atmosphere, and a characteristic student life which have a
peculiar interest to all Michigan men and women. To chronicle in brief
the main events in Michigan's history; to suggest their significance; to
picture the life of the students and Faculties; and to set forth the
University's real measure of success, in order that all who are
interested in the University may know her and understand her ideals and
traditions, is the aim of the following chapters.

CHAPTER II

THE FOUNDATION OF THE UNIVERSITY

The history of the University of Michigan might properly be said to
begin in 1817. It is true that the University seal proclaims 1837 as the
year of its birth, but the present institution is only a successor of
two previous incarnations in Detroit, which were its direct
predecessors. The State Supreme Court, in fact, held in 1856 that the
corporate existence of the University began with the Act of the 26th of
August, 1817, and has been continuous throughout all the subsequent
changes of the organic law.

It would be difficult, however, to recognize the present University in
that curiosity of educational history established by the Act of 1817
under the sonorous title of the "Catholepistemiad, or University of
Michigania." This institution, in effect designed to be a university,
was to be composed of thirteen _didaxiim_, or professorships, of such
branches as _Catholepistemia_ or Universal Science, _Anthropoglossica_
or Literature, _Physiosophica_ or Natural Philosophy, _Polemitactica_ or
Military Science, and _Ennoeica_ or Intellectual Sciences, which
embraced all the _Epistimiim_ or "Sciences relative to the minds of
animals, to the human mind, to spiritual existences, to the Deity, and
to religion." It is worthy of note also that Chemistry, Medicine, and
Political Economy were provided for under the names of _Chymia_,
_Iatrica_, and _Oeconomica_. This scheme, which was prepared by
Augustus B. Woodward, Presiding Judge of the territorial Supreme Court,
went further than this provision for the University, however, for it
contemplated as well a complete state educational system, with
subordinate colleges, academies, schools, libraries, museums, athenaeums,
botanical gardens, laboratories and "other useful literary and
scientific Institutions consonant with the laws of the United States and
of Michigan." These the President and the Didactors were to provide for,
as well as for Directors, Visitors, Curators, Libraria