Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Nevins) [PAGE 60]

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48

BEGINNINGS OF THE UNIVERSITY

into matters of immense importance." At Griggsville in 1850 he lashed out at "those species of organized ignorance found in the creeds' of party politicians and sectarian ecclesiastics." His first plans stated that the addition of a distinct classical department would depend upon expediency, and that it would probably be best to make practicable arrangement for leaving it to existing colleges. At any rate, it should only be attached "in due time." Repeatedly he had spoken as if there were an abiding cleavage between practical and literary education, as he believed there was between the whole interest and destiny of the industrial and professional classes. The institutions designed for the one could not meet the wants of the others. Satan had "in all ages . . . put darkness for light" and seen to it that the workers had been denied the higher education to which they were entitled; and at the same time had given the professionally employed a "hotbed process" of training which was wrongly dignified by the name education. | The old curriculum," he wrote, as the University's plans were shaping, " is as absurd as the monkish learning." 1 Yet Gregory's committee on course of study boldly proposed not only the Agricultural, the Polytechnic, and the Military departments, but one of Trade and Commerce, one of Chemistry and Natural Science, and one of General Science and Literature. The distinction between the last two is interesting. The former was to be a course in applied science—as the application of geology to mining, or of chemistry to agriculture and manufac*See the addresses of Turner at Griggsville, 1850, and the Granville Convention, 1851, the Memorial of January, 1853, and letters in the Turner MSS.; Mrs. CarrieP* "Life of Turner"; E. J. James's * Origin of the Land Grant of 1862 " ; Report of State Horticultural Society, 1868, p. 171 ff.