The aims and methods of a liberal education for Africans. Inaugural address delivered by Edward Wilmot Blyden, LL.D., President of Liberia College. January 5, 1881

• o, ' TO " ^ '

s HOPKINSJNIVERSITY.

JI'UM C<it a, /'/-'. O r/ 1

INAUGURAL ADDRESS

DELIVERED BY

EDWARD WILMOT BLYDEN, LL.D.,

PRESIDENT OF LIBERIA COLLEGE.

JANUARY 5, 1881.

GIVEN BY

THE AIMS AND METHODS OF A LIBERAL
EDUCATION FOR AFRICANS.

CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.:
JOHN WILSON AND SON.

Snitircsitg
1882.

INAUGURAL ADDRESS.

GENTLEMEN OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES:

YOUR generous action — endorsed by the equally generous
action of the Trustees of Donations in Boston — in electing me
to the Presidency of Liberia College, gives me the opportunity
of appearing before you and this large and respected audience,
on this important occasion, to discuss what I conceive to be the
work which lies before this institution, and to indicate the man-
ner in which it shall be my endeavor to discharge the respon-
sible duties which the situation imposes.

A college in West Africa, for the education of African youth
by African instructors, under a Christian government con-
ducted by Negroes, is something so unique in the history of
Christian civilization, that wherever, in the civilized world, the
intelligence of the existence of such an institution is carried,
there will be curiosity if not anxiety as to its character, its
work, and its prospects. A college suited in all respects to the
exigencies of this nation and to the needs of the race cannot
come into existence all at once. It must be the result of years
of experience, of trial, of experiment.

Every thinking man will allow that all we have been doing
in this country so far, whether in church, in state, or in school,
(our forms of religion, our politics, our literature — such as it
is) is only temporary and transitional. When we advance
into Africa truly, and become one with the great tribes on the
continent, these things will take the form which the genius of
the race shall prescribe.

The civilization of that vast population, untouched by foreign
influence, not yet affected by European habits, is not to be or-
ganized according to foreign patterns, but will organize itself
according to the nature of the people and the country. Noth-
ing that we are doing now can be absolute or permanent, be-
cause nothing is normal or regular. Everything is provisional
or tentative.

The College i 5 only a machine, an instrument to assist in
carrying forward our regular work, — devised not only for intel-
lectual ends but for social purposes, for religious duty, for
patriotic aims, for racial development ; and when as an instru-
ment, as a means, it fails, for any reason whatever, to fulfil its
legitimate functions, it is the duty of the country, as well as the
interest of the country, to see that it is stimulated into health-
ful activity, or, if this is impossible, to see that it is set aside
as a pernicious obstruction. We cannot afford to waste time
in dealing with insoluble problems under impossible conditions.
When the College was first founded, according to the generous
conception of our friends abroad, they probably supposed that
they were founding an institution to be at once complete in its
appointments, and to go on working regularly and effectively
as colleges in countries where people have come to understand,
from years of experience and trial, their intellectual, social,
and political needs, and the methods for supplying those needs ;
and in their efforts to assist us to become sharers in the ad-
vantages of their civilization, they have aimed to establish
institutions a priori for our development. That is, they have,
by a course of reasoning natural to them, concluded that cer-
tain methods and agencies which have been successful among
themselves must be successful among Africans. They have on
general considerations come to certain conclusions as to what
ought to apply to us. They have not, perhaps, sufficiently
borne in mind that a college in a new country and among an
inexperienced people must be, at least in the earlier periods of
its existence, different from a college in an old country and
among a people who understand themselves and their work ;
but, from the little experience we have had on this side of the

water, we bare learned enough to know that no a priori ar-
rangements can be successfully employed in the promotion of
our progress. We are arriving at the principles necessary for
our guidance, through experience, through difficulties, through
failures. The process is slow and sometimes discouraging, but
after a while we shall reach the true methods of growth for us.
The work of a college like ours, and among a people like our
people, must be at first generative. It must create a sentiment
favorable to its existence. It must generate the intellectual
and moral state in the community which will give it not only
a congenial atmosphere in which to thrive, but food and nutri-
ment for its enlargement and growth ; and out of this will
naturally come the material conditions of its success.

Liberia College has gone through one stage of experience.
We are to-day at the threshold of another. It has, to a great
extent, created a public sentiment in its favor ; but it has not yet
done its generative work. It is now proposed to take a new de-
parture and, by a system of instruction more suited to the neces-
sities of the country and the race, — that is to say, more suited
to the development of the individuality and manhood of the
African, — to bring the institution more within the scope of the
co-operation and enthusiasm of the people. It is proposed also,
as soon as we can command the necessary means, to remove
the College operations to an interior site, where health of body,
the indispensable condition of health of mind, can be secured ;
where the students may devote a portion of their time to man-
ual labor in the cultivation of the fertile lands which will be
accessible, and thus assist in procuring the means from the soil
for meeting a large part of the necessary expenses ; and where
access to the institution will be convenient to the aborigines.
The work immediately before us, then, is one of reconstruc-
tion, and the usual difficulties that attend reconstruction of any
sort beset our first step. The people generally are not yet pre-
pared to understand their own interest in the great work to be
done for themselves and their children, and the part they should
take in it ; and we shall be obliged to work for some time to
come, not only without the popular sympathy we ought to have,
but with utterly inadequate resources.

6

This is inevitable in the present condition of our progress.
All we can hope is that the work will go on, hampered though
it may be, until, in spite of misappreciation and disparagement,
there can be raised up a class of minds who will give a healthy
tone to society, and exert an influence widespread enough to
bring to the institution that indigenous sympathy and support
without which it cannot thrive. It is our hope and expectation
that there will rise up men, aided by instruction and culture in
this College, imbued with public spirit, who will know how to
live and work and prosper in this country, how to use all favor-
ing outward conditions, how to triumph by intelligence, by
tact, by industry, by perseverance, over the indifference of their
own people, and how to overcome the scorn and opposition
of the enemies of the race, — men who will be determined
to make this nation honorable among the nations of the
earth.

We have in our curriculum, adopted some years ago, a
course of study corresponding to some extent to that pursued
in European and American colleges. To this we shall adhere
as nearly as possible ; but experience has already suggested,
and will no doubt from time to time suggest, such modifications
as are required by our peculiar circumstances.

The object of all education is to secure growth and efficiency,
to make a man all that his natural gifts will allow him to
become ; to produce self-respect, a proper appreciation of our
own powers and of the powers of other people ; to beget a fit-
ness for one's sphere of life and action, and an ability to dis-
charge the duties it imposes. Now if we take these qualities
as the true outcome of a correct education, then every one who
is acquainted with the facts must admit that as a rule, in the
entire civilized world, the Negro, notwithstanding his two hun-
dred years' residence with Christian and civilized races, has no-
where received anything like a correct education. We find
him everywhere — in the United States, in the West Indies,
in South America — largely unable to cope with the respon-
sibilities which devolve upon him. Not only is he not sought
after for any position of influence in the political operations of

those countries, but he is even denied admission to ecclesiastical
appointments of any importance.

The Rev. Henry Venn, late Secretary of the Church Mis-
sionary Society, writing in 1867 to the Bishop of Kingston ?
Jamaica, of the Negro of that island, says : —

" There can be no doubt in the minds of those who have watched
the progress of modern missions that a chief cause of the failure of
the Jamaica Mission has been the deficiency of Negro teachers for the
Negro race" 1

With regard to the same island Bishop Courtenay, in an
address before the American Episcopal Convention in 1874,
said : —

" We have not as yet in Jamaica one priest of purely African race.
At the present moment no Negro in holy orders could command that
respect in Jamaica which a white man could command." 2

Bishop Mitchinson, of Barbadoes, at the Pan Anglican Coun-
cil in London, in 1878, said with regard to his diocese : —

" Experience in my diocese has taught me to be mistrustful of intel-
lectual gifts in the colored race, for they do not seem generally to con-
note sterling work and fitness for the Christian ministry. . . I do not
think the time has come, or is even near, when the ranks of the clergy
will be largely recruited in the West Indies by the Negro race." 8

But this testimony is borne not only by white people, who
might be supposed to be influenced by prejudice ; it is the ex-
perience also of all thinking Negroes who set themselves earnestly
to consider the work and disqualifications of the Negro in civ-
ilized lands. All along this coast, in the civilized settlements,
there is a dissatisfaction with the results so far of the training
of native Africans in Europe and America, and even with their
training on the coast under European teachers.

The West African Reporter, of Sierra Leone, complains as
follows : —

1 Memoirs of Rev. Henr}- Venn, B. D., p. 215.

a The Church Journal, New York, October 29, 1874.

8 The Guardian, July 3, 1878.

8

"We find our children, as a result of their foreign culture (we do
not say in spite of their foreign culture, but as a result of their
foreign culture), aimless and purposeless for the race, — crammed with
European formulas of thought and expression so as to astonish their
bewildered relatives. Their friends wonder at the words of their
mouth ; but they wonder at other things besides their words. They
are the Polyphemus of civilization, huge, but sightless, — cui lumen
ademptum."

This paragraph has been quoted in several American period-
icals. The American Missionary, the organ of the American
Missionary Association, in commenting, adds : " To some ex-
tent the same holds true of Negroes from the South, educated
in the North for work in their old homes." The Foreign Mis-
sionary, organ of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions,
referring to the same paragraph, says : —

" "We would further add that Negroes educated anywhere out of
Africa labor under certain disadvantages in becoming missionaries to
the heathen of their own race. As foreigners, with foreign habits,
they fail to exert the influence wielded by Anglo-Saxons. We cannot
hand over the evangelization of Africa to the colored race, except so
fast and so far as they can be trained, like Bishop Crowther's men, on
the soil."

To a certain extent, perhaps to a very important extent,
Negroes trained on the soil of Africa have the advantage of
those trained in foreign countries ; but in all, as a rule, the in-
tellectual and moral results thus far have been far from satis-
factory. There are many men of book-learning, but few, very
few, of any capability, — even few who have that amount or
that sort of culture which produces self-respect, confidence in
one's self, and efficiency in work. Now why is this ? The
evil, it is considered, lies in the system and method of European
training, to which Negroes are everywhere in Christian lands
subjected, and which everywhere affects them unfavorably. Of
a different race, different susceptibility, different bent of char-
acter from that of the European, they have been trained under
influences in many respects adapted only to the Caucasian race.
Nearly all the books they read, the very instruments of their

culture, have been such as to force them from the groove which
is natural to them, where they would be strong and effective,
without furnishing them with any avenue through which they
may move naturally and free from obstruction. Christian and
so-called civilized Negroes live for the most part in foreign
countries, where they are only passive spectators of the deeds
of a foreign race ; and where, with other impressions which
they receive from without, an element of doubt as to their own

»

capacity and their own destiny is fastened upon them and
inheres in their intellectual and social constitution. They de-
precate their own individuality, and would escape from it if
they could. And in countries like this, where they are free
from the hampering surroundings of an alien race, they still
read and study the books of foreigners, and form their idea of
everything that man may do, or ought to do, according to the
standard held up in those teachings. Hence without the phys-
ical or mental aptitude for the enterprises which they are
taught to admire and revere, they attempt to copy and imitate
them, and share the fate of all copyists and imitators. Bound
to move on a lower level, they acquire and retain a practical
inferiority, transcribing very often the faults rather than the
virtues of their models.

Besides this result of involuntary impressions, they often
receive direct teachings which are not only incompatible with
but destructive of their self-respect.

In all English-speaking countries the mind of the intelligent
Negro child revolts against the descriptions given in elementary
books — geographies, travels, histories — of the Negro ; but,
though he experiences an instinctive revulsion from these car-
icatures and misrepresentations, he is obliged to continue, as
he grows in years, to study such pernicious teachings. After
leaving school he finds the same things in newspapers, in re-
views, in novels, in quasi scientific works ; and after a while
— scppe cadendo — they begin to seem to him the proper
tilings to say and to feel about his race, and he accepts what
at first his fresh and unbiassed feelings naturally and indig-
nantly repelled. Such is the effect of repetition.

2

10

Having embraced or at least assented to these errors and
falsehoods about himself, he concludes that his only hope of
rising in the scale of respectable manhood is to strive after
whatever is most unlike himself and most alien to his peculiar
tastes. And whatever his literary attainments or acquired
ability, he fancies that he must grind at the mill which is pro-
vided for him, putting in the material furnished to his hands,
bringing no contribution from his own field ; and of course

™ O '

nothing comes out but what is put in. Thus he can never bring
any real assistance to the European. He can never attain to
that essence of progress which Mr. Herbert Spencer describes
as difference : and therefore, he never acquires the self-respect
or self-reliance of an independent contributor. He is not an
independent help, only a subject help ; so that the European
feels that he owes him no debt, and moves on in contemptuous
indifference of the Negro, teaching him to contemn himself.

Those who have lived in civilized communities, where there
are diffeVent races, know the disparaging views which are en-
tertained of the blacks by their neighbors (and often, alas !) by
themselves. The standard of all physical and intellectual ex-
cellencies in the present civilization being the white complexion,
whatever deviates from that favored color is proportionally de-
preciated, until the black, which is the opposite, becomes not
only the most unpopular but the most unprofitable color. Black
men, and especially black women, in such communities experi-
ence the greatest imaginable inconvenience. They never feel
at home. In the depth of their being they always feel them-
selves strangers in the land of their exile, and the only escape
from this feeling is to escape from themselves. And this feel-
ing of self-depreciation is not diminished, as I have intimated
above, by the books they read. Women, especially, are fond of
reading novels and light literature ; arid it is in these writings
that flippant and eulogistic reference is constantly made to the
superior physical and mental characteristics of the Caucasian
race, which by contrast suggests the inferiority of other races,
— especially of that race which is furthest removed from it in
appearance.

11

It is painful in America to see the efforts which are made by
Negroes to secure outward conformity to the appearance of the
dominant race.

This is by no means surprising ; but what is surprising is
that, under the circumstances, any Negro lias retained a particle
of self-respect. Now in Africa, where the color of the ma-
jority is black, the fashion in personal matters is naturally sug-
gested by the personal characteristics of the race, and we are
free from the necessity of submitting to the use of " incongruous
feathers awkwardly stuck on." Still, we are held in bondage by
our indiscriminate and injudicious use of a foreign literature ;
and we strive to advance by the methods of a foreign race. In
this effort we struggle with the odds against us. We fight at
the disadvantage which David would have experienced in Saul's
armor. The African must advance by methods of his own.
He must possess a power distinct from that of the European.
It has been proven that he knows how to take advantage of
European culture, and that he can be benefited by it. This
proof was perhaps necessary, but it is not sufficient. We
must show that we are able to go alone, to carve out our own
way. We must not be satisfied that in this nation European
influence shapes our polity, makes our laws, rules in our
tribunals, and impregnates our social atmosphere. We must
not suppose that the Anglo-Saxon methods are final, that there
is nothing for us to find out for our own guidance, and that we
have nothing to teach the world. There is inspiration for us
also. We must study our brethren in the interior, who know
better than we do the laws of growth for the race. We see
among them the rudiments of that which, with fair play and
opportunity, will develop into important and effective agencies
for our work. We look too much to foreigners, and are dazzled
almost to blindness by their exploits, — so as to fancy that they
have exhausted the possibilities of humanity. In our estima-
tion they, like Longfellow's lagoo, have done and can do every-
thing better than anybody else : —

" Never heard he an adventure
But himself had made a greater;

12

Never any deed of daring.
But himself had done a bolder;
Never any marvellous story
But himself could tell a stranger.
No one ever shot an arrow
Half so far and high as he had,
Ever caught so many fishes,
Ever killed so many reindeer,
Ever trapped so many beaver.
None could run so fast as he could;
None could dive so deep as he could;
None could swim so far as he could;
None had made so many journeys;
None had seen so many wonders,
As this wonderful lagoo."

But there are possibilities before us not yet dreamed of by
the lagoos of civilization. Dr. Alexander Winchell, professor
in one of the American universities, — who has lately written
a book, in the name of science, in which he reproduces all the
old slanders against the Negro, and writes of the African at
home as if Livingstone, Barth, Stanley, and Cameron had
never written, — mentions it, as one of the evidences of Negro
inferiority, that " in Liberia he is indifferent to the benefits of
civilization." l I stand here to-day to justify and commend the
Negro of Liberia — and of everywhere else in Africa — for re-
jecting with scorn, " always and every time," the " benefits " of
a civilization whose theories are to degrade him in the scale of
humanity, and of which such sciolists as Dr. Winchell are the
exponents and representative elements. We recommend all
Africans to treat such " benefits " with even more decided
" indifference " than that with which the guide in Dante treated
the despicable herd, —

" Non ragionam di lor, ma guarda, e passa."

Those of us who have travelled in foreign countries, and who
witness the general results of European influence along this
coast, have many reasons for misgivings and reserves and
anxieties about European civilization for this country. Things

1 Pre- Adamite Man, p. 265.

13

winch have been of great advantage to Europe may work ruin
to us ; and there is often such a striking resernblance, or such
a close connection between the nocuous and the beneficial, that
we are not always able to discriminate. I have heard of a
native in one of the settlements on the coast who, having
grown up in the use of the simple but efficient remedies of the
country doctors, and having prospered in business, conceived
the idea that he must avail himself of the medicines he saw
used by the European traders. Suffering from sleeplessness
he was advised to take Dover's powders, but in his inexpe-
rience took instead an overdose of morphine, and next morn-
ing he was a corpse. So we have reason to apprehend that
in our indiscriminate appropriations of European agencies or
methods in our political, educational, and social life, we are
often imbibing overdoses of morphine when we fancy we are
only taking Dover's powders.

And it is for this reason, while we are anxious for immigra-
tion from America and desirous that the immigrants shall
push as fast as possible into the interior, that we look with
anxiety and concern at the difficulties and troubles which must
arise from their misconception of the work to be done in this
country. I apprehend that in their progress interiorwards
there will be friction, irritations, and conflicts; and our breth-
ren in certain portions of the United States are at this moment
witnessing a state of things among their superiors which they
will naturally want to reproduce in this country, and which, if
reproduced here, will utterly extinguish the flickering light of
the Lone Star, and close forever this open door of Christian
civilization into Africa.

Mr. Matthew Arnold reminds us l that when some one talked
to Themistocles of an art of memory he answered, " Teach me
rather to forget." The full meaning of this aspiration must be
realized in the life of the Christian Negro before he can become
a full man, or a successful worker in his fatherland.

In the prosecution of the work of a college in America for
the education of Negro youth, it seems to me, therefore, that

1 Preface to Johnson's Lives of ±-; Poets.

14

the aim should be, to a great extent, to assist their power of
forgetfulness, — an achievement of extreme difficulty, I imagine,
in that country where, from the very action of the surround-
ing atmosphere, " the interstices with which Nature has pro-
vided the human memory, through which many things once
known pass into oblivion, are kept constantly closed."

In the prosecution of the work of a college for the training
of youth in this country, the aim, it occurs to me, should be to
study the causes of Negro inefficiency in civilized lands ; and, so
far as it has resulted from the training they have received, to
endeavor to avoid what we conceive to be the sinister elements
in that training.

In the curriculum of Liberia College, therefore, it shall be
our aim to increase the amount of purely disciplinary agen-
cies, and to reduce to its minimum the amount of those dis-
tracting influences to which I have referred as hindering the
proper growth of the race.

The true principle of mental culture is perhaps this : to
preserve an accurate balance between the studies which carry
the mind out of itself, and those which recall it home again.
When we receive impressions from without we must bring
from our own consciousness the idea that gives them shape ;
we must mould them by our own individuality. Now in look-
ing over the whole civilized world I see no place where this
sort of culture for the Negro can be better secured than in
Liberia, — where he may, with less interruption from surround-
ing influences, find out his place and his work, develop his
peculiar gifts and powers ; and for the training of Negro
youth upon the basis of their own idiosyncracy, with a sense
of race, individuality, self-respect, and liberty, there is no in-
stitution so well adapted as Liberia College witli its Negro
faculty and Negro students.

We are often told of the advantages which students of the
African race are enjoying in the institutions established for
their training in America ; but listen to the testimony of Dr.
Winchell with regard to the position of the students in one of
the best of them, namely, Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn.
He says : —

15

" I have sometimes, when visiting Fisk University at Nashville,
looked with admiration at some magnificently formed heads which are
there working, under all the discouragements of social repression, for
knowledge, culture, and high respectability. My sympathies have been
deeply moved at the evidences of their earnestness and conscious
strength, coupled with a keen and crushing perception of the weight of
the social ban which their race brings upon them. I will uot refrain
from expressing here the hope that such cases may receive every
encouragement and mark of appreciation."

This testimony, coming from one who is ostentatiously anti-
Negro, is peculiarly striking ; but one is amused at the ndivett
exhibited in the expression of the " hope " recorded in the last
sentence by a man who has assailed the Negro with every
weapon of antipathy which could be drawn from his imagina-
tion, and is doing all in his power to swell the Negrophobic
literature and to intensify a public sentiment sufficiently hostile
to that class of people.

It has always been to me, let me say in passing, a matter of
surprise that there should be found white men who — in spite
of this anti-Negro literature, with the Notts and Gliddons and
Winchells and Bakers to instruct them, with the prophets of
ill on every hand — are still willing and ready to give their
means and their time and their labor for the promotion of the
intellectual training of such a race. It is astonishing, not that
so little money is spent on African education, but that any at
all is spent by men who from their childhood have been im-
bibing from the books they read, and from their surroundings,
sentiments of disparagement and distrust of the possibilities of
the African race.

We may conclude, then, that there is no field so well
adapted for the work of Negro training as Liberia ; and it
must be our aim to bring Liberia College up to the work to be
done in this peculiar and interesting field. Now what is
the course to be adopted in the education of youth in this
College ?

I have endeavored to give careful consideration to this im-

1 Pre-Adamite Man. p. 182, note.

16

portant subject ; and I propose now to sketch the outlines of a
programme for the education of the students in Lilferia Col-
lege, and, I may venture to add, of Negro youth everywhere in
Africa who are to take a leading part in the work of the race
and of the country. I will premise that generally in the
teaching of our youth far more is made of the importance of
imparting information than of training the mind. Their minds
are too much taken possession of by mere information drawn
from European sources.

Lord Bacon says that " reading makes a full man ; '" but
the indiscriminate reading by the Negro of European litera-
ture has made him, in many instances, too full, or has rather
destroyed his balance. " The value of a cargo," says Huxley,
" does not compensate for a ship being out of trim ; " and the
amount of knowledge that a man has does not secure his use-
fulness if he has so taken it in that he is lop-sided.

We shall devote attention principally, both for mental disci-
pline and information, to the earlier epochs of the world's
history. It is decided that there are five or six leading epochs
in the history of civilization. I am following Mr. Frederic
Harrison's classification. First, there was the great perma-
nent, stationary system of human society, held together by a
religious belief, or by social custom growing out of that belief.
This has been called the theocratic state of society. The type
of that phase of civilization was the old Eastern empires. The
second great type was the Greek age of intellectual activity
and civic freedom. Next came the Roman type of civilization,
and age of empire, of conquest, of consolidation of nations, of
law and government. The fourth great system was the phase
of civilization which prevailed from the fall of the Roman Em-
pire until comparatively modern times, and was called the
Mediasval Age, when the Church and feudalism existed side by
side. The fifth phase of history was that which began with the
breaking up of the power of the Church on the one side, and
of feudalism on the other, — the foundation of modern history
or the modern age. That system has continued down to the
present ; but if subdivided, it would form the sixth type, which

is the age since the French Revolution, — the age of social
and popular development, modern science and industry.

We shall permit in our curriculum the unrestricted study of
the first four epochs, but especially the second, third, and
fourth, from which the present civilization of Western Europe
is mainly derived. There has been no period of history more
full of suggestive energy, both physical and intellectual, than
those epochs. Modern Europe boasts of its period of intellect-
ual activity, but none can equal, for life and freshness, the
Greek and Roman prime. No modern writers will ever influ-
ence the destiny of the race to the same extent that the Greeks
and Romans have done.

We can afford to exclude then as subjects of study, at least
in the earlier college years, the events of the fifth and sixth
epochs, and the works which in large numbers have been writ-
ten during those epochs. I know that during these periods
some of the greatest works of human genius have been com-
posed. I know that Shakespeare and Milton, Gibbon and
Macaulay, Hallam and Lecky, Froude, Stubbs and Green,
belong to these periods. It is not in my power, even if
I had the will, to disparage the works of these masters ;
but what I wish to say is that these are not the works on
which the mind of the youthful African should be trained. It
was during the sixth period that the transatlantic slave trade
arose, and those theories — theological, social, and political
— were invented for the degradation and proscription of the
Negro. This epoch continues to this day, and has an abundant
literature and a prolific authorship. It has produced that
whole tribe of declamatory Negrophobists, whose views, in
spite of their emptiness and impertinence, are having their
effect upon the ephemeral literature of the day, — a literature
which is shaping the life of the Negro in Christian lands. His
whole theory of life, quite contrary to what his nature intends,
is being influenced, consciously and unconsciously, by the gen-
eral conceptions of his race entertained by the manufacturers
of this literature, — a great portion of which, made for to-day,
wilt not survive the next generation.

3

18

I admit that in this period there liuvn I,,-,,,, ,,1,),, (|r|( (
the race written, but they have all IKMMI In lln> hiih-nni,i
apologetic tone, — in the spirit of that K(III,| ,,(l| „,,,„, i,,,,,'
assured the world that —

Fleecy locks and dark *'<>iii|i|ii
Cannot forfeit nature's

Poor Phillis AVheatly, a native AlYinm odiii'uli'd in \(
in her attempts at poetry is made to Niiy, ,,, w|m| j|

(||.

pher calls " spirited lines," —

" Remember, Christian, Negroes, blac.k UK ('nil,, lM,,y |H, ,, ,(,,, t
join the angelic train."

The arguments of Wilberforco, tho «»Ujiit.||,.n ,,)• ^,((
Phillips, the pathos of Uncle Tom* <'>it>i,t Ulll u

i
strain, — that Negroes have souls to HUU» m:,| , .

M 1PM

have, and that the strength of nature's olutm JH , ,,,

*' t ' I M il) 1 1 ( *i 1

by their complexion and hair. We snmly (>|lmiu| , ,
with the same feelings of exultation tlml i|,,, Kiijr|iM|(l|
American experiences, in the proud l>ou«! n,,,, _

" We speak the language Shakespwu-ii MJ,,,),,,
The faith and morals hold \vl\k-h Mili.i,,, |,,,|(j . ..

for that " language," in some of its liin>«l nii,.m,ln,
izes and apologizes for us, and that " fiulh " |ll|M
powerless to save us from proscription <m.| \\\^\\i
It is true that culture is one, and tho unit'inl

. M l»t*1 IP

culture are the same; but the native »Mi|n«.i|.i,,M of i,,M) i
differ, and their work and destiny dillbr, h(, t|lu| ,||i(
which one man may attain to the higlu^nt olll«M,,iu-,y, \n ,(l|
which would conduce to the success of iiuulhor. Tin, ,
road which has led to the success and olovtvli,,,, of ||U, i. ?*
Saxon is not that which would lead to tlw «u,.,.,)MH lll((j
tion of the Negro, though we shall resort In ||u, muuo (
of general culture which has enabled tho Ai^lo-Sux«ni In r
out for himself the way in which he ought in w,,.

The instruments of culture which w« hluill oniplny i,,
College will be chiefly the Classics ami Mnllicmuli^r, R

'

M l»t*1 IP

19

•

Classics I mean the Greek and Latin languages and their
literature. In those languages there is not, as far as I know,
a sentence, a word, or a syllable disparaging to the Negro.
He may get nourishment from them without taking in any
race poison. They will perform no sinister work upon his
consciousness, and give no unholy bias to his inclinations.1

The present civilization of Europe is greatly indebted to the
influence of the rich inheritance left by the civilizations of
Greece and Rome. It is impossible to imagine what would be
the condition of Europe but for the influence of the so-called
dead languages and the treasures they contain.

" Had the Western World been left to itself in Chinese isolation,"
says Professor Huxley, " there is no saying how long that state of
things might have endured ; but happily it was not left to itself. Even
earlier than the 13th century the development of Moorish civilization
in Spain, and the movement of the crusades, had introduced the leaven
which from that day to this has never ceased to work. At first through
the intermediation of Arabic translations, afterwards by the study of

1 I have noticed a few lines from Virgil, describing a Negress of the lower
class, which are made to do duty on all occasions when the modern traducers of
the Negro would draw countenance for their theories from the classical writers ;
but similar descriptions of the lower European races abound in their own liter-
ature. The lines are the following, used by Nott and Gliddon, and recently
quoted by Dr. Winchell : —

" Interdum clamat Cybalen ; erat unioa custos ;
Afra genus, tota patriam testanto figura ;
Torta comaru, labroque tumens, et fusca colorem,
Peetore lata, jacens mammis, compressor alvo,
Cruribus exilis, spatiosa prodiga planta ;
Continuis rimis calcanea scissa rigebant.''

[Meanwhile he calls Cybale. She was his only (house) keeper. African by
race, her whole figure attesting her fatherland ; with crisped hair, swelling lip,
and dark complexion ; broad in chest, witli pendant dugs and very contracted
abdomen; with spindle shanks and broad enormous feet; her lacerated heels
were rigid with continuous cracks.]

But hear how Homer, Virgil's superior and model, sings the praises of the
Negro Euryabates, who signalized himself at the siege of Troy : —

" A reverend herald in his train I knew,

Of visage solemn, sad, but table hue.
Short woolly curls o'er-fleeced his bending he&d,
O'er which a promontory shoulder spread.
EuryabateR, in whose large soul alone,
Ulysses viewed an image of hie own."

20

t

the originals, the western nations of Europe became acquainted with the
writings of the ancient philosophers and poets, and in time with the
whole of the vast literature of antiquity. Whatever there was of high
intellectual aspiration or dominant capacity, in Italy, France, Germany,
and England, spent itself for centuries in taking possession of the rich
inheritance left by the dead civilizations of Greece and Rome. Mar-
vellously aided by the invention of printing, classical learning spread
and flourished. Those who possessed it prided themselves on having
attained the highest culture then within the reach of mankind." ]

Passing over then, for a certain time, the current literature
of Western Europe, which is, after all, derived and secondary,
we will resort to the fountain head ; and in the study of the
great masters, in the languages in which they wrote, we shall
get the required mental discipline without unfavorably affecting
our sense of race individuality or our own self-respect. There
is nothing that we need to know for the work of building up
this country, in its moral, political and religious character,
which we may not learn from the ancients. There is nothing
in the domain of literature, philosophy, or religion for which
we need be dependent upon the moderns. Law and philosophy
we may get from the Romans and the Greeks, religion from
the Hebrews.

Even Europeans, advanced as they are, are every day devot-
ing more and more attention to the Classics. Says a very
recent writer : —

" We have not done with the Hellenes yet, in spite of all the labor
spent and all the books written on them and their literature bequeathed
to us. It has indeed been said that we know nearly as much about
the Greeks and Romans as we shall ever know ; but this can only be
true of the mass of facts, to which, without some new discoveries, we
are not likely to add greatly. It is not in the least true in regard to
the significance of Hellenic history and literature. Beyond and above
the various interpretations placed by different ages upon the great
writers of Greece, lies the meaning which longer experience and more
improved methods of criticism, and the test of time declare, to be the

1 Inaugural Address at the opening of Mason Science College, Birmingham,
September, 1880.

21

true one. From this point of view much remains and will long re-
main to be done, whether we look to the work of the scholar or to the
influence of Hellenic thought on civilization. We have not yet found
all the scattered limbs of Truth ; it may be that we are only commenc-
ing the search. . . . The Gorgias of Plato and the Ethics of Aristotle
are more valuable than "modern books ou the same subjects, for the
simple reason that they are nearer the beginning. They have a greater
freshness, and appeal more directly to the growing mind." l

If we turn to Rome we find equal instruction in all the
elements of a correct and prosperous nationality. " The ed-
ucation of the world in the principles of a sound jurispru-
dence," says Dean Merivale, " was the most wonderful work
of the Roman conquerors. It was complete, it was universal ;
and in permanence it has far outlasted — at least in its distinct
results — the duration of the empire itself."

" As supernatural wisdom came from God through the mouths
of the prophets," said St. Augustine, " so also natural wisdom,
social justice, came from the same God through the mouth of
the Roman legislators." [Leges Romanorum divinitus per ora
principum emanarunt.~\ 2

" Roman civilization produced not only great men but good men, of
high views of human life and human responsibility, with a high stand-
ard of what men ought to aim at, with a high belief of what they
ought to do. And it not only produced individuals, it produced a
strong and permanent force of sentiment ; it produced a character
shared very unequally among the people, but powerful enough to
determine the course of history. . . . Certainly, in no people which
the world has ever seen has the sense of public duty been keener or
stronger than in Rome, or has lived on with unimpaired vitality
through great changes for a longer time. ... Its early legends dwelt
upon the strange and terrible sacrifices which supreme loyalty to the
commonwealth had exacted and obtained without a murmur from her
sons. They told of a founder of Roman freedom dooming his two
young sons to the axe for having tampered with a conspiracy against
the state ; of great men resigning office because they bore a dangerous
name, or pulling down their own houses because too great for private

1 Hellenica. Edited by Evelyn Abbott, M. A., LL.D. London, 1880.

2 Quoted by Pere Hyacinthe in the Nineteenth Century, February, 1880.

22

citizens ; of soldiers, to whose death fate had bound victory, solemnly
devoting themselves to die, or leaping into the gulf which would only
close on a living victim ; of a great family purchasing peace in civil
troubles by leaving the city and turning their energy into a foreign
war in which they perished ; of the captive general who advised his
countrymen to send him back to certain torture and death, rather than
grant the terms he was commissioned to propose as the price of his
release. Whatever we may think of these stories, they show what was
in the mind of those who told and repeated them ; and they continued
to be the accredited types and models of Roman conduct throughout
Roman history." :

It is our purpose to cultivate the study of the languages of the
two great peoples to whom I have referred as among the most
effective instruments of intellectual discipline.

A great deal of misapprehension prevails in the popular mind
as to the utility in a liberal education of the so-called dead
languages, and many fancy that the time devoted to their study
is time lost ; but let it be understood that their study is not
pursued merely for the information they impart. If informa-
tion were all, it would be far more useful to learn the French
and German, or any other of the modern languages, during the
time devoted to Greek and Latin ; but what is gained by the
study of the ancient languages is that strengthening and dis-
ciplining of the mind which enables the student in after life to
lay hold of and with comparatively little difficulty to master
any business to which he may turn his attention. A recent
scholarly and experienced writer says on this subject : —

" Even if it were conceivable that a youth should entirely forget all
the facts, pictures, and ideas he had learned from the Classics, together
with all the rules of the Greek and .Latin grammar, his mind would
still, as an instrument, be superior to that of every one who has not
passed through the same training. Nay, even the youth who was al-
ways last in his class, and who dozed out his nine years on the benches
of a classical school, only half attentive to his teacher and not doing
half his tasks, — even he will surpass, in mental mobility, the most dil-
igent scholar who has been taught only the modern languages and a

1 The Gifts of Civilization. By Dean Church. New edition. London, 1880.

23

quantity of special and disconnected knowledge. One of the first
bankers in a foreign capital lately told me that in the course of a year
he had given some thirty clerks, who had been educated expressly for
commerce in commercial schools, a trial in his offices, and was not able
to make use of a single one of them ; while those who came from the
German schools (and had studied the classics), although they knew
nothing whatever of business matters to begin with, soon made them-
selves perfect masters of them." 1

The study of tlie Classics also lays the foundation for the
successful pursuit of scientific knowledge. It so stimulates the
mind that it arouses the student's interest in all problems of sci-
ence. It is a matter of history that the scientific study of nature
followed immediately after the revival of classical learning.

But we shall also study Mathematics. These as instru-
ments of culture are everywhere applicable. A course of
algebra, geometry, and higher mathematics must accompany
step by step classical studies. Neither of these means of dis-
cipline can be omitted without loss. The qualities which make
a man succeed in mastering the Classics and Mathematics are
also those which qualify him for the practical work of life.
Care, industry, judgment, tact, are the elements of success
anywhere and everywhere. The training and discipline, the
patience and endurance, to which each man must submit in
order to success ; the resolution which relaxes no effort, but
fights the hardest when difficulties are to be surmounted, —
these are qualities which boys go to school to cultivate, and
these they acquire in a greater or less degree by a successful
study of Classics and Mathematics. The boy who shirks these
studies, or retires from his class because he is unwilling to con-
tend with the difficulties they involve, lacks those qualities
which make a successful and influential character.

It will be our aim to introduce into our curriculum also the
Arabic, and some of the principal native languages, — by means
of which we may have intelligent intercourse with the millions
accessible to us in the interior, and learn more of our own
country. We have young men who are experts in the geo-

1 Karl Hiltebrand in Contemporary Review, August, 18K).

24

graphy and customs of foreign countries ; who can tell all about
the proceedings of foreign statesmen in countries thousands of
miles away ; can talk glibly of London, Berlin, Paris, and
Washington ; know all about Gladstone, Bismarck, Gambetta,
and Hayes ; but who knows anything about Musahdu, Medina,
Kankan, or Sego — only a few hundred miles from us? Who
can tell anything of the policy or doings of Fanfi-doreh,
Ibrahima Sissi, or Fahqueh-queh, or Simoro of Boporu — only a
few steps from us ? These are hardly known. Now as Ne-
groes, allied in blood and race to these people, this is disgrace-
ful ; and as a nation, if we intend to grow and prosper in this
country, it is impolitic, it is short-sighted, it is unpatriotic ; but
it has required time for us to grow up to these ideas, to under-
stand our position in this country. In order to accelerate our
future progress, and to give to the advance we make the element
of permanence, it will be our aim in the College to produce
men of ability. Ability or capability is the power to use with
effect the instruments in our hands. The bad workman com-
plains of his tools ; but even when he is satisfied with the ex-
cellence of his tools, he cannot produce the results which an
able workman will produce even with indifferent tools.

If a man has the learning of Solomon, but for some reason,
either in himself or his surroundings, cannot bring his learn-
ing into useful application, that man is lacking in ability.
Now what we desire to do is to produce ability in our youth ; .
and whenever we find a youth, however brilliant in his powers
of acquisition, who lacks common sense, and who, in other
respects, gives evidence of the absence of those qualities which
enable a man to use his knowledge for the benefit of his coun-
try and his fellow-man, we shall advise him to give up books
and betake himself to other walks of life. A man without
common sense, without tact, as a mechanic or agriculturist
or trader, can do far less harm to the public than the man
without common sense who has had the opportunity of becom-
ing and has the reputation of being a scholar.

I trust that arrangements will be made by which the girls of
our country may be admitted to share in the advantages of this

25

College. 1 cannot see why our sisters should not receive
exactly the same general culture as we do. 1 think that the
progress of the country will be more rapid and permanent
when the girls receive the same general training as the boys ;
and our women, besides being able to appreciate the intellect-
ual labors of their husbands and brothers, will be able also to
share in the pleasures of intellectual pursuits. We need not
fear that they will be less graceful, less natural, or less wo-
manly ; but we may be sure that they will make wiser mothers,
more appreciative wives, and more affectionate sisters. And
here it affords me pleasure to extend, on behalf of the few
educators in Liberia, and of the public generally, a hearty wel-
come to a lady just from America, the daughter of a distin-
guished leader of the race, who has come to assist in the great
work of female education, and who honors us with her pres-
ence on this occasion.1

In the religious work of the College the Bible will be our
text-book, the Bible without note or comment, — especially as
we propose to study the original language in which the New
Testament was written ; and we may find opportunity, in con-
nection with the Arabic, to study the Old Testament. The
teachings of Christianity are of universal application. *' Other
foundation can no man lay than that which is laid." The
great truths of the Sermon on the Mount are as universally
accepted as Euclid's axioms. The meaning of the Good
Samaritan is as certain as that of the forty-seventh proposition,
and a great deal plainer.

Christianity is not only not a local religion, but it has
adapted itself to the people wherever it has gone. No lan-
guage or social existence has been any barrier to it ; and I
have often thought that in this country it will acquire wider
power, deeper influence, and become instinct with a higher
vitality than anywhere else. When we look at the treatment
which our own race and other so-called inferior races have
received from Christian nations, we cannot but be struck with
the amazing dissimilitude and disproportion between the

1 Mrs. Mary Garnet Barboza.
4

26

original idea of Christianity, as expressed by Christ, and the
practice of it by his professed followers.

The sword of the conqueror and the cries of the conquered
have attended or preceded the introduction of this faith wher-
ever carried by Europeans, and some of the most enlightened
minds have sanctioned the subjugation of weaker races — the
triumph of Might over Right — that the empire of civilization
might be extended ; but these facts do not affect the essential
principles of the religion. We must gather its doctrines not
from the examples of some of its adherents but from the
sacred records.

But even as exemplified in human action, notwithstanding the draw-
backs to which I have referred, " it has so manifested its superiority,"
says Dr. Peabody, "'in beneficent action, to all the other working
forces of the world combined, that the experimental evidence for it
under this head is oppressive and unmanageable from its multiplicity
and fulness. ... It is in the exclusively Christian elements that the
great workers of the last eighteen centuries have been of one mind and
heart. No matter what their sphere of labor, wherever we see pre-
eminent ability and success in a life-work worth performing, we find
but the reproduction of the specifically Christian elements of St. Paul's
energy, — a spirit profoundly moved in grateful sympathy with a lov-
ing suffering Redeemer, a strong emotional recognition of human
brotherhood, and a merging of self in the sense of a mission and a
charge from God. ... If you were to take away Christian work and
workers from the world, and destroy the vestiges of what has been
wrought in Christ's name, I doubt whether those who now reject
or despise the Gospel would think the world any longer worth liv-
ing in." 1

Now this is the influence which is to work the great reforma-
tion in this land for which we hope. This is the influence
which is to leaven this whole country and to become the princi-
ple of the new civilization which we believe is to be developed
on this continent. It has already produced important changes
notwithstanding its slow and irregular growth, notwithstand-

1 Christianity and Science, by Andrew P. Peabody, D. >D., LL.D. New
York, 1875.

27

ing the apparent scantiness and meagreness of its visible fruits ;
and it shall be the aim of this College to work in the spirit of
the" great Master who was manifested as an example of self-
sacrifice to the highest truth and the highest good, — that
spirit which excluded none from his converse, which kept
company with publicans and sinners that he might benefit
them, which went anywhere and everywhere to seek and to
save that which is lost. We will study to cultivate whatsoever
things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things
are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are
lovely, whatsoever things are of good report. If there be any
virtue, aud if there be any praise, we will endeavor to think
on these things.

Our fathers have borne testimony to the surrounding heathen
of the value and superiority of Christianity. They endeavored
to accomplish what they saw ought to be accomplished ; and,
according to the light within them, fought against wrong and
asserted the right. Let us not dwell too much on the mistakes
of the past. Let us be thankful for what of good has been
done, and let us do better if we can. We, like our predeces-
sors, are only frail and imperfect beings, feelers after truth.
Others, let us hope, will come by and by and do better than
we, — efface our errors and correct our mistakes, see truths
clearly which we now see but dimly, and truths dimly which
we do not see at all. The true ideal, the proper work of
the race, will grow brighter and more distinct as we advance
in culture.

Nor can we be assisted in our work by looking back and
denouncing the deeds of the oppressors of our fathers, by per-
petuating race antagonism. It is natural perhaps that we
should feel at times indignation in view of past injustice, but
continually dwelling upon it will not help us. It is neither
edifying nor dignified to be forever declaiming about the
wrongs of the race. Lord Beaconsfield once said in the House
of Commons that Irish members were too much in the habit of
clanking their chains on rising to speak. Such a habit, when
it ceases to excite pity, begets contempt and ridicule. What we

28

need is wider and deeper culture, more intimate intercourse
with our interior brethren, more energetic advance to the
healthy regions.

As those who have suffered affliction in a foreign land, we
have no antecedents from which to gather inspiration.

All our traditions and experiences are connected with a
foreign race. We have no poetry or philosophy but that of
our taskmasters. The songs that live in our ears and are often
on our lips are the songs which we heard sung by those who
shouted while we groaned and lamented. They sang of their
history, which was the history of our degradation. They
recited their triumphs, which contained the record of our
humiliation. To our great misfortune we learned their
prejudices and their passions, and thought we had their aspi-
rations and their power. Now if we are to make an inde-
pendent nation — a strong nation — we must listen to the
songs of our unsophisticated brethren as they sing of their
history, as they tell of their traditions, of the wonderful and
mysterious events of their tribal or national life, of the achieve-
ments of what we call their superstitions ; we must lend a
ready ear to the ditties of the Kroomen who pull our boats,
of the Pesseh and Golah men, who till our farms ; we must
read the compositions, rude as we may think them, of the
Mandingoes and the Yeys. We shall in this way get back
the strength of the race, like the giant of the ancients who
always gained strength, for the conflict with Hercules, when-
ever he touched his Mother Earth.

And this is why we want the College away from the sea-
board — with its constant intercourse with foreign manners
and low foreign ideas — that we may have free and uninter-
rupted intercourse with the intelligent among the tribes of the
interior ; that the students, even from the books to which they
will be allowed access, may conveniently flee to the forests and
fields of Manding and the Niger, and mingle with our brethren
and gather fresh inspiration and fresh and living ideas.

It is the complaint of the intelligent Negro in America that
the white people pay no attention to his suggestions or his

29

writings ; but this is only because he has nothing new to say, —
nothing that they have not said before him, and that they can-
not say better than he can. Let us depend upon it that the
emotions and thoughts which are natural to us command the
curiosity and respect of others far more than the showy display
of any mere acquisitions which we have derived from them,
and which they know depend more upon our memory than
upon any real capacity. What we must follow is all that con-
cerns our individual growth. Let us do our own work and we
shall be strong and respectable ; try to do the work of others
and we shall be weak and contemptible. There is magnetism
in original action, in self-trust, which others cannot resist. I
think we mistake the meaning of the lines of the poet which
are so often quoted, —

" Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time."

How shall we make our " lives sublime " ? Not by imitating
others, but by doing well our own part as they did theirs. We
are to study the " footprints" that when we are u forlorn " or
have been " shipwrecked " we may " take heart again ; " not to
put our own feet in the impression previously made, for by so
doing we should be compelled at times to lengthen and at
times to shorten our pace, sometimes to make the strides of
Hiawatha and sometimes to crawl, — and thus not only cut a
most ungainly figure, but accomplish nothing either for our-
selves or the world.

" Whilst I read the poets," says Emerson, " I think that nothing
new can be said about morning and evening ; but when I see the day
break, I am not reminded of these Homeric or Shakespearian or
Miltonic or Chaucerian pictures. No ; but I am cheered by the moist,
warm, glittering, budding, melodious hour, that takes down the narrow
walls of my soul, and extends its life and pulsation to the very hori-
zon. That is moruing, — to cease for a bright hour to be a prisoner of
the sickly body, and to become as large as nature."

30

We have a great work before us, a work unique in the
history of the world, which others who appreciate its vastness
and importance envy us the privilege of doing. The world is
looking at this Republic to see whether " order and law, reli-
gion and morality, the rights of conscience, the rights of per-
sons and the rights of property," may all be secured and
preserved by a government administered entirely by Negroes.

Let us show ourselves equal to the task.

The time is past when we can be content with putting forth
elaborate arguments to prove our equality with foreign races.
Those who doubt our capacity are more likely to be convinced
of their error by the exhibition, on our part, of those qualities
of energy and enterprise which will enable us to occupy the
extensive field before us for our own advantage and the advan-
tage of humanity, — for the purposes of civilization, of science,
of good government, and of progress generally, — than by any
mere abstract argument about the equality of races.

The suspicions disparaging to us will be dissipated only by
the exhibition of the indisputable realities of a lofty manhood
as they may be illustrated in successful efforts to build up a
nation, to wrest from nature her secrets, to lead the van of
progress in this country, and to regenerate a continent.