Page:The Student, Edinburgh University Magazine, New Series, Volume V., Summer Session 1891.pdf/21

 and students alike practised it. A professor taught a little, as if his chair were the only one in the world. Each played his part without hearing of his neighbour,—a concert with each of the performers placed several miles apart. But the students had always close relationships among themselves. Old schoolmates, those from the same district, associated; but the only common meeting-place was the café, where the intellectual exchange was the double-six and la dame de pique. There was no connection at all between the professors and students, unless when medicals met their teachers round the sick-bed. “The professor regarded the student from the height of the chair, or from the high end of the examination table. To look down from above, as the master did, or from below up, as did the students, is not to see things from the right point of view. It was the fulness of individualism?' The results? “A limited intellectual horizon for master and pupil, the interaction of colleague on colleague, of comrade on comrade, reduced to a minimum, and coldness between professors and students; for the relation of examiner to examinee, of judge to accused—the examination being a charge of ignorance—is not by nature cordial.”

A revolution has been made in our manners, and the students are not only the witnesses, but, better, are the convinced, energetic, and persevering actors. We have inherited imperfections, and the two most important are a lack of philosophy and a want of actuality. It is true that philosophy is taught in the Faculty of Letters, and never was more, or more seriously, taught than it is to­-day. But philosophy cannot be confined to the Arts Faculty. The prodigious work of analysis done during this century seems to announce a coming synthesis which will just be philosophy.

Our instruction is not sufficiently directed towards the present, towards the tasks of to-day and to-morrow. It is confined in too rigid frames, and has a certain timidity with regard to actual life. We have these two complementary faults,—we do not realise the whole, and we do not realise the present moment. Is not this a break in the speech? Not at all. In the new buildings are a library, a tutorial room, and a large hall. There we shall apply our theory. Don’t encumber your library shelves with the tools of your everyday work, but remember that there are libraries in the University. Give yours a special character. Give the preference to books of to-day ; read these, and seek in them the spirit of the times. You do not believe in our intellectual decline; for though there be subtilties and coquetries, though there be incertitude about some of the great questions, anarchy in art as in philosophy, the spirit of our times is free, varied, and sincere in its doubts, strong in its researches, and, allowing for everything, powerful.

It is needful that you should know the spirit of your times if you wish to in­-fluence them. Most men live without knowing in what century they are. Their tomb should bear no date, for they have none. They render little service to the community. But from you, your masters, your University, your country, expect higher and better things. You have no right to ignore your date in the continuity of universal history. It is difficult to keep in touch with the movements of great minds, and to under­-stand by oneself the times, but here comes in the use of your Union and its con­ference rooms.

I do not know what you are going to do with it, but I have again some uneasi­ness lest you add to the “conferences” the words “preparatory to exams.” I further fear that some, desiring to be orators, will prepare themselves there at the expense of their fellows. “Mon Dieu! all that isn’t bad; but, believe me, don’t abuse the professoriate. You have plenty professors, there are already a great number of us professors in France.* And further, don't be deceived by premature eloquence. I


 * Would that could be said about Scotland!