SOCIAL DREAMS 23 
have grasped when we have passed the Schools. Truth, may-be, is not limited to our sense 
perception ; and even Faith may often assimilate Truth. Therefore I would urge you all, what- 
ever your profession, not to be satisfied with knowledge merely professional. You will make 
better doctors, better men of Science, better citizens, and be of greater use to your fellow-creatures 
if you know something of the side of human thought expressed in the words Philosophy, Poetry, 
History, Literature. You have not time ? Then make it somehow ; I believe we all can do so, 
and make ourselves better men and women by the self-denial involved in the manufacture. 
But this is by the way, and I return to my dreams, in which we may look forward to that 
blessed day when on all hands it will be admitted that each of us knows his own business best ; 
and that the State too often means but the faddists who make the most noise and whose 
persistency overcomes our ignorance on most subjects, and who somehow, perhaps, from the 
providential lightness of their weight, seem to float on the top of the social wave— that blessed 
day, I repeat it, when they will all be relegated to a great Parliament House or speaking-place (open 
of course to both sexes), but without any power of oppressing their fellow-citizens — their brothers 
and sisters who wish to be free — by useless, mischievous, and very expensive legislation. 
How much better would be a largely increased Voluntary System, such as even now produces 
these noble institutions, this University College and that sumptuous Infirmary, without the aid of 
rate or tax, than a system by which, with other people's money extracted from unwilling pockets, 
a certain section of the nation, very often on mere party lines and for party purposes, attempts to 
control our lives. How much better it is, be it in matters of Faith or practice, to persuade men 
rather than to force them. And which (I put it to all your consciences) is the better r to force the 
opinion of a part upon the whole, and by force majeure obtain money by rate and tax to carry that 
opinion into effect, or to receive the free-will offerings of moral agents in the way we are told 
God best loves, the way of the cheerful giver. I have said my say, and yet I hear you Students 
also have a dream. You see in that dream arise, not far from where we meet to-day, a stately 
building, unpaid for by the rates, emblematical of the unity of all the Schools existing in this 
College, in which you of the rising generation, and each generation as it rises, will discuss weighty 
subjects and will tell the world that you at any rate wish to be free men, individuals responsible 
for all you do, judging what is best on your own account : with the determination to develop all 
the capabilities of your human nature for the good of your fellow-creatures and yourselves. 
