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 Addresses on the honor system at the Uni 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 030 629 491 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030629491 
 
Addresses on the Honor System 
 
 at the 
 
 University of Virginia 
 

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Addresses on the Honor System 
 
 — At The — 
 
 University of Virginia 
 
THE HONOR SYSTEM FROM A STUDENT'S POINT 
 OF VIEW* 
 
 It is indeed a difficult task to show in a limited space of time 
 how an abstract principle, such as honor, becomes an organic 
 and concrete fact in the life of the University of Virginia. I 
 think it will conduce to clearness if, at the very outset, we put 
 ourselves on guard lest we confound the mere mechanical and 
 administrative part of the system with the underlying senti- 
 ment which is its raison d'etre. The details of the administrative 
 phase are not the be-all and end-all of the honor system, but 
 only serve to regulate a system whose foundations are laid in 
 something deeper than mere conventional ruling. Many other 
 institutions have patents on other machinery, but the difference 
 is unessential, for all must utilize the same force of human 
 nature and be impelled by the same dynamic power. 
 
 With this in mind, my task will be to show how student 
 honor is eminently successful for, and vitally necessary to, the 
 welfare of our University. 
 
 The honor system, as it now exists at Virginia, is but the 
 natural outgrowth and living embodiment of certain passages 
 in Thomas Jefferson's ideal of academic discipline, which he ex- 
 presses in the following words: "That best mode of government 
 for youth in large collections is certainly a desideratum not yet 
 attained by us. It may be well questioned whether fear, after 
 a certain age, is a motive to which we should have ordinary 
 recourse. The human character is susceptible of other incite- 
 ments to correct conduct more worthy of employ and of better 
 effect. Pride of character, laudable ambition, and moral dis- 
 position are innate correctives of the indiscretions of that lively 
 age, and when strengthened by habitual appeal and exercise, 
 have a happier effect on future character than the degrading 
 motive of fear. Hardening them to disgrace, to corporal pun- 
 ishment and servile regulations cannot be the best process for 
 producting erect character. The affectionate deportment be- 
 
 *An address delivered by W. S. A. iPott, of the Department of 
 Graduate Studies at the University of Virginia, at the twenty-seventh 
 annual meeting of the New England Association of Colleges and 
 Preparatory Schools. From the Alumni Bulletin, April, 1913. 
 
4 THE HONOR SYSTEM 
 
 tween father and son offers, in fact, the best example for that 
 of tutor and pupil; and the experience and practice of other 
 countries in this respect may be worthy of inquiry and consid- 
 eration with us. It will then be for the wisdom and discretion 
 of the visitors to perfect and prepare a system of government, 
 which, if founded in reason and comity, will be more likely to 
 nourish in the minds of our youths the combined spirit of order 
 and self-respect, so congenial with our political institutions and 
 so important to be woven into the American character." 
 
 These, then, were the seeds of the honor system, which bore 
 fruit some years later in the following resolution, presented in 
 1842 by Prof. Henry St. George Tucker of the faculty, and 
 immediately adopted: Resolved, That in all future written 
 examinations for distinction or other honors of the university, 
 each candidate shall attach to the written answers presented by 
 him on such examinations, a certificate in the following words: 
 "I, A. B., do hereby certify upon honor that I have derived no 
 assistance during the time of this examination from any source 
 whatever, whether oral, written or in print, in giving the above 
 answers." Since then the form has been slightly modified, the 
 pledge now reading, "I hereby certify upon honor that I have 
 neither given nor received assistance on this examination," 
 which pledge is appended to all written quizzes and examina- 
 tions at Virginia. 
 
 Concerning the early successes and failures with which the 
 resolution of 1842 met, I am not prepared to speak for lack of 
 information. But the fact that the substance of it has remained 
 with us for seventy years is evidence that the honor system is 
 not a vain chimera, but a very practicable and feasible thing. 
 Of this I shall have more to say in its proper connection. 
 
 With such a pledge as we now have, implicit confidence is 
 placed in the student, and (to speak of the honor system in its 
 connection with examinations) the need of professors, proctors 
 or any other officers in the class room during the examination is 
 no longer felt. The professor goes in and out as he chooses, his 
 presence being required from time to time only in order that he 
 may clear up those obscurities that are almost invariably asso- 
 ciated with a series of questions. Furthermore, the student him- 
 self goes in and out as he chooses, but if the student intends to 
 absent himself for any length of time, or to visit any such un- 
 
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 5 
 
 frequented place as his own room, he usually requests someone 
 to accompany him during the absence. 
 
 At this point it is vital that a possible objection be answered. 
 Is not this total freedom that the student enjoys likely to be 
 abused? If you will pardon a personal allusion, I once had an 
 occasion to explain our honor system to a student of one of 
 our larger universities. When I had completed what I thought 
 was a satisfactory exposition, my friend turned to me and said, 
 "that's fine. We have nothing like that." "Yes," I say, "that is 
 fine." "But don't you cheat at Virginia any way?" was the 
 question put to me. So I found that we were judging the merits 
 of the system from totally different points of view. My friend 
 extolled the system because he thought he saw in it an increased 
 opportunity for underhanded practice. In fact, he was paying 
 a tribute to what he thought was the ingenuity of our students. 
 What security, then, can we offer that our pledges are strictly 
 observed? 
 
 The first safeguard, though not a tangible one, is yet a very 
 powerful one and rests on the empirical principle that to trust 
 a man is to make a man worthy of your trust. The generally 
 friendly terms on which professor and student stand at Virginia 
 are perhaps the result of the assumption, on the part of both, at 
 the very outset, that each is man and gentleman, and this mu- 
 tual relation of trust and friendship, in my mind, is one of the 
 chief guarantees of our honor system and the fulfillment of 
 Jefferson's ideal of student government, which he says, "if 
 founded in reason and comity will be more likely to nourish in 
 our youth the combined spirit of order and self-respect." This 
 feeling on the part of all that everyone is to be treated as a 
 man and a gentleman, in fact, "as an end in himself," renders 
 impossible any two codes of ethics totally divergent, one of 
 which is to be observed in general life, and the other only in 
 the narrower domain of the class room. 
 
 I know that "cribbing" is felt by some to be, if not justifi- 
 able, yet a venial offense when the professor or certain other 
 agents are present for the specific purpose of espionage; and 
 therefore the whole question is narrowed down to a mere con- 
 test of vigilance, in which the side that has the majority usually 
 wins. But be that as it may, suffice it to say that the honor 
 system and the open and amicable relations between faculty and 
 
D THE HONOR SYSTEM 
 
 students at Virginia are two things so inextricably connected 
 and reciprocally related, that it is impossible really to discover 
 which is cause and which is effect; and this relation prevents 
 any practices in the class room different from those employed in 
 a larger sphere. It seems to me that this very fact of our student 
 consistency discountenances the statement once made that 
 "Honor is too sensitive a sprite to be called upon on daily or 
 routine occasions." Surely it would be paradoxical and a con- 
 tradiction in terms to say that a gentleman should not be taken 
 at his word as soon as he enters the narrow confines of the lec- 
 ture hall. 
 
 To say that the habitual telling of truth, whenever the oc- 
 casion demands, makes a man less the gentleman, is a statement 
 based on a misconception of the psychology of nervous habit, 
 and finds no support from theory or facts. In fact, so far from 
 taxing the strength of this delicate sprite, constant practice and 
 exercise in truth-telling only serves to invigorate it and to 
 harden it against the sometimes tempestuous onslaughts of 
 temptation. 
 
 But, lest we prove unfair to the gentleman from whom I 
 have quoted, there is an element of truth in his statement which 
 we should not fail to grasp. It must not be supposed that the 
 observance of the honor code is or should be synonymous, or 
 co-extensive, with perfect or ideal conduct. It must not be 
 supposed that an honor system is a panacea or antidote for all 
 the different attacks of moral illness that a student body suffers. 
 The presence of such a system does not insure the Utopian hap- 
 piness and ideal goodness of a Platonic Republic. I know that 
 there are certain unreasonable extremists amongst ourselves 
 who would like drunkenness to be considered as a violation of 
 the honor system, and worthy of the capital punishment of ex- 
 pulsion in disgrace and dishonor. But to use a homely simile, 
 just as rubber stretched too much loses its quality of elasticity, 
 so I am sure that such a radical and far-fetched conception of 
 the just limits of the honor code would be destined to work 
 disaster. Our system is as elastic as such a system could be 
 and any attempt to render it more so would be wrong, unwise, 
 and a total failure. Of such an offense as drunkenness the fac- 
 ulty assumes control, and if it be the first time that the student 
 is arraigned on such a charge, he is usually allowed to sign 
 
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 7 
 
 his name to a pledge of total abstinence so long as he remains 
 a student of the University of Virginia. But it is to be carefully 
 noted that, should the pledge be broken, the thing ceases to be 
 a faculty affair and become a student affair. In other words, 
 the students and the honor committee have no authority over 
 such matters as drunken conduct, but they have complete au- 
 thority in all matters involving a breach of good faith. 
 
 I have been compelled to dwell at length on certain questions 
 that are related to, and developed from the statement of my 
 first thesis, namely: That frank and friendly relations between 
 professor and student is one of the strongest guarantees for the 
 successful operation of our honor system. But I must hurry on 
 to our second safeguard. 
 
 Our second safeguard rests in the fact that any offender of 
 the honor code, when detected by another student, is reported 
 by that student. Now this very fact that one student should re- 
 port another is generally the storm center around which a dis- 
 cussion of the honor system is waged. Some feel that student- 
 reporting is certainly an ignoble means for insuring the suc- 
 cessful operation of a system, however meritorious and laudable 
 that system may be in itself. However, all this dispute seems 
 to me to arise from the failure to obtain a correct idea of what 
 tale-bearing really is. Tale-bearing, or "squealing," is a word 
 that should be used to designate the reporting of a strictly 
 personal or man-to-man affair. Perhaps you will understand 
 my meaning better by a simple analogy from civil life. If, for 
 example, I detect an incendiary in the act of setting fire to a 
 building, surely there would be no moral turpitude in my re- 
 porting the man. But if I am done some personal injury by an- 
 other I would be considered a coward if I did not seek to mani- 
 fest my resentment in some personal and private way, without 
 calling in the aid of others. So it is in the smaller sphere of 
 our university life. Just as an incendiary threatens the best 
 interests of society and is a menace thereto, so the student who 
 cheats pollutes the fair name of our university and threatens 
 to undermine the very foundation upon which its student life 
 is built. Looked at in this light, we do not consider testifying 
 against a cheat as tale-bearing. Viewed in its full aspect and 
 context, student reporting of cases of dishonestry, so far from 
 being condemned as an opprobrious act, is considered as an 
 
THE HONOR SYSTEM 
 
 aboslute duty, and therefore a meritorious act. In other words, 
 we dismiss any violator of the honor code at Virginia in accord- 
 ance with a principle that Gibbon recognized when he said, 
 "It is the undoubted right of every society to exclude from its 
 communion and benefits such among its members as reject or 
 violate those regulations which have been established by gen- 
 eral consent." 
 
 But it may be very naturally asked, why, if student self- 
 protection exists in the case of lying, is it not also extended to 
 other fields? Why, for example, does not one student report 
 another for drunkenness? Does not drunkenness also bring ill 
 repute on the name of an institution, and should not the stu- 
 dent be justified in reporting a drunkard on the same grounds 
 that he is justified in testifying against a liar? 
 
 To begin with, the honor system, as I have shown before, 
 comes into play only where there is a promise made and broken, 
 or some other form of dishonesty has appeared, and to extend 
 its jurisdiction any further would be, if nothing else, a mis- 
 nomer. I do not wish to appear to be mounting the pulpit, but 
 
 1 am sure that you can respect a man who has forgotten, 
 momentarily, that "there is a just measure in all things," and 
 cannot respect one who has lied to you. In all the history of 
 civilization and morals a lie has ever been considered the mean- 
 est and basest of vices. In fact, truth and honesty have ever 
 been the sine qua non of a society or of nations. It is not neces- 
 sary to go further to show the importance of truth. We feel 
 at Virginia that if the consciousness of mutual trust is lost, if 
 the students' feeling of self-respect is gone, if the keen rever- 
 ence for truth is destroyed, then chaos must rule and the im- 
 potent aid of faculty supervision must be called in. 
 
 Do not think that I am condoning drunkenness, or any other 
 such fault, or that the faculty fails to detect and deal promptly 
 with a drunkard. But, in such cases we feel that for a student 
 to take any action other than that of counsel and persuasion is 
 to infringe on another's personality. We have not reached that 
 . stage in the progress of social evolution, in which each and 
 every man regulates or can regulate his own entire conduct in 
 accordance with correct social considerations. This is no doubt 
 an excellent standard for one to set himself, but to force it on 
 mortals of the present day, and to inflict severe penalties on 
 
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 9 
 
 those who fail to observe it, would certainly be a regress and 
 not a progress in ethical theory; for moral conduct would no 
 longer be a personal thing, but an artificial and external thing, 
 whose chief corrective and guarantee would be the police patrol 
 of fear. 
 
 However, I have been occupying your time merely with a pos- 
 sible objection, which I have tried to answer and which does 
 not in any way invalidate the honor system as we have it. 
 Whether you accept my explanation or not, the honor system 
 as such, and in its present operation, remains successful and in- 
 tact. Perhaps the objection cited, namely, that the system is 
 not comprehensive enough, or is not thoroughly consistent, 
 might with some plausibility be urged against the frailty of 
 human nature, but certainly not against the honor system as 
 you and I understand it. 
 
 I have given you what seem to me to be the two great safe- 
 guards against the abuse of the freedom and confidence that we 
 enjoy. To repeat them, they are, first the mutual trust and 
 friendship between professor and student, and second, the lofty 
 compulsion that the students feel to report all cases of dishonor- 
 able conduct. In this connection allow me to quote from a state- 
 ment made by the dean of our law department, in an address 
 delivered in 1910 before the Association of American Law 
 Schools at Chattanooga, Tennessee: "I have been in residence 
 at the university and in intimate contact with its student's life 
 for nineteen years. During that time, I have known of less than 
 a score of accusations made from all departments of the uni- 
 versity. During a connection of seventeen years with the law 
 school as teacher, and for a greater portion as dean of that 
 department — ^within which the total attendance of law students 
 has exceeded two thousand — there have come to my knowledge 
 less than a half dozen instances of the charge of suspicious con- 
 duct on the part of a law student." 
 
 This is surely evidence enough to refute the position of those 
 who make a very natural distinction between the desirability 
 and the practicability of the honor system in the American col- 
 lege. It is also evidence enough to disprove the statement that 
 a degree received under a system of espionage is of more value 
 than one received under the honor system, as if the very fact 
 of espionage gave to the degree a sort of certified check stamp 
 of validity. 
 
10 THE HONOR SYSTEM 
 
 But few and infrequent as honor violations are with us, they 
 yet nevertheless occur, and I must tell you how we deal with 
 such breaches. 
 
 We have nothing at Virginia that corresponds exactly with 
 your class divisions. For reasons that it is not necessary here 
 to discuss, our divisions are only into departments, such as the 
 college, the department of graduate studies, and the depart- 
 ments of medicine, law and engineering. Each department has 
 its officers, and the five presidents of the several departments, 
 together with the vice-president of the department of which 
 the accused is a member, constitute the honor committee. If 
 any student is suspected of cheating and there is sufficient evi- 
 dence for a prima jacie case, the accused is summoned to ex- 
 plain himself. He may, or may not, remain in college long 
 enough to be asked to appear before the committee, for he is 
 usually warned and advised by whomever he is detected to de- 
 part immediately from the university. But if he does appear 
 and fails to explain himself, he is simply asked to leave, and 
 he does so on the very next train. There is no case on record in 
 which a convicted student has failed to comply with the re- 
 quest of the honor committee. The accused, however, on being 
 asked to clear himself may demand a regular trial, either public 
 or private. So far as I know, there have been but two public 
 trials at Virginia, both, as I understand, solemn and heart- 
 rending occasions. At one of these the accused was convicted 
 and dismissed, while at the other the accused was acquitted, 
 being found guilty only of indiscretion. But the verdict of a 
 jury sitting at a public trial is obeyed as promptly as the re- 
 quest of the honor committee sitting in private. 
 
 All this, you see, is quite simple, and the chief thing to be 
 noted is that the students themselves have absolute control in 
 the administration of the honor system. It is regarded by them 
 as their dearest possession; the center of gravity, so to speak, 
 is shifted from the faculty to the student body, which is en- 
 trusted with and has complete authority over what it considers 
 a priceless heritage. 
 
 It may be thought by some that the summary punishment 
 that is meted out to any offender of the honor code is not alto- 
 gether deserved in the case of those who fall through ignorance. 
 It is impossible to make any distinctions or to recognize any 
 
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 11 
 
 such excuses, for the honor system itself is at stake as soon as it 
 starts to make exceptions. Nevertheless, for those w^ho are not 
 familiar with the honor system before they enter (it is in opera- 
 tion in several of the schools that supply us w^ith students) am- 
 ple opportunity is afforded them to become acquainted with the 
 system. It is explained by older men to all new students at a 
 sort of mass meeting on the first Monday night after the open- 
 ing of the session. With this and with living in an atmosphere 
 that is permeated with the spirit of students honor, any offense 
 that may occur is considered unpardonable and treated as such. 
 
 I have taken up most of your time with a consideration of the 
 honor system in its relation to examinations, but I would not 
 have you think that it is such an unelastic, narrow and stereo- 
 typed thing as to be confined only to the class room. In athletics 
 it is chiefly prominent. All of our training is regulated by 
 pledges signed by every application for a team. To take another 
 example, every member of a team, say the football or baseball 
 team, must, before he can represent the university, fulfill the 
 strict requirements placed upon him and sign a pledge to that 
 effect. A pledge signed dishonestly is treaited in the same way 
 as a violation of the examniation pledge is treated. Since the 
 eligibility rules were made, there has never been a case of an 
 athlete signing the eligibility pledge falsely. 
 
 To cite another instance of the comprehensiveness of the 
 honor system, although it may sound strange to you when I say 
 it, the honor committee takes charge of any form of dishonesty 
 in gambling, whether it be actual cheating or the writing of 
 bogus checks. However much the students may frown upon 
 gambling, they lead no active crusade against gambling as such, 
 but only against dishonesty in gambling. However much the 
 students may deplore gambling, drunkenness and other forms 
 of intemperance, yet a lie is considered by them as the blackest 
 of vices, the most certain indication of a base character, the 
 surest index of elemental viciousness. 
 
 In conclusion, my plea, if I may be allowed to make a plea 
 (and the plea of every student at Virginia) is not that there may 
 be more honor or honesty among the students of those institu- 
 tions that have not yet adopted the honor system, but that the 
 province of honor in those institutions may be enlarged so that 
 honor may become the piivot around which the whole of the 
 
12 THE HONOR SYSTEM 
 
 student life will revolve; that it may occupy the focal position 
 in the consciousness of the student body; that it may be, so to 
 speak, the energy of central heat that radiates itself in all direc- 
 tions and renders more genuine and congenial the atmosphere 
 of the institution to which you belong. 
 
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 13 
 
 THE HONOR SYSTEM* 
 
 A few years ago, in a questionnaire from a distinguished law 
 teacher, then, as now, I believe, an officer of your association, 
 appeared the question, "Do you believe in the Honor System?" 
 My reply was "Yes, as I do in the Christian religion." I am 
 here, on your invitation, to show cause for this transcendent 
 faith. 
 
 Those of us, born, as it were, into the honor system, who 
 have known no other, and who have lived with it and under it 
 since the callow days of the primary school, have difficulty in 
 realizing that there exists among intelligent educators skep- 
 ticism as to its genuineness and efficiency. But I am assured 
 that such skepticism does prevail, and widely, among the mem- 
 bers of your association. My address has been prepared with 
 this fact prominently in mind. This mental attitude will ac- 
 count for the nature of my treatment of the theme. 
 
 In discussions of the honor system among those not familiar 
 with it, confusion of thought has arisen from failure to dis- 
 tinguish between the desirability of the system, and its practi- 
 cability under conditions prevailing in particular schools or lo- 
 calities. 
 
 The end sought is surely most desirable; but when the system 
 seeks admission to new fields, it is halted by the pertinent in- 
 quiry, Is it practicable? 
 
 The truth probably is, that under conditions prevailing in 
 many educational institutions the system is not immediately 
 practicable. The truth certainly is, that in many other insti- 
 tutions its practicability has been demonstrated. 
 
 Further and greater confusion has resulted from ignorance 
 of what the system really is. There has come to my observation 
 no objection or criticism that did not originate in a colossal and 
 appalling ignorance of the system itself. 
 
 To clear the atmosphere, then, and to supply the facts for the 
 general discussion which I understand is to follow, let me ex- 
 
 *Address delivered by William Minor Lile, dean of the Law School 
 of the University of Virginia, before the Association of American 
 Law Schools at Chattanooga, Tennessee, August 30, 1910. 
 
14 THE HONOR SYSTEM 
 
 plain, as briefly as I may, something of the origin, nature, op- 
 eration and results of the honor system at its birthplace, the 
 University of Virginia. I say birthplace, because, so far as my 
 information goes, this system at the time of its institution, had 
 no precedent in other educational establishments. While it has 
 some of the features of Dr. Arnold's method at Rugby, it dif- 
 fers widely from that method. 
 
 As pupil of the high school, as academical and professional 
 student, and as teacher, I have lived in close personal contact 
 with the honor system for more than half of my life. This 
 experience warrants the acceptance of my testimony as that 
 of a qualified witness. Whether that of a biased or a deluded 
 one, you must determine. 
 
 For some years after the establishment of the University, in 
 1819, honesty in the written examinations was sought to be se- 
 cured by the surveillance of an examining committee. The re- 
 sult was doubtless unsatisfactory, for in 1842, Professor Henry 
 St. George Tucker, father of the late distinguished John Ran- 
 dolph Tucker, for many years dean of the Law School of 
 Washington and Lee University, and grandfather of the latter's 
 distinguished son, Harry St. George Tucker — Prof. Tucker 
 being at that time sole professor of law — offered, and the fac- 
 ulty adopted, the following resolution, namely: 
 
 "Resolved, That in all future written examinations for dis- 
 tinction and other honors of the University, each candidate 
 shall attach to the written answers presented by him, on such 
 examination, a certificate in the following words: 'I, A. B., do 
 hereby certify on honor that I have derived no assistance 
 during the time of this examination from any source whatever, 
 whether oral or written or in print, in giving the above an- 
 swers'." 
 
 This was the genesis of the honor system at the University. 
 Later, the pledge was amended so as to preclude the giving as 
 well as the receiving of assistance — and in this amended form 
 it has been retained to the present day. The system has been 
 in continuous operation since, and with results so satisfactory 
 as to render it, in the opinion of the faculty and friends of the 
 University, the most valuable asset that the institution pos- 
 sesses. Some of these results will appear in the development 
 of the theme. 
 
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 15 
 
 Now as to the nature and operation of the system. 
 
 From the moment of his matriculation, every student is pre- 
 sumed, by the faculty, and by his fellows, to be a man of honor 
 and worthy of their trust. If not already a disciple of the sys- 
 tem — as, from circumstainces to be mentioned presently, many 
 freshmen are — he learns within a few days that he has become 
 a member of a miniature, self-governing community, with but 
 one rule of conduct, and that is, the exercise of absolute candor 
 and honesty in all of his relations with the body politic and its 
 members. 
 
 This body regards itself as an association of gentlemen, the 
 student members of which are all contestants for the favors, 
 privileges and honors of the University. It considers that 
 these are to be attained by honest effort only, and that any 
 member who essays to win by dishonest methods is playing the 
 game unfairly, and should be eliminated at once from further 
 participation in the contest. 
 
 Originally, the system dealt Only with breaches of the pledge 
 appended to the written examination. In the course of time, 
 and by evolution of student public opinion its scope has grad- 
 ually widened, imtil at the present time it embraces any offense 
 seriously involving the student's honor. Its latest conquest has 
 been in the field of athletic sport — condemning as it does, par- 
 ticipation in athletic contests, when the player is conscious of 
 disqualification, under the rules of amateur sportsmanship. 
 
 The student makes no pledge in advance. His implied obliga- 
 tion does not include obedience to University ordinances, nor 
 to faculty regulations. All of these he may violate without in- 
 fraction of the honor system, provided his offense does not in- 
 volve a lie or a cheat, nor otherwise a breach of faith. 
 
 There are other offenses punished by the student body, such 
 as hazing — only one instance of which, by the way, has occurred 
 within the memory of the oldest inhabitant — and wanton de- 
 struction of, or injury to, University property. But these and 
 like offenses are dealt with under the system of self-govern- 
 ment — itself a reflex of the honor system — rather than under 
 the honor system proper. 
 
 Coming back to our raw freshman, he early learns not only 
 the nature of his obligations under the system, but its penalties. 
 
16 THE HONOR SYSTEM 
 
 He becomes conscious that its violation is a breach of trust in a 
 double sense — toward the constituted authorities of the Univer- 
 sity, and toward his fellow classmen; and that its penalties are 
 short, sharp and severe. Conviction carries with it immediate 
 expulsion from the University by the student body, and a dis- 
 grace that follows the delinquent for the remainder of his life. 
 As between conviction of cheating on examination, and of theft 
 in the police court, the average student would find the choice 
 an embarrassing one. Nor does public opinion in Virginia, and 
 in most parts of the South, distinguish between the two. 
 
 If the penalty seems severe, we must not forget the lie and 
 the breach of faith that accompany the offense. The mere act 
 of cheating is merged in the graver offenses of falsehood and 
 betrayal of trust. The first may, conceivably, be committed on 
 the spur of the moment — ^but signature to the pledge after- 
 wards, makes the act a deliberate falsehood. 
 
 Some account of the actual methods of holding examinations 
 under the system may be not without interest. 
 
 These examinations are held in one place, where all the candi- 
 dates are assembled, and no examination may be written else- 
 where. Logically, of course, the system would permit each 
 student to select any convenient place, even his own bedroom, 
 for the purpose. But, as society demands that its young women 
 shall be chaperoned, rather to preclude the suspicion or the 
 appearance of evil, than from the fear of it, so, to avoid ex- 
 posing the student to unnecessary temptation, and to preclude 
 suspicion on the part of his fellows, all candidates prepare their 
 examinations in the same room, and during the same hours. 
 In this room there are no monitors, student committees, nor 
 other detective machinery. The professor in charge considers 
 himself on duty, so long as the examination is in progress, but 
 his fimction is rather as chairman of the assembly. He is in 
 and out of the room at irregular intervals, as suits his conven- 
 ience. His presence from time to time is not only a necessary 
 part of the proceeding, but it testifies his interest in the occa- 
 sion, and lends it added dignity. His presence serves the fur- 
 ther purpose of clearing up those obscurities that will creep 
 into his questions, howsoever carefully set. But, neither in 
 theory nor in practice, does he play the role of detective. Such 
 a role would in itself be a flagrant violation of the system, and 
 
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 17 
 
 vsTould be resented by the student body with indignant protest. 
 
 As the professor is at hberty to leave the room at pleasure, 
 so the students freely exercise the same privilege. But, since 
 every student appreciates the delicacy of the situation, he is 
 careful not to incur the risk of criticism by going unaccom- 
 panied to his room, or absenting himself for any considerable 
 period from the observation of his fellows. The average stu- 
 dent would as little think of going to his chambers without a 
 companion, as a high-bred daughter of society would visit, un- 
 chaperoned, the apartments of her bachelor suitor. Indeed, I 
 know nothing with which one may more aptly compare the 
 cleanness and delicate decorum exacted of its subjects by the 
 honor system, than that which the best society demands of its 
 women. 
 
 At the end of his examination paper each student appends 
 the prescribed pledge, and deposits the paper upon the pro- 
 fessor's desk. In thus passing from the possession of the stu- 
 dent into the hands of the professor, the paper passes out of 
 the guardianship and jurisdiction of the student body — subject, 
 however, to challenge. The paper is, of course, read and 
 graded by the professor alone. 
 
 This brings us to the administrative side of the honor sys- 
 tem — the procedure and punishment, in case of violation of its 
 unwritten code. 
 
 The fundamental concept of the system is, that it is a stu- 
 dent code, interpreted and administered exclusively by the stu- 
 dent body. To borrow the language of the University catalogue, 
 "it imposes no burden on the faculty. Experience has shown 
 that the students themselves are its sternest guardians and ex- 
 ecutors." Feeling intense pride in this exercise of the govern- 
 mental function, they are keenly jealous of any inference 
 with their prerogatives, on the part of the faculty. The conse- 
 quence is, that from the inception of the system, in 1842, to the 
 present time, there is no trace, either on the faculty records or 
 in the memory of its oldest member, of faculty action against a 
 student for a violation of the honor system. 
 
 Under the system as it prevails at the University of Vir-, 
 ginia, any student who observes another cheating on examina- 
 tion, or otherwise violating the code of honor, is under a moral 
 obligation to his fellows to report the circumstance promptly 
 
18 THE HONOR SYSTEM 
 
 to such members of his class as he may desire to call in consul- 
 tation. This self-constituted committee makes a secret investi- 
 gation of the circumstances. If this inquisition seems to de- 
 velop a prima facie case, the committee calls upon the suspected 
 student for an explanation. Should this explanation prove sat- 
 isfactory, there is an end of the case. Should the explanation 
 be not satisfactory, the accused is given the choice of quietly 
 withdrawing, or of standing a trial before the honor committee. 
 This committee is made up of the presidents of the classes of 
 the five departments of the University, and the vice-president 
 of the class of which the accused is a member. The trial may 
 be in private or in public, as the accused may elect. If he elect 
 a public trial, the members of his class, together with such 
 friends as the accused may desire, are admitted, but no others. 
 Either side may be represented by student counsel. The pro- 
 ceedings are summary, and from the decision of this committee 
 there is no appeal. 
 
 If the accused be in fact guilty — as has proved to be the case 
 in, I believe, ninety per cent, of the accusations made — the fil- 
 ing of the charges usually insures his departure on the next 
 train, without awaiting a trial, or even a bill of particulars. 
 
 In rare instances the culprit has shown a bold front, and 
 made defense. His conviction is uniformly followed by an order 
 of immediate expulsion by the Honor Committee. There are 
 no minor penalties. 
 
 No case is remembered where the student remained in the 
 University after conviction. Refusal promptly to obey the or- 
 der of expulsion is practically an inconceivable situation; but I 
 am sure the lecture rooms would be empty, and police calls fre- 
 quent, while the students were engaged in executing their 
 decree. 
 
 If the impression has been created on your minds that these 
 accusations are of frequent occurrence, let me repeat that, as 
 student and teacher, I have been in residence at the University, 
 and in intimate contact with its student life, for nineteen years. 
 During that time, I have known of less than a score of accusa- 
 tions made, in the aggregate, from all departments of the Uni- 
 versity. During a connection of seventeen years with the Law 
 School, as teacher, and for the greater portion of that time as 
 Dean of the department — ^within which period the total attend- 
 
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 19 
 
 ance of law students has exceeded two thousand— there have 
 come to my knowledge less than a half dozen instances of a 
 charge of suspicious conduct on the part of a law student. Prob- 
 ably no case escaped my observation, since the custom of the 
 Honor Committee is to advise with the Dean, as amicus curiae, 
 m all such cases arising in his department. It may be added, 
 that in one of these cases only, did the accused demand a trial; 
 and that the strong prima facie case made against him was sat- 
 isfactorily proved to have been merely a thoughtless impru- 
 dence, and his acquittal resulted. In the other three or four 
 cases, the accused took leg bail, and stood not upon the order 
 of their going. 
 
 One not familiar vsdth the honor system may well inquire 
 how is obtained the consent of the students, as individuals and 
 as a mass, to accept this code of honor; and how is the spirit 
 kept alive, with the rapid and constant changes that take place 
 in every college constituency. 
 
 Of the difficulties, if any, that our predecessors in the fac- 
 ulty had, in engrafting the system upon our University life, I 
 may not speak, for lack of information. But its introduction 
 was at a time when the student body was made up of relatively 
 small numbers, and composed, to a large extent — as it still is, 
 but in less degree — of the sons of wealthy and aristocratic 
 Southern families. These sons, whatever may have been their 
 faults in other directions, held chivalrous notions of honor, and 
 were quick to defend their own honor, and to resent the want 
 of it in others. Such a code doubtless appealed strongly to their 
 aristocratic fancies. At any rate, the bud grafted into the stu- 
 dent life in 1842, found a congenial parent stock, and has bour- 
 geoned and borne fruit after its kind, with each succeeding sea- 
 son. 
 
 The continuity and vigor of the system have been fostered 
 by the circumstance that, through the influence of graduates 
 sent out as teachers, it has been transplanted into many of the 
 colleges and preparatory schools from which come most of our 
 students. Hence, a considerable majority of the freshmen come 
 to us already familiar with the system, and in sympathy with it. 
 These, with the returned members of the higher classes, each 
 one of whom is a loyal disciple of the system, make it possible 
 to begin each session with but a comparatively small number of 
 
20 THE HONOR SYSTEM 
 
 raw recruits to be broken in. Nor, as already stated, are these 
 long in learning the privileges and penalties of the system, for 
 the atmosphere is vibrant with it. Its appeal to the best there is 
 in them, soon converts the young barbarians into earnest, self- 
 respecting disciples. 
 
 The effects of the honor system on the University life, have 
 already, in part, been indicated. Not only has the problem of 
 securing honesty in the examinations been ,solved, but, inci- 
 dentally, many other problems of student government. The 
 spirit of truth and honor fostered in the examination room, has 
 gradually pervaded the entire life of the institution. It has 
 awakened the conscience of the student body, and developed a 
 public opinion that exercises a wholesome and potent influence 
 on student thought, manners and deportment. And, best of all, 
 the spirit of the system does not die with college days, but fol- 
 lows the graduate into the greater world outside. 
 
 That the honor system, as it exists at the University of Vir- 
 ginia, is a genuine and a practical thing, and that it has wrought 
 the results that I have endeavored to present to you, and more, 
 is not, and has not been within the past half century, a debat- 
 able question among members of the faculty, nor among the 
 undergraduates, nor the thousands of graduates distributed the 
 nation over; nor among the informed public at large. These with 
 one voice bear the same testimony in its behalf. It is no longer 
 a theory but a condition. 
 
 I have created a false impression, however, if I have led you 
 to believe that the students of our University are unwinged 
 saints, or that the honor system has tamed their youthful spirits, 
 or drawn the red blood from their veins. Doubtless, they sow, 
 with each recurring season, the same over-abundant crop of 
 wild oats which, in the false philosophy of youth, students have 
 been sowing since the world was young. I testify, on personal 
 knowledge, that the system has not eradicated the evils of idle- 
 ness and cutting of lectures. A gentleman may not lie, nor cheat, 
 nor steal — ^but he may abhor the confinement of the lecture 
 room, and detest the contemplation of contingent estates, and 
 be a gentleman still. And so, the honor system has steadily 
 refused to relieve the Dean of his weekly interviews with gen- 
 tlemen of leisure. 
 
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 21 
 
 Objection has been made that the honor system compels or 
 encourages one student to report the delinquencies of his fel- 
 lows. Such objection should have little force with members of 
 a bar association, under whose code of ethics the duty rests 
 upon every member, to bring to the notice of the court instances 
 of unprofessional conduct on the part of his brothers of the bar, 
 that they may be weeded out from the profession they have dis- 
 graced. 
 
 In the same manner as social clubs, religious bodies, literary 
 and scientific organizations, financial exchanges — ^indeed all 
 human organizations in which the moral character of the in- 
 dividual is important in determining his fitness as a member — 
 protect themselves against unworthy associates. 
 
 In the honor system there is no compulsion, other than that 
 exerted by one's own sense of duty to the student body of which 
 he is a member — the same compulsion that impels you to file 
 charges against a professional brother for betrayal of a trust, or 
 which leads a good citizen to report to the police, or to the 
 grand jury, a crime that has come under his observation. Nor, 
 until a student has by his conduct gilren cause for suspicion, is 
 there the slightest espionage upon his movements, by his fel- 
 lows. The atmosphere is not one of distrust and suspicion, but 
 precisely the reverse. The system demands and secures not 
 only faculty trust in the students' integrity, but the confidence 
 of his fellows as well. 
 
 Further objection has been made — and this comes from too 
 high a source to be passed by lightly — that under the honor 
 system the faculty cannot personally guarantee the honesty of 
 the examinations, and, therefore, the valuejaf the degree is low- 
 ered. I hope that I have already said enough to convince those 
 of you who have been good enough, to follow my treatment of 
 the theme thus far, that under the honor system, as we know it 
 at Virginia, there could be no surer guaranty of honesty of an 
 examination than the pledged — or dven the unpledged — honor 
 of the student, under the environment that I have described. 
 The examination is written, not in the presence of a few moni- 
 tors, nor in an environment where deception of the hired de- 
 tective is, perhaps not unnaturally, regarded as a clever per- 
 formance, and a matter for jest — or, at least, a mere pecca- 
 dillo — but in the presence of the candidate's classmen, not one 
 
22 THE HONOR SYSTEM 
 
 of whom would hesitate to challenge his honesty for cause; and 
 in an environment where dishonesty in the examination room 
 is not distinguished, in name or nature, from the same offense 
 in the counting room or the court room. 
 
 By the same token, it may be asked, who will personally cer- 
 tify to the integrity or the detective skill of the monitors? How, 
 under the monitorial system, may the faculty certify, of its own 
 knowledge, to the honesty of the examination, when the em- 
 ployment of the deputies is in itself a confession that the faculty 
 is unwilling or unable personally to guarantee the desired fair- 
 ness? Pursuing the argument until you tire of it, what assur- 
 ance has the American nation, other than their unchallenged 
 records as men of honor, that its chief magistrate, or the judge 
 of its highest court, are worthy of their great trusts? No 
 detectives dog their footsteps to spy out their transgressions, 
 and the door of opportunity for evil is wide open. 
 
 This objection assumes that young men are less worthy of 
 trust than their elders. The facts do not justify the assumption. 
 Other things being equal, my observation has been that an ap- 
 peal to conscience finds its readiest response in the bosom of 
 youth. Experience has taught me to place the same confidence 
 in the honor and manhood of the student as in my colleagues of 
 the faculty. Such is the general sentiment of my colleagues, 
 and such our practice. We give the student the same credit 
 for honesty in the part he plays in the examination, and for 
 truth in every statement made to us officially, as we expect him 
 to extend to us in our role as judges of his work. 
 
 Occasionally, in rarest instances, we do suspect a student of 
 untruthfulness. Every college teacher knows the college invalid 
 —the scamp who is well enough to be regular at all exercises 
 except those of the lecture room. Curiously enough, the moral 
 pervert will lie to his dean or professor, in excusing his idleness 
 or dissipation, but will be honest on his examination. This 
 means that he fears his fellows more than he fears the faculty— 
 a truth of general application under the honor system. Such 
 cases require much delicacy of handling. To be consistent with 
 the honor system, we accept his statements, and excuse his de- 
 linquencies, until patience itself ceases to be honorable. At this 
 
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 23 
 
 point, we send the sick man home, with the gentle admonition 
 that a real mother is a better nurse for an invalid than an alma 
 mater. 
 
 If further proof be needed of the honesty of the examina- 
 tions, we reach it inductively. Year after year, we find it pos- 
 sible, with considerable accuracy, to foretell the result of the 
 examinations. There are never violent surprises. The diligent 
 and intelligent student passes, while the dullard and the idler 
 fail. Presumably, it is the latter class to whom cheating would 
 be a temptation. 
 
 I hold no brief for the adoption of the honor system in law 
 schools now strangers to it. Its attempted introduction into new 
 territory to which the system would come as a suspected exotic, 
 would doubtless meet with many discouragements at the begin- 
 ning. There are probably law schools where, from local condi- 
 tions, the effort might be of doubtful expediency. But surely 
 we are all on common ground, in the conviction that every law 
 student should learn, from the beginning of his professional 
 studies, if no earlier, that, as an apprentice to a noble profession, 
 he should cultivate and practice the same principles of fair deal- 
 ing in his college relations, that he will be expected afterwards 
 to exhibit in his professional relations. 
 
 If we, as law teachers, are to deal lightly with deception and 
 dishonesty in the examination room, or out of it, and to excuse 
 these offenses as necessary or customary evils of college life, 
 when, may I ask, shall our complaisance cease, and when shall 
 our virtuous indignation at dishonesty begin? May the future 
 lawyer cheat his way into the college, and out of it — into and 
 through the law school — repeat the offense on his examination 
 for admission to the bar, and then suddenly develop into the 
 clean, high practitioner — the honest guardian of his clients' in- 
 terests, and the faithful servitor in the courts of his country? 
 Is the practice of law, with all the temptations it presents, a 
 better school for training one's ethical sense, than the study of 
 the law, under teachers selected as well for their high character 
 as for their learning? 
 
 These questions are left to your consideration. 
 
 If, in this discussion, the evils existing in many of our law 
 schools have been magnified, the error is to be attributed to the 
 same colossal ignorance of the facts on my part, that I have 
 
24 THE HONOR SYSTEM 
 
 already charged against censors of the honor system. The im- 
 pressions presented, were derived from hearsay, and from pos- 
 sibly irresponsible publications in the press. 
 
 If the evils suggested do exist, in greater or less degree, this 
 reference to them would be gratuitous, were no remedy sug- 
 gested. A word on this subject, and I shall cease to tax your 
 patience. 
 
 Such is my faith in any body of youth, possessing the cour- 
 age and ambition to undertake the severe regimen requisite to 
 a legal education, that I do not doubt that, left to their own de- 
 vices, they would themselves evolve some such system as I have 
 described, by whatever name it might be called. 
 
 The essential conditions would be the abolition of all espion- 
 age by the faculty or its deputies — the turning over of the exam- 
 ination room completely and unreservedly to the candidates — 
 and the grading, by the faculty, of every paper according to its 
 face value. The requirement of the pledge is a non-essential — 
 for after all, save in the case of a few moral weaklings, it is not 
 the written pledge that restrains, but the innate honesty of the 
 student, reinforced by a wholesome public opinion. In short, 
 the letter killeth, but the spirit maketh alive. Anarchy might 
 rule for a time; the new-found liberty might be outrageously 
 abused; the value of the degree might be temporarily sacrificed; 
 but the result would be well worth the cost. 
 
 In a peculiarly hostile environment such discouraging condi- 
 tions might continue long enough to exhaust the patience and 
 disappoint the hopes of the authorities. But if the latter show 
 the proper courage and consistency — not for a moment waver- 
 ing in the experiment — the instinct of self-protection among 
 the better class of students, would eventually solve the prob- 
 lem. The better element — always in the ascendency — ^would 
 tire of the spectacle of undeserved honors won by unfair 
 means, and of degrees conferred on wretched swindlers. And 
 if a revolution did not, sooner or later, bring order out of 
 chaos, I have misinterpreted the disposition and spirit of the 
 American law student. From the conflict would be evolved a 
 system of law, and order, and decency, enforced by the stu- 
 dents themselves — and a system more effective than could be 
 attained by an army of monitors. 
 
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 25 
 
 In brief, gentlemen of the Association, the honor system, or 
 some similar system, is the logical and imperative outcome of 
 absolute trust of the student body — of regarding college stu- 
 dents as men and not children — of the substitution of a demo- 
 cratic for an autocratic form of student government. Neither 
 this system, nor any similar one, can survive on half-hearted 
 trust. Where the confidence is unreserved, it cannot die. 
 
 In such a system, the result is both objective and subjective. 
 The student responds to the confidence reposed, by keeping 
 faith with the faculty and with his fellows — and himself learns 
 the invaluable lesson of using liberty without license. 
 
 On this principle our forefathers founded this great repub- 
 lic. I present it to you as the true principle of government for 
 the smaller republic of whose destinies you are the guardians. 
 There can be no real virtue where there is no opportunity for 
 vice. Remove freedom of choice between good and evil, and 
 character ceases to develop. No morality was ever created by 
 legislative ordinances, nor preserved by police supervision. 
 
26 THE HONOR SYSTEM 
 
 THE HONOR SYSTEM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF 
 VIRGINIA IN ORIGIN AND USE.* 
 
 I have been asked to prepare a paper on the Honor System 
 in the University of Virginia. I have interpreted this request 
 as having reference less to the historical development of this 
 system than to its practical working, and I have felt that you 
 would care more to learn the measure of success with which 
 this so-called system pursues its aims, than to hear the often 
 repeated eulogies of those familiar and universal ideals. 
 
 This system has been in Virginia, however, so truly a 
 growth, so little a result of contrivance, that I should despair 
 of making you fully acquainted with its merits and its defects, 
 unless I might briefly sketch the origin of its life' and the en- 
 vironment amidst which it has matured its powers and con- 
 quered its ascendancy. I must, therefore, beg the indulgence 
 of your patience, while I rapidly sketch its beginning and tell 
 you how it was born and how it grew to man's estate. 
 
 Thomas Jefferson is held by his admirers to be the first 
 American to conceive clearly and pursue consistently the true 
 image of an American university. Whether this claim be well 
 or ill founded, it concerns us not here to inquire. One thing is 
 certain and admitted: From the very birth of this nation, Jef- 
 ferson was keenly interested in the problems of education. In 
 1779 he promulgated for Virginia his well-known tripartite 
 scheme of public instruction, embracing Common Schools, 
 Grammar Schools, and a State University. In 1794 he urged 
 the transfer to Virginia of the whole Faculty of the Academy 
 of Geneva augmented by the illustrious geometer Lagrange 
 and the creation at one blow of a great American university 
 within the borders of his native State. Fifteen years later he 
 retired from public life to enjoy the repose of his country 
 home at Monticello, but was soon solicited by his neighbors to 
 aid them in organizing a local academy. He was over seventy 
 years old and wearied out with the fierce fightings and colossal 
 
 *A paper read by William M. Thornton, professor of Applied 
 Mathematics in the University of Virginia, before the Association of 
 Preparatory Schools and Colleges in the Southern States at its an- 
 nual meeting at the University of Tennessee, November, 1906. 
 
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 27 
 
 toils of a long and illustrious public career. Yet he seized this 
 opportunity with all the alacrity of youth; magnified the 
 academy into a college and procured for it a charter from the 
 legislature; raised an endowment fund; and then expanded his 
 plan into a scheme for a State university; secured the appoint- 
 ment of a Commission to select the site and devise the plans; 
 formulated the Report of the Commission and drafted the Bill; 
 and last, in 1819, aided by the devotion and sagacity of his 
 young friend and lieutenant, Joseph Cabell, achieved the final 
 passage of the statute which created the University of Virginia. 
 The great statesman loved this child of his old age with no 
 common love. In his familiar letters he called it his "bantling 
 of forty years' birth and nursing," and on his tomb he ordered 
 that he be written down, not the Founder, but the "Father of 
 the University of Virginia." 
 
 In the report of the Commission appointed by the Legisla- 
 ture to fix the site and devise the plan of organization of the 
 new university, a report drawn by Jefferson's own hand, we 
 find set forth his ideal of academic discipline. In this famous 
 passage, rightly regarded as the origin and the axiom of the 
 Honor System, Jefferson wrote as follows; 
 
 "The best mode of government for youth in large collections 
 is certainly a desideratum not yet attained by us. It may be 
 well questioned whether fear after a certain age is a motive to 
 which we should have ordinary recourse. The human character 
 is susceptible of other incitements to correct conduct more 
 worthy of employ and of better effect. Pride of character, 
 laudable ambition, and moral dispositions are innate correc- 
 tives of the indiscretion of that lively age; and when strength- 
 ened by habitual appeals and exercise have a happier effect on 
 future character than the degrading motive of fear. Hardening 
 them to disgrace, to corporal punishment and servile humilia- 
 tions cannot be the best process for producing erect character. 
 The affectionate deportment between father and son offers in 
 fact the best example for that of tutor and pupil; and the ex- 
 perience and practice of other countries in this respect may be 
 worthy of inquiry and consideration with us. It will then be for 
 the wisdom and discretion of the visitors to devise and perfect a 
 proper system of government, which if it founded in reason 
 and comity will be more likely to nourish in the minds of our 
 
28 THE HONOR SYSTEM 
 
 youth the combined spirit of order and self-respect, so congen- 
 ial with our political institutions, and so important to be 
 woven into the American character." 
 
 Such was Jefferson's ideal of collegiate discipline. We turn 
 to his practice in the building and organization of his new iini- 
 versity. With a studious and unvarying regard to economy, in 
 the administration of his modest funds, he adopted from the 
 earliest beginning of the original Central College a novel 
 architectural conception — the creation of what he himself de- 
 scribes as an "Academic Village." The unit was a professor's 
 residence (including his school-room) and an adjoining group 
 of single-story dormitories for students. Gradually these units 
 arranged themselves into a connected quadrangle. Most of 
 you have seen and recall the finished whole. To those who love 
 it, America offers no example of academic architecture so fine 
 and so true. The genius of antique beauty and dignity seems to 
 haunt its colonnades and throw the glamor of his loveliness 
 over the scholastic life. The chastity of correct detail, the re- 
 pose of perfect balance, the harmony of concordant motive 
 make their victorious appeal to every attentive soul. The gra- 
 cious variety of its facades masks a symmetry of plan which 
 yet leaves upon us its secret impression of sincerity and force. 
 It seems a fitting home, not for turbulent collegians nor bust- 
 ling housewives, but for some guild of quiet scholars or some 
 seminary of gentle monks. 
 
 Into this secluded realm, built for meditation and study, 
 poured the young Virginians of liB25. The pavilions were oc- 
 cupied in the main by scholarly young dons, fresh from the 
 semi-monastic life of Oxford and Cambridge. The dormitories 
 rapidly filled up with youngsters from the Virginian planta- 
 tions and cities, bringing with them the social traditions and 
 moral ideals of their Virginian homes. Of mutual knowledge, 
 of mutual sympathy, of mutual kindness there was little. 
 Academic life is in the main an echo of the home life. The boys 
 bring with them their vices and their virtues. The roots are 
 the same, the soil only is altered. Some came from homes of 
 sobriety and virtue, of religious conviction and ascetic living. 
 Young Gessner Harrison and his brother declined an invitation 
 to dine with Mr. Jefferson at Monticello because the dinner 
 was given on Sunday. Others brought with them the ancestral 
 
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 29 
 
 vices of the free-living Virginian planter — his love of horses 
 and sport, of cards and dice, of wine and women. The pro- 
 fessors knew only the traditions of the English Public Schools 
 and the English Universities — then at their worst, brutalized 
 by force and violence, governed only by stern repression, sick 
 for the reforming zeal and ennobling life of Thomas Arnold. 
 The faculty attempted to govern these American boys as they 
 themselves had been governed and the explosion followed 
 promptly. In the very plan of the buildings Jefferson had made 
 such government an anachronism. The students could not be 
 kept in their rooms or otherwise confined. Espionage was im- 
 possible. Even the virtues of these youngsters worked to over- 
 throw authority. They were brave and haughty, proud to in- 
 docility, magnificently loyal to each other, sensitive to rebuke, 
 and rebellious against punishment. With such collegians and 
 such college buildings the ancient methods of collegiate discip- 
 line were doomed to failure. 
 
 Nor had Jefferson stayed his hand at material measures cal- 
 culated to force his ideal of academic government into accept- 
 ance. When his Faculty was assembled they were presented 
 with a code of laws framed by the wise old Rector and ani- 
 mated by his humane and novel views. There was but one of- 
 fense for which a student could be expelled; that was duelling. 
 There were two for which he might be suspended for a brief 
 period; they were "riotous, disorderly, intemperate or indecent 
 conduct within ' the precincts of the university" and "con- 
 tumacy under reproof." For all other offenses, however numer- 
 ous, however gross, however exasperating, the Faculty could 
 inflict nothing more than an admonition. It was expressly or- 
 dered that no student should be constrained to testify either 
 against himself or against a fellow-student. "When testimony 
 is required from a student it shall be voluntary and not on 
 oath, and the obligation to give it shall be left to his own sense 
 of right." Nor was the Faculty free to control the details of his 
 daily life. "Every student," read the enactments, "shall be free 
 to attend the school of his choice and no other than he 
 chooses." "The students shall be free to diet themselves in any 
 of the hotels of the university, at their choice, or elsewhere 
 other than in taverns, as shall suit themselves." 
 
30 THE HONOR SYSTEM 
 
 It was not many years before the professors imported to 
 launch the new university withdrew from its service. First key 
 was called back to England, then Long, each to a position of 
 greater dignity and importance. It is pleasant to know that the 
 riotous indocility of some of their pupils did not mask the 
 pleasant memories of the more studious and of their honest 
 work. "I believed, and I still believe," wrote Long to one of 
 these with whom he corresponded regularly down to the close 
 of his distinguished and faithful life, "that I never had more 
 youths of good ability under me, nor youths more capable of 
 being made good and useful men." Other withdrawals and 
 changes came gradually. By 1840 the teaching staff had been 
 almost entirely renewed. Some of the new men were graduates 
 of the university. All the Faculty possessed naturally, or had 
 at least acquired a more sympathetic understanding of their 
 students, a closer contact with their lives, a clearer conception 
 of the Tightness and reasonableness of their founder's academic 
 code. Great abilities, unfaltering zeal, sound learning, manly 
 courage, stainless living, and lofty thinking conquered for 
 them an admiring and faithful allegiance. Where all were true 
 and good and wise it might seem invidious to single out any 
 for peculiar praise. Yet it is not too much to say of three men 
 that they were at least among the foremost in the great and 
 noble work accomplished by the united efforts of all. Those 
 who admire the achievements of the fathers may think of 
 three executives of the Faculty, each of whom stood for some 
 notable advancement of the common cause — of the martjrred 
 Davis, whose sweet charity married to unfaltering courage 
 taught the grace of gentleness in rebuke; of Edward Courte- 
 nay, in whom infinite patience was united with an inflexible 
 and impartial justice; of Gessner Harrison, who learned for 
 himself and showed to his coUegues the art of governing by in- 
 fluence, rather than by authority. To these men, more perhaps 
 than to all the others, did the University of Virginia owe the 
 method of her discipline and the secret of her academic life. 
 
 At this auspicious epoch a fourth member of the Faculty, 
 Henry St. George Tucker, offered to his colleagues in June, 
 1842, the following resolution: 
 
 "Resolved, That in all future written examinations for dis- 
 tinction or other honours of the University each candidate 
 
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 31 
 
 shall attach to the written answ^ers presented by him on such 
 examination a certificate in the following words: 'I, A. B., do 
 hereby certify on honour that I have derived no assistance 
 during the time of this examination from any source what- 
 ever, whether oral or written or in print, in giving the above 
 answers.' " 
 
 That the time was ripe is shown by the facts that this reso- 
 lution passed without dissent, and as far as the record shows, 
 without debate; that forthwith it commended itself to the stu- 
 dents, who cordially approved the regulation and took the en- 
 forcement of it into their own hands; and that of their own 
 motion they have devised a simple but firmly organized pro- 
 cedure for carrying the measure into effect. 
 
 That such a regulation was proposed and adopted would be 
 proof, if proof were needed, that fraudulent devices had crept 
 into the examination rooms. The original law of the Faculty 
 reproduced the practice common in the colleges of that day — 
 the practice of the present day at Oxford and Cambridge and 
 many other schools. Every examination was conducted by a 
 committee of three professors under the following rule: 
 
 "A majority of the committee shall always be present dur- 
 ing the examination, and they shall see that the students keep 
 perfect silence, do not leave their seats, and have no communi- 
 cation with one another or with other persons." 
 
 School-boy ethics is a curious branch of moral philosophy 
 and one of its principles seems to be that "where there is no 
 trust, deceit is no crime," and we know from Faculty records, 
 as well as from other sources, that cheating in examinations 
 was practiced, and, by a certain class of students, was con- 
 doned. One of the most painful and shocking episodes in my 
 recollection is that of an Alumni Banquet at Virginia, where 
 an old gentleman who had been a student in the thirties, was 
 among the guests of honour and was called upon to speak. He 
 was an old man, and had served his State nobly and well in 
 both peace and war, and had received the highest honours in 
 her gift. He rose and told as a merry jest the tale of some petty 
 examination-cheatery, which he had himself committed in his 
 student days. The crowded room was silent as the grave. There 
 was not a smile, not a whisper. The younger alumni looked as 
 if dumb with disbelief. To them the system under which they 
 
32 THE HONOR SYSTEM 
 
 lived was coeval with the University; the past had held no 
 shames. The old man took his seat and the toast-master, with- 
 out comment, called up the next speaker. 
 
 The examinations are conducted to-day under Professor 
 Tucker's resolution of 1842, extended to preclude by explicit 
 pledge, the giving, as well as the receiving, of assistance. The 
 committee of three professors is still present, but simply to 
 ensure order and quiet, and to answer reasonable inquiries as 
 to the question paper. The very appearance of watching the 
 conduct of individual students is . avoided. It is felt that the 
 jealous self-respect of the student-body furnishes the best 
 guarantee of honesty. Some of us habitually speak in a simple 
 but earnest way to the First Year classes at one of the closing 
 lectures of the Fall Term on the attitude of the University 
 towards its students in general and particularly as to the exami- 
 nations, and strive to impress upon them by affectionate 
 admonition the genuineness of our trust in them and the recip- 
 rocal duty resting on them of a fastidious rectitude of action. 
 But these admonitions seem even to us almost needless. So 
 powerful is student tradition in these matters that no student 
 brings with him to the examination room anything but a fresh 
 pad of paper and a fountain pen; that no two students willingly 
 occupy places at the same desk; that no student leaves the room 
 alone even for a few minutes; that no student ever visits his 
 room alone during the examination hours for any purpose 
 whatsoever. Not only with the Faculty, but with the students 
 themselves, the prevalent belief is that the examinations are 
 absolutely honest. The fact that at rare intervals some pitiful 
 creature — usually a man strange to the traditions and ideals of 
 the place — yields to temptation, cheats and is detected, adds to 
 our confidence in the prevalent rectitude. Where every man 
 strives to avoid the very appearance of evil, the actions of 
 such a student soon bring him under suspicion. His classmates, 
 jealous of the fair fame of their class and of the University, 
 observe him more carefully. We believe that such men are 
 almost invariably first suspected, then detected, then expelled. 
 
 The procedure in such cases is the same in all the depart- 
 ments. Each of these is organized into a Class and elects a 
 Class-President and other officers, who are charged with the 
 duty of advancing the general interests of the Class. The sus- 
 
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 33 
 
 pected student is at once reported confidentially to the Pres- 
 ident of the Class. The charge and the evidence are laid by him 
 before the Class officers. If the evidence appears convincing, 
 the student is called privately before these officers, and con- 
 fronted with his accusers. He hears the charge, the evidence is 
 recited before him, and he makes his explanation. If he clears 
 himself, the charge is at once dismissed and nothing is ever 
 heard of it by any outsider. If he cannot exculpate himself, 
 he is given the choice of private withdrawal from the Univer- 
 sity or a public trial. Usually the first of these alternatives is 
 elected. If the student takes the second, he may have his trial 
 either before his Class, or before the entire University, and 
 the jury may be, at his option, composed of his classmates or 
 may be an outside board of impartial referees. The Faculty 
 takes no part in the proceedings. In theory even the convicted 
 student has the right of appeal first to the Faculty and the 
 President, then to the Board. In practice there is no appeal.* 
 Fortunately for our University life, trials are exceedingly 
 rare, and the offense which occasions them is, we believe, pro- 
 portionately uncommon. Such is the tragical tension of these 
 occasions, and so wretched is the fate of the convicted offender, 
 that numerous occurrences would bring about some inevitable 
 disaster. The young Virginian, who is expelled from the Uni- 
 versity of Virginia, finds upon his brow the ineffaceable mark 
 of his shame. At home he is excluded from every club, shut out 
 from every position of trust, debarred from every office of hon- 
 our. Abroad he finds everywhere the omnipresent Virginian, 
 who carries with him through all the world the memories and 
 traditions of his early home. I have been interrogated private- 
 ly by the officers of New York Clubs as to the University rec- 
 ords of candidates for admission to their privileges. In all my 
 experience I have never known or heard of a man who lived 
 down the memories of an expulsion under the Honour System. 
 In discussing it with Northern teachers I have found them 
 often shocked by this aspect of relentless severity. To them it 
 seems savage and un-Christian. They feel that the crime of 
 fraud, committed under stress of great temptation, sincerely 
 
 *The procedure given by Dr. Thornton has been slightly modified 
 since the original publication of this article. 
 
34 THE HONOR SYSTEM 
 
 repented, and honestly repaired, should be condoned. To the 
 students of Virginia the case wears a different aspect. They 
 condemn and punish not the fraud, but the lie — a lie cold- 
 blooded, selfish, and murderous to the common good-fanie. 
 The offender signs the lie deliberately. Before the fault was 
 committed, he knew he must sign the lie. And he signs it not 
 as an individual, but as the member of a class, whose honour 
 is in his custody; as an alumnus of a college whose fair repute 
 is prostituted to his selfish ends. To cheat and lie under the 
 conditions of student life in Virginia with them betokens hope- 
 less moral debasement. 
 
 It is from this point of view that we must judge what seems 
 to the careless observer the student's capricious application of 
 the Honour System. Men have been expelled under it for pub- 
 lishing in the University Magazine a stolen article and offering 
 it in competition for a prize. They have been expelled for 
 cheating at cards with their fellow-students, or for evading 
 payment of just debts by falsely claiming they had been 
 robbed. They have been expelled for sexual crimes against 
 younger students and for violent and insulting behavior to 
 ladies or other defenseless persons. Of many other offenses the 
 students refuse to take cognizance. Gambling they condone as 
 long as the game is fairly played. Drinking they seem to con- 
 sider one accomplishment of a gentleman, and drunkenness is 
 simply the unfortunate error of an immature judgment. 
 Sexual passion is common to man, and illicit indulgence in it 
 has perils and penalties, which are its proper punishment. We 
 cannot change their code, if we would, and for my part I 
 should doubt the wisdom of a change. The student does not 
 analyze his convictions. He feels them, and by a true and just 
 instinct sets apart from other human frailties those sins which 
 destroy confidence in the sinner's inward soundness of nature. 
 If the foundations of character are destroyed then the toppling 
 superstructure of reputation must go likewise. 
 
 The conditions which have made possible the establishment 
 of this system in Virginia and its successful maintenance are 
 not unworthy of our study. Foremost among them I put Jeffer- 
 son's own convictions and ideals, the academic statutes framed 
 by him for the government of the new university, and the 
 
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 35 
 
 peculiar though beautiful lay-out of the buildings, which, 
 w^hether by accident or by design, forced upon a reluctant 
 Faculty the adoption and the adjustment of the Jeffersonian 
 plan. As far as the discipline at Virginia is concerned those 
 earliest statutes are still in force, consecrated by a noble tradi- 
 tion and commending themselves to our present day by their 
 genuine humanity and their sagacious reserve. The Honour 
 System in every college must be a growth rather than a build- 
 ing, a part of the life rather than a part of the law, and in 
 Jefferson's sweet and noble ideal I iind its true seed. 
 
 Hardly less essential is a compact academic life, where the 
 students are brought into familiar and gracious contact with 
 each other and with their teachers. The Romans were not far 
 wrong when they failed to distinguish between a stranger and 
 an enemy. Mutual knowledge brings almost inevitably mutual 
 understanding and mutual sympathy, and out of these grow 
 the care for common interests and the love for common causes. 
 The life of an Oxford College is to-day the hope of many for 
 American collegiate development, and all remember how 
 Arnold re-created Rugby by means of the boys who lodged in 
 his own house and boarded at his own table and came under 
 his personal tuition. Jefferson's academic village lent itself 
 most admirably to the creation of such an academic life. The 
 professors lived amidst their students and the physical near- 
 ness of dormitory and pavilion translated itself into social 
 courtesies and moral contacts. The students themselves were 
 brought into natural and unconstrained intercourse with each 
 other and learned to know and to trust each other and to live 
 a common life with common aims and common ideals. 
 
 Virginia was happy also in the qualities of her professors. 
 They were men of high social standards, of sound scholarship, 
 of noble aspiration. Many of them had acquired wide experi- 
 ence of life and deep knowledge of men. More than one pos- 
 sessed rare executive powers. But with it all and above all 
 they were gentlemen and added the gracious courtesy of their 
 caste to the force of robust intelligence and the energy of virile 
 natures. Only to-day* I stood with Colonel Mosby before a pa- 
 vilion on West Lawn. "Here." said he, "lived a man whom I 
 
 *October 20, 1906. 
 
36 THE HONOR SYSTEM 
 
 reverenced and still reverence above all men. Not even before 
 General Lee on the battlefield did I stand with such awe and 
 admiration as before Professor Courtenay." It was the daily- 
 intercourse with those men that transformed student-life in 
 Virginia and brought the Honour System to its birth. 
 
 A system created with so great expenditure of moral energy 
 and anxious thought is worthy of preservation. If it be in any 
 college a vital principle of action, an active element in the col- 
 legiate life, then none among the academic interests of that 
 college should be held more sacred or guarded more sedulous- 
 ly. No gain of income or of prestige, no enlargement of num- 
 bers or of teaching power, no relief from the burden of discip- 
 line or the responsibilities of direction, can in the long run 
 compensate for the destruction or even the weakening of the 
 sense of persoanl and collective honour in the academic life. In 
 two directions the modern university is confronted with seri- 
 ous present danger to the true, that is, the spiritual elements 
 of its existence. One of these directions is that of college ath- 
 letics, the other is that of college administration. 
 
 Faculties have for many years withheld from the interference 
 with college athletics because some men believed and others 
 hoped that the wholesome elements in it would purify and 
 sweeten the rest. We persuaded ourselves that the filthy scum 
 that came to the top, the vile odours that tainted the air, were 
 but manifestations of a natural and healthful fermentation 
 soon to be completed and done with forever. Long observation 
 and close study have proved that this noisome fermentation 
 was constantly renewed by accessions of corrupting agencies 
 from without; that ungoverned athletics was simply a by-pass 
 from an outside sewer, which drained its poison into the pure 
 springs of the academic life. At Virginia, and other universities 
 as well, it has been finally determined that athletics must be 
 subjected to Faculty control; that its practices must be made 
 open and honest; that games must be played as examinations 
 are taken — on honour; and that unless athletics can be made 
 wholesome and clean, then athletics must go. 
 
 As universities grow, as classes enlarge and multiply, as fac- 
 ulties expand, as administrative organization becomes more 
 intricate, the maintenance of close personal relations between 
 professors and students and among the students themselves, 
 
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 37 
 
 becomes increasingly difficult. There was a time when the 
 President of an American university would know personally 
 every student upon the rolls. Gessner Harrison made a special 
 study of his matriculation book, and each night would carefully 
 go over the names of the men registered during the day, until 
 at last he had connected the name and the face of every student 
 in the University of Virginia. General Lee made it a duty to 
 know personally in his University, and on one well known 
 occasion administered a stinging rebuke to a young professor, 
 who, presuming on the famed tenacity of Lee's memory, failed 
 to introduce a young man whom Lee had forgotten. In our 
 great hypertriphied American universities, with their enormous 
 faculties, the president hardly knows his own professors; the 
 professors do not know the men in their own classes; the stu- 
 dents do not know their own class-mates. The true academic 
 life is stifled and the virtues of manliness and honour and rever- 
 ence and love, once begotten from it, perish before the birth un- 
 less elsewhere engendered. Against this danger we know not 
 as yet how to fight. As the trusts have stifled initiative in 
 business; as the factories have choked the life out of the indi- 
 vidual producer in the decorative arts; so the great University 
 may transform the face of modern education. We can only 
 cry — Absit omen! 
 
 To think of the Honour System as a mere artifice for securing 
 honesty in the examination room, as an automatic machine for 
 replacing so many keen-eyed proctors, is to miss the heart of 
 the whole thing. The college officer who attempts to use it for 
 ends so low, for purposes so mean, must not be surprised if it 
 breaks down in his hands. To be effectual it must be conceived 
 as a vital principle, exalting to nobler ends and purer aims all 
 the incarnations of the academic life. It ought to affect and it 
 will affect the outlook of the student-mind upon all questions 
 of conduct and of duty. He is brought under its constraining 
 force at an age when the sanctions of religious rearing often 
 begin to loose their power; when the fresh new world of free- 
 dom and of joy allures him with manifold temptations; when 
 the nascent powers of virility produce in body and brain and 
 heart the riotous springtide of youth and hope. Shall we ac- 
 count it a small thing if at this fateful moment we possess a dis- 
 cipline which helps to keep him straight and clean; which tells 
 him in accents he can but heed that to be brave and loyal and 
 
38 THE HONOR SYSTEM 
 
 true is man's peculiar virtue; which bids him embrace failure 
 rather than stoop to fraud; which teaches him to despise an un- 
 deserved success and contemn an unmerited reward? The 
 great malady of our modern times is the adoration of the win- 
 ning side. In the business world to be rich at whatever cost 
 to body and to soul; in the political world to be powerful, what- 
 ever the price in sincerity and faith; in the social world to lead 
 through whatever sloughs of ignoble pleasure and brainless 
 folly — these are the manias of the life of our day. In our own 
 South we do not yet feel their full frenzy; but year by year 
 and decade by decade the poison works its way deeper and 
 deeper into our veins. Already our more affluent, more pow- 
 erful, more luxurious neighbors of the Northern States are 
 finding the fruits they battled for turn to ashes on their lips. 
 But still the frenzied fight goes on. If in the academic life 
 there be a point of vision, a principle of sanity, a rule of hon- 
 our; if it sends out these young collegians with souls tempered 
 to disdain wealth attained by fraud or force, and power won 
 by ignoble surrenders, and leadership gained by base com- 
 pliances, then once again it may come about that through the 
 colleges God has willed to save the State. 
 
 I feel assured that I shall not need in concluding this paper to 
 apologize for its personal tone or its frequent reference to the 
 experiences of a single school. To speak to you with force and 
 clearness I must needs speak concerning that which my own 
 eyes have seen, my own hands have handled. As I look back 
 over the thirty years of my professorship, I cannot recall that 
 any one of my students ev6r answered me falsely or even dis- 
 ingenuously as to his work or any other, topic; or tried to mis- 
 lead me as to his performance; or met me on any ground other 
 than that of openness and veracity. During eight years of serv- 
 ice in the Chairman's office, when the discipline of all the stu- 
 dents of the University was in my hands, but one man ever told 
 me a lie, and he came back the next morning and confessed the 
 truth, although the truth ensured his dismissal from the Uni- 
 versity. These experiences and others like them force us to 
 believe in the Honour System and constrain us to commend it 
 to others. We say frankly that it will not stop gambling, or 
 prevent drunkenness, or establish chastity as a rule of college 
 and deed; to manly openness of life and thought. Of all dis- 
 ciplines, it is the best to make men. 
 
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 39 
 
 Nor do I need to say to this audience that the University of 
 Virginia claims no monopoly of this system and asserts no rights 
 of prior discovery in the spirit of honour. We are, I fear, sus- 
 pected by some of a sort of arrogance in such matters. We are 
 sometimes told of schools, where the equivalent of this system 
 existed from the day when the first foundation-stone was laid, 
 and so told that we might well feel ashamed of our own difficul- 
 ties. It was not so in Virginia. This plant of Jefferson's was 
 not native to our arid Virginian soil. It was an exotic, planted 
 in faith and love, tended with carefulness, guarded with pray- 
 ers, watered with tears and at least once with blood, coming 
 slowly to its maturity. The university of the twentieth century, 
 with all the accumulating momentum of social progress may, 
 perhaps, effect with ease what has cost us so much in time and 
 pains. For ourselves we hold gratefully and reverently to this 
 bequest of the Father of our University, and guard it with de- 
 vout and unwearying care. In the day of our adversity it was 
 our chief support. In the time of our prosperity may it not de- 
 part from us. 
 
 An interesting and instructive parallel might be drawn be- 
 tween the work of reformation done by Arnold at Rugby and 
 the work of Jefferson and his successors in Virginia. Arnold 
 was called to Rugby in 1827 and died there in June, 1842. The 
 work at Rugby and the work in Virginia were therefore exactly 
 synchronous. The great object of both was also the same — ^to 
 secure a body of self-respecting and self-governing youths. The 
 method and the secret of both were the same; the method, that 
 of trust; the secret, that of exalted personal virtue reaching 
 down and lifting up to its own plant the unspoiled lives of in- 
 genuous boys. 
 
 The difference between the ideals of Arnold and of Jefferson 
 are equally striking. The great Head-master found in the Sixth 
 Form of his school an engine ready-built for his work. The 
 boys of this Form possessed already a traditional power and 
 authority over their school-fellows. Thus it came about that 
 Arnold strove to create out of his Sixth Form a governing aris- 
 tocracy of virtue and scholarship. Jefferson's aim was to build 
 his whole university into a democracy informed with sweetness 
 and light. Arnold approached his task as a Christian and a 
 clergyman, using the sanctions of religion to enforce his claims. 
 
40 THE HONOR SYSTEM 
 
 and employing his sermons as the great means of appeal to his 
 boys. Jefferson was here, as always, a deist and a statesman, 
 using wise statutes to direct the primitive currents of human 
 nature into the channels where he would have them flow. 
 
 In all the details of Arnold's dealings with his boys we see 
 exemplified the very spirit of Jefferson's conception of school 
 government. So familiar have the practices and precepts of a 
 gentler and more rational discipline now become, that we may 
 find Arnold's methods and Arnold's maxims paralleled in a 
 thousand schools today. But we should not forget that it was 
 Arnold's influence and the example of his success at Rugby 
 which reformed Public School education in England, and that 
 Jefferson's lofty conception of academic life has with us in Vir- 
 ginia and in all the South been potent in producing the same re- 
 sults. Much that is said of Arnold and by Arnold, reads as if it 
 had fallen from the lips of our great American. 
 
 "In the higher forms," writes his biographer. Dean Stan- 
 ley, "any attempt at proof of an assertion was immediately 
 check. 'If you say so, that is quite enough: oj course 1 believe 
 you!' " 
 
 Stanley describes in the same connection, Arnold's practice 
 "treating the boys as gentlemen and reasonable beings; of mak- 
 ing them respect themselves by the mere respect he shewed 
 to them, of shewing that he appealed and trusted to their own 
 common sense and conscience; ... of keeping punishment, 
 as much as possible, in the background, and by kindness and 
 encouragement attracting the good and noble feelings of those 
 with whom he had to deal." 
 
 As I began this paper with a quotation from Jefferson, ex- 
 pounding what I conceive to be the true theory of academic gov- 
 ernment, permit me to conclude it in words from Arnold, giving 
 us what I take to be the true theory of academic training — 
 moral as well as intellectual: 
 
 "I hold fast to the great truth that 'Blessed is he that over- 
 cometh.' Amid scenes of temptation and trial, the character is 
 braced to greater beauty and firmness than it ever can attain 
 without enduring the witnessing them. Our work here would 
 be absolutely unendurable, if we did not bear in mind that we 
 should look forward as well as backward; if we did not remem- 
 ber that the victory of fallen man lies, not in innocence but in 
 tried virtue." 
 
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 41 
 
 THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT* 
 
 No established code of laws is ever a complete or perfect in- 
 strument. The framers of a law or code, save when they are 
 endowed with an arbitrary power, find it necessary often to 
 compromise with principle in order to secure the adoption and 
 establishment of even an approximation to the law intended to 
 be based purely upon principle. No law established by a peo- 
 ple for their own government can be a law in any respect, and 
 is a positive detriment, unless that law and its enforcement be 
 approved and believed in by a large majority of those who are 
 governed by it. Any law established by a proper supreme au- 
 thority, in order to be effective, must have attached to it a pen- 
 alty sufficiently drastic to deter violation and must be backed by 
 an eflEective and efficient force completely capable of promptly 
 imposing and inflicting the penalty, impartially upon each and 
 every one who breaks the law. 
 
 The Hebrew Decalogue as established by Moses contains laws 
 governing two fundamental things, defining one's duty toward 
 God and one's duty toward one's neighbor. There is no word 
 in this code as to one's duty toward one's self. There is a 
 law against murder, against adultery, against stealing, and one 
 against bearing false witness or slander or libel, and finally a 
 law against covetousness. But, there is no word against lying, 
 or intemperance, or unchastity. It became necessary for the 
 Bishops of the Christian Church in a catechism to inject artifi- 
 cially and incongruently these ideas into an interpretation of 
 one's duty to one's neighbor in the form of a kind of corollary, 
 not, mind you, as a duty to one's self and one's self-respect. 
 
 Some religious codes are more definite in respect to these ap- 
 parently omitted things in the fundamental laws of the Jewish 
 ten commandments. For example, the ten commandments of 
 the Bhagavata School in India are: "Thou shalt not lie, slander 
 no one, use no harsh words, talk not idly, steal not, commit not 
 adultery, kill not, think no evil, hate not, and be not proud." 
 
 *An address read by Professor W. H. Echols of the University 
 before St. Paul's Club at its meeting February 12, 1914. From the 
 Alumni Bulletin, April, 1914. 
 
42 THE HONOR SYSTEM 
 
 What is a lie? If one turns to a dictionary to define it, one 
 finds there that it is an intentional falsehood, and on turning to 
 falsehood one finds that it is a lie; and you can take your choice. 
 A Jew psalmist, I believe, said all men are liars. If that were 
 true, lying is a congruent function of every man, and of course 
 there would be no sense in legislating against what is as thor- 
 oughly a proper thing as eating, breathing, sleeping. 
 
 A lie is an immoral act which cannot be defined and is, there- 
 fore, beyond the pale of law. There is no secular law against 
 the lie. The law does not define or use the term. There are 
 forms of the lie called, technically, perjury, slander, libel, upon 
 which the law can place its hand and punish. But, the lie at 
 large is too subtle, too evasive, too devilish to come within the 
 grasp of defined law. This poisonous thing can only be dealt 
 with through the unwritten law, a kind of eleventh command- 
 ment, Thou shalt not lie! 
 
 How difficult it is to deal concretely with the great generali- 
 ties. There is a great law. Thou shalt not kill; and yet we be- 
 lieve that sometimes killing is justifiable. There is a great law. 
 Thou shalt not lie; and yet it has been held that sometimes a 
 lie is justifiable. It is said that a noble and just judge on the 
 bench in the trial of a case in the state of Arkansas, concerning 
 a woman, charged a witness to the effect that, a man who would 
 not perjure himself where the honor of a woman was at stake 
 was not fit to be believed upon his oath on any other subject. 
 And in a similar case in Georgia, a witness was counseled to lie, 
 if it were necessary, until his tongue rotted in the roof of his 
 mouth to save the character of a woman. What the circum- 
 stances were which surrounded these cases is not known; and, 
 indeed, the stories themselves may be fictitious, but they illus- 
 trate the point and raise a mooted question. 
 
 They are both tales of a section of our country of which we 
 are a part and in which we are vitally interested; and this 
 brings us to consider a people whose hatred of the lie and the 
 liar is not surpassed by that of any people on the face of the 
 earth. The South, meaning by that the thirteen Southren 
 states, was peopled by an interesting and remarkable people. 
 It was a most homogeneous people of ,a common stock. In fact, 
 it is inhabited today by the most homogeneous people on this 
 continent. The Southerner of the nineteenth century was al- 
 
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 43 
 
 most purely of English, Scotch or Irish stock, and throughout 
 this territory the people all knew each other. They were bound 
 together by ties of blood and intermarriage and socially to such 
 an extent that state boundary lines were effaced in common 
 interests, common acquaintances and friendships, not to men- 
 tion the far reaching and closely interwoven ties of blood re- 
 lationship. The standards of living and thinking, moral and 
 intellectual and social influences, were singularly uniform 
 throughout the land. They were an extremely chivalrous peo- 
 ple, proud, sensitive, brave, and their ideals were exalted. It 
 has been said that chivalry on the part of a man means readi- 
 ness to fight on the instant any able bodied man who presents 
 himself, and to make love to any attractive woman. This was 
 much the characteristic of the Southerner. 
 
 Because of his ideals he saw that the laws of the land were 
 inadequate to cover his standards of conduct and, therefore, he 
 instituted his honor code of unwritten law. The duelling code 
 died last in the South. Under this a man could protect and de- 
 fend his honor without the sordid processes of the courts, and 
 even today the courts of the South hold that to give the lie is 
 to strike the first blow in deadly combat. To protect the home, 
 the seducer or def amer of a woman met swift death at the hand 
 of her man kin. The theory was that even where the woman 
 was entirely at fault, it was better that the man should die than 
 that an important principle should be jeopardized. The result 
 was a chaste womanhood. 
 
 Throughout the middle half of this century the University of 
 Virginia was the exponent-type of the ideals of this people. 
 They brought to her from all over the South their standards of 
 living and thinking and stamped upon her characteristically 
 their high purpose, and established what the Germans would 
 call a Sittlichkeit of high order. They laid down an unwritten 
 law: Thou shalt not lie and thou shalt not cheat. It was no 
 abiding place for the Sophist. They decreed that the student 
 who broke his honor pledge should be expelled by them from 
 the University, and so far as known, this was inexorably carried 
 out. It was a law of the code that a man who cheated at cards 
 should be expelled by his fellows. 
 
 In June, 1842, Judge Henry St. George Tucker, professor 
 of law in the University, introduced a resolution, which the fac- 
 
44 THE HONOR SYSTEM 
 
 ulty adopted, to the effect that in all written examinations for 
 distinction in the University each candidate should attach to 
 the written answers presented by him on such examination a 
 
 certificate in the following words: "I do hereby certify 
 
 on honor that I have derived no assistance during the time of 
 this examination from any source whatever, whether oral, writ- 
 ten or in print, in giving the above answers." 
 
 It would be extremely interesting to know the detailed cir- 
 cumstances which led to the introduction of this pledge; to 
 know what part the student played in its conception, and just 
 when and how the whole policing of the examinations was 
 taken in charge by the student body. This item is one of the 
 most interesting things in the life of the University of Vir- 
 ginia. 
 
 The students accepted the honor pledge in the examination as 
 part of their honor code, and guaranteed to the faculty that it 
 should be carried out to the letter. This took the matter from 
 faculty jurisdiction and placed it in the hands of the students. 
 Until recently, certainly in the late eighties, each examination 
 was held by a committee of the professors, usually three regu- 
 lar members of the faculty (not instructors). A major portion 
 of this committee always sat in the examination room during 
 the whole duration of the examination, not with any view of 
 espionage, but to give formal dignity to the important function. 
 Students standing examinations were extremely careful that 
 every act should be above the possibility of suspicion. No man 
 isolated himself at any time for any purpose whatever diu-ing 
 his examination. If one man wished to smoke he always waited 
 until it was convenient for some other man to go out with him. 
 Men did not leave the examination room to go to boarding 
 houses for meals, or to their rooms for any purpose during ex- 
 aminations. The boarding houses sent luncheons to the exam- 
 ination rooms and in an adjoining lecture room, which was va- 
 cant, the men took liinch together. In those days the examina- 
 tions lasted the entire day. The students assumed the responsi- 
 bility of protecting the examinations against fraud and under- 
 stood that they were the guardians who guaranteed the validity 
 of the examination papers, and that the pledge" was not a li- 
 censed opportunity but a guard which no man dared to take ad- 
 
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 45 
 
 vantage of to isolate himself or give cause for any shadow of 
 suspicion. 
 
 How was it possible for Virginia to establish such a custom, 
 so utterly at variance with the customs in other colleges and 
 universities, and to maintain it and carry it efficiently for sev- 
 enty-five years? This question is asked repeatedly by others 
 and no answers seem satisfying to them. It is hard to answer 
 without appearing to make a somewhat invidious distinction of 
 our people, and yet it seems the time has come when this ques- 
 tion should be analyzed and answered not so much for others 
 as for ourselves here today. 
 
 During the period of the establishment and growth of the 
 honor system at Virginia, say twenty years prior to and subse- 
 quent to the War between the States, the people of the South 
 were singularly homogeneous and were, in fact, but one great 
 family. The sons of these people who came to the University 
 of Virginia were either related by blood or family friendships 
 and were all in one way or another known to each other. Their 
 fathers had been students here and their fathers before them. 
 They came with the same family training and upbringing; they 
 brought with them the same fireside traditions, principles, be- 
 liefs and ideals; they were all of the same faiths; and, what was 
 vitally important, they were almost entirely of the same high 
 social status. They brought with them a common point of view 
 of right and wrong and a noblesse oblige with pride and courage 
 which was theirs by inheritance. It was not strange; on the 
 contrary, the most natural thing in the world— that these high 
 strung, proud, courageous youths should establish here a code 
 of honor whose ideal was something like that which governed 
 their high spirited fathers in the outer world. Then, too, it is 
 to be remembered that the number of students in attendance 
 was small, only a few hundred at most, and each student knew 
 more or less intimately each other one. Thus new students of 
 the same calibre, social status and general uniformity of train- 
 ing were readily and easily assimilated from year to year as 
 they came in. They knew the conditions here before they came, 
 learning them from fathers and brothers who had been students 
 here, and from the excellent preparatory schools intimately as- 
 sociated with the University, so that they came fully prepared 
 
46 THE HONOR SYSTEM 
 
 with full knowledge and with pride and joyous willingness to 
 become a part of it and to uphold and defend this code. 
 
 No honor code can stand the test of time and experience with- 
 out a drastic penalty for its violation, and this penalty must be 
 uniformly, impartially and impersonally administered puhlicly. 
 It is a distressing and heartrending thing that a man should 
 be expelled by his fellows for cheating in an examination, thus 
 violating his honor pledge. But if the principle is to maintain, 
 this must be done and it should be made known pubhcly in 
 college that the thing has occurred and the identified man has 
 been dismissed. This publicity is necessary as a part of the pun- 
 ishment of the guilty one and for the salutory effect upon 
 others. It will not do as the body of students increases and thus 
 becomes more unwieldly to let down the bars and mitigate the 
 punishment of this offense by suppressing the fact. 
 
 Notwithstanding the doubled attendance in the past twenty 
 years, the students of the University are to be congratulated 
 upon having maintained this system, or preferably code or, if 
 one rather, spirit, as well as it has been done. But eternal vigi- 
 lance is absolutely necessary for its preservation. 
 
 What is it that inculcates in a man the abihty to have and to 
 hold at all cost within himself a high ideal? It surely does not 
 have its origin in the isolated him, the primal and elemental 
 form of his being, for there the instinct of sel/-preservation is 
 the dominating principle, the first, second and third laws of 
 nature, and is the paramount feeling in the heart of the coward. 
 Viscount Haldane, Lord Chancellor of Great Britian, in an ad- 
 dress before the American Bar Association at Montreal last 
 September, admirably indicates that foundation principle 
 which in moments of supreme trial lifts a man into that exalted 
 plane on which he has full satisfied possession of the conscious- 
 ness of his spirit without fear and above reproach. He says 
 that it resembles the morality of conscience in that it is enforced 
 by no legal compulsion. In the English language we have no 
 name for it. German writers have marked out the system and 
 have given it the name of Sittlichkeit. "It is a system 0/ 
 habitual or customary conduct, ethical rather than legal, which 
 embraces all those obligations of the citizen which is bad form 
 or not the thing, to disregard." It is the result of the object- 
 
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 47 
 
 lesson in the conduct of decent people tow^ard each other and 
 toward the community to w^hich they belong; where man guides 
 himself by his sense of loyalty and responsibility to his people. 
 Sittlichkeit, a custom and a habit of mind and action, a prin- 
 ciple which has become a second nature and of which one is 
 not explicitly conscious! And out of this ethical habit arises 
 the power in time of stress to adequately control one's personal 
 conduct, and to rise at such times above the consciousness of 
 such sensations as courage or cowardice. Lord Haldane illus- 
 trates a higher form of such a sense of obligation by an actual 
 incident: "There is a poem by the late Sir Alfred Lyall which 
 exemplifies the high level that may be reached in such conduct. 
 The poem is called Theology in Extremis, and it describes the 
 feeling of an Englishman who had been taken prisoner by 
 Mahometan rebels in the Indian Mutiny. He is face to face 
 with a cruel death. They offer him his life if he will repeat 
 something from the Koran. If he complies, no one is likely to 
 even hear of it, and he will be free to return to England and 
 to the woman he loves. Moreover — and here is the real point — 
 he is not a believer in Christianity, so that there is no question 
 of denying his Savior. What ought he to do? Deliverance is 
 easy, and the relief and advantage would be unspeakably 
 great. But he does not really hesitate, and every shadow of 
 doubt disappears when he hears his fellow-prisoner, a haK- 
 caste, pattering eagerly the words demanded. He himself has 
 no hope of heaven and he loves life — 
 
 " 'Yet for the honor of English race 
 May I not live or endure disgrace. 
 Aye, but the word if I could have said it, 
 I by no terrors of hell perplext. 
 Hard to be silent and have no credit 
 From man in this world, or reward in the next; 
 Have to bear witness and reckon the cost 
 Of the name that is saved by the life that is lost. 
 I must begone to the crowd untold 
 Of men by the cause which they serve unknown, 
 Who moulder in myriad graves of old; 
 Never a story and never a stone 
 Tells of the martyrs who die like me 
 Just for the pride of the old countree.' " 
 
48 THE HONOR SYSTEM 
 
 It is this exalted sense which makes the quiet, reserved 
 Englishman in times of actual trial of men's hearts and souls 
 so superbly the finest created thing in the image of God. It 
 enables him to go down serenely with the Titanic without one 
 thought of self, without one sting of Death and with his spirit 
 thrilling with Victory. 
 
 An incident may be recalled which illustrates the concrete 
 thing for which the apparently useless sacrifice prepares and 
 makes possible. In one of England's many wars it became nec- 
 essary on one occasion to pass through a long bridge over an 
 unfordable stream in the face of the enemy. The enemy had 
 banked artillery at the exit on the further side commanding the 
 right of way. A certain English battalion was directed to take 
 this bridge and clear away the opposing guns. But when the 
 entrance to the bridge was reached, the annihilating destruction 
 was so appallingly certain that human flesh and blood could not 
 stand it. The spirit shrank and revolted and the English troops 
 simply refused and balked. The major of the battahon marched 
 as on parade alone down the center line of the bridge, the guns 
 held silent with astonishment until the full significance of the 
 act dawned upon them and enabled the major to reach the cen- 
 ter of the bridge, halt, right about, and with a sneering smile 
 of contempt, salute with his sword his cringing men before be- 
 ing torn limb from limb by the storm of shot which poured 
 through the bridge way. There was a small remnant of that 
 battalion left after the whirlwind charge down the bridge which 
 followed instantly, but sufficient to climb over the bodies of 
 their fellows, kill the gunners and clear away the exit to the 
 bridge, and the rest was easy. Who can say but that the major's 
 spirit knew with certainty the inevitable result to attain which 
 it soared! 
 
 Permit one more illustration of that spirit which holds a man 
 true to the traditions and the ideals of his people. It is in a way 
 accidental, I assure you, that these illustrations are of English- 
 men, but in a sense the more appropriate because we are Eng- 
 lish men. In a short-story, recently told by Melville Davisson 
 Post, an English gentleman, while crossing the Atlantic on a 
 ship which met with disaster in mid-ocean, was guilty of the 
 cowardly act of saving himself when the burning ship went 
 down at the expense of women and children. As soon as the 
 
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 49 
 
 man was beyond the excitement and confusion of the disaster, 
 his soul descended upon him with the weight of a mortal ex- 
 tremity from which he could find no relief or avenue of escape. 
 He roamed the earth in his agony of spirit, suffering, and 
 could find no rest. At Ostend he sent for a certain Sir Rufus 
 Simon whom he did not know personally, to come to him. I 
 must now use Post's own words, in extracts, for it would be 
 impossible for me to tell it so well: 
 
 "Sir Rufus Simon, the barrister, enjoyed a reputation un- 
 equaled in the whole of London. He stood for a scrupulous in- 
 tegrity and the nicest honor. He belonged to a race given to 
 extremes — great figures that shadowed over mankind and the 
 lowest trickster. It may have been for this reason that Sir 
 Rufus Simon, who occupied the top floor of his race, felt a 
 pressing need to maintain the very highest ideals by which a 
 man could live. 
 
 "The man was a gentleman. He required only that one 
 should act from the motives and according to the customs of a 
 man of honor; but he did press for that. He pressed for it with 
 a ruthless insistence. Moreover, his highstanding character 
 put him outside of fear. Early in April Sir Rufus Simon re- 
 ceived a letter asking him to come at once to Ostend, in Bel- 
 gium. He did not know the name of the writer. * * * At the 
 first landing the landlady opened a door and Sir Rufus entered. 
 A man warming his hands over a coal fire that smoked in the 
 chimney rose; and two things impressed themselves upon Sir 
 Rufus — that he had seen this man somewhere before tonight; 
 and that he belonged to an elevated class. The man placed a 
 chair for his guest, closed the door and turned up the lamp. He 
 offered an apology for the discomforts and the journey he had 
 forced upon the barrister. The bearing of the man, his manner 
 and his words, established his social status. He was dressed 
 with care, and there was about him, even in this equivocal posi- 
 tion, a certain insolence that presumed to command the at- 
 tendance of any one in a profession upon the payment of his 
 fee; but it was the insolence of habit and not of intention. The 
 man was beyond every sham and pretence. He was in some 
 mortal extremity and he came to it with the directness of those 
 who face that way. 
 
50 THE HONOR SYSTEM 
 
 " 'Sir Rufus,' he said, 'I have sent for you to ask your opin- 
 ion.' 
 
 " 'Upon the law,' replied the barrister, 'my opinion is to be 
 commanded.' 
 
 " 'But it is not upon the law,' returned the man, "that I would 
 have it. I am sick of the law! I am sick unto death with every 
 artificial standard in this world. I want to know what to do!' 
 
 " 'I do not presume to advise upon matters outside my pro- 
 fession,' replied the lawyer. 
 
 " 'You will not refuse me on that account,' cried the man. 
 'You are the one person whose opinion I must have — ^whose 
 opinion will be sure. I put you before any man in England.' 
 He made an annoyed and exasperated gesture. 'I know what 
 a lawyer would say, what a clergyman would say, what all the 
 ruck of professional advisers would advise me; but I want the 
 opinion of a man of honor. I want the opinion of a gentleman!' 
 
 "Sir Rufus thought he had never seen a living creature in 
 such anxiety of insistence. 
 
 " 'I want you to give me your opinion,' the man continued. 'I 
 want you to give it to me fully, with no reservations. I want 
 the reasons for it. I want the whole thing put before me as in 
 your mind it is before you. When I have asked you, go on and 
 tell me, and I will listen.' 
 
 "Sir Rufus looked closely at the man. He was astonished 
 and profoundly puzzled; and the need — ^the common primitive 
 need — of the man laid hold on him. 
 
 " 'I will do anything I can to help you,' he said finally. 
 
 " 'Then,' cried the man, 'tell me: Can any man — no matter 
 who, no matter what his training and instincts may be — can 
 any man say how he will conduct himself in the sudden pres- 
 ence of an awful and unimagined peril?' 
 
 "Sir Rufus looked at the man in astonishment, but he an- 
 swered at once. 
 
 " 'Ah, sir,' he said, 'it is indeed the living truth that no one 
 of us can answer that question. Caught on the moment, out 
 of the security of life, to face the King of Terrors, in spite of 
 every hope, one may prove to be no better than a coward. But 
 there is this distinction, I think, between a gentleman and that 
 one who is not: When he has a little time to compose himself, 
 the gentleman will begin to act like a man of honor. If it were 
 
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 51 
 
 not for this, the distinctions of class would be an abominable 
 pretense. If one man is better than another, it is because he 
 will act better in a given case; it is because he maintained what 
 we call principle at some peril to his life and fortune. One can- 
 not say precisely what his standard is, but the presence of it is 
 the distinguishing mark of a man of honor. We think he would 
 not send one under his authority into a thing that he feared to 
 face himself; we think he would not advance himself upon the 
 ignorance or incapacity of another; and we think he would not 
 go out of danger before the weak and helpless.' 
 
 "The barrister went on with appalling frankness. 
 
 " 'AH men, however, do not estimate these principles at so 
 great a value. To very many this value is excessive. And so it 
 happens that there is a certain peril in pretending to be what 
 one is not. One cannot ta:ke the distinctions of a gentleman and 
 leave behind him the obligations that go with it. He may be 
 called upon to meet the standard he pretends. And he must 
 then disclose the sham he is or he must sacrifice himself for an 
 ideal he does not believe in; and his vain end becomes, beyond 
 that of all other creatures, miserable; for he will reflect that, 
 but for these false principles of honor, he would have won a 
 way out of this disaster with his life.' 
 
 "Here the stranger interrupted: 'Might not a man's life be 
 worth so much — so much to some great enterprise — that he 
 ought to save it?' 
 
 " 'I think such a consideration would never occur to a man 
 of honor,' replied the barrister. 
 
 "The man got on his feet at that and faced Sir Rufus Simon. 
 
 " 'Tell me then,' he cried; 'if one were with an expedition in 
 which there were a great many people, and this expedition 
 were threatened with disaster, and one should escape from it, 
 using the means upon which the others depended for their 
 safety, what ought he to do?' 
 
 "The barrister answered immeidately. 
 
 " 'If you asked me my opinion on such a* case,' he said, 'I 
 would say that one who came away, under such conditions, 
 from other men in peril would be bound as a man of honor to 
 go back to them.' 
 
 "The man who had been standing motionless, stumbled as 
 though struck violently across the knees. 'Good God!' he whis- 
 
52 THE HONOR SYSTEM 
 
 pered, 'Go back to them! * * * Good God!' He reached 
 for a chair and sat down. His jaw slackened and dropped. 
 He put his hand up and fingered about his face. It was a strange 
 face at which he fingered. It had a kind of dreadful inanity, 
 for it worked and sweated as though something in the man, 
 primordal and organic — something nesting in the fibres of the 
 creature — struggled awfully to maintain itself, resisted with 
 tooth and claw and every twist and writhing, and would not be 
 ejected out of dominance. The man labored to slough it off and 
 to get the fibres of his being disentangled. And the barrister 
 thought he saw before him a man looking into hell." 
 
 The man took a ship at Cherbourg and when it was passing 
 the latitude and longitude of his fateful experience, he quietly 
 went overboard, as a man of honor, back to those whom he had 
 abandoned, expiating the weakness of his flesh and freeing his 
 spirit of the chain of slavery which bound it down. 
 
 I hope you begin to see that I am trying to impress upon you 
 the Sittlichkeit of your people, the importance of that Eleventh 
 Commandment set up by the stock from whence you came, the 
 observance of that "Law without the Laws," which makes a 
 man the man who glories in his Manhood above all other things, 
 and who, when once he finds himself, fears not — ^fears not the 
 things above or on the earth, nor in all the hells that are or ever 
 shall be, and at the finish can say with Cyrano: 
 
 "There, there! Ha, ha! And Compromise! 
 Bigotry! Cowardice! Shall I make terms? 
 No, never! never! There is Folly, too! 
 I knew that in the end you'd lay me low. 
 No matter. Let me fight! and fight! and fight! 
 You snatch them all away — laurel and rose! 
 Snatch on! One thing is left in spite of you, 
 Which I take with me: And this very night, 
 When I shall cross the threshold of God's house, 
 And enter, bowing low, this I shall take 
 Despite you, without wrinkle, without spot 
 And that, is — My stainless soldier's crest!"