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The Idea of a University: Defined and Illustrated : I, in nine discourses ...
The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated I in nine discourses Author:John Henry Newman Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: DISCOURSE VII. KNOWLEDGE VIEWED IN RELATION TO PROFESSIONAL SKILL. HAVE been insistinffinmv two preceding Dis- intellec-%- as . an,ead- which ma.y r... more »easonably be pursued for its own sakej and nextT-on Hie nature of that cultivation, or jvhat-thaf cultivation ..consists.. in. Truth of whatever kind is the proper object of the intellect; its cultivation then" lies in fitting it to apprehend and contemplate truth. Now the intellect in its present state, with exceptions which need not here be specified, does not discern truth intuitively, or as a whole. We know, not by a direct and simple vision, not at a glance, but, as it were, by piecemeal and accumulation, by a mental process, by going round an object, by the comparison, the combination, the mutual correction, the continual adaptation, of many partial notions, by the employment, concentration, and joint action of many faculties and exercises of mind. Such a union and concert of the jntellsctualpo.wers, such an enlargement and development, such a comprehensiveness, is necessarily a matter oTtraining. And again, such a training is a matter of rule ; it is not mere application, however exemplary, which introduces the mind to truth, nor the readingmany books, nor the getting up many subjects, nor the witnessing many experiments, nor the attending many lectures. All this is short of enough ; a man may have done it all, yet be lingering in the vestibule of knowledge :—he may not realize what his mouth utters; he may not see with his mental eye what confronts him; he may have no grasp of things as they are ; or at least he may have no power at all of advancing one step forward of himself, in consequence of what he has already acquired, no power of discriminating between truth and falsehood, of sifting out the grains of...« less