:s? THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE : AN ADDRESS BY NATHANIEL BUTLER nth Co THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE AN ADDRKSS DELIVERED AT THE SEVENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF COLBY UNIVERSITY NATHANIEL BUTLER DIRECTOR THE UNIVERSITY EXTENSION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO JULY 3, 1895 PORTLAND, MAINE PRESS OFjTHE THURSTON PRINT 1896 Sf^ 17062 The College Ideal and American Life. Twenty-five years ago, on the second day of August, President Champlin with these words closed his oration at the fiftieth anniversary of Waterville College : " Stand- ing now, as we do, at the middle point of the first century of the existence of the institution, whether we look back- ward or forward, have we not reason to thank God and take courage ? The College has been useful, the Univer- sity, I have no doubt, is destined to a still higher useful- ness. The foundations are already laid, and well laid, and the superstructure, I am confident, will gradually rise in fitting beauty and proportions. It will have a history to be recounted, I have no doubt, at the close of another half-century. And as the centuries roll on, chapter after chapter will have to be added to this history, till some future generation, looking back over its whole course, and estimating the influence which has gone forth from it to bless the world, will come to realize, if we do not now, how great a boon to a community is a Christian institution of learning, established and sustained and nurtured up to a high purpose, by the prayers, the labors, and the contribu- tions of the wise and the good." No man was so well able as Dr. Champlin to sum up what the College had been, and to predict the usefulness of the University. President Small, in his sketch in the New England Magazine of August, 1888, declared that Dr. Champlin was the real founder of Colby University. No one will question the justice of that assertion. It is 4 THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. true that, on the day of his resignation, the College was half a century old ; and that the events of the half-cen- tury, in a vital sense made, possible all that has since come to pass. Yet the life of the College, narrowly conceived, according to the ideal long prevalent in this country, had been starved and enfeebled by poverty and disaster. Dr. Champlin's skilful management, his heroic endeavor, and his determination to enlarge the resources of the College, were providentially crowned with success just at the open- ing of a new era in the history of all American colleges, because a new era in American life. No one here need be reminded that the last twenty-five years constituted such a period — a period unlike any that preceded it, a period presenting entirely new problems, industrial, social, political, religious. The College could justify its existence only by being vitally related to these problems, and by leading, either directly or indirectly, in their solution. The work that Dr. Champlin did made it possible for Colby to sustain her own part in the years that have since passed. This possibility his successors have not failed to understand and to make real. It will not be necessary at this time to follow in detail the history which leads up to this anniversary. The story of its first half-century has long been in your hands, written by Dr. Champlin. It is a story of bitter and heroic struggle, and of faith and endurance, renowned because of the final achievement. As for the twenty-five years now closing, one has but to recall the names of Robins, and Pepper, and Small, and Whitman, and events pass before him in rapid review. There are some of us here to-day who, as undergraduates and as alumni, have watched Colby University during pre- cisely this period of twenty-five years. As undergraduates, THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. 5 we saw its foundation securely laid by our own President. Then, from a distance, we have seen Robins creating for the College new ideals, giving it new character and reputa- tion, literally transfusing into it his own life, and impart- ing to it impulses which are felt to-day ; Pepper, wisely conserving what the years had wrought, stimulating a completer development, engaging for the college a livelier denominational interest, creating closer relations between faculty and students by inaugurating the Board of Con- ference, and still more surely and strongly establishing the College in the public confidence; Small, marking out for it an aggressive policy of educational propagandism, giving it a unique position in reference to coeducation, bring- ing it into touch with sociological questions, and commend- ing the College to a yet wider constituency ; until, under the present masterful and inspiring leadership of her Executive [President Whitman] retaining all the good of the past, and tactfully responsive to new demands, at a time when colleges attract the most generous endowments of wealth, and engage the very first scholarly and executive abilty, Colby University in all these respects occupies a place in the first rank. Each of her leaders seems to have been sent at the time when his characteristic work was needed. A comparison of the catalogue of 1870 with that last issued is nothing short of startling in what it reveals. The intervening cat- alogues, and the published reports of the presidents, are a record of almost uninterrupted building up — the steady evolution of a college. Within the period covered, the number of instructors has been more than doubled. New departments have been added in quick and wise response to the demands of the time. The Battle of the Books is peacefully over. The ancients and the moderns arerecon- 6 THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. oiled. Greek, Latin, and Mathematics, time-honored resi- dents, have entered into delightful companionship with Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy, Geology ; with History Economics, Biblical and General Literature. Rational methods, applied in laboratories and with apparatus, have taken the place of exact committal of scientific text-books, varied occasionally by some more or less successful tricks performed by the professor before his wondering class. These were well named "experiments." The present wise system of electives was not dreamed of at Colby twenty- five years ago. The report on hazing and college barbar- ism has fallen obsolete, and in its place one reads the report of the instructor in gymnastics, and the somewhat varying, always honorable, prevailingly brilliant record of the Colby team in the field. The record of the student enrollment is an interesting study. In 1870, the total was 53. With steady additions this rose, in 1879, to 155. From that time it decreased, until, in 1886, there were 118 students in attendance. Since 1886, an uninterrupted increase has brought the enrollment to more than four times that of the begin- ning of this period. At no time has it been more appar- ent than now, that Colby University is needed just where she is. The names of Colby and Coburn and Shannon will ever be associated with this story of progress. Nor must we forget the faithful counselors of these whom we have named. All honor to the devoted men of the past, who stood by Waterville College in her struggles, and lived to rejoice in the prosperity of the University — to Hamlin and Wording and Shailer and Bosworth, to Wilson and Merrill and Sheldon and Sturtevant and Butler and Han- son. Honor to the men who stood with these and who THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. J are still with us — to Small and Ricker and Giddings and Shaw, to Drummond and Thompson and Bakeman and Alden, to Dunton and Bonney and Crane, to Webb and Burrage and Bullen, to Smith and Foster and Hall and Taylor. Honor, too, to the instructors who have wrought here wholly within this period of twenty-five years, who have given new life, new reputation, new efficiency to the College, and who are its strength to day. This, gentle- men, is a roll of honor. What a past and present are here ! Between colleges and universities with such a his- tory as this, there can be no comparison as between greater or less. Scattered over the land, they are like electric lamps in a great city. Each has its own function. None fills the place of the other. If one grows dim, or goes out, the general illumination is less and a distinct region is plunged into darkness. Colby's luster was never brighter than to-day. But this occasion has for us a deeper interest than that of mere reminiscence. The significance of a college is not found in what has happened to it, but in that for which it stands. And it is because Colby is to-day one of the best types of the American college that her existence is of significance and the celebration of this anniversary, of interest. No American college has in all its history stood more faithfully to the ideal of a safe and sound culture — a culture not withdrawn from life, but intimately and necessarily concerned with life. Nor does the history of any institution illustrate more clearly the successive stages through which the American college has expanded its early and simple ideal so as to meet the complex con- ditions of modern life. Colby has steadily moved, not away from the ideal, but towards its more complete reali- zation. Thus alone could she justify her existence in a 8 THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. century which insists that only what is fruitful shall live. Thefage^^has cried out against the colleges, but, at the same time, from the colleges the age has drawn its best resources. For this reason, college anniversaries are incomparably the most important of our many public days. They commemorate the fact that the characteristic and wholesome tone of American life has been due more than to any other one thing, to the fact that it has been from the veryifirst dominated by the college ideal. No other celebrations are of such import in what they commemorate and emphasize — namely, that the ideal of the American college pervading American life has given it its healthful tone and is to be its savor in the time to come. What that ideal was, and how it was to influence American life, was shown in that most significant event in the early history of this country — the founding of Har- vard college. Occurring as early as 1636, it was signifi- cant at once of the character of the Massachusetts colonists and of the course of New England, which is to say. North American developement. The importance attaching to this event was hardly apparent in what has justly been termed the little " Wilderness Seminary," whose faculty consisted of a president and two tutors, and whose student enrollment numbered twenty or thirty. But the purpose of the College, set forth in its charter, was a germ capable of almost infinite evolution. That purpose, thus declared at the first, was " the instruction of the English and Indian youth in knowledge and godly- nes." It is to this plainly avowed purpose — to this tra- dition faithfully handed down — this ideal ever more and more clearly apprehended; — it is to this, that the immense importance of the early institution of the Ameri- can college is due. "Knowledge and Godlynes," Science THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. 9 and Religion, Art and Conscience — by whatever name we call them — these we have come to recognize as the essen- tial, and in a sense coordinate elements of sound culture. And as we have come to recognize more completely this dual nature of sound culture, our condition has likewise improved, our greatness has expanded. In the past, so far as we have been able to withstand what was hostile to our welfare, we have done it through the inspiration of this ideal. So far as we have made positive advance in national expansion, it has come through faithfulness to to the same ideal. In a sentence, the American college has given to this country, in larger measure than is true of any other agency or institution, the best in our national life ; to the American college, more than to anything else, under God, must we look for guidance out of present perils and to future good. Signs are not wanting that there is keen appreciation of this fact. A writer in a recent number of one of the lead- ing magazines (Atlantic, May, 1895, p. 103), asserts that, " of all the institutions of the country, the colleges are those which seem to be at this moment making the swift- est progress, and to have the brightest promise for the future." And he points out that " they are supplying exactly those things which European critics have hitherto found lacking in America, and they are contributing to her political as well as to her contemplative life elements of inestimable worth." And, comparing our colleges with German universities, he adds, " Inseparable from our col- leges is the glory of a closer connection with the manifold and active life of the country to which they belong, and of which they are the loyal servants." If one desires substantial proof that what this writer as- serts is generally felt to be true, let him note the fact that lO THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. within the last six months upwards of three and one-half millions of dollars have been donated to these institutions ; while, if one includes the gifts of Rockefeller and of Stan- ford and of others who have given during the five years just passed, the sum thus devoted reaches an enormous and most significant total. All this indicates that, whether clearly or vaguely, we are looking to the colleges as guides and safeguards in the midst of these changing times ; that we are fortifying ourselves against future perils, not by organizing an army, but by building and strengthening colleges. If this were national policy, rather than private endowment, nothing could be wiser. For, as these insti- tutions have in the past given us the best in our social and public life, so they must be the guarantors of the future. As things are now, nothing is more to be desired than that American youth should enter life through the American college. More and more we shall need men and women who can think and lead. In state, church, army, navy, the college-trained man has been the leader, the counsel- lor, the initiator of far-reaching measures of good. At this moment, college-trained men and women are at the heart of municipal reforms, civic federations, social settle- ments, university extension, charitable endowments, free hospitals. Christian leagues, guilds of every good name, bands of men and women devoting themselves to the practice and promulgation of the will of God for men. The same appears to be true in the realms of industry and commerce. Actual facts seem to establish the con- clusion that the business of the world is to-day dominated by the college-trained man. The ideal held and incul- cated by the colleges is, and is to be, the determining factor in American life. It will operate in homes, in mu- nicipalities, in legislatures. If that ideal is sound and THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. II complete, there is ground for the strongest confidence that problems will be rightly solved and perils safely encoun- tered, that new social conditions will be understood, that public policy will be wisely directed, that there will be a richer life, a higher citizenship. We shall agree that there can be no better statement of a complete ideal of fitness for life than the simple phrase of Harvard's charter, "knowledge and godliness." We are in no danger of neglecting the former of these two. We think we have developed this side of education almost to perfection. But let us ask what, precisely, is our ideal of culture, and what is the precise place of the second element — the spiritual — in the complete scheme .'' Perhaps this country has produced, on the whole, no more complete embodiment of the American ideal of cul- ture than James Russell Lowell. In the Forum for Octo- ber, 1 891, Archdeacon Farrar, writing of Mr. Lowell, said that it was " a part of his [Lowell's] training to be familiar with, and to be pervaded by, the best thoughts of many minds in many ages." That "as a student he de- voted many hours of every day to the earnest, systematic pursuit of knowledge and selfculture. Two great writers, Carlyle in his lecture on, The Hero as a Man of Letters and Emerson in his Representative Men, have sketched the quiet dignity and devotion which mark the man who has accepted it as one of his duties to make the most of the intellect which God has given him. Mr. Lowell pre- sented a finished specimen of that ideal." I have found it very helpful and stimulating to dwell upon this character sketch, and to catch the spirit that animated Mr. Lowell in maintaining, all his life, the habits of a student. It is not hard to understand Mr. Lowell's conception of self-culture. Most ot us, in our best efforts, 12 THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. are familiar with the temporary motives furnished by a specific task — a speech to be delivered, an article to be written, or with the motives of competition and immediate gain. Here was a man daily and habitually seeking larger power and larger knowledge, not to prepare for specific tasks, not in pursuit of a calling, but because he regarded himself a composite of faculties potentially capable of a large product, and he sought self-enrichment because he knew that the world had a right to demand, and did de- mand of him, as of every man, the largest possible output. His supreme business was to make the most of himself that he might honor the daily claims of others, that he might contribute full share to the sum total of useful ac- tivity in this world. This is somewhat different from the highest motives of effort of which we have heard in certain quarters. On the one hand, we have been told that the end of human en- deavor for every man, is the salvation of his soul. On the other, that self-perfection is the worthy and final end of all our effort. Each of these statements embodies a vital truth. But in each there is great danger of fatal error ; for a man may work at self-perfection until self fills his whole horizon ; and a man may be so intent on the salva- tion of his own soul as to lose his soul in utter selfishness. There is an ideal of self-perfection that passes into self- glorification. There is an ideal of salvation that makes a man self-centered, and small, and mean. Here was a man by whom the duty of self-perfection was taken for granted, not so much as an end in itself, as a means of entering into right relations with his fellowmen. Self-perfection was to him the normal pursuit of every man, in a universe where all men must cooperate. This was also the ideal of Matthew Arnold — that a man's culture does not ulti- THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. 1 3 mately concern the individual who possesses it, but the \ universe in which he Hves. The purpose of culture, he declares, is not "to make an intelligent being more intel- ligent," but rather "to make reason and the will of God prevail." A still better expression of this ideal of culture is that of a great Christian teacher who has it thus : — "That a man may be perfect — thoroughly furnished unto every good work." That the aim of culture is to prepare a man for good work and not chieily for enjoyment is familiar enough to every one who understands the spirit of modern education. Never has this thought been more operative in the minds of men than during the last twenty years. That men may be more perfectly fitted for every good work, the whole curriculum of the schools has been made anew. Every study has been made to stand and show cause why it should not be banished from the course, and new studies are offered to make good the deficiencies of the old plan. Our quar- rel with the old, was not so much because of what it did, as what it failed to do. It offered something more or less vague and general under the name of mental discipline. And it must be admitted that it accomplished some mag- nificent results under that name. But it ignored every- thing save mental training and mental power. The new understands that the soundness of one part depends on the soundness of all other parts, and so it seeks to train and strengthen the whole man. The old offered the higher training to those destined for two or three special pursuits. The new says that in every field of activity, men need the best training, the best instruction — that every good work, whether of teaching, or preaching, or building, or mining, demands a perfect man ; and that no education is worthy the name, that does not take ac- ^4 THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. count of the whole man, that does not aim to put a man in the way not only of gaining most for himself, but of ren- dering to the world his largest possible output. The conception of how this is to be done has taken on distinctiveness and completeness within comparatively a few years. Many of us can remember the time when the general training of the mind, especially for a career in theology, medicine, or law, was believed to be the function of higher education. At that time it would have been accepted as an adequate definition of culture that it con- sists of a knowledge of the best that has been thought and felt in the world. But this was presently seen to be an inadequate sort of culture ; for a man might be familiar with " the best that has been thought and felt in the world " and yet be feeble in body, and unable to use eye or hand to any practical end. And so, to ensure physical soundness for its own sake, and because the body at its best was seen to be the indispensable helper of the mind, the playground was laid out, the gymnasium built, and physical training was officially recognized as a part of the student's work and privilege. Thus the system became one degree more nearly perfect, for whether it be done with the ax in the woods, or with the scythe in the field, with the oar, or in the gymnasium, that man is a more perfect man, a more truly cultured man, a better educated man, whose sound and well-trained mind dwells in and controls a sound and vigorous body. The department of physical training is now fully recognized as the indispen- sable ally of better scholarship, better morals, better manhood. But the rapidly growing and multiplying industries in which men engage, soon made it evident that mental and physical training do not educate the whole man. The THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. 1 5 mind's most wonderful instruments — the hand and the eye — must receive most careful education, if railroads are to be constructed, bridges built, safe business structures erected, and cities kept habitable. And it presently be- came evident that such training is to be valued, not only for these economic and practical ends, but as a part of general education. And so, to give men fuller command of themselves to train these instruments — the eye, the hand — to call out and educate all their latent power and make them do the bidding of the trained mind, manual training schools and polytechnic schools multiplied on every hand. Our conception of culture was by so much the broader, and men could be in a larger way made per- fect, thoroughly furnished for every good work. Along with this came also that wonderful opening up of fields of activity demanding the very highest endowments, the finest training, political science, economics, and the crown of sciences — sociology. Here is culture touching human life in real earnest. The schools must give training and instruction in these if they would furnish men for every good work. In comparison with all this, how ludicrously narrow was the conception of culture even in the day of Nathaniel Hawthorne. He hardly knew what to do with his college course when once he had concluded it. " For," said he, writing to his mother, " I cannot become a physician and live by men's diseases ; I cannot be a lawyer and live by their quarrels ; I cannot be a clergyman and live by their sins : I suppose there is nothing left for me but to write books." Doubtless he made the very best use of it. But, to-day, the man of culture need not hesitate to enter any field of human activity — every work demands the perfect man. l6 THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. Is our scheme of culture now complete? It provides for the training of mind and body, intellect, muscle, hand and eye ; it provides technical instruction and makes men masters of the sciences that touch the very constitution of society and seek its highest welfare. Is the scheme com- plete ? Will it guarantee all that is required of a man ? Suppose you know a man to be possessed of all that this can give him ; suppose him to be splendidly endowed, highly accomplished, perfectly trained — would you, with- out further guarantee, take him into your employ, place your interests in his hands, and give him your confidence ? His accomplishments and training tell what he has. Do they in the least tell you what he is, what he will do .-' Will he tell the truth ? Can you trust your money with him .'' Will he betray your confidence ? Ah, these are things that all the training of the schools, as we commonly conceive it, cannot guarantee ; yet these things must be guaranteed ; and you, as a business man, would rather take your chances with one of whose character you were assured, but of whose accomplishments you could learn nothing, than with the most highly accomplished man of whose character you had no knowledge. Evidently there is something that the complete scheme of the schools, as we have reviewed it, cannot do for us ; at its best, it stops short of entire fitness for life. Is not this precisely what it can do for a man.? It can put into his hands the means of doing something. It can- not in the least guarantee what that thing will be. One may have the highest endowments, the most perfect train- ing, entire command of every branch of knowledge, and technical skill ; another may have the same endowments and attainments. One may use what he possesses, to make men curse and women weep and children beg, and THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. 1/ to bathe cities in blood ; the other may use the same to gladden hearts and homes, and make the deserts rejoice. Sharp instruments in the hands of a peaceable artisan will produce objects of beauty and utility; the same instru- ments in the hands of a villain will destroy life. And so what one may gain from what we understand by culture and training will be a good or an evil to him according to the use he makes of it. All this vastly increases the power of a good man to do good, but it no less greatly increases the power of an evil man to do evil. Culture and education are, therefore, not necessarily in themselves good, but only in the hands of the good and well-disposed. It is just here that we are forced to recognize the spirit- ual element in sound culture. Psychology, no less than religion, demands this recognition. It is just here that Christianity proposes to do its work for a man. But it undertakes to do only its own work — distinct, coordinate, cooperative. It does not propose to do everything. It may in a sense present the one thing needful — but by no means the only thing needful. It comes forward to super- sede not one of the elements of culture we have enu- merated, nor does it count them even secondary ; there must be the trained mind, the skilled hand, the sound body, the knowledge of what concerns men — but Christi' anity declares that there is one thing the world cannot do — it cannot teach a man how to use what it places in his hands. It may give him the means of splendid suc- cess, and he may turn it to his own and others' ruin. No, Christianity does not restrain men from the things that noble ambition seeks. It bids men seek these. But it does come forward to guide a trained mind and a skilled hand by a right and true heart. It does, what nothing else can do — it fixes the character. 10 THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. This, then, is the place of Christianity in culture. It determines the attitude and the relation of the man him- self to life, and no one who knows anything of life can doubt for a moment the powerlessness of the ordinary appliances of culture to reach the heart and to fix the man's moral status ; and men everywhere declare that this is so when they demand other guarantees than those which the schools can furnish before they will take a man into their employ and give him their confidence. Let us not commit the error of supposing that, so far as knowledge is concerned, the intellect is the only faculty to be cultivated, that all else is, as we often say, mere sentiment. Not only is this untrue, but, further, there are vital truths touching the relations of man, which truths the logical faculty utterly fails to grasp, and a man may have the keenest intellect and the widest experience and yet be radically wrong in his whole estimate of life, because he fails to grasp truths that can be apprehended only by the spiritual faculty. Not long since, there passed away an American citizen whose judgment of men and whose experience of business made him a leader in that realm. He was a man of keenest intellect, yet his view of life made it possible for him to add millions to his millions by means hostile to society, and when he died he left not one farthing for the common good. And though the logical faculty decides that he had an undoubted right to follow this course, a higher faculty led not only the religious but the secular press all over the land to declare that his course was a crime against society. On the other hand, perhaps the greatest merchant in the world to-day has not, as an inti- mate friend of his has informed me, for many years per- mitted one dollar to be added to his private fortune. THE COLLEGR IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. I9 What comes into his hands from his enormous business he understands to be committed to him for the common good to be devoted to benevolent and beneficent ends. And though the logical faculty would decide that no obligation rests upon him to follow this course, the spirit- ual faculty declares that it is vitally right and vitally necessary. In an address delivered to the working-men's college in London, Mr. Huxley in a single paragraph sketched in a wonderfully comprehensive manner the ideal of a liberal education. Said he, "That man I think has had a liberal education, whose body has been so trained in youth that it is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all that as a mechanism it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength and in smooth working order, ready like a steam engine to be turned to any kind of work, and to spin the gossamers, as well as forge the anchors of the mind ; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of nature and of the laws of her operations ; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions have been trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender con- science ; one who has learned to love all beauty, whether of nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to esteem others as himself." The schools are now prepared to do much of this for us, but where is the scheme of training that can guarantee that the man will hold his culture as "the servant of a tender conscience," and that he himself will be " one who has learned to love all beauty, to hate all vileness, and to esteem others as himself .'' " Yet if this be not done, how much better that the rest be not done. 20 THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. Fellow-Students, let us insist, in season and out of season, on this dual nature of culture ; let us be content with nothing short of totality. Let us have " sweetness and light," and let us have also the sanctions of duty and conscience ; let us insist that education is of God, no less than religion ; that the message of the gospel to every man is " be ye perfect," that no man has a right to neglect the broadest culture and the best physical condi- tions attainable ; that while religion without culture is blind and misdirected, culture without religion is futile and mischievous and deadly. But that when to the trained mind, the skilled hand, the knowledge of the laws of human society or of art, there is added the personal pres- ence of the divine Spirit to soften, to restrain, to mold, and to guide — then, but surely not before, is a man entirely fitted to live in this world, to get the most out of life, to produce the most for others ; then, but not before, is he ready to contribute his full share to the work whereby at last in the home, in the state, in society, " rea- son and the will of God shall prevail." Do you say this is somewhat trite ? This is what we have heard, lo ! these many years ? Never was there more need of insisting upon it, and, happily, never more evidence that educators are coming to take account of it openly. It is now almost a truism to say that education means fitness for life, that its ideal is not merely training for a calling, not merely learning to do a particular thing, not merely mastering a department of knowledge as an end — but ability to sustain the relations of life. But we are even yet talking in our public associations and con- ventions of teachers as if a man were intellect and body and nothing else. We shall never be right in education THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. 21 until we frankly confess and take into account that man is spirit. How truly said President Whitman, in his inaug- ural address, " Godliness, I am certain, is the true support of manliness." Why should we seek to fit men and women for life and leave out of our view the very essence of the man } But can we provide for this in the visible machinery of the public schools ? That is of small con- cern. For we can, even in the public schools, take the truth into account, keep it ever in view, and work con- sciously with reference to it, for ourselves and for our pupils. The College, however, as no other institution, can do this directly, visibly ; the College has ever done this. And the growing consciousness that this element of edu- cation is not a separable and separate department, but vitally related to life, has, by natural selections called the princes of the land to the presidency of the colleges, and placed the wealth of the land in their hands. And their work is certain to be done. An inevitable law of human nature guarantees it, because this comes, not chiefly through special curricula, not through modifications in methods of study, but through personal contact of man with man. In this, college life is unique. Colby has done her work, and will continue to do it, because her teachers send themselves out, in some degree, in every man and woman who goes forth. Whatever changes time works in courses and methods, this supreme result of edu- cation — the making of men and women — is reached in the old way. Garfield said that a log with Mark Hopkins at one end and a student at the other is a university. Arnold, Wayland, Anderson, are living forces in the world to-day. Such as they are evermore the savor of English 22 THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. and American life. Who that has known Charles Edward Hamlin does not this day feel his personality? Of him Wilkinson wrote, " I see him now, importunate, eager, bold " To push for truth, as most to push for gold. " Ideal Christian teacher, master, man, " Severely sweet, a gracious Puritan. " Beyond my praise to-day, beyond all blame, " He spurs me yet with his remembered name." James T. Champlin, Moses Lyford, not only are alive here where they wrought, but are abroad in power throughout the great West and Northwest. Such as they are the princes who rule that empire. And Colby alumni can add to the list the names of others, some of them here to-day, who, remembered not chiefly as classroom officials, but rather as companions in study, stamped their own admirable manhood upon the student with lasting impres- sion, and who commended learning by holding it, not as an end, but as "• the servant of a tender conscience," the instrument of " one who has learned to love all beauty . . . to hate all vileness, and to respect others as him- self." We often lament that the men and women of the old New England type are no more ; that those who stood for the simple, wholesome way of living, for the things that are true and honest and of good report, are gone from domestic, and social, and public life. And we ask, with apprehension, who and what will take their place .-* We need not fear. For the American college, itself the embodiment and perpetuation of the best of New Eng- land, will pour an ever fresh stream of health into our THE COLLEGE IDEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE. 23 new and manifold life, and the health it carries will be the health of consecrated personal character, perpetuated in endless impressions. This is the only thing human that survives on earth. This alone is our lasting debt to this place. The campus will change, the willows will die the old buildings will crumble or be removed, new halls' will rise, strange faces will be seen and new voices will be heard here. The old bell will one day have sounded out Its last note. The things that are unseen are eternal Memory will lose the things that eye and ear give us' Like the echoes from Tennyson's "horns of Elfland faintly blowing," they die, " They die, in yon rich sky, " They faint on hill and field and river. " Our echoes roll from soul to soul, " They grow forever and forever." LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 002 281 694 9