As a direct result of the opportunity which university life gives to
undergraduates for the development of self-governing institutions,
there can be little doubt that the university must be regarded above
all other schools and most institutions as powerful in the development
of good citizenship. The public school tradition will be carried
directly into the older universities and in increasing measure into
the new universities as the best spirit of the public schools
gradually permeates the whole system of our education even down to the
elementary schools themselves. When these opportunities so lavishly
provided for the development of student life in its self-governing
aspects are realised and when above it all there stand great teachers
in the lineage of those described by Cardinal Newman in his eulogy of
Athens--"the very presence of Plato" to the student, "a stay for his
mind to rest on, a burning thought in his heart, a bond of union with
men like himself, ever afterwards"--little else can be desired. In
every university there must be such teachers, or universities will
tend to fall to the level of the life about them. "You can infuse,"
said Lord Rosebery at the Congress of the Universities of the Empire,
"character, and morals and energy and patriotism by the tone and
atmosphere of your university and your professors."
From one point of view, all the old universities of Europe--Bologna,
Paris, Prague, Oxford, Cambridge, etc.
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