Universitas Litterarum

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"Each Castalian Institution and each Castalian should know only two ideals: to achieve the utmost possible perfection in his subject, and to keep both his Faculty and himself, living and elastic, so that he may know himself to be permanently bound to all other subjects and inwardly on good terms with all of them. This second ideal, the idea of the inner unity of all intellectual human effort, the thought of universality, has its perfect expression in our illustrious Game.
The physician, the musical historian or whatever teacher you like may at times display a stern and ascetic perseverance in his own subject and renounce the thought of a universal culture in favor of the special high achievement of the moment: but we- we bead players- whatever we do, must never approve and practice this limitation and self-sufficiency, for it is our definite task to preserve the idea of a Universitas Litterarum and its highest expression, the noble Game, and ever and again to rescue it from the inclination of the individual Faculties towards self-sufficiency."
From the Glass Bead Game
Hermann Hesse