to me to be a more effectual check on these tendencies than even the
love of usefulness or the ambition for fame.
But supposing the Professorial forces of our University to be duly
organised, there remains an important question, relating to the
teaching power, to be considered. Is the Professorial system--the
system, I mean, of teaching in the lecture-room alone, and
leaving the student to find his own way when he is outside the
lecture-room--adequate to the wants of learners? In answering this
question, I confine myself to my own province, and I venture to reply
for Physical Science, assuredly and undoubtedly, No. As 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 large allowance of time for helping a dull man, for
correcting an inaccurate one, or even for making an intelligent student
clearly apprehend what he is about. And, no doubt, the supplying of a
proper amount of this tutorial, practical teaching, is a difficulty in
the way of giving proper instruction in Physical Science in such
Universities as that of Aberdeen, which are devoid of endowments; and,
unlike the English Universities, have no moral claim on the funds of
richly endowed bodies to supply their wants.
Examination--thorough, searching examination--is an indispensable
accompaniment of teaching; but I am almost inclined to commit myself to
the very heterodox proposition that it is a necessary evil. I am a very
old Examiner, having, for some twenty years past, been occupied with
examinations on a considerable scale, of all sorts and conditions of
men, and women too,--from the boys and girls of elementary schools to
the candidates for Honours and Fellowships in the Universities. I will
not say that, in this case as in so many others, the adage, that
familiarity breeds contempt, holds good; but my admiration for the
existing system of examination and its products, does not wax warmer as
I see more of it. Examination, like fire, is a good servant, but a bad
master; and there seems 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 under stimulus, and his capacity
for rapidly and clearly producing that which, for the time, he has got
into his mind. Now, these faculties are by no means to be despised.
They are of great value in practical life, and are the making of many
an advocate, and of many a so-called statesman. But in the pursuit of
truth, scientific or other, they count for very little, unless they are
supplemented by that long-continued, patient "intending of the mind,"
as Newton phrased it, which makes very little show in Examinations. I
imagine that an Examiner who knows his students personally, must not
unfrequently have found himself in the position of finding A's paper
better than B's, though his own judgment tells him, quite clearly, that
B is the man who has the larger share of genuine capacity.
Again, there is a fallacy about Examiners. It is commonly supposed that
any one who knows a subject is competent to teach it; and no one seems
to doubt that any one who knows a subject is competent 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, or has not been, a teacher is really
qualified to examine advanced students. And in the second place,
Examination is an Art, and a difficult one, which has to be learned
like all other arts.
Beginners always set too difficult questions--partly because they are
afraid of being suspected of ignorance if they set easy ones, and
partly from not understanding their business. Suppose that you want to
test the relative physical strength of a score of young men. You 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 want to form any
estimate of the muscular strength of each. So, a practised Examiner
will seek for information respecting the mental vigour and training of
candidates from the way in which they deal with questions easy enough
to let reason, memory, and method have free play.
No doubt, a great deal is to be done by the careful selection of
Examiners, and by the copious introduction of practical work, to remove
the evils inseparable from examination; but, under the best of
circumstances, I believe that examination will remain but an imperfect
test of knowledge, and a still more imperfect test of capacity, while
it tells next to nothing about a man's power as an investigator.
There is much to be said in favour of restricting the highest degrees
in each Faculty, to those who have shown evidence of such original
power, by prosecuting a research under the eye of the 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 very old; for, I take it, that it lies
at the bottom of that presentation of a thesis by the candidate for a
doctorate, which has now, too often, become little better than a matter
of form.
* * * * *
Thus far, I have endeavoured to lay before you, in a too brief and
imperfect manner, my views respecting the teaching half--the Magistri
and Regentes--of the University of the Future. Now let me turn to the
learning half--the Scholares.
If the Universities are to be the sanctuaries of the highest culture of
the country, those who would enter that sanctuary must not come with
unwashed hands. If the good seed is to yield 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 been carefully prepared, and the Professor should find that
the operations of clod-crushing, draining, and weeding, and even a good
deal of planting, have been done by the Schoolmaster.
That is exactly what the Professor does not find in any University in
the three Kingdoms that I can hear of--the reason of which state of
things lies in the extremely faulty organisation of the majority of
secondary schools. Students come to the Universities ill-prepared in
classics and mathematics, not at all prepared in anything else; and
half their time is spent in learning that which they ought to have
known when they came.
I sometimes hear it said that the Scottish Universities differ from the
English, in being to a much greater extent places of comparatively
elementary education for a younger class of students. 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 of youths under twenty is now the only
function performed by the University;" and that Colleges are "boarding
schools in which the elements of the learned languages are taught to
youths." [3]
This is not the first time that I have quoted those remarkable
assertions. I should like to engrave them in public view, for they have
not been refuted; and I am convinced that if their import is once
clearly apprehended, they will 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 acquire the
political influence to which your education and your position should
entitle you, you will become responsible for it, unless each in his
sphere does his best to alter it, by insisting on the improvement of
secondary schools.
Your present responsibility is of another, though not less serious,
kind. Institutions do not make men, any more than organisation makes
life; and even the ideal University we have been dreaming 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 great Poet, who, though lapped in luxury,
the favourite of a Court, and the idol of his countrymen, remained
through all the length of his honoured years a Scholar in Art, in
Science, and in Life.
"Wouldst shape a noble life! Then cast
No backward glances towards the past:
And though somewhat be lost and gone,
Yet do thou act as one new-born.
What each day needs, that shalt thou ask;
Each day will set its proper task.
Give others' work just share of praise;
Not of thine own the merits raise.
Beware no fellow man thou hate:
And so in God's hands leave thy fate." [4]
* * * * *
Footnotes:
[1] "Quamvis enim melius sit bene facere quam nosse, prius tamen est
nosse quam facere."--"Karoli Magni Regis Constitutio de Scholis per
singula Episcopia et Monasteria instituendis," addressed to the Abbot
of Fulda. Baluzius, _Capitularia Regum Francorum_, T. i., p. 202.
[2] Inaugural Address delivered to the University of St. Andrew,
February 1, 1867, by J. S. Mill, Rector of the University (pp. 32, 33).
[3] _Suggestions for Academical Organisation, with Especial Reference
to Oxford_. By the Rector of Lincoln.
[4] Goethe, _Zahme Xenien, Vierte Abtheilung_. I should be glad to
take credit for the close and vigorous English version; but it is my
wife's, and not mine.
IX
ADDRESS ON UNIVERSITY EDUCATION [1]
[1876]
The actual work of the University founded in this city by the
well-considered munificence of Johns Hopkins commences to-morrow, and
among the many marks of confidence and good-will which have been
bestowed upon me in the United States, there is none which I value more
highly than that conferred by the authorities of the University when
they invited me to deliver an address on such an occasion.
For the event which has brought us together is, in many respects,
unique. A vast property is handed over to an administrative body,
hampered by no conditions save these:--That the principal shall not be
employed in building: that the funds shall be appropriated, in equal
proportions, to the promotion of natural knowledge and to the
alleviation of the bodily sufferings of mankind; and, finally, that
neither political nor ecclesiastical sectarianism shall be permitted to
disturb the impartial distribution of the testator's benefactions.
In my experience of life a truth which sounds very much like a paradox
has often asserted itself: namely, that a man's worst difficulties
begin when he is able to do as he likes. So long as a man is struggling
with obstacles he has an excuse for failure or shortcoming; but when
fortune removes them all and gives him the power of doing as he thinks
best, then comes the time of trial. There is but one right, and the
possibilities of wrong are infinite. I doubt not that the trustees of
the Johns Hopkins University felt the full force of this truth when
they entered on the administration of their trust a year and a half
ago; and I can but admire the activity and resolution which have
enabled them, aided by the able president whom they have selected, to
lay down the great outlines of their plan, and carry it thus far into
execution. It is impossible to study that plan without perceiving that
great care, forethought, and sagacity, have been bestowed upon it, and
that it demands the most respectful consideration. I have been
endeavouring to ascertain how far the principles which underlie it are
in accordance with those which have been established in my own mind by
much and long-continued thought upon educational questions. Permit me
to place before you the result of my reflections.
Under one aspect a university is a particular kind of educational
institution, and the views which we may take of the proper nature of a
university are corollaries from those which we hold respecting
education in general. I think it must be admitted that the school
should prepare for the university, and that the university should crown
the edifice, the foundations of which are laid in the school.
University education should not be something distinct from elementary
education, but should be the natural outgrowth and development of the
latter. Now I have a very clear conviction as to what elementary
education ought to be; what it really may be, when properly organised;
and what I think it will be, before many years have passed over our
heads, in England and in America. Such education should enable an
average boy of fifteen or sixteen to read and write his own language
with ease and accuracy, and with a sense of literary excellence derived
from the study of our classic writers: to have a general acquaintance
with the history of his own country and with the great laws of social
existence; to have acquired the rudiments of the physical and
psychological sciences, and a fair knowledge of elementary arithmetic
and geometry. He should have obtained an acquaintance with logic rather
by example than by precept; while the acquirement of the elements of
music and drawing should have been pleasure rather than work.
It may sound strange to many ears if I venture to maintain the
proposition that a young person, educated thus far, has had a liberal,
though perhaps not a full, education. But it seems to me that such
training as that to which I have referred may be termed liberal, in
both the senses in which that word is employed, with perfect accuracy.
In the first place, it is liberal in breadth. It extends over the whole
ground of things to be known and of faculties to be trained, and it
gives equal importance to the two great sides of human activity--art
and science. In the second place, it is liberal in the sense of being
an education fitted for free men; for men to whom every career is open,
and from whom their country may demand that they should be fitted to
perform the duties of any career. I cannot too strongly impress upon
you the fact that, with such a primary education as this, and with no
more than is to be obtained by building strictly upon its lines, a man
of ability may become a great writer or speaker, a statesman, a lawyer,
a man of science, painter, sculptor, architect, or musician. That even
development of all a man's faculties, which is what properly
constitutes culture, may be effected by such an education, while it
opens the way for the indefinite strengthening of any special
capabilities with which he may be gifted.
In a country like this, where most men have to carve out their own
fortunes and devote themselves early to the practical affairs of life,
comparatively few can hope to pursue their studies up to, still less
beyond, the age of manhood. But it is of vital importance to the
welfare of the community that those who are relieved from the need of
making a livelihood, and still more, those who are stirred by the
divine impulses of intellectual thirst or artistic genius, should be
enabled to devote themselves to the higher service of their kind, as
centres of intelligence, interpreters of Nature, or creators of new
forms of beauty. And it is the function of a university to furnish such
men with the means of becoming that which it is their privilege and
duty to be. To this end the university need cover no ground foreign to
that occupied by the elementary school. Indeed it cannot; for the
elementary instruction which I have referred to embraces all the kinds
of real knowledge and mental activity possible to man. The university
can add no new departments of knowledge, can offer no new fields of
mental activity; but what it can do is to intensify and specialise the
instruction in each department. Thus literature and philology,
represented in the elementary school by English alone, in the
university will extend over the ancient and modern languages. History,
which, like charity, best begins at home, but, like charity, should not
end there, will ramify into anthropology, archaeology, political
history, and geography, with the history of the growth of the human
mind and of its products in the shape of philosophy, science, and art.
And the university will present to the student libraries, museums of
antiquities, collections of coins, and the like, which will efficiently
subserve these studies. Instruction in the elements of social economy,
a most essential, but hitherto sadly-neglected part of elementary
education, will develop in the university into political economy,
sociology, and law. Physical science will have its great divisions of
physical geography, with geology and astronomy; physics; chemistry and
biology; represented not merely by professors and their lectures, but
by laboratories, in which the students, under guidance of
demonstrators, will work out facts for themselves and come into that
direct contact with reality which constitutes the fundamental
distinction of scientific education. Mathematics will soar into its
highest regions; while the high peaks of philosophy may be scaled by
those whose aptitude for abstract thought has been awakened by
elementary logic. Finally, schools of pictorial and plastic art, of
architecture, and of music, will offer a thorough discipline in the
principles and practice of art to those in whom lies nascent the rare
faculty of aesthetic representation, or the still rarer powers of
creative genius.
The primary school and the university are the alpha and omega of
education. Whether institutions intermediate between these (so-called
secondary schools) should exist, appears to me to be a question of
practical convenience. If such schools are established, the important
thing is that they should be true intermediaries between the primary
school and the university, keeping on the wide track of general
culture, and not sacrificing one branch of knowledge for another.
Such appear to me to be the broad outlines of the relations which the
university, regarded as a place of education, ought to bear to the
school, but a number of points of detail require some consideration,
however briefly and imperfectly I can deal with them. In the first
place, there is the important question of the limitations which should
be fixed to the entrance into the university; or, what qualifications
should be required of those who propose to take advantage of the higher
training offered by the university. On the one hand, it is obviously
desirable that the time and opportunities of the university should not
be wasted in conferring such elementary instruction as can be obtained
elsewhere; while, on the other hand, it is no less desirable that the
higher instruction of the university should be made accessible to every
one who can take advantage of it, although he may not have been able to
go through any very extended course of education. My own feeling is
distinctly against any absolute and defined preliminary examination,
the passing of which shall be an essential condition of admission to
the university. I would admit to the university any one who could be
reasonably expected to profit by the instruction offered to him; and I
should be inclined, on the whole, to test the fitness of the student,
not by examination before he enters the university, but at the end of
his first term of study. If, on examination in the branches of
knowledge to which he has devoted himself, he show himself deficient in
industry or in capacity, it will be best for the university and best
for himself, to prevent him from pursuing a vocation for which he is
obviously unfit. And I hardly know of any other method than this by
which his fitness or unfitness can be safely ascertained, though no
doubt a good deal may be done, not by formal cut and dried examination,
but by judicious questioning, at the outset of his career.
Another very important and difficult practical question is, whether a
definite course of study shall be laid down for those who enter the
university; whether a curriculum shall be prescribed; or whether the
student shall be allowed to range at will among the subjects which are
open to him. And this question is inseparably connected with another,
namely, the conferring of degrees. It is obviously impossible that any
student should pass through the whole of the series of courses of
instruction offered by a university. If a degree is to be conferred as
a mark of proficiency in knowledge, it must be given on the ground that
the candidate is proficient in a certain fraction of those studies; and
then will arise the necessity of insuring an equivalency of degrees, so
that the course by which a degree is obtained shall mark approximately
an equal amount of labour and of acquirements, in all cases. But this
equivalency can hardly be secured in any other way than by prescribing
a series of definite lines of study. This is a matter which will
require grave consideration. The important points to bear in mind, I
think, are that there should not be too many subjects in the
curriculum, and that the aim should be the attainment of thorough and
sound knowledge of each.
One half of the Johns Hopkins bequest is devoted to the establishment
of a hospital, and it was the desire of the testator that the
university and the hospital should co-operate in the promotion of
medical education. The trustees will unquestionably take the best
advice that is to be had as to the construction and administration of
the hospital. In respect to the former point, they will doubtless
remember that a hospital may be so arranged as to kill more than it
cures; and, in regard to the latter, that a hospital may spread the
spirit of pauperism among the well-to-do, as well as relieve the
sufferings of the destitute. It is not for me to speak on these
topics--rather let me confine myself to the one matter on which my
experience as a student of medicine, and an examiner of long standing,
who has taken a great interest in the subject of medical education, may
entitle me to a hearing. I mean the nature of medical education itself,
and the co-operation of the university in its promotion.