ccidental advantage,
which is ours to-day and another's to-morrow, which may be got up from a
book, and easily forgotten again, which we can command or communicate at
our pleasure, which we can borrow for the occasion, carry about in our
hand, and take into the market; it is an acquired illumination, it is a
habit, a personal possession, and an inward endowment. And this is the
reason, why it is more correct, as well as more usual, to speak of a
University as a place of education, than of instruction, though, when
knowledge is concerned, instruction would at first sight have seemed the
more appropriate word. We are instructed, for instance, in manual
exercises, in the fine and useful arts, in trades, and in ways of
business; for these are methods, which have little or no effect upon the
mind itself, are contained in rules committed to memory, to tradition, or
to use, and bear upon an end external to themselves. But education is a
higher word; it implies an action upon our mental nature, and the
formation of a character; it is something individual and permanent, and is
commonly spoken of in connexion with religion and virtue. When, then, we
speak of the communication of Knowledge as being Education, we thereby
really imply that that Knowledge is a state or condition of mind; and
since cultivation of mind is surely worth seeking for its own sake, we are
thus brought once more to the conclusion, which the word "Liberal" and the
word "Philosophy" have already suggested, that there is a Knowledge, which
is desirable, though nothing come of it, as being of itself a treasure,
and a sufficient remuneration of years of labour.

7.

This, then, is the answer which I am prepared to give to the question with
which I opened this Discourse. Before going on to speak of the object of
the Church in taking up Philosophy, and the uses to which she puts it, I
am prepared to maintain that Philosophy is its own end, and, as I
conceive, I have now begun the proof of it. I am prepared to maintain that
there is a knowledge worth possessing for what it is, and not merely for
what it does; and what minutes remain to me to-day I shall devote to the
removal of some portion of the indistinctness and confusion with which the
subject may in some minds be surrounded.

It may be objected then, that, when we profess to seek Knowledge for some
end or other beyond itself, whatever it be, we speak intelligibly; but
that, whatever men may have said,