came into being. Originally it had but one Faculty, that of Arts. Its
aim was to be a centre of knowledge and culture; not to be, in any
sense, a technical school.
The scholars seem to have studied Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric;
Arithmetic and Geometry; Astronomy; Theology; and Music. Thus, their
work, however imperfect and faulty, judged by modern lights, it may
have been, brought them face to face with all the leading aspects of
the many-sided mind of man. For these studies did really contain, at
any rate in embryo—sometimes, it may be, in caricature—what we now call
Philosophy, Mathematical and Physical Science, and Art. And I doubt if
the curriculum of any modern University shows so clear and generous
a comprehension of what is meant by culture, as this old Trivium and
Quadrivium does.
The students who had passed through the University course, and had
proved themselves competent to teach, became masters and teachers of
their younger brethren. Whence the distinction of Masters and Regents
on the one hand, and Scholars on the other.
Rapid growth necessitated organisation. The Masters and Scholars of
various tongues and countries grouped themselves into four Nations; and
the Nations, by their own votes at first, and subsequently by those
of their Procurators, or representatives, elected their supreme head
and governor, the Rector—at that time the sole representative of the
University, and a very real power, who could defy Provosts interfering
from without; or could inflict even corporal punishment on disobedient
members within the University.
Such was the primitive constitution of the University of Paris. It is
in reference to this original state of things that I have spoken of the
Rectorate, and all that appertains to it, as the sole relic of that
constitution.
But this original organisation did not last long. Society was not
then, any more than it is now, patient of culture, as such. It says to
everything, “Be useful to me, or away with you.” And to the learned,
the unlearned man said then, as he does now, “What is the use of all
your learning, unless you can tell me what I want to know? I am here
blindly groping about, and constantly damaging myself by collision
with three mighty powers, the power of the invisible God, the power
of my fellow Man, and the power of brute Nature. Let your learning
be turned to the study of these powers, that I may know how I am to
comport myself with regard to them.” In answer to this demand, some
of the Masters of the Faculty of Arts devoted themselves to the study
of Theology, some to that of Law, and some to that of Medicine; and
they became Doctors—men learned in those technical, or, as we now call
them, professional, branches of knowledge. Like cleaving to like, the
Doctors formed schools, or Faculties, of Theology, Law, and Medicine,
which sometimes assumed airs of superiority over their parent, the
Faculty of Arts, though the latter always asserted and maintained its
fundamental supremacy.
The Faculties arose by process of natural differentiation out of the
primitive University. Other constituents, foreign to its nature,
were speedily grafted upon it. One of these extraneous elements was
forced into it by the Roman Church, which in those days asserted with
effect, that which it now asserts, happily without any effect in these
realms, its right of censorship and control over all teaching. The
local habitation of the University lay partly in the lands attached to
the monastery of S. Geneviève, partly in the diocese of the Bishop of
Paris; and he who would teach must have the licence of the Abbot, or of
the Bishop, as the nearest representative of the Pope, so to do, which
licence was granted by the Chancellors of these Ecclesiastics.
Thus, if I am what archæologists call a “survival” of the primitive
head and ruler of the University, your Chancellor stands in the same
relation to the Papacy; and, with all respect for his Grace, I think
I may say that we both look terribly shrunken when compared with our
great originals.
Not so is it with a second foreign element, which silently dropped
into the soil of Universities, like the grain of mustard-seed in the
parable; and, like that grain, grew into a tree, in whose branches
a whole aviary of fowls took shelter. That element is the element
of Endowment. It differed from the preceding, in its original design
to serve as a prop to the young plant, not to be a parasite upon it.
The charitable and the humane, blessed with wealth, were very early
penetrated by the misery of the poor student. And the wise saw that
intellectual ability is not so common or so unimportant a gift that it
should be allowed to run to waste upon mere handicrafts and chares.
The man who was a blessing to his contemporaries, but who so often has
been converted into a curse, by the blind adherence of his posterity
to the letter, rather than to the spirit, of his wishes—I mean the
“pious founder”—gave money and lands, that the student, who was rich in
brain and poor in all else, might be taken from the plough or from the
stithy, and enabled to devote himself to the higher service of mankind;
and built colleges and halls in which he might be not only housed and
fed, but taught.
The Colleges were very generally placed in strict subordination to the
University by their founders; but, in many cases, their endowment,
consisting of land, has undergone an “unearned increment,” which has
given these societies a continually increasing weight and importance
as against the unendowed, or fixedly endowed, University. In Pharaoh’s
dream, the seven lean kine eat up the seven fat ones. In the reality of
historical fact, the fat Colleges have eaten up the lean Universities.
Even here in Aberdeen, though the causes at work may have been
somewhat different, the effects have been similar; and you see how
much more substantial an entity is the Very Reverend the Principal,
analogue, if not homologue, of the Principals of King’s College, than
the Rector, lineal representative of the ancient monarchs of the
University, though now, little more than a “king of shreds and patches.”
Do not suppose that, in thus briefly tracing the process of University
metamorphosis, I have had any intention of quarrelling with its
results. Practically, it seems to me that the broad changes effected in
1858 have given the Scottish Universities a very liberal constitution,
with as much real approximation to the primitive state of things as
is at all desirable. If your fat kine have eaten the lean, they have
not lain down to chew the cud ever since. The Scottish Universities,
like the English, have diverged widely enough from their primitive
model; but I cannot help thinking that the northern form has remained
more faithful to its original, not only in constitution, but, what is
more to the purpose, in view of the cry for change, in the practical
application of the endowments connected with it.
In Aberdeen, these endowments are numerous, but so small that, taken
altogether, they are not equal to the revenue of a single third-rate
English college. They are scholarships, not fellowships; aids to
do work—not rewards for such work as it lies within the reach of
an ordinary, or even an extraordinary, young man to do. You do not
think that passing a respectable examination is a fair equivalent
for an income, such as many a gray-headed veteran, or clergyman,
would envy; and which is larger than the endowment of many Regius
chairs. You do not care to make your University a school of manners
for the rich; of sports for the athletic; or a hot-bed of high-fed,
hypercritical refinement, more destructive to vigour and originality
than are starvation and oppression. No; your little Bursaries of ten
and twenty (I believe even fifty) pounds a year, enable any boy who
has shown ability in the course of his education in those remarkable
primary schools, which have made Scotland the power she is, to obtain
the highest culture the country can give him; and when he is armed and
equipped, his Spartan Alma Mater tells him that, so far, he has had his
wages for his work, and that he may go and earn the rest.
When I think of the host of pleasant, monied, well-bred young
gentlemen, who do a little learning and much boating by Cam and Isis,
the vision is a pleasant one; and, as a patriot, I rejoice that the
youth of the upper and richer classes of the nation receive a wholesome
and a manly training, however small may be the modicum of knowledge
they gather, in the intervals of this, their serious business. I admit,
to the full, the social and political value of that training. But, when
I proceed to consider that these young men may be said to represent
the great bulk of what the Colleges have to show for their enormous
wealth, plus, at least, a hundred and fifty pounds a year apiece which
each undergraduate costs his parents or guardians, I feel inclined
to ask, whether the rate-in-aid of the education of the wealthy and
professional classes, thus levied on the resources of the community,
is not, after all, a little heavy? And, still further, I am tempted
to inquire what has become of the indigent scholars, the sons of the
masses of the people whose daily labour just suffices to meet their
daily wants, for whose benefit these rich foundations were largely,
if not mainly, instituted? It seems as if Pharaoh’s dream had been
rigorously carried out, and that even the fat scholar has eaten the
lean one. And when I turn from this picture to the no less real vision
of many a brave and frugal Scotch boy, spending his summer in hard
manual labour, that he may have the privilege of wending his way in
autumn to this University, with a bag of oatmeal, ten pounds in his
pocket, and his own stout heart to depend upon through the northern
winter; not bent on seeking
“The bubble reputation at the cannon’s mouth,”
but determined to wring knowledge from the hard hands of penury; when
I see him win through all such outward obstacles to positions of wide
usefulness and well-earned fame; I cannot but think that, in essence,
Aberdeen has departed but little from the primitive intention of the
founders of Universities, and that the spirit of reform has so much to
do on the other side of the Border, that it may be long before he has
leisure to look this way.
As compared with other actual Universities, then, Aberdeen, may,
perhaps, be well satisfied with itself. But do not think me an
impracticable dreamer, if I ask you not to rest and be thankful in
this state of satisfaction; if I ask you to consider awhile, how this
actual good stands related to that ideal better, towards which both men
and institutions must progress, if they would not retrograde.
In an ideal University, as I conceive it, a man should be able to
obtain instruction in all forms of knowledge, and discipline in the
use of all the methods by which knowledge is obtained. In such an
University, the force of living example should fire the student with a
noble ambition to emulate the learning of learned men, and to follow
in the footsteps of the explorers of new fields of knowledge. And the
very air he breathes should be charged with that enthusiasm for truth,
that fanaticism of veracity, which is a greater possession than much
learning; a nobler gift than the power of increasing knowledge; by
so much greater and nobler than these, as the moral nature of man is
greater than the intellectual; for veracity is the heart of morality.
But the man who is all morality and intellect, although he may be good
and even great, is, after all, only half a man. There is beauty in the
moral world and in the intellectual world; but there is also a beauty
which is neither moral nor intellectual—the beauty of the world of Art.
There are men who are devoid of the power of seeing it, as there are
men who are born deaf and blind, and the loss of those, as of these,
is simply infinite. There are others in whom it is an overpowering
passion; happy men, born with the productive, or at lowest, the
appreciative, genius of the Artist. But, in the mass of mankind,
the Æsthetic faculty, like the reasoning power and the moral sense,
needs to be roused, directed, and cultivated; and I know not why the
development of that side of his nature, through which man has access to
a perennial spring of ennobling pleasure, should be omitted from any
comprehensive scheme of University education.
All Universities recognise Literature in the sense of the old Rhetoric,
which is art incarnate in words. Some, to their credit, recognise Art
in its narrower sense, to a certain extent, and confer degrees for
proficiency in some of its branches. If there are Doctors of Music, why
should there be no Masters of Painting, of Sculpture, of Architecture?
I should like to see Professors of the Fine Arts in every University;
and instruction in some branch of their work made a part of the Arts
curriculum.
I just now expressed the opinion that, in our ideal University, a man
should be able to obtain instruction in all forms of knowledge. Now, by
“forms of knowledge” I mean the great classes of things knowable; of
which the first, in logical, though not in natural, order is knowledge
relating to the scope and limits of the mental faculties of man; a form
of knowledge which, in its positive aspect, answers pretty much to
Logic and part of Psychology, while, on its negative and critical side,
it corresponds with Metaphysics.
A second class comprehends all that knowledge which relates to
man’s welfare, so far as it is determined by his own acts, or what
we call his conduct. It answers to Moral and Religious philosophy.
Practically, it is the most directly valuable of all forms of
knowledge, but speculatively, it is limited and criticised by that
which precedes and by that which follows it in my order of enumeration.
A third class embraces knowledge of the phenomena of the Universe, as
that which lies about the individual man: and of the rules which those
phenomena are observed to follow in the order of their occurrence,
which we term the laws of Nature.
This is what ought to be called Natural Science, or Physiology, though
those terms are hopelessly diverted from such a meaning; and it
includes all exact knowledge of natural fact, whether Mathematical,
Physical, Biological, or Social.
Kant has said that the ultimate object of all knowledge is to give
replies to these three questions: What can I do? What ought I to do?
What may I hope for? The forms of knowledge which I have enumerated,
should furnish such replies as are within human reach, to the first
and second of these questions. While to the third, perhaps the wisest
answer is, “Do what you can to do what you ought, and leave hoping and
fearing alone.”
If this be a just and an exhaustive classification of the forms of
knowledge, no question as to their relative importance, or as to the
superiority of one to the other, can be seriously raised.
On the face of the matter, it is absurd to ask whether it is more
important to know the limits of one’s powers; or the ends for which
they ought to be exerted; or the conditions under which they must be
exerted. One may as well inquire which of the terms of a Rule of Three
sum one ought to know, in order to get a trustworthy result. Practical
life is such a sum, in which your duty multiplied into your capacity,
and divided by your circumstances, gives you the fourth term in the
proportion, which is your deserts, with great accuracy. All agree, I
take it, that men ought to have these three kinds of knowledge. The
so-called “conflict of studies” turns upon the question of how they may
best be obtained.
The founders of Universities held the theory that the Scriptures and
Aristotle taken together, the latter being limited by the former,
contained all knowledge worth having, and that the business of
philosophy was to interpret and co-ordinate these two. I imagine
that in the twelfth century this was a very fair conclusion from
known facts. Nowhere in the world, in those days, was there such an
encyclopædia of knowledge of all three classes, as is to be found in
those writings. The scholastic philosophy is a wonderful monument of
the patience and ingenuity with which the human mind toiled to build up
a logically consistent theory of the Universe, out of such materials.
And that philosophy is by no means dead and buried, as many vainly
suppose. On the contrary, numbers of men of no mean learning and
accomplishment, and sometimes of rare power and subtlety of thought,
hold by it as the best theory of things which has yet been stated. And,
what is still more remarkable, men who speak the language of modern
philosophy, nevertheless think the thoughts of the schoolmen. “The
voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau.”
Every day I hear “Cause,” “Law,” “Force,” “Vitality,” spoken of as
entities, by people who can enjoy Swift’s joke about the meat-roasting
quality of the smoke-jack, and comfort themselves with the reflection
that they are not even as those benighted schoolmen.
Well, this great system had its day, and then it was sapped and mined
by two influences. The first was the study of classical literature,
which familiarised men with methods of philosophising; with conceptions
of the highest Good; with ideas of the order of Nature; with notions of
Literary and Historical Criticism; and, above all, with visions of Art,
of a kind which not only would not fit into the scholastic scheme, but
showed them a pre-Christian, and indeed altogether un-Christian world,
of such grandeur and beauty that they ceased to think of any other.
They were as men who had kissed the Fairy Queen, and wandering with her
in the dim loveliness of the underworld, cared not to return to the
familiar ways of home and fatherland, though they lay, at arm’s length,
overhead. Cardinals were more familiar with Virgil than with Isaiah;
and Popes laboured, with great success, to re-paganise Rome.
The second influence was the slow, but sure, growth of the physical
sciences. It was discovered that some results of speculative thought,
of immense practical and theoretical importance, can be verified by
observation; and are always true, however severely they may be tested.
Here, at any rate, was knowledge, to the certainty of which no
authority could add, or take away, one jot or tittle, and to which the
tradition of a thousand years was as insignificant as the hearsay of
yesterday. To the scholastic system, the study of classical literature
might be inconvenient and distracting, but it was possible to hope that
it could be kept within bounds. Physical science, on the other hand,
was an irreconcilable enemy, to be excluded at all hazards. The College
of Cardinals has not distinguished itself in Physics or Physiology; and
no Pope has, as yet, set up public laboratories in the Vatican.
People do not always formulate the beliefs on which they act. The
instinct of fear and dislike is quicker than the reasoning process;
and I suspect that, taken in conjunction with some other causes, such
instinctive aversion is at the bottom of the long exclusion of any
serious discipline in the physical sciences from the general curriculum
of Universities; while, on the other hand, classical literature has
been gradually made the backbone of the Arts course.
I am ashamed to repeat here what I have said elsewhere, in season
and out of season, respecting the value of Science as knowledge and
discipline. But the other day I met with some passages in the Address
to another Scottish University, of a great thinker, recently lost to
us, which express so fully, and yet so tersely, the truth in this
matter, that I am fain to quote them:—
“To question all things;—never to turn away from any difficulty;
to accept no doctrine either from ourselves or from other people
without a rigid scrutiny by negative criticism; letting no fallacy,
or incoherence, or confusion of thought step by unperceived; above
all, to insist upon having the meaning of a word clearly understood
before using it, and the meaning of a proposition before assenting
to it;—these are the lessons we learn” from workers in Science.
“With all this vigorous management of the negative element, they
inspire no scepticism about the reality of truth or indifference to
its pursuit. The noblest enthusiasm, both for the search after truth
and for applying it to its highest uses, pervades those writers.”
“In cultivating, therefore,” science as an essential ingredient in
education, “we are all the while laying an admirable foundation for
ethical and philosophical culture.”[5]
The passages I have quoted were uttered by John Stuart Mill; but you
cannot hear inverted commas, and it is therefore right that I should
add, without delay, that I have taken the liberty of substituting
“workers in science” for “ancient dialecticians,” and “Science as an
essential ingredient in education” for “the ancient languages as our
best literary education.” Mill did, in fact, deliver a noble panegyric
upon classical studies. I do not doubt its justice, nor presume to
question its wisdom. But I venture to maintain that no wise or just
judge, who has a knowledge of the facts, will hesitate to say that it
applies with equal force to scientific training.
But it is only fair to the Scottish Universities to point out that
they have long understood the value of Science as a branch of general
education. I observe, with the greatest satisfaction, that candidates
for the degree of Master of Arts in this University are required to
have a knowledge, not only of Mental and Moral Philosophy, and of
Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, but of Natural History, in addition
to the ordinary Latin and Greek course; and that a candidate may take
honours in these subjects and in Chemistry.
I do not know what the requirements of your examiners may be, but I
sincerely trust they are not satisfied with a mere book knowledge of
these matters. For my own part, I would not raise a finger, if I could
thereby introduce mere book work in science into every Arts curriculum
in the country. Let those who want to study books devote themselves
to Literature, in which we have the perfection of books, both as to
substance and as to form. If I may paraphrase Hobbes’s well-known
aphorism, I would say that “books are the money of Literature, but only
the counters of Science,” Science (in the sense in which I now use the
term) being the knowledge of fact, of which every verbal description
is but an incomplete and symbolic expression. And be assured that no
teaching of science is worth anything, as a mental discipline, which is
not based upon direct perception of the facts, and practical exercise
of the observing and logical faculties upon them. Even in such a simple
matter as the mere comprehension of form, ask the most practised and
widely informed anatomist what is the difference between his knowledge
of a structure which he has read about, and his knowledge of the same
structure when he has seen it for himself; and he will tell you that
the two things are not comparable—the difference is infinite. Thus I
am very strongly inclined to agree with some learned school-masters
who say that, in their experience, the teaching of science is all
waste time. As they teach it, I have no doubt it is. But to teach it
otherwise, requires an amount of personal labour and a development of
means and appliances, which must strike horror and dismay into a man
accustomed to mere book work; and who has been in the habit of teaching
a class of fifty without much strain upon his energies. And this is one
of the real difficulties in the way of the introduction of physical
science into the ordinary University course, to which I have alluded.
It is a difficulty which will not be overcome, until years of patient
study have organised scientific teaching as well as, or I hope better
than, classical teaching has been organised hitherto.