Under the rule of such a cultural ideal the corporation of learning could not well take any avowed stand except as an establishment for utilitarian instruction， the practical expediency of whose work was the sole overt test of its competency. And such it still should continue to be according to the avowed aspirations of the staler commonplace elements in the community today. By subreption， and by a sophisticated subsumption under some ostensibly practical line of interest and inquiry， it is true， the university men of the earlier time spent much of their best endeavour on matters of disinterested scholarship that had no bearing on any human want more to the point than an idle curiosity； and by a similar turn of subreption and sophistication the later spokesmen of the barbarian ideal take much complacent credit for the "triumphs of modern science"that have nothing but an ostensible bearing on any matter of practical expediency， and they look to the universities to continue this work of the idle curiosity under some plausible pretext of practicality.
So the university of that era unavoidably came to be organized as a more or less comprehensive federation of professional schools or faculties devoted to such branches of practical knowledge as the ruling utilitarian interests of the time demanded. Under this overshadowing barbarian tradition the universities of early modern times started out as an avowed contrivance for indoctrination in the ways and means of salvation， spiritual and temporal， individual and collective， --in some sort a school of engineering， primarily in divinity， secondarily in law and politics， and presently in medicine and also in the other professions that serve a recognized utilitarian interest. After that fashion of a university that answered to this manner of ideals and aspirations had once been installed and gained a secure footing， its pattern acquired a degree of authenticity and prescription， so that later seminaries of learning came unquestioningly to be organized on the same lines；and further changes of academic policy and practice， such as are demanded by the later growth of cultural interests and ideals， have been made only reluctantly and with a suspicious reserve， gradually and by a circuitous sophistication； so that much of the non-utilitarian scientific and scholarly work indispensable to the university's survival under modern conditions is still scheduled under the faculties of law or medicine， or even of divinity.
But the human propensity for inquiry into things， irrespective of use or expediency， insinuated itself among the expositors of worldly wisdom from the outset； and from the first this quest of idle learning has sought shelter in the university as the only establishment in which it could find a domicile， even on sufferance， and so could achieve that footing of consecutive intellectual enterprise running through successive generations of scholars which is above all else indispensable to the advancement of knowledge. Under the r間ime of unmitigated pragmatic aims that ruled the earlier days of the European universities， this pursuit of knowledge for its own sake was carried on as a work of scholarly supererogation by men whose ostensibly sole occupation was the promulgation of some accredited line of salutary information. Frequently it had to be carried on under some colourable masquerade of practicality. And yet so persistent has the spirit of idle curiosity proved to be， and so consonant with the long-term demands even of the laity， that the dissimulation and smuggling-in of disinterested learning has gone on ever more openly and at an ever increasing rate of gain； until in the end， the attention given to scholarship and the non-utilitarian sciences in these establishments has come far to exceed that given to the practical disciplines for which the several faculties were originally installed. As time has passed and as successive cultural mutations have passed over the community， shifting the centre of interest and bringing new ideals of scholarship， and bringing the whole cultural fabric nearer to its modern complexion， those purposes of crass expediency that were of such great moment and were so much a matter of course in earlier academic policy， have insensibly fallen to the rank of incidentals. And what had once been incidental， or even an object of surreptitious tolerance in the university， remains today as the only unequivocal duty of the corporation of learning， and stands out as the one characteristic trait without which no establishment can claim rank as a university.
