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 5
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 10
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 15
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.
Mutual education, in a large sense of the word, 20
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 5
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 10
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 15
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 20
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, 25
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 30
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 5
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 10
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 15
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 centers of
pilgrimage and throng, which such a method of 20
education necessarily involves.
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 25
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 30
the living man and listen to his living voice....
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 5
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 10
principles of any study you may learn by books at
home; but the detail, the color, 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 15
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 20
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 25
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 fullness is in one place alone. It
is in such assemblages and congregations of 30
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 5
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 10
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, 15
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 20
candor 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 25
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 30
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 5
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 centers to
which at stated times the country comes up, as to 10
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. 15
We are unable to conceive how the
"gentleman-like" can otherwise be maintained; and
maintained in this way it is....
Religious teaching itself affords us an
illustration of our subject to a certain point. It 20
does not indeed seat itself merely in centers 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 25
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 30
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 5
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 10
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 molding it upon the
Christian faith. The Scriptures indeed were at 15
hand for the study of those who could avail
themselves of them; but St. Irenæus 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 20
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 25
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 30
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. 5
But I have said more than enough in
illustration; 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 10
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 15
carried up thither; there are the best markets, and
there the best workmen. It is the center 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 20
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; 25
excellence implies a center. 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 30
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, 5
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 10
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 15
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 20
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.