What the Aim of a University Should Be,

it is hopeless for us to talk about reform, and I regret to say that in the discussions page 3 we have had lately, what a university should be seems not to have been kept in view. I recognise that nowadays the most important subjects for consideration are classed under the head of science. In New Zealand we ought ever to keep in view the limitations of our colony, and the need of our young people being trained in science, so that the industries of this colony may be fostered. I believe that a training in science can give as good mental training as the classics, and that if science is something more than a mere "manipulation of matter," it would fit men for the struggle in life better than any other subject they could study. But science so taught must be more than mere laboratory work. You must try and get an idea of the universe, and you must get a conception of the unity of knowledge. I further believe that a training in science is most important to make people truthful, and to make them cease to be "gullible," and that science perhaps of all knowledge will instil into the minds of her students 'an intense and self-sacrificing enthusiasm for truth." But along with science there must go some reference to history, and some reference to humanity, fur we must ever remember that we are not mere individuals, but that wo are members of a society having duties to that society, and we cannot perform our citizen duties properly if the whole of cur attention is directed to any one branch of knowledge. We have to govern ourselves, and we have to help to govern our country; but I do not think we can fitly do so without consideration of 30th history and literature.