I dream of an ideal university that would deliver no degrees, nor give access to any specific occupation, nor award any professional qualifications. The students would be motivated by one thing only: a strong personal desire for knowledge—the acquisition of knowledge would be their only reward.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Friday, August 02, 2013
An Ideal University
Simon Leys, The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays (© 2011; rpt. New York: New York Review Books, 2013), p. 463: