33G 
and in his (Mr. Dibdin’s) year it was a positive fact that his own was the 
only name entered for these lectures : he need hardly add that if Professor 
Challis was unable to get men to come and hear him on these subjects, no 
other man in the university was likely to do so. He believed that such a 
result was mainly due to the high-pressure system of examinations. In 
order to pass successfully in honours , a man was obliged to study solely with 
a view to the examination, instead of his first object being to master the 
subjects in which he had to be examined. This was particularly the case 
in regard to Mathematics ; some of those who passed tripos most suc- 
cessfully had not studied experimental science at ail ; and in regard to 
Astronomy he had actually heard the objection made, that going to the 
Observatory at all and examining the instruments tended to confuse the 
mind in calculations relative to those instruments. As regards Professor 
Nicholson’s remarks on miracles, he did not think his definition of them 
satisfactory — that mode of treatment would do away with miracles alto- 
gether ; because if, using a mathematical illustration, miracles were merely 
exceptional terms in a series of which the other terms were the ordinary 
course of Nature, the exceptional terms being the same in everything but 
the frequency of their recurrence with the ordinary terms, it followed that 
miracles were events as natural as any other events, and differing from other 
events only in this, that they seldom occurred. He himself preferred Pro- 
fessor Westcott’s definition of a miracle, which was — speaking from memory 
— anything which suggested the active interference of a Personal God. # 
The Chairman thought the point which had been brought forward by 
Mr. Dibdin, with reference to the mode of instruction at Cambridge Uni- 
versity, deserved considerable attention. Certainly, at Cambridge the mathe- 
matical studies of undergraduates had been, for the most part, directed to the 
acquirement of the knowledge of what have been called Pure Mathematics, 
independent of observation, and to mastering all the processes of reasoning 
and calculation by which the results obtained by our greatest mathematicians 
had been arrived at, It was to his mind a question of considerable doubt, 
whether it was essential to unite with the teaching of pure mathematics a 
constant observation of phenomena. The two things were quite separate, 
and it was questionable whether they should not be considered separately. 
In the study of Astronomy it was no doubt true that some men would not 
go to the Observatory, but would confine themselves to abstruse calculations ; 
but at any rate that mode of study was not without its value, for the great 
* Professor B. F. Westcott, D.D., writes : — “ These words give a fair general 
view of the definition of a miracle, and I prefer it to any other. The exact 
words which I have used, are, that a miracle is ‘ an event or phenomenon 
which is fitted to suggest to us the action of a personal spiritual power. . . 
Its essence lies not so much in what it is in itself as in what it is calculated 
to indicate. . . .’ The points on which I wish to lay stress are, (1) that a 
‘ miracle ’ involves an interpretation of facts observed ; and (2) that it 
assumes the existence of a spiritual power adequate to produce the effects.” 
