Sidebilder
PDF
ePub

successive page of that work, which continually contrasts the new system and the old, which points out the limited application of the latter, enumerates the evils that have arisen from its adoption, and states why it is rejected, and induction substituted, "per omnia, et tam ad minores propositiones quam ad majores."* It is refuted by the inconsistencies of the author himself who advances it, and who by turns admits that Aristotle sought to discover truth and acquire knowledge by syllogism, and yields to Bacon, that syllogism is useless for these ends; who one moment confesses its barrenness in facts and principles, and the next recurs to the assertion, that it is the "necessary foundation on which every solid intellectual fabric must be raised."

Enough, we trust, has been said to expose the erroneous views by which it is attempted to justify the study of the old logic to the exclusion of the new system recommended by Lord Bacon, and of all the modern acquisitions that have been made in moral philosophy by the method of induction. In opposition to the writer already quoted, it is argued, that if a knowledge of the ancient moralists continue to be indispensably required in the examinations, the admission of the modern writers also, at the option of the candidates, will not by comparison diminish, but rather confirm their respect for the former when it is well founded; and that those who from any cause find a difficulty in mastering the one, will not in this way be allowed to distract their at

tention with the other, while an additional road to distinction will be opened to youths of readier talents or greater application. But on the whole, we should be inclined to be satisfied with the examination-statutes, as at present constituted, if each of them were to come into operation a year sooner, and if the year immediately preceding the first degree, with such residence as is afterwards required, were devoted to attendance on public lectures.

It has been usual to charge the Oxford professors with neglect of duty; but though it must be owned that this is a defective part of the system, the defect often appears to have been traced to very inadequate causes. Public lectures are at present read on various subjects; but the college exercises and studies preparatory to the public examinations must of necessity form the principal occupation of under-graduates. When hearing public lectures forms the sole and exclusive occupation, they must of necessity be in more repute than where they are only a secondary and inferior object of attention. Were the examinations for degrees, and the whole system of college instruction abolished, the university lectures would soon claim their share of popularity; but it is absurd to expect that they should at present receive: the same encouragement as if the time of under-graduates were not devoted to a different course of more laborious study.

In the year 1809, of twenty-three professors, fourteen enjoyed sinc

"Huic nostræ scientiæ finis proponitur; ut inveniantur non argumenta, sed artes, nec principiis consentanea, sed ipsa principia; nec rationes probabiles, sed designationes et indicationes operum. Itaque ex intentione diversa diversus sequitur effectus. Illic enim adversarius disputatione vincitur, hic natura opere."-Bacon Inst. Mag,

cures; viz. the professors of Hebrew, Greek, Civil Law, Common Law, Ancient History, Poetry, Music, Laud's Arabic, Lord Almoner's Arabic, Medicine, Aldrich's Medicine, Aldrich's Anatomy, and the Clinical and Anglo-Saxon professors. The following nine professorships were efficient:-Regius Divinity, Lady Margaret's Divinity, Modern History, Botany, Natural Philosophy, Astronomy, Geometry, Tomline's Anatomy, and Chemistry; that is to say, the professors in these branches were always ready to lecture or teach, though in some instances a term, or even a whole year, might elapse without their being able to obtain an audience. The lectures most numerously attended were, we believe, those in Divinity, Modern History, and Geometry, though on this point we cannot speak with confidence. Oxford can never be a medical school; but in some of the other branches small classes might perhaps be formed of those who have been examined; although while the examinations continue on their present footing, there is not sufficient encourage ment to induce professors who have slept for ages to emerge from their long retirement.

The only exercise required after the examination, is the public reading of two Latin discourses, or, in place of one of them, the recitation of some Latin verses composed by the candidate; an exercise altogether inefficient, and which will probably soon dwindle into a form. What we would suggest as the best occupation during the fourth year and subsequent residence, would be to enforce attendance on public lectures in natural and moral philosophy and political economy.

In the two last of these most im

portant branches of knowledge, Oxford is two thousand years behind the rest of the world, and is very deficient even in the first. Of moral philosophy enough has been already said. As to political economy, it has been stated, that the leading doctrines are taught by the professor of modern history; but if our information be correct, though we entertain the highest respect for his labours, and should be extremely sorry to see them discontinued, we are inclined to doubt whether this statement of their subject has not originated in similar erroneous views of its nature to those which directed us to the pulpit for instruction in moral philosophy. We have heard indeed of the curious and interesting discussions, introduced by that learned person upon the theoretical history of modern governments, but we never heard that he travelled so far from his own province, as to explain the general principles of national wealth and prosperity. It has been demonstrated, that the recent improvements have had the effect of diminishing the numbers that attend even the lectures in natural philosophy, for which the mathematical examination is so well calculated to prepare. These branches are less adapted for examinations than for public lectures, and in all probability will never receive any effectual encouragement at Oxford, until an obligation to attend the latter is imposed.

Education is certainly one of those subjects, to which the usual arguments against restraint and monopoly will not apply, and it is generally admitted to be an instance in which Doctor Adam Smith's opinions are somewhat biassed by a love of sys

tem.

The supply of useful knowledge to all ranks must have some

other stimulus than the demand, as long as what is most agreeable is not always synonymous with what is most beneficial. In this point of view, it is apparent that the utility of public lectures may not be proportionable to their celebrity; and the necessity is obvious of bestowing some authority and peculiar privileges upon certain professors of the different arts and sciences, to remove them above the rank of itinerant mountebanks. The proportion which the independent part of their emoluments ought to bear, to what depends upon the number of their pupils, must vary according to circumstances, and may not in any case be easily determined. Neither is it possible to lay down any very positive rule with respect to the degree of compulsion to be used for insuring attendance on public lectures; but when this principle is extended so far as to sanction the conclusion, that a student should be allowed to chuse his own college tutor, and change him at his pleasure, it seems to infer the abolition of all that is useful in this office. Were several professors to read public lectures on the same subject, it might happen that the best would be forced on the general notice of young men and their advisers by public opinion, though it is much more likely that the greatest share of popularity might not always be united with general utility. The qualities upon which the former is founded are very different from those which are most conducive to the latter. Besides, party spirit and many other principles might interfere, and the public approbation might be so divided, that none of them would obtain much respectability. But in the private and unambitious intercourse of a pupil and his tutor, is it to be conceived that such a choice

would not generally fall upon the easiest and the worst? The members of a university may be left to themselves without much detriment, where they are lodged in private houses, scattered through the streets of a populous city, many of them under the immediate inspection of relations or private tutors, and a large proportion in circumstances of life that render proficiency in their studies a matter of absolute necessity. If they do not attend the public lectures, where this is the only mode of acquiring knowledge, they will not have even the appearance of doing any thing; and there are few young men professedly students who would not, either of their own accord, or by the authority of their friends, wish to preserve at least this connection with learning. The members of a university, under these circumstances, having no more connection with each other than the spectators who meet in the pit and galleries of a theatre, if they are not improved by such a system of education, are not at least of necessity corrupted. Where, on the contrary, the very reverse of all this is the case, and the great body of students consists of foundation members, to whom fellowships and livings descend in regular succession, together with the sons of a wealthy aristocracy, set loose from all restraints, but those which college discipline affords, all crowded together within the walls of their respective colleges, the bare statement of the fact appears to declare with the force of demonstration, that maxims by which one system may flourish may be totally inapplicable to another. Upon these grounds, whatever success may in certain instances attend the labours of public professors who have no authority over their pupils, and whose pu

pils are under no obligation to at tend their lectures, both reason and experience would seem to teach us, that some compulsion to attend the public lectures at Oxford is absolutely necessary.

*

Many forcible arguments are stated in the pamphlets above referred to in favour of the preference due to the Oxford system of college lectures, when compared with the mode of instruction from the chair of a public professor; while, at the same time, it is not denied that Oxford is deficient in the latter, and that "the best method would be that which should unite both more completely than is the case with any modern university." "However splendid a spectacle it may be," observes Mr Drummond, "to see hundreds of young men crowded together in a lecture room, catching every word that is uttered from the chair, as if it were an oracle, and carrying off volumes of notes, far exceeding in size the manuscripts of the professor, I have always doubted whether the instruction that is thus collected be not more specious than solid. The utility of this mode of instruction several centuries ago was manifest, when there were scarcely any books, and knowledge was confined to a few; but I should be glad to know, wherever the practice prevails at the present day, how many of those volumes of notes already

[ocr errors]

alluded to are ever studied after they are written; and, if they were, how great a proportion of what they contain might not be found much better told in a hundred books; and how much of what is new is mis-stated and unintelligible. People,' says Doctor Johnson, have now-adays got a strange idea that every thing is to be taught by lectures; now I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken. I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures, except where experiments are to be shewn. You may teach chemistry by lectures; you may teach making of shoes by lectures. Now, although this opinion is not to be understood as denying all advantages to oral over written instruction, yet, upon the whole, there is much good sense in the remark. Knowledge is now too generally diffused in books to leave much to be learned at a university, which may not be learned elsewhere. The great advantage of an academical education arises chiefly from the love of learning which is inspired by the genius of the place, from the collision of many minds, from the ardour which hope of distinction kindles, and from the advice and assistance in the use of books which young men derive from those of more experience than themselves.

At Edinburgh, the students educated for the church, having been obliged to attend the lectures in natural philosophy, without any previous obligation to attend the mathematical lectures, have in general left the university very ill informed in both of these departments. The present professor of mathematics has, however, lately obtained a regulation from the Senatus Academicus, enforcing attendance on his lectures, on the part of the students of divinity, which cannot fail to be attended with the most beneficial consequences. Dr Smith's opinions, in truth, in favour of leaving the utility of public instructors entirely dependent on their popularity, have never been acted on even in Scotland. Compulsion is more or less used in all the Scottish universities; and in one of them the professors have lately received an increase of salaries.

The knowledge that is actually gained is less to be considered than the foundation that is laid for future improvement. The habits that are acquired, the associations that are formed, the bias and turn of mind, are of infinitely more importance than a superficial smattering of the various arts and sciences. The latter may sometimes be more directly and immediately useful in the business of life, but it is from the former only that any real and solid advantage can ever be derived. The one is the seed scattered on the surface of the earth, which quickly springs up and ripens, but is withered and gone before the harvest; the other is the slow, though certain produce, which rewards the labour of the husbandman. "Hi sunt, qui parva facile faciunt: et audacia provecti, quidquid illic possunt, statim ostendunt. Possunt autem id demum, quod in proximo est: verba continuant; haec vultu interrito nulla tardati verecundia, proferunt: non multum præstant, sed cito : non subest vera vis, nec penitus immissis radicibus nititur: ut quae summo solo sparsa sunt semina, celerius se effundunt: et imitata spicas herbulæ inanibus aristis ante messem flauescunt."* As to discoveries in science, they are quite foreign from the instruction of youth. If they are not completely ascertained, they tend only to mislead; and as it is at best but the elements of knowledge that can be taught, it is of importance to teach, in the first place, those old and established principles that are beyond the reach of controversy; and, with regard to more modern improvements, rather to be satisfied with pointing out the best mode of study, than to

VOL. II. PART II.

attempt, in the short period of academical residence, to convey a few slight and superficial outlines of the whole mass of useful knowledge which learning and genius have accumulated in the revolution of ages. Thus it is that the most ingenious man is frequently the worst tutor or professor. Besides, it is obvious that a lecture, delivered to a popular assembly of several hundred persons, cannot be adapted to the capacities of the whole. The professor cannot, like the tutor of a college, know the previous habits and acquirements of his pupils, and separate them into small classes accordingly, where he can stop to explain every difficulty as it occurs. In a public lecture, the instruction conveyed may be of great service to those who have made some progress in their studies; but if the subject be new to them, and still more, if they either trust to it altogether for information, or, at best, content themselves with hastily referring to the books of which they learn the names and characters from the professor, their knowledge may be extensive, but it must be superficial, their principles ill founded, their deductions rash, and all their habits of thinking unsound. The desultory acquisition of general knowledge may suit some great geniuses, who catch the truth as it were by intuition, and can snatch at one glance all that is useful and important in the accumulated wisdom of past ages; but the evils that arise to the ordinary herd of men, from a precocious system of education, are serious and alarming." For other remarks of a similar tendency, we must be content to refer to the pamphlet from which this passage is taken, and to the first Reply

*Quinct. Instit. Lib. I.

2

« ForrigeFortsett »