Necessity of Colleges [pp. 83-86]

NECESSITY OF COLLEGES.
to navigation was another; to observe and register
the appearances of the heavenly bodies requires but
little knowledge, but to trace the laws in obedience
to which they move, demands a mind of the highest order. Who invented the cotton gin, which has
augmented immensely the wealth of the southern
states? Whitney was a graduate. The princes
in philosophy, astronomy, and psychology, were
alumni of the college.
3. Colleges are needful to prepare young men for
the learned professions. It will cheerfully be conceded that mental discipline is a prerequisite to
professional studies. The collegiate course confers
this advantage, as will appear from a glance at
what it embraces, viz., mathematics, ancient languages, natural science, and intellectual and moral
philosophy. That mathematics has a tendency to
qualify the mind for strong, patient, and consecutive thought, no one will deny. In this science the
soul must keep its eyes wide open, aqd guide its
powers in vigorous, onward movement, until it
has evolved the required truth. It may be compared to a long ladder, with smooth and regular
rounds: the mind can gain the summit by constant, careful, and progressive motion; but a single
misstep, or a cessation of effort, even at the last
round but one, and, like the stone of Sisiphus, it
rolls down to the foot. Lead the mind weekly,
daily, for successive years, up this ladder, and teach
it always to sit down, breathless, it may be, but triumphant, on the last round, and it will be prepared
to scale walls of truth which have withstood the
rude assaults of the battering ram for successive
ages of undisciplined mental warfare.
The study of ancient languages is another invaluable mode of mental training: one which has risen triumphant from every conflict with utilitarianism, and
which, perhaps, will not be banished from the halls
of learning, until the sounding of the last trumpet.
The chief objection to it, viz., its difficulty, proves its
importance. It brings the mind into communion
with the master spirits of other and golden ages,
and by constantly presenting the most splendid creations of fancy, and the finest models of style, fires
the imagination and purifies the taste. It is not
unfavorable to faith. God is the author of language no less than of nature, and he has impressed
his invisible Spirit upon the one as he has enstamped his almighty hand upon the other. We
see that Spirit breathing through the souls even of
uninspired men, and writing simple, eternal truth
in characters of living light on even the darkest
pages of error and confusion. The being and perfections of God stand forth no less vividly in the
conversations of Socrates than in the lamps of
heaven. There is a world of mind as well as of
matter, and language is the medium in which its
forms are cast.
We may see God in the clouds of heaven, but
yet more clearly may we trace his red right hand
in the thunder and lightning of the blind old man
of Scio's rocky isle. When France abandoned the
study of languages for that of matter and mathematics, she plunged headlong into vice and Atheism. The study of languages opens rich mines
of thought, in which the treasures of the noblest
intellects of the race have been stored. Account
for it as we may, there were ages in the history of
ancient states, when mind heaved up mountain
thoughts, from deep foundations. The floods of
time have washed away the glittering dust from
the regions of early literature, but left standing
the sternal hills with their veins of golden ore.
Law still digs in the Tribonian code: physic explores Galen and Hippocrates: philosophy, even
in the eighteenth century, mines in the depths of
Aristotle: the student finds his parallelograms and
triangles in Euclid: Demosthenes is yet the model of
the orator: and there is Homer, like Choumalarie.
Hail, blind old bard, hail! The purest streams of
modern literature are drawn from classic fountains,
and flow in classic beds. Nor can the transparent
purity of their waters, nor the value of their treasures be fully perceived by one who is ignorant of
the language of Greece and Rome. The classics
are necessary to lead us to Siloam's well. Every
man is indebted to the lexicon for opening his way
to the fountain of life.
The natural sciences are conceded by all to be
appropriate means of education. Botany, geology,
mineralogy, chemistry, and natural philosophy,
opening the secrets of material nature, glittering
with recent and brilliant discoveries, and offering
the richest rewards to their cultivators, are too fascinating to be neglected in any institution in the
civilized world; nor are they without their influence in disciplining the mind: they cultivate habits of attention, abstraction, and generalization:
they strengthen the memory and the reason, and
furnish beautiful and impressive illustrations for
intellectual and moral subjects.
The philosophy of the, mind has in all ages
been regarded as an indispensable branch of education. It explains the faculties of the soul, and
the laws of thought and feeling, and with its kindred sciences unfolds the principles of investigation
and reasoning: teaching how to detect and expose
fallacy, remove obscurity, develop truth, and show
the foundation on which it stands. Mathematics
train the mind for that reasoning in which we
proceed from one judgment to another founded
upon it-the premises being admitted, and the object beii. to disclose what is enveloped in previously admitted propositions. But there is another
kind of reasoning, which implies investigation,
where the degree of evidence for doubtful propo
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