Some great men insist that education should he confined to some particular and narrow end, and should issue in some definite wor

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问题     Some great men insist that education should he confined to some particular and narrow end, and should issue in some definite work, which can he weighed and measured.【F1】They argue as if every thing, as well as every person, had its price; and that where there has been a great expenditure, they have a right to expect a return in kind. This they call making education and instruction "useful," and "Utility" becomes their watchword.【F2】With a fundamental principle of this nature, they very naturally go on to ask, what there is to show for the expense of a University and what is the real worth in the market of the article called "a Liberal Education," on the supposition that it does not teach us definitely how to advance our manufactures, or to improve our lands, or to better our civil economy.
    Such then is the enunciation of the theory of utility in education.【F3】Certainly it is apparently right to contend that nothing is worth pursuing but what is useful, and that life is not long enough to expend upon interesting, or curious, or brilliant trifles. In one sense, I will grant it is true; but, if so, how do I propose directly to meet the objection? I have really met it already, in laying down, that intellectual culture is its own end; for what has its end in itself, has its use in itself also. 1 say, if a Liberal Education consists in the culture of the intellect, and if that culture be in itself a good, here, without going further, is an answer to the question; for if a healthy body is a good in itself, why is not a healthy intellect?【F4】If a College of Physicians is a useful institution, because it contemplates bodily health, why is not an Academical Body, though it were simply and solely engaged in imparting vigor and beauty and grasp to the intellectual portion of our nature?
    Let us take "useful," in its proper and popular sense, meaning not what is simply good, but what tends to be good, or is the instrument of good, "Good" indeed means one thing, and "useful" means another; but I lay it down as a principle, that, though the useful is not always good, the good is always useful.【F5】If the intellect is so excellent a portion of us, and its cultivation so excellent, it is not only beautiful, perfect, admirable, and noble in itself, but in a true and high sense it must be useful to the possessor and to all around him.
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答案只有有用的东西才值得去追求,人生短暂。不能耗费在有趣、奇特或华美的琐事上,这一论点听来确实貌似有理。

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