PRINCIPAL CAIRD'S ACADEMIC LECTURES.* THE late Principal Caird was in
the habit of giving a lecture at the beginning of each University Session on some subject of academic interest or on the work of some great author who might be regarded as a representative of academic studies, and these addresses, together with a few others, have been edited by his brother, the distinguished Master of Balliol, and are embodied in the present volume. Here and there one or two slight errors have been allowed to creep into the text, but the volume, taken as a whole, will be welcome to all readers who know the importance of Principal Caird's work, and who value the utterances of a mind of a very high and rare order on themes of perennial interest to all students of literature, science, art, and religion. The great authors treated by the late Principal of Glasgow are Erasmus, Galileo, Bacon, Hume, and Butler. The other lectures deal with such subjects as the unity of the sciences, the progressiveness of the sciences, the study of history, the science of history, the study of art, the progres- siveness of art; while three minor lectures on public speak- ing, on the personal element in teaching, and on general and professional education close the volume. When we refer to the latter as minor productions, we mean that they are slighter in form, but by no means that they are less weighty in substance. Indeed, it would not be easy to say anything wiser or better than that which has been said here by Dr. Caird on the question of the personal element in teaching.
• University Addresses. By John Caird. D.D., LL.D.. late Frincital and 'Tee-Chancellor of the University of Glasgow. Glasgow : James Maclehoso and Sons.
Coming as it does from one who had been a successful teacher, its merits claim attention from all who have to do with education, since it is an eloquent plea for the oral method which brings the mind of the pupil in close and vital contact with the living mind of the teacher. The most successful teaching of the world has been of that kind.
While the contents of this volume present a diversity in subjects, a certain unity of aim and spirit pervades the entire work. The author seeks to impress on the minds of the Glasgow students the highest ideals of academic culture. In the first lecture he asks what the institution of the Univer- sity stands for, and he answers that it stands for science in a large sense. By this he does not mean mere natural science as distinct from literature, for Principal Caird would have been the last man to take such a view. He means that the scientific method is the aim which the academic teacher should have before him, and he defines science as the search for unity. His remarks on this point are worth quoting, as showing the ruling conception of his treatment of the "unity of the sciences ":—
" The presupposition which is the secret stimulus of intelli. gence and of the desire for knowledge, is the possibility of find- ing reason, rational coherence, connection, system, in all things; the conviction that in the whole realm of being, in nature and in man, in matter and in spirit, from the least and lowest material object up to the highest intelligence, there can exist no dualism, no contradiction, no contingency, no gap or gulf, which it is impossible for thought to bridge ; and this is virtually the notion that there is really only one science, of which the various special sciences are but arbitrary divisions or degrees."
The aim of culture, therefore, as represented by a University,
is to accustom the mind to penetrate beneath the shows and apparent contradictions of things, to the essential unity of the world, and to interpret life in the terms of such unity. A
remarkable contrast, this, to Mill's celebrated declaration of surprise that nobody in our times had taken up the old Manichman theory of dualism. According to Dr. Caird, such a theory is impossible for modern culture.
Next to the idea of unity is the idea of progressiveness,
which is treated here alike in regard to science and art. The notion of the progressive character of science is, of course, familiar and easy to the average mind. We all see how the natural sciences have grown from small beginnings and from guesswork to their present state of an immense complex and verified body of knowledge. But how, thinks the Philistine, shall the progressive nature of theology, philosophy, and art be shown ? Dr. Caird purposely ignores the "delicate and perilous subject of theology," but devotes the latter part of his lecture on the progressiveness of the sciences to a vindica- tion of the claims of philosophy to share in that progressive development. He at once boldly and rightly says that outsiders have no right to talk on the subject, which is only for those who understand the problems of philosophy, and what has been done in the way of answering those problems. The demand that philosophy should be recognised as progressive is, as we might expect, based on the Hegelian idea that the whole history of speculative thought "is not an accidental succes- sion of opinions, but a development,—the evolution through definite stages of an ever-growing organic life." Take the problem of the relation of matter to mind ; speculation began with a doctrine of materialism, which gave way to an inevitable reaction of subjective idealism, and, both solutions of the great problem being palpably incomplete, the idea of the concrete unity of self-conscious thought in which both are lost and then found again comes into the philosophic mind.
The sea of thought is no waste chaos, it has its tidal move- ments and its steady advance in the progressive education of the hum= mind. If it is difficult to conceive of a forward movement in philosophy, it is perhaps more difficult to con- ceive of the progressiveness of art, but Principal Caird challenges the unbeliever in this field also. At first sight it seems evident that art rose to its highest pinnacle of great- ness and perfection long ages ago. What can be more perfect than the Greek marbles which appeal to our sense of beauty as we look at them in the long galleries of the Vatican F What is the art of our time as compared with this gracious human ideal ? But when we examine into Greek art we find that its ideal was that "of finite completeness, of a finite consciousness in harmony with itself and the world." Greek art embodied itself in-
" Pure form nakedly displayed. And all things absolutely made." But the Christian idea of the infinite content of life broke in on the Hellenic world, and compels, in the domain of art, the recognition of a world "not quickened by the sun," of a world lying beyond the beautiful but narrow range of sculpturesque art, and we get the great development of painting and music, leaving behind them superficial serenity and endeavouring "to grasp the ideal of a purity that has been won by struggle and conquest, and a peace that has known and triumphed over temptation and evil,"—we get, in short, the infinite range of Christian art, answering, as Wordsworth has hinted in a noble sonnet, to the infinite concept of life and the universe, from which the human spirit can never recede to the finite and limited beauty of the Pagan past.
The lectures on Erasmus and Galileo are very eloquent and admirable pleas for the freedom of teaching and of thought, with which the names of those two great teachers must for ever be identified. The lecture on Bacon is a tribute to "that indomitable devotion to truth and knowledge which, despite of all anomalies and imperfections, has made his an immortal name." In reading this animated defence of Bacon one cannot help wishing that that great man were more widely known in some other connection than merely by his essays, wonderful products of worldly wisdom as these were. The lecture on Butler is one of the best in the book. It shows why, all his ability notwithstanding, Butler cannot rank as one of the really great religious thinkers of the world. Proba- bility may be a guide in the secular affairs of life, but it is out of place in the beliefs of the soul. "Is a man a Christian when he simply determines to run his chance of Christianity proving true, with a reservation in his mind that the whole thing may prove a delusion P' To believe in the vital things of religion is not to hold a mere mental belief that these things may probably be true; it is to BO possess them in your inward soul that nothing shall shake your confidence. It is, in fact, to hold the faith of reason, to stand by the inward testimony. The lecture on the science of history asks, but scarcely answers, the question whether there is such a science. But, though not altogether satisfactory in this respect, it is a suggestive piece of work, especially as it tries to deal with the difficult question whether our modern States will, like the States of the ancient world, vanish and leave not a wrack behind, unless it be in legacies of laws, inventions, and literature. Principal Caird argues that we must not infer from ancient experience that our modern States are doomed to extinction, because, the modern world being one great whole instead of a series of absolutely separate commonwealths and empires, the free breath of international criticism prevents any one State from being stifled in its own atmosphere and going down to decay by its own corruption. The confederation of Christian nations, in short, sustains and vitalises the life of each member of the group.
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