AN ADDRESS TO THE ALUMNI OF HARVARD, AT THEIR TRIENNIAL FESTIVAL, JULY
19, 1866.
We meet to-day under auspices how different from those which attended
our last triennial assembling! We were then in the midst of a civil war,
without sight of the end, though not without hope of final success to
the cause of national integrity. The three days' agony at Gettysburg had
issued in the triumph of the loyal arms, repelling the threatened
invasion of the North. The surrender of Vicksburg had just reopened the
trade of the Mississippi. The capture of Port Hudson was yet fresh in
our ears, when suddenly tidings of armed resistance to conscription in
the city of New York gave ominous note of danger lurking at the very
heart of the Union. In the shadow of that omen, we celebrated our
academic festival of 1863.
The shadow passed. With varying fortunes, but unvarying purpose, the
loyal States pursued the contest. And when, in the autumn of 1864, by a
solemn act of self-interrogation, they had certified their will and
their power to maintain that contest to the end of disunion, and when a
popular election expressing that intent had overcome the land like a
summer-cloud without a bolt in its bosom, the victory was sown with the
ballot which Grant and Sherman reaped with the sword.
Secession collapsed. Its last and most illustrious victim, borne to his
rest through territories draped in mourning, through sobbing
commonwealths, through populations of uncovered heads, revealed to all
time the spirit that was in it and the spirit that subdued it. And
to-day, as we meet our Reverend Mother in this scene of old affections,
the stupendous struggle has already receded into the shadow-land of
History. The war is a thing of the past. If hatred still rankles, open
hostilities have ceased. If rumblings of the recent tempest still mutter
along the track of its former desolation, the storm is over. The
conflict is ended. No more conscription of husbands, sons, and brothers
for the weary work of destruction; no more the forced march by day, the
bivouac at night, and to-morrow the delirium of carnage. No more anxious
waiting in distant homes for tidings from the front, and breathless
conning of the death-list to know if the loved ones are among the slain.
No more the fresh grief-agony over the unreturning brave. All that is
past,--
"For the terrible work is done,
And the good fight is won
For God and for Fatherland."
The sword has returned to its sheath. The symbol-flags that shed their
starry pomp on the field of death hang idly drooping in the halls of
state. And before new armies in hostile encounter on American soil shall
unfurl new banners to the breeze, may every thread and thrum of their
texture ravel and rot and resolve itself into dust!
Another and nearer interest distinguishes this occasion and suggests its
appropriate theme,--our Alma Mater.
The General Court of Massachusetts, which has hitherto elected the Board
of Overseers of Harvard College, after so many years of fitful and
experimental legislation, has finally enacted, that "the places of the
successive classes in the Board of Overseers of Harvard College, and the
vacancies in such classes, shall hereafter be annually supplied by
ballot of such persons as have received from the College a degree of
Bachelor of Arts, or Master of Arts, or any honorary degree, voting on
Commencement-day in the city of Cambridge; such election to be first
held in the year 1866."
This act initiates a radical change in the organization of this
University. It establishes for one of its legislative Houses a new
electorate. The State hereby discharges itself of all active
participation in the conduct of the College, and devolves on the body of
the Alumni responsibilities assumed in former enactments extending
through a period of more than two hundred years. The wisdom or justice
of this measure I am not inclined to discuss. Certainly there is nothing
in the history of past relations between the Commonwealth and the
University that should make us regret the change. That history has not
been one of mere benefactions on one side, and pure indebtedness on the
other. Whatever the University may owe to the State, the balance of
obligation falls heavily on the other side. In the days of Provincial
rule the Colony of Massachusetts Bay appears to have exhausted its zeal
for collegiate education in the much-lauded promissory act by which the
General Court, in 1636, "agree to give four hundred pounds towards a
school or college, whereof two hundred pounds shall be paid next year."
The promise was not fulfilled, and the record of those years leaves it
doubtful whether legislative action alone would during that or the next
generation have accomplished the work, had not a graduate of Emanuel
College in English Cambridge, who seems providentially enough to have
dropped on these shores, where he lived but a year, for that express
purpose, supplied the requisite funds.
The College once started and got under way, the fathers of the Province
assumed a vigilant oversight of its orthodoxy, but discharged with a lax
and grudging service the responsibility of its maintenance. They ejected
the first President, the protomartyr of American learning, the man who
sacrificed more to the College than any one individual in the whole
course of its history, on account of certain scruples about infant
baptism, of which, in the language of the time, "it was not hard to
discover that they came from the Evil One," and for which poor Dunster
was indicted by the grand-jury, sentenced to a public admonition, and
laid under bonds for good behavior.
They starved the second President for eighteen years on a salary payable
in Indian corn; and in answer to his earnest prayer for relief, alleging
instant necessity, the sacrifice of personal property, and the custom of
English universities, a committee of the General Court reported that
"they conceive the country to have done honorably toward the petitioner,
and that his parity with English colleges is not pertinent."
The third President, by their connivance and co-operation, was
sacrificed to the machinations of the students, egged on, it is thought,
by members of the Corporation, and died, "as was said, with a broken
heart."
Meanwhile, through neglect of the Province to provide for its support,
the material fortunes of the College, in the course of thirty years, had
fallen into such decay that extinction was inevitable, had not the
people of another Colony come to the rescue. The town of Portsmouth, in
New Hampshire, hearing, says their address, "the loud groans of the
sinking College,... and hoping that their example might provoke ... the
General Court vigorously to act for the diverting of the omen of
calamity which its destruction would be to New England," pledged
themselves to an annual contribution of sixty pounds for seven years.
This act of chivalrous generosity fairly shamed our lagging Commonwealth
into measures for the resuscitation of an institution especially
committed to its care.
The most remarkable feature of this business is that the Province all
this while was drawing, not only moral support, but pecuniary aid, from
the College. "It is manifest," says Quincy,[A] "that the treasury of
the Colony, having been the recipient of many of the early donations to
the College, was not a little aided by the convenience which these
available funds afforded to its pecuniary necessities. Some of these
funds, although received in 1647, were not paid over to the treasury of
the College until 1713; then, indeed, the College received an allowance
of simple interest for the delay. With regard, therefore, to the annual
allowance of L100, whereby," during the first seventy years, "they
enabled the President of the College simply to exist, it is proper to
observe, that there was not probably one year in the whole seventy in
which, by moneys collected from friends of the institution in foreign
countries, by donations of its friends in this country, by moneys
brought by students from other Colonies, and above all by furnishing the
means of education at home, and thus preventing the outgoing of domestic
wealth for education abroad, the College did not remunerate the Colony
for that poor annual stipend five hundred fold."
The patronage extended to the College after the Revolution was not more
cordial and not more adequate than the meagre succors of Colonial
legislation. The first Governor of independent Massachusetts, from the
height of his impregnable popularity, for more than twelve years defied
the repeated attempts of the Corporation, backed by the Overseers, to
obtain the balance of his account as former Treasurer of the College,
and died its debtor in a sum exceeding a thousand pounds. The debt was
finally paid by his heirs, but not without a loss of some hundreds of
dollars to the College.
At the commencement of hostilities between the Colonies and the mother
country, the Revolutionary authorities had taken possession of these
grounds. Reversing the old order, "Cedant arma togae," they drove out the
_togae_ and brought in the arms. The books went one way, the boys
another,--the books to Andover, the boys to Concord. The dawn of
American liberty was not an "Aurora musis amica." The Muse of History
alone remained with Brigadier Putnam and General Ward. The College was
turned into a camp,--a measure abundantly justified by public necessity,
but causing much damage to the buildings occupied as barracks by the
Continentals. This damage was nominally allowed by the General Court,
but was reckoned in the currency of that day, whereby the College
received but a quarter of the cost.
In 1786, the State saw fit to discontinue the small pittance which till
then had been annually granted toward the support of the President; and
from that time to this, with the exception of the proceeds of a
bank-tax, granted for ten years in 1814, and the recent large
appropriation from the School Fund for the use of the Museum of Natural
History, the College has received no substantial aid from the State. The
State has, during the last ten years, expended two millions of dollars
in a vain attempt to bore a hole through one of her hills: in the whole
two hundred and thirty years of our academic history she has not
expended a quarter of that sum in filling up this hole in her
educational system.
I intend no disrespect to the noble Commonwealth of which no native can
be insensible to the glory of his birthright. No State has done more for
popular education than the State of Massachusetts. But for reasons
satisfactory, no doubt, to themselves, her successive legislators have
not seen fit to extend to her colleges the fostering care bestowed on
her schools. And certainly, if one or the other must be neglected, we
shall all agree in saying, Let the schools be cherished, and let the
colleges take care of themselves. Let due provision be made for popular
instruction in the rudiments of knowledge, which are also rudiments of
good citizenship; let every citizen be taxed for that prime exigency,
and let literature and science find patrons where they can. Literature
and science will find patrons, and here in Massachusetts have always
found them. If the legislators of the State have been sparing of their
benefactions, the wealthy sons of the State have been prodigal of
theirs. In no country has the private patronage of science been more
liberal and prompt than in Massachusetts. Seldom, in the history of
science, has there been a nobler instance of that patronage than this
University is now experiencing, in the mission of one of her professors
on an enterprise of scientific exploration, started and maintained by a
private citizen of Boston. When our Agassiz shall return to us
reinforced with the lore of the Andes, and replenished with the spoils
of the Amazon,--_tot millia squamigerae gentis_,--the discoveries he
shall add to science, and the treasures he shall add to his Museum,
whilst they splendidly illustrate his own qualifications for such a
mission, will forever attest the liberality of a son of Massachusetts.
The rich men of the State have not been wanting to literature and
science. They have not been wanting to this University. Let their names
be held in everlasting remembrance. When the Memorial Hall, which your
committee have in charge, shall stand complete, let its mural records
present, together with the names of those who have deserved well of the
country by their patriotism, the names of those who have deserved well
of the College by their benefactions. Let these fautors of science, the
heroes of peace, have their place side by side with the heroes of war.
Individuals have done their part, but slow is the growth of institutions
which depend on individual charity for their support. As an illustration
of what may be done by public patronage, when States are in earnest with
their universities, and as strangely contrasting the sluggish fortunes
of our own _Alma_, look at the State University of Michigan. Here is an
institution but twenty-five years old, already numbering thirty-two
professors and over twelve hundred students, having public buildings
equal in extent to those which two centuries have given to Cambridge,
and all the apparatus of a well-constituted, thoroughly furnished
university. All this within twenty-five years! The State itself which
has generated this wonderful growth had no place in the Union until
after Harvard had celebrated her two hundredth birthday. In twenty-five
years, in a country five hundred miles from the seaboard,--a country
which fifty years ago was known only to the fur trade,--a University has
sprung up, to which students flock from all parts of the land, and which
offers to thousands, free of expense, the best education this continent
affords. Such is the difference between public and private patronage,
between individual effort and the action of a State.
A proof of the broad intent and oecumenical consciousness of this
infant College appears in the fact that its Medical Department, which
alone numbers ten professors and five hundred students, allows the
option of one of four languages in the thesis required for the medical
degree. It is the only seminary in the country whose liberal scope and
cosmopolitan outlook satisfy the idea of a great university. Compared
with this, our other colleges are all provincial; and unless the State
of Massachusetts shall see fit to adopt us, and to foster our interest
with something of the zeal and liberality which the State of Michigan
bestows on her academic masterpiece, Harvard cannot hope to compete with
this precocious child of the West.
Meanwhile, Alumni, the State has devolved upon us, as electors of the
Board of Overseers, an important trust. This trust conveys no right of
immediate jurisdiction, but it may become the channel of an influence
which shall make itself felt in the conduct of this University. It
invites us to take counsel concerning her wants and her weal. I
therefore pursue the theme which this crisis in our history suggests.
Of existing universities the greater part are the product of an age
whose intellectual fashion differed as widely from the present as it did
from that of Greek and Roman antiquity. Our own must be reckoned with
that majority, dating, as it does, from a period antecedent, not only to
all other American colleges, but to some of the most eminent of other
lands. Half of the better known and most influential of German
universities are of later origin than ours. The University of Goettingen,
once the most flourishing in Germany, is younger than Harvard by a
hundred years. Halle is younger, and Erlangen, and Munich with its vast
library, and Bonn, and Berlin, by nearly two hundred years.
When this College was founded, two of the main forces of the
intellectual world of our time had scarcely come into play,--modern
literature and modern science. Science knew nothing as yet of chemistry,
nothing of electricity, of geology, scarce anything of botany. In
astronomy, the Copernican system was just struggling into notice, and
far from being universally received. Lord Bacon, I think, was the latest
author of note in the library bequeathed by John Harvard; and Lord Bacon
rejected the Copernican system. English literature had had its great
Elizabethan age; but little of the genius of that literature had
penetrated the Puritan mind. It is doubtful if a copy of Shakespeare had
found its way to these shores in 1636. Milton's star was just climbing
its native horizon, invisible as yet to the Western world.
The College was founded for the special and avowed purpose of training
young men for the service of the Church. All its studies were arranged
with reference to that object: endless expositions of Scripture,
catechetical divinity, "commonplacing" of sermons,--already, one
fancies, sufficiently commonplace,--Chaldee, Syriac, Hebrew without
points, and other Semitic exasperations. Latin, as the language of
theology, was indispensable, and within certain limits was practically
better understood, perhaps, in Cambridge of the seventeenth century,
than in Cambridge of the nineteenth. It was the language of official
intercourse. Indeed, the use of the English was forbidden to the
students within the College walls. _Scholares vernacula lingua intra
Collegii limites nullo praetextu utuntor_, was the law,--a law which
Cotton Mather complains was so neglected in his day "as to render our
scholars very unfit for a conversation with strangers." But the purpose
for which chiefly the study of Latin is now pursued--acquaintance with
the Roman classics--was no recognized object of Puritan learning. Cicero
appears to have been for a long time the only classic of whom the
students were supposed to have any knowledge. The reading of Virgil was
a daring innovation of the eighteenth century. The only Greek required
was that of the New Testament and the Greek Catechism. The whole rich
domain of ancient Greek literature, from Homer to Theokritos, was as
much an unexplored territory as the Baghavad-Gita or the Mababharata.
Logic and metaphysic and scholastic disputations occupied a prominent
place. As late as 1726, the books most conspicuous in Tutor Flynt's
official report of the College exercises, next to Cicero and Virgil, are
such as convey to the modern scholar no idea but that of intense
obsoleteness,--Ramus's Definitions, Burgersdicius's Logic, Heereboord's
Meletemata; and for Seniors, on Saturday, Ames's Medulla. This is such a
curriculum as Mephistopheles, in his character of Magister, might have
recommended in irony to the student who sought his counsel.
With the multiplication of religious sects, with the progress of secular
culture, with the mental emancipation which followed the great
convulsions of the eighteenth century, the maintenance of the
ecclesiastical type originally impressed on the College ceased to be
practicable,--ceased to be desirable. The preparation of young men for
the service of the Church is still a recognized part of the general
scheme of University education, but is only one in the multiplicity of
objects which that scheme embraces, and can never again have the
prominence once assigned to it. This secularization, however it might
seem to compromise the design of the founders of the College, was
inevitable,--a wise and needful concession to the exigencies of the
altered time. Nor is there, in a larger view, any real contravention
here of the purpose of the founders. The secularization of the College
is no violation of its motto, "_Christo et Ecclesiae_." For, as I
interpret those sacred ideas, the cause of Christ and the Church is
advanced by whatever liberalizes and enriches and enlarges the mind. All
study, scientifically pursued, is at bottom a study of theology; for all
scientific study is the study of Law; and "of Law nothing less can be
acknowledged than that her seat is in the bosom of God."
But something more than secularization of the course of study is
required to satisfy the idea of a university. What is a university? Dr.
Newman answers this question with the ancient designation of a _Studium
Generale_,--a school of universal learning. "Such a university," he
says, "is in its essence a place for the communication and circulation
of thought by means of personal intercourse over a wide tract of
country."[B] Accepting this definition, can we say that Harvard College,
as at present constituted, is a University? Must we not rather describe
it as a place where boys are made to recite lessons from text-books, and
to write compulsory exercises, and are marked according to their
proficiency and fidelity in these performances, with a view to a
somewhat protracted exhibition of themselves at the close of their
college course, which, according to a pleasant academic fiction, is
termed their "Commencement"? This description applies only, it is true,
to what is called the Undergraduate Department. But that department
stands for the College, constitutes the College, in the public
estimation. The professional schools which have gathered about it are
scarcely regarded as a part of the College. They are incidental
appendages, of which, indeed, one has its seat in another city. The
College proper is simply a more advanced school for boys, not differing
essentially in principle and theory from the public schools in all our
towns. In this, as in those, the principle is coercion. Hold your
subject fast with one hand, and pour knowledge into him with the other.
The professors are task-masters and police-officers, the President the
chief of the College police.
Now, considering the great advance of our higher town schools, which
carry their pupils as far as the College carried them fifty years ago,
and which might, if necessary, have classes still more advanced of such
as are destined for the university, I venture to suggest that the time
has come when this whole system of coercion might, with safety and
profit, be done away. Abolish, I would say, your whole system of marks,
and college rank, and compulsory tasks. I anticipate an objection drawn
from the real or supposed danger of abandoning to their own devices and
optional employment boys of the average age of college students. In
answer, I say, advance that average by fixing a limit of admissible age.
Advance the qualifications for admission; make them equal to the studies
of the Freshman year, and reduce the college career from four years to
three; or else make the Freshman year a year of probation, and its
closing examination the condition of full matriculation. Only give the
young men, when once a sufficient foundation has been laid, and the
rudiments acquired, the freedom of a true University,--freedom to select
their own studies and their own teachers from such material, and such
_personnel_, as the place supplies. It is to be expected that a portion
will abuse this liberty, and waste their years. They do it at their
peril. At the peril, among other disadvantages, of losing their degree,
which should be conditioned on satisfactory proof that the student has
not wholly misspent his time.
An indispensable condition of intellectual growth is liberty. That
liberty the present system denies. More and more it is straitened by
imposed tasks. And this I conceive to be the reason why, with increased
requirements, the College turns out a decreasing proportion of
first-class men. If the theory of college rank were correct, the highest
marks should indicate the men who are to be hereafter most conspicuous,
and leaders in the various walks of life. This is not the case,--not so
much so now as in former years. Of the present chief lights of American
literature and science, how many, if graduates of Harvard, took the
first honors of the University here? Or, to put the question in another
form, Of those who took the first honors at Harvard, within the last
thirty years, how many are now conspicuous among the great lights of
American literature and science?
Carlyle, in his recent talk to the students at Edinburgh, remarks that,
"since the time of Bentley, you cannot name anybody that has gained a
great name for scholarship among the English, or constituted a point of
revolution in the pursuits of men, in that way." The reason perhaps is,
that the system of the English universities, though allowing greater
liberty than ours, is still a struggle for college honors, in which
renown, not learning for the sake of learning, is the aim. The seeming
proficiency achieved through the influence of such motives--knowledge
acquired for the nonce, not assimilated--is often delusive, and is apt
to vanish when the stimulus is withdrawn. The students themselves have
recorded their judgment of the value of this sort of learning in the
word "cramming," a phrase which originated in one of the English
universities.
The rudiments of knowledge may be instilled by compulsory tasks; but to
form the scholar, to really educate the man, there should intervene
between the years of compulsory study and the active duties of life a
season of comparative leisure. By leisure I mean, not cessation of
activity, but self-determined activity,--command of one's time for
voluntary study.
There are two things which unless a university can give, it fails of its
legitimate end. One is opportunity, the other inspiration. But
opportunity is marred, not made, and inspiration quenched, not kindled,
by coercion. Few, I suspect, in recent years, have had the love of
knowledge awakened by their college life at Harvard,--more often
quenched by the rivalries and penalties with which learning here is
associated. Give the student, first of all, opportunity; place before
him the best apparatus of instruction; tempt him with the best of
teachers and books; lead him to the fountains of intellectual life. His
use of those fountains must depend on himself. There is a homely proverb
touching the impossibility of compelling a horse to drink, which applies
to human animals and intellectual draughts as well. The student has been
defined by a German pedagogue as an animal that cannot be forced, but
must be persuaded. If, beside opportunity, the college can furnish also
the inspiration which shall make opportunity precious and fruitful, its
work is accomplished. The college that fulfils these two
conditions--opportunity and inspiration--will be a success, will draw to
itself the frequency of youth, the patronage of wealth, the consensus of
all the good. Such a university, and no other, will be a power in the
land.
Nothing so fatal to inspiration as excessive legislation. It creates two
parties, the governors and the governed, with efforts and interests
mutually opposed; the governors seeking to establish an artificial
order, the governed bent on maintaining their natural liberty. I need
not ask you, Alumni, if these two parties exist at Cambridge. They have
always existed within the memory of "the oldest graduate."
Professors should not be responsible for the manners of students, beyond
the legitimate operation of their personal influence. Academic
jurisdiction should have no criminal code, should inflict no penalty
but that of expulsion, and that only in the way of self-defence against
positively noxious and dangerous members. Let the civil law take care of
civil offences. The American citizen should early learn to govern
himself, and to re-enact the civil law by free consent. Let easy and
familiar relations be established between teachers and taught, and
personal influence will do more for the maintenance of order than the
most elaborate code. Experience has shown that great reliance may be
placed on the sense of honor in young men, when properly appealed to and
fairly brought into play. Raumer, in his "History of German
Universities," testifies that the Burschenschaften abolished there the
last vestige of that system of hazing practised on new-comers, which
seems to be an indigenous weed of the college soil. It infested the
ancient universities of Athens, Berytus, Carthage,[C] as well as the
mediaeval and the modern. Our ancestors provided a natural outlet for it
when they ordained that the Freshmen should be subject to the Seniors,
should take off their hats in their presence, and run of their errands.
This system, under the name of "Pennalism," had developed, in the German
universities, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a degree of
oppression and tyrannous abuse of the new-comer unknown to American
colleges, and altogether incredible were it not sufficiently vouched by
contemporary writers, and by the acts of the various governments which
labored to suppress it. A certain German worthy writes to his son, who
is about to enter the university: "You think, perhaps, that in the
universities they sup pure wisdom by spoonfuls,... but when you are
arrived there, you will find that you must be made a fool of for the
first year.... Consent to be a fool for this one year; let yourself be
plagued and abused; and when an old veteran steps up to you and tweaks
your nose, let it not appear singular; endure it, harden yourself to it.
_Olim meminisse juvabit._"[D] The universities legislated against this
barbarism; all the governments of Germany conspired to crush it; but in
spite of all their efforts, which were only partially successful, traces
of it still lingered in the early years of this century. It was not
completely abolished until, in 1818, there was formed at Jena by
delegates from fourteen universities a voluntary association of students
on a moral basis, known as "The General German Burschenschaft," the
first principle in whose constitution was, "Unity, freedom, and equality
of all students among themselves,--equality of all rights and
duties,"--and whose second principle was "Christian German education of
every mental and bodily faculty for the service of the Fatherland."
This, according to Raumer, was the end of Pennalism in Germany. What the
governments, with their stringent enactments and formidable penalties,
failed to accomplish, was accomplished at last by a voluntary
association of students, organizing that sense of honor which, in youth
and societies of youth, if rightly touched, is never appealed to in
vain.
* * * * *
The question has been newly agitated in these days, whether knowledge of
Greek and Latin is a necessary part of polite education, and whether it
should constitute one of the requirements of the academic course. It has
seemed to me that those who take the affirmative in this discussion give
undue weight to the literary argument, and not enough to the
glossological. The literary argument fails to establish the supreme
importance of a knowledge of these languages as a part of polite
education. The place which the Greek and Latin authors have come to
occupy in the estimation of European scholars is due, not entirely to
their intrinsic merits, great as those merits unquestionably are, but in
part to traditional prepossessions. When after a millennial occultation
the classics, and especially, with the fall of the Palaeologi, the Greek
classics burst upon Western Europe, there was no literature with which
to compare them. The Jewish Scriptures were not regarded as literature
by readers of the Vulgate. Dante, it is true, had given to the world his
immortal vision, and Boccaccio, its first expounder, had shown the
capabilities of Italian prose. But the light of Florentine culture was
even for Italy a partial illumination. On the whole, we may say that
modern literature did not exist, and the Oriental had not yet come to
light. What wonder that the classics were received with boundless
enthusiasm! It was through the influence of that enthusiasm that the
study of Greek was introduced into schools and universities with the
close of the fifteenth century. It was through that influence that
Latin, still a living language in the clerical world, was perpetuated,
instead of becoming an obsolete ecclesiasticism. The language of Livy
and Ovid derived fresh impulse from the reappearing stars of secular
Rome.
It is in vain to deny that those literatures have lost something of the
relative value they once possessed, and which made it a literary
necessity to study Greek and Latin for their sakes. The literary
necessity is in a measure superseded by translations, which, though they
may fail to communicate the aroma and the verbal felicities of the
original, reproduce its form and substance. It is furthermore superseded
by the rise of new literatures, and by introduction to those of other
and elder lands. The Greeks were masters of literary form, but other
nations have surpassed them in some particulars. There is but one Iliad,
and but one Odyssee; but also there is but one Job, but one Sakoontala,
but one Hafiz-Nameh, but one Gulistan, but one Divina Commedia, but one
Don Quixote, but one Faust. If the argument for the study of Greek and
Latin is grounded on the value of the literary treasures contained in
those tongues, the same argument applies to the Hebrew, to the Sanscrit,
to the Persian, to say nothing of the modern languages, to which the
College assigns a subordinate place.
But, above all, the literary importance of Greek and Latin for the
British and American scholar is greatly qualified by the richness and
superiority of the English literature which has come into being since
the Graecomania of the time of the Tudors, when court ladies of a
morning, by way of amusement, read Plato's Dialogues in the original. If
literary edification is the object intended in the study of those
languages, that end is more easily and more effectually accomplished by
a thorough acquaintance with English literature, than by the very
imperfect knowledge which college exercises give of the classics.
Tugging at the Chained Prometheus, with the aid of grammar and lexicon,
may be good intellectual discipline, but how many of the subjects of
that discipline ever divine the secret of AEschylus's wonderful creation,
or receive any other impression from it than the feeling perhaps that
the worthy Titan's sense of constraint could hardly have been more
galling than their own.
Give them Shakespeare's Tempest to read, and with no other pony than
their own good will, though they may not penetrate the deeper meaning of
that composition, they will gain more ideas, more nourishment from it,
than they will from compulsory study of the whole trio of Greek
tragedians. And if this be their first introduction to the great
magician, they will say, with Miranda,
"O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
... O brave new world,
That has such people in it!"
The literary argument for enforced study of Greek and Latin in our day
has not much weight. What I call the glossological argument has more.
Every well-educated person should have a thorough understanding of his
own language, and no one can thoroughly understand the English without
some knowledge of languages which touch it so nearly as the Latin and
the Greek. Some knowledge of those languages should constitute, I think,
a condition of matriculation. But the further prosecution of them should
not be obligatory on the student once matriculated, though every
encouragement be given and every facility afforded to those whose genius
leans in that direction. The College should make ample provision for the
study of ancient languages, and also for the study of the mathematics,
but should not enforce those studies on minds that have no vocation for
such pursuits. There is now and then a born philologer, one who studies
language for its own sake,--studies it perhaps in the spirit of "the
scholar who regretted that he had not concentrated his life on the
dative case." There are also exceptional natures that delight in
mathematics, minds whose young affections run to angles and logarithms,
and with whom the computation of values is itself the chief value in
life. The College should accommodate either bias, to the top of its
bent, but should not enforce either with compulsory twist. It should not
insist on making every alumnus a linguist or a mathematician. If mastery
of dead languages is not an indispensable part of polite education,
mathematical learning is still less so. Excessive requirements in that
department have not even the excuse of intellectual discipline. More
important than mathematics to the general scholar is the knowledge of
history, in which American scholars are so commonly deficient. More
important is the knowledge of modern languages and of English
literature. More important the knowledge of Nature and Art. May the
science of sciences never want representatives as able as the learned
gentlemen who now preside over that department in the mathematical and
presidential chairs. Happy will it be for the University if they can
inspire a love for the science in the pupils committed to their charge.
But where inspiration fails, coercion can never supply its place. If the
mathematics shall continue to reign at Harvard, may their empire become
a law of liberty.
I have ventured, fellow-graduates, to throw out these hints of
University Reform, well aware of the opposition such views must
encounter in deep-rooted prejudice and fixed routine; aware also of the
rashness of attempting, within the limits of such an occasion, to
grapple with such a theme; but strong in my conviction of the pressing
need of a more emancipated scheme of instruction and discipline, based
on the facts of the present and the real wants of American life. It is
time that the oldest college in the land should lay off the _praetexta_
of its long minority, and take its place among the universities,
properly so called, of modern time.
* * * * *
One thing more I have to say while standing in this presence. The
College has a duty beyond its literary and scientific functions,--a duty
to the nation,--a patriotic, I do not scruple to say a political duty.
Time was when universities were joint estates of the realms they
enlightened. The University of Paris was, in its best days, an
association possessing authority second only to that of the Church. The
faithful ally of the sovereigns of France against the ambition of the
nobles and against the usurpations of Papal Rome, she bore the proud
title of "The eldest Daughter of the King,"--_La Fille ainee du Roi_.
She upheld the Oriflamme against the feudal gonfalons, and was largely
instrumental in establishing the central power of the crown.[E] In the
terrible struggle of Philip the Fair with Boniface VIII., she furnished
the legal weapons of the contest. She furnished, in her Chancellor
Gerson, the leading spirit of the Council of Constance. In the Council
of Bale she obtained for France the "Pragmatic Sanction." Her voice was
consulted on the question of the Salic Law; unhappily, also in the trial
of Jeanne d'Arc; and when Louis XI. concluded a treaty of peace with
Maximilian of Austria, the University of Paris was the guaranty on the
part of France.
Universities are no longer political bodies, but they may be still
political powers,--centres and sources of political influence. Our own
College in the time of the Revolution was a manifest power on the side
of liberty, the political as well as academic mother of Otis and the
Adamses. In 1768, "when the patronage of American manufactures was the
test of patriotism," the Senior Class voted unanimously to take their
degrees apparelled in the coarse cloths of American manufacture. In
1776, the Overseers required of the professors a satisfactory account of
their political faith. So much was then thought of the influence on
young minds of the right or wrong views of political questions
entertained by their instructors. The fathers were right. When the life
of the nation is concerned,--in the struggle with foreign or domestic
foes,--there is a right and a wrong in politics which casuistry may seek
to confuse, but which sound moral sentiment cannot mistake, and which
those who have schools of learning in charge should be held to respect.
Better the College should be disbanded than be a nursery of treason.
Better these halls even now should be levelled with the ground, than
that any influence should prevail in them unfriendly to American
nationality. No amount of intellectual acquirements can atone for
defective patriotism. Intellectual supremacy alone will not avert the
downfall of states. The subtlest intellect of Greece, the sage who could
plan an ideal republic of austere virtue and perfect proportions, could
not preserve his own; but the love of country inspired by Lycurgus kept
the descendants of the Dorians free two thousand years after the
disgrace of Chaeronea had sealed the fate of the rest of Greece.
In my college days it was the fashion with some to think lightly of our
American birthright, to talk disparagingly of republics, and to sigh for
the dispositions and pomps of royalty.
"Sad fancies did we then affect
In luxury of disrespect
To our own prodigal excess
Of too familiar happiness."
All such nonsense, if it had not already yielded to riper reason, would
ere this have been washed out of us by the blood of a hundred thousand
martyrs. The events of recent years have enkindled, let us hope, quite
other sentiments in the youth of this generation. May those sentiments
find ample nutriment within these precincts evermore.
Soon after the conquest of American independence, Governor Hancock, in
his speech at the inauguration of President Willard, eulogized the
College as having "been in some sense the parent and nurse of the late
happy Revolution in this Commonwealth." Parent and nurse of American
nationality,--such was the praise accorded to Harvard by one of the
foremost patriots of the Revolution! Never may she cease to deserve that
praise! Never may the Mother refuse to acknowledge the seed herself has
propagated! Never may her seed be repelled by the Mother's altered mind!
"Mutatam ignorent subito ne semina matrem."
When Protagoras came to Athens to teach in the university as
self-appointed professor, or sophist, according to the fashion of that
time, it was not to instruct Athenian youth in music or geometry or
astronomy, but to teach them the art of being good citizens,--[Greek:
Ten politiken technen, kai poiein andras agathous politas.] That was his
profession. With which, as we read, Hippocrates was so well pleased,
that he called up Socrates in the middle of the night to inform him of
the happy arrival. We have no professorship at Cambridge founded for the
express purpose of making good citizens. In the absence of such, may all
the professorships work together for that end. The youth intrusted to
their tutelage are soon to take part, if not as legislators, at least
as freemen, in the government of our common land. May the dignity and
duty and exceeding privilege of an American citizen be impressed upon
their minds by all the influences that rule this place! Trust me,
Alumni, the country will thank the University more for the loyalty her
influences shall foster, than for all the knowledge her schools may
impart. Learning is the costly ornament of states, but patriotism is the
life of a nation.