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of thought has become a growing experience, and the free play of their powers under the discipline of a general, many-sided culture has begun to be felt that they have come to discern where in the wide field of human activity lies their special vocation.

Another reason, I have said, why in education we should not have regard exclusively or mainly to the student's future calling or profession is that it is one great aim of education to protect us from the narrowing influence of all, even of the so-called liberal, professions. I must pass by this point, however, with only a single remark. The division of labor, as has often been pointed out, is subject to this drawback, that it tends to sacrifice the full development of the individual to the exigencies of society. Professional or technical excellence would seem to be incompatible with symmetry and width of culture. It often leads not merely to imperfect but also to unequal or one-sided development. This is most obvious in the case of manual or mechanical callings. Each trade or craft exercises constantly one member or faculty or class of faculties, leaving the others comparatively inactive runs the whole physical energy into one limb or organ, and so distends it to exaggerated dimensions, whilst the others are proportionately dwarfed or enfeebled.

And the same is in a measure true of intellectual work. It is the tendency of the various professions to call into play a limited class of mental activities, to dam up the spiritual force that is in a man into a particular channel, and so leave the nonprofessional regions of his nature comparatively dry and barren. Not only are most men apt to form an exaggerated estimate of the importance of that which is their daily occupation, but they get the stamp of the shop impressed upon them, and carry their technical views and principles of judgment about with them wherever they go. There are many men one meets in society whose only alternative is to be technical or dull, to be dumb or learnedly loquacious. The narrowing tendency in question shows itself by engendering in the mind a host of class prejudices,

by indisposing it for wide, impartial, tolerant views; by depriving it of flexibility and the capacity to look at things from the point of view of other minds and the wider one of reason itself; finally, by breeding in us a professional selfishness—a tendency to view all measures and plans of improvement, not by the bearing on the general welfare, but on the interests of a class, so that the first question is not - Is this opinion true, is this political or ecclesiastical reform just, will it redress some crying wrong, hinder or help the national weal? but - Will it promote or hinder the dignity, power, and wealth of the order to which I belong? Is our craft in danger and the shrine of the great goddess Diana, whom all Asia and the world worship?

I shall not prosecute this part of our subject any further; but enough, I think, has been said to show the importance of a general, as distinguished from a special and professional training. As the pettiness of mind incident to life in a small circle is best corrected by foreign travel, so the remedy for intellectual narrowness is to be free in the wide world of thought. Converse with many cities and men disabuses the mind of the parochial standard of judgment. So the best cure for intellectual narrowness is the capacity to escape from the confined atmosphere of class or craft into the wide domain of letters, of science, of philosophy, of art. The physician or lawyer who is a classical scholar, or at any rate conversant with the treasures of either ancient or modern literature, capable of finding purest enjoyment over the pages of its poets, historians, philosophers, is not likely to sink into a professional hack. The divine who is also a man of scientific or scholarly tastes is at least not likely to settle into the vulgar zealot, absorbing his soul in the petty politics of a sect or regarding its standards of orthodoxy as pillars round which the universe revolves. Be it yours, in this ancient home of learning, to seek after that preservative from narrowness which its studies afford.

One of the most precious characteristics of such institutions as this is what I may venture to designate the unworldiness of

the spirit which pervades them. It is surely no little gain for society that at the impressible stage of transition between boyhood and manhood young men should be made to breathe for a term of years an intellectual atmosphere other and purer than that which but too often pervades the world which they are about to enter that they should for a time be members of a society in which the scramble for material gain, the fierce and often vulgarizing competition for worldly preferment, are as yet things unknown. To say this implies no high-flown, sentimental disparagement of the aims and ambitions that play so large a part in the world, and lend movement, activity, and interest to the drama of life. But it is not to the love of money or the love of social advancement, or even mainly to the love of honor and reputation, that we here appeal. There is a passion purer, loftier, and, in those who are capable of its inspiration, more intense than any of these the love of truth, the passion for knowledge and intellectual attainment for its own sake; and it is our glory and boast that it is this which constitutes the distinctive characteristic, the very breath and life of such places as this.

Poor and vain would be the result of years you have passed in this place of study if, beyond the hope of future success in the world, beyond all ulterior aims and ambitions, there has not been awakened in you some breath of the genuine student's ardor, some sense of the worth and joy of intellectual effort for its own sake. On the other hand, if you have learned here, apart from the use of your studies as a preparation for your work in the world, to know with appreciative sympathy something of what the world's greatest minds have thought or its sweetest poets have sung, or of what in ancient or modern times its greatest workers have done for the progress of the race; or if there has been put into your hands the key by which science unlocks the secrets of nature, so that a treasure of mental resource will all through your future life be open to you; still more, if you have gained or begun to gain here the precious

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possession of disciplined faculties, of a trained intelligence, strength of judgment, refinement of taste, and habits of application and self-command, — then, be your future career what it may obscure, unrewarded, unknown to fame, or brilliant and successful as the most sanguine imagination can picture it - not in vain for you will these eventful years have passed. For you will have got from them that which in all the future will furnish you with an escape from the pettiness and narrowness, the vulgarizing and wearing anxieties that beset most of us amidst our daily work; that will provide you with new uses for wealth and property if they come to you, and, on the other hand, next to religion, will prove the truest consolation of adversity and disappointment, of worldly care and sorrow.

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FROM the time that the first suggestion to introduce physical science into ordinary education was timidly whispered, until now, the advocates of scientific education have met with opposition of two kinds. On the one hand, they have been poohpoohed by the men of business who pride themselves on being the representatives of practicality; while, on the other hand, they have been excommunicated by the classical scholars, in their capacity of Levites in charge of the ark of culture 2 and monopolists of liberal education.

The practical men believed that the idol whom they worship - rule of thumb - has been the source of the past prosperity, and will suffice for the future welfare of the arts and manufactures. They were of opinion that science is speculative rubbish; that theory and practice have nothing to do with one another; and that the scientific habit of mind is an impediment, rather than an aid, in the conduct of ordinary affairs.

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I have used the past tense in speaking of the practical men — for although they were very formidable thirty years ago, I am not sure that the pure species has not been extirpated. In fact, so far as mere argument goes, they have been subjected to such a feu d'enfer that it is a miracle if any have escaped. But I have remarked that your typical practical man has an unexpected resemblance to one of Milton's angels. His spiritual wounds, such as are inflicted by logical weapons, may be as deep as a

1 An address delivered at the opening of Sir Josiah Mason's Science College at Birmingham, October 1, 1880. It is reprinted from Science and Education.

2 See Numbers, iii, 14–32.

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