Theoria - DISA

finds himself overwhelmingly outnumbered by the inert uncreative
mass " and whose success or failure depends on whether
the " mass " is able to recognise the value of his ideas and is
willing to follow his leadership. This will depend, in turn, both
on emotional and on intellectual reactions and the problem of
the university is to ensure there will be a sufficient leaven of
intellectual reaction in the mass. This means that the university
must teach that our " beliefs shall be according to fact " and our
actions based on " enlightened self-interest ", which will usually
be the interest of the community also.
Any leader of today can have to aid him the power of the new
propaganda forces. This is a two-edged weapon, therefore, the
university must teach how to evaluate propaganda.
But above all the university must ensure that students acquire
a broad fund of knowledge as a basis for the intelligent formulation
of opinion. No amount of teaching to think (if indeed
this be possible in view of the effects of early experience which
psychologists allege, determine our attitudes and actions) will
be of any value unless the university preserves its function of
acting as a repository of past knowledge and of passing it on to
students in as concentrated a form as possible.
The ability to think independently is something which will
emerge in most cases by the end of a course in which the student
has been introduced to the existing field of knowledge in a great
many diverse subjects and has learned that there are many possible
approaches to identical problems. We must remember that ages
in which there were no universities to teach people to think
(e.g., 6th century Athens) were not noticeably less rational in
their approach to problems than is our own.
PROF. DURRANT : Yes ; provided that their thinking is directed
to valuable ends. " Thinking for themselves " might very well,
without such a proviso, include thinking out new ways to exploit
the community. Consequently a university curriculum should
not only teach students to think; it should teach them to think
about subjects that are of great importance to men, and to think
about them in the light of the " best thought " of the past and
present. In other words, a university education should be
humane and catholic, as well as a stimulus to individual thought.
It is hard to reconcile these two aims, but I believe that the
study of language—if it is a part of the study of classical literature
and of the best contemporary literature—is one of the best ways
to achieve this double aim.
PROF. FINDLAY : I should say that a university had two aims—
(a) to acquaint the student generally with the results of past
10