Professor Campbell Fraser, in his very able address to the
University of Edinburgh last week, pleaded, in effect, for resisting, for the present at least, the introduction of a liberal system of options into the pass degree for Arts students, He thought that options might be more fairly permitted for honours ; but that for pass-men, a degree in Arta on any materially narrower foundation than the present would not really imply the sort of intellectual cultivation which a University is understood to certify. This address is very well worth reading for its own sake, for it is full of enthusiasm, and shows the strong grasp of the man of letters on the true function of Uni- versity teaching. We feel a strong sympathy with Professor Campbell Fraser's position. It is quite true that for boys coming from the class of schools which supply students to the Scotch Universities, and also to the London University, any considerable reduction in the area of culture which those Univer- sities enforce for their Arts degrees, would result in turning out men without any largeness of education at all. It is the old, old diffiaulty,—how to get men with a taste for the literal humaniores to grasp the general principles of science, and how to get men with a taste for science to give any attention to language and literature. Of one thing at least we are confident,—that no Arts degree should be given to men who have not passed through a real course of discipline in the structure of two or three languages, and the literature of more than one people. Professor Campbell Fraser is certainly right in insisting on as much as that, and perhaps in insisting on something more.
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