"What is it that hath been? The same thing that shall be. What is it that hath been done? The same that shall be done." --Ecclesiastes i:10.
"To one small people . . . it was given to create the principle of Progress. That people was the Greek. Except the blind forces of nature, nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origin." --Maine.
THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY [Footnote 6]
[Footnote 6: The material for this address was gathered for lectures on the History of Education at St. Mary's Seminary, Scranton, Pa., and St. Joseph's College, Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia. It was largely added to for the introductory lecture in a course to the teachers of the parochial schools of Philadelphia, March, 1910. Very nearly in its present form it was delivered before the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences as the second lecture in the course on "How Old The New Is," April, 1910.]
We are very prone to think that our universities represent new developments in the history of humanity. We are aware that there were great educational institutions in the world at many times before the present, and that some of them profoundly affected the intellectual life of their time; we are likely to think, however, that these institutions were very different from our modern universities. They were not so well organized, they lacked endowments, their departments were not co-ordinated, they did not have the libraries and, of course, not the laboratory facilities that our modern universities have, and then, above all, they did not devote themselves to that one department of knowledge, physical science, in which absolute truth can be reached, and in which each advance in knowledge as made can be chronicled and set down as a sure basis for future work and workers in the same line for all time. [{64}] The older institutions of learning were given up to speculation, to idealism, to metaphysics, and, of course, therefore, their work, as many educated people are now prone to look at it, was too shadowy to last, too cloudy to serve as a foundation for any enduring scientific knowledge. I do not think that I exaggerate when I make this as the statement of the thought of a good many people of our time who are at least supposed to be educated and who consider that they are reasonably familiar with the educational institutions of the past.
It has seemed to me, then, that it would be interesting and opportune to trace the origin, the development and the accomplishments of the first institution of learning that is very similar to our own; and to retrace some of the achievements of its professors, the circumstances in which they were done and the conditions surrounding an ancient school which I think our study will make clear as well deserving of the title of the first modern university. This was not the collection of schools at Athens, though there is no doubt at all that great intellectual and educational work was accomplished there, but not in our modern university sense. The schools were independent, and while the rivalry engendered by this undoubtedly did good so long as genius ruled in the schools, it brought about a degeneration into sophistry, from here comes the word, and argumentativeness, once the great master had been [{65}] displaced by disciples who were sure that they knew their master's mind, and probably thought, as disciples always do, that they were going beyond their master, but who really occupied themselves with curious and trifling tergiversations of mind within the narrow circle of ideas laid down by the master,--as has nearly always been the case.
The first modern university was that of Alexandria. It was quite as much under Greek influence as the schools of Athens. There have been commentators on the story of Cleopatra, who have suggested that her African cast of countenance did not prove a deterrent to her success as a conqueror of hearts, and who argue from this to the fact that it is not physical charm but personality that counts in woman's power over men, quite forgetting, if they ever knew, that Cleopatra was a Greek of the Greeks, a daughter of the line of the Ptolemys, probably a direct descendant though with the bar sinister of Philip of Macedon, born of a house so watchful over its Greek blood and so resentful of any possible admixture of anything less noble with itself, that for generations it had been the custom for brother to marry sister, in order that the race of the Ptolemys might be perpetuated in absolute purity. Alexandria, while a cosmopolitan city in the inhabitants who dwelt in it and in the wide diffusion of commercial interests that centred there as a mart for East and West, was absolutely ruled by Greeks and represents for many centuries after [{66}] the decline of Athens had come, the brightest focus of Greek intellectual life, Greek culture and art, Greek letters and education and every phase of that Greek influence in aesthetics which has always meant so much in the world's history.
The interesting fact about Alexandria in the history of education, is that it was the home of a modern university in every sense of that term, having particularly the features that many people are prone to think of as representing modern evolution in education. The buildings of the university were erected practically by a legacy left by the great Conqueror himself, Alexander. The central point of interest in the university was a great library, the nucleus of which was the library of Aristotle, tutor of Alexander, which had been collected with the help of that great Conqueror and was the finest collection of books in the world of that time. The main subject of interest in the university was physical science and its sister subject mathematics, which raises mere nature-study into the realm of science, and this scientific physical education was conducted in connection with the great museum or collection of objects of interest to scientists that had also been made partly by Aristotle himself and partly for his loved tutor by the gratitude of Alexander during his conquering expeditions in the far East. Finally professors were attracted to Alexandria by the offer of a better salary than had ever been paid at educational institutions before this, and [{67}] by the additional offer of a palace to live in, supplied by the ruler of the country. It is no wonder, then, that in attendance also, as well as in the prestige of its professors, Alexandria resembled a modern university.
It was its devotion to science, however, that especially characterized this first great institution of learning of which we have definite records. This devotion to science went so far that even literature was studied from the scientific standpoint. Such details as we have of the instruction at Alexandria and the books that have come down to us, all show men interested in philology, in comparative literature, in grammar and comparative grammar, rather than in the idealistic modes of knowledge. We have commentaries on the great authors, but no great original works of genius in literature from the professors of Alexandria. The translation of the Septuagint version of the Old Testament is a typical example of the sort of work that was being done at Alexandria. They collected the documents of the nations and translated them for purposes of comparative study. It was an education for information rather than for power. The main idea of the time and place was to know as much as possible about literature, rather than to know what it represented in terms of life, and the real meaning of both literature and life was obscured in the study about and about them. People studied books about books rather than the books [{68}] themselves. There was much writing of books about books, and it was nearly always comparatively trivial things in the great authors that attracted most attention from the many scholiasts, critics, editors, commentators, lecturers of the time.