From The
Idea of a University
. . . If then a practical end must be assigned to a
University course, I say it is that of training good
members of society. Its art is the art of social life,
and its end is fitness for the world. It neither confines
its views to particular professions on the one hand, nor
creates heroes or inspires genius on the other. Works
indeed of genius fall under no art; heroic minds come
under no rule; a University is not a birthplace of poets
or of immortal authors, of founders of schools, leaders
of colonies, or conquerors of nations. It does not
promise a generation of Aristotles or Newtons, of
Napoleons or Washingtons, or Raphaels or Shakespeares,
though such miracles of nature it has before now
contained within its precincts. Nor is it content on the
other hand with forming the critic or the experimentalist,
the economist or the engineer, though such too it
includes within its scope. But a University training is
the great ordinary means to a great but ordinary end; it
aims at raising the intellectual tone of society, at
cultivating the public mind, at purifying the national
taste, at supplying true principles to popular enthusiasm
and fixed aims to popular aspiration, at giving
enlargement and sobriety to the ideas of the age, at
facilitating the exercise of political power, and
refining the intercourse of private life. It is the
education which gives a man a clear conscious view of his
own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them,
an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging
them. It teaches him to see things as they are, to go
right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought, to
detect what is sophistical, and to discard what is
irrelevant. It prepares him to fill any post with credit,
and to master any subject with facility. It shows him how
to accommodate himself to others, how to throw himself
into their state of mind, how to bring before them his
own, how to influence them, how to come to an
understanding with them, how to bear with them, He is at
home in any society, he has common ground with every
class; he knows when to speak and when to be silent; he
is able to converse, he is able to listen; he can ask a
question pertinently, and gain a lesson seasonably, when
he has nothing to impart himself; he is ever ready, yet
never in the way; he is a pleasant companion, and a
comrade you can depend upon; he knows when to be serious
and when to trifle, and he has a sure tact which enables
him to trifle with gracefulness and to be serious with
effect. He has the repose of a mind which lives in itself,
while it lives in the world, and which has resources for
its happiness at home when it cannot go abroad. He has a
gift which serves him in public, and supports him in
retirement, without which good fortune is but vulgar, and
with which failure and disappointment have a charm.
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