ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER.

Otago Witness, Issue 3861, 13 March 1928, Page 7

ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER.

AN ABERDONIAN: “ HIS INDEFATIGABLE LABOUR AT PRESCRIBED TASKS.”

By W.H. One thing leads to another. If anyone doubts it, let him take to gardening, and he will doubt no longer. Let him go on to a committee, and lie will find that he will be put on a second, and a third, until, in Weir Mitchell’s phrase, he is "committed to the grave.” In reading, one book leads to another. Robert Hall read Macaulay’s “ Essay on Milton ” ; that incited him to learn Italian with a view to reading Dante. A few weeks ago I received a letter from Professor Elmslie, of Westminster College, Cambridge, in which he asked me to make it known that his college is offering to divinity students some university and some theological scholarships. The letter suggested an article. I don’t know Professor Elmslie, but his father, who was the closest friend of one. of my professors, has interested me from student days. I turned up Dr Harper’s paper on his friend and read it again; then I went on to Robertson Nicoll’s small biography; and, now, here I am Writing an article on “ An Aberdonian and his Indefatigable Labour on Prescribed Tasks,” and thinking of other articles on A Charming Aberdonian—a Contradiction in Terms,” “ A Preacher Without a Peer,” “ A Factory of Preachers and Pastors,” and so on, and so forth, until the guillotine descends with “ this correspondence is now closed.” Professor Elmslie, senior, was born at Insch in a Free Church manse, from which he went to the Grammar School at Aberdeen, and then on to the university, the characteristic of which was “ limitless persistency of application.” Elmslie caught the spirit of the place, and gave himself with indefatigible labour to the prescribed tasks. He distinguished himself by taking prizes in almost every department of study. Then he went to Edinburgh to T...J theology. There were some ahead of him, but he pegged away, overtook them, and passed them. When the marks of a particular scholarship examination were coming in the secretary of the -Senatus thought there must be some mistake. Elmslie’s marks were so very high. Two long vacations were spent in Germany with his friend, Mr Harper. They lived in different houses, and saw each other only for a short time each day, so that all the rest of the day they would be compelled to listen to German and to speak it. It was at this time he laid “ the foundation of his profound acquaintance with Goethe.” Later, he became the master of four foreign modern languages, and acquired--a reading knowledge of several others. It has been said of Lancelot Andrews that he could have acted as inter-preter-general at the Tower of Babel. Elmslie’s linguistic powers were not quite so great as that, but he could have found his way linguistically over a good part of Europe. In this respect he was like his famous Hebrew teacher, A. B. Davidson, who, after graduating at Aberdeen, gained a fair mastery of the principal languages *>f modern Europe.

Elmslie paid the bill for his indefatig-“'-v able labour. There were occasional head-' . aches, then, a serious illness, which his doctor warned him would reappear in 20 years. It did, and at 41, to the great grief of his friends and to the great loss of Semitic scholarship, Elsmlie died. I do not know much of Aberdeen students except what I have learned from biographies of an earlier date. Many things have changed, I have no doubt, with the passing years, but there are some things in those Aberdeen students that appear to me of interest still. Those of whom I have read had an extraordinary thirst for knowledge and for academic distinction. Thirst is one of our most absorbing passions. I have read of a soldier who was wounded in the Franco-Prussian War. As the bullets and shells, flew and fell about him, lying on the ground, he was greatly alarmed; but as hour after hour wore on, thirst so took possession of him that he became utterly indifferent to shot and shell. Some Aberdonian students have suffered from a similar thirst for knowledge. It has led them to disregard all pains and pleasures; under its influence they have fought poverty and poor fare,

and some of them have not counted even i life dear unto them that they might reach their goal. I suspect, though Browning does not say so, that his grammarian was an Aberdonian. He certainly was so after the spirit, if not after the fleesh: “ Calculus racked him : Tussis attacked him So, with the throttling hands of death at strife. Ground he at grammar ; Dead from the waist down.” Robertson Smith and his brilliant brother, George both students of Aberdeen, though tney were constitutionally delicate, toiled at-their studies until they broke down. In their earliest letters references to illnessses and deaths among the students are sadly frequent. George Smith left Aberdeen with every honour the university could heap upon him, and in three weeks he was dead. There is something deeply moving in the great and overflowing passion of love for knowledge, which has led students and scientific workers to sacrifice leisure, health, and even life in the quest of learning. It must not be hastily concluded, however, that all students suffer from the Aberdonian thirst, and that, in consequence, they die young. There is another trouble that attacks groups of students, “ the malady of not wanting,” to use a phrase of Stevenson’s. Those who have this trouble die of extreme old age. No successor of lan M'Laren will write for them a pathetic idyll called *‘A Lad of Pairts,” and no follower of Browning will write a poem on their funeral. The thing that interests them is not how much knowledge is required in order to be the master of a subject or to be thoroughly efficient in its practical application in life, but how much is required for examination purposes. To get over the fence, not to be first at the tape, is the only thing they want to do. Competition for academic distinction is one. of the characteristics of the Aberdonian students whose biographies are known to me. The serious rivalry has been described as “ almost unwholesome,” and as something which falls “little short of ferocity.” The father of Robertson Smith made a careful statistical abstract of his prizes and class places with a view to establish his position in reference to a rival. Students earnestly contended for distinction in Bain’s classes as the blue ribbon of the college. It may be impossible to eliminate altogether the element of competition in the intellectual and in the athletic life of students, but it very easily becomes mischievous. It may readily corrupt the pure love of knowledge and place an undue strain on the physical powers. In athletics it easily lifts ‘them out of their true place, as a means to an end, and makes them th e chief end of the student’s life. Robertson Nicoll, an Aberdonian, said that he never remembered hearing of any among his fellowstudents who was distinguished as an a thlete. Some students, falsely sa-called are distinguished as'nothing else.

Competition which operates from without, like the thirst for knowledge, a craving which operates from within, is a factor which enters into the pursuit of learning. Most of us are so made that we need a pace maker. If a man has a walk-over he generally reduces it to a dawdle over. A university scholar, in acknowledging his debt to his school recently, referred to the excellent reaching of the staff and the strong competition of the class. The other boys kept him on the stretch. I once heard the school in question sunken of as ” a regular racing stable.” A professor of the University of Otago, in talking to ne, refused to recognise this school as an educational institution. Professors, however, have not been unknown who selected likely colts, put blinkers on them so that they should not see too much of the attractions of the surrounding country, exercised them regularly, and then raced them. Competition is a question that vexes the soul of the economist. Where it is operative it sends many a worthy man to the wall, and crushes him cruelly; where it does not exist, we get high prices, poor goods, and slack methods. In the educational world competition is also a vexed problem. Where it exists you may get a man who cares more for class distinction than for knowledge of his subject; where it does not exist you get the dawdler. It docs happen sometimes that a man who refuses the academic race, and who can scarcely

be kept on the course—a man who hates prescribed tasks—does get somewhere in life. Wordsworth and Ruskin occur to one. Sir William Robertson Nicoll says that when he was a student at Aberdeen, general reading was strongly disapproved. One famous student severely reprimanded him for having been seen in the news room. He continued, none the less, to haunt the Corn Exchange Reading Room and to pore over newspapers and periodicals. During his course as a student he won hardly any prizes or honours, mainly because in his passion for English literature he devoted himself to subjects outside the fixed academic routine. Nicoll had the consuming Aberdeen thirst, but not the fierce Aberdeen competitive spirit. He won some prizes and honours in life, though not in college. On the other hand, I have known a racehorse settle down finally to service in a milk wagon—a very useful occupation, but not a distinguished one. Thirst and competition are not the same thing, and do not produce the same effects. In reading of the devotion of Elmslie and of some others to the study of German, I have wondered how far a knowledge of that language is an essential of scholarship. In his essay on Newman, Dean Inge refers to Mark Pattison's caustic contempt for the intellectual lethargy of Oxford in Newman’s day, and he adds “ Knowledge of German was rare.” Faunce, who writes a good book on “ The Educational Ideal of the Ministry,” says in another place: “ French and German are both of value to the man who would be a workman- that needs not to be ashamed. While k working pastor may do without them, the theological scholar must have a reading knowledge of both tongues—with the emphasis upon the German.”

In looking back over a great many years in Australia and New Zealand, I can recall only two colonial.divinity students who could read German. All the men of my acquaintance to whom I think the word scholar could be fittingly applied, know German, and they also are men who have been either born and educated abroad or have been abroad for study. It is a question whether in our present circumstances our university colleges and divinity schools can nroduce scholars. Because we cannot produce them, it is not to be concluded that we do not need them.