Royal Academician

“ Publication in the journals of the Royal Society, or in a leading scientific magazine, might be considered a sufficient proof of the satisfactory quality of the labour.
It is very desirable that all the higher teachers and professors of science in our educational institution should devote a portion of their time to original research. It would make their lectures more reliable, because research yields experience in the detection of error ”

“ From the great knowledge which you possess of British art, looking to the most eminent painters, sculptors, and architects at this time, should you say that the number of the Royal Academy is sufficient fully to represent them, or would you recommend an increase in the present number of Academicians?—I have not considered in what proportion the Academicianships at present exist. ”

“ He gave his introductory lecture to the morning course on General Chemistry on Thursday, January 21, and to the evening course on Outlines of Chemical Science and Chemistry of the Arts on February 9. The allusion to the Royal Institution with which he ended his first lecture was full of poetry.
‘In reasoning concerning the future hopes of the human species we may look forward with confidence to a state of society in which the different orders and classes of men will contribute more effectually to the support of each other than they have hitherto done. ”

“ You will naturally consider the Journals of the Institution as the most proper vehicle for communicating to the public from time to time short accounts of the progress you may make in your investigations; this will, however, by no means be considered as precluding you in any degree from presenting to the Royal Society of London, or any other learned body, philosophical papers or memoirs on such [Pg 319] scientific subjects as may engage your attention, or from publishing in any other manner the results of your researches. ”

“ He had acquired at a very early period of his life a well-established celebrity among men of science throughout Europe by the originality and accuracy of his researches, and at the same time the fluent and impressive delivery of his lectures had obtained him the most flattering marks of approbation from the public of the metropolis. ”

“ The Royal Institution may in some degree supply the [Pg 242] place of a subordinate university to those whose sex or situation in life has denied them the advantage of an academical education in the national seminaries of learning.
With regard to the special objects of the Institution, the theory of practical mechanics and of manufactures, he said:
We must be more practical than academies of science and more theoretical than societies for the improvement of arts ”

“ Those who possess the genuine spirit of scientific investigation, and who have tasted the pure satisfaction arising from an advancement in intellectual acquirements, are content to proceed in their researches without inquiring at every step what they gain by their newly-discovered lights, and to what practical purposes they are applicable; they receive a sufficient gratification from the enlargement of their views of the constitution of the universe, and experience in the immediate pursuit of knowledge that pleasure which others wish to obtain more circuitously by its means. ”

“ Restricting my remark to my own study, I will say, if an Oxford Professor of History is to be a man to be trusted to maintain the reputation of his University, to keep abreast with foreign scholars, and to conduct research on his own account, he ought to have been left with some discretion as to the management of his teaching. ”

“ But, with all their deficiencies, it must be acknowledged, that no universities have produced a greater number of men distinguished for polite literature, and eminent for science, than those of England. ”

“ The highest result of a professor's labours would be the formation of a small class of those who were willing to prolong their university course, that they might study methods of research, that they might begin some work which would be capable of expansion into a worthy contribution to historical literature. ”

“ But great changes have been made, and are still making, in the degree of previous qualification.
‘Still, it would be premature to say, that there is any one of the American universities where classical knowledge, or even science, is profoundly attained, even at the present day. Some of the professors push their studies, for a life, certainly; and you well know, after all, that little short of a life, and a long one too, will make any man a good general scholar. ”

“ These University professors of science should be men specially devoted to their subject; they should be men not engaged in many different occupations, but there should be in them, in order that they may attain perfection in their own pursuit, that specialization of labour, that devotion to single subjects of study which it would be impossible for any one engaged in an ordinary profession, or in any ordinary business to have. The professor of a particular subject, as of Chemistry in an University, must give himself up to that one subject. ”

“ I know that the doors of the University are being opened to all the newer studies, and that many a student spends most of his time in acquiring the useful knowledge that is to equip him for his profession and for the direct purpose of that profession; knowledge which is to fit him to become lawyer, doctor, minister, engineer, or teacher; yet an Oxford Professor may always maintain the pursuit of Learning for its own sake and keep this purpose before his students even in their most technical work. ”

“ The honor of the University is committed to your keeping. See that your life and conduct reflect those high principles, that lofty tone of thought, which the instruction you have received is designed to engender ; and show that your education consists not merely in the acquirement of a certain limited amount of knowledge which may be useful in procuring a means of livelihood or may recommend itself by an intellectual display, but is an active principle bent on further conquests and ever seeking to enlarge the boundaries of the domain of science. ”

“ But under the working of the system of almost unlimited electives which has prevailed in our higher institutions of learning during the past half-generation or more, the candidate for a future professorship is almost certain to discover that he has neglected to lay the foundations of any particular subject solidly and thoroughly well. He knows no elements, as the elements of every species of science and scholarship must be known, in order to proceed safely and with joy in hard work to its ever higher stages of study, research and discovery. ”

“ Education may also introduce us to the principal facts which have a direct bearing on the subject, namely the different modes or stages of civilization that have been found among mankind, and the characteristic properties of each. This is the true purpose of historical studies, as prosecuted in an University. The leading facts of ancient and modern history should be known by the student from his private reading: if that knowledge be wanting, it cannot possibly be supplied here. What a Professor of History has to teach, is the meaning of those facts. ”

“ The graduate comes forth a scholar, not, as from Oxford and Cambridge, the pert parrot of a dead language, smooth prosodian, mechanic rhymster of Idyllic verse; but a linguist of living tongues—one who has studied science, and not neglected art—a botanist, draughtsman, geologist, astronomer, engineer, soldier—all; in short, a man fitted for the higher duties of social life—capable of supervision and command—equally so of obedience and execution. ”

“ The present system merely leads to the transmission of the sterile art of passing examinations. (At Oxford and Cambridge many fellowships are now awarded on the results of examination; it is sometimes stated, in defence of this system, that young men cannot be expected to carry out research in classics or philosophy.) ”

“ But you should be for ever grateful that the scheme of higher education marked out for you was at once modelled on more scientific lines than those which till then prevailed in some of the leading Universities of Great Britain, Your fathers were not limited to instruction in ancient Languages, and Letters, or in Mathematics, but they were at once given a course which compelled them to study not only Language or Mathematics, but also History and Moral Philosophy, with an option of either Natural Philosophy, Physical Science, or Logic and Mental Philosophy. ”

“ I have already emphasised what I consider to be the specific character of University education, namely, the comprehensive view of knowledge which it places before its true followers, its antipathy to all one-sidedness and incompleteness, its constant effort to gather the vast variety of human knowledge into a unity born of that higher spirit which it is its great mission to inspire. ”

“ But, speaking now from a point of view which concerns literature no less than science, I may be permitted to say that it is gratifying to hear the announcement of the Honourable the Premier that the claims of original research will be brought within the scope of the institution which takes its origin to-day. (Applause.) Surely it is a desirable, even a necessary, function of the chief seat of learning of a State that its professors and teachers should not only teach that which is known, but that they should themselves be contributors to the sum of human knowledge. ”

“ In some cases persons of private means, sometimes physicians, but more and more professors in the universities of Germany, France, England and Italy, and the smaller countries of Europe. In these countries it has always been assumed that the greatest intellectual activity would be found among professors in the universities, who would be expected, as a matter of course, to produce those fruits in the way of new knowledge that would make the glory of the nation. ”

“ Patient in research, possessing to an extraordinary degree the rare quality of fair-mindedness, the master of a clear and dignified style, he came to be regarded by many competent judges, both in England and in Germany, as one of the most brilliant of the new school of Oxford historians. ”

“ Oral teaching was of supreme importance on account of the cost and rarity of manuscripts.
The modern university looks forward, and is a factory of new knowledge: its professors have to be at the top of the wave of progress. Research and criticism must be the breath of their nostrils; laboratory work the main business of the scientific student; books his main helpers.
The lecture, however, in the hands of an able man will still have the utmost importance in stimulating and giving facts and principles their proper relative prominence. ”

“ Various institutions were organized, notably the University of London, which accepted more modern standards of scholarship, and gradually recognized the claims of science as a means of education and a basis of university honors. ”

“ Although studying law only that he might have an academic degree, he enjoyed a reputation for diligence, and as a logician in the scholastic way had no cause to envy the most frenzied quibblers of the University faculty. ”

“ I need not inform your excellency, how contrary such a practice is to that of all the universities in Europe. Your excellency well knows how many learned men, of the two last ages, have been invited by princes to be professors in some art or science for which they were renowned; and that the like rule has been followed in Oxford and Cambridge. I hope your excellency will show no regard to so narrow and partial an opinion, which can only tend to mend fellowships, and spoil professorships ”

“ And though my theme at present be mainly that intellectual character, the growth of which a University must always make its first concern, I may be permitted to point out before passing on, one noble result of a different kind which will have a tendency to flow from your faithfully pursuing wisdom and knowledge in whatever department of human thought. He that gives himself to this pursuit is raised above the power of some at least of the allurements with which the world is crowded. ”

“ The history of all great Universities is the history of men who have thrown a new light on the subject which they had made their own particular field of research, or of men who have brought to light errors of past times, or of men who have exposed fallacies which obtained during their lives, whether they were recognised as fallacies by their own or by a subsequent generation. ”

“ This is all the more incumbent on me, as I have the honour to be the first Wilde Lecturer in Natural and Comparative Religion—the first, that is, who has been officially charged by the University to give public teaching in the most modern and one of the most difficult fields of study, one that has already borne copious fruit, and will bear more in the future. ”

“ If, then, classical studies are to be cultivated with the best result, it is not enough that the spirit and the ardour of scientific research should animate every department of them; it is also essential that in every department the spirit of science should be associated with the literary and artistic sense; a sense which will not only invest the specialist's own work with a higher value, but will also quicken his appreciation of the place which his special work holds in relation to other provinces of scholarship. ”

“ A narrow mind is thought to be that which contains little knowledge; and an enlarged mind, that which holds a great deal; and what seems to put the matter beyond dispute is, the [pg 130] fact of the great number of studies which are pursued in a University, by its very profession. Lectures are given on every kind of subject; examinations are held; prizes awarded. There are moral, metaphysical, physical Professors; Professors of languages, of history, of mathematics, of experimental science. ”