_Bishop Lawrence, Brothers, Men of Harvard_:
We have just heard from a Harvard man speaking in behalf of the class
of ’55. I now speak to you in behalf of the class of ’80. Mr. Choate,
you can afford to be generous. A man whose life has been passed in
public service such as yours can freely praise those who come after
him. I speak in behalf of the younger men here present when I say
that we shall count ourselves more than happy if in the future we can
approach the service of the men of Harvard in the past. I trust that
if any great crisis come again—may Heaven forbid its coming—if ever a
great crisis like that of ’61 should come, may the men of that day who
have been brought up in Harvard rise level to it as you of the years
from ’55 onward rose level to meet the crisis of your day. We heard
from Mr. Agassiz what the class of his day did, how many of them went
into the Union Army, how some of them went into the gallant Confederate
Army, one of the members of which, the great justice from Louisiana,
Mr. Justice White, has to-day become an adopted son of Harvard. In
Kentucky, a number of years ago, I had a good friend, a man much older
than I was, Colonel John Mason Brown. He came back from a trip to the
Rocky Mountains just after Sumter had been fired on. His mother brought
him the sword that his father had worn with honor in the Mexican War,
and said to him, “My son, war has come, and you must draw this sword;
I hope you will draw it for the flag under which your father fought;
but draw it for one side or the other you must.” We Americans of to-day
have the right to feel the same pride in the valor, the devotion, the
fealty to the right as it was given them to see the right, of those who
wore the gray no less than of those who wore the blue.
In Bishop Lawrence’s introduction—an introduction which touched me
deeply, not only because of the words used, but because of the high
value which I put upon the friendship of the man using them—he spoke of
the effort that I am making for peace throughout the world. Of course
I am for peace. Of course every President who is fit to be President
must be for peace. But I am for one thing before peace; I am for
righteousness first, and then peace. I am for peace, because normally
peace is the best instrument wherewith to obtain righteousness. But,
Mr. Agassiz, when you and those like you faced 1861, you had to win
peace by war, and you rendered us forever your debtors, because when
the choice was between what was peaceful and what was right you chose
what was right.
A great university like this has two especial functions. The first is
to produce a small number of scholars of the highest rank, a small
number of men who, in science and literature, or in art, will do
productive work of the first class. The second is to send out into the
world a very large number of men who never could achieve, and who ought
not to try to achieve, such a position in the field of scholarship, but
whose energies are to be felt in every other form of activity; and who
should go out from our doors with the balanced development of body, of
mind, and above all of character, which shall fit them to do work both
honorable and efficient.
Much of the effort to accomplish the first function, that of developing
men capable of productive scholarship, as distinguished from merely
imitative, annotative, or pedagogic scholarship, must come through the
graduate school. The law school and medical school do admirable work in
fitting men for special professions, but they in no shape or way supply
any shortcomings in the graduate school any more than does the college
proper, the college of the undergraduates. The ideal for the graduate
school and for those undergraduates who are to go into it must be the
ideal of high scholarly production, which is to be distinguished in
the sharpest fashion from the mere transmittal of ready-made knowledge
without adding to it. If America is to contribute its full share to
the progress not alone of knowledge, but of wisdom, then we must put
ever-increasing emphasis on university work done along the lines of the
graduate school. We can best help the growth of American scholarship
by seeing that as a career it is put more on a level with the other
careers open to our young men. The general opinion of the community
is bound to have a very great effect even upon its most vigorous and
independent minds. If in the public mind the career of the scholar
is regarded as of insignificant value when compared with that of a
glorified pawnbroker, then it will with difficulty be made attractive
to the most vigorous and gifted of our American young men. Good
teachers, excellent institutions, and libraries are all demanded in a
graduate school worthy of the name. But there is an even more urgent
demand for the right sort of student. No first-class science, no
first-class literature or art, can ever be built up with second-class
men. The scholarly career, the career of the man of letters, the man of
arts, the man of science, must be made such as to attract those strong
and virile youths who now feel that they can only turn to business,
law, or politics. There is no one thing which will bring about this
desired change, but there is one thing which will materially help in
bringing it about, and that is to secure to scholars the chance of
getting one of a few brilliant positions as prizes if they rise to the
first rank in their chosen career. Every such brilliant position should
have as an accompaniment an added salary, which shall help indicate how
high the position really is; and it must be the efforts of the alumni
which can alone secure such salaries for such positions.
As a people I think we are waking up to the fact that there must be
better pay for the average man and average woman engaged in the work
of education. But I am not speaking of this now; I am not speaking of
the desirability, great though that is, of giving better payment to
the average educator, I am speaking of the desirability of giving to
the exceptional man the chance of winning an exceptional prize, just
as he has the chance to do in law and business. In business at the
present day nothing could be more healthy than an immense reduction
in the money value of the exceptional prizes thus to be won; but in
scholarship what is needed is the reverse. In this country we rightly
go upon the theory that it is more important to care for the welfare
of the average man than to put a premium upon the exertions of the
exceptional. But we must not forget that the establishment of such a
premium for the exceptional, though of less importance, is nevertheless
of very great importance. It is important even to the development of
the average man, for the average of all of us is raised by the work of
the great masters.
It is, I trust, unnecessary to say that I appreciate to the full the
fact that the highest work of all will never be affected one way or
the other by any question of compensation. And much of the work which
is really best for the Nation must from the very nature of things be
non-remunerative as compared with the work of the ordinary industries
and vocations. Nor would it ever be possible or desirable that the
rewards of transcendent success in scholarship should even approximate,
from a monetary standpoint, the rewards in other vocations. But it is
also true that the effect upon ambitious minds can not but be bad if
as a people we show our very slight regard for scholarly achievement
by making no provision at all for its reward. The chief use of the
increased money value of the scholar’s prize would be the index thereby
afforded of the respect in which it was popularly held. The American
scientist, the American scholar, should have the chance at least of
winning such prizes as are open to his successful brother in Germany,
England, or France, where the rewards paid for first-class scholarly
achievement are as much above those paid in this country as our
rewards for first-class achievement in industry or law are above those
paid abroad.
But of course what counts infinitely more than any possible outside
reward is the spirit of the worker himself. The prime need is to
instil into the minds of the scholars themselves a true appreciation
of real as distinguished from sham success. In productive scholarship,
in the scholarship which adds by its work to the sum of substantial
achievement with which the country is to be credited, it is only
first-class work that counts. In this field the smallest amount of
really first-class work is worth all the second-class work that can
possibly be produced; and to have done such work is in itself the
fullest and amplest reward to the man producing it. We outsiders should
according to our ability aid him in every way to produce it. Yet all
that we can do is but little compared to what he himself can and must
do. The spirit of the scholar is the vital factor in the productive
scholarship of the country.
So much for the first function of the university, the sending forth of
a small number of scholars of the highest rank who will do productive
work of the first class. Now turn to the second, and what may be called
the normal function of the college, the function of turning out each
year many hundreds of men who shall possess the trained intelligence,
and especially the character, that will enable them to hold high the
renown of this ancient seat of learning by doing useful service for
the Nation. It is not my purpose to discuss at length what should be
done in Harvard to produce the right spirit among the men who go
out of Harvard, but rather to speak of what this spirit should be.
Nor shall I speak of the exceptions, the men to whom college life is
a disadvantage. Randolph of Roanoke, he of the biting tongue, once
remarked of an opponent that he reminded him of certain tracts of land
“which were almost worthless by nature, and became entirely so by
cultivation.” Of course, if, in any individual, university training
produces a taste for refined idleness, a distaste for sustained effort,
a barren intellectual arrogance, or a sense of supercilious aloofness
from the world of real men who do the world’s real work, then it has
harmed that individual; but in such case there remains the abiding
comfort that he would not have amounted to much anyway. Neither a
college training nor anything else can do much good to the man of weak
fibre or to the man with a twist in his moral or intellectual makeup.
But the average undergraduate has enough robustness of nature, enough
capacity for enthusiasm and aspiration, to make it worth while to turn
to account the stuff that is in him.
There are, however, two points in the undergraduate life of Harvard
about which I think we have a right to feel some little concern. One
is the growth of luxury in the university. I do not know whether
anything we can say will have much effect on this point, but just so
far as the alumni have weight I hope to see that weight felt in serious
and sustained effort against the growing tendency to luxury, and in
favor of all that makes for democratic conditions. One of our number,
the one whom I think the rest of us most delight to honor—Colonel
Higginson—has given to our Alma Mater the Harvard Union, than which no
better gift, no gift meeting a more vital need, could have been given
to the university. It is neither possible nor desirable to try to take
away all social differences from the student life; but it is a good
thing to show how unimportant these differences are compared to the
differences of real achievement, and compared also to the bonds which
should unite together all the men who are in any degree capable of such
real achievement; bonds, moreover, which should also knit these capable
men to their brethren who need their help.
The second point upon which I wish to speak is the matter of sport.
Now I shall not be suspected of a tendency unduly to minimize the
importance of sport. I believe heartily in sport. I believe in outdoor
games, and I do not mind in the least that they are rough games, or
that those who take part in them are occasionally injured. I have no
sympathy whatever with the overwrought sentimentality which would keep
a young man in cotton wool, and I have a hearty contempt for him if
he counts a broken arm or collar bone as of serious consequence when
balanced against the chance of showing that he possesses hardihood,
physical address, and courage. But when these injuries are inflicted
by others, either wantonly or of set design, we are confronted by
the question, not of damage to one man’s body, but of damage to the
other man’s character. Brutality in playing a game should awaken the
heartiest and most plainly shown contempt for the player guilty of
it; especially if this brutality is coupled with a low cunning in
committing it without getting caught by the umpire. I hope to see both
graduate and undergraduate opinion come to scorn such a man as one
guilty of base and dishonorable action, who has no place in the regard
of gallant and upright men.
It is a bad thing for any college man to grow to regard sport as the
serious business of life. It is a bad thing to permit sensationalism
and hysteria to shape the development of our sports. And finally it
is a much worse thing to permit college sport to become in any shape
or way tainted by professionalism, or by so much as the slightest
suspicion of money-making; and this is especially true if the
professionalism is furtive, if the boy or man violates the spirit
of the rule while striving to keep within the letter. Professional
sport is all right in its way. I am glad to say that among my friends
I number professional boxers and wrestlers, oarsmen, and baseball
men, whose regard I value, and whom in turn I regard as thoroughly
good citizens. But the college undergraduate who, in furtive fashion,
becomes a semi-professional is an unmitigated curse, and that not
alone to university life and to the cause of amateur sport; for the
college graduate ought in after years to take the lead in putting the
business morality of this country on a proper plane, and he can not do
it if in his own college career his code of conduct has been warped
and twisted. Moreover, the spirit which puts so excessive a value upon
his work as to produce this semi-professional is itself unhealthy. I
wish to see Harvard win a reasonable proportion of the contests in
which it enters, and I should be heartily ashamed of every Harvard
athlete who did not spend every ounce there was in him in the effort
to win, provided only he does it in honorable and manly fashion. But
I think our effort should be to minimize rather than to increase that
kind of love of athletics which manifests itself, not in joining in
the athletic sports, but in crowding by tens of thousands to see other
people indulge in them. It is a far better thing for our colleges to
have the average student interested in some form of athletics than to
have them all gather in a mass to see other people do their athletics
for them.
So much for the undergraduates. Now for the alumni, the men who are
at work out in the great world. Of course the man’s first duty is to
himself and to those immediately dependent upon him. Unless he can pull
his own weight he must be content to remain a passenger all his life.
But we have a right to expect that the men who come out of Harvard will
do something more than merely pull their own weight. We have a right to
expect that they will count as positive forces for the betterment of
their fellow-countrymen; and they can thus count only if they combine
the power of devotion to a lofty ideal with practical common-sense in
striving to realize this ideal.
This Nation never stood in greater need than now of having among its
leaders men of lofty ideals, which they try to live up to and not
merely to talk of. We need men with these ideals in public life, and
we need them just as much in business and in such a profession as the
law. We can by statute establish only those exceedingly rough lines of
morality the overpassing of which means that the man is in jeopardy
of the constable or the sheriff. But the Nation is badly off if in
addition to this there is not a very much higher standard of conduct,
a standard impossible effectively to establish by statute, but one
upon which the community as a whole, and especially the real leaders
of the community, insist. Take such a question as the enforcement of
the law. It is, of course, elementary to say that this is the first
requisite in any civilization at all. But a great many people in the
ranks of life from which most college men are drawn seem to forget that
they should condemn with equal severity those men who break the law by
committing crimes of mob violence and those who evade the law, or who
actually break it, but so cunningly that they can not be discovered,
the crimes they commit being not those of physical outrage, but those
of greed and craft on the largest scale. The very rich man who conducts
his business as if he believed that he were a law unto himself thereby
immensely increases the difficulty of the task of upholding order when
the disorder is a menace to men of property; for if the community feels
that rich men disregard the law where it affects themselves, then
the community is apt to assume the dangerous and unwholesome attitude
of condoning crimes of violence committed against the interests which
in the popular mind these rich men represent. This last attitude is
wholly evil; but so is the attitude which produces it. We have a
right to appeal to the alumni of Harvard, and to the alumni of every
institution of learning in this land, to do their part in creating a
public sentiment which shall demand of all men of means, and especially
of the men of vast fortune, that they set an example to their less
fortunate brethren, by paying scrupulous heed not only to the letter
but to the spirit of the laws, and by acknowledging in the heartiest
fashion the moral obligations which can not be expressed in law, but
which stand back of and above all laws. It is far more important that
they should conduct their business affairs decently than that they
should spend the surplus of their fortunes in philanthropy. Much has
been given to these men and we have the right to demand much of them in
return. Every man of great wealth who runs his business with cynical
contempt for those prohibitions of the law which by hired cunning he
can escape or evade is a menace to our community; and the community is
not to be excused if it does not develop a spirit which actively frowns
on and discountenances him. The great profession of the law should be
that profession whose members ought to take the lead in the creation of
just such a spirit. We all know that, as things actually are, many of
the most influential and most highly remunerated members of the bar
in every centre of wealth make it their special task to work out bold
and ingenious schemes by which their very wealthy clients, individual
or corporate, can evade the laws which are made to regulate in the
interest of the public the use of great wealth. Now, the great lawyer
who employs his talent and his learning in the highly remunerative task
of enabling a very wealthy client to override or circumvent the law
is doing all that in him lies to encourage the growth in this country
of a spirit of dumb anger against all laws and of disbelief in their
efficacy. Such a spirit may breed the demand that laws shall be made
even more drastic against the rich, or else it may manifest itself in
hostility to all laws. Surely Harvard has the right to expect from her
sons a high standard of applied morality, whether their paths lead them
into public life, into business, or into the great profession of the
law, whose members are so potent in shaping the growth of the national
soul.
But in addition to having high ideals it can not too often be said to
a body such as is gathered here to-day, that together with devotion
to what is right must go practical efficiency in striving for what is
right. This is a rough, workaday, practical world, and if in it we
are to do the work best worth doing, we must approach that work in a
spirit remote from that of the mere visionary, and above all remote
from that of the visionary whose aspirations after good find expression
only in the shape of scolding and complaining. It shall not help us if
we avoid the Scylla of baseness of motive, only to be wrecked on the
Charybdis of wrong-headedness, of feebleness and inefficiency. There
can be nothing worse for the community than to have the men who profess
lofty ideals show themselves so foolish, so narrow, so impracticable,
as to cut themselves off from communion with the men who are actually
able to do the work of governing, the work of business, the work of
the professions. It is a sad and evil thing if the men with a moral
sense group themselves as impractical zealots, while the men of action
gradually grow to discard and laugh at all moral sense as an evidence
of impractical weakness. Macaulay, whose eminently sane and wholesome
spirit revolted not only at weakness, but at the censorious folly which
masquerades as virtue, describes the condition of Scotland at the end
of the seventeenth century in a passage which every sincere reformer
should keep constantly before him.
“It is a remarkable circumstance that the same country should have
produced in the same age the most wonderful specimens of both extremes
of human nature. Even in things indifferent the Scotch Puritan would
hear of no compromise; and he was but too ready to consider all who
recommended prudence and charity as traitors to the cause of truth. On
the other hand, the Scotchmen of that generation who made a figure in
Parliament were the most dishonest and unblushing time-servers that the
world has ever seen. Perhaps it is natural that the most callous and
impudent vice should be found in the near neighborhood of unreasonable
and impracticable virtue. Where enthusiasts are ready to destroy or
be destroyed for trifles magnified into importance by a squeamish
conscience, it is not strange that the very name of conscience should
become a byword of contempt to cool and shrewd men of business.”
The men who go out from Harvard into the great world of American life
bear a heavy burden of responsibility. The only way they can show
their gratitude to their Alma Mater is by doing their full duty to the
Nation as a whole; and they can do this full duty only if they combine
the high resolve to work for what is best and most ennobling with the
no less resolute purpose to do their work in such fashion that when
the end of their days comes they shall feel that they have actually
achieved results and not merely talked of achieving them.
TO THE NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, OCEAN GROVE, N. J.,
JULY 7, 1905
_Mr. Maxwell; Members of the National Educational Association_:
I am glad to have the chance of greeting the National Educational
Association; for in all this democratic land there is no more genuinely
democratic association than this. It is truly democratic, because here
each member meets every other member as his peer without regard to
whether he is the president of one of the great universities or the
newest recruit to that high and honorable profession which has in its
charge the upbringing and training of those boys and girls who in a few
short years will themselves be settling the destinies of this Nation.
It is not too much to say that the most characteristic work of the
Republic is that done by the educators, for whatever our shortcomings
as a Nation may be, we have at least firmly grasped the fact that
we can not do our part in the difficult and all-important work of
self-government, that we can not rule and govern ourselves, unless we
approach the task with developed minds and trained characters. You
teachers make the whole world your debtor. If you did not do your work
well this Republic would not endure beyond the span of the generation.
Moreover, as an incident to your avowed work, you render some wellnigh
unbelievable services to the country. For instance, you render to
the Republic the prime, the vital service of amalgamating into one
homogeneous body the children alike of those who are born here and of
those who come here from so many different lands abroad. You furnish
a common training and common ideals for the children of all the mixed
peoples who are here being fused into one nationality. It is in no
small degree due to you and your efforts that we are one people instead
of a group of jarring peoples.
Moreover, where altogether too much prominence is given to the mere
possession of wealth, the country is under heavy obligations to such
a body as this, which substitutes for the ideal of accumulating
money the infinitely loftier, non-materialistic ideal of devotion to
work worth doing simply for that work’s sake. I do not in the least
underestimate the need of having material prosperity as the basis of
our civilization, but I most earnestly insist that if our civilization
does not build a lofty superstructure on this basis, we can never
rank among the really great peoples. A certain amount of money is of
course a necessary thing, as much for the Nation as for the individual;
and there are few movements in which I more thoroughly believe than
in the movement to secure better remuneration for our teachers. But,
after all, the service you render is incalculable, because of the very
fact that by your lives you show that you believe ideals to be worth
sacrifice, and that you are splendidly eager to do non-remunerative
work if this work is of good to your fellow-men.
To furnish in your lives such a realized high ideal is to do a great
service to the country. The chief harm done by the men of swollen
fortune to the community is not the harm that the demagogue is apt to
depict as springing from their actions, but the fact that their success
sets up a false standard, and so serves as a bad example for the rest
of us. If we did not ourselves attach an exaggerated importance to
the rich man who is distinguished only by his riches, this rich man
would have a most insignificant influence over us. It is generally
our own fault if he does damage to us, for he damages us chiefly by
arousing our envy or by rendering us sour and discontented. In his
actual business relations he is much more apt to benefit than harm the
rest of us; and though it is eminently right to take whatever steps
are necessary in order to prevent the exceptional members of his class
from doing harm, it is wicked folly to let ourselves be drawn into any
attack upon the man of wealth merely as such. Moreover, such an attack
is in itself an exceptionally crooked and ugly tribute to wealth, and
therefore the proof of an exceptionally ugly and crooked state of
mind in the man making the attack. Venomous envy of wealth is simply
another form of the spirit which in one of its manifestations takes the
shape of cringing servility toward wealth, and in another the shape
of brutal arrogance on the part of certain men of wealth. Each one of
these states of mind, whether it be hatred, servility, or arrogance,
is in reality closely akin to the other two; for each of them springs
from a fantastically twisted and exaggerated idea of the importance
of wealth as compared to other things. The clamor of the demagogue
against wealth, the snobbery of the social columns of the newspapers
which deal with the doings of the wealthy, and the misconduct of those
men of wealth who act with brutal disregard of the rights of others,
seem superficially to have no fundamental relation; yet in reality they
spring from shortcomings which are fundamentally the same; and one of
these shortcomings is the failure to have proper ideals.
This failure must be remedied in large part by the actions of you and
your fellow-teachers, your fellow-educators throughout this land. By
your lives, no less than by your teachings, you show that while you
regard wealth as a good thing, you regard other things as still better.
It is absolutely necessary to earn a certain amount of money; it is a
man’s first duty to those dependent upon him to earn enough for their
support; but after a certain point has been reached money-making can
never stand on the same plane with other and nobler forms of effort.
The roll of American worthies numbers men like Washington and Lincoln,
Grant and Farragut, Hawthorne and Poe, Fulton and Morse, St. Gaudens
and MacMonnies; it numbers statesmen and soldiers, men of letters,
artists, sculptors, men of science, inventors, explorers, roadmakers,
bridge builders, philanthropists, moral leaders in great reforms; it
numbers men who have deserved well in any one of countless fields of
activity; but of rich men it numbers only those who have used their
riches aright, who have treated wealth not as an end, but as a means,
who have shown good conduct in acquiring it and not merely lavish
generosity in disposing of it.
Thrice fortunate are you to whom it is given to lead lives of resolute
endeavor for the achievement of lofty ideals, and, furthermore, to
instil, both by your lives and by your teachings, these ideals into the
minds of those who in the next generation will, as the men and women of
that generation, determine the position which this Nation will hold in
the history of mankind.
In closing, I want to speak to you of how certain things, some of which
have happened, and some of which have been suggested to me by what has
happened, in the past week, emphasize what I have said to you as to the
importance to this country of having within its limits men who put the
realization of high ideals above any form of money-making.
Within a week this country has lost a great statesman, who was also a
great man of letters; a man who occupied a peculiar and unique position
in our country; a man of whose existence we could each of us be proud;
for the United States as a whole was better because John Hay lived.
John Hay entered the public service as a young man just come of age,
as the secretary of President Lincoln. He served in the war and was a
member of the Loyal Legion. He was trusted by and was intimate with
Lincoln as hardly any other man was. He then went on rendering service
after service; yet always able (this was one of his great advantages
and great merits) at any moment to go back to private life unless
he could continue in public life on his own terms. As the climax
of his career he served as Secretary of State under two successive
administrations, and by what he did and by what he was he contributed
in no small degree to achieving for this Republic the respect of the
nations of mankind. Such service as that could not have been rendered
save by a man who had before him ideals as far apart as the poles from
those ideals which have in them any taint of what is base or sordid.
Now I wished to secure as John Hay’s successor the man whom I regarded
as of all the men in the country that one best fitted to be such
successor. In asking him to accept the position of Secretary of State
I was asking him to submit to a very great pecuniary sacrifice; and I
never even thought of that aspect of the question, for I knew he would
not either. I knew that whatever other considerations he had to weigh
for and against taking the position, the consideration of how it would
affect his personal fortune would not be taken into account by Elihu
Root; and he has accepted.
I am not speaking of Hay and Root as solitary exceptions. On the
contrary, I am speaking of them as typical of a large class of men in
public life. When we hear so much criticism of certain aspects of our
public life and of certain of our public servants, criticism which
I regret to state is in many cases deserved, it is well for us to
remember also the other side of the picture, to remember that here in
America we have and always have had at the command of the Nation in any
crisis, in any emergency, the very best ability to be found within the
Nation; and this ability has been given with the utmost freedom, given
lavishly and generously, although at great pecuniary loss to the man
giving it.
There is not in my Cabinet a man to whom it is not a financial
disadvantage to stay in the Cabinet. There is not in my Cabinet a man
who does not have to give up something substantial, often very much
that is substantial, sometimes what it is a very real hardship for him
to give up, in order that he may continue in the service of the Nation;
and the only reward for which he looks or for which he cares is the
consciousness of doing service worth rendering. I hope to see more and
more throughout this Nation the spirit grow which makes such service
possible. I hope more and more to see the sentiment of the country as
a whole become such that each man shall feel borne in on him, whether
he is in public life or in private life (and, mind you, some of the
greatest public services can be best rendered by those who are not in
public life), that the chance to do good work is the greatest chance
that can come to any man or any woman in our generation or in any other
generation. Let each man feel that if such work can be well done it is
in itself the amplest reward and the amplest prize.