AND OTHER COUNTRIES,
WHO, BY THEIR RESOLUTE PRAYERS AND PENANCE,
AND BY THEIR GENEROUS STUBBORN EFFORTS
AND BY THEIR MUNIFICENT ALMS,
HAVE BROKEN FOR HIM THE STRESS
OF A GREAT ANXIETY,
THESE DISCOURSES,
OFFERED TO OUR LADY AND ST. PHILIP ON ITS RISE,
COMPOSED UNDER ITS PRESSURE,
FINISHED ON THE EVE OF ITS TERMINATION,
ARE RESPECTFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED
BY THE AUTHOR.

IN FEST. PRAESENT.
B. M. V.
NOV. 21, 1852

PREFACE.

The view taken of a University in these Discourses is the following:--That
it is a place of _teaching_ universal _knowledge_. This implies that its
object is, on the one hand, intellectual, not moral; and, on the other,
that it is the diffusion and extension of knowledge rather than the
advancement. If its object were scientific and philosophical discovery, I
do not see why a University should have students; if religious training, I
do not see how it can be the seat of literature and science.

Such is a University in its _essence_, and independently of its relation
to the Church. But, practically speaking, it cannot fulfil its object
duly, such as I have described it, without the Church's assistance; or, to
use the theological term, the Church is necessary for its _integrity_. Not
that its main characters are changed by this incorporation: it still has
the office of intellectual education; but the Church steadies it in the
performance of that office.

Such are the main principles of the Discourses which follow; though it
would be unreasonable for me to expect that I have treated so large and
important a field of thought with the fulness and precision necessary to
secure me from incidental misconceptions of my meaning on the part of the
reader. It is true, there is nothing novel or singular in the argument
which I have been pursuing, but this does not protect me from such
misconceptions; for the very circumstance that the views I have been
delineating are not original with me may lead to false notions as to my
relations in opinion towards those from whom I happened in the first
instance to learn them, and may cause me to be interpreted by the objects
or sentiments of schools to which I should be simply opposed.

For instance, some persons may be tempted to complain, that I have
servilely followed the English idea of a University, to the disparagement
of that Knowledge which I profess to be so strenuously upholding; and they
may anticipate that an academical system, formed