Without debating the details, we may say that
this Faculty should always be representative of the needs of our
intelligence, both for the professional and for the extra-professional
life; it should not be of the shop, shoppy. The University exists
because the professions would stagnate without it; and still more,
because it may be a means of enlarging knowledge at all points. Its
watchword is Progress. We have, at last, the division of labour in
teaching; outside the University, teachers too much resemble the Regent
of old--having too many subjects, and too much time spent in grinding.
Our teachers are exactly the reverse.
Yet, there cannot be progress without a sincere and single eye to the
truth. The fatal sterility of the middle ages, and of our first and
second University periods, had to do with the mistake of gagging men's
mouths, and dictating all their conclusions. Things came to be so
arranged that contradictory views ran side by side, like opposing
electric currents; the thick wrappage of ingenious phraseology arresting
the destructive discharge. There was, indeed, an elaborate and
pretentious Logic, supplied by Aristotle, and amended by Bacon; what was
still wanted was a taste of the Logic of Freedom.
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