UNIVERSITIES: ACTUAL AND IDEAL. 53 



feel inclined to ask, whether the rate-in-aid of the education of the 

 wealthy and professional classes, thus levied on the resources of the 

 community, is not, after all, a little heavy? And, still further, I am 

 tempted to inquire what has "become of the indigent scholars, the sons 

 of the masses of the people, whose daily labor just suffices to meet 

 their daily wants, for whose benefit these rich foundations were largely 

 if not mainlv instituted ? It seems as if Pharaoh's dream had been 

 rigorously carried out, and that even the fat scholar has eaten the lean 

 one. And, when I turn from this picture to the no less real vision of 

 many a brave and frugal Scotch boy, spending his summer in hard 

 manual labor, that he may have the privilege of wending his way in 

 autumn to this university, with a bag of oatmeal, ten pounds in his 

 pocket, and his own stout heart to depend upon through the northern 

 winter ; not bent on seeking 



" The bubble reputation at the cannon's mouth," 



but determined to wiring knowledge from the hard hands of penury; 

 w^hen I see him win through all such outward obstacles to positions 

 of wide usefulness and well-earned fame — I cannot but think that, in 

 essence, Aberdeen has departed but little from the primitive intention 

 of the founders of universities, and that the spirit of reform has so 

 much to do on the other side of the border, that it may be long before 

 he has leisure to look this way. 



As compared with other actual universities, then, Aberdeen may, 

 perhaps, be well satisfied w^ith itself. But, do not think me an im- 

 practicable dreamer, if I ask you not to rest and be thankful in this 

 state of satisfaction ; if I ask you to consider, awhile, how this actual 

 good stands related to that ideal better toward which both men and 

 institutions must progress, if they would not retrograde. 



In an ideal university, as I conceive it, a man should be able to 

 obtain instruction in all forms of knowledge, and discipline in the 

 use of all the methods by which knowledge is obtained. In such a 

 university, the force of living example should fire the student with a 

 noble ambition to emulate the learning of learned men, and to follow 

 in the footsteps of the explorers of new fields of knowledge. And 

 the very air he breathes should be charged with that enthusiasm for 

 truth, that fanaticism of veracity, which is a greater possession than 

 much learning ; a nobler gift than the power of increasing knowledge; 

 by so much greater and nobler than these, as the moral nature of man 

 is greater than .the intellectual — for veracity is the heart of morality. 



But the man w^ho is all morality and intellect, although he may 

 be good and even great, is, after all, only half a man. There is beauty 

 in the moral world and in the intellectual world ; but there is also a 

 t)eauty which is neither moral nor intellectual — the beauty of the 

 world of art. There are men who are devoid of the power of seeing 

 it, as there are men who are born deaf and blind, and the loss of 



