“Why do we educate, except to prepare for the world?
Why do we cultivate the intellect of the many beyond the first elements of
knowledge, except for this world? Will it be much matter in the world to come
whether our bodily health or whether our intellectual strength was more or
less, except of course as this world is in all its circumstances a trial for
the next? If then a University is a direct preparation for this world, let it
be what it professes. It is not a Convent, it is not a Seminary; it is a place
to fit men of the world for the world. We cannot possibly keep them from
plunging into the world, with all its ways and principles and maxims, when
their time comes; but we can prepare them against what is inevitable; and it is
not the way to learn to swim in troubled waters, never to have gone into them.”
—Roman Catholic theologian, educator, and essayist John Henry Cardinal Newman
(1801-1890), “Duties of the Church towards Knowledge,” in
The Idea of a University (1852)
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