knowledge as the sufficient end of a University Education, let me not be
supposed, Gentlemen, to be disrespectful towards particular studies, or
arts, or vocations, and those who are engaged in them. In saying that Law
or Medicine is not the end of a University course, I do not mean to imply
that the University does not teach Law or Medicine. What indeed can it
teach at all, if it does not teach something particular? It teaches _all_
knowledge by teaching all _branches_ of knowledge, and in no other way. I
do but say that there will be this distinction as regards a Professor of
Law, or of Medicine, or of Geology, or of Political Economy, in a
University and out of it, that out of a University he is in danger of
being absorbed and narrowed by his pursuit, and of giving Lectures which
are the Lectures of nothing more than a lawyer, physician, geologist, or
political economist; whereas in a University he will just know where he
and his science stand, he has come to it, as it were, from a height, he
has taken a survey of all knowledge, he is kept from extravagance by the
very rivalry of other studies, he has gained from them a special
illumination and largeness of mind and freedom and self-possession, and he
treats his own in consequence with a philosophy and a resource, which
belongs not to the study itself, but to his liberal education.
This then is how I should solve the fallacy, for so I must call it, by
which Locke and his disciples would frighten us from cultivating the
intellect, under the notion that no education is useful which does not
teach us some temporal calling, or some mechanical art, or some physical
secret. I say that a cultivated intellect, because it is a good in itself,
brings with it a power and a grace to every work and occupation which it
undertakes, and enables us to be more useful, and to a greater number.
There is a duty we owe to human society as such, to the state to which we
belong, to the sphere in which we move, to the individuals towards whom we
are variously related, and whom we successively encounter in life; and
that philosophical or liberal education, as I have called it, which is the
proper function of a University, if it refuses the foremost place to
professional interests, does but postpone them to the formation of the
citizen, and, while it subserves the larger interests of philanthropy,
prepares also for the successful prosecution of those merely personal
objects, which at first sight it seems to disparage.
7.
And now, Gentlemen, I wish to be allowed to enforce in detail what I have
been saying, by some extracts from the writings to which I have already
alluded, and to which I am so greatly indebted.
“It is an undisputed maxim in Political Economy,” says Dr. Copleston,
“that the separation of professions and the division of labour tend to the
perfection of every art, to the wealth of nations, to the general comfort
and well-being of the community. This principle of division is in some
instances pursued so far as to excite the wonder of people to whose notice
it is for the first time pointed out. There is no saying to what extent it
may not be carried; and the more the powers of each individual are
concentrated in one employment, the greater skill and quickness will he
naturally display in performing it. But, while he thus contributes more
effectually to the accumulation of national wealth, he becomes himself
more and more degraded as a rational being. In proportion as his sphere of
action is narrowed his mental powers and habits become contracted; and he
resembles a subordinate part of some powerful machinery, useful in its
place, but insignificant and worthless out of it. If it be necessary, as
it is beyond all question necessary, that society should be split into
divisions and subdivisions, in order that its several duties may be well
performed, yet we must be careful not to yield up ourselves wholly and
exclusively to the guidance of this system; we must observe what its evils
are, and we should modify and restrain it, by bringing into action other
principles, which may serve as a check and counterpoise to the main force.
“There can be no doubt that every art is improved by confining the
professor of it to that single study. But, _although the art itself is
advanced by this concentration of mind in its service, the individual who
is confined to it goes back_. The advantage of the community is nearly in
an inverse ratio with his own.
“Society itself requires some other contribution from each individual,
besides the particular duties of his profession. And, if no such liberal
intercourse be established, it is the common failing of human nature, to
be engrossed with petty views and interests, to underrate the importance
of all in which we are not concerned, and to carry our partial notions
into cases where they are inapplicable, to act, in short, as so many
unconnected units, displacing and repelling one another.
“In the cultivation of literature is found that common link, which, among
the higher and middling departments of life, unites the jarring sects and
subdivisions into one interest, which supplies common topics, and kindles
common feelings, unmixed with those narrow prejudices with which all
professions are more or less infected. The knowledge, too, which is thus
acquired, expands and enlarges the mind, excites its faculties, and calls
those limbs and muscles into freer exercise which, by too constant use in
one direction, not only acquire an illiberal air, but are apt also to lose
somewhat of their native play and energy. And thus, without directly
qualifying a man for any of the employments of life, it enriches and
ennobles all. Without teaching him the peculiar business of any one office
or calling, it enables him to act his part in each of them with better
grace and more elevated carriage; and, if happily planned and conducted,
is a main ingredient in that complete and generous education which fits a
man ‘to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all the offices,
both private and public, of peace and war.’ ”(23)
8.
The view of Liberal Education, advocated in these extracts, is expanded by
Mr. Davison in the Essay to which I have already referred. He lays more
stress on the “usefulness” of Liberal Education in the larger sense of the
word than his predecessor in the controversy. Instead of arguing that the
Utility of knowledge to the individual varies inversely with its Utility
to the public, he chiefly employs himself on the suggestions contained in
Dr. Copleston’s last sentences. He shows, first, that a Liberal Education
is something far higher, even in the scale of Utility, than what is
commonly called a Useful Education, and next, that it is necessary or
useful for the purposes even of that Professional Education which commonly
engrosses the title of Useful. The former of these two theses he
recommends to us in an argument from which the following passages are
selected:—
“It is to take a very contracted view of life,” he says, “to think with
great anxiety how persons may be educated to superior skill in their
department, comparatively neglecting or excluding the more liberal and
enlarged cultivation. In his (Mr. Edgeworth’s) system, the value of every
attainment is to be measured by its subserviency to a calling. The
specific duties of that calling are exalted at the cost of those free and
independent tastes and virtues which come in to sustain the common
relations of society, and raise the individual in them. In short, a man is
to be usurped by his profession. He is to be clothed in its garb from head
to foot. His virtues, his science, and his ideas are all to be put into a
gown or uniform, and the whole man to be shaped, pressed, and stiffened,
in the exact mould of his technical character. Any interloping
accomplishments, or a faculty which cannot be taken into public pay, if
they are to be indulged in him at all, must creep along under the cloak of
his more serviceable privileged merits. Such is the state of perfection to
which the spirit and general tendency of this system would lead us.
“But the professional character is not the only one which a person engaged
in a profession has to support. He is not always upon duty. There are
services he owes, which are neither parochial, nor forensic, nor military,
nor to be described by any such epithet of civil regulation, and yet are
in no wise inferior to those that bear these authoritative titles;
inferior neither in their intrinsic value, nor their moral import, nor
their impression upon society. As a friend, as a companion, as a citizen
at large; in the connections of domestic life; in the improvement and
embellishment of his leisure, he has a sphere of action, revolving, if you
please, within the sphere of his profession, but not clashing with it; in
which if he can show none of the advantages of an improved understanding,
whatever may be his skill or proficiency in the other, he is no more than
an ill-educated man.
“There is a certain faculty in which all nations of any refinement are
great practitioners. It is not taught at school or college as a distinct
science; though it deserves that what is taught there should be made to
have some reference to it; nor is it endowed at all by the public;
everybody being obliged to exercise it for himself in person, which he
does to the best of his skill. But in nothing is there a greater
difference than in the manner of doing it. The advocates of professional
learning will smile when we tell them that this same faculty which we
would have encouraged, is simply that of speaking good sense in English,
without fee or reward, in common conversation. They will smile when we lay
some stress upon it; but in reality it is no such trifle as they imagine.
Look into the huts of savages, and see, for there is nothing to listen to,
the dismal blank of their stupid hours of silence; their professional
avocations of war and hunting are over; and, having nothing to do, they
have nothing to say. Turn to improved life, and you find conversation in
all its forms the medium of something more than an idle pleasure; indeed,
a very active agent in circulating and forming the opinions, tastes, and
feelings of a whole people. It makes of itself a considerable affair. Its
topics are the most promiscuous—all those which do not belong to any
particular province. As for its power and influence, we may fairly say
that it is of just the same consequence to a man’s immediate society, how
he talks, as how he acts. Now of all those who furnish their share to
rational conversation, a mere adept in his own art is universally admitted
to be the worst. The sterility and uninstructiveness of such a person’s
social hours are quite proverbial. Or if he escape being dull, it is only
by launching into ill-timed, learned loquacity. We do not desire of him
lectures or speeches; and he has nothing else to give. Among benches he
may be powerful; but seated on a chair he is quite another person. On the
other hand, we may affirm, that one of the best companions is a man who,
to the accuracy and research of a profession, has joined a free excursive
acquaintance with various learning, and caught from it the spirit of
general observation.”
9.
Having thus shown that a liberal education is a real benefit to the
subjects of it, as members of society, in the various duties and
circumstances and accidents of life, he goes on, in the next place, to
show that, over and above those direct services which might fairly be
expected of it, it actually subserves the discharge of those particular
functions, and the pursuit of those particular advantages, which are
connected with professional exertion, and to which Professional Education
is directed.
“We admit,” he observes, “that when a person makes a business of one
pursuit, he is in the right way to eminence in it; and that divided
attention will rarely give excellence in many. But our assent will go no
further. For, to think that the way to prepare a person for excelling in
any one pursuit (and that is the only point in hand), is to fetter his
early studies, and cramp the first development of his mind, by a reference
to the exigencies of that pursuit barely, is a very different notion, and
one which, we apprehend, deserves to be exploded rather than received.
Possibly a few of the abstract, insulated kinds of learning might be
approached in that way. The exceptions to be made are very few, and need
not be recited. But for the acquisition of professional and practical
ability such maxims are death to it. The main ingredients of that ability
are requisite knowledge and cultivated faculties; but, of the two, the
latter is by far the chief. A man of well improved faculties has the
command of another’s knowledge. A man without them, has not the command of
his own.
“Of the intellectual powers, the judgment is that which takes the foremost
lead in life. How to form it to the two habits it ought to possess, of
exactness and vigour, is the problem. It would be ignorant presumption so
much as to hint at any routine of method by which these qualities may with
certainty be imparted to every or any understanding. Still, however, we
may safely lay it down that they are not to be got ‘by a gatherer of
simples,’ but are the combined essence and extracts of many different
things, drawn from much varied reading and discipline, first, and
observation afterwards. For if there be a single intelligible point on
this head, it is that a man who has been trained to think upon one subject
or for one subject only, will never be a good judge even in that one:
whereas the enlargement of his circle gives him increased knowledge and
power in a rapidly increasing ratio. So much do ideas act, not as solitary
units, but by grouping and combination; and so clearly do all the things
that fall within the proper province of the same faculty of the mind,
intertwine with and support each other. Judgment lives as it were by
comparison and discrimination. Can it be doubted, then, whether the range
and extent of that assemblage of things upon which it is practised in its
first essays are of use to its power?
“To open our way a little further on this matter, we will define what we
mean by the power of judgment; and then try to ascertain among what kind
of studies the improvement of it may be expected at all.
“Judgment does not stand here for a certain homely, useful quality of
intellect, that guards a person from committing mistakes to the injury of
his fortunes or common reputation; but for that master-principle of
business, literature, and talent, which gives him strength in any subject
he chooses to grapple with, and enables him to _seize the strong point_ in
it. Whether this definition be metaphysically correct or not, it comes
home to the substance of our inquiry. It describes the power that every
one desires to possess when he comes to act in a profession, or elsewhere;
and corresponds with our best idea of a cultivated mind.
“Next, it will not be denied, that in order to do any good to the
judgment, the mind must be employed upon such subjects as come within the
cognizance of that faculty, and give some real exercise to its
perceptions. Here we have a rule of selection by which the different parts
of learning may be classed for our purpose. Those which belong to the
province of the judgment are religion (in its evidences and
interpretation), ethics, history, eloquence, poetry, theories of general
speculation, the fine arts, and works of wit. Great as the variety of
these large divisions of learning may appear, they are all held in union
by two capital principles of connexion. First, they are all quarried out
of one and the same great subject of man’s moral, social, and feeling
nature. And secondly, they are all under the control (more or less strict)
of the same power of moral reason.”
“If these studies,” he continues, “be such as give a direct play and
exercise to the faculty of the judgment, then they are the true basis of
education for the active and inventive powers, whether destined for a
profession or any other use. Miscellaneous as the assemblage may appear,
of history, eloquence, poetry, ethics, etc., blended together, they will
all conspire in an union of effect. They are necessary mutually to explain
and interpret each other. The knowledge derived from them all will
amalgamate, and the habits of a mind versed and practised in them by turns
will join to produce a richer vein of thought and of more general and
practical application than could be obtained of any single one, as the
fusion of the metals into Corinthian brass gave the artist his most
ductile and perfect material. Might we venture to imitate an author (whom
indeed it is much safer to take as an authority than to attempt to copy),
Lord Bacon, in some of his concise illustrations of the comparative
utility of the different studies, we should say that history would give
fulness, moral philosophy strength, and poetry elevation to the
understanding. Such in reality is the natural force and tendency of the
studies; but there are few minds susceptible enough to derive from them
any sort of virtue adequate to those high expressions. We must be
contented therefore to lower our panegyric to this, that a person cannot
avoid receiving some infusion and tincture, at least, of those several
qualities, from that course of diversified reading. One thing is
unquestionable, that the elements of general reason are not to be found
fully and truly expressed in any one kind of study; and that he who would
wish to know her idiom, must read it in many books.
“If different studies are useful for aiding, they are still more useful
for correcting each other; for as they have their particular merits
severally, so they have their defects, and the most extensive acquaintance
with one can produce only an intellect either too flashy or too jejune, or
infected with some other fault of confined reading. History, for example,
shows things as they are, that is, the morals and interests of men
disfigured and perverted by all their imperfections of passion, folly, and
ambition; philosophy strips the picture too much; poetry adorns it too
much; the concentrated lights of the three correct the false peculiar
colouring of each, and show us the truth. The right mode of thinking upon
it is to be had from them taken all together, as every one must know who
has seen their united contributions of thought and feeling expressed in
the masculine sentiment of our immortal statesman, Mr. Burke, whose
eloquence is inferior only to his more admirable wisdom. If any mind
improved like his, is to be our instructor, we must go to the fountain
head of things as he did, and study not his works but his method; by the
one we may become feeble imitators, by the other arrive at some ability of
our own. But, as all biography assures us, he, and every other able
thinker, has been formed, not by a parsimonious admeasurement of studies
to some definite future object (which is Mr. Edgeworth’s maxim), but by
taking a wide and liberal compass, and thinking a great deal on many
subjects with no better end in view than because the exercise was one
which made them more rational and intelligent beings.”
10.
But I must bring these extracts to an end. To-day I have confined myself
to saying that that training of the intellect, which is best for the
individual himself, best enables him to discharge his duties to society.
The Philosopher, indeed, and the man of the world differ in their very
notion, but the methods, by which they are respectively formed, are pretty
much the same. The Philosopher has the same command of matters of thought,
which the true citizen and gentleman has of matters of business and
conduct. If then a practical end must be assigned to a University course,
I say it is that of training good members of society. Its art is the art
of social life, and its end is fitness for the world. It neither confines
its views to particular professions on the one hand, nor creates heroes or
inspires genius on the other. Works indeed of genius fall under no art;
heroic minds come under no rule; a University is not a birthplace of poets
or of immortal authors, of founders of schools, leaders of colonies, or
conquerors of nations. It does not promise a generation of Aristotles or
Newtons, of Napoleons or Washingtons, of Raphaels or Shakespeares, though
such miracles of nature it has before now contained within its precincts.
Nor is it content on the other hand with forming the critic or the
experimentalist, the economist or the engineer, though such too it
includes within its scope. But a University training is the great ordinary
means to a great but ordinary end; it aims at raising the intellectual
tone of society, at cultivating the public mind, at purifying the national
taste, at supplying true principles to popular enthusiasm and fixed aims
to popular aspiration, at giving enlargement and sobriety to the ideas of
the age, at facilitating the exercise of political power, and refining the
intercourse of private life. It is the education which gives a man a clear
conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing
them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them. It
teaches him to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to
disentangle a skein of thought, to detect what is sophistical, and to
discard what is irrelevant. It prepares him to fill any post with credit,
and to master any subject with facility. It shows him how to accommodate
himself to others, how to throw himself into their state of mind, how to
bring before them his own, how to influence them, how to come to an
understanding with them, how to bear with them. He is at home in any
society, he has common ground with every class; he knows when to speak and
when to be silent; he is able to converse, he is able to listen; he can
ask a question pertinently, and gain a lesson seasonably, when he has
nothing to impart himself; he is ever ready, yet never in the way; he is a
pleasant companion, and a comrade you can depend upon; he knows when to be
serious and when to trifle, and he has a sure tact which enables him to
trifle with gracefulness and to be serious with effect. He has the repose
of a mind which lives in itself, while it lives in the world, and which
has resources for its happiness at home when it cannot go abroad. He has a
gift which serves him in public, and supports him in retirement, without
which good fortune is but vulgar, and with which failure and
disappointment have a charm. The art which tends to make a man all this,
is in the object which it pursues as useful as the art of wealth or the
art of health, though it is less susceptible of method, and less tangible,
less certain, less complete in its result.
Discourse VIII.
Knowledge Viewed In Relation To Religion.
1.
We shall be brought, Gentlemen, to-day, to the termination of the
investigation which I commenced three Discourses back, and which, I was
well aware, from its length, if for no other reason, would make demands
upon the patience even of indulgent hearers.
First I employed myself in establishing the principle that Knowledge is
its own reward; and I showed that, when considered in this light, it is
called Liberal Knowledge, and is the scope of Academical Institutions.
Next, I examined what is meant by Knowledge, when it is said to be pursued
for its own sake; and I showed that, in order satisfactorily to fulfil
this idea, Philosophy must be its _form_; or, in other words, that its
matter must not be admitted into the mind passively, as so much
acquirement, but must be mastered and appropriated as a system consisting
of parts, related one to the other, and interpretative of one another in
the unity of a whole.
Further, I showed that such a philosophical contemplation of the field of
Knowledge as a whole, leading, as it did, to an understanding of its
separate departments, and an appreciation of them respectively, might in
consequence be rightly called an illumination; also, it was rightly called
an enlargement of mind, because it was a distinct location of things one
with another, as if in space; while it was moreover its proper cultivation
and its best condition, both because it secured to the intellect the sight
of things as they are, or of truth, in opposition to fancy, opinion, and
theory; and again, because it presupposed and involved the perfection of
its various powers.