relief of a second face all the four years. The exceptions are of
importance. First, as regards Marischal College. Within a few years of
the foundation, Dr. Duncan Liddell founded the Mathematical Chair, and
thus withdrew from the Regents the subject that most of all needed a
specialist; a succession of very able mathematicians sat in this chair.
King's College had not the same good fortune. From its foundation it
possessed a separate functionary, the Humanist or Grammarian; but he had
also, till 1753, to act as Rector of the Grammar School. Edinburgh
obtained from an early date a Mathematical chair, occupied by men of
celebrity. There was no other innovation till near the end of the 17th
century, when Greek was isolated both in Edinburgh and in Marischal
College; but the end of Regenting was then near.
The old system, however, had some curious writhings. During the troubled
17th century, University reform could not command persistent attention.
But after the 1688-Revolution, opinions were strongly expressed in
favour of the Melville system. The obvious argument was urged, that, by
division of labour each man would be able to master a special subject,
and do it justice in teaching. Yet, it was replied, that, by the
continued intercourse, the master knew better the humours, inclinations,
and talents of their scholars. To which the answer was--the humours and
inclinations of scholars are not so deeply hid but that in a few weeks
they appear. Moreover, it was said, the students are more respectful to
a Master while he is new to them.
The final division of subjects took place in Edinburgh, in 1708; in
Glasgow, in 1727; in St. Andrews, in 1747. In Marischal College, the
change was made by a minute of 11th Jan., 1753; but, whether from
ignorance, or from want of grace, the Senatus did not record its
satisfaction at having, after a lapse of five generations, fulfilled the
wishes of the pious founder. In King's College, the old system lasted
till 1798.
This closes the second age of the Universities, and introduces the third
age, the age of the Professoriate, of Lecturing instead of Text-books,
the end of Disputation, and the use of the English Language. It was now,
and not till now, that the Scottish Universities stood forth, in several
leading departments of knowledge, as the teachers of the world.
[AGE OF THE PROFESSORIATE.]
THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE POLITICAL REVOLUTIONS.
The second age of the Universities was Scotland's most trying time. In a
hundred and thirty years, the country had passed through four revolutions
and counter-revolutions; every one of which told upon the Universities.
The victorious party imposed its test upon the University teacher, and
drove out recusants. You must all know something of the purging of the
University and the Ministry of Aberdeen by the Covenanting General
Assembly of 1640. These deposed Aberdeen doctors may have had too strong
leanings to episcopacy in the Church and to absolutism in the State, but
they were not Vicars of Bray. The first half of the century was adorned
by a band of scholars, who have gained renown by their cultivation of
Latin poetry; a little oasis in the desert of Aristotelian Dialectics.
It would be needless and ungracious to enquire whether this was the best
thing that could have been done for the generation of Bishop Patrick
Forbes.
Your reading in the History of Scotland will thus bring you face to face
with the great powers that contended for the mastery from 1560: the
Monarchy, always striving to be absolute; the Church, whose position
made it the advocate of popular freedom; the Universities, fluctuating
as regards political liberty, but standing up for intellectual liberty.
In the 17th century the Church ruled the Universities; in the 18th, it
may be said, that the Universities returned the compliment.
[PROFESSIONAL TEACHING BY APPRENTICESHIP]
UNIVERSITIES NOT ESSENTIAL FOR PROFESSIONS.
Enough for the past. A word or two on the present. What is now the need
for a University system, and what must the system be to answer that
need? Many things are altered since the 12th century.
First, then, Universities, as I understand them, are not absolutely
essential to the teaching of professions. Let me make an extreme
supposition. A great naval commander, like Nelson, is sent on board
ship, at eleven or twelve; his previous knowledge, or general training,
is what you may suppose for that age. It is in the course of actual
service, and in no other way, that he acquires his professional fitness
for commanding fleets. Is this right or is it wrong? Perhaps it is
wrong, but it has gone on so for a long time. Well, why may not a
preacher be formed on the same plan? John Wesley was not a greater man
in preaching, than Nelson in seamanship. Take, then, a youth of thirteen
from the school. Apprentice him to the minister of a parish. Let him
make at once preparations for clerical work. Let him store his memory
with sermons, let him make abstracts of Divinity systems; master the
best exegetical commentators. Then, in a year or two, he would begin to
catechise the young, to give addresses in the way of exposition,
exhortation, encouragement, and rebuke. Practice would bring facility.
Might not, I say; seven years of the actual work, in the susceptible
period of life, make a preacher of no mean power, without the Grammar
School, without the Arts' Classes, without the Divinity Hall?
What then do we gain by taking such a roundabout approach to our
professional work? The answer is twofold.
First, as regards the profession itself. Nearly every skilled
occupation, in our time, involves principles and facts that have been
investigated, and are taught, outside the profession; to the medical man
are given courses of Chemistry, Physiology, and so on. Hence to be
completely equipped for your professional work, you must repair to the
teachers of those tributary departments of knowledge. The requirement,
however, is not absolute; it admits of being evaded. Your professional
teachers ought to master these outside subjects, and give you just as
much of them as you need, and no more; which would be an obvious economy
of your valuable time.
Thus, I apprehend, the strictly professional uses of general knowledge
fail to justify the Grammar School and the Arts' curriculum. Something,
indeed, may still be said for the higher grades of professional
excellence, and for introducing improved methods into the practice of
the several crafts; for which wider outside studies lend their aid.
This, however, is not enough; inventors are the exception. In fact, the
ground must be widened, and include, secondly, _the life beyond the
profession_. We are citizens of a self-governed country; members of
various smaller societies; heads, or members of families. We have,
moreover, to carve out recreation and enjoyment as the alternative and
the reward of our professional toil. Now the entire tone and character
of this life outside the profession, is profoundly dependent on the
compass of our early studies. He that leaves the school for the shop at
thirteen, is on one platform. He that spends the years from thirteen to
twenty in acquiring general knowledge, is on a totally different
platform; he is, in the best sense, an aristocrat. Those that begin work
at thirteen, and those that are born not to work at all, are alike his
inferiors. He should be able to spread light all around. He it is that
may stand forth before the world as the model man.
[THE GRADUATE AS SUCH.]
THE IDEAL GRADUATE.
All this supposes that you realise the position; that you fill up the
measure of the opportunities; that you keep in view at once the
Professional life, the Citizen life, and the life of Intellectual
tastes. The mere professional man, however prosperous, cannot be a power
in society, as the Arts' graduate may become. His leisure occupations
are all of a lower stamp. He does not participate in the march of
knowledge. He must be aware of his incompetence to judge for himself in
the greater questions of our destiny; his part is to be a follower, and
not a leader.
It is not, then, the name of graduate that will do all this. It is not a
scrape pass; it is not decent mediocrity with a languid interest. It is
a fair and even attention throughout, supplemented by auxiliaries to the
class work. It is such a hold of the leading subjects, such a mastery of
the various alphabets, as will make future references intelligible, and
a continuation of the study possible.
Our curriculum is one of the completest in the country, or perhaps
anywhere. By the happy thought of the Senatus of Marischal College, in
1753, you have a fundamental class (Natural History) not existing in the
other colleges. You have a fair representation of the three great lines
of science--the Abstract, the Experimental, and the Classifying. When it
is a general education that you are thinking of, every scheme of option
is imperfect that does not provide for such three-sided cultivation of
our reasoning powers. A larger quantity of one will no more serve for
the absence of the rest than a double covering of one part of the body,
will enable another part to be left bare.
VOLUNTARY EXTENSION OF THE BASIS.
Your time in the Arts' curriculum is not entirely used up by the
classes. You can make up for deficiences in the course, when once you
have formed your ideal of completeness. For a year, or two after
graduating, while still rejoicing in youthful freshness, you can be
widening your foundations. The thing then is, to possess a good scheme
and to abide by it. Now, making every allowance for the variation of
tastes and of circumstances, and looking solely to what is desirable
for a citizen and a man, it is impossible to refuse the claims of
the department of Historical and Social study. One or two good
representative historical periods might be thoroughly mastered in
conjunction with the best theoretical compends of Social Philosophy.
[THE WELL-INSTRUCTED MAN.]
Farther, the ideal graduate, who is to guide and not follow opinion,
should be well versed in all the bearings of the Spiritual Philosophy of
the time. The subject branches out into wide regions, but not wider than
you should be capable of following it. This is not a professional study
merely; it is the study of a well-instructed man.
Once more. A share of attention should be bestowed early on the higher
Literature of the Imagination. As, in after life, poetry and elegant
composition are to be counted on as a pleasure and solace, they should
be taken up at first as a study. The critical examination of styles, and
of authors, which forms an admirable basis of a student's society,
should be a work of study and research. The advantages will be many and
lasting. To conceive the exact scope and functions of the Imagination in
art, in science, in religion, and everywhere, will repay the trouble.
THE ARTS' GRADUATE IN LITERATURE.
Ever since I remember, I have been accustomed to hear of the superiority
of the Arts' graduate, in various crafts, more especially as a teacher.
Many of you in these days pass into another vocation--Letters, or the
Press. Here too, almost everything you learn will pay you professionally.
Still, I am careful not to rest the case for general education on
professional grounds alone. I might show you that the highest work of
all--original enquiry--needs a broad basis of liberal study; or at all
events is vastly aided by that. Genius will work on even a narrow basis,
but imperfect preparatory study leaves marks of imperfection in the
product.
The same considerations that determine your voluntary studies, determine
also the University Ideal. A University, in my view, stands or falls
with its Arts' Faculty. Without debating the details, we may say that
this Faculty should always be representative of the needs of our
intelligence, both for the professional and for the extra-professional
life; it should not be of the shop, shoppy. The University exists
because the professions would stagnate without it; and still more,
because it may be a means of enlarging knowledge at all points. Its
watchword is Progress. We have, at last, the division of labour in
teaching; outside the University, teachers too much resemble the Regent
of old--having too many subjects, and too much time spent in grinding.
Our teachers are exactly the reverse.
Yet, there cannot be progress without a sincere and single eye to the
truth. The fatal sterility of the middle ages, and of our first and
second University periods, had to do with the mistake of gagging men's
mouths, and dictating all their conclusions. Things came to be so
arranged that contradictory views ran side by side, like opposing
electric currents; the thick wrappage of ingenious phraseology arresting
the destructive discharge. There was, indeed, an elaborate and
pretentious Logic, supplied by Aristotle, and amended by Bacon; what was
still wanted was a taste of the Logic of Freedom.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 15: RECTORIAL ADDRESS, to the Students of Aberdeen University,
_15th November_, 1882.]
* * * * *
VII.
THE ART OF STUDY.
Of hackneyed subjects, a foremost place may be assigned to the Art of
Study. Allied to the theory and practice of Education generally, it has
still a field of its own, although not very precisely marked out. It
relates more to self-education than to instruction under masters; it
supposes the voluntary choice of the individual rather than the
constraint of an outward discipline. Consequently, the time for its
application is when the pupil is emancipated from the prescription and
control of the scholastic curriculum.
There is another idea closely associated with our notion of study--namely,
learning from books. We may stretch the word, without culpable licence,
to comprise the observation of facts of all kinds, but it more naturally
suggests the resort to book lore for the knowledge that we are in quest
of. There is a considerable propriety in restricting it to this meaning;
or, at all events, in treating the art of becoming wise through reading,
as different from the arts of observing facts at first hand. In short,
study should not be made co-extensive with knowledge getting, but with
book learning. In thus narrowing the field, we have the obvious advantage
of cultivating it more carefully, and the unobvious, but very real,
advantage of dealing with one homogeneous subject.
In the current phrase, "_studying under_ some one," there is a more
express reference to being taught by a master, as in listening to
lectures. There is, however, the implication that the learner is
applying his own mind to the special field, and, at the same time, is
not neglecting the other sources of knowledge, such as books. The master
is looked upon rather as a guide to enquiry, than as the sole fountain
of the information sought.
Thus, then, the mental exercise that we now call "study" began when
books began; when knowledge was reduced to language and laid out
systematically in verbal compositions. A certain form of it existed in
the days when language was as yet oral merely; when there might be long
compositions existing only in the memory of experts, and communicable by
speech alone. But study then was a very simple affair: it would consist
mainly in attentive listening to recitation, so as to store up in the
memory what was thus communicated. The art, if any, would attach equally
to the reciter and to the listener; the duty of the one would be to
accommodate his lessons in time, quantity, and mode of delivery to the
retentive capacity of the other; who, in his turn, would be required to
con and recapitulate what he had been told, until he made it his own,
whatever it might be worth.
[BOOK STUDY AMONG THE ANCIENTS]
Even when books came into existence, an art of study would be at first
very simple. The whole extent of book literature among the Jews before
Christ would be soon read; and, when once read, there was nothing left
but to re-read it in whole or in part, with a view of committal to
memory, whether for meditative reflection, or for awakening the
emotions. We see, in the Psalms of David, the emphasis attached to
mental dwelling on the particulars of the Mosaic Law, as the nourishment
of the feelings of devotion.
The Greek Literature about 350 B.C., when Aristotle and Demosthenes had
reached manhood (being then 34), had attained a considerable mass; as
one may see at a glance from Jebb's chronology attached to his Primer.
There was a splendid poetical library, including all the great
tragedians, with the older and the middle Comedy. There were the three
great historians--Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon; and the
orators--- Lysias, Isocrates, and Isaeus; there were the precursors of
Socrates in Philosophy; and, finally, the Platonic Dialogues. To
overtake all these would employ several years of learned leisure; and to
imbibe their substance would be a rich and varied culture, especially of
the poetic and rhetorical kind. To make the most of the field, a
judicious procedure would be very helpful; there was evident scope for
an art of study. The fertile intellect of the Greeks produced the first
systematic guides to high culture; the Rhetorical art for Oratory and
Poetry, the Logical art for Reasoning, and the Eristic art for
Disputation. There was nothing precisely corresponding to an Art of
Study, but there were examples of the self-culture of celebrated men.
The most notorious of these is Demosthenes; of whom we know that, while
he took special lessons in the art of oratory, he also bestowed
extraordinary pains upon the general cultivation of his intellectual
powers. His application to Thucydides in particular is recounted in
terms of obvious mythical exaggeration; showing, nevertheless, his idea
of fixing upon a special book with a view to extracting from it every
particle of intellectual nourishment that it could yield: in which we
have an example of the art of study as I have defined it. Then, it is
said that, in his anxiety to master his author, he copied the entire
work eight times, with his own hand, and had it by heart _verbatim_, so
as to be able to re-write it when the manuscripts were accidentally
destroyed. Both points enter into the art of study, and will come under
review in the sequel.
We do not possess from the genius of Aristotle--the originator or
improver of so many practical departments--an Art of Study. The omission
was not supplied by any other Greek writer known to us. The oratorical
art was a prominent part of education both in Greece and in Rome; and
was discussed by many authors--notably by Cicero himself; but the
exhaustive treatment is found in Quintilian. The very wide scope of the
"Institutes of Oratory" comprises a chapter upon the orator's reading,
in which the author reviews the principal Greek and Roman classics from
Homer to Seneca, with remarks upon the value of each for the mental
cultivation of the oratorical pupil. Something of this sort might be
legitimately included in the art of study, but might also be withheld,
as being provided in the critical estimates already formed respecting
all writers of note.
[MODERN GUIDES TO STUDY.]
After Ouintilian, it is little use to search for an art of study, either
among the later Latin classics, or among the mediaeval authors
generally. I proceed at once to remark upon the well-known essay of
Bacon, which shows his characteristic subtlety, judiciousness, and
weight; yet is too short for practical guidance. He hits the point, as
I conceive it, when he identifies study with reading, and brings in, but
only by way of contrast and complement, conference or conversation and
composition. He endeavours to indicate the worth of book learning, as
an essential addition to the actual practice of business, and the
experience, of life. He marks a difference between books that we are
merely to dip into (books to be tasted) and such as are to be mastered;
without, however, stating examples. He ventures also to settle the
respective kinds of culture assignable to different departments of
knowledge--history, poetry, mathematics, natural philosophy, moral
philosophy, logic and rhetoric; a very useful attempt in its own way,
and one that may well enough enter into a comprehensive art of study,
if not provided for in the still wider theory of Education at large.
Bacon's illustrious friend, Hobbes, did not write on studies, but made
a notable remark bearing on one topic connected with the art,--namely,
that if he had read as much as other men, he should have remained still
as ignorant as other men. This must not be interpreted too literally.
Hobbes was really a great reader of the ancients, and must have studied
with care some of the philosophers immediately preceding himself. Still,
it indicates an important point for discussion in the art of study, in
which great men have gone to opposite extremes--I mean in reference to
the amount of attention to be given to previous writers, in taking up
new ground.
To come down to another great name, we have Milton's ideal of Education,
given in his short Tractate. Here, with many protestations of knowing
things, rather than words, we find an enormous prescription of book
reading, including, in fact, every known author on every one of a wide
circle of subjects. This was characteristic of the man: he was a
voracious reader himself, and an example to show, in opposition to
Hobbes, that original genius is not necessarily quenched by great or
even excessive erudition. As bearing on the art of study, especially for
striplings under twenty, Milton's scheme is open to two criticisms:
first, that the amount of reading on the whole is too great; second,
that in subjects handled by several authors of repute, one should have
been selected as the leading text-book and got up thoroughly; the others
being taken in due time as enlarging or correcting the knowledge thus
laid in. Think of a boy learning Rhetoric upon six authors taken
together!
[LOCKE'S CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING.]
The transition from Milton to Locke is the inverse of that from Hobbes
to Milton. Locke was also a man of few books. If he had been sent to
school under Milton, as he might have been,[16] he would have very soon
thrown up the learned drudgery prescribed for him, and would have
bolted.
The practical outcome of Locke's enquiries respecting the human
faculties is to be found in the little treatise named--"The Conduct of
the Understanding". It is an earnest appeal in favour of devotion to the
attainment of truth, and an exposure of _all_ the various sources of
error, moral and intellectual; more especially prejudices and bias.
There are not, however, many references to book study; and such as we
find are chiefly directed to the one aim of painful and laborious
examination, first, of an author's meaning, and next of the goodness of
his arguments. Two or three sentences will give the clue. "Those who
have read of everything, are thought to understand everything too; but
it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of
knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ours. We are of the
ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great
deal of collections, unless we chew them over again, they will not give
us strength and nourishment." Farther: "Books and reading are looked
upon to be the great helps of the understanding, and instruments of
knowledge, as it must be allowed that they are; and yet I beg leave to
question whether these do not prove a hindrance to many, and keep
several bookish men from attaining to solid and true knowledge". Here,
again, is his stern way of dealing with any author:--"To fix in the mind
the clear and distinct idea of the question stripped of words; and so
likewise, in the train of argumentation, to take up the author's ideas,
neglecting his words, observing how they connect or separate those in
the question." Of this last, more afterwards.
[WATT'S IMPROVEMENT OF THE MIND.]