At Manchester last year, when they installed Lord Morley, the Secretary of State for India, as Chancellor of the University, the Right Hon. Arthur Balfour delivered a very interesting address, in which he declared himself a believer in the gospel of “Science the Master.” Mr. Balfour’s speech did not imply any disregard for the pursuit of historical knowledge and a training in literature and the use of language, but it was a clear recognition of the fact that when the great purpose for which universities exist is considered it must be asserted in no hesitating terms that the discovery of new knowledge is the most important activity which a university can foster. To train men (and women, too) to use their faculties not merely to acquire knowledge of what has been discovered by others in the past, but to discover new things and to gain further control over the conditions in which we live, and to secure further understanding not only of nature but of man—that is the great business of the university. It was fortunate that Mr. Balfour was present and able to strike this note, for Lord Morley, the new Chancellor, had not expressed any such conception of the aims of a university. He declared that, so long as the Greeks have anything to teach us we should not cease to study the Greeks. But, whilst we may agree to this, it is well to remember that, though pleasure can still be obtained from Greek poetry and prose by those who have thoroughly mastered the Greek language, yet almost all, if not quite all, that the Greeks have to teach us has been by this time translated and dealt with by our own writers. Consequently, although we may cordially approve of the study of ancient civilisations and ancient literatures and languages, both Greek and barbarian, as part of the enterprise of a university, it is somewhat excessive, not to say belated, to set up the study of Greek or of any other historic language and civilisation as the chief and distinctive boon which universities can offer to their scholars. The matter has, indeed, been thrashed out, and Greek, together with what is called the “study of literature” (but is usually an ineffective dabbling in it), has been put into its proper subordinate place in all the universities of Europe and in most of those of Great Britain. The illusion that flowers of speech and mastery of phrase (though all very well if honestly used) are an indication of any knowledge or capacity which can be of service to the community, has been, in late years, to a very large extent, dispelled.