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 THE MEANING OF 
 A UNIVERSITY 
 
 AN NAUGURAL ADDRESS DELIVERED TO THE 
 
 STUDENTS OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE 
 
 ABERYSTWYTH 
 
 ON THE 20TH OF OCTOBER, 1911 
 
 BY 
 
 WALTER RALEIGH 
 
 Price One Shilling net 
 
 OXFORD 
 
 AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 
 1911 
 
THE MEANING OF 
 A UNIVERSITY 
 
 AN INAUGURAL ADDRESS DELIVERED TO THE 
 
 STUDENTS OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE 
 
 ABERYSTWYTH 
 
 ON THE 20xH OF OCTOBER, 1911 
 BY 
 
 WALTER RALEIGH 
 
 OXFORD 
 
 AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 
 1911 
 
HENRY FROWDE 
 
 PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 
 
 LONDON, EDINBURGH, GLASGOW, NEW YORK 
 
 TORONTO AND MELBOURNE 
 

 THE MEANING OF A UNIVERSITY 
 
 MR. PRINCIPAL, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, 
 
 I am honoured by your invitation to address you at 
 the opening of another session, and I trust that my 
 choice of subject does not alarm you. I offered to 
 speak to you on the Meaning of a University, but it is 
 no part of my purpose to spend time on the definition 
 of familiar terms, or to attempt to extract surprising 
 lessons from the etymology of a word that is in daily 
 use. My interest in the subject is of another kind. By 
 the accidents of life I have had to do with many Uni- 
 versities in many places; in London, where they examine 
 without misgiving or remorse; in India, where the 
 University of London found a congenial soil for 
 multiplying all its worst vices ; at Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge, where Time and old Custom and the delights 
 of communal life have hallowed even the frailties of 
 these ancient institutions, so that their very faults have 
 something pleasant and respectable about them ; in 
 Scotland, where the Universities are truly national, and 
 prepare the chosen youth of the nation for work in the 
 learned professions ; last, and not least significant, in the 
 newer provincial Universities of England, Manchester 
 and Liverpool, where the activities of a University have 
 been recognized as essential to a full-grown municipal 
 civilization. With all these I have had to do, and 
 I should be very dull and incurious if I had never 
 troubled myself to ask what purposes they have in 
 common, and what is the meaning of a University. 
 
 5 3 -|!6 4 
 
4 THE MEANING OF 
 
 I have not mentioned Wales, for I have never taught 
 there. I have examined, but that perhaps demands an 
 apology. It is the poorest and least fruitful work that 
 falls to the lot of an academic teacher. By the irony of 
 circumstance, it is also the best paid. 
 
 On your part, I think you must find that the question 
 I have proposed is natural and relevant. Wales has 
 been convinced that University education is necessary 
 for her full national life and efficiency, and has borne 
 her own part in that renaissance and multiplication of 
 Universities which is one of the chief marks of our 
 own time. The Colleges of Aberystwyth, Cardiff, and 
 Bangor need no celebration from me. You enjoy one 
 great advantage over the newer Universities of England. 
 You make appeal not only to the love of learning but 
 to patriotism, to all that is associated with the birth- 
 tongue and the earliest and dearest memories. In 
 Aberystwyth you have shown, as I think, a far-sighted 
 wisdom in laying the foundations of a great library. 
 Fashions change and knowledge grows, but a library 
 full of ancient books can never be superseded. I have 
 always remembered a saying of my friend Professor 
 York Powell, who was at all times ready to help the 
 newer Universities. ' If you have a library and a 
 printing-press/ he once said, 'you have all that is 
 necessary for a University/ He was thinking, no 
 doubt, of the study of literature and the Arts ; the 
 Sciences are not so readily satisfied. 
 
 It is not by investigating the derivation of a word that 
 you can arrive at a true and adequate conception of a 
 living institution. The meaning of these great, vague, 
 familiar words lies in a whole world of preconceptions 
 
A UNIVERSITY 5 
 
 and mental associations. What was the name of that 
 saint, and father of the Church, who, being asked the 
 meaning of Time, replied, ' I know when you do not 
 ask me * ? All that we know best we know in that way. 
 We cannot define familiar notions. But we can some- 
 times enrich and enlarge our conceptions by inquiring 
 what a word means, or has meant, to others. Univer- 
 sities, though so many have come into being of late, are 
 not new institutions in Europe. The University is one 
 of the most valuable of the bequests that have come to 
 us from the Middle Ages. When the Germanic tribes 
 overran Western Europe and settled themselves in the 
 seat of the old Roman Empire, they organized society 
 upon a military pattern. No army can be governed 
 by a majority of votes; and feudal society was not 
 democratic. It was graded thoughout for service and 
 command. The ownership of land was an accident of 
 military service; it was enjoyed on condition that the 
 holder should put men into the field for his master's 
 wars. Such a society is picturesque in its aspect and 
 effective in its mechanism; but for one thing it made 
 no needful provision the advancement of learning. 
 Learning and the Arts, the inheritance of the free-born, 
 all that gave amenity to the hard Roman civilization 
 would have perished if it had found none to care for it 
 but the knights and barons who imposed their rule on 
 the peoples of the West. It was preserved by that 
 great and wonderful organization which rose on the ruins 
 of the Empire the Christian Church. Christianity 
 had not at first been favourable to learning, had viewed 
 learning, indeed, with profound distrust. St. Paul was 
 fearful lest the simplicity of his message should be over- 
 
6 THE MEANING OF 
 
 laid with human subtleties. He preached the Gospel 
 ' not with the wisdom of words '. When he says that 
 not many of the mighty and noble are called, he includes 
 with them also the wise ; and his words are echoed by 
 St. Augustine, by the author of the Imitation, and by 
 many later teachers. Yet a sure practical instinct led 
 the Church to recognize how essential learning is to a 
 religion which, in one of its aspects, is the religion of a 
 book. Latin literature was preserved largely by the 
 agency of the Church ; the only schools in the dark 
 ages were the schools attached to monasteries and 
 bishops* seats. By a slow process, which I need not 
 attempt to trace, these were strengthened and extended 
 to embrace a wider range of subjects ; until, about the 
 twelfth and thirteen centuries, their ambitions took shape 
 in the earliest of our great Universities. 
 
 The University, like the Church, was a democratic 
 institution that is to say, it opened useful and brilliant 
 careers to those who were neither noble by birth, nor 
 powerful, nor rich. In the midst of a society wholly 
 aristocratic in structure it established a new order by 
 conferring its rewards on those who sought knowledge, 
 not power... The learned men trained at the Universities 
 made a new republic in Europe. The Latin language 
 was a universal medium of communication among the 
 educated classes, and a scholar found himself at home 
 in any of the famous cities that he visited. This single- 
 ness of learned Europe is well illustrated by the career 
 of the only Englishman who was ever Pope Nicholas 
 Breakspear. His father was a poor man who took the 
 religious habit and retired into a monastery, leaving 
 Nicholas to shift for himself. The boy begged his way 
 
A UNIVERSITY 7 
 
 on foot through France, studied at the schools there, 
 and obtained a menial position in a monastery, where at 
 length he rose to be Abbot. He was elected Pope in 
 1154, and, as Adrian IV, had a short and troubled reign. 
 It was he who said that the Pope's tiara is splendid 
 because it burns the head that wears it. 
 
 In the community of learning, more than in other 
 communities, a career has always been open to the 
 talents. Of all modern institutions the University 
 approaches most nearly, both by its faults and by its 
 virtues, to the ancient Athenian democracy, where skill 
 in the liberal arts was encouraged and rewarded^ Every 
 one who has been a member of a University knows'Kow 
 strong is this democratic spirit, how little regard is paid 
 to alien differences and distinctions. The place _you_ 
 hold in a University cannot be given y_o_li ; you cannot 
 bring it with you from outside ; you must make it for 
 yourself; and, even so, it is not of much value unless it 
 carries with it the goodwill and consent of your fellows. 
 They judge you more truly than your teachers, for they 
 see you closer. 
 
 Wordsworth, in a well-known passage of The Prelude 
 (if any passage of The Prelude can be said to be well 
 known), speaks of the strong republican tinge that he 
 took from his education at Cambridge. The doctrines 
 of the French Revolution, he says, were not strange or 
 startling to him ; they merely proclaimed to the world 
 at large the principles which he had already found active 
 in the life of a University. 
 
 Nor was it least 
 Of many benefits, in later years 
 Derived from academic institutes 
 

 8 THE MEANING OF 
 
 And rules, that they held something up to view 
 
 Of a Republic, where all stood thus far 
 
 Upon equal ground; that we were brothers all 
 
 In honour, as in one community, 
 
 Scholars and gentlemen; where, furthermore, 
 
 Distinction open lay to all that came, 
 
 And wealth and titles were in less esteem 
 
 Than talents, worth, and prosperous industry. 
 
 Add unto this, subservience from the first 
 
 To presences of God's mysterious power 
 
 Made manifest in Nature's sovereignty, 
 
 And fellowship with venerable books 
 
 To sanction the proud workings of the soul, 
 
 And mountain liberty. 
 
 All these things you have here to-day ; they are still, as 
 they were in Wordsworth's time, the best introduction 
 to human society. 
 
 When I speak of a University as the best modern 
 type of a democracy, I do not mean by democracy that 
 strict mechanical equality and similarity of units which 
 some social thinkers seem to desire. A dead level of 
 equality between man and man is not conceivable in 
 live society. ^A-great part of the business_of jiJJniver- 
 sityjsjx) cultivate differences andjdistinctions. If there 
 is any place in the world where it is a stupid heresy to 
 say that there shall be no distinction made between the 
 skilled and the unskilled, that place is a University. It 
 has its own aristocracy of talent. Judging by its own 
 standards it does something, no doubt, to redress the 
 inequalities of the world, and to provide an escape from 
 the tyranny of the social order. Engaging in its own 
 work, it opens its doors to all who come, so that it may 
 get the best possible recruits for the carrying on of that 
 Work. Having got the best it can, it helps and en- 
 

 A UNIVERSITY 9 
 
 courages them, and exalts them above the rest. But 
 the rest are not really neglected ; they too get benefit 
 from being brought into touch with the business of 
 learning, from breathing the atmosphere of a place 
 where knowledge is pursued sincerely and disinterest- 
 edly, for its own sake. 
 
 If I am to make a general statement on the question 
 I have proposed, I should say that aJUniversity is an 
 institution for guarding and increasing our inheritance 
 of knowledge, and above all (because knowledge in- 
 creases only by process of natural growth) for keeping 
 knowledge alive. Life implies decay and renewal; ji_ 
 University must be perpetually alert to discard super- 
 seded methods and to detect the importance and signi- 
 ficance of new studies and new ways of approach. It 
 rehandles all fundamental conceptions, and revises 
 them. It begins at the beginning, and builds from the 
 foundation. It raises fresh crops by turning over the 
 old soil. It is constantly vigilant on the frontiers of 
 knowledge. It cares little for drilling men in masses, 
 in barrack-yards ; it encourages adventure, and gives to 
 each a place in the extended line of pioneers, who are 
 pushing forward the boundaries and claiming new pro- 
 vinces. It never sets itself to produce things equal to 
 sample, but attempts rather to increase human power 
 and human knowledge. 
 
 Do not imagine for a moment that I am casting any 
 shadow of suspicion upon those older humane studies 
 which for four centuries now have preoccupied and 
 fascinated so many of the best and rarest minds. Methods 
 of cultivation change, but they must be applied to the 
 same old ground. We cannot jump off the earth, or 
 
 B 
 
10 THE MEANING OF 
 
 dispense with what has been preserved for us of the 
 experience of the ages. The study of Greek can never 
 be effete ; indeed, few studies are so full of lessons for 
 modern life. I will not argue the case ; I am content to 
 quote Sir Walter Scott's remark upon it. He tells, in 
 his fragment of autobiography, how he was prevented 
 by his sickly childhood from learning Greek at school. 
 When he went to College he found himself unable to 
 hold his own with boys who had been better schooled, 
 and thus, from motives of pride (or so he says), he con- 
 tracted an insuperable dislike for the study of Greek. 
 
 1 1 forgot the very letters/ he adds, ' of the Greek alpha- 
 bet ; a loss never to be repaired, considering what that 
 language is, and who they were who employed it in 
 their compositions/ 
 
 Yet nothing persists unchanged ; knowledge is always 
 being born and dying; it is a tree which pushes new 
 branches while others wither and drop. We have to be 
 on our guard against dead and petrified knowledge 
 bequeathed to us by former generations. Astrology and 
 alchemy were useful sciences in their day ; their history 
 is full of brilliant discoveries and inventions ; but they 
 are dead, and the best tribute that we can pay to the old 
 astrologers and alchemists is to continue the progressive 
 study of astronomy and chemistry. Or let me take an 
 illustration from a more familiar science the science of 
 Grammar. We are all fed at school on some of these 
 fossils. I do not know how grammar is taught to-day, 
 but I remember that great play used to be made with 
 the division of words into Parts of Speech. There was 
 a noun (which is a name), a verb (which is a word), an 
 adjective (which is added to a name), an adverb (which 
 
A UNIVERSITY n 
 
 is added to a word), a pronoun (which is used instead of 
 a name), a preposition (which is put before other words), 
 a conjunction (which is put between other words), an 
 interjection (which is also put between other words, but 
 with no adhesive quality in it). There is no harm, I 
 suppose, in this venerable piece of grammatical learning; 
 but it does not introduce you to the best modern thought 
 on the problems of language, and as a scientific classifi- 
 cation it is no better than the division of living creatures 
 into animals, beasts, quadrupeds, chaperons, children, 
 men-servants, and apparitions. 
 
 Though we should be jealous continually to revise 
 our knowledge, to prune the dead branches and foster 
 the living, we must not be misled into judging every 
 branch of knowledge by its immediate utility. The 
 standard of utility is a false and mischievous standard 
 invented by short-sighted greed, and certain, if it is 
 accepted, to paralyse and kill the University that accepts 
 it. It cultivates the branches for profit, and neglects the 
 root. You cannot apply the test of utility to knowledge 
 that is living and growing. The use of knowledge is 
 often the application to practical ends of knowledge that 
 has ceased to grow. It is the timber, not the growing 
 tree, which serves for ships. Some of the conclusions 
 of scientific study can be utilized, but who shall say 
 which of them ? How can we be free to ask questions 
 of the world, if we are told that we must ask no question 
 the answer to which is not certain to be immediately 
 profitable to us? We ask the question because we 
 do not know the answer. The answer, if we are so 
 fortunate as to find it, may be disconcerting and strange. 
 Then we must ask more questions. 
 
12 THE MEANING OF 
 
 I am glad to know that you include among your 
 studies here some subjects commonly called technical ; 
 I notice especially agriculture, and domestic science in 
 all its branches. These are not poor or narrow studies. 
 Who can be deeply versed in the tillage of fields if he 
 knows no botany, no chemistry, above all, no bacterio- 
 logy, a science which promises to revolutionize agricul- 
 ture and subdue it more completely to man's will ? The 
 management of a home, again, is perhaps the oldest 
 science in the world ; it demands all kinds of lore, and 
 leads the way to an intelligent interest in some of the 
 most curious problems of history. These problems have 
 been neglected because historians, for the most part, 
 have lived in Colleges, not in kitchens, and have served 
 on juries, not in dairies, so that you may read a dozen 
 volumes of ancient history and find no mention at all of 
 .what the Greeks ate, or what were their habits in 
 washingj" The truth is that there is no considerable 
 ~1und of human activity, involving a wide range and 
 diversity of material, which is not a fit subject for 
 University study. The chief danger comes to technical 
 schools when they are divorced from those wider and 
 freer forms of intellectual inquiry which are the sacred 
 charge of a University. Then they live as annuitants 
 upon accumulated capital, applying old discoveries with- 
 out criticism, without curiosity, and therefore without 
 intelligence. 
 
 C If you rule out certain investigations because no one 
 * at present can divine any possible utility for them, see 
 the danger that you run. How would the great dis- 
 coverers of old have fared? How could any one, from 
 the behaviour of the loadstone, predict the mariner's 
 
A UNIVERSITY 13 
 
 compass ? How would Harvey have justified his study 
 of the flow of the blood ? Or that curious property of 
 amber, which, when it is rubbed, attracts small particles 
 to itself this surely might seem to be an amusement 
 for a vacant mind, a scientific toy. But the toys of 
 yesterday are the engines of to-day ; and the force in the 
 amber drives trains, and links continents, and makes 
 human speech audible at the distance of the earth's 
 diameter. 
 
 There is another danger, a kind of lethargy which falls 
 upon Universities in the day of their prosperity, when 
 they have thousands of students and a full measure of 
 public recognition and material success. Then they 
 sometimes forget their earlier gospel, they lose their 
 first sprightly impulse, and settle down to a programme, 
 a time-table, an industry, a system. Mankind covets 
 repose even in the act of hard labour; and a certain 
 measure of repose is to be found in settled habits and 
 uniform duties. There are ten martinets in the world for 
 every one man of an inquiring mind : it is so simple to 
 be a martinet, and so difficult to be a man of an inquiring 
 mind. There are ten men who prefer to be told their 
 duties for every one man who prefers to invent his duties 
 for himself. Yet the world is moved only by those who 
 invent their duties for themselves; and thought, the 
 cardinal duty of a University, cannot be performed tc 
 order. Machinery and discipline, a constitution, and 
 regulations these things are necessary for any great 
 institution ; but they are the body of the institution, not 
 its animating soul. If discipline be exalted at the expense 
 of everything else, you get a spirit creditable perhaps to 
 a brigade, but disastrous to the activities of the mind. 
 
14 THE MEANING OF 
 
 Their's not to reason why, 
 Their's but to do and die, 
 
 is no motto for a University, and the University that 
 adopts it may add the moral 
 
 Into the Valley of Death 
 Rode the Six Hundred. 
 
 Some weeks ago I read in the newspapers a maxim 
 that was quoted with approval by a high educational 
 authority I think it was the Minister of Education. 
 ' It is no matter what you teach a boy/ he said, l so long 
 as it is something he does not want to learn/ That I 
 call putting discipline first. I do not want to argue 
 about an epigram ; and it is easy to detect the element 
 of truth in this epigram. If a boy, or a man, is unable 
 to perform a task unless from beginning to end it is 
 entirely pleasant to him, that boy, or that man, is fit for 
 nothing. Nevertheless, I do think that in relation to a 
 University this epigram expresses very precisely and 
 very memorably the direct opposite of the truth. If, when 
 some little pains have, been taken to teach him, a pupil 
 does not want to learn a subject, every teacher would 
 admit that, so far as that pupil is concerned, the teaching 
 is a failure. There is always an initial difficulty with a 
 new subject. A fire is often difficult to light. But this 
 is a difficulty which good teaching soon surmounts ; and 
 indeed, in my observation, a good teacher does not tell 
 you anything until he has made you eager to know it. 
 To say that the reluctance of the learner is a test of the 
 fitness of the study seems to me a desperate counsel of 
 pessimism. How far are we to go along this line of 
 thought ? Shall we say, ' It is no matter what you put 
 
A UNIVERSITY 15 
 
 on your fire, so long as it is something that will not 
 burn ' ? Shall we say, ' It is no matter what you know, 
 so long as it is something that does not interest you in 
 the least ' ? And what a maxim for high authority to 
 present to teachers ! How the bad teachers would revel 
 in it ! One can imagine it inscribed in letters of gold on 
 the unlovely walls of Mr. Squeers's academy of Dothe- 
 boys Hall. 
 
 It is true that every University is bound to help the 
 poor, and, within reasonable limits, even the backward, 
 so as to get rid of the accidental disadvantages of the 
 earlier training, and to give a man the full use of his 
 powers. But that does not mean that a University is 
 doing good if it helps those who have no special bent 
 for learned pursuits to acquire, with heavy labour and 
 much assistance, just so much as may enable them to 
 pass muster. On the contrary, it is doing harm. It is 
 making itself into a machine for multiplying inferior 
 products, and for stamping them with an ancient and 
 honourable hall-mark. Not every one has the taste or 
 ability for every study. Time cannot be more perfectly 
 wasted than in preparing an unmusical person for a 
 musical degree. It is time wasted without end, for the 
 pupils of this generation are the teachers of the next. 
 Let no one call this attitude cruel, or quote to me the 
 parable of the rich man who made a feast, and sent to 
 the highways and hedges to seek out the maimed and 
 the halt and the blind, to compel them to come in. If it 
 had been not a feast, but a meeting for athletic sports, 
 the compulsion would have been cruel. The business / 
 of a University is an athletic and exacting business. 
 And, after all, with good teaching and a vast diversity 
 
16 THE MEANING OF 
 
 of studies, there are few indeed who cannot be accom- 
 modated with something which suits them, and gives 
 them the great happiness of exercising their natural 
 powers. 
 
 I am not forgetting the broader utilities of the Uni- 
 versities, or their daily work. A Lhiiversityjin its most 
 obvious aspect, i^ji training-school for the learned pro- 
 fessions and businesses. There, on wide and solid 
 foundations, the knowledge necessary for some particular 
 craft is displayed in relation to the whole body of know- 
 
 r ledge. It is also a place of general education, where 
 those who find their leisure tedious may quicken it and 
 point it to some end. But all these utilities are depen- 
 
 l^dent upon the work of those who seek nothing from 
 knowledge but the pleasure of understanding. 
 
 We have now whole systems of National Education, 
 of State Control, of Grants in Aid, of statistics and 
 results. I am not complaining of the Grants : gifts are 
 welcome if they come from generous and unassuming 
 donors. But the central control of education always 
 has been and always will be regarded with jealousy by 
 'a live University. Spontaneity and individuality are the 
 springs of its life. Its bravest and most momentous 
 deeds are deviations from the beaten track. I have read 
 a good many blue books lately on the subject of educa- 
 tion, and I feel moved to ask a question. Why are these 
 books so appallingly dull to read ? Why does the very 
 name of Education oppress the mind with an overwhelm- 
 ing sense of dreariness and fatigue ? Education is the 
 opening of fresh eyes on the world ; the"exhilarating 
 trial of new powers against the forces of the world. 
 Why does nothing of this freshness and exhilaration 
 
A UNIVERSITY 17 
 
 find its way into these books ? I will not pretend that I 
 cannot answer this question : I can. It is because the 
 facts and figures which fill these books, though they tell 
 much of the organization of learning, do not and cannot 
 describe the real thing. If you wish to understand the 
 motive power of religion, you will not get much satis- 
 faction from a catalogue of the endowments of the various 
 religious bodies, the hours of their services, and the 
 numbers of their adherents. The spirit of the thing is 
 not there. What the State can do for education is to 
 furnish it with buildings and apparatus and salaries ; it 
 can fashion the body in the hope that the spirit may 
 enter in. Just so the tribes of the South Seas make 
 images to be their Gods, but they are careful to leave a 
 hole in the image for the divinity to enter at. If I 
 were in control of national education, I should be care- 
 ful to leave a very large hole. 
 
 Because they are seeking what it is not easy to find, 
 the Universities have always been jealous of control. 
 They have often given harbourage to studies which for 
 one reason or another were unpopular in the world 
 without. They have been the homes of many great 
 heretics. But for the support that he got from his 
 University, Wiclif (to take a famous instance) would 
 have been silenced and arrested with his work undone. 
 Freedom to think, to criticize, to doubt, are essential to 
 a University. It cannot be free if it is the appanage of 
 any external power. 
 
 The spirit of learning is a good and humble thing, 
 much better than the spirit of teaching. ' The vanity of 
 teaching,' says a favourite author of mine, 'often tempteth 
 a man to forget that he is a blockhead.' A University 
 
 c 
 
i8 THE MEANING OF 
 
 consists not of pupils and teachers, but of junior and 
 senior students ; indeed, in the older Universities there 
 was often very scant provision made for engaging 
 the services of regular teachers. Any Master of Arts 
 could set up his bills, and advertise his lectures, and 
 teach those who were willing to attend. In our time 
 we make fuller and more settled provision for teaching. 
 But learning is still the real business, and the most that 
 a teacher can do is to help with sympathy and advice 
 those who are travelling the same way with him. 
 
 The evil effects of the tyranny of teaching are remarked 
 by the first historian of the Royal Society, who describes 
 the corruptions and errors which he observed in the 
 ancient seats of learning. One of the chief of these, he 
 says, is that ' Seats of Knowledge have been for the 
 most part heretofore, not Laboratories, as they ought 
 to be, but only Schools, where some have taught, and 
 all the rest subscribed'. So things go from bad to 
 worse. '> 
 
 * For those who take their opinions from others' rules 
 are commonly stricter imposers upon their scholars than 
 their own authors were upon them, or than the first 
 inventors of things themselves are upon others. What- 
 ever the cause of this be, whether the first men are 
 made meek and gentle by their long search, while those 
 that -learn afterwards, only hastily catching things in 
 small Systems, are soon satisfied, before they have 
 broken their pride, and so become more imperious ; or 
 whether it arises from hence, that the same meanness 
 of Soul which made them bound their thoughts by 
 others' precepts, makes them also insolent to their 
 inferiors ... or whatever other cause may be alleged, the 
 observation is certain, that the successors are usually 
 more positive and tyrannical than the beginners of sects.' 
 
A UNIVERSITY 19 
 
 That was written more than two hundred and forty 
 years ago, but the evil which it describes has not grown 
 old. Seats of Knowledge are still subject to the vanity 
 of dogmatizing. 
 
 There has been a notable growth, I think, in our own > 
 time, of the social sense, the sense of mutual dependence v 
 and mutual responsibility. We begin to see that we 
 owe everything we have, even our very selves, to the 
 society that gave us birth. Call this quickened social 
 consciousness what you like, you cannot make it any- 
 thing but a good thing. We are more dependent on 
 our fellows than we can easily imagine. One of the 
 delights of a University is to be found in those close 
 ties of mutual help and understanding which are so 
 often knit there. Nevertheless, the best part of a student's // 
 work must always be done_alpne. Thought is a lonely ' 
 business. Crowds cannot think; and those who love 
 to warm themselves at the applause of others pass all 
 too easily from thought to rhetoric. The life of a man 
 of science, a man of letters, an artist, is essentially a life 
 of much solitude. The very things which make social 
 life pleasant and possible, the things which raise the 
 standard of comfort and civilization, we owe to men who 
 struggled long with their own thoughts in lonely con- 
 templation. The great men of the great age of the 
 Renaissance, the men who made modern Europe, were 
 all lonely adventurers ; from Drake on the high seas to 
 Newton in his study. We seem to be passing into a 
 period unlike the period of the Renaissance, a period 
 when men's minds are chiefly directed to problems of 
 social architecture and social betterment. It is a neces- 
 sary task, but we shall be foolish if we forget that we 
 
20 THE MEANING OF 
 
 _are dependent on the lonely men, whom we cannot 
 command. It is so easy to use the resources of civiliza- 
 tion, that we fall into the habit of regarding them as 
 if they were ours by right. They are not ours by right ; 
 they come to us by free gift, from the thinkers. Take 
 any hundred people and set them on an uninhabited 
 island. Let them have all the material of civilization 
 iron-ore, and fuel, and the seeds of plants, so that they 
 may build up as good a society as they can. How 
 many things would there be, things now of daily use, 
 which would be lost to them for ever ? How many years 
 would it take them to recapture the lore of the steam- 
 engine and the printing-press? They would be in a 
 position to understand how completely in our daily life 
 we are the beneficiaries of knowledge and skill not our 
 own. 
 
 I remember once asking a good biologist whether 
 any proof is possible that man is the most intelligent of 
 the animals. He replied that comparison of individual 
 with individual is impossible ; we know too little of the 
 mental processes of other creatures ; but that, judged 
 by the perfection of their social organization, the ants, 
 not to mention the bees, are above us. They have 
 a more thoroughly organized society. The individual 
 is more completely subordinated to social welfare. 
 Their small size is against them ; if they were as large 
 as cats, there would soon be none of us left. I do not 
 know whether we can rest a claim to superiority upon 
 some more honourable ground than mere size. But 
 I suggest that it is at least possible that the ants and 
 the bees do not ask questions ; that they can show us no 
 counterpart to the man at work on his own thoughts 
 
A UNIVERSITY 21 
 
 in laboratory or study. And this power in man seems 
 to be the chief guarantee for the welfare and progress 
 of humanity. 
 
 I have spoken as if progress were a part of the law of 
 life ; and it is easy to think so while one Contemplates 
 the amazing developments of science, particularly of 
 mechanical science. But literature and the arts, to 
 which my own time is given, teach a humbler lesson. 
 There the question is not by how much we can excel 
 our fathers, but whether with toil and pains we may 
 make ourselves worthy to be ranked with them. The 
 rapid strides of scientific invention make us prone to 
 think of the history of mankind as a triumphant story of 
 continual advance. So we may think of it, if we like. 
 But if man has in the main been successful in his 
 business of understanding and mastering the world, 
 nevertheless his story is a chequered story, and he has 
 suffered many defeats and disasters. He is a fellow that 
 hath had losses. In the beautiful art which models the 
 human figure in stone or some other enduring material, 
 who can hope to match the Greeks? In the art of 
 building, who can look at the crowded confusion of any 
 great modern city, with all its fussy and meaningless 
 wealth of decoration, like a pastry-cook's nightmare, and 
 not marvel at the simplicity, the gravity, the dignity 
 and the fitness of the ancient classic buildings? How 
 can the seasoned wisdom of life be better or more 
 searchingly expressed than in the words of Virgil 
 or Horace, not to speak of more ancient teachers ? 
 The fact is that the human body, so far as we know, 
 has not been improved within the period recorded by 
 history; nor has the human mind, so far as we can 
 
22 THE MEANING OF 
 
 judge, gained anything in strength or grace. The prob- 
 lem of learning, in the Arts at least, is the problem of 
 how to make good our losses. Consider for a moment 
 how enormous these are, and how unceasing. The toll 
 exacted by Death is the heaviest tax in the world. 
 A young man spends years of his life in preparing him- 
 self for active work, and dies before he has had the 
 opportunity to put his ideas into practice. An older 
 man, who has attained to mastery in some branch of 
 craft or science, dies, and his place cannot be filled 
 except at the expense of long time, and by the fortunate 
 co-operation of many chances. The race for knowledge 
 ajidj3regres&~is.a race~against the steady. oncoming tide 
 of destruction and oblivion. It is not a little achieve- 
 ment if we can move so fast that at least we lose no 
 ground, and keep ahead of the pursuer. Every thirty 
 years or so we have to replace all the knowledge and 
 all the skill in the world. We have to provide that the 
 infants and children of to-day shall know all the secrets 
 and wield all the powers of the best and wisest men 
 now living. Some of these secrets and some of these 
 powers will certainly be lost, despite our efforts ; so 
 that we shall do well to be generous in our policy, and 
 to aim at something more than a bare renewal. We 
 must run hard if we wish to stay where we are. We 
 must multiply knowledge and advance it if we wish to 
 keep what we have. In the excitement of our own 
 activity we seem, by a pleasing fallacy, to be advancing 
 fast ; but it is not so. We measure the speed of our 
 own passage through the world, and we call it the 
 progress of the world. We see the crests of the waves 
 all riding forward one way, and we think that the sea is 
 
A UNIVERSITY 23 
 
 moving. But the deep is very still; and man, who 
 comes from it, returns to it again. 
 
 There is nothing in this doctrine to damp human * 
 confidence, or to depress human energy. Such a view 
 of progress as I have tried to express does not flatter 
 the vainglory of man, but it teaches him piety. We 
 owe an enormous debt to those who went before us ; 
 we can pay it, or a part of it, only to those who come 
 after us. We must pass on our inheritance ; and if we 
 really can make here and there, as no doubt we can, 
 some additions and improvements, to compensate the 
 irrecoverable depredations of time and mortality, we 
 are happy indeed. Anyhow, here is work enough for 
 a University, and motive enough to urge us on to the 
 work. The lives that are yet to come are its reward. 
 As one of your own poets has said 
 
 Thou, under stress of the strife 
 Shalt hear, for sustainment supreme, 
 The cry of the conscience of Life : 
 Keep the young generations in hail 
 And bequeath them no tumbled house. 
 
OXFORD : HORACE HART 
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