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.
The power and significance of education is eloquently exemplified in this passage. Through the clarification that the qualities of education should not “infinitely” acquired but rather “indefinitely,” the authors highlight one of the goals for the university. Education will be pursued without limits or bounds and it is only through a suitable environment, which the commissioners are attempting to create, that this vision will be brought to life.