have given utterance to what seems to us, looking back with a larger outlook, to have been but a partial and inadequate expression of the truth. But the history of knowledge is

no record of system cast aside and obliterated by what has succeeded it. Rather is the truth a process of development in which each partial view is gradually corrected by and finally absorbed into what comes after it. There There may be, as elements in the process, violent revulsions—revulsions to what proves itself in the end to be as one-sided as that which it has superseded. But, taken over a sufficient tract of time, the process of knowledge in the main displays itself as one in which the truth has turned out to be a larger and deeper comprehension of what for the generation before was the best of which that generation was capable. Thus there is at all times a tendency for a new phase of authority to display itself-the authority which rests either on reason or on the instinct that the highest is to be sought beyond what belongs merely to the moment. And the striving in which this tendency in the end takes shape appears in just a deeper meaning conferred on what is here and now. Sometimes even to a nation the revelation comes suddenly. It wakens from its dogmatic slumber, is wakened perhaps by the sense of impending calamity, and proves at a bound what is the measure of its latent capacity.

So it was with England under Cromwell, with France under Napoleon, with the United States under Washington, with Germany under the great leaders of the intellectual awakening of the nineteenth century. So it has been with Japan, the spectacle of whose new and rapid development has just been unrolled before the eyes of this generation. The awakening has come suddenly in such cases, and that awakening of thought and action has been in response to the Higher Command:

There are flashes struck from midnights,
There are fire-flames noondays kindle,
Whereby piled-up honours perish,
Whereby swollen ambitions dwindle,
While just this or that poor impulse
Which for once had played unstifled,
Seems the sole work of a lifetime,

That away the rest have trifled.'

In peace as in war history displays the irresistible nature of this Higher Command where it really has made itself manifest. He who wields it may be humble. If the Divine fire of genius has inspired him, no barrier can hold him from the highest recognition-that recognition which is founded on the popular conviction that, at last, in this particular sphere of thought or of action, the truth has been made. evident.

Sometimes-perhaps more often than not-this Command is wielded, too, by no single man. It may take the form of a great doctrine—the foundation of a penetrating faith, inculcated and enforced by a group of leaders in co-operation, no one of whom would have been great enough to be the head of a nation. This was so with Germany at the commencement of the last century, and it would seem to have been so in the recent instance of Japan. The moral is that, given an inspiring faith, moral or intellectual, and a sufficiency of men imbued with it and fit to teach and to preach it, no nation need languish for want of a single great leader. The Higher Command is there all the same; it is only differently expressed and made manifest. Here, then, it has for long seemed to me, lies the true and twofold function of the University. It is a place of research, where the new and necessary knowledge is to be developed. It is a place of training, where the exponents of that knowledge -the men who are to seek authority based on it, are to be nurtured and receive their spiritual baptism.

Such a University cannot be dependent in its spirit. It cannot live and thrive under the domination either of the Government or the Church. Freedom and development are the breath of its nostrils, and it can recognise no authority except that which rests on the right of the Truth to command obedience. Religion, art, science—these are, for the body of teachers of the true University type, but special and therefore restricted avenues towards that Truth-manysided as it is, and never standing still. It was Lessing who declared that were God to offer him the Truth in one hand and the Search for Truth in the other, he would choose the Search. He meant that, just as the Truth never stands still, but is in its nature a process of evolution, so the mind of the seeker after it can never stand still. Only in the process of daily conquering them anew do we, in this region also, gain life and freedom. And it is in the devotion to this search after the Most High-a search which may assume an infinity of varied forms-that the dedicated life consists; the life dedicated to the noblest of quests, and not to be judged by apparent failure to reach some fixed and rigid goal, but rather by the quality of its striving.

I know no career more noble than that of a life so consecrated. We have each of us to ask ourselves at the outset a great question. We have to ascertain of what we are really capable. For if we essay what it is not given to us to excel in, the quality of our striving will be deficient. But, given the capacity to recognise and seek after what is really the highest in a particular department of life, then it is not the attainment of some external goal-itself of limited and transient importance-but in earnestness and concentration of effort to accomplish what all recognise to be a noble purpose, that the measure of success lies. So it was with Browning's 'Grammarian.' Men have laughed at him while he lived. That did not matter. In the end they bowed their heads before him, and when his life was finished laid

him to rest in the highest place they knew. For they saw the greatness of spirit of the man who chose what he could best accomplish, limited himself to that, and strove to perfect his work with all his might.

If its Universities produce this spirit in its young men and women, a nation need not despair. The way is steep and hard to tread for those who enter on it. They must lay aside much of what is pleasant and commonly sought after. They must regard themselves as deliberately accepting the duty of preferring the higher to the lower at every turn of daily existence. So only can they make themselves accepted leaders; so only can they aspire to form a part of that priesthood of humanity to whose commands the world will yield obedience.

There is a saying of Jesus with which I will conclude this address, because it seems to me to be, in its deepest interpretation, of profound significance for us, whose concern is for the spirit of this University and for its future influence: 'Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven.'

BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD