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ADDRESS TO THE GRADUATING CLASS
*OF THE
GOMxEGE DEPARTMENT
J-1OWARD University,
BY
PROFESSOR KELIvY MILLER.
June i, 1898.
truth and reason are; common to every one, and are no more
his who spake them first than his who speaks them after ; 'tis
.no more according to plato than according to me, since he and
i both equally see and understand Them.—Montaigne.
ie thou be a great people, Then get thee to the wood country
and cut down for thyself, in the land of the perizites and the
giants, if mount ephraim be too narrow for thee.
—Joshua.
ADDRESS
TO THE
GRADUATING CLASS OF THE COLLEGE DEPARTMENT
Of Howard University
BY
PROF. KELLY MILLER,
June i, 1898.
A brochure of 12 pages.
COMMENTS.
Here is a noble, a manly, an enlightened code.
The Washington Post, June 26, 1898.
I have read your address with exceptional interest. I es¬
pecially value J'our remarks on pages 10 and 11, than which
it would be difficult to concentrate more common sense into a
very few words.
Frederick L. Hoffman, F. S. S.,
Author of "Race Traits and Tendencies of the
American Negro."
Your address to the Senior Class was admirable. It was
wise, calm, conservative, and yet full of encouragement.
J. E. Rankin, D. D., LL. D.,
President Howard University.
I have read it with great interest for its literary merit and
its concise and forcible statement of matters concerning edu¬
cation in general. But, after twenty years of acquaintance
with the school life of the south and a personal acquaintance
with the leading public men of the colored race, I can say in
truth that I have read nothing that seemed to me more wise,
true, and courageously and powerfully stated than the advice
you have given the young graduates.
Rev. A. D. Mayo, D. D.
We want more of such talk, and we want it often.
Prof. O. M. Waring,
Principal Sumner High School, St. Louis, Mo.
Beautiful in sentiment, so lofty in its pliilosophizings, and
withal so replete with practical, applicable wisdom.
Rev. G. Fra^ier MutER,
Pastor St. Mark's Church, Brooklyn, N. Y.
With pleasure I read the noble words and good advice given
to the class of '9S. Long live my Alma Mater when she turns
out alumni who can make such addresses.
P. J. SHADD, M. D.,
Secretary Medical Faculty, Howard University.
I wish it could be read by members of every graduating
class, white or black, throughout the country.
Geo. R. Stetson,
Washington, D. C.
Its spirit is so manly, heroic, and hopeful, yet so sober and
thoughtful, that I would urge that it be given a very wide and
extensive distribution.
C. C. Johnson, M. D.,
Columbia, S. C.
I do not think that the three primary relations could be
better stated.
D. S. Lamb, M. D.,
Pathologist, Surgeon General's Office,
Washington, D. C.
It is a gratification to me to learn, through your address,
that there are other centers of diffusion than Tuskegee, and
other leaders in the cult of common sense than the brilliant
Washington of the South.
Prof. W. J. McGEE,
Director Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C.
A production which is worthy of any institution or any man.
Prof. Wm. L. BulkxEY, Ph. D.,
Claflin University, Orangeburg, S. C.
Your address to the graduating class of Howard University
is timely, polished, and practical.
Prof. G. N. GrishAm,
Principal Lincoln High School, Kansas City, Mo.
Mr. President, Dean of the College Faculty, Ladies and Gentle=
men, Members of the Graduating Class :
When Socrates was about to be sacrificed upon the altar of truth,,
his devoted disciples gathered around him and asked if he had any
-^especial advice or final message to leave with them in view of his
approaching doom. But the serene philosopher, endowed as he was
with a double portion of Greek moderation and calmness of spirit,
replied that he had nothing new to offer them beyond the principles
which he had striven to inculcate during the whole period of their
intercourse as disciples and master. And so tonight, adopting the
words of the martyred sage, I must warn you at the outset that I have
no fresh advice or new words of wisdom to offer different from the
lessons which I have striven to impart during the years of our
academic relationship.
You have now come to the end of your scholastic labors. To
you, years of hopes, ambitions, aspirations, and strivings are epito¬
mized in the proceedings of this hour. For years you have been
yearning for the large excitement of the outside world. Tonight
you cross the threshold of college confinement into this larger life.
The instruction which you have received here, and upon which your
diplomas set a seal, will be of value to you only in so far as you di¬
gest and assimilate it, and wisely adapt it to the tasks which lie be¬
fore you. A machine is an instrument whose purpose is to transmit
and modify the force imparted to it, in such manner as to accomplish
desired mechanical work. The function of machinery is to modify
the form or direction of impressed energy and to transmit it to the
required points of application. The steam engine takes in fuel con¬
taining, in latent form, the stored up energy of past ages, and trans¬
forms it into power available for the uses and wants of man. You
are animated machines—pieces of divine mechanism. You have
taken in a good supply of knowledge which represents the stored up
energy of all human experience. Your efficiency in life will depend
upon your ability to transmit this energy to the place where it is
needed, and to transform it into whatever mode of force may be nee-
essary for the accomplishment of the tasks which devolve upon you.
Many take in information as the sponge absorbs water. They satu¬
rate themselves to their fullest capacity, and boast of their bloated
bigness; but, like the sponge, the)' can give back to the world only
that which they received from it, unaltered in quantity or kind.
They make unprofitable machines. Such knowledge cannot result
in practical wisdom. Vegetable life thrives best upon the substance
of the mineral kingdom, but before it can make use of these gross
elements they must be assimilated to the character and function of
its vegetal nature.
If you would learn a language so as to have it become a practical
instrument of expression, you must make it a part of your anatomy.
Teeth, tongue, lips, and palate ; chest, diaphragm, thorax ; vocal
chords, nasal passage, and Eustachian tube ; muscles of the face
and eye; the gesticulatory action and movements of the body—all
form a part of the linguistic machinery, and must give spontaneous
and pliant yieldance to its operation. When a language has thus
permeated the whole system and become affiliated with the anatom¬
ical structure and functions of the body, it is made your willing
servant to express, not only the ordinary wants and necessities of
life, but also the profoundest thoughts of the intellect, the highest
flights of fancy, and the deepest emotions of the soul. And so your
knowledge must become a part of your moral and mental anatomy,
if you would make it an instrument of power to uplift the world. It
must not only be chewed and swallowed, but digested, assimilated,
and changed into flesh, blood, muscle, and bone ; and, by the mys¬
terious process of vital action, transmuted into the finer phases of
thought, sentiment, passion, and power.
Your studies have brought you in touch with the fundamental
problems of human life. Man sustains three primary relations to the
universe.
i. He is connected with the eternal mystery, out of which he
emerged and into which he will finally be absorbed. As a lone
mariner upon the dark bosom of the ocean views a feeble light
which suddenly looms up and flickers for a moment upon the wav¬
ering line of vision and then fades again into the surrounding
gloom; so man, a broken light of the infinite, looms up and shines
5
for a moment only upon the field of finite existence, and is straight¬
way absorbed in the eternal mystery from which he sprung. Who
knows whence he cometh or whither he goeth ? The awful problems
of Being and Destiny will ever constitute the highest themes for
human contemplation.
2. Man is related to his fellow-man. The dawn of history breaks
upon a world at strife—a universal conflict of man at war with his
brother. The face of the earth has been dyed in blood, and its sur¬
face whitened with human bones, in the endeavor to establish a har¬
monious adjustment between man and man. There can certainly be
no interest more fundamental or of greater concern to the human fam¬
ily than the solution of the problem—how men may dwell together
in peace and prosperity, under a stable social, civil, and political
policy.
3. Man is connected with the material and visible universe about
him. His egotism first suggested that the universe was anthropo
centric, and that all the rest of creation was intended solely to sup¬
port and delight him. The development of the natural and physical
sciences has taught us that man is indissolubly connected with the
material and organic world, though possessed of the power to make
all the rest of creation administer to his wants and well-being.
It has been the mission of four great peoples to work out these
several problems. The Hebrews and Greeks have solved man's
relation to the eternal mystery—the one in its religious, the other
in its philosophical aspect; each has come as near the perfect so¬
lution as, perhaps, it is possible for the human mind to reach.
Rome has perfected society in its organic and civil relations, and
has left the organic principle which must lie at the basis of all
subsequent social development. It was reserved for modern Europe
to develop the physical and natural sciences, and to point out their
practical applications to human needs. It is hard to predict the de¬
tails of the pedagogical program of the future, but we may rest as¬
sured that it must be based upon these fundamental relations, for
they fathom the depths of human interests and must for all time con¬
stitute the universal trivium.
You have studied these problems and these great peoples in vain,
unless the mass of exact and refined information and the insight into
6
human nature in its original phases of action have fructified in your
own character. Character is the assemblage of qualities which
stamp the individuality and give it dignity, purity, and power, and
make it more efficient for service. Your studies have necessarily
reacted upon the character. Judea has taught you the rational joy
of piety, reverence, and devotion, and how to seek spiritual satis¬
faction through the Christian ritual. It is said that mankind first
determined the points of the compass by the desire to build temples
of worship in exact line with the path of the sun. We. too, must go
back to the temple at Jerusalem for our spiritual orientation. From
Greece you have learned the virtue of moderation, the value of self-
culture, and the pleasure of the pursuit of truth. Rome has shown
the necessity of discipline, system, order, and method ; while Eu¬
rope has taught you practical efficiency in adapting means to ends
through the control of the forces and powers of nature.
I do not mean to flatter you or to exaggerate your attainments.
You have only grasped these subjects in outline. A full comprehen¬
sion of them will require the study of a life-time. But knowledge
derived at first hand and from original sources must have infiltrated
into the pores of your nature, and trickled into the innermost crevices
•of your character. Herein lies the great advantage of the higher
education, or rather the deeper education, that education which fath¬
oms the depth of human experience. It is only by long study and re¬
flection upon the fundamental principles of things that the nature is
(uplifted and improved. The mere rudiments of knowledge, practical
linformation or manual cleverness, cannot refine the nature or purify
"the character. They do not reach the soul, but leave the human
-spirit in the same sad condition in which they find it. But a system
>of studies embracing the whole cycle of human experiences and in¬
terests cannot but leave the nature purer, the character nobler, and
the faculties stronger and better able to perform any task which may
be assigned them.
Keep abreast of the times. We live in an age of rapidly revolv¬
ing changes. Process succeeds process in such rapid succession that
we have scarcely time to test the advantage and value of the one be¬
fore it is succeeded by another promising better and larger returns.
The methods of the past, no matter what halo of endearment tradi-
7
tion may have woven about them, must give way for the more facile
and fruitful method of the present day.
During the latter part of the thirteenth century there flourished a
great Scotchman by the name of John Duns Scotus. He added to
his keen Scotch insight into things, all the subtle learning of his day
and generation. Espousing one side of the existing controversy, he
threw all the energy of his nature on the side of scholasticism as
opposed to the classical learning. He gained great celebrity and
gathered about him enthusiastic disciples who were proud to be
called "Duns men," after the name of their great founder. But af¬
ter the brilliant Erasmus had changed the tide of opinion in favor of
more rational and liberal methods of learning, the glory of the *'Duns
men" became their shame. Their name, assumed as a shibboleth of
proud distinction, became a by-word of ridicule and reproach ; and
the only relic we have left us of this once famous school of learning
is the survival of the word Dunce. Thus it is, the wisdom of one
age may become the folly of the next, and the philosopher of today,
the fool of tomorrow. We live in an age of machinery, an age in
urhich man performs all of his undertakings through the mediate
agency of tools ; all great enterprises are conducted through organiz¬
ation, the most perfect of all machinery. Even our politics are con¬
ducted by machines. If you would keep abreast of the times you
must use the best instrument available and apply the latest approved
methods to whatever tasks you undertake. If you would enter into
the rivalry of life with hope of success, you must select your chosen
line of work; be on the alert for the latest discovery in science,
invention in art, or advancement in thought, which bears upon your
vocation. Use all the instrumentalities which human skill has per¬
fected and human wisdom approved ; and keep yourselves in soldierly
readiness to obey the voice of progress when she gives the command
Forward / March /
In his baccalaureate discourse the President urged you to preserve
your self-respect. All the world respects a man who respects him¬
self. This proposition has the force and sanction of a universal
truth, for it is equally true when stated negatively—all the world
despises a man who despises himself. Yon will find the maintenance
of self-respect a most trying and difficult task. Men will revile you,
8
despitefully use you, and ignore your just claims to recognition be¬
cause of ethnological peculiarities for which you are not responsible.
It becomes easy to accept the valuation which others set upon you
and to conclude that you are good for nothing but to be cast out and
trodden under the feet of men. You must never forget, however,
that a mind conscious to itself of the intellectual and moral rectitude
of its natuie can always contemplate its own action with self-satisfied,
complacency. There is no creature so contemptible as he who in¬
sults his own soul, or who does not seek first the approval of God
and his own conscience. How poor is human recognition when you~
and God are aware of your inward integrity of soul. Keeping clean
hands and a pure heart, you can stand up before all the world and
say, "Doubtless thou, O L,ord, art our father, though Abraham be
ignorant of us and Israel acknowledge us not."
Do not go through the world with a self-deprecatory demeanor, as
if you owed the rest of mankind an apolog}- for existing. You are
men created in the image of God, and any lack of appreciation of
that fact is a reflection upon the original. Enter into the zest of ex¬
istence. Consider "what a piece of work is man ! How noble in
reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a
god—the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals." All this
refers to you. Do not think of yourselves as despicable and mean in
comparison with the more forward class who are in the van of civil¬
ization. The creator is greater than the creature. Man is the arch¬
itect of civilization, and is, therefore, greater than the handiwork
which he has made. Destroy all society, government, and existing
forms of culture, obliterate every vestige of civilization, but leave a
single pair of human beings upon the earth, even though they be of
the lowest existing type of mankind, and in course of time they will
rebuild all of the destroyed standards, and that, too, only as a stage
in a larger and still more glorious expansion. You are at the climax
of creation and, conscious of the dignity of this distinction, let this
be your song of triumph :
9
Immense have been the preparations for me;
For room to me the stars kept aside in their own rings;
My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it,
For it the nebulae cohered to an orb,
The long, slow strata piled to rest it on,
Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,
Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with
care—
All forces have steadily been employed to complete me ;
Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.
This is the common heritage of humanity.
The diplomas which you hold in 3Tour hands confer upon you all
the rewards, rights, privileges, honors, and distinctions which are ac¬
customed to be conferred upon the choicest youth* of the human race
throughout the civilized world. This honor places you among "the
heirs of all the ages, in the foremost ranks of time." Remember the
sentiment so often emphasized upon your attention by your dean,
''Noblesse oblige,''
But I must caution j-ou to discriminate finely between self-respect
and self-conceit.
They say that egotism and self conceit are characteristic of the
African race, and especially the Afro-American of academic training.
You will have to deal with a population that places a premium upon
bombastic display, and a discount upon unpretentious merit. You
should devote your powers to the masses, to uplift them, and not to
exploit them for your vainglory and unrighteous self-aggrandizement.
It is said that a native African struts proudly when decorated with
flaming European neckwear of the latest Parisian pattern, though he
wear not a single other article of dress. Men cross the seas, and even
go to college, without changing their natures. Witness those Afro-
Americans who decorate themselves with the highest sounding liter¬
ary and scholarly degrees, making heavy demands upon the alpha¬
bet to express them, without a single other ilem of intellectual adorn¬
ment to support this gaudy display. Reprobate all such childish in¬
firmity. It will only make you ridiculous in the eyes of sensible
men. Be natural. Be simple. "Be whatever you may, but yourself
first.'' Do not impose cheap and shoddy standards upon the masses,
but teach them to appreciate the noblest and the best. Grasp the
IO
real things of life rather than the superficial and showy. It is per¬
fectly natural for a people who are rapidly acquiring civilization,
and in whom the faculty of imitation is strong, to be captivated by
the superficial aspect of things, to grasp after the frith and froth
rather than the life-giving liquid upon which it floats. If a wild man
from Borneo should plunge into the gayeties of the European capit¬
als, should become initiated into the latest style of dress and forms
of fashionable display, he might vainly flatter himself that he
had leveled the immense lift between savagery and civilization, to¬
tally oblivious of the fact that he is separated from that life whose
forms he slavishly imitates, by ten centuries of solid development.
It is true that other men have labored and you have entered into their
labors, but you must prove your right to this inheritance by striving
to comprehend its inner spirit and meaning, and to unravel its secret
and method. I have said that your education has brought you in
touch with the fundamental things of life. Return ever and anon to
these first principles as your standards and data of reference. In
Greek mythology we learn that Antseus, the giant, in wrestling with
Hercules received new vigor whenever he touched his mother earth;
but Hercules, discovering the secret of his strength, lifted him into
the air and squeezed him to death in his herculean grasp. I advise
you to make sure of the firmness and fixture of your foothold in the
basis of solid things ; for fear that you be lifted into the delusive
realm of unreal allurements and be intoxicated by the frivolous demi¬
god of this unsubstantial region.
Do not waste time complaining against the existing order of soci¬
ety. Enter a manly protest against all forms of wrong and injustice,
but do not pass your days in wailful lachrymations against the regu¬
lations of a civilization whose grandeur you have done nothing to
make, and whose severities you are doing nothing to mollify. Leave
that to the ignorant demagogue. Bring your knowledge of history
and of human nature to bear upon the situation. I have already
pointed out to you that the adjustment of man's relation to man con¬
stitutes one of the primary problems of life. Where this adjustment
is complicated by diverse physical pecularities and by different in¬
herited or acquired characteristics, the problem becomes one of the
greatest intricacy that has ever taxed human wisdom and patience
II
for solution. Race prejudice is as much a fact as the law of gravi¬
tation, and it would be as suicidal to ignore the operation of the one
as that of the other. Mournful complaint is as impotent as an in¬
fant crying against the fury of the wild wind. History has taught
you that the path of moral progress has never taken a straight line,
but has ever been a zig-zag course amid the conflicting forces of
right and wrong, truth and error, justice and injustice, cruelty and
mercy. Do not be discouraged, then, that all the wrongs of the
universe are not righted at your bidding. The great humanitarian
movement which has been sweeping over the civilized world from
the middle of the eighteenth centur}' to the present time, manifest¬
ing itself in political revolutions, in social and moral reforms, and in
works of love and mercy, affords the amplest assurance that all
worthy elements of the population will ultimately be admitted to
share in the privileges and blessings of civilization according to the
measure of their merit.
Finally, I urge you to learn to deal with primary conditions. The
visible forms of civilization are nothing more than the concrete em¬
bodiment of thought applied to things. Do not be parasites upon a
generous society, eternally beseeching 3rour neighbors to give you
oil to replenish your lamps, but go rather unto them that sell and
buy for yourselves. When the children of Joseph complained to
Joshua that the limits of their territorial opportunity were too narrow,
and that they wanted wider scope for the exercise of their powers,
the grand old warrior of solstitial fame replied to them : "If thou
be a great people, then get thee up to the wood country and cut
down for thyselves, in the land of the Perizites and the giants, if
Mount Ephraim be too narrow for thee." And so I say to you.
Idle not your time in useless complaint against the narrowness of
your opportunities and the misery of your lot, but rather "get thee
to the wood country and cut down for thyself." Remember that a
people who cannot deal with primary conditions, and who will not
go to the wood country and cut down for themselves, can never con¬
tribute anything to civilization. Wherever there is soil to be cul¬
tivated, commodities to be exchanged, raw material to be refined,
the hungry to be fed, the naked to be clothed, the ignorant to be
enlightened, or the vicious to be restrained, there the educated man—
the man whose education has resulted in practical intelligence—will
find the largest field for the exercise of his powers. Again, I urge
you to bring your education to bear your practical tasks. You need
not fear that your knowledge will carry you beyond the needs of the
situation. The perfection of workmanship and the fineness of finish
of an instrument should be conditioned upon its uses and function.
It is the height of folly to put a razor-edge upon a broad-ax. But
your duties will embrace the whole cycle of human activities, fromr
meeting the crudest wants of a crude people to the highest problems
of the soul. In dealing with a people who exhaust their strength in
working with blunt iron without sufficient knowledge to whet the
edge, your wisdom will ever be profitable to direct.
You are in the midst of the struggle for existence, not the mere
struggle against the forces of nature and ferocity of man and beast
for physical continuance, but you are struggling for the higher
phases of existence which require finer qualities of fitness, and you
will be put to the severest stress of mental and moral endeavor if
you would
Break your birth's invidious bar
And breast the blows of circumstance,
And grasp the skirts of happy chance
And grapple with your evil star.