The Evening Star. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1870.

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2116, 16 February 1870, Page 2

The Evening Star. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1870.

It is perhaps a thing to he regretted that the Council of the Otago University have found it impossible to make provision for the teaching of Science. If this age may be accurately distinguished from all preceding times by one word, that word is undoubtedly “ scientific.” All progress that has been made during the present century, whether in Economics, Morals, or Religion, has been of a scientific character. It is impossible to form any adequate idea of how very much we owe our material comforts and luxuries to the scientific discoveries in Chemistry, Geology, Electricity, and the kindred sciences. It would seem, then, that a University education which ignored Modern Science, or at any rate left it untouched, could not be of a satisfactory character. It would be “ Hamlet ” with the part of Hamlet left out. At the best it could only pretend to produce men equal in knowledge to those of the last century—men who would have just as much to learn about modern progress in Science and the Aids as if they had been born a hundred years ago, had gone to the University and taken their degree there, and had then been mesmerised and stowed away in glass cases till the present day. But this is surely not what is wanted. Then, again, it is by no means desirable that a body as influential as the Senate of the Otago University will soon become, should, on sending young men into the world, tell them that they are thoroughly educated, in the highest sense of the word, and that yet these young men should find out—or, still worse, should not find out—that instead of being, as they were given to understand, thoroughly educated, they were in a state of mental lopsidedness, through having some of their faculties over-trained, while the rest had been allowed, so to speak, to wither away for want of due exercise. It is, we believe, now generally admitted that the study of classics and mathematics along with purely literary subjects does leave some of the most important mental faculties nearly or quite untrained. The benefits conferred on all classes of professional men by a scientific training are undoubtedly great. Medical men are of course obliged to receive more or less of such training 3 but all others would be benefited by it to nearly an equal extent. Indeed, if science formed always an important part of a liberal education, we should be spared the humiliating spectacle we often see of a minister preaching about the relations existing between Science and Revelation, his knowledge of the former being absolutely nil; or talking about geological periods, creation days, catastrophes, and so forth, while for the life of him he could not distinguish a trilobite from a pterodactyl or gneiss from porphyry. It seems to us that the Council might in the following way get over the difficulty under which they labor, from its being very desirable on the one hand, that provision should be made for the teaching of science, which on the other hand is impossible because their income is not at present large enough; The subject in question should be placed under the charge of the professors jointly. Then three lecturers might be appointed from among the medical and other scientific men in the town, to hold office each for a year. Thus, during the first year, one lecturer might deliver a course on chemistry 3 during the second, another could lecture on botany and zoology 3 and the third on geology during the last year. This plan wo are inclined to think would answer admirably, and, indeed, something like it has been successfully adopted in the Medical School of Melbourne, the Professor of Anatomy being the only one belonging to the school, while the other branches of medicine are taught by lecturers in the way pointed out above. Indeed we arc of opinion that this plan might be permanently adopted with advantage, as it would be very difficult to find a man capable of teaching the whole of such a large subject as Natural Science, and very many years must elapse, before our University will be able to support a Professor for each branch of it.