[Speech of Rev. Dr. Noah Porter, President of Yale College, at the
seventy-second anniversary banquet of the New England Society in
the City of New York, December 22, 1877. The President of the
Society, William Borden, occupied the chair. This speech of
President Porter followed a speech of President Eliot of Harvard.
The two Presidents spoke in response to the toast: "Harvard and
Yale, the two elder sisters among the educational institutions of
New England, where generous rivalry has ever promoted patriotism
and learning. Their children have, in peace and war, in life and
death, deserved well of the Republic. Smile, Heaven, upon this fair
conjunction."]
MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY:--The
somewhat miscellaneous character of the sentiment which has called me up
embarrasses me not a little as to which of the points I should select as
the subject of my remarks. I am still more embarrassed by the
introduction of additional topics on the part of my friend, the
President of Harvard College. The president knows that it is our custom
to meet once a year, and discuss all the matters to which he has
referred, as often as we meet. [Laughter.] He knows also that he was
providentially prevented, by a very happy occurrence to himself, from
attending our last College Convention; and in consequence of his
absence, for which we all excused and congratulated him, the meeting was
more than usually tame. [Laughter.] Now, I find that all the sentiments
which he had been gathering for a year have been precipitated upon me on
this occasion. [Laughter.] I rejoice that His Excellency, the President
of the United States, and the distinguished Secretary of State
[Rutherford B. Hayes and William M. Evarts], are between us. [Laughter.]
For here is a special occasion for the application of the policy of
peace. [Laughter.] I therefore reserve what few remarks I shall make
upon this special theme for a moment later.
The first point in the sentiment proposed recognizes New England as the
mother of two colleges. I think we should do well also to call to mind,
especially under the circumstances by which we are surrounded this
evening, that New England was not merely the mother of two colleges
which have had some influence in this land, but that New England, with
all its glory and its achievements, was, in a certain sense, the
creation of a college. It would be easy to show that had it not been for
the existence of one or two rather inferior colleges of the University
of Cambridge in England, there never would have been a New England. In
these colleges were gathered and trained not a few of the great leaders
of opinion under whose influence the father of New England became a
great political power in the mother country. It is not to the Pilgrim
Fathers alone who landed at Plymouth on December 22, 1620, that New
England owes its characteristic principles and its splendid renown, but
it is also to the leaders of the great Puritan party in England, who
reinforced that immigration by the subsequent higher and nobler life of
the planters of Massachusetts Bay, conspicuous among whom was the
distinguished and ever-to-be-honored Governor Winthrop. [Applause.]
It was from these colleges that so many strong-hearted young men went
forth into political public life in England to act the scholar in
politics, and who, as scholars in politics, enunciated those new
principles and new theories of government which made Old England
glorious for a time, and which made New England the power for good which
she afterward became, first at her home in the old States, and in all
their extension westward even to this hour. These scholars sought
emphatically a reform of the civil service in England. That was their
mission. They vindicated their principles upon the scaffold and their
rights upon the field of battle at home, and they transmitted that
spirit to the emigrants who came out from among them before the great
rebellion reached its great crisis and finished its memorable history.
While, then, we honor the universities of which New England has been
the mother, let us remember that New England owes its being to a
university. In remembering this, we shall be prepared to follow in the
steps of our fathers, and to be mindful of what we ourselves owe to our
own institutions of learning.
In respect to the rivalry between Yale and Harvard, which was noticed in
the sentiment to which I speak, and in reply to the suggestions which
have been offered by the President of Harvard, I will venture a single
remark. You, sir, who are learned in our New England history, are not
unfamiliar with the saying which was once somewhat current, that when a
man was found in Boston, in the earlier generations, who was a little
too bad to live with, they sent him to Rhode Island [Laughter.]; and
when they found a man who was a little too good to be a comfortable
neighbor, they sent him to Connecticut. [Laughter.] The remainder--the
men of average respectability and worth--were allowed to remain on the
shores of Massachusetts Bay and in Boston. And so it happened that these
people of average goodness, from constantly looking each other in the
face, contracted the habit of always praising one another with especial
emphasis; and the habit has not been altogether outgrown. [Laughter.]
The people of Rhode Island, being such as I have described, found it
necessary to have certain principles of toleration to suit their
peculiar condition, which they denominated the principles of soul
liberty.
The people of Connecticut, being so very good, could not allow their
goodness to remain at home, and they very soon proceeded on a missionary
errand westward toward the city of New York, and in due time captured
the harbor and the infant city, and the great river of the North. In
this way, New York fell into the hands of those super-excellent
Connecticut Yankees, and with that began the stream of emigration
westward which has made our country what it is. [Laughter and applause.]
Perhaps this piece of history is about as good an explanation of the
jealousy of Yale toward Harvard as the interpretation which has been
given by the President of that honorable university--that Yale College
was founded because of the discontent of the self-righteous Puritans of
Connecticut with the religious opinions of the ruling spirits at
Harvard. [Laughter.] That piece of information has been amply discussed
and exploded by an able critic, and I will not repeat the arguments
here.
As to any present rivalry which may exist between those institutions, we
disclaim it altogether. We know no jealousy of Harvard College now. We
acknowledge no rivalry except in the great enterprise of training
upright and intelligent and good-principled men for the service and the
glory of our common land. [Applause, and cries of "Hear! Hear!"] But
there is one means to this end you may be sure we shall always insist
upon--and that is the principle which we have received from our fathers,
that manhood and character are better than knowledge. The training which
our country demands is that which we intend always to give; and it is a
training in manhood of intelligence, in manhood of character, and in a
constant, ever-present faith in the providence and goodness of the
living God. [Applause.]
I deem it proper here to remind you, that Yale College was foremost
among the American colleges in cherishing the taste for physical
science, and that these sciences, in all their forms, have received from
us the most liberal attention and care. If any of you doubt this, we
would like to show you our museum, with its collections, which represent
all that the most recent explorations have been able to gather. In these
well-ordered collections you would find as satisfactory an exhibition of
results as you could ask for. [Applause.] You need not fear, however,
that, because we believe in science, we have learned any more to
disbelieve in the living God. As we stand in the midst of one of the
halls of our splendid museum, and see arrayed before us all the forms of
vertebrate life, from man down to the lowest type, and see how one and
the other suggests the progress--the evolution, if you please--during we
care not how many centuries of advancing life; the more closely we study
these indications, the more distinctly do we see lines of thought, of
intelligence, and goodness reflected from one structure to another, and
all declaring that a divine thought and love has ordered each and all.
[Applause.] Hence we find no inconsistency between the teachings of this
museum on the one corner and the teachings of the college chapel on the
other. [Applause.] We therefore commit ourselves, in the presence of all
these sons of New England, whether they live in this city of their
habitation and their glory, or whether they are residents of other
cities and States of the North and Northwest, to the solemn declaration,
that we esteem it to be our duty to train our pupils on the one hand in
enlightened science, and on the other in the living power of the
Christian faith. [Applause.] We are certainly not sectarian. It is
enough that I say that we aim to be enlightened Christian believers, and
with those hopes and those aspirations we trust that the next generation
of men whom we shall educate will do their part in upholding this
country in fidelity to its obligations of duty, in fidelity to every
form of integrity, in generous self-sacrifice on the field of contest,
if it be required, and in Christian sympathy with the toleration and
forbearance which should come after the fight. [Applause.]