The office and work of universities

Front matter

IS JJJt/

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

Chapter I. Introductory p. 1

II. What is a University ? 9

III. Site of a University 26

IV. University Life : Athens 49 V. Free Trade in Knowledge : The Sophists 70

VI. Discipline and Influence 90

VII. Influence : Athenian Schools 116 A7m. Discipline: Macedonian and Roman

Schools 136 EX. Downfall and Refuge of Ancient Civilization. The Lombards -"- 158 X. The Tradition of Civilization: The Isles

of the North 1 74 XI. A Characteristic of the Popes : St. Gregory the Great 196 XII. Moral of that Characteristic of the Popes:

Vlll CONTENTS.

XIII. Schools of Charlemagne : Paris p. 226

XIV. Supply and Demand : The Schoolmen 246 XV. Professors and Tutors 269

XVI. The Strength and Weakness of Universities : Abelard - 289 XVII. The Ancient University of Dublin 306 XVIII. Colleges the Corrective of Universities :

XIX. Abuses of the Colleges : Oxford 344 XX. Universities and Seminaries : 1' Ecole des

Hautes Etudes 361

UNIVERSITIES.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

I have it in purpose to commit to paper, time after time, various thoughts of my own, seasonable, as I conceive, when a Catholic University is under formation, and apposite in a publication,* which is to be the record and organ of its proceedings. An anonymous person, indeed, like myself, can claim no authority for anything he advances ; nor have I any intention of introducing or sheltering myself under the sanction of the Institution which I wish to serve. My remarks will stand amid weightier matters like the non-official portion of certain government journals in foreign parts ; and I trust they will have their use, though they are but individual

* The Catholic University Gazette.

in their origin, and meagre in their execution. When I say anything to the purpose, the gain is the University's ; when I am mistaken or unsuccessful, the failure is my own.

The Prelates of the Irish Church are at present engaged in an anxious and momentous task, which has the inconvenience of being strange to us, if it be not novel. A University is not founded every day; and seldom indeed has it been founded under the peculiar circumstances which will now attend its introduction into Catholic Ireland. . Generally speaking, it has grown up out of schools, or colleges, or seminaries, or monastic bodies, which had already lasted for centuries ; and, different as it is from them all, has been little else than their natural result and completion. While then it has been expanding into its peculiar and perfect form, it has at the same time been by anticipation educating subjects for its service, and has been creating and carrying along with it the national sympathy. Here, however, as the world is not slow to object, this great institution is to take its place among us without antecedent or precedent, whether to recommend or to explain it. It receives, we are told, neither illustration nor augury from the history of the past, and must needs he brought into being as well as into shape. It has to force its way abruptly into an existing state of things, which has never duly felt the absence of it; and it finds its most formidable obstacles, not in anything inherent in the undertaking itself, but in the circumambient atmosphere of misapprehension and prejudice into which it is received. Necessary as it may be, it has to be carried into effect in the presence of a reluctant or perplexed public opinion, and that, without any counterbalancing assistance whatever, as has commonly been the case with Universities, from royal favour or civil sanction.

This is what many a man will urge, who is favourable to the project itself, viewed apart from the difficulties of the time; nor can the force of such representations be denied. On the other hand, such difficulties must be taken for what they are really worth ; they exist, not so much in adverse facts, as in the opinion of the world about the facts. It would be absurd to deny, that grave and good men, zealous for religion, and experienced in the state of the country, have had serious misgivings on the subject, and have thought the vision of a Catholic University

INTRODUCTORY.

too noble, too desirable, to be possible. Still, making every admission on this score which can be required of me, I think it is true, after all, that our main adversary is to be found, not in the unfavourable judgments of particular persons, though such there are, but in the vague and diffusive influence of what is called Public Opinion. I am not so irrational as to despise Public Opinion ; I have no thought of making light of a tribunal established in the conditions and necessities of human nature. It has its place in the very constitution of society; it ever has been, it ever will be, whether in the commonwealth of nations, or in the humble and secluded village. But wholesome as it is as a principle, it has, in common with all things human, great imperfections, and makes many mistakes. Too often it is nothing else than what the whole world opines, and no one in particular. Your neighbour assures you that every one is of one way of thinking ; that there is but one opinion on the subject; and while he claims not to be answerable for it, he does not hesitate to propound and spread it. In such cases, every one is appealing to every one else ; and the constituent members of a community one by one think it their duty to defer and succumb to the voice of that same community as a whole.

It would be extravagant to maintain that this is the adequate resolution of the feelings which have for some time prevailed among us as to the establishment of our University ; but, so far as it is correct, this follows, viz. : that the despondency with which the project is regarded by so many persons, is the offspring, not of their judgment, but mainly (I say it, as will be seen directly, without any disrespect) of their imagination. Public Opinion especially acts upon the imagination ; it does not convince, but it impresses ; it has the force of authority, rather than of reason ; and concurrence in it is, not an intelligent decision, but a submission or belief. This circumstance at once suggests to us how we are to proceed in the case under consideration. Arguments are the fit weapons with which to assail an erroneous judgment, but statements and actions must be brought to bear upon a false imagination. The mind in that case has been misled by representations ; it must be set right by representations. It demands of us, not reasoning, but discussion. In works on Logic, we meet with a sophistical argument, the object of which is to prove that motion is impossible ; and it is not uncommon, before scientifically handling it, to suggest a practical refutation of it ; — Solvitur ambulando. Such is the sort of reply which I think it may be useful just now to make to public opinion, which is so indisposed to allow that a Catholic University of the English tongue can be set in motion. I will neither directly prove that it is possible, nor answer the allegations in behalf of its impossibility ; I shall attempt a humbler, but perhaps a not less efficacious service, in employing myself to the best of my ability, and according to the patience of the reader, in setting forth what a University is. I will leave the controversy to others ; I will confine myself to description and statement, concerning the nature, the character, the work, the peculiarities of a University, the aims with which it is established, the wants it may supply, the methods it adopts, what it involves and requires, what its relations to other institutions, and what has been its history. I am sanguine that my labour will not be thrown away, though it aims at nothing very learned, nothing very systematic ; though it should wander from one subject to another, as each happens to arise, and gives no promise whatever of terminating in the production of a book.

And in attempting as much as this, while I hope I shall gain instruction from criticisms of whatever sort, I do not mean to be put out by them, whether they come from those who know more, or those who know less than myself; — from those who take exacter, broader, more erudite, more sagacious, more philosophical views than my own ; or those who have yet to attain such measure of truth and of judgment as I may myself claim. I must not be disturbed at the animadversions of those who have a right to feel superior to me, nor at the complaints of others who think I do not enter into or satisfy their difficulties. If I am charged with being shallow on the one part, or off-hand on the other, if I myself feel that fastidiousness at my own attempts, which grows upon an author as he multiplies his compositions, I shall console myself with the reflection, that life is not long enough to do more than our best, whatever that may be; that they who are ever taking aim, make no hits; that they who never venture, never gain ; that to be ever safe, is to be ever feeble ; and that to do some substantial good,

8 INTRODUCTOBY.

the compensation for much incidental imperfection.

With thoughts like these, which, such as they are, have been the companions and the food of my life hitherto, I address myself to my undertaking.

CHAPTER IL

WHAT IS A UNIVERSITY t

If I were asked to describe as briefly and . popularly as I could, what a University was, I should draw my answer from its ancient designation of a Studium Generate, or " School of Universal Learning". This description implies the assemblage of strangers from all parts in one spot; — from all parts; else, how will you find professors and students for every department of . knowledge? and in one spot; else, how can there be any school at all? Accordingly, in its simple and rudimental form, it is a school of knowledge of every kind, consisting of teachers and learners from every quarter. Many things are * requisite to complete and satisfy the idea embodied in this description ; but such a University seems to be in its essence, a J)lace for the / communication and circulation of thought, by I means of personal intercourse, through a wide ' extent of country.

There is nothing far-fetched or unreasonable in the idea thus presented to us ; and if this be a University, then a University does but contemplate a necessity of our nature, and is but one' specimen in a particular department, out of many which might be' adduced in others, of a provision for that necessity. Mutual education, in a large sense of the word, is one of the great and incessant occupations of human society, carried on partly with set purpose, and partly not. One" generation forms another ; and the existing generation is ever acting and reacting upon itself in the persons of its individual members. Now, in this process, books, I need scarcely say, that is, the littera scripta, are one special instrument. It is true; and emphatically so in this age. Considering the 'prodigious powers of the press, and how they are developed at this time in the never-intermitting issue of periodicals, 'tracts, pamphlets, works in series, and light'literature, we must allow there never was a time which promised fairer for dispensing with every other means of information and instruction. What can we want more, you will say, for the intellectual education of the whole man, and for every man, than so exuberant and diversified and persevering a promulgation of all kinds of knowledge? Why, you will ask, need we go up to knowledge, when knowledge comes down to us? The Sybil wrote her prophecies upon the leaves of the forest, and wasted them ; hut here such careless profusion might be prudently indulged, for it can be afforded without loss, in consequence of the almost fabulous fecundity of the instrument which these latter ages have invented. We have sermons in stones, and books in the running brooks ; works larger and more comprehensive than those which have gained ancients an immortality, issue forth every morning, and are projected onwards to the ends of the earth at the rate of hundreds of miles a day. Our seats are strewed, our pavements are powdered, with swarms of little tracts ; and the very bricks of our city walls preach wisdom, by largely informing us where we can at once cheaply purchase it.

I allow all this, and much more; such certainly is the popular education, and its effects are remarkable. Nevertheless, after all, even in this age, when men are really serious about getting what, in the language of trade, is called "a good article", when they aim at something precise, something refined, something really luurinous, something really large, something choice, they go to another market; they avail themselves, in some shape or other, of the rival method, the ancient method, of oral instruction, of present communication between man and man, of teachers instead of teaching, of the personal influence of a master, and the humble initiation of a' disciple, and, in consequence, of great centres of pilgrimage and throng, which such a method of education necessarily involves. This, I think, will be found good in all those departments or aspects of society, which possess an interest sufficient to bind men together, or to constitute what is called "a world". It holds in the political world, and in the high world, and in the religious world ; and it holds also in the literary and scientific world.

If the actions of men may be taken as any test of their convictions, then we have reason for saying this, viz. : — that the province and the inestimable benefit of the littera scripta is that of being a record of truth, and an authority of appeal, and an instrument of teaching in the hands of a teacher ; but that, if we wish to become exact and fully furnished in any subject of teaching which is diversified and complicated, we must consult the living man and listen to his living voice. I am not bound to investigate the cause of this, and anything I may say will, I am conscious, be short of its full analysis ; — perhaps we may suggest, that no books can get through the number of minute questions which it is possible to ask on any extended subject, or hit upon the very difEculties which are respectively felt by each reader in succession. Or again, that no book can convey the special spirit and delicate peculiarities of its subject with that rapidity and certainty which attend on the sympathy of mind with mind, through the eyes, the look, the accent, and the manner, in casual expressions thrown off at the moment, and the unstudied turns of familiar conversation. But I am already dwelling too long on what is but an incidental portion of my main subject. Whatever be the cause, the fact is undeniable. The general principles of any study you may learn by books at home ; but the detail, the colour, the tone, the air, the life which makes it live in us, you must catch all these from those in whom it lives already. You must imitate the student in French or German, who is not content with his grammar, but goes to Paris or Dresden: you

14 •'WHAT IS A UNIVEKSITT?

must take example from the young artist, who aspires to visit the great Masters in Florence and in Rome. Till we have discovered some intellectual 'daguerreotype, which takes off the course of thought, and the form,' lineaments, and features of truth, as completely, and minutely, as the optical instrument produces the sensible object, we must come to the teachers of wisdom to learn wisdom ; we must repair to the fountain, and drink there. Portions may go from thence to the ends of the earth by means of books ; but the fulness is in one place alone. It is in such assemblages and congregations of intellect that books themselves, the master -pieces of human genius, are written, or at least originated.

The principle on which I have been insisting is so obvious, and instances in point so ready, that I should think it tiresome to proceed with the subject, except that one or two illustrations may serve to explain my own language about it, which may not have been as clear as the subject on which it has been employed.

For instance, the polished manners and highbred behaviour which are so difficult of attainment, and so strictly personal when attained which are so much admired in society, from society are obtained. All that goes to constitute , a gentleman, — the carriage, gait, address, gestures, voice; the ease, the self-possession, the courtesy, the power of conversing, the success in not offending ; the lofty principle, the delicacy of thought, the happiness of expression, the taste and propriety, the generosity and forbearance, the candour and consideration, the openness of hand ; — these qualities, some of them come by nature, some of them may be found in any rant, some of them are a direct precept of Christianity ; but the full assemblage of them, bound up in the unity of an individual character, do we expect they can be learned from; books? are they not necessarily acquired, where they are to be found, in high society? The very nature of the case leads us to say so ; you cannot fence without an antagonist, nor challenge all comers in disputation before you have supported a thesis ; and in like manner, it stands to reason, you cannot learn to converse till you have the world to converse with; you cannot unlearn your natural bashfulness, or awkwardness, or stiffness, or other besetting deformity, till you serve your time in some school of manners. "Well, and is' it not so in matter of fact? The ' metropolis, the court, the great houses of the land, are the centres to which at stated times the country comes up, as to shrines of refinement and good taste ; and then in due time the country goes back again home, enriched with a portion of those social accomplishments, which those very visits serve to call out and heighten in the gracious dispensers of them. We are unable to conceive how the "gentlemanlike" can otherwise be maintained; and maintained in this way it is.

And now a second instance : and here too I am going to speak without personal experience of the subject I am introducing. I admit I have not been in Parliament, any more than I have figured in the beau monde; yet I cannot ^but think that statesmanship, as well as high breeding, is learned, not by books, but in certain centres of education. If it be not presumption 1 to say so, Parliament puts a clever man au courant with politics and affairs of state in a way surprising to himself. A member of the Legislature, if tolerably observant, begins to see things with new eyes, even though his views undergo no change. Words have a meaning now, and ideas a reality, such as they had not before. He hears a vast deal in public speeches If and private conversation, which is never put into print. The bearings of measures and events, the action of parties, and the persons of friends and enemies, are brought out to the man who is in the midst of them with a distinctness which the most diligent perusal of newspapers will fail to throw around them. It is access to the fountain-heads of political wisdom and experience, it is daily intercourse, of one kind or another, with the multitude who go up to them, it is familiarity with business, it is access to the contributions of fact and opinion thrown together by many witnesses from many quarters, which does this for him. However, I need not account for a fact, to which it is sufficient to appeal; that the Houses of Parliament and the atmosphere around them are a sort of University of politics.

As regards the world of science, we find a remarkable instance of the principle which I am illustrating, in the periodical meetings for its advance which have arisen in the course of the last twenty years, such as the British Association. Such gatherings would to many persons appear at first sight simply preposterous. Above all subjects of study, Science is conveyed, is

propagated, by books, or by private teaching;

experiments and investigations are conducted in

I silence ; discoveries are made in solitude. What i » •

have philosophers to do with festive celebrities,

and' panegyrical solemnities with mathematical and physical truth ? Yet on a closer attention ^ to the subject, it is found that not even scientific thought can dispense with the suggestions, the instruction, the stimulus, the sympathy, the intercourse with mankind on a large scale, which such meetings secure. A fine time of year is chosen, when days are long, skies are bright, the earth smiles, and all nature rejoices; a city or town is taken by turns, of ancient name or modern opulence, where buildings are spacious and hospitality hearty. The novelty of place and circumstance, the excitement of strange, or the refreshment of well-known faces, the majesty of rank or of genius, the amiable charities of men pleased both with themselves and with each other ; the elevated spirits, the circulation of thought, the curiosity ; the morning sections, the outdoor exercise, the well-furnished, wellearned board, the not ungraceful hilarity, the evening circle; the brilliant lecture, the discussions or collisions or guesses of great men one with another, the narratives of scientific processes, of hopes, disappointments, conflicts, and successes, the splendid eulogistic orations; these and the like constituents of the annual celebration, are considered to do something real and substantial for the advance of knowledge

o

which can be done in no other way. Of course they can but be occasional: they answer to the annual Act, or Commencement, or Commemoration of a University, not to its ordinary condition ; but they are of a University nature ; and I can well believe in their utility. They issue in the promotion of a certain living and, as it were, bodily communication of knowledge from one to another, of a general interchange of ideas, a comparison and adjustment of science with science, of an enlargement of mind, intellectual and social, of an ardent love of the particular study, which may be chosen by each individual, and a noble devotion to its interests.

Such meetings, I repeat, are but periodical, iand only partially represent the idea of a University. The bustle and whirl which are their usual concomitants, are in ill keeping with the order and gravity of earnest intellectual education. We desiderate the means of instruction without the interruption of our ordinary habits; nor need we seek it long, for the natural course of things brings it about, while we debate over it. In every great country, the metropolis itself becomes a sort of necessary University, whether we will or no. As the chief city is the seat of the court, of high society, of politics, and of law, so as a matter of course is it the seat of letters also ; and at this time, for a long term of years, London and Paris are in fact and in operation Universities, though in Paris its famous University is no more, and in London a University scarcely exists except as a board of management. The newspapers, magazines, reviews, 'journals, and periodicals of all kinds, the publishing trade, the libraries, museums, and academies there found, the learned and scientific societies, necessarily invest it with the functions of a University ; and that atmosphere of intellect, which in a former age hung over Oxford or Bologna or Salamanca, has, with the change of time, moved away to the centre of civil government. Thither come up youths from all parts of the country, the students of law, medicine, and the fine arts, and the employes and attaches of literature. There they live, as chance determines; and they are satisfied with their temporary home, for they find in it all that was promised to them there. They have not come in vain, as far as their own object in coming is concerned. They have not learned any particular religion, but they have learned their own particular profession well. They have, moreover, become acquainted with the habits, manners, and opinions of their place of Tsojourn, and done their part in maintaining the tradition of them. We cannot then be without virtual Universities; a metropolis is such : the simple question is, whether the education sought and given should be based on principle, formed upon rule, directed to the highest ends, or left to the random succession of masters and schools, one after another, with a melancholy waste of thought and an extreme hazard of truth.

Religious teaching itself affords us an illustration of our subject to a certain point. It does not indeed seat itself merely in centres of the world ; this is impossible from the nature of the case. It is intended for the many, not the few ; its subject-matter is truth necessary, not truth » recondite and rare ; but it concurs in the principje of a University so far as this, that its great instrument, or rather organ, has ever been that which nature prescribes in all education, the personal presence of a teacher, or, in theological'* language, Oral Tradition. It is the living voice, the breathing form, the expressive countenance, which preaches, which ' catechises. Truth, a subtle, invisible, ' manifold spirit, is poured into the mind of the scholar by his eyes and ears, through his affections, imagination, and reason ; it is poured into his mind and is sealed up there in perpetuity, by propounding and repeating it, by questioning and requestioning, by correcting and explaining, by progressing, and then recurring to first principles, by all those ways which are implied in the word " catechising". In the first ages, it was a work of long time ; months, sometimes years, were devoted to the arduous task of disabusing the mind of the incipient Christian of its "pagan errors, and of moulding it upon the Christian faith. , The Scriptures indeed were at hand for the study of those who could avail themselves of them; but St. Irenasus does not hesitate to speak of whole races, who had been converted to Christianity, without being able to read them. To be unable to read or write was in those times no evidence of want of learning: the hermits of the deserts were, in this sense of the word, illiterate; yet the great St. Antony, though he knew not letters, was a match in disputation for the learned philosophers who came to try him. Didymus again, the great Alexandrian theologian, was blind. The ancient discipline, called the Disciplina Arcani, involved the same principle. The more sacred doctrines of Revelation were not committed to books, but passed on by successive tradition. The doctrines of the Blessed Trinity and the Eucharist appear to have been so handed down for some hundred years ; and when at length reduced to writing, they have filled many folios, which after all have left much unsaid.

But I have said more than enough in illustration ; I end as I began ; — a University is a place of 'concourse, whither students come from every quarter for every kind of knowledge. You cannot have the best of every kind everywhere ; you must go to some great city or emporium for it. There you have all the choicest productions of nature and art all together, which you find each in its own separate place elsewhere. All the riches of the land, and of the world, are carried up thither ; there are the best markets, and there the best workmen. It is the centre of trade, the supreme court of fashion, the umpire of rival skill, and the standard of things rare and precious. It is the place for seeing galleries of first-rate pictures, and for hearing wonderful . voices and miraculous performers. It is the place for great preachers, great orators, great nobles, great statesmen. /In the nature of things^ greatness and unity go--together ; excellence implies a centre. Such, then, for the third or fourth time, is a University ; I hope I do not weary out the reader by repeating it. It is the place to which a thousand schools make contributions ; in which the intellect may safely range and speculate, sure to find its equal in some antagonist activity, and its judge in the tribunal of truth. It is a place where inquiry is pushed forward, and discoveries verified and perfected, and rashness rendered innocuous, and error exposed, by the collision of mind with mind, and knowledge with knowledge. It is the place where the professor becomes eloquent, and a missionary and preacher of science, displaying it in its most complete and most winning form, pouring it forth with the zeal of enthusiasm, and lighting up his own love of it in the breasts of his hearers. It is the place where the catechist makes good his ground as he goes, treading in the truth day by day into the ready memory, and wedging and tightening it into the expanding reason. It is a place which attracts the affections of the young by its fame, wins the judgment of the middle-aged by its beauty, and rivets the memory of the old by its associations. (It_is_a_ seat of wisdom, a light of the world, a minister of the faith, an Alma Mater of the rising generation. It is this and a great deal more, and demands a somewhat better head and hand than mine to describe it well.