ever end thought and study may be directed. I call it reasonable self-dependence, partly to contrast it with the uncritical acceptance of new ideas—if impressively conveyed and hitting the reader's fancy—to which even persons of strong intellectual interests are liable, if they are given over to miscellaneous reading without ever having made a thorough study of anything and thus learnt the kind of labour and care and precision of thought that is required to arrive at sound conclusions in any department. But I equally wish to distinguish it from the undue self-confidence and sweeping dogmatism sometimes seen in persons who have really mastered one subject well, but have never, by living and learning among students who are studying other subjects, imbibed an adequate sense of the limits of their knowledge and its relation to other parts of the vast system of modern science and learning. This reasonable self-dependence is not, of course acquired at once; it has to come by degrees. Most students are during their University course turning from school boys or girls into young men or women. At school, if they have been conscientious, they have been working steadily at their appointed tasks, acquiring the knowledge set before them; but their minds must necessarily have been mainly receptive, and they have seen largely through their teachers' eyes. At the University they will still of course, rely on their teachers but from their teachers they will gradually learn to rely on themselves. They will learn not only to read books, but to use them, to combine the observations and reasoning of others with observations and reasoning of their own; to know how their little knowledge shades off on all sides into ignorance, and in what way on any side it may be extended if need arises and opportunity is allowed. I do not say that this faculty cannot be acquired elsewhere than at a University, but I do say that it is learnt far more easily from a group of teachers who are thinking for themselves and advancing as well as imparting knowledge, than it can be learnt by solitary study. The solitary student will sometimes over-
