A philosophical approach

There was a moment in his younger life when Stewart Sutherland considered going for the Church. ''But under the tutelage of Hume, among others . . .'' The sentence drifts off, overtaken by a droll glance towards a portrait above the mantelpiece. Framed there, and glowing in his scarlet cap, the man whom the French called le bon Davide keeps his sceptic's eye on the principal and vice-chancellor of Edinburgh University. Hume and Sutherland, linked by philosophy and affable temperament, would have been a comradely pair. ''I don't know what strange bug got me as a teenager, but I'd heard about this guy, this great figure who changed the way philosophy was conducted and, indeed, has been conducted ever since, and I was hooked.''

That was in the 1950s in Sutherland's native city, Aberdeen, and although he set aside his ministry inclination fairly quickly, he was later to gain a First in the philosophy of religion from Corpus Christi, Cambridge, after already winning first class honours in mental philosophy from Aberdeen. But, as Hume must have done, Sutherland wears immense scholarship lightly.

He is one of the most distinguished and widely published academics in Britain, a fellow of the British Academy, the recipient of numerous international honorary degrees, a specialist in Dostoyevsky and Kierkegaard, and, just as importantly in his terms, a passionate follower of jazz. Before his present appointment, he was principal of King's College, London, and Chief Inspector for Schools in England during the national curriculum furore.

He was on the staff of Stirling University in its early troubled years, but you can't help feeling Edinburgh, more than anywhere else, is Sutherland's natural habitat. His physical proximity to that eighteenth-century portrait seems symbolic of that.

The picture itself is a relatively recent acquisition by the university which, in its day, shamelessly felt no shame for refusing a professorship to the scholar esteemed by learned institutions all over the the world. ''Hume was lionised by Parisian society particularly, and on a personal basis he knew all the great figures who laid the foundation for the French Revolution and the French Enlightenment. Yet here he was regarded as someone who would overthrow morality, although that was actually the reverse of the truth.

''No-one more than Hume was interested in the importance of moral judgments being at the core of what a cohesive society should be.'' Even now, says Sutherland, there is a lesson in this: do not let small minds take big decisions.

''In that particular case those with very limited preoccupations forgot that there's a much broader perspective.'' The petty provincialism which had robbed Hume of Edinburgh's chair of philosophy ended up instead with a tame, insignificant academic, a man Sutherland calls a nice nonentity. ''His name actually escapes me, so there's another lesson: politicians interfere with the running of universities at their peril.''

That episode obviously heaped ridicule on Edinburgh from abroad, if not from the town itself, but over the many generations since the university's accomplishments in the humanities and sciences have placed it at the forefront of knowledge, giving it an enviable international reputation. The other week a national survey of higher education performance throughout the UK rated Edinburgh as Scotland's top university and eighth in the British premier league of 10 centres of excellence.

There's an irony here, of course, because even as inspector of schools Sutherland was one who always appreciated that, for staff and students, league tables were ''an absolute pain in the neck''. However, some form of national testing is important, he says, because parents and teachers do need to know how their children are doing. Yet in the context of our proliferating universities many insist the league table imperative is discredited as it can't really compare like with like.

But the problem, Sutherland believes, is that we haven't been clear enough about the very different ways in which many more people can benefit from mass higher education. ''I'm perfectly content with the decision that as a community we've gone for a mass higher education approach, but there are certain corollaries and consequences. If you look at where the system is reasonably successful, you look at the US. It works there because it's accepted that not everybody is the Harvard of Auchterarder, and equally the University of Auchterarder may well have things to deliver that Harvard can't.''

Here, however, the funding system has so far conspired to persuade universities to compete with each other on a cut-throat basis by roughly doing the same things. ''Because that's where the money is. It's something we must overcome if the system is to work.''

But it will hardly please Sutherland's critics and competitors that he can now use Edinburgh's league table dominance to

reinforce his claim for the bulk of research funds at the newer universities' expense.

So, despite the good intentions, isn't higher education still fundamentally elitist? ''Well, if you mean we're building up departments which can compete with the best in the world, then yes, and Scotland needs to do that, as anybody with any economic sense will tell you. The future of Scotland has to be outward looking and based on creativity and education, what we call the knowledge industries where you originate ideas but also take them right through to the market.

''There are now some marvellous examples of indigenous companies doing this and tackling the major outfits on the world stage. But who here can challenge the accepted pre-eminence of Oxford, Cambridge, and London for research? I have no doubt that Edinburgh has a role here, yet for that to be recognised the funding must be appropriate.''

Sutherland readily acknowledges that there are areas of excellence at all Scottish universities. ''I know the obvious areas for us - micro-electronics, cell and molecular biology, medicine - and at the moment Edinburgh probably has the leading high-performance computing centre in Europe; a US survey listed ours as one of the 10 best labs in the world for computer

science. But I also know the obvious areas for other universities.'' Glasgow and Dundee, he emphasises, are also doing tremendous molecular biology work, and Glasgow and Strathclyde are now collaborating with a leading Japanese company in bio-technology.

''I'm not weeping and wailing about that. I think it's great, and I'm sure they'll take the same view about our successes. However, success depends on the system not just encouraging it, but encouraging it selectively.''

But Sutherland is also an eloquent advocate of lifelong learning being exactly that, if for no other reason than that the quest for whatever knowledge is in itself an adventure which can make the disobliging business of ageing more tolerable.

This is a heartening view from a man who now chairs the Government's Royal Commission into long-term care for elderly, a formidably complex and delicate subject not only covering financial costs and medical advances, but profound sociological and demographic changes to the family. And, of course, the appointment stirs the philosopher in him.

''What is our perception of what human beings are?'' he muses. ''Do we think they only count as long as they are earning? There is a danger that lifelong learning is simply understood

in terms of a career, but many people are living 25 years beyond having a job, so shouldn't lifelong learning apply to them; that opportunity to keep active the whole human personality for as long as it is psychologically and physically possible?''

On the whole, though, isn't it impossible to give ageing a good press because it's so fixed in the public psyche as a process of impoverishment?

''Well, it does have a certain inevitability about it, but there are compensations. Those who manage to maintain a lively interest in what's going on do seem to keep on the ball, and not having to strive to be the best, to be ambitious anymore . . . that's marvellous. There are lots of people who achieve an enviable contentment and serenity in old age.''

Sutherland's own retirement will doubtless be filled with book-writing and tending a magical nineteenth-century garden at Houndwood House, where he and his wife live in an ancient village between Edinburgh and Berwick-upon-Tweed. ''Twenty years ago if you'd said the word garden I'd have run a mile.

''So, with age, there's been a change of perception, and one of the pleasures is that gardening is something Sheena and I can share. But the challenge is that a garden has its own independence: whatever we do, the weeds reappear.''

In the hallowed calm of Edinburgh's Old College, it's difficult to imagine Stewart Sutherland plunging through the turmoil of Stirling University almost 30 years ago, trying to negotiate with students who had anarchy on their minds.

The trouble started on the day of the Queen's visit to the new campus. ''There were a 101 reasons given for the uproar and I won't tell you mine because it might be actionable, but I don't particularly think it was the fault of the university. They made one mistake - they gave the students a half-day and some got drunk and behaved abominably. But it wasn't a huge political protest or that they were out there damning the monarchy.''

The result, though, was hugely damaging to Stirling's reputation. ''It was an extremely searing experience and, about a year or so later, the principal, Tom Cottrell, died prematurely of a heart attack. Now, the two things can't be unconnected.''

But, for Sutherland, one of Stirling's great benefits had been that chance to work with the visionary Cottrell. ''He encouraged people to run with their ideas, for which I'll always be grateful.''

Sutherland's own career is proof that possession of the talismanic silver spoon isn't essential. His father was a commercial traveller, and he and his brother were raised in a council house, attending Woodside Primary nearby. ''I wouldn't say it was the poorest area of Aberdeen but there was nobody there whose family owned a car. Forty-eight kids were in my class, and the tin shack in which we had our second classroom was heated by a stove fed with coke. God knows what that did to our health, but the teaching standard was amazing and it opened doors, giving you the confidence to take the next step.''

After Woodside came Robert Gordon's College, but no further steps led to ordination. Was it just because he fell in with the great questioning sage? ''Oh, it was also partly because of the Church itself. Its structures in the sixties were too rigid, too authoritarian, but yes, I do still have a faith, although could I sign up to one of the standard creeds? No.''

And what else has learning taught Sir Stewart Sutherland about himself? ''That you're only as good as the people you work with. If you don't have folk about you whom you can trust, the capacity to achieve anything is very limited.''

No better reason, then, for keeping Hume the mentor, Hume the ally, hanging around, ready to nudge the principal's elbow.