Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1888 [PAGE 200]

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HISTORICAL ADDRESS, TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY.

203

I n Professor Turner's "Plan for a State University," I find the following: "There should be connected with such an institution in this State a sufficient quantity of land of various soil and aspect for all of its needful experiments and processes in the great interests of agriculture and horticulture. "Buildings of appropriate size and construction for all its ordinary and special uses, a complete philosophical, chemical, anatomical, and industrial apparatus; a general cabinet embracing everything that relates to, illustrates,- or facilitates, any of the industrial arts; especially all sorts of animals, birds, reptiles, insects, trees, shrubs, and plants, found in the State and in the adjacent States. Instruction should constantly be given in the anatomy and physiology, the nature, instincts, and habits of animals and insects; on the nature, composition, adaptation, and regeneration of soils; on the nature, strength, durability, cost, use, and manufacture of all materials of art and industrial processes; on political, financial, and manual economy; on national, constitutional, and civil law; on the laws of vicinage, or the laws of courtesy and comity between neighbors, as such, and on the principles of health and disease in the human subject: in short, upon all those studies and sciences, of whatever sort, which tend to throw light upon any art or employment which any student may desire to master, or upon any duty which he may be called to perform, or which may tend to secure his moral, civil, social, and industrial perfection as* a man. "No species of knowledge should be excluded, practical or theoretical, unless, indeed, those specimens of organized ignorance found in the creeds of party politicians and sectarian ecclesiastics should be mistaken for a species of knowledge." How far is this from Mr. Cornell's motto, "I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study?" I n the session of the legislature which was held in 1855 a bill was reported, and was received with great favor, but failed to become a law on account of the lateness of the season, to incorporate an institution of learning upon the lines which had been laid down as before described, the trustees named being Professor Turner, and five others, with six more to be afterwards chosen. The declared object of this institution was "to impart instruction in all departments of useful knowledge, science and art, * * so that the University may become a resort for acquiring an accomplished and finished education in all useful, practical, literary, and scientific knowledge." The name of this institution was to be "The Illinois University," identical with that now only a little more euphoniously expressed as the University of Illinois. The movement which has been referred to in Illinois, uniting with one of similar import in the* eastern States, culminated in the passage of a bill by Congress in 1858, commonly known as the