full: http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/Hazlitt/TableTalk/Corporate.htm
_______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
The great resorts and seats of learning often outlive in this way the
intention of the founders as the world outgrows them. They may be said
to resemble antiquated coquettes of the last age, who think everything
ridiculous and intolerable but what was in fashion when they were young,
and yet are standing proofs of the progress of taste and the vanity of
human pretensions. Our universities are, in a great measure, become
cisterns to hold, not conduits to disperse knowledge. The age has the
start of them; that is, other sources of knowledge have been opened
since their formation, to which the world have had access, and have
drunk plentifully at those living fountains, but from which they are
debarred by the tenor of their charter, and as a matter of dignity and
privilege. They have grown poor, like the old grandees in some
countries, by subsisting on the inheritance of learning, while the
people have grown rich by trade. They are too much in the nature of
fixtures in intellect: they stop the way in the road to truth; or at any
rate (for they do not themselves advance) they can only be of service as
a check-weight on the too hasty and rapid career of innovation. All that
has been invented or thought in the last two hundred years they take no
cognizance of, or as little as possible; they are above it; they stand
upon the ancient landmarks, and will not budge; whatever was not known
when they were first endowed, they are still in profound and lofty
ignorance of. Yet in that period how much has been done in literature,
arts, and science, of which (with the exception of mathematical
knowledge, the hardest to gainsay or subject to the trammels of
prejudice and barbarous ipse dixits) scarce any trace is to be found in
the authentic modes of study and legitimate inquiry which prevail at
either of our Universities! The unavoidable aim of all corporate bodies
of learning is not to grow wise, or teach others wisdom, but to prevent
any one else from being or seeming wiser than themselves; in other
words, their infallible tendency is in the end to suppress inquiry and
darken knowledge, by setting limits to the mind of man, and saying to
his proud spirit, Hitherto shalt thou come, and no farther! It would not
be an unedifying experiment to make a collection of the titles of works
published in the course of the year by Members of the Universities. If
any attempt is to be made to patch up an idle system in policy or
legislation, or church government, it is by a member of the University:
if any hashed-up speculation on an old exploded argument is to be
brought forward 'in spite of shame, in erring reason's spite,' it is by
a Member of the University: if a paltry project is ushered into the
world for combining ancient prejudices with modern time-serving, it is
by a Member of the University. Thus we get at a stated supply of the
annual Defences of the Sinking Fund, Thoughts on the Evils of Education,
Treatises on Predestination, and Eulogies on Mr. Malthus, all from the
same source, and through the same vent. If they came from any other
quarter nobody would look at them; but they have an Imprimatur from
dulness and authority: we know that there is no offence in them; and
they are stuck in the shop windows, and read (in the intervals of Lord
Byron's works, or the Scotch novels) in cathedral towns and close boroughs!
