But  as  it  is  of  "The  University,"  in  connection  with  the  popular
methods,  and  not  in  contrariety  to  them,  as  working  with  them  and
for  them,  fostering  them  in  its  loving  care,  drawing  them  into  its
own  life,  and  growing  them,  with  itself,  into  the  same  structure,  that
I  venture  to  speak,  may  I  not  hope  to  have  given  no  offense  to  the
partisans  of  either  a  common  or  a  liberal  education,  possibly  to
have  conciliated  both  in  the  interest  of  a  common  cause,  in  having
thus  announced  my  theme.
It  has  seemed  strange  to  some  persons,  that  "  the  tree  "  (if  it
were  a  tree)  "  whose  mortal  taste  brought  death  into  the  world,  and
all  our  woe,"  should  have  been  "  the  tree  of  the  knowledge  of  good
and  evil,"  and  that  man  should  not  have  found,  in  the  fruit  of  that
very  tree,  a  proper  preventative  to  his  fall,  and  all  the  ills  which  have
followed  in  its  train.  But  if  we  no  longer  make  the  eating  in  ques-
tion, and  the  knowledge,  interchangeable  terms;  if  by  the  eating  of
good  and  evil,  we  understand  a  practical  experiment  at  living,  in  the
contradiction  of  the  two,  and  by  the  kno7c>ledge  that  observation  of
nature  and  that  light  of  the  reason  and  of  the  conscience  which,
preliminary  to  choice,  and  anticipating  its  consequences,  should  have

I  This  oration  was  delivered  June  7,  1S65.
