Our curriculum is one of the completest in the country, or perhaps
anywhere. By the happy thought of the Senatus of Marischal College, in
1753, you have a fundamental class (Natural History) not existing in the
other colleges. You have a fair representation of the three great lines
of science--the Abstract, the Experimental, and the Classifying. When it
is a general education that you are thinking of, every scheme of option
is imperfect that does not provide for such three-sided cultivation of
our reasoning powers. A larger quantity of one will no more serve for
the absence of the rest than a double covering of one part of the body,
will enable another part to be left bare.
VOLUNTARY EXTENSION OF THE BASIS.
Your time in the Arts' curriculum is not entirely used up by the
classes. You can make up for deficiences in the course, when once you
have formed your ideal of completeness. For a year, or two after
graduating, while still rejoicing in youthful freshness, you can be
widening your foundations. The thing then is, to possess a good scheme
and to abide by it. Now, making every allowance for the variation of
tastes and of circumstances, and looking solely to what is desirable
for a citizen and a man, it is impossible to refuse the claims of
the department of Historical and Social study. One or two good
representative historical periods might be thoroughly mastered in
conjunction with the best theoretical compends of Social Philosophy.
[THE WELL-INSTRUCTED MAN.]
Farther, the ideal graduate, who is to guide and not follow opinion,
should be well versed in all the bearings of the Spiritual Philosophy of
the time. The subject branches out into wide regions, but not wider than
you should be capable of following it. This is not a professional study
merely; it is the study of a well-instructed man.
Once more. A share of attention should be bestowed early on the higher
Literature of the Imagination. As, in after life, poetry and elegant
composition are to be counted on as a pleasure and solace, they should
be taken up at first as a study. The critical examination of styles, and
of authors, which forms an admirable basis of a student's society,
should be a work of study and research. The advantages will be many and
lasting. To conceive the exact scope and functions of the Imagination in
art, in science, in religion, and everywhere, will repay the trouble.
THE ARTS' GRADUATE IN LITERATURE.
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