1 873.] Sects and Science. 289 



fly about the heavens for joy, singing with the lark, or 

 rolling like the tumbler. These are like arts that bring no 

 bread, but typify leisure, grace, and overflow of life, thought, 

 and feeling. 



The wise men we ought to find in our universities. 

 They must keep the links of humanity together ; they must 

 prevent us from looking at subjects from one point of space 

 or time merely, and enable us to view them from every 

 good loophole, even out of almost forgotten eyes of Pytha- 

 goras and Zoroaster, and others, up to our time. And when 

 the world laughs at such names, as unfit to teach us to 

 make a thousand pounds a year or a week, we shall say 

 " These men saw a world that we do not see ; and when 

 our own view is rather confined, we may see it profitable 

 to use their vision, and claim for cultivation the fields they 

 discovered." 



The universities must be broad, or why should we call 

 them universities ? Narrow them, and in that proportion 

 you make them sectarian. They certainly began with very 

 limited views, but they have gradually grown, and one or 

 two include nearly all the circle of human thought. None, 

 however, include actually the whole. When London Uni- 

 versity rose and excluded the religious element, that was a 

 decided step in the formation of a sect. It limited the 

 universality, so to speak, and although it may be said 

 nominally to have excluded only one branch of mental 

 activity, we must remember that the branch was to the 

 most of the world the most important, and in early times 

 the only branch taught at seminaries rising to universities. 

 It was a new step separating, in a prominent manner, 

 religious and secular education. That separation is going 

 on still more, and without objecting at all to it we must not 

 forget the importance of the era passed. We had at once 

 two sects — two divisions. Some persons will say that these 

 were not two sects properly, because they attended to 

 different subjects ; but probably no persons will say that 

 they were not two sects in every sense but the name. 

 There was a desire to separate from the religious question 

 from a dislike to it, and this is already a sectarian element 

 in society; no man can differ from society without being 

 sectarian unless he is perfectly right, and when he is so we 

 shall cease to give him any trifling name. But to separate 

 from religious bodies because you adopt other religious 

 opinions and make converts is to form a sect in the eyes 

 of all ; and to separate because you object to all religious 

 opinions is equally to form a sect, unless you can show 



