p Whately pointed out long ago, it is
a fallacy to mistake general truths for superficial truths, or a
knowledge of the leading propositions of a subject for a superficial
knowledge. 'To have a general knowledge of a subject is to know only
its leading truths, but to know these thoroughly, so as to have a true
conception of the subject in its great features' (_Mill_). And I need
not point out that instruction may be of the most general kind, and
still possess that most important quality of all instruction--namely,
being _methodical_.

* * * * *

I think popular instruction has been made much more repulsive than it
need have been, and more repulsive than it ought to have been, because
those who have had the control of the movement for the last fifty
years, have been too anxious to make the type of popular instruction
conform to the type of academic instruction proper to learned men. The
principles of instruction have been too rigorously ascetic and
puritanical, and instead of making the access to knowledge as easy as
possible, we have delighted in forcing every pilgrim to make his
journey to the shrine of the Muses with a hair-shirt on his back and
peas in his shoes. Nobody would say that Macaulay had a superficial
knowledge of the things best worth knowing in ancient literature, yet
we have his own confession that when he became a busy man--as you are
all busy--then he read his classics, not like a collegian, but like a
man of the world; if he did not know a word, he passed it over, and if
a passage refused to give up its meaning at the second reading, then
he let it alone. Now the aims of academic education and those of
popular education are--it is obvious if you come to think of it--quite
different. The end of the one is rather to increase knowledge: of the
other to diffuse it, and to increase men's interest in what is already
known. If, therefore, I am for making certain kinds of instruction as
general as they can possibly be made in these local centres, I should
give to the old seats of learning a very special function indeed.

It would be absurd to attempt to discuss academic organisation here,
at this hour. I only want to ask you as politicians whose
representatives in parliament will ultimately settle the matter--to
reflect whether the money now consumed in idle fellowships might not
be more profitably employed in endowing inquirers. The favourite
argument of those who support pr