By Michael Pakaluk, The Catholic Thing - For Newman, too, a genuine university must study God, who truly exists as the first and final cause, and therefore is the sole unifying reason for all truth, as if in the manner of a highest form. Take away the highest form of anything, and you are left with a “heap”... lacking unity... Nothing can exist without unity. In a sense the reality of truth is denied because the reality of truth as a whole is subverted, once God is taken away. The university becomes bereft of its object.