Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 3Huxley, Thomas Henry
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Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 3
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Huxley, Thomas Henry, 1825-1895; Naturalists -- England -- Biography
Our side has been too apt to look upon medical schools as feeders for
Science. They have been so, but to their detriment as medical schools.
And now that so many opportunities for purely scientific training are
afforded, there is no reason they should remain so.
The problem of the Medical University is to make an average man into a
good practical doctor before he is twenty-two, and with not more
expense than can be afforded by the class from which doctors are
recruited, or than will be rewarded by the prospect of an income of 400
to 500 pounds a year.
It is not right to sacrifice such men, and the public on whom they
practise, for the prospect of making 1 per cent of medical students
into men of science.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[An undated draft in his own handwriting (probably the draft of a
speech delivered the first time he came to the committee as President,
October 26) expands the same idea as to the modern requirements of the
University:--]
The cardinal fact in the University question, appears to me to be this:
that the student to whose wants the mediaeval University was adjusted,
looked to the past and sought book-learning, while the modern looks to
the future and seeks the knowledge of things.
The mediaeval view was that all knowledge worth having was explicitly
or implicitly contained in various ancient writings; in the Scriptures,
in the writings of the greater Greeks, and those of the Christian
Fathers. Whatever apparent novelty they put forward, was professedly
obtained by deduction from ancient data.
The modern knows that the only source of real knowledge lies in the
application of scientific methods of inquiry to the ascertainment of
the facts of existence; that the ascertainable is infinitely greater
than the ascertained, and that the chief business of the teacher is not
so much to make scholars as to train pioneers.
From this point of view, the University occupies a position altogether
independent of that of the coping-stone of schools for general
education, combined with technical schools of Theology, Law, and
Medicine. It is not primarily an institution for testing the work of
schoolmasters, or for ascertaining the fitness of young men to be
curates, lawyers, or doctors.
It is an institution in which a man who claims to devote himself to
Science or Art, should be able to find some one who can teach him what
is already known, and train him in the methods of knowing more.
I include under Art,--Literature, the pictorial and plastic art with
Architecture, and Music; and under Science,--Logic, Philosophy,
Philology, Mathematics, and the Physical Sciences.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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