Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1871-08-04

cannot persuade myself that We Of to-day can
YORK in this field with a spirit essentially diher-
emit from theirs, and yet be right. The human
mind. the subject Of all culture, is still the same;
the truth, the instrument of culture, IS essen
italy the same intelligence and virtue, Inc en-.
Of all discipline, sre eternally the same am
with whatever wisdom, enterprise and iathiu'-
ness we may prosecute our work, We can never
hone to excel theirs They were progressive
men, most Of them /; lioera-minded men all
bopeful Of new ideas, and hospitsble to all re
forms. And vet it is not to be disguised
that this University today presents a
somewhat different front to the world from that
which they reared that its future IN our hopes
and aims is not precisely the future for which
they shaped H. ilave we really cut loose from
them. and are we cruising in new direction
steering by another star, or have we only al
yaucst with the accelerated speed sf all modern
[ movements. in the course on which they startei
US. so that our departure is the measure OF our
nrogress If Marsh and Wheeler, Smith, fease
and Torrey the men who made the University
what il has been, were to come among US To-Day
would they upbrai1 US for our f2ith.essness 10
the principles which they lsb0red to establish
here. or would they bid Us G0d-speet on the
way which We have marked outt l would
fain believe that what we call the Old anu the
new in education are continuous. not contra1ic-
tory-that the idea Of liberal culture which
grew 10 with modern Christian civilization IN
the Universities and learned societies OF Europe,
which was transported along with cur fathers
inheritance in all the fruits Of literature,
learning and piety, 70 the Universities and C0i-
leges Of he New World which in those old in
situations in England and Germany, as IN our
Younger and youngest institutions IN the east
he iaErg
Of devotion TO the highest interests Of truth
and Of mani would fsin hope that it is this
same Interchangeable Christian idea, modified only
in form and expression, which has wrought
and is working these changes in this University &,
and in every vigorous institution Of learning IN
both hemispheres l will not disguise II from
you, that We who n0E occupy the chairs CT the
Marshes, Beneiicts and Torreys OF the old re-
CINE, are in cordial sympathy with the new
IDEAS which the University has Sttiliated, Snd
vet | should rejoice to fee to-day that the man
lie and a double portion Of the spirit Of the cid
prophets we're resting upon US.
IT, therefore, one who had sat AZ the feet Of
Thomas Arnold. or Cornelius FELTON,, or James
Marsh, should desire 10 know why any depsr-
ture al al was necessary from the system which
had coufesseily produced the ripest scholars
and abest men the world has yet seen, we viii
not answer him by any evssiye aPpeals to the
spirit Of the age for scholarship should not
psnder but give tone and direction to the spirit
Of the age nor by surrendering the principle
ever to he maintained which distinguishes
liberal from merely professional educstion
least Of all by depreciating, in the airy tone Of
Chancellor Lowe and the wiseacres who have
echoed him. that old collegiate system which
has achieved such splendid results, not only in
scholarship, but in literature, EtatesmAnship,
invention and every other high enterprise Of hui
man genius. We snswer him deferentsly and
yet confidently thus. The very principle on
which that plan OF education was based, Itself
demanded and itself has brought the changes
which that plan has undergone. For what has
always been the constitutive principle Of 4 lib
eral education, if not this-to subject
the mind to the educating power Of vSri-
Gus studies, and indeed 60 far as
possible to the influence Of 81 studies, in order
first to libersize it, and secondly 10 enable it to
ind its own select sphere Of action, Whenever
the mind learns a new science, it gets new or
gan, and the original aim Of liberal education
was TO endow q man with all the organs or in
struments Of power which all the sciences could
give him-and that rot with the fool-hardy aim
Of attaining omnisceuce in orler to attain ON
impotence, but that each man might DO his best
by learning his utmost for it was understood
then as well as now, that such an education,
in the happy Phrase Of Ruskin. would be " the
discerner not the equalizer OF men," The great
University system of Europe established be-
tween the 18th and 18th centuries, aimed TO
teach everything then movable. 9mRe sci5iie.
Il was no, until the Catholic spirit Of this old
system had been los,, that oxford and Cam
bridge were narrowed down TO mere schools in
philoiogy aud pure mathematics, and that ex-
elusive Cerberesn spirit arose which so long
kept the Principia out Of Cambridge and Ply
sizes out Of Oxford. Then the world beheld the
not unusual spectacle Of the linesl descendants
Of an Intellectual system cOntending as for life
ITSELF against the very principle on which the
system was founded. We have but come back
TO the true idea Of University culture. forced
thereto it must be confessed by the unsppessa-
bic demands of modern science For by what
right cas- system Of education whose funds
mental principle it is to uphold all truth in its
due relations, refuse to give a very large promi-
nence to a department OF truth so important
and productive as physical science? If now
this is conceded, and if the University course
must open TO receive the natural sciences, the
circle becomes 50 greatly enlarged as to be no
longer compasssble by any one mind. The
time was when man might in some fair sense
be said to be capable Of mastering all knowl-
edge. Such men as Bacon, Milton and Leibnitz
did carry with them, within the compass of one
brain, the Srgest and best part Of ell the knowl-
edge man had attained. To come nearer still
to our own times when Peel. Macauay and
Gladstone carried of st their graduation what
are known in England double frsts, the dis
tinction was understood to imply that they had
explored, not to say cultivated, the whole field Of
knowledge But in the University of today, =
triple or qusdruple first would be beyond the
capacity even Of . Msca1lsy or Whewll.
With the modern sdsro,ion to specialities. the
number Of the sciences has become so multiplied
and the learning has so rapidly accumulated in
each science, that suoh universal scholarship is
no longer sttsinable.
Now in this changed state Of
things, what is the part of wise,
staunch and yet liberal and progressive Institu-
ton of learning! Shall it keep on in its old way
and remand the new sciences to schools of their
own? That would leave in the college s set Of
men who would have been literally educated for
the 18th century but are not for the 19th-snd
would give US in the scientific schools q set Of
men not literally educated at all, mere learned,
dogmatic, conceited specialists. Shall we then
redistribute the time of pupiage so as to re-
tain little for every branch Of study both old
and new What would give us a set of men not
educated at all. generation Of sciOlists and
smatterers The solution to which We 10 com
mon with the best European and American col
leges have come, is to group studies into courses
in such a way as to give something Of that gen
erAl culture, without which education is not lib
eral, along with that special and exhaustive
pursuit OF some one branch Of study, without
which education can no longer be thorough
This is the work to which this College five years
L. ffaI g.
cessful shaping Of which the credit is msinly
due to the ability, wisdom and scholarly faith OF
my predecessor in oii,e If. at that critical
formative period in the history Of this institu-
ton, the controlling mind in its counsels had
been one Of less breadth of culture on the one
hand Of less practical good sense on the other,
the University might have lost its golden op-
portunity and its good name among the institu-
tons Of the land. Whether or not other col
leges, in the changes to which they have sub
mitted, have kept this idea Of liberal education.
clearly aud constantly before them, we certainly
have. We never intended to encourage that
psltry kind of practical education which is
mere apprenticeship to trade, and which leaves
the mind all undeveloped and immature. We
did intend, while giving that broad liberal cul-
ture which makes a man the citizen Of all
realms and heir Of all the gathered wealth Of
the ages, to enable him to choose wisely that
one department in which he WAS to labor, to
master the special science which underlies his
chosen art, and thus to be literally educated
man in practical life. Instead of the old theory
that all minds are constituted alike, and there
fore that like training would easily adjust it.
self to all the slight variations Of individual
minds theory which was somewhat dogmstic
and not true to the facts Of the csse-we have
gone upon the theory that as all minds are essen
tally alike, there are some studies which tend to
expand, vivify and liberalize all alike. and