PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 801 



I am conscious that this address is lamentably incomplete in that it is con- 

 cerned only with the manner of University teaching, and scarcely at all with 

 its matter, and that, to carry any conviction, I should address myself to the 

 task of working out in detail the suggestions that I have made. But this would 

 lead me far beyond the limits of an address, and I am content to do little more 

 than touch the fringe of the problem. Reduced to its simplest terms, this, like 

 so many educational problems, involves an attempt to reconcile two more or less 

 incompatible aims. 



The acquisition of knowledge and the training of the mmd are two inseparable 

 aims of education, and yet it often appears difficult to provide adequately for the 

 one without neglecting the other. If childhood is the time when systematic 

 training is most desirable it is also the time when knowledge is most easily 

 acquired ; if early manhood is the time when special knowledge must be sought 

 it is also the time when training for the special business of life is necessary. 

 To withdraw from the child the opportunities of absorbing knowledge may be 

 as harmful as it is unnatural ; to turn a young man or young woman loose into a 

 profession without proper preparation is cruel, and may be disastrous. 



And so we get the battle of syllabus,, time-table, scholarships, examinations, 

 professional training, technical instruction, under all of which lies the disturbing 

 distinction between training and knowledge. 



But, if we inquire further into these matters, I think we shall find that the 

 fundamental question is to a large extent one of responsibility. Left to himself, 

 a boy or a man will acquire a knowledge of the things which interest him, even 

 though they be only the arts of a pickpocket, and will obtain a training from 

 experience such as no school or college can give. If education is to achieve the 

 great purpose of interesting and instructing him while young in the right objects, 

 and also of training him for the proper business of his life before it is too late, is 

 it not mainly a question of deciding when and how far to take for him, or to leave 

 to him, the responsibility of what he is to learn and how he is to learn it? If 

 the teacher bears the responsibility during the period of school training, should 

 not the student have a large share of responsibility in the quest of knowledge at 

 the University ? 



Now, it is of the essence of responsibility that there should be something 

 sudden and unexpected about it. If, before putting a young man into a position 

 of trust, you lead him through a kindergarten preparation for it, in which he plays 

 with the semblance before being admitted to the reality, if you teach him first 

 all the rules and regulations which should prevent him from making a mistake, 

 you will effectually smother his independence and stifle his initiative. But 

 plunge him into a new experience and make him feel the responsibility of his 

 position, and you will give him the impulse to learn his new duties and the 

 opportunity to show his real powers. It is because I feel that this sudden en- 

 trance into an environment of new responsibility is so necessary that I would 

 regard with suspicion any attempt to provide a gradual transition between school 

 and University methods. 



In matters of discipline and self-control it is possible and advisable to place 

 responsibility upon school children ; in intellectual matters it is not advisable, 

 except for the few who are matured beyond their years. It is, therefore, all 

 the more necessary that this should be done at the moment when they enter the 

 University. 



This should be the moment of which Emerson says : ' There is a time in 

 every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that he must take him- 

 self for better or worse as his portion ; that, though the wide universe is full of 

 good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed 

 on that plot of ground which is given him to till. The power which resides in 

 him is new in Nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor 

 does he know until he has tried.' 



The spirit of independent inquiry, which should dominate all University 

 teaching and learning, is not to be measured, as I have already said, by the 

 number of memoirs published, but it is to be tested by the extent to which 

 University students are engaged upon work for which they feel a responsibility. 

 Visit the Universities at the present moment, and, in spite of all the admirable 

 investigation which is being carried on, you will find the majority of students 



