mind the most independent and dissimilar; and to give full
play to thought and erudition in their most original forms,
and their most intense expressions, and in their most ample
circuit. Thus to draw many things into one, is its special
function ; and it learns to do it, not by rules reducible to
writing, but by sagacity, wisdom, and forbearance, acting
upon a profound insight into the subject-matter of knowledge,
and by a vigilant repression of aggression or bigotry in any
quarter. 20
"Ibid., p. 457.
Ibid., p. 458.
238 EDUCATION
What an empire is in political history, such is a University
in the sphere of philosophy and research. It is, as I have
said, the high protecting power of all knowledge and science,
of fact and principle, of inquiry and discovery, of experiment
and speculation; it maps out the territory of the intellect,
and sees that the boundaries of each province are religiously
respected, and that there is neither encroachment nor sur-
render on any side. It acts as umpire between truth and
truth, and, taking into account the nature and importance
of each, assigns to all their due order of precedence. It main-
tains no one department of thought exclusively, however ample
and noble ; and it sacrifices none. It is deferential and loyal,
according to their respective weight, to the claims of litera-
ture, of physical research, of history, of metaphysics, of theo-
logical science. It is impartial towards them all, and pro-
motes each in its own place and for its own object. 21
The sum of the work of a university on its human
side may be said to be that :
Liberal Education makes not the Christian, not the Catho-
lic, but the gentleman. It is well to be a gentleman, it is
well to have a cultivated intellect, a delicate taste, a candid,
equitable, dispassionate mind, a noble and courteous bearing
in the conduct of life; these are the connatural qualities
of a large knowledge ; they are the objects of a University. 22
In one of the greatest of all passages of litera-
ture Newman sums up the purpose and service of a
university in his interpretation of a gentleman :
id., p. 459.
Ibid., p. 120.
ACCORDING TO JOHN NEWMAN 239
It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say he is one
who never inflicts pain. This description is both refined and,
as far as it goes, accurate. lie is mainly occupied in merely
removing the obstacles which hinder the free and unembar-
rassed action of those about him; and he concurs with their
movements rather than takes the initiative himself. His bene-
fits may be considered as parallel to what are called com-
forts or conveniences in arrangements of a personal nature:
like an easy chair or a good fire, which do their part in dis-
pelling cold and fatigue, though nature provides both means
of rest and animal heat without them. Thn true gentleman
in like manner carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or
a jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast ; all clash-
ing of opinion, or collision of feeling, all restraint, or suspi-
cion, or gloom, or resentment; his great concern being to
make every one at their ease and at home. He has his eyes
on all his company ; he is tender towards the bashful, gentle
towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd ; he can
recollect to whom he is speaking ; he guards against unseason-
able allusions, or topics which may irritate; he is seldom
prominent in conversation, and never wearisome. He makes
light of favours while he does them, and seems to be receiv-
ing when he is conferring. He never speaks of himself except
when compelled, never defends himself by a mere retort, he
has no ears for slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing
motives to those who interfere with him, and interprets every-
thing for the best. He is never mean or little in his dis-
putes, never takes unfair advantage, never mistakes person-
alities or sharp sayings for arguments, or insinuates evil
which he dare not say out. From a long-sighted prudence,
he observes the maxim of the ancient sage, that we should
ever conduct ourselves towards our enemy as if he were one
240 EDUCATION
day to be our friend. He has too much good sense to be
affronted at insults, he is too well employed to remember
injuries, and too indolent to bear malice. He is patient, for-
bearing, and resigned, on philosophical principles; he sub-
mits to pain, because it is inevitable, to bereavement, because
it is irreparable, and to death, because it is his destiny. If
he engages in controversy of any kind, his disciplined in-
tellect preserves him from the blundering discourtesy of
better, perhaps, but less educated minds; who, like blunt
weapons, tear and hack instead of cutting clean, who mistake
the point in argument, waste their strength on trifles, mis-
conceive their adversary, and leave the question more in-
volved than they find it. He may be right or wrong in his
opinion, but he is too clear-headed to be unjust; he is as
simple as he is forcible, and as brief as he is decisive. No-
where shall we find greater candour, consideration, in-
dulgence : he throws himself into the minds of his opponents,
he accounts for their mistakes. He knows the weakness of
human reason as well as its strength, its province and its
limits. If he be an unbeliever, he will be too profound and
large-minded to ridicule religion or to act against it; he
is too wise to be a dogmatist or fanatic in his infidelity. He
respects piety and devotion; he even supports institutions
as venerable, beautiful, or useful, to which he does not assent ;
he honours the ministers of religion, and it contents him to
decline its mysteries without assailing or denouncing them.
He is a friend of religious toleration, and that, not only be-
cause his philosophy has taught him to look on all forms of
faith with an impartial eye, but also from the gentleness
and effeminacy of feeling, which is the attendant on civili-
zation. 23
a lbid., pp. 208-210.
ACCORDING TO JOHN NEWMAN 241
A liberal education, the giving of which is the
peculiar and beautiful purpose of a university,
represents activity of the intellectual forces of
man. With charming irony Newman discourses on
securing such an education without money and
without the price of toil.
Learning is to be without exertion, without attention, with-
out toil ; without grounding, without advance, without finish-
ing. There is to be nothing individual in it; and this, for
sooth, is the wonder of the age. What the steam engine does
with matter, the printing press is to do with mind; it is to
act mechanically, and the population is to be passively, almost
unconsciously enlightened, by the mere multiplication and
dissemination of volumes. Whether it be the school boy, or
the school girl, or the youth at college, or the mechanic in
the town, or the politician in the senate, all have been the
victims in one way or other of this most preposterous and
pernicious of delusions. Wise men have lifted up their voices
in vain; and at length, lest their own institutions should be
outshone and should disappear in the folly of the hour, they
have been obliged, as far as they could with a good conscience,
to humour a spirit which they could not withstand, and make
temporizing concessions at which they could not but inwardly
smile. 2 *
And yet learning is not to be made a mechanical
process, but an unconscious growth and vital ab-
sorption of forces.
"Ibid., pp. 142-143.
242 EDUCATION
I protest to you, Gentlemen, that if I had to choose be-
tween a so-called University, which dispensed with residence
and tutorial superintendence, and gave its degrees to any
person who passed an examination in a wide range of sub-
jects, and a University which had no professors or examina-
tions at all, but merely brought a number of young men
together for three or four years, and then sent them away as
the University of Oxford is said to have done some sixty years
since, if I were asked which of these two methods was the
better discipline of the intellect, mind, I do not say which
is morally the better, for it is plain that compulsory study
must be a good and idleness an intolerable mischief, but if
I must determine which of the two courses was the more
successful in training, moulding, enlarging the mind, which
sent out men the more fitted for their secular duties, which
produced better public men, men of the world, men whose
names would descend to posterity, I have no hesitation in
giving the preference to that University which did nothing,
over that which exacted of its members an acquaintance with
every science under the sun. 25
In this educative process, the learned cardinal
gives an exalted place to religion. Eeligion repre-
sents the greatest thoughts which influence or in-
struct the mind and the noblest emotions which fill
the heart. To persons who are said to be unedu-
cated religion seems often to give an enlargement
of the mind which is nothing less than a liberal
Ibid., p. 145.
ACCORDING TO JOHN NEWMAN 243
education. The new birth of the heart produces
an intellectual new birth.
It is often remarked of uneducated persons, who hitherto
have lived without seriousness, that on their turning to God,
looking into themselves, regulating their hearts, reforming
their conduct, and studying the inspired Word, they seem
to become, in point of intellect, different beings from what
they were before. Before, they took things as they came,
and thought no more of one thing than of another. But
now every event has a meaning; they form their own esti-
mate of whatever occurs; they recollect times and seasons;
and the world, instead of being like the stream which the
countryman gazed on, ever in motion and never in prog-
ress, is a various and complicated drama, with parts and with
an object. 26
The education which is given by religion, or
which is given in the atmosphere of the institutions
of religion, is still to be free and liberal. Ward
quotes a remark of the cardinal made in his first
university sermon in Dublin, to the effect :
Some persons will say that I am thinking of confining, dis-
torting, and stunting the growth of the intellect by ecclesi-
astical supervision. I have no such thought. Nor have I
any thought of a compromise, as if religion must give up
something, and science something. I wish the intellect to
range with the utmost freedom, and religion to enjoy an
equal freedom; but what I am stipulating for is, that they
""Oxford University Sermons," p. 285.
244 EDUCATION
should be found in one and the same place, and exemplified
in the same persons. I want to destroy that diversity of cen-
tres which puts everything into confusion by creating a con-
trariety of influences. I wish the same spots and the same
individuals to be at once oracles of philosophy and shrines of
devotion. I want the intellectual layman to be religious, and
the devout ecclesiastic to be intellectual. 271
Newman believes that the Catholic church should
have colleges for its own members. The Dublin
experiment, even though it proved to be a failure,
testifies to the sincerity of his deep conviction.
As to Oxford and Cambridge, it is quite plain that the
Church ought to have Schools (Universities) of her own.
She can in Ireland she can 't in England, a Protestant coun-
try. How are you to prepare young Catholics for taking
part in life, in filling stations in a Protestant country as Eng-
land, without going to the English Universities? Impossi-
ble. Either then refuse to let Catholics avail themselves of
these privileges, of going into Parliament, of taking their
seat in the House of Lords, of becoming Lawyers, Commis-
sioners, etc. etc. or let them go there, where alone they will
be able to put themselves on a par with Protestants. Argu-
ment the 1st.
2. They will get more harm in London life than at Oxford
or Cambridge. A boy of 19 goes to some London office, with
no restraint he goes at that age to Oxford or Cambridge,
and is at least under some restraint.
3. Why are you not consistent, and forbid him to go into
"Ward's "Life of," etc., Vol. I., p. 395.
ACCORDING TO JOHN NEWMAN 245
the Army? why don't you forbid him to go to such an
"Academy" at Woolwich? He may get at Woolwich as
much harm in his faith and morals as at the Universities.
4. There are iwo sets at Oxford. What Fr. B. says of
the good set being small, is bosh. At least I have a right
to know better than he. What can he know about my means
of knowledge? I was Tutor (in a very rowing College, and
was one of those who changed its character). I was Dean
of discipline I was Pro-proctor. The good set was not a
small set tho' it varied in number in different colleges. 28
Literature, moreover, as well as religion, bears a
close relation to the higher education. Of litera-
ture, in a characteristic passage, this master of
style says :
If a literature be, as I have said, the voice of a particular
nation, it requires a territory and a period, as large as that
nation's extent and history, to mature in. It is broader and
deeper than the capacity of any body of men, however gifted,
or any system of teaching, however true. It is the exponent,
not of truth, but of nature, which is true only in its elements.
It is the result of the mutual action of a hundred simultaneous
influences and operations, and the issue of a hundred strange
accidents in independent places and times; it is the scanty
compensating produce of the wild discipline of the world
and of life, so fruitful in failures; and it is the concen-
tration of those rare manifestations of intellectual power
which no one can account for. It is made up, in the particular
language here under consideration, of human beings as
76td, VoLII., p. 70.
246 EDUCATION
heterogeneous as Burns and Bunyan, De Foe and Johnson,
Goldsmith and Cowper, Law and Fielding, Scott and Byron.
The remark has been made that the history of an author
is the history of his works; it is far more exact to say that,
at least in the case of great writers, the history of their works
is the history of their fortunes or their times. Each is,
in his turn, the man of his age, the type of a generation,
or the interpreter of a crisis. He is made for his day, and his
day for him. Hooker would not have been, but for the exist-
ence of Catholics and Puritans, the defeat of the former and
the rise of the latter; Clarendon would not have been with-
out the Great Rebellion ; Hobbes is the prophet of the reaction
to scoffing infidelity; and Addison is the child of the Revo-
lution and its attendant changes. If there be any of our
classical authors, who might at first sight have been pro-
nounced a University man, with the exception of Johnson,
Addison is he; yet even Addison, the son and brother of
clergymen, the fellow of an Oxford Society, the resident of
a College which still points to the walk which he planted,
must be something more, in order to take his place among
the Classics of the language, and owed the variety of his
matter to his experience of life, and to the call made on his
resources by the exigencies of his day. The world he lived in
made him and used him. While his writings educated his
own generation, they have delineated it for all posterity after
him. 29
In the appreciation of literature, and also as
helpful in writing, Newman made some notes in
the year 1868. They are perhaps no less useful in
""The Idea of a University," p. 311.
ACCORDING TO JOHN NEWMAN 247
1916 and for general purposes, though they were
made primarily on the writing of sermons:
1. A man should be in earnest, by which I mean he should
write not for the sake of writing, but to bring out his
thoughts.
2. He should never aim at being eloquent.
3. He should keep his idea in view, and should write sen-
tences over and over again till he has expressed his mean-
ing accurately, forcibly, and in few words.
4. He should aim at being understood by his hearers or
readers.
5. He should use words which are likely to be understood.
Ornament and amplification will come spontaneously in due
time, but he should never seek them.
6. He must creep before he can fly, by which I mean that
humility which is a great Christian virtue has a place in lit-
erary composition.
7. He who is ambitious will never write well, but he who
tries to say simply what he feels, what religion demands,
what faith teaches, what the Gospel promises, will be elo-
quent without intending it, and will write better English than
if he made a study of English literature. 30
In this relation it may not be amiss to quote his
remark in respect to the hardship he found in his
own writing. The remark illustrates the old truth
that hard writing makes easy reading.
If I had my way I should give myself up to verse-making;
it is nearly the only kind of composition which is not a
"Ward's "Life of," etc., Vol. II., p. 335.
248 EDUCATION
trouble to me, but I have never had time. As to my prose
volumes, I have scarcely written any one without an external
stimulus; their composition has been to me, in point of pain,
a mental childbearing, and I have been accustomed to say
to myself: "In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children." 31
Thus writes Newman of the nature of the human
reason as touched by the liberalizing force of edu-
cation. His interpretations are among the most
moving ever given to the mind of a man to offer
to his fellows. Education, he says, further, is a
social process. His objections, therefore, to soli-
tary self -education are weighty, and it may be
added, timely:
Nay, self-education in any shape, in the most restricted
sense, is preferable to a system of teaching which, professing
so much, really does so little for the mind. Shut your Col-
lege gates against the votary of knowledge, throw him back
upon the searchings and the efforts of his own mind; he
will gain by being spared an entrance into your Babel. Few
indeed there are who can dispense with the stimulus and
support of instructors, or will do anything at all, if left to
themselves. And fewer still (though such great minds are
to be found), who will not, from such unassisted attempts,
contract a self-reliance and a self-esteem, which are not only
moral evils, but serious hindrances to the attainment of
truth. And next to none, perhaps, or none, who will not
be reminded from time to time of the disadvantage under
* Ibid., p. 204.
ACCORDING TO JOHN NEWMAN 249
which they lie, by their imperfect grounding, by the breaks,
deficiencies, and irregularities of their knowledge, by the
eccentricity of opinion and the confusion of principle which
they exhibit. They will be too often ignorant of what every
one knows and takes for granted, of that multitude of small
truths which fall upon the mind like dust, impalpable and
ever accumulating ; they may be unable to converse, they may
argue perversely, they may pride themselves on their worst
paradoxes or their grossest truisms, they may be full of their
own mode of viewing things, unwilling to be put out of their
way, slow to enter into the minds of others ; but, with these
and whatever other liabilities upon their heads, they are likely
to have more thought, more mind, more philosophy, more true
enlargement, than those earnest but ill-used persons, who are
forced to load their minds with a score of subjects against an
examination, who have too much on their hands to indulge
themselves in thinking or investigation, who devour premiss
and conclusion together with indiscriminate greediness, who
hold whole sciences on faith, and commit demonstrations to
memory, and who too often, as might be expected, when their
period of education is passed, throw up all they have learned
in disgust, having gained nothing really by their anxious
labours, except perhaps the habit of application. 32
In Newman, the ecclesiastic, the scholar, the
writer, the educationist, are united apparently con-
tradictory principles and methods of thought. A
cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, he yet was
for a time a rector of the University of his Church
and as rector was obliged to secure for young men
""The Idea of a University," pp. 148-149.
250 EDUCATION
a rational point of view of the fundamental disci-
plines, of scholarship, and of learning. Noble were
the pleas and strong the arguments which this
ecclesiastic made for intellectual freedom within
academic walls. He sought in practice and in writ-
ing to reconcile scientific research with theological
development. He wished to create in the same
personalities able thinkers and loyal Roman Cath-
olic believers. He sought within the same academic
hall to erect the altar of faith and the chemical
laboratory. He desired to create and to nurture a
religious education which should be liberal and
liberalizing to the minds of the students, and also
to promote a liberal education which should con-
firm their belief in the traditions and doctrines of
his historic Church. He tried to do what many
today would declare cannot be done. But his inter-
pretations of the educational and religious condi-
tions attending his endeavors are full of meaning,
and his whole conception of the nature and func-
tions, of the purposes and results, of that educa-
tional process is pregnant with lasting lessons to
the mind and the conscience of man.
VIII
EDUCATION ACCORDING TO GOETHE
GOETHE was the most universal mind of his
time and his time was long and significant
and one of the universal minds of any period. His
is a unique place like that belonging to Leonardo
da Vinci and Bruno. If one does not feel quite
free to apply to him the words which are applied to
Socrates in the last paragraph of Phaedo, "the
wisest, justest and best of all the men whom I have
ever known," one can at least say that his was one
of the most human and humanistic lives lived in all
the centuries.
The main currents of Goethe 's development were
fed by three great springs, the Greek, the Chris-
tian, and the modern search for natural truth and
law. From the first came his serenity, from the
second his joy, and from the third, his rapture in
revelation. Natural law he held to be divine law.
Pursuing the middle course in life, he was free
from the fantastic and eccentric, and he embodied
the moderation which lies between original un-
251
252 EDUCATION
restrained nature, and the artificial restricted life
of man. The light of wisdom burned for him
throughout his journey. He had a clear eye for the
concrete, the actual, the living. Truth and duty
rested over him and his great career as a nimbus.
The universality of his relationship emerges in
the place of his birth as well as in more personal
conditions and forces. Frankfort in the year 1749
and the years following his birth was a mediaeval
fortress, treasuring the memorials of the Middle
Ages, yet being a center of commerce and of indus-
trialism. The ancient and the modern were joined
together in peaceful picturesqueness. The ancient
storks still looked down from their gables upon the
affairs of modern mercantile life.
The home, too, united diverse conditions. It was
a German home in its origin, yet the husband and
the father had lived in Italy and the house in pic-
ture and other memorial bore evidences of his resi-
dence in that historic peninsula. It was, moreover,
a home of simple competencies standing midway
between poverty and wealth. It represented the
Aristotelian golden mean in which are gathered up
the most enduring results, and the most inspiring
forces, of human achievement and personal char-
acter.
ACCORDING TO GOETHE 253
The age as well as the place was significant. It is
not without meaning, that, in the year of Goethe's
birth, Rousseau was arguing with the encyclopae-
dists, Gibbon was trying to master the grammar of
the people whose history he was to write, Johnson
was making his dictionary, and Buff on published
the first volume of his natural history.
But it is still more significant that within the
greatest period of his life, in the last decades of the
eighteenth, and the first of the nineteenth, century,
are united the rise and the fall of Napoleon. In
this period are seen finally the close of the middle
ages, and the ultimate dissolution of the Holy
Roman Empire. It was also the period of the rise
of the transcendental movement in philosophic in-
terpretation. It was the age of Kant, who, in his
provincial university of Koenigsberg, rubbed off
the dimness of the vision of philosophy and gave
to it a new outlook and inlook, and a consequent
new life. It was the age of Fichte, of the Von