96 Transactions of the Soictli Af)-ica)i Pliilosopliical Socictij. 



progress of University life in South Africa. It tends also to per- 

 petuate the present expensive and ^vasteful staffing of colleges in 

 which there are already too few students of the best calibre, while 

 the effect upon the professors will continue to be seen in the 

 readiness with which men will leave us for positions where their 

 work has a true University status, with the consequent more ready 

 accessibility of those offices associated with an educational career 

 ■of the more advanced type. Scholarships available at European 

 Universities we must always have, but if our own educational life 

 is to be helped forward in the direction of its possible best, the 

 European scholarship will serve the highest purpose when it is made 

 post-graduate, when it partakes of the nature of reward for what 

 has been attempted and done, and when "it has a special object in 

 view. It is difficult to give unmixed praise to any scheme which 

 tends to defer the day when our own University shall exercise 

 ;all those higher functions for which such a body ultimately exists, 

 namely, the home of intellectual, moral, and social culture, and the 

 centre of those forces which naturally spend themselves in research 

 in the higher branches of the arts, sciences, and crafts. 



What steps should be taken to secure the establishing of a 

 Teaching University in South Africa, or how far it is practicable to go 

 in the near future, there will doubtless be many to suggest. What 

 must be taken for granted seems to be the necessity for working on 

 broad lines. The question belongs to South Africa. It is not one 

 for Cape Town or for the Cape Colony alone. South Africa as a 

 whole needs this University, and never needed it more than it needs 

 it to-day. Nothing that has transpired during the past fortnight has 

 lessened that need. The time will probably come when there will 

 be two or more Teaching Universities in South Africa, but it is 

 doubtful if there is room for more than one at present, without 

 perpetuating that wicked and weakening waste of resources and 

 men which is one great condemnation of our present collegiate 

 system. 



To obtain the one University required there are several possible 

 methods of procedure. We naturally turn to our present University 

 as the centre from which expansion would most naturally proceed, 

 .and which will doubtless one day put forth effort in this direction 

 and obtain the requisite powers and resources to enlarge the scope 

 ■of its woi'k. It is of course open for a particular college obtaining 

 private endowments to force the question of applying to Parliament 

 for a charter. Or, failing action in such quarters, those who are 

 interested and believe in the object in view, might form themselves 

 into an association and educate and agitate public opinion with the 



