Educated Man By Henry Norman Essay, Research Paper

John Henry Newman, the author of the essay entitled ?The Educated Man?

begins his essay in a way that was very contradictory to his times. He opens his

essay boldly declaring that ?A University is not a birthplace to poets or

immortal authors, of founders of schools, leaders of colonies, or conquerors of

nations.? In essence, what he is saying is that the university is not the

birthplace of an educated man. This thought helps highlight his purpose for the

remainder of the essay, to provide a pure definition, untainted by society, of

what a true educated man is, as opposed to what he was considered in the

Victorian Period. I strongly agree with his essay, and its function of requiring

the paper-machier-and-chicken-wire educated man of the Victorian Age to become

molded of real substance. The essay continues to say ? [A university] does not

promote a generation of Aristotles or Newtons, of Raphaels or Shakespeares?

Nor is it content on the other hand with forming the critic or experimentalist,

the economist or engineer?. This statement helps defend Newman?s case. The

names mentioned were all men who in some way changed the world. Those of them

who did receive a University diploma do not owe their success or education to

the University they received it from. The task of the university was minimal,

the true thing that made them become pinnacles of education was their own love

for knowledge, and the traits they possessed as described throughout the rest of

the essay. Today, men such as Martin Luther, Albert Einstein, and Charlie

Chaplin can be added to the list. Albert Einstein, although considered on of the

most educated men ever, never even finished middle school. These accounts all

make a case for Newman in arguing that the general definition of and educated

man- a man who has received diploma and graduation from a college, as incorrect.

One trait of Newman?s educated man is that ?he is at home with any

society? and ?has common ground with every class.? This idea is also

contradictory to the thought of the time- that an educated man relates only to

other educated men. I side with Newman on this issue also. A true educated man

knows he may learn more about the anatomy of a fish from a poor fisherman than a

Harvard grad. He knows he may gain knowledge from all walks of life, and does

not limit his knowledge imput to the ideas of just one class. Newman concludes

his essay by saying, ?He has a gift which? without which good fortune is but

vulgar, and with which failure and disappointment have a charm.? The fictional

character Jay Gatsby, of Fitzgerald?s The Great Gatsby was proof of this. He

was a man who had acquired good fortune without education, and it was indeed

vulgar, as opposed to the charming life of Van Gough, whose artwork, although

not rewarded with money during his lifetime, will forever be appreciated. This

view of Newman?s was also contradictory of a time who?s men would acquire go

to a university simply because they have wealth, and who would never see a day

of lack because the good fortune of inheritance. The good fortune then becomes

unappreciated and vulgar. In dispelling Society?s definition, Newman took it

upon himself to create a substitute; an unaffected spiritual definition pulled

from the same well that the definition of man in the constitution was pulled.

This essay is still valuable because the idea of an educated man is still a

social title rather than a task to complete. He is still stereotyped by what

they?ve done, rather than what he is. Perhaps the beginning of educated men

will remain where it has always begun, in the small cleft of a rock- such as

Stratford-upon-Avon or Urbino, Italy, where one learns to ask questions, in

pursuit of their answers stumble upon new world?s and ideas alike.