i873«] Sects and Science. 291 



• 

 College of Independents, and partake of denominationalism. 

 The result is in our opinion decidedly so. Men as a rule 

 turn out to be what they are taught to be. 



Are we therefore to blame the one or the other ? Cer- 

 tainly not the old for being wide in theory. It will be said 

 that this is only in theory, and that in practice their 

 teaching is narrow, and that in former times it was still 

 narrower, and therefore the London University was called 

 into existence. This was partly true, and therefore we 

 should be sorry to see it otherwise, at least for a while ; 

 this reasoning, however, simply shows that the new insti- 

 tution was supplementary, and did not even pretend to the 

 greatest breadth. The spirit of this university seems to 

 continue unchanged, and there is a growing tendency to 

 the cultivation of science only. The exclusion of Greek 

 from the necessities in the matriculated examination is a 

 step in a similar direction, and one most resolutely fought 

 for. The tendency is to the cultivation of the present. It 

 is the same spirit that stimulates the manufacturer to 

 despise science, and to make his son learn by apprentice- 

 ship the thumb-rules of his art, although for professions 

 no university is so strict; in encouraging true scientific 

 principle. For this the nation owes it much. 



Is it to the same feeling in the nation that we are to 

 attribute the proposal of the premier to found a university 

 which should not teach metaphysics ? The occasion of the 

 proposal would lead us to suppose that the cause was quite 

 different ; but the time at which it took place, and its 

 associations, would lead us to think that he was moved by 

 the spirit of the age, pressing in directions foreshadowed, 

 but unseen except to a few. 



This may be the case, and unknown even to the author 

 himself, who certainly is not a man to be guided by merely 

 material considerations. It comes at the time of the 

 exclusion of Greek, and with the proposal of one examining 

 board. 



We are glad that there are the old and broad universities 

 ready to receive all knowledge within them, lax sometimes 

 in their rules, lax in their examinations on some points, 

 but minute in others — like scholars careless in many things 

 — but excessively careful of the points they study. The 

 new comes out with business-like habits, numbers its 

 students like workmen in a mill, knocks off those that are 

 not up to the mark, and promotes the best, ruthlessly but 

 successfully making good men of business — a magnificent 

 manufactory of professional men — journeymen in science. 



