Bacon has prefaced some of his works with no more
than this: Franciscus Bacon sic cogitavit;
let “sic cogitavi” be the epilogue to
what I have ventured to address to you to-night.
UNIVERSITIES: ACTUAL AND IDEAL
[1874]
Elected by the suffrages of your four Nations Rector
of the ancient University of which you are scholars,
I take the earliest opportunity which has presented
itself since my restoration to health, of delivering
the Address which, by long custom, is expected of the
holder of my office.
My first duty in opening that Address, is to offer
you my most hearty thanks for the signal honour you
have conferred upon me—an honour of which,
as a man unconnected with you by personal or by national
ties, devoid of political distinction, and a plebeian
who stands by his order, I could not have dreamed.
And it was the more surprising to me, as the five-and-twenty
years which have passed over my head since I reached
intellectual manhood, have been largely spent in no
half-hearted advocacy of doctrines which have not yet
found favour in the eyes of Academic respectability;
so that, when the proposal to nominate me for your
Rector came, I was almost as much astonished as was
Hal o’ the Wynd, “who fought for his own
hand,” by the Black Douglas’s proffer
of knighthood. And I fear that my acceptance must
be taken as evidence that, less wise than the Armourer
of Perth, I have not yet done with soldiering.
In fact, if, for a moment, I imagined that your intention
was simply, in the kindness of your hearts, to do
me honour; and that the Rector of your University,
like that of some other Universities was one of those
happy beings who sit in glory for three years, with
nothing to do for it save the making of a speech,
a conversation with my distinguished predecessor soon
dispelled the dream. I found that, by the constitution
of the University of Aberdeen, the incumbent of the
Rectorate is, if not a power, at any rate a potential
energy; and that, whatever may be his chances of success
or failure, it is his duty to convert that potential
energy into a living force, directed towards such ends
as may seem to him conducive to the welfare of the
corporation of which he is the theoretical head.
I need not tell you that your late Lord Rector took
this view of his position, and acted upon it with
the comprehensive, far-seeing insight into the actual
condition and tendencies, not merely of his own, but
of other countries, which is his honourable characteristic
among statesmen. I have already done my best,
and, as long as I hold my office, I shall continue
my endeavours, to follow in the path which he trod;
to do what in me lies, to bring this University nearer
to the ideal—alas, that I should be obliged
to say ideal—of all Universities; which,
as I conceive, should be places in which thought is
free from all fetters; and in which all sources of
knowledge, and all aids to learning, should be accessible
to all comers, without distinction of creed or country,
riches or poverty.
