Middle Ages and Renaissance 213
in this respect is correct, and in the medieval tradition ; but a
school of higher learning is not necessarily a university, the
very name of which implies corporate privileges and auton-
omy. The American whose notion of an efficient college was
a student at one end of a log and Mark Hopkins at the other,
unconsciously voiced a Greek, not a medieval, idea of educa-
tion; for the men of the middle ages found it difficult, like
ourselves, to conceive of higher learning apart from a society
of scholars.
In the decay and destruction that overcame ancient civili-
zation during the dark ages, it became necessary for men
engaged in the same occupation, or living in the same com-
munity, to band together for self-protection. That is why
the middle ages bred institutions. Medieval man, like his
American frontier descendant (and for much the same
reason), liked to merge his individuality in a guild, commune,
fraternity, or corporation. He was an excellent “joiner,”
and one of the things he loved to join was a university.
A university in the middle ages meant an institution of
learning recognized as such by Church or State, where the
teachers or students, or both, were united in guilds enjoying
a certain privilege and autonomy, where some “superior”
study such as Law, Medicine, or Theology was taught in
addition to the Seven Arts and Philosophy, and where defi-
nite curricula led to specific degrees. Four of these attributes
still mark the university in America. It must be recognized
as such by the State, and from the same source receive the
power to grant degrees; it should have professional and
graduate schools in addition to a liberal arts course for
undergraduates and definite curricula. The only attribute
of the university that has lapsed in eight centuries is the one
that occasioned its formation—the corporate autonomy of
masters, doctors, and scholars. The university is no longer