t. Genius will work on even a narrow basis,
but imperfect preparatory study leaves marks of imperfection in the
product.

The same considerations that determine your voluntary studies, determine
also the University Ideal. A University, in my view, stands or falls
with its Arts' Faculty. Without debating the details, we may say that
this Faculty should always be representative of the needs of our
intelligence, both for the professional and for the extra-professional
life; it should not be of the shop, shoppy. The University exists
because the professions would stagnate without it; and still more,
because it may be a means of enlarging knowledge at all points. Its
watchword is Progress. We have, at last, the division of labour in
teaching; outside the University, teachers too much resemble the Regent
of old--having too many subjects, and too much time spent in grinding.
Our teachers are exactly the reverse.

Yet, there cannot be progress without a sincere and single eye to the
truth. The fatal sterility of the middle ages, and of our first and
second University periods, had to do with the mistake of gagging men's
mouths, and dictating all their conclusions. Things came to be so
arranged that contradictory views ran side by side, like opposing
electric currents; the thick wrappage of ingenious phraseology arresting
the destructive discharge. There was, indeed, an elaborate and
pretentious Logic, supplied by Aristotle, and amended by Bacon; what was
still wanted was a taste of the Logic of Freedom.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 15: RECTORIAL ADDRESS, to the Students of Aberdeen University,
_15th November_, 1882.]

* * * * *

VII.

THE ART OF STUDY.

Of hackneyed subjects, a foremost place may be assigned to the Art of
Study. Allied to the theory and practice of Education generally, it has
still a field of its own, although not very precisely marked out. It
relates more to self-education than to instruction under masters; it
supposes the voluntary choice of the individual rather than the
constraint of an outward discipline. Consequently, the time for its
application is when the pupil is emancipated from the prescription and
control of the scholastic curriculum.

There is another idea closely associated with our notion of study--namely,
learning from books. We may stretch the word, without culpable licence,
to comprise the observation of facts of all kinds, but it more naturally
sugg