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
content to serve their generation, to promote the interests of religion,
to recommend truth, and to edify their brethren to-day, though their names
are to have little weight, and their works are not to last much beyond
themselves.
5.
And now having shown what it is that a Catholic University does not think
of doing, what it need not do, and what it cannot do, I might go on to
trace out in detail what it is that it really might and will encourage and
create. But, as such an investigation would neither be difficult to
pursue, nor easy to terminate, I prefer to leave the subject at the
preliminary point to which I have brought it.
Lecture IV.
Elementary Studies.
It has often been observed that, when the eyes of the infant first open
upon the world, the reflected rays of light which strike them from the
myriad of surrounding objects present to him no image, but a medley of
colours and shadows. They do not form into a whole; they do not rise into
foregrounds and melt into distances; they do not divide into groups; they
do not coalesce into unities; they do not combine into persons; but each
particular hue and tint stands by itself, wedged in amid a thousand others
upon the vast and flat mosaic, having no intelligence, and conveying no
story, any more than the wrong side of some rich tapestry. The little babe
stretches out his arms and fingers, as if to grasp or to fathom the
many-coloured vision; and thus he gradually learns the connexion of part
with part, separates what moves from what is stationary, watches the
coming and going of figures, masters the idea of shape and of perspective,
calls in the information conveyed through the other senses to assist him
in his mental process, and thus gradually converts a calidoscope into a
picture. The first view was the more splendid, the second the more real;
the former more poetical, the latter more philosophical. Alas! what are we
doing all through life, both as a necessity and as a duty, but unlearning
the world’s poetry, and attaining to its prose! This is our education, as
boys and as men, in the action of life, and in the closet or library; in
our affections, in our aims, in our hopes, and in our memories. And in
like manner it is the education of our intellect; I say, that one main
portion of intellectual education, of the labours of both school and
university, is to remove the original dimness of the mind’s eye; to
strengthen and perfect its vision; to enable it to look out into the world
right forward, steadily and truly; to give the mind clearness, accuracy,
precision; to enable it to use words aright, to understand what it says,
to conceive justly what it thinks about, to abstract, compare, analyze,
divide, define, and reason, correctly. There is a particular science which
takes these matters in hand, and it is called logic; but it is not by
logic, certainly not by logic alone, that the faculty I speak of is
acquired.
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