FOOTNOTES:

"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 Tripitaka, and the Qur'än.

But as I said before, I was not thinking of religious dogmas only, or even chiefly, when I maintained that the character of academicteaching 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,λόγος. 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 termsgenus,species, andindividualoccupy 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 ofgenusandspecies; and if a boy can trace these terms back to Aristotle'sγένοςandεἶδος, 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 asgenusandspecies. Some people write, indeed, as if they had seen aspeciesand agenuswalking 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 ofagenusor aspecies. 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 agenus, men aspecies, and Socrates anindividual.

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 withgenusandspecies, we shall find that the words which Aristotle defined—viz.,γένοςandεἶδος—had originally a very different and far more useful application than that which he gave to them.Γένος,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.Εἶδοςor 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 findgâti, generation, used in the sense ofgenus, and opposed toâkriti, appearance, used in the sense ofspecies.

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 aγένος, thegensor clan was aγένος, the nation (gnatio) was aγένος, the whole human kith and kin was aγένος; in fact, all that was descended from common ancestors was a trueγένος. There is no obscurity of thought in this.

On the other side, takingεἶδοςor species in its original sense, one man might be said to be like another in hisεἶδοςor appearance. An ape, too, might quite truly be said to have the sameεἶδοςor species or appearance as a man, without any prejudice as to their common origin. People might also speak of differentεἴδηor 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 sameγένος, such as the white man and the negro, differed in theirεἶδοςor appearance;often also that things belonging to the sameεἶδος, such as eatables, differed in theirγένος, 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 agenus, might from another be called a species, andvice versâ. Human beings, for instance, were now called aspecies, all living beings agenus, 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 aγένος, 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 anεἶδος—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,γένοςandεἶδος, you may see passing before your eyes almost the whole panorama of philosophy, from Plato's ideas down to Hegel'sIdee. The question ofgenera, their origin and subdivision, occupied chiefly the attention of natural philosophers, who, after long controversies about the origin and classification ofgeneraandspecies, 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 butgenera, or generations, to be traced back to a limited number of ancestors, and that the so-calledspeciesare onlygenera, whose genealogical descent isas yetmore or less obscure.

But the question as to the nature of theεἶδοςbecame 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 whatεἶδοςor species or form was, and where these things were kept, changed those words from predicates into subjects.Εἶδοςwas conceived as something independent and substantial, something within or above the individuals participating in it, something unchangeable and eternal. Soon there arose as manyεἴδηor 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 oppositeopinions that ideas have no independent existence, and that the one is nowhere found except in the many (τὸ ἕν παρὰ τὰ πολλά), 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 thatanimal,man, orwomanwere 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, calledNominalists, in opposition to theRealists, declared that all general terms werenames 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; ormore 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 Müller, 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 theTimes, in very imperfect English, were in favour of examinations. They were signedLa Carrière 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 knowsnot, he can hardly ever find out all he knows; and even if he succeeds in finding outhow mucha candidate knows, he can never find outhowhe 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, particularlyvivâ 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 extortmoney 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 pocketscram 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 theSenatus 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 lasttwenty 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 countrymaya 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 thebeau idéalof 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 mediæval 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 retailingtraditional 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.

F. Max Müller.

FOOTNOTES:[1]An Address delivered on the 20th October, before the Birmingham and Midland Institute.[2]Mill tells us that his Essay "On Liberty" was planned and written down in 1854. It was in mounting the steps of the Capitol in January, 1855, that the thought first arose of converting it into a volume, and it was not published till 1859. The author, who in his Autobiography speaks with exquisite modesty of all his literary performances, allows himself one single exception when speaking of his Essay "On Liberty." "None of my writings," he says, "have been either so carefully composed or so sedulously corrected as this." Its final revision was to have been the work of the winter of 1858 to 1859 which he and his wife had arranged to pass in the South of Europe, a hope which was frustrated by his wife's death. "The 'Liberty,'" he writes, "is likely to survive longer than anything else that I have written (with the possible exception of the 'Logic'), because the conjunction of her mind with mine has rendered it a kind of philosophic textbook of a single truth, which the changes progressively taking place in modern society tend to bring out into stronger relief: the importance, to man and society, of a large variety of character, and of giving full freedom to human nature to expand itself in innumerable and conflicting directions."[3]Herzen defined Nihilism as "the most perfect freedom from all settled concepts, from all inherited restraints and impediments which hamper the progress of the Occidental intellect with the historical drag tied to its foot."[4]Ueber die Akademische Freiheit der Deutschen Universitäten, Rede beim Antritt des Rectorats an der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin, am 15 October 1877, gehalten von Dr. H. Helmholtz.[5]Ueber eine Akademie der Deutschen Sprache, p. 34. Another keen observer of English life, Dr. K. Hillebrand, in an article in the October number of theNineteenth Century, remarks: "Nowhere is there greater individual liberty than in England, and nowhere do people renounce it more readily of their own accord."[6]Spencer Hardy, "Manual of Buddhism," p. 391.[7]Ibid., p. 39.[8]"As one generation dies and gives way to another, the heir of the consequences of all its virtues and all its vices, the exact result of pre-existent causes, so each individual, in the long chain of life, inherits all, of good or evil, which all its predecessors have done or been; and takes up the struggle towards enlightenment precisely there where they left it."—Rhys Davids,Buddhism, p. 104.[9]Bunsen, "Egypt," ii., pp. 77, 150.[10]Mémoire sur l'Origine Egyptienne de l'Alphabet Phénicien, par E. de Rougé, Paris, 1874.[11]See Brandis, "Das Münzwesen."[12]"Is it not almost a self-evident axiom, that the State should require and compel the education, up to a certain standard, of every human being who is born its citizen? Yet who is there that is not afraid to recognize and assert this truth?"—On Liberty, p. 188.[13]Times, January 25, 1879.[14]"Sacred Books of the East," edited by M. M., vols. i., ii., iii.; Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1879.[15]"Computation or Logic," t. iii., viii., p. 36.[16]Lectures on Mr. Darwin's "Philosophy of Language,"Fraser's Magazine, June, 1873, p. 26.[17]Prantl, "Geschichte der Logik," vol. i. p. 121.[18]L. Noiré, "Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch," p. 157; "Todtes Wissen."[19]Mill, "On Liberty," p. 193.[20]Zeller, "Ueber den wissenschaftlichen Unterricht bei den Griechen," 1878, p. 9.

[1]An Address delivered on the 20th October, before the Birmingham and Midland Institute.

[2]Mill tells us that his Essay "On Liberty" was planned and written down in 1854. It was in mounting the steps of the Capitol in January, 1855, that the thought first arose of converting it into a volume, and it was not published till 1859. The author, who in his Autobiography speaks with exquisite modesty of all his literary performances, allows himself one single exception when speaking of his Essay "On Liberty." "None of my writings," he says, "have been either so carefully composed or so sedulously corrected as this." Its final revision was to have been the work of the winter of 1858 to 1859 which he and his wife had arranged to pass in the South of Europe, a hope which was frustrated by his wife's death. "The 'Liberty,'" he writes, "is likely to survive longer than anything else that I have written (with the possible exception of the 'Logic'), because the conjunction of her mind with mine has rendered it a kind of philosophic textbook of a single truth, which the changes progressively taking place in modern society tend to bring out into stronger relief: the importance, to man and society, of a large variety of character, and of giving full freedom to human nature to expand itself in innumerable and conflicting directions."

[3]Herzen defined Nihilism as "the most perfect freedom from all settled concepts, from all inherited restraints and impediments which hamper the progress of the Occidental intellect with the historical drag tied to its foot."

[4]Ueber die Akademische Freiheit der Deutschen Universitäten, Rede beim Antritt des Rectorats an der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin, am 15 October 1877, gehalten von Dr. H. Helmholtz.

[5]Ueber eine Akademie der Deutschen Sprache, p. 34. Another keen observer of English life, Dr. K. Hillebrand, in an article in the October number of theNineteenth Century, remarks: "Nowhere is there greater individual liberty than in England, and nowhere do people renounce it more readily of their own accord."

[6]Spencer Hardy, "Manual of Buddhism," p. 391.

[7]Ibid., p. 39.

[8]"As one generation dies and gives way to another, the heir of the consequences of all its virtues and all its vices, the exact result of pre-existent causes, so each individual, in the long chain of life, inherits all, of good or evil, which all its predecessors have done or been; and takes up the struggle towards enlightenment precisely there where they left it."—Rhys Davids,Buddhism, p. 104.

[9]Bunsen, "Egypt," ii., pp. 77, 150.

[10]Mémoire sur l'Origine Egyptienne de l'Alphabet Phénicien, par E. de Rougé, Paris, 1874.

[11]See Brandis, "Das Münzwesen."

[12]"Is it not almost a self-evident axiom, that the State should require and compel the education, up to a certain standard, of every human being who is born its citizen? Yet who is there that is not afraid to recognize and assert this truth?"—On Liberty, p. 188.

[13]Times, January 25, 1879.

[14]"Sacred Books of the East," edited by M. M., vols. i., ii., iii.; Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1879.

[15]"Computation or Logic," t. iii., viii., p. 36.

[16]Lectures on Mr. Darwin's "Philosophy of Language,"Fraser's Magazine, June, 1873, p. 26.

[17]Prantl, "Geschichte der Logik," vol. i. p. 121.

[18]L. Noiré, "Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch," p. 157; "Todtes Wissen."

[19]Mill, "On Liberty," p. 193.

[20]Zeller, "Ueber den wissenschaftlichen Unterricht bei den Griechen," 1878, p. 9.

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