EDUCATIONAL ENDOWMENTS. 547 



spoken of not only in the government and the corporate character of 

 the institution, but in the personal character of most of its officers. 

 Many, very many exceptions must be made to such a statement ; but, 

 in the end it must be acknowledged that that stamp of action known 

 as officialism leaves its mark upon the official ; and that the individual 

 as well as corporate influence of institutions thus artificially maintained, 

 and animated by a different spirit and principle from that elsewhere 

 prevailing in the body social, is hostile to the free movement, and 

 an obstacle to a continuous healthful readjustment of ideas in our 

 country. 



Any general objection to the existing order of things inevitably 

 meets the query, " What will you put in its place ? " It is frequently 

 assumed, so strong is the conservative instinct in mankind, that the 

 objector, if he discovers or points out a disease, should also cure it. 

 This hardly seems just. Nature puts forward one set of agencies for 

 right criticism and another for right construction. Critics are seldom 

 artists, and artists are seldom critics. Still, it is not difficult, in the 

 present case, to give a more satisfactory answer. In the first place, 

 it may be said that the objections brought against the foregoing 

 are generally based on an overestimation of the function of academic 

 education, both in individual and national life. The learned Hu- 

 ber remarks that the revival of learning in the fifteenth century, 

 like the speculative movement of the twelfth century, " was sus- 

 tained by the co-operation, not of institutions, but of individuals"; 

 and this is also true, he says, " without a doubt, of every intellectual 

 impulse which is animated by an independent principle of life." * This 

 fact is evident enough both historically and from the rationale of 

 all progress. I can not think of a single forward movement of society 

 which has not been obliged to overcome the opposition of great edu- 

 cational centers ; and hardly an eminent name occurs to me as having 

 been assisted in its high destiny by academic education.! Whether 

 in business, politics, or letters, the world's leaders have not been sent 

 forth panoplied to conquer by their alma maters. It is with intel- 

 lectual as with other progress. New developments arise, not from 

 fixed types and structures, but by fresh movements from beneath ; 

 and the surface crust has always to be broken through before the new 

 experience can displace the old in consciousness, and the new force has 

 to break or bend the old structure in society before it can assume its 

 rightful place. This is so obviously and so universally and necessarily 

 true, that one may be surprised at the wide prevalence of the opposite 



* Huber's " History of English Universities," vol. i, p. 216. 



f A few Englishmen in several classes may be instanced as either having no connec- 

 tion with universities, or as deriving no profit from them. Burke, Bentham, J. S. Mill, 

 Herbert Spencer, Davy, Faraday, Watt, the Stephensons, Lardner, Turner, Grote, Buckle, 

 George Eliot, Thackeray, Dickens. Gladstone has been fifty years in getting Oxford 

 out of him, and Grant Allen says that Darwin " escaped with comparatively little injury." 



