Excerpt from Address Delivered Before the Two Literary Societies of the University of North Carolina, June 6, 1849 The design of all education being to prepare the young for the duties and employments of life, the system has no doubt varied with the phases and progress of society in different ages. When the strongest arm, the most dextrous spear, lance or scimetar, or even the successful combinations of embattled hosts, were the tests of human excellence, and hercules or achilles, sampson or richard camp. DE lion, were the ...
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Excerpt from Address Delivered Before the Two Literary Societies of the University of North Carolina, June 6, 1849 The design of all education being to prepare the young for the duties and employments of life, the system has no doubt varied with the phases and progress of society in different ages. When the strongest arm, the most dextrous spear, lance or scimetar, or even the successful combinations of embattled hosts, were the tests of human excellence, and hercules or achilles, sampson or richard camp. DE lion, were the impersonations of all that com manded the admiration of men, there was but little need of a refi ned taste, a critical knowledge of Languages, of Mathematics, or of Physical or Moral Science. Even in times and countries where learning was esteemed and cultivated, the zeal and energies of its votaries were too often wasted in futile speculations and vagaries, and the aspiring youth, fired with a noble ardor for intellectual distinction, was doomed to wear out his life in the intricacies of a vain philosophy, or afalse theology, which has been dissipated, as the mists of the morning, before the light of the Christian and re formed religion, or in the labyrinths of metaphysical disputation, serving no other end than to whet the mental appetite, without fur hishing it any appropriate food. And since the establishment of Universities, which were unknown to the Ancients, and have arisen consequently to the revival of letters, after the dark ages of history, much that once engaged their attention, and procured for their sophisters high Academic honors, has been found unequal to the scrutiny of common sense, and of that new philosophy of which Lord bacon was the founder, and has been exploded as obsolete pedantry. Having our lot cast in a period favored beyond all others, because blessed with the light of their experience, and the re searches and inventions of our own, our scheme of instruction Is, of course, designed to fit us to act well our parts, in the maturity of knowledge, and the higher civilization which it is our privilege to enjoy. With Governments of vast and complicated affairs, appealing to justice, - truth and reason, instead efforce, in every step of their administration; with systems of Law, attempting-to define every individual right, and the appropriate remedy for its infraction - a Medical Art, which puts in requisition a knowledge of the 'minutest functions of our-bodily organs, and calls on all the kingdoms of nature for its remedies; - a Theology, which, though simple and easily intelligible in its essential features, runs back in its details and history, through all the learned languages of the world, to the very origin of our race -with a Literature, preserving for our use the wisdom and learning of past ages when Commerce brings us into acquaintance and friendly com petition with all the nations of the earth, and every Art is bocom ing illustrated, adorned and dignified by the discoveries of Sci ence; a system of Education, corresponding in its provisions with this stage in the progress of mankind, is obviously necessary. And modern nations, sensible of this necessity, instead of leaving such provision to be made by the voluntary and unaided efforts of the friends of learning, as was the case even in the most pol ished ages of Greece and Rome, have established Universities in their fundamental systems of Government. N ot to supersede inferior Schools, but as a part of the same system to supply the wants of the noble aspirants, whose thirst for knowledge has not been quenched at these humbler fountains of learning. N ot that it is expected that every youth can participate in their teachings, however desirable it may be among a free people that all should, but because the State will be remunerated for their endowment, if those who do, shall become worthy representatives of their age and country, in useful and elegant erudition and good morals.
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