The American college in American life

The American College
in American Life

By

Charles Franklin Thwing, D.D., LL.D.

President of Western Reserve University
and of Adelbert College

New York and London
G. P. Putnam's Sons

1897

T5

COPYRIGHT, 1897
BY

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

Entered at Stationers' Hall, London

l¥-l'4-H

Vbe Kniclietbocltec ipress, flew IBcrk

PREFATORY NOTE.

WITH the growth of American life has
grown the American college. The
college has enlarged its constituency ;
it has gained in material worth and significance ;
it has related itself more vitally and more gener-
ally to life. It has made appeals of increasing
urgency to the American people for sustenance,
— and these appeals have not been without
avail, — and it has asked also for the privilege of
giving itself through its graduates to every
worthy cause. It may not be too much to say
that the college has tried to be of the utmost
value to man.

These conditions may be interpreted as an
intimation of the purposes which have ruled in
the writing of this book. The primary aim has
been to bring the American college into closer
relationship with American life and — so far as

iv Prefatory Note.

may be — to bring American life into a more
vital touch with the American college. I have
believed, and still believe, that through the
securing of this double purpose the college may
be able to be a richer blessing to this great life
of which the college is a part, and which it is
set to serve.

No book of a kind such as this can make any
pretence of being complete. This volume in-
cludes the consideration of only a few of the
more vital questions. Other questions, quite
as vital possibly, I hope to be able to discuss in
other volumes. For the American college, like
American life or the life of any progressive peo-
ple, is full of infinite suggestions appealing to
thouofht or to action.

"fc>*

C. F. T.

Cleveland, Ohio.

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. — Its Increasing Power . . . . i

II. — Certain Great Results . . .46

III. — Its Influence over and through

Individuals . . . . . SS

IV. — Its Influence Illustrated in the

Three Oldest Colleges , » 146

V. — Certain Present Conditions . . 188

VI. — Certain Adjustments of its Ethical
AND Religious Forces to its In-
tellectual 219

VII. — The Increasing Cost of its Education 242

VIII. — Certain Difficulties

IX. — Its Power in the Future .

255
278

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THE AMERICAN COLLEGE
IN AMERICAN LIFE.

I.

ITS INCREASING POWER.

THE history of college education in
America may be divided into three
periods. The first period begins with
the foundation of Harvard College in 1636 and
closes with the opening of the Revolutionary
War. The second begins with the close of the
Revolutionary War and continues through the
first quarter of the present century. The third
begins two generations ago and is still in pro-
gress. The first period may be called the
ecclesiastical period,, the second the political,^
" andTTEethird the human. E ach period may
also be described in respect to the source whence

2 The American College.

certain of its stronger influences arose: — The
first, as the English, the second as the French,
and the third as the German.

During the larger part of the first period only
three colleges existed — Harvard, William and
Mary, and Yale ; — and up to the close of the
period only nine colleges had been founded.
In this time the predominant influence in the
colleges, as in the State, was ecclesiastical, and
largely clerical. The Church and the State
were in most respects one, — and that one was
the Church. In the Church the most influen-
tial member was its pastor. The college, too,
was governed by the clergyman. The presi-
dent was himself a clergyman, and the students
in large numbers became clergymen. The first
Board of Overseers of Harvard College was
composed of certain magistrates, and of the
'* Teaching Elders" of six **next adjoining"
towns to Boston. The principle of clerical
government continued even longer than this
period itself lasted. Ecclesiastical divisions
and theological discussions found in the college
the staunchest ally or antagonist. Not only
was the college governed by clergymen but the
clerical purpose prevailed in its education. In

Its Increasing Power. 3

the seventeeth century fifty-two per cent, of the
graduates of Harvard entered the ministry and
of the first thirty-three graduates of Yale
College, from 1702 to 1710, twenty-five, or
seventy-five per cent., entered the ministry. In
the eighteenth century twenty-nine per cent,
of the Harvard graduates and forty per cent, of
the Yale graduates became ministers.

The ecclesiastical character of the first col-
leges was simply the realization under new con-
ditions of the purpose for which the colleges of
Oxford and Cambridge were established. As
the early Oxford reproduced the University of
Paris, so the early Harvard reproduced the
English Universities. One reading the statutes
of the Oxford colleges is impressed with the
specific nature of the statements in respect to
the ecclesiastical purposes and conditions.
*' Established for religious training," *' founded
to teach students in the canon law and in the-
ology,'' '' for the culture of sacred theology ; "
these and similar statements are made in the
Statutes of the Oxford colleges as embodying
the purposes of their establishment. Richard
Fox, Bishop of Winchester, founder of Corpus
Christi College, indicated his purpose in the

4 The American College.

foundation by using in the statutes the image
of a ladder, which he applies to the college, on
which to mount up to heaven. He also com-
pared the colleges to hives in which scholars,
like bees, may make honey for the glory of God.
But this condition at Oxford was simply a part
of a yet more general condition. All the Uni-
versities of Northern Europe were the doors to
the Church, and the Church was the door to
professional life of every character. In the
Universities of Southern Europe the law held
a similar place.

Not only were the ecclesiastical purposes and
relations of the English university transplanted,
but also in many respects the course of study.
The courses of study in Oxford and Cambridge
were somewhat more extended and of a larger
variety than those of the new colleges in the
New World, but in many respects they were
identical. The founders of the College in the
new Cambridge were trained at old Cambridge
and the greater number of them at Emmanuel
College. The course of study in both the old
college and the new was specially designed to
educate clergymen.

With the close of the Revolutionary War the

Its increasing Power. 5

allegiance which a large body of the American
people had paid to English prescription ceased.
It was inevitable that the men who had fought
the English in a contest for civil freedom,
should feel only a slight sympathy with the edu-
cational positions and conditions of the same
people. '* The leading men of the Revolution,
the Otises, the Adamses, the Trumbulls, the
Warrens, Hancock, Quincy, and others, caught
the spirit of liberty and patriotism in the recita-
tion-room, the library, and among their associ-
ates at the College," says Sibley.^ It was also
inevitable that a people who in winning its in-
dependence had received aid from the ancient
foe of England should have a warm sympathy
with the educational ideas and ideals of its
allies. The strongest influence which France
exerted upon the new Republic at the time of
its foundation was civil and political.

The first duty of the new nation was to pre-
serve and to magnify itself. In this endeavor
the agency of education became of priceless
value. Therefore we find the Ordinance of
1787, declaring ** Religion, morality, and know-
ledge being necessary to good government and

* Sibley's Harvard Graduates^ I., xi.

6 The American College.

the happiness of mankind, schools, and the
means of education shall forever be encour-
aged ; " and, therefore, also we find Washington
urging the foundation of a national university
in order to secure the perpetuity of the new
republic. It is to be observed that the Ordin-
ance of 1787 could not probably have been
passed simply to secure educational advantages.
The people were more interested in the political
side of this action than in its educational ; but
in the document the political and the educa-
tional elements were united. Sentiments ex-
pressed in the constitutions of the various
States, and in various laws, indicate the preval-
ence of the idea that the education of all classes
should be fostered for the purpose of the pre-
servation of the commonwealth. Education
had to do with public and civil relations.

The potency of the French influence is well
illustrated by the attempt of Quesnay in 1 780
and 1 788 to found a French Academy of Arts
and Sciences at Richmond. Quesnay was the
grandson of the famous French philosopher
and economist, Quesnay, who was court phy-
sician to Louis XV. He came to this country
to aid in the Revolution, serving as a captain

Its Increasing^ Power.

^D

in Virginia. After giving up the military life
because of ill health, he travelled through the
country, and on these travels conceived the idea
of introducing French arts and culture, believ-
ing, also, that he could multiply the relations
uniting France and this country.^ The institu-
tion was to be national, having branches at
Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York ; and
also international, being affiliated with similar
institutions in Europe. It was designed to
give what we might now call graduate instruc-
tion. Its curriculum was sufficiently broad,
including foreign languages ; mathematics ;
architecture, civil and military ; painting ;
sculpture, engraving ; experimental physics,
astronomy, geography, chemistry, mineral-
ogy, botany ; anatomy, human and veterinary ;
and natural history. This endeavor interested
many people both in America and France. No
less than sixty thousand francs was raised tow-
ard the endowment. Among the subscribers
to the fund were about a hundred of the repre-
sentatives of the best culture of Virginia. On
July I, 1786, the corner-stone of the building

^ Herbert B. Adams's Thomas Jefferson and the University of
Virginia^ 22.

8 The American College.

was laid at Richmond, and one professor was
appointed. He was Dr. Jean Rouelle. But in
1 786 France was in no condition to enter into
schemes of education or other propagandism
outside of her own territory, and the formal en-
deavor came to an end. The extinction of the
movement, however, did not mean the extinc-
tion of French influence in the United States.
In the States of Virginia and the Carolinas,
French influence prevailed with great force.
The chief agent in putting it down was the Pres-
byterian power of Princeton ; but yet it showed
itself ultimately in the foundation of the Uni-
versity of Virginia, and at the beginning of the
century among the students of many colleges.
But the French influence was by no means
confined to the South. In 1784 the Corpora-
tion of Harvard College received an offer from
the King of France to furnish a botanic garden
which the College desired to establish '* with
every species of seeds and plants, which may
be requested from his royal garden, at his own
expense." Through the indifference of the
Massachusetts Legislature the College was not
able to accept of the offer.^ It is further worthy

^Quincy's History of Harvard University^ ii., 267.

Its Increasing Power. 9

of note that two years before Albert Gallatin
had been granted the right of teaching the
French language in the College.

The University of Virginia is the child of
Jefferson, and Jefferson in both the strength
and weakness of his character belonged rather
to the French than to any other nation. The
policy of centralization which the University
of Virginia represented was the policy which
Napoleon introduced into the higher education
of France. The free religious sentiment which
the university embodied was an echo, too, of
French principles. The endeavors to secure
from abroad teachers for its chairs indicates
the prevalence of French influences.

In another respect the influence of France
was as evil as in the case of the University of
Virginia it was beneficent. For never was a
period in the history of the higher education
when those principles and vices which are fre-
quently denominated French had so large an
influence among American students as at the
opening of the century. The records show
that the students of tlue time were defiant of
authority, in conduct immoral, and in religion
skeptical. A general spirit of insubordination

lo The American College.

prevailed. What is usually called infidelity
was fashionable and prevalent in almost every
college. It is a common remark that certain
students of Yale at this time were calling
themselves by the names of the conspicuous
free-thinkers of France. Writing of Williams
College one says : '* French liberty and French
philosophy poured in upon us like a flood ; and
seemed to sweep almost everything serious
before it."^ The condition of Dartmouth Col-
lege was like that of Williams and of Yale.
Coarse dramatic exhibitions, terrific outbursts
of rowdyism, bombastic display of contempt
for the Christian religion, seem to have been
the rule. A wave of immorality and of irreli-
gion had for a time submerged all the colleges.
The third period in the development of the
American college dates from about the close of
the first quarter of the present century. This
period is not yet closed. It is a period which
deserves an epithet no less broad than the
word human. The college has become in this
period an agency for preparing its students
for life. Its purpose is no less than the fitting
of a man to achieve all purposes which he may

^'DnrltQ^s History of Williams College^ IIO.

Its Increasing Power. n

worthily set before himself. A boy who comes
to college, comes not so much to fit himself
for a profession as to become a large and com-
plete man. I lately asked a class of young
men in college to write answers to the follow-
ing questions : First, Why did I come to col-
lege ? Second, Is my purpose in coming to
college being met? Third, How is it being
met? The answers have a similarity which,
although remarkable at first reading, is not so
remarkable when all the conditions are con-
sidered. Choosing from these papers almost
at random, I find that certain students indi-
cate their purpose, as expressed in their own
words, as follows :

" My purpose in coming to college was somewhat vague
and ill-defined. I was brought up with that idea, and
had a general idea that the college man's culture would
be a good acquisition. This, however, was but one side
of it. I wanted to see through my studies just what life-
work would be best fitted for me. I think that being
under the training of a college has had its good effect
upon me as upon others. I think I have begun to get
an earnest determination as to what I shall do in life,
and I think my studies here, and the comradeship of my
friends, have been valuable.*' " I came to college," says
another, " in order to obtain, by a systematic course of
study directed by competent men, that mental training

r

t± The American College.

and discipline, as well as a fund of information, which
shall enable me to enjoy life myself, and perhaps be a
benefit to others in some way. 1 think that my desire is
being realized both in the way of training and discipline.
The training is obtained by mental exercise in many dif-
ferent studies, insuring at the same time a gradual ac-
quisition of information." " I came to college," answers
a third, "to prepare myself for my life-work by getting
a broader education, and also to develop myself along
the mental, moral, and physical lines for which the col-
lege offers the best chance. My purpose is being se-
cured. It is being secured by the studies which I take,
by contact with the professors and my fellow-students,
the latter having as much, if not more, influence in at-
taining this end, as that which I get out of the text-
books."

That is to say, these men are in college in
order to fit themselves for life.

This largeness of relationship as expressed
by these undergraduates is only the reflection
of what the college officer has been saying in
these recent years. At the time of his inaug-
uration as President of Harvard College, in
i860, Cornelius Conway Felton said :

" The proper objects of a University are twofold.
First, educating young men to the highest efficiency of
their intellectual faculties, and to the noblest culture of
their moral and religious natures. ... A liberal

Its Increasing Power. 13

education, a university education, aims to train the mind
in . . . high studies, to make it familiar with inspir-
ing examples, to refine the taste, exercise the judgment,
soften the heart, by . . . humanizing arts."

More than a quarter of a century after the
inauguration of President Felton, at his inaugu-
ration, President Dwight, of Yale, said :

" It [education] does for the mind what religion does
for the heart. It builds up and builds out the man.
The man, when it has accomplished its work within
him, can use his knowledge and his powers wherever the
world may need them, and he will do so if the noble im-
pulses of educated manhood are in his spirit\ ... It
is the priceless privilege of a University teacher to help
the manly youth around him in their souls* living, to
make them more generous, more truthful, more fit for
life in this earnest and struggling world, more worthy of
love and respect."

The president of a scientific school, Lehigh
University, said at his inauguration :

" Modern collegiate life is io-day a wonderful micro-
cosm ; — it represents the endeavor of generations of
zealous, earnest educators to make this period of youth
increasingly profitable. The number and variety of
studies have been increased many fold, the proportion
of teachers to students has been increased, improved
methods of instruction have been brought into play and
the equipment of laboratories is lavishly generous. IfCver

1 4 The American College.

before has there been such earnest discussion as to edu-
cational methods and vakies ; the teacher^s art has be-
come a science, and he a great power in the land." ^

It is, in a word, to the making of a man that
the college now gives itself.

This breadth of interest is at once the cause
and the result of the increasing number of sub-
jects found in the curriculum. The curriculum
of the American college two hundred years
after the foundation of Harvard showed very
little change or progress. It was one which
well represents the attainments of a boy who
is now entering college rather than of the man
who is now leaving. An English traveller,
Weld, visiting Princeton at the close of the
last century says of it :

" A large college, held in much repute by the neigh-
boring States. The number of students amounts to
upwards of seventy ; from their appearance, however,
and the course of studies they seem to be engaged in,
like all the other American colleges I ever saw, it better
deserves the title of a grammar-school than of a college.
The library which we were shown is most wretched, con-
sisting for the most part of old theological books not
even arranged with any regularity. An orrery contrived
by Mr. Rittenhouse stands at one end of the apartment,

* * Inaugural of President T. M. Drown, October lo, 1895.

Its Increasing Power. 15

but it is quite out of repair, as well as a few detached
parts of a philosophical apparatus enclosed in the same
glass case. At the opposite end of the room are two
small cupboards, which are shown as the museum.
These contain a few small stuffed alligators and a few
singular fishes in a miserable state of preservation, from
their being repeatedly tossed about." *

There is in the diary of President Stiles, of
Yale College, under date of November 9,
1779, a list of the books in which classes re-
cited at the time when he came into his ofifice.
The Freshman class list included Virgil, Cicero,
Greek Testament, and Arithmetic, and the stud-
ies for each of the three following years are the
natural consequences of the elementary work
of the Freshman.^ The few reminiscences
which we have of the studies in the last part
of the seventeenth and the early part of the
present century, among which those of Edward
Everett are prominent, and the formal histori-
cal statements respecting the course of study,
lead one to believe that for almost two hun-
dred years the American college had remained
stationary in respect to its course of study.

It is also evident that the students pursued

* Henry Adams's History of the United States, i., 129.
^The Yale Book, ii., 498.

i6 The American College.

their studies without great intellectual zest,
and that they possessed only a small share of
that scholarly interest which now prevails
among the better class of undergraduates.
But in the last seventy-five years a larger
progress has been made in the broadening of
the course than was made during all the cen-
turies since Oxford and Cambridge began to
receive students. The studies which now con-
sume the larger share of the students atten-
tion, outside of Latin and Greek and Mathe-
matics, have been introduced in the last
three-quarters of the present century. The
Smith Professorship of French and Spanish
was founded at Harvard in 1815, although in-
struction in French had been offered to those
who desired it as early as 1780, — a time when
this offer made at Harvard reflects the popu-
larity of the French nation in the colonies. I
have heard the late Professor F. H. Hedge
say that in his time as an undergraduate — he
was a member of Harvard's class of 1825 — it
was as unusual to hear a person speak German
as it would now be to hear one speak Russian.
It was not till 1839 ^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ Professor-
ship of History was established in Harvard,

Its Increasing Power. 17

although, of course, the subject had been
taught before, and it represents the first dis-
tinct endowment of this Chair in any college.
The first incumbent was Jared Sparks.

But the greatest development of this third
period has occurred in the teaching of the
sciences.^ Chemistry was the first to receive
attention. Benjamin Silliman was appointed
professor of chemistry and natural philosophy
(also teaching geology and mineralogy) at Yale
in 1804 ; and Robert Hare, of Philadelphia,
was called to the chair of chemistry in the
medical college of the University of Pennsyl-
vania in 18 18.

Both of these men taught chemistry by text-
books and illustrated lectures. Hare was a
tireless investigator, Silliman a helper of too
many good causes to become eminent as an
original authority in any. The idea of instruc-
tion in laboratory work does not seem to have
occurred to either of them. Even Benjamin
Silliman the younger does not appear to have
had free access to his father's laboratory until
he became his assistant in 1837. ^Y this time

^ For the statement of facts as to the introduction of instruction in
the sciences I am indebted to my associate, Professor F. P. Whitman.

i8 The American College.

Liebig s laboratory had been established, and
the possibility of obtaining practical instruction
in chemistry began to draw young men to Ger-
many. Probably this was an important influ-
ence in bringing about the change of method
which swept over the country about 1850, Yale
taking the lead.

In 1842, Benjamin Silliman, Jr., began tak-
ing a few favored students into his laboratory.
Among them was J. P. Norton, who went in
1843 to study for two years in Edinburgh and
Utrecht, bringing back European methods.

In 1847 ^^s established the '' School of Ap-
plied Chemistry," under the care of the younger
Silliman and Norton. Among the six students
of the first year were the well-known professors
of the Sheffield Scientific School, Brush, Brew-
er, and Johnson. This was the beginning of
the Sheffield Scientific School.

In Pennsylvania the movement appears to
have been similar, in that the applications of
chemistry to the arts were the chief reasons
urged for establishing a department of applied
chemistry in 1850, under the charge of Profes-
sor James C. Booth.

At Harvard the same influence was working.

Its Increasing Power. 19

In 1846 Eben N. Horsford, fresh from two
years' work with Liebig, at Giessen, was recom-
mended by Professor Webster (of sinister mem-
ory) to the '' Rumford Professorship of the
Application of Science to the Useful Arts," on
assuming which he organized at once, in 1847,
the laboratory of the Lawrence Scientific
School, on the model, as far as possible, of that
at Giessen.

But a more notable event was the appoint-
ment of the eager young chemist, Josiah P.
Cooke, to a position in Harvard College, first
as a lecturer in chemistry in 1850, in addition
to his duties as tutor in mathematics, and after-
ward in December of the same year as Erving
professor of chemistry and mineralogy. In
1 85 1, Cooke opened a laboratory at his own
cost, for undergraduate students, apparently
the first recognition of the fact that chemistry
may be taught not merely to specialists but
to those less advanced, by laboratory methods.
This course was formally recognized by the
college, and proper accommodations provided
for it in 1858.

Dr. Wayland's famous report of 1850 awak-
ened interest in the same direction at Brown,

20 The American College.

and a working laboratory for chemistry was
opened at the beginning of the next college
year.

As far as catalogues of that date show, the
sciences were still taught in the old way,
in 1850, at Amherst, Bowdoin, Dartmouth,
Princeton, and the University of Virginia, but
by 1852 a chemical laboratory had been estab-
lished .at the last named institution.

The establishment of physical laboratories
began nearly twenty years later, those for the
study of biology at a later period still, after the
value of the laboratory method had been thor-
oughly established by the experience of the
chemists.

The history of the introduction of political
economy and economic science into the Ameri-
can college covers a much longer period than
it is usually believed to cover. The Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania was the first to make pro-
vision for this study. As early as 1 756, a plan
of liberal studies was framed, in which, after
prescribing

^ " a preliminary training in logic and metaphysics to de-
velop his powers of thought, the student was to be
brought to a knowledge and practical sense of his posi-

Its Increasing Power. 2t

tion as a man and a citizen, and this by a course em-
bracing ethics, natural and civil law, and an introduction
to civil history, to laws and government, to trade and
commerce.'*

In 1799, William and Mary College added to
its curriculum the subject of the law of na-
tions, and near the beginning of the present
century, Adam Smith's great book is found to
be among the text-books. In 1820, Harvard
introduced Economics into its curriculum and
other colleges presently followed. At Yale,
Economics was introduced in 1824, at Colum-
bia in 1827, at Dartmouth in 1828, at Prince-
ton in 1830, and at Williams in 1835. The
writer^ to whom I am indebted for these facts,
states that the almost simultaneous introduc-
tion of this study by Harvard, Yale, Dart-
mouth, Columbia, Princeton, and Williams
was probably due to the industrial revolution
which the inventions of Arkwright, Har-
greaves, and Fulton had wrought, to the ex-
pansion of commerce which followed the close
of the Napoleonic wars, to the growth of popu-
lation, and to the increasing mobility of labor

^ James F. Colby, a letter in the New York Nation^ vol. Ixiii., p.
494, dated December 31, 1896.

^i^^-:

22 The American College.

and capital, which before 1820 gave rise to new
political issues in the United States, The ad-
dition of Economics to the curriculum of these
colleges undoubtedly was facilitated by the
appearance, as early as 1821, of an American
edition of Say's Political Economy. This was
the first text-book upon this subject used in
most of these colleges.

This enlargement of the curriculum is at
once cause and result of the college becoming
more human. Whatever belongs to man is no
longer regarded as foreign to the higher edu-
cation. To embody Newman's idea of the
higher education has become the controlling
nirpose of the university.

" Education," says Newman, " shows him [the student]
how to accommodate himself to others, how to throw
himself into their state of mind, how to bring before
them his own, how to influence them, how to come to an
.understanding with them, how to bear with them. He.
is at home in any society, he has common ground witli
every class ; he knows when to speak and when to be
silent ; he is able to converse, he is able to listen ; he
can ask a question pertinently, and gain a lesson season-
ably, when he has nothing to impart himself ; he is ever
ready, yet never in the way ; he is a pleasant companion,
and a comrade you can depend upon ; he knows when
to be serious and when to trifle, and he has a sure tact

Its Increasing Power. 23

' which enables him to trifle with gracefulness and to be
serious with effect. ^ He has the repose of a mind which
lives in itself, while it lives in the world, and which has /
resources for its happiness at home when it cannot go
abroad. He has a gift which serves him in public, and
supports him in retirement, without which good fortune
is but vulgar, and with which failure and disappointment
have a charm." ^

The human interest of the college is further
evidenced in the fact that the college now
ministers to the higher scholarship as it never
has before ministered to it. Newman writes
as no one else has ever written of the value of
the college in training men ; but the college is
not only training men, it is promoting scholar-
ship. Although certain men, great as in-
ventors and discoverers of scientific facts,
have not been liberally trained, — one cannot,
however, forget that Eli Whitney and Samuel
F. B. Morse were graduates of Yale, — yet the
impulses for t^heir inventions and discoveries
have largely come from the college laboratory.
It is ever to be remembered, too, that the great
work of such investigators as Agassiz, Gray,
Dana, and Morley has been done within col-
lege walls. The great institution that Agassiz

^ Newman's The Idea of a University^ 178.

24 The American College.

— father and son — has built at Cambridge is a
part of Harvard, and also the noble and mani-
fold work of the associate of Agassiz, Asa
Gray, is an integral part of the same Uni-
versity. The great work of the codification
of knowledge and the systematization of facts,
which is saving knowledge unto itself and
unto the world, and is preventing the human
mind from becoming submerged in its own
discoveries, is carried on largely in the col-
leges. Investigations in literature, history, the
sciences, political and civic relations of the
present time, belong in the largest degree and
in an increasing degree, to the best colleges.
The purpose which the American college for-
merly held of training men is no longer the
single one ; with this aim is to be united the
purpose of advancing scholarship.

The breadth of the field which an education
of this period covers is indicated by the num-
ber and character of the State universities.
These universities have largely sprung up in
the last forty years. The majority of them
have been founded since the passing of the
Land Act of 1862. The State universities of
the States west of the Mississippi are certainly

Its Increasing Power. 25

o

the strongest educational agencies to be found
within their borders. In many of the States
immediately east of the Mississippi, such as
Michigan and Wisconsin, the State universi-
ties are also the strongest to be found within
the Commonwealth. In several of the States
lying between the Mississippi and the Alle-
ghanies it might be open to question which is
the stronger, the State universities or the pri-
vate colleges. But in the larger number of the
States of the Atlantic coast, the private col-
leges are the best. The State university has
already become a dominant educational force
in a majority of our Commonwealths. Its
financial supporter is the State itself ; its re-
lations to other educational agencies is, in cer-
tain instances, the relation of the head to the
body in the human system ; its curriculum is
broad, including not only liberal, but also
many technical, courses. It embraces profes-
sional and technical schools, even those of nar-
row limits, as the dental and the veterinary.
But it is to be emphasized that the State
university represents all the elements of the
higher education. The university is ordained
to minister to the whole man.

26 The American College.

The human element in this period is illus-
trated also in the progress of the education
for women. In this generation the higher
education for women has made more progress
than in the preceding hundred years. The
purpose in the foundation of the colleges for
women has not been to make women into bet-
ter wives or worthier mothers, but it has been
the same purpose which prevails in the higher
education of men. When Matthew Vassar
founded the first college for women, his pur-
pose was simply to offer to women the same
advantages v/hich young men were receiving.

The college for women receives each woman,
both as a woman and as a human being ; and
it receives her in order to train her for the
largest life. And it does train her for this life.
The American college has helped American
women to get strength without becoming prig-
gish, and vigor of intellect without becoming
cold ; it has helped them to become rich in
knowledge without being pedantic ; broad in
sympathy without wanting a public career ;
and large-minded and broad-minded without
neglecting humble duties. The American col-
lege has helped woman toward doing the high-

Its Increasing Power. 27

est work, by the wisest methods, with the
richest results.

The great interest in athletics in the Ameri-
can colleges illustrates the width of the human
interests that have entered into college life.
The college has become sympathetic with the
community in the athletic revival. Each grad-
uate knows that his success in life depends
not upon any one single power, but upon the
relation which many powers bear to each other.
He also knows that he has the treasure of
his intellect in the earthen vessel of his body.
His judgment therefore impels him to give to
his body the discipline adequate to the ef-
ficient working of his mental faculties. He
therefore becomes an athlete in the gymna-
sium, or an athlete on the football or the
baseball field, or on the river. If he does
not become an athlete, he gets exercise of
the physical faculties in the gymnasium suffi-
cient for the proper working of the intel-
lectual. Thusj^dil£tijcs.xepresentJLhje4^
of an important part of the whole man for
life's service.

The human element of this period has
a negative illustration in the foundation of

28 The American College.

technical schools in the latter part of this time.
These schools are professional schools. They
are not designed to give a liberal training, nor
are they designed to promote the comprehen-
sive interests of the student. Their purpose
is to train him to become able to follow certain
vocations as practical chemistry, architecture,
engineering, or any other technical calling.
The worth of these schools to the community
is of course great ; but their worth does not
consist in the liberal culture which they be-
stow. The gift which they make to common
life is of great value. It consists in giving
to certain callings well-equipped workers ; but
their purpose, function, and scope are quite un-
like the purpose, function, and scope of what
is frequently called, the College of Liberal
Arts. This college still stands for the humani-
ties and for humanity.

I have called the third period the German
period. I have thus denominated it, not only
because it was the period in which the German
universities have become the most vigorous
agencies for the higher scholarship, but also
and far more, because the influence of the
German universities in the development of

Its Increasing Power. 29

the period has been great. The new learning
came to these shores near the beginning of
the third period. Early in the century the
German influence laid a strong hand on the
undergraduates. In 1820, when he was a
Freshman at Harvard, George Ripley wrote
of a classmate : '' He will probably spend some
years in Germany, after he leaves Cambridge,
and if his health is spared return one of the
most eminent among our literary men." ^ The
direct influence of Germany over the higher
education in America has three periods well
defined. The first begins with such men as
Edward Everett, George Bancroft, Joseph
Cogswell, Robert Patton, George Ticknor,
and Henry W. Longfellow, who went to
Gottingen in the first third of the century.
Edward Everett was the first American to
take a German doctorate, which he received in
Gottingen in 181 7. In the second period we
find in Germany such men as Goodwin, Child,
Whitney, Gould the astronomer, and Gilder-
sleeve. The influence of these two generations
of scholars in the university life of America has
been, and still is, very great. In the more

^ Frothingham's George Ripley, lo.

30 The American College.

general relations the influence of the first
generation has been greater, but in the more
scholarly relations the influence of the second
generation has been greater by far. The third
period begins with that awakening of the
American mind which followed our Civil War.
It was contemporaneous with the beginning of
the '' New Education." In this period, which
is still in progress, hosts of men who are still
young in years have gone to Germany, and,
returning, have become noble forces in Ameri-
can scholarship. They are found to-day in
scores of our best colleges. The German
movement, therefore, which began in the first
decades of the century, has gone forward in
enlarging relations and with increasing power.
In 1835, f^^^ Americans were registered as
students in German universities; in 1891 the
number was four hundred and forty-six. It
has increased in the later years of the decade,
and is at present about six hundred. But this
early inspiration has continued to promote
high scholarship. It has come to us borne by
our own American students, but also borne by
native Germans themselves. German scholars,
obliged to leave their native land or coming

Its Increasing^ Power. 31

o

voluntarily, as the elder Agassiz, Charles
Theodore Follen, and Beck, have had a large
influence in the development of our higher
education.

These three periods, which are thus named
the ecclesiastical, the civil, and the human, are
yet not so clearly differentiated as these di-
visions might indicate. For into each period
the chief characteristics of the others have
forced their way. In the ecclesiastical period
certain civil relations are found obtaining, for
the College was the child of the State. The
elder colleges could not have lived without the
fostering care of the Commonwealth. The
colleges also trained men for the service of
the State. The way in which the statesmen
of the decade before the Revolution, and the
decade following it, dealt with the great prob-
lems that were forced upon them proves how
efficient was the training which the college
gave. The influence of the academic disci-
pline is seen in the writing of the Constitution
of the United States ; and it is easy to trace
this discipline in the compositions of the
elder Adams, of Jefferson, of Hamilton, and
of Madison.

32 The American College.

" These scholars," says Sibley, writing of the general
conditions, " originated or urged forward the ideas and
principles on which our government now rests, and which
in their expansion are to-day agitating the world and
ameliorating the condition of mankind. Their lives and
the history of the country were so interwoven, that the
knowledge of both is necessary to the proper under-
standing of either. There is probably no instance in
history where the same number of young men, taken
indiscriminately from various classes of society, and
trained under the same auspices, have afterward, in
their various spheres, exerted greater influence on the
politics, morals, religion, thought, and destiny of the
world than the early graduates of Harvard University." *

So, also, the ecclesiastical influence has been
potent in the second and third periods. In
the westward movement of the population the
Church has been the mother of schools and
colleges. The beginnings of the higher edu-
cation in the larger part of the newer States
have been ecclesiastical. The history of not
a few of these colleges is the history of an
earnest denominational propagandism ; and at
the present time the functions and the pres-
ence of the denominational college are forces
to which the historian of our colleges must
give much attention. The great growth of the

' Sibley's Harvard Graduates ^ I,, x.

Its Increasing Power. 33

system of the State universities represents the
prevalence of the civil idea in this same great
human period.

In the development of the German uni-
versities are to be found three periods also,
not unlike the three periods in the develop-
ment of the higher education in America.
The first period is that of the establishment
of universities by the churches of the differ-
ent States. This period closes with the seven-
teenth century, a time which was coincident
with the foundation of Yale College. Through-
out this time the interests, ecclesiastical and
theological, were predominant. The faculty
of theology was the most important of all the
faculties. The second period covers the last
century. It is marked by the supplanting of
theological and ecclesiastical interests, by the
interests of philosophy and of law. As an im-
portant event of the second period in the
United States was the foundation of the Uni-
versity of Virginia, so, also, in Germany, the
great events were the making of the educa-
tional foundations in 1694 at Halle, and in
1737 at Gottingen. Rationalism, too, is the
key-note to this period in Germany, as it was

34 The American College.

of the second period in America. In both
periods in both countries, freedom of investi-
gation had been prevalent, and yet in Amer-
ica the political aspect of education appears
stronger than in Germany. The third period
in Germany begins with the close of the
Napoleonic disaster and still continues. The
foundation of the University of Berlin repre-
sents the commencement of the great move-
ment. It is marked in Germany, as it is in
this country, by the intimacy of the relation-
ship between the University and all the people.
As in America this period is distinguished by
the comprehensiveness of the human relations
which the College embraces, so in Germany
this period is marked by the foundation of the
University of Berlin, and by the strengthening
of the old universities for the sake of increasing
the power of the nation. As in America, also,
the ecclesiastical relations of the universities
have declined ; and in the substance and form
of the instruction, as well as in the personnel,
large human relationships have come to pre-
vail.

The development of the great English uni-
versities has been like and unlike the develop-

Its Increasing Power. 35

ment in the United States. The first period
is essentially the same of both countries.
The second period, the political, has not had
so distinct existence in England; but the third
is quite as marked, and its scholarly and human
forces are quite as aggressive, in the old as in
the new country. The movement for reform
in Oxford and Cambridge, covering more than
fifty years, culminating in the Act of 1850 and
the Bill of 1 87 1, has been a movement toward
making the Universities centres of national
thought and education.

LThus the influence of the American College
has constantly enlarged in these two hundred
and fifty, and more, years. It began as an in-
stitution for training ministers ; it next became
an agency for training citizens ; and then,
broadening its purpose, it was content with
nothing less than training men for complete
living'5

That the influence of the college is enlarging
is made evident not only through the widening
of its purpose and function, it is also made
evident through the increase in the number of
the members of the community whom it en-
rolls as students.

36 The American College.

The fear is often expressed that the materi-
alism and commercialism of the time are caus-
ing the college, standing for things of the
mind, to lose influence. This fear is based
rather on general considerations than on exact
and complete evidence. It is the result rather
of what is thought must be, or ought to be,
than of what is known to be. Lord Kelvin
once said that ''nothing can be clearly under-
stood until we can express it in figures." It
may be said with equal truth that the evidence
of the decline or increase of the influence of an
institution is strongly presented by figures.

One cannot forget that among the twenty-
one thousand people who between 1620 and
1640 came to New England, and among their
descendants for the following fifty years, there
were as many college graduates as could be
found in any population of similar size in the
mo.ther country. At one time of this period in
Massachusetts and Connecticut, every group
of two hundred and fifty people had one grad-
uate of old Cambridge. In addition to the
Cambridge graduates there were also several
from Oxford.

The proportion of college men found in the

Its Increasing Power. 37

colonies in the last years of the seventeenth
century, and throughout the eighteenth, is
largely a matter of conjecture, for the popula-
tion itself is a matter of conjecture. The first
census was taken in 1 790. Although Bancroft
has devoted much space to the consideration
of the population at different periods, yet the
results reached are simply estimates. In order,
therefore, to reduce the question in hand to
very definite and simple limits, I shall compare
the population and students of 1830 and 1831,
with the population and students of 1890 and
1891.

The former date represents the beginning
of a very interesting period in American edu-
cation, for the fourth decade of this century
stands for a great awakening in educational
affairs. It was the decade in which more col-
leges were founded than were founded in all
the three previous decades, among them being
the University of Michigan. At that time the
United States had forty-six colleges and the
population was 12,866,020 persons. The num-
ber of students in forty of these forty-six col-
leges was 3582. The number of students in
the remaining six colleges it is now impossible

38 The American College.

to secure. But it is not unjust to estimate the
whole number of college students in this coun-
try at the beginning of the fourth decade as
4000. There were, therefore, 3216 persons in
the entire population for each college student.
We are constantly blaming ourselves for the
depreciated sense in which we use the word col-
lege. We are, however, less blameworthy than
the people of old England, although blame-
worthy enough. In the varying breadth with
which the term is used we find the number of
colleges in the United States a variable quan-
tity. But in the colleges which make a report
to the Bureau of Education, are now 46,474
students. The population according to the
last census, was 62,622,250 persons. There
are, therefore, now 1347 persons to each col-
lege student. In a word, therefore, we now
have twice the number of students to each per-
son of the population that we had two genera-
tions ago. The proportion in the different
states in these two periods is certainly signifi-
cant. In Maine, in 1830, there were 2330
persons to each student ; in Maine now there
are 1294 persons to each student. In New
Hampshire, in 1830, there were 1756 persons

Its Increasing Power. 39

to each student; in New Hampshire now there
are 1034. In Vermont, in 1830, there were
1696 persons to each student; in Vermont
now there are 1433. In Massachusetts, in
1830, there were 895 persons to each student ;
in Massachusetts now there are 501. In Rhode
Island, in 1830, there were 2442 persons to
each student ; in Rhode Island now there are
857. In Connecticut, in 1830, there were 1,340
persons to each student ; in Connecticut now
there are 421. In New York, in 1830, there
were 2496 ; in New York now there are 1 149.
The general summaries are, in New England
in 1830 there were 1231 persons to each
student; in the four Middle States there were
3,465 to each student. Now in these same
States, leaving out Delaware, there are looi
persons to each student. In 1830, in six
Southern States, including the District of
Columbia, there were 7232 persons to each
student. Now, in what are called the South
Atlantic States, there are 1874 persons to
each student, and in the South Central division
there are to each student, 1908 persons. In
1830, in eight Western States, there were 6060
persons to each student. Now in the Northern

40 The American College.

Central division there are 1333 persons to each
student, and in the Western division there are
1640.

It is not a little difficult to point out the great
significance of these proportions. In 1830 the
population of this country was small, under thir-
teen milHons of people. Sixty years later the
population of this country was somewhat over
sixty milHons. That is to say, the population
of the country was four and one half times as
large in 1890 as it was in 1830, but the number
of college students was more than ten times as
large.

It is to be said that in these forty-six thou-
sand students are included a few professional
students and also women, for certain colleges
so report their students that it is impossible to
distinguish the professional from the under-
graduate members. This same fact was true
though to a less extent in 1830. But among
the students of sixty years ago there were prob-
ably no women. At the present time one fifth
of all our college students are women.

It is to be said, too, that in the years that have
followed the close of this sixty year period the
number of college students has constantly in-

Its Increasing Power. 41

creased. From forty-six thousand it has in-
creased to over seventy thousand.

Such an increase is to be expected. The
first attention of a new people must be given to
material things. Forests are to be felled and
turned into houses ; soil must be broken, crops
sown and harvested ; streams dammed and
bridged ; mills of every kind built ; roads made,
— all material values to be increased, and utili-
ties created and augmented. Physical con-
ditions are to be first consulted and physical
life promoted. The consequent attention is
given to things of the mind. The college fol-
lows the factory, the dormitory the family
home. The smallest proportion of college
men to the population is found among the
newer or newest States and the largest among
the oldest. New York and Massachusetts have
more students than any other State, (of course
many of the students have their homes outside
of Massachusetts and New York). We can-
not forget that not a few of the newer States
have followed the example set by Massachu-
setts of founding a college within its first score
of years. Ohio was admitted in 1803 ^^^d
within the next twenty-five years Ohio had

42 The American College.

established four colleges, one founded the year
following the admission of the State. Illinois
became a State in 1818 and the college which
bears its name was chartered in 1835, and in
the same fourth decade were founded several
other colleges in this State. The history of
the American Commonwealth and of American
education is simply the history of the applica-
tion of the principle, that material things pre-
cede the intellectual. We are, therefore, to
expect that the proportion of well-trained men
in the community will increase with the age of
the community.

In certain countries of Europe we find this
expectation realized. The number of under-
graduates enrolled at Oxford and Cambridge
has increased in the sixty years, though the
proportion of increase it is difficult to state
for enrollments were formerly more lax than
at present. There is reason to believe that
to-day at these two universities is a larger
number of regular undergraduates than at any
time since the Reformation. The newer col-
leges, too, founded in the last fifty years seem to
have drawn students who otherwise would have
sought the older and more eminent universities.

Its Increasing Powef. 43

The Scottish universities, moreover, have in-
creased their enrollment, Edinburgh rising
from two thousand to three thousand. In
Germany in the first years of the fourth decade
of this century there were fifty-two university
students to each one hundred thousand of the
population. In the following decades the pro-
portion declined, falling as low as thirty-three
to each one hundred thousand ; but in the
eighties it rose till at the close of the decade
there were no less than sixty-three students to
each one hundred thousand. In the years
1886-9 there were found to each one hundred
thousand of the population, in Austria, fifty-six
university students, in Italy fifty-one, in France
forty-three, in Belgium eighty-two, in Holland
forty-five, in Switzerland fifty-six, in Den-
mark forty-seven, in Norway seventy-seven, in
Sweden fifty-seven, and in Russia ten.^ From
these estimates theological students are ex-
cluded. Yet, be it said, the comparative value
of these figures is not so great as might seem,
for the educational systems of different coun-
tries are very different.

^ Die Deutschen Universtdten. Herausgegeben von W. Lexis,
i., 116.

44 The American College.

In all Europe the proportion has remained
substantially the same in sixty years, although
falling slightly — from one student in twenty-
five hundred of the people to one student in
three thousand. Professor Lexis, writing in
particular of the universities of his own coun-
try, suggests that these variations arise largely
from commercial causes. A revival in business
usually diminishes the attendance through of-
fering commercial opportunities ; a depression
increases attendance through making profes-
sional careers more attractive.

The fear is not infrequently expressed that
the world has too many educated men. The
fear is more often entertained in reference to
Germ.any. The expression gives ground for
the question, too many for what ? Too many
to make lawyers, or orators, or clergymen, or
editors ? Certainly the number of lawyers, or
of orators, or of clergymen, or of editors may
exceed the demand. Too many, so that college
graduates are obliged to become mechanics
and farmers ? And why, let it be asked, should
not college graduates become mechanics and
farmers ? Does not a college education aid a
mechanic or a farmer ? Pity on the education
and on the graduate if it does not ! But edu-

Its Increasing Power. 45

cation, be it ever said, is not designed to make
members of a certain ilk or profession. It is
designed to make men. It is designed to help
each man to find and to make life interesting.
No ! There cannot be an over supply of edu-
cated men. There can be no absolute over
supply of any good thing. We cannot educate
too many men ; neither can we educate men too
much. Can humanity become too good, or too
able, or too learned, or too reasonable ?

It is, therefore, specially significant that the
graduates of American colleges are not confined
as once they were to the learned professions.
There was a time when to go to college meant,
for the ordinary student, going into the minis-
try. That time passed away long ago. A little
later there was a period in which to go to col-
lege meant to enter either the law or the min-
istry. That time has passed away within not
many years. Now to go to college does not
necessarily indicate entrance upon any one of
the learned professions. One third of the grad-
uates of Harvard College enter business. The
college graduate is finding any work proper to
himself in which he can best serve his age.
The college has become an institution of and
for humanity.

11.

CERTAIN GREAT RESULTS.

THE American college has rendered a ser-
vice of greater value to American life in
training men than in promoting scholar-
ship. It has affected society more generally
and deeply through its graduates than through
its contributions to the sciences. Its work for
America and for the world has been largely
done through the men whom it has educated.
It has been rather a mother of men than a
nurse of scientists.

In judging of the value of the service which
the college has rendered to society through its
sons and daughters, of course one must not be
guilty of claiming too much. The college is
only one of the factors which helps to develop
the character and the working power of an

46

Certain Great Results. 47

individual. The Roman in his theory of peda-
gogical values was inclined to interpret nature
as of greater worth than education ; the mod-
ern is prone to think that education is of
greater worth than nature. We are never to
forget that the home, personal association, en-
vironment, as well as ability, are always to
be weighed and assessed. Many men **of light
and leading '' would still have been guides of
their fellows if they had never gone to college.
Yet the college has rendered unique and pe-
culiarly rich services. It has, in nearly every
instance, increased ability, and made ability
more efficient. It has rendered indifferent
ability good, good better, and given a superla-
tive excellence to that of a higher degree.

Of all the professions, the ministry enrolls the
largest proportion of college graduates. An
examination of Dr. Sprague's Annals of the
American P^ilpit shows that of the eleven hun-
dred and seventy clergymen therein named, 74
per cent, of those who are Episcopalians, 78
percent, of those who are Presbyterians, 80 per
cent, of those who are Congregational, and 97
per cent, of those who are Unitarian clergymen
are graduates. The influence of the minister

48 The American College.

in a community is, in a degree, the influence
of the college, and that influence has been from
the birth of the nation great. In the very be-
ginning the minister was the autocrat, both
civil and social, of the Commonwealth. He
has now ceased to be an autocrat, but his
influence continues strong and pervasive. Of
all the members of the community he is the
only one who has the opportunity of speaking
to the people at frequent and regular intervals
upon important questions. The decline of the
lyceum system has left him practically alone
in the forum of public debate. If he give to
his functions a large interpretation, he finds
himself closely related to all the higher con-
cerns of humanity. He is, above most citizens,
interested and influential in the development
of the public school system. He is the arbiter
upon many questions of social and civil re-
lationships. In all sociological concerns his
counsel may be of great value. Above most
persons in the community, he is a scholar.
Aside, therefore, from his purely professional
relations, the clergyman is, or may be, of great
influence. In almost all instances the college
has trained in him those qualities which, at

Certain Great Results. 49

least, greatly enlarge his field of usefulness and
enrich his power of service. In the rural parish
as well as in the urban, his influence is greater
because he has had four years in college. The
power of the clergyman, therefore, is the power
of the college.

It is also to be acknowledged that the power
of a college consists quite as much in the
teacher as in the teaching. One needs to read
only a dozen pages of Bowdoin's history to
know that Cleaveland, Newman, Upham, Pack-
ard, Smyth, had for half a century an influence
over the students of that college as great as any
body of teachers ever possessed.

A half-century ago Harvard College, too,
had one and only one professor of Philosophy,
but that one was James Walker ; one, and one
only, professor of Mathematics, but that one
was Benjamin Peirce ; one, and one only, pro-
fessor of Literature, but that one was Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow ; one, and only one,
professor of History, but that one was Jared
Sparks.

A strong man, whatever be the subject he
teaches, and whether his range of knowledge \[
be wide, only provided it considerably exceeds

50 The American College.

that of the body of students whom he instructs,
will always and everywhere be an educational
force amonp- the men who gfather in his
class-room. Personality is the greatest power.
Teachers are as great as they were in the
former time. The educational value of the
college as embodied in its teachers is certainly
as great now as it was. If personality itself is
no stronger than it was, it is true that teachers
are, as teachers, far better qualified for their
work. Men are no longer taken from the pas-
torate to teach Latin or Philosophy. In 1873,
in ten selected colleges, forty per cent, of the
teachers were not specially trained ; in 1893, in
the same colleges, only twenty-five per cent,
were not specially trained.^ Men are no longer
drafted from the graduating class to become
the instructors of the Freshman class. No
worthy college, as a rule, employs other than
experts as teachers. I The influence, therefore,
of the American college is not only enlarging,
it is also deepening and strengthening^

The result on the community of the presence
of an increasing proportion of college-bred men
is of the largest significance. These men be-

* Education^ vol. xv., 56.

Certain Great Results. 51

long to every rank of the social order and to
every condition of life. They represent a
higher civilization also, and their presence tends
yet further to ennoble civilization. Their
characters are prophetic of the rule of a genu-
ine aristocracy in a democracy ; for the people
themselves are becoming the best. They sug-
gest a sympathy more extended as well as more
profound between social classes, for they in-
dicate the possession of a stronger power as
well as of a wiser wisdom on the part of the
stronof and wise to bless the weak and the
ignorant.

\Q American college, therefore, represents
the enlarged and enlarging intellectual life of
the American people. It has helped to train
one third of all our statesmen ; more than a
third of our best authors ; ahiiost a half of our
more distinguished physicians ; fully one half
of our better known lawyers; more than a
half of our best clergymen, and considerably
more than half of our most conspicuous edu-
cators. It has thus entered into the intellectual
life of all the people. It has, above every other
force, tended to raise the intellectual level of
all the people to a higher point than that

52 The American College.

reached elsewhere. The intellectual life has
thus secured breadth, and variety, and rich-
ness. Curiosity has been stimulated, and men-
tal activity quickened. The common school
has gained in dignity and inspiring power.
Books have become more common and better.
Scholarly ideals have been upheld. *' Things
of the mind," in the judgment of the better
American, have come to be of higher worth ;
and the value set upon them in his mental
price-list increases with each passing year.

The colleges have ceased to be, as several
of the earlier colleges were designed in their
foundations to be, training schools for the
ministry. The callings of the law and of com-
mercial life are now more attractive to gradu-
ates of many colleges. Yet the colleges are
still maintaining their prestige as the best train-
ing schools for the ministry, though the propor-
tion of graduates who become ministers dimin-
ishes. In the fifty years in the middle of the
present century, somewhat more than sixteen
thousand men graduated at the eight principal
colleges of New England, of which number
more than four thousand became ministers.
Of the 1626 graduates of Amherst College,

Certain Great Results.

754 became ministers; of 1475 graduates of
Bowdoin, 307 became ministers ; of 2293 grad-
uates of Dartmouth, 554 became ministers ; of
3399 graduates of Harvard, 386 became min-
isters; of 862 graduates of Middlebury, 367
became ministers ; of 682 graduates of the
University of Vermont, 167 became ministers ;
of 1592 graduates of Williams, 533 became
ministers; of 431 1 graduates of Yale, 1041
became ministers/ Such a record is full of
meaning. It proves that a large number of
the graduates of these historic colleges prefer
the ministry as a life's v/ork. A contribution
of four thousand men made in a half-century
to a single profession from eight colleges rep-
resents an increment of the highest value to
the best forces of society.

Certainly, general reasoning would lead one
to expect that the colleges would make large
contributions to the membership of the Chris-
tian ministry. For the ministry demands,
above every other profession, the power of
abstract thinking, and the power of applying
the results of abstract thinking to practical
concerns. The worthy sermon represents

* Congregational Quarterly^ vol. xii., 567.

54 The American College.

thought upon the profoundest themes. The-
ology, that represents the foundation of the
preacher s work, is the most recondite part of
philosophy. Therefore the minister must be
pre-eminently a thinker. The college is or-
dained especially to train thinkers. The pri-
mary characteristic of the educated man is the
power to think. The college uses scholarship
rather as a means to make thinkers than as a
method for the enhancement of learning. In
every generation, therefore, it is to be de-
manded that the college shall make large con-
tributions of its ablest graduates to the ranks
of the ministry.

The college, therefore, has not yet lost its
prestige as being the most valuable opportunity
for the men who propose to be ministers to fit
themselves for their work, be their number
small or large. About seventy per cent, of
the ministers of the Congregational and Pres-
byterian churches are college-bred. Under a
government in which the State and the Church
and the college are more normally and gener-
ally united than these agencies are in the
United States, the college usually represents
a necessary condition to the assuming of

Certain Great Results. 55

clerical functions. The Church of England
would have lost its power, and the minister in
that church his influence, if Oxford and Cam-
bridge had not existed. Writing to Mr.
Gladstone, in 1854, Dean Burgon referred to
Oxford and her colleges as '' those fortresses
where the Church has ever nursed her warriors,
and whither she has never turned in vain for a
champion in her hour of need." ^ The English
Church coijimands the respect of those whose
respect is most worth commanding, largely
through the contributions of manifold sorts
which the English universities have made to
it. Whoever controls Oxford and Cambridge
controls the English Church. In America, it
is significant that the churches which have been
most influential in the development of Ameri-
can life have been those which have placed
greatest emphasis upon the worth of a college-
bred ministry. It is also evident that as the
churches themselves have attached greater
or less importance to the necessity of a college
training for their ministers, has their influence
increased or diminished. At the time when
the Methodist Church did not regard a college

* Lt/e of Dean Burgon, i,, 282,

56 The American College.

training as desirable for securing ordination,
the influence of that church was small Only
1 1 per cent, of the Methodist clergymen named
in Dr. Sprague^s volumes are graduates. But
at the present time, when the Methodist Church
regards a liberal education as a valuable ele-
ment in the clergyman's equipment, the public
influence of this church is greatly increasing.
This church now controls more colleges than
any other.

A large majority of the lawyers of the United
States are not college-bred ; but it is not too
much to say that the influence of those who are
is greater than that of the remainder who
are not. The highest positions in the courts
of the United States, or in the courts of the
individual States, are usually filled by those
who have had an academic education. Every
Chief Justice of the United States has been
a college graduate except one ; and that one,
John Marshall, was a student at the College
of William and Mary until the outbreak of the
Revolution which interrupted his undergrad-
uate career. More than two thirds of the asso-
ciate judges of the Supreme Court, and about
two thirds of the present Circuit Court judges

Certain Great Results. 57

are college graduates. Jay and Blatchford re-
ceived their degrees at Columbia; Cushing,
John Quincy Adams, Story, Levi Lincoln,
Curtis, and Gray, at Harvard ; Wilson, at
Edinborough ; Blair and Bushrod Washington,
at William and Mary ; Paterson, Ellsworth,
Johnson, Brockholst Livingston, Thompson,
Wayne, and Daniel, at Princeton ; Baldwin,
Strong, and Waite, at Yale, together with
Brewer, Brown, and Shiras, who were mem-
bers of the same class of 1856 at Yale ; Taney
and Grier, at Dickinson ; William Smith,
at Mount Zion College, Maryland ; Nelson,
at Middlebury ; Woodbury and Chase, at
Dartmouth; Campbell, at the University of
Georgia ; Miller, at Transylvania, Kentucky ;
Davis and Matthews, at Kenyon ; Field, at
Williams ; Bradley, at Rutgers ; Hunt, at
Union ; Harlan, at Centre College, Kentucky;
Jackson, at West Tennessee College ; White,
at St. Mary's College, in Maryland, and
Woods, at Western Reserve and at Yale.
Stanton was a student in Kenyon College two
years. At the present time every member of
our Supreme Court has received a liberal edu-
cation.

58 The American College.

It IS a single college which has trained such
judges or lawyers as Caleb Cushing, Joseph
Story, Benjamin Robbins Curtis, Horace Gray,
George Tyler Bigelow, and Ebenezer Rock-
wood Hoar. The same college has given an
education to no less than one hundred and
fifty members of the United States and State
courts. Men of like eminence and position
have been trained at not a few of our colleges,
although their number may not be so great.
The American people are in far greater debt
for the permanence of their institutions to the
courts of justice than they are usually inclined
to believe ; and these courts of justice are in
debt to the colleges for no small share of those
powers which render their methods wise and
their decisions right. Remove from the intel-
lectual resources of the great judge or the
great lawyer, that training which the four years
of college gave to him, and one would usually
take away the possibility of his ever being a
worthy judge or a competent lawyer at all.
Conspicuously among the professions, the law
demands the power of applying fundamental
principles to the solution of complex prob-
lems. Every case submitted to a lawyer rep-

Certain Great Results. 59

resents an opportunity for an application of
the law of rights. The lawyer, therefore,
should have clearness of mental vision, a
thorough understanding of principles, facility
in the application of these principles, and
above all else the power of analysis. No bet-
ter means for developing such powers exists
than the college.

Our great system of public education is a
sphere in which the influence of the college is
not usually recognized. It is often supposed
that the teacher in the primary, or grammar,
or high school, is jealous of the college profes-
sor, and that the college professor has a con-
tempt for the school-teacher. But what is
called the lower, and what is called the higher,
education are but two parts of one great
scheme, each ministering unto, and each re-
ceiving ministry from, the other. If the work
in the primary grades be slovenly, superficial,
weak, the teaching in the higher grades is also
slovenly, superficial, weak, and ineffective. If
the college fail to be effective, strong, inspiring,
wholesome, all the education that comes be-
fore the college period falls into methods of
narrowness and superficiality. The kinder-

6o The American College.

garten is a preparation for the physical la-
boratory, and the physical and psychological
laboratories of the college have close relations
to the kindergarten.

Historically the college has had a great in-
fluence in the development of our educational
system. Harvard College was founded eleven
years before the passage of the law requiring
those towns in the Bay Colony having one
hundred families to be able to fit students for
college. It was a graduate of Brown Uni-
versity who became the founder of Antioch
College, who did the greatest work for the
common schools ever done by any American.
Massachusetts /and every commonwealth owe
a lasting debt of gratitude to Horace Mann.
The educational system of Indiana is the pro-
duct of the influence of Caleb Mills, who for
many years was a professor in Wabash Col-
lege. At the present time the college, and
especially the college in the West, is doing a
great work in upholding the higher standards
of the public-school system. The forces that
are constantly trying to pull down these stand-
ards are tremendous. The tendency of the
age to reach practical results by the shortest

Certain Great Results. 6i

pathways carries along with itself the peril of
ethical and intellectual superficiality. Against
this tendency the college stands firm as the
everlasting hills. Although only a small pro-
portion of the teachers of the United States
are college-trained, yet many of them have been
taught by those who are college-trained. They
have felt the inspiration of the motives, and
have been affected in a measure by the charac-
ter, of those who have been inspired themselves
by college ideals, moved by college motives,
and influenced by college conditions. The su-
perintendents and supervisors of many schools
are college graduates, as are the teachers in
many high schools. Therefore, not a few stu-
dents who are obliged to finish their education
with the high school have received at one re-
move an influence from the college. Even
beyond the personal influence, the college
system, as a system, has touched the public-
school system. It has held before the schools
standards of learning, larger in content, and
higher in aim, than the schools could them-
selves create.

The college, further, has embodied a broad
and noble patriotism. This patriotism has

62 The American College.

been free from provincialism. The college
has interpreted *' country," not as representing
square miles of territory or loyalty to a partisan
government, but as meaning justice for all,
helpfulness toward the worthy or the weak,
sympathy for the oppressed, and opportunity
for the working out of noblest results under
favorable conditions. It has sought that just
government might prevail ; that toleration of
opinions might become common. It has en-
deavored to incarnate the cardinal virtues in
the State. No youth has been more eager
than the college youth to doff the students
gown and to don the soldier s uniform. It has
been said that, except for Harvard College,
the Revolution would have been put off half
a century. Of the great war no stories are
more moving, no tales of valor more splendid
than those told of the college boys who be-
came soldiers. It is significant that in the
petition for the granting of the charter of
Union College a hundred years ago, attention
is called to the need in the young Republic of
men qualified to lead in the State as well as
in the Church ; and Union College, be it said,
has furnished a great number of men who have

Certain Great Results. 63

rendered efficient service to the nation. The
constitution of North Dakota was partly the
work of a graduate of a college in Wisconsin.
Of the men who have been influential in the
affairs of Rhode Island in the last century and
a half, only three can be mentioned who have
not been graduates of Brown University, and
these three were connected with the university
in such a way as to feel its influence. The
motto of the college graduate is not '* My
country, right or wrong." Rather he loves his
country, and is willing to die or live for it, as
it embodies those principles which represent
eternal and infinite relationships. He loves
his country more because he loves the world
much.

The college has, moreover, rendered great
service in upholding the ideas of a simple de-
mocracy. The college is, along with the pub-
lic school, the most democratic of our institu-
tions. It exists for the people.^ If the college

'•'He [Jowett] sometimes dreamed ... of a bridge which
might unite the different classes of society, and at the same time bring
about a friendly feeling in the different sects of religion, and that
might also connect the different branches of knowledge which were
apt to become estranged one from another." — Life and Letters of
Benjamin Joivett, ii. , 26.

64 The American College.

is a part of the system of public education, it
exists as a part of the commonwealth. If it is
a private corporation, it is private in no sense
other than that it represents private property
held in trust for public weal. The ordinary
college represents the bestowment of a large
amount of property for the improvement of the
people. It embodies the power of promoting
scholarship as a means for the elevation of
humanity, i The principles dominant in the col-
lege are the principles of our common citizen-
ship. It is not wealth nor birth, prestige nor
family, which opens the doors of the college,
but it is the simple desire to use the facilities
offered by the college for the enlargement and
enrichment of character and of life. The col-
lege finds its best conditions in a democratic
community. But the college in turn tends to
develop democracy in the community! The
English universities failed for centuries to
have a worthy influence in English life because
of ecclesiasticism. The American college is
the creation of the democratic commonwealth.
The American college in turn tends to make
the democratic commonwealth yet more demo-
cratic. It is still true, as the late President

V» OF TT.

Certain Great Results.

Anderson said in an address given at the time
of his inauguration forty-three years ago :
" Universities have been everywhere the nur-
series of equality. The single fact that for
centuries their endowments gave to the sons of
the poor their only available opportunity to
measure their strength with the rich and noble
on equal terms, shows that they have had more
influence in giving to man a superiority over
his accidents than any institution except the
Christian Church. Universities have beeo"-""^
the special benefactors of the poor. We be-
lieve that accurate statistics would show that
more than two thirds of the students who in
our country have gone through a course of
collegiate education, have been the sons of —
men in comparative poverty. To these has
the main benefit of the university endowments
inured. These foundations alone have pre-
vented the monopoly of education from being
secured to the rich."^

The story of the political or public achieve-
ments wrought by the American college for the
community through its graduates is a long and
glorious one. It is worth while possibly to

^ Papers and addresses of Martin B. Anderson, i., 44-5.
5

66 The American College.

present a few statistics. In suggesting the
great part which college men have played in
national affairs, it is not unworthy to mention
that clergymen, teachers, and physicians are by
their occupations usually prevented from en-
tering political life. The proportion, therefore,
of college men who are found rendering con-
spicuous service to the nation becomes exceed-
ingly significant. Of the fifty-six signers of
the Declaration of Independence, forty-two
had a liberal education. Three members of
the committee of five appointed to draft the
Declaration — Jefferson, Adams, and Living-
ston— were college-bred. At least twenty-nine
of the fifty-five men who composed the Con-
vention of 1787, which framed the Constitu-
tion, had had the advantage of a classical edu-
cation. One was educated at Oxford, London,
Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen each ; one
at the University of Pennsylvania ; two at Co-
lumbia, three at Harvard, four at Yale, five
at William and Mary, and nine at Princeton.
The men who were most influential in the
struggle which resulted in the adoption of the
Constitution were men trained at college.
It may as well be confessed at once that

Certain Great Results. 67

the prejudice is more or less common against
the college graduate entering politics. The
usual charge brought against him is that he
is not practical. His training has been the-
oretical. He has lived long within college
walls and knows little or nothing of what is
without college walls. It is constantly affirmed
that the judgment of a practical man upon the
tariff is of far more value than the judgment of
one college-bred. Not infrequently is it said,
too, that the college man is not fitted to be
the master in national crises. Since the time
of Andrew Jackson this prejudice has been
not uncommon. The nearest Andrew Jackson
ever came to going to college was when he
went to Harvard and heard the late Francis
Bowen give an oration in which Jackson was
compared, through the adoption of a figure of
Virgil,^ to Neptune, who, by showing his pla-
cidum caput, stilled the tempestuous waves of
the nullification storm. I have heard Professor
Bowen say that apparently President Jackson
did not know what the figure meant. He
probably did not. But the influence of Jackson
has impressed certain people with the assur-

* ^neid, i., 127.

68 The American College.

ance that the man of the back-woods with
force and common sense is a better element in
American political life than the well-bred gen-
tleman of collegiate learning.

This prejudice, however, seems now to me
to be dying out, and also, I believe, it was
never firmly or widely held. It represents one
of those superficial opinions which even the
one holding does not regard as a permanent
conviction. In his heart of hearts every one
knows that good judgment, training, and dis-
ciplined power are the natural and normal
results of a college course. Although these
qualities are found developed in ten thousands
of men without the collegiate method, and
although hundreds of men graduate from col-
lege without possessing these supreme quali-
ties, yet the tendency of the life of the college
is to train them.

But it is clear that certain qualities of which
the statesman stands in particular and urgent
need are promoted through a college educa-
tion. Among the intellectual needs of the
statesmen are the power of interpretation and
the power of exposition. He needs to under-
stand the significance of events and the rela-

Certain Great Results. 69

tions of facts. He should be able to distin-
guish the transient from the permanent, the
comprehensive from the narrow, the superficial
from the profound. He should be able to
assess each fact and truth at its proper value.
Having this power of interpretation, he also
needs the power of exposition. He should
have the teacher s quality of making his in-
terpretation of certain conditions clear to other
minds. He should be able to explain things.
Another quality which is at once intellectual
and ethical the statesman should also possess.
It may be called the quality of high-minded-
ness. The thoughts in which his intellect de-
lights should be noble, and the feelings which
his heart rejoices in should be pure. He should
have that same quality intellectually which the
term gentleman connotes socially. He should
possess intellectual conscientiousness. This
quality, highly developed in the individual and
devoted to the service of the State, is of the
greatest value in the betterment of our social,
political, and civil conditions. These are the
qualities which the college trains. It trains
the power of interpretation and of exposition
through every study pursued, but also, in par-

70 The American College.

ticular, through the linguistic and the mathe-
matical. That simple means, so largely used
in the college, of translation from a foreign
tongue into the English represents the train-
ing of the power of interpretation and of ex-
position. Intellectual conscientiousness, too,
is fostered in the college through the accuracy
of the training given in the class-room and
also, and more, by the inspirations and ex-
amples of noble living set before the students
in the persons of their teachers.

We are, therefore, prepared to believe that
a large number of those who have been con-
cerned in political life have been trained in the
colleges. We also are not surprised to find
that on the whole the abler men following a
political life have added to their native powers
through the discipline of the higher education.
Not far from one half of the members of the
national Senate and House have received a
liberal education. Of the thirty-two speakers,
sixteen have had the advantage of a regular
college training. Muhlenberg was a student
in Halle (Germany) ; Trumbull and Winthrop
graduates of Harvard ; Dayton and Penning-
ton, of Princeton ; Hunter and Orr, of the

Certain Great Results. 71

University of Virginia ; Bell, a graduate of
Cumberland, Tennessee ; Polk, of the Univer-
sity of North Carolina ; John W. Jones, of
William and Mary ; John W. Davis, of Balti-
more ; Howell Cobb, of Franklin ; Grow, of
Amherst ; Blaine, of Washington ; Keifer, of
Antioch, and Reed, of Bowdoin. Two other
Speakers had the advantage of a partial college
training ; Sedgwick spent three years at Har-
vard and also Macon was a member of Prince-
ton, but left without graduating in order to
join the army. In the Executive Department
of the national government, of twenty-four
presidents, twelve have been liberally educated.
John Adams and John Quincy Adams received
a first degree from Harvard College; Jeffer-
son, Madison, and Tyler, from William and
Mary ; Polk, from the University of North
Carolina ; Pierce, from Bowdoin ; Buchanan,
from Dickinson ; Hayes, from Kenyon ; Gar-
field, from Williams ; Arthur, from Union, and
Benjamin Harrison, from Miami University.
Monroe was a student in William and Mary,
but left college to join the Revolutionary
army, and William H. Harrison was a member
of Hampden-Sidney College in Virginia, but

72 The American College.

did not graduate. One half of the vice-presi-
dents have had the same advantage. Of. our
vice-presidents who have not served in the
office of president, Burr, Dallas, and Hobart
were graduates of Princeton ; Gerry, of Har-
vard ; Tompkins, of Columbia ; Calhoun, of
Yale ; Richard M. Johnson, of Transylvania,
in Kentucky ; King, of the University of
North Carolina, and Stevenson, of Centre Col-
lege, Kentucky. Wheeler was for two years a
student in the University of Vermont. The
larger proportion of the members of the Cabi-
net have also been liberally educated. Of the
thirty-six men who have filled the office of
Secretary of State, twenty-three have gradu-
ated from colleges, and five others were in
college for a longer or shorter period. Jeffer-
son, Randolph, Madison, and Nelson gradu-
ated from William and Mary, and Monroe
attended the same institution until the break-
ing out of the Revolutionary War, when he
enlisted ; Pickering, John Quincy Adams, and
Everett received degrees from Harvard ;
Smith, Livingston, Forsyth, and Upshur, from
Princeton ; Calhoun, Clayton, and Evarts, from
Yale ; Marcy and Olney, from Brown ; Web-

Certain Great Results. iz

ster, from Dartmouth ; Legare, from the Col-
lege of South Carolina ; Buchanan, from Dickin-
son ; Fish, from Columbia ; Blaine, from Wash-
ington ; Frelinghuysen, from Rutgers ; Foster,
from the University of Indiana, at which in-
stitution Gresham also attended one year.
McLane was a member of Newark College,
Delaware, three years ; Seward was in Union
the same length of time ; and Sherman was
in college two years. And also, it should not
be forgotten, that in the solution of the critical
questions which Seward was obliged to make,
he especially relied on a president of Yale Col-
lege, Theodore Dwight Woolsey ; on Francis
Wharton, a graduate of Yale in the class of
1839 ; and on William Beach Lawrence, a Co-
lumbia graduate in 1 818. Of the Secretaries
of the Treasury, Hamilton received a degree
from Columbia in 1774 ; Wolcott took his first
degree at Yale ; Dexter, Richardson, and Fair-
child at Harvard ; Gallatin at Geneva, Switzer-
land ; Campbell, Rush, and Bibb, at Princeton ;
Dallas, at Edinborough ; Taney and Thomas,
at Dickinson ; Woodbury and Chase, at Dart-
mouth ; Ewing, at Ohio University ; Spencer,
at Union ; Walker and Meredith, at Univer-

74 The American College.

sity of Pennsylvania ; Cobb, at Franklin ; Dix,
at University of Montreal ; Fessenden, at Bow-
doin, where also McCuUoch attended two
years ; Bristow, at Jefferson ; Folger, at Ho-
bart ; and McLane was for a time a student at
Newark, Delaware, and Lot M. Morrill at Col-
by (Waterville) in Maine. One cannot forget,
too, that in the office of the Secretaryship of
the Treasury, it is the college graduate who
has rendered most conspicuous service. Rob-
ert Morris who gave superb service in the
management of the financial affairs of the coun-
try during the Revolution, declining the honor
of becoming Secretary of the Treasury, pointed
out Hamilton as the man best qualified to
arrange the finances of a new nation. Hamil-
ton was a graduate of Columbia. Chase, also
called to the service of the nation in a crisis as
great as that in which Hamilton served, was
a graduate of Dartmouth in 1826; and Fes-
senden, Chase's successor, was a graduate of
Bowdoin in the class of 1823. In this relation
it is not unfitting to say that, in 1865, the man
who was named chairman of a committee upon
national taxation and revenues, and who did
for the nation after our Civil War a service as

Certain Great Results. 75

important as Robert Morris rendered at the
time of the war of the Revolution, was a grad-
uate of Williams of the class of 1847, — David
A. Wells. Of those who have held other port-
folios in the Cabinets somewhat more than one-
half have received a liberal education.

The history of the foreign service of our
government is a history on the whole more
honorable than the history of its legislative and
executive functions. At the most important
courts of the world we have been well repre-
sented. To these courts, Harvard has con-
tributed such men as the Adamses, — father, son
and grandson, — Elbridge Gerry, Rufus King,
George Bancroft, Caleb Cushing, Motley, James
Russell Lowell, John Chandler Bancroft Davis,
and Robert Tod Lincoln. It may be said too,
in passing, that George Downing, a graduate of
Harvard in the class of 1642, went to England,
and became, besides filling other important
posts, a minis,ter to Holland of Cromwell and
Charles II. His name is perpetuated in Down-
ing Street. Yale also has given to our diplo-
matic service such men as Edwards Pierrepont,
Joel Barlow, Cassius M. Clay, Peter Parker,
William Walter Phelps, and Andrew D.

7^ The American College.

White ; Columbia, such citizens as John Jay,
and Hamilton Fish ; William and Mary, such
statesmen as Jefferson, Monroe, and William
C Rives ; Princeton, such sons as George M.
Dallas, William L. Dayton, and George H.
Boker ; Dartmouth, such a scholar as George
P. Marsh ; and Brown, an administrator like
President Angell and an author like John Hay.

Greatly extended might be this list, but long
enough is it to show that the American College
has helped to train some of the most skillful
diplomats of our history. One of the primary
aims controlling European universities in the
Middle Ages has been thus gained in the Amer-
ican college.

The seven colleges which were founded be-
fore I 770 in this country have, since the organ-
ization of our government, contributed more
than two thousand of their graduates to the
highest political and judicial offices. These col-
leges have helped to train no less than nine of
our Presidents and eleven vice-presidents ; more
than eighty cabinet officers, and a hundred
United States ministers ; two hundred United
States Senators ; more than seven hundred
members of Congress ; four Chief Justices of

Certain Great Results. "n

the United States ; at least eighteen associate
justices ; eleven circuit judges ; about a hun-
dred district and other United States judges ;
about six hundred judges of the higher state
courts ; and at least a hundred and fifty gover-
nors of states. Of these seven colleges and for
these high places, Yale has helped to train the
largest number, — about 550; Harvard about
425 ; Princeton 400 ; William and Mary some-
what over 200; Brown 125 ; Columbia some-
what over 100 ; and Pennsylvania a few more
than 50. But the same work has been done in
kind by all the colleges founded in the last hun-
dred years. And no figures, it is to be remem-
bered, can represent the intellectual and moral
forces which have rendered the work of these
public servants of the greatest value to the peo-
ple of the United States.

It is fitting to say that the proportion of col-
lege-trained men engaged in public life in Eng-
land and Germany is greater than is found in
the United States. In Germany, a university
course is almost a necessary step to entrance
upon a public career. In England, not infre-
quently every member of a Cabinet has been
trained at Oxford or at Cambridge, or has

78 The American Colleg-e

^5^

received a degree from the University of
London.

The American college has given to the
American people a discipline more thorough,
a scholarship richer, and a culture finer than
they otherwise could have received. I use
these words discipline, scholarship, and culture
not without discrimination. Tl^e college has
trained men to think — to think for themselves
aft^o thmk tor others. Such training is usu-
ally obtained within the first two years of the
course. It is the result of pursuing the mathe-
matical, linguistic, and scientific studies. These
studies are a first-rate gymnastic for the stu-
dent ; they produce intellectual strength. The
college using them becomes a drill master, and
the student having the advantage of the discip-
line given through them becomes keen and
broad in vision, swift and constant to infer,
true and impressive in applying and using.
Such advantages are the best results of what
we now call the old New England country
college, and indeed of the college, be it new
or old, whether within New England or
without.

If the chief value of the services of the

Certain Great Results. 79

American college lies in the training of men,
we are yet to bear in mind that the college has
been the greatest of all contributors to scholar-
ship. If we must confess — as indeed we must
— that the American college has not achieved
in scholarship what it has in discipline, or what
the English universities and German have
achieved ; if we acknowledge — as we ought —
that the high promise of American scholarship
set forth in Emerson's Phi Beta Kappa ad-
dress sixty years ago has not been made good,
yet it is to be affirmed that whatever scholar-
ship we may claim has found in the college
its fostering mother. Many, though by no
means all, of the advances which have been
made in our knowledge of the laws of nature
have been made under the patronage of the
college, even if they have not been directly
made by its officers. Most of the researches
into the condition of early races of this coun-
try, or of the Latin and Greek peoples, or of
the natives of the far East, have found in the
college their chief supporters and leaders. Ar-
chaeological museums are usually organized in
connection with colleges. Our acquaintance
with the literature of the Roman and Greek

8o The American College.

peoples — the two peoples which, together with
the Hebrew, have most vitally affected modern
civilization — is derived largely through the col-
lege. Without the college, scholarship would
be bereft of its most useful agency, and its most
healthful condition. Our condition has been
akin to that of Germany, where Kant, Fichte,
Schelling, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Ranke were
university professors, and unlike that of Eng-
land, where Darwin, Wallace, Spencer, Grote,
the two Mills, Bentham, Ricardo had no formal
university association. The American scholar
has usually, though by no means always, been
an officer in the American college. The college
library has been his workshop, the college labo-
ratory his tool, the college desk his pulpit, and
in the name and prestige of the college he has
found a presumption in his own behalf as a
scholar. Should one choose to mention the
ten Americans who have contributed most
largely to the progress of natural and physical
science, eight of the ten would be found en-
rolled in the faculties of our colleges. The
greatest American linguists, as well as the
greatest American mathematicians, our great-
est philosophers and psychologists, and several

Certain Great Results. 8i

of our ablest economists and historians, are
found as teachers in our colleges.

The American college has possibly done
more in laying foundations for culture than
in directly cherishing culture; for the Ameri-
can college has been so deeply concerned with
the primary disciplines, that it has found little
opportunity for affording to its students means
and methods of the deepest enrichment. But
it has given impulses ; it has awakened aspira-
tions ; it has put before the student standards
of taste ; it has trained intellectual judgment ;
it has given to the great law of right a new
value by showing the breadth of its applica-
tion and the height of its reach ; it has sought
to create a refinement which is purchased
neither by the elimination of robustness nor by
the introduction of over-critical sestheticism ; it
has tried to train each man to love the best in
literature, in music, in painting, in nature, in
humanity ; and it has striven constantly to
cause the student to distinguish in everything,
not simply the good from the bad, but, what is
far more difficult, the better from the best.

This service of the American college in
training men to live intellectual lives is of the

82 The American Collesre.

^5"

greatest worth to this country and to this age.
For, in this age and country of materiaHsm,
the college should minister to the things of
the mind. The college should not directly
attempt to stem the tide of materialism. The
attempt would be useless. But the college
may worthily hope to transmute the capacity
for this material enthusiasm, even if not the
enthusiasm itself, into a capacity for holding
and delighting in relations which are eternal,
spiritual, and ethical.

When one attempts to estimate the value of
the college as a means of promoting literature,
the task is, at first thought, a difficult one.
For in any list of the writers of any one time
and place, the number of college-trained men
would not be found to exceed the number of
those who have not received a college train-
ing ; but when one passes out into the rela-
tions of a century and of a whole nation, the
difficulty vanishes. It seems, of course, a rule
of thumb to judge of the worth of the contri-
bution which the college makes to literature
through the number of authors it has trained,
or even through the greatness of these authors.
But the method has value. Of course, in

Certain Great Results. 83

general, the great worth of the contribution
which the college makes to literature is to be
measured by the extent to which the college
maintains literary standards, inspires literary
motives, and by the degree in which it cherishes
literary atmospheres and conditions. And it
may at once be said that the large number
of the great authors of the country are college-
bred. The inference is inevitable that the col-
lege has had a large share in the creation of
literature. Of the five or six men who are
regarded by common suffrage as the greatest
poets of America, four out of the five, or five
out of the six, are college-trained. Those
five men whom no one, also, would hesitate to
call the greatest historians of America, are
also college-trained. It is significant, too,
that they are the sons of one mother. The
first romancer, Hawthorne, and the first essay-
ist, Emerson, are the sons of New England
colleges. The great writers upon philosoph-
ical, ethical, and theological subjects represent
with hardly an exception an academic train-
ing. In the large relations of time, it is the
author of college training and enlargement
who is recognized as the ablest and best.

84 The American College.

It IS almost natural for us to expect that
the makers of a nation's literature shall be
bred in the colleges of that nation. For the
maker of a nation's literature needs above all
else an aquaintance with literature already
made. To promote an acquaintance with litera-
ture already made is one of the supreme pur-
poses of the college. Has not the boy for
three years or more before entering college
devoted at least a half of his time to Latin and
Greek, to either French or German, and to
English? Has not a large share of the first
years of the college course been devoted to
reading the great books of those literatures
which have profoundly affected modern life ?
Such reading, too, is done under the guidance
of masters. Therefore one expects that the
worthy authors shall have been worthily trained.
A popular English writer — Dean Farrar, —
making a catalogue of the English authors of
the present generation, names the following :
Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold, George
Eliot, Maurice, Kingsley, Bishop Lightfoot,
Dean Stanley, F. W. Robertson, Dickens,
Thackeray, Lord Macaulay, Thomas Carlyle,
Lord Houghton, Clough, Sir Arthur Helps,
Ruskin, Froude, Cardinal Newman, Darwin,

Certain Great Results. 85

Huxley, and Tyndall. Of this list, omitting
George Eliot, all but two have been trained
at the universities. The same writer, nam-
ing the great authors of the generation in
America, mentions Bancroft, Parkman, Long-
fellow, Emerson, Lowell, Whittier, and
Holmes ; all of whom, with the exception of
Whittier, are graduates. If American litera-
ture has not been made in the college, the
college has certainly helped to make the
makers themselves of the literature ; and it is
to be ever borne in mind that for many years,
while Longfellow, Lowell, and Holmes were
adding to the treasures of American literature,
they were teachers in an American university.
America has made great contributions to
the higher civilization of the world, but these
contributions have usually been indirect. But
she has made none more valuable, and none
more direct, than are found in the missionary
movements of the Christian Church. These
movements have been genuine and large en-
deavors for the establishing of a high type of
civilization in countries not so richly blessed
as our own. They represent the elements of
the finest civilization. They include the teach-
ing of the principles and the example of the

86 The American College.

monogamous family, the worship of one God,
the institution of schools and colleges, the
creation of a written language, and, to some
extent, of a literature. Missionaries have re-
duced to writing some seventy languages,
twenty-six of which are to be put to the credit
of an American missionary society. In all
these languages, a literature is either begin-
ning, or is already somewhat advanced. Such
labors represent linguistic and literary tri-
umphs of a rare and exceedingly high order.
And at once it is to be said that these mis-
sionaries, who have been the bearers of civiliza-
tion to South Sea Islanders and to degraded
peoples in all parts of the globe, have, with
few exceptions, found their most valuable
training for this great service in the American
college. It has been, and is, the policy of the
foreign missionary boards to send to the
lowest people the best-trained college man or
woman.

One of the principal officers of the oldest
foreign missionary society in the United States,
the American Board, writes me saying :

" On our theory of missions, we are confident that our
missionaries, with rare exceptions, must have a college
education. Even more than the average minister at

Certain Great Results. 87

home does the missionary need such training, for he
must master at least one new language, and he must be
capable of entering into the life and thought of another
people : he must be a translator of the Bible and of other
Christian literature. He must be a teacher as well as
preacher, training others for the ministry. We should
not want a professor in a theological seminary in the
United States to lack a college training, and a very large
proportion of our missionaries do work that is precisely
similar to that of a professor of theology. Aside from
special training, the missionary should be a man of
culture, capable of standing, as he very likely may be
called to stand, before kings."

In fact it is within the bounds of simple
truth to say that the American college has ren-
dered a richer service to the highest civiHza-
tion of the entire world in preparing men for
moral and religious work in foreign countries
than all other American agencies and condi-
tions have rendered. The American college
represents the greatest and most direct work
which America has done for the world. The
American college of poverty, of meagre equip-
ment, of few teachers, as well as the mighty
university of prestige, of eminence, of wealth,
of vast numbers, has had a share in this mag-
nificent service.

III.

ITS INFLUENCE OVER AND
THROUGH INDIVIDUALS.

THE causes and the conditions that unite
to form the character of a man are so
many and so diverse that he is a bold
prophet and judge who should attempt to
assess each of them at its proper value. Even
for one's self it is hard to know to what extent
any element has entered into one's constitu-
tion, intellectual or ethical. Judgments of one s
self labor under the same perils that judgments
of other men labor under ; and judgments
respecting the worth of the elements of the
careers of other men are beset by very serious
perils.

Yet this is the very problem, the problem of
the relation of causes and effects, in the realm

88

Its Influence. 89

of intellectual and ethical character, which is
constantly presenting itself to every one who
is concerned with the higher relations of life.
It is a problem which is with great urgency
presented to the American college. What has
the college done for its sons ? Are these men
abler in intellect, purer in heart, stronger in
right choices, by reason of having spent four
years in college ? If they are abler, purer,
stronger, to what extent has the college con-
tributed to these gains? In particular, what
elements of the college have made these ad-
ditions to this increase of power ? Seriously
important, therefore, are these questions, — im-
portant to the college, important to the gradu-
ate, and important to life itself.

In order to make the least inadequate solu-
tions of these problems, — for I recognize that
the most adequate solutions would in many
respects be unworthy, — I have adopted a
simple and definite method. This method
consists in gathering testimony from many
men in respect to the worth of their college
to themselves and to others. This testimony
is gathered from the lips of the living, and
from the record of those dead, from autobiog-

go The American College.

raphies and from biographies. The amount of
evidence which I have thus collected is very
great, much greater than it is possible to use
in the present chapter. The evidence covers
a long period. It is, too, not limited to the
graduates of American colleges only. From the
testimony which is thus received I believe that
conclusions may be derived in respect to the
value of certain specific advantages which the
American college has given to American life.
For the advantages which American life has
received from the American college are pri-
marily advantages received through the indi-
viduals which help to constitute that life.

It is the veriest commonplace to say that
the value of the college is made up of many
elements. To some men the value of the col-
lege is slight, to some great, to a few very
great, and to a large number considerable. It
is my opinion that the wo^tb. of the college
may Qgsilybe divided into certaio- specific ele-
ments. Among them are these : the discipline
/of the regular studies ; the inspiration of
I friendship ; the enrichment of general reading ;
I the culture of association with men of culture
I and of scholarly atmospheres ; special private

Its Influence.

reading ; literary societies. These six elements
represent the chief forces of the college for
doing good to its students. As I read the
story of the lives of men, or as I talk with
graduates themselves, with scarcely an excep-
tion, whatever of good the college had for any
one of them was a good of one or of all of
these six kinds, j

'^It may at once be said that the value of the
discipline of the pursuit of the regular studies
and the value of the inspiration of friendships
represent the two chief goods of the college.
By far the largest number of men who since
graduation have lived useful lives, acknowl-
edge that these two elements were the chief
agencies in their college course in contributing
to the worth of their character or to the suc-
cess of their career.

Yet it is often found that these two elements
are not separated. For not a few men who
confess that the college has been of great value
to them are also found acknowledging that the
power of personality arising from the college
in living their lives has been as great as the
value of formal studies. It is also occasionally
found that several of these elements contribute

92 The American College

^^

in apparently not unequal degrees in forming
the whole constitution of the man. When one
selects such leaders as, in the pulpit, Bushnell,
Channing, and Brooks ; or at the bar or on
the bench, as Rufus Choate, Benjamin Robbins
Curtis ; or in statesmanship, as Jefferson and
Webster ; or in literature, as Longfellow ; or
in scholarship and teaching, as the elder Silli-
man. Sparks, Peirce, Felton, and Barnard ; or,
abroad, such men as Gladstone, Dean Church,
Charles Kingsley, Hort, Westcott, and Maur-
ice ; one finds that it was the discipline of the
studies of the college that largely contributed
to the formation of character and to the equip-
ment of mind and heart for great service. It
was one hundred years ago that the greatest
of all the preachers of the Unitarian Church
graduated at Harvard, William Ellery Chan-
ning. As an undergraduate his chief liking
was for historical and literary studies. That
charming style which either in written or spoken
discourse has captivated us for a century was
largely formed in college, not only through
the instruction, but also through self-drill and
through the training given in the literary soci-
eties. Graduating at the time when the great

Its Influence. 93

humanitarian movement was still in progress
in France, he was especially moved with high
hopes for the advancement of man. Locke,
Berkeley, Reid, Priestley, and Price were au-
thors that contributed to the making of his
character. Price in particular, he says, saved
him from the effects of Locke's philosophy,
and caused him to write throughout his life
such words as Love and Right with a capital.
At this time, too, the interest in Shakespeare
was reviving, and that author who has come
by gradual degrees to be regarded as the great
author of our literature had a large influence
over Channing.^ Horace Bushnell, too, was,
through his career at Yale, transformed from
an original, discriminating mind, self-possessed
and self-reliant, but crude, into a mind no less
original, discriminating, self-possessed and self-
reliant, and having a high degree of culture.
Throughout his college course he lived the life
of a scholar, — retiring and independent.^

No man is better fitted to illustrate the
effects of the college than Benjamin Robbins
Curtis, a great lawyer and a great judge.

* W. H. Channing's Memoir of W. E. Ckanning, i. 53-72.

^ Mary B. Cheney's Life aud Letters of Horace Busknell^ 35-6l.

94 The American College.

Graduating from Harvard in that still most
famous class of the oldest of our colleges, the
class of 1829, he had in the college a career of
which Mr. James Freeman Clarke says :

" We also could see in our forensic discussions the
future eminence of Benjamin Robbins Curtis, who after-
wards became so prominent at the bar and on the bench
of the United States Court. His papers, read aloud to
the professor of philosophy, were so strictly logical, and
such exhaustive discussions, that it seemed impossible to
improve on them. His mind worked, even then, with the
accuracy of a machine, doing its work perfectly. In after
years his intelligence was enlarged by ampler knowledge,
was capable of more extensive research and more sus-
tained investigation ; but it worked as accurately in those
college papers as when it showed its irresistible force in
arguments at the bar or opinions from the bench.*' *

The name of Curtis is far less conspicuous in
American life than the name of Rufus Choate.
Choate, too, found in the curriculum those
aids necessary for the development of his great
native ability. He acquired knowledge swiftly,
his memory was strong, his power of concen-
tration great ; as a student he was diligent and
faithful. The testimony of those who knew
Choate at college is that from the beginning

^ Autobiography of James Freeman Clarke^ edited by Edward
Everett Hale, 34-35.

Its Influence. 95

of his career at Dartmouth he was easily the
first of all his college mates, — at a time when
among his mates were many who afterwards
proved to be men of great power. The course
of study that he pursued was thorough and
systematic, and the example of high scholar-
ship which he set did much to maintain the
standards of the college. ^

Similar words might be written about a
man greater than Choate, who rendered noble
service to humanity in several fields — Daniel
Webster. He was a devoted student. It
was the ancient classics which formed the
chief source of the early delight of Webster
the student. To the more critical elements of
the languages he gave heed, but he also paid
much attention to the formation of a good
English style from his reading of Latin and
Greek authors. Cicero was of the Roman
authors his favorite. It is said — I do not
know with how much truth — that he could re-
peat several of Cicero's orations from memory.
He thus made the spirit of Roman eloquence
his spirit and the life of the Roman people
a part of his life. It is told, too, that he was

* S. G. Brown's Life of Rufus Choate^ 11-21.

9^ The American College.

exceedingly fond of Virgil and that some of
the finest passages of the ^neid were upon
his tongue. Demosthenes, also, he read with
great interest, but not with so full an apprecia-
tion as in the case of the Roman orator. Eng-
lish orations and American he read as far as
he was able, and in particular the writings of
Alexander Hamilton. As may be expected,
philosophy, both intellectual and ethical, and
public law, were studies that made deep im-
pressions on his mind.^

Singular at once in contrast and in likeness
is the career of Thomas Jefferson and that of
Daniel Webster. Webster lacked a taste for
mathematics ; Jefferson had a love for mathe-
matics, as well as for the classics. Webster
was fond of ethics and metaphysics, which
Jefferson in turn disliked. Webster, on the
whole, preferred the Latin author to the
Greek ; Jefferson preferred the Greek to the
Latin. Thucydides was chosen by the Vir-
ginian before Tacitus. A most thorough
training for the time Jefferson received at
William and Mary College ; but it was in

> B. F. Tefft's Life of Daniel Webster, 51-79-
G. T. Curtis 's Life of Daniel Webster, 24-26.

Its Influence. 97

particular to the acquaintance and personal
friendship of one of the teachers of William
and Mary, — Professor Small, — that Jefferson
owed more than to any other one. Of Pro-
fessor Small it is said he '* probably fixed the
destinies of his life."^

There is probably no American author who
received greater advantage from his college
course than he who is the most popular of all
American poets. An incident in Longfellow's
college life is of value in indicating, in a way,
the worth of the college training for himself,
and also as being a determinative factor in his
whole career. A.t an annual examination of
his class the fine rendering by Longfellow of
an ode of Horace attracted the notice of one
of the examiners, Benjamin Orr, who was a
trustee of the college and an eminent lawyer.
At this very Commencement the professorship
of Modern Languages was established at Bow-
doin, and Orr proposed the name of Longfel-
low for the place. He referred to the transla-
tion which Longfellow had made into fine
English of the ode of Horace as evidence of
the fitness of the young student, soon to be-

* H, S. Randall's Life of Thomas Jefferson^ 21-30.
7

9^ The American College.

come a graduate, for the place. It was in one
of the last months of his Junior year at Bow-
doin that Longfellow wrote to his father about
Horace as follows :

" I forgot to tell you in my last that we were reading
Horace. I admire it very much indeed, and, in fact,
I have not met with so pleasant a study since the com-
mencement of my college course. Moreover, it is ex-
tremely easy to read, which not a little contributes to
the acquisition of a thorough knowledge of every line
and every ode." '

A few months later he wrote to his father as
follows :

" The fact is — and I will not disguise it in the least,
for I think I ought not — the fact is, I most eagerly aspire
after future eminence in literature ; my whole soul burns
most ardently for it, and every earthly thought centres
in it. There may be something visionary in this^ but I
flatter myself that I have prudence enough to keep my
enthusiasm from defeating its own object by too great
haste. Surely, there never was a better opportunity
offered for the exertion of literary talent in our own
country than now is offered." '

Over those men who have made their con-
tributions to the service of humanity through
scholarship and through teaching, it would be

' Life of Longfellow, edited by Samuel Longfellow, 49.
^Ibid., 53.

Its Influence. 99

expected that the value of the pursuit of the
regular college course would be the greatest of
all formative forces. Among such men one
might select many, but I content myself with
choosing only a few. Among the few is one
who is usually acknowledged to be the great-
est of all American mathematicians, — Benjamin
Peirce. In one sense Peirce was too great a
man for the Harvard of 1825-1829. He went
far beyond the curriculum ; but that the cur-
riculum had at least a formative influence as a
condition, if not as an agency, is evident. His
class-mate, James Freeman Clarke, relates that

" the tutor never put any questions to Peirce, but having
set him going, let him talk as long as he chose without
interruption. It v»^as shrewdly suspected," says Dr.
Clarke, " that this was done from fear lest the respective
roles be reversed, and the examiner might become the
examinee. " *

If all the college graduates now living should
be asked, '' Who is the greatest teacher of the
last half-century in the colleges of the United
States ?" I am sure that many would say Mark
Hopkins. All those who should thus express
their opinion would not be by any means grad-

^ y antes Freeman Clarke^ Autobiography ^ 34.

loo The American College.

uates of the college in which Mark Hopkins
did his great work. The influence of Williams
College upon Mark Hopkins, a student, was
not unlike that which belongs to the Influence
of the ordinary college upon the student of
ability and faithfulness. A classmate of Mark
Hopkins, Hon. Harvey Rice, of Cleveland,
who at the time of his writing was the only
surviving member of his class, and who has
since died, says :

" He came into the class with the reputation of being
a bright scholar, and continued to maintain that repu-
tation. We soon became, I hardly know why, mutual
friends. He seemed as remarkable for his modesty and
unassuming manners as for his excellence in scholarship.
He enjoyed the respect of his class, and was regarded by
all who knew him as an exemplary young man.

" He was studious in his habits and scrupulous in the
discharge of his duties, kind and obliging, and always
ready to bestow favors. This he often did by way of
aiding the inefficient of his class in acquiring their les-
sons, and in writing the essays required of them as class
exercises. He was a deep thinker, and acknowledged
to be the best literary writer in his class. He never in-
dulged in sports, or frolics, so common among college
students, but, in whatever he did or said, he always ob-
served the proprieties of life. In matters of serious im-
port he was considerate, and in his religious observances,
reverent and sincere.

Its Influence. loi

" Yet he appreciated humor and witticism, loved to
hear and tell anecdotes, and enjoyed a hearty laugh.
He was quick in his perceptions, logical in his conclu-
sions, and could make a fine point and see a fine point
without spectacles. In the recitation room he often put
questions, arising out of our lessons, to the learned pro-
fessor, which perplexed him, and then would answer the
questions himself with becoming deference.

" In his course of reading, while in college, he mani-
fested little or no relish for novels, but seemed to prefer
standard authors in literature and science. He soon
evinced a decided love for the study of metaphysics, and
read all the books on that subject which he could find
in the college library, and took great pleasure in dis-
cussing the different theories advanced by different
authors." '

Upon that mind which is generally consid-
ered the greatest philosophical mind that has
come into existence in America, Jonathan Ed-
wards, it is probable that the college had small
influence. He was too strong, and the college
too weak. Of the relation of Yale College to
him his latest biographer, Professor Allen,
says :

" He was not quite thirteen when he entered Yale
College, then in an inchoate condition, and not yet fixed
in a permanent home. The course of instruction at this
time must have been a broken and imperfect one. Such

' Mark Hopkins^ by President Franklin Carter, 14-16.

I02 The American College.

as it was, Edwards followed it faithfully, now at New
Haven and then at Wethersfield, whither a part of the
students emigrated in consequence of some disturbance
in which he seems to have shared. A letter to his father
from the rector of the college speaks of his * promising
abilities and great advances in learning.' He was not
quite seventeen when he graduated, taking with his de-
gree the highest honors the institution could offer." *

The first part of the college life of Noah
Porter was of little significance, but beginning
with his Sophomore year he grew as a scholar
and as a man continually. This growth was
promoted by two leading influences : one of
these lay in the literary society of which he had
been a member up to this time* in his course,
but in which he had previously taken no par-
ticular interest. His quick perception soon
overcame the boyish dififidence which had been
a draw-back, and now, with increase of confi-
dence in himself and growing ripeness of intel-
lect, he rapidly became one of the best debaters.
A second potent influence upon his intellectual
and spiritual development was the literature of
the time, and especially the writings of Cole-
ridge, whose Aids to Reflection was published

* Jonathan Edwards, by Prof. A. V. G. Allen. American Re-
ligious Leaders Series, 4.

Its Influence. 103

during his college life. It soon became the
text-book of a little circle in which Porter was
one of the most conspicuous. This work
wrought in all the members of this circle an
intellectual and spiritual revolution. His com-
panions learned from it the art of thinking
and of referring facts to principles ; they were
taught to look below the phenomena of the
moment or of the age to the imperishable
truths which give facts meaning and value.
Porter, however, already possessed intellectual
clearness, precision of statement, and accuracy
of reasoning, — though these were quickened
and broadened, — but from this course of read-
ing he found what had been lacking : the
awakening of his imaginative faculties. A
classmate of Porter, Andrews, says :

" I do not remember a more striking growth and trans-
formation, intellectual and spiritual, than took place in
him from the beginning of our Sophomore year. . . .
The sprightly boy had developed into the strength of
manhood." *

When one turns to Oxford and Cambridge
one finds also the names of scores of scholars,
clergymen, and statesmen over whom the stud-

1 Noah Porter^ A Memorial by Friends^ 21.

I04 The American College.

ies have had a determinative influence. Glad-
stone, with his double-first class ; Mansel, also
with his double-first class in the classics and
the mathematics ; Dean Church winning honors
which he did not expect to win ; Kingsley with
his idleness and honors, — loafing in the first
years of his under-graduate course, but through
industry at the close winning a first class in the
classical tripos; Maurice, disliking the Uni-
versity system, but gathering through it and
through its friendships large results : these and
the examples of scores of other Englishmen
might be cited as evidence for the proposition
that the curriculum has a determinative effect
upon character and career.

Most men, however, it is to be said, gather
more from the inspiration of the personalities
of the college than from the education afforded
by the regular studies of the curriculum. Over
such leaders in the various departments of life,
in England and Scotland, as Scott and Car-
lyle, Darwin, Chalmers, and Byron, Duff and
Keble, Macaulay and Ruskin, Newman and
Charles Wordsworth, Stanley, Maxwell and
Shelley ; and, over such leaders on this side
of the water as Garfield and Seward, Samuel

Its Influence. 105

F. B. Morse and Silliman, it is the personality
of the college which has had the greater in-
fluence. It was Dr. Brown, of St. Andrews, who
awoke in Chalmers those intellectual powers
from which Scotland for many years after de-
rived the greatest advantage.^ Byron, who left
''trinity College, Cambridge, in 1808, received
no advantage from the college, but he formed at
Cambridge several strong friendships which,
he says, became to him as *' passions." That
with Lord Clare was one of the earliest, and
lasted as long as any, and he says : '' I never
hear the word Clare without a beating of the
heart." Cambridge, as a University, had small
or no influence over Byron. His career grew
out of his natural capacities ; and they were
profoundly influenced by ardent friendships.
Not unlike the career of Byron in certain re-
spects is the career of Shelley. More of a
scholar, indeed, than Byron, was Shelley ; but
it was the friendship of Hogg that was the
chief element in Shelley's life at Oxford.
Together Shelley and Hogg lived and
worked at Oxford, together they wrote the
pamphlet on The Necessity of Atheism, and

* J. C. Moffat's Life of Thomas Chalmers, 11-18.

io6 The American College.

together for the writing of this pamphlet were
they expelled from Oxford. That Hogg and
Shelley should have been mutually attracted
by their very diversities is natural enough, but
there were, on the other hand, sufficient points
of contact between the man of the world, a
Tory skeptic, and the Republican, a confirmed
idealist, to explain their sympathy and regard.
Without taking into account the moral quali-
ties they shared in common, — their thirst for
knowledge, their love of philosophic research
and literary study, and a burning desire to write
were sufficient cause to promote intimacy be-
tween two young men whose maturity of mind
and uniqueness of life placed them apart from
the common crowd of students. The first
meeting of these two essentially different
minds, mutually attractive by their very con-
trasts, was decisive. Hogg and Shelley could
not thenceforth exist apart ; they were called
the inseparables.^

The first two years Coleridge spent at Cam-
bridge were spent in hard work ; for, on
entering, he found friends, who gave him an
inspiration that made him industrious. But

* Babbe's Life of Shelley^ 71, 73, 76.

Its Influence. 107

when they left, there appears to have been no
one to exert a steadying influence. From this
time he paid little attention to the collegiate
studies, — he became interested in philosophy,
religion, and politics. So strong were these
personal and scholastic influences, that, in
company with Southey and several others, he
planned to sail for America and establish there
a *' Pantisocracy,'' a state in which every one
was "to enjoy his own religious and political
opinions." Finally, he was led to a change in
his religious opinions through Dr. Priestly and
the personal influence of William Frend.^

Thomas Carlyle succeeded fairly well in his
university studies. In mathematics only did he
make special progress, and, as he himself says :
*'that I made progress in mathematics is per-
haps due merely to the accident that Professor
Leslie alone of my professors had some genius
in his business, and awoke a certain enthusi-
asm in me." By instinct, poverty, or a happy
accident he took less to rioting than to read-
ing and thinking and therefore spent most
of his time in the college library, from '* the

* Brandl's Samuel Taylor Coleridge^ 50-57.
Campbell's Samuel Taylor Coleridge^ 22-41.

io8 The American College.

Chaos of which," to use his own words in
Sartor Resartus, '' I succeeded in fishing up
more books than had been known to the
keeper thereof." There was laid the founda-
tion of a literary life, and there he learned to
read in several languages. But it is apparent
that the greatest influence flowing from his
college days came from a Httle circle of eleven
men of about his own age and conditions,
clever lads, distinctly superior to the ordinary
boys of their age and eager to learn. With
these he seems to have lived more than with
any others, and with them he held discussions
on literature and science, and theology.^

It would be hard to find a character and
career more unlike those of Carlyle than are
the character and career of Charles Darwin ;
but there is a likeness in the formative power
of personality. Like Carlyle, Darwin was at
Edinburgh and from Edinburgh went to
Cambridge ; but both at Edinburgh and at
Cambridge Darwin himself says that his time
was quite wasted. He tried mathematics, but
his progress was slow, and the study became

^ Froude's Thomas Carlyle ^ A History of the First Forty Years of
his Life, i. 21-34.

Its Influence. 109

repugnant ; in respect to the classics his gains
were sHght. He does, however, confess his
indebtedness to Paley's books and acknowl-
edges that they were to him of use in the edu-
cation of his mind, although the advantage, he
thinks, was not great. But at Edinburgh
he became acquainted with several young men
who were fond of natural science. He speaks
also of a society which met for the reading and
discussion of papers on natural science, and he
believed that these meetings had a good effect
in stimulating his zeal. But his friendship
with Professor Henslow at Cambridge was
perhaps the most important factor in influenc-
ing his career. Professor Henslow kept open
house at least once every week, when under-
graduates and some of the other members of
the University used to meet. Darwin became
well acquainted with Henslow, and during the
latter part of his course took long walks with
him on summer days. Darwin says that his
knowledge of Botany, Entomology, Chemistry,
Mineralogy, and Geology was great, and that
he was accustomed to draw conclusions from
long continued minute observation. It was
Henslow who persuaded Darwin to begin the

no The American College.

study of Geology. Professor Sedgwick also
had a strong influence over him/

Into the undergraduate life of that great and
unique character, John Henry Newman, two
men entered with great power. They were
Dr. Hawkins, the Provost of Oriel and the
Vicar of St. Mar/s, and Dr. Whately. Of Dr.
Hawkins, Newman says :

" He was the first who taught me to weigh my words,
and to be cautious in my statements. He led me to that
mode of limiting and clearing my sense in discussion and
in controversy, and of distinguishing between cognate
ideas, and of obviating mistakes by anticipation, which
to my surprise has been since considered, even in
quarters friendly to me, to savor of the polemics of
Rome. He is a man of most exact mind himself, and
he used to snub me severely, on reading, as he was kind
enough to do, the first Sermons that* I wrote, and other
compositions which I was engaged upon." '

Of him who was afterwards known as Arch-
bishop Whately, Newman writes :

** I owe him a great deal. He was a man of generous
and warm heart. He was particularly loyal to his
friends, and to use the common phrase, *all his geese
were swans.* While I was still awkward and timid in

* F. Darwin*s Life and Letters of Charles Darwin^ 32-48.
^ Apologia Pro Vita Sua^ by John Henry Newman. Fifth edi-
tion, New York, 59-60.

Its Influence. in

1822, he took me by the hand, and acted the part to me
of a gentle and encouraging instructor. He, emphati-
cally, opened my mind, and taught me to think and to
use my reason/' *

Again he says :

"During the first years of my residence at Oriel,
though proud of my college, I was not at home there.
I was very much alone, and used often to take my daily
walk by myself. I recollect once meeting Dr. Copleston,
then Provost, with one of the Fellows. He turned
around, and with the kind courteousness which sat so
well on him, made me a bow and said, * Nunquam minus
solus, quam cum solus.* At that time indeed (from
1823) I had the intimacy of my dear and true friend Dr.
Pusey, and could not fail to admire and revere a soul so
devoted to the cause of religion, so full of good works,
so faithful in his affections ; but he left residence when
I was getting to know him well. As to Dr. Whately
himself, he was too much my superior to allow of my
being at my ease with him ; and to no one at Oxford at
this time did I open my heart fully and familiarly. But
things changed in 1826. At that time I became one of
the Tutors of my College, and this gave me position ;
besides, I had written one or two Essays, which had been
well received. I began to be known. I preached my
first University Sermon. Next year I was one of the
Public Examiners for the B.A. degree. It was to me
like the feeling of spring weather after winter ; and, if I
may so speak, I came out of my shell ; I remained out
of it till 1841."*

^Ibid,, 62. ^IHd,,(>6,

112 The American College.

During his course at St. John's College,
Cambridge, Henry Martyn was among the
leaders of his class in scholarship, but it was
not in this respect that college left a lasting
impression upon his character. During his

first term a friend, w^hom he refers to as K ,

kept him from idleness and turned his mind to
hard work. Martyn was by no means relig-
iously inclined, and this friend tried to get him
to undertake a course of reading '' that would
be for the glory of God." During his vaca-
tions his sister frequently addressed him on
the subject of religion, and, when the sudden
death of his father nearly rent his heart, she

renewed these addresses ; K , too, advised

him to make this time an occasion for serious
reflection. He began to read the Bible, — in
accordance with a promise made to his sister,
— beginning with the Book of Acts, as '' being
the most amusing" and at the same time read
Doddridge's ** Rise and Progress." At length
in his Junior year he wrote to his sister assur-
ing her that she had kept him in the right way
and announced to her his complete conversion.

The persistent friendship of K and his

sister's love had changed his life.^

* Sargent's Me7noir of Henry Martyn, 13-21.

Its Influence. 113

Professor J. Clerk Maxwell Illustrates the
value in forming a career both of personality
and of scholarship. He, too, was a student both
at Edinburgh and Cambridge. Though but
sixteen when he entered the class in logic, he
worked hard, and from this class together with
the one in metaphysics the next year, he received
many lasting impressions. His boundless
curiosity was fed by Sir William Hamilton's
inexhaustible learning. From Hamilton he re-
ceived an impulse for study which never lost
its effect. Sir William in turn took a personal
interest in his pupil who happened to be the
nephew of an old friend of his, affording, per-
haps, the most striking example of the effect
produced by him on powerful young minds.
It was impossible that young Maxwell should
listen to this speculative philosopher, without
eagerly working out each problem for himself.
He, himself, combined scholarship with a charm-
ing personality, for he had hosts of friends
whom he drew to himself by a " childlike sim-
plicity of trust " and, possibly, by his naturally
social spirit.^

There is probably no man who ever offered

* Campbell and Gamett's Life of y. Clerk Maxwell, 105-176.
8

114 The American College.

testimonials of fitness for a scholastic position
signed by so many who afterwards came to
occupy conspicuous positions as Bishop Charles
Wordsworth. The list of those men with whom
he was intimate at Oxford covers a whole page
of his annals, and the list of those men whose
recommendation he bore for a Mastership at
Winchester, included thirty-one persons, among
whom were : one who became Archbishop of
Canterbury ; ten who became Bishops ; eleven
who became Deans ; one a Roman Catholic
Archbishop and Cardinal ; one Prime Minister ;
two Governor-Generals of India ; four Cabinet
Ministers ; and one Lord Chancellor.^ It is
evident therefore that personality had a larger
influence in forming the character of Charles
Wordsworth than scholarship although, of
course, his scholarship was first-rate. I may say
here, that there was one regret that Bishop
Wordsworth expressed which is worthy of being
noted. He says :

" I have always regretted that I did not make more use
of the * Union * — our Debating Society — as an instrument
of education. I was elected a member in my second
term, and I put down a question for discussion, * Was

^Annals of my Early Life, 1 806-1 846, by Charles Wordsworth,
D.D. Second Edition, London, 1891, 171.

Its Influence. 115

the dissolution of monasteries by Henry VIII. justifi-
able ? ' which was chosen, and was to come on after the
Easter vacation. My principal opponent was Wrangham
of Brasenose, the clever son of Archdeacon Wrangham,
and a double-first-class man. I believe I succeeded
fairly well ; Herman Merivale, I remember, told me I had
given signs of promise ; but I never spoke again, except
on one or two occasions about matters of business." *

Of the influences that entered into the
character of Sir Walter Scott during his under-
graduate career, the personal were more valu-
able than any other. He went to the university
without preparation in Greek, and, through
being far inferior to his fellow-students, he
conceived a contempt for the language. He
also forswore Latin for no other reason, he
says, than that it was akin to Greek ! Mathe-
matics he began with all the *' ardor of novelty "
but the tutor was old, and the class small, and
his ardor soon vanished. *' To sum up my
academic studies,'' he writes, ** I attended the
class in history .... and, so far as I re-
member, no others except those of civil and
municipal law.'* As far as scholarship went he
received only a *' superficial smattering," but
in college he became intimate with John Irving,

»/^jV., 48.

ii6 The American College.

with whom every Saturday and more frequently
during certain vacations, he used to retire to
SaHsbury Crags with three or four books from
the library which they read together. Their
special favorites were romances of knight-
errantry. Irving remarks that, notwithstand-
ing the vast number that they read in this way,
Scott would remember whole pages having
particular interest, and could repeat them
weeks after the reading. Soon they began to
invent and recite to each other adventures of
knights-errant. Later their passion for romance
led them to learn Italian together. In this
friendship lay a part of the foundation of Scott's
future greatness.^

It has long seemed to me that Macaulay
ought to have gone to Oxford rather than Cam-
bridge. He should have gone to the univer-
sity where the classics were more at home, and
the sciences and mathematics less at home,
than they were at Cambridge. A greater
study of the classics would have proved more
valuable than the small study of the sciences.
To be sure we can say that Macaulay needed

* Lockhart's Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, 31-33, 95-
103.

Its Influence. n;

a mathematical and scientific training, and
if he had been born fifty years later than he
was, he would probably have been obliged
to receive it, and, receiving it, he would haye
become a more careful historian. But great as
was the effect of the studies of Cambridge upon
Macaulay, it was a Cambridge society which
left the most conspicuous marks upon his mind.
Frank, genial, with a passion for friendships
and for conversation, he shone the brightest in
the Union Debating Society. His friends
made him. He went to Cambridge a Tory;
he left Cambridge a Whig because of the in-
fluence of Charles Austin. ^

Although Mr. Ruskin was known through-
out his early years as '* A graduate of Oxford,"
yet Oxford had apparently a very slight influ-
ence upon him. He wrote bad Latin; in
Greek he was deficient ; his divinity, philsophy,
and mathematics were of the sort to give him
a double-fourth ; but he owed more, as he
owed much, to Osborne Gordon and to Hard-
ing who were his teachers and his masters.^

Dean Stanley, too, received large good

'J. C. Morison's, Thomas B. Macaulay, 7-12.

^ CoUingwood's The Life and Work of John Ruskin, 92-120.

iiS The American College.

through the scholarship of Balliol College,
Oxford, but larger advantages he received
through the inspirations of personal friendship.
It is probable that the best good that came
into the life of Stanley came into it before he
went to Oxford, as every one knows who has
read the life of the great Rugby master. But
of his life, both at Rugby and at Oxford, the
words that Stanley spoke at Baltimore, in 1878,
may be true :

" The lapse of years has only served to deepen in me
the conviction that no gift can be more valuable than
the recollection and the inspiration of a great character
working on our own. I hope that you may all experi-
ence this at some time of your life, as I have done." *

In the life of one who was both a foreigner
and an American, Louis Agassiz, the combined
advantages of scholarship and of friendship
are illustrated.

In his nineteenth year, in 1826, he went to Heidel-
berg University, having already spent two years at Zu-
rich. " There he made acquaintances which influenced
him as much as he could be influenced for the rest of his
life His studies took a more decided direction toward
natural history, under the leadership of Professors Tiede-

* Life and Correspondence of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley ^ by R. E.
Prothero, 140.

Its Influence. 119

mann, Leuckart, Bischoff, and H. G. Bronn. While
attending the lectures of these men Agassiz became
acquainted with Alexander Braun and Karl Schimper,
two very brilliant botanical students ; and they very soon
became congenial and inseparable companions, not only
during their courses at Heidelberg and afterwards at
Munich, but even during the first decade after leaving
the universities. The vacations Agassiz passed at the
home of Braun, in Carlsruhe, and together they ram-
bled through the forests and fields, ransacking every cor-
ner where plants or animals were to be found. In the
house they had special rooms devoted to dissections,
true laboratories ; here they brought their specimens,
and for hours together discussed and theorized on all
kinds of natural history subjects." ^

In 1828, these friends went together to
Munich.

" He was there a most happy and successful young man,
using all the scientific resources existing in that large and
progressive city ; drawing round him comrades of the
University, and even professors ; and receiving visits
from naturalists of renown, including the great anato-
mist, Meckel. . . . Agassiz was the most prominent
among the students. His acquaintance was courted by
all. He was especially considered with much pride by
the Swiss students, and was welcome both in the rooms
and yards of the University, and at the students' clubs
. . . and fencing rooms." ^

* Life^ Letters, and Works of Louis Agassiz^ by Jules Marcou,
i. 16-17, abridged. 2 /^/^,^ 25.

I20 The American College.

Cuvier was the only man who exerted a
scientific and personal influence over Agassiz ;
from him, and from him alone, Agassiz would
accept advice and be guided in his work. He
recognized in him his master, and the young
charmer of Switzerland found in him another
more powerful than himself, and especially
more practical in his life and work. At first
the formal politeness of Cuvier chilled him,
and he says : *' I would gladly go away were I
not held fast by the wealth of material of which
I can avail myself for instruction.''^ But this
first impression soon passed away, and an un-
bounded admiration replaced it.

The late President Robinson of Brown Uni-
versity says of his college life :

" The most profitable portion of my college life was
its .last year, under the instruction of President Way-
land. He was then in the ripe fulness of his powers.
His specialty as a teacher was moral science, though
he also taught political economy. But the latter inter-
ested him only theoretically ; the former, practically and
intensely. His strong sense of justice and his profound
love of truth made him a most impressive teacher of
ethics, — the most impressive I have ever known ; and
his keen sense of humor, his quick wit, his appreciation

» Ibid., 43.

Its Influence. 121

of wit in others, always made his recitation room a
very lively place. He was no metaphysician ; his moral
science, even in its distinctively theoretic portions, was
more practical than metaphysical, no part of it resting
on any metaphysical system, avowed or implied. When
I was his pupil, mental philosophy, even on its psycho-
logical side, had received from him only casual attention.
His treatise on * Intellectual Philosophy,' was written after
I had passed from under him, and years after his views
of moral science had become inflexibly fixed. Nor
was he widely read in the science of ethics. Allusions
in his lecture-room to authors whose views differed from
his own were extremely rare. He had thought out his
ethical principles for himself, and his conclusions were
deep and strong, and rooted in the very depths of his
being. Above all men whom I ever knew, he was him-
self the embodiment of what he taught. Clear and ana-
lytic in his own thinking, he insisted on analyzed and
logical thought in his pupils. Possessed of a stature and
a muscular development and a physiognomy that would
have made him an admirable model for a Jupiter Tonans,
and animated by a spirit that lifted him above everything
selfish and mean, he succeeded beyond every other col-
lege president of his time, I suspect, in impressing him-
self and his sentiments on all who came under his
instruction." *

The greatest influence of Yale College upon
the elder Silliman was the personality of the

^ Autobiography of Ezekiel Gilman Robinson^ edited by E. H.
Johnson, 16-17.

122 The American College.

elder President Dwight, who came to the col-
lege during Silliman's senior year. Up to
this time he had attained a respectable rank
in his classes, and was equally able in all de-
partments of college work. But President
Dwight's vigorous and animated discussions
in the lecture-room and pulpit opened to his
admiring pupil a new world of thought. Of
recitations conducted by him, Silliman says in
his journal, in October of his senior year :

" Our recitations are now becoming very interesting, by
the useful and entertaining instruction which is commu-
nicated in them by the President. He is truly a great
man, and it is very rare that so many excellent natural
and acquired endowments are to be found in one person.
When I hear him speak, it makes me feel like a very in-
significant being, and almost prompts me to despair ; but
I am reencouraged when I reflect that he was once as
ignorant as myself, and that learning is only to be ac-
quired by long and assiduous application." *

Personal influences are the most striking in
the character and career of Samuel F. B.
Morse, and these influences came from three
men in succession. Like Benjamin Silliman,
he fell under the magnetic power of President
Dwight. This great man was an inspiration

* Benjamin Silliman ^ by Fisher, i., 32.

Its Influence. 123

to young Morse in the class-room, where he
taught inductive philosophy, but his influence
was still greater through the intimate and con-
fidential relations which afterwards existed be-
tween them when Morse became the President's
amanuensis. The inspirations received from
President Dwight prepared his mind to receive
and utilize the impressions which he got under
the instruction of Professor Jeremiah Day.
The study of electricity and physics under Day
produced a great influence upon him person-
ally, and in subsequent years led to applications
of the principles of physics of priceless worth.
But there was a third man in Yale College to
whom Morse was indebted for the influences
which led to his great invention. That man
was Benjamin Silliman himself, who long held
the front rank among men of science. Silliman
was at once his teacher and friend. Morses
letters at the time speak frequently of his
interest in chemistry and of regard for his
instructor in that branch.^

College life and influences altered the whole
career of Henry Ward Beecher. When a boy
he had decided to be a sailor. His father

' Prime's Life of Samuel F, B. Morse^ l6-22.

124 The American College.

said: **Of course you do not want to be a
common sailor?" and Henry replied: ''No,
sir, I want to be a midshipman and after that
a commodore." His father told him that in
that case he must study navigation and mathe-
matics. Accordingly he went to Amherst
where new ambitions were awakened. His
instructor in mathematics was Mr. Fitzgerald,
whose manly ways captivated him and to
whom, — as he himself has said, — he owed his
habit of becoming well grounded in facts for
the formation of opinions, and his power of
sustaining, freely and good-naturedly, his po-
sition in the face of opposition. He followed
his master's dictum : '' You must not only
know, but you must know that you know/'^

The college life, and, of course, the whole
life of Prescott, the historian, was altered by
the injury to his sight incurred while he was a
student. Of his days at Cambridge, George
Ticknor says :

" At the time when William thus gayly entered upon his
collegiate career, he had, thanks to the excellent training
he had received from Dr. Gardiner, a good taste formed
and forming in English literature, and he probably knew

* Howard's Henry Ward Beccher, 27-33.

Its Influence. 125

more of Latin and Greek — not of Latin and Greek litera-
ture, but of the languages of Greece and Rome — than
most of those who entered college with him knew when
they were graduated. But, on the other hand, he had no
liking for mathematics, and never acquired any ; nor did
he ever like metaphysical discussions and speculations.
His position in his class was, of course, determined by
these circumstances, and he was willing that it should be.
But he did not like absolutely to fail pf a respectable
rank. It would not have been becoming the character
of a cultivated gentleman, to which at that time he more
earnestly aspired than to any other ; nor would it have
satisfied the just expectations of his family, which always
had much influence with him. It was difficult for him,
however, to make the efforts and the sacrifices indispen-
sable to give him the position of a real scholar. He
adopted, indeed, rules for the hours, and even the min-
utes, that he would devote to each particular study ; but
he was so careful never to exceed them, that it was plain
his heart was not in the matter, and that he could not
reasonably hope to succeed by such enforced and me-
chanical arrangements. Still, he had already a strong
will concealed under a gay and light-hearted exterior.
This saved him from many dangers. He was always able
to stop short of what he deemed flagrant excesses, and
to keep within the limits, though rather loose ones, which
he had prescribed to himself. His standard for the
character of a gentleman varied, no doubt, at this period,
and sometimes was not so high on the score of morals as
it should have been : but he always acted up to it, and
never passed the world's line of honor, or exposed him-
self to academical censures by passing the less flexible line

126 The American College.

drawn by college rules. He was, however, willing to run
very near to both of them/' *

And also Mr. Ticknor says :

" He received, in the latter part of his college career,
some of the customary honors of successful scholarship,
and at its close a Latin poem was assigned to him as his
exercise for Commencement.

" No honor, however, that he received at college, was
valued so much by him, or had been so much an object of
his ambition, as his admission to the Society of the Phi
Beta Kappa which was composed, in its theory and pre-
tensions, and generally in its practices, of a moderate
number of the best scholars in the two upper classes.
As the selection was made by the undergraduates them-
selves, and as a single black-ball excluded the candidate,
it was a real distinction ; and Prescott always liked to
stand well with his fellows, later in life no less than in
his youth. From his own experience, therefore, he re-
garded this old and peculiar society with great favor,
and desired at all periods to maintain its privileges and
influence in the University." *

Scores of men now living, in speaking of
their college careers, have assessed the per-
sonality of teachers and students in the for-
mation of character and in the determination
of a career as of supreme value. The presi-
dent of one of our great universities says :

^ Life of William Hickling Prescott^ by George Ticknor, 15-16.
^ Ibid. 23-24.

Its Influence. 127

''The moral impulse to manly and laborious
lives was probably the best thing we got from
college."

It can not, also, be denied that the college
presents opportunities for the acquiring of
habits of dignified leisure. An Oxford Don
says :

" It is a great thing to be able to loaf \vell : it softens
the manners and does not allow them to be fierce ; and
there is no place for it like the streams and gardens of
an ancient University." ^

The words of a '* Mere Don " are not to be
interpreted too seriously. But if the college
is a good place to learn to work hard, it is
also a good place to learn how to rest and to]
recreate oneself well.

If the American college has been the mother
of men, rather than the nurse of scholarship,
it has, in making men and in conveying in-
struction, done a work of tremendous signifi-
cance. This work is partially ethical, partially
religious, partially scholastic. It is a work
which may be said to be embodied in the
general broadening, deepening, and enriching
of character. A well-known editor writes to me :

^ Aspects of Modern Oxford ^ by a Mere Don, 133.

128 The American College.

" As I look back to it now, the only thing that I re-
member with very great definiteness, and am especially
grateful for, is the general broadening influence which
followed the finding out of what men had done in the
world in one department of learning after another. So
that by the time I had finished my college course I had
conceived a more or less well proportioned idea of the
great things the human race has achieved, and I had my
curiosity aroused to learn something. Unless my memory
is treacherous, I can truthfully say that I knew nothing
of very much value when my college course was finished ;.
nothing except that I had this sort of chart of the world's
great work."

But the college has done a very special
work in developing character along ethical and
religious lines. Another college president re-
marks : ** The college enlarged the range of
my sympathies and my views of life, God, man,
and duty, turning, as I trust, my pietism into
piety.'* So also says Dr. Henry M. Field, in
speaking of Albert Hopkins: ''In leading us
among the stars he led us to the Creator and
Ruler of all.'*

It is the testimony of most college gradu-
ates that, of the two elements which represent
so large a part of the college, — instruction and
personality, — personality is by far of superior
importance. When a distinguished college

Its Influence. 129

president says : *' The best thing a college, as
a rule, does for a young man, is to bring him
into contact and under the inspiration of other
men of a higher type than he is otherwise
likely to meet ; " and when a great preacher
says : '' While books can teach, personality
only can educate ; " and when an able mathe-
matician says : *' The greatest service to me
was in bringing me into contact with educated
men and offering me the appliances necessary
to prosecute my studies ; " and when Dr. Field
says: *'The statements of President Hopkins
were as goads in the hands of a master to
prick up sluggish minds ; " or a great editor :
'* The best thing which Williams College did
for me was to bring me within the scope of
Dr. Mark Hopkins's inspirational teaching,"
they are simply declaring that personality is
the greatest power of college, as it is of all,
life. This impression is still further empha-
sized by the words of a graduate of Amherst :

" I can say, without an instant's hesitation, that the
one influence in my college life to which I owed more
than to anything else, was the personal pressure upon
me of Professor Julius H. Seelye, afterwards President
Seelye, and I think there are a good many of my college-
mates who would make the same statement. I do not

ijo The American College.

mean to underrate the work done in the class-rooni m a
purely professional capacity.'*

The remark is often made, that students are
educated as much by each other as by their
professors. The influence of students over
each other at Yale is especially strong. I re-
cently asked an officer of Yale College which
had the stronger influence over the students,
— the students or the professors. Prompt was
the answer: **The students." Whether the
answer was a true or a false interpretation I
do not know. Whether this ought to be the
fact may be open to question. But it is clear
that the attrition of dififerent minds of the
same general character upon each other is of
great value. It is certainly significant that a
character so strong and so individual as that
of Dr. Richard Salter Storrs found its best in-
fluence in these common relations. For Dr.
Storrs writes :

^'' I think the best thing I found in college life was
X / the intimate contact with fine minds of class-mates. I
^ shall never cease to be grateful for the educating influ-
ence thus received."

Another graduate of Amherst says :

Its Influence. 131

" The best thing that I received in college was the en-
couragement and help that came from good fellowships.
I was brought into relations with other serious and earnest
young men who had impulses before them to do good,
and who were eager for the acquisition of what would
help them. Those associations were a support. They
helped me to study in literary work and elsewhere to
good purpose. I enjoyed very much my membership in
college societies. By association with certain particular
friends I could carry on certain scientific studies better
than I could alone. I could go about the country bot-
anizing and geologizing, and I made myself a part of the
great sodality of letters which can not be overvalued.
. . . Civilization is a product, not of isolation, but of
the crowding of population, and the civilizing influences
of the humanities is in good part due to the fellowships
in which it is cultivated.*'

The influence of students is constantly rec-
ognized in respect to its less favorable aspects.
But it is not so often recognized in respect to
its higher and nobler relations. It is never to
be forgotten that humanity educates humanity,
and personality disciplines personality.

Outside of the value of the curriculum and
the value of friendships, one of the chief values
of the college course as contributing to the
worth of Hfe lies in the general reading for
which it gives an opportunity. Many of those
who have found great worth in the college

132 The American College.

course through the element of friendship, have
also acknowledged that in general reading they
received large advantages. This was the fact
with Carlyle and De Quincey, with Shelley and
Chalmers, with Webster and Scott It is
probable, also, that this was the chief value of
the course to such men as Emerson, Haw-
thorne, Lowell, and Sumner.

Of De Quincey's Oxford life but little is
known. During this period he was quiet and
studious, devoting himself principally to the
society of a German named Schwartzburg,
from whom he learned Hebrew, and acquired
an intimate acquaintance with German litera-
ture. But of greater importance was the sys-
tematic attention which he began to bestow
on English literature in the last years of his
course. By his reading of English poets and
prose writers he was deeply affected. Though
fond of the older writers, he was particularly
enthusiastic over the writers of his own time.
At Oxford De Quincey began the use of
opium to relieve himself from the effects of
neuralgia, but he was not yet, nor for some
years to come was he to be, a slave to opium.
In a fit of shyness, or through some personal

Its Influence. 133

offence, he never presented himself for his final
examination for his degree, and at last sud-
denly disappeared from Oxford.

Of the college course of Ralph Waldo Em-
erson, his son. Dr. Edward W. Emerson, writes
me as follows :

" I can not answer your question fully as to what in-
fluence my father believed his college life had upon
him. His instinct was strong in favor of the college
course for all serious boys, and he thought it worth much
sacrifice. I cared so little for college, as I found it, and
would so gladly have left it any day to go into the army,
that his desire that I should stay (apart from the army
question) surprised me, for he did not highly prize the
men and the methods of Harvard at that time. Indeed,
I know that he said shortly before that time, to a youth
consulting him on this subject, that there were many
better chances than college ; an exploring expedition, for
instance, or the working under any great master, yet for
most boys the college offered, on the whole, the best
chance for culture. What I believe he thought of as
valuable in the college was just what he had found there;
the cloistered life, with the freest access to books, no out-
side exacting duties, and the chance to meet a very few
good or strong men among the professors or the stu-
dents. The social advantages, also, to a shy youth un-
used to society and awkward, I know he prized, and he
often referred to the fine manners and speech of some
of the students. Southerners and others, as interesting
and valuable to the more rustic youth."

134 The American College.

Hawthorne, too, was a character who nat-
urally would be little influenced by the studies
or the personal associations of college life.
His countenance was winning and his manner
gentle ; he would have won great popularity,
but, as one of his classmates says, '* he dwelt
in obscurest recesses of thought which his
most intimate friends were not permitted to
penetrate." Jonathan Cilley was probably his
most intimate friend In that great class of 1825
at Bowdoln, and yet Cilley says : '* I loved
Hawthorne, I admired him, and yet I did not
know him. He lived in an Isolated world of
thought and imagination which he never per-
mitted me to enter." His son says of him :

" Nathaniel Hawthorne's academic career shows him
to have been independent, self-contained, and disposed
to follow his own humor and judgment, without undue
reference to the desires or regulations of the college
faculty. His friends were men who afterwards attained
a more or less distinguished position in the world, —
Franklin Pierce, Horatio Bridge, and Longfellow. He
evinced no unnatural and feverish thirst for college
honors, and never troubled himself to sit up all night
studying, with a wet towel round his head and a cup of
coffee at his elbow ; but neither did he see fit to go to
the other extreme. He assimilated the knowledge that
he cared for with extreme ease, and took just enough

Its Influence. 135

of the rest to get along with ; in this respect, as in
most others, displaying a delectable maturity of judg-
ment and imperturbable common-sense. He perceived
that the value of college to a man — or, at any rate, to
him — was not so much in the special things that were
taught as in the general acquaintance it brought about
with the various branches of learning ; and still more, in
the enlargement which it incidentally gives to one's
understanding of foreign things and persons. At no
time during his residence at Bowdoin did he have the
reputation of being a recluse, or exclusive ,^it was his
purpose and practice to be like his fellows, and (barring
certain private and temperamental reservations) to do as
they did. He steered equally clear of the Scylla of prig-
dom, and the Charybdis of recklessness ; in a word, he
had the mental and moral strength to be precisely his
natural and unforced self. Within certain limits he was
facile, easy-going, convivial ; but beyond those limits he
was no more to be moved than the Rock of Gibraltar or
the North Pole. He played cards, had * wines ' in his
room, and went off fishing and shooting with Bridge
when the faculty thought he was at his books ; but he
maintained without effort his place in the recitation-
room, and never defrauded the college government of
any duty which he thought they had a right to claim
from him. His personal influence over his college
friends was great ; and he never abused it or employed
it for unworthy ends." *

The opportunity which Harvard opened to

' JViithaniel Hawthorne and his Wife, by J Lilian Hawthorne, i.,
119-20.

13^ The American College.

Lowell for reading and for the general enrich-
ment of culture represents the chief value of
the college course to this great American.
Mr. Norton says of him that he did not find
the regular discipline of the required studies
suited to his taste.^ He neglected the required
tasks, and often substituted for them some-
thing not only of more intrinsic worth, but in
particular of more worth to himself. On ac-
count of his negligence he fell under the ban
of college discipline and suffered suspension.
The period of his suspension he spent at Con-
cord.

The opportunity, too, which college gives
for general reading and culture was of greater
value to Charles Sumner than any other ad-
vantage which Harvard held forth. He utterly
failed in mathematics ; he had no faculty for
the sciences. This deficiency lowered his
general standing ; and he therefore studied
such text-books as he chose and neglected
the rest. In the classics, however, he stood
near or at the head of his class. He had no
rival in his devotion to miscellaneous litera-

* Letters of James Russell Lowell^ edited by Charles Eliot Norton,
i., 26.

Its Influence. 137

ture ; when he left college no student in his
class had read so widely. His memory both
of thought and language was remarkable. He
could, too, with ease imitate an author's style.
His early conversation and letters, as his later,
were full of quotations.^

The worth of the college through the oppor-
tunity which it gives for reading and for study
in lines of the student's own choosing repre-
sents a great advantage. The college course
is usually made with reference to the average
man, but the average man never exists. Not
infrequently the student is of the opinion that
he is a better judge of what is of importance
to himself than any one else, and he follows the
determination of his own judgment. As has
been indicated, the studies which Darwin
chose for himself at Cambridge were of
greater value than the studies which the uni-
versity offered to him. The studies also which
Goethe chose for himself at Strassburg were
of greater value to him than the studies which
his professors would have selected. Men so
diverse as Edward Irving and Thackeray re-

* Meinfiir and Letters of Charles Sumner^ by Edward L. Pierce,
i., 46-48.

138 The American College.

ceived greater advantage from their own se-
lected reading than from the courses that their
professors would have set for them.

Edward Irving was not a diligent scholar
during his days at Edinburgh University. He
read, however, a great deal, ranging from
Hookers Ecclesiastical Polity to Arabian
Nights, and '' sundry books with forgotten but
suspicious titles." In his waist-coat pocket he
carried about a miniature copy of Ossian, pas-
sages from which he read or recited in his
walks in the country, or delivered *'with
sonorous elocution and vehement gesticula-
tion " for the benefit of his companions. This
is the first indication of his oratorical gifts,
which were further developed by his participa-
tion in the college debating society, of which
he was a member.^

But at the present time it is to be said that
the curriculum is far less of the race-course,
in which all members are disciplined, than it is
a pathway which the student chooses for him-
self under the guidance of competent in-
structors. It is a mountain path which he
climbs for himself. Therefore the occasion

^ Mrs. Oliphant's Life of Edward Irving, 34-37.

Its Influence. 139

for the student of to-day choosing a certain
course in college for himself, apart from the
counsel of his official superiors, is very slight.
It is a happy augury for the future of the
American college, and so for the future of
American life, that the studies which students
pursue to-day have a most direct and vital
relation to their whole career.

There is an element of influence in college
life which was formerly of greater power than
it now possesses. This element is the literary
society. Not a few men confess their indebt-
edness to it. Edward Irving, William Ellery
Channing, John H. Raymond the President
of Vassar College, President Barnard of Colum-
bia, each found a large element of their train-
ing in the literary society. Of President
Raymond it is said :

At the beginning of his course he received an honor
for scholarship and, feeling satisfied, he did not exert
himself further, and dropped gradually, until he became
thirteenth in his class. He then grew reckless in study,
and also became generally disorderly, — so disorderly, in
fact, that in his senior year he was dismissed. As he fell
from regular college work, he devoted himself to general
reading and became, as he says, " a boyish oracle on sub-
jects of general literature and criticism." He wrote

HO The American College.

much and wrote as well as he could, but his chosen
arena was the literary society, debates in which com-
manded the strength he could command. He became
deeply interested in oratory. He says : " It was my
constant habit while in college to spend a part of the
day several times each week in the civil and criminal
courts, studying the style of debate and delivery in
vogue among the lawyers. For a similar purpose, in
part, I frequented the theatre, and became a sort of con-
noisseur in theatrical criticism. Shakespeare I studied
with a laborious assiduity and genuine relish, and this
I have never regretted. Such was the effect of my
efforts that I overcame in a great measure a natural
bashfulness, which I had supposed would always unfit
me for public speaking, and my mind was entirely di-
verted from the study of medicine, which had been my
first choice for a profession, and set on that of law.** ^

President Barnard also says of himself :

" As I look back upon it, no part of my training at Yale
College seems to me to have been more beneficial than
that which I derived from the practice of writing and
speaking in the literary society to which I belonged.
The general literary societies, open to students of all the
classes, and numbering one or two hundred members
each, were maintained at that time with great enthusiasm.
I am told that they are now extinct at New Haven.
They have been supplanted, I suppose, by the multi-
plicity of small secret societies which decorate them-
selves with Greek-letter titles, but which — if they are

* Life of John H. Raymond, 47-56.

Its Influence. 141

literary at all, as they possibly are, though I doubt it —
can never furnish the stimulus of a large audience. I
can only regret the change. It seems to me that, with
the loss of her literary societies, half the glory of Yale
has departed from her. In the old Linonia Hall I spent
many of the most profitable hours of my college life ;
and I heard debates there which for interest and brill-
iancy were equal to any at which I have since been
privileged to be present in assemblies of much superior
dignity. There were some men of my time who made
no very serious struggle for grade scholarship, and yet
would sometimes ^ come out strong' in the society. For
the sake of students of this class, who will always be
more or less numerous in every college, I should esteem
it a great advantage if the old societies could be resusci-
tated." '

As I have been reading the lives and study-
ing the careers of hundreds of men to discover
the effects of their college lives upon them, I
find there are certain men who became great,
upon whom the college had no, or at least,
only a very small, effect. All those whom I
name are no longer living. Possibly there are
some living of whom the same might be said.
But of the men over whom the college had a
very small influence, I would name, Buchanan,
Thomas H. Benton, John Randolph, John

^ Memoirs of Frederick A , P. Barnard, by John Fulton, 36.

142 The American College.

Jay, Timothy Pickering;, George Ticknor, and
Dr. O. W. Holmes. The historian of Spanish
literature says of his life at Dartmouth :

*' I had a good room, and led a very pleasant life,
with good and respectable peo])le, all more or less con-
nected with the college ; but I learnt very little. The
instructors generally were not as good as my father had
been, and I knew it ; so I took no great interest in study.
I remember liking to read Horace, and I enjoyed calcu-
lating the great eclipse of 1806, and making a projection
of it, which turned out nearly right. This, however,
with a tolerably good knowledge of the higher algebra,
was all I ever acquired in mathematics, and it was soon
forgotten.

" I was idle in college, and learnt very little ; but I
led a happy life, and ran into no wildness or excesses.
Indeed, in that village life, there was small opportunity
for such things, and those with whom I lived and asso-
ciated, both in college and in the society of the place,
were excellent people." ^

The education of George Ticknor, I will not
say was completed, but it was in a sense be-
gun, in private tuition, taken after his college
graduation, in Boston, and it was continued
abroad. He was among that choice number
of Americans who went to Gottingen in the
first quarter of the present century.

' Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor, eighth edition,
i., 7.

Its Influence. 143

James Buchanan graduated from Dickinson
College in 1809, but of his college he seems
to have had a poor opinion. For he writes :

" The college was in a wretched condition, and I have
often regretted that I had not been sent to some other
institution." *

In college he was a hard student, but full of
mischief. At one time he was nearly sus-
pended, but was finally allowed to remain
under a promise to do better. This promise
he kept, but be it said that at graduation he
was a candidate for honors in scholarship, yet
failed to get them on account of his previous
disorderly conduct.

I can fiot believe that college life had much
influence upon the character or career of Oliver
Wendell Holmes. A year before he gradu-
ated he wrote to his friend Barnes as follows :

" To be sure I have altered a little, since I was at An-
dover. I wear my gills erect, and do not talk sentiment.
I court my hair a little more carefully, and button my
coat a little tighter ; my treble has broken down into a
bass, but I still have very little the look of manhood. I
smoke most devoutly, and sing most unmusically, have
written poetry for an Annual, and seen my literary bant-
lings swathed in green silk and reposing in the draw-
^ Curtis' Life of Jajues Btuhanan^ 4.

144 The American College.

ing-room. I am totally undecided what to study ; it
will be law or physick, for I can not say that I think the
trade of authorship quite adapted to this meridian." *

In December, 1828, he also wrote to
Barnes :

"'What do I do?* I read a little, study a little,
smoke a little, and eat a good deal ! * What do I think ? '
I think that 's a deuced hard question. * What have I
been doing these three years ? ' Why, I have been grow-
ing a little in body, and I hope in mind ; I have been
learning a little of almost everything, and a good deal of
some things." ^

It IS clear that Holmes did not come into
his second intellectual birth in Cambridge.
That experience he passed through in Paris,
where he pursued his medical studies with
great vigor, and laid the foundations not only
for his work as a teacher, but also as an au-
thor.

If the college had small influence over these
men the reason commonly given — that of youth-
fulness — is probably the correct one. They
were too young to receive the advantages of
a college training. I am sure that in general
the lack of value of a college course for a boy

* Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes^ by John T. Morse,
Jr., i., 55. ^ Ibid., 59.

Its Influence. i45

arises from youthfulness, — whether that youth-
fulness be measured by lack of years or by the
lack of those virtues which constitute maturity.
Even the pranks and the vices of the college
course arise from this condition rather than
from malevolence or depravity.

Through each or all of these methods or
means which I have thus outlined and illus-
trated, the college has had a vital and lasting
effect upon the characters and careers of hun-
dreds and thousands of men. The influences
thus exerted over individuals has, by direct
and indirect methods, entered into the consti-
tution of American society and American life.

American life has thus been made more
worth the living. We lament that America is
not more scholarly ; but the greater part of the
scholarship that America does possess is de-
rived through the college and is fostered by
the college ; and no small share of the richest
and holiest part of American life, personal
character, has had its inspiration within college
walls.

IV.

ITS INFLUENCE ILLUSTRATED IN

THE THREE OLDEST

COLLEGES.

ARVARD is two hundred and fifty years
old ; Yale two hundred ; and Prince-
ton one hundred and fifty. Harvard
is pre-eminently a college of New England,
Yale of the Western and Middle States, and
Princeton of the Middle States and of the
Southern. Harvard is a University, with
its professional schools approaching in impor-
tance to the College ; Yale is pre-eminently a
college, with the professional schools, except
its scientific and theological, comparatively
insignificant ; Princeton is pre-eminently a col-
lege notwithstanding its assumption of univer-
sity functions. Harvard is undenominational,

146

Its Influence. 147

although some would call it Unitarian ; Yale is
as much Congregational as almost any college
can be, although some would call it un-denomi-
national; Princeton is essentially Presbyterian,
although its ecclesiastical relations with that
body are not organic. Harvard is often called
the Oxford of the New World, and Yale the
Cambridge. Princeton pretty closely corre-
sponds to a single one of the greater colleges
of the English University.

These three colleges have had a greater in-
fluence, in their combined six hundred years of
life, than any other three or possibly any
other three times three colleges in the United
States. The sphere and the agency of the in-
fluence of each of these colleges are manifold,
covering every vocation and opportunity for
the carrying on of the world's business. Yet
the influence of Harvard through the literature
which its graduates have created, the influence
of Yale through religious, educational, and
public leaders whom it has trained, and the
influence of Princeton through statesmen,
teachers, and ecclesiastics whom it has edu-
cated, have been pre-eminent. The names of
the graduates of Harvard which have be-

^^^ LiaTJ^

148 The American College.

come illustrious in American literature are
far more eminent and far more numer-
ous than are found in the annals of any
other college. To call the roll of them is to
call the roll of the most famous poets, histori-
ans, and essayists. Yet one does not forget
that in other spheres Harvard has rendered
conspicuous service. Three of her graduates,
— although one, Hayes, was of the Law School
only, — have been presidents of the United
States, and two have been vice-presidents.
The list of her graduates who have served at
the Court of St. James' includes members of
the Adams family in three generations, and
also such names as Everett, Bancroft, Motley,
and Lowell. Great men whom she has trained,
who have become great in the service of other
colleges, are many. To Yale she has given
four presidents, to Amherst one, to Bowdoin
two, to Trinity one, to Haverford one, to
Hobart two, to Antioch three, to Columbia
one, and at least ten other presidents to as
many other institutions.

The greatest work of Yale for this country
has been done through the theologians and
educators whom she has helped to train. One

Its Influence. 149

hesitates to fill pages with bare lists of names,
but from a long and honorable roll of theo-
logians one may select such names as Jonathan
Edwards, Joseph Bellamy, Samuel Hopkins,
John Smally, Nathaniel Emmons, Lyman
Beecher, Moses Stuart, Richard Salter Storrs,
— eloquent preacher, father of an eloquent
preacher, — John Pierpont, Bennet Tyler, Na-
thaniel W. Taylor, Gardiner Spring, Ashael
Nettleton, Elias Cornelius, William B. Sprague,
Theron Baldwin, John Todd, Horace Bushnell,
and the Dwights in three generations.

Yet, possibly, Yale delights more in being
known as the mother of colleges than as the
mother of theologians. Such names may be
misleading, yet there is much more reason for
Yale thus denominating herself than there is
in the case of most universities, for she has
furnished presidents for many colleges from
Massachusetts Bay to the Golden Gate. One
of her graduates was the first president of
Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth, Williams,
Hamilton, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, and of the
Universities which bear the name of Georgia,
Missouri, Mississippi, Wisconsin, and Cali-

ISO The American College.

fornia. About one hundred of her sons have
been at the head of our colleges.

Mr. Richard H. Greene has prepared an in-
teresting table of the distinguished men calling
Yale their alma mater. This list contains the
name of i Vice-President of the United States,
17 Cabinet officers, i Chief Justice of the
United States, i Chief Justice of Canada, 2
national officers of the Hawaiian Islands, i
Minister Plenipotentiary from China to the
United States, 3 Judges of the United States
Supreme Court, i Surgeon-General of the
United States, 50 United States Senators, 20
United States District judges, i Circuit Judge
of the United States, 160 State judges, 4
chancellors, 22 Ministers Plenipotentiary of the
United States, 187 members of Congress, 40
State governors, and 92 college presidents.^

The influence of Princeton seems to me to
have been pre-eminent in the field of political
and educational life. For in political life the
record of her sons is large and illustrious. It
includes i President of the United States, 3
Vice-Presidents, 4 justices of the Supreme
Court, 20 members of the Cabinet (including

* Steiner's History of Education in Connecticut^ 235.

Its Influence. 151

5 Attorney-Generals), 171 members of Con-
gress, and 28 governors of States. But in
educational life her record approaches in emi-
nence to that of her next older sister. She
has been, in a peculiar sense, the alma mater of
some twenty-five other colleges ; and of her
graduates at least forty-three have been presi-
dents of colleges, and more than two hundred
of them teachers in other colleges.

The influence therefore of Yale in political
life, and of Princeton in ecclesiastical life, is
not, in my opinion, so great as is usually be-
lieved. The influence of Yale in ecclesiastical
life, and of* Princeton in political life, is greater
than is usually believed. Many of Princeton's
ecclesiastics have done their noblest work not
as ecclesiastics but as presidents and profes-
sors in colleges. The fame of the ecclesiastic
has been lost in the fame of the educator.

As I said in the beginning of this chapter,
Harvard is pre-eminently a college of New
England, Yale of the Western and Middle
States, and Princeton of the Middle States
and of the Southern. In the West the influ-
ence of Yale far exceeds that of Harvard.
Some of the chief facts relative to the present

152 The American College

<^^

residences of the living graduates of these two
oldest colleges are significant.

The directory of the living graduates of
Harvard College shows the number to be
5553. The directory of the living graduates
of Yale College shows the number to be
4618. Of the graduates of Harvard, more
than one half, 2908, live in Massachusetts.
Of the graduates of Yale, less than one fifth,
812, live in Connecticut. But be it said that
three times as many people live in Massachu-
setts as live in Connecticut. Of the Yale
graduates, also, less than one third, 141 7, live
in the State of New York. Slightly less than
one half of the graduates of Yale, 2229, live
in Connecticut and New York. In the New
England States are 3129 Harvard graduates,
and 1289 Yale graduates.

It is, therefore, evident that a large portion
of the Harvard men have their residence in the
State of their college or In the States imme-
diately surrounding. The frequent remark is
true that Harvard is a Massachusetts and a
New England college. But the preponder-
ance of Harvard men to Yale as residents of a

Its Influence. 153

State or Territory ceases, with two or three
exceptions, on passing outside of New England.
Although the whole number of Harvard men
is greater by 800 than the whole number of
Yale men, yet, in the Middle States, Harvard
has only 1303, and Yale, 1986. In the State
of New York Harvard has 976 graduates, and
Yale 141 7. In Pennsylvania Yale has 312,
and Harvard, be it said, has three more than
312 ; but in New Jersey, Harvard's 23 seems
small when put by the side of Yale's 140. In
Delaware the number of graduates of both
colleges is commensurate with the size of
the State, Harvard having 2 and Yale 14.
This preponderance of Yale graduates still
holds good as one goes west. I have caused
additions to be made of the number of gradu-
ates of the two colleges found in each of the
States. In only two of the Western States do
I find a larger number of Harvard than of
Yale graduates, and one of these, California,
is a State so far west that we seldon think of
it as being west at all. The following are
the facts in these representative Common-
wealths :

154 The American College.

State.

Harvard
Graduates.

Yale
Graduates.

Ohio

135
20

152
25
39
43
20

37

19

2

4
5
4
9

28
127

174

25

255

36

69

87
32
33
21

Indiana

Illinois

Iowa

Michigan

Minnesota

Kansas

Wisconsin

Nebraska

North Dakota

2

South Dakota

8

Montana

15

4

13

35

106

Idaho

Oregon

Washin^rton

California

Total

669

915

In these sixteen States, Harvard has 669
graduates, and Yale 915. In the States exclud-
ing CaHfornia are found 9.76 per cent, of all the
living graduates of Harvard College. In the
same States are found 17.47 per cent, of all
the living graduates of Yale College. In fact,
in proportion to the whole number of gradu-
ates, almost twice as many men have gone from
Yale into these States as from Harvard.

These figures are exceedingly significant.
We have long known, in a general way, that

Its Influence. 155

the number of Yale men in these States and
the States of the West was in some way
surprisingly larger than the number of Harvard
men, but I have never known until this hour
how much greater the number is. The propor-
tion in favor of Yale is, as I have said, significant
to any one interested in education. Harvard
College had graduated more than sixty classes
before the first Yale class received its degrees.
Harvard College had the start in point of
time. It had also the advantage, and always
has had the advantage, of a larger endowment.
And yet, in that great territory between the
Alleghanies and the Pacific known as ''the
West," representing the larger part of the
domain of the country, the number of Yale
graduates exceeds the number of Harvard.
What is the cause of this condition ?

The period covered by this survey begins,
in the case of Harvard, with the year 18 18,
and in reference to Yale, it begins with the
year 1820. It covers the period of the popu-
lating of the Western territory. Our question,
therefore, may be somewhat broadened, be-
coming this : What is the reason that, in the
populating of the States of the West, the num-

156 The American College.

ber of the graduates of Yale exceeds that of
the graduates of Harvard? It ceases to be a
question between the relation of these colleges
simply, and becomes a question concerning the
movements and characteristics of a people.

Yale was a Congregational college. Yale is,
I suppose, to-day, as much a Congregational
college as any college can easily be, although
the Congregational college is the least denomi-
national of any college. Its presidents were
Congregational clergymen. The ecclesiastical
relations of its professors were usually Congre-
gational. It had and has a School of Theology
of the Congregational Church. Orthodoxy,
as embodied in Congregationalism, was and is
aggressive. The Congregational School of
Theology at New Haven sent its graduates,
throughout this formative period, into the
West as ministers. Not a few of them were
natives of the West, particularly in later years.
Graduates of Yale College who were graduates
of Yale Theological Seminary entered the
West. Graduates of Yale College who were
graduates of other theological seminaries
entered the West as missionaries and minis-
ters. The so-called '* Yale Band" was among

Its Influence. i57

the first evangelizing agencies which touched
the great State of Illinois. A few years ago a
''Yale Band/' composed of graduates of Yale
Seminary, entered the State of Washington.
A few years before a '' Dakota Band '' went
from New Haven into that Territory. Illinois
College at Jacksonville was founded by the
members of the ''Yale Band." The old col-
lege at Hudson, Ohio, begun in 1826, was
founded as a Yale of the West. Of those men
going into many and widely separated parts of
the West, every one went as a loyal son of
Yale. Every one of them found it difficult,
perhaps, to adjust his love for his a/ma mater
with his love for the local institution of his
State, to the building up of which he was
giving his money and his life. Of all the
colleges except the local one, Yale was the
most beloved. The Yale spirit moved on the
face of the prairie. The black dust of the
Wabash and of the Ohio became the livinof
soul bearing the name of Yale. The result
followed under the law of cause and effect.
The new West, so far as it received any col-
lege influence, became like Yale.

In this same period Harvard v/as not Ortho-

158 The American College.

dox. It was Unitarian. It was able and
strong and cultured. It had for its presidents
men noble in character, men also who were
noble in scholarship. Until Quincy was elected,
it called to its chief executive office Unitarian
clergymen, the memory of whom is fragrant
and beautiful. Professors better qualified for
college service could not be found. Harvard
was in close affiliation with the best forces of
Boston and of Massachusetts. But the mo-
tives in its life were not missionary. They
were as little missionary as those dominating
the Unitarian Church. The number of Uni-
tarian churches in Massachusetts far exceeds
the number found in all other Commonwealths.
Unitarianism may be a qualitative propagand-
ism, but it is not a quantitative one. It may
have enriched other faiths, but it has not
spread its own faith. Its movement has been
intensive and not extensive.

This lack of religiously missionary enthu-
siasm was a pretty costly thing to Harvard,
and possibly, also, to Unitarianism itself. But
Unitarianism did not lack in certain of its ad-
herents a missionary enthusiasm of a certain
sort. This enthusiasm was an enthusiasm

Its Influence. 159

social, sociological, political. Radicalism in
theology led to radicalism in sociology. There
is some ground for the historical statement
that conservatism in theology led to conserva-
tism in sociology. It is certainly true that
Garrison, Phillips, Emerson, Sumner, Tho-
reau, Lowell, Higginson, Sanborn, were in
more intimate alliance with the Unitarian than
with any other faith. The black man of the
South appealed more powerfully to these anti-
slavery men than the white man of the new
West. Lack of personal freedom was to them
a worse evil than a lack of personal piety.
James Freeman Clarke was for a time a *' home
missionary," but the place was rather Southern
than Western, — Louisville ; and his big heart
and fine brain were directed throughout his
chief pastorate rather toward the slave than
toward the free pagan of the prairie. In this
devotion all now exult. But it was a devotion
which had its penalties. Harvard College was
not presented to the new people of the new
West.

The graduates, therefore, of Harvard Col-
lege, of this time,and of its Divinity School,
were not intent upon going West. They did

i6o The American College.

not feel the impulse for establishing the houses
of their faith on the Mississippi. They had
no visions of building a second Harvard in the
swamps of the Missouri. These graduates pre-
ferred to write odes about the duty of being
pilgrims and still to live beneath the graceful
elms of Cambridge. The result was necessary
and has become evident ; Harvard failed to
establish a constituency in the West when the
West was in its formative period. Therefore,
to-day the number of Harvard graduates in
the West is far less than the number of Yale
graduates.

There are, also, it seems to me, certain gen-
eral reasons which have value in explaining
this divergency. The impression prevails
throughout the West that Yale is more demo-
cratic than Harvard ; that considerations of
family and wealth have less value in New
Haven than in Cambridge. It is also sup-
posed that the manners of the Harvard man
are more elegant and his refinement greater.
It is also thought that the nil-admirari prin-
ciple is more influential at the Cambridge
college. Repression is supposed to be the
mood of the Harvard, expression the mood

]^.<^VI

Its Influence. ^"^^61

of the Yale man. The Western man is usu-
ally democratic socially. He respects nobility
and refinement of personal bearing, but he is
inclined to think that some Harvard students
carry these elegancies into eccentricities. Re-
pression he rather despises, admiring freedom
and frankness. The falseness of these impres-
sions held by the Western man do not at all
lessen their force in deterring him from send-
ing his son to Harvard.

I am also inclined to believe, although my
belief is by no means an assurance, that in the
larger part of this period under survey Har-
vard was known throughout the West more
for its literary advantages, and Yale for its
scientific. Of course, at once the names of
Agassiz, and Gray, and others, may seem to
overthrow the ground of this impression, but
never in the popular view was Agassiz an in-
tegral part of the Harvard Faculty. When w^e
think of the great teachers at Harvard of the
earlier generation, the first names to occur
to us are those of Ticknor and Longfellow.
When we think of the great teachers of Yale
in the preceding generation, we speak imme-
diately of Silliman and Dana. The fame of

1 62 The American College.

Yale in science was more attractive to the
Western man than the fame of Harvard in
literature. The materialistic tendency of life
in the West found its counterpart in the scien-
tific character of the teaching at Yale.

But a further question grows out of the gen-
eral one, and one, too, possibly more interest-
ing. I have thought that my statistics would
show that the proportion of Harvard men liv-
ing in the West during the last score of years
would show a great increase. The figures
prove that the a p7'iori reasoning was right.
As I have before said, in the sixteen Western
States the names of which have been given,
beginning with Ohio, and ending with Wash-
ington, in this period have lived 9.76 per cent,
of all of Harvard's graduates ; and also in this
same period and in these same States have
lived 17.47 per cent, of all the Yale graduates
now living. But, of the classes between 1878
-88, 11.62 percent, of the graduates of Har-
vard live in these States, a gain of 1.86 per
cent. In these same States and of the classes
from 1 880-9 T , 1 8. 79 per cent, of Yale graduates
are found residing, a gain of 1.32 per cent.
Harvard, therefore, in this time, had a greater

Its Influence. 163

relative gain than Yale. The proportions of
certain States are possibly less significant than
of all the States combined. In certain States,
Yale has gained. In Illinois, for the whole
period, are dwelling 5.52 per cent, of all the
graduates. In Illinois, for the last ten years,
are dwelling 7. 15 per cent. In the same State,
in respect to Harvard's graduates, there were,
for the entire period, 2.73 per cent, and for
the last decade 3.17 per cent. In Ohio, Har-
vard has increased in the last decade over the
whole period from 2.45 per cent, to 2.46, in
Michigan, from .007 to .008 per cent. In the
same period, Yale has fallen off in Ohio from
3.80 to 3.57 per cent., and in Michigan from
1.27 to 1.05 per cent. I recognize that these
differences are exceedingly slight, but a single
leaf, as well as a whole tree, may reveal the
direction of the Vv^ind.

Yale, however, has still a large lead in the
West. The causes of this present popularity
are as interesting and subtile as the reasons for
the relatively greater popularity in the earlier
generations. I am inclined to think that the
reasons which have existed are still of force.
Sectarian prepossessions are the hardest to

164 The American College.

remove. The West is orthodox. The States
of the West are filled with Congregational,
Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, and Episco-
pal churches. To certain Western men the
word '* Unitarian" means something almost as
harrowing as the word 'Tndian " meant to
their children of forty years ago. Harvard is
no longer a Unitarian college, but the reputa-
tio7i of Harvard as a Unitarian college still
lingers, so hard are sectarian prejudices to re-
move. Further, it is to be acknowledged that
many persons identify Unitarianism with irre-
ligion. Beginning with the assumption that
Harvard is a Unitarian college, they proceed
to the conclusion that Harvard is irreligious.
The chain of their logic has another link.
From the conclusion that Harvard is irreligious
they draw the further inference that it is im-
moral. Harvard has suffered, Harvard is suf-
fering, and Harvard with all its wisdom of ad-
ministration must for a time yet, suffer the
consequences of such prejudices. And yet, as
I have suggested, these prejudices are being
removed. The proportion of Harvard men
coming to live in the West at the present time,
in relation to the number of Harvard men liv-

Its Influence. 165

ing in the West in the last seventy years, is
greater than the number of Yale men of the
same conditions.

In the South the power of Harvard has been
slight, Yale's somewhat, and Princeton's great.
In the college year of 1836-37 Harvard had
233 students, of whom only 19 came from the
South, including such border States as Mary-
land and Kentucky. In the same year Yale
had 511 students, of whom 55 came from the
South and also one quarter of the 55 came
from the central Southern State of Georgia ; at
present less than 2 per cent, of the students of
Harvard are from the South. These figures,
I think, show the relative clientage of the two
oldest New England colleges drawn from the
South. In this same time about two fifths of
all the Princeton students were drawn from the
South. The influence of Princeton in the South
at the beginning of the Civil War was very
great. So many Southern men were in Prince-
ton at the beginning of the war that there was a
decided antagonism to the raising of the Stars
and Stripes over the college buildings, and in
the spring of 1861 the departure of the South-
ern students from '*old Nassau" was a scene

1 66 The American College.

never to be forgotten. Even in the first dec-
ades of the century, the tendency of the boys
of Virginia to go from their State for their
education caused a considerable degree of un
easiness. One writer asserts that he came to
the conclusion that one quarter of a million
dollars was carried each year from the State of
Virginia for the purpose of education.^ A large
share of this amount, no doubt, went into the
coffers of Princeton College. Some of the
most illustrious names on the register of Prince-
ton College are the names of the most illustri-
ous families of the South. The name of
Calhoun is not there, for that is found at Yale.
The names of the Lees, Bayards, Dabneys,
Davies, Pendletons, Breckenridges, Caldwells,
Crawfords, Baches, Hagers, and Johns,^ are
found.

The reason of the mighty influence of Prince-
ton throughout the South is due largely, in my
judgment, to three causes : first, the location
of the college ; second, the ecclesiastical unity
of the people of the South and of the support-

^ Jefferson and Cabell's : University of Virginia^ 157, note.
^ Fotir American Universities^ 99, Chapter by Professor W. M.
Sloane.

Its Influence. 167

ers of the college ; and third, the unity of the
people of certain Southern States with the
founders and the supporters of Princeton.
These three reasons do not require elabora-
tion. Princeton was, of course, nearer to the
South than her sister colleges by the distance
from New Haven or from Cambridge, a dis-
tance much greater formerly than it now is ;
but this fact, although having value, is not the
most significant. The commercial relations of
the South were rather with New York and
Philadelphia than with Boston and other parts
of New England. Intimacy of commercial re-
lations made intimacy of other relations of
course less difficult. College boys go and
come very much along those lines of latitude
and longitude which trade follows. Down to
the time of the foundation of the University
of Virginia, the College of William and Mary
was probably the most influential college in
the South. The record of the statesmen
which this college trained in the colonial period
and in the generation succeeding the Revolu-
tionary period is illustrious. The College of
Wifliam and Mary was under the control of
the Protestant Episcopal Church, and had for

1 68 The American College.

its special purpose the training of ministers for
that Church. In the Presbyterian Church
was the College of Hampden-Sidney, but it
was not strong. The Presbyterian Church
throughout that region of the South, which
was peopled by the Scotch, and the Scotch-
Irish, was of great strength. In Maryland,
Virginia, and the Carolinas, therefore, the
families allied with the Presbyterian Church
would naturally send their sons to a Presby-
terian College, and to the strongest Presbyte-
rian College within their command. That
college was the College of New Jersey. More-
over, as has been said, the people who settled
New Jersey and Pennsylvania, were in a de-
gree of the same race with those who settled
Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas, —
Scotch and Scotch-Irish. They contributed
of their best blood in the building up of
these Commonwealths. These were the libe-
ral colonies to which came people not only
from North of Ireland and from Scotland, but
also fugitives from France, Holland, and cer-
tain parts of Germany. The oneness of the
race contributed toward making the chief Pres-
byterian College in New Jersey the chief col-

Its Influence. 169

lege of the States as far south as South Caro-
lina. The best provincial college in any one
of the States would be the most attractive col-
lege for all the States.

These are at least some of the reasons which
have helped to make the influence of Princeton
great throughout the South. These conditions
have continued in a degree to the present, al-
though their force has been much lessened
since the Civil War. The founding of a uni-
versity at Baltimore, although of an undenomi-
national character, and of one at Nashville,
although not of the Presbyterian order, has
also tended to attract students who might
otherwise have come to Princeton. Yet, in
many parts of the South, Princeton is regarded
with a loyalty and affection which Harvard
receives in Massachusetts and Yale in Connec-
ticut.

In respect to the method of the growth
and use of the influence which the two older
colleges embody there is a deep and striking
contrast. Harvard seems to stand for the prin-
ciple of individuality, Yale for the communistic
or collective principle. This difference runs
back into the conditions of the beginning of

lyo The American College.

the century. The Unitarians had a stronger
and larger following by far in Massachusetts
than in the New Haven or Hartford Colony.
At the beginning of the century the schism in
the Congregational Church resulted in the
great Unitarian movement, — a movement
which represents individuality even more than
the ordinary orthodox Congregational Church
represents it. But in Connecticut not more
than one church became in this time Unitarian,
and the Unitarian denomination has always
had a very small constituency in Connecticut.
In the earlier part of the century in Connecti-
cut that form of ecclesiastical government
known as ** Consociation," a modified Presby-
terianism, had sway ; in Massachusetts the
*' Association," which represents greater indi-
viduality of action, ruled. At Yale, through-
out the century, the class system in the college
has largely obtained ; and in Harvard the elec-
tive system has had the supremacy in the last
generation. Harvard represents rather the
critical side of college allegiance — each gradu-
ate thinks it to be his right to criticise his Uni-
versity ; but of Yale each graduate looks upon
his college as his a/ma mater, and to criticise

Its Influence. 17^

her would be as unfitting as to disparage the
one who bore him. The result has therefore
been that in those athletic sports in which the
individual is the more important, Harvard, on
the whole, has the supremacy, but in those in
which community of action is the more import-
ant, Yale has won. Harvard, therefore, has
been victorious rather in field contests, and
Yale in football, baseball, and in rowing. In
a word. Harvard has stood rather for individu-
ality of action, while Yale has stood for com-
munity of effort.

It is not unfrequently said that Harvard is
the Oxford of the New World, and Yale the
Cambridge. The reason of this discrimination
lies, in my judgment, in the past, in a very sim-
ple matter. Yale in the first half of this cen-
tury, as I have intimated in a former para-
graph, represented with greater fullness the
scientific studies for which the older Cam-
bridge stood, and Harvard the humanistic
studies which received special cultivation at
Oxford. As I have before said, Yale, through
the Sillimans, was holding a large place in
scientific studies long before Gray, or Agas-
siz, or Cooke, began their work in the Cam-

172 The American College.

bridge on the Charles. In the year 1818
George Ripley was considering the choice of a
college. At that time he wrote to his father,
saying :

" I feel emboldened to make the request that, if con-
sistent with your inclinations and plans, I may receive
an education at Yale rather than Cambridge. I may
be thought assuming and even impertment to make this
request. But, sir, I entreat you to consider the thing.
The literary advantages at Cambridge are superior in
some respects to those at Yale. The languages can un-
doubtedly be learnt best at Cambridge. But it is allowed
by many, who have had opportunity to judge, free from
prejudice, that the solid branches may be acquired to as
great perfection at Yale. Cousin Henry, who has had
some information on the subject, says that for mathe-
matics, metaphysics, and for the solid sciences in gen-
eral, Yale is the best." ^

The linguistic and literary training which
Harvard has offered throughout the century
was now at its beginning. For the year when
Ripley entered Harvard was the year when
Edward Tyrrel Channing became Boylston
professor and began that career which did not
close till the year of 185 1, a career which was
of priceless value in the giving of an education

* Frothingham's Geor ge Ripley y 5-6.

Its Influence. 173

to the men who were, in a peculiar degree, to
be the makers of American literature.

"When it is considered that Channing's method reared
most of the well-known writers whom New England was
then producing/' — says Colonel Thomas Wentworth
Higginson, — '^ that it was he who trained Emerson, C. F.
Adams, Hedge, A. P. Peabody, Felton, Hillard, Win-
throp, Holmes, Sumner, Motley, Phillips, Bowen, Lover-
ing, Torrey, Dana, Lowell, Thoreau, Hale, Thomas Hill,
Child, Fitzedward Hall, Lane, and Norton (and I may
add Higginson), it will be seen that the classic portion
, of our literature came largely into existence under him." *

Soon after becoming president of Yale,
President Dwight In an address delivered be-
fore the Phi Beta Kappa Society indicated
what he regards as certain traits of the ideal
Yale man.^ The first element which he names
is ''a certain large-minded and fair-minded
love of truth." Allied to this he suggests
** manliness " or *' the manly sense of duty "
as a second element. A third which he names,
is *' the disposition to estimate both men and
things according to their true value." A
fourth characteristic of the Yale spirit he
describes as '* that union of the intellectual and

* Atlantic Monthly^ December, 1896, 762-763.

2 What a Yale Student Ought to Be, Yale University, 1887.

174 The American College.

emotional elements which keeps them in due
relations to each other." He adds also '*the
genuine Yale man is a gentleman, . . . one
who has the spirit of reverence for what is
good, of kindness towards others, of gentle-
ness and self-sacrifice and honor and truth, of
obedience to that great command which bids
us love our neighbors as ourselves."

But I am confident that the President of
Harvard College, seeking to give a picture of
the elements which make the ideal Harvard
man, would suggest these very same elements
which the President of Yale names. In fact,
these elements are not the property of Yale or
of Harvard. They are the supreme purposes
and principles which rule in every college.
President Dwight disclaims any purpose of
affirming *' that the characteristics of our life
are exclusively found here." Every college
seeks to inspire in each student a *' large-
minded and fair-minded love of truth." Every
college endeavors to arouse ''the manly sense
of duty" in its men. Every college endeav-
ors to train students to '' estimate both men
and things according to their true value."
Every college has for its purpose '* to unite

/ 9^" OF TMK

f UNI VERS

Its Influence. ^l^^i.^

properly the emotional and intellectual elements
of character." Every college seeks to make
each student a '* gentleman.'*

It is, I think, generally confessed that
Harvard has attained a genuine leadership in
American education. This leadership has
been secured largely through the efficiency of
its President. But previous to the accession
of President Eliot, it would, I think, have
been generally said that Yale was enjoying
a pre-eminence. For many years before the
accession of President Eliot the graduating
classes at Yale were larger than those at
Harvard. But about the time that President
Eliot became President and about the time
President Woolsey retired from the office to
which he had given lustre in the twenty-five
years of his administration, it was a matter
of conjecture whi<:h of these two greatest and
oldest colleges should become the progres-
sive, and which the conservative, force in
the higher education. Although Harvard had
had a history more distinguished for mak-
ing experiments, as the elder Silliman once
pointed out, than Yale, yet the greater freedom
from provincialism of Yale, rendered Yale a

176 The American College.

better agency and condition for progressive
educational endeavors. But President Eliot
was chosen President to succeed President
Hill, and President Porter was chosen to
succeed President Woolsey. President Eliot
had became recognized as a teacher of a com-
paratively new science, and President Porter
had been recognized as a teacher of the
oldest of all knowledges. The one was, too,
essentially a man vitally in touch with life ; the
other gave the impression to many friends of
being quite as much interested in the philoso-
phy of the seventeenth century as in the
problems of the present. Under the lead of
President Eliot, who came into office some two
years earlier than President Porter, Harvard
sprang at once into the opening opportunites
of the new education. By this very condition,
Yale was almost obliged to represent the con-
servative tendency.

Of course, progressiveness and aggressive-
ness have their perils, but the conditions of
the times removed these perils from the path-
way of Harvard and its vigorous executive.
For the means of carrying forward progres-
sive and aggressive measures were offered

Its Influence. ^11

through the increasing wealth of the country,
through the increasing demand for well-trained
men in every field of service, and through the
enlargement of the great humanitarian and
scientific studies. If, from 1869 onward, with
brief exceptions, the country had not been
becoming richer, or if the demand for well-
trained men had lessened, or if social science
and political economy and the natural sciences
had not enlarged their boundaries, the results
might have been altogether different from what
they are. In this case, the conservative
policy of Yale would have been the successful
one and the aggressive policy of Harvard
could not and would not have won that
triumph which it enjoys.

It is also significant that the older college has
been the mother of three great movements
in the course of this century. It may not be
unfitting to say that Harvard stands as the
mother of movements, and Yale as the mother
of men. Certainly, these phrases are as well
applied to the colleges of the new world as
they are to the corresponding universities of
the old world.

A movement in an American college must

1 78 The American College.

be carried on under conditions quite unlike
those which obtain in a movement in Oxford
or in Cambridge. It lacks a substantial and
permanent moving force. The English uni-
versity has in its constituency a larger body
of men in permanent association with the
university. The men have those qualities
and relations which residence as graduates or
as fellows gives. They are usually blessed
with more or less of leisure, and they are also
in a more or less intimate touch with the life
outside the university. These men constitute
an excellent body for making a movement of
the social, scholastic, or theological sort. The
three great men of the Oxford movement were
Keble, Newman, and Hurrell Froude, and
these men were all fellows or tutors of Oriel.
The American college has few men in per-
manent association and those who are are mem-
bers of the teaching force. This body is blessed
with leisure in only a very moderate degree.
The more public movements, therefore, which
we find carried on under the auspices of the
American college have usually been move-
ments made by graduates whose formal re-
lations with their college have ceased. In a

Its Influence. 179

few cases these movements have been promoted
by the professors. Not so much as a corpora-
tion, therefore, but as a centre of radiating
influence, has the American college been the
mother of movements.

The three movements, of which Harvard
may be said to be the author in this century,
have had a single key-note — a larger liberty.
The first was a movement for greater liberty in
matters religious ; the second was a movement
for greater liberty in matters philosophical ; the
third was a movement for greater liberty in
matters educational. The first is usually
called the Unitarian movement, the second the
Transcendental movement, and the third is rep-
resented narrowly in the phrase '' The Elective
System." Not infrequently is the third of
these movements called by the comprehensive
phrase ^^The New Education." The first
movement belongs largely to the first quarter
of the century ; the second to the second
quarter ; and the third movement to the third
quarter and the last of the century.

The movement for greater freedom in matters
religious does not begin with the appointment
of Henry Ware as Hollis Professor of Divinity

I So The American College.

in 1805, but his appointment represents the
beginning of aggressiveness in the progress of
this movement. Other appointments followed
the appointment of Ware which, in two years,
says the historian of the Unitarian denomina-
tion, made Harvard '' University conspicuously
the headquarters of intellectual and religious
h'beralism in America." ^ So rapid was the pro-
gress in the next score of years, that in 1823,
when Dr. Lyman Beecher came to Boston, he
was able to say: '*A11 the literary men of
Massachusetts were Unitarian ; all the Trustees
and Professors of Harvard College were
Unitarian ; all the elz'U of wealth and fashion
crowded the Unitarian Churches; the judges
on the bench were Unitarian, giving decisions
by which the peculiar features of church
organization so carefully ordered by the Pil-
grim Fathers had been nullified, and all the
power had passed into the hands of the
congregation." ^

In this movement the graduates and
officers of the University bore the most con-
spicuous part. Its preacher, Channing, was a

^ A History of the Unitarians, Joseph Henry Allen. D.D., i88,
* Quoted in Allen's History^ 194.

Its Influence. i8i

Harvard graduate ; its most powerful apologist,
John Lowell, was a member of the Univers-
ity corporation ; Jared Sparks, the historian,
James Walker, the philosopher, and Andrews
Norton, the exegete, were all Harvard graduates
and already occupied or were to occupy import-
ant places in the government of the Univer-
sity. So thorough was the identification of the
College with the movement, that of seventy-
seven Unitarian preachers sketched in Dr.
Sprague's Annals of the American Pulpit sixty-
seven are graduates of Harvard College. Of
the graduates of Harvard who have served all
churches, Dr. Sprague names two hundred and
ten. Although the number of clergymen in
the Unitarian Church, compared with other
denominations, is relatively small, and although
the time of its specific existence is brief, yet
almost one third of its distinguished clergymen
of the earlier period are graduates of Harvard.
So intimate was the association between the
Unitarian Church and the College that the
College came to be known as a Unitarian
College, a reputation which in recent years it
wisely has been endeavoring to throw ojff and
which it has succeeded in throwing off among

1^2 The American College

^:5"

those who are well-informed, but not among
those who are Ignorant of the conditions.

The second movement which is closely iden-
tified with Harvard is also identified with the
Unitarian movement, even outside of collegiate
relations. For the names which are illustrious
in Transcendentalism are also in no small de-
gree illustrious in the Unitarian movement.
This Transcendental movement was simply an
episode, but while it lasted its effect was power-
ful in the thought and the life of New England.
It was a literary as well as a philosophical
and religious power. Its influence especially
touched social agitations and movements for
reform, but its specific duration was brief
although its echoes are still heard. In its
progress the presence and the power of the
Harvard graduates were most significant. The
seer of Transcendentalism was Emerson, and
Emerson was a Harvard graduate. Its man
of letters was George Ripley, a distinguished
member of a Harvard class not without dis-
tinguished men ; its theologian was Theodore
Parker, a Harvard student and a Harvard
Master of Arts ; its historian was Octavius
Brooks Frothingham, also a Harvard gradu-

Its Influence. 183

ate ; its critic was Margaret Fuller, who felt
the influence of Harvard a great deal more
than some men who were its graduates, and
as much a graduate as any one could be in her
time who was a woman. Of those whom its
historian, Dr. Frothingham, calls minor proph-
ets, William Henry Channing, Samuel John-
son, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, John
Weiss, and Cyrus Augustus Bartol, were all,
with one exception, graduates of Harvard
College, and he, Bartol, was a graduate of the
Divinity School ; and several others had taken
their professional degree as well as their first
degree at the University. While this move-
ment was in progress, the Oxford movement
was also coming to its climax, and it may be
said of Harvard that she was author and pro-
moter of the Transcendental movement quite as
truthfully as it has been said of Oxford that
she promoted the Tractarian movement. In
each case, however, it was men, not Univer-
sity authorities, who urged on the movement;
in each case, too, certain authorities opposed
the movement through ridicule or argument.
It may be added that these two movements
were alike in attracting and holding together

1 84 The American Colles^e

o

for a term of years men of pure character, noble
intellect, high hopes, and rare earnestness, who
trusted that they might achieve great things for
humanity, some through the church and others
through social reform based upon philosophical
principles.^

The third and the last movement of which
Harvard may be called the mother, is that
embodied in the '' New Education.'* This
movement is sometimes called the *' Elective
System." It is a system which has been a neces-
sary growth. Its introduction arose inevitably
from the enlargement of the field of human
knowledge. As the field of human knowledge
has vastly increased, life has not lengthened,
neither has the time which the average student

* In answer to a question respecting the attitude of certain mem-
bers of the Harvard Faculty to this movement, Dr. Edward Everett
Hale writes me as follows :

" The four gentlemen named, Dr. Walker, Mr. Sparks, Mr.
Longfellow, and Mr. Peirce, all knew and were in intimate relations
with Mr. Emerson, Mr. Ripley, Dr. Hedge, and other persons who
would now be spoken of as leaders of the Transcendental movement.
Of them all, Walker took the most interest in it, and did a great deal
in his preaching and in his Lowell lectures, to bring the general
Philistine mind into sympathy vvitli it. To the end of his life Peirce
was a profound philosopher, and believed with enthusiasm in tlie
idea. Mr. Longfellow, I should say, was an artist in his habit of
looking at such matters; and I do not think Mr. Sparks really cared
much about the new tide of life which came in with Mr. Emerson's
great purpose." — Personal letter of E. E. Hale, of 2d January, 1896,

Its Influence. 185

can devote to preparing himself for life in-
creased. Therefore the college authorities
had put before themselves the alternative of
either allowing the student to choose what he
wanted to pursue or to pursue all studies in an
extreme degree of superficiality. The freedom
of choice was found to be the better solution
of the problem. The movement has also a
further condition in a proper psychology
which endeavors to adjust the content and
kind of studies to the human mind, in order
to promote its highest development. At Har-
vard the new education has had a long and
gradual growth. As early as 1825 '* options"
were introduced in the modern languages on
the recommendation of Judge Story. The
next score of years were a time of experiment.
In 1846 Seniors and Juniors were allowed cer-
tain '' electives," and in 1867 this freedom was
granted to the Sophomores, and in 1884 to the
Freshmen. The enlargement of the field of
choice has been gradual and at the present
time it is limited, except in English, only by
the limits of the curriculum. The system has
come to its fullest development in the admin-
istration of the present great president.

1 86 The American College.

This movement for greater intellectual free-
dom has spread from Cambridge into almost
every college throughout the United States.
It has now become an integral part of the
curriculum. The width of its influence and
its power are largely due to Harvard.

It is to be observed that this movement
for the new education is in one respect un-
like the movements for greater religious and
philosophical freedom. The Unitarian and
Transcendental movements were promoted by
Harvard largely through its graduates, but the
movement for the new education has been
promoted almost entirely by those who are
officers of the college. It has been a move-
ment largely carried on by the executive head
aided by the undergraduate faculty.

In the second half of the century that is
now closing, several great colleges have been
founded : several by the States as a part of their
system of education, and several also by indi-
vidual citizens. These colleges are now exert-
ing a wide and great influence, an influence of
a continually increasing power. Other foun-
dations of great strength will doubtless be made
in the future ; but it may be well questioned

Its Influence.

187

whether any one of these colleges, when it has
been in existence even longer than two hun-
dred and fifty years, will be able to show a
more worthy list of graduates, or a record more
splendid, or a service more effective in Ameri-
can life for the betterment of the people, than
the old college in New Jersey, or the yet older
college in Connecticut, or the oldest college in
Cambridge is able now to show.

V.

CERTAIN PRESENT CONDITIONS.

THE higher education in the United
States, like the government of the
United States, is beset by two opposing
movements, the one tending toward the central-
ization and the other toward the division of
forces. We are seeing the rapid and magnificent
growth of a few colleges and universities. The
increase in the number of teachers and students,
in equipment and in endowment, in the last ten
years has been very great. We are also seeing
the founding of many and small institutions.
In the present century we have beheld the
graduating class of Harvard College increase
tenfold, and more. The class graduating the
first year in the nineteenth century numbered
thirty-four, but the present classes of the Col-

i88

Certain Present Conditions. 189

lege Itself are more than ten times this number
and in the whole University those receiving de-
grees at a Commencement approach twenty
times this number. At Yale a similar increase
is manifest, although not so great. In the
year 1838-39 Harvard College had 216 stu-
dents ; Yale, 411; Princeton, 237; and the
University of Pennsylvania, 105. To-day the
graduating classes of most of these institu-
tions far exceed the entire enrollment of sixty
years ago. In fact, the entire number of stu-
dents in the twenty-five principal colleges of
sixty years ago was smaller than is found in
the largest university to-day. An increase in
endowment, correspondingly great, has oc-
curred. I n this period several colleges have suf-
fered a decline in their attendance. Dartmouth
sixty years ago had more than three hundred
students ; Middlebury, one hundred and thirty-
three. There have been recent years when
these colleges have had a smaller number;
although Dartmouth has in the present year
vastly increased. The mighty growth of a
few colleges attracts public notice. The great
individual college becomes conspicuous. The
idea has come to prevail therefore that Ameri-

I go The American College.

can college education has become centralized,
like the American government. Conspicuous,
however, as these examples are, decentraliza-
tion of our educational forces is yet more
characteristic.

For, the present condition of the colleges in
this country may be interpreted by five epi-
thets. They are many, small, poor, sectarian,
and rural. I know very well that these epi-
thets are not to be received as entirely compre-
hensive, but yet they do represent certain very
significant conditions of our higher education.

There are in the United States 695 institu-
tions which confer collegiate degrees. Of these
481 are co-educational or colleges for men
only; 163 are colleges for women only, and
51 are schools of technology. When one
thinks of the 22 universities of Germany and
of the 145 or more gymnasia ; or when one
thinks of the 17 colleges of Cambridge and
the 21 colleges of Oxford, one is impressed
with the vast number of collegiate institutions
which the United States possesses. These
institutions are found in every one of the
States. It is possibly significant that some older
States have the fewer colleges and the newer

Certain Present Conditions. 191

the many colleges. Massachusetts, for in-
stance, has 9, and Missouri has 29 ; Maine
has 4, and Kansas has 16 ; Connecticut has 3,
and Nebraska has 10. This induction that the
newer the State the larger its number of col-
leges, and the older the State the smaller, is
not an absolute truth, for New York has 22,
Pennsylvania 29, and Iowa has the same num-
ber as New York. Indiana has only 14, and
Illinois has only as many as Pennsylvania.
Yet, at the least, it may be said that the newer
States do contain more colleges than the older.
In the entire country there is one institution
for each group of one hundred thousand per-
sons, but in the North Atlantic Division,
which States are of course older, there is only
one institution for every quarter of a million
persons ; whereas in the North Central Divis-
ion there is one institution for less than one
hundred thousand persons, and in the Western
Division, which of course includes the newer
States, there is one institution for less than
every group of seventy thousand persons.
Westward the course of the higher educa-
tion does take its way and it grows wider, ap-
parently, the farther it goes west.

192 The American College.

^:5"

This fact is of great significance. It is sig-
nificant of the mighty grasp which the higher
education has taken upon the mind and heart
of the American people. It is also significant
as containing the promise of the permanence
of the best elements of our civilization. Even
if in the case of making certain foundations
the finest motives have not prevailed, and even
if poverty and insufficiency of various sorts
have been alarming, yet the simple fact of the
establishment of these colleges in the first days
of our new commonwealths, is full of precious
hope of the American people sometime gain-
ing the highest attainments and living the
highest life.

These colleges, which are so many in their
number, are yet small in their enrolment. Of
the 695 institutions that confer collegiate de-
grees, 417 have each less than 100 students in
their collegiate departments. The total num-
ber of students enrolled in all these colleges
is slightly over 60,000. If, therefore, an equal
division were made, each of these institutions
would have a few less than 100 students. Of
course the division is not equal. About two
thirds of the colleges do actually have a smaller

Certain Present Conditions. 193

number than 100 students, and the number of
colleges that have more than 300 students in
their collegiate departments hardly exceeds the
number of our States. In the North Atlantic
Division of our States the number of students
in each institution is about 250; in the South
Atlantic Division the number is about 90, in
the South Central Division the number is be-
tween 90 and 100, in the North Central Di-
vision it is slightly over 100, and in the West-
ern Division it is somewhat under 100. It is,
therefore, evident that the normal American
college is small. Its students are few.

The American college is also poor. These
institutions possess in productive funds one
hundred millions of dollars, and also the value
of grounds and buildings exceeds by a few mil-
lions the same sum. Of these sums almost
one half belongs to the colleges of the North
Atlantic Division, sixty millions belong to the
States of the North Central Division — which
leaves a pretty small sum to be divided among
the South Atlantic, South Central, and West-
ern States. Of these sums of somewhat over
two hundred millions, Massachusetts has one

tenth; New York, one sixth; and Pennsyl-

13

194 The American College.

vania, one fifteenth. Ohio has about one six-
teenth, Indiana has about half as much as
Ohio, and Illinois has an amount equal to
that held by Ohio. Of these 695 institutions,
576 have each less than $200,000 in productive
funds. The colleges of the North Atlantic
States possess fifty-five per cent, of all the pro-
ductive funds invested in the higher education,
and the value of their grounds and buildings
IS thirty-eight per cent, of the entire value of
similar property in the whole country — which
clearly indicates that outside of these States
the American college is poor.

This poverty of the American college is ex-
ceedingly significant, for poverty represents a
lack of capacity for giving an adequate educa-
tion. There was a time when a college could
be poor and still give an education adequate to
its time and conditions. In the middle of the
century, when the Universalist churches were
about to establish Tuft's College, it was in-
sisted that the foundation should not be made
before one hundred thousand dollars were
raised. To-day a college in one of the older
communities would not be justified in opening
its doors to students if it had less than one

Certain Present Conditions. 195

million of dollars in endowment. The enlarg-
ing of the field of scholarship has necessitated
the pecuniary enrichment of the college. Fifty
years ago Columbia College had 10 professors
and 139 students ; Union, 10 professors and
221 students; Hamilton, 6 professors and
tutors and 92 students; Princeton, 12 profes-
sors and tutors and 263 students ; Rutgers, 5
professors and 76 students. The number of
professors necessary for the proper equipping
of a college fifty years ago was one third or
one fourth of the number necessary at the
present time. A proper equipment demands
large revenues. Such revenues can usually be
derived only from large endowments. There-
fore, poverty in endowment means an insuf-
ficient and inadequate teaching force. That,
therefore, the American college is not fittingly
equipped with a proper number of teachers is
an inevitable and necessary inference.

The poverty of the American college be-
comes also significant in relation to the library.
The library of the college may be called its
objective brain. If the library is insuflficient
in number and variety and freshness of books,
or inadequately administered, the education

196 The American College.

which the college gives is insufficient and in-
adequate. But, an adequate number of books
is supplied only through adequate revenues.
Such revenues are lacking in the American
college, and therefore the libraries are insuffi-
cient and usually inefficient. Forty-four per
cent, of all the books in college libraries are
possessed in the States of the North Atlantic
Division and thirty-two per cent, by colleges
of the States of the North Central Division.
It is therefore evident that the colleges of the
other States are obliged to be content with a
bit more than one fifth of all the volumes in
our college libraries. As one's eye runs along
the number of volumes credited to each col-
lege, one is obliged to read such figures as
these : for one college, 5000 ; for another,
5500; for another, 1000; for another 5000;
for another 26,000 ; and so on. It is true that
the equipment of the colleges in respect to the
teaching force and in respect to the library
makes it painfully evident that the American
college is poor.

The American college is also sectarian, or,
if one prefer the word, denominational. Of
all the colleges and universities 109 are non-

Certain Present Conditions. 197

sectarian and 372 are controlled by religious
denominations, as follows : Roman Catholic,
58, Methodist Episcopal, 57, Baptist, 50, Pres-
byterian, 39, Methodist Episcopal South, 25,
Congregational, 25, Lutheran, 23, Christian,
20, United Brethren, 13, Reformed, 8, Friends,
7, Cumberland Presbyterian, 7, United Presby-
terian, 6, Protestant Episcopal, 5, African
Methodist Episcopal, 4, Evangelical, 4, Uni-
versalist, 4, Seventh Day Adventists, 3, Meth-
odist Protestant, 2, Free Will Baptist, 2,
Reformed Presbyterian, 2, South Presbyterian,
I, Christian Union, i, Seventh Day Baptist,
I, African Methodist Episcopal Zion, i. Church
of God, I, New Church, i. Latter Day Saints,
I, Unknown, i. Of the 163 colleges for
women 54 are non-sectarian, and the remaining
109 are denominational and they are as fol-
lows : Baptist, 27, Presbyterian, 22, Methodist
Episcopal, 20, Methodist Episcopal South,
18, Protestant Episcopal, 5, Lutheran, 5, Mo-
ravian, 3, Cumberland Presbyterian, 2, Re-
formed, 2, Christian, 2, Roman Catholic, 2,
Universalist, i. The American college, there-
fore, it is evident, is denominational, and the
leading denominations are blessed with many

198 The American College.

colleges. This ecclesiastical condition is not
surprising, for in all, or nearly all, civilizations,
the priest has been the teacher and the priest
was usually the earliest teacher. The relation
between the discipline and the culture of the
heart and the discipline and culture of the
reason is intimate. Piety and education are
sisters. This close relation that belongs to
religion has been perpetuated in Christianity.
Christianity has organized itself into denomina-
tions. It has organized itself into at least two
great bodies which have special relations to us,
— the Roman Catholic Communion and the
Protestant. The Protestant Communion has
organized itself into numberless churches. To
most people Christianity appeals under the de-
nominational name, and as a propagandist
Christianity has made its progress under the
denominational banner. Most persons who
call themselves by the name of Christian are
members of some individual or denominational
body. Christianity, therefore, in organizing
colleges, has organized them under the de-
nominational relation and name. Whether
this method was wise is not the question.
Whether any other method was possible is not

Certain Present Conditions. 199

the question ; but, that Christianity in organ-
izing colleges has organized them as denomi-
national institutions is evident.

Historically the method is clear enough.
Whenever the territory of any one of our
commonwealths has been receiving settlers,
Christianity in the person of its apostles has
followed the settler into his new home. But
it has not been Christianity free from eccle-
siastical relations. The Christianity that has
followed the immigrant has been denomina-
tional Christianity. It has, in rendering this
service, established the denominational church.
The ministers and laymen of the church have
in each new commonwealth and in each new
condition recognized that the prosperity of the
church depends upon the having of a learned
and progressive ministry. The learned minis-
try, it was recognized, is most easily and
directly secured through the college. The
older colleges in the older States could not
furnish such a ministry. It is well known that
the graduates of colleges usually make their
homes in the parts in which those colleges are
located. College men are not as a class pio-
neers. Therefore for the securing of a suffi-

200 The American College.

cient and adequate ministry every church has
founded its own college in each new State.
Such, in brief, is the ecclesiastical history of
many colleges belonging to each of these great
churches in each of the commonwealths.

It is to be said that, though the ordinary
American college is denominational, in many
colleges the denominational relation does not
manifest itself in the administration of the
college, and much less in the common life
and conduct of the students and teachers.
The denominational character is more or less
evident according to the emphasis placed upon
its own ecclesiastical rights by each church.
It would be usually recognized that the denom-
inational character of the Protestant Episco-
pal college is far more evident than that of
the Presbyterian college. It is also recognized
that the denominational character of the Pres-
byterian college is more evident than that
which exists in the Congregational college. It
is also usually acknowledged, I think, that the
older a college is, and the more numerous and
rich its relationships to the great public life,
the less marked are its denominational charac-
teristics and elements.

Certain Present Conditions. 201

At the present time the denominational
phase is assuming a less important part in
American college life. It is evident that,
although Christianity does manifest itself in
organic forms and relations in the college,
Christianity need not manifest itself under
such forms. The simple fundamental truths
of Christianity are sufficient to form a founda-
tion broad and deep for the building up of the
educational structure. It is also becoming
more clearly understood that the purpose of
the college is not to form a severe ecclesiasti-
cal type of character, but is to form character of
the finest type. The aim is to make man largest,
richest, strongest, best. It is also recognized
that that Christianity which is broadest and
deepest and simplest appeals far more vitally
and puissantly to the young man at college
than the Christianity which makes its appeal
to him through the denominational voice and
manner and teaching. Beyond the Baptist or
Presbyterian or Methodist man, the college
desires that the man, its graduate, shall be a
man of God. It is well content if he be a man
of God, and whether he be an Episcopalian or
a Congregationalist is of minor significance.

202 The American College.

It is also generally confessed that in the ordi-
nary teaching of the college, ecclesiastical
truths have no place. There is no Presby-
terian calculus, or Baptist interpretation of
Horace, or a Congregational Demosthenes, or
a Methodist French or a Methodist German
Literature. Truth is studied in college with-
out reference to sectarian relationships.

Therefore, as the American college is now
organized, the denominational element and
character has an exceedingly narrow and slight
place. Such a remark is the more true usually
as the college is the older and stronger and
larger. Such a remark is the less true, usually,
as the college has smaller resources and fewer
students.

It is to be said that the State University
established in each of our newer States is as
free from denominational and ecclesiastical re-
lations as is the public school system of that
State. In respect to general Christian influ-
ences and conditions it may be said that the
State University is as free from and as subject
to Christian influences as are any public insti-
tutions of learning in that State.

There is a fifth element or condition in the

Certain Present Conditions. 20^

ordinary American college : it is situated in
the country. As the eye runs along the names
of the towns in which the colleges are located,
one finds that nine tenths of these towns are
utterly unknown to the reader. In many cases
the college is the town and the town the col-
lege; in many cases also the college is more
than the town. Every one of us is more fami-
liar with the name of Dartmouth College than
with that of Hanover; with Hamilton than
with Clinton ; with Cornell than with Ithaca ;
with Bowdoin than with Brunswick ; with Col-
by than with Waterville ; but also Williams
and Williamstown, Middlebury and Middle-
bury, Amherst and Amherst, Oberlin and
Oberlin are each equally well known. The
town and the college are identified. In vil-
lages of two and three thousand people, in
towns of five and six thousand people, and in
small cities of ten thousand persons is found
the larger number of our American colleges.
Five of the colleges of Massachusetts are
either in or near large cities. Half of the col-
leges of New York are either in or near large
cities. Nine of the thirty-nine colleges of
Ohio are in large cities, but the other thirty

204 The American College.

are in small cities or villages. In general, the
location of the colleges in Indiana or of Illinois
and of most States impresses one with their
rural character.

Advantages there are in the location of a
college in the country. A rural situation tends
to promote economy in collegiate administra-
tion and in the personal expenses of the stu-
dents. It also fosters constant and close asso-
ciation with nature. It gives, too, freedom
from certain social recreations and forms of
amusement. These are the more ordinary
statements that are urged as advantages that
belong to the country college.

In behalf of the urban situation of the col-
lege it is urged that the student is able to
come into association with the best life of
every kind. The mightiest life of the nation
pours into the city. The best preachers have
here their pulpits ; the best influences of art
and of every form of enjoyment here centre.
The association of man with man becomes
more constant, more close, and more formative
of character. It is also to be said that the
enjoyment of nature is more intense to one
spending a part of his energies and time

Certain Present Conditions. 205

amidst the works of man. The contrast be-
tween the works of God and the works of man
flings man more sharply and profoundly into
the appreciation of natural scenes. It is fur-
ther urged that the great colleges must be in a
city as a rule. No college is great without a
great endowment. The endowment of a col-
lege is usually, though not always, received
from those of its immediate neighborhood.
If, therefore, the college receives at all, it
must receive from its city. The city alone has
the great wealth of the nation. It is also said
that in education the prevailing type is the
university. A university cannot, under ordi-
nary conditions, be equipped in a small town.
It is difficult to secure the proper facilities for
a medical college, for instance, in any other
place than a metropolis. These are some of
the more common statements frequently made
in behalf of the urban location of the college.
The statements made on either side must
be weighed with a good deal of care, and cer-
tain exceptions should be taken to these
statements. For instance, certain statements
that are urged in behalf of the rural location
of a college I should at once dissent from.

2o6 The American College.

On the whole, In my thought, the location of
the college in the city is by far the better.
The location should not be in the midst of the
city, but on its borders, — so near that the great
life of the town can come into the college, and
the students and professors can feel its moving
impulses, and so that also the students them-
selves and the professors can enter into this
great life, helping to qualify it. The location,
also, should be so near the green fields and
forests, that all those delights and all those in-
fluences which belong to nature may enter
into and possess the quiet or the restless soul.
This question as to the rural or urban loca-
tion of a college appeared at the time of the
foundation of what is now known as the Uni-
versity of Berlin. On the part of those favor-
ing a situation in the country it was urged that
the Prussian metropolis offered too many op-
portunities to dissipation, and too many means
of evil temptation, to be made the seat of a
school for young men. This was the judgment
of the Minister Stein. Fichte who became
the first rector, Wolff and others favored the
location at Berlin. No one can now doubt
that the University of Berlin could not have

Certain Present Conditions. 207

become, in certain respects, what it is, the
most important agency of education and of
scholarship in the world, were it placed out-
side of a great city.

Such, in certain exterior and objective and
material relations, is the present condition of
the American college. The American col-
leges are many, the American colleges are
small, the American colleges are poor, the
American colleges are denominational, and the
American colleges are rural. Such an inter-
pretation, thus made, is hardly an object of
glory. That form of higher education which
America has reason to glory in is embodied in
the achievements of such colleges as the older
colleges of Massachusetts, of New York, of
Pennsylvania, and of the strongest colleges of
Ohio and of Illinois, — colleges whose leading
is the finest in their respective commonwealths.
In colleges of this sort we may well exult.
Their triumphs are the triumphs of noble
character and of scholarship. To call the roll
of their graduates is to call the roll of the
greatest men in the most important depart-
ments of life.

The future of the American college, small,

2o8 The American College.

poor, denominational and situated in the coun-
try, is a question of great interest. I know an
Ohio college of this character founded sixty
years ago. It has, in these two generations,
sent forth some six hundred graduates who
have entered into the noblest vocations and
have given best service to humanity. The
college has enrolled eminent teachers. It has
possessed an endowment varying from two to
three hundred thousand dollars. It has re-
ceived no small sum from the fees of its stu-
dents. It is situated in a town of a few
thousand people. One of its professors asked
me :

" What is to be the future of our college ? Our num-
ber of students remains as it was. Our teaching force is
as it has been for a decade or more. Within forty miles
of us are three other colleges. We do not increase our
endowment ; we are not able to build laboratories or to
buy the books necessary for doing the best work. We
can not hold our able professors, and we can not call the
best men to equip our chairs. The advantages and con-
ditions, socially and scholastically, afforded by other
colleges are superior to those which we can maintain.
In a word, our college is small, and poor, and denomi-
national, and rural. Has it a future ? "

For many an hour he and I talked, weigh-

Certain Present Conditions. 209

ing the evidence, putting and answering ques-
tions, offering suggestions. We, as searchers
for the truth, came to the conclusion that the
future of the college is dark. The immedi-
ate future of the college is not dark. For
decades the college can continue its small and
beneficent work. But as the decades go on
and the generations increase, unless there be
some new power, at present unknown, coming
into the life of that college, the college must
become yet smaller and poorer. Its power
will lessen. Its tools for doing its work will
become dull. Its conditions for moulding
character and promoting scholarship will be-
come less puissant. In each generation it will
come a little bit less of a college than before.
** Will the college or shall the college ultim-
ately die ?" we asked, my friend and I, of each
other. As to that matter we each said we did
not know. We, ourselves, shall have been a
long time dead before the college comes to its
dissolution, for it is apparent that colleges, like
individuals, do not like to die. The attitude
which the trustees, w^ho are the large conserva-
tors and the embodiment of the life of the col-
lege, would assume, is somewhat of this sort :

2IO The American College.

" This trust we have received from our predecessors.
This trust they committed to us, not to yield but to ad-
minister. We feel bound both by heart and by conscience
to administer it until we in turn transfer this trust to our
successors. We are also prevented by our constitutional
oaths from surrendering this trust to any other corpora-
tion. We represent a life and this life we are bound to
foster."

The remark is not infrequently made that
the great number of small and poor colleges
found scattered throughout the length and
breadth of the country is to become dimin-
ished ; that colleges small and poor are soon
to die out, others to unite and others still to
pass into the stage of academies. It is to be
said that such an inference is not borne out by
recent history. Of the colleges now in exis-
tence and usually recognized as colleges, one
dates its foundation to the seventeenth cen-
tury, and twenty-two to the eighteenth. All
the remaining ones have been founded in
this century, and as the decades have gone on
the number has increased. In the first decade
were founded four, in the second eight, in the
third twelve, in the fourth twenty-nine, in the
fifth thirty-four, in the sixth seventy-four, in
the seventh — that time of war — eighty-two,

Certain Present Conditions. 211

and since 1870 have been founded the remain-
der. Instead, therefore, of thinking that our
colleges are to become less numerous, we are
obliged by the teaching of recent movements
to face the probability that their number is to
increase. But this fact has in itself certain
elements which may be significant. The older
a State becomes and the better understood
are the conditions of education, the more con-
vinced grow the people that no institution of
higher education should be formed without a
proper endowment. In the States of New
York and Pennsylvania, before a charter can
be given to an institution to confer collegiate
degrees, such an institution must possess a
sum of money aggregating a half million of
dollars. I am convinced that the older any State
becomes the more wise will it seem to the wise
people of that State to have a similar law on its
statute books. Ohio, for instance, has not yet
come into this condition. In the session of the
Legislature of Ohio, of 1895-96, a Senator
bearing a most honored name, introduced a
bill that no institution should have a charter
giving it the power to confer degrees, unless it
had property yielding an annual income of

212 The American College.

fifteen thousand dollars. The bill met with
such opposition from colleges already existing
— strange as it may seem — that the honorable
Senator wrote me, saying there was absolutely
no possibility of its passage.

A young American scholar — who died early
— writing of the higher education in the State
of Tennessee, says :

" Of the making of colleges there is no end. The
curse of higher education in Tennessee is the multipli-
city of so-called * colleges * and * universities.' Nearly
every cross-roads hamlet has, not its academy or high-
school, but its * college.' Many of the schools that
style themselves colleges do not possess the ghost of a
college equipment, either material or intellectual.
Aspiring to do what they can not do at all, they do poorly
what they might do well. Their pupils, deluded into
the belief that they have *been to college,' know of
nothing better and hence aim at nothing better." *

The condition which is so graphically
described as obtaining in Tennessee is spread
through more than one half of all our States.
It is a condition which contains noble and
most promising elements ; but it is a condition
which calls out at once laughter and tears :

' Bureau of Education Circular, " Higher Education in Tennessee."
By Lucius Salisbury Merriam, Ph.D., i8.

Certain Present Conditions. 213

laughter at the failure of those who arrogate
to themselves great functions to know even the
significance of these functions, and tears at the
great harm which is thus done to the cause of
genuine and high learning.

But for Americans, and especially for
Americans in the newer States, the duty is clear.
This duty is to promote the growth of a few
great institutions. The unity of American
education is to be recognized. The power of
one college — Harvard — is greater than the
power of ten colleges each having one tenth of
the endowment and one tenth of the professors
and one tenth of the students of the univer-
sity on the banks of the Charles. The influence
of Oxford, or the influence of Cambridge, is far
more vital and pervasive and puissant than
their influence would be if their colleges were
scattered through the counties of England.
The influence of a college grows in a geometri-
cal ratio as its endowment and professors and
students increase in an arithmetrical. It is
the duty of all to endeavor to establish a few
great institutions in our great country.

It is interesting to find that President Quincy,
of Harvard, held a half-century ago a similar

214 The American College.

opinion. This opinion he expressed in the
last chapter of his History of Harvard Uni-
versity, published in 1840. He says:

" In every section of country, which is great
either from extent, or numbers, or wealth, there is a
natural ambition to concentrate within its own immedi-
ate vicinity or influence, as far as possible, all the great
institutions of society ; and a college or a university as
well as others. Undoubtedly, some local accommoda-
tion will always result, or some local or personal interest
be served, by such an arrangement. But the great
interests of the public, in respect to the advancement of
the intellectual power, require a conduct regulated by-
different principles. * It is better,* says Lord Bacon,
* in a fair room, to set up one great light, or branching
candlestick of lights, than to go about with a small
watch-candle into every corner.' "

The interests of society demand that the
number of the greater seminaries of science
should be few ; that they should be highly en-
dowed, and so constituted as to become, if
possible, the common centre of action to those
minds of great power, which in every passing
period exist in a community. Such great
seminaries of learning are the natural central
fires of science, whence intellectual light and
heat radiate for the use and comfort of the

Certain Present Conditions. 215

whole land. From the known laws of mental
action, intellect enkindles intellect ; and, of
consequence, minds brought into connection
and joint action at a centre disperse more and
stronger rays, and send them farther, than the
same minds could possibly do, if solitary, or
scattered in small groups over the surface of
the country.

It is without question a great and import-
ant truth, that the higher seminaries of science
and literature in every country should be en-
dowed in the most liberal spirit, and to the
greatest requisite extent ; and, as a conse-
quence, it is essential that they be few ; other-
wise, the struggle for public patronage will be a
scramble among local literary and religious
factions, in which all may get something, and
no one of them get enough ; and the spirit which
should lead the community to high intellectual
eminence, degenerates into a low and mean
spirit of selfish solicitation or factious intrigue.^

Signs abound that we are yet to see the
growth of a few great colleges. Out of a
selected list of forty-six colleges of New Eng-
land and the Middle States the attendance in

^ Quincy's History of Harvard University, ii., 452-3.

2i6 The American College.

the twenty-five years between 1868 and 1893
doubled. But the attendance for the six
largest of these colleges has almost quadrupled.^
The large colleges have grown larger at a rate
of increase almost twice that by which the
smaller colleges have increased.

It is also to be said that a very strong objec-
tion to the development of a few and great and
therefore widely separated colleges is found
in the fact that colleges to a large degree
make their own constituency. Many men go
to a college that is found within twenty-
five miles of their home who would not go to
college at all were there no college within that
radius. The college educates its neighborhood
to the need of itself and to an appreciation of
the worth of an education, such as it is able to
give. This consideration is supported by the
fact that more than one half of the students
of Harvard are drawn from Massachusetts ;
one third or one fourth of the students of
Yale are drawn from Connecticut; forty per
cent, of the students of Amherst — situated

^ * * The Future of the College. " A paper read before the Associa-
tion of Colleges and Preparatory Schools at Baltimore, Dec. i, 1894,
by Talcott Williams.

Certain Present Conditions. 217

midway between New Haven and Cambridge,
— are drawn from Massachusetts. In any
argument for the development of a few and
great colleges, this fact of the college educating
its own constituency to an appreciation of the
worth of the opportunity it gives is not to be
overlooked.

It would yet make vastly for the betterment
of American scholarship and of American
character if we were all content with a hundred
colleges and universities in this country. I
know that instead of saying a hundred not a
few would say fifty. I do not fail to recognize
the difficulties in any such concentration and
consolidation of force ; but such consolida-
tion and concentration represent that system
which has the most power with the least fric-
tion, that method which brings the largest re-
sults with the smallest expenditure. I do not
fail to recognize, either, the worth of person-
ality, nor the advantages that accrue to stu-
dents in solitude. It is the duty of Americans,
then, first, to use every endeavor to prevent the
foundation of more colleges ; second, to unite,
if it be possible, certain ones of those now ex-
isting ; third, to strengthen the colleges already

2i8 The American College.

great, well endowed, well established, and well
situated — to make these not only great but the
greatest possible. We should unite all the
fires of our scholarship in a few central suns
rather than scatter them as star dust through
the scholastic heavens.

Such colleges, unlike our present ones,
would have many students. Such colleges,
unlike our present ones, would have large en-
dowments, noble laboratories, great libraries.
Such colleges, unlike our present ones, would
not be primarily denominational, but they
would be primarily, vitally, fundamentally,
profoundly Christian. Such colleges would be,
unlike our present ones, not situated in the
country, but located on the borders of great
towns, where all the mighty and best life of
the nation can enter into them.

To such a result the movements of the cen-
turies will tend. The drift of the present time
may be antagonistic, but the history of Eng-
land, and the history of Germany, and the
history of the great civilizing movements of
our own government, assure us what is to be
the ultimate result.

VI.

CERTAIN ADJUSTMENTS OF ITS

ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS FORCES

TO ITS INTELLECTUAL.

THAT man is a unit, is a truth having
value in college instruction and life.
Even if the more immediate purpose
of the college be intellectual, yet the college
cannot secure this intellectual purpose unless
all the parts of man's nature are properly ad-
justed to each other. One cannot attain in-
tellectual results unless the feelings are in a
proper state, and the will also fittingly di-
rected. If the appetites are riotous, the power
of reflection is disturbed. If the desires are
toward the base, the power of imagination is
weakened. If the affections fail to be properly
directed and of proper strength, the power of

219

220 The American College,

^^^^^^..^..-p^ception is lessened. Man is one. His

powers ^TR^tn hp kppf in pqnjijhrnim For

^>-«i'poscs of convenience we divide and subdi-
vide the various faculties of man ; but it is
never to be forgotten by or in the college that
the man who sees truth is the same man who
feels its impressiveness and who chooses its
duties.

These general propositions prepare the way
for certain statements in detail. The training
of the intellectual nature should promote the
training of the ethical, and the training of the
ethical the training of the religious. The in-
tellectual man is the man who is reflective,
who sees truth, who is rich in knowledge.
Such a man should find it easy to do the right,
and the man who does the right is the man
who should find it easy to be religious. Obe-
dience to the law of right prepares one to
obey the law of God, which is the right.

Such reasoning has not always been assented
to. Too often has it been thought that intel-
lectual strength does not lead to ethical power,
and that ethical power is not a stepping-stone
to the acceptance of what may be called specific
Christian truth. But to-day we are learning

Adjustments of its Forces. 221

that the best intellectual conditions promote
the best ethical, and the best ethical the no-
blest Christian. We cannot think that the
man who is low in his thoughts and base in
his imaginations is the man best fitted to attain
to the ethical verities. We have learned, too,
that aesthetics has a pretty close relation to
morals ; the man who sees and who delights in
the beautiful is the man who the more easily
comes to see and to delight in the great law
of righteousness. It may also be observed as
a reverse side of the same general truth, that
allegiance to Christian truth prepares one for
allegiance to the ethical verities, and that hold-
ing to the ethical verities is itself a good prep-
aration for loyalty to all intellectual truth.
That change in the being of a man which is
called conversion, a change which is immedi-
ately limited to or which immediately affects
the will and emotions, is often a change result-
ing, also, in an intellectual new birth. All the
parts of human nature act and react each upon
the other. No enlightenment dawns upon the
intellect but it affects the heart, and no effect
is produced upon the heart but it may necessi-
tate acting on the part of the v/ill. So, also,

222 The American College,

every act on the part of the will may result
in effects on the appetites, the desires, the pas-
sions, the affections, and also, in turn, may
itself cause a baptism of power upon, or a dis-
integration of, the intellect.

Great changes are occurring in the religious
life of colleges as there are occurring great
changes also in the general intellectual life.
Perhaps the chief element of change in the
Christian life of the college consists in the de-
cadence of the revival. The revival has ceased
to be a normal part of the life of many a nor-
mal Christian college. The revival was for-
merly a part of the life of the Christian college.
In Yale College, in the ninety-six years fol-
lowing the great revival of 1741, there were
*' twenty distinct effusions of the Holy Spirit,
of which three were in the last century, and
seventeen in the present." ^ The history of
Yale College for one hundred years in this
respect is the history of the larger number of
our older colleges. In Dartmouth College, in
the space of sixty-five years there were nine
revivals of religion. Prof. W. S. Tyler says :

' ** Narrative of Revivals of Religion in Yale College," by Pro-
fessor Goodrich, Quarterly Register ^ X., 310.

Adjustments of its Forces. 223

" No class has ever yet left Amherst College without
witnessing a powerful revival of religion, and scarce a
year has passed without some special interest in the
church, and more or less conversions." *

But this passage was written forty years ago ;
and it must now be said that the revival has
ceased to be an integral part of the life of many
Christian colleges. Revivals do not occur
now with the frequency or with the extensive-
ness of the former time.

The reason of the decadence of the revival
in the American college is manifold. One
cause lies in the change in ordinary society.
Revivals are less frequent in the Church than
they were. It is also to be said that men do
not approach each other with the earnestness
or the urgency of the former time in reference
to what is frequently called the question of
personal salvation. We no longer ask a man,
''Are you saved?" Rather we now ask him,
*' Are you willing to do some work to help men
to be better men ? " The change is sociological.
We have a feeling that to ask a man, ''Are
you saved?" is to approach him upon a very
selfish ground, but to ask him to aid in some

^ Prayer for Colleges^ 132, 133.

224 The American College.

Christian work is to approach him upon the
noble ground of Christian altruism. It is
simply what is in some places called a ** conse-
cration " service which was held some time ago
at the opening of a college year at Harvard
College. Men at that meeting made to each
other a pledge that they would do some work
to help men to be better in the new college
year. And what was that pledge, but that
they would devote themselves to the work to
which Christ gave himself, and what was this
devotion but a pledge of Christian consecra-
tion ? The meeting did not seem to be a re-
vival meeting or a consecration meeting, but
it was in essence such.

Another cause of the decadence of the re-
vival in college is the increasing prevalence of
the conviction that religion is life, and that
life is personal and permanent, and does not
lend itself to the methods of the revival. This
conviction is suggested by Bishop Brooks in
an essay, read a short time before his death, in
which he said ^ :

" Men who believe that natural science and political
economy may be satisfactorily expounded by the pro-
^ Essays and Addresses^ 204.

Adjustments of its Forces. 225

fessor to his class of pupils believe that religion is un-
teachable. Some sense of the fineness and subtlety and
also of the intense personalness of spiritual truth makes
it seem incommunicable. It must lose its essential qual-
ity as it passes from lip to ear, from mind to mind.
This misgiving shows itself in a crude way in the familiar
talk of many people who, holding a true Christian faith
themselves, declare that they will never undertake to
teach their children to be Christians. The children
must find their own faith as they grow up. They must
think for themselves."

In this conviction Bishop Brooks did not sym-
pathize ; but with its prevalence he was famil-
iar. This conviction is probably more general
and stronger in the college than elsewhere.

A further cause of decadence of the revival
lies in a doubt on the part of many college
officers of the truth of certain specific Christian
doctrines. There was formerly a good deal of
superficial believing. There is now a good
deal of superficial doubting. But mixed in
with the present superficial doubting is a great
deal of fundamental Christian believing. Many
college officers doubt, for instance, whether
Moses wrote the Pentateuch ; or perhaps I
may say that most college officers believe that

he did not write it. But there is no doubt
15

226 The American College.

among most college men that the Bible is in a
special sense the book of God. There is a
good deal of doubt as to certain statements
which are made in many creeds ; but there is
no doubt among most college people as to the
fundamental principles underlying the state-
ments of the creeds. But because of the cur-
rent doubt of the more evident statements,
college teachers hesitate to talk personally
with their students on religious subjects.

Yet the college is an agent for the training
of the character of the individual man. Char-
acter is a unity. With the decadence, therefore,
of the revival it is of mightily serious conse-
quence to ask — By what means can the college
train the ethical and the religious character of
its men ?

The answer lies, at least in part, in the truth
that these ethical and Christian relations are
to become normal, consistently strong, and
constant. The method of training is through
the ordinary means of the college. These
agencies are to be made ** means of grace."
The common, daily intellectual intercourse
offers the best opportunity for the securing of
the ethical and Christian advantages which

Adjustments of its Forces. 227

were formerly secured by the somewhat ab-
normal revival.

There are at least three constant conditions
or methods by which this ethical and religious
training can be secured : First, through the
content of studies ; second, through the method
of instruction ; and third, through the general
spirit or atmosphere of the college.

The content of certain studies offers an ad-
mirable opportunity for the giving of an ethi-
cal discipline. Literature has tremendous
ethical importance, and literature represents a
large part of the content of the training of a
college. The noblest part of a nation's char-
acter is impressed in its permanent literature.
The ignoble in literature is rotten ; it van-
ishes. The pure, the true, the worthiest is vital ;
It endures. The literature of the Greek and
of the Roman which we have, has lasted these
two thousand and more years, simply because it
is strong in intellectual truth and pure in moral
impressiveness. The most lasting literature
must embody the best humanity. Humanity
will not treasure from age to age anything but
the best. These general truths receive special
illustration in English literature. The dom-

2 28 The American College.

inant note in English literature is ethical. Its
chief words are, as a professor in one of our
colleges has said, the words Right, Duty.
Goodness is made mightier than greatness, or
rather, goodness is interpreted as an essential
part of greatness. The life of English litera-
ture is, certain writers say, longer, too, than
the literature of any other people ; and this
continuity impresses the reader with the truth
that the rational conviction of duty is the
great principle of life. Swift may be coarse
and Byron shameless, but the masters, begin-
ning with Shakespeare and ending with Ten-
nyson, strengthen the belief in the ethical and
the spiritual. English literature is serious.
It is pervaded v/ith a sense of human responsi-
bility. It deals with questions of the migh-
tiest import in human life and action. This
sense of responsibility gives to it a sense of
sincerity. The fantastic has had a short life
and has held narrow sway. The long record
of our literature helps also to give a per-
spective which enables a student to trace the
conflict of ideas to partial or complete victory
or to partial or absolute defeat. He thus learns
the power of an idea, beneficent or malevolent,

Adjustments of its Forces. 229

over human minds. It is never, further, to be
denied that high art is itself a moral agency.
The literature of the English race is a form of
art. It embodies the beautiful under con-
ditions of sincerity and of seriousness.

Thus it is clear that the content of English
literature helps to impress ethical truths upon
the student. It may be added that the study
of the methods of a writer is potential over a
student. Every involuntary revelation of an
authors own character in his composition
warns the student of the subtlety of self-be-
trayal. The intangible but sure evidence of
insincerity teaches him that there is no safety
except in integrity of heart. As he sees the
artifices of others fail them, he comes to hesi-
tate to use subterfuge in the expression of his
own thought or in his thought itself. He him-
self in his writing becomes frank, genuine,
direct. He becomes a serious thinker; he
becomes a serious man.

The ethical value of the content of studies,
so forcibly illustrated in English literature, ap-
pears in other subjects. What can give a
stronger ethical and spiritual impression to the
student than philosophy? Philosophy con-

530 The American College.

cerns itself with the most fundamental truths
of the being of man — his own existence, his
responsibiHty for himself ; the relation which
all the past bears to him ; the relation which
he bears to the future, God, immortality, free-
dom— these are questions of which no man
can think without receiving impressions which
relate most directly and fundamentally to the
moral and religious nature of the individual.

Ethical lessons of tremendous importance
are also among the most significant teachings
of history. Obedience to the law of right as it
tends to build up a people, and obedience to
the law of wrong as it tends to disintegrate a
nation, are the two opposite principles out of
which the annals of any people may be written.
Every student who reads history with his eyes
and not with his prejudices may receive a tui-
tion in ethics of priceless worth.

Even the ethical content of mathematics
seems to me of the greatest value, for what is
mathematics but absolute truth ? It is man
seeing truth as God sees it. From this per-
ception of truth is deduced the great law of
right. Intellectual accuracy is akin to moral
honesty. The elder Professor Peirce once put

Adjustments of its Forces. 231

down upon the blackboard of a recitation-room
a formula and said : '' That is the formula by
which God created the universe." Mathe-
matics represents the truth of God to the
mind of man.

The sciences even in their content have an
ethical import. Biology through the revela-
tions of the microscope, and astronomy through
the revelations of the telescope, one dealing
with what may be called the infinitely small,
and the other dealing with the infinitely im-
mense, tend to awaken such a profound feeling
that they cannot but have an effect upon
morals. Who can contemplate ' the develop-
ment of life as biology exhibits it without be-
ing filled with wonder and adoration for its
author ; and who can think of the phenomena
of the celestial system without a certain eleva-
tion of mind and heart of the noblest character ?

Thus the content of a study has great
ethical value. But the method of teaching
or of studying has ethical value also great.
The ethical value of the methods of science is
as great as the ethical value of the content of
literature. The late Professor Cooke said : ^

* Credentials of Science ^ 1 19-120.

232 The American College.

" I would that I could also give an adequate concep-
tion of the great amount of conscientious work which is
expended on the deductions of science for the sole love
of truth. Were it possible, I am sure that your respect
for the scientific investigator would be greatly increased
and your belief in his sincerity established, however mis-
taken you may at times deem his opinions or his judg-
ment. Of course in the cultivation of science, as in
every other pursuit of life, there is abundant room for
the display of unworthy motives and ignoble passions ;
but I venture to assert that there is no class of men in
the world among whom is found more unselfish devotion
and more personal sacrifice than among the great army
of scientific workers. The love of abstract truth may be
a much lower motive than the love of man, but it equally
calls forth the very noblest qualities of the mind. More-
over, in most cases the constancy and courage of the
scientific investigator meet with no reward except the
satisfaction which unselfish duty conscientiously dis-
charged always brings ; and, as Professor Tyndall has
said, * There is a morality brought to bear on such mat-
ters which in point of severity is probably without a
parallel in any other domain of intellectual action.* **

The same ethical advantage is found in
every scientific subject. As already said, in-
tellectual qualities have moral value. The
study of such a subject as physics has an ethi-
cal value through the development of patience
caused by pursuing a tedious research and in
surmounting unexpected difificulties ; through

Adjustments of its Forces. 233

the development, also, of carefulness in plan-
ning a course of experiment, in proyiding for
any possible contingency, in keeping a com-
plete and systematic record ; through the de-
velopment of honesty, in holding the mind
balanced and unbiased, not juggling with nor
manipulating results, not embracing one theory
or explanation more than another until all the
facts have been examined and given due weight ;
through the development of caution in dis-
cussing results and in drawing conclusions.
Physics has for its chief condition precision,
and the intellectual quality of precision pro-
motes the same ethical quality.

The ethical value of scientific studies is com-
prehensively described in both content and
method by a distinguished teacher of science,
who says : ^

"The object which the scientific investigator sets be-
fore him is to ascertain the truth. He is devoted to it,
and pursues it with unremitting toil. But this is not all.
He not only seeks truth, but he must be true himself.
It is difficult to conceive of any circumstances which
would induce him to play a dishonest part in scientific
research. He has every inducement not only to accu-

^ Prof. H. S. Carhart, of University of Michigan, at dedication of
Hale Scientific Building, University of Colorado, 9 March, 1895.

234 The American College.

racy, but to honesty. He may unwittingly blunder and
fall into error, but if he is untrue he is certain to be ex-
posed. No discovery is permitted to go unverified. It
must undergo the searching examination of scientific in-
quiry. The investigator must submit his data, and must
seek to have his results confirmed. There is, therefore,
every inducement for him to be absolutely truthful.
This condition imposes upon him also the habit of con-
servatism and moderation in statement. He is not ex-
pected to plead a cause or to make the most of the
occasion for himself. In this regard his position is in
contrast with those whose profession makes them the
allies of faith, but whose moderation is not always
known to all men ; for their assertions are not brought
to the touchstone of revision and justification, and the
released word flies over the unguarded wall. The habit
of the scientific investigator is to subject every question
to the scrutiny of reason, and to weigh probabilities.
He obeys the injunction, * Prove all things ; hold fast
that which is good.' He respects conscience, but has
no use for credulity. He exhibits devotion to principle,
but dogmatism, whether in science or religion, has no
place in his creed. He looks not only upon the things
which are seen, but also upon the things which are un-
seen. You may suffer me to remind you that the most
noted American atheist is not a man of science, while
one of the forceful books of modern times. The Unseen
Universe, which aims to lay a foundation for belief in a
future life without the aid of inspiration, was written by
two distinguished physicists. Science examines the
foundations of belief. It takes nothing from mere tra-
dition, on authority, nor because it is an inheritance

Adjustments of its Forces. ^35

from the past. It admits its own limitations and the
somewhat circumscribed boundaries set to the field of its
inquiries ; but within this province it seeks to ascertain
only the truth. It recognizes not only the promise and
potency of matter, but the power which makes for
righteousness/'

But it is still to be said that the general
atmosphere of a college as well as the content
of studies and the method of teaching may-
promote an ethical and spiritual impressive-
ness. If teaching be human, and large, and in-
spiring, it promotes an atmosphere in which
definite and individual ethical truths become
of tremendous importance. If teachers also
are men of the noblest living, as they usually
are, the force of example is great in drawing
students up into the best ethical conditions and
helping them to live the best life. The pres-
ence of such a teacher as President Hopkins,
of Williams College, was of priceless worth to
the students. Dr. McCosh did quite as much
for the ethical and religious Interests of Prince-
ton through his presence and through the mani-
festation of his personal character, as through
his instruction in the class-room. The power
of this general atmosphere is well expressed
by Prof. John Bascom :

236 The American College.

" Carry a man onward, sweep him upward, whether by
a pervasive sense of natural law or of divine grace, — will
any one tell me exactly what is the real difference be-
tween them, so that the two shall not glide into each
other while one's eye is upon them — and before he is
aware he is earnest, reverential, devout. The wisdom
that is buoyant, lifting the man that entertains it, carries
teacher and taught alike heavenward. . . . Scarcely
anything is shut out from a man by the form of an insti-
tution ; and scarcely anything is conferred upon him by
its form. . . . There must be moral elevation in our
educational life, and elevation always declares itself. It
is by elevation that nature ignites our thoughts, and
hushes our words into awe." *

All ethical instruction is in a sense Chris-
tian ; and all Christian teaching may properly
be called the development and the blossoming
of the ordinary ethical instruction.

We have in America three types of what
may be called the Christian college. One type
is the denominational— a college founded by a
Church and the servant of that Church. Such
was the original Harvard. Such are many
colleges established In the western movement
of the people. One type is that of a broad-
church Christianity, such as I interpret Will-

* Williams College Centennial Anniversary, 72-73.

Adjustments of its Forces. 237

iams and Dartmouth to represent; and one
type is a Christianity such as I understand
the ordinary State university to embody.
Now as to the best way of making the col-
lege Christian, to whichever of these three
types it may belong, it is to be said that Chris-
tianity should not be a department of a col-
lege. Christianity is not so much a science
as it is a life ; Christianity is still an incar-
nation. Yet as the Old Testament came be-
fore the incarnate Christ, and as the New
Testament followed his presence, so also the
text-book may at once precede the Christian
life of the college, and may also supplement
and nourish it. The Christian college may,
therefore, make and keep itself Christian first
and always through the life of the men in col-
lege, and, secondly, through instruction in the
content of Christianity. Courses, moreover, on
theism, on the supernatural origin of Christian-
ity, are germane to the purpose and work of
the Christian college. Theology itself is also
simply a department of philosophy. The Old
Testament is quite as worthy of study, as em-
bodying the history of a people which has
supremely influenced the world, as many parts

238 The American College.

of the early history of Rome. The ethical
and religious teachings of Pauls Epistles, too,
are quite as well worth reading for their intel-
lectual value as the epistles of Seneca. The
college, also, in a third way, should make itself
Christian. The atmosphere of a college has
more value possibly in the promotion of Chris-
tian ideals than specific instruction. Of course,
this atmosphere is created very largely by the
men in the college. It is said of Dr. Arnold
that it was his ambition to compass an educa-
tion which was not based upon religion, but
was itself religious. And Professor Bascom,
from whom I have already quoted, also finely
says that the best way for a Christian college
to fulfil its function in training young men to
take a successful part in society is

" certainly not by an ism ; hardly by a prescribed
method ; undoubtedly by a steady leading of all knowl-
edge, in its ample and manifold forms, into a knowledge
of man ; by the constant gathering of truth into the ulti-
mate truth of a spiritual universe ; by subduing and ex-
panding action, personal, economic, and civic, into the
fellowship of man with man in righteousness ; by gather-
ing all things and being gathered of all into the kingdom
of God." '

^ Williams Cohege Centennial Anniversary ^ 77-78.

Adjustments of its Forces. 239

The college is supposed to be a community of
gentlemen. The atmosphere of the life of a gen-
tleman pervades the college. Let it be known
and felt that the typical gentleman is the high-
est type of the Christian. The college is not
so much to teach Christianity as to be Chris-
tian. The old custom that prevailed in many
colleges of giving up the regular college work
for the sake of holding a revival, a custom still
observed in certain colleges, is, on the whole,
thoroughly bad. It tends to show that the
Christian life stands apart from other life.
Rather the purpose of the college is to show
that all life is to be Christian, and that to
follow the Christ is not to turn one's back
upon one's set tasks, but to have the mo-
tive and the force of Christ in doing these
tasks.

Thus I believe that the American college is
to gather up and to conserve and to make
forcible the ethical and the Christian. It is to
accomplish these highest purposes through the
use of the ordinary means. When a recently
held Roman Catholic Congress passed a re-
solution that *' in the elevating and directing
influence of the Christian higher education

HO The American College.

. . . we recognize the most potent agency
for the wise solution of the great social
problems now facing mankind," it was simply
saying that the Christian higher education in its
ordinary condition and powers was most potent
for this supreme work. This work is to be
done in the large spirit of earnestness, of
devotion, and of love. Oxford and Cambridge
were established as ecclesiastical foundations.
Their ecclesiastical relations have now been
somewhat eliminated. The American college
was never an ecclesiastical foundation in the
sense in which the oldest English universities
were. The American college was and is a
Christian foundation ; was and is an intellectual
foundation ; and was and is also an ethical
foundation. But these three aspects of the one
institution are not to be separated. As the
college is intellectual it promotes the ethical and
the Christian purpose. As the college is an
ethical agency it takes hold of the intellectual
relations of man, and also of his Christian
beliefs and principles. And as the college is
Christian it must base itself upon the intellect-
ual powers and also upon all ethical truth.
The college of the future that is the worthiest

Adjustments of its Forces.

241

will unite in any description of itself the three
epithets, intellectual, ethical, and Christian,
into the one comprehensive epithet, human.
For humanity is the expression of God, as it
is his creation.

16

^

s

^^-

VII.

THE INCREASING COST OF ITS
EDUCATION.

THE increase in the number of students
in American colleges in the last two
generations should be still further aug-
mented. The period of education, too, should
be lengthened for most boys and girls, men
and women. Of the students at any one time
enrolled in the public schools of the United
States only twelve per cent, graduate, and the
private academies and seminaries exhibit as low
a percentage of graduates as seven. Many
college classes show a decrease of one fifth,
and I have known classes to summon only one
half as many men upon the Commencement
platform as stood together in the Freshman
year. We ought to do all that can be done to
have the pupils of the grammar-school enter

242

Increasing cost of its Education. 243

the high-school, to cause students of the high-
school to complete the course, and to urge
graduates of the high-school to take degrees at
the college.

It is never to be denied that many men and
women do not want a college education.. It
is also to be granted that if a person does not
want a college course the college does not
want him as a student. He would probably
be hurt by the college, and he certainly would
hurt the college. And yet most persons would
be glad of an education if it could be had.
The most evident reason which prevents
worthy men who desire a college training
from getting it is the cost. Mr. Benjamin
Kidd says :

" Even from that large and growing class of positions
for which high acquirements or superior education is the
only qualification, and of which we, consequently (with
strange inaccuracy), speak as if they were open to all
comers, it may be perceived that the larger proportion of
the people are excluded — almost as rigorously and as
absolutely as in any past condition of society — by the
simple fact that the ability to acquire such education or
qualification is at present the exclusive privilege of
wealth." '

* Social Evolution y 233.

244 The American College.

In one view of the question the cost of a
college education is high. The average cost
to the student per year at the better college is
larger than the total income of the average
American family. The cost, too, has greatly
increased. I have lying before me tables
which indicate the cost of education in certain
respects at three such old and representative
colleges as Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth since
their foundation.^ I shall begin with the former,
and with the first decades of the century.

From 1825-30 the average annual expenses
of a student at Harvard were $176, of which
half went for tuition and half for board and
room ; from 1831-40 the average was $188.10 ;
from 1840-48, $194 ; 1849-60, $227 ($138 went
for board and room) ; in the sixties the price
jumped from $263 to $437, two thirds of
which went for board and room; in 1881-82
the average expense to an economical student
ranged from $484 to $807, the latter sum in-
cluding a few more material comforts, and
in recent years these last figures have been
slightly reduced.

At Yale the increase of expenses has been

^ These statements have been compiled from the old catalogues
and other official statements.

Increasing cost of Its Education. 245

nearly in the same ratio, the average for the
first year of the third decade being $175, and
the average for 1893 being $687.50.

Eleven catalogues of Dartmouth College
which I examined mention no expenses prior
to 1822, in which year the cost of tuition was
$26, other expenses amounting to about $75.
This scale of expense changed little until 1862,
when tuition cost $51, and other expenses
amounted to about $101. In 1892 the figures
were higher, tuition being $90 and other ex-
penses about $191.

At the risk of inflicting too many figures
upon the reader I venture to give certain fur-
ther facts in reference to the increase of bills
at a few other colleges. In 1830 the total ex-
penses per student at Waterville, Hamilton,
Amherst, Brown, and the University of Penn-
sylvania ranged from $84 at the first named to
$180 at the last; in 1893 from $275, or more,
at Waterville to $335, or more, at the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania. President Lord, of
Dartmouth, wrote in 1830:

" Our students have just now commenced reform with
an excellent spirit in regard to their diet. Several board-
ing-houses have been opened upon the principle of strict

246 The American College.

temperance, and perhaps fifty or sixty young men have
good living for $1 to $1.1 2|^ per week. It may be under-
stood that boarding may now be had in our most respect-
able families for $1, the student consenting to a moderate,
but in all respects sufficient bill of fare, and which will
insure the * 7ne7ts sana in corpore sano* "

These facts necessitate the conclusion that
every element of the cost of an education has
in the last sixty years increased three or four
fold.

The following notes, taken from the College
books of Harvard, show the contrast between
the simplicity of its early days and the more
costly necessities of the present :

1667. — "The cook, receiving provisions from y® Steward
at current prices, shall deliver the same out, to y*
scholars, advancing an halfe penny upon a penny.*'
" The Butler, receiving his beer from y^ Steward,
single beer at 2^, & double beer at 4^ y® barrell, shall
advance 4"* upon y® shilling.'*

1702.— Steward allowed to ch'ge two pence 3 farthings
for each " part."

1724, Apr. 14. — Steward may charge 6 pence ^qt part the
current quarter.

1732, Nov. 7. — Food increased : Steward may charge 10
pence half penny for a part at noon : other meals
remain the same.

1737, Apr. 6. — Provisions dear : so charged 16** a part at
noon, To"^ at night : bread to be 5^ a loaf.

Increasing cost of its Education. 247

1741, Apr. 15. — Dearness of provisions. Steward to
ch'ge 2^ a part at dinner, 15*^ at night.

1748, Oct. 19. — Particular management of Commons, and
the price, left to be ordered by the members of the
corporation resident in Cambridge.

1750, Aug, 15. — Prices of Commons fixed : Bread — two
pence per loaf. Dinner — five pence, one farthing
(" of which ^ part is allowed for sauce ").
Beer — one penny a quart. Supper — three pence,
one farthing.
Commons to be as follows : " Two sizzes of bread in the
morning, one pound of Meat at Dinner w*^ sufficient
sauce & half a pint of Beer : & at night. That a
Part Pye, be of the same Quantity as usual, & also
half a pint of Beer, and that the Supper Messes be
but of four Parts, tho' the dinner Messes . . .
be of six."

Sept. 8, 1778. — Tuition raised to 40^ a quarter.

Dec. 15, 1778. — Assessment as follows : To Hancock
Professor 16^: to Tuition ^^5 5^ o"^: to the Monitors
2^: to gallery money 6^ Also, on the Junior and
Senior Sophisters, for Library ^i 5^ o"^ ; for Hollis
Prof. Math. ^2. (Reckoning is always by the
quarter.)

Oct. 14, 1805. — Tuition for Seniors and Juniors $5.50 a
quarter ; for Sophomores and Freshmen, $4.50.

Aug. 7, 1806. — Tuition doubled — twice as much as pre-
ceding quarter.

Dec. 16, 1806. — lo*" assessment on each student attend-
ing the French instruction.

Sept. 13, 181 1. — Tuition increased one quarter part.

248 The American College.

It cannot be said that this increase of cost
can worthily be avoided. It is simply a part of
the increase which comes from the change from
living in a simple and rural community to living
in a community whose relations are more or
less elaborate. The college is a part of the
community ; it is moved by all that moves the
community. The ordinary family of the com-
munity is spending several times as much
money as the ordinary family of the commun-
ity of two generations ago. The college-man
does as the family does of which he is a mem-
ber. It is also to be said that the cost of the
administration of a college has vastly increased.
Though complaints as to the present small
salaries of college professors abound, yet these
salaries have increased quite as rapidly as most
incomes. At the period of the American
Revolution the average salary of a professor
at Harvard was ;^200. Early in the century
the salary was $1500, and remained at that
figure till 1838-39. At this time it was in-
creased to $1800. In 1854 it was raised to
$2000. In the next twelve years it was by
successive increments so increased that it 1866
it was $3200. In 1869 it became $4000. The

Increasing cost of its Education. 249

maximum salary now paid in the College is
$4500, and in the Law School $5000.

The most expensive part, in certain respects,
of a college to-day is the laboratory and the
library. The laboratory is wholly a new crea-
tion, and the library in its present extensive
relations is also new. No less than $50,000
are spent each year in the library of Harvard
University. What a laboratory costs it is
hard to separate from other elements of ex-
pense. But each college is spending in scien-
tific apparatus many times what it expended
a few years ago. All this increase of cost
must directly or indirectly increase the cost of
an education to each student.

Yet the cost to a student for an education
does not consist only of the amount of his for-
mal fees and of the cost of board and room.
The expenses which are called incidental are
now in a few colleges larger than all others.
Not a few college men of an economical turn
find that, when they have added together the
three things — the cost of tuition, room, and
board — the expenditure of the whole year will
be represented by this sum multiplied by two.
Now there can be no doubt that the cost of an

250 The American College.

education is keeping many men from receiving
it, and the question therefore recurs, Can any-
thing be done to open the way to boys who
want to go to college but who cannot pass
through the narrow financial doorway ?

In answer It Is to be said, first : the cost of
an education to the student should not be les-
sened by lessening the cost of administration
or of Instruction, or by diminishing the effi-
ciency of laboratories and libraries. Such a
diminution would represent the diminution of
the worth of a college course. It would also
represent a change which the colleges them-
selves would not endure. Secondly : a de-
crease should not be secured through a de-
crease in the fee for tuition. The fee for tui-
tion now represents only a part of the cost of
the tuition itself. Professor Coulter, of the
University of Chicago, has recently gathered
together certain very suggestive facts upon
this point, which are well worth careful study.
From his table, which shows, among other in-
teresting things, the cost, above fees, to the
leading American universities of educating
their students, I have selected a dozen of the
largest institutions, and I find that the aver-

Increasing cost of its Education. 251

age cost each year per student over and above
the fees he pays to these twelve colleges is.

$245.

But on the positive side it may be said«, first :
that the cost of an education may be lessened
through the increase of endowment. This in-
crease of endowment and the consequent in-
crease in income would allow a decrease in the
amount which the college receives from the
student. Secondly : the same result might be
secured by a tax laid upon the people for the
benefit of the college. The State university is
the result of a public tax. Should the State
lay a tax upon itself for the benefit of more
than one college ?

In answer to the second of these two sugges-
tions it is to be said that one university sup-
ported by the State is sufficient. Ohio has
three universities which are supported in part
out of the public chest. Not a few of those
who are best acquainted with the method of
education in this great State believe that it
would be for the advantage of the State and
of education if the money now given to three
colleges could be given to one. Not a few
colleges in each State are denominational, and

252 The American College.

the chief reason for their existence is the de-
nominational reason. No pubic tax should be
assessed for the promotion of such interests.

In respect to the method of decreasing the
cost of education through the increase of en-
dowment it is to be said that such increase has
seldom resulted in such decrease. For, as a
rule, every college has need of all the funds it
can possess for filling up urgent needs.

But there is a method, the opposite of this,
which might result in allowing a poor boy to
come to college. It consists in the increase of
tuition fees. As has been said, the present fee
for tuition represents only a share of the cost of
tuition. Why should not the fee be increased
to represent the entire cost ? Why should
there not be a payment in money of the actual
cost of instruction ? Any reason which can be
given for paying less than a college educa-
tion costs is a reason which, I apprehend,
would overthrow most economic theories.
The American people have come to expect that
the American college shall give an education
at less than its cost. This expectation should
cease. This presumption has arisen from the
free public-school system. Every American

Increasing cost of its Education. 253

child goes to the public school without a direct
expenditure on the part of the parent. The
parent does not feel the indirect taxes which
he pays for his child's education. It is hard,
therefore, for him to pay the fee at the college
to which his son or daughter goes upon gradu-
ation from the high-school.

It is also to be said that the price of instruc-
tion at the college is lower than the price at
many secondary or even primary private
schools. One hundred and fifty dollars is an
extreme price for tuition at the college, but
twice one hundred and fifty dollars is not an
extreme price for tuition at certain private
schools. There are moreover two special
reasons for the increase of fees. The one of
less force, is that not a few rich men are not
willing to give their money to afford the sons
of other rich men an education at less than its
cost. A friend of mine with whom I was re-
cently conversing said to me, '' I can give you,
if you wish, a large amount of money, but that
amount of money would go for the benefit of
the son of Mr. A. or Mr. B., who is perfectly
able to pay all his son's fees at their full
amount." The force of the reasoning cannot

254 The American College.

be easily set aside, as the truth of the fact can-
not be denied. But the special reason for this
increase lies in the fact that money would thus
be had for the benefit of men who could not
pay for a college education. If the American
college could increase its tuition fee to $500,
there are not a few men in college who would
be willing and able to pay this fee, and
who ought to pay this fee, for the fee repre-
sents simply what the education costs. With
the present endowments, and with the increase
of endowments sure to be made, these pay-
ments would allow each college to offer an
education to men who are not able to pay for
it, at a very small cost. Thus, every poor boy
in America who wants an education could
receive it.

VIII.

CERTAIN DIFFICULTIES.

The college should be prepared to justify its
existence, and to prove the value of its methods
and conditions, at the bar of an enlightened
public opinion. That its critics are so many
and so alert the college should be grateful.
The severest critcism that the college can be
subjected to, is the simple charge that it fails to
fit its students for life. This comprehensive
remark includes several drawbacks which, it is
inferred, the college labors under.

The college may injure men through fixing
the habit of loving and doing only that which
is agreeable. The college may minister to
laziness. The laziness may be of a crude sort,
such as belongs to Mrs. Stowe's Sam Lawson;
but this type is far less common than that

255

256 The American College.

of a refined dilettanteism. The college may
minister to an indolence manifesting itself in
methods and manners which are at once gentle
and inane ; of excellent form, but of worthless
content. To do nothing, or to do nothing hard,
is a special form of the agreeable. It repre-
sents our inheritance of '' total depravity."
The statical quality is a far more pleasant one
for the ordinary human being to manifest than
the dynamical. Now the college is in peril
of developing in the students this quality ; for
the agreeable is found in indolence or a gentle
dilettanteism. I do not, of course, fail to re-
cognize that if, on the other hand, the
agreeable have for its content — as it has for
some natures — vigor, hardihood, daring, there
can be no peril in the college promoting a love
of such qualities ; but, alas ! too many of us
are inclined to find the agreeable in soft
pleasures and gentle inactivities.

The college may foster the habit of loving
and doing only the pleasant by several means.
The habit is promoted by the general condition
of liberty which obtains more or less fully in
most colleges. I am not now arguing against
liberty in our colleges. Necessity is laid on us

Certain Difficulties. 257

to have it : it is the Divine method for better-
ing mankind. But every advantage carries with
it certain perils ; and I am only stating one of
the results which follow present conditions. I
lately asked a graduate of one of our oldest
and most conspicuous colleges — a scholar of
wide reputation, who himself graduated forty
years ago, and whose son is now a student in
the same college — if it was as good a college
now as in his own undergraduate days. In-
stantly came the reply, *^ No." ^^Why?" I
asked. ** Because," he answered, '' the men
are not obliged to get up in the morning."
The condition of liberty was too unrestrained.
He also meant to say that the college was doing
little to train its students to do what they do
not like to do. The same condition obtains,
at least to some extent, in all our colleges ;
and it must obtain. The advantages of the
condition are far greater than the disadvan-
tages ; but the perils of liberty are, nevertheless,
not to be lightly passed over.

But the old graduate also intended to con-
vey that not only was freedom top free, but
that luxury was too luxurious. If men of very
small means suffer in the value of their educa-

258 The American College.

tion through poverty, men of very large means
suffer, and usually more, through too large
expenditures. Th^ ordinary college man does
not spend too much : the rich one does. The
rate of expenditure of the rich student may be
no higher than that of his family ; but, in rela-
tion to the development of his character and
the discipline of his life, he frequently spends
more money than he ought. Further, he con-
sumes more time and strength in spending this
money than he can afford. Luxury is not
usually the nurse of scholarship. ** Henry,"
said the old graduate above referred to, as he
was visiting one of the luxurious dormitories,
— '' Henry, we did n't use to make first schol-
ars on Turkish rugs."

The college is also promoting this love of
the agreeable by failing to insist upon students
doing a proper amount of work. It is not my
intention to enter upon a discussion as to the
amount of work which a college student in
good health and of average capacity should
do : any such estimate belongs quite as much
to the physician as to the college officer. It
is, however, safe to say that, while certain stu-
dents work too much, four fifths of the men do

Certain Difficulties. 259

not work enough. The ordinary college ad-
justs its work somewhat on this basis : in each
week to hold for each student about fifteen
exercises, the number being seldom less than
twelve or more than seventeen. The length
of an exercise is usually one hour; and the
character of each is such that two hours are
allotted to adequate preparation.

Therefore, each student is supposed to de-
vote to affairs intellectual nine hours a day for
five days of the week. Most wise men would
agree that nine hours of stiff work is enough
for a college man to do in one day. Some
men do more — sixty hours a week, or even a
larger amount ; but the number that do less,
very much less, is considerable. I was recently
told by a professor in a well-known college,
that a student could graduate at that college
by working two hours — and two hours only —
each day. In these two hours was included
the time spent in recitations. ** But the reci-
tations are more than two a day." ** Yes ; but
he can cut some of these ; and with a good tu-
tor near the time of examinations he can make
up his omitted work, pass the examinations,
and get his degree." I myself do not believe

26o The American College.

that the condition is quite so lax, or the ability
of certain students so great, as this professor
intimated. But it is clearly safe to say that
there are thousands of students who, including
the time spent in recitations and lectures, do
not devote five hours a day to their college
studies. At once the question arises. Why do
not the college authorities compel students to
work as (some would say) is their duty, as (all
would say) is their privilege ? The answer is
that such compulsion would probably throw
the whole body of students into a state of irri-
tation, if not of absolute rebellion. Judging
by the work done in preceding classes, as well
as in colleges other than their own, students
have a tolerably clear idea of how much they
may be justly called upon to do. Against any
attempt greatly to increase their work they
would rebel ; and college authorities do not
like rebellion and friction. These would be as
injurious as the addition of one third to the
amount of work would be beneficial. It is
thus better to keep things as they are.

This condition is not quite so loose as might
be inferred from what I have said ; for, though
the work by which one may slide down the col-

Certain Difficulties. 261

lege course be slight, yet, beyond and above all
requirements, many opportunities are open to
the strong and conscientious man for pursuing
investigation and for reading. The fields of
scholarship are large and inviting to the eager
student, and are not unattractive to some who
do not care to pursue the regular curriculum.
Enough has, however, I trust, been said to
show that, in allowing its students to cultivate
a love of the agreeable, the American college
is fostering a real danger. Four years of such
a condition at a formative period make it diffi-
cult for a man to do hard work in the years
which follow the college quadrennium.

A second drawback of a college education,
helping to constitute the criticism that the edu-
cation fails to fit men for life, is one which the
public often realizes but seldom calls attention
to, viz., the training of the judgment of the
student at the expense of his energy. \The
college teaches the student to see. His clari-
fied and broadened vision gives him such a
knowledge of difficulties that he becomes the
less inclined to undertake tasks requiring en-
ergy and persistence. The college teaches the
student to discriminate ; and his finer sense of

262 The American College.

appreciation enables him to estimate the na-
ture of the perils and obstacles which lie in his
way. He, therefore, becomes less inclined to
exercise his power. He keeps his talent where
it is safe.

The extent of this drawback will seem to
some great, and to others slight. It cannot
be doubted that, if certain men had had the ad-
vantage of a training in weighing evidence and
in seeing comprehensively — qualities which the
college specially disciplines — they would have
been saved from mistakes many and momen-
tous. The Patent Office would not need so
large chambers for the storage of useless in-
ventions. But I also find myself asking. What
would have been the effect of a college train-
ing on some of the more energetic men of our
time, who have been the leaders in aggressive
industrial movements, or masters of large af-
fairs ? What would have been its effect on the
older generations of that family which controls
certain railroads running between New York
and Chicago ? Would the marvellous and mag-
nificent enterprises of ** Commodore" Vander-
bilt have been rendered less so by a college
education ? Better judgment about many

Certain Difficulties. 263

things he would have had ; but, would he not
have had less energy ? Great as is the need
of good judgment in the administration of af-
fairs in the home, the factory, the shop, the
need of energy is greater. Fewer men fail by
reason of a lack of judgment — numerous as
these men are — than from a lack of force.
More men are found sitting at the base of the
mountain of some great enterprise because
they are too indolent to climb, than are there
through lack of wisdom how to make the
ascent. We Americans plume and pride our-
selves upon being the most energetic of na-
tions ; yet our energy lags behind our judgment.
It is, therefore, a serious matter when the
college causes her students to run the risk of
losing energy in order to increase the riches of
judgment.

It is urged as another drawback that the
time spent in getting a college education re-
moves the man destined for a commercial life
from the most favorable opportunities for learn-
ing business. The four years between the
ages of eighteen or nineteen and twenty-two
or twenty-three are those in which the most
valuable habits of commercial life may be most

264 The American College.

easily learned. About one third of the gradu-
ates of certain colleges are going into business.
Of the one hundred and eighty-two members
of the class of 1891 of Yale College no less
than seventy-one are engaged in business.
These men are obliged to begin, at an age be-
yond twenty-one, work of a kind which they
might have begun several years earlier. Have
they not lost time, training, opportunity? In
this relation, one urging the man who is to
enter business not to enter by way of the col-
lege would probably say that, as a rule, the
great fortunes of our time have not been made
by college graduates ; that they have been
made by men of tremendous energy, of keen
insight, of mighty industry, of close economy,
— by men who began their careers early and
have followed them with haste and without
rest.

Before I pass to another rather serious draw-
back (as it is believed by many to be) of col-
lege education, there is a conception regarding
the college man as a learner of business which
calls for notice. It is commonly believed that
there is a '' certain condescension " in college
men. Many are incline4 to think that the

Certain Difficulties. 265

collegian considers the dust out of which he is
formed to be a little finer than that which
makes up the constitution of the ordinary
mortal. For him the best things of life are
none too good. His manners, gentle and re-
fined, may be maligned on the ground of being
slightly pompous. He is exclusive and seclu-
sive. Such an interpretation is not uncom-
mon. Some college men give ground for it,
but not all. In point of fact the charge is
better founded when applied to the students
of certain colleges than to those of others.
But it is not to be doubted that such an im-
pression is made and that it prevents college
graduates from securing a fair chance in com-
mercial life to prove that they are neither cox-
combs nor supercilious ninnies.

A further drawback is urged, with a good
deal of vigor and generality of statement, that
the college fills the mind with useless knowl-
edge and trains it in antiquated methods of
thought and action. In the same breath it is
added that the scientific school gives practical
knowledge and that its training is vital. The
comparison between the dead languages and
the modern is made — always to the credit of

266 The American College.

the modern. The value of modern history
and of economic science is made to appear
greater than that of ancient history and of
philosophy. Scientific studies are lauded as
by far the most precious. The humanities are
discredited. I remember overhearing, at a
hotel table, a conversation between two recent
graduates of the scientific school of a rich and

famous university. ** Mr. ," said one,** gave

several thousand dollars for any use the officers
wished to make of the money. And what do
you think they did with it ? Why, instead of
buying something useful, they spent it all in
buying some mugs of the old Greek dujffers."
It was evident that the study of the humanites
had not seriously influenced the manners nor
the linguistic tastes of the graduates in question.
The drawback is not infrequently charged
against the college that it trains individuality,
but not social efficiency. The college tends,
it is said, to remove the graduate from the
ordinary concerns of ordinary men. It lessens
his interest in human affairs. It develops the
critic — the man who tears things apart : it does
not make the creator — the man who puts things
together, the constructor. It creates men of

Certain Difficulties. 267

the type represented by a certain scholar, who,
being told on an April forenoon, '' Fort Sumter
is fired on," replied, ''What do I care? I
must finish my Greek Grammar." In patriot-
ism, national and local, it develops the mug-
wump— the man who is dissatisfied with things
as they are, but who seems powerless to make
them better. To public improvements of any
sort the typical graduate has a blind eye, a deaf
ear, a cold heart. He represents an academic
type, which is without grace or graciousness,
learned without public spirit, individualistic
without social relations. This disadvantage, as
well as the preceding one, I state with a good
deal of boldness ; for whatever of foundation
in fact either drawback possesses, the college
should be willing promptly to acknowledge.
This drawback may be called *' academicity."

I shall allude to one more drawback, or
rather to an application of a disadvantage to
which I have already referred. For the man
who takes no interest in any one of the mani-
fold concerns of a college, the college is a dis-
tinct and positive injury. These concerns are
manifold — scholastic, fraternal, social, athletic.
If the student is irresponsive to each of them,

268 The American College.

college is not a fitting environment, and must,
therefore, have a deteriorating influence upon
him. Was it not a former president of Har-
vard who used to say that it was, on the whole,
good for a man to come to college, even if he
did no more than rub his shoulders against the
brick walls ? Was it not another teacher, now
living, who said that it was worth while to come
to college, even if one stayed only a short time
and did nothing, provided he got the college
touch and atmosphere? I do not, I trust, fail
to appreciate the value of the college touch
and atmosphere. But, while one is getting
these one may be also acquiring other things
which may prove quite as disadvantageous as
the touch and atmosphere are desirable. Is
not one in peril of becoming pessimistic in
thought and feeling, of blurring moral vision,
of forming indolent, lackadaisical habits which
may prove to be as confining in their limita-
tions as the atmosphere and touch are full of
inspiration ? The boy who has not come to
his second intellectual birth before going to
college — and most boys have not — or the boy
who does not come to his second intellectual
birth at college, is the boy who does not re-

Certain Difficulties. 269

ceive much of value while in college. Such
a boy, whether he have the free and happy
nature of Hawthorne's Donatella, or a nature
^ touched by the spirit of evil, without interest
f in any one of the many relations of the college,
goes forth from the institution less well fitted
to undertake the great business of life than if
he had not rubbed his shoulders against the
red bricks, or breathed a college atmosphere.

I have written thus far largely, though not
entirely, with another's pen. I have tried to
interpret certain convictions which are held
more or less firmly, or which are more or less
widely spread. I now wish to become judge
and critic of what I have written.

The drawback of a college education result-
ing from promoting a love for the agreeable
seems to me to be so well founded that the
officers and the people should be alert to its
perils. These perils are greatest for those
whose environment is of the soft things of
life. For the men who work hard in col-
lege and who must work hard in life, the
temptation is that they will not appreciate
the value of those courtesies and refinements
which bear so large a part in the constitu-

270 The American College.

tion of a beautiful character. It would be
well if every man of wealth — inherited early
or acquired late — could say, as said one grad-
uate on the fortieth anniversary of his class :
*' I am thankful the old college made me do
disagreeable things ; it was the training I need-
ed, and it has been of priceless value to me
these forty years." The rule should, it seems
to me, be somewhat of this sort : The college
should require its students to take those stud-
ies which yield the richest educational results.
(I am not now discussing the elective system,
in which, of course, I do thoroughly believe.)
Whether these studies be agreeable or dis-
agreeable is an element of secondary impor-
tance. Yet their disagreeableness may, in
certain instances, be so great as to render their
educational value slight. In this case, to pur-
sue them is a task hardly worth the doing ; the
boy had better leave college, if he can find no
study agreeable. But in general no such value
should. In my judgment, be attached to the
pleasant or unpleasant character of studies in
the early part of the student s course, as pre-
vails in certain colleges.

In respect to the luxurious living of a certain

Certain Difficulties. 271

set of college men — I believe it is very easy to
over-estimate its importance. The number of
such men at the largest is but small, and they
are found in only a few colleges : in most col-
leges they are not found at all. The influence,
too, of luxury on the character of rich young
men is not so enervating as those of us who
have no luxuries are inclined to believe. The
evil is, that men become so attached to luxuri-
ous modes of living that they cannot give them
up. But this evil is not so serious for college
men as for men who lack intellectual interests
and resources. College men of any vigor at
all are inclined to regard these soft things as
pleasant enough and are glad to have them ;
but to be obliged to part with them is not so
dire a wrench as to wreck either happiness or
character. We are learning that young men
of great wealth may be as vigorous and virile
as poor men.

The second drawback referred to, consisting
in the tendency of the college to train the
student's judgment at the expense of his energy,
IS another actual peril ; but its existence is not
wide. The peril has also lessened with the in-
crease of the relations and elements which

272 The American College.

constitute the life of the modern student The
constant peril of the scholar is that of a lack of
energy : the acquiring and the executive func-
tions seem often to be antagonistic. But, for
the student in whom energy is mightier than
judgment, the modern college opens up many
opportunities for the enlargement and disci-
pline of his chief power. The various concerns
of the students — athletic, social, dramatic,
musical — represent fields in which he may pre-
pare himself for winning his Gettysburgs ; and
it may be noted, in evidence, that some of the
greatest constructive works of modern times,
requiring bravest daring and the most intrepid
confidence in oneself and in mankind — such
as the building of railroads, telegraph and tele-
phone lines, great bridges — have been among
the triumphs of college men.

The drawback which relates to the disad-
vantages under which the college graduate
labors in entering business is one very com-
monly urged. The frequency of its presenta-
tion is, however, lessening. It is lessening for
the best of reasons— the power and the success
of the college man in business. The simple
fact is, that if the graduate begin at the age

Certain Difficulties. 273

of twenty-two to learn a business at that very
point where he would have begun at eighteen,
he stays at this point only about one tenth as
long as he would have stayed had he begun at
eighteen. The rate at which he attains skill
and power in business is many times greater.
When he has reached the age of twenty-seven,
he has not infrequently overtaken and passed
the boy who has been in business since the
age of eighteen. For the sake of gaining
ability sufficient for managing great under-
takings, every boy who is to enter business
should give to himself the best and widest
training. Such a training is usually found in
the college. If it is at all noteworthy that
many of the very rich men of the United
States, who have made their riches by their
own energy and foresight, are not college-bred,
it is certainly most significant that the sons of
these men are receiving a college education.

As to the fourth disadvantage named — that
the college fills the mind with useless knowl-
edge, and trains it in antiquated methods of
thought and action — I wish to say two things :
First : One of the most valuable kinds of

training which the college can give is the lin-

18

2 74 The American College.

guistic. If to think is important, linguistic
training is important. For we think in words.
Therefore, thinking becomes clear, orderly,
profound, as language is adequate. Lan-
guage represents those methods and results of
thought without which thought itself is feeble
and inefificient. Therefore, training in lan-
guage is of the highest value. To be able to
think in, or adequately use, the English or any
other language, one should know the language.
He can only know his own language as he
knows those languages which have made the
richest contributions to its structure. Every
new science, and every new application of any
old science, goes to the Greek for its very name.
Hence, a training in Latin and Greek is of
the greatest worth. The college is not filling
the mind with useless knowledge in requiring
students to learn these, not dead, but living
languages. Second : The scientific school is
a professional school. Its graduate goes from
its commencement, as goes the graduate of
the school of law, theology, or medicine —
directly to his life's work. It is not a school of
liberal culture or of general training. It is to
be said, and said with the utmost clearness,

Certain Difficulties. 275

that the governors of our best technical and
scientific schools are beginning to recognize
the advantages which the man desiring to
enter these schools possesses if he has pre-
viously received a general training through
the college. My friend and co-worker, Presi-
dent Staley, of the Case School of Applied
Science, has said to me frequently and forci-
bly, '* I wish that all students before coming
to the Case School had had a regular college
course." A recent commencement orator at
the same school urged all students before be-
ginning their technical studies to be college
graduates. The reasons that prompt the
student of law, of medicine, of theology to
gain a good general education also prompt the
student of technical science to secure one. It
is, therefore, evident that, even in the judg-
ment of those who might be inclined to dis-
parage a college education, the knowledge
which this education conveys is not rubbish,
nor are the methods in which the college
trains students antiquated. Indeed, such men
are coming to recognize that a technical educa-
tion, without a liberal education preceding it,
may result in giving to its recipient an intel-

276 The American College.

lectual narrowness of a type so narrow as to
fail to recognize its own limitations. The
narrowest narrowness is that which is uncon-
scious of itself.

The drawback which I have called '' acade-
micity," has been common, is not uncommon,
but is becoming less common. For with each
year the college becomes more vital. It is
more thoroughly adjusting itself to life. It is
training men for service in the first half of the
twentieth century. Its keynote is not indi-
vidual sufificiency but social sufificiency. The
whole tone of the typical commencement ad-
dress is not, '' Stay here in the college !" but,
*' Go into life ! '' For, as President Cleveland
said at the great celebration at Princeton in
October, 1896 :

" I would have those who are sent out by our univer-
sities and colleges to be not only the counsellors of their
fellow-country men, but the tribunes of the people — fully
appreciating every condition that presses upon their daily
life, sympathetic in every untoward situation, quick and
earnest in every effort to advance their happiness and
welfare, and prompt and sturdy in the defence of all
their rights. ... A constant stream of thoughtful,
educated men should come from our universities and
colleges, preaching national honor and integrity, and

Certain Difficulties. 'i']']

teaching that a belief in the sincerity of national obe-
dience to the laws of God is not born of superstition.*'

It is significant that the most aggressive and
fearless of the reformers of recent years have
been college graduates. It is also significant
that the wisest, most vital, most direct method
of social improvement bears the name of the
'' College Settlement."

The American college sets before itself the
highest ideals. It calls into its service great
personalities. It receives large material en-
dowment. It is filled with a spirit of earnest-
ness. Its methods are usually wise. It seeks
to relate itself to its own age and place. It is
a great power in American life, despite even
the greatest weight which may be attached to
its drawbacks. It only remains for those who
love it, and who work for it — good as it is —
to make it better, to increase its power for se-
curing its highest ideals, to enlarge its material
endowment, and to quicken the force of its
great personalities. The duty rests on such
men to make the American college a more
vital and a more vigorous part of American
life.

IX.

ITS POWER IN THE FUTURE.

HOW far the American college has already
helped American life is a question to
which what has already been said gives
certain general answers. The influence of the
American college has gone through all the
ranges of the manifold and diverse life of
America. It has helped to train, as I have
already intimated, at least one third of all our
statesmen, more than a third of our best au-
thors, almost a half of our more distinguished
physicians, fully one half of our lawyers, more
than a half of our best clergymen, and con-
siderably more than a half of our most con-
spicuous educatorSju So far as the influence
of these leaders in national life has entered
into the life of the people, so far has the life

278

Its Power in the Future. 279

of the college become a vital force in Ameri-
can character. Therefore, it must be con-
fessed that the college has vastly influenced
America. Such is the record of the past.
What can the American college now do to in-
fluence the national character for the present
and for the future ? This is the question
which I wish to consider. What more can
the American college do than it is now do-
ing to help American life ?

The college has stood, and still stands, for
the things of the mind. In a material world
it represents that which is not material. The
college can do nothing more worthy of its high
quest than still remaining as the embodiment
of this spiritual purpose.

In this service it is to stand for learning, for
knowledge, for truth ; it is also to stand for
discipline, trained mental power ; it is also to
stand for what we may call, for lack of a better
term, culture. (Truth, without training, makes
the mind a mere granary ; training, without
truth, makes the mind a mere mill without a
grist to grind ; (truth and training make the
mind a forcible agency of usefulness! But
truth and training and culture make tKe mind

28o The American College.

a forcible agency both of usefulness and for
beaut^

There was a time when the college was
inclined to consider scholarship as a piece
of embroidery on the collegiate apron, as a
bit of ornamentation on the collegiate sword.
That time is past. The college regards scholar-
ship as an integral part of its work and the
promotion of scholarship one of its supreme
purposes. The motto which the oldest col-
lege still bears on its seal, Veritas, will be
borne also as a most precious inscription on
the seal of the new college. The college will
seek to save all that man has discovered
and will also seek to enlarge the bounds of
human knowledge. It will establish schools
among the ruined monuments of the ancient
civilization, as it has already established them
at Athens and Rome, in order to reconstruct
the life of the early and long-ago vanished
nations. It will regard all that is human as
its proper field for inquiry and investigation.
It may be said by some in particular that the
college will seek out those truths which belong
to the natural and physical sciences ; that the
mighty movement which began in the study of

Its Power in the Future. 281

nature in the early years of the nineteenth cen-
tury is to be accelerated and broadened : the
field open is limitless and that constant and ad-
vancing investigation will pay. The college
has the tools for investigating and the college
gives to investigators that freedom from teach-
ing which is necessary to secure the best re-
sults. Into the field of science the college
which was established to train men in the hu-
manities will enter more and more fully and
ardently. Seventy-two years ago a distin-
guished graduate of Columbia College warned
his fellow alumni against certain scientific
truths as the frivolity of education. This friv-
olity has become the most serious work of
the American college. This old world of
ours has become a new world under the
new knowledge of its forms and forces. So
vast is to become this increase of knowledge
that the university might well fear it would
be swamped by the simple reports of these
magnificent results. The fear would be well
grounded excepting for the fact that modern
scholarship has learned through cataloguing,
and systematizing, and indexing, to codify and
arrange these vast stores. The vast in-

282 The American College.

crease already made can go on in vastly enlarg-
ing increments with the assurance that there
is no peril of disorder or confusion.

This enrichment and enlargement is not lim-
ited to the natural and physical sciences. It
touches every field of thought and of scholar-
ship. Philosophy, history, languages, litera-
ture, mathematics, are included in these ad-
vances. In no department, indeed, is there a
larger activity of the highest scholarship than
in that department which is old and usually
considered slow going — Latin. Latin, like so
many other subjects, is no longer a specialty,
but Latin is a field of specialization of several
sorts : Roman Religion, Roman Literature,
Roman Private Life, Roman Law, Roman Pub-
lic Administration, and several other terms
represent subjects for investigation which are
each year receiving treatment not only in the
class-room but also through scores of volumes
and even through two score of periodical pub-
lications.

Now this vast increase in the scholarship of
the American college is going on, strange as
it may seem to say, without a high degree
of scholastic supervision on the part of the

Its Power in the Future. 283

highest officers of many American universi-
ties. The scholarship of our instructors is
constantly growing richer but the scholarship
of the superintending bodies is declining.
Walter Besant was struck at a recent Har-
vard Commencement Dinner by the laudation
given to the men whom the College had sent
into political life and by the failure to praise
graduates eminent for literary and scientific
services. Soon after the death of that pre-
eminent scholar, W. D. Whitney, was held a
Yale Dinner in New York City at which no
allusion was made to the great man. Upon
this very point a distinguished graduate of a
conspicuous American college with which he
has for many years been in close association,
writes to me as follows :

" There is not at this moment on either of the govern-
ing boards of that University with which I am best ac-
quainted, these boards numbering in all thirty-seven men,
a single person who can possibly be said to stand for
pure scholarship. Nearly all are business men or lawyers,
often eminent lawyers, but it must be remembered that
it was a President of that very University, and a very
shrewd and worldly-wise one, who gave the maxim * Put
it down as a rule that no really eminent man ever reads
a book.' So far as it is necessary to manage great busi-

284 The American College.

ness interests, the selection could hardly be improved
upon ; but when we consider that these bodies have
under their exclusive charge the general arrangement of
studies, the selection and dismissal of instructors, and the
bestowal of regular and honorary degrees, there seems
something inadequate in the arrangement."

This condition which is thus so aptly inter-
preted arises from a serious demand for money
in the establishment and administration of col-
leges, and also from the serious responsibility
of investing the money which has been given
to the college. The demand for money and
the consequent financial responsibility may not
lessen, but the undue emphasis which is placed
on our having business men in our administra-
tive bodies will presently give place to a wiser
policy. ' It will not be wise to make our super-
vising bodies so entirely professional as were
those of the early colleges, although this con-
dition had one advantage in that the early
American clergymen were scholars as well as
clergymen. It would be well to have our gov-
erning bodies composed more generally of
teachers, of authors, of editors, and of men
of leisure who are sympathetic with and ap-
preciative of the ends and the methods of
scholarship.

Its Power in the Future. 285

This prominence of scholarship will pro-
mote a result which the college should al-
ways bring forth. The College is to make
the thinker, — American hie needs the rhinker
more than it needs the scholar. For the
thinker takes the old truth and applies it to
the new conditions of the present and of the
future.

The college is now beset, in standing for
scholarship and for culture, by two opposite
forces. They are both material forces, born
of a material age.

One difficulty that besets the college in the
maintenance of this lofty purpose is the ath-
letic interest. The college has not become a
base-ball field, or a foot-ball gridiron, or a
race-course to that extent to which the peo-
ple believe it has fallen. Certain colleges are
quite free from this evil drift, but in other
colleges the athletic movement has become a
craze, a frenzy, a madness. The origin of the
movement is not hard to trace, and the origin
is, in many respects, worthy. The college
stands for things of the mind, but the human
mind, fortunately or unfortunately, is located
in a body. The mind thus placed seldom.

286 The American College.

works well unless the body is in health. A
body is seldom in health without exercise.
Exercise to be the most healthful must be
taken in joy. One method by which joyous
exercise is promoted is competition. There-
fore competitive exercise results from a
method of keeping the mind vigorous for its
work. But exercise that is used as a means
very easily takes to itself the interest which
attaches to the end for which the service is
used, and when exercise in college becomes
an end athletics have become an evil. This
movement in the college is contemporaneous
with the athletic movement of the whole
American people ; a movement which is of
tremendous significance for the health of the
people of the present time and of those yet
unborn. Now the college has had set before
itself a very important problem in keeping ath-
letics in the college vigorous as a means but
of crushing out athletics as an end. Through
athletics as a means and agency the college
may still maintain its place as standing for
things of the mind, but whenever athletics be-
come an absolute good then the college ceases
to be a mental and spiritual agency and takes

Its Power in the Future. 287

its place with the materiaHsms of a material
time.

I do not apprehend that the difficulties
which certain colleges meet with in the proper
administration of these athletic interests are to
become widespread or to remain lasting. Col-
lege men are on the whole sensible fellows,
and the parents of college men are on the
whole sensible. We are soon to find athlet-
ics assuming their proper place in the whole
work of the whole college, whose purpose is to
train the whole man.

But a difficulty far more serious opposing
the intellectual purpose of the college lies in
the increasing luxury of college living. The
age is a luxurious age, and the college cannot
but be sympathetic with the age ; but the col-
lege seems, in a sense, to be leading in the
luxuriousness of the life of the age. The
scholar has not in the past been distinguished
for the elegance of his environment. The
scholar has been a pretty independent being,
but he has been independent not because he
had much but because he needed little. The
laws of begging were, in the Middle Ages, sus-
pended in behalf of the scholars. The scholars

288 The American College.

walked from all Europe to Paris to hear
Abelard, and they begged their way as they
came in pursuit of knowledge. When the
magnificent Earl of Essex was sent to Cam-
bridge, in Elizabeth's time, his guardians pro-
vided him with a side-table covered with green
baize, a truckle-bed, half a dozen chairs and a
wash-hand basin — the cost of all was about
five pounds.^ But to-day the furnishing of the
room of many a student in many American
colleges is many times five pounds.

The English and American people — the
most luxurious of all people on the face of the
earth — have allowed their luxurious habits to
pervade their universities and their colleges.
Luxury has not gone into Edinburgh and
Glasgow, Aberdeen and St. Andrews, as it
has into New Haven or Oxford or Cam-
bridge. The German student, too, is still
a student, like the German nation, of great
economy and simplicity in manner of living.
I cannot but believe that the American col-
lege should be made as little sympathetic as
possible with the luxuriousness of American
living. There should be one place in a demo-

* 5/. Andrews Rectorial Addresses y 90.

Its Power in the Future. 289

cratic country where men are measured and
men are influential not by their wealth, not
by the elegance of their bed-chamber or the
splendor of their raiment, but by simple and
sheer character. I cannot doubt that the in-
fluence of the two great ancient universities
of England would have been far greater in
English life if the method of living of the stu-
dents had been simple, plain, severe. Oxford
and Cambridge have had a tremendous influ-
ence in training men for the upper realm of the
professional and social, of the theological and
civil life, but neither has had a large influence
in the great community of the people. I be-
lieve that one cause of the influence of Leipsic
and of Berlin, of Bonn and of Munich, in the
life of the German people has been the sim-
plicity and plainness of the life of the student.
I believe that the influence of the American
college would be magnified and deepened in
the community if the life of the student in the
college were more plain and more simple. Let
the living riot be high, let the thinking not be
plain ; let there be cultivated much philosophy
on a little oatmeal. I know very well that in
certain colleges the life is plain, too plain ; it

290 The American College.

lies at the other extreme of the scale of luxury ;
it is too bare and it is barren ; it is remote
from humanizing and cultivating influences.
Men are herded, and dwell in surroundings
that have none of the comforts of home ; such
conditions are quite as evil as the evil that
arises from luxuriousness of environment. But
such barrenness is not our peril. Our peril
is that increasing luxury shall result in dimin-
ishing intellectuality. Our peril is that the
college will come to be the home of the rich
and the dwelling-place of the magnificent.
Our peril is that in this condition the college
will not and cannot stand for things of the
mind. But for things of the mind the college
must stand. In the age of homespun of our
fathers the college did stand for things of the
mind ; in the age of broadcloth the college
must still thus stand.

The bishop of, in certain respects, the most
important diocese of the Protestant Episcopal
Church in America has lately written me as
follows :

" If I were disposed to challenge the American college
of to-day on any ground, it would be because of its
tendency to descend from the loftier level of * plain

Its Power in the Future. 291

living and high thinking/ which was the characteristic of
college life a generation ago. The passion for building,
endowments, material enrichment, in one word, is likely
to smother the love of learning and to discourage simple
tastes. It we can recover the spirit which educates in
young men a love of learning for its own sake, and which
teaches them that character is of incomparably more
consequence than belongings, the college of to-day will
do them the best service."

I have no doubt that the American college
will, despite the increasing luxury of American
life, still be able to maintain the scholastic
ideals. I have no doubt that the American
college, despite the vigor of athletic interests,
will be able to maintain its intellectual methods
and purposes ; but the peril does exist and
must be crushed. The college to bless Ameri-
can life in the next century as it ought must
stand for things of the mind.

In standing for things of the mind the
college will stand for an element or quality to
which I have already incidentally alluded : I
mean culture. That American life is In need
of this quality, it is almost irony to affirm.
That the American college can inspire Amer-
ican life with it, some would doubt. For
culture belongs to those higher realms of

292 The American College.

thinking and feeling which many American
colleges are not able to enter. The college,
primarily, must be content with giving disci-
"pline and training, so meagre are its resources,
so immature are its students. And yet the
better equipped of our colleges may do some-
what toward the securing of these highest
purposes. Surely to the American college,
standing as a type and agent of intellectual
movements, the American people have the
right of looking for help and light in nourish-
ing these elements of life, which are the high-
est forms of the human spirit.

These elements belong to the realm of
thought, of imagination. They are not a
part of professional knowledge, important as
this is. They are hardly a part of the ordinary
and earlier studies of the college. These
higher things pre-suppose the discipline and
the training of the elements of language, of
mathematics, and of science. They represent
the spiritual and aesthetic side of all knowledge,
and those relations in thought to which wide
reading, keen observation, and reflection lead.
Such a knowledge the American college
should and does to a degree nourish. Its pro-

Its Power in the Future. ^93

motion belongs rather to the later than to the
earlier years. It can hardly be said that the
German university fosters this idea of culture.
The German university is essentially a pro-
fessional school, and one does not look to a
professional school for culture. The English
university does foster this idea. It represents
an *' atmosphere " and a wide vision of the
best things which man has done or aspired
after.

In its ministry to the higher life of the race
the college should train in particular the power
of appreciation. As an associate of mine, Pro-
fessor Whitman, has well said ^ :

" This [appreciation] is the very flower of liberal cul-
ture, its finest product, and its surest sign. It includes
not merely that critical judgment which enables one out
of what is placed before him to choose the best, but
those rightly ordered affections which dispose him to
love that which is beautiful, high, and true, rather than
that which is false and ignoble. As a result of educa-
tion, it is a training of the judgment and the emotions,
as the other elements considered embrace the training of
the intellect and the will."

The appreciation is not simply intellectual,

' Address at Dedication of Physical Laboratory of Adelbert Col-
lege of Western Reserve University, Commencement, 1895.

^94 The American College.

although such appreciation belongs largely to
the field of truth ; it is also emotional and fre-
quently even volitional. It carries along with
itself allegiance to the idea which is properly
valued. It is in a word, love, — that '* superior,"
as the great Emerson says, *'that has no su-
perior, the redeemer and instructor of souls."
The college may further help the life of the
nation through an intelligent and sympathetic
treatment of all sociological questions. There
can be no doubt that the twentieth century is
to be a sociological century. The eighteenth
century was a theological age, the nineteenth
has been a scientific one, and the twentieth is
to be a sociological age. From God to nature,
from nature to man, is the progress. The col-
lege is the most important agency in this pro-
gress. For this great being that we call the
community is an organism of very delicate
functions. To endeavor to correct any one
part which may be out of order may result
in harm to a dozen other parts. Therefore,
great wisdom is needed in the treatment. If
it is only the trained physician who should
minister to the body diseased ; if it is only the
trained physician who should minister to the

Its Power in the Future. 295

mind diseased ; it is also only one well trained
who should minister to the diseased of the
community in both mind and body. The man
who is called the practical man is not by any
means the best fitted to deal with the ills of
the community. The man who is at once
practical in his aims and scientific in his
training is the best fitted. All the practical
methods and practical agencies for benefiting
humanity must rest upon scientific considera-
tions. If they are not made thus to rest, the
application of those methods may result in
disaster.

One of the masters of this great subject,
Carroll D. Wright, writes me as follows :

" I think that the department of political economy, as
usually conducted in colleges and universities, rather
antagonizes the public at large, and this has done some-
thing toward creating a more or less strained feeling
between universities and the workingmen in particular.
They (the workingmen) find that political economy is
not adequate to the solution of the questions which they
raised. Students, generally, find this true also, and that
while political economy can not, and ought not be ig-
nored, there is something deeper and more vital concern-
ing the relations in life than political economy teaches ;
so ethics come in to supplement, or, rather, to comple-
ment, the teachings of political economy. To my own

296 The American College.

mind, if colleges and universities would broaden their
economic work, they would do something to aid Ameri-
can life as it appears to us at the present time. I would
not in any way abridge the academic work of colleges,
but I would extend the elective studies and bring the
college into more intimate relations with the people
themselves."

In one word, let the college be vital — vital in
giving wisdom for the solving of the great
social problem ; vital in wishing that the prob-
lem be pressed home upon itself.

In the future the relation between the col-
lege and the public school should be made
more Intimate. Instead of the too common
attitude of patronage and of jealousy should
be the attitude of receiving and of giving the
utmost help. In his great address given at
the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the
founding of Harvard College Mr. Lowell said :

" It is to be hoped that our higher institutions of learn-
ing may again be brought to bear, as once they did, more
directly on the lower, that they may again come into such
closer and graduated relation with them as may make the
higher education the goal to which all who show a clear
aptitude shall aspire. I know that we cannot have ideal
teachers in our public schools for the price we pay, or in
the numbers we require. But teaching, like water, can
rise no higher than its source ; and, like water again, it

Its Power in the Future. 297

has a lazy aptitude for running down-hill unless a con-
stant impulse be applied in the other direction. Would
not this impulse be furnished by the ambition to send on
as many pupils as possible to the wider sphere of the
University ? Would not this organic relation to the
higher education necessitate a corresponding rise in
the grade of intelligence, capacity, and culture demanded
in the teachers ? " '

The fact is that the college in mere self-
preservation should adjust itself to the public
schools. The fact is, also, that the college in
the preservation and augmentation of those
great interests out of which it grows should be
in closer touch with the public-school system.
In particular the college should bear to the
public schools two offerings. It should carry
into those schools an appreciation of the value
of scholarship. It should also train for those
schools administrators. If the great body of
the pupils in the public schools have a slight
sense of scholarship — as I presume it would be
usually granted that their sense of scholarship
is slight — the college has resting upon itself
the duty, to use the figure which Sir Walter
Mildmay used to Queen Elizabeth about the
foundation of Emanuel College, of '' planting

* Harvard College, 250th Anniversary, 227-8.

298 The American College.

acorns." But possibly more urgent than the
need of scholarship in the public schools is the
need of efficient administration. In the work
of direction and of supervision of our public
schools there is a crying call for wisdom.

The college of the future is also to have
a vital influence upon religion. For, as Presi-
dent Eliot said, in an address given at the
dedication of the site of Columbia Univer-
sity, ** religion, in the universal sense, and
the domestic relations remain, through all
governmental and instrumental changes, the
supreme forces in human society." ^ The
question of the past century has been the
question of the permanence and power of the
denominational college. The college has been
founded largely by denominations to promote
denominational interests. The question of the
new century is to be the question of the preva-
lence and power of the Christian college. In
America the word religion will be interpreted
by the word Christianity, and Christianity will,
as a spiritual doctrine and as a movement, be
interpreted in the most comprehensive and

* Columbia University ; Dedication of the new site, May 2, 1896,
97.

Its Power in the Future. ^99

vital way. The primary purpose and work of
the college as related to Christianity will be to
cause Christianity to make a proper appeal to
the human reason. In the college as well as
out of the college, Christianity has too often
been presented as a system of unreasoned
commands, as a creed without a logic, and
as a doctrine without an ethic. It has too
often been narrowed into denominational pro-
pagandism, or dissipated into atmospheric in-
fluences, or ossified into dogmatism. The
human reason has not had sufficient opportu-
nities under the best conditions for studying
its truths or for satisfying itself of the logical
worth of the evidences for its doctrines. The
collep-^ should impress all men with its "desire
to tesrfearlesslv every ratioii^l jL^iUT
whicK'^Chnstianity stands, in the college as
in the world, Christianity need not cease to
join itself to holy and beautiful environments,
or to prove its presence by its works of love
and beneficence ; but it should more constantly
and ardently manifest itself to the reason of
man in clearer light and greater impressive-
ness. The college of the future will not be
less, but more. Christian, but it will be far less

300 The American College.

sectarian. It will come into the large con-
ditions of liberty in which our oldest college
has so well led the advance. Religion in this
college has come to be regarded, not as a part
of college discipline, but as a • natural and
rational opportunity offering itself to the life
of youth. The college should always re-
member, as Professor F. G. Peabody says,'
'*that religion, rationally presented, will always
have for healthy-minded young men a com-
manding interest." The college man of the
future will be a religious man, not so much
technically religious as he has been in the
past, but genuinely and personally religious.
He will be a Christian of the sort which is in-
terpreted by the phrase that *' the Christian
embodies the highest type of the gentleman."
It is still true, as said Mark Hopkins, on the
fiftieth anniversary of his connection with Wil-
liams College : ** Christianity is the greatest
civilizing, moulding, uplifting power on this
globe, and it is a sad defect in any institution
of high learning if it does not bring those
under its care into the closest possible relation
to it."

• Preface to Mornings in the College Chapel.

Its Power in the Future. 301

Closely connected with the relation of the
college to religion is the question of the rela-
tion of the college to the moral training of its
students. It is plain that the college of the
future cannot abdicate all responsibility for
what we call the moral character of its under-
graduates. The value of moral character is so
evident, and the relation between moral char-
acter and the intellectual parts of one's being
so intimate, that the college cannot be suffered
to lay aside this duty. But the method which
the college of the future will adopt for the
bearing of this responsibility will be unlike the
method that has been most common in the
century that is now closing. The college will
not attempt to train moral character through
set rules and regulations. The method that
has been used has proved in some places value-
less and in others valuable. But it is a method
ill fitted for mature American students. The
method of the future will be the method of in-
fluence through personal association and proper
environment. The personality of the teachers
will come to have a larger value in forming
the highest type of character. The college
will treat the student of nature depraved, of

302 The American College.

aims low, of intimations base, as nature treats
an organism which has no relation to itself.
But th^ jxtan ^f high aims anrl white puri/y,

will, throngh the power of pfirs-^^Rf^f--'nrs^^??Tfin-
tion, develop into a manhood which is simplj^;^
incaTnate godTmess.

Ihe college is alsoto continue in the new
century its work of making men of large and
fine character. The distinguished editor of one
of our oldest and most influential magazines
has said : '* The college youth I see are— too
many of them — merely bright fellows with pre-
cocious worldliness : they seem not to have
seen the Holy Grail that a man who has lov-
ingly studied any great subject gets glimpses
of. I doubt whether present American col-
lege life gives enough of this inner growth."
The new college is to lay emphasis upon
sheer and simple character. The old colleges
did lay emphasis upon this fundamental ele-
ment. If the college of the last two decades of
the nineteenth century has failed to lay proper
emphasis upon this most serious matter, the
college of the first decades of the twentieth
century will return to the earlier and worthier

Its Power in the Future. 303

purposes. The college must continue in the
making of the strong and noble gentleman.
As Mr. Lowell said in his great Anniversary
address: ** Let it be our hope to make a
gentleman of every youth who is put under
our charge ; not a conventional gentleman, but
a man of culture, a man of intellectual re-
source, a man of public spirit, a man of refine-
ment, with that good taste which is the con-
science of the mind, and that conscience which
is the good taste of the soul. This we have
tried to do in the past ; this let us try to do in
the future."^ Of course such results cannot
be secured in every graduate, and of course the
influence of the few thousands who each year
go forth from the college portals into life, and
are swallowed up in its forces, is numerically
slight, for the number is only as one in some
four thousand. But such influences represent
those forces which are akin to the forces of
gravitation and light. Their power is not to
be measured by their number but by their
might.

O^his man of large and fine character — the
product of the college — is to be above all else

* Harvard College, 250th Anniversary, 234.

304 The American College.

a leader. The new century cries out for
leadership.^ On the whole the heart of hu-
manity is better than its head. Its wish to do
the right thing is superior to its power of
knowing what the right thing is, or of knowing
how to do the right thing when it is known)
The call for men of wisdom in legislation,
both in the municipality and in the State
and in the nation, is loud. The call for men
of appreciation and interpretation of the social
problems is loud. The call for administrators
and directors in the public-school system and
in scholarship is hardly less loud. Leaders,
whose knowledge has become wisdom, whose
wisdom has become conviction and whose
convictions are worthy battle-cries, the college
is to help to provide. The call is for men of
light and for men of light who, in this light,
can become men of leading. We should re-
turn to the condition which prevailed in the
Middle Ages. That pre-eminent interpreter
of the higher education in the Middle Ages,
Rashdall, says : *' Kings and princes found
their statesmen and men of business in the
Universities — most often, no doubt, among
those trained in the practical Science of Law,

Its Power in the Future. 305

but not invariably so. Talleyrand is said to
have asserted that Theologians made the best
diplomatists. It was not the wont of the
practical men of the Middle Ages to disparage
academic training. The rapid multiplication
of Universities during the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries was largely due to a direct
demand for highly educated lawyers and ad-
ministrators." ^

As has been said, the universities of the
Middle Ages were schools of the modern spirit.
They put the administration of government
and of affairs in the hands of men well trained.
In securing these worthiest results of leader-
ship, the college is to train men of power. At
certain times the college has been inclined to
emphasize too strongly knowledge as knowl-
edge, but the college is to emphasize the fact
and the method that from knowledge is to
come power.

A further method by which the college may
bless American life is through the inculcation
and illustration of a broad patriotism. No
sympathy is the college to have with that sen-
timent which cries, '* My country, right or

' Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, ii. 2, 707.

3o6 The American College.

wrong." No sympathy is the college to have
with that kind of patriotic love which is
bought by the destruction of other nations.
The college is to have the keenest sympathy
with every endeavor to promote a love for that
nation into which one was born, of which he
forms a part, and in whose soil his own dust
becomes dust itself. America ought to be the
best nation of the future. In humble pride
we may plume ourselves upon what has been
done and upon what we are able to do. Not
in vain, braggart boasting, may we recall the
past or anticipate the future. For a nation
that has in the hundred years of its national
existence done what the American has done
for civilization may be humbly proud. When
we take up the book of our illustrious ones
there are names which we can worthily write
by the side of the names of the greatest.

There is no nobler chapter in the history of
the American college than the chapter which
tells in glowing phrases of the college boys
who went forth from college hall to the camp ;
who marched from the Commencement plat-
forms to the field of battle. One may read
the record of them in the Memorial Halls at

Its Power in the Future. 307

Cambridge and at Brunswick, and one may
read the song memorial of them in the Com-
memoration Ode. Tit was not alone from the
college of the North that these men went
forth. One reads in the catalogues of the
colleges of Virginia name after name upon
page after page having the simple record :
wounded in The Wilderness ; killed at Manas-
sas ; killed at Cold Harbor. Yes, there came
from the college heart. Northern and South-
ern, the patriotic impulse to do loyal service
for '' my country.^

I know very well that it is sometimes said,
and very often thought, that the scholar is not
patriotic ; that in the comprehensiveness of
knowledge he loses intensity of conviction ;
that in loving humanity he does not love the
brothers of his own soil as he ought. One
recalls the oration of Wendell Phillips delivered
at the Phi Beta Kappa centennial anniversary
at Cambridge, in which he arraigned the
American scholar for cowardice and indiffer-
ence in the nation's crisis. But the best
answer to the words of the orator was the
four-square tower, rising above the platform
on which he spoke, that proclaimed to the

3o8 The American College.

world that our oldest college gladly gave her
sons, and poured out her bluest blood for
the salvation of the nation. Memorial Hall,
with the tablets pf white marble inscribed with
the names of heroes, was sufficient answer.
The Shaw monument removes the charge.

In his preface to those most stirring volumes,
Harvard Memorial Biographies ^ Colonel Hig-
ginson nobly says :

" There is no class of men in this republic from whom
the response of patriotism comes more promptly and
surely than from its most highly educated class. All
those delusions which pass current in Europe, dating
back to De Toqueville, in regard to some supposed tor-
por or alienation prevailing among cultivated Americans,
should be swept away forever by this one book. The
lives here narrated undoubtedly represent on the whole
those classes, favored in worldly fortune, which would
elsewhere form an aristocracy, — with only an admixture,
such as all aristocracies now show, of what are called
self-made men. It is surprising to notice how large is
the proportion of Puritan and Revolutionary descent.
Yet these young men threw themselves promptly and
heartily into the War ; and that not in recklessness or
bravado, — not merely won by the dazzle of a uniform,
or allured by the charm of personal power, or con-
trolled even by * that last infirmity,' ambition, — but
evidently governed, above all things else, by solid con-

Its Power in the Future. 3^9

victioo and the absolute law of conscience. To have
established incontestably this one point, is worth the
costly sacrifice which completed the demonstration."

And he continues in a further paragraph,

" And if there is another inference that may justly be
deduced from these pages, it is this : that our system of
collegiate education must be on the whole healthy and
sound, when it sends forth a race of young men Avho
are prepared, at the most sudden summons, to transfer
their energies to a new and alien sphere, and to prove
the worth of their training in wholly unexpected appli-
cations. So readily have the Harvard graduates done
this, and with such noble and unquestioned success,
that I do not see how any one can read these memoirs
without being left with fresh confidence in our institu-
tions, in the American people, and indeed in human
nature itself. Either there was a most rare and excep-
tional combination in the lives which Harvard Univer-
sity gave to the nation, or else — if they fairly represent
their race and their time — then the work and the tradi-
tions of our fathers are safe in the hands of their
descendants." *

The American people love America. The
love sometimes becomes braggadocio ; but the
American people in their love for America have
often felt that they did not find a sympathetic

^ Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Harvard Meitiorial Biographies ^
Preface v, vi.

3^0 The American College.

heart in the bosom of the American college.
The people have, therefore, felt themselves
aloof from the college. The college should
therefore inculcate love for the country ; a
patriotism which is broad and yet enthusiastic
and vital ; patriotism which is high without
boastfulness ; a patriotism which is as deep as
the instincts of the human heart. It is thus
that the American college can bless American
life. It is thus that the American college can
lead the people in times of national crisis into
ways of strength, into ways of peace.

The American college is, therefore, to be in
American life in the profoundest, widest, and
highest relations. If the college look into
the past — and into the past it must look — let
it look, in order that it may secure a course
more direct in present and future achieve-
ment. The scholar should make all antiquity
a prophet for to-day, as Grote made his his-
tory '' a modern political pamphlet in twelve
volumes." The college should fill that dire
need of the new world of wise leadership. It
should train every faculty in every man into
effective and gracious facility. It should
cause noble character to blossom in noble

Its Power in the Future. 311

doing, as noble doing is the seed of yet nobler
character. It should not dictate legislation,
but it should fit men to become worthy law-
makers. It should not, as it can not, step
over the threshold of domestic rights, but it
should so train women that they, in wifehood
and motherhood, may worthily train the gen-
erations yet to be. It should not stand blind-
folded as justice and mute as the Sphinx
before terrible social problems, but its eye
should discover ways of relieving the increas-
ing wants of suffering humanity, and its voice
should be a bugle in clearness and a flute in
sympathy, calling man to help man. Its in-
terests should be humane because they are
human.

Let the college have, or not have, noble
buildings, but let it be vital. Let the stu-
dents adopt or refuse adopting some academic
customs or costumes, but let the college be
vital. Let the collegfe be in the city with all
fhf- mao-niflppnt anH tnanitolrf litp of the me-
tr^pr>1is bfRting about it and beating into it,
or let_thecollege be in the countrv with all the
benedictions and beneficences of nature speak-
ing silentlyHnio the re^<^pHvp. mmn anH qiTjpt-

312 The American College.

heart, but let the college be vital. Let the
college be splendid and magnificent in equip-
ment and its laboratories commensurate with
all the life of nature, let its libraries be the
accumalation of the wisdom of man, but let
the college be vital itself in teacher and stu-
dent. Let the college also have a vitality as
broad as is human life itself. Let it reach
the American people as a people.

Discard Greek, but reach the people ; re-
tain Greek, but reach the people ; shorten the
college course or lengthen the college course,
but reach the people ; keep to the required
system, but reach the people; introduce the
elective system, but reach the people ; keep
out the sciences or let them in, but reach the
people ; bring in German methods, but reach
the people ; discard German methods, but
reach the people. Let not the American col-
lege be obliged to offer excuses for its mere
being because in its remoteness from the
people it is so useless ; let, rather, every Amer-
ican home be obliged to offer excuses for not
sending its sons and daughters to the college,
because the college in its abounding usefulness
is so near to the home. Let the college have

Its Power in the Future. 3^3

a . glorious past, a past of great movements
like Oxford, a past of great men like Cam-
bridge, or let the college be unknown ; but let
the college now be vital and broad in every
part of its being. Life^^ Lifey Life :~rrThat let
the American college stand for, that let the
American college^ be.

THE END

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