Inaugural Address delivered to the University of St. Andrews (1867)

The piece opens with

Universities exist to make capable and cultivated human beings, not to train people for a particular livelihood

Their wordsIt is not a place of professional education. Universities are not intended to teach the knowledge required to fit men for some special mode of gaining their livelihood. Their object is not to make skilful lawyers, or physicians, or engineers, but capable and cultivated human beings.

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John Stuart Mill did not write this page.

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Our reading
Universities exist to make capable and cultivated human beings, not to train people for a particular livelihood

Their wordsIt is not a place of professional education. Universities are not intended to teach the knowledge required to fit men for some special mode of gaining their livelihood. Their object is not to make skilful lawyers, or physicians, or engineers, but capable and cultivated human beings.
Our reading
Educate people to be capable and sensible, and they will make themselves capable professionals

Their wordsMen are men before they are lawyers, or physicians, or merchants, or manufacturers; and if you make them capable and sensible men, they will make themselves capable and sensible lawyers or physicians.
Our reading
What most distinguishes one mind from another is the ability to judge evidence correctly

Their wordsIn what consists the principal and most characteristic difference between one human intellect and another? In their ability to judge correctly of evidence.
Our reading
No part of intellectual education is more valuable, or harder to replace, than logic

Their wordsOf Logic I venture to say, even if limited to that of mere ratiocination, the theory of names, propositions, and the syllogism, that there is no part of intellectual education which is of greater value, or whose place can so ill be supplied by anything else.
Our reading
Bad people need only that good people look on and do nothing; someone who lets wrong be done in their name without protest is not good

Their wordsBad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.
Our reading
A university ought to be a place of free inquiry, and the better it does its other duties the more surely it will be

Their wordsAn University ought to be a place of free speculation. The more diligently it does its duty in all other respects, the more certain it is to be that.
Our reading
What we achieve depends less on how much time we have than on how we use it

Their wordsThose who know how to employ opportunities will often find that they can create them: and what we achieve depends less on the amount of time we possess, than on the use we make of our time.

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