378.73 D255a DARTMOUTH: ITS EDUCATIONAL TYPE, WORK, AND PRODUCTS. AN ORATION DELIVERED BEFORE THE A I IATION DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, JUNE 22,1886, CHARLES A. AIKEN, D.D. ¥ PRINTED BY REQUEST OF THE ASSOCIATION. UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN BOOKS TACKS DARTMOUTH: ITS EDUCATIONAL TYPE, WORK, AND PRODUCTS. AN ORATION DELIVERED BEFORE THE DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, JUNE 22, 1886, BY CHARLES A. AIKEN, D.D. PRINTED BY REQUEST OF THE ASSOCIATION. 3U13 W5a- Mr. President, Brethren of the Alumni Association, Classmates, Ladies and Gentlemen : The dear old vox clamantis in deserto calls us back once more to this home of by-gone years. . It is the home of many cherished memories; the home of many earnest aspirations and strenuous endeavors ; the home where subtle and powerful influ¬ ences wrought in many ways of which we were but half conscious at the time, to mould our young manhood; a home, where, as some of us are learning anew to-day, deep and strong personal attachments were formed, that do not simply endure, but live and ripen to a new fineness and tenderness through all the changes of a fluctuating and busy life. As our brotherhood as¬ serts itself afresh on this old familiar ground, we find that it has become a maturer, manlier thing. So with our love and loyally to Alma Mater —alma mater virum ; —for, whatever approved and developed manhood we bring back with us to-day we trace with grateful gladness in part to her stimulating and moulding influence. And our tribute shall not be that of reminiscence only. As we greet our Mother again, the Eastern salutation springs to our lips : “ Is it well with thee ? ” Her answer, what¬ ever it shall be, shall pledge us to new interest and demonstrated loyalty in the future. We are not all here. Most of our brethren are busy else¬ where to-day. I take it for granted ; for, whatever else may be true of our Mother’s sons, they are not idlers. They do not come of that stock; they.have not that spirit, by inheritance, by spontaneous generation, or in any other way. And of most of them it has been characteristic, and will doubtless continue to be so, that they have their own way to make in the world; and they make it. We send them to-day our heartiest salutations from the old home. We are not all here. Some fail to-day for the first time to answer the annual roll call. They have heard another call. Their names will be recited at another hour and in another place, and we shall bring them one by one to remembrance. Among them you will find one group of names so peculiar 4 DARTMOUTH: ITS EDUCATIONAL TYPE , and so representative, that I ask you to join with me here and now in a special commemoration. It is the group of those who beyond the rest symbolize and recall the service and the dis¬ tinction of Dartmouth as an educator of educators. Two trienniums ago, on the last occasion but one when the Associated Alumni held the post of honor in the exercises of Commencement week, a group of our brethren of the legal pro¬ fession paid fitting tribute in our behalf to a chosen number of those who through a long period and over a wide area had hon¬ ored the College as well as their profession and themselves at the bar and on the bench. I should not expect to encounter a serious challenge, if I were to set up over against this roll of honor another list of those Alumni who have rendered eminent service as educators ;—and were to claim that these are the two lines of public life in which Dartmouth’s sons have been most conspicuous. I would not, by any implication withhold due recognition and praise from any profession or occupation in which our fathers and brethren have found their sphere and done their work. But look down the College rolls for a hun¬ dred years, and you find such names as these, representing many times their number of those who have been eminent in the teacher’s profession : Jesse Appleton, Ebenezer Porter, Sylvanus Thayer, Benjamin Greenleaf, Nathan W. Fiske, James Marsh, Thomas C. Upham, Charles White, Caleb Sprague Henry, Hov- ey and Mills, Johnson and Labaree, D. H. Allen, Samuel H. Taylor, Alphonso Wood. Then there are our own Adams and Shurtleff, and Haddock, and Crosby, and Long, and Young, and Putnam, and the rest, to whom so many of us owe personally a debt that can never be paid except by perpetuating their good work as we have opportunity. Want of time, not want of mate¬ rial, limits my enumeration. And this good work is not all of the past. The emphatic and grateful testimony of competent witnesses comes to us from all parts of our broad land to assure us, that wherever good work is going on in teaching, or in the superintendence of instruction, Dartmouth’s sons in more than their numerical proportion stand in the high places of re¬ sponsibility and efficiency. From her abundant treasure our Mother has always thought it right to make loans to more needy institutions. The Supplement to our General Catalogue which WORK, AND PRODUCTS. 5 was issued last year tells us, that of the Academic Class then two years out of College twenty-five (40 per cent) were at that time engaged in teaching. The obituary record of this closing year adds an illustration almost unique, which has so preoccupied my own mind as I have thought of to-day and of this occasion, that fortunately or un¬ fortunately for you it left me a very narrow range of choice as I sought for a theme. My theme found me. Here are seven names, over which, on account of their various relations to the educational work and reputation of the College, I ask you to linger with me for a time. Hon. Edward Ashton Rollins, (1851), the President of the Alumni Association for the current year. Hon. Henry Kemble Oliver, Mus. Doc., (1818). Rev. Pres. Samuel Gilman Brown, D.D., LL.D., (1831). Rev. Prof. Daniel James Noyes, D.D., (1832). Prof. Edwin David Sanborn, LL.D., (1832). Cyrus Smith]Richards, LL.D., (1835). John Dudley Philbrick, LL.D., D.C.L., (1842). Apart from the tribute which we owe Mr. Rollins as the honored President of our Association at the time of his death, his name is not out of place in the special list in which I have put it and made it first. His secular teaching, so far as I know, was limited to three winters of his College course, and two years of instruction as a private tutor after graduation. During his busiest and most burdened years in Washington and Philadel¬ phia he was a Bible Class teacher. His name represents to us here those Alumni, whose benefactions constitute an important part of the equipment of the College for its great work. All honor to those who, not prompted by the affection of sons, or constrained by the obligation of sons, have given the College so large a part of its endowment. But not a little has come from filial hearts and hands. To names like Thayer and Fletcher, and Parker, Bond and Willard, Peaslee and Wentworth, Bissell and Rollins, there might be added those of many more, whose contributions less noticeable in their magnitude have equally ex¬ pressed their loyalty to the College, and their readiness to meet with prompt and warm response her call for relief or for enlarged resources. 6 DARTMOUTH: ITS EDUCATIONAL TYPE , Behind each benefaction stands the benefactor, who may indeed be much smaller, but in every worthy bestowal is so much greater and nobler than his gift. We pay our tribute to¬ day, not to the munificent and timely donation of Mr. Rollins, but to his broad, true Christian manhood, to his capacity for and efficiency in high and important stations of responsibility and trust, first in this his native state; then in the financial service of the national government during the closing years of our civil war and the critical, burdened years that followed ; then in Phil¬ adelphia, his adopted home, where his approved ability and in¬ tegrity, his wide experience, his acquaintance with public men, secured him a welcome from the first, with position, influence, and ample success. We were anticipating for his later years with larger opportunities proportionally enlarged efficiency in many spheres of social and Christian usefulness. The Rollins Chapel, connecting him forever with the religious life of the Col¬ lege, was, as it proved, to crown his work. So long as those who knew him shall live, this monument of stone, although his most conspicuous memorial, will not speak his warmest praise. We rejoice to-day in the added wealth of commemoration and beauty that has come this year to the Chapel, to multiply the voices that shall speak to all who shall gather there, and to il¬ lustrate and emphasize the lessons of truth and piety that shall there be taught. General Oliver comes before us first as the “ Master Oliver ” who for twenty-five years did so admirable a work as a teacher at Salem, Mass. Beginning this work a few months after his graduation as a youth not yet nineteen years of age, he became, we are told, from the first “ the idol of the boys,” and made the Latin school what if was during the years of his connection with it. His success was no less signal as Principal of the English High School, and in his own private school, first for boys, then for girls, where he could more freely work his own will. His scholarship was greatly broadened and enriched in many direc¬ tions,—he would himself have said it was created,—as he threw himself with all the energy of his strong and sympathetic nature into the work in which he delighted. His command over his pupils was complete without the display of authority. He had the happy faculty of inspiring an enthusiasm like his WORK, AND PRODUCTS. 7 own. One of his High School classes computed all the solar eclipses that would be visible in the United States for seventy years. It is no novelty that the eminently successful teacher can be the equally efficient man of affairs. I had hoped to salute here to-day as His Excellency, the Governor of this Common¬ wealth, the good teacher under whom, a few years ago, I pur¬ sued most of my studies in preparation for College. General Oliver, after a quarter of a century devoted to teaching, entered upon a more diversified public life. He not only filled usefully various municipal and legislative offices, but served the Com¬ monwealth at intervals, as its Adjutant General, its war Treas¬ urer, and the organizer and first chief of its important and use¬ ful Bureau of Statistics of Labor, the pioneer organization of its kind. His rare versatility, his power of mastering new, greatly diversified and intricate details of business, his knowledge of men and his power of control over them, his appreciation of and sympathy with the real needs of the laboring classes, and other qualities of which I cannot stay to speak, received further illus¬ tration during his ten years residence in Lawrence, where as or¬ ganizer and superintendent of one of its great manufacturing corporations he won marked success, making himself meanwhile one of the most honored and best beloved of citizens. Oh for more Olivers, to grapple with the economic and social problems of our time, and bridge over the chasm that so often separates and embitters employers and employed! He who could write for the service of sacred song such tunes as Merton and Federal Street, had perhaps in this gift, so unusual with men of affairs, one source of power for stilling the unrest of troubled hearts, and resolving the strife of tongues into sweet harmony. Dr. Richards was another of the teachers, who, like poets are “ born, not made.” For thirty-six years from the date of his graduation he was Principal of the Kimball Union Academy at Meriden, N. H., which was in his time the foremost institution of its grade in the valley of the upper Connecticut, and in the ratio of its results to its means not easily surpassed in a much wider area. His fine qualities as instructor and administrator are borne in grateful remembrance by the thousands who came under his vigorous, skilful and kindly tuitions. From 1871 oi}- 8 DARTMOUTH : ITS EDUCATIONAL TYPE , ward Dr. Richards did a most useful work in another sphere, among another class, to whom his fine powers and broad expe¬ rience would be most helpful. He was for fourteen years head of the Preparatory Department of Howard University, Washing¬ ton. Beyond the value of his immediate work as instructor we must estimate the influence of such a character and such a ripe experience on the present and future of a young institution con¬ stituted and situated like Howard. Soon after the completion of his fiftieth year of service as classical instructor, which was fitly commemorated, he was disabled by age and infirmities, and died at the home of his son in Madison, Wisconsin. Dr. Philbrick’s fame and honors were won chiefly in anoth- ar department of the broad field of public education. His pro¬ fession was chosen early in his College course. For ten years after graduation he was a successful teacher in the schools of Boston and its vicinity. The experienced eye of Henry Barnard selected him for association with himself in educational work in Connecticut, where he spent five years as head of the State Nor¬ mal School, Assistant Superintendent and Superintendent of Education in the State. Called back to Boston he served for twenty-one years (with a brief interval) as Superintendent of that system of city schools which the world studies, as coming nearer to the ideal of their type than anything that has yet been devel¬ oped elsewhere. His forty or fifty reports are consulted as an encyclopaedia of wisdom in theoretical and practical education. If the tributes published within a few weeks after his death in the Journal of Education , from nearly forty distinct and very diverse sources, and the honors paid him by foreign institutions and governments, as well as at home, represent the real suffrage of those who have a right to vote, Dr. Philbrick must be awarded the foremost place among American educators of his generation. His superintendence of the educational department in the International Expositions of Vienna, Philadelphia, and Paris, while setting forth before the millions our educational system, and his mastery of it, brought him in close contact with repre¬ sentative educators from all parts of the civilized world, and gained for him a world-wide admiration and respect. China and Japan joined with Europe and America in honoring him and that which he represented. WORK, AMD PRODUCTS. 9 His conception of the true scope of popular education was (to use his own words) “ that it should aim to render the chil¬ dren of the people fit for all occupations that fall to the lot of citizens.” The breadth of view, the patient and tireless thor¬ oughness of investigation, the balanced judgment, the practical sagacity and sympathetic tact with which he worked toward the realization of this conception, made him the instructor and help¬ er that he was to committees and communities, to States and peo¬ ples, as well as to the teachers and pupils who came into personal contact with him. When so many have risen up to do him honor, the fellow Alumni of John Dudley Philbrick will not withhold the expression of their respect, and love and pride. I have reserved for a blended tribute the other three to whom our attention is irresistibly drawn to-day;—the three Pro¬ fessors, instructors of all but the fewest of us, colleagues of some, beloved and honored by all. It is probably without a par¬ allel in the history of our American Colleges, that three Profess¬ ors, contemporaries in College through nearly the entire pe¬ riod of their undergraduate days, who had in all served their College as instructors more than a hundred years, should have been brought back within two brief months, as the last autumn was passing into winter, to what we call their resting-place, on the consecrated slope hard by. So long and closely united in their lives, in their deaths they were not much divided. Thir¬ teen years the three had worked together in the instruction and discipline of the College; Professors Brown and Noyes seven¬ teen years; Professors Brown and Sanborn twenty-three years ; Professors Sanborn and Noyes twenty-eight. In due time such a tribute as they have merited of the Col¬ lege will be paid them here, by appointment of the Faculty, at the hands of one to whom we should all choose that such a work should be entrusted. You will not count it an intrusion, he will not, if I cannot here and now and before you keep utter silence with respect to them. You would censure me in your hearts if I did not say something to give voice to your feelings and my own. I can touch but a point or two in recalling to you the men and their work, their mutual relations, and their common devotion and service to the College of their love and ours, 10 DARTMOUTH: ITS EDUCATIONAL TYPE , Nearly all the living graduates of the College have been Prof. Sanborn’s pupils within the two periods of service, extend¬ ing over forty-three years, in the two departments of instruction that fell to him. In consequence of the short break in his work here all but fifty classes felt the stimulus of his active, vigorous manhood. We knew that he was less careful for the minutiae of classical culture, or for the perfected details of English compo¬ sition, than that we should get some sense of the genius and power of the two great languages with which he was concerned, some appreciation of the spirit and scope of the authors we read, some idea of the significance and result of the old Roman life and history, some knowledge and command of the capabilities of our English tongue for expressing the thought of earnest men. The unusual breadth and variety of his reading, and his rare command both in substance and in phrase of what he had read, while at times discouraging, was full of incitement to us. He kept these large resources ready for use at the call of an inter¬ est that was always fresh and strong in the many matters that should or might concerh us. It was well for us that such an example and influence should be supplemented and counterpoised by the careful, painstaking at¬ tention of Prof. Brown to his own style and ours, to the fine dis¬ tinctions, the delicate, tasteful shadings of thought and expres¬ sion that he commanded and exemplified, to finishing up our work to the highest attainable perfection and completeness. It was so that he grew himself in his polished, gracious manhood before our eyes, developing greater power in the class-room, and over the life of the College. You who knew Prof. Sanborn only in the rhetorical depart¬ ment will recall the interest he took and the interest he awak¬ ened in debate, with its concentration of previous investigation upon definite practical ends, its studied self-command, its call for vigilance and alertness of mind, and for dexterity in using one’s accumulated and cumulatively employed resources as rap¬ idly changing exigencies may require. Prof. Brown’s delight was rather in the polished essay, or the well proportioned ora¬ tion ; in the well considered and skilful adjustment of material with refined taste and artistic completeness for other moods of mind and other practical issues. WORK, AND PRODUCTS. II For the short period of Prof. Brown’s service in his second department,—that of intellectual and political science,—these same mental characteristics were most useful, where inexact thought and inaccurate expression so often convert truth into error, or rob truth of half its power by its imperfect utterance. So in College administration, the first thought was not with him characteristically the only or the final thought, the first form of a project its finished form. It was he oftener than any one else that counselled deliberation. Prof. Noyes came to the service of the College from the pas¬ toral office, and this spirit he never lost. Whatever else he did he watched for souls. He, too, taught successively in two de¬ partments, having held for nineteen years the Phillips Profess¬ orship of Theology, and for fourteen years the Chair of Intel¬ lectual Philosophy and Political Economy. The most marked characteristics of his work as teacher seem to me to have been his clearness of thought and statement, his thorough command of the material of his text books for the purposes of the class-room, and his constant aim to secure the thorough mastery of these, as being for most students the best preparation for broad and thorough supplementary study of oth¬ er authors, and other aspects of each subject. And what better result can be attained by a system of aca¬ demic training, than that in the great representative departments, that are central to discipline and knowledge, the student should have been enabled by wise instruction, incitement and guidance, to gain a position and take his bearings ? He will then be ready with powers exercised to different kinds of observation, interpretation and reasoning, to extend or vary his investiga¬ tions and acquisitions as necessity and opportunity may di¬ rect, and put them to the manifold uses of a cultured life. He can investigate for himself or judge of other men’s investiga¬ tions, reason for himself or estimate others reasonings, express his own thought and do justice to the expressed thought of other men. Among earnest Christian men Prof. Noyes always seemed to me to stand out conspicuous for crystal purity, elevation and guilelessness of character. Such a presence was an incalcula¬ ble power for good in the College and the community. 12 DARTMOUTH: ITS EDUCATIONAL TYPE, The quality and value of the judgment and influence of these three men in all questions of College policy, administra¬ tion, and discipline, are best known to those who shared their re¬ sponsibilities. Students often expressed their confidence that they had in these men friends indeed in many a time and many a form of need. Widely as Dartmouth’s sons are scattered through the earth so widely does their influence live, so widely are their memories tenderly cherished. May not our Mother well point to such as these seven among her recently buried sons, and say, Cornelia like, “ These are my jewels ” ? And now what other direction can our thoughts naturally take, than toward the Mother herself,—toward Dartmouth as an educational institution, and a factor in the educational sys¬ tem of the country ? She brings up her sons for the manhood that is in them, the manly development to which they may at¬ tain, the manly work they may do, the manly influence they may put forth, whatever their profession, in moulding other men. To this end she has from the first aimed at that which is so well described by President Hill in his Inaugural at Harvard in 1863, as “an integral education developing all the powers of the man; ” —an education in striking contrast with that indicated in the offi¬ cial reports of the same honored institution for the last two or three years, in which there is so little that is “ integral,” and so little chosen by the students that even tends to the development of all the powers. The powers of which he is most conscious, and which he is most fond of exercising, will inevitably warp the student’s immature choices. The bright examples at which we have been looking furnish one measure of our Dartmouth’s suc¬ cess in promoting the “ integral ” education. So far as I need announce a further theme let it be: Dart¬ mouth—ITS EDUCATIONAL TYPE, WORK, AND PRODUCTS. Dartmouth has aimed to be, and has been content to be, a simple College of the earlier and more conservative American type. The American College is a natural and genuine product of the spirit of the American people, working under the conditions of our American life. As a main reliance in the education of our Amer- WORK ,i AND PRODUCTS. 13 ican people the College is, I confidently maintain, the desira¬ ble institution ; the real University, perhaps for a long time to come should be and must be exceptional and supplementary. A mere conglomerate of departments constitutes no University in any high educational sense. A University built on a Collegiate foundation is the proper crown of our educational system. A University substituted for the College is a delusion and a snare. With our American propensity for appropriating high and honorable names, and giving an American complexion and im¬ port to them, a hundred institutions and more among us are called Universities. Two or three perhaps have shown some right to the name on the ground of their requirements, their methods, the breadth and completeness of their equipment, and the quality of their finished work. If you mean by University merely something more heterogeneous than a College, attempt¬ ing a little of everything, and attaching to its graduates the larg¬ est possible variety of labels, let it be so understood, and let the nature and worth of the work and product be estimated accord¬ ingly. Some of our prominent institutions are proposing to make a transition from the College to the University type. Let the ground and warrant for the proposed change be definitely announced by something of higher authority than a mass meet¬ ing. Let it be known that the metamorphosis will be closely scrutinized, and that those whose approval is worth having will demand, while they will welcome, really advanced service to the cause of higher culture. As for the rest of the “Universities,” sober sense will declare the discipline and the diploma of the old-fashioned College good enough for it. Our land has been sometimes deemed a very hot bed of novelties and wild experiments, political, social, economic, edu¬ cational, religious. Whatever else may be adduced to substan¬ tiate the charge, our common school system, and the true Amer¬ ican College, cannot be so employed. In nothing was the really and grandly creative power of our fathers more conspicuous, and their appreciation of their needs and their opportunities, than when they struck out those two types of educational agen¬ cy. Education they would have, solid, flexible, expansive, practical. National control over education they would not have; neither will their sons. We barely accept information 14 DARTMOUTH: ITS EDUCATIONAL TYPE , from our National Bureau of Education ; and do what we like with it. More than half the land is just now questioning and resenting propositions pending before our National Congress, to subsidize from the national treasury our local institutions and agencies. State control over education we watch and jealously limit. It has not been esteemed one of the inherent rights, it has not been made by surrender and concession to any reliable and uni¬ form extent one of the actual rights, of the States to educate the children of the people. We are a people quick to resent gov¬ ernmental usurpations; slow to divest ourselves, even in our own behalf, of the right to decide what we will have and how we will have it;—what we will consent to, and in what form we will consent to it. As the great civil war brought us twenty-five years ago to new views in the political sphere as to the limita¬ tions of private rights in times of public danger, so it may be that the economic and social excitements and perils of to-day will constrain us to larger concessions to the States for enforc¬ ing and unifying the education of the people. We put Ameri¬ can ideas into the heads of adult immigrant anarchists at the touch of the policeman’s baton, and through the verdicts of our juries and the striped suits of our penitentiaries. We may find it wise to make our education more compulsory over their chil¬ dren. Whether we hold it theoretically to be the true function of government to protect and conserve, or positively to foster and advance the individual and common welfare, the instinct of self-preservation will compel very practical dealing with our ur¬ gent necessities and imminent dangers. Without becoming a great Home Missionary Society the State may yet find itself compelled to protect itself more completely, by not merely offering but exacting and enforcing (so far as exaction and enforcement can enter into such a sphere) some knowledge, some training, something of the habit of self-control, something of submission, prompt and habitual, to the will of others, beyond what is yet assured to us. Our fathers were not ignorant of, nor did they seek to evade, the questions of conscience, questions of expediency, questions of true and wise economy, questions as to the best ad¬ justment of the claims and safeguards of society to the rights WORK, AND PRODUCTS. X S and duties of the individual, and the like, which beset every at¬ tempt to deal in a broad and effective way, and on a high plane, with educational problems. In the College they aimed to provide an agency that should under existing conditions lead the largest number farth¬ est on the way toward a substantial and serviceable culture. The College is not according to any conceptions of theirs an agency for carrying out the will of the dear people, or even the will of its Alumni. The American College may be simple or composite ; if it has several “ departments ” the Academic will be central; others must be content to be grouped about it, and to have their status measured from it. At the threshold there is laid , the requirement of conditions as high and strict as the development of our primary and secondary education will war¬ rant. We keep in close contact with our training schools, re¬ quiring their best, and making it better by blended example and demand. Two facts must be constantly borne in mind in regard to entrance examinations. An unreasonably high demand, when so few schools are as yet in condition to meet it, postpones the entrance of students, and increases the expense of their prepar¬ atory course. The older the student, and the greater the ante¬ cedent expense, in a land where the opportunities are so great and the temptation so strong to enter early on active and re- numerative employments, the larger the number that will be turned aside from a really liberal education. There is among us worship enough of “ self-made ” men, of the uneducated suc¬ cessful man, of the education that comes through the struggles of life as distinguished from that ruled by forecast, and broad studies of man, nature, and history. The wise College will be careful both in its separate and in its concerted action, not to repel and exclude those whom it should rather attract. A disciplinary aim is the conspicuous feature of the true College curriculum. There is substantial unity in its course of instruction, with constant demands upon the student, and the application at frequent intervals of effective tests to regulate his progress from stage to stage. We do not cast all men in one mould, or trim all men to one stature ; we advance men pari passu , and yet put a premium on the higher intelligence and 16 DARTMOUTH: ITS EDUCATIONAL TYPE , greater diligence of the better minds. The final degree when fitly bestowed has a substantial and well understood signifi¬ cance ; we know what it at least professes to represent. It has been deemed essential that attendance should be close and faithful upon appointed courses; we have not been content that at intervals of months or years students should bring to view certain attainments in knowledge and mental dis¬ cipline. Character and conduct have also been held under a real supervision and control. Certain presumptions established as a condition of admission must be maintained as a condition of continuance. The “ go as you please ” race for knowledge and culture finds its analogue on the sawdust or cinder track, rather than in anything that is traditional with the American College. We have not heretofore put such a premium on juvenility, as to maintain that the American student in academic days is compe¬ tent to “choose his own studies and govern himself.” “Tutors and governors ” have a scriptural warrant while the heir is a child, and the American College system has held the heir to a liberal culture and to College honors to be so far forth a child until the completion of the academic course. The entire system of our professional schools is also wit¬ ness to the conviction that*, even in maturer years and more ad¬ vanced studies, it is not enough to call for certain results, gain¬ ed as the students may please ; but that it is better to prescribe his studies in detail, and secure both knowledge and discipline by orderly procedure. A curriculum, if you can call it by such a name, that is almost fortuitous in its elements and proportions, is not an American College idea, nor can we accept it as a sound educational idea. We take encouragement from the recent ex¬ pression of opinion by the Overseers of Harvard, “ that a more, careful attention should be given by the Faculty to the adminis¬ tration of the elective system, and that a more careful supervis¬ ion should be exercised by the Faculty, through Committees or in such other way as may seem best, over the choice of studies made by students, and over the results of such choice as shown by the daily work of the undergraduates.” Our oldest Univer¬ sity does not yet wholly part company with her honored past, or with the American College idea. WORK, AND PRODUCTS , *7 It has been the laudable ambition of Dartmouth from the first to be a worthy and efficient institution of this College type. Historically we have no reason for prepossession in favor of the University name. Seventy years ago Hanover saw in the period of the great College controversy all the University she «desires to see. Our fathers have told us of the vigilance and loyalty with which our scanty library and other movable property was defended, while the great contest of principle and right was tak¬ ing its course through the courts. The College has, however, with equal persistence cherished the purpose and put forth the effort to be conservatively pro¬ gressive. Our beginnings were modest enough. The first year the President was the only instructor. For the next eight years he had the aid merely of tutors. The tenth year saw the ap¬ pointment of the first Professor. Fifty years elapsed before the number of academic Professors exceeded three. Yet the clos¬ ing years of our first half century saw our rolls adorned by such names as those of Choate, and George P. Marsh, and James Marsh, and Torrey, and others that might be mentioned. As rapidly as her slowly enlarging resources would allow the College has ever been ready to advance her requirement, to improve her methods, and to widen and enrich her curriculum. If the College type is to be maintained, while a real rather than a seeming and spurious progress is secured, the great disciplin¬ ary studies which the experience of the ages has approved, must be kept central and controlling; must be enriched to new fruit¬ fulness ; must be exalted to higher moulding and assimilating power. A few things will be taught thoroughly rather than many things superficially; and the few things will be those that are fundamental, representative, formative. Principles will be esteemed above mere facts; education will be exalted above mere instruction. Peremptory refusal will shut out many at¬ tractive but intrusive studies that would destroy the homogene¬ ous character of the culture which a wise institution is bound to guard as of great price. Encyclopaedic completeness is not for the College; nor is it for the College to open an educational variety store to attract the public and please the children. There are institutions enough ready to fall in with the currents of the day, and give the people what they ask for; the true and conserva- 18 DARTMOUTH: ITS EDUCATIONAL TYPE , tive College will continue to give what they need according to the witness of a sound philosophy and a broad experience. We will leave it to the “ dollar stores ” to exhibit the placard “ If you want anything you do not see, ask for it.” And yet to relieve the pressure on the curriculum resulting not merely from the rapid enlargement before us of the field of knowledge, but from the reasonable demands of probable occu¬ pations, our College, conservatively progressive, introduces, with others like minded, a scheme of elective studies, under judicious limitations, with a careful estimate of harmonies, compensations and equivalents. She allows from the beginning of the aca¬ demic course certain substitutions, but guards her own integrity, while showing her respect for the discernment and good sense of an intelligent public by the degree she confers, which leaves no doubt as to the line by which the student has reached his hon¬ ors. As a true College she stands like a rock against the de¬ mands of a premature and shallow specialism in education. A wise son would not wish,—the son of wise parents, the ward of wise guardians, will not be allowed,—to dwarf himself and thwart his own aspirations and theirs by precipitate decisions and an attenuating culture. The specialist whose manhood has become misshapen and bloodless through neglect of important powers and functions is a great failure and a great warning. If the best interests of society are to be served by our specialists in the pro¬ fessions, the industries, the arts, it will be not so much through what each can do that the others cannot, as through the ample, robust and sympathetic manliness that in them all lies back of their special attainments and capacities. If society itself is not to become a great machine, rather than more grandly human, we shall in our training be more and more intent on ennobling and enriching the manliness that is in every part, before we sum¬ mon the parts to their partitive function in the great work of life. To train our workers more generally and exclusively to observation in some one sphere, to the interpretation of single classes of facts and truths, to reasonings of one type, and to practical work for single ends, would render mutual understand¬ ing and cooperation more and more impossible, and multiply the confusions and contentions of which the world will always be WORK, AND PRODUCTS . *9 full enough. The wise College will postpone rather that hasten the day when the student shall be isolated and specialized in his culture, and made more of a professional at the cost of being less of a man. We would not teach too early the dialects by which the specialists become unintelligible to all but those of their own guild. We would have our educated men keep within touch of each other, knowing the sound of each others voices and re¬ sponsive to the beating of each others hearts. Their individual work will be most perfect and effective, and their cooperative work most useful, when the broadest foundations have been laid for their culture, and they have been together made familiar with those great truths and principles, which are not only a common possession, but a common instrumentality. In that great strug¬ gle which is nowhere sharper than in our land, between wealthy, conceited and powerful ignorance, and a true and wide intelli¬ gence, the most efficient service will be done by those whose large and flexible and well-equipped manhood is the best vindi¬ cation at the same time of the school in which they have been reared, and of the interests for which they stand as representa¬ tives and champions. And after all most of us are never to be specialists, but men ready with intelligence, good judgment and effect to turn our hand to varied and manifold activities. The motto on our College seal suggests a third element in the educational type of our institution. It has not merely aimed to be a true College, and a conservatively progressive College, but an .institution religious from corner-stone to cap-stone in its structure, in all its workings and all their products. This religious faith has as a general fact characterized our American College system, and the founding and administration of most of our American Colleges. The tone of Dartmouth has been in this respect clear, emphatic and unequivocal. The legend on our seal we cannot sunder from its Biblical se¬ quel : u Par ate viam Domini; redasfadte semitas ejusP Our found¬ ers and fathers believed in the Lord and in his lordship. They believed that education with every other high and true human activity should be a preparing of His way, a making His paths straight. God the Lord was in their philosophy and in their sci¬ ence ; in their interpretation of man and of all nature, and in 20 DARTMOUTH: ITS EDUCATIONAL TYPE , their reading of history; in their estimate of art and literature and of all good work. They assumed God ; in all their research they found God; they proclaimed God; they were for them¬ selves consciously, gratefully, gladly dependent on God, and they builded and wrought in all for God. Their views of life, their aims in life, their power in life, their ethics, their religion, they did not regard as having come up to them from the dog or the horse, but as having with every good gift and every perfect boon come from above by no tortuous channels. They believed in the reality, in the specific truths, and in the life-giving and re¬ fining power of revealed religion. They would prepare the way of the Lord, whether in the human heart or in society, in the home or the State, in the Lord’s way, and not by inventions and devices of their own. They esteemed no culture that lacked the sanction of the Word, and that did not draw its vigor and refreshment from the Word. They had no hope of reclaiming the world’s wildernesses, or the wilderness that is naturally with¬ in the heart of man, except by this power. He who does not wish to be educated under these auspices need not come here ; the world is open to him. These are our traditions, and in them we abide. He who will not counsel, ad¬ minister and instruct in this spirit should not put on our official robes. He is an alien and a trespasser. This has been in its main features the type of Dartmouth as an educational institution. Its guardians, administrators and instructors have in the main held fast to this as its type. In estimating its workings and its products as a factor in the educational system of the country, the type being given we have to consider on the one side the loyalty, intelligence and ef¬ ficiency with which its idea and purpose have been carried out, and on the other the kind of material and the surrounding con¬ ditions with which its working agencies have had to deal. We shall then be prepared to judge of the capacity that has been found in its council chambers, its chairs, its halls;—of the cul¬ ture that has gone forth from them ;—and of the contributions they have made to the educated manhood and the educating forces of the land. The period has been long enough, the tests have been varied and thorough enough to warrant a fair judg¬ ment. WORK, AND PRODUCTS. 2 I In spite of its embarrassing poverty, the compactness of its home field,—the homogeneous and sterling qualities of its ma¬ terial,—the vigor and intelligence of its work both in its chairs of instruction and in its halls,—the sturdy loyalty of its Alumni, —the steadiness and unity of its administration and its training, —long enabled Dartmouth to hold on its way against any com¬ petitions or distractions then existing. In more recent years, as institutions have multiplied far and near whose endowment and equipment have been more rapid and ample ; as the country has been covered by a network of communication making distance a matter of far less account to the student, and enabling him to move more freely under the manifold attractions that drew him this way or that; as Dartmouth’s sons, especially the more en¬ ergetic and prosperous, have been more widely dispersed, and have become identified with other interests, feeling less power¬ fully, meanwhile, the constraints of loyalty to the old home, the burden of responsibility resting here, and already pressing heav¬ ily enough, has become yet heavier. The problems which the guardians and administrators of the College are called to solve become more perplexing. They are more heavily handicapped in the race which they must run in the cause of good learning and for the College of our love. All honor to them for the cour¬ age, steadfastness and wisdom with which they have held to their course. Our compact and efficient Board of Trustees has through these generations watched vigilantly and toiled arduously in ful¬ filling its charge. If we call the first third of the history of the College the formative period, those who planned and enacted came of necessity almost exclusively from without. They cre¬ ated its type ; they initiated its traditions. Within the first thir¬ ty-seven years but three Alumni had become Trustees. For the last eighty years more than two-thirds of the elected Trustees have been Alumni, heirs to the spirit of the College, jealous with a filial jealousy for its prestige and success. They have come to their work by the invitation and appointment of those who knew by experience for what they wanted colleagues and suc¬ cessors ;—and in connection with each vacancy what kind of re¬ source would be most timely and helpful. They have not been brought in, as is sometimes conspicuously the case elsewhere* 2 2 DARTMOUTH: ITS EDUCATIONAL TYPE, by the methods of the caucus and convention, to represent some clique, to serve perchance some other ends, temporary or per¬ manent, than those for which the College was in sore need of service. These our fathers and brethren, in association with less than half their number brought in from without, as a need¬ ed and valued infusion of fresh blood, have served with a devo¬ tion that we who stand at a distance can poorly measure. And the good men and true who have been entrusted with the work of administration and instruction, whether Alumni or brought by adoption into the home circle and the family service, have surely as a body done with signal diligence and the Highest integrity that for which they were set. Not conspicuous ordina¬ rily in the learned world, there have been among them some of wide and rare repute. No man can deny them this praise, that with true devotion they have sought to attain the high intellect¬ ual, moral and spiritual ends for the sake of which they accepted their responsible stations. Some of those least known to the busy world have most completely given to their good work the entire energy of their wise, able and consecrated life. A Col¬ lege work as distinguished from a University work they have with the greatest singleness and sincerity striven to do. To them we must accredit in large measure the fair fame of Alma Mater. The effectiveness and success of their work has been de¬ pendent in part on the kind of material which has come to their hands. That upon which they have tested the wisdom of their aim and method, and their personal skill, has been chiefly the characteristic local material of rural New England, solid, strong, sometimes a little rough. The New England granite (like that of Aberdeen) makes a polished shaft, but is chiefly useful for supporting great weights and standing where stability is essen¬ tial. The visitor to Old England, as he has stood before its ven¬ erable cathedrals, has often found the hand of restoration at work upon the pinnacles and buttresses and even upon more essential and fundamental parts, to repair the damage wrought by time’s corroding touch on the soft sandstones used in their construction. Our granite is not so easily wrought into forms of architectural beauty; but how it lasts ! You would not take to the sculptor a block from our New Hampshire hills if you WORK, AND PRODUCTS . 23 wanted a copy of the Apollo or the Venus, or an original from the chisel of Powers. So you would not go first to the homes scattered over these rough slopes about us if you were looking for such as should from the first grace drawing rooms; but for the world’s strong workers in all departments of human activity, this very region to which our Dartmouth is central is one of the fields first resorted to. Nor can it be denied that by reason of the very energy that is stored up in them, there is a strong centrifugal tendency carrying the sons of this little corner of the land wherever there is work to be done prolific in satisfaction and reward. The material fashioned here has been for the most part ho¬ mogeneous. It has been ordinarily more mature than the aver¬ age, and proportionally more earnest in its purpose. If less plastic at first there is a great compensation in the more assured cooperation of teacher and taught. Dartmouth’s sons have mainly come here because they wanted an education, not be¬ cause others would have them educated for positions that birth or wealth or favor made comparatively secure. You and I who have taught elsewhere know how much it is worfeh to be met, not by a challenge to prove yourself more expert in accomplishing than your pupil is in evading the work of the hour or the year, but by a resolute desire to gain an education, for its intrinsic value and for its uses. And work of the College type on such material, in such an atmosphere, at the hands of steadfast, skilful artists, brings out results. The spirit of the hour limits our attention to Dart¬ mouth’s efficiency ip. training teachers. We come back to the group of loved and honored brethren whose recently finished work supplied our theme. We looked at them individually; let us look at them together, as illustrat¬ ing the quality and worth of our culture. They were in their calling specimens of what Dartmouth’s sons have done in many another sphere. They represent a vocation that has always been held in honor here. A large proportion of our Alumni have for a longer or shorter time engaged in teaching. Before the insti¬ tution of Normal Schools I know no other educational centre to which men turned so naturally for a supply of experienced and competent teachers. They were not trained after the method of 24 DARTMOUTH: ITS EDUCATIONAL TYPE , the Normal Schools; they were not specially familiar with the theories of education ; they carried no certificates won by rigid examinations, such as are exacted by some of the European sys¬ tems ; but they were known as men whose mental habits had been formed, and their capacities developed in the conduct of schools. Until recently this was for those whose means were scanty the most available, the most useful, the most honorable form of self help. Many of our brethren, probably some of us, could never have reached the liberal education that we coveted with¬ out this resource. It not only contributed to the financial basis of our College work, and of our later professional study, but gave purpose and quality to our acquisitions and to our disci¬ pline. It braced our manliness; it imparted self-reliance, the habit and power of self-command, and a self-respecting dignity; it promoted capacity, tact and skill in influencing and moulding other minds and characters. The arrangements of the College were for very many years, partly of necessity, yet not without a measure of consent and actual approval, made to favor winter teaching. It was understood and accepted as for us part of the broad scheme of our life, that for most of us education came partly at the teacher’s desk in the district school. We were ed¬ ucated in part in educating. There was a serious encroachment on the length of College terms, a limitation upon the possible range of College studies; for many there was a loss here and there in the precision and finish of College scholarship. After a win¬ ter’s arduous teaching students sometimes came back a little weary to the first College duties of the opening Spring. But change of mental attitude, and change of occupation, as we have so often found to be the case in the work of later years, brought speedy and sufficient recuperation. The three “ r’s ” of the win¬ ter did not seem very closely affiliated with, or very helpful to the higher classical, literary or scientific studies of term time. The motive to study, however, and the capacity for effective study, had drawn vigor from our necessities and occupations. He thinks best who bears it in mind that he is to impart his thought. He studies to best purpose who seeks to make his acquisitions portable, his knowledge communicable. As the guide through the wilderness is most observant of every way- WORK, AND PRODUCTS. 2 5 mark, he notes most carefully the landmarks in the wide and di¬ versified realms of knowledge, who is to show others the way. He will be most watchful and scrupulous in respect to his own power and habits of observation, reasoning and interpretation, who feels that the responsibility is upon him of training others to observe, reflect, interpret and express. Of all this law of rea¬ son and experience our teaching students and student teachers reaped the advantage. These days belong very much to the past. A change has come over our common school system. Among other things greater permanence in the teacher’s office is insisted on; and to a certain extent this is a great gain. But it is just as certain that the teaching office in common schools will not be sought or accepted by minds of as high order as went out winter after win¬ ter with their broader training and greater vigor to give a shorter but more energetic impulse to the culture of the district where they taught. And to the students and the College while the change is not wholly loss it is partly loss. I undervalue no honest manly effort at self-help; but surely in its contribution to mental fibre and manly character the modern summer vacation with its con¬ tingent compensation is not equal to the winter of olden time with its square contract based on intellectual service. Precari¬ ous “ perqs ” (perquisites the uninitiated would call them) are not of equal worth with the well earned stipend from the town tax or the school fund. It is to be hoped that these are only days of transition to some better provision, and that they will be few. The type of the College remains; the sterling character of its student material remains essentially unchanged. The pro¬ visions made here for high and broad and solid culture are ex¬ tended and multiplied as rapidly as the slowly gathering endow¬ ments of the College will allow. The demands made on teachers and students for their best services and largest attainments were never greater. The glorious inheritance of the memories, the examples, the education of the past is inalienable. What the College asks of us, Mr. President and brethren, is that we tell it out by word and deed that we love this old home of our student days. There was in olden time a deep and fer- 26 DARTMOUTH: ITS EDUCATIONAL TYPE , vid esprit du corps among the sons of Dartmouth, that was not only honorable as a sentiment, but invaluable in many ways as a source of strength to the College. I was brought up in a home (others of you were) where loyalty to Dartmouth was inferior in intensity only to loyalty to Christ and to fatherland. I have of¬ ten thought that from the period of the great College contro¬ versy there went out, at least through the generation that follow¬ ed, a steadfastness and enthusiasm of devotion that did much for the weary years of poverty and waiting through which the College was to pass. It was a more bracing and exhilarating air in which the arduous work of the College was done, its worthy type maintained, its standard held high and ever higher. Mr. President and brethren, that is a poor, sterile devotion that lives wholly on reminiscence. We renew in our reunions here and elsewhere the living spirit of fraternal regard and mu¬ tual interest. That were a curious fraternal relation that did not presuppose a filial relation. Our heroic age is receding far¬ ther and farther into the past. We shall soon reach a point where our great names will be a poor spell to conjure with, in a land and an age full of living issues. We surely have warrant enough and motive enough for a living and ever manifested loy¬ alty that shall do its part toward a greater glory for the coming days. 3 0112 061618564