This spirit of freedom, which has been almost wrenched, one might say, from many of the institutions of higher learning, is occasionally found to have swayed the hearts of earlier educators. One reads with keen relish the history of the founding of the University of Virginia, the moving spirit of which was Thomas Jefferson. The reader will be interested in a paragraph by Boone:— “As early as 1779, while the ‘Old Dominion,’ with her sister States, was embroiled in a doubtful war; and again in 1814, after numerous defeats and constant opposition from the already-established William and Mary College, from the Protestant churches, and from most of the political leaders of the time, Mr. Jefferson and his friends sought to provide for the state, along with the general system of education, a university, in which should be taught in the highest degree, ‘every branch of knowledge, whether calculated to enrich, stimulate, and adorn the understanding, or to be useful in the arts and practical business of life.’ Five years later (1819) an act of the Assembly was obtained establishing the University of Virginia. When six years later it was opened, after a wide acquaintance and careful study of the most progressive institutions in the United States, it was found that in discipline and instruction, in constitution and means, it very materially differed from them all.”[168] [Sidenote: Freedom from other objectionable features] The far-reaching sight of the chief promoter of the enterprise is seen when we note wherein lay this very material difference. “There is one practice,” wrote Mr. Jefferson, “from which we shall certainly vary, although it has been copied by nearly every college and academy in the United States; that is, the holding of the students all to one prescribed course of reading, and disallowing exclusive application to those branches only which are to qualify them for the particular vocation to which they are destined. We shall, on the contrary, allow them uncontrolled choice in the lectures they shall choose to attend, and _require elementary_ qualifications only, and sufficient age.”[169] This was a wonderful step for the time in which it occurred, and indicates the direction given to minds of men by the Spirit of God. The greater freedom occasioned by the adoption of the elective system is felt throughout the educational centers of our land. Johns Hopkins University grants the degree of B.A. in four out of six of its courses without the classics. This leads us, however, to a consideration of the question suggested several pages back, _What subjects can of right be taught in schools supported from the public funds?_ [Sidenote: Should the state support the school]