1852, he gave a series of speeches in Dublin to promote the newly established university. These speeches were later revised, and together with his speeches on university education on other occasions, a book "The Ideal of University" was synthesized. This translation is based on an abridged version of May's translation from Yardley, which selects several speeches from the original book and some wonderful chapters from other speeches. Newman was a great advocate of liberal education in the19th century. When he wrote The Ideal of University, the traditional political, economic and cultural foundation of liberal education began to change:/kloc-The political revolution in France and the United States began at the end of August, claiming that everyone should have political freedom; With the rise of the British industrial revolution, everyone can work and their leisure time is increasing day by day. On the other hand, with the progress of society, the influence of religious society gradually weakened, the social status and influence of science gradually improved, and the elite of scientific knowledge began to replace the traditional elite of religious knowledge and become the dominant of society. In order to adapt to these changes and safeguard class interests, the British bourgeoisie turned its attention to higher education. The British universities, represented by Oxford and Cambridge, stick to tradition, pay attention to rational cultivation and character cultivation, and reject scientific education. In order to reverse this situation, British universities have taken a circuitous development path, established new universities and colleges specializing in science education outside traditional universities, and appeared the so-called "new university movement". These new universities follow the Scottish university model, are market-oriented, and have the characteristics of low fees, low admission requirements, no requirement for students to live on campus, rejection of religious education, and ignorance of knowledge integrity. The emergence of these new universities has endangered the educational tradition of classical humanism formed by British higher education for hundreds of years, and posed a severe challenge to the traditional ideals of British universities. At the same time, the advocates of utilitarianism and scientism, represented by critics of Spencer, Heckley and Edinburgh, constantly criticized the conservatism and closeness of Oxford and Cambridge, demanding that these two universities reform, abolish religious examinations, absorb natural science achievements into university education, offer natural science courses and establish science laboratories. Britain's traditional ideal of university is threatened. It is against this background that Newman, as a humanist, has comprehensively and comprehensively considered the main problems of university education. Newman based the logical starting point of the whole argument on his explanation of the essence of university and his understanding that all knowledge constitutes a complete whole. From the etymological point of view, he believes that "a university is a place to impart universal knowledge". He advocates that universities should impart all kinds of knowledge equally and completely. On this basis, he believes that the purpose of the university is twofold. First of all, university education is rational, not moral. The purpose of university education is to cultivate rationality and develop human rationality. Secondly, university education focuses on spreading and popularizing knowledge, not expanding it. Combining these two aspects, he believes that university education should pay more attention to cultivating students' rational ability while imparting knowledge. Since universities should take imparting knowledge and cultivating rationality as their responsibility, what knowledge to impart and how to cultivate rationality are the key issues. He believes that university education should provide universal knowledge (truth with ordinary meaning) and complete knowledge (theology cannot be excluded from the knowledge of university professors), rather than narrow professional knowledge. The knowledge he said includes both concrete scientific truth and abstract and scientific philosophical knowledge. He believes that "knowledge is a state of mind and condition". Therefore, the pursuit of knowledge must be a spiritual pursuit, and the greatest purpose of spiritual pursuit lies in the spirit itself. Therefore, he advocated that "knowledge itself is an end". Universities can only be more suitable for rational cultivation if they include philosophical knowledge in the knowledge they impart and study for knowledge. Regarding the functional orientation of universities, he clearly put forward that scientific research should be separated from teaching. Since a university is a place for imparting common sense, it should be established for imparting knowledge, for students and with teaching as its only function. The emphasis on teaching function actually means that Newman attaches importance to the academic system of established universities such as Oxford and Cambridge, but his talk focuses on knowledge, so he can hardly see his discussion on the academic system. In a word, in his eyes, the existence of universities is neither to make people have knowledge (non-research), nor to prepare for work (non-professional), nor to make people lofty and sacred (immoral), but to prepare for knowledge (knowledge for knowledge's sake). The real mission of a university is to "cultivate good social citizens" and realize the harmonious development of society. Newman made the above position clear in his second to fourth speeches. He is actually refuting the utilitarian view of establishing a secular university that only provides professional education for the middle class. Based on the fact that all knowledge constitutes a whole, universities are places where general knowledge is taught. He believes that universities cannot be called universities if they do not include theology and teach general knowledge. Based on this understanding, he believes that university education should be designed for free education. Newman's liberal education is an "operational activity of mind, reason and reflection", aiming at mental training, character cultivation and rational development. The concrete embodiment of free education is a gentleman who combines wisdom, courage, tolerance and self-cultivation. The pursuit of knowledge itself is an important way to carry out this kind of education. He opposes the narrow professional education in universities. In his words, "when knowledge becomes more and more special according to its degree, the less knowledge can be regarded as knowledge." In other words, the more specific and empirical a person has, the less knowledge he has and the less free education he receives. He used the relationship between "goodness" and "practicality" to demonstrate the relationship between free education and professional education. "Practicality is not necessarily good, but good must be practical." Because the purpose of general education is to cultivate rationality, and "the cultivation of rationality itself is a good thing and its own purpose", it is also a practical education. Although "practicality" and "goodness" belong to the concepts of tool level and value level respectively, they can be unified. The training objectives of free education and professional education are not contradictory, because people trained by free education have the ability to engage in relevant scientific and professional work immediately. Newman's liberal education thought does not aim at pursuing utilitarianism and practicality, but it does not deny its utilitarianism and practicality, which is a powerful refutation of utilitarian education view. In the fifth to eighth chapters, Newman mainly discusses the essence of liberal education and its utilitarian and practical side. In order to realize this kind of free education, he not only insists on the principle of knowledge for knowledge's sake, but also advocates that students should really and actively enter the field of knowledge, embrace knowledge and master it. Wei must take action to meet the coming fact halfway ... you are not only here to attend classes or read books, but also to teach questions and answers. This kind of teaching exists in your conversation with the teacher. In his ideal university, students should not only study actively, actively, openly and interactively, but also master knowledge with the viewpoint of universal connection. He advocates establishing a connection between old and new knowledge, and through analysis, classification, comparison, coordination, matching, integration and other means, the new knowledge can be truly internalized as an organic part of the whole knowledge system of students, and the growth of students' intelligence can be truly realized. Because it is impossible for students to learn every subject open to them, in order to realize the teaching goal that universities should provide universal and complete knowledge, he advocates that universities should become educational places instead of teaching places, that is, students should live among people who represent the whole knowledge field, and emphasize that students should educate themselves in the atmosphere of jigsaw puzzles full of universal knowledge. Newman has lived in Oxford for more than twenty years. The essence of Oxford-college system, boarding system and tutorial system-constitutes an important part of his university ideal. In addition, his religious career also greatly influenced his university ideal. Newman was once an Anglican and later converted to Roman Catholicism at 1845. He was very dissatisfied with the rejection of theology by emerging universities and colleges at that time. In his preface, he pointed out that universities are independent of the church. However, without the help of the church, the university can't fully accomplish its purpose, because the church is a necessary condition to realize the integrity of the university, and theology, as a religious truth, should be an inseparable part of this complete knowledge system. Religious intervention will not change the characteristics of universities, but will make universities behave more steadily in the process of fulfilling their intellectual education responsibilities. In his ninth speech, Newman discussed the responsibility of religion to universities, and thought that universities should accept the moral influence of religion in order to achieve their goals. He also discussed how to exert these influences properly. Here, although Newman overemphasizes the role of religion in university education and theology in the whole knowledge system, we can also see his thoughts on university autonomy. In fact, when he realized that the Pope appointed him as the president of Dublin Catholic University, he just asked him to turn the university into a carefully protected Catholic greenhouse, he resolutely resigned as president. Newman's passionate and logical eloquence did not save the ideal fate of traditional British universities. On the one hand, Newman's university ideal itself has the limitations of the times and individuals. In terms of university functions, he advocated excluding scientific research from the university, and failed to see the positive side of mutual promotion between scientific research and teaching, so he failed to make a more comprehensive and positive evaluation of the relationship between teaching and scientific research like Humboldt. On how to deal with the relationship between college free education and professional education, Newman completely stood on the standpoint of free education, without fully considering the professional education itself, ignoring the actual needs of the changing social reality and not actively responding to the scientific revolution; Even as far as liberal arts education itself is concerned, he attaches great importance to the study of classical subjects, especially literature (the last chapter of this section is about literature), and strictly limits liberal arts education to the cultivation of rationality, while excluding the cultivation of virtue (in his view, conscience and virtue can only come from religion). In terms of the restrictive factors of universities, he exaggerated the influence of the church and ignored the role of the government and its connection with society. In methodology, many of Newman's educational thoughts are based on assumptions, and his possible etymological explanation of the word university forms the basis of his argument. The discussion on the relationship between general education and professional education is based on the assumption that intellectual training itself is good, which directly affects the credibility of his thought. On the other hand, when Newman wrote The Ideal of University, the secularization and specialization of higher education was the general trend. In addition, Newman is not unaware that a new university ideal has been formed in Germany and widely imitated. His university ideal can only find a balance between tradition, reality and hope.