The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of DublinNewman, John Henry
Religion
The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin
Newman, John Henry
Education, Higher; Universities and colleges
Instances, such as these, confirm, by the contrast, the conclusion I have
already drawn from those which preceded them. That only is true
enlargement of mind which is the power of viewing many things at once as
one whole, of referring them severally to their true place in the
universal system, of understanding their respective values, and
determining their mutual dependence. Thus is that form of Universal
Knowledge, of which I have on a former occasion spoken, set up in the
individual intellect, and constitutes its perfection. Possessed of this
real illumination, the mind never views any part of the extended
subject-matter of Knowledge without recollecting that it is but a part, or
without the associations which spring from this recollection. It makes
every thing in some sort lead to every thing else; it would communicate
the image of the whole to every separate portion, till that whole becomes
in imagination like a spirit, every where pervading and penetrating its
component parts, and giving them one definite meaning. Just as our bodily
organs, when mentioned, recall their function in the body, as the word
“creation” suggests the Creator, and “subjects” a sovereign, so, in the
mind of the Philosopher, as we are abstractedly conceiving of him, the
elements of the physical and moral world, sciences, arts, pursuits, ranks,
offices, events, opinions, individualities, are all viewed as one, with
correlative functions, and as gradually by successive combinations
converging, one and all, to the true centre.
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