This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project
to make the world's books discoverable online.
It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject
to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books
are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.
Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the
publisher to a library and finally to you.
Usage guidelines
Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the
public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to
prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying.
We also ask that you:
+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for
personal, non-commercial purposes.
+ Refrain from automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine
translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the
use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.
+ Maintain attribution The Google "watermark" you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find
additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.
+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just
because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other
countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of
any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner
anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe.
About Google Book Search
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers
discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web
at |http : //books . google . com/
INAUGURATION
PRESIDENT HENRY CHURCHILL KING
OF OBERLIN COLLEGE
MAT 13 1903
Digitized by LjOOQIC
Digitized byLjOOQlC
Digitized byLjOOQlC
Digitized by LjOOQIC
Digitized byLjOOQlC
INAUGURATION
PRESIDENT HENRY CHURCHILL KING
OBERLIN MAY 13 1903
Digitized byCjOOQlC
Digitized byLjOOQlC
Digitized by LjOOQIC
Digitized byLjOOQlC
<r :-"»'
. ^ ,
INAUGURATION
PRESIDENT HENRY CHURCHILL KING
OF OBERLIN COLLEGE
MAY 13 1903
^
OBERLIN OHIO
PUBLISHED BY THE COLLEGE
1903
Digitized byLjOOQlC
THE IliPBRlAL PRBSS CLEVELAND
Digitized byLjOOQlC
•
V •
CONTENTS
THE INAUGURATION EXERCISES .... 7
INAUGURAL ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT HENRY
CHURCHILL KING 21
ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT WILLIAM JEWETT
TUCKER, D. D., LL. D 53
ADDRESSES BY
HON. J. G. W. COWLES, LL. D., ON BEHALF
OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES . . .61
PROFESSOR EDWARD INCREASE BOSWORTH,
D. D., ON BEHALF OF THE FACULTY . . 67
PRESIDENT WILLIAM GOODELL FROST,
PH. D., D. D., ON BEHALF OF THE ALUMNI 71
MR. DAHL BUCHANAN COOPER, ON BEHALF
OF THE STUDENTS 75
M10702
Digitized byLjOOQlC
Digitized by LjOOQIC
INAUGURATION
OF
PRESIDENT HENRY CHURCHILL KING
At the Annual Meeting of the Board of Trus-
tees of Oberlin College, held in Oberlin on
Wednesday, November 19, 1902, Professor Henry
Churchill King was elected President of Oberlin
College. A committee, consisting of Dr. Lucien
C. Warner, Dr. Henry M. Tenney, and Dr. Judson
Smith, was appointed to notify the President-elect
of this action. At a reception given at Baldwin
Cottage on the evening of that day, Professor King
announced his acceptance, following this with a
further statement to the students at the chapel ex-
ercises on Thursday, November 20. President
King undertook immediately the performance of
the duties of the new position.
On January 21, 1903, the Faculty appointed the
following Inauguration Committee : Professor A.
S. Root, Professor H. H. Carter, Mrs. A. A. F.
Johnston, Secretary G. M. Jones, Professor C. W.
Morrison, Professor J. F. Peck, and Professor A.
T. Swing. This committee recommended to the
Faculty that the inauguration be held on Wednes-
day, May 13, 1903, in connection with the "May
Festival" concerts of the Oberlin Musical Union,
May 12 and May 13, and with the graduation ex-
ercises of the Oberlin Theological Seminary on
Thursday, May 14.
[7]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
•;{.i^i the special meeting of the Board of Trustees,
held Thursday, February 5, 1903, the arrange-
ments already made for the inauguration were ap-
proved, and the Trustees asked the Faculty to
arrange all further necessary details. The Com-
mittee thereupon appointed the following sub-
committees :
Entertainment: Mr. L. D. Harkness, Mr. C. P. Doo-
little, and Professor C. W. Morrison.
Invitations and Publications: Secretary G. M. Jones, Pro-
fessor E. I. Bosworth, and Treasurer J. R. Severance.
Decoration : Professor F. O. Grover, Mr. C. P. DooHttlc,
Mrs. C. P. Doolittle, Professor A. S. Kimball, and Mrs. Her-
bert Harroun.
Music: Professor C. W. Morrison, Professor G. W*
Andrews, and Professor A. S. Kimball.
Procession : Professor A. A. Wright, Professor C. E. St.
John, Professor W. G. Caskey, Mr. C. H. Adams, and Mr. S.
K. Tompkins.
Seating: Professor A. E. Heacox, Mr. W. J. Homer, and
Mr. C. S. Pendleton.
Invitations were sent to the President of the
United States, the Governor of the Commonwealth
of Ohio and other officials, to the presidents of
other colleges and universities, to the clergymen
and members of the Council of the village of Ober-
lin, to all alumni, and to friends of the college.
The colleges and universities arranged in the or-
der of seniority which were represented at the
inaugural exercises were as follows :
LIST OF DELEGATES
Harvard University
Professor Edward Caldwell Moore, Ph.D., D.D.
[8)
Digitized by LjOOQIC
Yale University
Professor Frank Knight Sanders, Ph.D., D.D.
University of Pennsylvania
Professor Edwin Grant Conklin, Ph.D.
Columbia University
Professor Walter Taylor Marvin, Ph.D.
Brown University
Mr. Charles G. King, Jr.
Dartmouth Q)llege
President William Jcwett Tucker, D.D., LL.D.
Williams College
President Henry Hopkins, D.D., LL.D.
Andover Theological Seminary
Professor William Henry Ryder, D.D.
Allegheny College
President William H. Crawford, D.D., LL.D.
Indiana University
Professor Albert Frederick Kuersteiner.
Miami University
Professor Andrew D. Hepburn, D.D., LL.D.
Kenyon College
Professor Henry Titus West, A.M.
Western Theological Seminary
Professor Thomas Hastings Robinson, D.D.
Western Reserve University
President Charles Franklin Thwing, D.D., LL.D.
Mr. W. S. Tyler
Lane Theological Seminary
Professor Henry Goodwin Smith, D.D.
McCormick Theological Seminary
Professor Augustus Stiles Carrier, D.D.
Denison University
Professor Augustine S. Carman, A.B.
Hartford Theological Seminaiy
Professor Charles S. Thayer
Marietta College
President Alfred Tyler Perry, D.D.
Union Theological Seminary
President Charles Cuthbert Hall, D.D.
[»]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
University of Michigan
Professor Albert Benjamin Prescott, M.D., LL.D.
Mount Holyokc College
Professor Nellie A. Spore
University of Missouri
President Richard Henry Jesse, LL.D.
University of Notre Dame
Professor William Hoynes, LL.D.
University of Toronto
Professor John Roaf Wightman, Ph.D.
Ohio Wesleyan University
President James Whitford Bashford, Ph.D., D.D.
Olivet College
Professor Walter Eugene Colbum Wright, D.D.
Wittenberg College
Professor Charles Girven Heckert, D.D.
Baldwin University
President E. O. Buxton, D.D.
Mount Union College
President Albert Burdsall Riker, D.D.
Beloit College
President Edward D. Eaton, D.D., LL.D.
Otterbein University
President George Scott, Ph.D.
University of Wisconsin
Professor William Axnasa Scott, Ph.D.
Heidelberg University
President Charles E. Miller, A.M.
Northwestern University
Dean Thomas Franklin Holgate, Ph.D.
Wa5mesburg College
President Archelaus Ewing Turner, A.M.
Hillsdale College
President Joseph W. Mauck, LL.D.
Berea College
President William Goodell Frost, Ph.D., D.D.
Michigan Agricultural College
President J. L. Snyder, Ph.D.
Union Christian College
President Leander Jefferson Aldrich, D.D.
[10]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Mr. E. A. Handy
Carleton College
Professor Wilmot V. Metcalf, Ph.D.
Cornell University
Professor Waterman Thomas Hcwett, Ph.D.
University of Woostcr
President Louis Edward Holden, D.D., LL.D.
Ohio State University
Professor William Henry Scott, LL.D.
Buchtel College
President A. B. Church, A.M.
Smith College
President L. Clark Seelye, D.D, LL.D.
Welleslcy College
President Caroline Hazard, A.M., Litt.D.
Johns Hopkins University
Professor John Martin Vincent, Ph.D.
Case School of Applied Science
Acting President Charles Sumner Howe, Ph.D.
Tuskegee Institute
Mrs. Booker T. Washington.
Yankton College
President Henry Kimball Warren, A.M., LL.D.
Findlay College
President Charles Manchester, D.D.
Clark University
Professor Herbert Austin Aikens, Ph.D.
The Woman's College of Baltimore
Professor Maynard M. Metcalf, Ph.D.
University of Chicago
Professor George Herbert Mead, A.B.
Lake Erie College
President Mary Evans, A.M.
The Inaugural Procession comprised the follow-
ing divisions :
1. The Students.
2. The Obcrlin Musical Union.
3. The Alumni.
[Ill
Digitized byLjOOQlC
4. Representatives of the village of Obcrlin — the Board
of Q>mmerce, the village Q)uncil, the Teachers in the Public
Schools, the Board of Education, and the Pastors of the
Churches.
5. The Faculty, Office Staff, and Prudential Committee.
6. Invited Guests, not representatives of Colleges.
7. Representatives of Colleges and Universities.
8. The Board of Trustees, the Speakers and the Pres-
ident-elect.
The movements of the procession were under the
direction of Mr. Seeley K. Tompkins, Marshal-
in-Chief, and his assistants. As Honorary Marshal,
Mr. Louis H. Severance acted as the special escort
of President King. Student marshals directed the
marching of the students in division i ; division 2
was in charge of Mr. Earl F. Adams. Mr. Charles
H. Kirshner, of the class of 1886, acted as head
marshal of the Alumni, assisted by Professor
Azariah S. Root. Division 4 was in the charge of
Mr. Charles K. Whitney; division 5, of Professor
William G. Caskey; division 6, of Professor Fred
E. Leonard; division 7, of Professor Charles E.
St. John; and division 8, of Mr. William C.
Cochran.
The various divisions assembled at 8 130 o'clock,
at the appointed places, and moved promptly at
9 o'clock over the following route: South from
Peters Hall to the corner of West College and
North Professor streets; thence northward upon
the west side of North Professor street as far as
Tappan Walk; thence eastward under the Me-
morial Arch and along Tappan Walk, to the east
side of the campus ; thence northward on the wesl
[12]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
side of North Main street, to the First Congrega-
tional Church.
Upon arriving at the steps of the Church, the
students comprising division i halted and opened
ranks, forming a passage way through which the
other divisions of the procession passed.
Hon. John G. W. Cowles, LL. D., senior mem-
ber of the Board of Trustees, presided at the Inau-
guration exercises, the program being as follows :
INAUGURATION EXERCISES
Processional H)aiin, "Our God, our help in ages past/' Watts
Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come ;
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home!
Under the shadow of thy throne
Thy saints have dwelt secure;
Sufficient is thine arm alone.
And our defense is sure.
Before the hills in order stood.
Or earth received her frame.
From everlasting thou art God
To endless years the same.
A thousand ages, in thy sight,
Are like an evening gone;
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun.
Time, like an ever-rolling stream.
Bears all its sons away;
They fly, forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.
Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Be thou our guard while troubles last,
And our eternal home.
Organ Prelude. — March from Tannhauser, Wagner
Invocation. Rev. Washington Gladden, D.D., of Columbus, O.
Music: "Banquet Chorus," from the Odysseus, Bruch
By the Oberlin Musical Union
tis]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
Address by Hon. J. G. W. Cowles, LL.D., on behalf of the
Board of Trustees
Response by President Henry Churchill King, D.D.
Addresses by: —
Professor Edward Increase Bosworth, D.D., on behalf of
the Faculty
President William Goodell Frost, Ph,D., D.D., of the
class of 1876, on behalf of the Alumni
Mr. Dahl Buchanan Cooper, of the class of 1903, on
behalf of the Students
Music: "And the Glory of the Lord," Chorus from the
Messiah, Handel. By the Oberlin Musical Union
Address: "Is Modem Education Capable of Idealism?"
President William Jewett Tucker, D.D., LL.D., of Dart-
mouth College
Inaugural Address: "The Primacy of the Person in College
Education." President Henry Churchill King, D.D.
Hymn, "O Master, let me walk with Thee." W. Gladden.
O Master, let me walk with thee
In lowly paths of service free;
Tell me thy secret, help me bear
The strain of toil, the fret of care.
Help me the slow of heart to move
By some clear, winning word of love;
Teach me the wayward feet to stay,
And guide them in the homeward wav.
Teach me thy patience ; still with thee
In closer, dearer company.
In work that keeps faith sweet and strong,
In trust that triumphs over wrong.
In hope that sends a shining ray
Far (fown the future's broadening way,
In peace that only thou canst give.
With thee, O Master, let me live.
Qosing Prayer and Benediction, President Charles Cuthber
Hall, D.D., of Union Theological Seminary
Organ Postlude, March from Aida, Verdi
At the close of the exercises in the First Churcl
a luncheon was given at Warner Gymnasium ii
[14]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
honor of the representatives of other colleges and
universities, and at this luncheon brief addresses
were made by President James Whitford Bash-
ford, of Ohio Wesleyan University, President
Caroline Hazard, of Wellesley College, and Pro-
fessor Waterman Thomas Hewett, of Cornell
University.
Late in the afternoon, from 4 o'clock to 5:30
o'clock, the President of the College and Mrs.
King gave a general reception to all friends at
Talcott lawn.
By the generosity of the Oberlin Musical Union
the College was able to give to visiting delegates
and friends tickets for reserved seats for the three
concerts of the May Festival. The May Festival
exercises consisted of the following events :
Tuesday, May 12, 7 P. M., Concert by the Oberlin Musi-
cal Union, assisted by the Boston Festival Orchestra, Lohengrin,
Wagner.
The soloists for the Lohengrin concert were as follows :
Anita Rio, Elsa
Isabelle Bouton, Ortrud
William A. Wegener, Lohengrin
Emilio de Gogorza, Frederick of Telramund
Frederic Martin, King
Wednesday, May 13, 2 P. M., Orchestra Concert, Richard
Wagner program, by the Boston Festival Orchestra and soloists..
The program for this concert was as follows:
Emil MoUenhauer, Conductor
Vorspiel Tristan and Isolde
Aria, Adriano Rienzi
Mme. Isabelle Bouton
Siegfried Idylle
[15 1
Digitized by LjOOQIC
Digitized byLjOOQlC
Prize Song (arranged for violin) Die Meistersinger
Mr. John Witzcmann
Ritt der Walkuren Die Wdkure
Romanza, "The Evening Star" Tannhauser
Mr. Frederic Martin
Overture The Flying Dutchman
Wednesday, May 13, 7 P. M., Concert by the Oberlin Musi-
cal Union, assisted by the Boston Festival Orchestra, Lohengrin,
Wagner.
. The events of Inauguration Week closed on
Thursday, May 14, with the dedication of the
Memorial Arch at 10 o'clock A. M. and the ex-
ercises in connection with the Seventieth Annual
Commencement of the Theological Seminary at
2 130 P. M. The program at the dedication of the
Memorial Arch was as follows :
DEDICATION OF THE MEMORIAL ARCH
Rev. Judson Smith, D.D., Secretary of the American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Presiding
Dedicatory Address, Rev. Frank S. Fitch, D.D., of Buffalo,
N. Y.
Dedicatory Prayer, Rev. Henry M. Tenney, D.D., of Oberlin
Hymn, "The Scm of God goes forth to war," Heber
The Son of God goes forth to war,
A kingly crown to gain;
His blood-red banner streams afar:
Who follows in his train?
Who best can drink his cup of woe,
Triumphant over pain.
Who patient bears his cross below —
He follows in his train.
The martyr first, whose eagle eye
Could pierce beyond the grave,
Who saw his Master in the sky.
And called on him to save: 4'
[17]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
A glorious band, the chosen few,
On whom the spirit came —
Twelve valiant saints, their hope they knew,
And mocked the cross and flame.
They climbed the steep ascent of heaven
Through peril, toil, and pain :
O God ! to us may grace be given
To follow in their train !
Benediction, Rev. John W. Bradshaw, D.D., of Oberlin
At 1 1 :oo o'clock, in connection with the gradu
tion exercises of the class of 1903 of the Oberl
Theological Seminary, there were two addresses
the Memorial Arch by students of the Seminary,
follows :
Monument Oration, by Mr. Paul Leaton Corbin, of 1
Senior Class.
Reply, by Mr. Guy Hugh Lemon, of the Middle Class.
The program of the Seventieth Annual Cor
mencement of the Oberlin Theological Semina
was as follows :
COMMENCEMENT EXERCISES OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINA
Invocation, by Dean Frank K. Sanders, Ph.D., D.D., of Yj
Divinity School
Music: Selection from The Redemption Goun
By the Choir of the Second Congregational Church
Inauguration of the Dean of the Theological Seminary:
Address by President Henry Churchill King, D.D.
Response by Professor Edward Increase Bosworth, D.
Music: "O Salutaris Hostia" Lu
Ladies' Quartette
Commencement Address, "The Call of Christ to the Minist
of Christ," By President Henry Hopkins, D.D., LL.D.,
Williams College
Presentation of Degrees and Diplomas
Benediction, by Professor William H. Ryder, D.D., of A
dover Theological Seminary
[18]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
The enjoyment of the exercises of Inaugural
Week was heightened by the unusually attractive
weather which prevailed. The temperature on the
morning of Inaugural Day was ideal for such a
function as the Inaugural Procession, and the even-
ings were warm enough for the full appreciation
of the campus illuminations which had been ar-
ranged by the Committee on Decoration.
Digitized byLjOOQlC
Digitized byLjOOQlC
INAUGURAL ADDRESS^
THE PRIMACY OF THE PERSON IN COLLEGE
EDUCATION
BY PRESroENT HENRY CHURCHILL KING, D. D.
The numerous inaugurations of college presidents in the
last three or four years, have necessarily called out extended
discussions of educational aims. A late-comer in the field hardly
feels at liberty to ignore, and he certainly does not wish merely
to repeat, what has been already well said. To a certain extent
he must probably do both; for he can hardly contribute more
than his individual view-point, and may, perhaps, count himself
fortunate, if, taking advantage of the discussions of his predeces-
sors, he can by a single degree advance to greater clearness the
exact problem of college education.
But he may still find encouragement to believe that the task
naturally set him is not wholly useless, when he remembers, that,
in spite of a considerable consensus of opinion on the part of
college presidents as to what a college education in general ought
to be, the problem of the precise place of the college in our actual
educational system has perhaps never been at a more critical
stage than now. That at least an increasing number of thought-
ful observers feel this to be the Case there can be no doubt. Pres-
ident Butler only voices the fear of many when he says : "The
American college hardly exists nowadays, and, unless all signs
mislead, those who want to get it back in all its useful excel-
lence will have to fight for it pretty vigorously. The milk-and-
water substitutes and the fiat universities that have taken the
place of the colleges, are a pretty poor return for what we have
lost."
For the rapid changes that have taken place in college edu-
cation in the last twenty-five years have carried with them, in
iQnly a portion of the full discussion that follows was presented at the
Inauguration Exercises.
[tl]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
many quarters at least, unforeseen and far-reaching conse-
quences. The study of these consequences has brought to some
of the most careful students of education, with whatever recog-
nition of gain, a distinct sense of loss, most definitely expressed,
perhaps, by Dean Briggs in his "Old-fashioned Doubts concern-
ing New-fashioned Education."
Other changes in other departments of education have
greatly complicated the problem of the relation of the different
members of our educational system. Revolutionary changes,
that seem almost, if not quite, to involve the elimination of the
college, are soberly, even if reluctantly, suggested by distin-
guished educators. And other changes of relations that appear
at first sight less serious, in which the colleges themselves are
acquiescing, may in the end make any adequate attainment of
the older college ideal equally impossible. The result of the
entire situation, therefore, is to press today upon American
educators as never before these questions: Has the American
college a real function, a logical and vital place in a compre-
hensive system of education ? or is it the blunder of a crude time
and a crude people, an illogical hybrid between the secondary
school and the university, that ought to hand over a part of its
work to the secondary school and the rest to the university, and
to retire promptly from the scene with such grace as it can
muster? or, at best, is its older function now incapable of
realization ?
I. THE FUNCTION OF COLLEGE EDUCATION.
Just because these questions concern the place of college
education in a system of education, they can be answered only
in the light of a comprehensive survey of the entire problem
of education.
The problem of education in its broadest scope may per-
haps be said to be the problem of preparation for meeting the
needs of the world's life and work. Much of the training be-
longs necessarily to the home and to the interactions of the in-
evitable relations of life. Much of it, probably, can never be
brought into any organized system. But organized education
[22J
Digitized by LjOOQIC
must do what it can to insure, first, that no men shall lack that
elementary training and knowledge without which they are
hardly fitted at all for ordinary human intercourse, or for intel-
ligent work of any kind in society, still less for growing and
happy lives; second, that there shall be those who can carry on
the various occupations demanded by our complex civilization,
in the trades, in business, and in the professions; third, that
there shall be investigators, scientific specialists, extenders of
human knowledge, in all spheres. None of these needs are
likely to be denied — not even the last; for our age has had so
many demonstrations of the practical value of scientific discov-
eries, that it is even ready to grant the value of the extension of
knowledge for its own sake. That, then, every man should have
the education necessary to render him a useful member of so-
ciety; that the necessary occupations should be provided for;
that there should be a class of scientific specialists constantly
pushing out the boundaries of human knowledge, — ^we are all
agreed. And to this extent at least, the problems, first, of the
elementary schools; second, of the trade, technical, and profes-
sional schools; and, third, of the university proper, are recog-
nized and justified.
Our diflSculties begin when we try to define more narrowly
just what is to be included in our first group of schools. Ex-
actly what education is indispensable that one may become a
useful member of society? Virtually we seem to have decided
that that indispensable education is covered in our primary and
grammar grades; for the majority do not go further, and com-
pulsory education does not require more. And yet, with prac-
tical unanimity, the United States have decided that the State
is justified in furnishing, and, indeed, is bound to furnish, that
smaller number of its children who are willing and able to
take further schooling, opportunity to continue for three or four
years longer in studies of so-called "secondary" grade. The
State can justify this procedure only upon the ground that
such further study prepares still better for citizenship, and that
it is of value to the State that even a much smaller number
should have this better preparation; or, also, and perhaps more
[ 23]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
commonly, upon the practical ground that the secondary educa-
tion furnishes the knowledge and training which, if not indis-
pensable to citizenship, is indispensable to many of the higher
occupations and forms of service to the State. No sharp line,,
certainly, can be drawn between the studies of the grammar
school and those of the high school. And we all recognize and
justify the secondary school, and unhesitatingly include it, as-
practically indispensable to the State if not to all its citizens,
in our first group of schools, to form the unified public school
system.
But it needs to be borne clearly in mind, that if the true
justification of elementary and secondary education is the prepa-
ration of useful members of society, it cannot be regarded as^
merely intellectual. The moral side of the matter is, if there is
any difference, even more important — the learning of order, of
obedience, of integrity in one^s work, of steadfastness in spite
of moods, of the democratic spirit, of a real sense of justice, and
of the rightful demand of the whole upon the individual. If
these are not given in some good measure, then, whatever the-
intellectual results, in just so far, from the point of view of the
State, public-school education is a failure. And yet no doubt
it must be said, that since in America the school children are-
all in homes, the American public-school teacher has, quite nat-
urally, not regarded himself as primarily charged with anything
but the intellectual training of the child. Other training has.
been largely incidental — taken up only so far as the order of
the school demanded, or as it was inevitably involved in the
situation. Even so, the moral training has been by no means un-
important. But it may be doubted if there is any change in
public-school education so important today as that the teacher
should plainly recognize that his real responsibility is to train
his charges to be useful members of society, with all that that
implies. Let the child and the parent and the teacher all alike
understand that the State undertakes the free education of all
its children just because it hopes thus to prepare them to be-
valuable members of a free people; and that whatever is neces-
sary to that end, provided it does not violate individual con-
[241
Digitized by LjOOQIC
sciences, is within the function of the public school. This means^
of course, that it is the business of the public school to teach
living, as well as studies.
But with this recognition of the broader function of the
public schools, with the necessary acknowledgment of a real
broadening even on the intellectual side of technical and profes-
sional courses, and with the present common admission of the
danger of a specialism not broadly based, is the distinct functioa
of the college clearer, or has it rather been taken on by the other
members of the educational system? To a certain extent, no*
doubt, the latter is true and ought to be true.
But we might well argue for college education, in line with
the more practical argument already made for secondary educa-
tion, that the highest success in the great occupations of the
world's work, including scientific specialism, requires an educa-
tion preliminary to the technical training, more extended not
only, but of a broader type than secondary education can fur-
nish. This seems commonly granted now by the technical
schools themselves. And this position is no doubt correct. But
is this the chief reason for college education? It is not merely
for the purpose of carrying on the world's work in this external
sense that college education exists, nor does this sufficiently
define its function. The college does not look beyond to the
technical or professional school, or to the university proper for
its justification ; but rather is itself the culmination of the work
that at least ought to be undertaken by the public schools.
We might, therefore, argue again and more truly, probably,,
for college education, in line with the other argument for sec-
ondary education ; that the world needs pre-eminently the lead-^
ership of a few of greater social efficiency than any of the other
types of education by their necessary limitations are able ta
offer. For when all is said that can possibly be said for ele-
mentary, secondary, technical, professional, and specialized train-
ing, what still do the world's life and work need? All these
are necessary, but obviously, for the highest life of sodety, much
more, and much that is greater, is demanded. Here are instruc-^
tion and discipline, technical skill and professional training,.
[25 1
Digitized by LjOOQIC
and heights of specialized knowledge. "But where shall wisdom
be found, and where is the place of understanding?" The ele-
mentary school saith, It is not in me; and the secondary school
saith, It is not with me. It cannot be gotten for technical skill,
nor shall professional success be weighed for the price thereof;
It cannot be valued with the gain of the specialist, with his en-
larged knowledge or his discovery. Whence then cometh wis-
dom, and where is the place of understanding?
One cannot answer that question by raising small inquiries
of immediately appreciable gain. Let us ask, then, the largest
questions and note their generally admitted answers. Assum-
ing that the world and life are not wholly irrational, what is
the best we can say concerning the meaning of the earthly
life? What is the goal of civilization? What is the danger of
the American nation? What are the greatest needs of the in-
dividual man ?
The wisdom of the centuries has not been able to suggest
a better meaning for the earthly life, than that it is a preliminary
training in living itself. The goal of civilization, our sociolo-
gists tell us, is a rational, ethical democracy. Our political
students insist that the foremost danger of the nation is the
lack of the spirit of social service. The greatest needs of the in-
dividual man are always character, happiness, and social effi-
ciency. If these are even approximately correct answers to our
questions, then the deepest demands to be made upon an educa-
tional system are, that, so far as it may, it should give such wis-
dom in living, as should insure character and happiness to the in-
dividual, and that spirit of social service that should make men
efficient factors in bringing on the coming rational and ethical
democracy.
This requires that somewhere in our educational system
we should attack the problem of living itself and of social serv-
ice in the broadest possible way, and in a way that is broader
than is possible to either the elementary or secondary school,
though neither of these may legitimately shirk this task. Just
this, then, is the function of the college: to teach in the broadest
way the fine art of living, to give the best preparation that or-
126 1
Digitized by LjOOQIC
ganized education can give for entering wisely and unselfishly
into the co?nplex personal relations of life, and for furthering
unselfishly and efficiently social progress. As distinguished from
the other forms of education, it has no primary reference to
the earning of a living, or to the performance of some specific
task; it faces the problem of living in a much broader and more
thoroughgoing fashion; it does not specifically aim or expect
to reach all, but seeks to train a comparatively small self -selected,
number who shall be the social leaven of the nation.
If the task so set the college seems too large, let us re-
member not only that the admitted individual and social goals,
require no less, but also that the outcome of the maturest think-
ing upon man and his relation to the world, indicates that the
best anywhere can be attained only through such breadth of aim.
For if we seek light from psychology, we are confronted
at once with its insistence upon the complexity of life — the re-
latedness of all — ^and upon the unity of man. But these prin-
ciples deny point-blank the wisdom of an education exclusively
intellectual, and require rather, that, for the sake of the intel-
lect itself, the rest of life and the rest of ipan be not ignored..
Positively, they call for an education that shall be broadly in-
clusive in its interests, and that shall appeal to the entire man.
If we turn to sociology, we meet, if possible, an even
stronger emphasis upon the complexity of life, and a clear de-
mand that, back of whatever power the individual may have,
there should lie the great convictions of the social consciousness,
that imply the highest moral training, and set one face to face-
with the widest social and political questions. No narrow edu-
cation can meet the sociological test.
And if we ask for the evidence of philosophy, we have to^
note that its most characteristic positions today in metaphysics
and theory of knowledge — its teleological view of essence, its
insistence that the function of knowledge is transitional, and
that the key to reality is the whole person — ^all refute a purely
intellectual conception of education and logically require a
broader view of education than has anjrwhere commonly pre-^
vailed.
[27]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
And if as a Christian people, professing to find our I
ideals in the Christian religion, we seek guidance from its
that all men should live as obedient sons of the He
Father and as brothers one of another — ^we are face t
;again with that problem of the complex world of persona
tions, that cannot be solved except through the training
entire man.
In all these lines of psychological, sociological, philc
•cal, and Christian thinking, our theories are right; our p:
in education at best lags far behind. Every line of modern
ing is a fresh insistence upon the concrete complexity of li
upon the unity of man, and demands an education,
enough to meet both. Nothing justifies the common ex
dinary emphasis on the intellectual as the one aim oi
•cation.
It is not, then, by accident that we speak of the nectsi
a liberal education. For let us notice that even on the
lectual side, the most valuable and vital qualities cann
.^ven by rule or by any narrow technique. The suprea
mand is for what we call sanity, judgment, common
adaptability — all different names, perhaps, for the same
namely, ability to know whether a given case is to be ti
•according to general precedent — by appeal to a general
ciple — or decided upon its individual merits; to know wl
our problem is one of classification, or one of more tho:
:acquaintance with the particular. No rules or methods oi
cedure can make a reasoner or an investigator; for the
point is to pick out of a new situation the exact element
which is significant for the purpose in hand. The case c
have been anticipated ; the only help that education can g
through much practice in discrimination and assimilation,
through the bestowal of a wide circle of interests, aBstheti<
-practical, even more than intellectual. Interpretive pou
similarly conditioned, and calls for the richest life in th
terpreter. Even the scientific spirit, then, — the most val
gift of a scientific training, — is not merely intellectual. Stil
.•are the historical spirit and the philosophic spirit intellect
[281
Digitized by LjOOQIC
conferred ; they require at every turn the use of the key of the
whole man.
And we certainly have a right to ask of education that it
bring men to appreciation of the great values of life — what else
does culture mean? — to aesthetic taste and appreciation, to
moral judgment and character, to the capacity for friendship,
to religious appreciation and response.
But if we have a right to demand from an educational
system in any measure these qualities — ^judgment, adaptability,
discernment, interpretive power, the scientific, historical, and
philosophical spirit, and the culture adequate to enter into the
great spheres of value — aesthetic, personal, moral, and reli-
gious, — ^it is evident that they can be given only indirectly and
through the most liberal training. Do they not lie, in the na-
ture of the case, quite beyond the limits of elementary, second-
ary, professional, or specialistic training, and constitute the great
aims of college education? Is there anything else likely to take
the place of the college in performing this greatest educational
work?
It will hardly be contended by any, I judge, that technical
or professional training, for the very reason that it does and
must aim primarily at direct preparation for a particular call-
ing, can give with any adequaqr this indirect and liberal edu-
cation.
And it is difficult to believe that any one who has measured
with seriousness the greatness of the need of which we have
just spoken, and the breadth of the education required to meet
the need, will be able to think that the secondary school, even if
extended two years, is, or can be made, sufficient to the task.
For, in the first place, it is only reasonable that our educational
system should somewhere recognize the special significance of the
transitional character of the period of later youth, and definitely
provide for it. That period peculiarly needs the kind of sepa-
rate training given by the college, with its increased call for in-
dependent action, and (as compared with the high school) its
greater possibility of bringing all sides of the life of the student
under some common and unified training. Is it too much to
Digitized byLjOOQlC
claim that the college, at its best, has proved an almost
transition from the stricter supervision of the secondary sc
to the complete individual liberty of the university proper ?
Moreover, it is quite wide of the mark to argue, as aga
the need of the college, that the high-school graduate of to
has often done as much work in many lines as the college gi
uate of fifty years ago. That may be true, but the real qi
tion is this: Is he proportionally as well prepared to meet i
complex demands of modern life, as the college graduate of i
older time, the conditions of the much simpler life he co
fronted? The question, in other words, is not one of absolu
attainment, but of proportional preparation for life; nor one <
amount of knowledge merely, but of adaptive power. In ed\
cation, we are least of all at liberty to ignore the increasing con
plexity of modem civilization.
But the decisive reason, after all, why the secondary schoo
cannot take the place of the college is this : that one has only t<
review the list of qualities required for the completest training
for living, to see that the deepest of the interests involved simply
cannot be appreciated at the secondary school age, even if ex-
tended two years. I have no desire to underrate the attain-
ments of the secondary school graduate, but I cannot forget
that the true scientific spirit, the historical spirit, the philosophi-
cal spirit, power of wise adaptation, and appreciation of the
greatest spheres of value, are all plants of slow growth, and
necessarily presuppose a certain maturity of mind. What does
the whole principle of psychological adaptation in education
mean but just this, that you cannot wisely overhasten life's own
contribution ? It seems to me too often forgotten, that the two
later years which it is sometimes proposed to cut off from the
college course are precisely the years, which, from the broader
and deeper point of view, can least of all be spared. Generally
speaking, you simply cannot make a philosopher of a sophomore.
He has not lived enough. In like manner, the key to the great-
est values of life is simply not yet held before the dawning, at
least, of some real maturity.
Nor do statistics as to age seem to me greatly to affect the
rao]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
problem. With an advancing civilization, the period of youth
for women certainly has been generally extended with real gain ;
probably it is wisely extended for both men and women. In any
case, I see no reason for believing that the average sophomore
is relatively maturer today than his compeer of the earlier time.
These considerations seem to me sufficient to show that we
have no good reason to expect the secondary school to take the
place of the college.
And we have still less reason to expect the university to
take the place of the college, unless college and university are
regarded as essentially interchangeable terms. If the university
proper has any really distinctive function, so far as I am able
to see, that must be regarded as the training of the scientific
specialist. I am quite ready to admit and to assert, that even
the university cannot wisely ignore the claims of citizenship;
but just because its primary aim is specific and limited, its recog-
nition of these claims must be almost wholly incidental — in
spirit and atmosphere rather than in its proper training.
The university, then, properly so-called, cannot do the
work of the college, first, because its aim is distinctly and en-
tirely intellectual; and, second, because it assumes, with some
reason, that it is dealing with fully mature men, in whose case
any imposition of conduct and ideals would be out of place ; and
this assumption accentuates still further its strictly intellectual
aim. But, besides this, in the very nature of the case, in its
exclusive specialism, the university lacks, necessarily, the breadth
of aim required in the fullest training for living, and quite fails
to make its appeal to the entire man ; and so shuts out both in-
dispensable interests and indispensable training. Even on the
purely intellectual side, for the very reason that it looks to spe-
cialism in each line, it is likely quite to lack those general courses
that even the specialist needs in other lines than his own. These
three essential differences, then, — the purely intellectual aim,
the assumption of the maturity of its students, and its exclusive
specialism, — ^make the atmosphere of the university distinctly
different from that of the college, and make it impossible that it
should ever do the work of the older college.
[ni
Digitized by LjOOQIC
In fact, it is hardly too much to say that the greatest losses
that college education has suffered are due to the fact that the
attempt has been mistakenly made to carry over the spirit of
the university into the college. As American educators awak-
ened only slowly to the true conception of the university proper,
and then, with the natural enthusiasm of a new-found ideal,
exaggerated the value of the university's function, the college
and university ideals were naturally confused, and the true col-
lege ideal almost lost in the process. Many circumstances have
favored this tendenqr. The confusion was real and honest.
Colleges were growing into universities. Many changes in
college education itself were necessary. But the greatest dam-
age was done, simply because the colleges were cowardly in the
face of unwise and ill-founded criticism made from the stand-
point of the university, and were either ashamed to resist the ex-
clusively intellectual trend, or lazily unwilling to keep the in-
creasingly diiScult responsibility of the broader college training.
As a natural consequence, many of our colleges and uni-
versities have presented the anomalous condition of being filled
with students who claimed both the liberty of men and the ir-
responsibility of boys. Naturally, too, aside from sham univer-
sities, those colleges have been in most danger in this respect of
losing true college ideals, that have been in closest connection
with the university, especially where the same courses and in-
structors and methods and discipline and aims have served both
college and university. Courses admirably adapted for the ex-
clusive specialist may be quite unprofitable as the chief pabulum
of a college course: and a method of treatment, not only justi-
fied, but almost demanded in dealing with really mature men,
may be quite inadequate and unwarranted for the student
whose ideals are in flux, and the appeal of whose entire per-
sonality no instructor has a right to ignore. "Is not the life
more than meat? and the body than raiment?" The college
needs much more than a highly trained specialist in the teach-
er's chair; it can never spare, without disastrous loss, the close
personal touch of mature men of marked interest in the wide
range of the life of others, and with character-begetting power.
Digitized by LjOOQIC
And it cannot spare a real training that is far more than intel-
lectual. Indeed, if I understand President Butler aright, in his
tentative suggestion of halving the college course, it is exactly
the state of the universitized college that has made him regard
the halving of its course as no great disaster. The suggestion
would seem warranted, however, only if we must regard the
cause of the college as already lost, and count it hopeless that
cither educators or the public should be again awakened to the
priceless value of the work of the true college.
Nor do I believe that> with whatever losses, the college has
quite failed to give the liberal training required. Many a col-
lege teacher can confirm from his own repeated observation
President Wilson*s words: "Raw lads are made men of by
the mere sweep of their lives through the various schools of ex-
perience. It is this very sweep of life that we wish to bring to
the consciousness of young men by the shorter processes of the
college. We have seen the adaptation take place ; we have seen
crude boys made fit in four years to become men of the world."
Mistakes, no doubt, have been made, serious losses sus-
tained, and there are grave dangers to be guarded against in all
our colleges. The utilities have been over-insistent ; the aim has
been too merely intellectual; specialism has claimed too much;
the standpoint and method of the university have prevailed to
an extent quite beyond reasonable defense; and, in consequence,
at multiplied places the rights of the entire personality have
been ignored.
But, on the other hand, no mere reaction to the older col-
lege is either desirable or possible. Men came to see that tl\ey
were in a new world that required for wise and fruitful living
a broader curriculum than the older college ever afforded. A
change here was inevitable.
So, too, it can hardly be doubted that there was needed
greater emphasis on a close and living and practical relation to
the actual world ; fuller recognition of the meaning of hard, hon-
est, intellectual work, and of the sound psychological basis of
the laboratory and seminar methods ; a better adaptation to dif-
fering individuals; and, for the very sake of greater power in the
[33J
Digitized byLjOOQlC
more general courses, a real approach to something like spe-
cialism in at least one line of study. In all these important re-
spects, the changes toward the newer college have been not
only practically justified but thoroughly right.
Now, is it possible to combine the gains of the new with
the indisputable advantages of the old? What changes in the
present situation are demanded, if the true function of the
college is to be completely fulfilled? The present lack seems
to me plainly to lie in the comparative neglect of the entire per-
sonality. How are these needs of the complete personality to
be met in education? What are the means, and what is the
spirit required ?
The direct study of human nature in its constitution and
in the relations of society ought to enable one to answer these
questions with some precision. In other words, if college edu-
cation has really the broad function that has been ascribed to
it, it ought to be able to meet a psychological and sociological
test. Modern psychology — ^with what seems to me its pre-
eminent fourfold insistence, upon the complexity of life, the
unity of man, the central importance of will and action, and
the concreteness of the real, involving a personal and a social
emphasis — has its clear suggestions. And modern sociology, too,
with its demand for a social consciousness that shall be charac-
terized by the threefold conviction of the essential likeness of
men, of the mutual influence of men, and of the value and
sacredness of the person, has its definite counsel. The proper
fulfillment of the function of the college, this seems to indicate,
requires as its great meansy first, a life sufficiently complex to
give acquaintance with the great fundamental facts of the world,
and to call out the entire man ; second, the completest possible
expressive activity on the part of the student; and, third, per-
sonal association with broad and wise and noble lives. And the
corresponding spirit demanded in college education must be,
first, broad and catholic in both senses, — ^as responding to a
wide range of interests, and looking to the all-around develop-
ment of the individual; second, objective rather than self-cen-
tered and introspective ; and, third, imbued with the fundamental
[84]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
convictions of the social consciousness. These are always the
greatest and the alone indispensable means and conditions in a
complete education, and they contain in themselves the great
sources of character, of happiness, and of social efficiency. The
supreme opportunity, in other words, that a college education
should offer, is opportunity to use one's full powers in a wisely
chosen, complex environment, in association with the best; — and
all this in an atmosphere, catholic in its interests, objective in
spirit and method, and democratic, unselfish, and finely reverent
in its personal relations. Such an ideal definitely combines the
best of both the older and the newer college. And the colleges
that most completely fulfill this ideal have, I judge, a work
which is beyond price, and without possible substitute.
Before passing to the discussion of the means and spirit
demanded in a true college education, a word further concern-
ing the relation of the college to the professional training seems
desirable. In this whole problem of the possible shortening of
the college course for the sake of students looking to professional
studies, several things need to be kept closely in mind if confu-
sion is to be avoided.
In the first place, if the professional course is a full rigorous
four-year course, this ought to mean, and usually does mean,
that it has been laid out on somewhat broad and liberal lines,
and not with reference to mere narrow technique. And the
student who is to continue his study through such a course
can more easily afford to abridge the time given to the two
courses.
This same broadening of the professional course, more-
over, makes possible ian entirely legitimate adjustment to the
coming professional study on the part of the college. In every
broadly planned professional course of four years, there is quite
certain to be at least a year of work of so liberal a character
that it may justly be counted toward both the college and the
professional degree. And the colleges which can offer such
work of first quality for the different professions can meet
squarely and strongly every legitimate demand for abridging the
entire period of study; and can then, in all probability, in the
[36]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
great majority of cases, render a better service to the stu<
himself, to the professional school, and to society, by retail
the student in the atmosphere of the college through his
four years.
It is further to be noted that in any case this reason
shortening college courses holds only for such professional
dents. For the majority of college students, including aln
all the women, such shortening is not called for, and woulc
only a calamity. Even the smallest real colleges, theref
that can do very little in the way of adjustment to professic
courses, and that may have to lose many, perhaps most, of tl
looking to professional work, would still have their former n
important service to render for the majority of their students
Moreover, it seems to me wholly probable that a good i
portion of the very ablest and clearest-sighted of those go
into the professions, will still choose not to deprive themse]
of the very best the college can give them, and will there!
prefer not to specialize in college in precisely those subjects
which the larger part of all their later study in any case m
be devoted. And, through specialization in other lines, such
ceptional students will look forward confidently to a larger '.
and a higher professional success than could otherwise come
them. These wisest students will certainly not wish to sa<
fice acquaintance with the natural great broad human subjc
of the last year in college to professional specialization. A
even those students who feel compelled to abridge their ent
period of study, if they are wise, will so scatter their preli
inary professional study through their college course, as to
sure that at least a part of their maturest time in college n:
be given to those great subjects, like philosophy, that requ
some real maturity of mind to be most profitably taken. I
not believe that the proper demands of both liberal and prof
sional training can be met where it is attempted to cover be
courses in six years. Even where the requisite subjects are ;
covered by brilliant students the value of the outcome may w
be doubted. It is not to be forgotten that it is time, and soi
real sense of leisure, and opportunity to take in the full signi
[86]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
cance of one's studies and to knit them up with the rest of one's
thinking and living — it is just these things that distinguish
real education from cramming.
II. THE GREAT MEANS IN COLLEGE EDUCATION.
A. A Complex Life, — And, first, the college must furnish
a life sufficiently complex to insure to the student a wide circle
of interests, and to call out his entire personality.
Aside from its psychological basis, justification for this
prime emphasis on breadth in college education is ever3rwhere at
hand. For philosophy has practically to recognize, even when
it does not theoretically and directly assert, that "to be is to be
in relations." Science cannot forget that as the scale of life
rises, there must be correspondence to a more complex environ-
ment. The philosophical historian finds the main safeguard
against the retrogression of the race in an increasing self-control,
due to the steady pressure of great and many-sided objective
forces organized in institutions, laws, customs, and education.
The supreme educational counsel, and the secret of full mental
wakefulness both seem often to be found in concentration upon
relations. Our follies usually go back to the ignoring of some
relation or other of the matter in hand. And it is not diflScult
to show that our world, our experience, our sanity, our free-
dom, and our influence, — all depend in no small degree on the
largeness of our circle of interests; while simple understanding
of our complex modern civilization alone requires great breadth
In training.
It cannot be denied that such breadth of education is at-
tended by serious dangers of over-sophistication and pessimism
through loss of convictions and ideals. And yet the breadth is
to be welcomed; for the remedy is not in less breadth, but in
more breadth. For breadth certainly does not mean the nar-
rowness of ignoring the results of experience. It is a false lib-
erality that treats with equal respect exploded and verified
hypotheses. The entire lack of prejudice upon which some so
pride themselves is curiously akin to stupid and obstinate folly.
Some things have been proved in the history of the race.
[87]
Digitized byLjOOQlC
Nor does breadth mean the abandonment of all discrim-
ination in values — ^putting all values on a dead level. It is a
strange reversal of scientific estimates, that turns unscientific
lack of discrimination into science's broad openness to light.
There are many points of view, but they are not therefore all
of equal importance. The noble virtue of tolerance is not pos-
sible to such cheap and easy indifferentism. Only the man of
convictions and ideals, with a strong sense of the difference of
values, can be tolerant, for only he cares. The view of any
single individual is no doubt limited; but the point of view
which results from the gradual and careful cancellation of the
limitations of many minds, is more than an individual view.
Nor, once more, does breadth mean a narrow intellectual-
ism, for if we can trust the indications of our intellect, we
ought to be able to trust the indications of the rest of our
nature; and in any case the only possible key and standard of
truth and reality are in ourselves — the whole self — ^and the so-
called "necessities of thought" become, thus, necessities of a
reason which means loyally to take account of all the data of the
entire man.
Obviously, then, no attempt at mere reaction to simpler
conditions will avail in education. Indeed, we cannot return
to them if we would; though the temptation to do so is often
real enough. But, even if the return were possible, it would
mean nothing less than a declaration that our Christian ideals
cannot conquer a complex situation. This would be really to
give up the whole battle; for we have not only found reason
fully to justify the greatest breadth on general grounds, but the
ideal interests themselves suffer from any spirit of exclusive-
ness. Human nature certainly avenges itself for any attempted
disregard of the wide range of its interests; and, in truth, the
denial of legitimate worldly interests only limits the possible
sphere of morality and religion. It is for just this reason that
the separation of the sacred and secular is the heresy of here-
sies. The simplicity to be sought lies — not in environment —
but in a spirit that, having great convictions and great ideals,
clearly discriminates the greater from the less, and unhesitatingly
[38]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
subordinates all relative goods. This insures that singleness of
aim that makes the genuinely simple and transparent life. It is
a spirit that can recognize the full value of the material in its
place, but with the clear vision that "a man's life consisteth
not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth" will not
allow itself to be absorbed in the "passion for material comfort"
The simplicity of higji ideals, consistently and resolutely pur-
sued, is possible to any college in the very midst of the most
varied interests. And only such a simplicity' can conquer in
the end.
The college, of course, must meet these demands for breadth
of training by the wide range of its studies and of its interests.
In its studies it aims to let the student share in the world's best
inheritance in each of die great realms of human thinking. I
need not repeat the often given argument for the different
studies to be recognized in a liberal training. It will include
the older and newer studies, mathematics, ancient and modem
languages and literatures, natural science, history, economics and
sociology, philosophy, and physical training. And it seems to
me hardly open to question that it ought to provide courses that
shall prove valuable introductions to the intelligent appreciation
of music and of art, as well as of literature. These studies will
represent all the great classes of facts in the midst of which
every man must live, and afford the full range of fundamental
educational values. But liberal training need not mean neces-
sarily, I think, large numbers of greatly detailed courses; nor
for any one man acquaintance with all branches of natural
science. The scientific spirit it must give, with the involved some-
what thorough knowledge of at least one science. The study
of material objects has great advantages for the scientific spirit
and method over the study of any other objects; but we are not
at liberty to forget that our primary relation in life is, never-
theless, not to things but to persons.
But in any case the interests of the college must be wider
than the curriculum. It is only a part of our excessive intel-
lectualism that it is so often assumed that the curriculum makes
the college. Some of the most important interests in a liberal
[39]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
education can be best met only indirectly. Surroundings, or-
ganization, discipline, and atmosphere may here count for more
than definite instruction. We have the needs of the entire
man — ^physical, intellectual, aesthetic, social, moral, and reli-
gious — to meet in a truly liberal education. The intellectual
needs can doubtless be met more easily and directly in the cur-
riculum than any of the others; but none of them may be ig-
nored without serious loss.
Physical education makes its rightful claim upon the col-
lege. The college must not only talk about the sound mind in
the sound body, but do something really to secure that sound
body for its students. It must not only thoroughly recognize
in its psychological teaching the intimate way in which body
and mind are knit up together, the physical basis of habit, the
critical importance of surplus nervous energy, the influence of
physical training upon the brain centers, and the close connec-
tion of the will with muscular activity; but if it really believes
these things, it must practically recognize them in the organi-
zation of its work. This means, not only, that there must be
scrupulous care about sanitary conditions, careful supervision
of the health of students by thoroughly trained physicians, and
general hygienic instruction, but such scientifically planned
and graded courses in physical training as shall deserve to count
as real education on the same basis as laboratory courses. Un-
less our modern psychology is wholly wrong, such phjrsical edu-
cation that can be applied to all students, has a great contribu-
tion to make, not only in health and in the systematic develop-
ment of the body, but intellectually and volitionally as well.
If athletics are to make their true contribution to the col-
lege life — and a most valuable contribution that may be — a wide
range of sports must be encouraged that shall enlist a great
portion of the students, and not merely a small number of spe-
cially athletic men; and the spirit of genuine play must be
brought back into all college so-called sports. They have their
most valuable office, it should never be forgotten, not as serious
business or money-making enterprises, but simply as play. A
relative good becomes a serious evil, when it is allowed to over-
[40]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
top greater values; but in its place it contributes to the sanity-
and health of all other interests. Such a contribution, I have
no doubt, athletics have it in their power to make, and to a con-
siderable extent do make even now; and physical education, as
a whole, demands greater attention from the college.
The universally recognized demand of the intellectual ia
college education needs no argument.
The fact that man is as truly an asthetic being, as phy-
sical and intellectual, the college has less often sufficiently recog-
nized. But if it is the mission of a liberal training to produce
the man of culture, it can hardly refuse to furnish, in some
form, ability to appreciate the great aesthetic realms of literature,
music, and art. What it already does in large measure for lit-
erature, it ought also to do for music and art We must not
forget the kinship of the aesthetic with the still higher values,,
and its own large contribution to the sanity and happiness of
life. The college cannot wisely ignore this need of man. Doubt-
less, the real need cannot be fully nor perhaps chiefly met in
courses or in their equipment. The college needs to be able to
put its students to such extent as is possible in the presence of
the best in these realms, and to permeate the common life of each
student with something of the beautiful. It is no small service,
which is so rendered. Music has certain great advantages in
this respect, especially in a coeducational institution.
And certainly, unless one denies the legitimacy of the very-
aim — social efficiency — with which either the state or the church
enters upon the work of education at all, the place of the social
and moral in college education cannot be questioned. Men may
differ as to the best way of meeting these needs ; they can hardly
differ as to their imperative claim upon any education that is to
be called liberal. No let-alone policy here is enough. The
moral in its broadest scope should be a clearly recognized part
of college education — to be most wisely and considerately done,
no doubt, with all possible recognition of the moral initiative of
the pupil — ^but to be done, nevertheless. Much talk upon this
point seems to make the most singular assumption that the only
real necessity in that finest and most delicate of all worlds, the
[41 ]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
world of personal relations, is moral backbone; and that a sit-
uation that tends to develop that is doing all that can be asked
for moral education. But what of aims and ideals and wisest
means in all this? What of that sensitive moral judgment, and
creative imagination, and deep sense of the meaning of life,
without which no high moral attainment can be made? What
ri^t have we indifferently to let things take their course
here? This is nothing less than to give the student a shove
downward; for other influences do not keep their hands off in
the meantime. What else is the object of education, but to make
a man all around a better man than he would have otherwise
naturally become?
And, once more, unless one is ready to deny altogether the
value of the function of religion in the life of men, the religious
need also deserves recognition in some way in any education
that is to be called complete. Any ideal view of life, such as
a broad education must itself assume, virtually implies a faith
in the rationality of the world which is practically religious. It
is shallow thinking that imagines that religious faith is a matter
K>f small concern, and easily to be set aside. If, as Emerson
tells us, any high friendship transfigures the world for us, cer-
tainly there is no such contributor to peace and joy as a real
faith in God. And ethical earnestness and social efficiency, no
less than happiness, surely find their strongest support in a re-
ligious faith. Why should the man of ethical earnestness be-
lieve that he is more in earnest to be honest and kind than the
Source of all whence he has come? Is man indeed himself the
Highest? And what rational defense has any man for the en-
thusiasm with which he throws himself either into his own
calling, or into work for social progress, who cannot believe
that in both he is working in line with the eternal forces, and
that a plan greater than his own encircles all his plans and
makes effective all the bits of his striving? None of us are going
seriously and enthusiastically to attempt to dip out the ocean
with a cup. And if we really believe in the value of our call-
ing, or of our own social endeavor, whether we recognize it or
not, our belief is at bottom a genuinely religious faith. Man
[42]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
is inevitably a religious being. For this very reason, too, a pe-
culiar responsibility is laid upon education. For this means-
that some kind of religious life and thought every man is bound
to have; the only question is, whether that religious life and
thought shall be well considered and adequate.
Either the function of religion is much less than the great
majority of the more thoughtful of mankind have always^
thought, or the religious need of men deserves to be met in edu-
cation without apology and with an effectiveness seldom found-
It concerns a people to know whether its educational system is
helping to an intelligent and genuine religious life. So great a
need as this will not take care of itself. Where is it being ade-
quately met today? Few things are more discouraging than the^
large amount of surprisingly unintelligent Christianity in sup-j
posably educated men. How many of our college graduates have
really awakened, for example, to the significance of the serious
self-limitation of philosophy in its setting outside its field the
great facts of Christian history?
It is a chief aim of a liberal education — is it not? — to bring
a man to true culture — to ability to enter into all values with ap-
preciation and conviction. And all values — all the marvelous
content of literature and music and art — we may not forget, are
but the revelation of the riches of some personal life. All
values go back ultimately to persons. And the highest achieve-
ment of culture is the understanding and appreciation of the
great personalities. And the Christian religion, therefore,,
makes its rightful appeal to the truly cultivated man in the tran-
scendent person of its Founder. May not the college be asked
to send out men sufficiently cultured to be able to appreciate
that transcendent person of history?
Doubtless, in many of our institutions the use of anything
like definite religious instruction and motive by the Iiistitution
itself is necessarily excluded. Even so, it means a limitation in
the education, which is to be made good so far as possible by^
other agencies. The necessity of these situations is, l>owever,
by no means to be made into a prescription for all otheis. And
the teacher may well rejoice, who, in the midst of his teaching, is.
[43)
Digitized by LjOOQIC
jree to give utterance to his deepest and most significant conrk-
tions.
In general, those colleges will best meet the demands for
l)readth of education, that are most free and best organized to
meet the entire range of human interests. The advantage here
lies in part with the larger and in part with the smaller in-
stitutions.
In all cases, with whatever inevitable limitations of situa-
tion, it must at least be demanded that the spirit pervading the
college should be heartily, though discriminatingly, catholic.
There should be, certainly, no vaunting of our limitations. And
this discriminating breadth of view, it should be noticed, in its
recognition of the complexity of life, and of the unity of man, if
truly interpreted, itself affords moral support; for it furnishes a
motive against mere impulse, and helps directly to that delibera-
tion which is the secret of self-control; and, because it believes
that all life is so knit up together, is also strenuous counsel
against deterioration at any point.
Beyond this breadth in interest and appeal, the great reli-
ance of an education that is to meet the needs of the entire man
must be, as we have seen, upon making all possible use of ex-
pressive activity on the part of the student, and of personal as-
sociation.
B. Expressive Activity, — ^And, first, if the "voluntaristic
trend" in modern psychology has any justification, if in body and
mind we are really made for action, if for the very sake of
thought and feeling we must act, then any soundly based educa-
tion must everywhere make much of the will and of action, must
in all departments of its training of the individual — physical,
intellectual, aesthetic, social, moral, and religious — specifically
seek expressive activity.
This goes without saying in physical education, and it is
just at that point that physical education has its greatest con-
tribution to make to all other training. And the educational
value of earning one's way in college is not to be overlooked
just here. It is easy to overdo the amount of direct financial
aid to students. It is not the ministry alone, as seems often
[44]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
gratuitiously assumed, that suffers in this respect. In spite of
the temptation of a short-sighted competition that sets colleges
to bidding against one another for students, it remains true that
no college that aims at the highest results can afford to ignore
social axioms in giving its beneficiary aid. Care by the college in
providing opportunities for self-help is the very best form of aid.
For such aid does not pauperize, but calls out useful active serv-
ice from the student himself. But the possibilities of develop-
ment in this direction depend very largely on the fidelity of
students. Each student generation holds a trust in this respect
for the next generation.
The principle has already been widely recognized in intel-
lectual training in many of the changes of the newer education —
in the introduction of laboratory and seminar methods, and in
the extension of these methods so far as possible to all subjects of
tstudy, and specifically in the revolution of the teaching of
English composition. But this principle of the fundamental
meed of expressive activity deserves ever-widening recognition,
as a real guiding principle even in intellectual teaching. The
pupil's own activity is to be called out at every point ; the fullest,
clearest, and most accurate expression of his thought in speech,
in writing, and, wherever possible, in action, is to be sought.
Even our ideas are not ours until we have expressed them, and
they are more perfectly ours, the more perfect the expression.
The old-fashioned recitation, when well conducted, had a real
aground of justification, and no lecturing by the teacher can fully
Teplace it.
In aesthetic education the same principle holds. Some ac-
tual attainment in each of the arts is no doubt a real aid to in-
telligent appreciation. And no art lends itself more easily than
•music to such attainment, even quite outside the work of the
Tegular curriculum. No doubt the main dependence in this
•matter of aesthetic education must be upon the molding influence
of the best in these realms, so far as the college can furnish this.
To a considerable extent this is possible in all the arts, if the nec-
essary means are granted. But if these influences are to do their
full work, it sihould be noted, there must be some real response
[451
Digitized by LjOOQIC
on the part of the student, made possible directly through courses
intended to introduce to the arts, and indirectly through the less
systematic but not less stimulating suggestion of a widespread
interest in the atmosphere of the college.
And aesthetic education has not done its full work until it
has brought the student to the recognition of the demands of the
beautiful in all his work and in all his surroundings, and to the
cherishing, as a permanent aim, of the ideal expression of the
ideal life.
But it is in the realms of the social, moral, and religious
that expressive activity is most imperatively demanded. If men
are to be saved from mere passive sentimentalism they must put
their desires, aspirations, and ideals into act. The very em-
plo5mient of the student in bringing him continually face to face
with noble sentiments, peculiarly subjects him to this danger.
That which is not expressed dies. A man can be best prepared
for moral earnestness, social efficiency, and a genuine religious
response in life only through active expression in each of these
spheres. Men are best trained for society by acting in society,
for the responsibilities of a democracy by taking their part in a
really democratic community, for the best fulfillment of personal
relations by honest answer to the varied personal demands —
human and divine. The student life should not be a hermit nor
cloistered nor exclusive life. The more natural and normal the
personal relations, both to men and women, in the midst of
which the student lives, the better the preparation for the ac-
tual life that awaits him. And let his relations to the com-
munity life, civic and religious, so far as possible, be those of
an ordinary law-abiding citizen, and let him act as such a citizen,
so far as such action is open to him.
Wherever the college calls for the attainment of definite
ends, w'herever it sets tasks to be faithfully done at given
times, wherever it calls out the will of the student in the larger
liberty its life affords him, it is doing something for the develop-
ment of his moral and religious character. But its responsibil-
ity cannot end with these means. The atmosphere of a college
should be sudh as to enlist the enthusiasm of the students in
[46]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
valuable causes — and there are a great variety of them — in
which they may already have some share. The naturally self-
centered life of the student peculiarly needs such enlistment in
objective causes. In the midst of a life permeated with a demo-
cratic, unselfish, and reverent spirit, he should find increasingly
such a spirit called out from him. Living in personal rela-
tions which may well be among the closest and richest of his life,
he is to learn the capacity for friendship in the only way it can
be learned, through some form of actual, useful service. So far
as college traditions are in conflict with such an ideal, they lag
behind any really Christian civilization. Certainly the college
should itself afford the best opportunities for the students' own
initiative and expression in both the moral and religious life.
And as — apart from personal association — it can best help the
moral life by an atmosphere permeated with the convictions of
the social consciousness, so it can best help the religious life by
making dominant a conception of religion that shall make it real
and rational and vital for the mind that really gives it attention.
By such a conception, the student's own response is most natur-
ally called out.
C. Personal Association, — But it is called out even so,
not so much by the teaching as by the spirit of the men back of
the teaching. And we are thus brought to the greatest of all
the means available in an all-around education — personal as-
sociation — already necessarily anticipated in part. I make no
doubt that the prime factors in a complete education are always
persons, not things, not even books. It would not be difficult to
show how powerful is personal association in all the lines of edu-
cation, even in scientific work; but it is, of course, most indis-
pensable in moral and religious training.
The inevitable interactions of the members of a cosmo-
politan student body are themselves of the greatest intrinsic
value. The great fundamental social convictions— of the like-
ness of men, of the mutual influence of men, of the sacredness of
the person — are developed in a true college life almost perforce.
And the more genuinely democratic the college, the more cer-
tain is its ability to make socially efficient citizens. For the sake
[47 3
Digitized by LjOOQIC
of its own highest mission, it can afford to stand against the aris>
tocracy of sex, against the aristocracy of color, against the
aristocracy of wealth, against the aristocracy of the clique,
against the aristocracy of mere intellectual brilliancy. And it
can safely carry this democratic spirit very far into all its or-
ganization and working.
Beyond these inevitable social interactions of the college
life, it is a great thing for the development of a man to be sur-
prised into really unselfish friendships. And the college, by
its great conununity of interests and its natural atmosphere of
trust, has peculiar power in bringing about just such unselfish,
friendships. The contribution which it so makes not only to
character but also to happiness, the college man knows well.
But either in morals or in religion we know but one royal
/ road to the highest life — through personal association with
! those who possess such a life as we ought to have, to whom we
can look in admiration and love, and who give themselves un-
stintedly to us. There is no cheaper way. Even so high a
service is often rendered to one student by another student; but
It is a wholly just demand to make upon a college that that serv-
ice should be rendered in pre-eminent degree by its teachers.
Whatever may be true in other parts of the educational system^
the college teacher must be one from whom the highest living
can be readily caught. In the interests of simple honesty, the
college teacher must be thoroughly prepared to teach what he
professes to teach. We cannot begin in character-making with
a fraud. And for the same reasons, professing to teach he
should be able to teach. He must have sanity, too, and tact —
real wisdom, for the insights of only such a man will be sure to
count with others. And, as a man who must stand as a convinc-
ing witness for the best, he cannot be excused from the requisites
of the effective witness — undoubted character and conviction^
genuine interest in the deepest life of others, and that power in
putting the great things home, that should belong to his teaching
ability. His highest qualification is character-begetting power —
power to inspire other men to their absolute best. When one
tries to measure the power of even one or two such men in a
[481
Digitized by LjOOQIC
college community, he begins to see at last what the one indis-
pensable factor in a college is, and how much is at stake in the
choice of a faculty. Nothing, let us be sure, so certainly bxings
about the deterioration of the college, as carelessness in the seleo
tion of its teachers. A few compromising 2^>pointments here
may easily make impossible the maintenance of the college's
highest ideals or best traditions. The spirit of a college cannot
go down in its buildings or grounds or forms of organization.
If its best continues at all and grows, it must continue and grow
in persons ; and the petty and ignoble cannot carry on the work
of the great and worthy. We seem to be in the midst of a great
awakening to the over-weighting importance of moral and reli-
gious education, and the movement comes none too soon ; but let
us not for a moment imagine that any change in courses or
methods or organization can ever take the place of the one great
indispensable means — the personal touch of great and high per-
sonalities. And if they are not found in our colleges, where
may they be sought?
in. THE REQUISITE SPIRIT IN COLLEGE EDUCATION.
And when one turns to characterize the spirit of the true
college he must parallel, as we have seen, the great means of a
complex life, of expressive activity, and of personal association,
with the demand for a spirit — ^heartily but discriminatingly cath-
olic, thoroughly objective, and marked by the great convictions
of the social consciousness. In the discussion of the means, the
spirit needed has been in no small part implied. I certainly need
not say more concerning the catholicity that must unmistakably
mark the true college.
But it does deserve to be emphasized that, if psychology's"),
insistence upon the importance of action is at all justified, then :
our normal mood, the mood of the best work, of the best associa- .
tions, and of happiness itself, is the objective mood. The great .
means in education, of using one's powers in an interesting and
complex environment, even for the very sake of the ideal, itself
demands the mood of work. And this needs to be particularly
remembered in moral and religious training. The student life
[49]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
/
1
in any case is quite too prone to be self-centered, and therefore
needs all the more the objective emphasis. But aside from this
peculiar need of the student life, the introspective mood itself
has a smaller contribution to make to the moral and religious
life than has been commonly assumed. Just so much introspec-
tion is needed as to make sure that one has put himself in the
presence of the great objective forces that lead to character and
to God. When this is determined, the work of introspection is
practically done. The dominant mood should be objective
through and through.
And one chief and good cause of reaction, no doubt, from
some of the older methods of moral and religious training in
college, has been the lack of this objective spirit. This does nat
mean any underestimation of the significance of personal reli-
gion, but a wholesome sense that no man may come into right
personal relations with God without sharing the life of God, and
that life is love ; and love cannot be cultivated in selfishness and
self-absorption.
But if the college looks pre-eminently to social efficiency,
and if its greatest means is personal association, its spirit must be,
above all, permeated with the great convictions of the social
consciousness. Nowhere should the atmosphere be more genu-
inely and thoroughly democratic, charged with the strong sense
of the likeness of men in the great essentials; nowhere a more
evident setting aside of all artificial and merely conventional
standards in the estimate of men. No small part of the value
of the college education lies in bringing a man steadily to the
test of the worth of his naked personality. And when conven-
tion rules, the very life of the college has gone out.
And the college must add to its democratic spirit the spirit
of responsibility and service. Its life must be permeated with
the conviction that men are inevitably members one of another,
and that responsibility for others, therefore, is inescapable ; that,
moreover, much of the best of life comes through this knitting
up with humanity in many-sided personal relations, and, in con-
sequence, this mutual influence of men is not merely inevitable,
but desirable and indispensable. Surely, a true cosmopolitan
[50]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
college must be able to send out men marked by the sense of
responsibility and of the obligation of service.
But no high development is possible in personal friendship
or in society without a deep sense of the value and sacredness
of the person. What even the golden rule really demands of a
man, depends upon his sense of the significance of life, of the
value of his own personality. And if even the sense of the like-
ness and of the mutual influence of men is to bear satisfying
fruit, it must be informed throughout by reverent regard for the
liberty and the person of others.
And nowhere is this reverence for the person more needed
than in moral and religious education. For the very aim of
such education is to bring a man to a faith and a life of his own.
This requires at every point the most careful guarding of the
other's liberty, the calling out everywhere of his own initiative.
There can be, therefore, in the nature of the case, no mere im-
position upon another of any genuine moral and religious life.
And more than this is true. What you will do, what you can
do, for another will be measured by your sense of his value.
If men are for you mere creatures of a day with but meager
possibilities, nothing can call out from you the largest service in
their behalf. Nor is this all. With the sense of the value, the
preciousness, of the person, comes a genuine reverence, that not
only sacredly guards the other's moral initiative, but under-
stands that the inner life of another is rightly inviolate; that in
any high friendship, nay, in any true personal relation, there can
be only request, never demand. The highest man stands with)
Christ at the door of the heart of the other, only knocking that;
he may come in, by the other's full consent alone.
And, if the college is to grapple in any effective way with
moral and religious education, it must, beyond all else, have a
spirit instinct with such reverence for the person. On this very)
account, indirect methods here may be really more effective than!
direct methods. Some wise instruction undoubtedly is desirable,
and even imperative, but it must be given by men who have a
delicate sense of what personality means ; and the spirit that per-
vades the college is here more effective even than the instruo
[511
Digitized by LjOOQIC
tion ; and it would not be difficult to overdo definite instruction
in this field. Character and religion are always rather caught
than taught.
I cannot doubt, then, that a second important reason for
reaction from the older college in its moral and religious educa-
tion has been because it too often forgot the supreme need of
reverence for the person of the pupil. The disrepute into which
the so-called ''paternal'' methods have fallen implies as much.
But is it not worth our while to remember that the name —
paternal — is falsely given in such a case? The highest char-
acteristic of the true father is a deep sense of the value and
sacredness of the person of his child, not the desire to dominate.
And no moral and religious education worthy of the name Is
possible in a college where such reverence for the person does not
prevail; for that reverence, deep-seated and all-pervading, is the
finest test of culture, the highest attainment in character, and
Jthe surest warrant for social efficiency.
And these great ends — culture, character, and social effi-
ciency — the true college must set before itself. The great
means to these ends are unmistakable: an environment suffi-
ciently complex to give acquaintance with the great fundamental
facts of the world and to call out the entire man ; the completest
possible expressive activity on the part of the student ; and per-
sonal association with broad and wise and noble lives. The
spirit demanded is equally indisputable — broadly but discrimi-
natingly catholic in its interests; objective in mood and mctlKKl;
democratic, unselfish, and finely reverent in its personal relations.
In all — means and spirit — the primacy of the person is to
be steadfastly maintained. All that is most valuable in college
education exists only in living men. "God give us men."
[52]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
IS MODERN EDUCATION CAPABLE OF IDEALISM?
ADDRESSES BY WILLIAM JEWETT TUCKER, D.D., LL.D., PRESIDENT
OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE.
I assume that I have your assent to these two propositions :
first, it is the business of education to accept, when it may not
create, the material of knowledge ; second, it is the business of the
higher education to idealize whatever material of knowledge it
accepts.
No greater calamity, it seems to me, can befall an age, apart
from a moral lapse, than to have its intellectual training de-
tached from the mind of the age. Wherever men are thinking
most vigorously, there those who are to follow after must be
trained to think, otherwise there will be in due time intellectual
revolt with its consequent delays and wastes.
But more knowledge, whether it be old or new, is not the
€nd of education, but rather knowledge penetrated by insight
and alive with motive. A fact is something which has been
done, something which has found a place in the world of reality.
There may be that in the creation of a fact which declares its
whole power. There are deeds from which nothing can be
taken and to which nothing can be added. But most facts, es-
pecially those which have not been accomplished by the hand of
man, await questioning. When an answer comes back we
speak of discovery. When the full answer comes back we an-
nounce a theory, a principle, a law. The understanding of
facts, whether personal or impersonal, of man's doing, that is,
or of nature's doing, the relating of facts to one another, the
discovery of the moral incentive in facts, make up in part the
idealizing process which belongs to the higher education.
Modern education differs from the education which has
come to us by long inheritance through the vast amount of
subject-matter which it has put into our hands, awaiting the
[88]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
idealizing process. The new subject-matter is in large degree
the raw material of knowledge, not having passed through the
alchemy of time, devoid of sentiment, lacking in those associa-
tions which make up the moral increment of knowledge. It
represents literatures which have not reached the final form,
sciences which run straight to application rather than to philo-
sophical conclusion, and theories of society and government
which are too serious and urgent to be held in academic dis-
cussion.
But the new subject matter of knowledge is powerful,
nevertheless, subtle enough to create an atmosphere, and tangible
enough to create an environment. Mr. A. J. Balfour has used
a term which expresses with rare exactness one of the relations
of the new knowledge to our thinking. It has created, he says,
a new, "mental framework." I quote the brief passage which
holds this definition. In an address upon the Nineteenth Cen-
tury, he remarked that it is not the distinction of the century
"that it has witnessed a prodigious and unexampled growth in
our stock of knowledge. Something much more important than
this has happened. Our whole point of view has altered. The
mental framework in which we arrange the separate facts in the
world of men and of things is quite a new framework. The
spectacle of the new universe presents itself now in a wholly
changed prospective: we not only see more but we see
differently."
The term, a "new mental framework," suggests at once the
idea of adjustment, and if you will review the educational work
of the decades just passed, you will see how definitely, how
completely I may say, adjustment has been our business. The
process has been carried on partly in strife and contention, partly
by inquiry, and partly through that understanding which comes
only from the actual handling of unfamiliar knowledge. For so
large an undertaking the process has been rapid. Let me re-
mind you that it was on the first of October, 1859, that Mr.
Darwin sent out his abstract, as he termed it, on the Origin of
Species, accompanying the volume with the modest prophecy that
"when the views entertained in this volume, or when analogous
[54]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
views are generally admitted, we can dimly foresee that there
^m]l be a considerable revolution in natural history."
The process of adjustment is nearly over, so nearly over
that we may now, I think, address ourselves to a severer but
nobler task — that of idealizing our new knowledge and the
methods of its acquisition. And the essential condition, let me
say, of undertaking the task is that we approach it in the right
state of mind. The traditional mind is not altogether in the
right state. It is too ready to draw offliand distinctions between
culture and utility, too ready to ignore the ethical possibility of
the new education. What we need just now in the educational
world more than anything else is an ethical revival at the heart
of education. We shall not have it until we realize more
clearly the need of it.
If we should make a careful assessment of the present
moral values in the subject-matter of education, we should be
surprised, I think, to see how large has been the diversion or
decline of these values. I refer, of course, to subjects and to
the mode of their treatment. The old discipline which held the
Hebrew literature with its elemental righteousness, so much
of science as could be classified under natural theology and a
philosophy which vexed itself with the problems of human des-
tiny, was a discipline prosecuted under the very sanction of re-
ligion. But when the transfer was made in literature to the
classics and when the sciences began to be applied and when the
end of philosophy changed in part with the change of data, the
subject-matter of the higher education ceased to be religiously
ethical. We have been singularly unconscious of the change.
Under changes in form we have kept the same sentiment. Cul-
ture has become with us a kind of morality. So long as the old
discipline kept its associations and its methods and gave us con-
sistent results, we asked few questions about the moral content
of teaching, and therefore made no comparison of values. In
fact, we have silently abandoned the idea that the chief ethical
value of college instruction lies in the curriculum. The reserva-
tions which we make in behalf of certain distinctly ethical or
semi-religious subjects are too few to bear the weight of moral
[56]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
obligation which the higher education ought to assume.
Where then shall we look for the recovery and advance-
ment of education to its highest ethical power? Chiefly, I
1>elieve, to our capacity for carrying on the idealizing process
through which we accustom ourselves to think reverently of all
knowledge, to insist upon all intellectual work as a moral dis-
cipline and to hold all intellectual attainments and achievements
as tributary to the social good.
I believe that the finest, partly because it is the really dis-
tinctive product of academic life, is the knowing mind. The
-moral danger from it is inappreciable. Pride, conceit, arrogance,
if they ever attend knowledge, are intruders and transients.
They are not companions or guests. Knowledge leads to awe,
and awe to faith, or to that kind of doubt which is as humble as
faith. It is the unknowing mind with its triviality, its uncer-
tainties, its double vision, from which we have most to fear.
And if we get the knowing in place of the unknowing mind, it is
not of so much account how we get it, as that we get it. For
this reason I deprecate any academic discrimination against use-
ful knowledge. If utility can create the knowing mind, we
want its aid. I would accept at any time the moral result of
serious thinking on the inferior subject in place of less serious
thinking upon the greater subject.
The mental gymnastics of the old dialectic had no ethical
value. The subject-matter of discourse might be God himself,
but that did not necessarily make the discourse religious or moral.
It was the play of the mind, not its serious business. No one,
I am sure, can overlook the immense moral gain which has taken
place through the transfer of thought in so large degree from
speculation to sober inquiry. Very much of the change is due of
course to the incoming of such a vast amount of new subject-
matter within reach of the human mind. It was natural that
men should now begin to search where before they had tried to
conjecture, and that they should attempt to prove or disprove
what before they had afErmed. The change of method soon
became, as I have said, morally significant. After the first
excitements and confusion attendant upon the change the ideal-
[56]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
izing process set in. A type of mind was developed which in-
stinctively put first the love of truth. I do not fear that in
the long run the love of gain will prove to be the successful
competitor. The noble fellowship of seekers after truth is being
augumented, not decreased in these latter days. And through-
out this fellowship, though its work may take the whole range of
nature, the increasing tendency is toward faith. "I have never
been able," President Eliot has said in these reverent words, "to
find any better answer to the question, what is the chief end of
study in nature? than the answer which the Westminster Cat-
echism gives to the question, what is the chief end of man?
namely to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever."
Next to the reverence for knowledge which is akin to the
love of truth, I should insist in our idealizing process upon the
morality of that more active discipline which characterizes mod-
ern education. The old education, as we well know, was based
morally on the will trained to obedience. It was not a passive
training. It is never passive to obey. But it was not an ac-
tive discipline in the sense in which modern training is carried
on. And in so far as the material of training lay in the past
the mind was set upon interpretation more than upon creative or
productive work. The receptive faculties were by no means
exclusively developed, for there was always a fine appeal to the
imagination and to the sensibilities, but the prescription of sub-
jects put education largely into the hands of the master.
Modern education lays the stress upon the discovery of the
individual to himself, preferably by himself. It does not remove
the period of intellectual compulsion, but it reduces that period
to the limits of early training. It addresses itself necessarily to
the will, but it changes the appeal as soon as practicable from
obedience to choice. Its first effort is to awaken, its second and
constant effort to create the sense of responsibility. Education
is made co-operative. It is made as quickly as possible the con-
senting, choosing action of the mind. Modern education rests
upon the individuality of the individual, not upon his necessary
likeness to others. It assumes that the mind of each individual
if properly awakened and left free to act will separate itself from
[67]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
other minds in the satisfaction of its own desires, and the devel-
opment of its own powers. The logical outcome of this con-
ception is not the compulsory course of study, continued beyond
the necessary elements of knowledge, in the farther interest of
discipline or of culture, but the elective course of study in the in-
terest of self-development and personal attainment in knowledge.
It takes the risks of intellectual freedom for the sake of the
greater possibilities of intellectual freedom.
Now the ethical quality which resides in freedom is responsi-
bility, and the intellectual expression of responsibility is choice*
Will the one thus choosing become morally a strong man ? Not
necessarily. It is not safe to argue from intellectual obedience —
even to a creed — that the further result will be complete moral
character. You may have the inmioral scholar, as you may have
the immoral believer. But the morality of the intellect is not the
least among the guarantees of general morality. And the in-
tellect trained by responsibility ought to be as strong morally as
the intellect trained by obedience. There is, I think, a certain
elevation which comes to one who has found and proven himself ^
which can hardly be reached in any other way, a kind of scorn
for that incapacity for nobler things which leads one to do the
meaner thing. I have seen college men on their way to littleness
and shame so often recovered and saved by the intellectual
awakening through some subject of personal choice, a subject
without any moral significance in itself, that I cannot doubt the
ethical value of the method. I am not concerned with the moral
supremacy of either method. It is quite too early to determine
this point. What we need to do is to recognize the moral ele-
ment in the method, which for other ends, we have adopted.
We can make modern training a morality if we will. The ele-
ments of moral power are present and active. The full recogni-
tion of them is a great means to their development.
Beyond the reverence for knowledge which is akin to the
love of truth, and the recognition of the moral power which is
latent in an active intellectual discipline, I would see our modern
education permeated with the sense of the social obligation. The
essential nobility of the old education lay in the open fact that it
[58]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
was for somebody. There was no concealment of this purpose.
It was graven on all the foundations of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries and on many of those laid in the nineteenth
century. It was blazoned on their seals. It was illustrated in
the life of devotion which characterized so large a proportion of
the earlier graduates. They sought the most direct avenues of
approach to the heart of humanity.
There can be no other kind of nobility worthy of the pur-
pose of any great school of learning. A training which lacks
these motives, or which fails to keep this aim in full view cannot
be touched with ideality. But modern education meets this dif-
ficulty, that it must fit men for an immensely widening applica-
tion of the principle. Under the old education the great services
were delegated. Elect souls were set apart for high and ex-
ceptional duties. It was the age of the prophet, the missionary,
the reformer, and the occasional man of public career. Today
it is not possible for one educated man to find a place where he
can be free from the social obligation. It has become the task
of modem education to train the average man for duties which
are sufficiently imperative and exacting for the exceptional man.
The opportunity of the more devoted callings of other times is
matched in every department of life. The decision of a great
judge, the example of a great employer, the insight of a great
teacher, the self-sacrifice of a great investigator, all rank among
the powers which make for righteousness. The "hard sayings"
of our generation which those only who can hear them are able
to receive, are concerned with integrity, justice, courage, charity,
and sacrifice. Sacrifice, I say, and to the degree of Christian
consecration.
The hi^est place in our land, if to position be added per-
manency, is a seat on the bench of the Supreme Court of the
United States. When a man puts by the offer of this position
that he may serve an alien and dependent people in the interest
of the common humanity, I rank this surrender to duty among
the consecrated examples of the foreign missionary service. And
if our foreign policy as a nation shall develop a like spirit among
those who aspire to, or who accept political office, we shall bring
[69]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
back again that old fundamental unity which made of one
spiritual kin the servants of the church and of the state.
It was in view of these demands that I said a little while
ago that the greatest present need in the educational world was
that of an ethical revival at the heart of education. The idealiz-
ing process cannot stop with culture ; it must somehow culminate
in righteousness. And if it be asked again, Is modern education
capable of such idealism? I say yes, provided the question be
accepted not as a question, but as a challenge. Modem educa-
tion is here, with its materials of knowledge, with its active dis-
cipline, with its environment of duty. It is quite aside to com-
pare the idealism of the old and the new. If I were asked what
is the equivalent of Greek, I should reply with Professor Nor-
ton, "there is no equivalent." But that is not the issue. The
clear and sharp issue is, can we idealize modern education ? Can
we put ethics at the heart of it? I would not evade the issue,,
nor lessen its meaning.
In the old cemetery, where the founder of my college lies
there runs this epitaph on his tomb, "By the Grospel he sub-
dued the ferocity of the savage. And to the civilized he opened
new paths of science. Traveler : Go, if you can, and deserve
the sublime reward of such merit."
I like to go there from time to time and read this challenge
out of the heart of the eighteenth century. It seems to say to
me, "Man of the twentieth century, go, if you can, do an equal
task, declare an equal purpose, show an equal spirit."
The past has earned the right to challenge the men of to-
day. But stronger than any words of the past are the words of
the present need. I have tried to give them utterance and in-
terpretation. It remains for me only to express my faith in the
idealizing process which is going on in the educational world,
and declare my confidence in the motives and purposes and
methods of those who are guiding its thoughts and activities^
and more especially to welcome to this supreme position of in-
fluence the man of your choice, qualified for all its duties, and
standing preeminent among his brethren in his new fellowship,
in his new capacity to understand and to satisfy the ethical de-
mands of modem education.
[flO]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
ADDRESS BY HON. J. G. W. COWLES, LL.D.,
ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES.
The election and inauguration of Professor Henry Church-
ill King as the sixth president of Oberlin College, in its sev-
entieth year, mark the progress and growth of the college along:
the lines of its origin and history, without radical change, ex-
cept in the lives of men, who must pass away 3rielding their
places and their labors to their successors.
We have now a larger and better Oberlin than was con-
ceived by the founders and established here in the wilderness
seventy years ago. That was great only in embryo and in
ideals: for Shipherd and Stewart, if not prudent were prophetic.
What they lacked in worldly wisdom they made up in enthusi-
asm and single-mindedness. What they wanted in money they
made up in energy and self-denial. If their faith, being un-
warranted by reasons, appeared presumption, the tide of provi-
dential events carried their enterprise over shoals and rocks
threatening its destruction into deeper and wider seas of oppor-
tunity than their most sanguine hopes imagined. A divine
guidance made their aim, though sometimes erring, hit a mark
beyond what they foresaw. They appeared eccentric because-
they did not conform to established customs, nor hold experi-
mental theories as abstractions, but projected them at once-
into inconvenient and uncomfortable action. Conscience dom-
inated more than judgment, but as always happens when men
do right as God gives them to see the right, the heavens did
not fall, though the earth (or some part of it) rose in insur-
rection.
The first president and faculty of Oberlin College were-
strong men, not only in relation to the institution, but by what-
ever standard of measurement and comparison their force and
value may be estimated.
The first president, Asa Mahan, and the second, Charles
Digitized by LjOOQIC
G. Finney, came here together and were associated from the
beginning, their two terms as president covering thirty years.
Both exercised a powerful influence upon the college and upon
the public in relation to it, but the influence of President Fin-
ney at all times predominated, and continued constant and un-
diminished for more than forty years.
He was not a college bred man nor an ideal college presi-
dent, either as executive or from the standpoint of classical or
scientific education. He was a preacher and evangelist, and a
teacher of theology, not only in the class but through the pulpit
and the press. He was a man of God, and Oberlin may rightly
be called the college of the Holy Spirit Spiritual rather than
material forces, spiritual even more than intellectual concep-
tions and causes, operated in the creation of the college. It was
not alone a Christian, it was a spiritual movement. Learning
was valued, sought for, imparted, offered to all of either sex
and any color, less for its own sake than for its influence on
character. It was not only for education but for salvation, for
the Kingdom of God, that the college stood and labored.
The third president, James H. Fairchild, was a product
of Oberlin, conceived in this spirit : a pupil of Mahan and Fin-
ney, and associated with the latter through his presidency, not
only as a professor, but practically as Dean of the Faculty, be-
ginning then in fact the administration which he afterward car-
ried on as president for a further period of twenty-three years.
Finney and Fairchild were the constructive presidents of
the college who more largely than any or all other influences
have made it what it has been and is to be.
The agreements and differences of these men have added
greatly to the total results of their joint and successive labors
for the college. The legacies of thought and influence, of per-
sonality and power, left by them are our greatest riches, which
their immediate successors, the fourth president, William G.
Ballantine, and the fifth president, John Henry Barrows, in
their briefer terms of office, could only use, preserve and apply
to present needs without much altering or much increasing.
The work of President Barrows was more largely financial
[«]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
than scholastic or even administrative, nearly doubling the pro-
ductive endowment, while Professor King conducted the in-
ternal administration of the college.
Thus Professor King was the natural and logical suc-
cessor of President Barrows; also of President Fairchild; for
the transition from Fairchild to King, though interrupted and
postponed, was most intimate and vital, intellectually and
spiritually, as that from teacher to pupil, especially in phi-
losophy and theology, as well as in the constructive and admin-
istrative work of the college.
Thus there has been preserved from the beginning a singu-
lar unity in aim, purpose, spirit and method in the conduct of
the college, without interruption or diversion from the original
plan and object of its foundation, viz.: (as stated in the first
annual report in 1834) "the diffusion of useful science, sound
morality and pure religion among the growing multitudes of
the Mississippi Valley" and "to bear an important part in ex-
tending these blessings to the destitute millions which over-
spread the earth" ; by means of first, "the thorough education of
ministers and pious school teachers; second, the elevation of
female character, and third, the education of the common
people with the higher classes in such a manner as suits the
nature of Republican institutions." It is indeed remarkable
how largely these aims have been realized.
The peculiarities of the college Which long made it of-
fensive to public opinion have disappeared in the common ac-
ceptance of its principles. Its anti-slavery position was vin-
dicated by the act of emancipation after thirty years. Its anti-
caste position in the admission of colored students became com-
mon in the American colleges in the change of sentiment fol-
lowing the civil war. The emphasis it gave to the education
of young women, giving them equal rights and opportunities in
the college classes in the innovating system of co-education, has
been followed not only by the adoption of co-education in many
colleges and universities at home and abroad, but also by the
building of many separate and also associate colleges for wo-
men only, of which when Oberlin was founded there were
[68]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
none. Co-education here was an incident to the larger purpose
of furnishing a classical and liberal education to the "under-
valued and neglected sex." And the theology of Finney then
so far advanced beyond orthodox Calvinism as to be charged
with heresy now stands in the front of evangelical conservatism,
against the extreme liberal tendencies of religious thought.
So we stand now on the common level, with no factitious
advantages or disadvantages, in building up and carrying for-
ward the work of the college. We are in closer association
both of fellowship and also of competition, with other colleges
than formerly. Our chief distinction hereafter, if any, must be
in excellence in common methods. Our place is still is and will
be in the class of Christian colleges. These are largely in the
majority of our educational institutions. Out of 460 classed
as higher institutions of learning 360 were founded or conducted
by some branch of the Christian Church, with two-thirds of
the students in colleges enrolled in them. Christian ideals, the
Christian spirit and motive, and the practice of religion, no less
than instruction in religious truth, do and must continue here
coordinate with the teaching of the learned languages and liberal
arts and sciences. The evangelical and the missionary spirit do>
and no doubt will continue to prevail in a large degree, though
it may appear to be in less proportion to the whole value and
effect of the education furnished.
The college stands now upon a better financial founda-
tion than ever before. Its needs are still great, but not dis-
tressing. The president may safely give his first and best
thought and effort to the work of education in its broadest
sense, rather than to the business of advertising and of solicit-
ing increased endowments. The latter should come and will
come, not without effort, but more as the reward of merit than
as the result of special pleading. It is significant and encourag-
ing that a few weeks after the election of President King, a
friend of the college who had recently given $50,000, wrote to
a trustee offering to give another $50,000 (later increased to
$100,000) toward a second half million dollars to be raised,
saying in his letter "with the emphasis placed on the teaching
[64]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
side in the selection of the new president, the college has fol-
lowed, I think, the true order, — dignifying at the same time
the office of trustee, in placing more fully upon the Board the
responsibility of provision of facilities by which the president
and faculty can do the best work"; and he adds that "having
been founded in the interest of the 'things of the Spirit,* Obcr-
lin is still informed by the same spirit, in its present aim and
work and so worthy to command cordially and effectively the
interest of good people."
Oberlin has always been poor and may long remain so
relatively to other colleges, to the numbers of its faculty and
students, and to the work accomplished: (I think no other col-
lege has done so much with so little). Its presidents and pro-
fessors have been and still are underpaid, receiving, as has been
said reproachfully, "missionary salaries." But is not this a term
of praise and honor rather than of reproach, signifying that they
give themselves to the cause for the good to be done? The
highest salary received by President Fairchild in his twenty-
three years' presidency and sixty years* teaching service for the
college, was $2,000 a year; most of the time much less. With
such examples of unselfishness, showing the greatness of unre-
warded service, we shall more surely avoid becoming avaricious
and worldly-minded in the false opinion that money makes or
can make the college; except in so far as it commands, employs
and liberates men for the intellectual and spiritual uses of a
higher than material life.
Would we exchange our poverty and history, our poverty
and our achievements with it; the influences exerted, the good
done, the reforms begun, aided and carried forward in learning
and literature and music, in theology, for missions, for women,
for the colored race, for the state, the nation and the mankind ;
for a quick endowment of scMne millions in a new beginning, or
on the foundation of a buried or barren past? Nay, our in-
heritance is our riches, our record is our pledge of progress
and enlargement; our service of God and benefactions to man-
kind are our title to the generosity of present and of future
givers to the cause of education.
[65]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
This is the day to resolve that the work of the college be
not only maintained, but improved and enlarged without yield-
ing to the Academy one year of the College Course and re-
serving from the university, with its specialties and professional
schools, the ancient right of the college to furnish a liberal edu-
cation and the opportunity of character-building, while intel-
lectual and moral training advance together with e£Eective reli-
gious teaching and influence as the basis of morality.
We feel that this union is secured in this inauguration, in
a presidency which should serve the college, preserving its
original ideals, animated by its traditional spirit of democracy
and loyalty and Christianity for another period of twenty-five
years, or to its first centennial in 1933.
Let these be our thoughts and aspirations for the college
while, with mutual congratulations upon the present and with
firm assurance for the future, the trustees and faculty, the
alumni and the student body, and all friends and well-wisfhers
of the college join in welcoming President King to the presi-
dency of Oberlin, and in pledging to him and to the college
loyal and liberal continued support
[86]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
ADDRESS BY PROFESSOR EDWARD INCREASE
BOSWORTH, D.D„
ON BBHALF OF THE FACULTY.
The situation which finds its culmination today is not an
arbitrary creation, but the result of a growth. For twenty-five
years in the logic of events the premises have been forming for
the conclusion that we recognize today. None have had better
opportunities to see this than those for whom I speak — the
Faculty of Oberlin G)llege. We know Henry King and he
knows us. He knows that we know him, and we know that
he knows us. This being so, no more significant thing can be
said than that upon this glad day, not only in appearance, but
in heart, the Faculty of Oberlin College rejoices. We who
have seen him repeatedly at the points where disillusion is likely
to be experienced, if at all, are the ones who have unwavering
confidence in him and who have eagerly anticipated this day.
Those who have worked with him in the close relationships
which often breed petty jealousies are the ones whose satisfac^
tion is most sincere.
We have a confidence, grounded in long experience, that
under his leadership we shall be able to realize the true ideal
of Christian education. Wc know well his ideal of the intel-
lectual attainment essential to broad education; there will be
honest work in dass room, laboratory, and seminar. We know
that in his ideal of education, broadening aesthetic culture is an
essential element. We know that no ideal of education which
does not involve the development of a sincere Christian char-
acter will ever prove satisfactory to him. The College will do
what it ought only as it turns out men and women fitted for
life — ^men and women simply honest, shrewdly sympathetic^
spiritually poised, fitted for life in the new order that we call
the Kingdom of God among men.
This high and broad ideal of Christian education we tx-
[67]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
pect, for two reasons, to see realized in ever-increasing measure
under his leadership. We are sure, in the first place, that we
shall retain our individuality. The atmosphere of Oberlin has
always favored free development of individuality. The divine
right to be one's self and to do a thing in one's own way has
always been recognized. The men the memory of whom con-
stitutes our Oberlin tradition were pioneers in thought and
life. We recognize in President King the child of such an
ancestry. His own quiet independence of thought and readiness
to be himself, to have his own message and deliver it in his own
way, have given him power among men in which we rejoice
today. We know that under his leadership wholesome en-
thusiasms, deep and strong, will develop in the student body
without apology. This shall always be a place where everyone
can get a chance at the best things in his own way, and have his
own inspiring vision of life.
We are confident that under his administration we shall
be able, not only to develop our own individuality, but also to
relate ourselves to others. This *has always been our tradition.
Legitimate peculiarity has seldom developed into rank eccen-
tricity. It is somewhat remarkable that in a situation where
religious feeling has at times been so tense, the recluse and the
doctrinaire have been so seldom in evidence. The atmosphere
of the College has always been one favorable to the close rela-
tionship of education and the practical life of the world. Great
moral reforms, and practical politics as well, have appealed to
both teacher and student, and we believe that such will con-
tinue to be the case. He who has thought so profoundly and
spoken so clearly upon "Theology and the Social Consciousness"
will be able to lead men and women of marked individuality
into close and sensitive connection with the life of the great
world.
To the formation of this ideal of Christian education that
characterizes our life. President King in the last twenty-five
years has made no small contribution. Today we as a Faculty
pledge him our loyal co-operation in the effort to secure under
his leadership as President a larger realization of the ideal that
Digitized by LjOOQIC
he as teacher has helped to create. From the college men and
women of the country have always come a large proportion of
those destined to lead in its life and thought. It is they who
must ever stand listening, eager to hear voices calling them to
launch out upon the great sea of undiscovered truth. It is our
joy today to see placed at the center of our little group in this
great company Henry King, our seer, our leader, and our friend.
ro9]
Digitized byLjOOQlC
Digitized byLjOOQlC
ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT WILLIAM GOODELL
FROST, PH.D., D.D.,
OF THE CLASS OF 1 876, ON BEHALF OF THE ALUMNI.
John Shipherd, the pioneer; Asa Mahan, the prophet;
Charles G. Finney, the preacher; James H. Fairchild, the
philosopher; William G. Ballantine, the scholar; John Henry
Barrows, the publicist; Henry Churchill King, the educator*
King is Oberlin's seventh son.
As a graduate and the son of a graduate, I am set to
speak a word for the alumni. We return too seldom, but when
we come, it is as to Jerusalem. We have left our plow in the
furrow. A thousand important enterprises stand still today
in order that we may gather at this center of inspiration, that
we may look once more at those ideals of conduct and character
which our Alma Mater gave us to be the stars of our firmament,
and that we may bid God-speed to a new spiritual leader.
This is the eloquence of Oberlin to us: Here was the
burning bush where God spoke to us. From these choir seats
Allen and Chamberlain sang forth the challenge, '^Must Jesus
bear the cross alone?" Under that gallery James Monroe gath-
ered his great Bible class. From this pulpit Morgan, and
Cowles, and Brand poured out the everlasting Gospel. And in
yonder class-rooms Hudson, and Peck, and Thome, Hiram
Mead, and Judson Smith, Cross, and Dascomb, and Ellis, and
Mrs. Johnston, and Shurtleff, and Churchill, and Ryder opened
up to us the inner and the outer universe. This is our debt to
Oberlin: we came here callow, purposeless boys and girls, and
we were shown that a great struggle was going on between right
and wrong, between progress and conventionality, and that each
one of us had a chance to be a soldier. This was our place of
enlistment.
But Oberlin reminiscences all have a face to the future^
We have come to repeat our oath of fealty to Oberlin and to
[71]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
express our confidence in her new President. We pledge him
our united and our unreserved support.
And, President King, we realize that we are inducting
you into an office which is no mere honor. The duties of a
governor, a bishop, or a commodore do not compare in weight
and intricacy with those of a true college president, who must
be at once a Joseph in finance and a Paul in self-forgetful zeal.
It is a task to be undertaken only in the spirit of consecration:
a task which will both gladden your heart and shorten your life.
We sometimes speak of the trying times in the history of an
institution or a nation. But, my friends, all times are trying
when there are heroes on the stage. The only times which do
not try men's souls are the times of negligence, supineness, and
disgrace. It is because we know King will have an adminis-
tration full of the storm and stress of real achievement — ^achieve-
ment which does not float upon the tide, but stems it — that we
are here to strengthen his hands.
In the history of all institutions the test comes not in the
founding, but in the maintaining and reforming. Every head
of a religious establishment like Oberlin College has two cease-
less wars, one against worldliness, and one against scholasticism.
Here is the great tide of worldliness, like the Mississippi
chafing at its levees, which surges against every endowed in-
stitution. It is Christ's testimony that those who sit in Moses'
seat, and are engaged as we are, in building the tombs of the
martyrs, are subject to special temptations. Let us face the
fact that most of the great religious bodies, including the one
to whidi Oberlin chiefly belongs, have almost ceased to grow.
The minister has settled down with a good reason why his
Sunday School cannot increase, and why his preaching cannot
lead to conversions. We hardly send our ablest sons into the
ministry, or our ablest ministers to the hard fields where growth
should come. These noble bodies stand splendid in their history
and equipment, going through ineffective motions like the army
of McClellan. Our eyes are filled with other things and we
do not see the people who need spiritual guidance — the white
harvest fields are unreaped. It is worldliness — putting the ex-
[72]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
ternal and secondary in the place of the highest, setting great
and good things, like commerce and music, above religion,
abolishing the Day of Prayer for Colleges, that we may have
one more lesson in Chemistry and the History of Art. Now,
Finney's pulpit is tlie place, and the inauguration of a new presi-
-dent is the time to raise the question, where shall the reaction,
the next spiritual renaissance, begin? Must it begin as at other
times in some obscure sect, some persecuted band of students,
or can it begin in the hearts of a faculty of teachers?
The first inspiration of our founders came from the Alsa-
tian pastor, John Frederick Oberlin. And there has just come
another prophet's voice from those same far-off Alsatian Moun-
tains. It is Wagner's little book, "The Simple Life," full of
the ideals which we back numbers of the alumni received from
our teachers in Oberlin, and which are at once recognized by
the elect everywhere as part of a universal and infallible Gos-
pel. Let us pass on these high traditions to our pupils of today.
■**Labor," he says, "for people whom the world forgets; make
yourselves intelligible to the humble; so shall you open again
the springs whence these Masters drew, whose works have de-
fied the ages, because they knew how to clothe genius in sim-
plicity."
And there is the other battle against scholasticism. When
a young pastor fails in his parish, the Seminary instead of teach-
ing him to give a warmer handshake sometimes invites him to
return to the seclusion and comfort which have been his un-
<ioing, and take a fourth year in Hebrew and the History of
Doctrine !
President King, we desire above all things to have
our children get in Oberlin what we received — the impulse to
1>e soldiers. If my boy is as coltish and wrong-headed as his
father at the same age — if he escapes the influence of the or-
<iinary pastor and the chance teacher — we shall send him to
Oberlin, not because you have a gymnasium and a laboratory,
though we rejoice in these, but because you have teachers of
character-forming power. When the choice comes between the
specialist who is interested in his specialty, and the educator
Digitized by LjOOQIC
who is interested in young men and women, the Alumni cast
their votes for the educator.
So we must separate tomorrow to our several posts of duty*
But we go strengthened by this meeting. We hail President
King as the Lord's anointed for this high office. He has spoken
words which our hearts recognize. From every compass-point
we look to this College. We belong to Oberlin. And we are
glad to feel that Oberlin has a leader.
[74]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
ADDRESS BY MR. DAHL BUCHANAN COOPER,
OF THE CLASS OF I903, ON BEHALF OF THE STUDENTS,
Obcrlin Friends, Members of the Faculty, and Fellow Students:
Six months ago with band pla3dng, with Hi-O-Hi's ringing,
with the old chapel bell making a last strenuous effort to outdo
itself, the Oberlin students inaugurated their President in their
own student way. Today we come with less clamor, but with
a zeal grown greater with the days, to add our testimony to that
of riper years on this memorable occasion. Nor do we fear to
raise our voices in jubilant inauguration chorus, because we feel
and know that the Oberlin student yields to no one in his in-
terest in this day's event. Who more than he is a part of his
Alma Mater? Who more than he has the right to show en-
thusiasm at her inauguration hour?
Today, with hearts thoughtfully glad we cease our daily
round of student life, and plunge ourselves in depths of loyalty
to the college which is our college. We live in thought the life
of her historic past and are filled with reverence for it. We
live back her pioneer days, toil with her founders, and rejoice
with them in the humble beginnings whidi made the present
hour possible. We follow in sympathy her struggling growth
and are glad with the world for the influence of that struggle.
AVfaat but unbounded college patriotism can issue from a glimpse
into this rugged past! And yet we are not content. In the
midst of our admiration presses the thought that in all this we
have had no part. This history has been made and we* honor
those who made it. But to rest content with a glorious past is
not within our power. We realize that Oberlin history is still
making and we are making it. Students are still walking her
halls and we are those students. Hearts are still strong in her
service, and ours are those hearts.
As on this occasion the college begins another eventful era,
we claim an honest pride in being the students who witness its
[75 1
Digitized by LjOOQIC
beginning. Yet ours is not an enthusiasm born of the hour. It
is deep rooted in a firm belief in the principles of the college we
love. Ours is not a narrow enthusiasm; we stand today for
the best and broadest that Oberlin gives us. Ours is the spirit
which would cheer lustily as the crimson and gold crosses the
goal line. Ours is the spirit which would bow reverently as the
silent testimony of mission martyrs is borne across the sea
from China land.
Standing in the presence of representatives of our sister in-
stitutions of America, we invite the criticism that we are proud-
Proud of our college with her glorious past; prouder still that
we are students in her more glorious present. We would yield
to the sons of the Harvards and Yales a loyalty similar to ours^
we would yield to none in the degree of that loyalty. For the
student today who is not aglow with the spirit of his college, we
pity. Pity him as a man without a college. He cannot be
claimed as our own.
And yet our love for our college is not a sentimental love^
We love her because we can love her. We love her as radical,
who has dared to lead in right when to lead was to lead alone^
We love her as conservative who has refused to follow when
to follow was to sacrifice her usefulness. We love her simple
democracy which knows not wealth or poverty ; which places the
hand-soiled student with his stern stuff in the van of her moving:
forces. We love that democracy, and though the student prayer
is for endowment millions, that same prayer would forbid those
millions to sully the motto of learning and labor of the poor
man*s college. And last of all we love the college which stands
for character; which pours moral-minded men into the world's
hard places with honest heart and quickened brain combined
in Christian usefulness.
It is little wonder then that we joy today in honoring our
college by honoring him whom we are placing at its head. We
as students are glad to renew our heart-born allegiance to him
who has done so much to shape the ideals of the college; who-
today embodies those ideals in a personality that we deeply love.
As he assumes the responsibility for what promises to be Ober-
[76]
Digitized by LjOOQIC
lin's brightest days, we as students shall labor with him. We
shall be responsible for her student life to make it worthy of
the name it bears. With the rugged, resolute spirit of true sons
and daughters of Oberlin, we pledge our best to her best, our
lives to her life; and when with waning years the administra-
tion now beginning shall have its close, today's enthusiasm of
youth shall give place to the time-tried loyalty of venerable years,
and Oberlin shall have recorded her most brilliant epoch in a
most glorious history.
SONNET TO HENRY CHURCHILL KING
On His Accession to the Presidency of Oberlin College.
In Paolo's marble chancel, mute I gazed
Upon the carven altar's majesty of art;
Its wondrous fretted beauty smote my heart
To hungry sighs — at such achievement mazed.
I turned to leave ; when, like a radiant psalm,
Through the pane's crimson, throbbed the glorious light.
My heart, song-filled, surged eager at the sight,
And swept me into hope's triumphant calm.
So, thou art not the object of men's cries.
Posed for the plaudits of the admiring throng,
But like the lucent cr5^tal, to our eyes
Thou dost transmit the glory and the song
Of the eternal morning. Hope, serene and wise.
And heart-ripe faith we learn; and we are strong.
; James Rain^
[77 ]
4
Digitized by LjOOQIC
Digitized by LjOOQIC
Digitized by LjOOQIC
UNIVERSITY or CALlFOR>X4 LIBIL4RY
BERKELEY
Rerurn to d»k from wlildt Ttorrowed.
Tbjji book is DUE on tbc la&t date uamped below.
Wan 17 tm
W STACKS
SEP £4 136$
RECT
A-OA^! dept.
LD Sl-10t)tn-e,'4T(AetOSgl6}4Ttl
Digitized by
Goo'
YC 653
Sifl0702
THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
im.—tj^ m H^jH i j ^p > t« i 'W "»WiWWWi^>^WBW^p aiB ii iiip i wii||l l | Mi T^ i | | jj|j i<|jiy^n^p»
Digitized by LjOOQIC
,^'^S>A-yi>
Digitized by
Google
Live Music Archive
Librivox Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Internet Arcade
Console Living Room
Books to Borrow
Open Library
TV News
Understanding 9/11