Page:Essays on the Higher Education.djvu/40

 free concourse of students, perhaps of many nations and from many places, are intimately connected with the university idea. But there are large schools, in this country and elsewhere, that are not universities; and there have been great universities with a relatively small number of students. The grade and method of the teaching, and the spirit and previous training of the students, are important factors in the university idea. Again, the universality of the university has been thought to consist in this, that the scope of its instruction should include all subjects; thus the idea toward which the American institution should strive is held to be that of a place where anybody can come to learn anything that can be taught anywhere. Now, historically considered, this view is absurd. The phrases in which the word universitas occurs, if thus interpreted, would (it has been pointed out) be equivalent to speaking of the university as "an institution for studying everything where they study nothing but law." Moreover, this interpretation of the word misses the spirit of the reality. For example, a school of veterinary surgery, or a school for learning to sing and to play the piano, may be a convenient adjunct or appendage of a university. But certainly neither of these schools can ever become an integral part of a genuine university. The study and teaching of comparative anatomy and physiology, or of zoölogy,