Should such an intellectual centre serve no other purpose than to bring together a number of eager-hearted, truth-loving youths, what light and heat would not leap forth from the shock of mind with mind; what generous rivalries would not spring up; what intellectual sympathies, resting on the breast of faith, would not become manifest, grouping souls like atoms, to form the substance and beauty of a world?
O solemn groves that lie close to Louvain and to Freiburg, whose air is balm and whose murmuring winds sound like the voices of saints and sages whispering down the galleries of time, what words have ye not heard bursting forth from the strong hearts of keen-witted youths, who, Titan-like, believed they might storm the citadel of God's truth! How many a one, heavy and despondent, in the narrow, lonesome path of duty, has remembered you, and moved again in unseen worlds, upheld by faith and hope! Who has listened to the words of your teachers and not felt the truth of the saying of Pope Pius II.,—that the world holds nothing more precious or more beautiful than a cultivated intellect? The presence of such men invigorates like mountain air, and their speech is as refreshing as clear-flowing fountains. To know them is to be forever their debtor. The company of a saint is the school of saints; a strong character develops strength in others, and a noble mind makes all around him luminous.
Why may not eight million Catholics upbuild a home for great teachers, for men who, to real learning and cultivation of mind, shall add the persuasiveness of easy and eloquent diction; whose manifest and indisputable superiority shall put to shame the self-conceit of American young men, our most familiar intellectual bane, and an insuperable obstacle to all improvement,—self-conceit, which is the beatitude of vulgar characters and shallow minds? If our students should find in such an institution but one man, who, like Socrates, with ironic questioning might make for them the discovery of the new world of their own ignorance, the gain would be great enough.
Why may we not have a centre of light and truth which will raise up before us standards of intellectual excellence; which will enable us to see that our so-called educated men are as far from being scholars as the makers of our horrible show-bills are from being artists; which will teach us that it is not only false but vulgar to call things by pretentious names,—as, for instance, to call a politician a statesman, a declaimer an orator, or a Latin school a university.
Ah! surely as to whether an American Catholic university is desirable there cannot be two opinions among enlightened men. But is it feasible? A true university is one of the noblest foundations of the great Catholic ages, when faith rose almost to the height of creative power, and it were folly in me to maintain that such an undertaking is not surrounded by many and great difficulties. To begin with the material for foundation, money is necessary, and this, I am persuaded, we may have. A noble cause will find or make generous hearts. Men above all we need, for every kind of existence propagates itself only by itself. But let us bear in mind that the best teacher is not necessarily or often he who knows the most, but he who has most power to determine the student to self-activity; for in the end the mind educates itself. As distrust is the mark of a narrow intellect or a bad heart, so a readiness to believe in the ability of others is not only a characteristic of able men, but it is also the secret charm which calls around them helpers and followers. Hence, a strong man who loves his work is a better educator than a half-hearted professor who carries whole libraries in his head.
To bring together in familiar and daily life a number of young men, chosen for the brightness of their minds and an eager yearning for knowledge, is to create an atmosphere of intellectual warmth and light, which invigorates and inspires the master, while it stimulates his disciples. In such company it will not be difficult to form teachers. But will it be possible to find young men who will consent, when after years of study they have finally reached the priesthood, to continue in a higher institution the arduous and confining labors to the end of which they have looked as to the beginning of a new life? In other lands such students are found, and if with us there is a tendency to rush with precipitancy and insufficient preparation to whatever work we may have chosen, this is but a proof of the need of special efforts to restrain an ardor which springs from weakness and not from strength. Haste is a mark of immaturity. He who is certain of himself and master of his tools, knows that he is able, and neither hurries nor worries, but works and waits. The rank weed shoots up in a day and as quickly dies; but the long-growing olive-tree stands from century to century, and drops from its gently waving boughs ripe fruit through the quiet autumn air. The Church endures forever; and we American Catholics, in the midst of our rapidly-moving and ever-changing society, should be the first to learn to temper energy with the patient strength which gives the courage to toil and wait through a long life, if so we make ourselves worthy to speak some fit word or do some needful deed. And to whom shall this lesson first be taught if not to the clerics, whose natural endowments single them out as future leaders of Catholic thought and enterprise; and where can this lesson so well be learned as in a school whose standard of intellectual excellence shall be the highest?
While we look, therefore, to the founding of a true university, we will begin, as the university of Paris began in the twelfth century, and as the present university of Louvain began fifty years ago, with a national school of philosophy and theology, which will form the central faculty of a complete educational organism. Around this, the other faculties will take their places, in due course of time; and so the beginning which we make will grow, until like the seed planted in the earth, it shall wear the bloomy crown of its own development.
And though the event be less than our hope, though even failure be the outcome, is it not better to fail than not to attempt a worthy work which might be ours? Only they who do nothing derive comfort from the mistakes of others; and the saying that a blunder is worse than a crime is doubtless true for those who have no other measure of worth and success than the conventional standards of a superficial public opinion. We at least know—
"There lives a JudgeTo whose all-pondering mind a noble aimFaithfully kept is as a noble deed;In whose pure sight all virtue doth succeed."
THE END.