ON FREEDOM.[1]

Not more than twenty years have passed since John Stuart Mill sent forth

his plea for Liberty.[2]

If there is one among the leaders of thought in England who, by the

elevation of his character and the calm composure of his mind, deserved

the so often misplaced title of Serene Highness, it was, I think, John

Stuart Mill.

But in his Essay "On Liberty," Mill for once becomes passionate. In

presenting his Bill of Rights, in stepping forward as the champion of

individual liberty, a new spirit seems to have taken possession of him.

He speaks like a martyr, or the defender of martyrs. The individual

human soul, with its unfathomable endowments, and its capacity of

growing to something undreamt of in our philosophy, becomes in his eyes

a sacred thing, and every encroachment on its world-wide domain is

treated as sacrilege. Society, the arch-enemy of the rights of

individuality, is represented like an evil spirit, whom it behoves every

true man to resist with might and main, and whose demands, as they

cannot be altogether ignored, must be reduced at all hazards to the

lowest level.

I doubt whether any of the principles for which Mill pleaded so warmly

and strenuously in his Essay "On Liberty" would at the present day be

challenged or resisted, even by the most illiberal of philosophers, or

the most conservative of politicians. Mill's demands sound very humble

to _our_ ears. They amount to no more than this, "that the individual is

not accountable to society for his actions so far as they concern the

interests of no person but himself, and that he may be subjected to

social or legal punishments for such actions only as are prejudicial to

the interests of others."

Is there any one here present who doubts the justice of that principle,

or who would wish to reduce the freedom of the individual to a smaller

measure? Whatever social tyranny may have existed twenty years ago, when

it wrung that fiery protest from the lips of John Stuart Mill, can we

imagine a state of society, not totally Utopian, in which the individual

man need be less ashamed of his social fetters, in which he could more

freely utter all his honest convictions, more boldly propound all his

theories, more fearlessly agitate for their speedy realization; in

which, in fact, each man can be so entirely himself as the society of

England, such as it now is, such as generations of hard-thinking and

hard-working Englishmen have made it, and left it as the most sacred

inheritance to their sons and daughters?

Look through the whole of history, not excepting the brightest days of

republican freedom at Athens and Rome, and I know you will not find one

single period in which the measure of Liberty accorded to each

individual was larger than it is at present, at least in England. And if

you wish to realize the full blessings of the time in which we live,

compare Mill's plea for Liberty with another written not much more than

two hundred years ago, and by a thinker not inferior either in power or

boldness to Mill himself. According to Hobbes, the only freedom which an

individual in his ideal state has a right to claim is what he calls

"freedom of thought," and that freedom of thought consists in our being

able to think what we like--so long as we keep it to ourselves. Surely,

such freedom of thought existed even in the days of the Inquisition, and

we should never call thought free, if it had to be kept a prisoner in

solitary and silent confinement. By freedom of thought we mean freedom

of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of action, whether individual

or associated, and of that freedom the present generation, as compared

with all former generations, the English nation, as compared with all

other nations, enjoys, there can be no doubt, a good measure, pressed

down, and shaken together, and sometimes running over.

It may be said that some dogmas still remain in politics, in religion,

and in morality; but those who defend them claim no longer any

infallibility, and those who attack them, however small their minority,

need fear no violence, nay, may reckon on an impartial and even

sympathetic hearing, as soon as people discover in their pleadings the

true ring of honest conviction and the warmth inspired by an unselfish

love of truth.

It has seemed strange therefore to many readers of Mill, particularly on

the Continent, that this cry for Liberty, this demand for freedom for

every individual to be what he is, and to develop all the germs of his

nature, should have come from what is known as the freest of all

countries, England. We might well understand such a cry of indignation

if it had reached us from Russia; but why should English philosophers,

of all others, have to protest against the tyranny of society? It is

true, nevertheless, that in countries governed despotically, the

individual, unless he is obnoxious to the Government, enjoys far greater

freedom, or rather licence, than in a country like England, which

governs itself. Russian society, for instance, is extremely indulgent.

It tolerates in its rulers and statesmen a haughty defiance of the

simplest rules of social propriety, and it seems amused rather than

astonished or indignant at the vagaries, the frenzies, and outrages, of

those who in brilliant drawing-rooms or lecture-rooms preach the

doctrines of what is called Nihilism or Individualism,[3]--viz., "that

society must be regenerated by a struggle for existence and the survival

of the strongest, processes which Nature has sanctioned, and which have

proved successful among wild animals." If there is danger in these

doctrines the Government is expected to see to it. It may place watchmen

at the doors of every house and at the corner of every street, but it

must not count on the better classes coming forward to enrol themselves

as special constables, or even on the co-operation of public opinion

which in England would annihilate that kind of Nihilism with one glance

of scorn and pity.

In a self-governed country like England, the resistance which society,

if it likes, can oppose to the individual in the assertion of his

rights, is far more compact and powerful than in Russia, or even in

Germany. Even where it does not employ the arm of the law, society knows

how to use that softer, but more crushing pressure, that calm, but

Gorgon-like look which only the bravest and stoutest hearts know how to

resist.

It is rather against that indirect repression which a well-organized

society exercises, both through its male and female representatives,

that Mill's demand for Liberty seems directed. He does not stand up for

unlimited licence; on the contrary, he would have been the most

strenuous defender of that balance of power between the weak and the

strong on which all social life depends. But he resents those smaller

penalties which society will always inflict on those who disturb its

dignified peace and comfort:--avoidance, exclusion, a cold look, a

stinging remark. Had Mill any right to complain of these social

penalties? Would it not rather amount to an interference with individual

liberty to wish to deprive any individual or any number of individuals

of those weapons of self-defence? Those who themselves think and speak

freely, have hardly a right to complain, if others claim the same

privilege. Mill himself called the Conservative party the stupid party

_par excellence_, and he took great pains to explain that it was so, not

by accident, but by necessity. Need he wonder if those whom he whipped

and scourged used their own whips and scourges against so merciless a

critic?

Freethinkers, and I use that name as a title of honour for all who, like

Mill, claim for every individual the fullest freedom in thought, word,

or deed, compatible with the freedom of others, are apt to make one

mistake. Conscious of their own honest intentions, they cannot bear to

be mistrusted or slighted. They expect society to submit to their often

very painful operations as a patient submits to the knife of the

surgeon. That is not in human nature. The enemy of abuses is always

abused by his enemies. Society will never yield one inch without

resistance, and few reformers live long enough to receive the thanks of

those whom they have reformed. Mill's unsolicited election to Parliament

was a triumph not often shared by social reformers; it was as

exceptional as Bright's admission to a seat in the Cabinet, or Stanley's

appointment as Dean of Westminster. Such anomalies will happen in a

country fortunately so full of anomalies as England; but, as a rule, a

political reformer must not be angry if he passes through life without

the title of Right Honourable; nor should a man, if he will always speak

the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, be disappointed

if he dies a martyr rather than a Bishop.

But granting even that in Mill's time there existed some traces of

social tyranny, where are they now? Look at the newspapers and the

journals. Is there any theory too wild, any reform too violent, to be

openly defended? Look at the drawing-rooms or the meetings of learned

societies. Are not the most eccentric talkers the spoiled children of

the fashionable world? When young lords begin to discuss the propriety

of limiting the rights of inheritance, and young tutors are not afraid

to propose curtailing the long vacation, surely we need not complain of

the intolerance of English society.

Whenever I state these facts to my German and French and Italian

friends, who from reading Mill's Essay "On Liberty" have derived the

impression that, however large an amount of political liberty England

may enjoy, it enjoys but little of intellectual freedom, they are

generally willing to be converted so far as London, or other great

cities, are concerned. But look at your Universities, they say, the

nurseries of English thought! Can you compare their mediaeval spirit,

their monastic institutions, their scholastic philosophy, with the

freshness and freedom of the Continental Universities? Strong as these

prejudices about Oxford and Cambridge have always been, they have become

still more intense since Professor Helmholtz, in an inaugural address

which he delivered at his installation as Rector of the University of

Berlin, lent the authority of his great name to these misconceptions.

"The tutors," he says,[4] "in the English Universities cannot deviate

by a hair's-breadth from the dogmatic system of the English Church,

without exposing themselves to the censure of their Archbishops and

losing their pupils." In German Universities, on the contrary, we are

told that the extreme conclusions of materialistic metaphysics, the

boldest speculations within the sphere of Darwin's theory of evolution,

may be propounded without let or hindrance, quite as much as the highest

apotheosis of Papal infallibility.

Here the facts on which Professor Helmholtz relies are entirely wrong,

and the writings of some of our most eminent tutors supply a more than

sufficient refutation of his statements. Archbishops have no official

position whatsoever in English Universities, and their censure of an

Oxford tutor would be resented as impertinent by the whole University.

Nor does the University, as such, exercise any very strict control over

the tutors, even when they lecture not to their own College only. Each

Master of Arts at Oxford claims now the right to lecture (_venia

docendi_), and I doubt whether they would ever submit to those

restrictions which, in Germany, the Faculty imposes on every

_Privat-docent_. _Privat-docents_ in German Universities have been

rejected by the Faculty for incompetence, and silenced for

insubordination. I know of no such cases at Oxford during my residence

of more than thirty years, nor can I think it likely that they should

ever occur.

As to the extreme conclusions of materialistic metaphysics, there are

Oxford tutors who have grappled with the systems of such giants as

Hobbes, Locke, or Hume, and who are not likely to be frightened by

Buchner and Vogt.

I know comparisons are odious, and I am the last man who would wish to

draw comparisons between English and German Universities unfavourable to

the latter. But with regard to freedom of thought, of speech, and

action, Professor Helmholtz, if he would spend but a few weeks at

Oxford, would find that we enjoy a fuller measure of freedom here than

the Professors and _Privat-docents_ in any Continental University. The

publications of some of our professors and tutors ought at least to have

convinced him that if there is less of brave words and turbulent talk in

their writings, they display throughout a determination to speak the

truth, which may be matched, but could not easily be excelled, by the

leaders of thought in France, Germany, or Italy.

The real difference between English and Continental Universities is that

the former govern themselves, the latter are governed. Self-government

entails responsibilities, sometimes restraints and reticences. I may

here be allowed to quote the words of another eminent Professor of the

University of Berlin, Du Bois Reymond, who, in addressing his

colleagues, ventured to tell them,[5] "We have still to learn from the

English how the greatest independence of the individual is compatible

with willing submission to salutary, though irksome, statutes." That is

particularly true when the statutes are self-imposed. In Germany, as

Professor Helmholtz tells us himself, the last decision in almost all

the more important affairs of the Universities rests with the

Government, and he does not deny that in times of political and

ecclesiastical tension, a most inconsiderate use has been made of that

power. There are, besides, the less important matters, such as raising

of salaries, leave of absence, scientific missions, even titles and

decorations, all of which enable a clever Minister of Instruction to

assert his personal influence among the less independent members of the

University. In Oxford the University does not know the Ministry, nor the

Ministry the University. The acts of the Government, be it Liberal or

Conservative, are freely discussed, and often powerfully resisted by the

academic constituencies, and the personal dislike of a Minister or

Ministerial Councillor could as little injure a professor or tutor as

his favour could add one penny to his salary.

But these are minor matters. What gives their own peculiar character to

the English Universities is a sense of power and responsibility: power,

because they are the most respected among the numerous corporations in

the country; responsibility, because the higher education of the whole

country has been committed to their charge. Their only master is public

opinion as represented in Parliament, their only incentive their own

sense of duty. There is no country in Europe where Universities hold so

exalted a position, and where those who have the honour to belong to

them may say with greater truth, _Noblesse oblige_.

I know the dangers of self-government, particularly where higher and

more ideal interests are concerned, and there are probably few who wish

for a real reform in schools and Universities who have not occasionally

yielded to the desire for a Dictator, of a Bismarck or a Falk. But such

a desire springs only from a momentary weakness and despondency; and no

one who knows the difference between being governed and governing

oneself, would ever wish to descend from that higher though dangerous

position to a lower one, however safe and comfortable it might seem. No

one who has tasted freedom would ever wish to exchange it for anything

else. Public opinion is sometimes a hard task-master, and majorities can

be great tyrants to those who want to be honest to their own

convictions. But in the struggle of all against all, each individual

feels that he has his rightful place, and that he may exercise his

rightful influence. If he is beaten, he is beaten in fair fight; if he

conquers, he has no one else to thank. No doubt despotic Governments

have often exercised the most beneficial patronage in encouraging and

rewarding poets, artists, and men of science. But men of genius who have

conquered the love and admiration of a whole nation are greater than

those who have gained the favour of the most brilliant Courts; and we

know how some of the fairest reputations have been wrecked on the

patronage which they had to accept at the hands of powerful Ministers or

ambitious Sovereigns.

But to return to Mill and his plea for Liberty. Though I can hardly

believe that, were he still among us, he would claim a larger measure of

freedom for the individual than is now accorded to every one of us in

the society in which we move, yet the chief cause on which he founded

his plea for Liberty, the chief evil which he thought could be remedied

only if society would allow more elbow-room to individual genius, exists

in the same degree as in his time--aye, even in a higher degree. The

principle of Individuality has suffered more at present than perhaps at

any former period of history. The world is becoming more and more

gregarious, and what the French call our _nature moutonniere_, "our

mutton-like nature," our tendency to leap where any bell-wether has

leapt before, becomes more and more prevalent in politics, in religion,

in art, and even in science. M. de Tocqueville expressed his surprise

how much more Frenchmen of the present day resemble one another than did

those of the last generation. The same remark, adds John Stuart Mill,

might be made of England in a greater degree. "The modern _regime_ of

public opinion," he writes, "is in an unorganized form what the Chinese

educational and political systems are in an organized; and unless

individuality shall be able successfully to assert itself against this

yoke, Europe, notwithstanding its noble antecedents and its professed

Christianity, will tend to become another China."

I fully agree with Mill in recognizing the dangers of uniformity, but I

doubt whether what he calls the _regime_ of public opinion is alone, or

even chiefly, answerable for it. No doubt there are some people in whose

eyes uniformity seems an advantage rather than a disadvantage. If all

were equally strong, equally educated, equally honest, equally rich,

equally tall, or equally small, society would seem to them to have

reached the highest ideal. The same people admire an old French garden,

with its clipped yew-trees, forming artificial walls and towers and

pyramids, far more than the giant yews which, like large serpents, clasp

the soil with their coiling roots, and overshadow with their dark green

branches the white chalk cliffs of the Thames. But those French gardens,

unless they are constantly clipped and prevented from growing, soon fall

into decay. As in nature, so in society, uniformity means but too often

stagnation, while variety is the surest sign of health and vigour. The

deepest secret of nature is its love of continued novelty. Its tendency,

if unrestrained, is towards constantly creating new varieties, which, if

they fulfil their purpose, become fixed for a time, or, it may be, for

ever; while others, after they have fulfilled their purpose, vanish to

make room for new and stronger types.

The same is the secret of human society. It consists and lives in

individuals, each being meant to be different from all the others, and

to contribute his own peculiar share to the common wealth. As no tree is

like any other tree, and no leaf on the same tree like any other leaf,

no human being is exactly like any other human being, nor is it meant to

be. It is in this endless, and to us inconceivable, variety of human

souls that the deepest purpose of human life is to be realized; and the

more society fulfils that purpose, the more it allows free scope for the

development of every individual germ, the richer will be the harvest in

no distant future. Such is the mystery of individuality that I do not

wonder if even those philosophers who, like Mill, reduce the meaning of

the word _sacred_ to the very smallest compass, see in each individual

soul something sacred, something to be revered, even where we cannot

understand it, something to be protected against all vulgar violence.

Where I differ from Mill and his school is on the question as to the

quarter from whence the epidemic of uniformity springs which threatens

the free development of modern society. Mill points to the society in

which we move; to those who are in front of us, to our contemporaries. I

feel convinced that our real enemies are at our back, and that the

heaviest chains which are fastened on us are those made, not by the

present, but by past generations--by our ancestors, not by our

contemporaries.

It is on this point, on the trammels of individual freedom with which we

may almost be said to be born into the world, and on the means by which

we may shake off these old chains, or at all events carry them more

lightly and gracefully, that I wish to speak to you this evening.

You need not be afraid that I am going to enter upon the much discussed

subject of heredity, whether in its physiological or psychological

aspects. It is a favourite subject just now, and the most curious facts

have been brought together of late to illustrate the working of what is

called heredity. But the more we know of these facts, the less we seem

able to comprehend the underlying principle. Inheritance is one of those

numerous words which by their very simplicity and clearness are so apt

to darken our counsel. If a father has blue eyes and the son has blue

eyes, what can be clearer than that he inherited them? If the father

stammers and the son stammers, who can doubt but that it came by

inheritance? If the father is a musician and the son a musician, we say

very glibly that the talent was inherited. But what does _inherited_

mean? In no case does it mean what _inherited_ usually means--something

external, like money, collected by a father, and, after his death,

secured by law to his son. Whatever else inherited may mean, it does not

mean that. But unfortunately the word is there, it seems almost pedantic

to challenge its meaning, and people are always grateful if an easy word

saves them the trouble of hard thought.

Another apparent advantage of the theory of heredity is that it never

fails. If the son has blue, and the father black, eyes, all is right

again, for either the mother, or the grandmother, or some historic or

prehistoric ancestor, may have had blue eyes, and atavism, we know, will

assert itself after hundreds and thousands of years.

Do not suppose that I deny the broad facts of what is called by the name

of heredity. What I deny is that the name of heredity offers any

scientific solution of a most difficult problem. It is a name, a

metaphor, quite as bad as the old metaphor of _innate ideas_; for there

is hardly a single point of similarity between the process by which a

son may share the black eyes, the stammering, or the musical talent of

his father, and that by which, after his father's death, the law secures

to the son the possession of the pounds, shillings, and pence which his

father held in the Funds.

But whatever the true meaning of heredity may be, certain it is that

every individual comes into the world heavy-laden. Nowhere has the

consciousness of the burden which rests on each generation as it enters

on its journey through life found stronger expression than among the

Buddhists. What other people call by various names, "fate or

providence," "tradition or inheritance," "circumstances or environment,"

they call _Karman_, deed--what has been done, whether by ourselves or by

others, the accumulated work of all who have come before us, the

consequences of which we have to bear, both for good and for evil.

Originally this _Karman_ seems to have been conceived as personal, as

the work which we ourselves have done in former existences. But, as

personally we are not conscious of having done such work in former ages,

that kind of _Karman_, too, might be said to be impersonal. To the

question how _Karman_ began, the accumulation of what forms the

condition of all that exists at present, Buddhism has no answer to give,

any more than any other system of religion or philosophy. The Buddhists

say it began with _avidya_, and _avidya_ means ignorance.[6] They are

much more deeply interested in the question how _Karman_ may be

annihilated, how each man may free himself from the influence of

_Karman_, and Nirvana, the highest object of all their dreams, is often

defined by Buddhist philosophers as "freedom from _Karman_."[7]

What the Buddhists call by the general name of _Karman_, comprehends all

influences which the past exercises on the present, both physically and

mentally.[8] It is not my object to examine or even to name all these

influences, though I confess nothing is more interesting than to look

upon the surface of our modern life as we look on a geological map, and

to see the most ancient formations cropping out everywhere under our

feet. Difficult as it is to colour a geological map of England, it would

be still more difficult to find a sufficient variety of colours to mark

the different ingredients of the intellectual surface of this island.

That all of us, whether we speak English or German, or French or

Russian, are really speaking an ancient Oriental tongue, incredible as

it would have sounded a hundred years ago, is now admitted by everybody.

Though the various dialects now spoken in Europe have been separated

many thousands of years from the Sanskrit, the ancient classical

language of India, yet so unbroken is the bond that holds the West and

East together that in many cases an intelligent Englishman might still

guess the meaning of a Sanskrit word. How little difference is there

between Sanskrit _sunu_ and English _son_, between Sanskrit _duhitar_

and English _daughter_, between Sanskrit _vid_, to know, and English _to

wit_, between Sanskrit _vaksh_, to grow, and English _to wax_! Think how

we value a Saxon urn, or a Roman coin, or a Celtic weapon! how we dig

for them, clean them, label them, and carefully deposit them in our

museums! Yet what is their antiquity compared with the antiquity of such

words as _son_ or _daughter_, _father_ and _mother_? There are no

monuments older than those collected in the handy volumes which we call

Dictionaries, and those who know how to interpret those English

antiquities--as you may see them interpreted, for instance, in Grimm's

Dictionary of the German, in Littre's Dictionary of the French, or in

Professor Skeats' Etymological Dictionary of the English Language--will

learn more of the real growth of the human mind than by studying many

volumes on logic and psychology.

And as by our language we belong to the Aryan stratum, we belong through

our letters to the Hamitic. We still write English in hieroglyphics; and

in spite of all the vicissitudes through which the ancient hieroglyphics

have passed in their journey from Egypt to Phoenicia, from Phoenicia

to Greece, from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to England, when we

write a capital F {script F}, when we draw the top line and the

smaller line through the middle of the letter, we really draw the two

horns of the cerastes, the horned serpent which the ancient Egyptians

used for representing the sound of f. They write the name of the king

whom the Greeks called _Cheops_, and they themselves _Chu-fu_, like

this:[9]

[Illustration:

+---------+

| sieve | chu

| serpent | fu

| bird | u

+---------+

]

Here the first sign, the sieve, is to be pronounced _chu_; the second,

the horned serpent, _fu_, and the little bird, again, _u_. In the more

cursive or Hieratic writing the horned serpent appears as

{symbol}; in the later Demotic as {symbol} and

{symbol}. The Phoenicians, who borrowed their letters from the

Hieratic Egyptian, wrote {symbol} and {symbol}. The

Greeks, who took their letters from the Phoenicians, wrote

{symbol}. When the Greeks, instead of writing like the

Phoenicians from right to left, began to write from left to right,

they turned each letter, and as {symbol} became K, our k, so

{symbol}, vau, became F, the Greek so-called Digamma, the Latin

F.

The first letter in _Chu-fu_, too, still exists in our alphabet, and in

the transverse line of our H we must recognize the last remnant of the

lines which divide the sieve. The sieve appears in Hieratic as

{symbol}, in Phoenician as {symbol}, in ancient Greek

as {symbol}, which occurs on an inscription found at Mycenae and

elsewhere as the sign of the spiritus asper, while in Latin it is known

to us as the letter H.[10] In the same manner the undulating line of our

capital {script L} still recalls very strikingly the bent back of

the crouching lion, which in the later hieroglyphic inscriptions

represents the sound of L.

If thus in our language we are Aryan, in our letters Egyptian, we have

only to look at our watches to see that we are Babylonian. Why is our

hour divided into sixty minutes, our minutes into sixty seconds? Would

not a division of the hour into ten, or fifty, or a hundred minutes have

been more natural? We have sixty divisions on the dials of our watches

simply because the Greek astronomer Hipparchus, who lived in the second

century B.C., accepted the Babylonian system of reckoning time, that

system being sexagesimal. The Babylonians knew the decimal system, but

for practical purposes they counted by _sossi_ and _sari_, the _sossos_

representing 60, the _saros_ 60 × 60, or 3600. From Hipparchus that

system found its way into the works of Ptolemy, about 150 A.D., and

thence it was carried down the stream of civilization, finding its last

resting-place on the dial-plates of our clocks.

And why are there twenty shillings to our sovereign? Again the real

reason lies in Babylon. The Greeks learnt from the Babylonians the art

of dividing gold and silver for the purpose of trade. It has been proved

that the current gold piece of Western Asia was exactly the sixtieth

part of a Babylonian _mna_, or _mina_. It was nearly equal to our

sovereign. The difficult problem of the relative value of gold and

silver in a bi-monetary currency had been solved to a certain extent in

the ancient Mesopotamian kingdom, the proportion between gold and silver

being fixed at 1 to 13-1/3. The silver shekel current in Babylon was

heavier than the gold shekel in the proportion of 13-1/3 to 10, and had

therefore the value of one-tenth of a gold shekel; and the half silver

shekel, called by the Greeks a drachma, was worth one-twentieth of a

gold shekel. The drachma, or half silver shekel, may therefore be looked

upon as the most ancient type of our own silver shilling in its relation

of one-twentieth of our gold sovereign.[11]

I shall mention only one more of the most essential tools of our mental

life--namely, our _figures_, which we call Arabic, because we received

them from the Arabs, but which the Arabs called Indian, because they

received them from the Indians--in order to show you how this nineteenth

century of ours is under the sway of centuries long past and forgotten;

how we are what we are, not by ourselves, but by those who came before

us, and how the intellectual ground on which we stand is made up of the

detritus of thoughts which were first thought, not on these isles nor in

Europe, but on the shores of the Oxus, the Nile, the Euphrates, and the

Indus.

Now you may well ask _Quorsum haec omnia?_--What has all this to do with

freedom and with the free development of individuality? Because a man is

born the heir of all the ages, can it be said that he is not free to

grow and to expand, and to develop all the faculties of his mind? Are

those who came before him, and who left him this goodly inheritance, to

be called his enemies? Is that chain of tradition which connects him

with the past really a galling fetter, and not rather the

leading-strings without which he would never learn to walk straight?

Let us look at the matter more closely. No one would venture to say that

every individual should begin life as a young savage, and be left to

form his own language, and invent his own letters, numerals, and coins.

On the contrary, if we comprehend all this and a great deal more, such

as religion, morality, and secular knowledge, under the general name of

_education_, even the most advanced defenders of individualism would

hold that no child should enter society without submitting, or rather

without being submitted, to education. Most of us would even go further,

and make it criminal for parents or even for communities to allow

children to grow up uneducated. The excuse of worthless parents that

they are at liberty to do with their children as they like, has at last

been blown to the winds. I still remember the time when pseudo-Liberals

were not ashamed to say that, whatever other nations, such as the

Germans, might do, England would never submit to compulsory education.

That wicked sophistry, too, has at last been silenced, and among the

principal advocates of compulsory education, and of the necessity of

curtailing the freedom of savage parents of savage children, have been

Mill and his friends, the apostles of liberty and individualism.[12] A

new era may be said to date in the history of every nation from the day

on which "compulsory education" becomes part of their statute-book; and

I may congratulate the most Liberal town in England on having proved

itself the most inexorable tyrant in carrying out the principle of

compulsory education.

But do not let us imagine that compulsory education is without its

dangers. Like a powerful engine, it must be carefully watched, if it is

not to produce, what all compulsion will produce, a slavish receptivity,

and, what all machines do produce, monotonous uniformity.

We know that all education must in the beginning be purely dogmatic.

Children are taught language, religion, morality, patriotism, and

afterwards at school, history, literature, mathematics, and all the

rest, long before they are able to question, to judge, or choose for

themselves, and there is hardly anything that a child will not believe

if it comes from those in whom the child believes.

Reading, writing, and arithmetic, no doubt, must be taught dogmatically,

and they take up an enormous amount of time, particularly in English

schools. English spelling is a national misfortune, and in the keen

international race between all the countries of Europe, it handicaps the

English child to a degree that seems incredible till we look at

statistics. I know the difficulties of a Spelling Reform, I know what

people mean when they call it impossible; but I also know that personal

and national virtue consists in doing so-called impossible things, and

that no nation has done, and has still to do, so many impossible things

as the English.

But, granted that reading, writing, and arithmetic occupy nearly the

whole school-time and absorb the best powers of the pupils, cannot

something be done in play-hours? Is there not some work that can be

turned into play, and some play that can be turned into work? Cannot the

powers of observation be called out in a child while collecting flowers,

or stones, or butterflies? Cannot his judgment be strengthened either in

gymnastic exercises, or in measuring the area of a field or the height

of a tower? Might not all this be done without a view to examinations or

payment by results, simply for the sake of filling the little dull minds

with one sunbeam of joy, such sunbeams being more likely hereafter to

call hidden precious germs into life than the deadening weight of such

lessons as, for instance, that _th-ough_ is though, _thr-ough_ is

through, _en-ough_ is enough. A child who believes that will hereafter

believe anything. Those who wish to see Natural Science introduced into

elementary schools frighten schoolmasters by the very name of Natural

Science. But surely every schoolmaster who is worth his salt should be

able to teach children a love of Nature, a wondering at Nature, a

curiosity to pry into the secrets of Nature, an acquisitiveness for some

of the treasures of Nature, and all this acquired in the fresh air of

the field and the forest, where, better than in frouzy lecture-rooms,

the edge of the senses can be sharpened, the chest be widened, and that

freedom of thought fostered which made England what it was even before

the days of compulsory education.

But in addressing you here to-night it was my intention to speak of the

higher rather than of elementary education.

All education, as it now exists in most countries of Europe, may be

divided into three stages--_elementary_, _scholastic_, and _academical_;

or call it _primary_, _secondary_, and _tertiary_.

Elementary education has at last been made compulsory in most civilized

countries. Unfortunately, however, it seems impossible to include under

compulsory education anything beyond the very elements of knowledge--at

least for the present; though, with proper management, I know from

experience that a well-conducted elementary school can afford to provide

instruction in extra subjects--such as natural science, modern

languages, and political economy--and yet, with the present system of

Government grants, be self-supporting.[13]

The next stage above the elementary is _scholastic_ education, as it is

supplied in grammar schools, whether public or private. According as

the pupils are intended either to go on to a university, or to enter at

once on leaving school on the practical work of life, these schools are

divided into two classes. In the one class, which in Germany are called

_Real-schulen_, less Latin is taught, and no Greek, but more of

mathematics, modern languages, and physical science; in the other,

called _Gymnasia_ on the Continent, classics form the chief staple of

instruction.

It is during this stage that education, whether at private or public

schools, exercises its strongest levelling influence. Little attention

can be paid at large schools to individual tastes or talents. In

Germany, even more perhaps than in England, it is the chief object of a

good and conscientious master to have his class as uniform as possible

at the end of the year; and he receives far more credit from the

official examiner if his whole class marches well and keeps pace

together, than if he can parade a few brilliant and forward boys,

followed by a number of straggling laggards.

And as to the character of the teaching at school, how can it be

otherwise than authoritative or dogmatic? The Socratic method is very

good if we can find the _viri Socratici_ and leisure for discussion. But

at school, which now may seem to be called almost in mockery =schole=,

or leisure, the true method is, after all, that patronized by the great

educators of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Boys at school

must turn their mind into a row of pigeon-holes, filling as many as they

can with useful notes, and never forgetting how many are empty. There is

an immense amount of positive knowledge to be acquired between the ages

of ten and eighteen--rules of grammar, strings of vocables, dates, names

of towns, rivers, and mountains, mathematical formulas, &c. All depends

here on the receptive and retentive powers of the mind. The memory has

to be strengthened, without being overtaxed, till it acts almost

mechanically. Learning by heart, I believe, cannot be too strongly

recommended during the years spent at school. There may have been too

much of it when, as the Rev. H. C. Adams informs us in his "Wykehamica"

(p. 357), boys used to say by heart 13,000 and 14,000 lines, when one

repeated the whole of Virgil, nay, when another was able to say the

whole of the English Bible by rote:--"Put him on where you would, he

would go fluently on, as long as any one would listen."

No intellectual investment, I feel certain, bears such ample and such

regular interest as gems of English, Latin, or Greek literature

deposited in our memory during our childhood and youth, and taken up

from time to time in the happy hours of our solitude.

One fault I have to find with most schools, both in England and on the

Continent. Boys do not read enough of the Greek and Roman classics. The

majority of our masters are scholars by profession, and they are apt to

lay undue stress on what they call accurate and minute scholarship, and

to neglect wide and cursory reading. I know the arguments for minute

accuracy, but I also know the mischief that is done by an exclusive

devotion to critical scholarship before we have acquired a real

familiarity with the principal works of classical literature. The time

spent in our schools in learning the rules of grammar and syntax,

writing exercises, and composing verses, is too large. Look only at our

Greek and Latin grammars, with all their rules and exceptions, and

exceptions on exceptions! It is too heavy a weight for any boy to carry;

and no wonder that when one of the thousand small rules which they have

learnt by heart is really wanted, it is seldom forthcoming. The end of

classical teaching at school should be to make our boys acquainted not

only with the language, but with the literature and history, the ancient

thought of the ancient world. Rules of grammar, syntax, or metre, are

but means towards that end; they must never be mistaken for the end

itself. A young man of eighteen, who has probably spent on an average

ten years in learning Greek and Latin, ought to be able to read any of

the ordinary Greek or Latin classics without much difficulty; nay, with

a certain amount of pleasure. He might have to consult his dictionary

now and then, or guess the meaning of certain words; he might also feel

doubtful sometimes whether certain forms came from =hiemi=, I send, or

=eimi=, I go, or =eimi=, I am, particularly if preceded by prepositions.

In these matters the best scholars are least inclined to be pharisaical;

and whenever I meet in the controversies of classical scholars the

favourite phrase, "Every schoolboy knows, or ought to know, this," I

generally say to myself, "No, he ought not." Anyhow, those who wish to

see the study of Greek and Latin retained in our public schools ought to

feel convinced that it will certainly not be retained much longer, if it

can be said with any truth that young men who leave school at eighteen

are in many cases unable to read or to enjoy a classical text, unless

they have seen it before.

Classical teaching, and all purely scholastic teaching, ought to be

finished at school. When a young man goes to University, unless he means

to make scholarship his profession, he ought to be free to enter upon a

new career. If he has not learnt by that time so much of Greek and Latin

as is absolutely necessary in after-life for a lawyer, or a student of

physical science, or even a clergyman, either he or his school is to

blame. I do not mean to say that it would not be most desirable for

every one during his University career to attend some lectures on

classical literature, on ancient history, philosophy, or art. What is to

be deprecated is, that the University should have to do the work which

belongs properly to the school.

The best colleges at Oxford and Cambridge have shown by their

matriculation examinations what the standard of classical knowledge

ought to be at eighteen or nineteen. That standard can be reached by

boys while still at school, as has been proved both by the so-called

local examinations, and by the examinations of schools held under the

Delegates appointed by the Universities. If, therefore, the University

would reassert her old right, and make the first examination, called at

Oxford Responsions, a general matriculation examination for admission to

the University, not only would the public schools be stimulated to

greater efforts, but the teaching of the University might assume, from

the very beginning, that academic character which ought to distinguish

it from mere schoolboy work.

Academic teaching ought to be not merely a continuation, but in one

sense a correction of scholastic teaching. While at school instruction

must be chiefly dogmatic, at University it is to be Socratic, for I find

no better name for that method which is to set a man free from the

burden of purely traditional knowledge; to make him feel that the words

which he uses are often empty, that the concepts he employs are, for the

most part, mere bundles picked up at random; that even where he knows

facts, he does not know their evidence; and where he expresses opinions,

they are mostly mere dogmas, adopted by him without examination.

But for the Universities, I should indeed fear that Mill's prophecies

might come true, and that the intellect of Europe might drift into

dreary monotony. The Universities always have been, and, unless they are

diverted from their original purpose, always will be, the guardians of

the freedom of thought, the protectors of individual spontaneity; and it

was owing, I believe, to Mill's ignorance of true academic teaching that

he took so desponding a view of the generation growing up under his

eyes.

When we leave school, our heads are naturally brimful of dogma, that is,

of knowledge and opinions at second-hand. Such dead knowledge is

extremely dangerous, unless it is sooner or later revived by the spirit

of free inquiry. It does not matter whether our scholastic dogmas be

true or false. The danger is the same. And why? Because to place either

truth or error above the reach of argument is certain to weaken truth

and to strengthen error. Secondly, because to hold as true on the

authority of others anything which concerns us deeply, and which we

could prove ourselves, produces feebleness, if not dishonesty. And,

thirdly, because to feel unwilling or unable to meet objections by

argument is generally the first step towards violence and persecution.

I do not think of religious dogmas only. They are generally the first to

rouse inquiry, even during our schoolboy days, and they are by no means

the most difficult to deal with. Dogma often rages where we least expect

it. Among scientific men the theory of evolution is at present becoming,

or has become, a dogma. What is the result? No objections are listened

to, no difficulties recognized, and a man like Virchow, himself the

strongest supporter of evolution, who has the moral courage to say that

the descent of man from any ape whatsoever is, as yet, before the

tribunal of scientific zoology, "not proven," is howled down in Germany

in a manner worthy of Ephesians and Galatians. But at present I am

thinking not so much of any special dogmas, but rather of that dogmatic

state of mind which is the almost inevitable result of the teaching at

school. I think of the whole intellect, what has been called the

_intellectus sibi permissus_, and I maintain that it is the object of

academic teaching to rouse that intellect out of its slumber by

questions not less startling than when Galileo asked the world whether

the sun was really moving and the earth stood still; or when Kant asked

whether time and space were objects, or necessary forms of our sensuous

intuition. Till our opinions have thus been tested and stood the test,

we can hardly call them our own.

How true this is with regard to religion has been boldly expressed by

Bishop Beveridge.

"Being conscious to myself," he writes in his "Private Thoughts on

Religion," "how great an ascendant Christianity holds over me beyond

the rest, as being that religion whereinto I was born and baptized;

that which the supreme authority has enjoined and my parents

educated me in; that which every one I meet withal highly approves

of, and which I myself have, by a long-continued profession, made

almost natural to me: I am resolved to be more jealous and

suspicious of this religion than of the rest, and be sure not to

entertain it any longer without being convinced, by solid and

substantial arguments, of the truth and certainty of it."

This is bold and manly language from a Bishop nearly two hundred years

ago, and I certainly think that the time has come when some of the

divinity lecturers at Oxford and Cambridge might well be employed in

placing a knowledge of the sacred books of other religions within the

reach of undergraduates. Many of the difficulties--most of them of our

own making--with regard to the origin, the handing down, the later

corruptions and misinterpretations of sacred texts, would find their

natural solution, if it was shown how exactly the same difficulties

arose and had to be dealt with by theologians of other creeds. If

some--ay, if many--of the doctrines of Christianity were met with in

other religions also, surely that would not affect their value, or

diminish their truth; while nothing, I feel certain, would more

effectually secure to the pure and simple teaching of Christ its true

place in the historical development of the human mind than to place it

side by side with the other religions of the world. In the series of

translations of the "Sacred Books of the East," of which the first three

volumes have just appeared,[14] I wished myself to include a new

translation of the Old and New Testaments; and when that series is

finished it will, I believe, be admitted that nowhere would these two

books have had a grander setting, or have shone with a brighter light,

than surrounded by the Veda, the Zendavesta, the Buddhist Tripi_t_aka,

and the Qur'an.

But as I said before, I was not thinking of religious dogmas only, or

even chiefly, when I maintained that the character of academic teaching

must be Socratic, not dogmatic. The evil of dogmatic teaching lies much

deeper, and spreads much further.

Think only of language, the work of other people, not of ourselves,

which we pick up at random in our race through life. Does not every word

we use require careful examination and revision? It is not enough to say

that language assists our thoughts or colours them, or possibly obscures

them. No, we know now that language and thought are indivisible. It was

not from poverty of expression that the Greek called reason and language

by the same word, =logos=. It was because they knew that, though we may

distinguish between thought and speech, as we distinguish between body

and soul, it is as impossible to tear the one by violence away from the

other as it is to separate the concave side of a lens from its convex

side. This is something to learn and to understand, for, if properly

understood, it will supply the key to most of our intellectual puzzles,

and serve as the safest thread through the whole labyrinth of

philosophy.

"It is evident," as Hobbes remarks,[15] "that truth and falsity have no

place but amongst such living creatures as use speech. For though some

brute creatures, looking upon the image of a man in a glass, may be

affected with it, as if it were the man himself, and for this reason

fear it or fawn upon it in vain; yet they do not apprehend it as true or

false, but only as like; and in this they are not deceived. Wherefore,

as men owe all their true ratiocination to the right understanding of

speech, so also they owe their errors to the misunderstanding of the

same; and as all the ornaments of philosophy proceed only from man, so

from man also is derived the ugly absurdity of false opinion. For speech

has something in it like to a spider's web (as it was said of old of

Solon's laws), for by contexture of words tender and delicate wits are

ensnared or stopped, but strong wits break easily through them."

Let me illustrate my meaning by at least one instance.

Among the words which have proved spider's webs, ensnaring even the

greatest intellects of the world from Aristotle down to Leibniz, the

terms _genus_, _species_, and _individual_ occupy a very prominent

place. The opposition of Aristotle to Plato, of the Nominalists to the

Realists, of Leibniz to Locke, of Herbart to Hegel, turns on the true

meaning of these words. At school, of course, all we can do is to teach

the received meaning of _genus_ and _species_; and if a boy can trace

these terms back to Aristotle's =genos= and =eidos=, and show in what

sense that philosopher used them, every examiner would be satisfied.

But the time comes when we have to act as our own examiners, and when we

have to give an account to ourselves of such words as _genus_ and

_species_. Some people write, indeed, as if they had seen a _species_

and a _genus_ walking about in broad daylight; but a little

consideration will show us that these words express subjective concepts,

and that, if the whole world were silent, there would never have been a

thought of a _genus_ or a _species_. There are languages in which we

look in vain for corresponding words; and if we had been born in such a

language, these terms and thoughts would not exist for us. They came to

us, directly or indirectly, from Aristotle. But Aristotle did not invent

them, he only defined them in his own way, so that, for instance,

according to him, all living beings would constitute a _genus_, men a

_species_, and Socrates an _individual_.

No one would say that Aristotle had not a perfect right to define these

terms, if those who use them in his sense would only always remember

that they are thinking the thoughts of Aristotle, and not their own. The

true way to shake off the fetters of old words, and to learn to think

our own thoughts, is to follow them up from century to century, to watch

their development, and in the end to bring ourselves face to face with

those who first found and framed both words and thoughts. If we do this

with _genus_ and _species_, we shall find that the words which Aristotle

defined--viz., =genos= and =eidos=--had originally a very different and

far more useful application than that which he gave to them. =Genos=,

_genus_, meant generation, and comprehended such living beings only as

were known to have a common origin, however they might differ in outward

appearance, as, for instance, the spaniel and the bloodhound, or,

according to Darwin, the ape and the man. =Eidos= or species, on the

contrary, meant appearance, and comprehended all such things as had the

same form or appearance, whether they had a common origin or not, as if

we were to speak of a species of four-footed, two-footed, horned,

winged, or blue animals.

That two such concepts, as we have here explained, had a natural

justification we may best learn from the fact that exactly the same

thoughts found expression in Sanskrit. There, too, we find *_g_ati*,

generation, used in the sense of _genus_, and opposed to *ak_ri_ti*,

appearance, used in the sense of _species_.

So long as these two words or thoughts were used independently (much as

we now speak of a genealogical as independent of a morphological

classification) no harm could accrue. A family, for instance, might be

called a =genos=, the _gens_ or clan was a =genos=, the nation (gnatio)

was a =genos=, the whole human kith and kin was a =genos=; in fact, all

that was descended from common ancestors was a true =genos=. There is no

obscurity of thought in this.

On the other side, taking =eidos= or species in its original sense, one

man might be said to be like another in his =eidos= or appearance. An

ape, too, might quite truly be said to have the same =eidos= or species

or appearance as a man, without any prejudice as to their common origin.

People might also speak of different =eide= or forms or classes of

things, such as different kinds of metals, or tools, or armour, without

committing themselves in the least to any opinion as to their common

descent.

Often it would happen that things belonging to the same =genos=, such as

the white man and the negro, differed in their =eidos= or appearance;

often also that things belonging to the same =eidos=, such as eatables,

differed in their =genos=, as, for instance, meat and vegetables.

All this is clear and simple. The confusion began when these two terms,

instead of being co-ordinate, were subordinated to each other by the

philosophers of Greece, so that what from one point of view was called a

_genus_, might from another be called a species, and _vice versa_. Human

beings, for instance, were now called a _species_, all living beings a

_genus_, which may be true in logic, but is utterly false in what is

older than logic--viz., language, thought, or fact. According to

language, according to reason, and according to Nature, all human beings

constitute a =genos=, or generation, so long as they are supposed to

have common ancestors; but with regard to all living beings we can only

say that they form an =eidos=--that is, agree in certain appearances,

until it has been proved that even Mr. Darwin was too modest in

admitting at least four or five different ancestors for the whole animal

world.[16]

In tracing the history of these two words, =genos= and =eidos=, you may

see passing before your eyes almost the whole panorama of philosophy,

from Plato's ideas down to Hegel's _Idee_. The question of _genera_,

their origin and subdivision, occupied chiefly the attention of natural

philosophers, who, after long controversies about the origin and

classification of _genera_ and _species_, seem at last, thanks to the

clear sight of Darwin, to have arrived at the old truth which was

prefigured in language--namely, that Nature knows nothing but _genera_,

or generations, to be traced back to a limited number of ancestors, and

that the so-called _species_ are only _genera_, whose genealogical

descent is _as yet_ more or less obscure.

But the question as to the nature of the =eidos= became a vital question

in every system of philosophy. Granting, for instance, that women in

every clime and country formed one species, it was soon asked what

constituted a species? If all women shared a common form, what was that

form? Where was it? So long as it was supposed that all women descended

from Eve, the difficulty might be slurred over by the name of heredity.

But the more thoughtful would ask even then how it was that, while all

individual women came and went and vanished, the form in which they were

cast remained the same?

Here you see how philosophical mythology springs up. The very question

what =eidos= or species or form was, and where these things were kept,

changed those words from predicates into subjects. =Eidos= was conceived

as something independent and substantial, something within or above the

individuals participating in it, something unchangeable and eternal.

Soon there arose as many =eide= or forms or types as there were general

concepts. They were considered the only true realities of which the

phenomenal world is only as a shadow that soon passeth away. Here we

have, in fact, the origin of Plato's ideas, and of the various systems

of idealism which followed his lead, while the opposite opinions that

ideas have no independent existence, and that the one is nowhere found

except in the many (=to hen para ta polla=), was strenuously defended by

Aristotle and his followers.[17]

The same red thread runs through the whole philosophy of the Middle

Ages. Men were cited before councils and condemned as heretics because

they declared that _animal_, _man_, or _woman_ were mere names, and that

they could not bring themselves to believe in an ideal animal, an ideal

man, an ideal woman as the invisible, supernatural, or metaphysical

types of the ordinary animal, the individual man, the single woman.

Those philosophers, called _Nominalists_, in opposition to the

_Realists_, declared that all general terms were _names only_, and that

nothing could claim reality but the individual.

We cannot follow this controversy further, as it turns up again between

Locke and Leibniz, between Herbart and Hegel. Suffice it to say that the

knot, as it was tied by language, can be untied by the science of

language alone, which teaches us that there is and can be no such thing

as "a name only." That phrase ought to be banished from all works on

philosophy. A name is and always has been the subjective side of our

knowledge, but that subjective side is as impossible without an

objective side as a key is without a lock. It is useless to ask which of

the two is the more real, for they are real only by being, not two, but

one. Realism is as one-sided as Nominalism. But there is a higher

Nominalism, which might better be called the Science of Language, and

which teaches us that, apart from sensuous perception, all human

knowledge is by names and by names only, and that the object of names is

always the general.

This is but one out of hundreds and thousands of cases to show how names

and concepts which come to us by tradition must be submitted to very

careful snuffing before they will yield a pure light. What I mean by

academic teaching and academic study is exactly this process of

snuffing, this changing of traditional words into living words, this

tracing of modern thought back to ancient primitive thought, this

living, as it were, once more, so far as it concerns us, the whole

history of human thought ourselves, till we are as little afraid to

differ from Plato or Aristotle as from Comte or Darwin.

Plato and Aristotle are, no doubt, great names; every schoolboy is awed

by them, even though he may have read very little of their writings.

This, too, is a kind of dogmatism that requires correction. Now, at

University, a young student might hear the following, by no means

respectful, remarks about Aristotle, which I copy from one of the

greatest English scholars and philosophers:--"There is nothing so absurd

that the old philosophers, as Cicero saith, who was one of them, have

not some of them maintained; and I believe that scarce anything can be

more absurdly said in natural philosophy than that which now is called

Aristotle's Metaphysics; or more repugnant to government than much of

that he hath said in his Politics; nor more ignorantly than a great part

of his Ethics." I am far from approving this judgment, but I think that

the shock which a young scholar receives on seeing his idols so

mercilessly broken is salutary. It throws him back on his own resources;

it makes him honest to himself. If he thinks the criticism thus passed

on Aristotle unfair, he will begin to read his works with new eyes. He

will not only construe his words, but try to reconstruct in his own mind

the thoughts so carefully elaborated by that ancient philosopher. He

will judge of their truth without being swayed by the authority of a

great name, and probably in the end value what is valuable in Aristotle,

or Plato, or any other great philosopher far more highly and honestly

than if he had never seen them trodden under foot.

But do not suppose that I look upon the Universities as purely

iconoclastic, as chiefly intended to teach us how to break the idols of

the schools. Far from it! But I do look upon them as meant to freshen

the atmosphere which we breathe at school, and to shake our mind to its

very roots, as a storm shakes the young oaks, not to throw them down,

but to make them grasp all the more firmly the hard soil of fact and

truth! "_Stand upright on thy feet_" ought to be written over the gate

of every college, if the epidemic of uniformity and sequacity which Mill

saw approaching from China, and which since his time has made such rapid

progress Westward, is ever to be stayed.

Academic freedom is not without its dangers; but there are dangers which

it is safer to face than to avoid. In Germany--so far as my own

experience goes--students are often left too much to themselves, and it

is only the cleverest among them, or those who are personally

recommended, who receive from the professors that personal guidance and

encouragement which should and could be easily extended to all.

There is too much time given in the German Universities to mere

lecturing, and often in simply retailing to a class what each student

might read in books often in a far more perfect form. Lectures are

useful if they teach us how to teach ourselves; if they stimulate; if

they excite sympathy and curiosity; if they give advice that springs

from personal experience; if they warn against wrong roads; if, in fact,

they have less the character of a show-window than of a workshop. Half

an hour's conversation with a tutor or a professor often does more than

a whole course of lectures in giving the right direction and the right

spirit to a young man's studies. Here I may quote the words of Professor

Helmholtz, in full agreement with him. "When I recall the memory of my

own University life," he writes, "and the impression which a man like

Johannes Muller, the professor of physiology, made on us, I must set the

highest value on the personal intercourse with teachers from whom one

learns how thought works on independent heads. Whoever has come in

contact but once with one or several first-class men will find his

intellectual standard changed for life."

In English Universities, on the contrary, there is too little of

academic freedom. There is not only guidance, but far too much of

constant personal control. It is often thought that English

undergraduates could not be trusted with that amount of academic freedom

which is granted to German students, and that most of them, if left to

choose their own work, their own time, their own books, and their own

teachers, would simply do nothing. This seems to me unfair and untrue.

Most horses, if you take them to the water, will drink; and the best way

to make them drink is to leave them alone. I have lived long enough in

English and in German Universities to know that the intellectual fibre

is as strong and sound in the English as in the German youth. But if you

supply a man, who wishes to learn swimming, with bladders--nay, if you

insist on his using them--he will use them, but he will probably never

learn to swim. Take them away, on the contrary, and depend on it, after

a few aimless strokes and a few painful gulps, he will use his arms and

his legs, and he will swim. If young men do not learn to use their arms,

their legs, their muscles, their senses, their brain, and their heart

too, during the bright years of their University life, when are they to

learn it? True, there are thousands who never learn it, and who float

happily on through life buoyed up on mere bladders. The worst that can

happen to them is that some day the bladders may burst, and they may be

left stranded or drowned. But these are not the men whom England wants

to fight her battles. It has often been pointed out of late that many of

those who, during this century, have borne the brunt of the battle in

the intellectual warfare in England, have not been trained at our

Universities, while others who have been at Oxford and Cambridge, and

have distinguished themselves in after-life, have openly declared that

they attended hardly any lectures in college, or that they derived no

benefit from them. What can be the ground of that? Not that there is

less work done at Oxford than at Leipzig, but that the work is done in a

different spirit. It is free in Germany; it has now become almost

compulsory in England. Though an old professor myself, I like to attend,

when I can, some of the professorial lectures in Germany; for it is a

real pleasure to see hundreds of young faces listening to a teacher on

the history of art, on modern history, on the science of language, or on

philosophy, without any view to examinations, simply from love of the

subject or of the teacher. No one who knows what the real joy of

learning is, how it lightens all drudgery and draws away the mind from

mean pursuits, can see without indignation that what ought to be the

freest and happiest years in a man's life should often be spent between

cramming and examinations.

And here I have at last mentioned the word, which to many friends of

academic freedom, to many who dread the baneful increase of uniformity,

may seem the cause of all mischief, the most powerful engine for

intellectual levelling--_Examination_.

There is a strong feeling springing up everywhere against the tyranny of

examinations, against the cramping and withering influence which they

are supposed to exercise on the youth of England. I cannot join in that

outcry. I well remember that the first letters which I ventured to

address to the _Times_, in very imperfect English, were in favour of

examinations. They were signed _La Carriere ouverte_, and were written

long before the days of the Civil Service Commission! I well remember,

too, that the first time I ventured to speak, or rather to stammer, in

public, was in favour of examinations. That was in 1857, at Exeter, when

the first experiment was made, under the auspices of Sir T. Acland, in

establishing the Oxford and Cambridge Local Examinations. I have been an

examiner myself for many years, I have watched the growth of that system

in England from year to year, and in spite of all that has been said and

written of late against examinations, I confess I do not see how it

would be possible to abolish them, and return to the old system of

appointment by patronage.

But though I have not lost my faith in examinations, I cannot conceal

the fact that I am frightened by the manner in which they are conducted,

and by the results which they produce. As you are interested yourselves

at this Midland Institute, in the successful working of examinations,

you will perhaps allow me in conclusion to add a few remarks on the

safeguards necessary for the efficient working of examinations.

All examinations are a means to ascertain how pupils have been taught;

they ought never to be allowed to become the end for which pupils are

taught.

Teaching with a view to examinations lowers the teacher in the eyes of

his pupils; learning with a view to examinations is apt to produce

shallowness and dishonesty.

Whatever attractions learning possesses in itself, and whatever efforts

were formerly made by boys at school from a sense of duty, all this is

lost if they once imagine that the highest object of all learning is

gaining marks in examinations.

In order to maintain the proper relation between teacher and pupil, all

pupils should be made to look to their teachers as their natural

examiners and fairest judges, and therefore in every examination the

report of the teacher ought to carry the greatest weight. This is the

principle followed abroad in all examinations of candidates at public

schools; and even in their examination on leaving school, which gives

them the right to enter the University, they know that their success

depends far more on the work which they have done during the years at

school, than on the work done on the few days of their examination.

There are outside examiners appointed by Government to check the work

done at schools and during the examinations; but the cases in which they

have to modify or reverse the award of the master are extremely rare,

and they are felt to reflect seriously on the competency or impartiality

of the school authorities.

To leave examinations entirely to strangers reduces them to the level of

lotteries, and fosters a cleverness in teachers and taught often akin to

dishonesty. An examiner may find out what a candidate knows _not_, he

can hardly ever find out all he knows; and even if he succeeds in

finding out _how much_ a candidate knows, he can never find out _how_ he

knows it. On these points the opinion of the masters who have watched

their pupils for years is indispensable for the sake of the examiner,

for the sake of the pupils, and for the sake of their teachers.

I know I shall be told that it would be impossible to trust the masters,

and to be guided by their opinion, because they are interested parties.

Now, first of all, there are far more honest men in the world than

dishonest, and it does not answer to legislate as if all schoolmasters

were rogues. It is enough that they should know that their reports would

be scrutinized, to keep even the most reprobate of teachers from bearing

false witness in favour of their pupils.

Secondly, I believe that unnecessary temptation is now being placed

before all parties concerned in examinations. The proper reward for a

good examination should be honour, not pounds, shillings, and pence. The

mischief done by pecuniary rewards offered in the shape of scholarships

and exhibitions at school and University, begins to be recognized very

widely. To train a boy of twelve for a race against all England is

generally to overstrain his faculties, and often to impair his

usefulness in later life; but to make him feel that by his failure he

will entail on his father the loss of a hundred a year, and on his

teacher the loss of pupils, is simply cruel at that early age.

It is always said that these scholarships and exhibitions enable the

sons of poor parents to enjoy the privilege of the best education in

England, from which they would otherwise be debarred by the excessive

costliness of our public schools. But even this argument, strong as it

seems, can hardly stand, for I believe it could be shown that the

majority of those who are successful in obtaining scholarships and

exhibitions at school or at University are boys whose parents have been

able to pay the highest price for their children's previous education.

If all these prizes were abolished, and the funds thus set free used to

lessen the price of education at school and in college, I believe that

the sons of poor parents would be far more benefited than by the present

system. It might also be desirable to lower the school-fees in the case

of the sons of poor parents, who were doing well at school from year to

year; and, in order to guard against favouritism, an examination,

particularly _viva voce_, before all the masters of a school, possibly

even with some outside examiner, might be useful. But the present system

bids fair to degenerate into mere horse-racing, and I shall not wonder

if, sooner or later, the two-year olds entered for the race have to be

watched by their trainer that they may not be overfed or drugged against

the day of the race. It has come to this, that schools are bidding for

clever boys in order to run them in the races, and in France, I read,

that parents actually extort money from schools by threatening to take

away the young racers that are likely to win the Derby.[18]

If we turn from the schools to the Universities we find here, too, the

same complaints against over-examination. Now it seems to me that every

University, in order to maintain its position, has a perfect right to

demand two examinations, but no more: one for admission, the other for a

degree. Various attempts have been made in Germany, in Russia, in

France, and in England to change and improve the old academic tradition,

but in the end the original, and, as it would seem, the natural system,

has generally proved its wisdom and reasserted its right.

If a University surrenders the right of examining those who wish to be

admitted, the tutors will often have to do the work of schoolmasters,

and the professors can never know how high or how low they should aim in

their public lectures. Besides this, it is almost inevitable, if the

Universities surrender the right of a matriculation-examination, that

they should lower, not only their own standard, but likewise the

standard of public schools. Some Universities, on the contrary, like

over-anxious mothers, have multiplied examinations so as to make quite

sure, at the end of each term or each year that the pupils confided to

them have done at least some work. This kind of forced labour may do

some good to the incorrigibly idle, but it does the greatest harm to all

the rest. If there is an examination at the end of each year, there can

be no freedom left for any independent work. Both teachers and taught

will be guided by the same pole-star--examinations; no deviation from

the beaten track will be considered safe, and all the pleasure derived

from work done for its own sake, and all the just pride and joy, which

those only know who have ever ventured out by themselves on the open sea

of knowledge, must be lost.

We must not allow ourselves to be deceived by the brilliant show of

examination papers.

It is certainly marvellous what an amount of knowledge candidates will

produce before their examiners; but those who have been both examined

and examiners know best how fleeting that knowledge is, and how

different from that other knowledge which has been acquired slowly and

quietly, for its own sake, for our own sake, without a thought as to

whether it would ever pay at examinations or not. A candidate, after

giving most glibly the dates and the titles of the principal works of

Cobbett, Gibbon, Burke, Adam Smith, and David Hume, was asked whether he

had ever seen any of their writings, and he had to answer, No. Another,

who was asked which of the works of Pheidias he had seen, replied that

he had only read the first two books. That is the kind of dishonest

knowledge which is fostered by too frequent examinations. There are two

kinds of knowledge, the one that enters into our very blood, the other

which we carry about in our pockets. Those who read for examinations

have generally their pockets cram full; those who work on quietly and

have their whole heart in their work are often discouraged at the small

amount of their knowledge, at the little life-blood they have made. But

what they have learnt has really become their own, has invigorated their

whole frame, and in the end they have often proved the strongest and

happiest men in the battle of life.

Omniscience is at present the bane of all our knowledge. From the day he

leaves school and enters the University a man ought to make up his mind

that in many things he must remain either altogether ignorant, or be

satisfied with knowledge at second-hand. Thus only can he clear the deck

for action. And the sooner he finds out what his own work is to be, the

more useful and delightful will be his life at University and later.

There are few men who have a passion for all knowledge, there is hardly

one who has not a hobby of his own. Those so-called hobbies ought to be

utilized, and not, as they are now, discouraged, if we wish our

Universities to produce more men like Faraday, Carlyle, Grote, or

Darwin. I do not say that in an examination for a University degree a

minimum of what is now called general culture should not be insisted on;

but in addition to that, far more freedom ought to be given to the

examiner to let each candidate produce his own individual work. This is

done to a far greater extent in Continental than in English

Universities, and the examinations are therefore mostly confided to the

members of the _Senatus Academicus_, consisting of the most experienced

teachers, and the most eminent representatives of the different branches

of knowledge in the University. Their object is not to find out how many

marks each candidate may gain by answering a larger or smaller number of

questions, and then to place them in order before the world like so many

organ pipes. They want to find out whether a man, by the work he has

done during his three or four years at University, has acquired that

vigour of thought, that maturity of judgment, and that special

knowledge, which fairly entitle him to an academic status, to a degree,

with or without special honours. Such a degree confers no material

advantages;[19] it does not entitle its holder to any employment in

Church or State; it does not vouch even for his being a fit person to be

made an Archbishop or Prime Minister. All this is left to the later

struggle for life; and in that struggle it seems as if those who, after

having surveyed the vast field of human knowledge, have settled on a few

acres of their own and cultivated them as they were never cultivated

before, who have worked hard and have tasted the true joy and happiness

of hard work, who have gladly listened to others, but always depended on

themselves, were, after all, the men whom great nations delighted to

follow as their royal leaders in their onward march towards greater

enlightenment, greater happiness, and greater freedom.

To sum up. No one can read Mill's Essay "On Liberty" at the present

moment without feeling that even during the short period of the last

twenty years the cause which he advocated so strongly and passionately,

the cause of individual freedom, has made rapid progress, aye, has

carried the day. In no country _may_ a man be so entirely himself, so

true to himself and yet loyal to society, as in England.

But, although the enemy whose encroachments Mill feared most and

resented most has been driven back and forced to keep within his own

bounds,--though such names as Dissent and Nonconformity, which were

formerly used in society as fatal darts, seem to have lost all the

poison which they once contained,--Mill's principal fears have

nevertheless not been belied, and the blight of uniformity which he saw

approaching with its attendant evils of feebleness, indifference, and

sequacity, has been spreading more widely than ever in his days.

It has even been maintained that the very freedom which every individual

now enjoys has been detrimental to the growth of individuality; that you

must have an Inquisition if you want to see martyrs; that you must have

despotism and tyranny to call forth heroes. The very measures which Mill

and his friends advocated so warmly, compulsory education and

competitive examinations, are pointed out as having chiefly contributed

to produce that large array of pass-men, that dead level of

uninteresting excellence, which is the _beau ideal_ of a Chinese

Mandarin, while it frightened and disheartened such men as Humboldt,

Tocqueville, and John Stuart Mill.

There may be some truth in all this, but it is certainly not the whole

truth. Education, as it has to be carried on, whether in elementary or

in public schools, is no doubt a heavy weight which might well press

down the most independent spirit; it is, in fact, neither more nor less

than placing, in a systematized form, on the shoulders of every

generation the ever-increasing mass of knowledge, experience, custom,

and tradition that has been accumulated by former generations. We need

not wonder, therefore, if in some schools all spring, all vigour, all

joyousness of work is crushed out under that load of names and dates, of

anomalous verbs and syntactic rules, of mathematical formulas and

geometrical axioms, which boys are expected to bring up for competitive

examinations.

But a remedy has been provided, and we are ourselves to blame if we do

not avail ourselves of it to the fullest extent. Europe erected its

Universities, and called them the homes of the Liberal Arts, and

determined that between the slavery of the school and the routine of

practical life every man should have at least three years of freedom.

What Socrates and his great pupil Plato had done for the youth of

Greece,[20] these new academies were to do for the youth of Italy,

France, England, Spain, and Germany; and, though with varying success,

they have done it. The mediaeval and modern Universities have been from

century to century the homes of free thought. Here the most eminent men

have spent their lives, not merely in retailing traditional knowledge,

as at school, but in extending the frontiers of science in all

directions. Here, in close intercourse with their teachers, or under

their immediate guidance, generation after generation of boys, fresh

from school, have grown up into men during the three years of their

academic life. Here, for the first time, each man has been encouraged to

dare to be himself, to follow his own tastes, to depend on his own

judgment, to try the wings of his mind, and, lo, like young eagles

thrown out of their nest, they could fly. Here the old knowledge

accumulated at school was tested, and new knowledge acquired straight

from the fountain-head. Here knowledge ceased to be a mere burden, and

became a power invigorating the whole mind, like snow which during

winter lies cold and heavy on the meadows, but when it is touched by the

sun of spring melts away, and fructifies the ground for a rich harvest.

That was the original purpose of the Universities; and the more they

continue to fulfil that purpose the more will they secure to us that

real freedom from tradition, from custom, from mere opinion and

superstition, which can be gained by independent study only; the more

will they foster that "human development in its richest diversity" which

Mill, like Humboldt, considered as the highest object of all society.

Such academic teaching need not be confined to the old Universities.

There is many a great University that sprang from smaller beginnings

than your Midland Institute. Nor is it necessary, in order to secure the

real benefits of academic teaching, to have all the paraphernalia of a

University, its colleges and fellowships, its caps and gowns. What is

really wanted are men who have done good work in their life, and who are

willing to teach others how to work for themselves, how to think for

themselves, how to judge for themselves. That is the true academic stage

in every man's life, when he learns to work, not to please others, be

they schoolmasters or examiners, but to please himself, when he works

from sheer love of work, and for the highest of all purposes, the

conquest of truth. Those only who have passed through that stage know

the real blessings of work. To the world at large they may seem mere

drudges--but the world does not know the triumphant joy with which the

true mountaineer, high above clouds and mountain walls that once seemed

unsurpassable, drinks in the fresh air of the High Alps, and away from

the fumes, the dust, and the noises of the city, revels alone, in

freedom of thought, in freedom of feeling, and in the freedom of the

highest faith.