Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 333]

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History University of Illinois

for a few hours per diem, half of which break their traces and run away the first hour, under the absurd pretext of teaching these boys how to plow! When Almighty God created the heavens and the earth, and ordered man to 'eat his bread by the sweat of his brow,' he created and most liberally endowed the best possible University for learning all such mere manual arts; and if we expect to supersede Omnipotence by grants of land for endowments in this line, it will prove worse than a Bull Run defeat; for no institution for teaching the arts and the habits of bare manipulation and industrial skill, can ever be endowed at all comparable with those which the great Father of All has most munificently spread abroad over every household, every shop, and every field, throughout the civilized globe. The PRINCIPLES OF SCIENCE, therefore, and not the bare manipulations of art should form the SOLE END of Industrial Universities.' " "So wrote Prof. Turner," said Mr. Bateman, "four years ago, demolishing a great fallacy and enunciating a great truth, in a manner, not to be resisted or forgotten, whatever may be said of his zoological illustrations." There is no record while these remarks were in progress of the emotions of those who had insisted upon manual labor on the part of the students. Whether or not they cringed under the zoological comparison will never be known. Mr. Bateman's interpretation of the purpose of the university as defined in the law is interesting. It is the interpretation of Dunlap, and, undoubtedly that of the agriculturists who worked for the establishment o£ the institution. He said: "The purposes for which this University was established, the work which it must do and may do, are here stated and defined, by the supreme and authoritative laws of Congress and of Illinois, in a manner so plain that only the most hopeless ignorance or willful perversity can misconstrue or misunderstand them. 'It will be seen that the law in respect to the instruction to be given in the University is two-fold, MANDATORY AND PERMISSIVE—certain things must be taught, certain other things are NOT EXCLUDED. § Respecting the latter the Trustees seem to have discretion; they may provide for them or