If I were asked to describe as briefly and popularly as I could, what a
University was, I should draw my answer from its ancient designation of
a _Studium Generale_, or "School of Universal Learning." This
description implies the assemblage of strangers from all parts in one
spot;--_from all parts_; else, how will you find professors and
students for every department of knowledge? and _in one spot_; else,
how can there be any school at all? Accordingly, in its simple and
rudimental form, it is a school of knowledge of every kind, consisting
of teachers and learners from every quarter. Many things are requisite
to complete and satisfy the idea embodied in this description; but such
as this a University seems to be in its essence, a place for the
communication and circulation of thought, by means of personal
intercourse, through a wide extent of country.
There is nothing far-fetched or unreasonable in the idea thus presented
to us; and if this be a University, then a University does but
contemplate a necessity of our nature, and is but one specimen in a
particular medium, out of many which might be adduced in others, of a
provision for that necessity. Mutual education, in a large sense of
the word, is one of the great and incessant occupations of human
society, carried on partly with set purpose, and partly not. One
generation forms another; and the existing generation is ever acting
and reacting upon itself in the persons of its individual members.
Now, in this process, books, I need scarcely say, that is, the _litera
scripta_, are one special instrument. It is true; and emphatically so
in this age. Considering the prodigious powers of the press, and how
they are developed at this time in the never-intermitting issue of
periodicals, tracts, pamphlets, works in series, and light literature,
we must allow there never was a time which promised fairer for
dispensing with every other means of information and instruction. What
can we want more, you will say, for the intellectual education of the
whole man, and for every man, than so exuberant and diversified and
persistent a promulgation of all kinds of knowledge? Why, you will
ask, need we go up to knowledge, when knowledge comes down to us? The
Sibyl wrote her prophecies upon the leaves of the forest, and wasted
them; but here such careless profusion might be prudently indulged, for
it can be afforded without loss, in consequence of the almost fabulous
fecundity of the instrument which these latter ages have invented. We
have sermons in stones, and books in the running brooks; works larger
and more comprehensive than those which have gained for ancients an
immortality, issue forth every morning, and are projected onwards to
the ends of the earth at the rate of hundreds of miles a day. Our
seats are strewed, our pavements are powdered, with swarms of little
tracts; and the very bricks of our city walls preach wisdom, by
informing us by their placards where we can at once cheaply purchase it.
I allow all this, and much more; such certainly is our popular
education, and its effects are remarkable. Nevertheless, after all,
even in this age, whenever men are really serious about getting what,
in the language of trade, is called "a good article," when they aim at
something precise, something refined, something really luminous,
something really large, something choice, they go to another market;
they avail themselves, in some shape or other, of the rival method, the
ancient method, of oral instruction, of present communication between
man and man, of teachers instead of learning, of the personal influence
of a master, and the humble initiation of a disciple, and, in
consequence, of great centres of pilgrimage and throng, which such a
method of education necessarily involves. This, I think, will be found
to hold good in all those departments or aspects of society, which
possess an interest sufficient to bind men together, or to constitute
what is called "a world." It holds in the political world, and in the
high world, and in the religious world; and it holds also in the
literary and scientific world.
If the actions of men may be taken as any test of their convictions,
then we have reason for saying this, viz.:--that the province and the
inestimable benefit of the _litera scripta_ is that of being a record
of truth, and an authority of appeal, and an instrument of teaching in
the hands of a teacher; but that, if we wish to become exact and fully
furnished in any branch of knowledge which is diversified and
complicated, we must consult the living man and listen to his living
voice. I am not bound to investigate the cause of this, and anything I
may say will, I am conscious, be short of its full analysis;--perhaps
we may suggest, that no books can get through the number of minute
questions which it is possible to ask on any extended subject, or can
hit upon the very difficulties which are severally felt by each reader
in succession. Or again, that no book can convey the special spirit
and delicate peculiarities of its subject with that rapidity and
certainty which attend on the sympathy of mind with mind, through the
eyes, the look, the accent, and the manner, in casual expressions
thrown off at the moment, and the unstudied turns of familiar
conversation. But I am already dwelling too long on what is but an
incidental portion of my main subject. Whatever be the cause, the fact
is undeniable. The general principles of any study you may learn by
books at home; but the detail, the colour, the tone, the air, the life
which makes it live in us, you must catch all these from those in whom
it lives already. You must imitate the student in French or German,
who is not content with his grammar, but goes to Paris or Dresden: you
must take example from the young artist, who aspires to visit the great
Masters in Florence and in Rome. Till we have discovered some
intellectual daguerreotype, which takes off the course of thought, and
the form, lineaments, and features of truth, as completely and
minutely, as the optical instrument reproduces the sensible object; we
must come to the teachers of wisdom to learn wisdom, we must repair to
the fountain, and drink there. Portions of it may go from thence to
the ends of the earth by means of books; but the fulness is in one
place alone. It is in such assemblages and congregations of intellect
that books themselves, the masterpieces of human genius, are written,
or at least originated.
The principle on which I have been insisting is so obvious, and
instances in point are so ready, that I should think it tiresome to
proceed with the subject, except that one or two illustrations may
serve to explain my own language about it, which may not have done
justice to the doctrine which it has been intended to enforce.
For instance, the polished manners and high-bred bearing which are so
difficult of attainment, and so strictly personal when attained,--which
are so much admired in society, from society are acquired. All that
goes to constitute a gentleman,--the carriage, gait, address, gestures,
voice; the ease, the self-possession, the courtesy, the power of
conversing, the talent of not offending; the lofty principle, the
delicacy of thought, the happiness of expression, the taste and
propriety, the generosity and forbearance, the candour and
consideration, the openness of hand;--these qualities, some of them
come by nature, some of them may be found in any rank, some of them are
a direct precept of Christianity; but the full assemblage of them,
bound up in the unity of an individual character, do we expect they can
be learned from books? are they not necessarily acquired, where they
are to be found, in high society? The very nature of the case leads us
to say so; you cannot fence without an antagonist, nor challenge all
comers in disputation before you have supported a thesis; and in like
manner, it stands to reason, you cannot learn to converse till you have
the world to converse with; you cannot unlearn your natural
bashfulness, or awkwardness, or stiffness, or other besetting
deformity, till you serve your time in some school of manners. Well,
and is it not so in matter of fact? The metropolis, the court, the
great houses of the land, are the centres to which at stated times the
country comes up, as to shrines of refinement and good taste; and then
in due time the country goes back again home, enriched with a portion
of the social accomplishments, which those very visits serve to call
out and heighten in the gracious dispensers of them. We are unable to
conceive how the "gentlemanlike" can otherwise be maintained; and
maintained in this way it is.
And now a second instance: and here too I am going to speak without
personal experience of the subject I am introducing. I admit I have
not been in Parliament, any more than I have figured in the _beau
monde_; yet I cannot but think that statesmanship, as well as high
breeding, is learned, not by books, but in certain centres of
education. If it be not presumption to say so, Parliament puts a
clever man _au courant_ with politics and affairs of state in a way
surprising to himself. A member of the Legislature, if tolerably
observant, begins to see things with new eyes, even though his views
undergo no change. Words have a meaning now, and ideas a reality, such
as they had not before. He hears a vast deal in public speeches and
private conversation, which is never put into print. The bearings of
measures and events, the action of parties, and the persons of friends
and enemies, are brought out to the man who is in the midst of them
with a distinctness, which the most diligent perusal of newspapers will
fail to impart to them. It is access to the fountain-heads of
political wisdom and experience, it is daily intercourse, of one kind
or another, with the multitude who go up to them, it is familiarity
with business, it is access to the contributions of fact and opinion
thrown together by many witnesses from many quarters, which does this
for him. However, I need not account for a fact, to which it is
sufficient to appeal; that the Houses of Parliament and the atmosphere
around them are a sort of University of politics.
As regards the world of science, we find a remarkable instance of the
principle which I am illustrating, in the periodical meetings for its
advance, which have arisen in the course of the last twenty years, such
as the British Association. Such gatherings would to many persons
appear at first sight simply preposterous. Above all subjects of
study, Science is conveyed, is propagated, by books, or by private
teaching; experiments and investigations are conducted in silence;
discoveries are made in solitude. What have philosophers to do with
festive celebrities, and panegyrical solemnities with mathematical and
physical truth? Yet on a closer attention to the subject, it is found
that not even scientific thought can dispense with the suggestions, the
instruction, the stimulus, the sympathy, the intercourse with mankind
on a large scale, which such meetings secure. A fine time of year is
chosen, when days are long, skies are bright, the earth smiles, and all
nature rejoices; a city or town is taken by turns, of ancient name or
modern opulence, where buildings are spacious and hospitality hearty.
The novelty of place and circumstance, the excitement of strange, or
the refreshment of well-known faces, the majesty of rank or of genius,
the amiable charities of men pleased both with themselves and with each
other; the elevated spirits, the circulation of thought, the curiosity;
the morning sections, the outdoor exercise, the well-furnished,
well-earned board, the not ungraceful hilarity, the evening circle; the
brilliant lecture, the discussions or collisions or guesses of great
men one with another, the narratives of scientific processes, of hopes,
disappointments, conflicts, and successes, the splendid eulogistic
orations; these and the like constituents of the annual celebration,
are considered to do something real and substantial for the advance of
knowledge which can be done in no other way. Of course they can but be
occasional; they answer to the annual Act, or Commencement, or
Commemoration of a University, not to its ordinary condition; but they
are of a University nature; and I can well believe in their utility.
They issue in the promotion of a certain living and, as it were, bodily
communication of knowledge from one to another, of a general
interchange of ideas, and a comparison and adjustment of science with
science, of an enlargement of mind, intellectual and social, of an
ardent love of the particular study, which may be chosen by each
individual, and a noble devotion to its interests.
Such meetings, I repeat, are but periodical, and only partially
represent the idea of a University. The bustle and whirl which are
their usual concomitants, are in ill keeping with the order and gravity
of earnest intellectual education. We desiderate means of instruction
which involve no interruption of our ordinary habits; nor need we seek
it long, for the natural course of things brings it about, while we
debate over it. In every great country, the metropolis itself becomes
a sort of necessary University, whether we will or no. As the chief
city is the seat of the court, of high society, of politics, and of
law, so as a matter of course is it the seat of letters also; and at
this time, for a long term of years, London and Paris are in fact and
in operation Universities, though in Paris its famous University is no
more, and in London a University scarcely exists except as a board of
administration. The newspapers, magazines, reviews, journals, and
periodicals of all kinds, the publishing trade, the libraries, museums,
and academies there found, the learned and scientific societies,
necessarily invest it with the functions of a University; and that
atmosphere of intellect, which in a former age hung over Oxford or
Bologna or Salamanca, has, with the change of times, moved away to the
centre of civil government. Thither come up youths from all parts of
the country, the students of law, medicine, and the fine arts, and the
_employés and attachés_ of literature. There they live, as chance
determines; and they are satisfied with their temporary home, for they
find in it all that was promised to them there. They have not come in
vain, as far as their own object in coming is concerned. They have not
learned any particular religion, but they have learned their own
particular profession well. They have, moreover, become acquainted
with the habits, manners, and opinions of their place of sojourn, and
done their part in maintaining the tradition of them. We cannot then
be without virtual Universities; a metropolis is such: the simple
question is, whether the education sought and given should be based on
principle, formed upon rule, directed to the highest ends, or left to
the random succession of masters and schools, one after another, with a
melancholy waste of thought and an extreme hazard of truth.
Religious teaching itself affords us an illustration of our subject to
a certain point. It does not indeed seat itself merely in centres of
the world; this is impossible from the nature of the case. It is
intended for the many, not the few; its subject matter is truth
necessary for us, not truth recondite and rare; but it concurs in the
principle of a University so far as this, that its great instrument, or
rather organ, has ever been that which nature prescribes in all
education, the personal presence of a teacher, or, in theological
language, Oral Tradition. It is the living voice, the breathing form,
the expressive countenance, which preaches, which catechises. Truth, a
subtle, invisible, manifold spirit, is poured into the mind of the
scholar by his eyes and ears, through his affections, imagination, and
reason; it is poured into his mind and is sealed up there in
perpetuity, by propounding and repeating it, by questioning and
requestioning, by correcting and explaining, by progressing and then
recurring to first principles, by all those ways which are implied in
the word "catechising." In the first ages, it was a work of long time;
months, sometimes years, were devoted to the arduous task of disabusing
the mind of the incipient Christian of its pagan errors, and of
moulding it upon the Christian faith. The Scriptures indeed were at
hand for the study of those who could avail themselves of them; but St.
Irenaeus does not hesitate to speak of whole races, who had been
converted to Christianity, without being able to read them. To be
unable to read or write was in those times no evidence of want of
learning: the hermits of the deserts were, in this sense of the word,
illiterate; yet the great St. Anthony, though he knew not letters, was
a match in disputation for the learned philosophers who came to try
him. Didymus again, the great Alexandrian theologian, was blind. The
ancient discipline, called the _Disciplina Arcani_, involved the same
principle. The more sacred doctrines of Revelation were not committed
to books but passed on by successive tradition. The teaching on the
Blessed Trinity and the Eucharist appears to have been so handed down
for some hundred years; and when at length reduced to writing, it has
filled many folios, yet has not been exhausted.
But I have said more than enough in illustration; I end as I began;--a
University is a place of concourse, whither students come from every
quarter for every kind of knowledge. You cannot have the best of every
kind everywhere; you must go to some great city or emporium for it.
There you have all the choicest productions of nature and art all
together, which you find each in its own separate place elsewhere. All
the riches of the land, and of the earth, are carried up thither; there
are the best markets, and there the best workmen. It is the centre of
trade, the supreme court of fashion, the umpire of rival talents, and
the standard of things rare and precious. It is the place for seeing
galleries of first-rate pictures, and for hearing wonderful voices and
performers of transcendent skill. It is the place for great preachers,
great orators, great nobles, great statesmen. In the nature of things,
greatness and unity go together; excellence implies a centre. And
such, for the third or fourth time, is a University; I hope I do not
weary out the reader by repeating it. It is the place to which a
thousand schools make contributions; in which the intellect may safely
range and speculate, sure to find its equal in some antagonist
activity, and its judge in the tribunal of truth. It is a place where
inquiry is pushed forward, and discoveries verified and perfected, and
rashness rendered innocuous, and error exposed, by the collision of
mind with mind, and knowledge with knowledge. It is the place where
the professor becomes eloquent, and is a missionary and a preacher,
displaying his science in its most complete and most winning form,
pouring it forth with the zeal of enthusiasm, and lighting up his own
love of it in the breasts of his hearers. It is the place where the
catechist makes good his ground as he goes, treading in the truth day
by day into the ready memory, and wedging and tightening it into the
expanding reason. It is a place which wins the admiration of the young
by its celebrity, kindles the affections of the middle-aged by its
beauty, and rivets the fidelity of the old by its associations. It is
a seat of wisdom, a light of the world, a minister of the faith, an
Alma Mater of the rising generation. It is this and a great deal more,
and demands a somewhat better head and hand than mine to describe it
well.
Such is a University in its idea and in its purpose; such in good
measure has it before now been in fact. Shall it ever be again? We
are going forward in the strength of the Cross, under the patronage of
the Blessed Virgin, in the name of St. Patrick, to attempt it.