by two influences. The first was the study of classical literature,
which familiarised men with methods of philosophising; with conceptions
of the highest Good; with ideas of the order of Nature; with notions of
Literary and Historical 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 Fairy Queen, and wandering with her
in the dim loveliness of the under-world, cared not to return to the
familiar ways of home and fatherland, though they lay, at arm's length,
overhead. Cardinals were more familiar with Virgil than with Isaiah;
and Popes laboured, with great success, to re-paganise Rome.
The second influence was the slow, but sure, growth of the physical
sciences. It was discovered that some results of speculative thought,
of immense practical and theoretical importance, can be verified by
observation; and are always true, however severely they may be tested.
Here, at any rate, was 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 was possible to hope that
it could be kept within bounds. Physical science, on the other hand,
was an irreconcilable enemy, to be excluded at all hazards. The College
of Cardinals has not distinguished itself in Physics or Physiology; and
no Pope has, as yet, set up public laboratories in the Vatican.
People do not always formulate the beliefs on which they act. The
instinct of fear and dislike is quicker than the reasoning process; and
I suspect that, 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 sciences from the general curriculum
of Universities; while, on the other hand, classical literature has
been gradually made the backbone of the Arts course.
I am ashamed to repeat here what I have said elsewhere, in season and
out of season, respecting the value of Science as knowledge and
discipline. But the other day I met with some passages in the Address
to another Scottish University, of a great thinker, recently lost to
us, which express so fully and yet so tersely, the truth in this matter
that I am fain to quote them:--
"To question all things;--never to turn away from any difficulty; to
accept no doctrine either from ourselves or from other people without a
rigid scrutiny by negative criticism; letting no fallacy, or
incoherence, or confusion of thought, step by unperceived; above all,
to insist upon having the meaning 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 pursuit.
The noblest enthusiasm, both for the search after truth and for
applying it to its highest uses, pervades those writers." "In
cultivating, therefore," science as an essential ingredient in
education, "we are all the while laying an admirable foundation for
ethical and philosophical culture." [2]
The passages I have quoted were uttered by John Stuart Mill; but you
cannot hear inverted commas, and it is therefore right that I should
add, without delay, that I have taken the liberty of substituting
"workers in science" 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 not doubt its justice, nor presume to
question its wisdom. But I venture to maintain that no wise or just
judge, who has a knowledge of the facts, will hesitate to say that it
applies with equal force to scientific training.
But it is only fair to the Scottish Universities to point out that they
have long understood the value of Science as a branch of general
education. I observe, with the greatest 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
Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, but of Natural History, in addition
to the ordinary Latin and Greek course; and that a candidate may take
honours in these subjects and in Chemistry.
I do not know what the requirements of your examiners may be, but I
sincerely trust they are not satisfied with a mere book knowledge of
these matters. For my own part I would not raise a finger, if I could
thereby introduce mere book work in science into every Arts curriculum
in the country. Let those who want to study books devote themselves to
Literature, in which we have the perfection of books, both as to
substance and as to form. If I may paraphrase Hobbes's well-known
aphorism, I would say that "books are the money of Literature, but only
the counters of Science," Science (in the sense in which I now use the
term) being the knowledge of fact, of which every verbal description is
but an incomplete 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, the teaching of science is all waste
time. As they teach it, I have no doubt it is. But to teach it
otherwise requires an amount of personal labour and a development of
means and appliances, which must strike horror and dismay into a man
accustomed to mere book work; and who has been in the habit of teaching
a class of fifty without much strain upon his energies. And this is one
of the real difficulties in the way of the introduction of physical
science into the ordinary University course, to which I have alluded.
It is a difficulty which will not be overcome, until years of patient
study have organised scientific teaching as well as, or I hope better
than, classical teaching has been organised hitherto.
A little while ago, I ventured to hint a doubt as to the perfection of
some of the arrangements in the ancient Universities of England; but,
in their provision for giving instruction in Science as such, and
without direct reference to any of its practical applications, they
have set a brilliant example. 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,
but aided by the munificence of her Chancellor, is taking the same
course; and in a few years, it will be for no lack of the means and
appliances of sound teaching, if the mass of English University men
remain in their present state of barbarous ignorance of even the
rudiments of scientific culture.
Yet another step needs to be made before Science can be said to have
taken its proper place in the Universities. That is its recognition as
a Faculty, or branch of study demanding 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 equip men who have received general culture, with the
special knowledge which is needed for the proper performance of the
duties of clergymen, lawyers, and medical practitioners.
When the material well-being of the country depended upon rude pasture
and agriculture, and still ruder mining; in the days when all the
innumerable applications of the principles of physical science to
practical purposes were non-existent even as dreams; days which men
living 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 of
poisons; of Botany, because it enabled the physician to recognise
medicinal herbs; of Comparative Anatomy and Physiology, because the man
who studied Human Anatomy and Physiology for purely medical purposes
was led to extend his studies to the rest of the animal world.
Within my recollection, the only way in which a student could obtain
anything like a training in Physical Science, was by attending the
lectures of the Professors 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, that they threaten not only
to crush one another, but to press the very life out of the unhappy
student who enters the nursery; to the great detriment of all three.
I speak in the presence of those who know practically what medical
education is; for I may assume that a large proportion of my hearers
are more or less advanced students of medicine. I appeal to 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 practitioner, when I ask whether,
out of the four years which you devote to your studies, you ought to
spare even so much as an hour for any work which does not tend directly
to fit you for your duties?
Consider what that work is. Its foundation is a sound and practical
acquaintance with the structure of the human organism, and with the
modes and conditions of its action in health. I say a sound and
practical acquaintance, to guard against the supposition that my
intention is to suggest that you ought all to be minute anatomists and
accomplished physiologists. The devotion of your whole four years to
Anatomy and Physiology alone, would be totally insufficient to attain
that end. What I mean is, the sort of practical, familiar, finger-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 function, until each of the
greater truths of anatomy and physiology has become an organic part of
your minds--until you would know them if you were roused and questioned
in the middle of the night, as a man knows the geography of his native
place and the daily life of his home. That is the sort of knowledge
which, once obtained, is a life-long possession. Other occupations may
fill your minds--it may grow dim, and seem to be forgotten--but there
it is, like the inscription on a battered and defaced coin, which comes
out when you warm it.
If I had the power to remodel Medical Education, the first two years of
the medical curriculum should be devoted to nothing but such thorough
study of Anatomy and Physiology, with Physiological Chemistry and
Physics; the student should then 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 broadest sense, to
Practical Medicine and to Surgery, with instruction in Hygiene and in
Medical Jurisprudence; and of these subjects only--surely there are
enough of them--should he be required to show a knowledge in his final
examination.
I cannot claim any special property in this theory of what the medical
curriculum should be, for I find that views, more or less closely
approximating these, are held by all who have seriously considered the
very grave and pressing question of Medical Reform; and have, indeed,
been carried into practice, to some extent, by the most enlightened
Examining Boards. I have heard but two kinds of objections to them.
There is first, the objection of vested interests, which I will not
deal with here, because I want to make myself as pleasant as I can, and
no discussions are so unpleasant as those which turn on such points.
And there is, secondly, the much more respectable objection, which
takes 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, that doctors know all about things that are queer or
nasty to the general mind, and may, therefore, be reasonably expected
to know the "barbarous binomials" applicable to snakes, snails, and
slugs; an amount of information with which the general mind is usually
completely satisfied. And there is a scientific superstition that
Physiology is largely aided by Comparative Anatomy--a superstition
which, like most superstitions, once had a grain of truth at bottom;
but the grain has become homoeopathic, since Physiology took its modern
experimental development, and became what it is now, the application of
the principles of Physics and Chemistry to the elucidation of the
phaenomena of life.
I hold as strongly as any one can do, that the medical practitioner
ought to be a person of education and good general culture; but I also
hold by the old theory of a Faculty, that a man should 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 ought to be, the student
would have quite as much knowledge of the fundamental principles of
Physics, of Chemistry, and of Biology, as he needs, before he commenced
his special medical studies.
Moreover, I would urge, that a thorough study of Human Physiology is,
in itself, an education broader and more comprehensive than much that
passes under that name. There is no side of the intellect which it does
not call into play, no region 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; through its
waters, as yet unfurrowed by the keel of any Columbus, lies the road,
if such there be, from the one to the other; far away from that
North-west Passage of mere speculation, in which so many brave souls
have been hopelessly frozen up.
But whether I am right or wrong about all this, the patent fact of the
limitation of time remains. As the song runs:--
"If a man could be sure
That his life would endure
For the space of a thousand long years------"
he might do a number of things not practicable under present
conditions. Methuselah might, with much propriety, have taken half a
century to get his doctor's degree; and might, very fairly, have been
required to pass a practical examination upon the contents of the
British Museum, before commencing practice as a promising young fellow
of two hundred, or thereabouts. But you have four years to do your work
in, and are turned loose, to save or slay, at two or three and twenty.
Now, I put it to you, whether you think that, when you come down to the
realities of life--when you stand by the sick-bed, racking you brains
for the principles which shall furnish you with the means of
interpreting symptoms, 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 me, you can quite easily "give an
account of the leading peculiarities of the _Marsupialia_," or
"enumerate the chief characters of the _Compositae_," or "state
the class and order of the animal from which Castoreum is obtained."
I really do not think that state of things will be satisfactory to
you; I am very sure it will not be so to your patient. Indeed, I
am so narrow-minded myself, that if I had to choose 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 medicine to his art; while the other, like
Talleyrand's doctor, "knew everything, even a little physic"--with all
my love for breadth of culture, I should assuredly consult the former.
It is not pleasant to incur the suspicion of an inclination to injure
or depreciate particular branches of knowledge. But the fact that one
of those which I should have no hesitation in excluding from the
medical curriculum, is that to which my own life has been specially
devoted, should, at any rate, defend me from the suspicion of being
urged to this course by any but the very gravest considerations of the
public welfare.
And I should like, further, to call your attention to the important
circumstance that, in thus proposing the exclusion of the study of such
branches of knowledge as Zoology and Botany, from those compulsory upon
the medical student, I am not, for a moment, suggesting their exclusion
from the University. I think that sound and practical instruction in
the elementary facts and broad principles of Biology should form part
of the 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 are the places for technical schools of Engineering or
applied Chemistry, or Agriculture. But there can surely be little
question, that instruction in the branches of Science which lie at the
foundation of these Arts, of a far more advanced and special character
than could, with any propriety, be included in the ordinary Arts
Curriculum, ought to be obtainable by means of a duly organised Faculty
of Science in every University.
The establishment of such a Faculty would have the additional advantage
of providing, in some measure, for one of the greatest wants of our
time and country. I mean the proper support and encouragement of
original research.
The other day, an emphatic friend of mine committed himself to the
opinion that, in England, it is better for a man's worldly prospects to
be a drunkard, than to be smitten with the divine dipsomania of the
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 like
ability, who goes into Law, or Engineering, or Commerce; it is not a
question of "maintaining a due number of saddle horses," as George
Eliot somewhere puts it--it is a question of living or starving.
If a student of my own subject shows power and originality, I dare not
advise him to adopt a scientific career; for, supposing he is able to
maintain himself until he has attained distinction, I cannot 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 perhaps worse, with other branches
of Science. In this respect Britain, whose immense wealth and
prosperity hang upon the thread of Applied Science, is far behind
France, and infinitely behind Germany.
And the worst of it is, that it is very difficult to see one's way to
any immediate remedy for this state of affairs which shall be free from
a tendency to become worse than the disease.
Great schemes for the Endowment of Research have been proposed. It has
been suggested, that Laboratories for all branches of Physical Science,
provided with every apparatus needed by the investigator, shall be
established by the State: and shall be accessible, under due conditions
and regulations, to all properly qualified persons. I see no objection
to the principle of such a proposal. If it be legitimate to spend great
sums of money on public Libraries and public collections of Painting
and Sculpture, in aid of the Man of Letters, or the Artist, or for the
mere sake of affording pleasure to the general 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 Literature, have not been so brilliant that one would
wish to see it extended to Science; unless some much better securities
than at present exist can be taken that it will foster real work. You
know that among the Bees, it depends on the kind of cell in which the
egg is deposited, and the quantity and quality of food which is
supplied to the grub, whether it shall turn out a busy little worker or
a big idle queen. And, in the human hive, the cells of the endowed
larvae are always tending to enlarge, and their food to improve, until
we get queens, beautiful to behold, but which gather no honey and build
no comb.
I do not say that these difficulties may not be overcome, but their
gravity is not to be lightly estimated.
In the meanwhile, there is one step in the direction of the endowment
of research which is free from such objections. It is possible to place
the scientific enquirer in a position in which he shall have ample
leisure and opportunity for original work, and yet shall give a fair
and tangible equivalent for those privileges. The establishment of a
Faculty of Science in every University, implies that of a corresponding
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
comprehensive survey of your subject; or to bring your results to a
point, and give them, as it were, a tangible objective existence. The
besetting sins of the investigator are two: the one is the desire to
put aside a subject, the general bearings of which he has mastered
himself, and pass on to something which has the attraction of novelty;
and the other, the desire for too much perfection, which leads him to
"Add and alter many times,
Till all be ripe and rotten;"
to spend the energies which should be reserved for action in whitening
the decks and polishing the guns.