It is an institution in which a man who claims to devote himself to Science or Art, should be able to find some one who can teach him what is already known, and train him in the methods of knowing more.
I include under Art,—Literature, the pictorial and plastic art with
Architecture, and Music; and under Science,—Logic, Philosophy,
Philology, Mathematics, and the Physical Sciences.
The question of the connection of the High Schools for general education, and of the technical schools of Theology, Law, Medicine, Engineering, Art, Music, and so on, with the University is a matter of practical detail. Probably the teaching of the subjects which stand in the relation of preliminaries to technical teaching and final studies in higher general education in the University would be utilised by the colleges and technical schools.
All that I have to say on this subject is, that I see no reason why the existing University of London should not be completed in the sense I have defined by grafting upon it a professoriate with the appropriate means and appliances, which would supply London with the analogue of the Ecole des hautes Etudes and the College de France in Paris, and of the Laboratories with the Professor Extraordinarius and Privat Docenten in the German Universities.
[A new Commission was promised to look into the whole question of the London University. This is referred to in a letter to Sir J. Donnelly of March 30, 1892.]
Unless you want to kill Foster, don't suggest him for the Commission.
He is on one already.
The whole affair is a perfect muddle of competing crude projects and vested interests, and is likely to end in a worse muddle, as anything but a patch up is, I believe, outside practical politics at present.
If I had carte blanche, I should cut away the technical "Faculties" of
Medicine, Law, and Theology, and set up first-class chairs in
Literature, Art, Philosophy, and pure Science—a sort of combination of
Sorbonne (without Theology) and College de France.
Thank Heaven I have never been asked to say anything, and my chimaeras remain in petto. They would be scouted.
[On the other hand, he was most anxious to keep the School of Science at South Kensington entirely independent. He writes again on May 26:—]