In his inaugural address, the President of the Johns Hopkins University,
after a grateful reference to the founder and his generosity, and a
reminder that the endowment, large as it appears, is not large when
compared with the acquisitions of many other institutions, called
attention to some of the special distinctions of this gift. Among them
were named: the freedom from conditions; the absence of political or
ecclesiastical control; the connection with an endowed hospital; the
geographical advantages of Baltimore; and the timeliness of the
foundation. Five agencies for the promotion of superior instruction were
next briefly discussed, universities, learned academies, colleges,
technical schools, and museums. The object of these paragraphs was to
suggest the distinctive Idea of the University, and to show that while
forms and methods vary in different countries, the freedom for
investigation, the obligation to teach, and the careful bestowal of
academic honors are always understood to be among the university
functions. Wherever a strong university is established, learned
societies, colleges, technical schools, and museums are clustered. It is
the sun and they are the planets.
Twelve points were then enumerated on which there is a consensus so
general that further discussion seemed needless.
1. All sciences are worthy of promotion; or in other words, it is
useless to dispute whether literature or science should receive most
attention, or whether there is any essential difference between the old
and the new education.
2. Religion has nothing to fear from science, and science need not be
afraid of religion. Religion claims to interpret the word of God, and
science to reveal the laws of God. The interpreters may blunder, but
truths are immutable, eternal, and never in conflict.
3. Remote utility is quite as worthy to be thought of as immediate
advantage. Those ventures are not always most sagacious that expect a
return on the morrow. It sometimes pays to send our argosies across the
seas,--to make investments with an eye to slow but sure returns. So it
is always in the promotion of science.
4. As it is impossible for any university to encourage with equal
freedom all branches of learning, a selection must be made by
enlightened governors, and that selection must depend on the
requirements and deficiencies of a given people, in a given period.
There is no absolute standard of preference. What is more important at
one time or in one place may be less needed elsewhere and otherwise.
5. Individual students cannot pursue all branches of learning, and must
be allowed to select, under the guidance of those who are appointed to
counsel them. Nor can able professors be governed by routine. Teachers
and pupils must be allowed great freedom in their method of work.
Recitations, lectures, examinations, laboratories, libraries, field
exercises, travel, are all legitimate means of culture.
6. The best scholars will almost invariably be those who make special
attainments on the foundation of a broad and liberal culture.
7. The best teachers are usually those who are free, competent, and
willing to make original researches in the library and the laboratory.
8. The best investigators are usually those who have also the
responsibilities of instruction, gaining thus the incitement of
colleagues, the encouragement of pupils, the observation of the public.
9. Universities should bestow their honors with a sparing hand; their
benefits most freely.
10. A university cannot be created in a day; it is a slow growth. The
University of Berlin has been quoted as a proof of the contrary. That
was indeed a quick success, but in an old, compact country, crowded with
learned men eager to assemble at the Prussian court. It was a change of
base rather than a sudden development.
11. The object of the university is to develop character--to make men.
It misses its aim if it produces learned pedants, or simple artisans, or
cunning sophists, or pretentious practitioners. Its purport is not so
much to impart knowledge to the pupils, as to whet the appetite, exhibit
methods, develop powers, strengthen judgment, and invigorate the
intellectual and moral forces. It should prepare for the service of
society a class of students who will be wise, thoughtful, progressive
guides in whatever department of work or thought they may be engaged.
12. Universities easily fall into ruts. Almost every epoch requires a
fresh start.
If these twelve points are conceded, our task is simplified, though it
is still difficult. It is to apply these principles to Baltimore in
1876. We are trying to do this with no controversy as to the relative
importance of letters and science, the conflicts of religion and
science, or the relation of abstractions and utilities; our simple aim
is to make scholars, strong, bright, useful and true.
Proceeding to speak of the Johns Hopkins University, the speaker then
announced that at first the Faculty of Philosophy would alone be
organized, where instruction would be given in language, mathematics,
ethics, history and science. The Medical Faculty would not long be
delayed. That of Jurisprudence would come in time. That of Theology is
not now proposed.
The next paragraphs of the address will be given without abbreviation.
Who shall our teachers be?
This question the public has answered for us; for I believe there is
scarcely a preeminent man of science or letters, at home or abroad, who
has not received a popular nomination for the vacant professorships.
Some of these candidates we shall certainly secure, and their names will
be one by one made known. But I must tell you, in domestic confidence,
that it is not an easy task to transplant a tree which is deeply
rooted. It is especially hard to do so in our soil and climate. Though
a migratory people, our college professors are fixtures. Such local
college attachments are not known in Germany; and the promotions which
are frequent in Germany are less thought of here. When we think of
calling foreign teachers, we encounter other difficulties. Many are
reluctant to cross the sea; and others are, by reason of their lack of
acquaintance with our language and ways, unavailable. Besides we may as
well admit that London, Paris, Leipsic, Berlin, and Vienna afford
facilities for literary and scientific growth and influence, far beyond
what our country affords. Hence, it is probable that among our own
countrymen, our faculty will be chiefly found.
I wrote, not long ago, to an eminent physicist, presenting this problem
in social mechanics, for which I asked his solution, "We cannot have a
great university without great professors; we cannot get great
professors till we have a great university: help us from the dilemma."
Let me tell his answer: "Your difficulty," he says, "applies only to old
men who are great; these you can rarely move; but the young men of
genius, talent, learning and promise, you can draw. They should be your
strength."
The young Americans of talent and promise--there is our strength, and a
noble company they are! We do not ask from what college, or what state,
or what church they come; but what do they know, and what can they do,
and what do they want to find out.
In the biographies of eminent scholars, it is curious to observe how
many indicated in youth preeminent ability. Isaac Casaubon, whose name
in the sixteenth century shed lustre on the learned circles of Geneva,
Montpellier, Paris, London and Oxford, began as professor of Greek, at
the age of twenty-two; and Heinsius, his Leyden contemporary, at
eighteen. It was at the age of twenty-eight, that Linnaeus first
published his _Systema Naturae_. Cuvier was appointed a professor in
Paris at twenty-six, and, a few months later, a member of the
Institute. James Kent, the great commentator on American law, began his
lectures in Columbia College at the age of thirty-one. Henry was not far
from thirty years of age when he made his world-renowned researches in
electro-magnetism; and Dana's great work on mineralogy was first
published before he was twenty-five years old, and about four years
after he graduated at New Haven. Look at the Harvard lists:--Everett was
appointed Professor of Greek at twenty-one; Benjamin Peirce, of
Mathematics at twenty-four; and Agassiz was not yet forty when he came
to this country. For fifty years Yale College rested on three men
selected in their youth by Dr. Dwight, and almost simultaneously set at
work; Day was twenty-eight, Silliman, twenty-three, and Kingsley,
twenty-seven, when they began their professorial lives. The University
of Virginia, early in its history, attracted foreign teachers, who were
all young men.
We shall hope to secure a strong staff of young men, appointing them
because they have twenty years before them; selecting them on evidence
of their ability; increasing constantly their emoluments, and promoting
them because of their merit to successive posts, as scholars, fellows,
assistants, adjuncts, professors and university professors. This plan
will give us an opportunity to introduce some of the features of the
English fellowship and the German system of privat-docents; or in other
words, to furnish positions where young men desirous of a university
career may have a chance to begin, sure at least of a support while
waiting for promotion.
Our plans begin but do not end here. As men of distinction, who have won
the highest rank in their callings, are known to be free, we shall
invite them to come among us.
If we would maintain a university, great freedom must be allowed both to
teachers and scholars. This involves freedom of methods to be employed
by the instructors on the one hand, and on the other, freedom of courses
to be selected by the students.
But this freedom is based on laws,--two of which cannot be too
distinctly or too often enunciated. A law which should govern the
admission of pupils is this, that before they win this privilege they
must have been matured by the long, preparatory discipline of superior
teachers, and by the systematic, laborious, and persistent pursuit of
fundamental knowledge; and a second law, which should govern the work of
professors, is this, that with unselfish devotion to the discovery and
advancement of truth and righteousness, they renounce all other
preferment, so that, like the greatest of all teachers, they may promote
the good of mankind.
I see no advantage in our attempting to maintain the traditional
four-year class-system of the American colleges. It has never existed in
the University of Virginia; it is modified, though not nominally given
up at Harvard; it is not an important characteristic of Michigan and
Cornell; it is not known in the English, French or German universities.
It is a collegiate rather than a university method. If parents or
students desire us to mark out prescribed courses, either classical or
scientific, lasting four years, it will be easy to do so. But I
apprehend that many students will come to us excellent in some branches
of a liberal education and deficient in others--good perhaps in Greek,
Latin and mathematics; deficient in chemistry, physics, zoology,
history, political economy, and other progressive sciences. I would give
to such candidates on examination, credit for their attainments, and
assign them in each study the place for which they are fitted. A
proficient in Plato may be a tyro in Euclid. Moreover, I would make
attainments rather than time the condition of promotion; and I would
encourage every scholar to go forward rapidly or go forward slowly,
according to the fleetness of his foot and his freedom from impediment.
In other words, I would have our University seek the good of individuals
rather than of classes.
The sphere of a university is sometimes restricted by its walls or is
limited to those who are enrolled on its lists. There are three
particulars in which we shall aim at extramural influence: first, as an
examining body, ready to examine and confer degrees or other academic
honors on those who are trained elsewhere; next, as a teaching body, by
opening to educated persons (whether enrolled as students or not) such
lectures as they may wish to attend, under certain restrictions--on the
plan of the lectures in the high seminaries of Paris; and, finally, as
in some degree at least a publishing body, by encouraging professors and
lecturers to give to the world in print the results of their researches.
What are we aiming at?
An enduring foundation; a slow development; first local, then regional,
then national influence; the most liberal promotion of all useful
knowledge; the special provision of such departments as are elsewhere
neglected in the country; a generous affiliation with all other
institutions, avoiding interferences, and engaging in no rivalry; the
encouragement of research; the promotion of young men; and the
advancement of individual scholars, who by their excellence will advance
the sciences they pursue, and the society where they dwell.
No words could indicate our aim more fitly than those by which John
Henry Newman expresses his "Idea of the University," in a page glowing
with enthusiasm, to which I delight to revert.
What will be our agencies?
A large staff of teachers; abundance of instruments, apparatus,
diagrams, books, and other means of research and instruction; good
laboratories, with all the requisite facilities; accessory influences,
coming both from Baltimore and Washington; funds so unrestricted,
charter so free, schemes so elastic, that as the world goes forward, our
plans will be adjusted to its new requirements.
What will be our methods?
Liberal advanced instruction for those who want it; distinctive honors
for those who win them; appointed courses for those who need them;
special courses for those who can take no other; a combination of
lectures, recitations, laboratory practice, field work and private
instruction; the largest discretion allowed to the Faculty consistent
with the purposes in view; and, finally, an appeal to the community to
increase our means, to strengthen our hands, to supplement our
deficiencies, and especially to surround our scholars with those social,
domestic and religious influences which a corporation can at best
imperfectly provide, but which may be abundantly enjoyed in the homes,
the churches and the private associations of an enlightened Christian
city.
_Citizens of Baltimore and Maryland_.--This great undertaking does not
rest upon the Trustees alone; the whole community has a share in it.
However strong our purposes, they will be modified, inevitably, by the
opinions of enlightened men; so let parents and teachers incite the
youth of this commonwealth to high aspirations; let wise and judicious
counsellors continue their helpful suggestions, sure of being heard with
grateful consideration; let skilful writers, avoiding captionsness on
the one hand and compliment on the other, uphold or refute or amend the
tenets here announced; let the guardians of the press diffuse widely a
knowledge of the benefits which are here provided; let men of means
largely increase the usefulness of this work by their timely gifts.
At the moment there is nothing which seems to me so important, in this
region, and indeed in the entire land, as the promotion of good
secondary schools, preparatory to the universities. There are old
foundations in Maryland which require to be made strong, and there is
room for newer enterprises, of various forms. Every large town should
have an efficient academy or high school; and men of wealth can do no
greater service to the public than by liberally encouraging, in their
various places of abode, the advanced instruction of the young. None can
estimate too highly the good which came to England from the endowment of
Lawrence Sheriff at Rugby, and of Queen Elizabeth's school at
Westminster, or the value to New England of the Phillips foundations in
Exeter and And over.
Every contribution made by others to this new University will enable the
Trustees to administer with greater liberality their present funds.
Special foundations may be affiliated with our trust, for the
encouragement of particular branches of knowledge, for the reward of
merit, for the construction of buildings; and each gift, like the new
recruits of an army, will be more efficient because of the place it
takes in an organized and efficient company. It is a great satisfaction
in this world of changes and pecuniary loss to remember what safe
investments have been made at Harvard and Yale, and other old colleges,
where dollar for dollar is still shown for every gift.
The atmosphere of Maryland seems favorable to such deeds of piety,
hospitality and "good-will to men." George Calvert, the first Lord
Baltimore, comes here, returns to England and draws up a charter which
becomes memorable in the annals of civil and religious liberty, for
which, "he deserves to be ranked," (as Bancroft says), "among the most
wise and benevolent lawgivers of all ages;" among the liberals of 1776
none was bolder than Charles Carroll of Carrollton; John Eager Howard,
the hero of Cowpens, is almost equally worthy of gratitude for the
liberality of his public gifts; John McDonogh, of Baltimore birth,
bestows his fortune upon two cities for the instruction of their youth;
George Peabody, resident here in early life, comes back in old age to
endow an Athenaeum, and begins that outpouring of munificence which
gives him a noble rank among modern philanthropists; Moses Sheppard
bequeaths more than half a million for the relief of mental disease;
Rinehart, the teamster boy, attains distinction as a sculptor, and
bequeaths his hard-won acquisitions for the encouragement of art in the
city of his residence; and a Baltimorean still living, provides for the
foundation of an astronomical observatory in Yale College; while Johns
Hopkins lays a foundation for learning and charity, which we celebrate
to-day.
The closing sentences of the discourse were addressed to the young men
of Baltimore and to the Trustees.