nothing more than a lawyer, physician, geologist, or
political economist; whereas in a University he will just know where he
and his science stand, he has come to it, as it were, from a height, he
has taken a survey of all knowledge, he is kept from extravagance by the
very rivalry of other studies, he has gained from them a special
illumination and largeness of mind and freedom and self-possession, and he
treats his own in consequence with a philosophy and a resource, which
belongs not to the study itself, but to his liberal education.

This then is how I should solve the fallacy, for so I must call it, by
which Locke and his disciples would frighten us from cultivating the
intellect, under the notion that no education is useful which does not
teach us some temporal calling, or some mechanical art, or some physical
secret. I say that a cultivated intellect, because it is a good in itself,
brings with it a power and a grace to every work and occupation which it
undertakes, and enables us to be more useful, and to a greater number.
There is a duty we owe to human society as such, to the state to which we
belong, to the sphere in which we move, to the individuals towards whom we
are variously related, and whom we successively encounter in life; and
that philosophical or liberal education, as I have called it, which is the
proper function of a University, if it refuses the foremost place to
professional interests, does but postpone them to the formation of the
citizen, and, while it subserves the larger interests of philanthropy,
prepares also for the successful prosecution of those merely personal
objects, which at first sight it seems to disparage.

7.

And now, Gentlemen, I wish to be allowed to enforce in detail what I have
been saying, by some extracts from the writings to which I have already
alluded, and to which I am so greatly indebted.

"It is an undisputed maxim in Political Economy," says Dr. Copleston,
"that the separation of professions and the division of labour tend to the
perfection of every art, to the wealth of nations, to the general comfort
and well-being of the community. This principle of division is in some
instances pursued so far as to excite the wonder of people to whose notice
it is for the first time pointed out. There is no saying to what extent it
may not be carried; and the more the powers of each individual are
concentrated in one employment, the greater skill and quickness will he