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SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XV. No. 372 



and accordingly soms of the greatest masters in this depart- 

 ment stand outside of all scholastic association, while others, 

 who have passed through the ordinary discipline, have failed 

 to discern its advantage. It is in no small degree disappointing 

 to note the relation in which so many of our English poets 

 have stood toward the established educational system. They are. 

 no doubt, a "genus irritable,'' somewhat likely to re -act against 

 methods intended for the ordinary mind. Yet we do not like 

 to add to Shakspeare, Pope, Burns, Scott, Keats, and the 

 many others who accomplished their work without aid from 

 learned institutions, so many critical and dissatisQed recipients 

 of that aid: such as Shelley, prematurely dismissed from aca- 

 demic privileges ; Byron, Goldsmith, Swift, who perhaps deserved 

 to be; Southey, who declared that of all the months of his 

 life those passed at Oxford were the most unprofitable, — "All 

 I learned was a little swimming and a little boating;" Words- 

 worth, who showed his contempt for the ceremony of gradua- 

 tion by devoting the days preceding the final examinations to 

 the reading of "Clarissa Harlowe;" even Milton, the most 

 learned of our poets, whose discontent with his alma mater led 

 him to speak of Cambridge, in his "Reason of Chm-ch Govern- 

 ment," in this wise, "As in the time of her better health, and 

 mine own younger judgment, I never greatly admired her, so 

 now much less." 



Nor is it the more strictly imaginative departments of litera- 

 ture alone that have been largely non-academical in their spirit. 

 The fragment of autobiography in which Gibbon has given us 

 ■SO vivid a picture of his intellectual life comments with unspar- 

 ing severity upon the learned body intrusted with his education : 

 "To the University of Oxford I acknowledge no obligation : and 

 ishe will as cheerfully renounce me for a son as I am willing 

 to disclaim her for a mother. ' ' His great contemporarj , Hume, 

 ■ owed so little. to scholastic influences that the bare fact of his 

 residence as a student is with some difficulty established. Adam 

 Smith devotes a well-known passage of the "Wealth of Na- 

 tions" to a consideration of public endowments of education 

 from a point of view sufficiently indicated in remarks like 

 these: "The discipline of colleges and universities is in gen- 

 eral contrived, not for the benefit of the students, but for the 

 interest, or more properly speaking for the ease, of the masters. 

 .. . . Those parts of education for the teaching of which there 

 are no public institutions are generally the best taught." The 

 Jew esteem in which Locke held the curriculum of his day is 

 ■stated, expressly or by implication, in each of his writings on 

 .education. Francis Bacon criticised the learned foundations of 

 his time on historical grounds in the "Advancement of Learn- 

 ing," and on grounds of theory in his "Novum Organum." 



It is needless to multiply instances of this revolt of individual 

 genius from the ideas and methods embodied in institutions of 

 education. It seems necessary to admit that the academic dis- 

 cipline has not been very successful in dealing with the highest 

 order of minds. Yet. obviously, there are various things that 

 may be said in reply to such an allegation. It does not follow, 

 because the work of a great man seems to himself or to others 

 to have been uninfluenced by his early education, that it really 

 was so. We sometimes forget the source of impulses that have 

 tbeen of great consequence tons; and it is not difficult to show, 

 in the case of some distinguished critics of the educational 

 .system, that their obligations to it are much greater than they 

 .suppose. All human things have periods of relative decline 

 .and inferiorit , which it is not just to treat as representative. 

 Some of the s verest strictures proceed from men who happened 

 .upon evil days, and in such cases the exceptional character of 

 the Jtime should be taken account of. During the eighteenth 

 iSentury, for example, the English universities were unproduc- 

 tive. Many of the professors treated their positions as sinecures, 

 and gave no instruction. The story goes that one of the non- 

 resident professors, subjected to the cruel hardship of a journey 

 four times a year for the drawing of his salary, who had made 

 various attempts to induce the authorities to forward the 

 stipend, at last discovered a statute which obliged them to do 

 so, and thus succeeded in absolving himself from the solitary 

 function which he had ever been known to discharge. It is no 



wonder that the indignant comments of the author of the 

 "Wealth of Nations" were provoked by an administration of a 

 public trust under which such abuses were possible. So far as 

 there is any incomiDatibility between provision for the original 

 and creative mind, and due consideration for persons of in- 

 ferior endowment, it may with some reason be maintained that 

 the latter is the more important duty. Genius can take care of 

 itself: it will not suffer its path to be too narrowly marked 

 out: it is the man of average powers who needs instruction and 

 direction. Society may be better served by an educational 

 regimea adapted to the great mass of those subjected to it than 

 by one higher in intellectual quality, but narrower in the range 

 of its application. We must not allow too great weight to the 

 fact that so many distinguished names can be cited in criticism 

 of methods of education. Such criticisms are often unfair as 

 to the matter of fact, withholding acknowledgments that ought 

 to be rendered. Just as applied to a particular time, they are 

 often unjust as general propositions. The dist^inction which 

 ought always to be kept in view between the ordinary mind, 

 for which systems of instruction are largely designed, and the 

 exceptional mind, which is in great degree a law unto itself, 

 they often disregard. 



I have thought that it might be suitable to the occasion which 

 brings us together, if, instead of discussing a theme of more 

 specific character, which might not be of interest to us all, I 

 were to remind you, through a few illustrations, how potent 

 and effective the influence of learned institutions has been upon 

 the progress of modern society. The conception of scholarly 

 life as remote from practical things is sufficiently common to 

 make it well sometimes to enter protest against it; and how- 

 ever little influenced we may be by derogatory estimates, such 

 as have been referred to, an occasional resurvey of salient facts 

 of academic history cannot be without value. One who con- 

 siders how hard it is to name an important movement of 

 thought or life, since society emerged from the middle ages, 

 in which institutions of higher education have not been a dis- 

 cernible factor, will understand how honorable and dignified is 

 the learned tradition which we have inherited. "I have felt," 

 said Frederick D. Maurice, "the close connection between the 

 learning of the scholar and the life of the world." The reali- 

 zation of this, as a personal consciousness, is one of the most 

 ennobling and invigorating experiences of which one is capable ; 

 the perception of it, merely as a fact observed in history, is 

 by no means unimportant. 



In June, 1888, the University of Bologna celebrated the 

 eight hundredth anniversary of its founding. Unless the suc- 

 cession of teachers said to be traceable at Athens, from Plato 

 down to the suppression of Pagan philosophy by Justinian, be 

 admitted as an exception, this is the longest existence attained 

 by any such institution in the civilized world. This length of 

 time takes us back to that early awakening of the intellect of 

 Europe which has been happily termed the "Roman Renais- 

 sance." Various influences contributed to make this period of 

 the twelfth and thirteenth centuries one of new life, — Mo- 

 hammedan civilization, acting through the Crusades and the 

 Saracen conquests, awakening an interest in physical science, 

 bestowing upon western Europe important portions of the phi- 

 losophy of Aristotle; the commercial enterprise of the busy 

 Italian cities, creating wealth, introducing refined tastes and 

 habits, developing political relations and ideals before unknown ; 

 the resuscitation of ancient philosophy, under the direction of 

 the Church, expressing itself in the speculative and dogmatic 

 movement known as scholasticism. The early universities were 

 the product of these pregnant influences. In their origin they 

 were essentially popular; not established by bounty of king or 

 patron, but rising, without preconcerted plan, in response to 

 recognized needs, around the persons of famous teachers. 



The most characteristic of the intellectual tendencies of the 

 age was the scholastic philosophy, and it was only natural that 

 the newly founded schools should for a long period of time be 

 mainly devoted to its promulgation. Mr. Hallam, writing 

 scarcely more than fifty years ago, declared that he knew of 

 only one Englishman, since the revival of letters, who had 



