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
But I must bring these extracts to an end. To-day I have confined myself
to saying that that training of the intellect, which is best for the
individual himself, best enables him to discharge his duties to society.
The Philosopher, indeed, and the man of the world differ in their very
notion, but the methods, by which they are respectively formed, are pretty
much the same. The Philosopher has the same command of matters of thought,
which the true citizen and gentleman has of matters of business and
conduct. 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, of 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
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