The history of the University of Michigan might properly be said to begin in 1817. It is true that the University seal proclaims 1837 as the year of its birth, but the present institution is only a successor of two previous incarnations in Detroit, which were its direct predecessors. The State Supreme Court, in fact, held in 1856 that the corporate existence of the University began with the Act of the 26th of August, 1817, and has been continuous throughout all the subsequent changes of the organic law. It would be difficult, however, to recognize the present University in that curiosity of educational history established by the Act of 1817 under the sonorous title of the "Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania." This institution, in effect designed to be a university, was to be composed of thirteen _didaxiim_, or professorships, of such branches as _Catholepistemia_ or Universal Science, _Anthropoglossica_ or Literature, _Physiosophica_ or Natural Philosophy, _Polemitactica_ or Military Science, and _Ennoeica_ or Intellectual Sciences, which embraced all the _Epistimiim_ or "Sciences relative to the minds of animals, to the human mind, to spiritual existences, to the Deity, and to religion." It is worthy of note also that Chemistry, Medicine, and Political Economy were provided for under the names of _Chymia_, _Iatrica_, and _Oeconomica_. This scheme, which was prepared by Augustus B. Woodward, Presiding Judge of the territorial Supreme Court, went further than this provision for the University, however, for it contemplated as well a complete state educational system, with subordinate colleges, academies, schools, libraries, museums, athenaeums, botanical gardens, laboratories and "other useful literary and scientific Institutions consonant with the laws of the United States and of Michigan." These the President and the Didactors were to provide for, as well as for Directors, Visitors, Curators, Librarians, Instructors and "Instructrixes" throughout the various counties, cities, towns, townships, or other geographical divisions of Michigan. To support this grand scheme, the public taxes were to be increased fifteen percent, and a provision, which seems strangely unacademic to the college community of a century later, was made for four successive lotteries from which the Catholepistemiad might retain fifteen percent of the prizes for its own use. Two of these lotteries apparently were drawn.