87

scholars, I take the earliest opportunity which has presented itself since my restoration to h

ed. And it was the more surprising to me, as the five-and-twenty years which have passed over my head since I reached intellectual manhood, have been largely spent in no half-hearted advocacy of doctrines which have not yet found favour in the eyes of Academic respectability; so that, when the proposal t

nothing to do for it save the making of a speech, a conversation with my distinguished predecessor soon dispelled the dream. I found that, by the constitution of the University of Aberdeen, the incumbent of the Rectorate is, if not a power, at any rate a potentia

tic among statesmen. I have already done my best, and, as long as I hold my office, I shall continue my endeavours, to follow in the path which he trod; to do what in me lies, to bring this University nearer to the ideal--alas, that I should be obliged to say idea

take any notice of my incumbency, I shall probably go down to posterity as the Rector who was always beaten. But if th

*

inning, once more, to awake to the fact that matters of belief and of speculation are of absolutely infinite practical importance; and are drawing off from that sunny country "where it is always afternoon"--the sleepy hollow of broad indifferentism--to range themselves under their natural banners. Change is in the air. It is whirling feather-heads into all sorts of eccentric orbits, and filling the steadiest with a sense of insecurity. It insists on reopening all questions and asking all institu

and I have been filled with astonishment by the evidences of internal fermentation which they exhibit. If Gibbon could revisit the ancient seat of learning of which he has written so cavalierly, assuredly he would no longer spe

nished and presented the Report which related to these Universities; for we should have looked like mere plagiarists, if, in consequence of a litt

nection with the Universities, resident in those towns. It is said that the Commission has reported, and that, for the first time in recorded history, the nation, and perhaps the Colleges themselves, will know what they are wort

nion--which some whisper is, in the present case, very much the same thing as publican's opinio

mentation depends, not so much on the quantity of the yeast, as on the composition of the wort, and its richness in fermentable material; and, as a preliminary to

, the organisation of the members of a University into Nations, with their elective Rector, is the last relic of the primitive constitution of Universities. The Rectorate was the most important

he Franks and Lombards, Karl, surnamed the Great, whom we all called Charlemagne, and believed to be a Frenchman, until a learned historian, by beneficent iteration, taught us better. Karl is

er to do what is right, we must know what is right." [1] An irrefragable truth, I fancy. Acting upon it, the king took pretty full compulsory po

they had lived in these times, they would have been able to show, with ease, that the king's proceedings were totally contrary to the best liberal principles. But it may be said, in justification of the Teutonic ruler, first, that he was born before those principles, and did not suspect that the best way of getting disorder into order was to let it alone; and, secondly, that his rough and questionable proceedings did, more or less, bring about the end he had in view. For, in a couple of centuries, the schools he sowed broadcast produced their crop of men, thirsting

to being. Originally it had but one Faculty, that of Arts. Its aim was to be a

brought them face to face with all the leading aspects of the many-sided mind of man. For these studies did really contain, at any rate in embryo--sometimes, it may be, in caricature--what we now call Philosophy,

s competent to teach, became masters and teachers of their younger brethren. Whence

t first, and subsequently by those of their Procurators, or representatives, elected their supreme head and governor, the Rector--at that time the sole representative of the

eference to this original state of things that I have spoken of the Rector

by collision with three mighty powers, the power of the invisible God, the power of my fellow Man, and the power of brute Nature. Let your learning be turned to the study of these powers, that I may know how I am to comport myself with regard to them." In answer to this demand, some of the Masters of the Faculty of Arts devoted themselves to the study of Theology, some to that of Law, and some

days asserted with effect, that which it now asserts, happily without any effect in these realms, its right of censorship and control over all teaching. The local habitation of the University lay partly in the lands attached to the monastery of S. Gen

sity, your Chancellor stands in the same relation to the Papacy; and, with all respect for his Gr

upon it. The charitable and the humane, blessed with wealth, were very early penetrated by the misery of the poor student. And the wise saw that intellectual ability is not so common or so unimportant a gift that it should be allowed to run to waste upon mere handicrafts and chares. The man who was a blessing to his contemporaries, but who so often has been converted into a curse, by the blind

ndergone an "unearned increment," which has given these societies a continually increasing weight and importance as against the unendowed, or fixedly endowed, Univ

more substantial an entity is the Very Reverend the Principal, analogue, if not homologue, of the Principals of King's College, than th

itution, with as much real approximation to the primitive state of things as is at all desirable. If your fat kine have eaten the lean, they have not lain down to chew the cud ever since. The Scottish Universities, like the English, have diverged widely enough from the

r an income, such as many a grey-headed veteran, or clergyman would envy; and which is larger than the endowment of many Regius chairs. You do not care to make your University a school of manners for the rich; of sports for the athletic; or a hot-bed of high-fed, hypercritical refinement, more destructive to vigour and originality than are starvation and oppression. No; your little Bursaries of ten an

great bulk of what the Colleges have to show for their enormous wealth, plus, at least, a hundred and fifty pounds a year apiece which each undergraduate costs his parents or guardians, I feel inclined to ask, whether the rate-in-aid of the education of the wealthy and professional classes, thus levied on the resources of the community, is not, after all, a little heavy? And, still further, I am tempted to inquire what has become of the indigent scholars, the sons of the masses of the people whose daily labour just suffices to meet their daily wants,

utation at the

ss and well-earned fame; I cannot but think that, in essence, Aberdeen has departed but little from the primitive intention of the founders of Unive

acticable dreamer, if I ask you not to rest and be thankful in this state of satisfaction; if I ask you to consider awhile, how this

the student with a noble ambition to emulate the learning of learned men, and to follow in the footsteps of the explorers of new fields of knowledge. And the very air he breathes should be charged with that enthusiasm for truth, that fanaticism of ver

of the power of seeing it, as there are men who are born deaf and blind, and the loss of those, as of these, is simply infinite. There are others in whom it is an overpowering passion; happy men, born with the productive, or at lowest, the appreciative, genius of the Artist. But, in the mass of mankind, the Aesth

a certain extent, and confer degrees for proficiency in some of its branches. If there are Doctors of Music, why should there be no Masters of painting, of Sculpture,

reat classes of things knowable; of which the first, in logical, though not in natural, order is knowledge relating to the scope and limits of the mental faculties of man, a f

call his conduct. It answers to Moral and Religious philosophy. Practically, it is the most directly valuable of all forms of knowl

lies about the individual man; and of the rules which those phaenomena are obser

erms are hopelessly diverted from such a meaning; and it includes all exact kn

y I hope for? The forms of knowledge which I have enumerated, should furnish such replies as are within human reach, to the first and second of

of knowledge, no question as to their relative importance, or as

which of the terms of a Rule of Three sum one ought to know, in order to get a trustworthy result. Practical life is such a sum, in which your duty multiplied into your capacity, and divided by your circumstances, gives you the fourth t

e writings. The scholastic philosophy is a wonderful monument of the patience and ingenuity with which the human mind toiled to build up a logically consistent theory of the Universe, out of such materials. And that philosophy is by no means dead and buried, as many vainly suppose. On the contrary, numbers of men of no mean learning and accomplishment, and sometimes of rare power and subtlety of thought, hold by it as the best theory of things which has yet been sta

cal Criticism; and, above all, with visions of Art, of a kind which not only would not fit into the scholastic scheme, but showed them a pre-Christian, and indeed altogether un-Christian world, of such grandeur and beauty that they ceased to think of any other. They were as men who had kissed the Fair

knowledge, to the certainty of which no authority could add, or take away, one jot or tittle, and to which the tradition of a thousand years was as insignificant as the hearsay of yesterday. To the scholastic system, the study of classical literature might be inconvenient and distracting, but it w

taken in conjunction with some other causes, such instinctive aversion is at the bottom of the long exclusion of any serious discipline in the physical sc

edge and discipline. But the other day I met with some passages in the Address to another Scottish University, of a great thi

ng of a word clearly understood before using it, and the meaning of a proposition before assenting to it;--these are the lessons we learn" from workers in Science. "With all this vigorous management of the negative element, they inspire no scepticism about the reality of truth or indifference to its pu

e" for "ancient dialecticians," and "Science as an essential ingredient in education" for "the ancient languages as our best literary education." Mill did, in fact, deliver a noble panegyric upon classical studies. I do no

t satisfaction, that candidates for the degree of Master of Arts in this University are required to have a knowledge, not only of Mental and Moral Philosophy, and of Mathemati

and symbolic expression. And be assured that no teaching of science is worth anything, as a mental discipline, which is not based upon direct perception of the facts, and practical exercise of the observing and logical faculties upon them. Even in such a simple matter as the mere comprehension of form, ask the most practised and widely informed anatomist what is the difference between his knowledge of a structure which he has read about, and his knowledge of the same structure when he has seen it for himself; and he will tell you that the two things are not comparable--the difference is infinite. Thus I am very strongly inclined to agree with some learned schoolmasters who say that, in their experience,

ple. Within the last twenty years, Oxford alone has sunk more than a hundred and twenty thousand pounds in building and furnishing Physical, Chemical, and Physiological Laboratories, and a magnificent Museum, arranged with an almost luxurious regard for the needs of the student. Cambridge, less rich

ing recognition and special organisation, on account of its bearing on the wants of mankind. The Faculties of Theology, Law, and Medicine, are technical schools, intended to eq

iving may have heard their fathers speak of; what little physical science could be seen to bear directly upon human life, lay within the province of Medicine. Medicine was the foster-mother of Chemistry, because it has to do with the preparation of drugs and the detection

s of Physical and Natural Science attached to the Medical Schools. But, in the course of the last thirty years, both foster-mother and child have grown so big, t

o the most industrious and conscientious among you, to those who are most deeply penetrated with a sense of the extremely serious responsibilities which attach to the calling of a medical practi

er-end knowledge which a watchmaker has of a watch, and which you expect that craftsman, as an honest man, to have, when you entrust a watch that goes badly, to him. It is a kind of knowledge which is to be acquired, not in the lecture-room, nor in the library, but in the dissecting-room and the laboratory. It is to be had not by sharing your attention between these and sundry other subjects, but by concentrating your minds, week after week, and month after month, six or seven hours a day, upon all the complexities of organ and func

hen pass a real, practical examination in these subjects; and, having gone through that ordeal satisfactorily, he should be troubled no more with them. His whole mind should then be given with equal intentness to Therapeutics, in its bro

kes the general form of the reproach that, in thus limiting the curriculum, we are seeking to narrow it. We are told that the medical man ought to be a person of good education and general information, if his profession is to hold its own among other professions; that he ought to know Botany, or else, if he goes abroad, he will not be able to tell poisonous fruits from edible ones; that he ought to know drugs, as a druggist knows them, or he will not be able to tell sham bark and senna from the real articles; that he ought to know Zoology, because--well, I really have never been able to learn exactly why he is to be expected to know zoology. There is, indeed, a popular superstition,

have his general culture before he devotes himself to the special studies of that Faculty; and I venture to maintain, that, if the general culture obtained in the Faculty of Arts were what it

of human knowledge into which either its roots, or its branches, do not extend; like the Atlantic between the Old and the New Worlds, its waves wash the shores of the two worlds of matter and of mind; its tributary streams flow from both; thr

ll this, the patent fact of the limitat

an coul

life wo

f a thousand lo

egree; and might, very fairly, have been required to pass a practical examination upon the contents of the British Museum, before commencing practice as a prom

s, and forming a rational theory of the condition of your patient, it will be satisfactory for you to find that those principles are not there--although, to use the examination slang which is unfortunately too familiar to m

se between two physicians--one who did not know whether a whale is a fish or not, and could not tell gentian from ginger, but did understand the applications of the institutes of me

those which I should have no hesitation in excluding from the medical curriculum, is that to which my own life has been specially devoted, sh

he Arts Curriculum: and here, happily, my theory is in entire accordance with your practice. Moreover, as I have already said, I have no sort of doubt that, in view of the relation of Physical Science to the practical life of the present day, it has the same right as Theology, Law, and Medicine, to a Faculty of its own in which men shall be trained to be professional men of science. It may be doubted whether Universities ar

providing, in some measure, for one of the greatest wants of our time and

e original investigator. I am inclined to think he was not far wrong. And, be it observed, that the question is not, whether such a man shall be able to make as much out of his abilities as his brother, of

nnot give him the assurance that any amount of proficiency in the Biological Sciences will be convertible into, even the most modest, bread and cheese. And I believe that the case is as bad, or per

way to any immediate remedy for this state of affairs which s

al public. I apprehend that it cannot be illegitimate to do as much for the promotion of scientific investigation. To take the lowest ground, as a mere investment of money, the latter is likely to be much more immediately profitable. To my mind, the difficulty in the way of such schemes is not theoretical, but practical. Given the laboratories, how are the investigators to be maintained? What career is open to those who have been thus encouraged to leave bread-winning pursuits? If they are to be provided for by endowment, we come back to the College Fellowship system, the results of which, for Literatu

s may not be overcome, but their gr

onding number of Professorial chairs, the incumbents of which need not be so burdened with teaching as to deprive them of ample leisure for original work. I do not think that it is any impediment to an original investigator to have to devote a moderate portion of his time to lecturing, or superintending practical instruction. On the contrary, I think it may be, and often is, a benefit to be obliged to take a

alter m

be ripe a

be reserved for action in whiteni

rs, seems to me to be a more effectual check on these tendenc

I have already intimated, practical work in the Laboratory is absolutely indispensable, and that practical work must be guided and superintended by a sufficient staff of Demonstrators, who are for Science what Tutors are for other branches of study. And there must be a good supply of such Demonstrators. I doubt if the practical work of more than twenty students can be properly superintended by one Demonstrator. If we take the working day at six hours, that is less than twenty minutes apiece--not a very la

s to me to be some danger of its becoming our master. I by no means stand alone in this opinion. Experienced friends of mine do not hesitate to say that students whose career they watch, appear to them to become deteriorated by the constant effort to pass this or that examination, just as we hear of men's brains becoming affected by the daily necessity of catching a train. They work to pass, not to know; and outraged Science takes her revenge. They do pass, and they don't know. I have passed sundry examinations in my time, not without credit, and I confess I am ashamed to think how very little real knowledge underlay the torrent of stuff which I was able to pour out on paper. In fact, that which examination, as ordinarily conducted, tests, is simply a man's power of work unde

mpetent to examine in it. I believe both these opinions to be serious mistakes: the latter, perhaps, the more serious of the two. In the first place, I do not believe that any one who is not

do not put a hundredweight down before them, and tell each to swing it round. If you do, half of them won't be able to lift it at all, and only one or two will be able to perform the task. You must give them half a hundredweight, and see how they manoeuvre that, if you wa

e the evils inseparable from examination; but, under the best of circumstances, I believe that examination will remain but an imperfect

e Professor in whose province it lies; or, at any rate, under conditions which shall afford satisfactory proof that the work is theirs. The notion may sound revolutionary, but it is really

*

anner, my views respecting the teaching half--the Magistri and Regentes--of th

ield its hundredfold harvest, it must not be scattered amidst the stones of ignorance, or the tares of undisciplined indolence and wantonness. On the contrary, the soil must have be

s lies in the extremely faulty organisation of the majority of secondary schools. Students come to the Universities ill-prepared in classics an

s. But it would seem doubtful if any great difference of this kind really exists; for a high authority, himself Head of an English College, has solemnly affirmed that: "Elementary teaching o

play no mean part when the question of University reorganisation, with a view to practical measures, comes on for discussion. You are not responsible for this anomalous state of affairs now; but, as you pass into active life and acq

ing about will be but a superior piece of mechanism, unless each student strive after the ideal of the Scholar. And that ideal, it seems to me, has never been better embodied than by the grea

pe a noble l

glances towa

omewhat be l

u act as o

needs, that

ll set its

work just sha

e own the m

fellow man

s hands leave

tno

aroli Magni Regis Constitutio de Scholis per singula Episcopia et Monasteria instituendi

y of St. Andrew, February 1, 1867, by J. S.

sation, with Especial Reference t

be glad to take credit for the close and vigorous