limited so as to become strong. They are but examples, intended merely
to draw attention to the three kinds of limitation still possible.
Humble ways they may seem, not particularly interesting to hear about;
business methods one might call them. But by means of these and such
as these the young scholar becomes clearer in intention, larger in
information, hardier in persistence. In urging such means I shall be
seen to be no thick and thin advocate of election. That I have never
been. Originally a doubter, I have come to regard the elective
system, that is, election under such limitations as I have described, as
the safest--indeed as the only possible--course which education can
now take, I advocate it heartily as a system which need not carry us
too fast or too far in any one direction, as a system so inherently
flexible that its own great virtues readily unite with those of an alien
type. Under its sheltering charge the worthier advantages of both
grouped and prescribed systems are attainable. I proclaim it,
therefore, not as a popular cry nor as an educational panacea, but as
a sober opportunity for moral and intellectual training. Limited as
it is at Harvard, I see that it works admirably with the studious,
stimulatingly with those of weaker will, not unendurably with the
depraved. These are great results. They cannot be set aside by calling
them the outcome of "individualism." In a certain sense they are. But
"individualism" is an uncertain term. In every one of us there is a
contemptible individuality, grounded in what is ephemeral and
capriciously personal. Systematic election, as I have shown, puts
limitations on this. But there is a noble individuality which should
be the object of our fostering care. Nothing that lends it strength
and fineness can be counted trivial. To form a true individuality
is, indeed, the ideal of the elective system. Let me briefly sketch my
conception of that ideal.
George Herbert, praising God for the physical world which He has made,
says that in it "all things have their will, yet none but thine." Such a
free harmony between thinking man and a Lord of his thought it is the
office of education to bring about. At the start it does not exist. The
child is aware of his own will, and he is aware of little else. He
imagines that one pleasing fancy may be willed as easily as another. As
he matures, he discovers that his will is effective when it accords with
the make of the world and ineffective when it does not. This discovery,
bringing as it does increased respect for the make of the world and even
for its Maker, degrades or ennobles according as the facts of the world
are now viewed as restrictive finalities or as an apparatus for larger
self-expression. Seeing the power of that which is not himself, a man
may become passively receptive, and say, "Then I am to have no will of
my own"; or he may become newly energetic, knowing that though he can
have no will of his separate own, yet all the power of God is his if he
will but understand. A man of the latter sort is spiritually educated.
Much still remains to be done in understanding special laws; and with
each fresh understanding, a fresh possibility of individual life is
disclosed. The worth, however, of the whole process lies in the man's
honoring his own will, but honoring it only as it grows strong through
accordance with the will of God.
Now into our colleges comes a mixed multitude made up of all the three
classes named: the childish, who imagine they can will anything; the
docile, so passive in the presence of an ordered world that they have
little individual will left; the spiritually-minded or original, who
with strong interests of their own seek to develop these through living
contact with truths which they have not made. Our educational modes must
meet them all, respecting their wills wherever wise, and teaching the
feeble to discriminate fanciful from righteous desires. For carrying
forward such a training the elective system seems to me to have peculiar
aptitudes. What I have called its limitations will be seen to be
spiritual assistances. To the further invention of such there is no end.
A watchful patience is the one great requisite, patience in directors,
instructed criticism on the part of the public, and a brave expression
of confidence when confidence is seen to have been earned.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] Doubtless some have carried out the intention of making everything
as soft as possible for themselves. But the choices, in fact, do
not as yet show the existence of any such intention in any
considerable number of cases; they show rather the very
reverse.--Professor Ladd in _The New Englander_, January, 1885,
p. 119.
[9] As the minute personal care given to individual students in the
English universities is often and deservedly praised, I may as
well say that it costs something. Oxford spends each year about
$2,000,000 on 2500 men; Harvard, $650,000 on 1700.
[10] I may not have a better opportunity than this to clear up a petty
difficulty which seems to agitate some of my critics. They say
they want the degree of A.B. to mean something definite, while at
present, under the elective system, it means one thing for John
Doe, and something altogether different for his classmate,
Richard Roe. That is true. Besides embodying the general
signification that the bearer has been working four years in a
way to satisfy college guardians, the stately letters do take on
an individual variation of meaning for every man who wins them.
They must do so as long as we are engaged in the formation of
living persons. If the college were a factory, our case would be
different. We might then offer a label which would keep its
identity of meaning for all the articles turned out. Wherever
education has been a living thing, the single degree has always
contained this element of variety. The German degree is as
diverse in meaning as ours. The degree of the English university
is diverse, and more diverse for Honors men--the only ones who
can properly be said to deserve it--than for inert Pass men.
Degrees in this country have, from the first, had considerable
diversity, college differing from college in requirement, and
certainly student from student in attainment. That twenty-five
years ago we were approaching too great uniformity in the
signification of degrees, I suppose most educators now admit.
That was a mechanical and stagnant period, and men have brought
over from it to the more active days of the present ideals formed
then. Precision of statement goes with figures, with etiquette,
with military matters; but descriptions of the quality of persons
must be stated in the round.
XI
COLLEGE EXPENSES[11]
The subject of college expenses has been much debated lately. At our
Commencement dinner, a year ago, attention was called to it. Our
chairman on that occasion justly insisted that the ideal of the
University should be plain living and high thinking. And certainly there
is apt to be something vulgar, as well as vicious, in the man of books
who turns away from winning intellectual wealth and indulges in tawdry
extravagance. Yet every friend of Harvard is obliged to acknowledge with
shame that the loose spender has a lodging in our yard. No clear-sighted
observer can draw near and not perceive that in all his native
hideousness the man of the club and the dog-cart is among us.
I do not think this strange. In fact, I regard it as inevitable. It is
necessarily connected with our growth. The old College we might compare,
for moral and intellectual range, with a country village; our present
University is a great city, and we must accept the many-sided life, the
temptations as well as the opportunities, of the great city. Probably
nowhere on this planet can a thousand young men be found, between the
ages of eighteen and twenty-four, who will not show examples of the
heedless, the temptable, and the depraved. Let us not, then, shrink from
acknowledging the ugly fact; extravagance is here,--shameless, coarse
extravagance. I hope nothing I say may diminish our sense of its
indecency. But how widespread is it? We must not lose sight of that
important question. How largely does it infect the College? Are many
students large spenders? Must a man of moderate means on coming here be
put to shame? Will he find himself a disparaged person, out of accord
with the spirit of the place, and unable to obtain its characteristic
advantages? These are the weighty questions. Only after we have answered
them can we determine the moral soundness of the University. Wherever we
go on earth we shall find the insolently rich and wasteful. They, like
the poor, are always with us; their qualities are cheap. But what we
want to know is whether, side by side with them, we have a company of
sober men, who care for higher things and who spend no more than the
higher things require. Facts of proportion and degree form the firm
basis of general judgments, and yet I am aware that these are the
hardest facts to obtain. Hitherto nobody has known any such facts in
regard to the expenses of Harvard. Assertions about the style of living
here have only expressed the personal opinion of the assertor, or at
best have been generalizations from a few chance cases. No systematic
evidence on the subject has existed. It is time it did exist, and I have
made an attempt to obtain it. To each member of the graduating class I
sent a circular, a month ago, asking if he would be willing to tell me
in confidence what his college course had cost. I desired him to include
in his report all expenses whatever. He was to state not merely his
tuition, board, and lodging, but also his furniture, books, clothing,
travel, subscriptions, and amusements; in fact, every dollar he had
spent during the four years of his study, except his charges for Class
Day and the summer vacations; these times varying so widely, it seemed
to me, in their cost to different men that they could not instructively
enter into an average.
The reply has been very large indeed. To my surprise, out of a class of
two hundred and thirty-five men actually in residence, two hundred and
nineteen, or ninety-three per cent, have sent reports. Am I wrong in
supposing that this very general "readiness to tell" is itself a sign of
upright conduct? But I would not exaggerate the worth of the returns.
They cannot be trusted to a figure. It has not been possible to obtain
itemized statements. College boys, like other people, do not always
keep accounts. But I requested my correspondents, in cases of
uncertainty, always to name the larger figure; and though those who have
lived freely probably have less knowledge about what they have spent
than have their economical classmates, I think we may accept their
reports in the rough. We can be reasonably sure whether they have
exceeded or fallen below a certain medium line, and for purposes more
precise I shall not attempt to use them. Anything like minute accuracy I
wish expressly to repudiate. The evidence I offer only claims to be the
best that exists at present; and I must say that the astonishing
frankness and fulness of the reports give me strong personal assurance
of the good faith of the writers. In these letters I have seen a vivid
picture of the struggles, the hopes, the errors, and the repentings of
the manly young lives that surround me.
What, then, are the results? Out of the two hundred and nineteen men who
have replied, fifty-six, or about one quarter of the class, have spent
between $450 and $650 in each of the four years of residence;
fifty-four, or again about a quarter, have spent between $650 and $975;
but sixty-one, hardly more than a quarter, have spent a larger sum than
$1200. The smallest amount in any one year was $400; the largest,
$4000.[12]
I ask you to consider these figures. They are not startling, but they
seem to me to indicate that a soberly sensible average of expense
prevails at Harvard. They suggest that students are, after all, merely
young men temporarily removed from homes, and that they are practising
here, without violent change, the habits which the home has formed.
Those who have been accustomed to large expenditure spend freely here;
those of quiet and considerate habits do not lightly abandon them. I
doubt if during the last twenty-five years luxury has increased in the
colleges as rapidly as it has in the outside world.
There is no reason, either, to suppose that the addition of the sixteen
men who have not replied would appreciably affect my results. The
standing of these men on the last annual rank-list was sixty-eight per
cent. They seem to me average persons. Their silence I attribute to
mistakes of the mail, to business, to neglect, or to the very natural
disinclination to disclose their private affairs. To refuse to answer my
intrusive questions, or even to acknowledge that college days were
costly, is not in itself evidence of wantonness. Small spenders are
usually high scholars; but this is by no means always the case. In the
most economical group I found seven who did not reach a rank of seventy
per cent. last year; whereas out of the seven largest spenders of the
class three passed seventy-five per cent. It would be rash to conclude
that large sums cannot be honorably employed.
But it may seem that the smallest of the sums named is large for a poor
man. It may be believed that even after restraint and wisdom are used,
Harvard remains the college of the rich. There is much in our
circumstances to make it so. An excellent education is unquestionably a
costly thing, and to live where many men wish to live calls for a good
deal of money. We have, it is true, this splendid hall, which lessens
our expense for food and encompasses us with ennobling influences; but
it costs $150 a year to board here. Our tuition bill each year is $150.
The University owns 450 rooms; but not a third of them rent for less
than $150 a year, the average rent being $146. These large charges for
tuition and room-rent are made necessary by the smallness of the general
fund which pays the running expenses of the college. Very few of the
professorships are endowed, and so the tuition-fee and room-rent must
mainly carry the expenses of teaching.
Still, there is another side to the story. Thus far I have figured out
the expenses, and have said nothing about the means of meeting them.
Perhaps to get the advantages of Harvard a student may need to spend
largely; but a certain circumstance enables him to do so,--I mean the
matchless benevolence of those who have preceded us here. The great sums
intrusted to us for distribution in prizes, loan-funds, and scholarships
make it possible for our students to offset the cost of their education
to such a degree that the net output of a poor boy here is probably less
than in most New England colleges. At any rate, I have asked a large
number of poor students why they came to expensive Harvard, and again
and again I have received the reply: "I could not afford to go
elsewhere."
The magnitude of this beneficiary aid I doubt if people generally
understand, and I have accordingly taken pains to ascertain what was the
amount given away this year. I find that to undergraduates alone it was
$36,000; to members of the graduate department, $11,000; and to the
professional schools $6000: making in a single year a total of
assistance to students of the University of more than $53,000. Next year
this enormous sum will be increased $13,000 by the munificent bequest of
Mr. Price Greenleaf. Fully to estimate the favorable position of the
poor man at Harvard, we should take into account also the great
opportunities for earning money through private tuition, through
innumerable avenues of trade, and through writing for the public press.
A large number of my correspondents tell of money earned outside their
scholarships.[13]
These immense aids provided for our students maintain a balance of
conditions here, and enable even the poorest to obtain a Harvard
education. And what an education it is; how broad and deep and
individually stimulating,--the most truly American education which the
continent affords! But I have no need to eulogize it. It has already
entered into the very structure of you who listen. Let me rather close
with two pieces of advice.
The first shall be to parents. Give your son a competent allowance when
you send him to Harvard, and oblige him to stick to it. To learn
calculation will contribute as much to his equipment for life as any
elective study he can pursue; and calculation he will not learn unless,
after a little experience, you tell him precisely what sum he is to
receive. If in a haphazard way you pour $2000 into his pocket, then in
an equally haphazard way $2000 will come out. Whatever extravagance
exists at Harvard to-day is the fault of you foolish parents. The
college, as a college, cannot stop extravagance. It cannot take away a
thousand dollars from your son and tell him--what would be perfectly
true--that he will be better off with the remaining thousand; that you
must do yourselves. And if you ask, "What is a competent allowance?" out
of what my correspondents say I will frame you five answers. If your son
is something of an artist in economy, he may live here on $600, or less;
he will require to be an artist to accomplish it. If he will live
closely, carefully, yet with full regard to all that is required, he may
do so, with nearly half his class, on not more than $800. If you wish
him to live at ease and to obtain the many refinements which money will
purchase, give him $1000. Indeed, if I were a very rich man, and had a
boy whose character I could trust, so that I could be sure that all he
laid out would be laid out wisely, I might add $200 more, for the
purchase of books and other appliances of delicate culture. But I should
be sure that every dollar I gave him over $1200 would be a dollar of
danger.
Let my second piece of advice be to all of you graduates. When you meet
a poor boy, do not rashly urge him to come to Harvard. Estimate
carefully his powers. If he is a good boy,--docile, worthy,
commonplace,--advise him to go somewhere else. Here he will find himself
borne down by large expense and by the crowd who stand above him. But
whenever you encounter a poor boy of eager, aggressive mind, a youth of
energy, one capable of feeling the enjoyment of struggling with a
multitude and of making his merit known, say to him that Harvard College
is expressly constituted for such as he. Here he will find the largest
provision for his needs and the clearest field for his talents. Money is
a power everywhere. It is a power here; but a power of far more
restricted scope than in the world at large. In this magnificent hall
rich and poor dine together daily. At the Union they debate together. At
the clubs which foster special interests,--the Finance Club, the
Philological Club, the Philosophical Club, the French Club, the Signet,
and the O. K.--considerations of money have no place. If the poor man is
a man of muscle, the athletic organizations will welcome him; if a man
skilled in words, he will be made an editor of the college papers; and
if he has the powers that fit him for such a place, the whole body of
his classmates will elect him Orator, Ivy Orator, Odist, or Poet,
without the slightest regard to whether his purse is full or empty. The
poor man, it is true, will not be chosen for ornamental offices, for
positions which imply an acquaintance with etiquette, and he may be cut
off from intimacy with the frequenters of the ballroom and the opera;
but as he will probably have little time or taste for these things, his
loss will not be large. In short, if he has anything in him,--has he
scholarship, brains, wit, companionability, stout moral purpose, or
quiet Christian character,--his qualities will find as prompt a
recognition at Harvard as anywhere on earth.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] Delivered in Memorial Hall, Cambridge, June 29, 1887. Since this
date the scale of expenditure in college, as elsewhere, has been
steadily rising.
[12] Perhaps I had better mention the adjustments by which these results
have been reached. When a man has been in college during only the
closing years of the course, I assume that he would have lived at
the same rate had he been here throughout it. I have added $150
for persons who board at home, and another hundred for those who
lodge there. Though I asked to have the expenses of Class Day and
the summer vacations omitted, in some instances I have reason to
suspect that they are included; but of course I have been obliged
to let the error remain, and I have never deducted the money
which students often say they expect to recover at graduation by
the sale of furniture and other goods. There is a noticeable
tendency to larger outlay as the years advance. Some students
attribute this to the greater cost of the studies of the later
years, to the more expensive books and the laboratory charges;
others, to societies and subscriptions; others, to enlarged
acquaintance with opportunities for spending.
[13] For the sake of lucidity, I keep the expense account and the income
account distinct. For example, a man reports that he has spent
$700 a year, winning each year a scholarship of $200, and earning
by tutoring $100, and $50 by some other means. The balance
against him is only $350 a year; but I have included him in the
group of $700 spenders.
XII
A TEACHER OF THE OLDEN TIME
On the 14th of February, 1883, Evangelinus Apostolides Sophocles,
Professor of Ancient, Byzantine, and Modern Greek in Harvard University,
died at Cambridge, in the corner room of Holworthy Hall which he had
occupied for nearly forty years. A past generation of American
schoolboys knew him gratefully as the author of a compact and lucid
Greek grammar. College students--probably as large a number as ever sat
under an American professor--were introduced by him to the poets and
historians of Greece. Scholars of a riper growth, both in Europe and
America, have wondered at the precision and loving diligence with which,
in his dictionary of the later and Bzyantine Greek, he assessed the
corrupt literary coinage of his native land. His brief contributions to
the Nation and other journals were always noticeable for exact knowledge
and scrupulous literary honesty. As a great scholar, therefore, and one
who through a long life labored to beget scholarship in others,
Sophocles deserves well of America. At a time when Greek was usually
studied as the schoolboy studies it, this strange Greek came among us,
connected himself with our oldest university, and showed us an example
of encyclopaedic learning, and such familiar and living acquaintance with
Homer and AEschylus--yes, even with Polybius, Lucian, and Athenaeus--as we
have with Tennyson and Shakespeare and Burke and Macaulay. More than
this, he showed us how such learning is gathered. To a dozen generations
of impressible college students he presented a type of an austere life
directed to serene ends, a life sufficient for itself and filled with a
never-hastening diligence which issued in vast mental stores.
It is not, however, the purpose of this paper to trace the influence
over American scholarship of this hardly domesticated wise man of
the East. Nor will there be any attempt to narrate the outward events
of his life. These were never fully known; and could they be discovered,
there would be a kind of impiety in reporting them. Few traits were
so characteristic of him as his wish to conceal his history. His
motto might have been that of Epicurus and Descartes: "Well hid is well
lived." Yet in spite of his concealments, perhaps in part because of
them, few persons connected with Harvard have ever left behind them
an impression of such massive individuality. He was long a notable
figure in university life, one of those picturesque characters who by
their very being give impulse to aspiring mortals and check the
ever-encroaching commonplace. It would be ungrateful to allow one
formerly so stimulating and talked about to fall into oblivion. Now
that a decent interval after death has passed, a memorial to this
unusual man may be reverently set up. His likeness may be drawn by a
fond though faithful hand. Or at least such stories about him may be
kindly put into the record of print as will reflect some of those
rugged, paradoxical, witty, and benignant aspects of his nature which
marked him off from the humdrum herd of men.