Chips from a German Workshop, Volume 4: Essays Chiefly on the Science of LanguageMüller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Religion
Chips from a German Workshop, Volume 4: Essays Chiefly on the Science of Language
Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Comparative linguistics; Folklore; Literature -- History and criticism; Mythology; Religions
the best workers in every branch of human knowledge resident at Oxford,
whether as teachers, or as guides, or as examples? The very presence of
such men would have a stimulating and elevating effect: it would show to
the young men higher objects of human ambition than the baton of a
field-marshal, the mitre of a bishop, the ermine of a judge, or the
money bags of a merchant; it would create for the future a supply of new
workers as soon as there was for them, if not an avenue to wealth and
power, at least a fair opening for hard work and proper pay. All this
might be done to-morrow, without any injury to anybody, and with every
chance of producing results of the greatest value to the universities,
to the country, and to the world at large. Let the university continue
to do the excellent work which it does at present as a teacher, but let
it not forget the equally important duty of a university, that of a
worker. Our century has inherited the intellectual wealth of former
centuries, and with it the duty, not only to preserve it or to dole it
out in schools and universities, but to increase it far beyond the
limits which it has reached at present. Where there is no advance, there
is retrogression: rest is impossible for the human mind.
Much of the work, therefore, which in other universities falls to the
lot of the professors, ought, in Oxford, to be performed by a staff of
student-fellows, whose labors should be properly organized as they are
in the Institute of France or in the Academy of Berlin. With or without
teaching, they could perform the work which no university can safely
neglect, the work of constantly testing the soundness of our
intellectual food, and of steadily expanding the realms of knowledge. We
want pioneers, explorers, conquerors, and we could have them in
abundance if we cared to have them. What other universities do by
founding new chairs for new sciences, the colleges of Oxford could do
to-morrow by applying the funds which are not required for teaching
purposes, and which are now spent on sinecure fellowships, for making
either temporary or permanent provision for the endowment of original
research.
It is true that new chairs have, from time to time, been founded in
Oxford also; but if we inquire into the circumstances under which
provision was made for the teaching of new subjects, we shall find that
it generally took place, not so much for the encouragement of any new
branch of scientific research, however interesting to the philosopher
and the historian, as in order to satisfy some practical wants that
could no longer be ignored, whether in church or state, or in the
university itself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account