may acquire all that knowledge of geography and arithmetic, and history which is fitted for his years and which will be useful in the transaction of the ordinary business of after life. When the higher faculties begin to dawn and the years of reflection are coming in, he is then to be transferred to an institution which will guide him into the paths of science and introduce him into that world of principles from which he is to derive, if he ever does, high moral and intellectual power, and make himself a strong man among men. Colleges and Common Schools are therefore not to be opposed to each other. Each has its own proper work to do. The one cannot do the work of the other, and even if it could, yet boyhood cannot receive the instruction of opening manhood, and calm and reflective manhood craves a more profound learning than that which satisfies inquisitive and acquisitive boyhood. The two are not independent of each other like two different machines, but are living members of the same body, and therefore the one cannot say to the other, "I have no need of thee," nor can the other say to the one, "I have no need of thee."

Colleges are thus a standing evidence of the validity of the distinction between scientific and practical knowledge. Their aim is to give an education which will develop the mind itself, irrespective (for the time being) of the uses which may be made of learning, knowing that if there only be produced within the youth the power to work, the occasions and the incitements to exercise it will not be wanting in a world that is full of work. And they do this not so much by imparting an amount of separate facts of which immediate use may be made, as by awakening the mind of the young man to the recognition of first truths in the various departments of learning. It cannot be too carefully remembered that a collegiate, or liberal education, differs from what is called a common education by its having more than the latter can, the powers of the individual the mind itself in its eye. Its object is not mainly to furnish the mind with enough to meet daily wants, but to fill it with power and to ground it in principles as a reserved fund upon which to draw at any time and during all time. It is a mistake to suppose that that only is useful knowledge of which an immediate and palpable use can be made in the acquisition of wealth, or in providing for the daily wants of the body. This is indeed useful, but it is not enough for all the exigencies of this life even, and it surely is not enough for those of the life to come. When revolutions in human affairs break out, when States are to be founded, when institutions that are to affect the progress of the race are to be established, when laws are to be made when in short the primary and foundation-work depending upon primary and fundamental truths is to be done, then the liberal education shows itself

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to be the useful education. In these trying times the reserved fund of mental power and clear intuition of principles may be drawn upon and its untold worth be seen in the origination of a great instrument like the American Constitution, or in the start of a great idea like that of popular liberty which is to work through masses of men with superhuman power.1

We say then that if the distinction between the knowledge of principles and the knowledge of facts is an important one, the preservation of the distinction and the foundation of a particular sort of education upon it are still more important. Moreover, unless the current information of society is kept moving and alive by the presence and the power of a system of liberal education, and by those who are yearly coming out fresh from the contact with science and principles, it speedily diminishes in amount, and loses the vitality it once possessed, and society sinks down into barbarism. The reign of barbarism began in Greece when the liberal education of its young men fell into the hands of the sophists who substituted the denial and disputation of first principles for that clear and profound enunciation of them which characterized an elder day. When this class of public teachers appeared there was a great amount of useful knowledge current in Grecian society, but it soon betrayed the lack of that vigor which arises from the diffusion of correct principles in politics and morals and which had kept it fresh and healthy, and not many years elapsed before this whole mass of current and common information was found to be utterly powerless towards the preservation and glory of the State when threatened by Philip, and crumbled away like some noble shaft that has been struck with the saprot.

Neither let it be supposed that by making and preserving the distinction between a common and a liberal education any injury is done to useful and practical knowledge. It is only by the maintenance and widest possible diffusion of scientific learning, that this common everyday knowledge arises and is current; for the common information of society is nothing more nor less than the fine and diffusive radiance of a more substantial and profound culture. This light, spreading and penetrating in all directions, is an effluence from a ball of solid fire. All this general and practical information which distinguishes an enlightened from a savage, or (though civilized yet) ignorant state of society —

'For some excellent thoughts upon the relation of scientific to popular knowledge, see an article upon Theology by Ullmann in the Studien und Kritiken for 1849. The truly fruitful effort for the people and popular life, he says, is not merely the direct and immediate effort, but the thorough cultivation also of all those departments of knowledge whose results cannot pass over into common life except at second-hand and by radiation.

which distinguishes England and the United States from Africa and South America, did not grow up spontaneously from the earth; is not the effect of a colder climate or a harder soil. It has been exhaling for centuries from colleges and universities - it has been distilling for ages from the alembic of the scholar's brain.

The condition of society at any one given time, must be looked upon as the total result of past institutions. It is false and absurd to assume that the present form of things started into being in a twinkling, and is totally unconnected with what has gone before. This is true of all that enters into the idea of social existence, but it is emphatically true of the general state of information. And if we would know why there is at this present moment such a great amount of intelligence among the descendants of English colonists, and such an entire absence of intelligence among the descendants of Spanish colonists on this western continent, we have only to remember that the English brought over books and built churches and founded colleges simultaneously, while the Spaniards did no such thing, but attempted to found and perpetuate State governments, and to rear up society upon the current maxims of worldly and selfish policy. If when Hernando Cortez subjugated Mexico to the Spanish crown and provided for the colonization of that region, he had laid such foundations for national existence and growth as were laid by the Puritans, and that population for three centuries had been feeling the vigor of just principles in social intercourse, in legal arrangements, in government and religion, it would not be the ignorant and powerless mass it is. If he had provided for the investigation of the principles of knowledge, and for raising up a body of thoughtful and wise men, leading and powerful spirits, like those who planned and acted in the great emergency in our history, would not have been wanting in her hour of national trial.

II. And this leads us to notice a second way whereby the higher institutions of learning keep scientific and popular knowledge in connection, and thus elevate and improve the whole body of the people in a commonwealth. And this is by constantly sending out into society professional men.

Most of the members of the three professions are college graduates, and the few who have raised themselves to posts of honor and usefulness by their own resolute and private study, are no testimony against the fact that professional influence is based upon scientific knowledge. These few instances only go to show that if there is a fixed determination, a man may overcome all obstacles, and may become an eminent physician, jurist or divine, not because of the want of direct aid from the higher institutions of learning, but in spite of that want. And even

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these do not acquire their knowledge entirely independent of universities. Even these must have access to a library of old books which one, with some degree of truth, has asserted to be the true university, and which at any rate is the expression of the thought and research of universities.

It may be said, therefore, without fear of contradiction, that professional life and influence grows out of collegiate education, and can grow from no other root. And if we would estimate the effect upon society of the decline and fall of the higher literary institutions, we must first estimate the effect of the entire removal from among us of the physician, the lawyer and the clergyman, and of the entire destruction of the three great sciences of medicine, law and theology. It is a forcible saying of Cicero, that the Athenian State could no more be sustained and regulated without that grave and venerable court, the Areopagus, than the world could be sustained and regulated without the Providence of God. With greater truth and force it may be affirmed that modern society might as easily be kept in prosperous existence without the Providence of God, as without the presence and pervading power of those professions whose province it is to investigate and expound natural, civil, judicial and religious truths, for they are themselves one of the most benignant of Divine Providences.

But we shall perhaps be able to form a more correct estimate of the worth of professional men, and consequently of those institutions which train them up, by an examination of the business and influence of each class separately.

1. It is the business of the physician to study the nature and laws of life, especially of animal life, and still more especially of human life, that he may understand the causes of disease and death. It is also his business to study material nature, that he may know the various elements that enter into it, and their relation to the chief practical purposes of his profession, viz. the preservation of health and the cure of disease. Setting aside, therefore, the palpable and immediate benefit which the individual derives from the medical man as he stands by his bed-side, there is an amount of information put in currency by him, which ministers much to that general cheerfulness and absence of anxious apprehensions, which, like fresh breezes and bright sun-shine, contributes much to the physical well-being of society. The investigations and influence of the medical profession, rid community of that superstitious dread with respect to the strange processes of nature and the wonderful functions of animal life, which indeed in its highest intensity is to be found only in savage society, but which in its milder but nevertheless most fearful form, marks the history of ages highly educated in

other branches of knowledge, but ignorant of this because its cultivation had not kept pace with that of the other. For example, whole communities in Europe during the middle ages were often set in a tremor by natural phenomena that would not startle the child of the present day, because the ignorant imagination of the age filled the (mysterious it is true, yet) beautiful and harmless world of vegetable and animal life with malignant powers and horrible spirits. And had there been as much general information regarding the science of medicine, as there was regarding those of law and theology among the early inhabitants of New England, that most strange and awful chapter in its history which records the story of the Salem witchcraft would be wanting. The gloom and horror (a gloom and horror which could not have been thicker and deeper if the world of evil spirits had really been let loose upon men) that hung over that community like a black cloud, could not possibly be made to throw its shadow across the present generation, not surely because it is morally better or wiser than its holy fathers, but because the strange marvels of animal organization and nervous excitement have been traced to causes originating in that "God who is light, and in whom there is no darkness at all."

2. It is the business of the jurist to study the principles of lawthe science of justice. This science stands beside that of religion, and has very profound and close affinities with it. So very nearly are these two sciences connected, that history shows that where clear and correct views of the one have prevailed, clear and correct views of the other have also prevailed. In proportion as a community is possessed of a deep sense of the sacred nature of justice, it is possessed of a correspondingly profound sense of the solemn nature of religion.

The cause of this lies in the fact that justice, which is the substance and staple of law, is the most fundamental of all fundamentals, whether the being of the Creator or of creation is contemplated. Justice is the deepest of all the "deep things of God," underlying his whole Godhead, and "forming the equilibrium of the Divine character." Even mercy, an attribute which is sometimes supposed to be the very contrary of justice, and in necessary incompatibility with it, derives from it its very essential nature—its mercifulness. Mercy shows its distinguishing quality, its real peculiarity only in the light and flame of law, and no man has ever known and felt the mercy of his God, until he has first known and felt what his God might in justice do unto him.

Again the idea of justice is a constituent of man's being, and if, owing to his fall and corruption, the positive sense of justice is often slumbering, the negative side of the idea, the sense of injustice, of being wronged, is one of the quickest and keenest of which he is conscious.