French and German in the case of the English, and English in the case of the French and Russians, are essentially governess languages; any intelligent boy or girl from a reasonably prosperous home ought to be able to read, write, and speak either before fifteen; they are to be taken by the way rather than regarded as a fundamental part of education.  The French, German, or English literature and literary development up to and including contemporary work is, of course, an entirely different matter.  But there can be no doubt of the great educational value of some highly inflected and well-developed language taught by men to whom it is a genuine means of expression.  Educational needs and public necessity point alike to such languages as Russian or, in the case of Great Britain, Hindustani to supply this sound training.

If Great Britain means business after this war, if she is to do her duty by the Eastern world she controls, she will not stick at the petty expense of getting a few hundreds of good Russian and Hindu teachers into the country, and she will place Russian and Hindustani upon at least an equal footing with Greek in all her university and competitive examinations.  Moreover, it is necessary to set a definite aim of application before university mathematical teaching.  As the first condition of character-building in all these things, the student should do what he ostensibly sets out to do.  No degree and no position should be attainable by half accomplishment.

Of course, languages and mathematics do not by any means round off the education of a man of the leading classes.  There is no doubt much exercise in their attainment, much value in their possession.  But the essence of the higher education is now, as it always has been, philosophy; not the antiquated pretence of “reading” Plato and Aristotle, but the thorough and subtle examination of those great questions of life that most exercise and strengthen the mind.  Surely that is the essential difference of the “educated” and the “common” man.  The former has thought, and thought out thoroughly and clearly, the relations of his mind to the universe as a whole, and of himself to the State and life.  A mind untrained in swift and adequate criticism is essentially an uneducated mind, though it has as many languages as a courier and as much computation as a bookie.

And what is our fundamental purpose in all this reform of our higher education?  It is neither knowledge nor technical skill, but to make our young men talk less and think more, and to think more swiftly, surely, and exactly.  For that we want less debating society and more philosophy, fewer prizes for forensic ability and more for strength and vigour of analysis.  The central seat of character is the mind.  A man of weak character thinks vaguely, a man of clear intellectual decisions acts with precision and is free from vacillation.  A country of educated men acts coherently, smites swiftly, plans ahead; a country of confused education is a country of essential muddle.