SOURCE: "Liberal Studies and Moral Aims: A Critical Survey of Newman's Position," in Thought, Vol. 1, No. 1, June, 1926, pp. 54-71.

In the following essay, Corcoran examines Newman's late essay "Discourses on University Education," an elaboration of the methods and goals of liberal education, which "must not be 'burdened' or 'implicated' with virtue or religion."

I

Seventy-five years have elapsed since, in the interval between the Falls of 1851 and 1852, John Henry Newman composed, delivered publicly, and issued in book form his "Discourses on University Education."

Rare indeed are those treatises in English, setting forth a theory of education, which can be praised as being not only sustained expositions of constructive thought, but also choice models of that high dignity of style and mastery of expression befitting an arduous synthesis of intellectual principles. Such a union of matter and form is found in Plato and Quintilian, writers on education during the...