The Idea of a University

“Our desideratum is, not the manners and habits of gentlemen […] but the force, the steadiness, the comprehensiveness and the versatility of intellect, the command over our own powers, the instinctive just estimate of things as they pass before us, which sometimes is indeed a natural gift, but commonly is not gained without much effort and the exercise of years.”

In a preface composed for the publication of the first nine discourses (Part 1), Newman presents his central thesis statement, essentially that the goal of university teaching is the holistic intellectual formation of the student. Newman expresses this idea most fully in the fifth and sixth discourses (Part 1, Chapters 5-6). Even this preface introduces the idea that the intellect is distinct from other virtues; an intellectual formation does not a “gentleman” make.

“Religious doctrine is knowledge, in as full a sense as Newton’s doctrine is knowledge. University Teaching without Theology is simply unphilosophical.”

Newman refers here to the scientific laws of gravity and motion postulated by Sir Isaac Newton, and he claims that if those principles are considered knowledge, then religious doctrine should also be considered knowledge. This quote is insufficient by itself to support such a claim (arguments for which Newman includes in his first four discourses), but it illustrates just how firmly Newman holds his point to be true.

“All that exists, as contemplated by the human mind, forms one large system or complex fact, and this of course resolves itself into an indefinite number of particular facts, which, as being portions of a whole, have countless relations of every kind towards one another. Knowledge is the apprehension of these facts, whether in themselves, or in their mutual positions and bearings.”

This is one of Newman’s central statements on his theme of the unity of truth. All knowledge constitutes a vast, single, interconnected system of facts and their relations to each other. While this point might seem obvious or trivial on its own, it is foundational to Newman’s conception of education, which strives to convey not just sets of facts but a comprehensive knowledge that is familiar with the broad contours of the unity of truth.