Sir G. G. Stokes, Bart., M. A., LL. D., Sc. D., F. R. S., Pembroke. Lucasian Professor of Mathematics.
The Cavendish Laboratory of Physics, where Clerk-Maxwell and afterward Lord Rayleigh taught, and which is at present in the hand of their able successor, J. J. Thomson, is a building of considerable size and admirably fitted out, but the rapidly increasing number of young physicists who are being allured by the working facilities of the place, and by the fame of Professor Thomson, is rendering even this splendidly equipped hall of science inadequate. The physiological laboratories are many, they are completely furnished with appliances, and a large number of students are there trained annually under the supervision of one of England's most eminent living scientists, Michael Foster, and his scarcely less able associates—Langley, Hardy, and Gaskell. Chemistry, zoölogy, botany, anatomy, and geology have each their well-appointed halls and masterly exponents. The names MacAlister, Liveing, Dewar, Newton, Sedgwick, Marshall Ward, and Hughes are not easily matched in any other one institution. Indeed, it is when one stops to consider the intellects at Cambridge that it becomes a dangerous matter to institute comparisons, and to say that this discipline or that is most rich in eminent interpreters. In science, at any rate, and in all branches of science, Cambridge stands alone. Not even Oxford can be considered for a moment as in the same class with her. And of all the sciences it is undoubtedly in mathematics and astronomy that the supremacy of Cambridge is most pronounced. The names of Profs. Sir G. G. Stokes and Sir R. S. Ball will be familiar to every reader, while those of Profs. Forsythe and G. H. Darwin and Mr. Baker will be familiar to all mathematicians. In classics Cambridge, while not possessing a similar monopoly of almost all the talent, still holds her own even with Oxford. Professors Jebb, Mayor, and Ridgeway, and Drs. Verrall, Jackson, and Frazer constitute a group of men second to none in the subjects of which they treat. Professor Jebb is also one of the university's two representatives in Parliament. In philosophy Cambridge has two men, Henry Sidgwick and James Ward, the former of whom is perhaps by common consent the first living authority on moral science, while the latter ranks among the first of living psychologists. These men, while representing very different philosophical standpoints, unite in opposition not only to the Hegelian movement, which, led by Caird and Bradley of Oxford, Seth and Stirling of Edinburgh, threatens the invasion of England, but also to the Spencerian philosophy. The latter system has not many adherents at either university, but the writer has been told by Professor Sully that the ascendency of the neo-Hegelian and other systems is by no means so pronounced elsewhere in England. The Spencerian biology, on the contrary, has been largely defended at Cambridge, while Weismannism, for the most part, is repudiated there and at Oxford.
James Ward, Sc. D., Trinity. Professor of Mental Philosophy and Logic.
The teaching at Cambridge, as at all universities, is of many grades. In many subjects the lectures are not meant to give a student sufficient material to get him through an examination, and a "coach" becomes requisite, or at any rate is employed. This system of coaching has attained large dimensions; its results are often good, but it means an additional expense and seems an incentive to laziness, making it unnecessary for a student to exert his own mental aggressiveness or powers of application as he who fights his own battles must do. The Socratic form of instruction, producing a more intimate and unrestricted relation between instructor and student, and which is largely in operation in the States, is little practiced in England. In science the methods of instruction at Cambridge are ideal. That practical acquaintance with the facts of Nature which Huxley and Tyndall taught is the only true means of knowing Nature, is the key according to which all biological and physical instruction at these institutions is conducted.
In the last half dozen years two radical steps have been taken by both Oxford and Cambridge—steps leading, to many respectable minds, in diametrically opposite directions. The step backward (in the writer's view) occurred when the universities, after much excitement, defeated with slaughter the proposition granting university degrees to women. It was simply proposed that the students of Newnham and Girton, who should successfully compete with male students in an honor course, should have an equal right with the latter to receive the usual degrees from their alma mater. After industrious inquiry among those who were foremost in supporting and opposing this movement the writer has unearthed no objection of weight against the change. "If the women were granted degrees they would have votes in the senate," and "It never has been done"—these are the two reasons most persistently urged in defense of the conservative view; while justice and utility alike appear to be for once, at any rate, unequivocally on the side of the women. Prejudice defeated progress, and students celebrated the auspicious occasion with bonfires. The step forward was taken when the universities and their colleges decided to throw open their gates to the graduates of other universities in England, America, and elsewhere for the purpose of advanced study. But here, as in other things, Cambridge leads the way, and Oxford follows falteringly. The advanced students at Cambridge are treated like Cambridge men, they have the status of Bachelors of Arts, and possess in most respects the advantages, such as they are, of the latter; while at Oxford the advanced students are a restricted class, with restricted advantages, and their relation to the university is not that of the other students. In Cambridge the movement which has resulted in the present admirable condition of affairs was largely brought about by the zeal and enterprise of Dr. Donald MacAlister, of St. John's College, the University Lecturer in Therapeutics, a man of wide sympathies and ability, and whose name is closely associated with this university's metamorphosis into a more modern institution.
THE WONDERFUL CENTURY.[1]
A REVIEW BY W. K. BROOKS,
PROFESSOR OF ZOÖLOGY IN THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY.