be tested by the same tribunal.

In Germany, they have it by the co-existence of the ordinary professors, the extraordinary professors, and the privat-docents. We in Scotland have it not at all; and if in some places we do not feel our need of it, that by no means shows that the need does not there exist. So scandalous a departure from the tradition of Universities, ancient and modern, and upon a point which affects their life so intimately, must have had a deadening and depressing effect. I cannot help thinking that the most gradual introduction of the other scheme would soon send stimulus and life through the whole system.

But besides stimulating professorial teaching to its highest efficiency, it would supplement that teaching when it is quite inefficient. There is such a thing as professorial inefficiency; and it is a thing so common, and so certain to occur occassionally, that it is simply common prudence to provide for it. Given a University with thirty chairs, you will certainly within the next century have twenty recurrences of complete inefficiency, resulting in sheer ruin for the time to the department of science represented. And such cases very often cannot be remedied by the power of the University Court to call on the professor to resign. We can all remember cases where such a remedy would have been held harsh, and where yet the professor sat like death on his students and his subject, and that for many of the years which to us were most important. Now, some evils a University cannot remedy, and some it can ; and this is one which is distinctly within its own power. Whatever else the system of open teaching would do, it would certainly and sufficiently provide against professorial inefficiency.

And if a system can be relied upon to fill every chair in a University with living teaching (fed from an atmosphere and halo of its own life outside), the only remaining question about it seems to be whether it is safe in itself, and can be safely introduced. Now, I venture to say that this is in itself a safe and self-regulating system, a system which not only repairs its own losses and renews its own strength, but which is full of checks and compensations, and the remedies in which act strongly only when they are required. Then as to danger in

introduction, the restrictions on the proposed right are many. It is not proposed that all extra-mural teachers should have it, only those who are graduates of this or another University. It is not proposed that all graduates should have it,-only those distinguished in their particular subjects. These, again, may be sifted by a very strict examination; unless they have presented some work of great merit equivalent to a strict examination. And lastly, the amount of their fee would of course be regulated by the University Court, and their license might be continued or renewed from time to time. In short, it is a scheme which is not only safe in itself, but may be most safely introduced-just as safely, slowly, and gradually as you choose to do it.

Such are the advantages to the Universities which are claimed as certain to result from the institution of the system of open or extra-mural teaching. In stating them, as in stating what is meant by the system, I have been careful to adhere to the substance, and indeed to the very words, alike of its advocacy before the Edinburgh Council a quarter of a century ago, and of my evidence laid before the Royal Commission in 1878. This will help to insure that there is no unfair changing of the conditions of the argument when we now go on to inquire, What are the disadvantages which are alleged to counterbalance all this academic gain?

I. The chief objection which has been stated is the rather unexpected one, that the system of open teaching would lower the standard of teaching, and would lead to the oppressive increase of the system of competitive examination among the students. It is not at all clear what the connection of ideas is upon which this suggestion as to competition is founded. It is plain enough that open teaching leads to an increase of competition between the University teachers, and it has been recommended upon the ground, among others, that such competition would tend to heighten the standard of teaching, the students naturally going to that which they find most powerful and attractive. The counter suggestion, that teachers, "when exposed to competition, are tempted to lower the standard of teaching," has not been supported in its

application to the Scottish Universities by any appeal to facts. On the contrary, it is admitted that the evidence of facts in those Universities, in so far as the system has already been tried there, is the other way. The Royal Commission has accordingly resolved that the system should be continued in the Medical and all the other Faculties where we have had experience of it. But what as to the others? The reasons suggested (for they can scarcely be said to be stated) for assuming that future experiment in the remaining Faculties (of Arts and Law) would give another result than experience has thus given in the past, are curious, and even paradoxical. It is said (rather injuriously, I should imagine, to the science of Medicine) that the primary object of the teaching “in the Faculty of Arts is culture, in the Faculty of Medicine to obtain information." Supposing this accurate, it would seem clearly to follow that it is the latter Faculty, not the former, in which there might be a risk of the teaching degenerating into mere cramming. Yet, in the latter Faculty, the system of open teaching is expressly declared to have had beneficial results in the past, and its extension to Glasgow is heartily approved. How a teaching, on the other hand, which is more specially directed to culture, and which it is impossible to test by cram,-which indeed no examiner not an idiot would attempt so to test,-how such open teaching would lead to cramming, when the other does not, is impossible to conceive. In truth, the difficulty really apprehended as to future examinations seems to be not so much cram, but that, as one of the professors expresses it in his evidence, you could not, in the event of open teaching, "construct your examination with a view to the professor.' But it is a very much better thing if it is constructed with a view to those principles of science, which may be repeated memoriter if they are picked up from one man, professor or docent, but which must be apprehended intelligently if they are to result in culture to be tested by an independent tribunal.

But the distinction which this objection attempts between the degrees of Arts and Medicine seems to grow even into absurdity when we remember that it is the latter and not the former which is eminently a "bread-degree," and therefore a pass-degree. In Arts and in Law there is no professional degree

entitling to practice; in Medicine there is. Yet, in the latter, where open teaching has been tried, it is highly approved, and no one suggests that it should be withdrawn on account of the risk of cramming for an examination which every student must pass or starve. It is only in the Faculties where the degree is an honorary one and no student needs to pass at all, and where, in consequence, the chief object of ambition under open teaching, with students and teachers alike, would be to take it with the highest honours which could certify culture it is only there that open teaching is objected to, and that on account of the risk of cram !

In truth, there is no substance and no meaning in this objection. It seems to have been hastily picked up from the confusion already noticed in some minds between the system of open teaching as existing in Germany and desired here, on the one hand, and a system, on the other, like that of the University of London, where there has been a mere Examining Board without teaching. I hope the system even of the London University is now on its way to become something like what we desire for Scotland. But before parting with this objection, there is a further remark that must be made upon it.

It is the converse of the truth. The real danger of open teaching, the real objection which may be made to the too rapid or too indefinite extension of it in the Universities, has always been held to be the very opposite of that made to do duty on the present occasion. Instead of cramping" the University teaching, the freedom of the modern German and of the old European University* brought with it the risk of too great inflation and expansion-a tendency to unbounded speculation on the part of the teacher, and to daring individualism on the part of the student. I content myself with merely stating this as the true reading of a thousand years of academic history. Those who desire to see it brought out with learning and power, need go no farther than Cardinal

"I think there is no doubt that in proportion as we can give a just freedom to teaching by introducing into it the element of a wholesome competition, do we approach more closely to the primitive spirit and system of universities."—Mr. Gladstone's First Inaugural Address as Rector of Edinburgh University.

Newman's book already mentioned, or a much less known volume published many years ago by an Oxford scholar, who had recently taught in our Edinburgh halls.*

II. But there is another objection, which may at least be seriously put, though I hope to show that it shrinks into small bulk when scrutinised. It may be admitted that the proposed system is safe in itself, and could never have any danger for the University as a whole. But it may, at the same time, be contended that it would be very unsafe, pecuniarily, for particular chairs or particular professorships which have been filled up under the existing system. And it may be urged that it would be unfair, however clear the gain to the students, to set up extra-mural chairs in rivalry to these. I admit that this is a matter which deserves consideration; but I point out

1. In the University of Edinburgh eminently, and to some extent in all the others, this is a difficulty which, in three out of four Faculties, has already been encountered and found no difficulty at all. In three of our Faculties the system of open teaching (so far as regards students and their fees) already exists. In the Medical Faculty in Edinburgh, as elsewhere, it has long existed, and is carried on to a greater extent than is proposed in the above scheme, for I am not aware that medical open teaching is there restricted to graduates. In the Theological Faculty there, as in St. Andrews, Glasgow, and Aberdeen, degrees have for years past been given without attendance being at all required on the professors in the University. And in the degrees in Science which have been recently instituted, attendance at other Universities and on other teachers is recognised. In all these cases open teaching is recognised to what is theoretically an extreme extent; and the proposal for which the Edinburgh Council has demanded legislation need not go so far, even at the furthest, as that which already exists in them. The remaining question in Edinburgh now concerns merely the Degree in Arts and the Faculty of Law; and on the latter of these we have the significant

"The Historically received Conception of the University." By Edward Kirkpatrick London, 1857.