University of Oxford, materially impairs its character as a seat of
learning, and consequently its hold on the respect of the nation."
Cambridge can claim no exemption from the reproaches addressed to
Oxford. And thus there seems no escape from the admission that what we
fondly call our great seats of learning are simply "boarding schools"
for bigger boys; that learned men are not more numerous in them than
out of them; that the advancement of knowledge is not the object of
fellows of colleges; that, in the philosophic calm and meditative
stillness of their greenswarded courts, philosophy does not thrive, and
meditation bears few fruits.
It is my great good fortune to reckon amongst my friends resident
members of both universities, who are men of learning and research,
zealous cultivators of science, keeping before their minds a noble
ideal of a university, and doing their best to make that ideal a
reality; and, to me, they would necessarily typify the universities,
did not the authoritative statements I have quoted compel me to believe
that they are exceptional, and not representative men. Indeed, upon
calm consideration, several circumstances lead me to think that the
Rector of Lincoln College and the Commissioners cannot be far wrong.
I believe there can be no doubt that the foreigner who should wish to
become acquainted with the scientific, or the literary, activity of
modern England, would simply lose his time and his pains if he visited
our universities with that object.
And, as for works of profound research on any subject, and, above all,
in that classical lore for which the universities profess to sacrifice
almost everything else, why, a third-rate, poverty-stricken German
university turns out more produce of that kind in one year, than our
vast and wealthy foundations elaborate in ten.
Ask the man who is investigating any question, profoundly and
thoroughly--be it historical, philosophical, philological, physical,
literary, or theological; who is trying to make himself master of any
abstract subject (except, perhaps, political economy and geology, both
of which are intensely Anglican sciences), whether he is not compelled
to read half a dozen times as many German as English books? And
whether, of these English books, more than one in ten is the work of a
fellow of a college, or a professor of an English university?
Is this from any lack of power in the English as compared with the
German mind? The countrymen of Grote and of Mill, of Faraday, of Robert
Brown, of Lyell, and of Darwin, to go no further back than the
contemporaries of men of middle age, can afford to smile at such a
suggestion. England can show now, as she has been able to show in every
generation since civilisation spread over the West, individual men who
hold their own against the world, and keep alive the old tradition of
her intellectual eminence.
But, in the majority of cases, these men are what they are in virtue of
their native intellectual force, and of a strength of character which
will not recognise impediments. They are not trained in the courts of
the Temple of Science, but storm the walls of that edifice in all sorts
of irregular ways, and with much loss of time and power, in order to
obtain their legitimate positions.
Our universities not only do not encourage such men; do not offer them
positions, in which it should be their highest duty to do, thoroughly,
that which they are most capable of doing; but, as far as possible,
university training shuts out of the minds of those among them, who are
subjected to it, the prospect that there is anything in the world for
which they are specially fitted. Imagine the success of the attempt to
still the intellectual hunger of any of the men I have mentioned, by
putting before him, as the object of existence, the successful mimicry
of the measure of a Greek song, or the roll of Ciceronian prose!
Imagine how much success would be likely to attend the attempt to
persuade such men that the education which leads to perfection in such
elegances is alone to be called culture; while the facts of history,
the process of thought, the conditions of moral and social existence,
and the laws of physical nature are left to be dealt with as they may
by outside barbarians!
It is not thus that the German universities, from being beneath notice
a century ago, have become what they are now--the most intensely
cultivated and the most productive intellectual corporations the world
has ever seen.
The student who repairs to them sees in the list of classes and of
professors a fair picture of the world of knowledge. Whatever he needs
to know there is some one ready to teach him, some one competent to
discipline him in the way of learning; whatever his special bent, let
him but be able and diligent, and in due time he shall find distinction
and a career. Among his professors, he sees men whose names are known
and revered throughout the civilised world; and their living example
infects him with a noble ambition, and a love for the spirit of work.
The Germans dominate the intellectual world by virtue of the same
simple secret as that which made Napoleon the master of old Europe.
They have declared _la carrière ouverte aux talents_, and every
Bursch marches with a professor's gown in his knapsack. Let him become
a great scholar, or man of science, and ministers will compete for his
services. In Germany, they do not leave the chance of his holding the
office he would render illustrious to the tender mercies of a hot
canvass, and the final wisdom of a mob of country parsons.
In short, in Germany, the universities are exactly what the Rector of
Lincoln and the Commissioners tell us the English universities are not;
that is to say, corporations "of learned men devoting their lives to
the cultivation of science, and the direction of academical
education." They are not "boarding schools for youths," nor clerical
seminaries; but institutions for the higher culture of men, in which
the theological faculty is of no more importance, or prominence, than
the rest; and which are truly "universities," since they strive to
represent and embody the totality of human knowledge, and to find room
for all forms of intellectual activity.
May zealous and clear-headed reformers like Mr. Pattison succeed in
their noble endeavours to shape our universities towards some such
ideal as this, without losing what is valuable and distinctive in their
social tone! But until they have succeeded, a liberal education will be
no more obtainable in our Oxford and Cambridge Universities than in our
public schools.
If I am justified in my conception of the ideal of a liberal education;
and if what I have said about the existing educational institutions of
the country is also true, it is clear that the two have no sort of
relation to one another; that the best of our schools and the most
complete of our university trainings give but a narrow, one-sided, and
essentially illiberal education--while the worst give what is really
next to no education at all. The South London Working-Men's College
could not copy any of these institutions if it would; I am bold enough
to express the conviction that it ought not if it could.
For what is wanted is the reality and not the mere name of a liberal
education; and this College must steadily set before itself the
ambition to be able to give that education sooner or later. At present
we are but beginning, sharpening our educational tools, as it were,
and, except a modicum of physical science, we are not able to offer
much more than is to be found in an ordinary school.
Moral and social science--one of the greatest and most fruitful of our
future classes, I hope--at present lacks only one thing in our
programme, and that is a teacher. A considerable want, no doubt; but it
must be recollected that it is much better to want a teacher than to
want the desire to learn.
Further, we need what, for want of a better name, I must call
Physical Geography. What I mean is that which the Germans call
"_Erdkunde_." It is a description of the earth, of its place and
relation to other bodies; of its general structure, and of its great
features--winds, tides, mountains, plains: of the chief forms of the
vegetable and animal worlds, of the varieties of man. It is the peg
upon which the greatest quantity of useful and entertaining scientific
information can be suspended.
Literature is not upon the College programme; but I hope some day to
see it there. For literature is the greatest of all sources of refined
pleasure, and one of the great uses of a liberal education is to enable
us to enjoy that pleasure. There is scope enough for the purposes of
liberal education in the study of the rich treasures of our own
language alone. All that is needed is direction, and the cultivation of
a refined taste by attention to sound criticism. But there is no reason
why French and German should not be mastered sufficiently to read what
is worth reading in those languages with pleasure and with profit.
And finally, by and by, we must have History; treated not as a
succession of battles and dynasties; not as a series of biographies;
not as evidence that Providence has always been on the side of either
Whigs or Tories; but as the development of man in times past, and in
other conditions than our own.
But, as it is one of the principles of our College to be
self-supporting, the public must lead, and we must follow, in these
matters. If my hearers take to heart what I have said about liberal
education, they will desire these things, and I doubt not we shall be
able to supply them. But we must wait till the demand is made.
* * * * *
Footnotes:
[1] For a justification of what is here said about these
schools, see that valuable book, _Essays on a Liberal Education,
passim_.
V
SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION: NOTES OF AN AFTER-DINNER SPEECH
[1869]
[Mr. Thackeray, talking of after-dinner speeches, has lamented that
"one never can recollect the fine things one thought of in the
cab," in going to the place of entertainment. I am not aware that
there are any "fine things" in the following pages, but such as
there are stand to a speech which really did get itself spoken, at
the hospitable table of the Liverpool Philomathic Society, more or
less in the position of what "one thought of in the cab."]
The introduction of scientific training into the general education of
the country is a topic upon which I could not have spoken, without some
more or less apologetic introduction, a few years ago. But upon this,
as upon other matters, public opinion has of late undergone a rapid
modification. Committees of both Houses of the Legislature have agreed
that something must be done in this direction, and have even thrown out
timid and faltering suggestions as to what should be done; while at the
opposite pole of society, committees of working men have expressed
their conviction that scientific training is the one thing needful for
their advancement, whether as men, or as workmen. Only the other day,
it was my duty to take part in the reception of a deputation of London
working men, who desired to learn from Sir Roderick Murchison, the
Director of the Royal School of Mines, whether the organisation of the
Institution in Jermyn Street could be made available for the supply of
that scientific instruction the need of which could not have been
apprehended, or stated, more clearly than it was by them.
The heads of colleges in our great universities (who have not the
reputation of being the most mobile of persons) have, in several cases,
thought it well that, out of the great number of honours and rewards at
their disposal, a few should hereafter be given to the cultivators of
the physical sciences. Nay, I hear that some colleges have even gone so
far as to appoint one, or, maybe, two special tutors for the purpose of
putting the facts and principles of physical science before the
undergraduate mind. And I say it with gratitude and great respect for
those eminent persons, that the head masters of our public schools,
Eton, Harrow, Winchester, have addressed themselves to the problem of
introducing instruction in physical science among the studies of those
great educational bodies, with much honesty of purpose and
enlightenment of understanding; and I live in hope that, before long,
important changes in this direction will be carried into effect in
those strongholds of ancient prescription. In fact, such changes have
already been made, and physical science, even now, constitutes a
recognised element of the school curriculum in Harrow and Rugby, whilst
I understand that ample preparations for such studies are being made at
Eton and elsewhere.
Looking at these facts, I might perhaps spare myself the trouble of
giving any reasons for the introduction of physical science into
elementary education; yet I cannot but think that it may be well if I
place before you some considerations which, perhaps, have hardly
received full attention.
At other times, and in other places, I have endeavoured to state the
higher and more abstract arguments, by which the study of physical
science may be shown to be indispensable to the complete training of
the human mind; but I do not wish it to be supposed that, because I
happen to be devoted to more or less abstract and "unpractical"
pursuits, I am insensible to the weight which ought to be attached
to that which has been said to be the English conception of
Paradise--namely, "getting on." I look upon it, that "getting on" is a
very important matter indeed. I do not mean merely for the sake of the
coarse and tangible results of success, but because humanity is so
constituted that a vast number of us would never be impelled to those
stretches of exertion which make, us wiser and more capable men, if it
were not for the absolute necessity of putting on our faculties all the
strain they will bear, for the purpose of "getting on" in the most
practical sense.
Now the value of a knowledge of physical science as a means of getting
on is indubitable. There are hardly any of our trades, except the
merely huckstering ones, in which some knowledge of science may not be
directly profitable to the pursuer of that occupation. As industry
attains higher stages of its development, as its processes become more
complicated and refined, and competition more keen, the sciences are
dragged in, one by one, to take their share in the fray; and he who can
best avail himself of their help is the man who will come out uppermost
in that struggle for existence, which goes on as fiercely beneath the
smooth surface of modern society, as among the wild inhabitants of the
woods.
But in addition to the bearing of science on ordinary practical life,
let me direct your attention to its immense influence on several of the
professions. I ask any one who has adopted the calling of an engineer,
how much time he lost when he left school, because he had to devote
himself to pursuits which were absolutely novel and strange, and of
which he had not obtained the remotest conception from his instructors?
He had to familiarise himself with ideas of the course and powers of
Nature, to which his attention had never been directed during his
school-life, and to learn, for the first time, that a world of facts
lies outside and beyond the world of words. I appeal to those who know
what engineering is, to say how far I am right in respect to that
profession; but with regard to another, of no less importance, I shall
venture to speak of my own knowledge. There is no one of us who may not
at any moment be thrown, bound hand and foot by physical incapacity,
into the hands of a medical practitioner. The chances of life and death
for all and each of us may, at any moment, depend on the skill with
which that practitioner is able to make out what is wrong in our bodily
frames, and on his ability to apply the proper remedy to the defect.
The necessities of modern life are such, and the class from which the
medical profession is chiefly recruited is so situated, that few
medical men can hope to spend more than three or four, or it may be
five, years in the pursuit of those studies which are immediately
germane to physic. How is that all too brief period spent at present? I
speak as an old examiner, having served some eleven or twelve years in
that capacity in the University of London, and therefore having a
practical acquaintance with the subject; but I might fortify myself by
the authority of the President of the College of Surgeons, Mr. Quain,
whom I heard the other day in an admirable address (the Hunterian
Oration) deal fully and wisely with this very topic. [1]
A young man commencing the study of medicine is at once required to
endeavour to make an acquaintance with a number of sciences, such as
Physics, as Chemistry, as Botany, as Physiology, which are absolutely
and entirely strange to him, however excellent his so-called education
at school may have been. Not only is he devoid of all apprehension of
scientific conceptions, not only does he fail to attach any meaning to
the words "matter," "force," or "law" in their scientific senses, but,
worse still, he has no notion of what it is to come into contact with
Nature, or to lay his mind alongside of a physical fact, and try to
conquer it, in the way our great naval hero told his captains to master
their enemies. His whole mind has been given to books, and I am hardly
exaggerating if I say that they are more real to him than Nature. He
imagines that all knowledge can be got out of books, and rests upon the
authority of some master or other; nor does he entertain any misgiving
that the method of learning which led to proficiency in the rules of
grammar will suffice to lead him to a mastery of the laws of Nature.
The youngster, thus unprepared for serious study, is turned loose among
his medical studies, with the result, in nine cases out of ten, that
the first year of his curriculum is spent in learning how to learn.
Indeed, he is lucky if, at the end of the first year, by the exertions
of his teachers and his own industry, he has acquired even that art of
arts. After which there remain not more than three, or perhaps four,
years for the profitable study of such vast sciences as Anatomy,
Physiology, Therapeutics, Medicine, Surgery, Obstetrics, and the like,
upon his knowledge or ignorance of which it depends whether the
practitioner shall diminish, or increase, the bills of mortality. Now
what is it but the preposterous condition of ordinary school education
which prevents a young man of seventeen, destined for the practice of
medicine, from being fully prepared for the study of Nature; and from
coming to the medical school, equipped with that preliminary knowledge
of the principles of Physics, of Chemistry and of Biology, upon which
he has now to waste one of the precious years, every moment of which
ought to be given to those studies which bear directly upon the
knowledge of his profession?
There is another profession, to the members of which, I think, a
certain preliminary knowledge of physical science might be quite as
valuable as to the medical man. The practitioner of medicine sets
before himself the noble object of taking care of man's bodily welfare;
but the members of this other profession undertake to "minister to
minds diseased," and, so far as may be, to diminish sin and soften
sorrow. Like the medical profession, the clerical, of which I now
speak, rests its power to heal upon its knowledge of the order of the
universe--upon certain theories of man's relation to that which lies
outside him. It is not my business to express any opinion about these
theories. I merely wish to point out that, like all other theories,
they are professedly based upon matters of fact. Thus the clerical
profession has to deal with the facts of Nature from a certain point of
view; and hence it comes into contact with that of the man of science,
who has to treat the same facts from another point of view. You know
how often that contact is to be described as collision, or violent
friction; and how great the heat, how little the light, which commonly
results from it.
In the interests of fair play, to say nothing of those of mankind, I
ask, Why do not the clergy as a body acquire, as a part of their
preliminary education, some such tincture of physical science as will
put them in a position to understand the difficulties in the way of
accepting their theories, which are forced upon the mind of every
thoughtful and intelligent man, who has taken the trouble to instruct
himself in the elements of natural knowledge?
Some time ago I attended a large meeting of the clergy, for the purpose
of delivering an address which I had been invited to give. I spoke of
some of the most elementary facts in physical science, and of the
manner in which they directly contradict certain of the ordinary
teachings of the clergy. The result was, that, after I had finished,
one section of the assembled ecclesiastics attacked me with all the
intemperance of pious zeal, for stating facts and conclusions which no
competent judge doubts; while, after the first speakers had subsided,
amidst the cheers of the great majority of their colleagues, the more
rational minority rose to tell me that I had taken wholly superfluous
pains, that they already knew all about what I had told them, and
perfectly agreed with me. A hard-headed friend of mine, who was
present, put the not unnatural question, "Then why don't you say so in
your pulpits?" to which inquiry I heard no reply.
In fact the clergy are at present divisible into three sections: an
immense body who are ignorant and speak out; a small proportion who
know and are silent; and a minute minority who know and speak according
to their knowledge. By the clergy, I mean especially the Protestant
clergy. Our great antagonist--I speak as a man of science--the Roman
Catholic Church, the one great spiritual organisation which is able to
resist, and must, as a matter of life and death, resist, the progress
of science and modern civilisation, manages her affairs much better.
It was my fortune some time ago to pay a visit to one of the most
important of the institutions in which the clergy of the Roman Catholic
Church in these islands are trained; and it seemed to me that the
difference between these men and the comfortable champions of
Anglicanism and of Dissent, was comparable to the difference between
our gallant Volunteers and the trained veterans of Napoleon's Old
Guard.
The Catholic priest is trained to know his business, and do it
effectually. The professors of the college in question, learned,
zealous, and determined men, permitted me to speak frankly with them.
We talked like outposts of opposed armies during a truce--as friendly
enemies; and when I ventured to point out the difficulties their
students would have to encounter from scientific thought, they replied:
"Our Church has lasted many ages, and has passed safely through many
storms. The present is but a new gust of the old tempest, and we do not
turn out our young men less fitted to weather it, than they have been,
in former times, to cope with the difficulties of those times. The
heresies of the day are explained to them by their professors of
philosophy and science, and they are taught how those heresies are to
be met."
I heartily respect an organisation which faces its enemies in this way;
and I wish that all ecclesiastical organisations were in as effective a
condition. I think it would be better, not only for them, but for us.
The army of liberal thought is, at present, in very loose order; and
many a spirited free-thinker makes use of his freedom mainly to vent
nonsense. We should be the better for a vigorous and watchful enemy to
hammer us into cohesion and discipline; and I, for one, lament that the
bench of Bishops cannot show a man of the calibre of Butler of the
"Analogy," who, if he were alive, would make short work of much of the
current _à priori_ "infidelity."