Coming now to the question of the central authority, it is enough to say that primary education was originally under the education department, which, like many other departments of state, was at first an appanage of the privy council. The latter is the real source of an unexhausted executive power in England, and may be compared to the sun in its. potentiality to throw off some new department of state when a new administrative want makes itself felt. Science and art teaching, which dates back to the great exhibition of 1851, was under the science and art department, which was later on made the authority for technical education. The endowed schools were controlled by the charity commission, whose oversight, however, was mainly financial. The present board of education was evolved out of the two above-named departments, with power to take over certain functions from the charity commission. The new office was divided up into two sections, primary and secondary, and technological. The latter section shows sign of splitting up into two parts, so that there will probably in the end be three sections in the office. Hitherto, owing to the miserable system of payment by results, the office has been overwhelmed by questions of detail and audit. The establishment of the block grant may perhaps set it free to study the admirable collection of reports which have been amassed by its special inquiries section, in order to enable it to frame general principles of control. It has also been furnished with a consultative committee of experts; these no doubt should serve as an admirable go-between in their dealings with the schools on their pedagogical side; but what they really most require at the present time is an efficient secondary inspectorate that shall serve, not only as the mouthpiece, but the eyes and ears, of the board. Otherwise they will be like those lay figures that have eyes, but see not; ears have they, but they hear Much, again, of their routine work should be delegated to the local authorities. The true function of the board of education seems to be something of a mean between your, bureau of education and the strong centralized ministry of public instruction in France. I cannot define this function in better words than those of our greatest writer on education, Mr. Michael Sadler. He is speaking of the part of the state in national education, and, after dismissing the individualist idea that the state should have no part in national education, and rejecting Adam Smith's opinion that it should provide only primary schools, and Mills' view that it should establish a system of schools of its own among other competing systems, he goes on to lay down that the state should rather draw toward itself, inspire, stimulate, and (when needful) aid each and every type and instance of efficient and needed schools, while absorbing, controlling, crushing none; aiming, not at monopoly, but at a comprehensive federation of schools and colleges; at strengthening educational freedom, not at any restriction of it; at self-criticism, not at the discouragement of criticism; at the planning and record of careful and systematic experiments; at the very liberal encouragement of educational, psychological, and hygienic research of all kinds, in all types of schools, and those not in England alone; at the wide diffusion among all concerned of the accurate, but varied and outspoken, observations thus secured, with a view to the development and guidance of a well-informed and skillfully observant public and professional opinion. Such seems to me to be the present position of English education and its principal shortcomings; and, in speaking so plainly of our failings, I do not wish you to imagine for a moment there is little to be said in praise of English education. My abstention was rather intentional, because it seemed to me scarcely the place to say it; and yet, as one reared in the traditions of our English public schools, who has breathed their subtle atmosphere, as strong and life-giving in its way as that of your American schools; who later on, as a teacher, has attempted to maintain and spread their high-soaring and deep-rooted traditions, I feel it is only fair tonight to express in public my eternal gratitude toward those public institutions which instilled into me, unforward scholar that I was, some scanty sense of the high ideals of patriotism; of esprit de corps and of serving the state, of noblesse oblige and the non-existence of rights unaccompanied by duties; of the virtue of self-control; of the spirit of never-say-die; of the belief in fair play and other national qualities which belong pre-eminently to the Anglo-Saxon race. And if I also look on France as a sort of foster-mother who, taking me late in life, deepened my ideas of culture and philosophy, it is because she gave me thereby a sort of intellectuelle Anschauung into the 0os of English public-school life, and helped me better to understand myself and my great debt to these ancient and religious foundations. I might also point with pride to the work of the great school boards, like those of Leeds and London, to show what thirty years of popular effort have done for the working classes, or extol the energy of the technical-education board for London, which in ten years has literally created the present network of technical education out of nothing. But my object is not to praise or blame our national education, but to render it intelligible. I greatly fear, however, I have not infrequently been obscure, owing to the lack of time to set forth each proposition and idea in its due light and proportion. If I have failed, I shall at least have had the melancholy satisfaction of making you realize the extraordinary complexity of the problem by explaining the obscureness per obscureness. There are, however, two ideas which I would wish you to carry away with you. One, that a trim and geometrical system of education is probably impossible in England, not because of the stupidity or indif ference of the English people, but because of the diversity that exists in the national character, and the extraordinary sensitiveness of the English people to fundamentals, about which they rarely argue, but which, as the suppressed premise, give weight and direction to their arguments. I think no nation feels more deeply, or experiences greater difficulty in putting its feelings into words. I fancy at times it even half-consciously shrinks from doing so. The second is that any satisfactory settlement of the education question, or even temporary modus vivendi, must recognize this diversity in the national character and give fair play to the various sets of opposing tendencies which are not always symmetrically ranged under one banner or party, yet are ever carrying on a perpetual duel in England, as prefigured by the battle between freedom and authority, between the spirit of inquiry and that of obedience, between individual liberty and state control, between private effort and corporate life, between the ethical and the intellectual conceptions of education. This English duality, which Emerson himself has remarked upon, makes us appear at times strangely undecided, irresolute, illogical, and cross-grained; but there are moments when, as Pascal says, the heart has reasons, the head knows not. Yet I do not wish to imply that we should be forever halting between two opinions, and that there are not occasions when we must make up our minds to take a decided step. No one is more convinced than myself at the present time that we have need of overhauling the ship of state and putting her into a better state of repair, making jettison of certain of the laissez-faire notions with which we are encumbered and taking in a fresh consignment of state control. I only ask you to judge us gently. Our responsibilities are indeed great, yet I have no doubt whatever, once we have truly realized them, we shall prove fully equal to the task. For my part I cannot entertain the idea that the Anglo-Saxon race, whether on this side of the Atlantic or the other, can ever go under. THE FUNCTIONS OF A UNIVERSITY IN A PROSPEROUS DEMOCRACY CHARLES F. THWING, PRESIDENT OF WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY AND ADELBERT COLLEGE, CLEVELAND, 0. There is one special respect in which the university proves to be of great advantage to organized religion. The university helps to show to the world the relative worth of the church and the relative lack of the worth of churches. The church is founded upon the primary belief of the existence of a personal God, and upon the derived belief that the will of this Being is made known to the will of man, and also upon the derived belief that the will of this Supreme Being is to be obeyed by man. Churches are founded upon some adaptation of application or corollary of this fundamental conception. The university is concerned with truth in large relations. It therefore investigates and presents the primary conception on which the church rests. It therefore is an aid to the support of the church in a democratic community. But its relations to the divisions of the one great church are on the whole remote. For cisms it has not only contempt, but also indifference; for heresy, while it may give approval to the motives of the heretic, it has only indifference. The little truths which one endeavors to correlate and to transmute into the system of orthodoxy usually seem to it slight and unimportant. The larger, therefore, a university becomes, the less significant do its denominational and sectarian relations appear. A sectarian university is a misnomer. The larger and stronger a university becomes, the more impressive and stronger becomes its allegiance to the fundamental doctrines of religion. For these are fundamental truths of being. A sectarian university would be a practical impossibility, as an irreligious university is a logical inconsistency. These truths receive illustration in the changes which have occurred in the universities of every order, and also in the enlarging policy of the oldest colleges of America. It is also to be noted that theology, studied broadly, as it ever should be, becomes, when studied subjectively, psychology, and when studied objectively it becomes either anthropology or biology. Such a broad study of theology the university is, of all institutions and agencies, the best fitted to conduct. The school of theology is in peril of being a school of theology only. The results of such a narrow method cannot but be slight. For, valuing at the utmost the content of all special revelations from and concerning the Divine Being, these revelations are so slight in comparison to the whole content of truth respecting God and his will that advantage must be taken of psychology and anthropology and biology for learning whatever can be known touching Him who is all and in all. In the promotion of social efficiency the university adjusts itself in best ways to the growth of that ever-growing force, the sense of humanity. It is significant that the growth of the sense of humanity has been specially vigorous in the forty years that have elapsed since the publication of The Origin of the Species. As it has become evident that man has arisen out of the lower forms of life, the worth of humanity, the highest form, has been more appreciated, and the sense of the oneness of this present highest form been the more clearly harmonized. This problem of recognition and appreciation the university is set to promote. been and is an agency and a condition best fitted and qualified to promote the growth of this sense of humanity. Thru the interpretation of human movements, and thru a sense of love for all men and a desire to serve all men, the university most directly ministers to the noblest growth of the noblest humanity. The university also performs an important function toward that element of society known as public opinion. Public opinion is the special product of democracy. It arises from the freedom of the body democratic to express its thoughts, and it reacts on the people and helps to create and maintain a democracy. The university is the voice of the people. It is at times the voice of God, and it has sometimes, in a free democracy, an authority greater than that of God. Public opinion, in a democracy, is usually tyrannical, and those over whom it rules are commonly its willing subjects. It is the tyranny of the majority, and it is hard to find a tyranny more tyrannical than the tyranny of the majority. It is the power of a tyrant raised to the nth degree. To public opinion the university owes three duties: first, it should give enlightenment, in order that public opinion may be rightly formed; second, it should teach the right of dissent; and third, it should teach and give an example of fairness and moderation. The uni Concerning all these elements truth is to be the basis. Absolute freedom in the teaching is to be allowed, and even to be required. The judge of what is allowed and what is the truth is not to be the civil nor, of course, the ecclesiastical power, but the university itself. versity is of all bodies the best qualified to be the judge. It has no political government to conserve or to perpetuate; it has no doctrine to impress; it has no purpose to perform, excepting the discovery of the truthfulness of the truth, as a means of human betterment. The great progress of the universities of Germany in this century has been caused more by the freedom of the teaching than by any other condition, and upon whatever occasions the civil authorities have seen fit to interfere with the freedom of the teaching, these occasions have resulted, not only in harm to the universities, but also in injury to the best interests of the people. In this country the interference with freedom of teaching has been far less frequent than is commonly supposed. Professors have been removed from their chairs, and the public has often believed that the reason for the removal lay in the unwillingness of the professors to submit their judgments to the judgments of founders or trustees or benefactors. I, for one, would not say that in some American universities the freedom of teaching is not so great as it ought to be. I would not say that chairs have not been declared vacant on the ground that their occupants presented opinions which did not have the approval of boards. of trustees; but I do say that such instances are far less common than is usually believed. The reasons for the removal of professors have often been reasons of personal character or of general inefficiency-reasons of which the public knows nothing at all. Such reasons are far more frequent than reasons arising from a lack of freedom in teaching. In fact, |