,0.549 ADDRESSES DISCOURSE INAUGURATION OF THE HEY. GEORGE F. MAGOUN, A. PRESIDEI^^T OF IOWA COLLEGE, JUIiY 19, 1865. PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE CORPORATION. CHICAGO: UORTON & LEONARD, PRINTERS, 104 & 106 RANDOLPH STREET. 1865. dCnv-v^ vtrOji^oje^ ^^j/uAvvuX^ d*cv. ADDEESSES DISCOURSE INAUGURATION OF THE KEY. GEORGE F. MAGOUI, A. M. PEESIDEI^T OF IOWA COLLEGE, JULY 19^,3^6 5 PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE CORPORATION. >^, ^ CHIC AGIO: HORTON & LEONARD, PRINTERS, 104 & 106 RANDOLPH STREET. 1865. At the Annual Meeting of the Boaid of Trustees of Iowa College, August 14th, 1862, the Rev. George F. Magoun, of Lyons, was elected President of the College. Coupled with the election, was the condition that he should "enter upon the active duties of his office when provision shall be made for his support." This having been done by the obtaining of an endowment, the appointment was accepted at the Annual Meeting in July, 1864, and leave of absence was granted to the President elect for six months. He was also elected Professor of Mental and Moral Science. He entered on the duties. of his office March 10th, 1865. By arrangement of the Executive Committee and vote of the Trustees, the exercises of the inauguration took place on Commencement Day, the 19th of July. The Trustees met on the previous day, and in the after- noon the first class of young ladies — ten in number — was graduated from the Ladies' Department, the President elect conferring the degrees. Oa the following day, at nine o'clock A. M., a procession was formed from the College to the Congregational Church. The exercises were opened with an anthem by a volunteer choir from the town and the College, who also performed the other music of the occasion. The Kev. Abner D. Chapman, minister of the Presbyterian Church of Malcom, offered prayer. In behalf of the Trustees, the Rev. Aldex B. Robbins, pastor of the Congregational Church of Muscatine, who had been President of the Board from its organization, June 17th, 1847, performed the ceremony of induction with an address. In behalf of the Trustees of " Grinnell University," Hon. Josiah B, Grinkell, former President of that Institu- tion, and in behalf of the Faculty of the College, the Rev. Leoxarb F. Parker, Professor of Languages, then addressed the President. The Inaugural Discourse of President Magoux followed. After an anthem, the benediction v/as pronounced by the Rev. Jesse Guernsey, of Dubuque. In the afternoon the graduating exercises of the Senior Class, four in number, were held. The first class graduated from the College Depart- partment since the removal to Grinnell. THE INAUGURATING ADDRESS, EEV. ALDEH" B. EOBBIITS, President pro tern, of the Trxistees. ADDRESS Rey. George F. Magoun Honored Sir, and Christian Brother : Yon are the cliosen President of Iowa College. In accordance with tlie instructions of the Board of Trustees, I hand over to you as such, and thereby invest you Avith the insignia of your official position and authority, the Articles of Incorporation, the By-Laws, and the Seal of the College. In so doing, I add a few friendly words accordant, as is believed, with the views of the Board, and savoring rather of practical hints than of eloquent thoughts. You are the first President of the College, and much depends, under Grod, upon you as to the character and force of the College in its educating and saving influence upon the State, the Nation, and the world. The first President of a College, like the lower stone in a substantial and ever enduring edifice — an edifice that shall be the joy and admiration of many thousands who gaze upon its goodly proportions — will not always be remembered, and to praise him will often be forgot- ten. Yet, like that foundation stone, none will do more essential service. As upon its position, strength and permanence, it depends whether the top stone of the edifice, if brought out at all, shall be with rejoicing, or 8 ADDRESS. wlietlier it shall only tend to make its unseemly fissures and its awry proportions tlie more marked and ridiculous, so upon your character and plans and efficient working, it greatly depends what shall be, not only the standing and efficiency of the other officers and future Presidents, but also the general symmetry, and effectiveness of the institution for all time. Upon you it greatly depends whether tearing down and rebuilding shall be a frequently recurring necessity; or whether now beginning to have an official head — 7ioiv, at this — in light and freedom — greatly advanced period of the world s history, this College shall continue to advance, in unbroken symmetry and unpatched beauty to all time. You are the President of a Congregational College ; and though not founded for denominational purposes, but for something larger than these, yet it is natural that those going out from it into the ministry, should ordinarily be of that order. Thus you are to be the guide of those who need more talent and culture, more sound sense and intellectual fur- niture than those in any other ministry. They will have less outward — neither music nor surplice, nor responses nor vestments — to depend upon, no machinery to hold them up, no stained glass to chasten and soothe, no book to lift them safely through when dull and lifeless in spirit. Consonant with this is the fact that you are to fill a chair, which, compared with the mind and culture needed has less endowment, less adventitious help, and, in some respects, even less sympathy than any other. Sumner, in his eulogjr, speaks of a passage in which Lincoln says of Douglas, that all anxious politicians of his party could see in his round, jolh^, fruitful face post- offices, land offices, marshalships, etc. etc., and that, on the contrary, in his poor, lean, lank face nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sj^routing out. ADDRESS. 9 Compared with many a place, this chair is as Douglas' face to Lincoln's; but to well fill it is, in our opinion, as much beyond the well filling of many another, as was he of the lean face beyond him of the round and plump, in his power and fitness to meet the great demands of the days through which the nation has just passed. The object, as it seems to us, of a College is to help make men, to excite in each one, entering its walls, a deep and earnest interest in intellectual improvement — to cheer on each one — to make to each seem glorious the path of intellectual, combined with moral advancement — and to secure physical strength and sound health in order to make more sure and real and perfect the mental advance. It is to add to the noble band of tcctchers those of larger culture and manliness than can possibly be secured by the (perhaps necessary,) merely normal school process ; men who will not be afraid to affiliate with the best friends of education ; men not caring a hundredth part so much for place as for their own freedom and self respect. It is to send forth to the professional schools those who shall be the doctors, and lawyers, and large minded mer- chants, who shall be public-spirited advocates of increased knowledge and freedom for all men. It is to send forth equally well cultivated loomen, to second the efforts of such men, and to illustrate, as the wives and sisters of such men, that as gi^ace in the heart may help, as Herbert says, to sweep a room, so intellectual culture need not interfere with the doing well any such humble service. Should it not be a distinctive idea of this College to accomplish in these ways, the greatest amount of possible good to the State and world ? jN'ot to make a something that shall be like Amherst or Dartmouth or Harvard but an efficient instrumentality in the great warfare for God and humanity. 10 ADDRESS. To this end it would give, in the liomety phrase of our Lincoln, ^' to all an equal chance " of securing power for good. It would not dare to think of going hack to the days when those having so much of the toil and pain of life to bear were not thought to need all that culture and mental and physical training could do to fit them for doing and enduring. To this end — of the good to he done — it should guard carefully against so far pressing intellectual culture as to fail of securing, ordinarily, sound health and full ph^'si- cal development ; and thus affording a formidable argu- ment against us in the hard and bony hands of our agricultural school friends. And of what use, in these days when so much more than ever is thought of inches and muscle in body, is a dyspeptic, feeble, whining edu- cated man or woman ? To this end of the good to be done there should not for a day be forgotten the need for the constant predominance and pov\'er of spiritual influ- ences that the three thousand young men now, this day, in our Colleges, not having this doing of good by any means t\iQ first thing with them, should not long continue so narrow in heart. You are to hold the very difficult and delicate position of President of a College. There are the Trustees — not always as earnest, as large minded, as wise as they might be ! and the Executive Committee — not always the wisest of the Trustees! There are the other Professors, each Avith his own pecu- liar bent and bias, not always by any means tempered as those of the President. There are the students ; of even the sophomore class of whom a genial and eloquent preacher and professor once said that he preferred preaching " to a Jewish San- hedrim;*' and who in some cases do wot know Qi\o\xg\i until they are seniors, even to avoid personal insults to their teachers. ADDRESS. 11 • You are to guide and, to a great degree, execute tlie plan of the College, and, in such a way, as to he in cor- dial fellowship with the Board; gaining by argument and moral strength, their opinion to yours when differ- ing ; and yielding gracefully and cheerfully, though not recklessly, when this cannot be done. You are to rejoice in the free play of mind and mode of action on the part of the Faculty ; working with them and not above them. You will often, without notice of the littleness of the student, help make the most possible of him. You are to be in diligence, in courtesy, in habits of order and general deportynent an example to all. But the difficuties of your position I need not enumer- ate. These make it necessary that, providentially, such a man as you should be here. For Kansas ('' Lincoln ") College, in the first year of its existence, one hundred thousand dollars and the en- dorsement of the great Council are asked. Let her have them ! Do not treat our younger sister as you have the elder — who, in the seventeenth year has asked for only fifty thousand dollars and has as yet asked in vain. But we have an endorsement which Kansas cannot wait for — that of experience and trial and sorrow. Laid up in Heaven's treasure-house, gathered into God's bottle are many tears in our behalf Standing, as monuments all along through the history of this college, are the prayers of God'a people, prayers to be over and over answered, — prayers and sympptthies and earnest love such as might not come with millions of money — such as millions of money could not compensate. As early as 1850 it is recorded of Iowa CoLLEaE that it had been blessed with a revival of religion ; that in the same year Home missionaries subscribed four hundred and fifty dollars, and Home missionaries' wives subscribed one hundred for it. 12 ADDRESS. The family altars of many households can testify that scarcely has a Tuesday passed, during all these years, in which this College has not been, in faith and prayer and hope, commended to G-od. The question how not to do has too often, however, been the question with Iowa College. The remarkable wisdom forbidding our early endowment of land — the chastening hindrance of the College Society — the ceasing at times, to do anything lest we do too much — caught once napping, like Father ***** *^ going to the Council and losing his pocket book, have all made us too cautious, like the German immigrant who hides his silver, when, by its use, he might double the amount. But we come this day to a new and glad hour in our history. The costly school of teaching — pastorships and re- movals — social sorrows and bereavements — rare oppor- tunies of travel and reading, and God's grace given you in all these providences, have prepared you, we trust, to be at the head of this institution. Among the most delightful, cheering, and invigorating recollections of the past — a recollection like that to you, of some Alpine peak or valley, in the summer's heat of a crowded city — is to me that of a President of a Col- lege, (in the hearts of all President — before called by the name and before the place was vacant for him,) talented, faithful, constant, assiduous, simple-hearted, transparent, modest, loyal, gentle and generous, and yet devout.* If in any good degree the Lord shall make you like him, as we trust He may, this, of all days, will be the gladdest in the history of this College. President oe Iowa College ! you have the assurance of our confidence — our largest hopes, ouv Wi^Qst counsels — our most earnest and frequent prayers. ^ Rev. Dr. Edward Hitchcock, of Amlierst. ADDEESS OP HOE". JOSIAH B. QEIE'lSrELL, Former President of Grinnell University. ADDRESS ^' It is a pleasant duty with which I am charged on this occasion, in formally recognizing a union now effected, which virtually secures the coalesence of Grinnell Uni- versity in Iowa College. Mr. President : Coming to you in our youth, wearing the simple blushes of a maiden on the occasion of mar- riage proposals, we make no apologies for the natural and coy advances of a yearning heart, nor for the seeming indulgence of leap- year privileges ; for so blissful is the union that had you known more of us we know that earlier you would have taken us " for better or worse." Permit us then (with a parenthesis, that we may be re- assured of the consideration due to so unassuming a bride), to remind you that our contribution to this union was an untarnished reputation, two Professors, a half hundred of students, the good will of a community, and a considerable dowry of the value in College building, lands, and cash, of twenty-five thousand dollars — 125,000. Koina Ta Tone Fhilone, and let these currents of influ- ence — ^widening and deepening as they flow, w^ith the products of common toil consecrated to sound learning — be one. The streamlet that was by the " Father of "Waters," and shares the loves of the Alumni, welcomes we know 16 ADDRESS. this prairie rill tliat mingies with the glee of our youth to-day its murmurs in salutation to you, our Pilot and President of this conflux. Hundreds of churches, the guardians of our common schools, and sagacious states- men, indulge the hope that by this fountain of learning, the first made free to the poor and maimed of our gallant soldiery, there may grow the tre^s of knowledge ^vhose gilded leaves, graceful boughs, and golden fruit shall be at once an attraction and a blessing to many generations dwelling on these " unshorn gardens." All is auspicious. ^' Let me then most heartily, in behalf of the founders of Grinnell UniversUy^ her Trustees, the beauty and virtue Of her daughters, and the well proven chivalry of her sons, surrender to your keeping her all. The youth of our commonwealth we know are your pride. You have the ripe culture and the educational experience of one who may make his motto. Aid viam mveniam aut faciam, and God being your counsellor, we are confident of mde and glorious results. LATIN ADDRESS IN BEHALF OF THE FACULTY, BT THH EET. leo:n"aed f. paekee, a. m.. Carter Professor of Ancient Languages. LATIN ADDRESS. Plena momenti est vita. Omnis liora viribus, quse aut boni ant mali mnltnm liominibns generibns, et nation- ibns ferent, oneratur. Tempora antem prsestantissimi momenti sunt, tempora qunm Fata, nnm auctns sucees- sns tribnendus sit aut magna calamitas, ponderare videan- tur. Horse sunt quibus futura inusitato splendore quasi candent aut insolitis tenebris offunduntur. ISTulla bora quam presens lowensis Literarise Academise in historia spei plenior vel boni fatidicior fuit. E>ecubat, bodierno die, in suorum amicorum sinu. Ut non sit in loco sui originis, tamen est domi. Hodierno die macula nulla, merita aut immerita, decori of&eit. Opes ejus et potentia augent, et nulla imaginandi vi usus est ut novo- rum literarium ?edificiorum construendorum crescentes parietes et ampla spatia in animo spectemus. Hodierno die, quidam alumni verbis, et presentia nobis Igetantur, qui ignoti essent si tempus intermitti vigoris eam adhuc vivere obliti essent. Filii ejus, bodierno die, quorum permulti sua omnia in patriae altaribus posuerunt, ornati suis rebus gestis, ab longinqua militia redeunt. E"unc primse alumnse ut in vitaa arena et labore fratribus earum se comites adjungant, evadunt. 20 LATIN ADDRESS. Sed, hodierno die, alia latitia est nostra. Nudc Ordo Professorum habet caput. Diu corpus vixit, immo vero, perfruitum est vita, sed hodierno die vera ejus vita inchoat. Proprium Academiee Literarise officium felicitatem dare hominibus ac reverentiam pr^stare Magno Doctori est dimittendo multos imbutosPythagorse scientia, Aristotelis logicis, Ciceronis rhetoricis, Socratis temperantia ac, quod est gravissimuni, Christi divina phiiantbropia. Postulat nostra patria, genus humanum et Deus ex bis parietibus permultos bene aptos exituros ut millibus natis et nasceu- dis lucem scientise et lucernam vitse ferant. In boc munere faciendo nobis sic attributo, nos, lowensis CoUegii Ordo Professorum, te comitem, et ducem salvere jubent. Scientia, industria, ingenium et diuturnus successus tuus bic te non defuturum esse. immo vero, te deficere non posse nobis persuadet. Hie te babetis ubi tota tua prseclara facultate ad doce- ndum, ad nobiles voluntates stimulandum et optimis exemplis ad mores conformandum utaris; etquidnobil- ius est boc ? " Sunt quos curriculo pulverem Olympicum Collegisse juvat, metaque fervidis Evitata rotis palmaque nobibs Terrarum dominos evebit ad deos : Hunc, si mobilium turba Quiritium Certat tergeminis tollere bonoribus ; Ilium, in proprio condidit borreo, Quidquid de Lybicis verritur areis." " Multos castra juvant et lituo tuba Permixtus sonitus, bellaque matribus Detestata." Sunt quos '' doctarum bederse premia frontium" juvant, et " qui se ita in Uteris abdiderunt, ut nihil possint ex iis neque ad communem affere fructum, neque in adspectum lucemque proferre." LATIN ADDRESS. 21 Sed vestrum sanctius muiius est juvenibus mentibus quasi celestibus urnis dulces scientise aquas infundi, in sempiternis altaribus ignes vestales inflammandi, salientes perennias in desertis mundi aperiendi et coelum angelis procerioribus et harmoniis dulcioribus implendi. Carus Omnibus expeetatusque venis ; et quum Domi- nus, " Yeni superius," dixerit, possis cum Horatio dicere, "Exegi monumentum sere perennius, Regalique situ pyramidum altius ; Quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens Possit diruere, aut innumerabilis Annorum series et fuga temporum." Longum tempus lowense Collegium remaneat, fons virtutis ac scientise, memorise lionorificum et ingenio dignum ejus Praesidis primi. THE INAUGFEAL DISCOUESE, BY KEY. GEOEQE FEEDEEIO MAGOUN President of Iowa College. DISCOURSE. An entire departure from the commanding topic of this occasion would be more noticeable, as a neglect of congruity and a violation of good taste, than the closest adherence to it could be, as an example of good judg- ment. It does not seem needful to make any formal an- nouncement of it in general, or of that particular aspect of it to which I now lead your thoughts. In no age can the individual man be moulded as to himself alone. What he is capable of is to be developed and trained with reference to iTature, his fellowman, and Grod. All truth is correlated to these. But discovery and improvement — the occupancy of the earth, and the disclosure of the facts and laws embraced in its constitu- tion — change from generation to generation his known relations to ligature, ^ot less truly, though less obvi- ously, do history and philosophy — both advancing ever, though not keeping step in the years and ages — change his relations to his fellow men ; while humanity is not changed thereby, any more than nature is by discovery and improvement. For new institutions and conditions of society are, in one view, simply altered relations among men. So the progress in salvation and theology — the one an onward movement in evolving the highest truth, the other in the highest form of life — modify and 26 DISCOURSE. enlarge many ways those relations towards tlie Creator and Governor, in respect to which the creature, under law and Providence, is to be moulded. "We must needs be developed and trained in the world's high noon as men could not be in its morning, more largely and with differences. So the beneficient and hopeful doctrine of progress applies to education. And without so wide a generali- zation as this, I might show that, in a single land like ours, there is such movement and reconstruction all over society, in brief periods, as to compel advance in the science of it and in the art. The limits of the American college plan have been growing more defined, and yet the style of culture within them more comprehensive. The institution which the Pilgrims conceived, which Cotton Mather pronounced "the best thing ^ew Eng- land ever thought on," is altogether insufficient now at Cambridge and at N^ew Haven, because the land of the Pilgrims and the civilized world are not at all what they were when the fathers laid university foundations. Lead- ing branches of present instruction are not half as old as Plarvard or Yale, and none more influential over human thought and destiny. A conservative scholar,§ avers that the nation's advance demands " a new version of the art of education as much as Alexander's tactics de- manded of the Persians, or ^N'apoleon's strategy of the G-ermans, a change in the theory of campaigns." When the fathers of Connecticut prayed for a '■^College School'^ in the Colony, " wherein youths should be instructed in all parts of learning to qualify them for public em- ployments in church and civil state," how much less all the material terms of their prayer signified than now I IIow limited the employments, comparatively, in state and church. How narrow the range of learning. How different many of the contents of the idea of a college. §Rev. Prof. Henry B. Smitli, D, D. DISCOURSE. 27 " There are seventy-five liigli schools in Massachusetts, to-day, v/here a better education can be obtained than at Harvard forty years ago."* Now, it might be easy to set forth at large that more culture is demanded in this land and now, than in any other-— a better article and more widely diffused. For apprehending the more extensive relations of man to l!^ature, in the nineteenth century, the facilities are greater in Europe, quite unexampled, but those relations themselves are unexampled here. So, in the spheres that connect man with society and God, the better appa^ ratus for education, in many respects, there — the better relations, social and religious, here. I^ot finished out indeed. Better, as the immigrant's new house, framed, raised, covered in, no more, is better than the old cabin, though plastered, glazed, painted, and furnished. When it is done, our house will be vastly better, and sometime it will be done^ at least as nearly so as the old house over the water, in which an observer yet sees much that is incomplete. We build in this land upon democracy. But democracy plainly requires the highest style of men- tal training among the largest number. The most per- fect equality of rights does not forbid that labor and skill should accumulate wealth, or that culture and learning should acquire power over mind, or that right- practice and goodness of heart should possess moral weight and honor. But as liberty always perishes in an age of moral corruption, so true equality perishes if the opportunities for mental growth and fruitage do not run down to the lowest capacit}^, and rise to the highest. You can have an. aristocracy if you have only the higher institutions without the lower. Eleven centuries Oxford University has stood, and England has no common school * Ex-Governor Boutwell, former Sec. Massachusets Board of Education, 28 DISCOURSE. yet.'^ On tlie Continent, tlic Liniversity is tlie most dem- ocratic thing to be found. The safeguard in this land, against even the semblance of an aristocracy of refine- ment and knowledge, is, that colleges shall make the higher education available and cheap, and the higher and the lower shall keep step. 'No adequate common SCHOOL SYSTEM WITHOUT COLLEGES. No COLLEGES WITHOUT COMMON SCHOOLS. Tlicv wcrc twin-born by Plymouth Rock. But we are on Western soil. As the Commonwealths this side of the Allegha,nies differ from those beyond the Hudson, so must the colleges. Obviously, our own institution is entering on a new epoch. It graduates its first classes since its removal. Its faculty is at length full. All this just where a new and grand phase of public affairs has arrived ; war handing over to peace a renovated nation ; a new Liberty, a new Union, demanding new appliances of education; un- paralleled recent developments of the national resources foreshadowing a future unparalleled. This college was planted on the frontier rf but the bayonet, the spade and the pick make new frontiers. Ideas that have followed the flag in triumph will triumph new on other fields with the plow and the steam-engine. Unexpected uses of science have been disclosed in war ; but peace has more multitudinous and more surprising ones. Western colleges, above all, must adjust themselves to the Union as it novv^ is, and the ^ew World as it is going to be. At such a moment, the question, What is the true idea of Western college culture? assumes an importance it never had before. * The '• National Schools," so calledln England, are under and for an Es- tablished Church, which represents, in the loosest way, even by formal con- nection merely, less than half the people. In Scotland, they belong to another, that embraces only one-third. In England, of the three grades of education, the highest and the lowest make progress aft^r a fashion, the "middle" makes little or none. In Scotland, the two lower are coniparar- tlvely advanced — the universities are behind. t See Historical Sketch. DISCOUKSE. 29 I. Shall it be thought, then, that because the propor- tionate attention to learning in new States is less than in older ones — because our percentage of popular ignorance is higher — because we receive most of the comers from the Old World who cannot read and write, that the dis- cipline of our colleges may — if not must — be of an in- ferior style ? Rather, the premises just named show our lack and need, and our need supports the opposite con- clusion. Rather, I maintain, should it be of the most advanced type. To be sure our communities, compared with the ancient ones of this and other lands, are as boys compared with men ; but then, Andrew Fuller once said that " any boy can teach a man, but it takes a man to teach a boy anything." By the laws of history, the minimum of intellectual activity in any people is never in its youth. An Eastern scholar transferred to a chair upon the prairies does not find his functions rendered nominal by a torpid, stagnant, unquestioning type of mind. We are also, to be sure, toward the frontier. But men do not suppose that light-houses of imperfect con- 'Struction, provided with apparatus cast by elsewhere will answer for the stormy head-lands and the lashed and perilous rocks that stand far out in the sea ! On the European coast, down to 1811-12, they had to guide vessels at night, only torches in the upper chambers of such structures, or fires fed by attendants blowing bel- lows ; the ancient Phari still kept their place at Boulogne and Dover as at Alexandria and Ostia. Wax candles were introduced when the new Eddystone Light-house was erected. Coal fires burned in the English light- houses till 1823, on the Cattegat till 1846, on the coast of Sweden they keep them still. In 1847, the old Coruna Pharos, in Spain, was refitted with all the mod- ern improvements : and now all up that Western coast are marine lights nearly perfect. The last built are the most improved; especially if they occupy distant and 30 DISCOURSE. exposed and lonely positions. So witli colleges. The illustration will apply itself. It is understood, I believe, tliat from our pulpits we have quite expelled the notion that " anything will do for the West." We shall not let it linger in our school rooms and our college halls. "Who has sentenced our pupils to learn obsolete things, our teachers to use obsolete methods ? A university of Western Europe or America has never been patterned after the ancient Academy or the Lyceum. ISTor are we now obliged to go back to anything. If we come later to the field, we can take up the better positions which the advanced pickets and skirmishers of learning have won. With new facts and laws ever disclosing themselves in matter, and new distinctions and phenomena in mind, we can never return to the times when one text book was used for a thousand years. It is just as easy to designate the best manuals, books that are up to the foremost present study and results, as any. Can God's intent, in giving us the dis- covery of truth beyond former times and men, be other than this — that we should use it, with the minds under our hand, rather than the truth other ages had ? The moderns may all, indeed, confess themselves pigmies, and yet remember Andrew Fuller's shrewd remark, that a pigmy on a giant's shoulders can see farther than the giant himself. And we may stand up among the mod- erns and insist upon the necessities and consequences of our position. The utmost results of science are just as needful to our future scientific farming, our mining, our manufacturing, our engineering, oar industrial arts — the last word of learning just as important to the pro- fessions, the thinkers, and the society of the West, as they can be anywhere to any. In an age when even Rome uses the telegraph to convey the Pope's blessing,* * A Catliolic gentleman in England died recently. His son was in Rome, and with tlie Pope, wlien he received the news. So his Holiness telegraphed his benediction to the family of the deceased.— Journals of the day. DISCOURSE. 31 the applications of discovery and invention to use here will be of the most novel and multifarious sort. Our Western politics and religion connect with the deepest questions and the best thinking of the ages. The mixed races of history have always required intellectual and moral culture of a higher type than the unmixed — the Roman than the Chaldee, the German than the Hindoo, the French than the Arabian, the Anglo Saxon than the Chinese. The law holds yet. " Time's noblest offspring is his last." n. It may also be maintained that Western college culture is to be thorough. As the term advanced is used in opposition to inferior and obsolete, so by thorough is meant that which is opposed to deficient and superficial. We are not to teach little, or much in a shallow manner. Our pupils are to master what they handle. Of some of the great schools of Europe it has been observed that they now require of young men what is beyond the capacity of the human mind. Out of twelve or thirteen hundred students, " Oxford sends out yearly twenty or thirty very able men " — according to the range and standard adopted there — *' and three or four hundred well educated men." It is well enough understood, I suppose, that an Ameri- can college lays only the foundation of true scholarship. And the question is in the East, as well as in the West, whether time shall be allowed for even that. We have the authority of President Day's observation and experience for the weighty statement that "in this country speed is everything : superior excellence a se- condary consideration." We will not deny that the dictum of our ITew Eng- land sage is emphatically true of this part of the coun- try. We are not blind to the passion for immediate results that rages here, the inordinate feverishness to 82 DISCOURSE. see and hear all tliat is going on, and have part at once in it, the excessive development of curiosity over the love of knowledge, the materialistic view of what is truly practical. It may be believed that no where in the world can " the Horatios of action " so '' discourage the Hamlets of thought." It may seem that the superfi- cialness of men's minds must be proportioned to the superficies over which they expatiate. A vast Western superficies, therefore a vast superficialness. It may be feared that this impatience of taking pains, this indispo- sition to protracted, steady, undiverted efibrt and slowly cumulative acquisitions, which now so marks Western mind, can never be cured by the diligent, persevering, accurate processes of collegiate education. But then, precisely so it must be. This generation, indeed, is tempted to clamor for the " cream " of learning and accomplishments, without giving it time to rise ; it may be taken with the show of hurried and unreal attain- ments and shallow and pretentious schools ; eager to Btudy " too extensively and not intensively" — multum agendo nihil agens. These are ill boding foibles, confessedly. But we are not without examples of other races once superficial in no long time becoming profound. For great and deep learning Germany now leads Christendom. But this is not old. In Luther's day the popular diffusion of knowl- edge, not abstruse and consummate lore, was the German idea. To-day the American idea is to get over a great surface ; thorough research beneath it will come duly. Education, like Christianity, must needs be first diffusive, then exhaustive ; first goes out to the widest possible triumphs, then goes down, returns upon itself, sinks its old shafts into more penetrating and remote investiga- tion, brings its results from more distant and recondite recesses. Along our great prairies is yet to be carried on the vastest coal mining under ground. In these DISCOURSE. 66 fields of mind where there is now most expansion, there will yet be most profundit3\ It is only the Jirst cabin on the frontier which is thrown np on top of the ground without cellar or foundation. The better dwellings that sacceed it have both. The discipline of mind here is to have a basis sunk low and hidden, and solid as the frag- ments of granite boulder on which the walls of yonder college hall are laid. The most significant and instruc- tive original treatise on public afiairs issued among us during our war was the work of a professor ot Greek, at once one of the most plodding and the most polished.* The title runs — '' State RiaHTS : a Photograph from ancient Greece.^ ^ In this grand task of re-building and enlarging the nation, we shall only have a greater and a constant need of such acute and sound learning as pointed out the antiquity of that piece of rotten timber. And we shall have what we shall need. III. As opposed also to a fixed style, though it be advanced and thorough, I maintain that the true type of Western college culture is progressive. We find the truth of human progress as the mean be- tween two extremes of error. Some men assert it as universal fact and law, not distinguishing between these two. Some universally deny. The truth is, the original law was universal. But in fact there is a large, sad, solemn exception. It is moral. Good men, looking at the exception in fact, and its breadth and length, ignore their Maker's law. Other men, looking at the other facts, and, by induction, concluding the law, ignore the great exception. But even in the darkness of the exception, we can behold the light of the law to which it is an ex- ception. The fact is moral; wrong exists, and hence moral decline. Counteract this by moral renovation, and the Divine law resumes its sway, and Scripture cometh * Prof. Tayler Lewis, LX. D., Union College. 3 34 DISCOURSE. true concerning the ever-growing strength of him that hath clean hands, and the ever-brightening light of the path of the just. 'Now true education must recognize the exceptional fact, and work against the fact with the law. To work with the fact alone were to plunge downward. It must not only make the pupil progress, but be itself progres- sive. The law is recognized elsewhere ; it must be both imperative and persuasive here. Human progress is im- plied in a patent office and in a common school. Ordi- nary educational progress is implied in a teachers' institute and a normal department. The higher progress of colleges is implied in universities, if they deserve the name. There is an ever-growing ideal. If there be any occupation fitted to make men idealists, it is that of the educator. The perfect man, the perfect training, is ever fleeing before his eye. Some men unconsciously con- found some real institution — generally that which trained themselves — with the ideal. ITarrow and unprogressive minds do always. It takes more than one life-time to perfect a college, for, indeed, it is one of those things that never are perfected. Grow as fast as it may in the fruits of insight and comprehension, in all ripeness to the age, the age itself is ever growing beyond, and no limit is to be named or thought of. I^ot merely to add on, as men do to old and dilapidated dwellings, but, at times, to revise, to re-model in parts — in accord with improved conditions — this is the law of life to a living college.'*' "When the astronomer's vision shall have ar- rived at the outside of all things, when the physical investigator shall have determined the original ultimate composition of any one material element, and proved * Since this discourse was delivered, it has been said of Harvard, " the changes made during the last ten years are such as, if attempted all at once, would have been deemed Utopian and revolutionary. The present attitude of affairs is favorable to still more extensive and fundamental changes : the causes at work within are likely, if uninterrupted, to effect results which the hardiest lovers of innovation would hardly venture to propose." DISCOURSE. 35 those, beyond whicli analysis can now no farther go, certainly indecomposable, when force shall be explained and the principle of life identified in its hiding place, then we may settle on a fixed scheme of education, allowing of neither modification nor enlargement. It may be suggested here why I have not used, and shall not, the common phrase "a complete education.'^ I doubt its being at all correct. It can be intelligently employed only in a modified sense. There never was any such thing on earth, there never will be, as an abso- lutely complete education. It is always relative to the time when, and the purposes for which, it is acquired. In the light of the ideal, all the schools are approxi- mate and experimental. " Human knowledge, after all," it is well said, " is but broken wonder." It will never be more. Science itself is just a confession of our incomplete acquaintance with every thing. "We must have systematic knowledge because we cannot know objects in detail, by single acts of the perceptive faculty. The essential qualities of even one would exhaust a life-time.* We must group them, losing in minute comprehensiveness what we gain in grasp of faculty. " ^o complete culture is possible," says Her- bert Spencer, " till we have a complete psychology ;" which is very nearly what another means, by saying, " we must learn the boy before we try to teach him." Yet, another distinguished advocate of progress declares that there is as yet " no one single physical discovery connected with the laws of mind."f Is a complete culture to be expected if this be true ? There are very obvious differences between a German university and an English one. The former is a group of public lecturers and of professional schools — the teaching by lectures only. The latter is a congeries of * Bowen's Logic, p. 336. t Buckle, Essays, p. 206. 36 DISCOURSE. colleges for private instruction and of examiners for pub- lic honors. So do their aims differ. The English designs to produce, in certain classes, the completest style of Englishman. The G-erman undertakes to keep abreast, in each several department, with all learning the world over. American colleges propose objects that differ from both these — to impart the rudiments of gene- ral scholarship to all alike, (herein a " liberal " educa- tion departs from one contemplating some partial purpose or mere calling in life,) to make common the highest style of Americans, and to make true men. Greater completeness within these limits is getting attained by taking in the principles — only the principles — of all the great departments of human thought. • But when will this be fully done ? The men of the "West are to be, of all, most typically American, and also most cosmopolitan. The vices of the English universities are, first, insular narrowness — the Englishman is the end, not the man ; second, stubborn conservatism that refuses to modify and improve, i. e., to increase the approximation to completeness. § We are at liberty here in the bosom of the prairies to see the points of the nearest approximation, adopt them, and make them our starting points ; but if we stay there, and do not move on, our culture will not be, even for the time and the generation, complete, and we shall have only a stunted Western civilization blindly reproducing itself as it rolls itself over upon new frontiers. IV. The way is now prepared to show that the mental discipline of our Western Colleges must also be natural. W^e are closer to nature than older societies of men, there- fore it must be preeminently natural. Raw nature, phys- ical or intellectual, is often uncomfortable enough, but it g " The English classical system, is a protected monopoly of the strictest kind, entirelj' shut out from the influences of the age, and incapable of self- improvement."— Hon. Charles Hax,e. DISCOURSE.! 37 yields this advantage, as a venerated officer of my Alma Mater wrote the other day, — that we " can mould our institutions untrammeled by custom and precedents." "We have not to unlearn or to unteach. I use the term natural as opposed to the conventional, the artificial, the arbitrary, the distorted and the partial. Our security for a healthful intellectual condition in fu- ture time, and for the richest results, is in a normal free- dom and equity of culture. We must be natural in methods and regimen, in order and scope of studies, and inad aptedness to the mind. We must go from things to names, from the simple to the complex, from the notions that come through obser- vation to the ideas that consciousness suggests, from round-about descriptions to exactest definitions, from facts to theories, from the concrete to the abstract. By the way the faculties approach the first knowledge we must find the path to other knowledges. Unnatural methods do indeed abound. Over many a curriculum the student cannot possibly march step by step, he must go by the jump — or ride. The tasks set him do not join on to each other by any organic or normal articulation. I think it would be hard to tell why our school children should not learn the flowing movements of drawing before the cramped ones of writing; why they should be taught the technics of grammar — "among the first things taught but the latest understood," according to Home Tooke — before the simplest analysis of expression of thought ; or why the study of geometric figures, the element of form, — so early engaging the eye and imagination — should be postponed to the days of algebra and the calculus. Possibly we might discover something in a school of con- trabands learning to read short words before the alpha- bet, — a method proposed in our seminaries twenty-five years ago, but reached only under martial law — the bay- onet pointing the way to the blackboard. It is not to be 38 DISCOURSE. disputed tliat tlie mathematics should precede in time any physical science in which mathematical principles are in- volved, such as mechanics and chemistry, and the mie- chanical forces come before the chemical, and the chemi- cal, again, before the vital. But these are only examples of what is, by Divine right, a universal law. It applies to the whole round circle of studies. And it demands a round circle. It is for Jesuits to decide first what not to teach, and then how to pare down and neutralize what must be taught. We are to appreci- ate the relative progress and the poise of all liberal stud- ies and maintain equity among them. IlTo one of them educes all the mind as God intended, else the others were superfluous. Although we have the great name of Sir William Hamilton for the proposition that some studies, *' from the variety of objects and of relations which they represent, calling into strong and unexclusive activity the whole circle of the higher powers, may almost pretend to accomplish alone the work of education," we know well they cannot altogether , we know well what overbal- ance and one-sidedness result. A rich, full, propor- tioned, symmetric, and real education cannot be produced if one branch overtops another, if some one department is made the standard oi proficiency, and, like Pharaoh's lean kine, swallows up all the rest. The natural system of College culture asks also for all the powers that are to be trained as well as for all the matter that is to be taught. The one correlates to the other. John Locke, in his Essay upon the Understand- ing, considered the exercise of the imagination a fraud, upon the reason, and Bishop Butler treats it, in the same way, as ''that forward, delusive faculty," '' the author of all error," w^hile there are multitudinous modern mathe- maticians who regard it as the chief working faculty in their pursuits. New branches of study, which are just new disclosures of the mind of the Creator, ever develop DISCOURSE. 39 new phases of faculty in created minds. "We should take most pains to supply in our College course what most we must needs lack. Because our youth are re- moved from the great models in art, and encompassed by peerless natural beauty, they should be drilled in the criticism of the beautiful and the principles of art, and it is as easy to inculcate the highest as any. Because they are where collections in English authorship are small, and the dangers of debasing our mother tongue are great, they should have its history and wealth of litera- ture unfolded to them with Shakspeare and the English Bible for text books. Because they are remote from in- tellectual contact with great nations whose languages come from similar sources with their own, the modern classics in French and Q-erman at least should have their place in the College course with the ancient; perhaps should be studied before them, as Dr. Arnold thought at last. It is not to our national honor that we have Amer- ican professorships of Sanscrit and none of Anglo-Saxon. This natural and balanced style of education, as op- posed to the partial, the distorted, the conventional, also looks chiefly after that which is common to all mind. With all due elastic adaptation to individualities in the treatment under the system, there is a system which is best for all. Each deathless intelligence beneath the true teacher's hand is " one several pearl," to be made to shine with all the beautiful light the Maker and Fashion- er of it intended. Bat the process that will bring out one is not materially different from that which sacceeds with another. G-eniuses, which do not act at all like oth- er minds, if such there be, establish no laws for general nurture ; rather themselves need the more the common law, to keep them from the tyranny of idiosyncrasy and overtendency, and from swinging away from their own generation. A literary institution must never be a nurs- ery — or hospital — of intellectual eccentrics. ISTor are 40 DISCOURSE. there such dissimilarities between the mind of man and that of woman as to render the processes of culture which are natural for the one unnatural for the other. A teach- er of reputation says that the education of females is based in this country on mathematics, and should be on language, for the mastery of which woman has special en- dowments. I question the fact stated, as to institutions in which the severer studies are not pursued jointly with young men. I question the doctrine that follows. It is equally natural for each to acquire both branches. Each equally needs both ; needs solidity and elegance of edu- cation. They begin life together, to diverge but little ever, and only with harm, if the points of departure ex- ceed the points of union, if they do not look at truth to- gether, as they naturally should, if they do not understand truth alike, and truly and purely understand each other. There is enough that is normally and wholesomely com- mon to both for a joint course of higher education, and there is not enough that is peculiar to either to constitute an entirely separate one.§ Y. The type of education in a Western College must also be philosophical. This term indicates both the place it should give to philosophy proper, and the way of think- ing and habits of mind it should produce. Some one has often been needed to recall education to philosophy as Pestalozzi did to nature. Knowledge is born before science, and science before philosophy. A fact known is not scientific till it is arranged with others and subsumed under some law. Classification, as it is the beginning, so it has been thought to be the end of science. But classification once begun ever grows phil- osophical. "What is '' philosophy ?" and what is " philo- ? After these pages were sent to press John Ruskin's two Manchester Lec- tvires (" Sesame axd Lilies ") appeared, in the second of which that brilliant writer argues that in the education of children tliat of the girl should be tha same as that of the boy, only more serious, instead of more frivolous, as is usual. DISCOURSE. 41 sopliical ? " Cognoscere causas rerum f If you follow that road strictly and way out, there is but one goal, for there is but one Cause at last, and philosophy becomes tlieolo- ogy. There is no force in nature that works without design ; events, effects, prove superficially this much of design at least, an intention somewhere to produce them. A producing agency totally blind is, in the last analysis, unthinkable. But second causes, though intentional, are but relay engines, in which God's power is made local. It is not the power philosophy seeks, but the law of its action. I^ot the Maker, but the method of things made : to find in every department its idea. Therefore philoso- phy is called " an interest perpetual and enduring for man. While humanity shall possess Reason man must have his philosophy. "J A high civilization clings to the abstract and is flexible in the concrete, and this it learns from philosophy. The abstract true and the abstract good are ever rising in history. The first step in philosophy is analysis, as the first step in science is synthesis. Time was when knowledge was the simple collection of facts, induction only, and when science was the mere synthesis of rudimentary and obvi- ous facts, — the phenomena of the empirical and the con- tingent. But it is fast including necessary facts and truths as well. There is no science now that is not largely analysis along with synthesis. Without analysis there is no forward step in any art even. Whether the ultimate science of pure abstraction will ever be construct- ted, or whether there will sometime be no separate philos- ophy, it is certain that every branch of real study has its philosophy, and the Scientia Scientiarum — instead of being a dream of abstruse recluses — meets the student as a reality in every direction. An eminent linguist § main- tains that " no study of language deserves the name that X Dr. Hickok. § Dr. B. W. Dwight. 42 DISCOURSE. is not analytical and philosophical; " but neither does any other such study. When President Everett proposed to add a faculty to the university at Cambridge, — co-ordinate to that of Applied Science, " in which the various branches of science and literature should be cultivated beyond the limits of an academical course, with a view to a complete liberal education,'' — he denominated it "a Philosophical Faculty. " Intellectual heresies and moral wrongs die in the grasp of analysis as "almost all crude and irrational theories of physics may be decisively over- turned by the simple application of geometric or algebraic calculus to them." § Mere accumulation of facts may ad- vance knowledge, but not of course truth, or education. Simple facts, and the systematized facts of science are of immediate importance to life, but analysis and philosophy are all important to the higher education. In the perfect- ing of human powers you must sharpen them on some- thing hard enough for the purpose, perhaps harder than that on which they are to be used, as the knife on stone to cut wood. On analysis philosophy whets the mind, and what is there when brought to that edge it will not cut? We must give it, then, the philosophy of inorganic and organic matter, of animated nature, of the relation of numbers and proportion, of language and persuasion, of mind and morals. All these subjects of study point back and point down to reasons that lie behind and be- neath them. They grow out of conceptions which they do not themselves yield. They are correlated to that intelligence in us by whose laws and necessary ideas all that is worth knowing and thinking is constructed. They build on consciousness as on a corner stone. " The very mathematics themselves," it is the thought of a deep and skilled teacher, * " rest half upon the soul, and but half upon the world." Philosophical materials and methods, g President Hill of Harvard. Address on Natural History, p. 9. ^ * President Hill, Harvard Natural History Address, p, 11. DISCOUIISE. 43 then, are indispensable to real education;- and the more perfect tliey are the more justly and successfully is the mind prepared for its work. True philosophy brings it to a finer edge and tempering than *' philosophy falsely so called," astronomy than astrology, psychology than phrenology. And as philosophy itself advances, so will education. It must needs become better adapted to our powers, as it learns more accurately and amply what these powers are ; and will give due place to studies fitted to unfold and improve them. I am quite aware that Sir William Hamilton averred that psychology and metaphysics were '' beyond the aver- age comprehension of the College Fellows at Oxford.*' That was in 1832. It may be so still. But why should that hold true of a land in which education cannot be fast anchored as it is there ? Logic, even the Aristotelian, I heard them complaining, was not mastered by Oxford men, nor its relations to general metaphysics. But these things need not be beyond the scope of College graduates in the land of Jonathan Edwards. I am quite aware of the impulses the course of events here gives to life in the concrete and unreflective. His tory teaches by synthesis — so far is it from "philosophy teaching," according to the current maxim, — and lately by the tremendous synthesis of war. But peace, like the higher education, tends to inward research, and the dis- covery of laws and reasons. Science is more our need in war; philosophy returns with peace. Do you ask me whether the present Western generation, with both hands employed in induction, gathering myriads of new, attract- ive, distracting facts, can ever become philosophical? Doubt not that it can. Isaac Taylor* declares it to be a prominent fault of the day in an unusual degree, "to generalize upon an array of facts exceedingly slender." * "Ultimate Civilization and Other Essays," 1860. 44 DISCOURSE. Peradventure Providence would here balance the intel- lectual world, and duly cure this tendency, — in a whole people, — by the enormous and multifarious induction g-oing on in these imperial wildernesses, along our Cen- tral mountain ranges, and far out to the Western Sea ! ]^ay, I think it can be easily seen that the most generally philosophic era of American history is just about to dawn. Abstract and dark as the point may appear, there is no other that really burns so, to a keen and steady gaze, in the lurid light of events just passing. Each of the two types of mind, between which our four years' wrestling of giants has been going on, has its phil- osophical tendency, but diverse. The speculative think- ing of the ISTorth ran chiefly to religion; that of the South to polities. Our bloodless revolutions in creeds have been in the former; there came first in the latter — as it needs must — an attempt at a bloody revolution in government. The strongest religious life that ever was on this continent, i. e. strongest m proportion to the bulk of the body in which it circulated, was in the meta- physical era of 'New England theology. "Whole genera- tions of scholars in sacred philosophy stand behind the simple and apostolical Declaration of Faith made the other day on Plymouth Hill and at Boston. On the other hand forget not that it was the subtle States Eights' theory that once organized a " Confederacy," created armies, and planned starvation and assassinations. We used to laugh at it, as metaphysics and logic ; we have wept for it since when armed to the teeth ! It made the long lines of desperate men under the " Stars and Bars " formidable, because it was aforetime formidable in the brain and on the tongue of John C. Calhoun. The Car- olina nuUifier was not surprised out of that theory by the peerless daring of Sherman. In the Virginia abstraction- ist it has not been annihilated by the gallant dash of Sher- idan, or the astute strategy of Grant. It will yet resist DISCOUESE. 45 freedom and loyal reconstruction, l^ortliern doctrines and Northern schools. It is yet to be met and conquered by the philosopbical jurist and statesman. Tlie fundamental question of secession from a government of the people is one of theory and reasoning. So are, largely, all the coming problems of reconstruction. Even in the I^orth we need a deeper and more sufficient philosophy of gov- ernment and politics. The time is propitious for its growth- Men always think radically, and therefore generalize, in revolutionary epochs like this. An accomplished 'New England Governor § wrote the other day: " We have reached a point when temperate, philo- sophical, and statesmanlike treatment of great questions has become easy because it is of controlling and absolute necessity." But coming men cannot leap into this on occasion ; they must be educated up to it. The men of the West must be, for the West has now a leading part in great questions, and "Western statesmanship is to follow up Western soldiership ; and a great many who can never be statesmen must also have this temperate and philosophical, this educated habit of mind. YI. The type of education in our Colleges should also be Christian, emphatically this. I do not say now that it must be so for the sake of Christianity; but for its own sake, and for the sake of Western mind. It will not be of a. lower type for being Christian ; but in that it is philo- sophically, vitally Christian, only higher. It was Chris- tianity that discovered to the modern world that education is development and not accretion; for it showed what there is in man to be developed, and for what. It has begotten that purely intellectual habit of mind which true scholarship requires. "All science is conditioned by faith, in one form or another." The ultimate ideas on w^hich it builds, and to which it constantly recurs, illus- 2 Governor Andrew, of Mass. 46 DISCOURSE. trate this. On ideas of tMs sort the religion of Christ builds also, and accustoms the mind to the highest and soberest exercises of faith, and to its proper limitations. It supplies noble and compelling motives to the student. It interweaves inspiring and precious relations with the Divine, like golden threads, through all the silken and beautiful fabric of learning. It gives a true intellectual proportion ; for if you leave out the uppermost and the largest realm of thought, love, action, how can you have symmetry ? It suggests an end worthy the ripest and richest perfecting of our nature. It lights up the mental firmament with glory. Both for the individual and for society this Christian element in our College culture is essential. 'No young mind can unfold into goodness now without it, and to impart an un-Christian education is to give that which is not good. It contributes not to any one's happiness. It is a cruel wrong to the choicest and supremest endow- ments. It leaves the human spirit without safeguards. Materialism and Idealism long divided the systematic thinking of the world between them. Pantheism and Secularism are now ravaging civilized lands. There is no form that can overtop these giants, no arm that can slay them, but that of Christian learning. Kor can any man who is of age as an actor in Western thought and life believe that the obvious defects and faults of Western mind will be cured, or its salient excellencies — its spring- ing ardor, its fearless directness, its native insight, its utter abhorrence of sham, its movement and po^ver — have freest and most salutary play, save as guided by the keenest, clearest Christian views, the most assured and proportioned Christian principles. Our peculiar materi- alistic tendencies can only so be neutralized. The late Edward Everett, a scholar of happy sympathies, when inaugurated at Harvard, uttered the couviction that our age with all its improvements was sinking faster than any DISCOURSE. 47 preceding under the sordid worship of Mammon ; and that the corrective, if not found in pubhc calamity and the return of "the times that tried men's souls," must be in seminaries of liberal education " in a time of prosperity and by gentle influences." Our public calamities over- past have not corrected it, and now such a time is coming to the West, and so must these influences. In new com- munities ever impressible to ever renewing temptations of present gain and enjoyment, from the advancing reduc- tion of luxuriant nature to human use, if a sound train- ing of mind and heart and conscience does not keep selfishness from the throne what can ? How shall we be assured that it shall not handle and sway the potencies of our new civilization for all mischief? Society is devel- oped purely and beneficently just as individuals are. Its tendencies are under the law of the tendencies in individ- uals. Therefore education should without fail make Christians of our young men and women, and of our young Christians make such men and women as society shall need in the imminent and magnificent future. It is by no means enough, then, that the influence of a College should be generally and indefinitely on the Chris- tian side, but it should be distinctly such as to give the student fall proof of the actual, transforming, spiritual power of religion. ]^ot enough that some fine and eleva- ted sentiments about the relations of Christianity to the best thought and work of the ages should be instilled, — thought about it as a thing which he is to go to churches and missions and closets of dead saints and scenes of reform toil and sufi'ering to find exemplified. It must be in the tenor, implications, and connections of the teaching, in the personal character of the teachers, in the regime and very atmosphere of the institution. It must give the better in every youth a vantage over the worse ; give him a chance to learn the beauty of Christian experience, and quietly, deliberately, genially acquire it, — abetter chance 48 DISCOURSE. than elsewhere. Enough of this influence there must he^ fervid, noble, and winning, to prevent the need of calling it in ab extra to arrest jejune intellectualism, or warping scholarly ambition, or dissolving vice. Enough, withal, to overflow upon the adjacent territory of mind, and prove that there is an internal fountain of it. "Within the circle of still air that encloses the halls of study, in the chapel where the student daily meets his fellows and instructors, in the plain and humble dormitory where he delves and drills, in the class-room associated with his endeavors and acquirements as a scholar, the reality and vitality of this influence must reside. It should be so in order that the College may be alive all over with true intellectual and moral life. It should be so that it may prove a cherishing mother indeed, who cherishes that whicb.most deserves cherishing in her children. After all a College should have a heart, and if it be not a Chris- tian heart what shall it be ? I have sketched now six different characteristics of the true type of Western College culture. There is a needs be for each one not only for itself, but in order to the rest. Unless our education is advanced it will be nothing else that I have described. But it must be thorough in order to be advanced, and progressive or it will not long be advanced or thorough. A stereotyped culture can but be of a low type and superficial. But it must be natural in order to be progressive, or thorough, or advanced. Artificial and disproportioned systems lack vitality and cannot grow. And then it must be philosophical to be natural and the rest. The true advance is not only in tact and skill, but in insight and adaptation. All philo- sophical methods are natural, though to teach philosophy first were neither natural nor philosophical. Our culture must be planted down among the deep and true relations of things. Its roots must come out of G-od's thoughts which are always infinitely philosophical. And by the DISCOURSE. 49 same token it is under a necessity of being Christian, imbued with God's choicest thoughts and best intentions toward earthly intelligences, if it is to be philosophical, natural, thorough, progressive, or advanced. It is with such conceptions of this subject that I assume — and have already entered upon — the duties of the office in which I am formally recognized to-day. I did not seek it. It would have been filled by some other long ago, if my persuasion could have prevailed. I never anticipated the sorrowful providences which have opened my way to it. Surrendering a most happy pastorship, and declining other posts of honorable and more gainful service, I have heeded this call as the voice of God. I realize that this is a Western College, an Iowa College. My hope for it of success and usefulness proportionate to its possibilities and opportunities rests upon the actuali- zation, through the blessing of God, of these conceptions. Other things are needful, — ample endowments, that the Faculty may not turn from the altar of learning, of which they are ministers, to serve tables, — more complete apparatus for the illustration of science, — a library more deserving of the name, — buildings sufficient for a larger and 3^et larger increase of students. These, a discerning and prompt policy on the part of the Trustees and a wise generosity from the friends of Christian education in the State will bring. But all these will not make a real Col- lege, such as the State and times require, save as employ- ed by a faculty of high ideals, self-sacrificing, zealous for the best improvement of others and themselves, and moved by Christian fervor to live for a choice and far- reaching usefulness, and not for temporal and common aims. Such a Faculty is, in the highest sense, the Col- lege. It must be composed of men each an adept, an enthusiast, in his own specialty, who with small begin- nings can do true and thorough work, and who could do 4 50 DISCOURSE. far better for tliemselves in emolument elsewhere ; they will draw in and draw out the best minds of a wide cir- cuit as the magnet draws steel ; they will charge with aspirations for high and honorable progress every element that is not a non-conductor; they will dignify humble surroundings ; they will create sympathy with their own noble spirit ; they will enrich the piety and elevate the rate of intelligence about them. Just here it is my happiness to have for this institution solid confidence and cheering expectation. The accomplishments, the true purpose, the industry, and the unity of my colleagues assure me. N"or does the past history of the College fail to certify that a good foundation of a worthy future is laid. It has shown its vitality and the virtue that is in it — as all things earthly must — by outliving other things and its own misfortunes. Between 1840 and 1850 ten Collegiate institutions were chartered in this State, of which this and one other, since re-organized, alone sur- vive. This is the oldest College in Iowa under the same organization. If in its earlier history it might well have taken a legend for its seal, as Dartmouth did before the Revolution, from John the Baptist, vox clamantis in deserto, it cannot be so in its present condition and in this pros- perous era of the State. The full and powerful life of the Commonwealth, now proven heroic on so many fields, is charged with promise. It will give new impulse pres- ently to the higher education. I gather hope too, from the story of those who have gone before us in so great endeavors as this. When Dr. Wayland went to Brown University in 1827 the College property consisted of two buildings, used as lecture rooms and dormitories, and $34,300 in funds. When Dr. Sturtevant was inaugurated at Illinois College in 1845 * it had, in grounds, buildings, books and apparatus, some $50,000, and a few lands. The resources of this institution have nearly doubled * Founded in 1830. DISCOURSE. 61 since those entered it who will graduate this afternoon. Eyes beaming with kind and intelligent interest look this way. Hearts throbbing with generosity warm towards our yet young College. lN"ew gifts are flowing to it. Enlarged facilities for an enlarging attendance are on foot. It is realizing at last an approximate minimum endowment. The benefaction of |10,000 from, a single citizen of a distant Eastern State, who has no interest here save that of a patriot and a Christian, must ]3rove an example to patriotic and Christian men in the State who love Iowa and love learning. The State will have a mil- lion of souls when it passes its majority not long hence. It can certainly house and keep the youth who come to be taught and the means of teaching provided for them. It will surely see the economy of building up such a Col- lege in such a community. We have earnest of it already in the foundation laid within a few weeks by a far-seeing Iowa statesman. From the planting of this young Puri- tan community its warm-hearted and most exemplary liberality has given assurance of future fostering care for the wants of the College as they shall arise. Part of its endowment too is in the self-sacrificing toil of its earlier Professors, who shall yet have historic honor, among whom special recognition is due to one whose voice you heard this morning in the ancient tongue familiar to his lips as an instructor, to whom so largely its good name is to be ascribed. J^or shall I be restrained from the passing mention — for it was God's good providence for us as well as for him — of the womanly truth and wisdom, the fellow skill, and the unwearying patience that have waited and watched and labored in these years by his side. But best of all endowments is the blessing' of Heaven, never so manifestly bestowed as now. I read upon this seal the legend Christo Duce. Men dare sometimes to think that under some human leader in a great enterprise it is impossible to fail. Under that 52 DISCOURSE. Divine leader — if we abide with him — dare we think of failing ? With a hopeful heart for the'weighty cares you have laid upon me, Gentlemen of the Trustees, with some chastened views of life learned in the severe but gentle school of Divinely measured sorrow, with a sincerity of love for this commonwealth which lends the College its name, no less than that of any other citizen or public ser- vant — I dare to say, — with a respect for good learning and an ardor in its cause which my Puritan birth and training taught me, with a reliance on your discreet and unselfish and energetic cooperation I put my shoulders beneath this burden and my hand to this work. HISTORICAL SKETCH BY PEESIDEISTT MAGOII]^ HISTORICAL SKETCH. The first movement for the founding of Iowa College was made by " a called meeting of ministers and others," held at Denmark, March 12, 1844. It was proposed to enter a township of land, and by the sale thereof to set- tlers favorable to the enterprise commence an endow- ment. A committee of three was chosen to examine the location contemplated, who reported favorably to another and larger meeting April 16th. "The Iowa College As- sociation " was then formed, a board of Trustees agreed upon, an Executive Committee appointed, and an agent to secure funds for the entry of land employed. The agent. Rev. Asa Turner, Jr., went East immediately, (April 26,) his expenses being defrayed by the ministers composing the Association. He met in Eoston (May 28-9,) gentlemen who had just organized the "Society for the Promotion of Collegiate and Theological Educa- tion at the "West" and others, who condemned the plan, and advised that a location be first secured and a fund commenced from the gifts of the churches, and gave assurance that, through the new Society, " aid may be obtained when the plan and system of instruction shall be so matured that they can secure the confidence of the Eastern mind." The agent abandoned the original plan 5Q HISTORICAL SKETCH. and returned without further effort. Had it been carried through, in all probability it would have been highly suc- cessful, and the College long since had a large endow- ment, — the site proposed, which had been secured by a friend of the College, embracing a superior water power "in a section of countrj^ mostly subject to entry," and being now occupied by one of our largest and most pros- perous interior towns. The sympathies also of its friends in the State would have been enlisted and fostered as they could not be by years of weakness, suspense, and dis- heartenment. In June 1846 it was decided to locate at Davenport, ''provided the citizens would raise $1,500 for buildings, aud furnish certain specified grounds for a site," and the members of the Association pledged them- selves to raise $100 each. Twelve Trustees were elected to secure a College charter, who incorporated themselves — with others — under the general incorporation law^ of the Territory, Burlington, June 4, 1847, at the last meet- ing of the Association. Although the amount named had not been yet subscribed ( $1,362 and thirteen lots secured ) the College was located at Davenport, and a building resolved upon — "not to exceed in cost $2,000." The members pledged themselves to meet w^ithin one year any deficiency in the necessary funds up to the amount of $600. In 1848 a Professor of Languages was secured (wdio w^as also Principal of the Preparatory Department) on a salarj^ of $500 per annum, and the Preparatory De- partment opened I!n"ov. 1, 1848. In 1850 there were 26 stu- dents in Latin and 8 in Greek. The first Freshman Class of 6 was admitted to tlie College Department that fall. In 1854 the first Senior Class of 2 was graduated, and there were 109 names on the Catalogue. In 1856 there were 139. The Professorship of Mathematics was filled in 1851, that of I^atural Science in 1853, and that of Mental and Moral Science in 1855. (See General Catalogue published this year. ) Since the College was opened in HISTORICAL SKETCH. 57 1848 there have been in all,notwithstandiDg its interrupted sessions and crippled condition, more than a thousand young persons under instruction. But the work of raising funds was found, on the plan substituted for the original one, almost impossible to carry forward, though temporary agents were often appointed, sometimes a number of them, for the State a,nd for the East.- In 1849 at the meeting of the Congre- gational Association in Davenport, there was subscribed ^442,65, — all but four of the subscribers being ministers. At the meeting at Dubuque in 1850 the sum of $450 was raised. "The wives also of the ministers, anxious to share in the enterprise of founding this College, resolved to raise $100 out of their own resources, and $70 was sub- scribed by fourteen persons who were present." At the meeting in Muscatine in 1852 the ministers again sub- scribed $153, and at the meeting in Mt. Pleasant in 1853, a subscription was made of $711. Dea. P. W. Carter, of Waterbury, Conn., gave that year $5,080 to endow the Professorship of Languages. In 1856 Eev. E. Adams, Agent, secured about $11,000 on subscription, a large part of which was realized. The Society for Western Colleges made appropriations from time to time to the amount of about $6,000, for current expenses. The College has never been attached to any ecclesias- tical body. Like the New England Colleges, founded by the fathers, its Charter requires neither Trustees nor In- structors to be connected with any particular denomina- tion. Although nearly all its support has come from Congregationalists, in Iowa and at the East, it has had both Trustees and instructors of other denominations. Presbyterians {1^. S.) were in the first Board and the original "Iowa College Association," and took part in the proceedings down to 1852, when the Des Moines Presbytery proposed to undeHake the founding of a Pro- fessorship, on condition that it should be "always subject 58 niSTORICAL SKETCH. to the control of the Presbytery." The Trustees respond- ed that they wonld be happy to have the Professorship endowed on the principles "upon which the members of Des Moines Presbytery and the Congregational Associa- tion of Iowa united in founding the College, and the rules and regulations that are usually adopted in the endowment of Professorships in Literary Institutions." Nothing more was done by the Presbyterians, and they gradually ceased to be members of the Board of Trustees. The original site of the College was on the bluff in Davenport overlooking the river. The first building is now the residence of S. S. Gillett, Esq. In 1854 the city having laid out a street thi^ough the grounds, destroying their use for College purposes, and declining to vacate it on request of the Trustees, they were obliged to remove to a new location farther back. A fine stone building was there erected, and a boarding house of wood. The new grounds were of great beauty, containing nearly ten acres, part of which however was granted to the public for adjacent streets. In 1857 the city took steps to extend a street through these grounds, and in 1858 it was decided to dispose of them and again remove. The funds of the College were insufficient to make needed improvements, or sustain the Faculty, — now consisting of four profess- ors, — the unsettled condition of things prevented pro- gress, — through misrepresentation and breach of trust by the financial officer the treasury had become helplessly embarrassed, and in 1859 the property was sold to Bish- op H. W. Lee and others for an Episcopal College, the first of the proceeds being devoted to liquidating the debts. Proposals were invited for a new site. Meantime, another institution had been founded at Grinnell, Poweshiek Co., by a colony fromJ^ew England. The town was laid out in May 1854, a building for wor- ship and school purposes being immediately erected, and a church organized in May 1855. "All funds arising HISTORICAL SKETCH. 59 from the sale of town lots over and above the original ■cost" were devoted to education, and in December 1855 the " Grinnell University " was fomided. " The Univer- sity was the soul, the animating spirit of the colony." A "Literary Fund" was commenced, by the payment of •$20,00 to which any male citizen became an "Elector.," with power to vote in the election of half the Trustees ■and the President. A school had been commenced in 1856 by the present Carter Prof, of Languages, which was now opened to students in the higher branches, of whom there were in 1859 more than thirty. The Trustees of the "University" offered the College the property of the institution, including site of twenty acres and the " Sem- inary" partly finished, together with an additional citizens' subscription, — which was accepted, Sept. 1858, and the College exercises at Davenport suspended in December. The College professors resigned, and in Sept. 1859, preparatory classes were organized in the College building at Grinnell. The first Freshman class entered Sept. 1861. The present Prof of Languages was elected in 1861, the President in 1862, the Prof of Mathematics in 1863, the Professors of Natural Science -and Rhetoric, and the Principals of the Preparatory and Ladies' Depart- ments in 1864. Most of the instructors entered at once upon their duties. In 1861, the Congregational churches raised, for cur- rent expenses of the College $285,97, in 1862, $367,34, and in 1863, $ . In the Spring of that year Rev. J. C. Holbrook, of Dubuque, went East by arrangement with the Society for Western Colleges to obtain $2,000 pledged by the Society to the current expenses of the College. It was agreed, upon earnest representation, that if he could secure pledges also for future endowment funds he should do so. The prospects of the government and the country were not bright ; benevolent contribu- tions had been diminished by the war ; and the resources 60 HISTORIOAL SKETCH. of the College Society so largely cut off that a tract was issued by the Secretary to show that its mission was not yet ended, or disbanding a necessity. The success of the agency was unexpectedly so great in a short time as to induce the Society to consent to his raising $20,000 for endowment, and at length $50,000, of which about $40,000 has been secured — in funds and property — including a pledge of $10,000 from Hon. Samuel Willis- ton of East Hampton, Mass., conditioned upon the whole amount being obtained. This is the first general effort for an endowment, and is still going forward. Hon. James W. G-rimes, U. S. Senator from Iowa, has recently given a section of land to found Scholarships, and other benefac- tors are remembering the College with similar gifts. The Institution has now about $100,000 of property of which half is productive. It has seven instructors, including President, four Professors, and Principals of the Prepara- tory and Ladies' Departments. It has twenty-four grad- uates, — ten from the Ladies' Department, — and two hundred and eight undergraduates in the four depart- ments. The attendance during the last year has in- creased beyond'all its accommodations, and Boarding and Lodging Houses have been provided which will accom- modate about seventy additional students. More recita- tion rooms, with larger library and cabinet rooms, and a chapel of twice the capacity of the present one, are imperatively needed, as well as the endowments. The in- crease of students is such that more lodsrinc^ rooms will be required as soon as they can be prepared, and rooms for a Formal Department or Training School for Teach- ers. A nobler or more promising opportunity for far-see- ing benevolence could hardly be opened, and donations for these objects are urgently requested from the friends of Christian Education in this and other States. ERRATA. 26th page, seventh line — For '' beneficient " read "beneficent." 28th page, fifteenth line — For "just where," read ** just when." Twenty-third line — For " triumph new," read " triumph now." LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 029 927 010 5 ^