Page:Calcutta University and Science.djvu/8

Rh together and interwoven by trains of connecting thought and fact, and form part and parcel of the mental fabric, a source of conscious pleasure, and a stimulus to further acquisition. The committal of a given quantity of matter to memory is, as we have remarked, an easier mental operation to many, to most minds indeed of ordinary calibre, than that assimilation of ideas and trains of reasoning, which is more properly distinguished as knowledge ; but the act is one which brings little pleasure, and is rarely undertaken except under the stimulus of a definite object to be gained, whether for convenience and as conducive to an intellectual object, or with the less meritorious aim of passing an examination. If then we wish to impart to the natives the full benefits of European science, we must induct them more fully than is possible under the present system into some of its leading branches, and this can, as we have shewn, only be done at the sacrifice of variety.

As a consequence of the present superficial system, native graduates go forth from the Examination Hall, with little or no idea of how elementary and crude their acquisitions really are. The simple rudimentary text-books selected by the University, represent to their mind exhaustive treatises on their special or incidental subjects, and the really superficial acquaintance they have gained therewith seems boundless knowledge. And how are they to know otherwise? In their own native society they are looked up to as prodigies of learning ; like Gulliver they stalk among Liliputians, and do not dream of the existence of a Brobdignag race. Hence the pedantry and shallowness so frequently noticed as the result of our University teaching ; and hence its failure to instil thorough knowledge, and that cautiousness and sense of self-inferiority which is one of the most valuable results of real knowledge, and is most characteristic of its greatest masters.

We believe then that the true course which the University should pursue, would be to carry still further the reforms already effected to in some extent the case of Natural Science,—to contract the list of essential subjects of examination, to within narrower limits—to allow of selection to a greater extent than at present,—and to insist upon a thorough acquaintance with the subjects of examination, instead of with a particular book or books, treating thereon. This latter measure will render many of the Colleges now affiliated incapable of teaching more than a certain small selection of subjects, for it will enforce the substitution of efficient and special professorial teaching by lectures and class discussion, for the present school system with text-books, which practically degrades the professor into a