which commenced with the Protestant Reformation is nearly played out,
and a wider and deeper change than that effected three centuries ago--a
reformation, or rather a revolution of thought, the extremes of which
are represented by the intellectual heirs of John of Leyden and of
Ignatius Loyola, rather than by those of Luther and of Leo--is waiting
to come on, nay, visible behind the scenes to those who have good eyes.
Men are beginning, 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 institutions, however venerable, by what right
they exist, and whether they are, or are not, in harmony with the real
or supposed wants of mankind. And it is remarkable that these searching
inquiries are not so much forced on institutions from without, as
developed from within. Consummate scholars question the value of
learning; priests contemn dogma; and women turn their backs upon man's
ideal of perfect womanhood, and seek satisfaction in apocalyptic
visions of some, as yet, unrealised epicene reality.
If there be a type of stability in this world, one would be inclined to
look for it in the old Universities of England. But it has been my
business of late to hear a good deal about what is going on in these
famous corporations; 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 speak of "the monks of Oxford
sunk in prejudice and port." There, as elsewhere, port has gone out of
fashion, and so has prejudice--at least that particular fine, old,
crusted sort of prejudice to which the great historian alludes.
Indeed, things are moving so fast in Oxford and Cambridge, that, for my
part, I rejoiced when the Royal Commission, of which I am a member, had
finished and presented the Report which related to these Universities;
for we should have looked like mere plagiarists, if, in consequence of
a little longer delay in issuing it, all the measures of reform we
proposed had been anticipated by the spontaneous action of the
Universities themselves.
A month ago I should have gone on to say that one might speedily expect
changes of another kind in Oxford and Cambridge. A Commission has been
inquiring into the revenues of the many wealthy societies, in more or
less direct connection 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 worth. And it was announced that a
statesman, who, whatever his other merits or defects, has aims above
the level of mere party fighting, and a clear vision into the most
complex practical problems, meant to deal with these revenues.
But, _Bos locutus est_. That mysterious independent variable of
political calculation, Public Opinion--which some whisper is, in the
present case, very much the same thing as publican's opinion--has
willed otherwise. The Heads may return to their wonted slumbers--at any
rate for a space.
Is the spirit of change, which is working thus vigorously in the South,
likely to affect the Northern Universities, and if so, to what extent?
The violence of fermentation 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 discussion of this
question, I venture to call to your minds the essential and fundamental
differences between the Scottish and the English type of University.
Do not charge me with anything worse than official egotism, if I say
that these differences appear to be largely symbolised by my own
existence. There is no Rector in an English University. Now, 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 of all offices in
that University of Paris, upon the model of which the University of
Aberdeen was fashioned; and which was certainly a great and flourishing
institution in the twelfth century.
Enthusiasts for the antiquity of one of the two acknowledged parents of
all Universities, indeed, do not hesitate to trace the origin of the
"Studium Parisiense" up to that wonderful king of the 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 said not to have been much of a
scholar himself, but he had the wisdom of which knowledge is only the
servitor. And that wisdom enabled him to see that ignorance is one of
the roots of all evil.
In the Capitulary which enjoins the foundation of monasterial and
cathedral schools, he says: "Right action is better than knowledge; but
in order 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 powers, and carried into effect a really considerable and
effectual scheme of elementary education through the length and breadth
of his dominions.
No doubt the idolaters out by the Elbe, in what is now part of Prussia,
objected to the Frankish king's measures; no doubt the priests, who had
never hesitated about sacrificing all unbelievers in their fantastic
deities and futile conjurations, were the loudest in chanting the
virtues of toleration; no doubt they denounced as a cruel persecutor
the man who would not allow them, however sincere they might be, to go
on spreading delusions which debased the intellect, as much as they
deadened the moral sense, and undermined the bonds of civil allegiance;
no doubt, if 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 for knowledge and craving for culture. Such men
gravitating towards Paris, as a light amidst the darkness of evil days,
from Germany, from Spain, from Britain, and from Scandinavia, came
together by natural affinity. By degrees they banded themselves into a
society, which, as its end was the knowledge of all things knowable,
called itself a "_Studium Generale_;" and when it had grown into a
recognised corporation, acquired the name of "_Universitas Studii
Generalis_," which, mark you, means not a "Useful Knowledge
Society," but a "Knowledge-of-things-in-general Society."
And thus the first "University," at any rate on this side of the Alps,
came into being. Originally it had but one Faculty, that of Arts. Its
aim was to be a centre of knowledge and culture; not to be, in any
sense, a technical school.
The scholars seem to have studied Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric;
Arithmetic and Geometry; Astronomy; Theology; and Music. Thus, their
work, however imperfect and faulty, judged by modern lights, it may
have been, 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, Mathematical and Physical Science, and Art. And I
doubt if the curriculum of any modern University shows so clear and
generous a comprehension of what is meant by culture, as this old
Trivium and Quadrivium does.
The students who had passed through the University course, and had
proved themselves competent to teach, became masters and teachers of
their younger brethren. Whence the distinction of Masters and Regents
on the one hand, and Scholars on the other.
Rapid growth necessitated organisation. The Masters and Scholars of
various tongues and countries grouped themselves into four Nations; and
the Nations, by their own votes at 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
University, and a very real power, who could defy Provosts interfering
from without; or could inflict even corporal punishment on disobedient
members within the University.
Such was the primitive constitution of the University of Paris. It is
in reference to this original state of things that I have spoken of the
Rectorate, and all that appertains to it, as the sole relic of that
constitution.
But this original organisation did not last long. Society was not then,
any more than it is now, patient of culture, as such. It says to
everything, "Be useful to me, or away with you." And to the learned,
the unlearned man said then, as he does now, "What is the use of all
your learning, unless you can tell me what I want to know? I am here
blindly groping about, and constantly damaging myself 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 to that of Medicine; and they
became Doctors--men learned in those technical, or, as we now call
them, professional, branches of knowledge. Like cleaving to like, the
Doctors formed schools, or Faculties, of Theology, Law, and Medicine,
which sometimes assumed airs of superiority over their parent, the
Faculty of Arts, though the latter always asserted and maintained its
fundamental supremacy.
The Faculties arose by process of natural differentiation out of the
primitive University. Other constituents, foreign to its nature, were
speedily grafted upon it. One of these extraneous elements was forced
into it by the Roman Church, which in those 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. Geneviève, partly in the diocese of the Bishop of
Paris; and he who would teach must have the licence of the Abbot, or of
the Bishop, as the nearest representative of the Pope, so to do, which
licence was granted by the Chancellors of these Ecclesiastics.
Thus, if I am what archaeologists call a "survival" of the primitive
head and ruler of the University, your Chancellor stands in the same
relation to the Papacy; and, with all respect for his Grace, I think I
may say that we both look terribly shrunken when compared with our
great originals.
Not so is it with a second foreign element, which silently dropped into
the soil of Universities, like the grain of mustard-seed in the
parable; and, like that grain, grew into a tree, in whose branches a
whole aviary of fowls took shelter. That element is the element of
Endowment. It differed from the preceding, in its original design to
serve as a prop to the young plant, not to be a parasite 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 adherence of his posterity to the
letter, rather than to the spirit, of his wishes--I mean the "pious
founder"--gave money and lands, that the student, who was rich in brain
and poor in all else, might be taken from the plough or from the
stithy, and enabled to devote himself to the higher service of mankind;
and built colleges and halls in which he might be not only housed and
fed, but taught.
The Colleges were very generally placed in strict subordination to the
University by their founders; but, in many cases, their endowment,
consisting of land, has undergone an "unearned increment," which has
given these societies a continually increasing weight and importance as
against the unendowed, or fixedly endowed, University. In Pharaoh's
dream, the seven lean kine eat up the seven fat ones. In the reality of
historical fact, the fat Colleges have eaten up the lean Universities.
Even here in Aberdeen, though the causes at work may have been somewhat
different, the effects have been similar; and you see how much more
substantial an entity is the Very Reverend the Principal, analogue, if
not homologue, of the Principals of King's College, than the Rector,
lineal representative of the ancient monarchs of the University, though
now, little more than a "king of shreds and patches."
Do not suppose that, in thus briefly tracing the process of University
metamorphosis, I have had any intention of quarrelling with its
results. Practically, it seems to me that the broad changes effected in
1858 have given the Scottish Universities a very liberal constitution,
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 their primitive model;
but I cannot help thinking that the northern form has remained more
faithful to its original, not only in constitution, but, what is more
to the purpose, in view of the cry for change, in the practical
application of the endowments connected with it.
In Aberdeen, these endowments are numerous, but so small that, taken
altogether, they are not equal to the revenue of a single third-rate
English college. They are scholarships, not fellowships; aids to do
work--not rewards for such work as it lies within the reach of an
ordinary, or even an extraordinary, young man to do. You do not think
that passing a respectable examination is a fair equivalent for 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 and twenty
(I believe even fifty) pounds a year, enabled any boy who has shown
ability in the course of his education in those remarkable primary
schools, which have made Scotland the power she is, to obtain the
highest culture the country can give him; and when he is armed and
equipped, his Spartan Alma Mater tells him that, so far, he has had his
wages for his work, and that he may go and earn the rest.
When I think of the host of pleasant, moneyed, well-bred young
gentlemen, who do a little learning and much boating by Cam and Isis,
the vision is a pleasant one; and, as a patriot, I rejoice that the
youth of the upper and richer classes of the nation receive a wholesome
and a manly training, however small may be the modicum of knowledge
they gather, in the intervals of this, their serious business. I admit,
to the full, the social and political value of that training. But, when
I proceed to consider that these young men may be said to represent the
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, for whose benefit these rich foundations were largely, if
not mainly, instituted? It seems as if Pharaoh's dream had been
rigorously carried out, and that even the fat scholar has eaten the
lean one. And when I turn from this picture to the no less real vision
of many a brave and frugal Scotch boy, spending his summer in hard
manual labour, that he may have the privilege of wending his way in
autumn to this University, with a bag of oatmeal, ten pounds in his
pocket, and his own stout heart to depend upon through the northern
winter; not bent on seeking
"The bubble reputation at the cannon's mouth,"
but determined to wring knowledge from the hard hands of penury; when I
see him win through all such outward obstacles to positions of wide
usefulness and well-earned fame; I cannot but think that, in essence,
Aberdeen has departed but little from the primitive intention of the
founders of Universities, and that the spirit of reform has so much to
do on the other side of the Border, that it may be long before he has
leisure to look this way.
As compared with other actual Universities, then, Aberdeen, may,
perhaps, be well satisfied with itself. But do not think me an
impracticable 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 actual
good stands related to that ideal better, towards which both men and
institutions must progress, if they would not retrograde.
In an ideal University, as I conceive it, a man should be able to
obtain instruction in all forms of knowledge, and discipline in the use
of all the methods by which knowledge is obtained. In such a
University, the force of living example should fire 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 veracity, which is a greater possession than much
learning; a nobler gift than the power of increasing knowledge; by so
much greater and nobler than these, as the moral nature of man is
greater than the intellectual; for veracity is the heart of morality.
But the man who is all morality and intellect, although he may be good
and even great, is, after all, only half a man. There is beauty in the
moral world and in the intellectual world; but there is also a beauty
which is neither moral nor intellectual--the beauty of the world of
Art. There are men who are devoid 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 Aesthetic faculty, like the reasoning power and the moral
sense, needs to be roused, directed, and cultivated; and I know not why
the development of that side of his nature, through which man has
access to a perennial spring of ennobling pleasure, should be omitted
from any comprehensive scheme of University education.
All Universities recognise Literature in the sense of the old Rhetoric,
which is art incarnate in words. Some, to their credit, recognise Art
in its narrower sense, to 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, of Architecture?
I should like to see Professors of the Fine Arts in every University;
and instruction in some branch of their work made a part of the Arts
curriculum.
I just now expressed the opinion that, in our ideal University, a man
should be able to obtain instruction in all forms of knowledge. Now, by
"forms of knowledge" I mean the great 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 form
of knowledge which, in its positive aspect, answers pretty much to
Logic and part of Psychology, while, on its negative and critical side,
it corresponds with Metaphysics.
A second class comprehends all that knowledge which relates to man's
welfare, so far as it is determined by his own acts, or what we call
his conduct. It answers to Moral and Religious philosophy. Practically,
it is the most directly valuable of all forms of knowledge, but
speculatively, it is limited and criticised by that which precedes and
by that which follows it in my order of enumeration.
A third class embraces knowledge of the phaenomena of the Universe, as
that which lies about the individual man; and of the rules which those
phaenomena are observed to follow in the order of their occurrence,
which we term the laws of Nature.
This is what ought to be called Natural Science, or Physiology, though
those terms are hopelessly diverted from such a meaning; and it
includes all exact knowledge of natural fact, whether Mathematical,
Physical, Biological, or Social.
Kant has said that the ultimate object of all knowledge is to give
replies to these three questions: What can I do? What ought I to do?
What may 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 these questions. While to the third, perhaps the wisest
answer is, "Do what you can to do what you ought, and leave hoping and
fearing alone."
If this be a just and an exhaustive classification of the forms of
knowledge, no question as to their relative importance, or as to the
superiority of one to the other, can be seriously raised.
On the face of the matter, it is absurd to ask whether it is more
important to know the limits of one's powers; or the ends for which
they ought to be exerted; or the conditions under which they must be
exerted. One may as well inquire 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 term in the
proportion, which is your deserts, with great accuracy. All agree, I
take it, that men ought to have these three kinds of knowledge. The
so-called "conflict of studies" turns upon the question of how they may
best be obtained.
The founders of Universities held the theory that the Scriptures and
Aristotle taken together, the latter being limited by the former,
contained all knowledge worth having, and that the business of
philosophy was to interpret and co-ordinate these two. I imagine that
in the twelfth century this was a very fair conclusion from known
facts. Nowhere in the world, in those days, was there such an
encyclopaedia of knowledge of all three classes, as is to be found in
those 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 stated. And,
what is still more remarkable, men who speak the language of modern
philosophy, nevertheless think the thoughts of the schoolmen. "The
voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau."
Every day I hear "Cause," "Law," "Force," "Vitality," spoken of as
entities, by people who can enjoy Swift's joke about the meat-roasting
quality of the smoke-jack, and comfort themselves with the reflection
that they are not even as those benighted schoolmen.