n
knowledge.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} _Looking always to real utility as our guide_, we should see,
with equal pleasure, a studious and inquisitive mind arranging the
productions of nature, investigating the qualities of bodies, or mastering
the difficulties of the learned languages. We should not care whether he
was chemist, naturalist, or scholar, because we know it to be as
_necessary_ that matter should be studied and subdued _to the use of man_,
as that taste should be gratified, and imagination inflamed."

Such then is the enunciation, as far as words go, of the theory of Utility
in Education; and both on its own account, and for the sake of the able
men who have advocated it, it has a claim on the attention of those whose
principles I am here representing. Certainly it is specious to contend
that nothing is worth pursuing but what is useful; and that life is not
long enough to expend upon interesting, or curious, or brilliant trifles.
Nay, in one sense, I will grant it is more than specious, it is true; but,
if so, how do I propose directly to meet the objection? Why, Gentlemen, I
have really met it already, viz., in laying down, that intellectual
culture is its own end; for what has its _end_ in itself, has its _use_ in
itself also. I say, if a Liberal Education consists in the culture of the
intellect, and if that culture be in itself a good, here, without going
further, is an answer to Locke's question; for if a healthy body is a good
in itself, why is not a healthy intellect? and if a College of Physicians
is a useful institution, because it contemplates bodily health, why is not
an Academical Body, though it were simply and solely engaged in imparting
vigour and beauty and grasp to the intellectual portion of our nature? And
the Reviewers I am quoting seem to allow this in their better moments, in
a passage which, putting aside the question of its justice in fact, is
sound and true in the principles to which it appeals:--

"The present state of classical education," they say, "cultivates the
_imagination_ a great deal too much, and other _habits of mind_ a great
deal too little, and trains up many young men in a style of elegant
imbecility, utterly unworthy of the talents with which nature has endowed
them.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} The matter of fact is, that a classical scholar of twenty-three or
twenty-four is a man principally conversant with works of imagination. His
feelings are quick, his fancy lively, and