The cardinal fact in the University questions appears to me to be this:
that the student to whose wants the mediaeval University was adjusted,
looked to the past and sought book-learning, while the modern looks to
the future and seeks the knowledge of things.
The mediaeval view was that all knowledge worth having was explicitly or
implicitly contained in various ancient writings; in the Scriptures, in
the writings of the greater Greeks, and those of the Christian Fathers.
Whatever apparent novelty they put forward, was professedly obtained by
deduction from ancient data.
The modern knows that the only source of real knowledge lies in the
application of scientific methods of enquiry to the ascertainment of the
facts of existence; that the ascertainable is infinitely greater than
the ascertained, and that the chief business of the teacher is not so
much to make scholars as to train pioneers.
From this point of view, the University occupies a position altogether
independent of that of the coping-stone of schools for general
education, combined with technical schools of Theology, Law, and
Medicine. It is not primarily an institution for testing the work of
schoolmasters, or for ascertaining the fitness of young men to be
curates, lawyers, or doctors.
It is an institution in which a man who claims to devote himself to
Science or Art, should be able to find some one who can teach him what
is already known, and train him in the methods of knowing more.