Science and Morals and Other EssaysWindle, Bertram Coghill Alan, Sir
Religion
Science and Morals and Other Essays
Windle, Bertram Coghill Alan, Sir
Essays; Religion and science; Science
Trinity College has in its Fellowship system one of the most important
series of pecuniary rewards perhaps in Europe, of an educational
character. A man has only once to pass an examination, admittedly one of
great severity and competitive in character, and thenceforward to go on
living respectably and doing such duties as are committed to him, to be
ensured an excellent and increasing income for life. How great the
rewards are will be gathered from the fact that a distinguished occupant
of one of these positions some years ago endeavoured--with complete
success--to enforce on me the importance of the Fellowship examination
by telling me that he had already received over L50,000 in emoluments as
a result of his success. He has received a good deal more since, and I
hope will continue to be the recipient of this shower of gold for many
years to come.[31] No doubt much might be urged for this system, which
was for a long time popular in China for the selection of Mandarins, and
I am not criticising it here. What I want to emphasise is that the
examination for these valuable positions is either classical or
mathematical, and there it ends. The greatest biologist in the world
would have as much chance of a Fellowship as the ragged urchin in the
street unless he could "settle Hoti's business" or elucidate [Greek: P]
or do other things of that kind. It is a luminous example of what
was--must we say is?--thought of science in certain academic circles.
Of course it may be urged--I have actually heard it urged--that nothing
is science save that which is treatable by mathematical methods. It was
a kind of inverted M. Jourdain who used this argument, a gentleman who
imagined himself to have been teaching science during a long life
without ever having effected what he supposed to be his object. Then,
again, our manufacturer, whose object in life is to make money, is
naturally, perhaps even necessarily, affected by the kind of salaries
which highly trained and highly eminent men of science receive by way of
reward for their work. Few, if any, receive anything like the emoluments
attaching to the position of County Court Judge, and I know of only one
case in which a Professor's income, to the delight and envy of all the
teaching profession, actually, for a few years, soared somewhat near the
empyrean of a Puisne Judge's reward.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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