The American College 
 in American Life 
 
 By 
 
 Charles Franklin Thwing, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 President of Western Reserve University 
 and of Adelbert College 
 
 New York and London 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
 1897 
 
T5 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1897 
 BY 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 Entered at Stationers' Hall, London 
 
 l¥-l'4-H 
 
 Vbe Kniclietbocltec ipress, flew IBcrk 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 WITH the growth of American life has 
 grown the American college. The 
 college has enlarged its constituency ; 
 it has gained in material worth and significance ; 
 it has related itself more vitally and more gener- 
 ally to life. It has made appeals of increasing 
 urgency to the American people for sustenance, 
 — and these appeals have not been without 
 avail, — and it has asked also for the privilege of 
 giving itself through its graduates to every 
 worthy cause. It may not be too much to say 
 that the college has tried to be of the utmost 
 value to man. 
 
 These conditions may be interpreted as an 
 intimation of the purposes which have ruled in 
 the writing of this book. The primary aim has 
 been to bring the American college into closer 
 relationship with American life and — so far as 
 
iv Prefatory Note. 
 
 may be — to bring American life into a more 
 vital touch with the American college. I have 
 believed, and still believe, that through the 
 securing of this double purpose the college may 
 be able to be a richer blessing to this great life 
 of which the college is a part, and which it is 
 set to serve. 
 
 No book of a kind such as this can make any 
 pretence of being complete. This volume in- 
 cludes the consideration of only a few of the 
 more vital questions. Other questions, quite 
 as vital possibly, I hope to be able to discuss in 
 other volumes. For the American college, like 
 American life or the life of any progressive peo- 
 ple, is full of infinite suggestions appealing to 
 thouofht or to action. 
 
 "fc>* 
 
 C. F. T. 
 
 Cleveland, Ohio. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. — Its Increasing Power . . . . i 
 
 II. — Certain Great Results . . .46 
 
 III. — Its Influence over and through 
 
 Individuals . . . . . SS 
 
 IV. — Its Influence Illustrated in the 
 
 Three Oldest Colleges , » 146 
 
 V. — Certain Present Conditions . . 188 
 
 VI. — Certain Adjustments of its Ethical 
 AND Religious Forces to its In- 
 tellectual 219 
 
 VII. — The Increasing Cost of its Education 242 
 
 VIII. — Certain Difficulties 
 
 IX. — Its Power in the Future . 
 
 255 
 278 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/americancollegeiOOthwirich 
 
THE AMERICAN COLLEGE 
 IN AMERICAN LIFE. 
 
 I. 
 
 ITS INCREASING POWER. 
 
 THE history of college education in 
 America may be divided into three 
 periods. The first period begins with 
 the foundation of Harvard College in 1636 and 
 closes with the opening of the Revolutionary 
 War. The second begins with the close of the 
 Revolutionary War and continues through the 
 first quarter of the present century. The third 
 begins two generations ago and is still in pro- 
 gress. The first period may be called the 
 ecclesiastical period,, the second the political,^ 
 " andTTEethird the human. E ach period may 
 also be described in respect to the source whence 
 
2 The American College. 
 
 certain of its stronger influences arose: — The 
 first, as the English, the second as the French, 
 and the third as the German. 
 
 During the larger part of the first period only 
 three colleges existed — Harvard, William and 
 Mary, and Yale ; — and up to the close of the 
 period only nine colleges had been founded. 
 In this time the predominant influence in the 
 colleges, as in the State, was ecclesiastical, and 
 largely clerical. The Church and the State 
 were in most respects one, — and that one was 
 the Church. In the Church the most influen- 
 tial member was its pastor. The college, too, 
 was governed by the clergyman. The presi- 
 dent was himself a clergyman, and the students 
 in large numbers became clergymen. The first 
 Board of Overseers of Harvard College was 
 composed of certain magistrates, and of the 
 '* Teaching Elders" of six **next adjoining" 
 towns to Boston. The principle of clerical 
 government continued even longer than this 
 period itself lasted. Ecclesiastical divisions 
 and theological discussions found in the college 
 the staunchest ally or antagonist. Not only 
 was the college governed by clergymen but the 
 clerical purpose prevailed in its education. In 
 
Its Increasing Power. 3 
 
 the seventeeth century fifty-two per cent, of the 
 graduates of Harvard entered the ministry and 
 of the first thirty-three graduates of Yale 
 College, from 1702 to 1710, twenty-five, or 
 seventy-five per cent., entered the ministry. In 
 the eighteenth century twenty-nine per cent, 
 of the Harvard graduates and forty per cent, of 
 the Yale graduates became ministers. 
 
 The ecclesiastical character of the first col- 
 leges was simply the realization under new con- 
 ditions of the purpose for which the colleges of 
 Oxford and Cambridge were established. As 
 the early Oxford reproduced the University of 
 Paris, so the early Harvard reproduced the 
 English Universities. One reading the statutes 
 of the Oxford colleges is impressed with the 
 specific nature of the statements in respect to 
 the ecclesiastical purposes and conditions. 
 *' Established for religious training," *' founded 
 to teach students in the canon law and in the- 
 ology,'' '' for the culture of sacred theology ; " 
 these and similar statements are made in the 
 Statutes of the Oxford colleges as embodying 
 the purposes of their establishment. Richard 
 Fox, Bishop of Winchester, founder of Corpus 
 Christi College, indicated his purpose in the 
 
4 The American College. 
 
 foundation by using in the statutes the image 
 of a ladder, which he applies to the college, on 
 which to mount up to heaven. He also com- 
 pared the colleges to hives in which scholars, 
 like bees, may make honey for the glory of God. 
 But this condition at Oxford was simply a part 
 of a yet more general condition. All the Uni- 
 versities of Northern Europe were the doors to 
 the Church, and the Church was the door to 
 professional life of every character. In the 
 Universities of Southern Europe the law held 
 a similar place. 
 
 Not only were the ecclesiastical purposes and 
 relations of the English university transplanted, 
 but also in many respects the course of study. 
 The courses of study in Oxford and Cambridge 
 were somewhat more extended and of a larger 
 variety than those of the new colleges in the 
 New World, but in many respects they were 
 identical. The founders of the College in the 
 new Cambridge were trained at old Cambridge 
 and the greater number of them at Emmanuel 
 College. The course of study in both the old 
 college and the new was specially designed to 
 educate clergymen. 
 
 With the close of the Revolutionary War the 
 
Its increasing Power. 5 
 
 allegiance which a large body of the American 
 people had paid to English prescription ceased. 
 It was inevitable that the men who had fought 
 the English in a contest for civil freedom, 
 should feel only a slight sympathy with the edu- 
 cational positions and conditions of the same 
 people. '* The leading men of the Revolution, 
 the Otises, the Adamses, the Trumbulls, the 
 Warrens, Hancock, Quincy, and others, caught 
 the spirit of liberty and patriotism in the recita- 
 tion-room, the library, and among their associ- 
 ates at the College," says Sibley.^ It was also 
 inevitable that a people who in winning its in- 
 dependence had received aid from the ancient 
 foe of England should have a warm sympathy 
 with the educational ideas and ideals of its 
 allies. The strongest influence which France 
 exerted upon the new Republic at the time of 
 its foundation was civil and political. 
 
 The first duty of the new nation was to pre- 
 serve and to magnify itself. In this endeavor 
 the agency of education became of priceless 
 value. Therefore we find the Ordinance of 
 1787, declaring ** Religion, morality, and know- 
 ledge being necessary to good government and 
 
 * Sibley's Harvard Graduates^ I., xi. 
 
6 The American College. 
 
 the happiness of mankind, schools, and the 
 means of education shall forever be encour- 
 aged ; " and, therefore, also we find Washington 
 urging the foundation of a national university 
 in order to secure the perpetuity of the new 
 republic. It is to be observed that the Ordin- 
 ance of 1787 could not probably have been 
 passed simply to secure educational advantages. 
 The people were more interested in the political 
 side of this action than in its educational ; but 
 in the document the political and the educa- 
 tional elements were united. Sentiments ex- 
 pressed in the constitutions of the various 
 States, and in various laws, indicate the preval- 
 ence of the idea that the education of all classes 
 should be fostered for the purpose of the pre- 
 servation of the commonwealth. Education 
 had to do with public and civil relations. 
 
 The potency of the French influence is well 
 illustrated by the attempt of Quesnay in 1 780 
 and 1 788 to found a French Academy of Arts 
 and Sciences at Richmond. Quesnay was the 
 grandson of the famous French philosopher 
 and economist, Quesnay, who was court phy- 
 sician to Louis XV. He came to this country 
 to aid in the Revolution, serving as a captain 
 
Its Increasing^ Power. 
 
 ^D 
 
 in Virginia. After giving up the military life 
 because of ill health, he travelled through the 
 country, and on these travels conceived the idea 
 of introducing French arts and culture, believ- 
 ing, also, that he could multiply the relations 
 uniting France and this country.^ The institu- 
 tion was to be national, having branches at 
 Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York ; and 
 also international, being affiliated with similar 
 institutions in Europe. It was designed to 
 give what we might now call graduate instruc- 
 tion. Its curriculum was sufficiently broad, 
 including foreign languages ; mathematics ; 
 architecture, civil and military ; painting ; 
 sculpture, engraving ; experimental physics, 
 astronomy, geography, chemistry, mineral- 
 ogy, botany ; anatomy, human and veterinary ; 
 and natural history. This endeavor interested 
 many people both in America and France. No 
 less than sixty thousand francs was raised tow- 
 ard the endowment. Among the subscribers 
 to the fund were about a hundred of the repre- 
 sentatives of the best culture of Virginia. On 
 July I, 1786, the corner-stone of the building 
 
 ^ Herbert B. Adams's Thomas Jefferson and the University of 
 Virginia^ 22. 
 
8 The American College. 
 
 was laid at Richmond, and one professor was 
 appointed. He was Dr. Jean Rouelle. But in 
 1 786 France was in no condition to enter into 
 schemes of education or other propagandism 
 outside of her own territory, and the formal en- 
 deavor came to an end. The extinction of the 
 movement, however, did not mean the extinc- 
 tion of French influence in the United States. 
 In the States of Virginia and the Carolinas, 
 French influence prevailed with great force. 
 The chief agent in putting it down was the Pres- 
 byterian power of Princeton ; but yet it showed 
 itself ultimately in the foundation of the Uni- 
 versity of Virginia, and at the beginning of the 
 century among the students of many colleges. 
 But the French influence was by no means 
 confined to the South. In 1784 the Corpora- 
 tion of Harvard College received an offer from 
 the King of France to furnish a botanic garden 
 which the College desired to establish '* with 
 every species of seeds and plants, which may 
 be requested from his royal garden, at his own 
 expense." Through the indifference of the 
 Massachusetts Legislature the College was not 
 able to accept of the offer.^ It is further worthy 
 
 ^Quincy's History of Harvard University^ ii., 267. 
 
Its Increasing Power. 9 
 
 of note that two years before Albert Gallatin 
 had been granted the right of teaching the 
 French language in the College. 
 
 The University of Virginia is the child of 
 Jefferson, and Jefferson in both the strength 
 and weakness of his character belonged rather 
 to the French than to any other nation. The 
 policy of centralization which the University 
 of Virginia represented was the policy which 
 Napoleon introduced into the higher education 
 of France. The free religious sentiment which 
 the university embodied was an echo, too, of 
 French principles. The endeavors to secure 
 from abroad teachers for its chairs indicates 
 the prevalence of French influences. 
 
 In another respect the influence of France 
 was as evil as in the case of the University of 
 Virginia it was beneficent. For never was a 
 period in the history of the higher education 
 when those principles and vices which are fre- 
 quently denominated French had so large an 
 influence among American students as at the 
 opening of the century. The records show 
 that the students of tlue time were defiant of 
 authority, in conduct immoral, and in religion 
 skeptical. A general spirit of insubordination 
 
lo The American College. 
 
 prevailed. What is usually called infidelity 
 was fashionable and prevalent in almost every 
 college. It is a common remark that certain 
 students of Yale at this time were calling 
 themselves by the names of the conspicuous 
 free-thinkers of France. Writing of Williams 
 College one says : '* French liberty and French 
 philosophy poured in upon us like a flood ; and 
 seemed to sweep almost everything serious 
 before it."^ The condition of Dartmouth Col- 
 lege was like that of Williams and of Yale. 
 Coarse dramatic exhibitions, terrific outbursts 
 of rowdyism, bombastic display of contempt 
 for the Christian religion, seem to have been 
 the rule. A wave of immorality and of irreli- 
 gion had for a time submerged all the colleges. 
 The third period in the development of the 
 American college dates from about the close of 
 the first quarter of the present century. This 
 period is not yet closed. It is a period which 
 deserves an epithet no less broad than the 
 word human. The college has become in this 
 period an agency for preparing its students 
 for life. Its purpose is no less than the fitting 
 of a man to achieve all purposes which he may 
 
 ^'DnrltQ^s History of Williams College^ IIO. 
 
Its Increasing Power. n 
 
 worthily set before himself. A boy who comes 
 to college, comes not so much to fit himself 
 for a profession as to become a large and com- 
 plete man. I lately asked a class of young 
 men in college to write answers to the follow- 
 ing questions : First, Why did I come to col- 
 lege ? Second, Is my purpose in coming to 
 college being met? Third, How is it being 
 met? The answers have a similarity which, 
 although remarkable at first reading, is not so 
 remarkable when all the conditions are con- 
 sidered. Choosing from these papers almost 
 at random, I find that certain students indi- 
 cate their purpose, as expressed in their own 
 words, as follows : 
 
 " My purpose in coming to college was somewhat vague 
 and ill-defined. I was brought up with that idea, and 
 had a general idea that the college man's culture would 
 be a good acquisition. This, however, was but one side 
 of it. I wanted to see through my studies just what life- 
 work would be best fitted for me. I think that being 
 under the training of a college has had its good effect 
 upon me as upon others. I think I have begun to get 
 an earnest determination as to what I shall do in life, 
 and I think my studies here, and the comradeship of my 
 friends, have been valuable.*' " I came to college," says 
 another, " in order to obtain, by a systematic course of 
 study directed by competent men, that mental training 
 
r 
 
 t± The American College. 
 
 and discipline, as well as a fund of information, which 
 shall enable me to enjoy life myself, and perhaps be a 
 benefit to others in some way. 1 think that my desire is 
 being realized both in the way of training and discipline. 
 The training is obtained by mental exercise in many dif- 
 ferent studies, insuring at the same time a gradual ac- 
 quisition of information." " I came to college," answers 
 a third, "to prepare myself for my life-work by getting 
 a broader education, and also to develop myself along 
 the mental, moral, and physical lines for which the col- 
 lege offers the best chance. My purpose is being se- 
 cured. It is being secured by the studies which I take, 
 by contact with the professors and my fellow-students, 
 the latter having as much, if not more, influence in at- 
 taining this end, as that which I get out of the text- 
 books." 
 
 That is to say, these men are in college in 
 order to fit themselves for life. 
 
 This largeness of relationship as expressed 
 by these undergraduates is only the reflection 
 of what the college officer has been saying in 
 these recent years. At the time of his inaug- 
 uration as President of Harvard College, in 
 i860, Cornelius Conway Felton said : 
 
 " The proper objects of a University are twofold. 
 First, educating young men to the highest efficiency of 
 their intellectual faculties, and to the noblest culture of 
 their moral and religious natures. ... A liberal 
 
Its Increasing Power. 13 
 
 education, a university education, aims to train the mind 
 in . . . high studies, to make it familiar with inspir- 
 ing examples, to refine the taste, exercise the judgment, 
 soften the heart, by . . . humanizing arts." 
 
 More than a quarter of a century after the 
 inauguration of President Felton, at his inaugu- 
 ration, President Dwight, of Yale, said : 
 
 " It [education] does for the mind what religion does 
 for the heart. It builds up and builds out the man. 
 The man, when it has accomplished its work within 
 him, can use his knowledge and his powers wherever the 
 world may need them, and he will do so if the noble im- 
 pulses of educated manhood are in his spirit\ ... It 
 is the priceless privilege of a University teacher to help 
 the manly youth around him in their souls* living, to 
 make them more generous, more truthful, more fit for 
 life in this earnest and struggling world, more worthy of 
 love and respect." 
 
 The president of a scientific school, Lehigh 
 University, said at his inauguration : 
 
 " Modern collegiate life is io-day a wonderful micro- 
 cosm ; — it represents the endeavor of generations of 
 zealous, earnest educators to make this period of youth 
 increasingly profitable. The number and variety of 
 studies have been increased many fold, the proportion 
 of teachers to students has been increased, improved 
 methods of instruction have been brought into play and 
 the equipment of laboratories is lavishly generous. IfCver 
 
1 4 The American College. 
 
 before has there been such earnest discussion as to edu- 
 cational methods and vakies ; the teacher^s art has be- 
 come a science, and he a great power in the land." ^ 
 
 It is, in a word, to the making of a man that 
 the college now gives itself. 
 
 This breadth of interest is at once the cause 
 and the result of the increasing number of sub- 
 jects found in the curriculum. The curriculum 
 of the American college two hundred years 
 after the foundation of Harvard showed very 
 little change or progress. It was one which 
 well represents the attainments of a boy who 
 is now entering college rather than of the man 
 who is now leaving. An English traveller, 
 Weld, visiting Princeton at the close of the 
 last century says of it : 
 
 " A large college, held in much repute by the neigh- 
 boring States. The number of students amounts to 
 upwards of seventy ; from their appearance, however, 
 and the course of studies they seem to be engaged in, 
 like all the other American colleges I ever saw, it better 
 deserves the title of a grammar-school than of a college. 
 The library which we were shown is most wretched, con- 
 sisting for the most part of old theological books not 
 even arranged with any regularity. An orrery contrived 
 by Mr. Rittenhouse stands at one end of the apartment, 
 
 * * Inaugural of President T. M. Drown, October lo, 1895. 
 
Its Increasing Power. 15 
 
 but it is quite out of repair, as well as a few detached 
 parts of a philosophical apparatus enclosed in the same 
 glass case. At the opposite end of the room are two 
 small cupboards, which are shown as the museum. 
 These contain a few small stuffed alligators and a few 
 singular fishes in a miserable state of preservation, from 
 their being repeatedly tossed about." * 
 
 There is in the diary of President Stiles, of 
 Yale College, under date of November 9, 
 1779, a list of the books in which classes re- 
 cited at the time when he came into his ofifice. 
 The Freshman class list included Virgil, Cicero, 
 Greek Testament, and Arithmetic, and the stud- 
 ies for each of the three following years are the 
 natural consequences of the elementary work 
 of the Freshman.^ The few reminiscences 
 which we have of the studies in the last part 
 of the seventeenth and the early part of the 
 present century, among which those of Edward 
 Everett are prominent, and the formal histori- 
 cal statements respecting the course of study, 
 lead one to believe that for almost two hun- 
 dred years the American college had remained 
 stationary in respect to its course of study. 
 
 It is also evident that the students pursued 
 
 * Henry Adams's History of the United States, i., 129. 
 ^The Yale Book, ii., 498. 
 
i6 The American College. 
 
 their studies without great intellectual zest, 
 and that they possessed only a small share of 
 that scholarly interest which now prevails 
 among the better class of undergraduates. 
 But in the last seventy-five years a larger 
 progress has been made in the broadening of 
 the course than was made during all the cen- 
 turies since Oxford and Cambridge began to 
 receive students. The studies which now con- 
 sume the larger share of the students atten- 
 tion, outside of Latin and Greek and Mathe- 
 matics, have been introduced in the last 
 three-quarters of the present century. The 
 Smith Professorship of French and Spanish 
 was founded at Harvard in 1815, although in- 
 struction in French had been offered to those 
 who desired it as early as 1780, — a time when 
 this offer made at Harvard reflects the popu- 
 larity of the French nation in the colonies. I 
 have heard the late Professor F. H. Hedge 
 say that in his time as an undergraduate — he 
 was a member of Harvard's class of 1825 — it 
 was as unusual to hear a person speak German 
 as it would now be to hear one speak Russian. 
 It was not till 1839 ^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ Professor- 
 ship of History was established in Harvard, 
 
Its Increasing Power. 17 
 
 although, of course, the subject had been 
 taught before, and it represents the first dis- 
 tinct endowment of this Chair in any college. 
 The first incumbent was Jared Sparks. 
 
 But the greatest development of this third 
 period has occurred in the teaching of the 
 sciences.^ Chemistry was the first to receive 
 attention. Benjamin Silliman was appointed 
 professor of chemistry and natural philosophy 
 (also teaching geology and mineralogy) at Yale 
 in 1804 ; and Robert Hare, of Philadelphia, 
 was called to the chair of chemistry in the 
 medical college of the University of Pennsyl- 
 vania in 18 18. 
 
 Both of these men taught chemistry by text- 
 books and illustrated lectures. Hare was a 
 tireless investigator, Silliman a helper of too 
 many good causes to become eminent as an 
 original authority in any. The idea of instruc- 
 tion in laboratory work does not seem to have 
 occurred to either of them. Even Benjamin 
 Silliman the younger does not appear to have 
 had free access to his father's laboratory until 
 he became his assistant in 1837. ^Y this time 
 
 ^ For the statement of facts as to the introduction of instruction in 
 the sciences I am indebted to my associate, Professor F. P. Whitman. 
 
i8 The American College. 
 
 Liebig s laboratory had been established, and 
 the possibility of obtaining practical instruction 
 in chemistry began to draw young men to Ger- 
 many. Probably this was an important influ- 
 ence in bringing about the change of method 
 which swept over the country about 1850, Yale 
 taking the lead. 
 
 In 1842, Benjamin Silliman, Jr., began tak- 
 ing a few favored students into his laboratory. 
 Among them was J. P. Norton, who went in 
 1843 to study for two years in Edinburgh and 
 Utrecht, bringing back European methods. 
 
 In 1847 ^^s established the '' School of Ap- 
 plied Chemistry," under the care of the younger 
 Silliman and Norton. Among the six students 
 of the first year were the well-known professors 
 of the Sheffield Scientific School, Brush, Brew- 
 er, and Johnson. This was the beginning of 
 the Sheffield Scientific School. 
 
 In Pennsylvania the movement appears to 
 have been similar, in that the applications of 
 chemistry to the arts were the chief reasons 
 urged for establishing a department of applied 
 chemistry in 1850, under the charge of Profes- 
 sor James C. Booth. 
 
 At Harvard the same influence was working. 
 
Its Increasing Power. 19 
 
 In 1846 Eben N. Horsford, fresh from two 
 years' work with Liebig, at Giessen, was recom- 
 mended by Professor Webster (of sinister mem- 
 ory) to the '' Rumford Professorship of the 
 Application of Science to the Useful Arts," on 
 assuming which he organized at once, in 1847, 
 the laboratory of the Lawrence Scientific 
 School, on the model, as far as possible, of that 
 at Giessen. 
 
 But a more notable event was the appoint- 
 ment of the eager young chemist, Josiah P. 
 Cooke, to a position in Harvard College, first 
 as a lecturer in chemistry in 1850, in addition 
 to his duties as tutor in mathematics, and after- 
 ward in December of the same year as Erving 
 professor of chemistry and mineralogy. In 
 1 85 1, Cooke opened a laboratory at his own 
 cost, for undergraduate students, apparently 
 the first recognition of the fact that chemistry 
 may be taught not merely to specialists but 
 to those less advanced, by laboratory methods. 
 This course was formally recognized by the 
 college, and proper accommodations provided 
 for it in 1858. 
 
 Dr. Wayland's famous report of 1850 awak- 
 ened interest in the same direction at Brown, 
 
20 The American College. 
 
 and a working laboratory for chemistry was 
 opened at the beginning of the next college 
 year. 
 
 As far as catalogues of that date show, the 
 sciences were still taught in the old way, 
 in 1850, at Amherst, Bowdoin, Dartmouth, 
 Princeton, and the University of Virginia, but 
 by 1852 a chemical laboratory had been estab- 
 lished .at the last named institution. 
 
 The establishment of physical laboratories 
 began nearly twenty years later, those for the 
 study of biology at a later period still, after the 
 value of the laboratory method had been thor- 
 oughly established by the experience of the 
 chemists. 
 
 The history of the introduction of political 
 economy and economic science into the Ameri- 
 can college covers a much longer period than 
 it is usually believed to cover. The Univer- 
 sity of Pennsylvania was the first to make pro- 
 vision for this study. As early as 1 756, a plan 
 of liberal studies was framed, in which, after 
 prescribing 
 
 ^ " a preliminary training in logic and metaphysics to de- 
 velop his powers of thought, the student was to be 
 brought to a knowledge and practical sense of his posi- 
 
Its Increasing Power. 2t 
 
 tion as a man and a citizen, and this by a course em- 
 bracing ethics, natural and civil law, and an introduction 
 to civil history, to laws and government, to trade and 
 commerce.'* 
 
 In 1799, William and Mary College added to 
 its curriculum the subject of the law of na- 
 tions, and near the beginning of the present 
 century, Adam Smith's great book is found to 
 be among the text-books. In 1820, Harvard 
 introduced Economics into its curriculum and 
 other colleges presently followed. At Yale, 
 Economics was introduced in 1824, at Colum- 
 bia in 1827, at Dartmouth in 1828, at Prince- 
 ton in 1830, and at Williams in 1835. The 
 writer^ to whom I am indebted for these facts, 
 states that the almost simultaneous introduc- 
 tion of this study by Harvard, Yale, Dart- 
 mouth, Columbia, Princeton, and Williams 
 was probably due to the industrial revolution 
 which the inventions of Arkwright, Har- 
 greaves, and Fulton had wrought, to the ex- 
 pansion of commerce which followed the close 
 of the Napoleonic wars, to the growth of popu- 
 lation, and to the increasing mobility of labor 
 
 ^ James F. Colby, a letter in the New York Nation^ vol. Ixiii., p. 
 494, dated December 31, 1896. 
 
 ^i^^-: 
 
22 The American College. 
 
 and capital, which before 1820 gave rise to new 
 political issues in the United States, The ad- 
 dition of Economics to the curriculum of these 
 colleges undoubtedly was facilitated by the 
 appearance, as early as 1821, of an American 
 edition of Say's Political Economy. This was 
 the first text-book upon this subject used in 
 most of these colleges. 
 
 This enlargement of the curriculum is at 
 once cause and result of the college becoming 
 more human. Whatever belongs to man is no 
 longer regarded as foreign to the higher edu- 
 cation. To embody Newman's idea of the 
 higher education has become the controlling 
 nirpose of the university. 
 
 " Education," says Newman, " shows him [the student] 
 how to accommodate himself to others, how to throw 
 himself into their state of mind, how to bring before 
 them his own, how to influence them, how to come to an 
 .understanding with them, how to bear with them. He. 
 is at home in any society, he has common ground witli 
 every class ; he knows when to speak and when to be 
 silent ; he is able to converse, he is able to listen ; he 
 can ask a question pertinently, and gain a lesson season- 
 ably, when he has nothing to impart himself ; he is ever 
 ready, yet never in the way ; he is a pleasant companion, 
 and a comrade you can depend upon ; he knows when 
 to be serious and when to trifle, and he has a sure tact 
 
Its Increasing Power. 23 
 
 ' which enables him to trifle with gracefulness and to be 
 serious with effect. ^ He has the repose of a mind which 
 lives in itself, while it lives in the world, and which has / 
 resources for its happiness at home when it cannot go 
 abroad. He has a gift which serves him in public, and 
 supports him in retirement, without which good fortune 
 is but vulgar, and with which failure and disappointment 
 have a charm." ^ 
 
 The human interest of the college is further 
 evidenced in the fact that the college now 
 ministers to the higher scholarship as it never 
 has before ministered to it. Newman writes 
 as no one else has ever written of the value of 
 the college in training men ; but the college is 
 not only training men, it is promoting scholar- 
 ship. Although certain men, great as in- 
 ventors and discoverers of scientific facts, 
 have not been liberally trained, — one cannot, 
 however, forget that Eli Whitney and Samuel 
 F. B. Morse were graduates of Yale, — yet the 
 impulses for t^heir inventions and discoveries 
 have largely come from the college laboratory. 
 It is ever to be remembered, too, that the great 
 work of such investigators as Agassiz, Gray, 
 Dana, and Morley has been done within col- 
 lege walls. The great institution that Agassiz 
 
 ^ Newman's The Idea of a University^ 178. 
 
24 The American College. 
 
 — father and son — has built at Cambridge is a 
 part of Harvard, and also the noble and mani- 
 fold work of the associate of Agassiz, Asa 
 Gray, is an integral part of the same Uni- 
 versity. The great work of the codification 
 of knowledge and the systematization of facts, 
 which is saving knowledge unto itself and 
 unto the world, and is preventing the human 
 mind from becoming submerged in its own 
 discoveries, is carried on largely in the col- 
 leges. Investigations in literature, history, the 
 sciences, political and civic relations of the 
 present time, belong in the largest degree and 
 in an increasing degree, to the best colleges. 
 The purpose which the American college for- 
 merly held of training men is no longer the 
 single one ; with this aim is to be united the 
 purpose of advancing scholarship. 
 
 The breadth of the field which an education 
 of this period covers is indicated by the num- 
 ber and character of the State universities. 
 These universities have largely sprung up in 
 the last forty years. The majority of them 
 have been founded since the passing of the 
 Land Act of 1862. The State universities of 
 the States west of the Mississippi are certainly 
 
Its Increasing Power. 25 
 
 o 
 
 the strongest educational agencies to be found 
 within their borders. In many of the States 
 immediately east of the Mississippi, such as 
 Michigan and Wisconsin, the State universi- 
 ties are also the strongest to be found within 
 the Commonwealth. In several of the States 
 lying between the Mississippi and the Alle- 
 ghanies it might be open to question which is 
 the stronger, the State universities or the pri- 
 vate colleges. But in the larger number of the 
 States of the Atlantic coast, the private col- 
 leges are the best. The State university has 
 already become a dominant educational force 
 in a majority of our Commonwealths. Its 
 financial supporter is the State itself ; its re- 
 lations to other educational agencies is, in cer- 
 tain instances, the relation of the head to the 
 body in the human system ; its curriculum is 
 broad, including not only liberal, but also 
 many technical, courses. It embraces profes- 
 sional and technical schools, even those of nar- 
 row limits, as the dental and the veterinary. 
 But it is to be emphasized that the State 
 university represents all the elements of the 
 higher education. T he univer sity is ordained 
 to minister to the whole man. 
 
26 The American College. 
 
 The human element in this period is illus- 
 trated also in the progress of the education 
 for women. In this generation the higher 
 education for women has made more progress 
 than in the preceding hundred years. The 
 purpose in the foundation of the colleges for 
 women has not been to make women into bet- 
 ter wives or worthier mothers, but it has been 
 the same purpose which prevails in the higher 
 education of men. When Matthew Vassar 
 founded the first college for women, his pur- 
 pose was simply to offer to women the same 
 advantages v/hich young men were receiving. 
 
 The college for women receives each woman, 
 both as a woman and as a human being ; and 
 it receives her in order to train her for the 
 largest life. And it does train her for this life. 
 The American college has helped American 
 women to get strength without becoming prig- 
 gish, and vigor of intellect without becoming 
 cold ; it has helped them to become rich in 
 knowledge without being pedantic ; broad in 
 sympathy without wanting a public career ; 
 and large-minded and broad-minded without 
 neglecting humble duties. The American col- 
 lege has helped woman toward doing the high- 
 
Its Increasing Power. 27 
 
 est work, by the wisest methods, with the 
 richest results. 
 
 The great interest in athletics in the Ameri- 
 can colleges illustrates the width of the human 
 interests that have entered into college life. 
 The college has become sympathetic with the 
 community in the athletic revival. Each grad- 
 uate knows that his success in life depends 
 not upon any one single power, but upon the 
 relation which many powers bear to each other. 
 He also knows that he has the treasure of 
 his intellect in the earthen vessel of his body. 
 His judgment therefore impels him to give to 
 his body the discipline adequate to the ef- 
 ficient working of his mental faculties. He 
 therefore becomes an athlete in the gymna- 
 sium, or an athlete on the football or the 
 baseball field, or on the river. If he does 
 not become an athlete, he gets exercise of 
 the physical faculties in the gymnasium suffi- 
 cient for the proper working of the intel- 
 lectual. Thusj^dil£tijcs.xepresentJLhje4^ 
 of an important part of the whole man for 
 life's service. 
 
 The human element of this period has 
 a negative illustration in the foundation of 
 
28 The American College. 
 
 technical schools in the latter part of this time. 
 These schools are professional schools. They 
 are not designed to give a liberal training, nor 
 are they designed to promote the comprehen- 
 sive interests of the student. Their purpose 
 is to train him to become able to follow certain 
 vocations as practical chemistry, architecture, 
 engineering, or any other technical calling. 
 The worth of these schools to the community 
 is of course great ; but their worth does not 
 consist in the liberal culture which they be- 
 stow. The gift which they make to common 
 life is of great value. It consists in giving 
 to certain callings well-equipped workers ; but 
 their purpose, function, and scope are quite un- 
 like the purpose, function, and scope of what 
 is frequently called, the College of Liberal 
 Arts. This college still stands for the humani- 
 ties and for humanity. 
 
 I have called the third period the German 
 period. I have thus denominated it, not only 
 because it was the period in which the German 
 universities have become the most vigorous 
 agencies for the higher scholarship, but also 
 and far more, because the influence of the 
 German universities in the development of 
 
Its Increasing Power. 29 
 
 the period has been great. The new learning 
 came to these shores near the beginning of 
 the third period. Early in the century the 
 German influence laid a strong hand on the 
 undergraduates. In 1820, when he was a 
 Freshman at Harvard, George Ripley wrote 
 of a classmate : '' He will probably spend some 
 years in Germany, after he leaves Cambridge, 
 and if his health is spared return one of the 
 most eminent among our literary men." ^ The 
 direct influence of Germany over the higher 
 education in America has three periods well 
 defined. The first begins with such men as 
 Edward Everett, George Bancroft, Joseph 
 Cogswell, Robert Patton, George Ticknor, 
 and Henry W. Longfellow, who went to 
 Gottingen in the first third of the century. 
 Edward Everett was the first American to 
 take a German doctorate, which he received in 
 Gottingen in 181 7. In the second period we 
 find in Germany such men as Goodwin, Child, 
 Whitney, Gould the astronomer, and Gilder- 
 sleeve. The influence of these two generations 
 of scholars in the university life of America has 
 been, and still is, very great. In the more 
 
 ^ Frothingham's George Ripley, lo. 
 
30 The American College. 
 
 general relations the influence of the first 
 generation has been greater, but in the more 
 scholarly relations the influence of the second 
 generation has been greater by far. The third 
 period begins with that awakening of the 
 American mind which followed our Civil War. 
 It was contemporaneous with the beginning of 
 the '' New Education." In this period, which 
 is still in progress, hosts of men who are still 
 young in years have gone to Germany, and, 
 returning, have become noble forces in Ameri- 
 can scholarship. They are found to-day in 
 scores of our best colleges. The German 
 movement, therefore, which began in the first 
 decades of the century, has gone forward in 
 enlarging relations and with increasing power. 
 In 1835, f^^^ Americans were registered as 
 students in German universities; in 1891 the 
 number was four hundred and forty-six. It 
 has increased in the later years of the decade, 
 and is at present about six hundred. But this 
 early inspiration has continued to promote 
 high scholarship. It has come to us borne by 
 our own American students, but also borne by 
 native Germans themselves. German scholars, 
 obliged to leave their native land or coming 
 
Its Increasing^ Power. 31 
 
 o 
 
 voluntarily, as the elder Agassiz, Charles 
 Theodore Follen, and Beck, have had a large 
 influence in the development of our higher 
 education. 
 
 These three periods, which are thus named 
 the ecclesiastical, the civil, and the human, are 
 yet not so clearly differentiated as these di- 
 visions might indicate. For into each period 
 the chief characteristics of the others have 
 forced their way. In the ecclesiastical period 
 certain civil relations are found obtaining, for 
 the College was the child of the State. The 
 elder colleges could not have lived without the 
 fostering care of the Commonwealth. The 
 colleges also trained men for the service of 
 the State. The way in which the statesmen 
 of the decade before the Revolution, and the 
 decade following it, dealt with the great prob- 
 lems that were forced upon them proves how 
 efficient was the training which the college 
 gave. The influence of the academic disci- 
 pline is seen in the writing of the Constitution 
 of the United States ; and it is easy to trace 
 this discipline in the compositions of the 
 elder Adams, of Jefferson, of Hamilton, and 
 of Madison. 
 
32 The American College. 
 
 " These scholars," says Sibley, writing of the general 
 conditions, " originated or urged forward the ideas and 
 principles on which our government now rests, and which 
 in their expansion are to-day agitating the world and 
 ameliorating the condition of mankind. Their lives and 
 the history of the country were so interwoven, that the 
 knowledge of both is necessary to the proper under- 
 standing of either. There is probably no instance in 
 history where the same number of young men, taken 
 indiscriminately from various classes of society, and 
 trained under the same auspices, have afterward, in 
 their various spheres, exerted greater influence on the 
 politics, morals, religion, thought, and destiny of the 
 world than the early graduates of Harvard University." * 
 
 So, also, the ecclesiastical influence has been 
 potent in the second and third periods. In 
 the westward movement of the population the 
 Church has been the mother of schools and 
 colleges. The beginnings of the higher edu- 
 cation in the larger part of the newer States 
 have been ecclesiastical. The history of not 
 a few of these colleges is the history of an 
 earnest denominational propagandism ; and at 
 the present time the functions and the pres- 
 ence of the denominational college are forces 
 to which the historian of our colleges must 
 give much attention. The great growth of the 
 
 ' Sibley's Harvard Graduates ^ I,, x. 
 
Its Increasing Power. 33 
 
 system of the State universities represents the 
 prevalence of the civil idea in this same great 
 human period. 
 
 In the development of the German uni- 
 versities are to be found three periods also, 
 not unlike the three periods in the develop- 
 ment of the higher education in America. 
 The first period is that of the establishment 
 of universities by the churches of the differ- 
 ent States. This period closes with the seven- 
 teenth century, a time which was coincident 
 with the foundation of Yale College. Through- 
 out this time the interests, ecclesiastical and 
 theological, were predominant. The faculty 
 of theology was the most important of all the 
 faculties. The second period covers the last 
 century. It is marked by the supplanting of 
 theological and ecclesiastical interests, by the 
 interests of philosophy and of law. As an im- 
 portant event of the second period in the 
 United States was the foundation of the Uni- 
 versity of Virginia, so, also, in Germany, the 
 great events were the making of the educa- 
 tional foundations in 1694 at Halle, and in 
 1737 at Gottingen. Rationalism, too, is the 
 key-note to this period in Germany, as it was 
 
34 The American College. 
 
 of the second period in America. In both 
 periods in both countries, freedom of investi- 
 gation had been prevalent, and yet in Amer- 
 ica the political aspect of education appears 
 stronger than in Germany. The third period 
 in Germany begins with the close of the 
 Napoleonic disaster and still continues. The 
 foundation of the University of Berlin repre- 
 sents the commencement of the great move- 
 ment. It is marked in Germany, as it is in 
 this country, by the intimacy of the relation- 
 ship between the University and all the people. 
 As in America this period is distinguished by 
 the comprehensiveness of the human relations 
 which the College embraces, so in Germany 
 this period is marked by the foundation of the 
 University of Berlin, and by the strengthening 
 of the old universities for the sake of increasing 
 the power of the nation. As in America, also, 
 the ecclesiastical relations of the universities 
 have declined ; and in the substance and form 
 of the instruction, as well as in the personnel, 
 large human relationships have come to pre- 
 vail. 
 
 The development of the great English uni- 
 versities has been like and unlike the develop- 
 
Its Increasing Power. 35 
 
 ment in the United States. The first period 
 is essentially the same of both countries. 
 The second period, the political, has not had 
 so distinct existence in England; but the third 
 is quite as marked, and its scholarly and human 
 forces are quite as aggressive, in the old as in 
 the new country. The movement for reform 
 in Oxford and Cambridge, covering more than 
 fifty years, culminating in the Act of 1850 and 
 the Bill of 1 87 1, has been a movement toward 
 making the Universities centres of national 
 thought and education. 
 
 LThus the influence of the American College 
 has constantly enlarged in these two hundred 
 and fifty, and more, years. It began as an in- 
 stitution for training ministers ; it next became 
 an agency for training citizens ; and then, 
 broadening its purpose, it was content with 
 nothing less than training men for complete 
 living'5 
 
 That the influence of the college is enlarging 
 is made evident not only through the widening 
 of its purpose and function, it is also made 
 evident through the increase in the number of 
 the members of the community whom it en- 
 rolls as students. 
 
36 The American College. 
 
 The fear is often expressed that the materi- 
 alism and commercialism of the time are caus- 
 ing the college, standing for things of the 
 mind, to lose influence. This fear is based 
 rather on general considerations than on exact 
 and complete evidence. It is the result rather 
 of what is thought must be, or ought to be, 
 than of what is known to be. Lord Kelvin 
 once said that ''nothing can be clearly under- 
 stood until we can express it in figures." It 
 may be said with equal truth that the evidence 
 of the decline or increase of the influence of an 
 institution is strongly presented by figures. 
 
 One cannot forget that among the twenty- 
 one thousand people who between 1620 and 
 1640 came to New England, and among their 
 descendants for the following fifty years, there 
 were as many college graduates as could be 
 found in any population of similar size in the 
 mo.ther country. At one time of this period in 
 Massachusetts and Connecticut, every group 
 of two hundred and fifty people had one grad- 
 uate of old Cambridge. In addition to the 
 Cambridge graduates there were also several 
 from Oxford. 
 
 The proportion of college men found in the 
 
Its Increasing Power. 37 
 
 colonies in the last years of the seventeenth 
 century, and throughout the eighteenth, is 
 largely a matter of conjecture, for the popula- 
 tion itself is a matter of conjecture. The first 
 census was taken in 1 790. Although Bancroft 
 has devoted much space to the consideration 
 of the population at different periods, yet the 
 results reached are simply estimates. In order, 
 therefore, to reduce the question in hand to 
 very definite and simple limits, I shall compare 
 the population and students of 1830 and 1831, 
 with the population and students of 1890 and 
 1891. 
 
 The former date represents the beginning 
 of a very interesting period in American edu- 
 cation, for the fourth decade of this century 
 stands for a great awakening in educational 
 affairs. It was the decade in which more col- 
 leges were founded than were founded in all 
 the three previous decades, among them being 
 the University of Michigan. At that time the 
 United States had forty-six colleges and the 
 population was 12,866,020 persons. The num- 
 ber of students in forty of these forty-six col- 
 leges was 3582. The number of students in 
 the remaining six colleges it is now impossible 
 
38 The American College. 
 
 to secure. But it is not unjust to estimate the 
 whole number of college students in this coun- 
 try at the beginning of the fourth decade as 
 4000. There were, therefore, 3216 persons in 
 the entire population for each college student. 
 We are constantly blaming ourselves for the 
 depreciated sense in which we use the word col- 
 lege. We are, however, less blameworthy than 
 the people of old England, although blame- 
 worthy enough. In the varying breadth with 
 which the term is used we find the number of 
 colleges in the United States a variable quan- 
 tity. But in the colleges which make a report 
 to the Bureau of Education, are now 46,474 
 students. The population according to the 
 last census, was 62,622,250 persons. There 
 are, therefore, now 1347 persons to each col- 
 lege student. In a word, therefore, we now 
 have twice the number of students to each per- 
 son of the population that we had two genera- 
 tions ago. The proportion in the different 
 states in these two periods is certainly signifi- 
 cant. In Maine, in 1830, there were 2330 
 persons to each student ; in Maine now there 
 are 1294 persons to each student. In New 
 Hampshire, in 1830, there were 1756 persons 
 
Its Increasing Power. 39 
 
 to each student; in New Hampshire now there 
 are 1034. In Vermont, in 1830, there were 
 1696 persons to each student; in Vermont 
 now there are 1433. In Massachusetts, in 
 1830, there were 895 persons to each student ; 
 in Massachusetts now there are 501. In Rhode 
 Island, in 1830, there were 2442 persons to 
 each student ; in Rhode Island now there are 
 857. In Connecticut, in 1830, there were 1,340 
 persons to each student ; in Connecticut now 
 there are 421. In New York, in 1830, there 
 were 2496 ; in New York now there are 1 149. 
 The general summaries are, in New England 
 in 1830 there were 1231 persons to each 
 student; in the four Middle States there were 
 3,465 to each student. Now in these same 
 States, leaving out Delaware, there are looi 
 persons to each student. In 1830, in six 
 Southern States, including the District of 
 Columbia, there were 7232 persons to each 
 student. Now, in what are called the South 
 Atlantic States, there are 1874 persons to 
 each student, and in the South Central division 
 there are to each student, 1908 persons. In 
 1830, in eight Western States, there were 6060 
 persons to each student. Now in the Northern 
 
40 The American College. 
 
 Central division there are 1333 persons to each 
 student, and in the Western division there are 
 1640. 
 
 It is not a little difficult to point out the great 
 significance of these proportions. In 1830 the 
 population of this country was small, under thir- 
 teen milHons of people. Sixty years later the 
 population of this country was somewhat over 
 sixty milHons. That is to say, the population 
 of the country was four and one half times as 
 large in 1890 as it was in 1830, but the number 
 of college students was more than ten times as 
 large. 
 
 It is to be said that in these forty-six thou- 
 sand students are included a few professional 
 students and also women, for certain colleges 
 so report their students that it is impossible to 
 distinguish the professional from the under- 
 graduate members. This same fact was true 
 though to a less extent in 1830. But among 
 the students of sixty years ago there were prob- 
 ably no women. At the present time one fifth 
 of all our college students are women. 
 
 It is to be said, too, that in the years that have 
 followed the close of this sixty year period the 
 number of college students has constantly in- 
 
Its Increasing Power. 41 
 
 creased. From forty-six thousand it has in- 
 creased to over seventy thousand. 
 
 Such an increase is to be expected. The 
 first attention of a new people must be given to 
 material things. Forests are to be felled and 
 turned into houses ; soil must be broken, crops 
 sown and harvested ; streams dammed and 
 bridged ; mills of every kind built ; roads made, 
 — all material values to be increased, and utili- 
 ties created and augmented. Physical con- 
 ditions are to be first consulted and physical 
 life promoted. The consequent attention is 
 given to things of the mind. The college fol- 
 lows the factory, the dormitory the family 
 home. The smallest proportion of college 
 men to the population is found among the 
 newer or newest States and the largest among 
 the oldest. New York and Massachusetts have 
 more students than any other State, (of course 
 many of the students have their homes outside 
 of Massachusetts and New York). We can- 
 not forget that not a few of the newer States 
 have followed the example set by Massachu- 
 setts of founding a college within its first score 
 of years. Ohio was admitted in 1803 ^^^d 
 within the next twenty-five years Ohio had 
 
42 The American College. 
 
 established four colleges, one founded the year 
 following the admission of the State. Illinois 
 became a State in 1818 and the college which 
 bears its name was chartered in 1835, and in 
 the same fourth decade were founded several 
 other colleges in this State. The history of 
 the American Commonwealth and of American 
 education is simply the history of the applica- 
 tion of the principle, that material things pre- 
 cede the intellectual. We are, therefore, to 
 expect that the proportion of well-trained men 
 in the community will increase with the age of 
 the community. 
 
 In certain countries of Europe we find this 
 expectation realized. The number of under- 
 graduates enrolled at Oxford and Cambridge 
 has increased in the sixty years, though the 
 proportion of increase it is difficult to state 
 for enrollments were formerly more lax than 
 at present. There is reason to believe that 
 to-day at these two universities is a larger 
 number of regular undergraduates than at any 
 time since the Reformation. The newer col- 
 leges, too, founded in the last fifty years seem to 
 have drawn students who otherwise would have 
 sought the older and more eminent universities. 
 
Its Increasing Powef. 43 
 
 The Scottish universities, moreover, have in- 
 creased their enrollment, Edinburgh rising 
 from two thousand to three thousand. In 
 Germany in the first years of the fourth decade 
 of this century there were fifty-two university 
 students to each one hundred thousand of the 
 population. In the following decades the pro- 
 portion declined, falling as low as thirty-three 
 to each one hundred thousand ; but in the 
 eighties it rose till at the close of the decade 
 there were no less than sixty-three students to 
 each one hundred thousand. In the years 
 1886-9 there were found to each one hundred 
 thousand of the population, in Austria, fifty-six 
 university students, in Italy fifty-one, in France 
 forty-three, in Belgium eighty-two, in Holland 
 forty-five, in Switzerland fifty-six, in Den- 
 mark forty-seven, in Norway seventy-seven, in 
 Sweden fifty-seven, and in Russia ten.^ From 
 these estimates theological students are ex- 
 cluded. Yet, be it said, the comparative value 
 of these figures is not so great as might seem, 
 for the educational systems of different coun- 
 tries are very different. 
 
 ^ Die Deutschen Universtdten. Herausgegeben von W. Lexis, 
 i., 116. 
 
44 The American College. 
 
 In all Europe the proportion has remained 
 substantially the same in sixty years, although 
 falling slightly — from one student in twenty- 
 five hundred of the people to one student in 
 three thousand. Professor Lexis, writing in 
 particular of the universities of his own coun- 
 try, suggests that these variations arise largely 
 from commercial causes. A revival in business 
 usually diminishes the attendance through of- 
 fering commercial opportunities ; a depression 
 increases attendance through making profes- 
 sional careers more attractive. 
 
 The fear is not infrequently expressed that 
 the world has too many educated men. The 
 fear is more often entertained in reference to 
 Germ.any. The expression gives ground for 
 the question, too many for what ? Too many 
 to make lawyers, or orators, or clergymen, or 
 editors ? Certainly the number of lawyers, or 
 of orators, or of clergymen, or of editors may 
 exceed the demand. Too many, so that college 
 graduates are obliged to become mechanics 
 and farmers ? And why, let it be asked, should 
 not college graduates become mechanics and 
 farmers ? Does not a college education aid a 
 mechanic or a farmer ? Pity on the education 
 and on the graduate if it does not ! But edu- 
 
Its Increasing Power. 45 
 
 cation, be it ever said, is not designed to make 
 members of a certain ilk or profession. It is 
 designed to make men. It is designed to help 
 each man to find and to make life interesting. 
 No ! There cannot be an over supply of edu- 
 cated men. There can be no absolute over 
 supply of any good thing. We cannot educate 
 too many men ; neither can we educate men too 
 much. Can humanity become too good, or too 
 able, or too learned, or too reasonable ? 
 
 It is, therefore, specially significant that the 
 graduates of American colleges are not confined 
 as once they were to the learned professions. 
 There was a time when to go to college meant, 
 for the ordinary student, going into the minis- 
 try. That time passed away long ago. A little 
 later there was a period in which to go to col- 
 lege meant to enter either the law or the min- 
 istry. That time has passed away within not 
 many years. Now to go to college does not 
 necessarily indicate entrance upon any one of 
 the learned professions. One third of the grad- 
 uates of Harvard College enter business. The 
 college graduate is finding any work proper to 
 himself in which he can best serve his age. 
 The college has become an institution of and 
 for humanity. 
 
11. 
 
 CERTAIN GREAT RESULTS. 
 
 THE American college has rendered a ser- 
 vice of greater value to American life in 
 training men than in promoting scholar- 
 ship. It has affected society more generally 
 and deeply through its graduates than through 
 its contributions to the sciences. Its work for 
 America and for the world has been largely 
 done through the men whom it has educated. 
 It has been rather a mother of men than a 
 nurse of scientists. 
 
 In judging of the value of the service which 
 the college has rendered to society through its 
 sons and daughters, of course one must not be 
 guilty of claiming too much. The college is 
 only one of the factors which helps to develop 
 the character and the working power of an 
 
 46 
 
Certain Great Results. 47 
 
 individual. The Roman in his theory of peda- 
 gogical values was inclined to interpret nature 
 as of greater worth than education ; the mod- 
 ern is prone to think that education is of 
 greater worth than nature. We are never to 
 forget that the home, personal association, en- 
 vironment, as well as ability, are always to 
 be weighed and assessed. Many men **of light 
 and leading '' would still have been guides of 
 their fellows if they had never gone to college. 
 Yet the college has rendered unique and pe- 
 culiarly rich services. It has, in nearly every 
 instance, increased ability, and made ability 
 more efficient. It has rendered indifferent 
 ability good, good better, and given a superla- 
 tive excellence to that of a higher degree. 
 
 Of all the professions, the ministry enrolls the 
 largest proportion of college graduates. An 
 examination of Dr. Sprague's Annals of the 
 American P^ilpit shows that of the eleven hun- 
 dred and seventy clergymen therein named, 74 
 per cent, of those who are Episcopalians, 78 
 percent, of those who are Presbyterians, 80 per 
 cent, of those who are Congregational, and 97 
 per cent, of those who are Unitarian clergymen 
 are graduates. The influence of the minister 
 
48 The American College. 
 
 in a community is, in a degree, the influence 
 of the college, and that influence has been from 
 the birth of the nation great. In the very be- 
 ginning the minister was the autocrat, both 
 civil and social, of the Commonwealth. He 
 has now ceased to be an autocrat, but his 
 influence continues strong and pervasive. Of 
 all the members of the community he is the 
 only one who has the opportunity of speaking 
 to the people at frequent and regular intervals 
 upon important questions. The decline of the 
 lyceum system has left him practically alone 
 in the forum of public debate. If he give to 
 his functions a large interpretation, he finds 
 himself closely related to all the higher con- 
 cerns of humanity. He is, above most citizens, 
 interested and influential in the development 
 of the public school system. He is the arbiter 
 upon many questions of social and civil re- 
 lationships. In all sociological concerns his 
 counsel may be of great value. Above most 
 persons in the community, he is a scholar. 
 Aside, therefore, from his purely professional 
 relations, the clergyman is, or may be, of great 
 influence. In almost all instances the college 
 has trained in him those qualities which, at 
 
Certain Great Results. 49 
 
 least, greatly enlarge his field of usefulness and 
 enrich his power of service. In the rural parish 
 as well as in the urban, his influence is greater 
 because he has had four years in college. The 
 power of the clergyman, therefore, is the power 
 of the college. 
 
 It is also to be acknowledged that the power 
 of a college consists quite as much in the 
 teacher as in the teaching. One needs to read 
 only a dozen pages of Bowdoin's history to 
 know that Cleaveland, Newman, Upham, Pack- 
 ard, Smyth, had for half a century an influence 
 over the students of that college as great as any 
 body of teachers ever possessed. 
 
 A half-century ago Harvard College, too, 
 had one and only one professor of Philosophy, 
 but that one was James Walker ; one, and one 
 only, professor of Mathematics, but that one 
 was Benjamin Peirce ; one, and one only, pro- 
 fessor of Literature, but that one was Henry 
 Wadsworth Longfellow ; one, and only one, 
 professor of History, but that one was Jared 
 Sparks. 
 
 A strong man, whatever be the subject he 
 teaches, and whether his range of knowledge \[ 
 be wide, only provided it considerably exceeds 
 
50 The American College. 
 
 that of the body of students whom he instructs, 
 will always and everywhere be an educational 
 force amonp- the men who gfather in his 
 class-room. Personality is the greatest power. 
 Teachers are as great as they were in the 
 former time. The educational value of the 
 college as embodied in its teachers is certainly 
 as great now as it was. If personality itself is 
 no stronger than it was, it is true that teachers 
 are, as teachers, far better qualified for their 
 work. Men are no longer taken from the pas- 
 torate to teach Latin or Philosophy. In 1873, 
 in ten selected colleges, forty per cent, of the 
 teachers were not specially trained ; in 1893, in 
 the same colleges, only twenty-five per cent, 
 were not specially trained.^ Men are no longer 
 drafted from the graduating class to become 
 the instructors of the Freshman class. No 
 worthy college, as a rule, employs other than 
 experts as teachers. I The influence, therefore, 
 of the American college is not only enlarging, 
 it is also deepening and strengthening^ 
 
 The result on the community of the presence 
 of an increasing proportion of college-bred men 
 is of the largest significance. These men be- 
 
 * Education^ vol. xv., 56. 
 
Certain Great Results. 51 
 
 long to every rank of the social order and to 
 every condition of life. They represent a 
 higher civilization also, and their presence tends 
 yet further to ennoble civilization. Their 
 characters are prophetic of the rule of a genu- 
 ine aristocracy in a democracy ; for the people 
 themselves are becoming the best. They sug- 
 gest a sympathy more extended as well as more 
 profound between social classes, for they in- 
 dicate the possession of a stronger power as 
 well as of a wiser wisdom on the part of the 
 stronof and wise to bless the weak and the 
 ignorant. 
 
 \Q American college, therefore, represents 
 the enlarged and enlarging intellectual life of 
 the American people. It has helped to train 
 one third of all our statesmen ; more than a 
 third of our best authors ; ahiiost a half of our 
 more distinguished physicians ; fully one half 
 of our better known lawyers; more than a 
 half of our best clergymen, and considerably 
 more than half of our most conspicuous edu- 
 cators. It has thus entered into the intellectual 
 life of all the people. It has, above every other 
 force, tended to raise the intellectual level of 
 all the people to a higher point than that 
 
52 The American College. 
 
 reached elsewhere. The intellectual life has 
 thus secured breadth, and variety, and rich- 
 ness. Curiosity has been stimulated, and men- 
 tal activity quickened. The common school 
 has gained in dignity and inspiring power. 
 Books have become more common and better. 
 Scholarly ideals have been upheld. *' Things 
 of the mind," in the judgment of the better 
 American, have come to be of higher worth ; 
 and the value set upon them in his mental 
 price-list increases with each passing year. 
 
 The colleges have ceased to be, as several 
 of the earlier colleges were designed in their 
 foundations to be, training schools for the 
 ministry. The callings of the law and of com- 
 mercial life are now more attractive to gradu- 
 ates of many colleges. Yet the colleges are 
 still maintaining their prestige as the best train- 
 ing schools for the ministry, though the propor- 
 tion of graduates who become ministers dimin- 
 ishes. In the fifty years in the middle of the 
 present century, somewhat more than sixteen 
 thousand men graduated at the eight principal 
 colleges of New England, of which number 
 more than four thousand became ministers. 
 Of the 1626 graduates of Amherst College, 
 
Certain Great Results. 
 
 754 became ministers; of 1475 graduates of 
 Bowdoin, 307 became ministers ; of 2293 grad- 
 uates of Dartmouth, 554 became ministers ; of 
 3399 graduates of Harvard, 386 became min- 
 isters ; of 862 graduates of Middlebury, 367 
 became ministers ; of 682 graduates of the 
 University of Vermont, 167 became ministers ; 
 of 1592 graduates of Williams, 533 became 
 ministers; of 431 1 graduates of Yale, 1041 
 became ministers/ Such a record is full of 
 meaning. It proves that a large number of 
 the graduates of these historic colleges prefer 
 the ministry as a life's v/ork. A contribution 
 of four thousand men made in a half-century 
 to a single profession from eight colleges rep- 
 resents an increment of the highest value to 
 the best forces of society. 
 
 Certainly, general reasoning would lead one 
 to expect that the colleges would make large 
 contributions to the membership of the Chris- 
 tian ministry. For the ministry demands, 
 above every other profession, the power of 
 abstract thinking, and the power of applying 
 the results of abstract thinking to practical 
 concerns. The worthy sermon represents 
 
 * Congregational Quarterly^ vol. xii., 567. 
 
54 The American College. 
 
 thought upon the profoundest themes. The- 
 ology, that represents the foundation of the 
 preacher s work, is the most recondite part of 
 philosophy. Therefore the minister must be 
 pre-eminently a thinker. The college is or- 
 dained especially to train thinkers. The pri- 
 mary characteristic of the educated man is the 
 power to think. The college uses scholarship 
 rather as a means to make thinkers than as a 
 method for the enhancement of learning. In 
 every generation, therefore, it is to be de- 
 manded that the college shall make large con- 
 tributions of its ablest graduates to the ranks 
 of the ministry. 
 
 The college, therefore, has not yet lost its 
 prestige as being the most valuable opportunity 
 for the men who propose to be ministers to fit 
 themselves for their work, be their number 
 small or large. About seventy per cent, of 
 the ministers of the Congregational and Pres- 
 byterian churches are college-bred. Under a 
 government in which the State and the Church 
 and the college are more normally and gener- 
 ally united than these agencies are in the 
 United States, the college usually represents 
 a necessary condition to the assuming of 
 
Certain Great Results. 55 
 
 clerical functions. The Church of England 
 would have lost its power, and the minister in 
 that church his influence, if Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge had not existed. Writing to Mr. 
 Gladstone, in 1854, Dean Burgon referred to 
 Oxford and her colleges as '' those fortresses 
 where the Church has ever nursed her warriors, 
 and whither she has never turned in vain for a 
 champion in her hour of need." ^ The English 
 Church coijimands the respect of those whose 
 respect is most worth commanding, largely 
 through the contributions of manifold sorts 
 which the English universities have made to 
 it. Whoever controls Oxford and Cambridge 
 controls the English Church. In America, it 
 is significant that the churches which have been 
 most influential in the development of Ameri- 
 can life have been those which have placed 
 greatest emphasis upon the worth of a college- 
 bred ministry. It is also evident that as the 
 churches themselves have attached greater 
 or less importance to the necessity of a college 
 training for their ministers, has their influence 
 increased or diminished. At the time when 
 the Methodist Church did not regard a college 
 
 * Lt/e of Dean Burgon, i,, 282, 
 
56 The American College. 
 
 training as desirable for securing ordination, 
 the influence of that church was small Only 
 1 1 per cent, of the Methodist clergymen named 
 in Dr. Sprague^s volumes are graduates. But 
 at the present time, when the Methodist Church 
 regards a liberal education as a valuable ele- 
 ment in the clergyman's equipment, the public 
 influence of this church is greatly increasing. 
 This church now controls more colleges than 
 any other. 
 
 A large majority of the lawyers of the United 
 States are not college-bred ; but it is not too 
 much to say that the influence of those who are 
 is greater than that of the remainder who 
 are not. The highest positions in the courts 
 of the United States, or in the courts of the 
 individual States, are usually filled by those 
 who have had an academic education. Every 
 Chief Justice of the United States has been 
 a college graduate except one ; and that one, 
 John Marshall, was a student at the College 
 of William and Mary until the outbreak of the 
 Revolution which interrupted his undergrad- 
 uate career. More than two thirds of the asso- 
 ciate judges of the Supreme Court, and about 
 two thirds of the present Circuit Court judges 
 
Certain Great Results. 57 
 
 are college graduates. Jay and Blatchford re- 
 ceived their degrees at Columbia; Cushing, 
 John Quincy Adams, Story, Levi Lincoln, 
 Curtis, and Gray, at Harvard ; Wilson, at 
 Edinborough ; Blair and Bushrod Washington, 
 at William and Mary ; Paterson, Ellsworth, 
 Johnson, Brockholst Livingston, Thompson, 
 Wayne, and Daniel, at Princeton ; Baldwin, 
 Strong, and Waite, at Yale, together with 
 Brewer, Brown, and Shiras, who were mem- 
 bers of the same class of 1856 at Yale ; Taney 
 and Grier, at Dickinson ; William Smith, 
 at Mount Zion College, Maryland ; Nelson, 
 at Middlebury ; Woodbury and Chase, at 
 Dartmouth; Campbell, at the University of 
 Georgia ; Miller, at Transylvania, Kentucky ; 
 Davis and Matthews, at Kenyon ; Field, at 
 Williams ; Bradley, at Rutgers ; Hunt, at 
 Union ; Harlan, at Centre College, Kentucky; 
 Jackson, at West Tennessee College ; White, 
 at St. Mary's College, in Maryland, and 
 Woods, at Western Reserve and at Yale. 
 Stanton was a student in Kenyon College two 
 years. At the present time every member of 
 our Supreme Court has received a liberal edu- 
 cation. 
 
58 The American College. 
 
 It IS a single college which has trained such 
 judges or lawyers as Caleb Cushing, Joseph 
 Story, Benjamin Robbins Curtis, Horace Gray, 
 George Tyler Bigelow, and Ebenezer Rock- 
 wood Hoar. The same college has given an 
 education to no less than one hundred and 
 fifty members of the United States and State 
 courts. Men of like eminence and position 
 have been trained at not a few of our colleges, 
 although their number may not be so great. 
 The American people are in far greater debt 
 for the permanence of their institutions to the 
 courts of justice than they are usually inclined 
 to believe ; and these courts of justice are in 
 debt to the colleges for no small share of those 
 powers which render their methods wise and 
 their decisions right. Remove from the intel- 
 lectual resources of the great judge or the 
 great lawyer, that training which the four years 
 of college gave to him, and one would usually 
 take away the possibility of his ever being a 
 worthy judge or a competent lawyer at all. 
 Conspicuously among the professions, the law 
 demands the power of applying fundamental 
 principles to the solution of complex prob- 
 lems. Every case submitted to a lawyer rep- 
 
Certain Great Results. 59 
 
 resents an opportunity for an application of 
 the law of rights. The lawyer, therefore, 
 should have clearness of mental vision, a 
 thorough understanding of principles, facility 
 in the application of these principles, and 
 above all else the power of analysis. No bet- 
 ter means for developing such powers exists 
 than the college. 
 
 Our great system of public education is a 
 sphere in which the influence of the college is 
 not usually recognized. It is often supposed 
 that the teacher in the primary, or grammar, 
 or high school, is jealous of the college profes- 
 sor, and that the college professor has a con- 
 tempt for the school-teacher. But what is 
 called the lower, and what is called the higher, 
 education are but two parts of one great 
 scheme, each ministering unto, and each re- 
 ceiving ministry from, the other. If the work 
 in the primary grades be slovenly, superficial, 
 weak, the teaching in the higher grades is also 
 slovenly, superficial, weak, and ineffective. If 
 the college fail to be effective, strong, inspiring, 
 wholesome, all the education that comes be- 
 fore the college period falls into methods of 
 narrowness and superficiality. The kinder- 
 
6o The American College. 
 
 garten is a preparation for the physical la- 
 boratory, and the physical and psychological 
 laboratories of the college have close relations 
 to the kindergarten. 
 
 Historically the college has had a great in- 
 fluence in the development of our educational 
 system. Harvard College was founded eleven 
 years before the passage of the law requiring 
 those towns in the Bay Colony having one 
 hundred families to be able to fit students for 
 college. It was a graduate of Brown Uni- 
 versity who became the founder of Antioch 
 College, who did the greatest work for the 
 common schools ever done by any American. 
 Massachusetts /and every commonwealth owe 
 a lasting debt of gratitude to Horace Mann. 
 The educational system of Indiana is the pro- 
 duct of the influence of Caleb Mills, who for 
 many years was a professor in Wabash Col- 
 lege. At the present time the college, and 
 especially the college in the West, is doing a 
 great work in upholding the higher standards 
 of the public-school system. The forces that 
 are constantly trying to pull down these stand- 
 ards are tremendous. The tendency of the 
 age to reach practical results by the shortest 
 
Certain Great Results. 6i 
 
 pathways carries along with itself the peril of 
 ethical and intellectual superficiality. Against 
 this tendency the college stands firm as the 
 everlasting hills. Although only a small pro- 
 portion of the teachers of the United States 
 are college-trained, yet many of them have been 
 taught by those who are college-trained. They 
 have felt the inspiration of the motives, and 
 have been affected in a measure by the charac- 
 ter, of those who have been inspired themselves 
 by college ideals, moved by college motives, 
 and influenced by college conditions. The su- 
 perintendents and supervisors of many schools 
 are college graduates, as are the teachers in 
 many high schools. Therefore, not a few stu- 
 dents who are obliged to finish their education 
 with the high school have received at one re- 
 move an influence from the college. Even 
 beyond the personal influence, the college 
 system, as a system, has touched the public- 
 school system. It has held before the schools 
 standards of learning, larger in content, and 
 higher in aim, than the schools could them- 
 selves create. 
 
 The college, further, has embodied a broad 
 and noble patriotism. This patriotism has 
 
62 The American College. 
 
 been free from provincialism. The college 
 has interpreted *' country," not as representing 
 square miles of territory or loyalty to a partisan 
 government, but as meaning justice for all, 
 helpfulness toward the worthy or the weak, 
 sympathy for the oppressed, and opportunity 
 for the working out of noblest results under 
 favorable conditions. It has sought that just 
 government might prevail ; that toleration of 
 opinions might become common. It has en- 
 deavored to incarnate the cardinal virtues in 
 the State. No youth has been more eager 
 than the college youth to doff the students 
 gown and to don the soldier s uniform. It has 
 been said that, except for Harvard College, 
 the Revolution would have been put off half 
 a century. Of the great war no stories are 
 more moving, no tales of valor more splendid 
 than those told of the college boys who be- 
 came soldiers. It is significant that in the 
 petition for the granting of the charter of 
 Union College a hundred years ago, attention 
 is called to the need in the young Republic of 
 men qualified to lead in the State as well as 
 in the Church ; and Union College, be it said, 
 has furnished a great number of men who have 
 
Certain Great Results. 63 
 
 rendered efficient service to the nation. The 
 constitution of North Dakota was partly the 
 work of a graduate of a college in Wisconsin. 
 Of the men who have been influential in the 
 affairs of Rhode Island in the last century and 
 a half, only three can be mentioned who have 
 not been graduates of Brown University, and 
 these three were connected with the university 
 in such a way as to feel its influence. The 
 motto of the college graduate is not '* My 
 country, right or wrong." Rather he loves his 
 country, and is willing to die or live for it, as 
 it embodies those principles which represent 
 eternal and infinite relationships. He loves 
 his country more because he loves the world 
 much. 
 
 The college has, moreover, rendered great 
 service in upholding the ideas of a simple de- 
 mocracy. The college is, along with the pub- 
 lic school, the most democratic of our institu- 
 tions. It exists for the people.^ If the college 
 
 '•'He [Jowett] sometimes dreamed ... of a bridge which 
 might unite the different classes of society, and at the same time bring 
 about a friendly feeling in the different sects of religion, and that 
 might also connect the different branches of knowledge which were 
 apt to become estranged one from another." — Life and Letters of 
 Benjamin Joivett, ii. , 26. 
 
64 The American College. 
 
 is a part of the system of public education, it 
 exists as a part of the commonwealth. If it is 
 a private corporation, it is private in no sense 
 other than that it represents private property 
 held in trust for public weal. The ordinary 
 college represents the bestowment of a large 
 amount of property for the improvement of the 
 people. It embodies the power of promoting 
 scholarship as a means for the elevation of 
 humanity, i The principles dominant in the col- 
 lege are the principles of our common citizen- 
 ship. It is not wealth nor birth, prestige nor 
 family, which opens the doors of the college, 
 but it is the simple desire to use the facilities 
 offered by the college for the enlargement and 
 enrichment of character and of life. The col- 
 lege finds its best conditions in a democratic 
 community. But the college in turn tends to 
 develop democracy in the community! The 
 English universities failed for centuries to 
 have a worthy influence in English life because 
 of ecclesiasticism. The American college is 
 the creation of the democratic commonwealth. 
 The American college in turn tends to make 
 the democratic commonwealth yet more demo- 
 cratic. It is still true, as the late President 
 
V» OF TT. 
 
 Certain Great Results. 
 
 Anderson said in an address given at the time 
 of his inauguration forty-three years ago : 
 " Universities have been everywhere the nur- 
 series of equality. The single fact that for 
 centuries their endowments gave to the sons of 
 the poor their only available opportunity to 
 measure their strength with the rich and noble 
 on equal terms, shows that they have had more 
 influence in giving to man a superiority over 
 his accidents than any institution except the 
 Christian Church. Universities have beeo"-""^ 
 the special benefactors of the poor. We be- 
 lieve that accurate statistics would show that 
 more than two thirds of the students who in 
 our country have gone through a course of 
 collegiate education, have been the sons of — 
 men in comparative poverty. To these has 
 the main benefit of the university endowments 
 inured. These foundations alone have pre- 
 vented the monopoly of education from being 
 secured to the rich."^ 
 
 The story of the political or public achieve- 
 ments wrought by the American college for the 
 community through its graduates is a long and 
 glorious one. It is worth while possibly to 
 
 ^ Papers and addresses of Martin B. Anderson, i., 44-5. 
 5 
 
66 The American College. 
 
 present a few statistics. In suggesting the 
 great part which college men have played in 
 national affairs, it is not unworthy to mention 
 that clergymen, teachers, and physicians are by 
 their occupations usually prevented from en- 
 tering political life. The proportion, therefore, 
 of college men who are found rendering con- 
 spicuous service to the nation becomes exceed- 
 ingly significant. Of the fifty-six signers of 
 the Declaration of Independence, forty-two 
 had a liberal education. Three members of 
 the committee of five appointed to draft the 
 Declaration — Jefferson, Adams, and Living- 
 ston — were college-bred. At least twenty-nine 
 of the fifty-five men who composed the Con- 
 vention of 1787, which framed the Constitu- 
 tion, had had the advantage of a classical edu- 
 cation. One was educated at Oxford, London, 
 Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen each ; one 
 at the University of Pennsylvania ; two at Co- 
 lumbia, three at Harvard, four at Yale, five 
 at William and Mary, and nine at Princeton. 
 The men who were most influential in the 
 struggle which resulted in the adoption of the 
 Constitution were men trained at college. 
 It may as well be confessed at once that 
 
Certain Great Results. 67 
 
 the prejudice is more or less common against 
 the college graduate entering politics. The 
 usual charge brought against him is that he 
 is not practical. His training has been the- 
 oretical. He has lived long within college 
 walls and knows little or nothing of what is 
 without college walls. It is constantly affirmed 
 that the judgment of a practical man upon the 
 tariff is of far more value than the judgment of 
 one college-bred. Not infrequently is it said, 
 too, that the college man is not fitted to be 
 the master in national crises. Since the time 
 of Andrew Jackson this prejudice has been 
 not uncommon. The nearest Andrew Jackson 
 ever came to going to college was when he 
 went to Harvard and heard the late Francis 
 Bowen give an oration in which Jackson was 
 compared, through the adoption of a figure of 
 Virgil,^ to Neptune, who, by showing his pla- 
 cidum caput, stilled the tempestuous waves of 
 the nullification storm. I have heard Professor 
 Bowen say that apparently President Jackson 
 did not know what the figure meant. He 
 probably did not. But the influence of Jackson 
 has impressed certain people with the assur- 
 
 * ^neid, i., 127. 
 
68 The American College. 
 
 ance that the man of the back-woods with 
 force and common sense is a better element in 
 American political life than the well-bred gen- 
 tleman of collegiate learning. 
 
 This prejudice, however, seems now to me 
 to be dying out, and also, I believe, it was 
 never firmly or widely held. It represents one 
 of those superficial opinions which even the 
 one holding does not regard as a permanent 
 conviction. In his heart of hearts every one 
 knows that good judgment, training, and dis- 
 ciplined power are the natural and normal 
 results of a college course. Although these 
 qualities are found developed in ten thousands 
 of men without the collegiate method, and 
 although hundreds of men graduate from col- 
 lege without possessing these supreme quali- 
 ties, yet the tendency of the life of the college 
 is to train them. 
 
 But it is clear that certain qualities of which 
 the statesman stands in particular and urgent 
 need are promoted through a college educa- 
 tion. Among the intellectual needs of the 
 statesmen are the power of interpretation and 
 the power of exposition. He needs to under- 
 stand the significance of events and the rela- 
 
Certain Great Results. 69 
 
 tions of facts. He should be able to distin- 
 guish the transient from the permanent, the 
 comprehensive from the narrow, the superficial 
 from the profound. He should be able to 
 assess each fact and truth at its proper value. 
 Having this power of interpretation, he also 
 needs the power of exposition. He should 
 have the teacher s quality of making his in- 
 terpretation of certain conditions clear to other 
 minds. He should be able to explain things. 
 Another quality which is at once intellectual 
 and ethical the statesman should also possess. 
 It may be called the quality of high-minded- 
 ness. The thoughts in which his intellect de- 
 lights should be noble, and the feelings which 
 his heart rejoices in should be pure. He should 
 have that same quality intellectually which the 
 term gentleman connotes socially. He should 
 possess intellectual conscientiousness. This 
 quality, highly developed in the individual and 
 devoted to the service of the State, is of the 
 greatest value in the betterment of our social, 
 political, and civil conditions. These are the 
 qualities which the college trains. It trains 
 the power of interpretation and of exposition 
 through every study pursued, but also, in par- 
 
70 The American College. 
 
 ticular, through the linguistic and the mathe- 
 matical. That simple means, so largely used 
 in the college, of translation from a foreign 
 tongue into the English represents the train- 
 ing of the power of interpretation and of ex- 
 position. Intellectual conscientiousness, too, 
 is fostered in the college through the accuracy 
 of the training given in the class-room and 
 also, and more, by the inspirations and ex- 
 amples of noble living set before the students 
 in the persons of their teachers. 
 
 We are, therefore, prepared to believe that 
 a large number of those who have been con- 
 cerned in political life have been trained in the 
 colleges. We also are not surprised to find 
 that on the whole the abler men following a 
 political life have added to their native powers 
 through the discipline of the higher education. 
 Not far from one half of the members of the 
 national Senate and House have received a 
 liberal education. Of the thirty-two speakers, 
 sixteen have had the advantage of a regular 
 college training. Muhlenberg was a student 
 in Halle (Germany) ; Trumbull and Winthrop 
 graduates of Harvard ; Dayton and Penning- 
 ton, of Princeton ; Hunter and Orr, of the 
 
Certain Great Results. 71 
 
 University of Virginia ; Bell, a graduate of 
 Cumberland, Tennessee ; Polk, of the Univer- 
 sity of North Carolina ; John W. Jones, of 
 William and Mary ; John W. Davis, of Balti- 
 more ; Howell Cobb, of Franklin ; Grow, of 
 Amherst ; Blaine, of Washington ; Keifer, of 
 Antioch, and Reed, of Bowdoin. Two other 
 Speakers had the advantage of a partial college 
 training ; Sedgwick spent three years at Har- 
 vard and also Macon was a member of Prince- 
 ton, but left without graduating in order to 
 join the army. In the Executive Department 
 of the national government, of twenty-four 
 presidents, twelve have been liberally educated. 
 John Adams and John Quincy Adams received 
 a first degree from Harvard College; Jeffer- 
 son, Madison, and Tyler, from William and 
 Mary ; Polk, from the University of North 
 Carolina ; Pierce, from Bowdoin ; Buchanan, 
 from Dickinson ; Hayes, from Kenyon ; Gar- 
 field, from Williams ; Arthur, from Union, and 
 Benjamin Harrison, from Miami University. 
 Monroe was a student in William and Mary, 
 but left college to join the Revolutionary 
 army, and William H. Harrison was a member 
 of Hampden-Sidney College in Virginia, but 
 
72 The American College. 
 
 did not graduate. One half of the vice-presi- 
 dents have had the same advantage. Of. our 
 vice-presidents who have not served in the 
 office of president, Burr, Dallas, and Hobart 
 were graduates of Princeton ; Gerry, of Har- 
 vard ; Tompkins, of Columbia ; Calhoun, of 
 Yale ; Richard M. Johnson, of Transylvania, 
 in Kentucky ; King, of the University of 
 North Carolina, and Stevenson, of Centre Col- 
 lege, Kentucky. Wheeler was for two years a 
 student in the University of Vermont. The 
 larger proportion of the members of the Cabi- 
 net have also been liberally educated. Of the 
 thirty-six men who have filled the office of 
 Secretary of State, twenty-three have gradu- 
 ated from colleges, and five others were in 
 college for a longer or shorter period. Jeffer- 
 son, Randolph, Madison, and Nelson gradu- 
 ated from William and Mary, and Monroe 
 attended the same institution until the break- 
 ing out of the Revolutionary War, when he 
 enlisted ; Pickering, John Quincy Adams, and 
 Everett received degrees from Harvard ; 
 Smith, Livingston, Forsyth, and Upshur, from 
 Princeton ; Calhoun, Clayton, and Evarts, from 
 Yale ; Marcy and Olney, from Brown ; Web- 
 
Certain Great Results. iz 
 
 ster, from Dartmouth ; Legare, from the Col- 
 lege of South Carolina ; Buchanan, from Dickin- 
 son ; Fish, from Columbia ; Blaine, from Wash- 
 ington ; Frelinghuysen, from Rutgers ; Foster, 
 from the University of Indiana, at which in- 
 stitution Gresham also attended one year. 
 McLane was a member of Newark College, 
 Delaware, three years ; Seward was in Union 
 the same length of time ; and Sherman was 
 in college two years. And also, it should not 
 be forgotten, that in the solution of the critical 
 questions which Seward was obliged to make, 
 he especially relied on a president of Yale Col- 
 lege, Theodore Dwight Woolsey ; on Francis 
 Wharton, a graduate of Yale in the class of 
 1839 ; and on William Beach Lawrence, a Co- 
 lumbia graduate in 1 818. Of the Secretaries 
 of the Treasury, Hamilton received a degree 
 from Columbia in 1774 ; Wolcott took his first 
 degree at Yale ; Dexter, Richardson, and Fair- 
 child at Harvard ; Gallatin at Geneva, Switzer- 
 land ; Campbell, Rush, and Bibb, at Princeton ; 
 Dallas, at Edinborough ; Taney and Thomas, 
 at Dickinson ; Woodbury and Chase, at Dart- 
 mouth ; Ewing, at Ohio University ; Spencer, 
 at Union ; Walker and Meredith, at Univer- 
 
74 The American College. 
 
 sity of Pennsylvania ; Cobb, at Franklin ; Dix, 
 at University of Montreal ; Fessenden, at Bow- 
 doin, where also McCuUoch attended two 
 years ; Bristow, at Jefferson ; Folger, at Ho- 
 bart ; and McLane was for a time a student at 
 Newark, Delaware, and Lot M. Morrill at Col- 
 by (Waterville) in Maine. One cannot forget, 
 too, that in the office of the Secretaryship of 
 the Treasury, it is the college graduate who 
 has rendered most conspicuous service. Rob- 
 ert Morris who gave superb service in the 
 management of the financial affairs of the coun- 
 try during the Revolution, declining the honor 
 of becoming Secretary of the Treasury, pointed 
 out Hamilton as the man best qualified to 
 arrange the finances of a new nation. Hamil- 
 ton was a graduate of Columbia. Chase, also 
 called to the service of the nation in a crisis as 
 great as that in which Hamilton served, was 
 a graduate of Dartmouth in 1826; and Fes- 
 senden, Chase's successor, was a graduate of 
 Bowdoin in the class of 1823. In this relation 
 it is not unfitting to say that, in 1865, the man 
 who was named chairman of a committee upon 
 national taxation and revenues, and who did 
 for the nation after our Civil War a service as 
 
Certain Great Results. 75 
 
 important as Robert Morris rendered at the 
 time of the war of the Revolution, was a grad- 
 uate of Williams of the class of 1847, — David 
 A. Wells. Of those who have held other port- 
 folios in the Cabinets somewhat more than one- 
 half have received a liberal education. 
 
 The history of the foreign service of our 
 government is a history on the whole more 
 honorable than the history of its legislative and 
 executive functions. At the most important 
 courts of the world we have been well repre- 
 sented. To these courts, Harvard has con- 
 tributed such men as the Adamses, — father, son 
 and grandson, — Elbridge Gerry, Rufus King, 
 George Bancroft, Caleb Cushing, Motley, James 
 Russell Lowell, John Chandler Bancroft Davis, 
 and Robert Tod Lincoln. It may be said too, 
 in passing, that George Downing, a graduate of 
 Harvard in the class of 1642, went to England, 
 and became, besides filling other important 
 posts, a minis,ter to Holland of Cromwell and 
 Charles II. His name is perpetuated in Down- 
 ing Street. Yale also has given to our diplo- 
 matic service such men as Edwards Pierrepont, 
 Joel Barlow, Cassius M. Clay, Peter Parker, 
 William Walter Phelps, and Andrew D. 
 
7^ The American College. 
 
 White ; Columbia, such citizens as John Jay, 
 and Hamilton Fish ; William and Mary, such 
 statesmen as Jefferson, Monroe, and William 
 C Rives ; Princeton, such sons as George M. 
 Dallas, William L. Dayton, and George H. 
 Boker ; Dartmouth, such a scholar as George 
 P. Marsh ; and Brown, an administrator like 
 President Angell and an author like John Hay. 
 
 Greatly extended might be this list, but long 
 enough is it to show that the American College 
 has helped to train some of the most skillful 
 diplomats of our history. One of the primary 
 aims controlling European universities in the 
 Middle Ages has been thus gained in the Amer- 
 ican college. 
 
 The seven colleges which were founded be- 
 fore I 770 in this country have, since the organ- 
 ization of our government, contributed more 
 than two thousand of their graduates to the 
 highest political and judicial offices. These col- 
 leges have helped to train no less than nine of 
 our Presidents and eleven vice-presidents ; more 
 than eighty cabinet officers, and a hundred 
 United States ministers ; two hundred United 
 States Senators ; more than seven hundred 
 members of Congress ; four Chief Justices of 
 
Certain Great Results. "n 
 
 the United States ; at least eighteen associate 
 justices ; eleven circuit judges ; about a hun- 
 dred district and other United States judges ; 
 about six hundred judges of the higher state 
 courts ; and at least a hundred and fifty gover- 
 nors of states. Of these seven colleges and for 
 these high places, Yale has helped to train the 
 largest number, — about 550; Harvard about 
 425 ; Princeton 400 ; William and Mary some- 
 what over 200; Brown 125 ; Columbia some- 
 what over 100 ; and Pennsylvania a few more 
 than 50. But the same work has been done in 
 kind by all the colleges founded in the last hun- 
 dred years. And no figures, it is to be remem- 
 bered, can represent the intellectual and moral 
 forces which have rendered the work of these 
 public servants of the greatest value to the peo- 
 ple of the United States. 
 
 It is fitting to say that the proportion of col- 
 lege-trained men engaged in public life in Eng- 
 land and Germany is greater than is found in 
 the United States. In Germany, a university 
 course is almost a necessary step to entrance 
 upon a public career. In England, not infre- 
 quently every member of a Cabinet has been 
 trained at Oxford or at Cambridge, or has 
 
78 The American Colleg-e 
 
 ^5^ 
 
 received a degree from the University of 
 London. 
 
 The American college has given to the 
 American people a discipline more thorough, 
 a scholarship richer, and a culture finer than 
 they otherwise could have received. I use 
 these words discipline, scholarship, and culture 
 not without discrimination. Tl ^e colleg e has 
 trained men to think — to think for themselves 
 aft ^o thmk tor others . Such training is usu- 
 ally obtained within the first two years of the 
 course. It is the result of pursuing the mathe- 
 matical, linguistic, and scientific studies. These 
 studies are a first-rate gymnastic for the stu- 
 dent ; they produce intellectual strength. The 
 college using them becomes a drill master, and 
 the student having the advantage of the discip- 
 line given through them becomes keen and 
 broad in vision, swift and constant to infer, 
 true and impressive in applying and using. 
 Such advantages are the best results of what 
 we now call the old New England country 
 college, and indeed of the college, be it new 
 or old, whether within New England or 
 without. 
 
 If the chief value of the services of the 
 
Certain Great Results. 79 
 
 American college lies in the training of men, 
 we are yet to bear in mind that the college has 
 been the greatest of all contributors to scholar- 
 ship. If we must confess — as indeed we must 
 — that the American college has not achieved 
 in scholarship what it has in discipline, or what 
 the English universities and German have 
 achieved ; if we acknowledge — as we ought — 
 that the high promise of American scholarship 
 set forth in Emerson's Phi Beta Kappa ad- 
 dress sixty years ago has not been made good, 
 yet it is to be affirmed that whatever scholar- 
 ship we may claim has found in the college 
 its fostering mother. Many, though by no 
 means all, of the advances which have been 
 made in our knowledge of the laws of nature 
 have been made under the patronage of the 
 college, even if they have not been directly 
 made by its officers. Most of the researches 
 into the condition of early races of this coun- 
 try, or of the Latin and Greek peoples, or of 
 the natives of the far East, have found in the 
 college their chief supporters and leaders. Ar- 
 chaeological museums are usually organized in 
 connection with colleges. Our acquaintance 
 with the literature of the Roman and Greek 
 
8o The American College. 
 
 peoples — the two peoples which, together with 
 the Hebrew, have most vitally affected modern 
 civilization — is derived largely through the col- 
 lege. Without the college, scholarship would 
 be bereft of its most useful agency, and its most 
 healthful condition. Our condition has been 
 akin to that of Germany, where Kant, Fichte, 
 Schelling, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Ranke were 
 university professors, and unlike that of Eng- 
 land, where Darwin, Wallace, Spencer, Grote, 
 the two Mills, Bentham, Ricardo had no formal 
 university association. The American scholar 
 has usually, though by no means always, been 
 an officer in the American college. The college 
 library has been his workshop, the college labo- 
 ratory his tool, the college desk his pulpit, and 
 in the name and prestige of the college he has 
 found a presumption in his own behalf as a 
 scholar. Should one choose to mention the 
 ten Americans who have contributed most 
 largely to the progress of natural and physical 
 science, eight of the ten would be found en- 
 rolled in the faculties of our colleges. The 
 greatest American linguists, as well as the 
 greatest American mathematicians, our great- 
 est philosophers and psychologists, and several 
 
Certain Great Results. 8i 
 
 of our ablest economists and historians, are 
 found as teachers in our colleges. 
 
 The American college has possibly done 
 more in laying foundations for culture than 
 in directly cherishing culture; for the Ameri- 
 can college has been so deeply concerned with 
 the primary disciplines, that it has found little 
 opportunity for affording to its students means 
 and methods of the deepest enrichment. But 
 it has given impulses ; it has awakened aspira- 
 tions ; it has put before the student standards 
 of taste ; it has trained intellectual judgment ; 
 it has given to the great law of right a new 
 value by showing the breadth of its applica- 
 tion and the height of its reach ; it has sought 
 to create a refinement which is purchased 
 neither by the elimination of robustness nor by 
 the introduction of over-critical sestheticism ; it 
 has tried to train each man to love the best in 
 literature, in music, in painting, in nature, in 
 humanity ; and it has striven constantly to 
 cause the student to distinguish in everything, 
 not simply the good from the bad, but, what is 
 far more difficult, the better from the best. 
 
 This service of the American college in 
 training men to live intellectual lives is of the 
 
82 The American Collesre. 
 
 ^5" 
 
 greatest worth to this country and to this age. 
 For, in this age and country of materiaHsm, 
 the college should minister to the things of 
 the mind. The college should not directly 
 attempt to stem the tide of materialism. The 
 attempt would be useless. But the college 
 may worthily hope to transmute the capacity 
 for this material enthusiasm, even if not the 
 enthusiasm itself, into a capacity for holding 
 and delighting in relations which are eternal, 
 spiritual, and ethical. 
 
 When one attempts to estimate the value of 
 the college as a means of promoting literature, 
 the task is, at first thought, a difficult one. 
 For in any list of the writers of any one time 
 and place, the number of college-trained men 
 would not be found to exceed the number of 
 those who have not received a college train- 
 ing ; but when one passes out into the rela- 
 tions of a century and of a whole nation, the 
 difficulty vanishes. It seems, of course, a rule 
 of thumb to judge of the worth of the contri- 
 bution which the college makes to literature 
 through the number of authors it has trained, 
 or even through the greatness of these authors. 
 But the method has value. Of course, in 
 
Certain Great Results. 83 
 
 general, the great worth of the contribution 
 which the college makes to literature is to be 
 measured by the extent to which the college 
 maintains literary standards, inspires literary 
 motives, and by the degree in which it cherishes 
 literary atmospheres and conditions. And it 
 may at once be said that the large number 
 of the great authors of the country are college- 
 bred. The inference is inevitable that the col- 
 lege has had a large share in the creation of 
 literature. Of the five or six men who are 
 regarded by common suffrage as the greatest 
 poets of America, four out of the five, or five 
 out of the six, are college-trained. Those 
 five men whom no one, also, would hesitate to 
 call the greatest historians of America, are 
 also college-trained. It is significant, too, 
 that they are the sons of one mother. The 
 first romancer, Hawthorne, and the first essay- 
 ist, Emerson, are the sons of New England 
 colleges. The great writers upon philosoph- 
 ical, ethical, and theological subjects represent 
 with hardly an exception an academic train- 
 ing. In the large relations of time, it is the 
 author of college training and enlargement 
 who is recognized as the ablest and best. 
 
84 The American College. 
 
 It IS almost natural for us to expect that 
 the makers of a nation's literature shall be 
 bred in the colleges of that nation. For the 
 maker of a nation's literature needs above all 
 else an aquaintance with literature already 
 made. To promote an acquaintance with litera- 
 ture already made is one of the supreme pur- 
 poses of the college. Has not the boy for 
 three years or more before entering college 
 devoted at least a half of his time to Latin and 
 Greek, to either French or German, and to 
 English? Has not a large share of the first 
 years of the college course been devoted to 
 reading the great books of those literatures 
 which have profoundly affected modern life ? 
 Such reading, too, is done under the guidance 
 of masters. Therefore one expects that the 
 worthy authors shall have been worthily trained. 
 A popular English writer — Dean Farrar, — 
 making a catalogue of the English authors of 
 the present generation, names the following : 
 Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold, George 
 Eliot, Maurice, Kingsley, Bishop Lightfoot, 
 Dean Stanley, F. W. Robertson, Dickens, 
 Thackeray, Lord Macaulay, Thomas Carlyle, 
 Lord Houghton, Clough, Sir Arthur Helps, 
 Ruskin, Froude, Cardinal Newman, Darwin, 
 
Certain Great Results. 85 
 
 Huxley, and Tyndall. Of this list, omitting 
 George Eliot, all but two have been trained 
 at the universities. The same writer, nam- 
 ing the great authors of the generation in 
 America, mentions Bancroft, Parkman, Long- 
 fellow, Emerson, Lowell, Whittier, and 
 Holmes ; all of whom, with the exception of 
 Whittier, are graduates. If American litera- 
 ture has not been made in the college, the 
 college has certainly helped to make the 
 makers themselves of the literature ; and it is 
 to be ever borne in mind that for many years, 
 while Longfellow, Lowell, and Holmes were 
 adding to the treasures of American literature, 
 they were teachers in an American university. 
 America has made great contributions to 
 the higher civilization of the world, but these 
 contributions have usually been indirect. But 
 she has made none more valuable, and none 
 more direct, than are found in the missionary 
 movements of the Christian Church. These 
 movements have been genuine and large en- 
 deavors for the establishing of a high type of 
 civilization in countries not so richly blessed 
 as our own. They represent the elements of 
 the finest civilization. They include the teach- 
 ing of the principles and the example of the 
 
86 The American College. 
 
 monogamous family, the worship of one God, 
 the institution of schools and colleges, the 
 creation of a written language, and, to some 
 extent, of a literature. Missionaries have re- 
 duced to writing some seventy languages, 
 twenty-six of which are to be put to the credit 
 of an American missionary society. In all 
 these languages, a literature is either begin- 
 ning, or is already somewhat advanced. Such 
 labors represent linguistic and literary tri- 
 umphs of a rare and exceedingly high order. 
 And at once it is to be said that these mis- 
 sionaries, who have been the bearers of civiliza- 
 tion to South Sea Islanders and to degraded 
 peoples in all parts of the globe, have, with 
 few exceptions, found their most valuable 
 training for this great service in the American 
 college. It has been, and is, the policy of the 
 foreign missionary boards to send to the 
 lowest people the best-trained college man or 
 woman. 
 
 One of the principal officers of the oldest 
 foreign missionary society in the United States, 
 the American Board, writes me saying : 
 
 " On our theory of missions, we are confident that our 
 missionaries, with rare exceptions, must have a college 
 education. Even more than the average minister at 
 
Certain Great Results. 87 
 
 home does the missionary need such training, for he 
 must master at least one new language, and he must be 
 capable of entering into the life and thought of another 
 people : he must be a translator of the Bible and of other 
 Christian literature. He must be a teacher as well as 
 preacher, training others for the ministry. We should 
 not want a professor in a theological seminary in the 
 United States to lack a college training, and a very large 
 proportion of our missionaries do work that is precisely 
 similar to that of a professor of theology. Aside from 
 special training, the missionary should be a man of 
 culture, capable of standing, as he very likely may be 
 called to stand, before kings." 
 
 In fact it is within the bounds of simple 
 truth to say that the American college has ren- 
 dered a richer service to the highest civiHza- 
 tion of the entire world in preparing men for 
 moral and religious work in foreign countries 
 than all other American agencies and condi- 
 tions have rendered. The American college 
 represents the greatest and most direct work 
 which America has done for the world. The 
 American college of poverty, of meagre equip- 
 ment, of few teachers, as well as the mighty 
 university of prestige, of eminence, of wealth, 
 of vast numbers, has had a share in this mag- 
 nificent service. 
 
III. 
 
 ITS INFLUENCE OVER AND 
 THROUGH INDIVIDUALS. 
 
 THE causes and the conditions that unite 
 to form the character of a man are so 
 many and so diverse that he is a bold 
 prophet and judge who should attempt to 
 assess each of them at its proper value. Even 
 for one's self it is hard to know to what extent 
 any element has entered into one's constitu- 
 tion, intellectual or ethical. Judgments of one s 
 self labor under the same perils that judgments 
 of other men labor under ; and judgments 
 respecting the worth of the elements of the 
 careers of other men are beset by very serious 
 perils. 
 
 Yet this is the very problem, the problem of 
 the relation of causes and effects, in the realm 
 
 88 
 
Its Influence. 89 
 
 of intellectual and ethical character, which is 
 constantly presenting itself to every one who 
 is concerned with the higher relations of life. 
 It is a problem which is with great urgency 
 presented to the American college. What has 
 the college done for its sons ? Are these men 
 abler in intellect, purer in heart, stronger in 
 right choices, by reason of having spent four 
 years in college ? If they are abler, purer, 
 stronger, to what extent has the college con- 
 tributed to these gains? In particular, what 
 elements of the college have made these ad- 
 ditions to this increase of power ? Seriously 
 important, therefore, are these questions, — im- 
 portant to the college, important to the gradu- 
 ate, and important to life itself. 
 
 In order to make the least inadequate solu- 
 tions of these problems, — for I recognize that 
 the most adequate solutions would in many 
 respects be unworthy, — I have adopted a 
 simple and definite method. This method 
 consists in gathering testimony from many 
 men in respect to the worth of their college 
 to themselves and to others. This testimony 
 is gathered from the lips of the living, and 
 from the record of those dead, from autobiog- 
 
go The American College. 
 
 raphies and from biographies. The amount of 
 evidence which I have thus collected is very 
 great, much greater than it is possible to use 
 in the present chapter. The evidence covers 
 a long period. It is, too, not limited to the 
 graduates of American colleges only. From the 
 testimony which is thus received I believe that 
 conclusions may be derived in respect to the 
 value of certain specific advantages which the 
 American college has given to American life. 
 For the advantages which American life has 
 received from the American college are pri- 
 marily advantages received through the indi- 
 viduals which help to constitute that life. 
 
 It is the veriest commonplace to say that 
 the value of the college is made up of many 
 elements. To some men the value of the col- 
 lege is slight, to some great, to a few very 
 great, and to a large number considerable. It 
 is my opinion that the wo^t b. of the colle ge 
 may Qgsilybe divided into ce rtaio- specific ele- 
 ments. Among them are these : the discipline 
 /of the regular studies ; the inspiration of 
 I friendship ; the enrichment of general reading ; 
 I the culture of association with men of culture 
 I and of scholarly atmospheres ; special private 
 
Its Influence. 
 
 reading ; literary societies. These six elements 
 represent the chief forces of the college for 
 doing good to its students. As I read the 
 story of the lives of men, or as I talk with 
 graduates themselves, with scarcely an excep- 
 tion, whatever of good the college had for any 
 one of them was a good of one or of all of 
 these six kinds, j 
 
 '^It may at once be said that the value of the 
 discipline of the pursuit of the regular studies 
 and the value of the inspiration of friendships 
 represent the two chief goods of the college. 
 By far the largest number of men who since 
 graduation have lived useful lives, acknowl- 
 edge that these two elements were the chief 
 agencies in their college course in contributing 
 to the worth of their character or to the suc- 
 cess of their career. 
 
 Yet it is often found that these two elements 
 are not separated. For not a few men who 
 confess that the college has been of great value 
 to them are also found acknowledging that the 
 power of personality arising from the college 
 in living their lives has been as great as the 
 value of formal studies. It is also occasionally 
 found that several of these elements contribute 
 
92 The American College 
 
 ^^ 
 
 in apparently not unequal degrees in forming 
 the whole constitution of the man. When one 
 selects such leaders as, in the pulpit, Bushnell, 
 Channing, and Brooks ; or at the bar or on 
 the bench, as Rufus Choate, Benjamin Robbins 
 Curtis ; or in statesmanship, as Jefferson and 
 Webster ; or in literature, as Longfellow ; or 
 in scholarship and teaching, as the elder Silli- 
 man. Sparks, Peirce, Felton, and Barnard ; or, 
 abroad, such men as Gladstone, Dean Church, 
 Charles Kingsley, Hort, Westcott, and Maur- 
 ice ; one finds that it was the discipline of the 
 studies of the college that largely contributed 
 to the formation of character and to the equip- 
 ment of mind and heart for great service. It 
 was one hundred years ago that the greatest 
 of all the preachers of the Unitarian Church 
 graduated at Harvard, William Ellery Chan- 
 ning. As an undergraduate his chief liking 
 was for historical and literary studies. That 
 charming style which either in written or spoken 
 discourse has captivated us for a century was 
 largely formed in college, not only through 
 the instruction, but also through self-drill and 
 through the training given in the literary soci- 
 eties. Graduating at the time when the great 
 
Its Influence. 93 
 
 humanitarian movement was still in progress 
 in France, he was especially moved with high 
 hopes for the advancement of man. Locke, 
 Berkeley, Reid, Priestley, and Price were au- 
 thors that contributed to the making of his 
 character. Price in particular, he says, saved 
 him from the effects of Locke's philosophy, 
 and caused him to write throughout his life 
 such words as Love and Right with a capital. 
 At this time, too, the interest in Shakespeare 
 was reviving, and that author who has come 
 by gradual degrees to be regarded as the great 
 author of our literature had a large influence 
 over Channing.^ Horace Bushnell, too, was, 
 through his career at Yale, transformed from 
 an original, discriminating mind, self-possessed 
 and self-reliant, but crude, into a mind no less 
 original, discriminating, self-possessed and self- 
 reliant, and having a high degree of culture. 
 Throughout his college course he lived the life 
 of a scholar, — retiring and independent.^ 
 
 No man is better fitted to illustrate the 
 effects of the college than Benjamin Robbins 
 Curtis, a great lawyer and a great judge. 
 
 * W. H. Channing's Memoir of W. E. Ckanning, i. 53-72. 
 
 ^ Mary B. Cheney's Life aud Letters of Horace Busknell^ 35-6l. 
 
94 The American College. 
 
 Graduating from Harvard in that still most 
 famous class of the oldest of our colleges, the 
 class of 1829, he had in the college a career of 
 which Mr. James Freeman Clarke says : 
 
 " We also could see in our forensic discussions the 
 future eminence of Benjamin Robbins Curtis, who after- 
 wards became so prominent at the bar and on the bench 
 of the United States Court. His papers, read aloud to 
 the professor of philosophy, were so strictly logical, and 
 such exhaustive discussions, that it seemed impossible to 
 improve on them. His mind worked, even then, with the 
 accuracy of a machine, doing its work perfectly. In after 
 years his intelligence was enlarged by ampler knowledge, 
 was capable of more extensive research and more sus- 
 tained investigation ; but it worked as accurately in those 
 college papers as when it showed its irresistible force in 
 arguments at the bar or opinions from the bench.*' * 
 
 The name of Curtis is far less conspicuous in 
 American life than the name of Rufus Choate. 
 Choate, too, found in the curriculum those 
 aids necessary for the development of his great 
 native ability. He acquired knowledge swiftly, 
 his memory was strong, his power of concen- 
 tration great ; as a student he was diligent and 
 faithful. The testimony of those who knew 
 Choate at college is that from the beginning 
 
 ^ Autobiography of James Freeman Clarke^ edited by Edward 
 Everett Hale, 34-35. 
 
Its Influence. 95 
 
 of his career at Dartmouth he was easily the 
 first of all his college mates, — at a time when 
 among his mates were many who afterwards 
 proved to be men of great power. The course 
 of study that he pursued was thorough and 
 systematic, and the example of high scholar- 
 ship which he set did much to maintain the 
 standards of the college. ^ 
 
 Similar words might be written about a 
 man greater than Choate, who rendered noble 
 service to humanity in several fields — Daniel 
 Webster. He was a devoted student. It 
 was the ancient classics which formed the 
 chief source of the early delight of Webster 
 the student. To the more critical elements of 
 the languages he gave heed, but he also paid 
 much attention to the formation of a good 
 English style from his reading of Latin and 
 Greek authors. Cicero was of the Roman 
 authors his favorite. It is said — I do not 
 know with how much truth — that he could re- 
 peat several of Cicero's orations from memory. 
 He thus made the spirit of Roman eloquence 
 his spirit and the life of the Roman people 
 a part of his life. It is told, too, that he was 
 
 * S. G. Brown's Life of Rufus Choate^ 11-21. 
 
9^ The American College. 
 
 exceedingly fond of Virgil and that some of 
 the finest passages of the ^neid were upon 
 his tongue. Demosthenes, also, he read with 
 great interest, but not with so full an apprecia- 
 tion as in the case of the Roman orator. Eng- 
 lish orations and American he read as far as 
 he was able, and in particular the writings of 
 Alexander Hamilton. As may be expected, 
 philosophy, both intellectual and ethical, and 
 public law, were studies that made deep im- 
 pressions on his mind.^ 
 
 Singular at once in contrast and in likeness 
 is the career of Thomas Jefferson and that of 
 Daniel Webster. Webster lacked a taste for 
 mathematics ; Jefferson had a love for mathe- 
 matics, as well as for the classics. Webster 
 was fond of ethics and metaphysics, which 
 Jefferson in turn disliked. Webster, on the 
 whole, preferred the Latin author to the 
 Greek ; Jefferson preferred the Greek to the 
 Latin. Thucydides was chosen by the Vir- 
 ginian before Tacitus. A most thorough 
 training for the time Jefferson received at 
 William and Mary College ; but it was in 
 
 > B. F. Tefft's Life of Daniel Webster, 51-79- 
 G. T. Curtis 's Life of Daniel Webster, 24-26. 
 
Its Influence. 97 
 
 particular to the acquaintance and personal 
 friendship of one of the teachers of William 
 and Mary, — Professor Small, — that Jefferson 
 owed more than to any other one. Of Pro- 
 fessor Small it is said he '* probably fixed the 
 destinies of his life."^ 
 
 There is probably no American author who 
 received greater advantage from his college 
 course than he who is the most popular of all 
 American poets. An incident in Longfellow's 
 college life is of value in indicating, in a way, 
 the worth of the college training for himself, 
 and also as being a determinative factor in his 
 whole career. A.t an annual examination of 
 his class the fine rendering by Longfellow of 
 an ode of Horace attracted the notice of one 
 of the examiners, Benjamin Orr, who was a 
 trustee of the college and an eminent lawyer. 
 At this very Commencement the professorship 
 of Modern Languages was established at Bow- 
 doin, and Orr proposed the name of Longfel- 
 low for the place. He referred to the transla- 
 tion which Longfellow had made into fine 
 English of the ode of Horace as evidence of 
 the fitness of the young student, soon to be- 
 
 * H, S. Randall's Life of Thomas Jefferson^ 21-30. 
 7 
 
9^ The American College. 
 
 come a graduate, for the place. It was in one 
 of the last months of his Junior year at Bow- 
 doin that Longfellow wrote to his father about 
 Horace as follows : 
 
 " I forgot to tell you in my last that we were reading 
 Horace. I admire it very much indeed, and, in fact, 
 I have not met with so pleasant a study since the com- 
 mencement of my college course. Moreover, it is ex- 
 tremely easy to read, which not a little contributes to 
 the acquisition of a thorough knowledge of every line 
 and every ode." ' 
 
 A few months later he wrote to his father as 
 follows : 
 
 " The fact is — and I will not disguise it in the least, 
 for I think I ought not — the fact is, I most eagerly aspire 
 after future eminence in literature ; my whole soul burns 
 most ardently for it, and every earthly thought centres 
 in it. There may be something visionary in this^ but I 
 flatter myself that I have prudence enough to keep my 
 enthusiasm from defeating its own object by too great 
 haste. Surely, there never was a better opportunity 
 offered for the exertion of literary talent in our own 
 country than now is offered." ' 
 
 Over those men who have made their con- 
 tributions to the service of humanity through 
 scholarship and through teaching, it would be 
 
 ' Life of Longfellow, edited by Samuel Longfellow, 49. 
 ^Ibid., 53. 
 
Its Influence. 99 
 
 expected that the value of the pursuit of the 
 regular college course would be the greatest of 
 all formative forces. Among such men one 
 might select many, but I content myself with 
 choosing only a few. Among the few is one 
 who is usually acknowledged to be the great- 
 est of all American mathematicians, — Benjamin 
 Peirce. In one sense Peirce was too great a 
 man for the Harvard of 1825-1829. He went 
 far beyond the curriculum ; but that the cur- 
 riculum had at least a formative influence as a 
 condition, if not as an agency, is evident. His 
 class-mate, James Freeman Clarke, relates that 
 
 " the tutor never put any questions to Peirce, but having 
 set him going, let him talk as long as he chose without 
 interruption. It v»^as shrewdly suspected," says Dr. 
 Clarke, " that this was done from fear lest the respective 
 roles be reversed, and the examiner might become the 
 examinee. " * 
 
 If all the college graduates now living should 
 be asked, '' Who is the greatest teacher of the 
 last half-century in the colleges of the United 
 States ?" I am sure that many would say Mark 
 Hopkins. All those who should thus express 
 their opinion would not be by any means grad- 
 
 ^ y antes Freeman Clarke^ Autobiography ^ 34. 
 
loo The American College. 
 
 uates of the college in which Mark Hopkins 
 did his great work. The influence of Williams 
 College upon Mark Hopkins, a student, was 
 not unlike that which belongs to the Influence 
 of the ordinary college upon the student of 
 ability and faithfulness. A classmate of Mark 
 Hopkins, Hon. Harvey Rice, of Cleveland, 
 who at the time of his writing was the only 
 surviving member of his class, and who has 
 since died, says : 
 
 " He came into the class with the reputation of being 
 a bright scholar, and continued to maintain that repu- 
 tation. We soon became, I hardly know why, mutual 
 friends. He seemed as remarkable for his modesty and 
 unassuming manners as for his excellence in scholarship. 
 He enjoyed the respect of his class, and was regarded by 
 all who knew him as an exemplary young man. 
 
 " He was studious in his habits and scrupulous in the 
 discharge of his duties, kind and obliging, and always 
 ready to bestow favors. This he often did by way of 
 aiding the inefficient of his class in acquiring their les- 
 sons, and in writing the essays required of them as class 
 exercises. He was a deep thinker, and acknowledged 
 to be the best literary writer in his class. He never in- 
 dulged in sports, or frolics, so common among college 
 students, but, in whatever he did or said, he always ob- 
 served the proprieties of life. In matters of serious im- 
 port he was considerate, and in his religious observances, 
 reverent and sincere. 
 
Its Influence. loi 
 
 " Yet he appreciated humor and witticism, loved to 
 hear and tell anecdotes, and enjoyed a hearty laugh. 
 He was quick in his perceptions, logical in his conclu- 
 sions, and could make a fine point and see a fine point 
 without spectacles. In the recitation room he often put 
 questions, arising out of our lessons, to the learned pro- 
 fessor, which perplexed him, and then would answer the 
 questions himself with becoming deference. 
 
 " In his course of reading, while in college, he mani- 
 fested little or no relish for novels, but seemed to prefer 
 standard authors in literature and science. He soon 
 evinced a decided love for the study of metaphysics, and 
 read all the books on that subject which he could find 
 in the college library, and took great pleasure in dis- 
 cussing the different theories advanced by different 
 authors." ' 
 
 Upon that mind which is generally consid- 
 ered the greatest philosophical mind that has 
 come into existence in America, Jonathan Ed- 
 wards, it is probable that the college had small 
 influence. He was too strong, and the college 
 too weak. Of the relation of Yale College to 
 him his latest biographer, Professor Allen, 
 says : 
 
 " He was not quite thirteen when he entered Yale 
 College, then in an inchoate condition, and not yet fixed 
 in a permanent home. The course of instruction at this 
 time must have been a broken and imperfect one. Such 
 
 ' Mark Hopkins^ by President Franklin Carter, 14-16. 
 
I02 The American College. 
 
 as it was, Edwards followed it faithfully, now at New 
 Haven and then at Wethersfield, whither a part of the 
 students emigrated in consequence of some disturbance 
 in which he seems to have shared. A letter to his father 
 from the rector of the college speaks of his * promising 
 abilities and great advances in learning.' He was not 
 quite seventeen when he graduated, taking with his de- 
 gree the highest honors the institution could offer." * 
 
 The first part of the college life of Noah 
 Porter was of little significance, but beginning 
 with his Sophomore year he grew as a scholar 
 and as a man continually. This growth was 
 promoted by two leading influences : one of 
 these lay in the literary society of which he had 
 been a member up to this time* in his course, 
 but in which he had previously taken no par- 
 ticular interest. His quick perception soon 
 overcame the boyish dififidence which had been 
 a draw-back, and now, with increase of confi- 
 dence in himself and growing ripeness of intel- 
 lect, he rapidly became one of the best debaters. 
 A second potent influence upon his intellectual 
 and spiritual development was the literature of 
 the time, and especially the writings of Cole- 
 ridge, whose Aids to Reflection was published 
 
 * Jonathan Edwards, by Prof. A. V. G. Allen. American Re- 
 ligious Leaders Series, 4. 
 
Its Influence. 103 
 
 during his college life. It soon became the 
 text-book of a little circle in which Porter was 
 one of the most conspicuous. This work 
 wrought in all the members of this circle an 
 intellectual and spiritual revolution. His com- 
 panions learned from it the art of thinking 
 and of referring facts to principles ; they were 
 taught to look below the phenomena of the 
 moment or of the age to the imperishable 
 truths which give facts meaning and value. 
 Porter, however, already possessed intellectual 
 clearness, precision of statement, and accuracy 
 of reasoning, — though these were quickened 
 and broadened, — but from this course of read- 
 ing he found what had been lacking : the 
 awakening of his imaginative faculties. A 
 classmate of Porter, Andrews, says : 
 
 " I do not remember a more striking growth and trans- 
 formation, intellectual and spiritual, than took place in 
 him from the beginning of our Sophomore year. . . . 
 The sprightly boy had developed into the strength of 
 manhood." * 
 
 When one turns to Oxford and Cambridge 
 one finds also the names of scores of scholars, 
 clergymen, and statesmen over whom the stud- 
 
 1 Noah Porter^ A Memorial by Friends^ 21. 
 
I04 The American College. 
 
 ies have had a determinative influence. Glad- 
 stone, with his double-first class ; Mansel, also 
 with his double-first class in the classics and 
 the mathematics ; Dean Church winning honors 
 which he did not expect to win ; Kingsley with 
 his idleness and honors, — loafing in the first 
 years of his under-graduate course, but through 
 industry at the close winning a first class in the 
 classical tripos; Maurice, disliking the Uni- 
 versity system, but gathering through it and 
 through its friendships large results : these and 
 the examples of scores of other Englishmen 
 might be cited as evidence for the proposition 
 that the curriculum has a determinative effect 
 upon character and career. 
 
 Most men, however, it is to be said, gather 
 more from the inspiration of the personalities 
 of the college than from the education afforded 
 by the regular studies of the curriculum. Over 
 such leaders in the various departments of life, 
 in England and Scotland, as Scott and Car- 
 lyle, Darwin, Chalmers, and Byron, Duff and 
 Keble, Macaulay and Ruskin, Newman and 
 Charles Wordsworth, Stanley, Maxwell and 
 Shelley ; and, over such leaders on this side 
 of the water as Garfield and Seward, Samuel 
 
Its Influence. 105 
 
 F. B. Morse and Silliman, it is the personality 
 of the college which has had the greater in- 
 fluence. It was Dr. Brown, of St. Andrews, who 
 awoke in Chalmers those intellectual powers 
 from which Scotland for many years after de- 
 rived the greatest advantage.^ Byron, who left 
 ''trinity College, Cambridge, in 1808, received 
 no advantage from the college, but he formed at 
 Cambridge several strong friendships which, 
 he says, became to him as *' passions." That 
 with Lord Clare was one of the earliest, and 
 lasted as long as any, and he says : '' I never 
 hear the word Clare without a beating of the 
 heart." Cambridge, as a University, had small 
 or no influence over Byron. His career grew 
 out of his natural capacities ; and they were 
 profoundly influenced by ardent friendships. 
 Not unlike the career of Byron in certain re- 
 spects is the career of Shelley. More of a 
 scholar, indeed, than Byron, was Shelley ; but 
 it was the friendship of Hogg that was the 
 chief element in Shelley's life at Oxford. 
 Together Shelley and Hogg lived and 
 worked at Oxford, together they wrote the 
 pamphlet on The Necessity of Atheism, and 
 
 * J. C. Moffat's Life of Thomas Chalmers, 11-18. 
 
io6 The American College. 
 
 together for the writing of this pamphlet were 
 they expelled from Oxford. That Hogg and 
 Shelley should have been mutually attracted 
 by their very diversities is natural enough, but 
 there were, on the other hand, sufficient points 
 of contact between the man of the world, a 
 Tory skeptic, and the Republican, a confirmed 
 idealist, to explain their sympathy and regard. 
 Without taking into account the moral quali- 
 ties they shared in common, — their thirst for 
 knowledge, their love of philosophic research 
 and literary study, and a burning desire to write 
 were sufficient cause to promote intimacy be- 
 tween two young men whose maturity of mind 
 and uniqueness of life placed them apart from 
 the common crowd of students. The first 
 meeting of these two essentially different 
 minds, mutually attractive by their very con- 
 trasts, was decisive. Hogg and Shelley could 
 not thenceforth exist apart ; they were called 
 the inseparables.^ 
 
 The first two years Coleridge spent at Cam- 
 bridge were spent in hard work ; for, on 
 entering, he found friends, who gave him an 
 inspiration that made him industrious. But 
 
 * Babbe's Life of Shelley^ 71, 73, 76. 
 
Its Influence. 107 
 
 when they left, there appears to have been no 
 one to exert a steadying influence. From this 
 time he paid little attention to the collegiate 
 studies, — he became interested in philosophy, 
 religion, and politics. So strong were these 
 personal and scholastic influences, that, in 
 company with Southey and several others, he 
 planned to sail for America and establish there 
 a *' Pantisocracy,'' a state in which every one 
 was "to enjoy his own religious and political 
 opinions." Finally, he was led to a change in 
 his religious opinions through Dr. Priestly and 
 the personal influence of William Frend.^ 
 
 Thomas Carlyle succeeded fairly well in his 
 university studies. In mathematics only did he 
 make special progress, and, as he himself says : 
 *'that I made progress in mathematics is per- 
 haps due merely to the accident that Professor 
 Leslie alone of my professors had some genius 
 in his business, and awoke a certain enthusi- 
 asm in me." By instinct, poverty, or a happy 
 accident he took less to rioting than to read- 
 ing and thinking and therefore spent most 
 of his time in the college library, from '* the 
 
 * Brandl's Samuel Taylor Coleridge^ 50-57. 
 Campbell's Samuel Taylor Coleridge^ 22-41. 
 
io8 The American College. 
 
 Chaos of which," to use his own words in 
 Sartor Resartus, '' I succeeded in fishing up 
 more books than had been known to the 
 keeper thereof." There was laid the founda- 
 tion of a literary life, and there he learned to 
 read in several languages. But it is apparent 
 that the greatest influence flowing from his 
 college days came from a Httle circle of eleven 
 men of about his own age and conditions, 
 clever lads, distinctly superior to the ordinary 
 boys of their age and eager to learn. With 
 these he seems to have lived more than with 
 any others, and with them he held discussions 
 on literature and science, and theology.^ 
 
 It would be hard to find a character and 
 career more unlike those of Carlyle than are 
 the character and career of Charles Darwin ; 
 but there is a likeness in the formative power 
 of personality. Like Carlyle, Darwin was at 
 Edinburgh and from Edinburgh went to 
 Cambridge ; but both at Edinburgh and at 
 Cambridge Darwin himself says that his time 
 was quite wasted. He tried mathematics, but 
 his progress was slow, and the study became 
 
 ^ Froude's Thomas Carlyle ^ A History of the First Forty Years of 
 his Life, i. 21-34. 
 
Its Influence. 109 
 
 repugnant ; in respect to the classics his gains 
 were sHght. He does, however, confess his 
 indebtedness to Paley's books and acknowl- 
 edges that they were to him of use in the edu- 
 cation of his mind, although the advantage, he 
 thinks, was not great. But at Edinburgh 
 he became acquainted with several young men 
 who were fond of natural science. He speaks 
 also of a society which met for the reading and 
 discussion of papers on natural science, and he 
 believed that these meetings had a good effect 
 in stimulating his zeal. But his friendship 
 with Professor Henslow at Cambridge was 
 perhaps the most important factor in influenc- 
 ing his career. Professor Henslow kept open 
 house at least once every week, when under- 
 graduates and some of the other members of 
 the University used to meet. Darwin became 
 well acquainted with Henslow, and during the 
 latter part of his course took long walks with 
 him on summer days. Darwin says that his 
 knowledge of Botany, Entomology, Chemistry, 
 Mineralogy, and Geology was great, and that 
 he was accustomed to draw conclusions from 
 long continued minute observation. It was 
 Henslow who persuaded Darwin to begin the 
 
no The American College. 
 
 study of Geology. Professor Sedgwick also 
 had a strong influence over him/ 
 
 Into the undergraduate life of that great and 
 unique character, John Henry Newman, two 
 men entered with great power. They were 
 Dr. Hawkins, the Provost of Oriel and the 
 Vicar of St. Mar/s, and Dr. Whately. Of Dr. 
 Hawkins, Newman says : 
 
 " He was the first who taught me to weigh my words, 
 and to be cautious in my statements. He led me to that 
 mode of limiting and clearing my sense in discussion and 
 in controversy, and of distinguishing between cognate 
 ideas, and of obviating mistakes by anticipation, which 
 to my surprise has been since considered, even in 
 quarters friendly to me, to savor of the polemics of 
 Rome. He is a man of most exact mind himself, and 
 he used to snub me severely, on reading, as he was kind 
 enough to do, the first Sermons that* I wrote, and other 
 compositions which I was engaged upon." ' 
 
 Of him who was afterwards known as Arch- 
 bishop Whately, Newman writes : 
 
 ** I owe him a great deal. He was a man of generous 
 and warm heart. He was particularly loyal to his 
 friends, and to use the common phrase, *all his geese 
 were swans.* While I was still awkward and timid in 
 
 * F. Darwin*s Life and Letters of Charles Darwin^ 32-48. 
 ^ Apologia Pro Vita Sua^ by John Henry Newman. Fifth edi- 
 tion, New York, 59-60. 
 
Its Influence. in 
 
 1822, he took me by the hand, and acted the part to me 
 of a gentle and encouraging instructor. He, emphati- 
 cally, opened my mind, and taught me to think and to 
 use my reason/' * 
 
 Again he says : 
 
 "During the first years of my residence at Oriel, 
 though proud of my college, I was not at home there. 
 I was very much alone, and used often to take my daily 
 walk by myself. I recollect once meeting Dr. Copleston, 
 then Provost, with one of the Fellows. He turned 
 around, and with the kind courteousness which sat so 
 well on him, made me a bow and said, * Nunquam minus 
 solus, quam cum solus.* At that time indeed (from 
 1823) I had the intimacy of my dear and true friend Dr. 
 Pusey, and could not fail to admire and revere a soul so 
 devoted to the cause of religion, so full of good works, 
 so faithful in his affections ; but he left residence when 
 I was getting to know him well. As to Dr. Whately 
 himself, he was too much my superior to allow of my 
 being at my ease with him ; and to no one at Oxford at 
 this time did I open my heart fully and familiarly. But 
 things changed in 1826. At that time I became one of 
 the Tutors of my College, and this gave me position ; 
 besides, I had written one or two Essays, which had been 
 well received. I began to be known. I preached my 
 first University Sermon. Next year I was one of the 
 Public Examiners for the B.A. degree. It was to me 
 like the feeling of spring weather after winter ; and, if I 
 may so speak, I came out of my shell ; I remained out 
 of it till 1841."* 
 
 ^Ibid,, 62. ^IHd,,(>6, 
 
112 The American College. 
 
 During his course at St. John's College, 
 Cambridge, Henry Martyn was among the 
 leaders of his class in scholarship, but it was 
 not in this respect that college left a lasting 
 impression upon his character. During his 
 
 first term a friend, w^hom he refers to as K , 
 
 kept him from idleness and turned his mind to 
 hard work. Martyn was by no means relig- 
 iously inclined, and this friend tried to get him 
 to undertake a course of reading '' that would 
 be for the glory of God." During his vaca- 
 tions his sister frequently addressed him on 
 the subject of religion, and, when the sudden 
 death of his father nearly rent his heart, she 
 
 renewed these addresses ; K , too, advised 
 
 him to make this time an occasion for serious 
 reflection. He began to read the Bible, — in 
 accordance with a promise made to his sister, 
 — beginning with the Book of Acts, as '' being 
 the most amusing" and at the same time read 
 Doddridge's ** Rise and Progress." At length 
 in his Junior year he wrote to his sister assur- 
 ing her that she had kept him in the right way 
 and announced to her his complete conversion. 
 
 The persistent friendship of K and his 
 
 sister's love had changed his life.^ 
 
 * Sargent's Me7noir of Henry Martyn, 13-21. 
 
Its Influence. 113 
 
 Professor J. Clerk Maxwell Illustrates the 
 value in forming a career both of personality 
 and of scholarship. He, too, was a student both 
 at Edinburgh and Cambridge. Though but 
 sixteen when he entered the class in logic, he 
 worked hard, and from this class together with 
 the one in metaphysics the next year, he received 
 many lasting impressions. His boundless 
 curiosity was fed by Sir William Hamilton's 
 inexhaustible learning. From Hamilton he re- 
 ceived an impulse for study which never lost 
 its effect. Sir William in turn took a personal 
 interest in his pupil who happened to be the 
 nephew of an old friend of his, affording, per- 
 haps, the most striking example of the effect 
 produced by him on powerful young minds. 
 It was impossible that young Maxwell should 
 listen to this speculative philosopher, without 
 eagerly working out each problem for himself. 
 He, himself, combined scholarship with a charm- 
 ing personality, for he had hosts of friends 
 whom he drew to himself by a " childlike sim- 
 plicity of trust " and, possibly, by his naturally 
 social spirit.^ 
 
 There is probably no man who ever offered 
 
 * Campbell and Gamett's Life of y. Clerk Maxwell, 105-176. 
 8 
 
114 The American College. 
 
 testimonials of fitness for a scholastic position 
 signed by so many who afterwards came to 
 occupy conspicuous positions as Bishop Charles 
 Wordsworth. The list of those men with whom 
 he was intimate at Oxford covers a whole page 
 of his annals, and the list of those men whose 
 recommendation he bore for a Mastership at 
 Winchester, included thirty-one persons, among 
 whom were : one who became Archbishop of 
 Canterbury ; ten who became Bishops ; eleven 
 who became Deans ; one a Roman Catholic 
 Archbishop and Cardinal ; one Prime Minister ; 
 two Governor-Generals of India ; four Cabinet 
 Ministers ; and one Lord Chancellor.^ It is 
 evident therefore that personality had a larger 
 influence in forming the character of Charles 
 Wordsworth than scholarship although, of 
 course, his scholarship was first-rate. I may say 
 here, that there was one regret that Bishop 
 Wordsworth expressed which is worthy of being 
 noted. He says : 
 
 " I have always regretted that I did not make more use 
 of the * Union * — our Debating Society — as an instrument 
 of education. I was elected a member in my second 
 term, and I put down a question for discussion, * Was 
 
 ^Annals of my Early Life, 1 806-1 846, by Charles Wordsworth, 
 D.D. Second Edition, London, 1891, 171. 
 
Its Influence. 115 
 
 the dissolution of monasteries by Henry VIII. justifi- 
 able ? ' which was chosen, and was to come on after the 
 Easter vacation. My principal opponent was Wrangham 
 of Brasenose, the clever son of Archdeacon Wrangham, 
 and a double-first-class man. I believe I succeeded 
 fairly well ; Herman Merivale, I remember, told me I had 
 given signs of promise ; but I never spoke again, except 
 on one or two occasions about matters of business." * 
 
 Of the influences that entered into the 
 character of Sir Walter Scott during his under- 
 graduate career, the personal were more valu- 
 able than any other. He went to the university 
 without preparation in Greek, and, through 
 being far inferior to his fellow-students, he 
 conceived a contempt for the language. He 
 also forswore Latin for no other reason, he 
 says, than that it was akin to Greek ! Mathe- 
 matics he began with all the *' ardor of novelty " 
 but the tutor was old, and the class small, and 
 his ardor soon vanished. *' To sum up my 
 academic studies,'' he writes, ** I attended the 
 class in history .... and, so far as I re- 
 member, no others except those of civil and 
 municipal law.'* As far as scholarship went he 
 received only a *' superficial smattering," but 
 in college he became intimate with John Irving, 
 
 »/^jV., 48. 
 
ii6 The American College. 
 
 with whom every Saturday and more frequently 
 during certain vacations, he used to retire to 
 SaHsbury Crags with three or four books from 
 the library which they read together. Their 
 special favorites were romances of knight- 
 errantry. Irving remarks that, notwithstand- 
 ing the vast number that they read in this way, 
 Scott would remember whole pages having 
 particular interest, and could repeat them 
 weeks after the reading. Soon they began to 
 invent and recite to each other adventures of 
 knights-errant. Later their passion for romance 
 led them to learn Italian together. In this 
 friendship lay a part of the foundation of Scott's 
 future greatness.^ 
 
 It has long seemed to me that Macaulay 
 ought to have gone to Oxford rather than Cam- 
 bridge. He should have gone to the univer- 
 sity where the classics were more at home, and 
 the sciences and mathematics less at home, 
 than they were at Cambridge. A greater 
 study of the classics would have proved more 
 valuable than the small study of the sciences. 
 To be sure we can say that Macaulay needed 
 
 * Lockhart's Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, 31-33, 95- 
 103. 
 
Its Influence. n; 
 
 a mathematical and scientific training, and 
 if he had been born fifty years later than he 
 was, he would probably have been obliged 
 to receive it, and, receiving it, he would haye 
 become a more careful historian. But great as 
 was the effect of the studies of Cambridge upon 
 Macaulay, it was a Cambridge society which 
 left the most conspicuous marks upon his mind. 
 Frank, genial, with a passion for friendships 
 and for conversation, he shone the brightest in 
 the Union Debating Society. His friends 
 made him. He went to Cambridge a Tory; 
 he left Cambridge a Whig because of the in- 
 fluence of Charles Austin. ^ 
 
 Although Mr. Ruskin was known through- 
 out his early years as '* A graduate of Oxford," 
 yet Oxford had apparently a very slight influ- 
 ence upon him. He wrote bad Latin; in 
 Greek he was deficient ; his divinity, philsophy, 
 and mathematics were of the sort to give him 
 a double-fourth ; but he owed more, as he 
 owed much, to Osborne Gordon and to Hard- 
 ing who were his teachers and his masters.^ 
 
 Dean Stanley, too, received large good 
 
 'J. C. Morison's, Thomas B. Macaulay, 7-12. 
 
 ^ CoUingwood's The Life and Work of John Ruskin, 92-120. 
 
iiS The American College. 
 
 through the scholarship of Balliol College, 
 Oxford, but larger advantages he received 
 through the inspirations of personal friendship. 
 It is probable that the best good that came 
 into the life of Stanley came into it before he 
 went to Oxford, as every one knows who has 
 read the life of the great Rugby master. But 
 of his life, both at Rugby and at Oxford, the 
 words that Stanley spoke at Baltimore, in 1878, 
 may be true : 
 
 " The lapse of years has only served to deepen in me 
 the conviction that no gift can be more valuable than 
 the recollection and the inspiration of a great character 
 working on our own. I hope that you may all experi- 
 ence this at some time of your life, as I have done." * 
 
 In the life of one who was both a foreigner 
 and an American, Louis Agassiz, the combined 
 advantages of scholarship and of friendship 
 are illustrated. 
 
 In his nineteenth year, in 1826, he went to Heidel- 
 berg University, having already spent two years at Zu- 
 rich. " There he made acquaintances which influenced 
 him as much as he could be influenced for the rest of his 
 life His studies took a more decided direction toward 
 natural history, under the leadership of Professors Tiede- 
 
 * Life and Correspondence of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley ^ by R. E. 
 Prothero, 140. 
 
Its Influence. 119 
 
 mann, Leuckart, Bischoff, and H. G. Bronn. While 
 attending the lectures of these men Agassiz became 
 acquainted with Alexander Braun and Karl Schimper, 
 two very brilliant botanical students ; and they very soon 
 became congenial and inseparable companions, not only 
 during their courses at Heidelberg and afterwards at 
 Munich, but even during the first decade after leaving 
 the universities. The vacations Agassiz passed at the 
 home of Braun, in Carlsruhe, and together they ram- 
 bled through the forests and fields, ransacking every cor- 
 ner where plants or animals were to be found. In the 
 house they had special rooms devoted to dissections, 
 true laboratories ; here they brought their specimens, 
 and for hours together discussed and theorized on all 
 kinds of natural history subjects." ^ 
 
 In 1828, these friends went together to 
 Munich. 
 
 " He was there a most happy and successful young man, 
 using all the scientific resources existing in that large and 
 progressive city ; drawing round him comrades of the 
 University, and even professors ; and receiving visits 
 from naturalists of renown, including the great anato- 
 mist, Meckel. . . . Agassiz was the most prominent 
 among the students. His acquaintance was courted by 
 all. He was especially considered with much pride by 
 the Swiss students, and was welcome both in the rooms 
 and yards of the University, and at the students' clubs 
 . . . and fencing rooms." ^ 
 
 * Life^ Letters, and Works of Louis Agassiz^ by Jules Marcou, 
 i. 16-17, abridged. 2 /^/^,^ 25. 
 
I20 The American College. 
 
 Cuvier was the only man who exerted a 
 scientific and personal influence over Agassiz ; 
 from him, and from him alone, Agassiz would 
 accept advice and be guided in his work. He 
 recognized in him his master, and the young 
 charmer of Switzerland found in him another 
 more powerful than himself, and especially 
 more practical in his life and work. At first 
 the formal politeness of Cuvier chilled him, 
 and he says : *' I would gladly go away were I 
 not held fast by the wealth of material of which 
 I can avail myself for instruction.''^ But this 
 first impression soon passed away, and an un- 
 bounded admiration replaced it. 
 
 The late President Robinson of Brown Uni- 
 versity says of his college life : 
 
 " The most profitable portion of my college life was 
 its .last year, under the instruction of President Way- 
 land. He was then in the ripe fulness of his powers. 
 His specialty as a teacher was moral science, though 
 he also taught political economy. But the latter inter- 
 ested him only theoretically ; the former, practically and 
 intensely. His strong sense of justice and his profound 
 love of truth made him a most impressive teacher of 
 ethics, — the most impressive I have ever known ; and 
 his keen sense of humor, his quick wit, his appreciation 
 
 » Ibid., 43. 
 
Its Influence. 121 
 
 of wit in others, always made his recitation room a 
 very lively place. He was no metaphysician ; his moral 
 science, even in its distinctively theoretic portions, was 
 more practical than metaphysical, no part of it resting 
 on any metaphysical system, avowed or implied. When 
 I was his pupil, mental philosophy, even on its psycho- 
 logical side, had received from him only casual attention. 
 His treatise on * Intellectual Philosophy,' was written after 
 I had passed from under him, and years after his views 
 of moral science had become inflexibly fixed. Nor 
 was he widely read in the science of ethics. Allusions 
 in his lecture-room to authors whose views differed from 
 his own were extremely rare. He had thought out his 
 ethical principles for himself, and his conclusions were 
 deep and strong, and rooted in the very depths of his 
 being. Above all men whom I ever knew, he was him- 
 self the embodiment of what he taught. Clear and ana- 
 lytic in his own thinking, he insisted on analyzed and 
 logical thought in his pupils. Possessed of a stature and 
 a muscular development and a physiognomy that would 
 have made him an admirable model for a Jupiter Tonans, 
 and animated by a spirit that lifted him above everything 
 selfish and mean, he succeeded beyond every other col- 
 lege president of his time, I suspect, in impressing him- 
 self and his sentiments on all who came under his 
 instruction." * 
 
 The greatest influence of Yale College upon 
 the elder Silliman was the personality of the 
 
 ^ Autobiography of Ezekiel Gilman Robinson^ edited by E. H. 
 Johnson, 16-17. 
 
122 The American College. 
 
 elder President Dwight, who came to the col- 
 lege during Silliman's senior year. Up to 
 this time he had attained a respectable rank 
 in his classes, and was equally able in all de- 
 partments of college work. But President 
 Dwight's vigorous and animated discussions 
 in the lecture-room and pulpit opened to his 
 admiring pupil a new world of thought. Of 
 recitations conducted by him, Silliman says in 
 his journal, in October of his senior year : 
 
 " Our recitations are now becoming very interesting, by 
 the useful and entertaining instruction which is commu- 
 nicated in them by the President. He is truly a great 
 man, and it is very rare that so many excellent natural 
 and acquired endowments are to be found in one person. 
 When I hear him speak, it makes me feel like a very in- 
 significant being, and almost prompts me to despair ; but 
 I am reencouraged when I reflect that he was once as 
 ignorant as myself, and that learning is only to be ac- 
 quired by long and assiduous application." * 
 
 Personal influences are the most striking in 
 the character and career of Samuel F. B. 
 Morse, and these influences came from three 
 men in succession. Like Benjamin Silliman, 
 he fell under the magnetic power of President 
 Dwight. This great man was an inspiration 
 
 * Benjamin Silliman ^ by Fisher, i., 32. 
 
Its Influence. 123 
 
 to young Morse in the class-room, where he 
 taught inductive philosophy, but his influence 
 was still greater through the intimate and con- 
 fidential relations which afterwards existed be- 
 tween them when Morse became the President's 
 amanuensis. The inspirations received from 
 President Dwight prepared his mind to receive 
 and utilize the impressions which he got under 
 the instruction of Professor Jeremiah Day. 
 The study of electricity and physics under Day 
 produced a great influence upon him person- 
 ally, and in subsequent years led to applications 
 of the principles of physics of priceless worth. 
 But there was a third man in Yale College to 
 whom Morse was indebted for the influences 
 which led to his great invention. That man 
 was Benjamin Silliman himself, who long held 
 the front rank among men of science. Silliman 
 was at once his teacher and friend. Morses 
 letters at the time speak frequently of his 
 interest in chemistry and of regard for his 
 instructor in that branch.^ 
 
 College life and influences altered the whole 
 career of Henry Ward Beecher. When a boy 
 he had decided to be a sailor. His father 
 
 ' Prime's Life of Samuel F, B. Morse^ l6-22. 
 
124 The American College. 
 
 said: **Of course you do not want to be a 
 common sailor?" and Henry replied: ''No, 
 sir, I want to be a midshipman and after that 
 a commodore." His father told him that in 
 that case he must study navigation and mathe- 
 matics. Accordingly he went to Amherst 
 where new ambitions were awakened. His 
 instructor in mathematics was Mr. Fitzgerald, 
 whose manly ways captivated him and to 
 whom, — as he himself has said, — he owed his 
 habit of becoming well grounded in facts for 
 the formation of opinions, and his power of 
 sustaining, freely and good-naturedly, his po- 
 sition in the face of opposition. He followed 
 his master's dictum : '' You must not only 
 know, but you must know that you know/'^ 
 
 The college life, and, of course, the whole 
 life of Prescott, the historian, was altered by 
 the injury to his sight incurred while he was a 
 student. Of his days at Cambridge, George 
 Ticknor says : 
 
 " At the time when William thus gayly entered upon his 
 collegiate career, he had, thanks to the excellent training 
 he had received from Dr. Gardiner, a good taste formed 
 and forming in English literature, and he probably knew 
 
 * Howard's Henry Ward Beccher, 27-33. 
 
Its Influence. 125 
 
 more of Latin and Greek — not of Latin and Greek litera- 
 ture, but of the languages of Greece and Rome — than 
 most of those who entered college with him knew when 
 they were graduated. But, on the other hand, he had no 
 liking for mathematics, and never acquired any ; nor did 
 he ever like metaphysical discussions and speculations. 
 His position in his class was, of course, determined by 
 these circumstances, and he was willing that it should be. 
 But he did not like absolutely to fail pf a respectable 
 rank. It would not have been becoming the character 
 of a cultivated gentleman, to which at that time he more 
 earnestly aspired than to any other ; nor would it have 
 satisfied the just expectations of his family, which always 
 had much influence with him. It was difficult for him, 
 however, to make the efforts and the sacrifices indispen- 
 sable to give him the position of a real scholar. He 
 adopted, indeed, rules for the hours, and even the min- 
 utes, that he would devote to each particular study ; but 
 he was so careful never to exceed them, that it was plain 
 his heart was not in the matter, and that he could not 
 reasonably hope to succeed by such enforced and me- 
 chanical arrangements. Still, he had already a strong 
 will concealed under a gay and light-hearted exterior. 
 This saved him from many dangers. He was always able 
 to stop short of what he deemed flagrant excesses, and 
 to keep within the limits, though rather loose ones, which 
 he had prescribed to himself. His standard for the 
 character of a gentleman varied, no doubt, at this period, 
 and sometimes was not so high on the score of morals as 
 it should have been : but he always acted up to it, and 
 never passed the world's line of honor, or exposed him- 
 self to academical censures by passing the less flexible line 
 
126 The American College. 
 
 drawn by college rules. He was, however, willing to run 
 very near to both of them/' * 
 
 And also Mr. Ticknor says : 
 
 " He received, in the latter part of his college career, 
 some of the customary honors of successful scholarship, 
 and at its close a Latin poem was assigned to him as his 
 exercise for Commencement. 
 
 " No honor, however, that he received at college, was 
 valued so much by him, or had been so much an object of 
 his ambition, as his admission to the Society of the Phi 
 Beta Kappa which was composed, in its theory and pre- 
 tensions, and generally in its practices, of a moderate 
 number of the best scholars in the two upper classes. 
 As the selection was made by the undergraduates them- 
 selves, and as a single black-ball excluded the candidate, 
 it was a real distinction ; and Prescott always liked to 
 stand well with his fellows, later in life no less than in 
 his youth. From his own experience, therefore, he re- 
 garded this old and peculiar society with great favor, 
 and desired at all periods to maintain its privileges and 
 influence in the University." * 
 
 Scores of men now living, in speaking of 
 their college careers, have assessed the per- 
 sonality of teachers and students in the for- 
 mation of character and in the determination 
 of a career as of supreme value. The presi- 
 dent of one of our great universities says : 
 
 ^ Life of William Hickling Prescott^ by George Ticknor, 15-16. 
 ^ Ibid. 23-24. 
 
Its Influence. 127 
 
 ''The moral impulse to manly and laborious 
 lives was probably the best thing we got from 
 college." 
 
 It can not, also, be denied that the college 
 presents opportunities for the acquiring of 
 habits of dignified leisure. An Oxford Don 
 says : 
 
 " It is a great thing to be able to loaf \vell : it softens 
 the manners and does not allow them to be fierce ; and 
 there is no place for it like the streams and gardens of 
 an ancient University." ^ 
 
 The words of a '* Mere Don " are not to be 
 interpreted too seriously. But if the college 
 is a good place to learn to work hard, it is 
 also a good place to learn how to rest and to] 
 recreate oneself well. 
 
 If the American college has been the mother 
 of men, rather than the nurse of scholarship, 
 it has, in making men and in conveying in- 
 struction, done a work of tremendous signifi- 
 cance. This work is partially ethical, partially 
 religious, partially scholastic. It is a work 
 which may be said to be embodied in the 
 general broadening, deepening, and enriching 
 of character. A well-known editor writes to me : 
 
 ^ Aspects of Modern Oxford ^ by a Mere Don, 133. 
 
128 The American College. 
 
 " As I look back to it now, the only thing that I re- 
 member with very great definiteness, and am especially 
 grateful for, is the general broadening influence which 
 followed the finding out of what men had done in the 
 world in one department of learning after another. So 
 that by the time I had finished my college course I had 
 conceived a more or less well proportioned idea of the 
 great things the human race has achieved, and I had my 
 curiosity aroused to learn something. Unless my memory 
 is treacherous, I can truthfully say that I knew nothing 
 of very much value when my college course was finished ;. 
 nothing except that I had this sort of chart of the world's 
 great work." 
 
 But the college has done a very special 
 work in developing character along ethical and 
 religious lines. Another college president re- 
 marks : ** The college enlarged the range of 
 my sympathies and my views of life, God, man, 
 and duty, turning, as I trust, my pietism into 
 piety.'* So also says Dr. Henry M. Field, in 
 speaking of Albert Hopkins: ''In leading us 
 among the stars he led us to the Creator and 
 Ruler of all.'* 
 
 It is the testimony of most college gradu- 
 ates that, of the two elements which represent 
 so large a part of the college, — instruction and 
 personality, — personality is by far of superior 
 importance. When a distinguished college 
 
Its Influence. 129 
 
 president says : *' The best thing a college, as 
 a rule, does for a young man, is to bring him 
 into contact and under the inspiration of other 
 men of a higher type than he is otherwise 
 likely to meet ; " and when a great preacher 
 says : '' While books can teach, personality 
 only can educate ; " and when an able mathe- 
 matician says : *' The greatest service to me 
 was in bringing me into contact with educated 
 men and offering me the appliances necessary 
 to prosecute my studies ; " and when Dr. Field 
 says: *'The statements of President Hopkins 
 were as goads in the hands of a master to 
 prick up sluggish minds ; " or a great editor : 
 '* The best thing which Williams College did 
 for me was to bring me within the scope of 
 Dr. Mark Hopkins's inspirational teaching," 
 they are simply declaring that personality is 
 the greatest power of college, as it is of all, 
 life. This impression is still further empha- 
 sized by the words of a graduate of Amherst : 
 
 " I can say, without an instant's hesitation, that the 
 one influence in my college life to which I owed more 
 than to anything else, was the personal pressure upon 
 me of Professor Julius H. Seelye, afterwards President 
 Seelye, and I think there are a good many of my college- 
 mates who would make the same statement. I do not 
 
ijo The American College. 
 
 mean to underrate the work done in the class-rooni m a 
 purely professional capacity.'* 
 
 The remark is often made, that students are 
 educated as much by each other as by their 
 professors. The influence of students over 
 each other at Yale is especially strong. I re- 
 cently asked an officer of Yale College which 
 had the stronger influence over the students, 
 — the students or the professors. Prompt was 
 the answer: **The students." Whether the 
 answer was a true or a false interpretation I 
 do not know. Whether this ought to be the 
 fact may be open to question. But it is clear 
 that the attrition of dififerent minds of the 
 same general character upon each other is of 
 great value. It is certainly significant that a 
 character so strong and so individual as that 
 of Dr. Richard Salter Storrs found its best in- 
 fluence in these common relations. For Dr. 
 Storrs writes : 
 
 ^'' I think the best thing I found in college life was 
 X / the intimate contact with fine minds of class-mates. I 
 ^ shall never cease to be grateful for the educating influ- 
 ence thus received." 
 
 Another graduate of Amherst says : 
 
Its Influence. 131 
 
 " The best thing that I received in college was the en- 
 couragement and help that came from good fellowships. 
 I was brought into relations with other serious and earnest 
 young men who had impulses before them to do good, 
 and who were eager for the acquisition of what would 
 help them. Those associations were a support. They 
 helped me to study in literary work and elsewhere to 
 good purpose. I enjoyed very much my membership in 
 college societies. By association with certain particular 
 friends I could carry on certain scientific studies better 
 than I could alone. I could go about the country bot- 
 anizing and geologizing, and I made myself a part of the 
 great sodality of letters which can not be overvalued. 
 . . . Civilization is a product, not of isolation, but of 
 the crowding of population, and the civilizing influences 
 of the humanities is in good part due to the fellowships 
 in which it is cultivated.*' 
 
 The influence of students is constantly rec- 
 ognized in respect to its less favorable aspects. 
 But it is not so often recognized in respect to 
 its higher and nobler relations. It is never to 
 be forgotten that humanity educates humanity, 
 and personality disciplines personality. 
 
 Outside of the value of the curriculum and 
 the value of friendships, one of the chief values 
 of the college course as contributing to the 
 worth of Hfe lies in the general reading for 
 which it gives an opportunity. Many of those 
 who have found great worth in the college 
 
132 The American College. 
 
 course through the element of friendship, have 
 also acknowledged that in general reading they 
 received large advantages. This was the fact 
 with Carlyle and De Quincey, with Shelley and 
 Chalmers, with Webster and Scott It is 
 probable, also, that this was the chief value of 
 the course to such men as Emerson, Haw- 
 thorne, Lowell, and Sumner. 
 
 Of De Quincey's Oxford life but little is 
 known. During this period he was quiet and 
 studious, devoting himself principally to the 
 society of a German named Schwartzburg, 
 from whom he learned Hebrew, and acquired 
 an intimate acquaintance with German litera- 
 ture. But of greater importance was the sys- 
 tematic attention which he began to bestow 
 on English literature in the last years of his 
 course. By his reading of English poets and 
 prose writers he was deeply affected. Though 
 fond of the older writers, he was particularly 
 enthusiastic over the writers of his own time. 
 At Oxford De Quincey began the use of 
 opium to relieve himself from the effects of 
 neuralgia, but he was not yet, nor for some 
 years to come was he to be, a slave to opium. 
 In a fit of shyness, or through some personal 
 
Its Influence. 133 
 
 offence, he never presented himself for his final 
 examination for his degree, and at last sud- 
 denly disappeared from Oxford. 
 
 Of the college course of Ralph Waldo Em- 
 erson, his son. Dr. Edward W. Emerson, writes 
 me as follows : 
 
 " I can not answer your question fully as to what in- 
 fluence my father believed his college life had upon 
 him. His instinct was strong in favor of the college 
 course for all serious boys, and he thought it worth much 
 sacrifice. I cared so little for college, as I found it, and 
 would so gladly have left it any day to go into the army, 
 that his desire that I should stay (apart from the army 
 question) surprised me, for he did not highly prize the 
 men and the methods of Harvard at that time. Indeed, 
 I know that he said shortly before that time, to a youth 
 consulting him on this subject, that there were many 
 better chances than college ; an exploring expedition, for 
 instance, or the working under any great master, yet for 
 most boys the college offered, on the whole, the best 
 chance for culture. What I believe he thought of as 
 valuable in the college was just what he had found there; 
 the cloistered life, with the freest access to books, no out- 
 side exacting duties, and the chance to meet a very few 
 good or strong men among the professors or the stu- 
 dents. The social advantages, also, to a shy youth un- 
 used to society and awkward, I know he prized, and he 
 often referred to the fine manners and speech of some 
 of the students. Southerners and others, as interesting 
 and valuable to the more rustic youth." 
 
134 The American College. 
 
 Hawthorne, too, was a character who nat- 
 urally would be little influenced by the studies 
 or the personal associations of college life. 
 His countenance was winning and his manner 
 gentle ; he would have won great popularity, 
 but, as one of his classmates says, '* he dwelt 
 in obscurest recesses of thought which his 
 most intimate friends were not permitted to 
 penetrate." Jonathan Cilley was probably his 
 most intimate friend In that great class of 1825 
 at Bowdoln, and yet Cilley says : '* I loved 
 Hawthorne, I admired him, and yet I did not 
 know him. He lived in an Isolated world of 
 thought and imagination which he never per- 
 mitted me to enter." His son says of him : 
 
 " Nathaniel Hawthorne's academic career shows him 
 to have been independent, self-contained, and disposed 
 to follow his own humor and judgment, without undue 
 reference to the desires or regulations of the college 
 faculty. His friends were men who afterwards attained 
 a more or less distinguished position in the world, — 
 Franklin Pierce, Horatio Bridge, and Longfellow. He 
 evinced no unnatural and feverish thirst for college 
 honors, and never troubled himself to sit up all night 
 studying, with a wet towel round his head and a cup of 
 coffee at his elbow ; but neither did he see fit to go to 
 the other extreme. He assimilated the knowledge that 
 he cared for with extreme ease, and took just enough 
 
Its Influence. 135 
 
 of the rest to get along with ; in this respect, as in 
 most others, displaying a delectable maturity of judg- 
 ment and imperturbable common-sense. He perceived 
 that the value of college to a man — or, at any rate, to 
 him — was not so much in the special things that were 
 taught as in the general acquaintance it brought about 
 with the various branches of learning ; and still more, in 
 the enlargement which it incidentally gives to one's 
 understanding of foreign things and persons. At no 
 time during his residence at Bowdoin did he have the 
 reputation of being a recluse, or exclusive ,^it was his 
 purpose and practice to be like his fellows, and (barring 
 certain private and temperamental reservations) to do as 
 they did. He steered equally clear of the Scylla of prig- 
 dom, and the Charybdis of recklessness ; in a word, he 
 had the mental and moral strength to be precisely his 
 natural and unforced self. Within certain limits he was 
 facile, easy-going, convivial ; but beyond those limits he 
 was no more to be moved than the Rock of Gibraltar or 
 the North Pole. He played cards, had * wines ' in his 
 room, and went off fishing and shooting with Bridge 
 when the faculty thought he was at his books ; but he 
 maintained without effort his place in the recitation- 
 room, and never defrauded the college government of 
 any duty which he thought they had a right to claim 
 from him. His personal influence over his college 
 friends was great ; and he never abused it or employed 
 it for unworthy ends." * 
 
 The opportunity which Harvard opened to 
 
 ' JViithaniel Hawthorne and his Wife, by J Lilian Hawthorne, i., 
 119-20. 
 
13^ The American College. 
 
 Lowell for reading and for the general enrich- 
 ment of culture represents the chief value of 
 the college course to this great American. 
 Mr. Norton says of him that he did not find 
 the regular discipline of the required studies 
 suited to his taste.^ He neglected the required 
 tasks, and often substituted for them some- 
 thing not only of more intrinsic worth, but in 
 particular of more worth to himself. On ac- 
 count of his negligence he fell under the ban 
 of college discipline and suffered suspension. 
 The period of his suspension he spent at Con- 
 cord. 
 
 The opportunity, too, which college gives 
 for general reading and culture was of greater 
 value to Charles Sumner than any other ad- 
 vantage which Harvard held forth. He utterly 
 failed in mathematics ; he had no faculty for 
 the sciences. This deficiency lowered his 
 general standing ; and he therefore studied 
 such text-books as he chose and neglected 
 the rest. In the classics, however, he stood 
 near or at the head of his class. He had no 
 rival in his devotion to miscellaneous litera- 
 
 * Letters of James Russell Lowell^ edited by Charles Eliot Norton, 
 i., 26. 
 
Its Influence. 137 
 
 ture ; when he left college no student in his 
 class had read so widely. His memory both 
 of thought and language was remarkable. He 
 could, too, with ease imitate an author's style. 
 His early conversation and letters, as his later, 
 were full of quotations.^ 
 
 The worth of the college through the oppor- 
 tunity which it gives for reading and for study 
 in lines of the student's own choosing repre- 
 sents a great advantage. The college course 
 is usually made with reference to the average 
 man, but the average man never exists. Not 
 infrequently the student is of the opinion that 
 he is a better judge of what is of importance 
 to himself than any one else, and he follows the 
 determination of his own judgment. As has 
 been indicated, the studies which Darwin 
 chose for himself at Cambridge were of 
 greater value than the studies which the uni- 
 versity offered to him. The studies also which 
 Goethe chose for himself at Strassburg were 
 of greater value to him than the studies which 
 his professors would have selected. Men so 
 diverse as Edward Irving and Thackeray re- 
 
 * Meinfiir and Letters of Charles Sumner^ by Edward L. Pierce, 
 i., 46-48. 
 
138 The American College. 
 
 ceived greater advantage from their own se- 
 lected reading than from the courses that their 
 professors would have set for them. 
 
 Edward Irving was not a diligent scholar 
 during his days at Edinburgh University. He 
 read, however, a great deal, ranging from 
 Hookers Ecclesiastical Polity to Arabian 
 Nights, and '' sundry books with forgotten but 
 suspicious titles." In his waist-coat pocket he 
 carried about a miniature copy of Ossian, pas- 
 sages from which he read or recited in his 
 walks in the country, or delivered *'with 
 sonorous elocution and vehement gesticula- 
 tion " for the benefit of his companions. This 
 is the first indication of his oratorical gifts, 
 which were further developed by his participa- 
 tion in the college debating society, of which 
 he was a member.^ 
 
 But at the present time it is to be said that 
 the curriculum is far less of the race-course, 
 in which all members are disciplined, than it is 
 a pathway which the student chooses for him- 
 self under the guidance of competent in- 
 structors. It is a mountain path which he 
 climbs for himself. Therefore the occasion 
 
 ^ Mrs. Oliphant's Life of Edward Irving, 34-37. 
 
Its Influence. 139 
 
 for the student of to-day choosing a certain 
 course in college for himself, apart from the 
 counsel of his official superiors, is very slight. 
 It is a happy augury for the future of the 
 American college, and so for the future of 
 American life, that the studies which students 
 pursue to-day have a most direct and vital 
 relation to their whole career. 
 
 There is an element of influence in college 
 life which was formerly of greater power than 
 it now possesses. This element is the literary 
 society. Not a few men confess their indebt- 
 edness to it. Edward Irving, William Ellery 
 Channing, John H. Raymond the President 
 of Vassar College, President Barnard of Colum- 
 bia, each found a large element of their train- 
 ing in the literary society. Of President 
 Raymond it is said : 
 
 At the beginning of his course he received an honor 
 for scholarship and, feeling satisfied, he did not exert 
 himself further, and dropped gradually, until he became 
 thirteenth in his class. He then grew reckless in study, 
 and also became generally disorderly, — so disorderly, in 
 fact, that in his senior year he was dismissed. As he fell 
 from regular college work, he devoted himself to general 
 reading and became, as he says, " a boyish oracle on sub- 
 jects of general literature and criticism." He wrote 
 
HO The American College. 
 
 much and wrote as well as he could, but his chosen 
 arena was the literary society, debates in which com- 
 manded the strength he could command. He became 
 deeply interested in oratory. He says : " It was my 
 constant habit while in college to spend a part of the 
 day several times each week in the civil and criminal 
 courts, studying the style of debate and delivery in 
 vogue among the lawyers. For a similar purpose, in 
 part, I frequented the theatre, and became a sort of con- 
 noisseur in theatrical criticism. Shakespeare I studied 
 with a laborious assiduity and genuine relish, and this 
 I have never regretted. Such was the effect of my 
 efforts that I overcame in a great measure a natural 
 bashfulness, which I had supposed would always unfit 
 me for public speaking, and my mind was entirely di- 
 verted from the study of medicine, which had been my 
 first choice for a profession, and set on that of law.** ^ 
 
 President Barnard also says of himself : 
 
 " As I look back upon it, no part of my training at Yale 
 College seems to me to have been more beneficial than 
 that which I derived from the practice of writing and 
 speaking in the literary society to which I belonged. 
 The general literary societies, open to students of all the 
 classes, and numbering one or two hundred members 
 each, were maintained at that time with great enthusiasm. 
 I am told that they are now extinct at New Haven. 
 They have been supplanted, I suppose, by the multi- 
 plicity of small secret societies which decorate them- 
 selves with Greek-letter titles, but which — if they are 
 
 * Life of John H. Raymond, 47-56. 
 
Its Influence. 141 
 
 literary at all, as they possibly are, though I doubt it — 
 can never furnish the stimulus of a large audience. I 
 can only regret the change. It seems to me that, with 
 the loss of her literary societies, half the glory of Yale 
 has departed from her. In the old Linonia Hall I spent 
 many of the most profitable hours of my college life ; 
 and I heard debates there which for interest and brill- 
 iancy were equal to any at which I have since been 
 privileged to be present in assemblies of much superior 
 dignity. There were some men of my time who made 
 no very serious struggle for grade scholarship, and yet 
 would sometimes ^ come out strong' in the society. For 
 the sake of students of this class, who will always be 
 more or less numerous in every college, I should esteem 
 it a great advantage if the old societies could be resusci- 
 tated." ' 
 
 As I have been reading the lives and study- 
 ing the careers of hundreds of men to discover 
 the effects of their college lives upon them, I 
 find there are certain men who became great, 
 upon whom the college had no, or at least, 
 only a very small, effect. All those whom I 
 name are no longer living. Possibly there are 
 some living of whom the same might be said. 
 But of the men over whom the college had a 
 very small influence, I would name, Buchanan, 
 Thomas H. Benton, John Randolph, John 
 
 ^ Memoirs of Frederick A , P. Barnard, by John Fulton, 36. 
 
142 The American College. 
 
 Jay, Timothy Pickering;, George Ticknor, and 
 Dr. O. W. Holmes. The historian of Spanish 
 literature says of his life at Dartmouth : 
 
 *' I had a good room, and led a very pleasant life, 
 with good and respectable peo])le, all more or less con- 
 nected with the college ; but I learnt very little. The 
 instructors generally were not as good as my father had 
 been, and I knew it ; so I took no great interest in study. 
 I remember liking to read Horace, and I enjoyed calcu- 
 lating the great eclipse of 1806, and making a projection 
 of it, which turned out nearly right. This, however, 
 with a tolerably good knowledge of the higher algebra, 
 was all I ever acquired in mathematics, and it was soon 
 forgotten. 
 
 " I was idle in college, and learnt very little ; but I 
 led a happy life, and ran into no wildness or excesses. 
 Indeed, in that village life, there was small opportunity 
 for such things, and those with whom I lived and asso- 
 ciated, both in college and in the society of the place, 
 were excellent people." ^ 
 
 The education of George Ticknor, I will not 
 say was completed, but it was in a sense be- 
 gun, in private tuition, taken after his college 
 graduation, in Boston, and it was continued 
 abroad. He was among that choice number 
 of Americans who went to Gottingen in the 
 first quarter of the present century. 
 
 ' Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor, eighth edition, 
 i., 7. 
 
Its Influence. 143 
 
 James Buchanan graduated from Dickinson 
 College in 1809, but of his college he seems 
 to have had a poor opinion. For he writes : 
 
 " The college was in a wretched condition, and I have 
 often regretted that I had not been sent to some other 
 institution." * 
 
 In college he was a hard student, but full of 
 mischief. At one time he was nearly sus- 
 pended, but was finally allowed to remain 
 under a promise to do better. This promise 
 he kept, but be it said that at graduation he 
 was a candidate for honors in scholarship, yet 
 failed to get them on account of his previous 
 disorderly conduct. 
 
 I can fiot believe that college life had much 
 influence upon the character or career of Oliver 
 Wendell Holmes. A year before he gradu- 
 ated he wrote to his friend Barnes as follows : 
 
 " To be sure I have altered a little, since I was at An- 
 dover. I wear my gills erect, and do not talk sentiment. 
 I court my hair a little more carefully, and button my 
 coat a little tighter ; my treble has broken down into a 
 bass, but I still have very little the look of manhood. I 
 smoke most devoutly, and sing most unmusically, have 
 written poetry for an Annual, and seen my literary bant- 
 lings swathed in green silk and reposing in the draw- 
 ^ Curtis' Life of Jajues Btuhanan^ 4. 
 
144 The American College. 
 
 ing-room. I am totally undecided what to study ; it 
 will be law or physick, for I can not say that I think the 
 trade of authorship quite adapted to this meridian." * 
 
 In December, 1828, he also wrote to 
 Barnes : 
 
 "'What do I do?* I read a little, study a little, 
 smoke a little, and eat a good deal ! * What do I think ? ' 
 I think that 's a deuced hard question. * What have I 
 been doing these three years ? ' Why, I have been grow- 
 ing a little in body, and I hope in mind ; I have been 
 learning a little of almost everything, and a good deal of 
 some things." ^ 
 
 It IS clear that Holmes did not come into 
 his second intellectual birth in Cambridge. 
 That experience he passed through in Paris, 
 where he pursued his medical studies with 
 great vigor, and laid the foundations not only 
 for his work as a teacher, but also as an au- 
 thor. 
 
 If the college had small influence over these 
 men the reason commonly given — that of youth- 
 fulness — is probably the correct one. They 
 were too young to receive the advantages of 
 a college training. I am sure that in general 
 the lack of value of a college course for a boy 
 
 * Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes^ by John T. Morse, 
 Jr., i., 55. ^ Ibid., 59. 
 
Its Influence. i45 
 
 arises from youthfulness, — whether that youth- 
 fulness be measured by lack of years or by the 
 lack of those virtues which constitute maturity. 
 Even the pranks and the vices of the college 
 course arise from this condition rather than 
 from malevolence or depravity. 
 
 Through each or all of these methods or 
 means which I have thus outlined and illus- 
 trated, the college has had a vital and lasting 
 effect upon the characters and careers of hun- 
 dreds and thousands of men. The influences 
 thus exerted over individuals has, by direct 
 and indirect methods, entered into the consti- 
 tution of American society and American life. 
 
 American life has thus been made more 
 worth the living. We lament that America is 
 not more scholarly ; but the greater part of the 
 scholarship that America does possess is de- 
 rived through the college and is fostered by 
 the college ; and no small share of the richest 
 and holiest part of American life, personal 
 character, has had its inspiration within college 
 walls. 
 
IV. 
 
 ITS INFLUENCE ILLUSTRATED IN 
 
 THE THREE OLDEST 
 
 COLLEGES. 
 
 ARVARD is two hundred and fifty years 
 old ; Yale two hundred ; and Prince- 
 ton one hundred and fifty. Harvard 
 is pre-eminently a college of New England, 
 Yale of the Western and Middle States, and 
 Princeton of the Middle States and of the 
 Southern. Harvard is a University, with 
 its professional schools approaching in impor- 
 tance to the College ; Yale is pre-eminently a 
 college, with the professional schools, except 
 its scientific and theological, comparatively 
 insignificant ; Princeton is pre-eminently a col- 
 lege notwithstanding its assumption of univer- 
 sity functions. Harvard is undenominational, 
 
 146 
 
Its Influence. 147 
 
 although some would call it Unitarian ; Yale is 
 as much Congregational as almost any college 
 can be, although some would call it un-denomi- 
 national; Princeton is essentially Presbyterian, 
 although its ecclesiastical relations with that 
 body are not organic. Harvard is often called 
 the Oxford of the New World, and Yale the 
 Cambridge. Princeton pretty closely corre- 
 sponds to a single one of the greater colleges 
 of the English University. 
 
 These three colleges have had a greater in- 
 fluence, in their combined six hundred years of 
 life, than any other three or possibly any 
 other three times three colleges in the United 
 States. The sphere and the agency of the in- 
 fluence of each of these colleges are manifold, 
 covering every vocation and opportunity for 
 the carrying on of the world's business. Yet 
 the influence of Harvard through the literature 
 which its graduates have created, the influence 
 of Yale through religious, educational, and 
 public leaders whom it has trained, and the 
 influence of Princeton through statesmen, 
 teachers, and ecclesiastics whom it has edu- 
 cated, have been pre-eminent. The names of 
 the graduates of Harvard which have be- 
 
 ^^^ LiaTJ^ 
 
148 The American College. 
 
 come illustrious in American literature are 
 far more eminent and far more numer- 
 ous than are found in the annals of any 
 other college. To call the roll of them is to 
 call the roll of the most famous poets, histori- 
 ans, and essayists. Yet one does not forget 
 that in other spheres Harvard has rendered 
 conspicuous service. Three of her graduates, 
 — although one, Hayes, was of the Law School 
 only, — have been presidents of the United 
 States, and two have been vice-presidents. 
 The list of her graduates who have served at 
 the Court of St. James' includes members of 
 the Adams family in three generations, and 
 also such names as Everett, Bancroft, Motley, 
 and Lowell. Great men whom she has trained, 
 who have become great in the service of other 
 colleges, are many. To Yale she has given 
 four presidents, to Amherst one, to Bowdoin 
 two, to Trinity one, to Haverford one, to 
 Hobart two, to Antioch three, to Columbia 
 one, and at least ten other presidents to as 
 many other institutions. 
 
 The greatest work of Yale for this country 
 has been done through the theologians and 
 educators whom she has helped to train. One 
 
Its Influence. 149 
 
 hesitates to fill pages with bare lists of names, 
 but from a long and honorable roll of theo- 
 logians one may select such names as Jonathan 
 Edwards, Joseph Bellamy, Samuel Hopkins, 
 John Smally, Nathaniel Emmons, Lyman 
 Beecher, Moses Stuart, Richard Salter Storrs, 
 — eloquent preacher, father of an eloquent 
 preacher, — John Pierpont, Bennet Tyler, Na- 
 thaniel W. Taylor, Gardiner Spring, Ashael 
 Nettleton, Elias Cornelius, William B. Sprague, 
 Theron Baldwin, John Todd, Horace Bushnell, 
 and the Dwights in three generations. 
 
 Yet, possibly, Yale delights more in being 
 known as the mother of colleges than as the 
 mother of theologians. Such names may be 
 misleading, yet there is much more reason for 
 Yale thus denominating herself than there is 
 in the case of most universities, for she has 
 furnished presidents for many colleges from 
 Massachusetts Bay to the Golden Gate. One 
 of her graduates was the first president of 
 Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth, Williams, 
 Hamilton, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, and of the 
 Universities which bear the name of Georgia, 
 Missouri, Mississippi, Wisconsin, and Cali- 
 
ISO The American College. 
 
 fornia. About one hundred of her sons have 
 been at the head of our colleges. 
 
 Mr. Richard H. Greene has prepared an in- 
 teresting table of the distinguished men calling 
 Yale their alma mater. This list contains the 
 name of i Vice-President of the United States, 
 17 Cabinet officers, i Chief Justice of the 
 United States, i Chief Justice of Canada, 2 
 national officers of the Hawaiian Islands, i 
 Minister Plenipotentiary from China to the 
 United States, 3 Judges of the United States 
 Supreme Court, i Surgeon-General of the 
 United States, 50 United States Senators, 20 
 United States District judges, i Circuit Judge 
 of the United States, 160 State judges, 4 
 chancellors, 22 Ministers Plenipotentiary of the 
 United States, 187 members of Congress, 40 
 State governors, and 92 college presidents.^ 
 
 The influence of Princeton seems to me to 
 have been pre-eminent in the field of political 
 and educational life. For in political life the 
 record of her sons is large and illustrious. It 
 includes i President of the United States, 3 
 Vice-Presidents, 4 justices of the Supreme 
 Court, 20 members of the Cabinet (including 
 
 * Steiner's History of Education in Connecticut^ 235. 
 
Its Influence. 151 
 
 5 Attorney-Generals), 171 members of Con- 
 gress, and 28 governors of States. But in 
 educational life her record approaches in emi- 
 nence to that of her next older sister. She 
 has been, in a peculiar sense, the alma mater of 
 some twenty-five other colleges ; and of her 
 graduates at least forty-three have been presi- 
 dents of colleges, and more than two hundred 
 of them teachers in other colleges. 
 
 The influence therefore of Yale in political 
 life, and of Princeton in ecclesiastical life, is 
 not, in my opinion, so great as is usually be- 
 lieved. The influence of Yale in ecclesiastical 
 life, and of* Princeton in political life, is greater 
 than is usually believed. Many of Princeton's 
 ecclesiastics have done their noblest work not 
 as ecclesiastics but as presidents and profes- 
 sors in colleges. The fame of the ecclesiastic 
 has been lost in the fame of the educator. 
 
 As I said in the beginning of this chapter, 
 Harvard is pre-eminently a college of New 
 England, Yale of the Western and Middle 
 States, and Princeton of the Middle States 
 and of the Southern. In the West the influ- 
 ence of Yale far exceeds that of Harvard. 
 Some of the chief facts relative to the present 
 
152 The American College 
 
 <^^ 
 
 residences of the living graduates of these two 
 oldest colleges are significant. 
 
 The directory of the living graduates of 
 Harvard College shows the number to be 
 5553. The directory of the living graduates 
 of Yale College shows the number to be 
 4618. Of the graduates of Harvard, more 
 than one half, 2908, live in Massachusetts. 
 Of the graduates of Yale, less than one fifth, 
 812, live in Connecticut. But be it said that 
 three times as many people live in Massachu- 
 setts as live in Connecticut. Of the Yale 
 graduates, also, less than one third, 141 7, live 
 in the State of New York. Slightly less than 
 one half of the graduates of Yale, 2229, live 
 in Connecticut and New York. In the New 
 England States are 3129 Harvard graduates, 
 and 1289 Yale graduates. 
 
 It is, therefore, evident that a large portion 
 of the Harvard men have their residence in the 
 State of their college or In the States imme- 
 diately surrounding. The frequent remark is 
 true that Harvard is a Massachusetts and a 
 New England college. But the preponder- 
 ance of Harvard men to Yale as residents of a 
 
Its Influence. 153 
 
 State or Territory ceases, with two or three 
 exceptions, on passing outside of New England. 
 Although the whole number of Harvard men 
 is greater by 800 than the whole number of 
 Yale men, yet, in the Middle States, Harvard 
 has only 1303, and Yale, 1986. In the State 
 of New York Harvard has 976 graduates, and 
 Yale 141 7. In Pennsylvania Yale has 312, 
 and Harvard, be it said, has three more than 
 312 ; but in New Jersey, Harvard's 23 seems 
 small when put by the side of Yale's 140. In 
 Delaware the number of graduates of both 
 colleges is commensurate with the size of 
 the State, Harvard having 2 and Yale 14. 
 This preponderance of Yale graduates still 
 holds good as one goes west. I have caused 
 additions to be made of the number of gradu- 
 ates of the two colleges found in each of the 
 States. In only two of the Western States do 
 I find a larger number of Harvard than of 
 Yale graduates, and one of these, California, 
 is a State so far west that we seldon think of 
 it as being west at all. The following are 
 the facts in these representative Common- 
 wealths : 
 
154 The American College. 
 
 State. 
 
 Harvard 
 Graduates. 
 
 Yale 
 Graduates. 
 
 Ohio 
 
 135 
 20 
 
 152 
 25 
 39 
 43 
 20 
 
 37 
 
 19 
 
 2 
 
 4 
 5 
 4 
 9 
 
 28 
 127 
 
 174 
 
 25 
 
 255 
 
 36 
 
 69 
 
 87 
 32 
 33 
 21 
 
 Indiana 
 
 Illinois 
 
 Iowa 
 
 Michigan 
 
 Minnesota 
 
 Kansas 
 
 Wisconsin 
 
 Nebraska 
 
 North Dakota 
 
 2 
 
 South Dakota 
 
 8 
 
 Montana 
 
 15 
 
 4 
 
 13 
 
 35 
 
 106 
 
 Idaho 
 
 Oregon 
 
 Washin^rton 
 
 California 
 
 
 
 Total 
 
 669 
 
 915 
 
 
 In these sixteen States, Harvard has 669 
 graduates, and Yale 915. In the States exclud- 
 ing CaHfornia are found 9.76 per cent, of all the 
 living graduates of Harvard College. In the 
 same States are found 17.47 per cent, of all 
 the living graduates of Yale College. In fact, 
 in proportion to the whole number of gradu- 
 ates, almost twice as many men have gone from 
 Yale into these States as from Harvard. 
 
 These figures are exceedingly significant. 
 We have long known, in a general way, that 
 
Its Influence. 155 
 
 the number of Yale men in these States and 
 the States of the West was in some way 
 surprisingly larger than the number of Harvard 
 men, but I have never known until this hour 
 how much greater the number is. The propor- 
 tion in favor of Yale is, as I have said, significant 
 to any one interested in education. Harvard 
 College had graduated more than sixty classes 
 before the first Yale class received its degrees. 
 Harvard College had the start in point of 
 time. It had also the advantage, and always 
 has had the advantage, of a larger endowment. 
 And yet, in that great territory between the 
 Alleghanies and the Pacific known as ''the 
 West," representing the larger part of the 
 domain of the country, the number of Yale 
 graduates exceeds the number of Harvard. 
 What is the cause of this condition ? 
 
 The period covered by this survey begins, 
 in the case of Harvard, with the year 18 18, 
 and in reference to Yale, it begins with the 
 year 1820. It covers the period of the popu- 
 lating of the Western territory. Our question, 
 therefore, may be somewhat broadened, be- 
 coming this : What is the reason that, in the 
 populating of the States of the West, the num- 
 
156 The American College. 
 
 ber of the graduates of Yale exceeds that of 
 the graduates of Harvard? It ceases to be a 
 question between the relation of these colleges 
 simply, and becomes a question concerning the 
 movements and characteristics of a people. 
 
 Yale was a Congregational college. Yale is, 
 I suppose, to-day, as much a Congregational 
 college as any college can easily be, although 
 the Congregational college is the least denomi- 
 national of any college. Its presidents were 
 Congregational clergymen. The ecclesiastical 
 relations of its professors were usually Congre- 
 gational. It had and has a School of Theology 
 of the Congregational Church. Orthodoxy, 
 as embodied in Congregationalism, was and is 
 aggressive. The Congregational School of 
 Theology at New Haven sent its graduates, 
 throughout this formative period, into the 
 West as ministers. Not a few of them were 
 natives of the West, particularly in later years. 
 Graduates of Yale College who were graduates 
 of Yale Theological Seminary entered the 
 West. Graduates of Yale College who were 
 graduates of other theological seminaries 
 entered the West as missionaries and minis- 
 ters. The so-called '* Yale Band" was among 
 
Its Influence. i57 
 
 the first evangelizing agencies which touched 
 the great State of Illinois. A few years ago a 
 ''Yale Band/' composed of graduates of Yale 
 Seminary, entered the State of Washington. 
 A few years before a '' Dakota Band '' went 
 from New Haven into that Territory. Illinois 
 College at Jacksonville was founded by the 
 members of the ''Yale Band." The old col- 
 lege at Hudson, Ohio, begun in 1826, was 
 founded as a Yale of the West. Of those men 
 going into many and widely separated parts of 
 the West, every one went as a loyal son of 
 Yale. Every one of them found it difficult, 
 perhaps, to adjust his love for his a/ma mater 
 with his love for the local institution of his 
 State, to the building up of which he was 
 giving his money and his life. Of all the 
 colleges except the local one, Yale was the 
 most beloved. The Yale spirit moved on the 
 face of the prairie. The black dust of the 
 Wabash and of the Ohio became the livinof 
 soul bearing the name of Yale. The result 
 followed under the law of cause and effect. 
 The new West, so far as it received any col- 
 lege influence, became like Yale. 
 
 In this same period Harvard v/as not Ortho- 
 
158 The American College. 
 
 dox. It was Unitarian. It was able and 
 strong and cultured. It had for its presidents 
 men noble in character, men also who were 
 noble in scholarship. Until Quincy was elected, 
 it called to its chief executive office Unitarian 
 clergymen, the memory of whom is fragrant 
 and beautiful. Professors better qualified for 
 college service could not be found. Harvard 
 was in close affiliation with the best forces of 
 Boston and of Massachusetts. But the mo- 
 tives in its life were not missionary. They 
 were as little missionary as those dominating 
 the Unitarian Church. The number of Uni- 
 tarian churches in Massachusetts far exceeds 
 the number found in all other Commonwealths. 
 Unitarianism may be a qualitative propagand- 
 ism, but it is not a quantitative one. It may 
 have enriched other faiths, but it has not 
 spread its own faith. Its movement has been 
 intensive and not extensive. 
 
 This lack of religiously missionary enthu- 
 siasm was a pretty costly thing to Harvard, 
 and possibly, also, to Unitarianism itself. But 
 Unitarianism did not lack in certain of its ad- 
 herents a missionary enthusiasm of a certain 
 sort. This enthusiasm was an enthusiasm 
 
Its Influence. 159 
 
 social, sociological, political. Radicalism in 
 theology led to radicalism in sociology. There 
 is some ground for the historical statement 
 that conservatism in theology led to conserva- 
 tism in sociology. It is certainly true that 
 Garrison, Phillips, Emerson, Sumner, Tho- 
 reau, Lowell, Higginson, Sanborn, were in 
 more intimate alliance with the Unitarian than 
 with any other faith. The black man of the 
 South appealed more powerfully to these anti- 
 slavery men than the white man of the new 
 West. Lack of personal freedom was to them 
 a worse evil than a lack of personal piety. 
 James Freeman Clarke was for a time a *' home 
 missionary," but the place was rather Southern 
 than Western, — Louisville ; and his big heart 
 and fine brain were directed throughout his 
 chief pastorate rather toward the slave than 
 toward the free pagan of the prairie. In this 
 devotion all now exult. But it was a devotion 
 which had its penalties. Harvard College was 
 not presented to the new people of the new 
 West. 
 
 The graduates, therefore, of Harvard Col- 
 lege, of this time,and of its Divinity School, 
 were not intent upon going West. They did 
 
i6o The American College. 
 
 not feel the impulse for establishing the houses 
 of their faith on the Mississippi. They had 
 no visions of building a second Harvard in the 
 swamps of the Missouri. These graduates pre- 
 ferred to write odes about the duty of being 
 pilgrims and still to live beneath the graceful 
 elms of Cambridge. The result was necessary 
 and has become evident ; Harvard failed to 
 establish a constituency in the West when the 
 West was in its formative period. Therefore, 
 to-day the number of Harvard graduates in 
 the West is far less than the number of Yale 
 graduates. 
 
 There are, also, it seems to me, certain gen- 
 eral reasons which have value in explaining 
 this divergency. The impression prevails 
 throughout the West that Yale is more demo- 
 cratic than Harvard ; that considerations of 
 family and wealth have less value in New 
 Haven than in Cambridge. It is also sup- 
 posed that the manners of the Harvard man 
 are more elegant and his refinement greater. 
 It is also thought that the nil-admirari prin- 
 ciple is more influential at the Cambridge 
 college. Repression is supposed to be the 
 mood of the Harvard, expression the mood 
 
]^.<^VI 
 
 Its Influence. ^"^^61 
 
 of the Yale man. The Western man is usu- 
 ally democratic socially. He respects nobility 
 and refinement of personal bearing, but he is 
 inclined to think that some Harvard students 
 carry these elegancies into eccentricities. Re- 
 pression he rather despises, admiring freedom 
 and frankness. The falseness of these impres- 
 sions held by the Western man do not at all 
 lessen their force in deterring him from send- 
 ing his son to Harvard. 
 
 I am also inclined to believe, although my 
 belief is by no means an assurance, that in the 
 larger part of this period under survey Har- 
 vard was known throughout the West more 
 for its literary advantages, and Yale for its 
 scientific. Of course, at once the names of 
 Agassiz, and Gray, and others, may seem to 
 overthrow the ground of this impression, but 
 never in the popular view was Agassiz an in- 
 tegral part of the Harvard Faculty. When w^e 
 think of the great teachers at Harvard of the 
 earlier generation, the first names to occur 
 to us are those of Ticknor and Longfellow. 
 When we think of the great teachers of Yale 
 in the preceding generation, we speak imme- 
 diately of Silliman and Dana. The fame of 
 
1 62 The American College. 
 
 Yale in science was more attractive to the 
 Western man than the fame of Harvard in 
 literature. The materialistic tendency of life 
 in the West found its counterpart in the scien- 
 tific character of the teaching at Yale. 
 
 But a further question grows out of the gen- 
 eral one, and one, too, possibly more interest- 
 ing. I have thought that my statistics would 
 show that the proportion of Harvard men liv- 
 ing in the West during the last score of years 
 would show a great increase. The figures 
 prove that the a p7'iori reasoning was right. 
 As I have before said, in the sixteen Western 
 States the names of which have been given, 
 beginning with Ohio, and ending with Wash- 
 ington, in this period have lived 9.76 per cent, 
 of all of Harvard's graduates ; and also in this 
 same period and in these same States have 
 lived 17.47 per cent, of all the Yale graduates 
 now living. But, of the classes between 1878 
 -88, 11.62 percent, of the graduates of Har- 
 vard live in these States, a gain of 1.86 per 
 cent. In these same States and of the classes 
 from 1 880-9 T , 1 8. 79 per cent, of Yale graduates 
 are found residing, a gain of 1.32 per cent. 
 Harvard, therefore, in this time, had a greater 
 
Its Influence. 163 
 
 relative gain than Yale. The proportions of 
 certain States are possibly less significant than 
 of all the States combined. In certain States, 
 Yale has gained. In Illinois, for the whole 
 period, are dwelling 5.52 per cent, of all the 
 graduates. In Illinois, for the last ten years, 
 are dwelling 7. 15 per cent. In the same State, 
 in respect to Harvard's graduates, there were, 
 for the entire period, 2.73 per cent, and for 
 the last decade 3.17 per cent. In Ohio, Har- 
 vard has increased in the last decade over the 
 whole period from 2.45 per cent, to 2.46, in 
 Michigan, from .007 to .008 per cent. In the 
 same period, Yale has fallen off in Ohio from 
 3.80 to 3.57 per cent., and in Michigan from 
 1.27 to 1.05 per cent. I recognize that these 
 differences are exceedingly slight, but a single 
 leaf, as well as a whole tree, may reveal the 
 direction of the Vv^ind. 
 
 Yale, however, has still a large lead in the 
 West. The causes of this present popularity 
 are as interesting and subtile as the reasons for 
 the relatively greater popularity in the earlier 
 generations. I am inclined to think that the 
 reasons which have existed are still of force. 
 Sectarian prepossessions are the hardest to 
 
164 The American College. 
 
 remove. The West is orthodox. The States 
 of the West are filled with Congregational, 
 Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, and Episco- 
 pal churches. To certain Western men the 
 word '* Unitarian" means something almost as 
 harrowing as the word 'Tndian " meant to 
 their children of forty years ago. Harvard is 
 no longer a Unitarian college, but the reputa- 
 tio7i of Harvard as a Unitarian college still 
 lingers, so hard are sectarian prejudices to re- 
 move. Further, it is to be acknowledged that 
 many persons identify Unitarianism with irre- 
 ligion. Beginning with the assumption that 
 Harvard is a Unitarian college, they proceed 
 to the conclusion that Harvard is irreligious. 
 The chain of their logic has another link. 
 From the conclusion that Harvard is irreligious 
 they draw the further inference that it is im- 
 moral. Harvard has suffered, Harvard is suf- 
 fering, and Harvard with all its wisdom of ad- 
 ministration must for a time yet, suffer the 
 consequences of such prejudices. And yet, as 
 I have suggested, these prejudices are being 
 removed. The proportion of Harvard men 
 coming to live in the West at the present time, 
 in relation to the number of Harvard men liv- 
 
Its Influence. 165 
 
 ing in the West in the last seventy years, is 
 greater than the number of Yale men of the 
 same conditions. 
 
 In the South the power of Harvard has been 
 slight, Yale's somewhat, and Princeton's great. 
 In the college year of 1836-37 Harvard had 
 233 students, of whom only 19 came from the 
 South, including such border States as Mary- 
 land and Kentucky. In the same year Yale 
 had 511 students, of whom 55 came from the 
 South and also one quarter of the 55 came 
 from the central Southern State of Georgia ; at 
 present less than 2 per cent, of the students of 
 Harvard are from the South. These figures, 
 I think, show the relative clientage of the two 
 oldest New England colleges drawn from the 
 South. In this same time about two fifths of 
 all the Princeton students were drawn from the 
 South. The influence of Princeton in the South 
 at the beginning of the Civil War was very 
 great. So many Southern men were in Prince- 
 ton at the beginning of the war that there was a 
 decided antagonism to the raising of the Stars 
 and Stripes over the college buildings, and in 
 the spring of 1861 the departure of the South- 
 ern students from '*old Nassau" was a scene 
 
1 66 The American College. 
 
 never to be forgotten. Even in the first dec- 
 ades of the century, the tendency of the boys 
 of Virginia to go from their State for their 
 education caused a considerable degree of un 
 easiness. One writer asserts that he came to 
 the conclusion that one quarter of a million 
 dollars was carried each year from the State of 
 Virginia for the purpose of education.^ A large 
 share of this amount, no doubt, went into the 
 coffers of Princeton College. Some of the 
 most illustrious names on the register of Prince- 
 ton College are the names of the most illustri- 
 ous families of the South. The name of 
 Calhoun is not there, for that is found at Yale. 
 The names of the Lees, Bayards, Dabneys, 
 Davies, Pendletons, Breckenridges, Caldwells, 
 Crawfords, Baches, Hagers, and Johns,^ are 
 found. 
 
 The reason of the mighty influence of Prince- 
 ton throughout the South is due largely, in my 
 judgment, to three causes : first, the location 
 of the college ; second, the ecclesiastical unity 
 of the people of the South and of the support- 
 
 ^ Jefferson and Cabell's : University of Virginia^ 157, note. 
 ^ Fotir American Universities^ 99, Chapter by Professor W. M. 
 Sloane. 
 
Its Influence. 167 
 
 ers of the college ; and third, the unity of the 
 people of certain Southern States with the 
 founders and the supporters of Princeton. 
 These three reasons do not require elabora- 
 tion. Princeton was, of course, nearer to the 
 South than her sister colleges by the distance 
 from New Haven or from Cambridge, a dis- 
 tance much greater formerly than it now is ; 
 but this fact, although having value, is not the 
 most significant. The commercial relations of 
 the South were rather with New York and 
 Philadelphia than with Boston and other parts 
 of New England. Intimacy of commercial re- 
 lations made intimacy of other relations of 
 course less difficult. College boys go and 
 come very much along those lines of latitude 
 and longitude which trade follows. Down to 
 the time of the foundation of the University 
 of Virginia, the College of William and Mary 
 was probably the most influential college in 
 the South. The record of the statesmen 
 which this college trained in the colonial period 
 and in the generation succeeding the Revolu- 
 tionary period is illustrious. The College of 
 Wifliam and Mary was under the control of 
 the Protestant Episcopal Church, and had for 
 
1 68 The American College. 
 
 its special purpose the training of ministers for 
 that Church. In the Presbyterian Church 
 was the College of Hampden-Sidney, but it 
 was not strong. The Presbyterian Church 
 throughout that region of the South, which 
 was peopled by the Scotch, and the Scotch- 
 Irish, was of great strength. In Maryland, 
 Virginia, and the Carolinas, therefore, the 
 families allied with the Presbyterian Church 
 would naturally send their sons to a Presby- 
 terian College, and to the strongest Presbyte- 
 rian College within their command. That 
 college was the College of New Jersey. More- 
 over, as has been said, the people who settled 
 New Jersey and Pennsylvania, were in a de- 
 gree of the same race with those who settled 
 Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas, — 
 Scotch and Scotch-Irish. They contributed 
 of their best blood in the building up of 
 these Commonwealths. These were the libe- 
 ral colonies to which came people not only 
 from North of Ireland and from Scotland, but 
 also fugitives from France, Holland, and cer- 
 tain parts of Germany. The oneness of the 
 race contributed toward making the chief Pres- 
 byterian College in New Jersey the chief col- 
 
Its Influence. 169 
 
 lege of the States as far south as South Caro- 
 lina. The best provincial college in any one 
 of the States would be the most attractive col- 
 lege for all the States. 
 
 These are at least some of the reasons which 
 have helped to make the influence of Princeton 
 great throughout the South. These conditions 
 have continued in a degree to the present, al- 
 though their force has been much lessened 
 since the Civil War. The founding of a uni- 
 versity at Baltimore, although of an undenomi- 
 national character, and of one at Nashville, 
 although not of the Presbyterian order, has 
 also tended to attract students who might 
 otherwise have come to Princeton. Yet, in 
 many parts of the South, Princeton is regarded 
 with a loyalty and affection which Harvard 
 receives in Massachusetts and Yale in Connec- 
 ticut. 
 
 In respect to the method of the growth 
 and use of the influence which the two older 
 colleges embody there is a deep and striking 
 contrast. Harvard seems to stand for the prin- 
 ciple of individuality, Yale for the communistic 
 or collective principle. This difference runs 
 back into the conditions of the beginning of 
 
lyo The American College. 
 
 the century. The Unitarians had a stronger 
 and larger following by far in Massachusetts 
 than in the New Haven or Hartford Colony. 
 At the beginning of the century the schism in 
 the Congregational Church resulted in the 
 great Unitarian movement, — a movement 
 which represents individuality even more than 
 the ordinary orthodox Congregational Church 
 represents it. But in Connecticut not more 
 than one church became in this time Unitarian, 
 and the Unitarian denomination has always 
 had a very small constituency in Connecticut. 
 In the earlier part of the century in Connecti- 
 cut that form of ecclesiastical government 
 known as ** Consociation," a modified Presby- 
 terianism, had sway ; in Massachusetts the 
 *' Association," which represents greater indi- 
 viduality of action, ruled. At Yale, through- 
 out the century, the class system in the college 
 has largely obtained ; and in Harvard the elec- 
 tive system has had the supremacy in the last 
 generation. Harvard represents rather the 
 critical side of college allegiance — each gradu- 
 ate thinks it to be his right to criticise his Uni- 
 versity ; but of Yale each graduate looks upon 
 his college as his a/ma mater, and to criticise 
 
Its Influence. 17^ 
 
 her would be as unfitting as to disparage the 
 one who bore him. The result has therefore 
 been that in those athletic sports in which the 
 individual is the more important, Harvard, on 
 the whole, has the supremacy, but in those in 
 which community of action is the more import- 
 ant, Yale has won. Harvard, therefore, has 
 been victorious rather in field contests, and 
 Yale in football, baseball, and in rowing. In 
 a word. Harvard has stood rather for individu- 
 ality of action, while Yale has stood for com- 
 munity of effort. 
 
 It is not unfrequently said that Harvard is 
 the Oxford of the New World, and Yale the 
 Cambridge. The reason of this discrimination 
 lies, in my judgment, in the past, in a very sim- 
 ple matter. Yale in the first half of this cen- 
 tury, as I have intimated in a former para- 
 graph, represented with greater fullness the 
 scientific studies for which the older Cam- 
 bridge stood, and Harvard the humanistic 
 studies which received special cultivation at 
 Oxford. As I have before said, Yale, through 
 the Sillimans, was holding a large place in 
 scientific studies long before Gray, or Agas- 
 siz, or Cooke, began their work in the Cam- 
 
172 The American College. 
 
 bridge on the Charles. In the year 1818 
 George Ripley was considering the choice of a 
 college. At that time he wrote to his father, 
 saying : 
 
 " I feel emboldened to make the request that, if con- 
 sistent with your inclinations and plans, I may receive 
 an education at Yale rather than Cambridge. I may 
 be thought assuming and even impertment to make this 
 request. But, sir, I entreat you to consider the thing. 
 The literary advantages at Cambridge are superior in 
 some respects to those at Yale. The languages can un- 
 doubtedly be learnt best at Cambridge. But it is allowed 
 by many, who have had opportunity to judge, free from 
 prejudice, that the solid branches may be acquired to as 
 great perfection at Yale. Cousin Henry, who has had 
 some information on the subject, says that for mathe- 
 matics, metaphysics, and for the solid sciences in gen- 
 eral, Yale is the best." ^ 
 
 The linguistic and literary training which 
 Harvard has offered throughout the century 
 was now at its beginning. For the year when 
 Ripley entered Harvard was the year when 
 Edward Tyrrel Channing became Boylston 
 professor and began that career which did not 
 close till the year of 185 1, a career which was 
 of priceless value in the giving of an education 
 
 * Frothingham's Geor ge Ripley y 5-6. 
 
Its Influence. 173 
 
 to the men who were, in a peculiar degree, to 
 be the makers of American literature. 
 
 "When it is considered that Channing's method reared 
 most of the well-known writers whom New England was 
 then producing/' — says Colonel Thomas Wentworth 
 Higginson, — '^ that it was he who trained Emerson, C. F. 
 Adams, Hedge, A. P. Peabody, Felton, Hillard, Win- 
 throp, Holmes, Sumner, Motley, Phillips, Bowen, Lover- 
 ing, Torrey, Dana, Lowell, Thoreau, Hale, Thomas Hill, 
 Child, Fitzedward Hall, Lane, and Norton (and I may 
 add Higginson), it will be seen that the classic portion 
 , of our literature came largely into existence under him." * 
 
 Soon after becoming president of Yale, 
 President Dwight In an address delivered be- 
 fore the Phi Beta Kappa Society indicated 
 what he regards as certain traits of the ideal 
 Yale man.^ The first element which he names 
 is ''a certain large-minded and fair-minded 
 love of truth." Allied to this he suggests 
 ** manliness " or *' the manly sense of duty " 
 as a second element. A third which he names, 
 is *' the disposition to estimate both men and 
 things according to their true value." A 
 fourth characteristic of the Yale spirit he 
 describes as '* that union of the intellectual and 
 
 * Atlantic Monthly^ December, 1896, 762-763. 
 
 2 What a Yale Student Ought to Be, Yale University, 1887. 
 
174 The American College. 
 
 emotional elements which keeps them in due 
 relations to each other." He adds also '*the 
 genuine Yale man is a gentleman, . . . one 
 who has the spirit of reverence for what is 
 good, of kindness towards others, of gentle- 
 ness and self-sacrifice and honor and truth, of 
 obedience to that great command which bids 
 us love our neighbors as ourselves." 
 
 But I am confident that the President of 
 Harvard College, seeking to give a picture of 
 the elements which make the ideal Harvard 
 man, would suggest these very same elements 
 which the President of Yale names. In fact, 
 these elements are not the property of Yale or 
 of Harvard. They are the supreme purposes 
 and principles which rule in every college. 
 President Dwight disclaims any purpose of 
 affirming *' that the characteristics of our life 
 are exclusively found here." Every college 
 seeks to inspire in each student a *' large- 
 minded and fair-minded love of truth." Every 
 college endeavors to arouse ''the manly sense 
 of duty" in its men. Every college endeav- 
 ors to train students to '' estimate both men 
 and things according to their true value." 
 Every college has for its purpose '* to unite 
 
/ 9^" OF TMK 
 
 f UNI VERS 
 
 Its Influence. ^l^^i.^ 
 
 properly the emotional and intellectual elements 
 of character." Every college seeks to make 
 each student a '* gentleman.'* 
 
 It is, I think, generally confessed that 
 Harvard has attained a genuine leadership in 
 American education. This leadership has 
 been secured largely through the efficiency of 
 its President. But previous to the accession 
 of President Eliot, it would, I think, have 
 been generally said that Yale was enjoying 
 a pre-eminence. For many years before the 
 accession of President Eliot the graduating 
 classes at Yale were larger than those at 
 Harvard. But about the time that President 
 Eliot became President and about the time 
 President Woolsey retired from the office to 
 which he had given lustre in the twenty-five 
 years of his administration, it was a matter 
 of conjecture whi<:h of these two greatest and 
 oldest colleges should become the progres- 
 sive, and which the conservative, force in 
 the higher education. Although Harvard had 
 had a history more distinguished for mak- 
 ing experiments, as the elder Silliman once 
 pointed out, than Yale, yet the greater freedom 
 from provincialism of Yale, rendered Yale a 
 
176 The American College. 
 
 better agency and condition for progressive 
 educational endeavors. But President Eliot 
 was chosen President to succeed President 
 Hill, and President Porter was chosen to 
 succeed President Woolsey. President Eliot 
 had became recognized as a teacher of a com- 
 paratively new science, and President Porter 
 had been recognized as a teacher of the 
 oldest of all knowledges. The one was, too, 
 essentially a man vitally in touch with life ; the 
 other gave the impression to many friends of 
 being quite as much interested in the philoso- 
 phy of the seventeenth century as in the 
 problems of the present. Under the lead of 
 President Eliot, who came into office some two 
 years earlier than President Porter, Harvard 
 sprang at once into the opening opportunites 
 of the new education. By this very condition, 
 Yale was almost obliged to represent the con- 
 servative tendency. 
 
 Of course, progressiveness and aggressive- 
 ness have their perils, but the conditions of 
 the times removed these perils from the path- 
 way of Harvard and its vigorous executive. 
 For the means of carrying forward progres- 
 sive and aggressive measures were offered 
 
Its Influence. ^11 
 
 through the increasing wealth of the country, 
 through the increasing demand for well-trained 
 men in every field of service, and through the 
 enlargement of the great humanitarian and 
 scientific studies. If, from 1869 onward, with 
 brief exceptions, the country had not been 
 becoming richer, or if the demand for well- 
 trained men had lessened, or if social science 
 and political economy and the natural sciences 
 had not enlarged their boundaries, the results 
 might have been altogether different from what 
 they are. In this case, the conservative 
 policy of Yale would have been the successful 
 one and the aggressive policy of Harvard 
 could not and would not have won that 
 triumph which it enjoys. 
 
 It is also significant that the older college has 
 been the mother of three great movements 
 in the course of this century. It may not be 
 unfitting to say that Harvard stands as the 
 mother of movements, and Yale as the mother 
 of men. Certainly, these phrases are as well 
 applied to the colleges of the new world as 
 they are to the corresponding universities of 
 the old world. 
 
 A movement in an American college must 
 
1 78 The American College. 
 
 be carried on under conditions quite unlike 
 those which obtain in a movement in Oxford 
 or in Cambridge. It lacks a substantial and 
 permanent moving force. The English uni- 
 versity has in its constituency a larger body 
 of men in permanent association with the 
 university. The men have those qualities 
 and relations which residence as graduates or 
 as fellows gives. They are usually blessed 
 with more or less of leisure, and they are also 
 in a more or less intimate touch with the life 
 outside the university. These men constitute 
 an excellent body for making a movement of 
 the social, scholastic, or theological sort. The 
 three great men of the Oxford movement were 
 Keble, Newman, and Hurrell Froude, and 
 these men were all fellows or tutors of Oriel. 
 The American college has few men in per- 
 manent association and those who are are mem- 
 bers of the teaching force. This body is blessed 
 with leisure in only a very moderate degree. 
 The more public movements, therefore, which 
 we find carried on under the auspices of the 
 American college have usually been move- 
 ments made by graduates whose formal re- 
 lations with their college have ceased. In a 
 
Its Influence. 179 
 
 few cases these movements have been promoted 
 by the professors. Not so much as a corpora- 
 tion, therefore, but as a centre of radiating 
 influence, has the American college been the 
 mother of movements. 
 
 The three movements, of which Harvard 
 may be said to be the author in this century, 
 have had a single key-note — a larger liberty. 
 The first was a movement for greater liberty in 
 matters religious ; the second was a movement 
 for greater liberty in matters philosophical ; the 
 third was a movement for greater liberty in 
 matters educational. The first is usually 
 called the Unitarian movement, the second the 
 Transcendental movement, and the third is rep- 
 resented narrowly in the phrase '' The Elective 
 System." Not infrequently is the third of 
 these movements called by the comprehensive 
 phrase ^^The New Education." The first 
 movement belongs largely to the first quarter 
 of the century ; the second to the second 
 quarter ; and the third movement to the third 
 quarter and the last of the century. 
 
 The movement for greater freedom in matters 
 religious does not begin with the appointment 
 of Henry Ware as Hollis Professor of Divinity 
 
I So The American College. 
 
 in 1805, but his appointment represents the 
 beginning of aggressiveness in the progress of 
 this movement. Other appointments followed 
 the appointment of Ware which, in two years, 
 says the historian of the Unitarian denomina- 
 tion, made Harvard '' University conspicuously 
 the headquarters of intellectual and religious 
 h'beralism in America." ^ So rapid was the pro- 
 gress in the next score of years, that in 1823, 
 when Dr. Lyman Beecher came to Boston, he 
 was able to say: '*A11 the literary men of 
 Massachusetts were Unitarian ; all the Trustees 
 and Professors of Harvard College were 
 Unitarian ; all the elz'U of wealth and fashion 
 crowded the Unitarian Churches; the judges 
 on the bench were Unitarian, giving decisions 
 by which the peculiar features of church 
 organization so carefully ordered by the Pil- 
 grim Fathers had been nullified, and all the 
 power had passed into the hands of the 
 congregation." ^ 
 
 In this movement the graduates and 
 officers of the University bore the most con- 
 spicuous part. Its preacher, Channing, was a 
 
 ^ A History of the Unitarians, Joseph Henry Allen. D.D., i88, 
 * Quoted in Allen's History^ 194. 
 
Its Influence. i8i 
 
 Harvard graduate ; its most powerful apologist, 
 John Lowell, was a member of the Univers- 
 ity corporation ; Jared Sparks, the historian, 
 James Walker, the philosopher, and Andrews 
 Norton, the exegete, were all Harvard graduates 
 and already occupied or were to occupy import- 
 ant places in the government of the Univer- 
 sity. So thorough was the identification of the 
 College with the movement, that of seventy- 
 seven Unitarian preachers sketched in Dr. 
 Sprague's Annals of the American Pulpit sixty- 
 seven are graduates of Harvard College. Of 
 the graduates of Harvard who have served all 
 churches, Dr. Sprague names two hundred and 
 ten. Although the number of clergymen in 
 the Unitarian Church, compared with other 
 denominations, is relatively small, and although 
 the time of its specific existence is brief, yet 
 almost one third of its distinguished clergymen 
 of the earlier period are graduates of Harvard. 
 So intimate was the association between the 
 Unitarian Church and the College that the 
 College came to be known as a Unitarian 
 College, a reputation which in recent years it 
 wisely has been endeavoring to throw ojff and 
 which it has succeeded in throwing off among 
 
1^2 The American College 
 
 ^:5" 
 
 those who are well-informed, but not among 
 those who are Ignorant of the conditions. 
 
 The second movement which is closely iden- 
 tified with Harvard is also identified with the 
 Unitarian movement, even outside of collegiate 
 relations. For the names which are illustrious 
 in Transcendentalism are also in no small de- 
 gree illustrious in the Unitarian movement. 
 This Transcendental movement was simply an 
 episode, but while it lasted its effect was power- 
 ful in the thought and the life of New England. 
 It was a literary as well as a philosophical 
 and religious power. Its influence especially 
 touched social agitations and movements for 
 reform, but its specific duration was brief 
 although its echoes are still heard. In its 
 progress the presence and the power of the 
 Harvard graduates were most significant. The 
 seer of Transcendentalism was Emerson, and 
 Emerson was a Harvard graduate. Its man 
 of letters was George Ripley, a distinguished 
 member of a Harvard class not without dis- 
 tinguished men ; its theologian was Theodore 
 Parker, a Harvard student and a Harvard 
 Master of Arts ; its historian was Octavius 
 Brooks Frothingham, also a Harvard gradu- 
 
Its Influence. 183 
 
 ate ; its critic was Margaret Fuller, who felt 
 the influence of Harvard a great deal more 
 than some men who were its graduates, and 
 as much a graduate as any one could be in her 
 time who was a woman. Of those whom its 
 historian, Dr. Frothingham, calls minor proph- 
 ets, William Henry Channing, Samuel John- 
 son, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, John 
 Weiss, and Cyrus Augustus Bartol, were all, 
 with one exception, graduates of Harvard 
 College, and he, Bartol, was a graduate of the 
 Divinity School ; and several others had taken 
 their professional degree as well as their first 
 degree at the University. While this move- 
 ment was in progress, the Oxford movement 
 was also coming to its climax, and it may be 
 said of Harvard that she was author and pro- 
 moter of the Transcendental movement quite as 
 truthfully as it has been said of Oxford that 
 she promoted the Tractarian movement. In 
 each case, however, it was men, not Univer- 
 sity authorities, who urged on the movement; 
 in each case, too, certain authorities opposed 
 the movement through ridicule or argument. 
 It may be added that these two movements 
 were alike in attracting and holding together 
 
1 84 The American Colles^e 
 
 o 
 
 for a term of years men of pure character, noble 
 intellect, high hopes, and rare earnestness, who 
 trusted that they might achieve great things for 
 humanity, some through the church and others 
 through social reform based upon philosophical 
 principles.^ 
 
 The third and the last movement of which 
 Harvard may be called the mother, is that 
 embodied in the '' New Education.'* This 
 movement is sometimes called the *' Elective 
 System." It is a system which has been a neces- 
 sary growth. Its introduction arose inevitably 
 from the enlargement of the field of human 
 knowledge. As the field of human knowledge 
 has vastly increased, life has not lengthened, 
 neither has the time which the average student 
 
 * In answer to a question respecting the attitude of certain mem- 
 bers of the Harvard Faculty to this movement, Dr. Edward Everett 
 Hale writes me as follows : 
 
 " The four gentlemen named, Dr. Walker, Mr. Sparks, Mr. 
 Longfellow, and Mr. Peirce, all knew and were in intimate relations 
 with Mr. Emerson, Mr. Ripley, Dr. Hedge, and other persons who 
 would now be spoken of as leaders of the Transcendental movement. 
 Of them all, Walker took the most interest in it, and did a great deal 
 in his preaching and in his Lowell lectures, to bring the general 
 Philistine mind into sympathy vvitli it. To the end of his life Peirce 
 was a profound philosopher, and believed with enthusiasm in tlie 
 idea. Mr. Longfellow, I should say, was an artist in his habit of 
 looking at such matters; and I do not think Mr. Sparks really cared 
 much about the new tide of life which came in with Mr. Emerson's 
 great purpose." — Personal letter of E. E. Hale, of 2d January, 1896, 
 
Its Influence. 185 
 
 can devote to preparing himself for life in- 
 creased. Therefore the college authorities 
 had put before themselves the alternative of 
 either allowing the student to choose what he 
 wanted to pursue or to pursue all studies in an 
 extreme degree of superficiality. The freedom 
 of choice was found to be the better solution 
 of the problem. The movement has also a 
 further condition in a proper psychology 
 which endeavors to adjust the content and 
 kind of studies to the human mind, in order 
 to promote its highest development. At Har- 
 vard the new education has had a long and 
 gradual growth. As early as 1825 '* options" 
 were introduced in the modern languages on 
 the recommendation of Judge Story. The 
 next score of years were a time of experiment. 
 In 1846 Seniors and Juniors were allowed cer- 
 tain '' electives," and in 1867 this freedom was 
 granted to the Sophomores, and in 1884 to the 
 Freshmen. The enlargement of the field of 
 choice has been gradual and at the present 
 time it is limited, except in English, only by 
 the limits of the curriculum. The system has 
 come to its fullest development in the admin- 
 istration of the present great president. 
 
 
1 86 The American College. 
 
 This movement for greater intellectual free- 
 dom has spread from Cambridge into almost 
 every college throughout the United States. 
 It has now become an integral part of the 
 curriculum. The width of its influence and 
 its power are largely due to Harvard. 
 
 It is to be observed that this movement 
 for the new education is in one respect un- 
 like the movements for greater religious and 
 philosophical freedom. The Unitarian and 
 Transcendental movements were promoted by 
 Harvard largely through its graduates, but the 
 movement for the new education has been 
 promoted almost entirely by those who are 
 officers of the college. It has been a move- 
 ment largely carried on by the executive head 
 aided by the undergraduate faculty. 
 
 In the second half of the century that is 
 now closing, several great colleges have been 
 founded : several by the States as a part of their 
 system of education, and several also by indi- 
 vidual citizens. These colleges are now exert- 
 ing a wide and great influence, an influence of 
 a continually increasing power. Other foun- 
 dations of great strength will doubtless be made 
 in the future ; but it may be well questioned 
 
Its Influence. 
 
 187 
 
 whether any one of these colleges, when it has 
 been in existence even longer than two hun- 
 dred and fifty years, will be able to show a 
 more worthy list of graduates, or a record more 
 splendid, or a service more effective in Ameri- 
 can life for the betterment of the people, than 
 the old college in New Jersey, or the yet older 
 college in Connecticut, or the oldest college in 
 Cambridge is able now to show. 
 
V. 
 
 CERTAIN PRESENT CONDITIONS. 
 
 THE higher education in the United 
 States, like the government of the 
 United States, is beset by two opposing 
 movements, the one tending toward the central- 
 ization and the other toward the division of 
 forces. We are seeing the rapid and magnificent 
 growth of a few colleges and universities. The 
 increase in the number of teachers and students, 
 in equipment and in endowment, in the last ten 
 years has been very great. We are also seeing 
 the founding of many and small institutions. 
 In the present century we have beheld the 
 graduating class of Harvard College increase 
 tenfold, and more. The class graduating the 
 first year in the nineteenth century numbered 
 thirty-four, but the present classes of the Col- 
 
 i88 
 
Certain Present Conditions. 189 
 
 lege Itself are more than ten times this number 
 and in the whole University those receiving de- 
 grees at a Commencement approach twenty 
 times this number. At Yale a similar increase 
 is manifest, although not so great. In the 
 year 1838-39 Harvard College had 216 stu- 
 dents ; Yale, 411; Princeton, 237; and the 
 University of Pennsylvania, 105. To-day the 
 graduating classes of most of these institu- 
 tions far exceed the entire enrollment of sixty 
 years ago. In fact, the entire number of stu- 
 dents in the twenty-five principal colleges of 
 sixty years ago was smaller than is found in 
 the largest university to-day. An increase in 
 endowment, correspondingly great, has oc- 
 curred. I n this period several colleges have suf- 
 fered a decline in their attendance. Dartmouth 
 sixty years ago had more than three hundred 
 students ; Middlebury, one hundred and thirty- 
 three. There have been recent years when 
 these colleges have had a smaller number; 
 although Dartmouth has in the present year 
 vastly increased. The mighty growth of a 
 few colleges attracts public notice. The great 
 individual college becomes conspicuous. The 
 idea has come to prevail therefore that Ameri- 
 
I go The American College. 
 
 can college education has become centralized, 
 like the American government. Conspicuous, 
 however, as these examples are, decentraliza- 
 tion of our educational forces is yet more 
 characteristic. 
 
 For, the present condition of the colleges in 
 this country may be interpreted by five epi- 
 thets. They are many, small, poor, sectarian, 
 and rural. I know very well that these epi- 
 thets are not to be received as entirely compre- 
 hensive, but yet they do represent certain very 
 significant conditions of our higher education. 
 
 There are in the United States 695 institu- 
 tions which confer collegiate degrees. Of these 
 481 are co-educational or colleges for men 
 only; 163 are colleges for women only, and 
 51 are schools of technology. When one 
 thinks of the 22 universities of Germany and 
 of the 145 or more gymnasia ; or when one 
 thinks of the 17 colleges of Cambridge and 
 the 21 colleges of Oxford, one is impressed 
 with the vast number of collegiate institutions 
 which the United States possesses. These 
 institutions are found in every one of the 
 States. It is possibly significant that some older 
 States have the fewer colleges and the newer 
 
Certain Present Conditions. 191 
 
 the many colleges. Massachusetts, for in- 
 stance, has 9, and Missouri has 29 ; Maine 
 has 4, and Kansas has 16 ; Connecticut has 3, 
 and Nebraska has 10. This induction that the 
 newer the State the larger its number of col- 
 leges, and the older the State the smaller, is 
 not an absolute truth, for New York has 22, 
 Pennsylvania 29, and Iowa has the same num- 
 ber as New York. Indiana has only 14, and 
 Illinois has only as many as Pennsylvania. 
 Yet, at the least, it may be said that the newer 
 States do contain more colleges than the older. 
 In the entire country there is one institution 
 for each group of one hundred thousand per- 
 sons, but in the North Atlantic Division, 
 which States are of course older, there is only 
 one institution for every quarter of a million 
 persons ; whereas in the North Central Divis- 
 ion there is one institution for less than one 
 hundred thousand persons, and in the Western 
 Division, which of course includes the newer 
 States, there is one institution for less than 
 every group of seventy thousand persons. 
 Westward the course of the higher educa- 
 tion does take its way and it grows wider, ap- 
 parently, the farther it goes west. 
 
192 The American College. 
 
 ^:5" 
 
 This fact is of great significance. It is sig- 
 nificant of the mighty grasp which the higher 
 education has taken upon the mind and heart 
 of the American people. It is also significant 
 as containing the promise of the permanence 
 of the best elements of our civilization. Even 
 if in the case of making certain foundations 
 the finest motives have not prevailed, and even 
 if poverty and insufficiency of various sorts 
 have been alarming, yet the simple fact of the 
 establishment of these colleges in the first days 
 of our new commonwealths, is full of precious 
 hope of the American people sometime gain- 
 ing the highest attainments and living the 
 highest life. 
 
 These colleges, which are so many in their 
 number, are yet small in their enrolment. Of 
 the 695 institutions that confer collegiate de- 
 grees, 417 have each less than 100 students in 
 their collegiate departments. The total num- 
 ber of students enrolled in all these colleges 
 is slightly over 60,000. If, therefore, an equal 
 division were made, each of these institutions 
 would have a few less than 100 students. Of 
 course the division is not equal. About two 
 thirds of the colleges do actually have a smaller 
 
Certain Present Conditions. 193 
 
 number than 100 students, and the number of 
 colleges that have more than 300 students in 
 their collegiate departments hardly exceeds the 
 number of our States. In the North Atlantic 
 Division of our States the number of students 
 in each institution is about 250; in the South 
 Atlantic Division the number is about 90, in 
 the South Central Division the number is be- 
 tween 90 and 100, in the North Central Di- 
 vision it is slightly over 100, and in the West- 
 ern Division it is somewhat under 100. It is, 
 therefore, evident that the normal American 
 college is small. Its students are few. 
 
 The American college is also poor. These 
 institutions possess in productive funds one 
 hundred millions of dollars, and also the value 
 of grounds and buildings exceeds by a few mil- 
 lions the same sum. Of these sums almost 
 one half belongs to the colleges of the North 
 Atlantic Division, sixty millions belong to the 
 States of the North Central Division — which 
 leaves a pretty small sum to be divided among 
 the South Atlantic, South Central, and West- 
 ern States. Of these sums of somewhat over 
 two hundred millions, Massachusetts has one 
 
 tenth; New York, one sixth; and Pennsyl- 
 
 13 
 
194 The American College. 
 
 vania, one fifteenth. Ohio has about one six- 
 teenth, Indiana has about half as much as 
 Ohio, and Illinois has an amount equal to 
 that held by Ohio. Of these 695 institutions, 
 576 have each less than $200,000 in productive 
 funds. The colleges of the North Atlantic 
 States possess fifty-five per cent, of all the pro- 
 ductive funds invested in the higher education, 
 and the value of their grounds and buildings 
 IS thirty-eight per cent, of the entire value of 
 similar property in the whole country — which 
 clearly indicates that outside of these States 
 the American college is poor. 
 
 This poverty of the American college is ex- 
 ceedingly significant, for poverty represents a 
 lack of capacity for giving an adequate educa- 
 tion. There was a time when a college could 
 be poor and still give an education adequate to 
 its time and conditions. In the middle of the 
 century, when the Universalist churches were 
 about to establish Tuft's College, it was in- 
 sisted that the foundation should not be made 
 before one hundred thousand dollars were 
 raised. To-day a college in one of the older 
 communities would not be justified in opening 
 its doors to students if it had less than one 
 
Certain Present Conditions. 195 
 
 million of dollars in endowment. The enlarg- 
 ing of the field of scholarship has necessitated 
 the pecuniary enrichment of the college. Fifty 
 years ago Columbia College had 10 professors 
 and 139 students ; Union, 10 professors and 
 221 students; Hamilton, 6 professors and 
 tutors and 92 students; Princeton, 12 profes- 
 sors and tutors and 263 students ; Rutgers, 5 
 professors and 76 students. The number of 
 professors necessary for the proper equipping 
 of a college fifty years ago was one third or 
 one fourth of the number necessary at the 
 present time. A proper equipment demands 
 large revenues. Such revenues can usually be 
 derived only from large endowments. There- 
 fore, poverty in endowment means an insuf- 
 ficient and inadequate teaching force. That, 
 therefore, the American college is not fittingly 
 equipped with a proper number of teachers is 
 an inevitable and necessary inference. 
 
 The poverty of the American college be- 
 comes also significant in relation to the library. 
 The library of the college may be called its 
 objective brain. If the library is insuflficient 
 in number and variety and freshness of books, 
 or inadequately administered, the education 
 
196 The American College. 
 
 which the college gives is insufficient and in- 
 adequate. But, an adequate number of books 
 is supplied only through adequate revenues. 
 Such revenues are lacking in the American 
 college, and therefore the libraries are insuffi- 
 cient and usually inefficient. Forty-four per 
 cent, of all the books in college libraries are 
 possessed in the States of the North Atlantic 
 Division and thirty-two per cent, by colleges 
 of the States of the North Central Division. 
 It is therefore evident that the colleges of the 
 other States are obliged to be content with a 
 bit more than one fifth of all the volumes in 
 our college libraries. As one's eye runs along 
 the number of volumes credited to each col- 
 lege, one is obliged to read such figures as 
 these : for one college, 5000 ; for another, 
 5500; for another, 1000; for another 5000; 
 for another 26,000 ; and so on. It is true that 
 the equipment of the colleges in respect to the 
 teaching force and in respect to the library 
 makes it painfully evident that the American 
 college is poor. 
 
 The American college is also sectarian, or, 
 if one prefer the word, denominational. Of 
 all the colleges and universities 109 are non- 
 
Certain Present Conditions. 197 
 
 sectarian and 372 are controlled by religious 
 denominations, as follows : Roman Catholic, 
 58, Methodist Episcopal, 57, Baptist, 50, Pres- 
 byterian, 39, Methodist Episcopal South, 25, 
 Congregational, 25, Lutheran, 23, Christian, 
 20, United Brethren, 13, Reformed, 8, Friends, 
 7, Cumberland Presbyterian, 7, United Presby- 
 terian, 6, Protestant Episcopal, 5, African 
 Methodist Episcopal, 4, Evangelical, 4, Uni- 
 versalist, 4, Seventh Day Adventists, 3, Meth- 
 odist Protestant, 2, Free Will Baptist, 2, 
 Reformed Presbyterian, 2, South Presbyterian, 
 I, Christian Union, i, Seventh Day Baptist, 
 I, African Methodist Episcopal Zion, i. Church 
 of God, I, New Church, i. Latter Day Saints, 
 I, Unknown, i. Of the 163 colleges for 
 women 54 are non-sectarian, and the remaining 
 109 are denominational and they are as fol- 
 lows : Baptist, 27, Presbyterian, 22, Methodist 
 Episcopal, 20, Methodist Episcopal South, 
 18, Protestant Episcopal, 5, Lutheran, 5, Mo- 
 ravian, 3, Cumberland Presbyterian, 2, Re- 
 formed, 2, Christian, 2, Roman Catholic, 2, 
 Universalist, i. The American college, there- 
 fore, it is evident, is denominational, and the 
 leading denominations are blessed with many 
 
198 The American College. 
 
 colleges. This ecclesiastical condition is not 
 surprising, for in all, or nearly all, civilizations, 
 the priest has been the teacher and the priest 
 was usually the earliest teacher. The relation 
 between the discipline and the culture of the 
 heart and the discipline and culture of the 
 reason is intimate. Piety and education are 
 sisters. This close relation that belongs to 
 religion has been perpetuated in Christianity. 
 Christianity has organized itself into denomina- 
 tions. It has organized itself into at least two 
 great bodies which have special relations to us, 
 — the Roman Catholic Communion and the 
 Protestant. The Protestant Communion has 
 organized itself into numberless churches. To 
 most people Christianity appeals under the de- 
 nominational name, and as a propagandist 
 Christianity has made its progress under the 
 denominational banner. Most persons who 
 call themselves by the name of Christian are 
 members of some individual or denominational 
 body. Christianity, therefore, in organizing 
 colleges, has organized them under the de- 
 nominational relation and name. Whether 
 this method was wise is not the question. 
 Whether any other method was possible is not 
 
Certain Present Conditions. 199 
 
 the question ; but, that Christianity in organ- 
 izing colleges has organized them as denomi- 
 national institutions is evident. 
 
 Historically the method is clear enough. 
 Whenever the territory of any one of our 
 commonwealths has been receiving settlers, 
 Christianity in the person of its apostles has 
 followed the settler into his new home. But 
 it has not been Christianity free from eccle- 
 siastical relations. The Christianity that has 
 followed the immigrant has been denomina- 
 tional Christianity. It has, in rendering this 
 service, established the denominational church. 
 The ministers and laymen of the church have 
 in each new commonwealth and in each new 
 condition recognized that the prosperity of the 
 church depends upon the having of a learned 
 and progressive ministry. The learned minis- 
 try, it was recognized, is most easily and 
 directly secured through the college. The 
 older colleges in the older States could not 
 furnish such a ministry. It is well known that 
 the graduates of colleges usually make their 
 homes in the parts in which those colleges are 
 located. College men are not as a class pio- 
 neers. Therefore for the securing of a suffi- 
 
200 The American College. 
 
 cient and adequate ministry every church has 
 founded its own college in each new State. 
 Such, in brief, is the ecclesiastical history of 
 many colleges belonging to each of these great 
 churches in each of the commonwealths. 
 
 It is to be said that, though the ordinary 
 American college is denominational, in many 
 colleges the denominational relation does not 
 manifest itself in the administration of the 
 college, and much less in the common life 
 and conduct of the students and teachers. 
 The denominational character is more or less 
 evident according to the emphasis placed upon 
 its own ecclesiastical rights by each church. 
 It would be usually recognized that the denom- 
 inational character of the Protestant Episco- 
 pal college is far more evident than that of 
 the Presbyterian college. It is also recognized 
 that the denominational character of the Pres- 
 byterian college is more evident than that 
 which exists in the Congregational college. It 
 is also usually acknowledged, I think, that the 
 older a college is, and the more numerous and 
 rich its relationships to the great public life, 
 the less marked are its denominational charac- 
 teristics and elements. 
 
Certain Present Conditions. 201 
 
 At the present time the denominational 
 phase is assuming a less important part in 
 American college life. It is evident that, 
 although Christianity does manifest itself in 
 organic forms and relations in the college, 
 Christianity need not manifest itself under 
 such forms. The simple fundamental truths 
 of Christianity are sufficient to form a founda- 
 tion broad and deep for the building up of the 
 educational structure. It is also becoming 
 more clearly understood that the purpose of 
 the college is not to form a severe ecclesiasti- 
 cal type of character, but is to form character of 
 the finest type. The aim is to make man largest, 
 richest, strongest, best. It is also recognized 
 that that Christianity which is broadest and 
 deepest and simplest appeals far more vitally 
 and puissantly to the young man at college 
 than the Christianity which makes its appeal 
 to him through the denominational voice and 
 manner and teaching. Beyond the Baptist or 
 Presbyterian or Methodist man, the college 
 desires that the man, its graduate, shall be a 
 man of God. It is well content if he be a man 
 of God, and whether he be an Episcopalian or 
 a Congregationalist is of minor significance. 
 
202 The American College. 
 
 It is also generally confessed that in the ordi- 
 nary teaching of the college, ecclesiastical 
 truths have no place. There is no Presby- 
 terian calculus, or Baptist interpretation of 
 Horace, or a Congregational Demosthenes, or 
 a Methodist French or a Methodist German 
 Literature. Truth is studied in college with- 
 out reference to sectarian relationships. 
 
 Therefore, as the American college is now 
 organized, the denominational element and 
 character has an exceedingly narrow and slight 
 place. Such a remark is the more true usually 
 as the college is the older and stronger and 
 larger. Such a remark is the less true, usually, 
 as the college has smaller resources and fewer 
 students. 
 
 It is to be said that the State University 
 established in each of our newer States is as 
 free from denominational and ecclesiastical re- 
 lations as is the public school system of that 
 State. In respect to general Christian influ- 
 ences and conditions it may be said that the 
 State University is as free from and as subject 
 to Christian influences as are any public insti- 
 tutions of learning in that State. 
 
 There is a fifth element or condition in the 
 
Certain Present Conditions. 20^ 
 
 ordinary American college : it is situated in 
 the country. As the eye runs along the names 
 of the towns in which the colleges are located, 
 one finds that nine tenths of these towns are 
 utterly unknown to the reader. In many cases 
 the college is the town and the town the col- 
 lege; in many cases also the college is more 
 than the town. Every one of us is more fami- 
 liar with the name of Dartmouth College than 
 with that of Hanover; with Hamilton than 
 with Clinton ; with Cornell than with Ithaca ; 
 with Bowdoin than with Brunswick ; with Col- 
 by than with Waterville ; but also Williams 
 and Williamstown, Middlebury and Middle- 
 bury, Amherst and Amherst, Oberlin and 
 Oberlin are each equally well known. The 
 town and the college are identified. In vil- 
 lages of two and three thousand people, in 
 towns of five and six thousand people, and in 
 small cities of ten thousand persons is found 
 the larger number of our American colleges. 
 Five of the colleges of Massachusetts are 
 either in or near large cities. Half of the col- 
 leges of New York are either in or near large 
 cities. Nine of the thirty-nine colleges of 
 Ohio are in large cities, but the other thirty 
 
204 The American College. 
 
 are in small cities or villages. In general, the 
 location of the colleges in Indiana or of Illinois 
 and of most States impresses one with their 
 rural character. 
 
 Advantages there are in the location of a 
 college in the country. A rural situation tends 
 to promote economy in collegiate administra- 
 tion and in the personal expenses of the stu- 
 dents. It also fosters constant and close asso- 
 ciation with nature. It gives, too, freedom 
 from certain social recreations and forms of 
 amusement. These are the more ordinary 
 statements that are urged as advantages that 
 belong to the country college. 
 
 In behalf of the urban situation of the col- 
 lege it is urged that the student is able to 
 come into association with the best life of 
 every kind. The mightiest life of the nation 
 pours into the city. The best preachers have 
 here their pulpits ; the best influences of art 
 and of every form of enjoyment here centre. 
 The association of man with man becomes 
 more constant, more close, and more formative 
 of character. It is also to be said that the 
 enjoyment of nature is more intense to one 
 spending a part of his energies and time 
 
Certain Present Conditions. 205 
 
 amidst the works of man. The contrast be- 
 tween the works of God and the works of man 
 flings man more sharply and profoundly into 
 the appreciation of natural scenes. It is fur- 
 ther urged that the great colleges must be in a 
 city as a rule. No college is great without a 
 great endowment. The endowment of a col- 
 lege is usually, though not always, received 
 from those of its immediate neighborhood. 
 If, therefore, the college receives at all, it 
 must receive from its city. The city alone has 
 the great wealth of the nation. It is also said 
 that in education the prevailing type is the 
 university. A university cannot, under ordi- 
 nary conditions, be equipped in a small town. 
 It is difficult to secure the proper facilities for 
 a medical college, for instance, in any other 
 place than a metropolis. These are some of 
 the more common statements frequently made 
 in behalf of the urban location of the college. 
 The statements made on either side must 
 be weighed with a good deal of care, and cer- 
 tain exceptions should be taken to these 
 statements. For instance, certain statements 
 that are urged in behalf of the rural location 
 of a college I should at once dissent from. 
 
2o6 The American College. 
 
 On the whole, In my thought, the location of 
 the college in the city is by far the better. 
 The location should not be in the midst of the 
 city, but on its borders, — so near that the great 
 life of the town can come into the college, and 
 the students and professors can feel its moving 
 impulses, and so that also the students them- 
 selves and the professors can enter into this 
 great life, helping to qualify it. The location, 
 also, should be so near the green fields and 
 forests, that all those delights and all those in- 
 fluences which belong to nature may enter 
 into and possess the quiet or the restless soul. 
 This question as to the rural or urban loca- 
 tion of a college appeared at the time of the 
 foundation of what is now known as the Uni- 
 versity of Berlin. On the part of those favor- 
 ing a situation in the country it was urged that 
 the Prussian metropolis offered too many op- 
 portunities to dissipation, and too many means 
 of evil temptation, to be made the seat of a 
 school for young men. This was the judgment 
 of the Minister Stein. Fichte who became 
 the first rector, Wolff and others favored the 
 location at Berlin. No one can now doubt 
 that the University of Berlin could not have 
 
Certain Present Conditions. 207 
 
 become, in certain respects, what it is, the 
 most important agency of education and of 
 scholarship in the world, were it placed out- 
 side of a great city. 
 
 Such, in certain exterior and objective and 
 material relations, is the present condition of 
 the American college. The American col- 
 leges are many, the American colleges are 
 small, the American colleges are poor, the 
 American colleges are denominational, and the 
 American colleges are rural. Such an inter- 
 pretation, thus made, is hardly an object of 
 glory. That form of higher education which 
 America has reason to glory in is embodied in 
 the achievements of such colleges as the older 
 colleges of Massachusetts, of New York, of 
 Pennsylvania, and of the strongest colleges of 
 Ohio and of Illinois, — colleges whose leading 
 is the finest in their respective commonwealths. 
 In colleges of this sort we may well exult. 
 Their triumphs are the triumphs of noble 
 character and of scholarship. To call the roll 
 of their graduates is to call the roll of the 
 greatest men in the most important depart- 
 ments of life. 
 
 The future of the American college, small, 
 
2o8 The American College. 
 
 poor, denominational and situated in the coun- 
 try, is a question of great interest. I know an 
 Ohio college of this character founded sixty 
 years ago. It has, in these two generations, 
 sent forth some six hundred graduates who 
 have entered into the noblest vocations and 
 have given best service to humanity. The 
 college has enrolled eminent teachers. It has 
 possessed an endowment varying from two to 
 three hundred thousand dollars. It has re- 
 ceived no small sum from the fees of its stu- 
 dents. It is situated in a town of a few 
 thousand people. One of its professors asked 
 me : 
 
 " What is to be the future of our college ? Our num- 
 ber of students remains as it was. Our teaching force is 
 as it has been for a decade or more. Within forty miles 
 of us are three other colleges. We do not increase our 
 endowment ; we are not able to build laboratories or to 
 buy the books necessary for doing the best work. We 
 can not hold our able professors, and we can not call the 
 best men to equip our chairs. The advantages and con- 
 ditions, socially and scholastically, afforded by other 
 colleges are superior to those which we can maintain. 
 In a word, our college is small, and poor, and denomi- 
 national, and rural. Has it a future ? " 
 
 For many an hour he and I talked, weigh- 
 
Certain Present Conditions. 209 
 
 ing the evidence, putting and answering ques- 
 tions, offering suggestions. We, as searchers 
 for the truth, came to the conclusion that the 
 future of the college is dark. The immedi- 
 ate future of the college is not dark. For 
 decades the college can continue its small and 
 beneficent work. But as the decades go on 
 and the generations increase, unless there be 
 some new power, at present unknown, coming 
 into the life of that college, the college must 
 become yet smaller and poorer. Its power 
 will lessen. Its tools for doing its work will 
 become dull. Its conditions for moulding 
 character and promoting scholarship will be- 
 come less puissant. In each generation it will 
 come a little bit less of a college than before. 
 ** Will the college or shall the college ultim- 
 ately die ?" we asked, my friend and I, of each 
 other. As to that matter we each said we did 
 not know. We, ourselves, shall have been a 
 long time dead before the college comes to its 
 dissolution, for it is apparent that colleges, like 
 individuals, do not like to die. The attitude 
 which the trustees, w^ho are the large conserva- 
 tors and the embodiment of the life of the col- 
 lege, would assume, is somewhat of this sort : 
 
2IO The American College. 
 
 " This trust we have received from our predecessors. 
 This trust they committed to us, not to yield but to ad- 
 minister. We feel bound both by heart and by conscience 
 to administer it until we in turn transfer this trust to our 
 successors. We are also prevented by our constitutional 
 oaths from surrendering this trust to any other corpora- 
 tion. We represent a life and this life we are bound to 
 foster." 
 
 The remark is not infrequently made that 
 the great number of small and poor colleges 
 found scattered throughout the length and 
 breadth of the country is to become dimin- 
 ished ; that colleges small and poor are soon 
 to die out, others to unite and others still to 
 pass into the stage of academies. It is to be 
 said that such an inference is not borne out by 
 recent history. Of the colleges now in exis- 
 tence and usually recognized as colleges, one 
 dates its foundation to the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, and twenty-two to the eighteenth. All 
 the remaining ones have been founded in 
 this century, and as the decades have gone on 
 the number has increased. In the first decade 
 were founded four, in the second eight, in the 
 third twelve, in the fourth twenty-nine, in the 
 fifth thirty-four, in the sixth seventy-four, in 
 the seventh — that time of war — eighty-two, 
 
Certain Present Conditions. 211 
 
 and since 1870 have been founded the remain- 
 der. Instead, therefore, of thinking that our 
 colleges are to become less numerous, we are 
 obliged by the teaching of recent movements 
 to face the probability that their number is to 
 increase. But this fact has in itself certain 
 elements which may be significant. The older 
 a State becomes and the better understood 
 are the conditions of education, the more con- 
 vinced grow the people that no institution of 
 higher education should be formed without a 
 proper endowment. In the States of New 
 York and Pennsylvania, before a charter can 
 be given to an institution to confer collegiate 
 degrees, such an institution must possess a 
 sum of money aggregating a half million of 
 dollars. I am convinced that the older any State 
 becomes the more wise will it seem to the wise 
 people of that State to have a similar law on its 
 statute books. Ohio, for instance, has not yet 
 come into this condition. In the session of the 
 Legislature of Ohio, of 1895-96, a Senator 
 bearing a most honored name, introduced a 
 bill that no institution should have a charter 
 giving it the power to confer degrees, unless it 
 had property yielding an annual income of 
 
212 The American College. 
 
 fifteen thousand dollars. The bill met with 
 such opposition from colleges already existing 
 — strange as it may seem — that the honorable 
 Senator wrote me, saying there was absolutely 
 no possibility of its passage. 
 
 A young American scholar — who died early 
 — writing of the higher education in the State 
 of Tennessee, says : 
 
 " Of the making of colleges there is no end. The 
 curse of higher education in Tennessee is the multipli- 
 city of so-called * colleges * and * universities.' Nearly 
 every cross-roads hamlet has, not its academy or high- 
 school, but its * college.' Many of the schools that 
 style themselves colleges do not possess the ghost of a 
 college equipment, either material or intellectual. 
 Aspiring to do what they can not do at all, they do poorly 
 what they might do well. Their pupils, deluded into 
 the belief that they have *been to college,' know of 
 nothing better and hence aim at nothing better." * 
 
 The condition which is so graphically 
 described as obtaining in Tennessee is spread 
 through more than one half of all our States. 
 It is a condition which contains noble and 
 most promising elements ; but it is a condition 
 which calls out at once laughter and tears : 
 
 ' Bureau of Education Circular, " Higher Education in Tennessee." 
 By Lucius Salisbury Merriam, Ph.D., i8. 
 
Certain Present Conditions. 213 
 
 laughter at the failure of those who arrogate 
 to themselves great functions to know even the 
 significance of these functions, and tears at the 
 great harm which is thus done to the cause of 
 genuine and high learning. 
 
 But for Americans, and especially for 
 Americans in the newer States, the duty is clear. 
 This duty is to promote the growth of a few 
 great institutions. The unity of American 
 education is to be recognized. The power of 
 one college — Harvard — is greater than the 
 power of ten colleges each having one tenth of 
 the endowment and one tenth of the professors 
 and one tenth of the students of the univer- 
 sity on the banks of the Charles. The influence 
 of Oxford, or the influence of Cambridge, is far 
 more vital and pervasive and puissant than 
 their influence would be if their colleges were 
 scattered through the counties of England. 
 The influence of a college grows in a geometri- 
 cal ratio as its endowment and professors and 
 students increase in an arithmetrical. It is 
 the duty of all to endeavor to establish a few 
 great institutions in our great country. 
 
 It is interesting to find that President Quincy, 
 of Harvard, held a half-century ago a similar 
 
214 The American College. 
 
 opinion. This opinion he expressed in the 
 last chapter of his History of Harvard Uni- 
 versity, published in 1840. He says: 
 
 " In every section of country, which is great 
 either from extent, or numbers, or wealth, there is a 
 natural ambition to concentrate within its own immedi- 
 ate vicinity or influence, as far as possible, all the great 
 institutions of society ; and a college or a university as 
 well as others. Undoubtedly, some local accommoda- 
 tion will always result, or some local or personal interest 
 be served, by such an arrangement. But the great 
 interests of the public, in respect to the advancement of 
 the intellectual power, require a conduct regulated by- 
 different principles. * It is better,* says Lord Bacon, 
 * in a fair room, to set up one great light, or branching 
 candlestick of lights, than to go about with a small 
 watch-candle into every corner.' " 
 
 The interests of society demand that the 
 number of the greater seminaries of science 
 should be few ; that they should be highly en- 
 dowed, and so constituted as to become, if 
 possible, the common centre of action to those 
 minds of great power, which in every passing 
 period exist in a community. Such great 
 seminaries of learning are the natural central 
 fires of science, whence intellectual light and 
 heat radiate for the use and comfort of the 
 
Certain Present Conditions. 215 
 
 whole land. From the known laws of mental 
 action, intellect enkindles intellect ; and, of 
 consequence, minds brought into connection 
 and joint action at a centre disperse more and 
 stronger rays, and send them farther, than the 
 same minds could possibly do, if solitary, or 
 scattered in small groups over the surface of 
 the country. 
 
 It is without question a great and import- 
 ant truth, that the higher seminaries of science 
 and literature in every country should be en- 
 dowed in the most liberal spirit, and to the 
 greatest requisite extent ; and, as a conse- 
 quence, it is essential that they be few ; other- 
 wise, the struggle for public patronage will be a 
 scramble among local literary and religious 
 factions, in which all may get something, and 
 no one of them get enough ; and the spirit which 
 should lead the community to high intellectual 
 eminence, degenerates into a low and mean 
 spirit of selfish solicitation or factious intrigue.^ 
 
 Signs abound that we are yet to see the 
 growth of a few great colleges. Out of a 
 selected list of forty-six colleges of New Eng- 
 land and the Middle States the attendance in 
 
 ^ Quincy's History of Harvard University, ii., 452-3. 
 
2i6 The American College. 
 
 the twenty-five years between 1868 and 1893 
 doubled. But the attendance for the six 
 largest of these colleges has almost quadrupled.^ 
 The large colleges have grown larger at a rate 
 of increase almost twice that by which the 
 smaller colleges have increased. 
 
 It is also to be said that a very strong objec- 
 tion to the development of a few and great and 
 therefore widely separated colleges is found 
 in the fact that colleges to a large degree 
 make their own constituency. Many men go 
 to a college that is found within twenty- 
 five miles of their home who would not go to 
 college at all were there no college within that 
 radius. The college educates its neighborhood 
 to the need of itself and to an appreciation of 
 the worth of an education, such as it is able to 
 give. This consideration is supported by the 
 fact that more than one half of the students 
 of Harvard are drawn from Massachusetts ; 
 one third or one fourth of the students of 
 Yale are drawn from Connecticut; forty per 
 cent, of the students of Amherst — situated 
 
 ^ * * The Future of the College. " A paper read before the Associa- 
 tion of Colleges and Preparatory Schools at Baltimore, Dec. i, 1894, 
 by Talcott Williams. 
 
Certain Present Conditions. 217 
 
 midway between New Haven and Cambridge, 
 — are drawn from Massachusetts. In any 
 argument for the development of a few and 
 great colleges, this fact of the college educating 
 its own constituency to an appreciation of the 
 worth of the opportunity it gives is not to be 
 overlooked. 
 
 It would yet make vastly for the betterment 
 of American scholarship and of American 
 character if we were all content with a hundred 
 colleges and universities in this country. I 
 know that instead of saying a hundred not a 
 few would say fifty. I do not fail to recognize 
 the difficulties in any such concentration and 
 consolidation of force ; but such consolida- 
 tion and concentration represent that system 
 which has the most power with the least fric- 
 tion, that method which brings the largest re- 
 sults with the smallest expenditure. I do not 
 fail to recognize, either, the worth of person- 
 ality, nor the advantages that accrue to stu- 
 dents in solitude. It is the duty of Americans, 
 then, first, to use every endeavor to prevent the 
 foundation of more colleges ; second, to unite, 
 if it be possible, certain ones of those now ex- 
 isting ; third, to strengthen the colleges already 
 
2i8 The American College. 
 
 great, well endowed, well established, and well 
 situated — to make these not only great but the 
 greatest possible. We should unite all the 
 fires of our scholarship in a few central suns 
 rather than scatter them as star dust through 
 the scholastic heavens. 
 
 Such colleges, unlike our present ones, 
 would have many students. Such colleges, 
 unlike our present ones, would have large en- 
 dowments, noble laboratories, great libraries. 
 Such colleges, unlike our present ones, would 
 not be primarily denominational, but they 
 would be primarily, vitally, fundamentally, 
 profoundly Christian. Such colleges would be, 
 unlike our present ones, not situated in the 
 country, but located on the borders of great 
 towns, where all the mighty and best life of 
 the nation can enter into them. 
 
 To such a result the movements of the cen- 
 turies will tend. The drift of the present time 
 may be antagonistic, but the history of Eng- 
 land, and the history of Germany, and the 
 history of the great civilizing movements of 
 our own government, assure us what is to be 
 the ultimate result. 
 
VI. 
 
 CERTAIN ADJUSTMENTS OF ITS 
 
 ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS FORCES 
 
 TO ITS INTELLECTUAL. 
 
 THAT man is a unit, is a truth having 
 value in college instruction and life. 
 Even if the more immediate purpose 
 of the college be intellectual, yet the college 
 cannot secure this intellectual purpose unless 
 all the parts of man's nature are properly ad- 
 justed to each other. One cannot attain in- 
 tellectual results unless the feelings are in a 
 proper state, and the will also fittingly di- 
 rected. If the appetites are riotous, the power 
 of reflection is disturbed. If the desires are 
 toward the base, the power of imagination is 
 weakened. If the affections fail to be properly 
 directed and of proper strength, the power of 
 
 219 
 
220 The American College, 
 
 ^^^^^^..^..-p^ception is lessened. Man is one. His 
 
 powers ^TR^tn hp kppf in pqnjijhrnim For 
 
 ^ > - «i ' poscs of convenience we divide and subdi- 
 vide the various faculties of man ; but it is 
 never to be forgotten by or in the college that 
 the man who sees truth is the same man who 
 feels its impressiveness and who chooses its 
 duties. 
 
 These general propositions prepare the way 
 for certain statements in detail. The training 
 of the intellectual nature should promote the 
 training of the ethical, and the training of the 
 ethical the training of the religious. The in- 
 tellectual man is the man who is reflective, 
 who sees truth, who is rich in knowledge. 
 Such a man should find it easy to do the right, 
 and the man who does the right is the man 
 who should find it easy to be religious. Obe- 
 dience to the law of right prepares one to 
 obey the law of God, which is the right. 
 
 Such reasoning has not always been assented 
 to. Too often has it been thought that intel- 
 lectual strength does not lead to ethical power, 
 and that ethical power is not a stepping-stone 
 to the acceptance of what may be called specific 
 Christian truth. But to-day we are learning 
 
Adjustments of its Forces. 221 
 
 that the best intellectual conditions promote 
 the best ethical, and the best ethical the no- 
 blest Christian. We cannot think that the 
 man who is low in his thoughts and base in 
 his imaginations is the man best fitted to attain 
 to the ethical verities. We have learned, too, 
 that aesthetics has a pretty close relation to 
 morals ; the man who sees and who delights in 
 the beautiful is the man who the more easily 
 comes to see and to delight in the great law 
 of righteousness. It may also be observed as 
 a reverse side of the same general truth, that 
 allegiance to Christian truth prepares one for 
 allegiance to the ethical verities, and that hold- 
 ing to the ethical verities is itself a good prep- 
 aration for loyalty to all intellectual truth. 
 That change in the being of a man which is 
 called conversion, a change which is immedi- 
 ately limited to or which immediately affects 
 the will and emotions, is often a change result- 
 ing, also, in an intellectual new birth. All the 
 parts of human nature act and react each upon 
 the other. No enlightenment dawns upon the 
 intellect but it affects the heart, and no effect 
 is produced upon the heart but it may necessi- 
 tate acting on the part of the v/ill. So, also, 
 
222 The American College, 
 
 every act on the part of the will may result 
 in effects on the appetites, the desires, the pas- 
 sions, the affections, and also, in turn, may 
 itself cause a baptism of power upon, or a dis- 
 integration of, the intellect. 
 
 Great changes are occurring in the religious 
 life of colleges as there are occurring great 
 changes also in the general intellectual life. 
 Perhaps the chief element of change in the 
 Christian life of the college consists in the de- 
 cadence of the revival. The revival has ceased 
 to be a normal part of the life of many a nor- 
 mal Christian college. The revival was for- 
 merly a part of the life of the Christian college. 
 In Yale College, in the ninety-six years fol- 
 lowing the great revival of 1741, there were 
 *' twenty distinct effusions of the Holy Spirit, 
 of which three were in the last century, and 
 seventeen in the present." ^ The history of 
 Yale College for one hundred years in this 
 respect is the history of the larger number of 
 our older colleges. In Dartmouth College, in 
 the space of sixty-five years there were nine 
 revivals of religion. Prof. W. S. Tyler says : 
 
 ' ** Narrative of Revivals of Religion in Yale College," by Pro- 
 fessor Goodrich, Quarterly Register ^ X., 310. 
 
Adjustments of its Forces. 223 
 
 " No class has ever yet left Amherst College without 
 witnessing a powerful revival of religion, and scarce a 
 year has passed without some special interest in the 
 church, and more or less conversions." * 
 
 But this passage was written forty years ago ; 
 and it must now be said that the revival has 
 ceased to be an integral part of the life of many 
 Christian colleges. Revivals do not occur 
 now with the frequency or with the extensive- 
 ness of the former time. 
 
 The reason of the decadence of the revival 
 in the American college is manifold. One 
 cause lies in the change in ordinary society. 
 Revivals are less frequent in the Church than 
 they were. It is also to be said that men do 
 not approach each other with the earnestness 
 or the urgency of the former time in reference 
 to what is frequently called the question of 
 personal salvation. We no longer ask a man, 
 ''Are you saved?" Rather we now ask him, 
 *' Are you willing to do some work to help men 
 to be better men ? " The change is sociological. 
 We have a feeling that to ask a man, ''Are 
 you saved?" is to approach him upon a very 
 selfish ground, but to ask him to aid in some 
 
 ^ Prayer for Colleges^ 132, 133. 
 
224 The American College. 
 
 Christian work is to approach him upon the 
 noble ground of Christian altruism. It is 
 simply what is in some places called a ** conse- 
 cration " service which was held some time ago 
 at the opening of a college year at Harvard 
 College. Men at that meeting made to each 
 other a pledge that they would do some work 
 to help men to be better in the new college 
 year. And what was that pledge, but that 
 they would devote themselves to the work to 
 which Christ gave himself, and what was this 
 devotion but a pledge of Christian consecra- 
 tion ? The meeting did not seem to be a re- 
 vival meeting or a consecration meeting, but 
 it was in essence such. 
 
 Another cause of the decadence of the re- 
 vival in college is the increasing prevalence of 
 the conviction that religion is life, and that 
 life is personal and permanent, and does not 
 lend itself to the methods of the revival. This 
 conviction is suggested by Bishop Brooks in 
 an essay, read a short time before his death, in 
 which he said ^ : 
 
 " Men who believe that natural science and political 
 economy may be satisfactorily expounded by the pro- 
 ^ Essays and Addresses^ 204. 
 
Adjustments of its Forces. 225 
 
 fessor to his class of pupils believe that religion is un- 
 teachable. Some sense of the fineness and subtlety and 
 also of the intense personalness of spiritual truth makes 
 it seem incommunicable. It must lose its essential qual- 
 ity as it passes from lip to ear, from mind to mind. 
 This misgiving shows itself in a crude way in the familiar 
 talk of many people who, holding a true Christian faith 
 themselves, declare that they will never undertake to 
 teach their children to be Christians. The children 
 must find their own faith as they grow up. They must 
 think for themselves." 
 
 In this conviction Bishop Brooks did not sym- 
 pathize ; but with its prevalence he was famil- 
 iar. This conviction is probably more general 
 and stronger in the college than elsewhere. 
 
 A further cause of decadence of the revival 
 lies in a doubt on the part of many college 
 officers of the truth of certain specific Christian 
 doctrines. There was formerly a good deal of 
 superficial believing. There is now a good 
 deal of superficial doubting. But mixed in 
 with the present superficial doubting is a great 
 deal of fundamental Christian believing. Many 
 college officers doubt, for instance, whether 
 Moses wrote the Pentateuch ; or perhaps I 
 may say that most college officers believe that 
 
 he did not write it. But there is no doubt 
 15 
 
226 The American College. 
 
 among most college men that the Bible is in a 
 special sense the book of God. There is a 
 good deal of doubt as to certain statements 
 which are made in many creeds ; but there is 
 no doubt among most college people as to the 
 fundamental principles underlying the state- 
 ments of the creeds. But because of the cur- 
 rent doubt of the more evident statements, 
 college teachers hesitate to talk personally 
 with their students on religious subjects. 
 
 Yet the college is an agent for the training 
 of the character of the individual man. Char- 
 acter is a unity. With the decadence, therefore, 
 of the revival it is of mightily serious conse- 
 quence to ask — By what means can the college 
 train the ethical and the religious character of 
 its men ? 
 
 The answer lies, at least in part, in the truth 
 that these ethical and Christian relations are 
 to become normal, consistently strong, and 
 constant. The method of training is through 
 the ordinary means of the college. These 
 agencies are to be made ** means of grace." 
 The common, daily intellectual intercourse 
 offers the best opportunity for the securing of 
 the ethical and Christian advantages which 
 
Adjustments of its Forces. 227 
 
 were formerly secured by the somewhat ab- 
 normal revival. 
 
 There are at least three constant conditions 
 or methods by which this ethical and religious 
 training can be secured : First, through the 
 content of studies ; second, through the method 
 of instruction ; and third, through the general 
 spirit or atmosphere of the college. 
 
 The content of certain studies offers an ad- 
 mirable opportunity for the giving of an ethi- 
 cal discipline. Literature has tremendous 
 ethical importance, and literature represents a 
 large part of the content of the training of a 
 college. The noblest part of a nation's char- 
 acter is impressed in its permanent literature. 
 The ignoble in literature is rotten ; it van- 
 ishes. The pure, the true, the worthiest is vital ; 
 It endures. The literature of the Greek and 
 of the Roman which we have, has lasted these 
 two thousand and more years, simply because it 
 is strong in intellectual truth and pure in moral 
 impressiveness. The most lasting literature 
 must embody the best humanity. Humanity 
 will not treasure from age to age anything but 
 the best. These general truths receive special 
 illustration in English literature. The dom- 
 
2 28 The American College. 
 
 inant note in English literature is ethical. Its 
 chief words are, as a professor in one of our 
 colleges has said, the words Right, Duty. 
 Goodness is made mightier than greatness, or 
 rather, goodness is interpreted as an essential 
 part of greatness. The life of English litera- 
 ture is, certain writers say, longer, too, than 
 the literature of any other people ; and this 
 continuity impresses the reader with the truth 
 that the rational conviction of duty is the 
 great principle of life. Swift may be coarse 
 and Byron shameless, but the masters, begin- 
 ning with Shakespeare and ending with Ten- 
 nyson, strengthen the belief in the ethical and 
 the spiritual. English literature is serious. 
 It is pervaded v/ith a sense of human responsi- 
 bility. It deals with questions of the migh- 
 tiest import in human life and action. This 
 sense of responsibility gives to it a sense of 
 sincerity. The fantastic has had a short life 
 and has held narrow sway. The long record 
 of our literature helps also to give a per- 
 spective which enables a student to trace the 
 conflict of ideas to partial or complete victory 
 or to partial or absolute defeat. He thus learns 
 the power of an idea, beneficent or malevolent, 
 
Adjustments of its Forces. 229 
 
 over human minds. It is never, further, to be 
 denied that high art is itself a moral agency. 
 The literature of the English race is a form of 
 art. It embodies the beautiful under con- 
 ditions of sincerity and of seriousness. 
 
 Thus it is clear that the content of English 
 literature helps to impress ethical truths upon 
 the student. It may be added that the study 
 of the methods of a writer is potential over a 
 student. Every involuntary revelation of an 
 authors own character in his composition 
 warns the student of the subtlety of self-be- 
 trayal. The intangible but sure evidence of 
 insincerity teaches him that there is no safety 
 except in integrity of heart. As he sees the 
 artifices of others fail them, he comes to hesi- 
 tate to use subterfuge in the expression of his 
 own thought or in his thought itself. He him- 
 self in his writing becomes frank, genuine, 
 direct. He becomes a serious thinker; he 
 becomes a serious man. 
 
 The ethical value of the content of studies, 
 so forcibly illustrated in English literature, ap- 
 pears in other subjects. What can give a 
 stronger ethical and spiritual impression to the 
 student than philosophy? Philosophy con- 
 
530 The American College. 
 
 cerns itself with the most fundamental truths 
 of the being of man — his own existence, his 
 responsibiHty for himself ; the relation which 
 all the past bears to him ; the relation which 
 he bears to the future, God, immortality, free- 
 dom — these are questions of which no man 
 can think without receiving impressions which 
 relate most directly and fundamentally to the 
 moral and religious nature of the individual. 
 
 Ethical lessons of tremendous importance 
 are also among the most significant teachings 
 of history. Obedience to the law of right as it 
 tends to build up a people, and obedience to 
 the law of wrong as it tends to disintegrate a 
 nation, are the two opposite principles out of 
 which the annals of any people may be written. 
 Every student who reads history with his eyes 
 and not with his prejudices may receive a tui- 
 tion in ethics of priceless worth. 
 
 Even the ethical content of mathematics 
 seems to me of the greatest value, for what is 
 mathematics but absolute truth ? It is man 
 seeing truth as God sees it. From this per- 
 ception of truth is deduced the great law of 
 right. Intellectual accuracy is akin to moral 
 honesty. The elder Professor Peirce once put 
 
Adjustments of its Forces. 231 
 
 down upon the blackboard of a recitation-room 
 a formula and said : '' That is the formula by 
 which God created the universe." Mathe- 
 matics represents the truth of God to the 
 mind of man. 
 
 The sciences even in their content have an 
 ethical import. Biology through the revela- 
 tions of the microscope, and astronomy through 
 the revelations of the telescope, one dealing 
 with what may be called the infinitely small, 
 and the other dealing with the infinitely im- 
 mense, tend to awaken such a profound feeling 
 that they cannot but have an effect upon 
 morals. Who can contemplate ' the develop- 
 ment of life as biology exhibits it without be- 
 ing filled with wonder and adoration for its 
 author ; and who can think of the phenomena 
 of the celestial system without a certain eleva- 
 tion of mind and heart of the noblest character ? 
 
 Thus the content of a study has great 
 ethical value. But the method of teaching 
 or of studying has ethical value also great. 
 The ethical value of the methods of science is 
 as great as the ethical value of the content of 
 literature. The late Professor Cooke said : ^ 
 
 * Credentials of Science ^ 1 19-120. 
 
232 The American College. 
 
 " I would that I could also give an adequate concep- 
 tion of the great amount of conscientious work which is 
 expended on the deductions of science for the sole love 
 of truth. Were it possible, I am sure that your respect 
 for the scientific investigator would be greatly increased 
 and your belief in his sincerity established, however mis- 
 taken you may at times deem his opinions or his judg- 
 ment. Of course in the cultivation of science, as in 
 every other pursuit of life, there is abundant room for 
 the display of unworthy motives and ignoble passions ; 
 but I venture to assert that there is no class of men in 
 the world among whom is found more unselfish devotion 
 and more personal sacrifice than among the great army 
 of scientific workers. The love of abstract truth may be 
 a much lower motive than the love of man, but it equally 
 calls forth the very noblest qualities of the mind. More- 
 over, in most cases the constancy and courage of the 
 scientific investigator meet with no reward except the 
 satisfaction which unselfish duty conscientiously dis- 
 charged always brings ; and, as Professor Tyndall has 
 said, * There is a morality brought to bear on such mat- 
 ters which in point of severity is probably without a 
 parallel in any other domain of intellectual action.* ** 
 
 The same ethical advantage is found in 
 every scientific subject. As already said, in- 
 tellectual qualities have moral value. The 
 study of such a subject as physics has an ethi- 
 cal value through the development of patience 
 caused by pursuing a tedious research and in 
 surmounting unexpected difificulties ; through 
 
Adjustments of its Forces. 233 
 
 the development, also, of carefulness in plan- 
 ning a course of experiment, in proyiding for 
 any possible contingency, in keeping a com- 
 plete and systematic record ; through the de- 
 velopment of honesty, in holding the mind 
 balanced and unbiased, not juggling with nor 
 manipulating results, not embracing one theory 
 or explanation more than another until all the 
 facts have been examined and given due weight ; 
 through the development of caution in dis- 
 cussing results and in drawing conclusions. 
 Physics has for its chief condition precision, 
 and the intellectual quality of precision pro- 
 motes the same ethical quality. 
 
 The ethical value of scientific studies is com- 
 prehensively described in both content and 
 method by a distinguished teacher of science, 
 who says : ^ 
 
 "The object which the scientific investigator sets be- 
 fore him is to ascertain the truth. He is devoted to it, 
 and pursues it with unremitting toil. But this is not all. 
 He not only seeks truth, but he must be true himself. 
 It is difficult to conceive of any circumstances which 
 would induce him to play a dishonest part in scientific 
 research. He has every inducement not only to accu- 
 
 ^ Prof. H. S. Carhart, of University of Michigan, at dedication of 
 Hale Scientific Building, University of Colorado, 9 March, 1895. 
 
234 The American College. 
 
 racy, but to honesty. He may unwittingly blunder and 
 fall into error, but if he is untrue he is certain to be ex- 
 posed. No discovery is permitted to go unverified. It 
 must undergo the searching examination of scientific in- 
 quiry. The investigator must submit his data, and must 
 seek to have his results confirmed. There is, therefore, 
 every inducement for him to be absolutely truthful. 
 This condition imposes upon him also the habit of con- 
 servatism and moderation in statement. He is not ex- 
 pected to plead a cause or to make the most of the 
 occasion for himself. In this regard his position is in 
 contrast with those whose profession makes them the 
 allies of faith, but whose moderation is not always 
 known to all men ; for their assertions are not brought 
 to the touchstone of revision and justification, and the 
 released word flies over the unguarded wall. The habit 
 of the scientific investigator is to subject every question 
 to the scrutiny of reason, and to weigh probabilities. 
 He obeys the injunction, * Prove all things ; hold fast 
 that which is good.' He respects conscience, but has 
 no use for credulity. He exhibits devotion to principle, 
 but dogmatism, whether in science or religion, has no 
 place in his creed. He looks not only upon the things 
 which are seen, but also upon the things which are un- 
 seen. You may suffer me to remind you that the most 
 noted American atheist is not a man of science, while 
 one of the forceful books of modern times. The Unseen 
 Universe, which aims to lay a foundation for belief in a 
 future life without the aid of inspiration, was written by 
 two distinguished physicists. Science examines the 
 foundations of belief. It takes nothing from mere tra- 
 dition, on authority, nor because it is an inheritance 
 
Adjustments of its Forces. ^35 
 
 from the past. It admits its own limitations and the 
 somewhat circumscribed boundaries set to the field of its 
 inquiries ; but within this province it seeks to ascertain 
 only the truth. It recognizes not only the promise and 
 potency of matter, but the power which makes for 
 righteousness/' 
 
 But it is still to be said that the general 
 atmosphere of a college as well as the content 
 of studies and the method of teaching may- 
 promote an ethical and spiritual impressive- 
 ness. If teaching be human, and large, and in- 
 spiring, it promotes an atmosphere in which 
 definite and individual ethical truths become 
 of tremendous importance. If teachers also 
 are men of the noblest living, as they usually 
 are, the force of example is great in drawing 
 students up into the best ethical conditions and 
 helping them to live the best life. The pres- 
 ence of such a teacher as President Hopkins, 
 of Williams College, was of priceless worth to 
 the students. Dr. McCosh did quite as much 
 for the ethical and religious Interests of Prince- 
 ton through his presence and through the mani- 
 festation of his personal character, as through 
 his instruction in the class-room. The power 
 of this general atmosphere is well expressed 
 by Prof. John Bascom : 
 
236 The American College. 
 
 " Carry a man onward, sweep him upward, whether by 
 a pervasive sense of natural law or of divine grace, — will 
 any one tell me exactly what is the real difference be- 
 tween them, so that the two shall not glide into each 
 other while one's eye is upon them — and before he is 
 aware he is earnest, reverential, devout. The wisdom 
 that is buoyant, lifting the man that entertains it, carries 
 teacher and taught alike heavenward. . . . Scarcely 
 anything is shut out from a man by the form of an insti- 
 tution ; and scarcely anything is conferred upon him by 
 its form. . . . There must be moral elevation in our 
 educational life, and elevation always declares itself. It 
 is by elevation that nature ignites our thoughts, and 
 hushes our words into awe." * 
 
 All ethical instruction is in a sense Chris- 
 tian ; and all Christian teaching may properly 
 be called the development and the blossoming 
 of the ordinary ethical instruction. 
 
 We have in America three types of what 
 may be called the Christian college. One type 
 is the denominational— a college founded by a 
 Church and the servant of that Church. Such 
 was the original Harvard. Such are many 
 colleges established In the western movement 
 of the people. One type is that of a broad- 
 church Christianity, such as I interpret Will- 
 
 * Williams College Centennial Anniversary, 72-73. 
 
Adjustments of its Forces. 237 
 
 iams and Dartmouth to represent; and one 
 type is a Christianity such as I understand 
 the ordinary State university to embody. 
 Now as to the best way of making the col- 
 lege Christian, to whichever of these three 
 types it may belong, it is to be said that Chris- 
 tianity should not be a department of a col- 
 lege. Christianity is not so much a science 
 as it is a life ; Christianity is still an incar- 
 nation. Yet as the Old Testament came be- 
 fore the incarnate Christ, and as the New 
 Testament followed his presence, so also the 
 text-book may at once precede the Christian 
 life of the college, and may also supplement 
 and nourish it. The Christian college may, 
 therefore, make and keep itself Christian first 
 and always through the life of the men in col- 
 lege, and, secondly, through instruction in the 
 content of Christianity. Courses, moreover, on 
 theism, on the supernatural origin of Christian- 
 ity, are germane to the purpose and work of 
 the Christian college. Theology itself is also 
 simply a department of philosophy. The Old 
 Testament is quite as worthy of study, as em- 
 bodying the history of a people which has 
 supremely influenced the world, as many parts 
 
238 The American College. 
 
 of the early history of Rome. The ethical 
 and religious teachings of Pauls Epistles, too, 
 are quite as well worth reading for their intel- 
 lectual value as the epistles of Seneca. The 
 college, also, in a third way, should make itself 
 Christian. The atmosphere of a college has 
 more value possibly in the promotion of Chris- 
 tian ideals than specific instruction. Of course, 
 this atmosphere is created very largely by the 
 men in the college. It is said of Dr. Arnold 
 that it was his ambition to compass an educa- 
 tion which was not based upon religion, but 
 was itself religious. And Professor Bascom, 
 from whom I have already quoted, also finely 
 says that the best way for a Christian college 
 to fulfil its function in training young men to 
 take a successful part in society is 
 
 " certainly not by an ism ; hardly by a prescribed 
 method ; undoubtedly by a steady leading of all knowl- 
 edge, in its ample and manifold forms, into a knowledge 
 of man ; by the constant gathering of truth into the ulti- 
 mate truth of a spiritual universe ; by subduing and ex- 
 panding action, personal, economic, and civic, into the 
 fellowship of man with man in righteousness ; by gather- 
 ing all things and being gathered of all into the kingdom 
 of God." ' 
 
 ^ Williams Cohege Centennial Anniversary ^ 77-78. 
 
Adjustments of its Forces. 239 
 
 The college is supposed to be a community of 
 gentlemen. The atmosphere of the life of a gen- 
 tleman pervades the college. Let it be known 
 and felt that the typical gentleman is the high- 
 est type of the Christian. The college is not 
 so much to teach Christianity as to be Chris- 
 tian. The old custom that prevailed in many 
 colleges of giving up the regular college work 
 for the sake of holding a revival, a custom still 
 observed in certain colleges, is, on the whole, 
 thoroughly bad. It tends to show that the 
 Christian life stands apart from other life. 
 Rather the purpose of the college is to show 
 that all life is to be Christian, and that to 
 follow the Christ is not to turn one's back 
 upon one's set tasks, but to have the mo- 
 tive and the force of Christ in doing these 
 tasks. 
 
 Thus I believe that the American college is 
 to gather up and to conserve and to make 
 forcible the ethical and the Christian. It is to 
 accomplish these highest purposes through the 
 use of the ordinary means. When a recently 
 held Roman Catholic Congress passed a re- 
 solution that *' in the elevating and directing 
 influence of the Christian higher education 
 
HO The American College. 
 
 . . . we recognize the most potent agency 
 for the wise solution of the great social 
 problems now facing mankind," it was simply 
 saying that the Christian higher education in its 
 ordinary condition and powers was most potent 
 for this supreme work. This work is to be 
 done in the large spirit of earnestness, of 
 devotion, and of love. Oxford and Cambridge 
 were established as ecclesiastical foundations. 
 Their ecclesiastical relations have now been 
 somewhat eliminated. The American college 
 was never an ecclesiastical foundation in the 
 sense in which the oldest English universities 
 were. The American college was and is a 
 Christian foundation ; was and is an intellectual 
 foundation ; and was and is also an ethical 
 foundation. But these three aspects of the one 
 institution are not to be separated. As the 
 college is intellectual it promotes the ethical and 
 the Christian purpose. As the college is an 
 ethical agency it takes hold of the intellectual 
 relations of man, and also of his Christian 
 beliefs and principles. And as the college is 
 Christian it must base itself upon the intellect- 
 ual powers and also upon all ethical truth. 
 The college of the future that is the worthiest 
 
Adjustments of its Forces. 
 
 241 
 
 will unite in any description of itself the three 
 epithets, intellectual, ethical, and Christian, 
 into the one comprehensive epithet, human. 
 For humanity is the expression of God, as it 
 is his creation. 
 
 16 
 
^ 
 
 s 
 
 ^^- 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE INCREASING COST OF ITS 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 THE increase in the number of students 
 in American colleges in the last two 
 generations should be still further aug- 
 mented. The period of education, too, should 
 be lengthened for most boys and girls, men 
 and women. Of the students at any one time 
 enrolled in the public schools of the United 
 States only twelve per cent, graduate, and the 
 private academies and seminaries exhibit as low 
 a percentage of graduates as seven. Many 
 college classes show a decrease of one fifth, 
 and I have known classes to summon only one 
 half as many men upon the Commencement 
 platform as stood together in the Freshman 
 year. We ought to do all that can be done to 
 have the pupils of the grammar-school enter 
 
 242 
 
Increasing cost of its Education. 243 
 
 the high-school, to cause students of the high- 
 school to complete the course, and to urge 
 graduates of the high-school to take degrees at 
 the college. 
 
 It is never to be denied that many men and 
 women do not want a college education.. It 
 is also to be granted that if a person does not 
 want a college course the college does not 
 want him as a student. He would probably 
 be hurt by the college, and he certainly would 
 hurt the college. And yet most persons would 
 be glad of an education if it could be had. 
 The most evident reason which prevents 
 worthy men who desire a college training 
 from getting it is the cost. Mr. Benjamin 
 Kidd says : 
 
 " Even from that large and growing class of positions 
 for which high acquirements or superior education is the 
 only qualification, and of which we, consequently (with 
 strange inaccuracy), speak as if they were open to all 
 comers, it may be perceived that the larger proportion of 
 the people are excluded — almost as rigorously and as 
 absolutely as in any past condition of society — by the 
 simple fact that the ability to acquire such education or 
 qualification is at present the exclusive privilege of 
 wealth." ' 
 
 * Social Evolution y 233. 
 
244 The American College. 
 
 In one view of the question the cost of a 
 college education is high. The average cost 
 to the student per year at the better college is 
 larger than the total income of the average 
 American family. The cost, too, has greatly 
 increased. I have lying before me tables 
 which indicate the cost of education in certain 
 respects at three such old and representative 
 colleges as Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth since 
 their foundation.^ I shall begin with the former, 
 and with the first decades of the century. 
 
 From 1825-30 the average annual expenses 
 of a student at Harvard were $176, of which 
 half went for tuition and half for board and 
 room ; from 1831-40 the average was $188.10 ; 
 from 1840-48, $194 ; 1849-60, $227 ($138 went 
 for board and room) ; in the sixties the price 
 jumped from $263 to $437, two thirds of 
 which went for board and room; in 1881-82 
 the average expense to an economical student 
 ranged from $484 to $807, the latter sum in- 
 cluding a few more material comforts, and 
 in recent years these last figures have been 
 slightly reduced. 
 
 At Yale the increase of expenses has been 
 
 ^ These statements have been compiled from the old catalogues 
 and other official statements. 
 
Increasing cost of Its Education. 245 
 
 nearly in the same ratio, the average for the 
 first year of the third decade being $175, and 
 the average for 1893 being $687.50. 
 
 Eleven catalogues of Dartmouth College 
 which I examined mention no expenses prior 
 to 1822, in which year the cost of tuition was 
 $26, other expenses amounting to about $75. 
 This scale of expense changed little until 1862, 
 when tuition cost $51, and other expenses 
 amounted to about $101. In 1892 the figures 
 were higher, tuition being $90 and other ex- 
 penses about $191. 
 
 At the risk of inflicting too many figures 
 upon the reader I venture to give certain fur- 
 ther facts in reference to the increase of bills 
 at a few other colleges. In 1830 the total ex- 
 penses per student at Waterville, Hamilton, 
 Amherst, Brown, and the University of Penn- 
 sylvania ranged from $84 at the first named to 
 $180 at the last; in 1893 from $275, or more, 
 at Waterville to $335, or more, at the Uni- 
 versity of Pennsylvania. President Lord, of 
 Dartmouth, wrote in 1830: 
 
 " Our students have just now commenced reform with 
 an excellent spirit in regard to their diet. Several board- 
 ing-houses have been opened upon the principle of strict 
 
246 The American College. 
 
 temperance, and perhaps fifty or sixty young men have 
 good living for $1 to $1.1 2|^ per week. It may be under- 
 stood that boarding may now be had in our most respect- 
 able families for $1, the student consenting to a moderate, 
 but in all respects sufficient bill of fare, and which will 
 insure the * 7ne7ts sana in corpore sano* " 
 
 These facts necessitate the conclusion that 
 every element of the cost of an education has 
 in the last sixty years increased three or four 
 fold. 
 
 The following notes, taken from the College 
 books of Harvard, show the contrast between 
 the simplicity of its early days and the more 
 costly necessities of the present : 
 
 1667. — "The cook, receiving provisions from y® Steward 
 at current prices, shall deliver the same out, to y* 
 scholars, advancing an halfe penny upon a penny.*' 
 " The Butler, receiving his beer from y^ Steward, 
 single beer at 2^, & double beer at 4^ y® barrell, shall 
 advance 4"* upon y® shilling.'* 
 
 1702.— Steward allowed to ch'ge two pence 3 farthings 
 for each " part." 
 
 1724, Apr. 14. — Steward may charge 6 pence ^qt part the 
 current quarter. 
 
 1732, Nov. 7. — Food increased : Steward may charge 10 
 pence half penny for a part at noon : other meals 
 remain the same. 
 
 1737, Apr. 6. — Provisions dear : so charged 16** a part at 
 noon, To"^ at night : bread to be 5^ a loaf. 
 
Increasing cost of its Education. 247 
 
 1741, Apr. 15. — Dearness of provisions. Steward to 
 ch'ge 2^ a part at dinner, 15*^ at night. 
 
 1748, Oct. 19. — Particular management of Commons, and 
 the price, left to be ordered by the members of the 
 corporation resident in Cambridge. 
 
 1750, Aug, 15. — Prices of Commons fixed : Bread — two 
 pence per loaf. Dinner — five pence, one farthing 
 (" of which ^ part is allowed for sauce "). 
 Beer — one penny a quart. Supper — three pence, 
 one farthing. 
 Commons to be as follows : " Two sizzes of bread in the 
 morning, one pound of Meat at Dinner w*^ sufficient 
 sauce & half a pint of Beer : & at night. That a 
 Part Pye, be of the same Quantity as usual, & also 
 half a pint of Beer, and that the Supper Messes be 
 but of four Parts, tho' the dinner Messes . . . 
 be of six." 
 
 Sept. 8, 1778. — Tuition raised to 40^ a quarter. 
 
 Dec. 15, 1778. — Assessment as follows : To Hancock 
 Professor 16^: to Tuition ^^5 5^ o"^: to the Monitors 
 2^: to gallery money 6^ Also, on the Junior and 
 Senior Sophisters, for Library ^i 5^ o"^ ; for Hollis 
 Prof. Math. ^2. (Reckoning is always by the 
 quarter.) 
 
 Oct. 14, 1805. — Tuition for Seniors and Juniors $5.50 a 
 quarter ; for Sophomores and Freshmen, $4.50. 
 
 Aug. 7, 1806. — Tuition doubled — twice as much as pre- 
 ceding quarter. 
 
 Dec. 16, 1806. — lo*" assessment on each student attend- 
 ing the French instruction. 
 
 Sept. 13, 181 1. — Tuition increased one quarter part. 
 
248 The American College. 
 
 It cannot be said that this increase of cost 
 can worthily be avoided. It is simply a part of 
 the increase which comes from the change from 
 living in a simple and rural community to living 
 in a community whose relations are more or 
 less elaborate. The college is a part of the 
 community ; it is moved by all that moves the 
 community. The ordinary family of the com- 
 munity is spending several times as much 
 money as the ordinary family of the commun- 
 ity of two generations ago. The college-man 
 does as the family does of which he is a mem- 
 ber. It is also to be said that the cost of the 
 administration of a college has vastly increased. 
 Though complaints as to the present small 
 salaries of college professors abound, yet these 
 salaries have increased quite as rapidly as most 
 incomes. At the period of the American 
 Revolution the average salary of a professor 
 at Harvard was ;^200. Early in the century 
 the salary was $1500, and remained at that 
 figure till 1838-39. At this time it was in- 
 creased to $1800. In 1854 it was raised to 
 $2000. In the next twelve years it was by 
 successive increments so increased that it 1866 
 it was $3200. In 1869 it became $4000. The 
 
Increasing cost of its Education. 249 
 
 maximum salary now paid in the College is 
 $4500, and in the Law School $5000. 
 
 The most expensive part, in certain respects, 
 of a college to-day is the laboratory and the 
 library. The laboratory is wholly a new crea- 
 tion, and the library in its present extensive 
 relations is also new. No less than $50,000 
 are spent each year in the library of Harvard 
 University. What a laboratory costs it is 
 hard to separate from other elements of ex- 
 pense. But each college is spending in scien- 
 tific apparatus many times what it expended 
 a few years ago. All this increase of cost 
 must directly or indirectly increase the cost of 
 an education to each student. 
 
 Yet the cost to a student for an education 
 does not consist only of the amount of his for- 
 mal fees and of the cost of board and room. 
 The expenses which are called incidental are 
 now in a few colleges larger than all others. 
 Not a few college men of an economical turn 
 find that, when they have added together the 
 three things — the cost of tuition, room, and 
 board — the expenditure of the whole year will 
 be represented by this sum multiplied by two. 
 Now there can be no doubt that the cost of an 
 
250 The American College. 
 
 education is keeping many men from receiving 
 it, and the question therefore recurs, Can any- 
 thing be done to open the way to boys who 
 want to go to college but who cannot pass 
 through the narrow financial doorway ? 
 
 In answer It Is to be said, first : the cost of 
 an education to the student should not be les- 
 sened by lessening the cost of administration 
 or of Instruction, or by diminishing the effi- 
 ciency of laboratories and libraries. Such a 
 diminution would represent the diminution of 
 the worth of a college course. It would also 
 represent a change which the colleges them- 
 selves would not endure. Secondly : a de- 
 crease should not be secured through a de- 
 crease in the fee for tuition. The fee for tui- 
 tion now represents only a part of the cost of 
 the tuition itself. Professor Coulter, of the 
 University of Chicago, has recently gathered 
 together certain very suggestive facts upon 
 this point, which are well worth careful study. 
 From his table, which shows, among other in- 
 teresting things, the cost, above fees, to the 
 leading American universities of educating 
 their students, I have selected a dozen of the 
 largest institutions, and I find that the aver- 
 
Increasing cost of its Education. 251 
 
 age cost each year per student over and above 
 the fees he pays to these twelve colleges is. 
 
 $245. 
 
 But on the positive side it may be said«, first : 
 that the cost of an education may be lessened 
 through the increase of endowment. This in- 
 crease of endowment and the consequent in- 
 crease in income would allow a decrease in the 
 amount which the college receives from the 
 student. Secondly : the same result might be 
 secured by a tax laid upon the people for the 
 benefit of the college. The State university is 
 the result of a public tax. Should the State 
 lay a tax upon itself for the benefit of more 
 than one college ? 
 
 In answer to the second of these two sugges- 
 tions it is to be said that one university sup- 
 ported by the State is sufficient. Ohio has 
 three universities which are supported in part 
 out of the public chest. Not a few of those 
 who are best acquainted with the method of 
 education in this great State believe that it 
 would be for the advantage of the State and 
 of education if the money now given to three 
 colleges could be given to one. Not a few 
 colleges in each State are denominational, and 
 
252 The American College. 
 
 the chief reason for their existence is the de- 
 nominational reason. No pubic tax should be 
 assessed for the promotion of such interests. 
 
 In respect to the method of decreasing the 
 cost of education through the increase of en- 
 dowment it is to be said that such increase has 
 seldom resulted in such decrease. For, as a 
 rule, every college has need of all the funds it 
 can possess for filling up urgent needs. 
 
 But there is a method, the opposite of this, 
 which might result in allowing a poor boy to 
 come to college. It consists in the increase of 
 tuition fees. As has been said, the present fee 
 for tuition represents only a share of the cost of 
 tuition. Why should not the fee be increased 
 to represent the entire cost ? Why should 
 there not be a payment in money of the actual 
 cost of instruction ? Any reason which can be 
 given for paying less than a college educa- 
 tion costs is a reason which, I apprehend, 
 would overthrow most economic theories. 
 The American people have come to expect that 
 the American college shall give an education 
 at less than its cost. This expectation should 
 cease. This presumption has arisen from the 
 free public-school system. Every American 
 
Increasing cost of its Education. 253 
 
 child goes to the public school without a direct 
 expenditure on the part of the parent. The 
 parent does not feel the indirect taxes which 
 he pays for his child's education. It is hard, 
 therefore, for him to pay the fee at the college 
 to which his son or daughter goes upon gradu- 
 ation from the high-school. 
 
 It is also to be said that the price of instruc- 
 tion at the college is lower than the price at 
 many secondary or even primary private 
 schools. One hundred and fifty dollars is an 
 extreme price for tuition at the college, but 
 twice one hundred and fifty dollars is not an 
 extreme price for tuition at certain private 
 schools. There are moreover two special 
 reasons for the increase of fees. The one of 
 less force, is that not a few rich men are not 
 willing to give their money to afford the sons 
 of other rich men an education at less than its 
 cost. A friend of mine with whom I was re- 
 cently conversing said to me, '' I can give you, 
 if you wish, a large amount of money, but that 
 amount of money would go for the benefit of 
 the son of Mr. A. or Mr. B., who is perfectly 
 able to pay all his son's fees at their full 
 amount." The force of the reasoning cannot 
 
254 The American College. 
 
 be easily set aside, as the truth of the fact can- 
 not be denied. But the special reason for this 
 increase lies in the fact that money would thus 
 be had for the benefit of men who could not 
 pay for a college education. If the American 
 college could increase its tuition fee to $500, 
 there are not a few men in college who would 
 be willing and able to pay this fee, and 
 who ought to pay this fee, for the fee repre- 
 sents simply what the education costs. With 
 the present endowments, and with the increase 
 of endowments sure to be made, these pay- 
 ments would allow each college to offer an 
 education to men who are not able to pay for 
 it, at a very small cost. Thus, every poor boy 
 in America who wants an education could 
 receive it. 
 
VIII. 
 
 CERTAIN DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 The college should be prepared to justify its 
 existence, and to prove the value of its methods 
 and conditions, at the bar of an enlightened 
 public opinion. That its critics are so many 
 and so alert the college should be grateful. 
 The severest critcism that the college can be 
 subjected to, is the simple charge that it fails to 
 fit its students for life. This comprehensive 
 remark includes several drawbacks which, it is 
 inferred, the college labors under. 
 
 The college may injure men through fixing 
 the habit of loving and doing only that which 
 is agreeable. The college may minister to 
 laziness. The laziness may be of a crude sort, 
 such as belongs to Mrs. Stowe's Sam Lawson; 
 but this type is far less common than that 
 
 255 
 
256 The American College. 
 
 of a refined dilettanteism. The college may 
 minister to an indolence manifesting itself in 
 methods and manners which are at once gentle 
 and inane ; of excellent form, but of worthless 
 content. To do nothing, or to do nothing hard, 
 is a special form of the agreeable. It repre- 
 sents our inheritance of '' total depravity." 
 The statical quality is a far more pleasant one 
 for the ordinary human being to manifest than 
 the dynamical. Now the college is in peril 
 of developing in the students this quality ; for 
 the agreeable is found in indolence or a gentle 
 dilettanteism. I do not, of course, fail to re- 
 cognize that if, on the other hand, the 
 agreeable have for its content — as it has for 
 some natures — vigor, hardihood, daring, there 
 can be no peril in the college promoting a love 
 of such qualities ; but, alas ! too many of us 
 are inclined to find the agreeable in soft 
 pleasures and gentle inactivities. 
 
 The college may foster the habit of loving 
 and doing only the pleasant by several means. 
 The habit is promoted by the general condition 
 of liberty which obtains more or less fully in 
 most colleges. I am not now arguing against 
 liberty in our colleges. Necessity is laid on us 
 
Certain Difficulties. 257 
 
 to have it : it is the Divine method for better- 
 ing mankind. But every advantage carries with 
 it certain perils ; and I am only stating one of 
 the results which follow present conditions. I 
 lately asked a graduate of one of our oldest 
 and most conspicuous colleges — a scholar of 
 wide reputation, who himself graduated forty 
 years ago, and whose son is now a student in 
 the same college — if it was as good a college 
 now as in his own undergraduate days. In- 
 stantly came the reply, *^ No." ^^Why?" I 
 asked. ** Because," he answered, '' the men 
 are not obliged to get up in the morning." 
 The condition of liberty was too unrestrained. 
 He also meant to say that the college was doing 
 little to train its students to do what they do 
 not like to do. The same condition obtains, 
 at least to some extent, in all our colleges ; 
 and it must obtain. The advantages of the 
 condition are far greater than the disadvan- 
 tages ; but the perils of liberty are, nevertheless, 
 not to be lightly passed over. 
 
 But the old graduate also intended to con- 
 vey that not only was freedom top free, but 
 that luxury was too luxurious. If men of very 
 small means suffer in the value of their educa- 
 
258 The American College. 
 
 tion through poverty, men of very large means 
 suffer, and usually more, through too large 
 expenditures. Th^ ordinary college man does 
 not spend too much : the rich one does. The 
 rate of expenditure of the rich student may be 
 no higher than that of his family ; but, in rela- 
 tion to the development of his character and 
 the discipline of his life, he frequently spends 
 more money than he ought. Further, he con- 
 sumes more time and strength in spending this 
 money than he can afford. Luxury is not 
 usually the nurse of scholarship. ** Henry," 
 said the old graduate above referred to, as he 
 was visiting one of the luxurious dormitories, 
 — '' Henry, we did n't use to make first schol- 
 ars on Turkish rugs." 
 
 The college is also promoting this love of 
 the agreeable by failing to insist upon students 
 doing a proper amount of work. It is not my 
 intention to enter upon a discussion as to the 
 amount of work which a college student in 
 good health and of average capacity should 
 do : any such estimate belongs quite as much 
 to the physician as to the college officer. It 
 is, however, safe to say that, while certain stu- 
 dents work too much, four fifths of the men do 
 
Certain Difficulties. 259 
 
 not work enough. The ordinary college ad- 
 justs its work somewhat on this basis : in each 
 week to hold for each student about fifteen 
 exercises, the number being seldom less than 
 twelve or more than seventeen. The length 
 of an exercise is usually one hour; and the 
 character of each is such that two hours are 
 allotted to adequate preparation. 
 
 Therefore, each student is supposed to de- 
 vote to affairs intellectual nine hours a day for 
 five days of the week. Most wise men would 
 agree that nine hours of stiff work is enough 
 for a college man to do in one day. Some 
 men do more — sixty hours a week, or even a 
 larger amount ; but the number that do less, 
 very much less, is considerable. I was recently 
 told by a professor in a well-known college, 
 that a student could graduate at that college 
 by working two hours — and two hours only — 
 each day. In these two hours was included 
 the time spent in recitations. ** But the reci- 
 tations are more than two a day." ** Yes ; but 
 he can cut some of these ; and with a good tu- 
 tor near the time of examinations he can make 
 up his omitted work, pass the examinations, 
 and get his degree." I myself do not believe 
 
26o The American College. 
 
 that the condition is quite so lax, or the ability 
 of certain students so great, as this professor 
 intimated. But it is clearly safe to say that 
 there are thousands of students who, including 
 the time spent in recitations and lectures, do 
 not devote five hours a day to their college 
 studies. At once the question arises. Why do 
 not the college authorities compel students to 
 work as (some would say) is their duty, as (all 
 would say) is their privilege ? The answer is 
 that such compulsion would probably throw 
 the whole body of students into a state of irri- 
 tation, if not of absolute rebellion. Judging 
 by the work done in preceding classes, as well 
 as in colleges other than their own, students 
 have a tolerably clear idea of how much they 
 may be justly called upon to do. Against any 
 attempt greatly to increase their work they 
 would rebel ; and college authorities do not 
 like rebellion and friction. These would be as 
 injurious as the addition of one third to the 
 amount of work would be beneficial. It is 
 thus better to keep things as they are. 
 
 This condition is not quite so loose as might 
 be inferred from what I have said ; for, though 
 the work by which one may slide down the col- 
 
Certain Difficulties. 261 
 
 lege course be slight, yet, beyond and above all 
 requirements, many opportunities are open to 
 the strong and conscientious man for pursuing 
 investigation and for reading. The fields of 
 scholarship are large and inviting to the eager 
 student, and are not unattractive to some who 
 do not care to pursue the regular curriculum. 
 Enough has, however, I trust, been said to 
 show that, in allowing its students to cultivate 
 a love of the agreeable, the American college 
 is fostering a real danger. Four years of such 
 a condition at a formative period make it diffi- 
 cult for a man to do hard work in the years 
 which follow the college quadrennium. 
 
 A second drawback of a college education, 
 helping to constitute the criticism that the edu- 
 cation fails to fit men for life, is one which the 
 public often realizes but seldom calls attention 
 to, viz., the training of the judgment of the 
 student at the expense of his energy. \The 
 college teaches the student to see. His clari- 
 fied and broadened vision gives him such a 
 knowledge of difficulties that he becomes the 
 less inclined to undertake tasks requiring en- 
 ergy and persistence. The college teaches the 
 student to discriminate ; and his finer sense of 
 
262 The American College. 
 
 appreciation enables him to estimate the na- 
 ture of the perils and obstacles which lie in his 
 way. He, therefore, becomes less inclined to 
 exercise his power. He keeps his talent where 
 it is safe. 
 
 The extent of this drawback will seem to 
 some great, and to others slight. It cannot 
 be doubted that, if certain men had had the ad- 
 vantage of a training in weighing evidence and 
 in seeing comprehensively — qualities which the 
 college specially disciplines — they would have 
 been saved from mistakes many and momen- 
 tous. The Patent Office would not need so 
 large chambers for the storage of useless in- 
 ventions. But I also find myself asking. What 
 would have been the effect of a college train- 
 ing on some of the more energetic men of our 
 time, who have been the leaders in aggressive 
 industrial movements, or masters of large af- 
 fairs ? What would have been its effect on the 
 older generations of that family which controls 
 certain railroads running between New York 
 and Chicago ? Would the marvellous and mag- 
 nificent enterprises of ** Commodore" Vander- 
 bilt have been rendered less so by a college 
 education ? Better judgment about many 
 
Certain Difficulties. 263 
 
 things he would have had ; but, would he not 
 have had less energy ? Great as is the need 
 of good judgment in the administration of af- 
 fairs in the home, the factory, the shop, the 
 need of energy is greater. Fewer men fail by 
 reason of a lack of judgment — numerous as 
 these men are — than from a lack of force. 
 More men are found sitting at the base of the 
 mountain of some great enterprise because 
 they are too indolent to climb, than are there 
 through lack of wisdom how to make the 
 ascent. We Americans plume and pride our- 
 selves upon being the most energetic of na- 
 tions ; yet our energy lags behind our judgment. 
 It is, therefore, a serious matter when the 
 college causes her students to run the risk of 
 losing energy in order to increase the riches of 
 judgment. 
 
 It is urged as another drawback that the 
 time spent in getting a college education re- 
 moves the man destined for a commercial life 
 from the most favorable opportunities for learn- 
 ing business. The four years between the 
 ages of eighteen or nineteen and twenty-two 
 or twenty-three are those in which the most 
 valuable habits of commercial life may be most 
 
264 The American College. 
 
 easily learned. About one third of the gradu- 
 ates of certain colleges are going into business. 
 Of the one hundred and eighty-two members 
 of the class of 1891 of Yale College no less 
 than seventy-one are engaged in business. 
 These men are obliged to begin, at an age be- 
 yond twenty-one, work of a kind which they 
 might have begun several years earlier. Have 
 they not lost time, training, opportunity? In 
 this relation, one urging the man who is to 
 enter business not to enter by way of the col- 
 lege would probably say that, as a rule, the 
 great fortunes of our time have not been made 
 by college graduates ; that they have been 
 made by men of tremendous energy, of keen 
 insight, of mighty industry, of close economy, 
 — by men who began their careers early and 
 have followed them with haste and without 
 rest. 
 
 Before I pass to another rather serious draw- 
 back (as it is believed by many to be) of col- 
 lege education, there is a conception regarding 
 the college man as a learner of business which 
 calls for notice. It is commonly believed that 
 there is a '' certain condescension " in college 
 men. Many are incline4 to think that the 
 
Certain Difficulties. 265 
 
 collegian considers the dust out of which he is 
 formed to be a little finer than that which 
 makes up the constitution of the ordinary 
 mortal. For him the best things of life are 
 none too good. His manners, gentle and re- 
 fined, may be maligned on the ground of being 
 slightly pompous. He is exclusive and seclu- 
 sive. Such an interpretation is not uncom- 
 mon. Some college men give ground for it, 
 but not all. In point of fact the charge is 
 better founded when applied to the students 
 of certain colleges than to those of others. 
 But it is not to be doubted that such an im- 
 pression is made and that it prevents college 
 graduates from securing a fair chance in com- 
 mercial life to prove that they are neither cox- 
 combs nor supercilious ninnies. 
 
 A further drawback is urged, with a good 
 deal of vigor and generality of statement, that 
 the college fills the mind with useless knowl- 
 edge and trains it in antiquated methods of 
 thought and action. In the same breath it is 
 added that the scientific school gives practical 
 knowledge and that its training is vital. The 
 comparison between the dead languages and 
 the modern is made — always to the credit of 
 
266 The American College. 
 
 the modern. The value of modern history 
 and of economic science is made to appear 
 greater than that of ancient history and of 
 philosophy. Scientific studies are lauded as 
 by far the most precious. The humanities are 
 discredited. I remember overhearing, at a 
 hotel table, a conversation between two recent 
 graduates of the scientific school of a rich and 
 
 famous university. ** Mr. ," said one,** gave 
 
 several thousand dollars for any use the officers 
 wished to make of the money. And what do 
 you think they did with it ? Why, instead of 
 buying something useful, they spent it all in 
 buying some mugs of the old Greek dujffers." 
 It was evident that the study of the humanites 
 had not seriously influenced the manners nor 
 the linguistic tastes of the graduates in question. 
 The drawback is not infrequently charged 
 against the college that it trains individuality, 
 but not social efficiency. The college tends, 
 it is said, to remove the graduate from the 
 ordinary concerns of ordinary men. It lessens 
 his interest in human affairs. It develops the 
 critic — the man who tears things apart : it does 
 not make the creator — the man who puts things 
 together, the constructor. It creates men of 
 
Certain Difficulties. 267 
 
 the type represented by a certain scholar, who, 
 being told on an April forenoon, '' Fort Sumter 
 is fired on," replied, ''What do I care? I 
 must finish my Greek Grammar." In patriot- 
 ism, national and local, it develops the mug- 
 wump — the man who is dissatisfied with things 
 as they are, but who seems powerless to make 
 them better. To public improvements of any 
 sort the typical graduate has a blind eye, a deaf 
 ear, a cold heart. He represents an academic 
 type, which is without grace or graciousness, 
 learned without public spirit, individualistic 
 without social relations. This disadvantage, as 
 well as the preceding one, I state with a good 
 deal of boldness ; for whatever of foundation 
 in fact either drawback possesses, the college 
 should be willing promptly to acknowledge. 
 This drawback may be called *' academicity." 
 
 I shall allude to one more drawback, or 
 rather to an application of a disadvantage to 
 which I have already referred. For the man 
 who takes no interest in any one of the mani- 
 fold concerns of a college, the college is a dis- 
 tinct and positive injury. These concerns are 
 manifold — scholastic, fraternal, social, athletic. 
 If the student is irresponsive to each of them, 
 
268 The American College. 
 
 college is not a fitting environment, and must, 
 therefore, have a deteriorating influence upon 
 him. Was it not a former president of Har- 
 vard who used to say that it was, on the whole, 
 good for a man to come to college, even if he 
 did no more than rub his shoulders against the 
 brick walls ? Was it not another teacher, now 
 living, who said that it was worth while to come 
 to college, even if one stayed only a short time 
 and did nothing, provided he got the college 
 touch and atmosphere? I do not, I trust, fail 
 to appreciate the value of the college touch 
 and atmosphere. But, while one is getting 
 these one may be also acquiring other things 
 which may prove quite as disadvantageous as 
 the touch and atmosphere are desirable. Is 
 not one in peril of becoming pessimistic in 
 thought and feeling, of blurring moral vision, 
 of forming indolent, lackadaisical habits which 
 may prove to be as confining in their limita- 
 tions as the atmosphere and touch are full of 
 inspiration ? The boy who has not come to 
 his second intellectual birth before going to 
 college — and most boys have not — or the boy 
 who does not come to his second intellectual 
 birth at college, is the boy who does not re- 
 
Certain Difficulties. 269 
 
 ceive much of value while in college. Such 
 a boy, whether he have the free and happy 
 nature of Hawthorne's Donatella, or a nature 
 ^ touched by the spirit of evil, without interest 
 f in any one of the many relations of the college, 
 goes forth from the institution less well fitted 
 to undertake the great business of life than if 
 he had not rubbed his shoulders against the 
 red bricks, or breathed a college atmosphere. 
 
 I have written thus far largely, though not 
 entirely, with another's pen. I have tried to 
 interpret certain convictions which are held 
 more or less firmly, or which are more or less 
 widely spread. I now wish to become judge 
 and critic of what I have written. 
 
 The drawback of a college education result- 
 ing from promoting a love for the agreeable 
 seems to me to be so well founded that the 
 officers and the people should be alert to its 
 perils. These perils are greatest for those 
 whose environment is of the soft things of 
 life. For the men who work hard in col- 
 lege and who must work hard in life, the 
 temptation is that they will not appreciate 
 the value of those courtesies and refinements 
 which bear so large a part in the constitu- 
 
270 The American College. 
 
 tion of a beautiful character. It would be 
 well if every man of wealth — inherited early 
 or acquired late — could say, as said one grad- 
 uate on the fortieth anniversary of his class : 
 *' I am thankful the old college made me do 
 disagreeable things ; it was the training I need- 
 ed, and it has been of priceless value to me 
 these forty years." The rule should, it seems 
 to me, be somewhat of this sort : The college 
 should require its students to take those stud- 
 ies which yield the richest educational results. 
 (I am not now discussing the elective system, 
 in which, of course, I do thoroughly believe.) 
 Whether these studies be agreeable or dis- 
 agreeable is an element of secondary impor- 
 tance. Yet their disagreeableness may, in 
 certain instances, be so great as to render their 
 educational value slight. In this case, to pur- 
 sue them is a task hardly worth the doing ; the 
 boy had better leave college, if he can find no 
 study agreeable. But in general no such value 
 should. In my judgment, be attached to the 
 pleasant or unpleasant character of studies in 
 the early part of the student s course, as pre- 
 vails in certain colleges. 
 
 In respect to the luxurious living of a certain 
 
Certain Difficulties. 271 
 
 set of college men — I believe it is very easy to 
 over-estimate its importance. The number of 
 such men at the largest is but small, and they 
 are found in only a few colleges : in most col- 
 leges they are not found at all. The influence, 
 too, of luxury on the character of rich young 
 men is not so enervating as those of us who 
 have no luxuries are inclined to believe. The 
 evil is, that men become so attached to luxuri- 
 ous modes of living that they cannot give them 
 up. But this evil is not so serious for college 
 men as for men who lack intellectual interests 
 and resources. College men of any vigor at 
 all are inclined to regard these soft things as 
 pleasant enough and are glad to have them ; 
 but to be obliged to part with them is not so 
 dire a wrench as to wreck either happiness or 
 character. We are learning that young men 
 of great wealth may be as vigorous and virile 
 as poor men. 
 
 The second drawback referred to, consisting 
 in the tendency of the college to train the 
 student's judgment at the expense of his energy, 
 IS another actual peril ; but its existence is not 
 wide. The peril has also lessened with the in- 
 crease of the relations and elements which 
 
272 The American College. 
 
 constitute the life of the modern student The 
 constant peril of the scholar is that of a lack of 
 energy : the acquiring and the executive func- 
 tions seem often to be antagonistic. But, for 
 the student in whom energy is mightier than 
 judgment, the modern college opens up many 
 opportunities for the enlargement and disci- 
 pline of his chief power. The various concerns 
 of the students — athletic, social, dramatic, 
 musical — represent fields in which he may pre- 
 pare himself for winning his Gettysburgs ; and 
 it may be noted, in evidence, that some of the 
 greatest constructive works of modern times, 
 requiring bravest daring and the most intrepid 
 confidence in oneself and in mankind — such 
 as the building of railroads, telegraph and tele- 
 phone lines, great bridges — have been among 
 the triumphs of college men. 
 
 The drawback which relates to the disad- 
 vantages under which the college graduate 
 labors in entering business is one very com- 
 monly urged. The frequency of its presenta- 
 tion is, however, lessening. It is lessening for 
 the best of reasons— the power and the success 
 of the college man in business. The simple 
 fact is, that if the graduate begin at the age 
 
Certain Difficulties. 273 
 
 of twenty-two to learn a business at that very 
 point where he would have begun at eighteen, 
 he stays at this point only about one tenth as 
 long as he would have stayed had he begun at 
 eighteen. The rate at which he attains skill 
 and power in business is many times greater. 
 When he has reached the age of twenty-seven, 
 he has not infrequently overtaken and passed 
 the boy who has been in business since the 
 age of eighteen. For the sake of gaining 
 ability sufficient for managing great under- 
 takings, every boy who is to enter business 
 should give to himself the best and widest 
 training. Such a training is usually found in 
 the college. If it is at all noteworthy that 
 many of the very rich men of the United 
 States, who have made their riches by their 
 own energy and foresight, are not college-bred, 
 it is certainly most significant that the sons of 
 these men are receiving a college education. 
 
 As to the fourth disadvantage named — that 
 the college fills the mind with useless knowl- 
 edge, and trains it in antiquated methods of 
 thought and action — I wish to say two things : 
 First : One of the most valuable kinds of 
 
 training which the college can give is the lin- 
 
 18 
 
2 74 The American College. 
 
 guistic. If to think is important, linguistic 
 training is important. For we think in words. 
 Therefore, thinking becomes clear, orderly, 
 profound, as language is adequate. Lan- 
 guage represents those methods and results of 
 thought without which thought itself is feeble 
 and inefificient. Therefore, training in lan- 
 guage is of the highest value. To be able to 
 think in, or adequately use, the English or any 
 other language, one should know the language. 
 He can only know his own language as he 
 knows those languages which have made the 
 richest contributions to its structure. Every 
 new science, and every new application of any 
 old science, goes to the Greek for its very name. 
 Hence, a training in Latin and Greek is of 
 the greatest worth. The college is not filling 
 the mind with useless knowledge in requiring 
 students to learn these, not dead, but living 
 languages. Second : The scientific school is 
 a professional school. Its graduate goes from 
 its commencement, as goes the graduate of 
 the school of law, theology, or medicine — 
 directly to his life's work. It is not a school of 
 liberal culture or of general training. It is to 
 be said, and said with the utmost clearness, 
 
Certain Difficulties. 275 
 
 that the governors of our best technical and 
 scientific schools are beginning to recognize 
 the advantages which the man desiring to 
 enter these schools possesses if he has pre- 
 viously received a general training through 
 the college. My friend and co-worker, Presi- 
 dent Staley, of the Case School of Applied 
 Science, has said to me frequently and forci- 
 bly, '* I wish that all students before coming 
 to the Case School had had a regular college 
 course." A recent commencement orator at 
 the same school urged all students before be- 
 ginning their technical studies to be college 
 graduates. The reasons that prompt the 
 student of law, of medicine, of theology to 
 gain a good general education also prompt the 
 student of technical science to secure one. It 
 is, therefore, evident that, even in the judg- 
 ment of those who might be inclined to dis- 
 parage a college education, the knowledge 
 which this education conveys is not rubbish, 
 nor are the methods in which the college 
 trains students antiquated. Indeed, such men 
 are coming to recognize that a technical educa- 
 tion, without a liberal education preceding it, 
 may result in giving to its recipient an intel- 
 
276 The American College. 
 
 lectual narrowness of a type so narrow as to 
 fail to recognize its own limitations. The 
 narrowest narrowness is that which is uncon- 
 scious of itself. 
 
 The drawback which I have called '' acade- 
 micity," has been common, is not uncommon, 
 but is becoming less common. For with each 
 year the college becomes more vital. It is 
 more thoroughly adjusting itself to life. It is 
 training men for service in the first half of the 
 twentieth century. Its keynote is not indi- 
 vidual sufificiency but social sufificiency. The 
 whole tone of the typical commencement ad- 
 dress is not, '' Stay here in the college !" but, 
 *' Go into life ! '' For, as President Cleveland 
 said at the great celebration at Princeton in 
 October, 1896 : 
 
 " I would have those who are sent out by our univer- 
 sities and colleges to be not only the counsellors of their 
 fellow-country men, but the tribunes of the people — fully 
 appreciating every condition that presses upon their daily 
 life, sympathetic in every untoward situation, quick and 
 earnest in every effort to advance their happiness and 
 welfare, and prompt and sturdy in the defence of all 
 their rights. ... A constant stream of thoughtful, 
 educated men should come from our universities and 
 colleges, preaching national honor and integrity, and 
 
Certain Difficulties. 'i']'] 
 
 teaching that a belief in the sincerity of national obe- 
 dience to the laws of God is not born of superstition.*' 
 
 It is significant that the most aggressive and 
 fearless of the reformers of recent years have 
 been college graduates. It is also significant 
 that the wisest, most vital, most direct method 
 of social improvement bears the name of the 
 '' College Settlement." 
 
 The American college sets before itself the 
 highest ideals. It calls into its service great 
 personalities. It receives large material en- 
 dowment. It is filled with a spirit of earnest- 
 ness. Its methods are usually wise. It seeks 
 to relate itself to its own age and place. It is 
 a great power in American life, despite even 
 the greatest weight which may be attached to 
 its drawbacks. It only remains for those who 
 love it, and who work for it — good as it is — 
 to make it better, to increase its power for se- 
 curing its highest ideals, to enlarge its material 
 endowment, and to quicken the force of its 
 great personalities. The duty rests on such 
 men to make the American college a more 
 vital and a more vigorous part of American 
 life. 
 
IX. 
 
 ITS POWER IN THE FUTURE. 
 
 HOW far the American college has already 
 helped American life is a question to 
 which what has already been said gives 
 certain general answers. The influence of the 
 American college has gone through all the 
 ranges of the manifold and diverse life of 
 America. It has helped to train, as I have 
 already intimated, at least one third of all our 
 statesmen, more than a third of our best au- 
 thors, almost a half of our more distinguished 
 physicians, fully one half of our lawyers, more 
 than a half of our best clergymen, and con- 
 siderably more than a half of our most con- 
 spicuous educatorSju So far as the influence 
 of these leaders in national life has entered 
 into the life of the people, so far has the life 
 
 278 
 
Its Power in the Future. 279 
 
 of the college become a vital force in Ameri- 
 can character. Therefore, it must be con- 
 fessed that the college has vastly influenced 
 America. Such is the record of the past. 
 What can the American college now do to in- 
 fluence the national character for the present 
 and for the future ? This is the question 
 which I wish to consider. What more can 
 the American college do than it is now do- 
 ing to help American life ? 
 
 The college has stood, and still stands, for 
 the things of the mind. In a material world 
 it represents that which is not material. The 
 college can do nothing more worthy of its high 
 quest than still remaining as the embodiment 
 of this spiritual purpose. 
 
 In this service it is to stand for learning, for 
 knowledge, for truth ; it is also to stand for 
 discipline, trained mental power ; it is also to 
 stand for what we may call, for lack of a better 
 term, culture. (Truth, without training, makes 
 the mind a mere granary ; training, without 
 truth, makes the mind a mere mill without a 
 grist to grind ; (truth and training make the 
 mind a forcible agency of usefulness! But 
 truth and training and culture make tKe mind 
 
28o The American College. 
 
 a forcible agency both of usefulness and for 
 beaut^ 
 
 There was a time when the college was 
 inclined to consider scholarship as a piece 
 of embroidery on the collegiate apron, as a 
 bit of ornamentation on the collegiate sword. 
 That time is past. The college regards scholar- 
 ship as an integral part of its work and the 
 promotion of scholarship one of its supreme 
 purposes. The motto which the oldest col- 
 lege still bears on its seal, Veritas, will be 
 borne also as a most precious inscription on 
 the seal of the new college. The college will 
 seek to save all that man has discovered 
 and will also seek to enlarge the bounds of 
 human knowledge. It will establish schools 
 among the ruined monuments of the ancient 
 civilization, as it has already established them 
 at Athens and Rome, in order to reconstruct 
 the life of the early and long-ago vanished 
 nations. It will regard all that is human as 
 its proper field for inquiry and investigation. 
 It may be said by some in particular that the 
 college will seek out those truths which belong 
 to the natural and physical sciences ; that the 
 mighty movement which began in the study of 
 
Its Power in the Future. 281 
 
 nature in the early years of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury is to be accelerated and broadened : the 
 field open is limitless and that constant and ad- 
 vancing investigation will pay. The college 
 has the tools for investigating and the college 
 gives to investigators that freedom from teach- 
 ing which is necessary to secure the best re- 
 sults. Into the field of science the college 
 which was established to train men in the hu- 
 manities will enter more and more fully and 
 ardently. Seventy-two years ago a distin- 
 guished graduate of Columbia College warned 
 his fellow alumni against certain scientific 
 truths as the frivolity of education. This friv- 
 olity has become the most serious work of 
 the American college. This old world of 
 ours has become a new world under the 
 new knowledge of its forms and forces. So 
 vast is to become this increase of knowledge 
 that the university might well fear it would 
 be swamped by the simple reports of these 
 magnificent results. The fear would be well 
 grounded excepting for the fact that modern 
 scholarship has learned through cataloguing, 
 and systematizing, and indexing, to codify and 
 arrange these vast stores. The vast in- 
 
282 The American College. 
 
 crease already made can go on in vastly enlarg- 
 ing increments with the assurance that there 
 is no peril of disorder or confusion. 
 
 This enrichment and enlargement is not lim- 
 ited to the natural and physical sciences. It 
 touches every field of thought and of scholar- 
 ship. Philosophy, history, languages, litera- 
 ture, mathematics, are included in these ad- 
 vances. In no department, indeed, is there a 
 larger activity of the highest scholarship than 
 in that department which is old and usually 
 considered slow going — Latin. Latin, like so 
 many other subjects, is no longer a specialty, 
 but Latin is a field of specialization of several 
 sorts : Roman Religion, Roman Literature, 
 Roman Private Life, Roman Law, Roman Pub- 
 lic Administration, and several other terms 
 represent subjects for investigation which are 
 each year receiving treatment not only in the 
 class-room but also through scores of volumes 
 and even through two score of periodical pub- 
 lications. 
 
 Now this vast increase in the scholarship of 
 the American college is going on, strange as 
 it may seem to say, without a high degree 
 of scholastic supervision on the part of the 
 
Its Power in the Future. 283 
 
 highest officers of many American universi- 
 ties. The scholarship of our instructors is 
 constantly growing richer but the scholarship 
 of the superintending bodies is declining. 
 Walter Besant was struck at a recent Har- 
 vard Commencement Dinner by the laudation 
 given to the men whom the College had sent 
 into political life and by the failure to praise 
 graduates eminent for literary and scientific 
 services. Soon after the death of that pre- 
 eminent scholar, W. D. Whitney, was held a 
 Yale Dinner in New York City at which no 
 allusion was made to the great man. Upon 
 this very point a distinguished graduate of a 
 conspicuous American college with which he 
 has for many years been in close association, 
 writes to me as follows : 
 
 " There is not at this moment on either of the govern- 
 ing boards of that University with which I am best ac- 
 quainted, these boards numbering in all thirty-seven men, 
 a single person who can possibly be said to stand for 
 pure scholarship. Nearly all are business men or lawyers, 
 often eminent lawyers, but it must be remembered that 
 it was a President of that very University, and a very 
 shrewd and worldly-wise one, who gave the maxim * Put 
 it down as a rule that no really eminent man ever reads 
 a book.' So far as it is necessary to manage great busi- 
 
284 The American College. 
 
 ness interests, the selection could hardly be improved 
 upon ; but when we consider that these bodies have 
 under their exclusive charge the general arrangement of 
 studies, the selection and dismissal of instructors, and the 
 bestowal of regular and honorary degrees, there seems 
 something inadequate in the arrangement." 
 
 This condition which is thus so aptly inter- 
 preted arises from a serious demand for money 
 in the establishment and administration of col- 
 leges, and also from the serious responsibility 
 of investing the money which has been given 
 to the college. The demand for money and 
 the consequent financial responsibility may not 
 lessen, but the undue emphasis which is placed 
 on our having business men in our administra- 
 tive bodies will presently give place to a wiser 
 policy. ' It will not be wise to make our super- 
 vising bodies so entirely professional as were 
 those of the early colleges, although this con- 
 dition had one advantage in that the early 
 American clergymen were scholars as well as 
 clergymen. It would be well to have our gov- 
 erning bodies composed more generally of 
 teachers, of authors, of editors, and of men 
 of leisure who are sympathetic with and ap- 
 preciative of the ends and the methods of 
 scholarship. 
 
Its Power in the Future. 285 
 
 This prominence of scholarship will pro- 
 mote a result which the college should al- 
 ways bring forth. The College is to make 
 the thinker, — American hie needs the rhinker 
 more than it needs the scholar. For the 
 thinker takes the old truth and applies it to 
 the new conditions of the present and of the 
 future. 
 
 The college is now beset, in standing for 
 scholarship and for culture, by two opposite 
 forces. They are both material forces, born 
 of a material age. 
 
 One difficulty that besets the college in the 
 maintenance of this lofty purpose is the ath- 
 letic interest. The college has not become a 
 base-ball field, or a foot-ball gridiron, or a 
 race-course to that extent to which the peo- 
 ple believe it has fallen. Certain colleges are 
 quite free from this evil drift, but in other 
 colleges the athletic movement has become a 
 craze, a frenzy, a madness. The origin of the 
 movement is not hard to trace, and the origin 
 is, in many respects, worthy. The college 
 stands for things of the mind, but the human 
 mind, fortunately or unfortunately, is located 
 in a body. The mind thus placed seldom. 
 
286 The American College. 
 
 works well unless the body is in health. A 
 body is seldom in health without exercise. 
 Exercise to be the most healthful must be 
 taken in joy. One method by which joyous 
 exercise is promoted is competition. There- 
 fore competitive exercise results from a 
 method of keeping the mind vigorous for its 
 work. But exercise that is used as a means 
 very easily takes to itself the interest which 
 attaches to the end for which the service is 
 used, and when exercise in college becomes 
 an end athletics have become an evil. This 
 movement in the college is contemporaneous 
 with the athletic movement of the whole 
 American people ; a movement which is of 
 tremendous significance for the health of the 
 people of the present time and of those yet 
 unborn. Now the college has had set before 
 itself a very important problem in keeping ath- 
 letics in the college vigorous as a means but 
 of crushing out athletics as an end. Through 
 athletics as a means and agency the college 
 may still maintain its place as standing for 
 things of the mind, but whenever athletics be- 
 come an absolute good then the college ceases 
 to be a mental and spiritual agency and takes 
 
Its Power in the Future. 287 
 
 its place with the materiaHsms of a material 
 time. 
 
 I do not apprehend that the difficulties 
 which certain colleges meet with in the proper 
 administration of these athletic interests are to 
 become widespread or to remain lasting. Col- 
 lege men are on the whole sensible fellows, 
 and the parents of college men are on the 
 whole sensible. We are soon to find athlet- 
 ics assuming their proper place in the whole 
 work of the whole college, whose purpose is to 
 train the whole man. 
 
 But a difficulty far more serious opposing 
 the intellectual purpose of the college lies in 
 the increasing luxury of college living. The 
 age is a luxurious age, and the college cannot 
 but be sympathetic with the age ; but the col- 
 lege seems, in a sense, to be leading in the 
 luxuriousness of the life of the age. The 
 scholar has not in the past been distinguished 
 for the elegance of his environment. The 
 scholar has been a pretty independent being, 
 but he has been independent not because he 
 had much but because he needed little. The 
 laws of begging were, in the Middle Ages, sus- 
 pended in behalf of the scholars. The scholars 
 
288 The American College. 
 
 walked from all Europe to Paris to hear 
 Abelard, and they begged their way as they 
 came in pursuit of knowledge. When the 
 magnificent Earl of Essex was sent to Cam- 
 bridge, in Elizabeth's time, his guardians pro- 
 vided him with a side-table covered with green 
 baize, a truckle-bed, half a dozen chairs and a 
 wash-hand basin — the cost of all was about 
 five pounds.^ But to-day the furnishing of the 
 room of many a student in many American 
 colleges is many times five pounds. 
 
 The English and American people — the 
 most luxurious of all people on the face of the 
 earth — have allowed their luxurious habits to 
 pervade their universities and their colleges. 
 Luxury has not gone into Edinburgh and 
 Glasgow, Aberdeen and St. Andrews, as it 
 has into New Haven or Oxford or Cam- 
 bridge. The German student, too, is still 
 a student, like the German nation, of great 
 economy and simplicity in manner of living. 
 I cannot but believe that the American col- 
 lege should be made as little sympathetic as 
 possible with the luxuriousness of American 
 living. There should be one place in a demo- 
 
 * 5/. Andrews Rectorial Addresses y 90. 
 
Its Power in the Future. 289 
 
 cratic country where men are measured and 
 men are influential not by their wealth, not 
 by the elegance of their bed-chamber or the 
 splendor of their raiment, but by simple and 
 sheer character. I cannot doubt that the in- 
 fluence of the two great ancient universities 
 of England would have been far greater in 
 English life if the method of living of the stu- 
 dents had been simple, plain, severe. Oxford 
 and Cambridge have had a tremendous influ- 
 ence in training men for the upper realm of the 
 professional and social, of the theological and 
 civil life, but neither has had a large influence 
 in the great community of the people. I be- 
 lieve that one cause of the influence of Leipsic 
 and of Berlin, of Bonn and of Munich, in the 
 life of the German people has been the sim- 
 plicity and plainness of the life of the student. 
 I believe that the influence of the American 
 college would be magnified and deepened in 
 the community if the life of the student in the 
 college were more plain and more simple. Let 
 the living riot be high, let the thinking not be 
 plain ; let there be cultivated much philosophy 
 on a little oatmeal. I know very well that in 
 certain colleges the life is plain, too plain ; it 
 
290 The American College. 
 
 lies at the other extreme of the scale of luxury ; 
 it is too bare and it is barren ; it is remote 
 from humanizing and cultivating influences. 
 Men are herded, and dwell in surroundings 
 that have none of the comforts of home ; such 
 conditions are quite as evil as the evil that 
 arises from luxuriousness of environment. But 
 such barrenness is not our peril. Our peril 
 is that increasing luxury shall result in dimin- 
 ishing intellectuality. Our peril is that the 
 college will come to be the home of the rich 
 and the dwelling-place of the magnificent. 
 Our peril is that in this condition the college 
 will not and cannot stand for things of the 
 mind. But for things of the mind the college 
 must stand. In the age of homespun of our 
 fathers the college did stand for things of the 
 mind ; in the age of broadcloth the college 
 must still thus stand. 
 
 The bishop of, in certain respects, the most 
 important diocese of the Protestant Episcopal 
 Church in America has lately written me as 
 follows : 
 
 " If I were disposed to challenge the American college 
 of to-day on any ground, it would be because of its 
 tendency to descend from the loftier level of * plain 
 
Its Power in the Future. 291 
 
 living and high thinking/ which was the characteristic of 
 college life a generation ago. The passion for building, 
 endowments, material enrichment, in one word, is likely 
 to smother the love of learning and to discourage simple 
 tastes. It we can recover the spirit which educates in 
 young men a love of learning for its own sake, and which 
 teaches them that character is of incomparably more 
 consequence than belongings, the college of to-day will 
 do them the best service." 
 
 I have no doubt that the American college 
 will, despite the increasing luxury of American 
 life, still be able to maintain the scholastic 
 ideals. I have no doubt that the American 
 college, despite the vigor of athletic interests, 
 will be able to maintain its intellectual methods 
 and purposes ; but the peril does exist and 
 must be crushed. The college to bless Ameri- 
 can life in the next century as it ought must 
 stand for things of the mind. 
 
 In standing for things of the mind the 
 college will stand for an element or quality to 
 which I have already incidentally alluded : I 
 mean culture. That American life is In need 
 of this quality, it is almost irony to affirm. 
 That the American college can inspire Amer- 
 ican life with it, some would doubt. For 
 culture belongs to those higher realms of 
 
292 The American College. 
 
 thinking and feeling which many American 
 colleges are not able to enter. The college, 
 primarily, must be content with giving disci- 
 "pline and training, so meagre are its resources, 
 so immature are its students. And yet the 
 better equipped of our colleges may do some- 
 what toward the securing of these highest 
 purposes. Surely to the American college, 
 standing as a type and agent of intellectual 
 movements, the American people have the 
 right of looking for help and light in nourish- 
 ing these elements of life, which are the high- 
 est forms of the human spirit. 
 
 These elements belong to the realm of 
 thought, of imagination. They are not a 
 part of professional knowledge, important as 
 this is. They are hardly a part of the ordinary 
 and earlier studies of the college. These 
 higher things pre-suppose the discipline and 
 the training of the elements of language, of 
 mathematics, and of science. They represent 
 the spiritual and aesthetic side of all knowledge, 
 and those relations in thought to which wide 
 reading, keen observation, and reflection lead. 
 Such a knowledge the American college 
 should and does to a degree nourish. Its pro- 
 
Its Power in the Future. ^93 
 
 motion belongs rather to the later than to the 
 earlier years. It can hardly be said that the 
 German university fosters this idea of culture. 
 The German university is essentially a pro- 
 fessional school, and one does not look to a 
 professional school for culture. The English 
 university does foster this idea. It represents 
 an *' atmosphere " and a wide vision of the 
 best things which man has done or aspired 
 after. 
 
 In its ministry to the higher life of the race 
 the college should train in particular the power 
 of appreciation. As an associate of mine, Pro- 
 fessor Whitman, has well said ^ : 
 
 " This [appreciation] is the very flower of liberal cul- 
 ture, its finest product, and its surest sign. It includes 
 not merely that critical judgment which enables one out 
 of what is placed before him to choose the best, but 
 those rightly ordered affections which dispose him to 
 love that which is beautiful, high, and true, rather than 
 that which is false and ignoble. As a result of educa- 
 tion, it is a training of the judgment and the emotions, 
 as the other elements considered embrace the training of 
 the intellect and the will." 
 
 The appreciation is not simply intellectual, 
 
 ' Address at Dedication of Physical Laboratory of Adelbert Col- 
 lege of Western Reserve University, Commencement, 1895. 
 
^94 The American College. 
 
 although such appreciation belongs largely to 
 the field of truth ; it is also emotional and fre- 
 quently even volitional. It carries along with 
 itself allegiance to the idea which is properly 
 valued. It is in a word, love, — that '* superior," 
 as the great Emerson says, *'that has no su- 
 perior, the redeemer and instructor of souls." 
 The college may further help the life of the 
 nation through an intelligent and sympathetic 
 treatment of all sociological questions. There 
 can be no doubt that the twentieth century is 
 to be a sociological century. The eighteenth 
 century was a theological age, the nineteenth 
 has been a scientific one, and the twentieth is 
 to be a sociological age. From God to nature, 
 from nature to man, is the progress. The col- 
 lege is the most important agency in this pro- 
 gress. For this great being that we call the 
 community is an organism of very delicate 
 functions. To endeavor to correct any one 
 part which may be out of order may result 
 in harm to a dozen other parts. Therefore, 
 great wisdom is needed in the treatment. If 
 it is only the trained physician who should 
 minister to the body diseased ; if it is only the 
 trained physician who should minister to the 
 
Its Power in the Future. 295 
 
 mind diseased ; it is also only one well trained 
 who should minister to the diseased of the 
 community in both mind and body. The man 
 who is called the practical man is not by any 
 means the best fitted to deal with the ills of 
 the community. The man who is at once 
 practical in his aims and scientific in his 
 training is the best fitted. All the practical 
 methods and practical agencies for benefiting 
 humanity must rest upon scientific considera- 
 tions. If they are not made thus to rest, the 
 application of those methods may result in 
 disaster. 
 
 One of the masters of this great subject, 
 Carroll D. Wright, writes me as follows : 
 
 " I think that the department of political economy, as 
 usually conducted in colleges and universities, rather 
 antagonizes the public at large, and this has done some- 
 thing toward creating a more or less strained feeling 
 between universities and the workingmen in particular. 
 They (the workingmen) find that political economy is 
 not adequate to the solution of the questions which they 
 raised. Students, generally, find this true also, and that 
 while political economy can not, and ought not be ig- 
 nored, there is something deeper and more vital concern- 
 ing the relations in life than political economy teaches ; 
 so ethics come in to supplement, or, rather, to comple- 
 ment, the teachings of political economy. To my own 
 
296 The American College. 
 
 mind, if colleges and universities would broaden their 
 economic work, they would do something to aid Ameri- 
 can life as it appears to us at the present time. I would 
 not in any way abridge the academic work of colleges, 
 but I would extend the elective studies and bring the 
 college into more intimate relations with the people 
 themselves." 
 
 In one word, let the college be vital — vital in 
 giving wisdom for the solving of the great 
 social problem ; vital in wishing that the prob- 
 lem be pressed home upon itself. 
 
 In the future the relation between the col- 
 lege and the public school should be made 
 more Intimate. Instead of the too common 
 attitude of patronage and of jealousy should 
 be the attitude of receiving and of giving the 
 utmost help. In his great address given at 
 the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the 
 founding of Harvard College Mr. Lowell said : 
 
 " It is to be hoped that our higher institutions of learn- 
 ing may again be brought to bear, as once they did, more 
 directly on the lower, that they may again come into such 
 closer and graduated relation with them as may make the 
 higher education the goal to which all who show a clear 
 aptitude shall aspire. I know that we cannot have ideal 
 teachers in our public schools for the price we pay, or in 
 the numbers we require. But teaching, like water, can 
 rise no higher than its source ; and, like water again, it 
 
Its Power in the Future. 297 
 
 has a lazy aptitude for running down-hill unless a con- 
 stant impulse be applied in the other direction. Would 
 not this impulse be furnished by the ambition to send on 
 as many pupils as possible to the wider sphere of the 
 University ? Would not this organic relation to the 
 higher education necessitate a corresponding rise in 
 the grade of intelligence, capacity, and culture demanded 
 in the teachers ? " ' 
 
 The fact is that the college in mere self- 
 preservation should adjust itself to the public 
 schools. The fact is, also, that the college in 
 the preservation and augmentation of those 
 great interests out of which it grows should be 
 in closer touch with the public-school system. 
 In particular the college should bear to the 
 public schools two offerings. It should carry 
 into those schools an appreciation of the value 
 of scholarship. It should also train for those 
 schools administrators. If the great body of 
 the pupils in the public schools have a slight 
 sense of scholarship — as I presume it would be 
 usually granted that their sense of scholarship 
 is slight — the college has resting upon itself 
 the duty, to use the figure which Sir Walter 
 Mildmay used to Queen Elizabeth about the 
 foundation of Emanuel College, of '' planting 
 
 * Harvard College, 250th Anniversary, 227-8. 
 
298 The American College. 
 
 acorns." But possibly more urgent than the 
 need of scholarship in the public schools is the 
 need of efficient administration. In the work 
 of direction and of supervision of our public 
 schools there is a crying call for wisdom. 
 
 The college of the future is also to have 
 a vital influence upon religion. For, as Presi- 
 dent Eliot said, in an address given at the 
 dedication of the site of Columbia Univer- 
 sity, ** religion, in the universal sense, and 
 the domestic relations remain, through all 
 governmental and instrumental changes, the 
 supreme forces in human society." ^ The 
 question of the past century has been the 
 question of the permanence and power of the 
 denominational college. The college has been 
 founded largely by denominations to promote 
 denominational interests. The question of the 
 new century is to be the question of the preva- 
 lence and power of the Christian college. In 
 America the word religion will be interpreted 
 by the word Christianity, and Christianity will, 
 as a spiritual doctrine and as a movement, be 
 interpreted in the most comprehensive and 
 
 * Columbia University ; Dedication of the new site, May 2, 1896, 
 97. 
 
Its Power in the Future. ^99 
 
 vital way. The primary purpose and work of 
 the college as related to Christianity will be to 
 cause Christianity to make a proper appeal to 
 the human reason. In the college as well as 
 out of the college, Christianity has too often 
 been presented as a system of unreasoned 
 commands, as a creed without a logic, and 
 as a doctrine without an ethic. It has too 
 often been narrowed into denominational pro- 
 pagandism, or dissipated into atmospheric in- 
 fluences, or ossified into dogmatism. The 
 human reason has not had sufficient opportu- 
 nities under the best conditions for studying 
 its truths or for satisfying itself of the logical 
 worth of the evidences for its doctrines. The 
 collep -^ should impress all men with its "desire 
 to tesrfearlesslv every rati oii^l jL^iUT 
 whicK'^ Chnstianity stands, in t he college as 
 in the world, Christianity need not cease to 
 join itself to holy and beautiful environments, 
 or to prove its presence by its works of love 
 and beneficence ; but it should more constantly 
 and ardently manifest itself to the reason of 
 man in clearer light and greater impressive- 
 ness. The college of the future will not be 
 less, but more. Christian, but it will be far less 
 
300 The American College. 
 
 sectarian. It will come into the large con- 
 ditions of liberty in which our oldest college 
 has so well led the advance. Religion in this 
 college has come to be regarded, not as a part 
 of college discipline, but as a • natural and 
 rational opportunity offering itself to the life 
 of youth. The college should always re- 
 member, as Professor F. G. Peabody says,' 
 '*that religion, rationally presented, will always 
 have for healthy-minded young men a com- 
 manding interest." The college man of the 
 future will be a religious man, not so much 
 technically religious as he has been in the 
 past, but genuinely and personally religious. 
 He will be a Christian of the sort which is in- 
 terpreted by the phrase that *' the Christian 
 embodies the highest type of the gentleman." 
 It is still true, as said Mark Hopkins, on the 
 fiftieth anniversary of his connection with Wil- 
 liams College : ** Christianity is the greatest 
 civilizing, moulding, uplifting power on this 
 globe, and it is a sad defect in any institution 
 of high learning if it does not bring those 
 under its care into the closest possible relation 
 to it." 
 
 • Preface to Mornings in the College Chapel. 
 
Its Power in the Future. 301 
 
 Closely connected with the relation of the 
 college to religion is the question of the rela- 
 tion of the college to the moral training of its 
 students. It is plain that the college of the 
 future cannot abdicate all responsibility for 
 what we call the moral character of its under- 
 graduates. The value of moral character is so 
 evident, and the relation between moral char- 
 acter and the intellectual parts of one's being 
 so intimate, that the college cannot be suffered 
 to lay aside this duty. But the method which 
 the college of the future will adopt for the 
 bearing of this responsibility will be unlike the 
 method that has been most common in the 
 century that is now closing. The college will 
 not attempt to train moral character through 
 set rules and regulations. The method that 
 has been used has proved in some places value- 
 less and in others valuable. But it is a method 
 ill fitted for mature American students. The 
 method of the future will be the method of in- 
 fluence through personal association and proper 
 environment. The personality of the teachers 
 will come to have a larger value in forming 
 the highest type of character. The college 
 will treat the student of nature depraved, of 
 
302 The American College. 
 
 aims low, of intimations base, as nature treats 
 an organism which has no relation to itself. 
 But th^ jxtan ^f high aims anrl white puri/y, 
 
 will, throngh the pow er of pfirs-^^Rf^f--'nrs^^??Tfin- 
 tion, develop into a manhood which is simplj^;^ 
 incaTnate godTmess. 
 
 Ihe college is alsoto continue in the new 
 century its work of making men of large and 
 fine character. The distinguished editor of one 
 of our oldest and most influential magazines 
 has said : '* The college youth I see are— too 
 many of them — merely bright fellows with pre- 
 cocious worldliness : they seem not to have 
 seen the Holy Grail that a man who has lov- 
 ingly studied any great subject gets glimpses 
 of. I doubt whether present American col- 
 lege life gives enough of this inner growth." 
 The new college is to lay emphasis upon 
 sheer and simple character. The old colleges 
 did lay emphasis upon this fundamental ele- 
 ment. If the college of the last two decades of 
 the nineteenth century has failed to lay proper 
 emphasis upon this most serious matter, the 
 college of the first decades of the twentieth 
 century will return to the earlier and worthier 
 
Its Power in the Future. 303 
 
 purposes. The college must continue in the 
 making of the strong and noble gentleman. 
 As Mr. Lowell said in his great Anniversary 
 address: ** Let it be our hope to make a 
 gentleman of every youth who is put under 
 our charge ; not a conventional gentleman, but 
 a man of culture, a man of intellectual re- 
 source, a man of public spirit, a man of refine- 
 ment, with that good taste which is the con- 
 science of the mind, and that conscience which 
 is the good taste of the soul. This we have 
 tried to do in the past ; this let us try to do in 
 the future."^ Of course such results cannot 
 be secured in every graduate, and of course the 
 influence of the few thousands who each year 
 go forth from the college portals into life, and 
 are swallowed up in its forces, is numerically 
 slight, for the number is only as one in some 
 four thousand. But such influences represent 
 those forces which are akin to the forces of 
 gravitation and light. Their power is not to 
 be measured by their number but by their 
 might. 
 
 O^his man of large and fine character — the 
 product of the college — is to be above all else 
 
 * Harvard College, 250th Anniversary, 234. 
 
304 The American College. 
 
 a leader. The new century cries out for 
 leadership.^ On the whole the heart of hu- 
 manity is better than its head. Its wish to do 
 the right thing is superior to its power of 
 knowing what the right thing is, or of knowing 
 how to do the right thing when it is known) 
 The call for men of wisdom in legislation, 
 both in the municipality and in the State 
 and in the nation, is loud. The call for men 
 of appreciation and interpretation of the social 
 problems is loud. The call for administrators 
 and directors in the public-school system and 
 in scholarship is hardly less loud. Leaders, 
 whose knowledge has become wisdom, whose 
 wisdom has become conviction and whose 
 convictions are worthy battle-cries, the college 
 is to help to provide. The call is for men of 
 light and for men of light who, in this light, 
 can become men of leading. We should re- 
 turn to the condition which prevailed in the 
 Middle Ages. That pre-eminent interpreter 
 of the higher education in the Middle Ages, 
 Rashdall, says : *' Kings and princes found 
 their statesmen and men of business in the 
 Universities — most often, no doubt, among 
 those trained in the practical Science of Law, 
 
Its Power in the Future. 305 
 
 but not invariably so. Talleyrand is said to 
 have asserted that Theologians made the best 
 diplomatists. It was not the wont of the 
 practical men of the Middle Ages to disparage 
 academic training. The rapid multiplication 
 of Universities during the fourteenth and 
 fifteenth centuries was largely due to a direct 
 demand for highly educated lawyers and ad- 
 ministrators." ^ 
 
 As has been said, the universities of the 
 Middle Ages were schools of the modern spirit. 
 They put the administration of government 
 and of affairs in the hands of men well trained. 
 In securing these worthiest results of leader- 
 ship, the college is to train men of power. At 
 certain times the college has been inclined to 
 emphasize too strongly knowledge as knowl- 
 edge, but the college is to emphasize the fact 
 and the method that from knowledge is to 
 come power. 
 
 A further method by which the college may 
 bless American life is through the inculcation 
 and illustration of a broad patriotism. No 
 sympathy is the college to have with that sen- 
 timent which cries, '* My country, right or 
 
 ' Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, ii. 2, 707. 
 
3o6 The American College. 
 
 wrong." No sympathy is the college to have 
 with that kind of patriotic love which is 
 bought by the destruction of other nations. 
 The college is to have the keenest sympathy 
 with every endeavor to promote a love for that 
 nation into which one was born, of which he 
 forms a part, and in whose soil his own dust 
 becomes dust itself. America ought to be the 
 best nation of the future. In humble pride 
 we may plume ourselves upon what has been 
 done and upon what we are able to do. Not 
 in vain, braggart boasting, may we recall the 
 past or anticipate the future. For a nation 
 that has in the hundred years of its national 
 existence done what the American has done 
 for civilization may be humbly proud. When 
 we take up the book of our illustrious ones 
 there are names which we can worthily write 
 by the side of the names of the greatest. 
 
 There is no nobler chapter in the history of 
 the American college than the chapter which 
 tells in glowing phrases of the college boys 
 who went forth from college hall to the camp ; 
 who marched from the Commencement plat- 
 forms to the field of battle. One may read 
 the record of them in the Memorial Halls at 
 
Its Power in the Future. 307 
 
 Cambridge and at Brunswick, and one may 
 read the song memorial of them in the Com- 
 memoration Ode. Tit was not alone from the 
 college of the North that these men went 
 forth. One reads in the catalogues of the 
 colleges of Virginia name after name upon 
 page after page having the simple record : 
 wounded in The Wilderness ; killed at Manas- 
 sas ; killed at Cold Harbor. Yes, there came 
 from the college heart. Northern and South- 
 ern, the patriotic impulse to do loyal service 
 for '' my country.^ 
 
 I know very well that it is sometimes said, 
 and very often thought, that the scholar is not 
 patriotic ; that in the comprehensiveness of 
 knowledge he loses intensity of conviction ; 
 that in loving humanity he does not love the 
 brothers of his own soil as he ought. One 
 recalls the oration of Wendell Phillips delivered 
 at the Phi Beta Kappa centennial anniversary 
 at Cambridge, in which he arraigned the 
 American scholar for cowardice and indiffer- 
 ence in the nation's crisis. But the best 
 answer to the words of the orator was the 
 four-square tower, rising above the platform 
 on which he spoke, that proclaimed to the 
 
3o8 The American College. 
 
 world that our oldest college gladly gave her 
 sons, and poured out her bluest blood for 
 the salvation of the nation. Memorial Hall, 
 with the tablets pf white marble inscribed with 
 the names of heroes, was sufficient answer. 
 The Shaw monument removes the charge. 
 
 In his preface to those most stirring volumes, 
 Harvard Memorial Biographies ^ Colonel Hig- 
 ginson nobly says : 
 
 " There is no class of men in this republic from whom 
 the response of patriotism comes more promptly and 
 surely than from its most highly educated class. All 
 those delusions which pass current in Europe, dating 
 back to De Toqueville, in regard to some supposed tor- 
 por or alienation prevailing among cultivated Americans, 
 should be swept away forever by this one book. The 
 lives here narrated undoubtedly represent on the whole 
 those classes, favored in worldly fortune, which would 
 elsewhere form an aristocracy, — with only an admixture, 
 such as all aristocracies now show, of what are called 
 self-made men. It is surprising to notice how large is 
 the proportion of Puritan and Revolutionary descent. 
 Yet these young men threw themselves promptly and 
 heartily into the War ; and that not in recklessness or 
 bravado, — not merely won by the dazzle of a uniform, 
 or allured by the charm of personal power, or con- 
 trolled even by * that last infirmity,' ambition, — but 
 evidently governed, above all things else, by solid con- 
 
Its Power in the Future. 3^9 
 
 victioo and the absolute law of conscience. To have 
 established incontestably this one point, is worth the 
 costly sacrifice which completed the demonstration." 
 
 And he continues in a further paragraph, 
 
 " And if there is another inference that may justly be 
 deduced from these pages, it is this : that our system of 
 collegiate education must be on the whole healthy and 
 sound, when it sends forth a race of young men Avho 
 are prepared, at the most sudden summons, to transfer 
 their energies to a new and alien sphere, and to prove 
 the worth of their training in wholly unexpected appli- 
 cations. So readily have the Harvard graduates done 
 this, and with such noble and unquestioned success, 
 that I do not see how any one can read these memoirs 
 without being left with fresh confidence in our institu- 
 tions, in the American people, and indeed in human 
 nature itself. Either there was a most rare and excep- 
 tional combination in the lives which Harvard Univer- 
 sity gave to the nation, or else — if they fairly represent 
 their race and their time — then the work and the tradi- 
 tions of our fathers are safe in the hands of their 
 descendants." * 
 
 The American people love America. The 
 love sometimes becomes braggadocio ; but the 
 American people in their love for America have 
 often felt that they did not find a sympathetic 
 
 ^ Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Harvard Meitiorial Biographies ^ 
 Preface v, vi. 
 
3^0 The American College. 
 
 heart in the bosom of the American college. 
 The people have, therefore, felt themselves 
 aloof from the college. The college should 
 therefore inculcate love for the country ; a 
 patriotism which is broad and yet enthusiastic 
 and vital ; patriotism which is high without 
 boastfulness ; a patriotism which is as deep as 
 the instincts of the human heart. It is thus 
 that the American college can bless American 
 life. It is thus that the American college can 
 lead the people in times of national crisis into 
 ways of strength, into ways of peace. 
 
 The American college is, therefore, to be in 
 American life in the profoundest, widest, and 
 highest relations. If the college look into 
 the past — and into the past it must look — let 
 it look, in order that it may secure a course 
 more direct in present and future achieve- 
 ment. The scholar should make all antiquity 
 a prophet for to-day, as Grote made his his- 
 tory '' a modern political pamphlet in twelve 
 volumes." The college should fill that dire 
 need of the new world of wise leadership. It 
 should train every faculty in every man into 
 effective and gracious facility. It should 
 cause noble character to blossom in noble 
 
Its Power in the Future. 311 
 
 doing, as noble doing is the seed of yet nobler 
 character. It should not dictate legislation, 
 but it should fit men to become worthy law- 
 makers. It should not, as it can not, step 
 over the threshold of domestic rights, but it 
 should so train women that they, in wifehood 
 and motherhood, may worthily train the gen- 
 erations yet to be. It should not stand blind- 
 folded as justice and mute as the Sphinx 
 before terrible social problems, but its eye 
 should discover ways of relieving the increas- 
 ing wants of suffering humanity, and its voice 
 should be a bugle in clearness and a flute in 
 sympathy, calling man to help man. Its in- 
 terests should be humane because they are 
 human. 
 
 Let the college have, or not have, noble 
 buildings, but let it be vital. Let the stu- 
 dents adopt or refuse adopting some academic 
 customs or costumes, but let the college be 
 vital. L et the collegfe be in the city w ith all 
 fhf- mao-niflppnt anH tnanitolrf litp of the me- 
 tr^pr>1is bf Rting about it and beating into it, 
 or let_thecollege b e in the countrv with a ll the 
 benedictions and beneficences of nature speak- 
 ing silentlyHnio the re^<^pHvp. mmn anH qiTjpt- 
 
312 The American College. 
 
 heart, but let the college be vita l. Let the 
 college be splendid and magnificent in equip- 
 ment and its laboratories commensurate with 
 all the life of nature, let its libraries be the 
 accumalation of the wisdom of man, but let 
 the college be vital itself in teacher and stu- 
 dent. Let the college also have a vitality as 
 broad as is human life itself. Let it reach 
 the American people as a people. 
 
 Discard Greek, but reach the people ; re- 
 tain Greek, but reach the people ; shorten the 
 college course or lengthen the college course, 
 but reach the people ; keep to the required 
 system, but reach the people; introduce the 
 elective system, but reach the people ; keep 
 out the sciences or let them in, but reach the 
 people ; bring in German methods, but reach 
 the people ; discard German methods, but 
 reach the people. Let not the American col- 
 lege be obliged to offer excuses for its mere 
 being because in its remoteness from the 
 people it is so useless ; let, rather, every Amer- 
 ican home be obliged to offer excuses for not 
 sending its sons and daughters to the college, 
 because the college in its abounding usefulness 
 is so near to the home. Let the college have 
 
Its Power in the Future. 3^3 
 
 a . glorious past, a past of great movements 
 like Oxford, a past of great men like Cam- 
 bridge, or let the college be unknown ; but let 
 the college now be vital and broad in every 
 part of its being. Life^^ Lifey Life :~ r rThat le t 
 the American college stand for, that let the 
 American college^ be. 
 
 THE END 
 
14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or 
 
 on the date to which renewed. 
 
 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 nmTGizo 
 
 ft^y 1 fi 1. 963 
 
 APR 1 '68-9 AM 
 
 mn 9*19 9 9^2 ' 
 
 M AI ? 17 67. 10^ ^- 
 
 ftPR2fet96T8i\R171Q74 4Y 
 
 DECEIVED 
 
 ■ #19'fi9-iPIV i 
 
 In stacks — mxT 
 
 us 
 
 RIT'D PES 
 
 APKi3'67-8 
 
 9 t9S? 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 APR 1 1 ^968 6T" 
 
 JPC'O ORG DEPT 
 
 MAR lo74X 9 
 
 LD 21A-50m-ll.'62 
 
 General Library 
 
XB 63'972 
 
 jps^m^ 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CAUFOIWJA UBRARY