The Idea of a University

In his eighth discourse, Newman attempts to bring some of the material of Discourses 5-7 to a conclusion, while shifting his focus toward religion, a consideration of primary importance to his Catholic audience. He aims to persuade his audience that the intellectual cultivation he has been describing as the aim of a university helps to prepare the mind for spiritual and religious formation. Intellectual culture has the effect of raising one’s mind above mere sense impressions, allowing one to exercise some small freedoms from one’s natural slavery to the passions and to self-will. This process brings the heart, Newman says, “half way to Heaven” (140). He also asserts that the shaping influence of knowledge upon the mind also tends to produce a sense of repugnance against excesses of evil and forms people with a high sense of personal virtue.

However, Newman makes it clear that intellectual cultivation is not a substitute for the grace of God. Intellectual cultivation can awaken the mind, but it cannot atone for sin or transform the soul. If left without the exercise of religion, intellectual culture can tend toward a pseudo-spirituality of its own, wherein the movements of

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