The Idea of a University (1852)
by John Henry Newman
Preface
{ix} THE view
taken of a University in these Discourses is the following:—That
it is a place of teaching universal knowledge. This implies that its object is, on the one hand,
intellectual, not moral; and, on the other, that it is the diffusion and
extension of knowledge rather than the advancement. If its object were scientific
and philosophical discovery, I do not see why a University should have students;
if religious training, I do not see how it can be the seat of literature
and scienceÉÉ
When the intellect has once been properly trained
and formed to have a connected view or grasp of things, it will display its
powers with more or less effect according {xviii} to its particular quality
and capacity in the individual. In the case of most men it makes itself felt
in the good sense, sobriety of thought, reasonableness, candour, self-command,
and steadiness of view, which characterize it. In some it will have developed
habits of business, power of influencing others, and sagacity. In others
it will elicit the talent of philosophical speculation, and lead the mind
forward to eminence in this or that intellectual department. In all it will
be a faculty of entering with comparative ease into any subject of thought,
and of taking up with aptitude any science or profession. All this it will
be and will do in a measure, even when the mental formation be made after
a model but partially trueÉ.
Discourse 5. Knowledge its
Own End
****
1.
I have said that all branches
of knowledge are connected together, because the subject-matter of knowledge
is intimately united in itself, as being the acts and the work of the Creator.
Hence it is that the Sciences, into which our knowledge may be said to be
cast, have multiplied bearings one on another, and an internal sympathy,
and admit, or rather demand, comparison and adjustment. They complete, correct,
balance each other. This consideration, if well-founded, must be taken into
account, not only as regards the attainment of truth, which is {100} their
common end, but as regards the influence which they exercise upon those whose
education consists in the study of them. I have said already, that to give
undue prominence to one is to be unjust to another; to neglect or supersede
these is to divert those from their proper object. It is to unsettle the
boundary lines between science and science, to disturb their action, to destroy
the harmony which binds them together. Such a proceeding will have a corresponding
effect when introduced into a place of education. There is no science but
tells a different tale, when viewed as a portion of a whole, from what it
is likely to suggest when taken by itself, without the safeguard, as I may
call it, of others.
****
It is a great
point then to enlarge the range of studies which a University professes,
even for the sake of the students; and, though they cannot pursue every
subject which is open to them, they will be the gainers by living among
those and under those who represent the whole circle. This I conceive to
be the advantage of a seat of universal learning, considered as a place
of education. An assemblage of learned men, zealous for their own sciences,
and rivals of each other, are brought, by familiar intercourse and for
the sake of intellectual peace, to adjust together the claims and relations
of their respective subjects of investigation. They learn to respect, to
consult, to aid each other. Thus is created a pure and clear atmosphere
of thought, which the student also breathes, though in his own case he
only pursues a few sciences out of the multitude. He profits by an intellectual
tradition, which is independent of particular teachers, which guides him
in his choice of subjects, and duly interprets for him those which he chooses.
He apprehends the great outlines of knowledge, the principles on which
it rests, the scale of its parts, its lights and its shades, its great
points and its little, as he otherwise cannot apprehend them. Hence it
is that his education is called "Liberal." A
habit of mind is formed which lasts through life, of which the attributes
are, freedom, equitableness, calmness, moderation, and wisdom; or {102} what
in a former Discourse I have ventured to call a philosophical habit. This
then I would assign as the special fruit of the education furnished at a
University, as contrasted with other places of teaching or modes of teaching.
This is the main purpose of a University in its treatment of its students.
And now the question is asked
me, What is the use of it? and my answer will constitute the main subject
of the Discourses which are to follow.
2.
Cautious and practical thinkers,
I say, will ask of me, what, after all, is the gain of this Philosophy, of
which I make such account, and from which I promise so much. Even supposing
it to enable us to exercise the degree of trust exactly due to every science
respectively, and to estimate precisely the value of every truth which is
anywhere to be found, how are we better for this master view of things, which
I have been extolling? Does it not reverse the principle of the division
of labour? will practical objects be obtained better or worse by its cultivation?
to what then does it lead? where does it end? what does it do? how does it
profit? what does it promise? Particular sciences are respectively the basis
of definite arts, which carry on to results tangible and beneficial the truths
which are the subjects of the knowledge attained; what is the Art of this
science of sciences? what is the fruit of such a Philosophy? É..
I am asked
what is the end of University Education, and of the Liberal or Philosophical
Knowledge which I conceive it to impart: I answer, that what I have already
{103} said has been sufficient to show that it has a very tangible, real,
and sufficient end, though the end cannot be divided from that knowledge
itself. Knowledge is capable of being its own end. Such is the constitution
of the human mind, that any kind of knowledge, if it be really such, is
its own reward. And if this is true of all knowledge, it is true also of
that special Philosophy, which I have made to consist in a comprehensive
view of truth in all its branches, of the relations of science to science,
of their mutual bearings, and their respective values. What the worth of
such an acquirement is, compared with other objects which we seek,—wealth
or power or honour or the conveniences and comforts of life, I do not profess
here to discuss; but I would maintain, and mean to show, that it is an
object, in its own nature so really and undeniably good, as to be the compensation
of a great deal of thought in the compassing, and a great deal of trouble
in the attaining.
Now, when
I say that Knowledge is, not merely a means to something beyond it, or
the preliminary of certain arts into which it naturally resolves, but an
end sufficient to rest in and to pursue for its own sake, surely I am uttering
no paradox, for I am stating what is both intelligible in itself, and has
ever been the common judgment of philosophers and the ordinary feeling
of mankind. I am saying what at least the public opinion of this day ought
to be slow to deny, considering how much we have heard of late years, in
opposition to Religion, of entertaining, curious, and various knowledge.
I am but saying what whole volumes have been written to illustrate, viz.,
by a "selection from the records of Philosophy,
Literature, and Art, in all ages and countries, of a body of examples, to
show how the most unpropitious circumstances have been unable to conquer
an ardent {104} desire for the acquisition of knowledge." [Note
1] That further advantages accrue to us and redound to
others by its possession, over and above what it is in itself, I am very
far indeed from denying; but, independent of these, we are satisfying a direct
need of our nature in its very acquisition; and, whereas our nature, unlike
that of the inferior creation, does not at once reach its perfection, but
depends, in order to it, on a number of external aids and appliances, Knowledge,
as one of the principal of these, is valuable for what its very presence
in us does for us after the manner of a habit, even though it be turned to
no further account, nor subserve any direct end.
3.
Hence it is
that Cicero, in enumerating the various heads of mental excellence, lays
down the pursuit of Knowledge for its own sake, as the first of them. "This pertains
most of all to human nature," he says, "for we are all of us drawn
to the pursuit of Knowledge; in which to excel we consider excellent, whereas
to mistake, to err, to be ignorant, to be deceived, is both an evil and a
disgrace." [Note
2] And he considers Knowledge the very first object to
which we are attracted, after the supply of our physical wants. After the
calls and duties of our animal existence, as they may be termed, as regards
ourselves, our family, and our neighbours, follows, he tells us, "the
search after truth. Accordingly, as soon as we escape from the pressure of
necessary cares, forthwith we desire to see, to hear, and to learn; and consider
the knowledge of what is hidden or is wonderful a condition of our happiness." {105}
This passage,
though it is but one of many similar passages in a multitude of authors,
I take for the very reason that it is so familiarly known to us; and I
wish you to observe, Gentlemen, how distinctly it separates the pursuit
of Knowledge from those ulterior objects to which certainly it can be made
to conduce, and which are, I suppose, solely contemplated by the persons
who would ask of me the use of a University or Liberal Education. So far
from dreaming of the cultivation of Knowledge directly and mainly in order
to our physical comfort and enjoyment, for the sake of life and person,
of health, of the conjugal and family union, of the social tie and civil
security, the great Orator implies, that it is only after our physical
and political needs are supplied, and when we are "free
from necessary duties and cares," that we are in a condition for "desiring
to see, to hear, and to learn." É. The idea of benefiting society by
means of "the pursuit of science and knowledge" {106} did not enter
at all into the motives which he would assign for their cultivation.
****
4.
Things, which
can bear to be cut off from every thing else and yet persist in living,
must have life in themselves; pursuits, which issue in nothing, and still
maintain their ground for ages, which are regarded as admirable, though
they have not as yet proved themselves to be useful, must have their sufficient
end in themselves, whatever it turn out to be. And we are brought to the
same conclusion by considering the force of the epithet, by which the knowledge
under consideration is popularly designated. It is common to speak of "liberal knowledge," of
the "liberal arts and
studies," and of a "liberal education," as the especial characteristic or
property of a University and of a gentleman; what is really meant by the
word? Now, first, in its grammatical sense it is opposed to servile; and by "servile work" is understood, as
our catechisms inform us, bodily labour, mechanical employment, and the like,
in which the mind has little or no part. Parallel to such servile works are
those arts, if they deserve the name, of which the poet speaks [Note
3], {107} which owe their origin and their method to hazard,
not to skill; as, for instance, the practice and operations of an empiric.
As far as this contrast may be considered as a guide into the meaning of
the word, liberal education and liberal pursuits are exercises of mind, of
reason, of reflection. ****
All that I
have been now saying is summed up in a few characteristic words of the
great Philosopher. "Of
possessions," he says, "those rather are useful, which bear fruit;
those liberal, which tend to enjoyment.
By fruitful, I mean, which yield revenue; by enjoyable, where nothing
accrues of consequence beyond the using."
****
6.
Now bear with
me, Gentlemen, if what I am about to say, has at first sight a fanciful
appearance. Philosophy, then, or Science, is related to Knowledge in this
way:—Knowledge is
called by the name of Science or Philosophy, when it is acted upon, informed,
or if I may use a strong figure, impregnated by Reason. Reason is the principle
of that intrinsic fecundity of Knowledge, which, to those who possess it,
is its especial value, and which dispenses with the necessity of their looking
abroad for any end to rest upon external to itself. Knowledge, indeed, when
thus exalted into a scientific form, is also {112} power; not only is it
excellent in itself, but whatever such excellence may be, it is something
more, it has a result beyond itself. Doubtless; but that is a further consideration,
with which I am not concerned. I only say that, prior to its being a power,
it is a good; that it is, not only an instrument, but an end. I know well
it may resolve itself into an art, and terminate in a mechanical process,
and in tangible fruit; but it also may fall back upon that Reason which informs
it, and resolve itself into Philosophy. In one case it is called Useful Knowledge,
in the other Liberal. The same person may cultivate it in both ways at once;
but this again is a matter foreign to my subject; here I do but say that
there are two ways of using Knowledge, and in matter of fact those who use
it in one way are not likely to use it in the other, or at least in a very
limited measure. You see, then, here are two methods of Education; the end
of the one is to be philosophical, of the other to be mechanical; the one
rises towards general ideas, the other is exhausted upon what is particular
and external. Let me not be thought to deny the necessity, or to decry the
benefit, of such attention to what is particular and practical, as belongs
to the useful or mechanical arts; life could not go on without them; we owe
our daily welfare to them; their exercise is the duty of the many, and we
owe to the many a debt of gratitude for fulfilling that duty. I only say
that Knowledge, in proportion as it tends more and more to be particular,
ceases to be Knowledge. It is a question whether Knowledge can in any proper
sense be predicated of the brute creation; without pretending to metaphysical
exactness of phraseology, which would be unsuitable to an occasion like this,
I say, it seems to me improper to call that passive sensation, or perception
of things, which brutes seem to {113} possess, by the name of Knowledge.
When I speak of Knowledge, I mean something intellectual, something which
grasps what it perceives through the senses; something which takes a view
of things; which sees more than the senses convey; which reasons upon what
it sees, and while it sees; which invests it with an idea. It expresses itself,
not in a mere enunciation, but by an enthymeme: it is of the nature of science
from the first, and in this consists its dignity. The principle of real dignity
in Knowledge, its worth, its desirableness, considered irrespectively of
its results, is this germ within it of a scientific or a philosophical process.
This is how it comes to be an end in itself; this is why it admits of being
called Liberal. Not to know the relative disposition of things is the state
of slaves or children; to have mapped out the Universe is the boast, or at
least the ambition, of Philosophy.
Moreover,
such knowledge is not a mere extrinsic or accidental advantage, which is
ours today and another's tomorrow, which may be got up from a book, and
easily forgotten again, which we can command or communicate at our pleasure,
which we can borrow for the occasion, carry about in our hand, and take
into the market; it is an acquired illumination, it is a habit, a personal
possession, and an inward endowment. And this is the reason, why it is
more correct, as well as more usual, to speak of a University as a place
of education, than of instruction, though, when knowledge is concerned,
instruction would at first sight have seemed the more appropriate word.
We are instructed, for instance, in manual exercises, in the fine and useful
arts, in trades, and in ways of business; for these are methods, which
have little or no effect upon the mind itself, are contained in rules committed
to memory, to tradition, or to use, {114} and bear upon an end external
to themselves. But education is a higher word; it implies an action upon
our mental nature, and the formation of a character; it is something individual
and permanent, and is commonly spoken of in connexion with religion and
virtue. When, then, we speak of the communication of Knowledge as being
Education, we thereby really imply that that Knowledge is a state or condition
of mind; and since cultivation of mind is surely worth seeking for its
own sake, we are thus brought once more to the conclusion, which the word "Liberal" and the word "Philosophy" have
already suggested, that there is a Knowledge, which is desirable, though
nothing come of it, as being of itself a treasure, and a sufficient remuneration
of years of labour.
****
Surely it is very intelligible to say, and that
is what I say here, that Liberal Education, viewed in itself, is simply the
cultivation of the intellect, as such, and its object is nothing more or
less than intellectual excellence. Every thing has its own perfection, be
it higher or lower in the scale of things; and the perfection of one is not
the perfection of another. Things animate, inanimate, visible, invisible,
all are good in their kind, and have a best of
themselves, which is an object of pursuit. Why do you take such pains with
{122} your garden or your park? You see to your walks and turf and shrubberies;
to your trees and drives; not as if you meant to make an orchard of the one,
or corn or pasture land of the other, but because there is a special beauty
in all that is goodly in wood, water, plain, and slope, brought all together
by art into one shape, and grouped into one whole. Your cities are beautiful,
your palaces, your public buildings, your territorial mansions, your churches;
and their beauty leads to nothing beyond itself. There is a physical beauty
and a moral: there is a beauty of person, there is a beauty of our moral
being, which is natural virtue; and in like manner there is a beauty, there
is a perfection, of the intellect. There is an ideal perfection in these
various subject-matters, towards which individual instances are seen to rise,
and which are the standards for all instances whatever. The Greek divinities
and demigods, as the statuary has moulded them, with their symmetry of figure,
and their high forehead and their regular features, are the perfection of
physical beauty. The heroes, of whom history tells, Alexander, or C¾sar,
or Scipio, or Saladin, are the representatives of that magnanimity or self-mastery
which is the greatness of human nature. Christianity too has its heroes,
and in the supernatural order, and we call them Saints. The artist puts before
him beauty of feature and form; the poet, beauty of mind; the preacher, the
beauty of grace: then intellect too, I repeat, has its beauty, and it has
those who aim at it. To open the mind, to correct it, to refine it, to enable
it to know, and to digest, master, rule, and use its knowledge, to give it
power over its own faculties, application, flexibility, method, critical
exactness, sagacity, resource, address, eloquent expression, is an object
as intelligible (for here we are inquiring, not what the object of a {123}
Liberal Education is worth, nor what use the Church makes of it, but what
it is in itself), I say, an object as intelligible as the cultivation of
virtue, while, at the same time, it is absolutely distinct from it.
Discourse 6. Knowledge Viewed
in Relation to Learning
****
In default
of a recognized term, I have called the perfection or virtue of the intellect
by the name of philosophy, philosophical knowledge, enlargement of mind,
or illumination; terms which are not uncommonly given to it by writers
of this day: but, whatever name we bestow on it, it is, I believe, as a
matter of history, the business of a University to make this intellectual
culture its direct scope, or to employ itself in the education of the intellect,—just
as the work of a Hospital lies in healing the sick or wounded, of a Riding
or Fencing School, or of a Gymnasium, in exercising the limbs, of an Almshouse,
in aiding and solacing the old, of an Orphanage, in protecting innocence,
of a Penitentiary, in restoring the guilty. I say, a University, taken
in its bare idea, and before we view it as an instrument of the Church,
has this object and this mission; it contemplates neither moral impression
nor mechanical production; it professes to exercise the mind neither in
art nor in duty; its function is intellectual culture; here it may leave
its scholars, and it has done its work when it has done as much as this.
It educates the intellect {126} to reason well in all matters, to reach
out towards truth, and to grasp it.
****
I have then to investigate,
in the Discourses which follow, those qualities and characteristics of the
intellect in which its cultivation issues or rather consists; and, with a
view of assisting myself in this undertaking, I shall recur to certain questions
which have already been touched upon. These questions are three: viz. the
relation of intellectual culture, first, to mere knowledge;
secondly, to professional knowledge;
and thirdly, to religious knowledge.
In other words, are acquirements and attainments the
scope of a University Education? or expertness in particular arts
and pursuits? or moral and
religious proficiency? or something besides
these three? É.
3.
I suppose the prim‰-facie view
which the public at large would take of a University, considering it as
a place of Education, is nothing more or less than a place for acquiring
a great deal of knowledge on a great many subjects. Memory is one of the
first developed of the mental faculties; a boy's business when he goes
to school is to learn, that is, to store up things in his memory. For some
years his intellect is little more than an instrument for taking in facts,
or a receptacle for storing them; he welcomes them as fast as they come
to {128} him; he lives on what is without; he has his eyes ever about him;
he has a lively susceptibility of impressions; he imbibes information of
every kind; and little does he make his own in a true sense of the word,
living rather upon his neighbours all around him. He has opinions, religious,
political, and literary, and, for a boy, is very positive in them and sure
about them; but he gets them from his schoolfellows, or his masters, or
his parents, as the case may be. Such as he is in his other relations,
such also is he in his school exercises; his mind is observant, sharp,
ready, retentive; he is almost passive in the acquisition of knowledge.
I say this in no disparagement of the idea of a clever boy. Geography,
chronology, history, language, natural history, he heaps up the matter
of these studies as treasures for a future day. It is the seven years of
plenty with him: he gathers in by handfuls, like the Egyptians, without
counting; and though, as time goes on, there is exercise for his argumentative
powers in the Elements of Mathematics, and for his taste in the Poets and
Orators, still, while at school, or at least, till quite the last years
of his time, he acquires, and little more; and when he is leaving for the
University, he is mainly the creature of foreign influences and circumstances,
and made up of accidents, homogeneous or not, as the case may be. Moreover,
the moral habits, which are a boy's praise, encourage and assist this result;
that is, diligence, assiduity, regularity, despatch, persevering application;
for these are the direct conditions of acquisition, and naturally lead
to it. Acquirements, again, are emphatically producible, and at a moment;
they are a something to show, both for master and scholar; an audience,
even though ignorant themselves of the subjects of an examination, can
comprehend when questions are answered and when they are not. {129} Here
again is a reason why mental culture is in the minds of men identified
with the acquisition of knowledge.
The same notion possesses
the public mind, when it passes on from the thought of a school to that of
a University: and with the best of reasons so far as this, that there is
no true culture without acquirements, and that philosophy presupposes knowledge.
It requires a great deal of reading, or a wide range of information, to warrant
us in putting forth our opinions on any serious subject; and without such
learning the most original mind may be able indeed to dazzle, to amuse, to
refute, to perplex, but not to come to any useful result or any trustworthy
conclusion. There are indeed persons who profess a different view of the
matter, and even act upon it. Every now and then you will find a person of
vigorous or fertile mind, who relies upon his own resources, despises all
former authors, and gives the world, with the utmost fearlessness, his views
upon religion, or history, or any other popular subject. And his works may
sell for a while; he may get a name in his day; but this will be all. His
readers are sure to find on the long run that his doctrines are mere theories,
and not the expression of facts, that they are chaff instead of bread, and
then his popularity drops as suddenly as it rose.
Knowledge then is the indispensable
condition of expansion of mind, and the instrument of attaining to it; this
cannot be denied, it is ever to be insisted on; I begin with it as a first
principle; however, the very truth of it carries men too far, and confirms
to them the notion that it is the whole of the matter. A narrow mind is thought
to be that which contains little knowledge; and an enlarged mind, that which
holds a great deal; and what seems to put the matter beyond dispute is, the
{130} fact of the great number of studies which are pursued in a University,
by its very profession. Lectures are given on every kind of subject; examinations
are held; prizes awarded. There are moral, metaphysical, physical Professors;
Professors of languages, of history, of mathematics, of experimental science.
Lists of questions are published, wonderful for their range and depth, variety
and difficulty; treatises are written, which carry upon their very face the
evidence of extensive reading or multifarious information; what then is wanting
for mental culture to a person of large reading and scientific attainments?
what is grasp of mind but acquirement? where shall philosophical repose be
found, but in the consciousness and enjoyment of large intellectual possessions?
And yet this notion is, I
conceive, a mistake, and my present business is to show that it is one, and
that the end of a Liberal Education is not mere knowledge, or knowledge considered
in its matter; and I shall best attain my object, by actually setting
down some cases, which will be generally granted to be instances of the process
of enlightenment or enlargement of mind, and others which are not, and thus,
by the comparison, you will be able to judge for yourselves, Gentlemen, whether
Knowledge, that is, acquirement, is after all the real principle of the enlargement,
or whether that principle is not rather something beyond it.
4.
For instance [Note 1],
let a person, whose experience has hitherto been confined to the more calm
and unpretending {131} scenery of these islands, whether here or in England,
go for the first time into parts where physical nature puts on her wilder
and more awful forms, whether at home or abroad, as into mountainous districts;
or let one, who has ever lived in a quiet village, go for the first time
to a great metropolis,—then I suppose he will have a sensation which
perhaps he never had before. He has a feeling not in addition or increase
of former feelings, but of something different in its nature. He will perhaps
be borne forward, and find for a time that he has lost his bearings. He has
made a certain progress, and he has a consciousness of mental enlargement;
he does not stand where he did, he has a new centre, and a range of thoughts
to which he was before a stranger.
Again, the view of the heavens
which the telescope opens upon us, if allowed to fill and possess the mind,
may almost whirl it round and make it dizzy. It brings in a flood of ideas,
and is rightly called an intellectual enlargement, whatever is meant by the
term.
And so again, the sight of
beasts of prey and other foreign animals, their strangeness, the originality
(if I may use the term) of their forms and gestures and habits and their
variety and independence of each other, throw us out of ourselves into another
creation, and as if under another Creator, if I may so express the temptation
which may come on the mind. We seem to have new faculties, or a new exercise
for our faculties, by this addition to our knowledge; like a prisoner, who,
having been accustomed to wear manacles or fetters, suddenly finds his arms
and legs free.
Hence Physical Science generally,
in all its departments, as bringing before us the exuberant riches and resources,
yet the orderly course, of the Universe, elevates and excites the student,
and at first, I may say, almost {132} takes away his breath, while in time
it exercises a tranquilizing influence upon him.
Again, the study of history
is said to enlarge and enlighten the mind, and why? because, as I conceive,
it gives it a power of judging of passing events, and of all events, and
a conscious superiority over them, which before it did not possess.
And in like
manner, what is called seeing the world, entering into active life, going
into society, travelling, gaining acquaintance with the various classes
of the community, coming into contact with the principles and modes of
thought of various parties, interests, and races, their views, aims, habits
and manners, their religious creeds and forms of worship,—gaining
experience how various yet how alike men are, how low-minded, how bad,
how opposed, yet how confident in their opinions; all this exerts a perceptible
influence upon the mind, which it is impossible to mistake, be it good
or be it bad, and is popularly called its enlargement.
And then again,
the first time the mind comes across the arguments and speculations of
unbelievers, and feels what a novel light they cast upon what he has hitherto
accounted sacred; and still more, if it gives in to them and embraces them,
and throws off as so much prejudice what it has hitherto held, and, as
if waking from a dream, begins to realize to its imagination that there
is now no such thing as law and the transgression of law, that sin is a
phantom, and punishment a bugbear, that it is free to sin, free to enjoy
the world and the flesh; and still further, when it does enjoy them, and
reflects that it may think and hold just what it will, that "the world is all before it where to
choose," and what system to build up as its own private persuasion;
when this torrent of wilful thoughts rushes over and inundates it, who will
{133} deny that the fruit of the tree of knowledge, or what the mind takes
for knowledge, has made it one of the gods, with a sense of expansion and
elevation,—an intoxication in reality, still, so far as the subjective
state of the mind goes, an illumination? Hence the fanaticism of individuals
or nations, who suddenly cast off their Maker. Their eyes are opened; and,
like the judgment-stricken king in the Tragedy, they see two suns, and a
magic universe, out of which they look back upon their former state of faith
and innocence with a sort of contempt and indignation, as if they were then
but fools, and the dupes of imposture.
On the other hand, Religion
has its own enlargement, and an enlargement, not of tumult, but of peace.
It is often remarked of uneducated persons, who have hitherto thought little
of the unseen world, that, on their turning to God, looking into themselves,
regulating their hearts, reforming their conduct, and meditating on death
and judgment, heaven and hell, they seem to become, in point of intellect,
different beings from what they were. Before, they took things as they came,
and thought no more of one thing than another. But now every event has a
meaning; they have their own estimate of whatever happens to them; they are
mindful of times and seasons, and compare the present with the past; and
the world, no longer dull, monotonous, unprofitable, and hopeless, is a various
and complicated drama, with parts and an object, and an awful moral.
5.
Now from these instances,
to which many more might be added, it is plain, first, that the communication
of knowledge certainly is either a condition or the means of that sense of
enlargement or enlightenment, of which at this day we hear so much in certain
quarters: this {134} cannot be denied; but next, it is equally plain, that
such communication is not the whole of the process. The enlargement consists,
not merely in the passive reception into the mind of a number of ideas unknown
to it, but in the mind's energetic and simultaneous action upon and towards
and among those new ideas, which are rushing in upon it. It is the action
of a formative power, reducing to order and meaning the matter of our acquirements;
it is a making the objects of our knowledge subjectively our own, or, to
use a familiar word, it is a digestion of what we receive, into the substance
of our previous state of thought; and without this no enlargement is said
to follow. There is no enlargement, unless there be a comparison of ideas
one with another, as they come before the mind, and a systematizing of them.
We feel our minds to be growing and expanding then,
when we not only learn, but refer what we learn to what we know already.
It is not the mere addition to our knowledge that is the illumination; but
the locomotion, the movement onwards, of that mental centre, to which both
what we know, and what we are learning, the accumulating mass of our acquirements,
gravitates. And therefore a truly great intellect, and recognized to be such
by the common opinion of mankind, such as the intellect of Aristotle, or
of St. Thomas, or of Newton, or of Goethe, (I purposely take instances within
and without the Catholic pale, when I would speak of the intellect as such,)
is one which takes a connected view of old and new, past and present, far
and near, and which has an insight into the influence of all these one on
another; without which there is no whole, and no centre. It possesses the
knowledge, not only of things, but also of their mutual and true relations;
knowledge, not merely considered as acquirement, but as philosophy. {135}
Accordingly, when this analytical,
distributive, harmonizing process is away, the mind experiences no enlargement,
and is not reckoned as enlightened or comprehensive, whatever it may add
to its knowledge. For instance, a great memory, as I have already said, does
not make a philosopher, any more than a dictionary can be called a grammar.
There are men who embrace in their minds a vast multitude of ideas, but with
little sensibility about their real relations towards each other. These may
be antiquarians, annalists, naturalists; they may be learned in the law;
they may be versed in statistics; they are most useful in their own place;
I should shrink from speaking disrespectfully of them; still, there is nothing
in such attainments to guarantee the absence of narrowness of mind. If they
are nothing more than well-read men, or men of information, they have not
what specially deserves the name of culture of mind, or fulfils the type
of Liberal Education.
In like manner, we sometimes
fall in with persons who have seen much of the world, and of the men who,
in their day, have played a conspicuous part in it, but who generalize nothing,
and have no observation, in the true sense of the word. They abound in information
in detail, curious and entertaining, about men and things; and, having lived
under the influence of no very clear or settled principles, religious or
political, they speak of every one and every thing, only as so many phenomena,
which are complete in themselves, and lead to nothing, not discussing them,
or teaching any truth, or instructing the hearer, but simply talking. No
one would say that these persons, well informed as they are, had attained
to any great culture of intellect or to philosophy.
The case is the same still
more strikingly where the persons in question are beyond dispute men of inferior
{136} powers and deficient education. Perhaps they have been much in foreign
countries, and they receive, in a passive, otiose, unfruitful way, the various
facts which are forced upon them there. Seafaring men, for example, range
from one end of the earth to the other; but the multiplicity of external
objects, which they have encountered, forms no symmetrical and consistent
picture upon their imagination; they see the tapestry of human life, as it
were on the wrong side, and it tells no story. They sleep, and they rise
up, and they find themselves, now in Europe, now in Asia; they see visions
of great cities and wild regions; they are in the marts of commerce, or amid
the islands of the South; they gaze on Pompey's Pillar, or on the Andes;
and nothing which meets them carries them forward or backward, to any idea
beyond itself. Nothing has a drift or relation; nothing has a history or
a promise. Every thing stands by itself, and comes and goes in its turn,
like the shifting scenes of a show, which leave the spectator where he was.
Perhaps you are near such a man on a particular occasion, and expect him
to be shocked or perplexed at something which occurs; but one thing is much
the same to him as another, or, if he is perplexed, it is as not knowing
what to say, whether it is right to admire, or to ridicule, or to disapprove,
while conscious that some expression of opinion is expected from him; for
in fact he has no standard of judgment at all, and no landmarks to guide
him to a conclusion. Such is mere acquisition, and, I repeat, no one would
dream of calling it philosophy.
6.
Instances,
such as these, confirm, by the contrast, the conclusion I have already
drawn from those which preceded them. That only is true enlargement of
mind {137} which is the power of viewing many things at once as one whole,
of referring them severally to their true place in the universal system,
of understanding their respective values, and determining their mutual
dependence. Thus is that form of Universal Knowledge, of which I have on
a former occasion spoken, set up in the individual intellect, and constitutes
its perfection. Possessed of this real illumination, the mind never views
any part of the extended subject-matter of Knowledge without recollecting
that it is but a part, or without the associations which spring from this
recollection. It makes every thing in some sort lead to every thing else;
it would communicate the image of the whole to every separate portion,
till that whole becomes in imagination like a spirit, every where pervading
and penetrating its component parts, and giving them one definite meaning.
Just as our bodily organs, when mentioned, recall their function in the
body, as the word "creation" suggests
the Creator, and "subjects" a sovereign, so, in the mind of the
Philosopher, as we are abstractedly conceiving of him, the elements of the
physical and moral world, sciences, arts, pursuits, ranks, offices, events,
opinions, individualities, are all viewed as one, with correlative functions,
and as gradually by successive combinations converging, one and all, to the
true centre.
To have even a portion of
this illuminative reason and true philosophy is the highest state to which
nature can aspire, in the way of intellect; it puts the mind above the influences
of chance and necessity, above anxiety, suspense, unsettlement, and superstition,
which is the lot of the many. Men, whose minds are possessed with some one
object, take exaggerated views of its importance, are feverish in the pursuit
of it, make it the measure of things which are utterly foreign to it, and
{138} are startled and despond if it happens to fail them. They are ever
in alarm or in transport. Those on the other hand who have no object or principle
whatever to hold by, lose their way, every step they take. They are thrown
out, and do not know what to think or say, at every fresh juncture; they
have no view of persons, or occurrences, or facts, which come suddenly upon
them, and they hang upon the opinion of others, for want of internal resources.
But the intellect, which has been disciplined to the perfection of its powers,
which knows, and thinks while it knows, which has learned to leaven the dense
mass of facts and events with the elastic force of reason, such an intellect
cannot be partial, cannot be exclusive, cannot be impetuous, cannot be at
a loss, cannot but be patient, collected, and majestically calm, because
it discerns the end in every beginning, the origin in every end, the law
in every interruption, the limit in each delay; because it ever knows where
it stands, and how its path lies from one point to another. It is the [tetragonos] of the Peripatetic, and has the "nil admirari" of
the Stoic,—
Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere
causas,
Atque metus omnes, et inexorabile
fatum
Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque
Acherontis avari.
There are men who, when in
difficulties, originate at the moment vast ideas or dazzling projects; who,
under the influence of excitement, are able to cast a light, almost as if
from inspiration, on a subject or course of action which comes before them;
who have a sudden presence of mind equal to any emergency, rising with the
occasion, and an undaunted magnanimous bearing, and an energy and keenness
which is but made intense by opposition. This is genius, this is heroism;
it is the exhibition of a natural gift, which no culture can teach, at which
no {139} Institution can aim; here, on the contrary, we are concerned, not
with mere nature, but with training and teaching. That perfection of the
Intellect, which is the result of Education, and its beau ideal,
to be imparted to individuals in their respective measures, is the clear,
calm, accurate vision and comprehension of all things, as far as the finite
mind can embrace them, each in its place, and with its own characteristics
upon it. It is almost prophetic from its knowledge of history; it is almost
heart-searching from its knowledge of human nature; it has almost supernatural
charity from its freedom from littleness and prejudice; it has almost the
repose of faith, because nothing can startle it; it has almost the beauty
and harmony of heavenly contemplation, so intimate is it with the eternal
order of things and the music of the spheres.
7.
And now, if I may take for
granted that the true and adequate end of intellectual training and of a
University is not Learning or Acquirement, but rather, is Thought or Reason
exercised upon Knowledge, or what may be called Philosophy, I shall be in
a position to explain the various mistakes which at the present day beset
the subject of University Education.
I say then, if we would improve
the intellect, first of all, we must ascend; we cannot gain real knowledge
on a level; we must generalize, we must reduce to method, we must have a
grasp of principles, and group and shape our acquisitions by means of them.
It matters not whether our field of operation be wide or limited; in every
case, to command it, is to mount above it. Who has not felt the irritation
of mind and impatience created by a deep, rich country, visited for the first
time, {140} with winding lanes, and high hedges, and green steeps, and tangled
woods, and every thing smiling indeed, but in a maze? The same feeling comes
upon us in a strange city, when we have no map of its streets. Hence you
hear of practised travellers, when they first come into a place, mounting
some high hill or church tower, by way of reconnoitring its neighbourhood.
In like manner, you must be above your knowledge, not under it, or it will
oppress you; and the more you have of it, the greater will be the load.
*****
8.
Nor indeed
am I supposing that there is any great danger, at least in this day, of
over-education; the danger is on the other side. I will tell you, Gentlemen,
what has been the practical error of the last twenty years,—not to
load the memory of the student with a mass of undigested knowledge, but
to force upon him so much that he has rejected all. It has been the error
of distracting and enfeebling the mind by an unmeaning profusion of subjects;
of implying that a smattering in a dozen branches of study is not shallowness,
which it really is, but enlargement, which it is not; of considering an
acquaintance with the learned names of things and persons, and the possession
of clever duodecimos, and attendance on eloquent lecturers, and membership
with scientific institutions, and the sight of the experiments of a platform
and the specimens of a museum, that all this was not dissipation of mind,
but progress. All things now are to be learned at once, not first one thing,
then another, not one well, but many badly. Learning is to be without exertion,
without attention, without toil; without grounding, without advance, without
finishing. There is to be nothing individual in it; and this, forsooth,
is the wonder {143} of the age. What the steam engine does with matter,
the printing press is to do with mind; it is to act mechanically, and the
population is to be passively, almost unconsciously enlightened, by the
mere multiplication and dissemination of volumes. Whether it be the school
boy, or the school girl, or the youth at college, or the mechanic in the
town, or the politician in the senate, all have been the victims in one
way or other of this most preposterous and pernicious of delusions. Wise
men have lifted up their voices in vain; and at length, lest their own
institutions should be outshone and should disappear in the folly of the
hour, they have been obliged, as far as they could with a good conscience,
to humour a spirit which they could not withstand, and make temporizing
concessions at which they could not but inwardly smile.
It must not
be supposed that, because I so speak, therefore I have some sort of fear
of the education of the people: on the contrary, the more education they
have, the better, so that it is really education. Nor am I an enemy to
the cheap publication of scientific and literary works, which is now in
vogue: on the contrary, I consider it a great advantage, convenience, and
gain; that is, to those to whom education has given a capacity for using
them. Further, I consider such innocent recreations as science and literature
are able to furnish will be a very fit occupation of the thoughts and the
leisure of young persons, and may be made the means of keeping them from
bad employments and bad companions. Moreover, as to that superficial acquaintance
with chemistry, and geology, and astronomy, and political economy, and
modern history, and biography, and other branches of knowledge, which periodical
literature and occasional lectures and scientific institutions diffuse
through the {144} community, I think it a graceful accomplishment, and
a suitable, nay, in this day a necessary accomplishment, in the case of
educated men. Nor, lastly, am I disparaging or discouraging the thorough
acquisition of any one of these studies, or denying that, as far as it
goes, such thorough acquisition is a real education of the mind. All I
say is, call things by their right names, and do not confuse together ideas
which are essentially different. A thorough knowledge of one science and
a superficial acquaintance with many, are not the same thing; a smattering
of a hundred things or a memory for detail, is not a philosophical or comprehensive
view. Recreations are not education; accomplishments are not education.
Do not say, the people must be educated, when, after all, you only mean,
amused, refreshed, soothed, put into good spirits and good humour, or kept
from vicious excesses. I do not say that such amusements, such occupations
of mind, are not a great gain; but they are not education. You may as well
call drawing and fencing education, as
a general knowledge of botany or conchology. Stuffing birds or playing stringed
instruments is an elegant pastime, and a resource to the idle, but it is
not education; it does not form or cultivate the intellect. Education is
a high word; it is the preparation for knowledge, and it is the imparting
of knowledge in proportion to that preparation. We require intellectual eyes
to know withal, as bodily eyes for sight. We need both objects and organs
intellectual; we cannot gain them without setting about it; we cannot gain
them in our sleep, or by haphazard. The best telescope does not dispense
with eyes; the printing press or the lecture room will assist us greatly,
but we must be true to ourselves, we must be parties in the work. A University
is, according to the usual designation, an Alma {145} Mater, knowing her
children one by one, not a foundry, or a mint, or a treadmill.
9.
I protest
to you, Gentlemen, that if I had to choose between a so-called University,
which dispensed with residence and tutorial superintendence, and gave its
degrees to any person who passed an examination in a wide range of subjects,
and a University which had no professors or examinations at all, but merely
brought a number of young men together for three or four years, and then
sent them away as the University of Oxford is said to have done some sixty
years since, if I were asked which of these two methods was the better
discipline of the intellect,—mind,
I do not say which is morally the
better, for it is plain that compulsory study must be a good and idleness
an intolerable mischief,—but if I must determine which of the two courses
was the more successful in training, moulding, enlarging the mind, which
sent out men the more fitted for their secular duties, which produced better
public men, men of the world, men whose names would descend to posterity,
I have no hesitation in giving the preference to that University which did
nothing, over that which exacted of its members an acquaintance with every
science under the sun. And, paradox as this may seem, still if results be
the test of systems, the influence of the public schools and colleges of
England, in the course of the last century, at least will bear out one side
of the contrast as I have drawn it. What would come, on the other hand, of
the ideal systems of education which have fascinated the imagination of this
age, could they ever take effect, and whether they would not produce a generation
frivolous, narrow-minded, and resourceless, intellectually considered, {146}
is a fair subject for debate; but so far is certain, that the Universities
and scholastic establishments, to which I refer, and which did little more
than bring together first boys and then youths in large numbers, these institutions,
with miserable deformities on the side of morals, with a hollow profession
of Christianity, and a heathen code of ethics,—I say, at least they
can boast of a succession of heroes and statesmen, of literary men and philosophers,
of men conspicuous for great natural virtues, for habits of business, for
knowledge of life, for practical judgment, for cultivated tastes, for accomplishments,
who have made England what it is,—able to subdue the earth, able to
domineer over Catholics.
How is this to be explained?
I suppose as follows: When a multitude of young men, keen, open-hearted,
sympathetic, and observant, as young men are, come together and freely mix
with each other, they are sure to learn one from another, even if there be
no one to teach them; the conversation of all is a series of lectures to
each, and they gain for themselves new ideas and views, fresh matter of thought,
and distinct principles for judging and acting, day by day. An infant has
to learn the meaning of the information which its senses convey to it, and
this seems to be its employment. It fancies all that the eye presents to
it to be close to it, till it actually learns the contrary, and thus by practice
does it ascertain the relations and uses of those first elements of knowledge
which are necessary for its animal existence. A parallel teaching is necessary
for our social being, and it is secured by a large school or a college; and
this effect may be fairly called in its own department an enlargement of
mind. It is seeing the world on a small field with little trouble; for the
pupils or students come from very different places, and {147} with widely
different notions, and there is much to generalize, much to adjust, much
to eliminate, there are inter-relations to be defined, and conventional rules
to be established, in the process, by which the whole assemblage is moulded
together, and gains one tone and one character.
Let it be clearly understood,
I repeat it, that I am not taking into account moral or religious considerations;
I am but saying that that youthful community will constitute a whole, it
will embody a specific idea, it will represent a doctrine, it will administer
a code of conduct, and it will furnish principles of thought and action.
It will give birth to a living teaching, which in course of time will take
the shape of a self-perpetuating tradition, or a genius loci,
as it is sometimes called; which haunts the home where it has been born,
and which imbues and forms, more or less, and one by one, every individual
who is successively brought under its shadow. Thus it is that, independent
of direct instruction on the part of Superiors, there is a sort of self-education
in the academic institutions of Protestant England; a characteristic tone
of thought, a recognized standard of judgment is found in them, which, as
developed in the individual who is submitted to it, becomes a twofold source
of strength to him, both from the distinct stamp it impresses on his mind,
and from the bond of union which it creates between him and others,—effects
which are shared by the authorities of the place, for they themselves have
been educated in it, and at all times are exposed to the influence of its
ethical atmosphere. Here then is a real teaching, whatever be its standards
and principles, true or false; and it at least tends towards cultivation
of the intellect; it at least recognizes that knowledge is something more
than a sort of passive reception of scraps and {148} details; it is a something,
and it does a something, which never will issue from the most strenuous efforts
of a set of teachers, with no mutual sympathies and no inter-communion, of
a set of examiners with no opinions which they dare profess, and with no
common principles, who are teaching or questioning a set of youths who do
not know them, and do not know each other, on a large number of subjects,
different in kind, and connected by no wide philosophy, three times a week,
or three times a year, or once in three years, in chill lecture-rooms or
on a pompous anniversary.
10.
Nay, self-education
in any shape, in the most restricted sense, is preferable to a system of
teaching which, professing so much, really does so little for the mind.
Shut your College gates against the votary of knowledge, throw him back
upon the searchings and the efforts of his own mind; he will gain by being
spared an entrance into your Babel. Few indeed there are who can dispense
with the stimulus and support of instructors, or will do any thing at all,
if left to themselves. And fewer still (though such great minds are to
be found), who will not, from such unassisted attempts, contract a self-reliance
and a self-esteem, which are not only moral evils, but serious hindrances
to the attainment of truth. And next to none, perhaps, or none, who will
not be reminded from time to time of the disadvantage under which they
lie, by their imperfect grounding, by the breaks, deficiencies, and irregularities
of their knowledge, by the eccentricity of opinion and the confusion of
principle which they exhibit. They will be too often ignorant of what every
one knows and takes for granted, of that multitude of small truths which
fall upon the {149} mind like dust, impalpable and ever accumulating; they
may be unable to converse, they may argue perversely, they may pride themselves
on their worst paradoxes or their grossest truisms, they may be full of
their own mode of viewing things, unwilling to be put out of their way,
slow to enter into the minds of others;—but, with these and whatever
other liabilities upon their heads, they are likely to have more thought,
more mind, more philosophy, more true enlargement, than those earnest but
ill-used persons, who are forced to load their minds with a score of subjects
against an examination, who have too much on their hands to indulge themselves
in thinking or investigation, who devour premiss and conclusion together
with indiscriminate greediness, who hold whole sciences on faith, and commit
demonstrations to memory, and who too often, as might be expected, when
their period of education is passed, throw up all they have learned in
disgust, having gained nothing really by their anxious labours, except
perhaps the habit of application.
Yet such is
the better specimen of the fruit of that ambitious system which has of
late years been making way among us: for its result on ordinary minds,
and on the common run of students, is less satisfactory still; they leave
their place of education simply dissipated and relaxed by the multiplicity
of subjects, which they have never really mastered, and so shallow as not
even to know their shallowness. How much better, I say, is it for the active
and thoughtful intellect, where such is to be found, to eschew the College
and the University altogether, than to submit to a drudgery so ignoble,
a mockery so contumelious! How much more profitable for the independent
mind, after the mere rudiments of education, to range through a library
at random, taking {150} down books as they meet him, and pursuing the trains
of thought which his mother wit suggests! How much healthier to wander
into the fields, and there with the exiled Prince to find "tongues in the trees, books in the running brooks!" How
much more genuine an education is that of the poor boy in the Poem [Note 2]—a
Poem, whether in conception or in execution, one of the most touching in
our language—who, not in the wide world, but ranging day by day around
his widowed mother's home, "a dexterous gleaner" in a narrow field,
and with only such slender outfit
"as
the village school and books a few
Supplied,"
contrived from the beach,
and the quay, and the fisher's boat, and the inn's fireside, and the tradesman's
shop, and the shepherd's walk, and the smuggler's hut, and the mossy moor,
and the screaming gulls, and the restless waves, to fashion for himself a
philosophy and a poetry of his own!
But in a large subject, I
am exceeding my necessary limits. Gentlemen, I must conclude abruptly; and
postpone any summing up of my argument, should that be necessary, to another
day.
Notes
1. The pages which follow
are taken almost verbatim from the author's 14th (Oxford) University Sermon,
which, at the time of writing this Discourse, he did not expect ever to reprint.
Return to text
2. Crabbe's Tales of the
Hall. This Poem, let me say, I read on its first publication, above thirty
years ago, with extreme delight, and have never lost my love of it; and on
taking it up lately, found I was even more touched by it than heretofore.
A work which can please in youth and age, seems to fulfil (in logical language)
the accidental definition of a Classic. [A further course of twenty years has
past, and I bear the same witness in favour of this Poem.]
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