The Project Gutenberg EBook of Colleges in America, by John Marshall Barker
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Title: Colleges in America
Author: John Marshall Barker
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COLLEGES IN AMERICA.
BY
JOHN MARSHALL BARKER, PH. D.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
REV. SYLVESTER F. SCOVEL, LL. D.,
PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WOOSTER.
[Illustration]
THE CLEVELAND PRINTING & PUBLISHING CO.,
CLEVELAND, OHIO.
1894.
COPYRIGHT, 1894,
THE CLEVELAND PRINTING & PUBLISHING CO.
TO ONE OF THE
GREATEST LIVING SCHOLARS AND EDUCATORS,
REV. WILLIAM F. WARREN, LL. D.,
PRESIDENT OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY.
NOTE.
The author of this volume aims to give the reader a brief survey of
the growth, functions, and work of the American Colleges. It has been
a pleasure to visit many of the colleges and gather facts, receive
impressions and carry away many pleasant recollections regarding them.
The following authorities have been helpful in the preparation of the
work: "A History of Education," by F. V. N. Painter; "The Rise and
Early Constitution of Universities," by S. S. Laurie; "Education in
the United States," by Richard G. Boone; "Essays on Educational
Reformers," by Robert H. Quick; "Education," by Herbert Spencer;
"Universities in Germany," by J. M. Hart; Huxley's "Technical
Education;" Froude's "Essay on Education,"; "The American College and
the American Public," by President Noah Porter; "Prayer for Colleges,"
by Professor W. S. Tyler; "American Colleges: their Life and Work,"
and "Within College Walls," by President Chas. F. Thwing;
"Universities on the Continent," and "Culture and Anarchy," by Matthew
Arnold; "Educational Essays," by Bishop Edward Thomson; "Christianity
in the United States," by Daniel Dorchester; "College Life," by
Stephen Olin; "The Intellectual Life," by P. G. Hamerton; "Essays on a
Liberal Education," by F. W. Farrar; "History of Higher Education" in
the several States, prepared by the Bureau of Education; "Reports of
the Commissioner of Education for 1890-'91;" and the periodical
literature bearing on the subject.
CONTENTS.
I. The Rise of Universities in the Old World, 13
II. The Planting of Colleges in the New World, 36
III. Characteristics of the American College, 69
IV. The Functions of the American College, 104
_a._ A Symmetrical Development.
_b._ The Advancement of Knowledge.
_c._ Preparation for Service.
V. Student Life in College, 156
VI. The Personal Factors in a College Education, 178
VII. The Practical Value of an Education, 196
VIII. Our Indebtedness to Colleges, 229
INTRODUCTION.
I cannot be unwilling to avail myself of any opportunity to turn the
attention of the Christian public to the Christian College. It is a
noble public and an equally noble object. I can conceive of no
worthier or more Christian thing than the caretaking of one generation
that the next one which must necessarily lie so long under its
influence and for which it is therefore so thoroughly responsible,
should receive a Christian education.
To put Christ at the center and make Him felt to the circumference (as
Bungener said in speaking of Calvin's school policy), is exceedingly
difficult. But it is exceedingly important. It is, indeed, vital and
pivotal.
The dangers about it are great and ever greater. They come from the
general worldliness of all things and everybody in this age of
unprecedentedly rapid and splendid material development. They are
increased by the growth of speculative infidelity whether of the
philosophical or scientific phase. They spring out of everything which
lowers the Bible from that supreme and sovereign consideration by
which alone it can hold the place in education which the Old Testament
economy gave it, and which all the books of all the other
book-religions of the world most unquestioningly possess. They are
born of all that false theorizing about the limits of government and
the liberty of conscience which issues in the demands for utter
secularization of every institution of the State, while at the same
time the necessities of popular government are demonstrating that
education must be by the State. They are intensified by the divided
opinion of the church universal, of which the Catholic and Greek
sections hold that education must be religious and under the care of
the Church; while the State-Church Protestant section holds that it
may be religious under certain conditions, and the extreme
secularistic protestant wing holds that it cannot be religious because
conducted by the State, and a rather diminishing protestant section in
free-church nations holds that the higher education should be
Christian, while the secondary and primary may safely be left to the
secular State.
These dangers are not only imminent but actual. The whole effort to
support a Christian education in the public schools is sometimes
called a "bootless wrangle." One section is thrown over towards
secularism, pure and simple, in recoiling from Church-education
exclusive and reactionary. The leading of the little child, the
favorite indication of the millennium's arrival, is frustrated amid
the clamor of the free thinkers and the uncertainty of the Church and
the necessities of the State. We are slowly but surely, if we go on
in this way, taking our children out of Christ's arms and our youth
from beside His footsteps. And that is at once the most fearful sin
against Him, and the most terrible injustice to them, we could
possibly commit. Who can do anything to stay this destructive
tendency? "God bless him," I would say in Livingstone's spirit,
"whoever he may be," that will help to heal this open wound of the
world.
I think Mr. Barker's little book will help. It supplies much
information carefully collected from scattered sources, given in brief
and explicit statements. Its range of themes is wide and upon them all
some standard thoughts are given. It is addressed to all readers and
should find them among parents (whom it should make patrons), among
those who have hearts to pray and those who have hands to help. It
will prove to be of rare interest to all whose duty it is to teach,
and it has much wise counsel for those who are to study.
The treatment of the function of the College for the cultivation of
the moral and spiritual nature (Chapter IV) deserves special
attention. Its declarations are firm, its ideals high and its selected
opinions apt and forcible. It ought to end the reign of any
institution in which religion is not put at the center and kept as
efficient as human instrumentalities can make it. The demand for
professors of pronounced Christian character and convictions is timely
and is fearlessly made.
The discussion of the currents and counter-currents of influences in
college life cannot but be useful, with a possibly increased emphasis
against the secret societies and a caution against organizations of
undergraduates for active partisan work in politics. The time for
these fruits is "not yet."
Admirably the author shows that we have the best College material in
the world and that it behaves itself best. And there can be no lack of
agreement as to the arousing arguments and the closing chapters
concerning the usefulness of colleges to the individual and the
community. May it serve to kindle and to extend when kindled the
wholesome enthusiasm its respected author manifests both by word and
work.
SYLVESTER F. SCOVEL.
The University of Wooster,
July 9, 1894.
COLLEGES IN AMERICA.
I.
THE RISE OF UNIVERSITIES IN THE OLD WORLD.
The American college system is deeply rooted in the past. It will be
better understood if we trace briefly its historic connection with the
ancient and European seats of learning. Higher education has been
promoted among all great nations. Flourishing colleges were founded
among ancient people. In the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, schools of
the Prophets were located at Bethel, Gibeah, Gilgal, Jericho and
Naioth. The Academy of Athens, the Museum of Alexandria, the Athenæum
of Rome were once centers of intellectual activity and spread their
influence over the civilized world.
The Greek race especially commands our attention for its activity in
matters relating to higher education. The Academy of Plato flourished
for nine hundred years. The schools of Athens are noted for their
great and permanent influence in awakening thought and shedding the
light of their teaching among the nations of the world. "So charged,"
says Cardinal Newman, "is the moral atmosphere of the East with Greek
civilization, that down to this day those tribes are said to show to
most advantage which can claim relation of place and kin with Greek
colonies established two thousand years ago." The influences of the
scholastic halls of Plato and Aristotle span the centuries with their
light and power.
Here truths were taught that have found universal acceptance. Down to
the second century, Athens was a favorite resort for students. The
college at Alexandria, where so many of the Fathers of the Church
were educated, was founded and carefully organized by Ptolemy two
centuries before the Christian era. For six hundred years it exerted a
great influence on the youth who gathered from all parts of the
civilized world to receive instruction from its eminent professors.
Roman colleges likewise exerted a wholesome influence in their day.
They began during the life-time of Quintilian, in the second century,
and it continued to be the deliberate policy of Augustus, Vespasian
and Hadrian to multiply and extend the influence of endowed schools in
Rome and provincial towns. Their object, says Merivale, was to
"restore the tone of society and infuse into the national mind
healthier sentiments." These Romano-Hellenic schools were so tenacious
of life that they continued to flourish down to the fifth century.
Owing to the decline of personal morality and the low conceptions of
the ends of human life, and other general influences which led to the
downfall of the empire, these schools finally degenerated and could no
longer survive.
"Some great new spiritual force," says Professor Laurie, "was needed
to reform society and the education of the young. That force was at
hand in Christianity; and if it very early assumed a negative, if not
a prohibitory, attitude to the old learning, it may be conceded that
this was an inevitable step in the development of a new ethical idea."
The Christian system of education gradually superseded the pagan
system. Christianity fortified the sense of personality and introduced
the idea of a broader and deeper sentiment of human brotherhood, which
helped to diffuse the spirit of education among the people and awaken
in the human mind a sense of its native dignity and power.
There were in the first century such men as Clemens, Ignatius and
Polycarp, who employed their talent to build up Christianity and
encourage the education of the people. In the second century, "the
number of the learned men increased considerably, the majority of whom
were philosophers attached to the elective system." It was at the
close of this century (181 A. D.) that the first Christian
catechetical school was established at Alexandria, in accord with
Christian requirements. Such schools soon became numerous and
efficient, and were under the superintendence of the Bishops. The
priests, as well as the laity, were educated in them. At the end of
the fourth century they had entirely superseded the schools of the
_grammaticus_, when ancient culture became practically extinct.
The monastic schools arose in the fifth century to supplant the
Romano-Hellenic schools. Chief among the founders in the West was
Benedict, who in 428 A. D. founded a monastery on Monte Cassino, near
Naples. "He had educational as well as religious aims from the first,
and it is to the monks of this rapidly extending order, or to the
influence which their 'rule' exercised on other conventual orders,
such as the Columban, that we owe the diffusion of schools in the
early part of the Middle Ages and the preservation of ancient
learning. The Benedictine monks not only taught in their own
monasteries, but were everywhere in demand as heads of Episcopal or
Cathedral schools."[A]
[A] Laurie.
The monastic schools multiplied rapidly throughout Europe and took the
lead in education and gained more influence than the episcopal
schools. These schools, sheltered by the church, existed from the
fourth to the twelfth century for the benefit of the ecclesiastical
body. The majority of them did not admit lay instruction until the
middle of the ninth century. Education during this period, with few
exceptional centers, was crude and unenlightened. The power of the
mediæval machinery was such that these schools gave to the clergy only
the mere rudiments of learning. The conception of education at first
did not embrace the culture of the whole man. It was commonly thought
that the religious life opposed the life of the world, and that the
temporal life should be one of abnegation and asceticism. It was the
belief that human reason could not be trusted to have independent
activity, and so dogma was substituted for its free movement. The mind
was cribbed and confined by rules, for fear that speculations in
philosophy and free investigations would disturb and rationalize
theology. Thought was so fettered that philosophy, literature and
science were almost forgotten. Everything was done to subserve the
faith and suppress heresy. The Latin and Greek classics were denounced
as the offspring of the pagan world. It required several centuries for
the Christian world to conceive that there was no antagonism between
reason and authority, and between Greek and Roman culture and the
Christian religion. These schools, however, did a valuable service to
the cause of education by transcribing manuscripts and becoming
repositories of ancient learning.
The intellectual chaos began to end about the tenth century. The
re-establishment of civilization and the revival of learning was still
more manifest during the eleventh century, and soon university life
became possible. The time was evidently ripe for Europe to awake from
its intellectual sleep and begin a new educational development. The
general causes which contributed to give fresh impulse to higher
education at this time were the growing tendency to organization, the
Saracen influence and the desire for higher learning in the more
important centers. "The universities were founded," says Professor
Laurie, "by a concurrence of able men who had something they wished to
teach, and of youth who desired to learn. * * * It was the eternal
need of the human spirit in its relation to the unseen that originated
the University of Paris. We may say then that it was the improvement
of the professions of medicine, law and theology which led to the
inception and organization of the first great schools."
The people felt the need of providing and obtaining instruction beyond
the monastic and episcopal schools. By the natural development of
these, a number of high-grade schools were established which
afterwards gave rise to the universities. They came into existence
without charter from either ecclesiastical or civil power, and were
not controlled or directed by either. The importance of these
institutions was soon discovered by both Pope and Emperor, who
cultivated friendly relations with these free, voluntary and
self-supporting centers of learning and gave them special privileges
and encouragement.
Among the first European schools was that of Salerno, in Italy, which
was known as a school of medicine as early as the ninth century. The
University of Bologna arose at the close of the twelfth century. In
1211 the University of Paris became a legal corporation. Oxford began
as a secondary school, and passed to the rank of a university in 1140,
and Cambridge was established in the year 1200. Professor Laurie says
that "in the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there grew
up in Europe ten universities; while in the fourteenth century we find
eighteen added; and in the fifteenth century twenty-nine arose,
including St. Andrew's (1411), Glasgow (1454), Aberdeen (1477). The
great intellectual activity of the fourteenth century, which led to
the rise of so many universities, coincides with the first revival of
letters, or rather was one manifestation of the revival." The main
center of this great intellectual movement was the University of
Paris, the mother of universities, which gained pre-eminence in the
great studies of theology and philosophy. It was chartered by Philip
Augustus in the thirteenth century, and was fostered by France,
Picardy, Normandy and England. These united and organized the Faculty
of Arts, which became its chief glory. It taught the three arts, Latin
grammar, rhetoric and dialectics, known as the _trivium_. The
_quadrivium_, embracing arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music, was
likewise taught. The Faculty of Theology was created in 1257, that of
Law in 1271, and that of Medicine in 1274.
Matthew Arnold says that "the University of Paris was the main center
of mediæval science, and the authoritative school of mediæval
teaching. It received names expressing the most enthusiastic devotion,
the _Fountain of Knowledge_, the _Tree of Life_, the _Candlestick of
the House of the Lord_. * * * Here came Roger Bacon, Saint Thomas
Aquinas and Dante; here studied the founder of the first university of
the empire, Charles the Fourth, Emperor of Germany and King of
Bohemia, founder of the University of Prague."
The intellectual lead which belonged to France in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries passed to Italy in the fourteenth century. Some
of the universities in Italy ranked among the best in Europe. They
were chiefly distinguished for their studies in law and medicine. In
the early part of the thirteenth century, the University of Bologna
was famous throughout the world, having at one time 12,000 students
from all parts of Europe. These universities continued to exert a
powerful influence until Catholicism triumphed over the abortive
attempts at religious reform, and there settled down over the
brilliant Italy of the Renaissance an unprogressive and
anti-intellectual influence from which she has never fully recovered.
"The importance of the university in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries," says Matthew Arnold, "was extraordinary. Men's minds were
possessed with a wonderful zeal for knowledge, or what was then
thought knowledge, and the University of Paris was the great fount
from which this knowledge issued. The University and those depending
on it, made at this time, it is said, actually a third of the
population of Paris. * * * One asks oneself with interest, what was
the mental food to which this vast, turbulent multitude pressed with
such inconceivable hunger. Theology was the great matter; and there is
no doubt that this study was by no means always that barren and verbal
trifling which an ill-informed modern contempt is fond of representing
it. It is evident that around the study of theology in the mediæval
University of Paris there worked a real ferment of thought, and very
free thought. But the University of Paris culminated as the exclusive
devotion to theological study declined, and culminated by virtue of
that declension."
The great business of the universities from the twelfth to the
seventeenth century was that of scholastic philosophy, which largely
governed their teaching.
The scholastic philosophy was "the legitimate development of the
philosophy of Aristotle and his successors, and was the only
philosophy possible in its day. Nay, it was an integral essential
element in human progress. It taught men to distinguish and define,
and has left its impress upon the language and thought of all
civilized peoples, 'in lines manifold, deep-graven and ineffaceable.'
Out of it has grown our modern civilization."
The schoolmen would freely canvass the deep problems of the mind and
soul, but would blindly exclude the new influences at work in society.
They had to meet the opposition of the humanists, who made the study
of Latin and Greek the basis of culture. The humanists were great
writers and artists, who worked for more modern ideas and a newer
civilization. They introduced the Renaissance, which was a literary
movement that began in Italy in the fourteenth century. It was
believed that vital knowledge was gained by knowing oneself, and that
the best way to attain this was to study poetry, philosophy, history
and all knowledge that was created by the spirit of man.
Unfortunately, the knowledge of letters in Italy tended to paganize
its adherents. Infidelity spread and immorality abounded in all ranks
of society.
The great movement of the Renaissance secured a stronghold in Germany,
where its power was extended to the established systems of instruction
and utilized in the interests of a purer Christianity. Melancthon and
Erasmus and all the chief reformers except Luther, were eminent
humanists and friends of classical learning. They were outside the
established schools, and were the leading spirits in intellectual
culture, so that the Renaissance triumphed with the Reformation. These
two forces united and gave spirit and power to the humanists. The
influence of the new learning in Germany was marked by comparative
freedom from frivolities, skepticism and immoralities. There was a
critical and enlightened study of classical literature and a reverent
and rational study of the Bible. The literary treasures of antiquity
were made to minister to religion. The Reformation also gave fresh
impulses to all the schools and institutions of learning. The school
teacher and preacher of the gospel joined hands in the common work of
education.
The universities, however, under the control of the schoolmen,
retrograded and decayed because they chose to remain mediæval. They
refused to become the educational agencies of the times, and so failed
to be at the head of a great intellectual movement. They could not be
induced to assimilate the new studies and make themselves the organ of
the Renaissance and the Reformation. The rapid growth of positive and
experimental science, however, was fatal to scholasticism. The narrow
scholastic spirit was exemplified by Cremonini, who is called the last
of the schoolmen, and who was professor at Padua in 1631.
This countryman of Galileo, after the discovery of Jupiter's
satellites, judging that this discovery contradicted Aristotle, would
never consent to look through a telescope again. One could not have a
better incident to end the career of the scholastic philosophy.
The Jesuits adopted a more liberal spirit and method. They established
and controlled a large number of universities and schools, and made
them the great channels of the movement of the counter-Reformation.
Their educational activity gained for them a great reputation for
teaching and a large patronage. In 1710, they had 612 colleges, 157
normal schools, 24 universities and 200 missions. They were inspired
not so much by the value they placed on culture for its own sake, as
to promote the authority of the old religion and prevent heresy.
The powerful initial impulse given to the cause of education by means
of the humanists and the reformers in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries began to flag in the seventeenth century, when the
Protestant Church, like the Catholic, became cold and petrified. The
universities were regarded as appendages of the church, and classical
training largely lost its hold in Europe.
The condition of contemporary institutions for superior instruction in
the old world is full of promise. The importance of building up great
universities is conceded by nearly all nations. In the judgment of Mr.
L. D. Wishard, the Foreign Secretary of the College Y. M. C. A., there
are 500,000 young men in Asia in the high-class institutions.
The government of Japan, that has lately joined the Western nations in
the onward march of civilization, gives enlightened direction to
higher education. There are, besides the Imperial College of Tokio,
five great secondary schools located in different centers throughout
the empire, which serve as feeders to the university. There are 5,000
youth in Christian colleges and schools in the kingdom. In the
Christian university at Kioto there are 600 youth pursuing a college
education under Christian teaching.
China has always encouraged colleges for the education of her
magistrates. "The literary class consisting of the graduates, and
those who attend the examinations for degrees, numbering some two and
a half millions, are the rulers of China."
There is a growing tendency to universal education in India. "It is
computed," says Bishop Hurst, "that in the small area of Calcutta and
suburbs there are 28,000 alumni who have completed the curriculum in
the five Christian colleges. There are about 2,000 who are alumni or
students of the Calcutta University, and there are 1,000 youths
besides who are studying up to the matriculation examinations of the
university." The English language is the medium of instruction in all
these institutions. It may not be wide of the mark to suppose that in
all India there are not less than 40,000 natives who have graduated at
some school of high grade, and that ten per cent. of the number have
passed the university degrees. The number is now more probably 50,000.
These men enjoy the highest respect and are the recognized leaders of
native thought. Already many are, and many more are to be judges,
lawyers, magistrates, professors, teachers, orators, physicians,
engineers, merchants, authors and journalists of the country.
The University of Fez, in Morocco, established in the eighth century,
is one of the oldest universities outside of Asia. The Mohammedan
University at Cairo, in Egypt, has more than 200 instructors and
10,000 students assembled from Europe, Asia and Africa to be
instructed in the Moslem faith.
If we turn to Europe, we find that the planting and enlarging of the
institutions for superior instruction has the most hopeful outlook. In
Great Britain and Ireland there are 11 universities with 834
professors and 18,400 students. Besides, there are the old established
and excellent schools at Eaton, Harrow, Winchester and Rugby.
A new era for the classical schools of Germany began in 1783, when
Baron Sedlitz, encouraged by Frederic the Great, was able to revive
"the dormant sparks planted in them by the Renaissance and they awoke
to a new life, which since the beginning of this century has drawn the
eyes of all students of intellectual progress upon them." Germany had
in 1890, 250 gymnasia and 22 universities. The latter are manned by
2,431 instructors and have 31,803 students, or one student to every
151 of the population.
France has 19,152 students in her professional and technical schools.
There are fifteen institutions of higher learning in the University of
France, with 180 professors and 12,695 students. These are under the
control and patronage of the State. The government appropriated in
1889-90, 12,000,000 francs for university purposes. Besides, there
were expended in the same year 99,000,000 francs for new buildings for
the advancement of higher education. In 1890, there were 598
professional chairs in the several universities, in which were taught
17,630 students, or one student to every 217 of the population.
The Austria-Hungary Empire had in 1891 eleven universities, eight of
which were in Austria, with 1,112 professors and 14,272 students. The
remaining three were in Hungary and had 322 professors and 4,098
students. There were for the same year in Switzerland nine
universities, with 434 professors and 2,619 students.
The Catholic Church in Italy continued for years to exert an
unprogressive and anti-intellectual influence. The present government
of Italy, however, is fully awake to the importance of a university
education for the people, and now maintains several universities at a
large annual outlay.
This brief outline reveals the facts that all civilized nations are
encouraging and maintaining schools for the higher education of the
people, and suggests that a comparative study of them is both helpful
and fruitful.
Many of the universities in the Old World lack the stimulus of the
strong Protestant denominational influence and the marked religious
character of the American colleges. They consequently fail to attain
the highest results for the general good, but they are inaugurating an
intellectual movement which will eventuate in a more glorious future.
II.
THE PLANTING OF COLLEGES IN THE NEW WORLD.
Our national existence came into full bloom under the light of a
Christian civilization. The political, social and religious
institutions were sufficiently well organized in the Old World to be
advantageously introduced, with some modifications, into a young
nation in the New World.
The early colonists first founded a church, then a school, and then a
college. They felt that the colonial organization was incomplete
without a college to inculcate such piety, virtue and intelligence as
would preserve and perfect the highest social order and secure the
blessings of liberty. These colleges, modelled at first after the
universities of Europe, soon mapped out a pathway for themselves, and
have now come to occupy a unique place in our national life.
The Pilgrim Fathers sought to establish in the New World three great
principles: civil and religious liberty, and to make education their
corner-stone. The scholarly impulses were so dominant at this early
day that when the entire population of New England did not exceed four
thousand, the people determined to establish a college, which Cotton
Mather says "was the best thing they ever thought of." It is estimated
that this meager population contained as many as one hundred men who
had received the training of Oxford and Cambridge. Sixty of them were
from the University of Cambridge; twenty were from Oxford, and others,
apparently, from the Scotch universities. The colleges they founded
show traces of all these institutions. These intelligent and refined
men, with breadth of culture and political foresight and public
spirit, constituted the chief source of greatness in the early days
of New England.
The three leading colonial colleges, Harvard, Yale, and William and
Mary, were planted and permeated with the spirit of republican liberty
and primitive Christianity. They began in a very modest way.
Harvard, the oldest of American colleges, was founded in the beginning
of the colonial days, only eighteen years after the Pilgrim Fathers
landed on Plymouth Rock, and when Boston was a village of twenty-five
or thirty houses, and when only twenty-five towns had begun to be
settled in the colony. In 1636, six years after the settlement of
Boston, the colonial legislature voted the sum of four hundred pounds
(equivalent to a tax of fifty cents to every person in the colony)
towards the founding of Harvard College, with the avowed purpose of
training young men for the ministry. This sum was increased in 1637 by
the munificence of John Harvard, who was a graduate of Cambridge, and
a finished scholar and clergyman from England. He gave eight hundred
pounds and his library, consisting of three hundred volumes, towards
the endowment, whereupon the college took his name. "The colony caught
his spirit," says Boone. "Among the magistrates themselves, two
hundred pounds was subscribed, a part in books. All did something,
even the indigent; one subscribed a number of sheep; another, nine
shillings' worth of cloth; one, a ten-shilling pewter flagon; others,
a fruit dish, a sugar spoon, a silver-tipped jug, one great salt, one
small trencher salt, etc. From such small beginnings did the
institution take its start. No rank, no class of men, is
unrepresented. The school was of the people." There is nothing in
history to parallel the heroic spirit and boldness of these early
settlers in attempting to found a college, surrounded as the people
were with poverty, scanty subsistence, and savage enemies. They did
not realize the wisdom of their liberality and sacrifice and its
influence upon the future civilization of the Western World. Harvard
College was located at Cambridge, with a single building, on less than
three acres of land. It was supported by government appropriations and
private philanthropy. For years the college was financially
embarrassed. The salaries were small, and for nearly one hundred years
were paid out of the colonial treasury. The President received a
salary of $600. The total grants made to the college by the colony
during the first century amounted to about $8,000. The total annual
income from all sources at the close of the first century of its
history was but £750. Down to 1780 the total amount contributed out of
the public treasury was $68,675 and 3,793 acres of land. Individuals
in England and America had likewise given $90,412.
No one at this period would have dared to predict that Harvard College
would have in 1892 an endowment of $12,000,000 and an annual revenue
of more than $1,000,000, with seventeen departments of instruction,
three hundred teachers, and three thousand students. But such has been
the phenomenal growth of some of our American institutions.
Among the colonial colleges, that of William and Mary is one of the
most important. As early as 1617, an attempt was made in England to
raise money to found a college among the Virginia settlers. In 1619,
fifteen hundred pounds were in the hands of the treasurer, and ten
thousand acres of land were granted by the Virginia Company. A
preparatory school was founded two years later, but owing to the
Indian massacre of 340 settlers which followed, the enterprise was
suspended. The effort to found a college was subsequently revived in
1660. The Virginia Assembly enacted that "for the advancement of
learning, education of youth, supply of the ministry, and promotion of
piety, there be land taken for a college and free school." Nothing
came of this until 1688, when a subscription was taken from wealthy
planters for twenty-five hundred pounds for the college. Five years
later (1692) the first royal educational charter in America was
granted. The college was established at Williamsburg, Virginia, and
was given £2,000 and 20,000 acres of land, a tax of a penny a pound on
all tobacco exported from Virginia and Maryland, and the duty on furs,
skins, and liquors imported, besides other fees and privileges of the
Surveyor General's office. "In its royal foundation, its generous
endowment, and liberal patronage," says R. C. Boone, "it stands in
sharp contrast to the early years of Harvard. This was established by
the Puritans, and stood for the severest of ultra-orthodox though
dissenting Protestantism; that was founded to be and was an exponent
of the most formal ceremonialism of the Church of England. The one was
nursed by democracy; the other befriended by cavalier and courtier.
Endowment for the one came from the purses of an infant and needy
settlement; the other was drawn from the royal treasury. The one was
environed and shaken for a hundred years by the schisms of a
controversial people; the roots of the other were deep in the great
English ecclesiastical system." This college has been called a school
of statesmen. It was here that Jefferson, Randolph, Tyler, Monroe,
Blair, Marshall, and other prominent statesmen received their
training.
The history of Yale College is full of interest. The original design
of the founders of the New Haven Colony was to establish a college. A
lot was set apart for this purpose as early as 1647. A plan was
proposed in 1698 to found a college, and to be placed under the
general care of the churches. In 1700, sixty-three years after the
founding of Harvard College, a society consisting of eleven ministers
met to take the initial step. At a second meeting, in the same year,
each of the trustees, numbering ten of the principal clergymen of the
colony, were without money, but they brought forty volumes of books,
and, placing them on a table, presented them to the body, saying in
substance: "I give these books for the founding of a college in this
colony." This was the humble beginning of Yale College. The colony had
a population at this time of fifteen thousand people, fifty of whom
were college-trained men. The outlook for this college was not very
encouraging, in view of their limited means and scattered population.
The work, at first, lacked system and unity. In 1718, the college was
permanently located at New Haven, Connecticut, and named in honor of
Elihu Yale, who was born in Boston in 1648. He received his education
in England, and was afterward made Governor of Madras, and, later,
Governor of the East India Company. His donation to Yale College was
largely in books, and amounted to five hundred pounds. This gift was
followed by that of Rev. George Berkely, who gave ninety-six acres of
land in Rhode Island and one thousand volumes to the library. The
college received for its support, in a century and a half, $100,000
from the commonwealth of Connecticut. It has been supported chiefly by
private means. In 1890, there were 143 instructors and 1,500 students.
There is no college in America that has a more enviable reputation for
giving a thorough Christian education to the thousands of youth who
have gone forth from her halls of learning.
It is a matter of record that our ancestors showed much self-denial,
courage, and genius, to turn aside from the work of organizing a new
social order, and the readjustment of themselves to their surroundings
in a new country to provide for the higher education of the people.
The founders and supporters of these colleges, as a rule, were men of
high intellectual and religious character, and worked intensely and
earnestly for the highest good of society. It would prove an
inestimable blessing to our nation if every American citizen were
inspired with the zeal of the early colonists in behalf of the cause
of higher education. They, out of their poverty, poured their gifts
into the treasury of the colleges in order to leave future generations
a great and glorious heritage. Gratitude should prompt us to excel
them in our love for the education of the present and future
generations by cheerfully giving of our abundance for the same high
and holy ends.
Other colleges were founded within the century. Aside from the three
colonial colleges, six more were founded prior to the Revolution, and
four during the war of independence. Following the Revolution was a
period of expansion, and by the close of the century there were
twenty-four colleges established. These colleges, scattered throughout
the Union, appeared as a galaxy of stars in the literary firmament of
the nation. They were founded and located as follows:
_Institution._ _State._ _Date._
1. Harvard, Massachusetts, 1637
2. William and Mary, Virginia, 1693
3. Yale, Connecticut, 1701
4. Princeton, New Jersey, 1746
5. University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, 1749
6. Columbia, New York, 1754
7. Brown, Rhode Island, 1764
8. Dartmouth, New Hampshire, 1769
9. Queen's Rutgers, New Jersey, 1766
10. Hamden-Sidney, Virginia, 1776
11. Washington and Lee, Virginia, 1782
12. Washington University, Maryland, 1782
13. Dickinson, Pennsylvania, 1783
14. St. Johns, Maryland, 1784
15. Nashville, Tennessee, 1785
16. Georgetown, Dist. of Columbia, 1789
17. University of N. Carolina, North Carolina, 1789
18. University of Vermont, Vermont, 1791
19. University of E. Tennessee, Tennessee, 1792
20. Williams, Massachusetts, 1793
21. Bowdoin, Maine, 1794
22. Union, New York, 1795
23. Middlebury, Vermont, 1795
24. Frederick College, Maryland, 1796
It remained for the nineteenth century to exhibit in the New World an
unprecedented multiplication and expansion of institutions of higher
learning.
At the opening of the century there were only twenty-four colleges in
the United States. Thirty years later the number had reached
forty-nine. In 1850, there were 120 colleges, manned by 1,300
teachers, with 17,000 students. There were besides 42 theological
seminaries, 35 medical schools, and 12 law schools.
By 1890, the number of colleges and universities had grown to 415,
having 7,918 instructors and 118,581 students. There were in the same
year 117 medical schools, with 7,013 students, and 54 law schools,
with 4,518 students. These facts bear witness to the determination of
the American people to satisfy the needs of their higher nature, and
not to rest content with material growth and the bare necessities of
life.
The spirit of our early ancestors was never more manifest than in
their earnest advocacy of religious liberty, and their protest against
all ecclesiastical authority. The numerous settlements in different
sections of the country, with their different nationalities and
diverse religious opinions, tended to multiply the religious
denominations and to establish churches with divergent aims and plans.
These independent sects gave rise to a great number of schools
claiming to be colleges. These schools they regarded as essential and
supplementary to their churches. Harvard owes its origin to
non-conforming clergymen. The Episcopal Church claimed William and
Mary College. The Congregationalists of Connecticut founded Yale.
Princeton was founded under the auspices of a Presbyterian synod, and
Brown was established by an association of Baptist Churches. One
hundred and four of the first one hundred and nineteen colleges
established in the United States had a distinctively Christian origin.
Their founders intended that they should be, in some sense,
ecclesiastical as well as religious. Notwithstanding their diversity,
there was unity in their general character and design. While they
maintained a denominational character, they were in nowise illiberal,
and set up no religious test for entrance.
The Christian Churches have been not only pioneers of education, but
their followers recognize as never before the power and efficiency of
the Christian College to further the Kingdom of God on earth. Out of
415 colleges in 1890, 316 of them were under the control of some
religious denomination. These were distributed in 1890 among the
several denominations as follows: Methodist, 74; Presbyterian, 49;
Baptist, 44; Roman Catholic, 51; Congregational, 22; Christians, 20;
Lutheran, 19; United Brethren, 10; Protestant Episcopal, 6; Reformed,
6; Friends, 6; Universalist, 4; Evangelical Association, 2; German
Evangelical, 1; Seventh Day Adventist, 1; New Church (Swedenborgian),
1.
The leading denominations are especially active in promoting the cause
of higher education. We summarize the educational work of a few of
them:
The Congregational Churches, with a membership of 525,097, had, in
1890, thirty-eight schools of distinctly college rank, with 1,034
instructors and 13,601 students. This denomination has generously
endowed many of her colleges. She has been pre-eminent in her efforts
to extend a liberal education to the people.
The Roman Catholic Church in the United States claimed to have, in
1894, 116 colleges, 637 academies, and 768,498 pupils in parochial
schools. This church, that numbers among its adherents one-tenth of
the population of this country, has one-fourth of all the colleges.
The Regular Baptists of the United States have one hundred and
fifty-two chartered institutions of learning, with an endowment and
property valuation of $32,162,904. Of these, seven are theological
seminaries, with 54 professors, 776 students, and $3,701,620 of
endowments and property. Thirty-five are universities and colleges
open to both sexes, with 701 professors and instructors, 9,088
students, and endowment and property to the amount of $19,171,045.
Thirty-two are colleges exclusively for women, with 388 professors and
instructors, 3,675 students, and endowment and property, $4,121,906.
Forty-seven are seminaries and academies, male and co-education, with
369 professors and instructors, 5,250 students, and endowment and
property worth $3,787,793. And thirty-one are institutions of learning
for colored people and Indians, several of which are chartered
colleges, with 279 instructors, 5,177 students, endowment and property
worth $1,380,540.
Among the church families in the United States the Presbyterians stand
third, having about 1,500,000 members, 13,476 organizations, and
church property valued at $94,869,000. They have always been favorable
to the higher education of ministers and people, and therefore liberal
in support of the better class of schools and colleges. They now have
under their immediate care 56 colleges, with an enrollment of 10,143
students. The estimated value of property owned by these institutions
is $6,780,600, and their permanent endowment funds amount to
$6,891,800. There are, besides, four colleges which are jointly owned
and patronized by Presbyterians and Congregationalists. In addition
there are some forty classical academies, under the care of different
Synods and Presbyteries, which have over 3,000 students, and property
whose net value is over $1,000,000. Fourteen theological seminaries
are scattered over the country, with more than 1,200 students. These
have property and endowments amounting to $8,164,762. This makes the
total investment of the churches in classical institutions and
seminaries to reach the large sum of $22,837,162. Immediately
connected with these halls of learning are some 700 of the church's
finest scholars and most devoted Christians acting as teachers, while
14,343 of the best and brightest young men and women sit at their feet
as learners.
Methodism has been a great educational force in this country. It took
its rise in a university, and its leaders were trained in the oldest
of English universities. The Methodist zeal for higher education has
put her in the front ranks of the moral and educational forces of the
age. Though among the youngest of Christian bodies of this country,
the magnitude and extent of her educational work is second to none.
The Methodist Episcopal Church comprises less than one-half of the
Methodists in the United States, yet she has 49 institutions of
collegiate grade, with property and endowment of over $17,000,000, and
from the 6,000 students there are sent out annually 1,500 graduates
with the Bachelor's degree. In 1892, she had 195 institutions of
learning of every grade, with property and endowment valued at
$26,000,000, with 2,343 professors and teachers and 40,026 students.
"The increase in population in the United States from 1880 to 1890 was
26.7 per cent.; for the same period the increase of students in
college classes in all schools in the United States was 53.1 per
cent.; in all Methodist schools in the United States, 52.3 per cent."
It is certainly a hopeful indication of the ambition and lofty purpose
of Methodist youth that one-eighth of the whole number of students of
the Johns Hopkins University are Methodists, seeking the broadest
educational facilities. A church with such a record will not lose her
hold upon the intellect and scholarship of the age.
Methodism has wisely undertaken to establish the American University
in Washington City. The founding of such a university was the dream of
Washington and other great statesmen. This is the most strategic
educational center in America. The scientific and literary treasures
of the government, aggregating a cost of more than $33,000,000, and
maintained at an annual expense of three and one-half millions of
dollars, will be at the service of this university. The funds of the
university will not be tied up in expensive buildings and equipment,
but, like the great German universities, employed in paying
enthusiastic professors of the broadest scholarship and culture to
instruct graduate students in every department of learning, and to
widen the horizon of knowledge. This is certainly one of the most
magnificent opportunities in the history of the Christian Church to
establish a powerful and comprehensive agency to help uphold and
expand and organize a Christian civilization. It will gain an
increasing power through coming generations.
The Federal Government has, likewise, favored and materially
encouraged the cause of education. The wisest statesmen believe that
the colleges are not solely the auxiliary of the churches, but that
they have an equal value to the State. They firmly believe that
education is essential to the general good of the community, and
worthy of favorable legislation. "During the first century of its
existence, the United States made land grants for educational purposes
of nearly 80,000,000 acres, a territory greater than all the landed
area of Great Britain and Ireland, and more than half of all France.
What a tribute to learning this munificence presents. Of these gifts
it is estimated that more than 80 per cent. went to permanent funds
for the elementary schools."
The spirit of the American people was shown in the Magna Charta of the
Northwest, framed in 1787, which declared that "Religion, morality and
knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of
mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be
encouraged." In obedience to this spirit, the Federal government made
grants of land to encourage and support institutions of learning, as
follows: "One section of land in every township for common schools,
and not less than two townships in every State for founding a
university." Appropriations have since been made by the general
government to establish and foster State universities. In 1862, the
Morrill act was passed by Congress, whereby a liberal grant was made
to provide for "the endowment, support and maintenance of at least one
college, where the leading object should be, without excluding other
scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to
teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and
mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislature of the States may
prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of
the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions of
life." This act was supplemented in 1890 by an additional provision of
$25,000 a year for the better equipment and endowment of each of the
colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts. The land grant made by the
general government to all the States aggregated 9,597,840 acres, from
which was realized $15,866,371.
The Hatch act of 1887 made generous Federal provision for the
establishment of agricultural experiment stations "for the
investigation of the laws and principles that govern the successful
and profitable tillage of the soil."
The State universities numbered 30 in 1890, having 12,846 students and
964 instructors. The value of the grounds and buildings aggregated
$15,146,588, and the productive fund $10,411,964. The total income for
the State schools reached the handsome sum of $2,176,250. These State
universities have become fixed factors in our civilization, and give
promise of accomplishing a great work for the people. What the
character of the work shall be, remains with the American people to
decide.
This century has witnessed in the United States the beginning and
growth of _Colleges for Women_. This is the fruit of the increasing
development of the idea and sentiment in favor of women sharing with
men in the privileges of the highest culture and all rational
enjoyment. Exclusive privileges and distinctions on account of sex are
contrary to the character and genius of a free people. "If," says
President Dwight, "education is for the growth of the human mind--the
personal human mind--and if the glory of it is in upbuilding and
outbuilding of the mind, the womanly mind is just as important, just
as beautiful, just as much a divine creation with wide-reaching
possibilities as the manly mind. When we have in our vision serious
thought as the working force and end of education, the woman makes the
same claim with the man, and her claim rests, at its deepest
foundation, upon the same grand idea." The history of the movement in
favor of the collegiate education of women is interesting and
instructive. One of the first steps in this direction was taken by
Mrs. Emma Willard, who opened a school for girls in Middlebury,
Vermont, in 1808, which in 1819 was removed to Waterford, New York.
Two years later she founded the Troy Female Seminary. Education for
women received a new impulse through Miss Catharine E. Beecher, who,
in 1822, opened at Hartford, Conn., an academy for girls, and it met
with excellent success. Further efforts were made to extend education
to young women of more mature years and give them the advantages of an
intellectual training equal with that of colleges for men. The
Wesleyan Seminary for women was founded at Kent's Hill, Maine, in
1821, and Granville College for women in 1834. Through the earnest
effort of Miss Mary Lyon, Mount Holyoke Female Seminary was
incorporated February 10, 1836. The Elmira Female College was founded
in 1855. These colleges multiplied rapidly and now there are more than
two hundred institutions of higher learning devoted exclusively to the
education of women.
Colleges for women have been quite liberally endowed by high-minded
and generous individuals, and the stability and permanency of these
colleges have thus been secured. Vassar College was incorporated in
1861. Mr. Matthew Vassar, the founder, gave 200 acres of land near
Poughkeepsie, on the Hudson, which with his other gifts aggregated
$788,000. The total productive endowment in 1892 was $1,018,000, and
the value of the grounds, buildings, etc., was $792,080 additional.
Wellesley College was founded by H. F. Durant in 1875, at Wellesley,
near Boston. He gave 400 acres of land and an endowment of more than
one million dollars. Smith College was founded through the beneficence
of Sophia Smith, who gave $400,000. Bryn Mawr, near Philadelphia, was
opened in 1885, through the generosity of J. W. Taylor, M. D., whose
gifts amounted to $1,000,000.
In 1890, there were 179 colleges devoted exclusively to the education
of women, having grounds and buildings valued at $11,559,379, with
scientific apparatus valued at $419,000 more, and the productive
funds aggregated $2,609,661. The total number of students in these
colleges for the same year was 24,851, and taught by 2,299 teachers.
The co-education of the sexes in colleges is also constantly growing
in favor among those colleges which have given it the most thorough
trial. Two hundred and seventy-two colleges in this country, or 65.5
per cent., excluding those devoted exclusively to the education of
women, are open equally to both sexes. The favorable results as to
scholarship, manners and morals of the two sexes have abundantly
confirmed the wisdom of this method. The question of co-education has
its complications, but with proper restrictions these are not serious.
There is no more danger of women developing bold or masculine
qualities of character in a college where co-education exists than in
the high schools, or in social and business life outside of college.
The charm and beauty of a lady are found in the qualities of modesty
and grace. The private life of the ladies attending a college where
co-education exists is in most cases so regulated as to secure such
home care and retirement as will help to preserve the charming
qualities of womanhood. The ladies in these schools gain a certain
poise and independence without boldness, which is of inestimable
advantage. Aside from this they get a knowledge of character and life
that is not likely to be secured in any other way.
The growth of the colleges since the war in the sixteen Southern
States for both white and black population is very encouraging. Fully
one-third of the colleges and universities and one-third of the
instructors and students of the nation are located in the Southern
States. Many of these colleges are only first-class academies, but
they are doing an excellent service. Benefactions in behalf of higher
education in the South have been something phenomenal in the history
of philanthropic work. The Peabody Fund for education in the South
was $3,100,000. The Slater Fund $1,000,000. Tulane and Vanderbilt each
gave $1,500,000 towards founding universities in the South. It is
estimated that more than $20,000,000 have been given by special donors
for this purpose since the war. This vast sum has been augmented by
the annual gifts of the churches for this object. The Methodist
Episcopal Church had expended up to 1892 the sum of $6,187,630.46 to
promote higher institutions of learning among both white and black
population in the South.
Other denominations have given largely in the same direction. These
benefactions have given new impulses to the cause of education, which
have been of vital importance in the regeneration of the social
conditions of this section of the country. The annual outlay for
schools in the Southern States increased from $11,400,000 in 1878 to
$20,000,000 in 1888. All these educational influences have contributed
to establish a New South that presages far-reaching possibilities for
good for all time to come.
The growth, number and progress of the American colleges and
universities is more and more attracting the attention of the
civilized world. In 1890, they numbered 415, with grounds and
buildings valued at $65,000,000, with scientific apparatus and
libraries valued at $9,000,000, and the productive endowment funds
aggregated $75,000,000. The total income of these higher institutions
of learning from all sources was $11,000,000.
The colleges and universities and professional schools in the United
States for the same year contained 135,242 students and 7,819
instructors. In the colleges and universities alone there were 46,131
men and 11,992 women. There were 34,964 in the normal schools, 6,349
in agricultural and mechanical colleges, and 35,806 in the various
professional schools. Besides, there were 117 medical schools with
4,552 students, and 145 theological schools with 7,013 students, and
54 law schools having 5,518 students.
These facts give us some faint conception of the extensive educational
agencies which have been provided, chiefly by private enterprise and
by the churches, for higher education.
It is claimed by some that the number of colleges in this country
exceeds at present the demand. It should be remembered, however, that
we are building for a population that is likely to reach 500,000,000
people. There is no doubt but that the planting and expansion of
colleges on a meager basis has been somewhat over done. The duty of
the hour is for the American people to cease establishing more
colleges, and to give their attention to strengthening those already
founded, in order that they may increase their power and efficiency.
The founders have planted better than they knew. The unfavorable
conditions and sacrifice surrounding many of their beginnings
strengthen the desire that these colleges may grow and flourish with
each succeeding generation, and continue in their beneficent work of
moulding Christian character and promoting human brotherhood.
III.
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE AMERICAN COLLEGE.
The American college occupies a distinctive place among the
educational systems of the world. It differs from the English and
Scotch systems, and is diverse in form and purpose from the German
university system. The American college signifies more than the
English _Grammar_ school, the French _Lycée_ or the German
_Gymnasium_, and its course of study is broader and more
comprehensive. The German _gymnasia_ hold the place of our high
schools and academies, and their course of study carries the student
through what is an equivalent to our Sophomore year in college.
The colleges established in the early history of our country were
shaped in some measure after the English model, but the American
college of to-day "is the bright consummate flower of democracy." We
may apply to it what Lowell says of Lincoln:
"For him her old-world moulds aside she threw,
And choosing sweet clay from the breast
Of the unexhausted West,
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new."
The American colleges have held fast to the best of the ancient
learning and utilized the best experiences and ideas of the English,
German and French systems of education, and mapped out a distinctive
system for themselves. They have sought to meet the needs of our age
and the requirements of our generation, and we have as a product the
modern American college, adapted to the wants of the people and the
formation of a strong national character.
The American people believe in individual rights and personal
sovereignty. They have accordingly shaped their institutions in
harmony with this view. In Germany the man is educated largely for
the State, but here we educate the man as a citizen and as an
individual whose intrinsic dignity and value are worthy of training.
The American college makes adequate provision for the full development
of all the human powers and the exercise of the functions of the
noblest manhood and womanhood. Her halls have always been wide open to
all the youth of the land, who have gathered by the thousand to drink
in "the American spirit of freedom and brotherhood of mankind, of
reverence for God, for law, for the Bible and for the Sabbath." Our
colleges have been built up through the generous and effective support
of the several churches, and of the patriotic people. For more than
two and a half centuries it has been the settled policy of the
American people to maintain and perpetuate colleges. They are deeply
rooted in the hearts of the people, since they are the offspring of
their free-offerings and voluntary sacrifices.
A few unthinking people are indifferent and fail to see and realize
the vital relations the colleges sustain to the national welfare; but
the more enlightened public opinion is eager and restless for their
advancement and influence. Our colleges are the pride and the crowning
glory of the American people. They bring the nation more renown than
all her fertile plains, rich treasures and splendid palaces.
In order to particularize some of the distinctive features of the
American college, we need to understand our educational system as a
whole. We start with the public school and impart to the youth a
primary education. In the high school or academy the pupil is
introduced into a higher circle of thought and life and then passes on
to the college, where the aim is to extend general culture and prepare
for special work. The educational system culminates in the university,
which is devoted chiefly to technical and professional education.
These educational agencies do not differ in kind, but in degree. There
is not as yet, however, a sufficient co-ordination of them to secure
the greatest economy of time and strength in mental effort. The
richest and broadest culture and scholarship demand a friendly and
harmonious relation between all of these educational agencies. We are
approaching co-operation and unity on these lines, but there are
practical difficulties which it is hoped that time will help to solve.
One of the difficulties has been that the standard of admission into
many of our colleges has outgrown the capacity of the high schools. In
order to supply the need of a more thorough preparation, a preparatory
department has been maintained in many colleges. The present aim and
tendency of our educational system is to introduce the pupil from the
high school to the rank of Freshman in college. This condition can not
become general unless there be a greater differentiation in the
courses of study in our high schools. It is encouraging to see that
in many States the high schools, academies and colleges are coming to
a helpful understanding of each other's province, and that there is a
practical agreement among them regarding a uniform minimum requirement
for entrance into the Freshman class in college.
The prescribed _courses of study_ in the average American college are
broad and comprehensive. They cover the general field of knowledge.
The regular parallel courses of study are usually designated
Classical, Scientific, Literary and Philosophical. These special
arrangements aim to encourage thought and study along different lines.
The groupings vary according to the time devoted to the study of
languages and other special branches. Each of the courses includes the
study of language, mathematics, science, mental and moral philosophy,
and covers a period of four years, generally designated Freshman,
Sophomore, Junior and Senior years. As a rule, in the Classical
course the study of Greek and Latin is required, while Greek is
omitted in the Scientific course, and more attention is given to the
study of the sciences. The Literary and Philosophical courses
substitute one or more of the modern languages for the ancient
classics. The number of these courses may be multiplied indefinitely,
especially in the universities where the grouping of studies is
essential to the highest success.
The work of _the college and the university_ so overlap each other
that it is difficult to make clear their distinction. The word
university is an elastic term in the United States, because until
within a brief period we have had nothing more than colleges. Many of
our colleges are called universities because of their chartered
privileges, but their aim is to become universities in fact.
Hence the terms are often used interchangeably. The few universities
we have are modelled largely after those in Germany and have grown up
by a natural development out of colleges. The reverse is true in
England, where the college has grown up within the university. The
college originally signified a society of scholars. In this country it
is an incorporated school of instruction in the liberal arts, having
one faculty, with advanced courses of study.
The college and university differ first in their _aim_. The college
endeavors to discipline the mind and form character for the broader
work in a chosen field of university study. The thorough scholastic
training is now regarded quite an essential preparation for the more
advanced work of the university. On the other hand, the university
aims at universal culture, and includes, if possible, every
description of knowledge for the training of specialists in the
various professions. Its aim is rather to do graduate work
exclusively.
Again they differ in their _courses of study_. In the college, the
courses of study include the higher branches of learning; and are so
arranged as to give the student an outline survey of the field of
knowledge. The study is largely restricted to preparing the student
for his advanced professional and technical work. The university goes
further and arranges its courses of study so as to supplement the
instruction given in college and direct the student in an advanced
grade of work in any department of intellectual life. The courses have
the broadest scope and embrace departments in liberal arts, law,
medicine, theology and science, each having a faculty composed of able
professors. Gladstone gives the true historic idea of a university in
these words: "To methodize, perpetuate and apply all knowledge which
exists and to adopt and take up into itself every new branch as it
comes successively into existence."
The college and the university likewise differ in their _methods of
work_. The college seeks the highest results in discipline. Its method
is more formal and didactic. In the later years of the college course
a certain amount of specialization is usually allowed, both for the
ends of discipline and as a provision for the work of the university
proper. The university adopts methods of work along the line of
original discovery, literary productivity, and the advancement of the
kingdom of knowledge. The inspiring aim of the university is the
discovery of truth. The student imbued with the spirit of research
passes from the known to the unknown, and feels that he lives in an
atmosphere of investigation, and in the center of the latest thought.
Finally, they differ in their resources. The college is usually
limited in its means and appliances. On the contrary, the university,
with abundant resources, great libraries and laboratories, affords a
broader scope and wider opportunities for work and growth.
The _State and denominational colleges_ have a common intellectual
aim. The first of the two often have larger resources and aim to give
more instruction in "practical affairs." Both State and
denominational colleges are generous and liberal in their spirit and
teaching. It is somewhat unfortunate that there should have arisen any
occasion for criticism by the friends of either the State universities
or of those under denominational control. One class of critics are
ready to declare that the colleges and universities under Protestant
denominational control are sectarian. Whereas it is unfair to
designate such colleges as sectarian, since as a class they are not
founded solely in the interest of any single Christian sect and are
not intolerant and bigoted. They set up no denominational standard for
entrance, and teach no particular creed or dogma, but extend their
privileges equally to all and on the same basis as the State
universities. Hence, they are denominational, but not sectarian.
It is equally unfair to assert that our State universities are godless
and run by political parties. The managers of them have possibly laid
themselves open to this criticism because they often fail to
recognize either the scientific bases or practical value of religion
and do not permit it to rank equally with the other sciences in the
courses of study. The right policy would not necessarily involve the
teaching of religious dogma, but only of facts concerning man's
spiritual nature, and the relative importance of the Christian
religion among the religious systems of the world to meet the demands
of man as a religious being. No reasonable man in a Christian nation
should object to this recognition of the science of religion. The
State universities should be at least religious in character without
having any denominational bias. The teaching of dogma in our colleges
for the sake of dogma would be narrow bigotry and rightly deserving of
censure. The State universities are as likely to be open to this
charge as the denominational colleges. The dogmas of scientists,
politicians, legalists and physicians are as intolerant and engender
as much strife as those of theologians. We are glad to believe
however, that the dogmatic spirit in all lines of study is fast
disappearing from our American colleges, and from the professions.
Again, the majority of the professors in the State universities are
avowedly Christian. Possibly one-third of the State universities have
Christian clergymen for presidents. After careful inquiry from those
in a position to know, it was ascertained that in one of the oldest
State universities there were eight professors out of more than one
hundred who were unbelievers or skeptics, and in one of the youngest
there were but three known skeptics among more than eighty professors.
Even this small number should not be possible, because one
"anti-Christian sophist or a velvet-footed infidel" may work moral and
religious disaster to the young in any college. "A college," remarks
President Gates, "must be either avowedly and openly Christian, or by
the very absence of avowed Christian influence it will be strongly
and decidedly un-Christian in its effects upon students."
The State universities will gain greater influence if they will
rigidly exclude from their teaching force the brilliant skeptic who
"becomes the center of a coterie without his gifts, dazzled by his
boldness, infected by his skepticism;" but rather employ Christian
professors who will inspire a "noble ambition that unites in its scope
the life that now is and that which is to come, that comprehends
earth-born sciences and the philosophy of salvation, the tongues of
men and the language of the city of the great King."
Likewise the State and denominational colleges and universities have
the largest freedom and independence. Their boards of management are
comparatively free from interference on the part of party politicians
and demagogues, or of those influenced by denominational prejudices.
Party leaders in the church or state may be equally liable to an undue
bias or a partisan spirit and influence which is beneath the dignity
of those who claim to represent the people in a Christian Republic.
The American college is a chartered institution, under the control of
a _Board of Trustees_ or _Regents_. These boards are composed of about
twenty or thirty representative men in church or state. They are, in
some cases, a self-perpetuating corporation, while others are chosen
for a term of years by the affiliating conferences or synods.
Occasionally, the Alumni of the college may elect some of the
Trustees. The State universities are under a Board of Regents
appointed by the Governor, with the consent of the legislative body,
or are chosen by popular election. These boards meet once or twice a
year. Their principal duties are to make laws for the government of
the college; appoint the officers and professors, and fix their
salaries and tenure of office, and hold all property entrusted to the
college, and retain general supervision and control of all
expenditures. These boards are the ultimate source of authority in
all matters pertaining to the welfare of the college.
The Chicago University and some others have a _University Council_,
composed of the chief administrative officials of the university. They
direct all administrative matters. The _University Senate_ is composed
of the heads of the departments of instruction. It is their duty to
control all educational affairs. The _Harvard Corporation_ consists of
the President, five Fellows, and the Treasurer, with the right to fill
their own vacancies. Their acts are "alterable" by the _Board of
Overseers_, to whom they are responsible. This board consists of
thirty-two members, elected by the Alumni.
_The Faculty_ is a body of instructors. The universities may have as
many faculties as there are departments of instruction. In the
American college proper there is but one faculty, composed of all the
instructors. It varies in number and efficiency according to the
number of students and financial resources of the college. The
proportionate number of professors to the students follows the custom
of the best English and German universities, which usually is one
professor for every twenty or thirty students. _The Dean_ is an
administrative officer of a department in a university, and is
concerned with the internal discipline and executive affairs.
_The Presidents_ of the American colleges are usually clergymen. They
are chosen with reference to their pre-eminent ability as scholars and
administrators. The President has oversight of the plan of
instruction, the maintenance of discipline, and is the representative
head of the college before the public. Considerable importance is
attached to the office of the President, since the success of the
college in a great measure depends on his individual talent and
character.
The American college _professors_, as a class, may be characterized as
having a living scholarship and a genuine speculative spirit,
combined with tact and firmness in teaching. They are enthusiastically
devoted to their work. There is a growing disposition to break away
from mechanical and plodding routine, and adopt an intellectual,
energizing style of questions in class work, that elicit enthusiasm
and aid the student. Lecturing is but little used. The teaching is
more of an active, earnest conversation on a special subject between
the teacher and the pupil. The instructor seeks to lead, but not to
carry, the student through the study. There is also less inclination
to dogmatize, and the student's mind is trained to habits of original
and philosophical investigation.
_The students_ in our American colleges have been well estimated by
Professor Von Holst in these words: "I have not only visited, but
lived in a number of countries, and the results of my observations of
their higher educated youth is that, though by no means as to
knowledge, yet as to the earnestness, steadiness and enthusiasm in
the pursuit of knowledge, the American students stand first. And
nature has not been in a stingy mood when weighing out their allotment
of brains! Give them but the opportunities, and you will soon see
whether they need to shun comparison with the scholars of any other
nation."
_College government_ is an important question. The college, as a
distinct and separate community, has rules and regulations based on
well-established principles, which aim to conserve the general good of
the whole body of students. The college honor can not be sustained
unless there is a recognition of authority and responsibility.
The college legislation and government rests principally with the
faculty, overseers and trustees, who aim to be liberal, yet firm.
College sentiment among students is often capricious and subject to
sudden revolutions. Some of them have strong passions, immature
judgments, and impetuous and weak wills, and authority must be lodged
with those who will sacredly uphold law and exercise a firm, rigorous
discipline.
In the early stages of college life in this country the regulations
were quite severe. In many cases the college authorities did not
hesitate to inflict upon the students corporal punishment for certain
offenses. College Presidents would sometimes personally attend to the
flogging of students, resorting to this punishment with great
solemnity. Mr. George C. Bush tells us what occurred at Harvard
College in 1674: "On that occasion the overseers of the college, the
President and Fellows, the students who chose to attend having been
called together in the library, the sentence was read in their
presence and the offender required to kneel. The President then
offered prayer, after which 'the prison keeper at Cambridge,' at a
given signal from him 'attended to the performance of his part of the
work.' The President then closed the solemn exercise with prayer."
Possibly this relic of severe college government found its example
across the water, where it is related that in a bygone age a Fellow at
Oxford, "who had been proved guilty of an over-susceptibility to the
charms of beauty, was condemned, as a penance, to preach eight sermons
in the Church of Saint Peter-in-the-East." In the days of President
Dunster, of Harvard, "no possible conduct escaped his eye. Class
deportment, plan of studies, personal habits, daily life, private
devotions, social intercourse, and civil privileges, were all
directed."
The student should feel that, in disobeying the rightful authority of
the college, he abridges the rights and privileges of every student.
The college sentiment should be so strong against unworthy conduct
that a student would as soon shrink from doing a mean action, and
having it known, as any citizen outside the college community. When it
is discovered that a student has mean and unworthy motives and wilful
evil tendencies, he should be summarily dismissed.
In some colleges the students participate in the governing affairs.
This is done by having representatives chosen from each college class,
elected by their fellow-students, who unitedly compose a College
Senate, with power to interpret the college laws, and deal with all
questions relating to the good order and decorum of students. The
President of the college is chairman, and has the power to veto the
decision of the senate. There are many favorable features of this
system. In the first place, it lessens the antagonism sometimes
manifest between the faculty and students. There are no less
requirements upon all college classes and duties, and it helps to
remove any feeling of suspicion and the semblance of espionage. The
students feel that they have been taken into confidence with the
college authorities and will get strict, even-handed justice in
college discipline. The result is that there comes to exist a more
pleasant and friendly relation between the professors and students.
Again, this system gives the freest scope for teaching. The
professor's time is not occupied doing police duty or sitting as a
juror, but is given wholly to his work as teacher.
The self-responsibility of the student also has an educating
influence, giving to the worthy and right-minded a better training for
future citizenship. It is undoubtedly true that the autonomy of a
college is an important factor in shaping the future liberties of our
country. No college, however, can hope to uphold the highest standard
of conduct by trusting to the force of rules and penalties. The spring
of right action is in the heart. All college authorities must rely
principally upon appeals to calm reason and an enlightened conscience,
reinforced by religious faith and feeling.
The general good order and morals of the students in American colleges
are changing for the better. In a large proportion of our colleges
only a small per cent. of the students use intoxicating drinks or
tobacco. All reprehensible conduct must be carried on so secretly as
to elude the college authorities. Those disposed to do evil represent
only a very small proportion of the great body of students, but these
give occasion for some supercilious and conceited correspondent of the
public press severely to criticise the college government, and to give
gross caricatures and exaggerated statements of the mischief done by
this small percentage of students, and then include the entire
academic body in the same general censure. It is generally believed by
those qualified to know that the average morals and good conduct of
the students in college are much better than those of the same number
of young men outside the college community.
The chartered colleges are entitled to confer _degrees_ as a measure
of honor the college wishes to bestow on men and women of merit. This
privilege has been so much abused by some colleges that a little
confusion arises as to the true value and significance of the degrees
conferred. In 1890, there were 8,290 degrees conferred in course or on
examination, and 727 honorary degrees, by 415 colleges and
professional schools.
In the best American colleges, the student completing the classical
course receives the degree of _Bachelor of Arts_ (A. B.)--_bas
chevalier_, a knight of low degree; it signifies "inception in arts."
If the student, after taking his bachelor's degree, pursues for a few
years some literary or scientific study, he may receive the degree of
Master of Arts (A. M.), meaning fitness to teach, a title which began
to be conferred in the twelfth century. These degrees are granted as a
reward of merit, based on examination and general fitness. The degrees
of Doctor of Divinity (D. D.) and Doctor of Laws (LL. D.) are granted
as honorary degrees to men of pre-eminent ability or for conspicuous
services. The student who completes a college course or its
equivalent, and follows it with a professional course in a university,
receives a degree recognizing the fact. Schools of Theology confer the
degree of Bachelor of Divinity (D. B.) Schools of Law, Bachelor of Law
(LL. B.), and Schools of Medicine, Doctor of Medicine (M. D.)
A post-graduate course of study, looking to the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy (Ph. D.), has reference not so much to the professional and
practical side of life as to the original investigation and
exploration of a special subject, with no other immediate aim than the
discovery of truth and a philosophical insight into the same. The
student, before receiving the degree in the best universities, is
required, at the close of his post-graduate work, to write a thesis
which would be regarded as an original contribution to the subject
discussed.
There is no practical uniformity in the scope and requirement of the
work for this degree. The Doctor's degree should stand in this
country, as it does in Europe, for research, and a general knowledge
of philosophy, with ability to open up original sources of
information. The student should be a resident graduate for at least
one year, and after rigorous examination be required to contribute
something to the advancement of knowledge, and withal be a man of good
character and judgment, before receiving this most desirable degree in
American and European universities. With such a uniform standard, this
degree will not likely depreciate in public esteem, but have, as all
degrees should, a uniform value. A federation of colleges may help to
attain this end.
College degrees are not essential to a man's success in life, but when
they are obtained as a reward of merit have a certain social value
which usually insures a speedier entrance into any chosen field of
work.
Another characteristic of American colleges is that they are _endowed_
either by churches, by the state or by individual donors. The
endowment is generally in the form of property or stocks yielding an
annual revenue. It may be a sum of money given to the college, to be
loaned and the interest to be permanently appropriated to the support
of professors or applied to the current expenses. The amount necessary
to endow a professorship varies from twenty-five to fifty thousand
dollars. The fund thus given remains intact, and the interest or
revenue of it alone is used to carry out the purpose of the donor.
No college of a high grade can exist without a generous endowment or
aid from some source. Education in the colleges and universities
throughout the world is given almost as a gratuity. It is maintained
principally through the benefactions of wealthy men who erect
buildings, found professorships and establish libraries for the use of
others.
The resources of American colleges surpass those of any other country
in the world. In 1890, the value of grounds, buildings and apparatus
for 378 colleges in the United States was $77,894,729, and the
productive fund of 315 colleges aggregated $74,090,415. In Germany,
the twenty-two universities are national property, and are supported
out of the national treasury at a large annual expense. The annual
incomes of Oxford and Cambridge in England aggregate more than
$3,500,000.
Many of the American colleges have wealthy foundations. Harvard
College has in grounds, buildings and productive endowment the sum of
$12,000,000, with an income in 1892 of $978,881.92. Columbia College
claims $13,000,000, with an annual income of $629,000. The estimated
value of the funds of Cornell College is $9,000,000, with an annual
income of more than $400,000, and Johns Hopkins University has
$5,000,000 endowment. In 1892, Yale College had $4,019,000, with an
annual income of $520,246. The Northwestern University has nearly
$3,000,000 endowment and an annual income of $225,000. Boston
University has more than $1,500,000 endowment and an annual income of
$160,000. Chicago University is one of our youngest universities, and
yet it has in property and endowment $7,500,000. These are only a
small portion of the 415 colleges and universities in this country
whose aggregate wealth and income are a source of satisfaction to all
the friends of higher education.
The munificence of the wealthy men of this nation in behalf of higher
education has excited the surprise and admiration of the old world.
Within the last quarter of a century nearly seventy-five million
dollars has been given for this cause. We recall with satisfaction
some of these distinguished donors: George Peabody left $6,000,000 of
his estate to the cause of education; Isaac Rich, $1,000,000 to Boston
University; Johns Hopkins, $3,140,000 to found a university in
Baltimore which bears his name; Asa Packard gave $3,000,000 to Lehigh
University; D. B. Fayerweather left a bequest of nearly $3,000,000 to
various colleges; Cornelius Vanderbilt gave $1,000,000 to the
Vanderbilt University; John C. Green gave $1,500,000 to Princeton
College; Amasa Stone, $600,000 to Adelbert College; George I. Seney,
$450,000 to Wesleyan University; Matthew Vassar, $800,000 to Vassar
College for women; John D. Rockefeller's gifts to the Chicago
University aggregate $4,500,000, and Leland Stanford's estate will
yield from $12,000,000 to $15,000,000 for the university that bears
his name on the Pacific Coast. These men and a host of others will be
remembered through succeeding generations for their generous
liberality. The wisdom of these noble benefactions commends itself to
the enlightened judgment of all good citizens. We believe, with
President Schurman, that "the heart behind American wealth is at the
bottom generous and discerning, and so long as money can foster
intelligence, that heart will not suffer our civilization to become a
prey to ignorance, brutishness and stupid materialism. No one knows
better than the millionaire that man lives not by bread alone." The
colleges are not founded to make money but to benefit the public by
training and fitting men for the highest service. The majority of the
students in American colleges are of limited means. If it were
possible to sustain a first-class college by means of the income from
students, the tuition would be so high as to limit the great advantage
of a higher education to a few children of rich men. The annual cost
of each undergraduate to the University at Oxford is $700, at
Cambridge $600, and at Harvard $300. If the actual expenses of running
a college of high grade were divided proportionately among the
students, they would have to pay three or four times the amount they
now do for tuition. It is important that these educational advantages
and incentives come within the reach of the humblest youth of the
Republic, in order that they may be productive of the noblest manhood
and womanhood.
Time and experience confirm the claim that the wisest and most
permanent use of money is to help endow a college. Large wealth
imposes obligations to make the best and most permanent use of it.
Every man of means ought to be a patron of learning, because it yields
the most satisfactory returns. "What better gift can we offer the
Republic," says Cicero, "than to teach and instruct the youth."
Wendell Phillips says that "education is the only interest worthy
deep, controlling anxiety of thoughtful men," and President Gilman
makes an equally forcible statement when he says that "to be concerned
in the establishment of a university is one of the noblest and most
important tasks ever imposed on a community or on a set of men."
Many of our denominational colleges are parsimoniously sustained. If
their constituency, both rich and poor, would become imbued with the
spirit of the Colonial fathers, and arouse themselves to give
liberally, their power and influence would be multiplied a hundred
fold. "Let it not be forgotten," says President Thwing, "that if the
college and university have large need of the wealth of the community,
this wealth has yet a larger need of the college and university.
Without the aid of the higher education in the past, much of the
wealth could not have been created; and without the higher education
of the present, wealth would now become sordid; gold-dust is no less
dust because it is golden. The rich man needs the college as his
beneficiary to help him to be a noble man quite as much as the college
needs his benefactions to help it make noble men. A college in poverty
can make men; a rich man (or a poor man, indeed,) cannot hoard in
meanness without degradation of manhood." The colleges are the
agencies to help call out the constructive talent of the nation. They
open the pathway of opportunity to every young man and woman who
desires to do the most for himself and humanity. Each one may link
himself through his means and prayers to these powerful agencies for
good.
IV.
THE FUNCTIONS OF THE AMERICAN COLLEGE--A SYMMETRICAL DEVELOPMENT.
The function of the American college is to train and develop all the
human powers and faculties and help the student to attain a complete
individuality. The broadest educational theory estimates the worth of
all the human powers and has the highest notion of personality, the
development of which demands the impact of physical, intellectual,
moral, and religious forces. A rounded human development provides for
the fullest and freest exercise of all the powers of being. "Culture,"
says Matthew Arnold, "is a harmonious expansion of all the powers
which make the beauty and worth of human nature, and is not
consistent with the over-development of any one power at the expense
of the rest."
Man is a unit, but inasmuch as God has endowed him with various
capacities, his highest glory should be to develop them. The only
limit to the college student is his native abilities and aptitudes,
modified by the parental training, various social influences, and the
preliminary discipline in the public schools. The college that
receives the students, with their different aims and predilections and
acquirements, and leads them to appreciate the greater possibilities
of their natures, and arouses and encourages them to strive for their
fullest development, is worthy of confidence and support.
A symmetrically developed manhood or womanhood implies _the training
of the mind to think accurately and systematically_. The tried and
historic conception of education is expressed in the Latin word,
_educare_: to lead out. It is to draw out of the living soul, by the
aid of books, appliances, and instructors, all its latent capacities,
to help in the formation of correct intellectual habits, and
pre-eminently to form character, and thus to enrich and broaden the
whole range of life. The purpose of a liberal education is not to cram
the mind with facts and principles, but "to build up and build out the
mind" by the natural process of growth, so that all knowledge from
without will be assimilated by a living mental organism. The important
work of the college is to develop intellectual power. It is to aid in
giving such a directive power of mind as will enable the student, by a
fixed determination, to recall facts, apply principles, and perform
acts as if they were spontaneous. It is so to train the judgment and
reasoning faculties of the student that in the end he will have
acquired power to do earnest intellectual work.
The direct aim of the instruction in college is to give the student
access to vital and formative knowledge by studying man and his
works, and nature and her works. He is thus led to know himself and to
know the world, and the laws which govern nature, and man as a part of
nature. He comes to see things as they are and to understand the laws
of things, and thus he thinks and acts on more perfect knowledge. If
the student is to be trained to independent thought and action, he
must have a sounder basis of knowledge than the teachings of those
whose ideas and opinions are shaped by current, ephemeral literature.
The majority of men act on too imperfect knowledge, because they will
not take the time and exercise the patience to study the facts and
principles relating to any given subject, and to do their own
thinking. Goethe says: "To act is easy, to think is hard." The remedy
is found in the college courses of study which involve the study of
ourselves through psychology, logic, and mental, moral, political and
social philosophy, and the study of nature through the sciences and
the laws of the world about us.
Another method, aside from the nature and scope of the studies
pursued, to attain the end, is through the strong personality of the
college professor. Alexander the Great said: "Philip gave me life,
Aristotle taught me how to live well," and Emerson's judgment was that
"it is little matter what you learn; the question is, with whom you
learn." It is within the power of the college professor to help
enlighten the understanding, strengthen and guide the intuitions and
reasoning faculties, and to awaken within the student a consciousness
of his new powers and capacities, and incite him to mental activity.
The highest scholastic training demands that the professor studiously
avoid all those methods of instruction which tend to mechanical habits
of thought, and which check the mind's spontaneity of growth and
repress the individuality so essential to true scholarship.
Incidental to intellectual culture in college is the ability to find
promptly the information we want. "Next to knowing a thing," says Dr.
Johnson, "is to know where to find it." No student can become a
walking encyclopædia, but he should learn while in college how to
avail himself advantageously of reference books, libraries and other
sources of information.
A college education likewise implies the ability to express one's
ideas in a clear, appropriate style. The student should be able to
tell what he knows. This clearness of thought and precision of
expression is best acquired in the class room, in the literary
societies, and in the classes devoted especially to the study of
expression.
The intellectual aim of a college should be not only to awaken and
develop independent thinking power as an abiding impulse which will
prompt to effective intellectual work, but withal the will, the
imagination, and emotive nature should be so trained that the student
will have a mental taste and moral appreciation for the best and
noblest thought. Mental discipline and the dull routine of study will
become cold and insipid unless the student is inducted into those
fields of science and literature where he will find the richest
sources of refined and elevating pleasures, and through them be
incited to noble action. It is on these lines of study that the
student acquires that spirit of study which becomes spontaneous,
attractive, and joyous. He loves culture for culture's sake, and does
not abandon its acquisition on leaving college.
A symmetrically developed manhood or womanhood involves _physical
culture_. The ascetic idea of college life no longer prevails. The
body, as well as the mind, is trained. The value to a student of good
health and an alert and vigorous body cannot be overestimated.
Educators are coming to realize more fully than in the past that the
physical and psychical factors of life are inseparable. The body and
mind are mutually related and affected. Systematic exercise
stimulates quickness of mental processes and promotes brain power.
The leading American colleges are conducted on better physiological
and hygienic principles than in the past. The student, on entering
college, is subject to a careful physical examination by a competent
physician, and a course of systematic physical training is prescribed.
Any organic defect or incipient disease is discovered, and, if
possible, corrected. Physical training has become an integral part of
a good college course. Exercise is largely compulsory, because
studious and ambitious students are likely to sacrifice physical for
intellectual training.
A well-equipped gymnasium is essential for the most thorough physical
culture. Bath-rooms, with facilities for plunge and shower baths, are
an important adjunct in promoting that healthy condition of the skin
which follows from frequent bathing. An athletic field for outdoor
sports is, likewise, a valuable accessory to develop a lithe and
active body.
The master of the gymnasium is generally a vigorous and enthusiastic
instructor, who is able to conduct skillfully daily gymnastic class
work, and relieve monotony and evoke interest by introducing a variety
of exercises for the different college classes. He is also the
hygienic adviser in all matters relating to study and recreation. The
students are taught that regular exercise, sufficient sleep, personal
cleanliness, and proper diet will correct most of the so-called
pernicious effects of over-study.
Outdoor sports, under proper restrictions, promote health and foster
mental qualities. Foot-ball and base-ball have gained an undue
prominence in some colleges. It is questionable whether they are the
most desirable forms of exercise for physical development, since only
a very small portion of the students at any one time can engage in
them.
The evil features of inter-collegiate games, especially as practiced,
offset their advantages. The undue excitement and spirit of rivalry
fostered is foreign to the true idea of an earnest student life. The
college is no monastery to make the student a recluse, but it should
be a place of solitude, a modern cloister, where the student may be
kept in partial isolation and away from the turbulent stream of public
life and distracting social influences. The student may keep in the
midst of the current of actual modern thought and life without
sacrificing the quiet seclusion which is an essential requirement for
the best scholarship.
These inter-collegiate games have been attended with temptations
perilous to character. Abundant testimony is not wanting to show that
their tendency has been toward rowdyism, gambling, debauchery, and
other disgraceful conduct. Some of the games scarcely rise above the
brutality of the prize fight. They have no elevating tendency, and no
apology can be made for their roughness and bad moral effects.
The fine natural instincts of the majority of American people are
repelled at such physical prowess. It is not necessary to introduce
the element of pugilism in order to give vent to the superabundance of
youthful animal spirits.
The abuse of these outdoor sports should not make us blind to the fact
that they have a legitimate use. It is wiser to control and direct
them than to curb the exuberance of good feeling which they call
forth, and which might find expression in less appropriate channels.
It should be borne in mind that all physical training is a failure
unless the aim is to maintain and develop health, to make the student
symmetrical, strong, graceful and better fitted for the duties of
living.
A symmetrical development involves, likewise, _the cultivation of the
moral and spiritual nature_.
The Christian religion affords the broadest educational basis,
because it presents the most exalted notion of personality and its
development. It takes account of the deepest facts of our nature, and
teaches philosophical principles that are true for all created
intelligences. Hence it is that Christianity is essential to the best
educational system. It precedes and governs true education. A narrow
and false conception of man leads to building only one side of his
nature. The will, the conscience, the emotional and spiritual natures
demand a share in the broadest culture. We cannot divide these
essential elements against themselves. The religious sentiment is so
interwoven with our being that it cannot be eliminated or dethroned.
It takes no subordinate place, because it is supreme. There is no true
theory of life without the spiritual element. All theories of
education and principles of action that do not recognize the relations
of the human soul to the supernatural are out of harmony with the laws
governing human life.
These truths have been impressed on the noblest minds. "The greatest
thought," said Daniel Webster, "that ever entered my mind, is the
thought of my personal accountability to God." And Channing says that
"man's relation to God is the great quickening truth, throwing all
other truths into insignificance, and a truth which, however obscured
and paralyzed by the many errors which ignorance and fraud have
hitherto linked with it, has ever been a chief spring of human
improvement. We look to it as the true life of the intellect. No man
can be just to himself, can comprehend his own existence, can put
forth all his powers with an heroic confidence, can deserve to be the
guide and inspirer of other minds, till he has risen to communion with
the Supreme Mind; till he feels his filial connection with the
Universal Parent; till he regards himself as the recipient and
minister of the Infinite Spirit; till he feels his consecration to the
ends which religion unfolds; till he rises above human opinion, and
is moved by a higher impulse than fame."
The Christian religion is in harmony with intellectual activity,
because it favors application to study, and enjoins the duty of
seeking truth, as well as awakens and intensifies the love of the good
and beautiful. In fact, the human intellect owes its greatest triumphs
to Christianity. From the beginning, the Christian religion has
assimilated and employed human learning, and has become a great
formative force in modern intellectual movements. It favors a broad
catholic spirit, and is the counterpoise and remedy of a narrow range
of intellectual activity. History teaches that it has been a strong
incentive in the search after truth, and the chief factor in training
the race to a higher civilized life. The changes in the progress in
modern civilization are stimulated and guided by Christian knowledge.
The whole trend of modern thought and instruction in the higher
intellectual circles is to apply Christian principles to the problems
of life. In every age it has stimulated and invigorated the human
mind. It has introduced nobler and better ideas of life, given impetus
to self-development, and has produced the highest types of manhood and
of womanhood. The inspiration and encouragement in advancing general
intelligence and founding the higher institutions of learning is
principally due to the Christian religion.
"From the days of the Apologists onwards," says Prof. John De Witt,
"learning has always advanced under the fostering care of our
religion. In the schools of Antioch and of Alexandria, in Carthage and
Hippo, in the old Rome on the Tiber, and in the new Rome on the
Bosphorus, throughout the period of the ancient church, religion is
the great inspiration of intellectual labor. How true this is of the
Middle Age I need not stop to say. Religion in Anselm assimilates the
philosophy of Plato. In the Anglican doctor it employs the dialectic
and metaphysics of Aristotle. And the true father of the inductive
philosophy, who anticipated the Organon and the very Idola of his
great namesake, is Roger Bacon, the Franciscan brother. It was to this
wonderful and unique power of Christianity to assimilate and employ
all the triumphs of the human intellect, that the Western World is
indebted for the universities by which, most of all, learning was
increased and transmitted from generation to generation. Bologna and
Naples, the school of Egbert at York, the schools of Charlemagne in
the New Christian Empire, with Alcuin as minister of education; the
later universities, with their tens of thousands of eager
students--Paris, Cologne, and Oxford--sprang into being obedient,
indeed, to a thirst for knowledge, but a thirst for knowledge which,
in turn, owed its existence and intensity to the unique fact that
Christianity alone among religions can assimilate and employ all the
truths of human philosophy, of science, and of literature."
The importance of promoting religious culture in our colleges cannot
be overestimated. Dr. Thomas Arnold has spoken words that should be
preserved in letters of gold. "Consider," he says, "what a religious
education, in the true sense of the word, is: It is no other than a
training our children to life eternal; no other than the making them
know and love God, know and abhor evil; no other than the fashioning
all the parts of our nature for the very ends which God designed for
them; the teaching our understandings to know the highest truth; the
teaching our affections to _love_ the highest good!" One of the
greatest teachers, Mark Hopkins, on the fiftieth anniversary of his
connection with Williams College, said: "Christianity is the greatest
civilizing, molding, uplifting power on this globe, and it is a sad
defect in any institution of higher learning if it does not bring
those under its care into the closest possible relation to it." The
profound French philosopher, Victor Cousin, declares that "any system
of school training which sharpens and strengthens the intellectual
powers without supplying moral culture and religious principle is a
curse rather than a blessing." And President M. E. Gates says: "In
place of the fermenting despair of nihilism, the reckless immoralities
of atheism, and the suicidal negations of agnosticism which have
cursed liberally-educated Europe, if we are to have here in America an
influence strong, binding and beneficient in our social system, as the
result of collegiate education, it must be, it can be only by
retaining in that system a clear faith in God, and by making
prominent, as the highest aim of life, the service of God in serving
the best interests of one's fellow-men."
The goal of all education is fulness of stature of men and women in
Christ. Art and science are a vain show without this aim. A man may
have a brain as keen as a Damascus scimiter, and yet he is wanting
without piety. This moral and religious equipment is necessary for
right conduct which, Matthew Arnold says, is three-fourths of life.
Other things being equal, the student that is touched and saturated
with the religious life will be under the strongest motives and attain
the highest culture and efficiency in life. A pure heart and a clear
brain are closely related. "Our education will never be perfect
unless, like the ancient temples, it is lighted from above." Martin
Luther said: "To have prayed well is to have studied well," which
accords with the idea of the best scholars in former days at
Cambridge: _Bene orasse est bene studisse_.
The Christian spirit is eminently favorable to culture and to the
promotion of literary productivity. It helps to make brilliant and
earnest teachers, and lends zest to professional ambition. "Other
things being equal," says Noah Porter, "that institution of learning
which is earnestly religious is certain to make the largest and most
valuable achievements in science and learning, as well as in literary
tastes and capacities."
President Gates forcibly expresses the thought in these words: "Man is
not, and was not meant to be, pure disembodied intellect. True
philosophy, as well as common sense, teaches that the heart and the
will have their rightful domain in every man's life. If the
understanding becomes arrogant and spurns the aid of the other powers
of the mind, not only does the man become an incomplete man, but his
intellect itself inevitably loses poise and clearness. The man ceases
to be a man, and becomes a calculating machine, and his intellect
becomes subject to those sudden reversals of legitimate processes and
results which the law of construction for calculating machines renders
inevitable in them, but from which _life_ saves the living man, the
feeling, worshiping soul."
There is nothing more important to equip the complete scholar and
gentleman than the Christian religion. Tennyson's poetic
interpretation of this truth is thus beautifully expressed:
"Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell,
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music, as before,
But vaster."
The _methods of promoting religious life in college_ are widely
varied. One of the most effective means is the positive Christian
faith and the personal religious influence of the college professors.
The student enters college at a vital and perilous period of life. The
judgment is often immature and the life principles unsettled. In this
speculative period the student may be blindly endeavoring to adjust
his faith to his reason. Especially at this time he needs professors
of superior reason, strength of faith and spiritual discernment to
unveil the divine mysteries and aid in dispelling doubt. Ex-President
Seelye, of Amherst, once said: "We should no more think of appointing
to a post of instruction here an irreligious man than we should an
immoral man, or one ignorant of the topics he would have to teach." It
is certainly no narrow bigotry that leads the Christian public to
demand that the colleges select professors loyal to the truth and the
Christian Church. United with their scientific culture and
professional ability as teachers they should embody Christian
earnestness and purity of life, and aim to send out students with a
positive and rational faith.
The parent who realizes that the moral character of his children will
be fixed, in a large measure, while in college, believes that it would
be moral suicide to permit them to come under the influence of a
professor whose religious indifference, or unfavorable remarks about
Christianity, might infuse the poison of skepticism, doubt, or
indifference, and perhaps unsettle their early religious convictions,
and "send them forth confused and adrift on the endless sea of
conflicting notions."
The courses of study in college should be arranged so as to favor the
study of the essential facts and truths of the Christian religion, and
through them promote practical piety. There is no valid reason why the
Christian religion, which is the chief energy and force in all
intellectual culture, should not be distinctly and permanently
recognized in the college curriculum. The well-established and
accepted facts of the Christian religion should be gathered and
studied with as much painstaking care, freedom of spirit, and loyalty
to truth as the scientist studies his facts and constructs his
theories. This method implies that the teacher and pupil hold in
abeyance all those probable theories, speculations, and conjectures
which are not established, as irrelevant to the work in hand. When
this scientific spirit is more effectively introduced into the study
of the Christian religion in our colleges, it will prepare the way
for the restatement of doctrine so as to commend it with increasing
force to every intelligent student. Christian truth is capable of
being built up into a system as scientific as any other. The
professor, in leading the earnest student in search of spiritual
truth, will exercise tolerance and tact, so that he will not awaken
suspicions of being actuated by a narrow bigotry, or appear as a lover
of dogmatic teachings.
Again, it is better to select text-books that have been written by
capable men who are in sympathy with the Christian religion. The
student with an immature mind, who seeks to build his faith and
theories of life on the teachings of those whose predilections are
away from Christianity, will find it fatal to his lofty ideals and
aspirations, while instruction based on Christian theism tends to lift
the mind upward, and to foster a hopeful and earnest moral and
intellectual life.
We grant that Christian character can only be incidentally produced
through the subjects studied. The same study may be taught in
different ways, and with entirely different results. The intellectual
processes involved in study do not necessarily exert a spiritual
influence. The aim and spirit of the professor and student will
determine whether the study pursued shall contribute to the
cultivation of greater reverence and exaltation of the soul. The charm
of scientific study may so occupy the student's attention as to
exclude all thoughts of the spiritual and eternal, or he may "look
through nature up to nature's God." The student may be so absorbed
with the human events and material conditions of history as to
overlook the light of God's presence and guiding hand in it all.
To be liberally educated in Christian America, one should have a
knowledge of the English Bible. It is the fountain and conservator of
pure English and the storehouse of the most inspiring thought. Its
classic beauty and lofty speculations and sublime morality are
essential to a liberal education. "Froude calls the Bible the best of
all literatures. Daniel Webster read the Bible through every year for
its effect upon his mind. Charles Sumner kept the Bible at his elbow
on his desk, and could find any passage without a concordance. Great
men have found the Bible a great inspiration. But not this alone--as a
great and inspiring literature,--but as a source of spiritual life and
power, the Bible is the basis of true collegiate growth."
The study of the English Bible in colleges is important in developing
the will and the conscience, and in evoking religious feelings which
have a practical influence on conduct. It certainly imparts a vigorous
character to education, and brings men face to face with the facts of
sin and its remedy. The presence of Christianity in the intellectual
life of the student is corrective of selfishness and other vices which
enslave the intellect and render life a disastrous failure.
It is encouraging to note that the study of the Bible is finding a
place in the American college curriculum on a level with other
studies, and time is allotted to attain a certain intellectual mastery
of it. The active class instruction is as exacting and exhausting as
any part of the college course. The student is led to trace the
historic movements and to perceive the organic character, the literary
forms and personal factors in its composition. The inductive method
adopted develops original and independent students of the Word. The
intellectual, devotional, and practical ends attained by this study
are a powerful factor in upholding and maintaining the moral and
spiritual character of the students.
Another method is that of _religious worship_. Students living in a
community with a separate intellectual and social life should be
required to meet daily for religious worship and instruction. The
sacred moments spent in the college chapel by the whole college
community are an appropriate recognition of the worth and power of the
Christian religion, and do something to meet the spiritual needs and
aspirations of the human soul. The daily gathering of the academic
body to listen to a brief but suggestive exposition of scripture, and
to unite in praise and prayer, cultivates reverence and devotion in
the student, and will be regarded by many of them in after years as
among the most delightful experiences in college life. If the
religious services are not made perfunctory, but attractive and
inspiring, in college, the students may pass to the university in
their maturer years with devotional habits, and, likely, to avail
themselves of its voluntary system of daily religious exercises.
The colleges should ever keep in view the original aim of the founders
to make them centers of evangelical power. Piety, however, should not
be a substitute for honest scholarly work. They should never permit
their enthusiasm for an intellectual training and the growth of the
sciences to obscure or conceal Him who is the Light and Life of all
men. Their immediate and primary aim should be to promote intellectual
culture, but this in nowise involves a departure from the spirit of
the forefathers who made them agencies for defending and propagating
the gospel, and for leading the youth to remember that "the fear of
the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."
It is evident, then, that the function of the college is to unfold the
intellectual, physical, moral, and spiritual life of the young people,
and especially to form character that shall be fully equipped for
carrying out the divine purpose of life.
THE ADVANCEMENT OF KNOWLEDGE.
Another function of the American college is to extend the objective
field of knowledge. The enlarged range of knowledge in our day is
owing principally to the clear thinking and earnest, original,
productive work done by college professors and students. They have
done more to extend the empire of thought than any other class of
intellectual workers. The college is the home of the arts and
sciences, and it exists to teach and promote them. Professors should
have the ability and the time, more and more, to make investigations,
to extend the domain of truth, and to give philosophical and
scientific guidance to the nation.
The university proper, as now being developed, regards as its special
function the training of men for research and professional work. Its
ample facilities and its methods of work give advanced students rare
privileges in any department of research.
"The modern university," says Professor Josiah Royce, "has its highest
business, to which all else is subordinate, the organization and
advance of learning. Not that the individual minds are now neglected.
They are wisely guarded as the servants of the one great cause. But
the real mind which the university has to train is the mind of the
nation--that concrete social mind whereof we all are ministers and
instruments. The daily business of the university is, therefore, first
of all, the creation and the advance of learning, as the means whereby
the national mind can be trained."
The constructive intellectual spirit so paramount in the university
begins in the college. The more formal methods of disciplinary work at
the beginning of a collegiate course gradually shade off, during the
closing years, into the methods and spirit of original discovery
adopted in university work. In the college there is kindled in the
student the love of new truth and an enthusiasm for the advancement of
learning. He is led to undertake creative work, and become an active,
intellectual producer, with aspirations to widen the horizon of
thought and weave the best results of his discoveries into the warp
and woof of the social organism.
The steps leading up to the important period in the student's life
where research is for the sake of fruitfulness are traceable in the
historic development and requirements of college studies. In nearly
all the colleges there is manifest a growing spirit of freedom in
pursuing a course of study. There is little doubt that elective
courses of study are a recognized necessity and benefit. It remains,
however, an open question what studies should be required and what
elected, and when the work of specialization should begin. If we keep
in view the fact that the primary aim of a college education is to
elevate and broaden the student by training him to clear and exact
thought and accurate observation and expression, we will see that,
whatever the course or subject of study chosen, it is only the means
to this end.
Required studies should be based upon the principle of the
instrumental, substantive and interpretative elements in a liberal
education. For example, the study of language is important as the
instrument of thought. A knowledge of the rich and copious foreign
languages opens up the wisdom of the past and present, and their study
develops memory and precision, as well as stimulates and provokes
thought. A knowledge of some of them is essential to the highest
professional success. The student who can read and appreciate the
foreign languages and appropriate their contents has a decided
advantage.
Mathematics is, likewise, an instrument of thought. It is the
foundation of the physical sciences and the framework of the material
universe. Its study trains the mind to think in relations and
quantities, and helps to obviate loose and confused thinking. Logic
and psychology are also important factors in developing the power of
orderly and protracted thought.
The substantive element in a liberal education is found in the study
of the natural and moral sciences. The study of them is both
attractive and stimulating, and helps to store the mind with useful
facts and principles. A general study of science should be required. A
knowledge of any favorite science involves in some measure a knowledge
of others. Physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, are all more or
less related. There is an interacting and interweaving of the facts
and principles. Aside from the information imparted, there is no other
class of study that will so effectively train the mind to accurate
habits of observation.
Philosophy is the interpretative element in education, and helps to
give unity to our knowledge. No one can reasonably lay claim to be
liberally educated who has not some knowledge of the philosophical
principles which underlie and explain the phenomena of history and
life.
These required studies should be embraced and upheld in all college
courses in order to give unity and consistency to the knowledge of the
student. The value of these different studies cannot be reasonably
doubted. The colleges of the past developed strength by studying these
few subjects. No technical studies or professional training can be
substituted for this scholastic training. The professional man
especially needs this general culture, in order to escape the danger
of concentrating and contracting his intellectual interest. Colleges
may vigorously adhere to these scholarly requirements, and yet
advantageously introduce the elective system. The student must have
depth as well as breadth of scholarship. This can be effectively done
by the specialization which the elective system affords. The character
of the different studies chosen, however, should have a cohesive and
logical connection in order to secure concentration and attain the
best results.
The student who has had the advantages of a thorough preliminary
training for admission to college, and has done faithful work in the
required studies of the Freshman and Sophomore years, should have
acquired such mental discipline and reached such a plane of
scholarship that he is prepared for the more advanced work in special
studies looking toward his life work. He should then be allowed to
choose, within reasonable limits, those subjects for study during the
Junior and Senior years in which his natural aptitudes and modes of
thought would lead him to seek the highest degree of proficiency. This
plan accords with the German system of education at the point where
the student leaves the required work of the gymnasium and enters upon
the elective work of the university. The most aggressive colleges in
America have adopted this method, and are satisfied with the results.
The elective system is beset with difficulties. Liberty is always
subject to abuse, but the best attainments are found where negligence
and mental trifling are possible. The advantages, however, are many.
When the student decides upon a course of study suited to his real or
imaginary needs, he exhibits more enthusiasm than if it is imposed.
He is spurred on to his best effort, and develops personal power in
original work. He gains depth and breadth of training, and is better
fitted for more extended study in a university where the means and
facilities are unlimited for the highest attainments in technical and
professional training.
This is the sure way to raise up a class of experts and investigators
who will keep in touch with the sources of knowledge, and, by doing
original work, contribute something new that will widen the horizon of
knowledge and extend the empire of thought.
PREPARATION FOR SERVICE.
The function of the college is something more than developing men and
women and promoting knowledge. Its aim is, likewise, _to prepare the
student for service_. The knowledge and culture gained in college are
only a means to an end. The student must not only know something, but
be able to do something in the sphere of life. The ultimate object of
all culture is to equip a person for life's work. Milton declares that
the proper system of training is "that which fits man to perform
justly and skillfully and magnanimously all the offices, both private
and public, of peace and war;" and Herbert Spencer says that "the
function which education has to discharge is to prepare us for
complete living." And again, "the great object of education," says
Emerson, "should be commensurate with the objects of life." The mind,
placed in actual conscious relations with existing realities and
phenomena, should be prepared for the largest service. To know, see,
and learn the truth is a preparation for doing. The high type of
manhood and womanhood which a liberal culture in college aims to
promote should fit the student for every walk of life, in the family,
society, church, and state.
The purpose of a college education should be twofold--_professional_
and _humanitarian_--to prepare for one's vocation in life, and to
cultivate humanitarian sympathies for the largest service. A person
possessed of the humanitarian spirit realizes that the individual life
is rooted in God, and consequently has a broader and deeper sense of
human brotherhood, which enables him to keep in vital and sympathetic
relation with human activity and experience. When these two aims
blend, the best results are obtained, both for the individual and the
community.
Aside from the scientific passion for knowledge, there is a view of
culture, as Matthew Arnold puts it, "in which all the love of our
neighbor, the impulses toward action, help, and beneficence, the
desire for removing human error, clearing human confusion, and
diminishing human misery, the noble aspiration to leave the world
better and happier than we found it--motives eminently such as are
called social--come in as a part of the grounds of culture, and the
main and pre-eminent part."
It is to be feared that in some colleges the ideals and spirit are
such as to lead the student to place power on wealth above culture,
and social position above usefulness. Professor J. M. Hart estimates
that nearly one-half of the students who attend Cambridge and Oxford
Universities, in England, do so not for the sake of study, but in
order to form good social connections. Liberal culture should not be
sacrificed to preparing men for idle social life and paying places.
Colleges do not exist to train the students' powers for personal
benefits, but to promote culture, to the end that a larger service may
be rendered to human progress. "An education," says President Hill,
"that fails in producing lofty character, sustained and nourished by a
pure faith, may, indeed, fill the world with capable and masterly men
in their vocation; but, unless it can soften the heart of success and
open the palm of power, it only strengthens the grasp of greed, and
misses the making of noble men."
The true conception of man and his duties leaves but little room for
individualism or insolent self-assertion. No one can divorce himself
from his fellow-men and their interests without lowering and debasing
his own vocation in life, and becoming enfeebled and stunted in his
own development. "The supreme object of the college," says President
M. E. Gates, "is _to give an education for power in social life_."
Every advancement in knowledge should tend to strengthen the bonds of
human sympathy. Learning should be turned to the advantage of the
people, and thus cause intelligence and helpfulness to go together.
The great example of Christ teaches that a life of service is the only
real human life. The quality of the student's character will be
determined by his use or abuse of opportunity for service.
The very character of culture is social and beneficent. The great men
of the world have most fully represented humanity. Touching the hearts
of men, they have brought out the best of humanity in themselves,
illustrating the truth of the divine law whereby we attain eminence,
"Power to him who power exerts." The best thought not only contributes
to the fulfillment of duty, but we receive impulse and mental activity
by obedience to duty. Farrar says: "There are some who wish to know
only to be known, which is base vanity; and some wish to know only
that they may sell their knowledge, which is covetousness. There are
some others who wish to know that they may be edified, and some that
they may edify; that is heavenly prudence. In other words, the object
of education is not for amusement, for fame, or for profit, but it is
that one may learn to see and know God here, and to glorify Him in
heaven hereafter. Our education is desired that, in the language of a
Harrow prayer, we may become profitable members of the church and
commonwealth, and hereafter partakers of the immortal glories of the
resurrection." The measure and worth of a college should depend upon
the pure and forceful character manifest in its students, and upon
their willingness to employ the ability and knowledge acquired to
serve the highest good of their fellow-men. The college that does this
most efficiently will produce the best results.
When this conception of the function of a college is more thoroughly
fixed upon the attention of educators and students, it may help to
present in a clearer light some educational problems in regard to
culture and practical training in college. On the one hand, there is a
demand that the work of our colleges should become higher and more
theoretical and scholarly, and, on the other hand, the utilitarian
opinion and ideal of the function of a college is that the work should
be more progressive and practical. One class emphasizes the
importance of true culture and of making ardent, methodical, and
independent search after truth, irrespective of its application; the
other believes that practice should go along with theory, and that the
college should introduce the student into the practical methods of
actual life.
They are both, in a measure, right. There are forces at work in
society to strengthen the demand that colleges teach the branches of
industry, as well as prepare men for the so-called learned
professions. The demand is based on the worth and dignity of
intelligent labor. In fact, a scientific and technical education in
some branch of industry has already won its way to the rank of a
learned profession.
The demand for industrial education has grown out of a reorganization
of the industries and trades of the world. The great industries of the
country require men of trained minds and directive intelligence to
organize and control them. Mechanical skill is in great demand, and
workmen must be trained not merely in dexterity and skill in the use
of tools, but they must be so instructed in the principles governing
science that they shall be able to reach results of the highest
practical value in the sciences and arts. This age requires better
mechanics, manufacturers, foremen, architects, farmers, and
engineers--men whose creative genius will help to awaken the
aspirations of the race to master the forces of nature and bring in an
era of more convenience, comfort, and leisure for the cultivation of
the mind and heart.
Our systems of education are planning to meet the needs of the people.
Manual training that is adapted to youth between twelve and seventeen
years of age is incorporated in the curricula of many of the existing
public schools. Besides, we have in the United States more than one
hundred advanced schools in technology founded as independent
organizations. One-third of them have shops for laboratory practice.
The fact that such a prominent place has been given to the physical
and practical sciences in the courses of study in colleges shows that
these institutions are responding to the constantly increasing demands
of a practical age. Scientific departments have been advantageously
established in connection with our well-endowed universities. It is
both desirable and practicable to give instruction in mechanical,
electrical, and civil engineering in our high grade colleges. This
should not be done, however, at the expense of liberal culture.
How far the colleges can meet the demand for technical and practical
education depends upon their condition and resources. They cannot make
bricks without straw. Wealthy men cannot perform a more generous act
than to help establish these schools of technology in connection with
our colleges, in order to give instruction in the practical and useful
arts of life.
There is danger, perhaps, in pressing the utilitarian principle in
education too far. It is not the colleges that make the greatest show
of utility that develop the most effective men. In the effort to
secure a practical education, it is important not to lessen the power
to understand and apply the foundation principles which underlie
actual practice.
In the German universities the practical and technical are left alone.
Professor J. M. Hart says of them that their "chief task, that to
which all their energies are directed, is to develop great
thinkers--men who will extend the boundaries of knowledge." We are
under different conditions in this country, but the importance of the
principle should not be overlooked. Every one has not the desire or
ability to be a great scholar and thinker, but preparation for all the
so-called practical careers of life should at least carry the student
through the rigorous discipline of a college course up to the Junior
year, when he may elect studies of a more technical nature looking to
his life work. This is the best way to get a profound insight into
principles from which to deduce practice and promote the interests of
human society.
Professor Josiah Royce has well said that "the result of this
'conflict' between the two ideals of academic work has been the union
of both in the effort of all concerned to build up a system of
university training whose ideal is at once one of scholarly method and
of scientific comprehension of fact. For the scholar, as such, be he
biologist, or grammarian, or metaphysician, the exclusive opposition
between 'words' and 'things' has no meaning. He works to understand
truth, and the truth is at once word and thing, thought and object,
insight and apprehension, law and content, form and matter. * * *
There is no science unexpressed; there is no genuine expression of
truth that ought not to seek the form of science."
The importance of scientific theories leading to the best practical
results is illustrated in the case of Columbus, whose investigations
led him to believe in the sphericity of the earth and the probability
of land in the far West. "Adams and Leverrier discovered Neptune
simultaneously and independently, simply because certain observations
had revealed perturbations that could be most naturally accounted for
by the existence of an unknown planet." After Professor Helmholtz and
others had made known the subtle laws of the transmission of sound,
there was only a step to its practical application in the use of the
telephone.
The essential condition in all industrial and social progress is the
acquisition of judgement, skill, and foresight by patient study of
facts and principles. It is energy within the being that gives birth
to achievement in the outward sphere of practical life. It is
certainly the prerogative of the colleges to extend the best
educational opportunities to the people. It should embrace their
intellectual and industrial pursuits.
The lofty and sacred purpose to render the highest service, to advance
the welfare of men, is best reached by training men and women for
leadership. The demand for educated and influential Christian
leadership is greater than the supply. In 1890 there were about
15,000,000 pupils in the public schools receiving elementary
instruction, while only one in 455 of the population was under
superior instruction in colleges. The majority of this small number
will be among the real leaders of the country. The character of the
nation will, in a large measure, depend on the character of the
colleges which train and shape these leaders.
A comparatively few men act as leaders, frame platforms, and shape
legislation. It is quite difficult to find even this small number who
are qualified for leadership. Nearly all our political and social
reform movements are asking for a Moses, or a Luther, or a Lincoln,
to lead them to victory. Some organizations of labor are officered by
foreign born leaders who are ignorant and out of sympathy with the
moral ideas and principles that have shaped our national life. There
is a large number of imperfectly equipped men in all professions and
in social movements, presuming to act as leaders, who might well be
replaced by disciplined and cultured men, able to grapple with modern
social problems, and to conduct the people to higher thought and
nobler action. Men who are to become leaders and gain a strong hold on
society must have a good foundation of general knowledge, and be
trained to think on complicated questions. The man of thorough
training, whether literary, scientific, or practical, has an immense
advantage in leadership.
It is the prerogative of the college, in its aim to serve the people,
to extend such educational opportunities to youth as will equip them
for true leadership in every vocation of life.
The American college student should be sent forth with a purpose even
stronger than that of the Greek youth, who took the oath of
citizenship in these words:
"I will transmit my fatherland [its institutions, its
civilization, its system of education, its people], not only not
less, but greater and better, than it was committed to me."
V.
STUDENT LIFE IN COLLEGE.
Admission to college is dependent upon the mental and moral fitness of
the student. If the student has completed the work of an advanced high
school, or that of an academy, he may in many colleges pass
immediately into the Freshman year without examination. The student is
generally required to have, as a necessary preparation to gain
admission to the Freshman class, three years of Latin and two of
Greek, or an amount of modern languages equivalent to the Greek,
besides mathematics, history, and English. In some cases the
qualifications of the candidate must be such as to enable him to read
at sight either Greek, Latin, French, or German. An essay in English
must be correct in composition, spelling, grammar, expression, and
division into paragraphs.
Some favor admitting the student on trial, and giving him an
opportunity to show his fitness and worth by application to study.
Certainly the best test of the student's knowledge is the ability to
pursue advantageously the prescribed course of study.
After admission to college the student has at least fifteen hours per
week of class room work. He may select, within a limited range, his
studies. This selection is done under the guidance of the professors,
and depends largely on the acquirements or deficiencies of the
student. About three-fourths of the Freshman and Sophomore years are
devoted to the classics and mathematics. A large share of the work in
the Junior and Senior years may be devoted to specialization in
science, language, mathematics, history, sociology, or philosophy. In
some cases elocution, music, and the fine arts rightly receive a fair
share of attention on the part of a large number of students
throughout the college course.
The advantages of a college education do not consist alone in the
training of the faculties and the acquisition of knowledge, but one of
its chief advantages grows out of the incidental noble and generous
associations and influences.
The college is a homogeneous community of a distinct and peculiar
type. It is a little world by itself. The professors and students are
separated from the common activities of life, and a common feeling
unites all in a common bond. There are poured into this community the
hopes, aspirations, habits, and tastes of the different students,
which are soon molded into a common life, and become, in turn, an
important factor in forming the character and directing the life of
the student.
The college classes become the organic centers of college life. For
four years the students meet, at least in the smaller colleges, in
the same lecture rooms for common studies, and become acquainted with
each other's talents, tempers, and characteristics. It is within this
charmed circle that the students find their associates and form warm
and lasting friendships. It is not to be wondered at that class spirit
runs high and class sentiment becomes a strong abiding power with the
student. It is worth much to any young man or woman to be initiated
into this hallowed sanctuary and catch its spirit and receive its
uplifting influence. These central forces of the college classes
naturally combine into a community with a common life. Thus each
college comes to have a _genius loci_ of its own. The subtle and
fascinating influence of the common life and spirit is the _esprit de
corps_ of a college, and exerts no small influence over the life of
the students. It gives exhilaration and stimulus to the students, and
its formative power is felt throughout their lives, molding character
and giving form to their opinions and direction to their aims, so
that the college becomes a real _Alma Mater_. It is this spirit that
makes and enforces a peculiar sentiment in the college community,
which becomes almost as strong as positive law. These influences
emanate in various ways. No one can trace them to their ultimate
source, but all feel the effect of these dominant forces, and realize
that their lives are, in some measure, gradually but surely becoming
molded and shaped by them. These influences are among the most
cherished recollections in after years, and unite the student to his
college with affectionate regard. There is certainly no better place
for our youth to form and solidify a manly character, and develop
independent convictions and humanitarian sympathies which will be of
lasting satisfaction.
Noah Porter, in speaking of the benefits of association in a college
community, truthfully says: "It is enough for us to be able to assert
that thousands of the noblest men, who stand foremost in the ranks of
social and professional life, would be forward to acknowledge that
they are indebted to the cultivating influences of college friendships
and college associations for the germs of their best principles, their
noblest aspirations, and their most refined tastes. * * * True
manhood, in intellect and character, is in no community so sagaciously
discerned and so honestly honored as in this community. Pretension and
shams are in none more speedily and cordially detected and exposed.
Whether displayed in manners or intellectual efforts, conceit is
rebuked and effectually repressed. Modest merit and refined tastes are
appreciated, first by the select few, and then by the less discerning
many. Each individual spectator of the goings-on of this active life
is learning intellectual and moral lessons which he cannot forget if
he would, and which he would not if he could, and he comes away with a
rich freight of the most salutary experiences of culture in his
tastes, his estimates of character, his judgments of life, as well as
of positive achievements in literary skill and power."
Some of the effective means of social life among the students are the
_open_ and the _secret_ societies. They are purely voluntary, and are
originated and managed by the members.
The _Greek Letter Societies_ are _secret_, and prevail in nearly all
colleges. They are generally limited to ten or twenty members, and the
chapters in the different colleges bear a friendly and mutual relation
to each other. Among the Eastern colleges, nearly all these societies
have elegant chapter houses, in which the members have rooms, and
where they enjoy homelike comforts; while in the Western colleges the
societies have attractive rooms, with tasteful appointments, which
become a place of rendezvous for their members. Their only bond is
congeniality. Some very different types of character are manifest in
these societies. Students group themselves according to their common
tastes, habits, and character. Some societies aim at scholarship or
literary excellence, while others make wealth or social qualities an
essential requirement. Even "fast fellows," if there be such, are
eager to group themselves together into a secret society. A few of
these societies are of a literary character, but the object of the
majority is to promote sociability. It is claimed that their influence
in some colleges is positively injurious, while in others they are
beneficial and helpful in cultivating social qualities and in
establishing warm intimate friendships among the members.
It is a question whether the attendant evils do not offset their
advantages. They are expensive, and often accompanied with
distractions unfavorable to student life. Sometimes the late hours and
suppers and other convivial indulgences absorb time and lower
scholarship. They afford opportunity secretly to do evil. The members
may plan escapades and hatch intrigues, and cover them up so as to
make it almost impossible for the college authorities to discover the
guilty ones. Yet many excellent things are said of them and of the
mutual benefits to their members.
The _open_ societies, devoted exclusively to literary work, need no
justification. They are voluntary associations for general literary
and forensic culture. Oratorical and literary accomplishments are a
prerequisite to the highest success and usefulness. The student who
improves the opportunities of these societies need not neglect his
regular college work, but in them can train himself to think
consecutively, and gain facility of expression and an acquaintance
with parliamentary law. If he makes faithful preparation, he will
escape bombast and loose thinking and expression, and will become
familiar with public movements, political questions, and social
tendencies. For these and other reasons the literary societies should
be encouraged, and students should consider it a privilege to become
members of the same.
Political clubs are, likewise, organized among the colleges to promote
the success of their several parties and the triumph of their
respective principles. At the time of national contests the clubs are
especially active at mass meetings, in joint debates, and speeches,
which set forth the merits of party principles and candidates. These
experiences are both pleasant and instructive. The dignified
participation of students in active political work tends to fire their
patriotism and better equip them for the important social and civil
duties of life. Political leagues are now organized in nearly all our
colleges, with a view to strengthen the political party ties of the
students in the several colleges and extend the party spirit and
principle.
Glee clubs and other musical clubs, together with classical and
scientific clubs, likewise afford ample opportunity for cultivating
social life, and furnish pleasant entertainment.
Interest in athletic sports and outdoor amusements is often intense.
Foot-ball and base-ball are the most popular games. Boat clubs are
especially popular at Harvard and Yale. Bicycle clubs and lawn tennis
clubs are made quite enjoyable to a large class of students.
College students also edit and publish college newspapers and
journals. They are issued as daily, weekly, or monthly papers, and are
supposed to voice the sentiment of the college and reflect its social,
intellectual, and moral conditions. These journals help to keep the
alumni and the undergraduate students in touch with the college and
its work.
The religious life in college is very important. One of the primary
purposes of the founders of American colleges was to promote such a
religious life among students that they would go forth into all
vocations as religious teachers and leaders of the people. This
religious purpose has not been entirely thwarted. The general
religious interest was never more marked and aggressive than at
present. From one-half to five-sevenths of the students in American
colleges make an open confession of Christ. In 1893, there were 70,419
young people in Protestant colleges. Of these, 38,327 were members of
churches. Within the last few years the religious tone of our colleges
has been elevated and improved. The average American student feels the
need of educating the spiritual nature, and that there is no better
way to attain this end than through a knowledge of the Bible and the
soul touch of the Christ-life.
College authorities, recognizing the student's need of daily spiritual
food, almost universally require once a day attendance at college
prayers, which last from fifteen to thirty minutes. The students have
frequent opportunities to meet the college pastor or one of the
professors for conversation on personal religion.
Revivals are of frequent occurrence in many of our American colleges.
These religious awakenings are strong and pervasive, and not only show
the deep religious interest, but give a Christian tone to the body of
students. The extent and intensity of these revivals in some colleges
is so manifest that from three-fourths to nine-tenths of the graduates
go out from their halls professing Christians.
The Young Men's and Young Women's Christian Associations are organized
in nearly all the colleges, to secure growth in the Christian life and
to encourage aggressive work among the students. They have either
separate buildings on the college campus, or rooms fitted up in some
of the college buildings, for their regular religious meetings. These
associations are operated through standing committees, composed of one
or more members from each college class. These societies have done
much to awaken, increase, and intensify the interest of the students
in religious matters, and by prayer and mutual sympathy have
strengthened each other's Christian character and principles during
the trying years of college life.
The morals of students should not be expected to rise much above the
morals of the homes from which they come. The formative period of the
student begins prior to college life. Parents who neglect this
opportune time for training the moral life should not place this
responsibility upon college professors and expect them to make up for
parental neglect. It is a well-known fact, however, that only a very
small per cent. of college students are known to be immoral. The
prevalence of the drinking habit is decreasing. In one or two of the
Eastern colleges a large per cent. of the students will take a social
glass on public occasions and at inter-collegiate games, but in
Western colleges this custom is rarely practiced. Money supplied by
over-indulgent parents is the occasion of most of the immoralities.
There is no general laxity of college law and sentiment in regard to
the morals of the student. Most college authorities deal severely with
known cases of drunkenness, theater going, and gambling.
The consensus of opinion among college authorities is that the morals
of students are better than those of the same number of youth outside
the college. "Our opinion is," says Noah Porter, "and we believe it
will be confirmed by the most extended observation and the most
accurate statistics, that there is no community in which the
pre-eminently critical period of life can be spent with greater safety
than it can in the college." President Timothy Dwight bears this
testimony: "There is no community of the same number anywhere in the
world which has a better spirit, or is more free from what is
unworthy, than the community gathered within our university borders.
The religious life of the community has been earnest and sincere. The
proportion of Christian men in the university is very large, and the
influence exerted by them is manifest in its results."
President Thwing says: "I do believe, and believe upon evidence, that
the morals of the American college student are cleaner than the morals
of the young man in the office, or behind the counter, or at the
bench. His life and associations belong to the realm of the intellect,
not to the realm of the appetite. His discipline is a training in that
virtue the most comprehensive of all virtues--the virtue of
self-control. He is able to trace more carefully than most the
relations of cause and effect in the sphere of moral action. He
recognizes the penalties of base indulgence. It is, therefore, my
conviction that the college man is at once less tempted to the
satisfaction of evil appetites, and less indulgent towards this
satisfaction, than are most young men."
The _expenses_ in college vary according to the means and dispositions
of the students themselves. In making general estimates, it is
impossible to be strictly accurate.
The average cost per year of an education at Harvard is estimated at
about $900; at Yale and Columbia, $700; at Princeton, Boston, Cornell,
and Amherst, $600; at Wellesley, Smith, and Vassar Colleges, $500 to
$600. The average cost of an education in most Western colleges does
not exceed $300 or $400. At Oberlin College, Wooster University, and
the Ohio Wesleyan University the average yearly expenses are reduced
to $200 or $250.
It is evident that higher education is more expensive in Eastern than
in Western colleges. The difference arises from various causes. The
tuition ranges from $100 to $150 in Eastern colleges, and from $30 to
$50 in Western colleges. Again, the professors in most of the Western
colleges receive smaller salaries than those in the Eastern colleges.
In many of the smaller college towns the cost of living is low.
Then the student's personal and social habits play an important part
in making up the general average. The large room rent and elaborate
furnishings, expensive athletic sports, and costly fraternity life is
much more manifest in the Eastern than in the Western colleges. The
students are prone to follow the standards of home expenses, and fall
in with the spirit of the wealthy social class, and indulge in
elaborate living. Parents should discourage any display of wealth or
extravagance in college if they wish their sons not to spend their
time attending clubs, theaters, and questionable places of amusement,
but to devote their attention to attaining true scholarship.
The student's manner of living varies according to location and
circumstances. In Eastern colleges the students reside mostly in
dormitories located on the college campus, or in fraternity chapter
houses, and secure their board outside in clubs or restaurants. These
rooms rent from $50 to $300 a year, and the price of board varies
from $3 to $7 per week. The dormitory system does not prevail to any
great extent among Western colleges. Students rent rooms in private
residences, paying from 50 cents to $2 per week, and find board in
families or clubs at a cost of $2 to $3 per week. The students
boarding in clubs are comparatively free from restraints, and often
fail to cultivate the social amenities and table manners which should
characterize a cultivated gentleman. For this reason, boarding in
private families, where a woman's presence usually lends grace and
dignity to social life at the table, is better for the student. The
college student cannot afford, for the sake of cheapness in club life,
to become rude or coarse. The people look to the college-trained man
for that inherent polish which reveals itself in good taste and
refined manners. Success and usefulness in life often depend upon
these small matters.
The students in American colleges are not measured by social and
financial standards. The colleges sustain democratic ideals and
methods by discouraging costly luxury, and encouraging simplicity of
living without making life bare of all that is elevating and refining.
They believe that "plain living and high thinking" is the way to call
out the talent hedged about by financial difficulties, as well as to
spur those gifted with fortune to higher aims and nobler efforts. The
student who has the promise of a large inheritance has intimate social
relations with those whose only capital is brain and heart. The true
college test is thus expressed by President Thwing: "Brain is the only
symbol of aristocracy, and the examination room the only field of
honor; the intellectual, ethical, spiritual powers the only test of
merit; a mighty individuality the only demand made of each, and a
noble enlargement of a noble personality the only ideal." This is a
healthful condition in college life, and tends to develop in the
student self-respect and independence as an essential element in true
citizenship.
Students of limited means are encouraged to secure an education. The
young man of ability and perseverance, who commands the esteem of the
college community, will receive encouragement and support to complete
his course in college. There are many charitable foundations to help a
needy young man in college. Harvard gives away annually to students
nearly $100,000 in prizes, scholarships, and fellowships. Cornell has
six hundred free scholarships, and other colleges deal generously with
earnest and worthy students. The hesitating young man who desires an
education would do well to follow Franklin's advice, "Young man, empty
your purse in your head." If necessity requires that the student
should go through college poorly dressed and with plain living, he can
afford to face these apparent disadvantages when he is confident that
within a few years, by force of application, he can win a position of
honor and independence as the reward of true merit. It is a
significant fact that the majority of the students in our American
colleges come from homes of moderate means, and that fully one-third
are earning their way through college.
VI.
THE PERSONAL FACTORS IN A COLLEGE EDUCATION.
One of the personal elements entering into a college education is the
choice of a college to attend. This decision is a problem of the first
importance, and should not be left to ignorance or caprice, but ought
to be carefully considered, inasmuch as it largely involves the future
type of character a student will have after the formative period of
college life. The college puts a life-long stamp upon its graduates.
It largely shapes their tastes, determines the company they keep, and
greatly influences the serious work of their lives. There are a few
principles by which we may test the excellence of a college without
undue disparagement of any.
In the first place, a young man or woman should select a college where
the standard of scholarship is high. The number and extent of studies
in the college curriculum is not so important as the quality and tone
of instruction. The world has come to require accuracy and
thoroughness in instruction. What little a student knows he ought to
know thoroughly, and then he can speak and act with assurance. A low
intellectual tone or lack of critical work on the part of a college
has a debilitating influence on the student. The professors should
have a ripe scholarship, and be earnest and strong in their work, as
well as inspire scholarly ambitions. Their bearing should be kind,
courteous, and gentlemanly, in order that the students may come to
possess more manly and womanly qualities of character as well as
scholarship. Such teachers, in close personal contact with students,
will awaken new powers, and help to discipline the mind to clear
thinking, and impart noble impulses that will enrich manhood and
womanhood.
Again, the college buildings, libraries, apparatus, and general
equipment are important, but not as essential as the teaching force.
President Gates says: "Harvard ranked as a small training college, and
had no cabinets illustrative of science, when she trained Emerson and
Holmes and Lowell, among all her gifted sons still her triple crown of
glory. Bowdoin had no expensive buildings upon her modest campus when
Hawthorne and Longfellow there drank at the celestial fount. Amherst,
among her purple hills, boasted no wealth of appliances or endowment
when she printed the roll of undergraduates rendered forever
illustrious by the names of Richard S. Storrs, Henry Ward Beecher, and
Roswell D. Hitchcock. Presidents Woolsey and Wayland, and Mark Hopkins
and Martin B. Anderson, were trained for their noble and ennobling
work in colleges which lacked rich appliances and thronging numbers."
Such, however, has been the growth of the sciences and advancement in
the methods of teaching, that in our modern schools for superior
instruction the well-equipped college has a decided advantage over
those with meager appliances.
Likewise, select a college where the life and _esprit de corps_ is the
very best. The college is not an exercising ground for the intellect
alone, but a place for inspiring ideas and aims. These are the soul of
college life. They are more important than college buildings,
endowment or libraries.
The religious principle should have the ascendancy in the choice of a
college, because religion demands the supreme place in life. The moral
and religious character is by no means fixed when the student enters
college, and he needs to come into a pure Christian atmosphere, where
the heart, as well as the mind, is molded and stimulated.
Other things being equal, the student should favor a college of his
own denomination, or the one that he thinks best represents the spirit
and form of Christianity. His church affiliations should be
strengthened. In advising this, we do so not from any sectarian
bigotry. The probabilities are that if the student attends a college
of another denomination, the impressions made may tend to produce
indifference to the church of his fathers, or weaken his own Christian
efficiency in it. The young should maintain personal loyalty to the
church that has helped to build up their Christian character and to
inspire in them a thirst for a broader culture.
It is claimed to be an advantage to the student living in the West to
select a college in his own state, where he will form his friendships
and associations, which afterward may be of value to him in his chosen
profession. In such cases, it is thought advisable to take graduate
work in the East, in some university which is pre-eminent for its
special courses, libraries, laboratories, and appliances. On the other
hand, it would often be an advantage for the Eastern student to take
work in the best universities of the West.
We come now to speak of some of the _personal hindrances and
advantages_ in acquiring an education. Student life has its
hindrances. All have not the same capacity to assimilate culture. It
requires more effort for some to master a college course than for
others. A thorough college training costs arduous labor. Many are not
willing to pay the price, and to practice the self-denial necessary to
acquire the power to think and master the great subjects of study. It
demands all the force of a strong conviction and an earnest resolution
to go through college and win a place among the thinkers of the world.
One reason why so many students enter college and drop out before they
complete their course of study, arises from the fact that they have
not acquired the power of application. Their feeble wills and
intellectual lethargy succumb before mental tasks requiring eight or
ten hours of hard, earnest work a day. They should be encouraged with
the words of Lord Bacon, who says: "There is no comparison between
that which we may lose by not trying and not succeeding, since by not
trying we throw away the chance of an immense good, and by not
succeeding we only incur the loss of a little human labor."
Again, there are those who are led to look for some short cut to
obtain a college education. This is a serious mistake. "Whatsoever a
man soweth, that shall he also reap," is as true in an intellectual
career as in any other work of life. The laws of mental growth must be
observed to make the most of ourselves, and to do the most for
humanity and God. The young must learn that it takes years of work to
get a college education. "If I am asked," says President J. W.
Bashford, "why Methodism does not produce more John Wesleys, I assign
as one reason of this failure the fact that none of us observe the
laws of mental development as John Wesley kept them, and devote the
time to mental growth which John Wesley gladly gave. I turn to
Arminius, and find that he spent between twelve and thirteen years at
the universities of Europe before he began to preach. Arminius died at
fifty-nine. Yet he left behind him a work on divinity which ranks him
with La Place and Newton, with Calvin and Augustine and Spinoza, as
one of the world's master minds. Calvin spent nine years at college,
and later was able to devote three years more to study. Augustine
devoted thirteen years to study after his father sent him away to
college before he accepted the professorship at Milan. It was eleven
years after Luther left home for college before he left the scholar's
bench for the professor's chair. Four years later, Luther took another
scholastic degree, showing that he was still pursuing his studies.
Five years more were required for Luther to reach clear convictions
on religion and theology. Paul was a student in the most celebrated
schools in Jerusalem for fifteen years. If, therefore, you do not seem
to have that mastery of truth, if you do not find yourself the
intellectual giant which you once thought you might become, do not
blame the Lord, do not depreciate your talent, until you have devoted
as many years to college studies as did Arminius, and Calvin, and
Augustine, and Wesley, and Luther, and Paul. If you would do a great
work in the world, fulfill the conditions by which men outgrow their
fellows." The student should be willing to begin at the bottom of the
ladder and work upward. It will take more time, but it will yield rich
returns and bring real satisfaction.
Again, if the college life is to be profitable and pleasant, the
student should refuse to enter an advanced class when his general
culture or discipline is so deficient as to render it difficult to
make reasonable progress in his studies. It is true that the entrance
examination is not always a fair test of the student's capacity or
promise. The difficulty cannot be corrected, and study be made a
pleasure, unless a student himself shows frankness, and is willing to
begin where every step forward is thoroughly understood.
Among the _personal advantages_ of a college education is the fact
that it helps to _emancipate the individual_. The studies pursued take
the student out of his narrow self and his present environment, and
make him conversant with other ages and conditions, where he finds his
larger self. The personality becomes enlarged and enriched by a wider
vision and a knowledge of the great and good men who have lived to
make the world better. The best thoughts of the past and the present
are at the student's command. He may place himself in touch with all
ages and peoples and feel that he is contemporaneous with the best
spirit and thought of all that have gone before. Truth thus gathered
and stored up in life and character has a wonderful emancipating
power. The gateway of truth is always thrown open to those who
earnestly knock and search for her hidden treasures. The individual in
this age, more than in any other, needs the emancipating power of
truth to act intelligently and effectively in the drama of life.
A college education likewise _tends to liberalize the individual_ by
first eliminating any self-conceit, or inclination to rashness or
falsity, and to build up firmness, judgment, and sincerity of
character. The aim of the college is to enable the student to know
himself and his mission in life. He must have a right conception of
self, because he must everywhere live and act with self. He owes it to
himself, and to the race, and to God, to make the most of life by
developing his God-given faculties. God had a purpose in creating each
person, and the aim of each individual should be to live worthy of his
origin, by finding out what God wants of him, and then training his
faculties and aptitudes on the line of this purpose. He who lives in
willful ignorance lives beneath the privileges and possibilities of a
human being created in the divine image. No one ought to be satisfied
with anything short of the noblest and best possibilities for himself.
The majority of men and women have rich capacities, and their natures
are full of resources, but these are not always called out. Their
incipient powers often need some outside impulse or suggestion to open
the chambers of the soul and lead them to discover their unconscious
capacities, natural aptitudes, and untried powers.
There are hidden forces in our nature and in life about us of which we
little dream. The marvelous forces of electricity are being applied to
all human activities, and are unfolding to us new life and new
possibilities. We are told that there are mightier currents in the
atmosphere above us than those in the Mississippi or the Amazon.
Likewise, the science of education exhibits how the trained powers of
man reveal unexpected forces and capacities, which have needed only
the touch of truth and personality to awaken a higher life and to
impart fresh inspiration. Now the college is the best place to
discover our inborn energies, and to awaken talent and develop
greatness through the influence of men and books.
The student is also liberalized by a knowledge of the truth. Ignorance
is the synonym for narrowness and bigotry. Charity, good-will, and
human brotherhood spring from a kind heart and an enlightened
understanding. The student, by reason of years of study, is better
able to see truth in its various human relations and personally
exhibit a breadth of charity unknown to those of narrow vision. His
informed judgment and quickened conscience will enable him to act
generously and to stuffer courageously, because his soul is quietly
resting in the bosom of truth.
A college education likewise _helps to fortify the individual_ for
complete living. It is in the college that the student gains a deeper
consciousness of his own ability, which gives independence to
character. Through genius, or by dint of extraordinary application, he
attains an intellectual ability which gives him the right to wield his
trained powers to uphold the truth and work for the general good. His
mental powers, stores of knowledge, and humanitarian sympathies
naturally give greater opportunity for influence and usefulness. The
judgment and reasoning powers have been trained so that the student
goes forth fortified against the acceptance of plausible delusions and
sophisms, and can speak with rightful authority as to the facts or
principles he has observed and verified. Truth and personality, thus
coupled together, face practical duties and questions with the
confident strength and heroic courage which presage victory.
The college-trained man, who enters his vocation in life as a
vigorous, virtuous and capable being, equipped with facts and
principles as the propelling power of life, will wield the greatest
influence for good. He will be fortified for the battles of life, and
able to maintain himself in honest independence.
The college offers another safeguard to the student by conserving
scholarly tastes and habits. The student who acquires a literary taste
is never at a loss to know how he may best employ his time. The baser
things of life are crowded out to give place to nobler thoughts and
higher aims. He finds his real happiness in cultivating the inner life
of exalted thought and generous impulses. He realizes that, as the
body demands sustenance, and the soul needs "bread from heaven," so
the mind must have intellectual food, which gratifies a taste for the
best thoughts of the best thinkers.
The student is also helped to fortify himself with a noble purpose. He
is led to feel that he has a mission in life, and the power of this
purpose gives an elevation to the spirit and a dignity and loftiness
to conduct. More than anything else, it helps to strengthen the will
to resist temptation and to conform to the highest moral code. By far
too many of our youth are drifting through life without any particular
aim or purpose. They fail to act in life under the inspiration of a
devotion to a great purpose. Henry D. Thoreau was right when he wrote:
"The fact is, you have got to take the world on your shoulders, like
Atlas, and put along with it. You will do this for an idea's sake, and
your success will be in proportion to your devotion to ideas. It may
make your back ache occasionally, but you will have the satisfaction
of hanging it or twirling it to suit yourself. Cowards suffer; heroes
enjoy." Any worthy calling or useful employment will lead to honor and
a broader development of self, providing that self is filled with an
absorbing love to God, so that it will be the unit of measure for
action towards a neighbor and the true base line from which his rights
and boundaries are surveyed and determined.
The college helps to fortify the young by imparting good impulses,
which enable them to enter upon life full of hope and courage. It is
the place to kindle the youth with a glow of enthusiasm, and impart an
inspiration which will pervade the whole career of life. It speaks for
the immaterial and unseen forces of life, and supplies the purest
motives by which to form a true and beautiful character.
No young man can afford to enter the wide-open door of the twentieth
century without a harmonious development of his faculties, and a
nature sensitive to the best and holiest influences, and responsive to
the most generous impulses. The aspirations of bright minds and noble
natures can never excel the lofty descriptions of wisdom by the wisest
of men.
"Happy is the man that findeth wisdom
And the man that getteth understanding,
For the merchandise of it is better than silver,
And the gain thereof than fine gold.
She is more precious than rubies,
And all things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her.
Length of days is in her right hand,
And in her left hand riches and honor;
Her ways are ways of pleasantness,
And all her paths are peace."
VII.
THE PRACTICAL VALUE OF EDUCATION.
Prince Bismarck is reported to have said that in Germany "there were
ten times as many people educated for the higher walks as there were
places to fill." Many uninformed persons are ready to make similar
statements in regard to this country, and believe that we are
over-educating the people. Colonel R. G. Ingersoll says: "You have no
idea how many men education spoils. Colleges are institutions where
brickbats are polished and diamonds dimmed."
The public schools have nearly fifteen million pupils enrolled, or
nearly one-fourth of the population of the entire country. In 1890,
the four hundred and fifteen colleges had 118,581 students in all
departments. This vast army of youth receiving instruction is
regarded, on the part of some people, with a little disquietude, and
it is believed that we are likely to have too many college-trained men
and women. There are certainly no grounds for fear if we take
education to mean the broadest culture for complete living.
If we examine more closely the figures regarding our school
population, we will find that, of the large number of pupils enrolled
in 1890, there was only "an average of three and one-half in one
hundred pupils studying any branches above the courses of study laid
down for the first eight years; that is, between the ages of six and
fourteen years."
Of the 118,581 students in our colleges, there were only 35,791 men
and 7,847 women in the collegiate department, making a total of 43,638
receiving higher instruction. The remaining number were in the
preparatory, normal, and professional departments. These students are
scattered over a great nation, and if we take students in all
departments they represent one in four hundred and fifty-five of the
population who are under superior instruction, and only one male
student in the collegiate department to a group of 1,770 of the
population. Many of those enrolled in college do not complete the
course of study. It is evident that the number of students in our
colleges is proportionately small, considering our population and the
requirements of our age, and the proportion of graduates is even
smaller.
The practical value of a college education is seriously questioned by
many good people unacquainted with the facts. There is abundant
evidence, however, which goes to prove that the college graduate has
better chances for success than the non-graduate.
It is admitted at the outset that some self-educated men have
succeeded without a college education, while some college-trained men
have failed in active life. It should be remembered that colleges do
not exist to make ability, but to develop it. There is certainly
nothing in a college education which unfits men for the practical
duties of life. Some college students have meager talent to begin
with, and a college training aims to help them make the most of
themselves.
The so-called "self-made" men have undergone the severest discipline.
By force of native ability and energy, they have surmounted
difficulties and achieved success which merits the warmest praise.
There is scarcely one of them who would not have availed himself of a
collegiate or technical training if force of circumstances had not
ordered otherwise. They feel keenly their educational disadvantages,
and believe that they would have had greater success if they could
have had the disciplinary training of a college course. Many feel as
did the distinguished orator, Henry Clay, who, when in Congressional
debate with John Randolph, a collegian, is said to have acknowledged,
with tears, the disadvantage he suffered from not having had a liberal
education.
Washington, Franklin, and Lincoln achieved success by their
application, but they were among the foremost to recognize the value
of a college training. These examples show that a college education is
not always essential to the highest service. The only just claim for a
collegiate training is that it increases the probabilities of a
person's success in life.
The criteria of comparison of the achievements of men are imperfect,
and the measure of success is not easily calculated. Great men are not
those who simply climb up to some conspicuous position. It is
important to estimate the quality of the work done, as well as the
place occupied. A greater premium should be placed upon the manhood
and womanhood put into the work, rather than the place filled. The
teachings of Christ show that there is no place in the Kingdom of God
for a place hunter, but that greatness is measured by service. In the
competition for success in life, it is often necessary to have not
only ability and worth, but the commercial instinct to gain public
recognition. The safe rule for men of talent to follow is to make
themselves conspicuously great in their present position, and make it
a stepping-stone for something greater. Charles Kingsley occupied, in
England, an apparently humble position in his rural pastorate, but the
thinking world has felt the power and influence of his great life.
Bearing in mind these restrictions in regard to the idea of success,
we offer a few suggestive facts to show the number of college men who
have made a record in the annals of the country.
The college has been the open doorway to positions of eminence and
usefulness in all countries. Lord Macaulay, in one of his speeches in
Parliament, said: "Take the Cambridge Calendar, or take the Oxford
Calendar for two hundred years; look at the church, the parliament, or
the bar, and it has always been the case that men who were first in
the competition of the schools have been first in the competition of
life."
Speaking of the advantages of a university education in Germany,
Professor J. M. Hart says: "I am warranted in saying that the majority
of the members of every legislative body in Germany, and three-fourths
of the higher office holders, and all the heads of departments, are
university graduates, or have at least taken a partial course--enough
to catch the university spirit. All the controlling elements of German
national life, therefore, have been trained to sympathize with the
freedom, intellectual and individual, which is the characteristic of
the university method."
It is estimated that only one-half of one per cent. of the male
population in America receives a college education, and yet this small
contingent of college men furnishes one-half of the Senators and
Vice-Presidents, two-thirds of the Presidents and Secretaries of
State, and seven-eighths of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the
United States.
Rev. W. F. Crafts says: "I have examined the educational records of
the seventy foremost men in American politics--Cabinet officers,
Senators, Congressmen, and Governors of national reputation--and I
find that thirty-seven of them are college graduates; that five more
had a part of the college course, but did not graduate, while only
twenty-eight did not go to college at all. As not more than one young
man in five hundred goes to college, and as this one-five-hundredth of
the young men furnishes four-sevenths of our distinguished public
officers, it appears that a collegian has seven hundred and fifty
times as many chances of being an eminent Governor or Congressman as
other young men."
The college graduate generally has the pre-eminence among professional
men. The proportion of successful men in the professions is difficult
to obtain, but if a wide reputation be regarded as the criterion of
success, the college-bred men take the lead.
President Thwing has carefully estimated that, of the 15,142 most
conspicuous persons of our American history, whose record is sketched
in "Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography," 5,326 are college
men. Among the latter, the percentage found in the various callings is
as follows: "Pioneers and explorers, 3.6 per cent.; artists, 10.4 per
cent.; inventors, 11 per cent.; philanthropists, 16 per cent.;
business men, 17 per cent.; public men, 18 per cent.; statesmen, 33
per cent.; authors, 37 per cent.; physicians, 46 per cent.; lawyers,
50 per cent.; clergymen, 58 per cent.; educators, 61 per cent.;
scientists, 63 per cent." He further estimates that one college man
in every forty attains recognition, to one in every ten thousand
non-college men; and a college-bred man has 250 times the chance of
attaining recognition that the non-college man has.
Dr. Channing says: "The grounds of a man's culture lie in his nature,
and not in his calling;" and, in keeping with this, the primary aim of
a college is to train men. Yet, it should be the door of approach to
all professions. The studies pursued in college are the foundations of
the practice of the various professions, and a young man does himself
and his profession no credit when he neglects to master a college
course because of his impatience to rush into a professional career,
and thus help to swell the army of poorly-equipped professional men.
"To practice law or medicine in France," says Matthew Arnold, "a
person must possess a diploma, which serves as a guarantee to the
public that such a person is qualified for his profession. A
licentiate of law must first have got the degree of Bachelor of
Letters; have then attended two years' lectures in a faculty of law,
and undergone two examinations, one in Justinian's Code, and the Codes
of Civil Procedure and Criminal Instruction. The new bachelor must
then, in order to become licentiate, follow a third year's lectures in
a faculty of law; undergo two more examinations, the first on the
Institutes of Justinian again, the second on the Code Napoleon, the
Code of Commerce, and Administrative Law, and must support a thesis on
questions of Roman and French Law. To be a physician or surgeon in
France, a man must have a diploma of a doctor either in medicine or in
surgery. To obtain this, he must have attended four years' lectures in
a faculty of medicine, and have two years' practice in a hospital.
When he presents himself for the first year's lectures, he must
produce a diploma of Bachelor of Letters; when for the third, that of
a Bachelor of Sciences, a certain portion of the mathematics generally
required for a third degree being, in his case, cut away. He must pass
eight examinations, and at the end of his course he must support a
thesis before his faculty."
Young men with talent and ambition are led to believe that the
professions are so over-crowded that there is very little opportunity,
in these days, for a collegian to succeed in a professional career. A
comparative study of the number of students in the professional
schools in Germany, France, and the United States, for 1890 reveals
the following facts:
KEY:
A: _Law._
B: _No. to every 100,000 population._
C: _Medicine._
D: _No. to every 100,000 population._
E: _Theology._
F: _No. to every 100,000 population._
A B C D E F
Germany, 6,304 13 8,886 18 5,849 12
France, 5,152 14 6,455 17 101 ..
United States, 4,518 7 14,884 24 7,013 11
We glance briefly at the promises which the so-called learned
professions hold out to young men. The opening for young men in the
legal profession has many difficulties, but it is not without its
rewards. David Dudley Field estimated that in 1893 there were 70,000
lawyers in the United States. If we estimate the population of the
nation at 70,000,000, there would be one lawyer for every 1,000 of the
population. Assuming that three-fourths of the population are women,
children, and men under age, there would be one lawyer to every 250
males of full age in the United States.
Germany, with a population of 50,000,000, has about 7,000 lawyers, or
one to every 7,000 persons. In the State of New York, with a
population of 6,000,000, there are 11,000 lawyers, or one for every
545 of the population. Of this number of lawyers, there is a great
proportion engaged in real estate business, or other outside matters,
which enables them to secure a maintenance. Others have entered the
law because of its promise of social position and honor.
Aside from the numbers in the legal profession, there are other
considerations in the problem. The people of to-day are less disposed
to controversy, and avoid employing lawyers to settle disputes and
differences in court, and others often hesitate to employ a lawyer for
fear of being made a victim of the rapacity of some who have brought
the profession into disrepute. Again, there is less confusion in the
laws. They are being collected, condensed, arranged, and simplified,
and people are coming to understand the codes. Likewise, the courts
are adopting simpler rules and codes of civil procedure, which give
less room for pettyfogging hindrances and delays in litigation. A
lawyer of talent, with the aid of a good stenographer and typewriter
and other advantages of to-day, can do double and treble the work of a
lawyer twenty-five years ago.
Finally, the qualifications of a lawyer never reached so high a
standard. To attain the greatest professional success, it is
indispensable to get the highest development which a college training
can give. Chauncey M. Depew says that three-fifths of the lawyers are
unfit for their profession from lack of ability or training. The
people demand abler and better lawyers. The requisite qualities of a
good lawyer to-day are not only knowledge and a good judgment, but
patience, industry, honesty, and certain other aptitudes for his work.
He must be ready to compete with a trained and talented rival. Special
training is of great value. A lawyer of several years' standing at the
bar in New York, in a recent conversation, remarked: "I studied law in
a lawyer's office. My brother, here, several years younger than
myself, went through the law school, and he has so much the advantage
of me, in consequence of that training, in the studious habits he has
formed, in being brought into immediate contact with the best legal
minds, in being held to the highest standards, that this fall I shall
enter the law school and take the entire course."
In facing these difficulties, let it be remembered that there are
always openings for young men of superior qualifications. Some one
asked Daniel Webster whether the legal profession was not
over-crowded, and he replied that there was always room at the top. An
ambitious young man of ability can win his way to the front, while
mediocrity will wait for patronage. There is jostling and crowding in
the rear ranks of every profession. It is surprising how few
thoroughly trained men are entering the profession. In 1890 there were
in the various law schools in this country 4,518 students, and only
1,255 of these had degrees in letters or science. In the same year,
1,514 were graduated in the schools of law, which was only 2.4 in
every 100,000 of the population. There is a demand for specialists.
The field is enlarging in the department of patent law, railroad law,
and other legal specialties. The business transactions of this age are
more complex, and the interests more important. Corporation
controversies need to be adjusted by those who thoroughly understand
the principles and practices of equity. "I was a teacher of law to
young men for more than twenty years," says Judge Hoadley, "and have
never seen any reason to discourage a sober, honest, and industrious
young man from studying law. He needs, first of all, absolute
fidelity, trustworthiness, and integrity; secondly, devotion to his
calling--in other words, industry that will not be interfered with by
the distraction of society or pursuit of politics. If he be honest and
willing to work, he will, with reasonable intelligence make a
sufficient success, if he have the patience to wait for success. If,
in addition, he have what I may call the lawyer's faculty--that
God-given power to appreciate leading principles and apply them to
facts as they arise, coupled with ability to reason, and to state
results cogently and persuasively,--he will make a shining success."
Again, the advantages of a thorough medical education are generally
recognized. The sacred work of ministering to the suffering demands
the most thorough instruction in medicine and methods of treatment. In
1890 there were 15,404 students in 116 medical schools in the United
States, distributed as follows: Regulars, 13,521; eclectics, 719;
homeopathists, 1,164. For the same year there were 4,492 graduates, or
7 in every 100,000 of the population. Sixteen of the medical schools
had no students enrolled who had previously obtained a literary or
scientific degree. Only 15 per cent. of all the students matriculated
had obtained a degree before entering the medical schools. There is an
evident lack of thorough preparation in foundation studies on the part
of the students. The medical profession is second to none in
importance, and the students of medicine who will give time to the
more extended culture of a college course will naturally obtain
greater skill and a broader range of thought, which will contribute to
their efficiency as practicing physicians.
It is also encouraging to know that the statistics of each decade
indicate that an increasing proportion of young men entering the
ministry have received a college education. There were 112 theological
schools in 1890, that reported 7,013 students, of whom 1,372 were
graduated, or two for every one hundred thousand of population. This
is certainly not over-crowding.
Of the students in theology enrolled in the schools of the various
denominations in 1890, the proportion was as follows: Baptists, 15.6
per cent.; Presbyterians, 15 per cent.; Methodists, 14.9 per cent.;
Lutheran, 14.7 per cent.; Roman Catholic, 13.4 per cent.;
Congregational, 9.7 per cent.; Christian, 5.5 per cent.; Episcopal,
4.7 per cent.; Hebrew, .5 per cent. Of the total enrollment, 7,013,
only 1,559 students had received degrees in letters or science. The
church demands educated men for the pulpit. A call to the ministry in
these days means that a man should prepare for the work. God does not
honor the slothful, but the man who seeks to make full proof of his
ministry. This is done when a man of piety takes the time to acquire
mental culture and refinement, and to become able properly to guide
and instruct the people. Such ministers, "thoroughly furnished unto
every good word and work," honor the church, and strengthen the cause
of Christ. Their mental endowments command respect and inspire
confidence. There never has been a time in the Christian ministry when
there was such a demand as now for ministers with minds cultivated and
well stored with knowledge, and hearts set on fire by the Holy Ghost.
The old idea that a college graduate must study for medicine, law, or
the pulpit, has attracted a large number of them into these
professions. We have learned, however, that these professions are not
superior to other avenues in science and business. A college training
is only a means to an end. It is giving a man fitness for work of any
kind. The departments opening up to college-trained men in all lines
of work are multiplying and expanding with each succeeding year.
The future is bright for those who will take up statesmanship as a
profession. Nothing has a more important bearing on the social
interests of the people than the science of civil government. The
nation is burdened with politicians, but intelligent Christian
statesmen are few. The intelligent people of this nation are asking
for men educated in history, political and social science, who, with
clear heads and loyal hearts, will use their ability for the welfare
of the public. Good citizens have too long held themselves aloof from
the great concerns of our organized society. All civic matters are
worthy of our best thought and noblest effort. The management of our
political and social interests has too often been usurped by
politicians, who, with little self-respect, efficiency, or character,
have worked not for the public good, but on the principle that "to the
victors belong the spoils." Their rapacity and greed have led them to
sacrifice principle to party. They aim to manage caucuses, pervert
elections, override the wishes and defy the moral sense of the people,
and corrupt the sources of national life.
We have come to ask for a remedy. Its answer must be found in the
young men whose patriotism will lead them to thoroughly prepare
themselves for public service and make statesmanship a profession.
Along with a broad and comprehensive knowledge of the science of
government they should cultivate the capacity for effective public
speech, in order to present political and social themes with such
power as to guide public opinion in the right direction. They must be
willing to carry their independent convictions into civil affairs, and
help to ennoble the national spirit, and purify public life, and make
it expressive of the highest intelligence and the best moral
sentiments of the people. Statesmanship is a sacred calling, and the
people are ready to uphold and encourage young men who will dedicate
themselves to this exalted work.
It is an omen of good that chairs of political and social science are
being established in all our high grade colleges to train young men
for this service. They ought to prosper, and will. Milton saw this
need years ago, and said: "The next remove must be to the study of
politics, to know the beginning, end, and reasons of political
societies; that they may not, in a dangerous fit of the commonwealth,
be such poor, shaken, uncertain reeds, of such a tottering conscience,
as many of our great counsellors have lately shown themselves, but
steadfast pillars of the state."
Those who are to be trained for this leadership, and expect to gain a
strong hold on society, should be taught and trained to think upon
complicated questions, and able not only to frame platforms and shape
legislation, but to grapple with modern social problems, and lead the
people to nobler action.
Journalism is another important field for talented young men and
women. The journalists of to-day need breadth and concentration of
mind to meet the demands of a reading and thinking people. They need a
knowledge based on history, literature, and politics in order to
report speeches correctly and to discuss living questions clearly,
cogently, and with a broad knowledge of principles and facts. The
press wields an influence next to the pulpit, and it should be
consecrated to the highest service through men qualified for editorial
work.
The profession of teaching has justly assumed a position in this
country second to none in influence and power.
There are 15,000,000 pupils in the public schools of this country.
There are 364,000 teachers employed in giving instruction to this army
of youth. College graduates are rapidly acquiring a control of the
high positions in these schools. The superintendents, principals, and
the majority of the male assistants are college graduates. A college
education is fast becoming an absolute necessity to secure a position
in the best schools. School boards will rarely select a superintendent
or a principal of the high school who has not received a collegiate
education. There is an increasing demand for thoroughly trained men
and women in this work. Few teachers can hope to attain prominence in
their profession without these advantages.
There is, likewise, a rich and fruitful field opening up to those who
receive a careful scientific education. The application of science to
the arts and industries is rapidly changing the social and economic
conditions of the people. We are unable to conceive of the
ever-widening field in which educated men will be needed to discover
new methods of concentrating and transmitting electrical and
mechanical power, thereby reducing the cost of production, and adding
to the comfort and happiness of the human family. There is a growing
demand for men versed in electrical science, who can take charge of
establishments for the transmission of power. Civil and mechanical
engineers are needed, who can wisely and economically construct our
bridges and highways of commerce, and who can apply the highest
scientific skill to all the constructive enterprises of the country.
"The Swiss and Germans aver," says Matthew Arnold, "if you question
them as to the benefit they have received from their _realschulen_ and
_polytechnicums_, that in every part of the world their men of
business, trained in these schools, are beating the English when they
meet on equal terms as to capital, and that where English capital, as
so often happens, is superior, the advantage of the Swiss or German in
instruction tends more and more to balance this superiority. I was
lately saying to one of the first mathematicians in England, who has
been a distinguished senior wrangler at Cambridge and a practical
mathematician besides, that in one department, at any rate--that of
mechanics and engineering,--we seemed, in spite of the absence of
special schools, good instruction, and the idea of science, to get on
wonderfully well. 'On the contrary,' said he, 'we get on wonderfully
ill. Our engineers have no real scientific instruction, and we let
them learn their business at our expense by the rule of thumb, but it
is a ruinous system of blunder and plunder. A man without a requisite
scientific knowledge undertakes to build a difficult bridge; he builds
three which tumble down, and so learns how to build a fourth which
stands, but somebody pays for the three failures. In France or
Switzerland he would not have been suffered to build his first bridge
until he had satisfied competent persons that he knew how to build it,
because abroad they cannot afford our extravagance.'"
We find, likewise, that our industries are demanding men trained in
applied chemistry. The application of the principles of chemical
philosophy to manufacturing steel, chemical fertilizers, artificial
preparation of articles of food, bleaching, dyeing, and printing of
cloths, offers a very inviting field of study. We might multiply
instances, but enough has been said to suggest to our minds the rich
possibilities before educated young men and women. We are only on the
edge of the future of applied science.
We need, also, to carry our culture and training into business
careers. Business is conducted by different methods than in the past.
The management affords a broader field for judgment and thought. Many,
in the future, may succeed without a college education, but they will
work at a disadvantage. The chances are always in favor of the man who
is well educated. It is a common belief that a college education
unfits a man for practical work. He often does appear at a
disadvantage on leaving college, but, other things being equal, he
will distance, within a few years, the man of like ability who has not
been rigorously trained to see, think, and judge. "Experience also
confirms this impression by the decisive testimony gathered from a
multitude of witnesses," says Noah Porter, "that the young man who
leaves college at twenty-one, and enters a counting or sales-room,
will, at twenty-three, if diligent and devoted, have outstripped in
business capacity the companion who entered the same position at
sixteen and has remained in it continuously, while in his general
resources of intellect and culture he will be greatly his superior."
Germany has for more than fifty years insisted that her youth should
not only have the foundation of a general education, but that
opportunities should be given for higher commercial instruction. This
superior education and training is producing its legitimate results.
Notwithstanding the many unfavorable circumstances which have combined
to prevent her growth in commerce and industry, Germany has gained an
amount of skill and experience in mercantile training that has no
parallel in France, England, or America. The advance of German trade
is due to the superior fitness of the Germans through their systematic
training in technical schools.
M. Ricard, in his report to the French Chamber of Commerce, said:
"Every intelligent man must admit that the invasion of our commerce by
foreigners is due entirely to this educational inferiority. The
Germans are taking our places everywhere. They even supplant the
English. Let the merchants of France take warning in time. German
commerce has better instruction, better discipline, and greater
enterprise than French commerce; it is at home everywhere; no
languages are foreign to it; it keeps a lookout over the world; it is
not ashamed to go to school, and if you do not awake from your
lethargy, it will annihilate you."
The London Chamber of Commerce found, on examination, that ninety-nine
per cent. of Englishmen who take to commercial life are unable to
correspond in any foreign language. The comparative disadvantage, on
all commercial lines, of England with Germany, is owing to "a higher
average of mercantile intelligence all round." It is not to be alleged
that the English are mentally inferior to the Germans, but, as
Professor W. G. Blackie said before the Educational Institute of
Scotland: "The question is solely an intellectual one, and must be
solved through educational means. It assumes the aspect of an
educational duel between the mercantile population of this country and
their competitors on the continent, in which the mastery is sure to
remain with those who are the most fully equipped for the contest."
The report on the superior instruction of Antwerp contains the
following words: "Men have seemed to imagine that, in order to
prosper, commerce and industry have only required money and favorable
treaties of commerce. Governments have occupied themselves with the
material side of the future merchant, without taking care to develop
his intellectual capacity, which is, indeed, the spirit of his
operations, without taking care to improve his intelligence, which is
the germ of enterprise in the commercial life of a nation."
Young men and women are often led to believe that there is no chance
for them to have a successful career, and so fail to attend college
and develop their capacity, and, as a consequence, often become
restless and idle. But this is no age for triflers. The world is in
need of educated men in all of the higher walks of life. There is
abundant room for men of ability and culture who can bring things to
pass. The fact that earnest, talented, and consecrated men and women
are overworked in their professions shows that there is a place in the
front ranks of all useful professions and vocations.
The door of the twentieth century swings open and invites the
ambitious men and women of talent and consecration to the service of
humanity, and extends the widest opportunities and the most exalted
privileges ever vouchsafed to man. Will the youth of the land be ready
to enter?
VIII.
OUR INDEBTEDNESS TO COLLEGES.
The American colleges hold the most intimate relation to the whole
community, for which they have done a vast work. They rightly enjoy
the confidence and esteem of the American people, since they have
infused into society some of the most purifying and life-giving
influences. Many of the first settlers were among the best educated
men of England, and they recognized that education was the
corner-stone of civil and religious liberty. Pembroke, Delaware,
William Penn, Roger Williams, the Winthrops, and a large number of
worthy men who settled in the early colonies came from the classical
shades of Oxford and Cambridge, and retained the educational
predilections which were so firmly established in their mother
country. The spirit and principles of our wise and godly ancestry were
early introduced into the colleges, which have conserved and
perpetuated them down to the present day.
The American people owe much to the colleges for training capable and
worthy men to fill the posts of honor and power in the nation. The men
who have given shape and character to the early political
organizations and spirit have been mostly collegians.
These institutions for higher education have trained men in history,
philosophy, and the principles of government, who have become the
right hand of strength to the nation. Their extensive knowledge and
thoroughly disciplined and comprehensive minds have been largely
instrumental in perfecting our system of government, and in elevating
the nation to the rank of one of the greatest political powers.
The colleges have trained the intellect and conscience of the
majority of students so that they have gone forth as leaders, and have
exerted a prodigious influence among the people for right thinking and
right acting. They have not only disciplined the powers of the
masterly statesmen, but have fostered among them a sense of fraternity
concerning our civil destinies. The students that have been gathered
into the colleges from the different portions of the nation have
become imbued with one sentiment, and entered upon public life linked
together by the bonds of a common intellectual life and strong
friendships, which have resulted favorably for the republic.
Some of the colonial colleges have richly repaid the nation for all
the effort and sacrifice it cost to found them. William and Mary
College has sent out twenty or more members of Congress, fifteen
United States Senators, seventeen Governors, thirty-seven Judges, a
Lieutenant General and other high officers of the Army, two
Commodores to the Navy, twelve professors, seven Cabinet officers; the
chief draughtsman and author of the Constitution, Edmund Randolph; the
most eminent of the Chief Justices, John Marshall, and three
Presidents of the United States.
Harvard has furnished two Presidents, one Vice President, fifteen
Cabinet officers, twenty Foreign Ministers, twenty-nine United States
Senators, one hundred and four Congressmen, and nineteen Governors.
Princeton has beaten the Harvard record in everything except the first
and fourth items. It has given to the country one President, two Vice
Presidents, nineteen Cabinet officers, nineteen Foreign Ministers,
fifty-five United States Senators, one hundred and forty-two
Congressmen, and thirty-five Governors.
The collegians have ranked among the principal leaders in the
political life of the nation. Fifty-eight per cent. of the chief
national offices have been filled by them. Thomas Jefferson, author
of the "Declaration of Independence," was a college man. Hamilton,
Madison, and Jay, who took such a prominent part in the framing of the
Constitution of the United States, were college-trained men.
Three-fourths of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were
college graduates. These and other superior men in public life, at
this period, were educated and possessed a scholarship that was in
compass and variety more than abreast with the learning of the time.
George Washington was a self-made man, but he had recourse to
America's greatest statesman, Alexander Hamilton, a graduate of
Columbia College, in preparing his state papers.
The counsellors of Abraham Lincoln, during the stormy days of the
Rebellion, were men of trained minds. "All the leaders," says
Professor S. N. Fellow, "in that Cabinet were college-trained men.
William H. Seward, the shrewdest diplomatist, who held other nations
at bay until the Rebellion was throttled; Salmon P. Chase, whose
fertile brain developed a financial system by which our nation was
saved from national bankruptcy, and made national bonds as good as the
gold in foreign markets; Edwin M. Stanton, that man of iron, who
organized a million of raw recruits into an army equal to any in the
world; Gideon Welles, who, almost from nothing, created a navy
sufficient for our needs,--each of these, and every other member of
Lincoln's Cabinet, save one, was a college graduate. So, also, in the
army. It was not until thoroughly trained and disciplined men filled
the chief places in command that the Federal forces overwhelmed and
destroyed the Rebellion. We repeat, the law is, and it is believed to
be universal, that the higher the rank or position, the larger per
cent. of college graduates are found in it."
Education was an important factor in deciding the issues of our Civil
War. Thoroughly trained and disciplined men filled the chief places
in command in the Federal Army. The Northern soldiers were better
educated than those of the South. It has been said that "in the German
Army that fought the battles of the Franco-Prussian war, those who
could neither read nor write amounted to only 3.8 per cent., while in
the French Army the number amounted to 30.4 per cent." According to
the admission of the defeated, the universities conquered at Sedan.
Perhaps it is not too much to say that the great number of colleges in
the Northern States conquered at Appomattox.
A large per cent. of the leaders in the American Congress, during the
trying period of our country's history from 1860 to 1870, were either
college graduates or had taken a partial course in college and gained
its inspiration.
The college graduates have furnished 33 per cent. of the Congressmen,
46 per cent. of the Senators, 50 per cent. of the Vice Presidents, 65
per cent. of the Presidents, 73 per cent. of the Associate Judges,
and 83 per cent. of the Chief Justices of the Supreme Court of the
United States.
Again, we are especially indebted to the colleges for encouraging
private and public schools, through which we have become an
enlightened people. It is impossible to estimate the indebtedness of
popular to collegiate education. There is an intimate and vital
relation between the college and the public schools, which differ not
in kind, but only in the degree of instruction. "The success and
usefulness of common schools," says Professor W. S. Tyler, "is exactly
proportioned to the popularity and prosperity of the colleges, and
whatever is done for or against the one is sure to react, with equal
force and similar results, upon the other."
The colleges have been foremost in advocating that the education of
the youth should not be left to those of meager attainments and narrow
sympathies. They have maintained that, in order to reap the best
advantages of our public schools, it is important to have wise,
competent, Christian men and women to give instruction, as well as to
prepare text-books, and to increase the appliances employed in
teaching.
It has been a difficult task to bring our public school system to the
present condition of progress. The work has proceeded slowly and
steadily under the example and inspiration of great educational
centers. The excellence and usefulness of our school system has
advanced just in proportion to the culture and ability of the
teachers. A collegiate education has always tended to foster and
encourage higher standards of scholarship among teachers, and this
influence has been diffused into the public school system. President
Charles W. Super truthfully says: "That which leads up to the highest
must always be supervised and directed by that which is at the top. A
system of elementary and secondary education which does not culminate
in the university, and make that the goal towards which its efforts
are directed, is an absurdity. There must be good teachers before
there can be good schools, and good teachers can only be formed in
institutions that are chiefly concerned with knowledge at first hand.
This has been a recognized principle in Germany for half a century, or
longer; is now almost universally admitted in France, and is the goal
toward which the whole civilized world is rapidly moving."
The efficiency of our public schools has been felt in every department
of our social organization. They have been a strong bulwark against
the influences of a raw and uninstructed foreign population, who, like
a tidal wave, have flooded our shores. Some of these have not only
been ignorant and infidel, but filled with monarchical ideas and
un-American sentiment. The public schools have brought their children
into accord with our American institutions, and developed intelligent
patriotism. They have taught the youth common rights and privileges,
and helped to generate a union of sympathy and sentiment which leads
to the consolidation of our society into a homogeneous body.
The colleges, working through the public school teachers, have
likewise helped to educate the millions of the manumitted and
enfranchised colored people, and to break up sectionalism, allay party
strife, and make for the peace, prosperity, and unity of the nation.
Our political safety has called for a wise and vigorous effort to
educate the masses and to assimilate the heterogeneous elements into
our body politic. The public schools and colleges, with their
interdependence, have in a great measure met the demand, and given us
a legacy of peace, prosperity, and intelligence enjoyed by all the
people.
Likewise, the colleges have contributed largely to the general
prosperity and material progress of society. They are the real centers
of power of this enterprising and progressive age. "The revival of
learning and the epoch of discovery ushered in the epoch of natural
science, which has made possible the epoch of useful inventions."
College-trained men are the most practical and useful of men. They
have been the creators of material wealth and prosperity. Their
discoveries and inventions have revolutionized business and social
life. Every department of life is teeming with the fruits of science
and philosophy, which have been largely built up by colleges and
college-trained men. Bacon, Newton and Locke were sons of the English
universities. Watt and Fulton associated with college men, and
"derived from them the principles of science which they applied in the
development of the steam engine and steam navigation. Professor Morse,
the inventor of the electric telegraph, was not only a college
graduate and professor, but made his great experiments within the
walls of a university." Likewise, many other scientists, who have
demonstrated the limitless possibilities of steam and electricity, and
other valuable discoveries and inventions, were either trained in the
colleges or received from them the working principles which were
essential to their success. These human inventions are of priceless
value to the people. The steam engine has contributed greatly to human
welfare. It represents, in the United States alone, 20,000,000 horse
power in the form of locomotives, or the steam power of 300 horses for
each thousand inhabitants. Besides all this, 6,000,000 horse power in
stationary steam engines manufacture goods for us. They give the vast
force which toils for us, and the laborer furnishes only the guiding
power. These inventions have enabled us to increase our wealth at the
rate of $2,000,000,000 a year during the last decade, and helped to
make our people sharers in the products of the world, and in all the
blessings of civilization.
Professor Huxley was right when he said: "If the nation could purchase
a potential Watt, or Davy, or Faraday, at a cost of a hundred thousand
pounds down, he would be dirt cheap at that money." Fifty-two of the
inventions now prized by the civilized world were made in Germany, and
within the influence of her universities. All these discoveries are
opening the doors for more wonderful disclosures. All the great
industries of the country require men of trained minds and directive
intelligence to organize and control them, and the colleges are
recognized agencies to help produce them.
Our literature is also largely the fruit of college labor and tastes.
The colleges, as centers of intellectual life, have fostered literary
tastes in those who have built up and enriched literature. Their
libraries and lectures have gathered together men of literary aims and
ambitions, so that the seat of the college has become the home of new
and grand ideas, which at once encourage literature and science. This
congenial intellectual atmosphere has incited many a young person to
project noble literary plans.
The majority of great writers have spent years at the university. Lord
Bacon outlined his gigantic plan for "the Instauration of the
Sciences" during the four years spent in the University of Cambridge.
Milton laid the foundations of his classical scholarship in the
university. "Newton was matured in academic discipline, a fellow in
Trinity College, Cambridge, and a professor of mathematics. He passed
fifteen years of his life in the cloisters of a college, and solved
the problems of the universe from the turret over Trinity gateway."
The literary influences of our colleges were early manifest in our
nation. The scholarship, classical taste, and fine literary style of
the superior men in public life led the Earl of Chatham, in the House
of Lords, in 1775, to pay "a tribute of eloquent homage to the
intellectual force, the symmetry, and the decorum of the state papers
recently transmitted from America, which was virtually an announcement
that America had become an integral part of the civilized world, and a
member of the republic of letters."
The colleges have nourished the conditions out of which a pure,
classical literature may grow. Such men as Edward T. Channing, of
Harvard, and Webster, Worcester and Goodrich, of Yale, have performed
an inestimable service in preparing the way for our mother tongue to
be spoken in its purity.
In the line of history, the American colleges have given the nation
such men as Bancroft, Parkman, Palfrey, Prescott, Motley, Winthrop and
Adams. In the sciences, there are Dana, Gray, Cooke, Walker, Porter,
Woolsey and Agassiz. In law and political science, we have Hamilton,
Jefferson, Adams, Evarts, Webster, Chase, Choate, Everett and Sumner.
These men have been the true architects of the state. The pulpit is
represented by such men as Mather, Edwards, Dwight, Storrs, Warren,
Beecher, Talmage, Cook, Thomson and Brooks.
Literary genius has been displayed by men like Longfellow, Bryant,
Lowell, Holmes, Hawthorne, Mitchell, Holland, Emerson and a host of
lights scarcely less brilliant. These men, who have written in a terse
and graphic style, received their stimulus and training in college,
and are among the bright examples of classical scholarship, and the
results of their genius have enriched character and enlightened the
world.
The periodical literature reflects the prevailing ideas, sentiments
and spirit of the American people. The college-trained men have been
especially quick to utilize this throne of power to guide the public
mind to right principles and inspiring motives. The colleges must
continue to be fountains whence shall flow a pure, earnest, and
truthful literature, which will, in a great measure, determine the
destiny of the present and future generations.
We are especially indebted to the colleges for the maintenance of the
ascendency of the moral and religious principles which have done so
much in unfolding and shaping our national life. The religious
sentiment has been the controlling spirit of the nation, and our
patriotism has issued from a meditative and religious temper, which
the colleges have been foremost in fostering. Nearly all the great
religious and reformatory movements have proceeded from the colleges
and universities, whereby great good has come to society. "It was
through the interchange of students between the Universities of Oxford
and Prague that the teachings of Wycliff passed over into Bohemia and
issued in the splendid work of Huss. It was from college students of
Florence that Colet, and Erasmus, and More caught somewhat of the
spirit of Savonarola, and felt the power of truths that emerged in
the Italian Renaissance, and made them contribute so grandly to
religious liberty in England. It was in the presence of the college
students of Germany that Martin Luther nailed his thesis to the doors,
and burned the papal bull, and lit the watch-fire of the Reformation
that has awaked an answering brightness from ten thousand hills. It
was from a little circle of Oxford students that God led forth Wesley
and Whitfield to shake the mighty pillars of unbelief in the
eighteenth century."
President William F. Warren says: "By means of the great religious
movement called Puritanism, the English University of Cambridge
shaped, for nearly two hundred years, the intellectual and spiritual
life of New England. Emmanuel College, the one in which John Harvard,
Thomas Hooker, John Cotton, and many of the early New England leaders
were educated, was founded for the express purpose of providing a
nursery for the propagation of Puritan principles. Never were the
hopes of founders more fruitfully fulfilled. The New World, then just
opening, furnished a field of unimagined extent, with motives and
social forces and ranges of opportunity which even yet are a marvel.
By founding a new England beyond the sea, and planting a new Emmanuel
College in a new Cambridge, English Puritanism was enabled to
transcend itself, to exchange the attitude of a struggling
ecclesiastical party for that of an Established Church. It gained the
opportunity to originate a new social order, and to impress itself
upon a new age, built upon new and democratic principles. The initial
and fundamental covenant out of which grew the chief of all New
England colonies--that of Massachusetts Bay--was formulated and signed
in ancient Cambridge. In fact, in American Puritanism, with its
social, civil, and religious results, may be seen the high-water mark
of the intellectual and spiritual influence which, in the whole course
of history, have thus far proceeded from the banks of the Cam." The
church, in harmony with the genius of Christianity, has always
fostered education. It assumes to guard Christianity by directing
education as one of its most powerful of organized forces.
The existence and support of colleges are largely due to the Christian
Church. They are the offspring of a dominant desire to promote the
cause of Christ, and make them powerful agencies for a positive and
aggressive Christianity. In the middle ages the pious princes,
Charlemagne and Alfred, established schools for the elevation of the
clergy. Oxford, Cambridge and Glasgow Universities were established
and fostered by the church to educate more fully the clergy. The
founders of Harvard College thus described their motive: "Dreading to
leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our ministers shall
lie in the dust." Yale College was founded by preachers for a like
purpose. Princeton College was founded "to supply the church with
learned and able preachers of the Word." The fact is that prior to the
eighteenth century there was no university founded save those
established for the glory of God and the good of the church.
The chosen mottoes of the colleges indicate the spirit of the
founders. That of Oxford is, "The Lord is My Light;" Harvard, "Christ
and the Church;" Yale, "Light and Truth." Eighty-three per cent. of
the colleges in our land were founded by Christian philanthropy, and
are under denominational control. The spirit of infidelity does not
lead men to make the sacrifices to found colleges. Perhaps there is
not more than one in our nation.
The majority of colleges are positively religious. According to Dr.
Dorchester, even Harvard, the oldest college in the United States,
that wishes to be understood as non-denominational, has been, for more
than half a century, "under the direction of a Board of Fellows, all
of whom have been Unitarians, except one elected within a few years;
and, besides, the theological school of Harvard College is usually
mentioned in the Unitarian Year Book as a Unitarian institution."
Leland Stanford University is one of the youngest and richest of our
American colleges. The regulations declare it to be the duty of the
trustees "to prohibit sectarian instruction, but to have taught the
immortality of the soul, the existence of an all-wise and benevolent
Creator, and that obedience to His laws is the highest duty of man."
Both of these colleges, reported as "non-sectarian," generously
provide buildings and pastors for religious services and lectures. Dr.
Dorchester believes that one-third of the State universities are under
the presidency of evangelical divines. He further states that "in 1830
the students in the denominational colleges were 76.6 per cent. of the
whole; in 1884, they were 79.2 per cent."
All the foregoing facts show the strong and enduring progress of
Christianity in the United States; that it is "identified with the
highest educational culture of the age; that the denominational
institutions are incalculably leading in number and students all the
undenominational colleges, and that the great principles and blessed
experiences of Christianity are voluntarily and intelligently adopted
by a far larger proportion of college students than ever before."
The colleges have upheld the vital truths of the gospel by expounding
the scriptures, and setting forth their ethical and religious
teaching. They recognize that the divine order in saving men is
through the inward working of the truth and spirit of God in their
souls. Since knowledge is essential to salvation, it is a duty to
enlighten men and bring them to understand the divine plan of
salvation. The Bible has been communicated to us in foreign languages,
and requires prolonged study and extensive knowledge in order that
these oracles of God may be known and accepted among men.
The colleges have given a higher efficiency to the Christian ministry.
There are those who have obtained their training and knowledge outside
of the college who have accomplished great good. There are pious and
devoted men who are illiterate, but whose Christian work has been
attended with more apparent results than some college-trained
ministers. These, however, are the exception. The rule is that those
who combine with their piety scholarly acquisitions exert by far the
greatest influence for good. The history of Christianity shows how God
has raised up a multitude of scholarly men to uphold the supremacy of
the gospel over all its foes. Paul, Luther, Melancthon, Calvin, Knox,
Cranmer, Wesley and Fletcher were all college-trained men. These men,
with others, endowed with mental vigor, great learning and executive
force, have been used by God to accomplish His great task of building
up His kingdom on earth.
The church has learned that there is no need of antagonism between
knowledge and spirituality. Knowledge and intellectual training may
work evil in an undevout mind, but when consecrated to the service of
Christ, learning becomes the handmaid of piety. The strength and power
of the Christian Church of to-day are attributable in no small degree
to the Christian colleges, that have not only encouraged mental
training, but have fostered refinement and humble evangelical piety.
The union of scholarly training and a holy life has raised the
ministry in the public estimation so that it commands more respect and
influence for good than ever before. The cause of Christ never took
such hold on the popular mind, and its influence never penetrated so
deeply the foundations of our social organism as it does in our day.
It is farthest from our aim to exalt and magnify the knowledge that
"puffeth up," or unduly to glorify the human faculties, but we do
plead that the widest opportunity be offered our youth to enlarge
their knowledge, and strengthen and train their mental powers, and
make the most of themselves, and that they may be consecrated to the
Master's service. Men and women thus trained in our Christian
colleges, and eminent alike for learning and piety, will more and more
esteem the divine revelations, and through them help to hasten the
establishment of the Kingdom of righteousness on the earth.
The Students' Volunteer Movement began in 1876. It aims to awaken a
deeper interest in foreign missions among college students, and to
enlist their services. Within a brief period, more than 4,000 students
consecrated their lives to this heroic Christian work. Already, since
the movement began, 600 young men and women have entered the mission
field, and thousands of others are waiting on a hesitating church to
furnish the means to send them to work in foreign lands. Well did
Ex-President McCosh say that the Christian Church had not witnessed
such a spirit of consecration since the day of Pentecost.
The colleges have done another valuable service in awakening and
strengthening in the national life a deeper sense of the value and
importance of human knowledge. They are monuments of the dignity and
worth of ideas, and the aspirations of the human soul.
In a new country, with its marvelous possibilities, the danger has
been in having an excessive and exaggerated estimate of our national
advantages, and our civilization has tended to take on a too
mechanical and material character. We need to have more time to
cultivate the nobler nature, and, by Christian and scholarly
associations and more intimate friendships, discover and prize the
fineness and sweetness of character in others, which may enrich our
own life and incite us to worthy action. It is the province of higher
education to help foster those conditions of mind and heart whose
flexibility and natural aptitudes lead the individual "to draw ever
nearer to a sense of what is indeed beautiful, graceful, and
becoming." Such wisdom and goodness are of the highest practical
utility in the life of a nation. The colleges have helped to offset
the material tendency of our civilization by holding up high ideals
and emphasizing the supremacy of the unseen mental, moral, and
spiritual forces in our life. Through their leadership in the schools,
and through the press, platform and pulpit, they have introduced into
the fomenting mind of the republic the noblest ideals and the most
generous incentives, which have, in a large measure, transformed
public sentiment for the better. We have, at least, learned one great
lesson in our history: that if we would have peace, contentment,
happiness and prosperity, we must give the people a Christian
education, and put all we can into character.
The college receives students from all ranks and conditions of
society, and holds open to them its great opportunities, and worthily
trains them to go forth into those professions and higher walks of
life where their generous character and refreshing influences may be
of larger service to the whole community. In the language of President
Thwing, it may be said that "it is to the people that the college and
university desire to give more than they receive from the people. It
is not unjust to say that the people are debtors. The community has
given to Yale, and to Princeton, and to Harvard, much, but Yale, and
Princeton, and Harvard have given to the community more. For the
college and the university are set to hold up the worth of things to
the mind, and these things are the worthiest. In an age democratic and
material, they are to represent the monarchy of the immaterial. In an
age of luxuriousness, they are to declare the words of Him, homeless
and pillowless, who said: 'A man's life consisteth not in the
abundance of things which he hath.' They stand for the continuity of
the best life, intellectual, ethical, religious, Christian. In the
realm of thought, they stand for the value of ideas; in the realm of
morals, for the value of ideals; in the realm of being, like the
church, for the value of character."
Next to the home, the college has been the ruling spirit in private
and public life. The colleges have rigorously upheld the principles of
piety, justice and sacred regard for truth as the best foundation of
social order. The true wealth and power of the nation are the great
and good men produced by the colleges whose example and influence have
been to promote intelligence and good order in society.
We look over our vast territory, with its multiplied resources and
growing population, and rejoice in our material possibilities and
social privileges. But what is better and grander than all these, is
the fact that more than 300 Christian colleges are scattered over our
land as beacon lights in our national life, building up Christian
character as the best legacy for present and future generations. Some
of the colleges are yet weak and struggling, but they glory in their
aspirations and prospects of future grandeur. The great fabric of our
national life is radiant with the golden threads of good influences
emanating from these centers of superior intelligence and instruction,
where time is given for careful thought and reflection on the great
problems of life.
Education by the Christian college is essential to the largest growth
and progress of the state, the church, and all humanitarian movements.
"The progress grows more rapid," says William T. Harris, "as the
Christian spirit which leavens our civilizations sends forward, one
after another, its legions into the field; for great inventions, as
well as great moral reforms, proceed from Christianity."
No one can afford to be indifferent to the power and influence for
good of the Christian college. These are immeasurable. The Christian
Church and all the friends of human progress and welfare must, more
and more, emphasize the lesson that, if we educate in our colleges the
leading minds of the nation, we will be able so to control the
prevailing habits and modes of thought throughout the country as to
secure the permanency and glory of Christian liberty and religious
institutions.
These truths may be enforced by many historic examples. The Jesuits
have always been eminent for their adroit management of men. They
recovered a large part of Europe to the papacy by seizing and
controlling the colleges and universities as fountains of power. They
had at one time under their control 600 colleges. They made it their
business to educate the leading minds, and through them to guide and
govern communities and nations. When only one in thirty of the
inhabitants of Austria adhered to the papacy, Professor Ranke says
that "the Jesuits obtained a controlling influence in the
universities, and in a single generation Austria was lost to the
Reformation and regained to the papal hierarchy."
In the sixteenth century, the Protestant King of Poland appointed a
Jesuit minister of public instruction, who soon filled the professors'
chairs with members of his own order. The "scale was soon turned, and
the doctrines of the Reformation never again recovered the
ascendency."
In our own day, the influence of a college education is seen in the
case of a number of young Bulgarians at Roberts College, in
Constantinople. These students rekindled hope and courage in the
people and revived the feeling of nationality in the hearts of the
Bulgarians. This prepared the way for a general uprising in 1876, the
bloody repression of which brought on the war with Russia, which led
to the liberation of the province. Thus, influences descend with power
from above into society. The colleges are the right arm of strength
for all noble efforts for human welfare. Professor Van Holst, in his
recent address, delivered at Chicago, said: "The most effectual way to
lift the masses to a higher plane--materially, intellectually and
morally--is to do everything favoring the climbing up of an
ever-increasing minority to higher and higher intellectual and moral
altitudes. Therefore, universities of the very highest order become
every year more desirable--nay, necessary--for the preservation and
the development of the vital forces of American democracy.
Undoubtedly, to have them established is the interest of those who
would frequent them, but it is still infinitely more in the interests
of the American people in its entirety."
It is impossible to estimate all the good that comes to society
through the influence of the college. It is quite evident that our
colleges stand for the production of the highest manhood and
womanhood, and their friends should marshal their forces to enhance
their growth and usefulness. It is the underlying forces at work for
good in our colleges that insure the integrity and safety of our
social and religious organizations. Men and women who have means
should regard it a privilege to lavish their gifts upon the colleges
that labor for the imperishable things of life, and provide incentives
for the highest Christian character and activity. He who consecrates
his money to found a professorship in a Christian college erects a
monument to the worth of the human soul, and perpetuates his own fame.
He helps the colleges to determine, in a large measure, the character
of the persons who shall fill our pulpits, teach our schools, edit our
papers, write our books, and give direction to all the political and
social movements. The dangers that menace our nation lie in the lack
of intelligent Christian leadership. It is within the power of friends
of the colleges to enroll among the college graduates a vast army of
the youth of our land, whose largeness of manhood and womanhood and
magnificence of character will commend themselves to the love and
esteem of the lowly and suffering in every land.
Lord Macaulay once said that "the destiny of England is in the great
heart of England," and we may safely say that the power for usefulness
of the colleges is in the great heart of the Christian people of
America, who will be more and more loyal to the sacred trust.
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE. |
| |
| The ordering of the table in Chapter II has been left as |
| originally printed, although Dartmouth and Queen's Rutgers are not |
| in chronological order. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
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