All
that has changed now. Why that has decayed away may in part be that
people have become doubtful that colleges are now the real sources
of that which I call wisdom, whether they are anything more--anything
much more--than a cultivating of man in the specific arts. In fact,
there has been a suspicion of that kind in the world for a long time.
(A laugh.) That is an old saying, an old proverb, "An ounce of mother
wit is worth a pound of clergy." (Laughter.) There is a suspicion that
a man is perhaps not nearly so wise as he looks, or because he has
poured out speech so copiously. (Laughter.)
When the seven free Arts on which the old Universities were based came
to be modified a little, in order to be convenient for or to promote
the wants of modern society--though, perhaps, some of them are
obsolete enough even yet for some of us--there arose a feeling that
mere vocality, mere culture of speech, if that is what comes out of a
man, though he may be a great speaker, an eloquent orator, yet there
is no real substance there--if that is what was required and aimed at
by the man himself, and by the community that set him upon becoming
a learned man.
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