IDEA OF A UNIVERSITY, The. Car dinal Newman's 'Idea of a University' is a collective volume composed (1) of a course of nine lectures delivered (1852) to the Roman Catholics of Dublin, (2) of 10 occasional lec tures and essays addressed (1854-58) primarily to the members of the Catholic University of Ireland while Newman was its rector. The formes part is a consistent whole, dealing con secutively with fundamental considerations of university teaching: with theology as a branch of knowledge, with the relations of theoloa to other knowledge, with knowledge consid ered as its own end and in relation to learning to professional skill, and to religion, and finally with the claims of knowledge upon the Church. The second part deals with the relations of Christianity to letters and to science, with the study of literature, with elementary studies, and with a few more special topics. Of these 19 discourses the best known are Studies,' which is largely in vivacious dialogue. and 'Literature,' which is so persuasive and suggestive that it has been widely quoted both as counsel and as a model of style. The other discourses have more general interest than is immediately suggested by their titles. To dis miss them as special in subject and audience is to ignore both the unfailing force and beauty of Newman's expression and the largeness of his philosophical conceptions. Educated him
self at Oxford, he was never provincially Eng fish; and during his maturity his associations in the Roman Church with men of Continental training widened his acquaintance with the practical problems of higher education. But his great claim upon the general public, a claim hardly second to his literary distinction, is that he deals, not with the technic of peda gogy, but with university education as the de velopment of the whole man. His conception of this total development as essentially moral, pervading his exposition, makes it both large and persuasive. Though the university as % place of teaching universal knowledge' has for its immediate object the intellectual rather than the moral, yet 'practically speaking, it cannot fulfil its object duly . . . without the Church's assistance ... the Church is nece9 sary for its integrity.' Animated by this idea of the integration of university studies in the development of Christian manhood, his discus sions embrace not only such practical matters as the relations of teaching to research, but the larger aspects of liberal education.