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Modern Solution
~-lF ~ Old Problems.
GEORGE ROGERS HOWELL.Modern Solution of Old Problems.
Address delivered before the Livingston County Hictorical Society at
its nineteenth annual meeting held in Dansville, N. Y., January
15th, 1895.
BY GEORGE ROGERS HOWELL OF ALBANY,
Archivist of the New York State Library.
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen :—The invitation which
the Livingston County Historical Society extended to me to address
you on this occasion afforded me a double pleasure, from the fact
that for a few years I was a citizen of the county, and secondly
from the fact that to my honored father-in-law, Norman Seymour,
the Society owes its existence. By this I mean it was from his
suggestion that the first meeting was held and in this village, and his
name with a few others was attached to the call for its organization.
Nothing more unique in the formation of an historical society has
ever come to my knowledge than the story of the origin of yours
as related to me by Mr. Proctor, one of the participants. A call
as I have intimated had been sent out to the citizens of the county to
meet in this village in the office of Mr. Proctor to organize the
Society. The day came and Mr. Seymour was the only represen-
tative of the county to appear. “Well,” said he to Mr. Proctor
after waiting some time in vain for the coming of others, “this
doesn’t look like organizing today, does it ?”	‘ Why not?” returned
Mr. Proctor. “We are citizens of Livingston county, and we may
as well go ahead and organize.” The audacity of the idea took Mr.
Seymour by storm and he smilingly assented. Thereupon Mr.
Proctor called the meeting to order and nominated and put the
motion and did the voting and announced Mr. Seymour for Presi-
dent. Mr. Seymour at once fell into the mood, and announced
the meeting was ready for business and in the next breath
announced Mr. Proctor secretary and inquired what was the2
pleasure of the meeting. The secretary thereupon said the object
of the call was the formation of an historical society and moved
that a committee be appointed to draft a constitution. The motion
was declared carried and the President was compelled to appoint
himself and Mr. Proctor the committee.* After appointing a time
for another meeting for fuller organization the meeting adjourned..
At the next meeting a permanent President was elected, a consti-
tution adopted and Mr. Seymour was elected secretary of the Society.
He had made quite a large collection of books illustrating the early
settlement of this section of the state and the Indian history. You
know better than I can tell you how often his facile pen was
employed in the preparation of addresses on public occasions in the
towns and villages of the county. The Society was very near his
heart—and certainly as much as any of its members he labored for
its success. From the first regular meeting until his death he regu-
larly sent to me the reports of all its meetings and the published
addressess, and they are now filed in the State Library, and on our
catalogue and accessible to all who consult the library. I trust you
will continue to place in the library of the state the reports that are so
valuable to students of our state history.
This age may be called the age of iconoclasm because it dares
to attack any and all questions in the physical universe, and in*
mental and moral philosophy. This age takes nothing for granted.
It studies the processes of nature at work on land or sea, in the
fields or in the workshop, wherever there happens to be an atom of
matter subject to law. It studies alike the movements of an
insect’s wing, the majestic sweep of a planetary world about the
sun, the annals of what we call history and the theology of the
Westminster catechism. It is an age of investigation literally—
a following in the footsteps of nature to learn all her ways; following
at the heels of the historian to see if he has written a historical
romance, a one sided lawyer’s plea, or sought for historical truth ;
following still more closely the manufacturer of ecclesiastical dogmas
to discover whether they be of God or man. Antiquity lends nc
authority to doctrine and a great name will not float a new theory
until it is probed and tested under conditions as severe as exact
science can make them. We may, like Sidney Smith, preserve our
respect for the equator ; for although we can neither see, feel nor
touch it, yet so far as we know, it exists and has never wronged any
*Mr. Seymour brought with him a pamphlet copy of the Constitution and By-
Laws of the Buffalo Historical Society which he told Mr. Proctor he thought
would be all that was needed for them with the necessary changes to adjust it to
their wants. Mr. Proctor assented, and this was the Constitution adopted or ac-
cepted at the second meeting.3
man ; but we flout a papal decree today, and tomorrow a creed of
Martin Luther with impartial indifference. We are in search of
truth and we are in dead earnest. Shams, humbugs, impostures,
false theories and traditions must go—everything must go that
cannot stand the search-light of truth. We have not without good
reason reached this condition of intellectual iconoclasm—this zeal to
smash the idols of superstition and ignorance. The light-bringers,
the prophets we have stoned, not only in the Old Testament times
and New Testament times, but down to the year of grace 1895.
The race has been floundering through many long centuries of error
until now because they needed all their time for getting food and
shelter in their struggle with man and beast and nature for existence.
Do not let me be understood to say that all the science of this day
consists in tearing down the beliefs of past ages. We build up as
well as tear down. If we analyze the diamond and find it pure
carbon, we can take pure carbon and make a diamond. If we deny
the old belief that the sun moves around the earth, we can calculate
the motion of the earth around the sun so accurately as to tell the
earth’s exact position at any time ten thousand years backward or
forward with the same precision that the. sailor locates his vessel at
any point in his voyage across the trackless ocean. When one
scientific truth is discovered it becomes a foundation stone to build on
by every succeeding generation. It is like a moral truth, or like
the multiplication table, true forever, true in this world and true in
all worlds. These truths that we have wrested by dint of hard
labor and study from nature are what we call science, and science
as we understand it, began its existence in this century. I call your
attention to some facts to show you I have have brought no false
indictment against former ages.
The general belief of mankind for over five thousand years was
that the earth was flat like a board, instead of round like an orange.
Here and there some bright soul like Plato divined the truth but
few believed them. As early as the fourth century some prophetic soul
whispered the possibility of the rotundity of the earth. At once
the church was up in arms. The good Christian fathers were
shocked at the mention of such an innovation on the common
belief, and endeavored at first to ridicule the new theory out of
existence. But the believers grew and multiplied. When the next
suggestion as an inference of the earth’s sphericity, was made, that
there was an antipodes—an opposite portion of the earth where
men might dwell, then the battle waxed hot. St. Basil and St.
Ambrose admitted that salvation was possible but doubtful to those
who believed the earth was round. But the majority of the fathers
of the church absolutely denied salvation to such misbelievers.
Lactantius asks :	“Is there any one so senseless as to believe that4
there are men whose footsteps are higher than their heads ? that the
crops and trees grow downward ? that the rains arid show and hail
fail upward toward the earth ?” And just what ideas did prevail we
learn from the writings of Cosmas in the 6th century a merchant of
Alexandria who in his last days employed himself in writing of the
earth. His views are based on his understanding of the Bible. As
cited by A . D. White, he taught that the earth was “a parallelogram,
flat and surrounded by four great seas. At the outer edges of these
seas rise immense walls closing in the whole structure. These walls
support the vault of the heavens, whose edges are cemented to
the walls ; walls and vault shut in the earth and all the. heavenly
bodies. This vast box is then divided into two compartments, one
above the other. In the lowest of these men live and stars move;
and it extends up to the upper solid vault or firmament where live the
angels, a main part of whose business it is to push and pull the
sun and planets to and fro. Over this upper vault is a vast cistern
containing the waters which the angels let fall in rain upon the
earth through the windows in the firmament. To the north of the
earth is a great mountain behind which the sun is pushed at night.”
This theory is varied by some follows of Cosmas by the belief that
the sun is pushed into a great pit at night and pulled out in the
morning. Such was the theory adopted by the church for the next
two hundred years. In the eighth century a German monk revives
the theory of the rotundity of the earth but it meets the anathema
of Pope Zachary and is again quenched in darkness for the next
six hundred years. In the fourteenth century two thinkers
again publish the doctrine. One of them escapes punishment by a
natural death and the other is burned alive for no other crime
than asserting the rotundity of the earth. A hundred years later
logic is marshalled against the doctrine. The theologian Tostatus
thus proves its falsity :	“The apostles were commanded to go into
all the world and preach the gospel to every creature; they did not
go to any such part of the world as the antipodes, they did not
preach to any creatures there ; ergo no antipodes exist.” But when
the ship of Magellan in 1519 passed completely around the world
and he actually saw lands and men in the antipodes, then the question
was settled forever and the arguments of the fathers vanished as
chaff in the wind. But a still fiercer battle raged when the old
Ptolemaic theory of the earth’s position in the heavens was challenged.
Not only their senses but the voice of antiquity and the Bible itself
taught them that the sun revolved about the earth. For thirty years
Copernicus had informed his friends of his belief in the theory of
the revolution of the earth and other planets about the sun, and at
last published the result of his studies and the copy reached him
only on his death bed in 1543. But the church formally con-5
demned it and proclaimed damnation to all who read it. The poetic
imagery of the Bible is cited by the defenders of the Ptolemaic theory
as point blank literal testimony of its truth. To show that it is the
sun that revolves about the earth the verse of Psalm is quoted
which speaks of the sun “which cometh forth as a bridegroom out
of his chamber. ” To prove that the earth stands still he cites
from Ecclesiastes the passage, “the earth standeth fast forever/*
Why, you can prove anything from the Bible by taking isolated
passages. You may have heaid of that,—we will call him—
western preacher, who when he wished to preach against the high
dressing of the hair by the women, took for his text, topknot, come
down, and he found it in Matt 24:17. “Let him that is on the
housetop not come down/* It was further asserted, if the earth
turned on its axis toward the east, the wind would blow constantly from
that direction. That buildings,trees and all objects on the surface would
fly off in such a rapid motion. But the Roman church was not the
only adversary to the doctrine. Both Luther and Melanch-
thon utterly rejected it, and Luther treated the author as truculently
as he did the pope. “This fool,” said he, “wishes to reverse the
entire science of astronomy.” Poor Copernicus—he was between
the upper and lower millstones. Protestant and Catholic both were
in arms to annihilate the doctrine. Do you ask the reason why
so simple a question in pure science could arouse such animosity ?
It seems incredible but it was because they really believed it was
contrary to divine teaching and would undermine the church. For
persistence in teaching the revolution of the earth Giordano Bruno
was imprisoned for six years and then burned at the stake and his
ashes scattered to the winds. But the earth did not stop in its revo-
lution and the truth did not perish at the stake. The little telescope
of Galileo proved to those who sought for truth the movement of
the earth and the planets about the sun, but his persecution by the
church is too well known to need further mention. The whole
civilized world, Catholic and Protestant, were not ready for the truth.
Isn’t it strange that new discoveries, unless it is of a gold mine,
have to fight their way inch by inch to obtain a foothold ! And so
this great battle went on for generations. The great thinkers of the
world discover new facts, the three great laws governing planetary
motions are discovered and published by Kepler. Newton and
Halley equipped with better telescopes confirm the theory of Coper-
nicus and the drift of mind, of true science is all in one direction.
But the church dies hard. Campanella for writing an apology for
Galileo and for other heresies seven times was subjected to torture.
Even Bossuet the brilliant preacher of France maintained that the
Ptolemaic was the Bible theory. The works of Galileo who had
been beaten down by the inquisition as a lofty palm by a West6
India hurricane, were removed from the index of prohibited books
only as late as 1835. For the Rev. John Jasper to maintain to this
day in Richmond, Va.,that the “sun do move/’ is not so very wonder-
ful, when we take into account his very limited education. But for
an assemblage of Lutheran ministers in Berlin, so late as 1868, to
denounce the Copernican theory shows the tenacity of ecclesiasticism
to an amazing degree.
And when Laplace formulated his nebular theory now univer-
sally adopted by the science of the world it encountered the same
storm of opposition from men of the church who failed to see how
it magnified the glory of the Creator in bringing into existence world
after world in obedience to one grand law operating on the great
central mass in inconceivable power and order. In comparison
with this how gross and grotesque seems the conception by the
medieval theologians of the Almighty as a gigantic being in human
form taking up nothing in his hands and out of it fashioning the
earth and bright star points as a carpenter would turn out a croquet
bafi.
And the same opposition sprung up all around the
horizon, in every field of human investigation. Buckle
in his history of civilization 2:92 says:	“So late as the year
1771 the University of Salamanca publicly refused to allow the dis-
coveries of Newton to be taught: and assigned as a reason, that the
system of Newton was not so consonant with revealed religion as the
system of Aristotle. All over Spain a similar plan was adopted.
Everywhere knowledge was spurned and inquiry discouraged.
Feijoo, who, notwithstanding his superstition and a certain slavish-
ness of mind, from which no Spaniard of that age could escape, did,
on matters of science, seek to enlighten his countrymen, has left
upon record his deliberate opinion, that whosoever had acquired all
that was taught in his time under the name of philosophy, would, as
the reward of his labor, be more ignorant than he was before he
began. And there can be no doubt that he was right. There can
be no doubt that, in Spain, the more a man was taught, the less he
would know. For, he was taught that inquiry was sinful, that in-
tellect must be repressed, and that credulity and submission were
the first of human attributes. The Duke de Saint Simon, who in
1721 and 1722, was the French ambassador at Madrid, sums up his
observations by the remark, that in Spain, science is a crime, and
ignorance a virtue.	.	. In the inorganic world, the magnifi-
cent discoveries of Newton were contumeliously rejected: and in
the organic world, the circulation of the blood was denied, more
than a hundred and fifty years after Harvey had proved it. These
things were new, and it was better to pause a little, and not receive
them too hastily. On the same principle, when in the year 1760,7
some bold men in the government proposed that the streets of
Madrid should be cleansed, so daring a suggestion excited general
anger. Not only the vulgar, but even those who were called edu-
cated, were loud in their censure. The medical profession, as the
guardians of the public health, were desired by the government to
give their opinion. This they had no difficulty in doing. They
had no doubt that the dirt ought to remain. To remove it was a
new experiment; and of new experiments it was impossible to fore-
see the issue. Their fathers having lived in the midst of it, why
-should they not do the same ? Their fathers were wise men, and
must have had good reasons for their conduct. Even the smell, of
which some persons complained, was most likely wholesome. For,
the air being sharp and piercing, it was extremely probable that bad
smells made the atmosphere heavy, and in that way deprived it of
some of its injurious properties. The physicians of Madrid were,
therefore, of opinion that matters had better remain as their an-
cestors had left them, and that no attempts should be made to purify
the capital by removing the filth which lay scattered on every
side.”	*
Bleeding and purging were the solitary remedies in case of sick-
ness. Solateasi776 there was not a man in Spain capable of
making the commonest drugs. In the latter half of the 13th cen-
tury Pope Boniface VIII prohibited dissection of the human body
as a sacrilege. About this time Arnold de Villa Nova the great
physician and chemist of his day sought for the secrets of nature by
experiment. He was promptly charged with sorcery and dealings
with the devil. “ The archbishop of Tarragona first excommunicated
him and drove him from Spain: next he was driven from Paris, and
took refuge in Montpellier; thence, too, he was driven ; finally every
place in France was closed against him, and he became an outcast.”
But when Jenner announced to the world that the ravages of
that dread disease, the small pox, could be stopped by vaccination,
then surely the world must have welcomed the good tidings with
great joy. But the world did no such thing. For a time at least
the world was in arms against it as they had opposed inoculation.
The ground taken by the sermons, for the opposition seemed to be
mostly from the church, was that diseases are sent by Providence as
a punishment for sin, and the proposed attempt to prevent them
was a diabolical operation. It was bidding defiance to God himself
and plainly prohibited by the Bible. Even the use of chloroform
was denounced as late as 1847 by the clergy as interfering with the
designs of the Almighty. In an age when the schoolmen, that is
the monks and clergy, were busying themselves with such met-
aphysical questions, as, how many angels can dance on a needle's
point, or whether an angel can exist in a vacuum, one man in8
England, Roger Bacon betook himself to the study of natural
philosophy and chemistry by experiment. He was at once charged
with sorcery and magic and dealings with the devil On one occa-
sion, it is said, he was about to perform a few experiments for some
friends and all Oxford was in an uproar. “It was believed that
Satan was let loose, everywhere were priests, fellows and students
rushing about, their garments streaming in the wind, and everywhere
resounded the cry, “Down with the Conjurer!” Both the Dominican
and the Franciscan friars formally denounced research by experiment
and observation. The members of the order of the Dominicans in
the 13th century were forbidden to study medicine, natural
philosophy and chemistry. In 1380 Charles V of France forbade
the possession of furnaces and apparatus necessary for chemical
processes. In 1404 Henry IV of England issued a similar decree.
Thus during these centuries when men as if inspired with desires to
understand the operations of nature in the world about them, devoted
themselves to study, observation and experiment, they were promptly
met at every point by an army of churchmen, who, when they had
the power, stifled all research by persecution, confiscation, imprison-
ment or death.
So in this long warfare between science and the church, there
could be but one result. Not between religion or divine revelation
and science, but between mistaken churchmen—good enough people
but ignorant—and divine truth written in the works of the Almighty.
I can say this because I am of the church myself. The men of the
church then were utterly routed in every conflict—and the word of
God did not suffer, but the principles of interpretation applied to all
other books, when applied to the Bible adjusted all differences, and
the two books of revelation and of nature were found to be in har-
mony. It was reserved for men of our own generation to witness
still another conflict no less bitter than its predecessors The
chronology of Archbishop Ussher fixed the creation of the world
about 6000 years ago. When the geologist began to be and to study
the history of the formation of the rockribbed earth, he found it
needed untold thousands—perhaps millions of years for the strata to
be formed and other thousands or millions for the cooling of the
earth to fit it for the habitation of man. For there were evidences
of its once being in a liquid state—liquid by intense heat, and even
that but a reduction from a still more intense heat in a gaseous con-
dition . The church was up in arms—Protestant and Catholic and
Greek alike, in denouncing this dangerous heresy. “In six days the
universe was created” so ran the first chapter of Genesis, and this
was deemed answer enough to geological pretenders. But when
the astronomer turned his telescope to the sky and discovered blaz-
ing suns so far away that the light would need full 20,000 years to9
reach the earth, the geologist said : Your 6000 years are not enough
—these stars must have been in existence 20,000 years, or we should
not be able to see them today. The argument from the telescope
was unanswerable. And yet some men refused their assent to the
new doctrine. A venerable doctor of divinity in the Presbyterian
church in Philadelphia between 1850 and i860 objected to licensing
a theological student because he accepted the doctrines of geology
and the antiquity of the earth taught in Princeton Theological
Seminary by Professor Guyot. He believed the millions of fossils
of fish and animals found imbedded in the rocks were absolutely
created in that form and condition along with the rocks in one of
the creative days of 24 hours duration. With this before our minds
we need not wonder so much at unbelief in science in ages of
ignorance and superstition.
Persecution not only befel the scientists, the benefactors of the
human race, but the printing press was shackled, sometimes by pope
and sometimes by king. Voltaire prepared for the enlightenment
of his countrymen an account of the discoveries and works of New-
ton, but the civil authorities interfered and forbade the printing of
the work. 4‘Indeed the rulers of France, as if sensible that their
only security was the ignorance of the people, obstinately set their
face” says Buckle, (1:6.74) “against every description of knowledge.
Several eminent authors had undertaken to execute, on a magnifi-
cent scale, an encyclopedia, which should contain a summary of all
the branches of science and art. This, undoubtedly the most
splendid enterprise ever started by a body of literary men, was at
firsf discouraged by the government and afterwards entirely pro-
hibited.” Time will not suffice to tell the number and titles of the
works by men whom today the world holds in high esteem and which
were ignominiously suppressed and burned by the common
hangman.
Such was the opposition to the human race in its attempt to
learn the truth of God’s works; to become acquainted with the
laws he has imposed on matter; to ascertain the medical effects of
things organic and inorganic on the human system to heal disease.
Now in all this arraignment of the church do not suppose for a
moment that the charge is aimed at the Bible or the religion of
Jesus Christ. The church aside from the civil government was the
only organized body that had the power to deal with the scientific
innovators and the church ignorantly but honestly thought the new
theories were in conflict with the Bible and its own existence. The
men of the church were as ignorant of science as the rest of the
world. And besides, with all its intolerance, wherever the church
existed, there the lives and property of men and women were always
more safe and comfortable than where the church was not. TheIO
trouble was they had not enough truth and intelligence and charity.
What light they had was good—but there was too little of it. The
world was only emerging slowly from intellectual barbarism.
In the moral world, after this display of ignorance and super-
stition, we should expect no brilliant exhibition of charity or moral
grandeur, and we should not be mistaken. Under the old church
before the reformation, religion consisted in the performance of per-
functory services. You read so many prayers, attend so many
masses, occasionally purchase an absolution, and there you are—
ticketed straight for the new Jerusalem. If some little irregularity
as a life of intemperance, theft, oppression or murder should land
you in purgatory, why payments to the church on a sliding scale
adapted to the estate of the deceased or his friends, would duly
release the soul and bring it safe to Abraham's bosom. This is no
indictment of any church of today. It is a picture of the beliefs of
our own ancestors—the ancestors of Protestants and Catholics
alike for hundreds of years. But the human mind could not always
live in such intellectual and moral slavery. The reformation came
—came suddenly to several nations in the life time of one man,
but it was the outcome of a long and arduous life and death struggle.
The results were not exactly alike in Germany, Holland, Switzer-
land, England and Scotland, but in all these countries it left the old
religion quite different from the old regime. It reacted on the old
church and made it purer and better. The established church, the
Puritan or Independent and the Presbyterian were the three great
results of the reformation in England. The settlers of New England
were both Independents and Presbyterians. The several churches
established there were Independent although they generally -or fre-
quently had the ruling elder of the Presbyterian system of govern-
ment. And a common cause, a common foe and a common creed
bound them together in peace and harmony. They were substantially
both the Plymouth colony and the Massachusetts Bay colony, all
Puritans. I need not say, in view of what they did, we are proud of
our Puritan ancestry. They had a rugged theology born of their
history, and the central idea of their government was a theocracy.
I do not think they purposed to found a republic, but practically
each town was a little republic of itself. But the source of authority
and of law in their actions and their utterances was God as their
king and lawgiver. There never was a thought for a moment that
the church or a minister of the church could absolve them from the
consequences of a sinful act. They,settled every moral transaction
directly between their conscience and their Maker. They felt that
the law of God impended over them every hour of the day.	It is
but too true that they like their Scotch brethren enlarged the cata-
logue of sins and imposed upon themselves restraints entirely unneces-II
sary. They never ceased to feel that they were servants of God,
and they never seemed to remember that Christ had made them
sons of God with all the privileges and intimacies of sonship. But
they were the best men and the best women the world had ever seen
up to that time. They were honest, manly men ; brave men, men
of integrity. They were just in their dealings with each other and
with the Indians. Their principles were not for sale. They were
above bribery. And this is saying much for their character when
there was not a country in the old world where the Judge was beyond
the reach of a bribe. They had the nerve to wield the sword of
justice as well as to settle the dispute of a dog fight, and would have
as soon led their Governor John Winthrop to execution had he been
guilty of murder as their brethren in England were to decapitate a
king for tyranny and treason and their descendants to hang a
Harvard professor for murder. Take them all in all, they were as I
have said the best men the world had ever seen. If you doubt it,
search all the records of the past for better types of manhood and
womanhood and you will search in vain. But I believe their
descendants are both better and superior to them in many ways.
We have in the main inherited and practiced their virtues. We may
have a mild belief that those who differ in opinion from ourselves
are cranks or old fogies, yet we do not persecute or even tithe them.
We would not if we could. We have good authority for holding
charity to be the greatest of human virtues. That flower of
Christianity blossoms best in a land of liberty, and was reserved for
our day, and is to some extent an evolution of our free institutions.
The charity I mean, includes toleration and every grade of kindly
feeling from universal benevolence to a universal mighty love for the
brotherhood of man. I cannot stop to elaborate this. This
charity is not yet perfect, but it is abroad in the world and growing
daily. I have marked its growth in my own lifetime. I picture to you
a scene that was witnessed by a famous portrait painter of Albany.
When a boy of ten or twelve years of age he attended the funeral
of the wife of a deacon in a Congregational church in Vermont.
This good woman had lived a sweet Christian life, respected and
loved by the whole community for her unblemished character and
deeds of charity. Out of her timidity and tender conscience she
had never dared to join the church lest she should partake of the
communion unworthily. That was the sole cause of the minister’s
condemnation. Said the minister in the presence of the bereaved
family and friends:	“If the body of our brother, Deacon So-and-So,
was lying there before us we should know what had become of his
soul. But for this woman, his wife who put herself out of the pale
of the church and salvation, we have no hope.” Now I say no such
ghastly scene is possible in a Protestant church today. We are12
wiser and better than our Puritan ancestors, in that we have a
broader charity and more trust in the father-love of the Almighty.
We recognize elements in the problems of life and morals that they
either did not perceive, or if they did, they refused to take into
account in their estimate of human character and responsibility.
Inherited tendencies for good or evil, the circumstances and environ-
ment of early life, all of these contribute largely to the formation of
character, and for not one of these is a man or woman personally
responsible. A man is the result of his antecedents modified by his
environments.
Let me mention one other point in honor of our ancestors.
The degree of civilization of any country is measured by its treat-
ment of its women. They came from a country where wife-
beating was common, and where it is legally permitted to this day
provided the rod or correction is not larger than a man's thumb,
when in the judgment of the husband correction is needed. But I
do not remember to have seen a single case in the American history of
the Puritans where this brutal treatment was ever imposed on
a woman. The fact is, the men saw their wives and mothers and
sisters bravely accepting the lot of colonists, performing cheerfully
their duties with a dignity and self-reliance that won their
respect. For obedience without discussion, there came to the wife a
responsibility without limit.	The women grew equal to the demands
upon them. Their facile fingers wrought the little ornaments, and
their fertile brains suggested the little comforts that made the first
rude houses into attractive homes. They were the intellectual
equals, and in religious devotion, often the superiors of their
husbands. As the years went on, instead of losing this honorable
position, the women of the country won still higher honor.
European travellers in America about the time of the revolution
write of their surprise at the attainments and the brilliant con-
versation of the women they met in public assemblies, surpassing
the female leaders in society in the capitals of Europe. When at
a brilliant assemblage of the President and high government
officials and foreign ministers at Philadelphia in 1790 the English
minister said courteously to Senator Tracy of Connecticut, “Your
American women would be admired even at St. James." “Yes,”
answered the loyal senator, “I have no doubt of it—they are
admired even at Litchfield Hill.” Men and women of Livingston
county, you have a glorious heritage. I speak not of the rich valley
lands unsurpassed in fertility in our broad domain—nor of your
pleasant homes and your abundant tables. I speak of the character
of your godly ancestors, the Covenanters of Scotland and the
Puritans of England. Were they great men ? What is greatness ?
Count the great men of the past. How few they are amongi3
the many millions ! And what constitutes greatness ? Just
two things—talents, and they are common enough, and above all,
the opportunity. There may have been any number of Washing-
tons in our country so far as talents and patriotism are con-
cerned, but there was room but for one.
As to success in accumulating wealth—you remember Bunyan’s
man with the muckrake. He stepped down from the highest plane
of manhood, he lost the sweet experiences of charity, and the
fellowship of good men ; to him God wrote in vain his splendid poem
in color in the glorious sunset sky, and the beauty of the landscape,—
but he raked in the dollars. Observe a group of boys playing
with their marbles. One has half a dozen, another a score,
and another a hundred.	The latter may have used the
muckrake, or he may have inherited them. What matter ? You,
a man look at them. A farm absorbs your cares—that means a
wider horizon, provision for yourself, your wife and children. The
interests of a family or a community are intetwoven with yours. Or
you are engaged in still larger enterprises, or making laws for states,
or defining the policy of nations. Do not the marbles seem a very
trifling affair, fit only for children ? Now turn to the works of the
Almighty, see the million forms of organic life, all interdependent,
growing up under mysterious laws, perpetuating themselves and
dying to make room for others, is there not here a field for a
reverential student’s devotion? Study the globe itself, a mausoleum
of whole races of living creatures and unfamiliar vegetation, and
you will find that you need many lifetimes to read its history.
Point your telescope to the heavens and watch the flight of suns
and constellations into distance beyond distance, with other plane-
tary systems trailing in their wake, many or all inhabited by intelli-
gent beings, and the boys with their marbles, and the man with the
muckrake appear to shrink in value and importance. And what is
this world, or all worlds, compared to a good man or a good woman ?
The worlds will perish, they are even now occasionally snuffed out
of existence, but the children of God live, live, live. And these are
the men and the women, who for eight generations have been going
up higher from your midst. The question is answered. They are
now great beyond all earthly greatness these Puritan and Covenanter
ancestors of Livingston.RESOLUTION
We, the New Women's Network, having met to discuss the Appeals
Process of the 1993 Cornell University Compensation Research Study
(formerly called the Classification Review Study), resolve:
Whereas, the current Appeals Process of the Compensation Research
Study (CRS) does not provide a fair and evenhanded appeals procedure
for employees, the University should revise the Appeals Process by
adopting the following fundamental due process protections:
1.	The appeals process will be reopened with a uniform internal
appeals process instituted across all colleges and units.
2.	Initial appeals may be filed during a two-week period
following the provision of information to the employee, as described
in paragraphs 4 and 5 below.
3.	Each employee will be provided, upon request, with a
qualified adviser to assist the employee in preparing his or her
appeal.
4.	Each employee will have the right to receive, upon request,
information related to:	(1) the development of the CRS; (2) the
structure used to determine the placement of positions generally in
the classification system (including factors used and weighting of
those factors); and (3) any instructions issued to colleges and units
concerning how to implement the classification system.
5.	Each employee will be provided, upon request, with written
documentation relevant to the evaluation and classification of the
employee's position and any other positions the employee deems
relevant, including, but not limited to, original job descriptions,
factors considered and weighting of factors in the classification of
the position(s).
6. Each employee will be provided with the supervisor's written
documentation regarding the appeal, and with the opportunity for the
employee to submit a written response to the review committee.
7.	Each employee, accompanied by an adviser upon request, will
have the opportunity to meet with the review committee and to be
present if the committee meets with the supervisor regarding the
appeal.
8.	Each employee will be provided with a written report from the
review committee explaining the reasons for its decision.
9.	Each employee will have the right to appeal to the University
appeals panel in the event of a negative decision by the review
committee of the college or unit.