The Object of a University

ON a dull morning of the early winter, when the light snow was tracked only by the bell-ringer and watchman, as the morning service at chapel had closed, a group of hurriedly dressed students had entered the recitation room of one of the two universities which our civilization calls venerable. There were some fifty students sitting restlessly on the long benches ; the lights burned with the dimness which no art can avoid, against the struggling dawn ; the tutor sat alone, in a box high enough to survey the class. The energy of the whole was pitted against an hour. Each student ran in advance over the page while another recited. The tutor, when each was called, was busy with an estimate of the value of the recitation, of which his book was to give the gauge; or, with the force of habit, marked at a low figure the boys whose dullness had grown familiar, and those singled out for some honor at a higher figure. He was to ascertain how well each could recite. The student had ceased from the study of certain subjects for certain ends, and learned to study only to recite. His aim was to accumulate a certain amount of knowledge for immediate use; it was to spend two or three hours, as the phrase went, in a “ little cram ” for the recitation, and to close at the end of the term with a general “ cram ” for the examination. For the tutor, it was an inquisition, and not an instruction. The method was one which tested most the freightage of the memory. It often honored dullness ; it gave distinction to mechanical habits of thought; it aided no enthusiasm ; it discouraged the study of subjects. It looked not out on life, nor beyond the lesson for the day. It made the noblest literature a mere adjunct of the grammar. The tutor was not a teacher. The student was led to one aim, which was to make the best show of the stock of learning he had on hand ; and for this he was to conceal his ignorance and take brave risks in showing what he could venture. The tutor was conscientious, and one who watched the motions of his countenance could see how much of the hour was occupied in estimating the relative value of the stock in learning which was displayed. But the three hours of recitation were the best of the day, and for three years afforded almost the only intercourse which the student had with the faculty. The recitation was looked forward to by the student as something better to be avoided, and when closed was regarded with relief as a good riddance. The subject may have been the lofty rhyme of Aischylos, “ of tragedy with sceptred pace;” or the story of the building of Rome, which should hold the ear of all the centuries with the soft measures of the Tuscan flute, and invest the periods of archaic history with the noblest moral significance; or the banquet of Plato, with its prophetic voices, containing, as Goethe said of his poem, more than the author knew ; or the story of the tragedy of philosophy in the dying Socrates : yet these served only to illustrate the uses of the grammar, and it was indifferent whether their unity was perceived, though that be the condition of art. There was no effort to give the student a knowledge of the literature which for a whole year should engage him, and still less to give some thought of the spirit and purpose which penetrated it. It was the study of the dead languages.

But again, in later years, it was my fortune once to attend a recitation at another school (kept by women in an old city). It was the early forenoon ; the fresh morning hours had been given to undisturbed study. The recitation continued for forty minutes, as the mind could not well stand longer its effort and movement, and it was not to become a strain. There was no pause or diversion. Each passage was translated, each topic was stated by a student, — and this secured the only advantage of the old recitation in cultivating clearness and readiness of statement; but, beyond that, each imperfect statement was supplemented by the more perfect statement of the teacher, each passage was retranslated, each allusion explained, the illustrations of art brought back the spirit of the old literature ; and further, each student was free to ask questions of the teacher, and encouraged in showing his own ignorance. It united all the advantages of private tuition and the instruction of a class. There was no thought of measuring the comparative excellence of one scholar against another; the only thought was of the excellence of the work itself, or the excellence of the subject. I came away with the impression that a recitation is one of the fine arts.

I might from my own experience draw the same contrast between books and experiments, and lectures and examinations. It is true that books are not of the first consideration. The text of Aischylos which Milton used was scant; but who would mind the text and page, if they had Milton to construe Aischylos? So, too, the Eton Latin grammar is a dingy book, written in Latin, not to be rated in a list today ; but with this book were trained the scholars who gave to Eton College a distinction beyond any school in England. The scholar to-day has an advantage, though we have no Latin grammar to compare with the better English grammars, and no texts so good as the better German texts, with their footnotes and thumb-marks and varied illustrations.

So I might draw the contrast of a lecture and an examination. There have been few lectures yet in our colleges which have had an enduring influence upon the thought of the people, or even shown adequate appreciation or respect for it. And we have lecturers to compare with those who have crowded the halls of universities in Europe ; and there are in none of our universities the avenues which would give admission to those men.

But recitations are followed by examinations. They have the utmost value in the methods of study; they concentrate thought, they open the view of a subject as a whole, they disclose the unity in great ideas. Iteration, also, has a singular power in forming the habitudes of the mind. These objects should always be considered in an examination, and in the study which is the preparation for it. Examinations should be frequent; they should never be so far apart as not to sustain each other and increase the volume which gathers accumulative force as it moves on. They should not be simply to ascertain how much the student knows : this is one object, though here it is more important to enable the student to measure his own knowledge, and as well his own ignorance. But to have an examination primarily to give a relative rank and degree to the student is to regard the student himself as the object of experiment. It is, as Dr. McCosh says, the device of the little child who is pulling up his flowers and fumbling at the roots to see if they be growing.

But examinations, besides being frequent, should cover a whole subject, and be both oral and written. I recall an instance when a class in a venerable university was examined through two weeks of summer on the study of two years. It was the inventory of a vast and miscellaneous stock. The writing of the voluminous pages required of the student, as well as the reading of piles of manuscript books by the tutors, imposed too much unprofitable work on the busy world. The effort was followed by a reaction, in which the materials accumulated for use on a single occasion were as quickly dispersed. It is evident that examinations should conform to the subject; and though they may have, for instance, when applied to the Iliad or the Politics of Aristotle, less of the style of a stated observance, and should be constantly going on, yet it is important that an examination on the Iliad should be on each book as a whole, and then on the Iliad as a whole. So in geology, it should be in cosmical, in structural, in physiographical geology, for instance, and then in geology as a whole ; for we can never know a work of art nor any science unless we learn to contemplate it in its unity and totality, since that alone gives to us in a more or less perfect form an insight into the ideal which is the presupposition of every art and science. The study of isolated sections, often arbitrarily made, is simply the degradation of literature. It can only tend to produce an uncouth habit of mind. But I recall an examination in a book of the higher mathematics, in perhaps the most famous school of engineering and mechanics in Europe, which was brief and oral, where each student was asked only one question, an exercise held perhaps fortnightly; and this was followed, when the subject was closed, by a written examination of a general character and embracing the whole. It made an examination what every movement in a university should be, a work of intellectual discipline.

But I have thus detained you because a book, a recitation, a lecture, and an examination are the elements which go to the making of every university ; and however far it may advance, however vast and splendid its attainment, its value at any period will always depend upon the perfect uses to which it has brought these primary elements.

There is one other element which I will name, which has a physical expression, though more than a physical significance, and that is an atmosphere. The new geology begins with the atmosphere, which is the envelope of the earth, and in which we appear as the fauna and flora in some deeper sea. It is true that the term may apply to any institution, and every form of communal life. But the illustration will serve my thought; it is more than a mere environment ; that is presumed, and there cannot be too thoughtful consideration for it, and for all that will aid toward its perfection. There can be no means and uses in nature and art, within human control, which a university should not aim to secure and shape in its more perfect environment. But there is also a spiritual environment, and there is with this an atmosphere. It may be elevating and expanding as the wide and liberal air, or it may be stilling and depressing. I do not know how to define it, or how to say of what elements it is composed ; but I know it is formed of light, and to it belong ministries of life; it becomes the source of a subtle strength of character ; from it is drawn the sustenance of a more robust life. It does not regard the mind as a figure to be moulded by it, in a certain pattern, to make a good fit for sects and schools and parties, like the idol of the tribe, but as a power that is to grow, and to grow after its own development, — and for this it brings the amplitude of its own freedom. Hence there is nothing which it so carefully avoids as the pale negations which are indicative of the absence of life, and tend at last to a mere vacuity ; but it cherishes all elements that aid toward a larger growth it tolerates no narrow confines, it wel. comes sources of vigor from the four quarters of the globe, and heeds not, though “ winds blow south, or winds blow north.” It recognizes the fact that all growth is calm and steady, as it is noiseless and ceaseless ; it is, in the poet’s line, “as a star, unhasting and unresting.”

These elements, a book, a recitation, a lecture, an environment, an atmosphere, are never to be lost sight of.

Before I pass to consider the object of the university, it is well to consider briefly its history. This history is the exposition of the more or less perfect realization of the idea of the university. It illustrates, as no mere theory will, the character of the institution and the conditions of its development. It aids toward averting the assumption that an individual can mould and fashion the university wholly after his own design, and without regard to its aim and development in the past; and it shows that this attempt, instead of being an advance toward a larger apprehension and organization of the university, tends to become merely destructive. It implies that there can be no identity or even correspondence between different forms of the university in different towns or lands. It instantly tears down that which has been carefully and slowly built up, until, in the phrase of Shakespeare, “unfenced desolation leaves it as naked as the vulgar air.”

In the ancient world there was no university. There was none in Greece, though it may be said with a certain truth that where Plato taught, or where Aristotle gathered about him a company of scholars, there was the university ; their philosophy had the universal for its end, but it did not conceive of its realization in the life of humanity. Thus in Greece virtues were reserved for heroes. There was no university in Judea, although there was the power of a physical distinction, as a tribe, and in a civilization determined by physical conditions this power may again appear; in Rome, with the inheritance of Grecian thought, rights were not the rights of man, but of station, and so of man for a certain station.

There was not in Judea, nor Greece, nor Rome the recognition of the universal as an end, which, in its physical and historical and spiritual import is the characteristic of the modern world, and is involved in the principle which is the most powerful in modern civilization,— the unity of humanity. It was not until another age that there should come the institution of the university, with its always ampler development, although in it the work of the Hebrew and Greek and Roman was (even in the restoration of its fragments) to have an immortal renown, and to aid toward the attainment of a universal end.

I will not trace the rise and growth of the university in the Middle Ages. There had been schools of law and theology, but these were to train men for a special pursuit. The university can scarcely be dated earlier than the twelfth century. It arose, says Mr. Bain, — and the statement is significant, — “ in the separation of philosophy from theology,”and “ the foundation was in philosophy.” It is here to be noticed that it had its ground in the recognition of an object which was distinct from any and every special pursuit. The position was won against a specialty which had the oldest and widest claims. The University of Bologna became eminent in jurisprudence, as it yielded to the tendency of the Latin mind. But the University of Paris taught nothing except philosophy. From this as a centre, universities were organized in the greater towns of Italy and Germany, and at Oxford and Cambridge in England.

I can but briefly present the growth of the university in America. This has increasingly an intimate relation with the university in Europe, — in England, and France, and Germany, where, since the days when Fichte advised the foundation of the University of Berlin as a national institution, it has come to have a higher and ampler development. With the years the inter-communication will become more intimate, but the university in America will not be a copy. It will not be a reproduction of Oxford, or of Jena, or of Paris. Even in each university in America there will be a certain distinct character, and it will have the qualities of individuality. This will come increasingly with its higher organization. Smith will not be like Wellesley, nor Yale like Harvard. And I may add that the university in its higher form illustrates the power of organization. It is slowly attained. A Christian missionary said to me that the missions in the East would have been straitened, and in some instances abandoned, but for the support, in the financial crisis which followed the war, of the women’s missionary societies. The women, he said, learned from their work in the Sanitary Commission the power of organization. It gives one a better hope for the world that this power of organization should be born of charity.

With the beginning of the history of the United States, in the colonial age, there was the building of a school for learning. There was the tradition of an education which had another purpose than merely to serve special and private ends. The new Cambridge followed the old Cambridge, as that had sprung from the University of Paris. This was the germ. The first college was not to be merely a school to adapt a certain number of men to pursue more successfully their private ends and execute their selfish schemes, although, it is true, the first college was founded primarily as a training-school for a single profession ; it was a school of theology. This commemorated the piety of its founders ; it was the fulfillment of the love which called them. The purpose was carefully guarded, so that the freshmen studied Hebrew and the seniors geography. There was little attention given to the law. The early magistrates of the towns of the United States were few of them lawyers. They were a noble body of men, and they did their work well, but they shared Cromwell’s notion of the civil law when he pronounced it “ a tortuous and ungodly jungle.” They did believe in a righteousness which was at the foundation, and was manifest in the order of human society ; hence this, in the simple conditions of life in this early age, may have better served. It was not until a more varied civilization opened before the people that there was adjoined to the faculty of theology that of law and of medicine.

The university, then, was represented as an institution which had in one connection schools of theology, law, and medicine. This was very nearly the reproduction of the notion of the Middle Ages; but then it was found that these schools in local contiguity, existing in the same community, did not constitute a university, and it was sought to form some inter-relation between them which should be more than the institution of separate colleges of law, theology, and medicine on the same street or in the same city, where often they were in an attitude of distrust or indifference each toward the other. There was at the same time arising within the college itself a school with even narrower limits than that of law, or theology, or medicine, — a school of physics, which trained men to be surveyors, or engineers, or chemists, in the mechanic arts, in architecture, or even in veterinary surgery. These branches of instruction were sometimes formed into a separate school, but often, with a more confident assumption than the older professions, took possession of the college itself. It was conceived that in this there was the more perfect attainment of the object of a university. The studies which jostled each other for their places so confidently brought with them an ethics which was a mere utilitarianism, and a politics which was a mere secularism. Thus the university, with its vast endowments of charity, came to be regarded mainly as an institution which might better train a certain number of men for business. Thus, at last, the conception of the university itself has disappeared, and the isolated schools of law, theology, and medicine are measured against another, — the new-comer with stout shoulders and sturdy tread, though not very farsighted, who is disposed to identity the horizon with his own vision, and has obtained possession of the university itself. There may be in this certain transient advantages, but there are also more serious defects. It is, in fact, little more than the application of an atomic and mechanical theory to education, and we may come to look back upon this period as not very far from the barbarism of thought.

I pass now from this brief survey of its history to consider the object of the university. Is it for research ? Is it for invention and discovery ? This has been the object set forth in the most recent theories. There are to be endowments for research. The faculty is to be engaged in the invention of arts and in investigation. It is for experiment. The theory does not go so far as to regard the students themselves as objects of experiment. It does not, in fact, stop to think much about them, in its eager assertion that it has found the true object of the university to be research. Now, the attainment of new truth, the result of some single discovery, is of so great value to the world, it adds so largely to the material progress, and, through the material, to the spiritual progress of the race, that if this could be effected through the organization of any institution it would justify the amplest endowments. But there is an original element in the finest research, the spirit which sets sail for unknown seas, which is more than the investigation of a topic in history or the solution of a problem in mathematics, and this the university may impair as well as encourage. It can rightly only know its value in its fruits, and the university may well be slow to learn the wisdom of Hamlet, “ and, therefore, as a stranger give it welcome.” But while research may be held as some coign of vantage and is incidental to its object, it is yet not primarily its object. The object of the university here is to instruct the scholar in the best processes and methods; it is to qualify men for research; it is not itself for research. It is to furnish to its students the last and best results in every science; it is to give them the most perfect equipment for the widest research, and then to send them forth. But for the adventure of thought, for invention and discovery, the world is before them. The most that the university can do is to give them the facilities for instruction in every subject which, through the attainment of an ideal unity, can be formulated as a science.

But the university is not the world; it cannot rival the world. It can prepare the student for research, but it is only in limited lines that it can furnish the facilities and field for this. Thus there are certain lines of research which can be conducted only by the state, and can allow no other control. The wider research will increasingly fall under this direction. And the most advanced examples of it in the fields of nature and history have been apart from the university. The work of Darwin in the study of nature had in its inception — and it may be rightly, as an unfounded hypothesis—the support of no university. The must valuable studies in archæology, in the illustration of the Homeric poems, have been conducted against the theories of every university. The most extensive contribution to the study of Latin has been made in the new Latin dictionary by a scholar who has no connection with any university. If investigation be limited to the laboratory, no university can afford the means which are open in the arts and inventions of the world. There are in no university the means for research in these departments which are found iu the shops of Thomas Edison at Menlo Pai k and the Bessemer steel works, or the offices of the Western Union Telegraph Company ; and all the Bessemer steel works are subject to the constant study and experiment of the rare genius of the machinist, whose patents alone give to the works their great value and income. But I do not wish to carry this subject too far. I only desire to enforce the position that the most which a university can do is to bring to the student a process and method to qualify him for research.

It may be concluded, then, that the first object of a university is to educate the scholar, to discipline his mind in those studies which have an ideal end. There is an ideal end in every science. Thus there may be a science where design and thought, what Darwin calls “ the provisions of nature,” are manifest in their simplest form. There may be, for instance, a science of building a stonewall ; there can be no science of stoneheaps. It follows, then, that the object of the university is not to train men in specialties. This is the work of special schools, and these schools, in various forms, may advantageously be grouped around a university ; but they are not the university, and the end of the university is not attained in any one of these schools separately, nor in several of them, nor all of them together. The university is not to train men in those occupations which represent that which is necessary to subsistence in life, to aid in the production and distribution of that which is required for its material ends, but it is to keep before itself the realization of an ideal, in the larger life and freedom of thought in which man is lifted above necessity. It is the conscious apprehension of this purpose that alone enables men to become the leaders of society. The university is to train, not the helots of society, but the captains.

There is thus one study which is distinctively to be recognized in a university, and that is the study of human society, sociology, — the study of social institutions and laws and relations. This is illustrated in the noblest literature. The poems of Homer are of the utmost value for the study of archaic society. The plays of Shakespeare are of the highest use, not only in their profound apprehension of the laws which are at the foundation of society, but in the lessons we may learn from them of our relations to our neighbors. It is in human society that humanity attains the conscious recognition of a universal end, and therefore it becomes distinctively the study of the university. For society does not exist simply as a physical organism. It is this, and so much is ascertained and defined in the economy which deals with wants, with physical necessities, and with the organization of society for production and exchange. But it is also an ethical and a spiritual organism. Thus Homer and Shakespeare in their larger realism apprehend it, and only thus can the poets give to us any representation of it. A society in Leipsic recently offered a prize for an essay On those Ethical Conditions which are beyond Question in Human Society. But there is one condition which is beyond question, and that is that the ethical is inalienable ; without it society will fall to pieces.

There has been, it is to be noticed here, a change in the theory of evolution, which already has a history. At the outset, it was simply the evolution of force, in lines of necessity, and this was to determine economic and social conditions. To those who intimated that this was hard, the reply was that they were sentimental or idealistic. But latterly evolution has come to have a conception of an evolution of character, and of moral ideals, and through a moral organism, and in this human society is formed.

Again, the object of the university is the scholars. It is all adrift if it does not keep this constantly in view. There may be, with the increase of endowments, an imposing character and influence, but it will not go well if the scholars who are gathered to the university are not made to recognize the fact that it is for them. Vast and splendid, as we come to think of them, are the resources of Nature, — her endowments in the crystals that fill her caverns and the gold that veins her hills, in the trees that grow in limitless forests, the flowers and grasses of meadowlands; but Nature takes her foster-child, and from the first, in the reflective spirit of childhood itself, is saying to him, “All things are yours.”And from Nature, that seems to distrust sometimes the pedagogue, and does not respect him, the university may learn a lesson. The young scholar comes up from the country, where haply his early years have passed in that undisturbed growth in which, through the association with simple imagery, repose brings strength. The years upon the farm and the onlooking life of study in the village are closed as he is ushered into the university. There, the long and elaborate list of studies does not impress him very greatly. He is sure that he will come to know them, more or less ; he is sure that in geology there is nothing beyond the tilt of the rocks and the scarred cliffs that mark the line of the rivers and the trend of the hills at home; he is sure that botany can add no lustre to the flowers he gathered for some young girl with whom he walked through the meadows. He knows that he can read no poet whose measures are softer than are those of Virgil; he knows that in the humor, the tragedy, the life, the infinite variety, in the figures that come to him like the catastrophe in the old comedy, there is a subtle power which no grammarian can interpret. But apart from the list of studies which he is to pursue and the books he is to read, there is the university itself. He is awed as he gazes upon the long line of buildings, and passes through the spacious halls, or looks upon the storied wealth of the library or the museum. The affectation of familiarity or indifference which is often attractive to him, and constantly betrays itself, does not conceal his ignorance nor his admiration ; so that it may be long before he learns that simple truth which was the characteristic of Abraham Lincoln, who of all things could not endure that one should ever think he knew what he did not know. But the young scholar is impressed alike by the imposing buildings and the eminent men, representing so high attainment; he is awed by all the elements which have given to the university its renown ; he is often overborne by it. It comes in its vast organization to be regarded as a weight upon him, and not as existing to furnish stepping-stones for his advance. He is buried under it, and as with some living form imbedded in the rocks, it does not matter much how massive are the strata over it, or how imposing are the names they bear. So, it may be, not until his college course is nearly gone, that the young scholar comes to know, as he counts the time passed, that the university exists for him and his uses. It may be slowly that he learns that Harvard, for instance, exists for him, rather than he for Harvard. I recall a university which counts its library amongst its advantages ; but it has no directory to indicate the special excellences of its books. No effort is made to encourage or instruct any student in its uses. The faculty avail themselves of it, and are subject to no rule in its use, “ only to take as many books as they want, and keep them as long.” But the students come and go, while its costly possessions are known only to a few, although one of the constant aims of a university should be to teach a student how to use books and museums and libraries : these are his tools.

So, one of the first objects of the university is to enable the young scholar to know that the university is for the scholars, and not the scholars for the university. But it is slowly that we learn the law of human uses which pervades the highest forms. The institutions which are necessary to order and freedom have their fulfillment only in the order and freedom of man. The world has not known, the world will not know, an historical line and precedent so imposing as that which formed the ancient Temple; however, there was One who without concern, said, in looking on it,

“ Seest thou these great buildings ? There shall not be left one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down.” It was the witness that human society is the enduring temple.

I will notice now, as they give us the advantage of a side-light, some more obvious defects in the American university. The first is that its methods have been those of an abstract system, without adaptation to the conditions of life, and therefore have allowed neither breadth nor freedom. It has presumed an evolution, but through mechanical, and not vital, forces. Thus, the sentences to be construed as examples in an English school-book are fresh and interesting, when those in an American book are dry, — like the abstract laws in ethics or obvious remarks. So, the not verbose but stiff and forbidding character of the American books for the higher forms has been a constant subject of criticism by English writers. The brave architect who built the new college of science at Oxford filled the wide panel over the main doorway with the figures of owls and apes and parrots; it conveys a lesson never to be lost sight of.

The question is often discussed as to whether it would have been better had Shakespeare gone to the university. If it had been to spend four years with the study and construction of merely formal propositions and abstract systems, if it had been to spend four years with pedants, certainly not. If it had been to forget for one moment that real life is the great school, if it had been to overlook the fact that life is the book which we are to learn to read, certainly not. It would have been no gain to one who of his own education said, —

But we are coming to recognize that Shakespeare did not abide with ignorance ; that he laid every department of thought in his own age under contribution for his own work. He learned his art by the light of the stage lamps ; but in politics, in law, in history (and eminently in the history of his own country) were the subjects of his study; and then in his profound ethical spirit there was that ardent patriotism, which every university as it becomes national will cherish, which left him bereft by no weak cosmopolitanism, and was to find profound expression in those impassioned words which the pale abstractions and economic theories in politics wholly eliminate : —

For to talk about a national university is easy; to assume that it is national because it is located in a certain geographical position, that it is made national by noting the points of the compass, is easy ; but to be a national university,— that is difficult. It will be only as it is pervaded by a national spirit, and by its duties and obligations, and only so does it come to have in its life and purpose a universal aim.

Here again is the evidence that a university is not to train men for specialties, equipping each for greater success in the pursuit of his own private end in life, but it is to train men in those studies which bring before them the universal end. Thus it becomes a school in politics, and the true order and foundation of the family and the nation are subjects which it can avoid only as it fails of its own conscious aim and end, for they are involved in the ethical life of society.

There is another defect which I will name, — and it needs only to be named : it is the tendency to conform to the fashion in thought. It is simply to adopt what is going. It is the new book and the new hypothesis, not yet even formulated as a theory. This excludes that which has been tested and already come to have a permanent value. The young scholar grows restless. He is led to read the last new book, the last new poet. The editor of a university magazine told me that the larger number of papers offered for publication were on the prose writings of Arnold and the poetry of Morris and Rossetti ; not the prose of Milton, nor the poetry of Spenser, or Wordsworth, or Shelley. In the lecture room the student is engaged with new and improved theories. It is true that every age must write its own books and will have its own theories, but the first object of the university is to engage the student with the best books, and the knowledge of those principles which are to be held against all theories. The university which is swayed and moved by the latest fashion of thought in literature or history, or ethics or politics, need not complain of the restlessness of the age, nor that it is so agitated by the tumult of politics as to have no time to study the principles of politics.

Another defect, never to be wholly overcome, appears in the failure adequately and constantly to recognize moral ideals. I do not mean that it is servile towards social distinctions, or allows them to be recognized and perpetuated in the university, nor that it is obsequious ; but it should offer constantly the excellence of moral ideals, the excellence of truth and beauty. These should be maintained in their austerity. There is thus an ascetic element in all true methods of education. The ideals of truth and the moral excellence which it involves should be so strongly asserted that all social distinction which is based upon the circumstance of life would come to be held in indifference in comparison with them.

There is still another defect in the fact that the distinctions are often founded in a low conception of human nature. There is a constant appeal to emulation. There are certain relative positions in rank, described by the formal notions of rhetoric of some ancient grammarian, as orations, dissertations, or colloquies, and grades corresponding to those. But, to borrow a phrase from the arena, the neck-and-neck race of certain contestants through a course of four years is often a weak and pitiful exhibition, and not always justified by its results in actual life. It is singular that a scholar so observant as Mr. Spencer should have found the one subject for warning, in his study of the intellectual life of this country, in the tendency to overwork. But it is not restricted to mature life, and is a danger to be guarded against in schools and universities, with their eager ambition; in the long run it becomes a hindrance to the best work and the largest intellectual development. That the tendency to overwork is confined to a small section does not diminish the danger. So it is confined in the world, and in the university it is aggravated by the fact that often the work through these years is done within the limits of a mechanical system, which allows no elective action. There should be the means of instruction in every science, and when thought, through its application to facts, is formulated into a science, then to exclude it impairs in that measure the scope and fullness of a university. Its work is imperfectly done ; but the object still is discipline, and not the mere acquisition of information. It is not the mere accumulation of facts in learning, gathering them as so many pumpkins are gathered into a cart, hut it is the discipline of the mind, so that it will concentrate as in a crystal its clear light upon any subject.

The university in this representation becomes not more restricted, but larger in its scope. It is not itself to educate men for specialties, but it should aim to group about it schools of instruction in the various arts and professions : in theology and medicine and law, in mechanics, in architecture, in agriculture, in music, in sculpture, in painting, and in teaching and journalism, two professions which I name for their wide influence. To call them pedagogy and newspaper writing only illustrates the singular lack in the creative power of words in modern thought. But the university itself is not to be identified with any one of these schools, and the one rule which is to determine their institution is a strictly practical one : it is the measure in which they meet human wants and human uses. It is vain to found the most splendid school of agriculture, if there are not students who can make its uses serviceable, or if the farm shall be the better school ; to found the most complete school of trade and mechanics, when these can he better acquired on the exchange or in the shop. The law is simply practical ; and these schools may gather around the university. They are not to trespass on it, nor to subvert it to their ends. They should be sustained and cherished by it; and here also — and it is a rule of the first moment — it should give its chief aid to education in those pursuits which do not pay in proportion to their importance. Thus, it should foster the study of the school of architecture, of music, of sculpture. It should foster especially a study like astronomy. It was Comte who regretted the invention of the telescope, since it diverted the attention from the earth ; but it is interesting to notice how the world has been circled, by the governments of the world, to watch the transit of Venus, though the knowledge thus acquired could not affect the legislation of any congress, in any country.

But these schools, as I have said, do not, though they serve the uses and the arts of men, constitute the university.

The university is to train men in that larger freedom which will enable them to apprehend in all thought the universal end. It will cherish the names of eminence on its rolls, but they will have been trained in a culture too large to bear the imprint of a distinctive type. There will be no signature by which a graduate of one or another can be recognized. There are no patents in thought. There are, for truth, no trade-marks ; as an old writer said, " Buy the truth, and sell it not.” Thus, we do not care to ask at what university Chief - Justice Marshall graduated, — the first lawyer of the modern world, who, if it had been lost, out of his own thought might have rewritten the Magna Charta; and who can discover, by reading those marvelous romances, at what university Hawthorne was a graduate ? The question here arises, What is the relation of the education of the university to genius? It cannot produce genius, but it will respect it. It will allow no method which is alien to it. It will cherish and study its works, and strive to bring its scholars into their spirit and aim. While it has been given to no one man of genius, in his highest products, to represent humanity, his attainment is in the measure in which he advances toward that; and the study of the work of genius is consonant with the university. For there is no power so typical of our common humanity as genius. The charm in Shakespeare is that he knows common men and their lives; and genius is of the gens. It is the flower which has grown in better soil and been fed by ampler air, but of the same stock. It is this flower of humanity which alone discloses to us the genius itself.

One other question meets us here, though the answer has been already indicated,— as to the scope of the university. Is it to be solely the education of the intellect ? It is to be this, primarily ; this is to be involved in all its methods and aims. But it cannot, if it would, be this exclusively. We are done with the old analytic notions of the mind. There has followed a synthetic representation which alone is true. While the aim is the education of the intellect, there is also to be in connection with this the education of the affections and the education of the will. I do not mean that education is built on emotion ; better on principles. But the intellect is impaired by weak will and disturbed emotion. Hamlet was a scholar. There was infirmity of purpose. They say it was Ophelia’s fault. When Hamlet turned to her for sympathy and its marvelous support, she failed. But then, with her the mind, as Shakespeare shows us, was overborne, and education should bring the whole into harmonious action. The intellect is impaired and the best results in its activity prevented by infirmity of purpose and every defect of will; education is for life, and life itself is the great school, and as it is formed in the relations of the family and the nation, in all education there is to be the recognition of these relations.

Let me throw together some illustrations of these defects: one of pure and one of applied science, one of political tradition and one of political evolution.

Take in speculative thought the study of Aristotle, the one name which was to become most closely connected with the history of the university, and whose writings held its prophecy : the history itself is interesting, the way in which in one age he has been the teacher of the university, and in another his domination has been overthrown. But Dante calls him “ the master of those that know,” and Bain says “ he has been the educator of all Europe.” He is the eternal school-master. The one man who in the ancient world came nearest to the training of the university was his great scholar, Alexander, who traveled with a copy of the Iliad as his companion, and pursued research, and filled notebooks with the memoranda of science. But from Aristotle we have yet to learn. While some of his distinctions have served to confuse thought, others are of inestimable worth. The mere history of the intellectual development of Europe cannot be read without him. There is facility for the study of this master now in every university in Germany. Oxford, within recent years, has published three or four good books upon him. But every scholar knows that the study of Aristotle has not passed far beyond the work of the grammarian in any American university.

Take, again, in practical thought, the study of architecture. No people, within the same period, ever built so many buildings and with so good material as our own people; but we have had no school of architecture. The characteristic of our architecture has been the destitution of thought; and while some of our university buildings are excellent, the most are those by which one does not care to stay long. But a thorough course in Aristotle, or a school of architecture, cannot be founded at once. The architect, however, may learn from Aristotle that thought is a virtue, and ignorance wastes the wealth of Ormus or of Ind at barbaric cost.

Look at the study of political tradition. No people have ever had so noble a political tradition. The distinction of the civil corporation and the nation, the transition from a confederate to a national principle, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States are so great. Mr. Gladstone has said, " The Constitution is the greatest work ever produced, at one time, by the mind of man.” But, at the beginning of the war for the Union, the text-book most used was that of Mill, with his negative notions of liberty. So, again, perhaps, the most original mind the country has produced was that of Chief-Justice Marshall, — so great that he entered the Supreme Court when it was a mere form, and gave to it substance and content. Story said that he formed the law out of his own consciousness, saying, “ It must be so and so.” How great was the integrity of that mind ! So, too, Madison was a man of the highest philosophic genius in politics. Some of the most important statements in recent German political science are repetitions of the thought of Madison, though not said so well. But our universities fall adequately to present the work of these two men, though it may be said that it is only in the reflective periods which have followed the war that the greatness of the work of Marshall has been seen.

Consider, again, the study of political evolution. It is true this is open to the most varied presentation, but its importance in the education of those who are to lead the people justifies it. The subject which is prominent is the civil service reform. It is difficult to overstate its value. The great elections of the year have indicated the clear judgment and purpose of the people. The people are right, we said. They are an understanding people. But no one who, to use a figure, “ lays his ear to the ground ” can fail to notice that the subjects which the people are occupied with are the rise and growth of the great corporations. These attain necessary ends and are of necessary value, but are connected with unprecedented individual fortunes ; are hastening from precedent to precedent; retain the greatest lawyers ; arbitrate as to their territory ; and — I will not add counts to the indictment, but the people dread the growth of a power which they cannot see clearly the way to control. Here is the work for a leader. The study of institutions alone will justify attention, on the part of a university, to this subject in the political evolution.

The object, then, of the university is — the application of thought to life. We are to recognize with Aristotle that thought is a virtue, and the excellence attained by a nation, in every department, however wide apart, — in theology, in music, in architecture, in politics, — is in the measure in which this principle is recognized.

This object illustrates the true law of tradition. The university is to gather up all that is best, all that in thought is its best achievement, all that in science is its best attainment, and is to give them to its scholars. It is to make them “ heirs of all the ages.” The most that it can do is to give them all that is best in the inheritance of the past. They have not time in the university (if one is not always to live there) for hypotheses which are unformed, and not yet theories, and theories which are without evidence.

The inquiry now is open to us as to the method of education : Shall it allow any difference? shall it have one aim for men and another for women ? shall it admit a quantitative distinction ? Ruskin says, “ That is the best picture which gives to us the largest number of the greatest ideas.” Shall it then give to the one or the other fewer and smaller ideas? But we have no quantitative measures here. Light may be hid under bushels, but it cannot be put into them. Shall it differ, then, in its aim for men and women? But we have found that this aim is no specialty. It is the knowledge and realization, through all literature and art and in every science, of the ideal; in the larger sense the knowledge of the truth.

But does the ideal differ? does the truth differ? Is the ideal without unity ? is the truth at variance with itself ? As men and women look upon the same picture of the world, or read the same book, is it to reflect one idea to the one, and another idea to the other ? There can be, then, in this, no difference in education, none in its aim, none in its subjects, none in its spirit. But it may and should differ in its methods, for these, always in themselves imperfect, are of worth only in their application to life; and the older and, in a measure, the current systems are so abstract and formal, so strictly mechanical, that they miss wholly the one law of method in education, and that is adaptation to life. This demands that there should be brought to the application of methods the most careful and patient results of practice and use. It is tested by experience. The aim, then, is to give what is best in all the past, and the question of the best method is determined by adaptation to life, of which experience alone is the test.

But it is only with a qualification that I use the expression, the education of man or woman. There is beneath it the fallacy that would stop the moving world, and leave one hemisphere always in night. There is no ground for the phrase, the education of man or woman ; none for the rights of woman. The true and eternal ground for all rights and freedom is in the spiritual life and oneness of humanity. Apart from this there is no ground for rights, no recognition of duties. The true expression is of the education of humanity. In this there is the conception of the real universal, the fulfillment of the object of the university.

There is in this the dawning of the new world. The Galilean gospel — that which was called the gospel sixteen or seventeen, and it may be eighteen, centuries ago — has gone up to Jerusalem ; it will go to Athens and to Rome. There may be no regret, then, that the Temple is destroyed, that the Academy is closed, that no Parthenon or Colosseum longer represents the round world. The university is the witness to the building of that temple of humanity which alone is sacred ; it is the recognition of the truth of the Academy; but in a universal life and the conception of Rome, her institution of the totus orbis mundi has vanished in the coming of a larger world.

In this is the law of the education of humanity. It is the recognition of its ground in the human consciousness. As George Eliot has said, “ the conquest of modern speculation is that the world arises in consciousness.” These are the walls of the celestial city ; there is for a system of education no other boundaries.

It is the education which is founded on the human consciousness. It has, therefore, no cause to envy the Academy at Athens, or the Temple at Jerusalem, or the Forum at Rome. It is the coming of the light which is the life of the world. It is the dawning of a Christian civilization over the buried East.

Elisha Mulford.