To impart and to acquire knowledge
for itself and for it alone, without subordinating this end to another
distinct and predominant end, to direct minds towards this object and
in this way, under the promptings and restraints of supply and demand,
to open up the largest field and the freest career to the faculties,
to labor, to the preferences of the thinking individual, master or
disciple, - such is (or ought to be) the spirit of the institution.
And, evidently, in order that it may be effective according to this
spirit, it needs an independent, appropriate body, that is to say,
autonomous, sheltered against the interference of the State, of the
Church, of the commune, of the province, and of all general or local
powers, provided with rules and regulations, made a legal, civil
personage, with the right to buy, sell and contract obligations, in
short proprietorship.
This is no chimerical plan, the work of a speculative, calculating
imagination, which appears well and remains on paper. All the
universities of the middle ages were organized according to this type.
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