Annual address to students / by Sir James Paget ; opening address by Dr. Westcott ; report of the Council and statistics for 1887.

  • Paget, James, Sir, 1814-1899.
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual address to students / by Sir James Paget ; opening address by Dr. Westcott ; report of the Council and statistics for 1887. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    You will observe that the subject, as it is offered to us in the agenda paper, defines an object and suggests a method of obtaining it. The object is “a definite mental training,” and the method is “a regular sequence in study, and systematisation in the work.” Allow me, then, to say a few words on each of these points. 1. I shall assume that the University Extension Lectures have a direct intellectual aim. These lectures sui^ply, I trust, an agreeable recreation, but they are essentially something different. They are designed to have a serious educational use. Under this aspect we may regard them either as a preparation for special work, or as a general intellectual discipline. I know how great is the temptation to adopt the former view; to measure the value of learning and knowledge by a material standard. But special training is not the work of a University, and, if I may speak my whole mind, I confess that I am alarmed and ashamed when I hear the results of science treated as instruments for successful competition; when I find the language, the methods, the aims of war transferred to the con- ditions of commerce and the circumstances of daily life. No University will lend itself to the x^m-suit of such an end. Universities exist to maintain and x>ropagate a nobler faith. So far as we have entered into their spirit, we believe, and Ave strive to si)read the belief, that life is as the man is; that if the man is sordid, selfish, narrow, mean, his life, however affluent, will reflect his character; and, on the other hand, that there is about us au inexhaustible store of unrealised possibilities, a treasure of spiritual Avealth, ox)en to the jpoorest, AA-hich grows Avith the using if only A\'e knoAv how to use it. And we belieA'e that true education oj)ens the eyes of the soul; that it is a strength in the difficulties which we must face; a solace in the sorrows which we much bear; an inspiration in interj)reting the ueAv truths Avhich claim to receive from us a harmonious place beside the old ; that it offers to all a Ausion of a larger order truly human and truly diA’iue; that it is not, in the noble words of your motto, “ a means of livelihood, but a means of hfe.” 2. Such an education, then, and nothing less than this, is the education which a UniA’ersity seeks to convey. To conA^ey such an education is the object which our society x)roposes to itself, not to place in the hands of the bread-AA'iuner a keener weapon, but to call into generous acti\'ity the fulness of his j^ower. What kind of knoAA’ledge then, Ave ask, is fitted to make a man educated in this sense ? It must, Ave can see at once, bring training, the true sense of work; and it must bring insjairation, the passion for Avork. It must be broad; and it must be thorough. The student must have an intelligent view of the Avide field of kuoAvledge, and he must have a full A'iew of the little field which he seeks to make his OAvn. fa) The student must, I say, seek to gain a wide view of the whole field of knoAA'ledge. I do not mean that he must laboriously accumulate innumerable details. A liAung encyclopoedia AA'Ould fail to satisfA’’ the conditions AA'hich Ave require him to recognise. For he must strive to obtain a Adtal sense of the relations of science one to another, of their unity and their differences, of the immeasurable dejiths wfflich lie beyond our utmost reach, of the limits which confine our present knoAvledge, of the limits which confine our xjoAA'ers of knoAving. Now we shall admit, I think, that such a AAude—not sux^erficial—vieAv is especially needed now. e all know the temx^tations of isolated study; we know the complexitj, the richness, the fascination of each little fragment of nature or life to Avhich we may devote ourselA'es; we knoAV hoAA' it is enough to occup} us, to absorb us, and, if we do not guard ourselves against the danger, to deaden us to all besides. We are not in the position of the great Masters of the