divergent as I have indicated, is it possible to suggest methods by
which we may discipline ourselves in the nobler way of seeking the
interests of life?--I mean by taking part with things in their
beginnings, learning to reverence them there, and so attaining an
interest which will continually be supported and carried forward. You
may look with some anxiety upon the doctrine which I have laid down. You
may say, "But beauty is seductive; beauty allures me. I know that the
imperfect in its struggle toward perfection is the nobler matter. I know
that America is, for him who can see all things, a more interesting land
than Spain. Yes, I know this, but I find it hard to feel it. My strong
temptation is to lie and dream in romance, in ideal perfection. By what
means may I discipline myself out of this degraded habit and bring
myself into the higher life, so that I shall always be interested in
progress, in the future rather than in the past, in the on-going rather
than in the completed life?" I cannot give an exact and final receipt
for this better mind. A persistently studied experience must be the
teacher. To-day you may understand what I say, you may resolve to live
according to the methods I approve. But you may be sure that to-morrow
you will need to learn it all over again. And yet I think I can mention
several forms of discipline, as I may call them. I can direct your
attention to certain modes by which you may instruct yourselves how to
take an interest in the imperfect thing, and still keep that interest an
honorable one.
In my judgment, then, your first care should be to learn to observe. A
simple matter--one, I dare say, which it will seem to you difficult to
avoid. You have a pair of eyes; how can you fail to observe? Ah! but
eyes can only look, and that is not observing. We must not rest in
looking, but must penetrate into things, if we would find out what is
there. And to find this out is worth while, for everything when observed
is of immense interest. There is no object so remote from human life
that when we come to study it we may not detect within its narrow
compass illuminating and therefore interesting matter. But it makes a
great difference whether we do thus really observe, whether we hold
attention to the thing in hand, and see what it contains. Once, after
puzzling long over the charm of Homer, I applied to a learned friend and
said to him, "Can you tell me why Homer is so interesting? Why can't you
and I write as he wrote? Why is it that his art is lost, and that to-day
it is impossible for us to awaken an interest at all comparable to
his?"--"Well," said my friend, "I have often meditated on that, but it
seems to come to about this: Homer looked long at a thing. Why," said
he, "do you know that if you should hold up your thumb and look at it
long enough, you would find it immensely interesting?" Homer looks a
great while at his thumb. He sees precisely the thing he is dealing
with. He does not confuse it with anything else. It is sharp to him; and
because it is sharp to him it stands out sharply for us over thousands
of years. Have you acquired this art, or do you hastily glance at
insignificant objects? Do you see the thing exactly as it is? Do you
strip away from it your own likings and dislikings, your own previous
notions of what it ought to be? Do you come face to face with things? If
you do, the hardest situation in life may well be to you a delight. For
you will not regard hardships, but only opportunities. Possibly you may
even feel, "Yes, here are just the difficulties I like to explore. How
can one be interested in easy things? The hard things of life are the
ones for which we ought to give thanks." So we may feel if we have made
the cool and hardy temper of the observer our own, if we have learned to
put ourselves into a situation and to understand it on all sides. Why,
the things on which we have thus concentrated attention become our
permanent interests. For example, unluckily when I was trained I was not
disciplined in botany. I cannot, therefore, now observe the rose. Some
of you can, for you have been studying botany here. I have to look
stupidly on the total beauty of the lovely object; I can see it only as
a whole, while you, fine observer, who have trained your powers to
pierce it, can comprehend its very structure and see how marvellously
the blooming thing is put together. My eyes were dulled to that long
ago; I cannot observe it. Beware, do not let yourselves grow dull.
Observe, observe, observe in every direction! Keep your eyes open. Go
forward, understanding that the world was made for your knowledge, that
you have the right to enter into and possess it.
And then besides, you need to train yourselves to sympathize with that
which lies beyond you. It is easy to sympathize with that which lies
within you. Many persons go through life sympathizing with themselves
incessantly. What unhappy persons! How unfit for anything important!
They are full of themselves and answer their own motion, while there
beyond them lies all the wealthy world in which they might be sharers.
For sympathy is feeling with,--it is the identification of ourself with
that which at present is not ourself. It is going forth and joining that
which we behold, not standing aloof and merely observing, as I said at
first. When we observe, the object we observe is alien to us; when we
sympathize, we identify ourselves with it. You may go into a home and
observe, and you will make every person in that home wretched. But go
into a home and sympathize, find out what lies beyond you there, see how
differently those persons are thinking and feeling from the ways in
which you are accustomed to think and feel; yet notice how imperfect you
are in yourself, and how important it is that persons should be
fashioned thus different from you if even your own completion is to
come; then, I say, you will find yourself becoming large in your own
being, and a large benefactor of others.
Do not stunt sympathy, then. Do not allow walls to rise up and hem it
in. Never say to yourself, "This is my way; I don't do so and so. I know
only this and that; I don't want to know anything else. You other people
may have that habit, but these are my habits, and I always do thus and
thus." Do not say that. Nothing is more immoral than moral psychology.
You should have no interest in yourself as you stand; because a larger
selfhood lies beyond you, and you should be going forth and claiming
your heritage there. Do not stand apart from the movements of the
country,--the political, charitable, religious, scientific, literary
movements,--however distastefully they may strike you. Identify yourself
with them, sympathize with them. They all have a noble side; seek it out
and claim it as your own. Throw yourself into all life and make it nobly
yours.
But I am afraid it would be impossible for you thus to observe, thus to
sympathize, unless you bring within your imperfect self just grounds of
self-respect. You must contribute to things if you would draw from
things. You must already have acquired some sort of excellence in order
to detect larger excellence elsewhere. You should therefore have made
yourself the master of something which you can do, and do on the whole
better than anybody else. That is the moral aspect of competition, that
one person can do a certain thing best and so it is given him to do.
Some of you who are going out into the world before long will, I fear,
be astonished to find that the world is already full. It has no place
for you; it never anticipated your coming and it has reserved for you no
corner. Your only means of gaining a corner will be by doing something
better than the people who are already there. Then they will make you a
place. And that is what you should be considering here. You should be
training yourself to do something well, it really does not matter much
what. Can you make dresses well? Can you cook a good loaf of bread? Can
you write a poem or run a typewriter? Can you do anything well? Are you
a master somewhere? If you are, the world will have a place for you; and
more than that, you will have within yourself just grounds for
self-respect.
To sum up, what I have been saying throughout this address merely
amounts to this: that the imperfect thing--the one thing of genuine
interest in all the world--gets its right to be respected only through
its connection with the totality of things. Do not, then, when you leave
college say to yourself, "I know Greek. That is a splendid thing to
know. These people whom I am meeting do not know it and are obviously of
a lower grade than I." That will not be self-respectful, because it
shows that you have not understood your proper place. You should respect
yourself as a part of all, and not as of independent worth. To call this
wide world our own larger self is not too extravagant an expression. But
if we are to count it so, then we must count the particular thing which
we are capable of doing as merely our special contribution to the great
self. And we must understand that many are making similar contributions.
What I want you to feel, therefore, is the profound conception of
mutual helpfulness and resulting individual dignity which St. Paul has
set forth, according to which each of us is performing a special
function in the common life, and that life of all is recognized as the
divine life, the manifestation of the life of the Father. When you have
come to that point, when you have seen in the imperfect a portion, an
aspect, of the total, perfect, divine life, then I am not afraid life
will be uninteresting. Indeed I would say to every one who goes from
this college, you can count with confidence on a life which shall be
vastly more interesting beyond the college walls than ever it has proved
here, if you have once acquired the art of penetrating into the
imperfect, and finding in limited, finite life the infinite life. "To
apprehend thus, draws us a profit from all things we see."
II
HARVARD PAPERS
The following papers relate primarily to Harvard University and are
chiefly of historic interest. But since out of that centre of
investigation and criticism has come a large part of what is significant
in American education, the story of its experiences will be found pretty
generally instructive for whoever would teach or learn.
The first three papers were published in the Andover Review for
1885, 1886, and 1887, and are now printed without alteration. Time has
changed most of the facts recorded in these papers, and the University
is now a different place from the one depicted here. An educational
revolution was then in progress, more influential than any which has
ever visited our country before or since. Harvard was its leader, and
had consequently become an object of suspicion through wide sections of
the land. I was one of those who sought to allay those suspicions and
to clear up some of the mental confusions in which they arose. To-day
Harvard's cause is won. All courses leading to the Bachelor's degree
throughout the country now recognize the importance of personal
choice. But the history of the struggle exhibits with peculiar
distinctness a conflict which perpetually goes on between two currents
of human progress, a conflict whose opposing ideals are almost equally
necessary and whose champions never fail alike to awaken sympathy. As
a result of this struggle our children enjoy an ampler heritage than
was open to us their fathers. Do they comprehend their added wealth
and turn it to the high uses for which it was designed? In good
measure they do. A brief consideration of the ethical aims which have
shaped the modern college may enable them to do so still more.
Appended to these are two papers: one on college economics in 1887,
describing the first attempt ever made, I believe, to ascertain from
students themselves the cost of the higher education; the other setting
forth a picturesque and noble figure who belonged to the days before the
Flood, when the prescribed system was still supreme.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Delivered at the first commencement of the Woman's College of
Western Reserve University.
VIII
THE NEW EDUCATION
During the year 1884-85 the freshmen of Harvard College chose a majority
of their studies. Up to that time no college, so far as I know, allowed
its first year's men any choice whatever. Occasionally, one modern
language has been permitted rather than another; and where colleges are
organized by "schools,"--that is, with independent groups of studies
each leading to a different degree,--the freshman by entering one school
turns away from others, and so exercises a kind of selection. But with
these possible exceptions, the same studies have always been required of
all the members of a given freshman class. Under the new Harvard rules,
but seven sixteenths of the work of the freshman year will be
prescribed; the entire remainder of the college course, with the
exception of a few exercises in English composition, will be elective. A
fragment of prescribed work so inconsiderable is likely soon to
disappear. At no distant day the Harvard student will mark out for
himself his entire curriculum from entrance to graduation.
Even if this probable result should not follow, the present step toward
it is too significant to be passed over in silence, for it indicates
that after more than half a century of experiment the Harvard Faculty
are convinced of the worth of the elective system. In their eyes, option
is an engine of efficiency. People generally treat it as a concession.
Freedom is confessedly agreeable; restive boys like it; let them have as
much as will not harm them. But the Harvard authorities mean much more
than this. They have thrown away that established principle of American
education, that every head should contain a given kind of knowledge; and
having already organized their college from the top almost to the bottom
on a wholly different plan, they now declare that their new principle
has been proved so safe and effective that it should supplant the older
method, even in that year when students are acknowledged to be least
capable of self-direction.
On what facts do they build such confidence? What do they mean by
calling their elective principle a system? Does not the new method,
while rendering education more agreeable, tend to lower its standard?
Or, if it succeeds in stimulating technical scholarship, is it equally
successful in fostering character and in forming vigorous and
law-revering men? These questions I propose to answer, for they are
questions which every friend of Harvard, and indeed of American
education, wishes people pressingly to ask. Those most likely to ask
them are quiet, God-fearing parents, who, having bred their sons to a
sense of duty, expect college life to broaden and consolidate the
discipline of the home. These are the parents every college wants to
reach. Their sons, whether rich or poor, are the bone and sinew of the
land. In my judgment the new education, once understood, will appeal to
them more strongly than to any other class.
But it is not easy to understand it. My own understanding of it has been
of slow growth. When, in 1870, I left Andover Seminary and came to teach
at Harvard, I distrusted the more extreme developments of the elective
system. Up to 1876 I opposed the introduction of voluntary attendance at
recitations. Not until four years ago did I begin to favor the remission
of Greek in the requisites for entrance. In all these cases my party was
defeated; my fears proved groundless; what I wished to accomplish was
effected by means which I had opposed. I am therefore that desirable
persuader, the man who has himself been persuaded. The misconceptions
through which I passed, I am sure beset others. I want to clear them
away, and to present some of the reasons which have turned me from an
adherent of the old to an apostle of the new faith.
An elementary misconception deserves a passing word. The new system is
not a mere cutting of straps; it is a system. Its student is still
under bonds, bonds more compulsive than the old, because fitted with
nicer adjustment to each one's person. On H. M. S. Pinafore the desires
of every sailor receive instant recognition. The new education will not
agree to that. It remains authoritative. It will not subject its student
to alien standards, nor treat his deliberate wishes as matters of no
consequence; but it does insist on that authority which reveals to a man
his own better purposes and makes them firmer and finer than they could
have become if directed by himself alone. What the amount of a young
man's study shall be, and what its grade of excellence, a body of
experts decides. The student himself determines its specific topic.
Everybody knows how far this is from a prescribed system; not so many
see that it is at a considerable remove from unregulated or nomadic
study. An American at a German university, or at a summer school of
languages, applies for no degree and is under no restraint. He chooses
whatever studies he likes, ten courses or five or one; he works on them
as much as suits his need or his caprice; he submits what he does to no
test; he receives no mark; the time he wastes is purely his own concern.
Study like this, roving study, is not systematic at all. It is
advantageous to adult students,--to those alone whose wills are steady,
and who know their own wants precisely. Most colleges draw a sharp
distinction between the small but important body of students of this
class--special students, as they are called--and the great company of
regulars. These latter are candidates for a degree, are under constant
inspection, and are moved along the line only as they attain a definite
standard in both the quantity and quality of their work. After
accomplishing the studies of the freshman year, partly prescribed and
partly elective, a Harvard student must pass successfully four elective
courses in each of his subsequent three years. By "a course" is
understood a single line of study receiving three hours a week of
instruction; fifty per cent of a maximum mark must be won in each year
in order to pass. Throwing out the freshman year, the precise meaning of
the Harvard B.A. degree is therefore this: its holder has presented
twelve courses of study selected by himself, and has mastered them at
least half perfectly.
Here, then, is the essence of the elective system,--fixed quantity and
quality of study, variable topic. Work and moderate excellence are
matters within everybody's reach. It is not unfair to demand them of
all. If a man cannot show success somewhere, he is stamped _ipso facto_
a worthless fellow. But into the specific topic of work an element of
individuality enters. To succeed in a particular branch of study
requires fitness, taste, volition,--incalculable factors, known to
nobody but the man himself. Here, if anywhere, is the proper field for
choice; and all American colleges are now substantially agreed in
accepting the elective principle in this sense and applying it within
the limits here marked out. It is an error to suppose that election is
the hasty "craze" of a single college. Every senior class in New England
elects a portion of its studies. Every important New England college
allows election in the junior year. Amherst, Bowdoin, Yale, and Harvard
allow it in the sophomore. Outside of New England the case is the same.
It is true, all the colleges except Harvard retain a modicum of
prescribed study even in the senior year; but election in some degree is
admitted everywhere, and the tendency is steadily in the direction of a
wider choice.
The truth is, Harvard has introduced the principle more slowly than
other colleges. She was merely one of the earliest to begin. In 1825, on
the recommendation of Judge Story, options were first allowed, in modern
languages. Twenty years of experiment followed. In 1846 electives were
finally established for seniors and juniors; in 1867 for sophomores; in
1884 for freshmen. But the old method was abandoned so slowly that as
late as 1871 some prescribed study remained for seniors, till 1879 for
juniors, and till 1884 for sophomores. During this long and unnoticed
period, careful comparison was made between the new and old methods. A
mass of facts was accumulated, which subsequently rendered possible an
extremely rapid adoption of the system by other colleges. Public
confidence was tested. Comparing the new Harvard with the old, it is
plain enough that a revolution has taken place; but it is a revolution
like that in the England of Victoria, wrought not by sudden shock, but
quietly, considerately, conservatively, inevitably. Those who have
watched the college have approved; the time of transition has been a
time of unexampled prosperity. For the last fifteen years the gifts to
the University have averaged $250,000 a year. The steady increase in
students may be seen at a glance by dividing the last twenty-five years
into five-year periods, and noting the average number of undergraduates
in each: 1861-65, 423; 1866-70, 477; 1871-75, 657; 1876-80, 808;
1881-85, 873.