The university should also be the seat of the principal Grand Seminary, and of a school of Higher Theology. The reasons for locating the place of education for ecclesiastics at a university apply to all the grades of their distinct schools above that of the grammar-school with nearly equal force, and they are very weighty in their nature. They concern in part the professors and in part the students. So far as the former are concerned, it is evident that they would derive the greatest advantage from the facilities for study and intercourse with learned men afforded by the university, and would exercise the most salutary influence over the professors in the departments of philosophy and secular science. One great end of the university is to collect together a great body of learned men devoted to the pursuit of universal science; and it is obvious that this cannot be successfully accomplished unless the ecclesiastical colleges are included within the corporation.
In regard to the students, it seems plain enough that all that part of their course which precedes theology can be much more thoroughly carried on at a university of the highest class than at a Little Seminary, especially if these seminaries are numerous and therefore necessarily limited in numbers and all kinds of means for improvement. A concentration of the endowments, the instructors, and the pupils in one grand institution, makes it possible to give a much better and higher kind of education, and saves a great deal of labor besides. It is especially, however, in relation to the lectures on physical science, and the cultivation of other general branches distinct from the routine of class recitations, that the university has the advantage over the seminary. The students of theology, moreover, can receive great benefit from lectures of this kind, and from the libraries, museums, cabinets, etc., which a great university will possess, as well as from the greater ability and learning which men chosen to fill the chairs of sacred science in such an institution are likely to have, in comparison with those who can be made available for giving instruction in many of the smaller seminaries. Over and above all these advantages for actually gaining a greater amount of knowledge, there is the immense advantage to be gained of bringing up together and binding into one intellectual brotherhood our most highly educated Catholic youth. There is something in the atmosphere and the surroundings of a great university which quickens and enlarges the intellectual life; brightens the faculties; trains the mind for its future career, and fits it to act in society and upon men. The alma mater is a centre of influences and associations lasting through life. The learned men residing there, and their pupils in all professions, are bound together by sacred ties, which are not only a cause of pleasure to them in future years, but of great power for good in the community. Such a university as we have described would in twenty-five years produce a body of alumni who would intellectually exert a great influence over the Catholic community throughout the United States, and make themselves respected by all classes of educated men. The clergy ought to retain the first place and a commanding influence among this body of educated Catholics. For this purpose, it seems to us that they ought to be educated with them, and look to the same university as their alma mater.