WHAT IS A UNIVERSITY?
IN the Queen's Speech we find a reference to that evergreen question of a teaching University for London as a subject on which we may look for legislation. We do not propose to weary or perplex the reader with a discussion of the various schemes which have been put forward for years to secure the object in view. Rather would we ask the question, What is a University ? For, if London is at length
to be endowed with a real University, it is very necessary that we should know what such an institution ought to be,— or at least that we should know what it ought not to be. It is rather humiliating to us that London should be the only great city or capital in the world without a University ; for we need scarcely point out that a mere Examining Board like that at Burlington Gardens, excellent as it may be, is not a University save in name. Every capital in Europe, save Lisbon, the Hague, and London, has its University ; and three of these, the Sorbonne in Paris, and the Universities of Berlin and Vienna, are now the greatest teaching centres in Europe. New York and Chicago, Philadelphia and Baltimore, contain great and well-equipped Universities ; Columbia, in New York, being one of the best appointed schools of learning in the world. Besides these, there are the old foundations of Harvard and Yale, whose achievements have been so honourable to New England. Sydney and Melbourne, Capetown and Toronto, also have their Univer- sities, which are of considerable importance, and which redeem these new countries from the reproach of mere materialism in life and thought. Of our old and unique Universities of Oxford and Cambridge there is no need to speak ; and, imperfect though their structure is, the Scottish Universities have achieved results beyond all praise. It is London, almost alone of great cities, which can show no great seat of learning within her walls. The fact is not creditable to the world's greatest city; but now that some attempt is to be made to do away with this reproach, let us see how the Universities of the world may be classified, what is the pre- vailing tendency as to the academic ideal, and what are the factors which any University worthy of London ought to embrace.
Roughly speaking, there are five types of the modern University, which we may classify as the French, the German, the English, the Scottish, and the American. Colonial Universities have followed more or less the English type, and need not be particularly specified ; while in most Continental countries the German type prevails. It is sad to note, by the way, the great decline in the Universities of Spain and Italy, so great and beneficent in the Middle Ages. Salamanca is little more than a name, while Padua and Bologna, perhaps at one time the greatest European Universities next to Paris, though by no means destitute of important scholars, have no longer their ancient fame. To return to our first type, that of France. Here we have had for a century a great centralised academic
system, organised by Napoleon. France is the literary country par excellence, and in science it is second to none ; yet the thinkers of France have not generally approved the rigid centralisation of Napoleon as applied to so fluid and subtle a matter as culture. They have complained of the system as fettering intellect and as fatal to originality, and they have pointed to the superior results obtained under the German system of free culture. The Universities have been organised under the College de France, and instead of being independent seats of learning, each with its own individuality, they have been, as it were, local bureaux of a great central department. Recently the views of the critics have partly prevailed, and there has been some decentralisation, and greater freedom has been imparted, with the result that private generosity has been stimulated, and the University of Montpelier in particular has been enriched by large donations. The founding of the Ecole Libre in Paris has also stimulated liberty as contrasted with roatine, and Paris is now beyond all question the fore- moss- school of political science in the world, even German and American students repairing thither. We may say, therefore, that the French type of a bureaucratic University is almost self-condemned, and that it is being largely modified to-day. This is due in no small degree to the influence of Germany, whose Universities are her most precious posses- sions, to which is attributed by some French critics the rapid rise of German power after generations of weakness and strife. There is no centralised system of culture in Ger- many, each University is independent, each has its own characteristics, and each has been free, though it is hazardous to say whether under the present rule in Germany this freedom will continue. The German University is not residential, its students live where they choose without any
collegiate discipline, but with curious customs and obligations of honour of their own. Essentially the German University is exactly what the University of Paris was in the Middle Ages,—a great teaching corporation; and this must be held to be the chief function of a University. In our time the Universities of Berlin and Leipzig have been the greatest centres of teaching in the world. Merely to name their leading professors is to indicate the best that has been done in thought and research—Ranke, Helmholtz, Von Sybel, Curtius, Mommsen, Virchow, Fechner, Pfleiderer, Treitschke, Hofmann, Wundt—no other seats of learning can yield such names. The intellectual life of Germany is expressed by the University as it is not either in France or England. Mill, Spencer, Grote, Huxley would in Germany have been Uni- versity professors; here they were unconnected with any University. This is not only true of the University of to-day, it was true of Germany at an earlier date. Kant and Hegel were University professors, and even so unacademic a personage as Goethe spent years at two Universities, Leipzig and Strassburg. A free teaching institution reaching even the lower classes (we have known a milkman take the Doctorate of Philosophy at Leipzig), tending to immense specialism, but embracing all knowledge and expressing the highest ideal of the nation's culture,—such is the German University.
The English type is different. Here we have the collegiate system with its reminiscences of school discipline, and its esthetic charm unknown to the German University. The chief drawbacks to Oxford and Cambridge are the low standards for the majority, the excessive competition, and the comparative absence of what the Americans call "post- graduate" work. There is too much of the school element, too little of the serious work of the mature student. The Universities have not yet quite recovered from the effects of those generations of cultivated ignorance and lettered idleness so severely exposed by Gibbon and Adam Smith. On the other hand, the strength of Oxford and Cambridge lies in their deep humanity, their lofty standard of life, their aloofness from everything that is vulgar, mercenary. or partisan. They recall to an age crammed with facts the old Greek idea, that beauty is even more important an aim than knowledge. It is to be hoped that, on the one hand, they may soon receive needed pecuniary aid, for they are falling behind in equipment ; and that, on the other, they may not be too much "popularised." We freely acknowledge the good of the "Extension" movement, but it is well to understand that a University never can be made, and ought not to be made, a " popular " institution. Let every efficient person have the easiest access to its portals, but recollect that it is for the few, not for the many. It would almost seem as though the Scottish Universities afforded a, standing contra- diction to this last doctrine, for they are for the many. Bat then Scotland is an almost unique country ; learning is valued there as it is not valued in England, and the tradition, so honourable to the Scottish people, dates from the Reforma- tion. Scotland's Universities are as characteristic of the soil as are those of Germany. Like the latter, they are teaching institutions essentially, but their popular character makes the teaching of a too elementary kind. It is quaint to enter a Scotch lecture-room and to hear professors of world-wide reputation taking a class in what is practically school work. We have the deepest respect for these hardy schools of the intellectual virtues, but they are too much given to elementary work to be as effective for culture as they should be.
We now come to the American Universities, by which we mean the greater institutions of culture, not the hundreds of petty Colleges to be found in all parts of America. Some of these, in our judgment, come nearer to the ideal of a true University than any of the other types. Beginning on the old English collegiate system, they have broadened out into vast and splendidly endowed institutions of universal learn- ing, have assimilated some German features, and have com- bined successfully College routine and discipline with mature and advanced work. Harvard and Princeton were originally English Colleges ; now, without entirely abandoning the College system, they are great semi-German seats of learn- ing. Johns Hopkins at Baltimore is purely of the German type with no residence, and only a few plain lecture-rooms, library, and museums. Columbia, originally an old English College (its name was King's, changed to Columbia at the Revolution), is now perhaps the first University in America, magnificently endowed, with stately buildings, and with a school of political and legal science second only to that of Paris. Cornell, intended by its generous founder to be a sort of cheap glorified technical institute, has grown into a great seat of culture. The quadrangles and lawns of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton almost recall Oxford and Cambridge; their lecture-rooms, laboratories, and post-graduate studies hint of Germany, where nearly all American teachers of the present generation have been educated.
What, then, should our new University of London be like if we get it ? What type should it follow of those we have glanced at ? On the whole, it seems to us that the American type would suit our purpose best. The old French Napoleonic type is out of the question, modified as it is being in France itself. Oxford and Cambridge are unique and cannot be re- produced in London even if it were desirable. The Scottish Universities are admirable in their way, but they are too much in the nature of high schools. Germany is supreme in learn- ing, but she has not the aesthetic charm of the academic grove, which we do hold to be an invaluable agency in the formation of a high and gracious type of character. We can- not reproduce in London the academic repose of Harvard em- bewared in sylvan calm out of the way of all business and noise ; but we can take in some measure the Harvard and Columbia models, and combine them, say, on a Berlin superstructure. We need a big sum of money—two millions would be scarcely too much—and we need a great space—say at Westminster— filled with noble buildings where every subject known to man will be taught, where great libraries, museums, art galleries, and laboratories shall be found, and yet where the ideal of culture shall be exalted over the ideal of accumulation of knowledge. The standard should be high, alike as regards entrance and degrees, and the payment of teachers should be sufficiently high to prevent able men from being attracted to the other side of the Atlantic. Is this too large and noble an aim to be realised in the world's greatest and richest city ?
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