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Bennett, Arnold, 1867-1931

"English Prose A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice"

Every one knows practically what are the constituents of
health or of virtue; and every one recognises health and virtue as ends
to be pursued; it is otherwise with intellectual excellence, and this
must be my excuse, if I seem to anyone to be bestowing a good deal of
labour on a preliminary matter.
In default of a recognised term, I have called the perfection or virtue
of the intellect by the name of philosophy, philosophical knowledge,
enlargement of mind, or illumination, terms which are not uncommonly
given to it by writers of this day: but, whatever name we bestow on it,
it is, I believe, as a matter of history, the business of a university
to make this intellectual culture its direct scope, or to employ itself
in the education of the intellect,--just as the work of a hospital lies
in healing the sick or wounded, of a riding or fencing school, or of a
gymnasium, in exercising the limbs, of an almshouse, in aiding and
solacing the old, of an orphanage, in protecting innocence, of a
penitentiary, in restoring the guilty.


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