continue to fulfil that purpose, the more will they secure to us that real
freedom from tradition, from custom, from mere opinion and superstition,
which can be gained by independent study only; the more will they foster
that "human development in its richest diversity" which Mill, like
Humboldt, considered as the highest object of all society.

Such academic teaching need not be confined to the old Universities. There
is many a great University that sprang from smaller beginnings than your
Midland Institute. Nor is it necessary, in order to secure the real
benefits of academic teaching, to have all the paraphernalia of a
University, its colleges and fellowships, its caps and gowns. What is
really wanted is the presence of men who, having done good work in their
life, are willing to teach others how to work for themselves, how to think
for themselves, how to judge for themselves. That is the true academic
stage in every man's life, when he learns to work, not to please others,
be they schoolmasters or examiners, but to please himself, when he works
from sheer love of work, and for the highest of all purposes, the quest of
truth. Those only who have passed through that stage know the real
blessings of work. To the world at large they may seem mere drudges--but
the world does not know the triumphant joy with which the true
mountaineer, high above clouds and mountain walls that once seemed
unsurpassable, drinks in the fresh air of the High Alps, and away from the
fumes, the dust, and the noises of the city, revels alone, in freedom of
thought, in freedom of feeling, and in the freedom of the highest faith.

II.

ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF MYTHOLOGY.

A Lecture Delivered At The Royal Institution In 1871.

What can be in our days the interest of mythology? What is it to us that
Kronos was the son of Uranos and Gaia, and that he swallowed his children,
Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Pluton, and Poseidon, as soon as they were born?
What have we to do with the stories of Rhea, the wife of Kronos, who, in
order to save her youngest son from being swallowed by his father, gave
her husband a stone to swallow instead? And why should we be asked to
admire the exploits of this youngest son, who, when he had grown up, made
his father drink a draught, and thus helped to deliver the stone and his
five brothers and sisters from their paternal prison? What shall we think
if we read in the mos