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her epoch and her position, must not be judged by the standards which will be applicable to Queen Victoria. The great popes of the Middle Ages, especially the greatest of them all, Gregory VII and Innocent III, must not be denounced as aggressors upon civil authority without bearing in mind that those who should have been guardians of law and right were oftentimes glaring examples of violence, lawlessness, and fraud. The historian, and, in his measure, the reader of the historian, must lift himself out of what is now called his environment and by effort of mind assume the points of view, and think under the entire conditions which belonged to the person he is calling to account. In so far as he fails to do this, he perverts judgment by taking his seat upon the tribunal loaded with irrelevant and with misleading matter; but in so far as he succeeds he not only discharges the duty in equity, but he acquires by degrees a suppleness and elasticity of mental discernment which enable him to separate even in complicated subject-matter between the wine and the lees, between the grain and the chaff, between the relevant matter in a controversy, which, when once ascertained and set in order, leads up to right judgment, and the by-paths of prejudice, ignorance, and passion, which lead away from it.

The historical mind is the judicial mind in the exactness of its balance; it is the philosophic mind in the comprehensiveness and refinement of its view. Nor is there any toiler in the field of thought who more than the historian requires to eschew what is known in trade as "scamping his work; he must, if only for his own sake, and to give himself a chance of holding a place in the kindly memory of men, bestow upon it that ample expenditure of labor of which Macaulay, independently of all his other brilliant gifts, has given to this age a superlative and rare example; in him we have an illustration of a vital truth in mental work; the substance and the form are so allied that they cannot be severed. The form is the vehicle through which the work of the substance is to be done. If the point of the arrow be too blunt the strength of the arm is vain; and every student in whatever branch should carry with him the recollection of the well-known saying of Dr. Johnson who, when he was asked how he had attained his extraordinary excellence in conversation, re

plied that whatever he had to say he had constantly taken pains to say it in the best manner that he could.

Yet once more, gentlemen: in a recent lecture on Galileo, Professor Jack has said with great truth and force, "that greatness is scarcely compatible with a narrow concentration of intellect-even to one family of subjects." I remember when the late Sir James Simpson, conversing on some extremely small human skulls which had then recently been discovered in the Orkneys, and which had been treated as belonging to some of the pre-Celtic and inferior races, observed that exclusive devotion to one pursuit and few ideas is known to give contracted skulls. It is difficult perhaps for those to whom one pursuit and one set of subjects are to be their daily bread to know how far they may with safety indulge in collateral studies; but there can hardly be a doubt as to the benefit of these, if they can be had. An absolute singleness of pursuit almost means a mind always in one attitude; an eye that regards every object however many-sided from one point of view; an intellectual dietary beginning and ending with one article.

Great good sense and modesty obviate a multitude of mischiefs. But the exclusiveness of which I now speak is in itself prone to serious evils. It lacks the benefit of the side-light which the kingdoms of knowledge cast upon one another; it disposes each man to exaggerate the force and value of his own particular attainment and perhaps therewith his own importance. It deprives the mind of the refreshment which is healthfully afforded by alternation of labor and of the strength as well as the activity to be gained by allowing varied subjects to evoke and put in exercise its wonderfully varied powers.

So much, gentlemen, for your future callings-and your actual studies. As to the temper in which you should set about them you have little need of exhortation and my closing words under this head shall be few. Be assured that every one of you has his place and vocation on this earth, and that it rests with himself to find it. Do not believe those who too lightly say "nothing succeeds like success." Effort, gentlemen, honest, manful, humble effort, succeeds by its reflected action, especially in youth, better than success, which indeed, too easily and too early

gained, not seldom serves, like winning the first throw of the dice, to blind and stupefy. Get knowledge-all you can; and the more you get, the more you breathe upon its nearer heights their invigorating air and enjoy the widening views, the more you will know and feel how small is the elevation you have reached in comparison with those immeasurable altitudes that yet remain unscaled.

Be thorough in all you do; and remember that though ignorance often may be innocent, pretension is always despicable. Be you like men strong; and the exercise of your strength to-day will give you more strength to-morrow. Work onwards and work upwards, and may the blessing of the Most High soothe your cares, clear your vision, and crown your labors with reward.

GEORGE JOACHIM GOSCHEN

USES OF IMAGINATION

[Rectorial address by the Right Honorable George J. Goschen, statesman, economist (born in London, August 10, 1831; — -), delivered at the University of Edinburgh, November 19, 1891, on the occasion of his installation as Lord Rector of that University. At the opening of the exercises, the degree of LL.D. having been conferred by the Chancellor, amid cheers, the Principal, Sir William Muir, said: “Looking back on the long list of distinguished men whom the University of Edinburgh has chosen for the distinguished position of Lord Rector, I am sure there has been no man more illustrious than the one who now sits before you. During the past twenty-five years the students have elected various Lord Rectors-Mr. Gladstone, that grand man, Carlyle, and Lord Iddesleigh. Looking back to a quarter of a century ago, when Mr. Gladstone gave us the address on the position of Greece in the history of the world, and to the charming lecture later on which Lord Iddesleigh gave us, I am sure you will now listen with as much profit to the address of Mr. Goschen, your distinguished Lord Rector, whom I will now call upon."]

GENTLEMEN:-My first duty is to express to the students here assembled my grateful thanks for the honor they have done me in electing me to a post which has been filled by so many illustrious men, and which brings each successive holder of it into such friendly touch with this famous University. Let me assure you that the heavy pressure of political existence has not crushed out my academic instincts, and that to meet such a large assembly of students, and to discourse to them of matters affecting University life, is a most welcome interlude in those other occupations, unmentionable, on this occasion, in which it is my fate to be engaged, no suggestion of which, however, shall be recalled to my mind even by the walls of this hall, which, somehow or other, I seem to have seen before.

The pleasure of meeting you will be enhanced if I should be able to give a practical proof of my gratitude to you by any thought or suggestion which might help forward the great work in which this University is engaged. I see around me distinguished men to whom, in each of your special branches of learning or science, you look for guidance and help. I stand in the midst of men who have doubtless been the critics-I hope indulgent critics-of successive Lord Rectors, the value of whose addresses on things in general they have been able, by the help of their deeper knowledge of things in particular, to submit to a very searching test. The diversity of your studies increases the embarrassment of a Rector, who would wish to address no single school, but find some common ground of interest, some topic on which he might equally claim the attention of the students of the humanities, of medicine, of philosophy, of science-indeed, of all faculties. Clearly, I must search for that common ground, not in the subject, but in the method of study; not in the material, but in the instrument by which material must be molded and manipulated. The subject of methods of study has, I confess, always inspired me with particular interest. The choice. of the method has often appeared to me almost equal in importance to the choice of subject-matter of the study itself. To one of the methods of study I propose to direct your minds to-day.

I want to bespeak your attention to the use to which the faculty of imagination should be put, in the studies in which you are engaged. To another audience on a previous occasion I have spoken of the cultivation of the imagination, of the sharpening of this instrument for use. To-day I will assume the existence of this form of intellectual force. I will assume that the imagination has been already cultivated, that you all possess this precious faculty in a greater or less degree, and I will ask you to accompany me in an investigation of some of the methods and occasions of its actual application. At the outset of this inquiry I must define what I mean, using the liberty so often claimed, of more or less choosing my own definition. I need not say that I exclude the meaning which is sometimes attached to the phrase "a lively imagination"; that is to say, a mental habit which, departing from fact, ex

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