Faculty

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

the power or ability of doing anything; capacity for any natural action or function; ease or dexterity in performance, possessed naturally or acper quired by practice; one of the powers of the mind or intellect, enabling it to receive or retain perceptions; as, the faculty of imaging, remembering, etc. In ecclesiastical law, a privilege or license granted to any person by favor, and not as a right to do any act which by law he may not do. In mental philosophy, a natural and active power of the human mind, as distinguished from a passive one, the latter approximately called capacity or receptivity. In the Roman Catholic Church, permission granted by an ecclesiastical superior to a duly qualified subject to hear confessions. Such permission only extends to the district over which the superior has jurisdiction. Thus, faculties are granted by bishops to the priests of their dioceses, and by the heads of religious houses to such of their subjects as they judge qualified to hear the confessions of the community. In the United States, the term faculty indicates the body of persons who are intrusted with the government and instruction of a university or college as a whole, comprising the president, professors, and tutors. It is also used for the body of masters and professors of each of the several departments of instruction in a university; as, the law faculty, etc. FÆCES, the excrementitious contents of the bowels, the refuse of the food and aliment, and sometimes called alvine discharges, or the dejecta; also, sediments; dregs; lees; settlings after distillation and infusion.