The Ideal University.

has yet been founded amongst English people. Before we can discuss any reform we must have in our mind some plan or ideal. It would be as hopeless to decide what reform was to be, until we had this plan formulated, as it would be to start building a house without knowing what the building should be. I apprehend that a university should aim at training men and women, and in impairing knowledge to them of many things, and perhaps a full knowledge of one thing. There ought, I think, to be some guarantee that one who has been at a university should have some general culture. A graduate ought not to be one-eyed. A graduate should be able to see more than one thing. To send a student out of a university who can manipulate things—gases, liquids, etc.—as an expert chemist can, may be sending out of a university a very ignorant person. He or she may have gone through a course which Carlyle calls "mechanical manipulation, falsely called science," and yet he or she may be what Carlyle calls "'gullible." If nothing is known of history, nothing of philosophy, and nothing of what is termed humanity, the graduate may be unable to fulfil his or her duty as a citizen in the struggle for life. So, if a student knows only some classical languages and some history, and is ignorant of science, he also would be one-eyed, and have missed a great part of education. The University must therefore provide not merely for training two or three specialists in one or two subjects, but in giving a general culture to students. The great difficulty in university training, considering the vast number of subjects that now claim our attention, is to decide when to specialise and when to allow students to select one or two subjects and ignore all others. Until we can get an agreement on