f 
 ^ 
 
 ,y 
 
 i OP 
 
 A
 
 WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 SAMOS AND SAMIAN COINS, 1882. 7&. 6d. MACMILLAN 
 & Co. 
 
 THE TYPES OF GREEK COINS, 1883. 31s, 6d. CAM- 
 BRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
 NUMISMATIC COMMENTARY ON PAUSANIAS (with 
 Dr IMHOOF-BLUMER), 1887. 15s. B. QUARITCH. 
 
 NEW CHAPTERS IN GREEK HISTORY, 1892. 15s. 
 J. MURRAY. 
 
 CATALOGUE OF GREEK VASES IN THE ASH- 
 MOLEAN MUSEUM, 1893. 63s. OXFORD UNI- 
 VERSITY PRESS. 
 
 A MANUAL OF GREEK ANTIQUITIES (with Dr F. B. 
 JEVONS). Second Edition, 1898. 16s. GRIFFIN & Co. 
 
 SCULPTURED TOMBS OF HELLAS, 1896. 25s. MAC- 
 MILLAN & Co. 
 
 CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY IN SCHOOLS (with Mr J. 
 L. MYRES), 1902. Is. OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
 FAITH AND CONDUCT, 1887. 7s. 6d. MACMILLAN & Co. 
 EXPLORATIO EV ANGELICA, 1899. 15s. A. & C. BLACK. 
 
 A HISTORIC VIEW OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 
 (JovvETT LECTURES for 1901). 6s. A. & C. BLACK.
 
 OXFORD AT THE CROSS 
 ROADS
 
 OXFORD AT THE CROSS 
 ROADS 
 
 z4 Criticism of the Course of Littera Humaniores 
 in the University 
 
 BY 
 
 PERCY GARDNER, M.A., LlTT.D. 
 
 LINCOLN AND MERTON PROFESSOR OF CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, OXFORD ; 
 
 HONORARY FELLOW OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE ; 
 CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, GOTT1NGEN 
 
 "You will not find your highest capacity in statesmanship, 
 nor in practical science, nor in art, nor in any other field where 
 that capacity is most urgently needed for the right service of 
 life, unless there is a general and vehement spirit of search in 
 the air." 
 
 JOHN MORLEY. 
 
 LONDON 
 ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK 
 
 1903
 
 PREFACE 
 
 WHEN a man is about to introduce to his family circle 
 a friend found abroad, he can scarcely fail to look at 
 his own circle in the fresh light shed by sympathy 
 with the new friend's point of view ; and he may well 
 discern defects which had before escaped his notice. 
 Perhaps the expected arrival of Ehodes' students may 
 thus affect some teachers at Oxford. But apart from 
 the Ehodes students, there are quite sufficient reasons 
 why we should occasionally examine our ways; and 
 these reasons especially apply to a place where the 
 forces of conservatism, and the power of inertia, are so 
 strong as they are at Oxford. 
 
 The changes which have taken place abroad in 
 university studies in the last quarter of a century are 
 enormous. As is shown below, France and America 
 have entirely changed their programmes. And at 
 home we have a rising University of London, at present 
 in nebular shape ; a new University of Birmingham ; 
 there is the Welsh University ; and apparently the 
 Victoria University is about to divide itself. In all 
 these the talk is of new schemes of work and fresh 
 developments. Within the last few years Cambridge 
 has recast her whole course of Classical study. All
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 this is, of course, no direct reason for changes at 
 Oxford ; but it is a perfectly valid reason for making 
 careful enquiry to see whether changes are needed 
 there. 
 
 There are reasons which make such an enquiry on 
 my part no mere enterprise, but a matter of immediate 
 and unavoidable duty. Since I was called from the 
 British Museum, fifteen years ago, to take charge of the 
 teaching of Classical Archaeology at Oxford, I have made 
 continual efforts to secure to that branch of Humanist 
 study a proper recognition by the University. Under 
 present conditions these efforts have necessarily been 
 in the direction of securing it a reasonable place in 
 the course of Litterae Humaniores. Thrice, in 1890, 
 1898, and 1900, has a committee of senior members 
 of the Board of litterse Humaniores reported in 
 favour of giving Classical Archaeology a place in 
 the final examination. Thrice has a majority of 
 the Board, consisting largely of its younger members, 
 rejected the report of the committee and vetoed all 
 change. 
 
 Personally at Oxford I have met nothing but friend- 
 ship ; and the University has responded in a liberal 
 spirit to my requests for money, so that at present all 
 apparatus for study is at hand. Only in one direction 
 is there set up an impassable barrier, prohibiting 
 students from taking up one of the greatest and most 
 important branches of humanistic study ; or making 
 them, if they do take it up, confine their attention to 
 it within unreasonable limits. 
 
 Now I am sure that the action of the Board does not 
 proceed from dislike or mistrust of the teachers of
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 archaeology in Oxford. Nor does it proceed from 
 dislike of the subject. The great majority of the 
 undergraduates who have given attention to archaeology 
 highly appreciate it: the tutors usually know very 
 little about it, but are not hostile. But they are 
 convinced that the Oxford system, being what it is, 
 leaves no room whatever for the introduction of 
 archaeology. It is an element foreign to the existing 
 course of Litteras Humaniores, and its expansive force 
 and energy will prevent it from taking a small place 
 in that course. 
 
 The option has thus been set before me, either to 
 consent to the exclusion of Classical Archaeology, includ- 
 ing even inscriptions, from the course in Humanity 
 at Oxford, or to make a formal and elaborate appeal 
 to the intelligence and conscience of members of 
 the Board, and beyond it to all the University. After 
 long consideration, I have decided on the second 
 alternative. 
 
 I would beg Oxford readers to remember that what 
 I am criticizing is a system, a way of regarding things, 
 not individuals. I bring no charge against my col- 
 leagues, several of whom are as strongly opposed to the 
 faults of the system as I am myself. On the other 
 hand I am as fully alive as anyone to the fact that in 
 some respects Oxford has stood in the past, and stands 
 now, in a more favourable position as regards Humanist 
 studies than any other university. Only I do not think 
 that she can hold that position much longer, without 
 certain changes in her course. 
 
 In making my enquiry I shall proceed, not as an 
 advocate who has a case to support, but as one who is
 
 x PREFACE 
 
 interested in every side of Litterae Humaniores, in 
 literature, philosophy and history, as well as archaeology, 
 and as one who is thinking for the future of Oxford. 
 If it be really for the good of the University that 
 archaeology should be excluded from the Classical 
 course, the teachers of the subject can reconcile them- 
 selves to such exclusion. But it may be that this 
 exclusion is a sign, not of health, but of disease, 
 and if so, it is of the greatest importance to seek 
 out some remedy alike for the symptom and for the 
 malady. 
 
 It will, however, be found by those who read 
 further in this book that our enquiry will lead us 
 far and deep. We shall have to consider what are 
 the true claims of humanistic education, even what is 
 the most worthy ideal of education in our universities. 
 Such questions have not been much discussed at 
 Oxford in late years ; we have had a time of quies- 
 cence, but surely now, when the pulse of the nation 
 has been quickened, and it is beginning consciously to 
 move in a larger orbit, surely now is a time for looking 
 backwards and forwards. 
 
 I wish to thank my friend Mr Warde Fowler and 
 my sister Miss Alice Gardner for kind help in dealing 
 with proofs. 
 
 PERCY GARDNER. 
 
 OXFORD, January 1903.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 EDUCATIONAL IDEALS, ABROAD AND AT OXFORD ... 1 
 I. Ideas governing university education in Germany, France, 
 
 and America. 
 II. Oxford education, physical, moral, and intellectual. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CRITICISM OF THE OXFORD COURSE IN HUMANITY . . 19 
 
 I. Influence of Civil Service Examinations. 
 II. Criticism of the existing course in Litterse Humaniores. 
 
 III. The course thirty years ago and now. 
 
 IV. Exclusion of Classical Archaeology. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 RESEARCH AT OXFORD 47 
 
 I. Backwardness of Oxford as regards research. 
 II. In research the process more valuable than the results. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 DEFENCE OF THE CLASSICS 62 
 
 I. Efficiency of classical study as a basis of school education. 
 II. Is more advanced classical study suited to the wants of 
 the age !
 
 xii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 HUMAN SCIENCE 76 
 
 I. Intellectual and ethical characters of human science. 
 II. Advantages of contact with fact and reality. 
 
 III. Conservative value of human science. 
 
 IV. It tends to further practical efficiency. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 THE CLASSICS AND HUMAN SCIENCE . . . . . 105 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 SUGGESTED REFORMS 112 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 EFFICIENCY. CONCLUSION . 128
 
 OXFORD AT THE CROSS 
 ROADS 
 
 CHAPTEK I 
 
 EDUCATIONAL IDEAS, ABROAD AND AT OXFORD 
 
 To those responsible for the teaching at Oxford, the 
 new foundation of Mr Rhodes causes much anxious 
 thought. We may anticipate the arrival at Oxford of 
 nearly two hundred endowed students from America, 
 from the Colonies, from Germany ; and when we try 
 to forecast the effect their arrival will have upon the 
 University, we find abundant grounds alike for hope 
 and for anxiety. 
 
 That this new element among the students will be 
 absorbed by the body corporate without trouble is a 
 view which can only be held by those who are un- 
 aware of the vast changes which have come over the 
 universities of America and of some British Colonies 
 in the last twenty years, and who do not realize to 
 what a degree Oxford is at present out of touch with 
 university education abroad.
 
 2 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 That Mr Rhodes did not understand the situation 
 is but natural. Though he had resided at Oxford, he 
 had seen scarcely anything of the intellectual life of the 
 place. Of the great mental movements of our day he 
 had no knowledge. It is not for an Oxford man to 
 complain of his somewhat naive confidence in his old 
 university, and yet one cannot help feeling that if he 
 had loved, not less well, but more wisely, he would 
 have better succeeded in attaining the noble and ideal 
 ends which, after all, he had at heart. Under the 
 circumstances, it is most fortunate that Mr Rhodes 
 left considerable powers in the hands of his trustees ; 
 in some matters, however faithful they may be to the 
 wishes of the testator, they will be obliged to choose 
 between courting failure by carrying out his directions 
 literally, and attaining his ends by somewhat different 
 paths from those which commended themselves to him. 
 
 The interests involved are not only those of the 
 Rhodes students and those of Oxford, but also those 
 of the English-speaking race throughout the world. 
 And clearly we are justified in supposing that the 
 broadest interests last mentioned would in Mr Rhodes' 
 mind far outweigh the narrower interests of particular 
 persons. 
 
 There are probably many residents at Oxford who 
 think that Oxford's chief interest is to remain as it is 
 the most immobile of all great universities, slowly 
 affected by the great changes which have taken place, 
 and are taking place, in the educated world. Some of 
 my American friends, when they visit Oxford, say : 
 " Change nothing ; Oxford is perfectly delightful." 
 But they would not dream of introducing in their own
 
 EDUCATIONAL IDEAS, ABROAD AND AT OXFORD 3 
 
 universities the ways which make Oxford interesting 
 and picturesque ; they want to retain Oxford as a 
 charming place to visit, and to reserve for the uni- 
 versities of America the primacy in the working 
 world. Yet surely it is possible, without quite spoil- 
 ing Oxford, to make the University a more effective 
 factor than it is in the world's intellectual work. 
 
 The fact is that at present Oxford is at the 
 dividing of the ways. Of the two paths before us, one 
 tends more and more towards narrowness and stagna- 
 tion, the other towards effectiveness and energy. The 
 question is whether the University is to become more 
 and more narrow, or a great part of the working brain 
 of a mighty empire, the source in the future as in the 
 past of great movements and high purposes. Which 
 of these destinies awaits us ? In the main the decision 
 rests in our own hands. 
 
 I. 
 
 Every scheme of education must be based upon an 
 idea, not a mere theory, that is, but a practical 
 intention. It must rest upon a view as to what is 
 the purpose of life, and what are the ways in which 
 that purpose is to be attained. For education is a 
 preparation for life ; and as life is variously regarded, 
 so will education for it vary, whether regulated by a 
 State authority or merely by custom and feeling. It 
 is not hard to discern the ideas which mould education 
 in France and Germany, because those ideas are 
 deliberately accepted by the educational authorities, 
 and to be traced in their regulations. It is far less 
 easy to discern the governing ideas in English or
 
 4 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 American education, because in those countries there is 
 more variety, more clashing of systems, a struggle for 
 existence rather than a victorious creed and purpose. 
 Yet unless we can track the underlying ideas, we 
 move in the dark. 
 
 The ultimate idea of the German university educa- 
 tion is purely intellectual and scientific. To secure 
 the most consummate masters of knowledge in its 
 various branches, and to set these proficients to carry 
 on their own studies to the utmost point, and to 
 impart their results and their methods to their pupils, 
 such is the business of those who govern the uni- 
 versities of Germany. They are not concerned with 
 the religious opinions of the students, nor primarily 
 with their moral growth; such matters as those are 
 for the Church or the State. Physical development 
 is secured by the State military service. It is in the 
 first place intellect which the universities cherish and 
 foster, but intellect in close relation to fact and to 
 reality. Perhaps those who are accustomed to use 
 the books of German university teachers may find 
 this last statement scarcely to be reconciled with the 
 reckless boldness in theorizing which marks their 
 work. But it may be replied that a wide knowledge 
 of fact requires in the man of science as a balance a 
 strong theoretic bent, without which knowledge will 
 become a mere morass. To be a thinker or a teacher 
 he must be the master of his knowledge, and not let 
 it become his master ; and this can only be done by 
 arranging it from within in accordance with idea and 
 purpose. He must draw his material from the world 
 of fact, but must make it part of his own mental
 
 EDUCATIONAL IDEAS, ABROAD AND AT OXFORD 5 
 
 furniture. A massive body of knowledge requires 
 for its support a strong skeleton of theory. But that 
 Germany is the land of fact and knowledge is a 
 familar truth to all who attempt to pursue beyond the 
 rudiments any branch of natural or human knowledge. 
 Into whatever seas of fact one may sail, one is almost 
 'sure to find that the German investigator is there 
 already with his telescope and his microscope, with his 
 tables of statistics and his infallible indexes. 
 
 And the result of this pursuit of fact, this cultus 
 of realities, has been beyond all denial an immense 
 success, at least in many directions. It is this which 
 has made Germany prominent in science, in applied 
 knowledge, in arms. As Mr Sadler well puts the 
 matter : 
 
 "In the greatest and most fruitful intellectual 
 movements, the really dominant authority has always 
 been not administrative in character, but intellectual 
 or (in the largest sense of the word) spiritual. The 
 binding idea which most firmly holds together the 
 intellectual labours of men engaged in the building 
 up of knowledge is the conception of the unity of all 
 knowledge, and the conviction that all individual 
 research and labour should be subordinated to the 
 claims of knowledge as a whole and of society as a 
 whole. . . . The initial and underlying cause of that 
 greatness (of Germany) was not the skilful contriving 
 of a new form of State organization, but an intense 
 and self-sacrificing enthusiasm for truth." l 
 
 Mr Sadler tells us elsewhere that on the Continent 
 there is now a widely-spread conviction that education, 
 1 M. Sadler, Education in Germany, p. 35.
 
 6 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 both in the schools and the universities, has been 
 regarded too exclusively as an intellectual training, 
 and too little as a preparation for life. We should 
 all be ready to allow that to prepare a man for life 
 and conduct is a greater and a more useful thing than 
 merely to instruct him. But I think that Mr Sadler's 
 statement requires some interpretation. For according 
 to reports which reach us from all fields of activity, 
 and from all parts of the world, the young German 
 is in all matters of commercial and scientific activity 
 the most efficient of men. Everywhere he is elbowing 
 his way, and thrusting aside men of other nationalities, 
 in Eussia, in the East, in England. Probably the 
 dissatisfaction of which Mr Sadler speaks must have 
 reference rather to the social outlook than to the 
 efficiency of individual young Germans in daily life. 
 
 In France literary feeling, a deep-rooted love of 
 style, is so dominant, that it is not wonderful that 
 until recently it ruled even in the universities. It is 
 only in the days of the third Eepublic that a decided 
 change set in. I cannot refrain from quoting a some- 
 what long passage from an address to the students of 
 the Faculty of Letters at Paris, delivered in 1897 by 
 Professor Langlois, which gives a summary history of 
 the course of events : l 
 
 " It is not very long since we began, in the Faculty 
 of Letters, to encourage and direct original research. 
 Training in method and procedure in the work of 
 research, in which the most flourishing of foreign 
 universities find one of their chief functions, was 
 
 1 C. V. Langlois, Questions d'histoire et d'enseiynemtnt, 1902, p. 169. 
 I Lave slightly abridged in translating.
 
 EDUCATIONAL IDEAS, ABROAD AND AT OXFORD 7 
 
 nowhere organized in France save at the Ecole des 
 Chartes, until the creation of the Fjcole des Hautes 
 Etudes. From 1870 until quite recently, only these 
 two institutions attempted it. That which prevented 
 the Faculties from themselves organizing training in 
 research was a system of examinations which they had 
 not themselves instituted, and which dated from a time 
 when there prevailed a view of higher education, fine 
 in its way, but less comprehensive than that which has 
 succeeded it. The immense majority of the students 
 came to pass examinations, in which there was no place 
 for training in research. How could it be expected that 
 such students, however willing they might be, would 
 have the heroism to undergo a painful apprenticeship, 
 which would avail them nothing in the day of 
 examination. The professors sometimes urged the 
 students to such heroism, appealing to their higher 
 feeling. Usually it was in vain. What prevails in 
 the minds of candidates is naturally the shortest way 
 to success. . . . You well know that now original 
 research, of no account in the old examinations, is 
 here rewarded and sometimes prescribed. To obtain 
 the ' diplome d'e'tudes superieures,' which corresponds 
 to the doctorate in philosophy in German universities, 
 you have to show that you understand the methods 
 of research, and can use the instruments and processes 
 of scientific work. Thus students both French and 
 foreign who come here to learn to work, can receive 
 the initiation they desire. . . . 
 
 "The hopes which the changes raised have been 
 justified, the fears have not." 
 
 The French Ministry of Instruction fully accepts
 
 8 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 the views uttered as long ago as 1882 by M. Jules 
 Ferry : " Messieurs, c'est un des characteres de la 
 science de ce temps-ci, a tous les degre's et dans tous 
 les ordres, que cette soif de la recherche, que cet 
 amour des documents precis, que cette passion de 
 1'analyse scientifique et rigoureuse. C'est le plus beau 
 titre ou la plus grande force de la science con- 
 temporaine." I must here add that the University 
 of Paris has now more than 13,000 students. 
 
 The universities of America, which at first were 
 offshoots of Oxford and Cambridge, and for a while 
 worked on English lines, have long ago been captured 
 by German ideas. The system of options, by which a 
 student is allowed to select for his university course 
 any subjects he pleases, and to follow any teacher he 
 may choose, is, according to President Eliot of Harvard, 
 an essential feature of American university education ; 
 and this system firmly fixes it on German lines. It 
 is true that in America there are many more cross 
 currents than in Germany ; and an almost infinite 
 number of conflicting ideals struggle for the mastery 
 in universities as elsewhere. But in all the larger and 
 more important of them, the scientific spirit is the 
 dominant one, the pursuit of knowledge is the 
 main end, to which all else is subordinate. And 
 almost all the distinguished university teachers of 
 America have studied in Germany, and brought 
 thence purposes and convictions which can scarcely 
 be altered, whereas but one here and there even 
 knows the methods and arrangements of the English 
 universities. In particular there has arisen with 
 rapid growth and spread a custom of devoting some
 
 EDUCATIONAL IDEAS, ABROAD AND AT OXFORD 9 
 
 years after the Bachelor's degree to the special study 
 of some branch of knowledge : and now the man who 
 has not taken one of these graduate courses has but 
 small chance of election to a professorship, or to any 
 position of importance in the scholastic world. The 
 natural result is that the last twenty years, which have 
 seen an enormous growth and spread of universities 
 in America, have also seen an immense rise in their 
 standard of knowledge and scientific attainment. 
 
 II. 
 
 When we turn from the universities of the Continent 
 and of America to our own older universities, and 
 particularly Oxford, we pass into quite a different 
 climate. The intellectual idea, the intense respect for 
 fact as fact, has never been dominant here. At first 
 sight to an impartial observer this might seem strange, 
 since it cannot be questioned that the English nature 
 is in almost all fields deeply impressed by the value of 
 fact and reality. And the virtue of personal truthful- 
 ness is more highly regarded in England than in most 
 countries. But the universities have, for historic 
 reasons, into which it is impossible here to enter at 
 length, become closely connected with the public 
 schools, and are dominated by the spirit of the public 
 schools. In Germany and America, public schools 
 like ours do not exist ; and when boys leave the 
 gymnasia and high schools for the university, they pass 
 into an atmosphere quite different, from a state of 
 pupilage to a complete intellectual liberty. In 
 England the break between school and university is 
 by no means so marked. The college tutor takes on
 
 io OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 the pupil of the public school master, and his education 
 is continued on nearly the same lines on which it had 
 moved before. The youth is supposed to be trained 
 at our older universities not only in literary taste, 
 alertness of mind, power of expression, but also in 
 manliness and gentlemanliness, as these qualities are 
 understood in the English public school. But, unfor- 
 tunately, the spirit of the public schools is obstinately 
 set against intellect. 
 
 In a striking paper, published in the December 
 number of the Nineteenth Century, Sir Oliver Lodge 
 has called attention to the fact, admitted on all hands, 
 that our public school system, with all its merits, has 
 very great drawbacks, because in a time when in- 
 telligence is urgently demanded " the intellectual 
 standard maintained at English public schools is low 
 .... a good many young boys have a germ of 
 intellectual life in them, but in many cases it dies a 
 natural death from mere inanition .... intellectual 
 things are, to put it frankly, unfashionable." 1 The 
 same want of intellectual interest is carried by boys 
 from the public schools to the universities. From 
 a considerable experience of Oxford freshmen, I can 
 assert that it is exceedingly difficult to stir the minds 
 which have been thus made numb to all intellectual 
 interests. Men who come to Oxford from Scotch or 
 Welsh colleges, or from schools abroad, are usually 
 easier by far to interest in matters of history and 
 archaeology than those who corne from our great 
 schools, excepting one or two. 
 
 1 These words are not Principal Lodge's, but quoted from Mr A. C, 
 Benson's Schoolmaster.
 
 EDUCATIONAL IDEAS, ABROAD AND AT OXFORD 11 
 
 Now if the unfashionableness of intelligence is a 
 danger in public schools, it is certainly a far greater 
 danger in the universities. This is clear in spite of 
 the fact, to which there is abundant testimony from 
 many quarters, that the best authorities on education 
 on the Continent are now inclining to the opinion that 
 in most countries the training of young men has been 
 too closely limited to the intellectual aspect, that 
 education should be a process of physical, moral, and 
 intellectual discipline, and not merely a training for 
 the mind. Attempts are being made in America to 
 introduce something like the English public school. 
 English games are being to some extent cultivated in 
 French and German high schools. But while, as 
 Englishmen, we recognize this fact with complacency, 
 it is no reason why we should abstain, at this great 
 crisis of the national life, from a careful examination 
 of our position and our ideals. It may be, and, indeed, 
 one may venture to say it certainly is, the truth that 
 whereas Germany has gone too far in one direction in 
 education, we have gone too far in the other. Each 
 nation has something to learn from the other, and the 
 best course, as usual, lies between the two extremes. 
 
 Naturally the intellectual side of university educa- 
 tion the side which can be studied in the Calendar 
 and lecture-list is the only side which I can criticize 
 in detail. All else is matter of custom and convention, 
 which can change but slowly with changing feeling. But 
 it may be well, before passing on to the consideration 
 of the teaching and examinations of Oxford, to say a 
 few words as to the physical and moral training which 
 the undergraduates receive.
 
 12 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 In the modern world there are three modes of 
 physical culture, which prevail in various countries. 
 First there is military service, imposed on the 
 Continent on all young men, and combined with 
 exercises which in a great degree set up for life 
 those who go through it. It is to such military 
 training that the great nations of Europe trust, to 
 avert that constantly-hovering danger, the physical 
 degeneration of the people. In England voluntary 
 games and sports take the place of this training. In 
 some of the American universities a system of physical 
 culture is usual, and even compulsory. A regular 
 trainer inspects all students, and prescribes to them 
 certain exercises by which their physical development 
 may be promoted and their health established. 
 
 Each of these systems has its advantages and its 
 disadvantages. The military system has the enormous 
 advantage of being compulsory on all, and being 
 bound up not with mere pleasure or esprit de corps, 
 but with national duty. It tends to give men a 
 serious view of their relation to the State ; and it 
 certainly is admirably effective in developing the body 
 towards efficiency and health. On the other hand it 
 lasts, in Germany in the case of university students, 
 only a year, which is not long enough to solidly 
 establish a healthy physique. 
 
 Physical culture, if conducted by skilful experts, is 
 of almost unlimited efficiency. What can be done in 
 this way has been shown among us recently by the 
 Japanese wrestlers. The great drawback is that this 
 system substitutes for the exhilaration of sport the 
 dull routine of hours of exercise. And it has no
 
 EDUCATIONAL IDEAS, ABROAD AND AT OXFORD 13 
 
 moral outlook; it begins and ends with physical 
 development. That it has a great future no observer 
 of the signs of the times can doubt. But one need 
 be in no hurry to further a chill, self-regarding and 
 uninteresting routine. 
 
 As to our English games it is not easy to speak 
 satisfactorily in brief space. In joyousness this mode 
 of physical culture stands first. It develops the body 
 through pleasure instead of through pain ; or if there 
 be pain, it is self-imposed and lightly borne. It 
 strongly encourages some high moral qualities, the 
 custom of obedience and of command, esprit de corps, 
 love of fairplay and generosity. It develops finer 
 qualities of hand and eye than any mechanical train- 
 ing. And the element of competition in it may fairly 
 be regarded as a good training for a world in which 
 competition is the rule. 
 
 But proud as every Englishman must be of our 
 English sports, one cannot overlook the fact that the 
 system is on its trial, and shows signs of decay. The 
 element of competition may be good, but carried to 
 excess it is ruinous. When men who cannot play 
 well prefer to look on at a match rather than them- 
 selves to play indifferently, the decay of games sets in. 
 When a man has to devote all his time and energy 
 before he can hope to excel in a sport, the game 
 clearly is not worth the candle. And high medical 
 authorities declare that athletes who go through too 
 severe tests are seldom or never in middle life so 
 sound as they would have been had they taken 
 only moderate exercise. I hold it to be beyond 
 question that athletics at the universities make
 
 14 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 too great demands on the time and energies of 
 undergraduates; they are too costly and too highly 
 specialized. 
 
 Thus the system of games, unlike the other systems 
 of physical training which I have mentioned, tends by 
 over-development to destroy itself. It is mere matter 
 of history that by over-development it did destroy 
 itself in Greece. 1 And it is a safe prophecy that 
 unless there is among us a reaction towards sobriety 
 and moderation, it will before long destroy itself in 
 England. It is the many, rather than the few, whose 
 physique requires watching and correction ; and unless 
 the many continue to cultivate games, the extreme 
 efficiency of the few will not prevent those games 
 from failing altogether in good purpose. To watch 
 cricket and football is a form not of exercise but of 
 idleness ; and exercise is more necessary to weak and 
 indolent than to strong and active men. 
 
 Let us next briefly consider the ethical side of 
 Oxford training. This, however, is no easy thing to 
 do, and a thing which can scarcely be done in brief 
 compass. If we turn to the writings of those whom 
 we may call the great Oxford reformers of the last 
 generation, in regard to whom I fear none of us could 
 utter the boast of Diomedes, 2 men such as Matthew 
 Arnold and Goldwin Smith, we shall find that they 
 vindicate the moral training of Oxford in their day as 
 at all events in some respects decidedly effective. 
 
 Matthew Arnold pointed out that at Oxford the 
 
 1 On this subject I would venture to refer to my New Chapters in 
 Greek History, pp. 300-304. 
 
 2 "Than these our fathers better far we make our boast to be."
 
 EDUCATIONAL IDEAS, ABROAD AND AT OXFORD 15 
 
 upper classes developed fine and governing qualities, 1 
 " a high spirit, dignity, a just sense of the greatness of 
 great affairs." This he sets in some degree against the 
 contempt for science which he attributed to the same 
 class. Professor Henry Nettleship wrote, in a volume 
 of essays on Eesearch, twenty-five years ago, " We do 
 not produce, and do not wish to produce, scholars, but 
 educated men, furnished with so much of liberal 
 culture as will enable them to win and to maintain 
 their position in life and in society, or to succeed 
 better in any practical pursuit in which they may 
 engage." I may add a little bit of testimony to the 
 same effect which I myself met with twenty-five years 
 ago. Coming then into contact with the teachers 
 employed by a great firm in London who prepared 
 men from the universities and elsewhere for public 
 examinations, I found them to be unanimously of 
 opinion that of all the pupils who came to them, those 
 from Oxford had the highest practical efficiency and 
 best knew how to make the most of themselves. 
 
 This end, beyond doubt, is one well worth striving 
 after, and some justification of the Oxford course in 
 past days. But it is very doubtful whether assertions 
 as to the practical efficiency of Oxford training are as 
 true now as they were thirty years ago. Indeed, it 
 may be gravely doubted whether the Oxford training 
 has not in some degree lost its quality of effective- 
 ness, without acquiring a scientific character. How- 
 ever this be, the conditions in the world have so 
 completely changed during one generation, that a 
 training which had efficiency thirty years ago would 
 1 Higher Schools and Universities in Germany, p. 207.
 
 16 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 have far smaller efficiency now. Self-confidence, 
 without knowledge at its back, does not go so far as 
 it did in the world. The value of method, of organiza- 
 tion in a word, of science is every year becoming 
 greater. The man who knows can in our day always 
 in the long run beat the man who thinks that he 
 knows but does not, and the man who thinks that it 
 does not matter whether he knows or not. In the 
 competition of nations, ordered knowledge and reasoned 
 action directed to definite ends go for more and more, 
 energy and self-confidence for less and less. They are 
 the bow and arrow in the hands of a giant pitted 
 against the repeating rifle in the hands of drilled 
 soldiers. 
 
 Of course real character, high morale, will still tell 
 in the long run. But, as I shall try to show later, 
 there is no real discrepancy between scientific study 
 and high character; rather character will make men 
 impatient of all study which is not systematic. And 
 certain virtues patience, self-suppression, persever- 
 ance are certainly promoted by any scientific study. 
 But many virtues are not either promoted or dis- 
 couraged by methodic study; they must be acquired 
 by other means. Idleness, at all events, is the worst 
 foe of all manly virtues, and most ruinous in the 
 work of life. 
 
 A remarkable feature which Oxford and Cambridge 
 have, and Continental universities have not, is the 
 college system. On the moral aspects of college life 
 there is no need to discourse, since there is no question 
 of destroying that life. Continental and American 
 authorities are disposed to envy us our colleges. To
 
 EDUCATIONAL IDEAS, ABROAD AND AT OXFORD 17 
 
 Cecil Ehodes, in some respects a keen judge, the 
 college seemed the most important feature of the 
 university. No one can have read the biographies 
 recently published of prominent Englishmen without 
 seeing how much college friendships, college dis- 
 cussions, college associations, still add to the beauty 
 and the dignity of life in those who have been trained in 
 colleges. Whatever changes may hereafter be found 
 necessary in Oxford curricula, those changes will 
 probably not alter the main relations of college 
 existence. It is true that, as all good things may be 
 overdone, an excess of collegiate feeling or too great 
 control by college tutors may tend to mar the freedom 
 and breadth of university education. But it will be 
 best to pass on at once to speak of education at 
 the University in its more official and intellectual 
 form. 
 
 Instead of embodying, like the German universities, 
 a single simple idea that of science Oxford tries 
 to realize many in turn or all at once. Education is a 
 preparation for life : but the lives lived by educated 
 Englishmen are very various, and the preparation 
 should also be various. But the question remains, 
 and often presents itself has the variety of purposes 
 and aims in Oxford education any real relation to the 
 facts of the present day, or is it rather true that it is 
 adapted to the circumstances of long ago ? Oxford is 
 before all things conservative. And conservatism is a 
 great power in life ; but it may sometimes go too far. 
 A healthy conservatism which prefers to let others try 
 the necessary experiments, and only accepts established 
 results, may be wise. But a conservatism based on 
 
 2
 
 i8 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 self-coufidence or indolence is always dangerous, and 
 in such times as ours may well be fatal. 
 
 I have headed this discussion " Oxford at the 
 Cross Eoads," and have suggested that the coming of 
 the Ehodes students is a crisis in the history of the 
 University. But it is not only the coming of these 
 students which makes the crisis ; without them the 
 crisis would be sufficiently marked. From all the 
 leaders of our national life, from statesmen like Lord 
 Eosebery and Mr Chamberlain, from our leaders in 
 education, our captains of industry, our military and 
 naval critics, one hears a general chorus that England 
 in the competition of nations is falling behind, that 
 we are too lethargic, that our rivals are moving faster 
 than we are, that we shall lose our place among the 
 nations unless we bestir ourselves and alter our ways. 
 The cry for greater efficiency, for a better adaptation 
 to modern conditions, for a careful reconsideration of 
 our position, is so general and so strong, that no man 
 in a public and responsible position has a right to be 
 deaf to it. Even if it is our strength to sit still, we 
 must be able to give a reason for sitting still when all 
 the world is on the move.
 
 CHAPTEK II 
 
 CKITICISM OF THE OXFORD COUKSE IN HUMANITY 
 
 THEKE can scarcely be any question that at Oxford 
 it is the humanistic side of education which gives 
 the tone to the whole University. In Litterse 
 Humaniores the most characteristic and most in- 
 fluential of Oxford teachers have their scope ; in 
 Litterse Humaniores the ablest of the students take 
 their degrees. Those who speak of Oxford education 
 always think first of the humanist side of it. This is 
 a great distinction and privilege to the University, 
 and it lays upon us a deeper obligation to be sure 
 that we who lay greater stress on the humanities than 
 any other university in the English-speaking world, 
 perhaps in the whole world, shall proceed with 
 wisdom and with full appreciation of the needs of the 
 time. 
 
 I shall venture to deal only with this one side of 
 Oxford education, the classical or humanistic side. 
 That the physical and biological sciences are far less 
 cultivated and esteemed among us than they should 
 be, I have no doubt. But some progress has been 
 
 19
 
 20 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 made in the equipment of our schools of natural 
 science in recent years, and to the many able and 
 energetic Oxford professors in the subject must be 
 left the task of urging its claims on the University, 
 and on the country. It is a well-worn theme on 
 which they will have to dwell; and there will be 
 many sympathizers. But when one urges the claims 
 of the other half of science the human one opens 
 new ground, and one runs great risk of misapprehension. 
 
 It is with regret that I criticize the scheme of work 
 in Litterae Humauiores, and the examination in which 
 the course ends. Friends and colleagues at Oxford 
 have often expressed to me their conviction, based on 
 a long experience, that the system tends greatly to 
 the development of intelligence and mental growth 
 among students, and I am unable to do anything 
 but accept their testimony. I have seen my own 
 pupils, in passing through the course, become more 
 articulate, more alert, better able to deal with books 
 and thought. It may be that on the whole it would 
 not be easy to suggest any course of mental discipline 
 which would in the time do more to cultivate in 
 certain ways the ordinary intelligent young English- 
 man. The mingling of historic criticism and philo- 
 sophic thought which it implies is generally allowed to 
 be a very fruitful mixture. But I think it possible, 
 as I shall show later, to check the evils of the present 
 course without destroying it, or losing the advan- 
 tages which belong to it. The great defects which 
 demand alteration at all hazards are its too rigid and
 
 CRITICISM OF OXFORD COURSE IN HUMANITY 21 
 
 exclusive character, and, above all, its too marked 
 domination. 
 
 Let us suppose that the present course in Litterae 
 Humaniores is not merely good for many of the stu- 
 dents, but as good as any such course which could be 
 devised for the majority of them. Even in that case, 
 the setting up of a fixed and hard system, the in- 
 clusion of some subjects and exclusion of others, the 
 persistent attempt to drill the minds of undergraduates 
 according to a tradition, are so pernicious to the 
 character of the University, that there is utmost 
 need of change. If the course seems good for indi- 
 viduals, it is ruinous to the commonwealth. The 
 University needs the greatest possible variety, in 
 subjects of study, in intellectual habits and tendencies, 
 in outlook on the world. By being hemmed in and 
 limited, it gives up an important part of its service to 
 the country. 
 
 This limitation of studies is produced and perpetuated 
 by the hard and fast examination system which binds 
 us hand and foot. Nowhere, not even at Cambridge, 
 does there exist any so fixed a scheme of study 
 as is furnished by the Oxford course of Litterse 
 Humaniores. In the Final Schools, though necessity 
 has forced on the examiners some relaxation in the 
 matter of allowing alternatives, yet none are officially 
 announced. Oxford has decided that in the study of the 
 Humanities one course is better than all others, and 
 that every student shall be driven through this par- 
 ticular gate. The Final Schools are one fluke of the 
 anchor which prevents Oxford from moving with the 
 stream, and the other fluke is the Civil Service Ex-
 
 22 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 animation, which resembles the Final Schools almost as 
 one side of an anchor resembles the other. 
 
 I propose to speak in turn of the Civil Service Ex- 
 amination and of the Oxford Final Schools, and it may 
 be well to begin with the Civil Service Examinations, 
 since in criticizing them I am sure to find sympathetic 
 readers. 
 
 A large and increasing number of undergraduates 
 make the attainment of a good place in this examina- 
 tion the object of their academic career. In the 
 crowded state of the professions they find here the 
 only visible chance of a safe and respectable career. 
 The result of tying together the University and the 
 Civil Service Examinations is naturally that neither 
 can move independently of the other. Practically it 
 appears that neither can move at all. We are stereo- 
 typed, incapable of moving in a moving world, like 
 Ixion, constantly revolving but making no progress. 
 It is necessary to speak strongly in this matter. Even 
 conservative Oxford tutors are often heard to speak 
 dolefully of the way in which the limits of the Civil 
 Service Examinations bound their lectures and narrow 
 their pupils. As soon as a lecturer leaves the charmed 
 circle of the immediately paying, he often sees his 
 pupils fall away. Any subject which has not a 
 satisfactory place in the great competition is dropped 
 and neglected. 
 
 Now examinations in their place are good enough. 
 In England under existing circumstances they are, if 
 an evil, a necessary evil. Every teacher knows that 
 without examinations in prospect he would never be 
 able to keep the attention of undergraduates fixed on
 
 CRITICISM OF OXFORD COURSE IN HUMANITY 23 
 
 their work. But examinations, if useful servants, are 
 bad masters. And when they are not merely masters, 
 but tyrants without appeal, the university course be- 
 comes a mere slavery. At present the Oxford course 
 is full of them ; in the College and in the University 
 they are always in the way, to prevent free study. 
 
 It will be within the memory of many Oxford 
 teachers how the present system of Civil Service 
 Examinations came into being fifteen years ago. The 
 age of competition was then raised, and the curriculum 
 modified, in order that it might better fit in with the 
 Final Examinations of Oxford and Cambridge. A 
 petition in favour of the changes was largely signed in 
 the universities ; I am glad to think that I was among 
 the few who refused to sign. Disastrous indeed have 
 been the consequences to us. Whether they have been 
 equally unfortunate to the Indian Service I know not. 
 But I know that many good judges in India greatly 
 regret the raising of the age of competition, involving 
 as it does the reduction of the two years of special 
 training after the examination to one year, which is 
 quite insufficient for acquiring the broad knowledge of 
 things Indian, very desirable before a man is suddenly 
 plunged into their practical details. * 
 
 A very able and experienced Indian official, Mr 
 Vincent Smith, writes to me : " The law course is 
 now confined to the Indian codes, and an elementary 
 knowledge of one language satisfies the examiners. 
 The essential subjects of Indian history and geography 
 have been relegated to the voluntary division. 1 Politi- 
 
 1 By a recent regulation, Indian history is again made compulsory. 
 But the men have no time to give to it.
 
 24 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 cal economy, likewise, a knowledge of which is of the 
 highest importance to an Indian administrator, is no 
 longer a compulsory subject. The result of the 
 excessive abbreviation of the training is that the 
 selected candidates now go out to India with the 
 slightest possible knowledge of either law or Oriental 
 subjects. I am strongly of opinion that the period 
 of two years formerly prescribed for the training of the 
 selected candidates was not too long. The work of 
 Oriental administration is peculiar, and requires special 
 preparation, for which two years are a moderate 
 allowance." 
 
 As the age at which young officials go out to India 
 cannot be raised, it seems that either they must be 
 sent out in an unprepared condition, or else the age 
 of competition must be once more lowered. 
 
 I cannot more fully go into the question whether 
 by the present scheme India secures a satisfactory 
 governmental staff. But from the point of view of 
 the universities and of higher education generally, that 
 scheme is a disaster. We have all seen men whose 
 talents should have enabled them to advance the 
 boundaries of knowledge, men born for the life of a 
 scholar or man otf science, devoting their exceptional 
 talents merely to capturing a foremost place in the 
 Civil Service list. It is hard sometimes to blame 
 them. Family funds are perhaps at a low ebb, and 
 will not bear the strain caused by the long and painful 
 start in a professional career. But though the de- 
 clension from the scholarly ideal may be comprehen- 
 sible, it is an evil sign. It looks as if the old English 
 restlessness and ambition were dying down, when our
 
 CRITICISM OF OXFORD COURSE IN HUMANITY 25 
 
 brightest youths limit their aspirations to the hope of 
 attaining a gentlemanly employment and a retiring 
 pension in the home service. India is, of course, 
 different, and may fairly claim of our best : but it is 
 not men of preponderant intellect that India requires ; 
 rather men of tact and principle ; and it is very 
 doubtful whether such are secured by our present 
 system. In a sense a loosening of the connexion with 
 the Civil Service scheme would be a loss to the 
 University, but freedom is worth purchasing at a 
 great price. 
 
 II. 
 
 It is to be feared that some readers who sympathize 
 with hostile criticism of the tendencies of the Civil 
 Service Examination will be quite indisposed to go 
 with me when I pass to criticism of the Oxford 
 examinations themselves. But the course I take is 
 one which I cannot avoid. 
 
 What then is the standard which we have set before 
 the abler undergraduates who have been working in our 
 classical schools ? l The aim has been to make them 
 cultured. First, they have been set to attain a fairly 
 accurate knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages, 
 then an appreciation of classical literature, next a 
 knowledge of parts of ancient philosophy, and of 
 ancient history mainly on its political side. They are 
 also expected to show considerable knowledge of 
 modern logic and philosophy, and to be able to write 
 
 1 I must apologize to Oxford readers for stating many things which 
 are matters of common knowledge among us, but I do not wish to 
 adapt this paper only to those well acquainted with Oxford studies.
 
 26 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 effectively at short notice on almost any subject which 
 is not of a technical character. 
 
 The first part of the course, occupying nearly two 
 years, is the preparation for Moderations. I think it 
 is generally felt that this is a weak part of our system. 
 For in Moderations the examination has to do not 
 merely with work like that done in school, but largely 
 with work which has actually been done at school. 
 When a man who has been well trained in the classics 
 at school comes to Oxford, he finds that for two years 
 he has little more to do than to go over again the 
 authors whom he has already read. He may, if he 
 pleases, take up, as alternative subjects, some studies 
 which will be new to him, logic, comparative philology, 1 
 the history of Greek sculpture. These new pursuits 
 will probably be the most interesting part of his work. 
 I know from the testimony of a large number of under- 
 graduates that at all events the study of Greek 
 sculpture appears to them a very great relief from 
 their other work. But these alternative subjects are 
 not allowed to take any large part of the time or 
 attention of the student. 
 
 Yet the moment when a youth passes from school 
 to university is surely of all the moments of life the 
 one which should be seized on to give him wider 
 views and fresh intellectual interests. His appetite 
 should be fresh, and if fresh intellectual nutriment is 
 not given him, it is exceedingly likely that he will 
 give the best of his energy and love to other matters, 
 
 1 This is the only provision for comparative philology in the course. 
 I have never heard the subject spoken of at the Board of Studies save 
 as an unsatisfactory subject for Moderations.
 
 CRITICISM OF OXFORD COURSE IN HUMANITY 27 
 
 such as athletic sports or social amusements. And 
 this, too often, is what actually takes place. 
 
 As the preparation for the Final Schools occupies 
 rather more than two years, we may suppose that 
 one year is taken up with philosophy, and one with 
 ancient history. By philosophy is meant Plato and 
 Aristotle in the first place, and in the second place 
 logic and moral philosophy, political science, and the 
 works of ancient and modern philosophers. Granting 
 that to the ordinary clever man a training in Greek 
 philosophy is an excellent mental gymnastic, yet it 
 is a very doubtful procedure to regard modern 
 philosophy as a sort of appendix to that of the Greeks. 
 For psychology in all its ramifications, psychology 
 observational and experimental, the course leaves 
 little time, and to regard ancient philosophy as summed 
 up in Plato and Aristotle is a very unsatisfactory view. 
 The later schools the Stoics, Epicureans, and Academics 
 are in some ways as nearly related to modern thought 
 as are the great Attic masters. In particular, the 
 exclusive or almost exclusive study of the latter tends 
 greatly to conceal from the student that the history 
 of philosophic thought in antiquity is continuous, from 
 Plato to Origen. 
 
 If the course in Litterse Humaniores were al- 
 together classical, and if there were in Oxford a 
 separate school of ancient and modern philosophy, 
 then no doubt there would be some justification for 
 making the study of Plato and Aristotle as prominent 
 as it is in the Final Schools. But modern philosophy, 
 and especially modern logic and psychology, will 
 refuse to be thrust into a corner. These studies will
 
 28 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 naturally attract many of the ablest of the under- 
 graduates, whose fate will painfully resemble that of 
 Tantalus. Historically the great importance assigned 
 to Aristotle at Oxford is a remnant of the vast 
 dominion which he exercised in the Middle Ages. 
 And admirable as are the intellect and the method 
 of the Master, it is unjustifiable to compel all students 
 in Humanity alike to give as much time as they do 
 to the study of him. 
 
 In Greek and Eoman history the texts are primary, 
 Herodotus, Thucydides, Tacitus and the rest ; and 
 with the texts goes a mass of commentary, results of 
 investigation, data from inscriptions and the like, 
 which the students acquire, not from the works of 
 the masters who have collected the facts, but from 
 lecturers, who (I am told) commonly make a skilful 
 mosaic from various sources and adapt it to the 
 note-book of the undergraduate. There is certainly 
 no time to check the statements of the lecturers, to 
 turn to the sources whence they borrow, to compare 
 author with author and inscription with inscription. 
 The pace allows no pause for realization, investigation, 
 contact with fact and tracing out of sources. 
 
 As a mental training history thus taught seems to 
 me inferior to the study of Plato and Aristotle, Butler 
 and Kant. For it is not easy to distinguish between 
 philosophers and philosophy. But between historians 
 and history the distinction is deep enough. The most 
 valuable training which the study of history should 
 give to the mind is the power of judging evidence, the 
 comparison of authorities, the sifting of facts, and the 
 realization of the past life of the world. And this
 
 CRITICISM OF OXFORD COURSE IN HUMANITY 29 
 
 training it is impossible that a course so hurried and 
 incomplete as that of Oxford can give. Such a course 
 may enable men to follow the outlines of ancient 
 military social and political life, and to write essays 
 in regard to it, but it is certainly no adequate training 
 in historic method. 
 
 And the want of time tells also in another way. 
 As it is quite impossible to untangle the whole skein 
 of Greek and Eoman life, some threads or some parts 
 of it are singled out, and the rest treated almost as 
 non-existent. Certain periods of Greek and Eoman 
 history are studied to the exclusion of others. In a 
 fellowship examination, one of the candidates informed 
 me that Ehodes ceased to have a history after B.C. 400 ; 
 the fourth century is, in fact, but little studied ; and a 
 knowledge of the development of European civilization 
 between the rise of Greece and the fall of Eome exists 
 in the students' minds as a series of oases in the 
 desert. As one leading thread of history must be 
 selected, that one thread naturally is the constitutional. 
 This is, however, done in a way which is unfortunately 
 exclusive. 
 
 Eeligion, art, manners, for instance, are set aside. 
 We may compare the view of Greek history encouraged 
 in Oxford with the wider and more comprehensive view 
 of Matthew Arnold. 1 " By knowing ancient Greece I 
 understand knowing her as the giver of Greek art, 
 and a guide to a free and right use of reason, and to 
 scientific method ; and the founder of our mathematics 
 and physics and astronomy and biology." 
 
 It is true that if we refer to the papers in ancient 
 
 1 Literature and Science, p. 91.
 
 30 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 history set in the schools in past years, we may some- 
 times light on such questions as : " What light is 
 thrown on ancient history by the study of numis- 
 matics ? " or, " Can any conclusions as to the early 
 populations of the Aegean be drawn from recent dis- 
 coveries ? " But such questions are little better than 
 a mockery. They occur in a perfectly haphazard 
 way : no undergraduate can be sure of having a single 
 question in any particular part of ancient history 
 which he may have studied, if away from the ordinary 
 lines. And as only a few questions out of many are 
 answered by the examinees, a man who by accident 
 has a chance to show unusual knowledge in some 
 direction does so at considerable risk. 
 
 Probably in the Oxford teaching of ancient history 
 there is no blank so great as the absence of all 
 methodical arrangement for bringing before students 
 those inscriptions which are first-hand contemporary 
 documents, some acquaintance with which is a 
 necessity to any one who wants to study ancient 
 history to any purpose. Occasional courses of lectures 
 on Eoman inscriptions are given at Christ Church to 
 a small class. There are in the University absolutely 
 no lectures on Greek inscriptions regarded as a source 
 of history and a test of the statements of historians. Of 
 two hundred or more men who annually take honours 
 in ancient history, perhaps not one will know how to 
 restore or utilize an inscription. In fact the students 
 have no time for lectures on, or for any private study of, 
 inscriptions. This fact in itself is enough to prove the 
 present course in Litterae Humaniores quite unsuited 
 to the canons of historic study as now accepted.
 
 CRITICISM OF OXFORD COURSE IN HUMANITY 31 
 
 Of course almost anything can be taken as a special 
 subject in the final examination. But by taking a 
 special subject the student escapes no part of the set 
 or regular subjects ; and as these entirely absorb his 
 time, how is it possible to take up any matter outside 
 them to any advantage ? Nothing will really widen 
 the course except the allowing of alternatives. 
 
 It may thus be said with truth that whereas there 
 are certain fields in ancient history with which almost 
 every man who passes through the schools becomes 
 acquainted, other fields, as numerous and quite as 
 important, are explored by none, a state of things 
 which seems to me altogether discreditable to the 
 University, and extremely misleading. The contact of 
 mind with mind under such circumstances produces 
 not broader knowledge, but rather prejudice. 
 
 In this case, again, there would be less cause for 
 complaint if in another school ancient history were 
 taken up in a more serious way, studied on all its 
 sides and in relation to its sources. A knowledge of 
 ancient history formed mainly from lectures may, 
 when combined with other kinds of knowledge, be a 
 fairly satisfactory education for men taken one by one. 
 But when this is the sum of the ancient history 
 taught or recognized by the University, when research 
 is branded as specialism or despised as valueless, 
 then one is obliged to allow that our most classical 
 University does not, after all, do justice to the study 
 of Greek and Eoman civilization as that study is 
 now received in the greater world. To this subject 
 I will return in my sixth chapter. 
 
 Further, it is clear that scholarship proper, easy
 
 32 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 mastery of the Greek and Latin languages, and 
 familiarity with classical literature as literature, must 
 be almost crowded out of the Final Schools. To men 
 who intend to teach Classics in schools, good and 
 accurate scholarship is exceedingly important. It is 
 certain that a first in the schools does not guarantee 
 good scholarship ; and on the other hand good scholar- 
 ship does not by itself secure a first-class. Probably 
 in past days the English universities have somewhat 
 overrated elegant scholarship ; Cambridge has certainly 
 cultivated it much too exclusively ; yet in its place it 
 is a thing well worth guarding and encouraging. It 
 goes naturally with good style in English letters. At 
 Oxford at present it does not by any means have a 
 fair chance, and I have heard in most competent 
 quarters complaints of the decay of Oxford scholar- 
 ship. 
 
 The writing of frequent essays upon a great variety 
 of subjects is a training which has some merits, but 
 those merits are balanced by so much which is objec- 
 tionable that it seems very desirable to try to secure 
 the good of the system without the evil. It is a good 
 thing to be able to express oneself clearly, and to have 
 the pen of a ready writer. If men were set to write 
 out clearly what they had really learned, it would be 
 an excellent training. But I think that to set men 
 to write on subjects about which they know little, and 
 about which under the conditions they can learn but 
 little, is not merely inexpedient but radically immoral. 
 It trains the writer to conceal his ignorance, to pretend 
 to know what he does not know, to cultivate sophistries 
 of all kinds. And worst of all, a man who has once
 
 CRITICISM OF OXFORD COURSE IN HUMANITY 33 
 
 learned the fatal art of writing plausibly, without 
 knowledge, will scarcely in after life be persuaded 
 to take the pains necessary in order to discover 
 the truth of things. Perhaps these phrases may 
 seem strained : but I am convinced that while the 
 writing of essays may furnish useful exercise for the 
 student, it is a practice full of danger unless controlled 
 with much discretion. 
 
 It would not be easy to ascertain what proportion 
 mere show-essay writing bears in Oxford to real essay 
 writing. Much depends upon the training and 
 tendencies of particular tutors. But the merely 
 rhetorical spirit which used to be dominant in Oxford 
 essays is certainly by no means extinct. Than this 
 spirit, nothing could be more destructive to the tone 
 of a university, or more out of harmony with the 
 conditions of modern life. 
 
 Any criticism of the Oxford course in the Humani- 
 ties cannot avoid speaking briefly of the tutorial 
 system, which is one of its most clearly-marked 
 features. It is notorious that at Oxford a student 
 receives closer and more personal attention than almost 
 anywhere. He spends time every week with his 
 tutor, is told what lectures he should attend, what 
 books he should read, and he reads essays which he 
 has written on given subjects. I cannot speak with 
 much confidence in regard to this training, of which I 
 have little personal experience. It would seem to 
 have both good and bad sides. It may be allowed 
 that close personal intercourse between a more mature 
 and a more immature mind is in many ways beneficial 
 to the younger man. But it is to be feared that per- 
 
 3
 
 34 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 sonal guidance, carried to the length to which it is 
 now commonly carried, is fatal to the independence 
 and originative power of the pupil. 
 
 The effect, however, upon the tutor is decidedly 
 detrimental. The man who gives all his days in 
 personal attention to pupils has no leisure for work of 
 research himself, has no time and no opportunity for 
 more broadly considering the tendencies of study. 
 And in the vacation he is apt to be occupied with 
 examinations or else too weary to think of anything 
 beyond restoring his expended forces and preparing 
 for the next term's lectures. If there is one thing 
 certain as regards university education, it is that he 
 who would teach freshly and effectively must carry on 
 advanced studies of his own in the subject on which he 
 lectures. And without leisure and stimulating reading 
 a teacher entirely loses his enthusiasm and force. 
 
 It is clear that by better organization the lecturing 
 work of the University might be diminished. For 
 example, it is surely unnecessary that eight lecturers 
 should lecture in the same term on the Ethics of 
 Aristotle. But I must not take up the question of 
 organization, which is a pressing one. That under 
 present circumstances a fair proportion of tutors find 
 time, in spite of all drawbacks, to produce learned 
 work, some of it of a high class, is immensely to their 
 credit. But the fact remains that time and energy 
 are limited; and what of these is given for one 
 purpose cannot be retained for another. Overstrain 
 and exhaustion, sometimes nervous and sometimes 
 intellectual, must needs be a common result of at- 
 tempting that which is scarcely possible.
 
 CRITICISM OF OXFORD COURSE IN HUMANITY 35 
 
 There is probably nowhere a more able, conscientious, 
 and devoted set of teachers than are the Oxford 
 tutors. But their horizon is usually limited. Those 
 who pass from a public school to the university, and 
 are set to teach directly after their degree, have no 
 chance of coming into contact with a wider world. 
 Devotion to Oxford traditions is apt with them to 
 become a superstition, and their very conscientiousness 
 keeps them bound to the routine under which they 
 have grown up. Their conservatism has become a 
 clog which stops all the wheels of progress. If the 
 new Khodes students really bring in a fresher wind 
 into our somewhat stale class-rooms, they will indeed 
 be a blessing. 
 
 Ill 
 
 There can be little doubt that thirty or forty years 
 ago the training in Litterse Humaniores was more 
 self-consistent and more effective than it is at present. 
 It had an ethical and rhetorical character, and stood 
 apart from the growth of historic science. In its way, 
 in those days it was a masterpiece. But even then 
 it did not suit everyone, and in particular it was 
 harshly judged by those scholars who already felt the 
 changes in the intellectual horizon. For example, 
 C. H. Pearson, the author of National Life and 
 Character, thus states his impression of it : 
 
 " The worst result of the Oxford teaching was not 
 so much even its flagrant inadequacy as that it had 
 a superficial completeness, from the skill with which 
 clever men, constantly grinding at it, had reduced it 
 into form. To have left Oxford hungering for real
 
 36 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 knowledge would have been beneficial ; to leave it 
 as most of us did thoroughly self-complacent and 
 believing that the University had taught us very 
 nearly the last word in philosophy, was unmixedly 
 mischievous." l 
 
 Probably Mr Pearson profited by his Oxford training 
 in ways of which he was scarcely aware. And he 
 would perhaps have allowed that to men destined for 
 certain callings in life it was decidedly helpful. In 
 the future barrister it promoted the power of seeing 
 rapidly the strong and the weak sides of a case. In 
 the future journalist it produced a faculty for writing 
 skilfully on a given subject at short notice. It certainly 
 tended to make men articulate, of well-balanced minds, 
 intellectually athletic. But Pearson disliked the form 
 of knowledge when devoid of the substance of it, and 
 thought about the false conceit of knowledge somewhat 
 as did Socrates. 
 
 No doubt since the days of Pearson the Greats 
 course has in some ways been modified. It has been 
 impossible wholly to exclude the influence of European 
 intellectual progress. In the department of ancient 
 history, in particular, the influence of Mommsen, and 
 of some able teachers in Oxford, has produced a far 
 more detailed study and a far more precise knowledge 
 of political development, and of the constitutions of 
 ancient states, more particularly of the government of 
 the Eoman Empire. The mere faculty of putting 
 things, apart from solid knowledge, would certainly 
 not go so far to-day as thirty years ago. 
 
 How deep the results of the change may be I can- 
 1 C. H. Pearson, Autobiography, p. 51.
 
 CRITICISM OF OXFORD COURSE IN HUMANITY 37 
 
 not profess to know. No one could really tell who 
 had not been an examiner in recent years. But it 
 will scarcely be denied that the rhetorical element is 
 still prominent in the Litterae Humaniores course. 
 The importance attached to essay-writing must neces- 
 sarily still foster that complacency and that habit of 
 concealing ignorance which shocked the intellectual 
 conscience of Mr Pearson. And anyone who is at all 
 used to modern research must know that youths of 
 one-and-twenty cannot in two years acquire any 
 sound and satisfactory mastery of so vast a field as 
 that ranged over by the examiners in the schools. 
 This examining must require almost as long and 
 careful a training, and be as much under the 
 rule of tradition, as the augural profession at Eome. 
 One has to know exactly what to expect, what is 
 possible under the conditions, how far knowledge 
 in one subject may fairly balance ignorance in 
 another. 
 
 Those who are identified with the system at Oxford 
 are usually attached to it with a conviction which is 
 its best justification. But when, as rarely happens. 
 a judge from without comes into contact with its 
 tendencies, he is seldom entirely satisfied. Thus 
 the late professor of poetry, Mr Courthope, who was 
 bound ex officio to examine some of the exercises of 
 the most brilliant undergraduates, writes of those 
 exercises : 
 
 " I note in the essays a failure of power to treat a 
 subject as a whole, a tendency to cultivate style as a 
 thing desirable in itself apart from the subject-matter, 
 and. on the other hand, a passion for making points
 
 38 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 and epigrams without any regard to perspective and 
 proportion." l 
 
 This judgment, by a very sound and accomplished 
 critic, is hardly reassuring, especially since the faults of 
 which the critic speaks are precisely those which belong 
 to a too rhetorical bent in education, and Mr Courthope 
 speaks as a man of literary taste and culture, not as a 
 votary of historic science. His measure is by no means 
 so rigid as Mr Pearson's. 
 
 IV. 
 
 It can scarcely be realized by teachers at Oxford 
 that the dominant system is, in fact, one of protection. 
 A path of orthodoxy, not, of course, in opinion, but in 
 choice of subjects for study, is clearly marked out. 
 Any deviation to the right or the left of the path is 
 frowned upon as waste of time. And not only is 
 there no encouragement to proceed further than the 
 needful point on this road, but the notion exists that 
 any sort of research, or specialism as it is termed, 
 outside a certain line, is a poor and contemptible thing, 
 innocent enough, but scarcely the concern of any man 
 of intellectual ability and ambition. 
 
 Thus it has come about that the teaching of the 
 Humanities at Oxford is remarkably defective on the 
 side which has of late years been most full of life and 
 growth, the study of the extant remains of antiquity. 
 There has taken place, as all scholars are aware, 2 during 
 the last half century a sort of renascence in the historic 
 study of antiquity in consequence of the numerous and 
 
 1 Courthope, Life in Poetry and Law in Taste, p. 438. 
 
 2 See especially Sir R. C. Jebb's Humanism in Education.
 
 CRITICISM OF OXFORD COURSE IN HUMANITY 39 
 
 extensive excavations and discoveries which have taken 
 place in southern Europe and western Asia. Egypt 
 and Babylon have, as it were, risen from the grave to 
 instruct mankind as regards the origins of civilization. 
 The soil of Greece and of Italy has been more 
 systematically explored, with the result that where the 
 historians of fifty years ago had no clue to the facts of 
 history before the time of Cyrus and Croesus except 
 their own ingenuity, we have a constantly accumulating 
 storehouse of material, in buildings and pottery, sculp- 
 ture and inscriptions, which take back the beginnings 
 of European culture into the third millennium. And 
 for comparison with the narratives of Greek and Eoman 
 historians we have now a fast-increasing mass of facts 
 geographic, topographic, monumental, inscriptional 
 which must needs put our study of those writers on 
 quite a new plane. We are no longer obliged to 
 accept or reject their statements on subjective grounds, 
 or to treat them as mere literature, but we are bound 
 to examine them as witnesses and to try to pass beyond 
 them to the truth of fact. 
 
 An archaeological revolution in the field of ancient 
 history is in full course among the universities and 
 learned academies of Europe. Everywhere it is giving 
 life to what had become dull and freshness to what 
 had become trite. Even the study of classical literature 
 has risen to another level since we have so far more 
 accurate a knowledge of the bed of civilization on 
 which it flowered, and since in the history of Greek 
 art we have a development parallel to that of literature 
 in every period, and often far more easy to trace. 
 
 In most of the universities of Europe and of
 
 40 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 America the new classical archaeology has been gladly 
 welcomed as an ally and a friend. It is hardly too 
 much to say that at Oxford it has generally been 
 regarded with feelings of dismay, not as an ally, but 
 as a rival or an enemy. It could not be wholly 
 excluded from the Oxford course in Litterae Humaniores, 
 but there was assigned to it the smallest place possible, 
 that of a special or extra subject, which was in no 
 way an alternative. 
 
 A few facts will put in strong relief the cleavage 
 which has thus been introduced between Oxford and 
 foreign universities. At Oxford in January 1902 there 
 were announced in the lists ninety-eight lectures in 
 classics for honour students : of these, five only were 
 in archaeology. At Harvard in the report for 1900-1 
 twenty-eight courses in classics were reported, omitting 
 those which were elementary : of these, six were in 
 archaeology, and in two of these attendances of 387 and 
 108 were reported, the highest attendance at a non- 
 archaeological course being 36. At Oxford, where 
 classical lecturers are counted by the score, there is 
 but one university professor of archaeology, with the 
 precarious assistance of two or three college lecturers. 
 At Berlin, where the whole number of university 
 teachers in the classical field appears to be twenty-three, 1 
 eight of these lecture wholly or in part on Greek 
 and Roman art and inscriptions. At Oxford, Greek 
 and Roman inscriptions are seldom the subjects of 
 lectures, and when such lectures are given, the classes 
 are extremely small. At Harvard, the lectures on 
 
 1 It is difficult to give precise figures, on account of overlapping of 
 subjects.
 
 CRITICISM OF OXFORD COURSE IN HUMANITY 41 
 
 ancient art have long been attended by almost all 
 cultivated students, even by many who are working at 
 other subjects than the Classics. And worst of all, 
 while at the German universities the main strength of 
 the archaeological teaching lies in the seminar and 
 in personal contact with facts, the Oxford student who 
 has turned the pages of a text-book on the history of 
 ancient art, or spent a few evenings over Hicks' 
 Historical Inscriptions, has the audacity to write 
 about such matters with the confidence which ignorance 
 alone can give. 
 
 As I write, I receive the programme of the annual 
 meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America at 
 Princeton. The meeting lasts three days ; thirty- 
 seven papers are announced for reading. Nearly all 
 of these are by classical professors and instructors in 
 the American universities, and all but two or three 
 are concerned with points in classical archseology, 
 antiquities, or palaeography. Nothing could more 
 clearly exhibit the keen interest taken by classical 
 teachers in America in every new fact in regard to 
 Greece and Eome brought to light by modern excava- 
 tion and research. 
 
 Even between Oxford and Cambridge there is a 
 great difference in the reception given to archaeology. 
 Cambridge has, for the last quarter of a century, 
 treated it with justice, if not with cordiality. Of 
 the five branches of the second part of the Classical 
 Tripos, archaeology is one, standing on the same 
 footing as philosophy and history. And in the new 
 regulations for the first part of the Tripos, a good 
 position is assigned to it In this examination, leaving
 
 42 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 out of account the papers in translation and composition, 
 there are six papers besides. One is in grammar and 
 criticism, two are in Greek and Koman history and 
 antiquities, one is an essay paper. The remaining 
 two papers are assigned to the subjects : (1) philosophy, 
 (2) literature, (3) sculpture and architecture, it being 
 prescribed that an equal weight shall be assigned to 
 each of the three subjects, which are, of course, more 
 or less alternative. Thus in future no man will take 
 classical honours at Cambridge without having an 
 opportunity of giving a good share of his time to 
 archaeological study, and without the certainty that 
 proficiency in such study will stand him in good stead 
 in the examinations. 1 This is free trade ; and if 
 archaeology does not henceforth flourish at Cambridge, 
 the university regulations can bear no share of the 
 blame. Instead of this free trade, we have at 
 Oxford, as I have already observed, a rigid system 
 of protection. 
 
 But at Oxford the common cry is that archaeology 
 is " specialism." Every man of culture is bound, it 
 seems, to know in detail the Aristotelian logic ; but 
 it is specialism to know in outline the history of 
 ancient art, or the principles of Greek and Roman 
 religion. Everybody who pretends to education 
 should know what were the duties of the Roman 
 Praetors or what the changes in the Athenian 
 constitution, but no classically educated man need 
 
 1 I learn on very good authority that already there are large 
 classes in Greek sculpture, and a Cambridge lecturer, who is not an 
 archaeologist, informs me that some of the ablest men are showing 
 much interest in the subject.
 
 CRITICISM OF OXFORD COURSE IN HUMANITY 43 
 
 be ashamed to own that he knows nothing of Pheidias 
 and Praxiteles except their names, and that the 
 marvellous harvests of Olympia and Mycenae and 
 Delphi are outside his ken. One cannot criticize 
 such views, one can only call them preposterous. 
 
 Let me quote on this subject the words of one whose 
 authority as regards Greek literature will scarcely be 
 questioned 1 : " Even a limited knowledge of Greek art 
 is obviously of the greatest value to a student of 
 classical literature ; not merely, of course, as a key to 
 allusions, but often in a far deeper sense, as throwing 
 light on the spirit which animates both monuments 
 and books. I repeat, even a limited knowledge of 
 classical art has that use, a knowledge which stops far 
 short of the equipment requisite for a specialist in the 
 subject." 
 
 Similarly one of the most accomplished of the 
 philologists of Germany 2 has expressed his conviction 
 that archaeological instruction is a necessary part of 
 philological training. Among recently deceased sons 
 of Oxford who have been greatly interested in Greek 
 art, I would name Walter Pater, Lewis Nettleship, 
 and Cecil Rhodes. 
 
 Another opinion which would seem, to judge from 
 letters to the Oxford Magazine, to be prevalent, is 
 that Greek art is a subject to be lectured on by 
 artists only, and only to students of art. Those who 
 give voice to this absurdity do not seem to know the 
 difference between history and practice. Can no one 
 but a play- writer lecture on Greek dramas, and do 
 
 1 R. C. Jebb, Humanism in Education, p. 29. 
 
 2 v. "Wilamowitz Moellendorff, Reden und Vortrage, p. 106.
 
 44 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 such dramas only concern those who are going on the 
 stage ? Greek dramas and Greek temples are parallel 
 embodiments of the Greek spirit, and he who would 
 understand that spirit must know something of both. 
 It is not with a view to practice that such things are 
 studied, nor merely to produce aesthetic pleasure, 
 though pleasure will follow in its place. The study 
 is historic ; and Greek history, whether of politics or 
 colonization or trade or religion or literature or art, is 
 all one ; and every branch throws back light on the 
 other branches. But if we are to compare the import- 
 ance of different branches of history, it must be allowed 
 that the example of Greece is far more important to 
 us in literature, in art, and in philosophy than in 
 political organization. 
 
 It is thus abundantly clear that the view officially 
 taken at Oxford as to the greater importance of certain 
 parts of ancient history, which are included in the 
 course while others are excluded, is a thoroughly 
 superficial view, one adopted nowhere else, and one 
 quite unworthy of a great university. It is, in fact, a 
 survival from a time when such views were possible 
 into a time when they are impossible. 
 
 Probably the insufficient appreciation of the history 
 of Greek art at Oxford is not unconnected with the 
 general attitude of the English mind in the teaching 
 of the history of art. We have great painters, but 
 the English art training is very far below the level of 
 that of France and Germany. This great defect in 
 our national training ties deep, and is visible every- 
 where. Boys pass through our public schools without 
 receiving any systematic training of the eyes, or any
 
 CRITICISM OF OXFORD COURSE IN HUMANITY 45 
 
 notion that a work of art is something better than a 
 curio. They come to the university, as I know well, 
 usually quite unaccustomed either to observe with 
 accuracy or to describe with accuracy what they see. 
 But what an enormous diminution and impoverish- 
 ment this involves in the satisfaction of life. I speak 
 not only of the pleasure of enjoying what is beautiful, 
 a pleasure which in our days involves much pain, 
 from the ugliness of our surroundings. But I refer 
 specially to the faculty of discerning the meaning and 
 the historic bearing of the works of man. Every artistic 
 production of man is like a fossil which preserves from 
 one age to another the record of a stage of life. Every 
 touch of the chisel in a statue, every line in a paint- 
 ing, is what it is because of the interworking of a 
 hundred ideas and tendencies ; of every work it may 
 be said, as truly as of Tennyson's flower, that he who 
 knows it all in all knows what God and man are. The 
 life-giving and ennobling ideas which are embodied in 
 Greek civilization are to be traced even in the most 
 modest works of the Greek workman, the terra-cotta 
 figure made to be broken at the grave, the lady's 
 mirror, the coin destined for the fishmarket. But in 
 the higher plastic art of Hellas, as in the great dramas 
 and epics, these ideas appear in their simplest and 
 noblest guise. 
 
 Almost all English people of education spend part 
 of their time in Continental museums and picture 
 galleries, but that time is mostly wasted, because they 
 have no notion how to look, or what to look for. 
 When one sees them sitting in silent worship before 
 works such as the Apollo Belvedere or the Laocoon,
 
 46 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 one wonders what is passing in their minds. They 
 are often astonished to learn that in London, at their 
 own doors, are works of much higher and nobler art. 
 
 Oxford is not a place where practical artists can be 
 trained, or where more than the rudiments of the 
 history of art can be taught. As young surgeons 
 can be trained only in great hospitals, so art students 
 and critics can be fully trained only in great galleries 
 and museums. But there is no reason why we should 
 neglect recognized parts of classical and historic train- 
 ing, branches of knowledge everywhere allowed to be 
 an important part of culture, merely because they 
 involve some study of art. 
 
 Even if it be allowed that Oxford cannot hope in a 
 brief space of time to do much to correct or supple- 
 ment national deficiencies in this matter, at least she 
 is able to do the special duty which falls to a 
 university devoted to the Classics, by seeing that her 
 own classical culture is not dwarfed and warped by 
 an insufficient attention to that art which in the time 
 of the Renascence fascinated the attention of the 
 learned no less than did the works of Plato and of 
 Homer. A classical culture which omits from its 
 view one whole side, and in some ways the most 
 characteristic side, of Greek life, stands in any broad 
 view of historic development as a poor and half- 
 developed thing.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 RESEARCH AT OXFORD 
 
 BUT the worst side of the course of Litterae Humaniores 
 is, perhaps, neither its encouragement of superficiality 
 nor its onesidedness, but its exclusion of personal re- 
 search and contact with fact, its discouragement of all 
 advanced study. I am far from asserting that there 
 is any irreconcilable antagonism between something 
 like the present course and research. But taking 
 matters as they stand, it can scarcely be denied that 
 the atmosphere produced by the present type of 
 classical study is one in which it is difficult for a 
 spirit of research to live. 
 
 I. 
 
 It is precisely in the value attached to research 
 that the universities of the Continent and of America 
 differ most from Oxford and Cambridge. Of the 
 German respect for research it is unnecessary to speak : 
 it is by this that intellectual rank in Germany is 
 acquired : it is this which lies at the root of German 
 primacy in the world of science. The American 
 
 47
 
 48 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 universities follow Germany closely. A teacher would 
 not usually be elected to a professorship in even a 
 small American university who had not given some 
 guarantee that he knew how to use authorities and 
 search out facts. In each of the larger American 
 universities there are some two or three hundred men 
 pursuing what are called graduate courses, that is, 
 working on some definite subject with a view to 
 training and result. The system is so new that the 
 results are scarcely yet apparent. 
 
 I am not, of course, under the impression that it is 
 reserved for me, in this twentieth century, to call 
 attention to the deficiency of Oxford on the side of 
 historic science and of research. I am merely echoing 
 the voices of men who, in the last generation, were 
 the pride of the University. The most outspoken of 
 them all was a man who was never silent through 
 want of courage, Matthew Arnold, who, in the remark- 
 able concluding chapter of his Higher Schools and 
 Universities in Germany, told us home truths without 
 stint. And who could possibly have so good a 
 right to do so as a son of Thomas Arnold, a devoted 
 Oxonian if ever there was one, a man thoroughly con- 
 versant with the educational systems of Europe, and 
 the greatest of modern critics ? 
 
 " The want of the idea of science, of systematic 
 knowledge is, as I have said again and again, the 
 capital want, at this moment, of English education 
 and of English life ; it is the university, or the 
 superior school, which ought to foster this idea. The 
 university or the superior school ought to provide 
 facilities, after the general education is finished, for
 
 RESEARCH AT OXFORD 49 
 
 the young man to go on in the line where his special 
 aptitudes lead him, be it that of languages and 
 literature, of mathematics, of the natural sciences, of 
 the application of these sciences, or any other line, and 
 follow the studies of this line systematically under 
 first-rate teaching. Our great universities, Oxford and 
 Cambridge, do next to nothing towards this end. . . . 
 They are still, in fact, schools, and do not carry educa- 
 tion beyond the stage of general and school education." 
 
 The whole of this chapter in Matthew Arnold is a 
 wonderful example of prophecy, a prophecy based not 
 on second sight of the future, but on insight into the 
 present. In many respects the writer forecasted 
 coming events incorrectly, but he saw, with marvellous 
 insight, how affairs were drifting. If one turns from 
 the newspapers, the magazines, the politics and the 
 trade reports of to-day to this chapter written thirty 
 years ago, one realizes how the future lies hidden in 
 the present, and can be in a degree seen before it 
 comes to pass. 
 
 Matthew Arnold foresaw the rise of young uni- 
 versities in the great cities of England, as they are 
 rising to-day, and he foresaw the difficulties with 
 which they would have to contend. The future of 
 Oxford he did not clearly see; but he was half 
 disposed to think that it would remain a Jiaut lycie 
 for the education of the leisured classes, while the 
 training of the nation would pass to others. Certainly 
 that is one of the alternatives which lie before the 
 University ; but are we content to accept it ? 
 
 Another brilliant son of Oxford, Professor Henry 
 Nettleship, published twenty-five years ago a most 
 
 4
 
 So OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 earnest protest against the neglect of higher study at 
 Oxford. Mr Nettleship wrote not in the interests of 
 historic study so much as in those of higher criticism 
 and philology. He had been a master at Harrow, and 
 fully appreciated the merits of the English public 
 school. He wrote l : " The familiar moral and social 
 type of character developed by the English public 
 school is, in many respects, a high and manly type, 
 but it is on the whole unfavourable to the cultivation 
 of learning, and to sympathy with it. Such are the 
 conditions of life in our great schools as to make the 
 thorough pursuit of learning in any branch of know- 
 ledge extremely difficult; in general, indeed, im- 
 possible. 2 But in the universities, it may be supposed, 
 with larger opportunities and abundance of leisure, the 
 pursuit of learning is actively carried on. It cannot, 
 however, be said that the English universities im- 
 plant in their students either a love of research or a 
 knowledge of its methods. An average first-class man 
 at Oxford or Cambridge has read and mastered the 
 contents of a considerable number of classical books, 
 and (at least at Oxford) has acquired a tincture of 
 modern philosophical culture, and a ready power of 
 expressing himself on paper. But his knowledge has 
 been gained almost entirely in the form of results, and 
 with the directly practical aim of succeeding in the 
 examinations and assuring him a good start in life. 
 The attitude of the students and the teachers at the 
 
 1 Essays on the Endowment of Research. Essay 10. I abridge the 
 passage quoted, but alter no words. 
 
 2 The more recent testimony of Mr Benson to the same effect is 
 quoted above, at p. 10.
 
 RESEARCH AT OXFORD 51 
 
 universities towards the subjects of study has a 
 tendency to be professional rather than scientific. 
 Knowledge is worked up and dealt out for the pur- 
 poses of the market, not pursued and communicated 
 as a life-giving means of culture. 
 
 " Classical teachers have regarded their subject too 
 exclusively as a means of training, or of information, 
 or of enjoyment, forgetting that like any other branch 
 of knowledge it requires fresh and constant cultivation, 
 that the field of classical research is in no sense worked 
 out. When it is recognised that classical study is an 
 essential part of the growing body of knowledge, and 
 of paramount importance as the key to a great chapter 
 of human history, classical students will have a clear 
 aim and a hope of fruit, and the spirit of languor and 
 compromise will disappear." 
 
 It will occur to some readers, especially such as are 
 not resident at the great universities, that statements 
 written of them thirty years ago will not now apply. 
 The pity of it is that they apply so nearly to the 
 universities to-day. I am not speaking of physical 
 science, which is not my affair. Nor can I venture 
 to speak in regard to Cambridge, for though a 
 graduate of that university, I have not closely followed 
 the recent changes in the classical course, changes, 
 indeed, so recent that their results are not yet 
 apparent. But speaking of the study and teaching 
 of the Humanities at Oxford, I fear that there is much 
 in the papers of Matthew Arnold and Mr Nettleship 
 which even now holds good. Having resided and 
 taught at Oxford for the last fifteen years, I am 
 deliberately of opinion that during that time the
 
 52 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 current has been setting, not in the direction of higher 
 study and expansion, but in that of greater restriction 
 and distrust of knowledge. 
 
 As regards the encouragement of research in the 
 University, much has to be done, I do not say to place 
 Oxford on a level with foreign universities, but to bring 
 her even to a moderate level of efficiency. There are 
 two kinds of researchers, the researcher who also 
 teaches, and the researcher who merely investigates. 
 Both need to be produced and encouraged among us. 
 At the present time the system of the place tells 
 heavily against both. 
 
 At present college tutors, and even some of the 
 professors, are so completely taken up with pupils that 
 they have little time and energy for private work. And 
 even in the vacations many are either occupied with 
 examining work, or too tired to feel the spring and 
 energy without which good work is impossible. Now, 
 it is generally allowed that teaching becomes flat and 
 stale unless the teacher has time to read in his own 
 subject, to keep himself abreast of all that is being 
 done in it, and to produce good work of his own. It 
 is not merely that pupils will want to know the latest 
 views, but that without original work every teacher must 
 soon lose interest and heart, and cease to have any 
 enthusiasm himself or to be a source of enthusiasm to 
 others. Merely to follow the views of the latest German 
 writers is a poor thing ; one must join the hunt and try 
 oneself to capture the quarry. How little this is felt 
 among us is evidenced by the languishing condition 
 of the Oxford Philological Society, the only society of 
 classical research.
 
 RESEARCH AT OXFORD 53 
 
 We are far too much under the dominion of the 
 notion, in a great degree false, that the purpose of the 
 University is education only, whereas, as has often 
 been pointed out, alike the purposes of our founders 
 and the circumstances of the age should make us 
 regard study and research as quite as much our busi- 
 ness as teaching. Examinations which should be a 
 means have become to us an end, and many teachers 
 never look beyond them. It is not as if we sacrificed 
 learning to moral training : what moral training is 
 there in preparing a youth to " score " in examina- 
 tions ? It is that our intellectual ideal is too low, 
 that we have little real belief in knowledge, and only 
 try to thrust men into a niche, so that they may make 
 a living. 
 
 If all scientific workers are in a sense priests, the 
 monks of science are the researchers who do not teach, 
 but are solely occupied with investigation and dis- 
 covery. These fare very badly indeed with us. Some 
 of the most celebrated researchers in Oxford, on the 
 historic side, are men of private means, who choose to 
 devote their resources to this purpose, and who stand 
 almost outside the University system. Occasionally a 
 Fellowship is given to a man who undertakes to do a 
 piece of research. This is better than nothing, but yet an 
 imperfect way of promoting the object. The Fellowship 
 is always for a limited period, and the holder is perfectly 
 aware that if he works on usefully, but obscurely, he 
 will at the end of his tenure find himself face to face 
 with destitution. Under such circumstances, who could 
 fearlessly devote himself to research ? Naturally the 
 Fellow tries to do some piece of work which will show
 
 54 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 and be appreciated, and give him a good chance in 
 competing for teaching appointments. Of course it is 
 necessary to guard against the danger that a man 
 appointed to do work of research might be idle or give 
 most of his time to work of another kind, for the 
 subtle poison which emanates from the worship of 
 examinations is apt to corrupt even those who are 
 occupied with research. Doubtless it is necessary to 
 make sure in some way that a research Fellow honestly 
 devotes himself to his work. But this may best be 
 done by a better organization of research, not by the 
 crude methods at present in use. 
 
 Oxford has perhaps more funds which could be 
 devoted to the promotion of research than any English 
 university. The Founders who gave those funds did 
 not, of course, destine them for the encouragement 
 of research, because in their days the horizon was 
 different. But they did intend to encourage such 
 studies as in those days had vogue, which then held 
 the same place in the intellectual world which research 
 now holds. Certainly they did not mainly intend 
 their funds to support teaching. The Founder of 
 Queen's College expressly states that he endowed that 
 college with money in order that its tenants should 
 not be driven to make money by teaching. 1 The 
 great foundation of All Souls' seems made for the 
 endowment of research; but instead of being thus 
 used, its Fellowships are held by rising young 
 barristers, or even members of the Indian Civil 
 Service. Meantime Mr Carnegie founds in America 
 
 1 It is but fair to say that Queen's College has in recent years done 
 more for Classical Research than, perhaps, any college.
 
 RESEARCH AT OXFORD 55 
 
 an Institute which is to be solely devoted to research 
 and discovery, and endows it with vast resources. 
 Mr Carnegie doubtless is thinking primarily of physical 
 science and of industry ; but it would be well if we 
 had the same zeal for knowledge combined with a 
 wider conception of the realm of knowledge. 
 
 As I have already said, I do not propose to speak 
 of the part taken by Oxford in physical science and 
 research. But it is in our way to consider what 
 Oxford is doing for the promotion of such knowledge 
 as is her traditional province. Some brilliant pieces 
 of historic research have been done by Oxford men. 
 The names of Mr Arthur Evans and Mr Grenfell, in 
 particular, are familiar in all the universities and 
 academies of learning in Europe. But if it be in- 
 quired what part of the funds required for the researches 
 of these scholars is provided by the University, the 
 answer is anything but satisfactory. Some of our 
 discoverers strain their private means ; some receive 
 subsidies from the other side of the Atlantic, and the 
 shame of this last fact does not seem to burn us 
 seriously. A very few Fellowships have been bestowed 
 on classical researchers, and the University has paid a 
 few subscriptions to such institutions as the Schools 
 of Athens and Kome, or to excavation funds. It has 
 not attempted to organize research. 
 
 Statutes have indeed been passed for the conferment 
 of new degrees B.Litt. and B.Sc. on those who have 
 done advanced work in the University. A few students 
 from inside and outside have taken those degrees, but 
 such students have to prepare themselves as best they 
 can ; they find here neither the seminar nor such
 
 56 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 advanced teaching as they require. Cases have 
 come within my knowledge in which Americans 
 intending to take a graduate course have come to 
 Oxford, and, finding no such help and superinten- 
 dence as they required, have reluctantly gone on to 
 Germany. 
 
 The Craven Foundation exists in order to encourage 
 Oxford men to pursue higher study after their degrees. 
 The difficulty of satisfactorily filling up these Fellow- 
 ships has decidedly increased, and sometimes satis- 
 factory candidates are not forthcoming. The same 
 thing is true of the studentships held at the School 
 of Athens. The Oxford men who do go abroad on 
 these foundations are seldom in a condition duly to 
 profit by their opportunities. Having passed the final 
 examination at Oxford, they think themselves above 
 going to the lectures of specialists or doing the 
 drudgery with which all real investigation must begin. 
 And never having been trained in the methods of 
 research, they do not know how to set about their 
 work. The German and French students, armed with 
 all modern appliances, filling their note-books with 
 systematic knowledge, always on the alert to find 
 what is new or unpublished, are a marvel to them. 
 A few, who have an inborn talent for research, 
 triumph in spite of all obstacles, make their own 
 methods, and do admirable work. But the system, 
 or want of system, is very wasteful. The best men 
 waste years in learning abroad the methods they 
 might very well have learned at home, and in follow- 
 ing blind alleys against which they had never been 
 warned.
 
 RESEARCH AT OXFORD 57 
 
 In fact, in relation to research Oxford stands where 
 the universities of France and America stood thirty 
 years ago. They have changed ; we remain un- 
 changed: 
 
 II. 
 
 As regards the value of historic research work, 
 Oxford teachers seem sometimes to be the victims of 
 a curious misapprehension. They cite this or that 
 German or American monograph which is occupied 
 with some minute point of criticism or archaeology, 
 the details of a battle, the origin of a custom, the 
 authorship of a statue, and they ask in triumph what 
 value attaches to such minutiae. How can they 
 matter to us in the twentieth century ? If these 
 objectors carried out this view consistently, they 
 would range themselves on the side of the ordinary 
 Philistine who sees no good in learning dead languages, 
 or on the side of the Arab chief who asked Layard 
 what was the use of inquiring about the dirt which 
 the infidels ate before the coming of the true faith. 
 But, of course, they are not consistent. Teachers on 
 the classical side in our old universities think that 
 to discover the precise usage of words by Greek and 
 Latin writers is a matter worthy of the greatest pains, 
 for exact scholarship has prestige. And Oxford 
 scholars except certain cases, as it were, in the desert 
 of ancient history as interesting to all men of culture. 
 The philosophic theories of Plato and Aristotle, the 
 organization of the Roman government, and a few 
 other such subjects, sometimes almost fortuitously 
 selected, are held to be things worthy of scholarly
 
 $8 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 research ; but the rest of ancient historic lore is 
 treated like quartz which contains too few grains of 
 gold to the ton to be worth crushing. 
 
 All this is scarcely defensible. The root of it is 
 a notion that the value of classical research lies in the 
 facts established, whereas it lies really in the research 
 itself. If we turn to the analogies of natural science, 
 this will become quite clear. The biological researcher 
 will give years of his life to the investigation of some 
 detail of animal organization, such as the breathing 
 apparatus of crabs or the sucking apparatus of 
 fleas. The value of his results is not direct. The 
 minute study of crabs probably does not help fishermen 
 to catch them, nor does the study of the organs of 
 fleas aid us in our warfare with those active enemies 
 of mankind. But it is recognized that he who in 
 any direction pushes back in the least degree the 
 walls of ignorance does a service to the cause of 
 science. Every fact, however humble, is sacred. And 
 it is also recognized that the close study of some 
 minute corner of the field of biology is a necessary 
 training of the powers of any man who aspires to be 
 a biologist. Only thus can he acquire a habit of 
 patient attention to detail, an almost religious venera- 
 tion for the smallest particle of actual fact, an entire 
 reliance on the consistency of natural law in the 
 universe. Only thus does he cease to be a dilettante 
 and becomes a master. 
 
 The case is really precisely the same in historic 
 investigations. These also are not usually made 
 fruitful by the worth of the results for any im- 
 mediate or practical purpose. But history as much
 
 RESEARCH AT OXFORD 59 
 
 as biology is a branch of science, and any truth, 
 however minute, is a brick in the magnificent palace 
 of history. Nor can anyone tell which facts will be 
 in the long run most serviceable in the construction 
 of that palace. I venture to speak from thirty years' 
 experience in this matter. Eepeatedly I have seen 
 some fact revealed by inscription or papyrus, seemingly 
 of little value, suddenly sought out and erected by 
 great scholars into a corner-stone of knowledge. I 
 have seen wide-spreading theories collapsp before the 
 touch of a fragment of terra- cotta or a coin. I have 
 seen a number of apparently unconnected observations 
 suddenly connected into a solid edifice by a coping- 
 stone of probable theory. Those who live among the 
 results of research soon begin to feel that every 
 clearly-established fact has a value, apart from its 
 immediate bearings. 
 
 Knowledge for the sake of knowledge may sound 
 as dubious and as unmoral a phrase as art for art's 
 sake. In fact, in the acquisition of knowledge as much 
 as in the production of works of art, ideal purpose is 
 necessary to raise the worker to a higher level, and 
 to give dignity to his life. Knowledge in itself will 
 no more necessarily make a man than will skill in 
 painting, or fine scholarship, or delicate taste. But 
 I venture to say that even from the ethical point of 
 view research has high claims on the universities. 
 As a mental and moral tonic nothing can be more 
 effective than the search for fact : the more deeply 
 the fact is hidden, the longer and severer the search, 
 the more stimulating it grows. And the qualities 
 which it inculcates patience, distrust of mere theories,
 
 60 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 delight in what will bear the test are of great value 
 in life. By degrees, as one learns how to proceed, one 
 finds keys which will unlock door after door, until the 
 whole world of history ceases to be an irregular and 
 arbitrary collection of events, and becomes a scene of 
 law and order, though not of law so fixed and definite 
 as that in the world of nature. 
 
 It may be said that I am laying upon Oxford blame 
 which more properly attaches to the whole country. 
 Eesearch leads to no openings in life, and parents and 
 guardians are an even more fatal barrier than is the 
 college tutor in the way of those who would fain 
 devote themselves to it. But this general neglect of 
 higher study is in part the result of the attitude taken 
 towards it at Oxford and Cambridge. The influence 
 of the newer and smaller universities is already be- 
 ginning to tell in the other direction. The Scotch 
 universities still sometimes appoint to their classical 
 professorships young men fresh from the final schools 
 and entirely destitute of any experience or understand- 
 ing of higher study. 1 But at the Welsh colleges and 
 elsewhere, it has already become customary to give the 
 preference to scholars who have done first-hand work. 
 In this direction there lies some hope. But at present 
 these rising universities are so cramped for funds, and 
 so straitened by the demand of their students for 
 practical bread-and-butter teaching, that they are 
 powerless to give effect to their respect for knowledge. 
 
 1 An extreme instance occurred a few years ago, when a young Oxford 
 man was elected to a Scotch Professorship of Greek, and took the 
 occasion of his inaugural address to his students, not to apologize for 
 his ignorance of modern historic and archaeologic research, which at his 
 age might well be excused, but to boast of it.
 
 RESEARCH AT OXFORD 61 
 
 The ball is still at the feet of Oxford, but she shows 
 little desire to set it going. 
 
 Events now seem to indicate that the Ehodes 
 students who come to Oxford from America will be 
 in large proportion advanced students who intend to 
 follow up some line of study or research. It seems to 
 be generally agreed, on both sides of the Atlantic, that 
 whatever may be the precise expressions used in Mr 
 Ehodes' will, his real purpose will be better served 
 by sending to Oxford from America men of older 
 standing than by sending youths fresh from school, 
 who would do little good to Oxford, and spoil their 
 own careers at home. And fortunately Mr Ehodes 
 has not fixed any limit of age. 
 
 It seems really not impossible that, if we go on 
 unmoved in our isolation, in a few years we may see 
 at Oxford a number of foreign advanced students and 
 researchers exploiting the wealth of the Bodleian 
 Library, contributing to all the learned journals, using 
 the apparatus of research, while the English students 
 go stolidly on their way, regarding such matters as 
 suitable to those who have had the misfortune to be 
 born abroad, but of no account to the real Oxford 
 man. Is this a future to which we can look forward 
 with equanimity ? Truly it is time to consider our 
 ways.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 DEFENCE OF THE CLASSICS 
 
 THE defects of which I have spoken as marking our 
 present course in Litterse Humaniores are not all of 
 them fundamental. Some at least of them may be 
 removed, as I hope presently to show, without any 
 startling or profound changes in the course. But 
 before I proceed to submit to my colleagues such 
 suggestions in the direction of reform as I am able to 
 make, I must for a time turn to a more general con- 
 sideration of the relation held by classical studies to 
 university education. We cannot in reason expect to 
 set forth a really good course in Litters Humaniores 
 until we have decided what should be the ideal at 
 which such a course should aim. There is the further 
 question whether any course in the subject is a sound 
 base for modern education. 
 
 I propose, then, first to attempt to justify the 
 claim of the Classics to a foremost place even in the 
 most modern and progressive system of education ; and 
 next to consider what kind of training in Litterse 
 Humaniores will best suit modern conditions, as I 
 understand them. 
 
 62
 
 DEFENCE OF THE CLASSICS 63 
 
 I. 
 
 The present is emphatically a time when those who 
 believe in a classical education, who think that the 
 study of antiquity is the best preparation for the 
 life of the present, should put their house in order. 
 At intervals, during the last half century, a strong 
 demand has arisen in Germany that education, when 
 literary and humanistic rather than concerned with 
 nature, should be based on modern languages and 
 modern literature, rather than on those of Greece and 
 Eome. The attack upon the classical foundation of 
 education has been repulsed over and over again, but 
 the assault is continually repeated. One of the 
 greatest authorities on German education, Professor 
 Paulsen of Berlin, is using all his weight for the 
 purpose of substituting a more exact study of German, 
 and of modern civilization for a study of the Greek 
 and Eoman languages and literature. In France the 
 Minister of Education, whose authority over schools 
 and universities is quite despotic, is moving in the 
 direction of the limitation of classical work in them, 
 and the substitution of modern literature and history. 
 From friends in other countries of Europe, I learn 
 that the same wave of tendency is spreading there 
 also. It is due, not so much to the changed con- 
 victions of the best authorities, as to a popular move- 
 ment, of parents against the " dead " and in favour of 
 the living languages. Nothing can be more certain 
 than that it is not by mere prestige or tradition that 
 classics can hold their old place in the education of 
 the twentieth century. Like everything in our days,
 
 64 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 they will be tried by the test of fruits, by the impera- 
 tive demand of national and individual efficiency. 
 
 The demand for efficiency is an undeniably good 
 demand ; it is the first demand of nature as well as of 
 society. But the demand for efficiency in education 
 may easily be perverted. The most obvious form of 
 efficiency is manufacturing and commercial success ; 
 and short-sighted men, dazzled by this kind of success, 
 demand that education shall be conducted with im- 
 mediate reference to it. Thus they put " living " 
 languages in the foreground, and instal technical in- 
 struction, which helps a man in the actual work of 
 manufacture and commerce, in the first place, and 
 claim that it shall be substituted for more general 
 training, and especially for such " useless " subjects as 
 history and the classical languages. There are many 
 " practical and experienced " men in our great cities 
 who take this view. Yet if ever a view was utterly 
 refuted by practice and experience, it is this. 
 
 If anything has been proved in the history of edu- 
 cation during the last half century, it is that mere 
 technical instruction in detail does not produce the 
 highest efficiency. It is here that many so-called 
 practical men are mistaken. The practical is often 
 confused with the obvious, and those who see only the 
 obvious see a very little way. Students and workers 
 who merely receive practical instruction in technical 
 schools learn the routine of a trade, the current ways 
 of meeting difficulties. But they learn unintelligeutly; 
 their minds are not exercised and trained, and so any 
 new discovery of importance is likely altogether to 
 frustrate them. It is necessary to learn, not only how
 
 DEFENCE OF THE CLASSICS 65 
 
 machinery works, but the principles involved in it, 
 the great laws of mathematics, of mechanics, and 
 chemistry. One must enter to some degree into the 
 secrets of nature, and see how nature works, before 
 one can hope to use natural forces working by natural 
 law for the purposes of material civilization. 
 
 Thus before a man can plan a steamship, or build a 
 bridge, or even invent a new soap, he must commonly 
 have a broad and deep education in the sciences of 
 nature from mathematics upwards. And we may go 
 further still and say that for full efficiency the most 
 practical man requires a thorough drilling in the use 
 of words, some acquaintance with literature and 
 history, and especially some systematic knowledge of 
 mankind, of men as individuals and of men in society. 
 And above all, he needs to be inspired with a pure 
 love of knowledge for its own sake. Science is a 
 fastidious mistress, and seldom reveals her secrets to 
 those who only desire to make profit of them : her 
 choicest favours she reserves for those who love her 
 only for her own sake, and without thought of 
 reward. 
 
 The case is much the same in regard to modern 
 languages. For immediate commercial purposes they 
 are more obviously useful than Latin and Greek. 
 And it may at once be confessed that the learning 
 of French and German has been grossly and disgrace- 
 fully neglected in English schools. It is simply 
 shocking to find, as one constantly does find, clever 
 youths who can barely puzzle out a page of French, 
 and do not know a word of German. But still, the 
 great question is whether modern languages can 
 
 5
 
 66 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 supply as good a basis for education as the ancient, 
 whether they afford an equally good and " athletic " 
 training to the mind. 
 
 The question of the value of a classical basis in 
 education falls into two parts : first as regards school 
 or more elementary education, second as regards the 
 more advanced education which ought at least to be 
 given at the universities. At schools the great 
 advantage of a classical basis is that it trains boys 
 in mental precision and accuracy in a way in which 
 no other study can train them. It is only a dead 
 language, which cannot be picked up in conversation, 
 but must be learned grammatically and by rule, which 
 gives real training in the use of words to express 
 thought and feeling. It is no doubt important also 
 to lead boys beyond words to things, to train them in 
 observation and enjoyment of nature and art. But it 
 seems to be proved by experience that the study of 
 natural science combined with the teaching of modern 
 languages does not develop the faculties so satisfactorily 
 as a classical training. 
 
 This question has been worked out thoroughly in 
 Germany, and, on the whole, the Classics have held 
 their ground well. For some decades past there has 
 been a competition between the Gymnasium in which 
 the Classics are the basis of education, and the 
 Kealschule, in which modern languages and elemen- 
 tary science are substituted for them. In 1880 the 
 Prussian Ministry of Instruction referred to the 
 boards of professors of the universities the question 
 whether they found the pupils from the Gymnasia or 
 those from the Realschulen best equipped for the
 
 DEFENCE OF THE CLASSICS 67 
 
 university courses in various branches of knowledge. 
 The tale has often been told, but it may be well here 
 to tell again a small part of it. 
 
 In reply to the enquiries of the Minister, the 
 Philosophical Faculty of the University of Berlin, 
 consisting of a body of professors of Classics, History, 
 Natural Science, and all branches of Wissenschaft, a 
 body without superior in the world for eminence and 
 distinction, reported, and reported unanimously, that 
 " the preparatory education which is acquired in the 
 Eealschulen of the first rank is, taken altogether, 
 inferior to that guaranteed by the diploma of a 
 gymnasium." * 
 
 The faculty stated as the advantages of a classical 
 foundation for education the following : 
 
 1. In some branches of study (such as natural 
 
 history) ignorance of Latin and Greek is a 
 direct impediment. 
 
 2. The ideality of the scientific sense is best 
 
 cultivated by studies not directly in relation 
 with daily life. 
 
 3. Thus is also promoted an interest in knowledge 
 
 for its own sake. 
 
 4. In classical study the power of thinking receives 
 
 a varied and general exercise. 
 
 5. Such study has historic value, as illustrating the 
 
 foundations of modern life and thought. 
 
 Dr Hofmann, professor of chemistry, in an address 
 given at the time, added that, " All efforts to find a 
 
 1 See Conrad, The German Universities for the last Fifty Fears (trans- 
 lated), Appendix.
 
 68 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 substitute for the classical languages, whether in 
 mathematics, in modern languages, or in the natura. 
 sciences, have hitherto proved unsuccessful." 
 
 In some branches of science, the Berlin professors 
 say, the youths coming from the Kealschulen have a 
 better start, because they have had some previous 
 practice in them, and know many useful facts. But 
 before long the youths from the Gymnasia overtake 
 them, win the prizes, and by the end of their course 
 have not only a better and wider general culture, but 
 even a better mastery of the particular science they 
 have been studying. 
 
 After this, the setting forth of other evidence seems 
 quite unnecessary. Of course the contest between the 
 Classics and their substitutes in education still goes 
 on vigorously in Germany. But as yet the position of 
 the Classics in what is generally allowed to be the most 
 efficient education in the world is well maintained. 
 Thus those many authorities who are calling on us to 
 make our education more practically efficient, and are 
 holding up before us the competition of Germany, have 
 no right whatever to ask us to give up the classical 
 foundation of education. 
 
 In America also, in a realm of boundless competi- 
 tion, and immense trust in what is new, the Classics 
 thoroughly hold their own in the school and under- 
 graduate courses. When, a few years ago, I visited 
 some of the inland universities of America, I was fully 
 prepared to find classical study a struggling cause. 
 How should societies cut off from tradition, and 
 mainly bent on training men for success in the 
 struggle with nature and for commercial life, retain
 
 DEFENCE OF THE CLASSICS 69 
 
 the cult of the dead languages which in Europe is a 
 continuous tradition ? But these universities not 
 only retain their grip of the Classics ; but classical 
 studies even gain ground, and inspire an enthusiasm 
 greater than that inspired by most other branches of 
 knowledge. 
 
 I believe that at Oxford and Cambridge also there 
 is among teachers a general belief that classically- 
 trained men will usually prove superior to those trained 
 in other schools, such as those of physical science and 
 modern history, in almost all the struggles where men 
 of different training compete together, even in cases in 
 which the men trained in other courses than the 
 classical seem to have a better start. Of course the 
 competition is not so fairly conducted, nor its results 
 so trustworthy as in America, since we are far more 
 under the sway of tradition. All our great schools 
 encourage the Classics, and the great majority of the 
 abler boys are urged towards this particular kind of 
 training by almost irresistible forces of custom and 
 influence. But if the superiority of the results of 
 classical training is fact, and not merely opinion, then 
 the matter would seem to be decided by the only test 
 from which there is no appeal, the test of fruits. At 
 any rate it would be folly to abandon the classical basis 
 of education until some effective substitute for it is 
 really found. 
 
 There is another consideration which must not be 
 omitted. The advocates of a modern basis to educa- 
 tion in Germany wish to make German literature the 
 main subject of study ; those who in France take a 
 similar line would accept French literature as the
 
 70 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 basal study. The countrymen of Shakespeare and 
 Milton would naturally feel that to an English youth 
 English literature is most important. In modern 
 Europe, since the patriotism of the nations has pulled 
 down the French language from the pinnacle which it 
 occupied in the eighteenth century, there is no one 
 language and no one literature which would be received 
 throughout Europe as a common possession. Thus we 
 are threatened with a terrible danger, that each nation 
 will, on patriotic grounds, not merely promote with all 
 its might the use of its own language, but even try to 
 produce a civilization of its own, not resting, like all 
 existing civilization, on a more or less Hellenic basis, 
 but based on national history and full of the feeling of 
 race. 
 
 This possibility, which is anything but remote, is a 
 serious matter for consideration. Every scholar and 
 savant must sometimes regret that Latin is no longer 
 the language in which works which appeal to the 
 highly educated are written, and that as a result many 
 books of very great value are buried alive because 
 written in Danish or Magyar or Bohemian, or some 
 other obscure tongue. But if it is impossible to 
 re-introduce Latin as a language common to the 
 learned of all nations, we can at least try to guard 
 against the serious evil of dividing up, on prin- 
 ciples of race and language, the common basis of 
 European education. This would be undoing the 
 work of the Christian Church in the Middle Ages, 
 and taking a long step in the direction of a new 
 barbarism, which would defend itself on the ground 
 of patriotism.
 
 DEFENCE OF THE CLASSICS 71 
 
 II. 
 
 So far I have been occupied with the defence of 
 the classical basis of education in our schools, and 
 among younger students in our universities. But 
 this defence must remain a very poor one unless we 
 can justify classical study not only as a basis of 
 general education, but also as in itself one of the 
 highest and most important kinds of education. If 
 the Classics are to drop away from the student, like 
 his tail from the tadpole, as soon as full maturity has 
 come, then we cannot expect long to retain them even 
 in our schools. 
 
 The strong hold which the Classics still retain upon 
 education, in England, on the Continent, in America, 
 is partly based upon grounds which will scarcely 
 resist a severe criticism. In a large degree it is 
 matter of tradition, of the inertia which makes 
 teachers anxious to bring up pupils in the way in 
 which they themselves were educated. Even the 
 class-instinct, the notion that a gentleman ought to 
 know or to have known something of Latin and 
 Greek, may have some force. And besides this, 
 there is the conviction of the majority of secondary 
 teachers that the study of the Classics pays, that it 
 makes the mind alert and supple, ready to deal with 
 books and men, able to express itself in words with 
 ease and with elegance. 
 
 But tradition in so unsettled an age is but a reed 
 to lean on. And the test of fruits, though the most 
 legitimate of all tests, needs to be fortified by some 
 armour of reason and theory. If it is not made
 
 72 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 explicable to the intelligence, its mere working in 
 practice is a precarious thing ; rationalism is likely to 
 drive it out of field after field. It is therefore most 
 desirable, if possible, to find some justification of 
 classical training in theory as well as in practice. 
 And in order to find it, we must go deeper into the 
 whole question of education, and even the question 
 of intellectual tendency in the modern world. 
 
 When, at the time of the Eenascence, Greek letters 
 and Greek art were re-discovered, it seemed to the 
 cultivated men of the time as if Europe were passing 
 out of darkness into light, casting aside the barbarism 
 and superstition of the dark ages, and basking in a 
 new day of truth and of beauty. That, under the 
 circumstances, the educated should blacken the shadows 
 and heighten the lights is most natural. It seemed 
 to them that the Ancients were superior in all respects 
 to the Moderns, and that nothing was to be done but 
 to follow the footsteps of the great writers and the 
 great artists of antiquity, whithersoever they might 
 lead. Even the most precious results of the religious 
 experience of ages of Christianity were in danger of 
 being thrown aside as worthless, and even Popes were 
 anxious to be thought of as followers of the Greeks 
 rather than as followers of Christ. 
 
 If we allow for the natural exaggerations and the 
 fresh enthusiasms of the time, we must confess that 
 in general the great scholars of the Kenascence were 
 fully justified in their anticipations. From their time 
 to ours successive generations have found in the 
 Classics ever new revelations of thought and beauty. 
 If one thinks of the greatest names during the last
 
 DEFENCE OF THE CLASSICS 73 
 
 four centuries, and then tries to imagine what they 
 would have been without the light reflected from 
 Hellas, one begins to realize how intensely Hellenic 
 is the whole of the brighter side of modern civilization. 
 
 It was not until the second half of the nineteenth 
 century that the predominance of the Classics in 
 education was seriously threatened. Of the attack 
 upon it from the partizans of the immediately ex- 
 pedient, I have already spoken. But we have now 
 to consider a far more serious questioning of the 
 classical tradition which comes from those who are 
 not merely abreast of all the knowledge of the age, 
 but even are looking earnestly into the future, and 
 trying to observe the obscure tendencies of modern 
 life and thought. 
 
 The main prop upon which the new attack is 
 based is the belief that in the education of the 
 past, rhetorical and metaphysical tendencies have too 
 much prevailed, and that the education of the future 
 must be more and more scientific, scientific not 
 merely in the sense of being more methodical and 
 orderly, but in the sense of lying closer to fact and 
 to reality. 
 
 A more superficial school would on such grounds 
 make a training in the knowledge of nature the basis 
 of modern education. A less superficial school under- 
 stands that man cannot, without deliberate suicide, 
 put the study of his own nature and his own works 
 on a lower level than that of mere surrounding things, 
 but proposes to introduce into these human studies 
 more rigid methods, imitated in some degree from 
 those in use in the natural sciences.
 
 74 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 And since the great difference between ancient and 
 modern civilization lies before all things in the greater 
 value attached in modern times to fact as opposed to 
 theory, and to experience as opposed to fancy, it is 
 very natural that advanced educational thinkers should 
 look with some distrust on the study of the Classics. 
 They see that study to be largely dominated by fancy 
 and by rhetoric, and they are less ready to see that it 
 is possible to alter its character. 
 
 This objection to the modern study of Greek has 
 been formulated and replied to by one of the most 
 brilliant of modern scholars, Professor von Wilamowitz 
 Moellendorff. 1 " Greek is not merely a language, in 
 which certain Heroes in the far beautiful Spring of the 
 world sang and spoke with inimitable expression. 
 Looked at thus, old Hellas itself becomes a mere fairy- 
 land, the citadel of Athens almost as much as the island 
 of the Phaeacians, and Greek history becomes an epic, 
 the Persian wars as well as that of Ilion. All this is 
 an artificial, a false light : our sons have a right to hear 
 the truth. In the end, truth must be worth more than 
 any beautiful illusion, for illusion is the work of men, 
 truth is of God." 
 
 But the writer of these words thinks that if the 
 method of the study of the Classics be altered, they 
 may well retain their place in education. Without 
 allowing all the views of this great scholar, I am quite 
 ready to go with him some distance. I hold, as he 
 does, that unless some allowance is made for the 
 modern spirit, unless the study of antiquity is pursued 
 in a more historic spirit, and directed more to things 
 
 1 Oriechisches Lesebuch, Preface, p. iv.
 
 DEFENCE OF THE CLASSICS 75 
 
 and less to words, it must necessarily fade away by 
 degrees. 
 
 In order more fully to explain this view, and to 
 show on what it rests, it is necessary that I should 
 consider in some detail, though at small length in com- 
 parison with its importance, the subject of the human 
 sciences generally, and the changes in the current view 
 of them which are coming over the modern world.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 HUMAN SCIENCE 
 
 THE course in Humanity at Oxford needs not only 
 to be widened and deepened, but it also, as I think, 
 requires to be penetrated by a new spirit. Eeal 
 progress can only take place when an ideal is accepted, 
 either consciously or unconsciously, as a point to be 
 approached by degrees. 
 
 When a writer thinks himself called upon to assert 
 ideals, he must cast behind him the fear of criticism 
 and the beaten paths of caution. I shall therefore 
 venture, in the present section, to express my views 
 with considerable freedom, appealing as a searcher and 
 a teacher to searchers and teachers. Where my views 
 are mistaken or exaggerated, no doubt colleagues will 
 be willing to set me right. When I come to speak 
 of practical measures I shall return to more guarded 
 views, and I am not without hope that some who 
 only go part of the way with me in the search for a 
 goal, may yet be willing to approve my suggestions 
 as to the path which lies immediately before us.
 
 HUMAN SCIENCE 77 
 
 It has scarcely yet dawned on the workers of 
 humanism in England that their studies are part of a 
 great whole ; that they also need to be organized ; 
 that to them also research and progress is as the 
 breath of life. Humanistic teachers, like the Cyclopes 
 of Homer, " dwell in hollow caves on the crests of the 
 high hills, and each one utters the law to his children 
 and his wives, and they reck not one of another." 
 We have British Association meetings, archaeological 
 congresses, educational congresses, congresses of all 
 sorts. But we never have a congress of students of 
 the Humanities, met together to consider how research 
 in the subjects to which they are devoted may be 
 developed and organized. This applies in some degree 
 to all Europe and America, but especially to our own 
 country. 
 
 Matthew Arnold wrote in 1868 l : "The idea of 
 science and systematic knowledge is wanting to our 
 whole instruction alike, and not only to that of our 
 business class. While this idea is getting more and 
 more power upon the Continent, we in England, having 
 done marvels by the rule of thumb, are still inclined 
 to disbelieve in the paramount importance, in whatever 
 department, of any other." " In nothing do England 
 and the Continent at the present time more strikingly 
 differ than in the prominence which is now given to 
 the idea of science there, and the neglect in which 
 this idea still lies here, a neglect so great that we 
 hardly even know the use of the word science in the 
 1 Schools and Universities of the Continent.
 
 78 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 strict sense, and only employ it in a secondary and 
 incorrect sense." 
 
 Thirty years have passed since the Apostle of 
 Culture, fresh from his study of German schools and 
 universities, wrote these words. But it must be 
 confessed that things with us have not greatly changed. 
 We still use the word science in a secondary and 
 incorrect sense as applying only to the world of nature, 
 not to that of humanity. We still fail to realize 
 that all branches of knowledge are branches of 
 a single tree, fed by the same soil and stretching 
 upwards towards the same sky. We still fail to 
 recognize that man in society and man in history 
 may be the object of researches as methodical, as 
 far-reaching, and as fruitful as are those in the field 
 of chemistry or of biology, while their bearing upon 
 practical life must be in the long run far more close 
 and extensive. 
 
 Yet in the greatest of our scientific institutions, the 
 unity of all knowledge and its natural division into 
 two great branches are fully recognised. The British 
 Museum has to do with knowledge as a whole. But 
 the great collections which illustrate and aid the 
 knowledge of nature are concentrated in the Kensing- 
 ton branch of the museum, while the collections which 
 belong to history, to anthropology, art, and literature, 
 remain at Bloomsbury. In dividing the accumulated 
 treasures of the nation between the two branches there 
 was scarcely any difficulty, and the arrangement and 
 classification of those treasures is, or should be, as 
 methodic and scientific in the one place as in the 
 other. Quite recently a charter has been granted to
 
 HUMAN SCIENCE 79 
 
 an Academy which is intended to stand in the same 
 relation to the sciences which have man, which have 
 human history and works, for their subject, as the 
 Royal Society stands in to the physical and biologic 
 sciences. In all the great academies of the Continent 
 a human section has long existed beside the section 
 of natural science, and England has thus somewhat 
 tardily followed the example. 
 
 It may be well to set forth in few words what I 
 mean by human science. It includes three main 
 branches, the psychologic, the sociologic, and the 
 historic. Under the first head comes the methodic 
 study of man as an individual, his body, his mind, and 
 his spirit. Under the second head comes the obser- 
 vational study of man in society in all his aspects and 
 activities. Under the third head comes the study of 
 the past as interpreted by observation of the present, 
 and as derived from all records, monumental, tradi- 
 tional, written and printed. At the basis of history 
 come anthropology and prehistoric archaeology ; next 
 above these, the history of the great peoples of the East, 
 Babylonians, Assyrians, Indians, Chinese. Next comes 
 the classic world in its three great divisions, Greek, 
 Jewish, and Eoman; and so we pass to the Middle 
 Ages, the Eenascence, and modern Europe. The idea 
 which binds together all this mass of knowledge is the 
 idea of evolution. It is ultimately one ; and no part 
 of it ought to be ignored by a great university, though 
 of course some parts will attract far more attention, 
 and be more useful to the ordinary student, than 
 others. 
 
 The blame for the non-recognition among us of the
 
 8o OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 essentially scientific character of the study of man 
 must be divided. Our great philologists, archaeologists, 
 and historians have not chosen to insist on the fact 
 that their work, so far as it has been ordered and 
 methodical, is scientific. The unfortunate notion 
 which has prevailed that science is the enemy of 
 religion and of idealism may have made them by no 
 means anxious to be called by its name. And the 
 physicists and chemists and biologists have been led by 
 the superior exactness of their methods and the definite- 
 ness of their results to refuse the name scientific to 
 historic studies, which is much as if the photographer 
 were to assert that the painter is not an artist because 
 he produces a less precise copy of nature than himself. 
 Anthropology, which stands in the same relation to 
 historic studies as does mathematics to physical studies, 
 has struggled hard to separate itself from its natural 
 congeners and to ally itself with biology and kindred 
 studies ; and the British Association has encouraged 
 these illogical aspirations. 
 
 But this confusion of thought has not, of course, 
 been universal. Matthew Arnold, as we have seen, 
 protested against it. And Huxley, with his noble 
 perspicacity, wrote l : " The inquiry into the truth or 
 falsehood of a matter of history is just as much a 
 question of pure science as the inquiry into the truth 
 or falsehood of a matter of geology, and the value of 
 evidence in the two cases must be tested in the same 
 way." This, however, is going somewhat too far. No 
 human being can look on the facts of history in the 
 perfectly calm and unemotional manner in which the 
 
 1 Life and Letters, ii. p. 212.
 
 HUMAN SCIENCE 81 
 
 geologist can examine strata and rocks. Freedom from 
 bias, impartiality, is the standard which the historian 
 strives to reach so far as he can ; but he cannot attain 
 to it by a mere volition ; it has to be approached through 
 infinite pains and most careful self-culture. If, how- 
 ever, one omits in Huxley's statement the word pure 
 as applied to science, it will be roughly correct. The 
 canons of evidence are fundamentally the same in 
 biology, in chemistry, in history, in the law courts; 
 only in biology one can examine organs and tissues 
 again and again, in chemistry one can make fresh 
 combinations by way of experiment, whereas when one 
 deals with human beings one has to make allowances, 
 to eliminate bias, to discount authorities, and so one 
 can seldom arrive at a result which is more than 
 probable. History is not pure science, it is not exact 
 science, but it is science, nevertheless. For science can 
 be nothing but ordered knowledge, and whenever truth 
 is sought by the method appropriate to the case, a 
 scientific investigation is in progress, even if the 
 results be indefinite. 
 
 Yet small as is the vogue of human science in 
 England at present, it is a safe prophecy that before 
 the century which has dawned on us reaches its 
 meridian we shall learn to realize how great is its 
 meaning for the future of mankind. Some memorable 
 words of Kenan may be quoted in this connexion : 
 " The historic sciences especially seem to me destined 
 to take the place of the philosophy of the schools in 
 the solution of the problems which in our days most 
 deeply interest mankind. Without at all refusing to 
 man the power of passing by intuition beyond the 
 
 6
 
 82 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 limits of the knowledge of experience, we may, I think, 
 recognize that there are for us but two kinds of science, 
 the science of nature and the science of man ; all 
 beyond this may be felt, % perceived, revealed, but 
 cannot be tested. The greatest problem of this age 
 is neither God nor nature, but man. And the real 
 knowledge of humanity lies in historic and philologic 
 science. The old psychology which dealt with the 
 individual as isolated had a task which was doubtless 
 useful and led to solid results ; but our age has rightly 
 seen that beyond the individual there is the species, 
 which has its history, its laws, its science. . . . 
 History, I mean the history of the human spirit, is 
 in this sense the true philosophy of our time. Every 
 question of our age necessarily ends in historic dis- 
 cussion, every statement of principles becomes a 
 historic account. The position of each of us is 
 determined by historic views." 3 
 
 That such is the intellectual tendency of our time 
 is written large in many books for all who will to 
 read. But it is never sufficient in addressing an 
 English audience to speak only of intellectual drift 
 and tendency. One has also to take up the matter 
 from the ethical point of view. This is a fact which 
 is no cause for regret, but rather for satisfaction. As 
 Mr William James has well put it 2 : " The Con- 
 tinental schools of philosophy have too often over- 
 looked the fact that man's thinking is organically 
 connected with his conduct. It seems to me to be 
 the chief glory of English and Scottish thinkers to 
 
 1 Essais de Morale et dc Critique, p. 82. 
 8 Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 442.
 
 HUMAN SCIENCE 83 
 
 have kept the organic connexion in view. The 
 guiding principle of British philosophy has, in fact, 
 been that every difference must make a difference, 
 every theoretical difference somewhere issue in a 
 practical difference, and that the best method of 
 discussing points of theory is to begin by ascertaining 
 what practical difference would result, from one alter- 
 native or the other being true." 
 
 Writing then as an Englishman, I feel the necessity 
 of considering the change in the intellectual horizon in 
 an ethical as well as in a merely speculative aspect. 
 It cannot be denied that with a scientific change of 
 view will go a change of moral views. The whole 
 matter is one too great and too difficult to be here dealt 
 with at all fully. 
 
 But I must briefly state my opinion. Morality is 
 in the main a question of will, of conduct, of character. 
 These are, of course, not unconnected with education, 
 especially if the word education is used in a broad 
 sense to cover the whole experience of life. But they 
 do not in any great degree depend upon mere intel- 
 lectual training. Two youths may pass through 
 precisely the same course of training in knowledge; 
 and one may use his knowledge for the best and 
 highest purposes, the other for purposes which are base 
 and mean. The training of will and character are not 
 things of which I can here speak. They would not be 
 primarily and immediately affected by a change of 
 method in learning, though in the long run such 
 change might react upon them. But decided changes 
 in subject and method of study would have a great and 
 immediate effect upon the intellectual side of human
 
 84 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 nature, would greatly alter the relation of the mind to 
 the world of nature and the human world, and thus 
 in the long run greatly modify the face of society. In 
 such modifications there must always be loss as well as 
 gain. But I think we may clearly see that in some 
 respects the introduction of more scientific method into 
 human studies, a closer adherence in them to fact and 
 reality, will bring not only intellectual but also ethical 
 gain. I shall try to establish three statements, which 
 are to me settled beliefs. 
 
 I believe that nothing is healthier, more purifying 
 and stimulating to the mind than a long contact with 
 fact and reality as opposed to mere words and theories. 
 I believe that in our days the way of human science 
 is the only sure refuge from scepticism, rationalism and 
 nihilism in religion, in art, in politics, and in social 
 studies. And I believe that the nation which is most 
 devoted to human science must needs, among the new 
 conditions of the new age, most prosper and flourish : 
 the future of the world belongs to the people who 
 have most knowledge of fact, most reverence for 
 fact, most determination to make their conduct con- 
 form to the realities of the visible and the spiritual 
 world. 
 
 In these days of little faith, so long a creed may 
 seem to savour of superstition ; but I hope to show 
 that the superstition is shared by men of eminence 
 and ability in the worlds both of thoughts and of deeds. 
 I will speak in order of the three points which I have 
 mentioned, and first of the delight and profit which 
 comes to the individual from contact with things as 
 they are.
 
 HUMAN SCIENCE 85 
 
 II. 
 
 Very naturally, and indeed inevitably, the sciences 
 which deal with nature arrived more quickly than 
 those which deal with man at what may be called 
 self-consciousness, at a perception of their higher 
 functions in the history of the human spirit. All 
 these are a fruit of the worship of truth. Among the 
 Teutonic nations especially the worship of truth has 
 tended more and more to become the basis of morality. 
 We may see this clearly enough in the elementary 
 matter of personal truthfulness. An English mother 
 would forgive in her son almost any fault sooner than 
 that of lying, and the word liar is one of those which 
 rouse the blood of the gentlest amongst us. But it is 
 a fact of observation, curious as it may seem, that 
 the passion for personal truthfulness only in some 
 degree and by slow stages enters into our intellectual 
 life. Those who are perfectly truthful in intent are 
 continually saying what is untrue through the mere 
 want of intelligence to discriminate between what is 
 and what is not. In judging of evidence, many of 
 those who are otherwise intelligent are like children. 
 In a work on the methods of history, 1 two professors 
 of the Sorbonne point out with remarkable clearness 
 how natural it is to believe the testimony of anyone 
 whom we have no reason to believe a deceiver, and 
 yet how necessary it is that this instinct, like all the 
 primary instincts of our nature, must be tamed, and 
 made, so to speak, to run in harness, before we can 
 
 1 Langlois et Seignobos, Introduction aux fitudes Historiques, 
 p. 130.
 
 86 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 attain to any conception of historic method. Man's 
 first instinct is to believe what he is told, just as his 
 first instinct is to give a penny to every shoeless 
 beggar ; but he finds by degrees that this road leads in 
 the latter case to general pauperism and imposture, in 
 the former case to utterly false views of the world and 
 mankind. It is, of course, the crudest possible view to 
 suppose that in order to speak truth one has only to 
 wish to do so. Apart from some sort of methodical 
 training, it is quite impossible to speak the truth 
 even in matters which seem simple, and the power of 
 discerning between fact and untruth is one which 
 gradually grows through a lifetime devoted to the 
 attainment of truth. Besides a virtuous will, and 
 besides a methodic training, there are also necessary 
 to truth-telling very important moral characteristics 
 which are by no means of easy acquirement, which 
 require as much toil for their attainment as any of 
 the saintly virtues of the mediaeval church. 
 
 Two passages on this subject from the letters of 
 Huxley, one of the greatest of the prophets of the 
 actual, will rouse an echo in almost all hearts: 
 
 " The very air we breathe 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." l 
 
 " Science seems to me to teach in the highest and 
 strongest manner the great truth which is embodied 
 
 1 Life and Letters of T. H. Huxley, i. p. 405.
 
 HUMAN SCIENCE 87 
 
 in the Christian conception of entire surrender to the 
 will of God. Sit down before fact as a little child, 
 be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, 
 follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses 
 nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only 
 begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have 
 resolved at all risks to do this." l 
 
 In these passages we catch the note, not merely of 
 the high ethical value of contact with fact, but also of 
 the personal satisfaction and happiness with which it 
 surrounds the life of the worker. As an anaesthetic 
 for the small troubles of life, as a solace in times of 
 trouble, as a cure for weariness and disappointment, a 
 plunge into the stream of the actual is of unrivalled 
 efficacy. It is health-giving to mind and to body, and 
 it produces a normal and sane way of looking at 
 events, which prevents one from falling into morbid- 
 ness and hypochondria. 
 
 Another great authority in the scientific world 
 wrote many years ago, in regard to first-hand work 2 : 
 " A man is thus made to feel, as he can be made by 
 no other means, that there is something sacred in even 
 the jots and tittles of natural laws ; he learns to put 
 away from himself all personal pride, and steps across 
 the threshold of nature with bare head and bare feet ; 
 and the love of truth becomes with him a passion. 
 He passes beyond the common honesty of the world, 
 and reaches forward towards that perfect sincerity 
 which is the fruit of long-continued watchfulness, self- 
 denial, patience, and care." 
 
 1 Life and Letters of T. H. Huxley, i. p. 219. 
 
 2 Quarterly Beview, vol. cxxiii. p. 472.
 
 88 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 Such utterances show that, as the author of Natural 
 Religion has shown, in the whole-hearted pursuit 
 merely of natural facts a man may find what may be 
 called a kind of salvation, a deliverance from pettiness, 
 from self-absorption, and from lying. "If we will 
 look at things," writes Professor Seeley, 1 "and not 
 merely at words, we shall soon see that the scientific 
 man has a theology and a God a most impressive 
 theology, a most awful and glorious God. I say that 
 man believes in a God who feels himself in the 
 presence of a Power which is not himself and is 
 immeasurably above himself, a Power in the contem- 
 plation of which he is absorbed, in the knowledge of 
 which he finds safety and happiness. And such now 
 is Nature to the scientific man." Half a century ago 
 the same truth had been seen by one who had a 
 remarkable gift for anticipating the progress of thought. 
 "Modern science," wrote F. W. Robertson, 2 "is eminently 
 Christian, having exchanged the bold theorizing of 
 ancient times for the patient, humble willingness to 
 be taught by the facts of nature, and performing its 
 wonders by an exact imitation of them, on the 
 Christian principle." 
 
 It is this principle, which Huxley calls scientific, 
 Seeley religious, and Eobertson Christian, which our 
 age is called upon to introduce also into human studies 
 in opposition to the dogmatic or rationalistic procedure 
 of past days. 
 
 Hitherto reverence for fact, appreciation of reality, 
 
 1 Natural Religion, p. 19. 
 
 8 Sermons, i. p. 164. Robertson cites the text, "What things 
 soever the Father doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. "
 
 HUMAN SCIENCE 89 
 
 has not been equally in vogue in all fields. As is 
 quite natural, the simpler of the sciences escaped from 
 the domination of authority and prepossession earlier 
 than the more complex sciences, geometry earlier than 
 astronomy, astronomy than chemistry, chemistry than 
 biology. In the matters of sense and of outward 
 observation, in regard to visible things and natural 
 fact, science is now supreme. And in these realms it 
 has borne fruit in richness and in abundance beyond 
 the dreams of imagination. By conforming ourselves 
 to nature, and by watching her processes with humble- 
 ness and in a teachable spirit, we have attained over 
 matter a mastery such as our ancestors never thought 
 of. The wildest flights of their imagination fade 
 before such everyday facts as wireless telegraphy and 
 photography by the Rontgen rays. Every year brings 
 some new conquest over space and over the forces of 
 the world, until nothing seems too great or too 
 ambitious to attempt in the way of making the powers 
 of nature do our bidding. 
 
 Yet amid all these outward and obvious triumphs, 
 there is among our best men a sense of frustration and 
 of hollowness. It is not clear how far mere material 
 triumphs can promote or secure human well-being. 
 Outer circumstances change, but human misery and 
 discontent persist. Idealists talk of the bankruptcy 
 of science in all the higher and nobler functions of 
 man, and many of them turn back from an age of 
 outward and visible success to comparatively ignorant 
 ages in the search for beliefs, for hopes, for happiness. 
 Now it seems clear that much of the disillusion and 
 dissatisfaction which we find in the highest quarters
 
 90 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 arises from a want of clear insight. Physical science 
 cannot fairly be called disappointing. In its own 
 sphere it has brought us results beyond calculation 
 and beyond imagination. It has given us all, and far 
 more than all, than we could reasonably have expected 
 from it. It is our mistake that we expected from it 
 what it could not possibly give, that we overvalued the 
 outward and the obvious, and thought too little of the 
 inward and spiritual. Science has disappointed 
 idealists because it has been partial and incomplete, 
 because it has neglected human nature, history, the 
 higher surroundings of the human spirit. 
 
 Does it not then seem possible that if we devote to 
 the more immaterial, the human side of life, the same 
 attention and care which we have bestowed on its 
 physical side, if here also we learn to set aside rhetoric 
 and assumption, and to accept fact as sacred, there 
 may be in reserve for our children conquests as wide 
 as ours, but in a different and less material region ? 
 I do not of course mean that the methods of natural 
 science can be imported unchanged and unadapted into 
 the human world. The methods of astronomy are not 
 those of chemistry, nor are the methods of chemistry 
 those of biology. But the spirit of science in 
 astronomy, chemistry, and biology is the same. It is 
 the scientific spirit, rather than the methods in use in 
 the schools of experiment and observation, that we 
 need to introduce into the higher range of studies. If 
 this were done, we might hope in time to produce in 
 the human world as great changes as have been pro- 
 duced during the last century in the world of matter. 
 
 The task is one of unmeasured length and infinite
 
 HUMAN SCIENCE 91 
 
 difficulty. If we consider how undeveloped at present 
 is anthropology, the simplest and most rudimentary of 
 all the human sciences, we may judge how much there 
 is to do. Some people speak as if observing facts and 
 accurately reporting them were the easiest of things. 
 But in fact it is only a highly-trained mind which can 
 really see the simplest fact, only a master who can 
 precisely describe the commonest phenomenon. This 
 is the case as regards the observation of nature : but 
 how much more as regards the observation of mankind. 
 In human studies the facts are far more complicated, 
 the chances of observation far rarer; and at every 
 moment inherited bias and acquired tendency come in 
 to distort the vision. The virtues which the votary of 
 physical science acquires as he works patience, self- 
 suppression, infinite respect for fact must be cultivated 
 in a still higher degree by him who would really learn 
 about mankind. From experiment he is almost shut 
 out, and the instruments of precision which are of so 
 ready avail in all physical studies help but little where 
 mind and thought are concerned. Thus the growth of 
 the human sciences must be exceedingly slow. And 
 it may be that for a long while to come in any par- 
 ticular field of human study the talent of individuals 
 may raise them to a higher level than can be attained 
 by a methodic plodding worker of inferior capacity. 
 But the difference remains that the cleverness of the 
 individual dies with him, or, rather, becomes stereotyped 
 at his death ; while in every generation those who 
 work by science and method can raise, if but slightly, 
 the level from which their successors will take their 
 start. The great charm of science is that in it one
 
 92 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 never goes back quite to the former level. Old theories 
 may be revived ; but it is with a difference ; they must 
 needs be modified to fit new observations. In a 
 primeval forest the savage can move faster than the 
 engineer ; but by degrees the engineer lays down his 
 railway, and by its means a child can move faster 
 than the swiftest son of nature. 
 
 How little do we at present really know about 
 man ! Physicians have studied his body, and their 
 art is continually at fault when they regard this 
 body as independent of mind and of spirit ; they treat 
 man as an animal when he is half a god. Psycholo- 
 gists have studied his mind; and only of late have 
 they begun to realize that the workings of the mind 
 are but the expressions of an inner force and will, 
 which is sometimes revealed in consciousness, but 
 often is hidden far beneath its surface. Attempts at 
 religious reform usually succeed only here and there, 
 because a profound and systematic knowledge of the 
 human spirit is wanting to their authors. 
 
 We have seen occasionally in history a city or a 
 nation, like the French at the time of the Eevolution, 
 determined to start anew and to recast the whole 
 scheme of society in accordance with certain principles 
 or ideas. Such attempts have succeeded only in 
 small part or for a moment, because the notions as to 
 human nature which occupied the minds of the 
 leaders were utterly insufficient, mere hasty guesses 
 and prejudices in the place of reasoned knowledge. 
 All around us we see the founders of charities through 
 mere ignorance producing far greater evils than those 
 which they would fain remove ; we see politicians
 
 HUMAN SCIENCE 93 
 
 through want of method giving a new lease of life to 
 the very hostilities which they would fain bring to an 
 end; we see social reformers in their eagerness to 
 combat a particular evil destroying the chief props of 
 society, and imagining that, so to speak, water can 
 be made to run uphill. In most of these cases the 
 spring, the purpose, was probably noble ; the whole 
 action took its rise in the perception of actual fact, 
 and was perhaps carried out with magnanimity and 
 self-denial. If as much evil as good resulted, the 
 cause has commonly been mere ignorance of the 
 nature of man and of the history of society. 
 
 But one must end with a qualification. It must 
 not, of course, be fancied that the mere study and 
 arrangement of facts, that ordered knowledge which 
 is identical with science, will at once furnish us with 
 purpose and ideal in our lives. Physical science has 
 done nothing for us in this direction, could not, in 
 fact, do anything. It has only given us new ways of 
 accomplishing our purposes, whatever they may be. It 
 has but enlarged the field in which idea and purpose 
 and will may work. In the same way a methodic 
 study of man and of history will not in itself serve to 
 guide us for the future, but it will enable us to pursue 
 such ends as seem to us good with intelligence and 
 purpose ; it will enable us to realize in the world 
 more systematically and consistently the ideas which 
 inspire mankind. 
 
 Carlyle long ago pointed out how in politics also 
 we confuse means and ends. "We extend the 
 franchise, and regard that extension as an end, 
 whereas it is, of course, only a means towards enabling
 
 94 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 the heart and purpose of the nation to express itself 
 in Parliament. Some fashions of popular representa- 
 tion may be better than others, but nothing can avail 
 unless there be a national purpose and a national 
 conscience to represent. " Life develops from within." 
 The more freely it can develop the better ; but the 
 what is always of infinitely more importance than the 
 how. 
 
 III. 
 
 In the second place, human science seems to be 
 the only way by which the negations of modern 
 scepticism may be met and overcome. There is a 
 notion abroad among the educated people of England 
 that scientific criticism is destructive. And destruc- 
 tive in a sense it must be, since so large a part of 
 the notions and beliefs with which it deals is the 
 outcome of mistake. But scientific criticism differs 
 wholly from rationalist criticism. The rationalist 
 condemns the views which he criticizes because they 
 seem to him absurd, and often is ready to put in 
 their place other views which commend themselves 
 to him personally, but which rest on no more solid 
 foundation than those which he attacks. But science 
 merely searches out in a spirit of impartiality the fact, 
 and if the fact be not certainly discoverable, it defines 
 the limits of the doubt, and tries to arrange alternative 
 theories in the order of probability. It is thus far 
 less reckless in its denials than is rationalism ; it 
 teaches us to sit down in humble patience before all 
 series of phenomena, to be willing to observe and to 
 wait, and never to declare impossible things for which
 
 HUMAN SCIENCE 95 
 
 there is good evidence, nor to declare certain what lies 
 open to doubt. 
 
 It is perfectly clear that in our days everything 
 will be called in question sooner or later. The 
 alternatives are whether the criticism shall proceed 
 in a reverent or a reckless, in a patient or an arrogant, 
 in a scientific or a rationalist spirit. One of the 
 ablest of modern historians writes as follows: 
 
 " The way in which historian and philosopher alike 
 have escaped nihilism is the way of criticism, by 
 which we penetrate through mere shows to the reality 
 of things and see them as they are. Thus we may 
 overcome mere negative rationalism, that superficial 
 method which strives to remove the objections arising 
 from the absurdities of tradition by some subjective 
 fancy, some theory of one's own contrivance, whereas 
 the only true objective remedy lies in a knowledge 
 of the conditions and surroundings of historic life at 
 every period." 1 
 
 A great fact which in these days we have to face, 
 whether sorrowfully or hopefully, is the shrinking of 
 authority in all the fields of knowledge. In the 
 sciences which deal with nature, authority can now 
 scarcely be said to exist. If an authority is quoted 
 in a work of natural history, he is quoted merely as 
 bearing witness to certain facts, and it is understood 
 that every reader and every student has a perfect 
 right, if he has opportunity, to test the facts or to 
 call them in question. If the theory of a master in 
 the science is quoted, it is quoted merely as theory, 
 that is, as a convenient way of colligating and ex- 
 
 1 E. Meyer, Forschungen zur alien Oeschichte, ii. 388.
 
 96 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 plaining facts, to be accepted until a better way can 
 be discovered. 
 
 By degrees, in the sciences concerned with man and 
 with his history, a movement similar to that which 
 has occurred in the natural sciences is taking place. 
 Here also " the individual withers and the race is more 
 and more." Here also the worship of the fact is 
 spreading, and theories of great men are taken merely 
 for what they are worth. It will be readily allowed 
 that this is the case in such observational branches of 
 human study as ethnology and political economy. But 
 it may be desirable briefly to set forth in what ways 
 this tendency must affect such studies as philosophy 
 and history. 
 
 The psychological part of philosophy will be greatly 
 developed. In those sections of psychology in which 
 experiment can be made, we have a close parallel to 
 the experimental study of the external world. As yet 
 experimental psychology has not reached very far-reach- 
 ing results, but the certainty and objectivity of these 
 results makes them valuable. The psychology which 
 is not experimental but observational will also naturally 
 attract the more scientifically-minded of the students 
 of mankind. And here, as I think, is opening out 
 before us a vast field for future work. Since literature 
 began, man has continually been making observations 
 on himself. Some of these observations may have only 
 personal value, but many go down deep into the 
 roots of the common life of the race. But they are 
 not scientific, because they are not methodical; they 
 need collation, arrangement ; and they require to be 
 tested by the results of fresh observations. In some
 
 HUMAN SCIENCE 97 
 
 departments of psychology this process has been of 
 late effectively carried out. 
 
 To gather a harvest of fact from biographies, from 
 philosophic and doctrinal treatises, from works of travel 
 and history, must be one of the chief tasks of psychology 
 in our day. But he who would use a sickle in this 
 field must have prepared himself for the task by a 
 long and careful observation of the facts of psychology 
 in the world about him. It is through experience 
 that history must be interpreted. Human nature is in 
 all historic ages the same in essentials, and the records 
 of history and the testimony of travellers must be read 
 in the light of a methodical, a scientific psychology. 
 
 It is surprising how in the long run such a pro- 
 ceeding will tend in the direction of moderation, of 
 conservatism. It is impatient radicalism and rational- 
 ism which are willing to fling away the convictions of 
 ages, and to start the world anew. Science knows 
 that the beliefs of the past could not have persisted 
 unless they were based on fact, though very often the 
 facts were misunderstood. This feature is very 
 prominent in Mr James' book on the Varieties of 
 Religious Experience. Popular rationalism flung aside 
 the wonders of healing wrought in the early church 
 as impostures ; modern medicine shows that many of 
 them can be repeated under like conditions to-day. 
 Mr James observes 1 that the custom of methodical 
 meditation, almost neglected among reformed Chris- 
 tians, has been re-introduced to our notice by the 
 professed mind-curers of America. 
 
 In fact, all the earlier part of Mr James' remark- 
 1 Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 406. 
 
 7
 
 98 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 able book, in which the facts of religious experience 
 are arranged and classified, is a good example to show 
 how tenderly and piously a really scientific psychology 
 will deal with all the phenomena of the human spirit. 
 With utmost sympathy and respect Mr James records 
 the testimony of such lights of religion as Saint 
 Augustine and Saint Theresa, of George Fox and John 
 Wesley, constantly insisting that experiences which 
 tend to the raising of the level of life cannot be dis- 
 missed as mere morbid phenomena, the result of over- 
 wrought nerves or irregular bodily functions. 
 
 But when in philosophy and in religion and in other 
 such matters we pass beyond phenomena, beyond that 
 which can be observed, studied, in a degree verified, 
 we reach the realm of hypothesis. And it is here that 
 the shrinking of authority has produced the most 
 complete change of view. In philosophy great leaders 
 have formed schools of disciples who repeated and 
 defended their views as the only rational explanation 
 of the universe. In religion great systematic theo- 
 logians have promulgated schemes of doctrine, which 
 have been accepted by the various organized churches, 
 and made a test of orthodoxy, and a matter of in- 
 struction to the young. The status of the great 
 systematizer is changed, and he no longer dominates 
 the schools. We recognise that philosophic system, that 
 religious doctrine is but theory, an explanation of life, 
 but not life itself. Theory is useful, is, indeed, 
 necessary for the colligation of fact, to make it 
 intelligible, and to give it a settled place in the house 
 of knowledge ; but theory is always decaying and 
 becoming outworn, needs to be restated to every
 
 HUMAN SCIENCE 99 
 
 generation and in every fresh school of thought, just 
 as walls of brick require occasional re-pointing. 
 Philosophic system and doctrinal construction are in 
 essence exactly parallel to the theories which have so 
 important a function in the progress of physical science, 
 but which are now known to be not the building but 
 the scaffolding, not the fact but a way of regarding it. 
 
 In writing thus I do not at all mean to condemn 
 the promulgation of systematic views by schools of 
 philosophy or by churches, nor even the teaching 
 of doctrine to children. This is a matter requiring 
 infinite consideration, which can in fact only be settled 
 by the study of the minds of children and men. It 
 may be observed that it is practically impossible to 
 teach the facts of physical science, without at the same 
 time teaching a certain amount of theory, whereby the 
 facts are bound together. Probably the same principle 
 will hold in philosophy and religion. It may very 
 well be doubted whether it is possible to call attention 
 to non- physical realities without using words which 
 imply system and doctrine. It seems possible, by 
 degrees, more and more to draw a line of distinction 
 between what is more and what is less certain in 
 religion as in other matters. But in the present state 
 of our knowledge, it is wiser, when fact and theory 
 are inextricably intermixed, to accept the whole rather 
 than to run the risk of rejecting valuable realities by 
 a too hasty criticism of some parts of the theories in 
 which they are wrapped up. 
 
 In all the sciences there is a historic as well as an 
 observational element. The history which belongs to 
 geology is the most ancient of all, reaching back to
 
 roo OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 the time when the solar system was in a nebular 
 condition. The books of that history are, however, 
 facts of observation. So also are the history books of 
 biology, the rocks and deposits in which the traces of 
 the primitive life of plants and animals in the world 
 are preserved. In regard to humanity also, there is 
 what may be called a geologic history, the flints, the 
 pottery, the weapons, and the burial customs of pre- 
 historic man. But the great mass of the history with 
 which human science is concerned is that written on 
 tablets or stones, or in books handed down to us from 
 past ages. If we do not regard' the writers of the past 
 with quite the same veneration as moved our ancestors, 
 if we do not accept their writings in so simple and 
 unsophisticated a spirit, we at least pay them the 
 compliment of studying them with infinitely more care 
 and in far closer detail than did our fathers. Professor 
 Seeley used to say that in modern days the commentator 
 had greatly fallen in honour. Yet there perhaps 
 never was a time when there was more care and 
 intelligence devoted to the work of the commentator. 
 
 Here, as in all the other branches of knowledge, the 
 essence of the modern spirit is to discern between fact 
 and theory. The text of an ancient, or, indeed, of a 
 modern writer, is the starting-point. And on its 
 exact restitution we have to work with infinite 
 patience, aided by a hundred methods unknown to 
 former scholars, some of them, such as photography, 
 the result of physical discovery. In the text of an 
 ancient writer we have the fact, but in its interpreta- 
 tion we at once come upon theory. And the essence 
 of modern criticism is that it is in character psycho-
 
 HUMAN SCIENCE 101 
 
 logic. It takes its Start from observed facts of human 
 nature, and reaching out into the past, tries to 
 determine the historic and psychical character of the 
 writer, the purpose with which he wrote, the circum- 
 stances under which he wrote, and the like. Only 
 when this study is fully carried out can we begin to 
 determine what is the value of his testimony, what 
 actual facts we may accept on his authority, how far 
 we may use him in reconstructing the past. 
 
 That this process is in Germany still incomplete we 
 may judge from the following statement of a high 
 modern authority : " We do not yet possess a com- 
 mentary on Thucydides such as is really needed, a 
 historic commentary, in which philological treatment 
 of the text is not the final purpose, but only a 
 necessary preliminary. The most important task of 
 such a commentary would be to make facts clear, to 
 answer the question why Thucydides writes thus and 
 no otherwise, why in a particular case he introduces 
 a speech, and a speech of that particular character." l 
 
 It is easy to see that such methods of working will 
 cause a new and a far higher value to attach to 
 archaeology, the science of the existing remains of 
 older civilisations. For a decree engraved upon a 
 stone, a coin issued by authority, the physical con- 
 formation of a battle-field are facts in a strict sense 
 of the word, facts almost pure from theoretic admix- 
 ture. We cannot therefore be surprised that modern 
 criticism, with its imperious demand for the actual, 
 has made much of the results of archaeological research. 
 Nor can we wonder that the methods of archaeology, 
 1 E. Meyer, Forschungen xur alien Geschichte, ii. 382.
 
 102 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 which closely resemble those of the observational 
 branches of natural science, have exercised a great 
 influence, even beyond their own province, on the 
 minds of historians. It has generally been allowed 
 that archseological tendency has been in a conservative 
 direction as regards the early history of the Egyptians, 
 the Jews, and the Greeks. Perhaps this general 
 impression may go beyond the truth, for conservative 
 historians have been not unnaturally disposed to make 
 too much of isolated archaeologic fact, and to interpret 
 it too conventionally. Time will remedy this mischief, 
 and in the long run, after all is said, it will be found 
 that archaeology, by setting up fixed points here and 
 there, has tended greatly to hinder the excessive 
 destructiveness of historic speculation, to restrain the 
 fancies of a too uncontrolled rationalism in dealing 
 with past times. The past must be judged in the 
 light of the present, it is true, but not by the mere 
 subjective fancies of the individual. As Mr Lang has 
 well put it, " Assuredly the Bible must be studied 
 like any other collection of documents, linguistically, 
 historically, and in the light of the comparative 
 method. But one may protest against criticising the 
 Bible, or Homer, by methods like those which prove 
 Shakespeare to have been Bacon." 1 
 
 IV. 
 
 My contention as to the thoroughly conservative 
 character of human science is thus clearly established. 
 And if there be any value in testimony, the third 
 point which I have mentioned is equally clear : that 
 
 1 A. Lang, The Making of Religion, p. 314.
 
 HUMAN SCIENCE 103 
 
 under modern conditions the nation which adopts 
 and insists upon the application of scientific method 
 in all matters, in the world of nature and of man, will 
 have an enormous advantage over its competitors. 
 
 In 1870 Kenan wrote l : " The victory of Germany 
 was the victory of the man who is full of reverence, 
 careful, attentive, methodical, over slapdash and hap- 
 hazard." To be full of reverence and method is to be 
 full of the spirit of science. That spirit some of the 
 peoples of the Continent are introducing, not only into 
 physical investigations, but into social and historic 
 studies, and into practical life. And there can be 
 little doubt that the future will belong to the people 
 who do this most completely. 
 
 In England it is the great progress made in 
 commercial matters and in manufacture by the 
 Americans and Germans, as a result of better method, 
 which has especially attracted the notice of our states- 
 men and organizers. With one voice they recommend 
 us to mend our ways. Mr Haldane writes : 
 
 " Our middle classes find their position threatened 
 by a new commercial combination. They have been 
 forced to realize that courage, energy, enterprise are 
 in these modern days of little more avail against the 
 weapons which science can put into the hands of our 
 rivals in commerce than was the splendid fighting of 
 the Dervishes against the shrapnel and the maxims 
 at Omdurman." 2 
 
 But it is not a question only of military success, 
 or of commercial progress, but of the whole organization 
 
 1 Darmesteter, Life of Renan, p. 192. 
 
 2 R. B. Haldane, Education and Empire, p. 6.
 
 104 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 of life and society. The empirical and haphazard 
 methods of the pastjn legislation, in social organization, 
 in the conduct of life, need a thorough revisal, and an 
 adaptation to the changed circumstances of the times. 
 A, very high authority, writing thirty years ago in the 
 Quarterly Review, maintained that in the case of 
 natural science, it was not the immediate value of the 
 results which made it a valuable means of education, 
 but the inculcation of method. " The general qualities 
 which promise success in any walk of life, and which 
 may be grafted on any young mind, or at least largely 
 developed in most, are precisely those which are not 
 only the essential requisites of success in scientific 
 research, but are also peculiarly nurtured and 
 strengthened by scientific work." * " You will not 
 find," writes Mr John Morley, 2 " your highest capacity 
 in statesmanship, nor in practical science, nor in art, 
 nor in any other field where that capacity is most 
 urgently needed for the right service of life, unless 
 there is a general and vehement spirit of search in the 
 air." What is true in regard to natural science is true 
 also of work in the human sciences ; in fact, far more 
 true, seeing that they are far more closely related to 
 conduct and happiness. The future belongs beyond a 
 doubt to the people who learn with most patience 
 and determination to search out the secrets of human 
 nature, the laws whose working we cannot escape, and 
 who then map out their course in accordance with 
 those laws. To this supreme question of efficiency I 
 shall return in the concluding chapter. 
 
 1 Quarterly Review, vol. cxxiii. p. 471. 
 
 2 Rousseau, i. 151.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE CLASSICS AND HUMAN SCIENCE 
 
 WE are now in a position to answer the question 
 suggested at the end of Chapter IV., whether a 
 thorough study of the civilization of the ancient world 
 is really a good preparation for work and for life in 
 the new century. 
 
 It is likely that some of those who sympathize with 
 the views above set forth as to the future of human 
 and historic studies will think them not altogether 
 consistent with the desire to maintain a classical basis 
 for the highest education. It must be allowed that 
 the study of the classics, as at present pursued, is but 
 a very imperfect preparation for a life devoted to 
 historic science. Yet I believe that now, and for an 
 indefinitely long time to come, the best basis of 
 education will be classical, though doubtless more 
 directly observational studies will claim more time and 
 attention than they have received. In fact a reformed 
 classical course may well stand in the same relation 
 towards human science in which a narrower study of 
 the classics has stood towards Humanity. 
 
 105
 
 io6 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 We have to consider whether a more advanced 
 study of classical literature, philosophy, and history, 
 pursued on historic and psychologic lines is, in fact, a 
 worthy part of a really scientific education. I hold it 
 to be so, and for reasons not unlike those which 
 justify the use of the classics in our schools, of which 
 I have already spoken. No doubt such studies as 
 modern history, modern philosophy, and modern 
 economics have more directness and actuality than 
 ancient studies. Some men will feel irresistibly drawn 
 towards them. Yet for those who are not impatient, 
 I think that even when the main business of the 
 student's life is to be things modern, he will greatly 
 profit by preliminary study of ancient parallels. When 
 a young man takes up the examination of phenomena 
 of our own or of recent periods, he is overwhelmed by 
 the mass of authorities, and by the divergent teachings 
 of leaders, many of whom are strongly influenced by 
 political, social, or other leanings. It is very desirable, 
 before steering one's ship into the open waters of the 
 ocean, to practise her in some gulf or roadstead. 
 Greece and Rome present us with simpler problems 
 than those of the modern world ; the extent of material 
 is limited, and most of it has been examined and re- 
 examined by some of the greatest intellects of recent 
 times, by men who may indeed have had pet theories 
 and prejudices, but cannot have been under the 
 dominion of perverting interests and passions. 
 Classical languages, classical literature, classical art, 
 offer the best of training simply because they are 
 classical, raised above the arena of modern dispute and 
 struggle for existence, showing in simple and noble
 
 THE CLASSICS AND HUMAN SCIENCE 107 
 
 form the workings of the human spirit. In all Greek 
 work in particular, whether poem or speech, history or 
 sculpture, there is an evenness of development, a 
 simplicity of motive, a beauty of outline, which cannot 
 be found elsewhere. And Greek and Roman civilization 
 presents for solution a series of problems admirably 
 adapted for developing method in observation and 
 reasoning. It is quite possible that the modern world 
 may grow too eager for results, too hasty and im- 
 patient to spend in the future so much time as it 
 has spent in the past over classical training ; but if so, 
 the world will probably lose much which it is a great 
 pity to lose. 
 
 From the thoroughly historical point of view the 
 civilization of the Greek and Eoman world gains a 
 greater importance as an object of study than it has 
 had before. It appears that all human history is 
 an evolution from one stage to another. Similar 
 phenomena meet us at every stage. But when we 
 look back through the ages, we see that the thousand 
 years from B.C. 600 to A.D. 400 is of incomparable 
 interest to us. The civilization of the modern world 
 has been of comparatively brief duration, and in no 
 modern age, not even at the Renascence, has man so 
 well shown the full extent of his powers of thought and 
 production. Probably we shall never know the reason 
 of the sudden outburst of a brilliant social, intellectual, 
 and artistic life which marks the beginning of that age, 
 not only in Greece and the Greek Colonies, but in 
 Palestine and Western Asia. Hitherto the world had 
 moved slowly, though the Homeric poems and some 
 of the prophets of Israel had struck a lofty note of
 
 io8 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 moral and spiritual life. But the level of civilization, 
 as we now know, in the South-East of Europe, was 
 lower in the seventh century B.C. than it had been 
 some centuries earlier. But a sudden awakening 
 came, and within about a century there arose, in 
 Greece, lyric and dramatic poetry, philosophy, and 
 the beginning of history and of sculpture ; in Pales- 
 tine, an astonishing religious revival and the wonderful 
 poems of the second Isaiah. It is certain that the 
 educated people of Greece for some centuries after 
 that time reached a level of intelligence and showed 
 a productive force such as have marked no subsequent 
 age. It was mainly the rediscovery of the remains 
 of Greek literature and art which transformed the 
 Europe of mediaeval barbarism into the Europe of 
 the sixteenth century. And from the same deep 
 wells came the thoughts and impulses which origin- 
 ated the Reformation and the rise of physical 
 science. A large part of what is best in modern 
 literature, philosophy, and art comes directly from 
 contact with the Greek spirit, and what is not thus 
 directly derived has, in the course of its production, 
 been in great measure influenced by Greece. Modern 
 Christianity is not more directly connected with the 
 Founder and his Disciples than is modern culture with 
 the ancient civilization of Hellas. 
 
 But if the culture of the ancient world is to be 
 taken up as an introduction to that of modern times, 
 it must be taken up as a whole. It is not satisfactory 
 to make elegant selections from it to be taught to all, 
 while all not included in our selections is neglected or 
 despised. It is the growth of ideas from stage to
 
 THE CLASSICS AND HUMAN SCIENCE 109 
 
 stage, the development of one phase out of another, 
 which is the key to the great panorama of ancient 
 culture ; and its great attraction is that we can look 
 upon it, as we cannot hope to look on modern civiliza- 
 tion, as a cosmos. 
 
 Perhaps no living scholar has a better right to sum 
 up the study of the Humanities than Professor von 
 Wilamowitz Moellendorff. I will cite a paragraph 
 from one of his addresses to the University of 
 Gottingen l : " With Homer begins a development of 
 civilization continuous and aware of its continuity, 
 which occupies a wider and wider field, first all Hellas, 
 then in Alexander's time the East, then in the Eoman 
 age the whole basin of the Mediterranean. With the 
 fall of the Koman Empire the unity and continuity of 
 this civilization ceases. The Barbarians gain their 
 freedom : Christianity, though it arose out of that 
 civilization, rejected it. Because that civilization is a 
 unity, in spite of all changes in life and intelligence, 
 every one of its phenomena in its individuality can 
 only be understood as an aspect of the whole, and 
 every phenomenon, even the most trifling, offers some 
 contribution to the study of the whole out of which it 
 rose, in which it exists. Because the object is one, 
 philology 2 is a unity. The particle av and the 
 entelecheia of Aristotle, the sacred caves of Apollo and 
 the idol Besas, the ode of Sappho, and the preaching of 
 Saint Thekla, the metres of Pindar and the counters of 
 Pompeii, the rude drawings on Dipylon vases, and the 
 Thermae of Caracalla, the functions of the magistrates 
 
 1 Beden und Vortrage, p. 104. 
 
 2 The writer uses philology in the broad sense of humanism.
 
 i ro OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 of Abdera and the deeds of the divine Augustus, the 
 conic sections of Apollonius, and the astrology of 
 Petosiris : all these, all, belong to philology, for they 
 belong to the object which philology would understand, 
 and not one of them can be overlooked." 
 
 No one scholar, it is true, at least in our country, 
 can hope to know all parts of so vast a field. He 
 must be master in one part of the field, and a willing 
 learner in other parts. But the University should be 
 the higher unit in which the partial and incomplete 
 studies of its members should be incorporated, so that 
 one thinks for another and helps another, and from the 
 combined knowledge of all comes real progress. To 
 allow the limits, not of individuals but of Oxford 
 scholars en masse, to be set by the conveniences of 
 examinations, and the iron rules of the Civil Service 
 Commissioners, is to take a line wholly unworthy of a 
 great University. 
 
 In England the study of the Classics in higher 
 schools and the universities has two enemies. The 
 first is the short-sighted view, of which I have already 
 spoken, that studies with a more direct bearing upon 
 life are more useful than those which merely cultivate 
 the intelligence. The second is the want of freshness 
 and vitality which has come upon the study of the 
 Classics, because they have been studied in too narrow 
 and pedantic a spirit, without literary and historic 
 outlook. I well remember that my own undergraduate 
 study of the Classics at Cambridge was for this reason 
 utterly uninteresting and barren, a pursuit which 
 never drew out my capacities or roused any enthusiasm. 
 It is thus that to very many youths in our great
 
 THE CLASSICS AND HUMAN SCIENCE in 
 
 schools and to many undergraduates during the 
 Moderations course at Oxford the Classics are dead 
 instead of being the living fruit of a great civilization. 
 A really historic and comparative treatment of the 
 great writers of Greece and Rome is comparatively 
 rare. And even in the last two years of the Oxford 
 course such a treatment is but partially attained, 
 because of the artificial restrictions of that course, its 
 rejection of archaeological aid, its dominance by con- 
 ventional examinations. 
 
 I hold it to be possible, without introducing any 
 very serious changes into the existing course at Oxford, 
 to make it at least more effective as a preliminary 
 training for men who intend to enter a profession or to 
 take up teaching as the work of their life, even if full 
 regard be had to the great changes in our intellectual 
 outlook, and the increased respect of the modern world 
 for fact. Thus we come to the question of practical 
 measures of university reform.
 
 CHAPTEE VII 
 
 SUGGESTED REFORMS 
 
 IN recent years, owing to the wave of conservative 
 reaction which has been observable in all departments 
 of public life, there has been no great talk of University 
 Reform. Movements have been quietly going on, 
 preparations for great changes ; but the changes have 
 been held off. The study of physical science has 
 made steady progress, and at Cambridge occupies an 
 almost dominant position ; but at Oxford its develop- 
 ment has been less free and powerful. What is called 
 University Extension has spread to the great towns 
 of England; and this movement has doubtless in 
 some ways been valuable, but it is a merely external 
 growth, like the examination of schools, without any 
 relation to the intellectual life of the university. 
 More attention has been paid to cutting channels 
 whereby university knowledge may flow through the 
 country than to deepening the reservoirs whence 
 those channels derive their supply. But as regards 
 educational ideas and methods, there has been but 
 little change in Oxford since the last University
 
 SUGGESTED REFORMS 113 
 
 Commission. Various attempts have been made at 
 reform ; but they have usually been half-hearted, and 
 have dwindled away. 
 
 It is very interesting to read the proposals and antici- 
 pations set forth by university reformers such as Goldwin 
 Smith, Mark Pattison, and Matthew Arnold about the 
 time of the last University Commission. Some of the 
 changes they advocated have come to pass ; some which 
 are clearly desirable have been till now delayed ; some 
 would now find but few advocates. Apart from the 
 definite decisions of the Commissioners, there has been 
 much drift, and little purposeful change. As might, 
 under such circumstances, have been expected, changes 
 which were in the interests of individuals have been 
 carried out ; those which tended to the general good 
 only have been neglected. The marriage question has 
 settled itself somehow ; tutors' houses have been erected 
 at several colleges, restrictions of all kinds have dis- 
 appeared ; but the machinery of the university remains 
 as clumsy and ineffective as before ; and the noise of 
 intellectual stir which fills the universities of Europe 
 and America arouses but faint echoes here. 
 
 Although the evils which necessarily attach to class 
 and competitive examinations are obvious and very 
 real, yet it would doubtless be futile to contemplate the 
 entire abolition of such examinations. The teachers and 
 the students alike have become so thoroughly accustomed 
 to teaching and working in view of examinations, that 
 if these were removed, the whole framework of Oxford 
 study would collapse. As things stand, the only way 
 of securing the methodical study of any branch of 
 knowledge is to set up an honour examination in it.
 
 114 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 Under the present conditions, if an undergraduate 
 chose to content himself with a pass degree, or a third 
 class in honours, and to give his whole strength to 
 some subject to which his tastes and talents inclined 
 him, he might probably make better use of his time 
 than in any other way. But a course so manful and 
 self-reliant is outside the dreams of the ordinary 
 undergraduate, and could be carried through only by a 
 very few in each generation, unless indeed one reckons 
 the athletes in this class. Class examinations on the 
 one hand and idleness on the other are the two 
 alternatives between which the men usually decide. 
 If their abilities are so good that they can combine 
 these two alternatives, they are reckoned by many of 
 their fellows supremely happy. 
 
 It appears to me that it would be possible, without 
 any violent change in the present course in Litterse 
 Humaniores, to make it on the whole as good as any 
 course at present anywhere existing. The evils which 
 adhere to it are removable, and the good of it is worth 
 making some sacrifice to preserve. The mischief is 
 want of discrimination between sorts of men, too rigid 
 a system, too little allowance for individual bent and 
 character. 
 
 If I tried in detail to set forth a reformed scheme 
 of examination in the Humanities, I should be walking 
 into a trap. The difficulties and the pitfalls awaiting 
 any attempt at change are innumerable. No change 
 at all can be made without infringing vested rights 
 and without giving up present advantages in order to 
 secure greater advantages. Any new scheme must be 
 the result of discussion and of compromise, and must
 
 SUGGESTED REFORMS 115 
 
 seem to a minority worse than nothing, and probably 
 to a majority but little better than nothing. I shall 
 only try to sketch in outline such changes as might 
 commend themselves to those who regard the views 
 already expressed in these pages as reasonable and 
 just. And it is obvious that some parts of the pro- 
 posed scheme might be adopted, without necessitating 
 its adoption in all points. 
 
 The first change which I would suggest is the 
 reduction of the length of the Honours course, for 
 ordinary men, from four to three years. By the time 
 that he has reached two-and-twenty, a man ought to 
 be free from the incubus of examinations, 1 and ready 
 either to take up his professional career, or to proceed 
 to more detailed and advanced study as a preparation 
 for teaching or research. 
 
 Two courses of action would be possible. Either 
 the two existing examinations could be amalgamated 
 into one and placed at the end of three years, or the 
 time for the first examination, Moderations, could be 
 shortened. To me the second of these two alterna- 
 tives seems on the whole preferable, for, undergraduates 
 being what they are, they could scarcely be induced 
 to start seriously for an examination divided from 
 them by a tract of three years. A first examination 
 could well be set after a residence at Oxford of a year 
 
 1 It is to be hoped that the custom of awarding Fellowships on 
 examination, which has of late years been dying down, may speedily 
 become extinct. Few things could be more demoralizing to a young 
 graduate than the attempt to keep up "examination-form" after his 
 degree. Such form is imperilled by studying abroad, even by advanced 
 work at home. A man can only retain it by stunting himself, and 
 remaining at the examination level.
 
 Ji6 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 and a term, in December of the year following 
 matriculation. 
 
 All schemes of reform almost necessarily begin by 
 an attack upon the present scheme of Classical Honour 
 Moderations, which contents few. The subjects of 
 Moderations are at present mostly such as a boy has 
 studied already, composition, and translation of the 
 Greek and Roman writers who are commonly read in 
 the higher forms of schools. It is notorious that it is 
 difficult to maintain the interest of undergraduates in 
 work thus wanting in novelty. On this point I have 
 already dwelt. 
 
 It would be possible to substitute for the present 
 Moderations an examination of a somewhat different 
 character ; its nature would naturally depend upon 
 that of the Final Examinations, of which I shall 
 presently treat. Without venturing to draw up a 
 scheme for the first examination, I would suggest 
 some features in it which seem essential. 
 
 1. It should be essentially and primarily a classical 
 examination, devoted to testing the scholarship of the 
 examinees, and their proficiency in the Greek and 
 Latin languages and literature. 
 
 2. It would be well to direct more attention than 
 is at present directed to ascertaining whether they 
 understood what they read. The subject matter of 
 historians and philosophers as well as of poets and 
 orators should be a subject of examination. It is 
 necessary to an intelligent reading of classical writers 
 that their works should be regarded in proper per- 
 spective, as writings of a particular period, standing 
 in close relations to the life, the customs, and the art
 
 SUGGESTED REFORMS 117 
 
 of that period. Thus there should be . set papers on 
 Greek and Roman history and antiquities, designed 
 not to encourage the acquisition of masses of detailed 
 information, but rather to secure in students a fresh 
 and intelligent interest in their authors. 
 
 3. It seems distinctly desirable, as already observed, 
 to give men when they enter the university some 
 subjects of an interesting kind which will be new to 
 them. Two subjects seem specially adapted for this 
 purpose, and might well be made alternatives (a) the 
 elements of logic and of moral philosophy, (/3) the 
 elements of Greek art, especially sculpture. Either 
 of these subjects would well serve the purpose of 
 introducing the freshman to a larger world of study 
 than that to which he was accustomed, and arousing a 
 new intellectual interest. 
 
 As the first examination would be taken by all 
 classical students alike, there should be required in 
 those who passed it all knowledge the absence of 
 which would be a disgrace to a classically-educated 
 man. After this examination students of different 
 tendencies and tastes should be permitted to diverge. 
 This is closely parallel to the line already taken in 
 the examinations in natural science. 
 
 At the end of the third year should be placed the 
 final examination. Of the unsatisfactory nature of 
 the present Final Schools I have already spoken. 
 For many years past the vastness of the ground 
 covered by the examination has been excessive ; and 
 it is well known that few or no men can duly occupy 
 the whole of that ground. Although alternatives 
 have not formally been admitted, yet in practice they
 
 n8 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 are to some extent allowed. The right and natural 
 course would clearly be to sanction a custom which 
 necessity has introduced, and openly to set before 
 the student a choice of subjects. Three alternative 
 courses suggest themselves, any one of which would be 
 an excellent training, and one or other of which 
 would suit almost any intelligence. These courses 
 would be 
 
 1. Philosophy, ancient and modern. 
 
 2. Ancient history and archaeology. 
 
 3. Philology and criticism. 
 
 On each of these I will briefly comment. 
 
 1. It is practically impossible to divide ancient 
 from modern philosophy. A classically-trained man, 
 and especially an Oxford man, will naturally take his 
 start from Plato and Aristotle. But he should not 
 neglect the very important philosophic schools of later 
 Greece, nor even Roman Stoicism. In the comparison 
 of the solutions of the problems of life and mind which 
 are offered us by ancient writers with those which 
 have successively prevailed in the modern world will 
 lie an excellent training. But yet something is needed 
 to give greater actuality, a closer touch with fact, 
 and this may well be supplied by insisting in the 
 examination on a grasp of the facts of observational 
 psychology. An alternative to psychology might be 
 modern economics. 
 
 2. If ancient history were made the main subject 
 of study for nearly two years, it would be possible to 
 require, besides an intimate knowledge of the great 
 historians, which would, of course, be primary, some
 
 SUGGESTED REFORMS ( 119 
 
 careful examination of such sources of our knowledge 
 of ancient history as are not literary. It would be 
 possible to study the geography, the monuments of 
 sculpture and architecture, the inscriptions and coins 
 of the Greeks and Eomans, and to learn something of 
 modern methods of historic enquiry and the criticism 
 of authorities. After what has been already said 
 on this subject, I need not stay here to show how 
 actuality would thus be given to the study of the 
 ancient world, and the minds of students trained for 
 work in the modern world. A modern touch might 
 be added in the comparative study of political 
 institutions. 
 
 3. Criticism and scholarship would naturally attract 
 men of a literary turn. The importance of keeping 
 up a high standard in scholarship is said on good 
 authority to have been of late overlooked at Oxford. 
 Of course in this branch of the final examination, the 
 level of scholarship required for a first-class would be 
 something respectable. But as scholarship and literary 
 criticism encourage elegance rather than force of 
 mind, it would be desirable to add under this head 
 some studies calling for definite hard work. Com- 
 parative philology might be studied at all events in 
 an elementary way; and students might be trained 
 to grapple with inscriptions and manuscripts. 
 
 Each of the three courses above mentioned would 
 be adapted to a different type of mind, the philosophic, 
 the historic, and the literary. It is noteworthy that 
 the Oxford Philological Society has quite spontaneously, 
 and by the logic of events, divided itself into these 
 three sections. In one or another of them almost
 
 120 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 any man of intelligence would find scope and mental 
 stimulus. And in each there would be provided 
 some contact with actual fact, so that each could 
 claim to be an introduction to some side of human 
 science. And the present crush and hurry would 
 be done away. The two years and a quarter now 
 devoted to the course in Litterse Humaniores would 
 in fact be not shortened by half a year, but in theory 
 lengthened out to four years and a half, a reasonable 
 time for so great a mass of subjects. As a rule, of 
 course, men would only take one branch, pursuing the 
 subjects to which their intelligence was adapted, and 
 not being perplexed with those for which they were 
 unfitted. I have indeed heard it argued that men 
 derive most good from the studies to which they are 
 naturally unsuited ; but I imagine that this is not the 
 kind of opinion on which anyone would work in 
 practical life. 
 
 The degree of B.A. could be claimed by all who had 
 taken a class in a branch of the Final Examination. 
 
 There is, however, a very strong feeling among 
 Oxford teachers that historic and philosophic studies, 
 when combined, have a far better educational result 
 than either separately. Under the course here out- 
 lined, such advantages, whatever their value may be, 
 need not be given up. An undergraduate might be 
 allowed to take one branch of the Final Examination 
 in one year and another in the next. In this way the 
 whole course would still be comprised within four years, 
 and any man could combine history with philosophy 
 or with criticism, or philosophy with criticism, thus 
 securing a training unquestionably more thorough and
 
 SUGGESTED REFORMS 121 
 
 complete than he now gets in the same time. The 
 memory also, which is at present overtaxed in the 
 preparation for the schools, would be relieved if, in 
 preparation for any examination, it had only one class 
 of facts to deal with at once. 
 
 It is clear that the course suggested, though it would 
 not break the tradition of examinations, would greatly 
 diminish their tyranny. Half the number of papers at 
 present set to each candidate would be quite sufficient 
 to test his knowledge, if he had to take one subject 
 and not three. This would be a very great advantage. 
 And as at Oxford fellowships do not depend on place 
 in the Final Schools, it seems to me that alike tutors 
 and undergraduates might begin to breathe again. As 
 to special subjects, it would almost seem that they 
 might disappear from the examination and be taken up 
 by the abler men as work for a fourth year. 
 
 Perhaps by itself a change in the ordering of 
 examinations might not avail to remedy the defects of 
 the present course. But it would tend to counteract 
 them. And it would probably be accompanied by 
 other changes. It is certainly desirable that under- 
 graduates should learn to depend less upon lectures and 
 more upon books and facts, and if they were less 
 pressed for time this might be brought about. It is 
 desirable that they should learn to rely less upon 
 their tutors and more upon themselves, and instead of 
 constantly writing essays, should take up little pieces 
 of work, to be carried out in their own way and by 
 their own resources. The writing of an essay now 
 and then probably tends greatly to help men to 
 express themselves; but the continual writing of
 
 122 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 essays, like too much of Greek and Latin composition, 
 may produce weariness and indifference. On the other 
 hand, to find things out for oneself is the very essential 
 of education ; what is thus acquired is remembered for 
 life, and by such exercise the muscles of the mind 
 grow strong and supple. It is in the direction of 
 these changes that the course which I have sketched 
 would work. 
 
 An objection which is sure to be brought against 
 these proposals, and which will carry weight in many 
 quarters, is that they would require too much, too 
 severe and special a training, for the ordinary under- 
 graduate, the man who wants only what he would call 
 a good general education. The final examination as 
 it stands at present is regarded by many as too special 
 for the class of undergraduates of whom I speak, and 
 some teachers would gladly bring it back to what it 
 was thirty years ago. This I do not think to be 
 possible ; but yet I am by no means without sympathy 
 for the man who wants a more general education. 
 It seems not impossible to make allowance for him 
 without expelling the percentage of the world's progress 
 in knowledge which has filtered through into the 
 Oxford course. 
 
 The fact is that Oxford class or honour examinations 
 have become somewhat perverted from their original 
 purpose. They were meant for men who had some 
 intellectual ambition, and more than average ability. 
 But now it has become the custom to send through 
 them men who are either without the will or without 
 the capacity to do justice to them ; and the abler men 
 in the University are kept at a lower level for the
 
 SUGGESTED REFORMS 123 
 
 sake of such. It is desirable that the standard for 
 honours should be very decidedly raised, and that Pass 
 Examinations should be improved, so as to make them 
 a really worthy course for ordinary men. The man 
 who wants a general training, who does not want to 
 go far, in classics or anything else, should clearly have 
 arranged for him a general examination, a good all-round 
 pass test, which should provide him with honest work 
 during his residence, but not prevent him from follow- 
 ing up any particular line of reading or investiga- 
 tion which might happen to attract him. Whether the 
 lowest standard in the Pass Examinations should be 
 raised, so as altogether to exclude incompetent men 
 from the Oxford degree, is another question, which 
 I do not propose here to consider. But, apart from 
 this, a standard of a pass first class might easily be 
 established, so as to make it by no means a con- 
 temptible achievement. Many of the men who at 
 present attain to a third class in Honours would do 
 far better to read for a good Pass Examination. All 
 this would do much to break the tyranny of examina- 
 tions. 
 
 The advantage of shortening the course in most 
 cases by a year would be inestimable. Men who were 
 going into business or into a profession could set about 
 their special training at a more reasonable age. And 
 those who had -a real capacity for study could devote 
 the year thus saved to graduate study, to doing for 
 themselves some small piece of first-hand work in any 
 part of their subject which they had found attractive. 
 In the present state of the world no man can be 
 considered really educated who has not thus set
 
 124 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 himself face to face with some group of facts to be 
 grappled with, to be conquered and reduced to order. 
 Under the Oxford system, a man after his final ex- 
 amination is not fit for such a piece of special study ; 
 he does not know how to set about it, or what it 
 means ; he has not learned the practical uses of 
 scientific method. But according to the scheme here 
 suggested, he would at the end of three years be 
 prepared for this further and final training. 
 
 But what is most necessary is that in all appoint- 
 ments of a classical kind in provincial colleges, to 
 fellowships and tutorships at Oxford, even to the 
 upper forms of schools regard shall be had to the 
 question whether candidates have really won their 
 spurs by doing some good piece of work. That they 
 have merely passed good examinations does not prove 
 that they possess perseverance, method, respect for 
 fact, or that they are fit to form younger minds for 
 the conflict of life. Of course the candidate need not 
 be a specialist ; that is quite another matter ; but he 
 should prove that he is not a mere dilettante and 
 sciolist. 
 
 It must be allowed to be a merit of the scheme 
 which I have sketched that although it would bring 
 Oxford into the current of the world's studies, and out 
 of the backwater of particularism, yet it would intro- 
 duce no violent or dislocating change in our system. 
 It would merely hasten the progress of a revolution 
 which is actually taking place, though slowly and 
 tentatively. Oxford would still preserve a very 
 strongly marked special character in her classical 
 course, which would strongly contrast with the free
 
 SUGGESTED REFORMS 125 
 
 options of Germany and America, Cambridge has 
 recently entirely changed her classical course ; as I 
 think, very greatly for the better ; but her new course 
 would still I think be decidedly inferior to that which 
 I have ventured to propose.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 EFFICIENCY. CONCLUSION 
 
 THE newspapers tell us that one demand in commerce, 
 in legislation, in the talk of the people eclipses all 
 others, the demand for efficiency. If we mean to 
 hold our place among the nations, nay, if we would 
 save ourselves from utter downfall, we must learn to 
 be more efficient. And the particular nations in face 
 of which we have to assert our efficiency are Germany 
 and America. It is useless to conceal or to minimize 
 the truth in such matters. In race, the Germans and 
 Americans are nearly allied to us ; in religion, in 
 material conditions, in traditions they come closest to 
 us. Naturally we have closer ties of friendship with 
 them than with other peoples. But for all that they 
 are our rivals, rivals in sea-power, in science, in 
 commerce, and we must hold our own against them, 
 or we must go to the wall. This international rivalry 
 affects Oxford as a leading power in education. It is 
 the business of Oxford so to train the students who 
 come hither for training that they may hold their own 
 everywhere, and keep up the honour of the flag and 
 the influence of England in the world of intelligence 
 and of knowledge. Mr Sadler has maintained in his 
 
 126
 
 EFFICIENCY. CONCLUSION 127 
 
 remarkable work on education in Germany, that 
 Germany has stolen a march upon us, and it will take 
 us at least a quarter of a century to secure as effective 
 an education in England as now prevails in Germany. 
 Mr Sadler's summary of the position of education 
 among our continental rivals is admirable. 
 
 " The German higher education spares no pains to 
 make boys think. But it was never intended to make 
 them think for the mere pleasure of thinking. It 
 intends to make them think in order that they may 
 act, act, that is, not on impulse, not merely with 
 blind, dogged persistence, and not simply with splendid 
 individual energy and courage, but with far-seeing 
 calculation, with skilful and economical adjustment of 
 well-chosen means to well-defined ends, and in com- 
 bination with great numbers of other workers uniting 
 their strength in the same task. The organization of 
 modern life in Prussia has been dominated by scientific 
 conceptions ; not, that is, by any exclusive regard for 
 physical science in its narrower sense, but by those 
 ideas of exact and co-operative inquiry and endeavour 
 which have been so brilliantly illustrated, and there- 
 fore so powerfully enforced, by the advance of modern 
 science." 1 
 
 But lest the perusal of such a passage as I have 
 quoted should leave us in despair, I hasten to quote 
 another, which proves that in the opinion of an 
 authority of very great experience, not all the qualities 
 which make for success flourish most vigorously in 
 Germany. Mr Saunders testifies as follows : 
 
 " I find that the intellectual apprehension of the 
 1 M. Sadler, Education in Germany, p. 34.
 
 128 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 average educated German is at least, on a rough 
 computation, ten times quicker than that of the 
 average educated Englishman. On the other hand, in 
 nine cases out of ten I find the former's intellectual 
 judgment most uncertain and weak, and often most 
 conventional. In ordinary matters of judgment, it 
 usually turns out that the Englishman has, perhaps 
 unconsciously, been taking a much wider basis for his 
 induction than the German has." 1 
 
 My own opinion, based upon a long experience of 
 German books and writers, agrees completely with Mr 
 Saunders'. In the amassing and the ordering of facts, 
 the Germans have a faculty which we can only regard 
 with envy. But when it comes to putting facts into 
 due perspective, discerning what they do or do not 
 prove, comparing the degrees of probability of various 
 views, the English intelligence seems to me, when not 
 perverted by strong bias or ignorance, superior to the 
 German. And here is our opportunity. For, after all, 
 this power of perspective is the ruling faculty. The 
 man who has it can, to a great degree, use the mere 
 accumulator of facts as a hewer of wood and a drawer 
 of water, to furnish him with the materials for intel- 
 lectual construction, or for paving a path in practical life. 
 
 It is, however, quite indispensable that anyone who 
 attempts to value and to use the researches of others 
 should have been himself properly trained in the logic 
 of investigation, and should have himself done some 
 first-hand work. Thus alone does a man gain a secure 
 standing, a manly self-reliance, without which he may 
 drift, as so many teachers and students do drift, in 
 1 Mr G. Saunders, quoted in Sadler, Education in Germany, p. 52.
 
 EFFICIENCY. CONCLUSION 129 
 
 one of two directions. Either he will accept a par- 
 ticular master, and regard all his views as possessing 
 a semi-sacred character. Or he will lose his way in 
 the turmoil of controversy, and think that any one 
 view is about as probable as any other, becoming, as 
 Plato says, an opponent of reason, and taking refuge 
 in an unlimited scepticism. 
 
 And again, to come back to a point on which I have 
 dwelt almost to weariness, there is no reason whatever 
 why, if we make our studies more orderly and compre- 
 hensive, we should thereby lose the moral and personal 
 qualities, whatever they may be, which have hitherto 
 enabled Englishmen to play in the world the great 
 part which they have played. At present much of the 
 energy and ability of the nation is wasted, simply 
 through want of order and method. It is this waste 
 for which one would fain suggest a remedy. If a 
 thoroughly scientific education has not in Germany 
 been a complete success, the reason does not lie in the 
 kind of mental training but in other things, into which 
 I do not feel called upon to enquire. 
 
 At present in Oxford there is a tendency to level 
 up in athletic sports, and to level down in studies. 
 The athletic ideal is constantly rising; records are 
 daily being broken ; the man who excels is placed on 
 a pinnacle for the worship of his contemporaries ; a 
 football match excites more attention than a battle or 
 a great literary achievement. But meanwhile the 
 average man is neglected ; for him there is no regular 
 or methodical training ; he is allowed to grow up with 
 his physical defects uncorrected, he is not encouraged 
 to attain such a degree of excellence as his indifferent 
 
 9
 
 130 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 physique will allow. The many are neglected ; the 
 few are overestimated and overstimulated. 
 
 In matters of study precisely the opposite course 
 is taken. The university is most diligent in examin- 
 ing schools ; in spreading the benefits of extension 
 lecturing through the land, in trying to drag men of 
 poor ability up to the point at which they may succeed 
 in passing examinations. But meantime the few I 
 do not mean the merely clever men, but those who 
 set themselves to do good work, the men who sustain 
 the credit of Oxford in foreign lands are neglected 
 or merely tolerated. If they have abundant private 
 resources, they can pursue their own course ; but 
 otherwise they are obliged to expend in work of 
 routine the energies which might do great things in 
 the service of knowledge ; they are set to cut billets 
 with a razor, and the keenness and energy with which 
 they set out is soon blunted, until they fall back into 
 the ranks of the undistinguished. 
 
 The main cause of this curious state of things is 
 probably the exaggerated working of the educational 
 ideas of Thomas Arnold and of E. Thring, 1 ideas good in 
 themselves, but like all other good ideas liable to work 
 mischief when carried too far. The English public 
 school has its merits as well as its defects ; but that 
 its spirit should dominate the universities is incon- 
 gruous. We want more levelling up in study, and 
 more levelling down in athletic sports ; for whereas 
 
 1 Fifty years ago Thring began to maintain that a boy who could not 
 hold his own in study might retain his self-respect and command the 
 respect of others on other lines. That was healthy. Now Mr Benson 
 tells us that intellect is unfashionable in public schools. That is 
 unhealthy.
 
 EFFICIENCY. CONCLUSION 131 
 
 health and beauty of body may be promoted by simpler 
 means than the devotion of a lifetime, the whole posi- 
 tion and future of the nation depends in a great degree 
 on the promotion of intelligence in the few to whom 
 it falls to form that intellectual atmosphere which we 
 must all breathe. Observers say that we English are 
 not an intellectual nation. Surely that is a further 
 reason why we should not waste intellect as it is now 
 wasted in our universities. The universities pass on 
 a large part of their best intellectual material to the 
 Civil Service, which, after all, seems to be very slowly 
 leavened ; another part they devote to the task of 
 dragging dull and uninterested passmen up to the 
 examination level. Meantime the Church, the Bar, 
 Science, the Arts are defrauded. Surely, if we are 
 not an intellectual nation, we ought not to be thus 
 careless of what is given us in the way of intellect. 
 
 To say that Oxford is at the parting of the ways 
 is to speak obvious truth. A great movement in 
 favour of adaptation to the conditions of the new 
 century is taking hold of the nation. In the greater 
 English towns new universities are arising, untram- 
 melled by the traditions of the past, and longing for 
 progress. In London, as we may hope, a really great 
 teaching university is being formed. The British 
 Academy, founded to promote and systematize higher 
 knowledge in philology, philosophy, history, has received 
 a charter. And the Ehodes foundation has at this 
 moment come into being, bringing us into close relation 
 with the universities of Germany and America, and 
 compelling us to consider the points in which we 
 differ from them. It is open to Oxford " stare super
 
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 132 OXFORD AT THE CROSS ROADS 
 
 antiquas vias." But if she does, such influence in 
 English learning and thought as she might claim will 
 pass from her, possibly to London, possibly to Boston. 
 Oxford can, if she prefers, choose to become more and 
 more a high-school for training the sons of the well- 
 to-do classes for an easy and leisurely, rather than a 
 strenuous, life, or for the Civil Service Examinations. 
 
 But one very strong reason why Oxford should not 
 refuse to take a part in the necessary remodelling of 
 Humanist studies is that if she did so she would 
 abandon her own character. If the lead in higher 
 education is left to Manchester or to London, the turn 
 which it will take is probably not towards a more 
 enlightened and scientific Humanism, but towards 
 physical science. The study of nature will encroach, 
 and the study of man recede. Both claim the most 
 complete devotion, the most rigid organization ; but I 
 agree with Renan in holding that the twentieth 
 century will be pre-eminently the age of human and 
 historic science. And whereas Oxford will probably 
 never rival such places as Newcastle and Birmingham 
 in the completeness of her apparatus for physical 
 research, her prestige and her endowments may well 
 enable her to secure a lead in the branches of study 
 which have to do with man and with society. Victor 
 Hugo said bitterly of William I. of Germany that 
 though he was made Caesar he remained a corporal. 
 It may be more truly said of Oxford that there is set 
 before her the choice either like a Caesar to marshal 
 the army of knowledge, or like a corporal to confine 
 herself to drilling the raw recruits who come to her 
 only up to the level of a fixed system of examinations. 
 
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