Item 131 - Letter from Julius Charles Hare

7 pp.

Herstmonceux - Congratulates WW on becoming Master of Trinity College. JCH has been trying to complete various publications he has promised. JCH asked John F. D. Maurice what he thought might be done to improve the theological education at Cambridge - 'he answered, "a divinity tripos, (which is the usual resort when any general improvement is to take place) wd. surely be an abomination". Herein I agree most entirely Emulation has done us enough harm already: in heaven's name let us not extend it any further. We should try to teach people that knowledge is to be pursued for its own sake, as it used to be pursued more or less down to the present century, and not for the prizes attacht to it. Until we can do this, we produce nothing sound or lasting. When the stimulus is taken away, the student turns to something which will afford him a substitute for it. The only truly powerful influence, by which men's minds and characters are lastingly affected, is personal, that of mind, of moral character on moral character. The advantage of institutions seems rather to be that of affording facilities for such an influence, and of keeping it within legitimate bounds. For instance what a mighty power has been exercised of late years at Oxford by Newman [John H. Newman] and Pusey [Edward B. Pusey]'. JCH thinks the best thing Cambridge could do would be to employ Maurice as a lecturer on philosophy and theology: 'Your present divinity professors are not men to stir the minds of the university'. The appointment of Maurice, if possible, should be done in conjunction with the neutralisation of the excessive amount of examinations: 'In the happier days when we went to Cambridge, & there was not half the number of examinations, Smythe's Lectures, Farish's, Clarke's, exercised much influence. Had they been men of greater moral power, the influence wd. have been much greater. Now the efficacy of the lectures is almost destroyed by the never-ending still-beginning examinations'. A portion of divinity should be compulsory to anyone who passes a degree. JCH gives his answer to a couple of WW's intellectual moral dilemmas given in his last letter: 'though our great sin is the original mother-sin of estrangement from God, and though all our actions in our natural state are more or less tainted with this sin, yet there are better human principles & affections; & he who violates these may, humanely speaking, be infinitely worse than he who reveres & upholds them. There are various stages of transition between the thick Egyptian darkness that can be felt, & the pure light when in God's light we see light. At the same time it is very true that with every increase of light, we acquire a deeper consciousness of the darkness within us; and thus it ever has happened that the best and holiest of men have spoken of themselves as the chiefest of sinners'. The other issue raised in WW's last letter concerned 'the degree in which students may be allowed to follow the bent of their own genius. This, you say, is not to educate'. However, 'to educate seems to me to be to bring out that which is in a man. And this is the business of education, to protect from stunting and blighting influences, and to cherish and develop the innate life, giving it room to spread all its branches around, and to feel forth all its leaves, its our leaves, not another tree's leaves'.