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
I am now going to attempt a philosophical answer to this representation,
that is, to the project of teaching secular knowledge in the University
Lecture Room, and remanding religious knowledge to the parish priest, the
catechism, and the parlour; and in doing so, you must pardon me,
Gentlemen, if my subject should oblige me to pursue a lengthy and careful
course of thought, which may be wearisome to the hearer:—I begin then
thus:—
2.
Truth is the object of Knowledge of whatever kind; and when we inquire
what is meant by Truth, I suppose it is right to answer that Truth means
facts and their relations, which stand towards each other pretty much as
subjects and predicates in logic. All that exists, as contemplated by the
human mind, forms one large system or complex fact, and this of course
resolves itself into an indefinite number of particular facts, which, as
being portions of a whole, have countless relations of every kind, one
towards another. Knowledge is the apprehension of these facts, whether in
themselves, or in their mutual positions and bearings. And, as all taken
together form one integral subject for contemplation, so there are no
natural or real limits between part and part; one is ever running into
another; all, as viewed by the mind, are combined together, and possess a
correlative character one with another, from the internal mysteries of the
Divine Essence down to our own sensations and consciousness, from the most
solemn appointments of the Lord of all down to what may be called the
accident of the hour, from the most glorious seraph down to the vilest and
most noxious of reptiles.
Now, it is not wonderful that, with all its capabilities, the human mind
cannot take in this whole vast fact at a single glance, or gain possession
of it at once. Like a short-sighted reader, its eye pores closely, and
travels slowly, over the awful volume which lies open for its inspection.
Or again, as we deal with some huge structure of many parts and sides, the
mind goes round about it, noting down, first one thing, then another, as
it best may, and viewing it under different aspects, by way of making
progress towards mastering the whole. So by degrees and by circuitous
advances does it rise aloft and subject to itself a knowledge of that
universe into which it has been born.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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