Mat 13, 1887.] 



scmisrcE. 



465 



longer of feeling as in the primary, or of moral 

 ideals and of law as in the secondary, but of ideas. 

 Training and discipline are, it is true, involved in 

 the true grasp of ideas, but they are not the uni- 

 versity aim. The nutrition of ideas, — this is the 

 great academic function, as I think. Nor are 

 discipline and training to be given hy the uni- 

 versity, but by the student to himself. The youth 

 has now escaped from the bondage of law. The 

 university does its work when it unfolds the do- 

 main of knowledge to the opening adolescent 

 mind, and invites it to enter in and take posses- 

 sion, and when it provides the material appa- 

 ratus of self-instruction. The professor is only a 

 guide and an example. The essence of university 

 life is freedom for the student, and freedom for 

 the professor. It is simply because the university 

 has become a certifying and graduating body that 

 even the calling of class-rolls is justifiable. Even 

 as a graduating body, I doubt, after all, if it is 

 justified in calling them. The professor offers to 

 show the student the way to knowledge, and to 

 teach him how to use the instruments of knowl- 

 edge, whether they be books or microscopes ; and 

 there his function ends. If any parent is unwill- 

 ing to send his son to the free life of a university, 

 let him keep him at home and call in a trained 

 nurse or a paternal tutor. 



>S'eZ/-discipline, seZ/-training, through the pur- 

 suit of ideas which attract by their eternal and 

 inherent charm all ingenuous spirits, — this is the 

 purpose of a university. There can be no self- 

 discipline without freedom. This is of the 

 essence of mind : God has ordered it so. True, 

 freedom may end in tasting of the tree that is for- 

 bidden, and in expulsion from Paradise. Be it 

 so. Such is the universal condition of adolescent 

 and adult life. By bringing to bear the school- 

 master — the law — on the student, we make the 

 unworthy less worthy, and the worthy we irri- 

 tate and repress in their upward and onward 

 striving. 



What follows from this general view ? Certain 

 very practical results. Boys in years and boys in 

 mind, though they be physically grown up, have 

 no business within academic walls. Their place is 

 the secondary school, where they may receive the 

 intellectual and moral discipline which fits them 

 to breathe the pure air of freedom and the rare 

 ether of ideas. Freedom of study also, not com- 

 pulsory curricula, is alone in place now. 



And what are ideas ? Shall I venture on a defi- 

 nition where Plato failed and Aristotle stumbled ? 

 I would rather not. And yet I know what I mean. 

 For is not ' the true ' an idea ? And is not the 

 pursuit of science and philosophy the pursuit of 

 the true? At these academic gates the student is 



to cast aside the idols of the den and of the mar- 

 ket-place, and, unencumbered, to question and to 

 investigate in loyal obedience to the divine sum- 

 mons to know. In philology, in philosophy, in 

 the study of nature in its many forms, in art, he 

 is called upon to look face to face with the true, 

 the good, and the beautiful. Even when the 

 student himself is all unconscious of the divine 

 presence iu his ardent pursuit of material sci- 

 ence, it is yet there, for his aim is the true. 

 Step by step he is putting himself in harmony 

 with the scheme of the universe, and preparing 

 for the final illumining. The truth of this and of 

 that he seeks for ; but these separate truths are but 

 the fragments of the whole, and lead him to the 

 whole. He is always on his way upward. The 

 conception of the unity of the whole, as seen in the 

 wisdom and working of the eternal Reason, teach- 

 ing him by the things which He has made, awaits 

 him. The student-spirit is thus brought into re- 

 lation with the universal Spirit, which effects in 

 him the fruits of the spirit ; above all, harmony of 

 soul and all the virtues. 



It is philosophy, and history treated in a philo- 

 sophical sense, that hold the key of the temple. 

 And if philosophy should fail him, literature will 

 be found to be a universal solvent ; for in itself it is 

 the creative thought of man on man cast in beauti- 

 ful forms. It is a striving after the truest truth and 

 a direct and informal penetration into the heart of 

 things ; it lives in the idea and by the ideal. 

 Harmony of thought and life — a tie between all 

 special knowledges — may be found here. 



It is scarcely necessary to say, that, when I 

 speak of science and philosophy, I speak of arts in 

 the mediaeval sense, — the whole circle of ration- 

 alized knowledge. The merely professional studies 

 which fit to be physician, theologian, lawyer, 

 teacher, are mere dependences on the university 

 properly conceived, mere accidents of the sub- 

 stance. The university itself was founded in arts, 

 and still truly lives only by arts. An aggregate 

 of professional colleges can never constitute a uni- 

 versity. The idea is not there : it cannot live 

 with the purely technical. Even in technical 

 schools, at least if they are part of a university 

 organization, no man is a fit professor who is not 

 alive to the university idea in what he teaches, 

 makes his students feel the intimate relations of 

 all knowledge, the philosophy which permeates 

 and gives significance to every subject. If the 

 student does not attain to this, he has fallen 

 short of the academic aim. 



But how can the student breathe the purely 

 scientific atmosphere if he does not come pre- 

 pared ? If he spends the years of his arts life in 

 acquiring the mere instruments, linguistic and 



