348 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 



There may be and indeed must be some differentiation within these totals, but 

 it is a differentiation which the College authorities do not think it necessary 

 to disclose. Whatever allowance may be made for that, I think it is obvious 

 that the Colleges tend to repeat many times over a stereotyped form and not to 

 distribute their energies over eubjects which for lack of funds or some other 

 reason are not represented in the University list. The list of subjects in- 

 dicates that the Colleges select the commoner subjects, and are particularly 

 partial to those subjects which do not require any special provision as regards 

 accommodation or equipment. Three subjects appear in the College list and not 

 in the University list — namely, Modern Greek, Celtic, and Military History. 

 Why these subjects are so favoured we need not inquire, but we may be sure 

 that the 176 College lecturers are in themselves fully -competent to represent 

 subjects of profound human interest which the University disregards for want 

 of means. That it is the system and not the lecturers that account for this 

 convergence upon a few subjects was evident enough during the war, when 

 Cambridge lecturers were to be found among the most proficient and successful 

 workers with their brains in many departments of activity. The needs of peace 

 are not less urgent than the needs of war ; what we have learned in war we ought 

 to practise in peace. 



No one can think that the distribution of teachers and subjects would be 

 what it is if the educational system of the University and the Colleges were 

 under the control of a single competent body bent upon manifesting a true 

 ideal of the use of educational endowments, whether in money or men. 



Suppose, for example, that the Council of the Senate were recognised as 

 responsible to the country for the educational system of the University and 

 the Colleges jointly ; that, once appointed, they were freed from the referendum 

 of every item of their procedure to the lottery of a vote in the Senate. Imagine 

 what would happen if the University really had an entrance examination and 

 the Colleges had to select their members from among the successful candidates. 

 One may speculate upon what such a body would produce, but it is hardly 

 imaginable that they would plump for concentrating so much of the College 

 teaching in general terms upon classics, mathematics, history, and divinity. 



And, in support of the contention that diversity of intellectual effort is a 

 pertinent consideration, I would point out that if recondite subjects are to be 

 studied at all it must be at our own great centres of learning. If there is any 

 part of the world where old customs are dying out, or interesting species becom- 

 ing rare or extinct, it is for highly centralised countries like ours, at a distance 

 from the scene of action, to take care that the subject is studied while there 

 is yet time. On the spot, where no doubt the material is available, people are 

 too much pre-occupied to notice the ultimate effect of their own personal 

 activity. If we should, for example, set about exterminating the vermin of 

 London houses (which, by the wa.y, is above all things a most urgent question 

 of rehousing), it is not from any Londoner nor even from our near neighbours 

 in Cambridge, however interesting the minor horrors of war may be to their 

 biologists, that any protest will be raised about the outrage which the extermi- 

 nation would entail upon the province of natural histor.y. 



I have looked through that interesting volume ' The Yearbook of the 

 Universities of the Empire 1914 ' to see whether the other Universities of this 

 country ;nd the Empire had a notably extended or different range of subjects. 

 The differences are mostly differences in name er in the differentiation of 

 medical and theological subjects. It is interesting to note the gradual forma- 

 tion of University teaching in new lands. It seems to begin with medicine 

 and theology, law, engineering, architecture, commerce, and banking; and next 

 to take in our old college friends mathematics, classics, and natural sciences, 

 but it seldom shows any particular characteristics of local scholarship or 

 specialised learning; but in the older institutions there are some suggestive 

 subjects as Ass.yrian and Babylonian archaeology, classical archreology, African 

 languages (Swahili and Bantu), Irish language and literature, Dutch language 

 and literature, Japanese, Portuguese, Scandinavian languages and Thibetan, 

 phonetics, libraiy science, ancient Indian history and culture, colonial history, 

 Irish history, Scots history, civic design and civic law, scholastic philosophy, 

 Zend philosophy, rhetoric and oratory, geodesies, acoustics, meteorology, and 

 epidemiology in various forms. 



