The fellowship of learning: presidential address delivered by Sir F.G. Kenyon, K.C.B., at annual general meeting, July 6, 1921

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THE BRITISH ACADEMY

The Fellowship of Learning

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

delivered by
SIH F. G. KENYON, K. C. B

At Annual General Meeting
July 6, 1921

London

Published for the British Academy

By Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press

Amen Corner, E.C.

Price One Shilling and Sixpence net

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THE FELLOWSHIP OF LEARNING
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

BY

Sir F. G. KEN YON, K.C.B.

Delivered at the Annual General Meeting, July 6, 1921

During the past year we have passed by unnoticed an anniversary
which, if it had not been overshadowed by the greater occasion of the
sexcentenary of Dante, we might well have celebrated. October the
twelfth, 1920, was the tercentenary of the publication of Bacon's
Instauratio Magna, or rather of the skeleton of that greatly planned
and imagined work and of the one completed section of it which he
named the Novum Organum. It is a book memorable even in its
typographical character, since it bears on its forefront perhaps the
finest title-page ever designed, depicting the ship of Learning putting
out through the Pillars of Hercules into the uncharted oceaii beyond
in search of the new world of Knowledge. But for us, and for all
time, it is memorable, not for its actual contribution to knowledge,
or even to the mechanism for its discovery, but for the great idea
which inspired it, the vision which Bacon was not to realize, but
which he beheld from his Mount of Pisgah. It is the vision of the
Kingdom of Knowledge, the ideal of the Fellowship of Learning, which
our Academy exists to foster and promote.

In Bacon's vision, knowledge was one great body, with members
duly articulated, each separate limb being a department in which
much was to be learnt by means of a new and all-powerful mechanism
of research, but all interconnected and correlated, so that the one
method would serve for all. It was a great kingdom with many
provinces, ready to be exploited and offering great wealth to its
conqueror. The new mechanism of which he thought so much has
proved to be a. delusion, but the ideal remains, and it is for what he
imagined, not what he achieved, that we honour the memory of Bacon.
Yet it is a mistake to belittle him on this account. The world is not
too rich in prophets, in the men who see visions and dream dreams,
and have sufficient faith in them to proclaim them to the world.
IloAXot y.'kv rap6t]KG(l)6poi, /3o.kxol hi re zavpon and Bacon himself
declared that he was ' content to tune the instruments of the Muses,
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2 PROCEEDINGS QE THE BRITISH ACADEMY

that they may play that have better hands \ A great idea does not
die, and may inspire men with greater powers of constructive work
than the man who proclaimed it ; and its force is not exhausted in
the generation which gave it birth.

The coincidence which brings the six-hundredth anniversary of
Dante into connexion with the three-hundredth of Bacon may remind
us that Dante too had a vision of a great unity, or rather of two
allied and mutually complementary unities, the one Church under the
headship of the Pope and the one State under the headship of the
Emperor. The Middle Ages too had their conception of the unity
of the sciences, summed up in and dominated by the summa amentia
of Theology. Bacon's conception was therefore not a new one, but
he gave it a new life. He encouraged men to look for a new method,
even if his own proved a blind alley, and he held out hopes of an
Eldorado, not material like that which travellers sought in the new
world, but an Eldorado of the spirit, the rewards of which would be
the domination of man over the kingdom of nature and the kingdom
of thought.

The prophecy which forms the motto of the great frontispiece of
the Instauratio Magna has been realized in fullest measure in these
latter days. Multi pertransibunt et angebitur scientia. There has
been much running to and fro on the face of the earth, and knowledge
has been multiplied in a manner which has far exceeded the utmost
dreams of Bacon. But the vision of unity, of the Fellowship of
Learning, has been imperilled. The tendency has been centrifugal,
separatist, specialist. No one can now, like Bacon, take all knowledge
for his province. In each subject knowledge has multiplied to such
an extent that the subject must be subdivided again and again, and
one man will spend his life in settling Hoti's business or in the
doctrine of the enclitic De, and another in investigating the parasite
of a parasite. Without specialism knowledge cannot now progress,
and specialism has its tendencies which break up the family of
learning. Separatism may only too easily turn to rivalry and even
hostility : and valuable time and energy are wasted while those who
should be allies fight one another.

This danger has been amply illustrated in the past, in the fights
between the New Learning and the Old, between Theology and
Science, between Science and the Classics, between the modern and
the ancient humanities. Nor would it be fair to say that these contests
were wholly blameworthy. Different ideals must come into conflict,
and those who hold them earnestly will fight for them ; and out of
the struggle comes progress. Yet it is a happier progress when it

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS s

takes the form of generous rivalry and not of hostility. Fighting is
at times necessary, to break up the crust of tradition and to remove
barriers ; but in itself, like war, it is an evil, though it may
sometimes be a necessary evil, and the best of the only alternatives.
Beyond destruction comes construction ; and construction demands
the combined exertions of those who before were enemies.

It is to such a period of reconstruction, of alliance, of co-operation,
that we seem now to have arrived ; or at least to a stage at which the
necessity for them is becoming obvious and paramount. On all sides
we hear the demand for union, or at least for federation. We have
learnt the value of comradeship in war, and the need to sink minor
differences in order to defeat the common enemy. The same ideal
inspires the conception of a League of Nations and the hopeful
movement towards reunion among the Churches. Even Industry is
finding out, though with many throes and through much tribulation,
the need of union : that neither Capital nor Labour can stand by
itself, and that their antagonism is the destruction of both. Whitley
Councils, Arbitration Boards, conferences of masters and men, all are
symptoms of the same need — the need for co-operation and common
effort to overcome the evils that confront us.

The same tendencies are, I think and hope, visible in the field of
learning, with which we in our present capacity are more immediately
concerned. The fight between Science and Theology has died down ;
Science is no longer so sure that it knows everything, and Theology
realizes that in its own sphere Science must be respected. The fight
between Science and the Humanities, or more particularly between
Science and the Classics, has also, I think and hope, lost its bitterness.
The advocates of each are more willing to recognize the value
of the other, and to acknowledge that the free development of
both is essential to the intellectual culture of the nation. The
war has taught us how greatly we need both, the knowledge of
nature which comes from science and the knowledge of man which
comes from the humanities. Neither can afford to despise the other.
For our defence in war, for our progress in peace, we need to cultivate
science, both with the disinterested research which we call pure science,
and in its practical applications to industry and commerce. And the
problems of government, of economics, of international and internal
relations, which bewilder us to-day, impress us with the vital need of
the knowledge of man's thought and the history of nations, and of
the cultivation of high ideals, which come through the study of the
humanities.

It has been my duty and good fortune recently to visit most of the

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4 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY

universities of Great Britain, and to investigate their needs and aspira-
tions ; and the experience has convinced me that the spirit of union in
progress is very generally spread among them. All are clamouring to
be enabled to develop so as to meet the new needs and render to the
nation the services for which the nation is asking. And, as a general
rule, it is not the material side which is foremost, but the ideal. No
doubt there are those who measure knowledge by its utilitarian
possibilities, and ask only of a university that it shall enable them to
multiply their wealth; but these are outside the universities, not in
them. Within the universities the desire is for the advancement of
knowledge and the training of the intellect and character. With this
great vision before them, there is no place for little jealousies. There
is less tendency than there once was to hold that one subject is the
best for all students, and more willingness to agree that different
minds should specialize in different directions, though all are the
better for a wide basis of common thought and common knowledge.
It is recognized that for the nation as a whole all branches of
intellectual culture are necessary, and that it would be a misfortune
if any of them were neglected and allowed to perish.

It is our duty to take advantage of this growth of greater toleration,
of this sense of comradeship in the cause of knowledge against
materialism, of high ideals against low. It is a duty peculiarly
incumbent on an Academy. The very reason of our existence is to
promote the Fellowship of Learning. We exist to correlate and to
promote the activities of all branches of humanistic study, — at least
I trust there are none among us who consider that we exist only to
confer honorary distinctions and the right to put certain letters after
our names. How far we have been able to realize this ideal may be
a matter of doubt. We are a comparatively young body, we are also
a scattered body, and we have hitherto had little of the material
means which are necessary for the full development of our
potentialities. But without such an ideal we have no right to exist.

The Academy will justify its existence if it is recognized, not as a
society claiming titular superiority over other societies, but as existing
to serve and assist both societies and individuals by the weight of
competent and disinterested opinion. It can serve as the centre for
combined activity, and can help a good cause by throwing the weight
of its authority into the scale. When it possesses the material
endowment which every national Academy needs, and which every
national Academy except ours possesses, it will be able to give
material as well as moral support to such enterprises as it judges to
be most deserving. But in order to exercise the fullest influence for

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 5

good of which it is capable, it must have the confidence of scholars in
general and the respect of the world at large; and to justify this
confidence and earn this respect it must be an active body, and not
merely a name.

It must be admitted that the difficulties in the way of corporate
activity are serious. Foreign Academies, as a rule, consist of members
living within easy distance of their headquarters, and therefore able
to make a point of attending the meetings without deranging their
normal work ; and such attendance comes to be recognized as a duty.
Here, with our members spread over the United Kingdom, any such
regularity is impossible. One cannot expect a Fellow to come up
from Manchester or Aberdeen to listen to a paper on a subject
outside his own sphere of interest ; and it is a serious demand to make
even if the subject is one with which he is intimately concerned.
Hence the activity of our Academy must necessarily be in the main
the activity of its Council ; though I hope that, as funds become
available, it will be possible to bring the several Sections into play for
the administration of grants for the special subjects with which they
are concerned. This, I am confident, will come in good time.
Meanwhile it is the duty of the Academy, through its Council and
through the goodwill of its Fellows scattered throughout the kingdom,
to lose no opportunity of putting itself at the service of any good
cause that comes within its proper scope, and in particular of pro-
moting to the full extent of its power the Fellowship of Learning.

The need for this spirit of fellowship is indeed great. It is not
merely a question of mitigating the rivalries and jealousies of scholars.
Indeed I think it may fairly be claimed that this particular evil,
which has at some periods been flagrant, is not now characteristic of
humanistic scholars in this country. I am inclined to think it is more
visible in other circles. When Hesiod wrote

KCU K€pCllJ.€VS K€pd[Jiel KOT€€l9 KCLl T€KTOVL T€KT(i)V,

was not the K€pafi€vs the painter of the time, and the tUtuv the sculptor
or architect ? But wherever it is, the spirit of jealousy and of de-
traction, of unwillingness to recognize the merits of others, must weaken
the vitality of the whole body and lessen the aspiration for progress.
A mutual admiration society is at any rate preferable to a mutual
detraction society, and in ages of progress men have been encouraged
to do great things by the sympathy of their fellows.

There are, however, certain more definite directions in which the
spirit of fellowship is needed, and in which our Academy can and
should make its influence felt. I should like to be allowed briefly to
indicate two or three of them.

6 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY

In the first place, it is only by co-operation that we can make our
influence felt. The progress of knowledge, of education, of culture in
the widest sense of the term, is hampered by the dead weight of
indifference with which it has to contend. Taking the British public
as a whole, there is a solid mass of disbelief in the value of knowledge
and of the things of the mind. In spite of the large class of amateurs
of culture that the country possesses, people who sympathize with
things of beauty and learning without pretending to be professional
students of them, the nation has no deep-rooted faith in the necessity
for such things. We are predominantly a materially minded people.
Consequently literature, art, knowledge, wherever they have not an
obvious material value, have to fight everywhere for recognition.
Every university has constantly to appeal for local support, and is
thankful if it gets even half of what it asked for. Every learned
society is in difficulties for want of adequate endowment. Scientific
research, archaeological exploration, historical investigation are every-
where held up for want of money. Apart from certain striking and
very welcome exceptions, the cause of intellectual progress is mainly
financed by the guineas of men who are none too richly endowed with
them for themselves. If its value were better understood, there would
be less difficulty in persuading politicians to regard it as a worthy
object of support from the public purse, and more men of wealth
would be willing to choose this as the avenue for the expenditure of
their superfluity.

I do not wish to exaggerate the lack of public support. More
money has been forthcoming of late for purposes of education and
of scientific research, and the atmosphere of the Treasury has
been more genial, although on the humanistic side the fruit has not
yet ripened. If the national finances were in a more prosperous
state, I believe that we might count on a more sympathetic hearing
in this quarter than we have had in the past. But it has been
uphill work, and one cannot yet say that the average politician,
even of those who form the official world, is really cordial and
sympathetic in his desire to assist intellectual progress. The same
is the case outside. Here and there in the world of commerce and
business are men who genuinely and even enthusiastically believe
in the things of the mind, and who realize that national efficiency
depends in great measure upon national education. I believe that
the recognition of this truth is growing, but its victory has not yet
come. The nation as a whole has still to be converted.

It is for this purpose that co-operation is especially needed. If all
those who believe in the things of the mind would combine and

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 7

support one another, they would have a much better chance of
making an impression on the nation. Hitherto the individualism
which is one of our national characteristics has stood in the way of such
combination. The tendency has been for each society to go its own
way, without much reference to what other societies were doing ; and
sometimes in place of indifference there has been jealousy and even
hostility. Of late there have been signs of improvement. The
existence of a Conjoint Board of Scientific Societies, of a Council
for Humanistic Studies, of a Joint Archaeological Committee, are signs
of a growing feeling that unity is strength. The Royal Society
and our Academy respectively took part in initiating these com-
binations ; and this is one of their most appropriate functions.
Containing as they do (or should) the leading representatives of
every branch of scientific and humanistic learning, it is their plain
duty to support, if they do not initiate, every movement in favour
of combined action ; to serve as clearing-houses for projects in which
more than one branch of learning is concerned ; to assist one another,
and all societies coming within their respective spheres, to secure that
support, whether from the public purse or from private liberality,
which is the essential condition of progress. In short, it is their
duty to promote the Fellowship of Learning.

A second province in which the Academy has obligations and
opportunities is that of International Scholarship. As we know
only too well, the Fellowship of Learning which existed in this
province up to 1914 has been violently torn asunder. It would
serve no good purpose here to recapitulate the unhappy events which
have made full co-operation between the scholars of Europe impossible.
The question which the Academy had to answer was whether, since
full co-operation was impossible, partial co-operation should be fostered
in its place. I have no doubt that the Academy was right ia
deciding that those nations which could work together should do
so, and that to defer all combination until everybody could come
into it would have been a treason to learning. But I think we have
gone into this combination in an inclusive and not an exclusive
spirit. We do not regard our new international organization as
a fortress of defence against the nations that are at present outside,
although we recognize that for a period to which we cannot as yet
fix a limit they must remain outside. The union is incomplete
because it must be so, not because we wish it so. Meanwhile the
combination is valuable, and we trust it will do good work. Nothing
could be better than the spirit of cordiality and goodwill that has
animated the meetings of the new Union Academique Internationale

8 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY

that have been held up to the present time ; and the Union has
embarked on a programme of work which we trust will be a real
contribution towards the progress of learning.

During the session which was held at Brussels at the end of May
last, several projects were before us, and two in particular were
materially advanced. The first of these is for a Corpus of Ancient
Vases, the object of which is to place at the disposal of students
descriptions and photographs of practically all the vases at present
known in public (and, if possible, also in private) collections, omitting
only duplicates and quite worthless specimens. Such a Corpus will
provide for ancient ceramic art what the compilations of Clarac
and Reinach have done for Greek and Roman sculpture. It cannot
claim to publish and reproduce every vase exhaustively ; nor is this
desirable. But it will show the student of any particular branch
of ceramics what his material is : what are the shapes of vases,
what their technique, what their method of decoration, what the
subjects depicted on them. The publication will consist of fascicules
issued by the several museums and collections in a common format,
with a common classification, and with a common scheme of descrip-
tion and illustration, but with sufficient elasticity to meet local
requirements, and with liberty for the employment of any of the
chief European languages. In this country I hope it may be possible
to make a beginning with the collections in the British Museum, and
perhaps some day the Academy will be able to assist with other
collections that need financial help.

. The other great project is a new Thesaurus of Mediaeval Latin, to
supplement, or in fact replace, Ducange. No one who is con-
cerned with mediaeval studies will question the desirability of such
a Thesaurus, or will be under any illusion as to the enormous magni-
tude of the enterprise. It is eminently a task to be undertaken
by international co-operation. It will be the work of a generation
or more, and it needs for editor some one who will devote his life
to it. Meanwhile preparations can be made. At the recent meeting
at Brussels it was resolved to limit it in the first place to the period
between a.d. 600 and 1050, and each country is asked to prepare
schemes for dealing with its own material for that period. A com-
mittee has been formed by our Academy, under the chairmanship
of Professor Tout ; and if we are able to offer any material contribution
to the work, it will be due to the enterprise and enthusiasm of one of
our Fellows, Professor Lindsay, who has set on foot and already begun
the publication of a series of editions of the earliest Latin glossaries.
It is hoped that his scheme will be carried through, and also that

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 9

volunteers will be forthcoming to collect materials for the Thesaurus
itself. A very small expenditure would enable us to establish
a central bureau, with a secretary, to which such collections might
be sent.

Other projects have been before the Union, — some which do not need
universal co-operation, but which will be carried out by the Academies
specially interested under the patronage of the Union, such as an edition
of the works of Gro this, collections bearing on the customary law
of Indonesia, and a catalogue of Greek and Latin alchemical manu-
scripts. The latter we have been able to assist by putting the
editors into relations with Professor and Mrs. Singer, of Oxford, who
have made vast collections bearing on the history of mediaeval
science. Others have been discussed, but not yet adopted : such are
the proposals for supplementary or re-edited volumes of the Corpus
of Greek and of Roman Inscriptions, and for a map on a uniform
scale of the Roman Empire. But, over and above the work actually
done or proposed, the great achievement of the Union is the pro-
motion of intellectual comradeship between the civilized peoples
of the world. The Academy may, I think, justly congratulate
itself that it has taken part in this manifestation of the reality
of the Fellowship of Learning.

A third development of the spirit of fellowship would be the
discouragement of exclusiveness and provincialism in matters of
learning. No country lives, or has a right to live, to itself.
If it has any contribution to make towards the advancement of
knowledge, it owes that contribution to the widest circle that
it can reach ; and the greater the contribution, the wider should
be the circle reached, and the greater is the interest that other
countries should take in it. The products of ancient Greece, of
the Roman Empire, of renaissance Italy, to the progress of humanity
do not concern the inhabitants of modern Greece and modern Italy
alone : they are part of the heritage of humanity, and all the civiliza-
tions which have descended from them have a claim upon them.
Any exclusiveness which reduces the number of those who benefit
by this inheritance is a sin against civilization, and a renunciation
of that which should be a nation's glory— the power of doing
a service to humanity.

Unfortunately there is a school of thought which maintains the
opposite thesis. It is argued that everything which was ever pro-
duced in Greece should remain in Greece, that everything produced
in Mesopotamia should remain in Mesopotamia, that everything
produced in Little Peddlington should remain in Little Peddlington.

10 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY

Local patriotism is good, devotion to the parish pump is good,
protection of the interests of a country entrusted to our charge
is very good ; but there are other goods to be taken into account
also. Excessive exclusiveness is not even an advantage to the country
or locality on whose behalf it is exercised. If all the pictures
produced in mediaeval Italy had remained there, not only would
the art of the rest of the world be poorer, but Italy would have
stood less high in the estimation of the world. How much have
not modern Greece and modern Italy owed to the admiration and
sympathy aroused in the whole of Europe and America by the services
rendered to civilization by those countries in the past, even in
a remote past? It has been a loss to England that English art
and literature have not been widely known (with a few exceptions)
on the continent of Europe. To every country it should be a source
of pride that the products of its culture are appreciated and desired
beyond its own borders.

This belief in the rights of humanity as a whole is compatible
with the fullest respect for the interests of the several localities.
It is eminently right and desirable that an ample representation
of the past art and history of a country should remain in the
country itself. This applies alike to countries in which a national
self-consciousness is fully developed and the glories of the national
past fully appreciated, and to those in which this consciousness
and this knowledge have still to be built up. In Egypt, in Palestine,
in Mesopotamia, in India, — to name only these countries as pre-
eminent examples — the relics of the past should be amply represented,
and the inhabitants enabled to learn to the fullest extent what their
ancestors have done, and what is the past of which they have got to
be worthy. But when full provision has been made for this first
call, the claims of civilization as a whole and of the advancement
of knowledge remain to be met; and there are ample resources
from which to meet them. It is blind obscurantism or parochialism
to lock up in Mesopotamia or in Egypt all the remains of the
ancient history of these countries ; it would do no service to those
countries themselves, and it would retard the progress of knowledge
in the world at large.

This is the spirit which we have to combat in the countries for
which we and other nations have become responsible as the result
of recent territorial changes, — and perhaps nearer home also. We
have to plead for a more generous appreciation of the Fellow-
ship of Learning, for the realization of the truth that know-
ledge knows no boundaries. Let each country try, not only to

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 11

cultivate its own particular soil for its own particular profit, but
to contribute all that it can to the common stock. The quality
of such generosity is not strained ; it blesseth him that gives and
him that takes. Let societies support one another in their endeavours
to impress the general public and to secure the resources which they
need for their efficiency and progress. Let it be the mark of the
liberally-minded scholar that he appreciates the importance of subjects
other than his own, and does what he can to secure their prosperity.
Let there be no dissipation of the forces of culture in vain con-
troversies among themselves, but let all go forward as one army
to overcome the hosts of indifference and materialism. So may we
play our part as members of the Fellowship of Learning, and
contribute to the realization of the universal victory of knowledge
which Bacon saw in his vision.

In order to leave in your ears the sound of a nobler language than
my own, let me recall to you one of the great passages in which
he sets out the grounds of his confidence in the new birth of time to
which he so wistfully looked forward :

1 Surely when I set before me the condition of those times, in which
learning hath made her third visitation or circuit, in all the qualities
thereof; as the excellency and vivacity of the wits of this age; the
noble helps and lights which we have by the travails of ancient
writers ; the art of printing, which communicateth books to men
of all fortunes ; the openness of the world by navigation, which
hath disclosed multitudes of experiments, and a mass of natural
history ; the leisure wherewith these times abound, not employing
men so generally in civil business, as the states of Graecia did in
respect of their popularity, and the state of Rome in respect of
the greatness of their monarchy ; the present disposition of these
times at this instant to peace; the consumption of all that ever
can be said in controversies of religion, which have so much diverted
men from other sciences ; the perfection of your Majesty's learning,
which as a phoenix may call whole vollies of wits to follow you ;
and the inseparable propriety of time, which is ever more and more
to disclose truth ; I cannot but be raised to this persuasion, that this
third period of time will far surpass that of the Graecian and Roman
learning; only if men will know their own strength and their own
weakness both ; and take one from the other light of invention and not
fire of contradiction ; and esteem of the inquisition of truth as of an
enterprise, and not as a quality or ornament ; and employ wit and
magnificence to things of worth and excellency, and not to things
vulgar and of popular estimation."'

12 1T10CEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY

We have not all the favourable symptoms which Bacon enumerates.
Our times do not abound with leisure, nor do they at this instant
manifest so effective a disposition to peace as we should desire, nor
are we blest with the phoenix-like perfection of James I; but at least
we can try to take one from another light of invention and not fire
of contradiction. Men and societies are what their ideals make them,
and the ideal of such a body as our Academy is that ' fraternity in
learning and illumination \ the hope of which inspired the prophecy
of Bacon.

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