Abstract
EDINBURGH.–The laureation and graduation ceremony on July 20 was also the occasion of the installation of the chancellor, Lord Tweedsmuir, Governor-General of Canada, who had been elected by the graduates to succeed the late Sir James Barrie. After conferring the honorary and ordinary degrees, mainly in medicine and law, the chancellor delivered his address in which he discussed the functions of a university under modern conditions. In the course of this he stated: "The instruction of a University must be in the general principles, the fundamental propositions, the theory, of any discipline. It cannot profess to teach the practice of a profession, for it cannot keep step with its rapid changes.... So one should regard as a primary function of a university the trusteeship of humane learning, the guardianship of the central culture of mankind. Its task is to pursue truth by research, by experiment, and by speculation and in so doing to inspire its members, young and old, with the love of truth, which includes the love of beauty, and with that spirit of disinterested inquiry which means intellectual freedom."
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University Events. Nature 142, 224 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/142224b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/142224b0