guage, these terms and thoughts would not exist for us. They came to us, directly or indirectly, from Aristotle. But Aristotle did not invent them, he only defined them in his own way, so that, for instance, according to him, all living beings would constitute a genus, men a species, and Socrates an individual. No one would say that Aristotle had not a perfect right to define these terms, if those who use them in his sense would only always remember that they are thinking the thoughts of Aristotle, and not their own. The true way to shake off the fetters of old words, and to learn to think our own thoughts, is to follow them up from century to century, to watch their development, and in the end to bring ourselves face to face with those who first found and framed both words and thoughts. If we do this with genus and species, we shall find that the words which Aristotle defined-viz., yévos and eidos-had originally a very different and far more useful application than that which he gave to them. Tévos, genus, meant generation, and comprehended such living beings only as were known to have a common origin, however they might differ in outward appearance, as, for instance, the spaniel and the bloodhound, or, according to Darwin, the ape and the man. Eidos or species, on the contrary, meant appearance, and comprehended all such things as had the same form or appearance, whether they had a common origin or not, as if we were to speak of a species of four-footed, twofooted, horned, winged, or blue animals. That two such concepts, as we have here explained, had a natural justification we may best learn from the fact that exactly the same thoughts found expression in Sanskrit. There, too, we find gâti, generation, used in the sense of genus, and opposed to â kriti, appear ance, used in the sense of species. So long as these two words or thoughts were used independently (much as we now speak of a genealogical as independent of a morphological classification) no harm could accrue. A family, for instance, might be called a yévos, the gens or clan was a yévos, the nation (gnatio) was a yέvos, the whole human kith and kin was a yévos; in fact, all that was descended from common ancestors was a true yévos. There is no obscurity of thought in this. On the other side, taking eidos or species in its original sense, one man might be said to be like another in his eidos or appearane. An ape, too, might quite truly be said to have the same eidos or species or appearance as a man, without any prejudice as to their common origin. People might also speak of different eldŋ or forms or classes of things, such as different kinds of metals, or tools, or armor, without committing themselves in the least to any opinion as to their common descent. Often it would happen that things belonging to the same yévos, such as the white man and the negro, differed in their eidos or appearance; often also that things belonging to the same eidos, such as eatables, differed in their yévos, as, for instance, meat and vegetables. All this is clear and simple. The confusion began when these two terms, instead of being co-ordinate, were subordinated to each other by the philosophers of Greece, so that what from one point of view was called a genus, might from another be called a species, and vice versâ. Human beings, for instance, were now called a species, all living beings a genus, which may be true in logic, but is utterly false in what is older than logic-viz., language, thought, or fact. According to language, according to reason, and according to Nature, all human beings constitute a yévos, or generation, so long as they are supposed to have common ancestors; but with regard to all living beings we can only say that they form an eldos-that is, agree in certain appearances, until it has been proved that even Mr. Darwin was too modest in admitting at least four or five different ancestors for the whole animal world.* In tracing the history of these two words, yévos and ɛidos, you may see passing before your eyes almost the whole panorama of philosophy, from Plato's ideas down to Hegel's Idee. The question of genera, their origin and subdivision, occupied chiefly the attention of natural philosophers, who, after long controversies about the origin and classification of genera and species, seem at last, * Lectures on Mr. Darwin's "Philosophy of Language, Fraser's Magazine, June, 1873, P. 26. thanks to the clear sight of Darwin, to have arrived at the old truth which was prefigured in language-namely, that Nature knows nothing but genera, or generations, to be traced back to a limited number of ancestors, and that the socalled species are only genera, whose genealogical descent is as yet more or less obscure. But the question as to the nature of the eidos became a vital question in every system of philosophy. Granting, for instance, that women in every clime and country formed one species, it was soon asked what constituted a species? If all women shared a common form, what was that form? Where was it? So long as it was supposed that all women descended from Eve, the difficulty might be slurred over by the name of heredity. But the more thoughtful would ask even then how it was that, while all individual women came and went and vanished, the form in which they were cast remained the same? Here you see how philosophical mythology springs up. The very question what eidos or species or form was, and where these things were kept, changed those words from predicates into subjects. Eidos was conceived as something independent and substantial, something within or above the individuals participating in it, something unchangeable and eternal. Soon there arose as many eidŋ or forms or types as there were general concepts. They were considered the only true realities of which the phenomenal world is only as a shadow that soon passeth away. Here we have, in fact, the origin of Plato's ideas, and of the various systems of idealism which followed his lead, while the opposite opinions that ideas have no independent existence, and that the one is nowhere found except in the many, was strenuously defended by Aristotle and his followers. The same red thread runs through the whole philosophy of the Middle Ages. Men were cited before councils and condemned as heretics because they declared that animal, man, or woman were mere names, and that they could not bring themselves to believe in an ideal animal, an ideal man, an ideal woman as the invisible, supernatural, or metaphysical types of the ordinary animal, the indi Those vidual man, the single woman. philosophers, called Nominalists, in opposition to the Realists, declared that all general terms were names only, and that nothing could claim reality but the individual. We cannot follow this controversy further, as it turns up again between Locke and Leibnitz, between Herbart and Hegel. Suffice it to say that the knot, as it was tied by language, can be untied by the science of language alone, which teaches us that there is and can be no such thing as "a name only." That phrase ought to be banished from all works on philosophy. A name is and always has been the subjective side of our knowledge, but that subjective side is as impossible without an objective side as a key is without a lock. It is useless to ask which of the two is the more real, for they are real only by being, not two, but one. Realism is as one-sided as Nominalism. But there is a higher Nominalism, which might better be called the Science of Language, and which teaches us that, apart from sensuous perception, all human knowledge is by names and by names only, and that the object of names is always the general. This is but one out of hundreds and thousands of cases to show how names and concepts which come to us by tradition must be submitted to very careful snuffing before they will yield a pure light. What I mean by academic teaching and academic study is exactly this process of snuffing, this changing of traditional words into living words, this tracing of modern thought back to ancient primitive thought, this living, as it were, once more, so far as it concerns us, the whole history of human thought ourselves, till we are as little afraid to differ from Plato or Aristotle as from Comte or Darwin. Plato and Aristotle are, no doubt, great names; every schoolboy is awed by them, even though he may have read very little of their writings. This, too, is a kind of dogmatism that requires correction. Now, at University, a young student might hear the following, by no means respectful, remarks about Aristotle, which I copy from one of the greatest English scholars and philosophers : There is nothing so absurd that the old philosophers, as Cicero saith, who was 46 one of them, have not some of them maintained; and I believe that scarce any thing can be more absurdly said in natural philosophy than that which now is called Aristotle's Metaphysics; or more repugnant to government than much of that he hath said in his Politics; nor more ignorantly than a great part of his Ethics." I am far from approving this judgment, but I think that the shock which a young scholar receives on seeing his idols so mercilessly broken is salutary. It throws him back on his own resources; it makes him honest to himself. If he thinks the criticism thus passed on Aristotle unfair, he will begin to read his works, with new eyes. He will not only construe his words, but try to reconstruct in his own mind the thoughts so carefully elaborated by that ancient philosopher. He will judge of their truth without being swayed by the authority of a great name, and probably in the end value what is valuable in Aristotle, or Plato, or any other great philosopher, far more highly and honestly than if he had never seen them trodden under foot. But do not suppose that I look upon the Universities as purely iconoclastic, as chiefly intended to teach us how to break the idols of the schools. Far from it! But 1 do look upon them as meant to freshen the atmosphere which we breathe at school, and to shake our mind to its very roots, as a storm shakes the young oaks, not to throw them down, but to make them grasp all the more firmly the hard soil of fact and truth! "Stand upright on thy feet" ought to be written over the gate of every college, if the epidemic of uniformity and sequacity which Mill saw approaching from China, and which since his time has made such rapid progress Westward, is ever to be stayed. Academic freedom is not without its dangers; but there are dangers which it is safer to face than to avoid. In Germany so far as my own experience goes -students are often left too much to themselves, and it is only the cleverest among them, or those who are personally recommended, who receive from the professors that personal guidance and encouragement which should and could be easily extended to all. There is too much time given in the German Universities to mere lecturing, and often in simply retailing to a class what each student might read in books often in a far more perfect form. Lectures are useful if they teach us how to teach ourselves; if they stimulate; if they excite sympathy and curiosity; if they give advice that springs from personal experience; if they warn against wrong roads; if, in fact, they have less the character of a show-window than of a work-shop. Half an hour's conversation with a tutor or a professor often does more than a whole course of lectures in giving the right direction and the right spirit to a young man's studies. Here I may quote the words of Professor Helmholtz, in full agreement with him. "When I recall the memory of my own University life," he writes, " and the impression which a man like Johannes Müller, the professor of physiology, made on us, I must set the highest value on the personal intercourse with teachers from whom one learns how thought works on independent heads. Whoever has come in contact but once with one or several first-class men will find his intellectual standard changed for life." In English Universities, on the contrary, there is too little of academic freedom. There is not only guidance, but far too much of constant personal control. It is often thought that English undergraduates could not be trusted with that amount of academic freedom which is granted to German students, and that most of them, if left to choose their own work, their own time, their own books, and their own teachers, would simply do nothing. This seems to me unfair and untrue. Most horses, if you take them to the water, will drink; and the best. way to make them drink is to leave them alone. I have lived long enough in English and in German Universities to know that the intellectual fibre is as strong and sound in the English as in the German youth. But if you supply a man, who wishes to learn swimming, with bladders. -nay, if you insist on his using themhe will use them, but he will probably never learn to swim. Take them away, on the contrary, and depend on it, after a few aimless strokes and a few painful gulps, he will use his arms and his legs, and he will swim. If young men do not learn to use their arms, their legs, their muscles, their senses, their brain, and their heart too, during the bright years of their University life, when are they to learn it? True, there are thousands who never learn it, and who float happily on through life buoyed up on mere bladders. The worst that can happen to them is that some day the bladders may burst, and they may be left stranded or drowned. But these are not the men whom England wants to fight her battles. It has often been pointed out of late that many of those who, during this century, have borne the brunt of the battle in the intellectual warfare in England, have not been trained at our Universities, while others who have been at Oxford and Cambridge, and have distinguished themselves in after-life, have openly declared that they attended hardly any lectures in college, or that they derived no benefit from them. What can be the ground of that? Not that there is less work done at Oxford than at Leipzig, but that the work is done in a different spirit. It is free in Germany; it has now become almost compulsory in England. Though an old professor myself, I like to attend, when I can, some of the professorial lectures in Germany; for it is a real pleasure to see hundreds of young faces listening to a teacher on the history of art, on modern history, on the science of language or on philosophy, without any view to examinations, simply from love of the subject or of the teacher. No one who knows what the real joy of learning is, how it lightens all drudgery and draws away the mind from mean pursuits, can see without indignation that what ought to be the freest and happiest years in a man's life should often be spent between cramming and examinations. And here I have at last mentioned the word, which to many friends of academic freedom, to many who dread the baneful increase of uniformity, may seem the cause of all mischief, the most powerful engine for intellectual levellingExamination. There is a strong feeling springing up everywhere against the tyranny of examinations, against the cramping and withering influence which they are supposed to exercise on the youth of England. I cannot join in that outcry. I well remember that the first letters which I ventured to address to the Times, in very imperfect English, were in favor of examina tions. They were signed La Carrière ouverte, and were written long before the days of the Civil Service Commission ! I well remember, too, that the first time I ventured to speak, or rather to stammer, in public, was in favor of examinations. That was in 1857, at Exeter, when the first experiment was made, under the auspices of Sir T. Acland, in establishing the Oxford and Cambridge Local Examinations. I have been an examiner myself for many years, I have watched the growth of that system in England from year to year, and in spite of all that has been said and written of late against examinations, I confess I do not see how it would be possible to abolish them, and return to the old system of appointment by patronage. But though I have not lost my faith in examinations, I cannot conceal the fact that I am frightened by the manner in which they are conducted, and by the results which they produce. As you are interested yourselves at this Midland Institute, in the successful working of examinations, you will perhaps allow me in conclusion to add a few remarks on the safeguards necessary for the efficient working of examinations. All examinations are a means to ascertain how pupils have been taught; they ought never to be allowed to become the end for which pupils are taught. Teaching with a view to examinations lowers the teacher in the eyes of his pupils; learning with a view to examinations is apt to produce shallowness and dishonesty. Whatever attractions learning possesses in itself, and whatever efforts were formerly made by boys at school from a sense of duty, all this is lost if they once imagine that the highest object of all learning is gaining marks in examinations. In order to maintain the proper relation between teacher and pupil, all pupils should be made to look to their teachers as their natural examiners and fairest judges, and therefore in every examination the report of the teacher ought to carry the greatest weight. This is the principle followed abroad in all examinations of candidates at public schools; and even in their examination on leaving school, which gives them the right to enter the University, they know that their success depends far more on the work which they have done during the years at school, than on the work done on the few days of their examination. There are outside examiners appointed by Government to check the work done at schools and during the examinations; but the cases in which they have to modify or reverse the award of the master are extremely rare, and they are felt to reflect seriously on the competency or impartiality of the school authorities. To leave examinations entirely to strangers reduces them to the level of lotteries, and fosters a cleverness in teachers and taught often akin to dishonesty. An examiner may find out what a candidate knows not, he can hardly ever find out all he knows; and even if he succeeds in finding out how much a candidate knows, he can never find out how he knows it. On these points the opinion of the masters who have watched their pupils for years is indispensable for the sake of the examiner, for the sake of the pupils, and for the sake of their teachers. I know I shall be told that it would be impossible to trust the masters, and to be guided by their opinion, because they are interested parties. Now, first of all, there are far more honest men in the world than dishonest, and it does not answer to legislate as if all schoolmasters were rogues. It is enough that they should know that their reports would be scrutinized, to keep even the most reprobate of teachers from bearing false witness in favor of their pupils. Secondly, I believe that unnecessary temptation is now being placed before all parties concerned in examinations. The proper reward for a good examination should be honor, not pounds, shillings, and pence. The mischief done by pecuniary rewards offered in the shape of scholarships and exhibitions at school and University, begins to be recognized very widely. To train a boy of twelve for a race against all England is generally to overstrain his faculties, and often to impair his usefulness in later life; but to make him feel that by his failure he will entail on his father the loss of a hun dred a year, and on his teacher the loss of pupils, is simply cruel at that early age. It is always said that these scholar ships and exhibitions enable the sons of poor parents to enjoy the privilege of the best education in England, from which they would otherwise be debarred by the excessive costliness of our public schools. But even this argument, strong as it seems, can hardly stand, for I believe it could be shown that the majority of those who are successful in obtaining scholarships and exhibitions at school or at University are boys whose parents have been able to pay the highest price for their children's previous education. If all these prizes were abolished, and the funds thus set free used to lessen the price of education at school and in college, I believe that the sons of poor parents would be far more benefited than by the present system. It might also be desirable to lower the school-fees in the case of the sons of poor parents, who were doing well at school from year to year; and, in order to guard against favoritism, an examination, particularly viva voce, before all the masters of a school, possibly even with some outside examiner, might be useful. But the present system bids fair to degenerate into mere horse-racing, and I shall not wonder if, sooner or later, the two-year-olds entered for the race have to be watched by their trainer that they may not be overfed or drugged against the day of the race. It has come to this, that schools are bidding for clever boys in order to run them in the races, and in France, I read, that parents actually extort money from schools by threatening to take away the young racers that are likely to win the Derby.* If we turn from the schools to the Universities we find here, too, the same complaints against over-examination. Now it seems to me that every University, in order to maintain its position, has a perfect right to demand two examinations, but no more: one for admission, the other for a degree. Various attempts have been made in Germany, in Russia, in France, and in England, to change and improve the old academic tradition, but in the end the original, and, as it would seem, the natural system, has generally proved its wisdom and reasserted its right. * L. Noiré," Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch," P. 157; Todtes Wissen." |