3 Matching Annotations
  1. Jun 2021
  2. Feb 2020
  3. Oct 2017
    1. We should be far too from the discouraging persuasion, that man is fixed, by the law of his nature, at a given point: that his improvement is a chimæra, and the hope delusive of rendering ourselves wiser, happier or better than our forefathers were. As well might it be urged that the wild & uncultivated tree, hitherto yielding sour & bitter fruit only, can never be made to yield better: yet we know that the grafting art implants a new tree on the savage stock, producing what is most estimable both in kind & degree. Education, in like manner engrafts a new man on the native stock, & improves what in his nature was vicious & perverse, into qualities of virtue and social worth; and it cannot be but that each generation succeeding to the knowledge acquired by all those who preceded it, adding to it their own acquisitions & discoveries, and handing the mass down for successive & constant accumulation, must advance the knowledge & well-being of mankind: not infinitely, as some have said, but indefinitely, and to a term which no one can fix or foresee

      It is interesting to see the purposeful imagery the authors used for this passage. They first liken the students of UVA to a chimaera, a being composed of multiple animals, showing they intend to have us as students adapt and evolve during our time here rather than to remain a static character. The writers then go on to mention a tree that has been engrafted, much like a chimaera may take on new animals the tree takes on new fruits. This is what the founders of UVA wanted, but rather than fruits and animals, they wanted to do this with education and I feel this visual analogy serves well in that purpose.