UC-NRLF ^3 JFV 1*w ^flt - -* C*%T*- #. '%^ -,..'' ? ffikrarg rrf (Slbrrlrr LtiRAftY GIFT OF Benjamin Ide Wheeler PEOPLE'S UNIVERSITY AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE CORNELL UNIVERSITY ON FOUNDER'S DAY, JANUARY IITH, 1888 BY J. G. SCHURMAN PROFKSSOR OF PHILOSOPHY / would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study. EZRA CORNELL. ITHACA, N. Y. PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY 1888 ' :':" :':"' : * "** r .**r *,**.* A People's University. Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : At the last commemoration of this honored day, it was our privilege to hear from one who had shared his friendship and his cares, an account of the later life and struggles of the founder of our University. The theme was well adapted to ora- tory, and Judge Finch's address was worthy of the occasion. His simple straightforwardness of man- ner, his skill in the grouping of facts, the insight and the sympathy with which he delineated his subject, and the literary finish with which he adorned it, all contributed to make his biographical sketch a model of natural and moving eloquence. In the course of the year that has since elapsed, much has been eifaced from our memories, but I dare to assert they still retain, in undimmed clear- ness, that luminous and impressive portrait of Ezra Cornell. Who can ever forget that picture of our founder's life of sacred devotion to mankind, the self-regardless ministration and hazardous be- 411274 4 Memorial Address. nevoleiice lie carried to the verge of desperate for- tune ? Who can ever forget the dauntless courage and the unquenchable hope with which he con- fronted the dire powers his own generosity had evoked ? If we were not wont to put the age of gods and miracles behind us, forgetting that every human soul is divine, and every moment of time teems with marvels, we should see in that heroic spirit, in whose name we meet again to-day, a ver- itable wonder-working Prometheus. For this man, too, strongly dared and suffered, like one of more than mortal mould, in order that he might wrest from grudging destiny the arts, the sciences, and the culture which earlier generations deemed the gift of godlike benefactors, whom they worshipped as saviors of humanity. It were sad, indeed, if the virtues and the heroic deeds of our illustrious dead were not worthily cel- ebrated by the living. They are the altar-fires in the temple of humanity at which we warm our colder hearts and quicken the motion of our more sluggish spirits. Like the fires sacred to Vesta, they must be kept ever burning ; for the moment of their extinction were the herald of our doom. In a world whose final end is good, no people can survive, no people deserves to survive, that does A People's University. 5 not reverence the memory of its noblest sons, and cherish and emulate the sympathies and impulses by which their lives were inspired. Yet I shall not, to-day, seek to stimulate myself or you to higher endeavor by holding up the mir- ror to our Promethean founder. Other hands have wreathed a garland for him, and we come too late to twine a single leaflet. Nor could words of ours add to the fragrance with which his memory is enshrined in the holiest of all temples the hearts of grateful beneficiaries. I have thought, however, it might be a service not unacceptable to him, and not inappropriate to this occasion, if, turning with reverential silence from the shrine of the founder, we surveyed afresh the foundations on which he built this institution. At any rate, after much perplexity in the choice of a topic, it is on this I have decided to address you. Such abstract sub- jects are, I am well aware, not generally popular, even when they are not, as they too often are, pos- itively unwelcome. And the reason is evident. Lying in the dry light of intellect, they never thrill the feelings, or fire the imagination, or charge the will with impetuous and consuming purpose. Nevertheless, the understanding has its own rights and claims. And it seems to me not unfitting that, 6 Memorial Address. as we last year gave ourselves up to the pathos of our founder's struggles, we should ou this anni- versary calmly consider the ends for which he struggled, or the ideas which he strove to realize by means of this University. It was a noble thought of Plato's that behind every common object of space and time lay an idea constitutive of its essence and significance. We are so busy with getting and spending that we can scarcely imagine the perfection of life to consist in communion with these everlasting grounds of things. Yet a greater than Plato has said, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Our true vocation, therefore, is, not to nourish a blind, instinctive life like the animals, but to look before and after and to comprehend the grounds and principles of things. But it is a general infirmity of human nature to fall far short of this high call- ing. Creatures of habit, we take what comes to us without troubling ourselves to think much about it. We seem to assume the universe is there to be enjoyed, not to be understood. And while I would not exaggerate the particular dis- temperature of our o\vn air and season, I think we must nevertheless admit that the neglect of ideas A Peopled University. 7 and principles is the special fault, I had almost said the inevitable calamity, of an energetic, active, and successful people engrossed with the practical problems of a vast material civilization. When we speak of Cornell University, how often does the name suggest to us more than its members, or its external features or accompani- ments ? We think, perhaps, of the students now grown to a body a thousand strong, and destined, at the present rate of increase, to become two thousand in the next half-dozen years. Or we think of the teaching staff, enlarging and chang- ing so rapidly that no one knows his colleagues at the beginning of an academic session. To other minds Cornell University is the symbol of untold wealth, the object of endowments larger than those of any other university in the country, with the possible exception of Harvard. I need scarcely say, this is not a professorial picture. By sad and repeated experience, even the unpractical professor has discovered that poverty is a relative conception, being strictly the pressure of expenditure upon income, and that, therefore, it is as easy to have one's department in want, and to see one's darling schemes of instruction and research frustrated in a millionaire university as in a petty college sup- 8 Memorial Address. ported by the weekly offerings of an impecunious constituency. At Cornell, as in many a smaller institution, there is abundant scope for the moral discipline that conies of reaching happiness rather through the suppression of wants than by the sat- isfaction of them. Yet, on the whole, I believe the professor has less ground for complaint here than in almost any other American university. And those for whom Cornell is synonymous with its material organization may point with much com- placency to the numerous and commodious edi- fices ; the well equipped laboratories, work-shops and barns ; the large libraries ; the appointments for instruction, recreation and devotion ; the private residences and the public monuments with which our grounds are covered, and, in many cases, orna- mented and embellished. Nor must I pass over another image which the name of Cornell Univer- sity will always call up in souls that have once felt the beauty of its natural surroundings. As often as the name is uttered there will rise before them a picture of these romantic grounds, lying as a rich border on the brow of this undulating table-land, shut in like another paradise on the north and on the south by deep and precipitous ravines, that echo eternally with the multitudinous roar of their A Peoples University. 9 water-falls, and faced towards the west by a noble and historic lake that stretches far as the eye can reach between high and sinuous banks, which, whether clad in the splendor of their unequalled flora, or delicately veiled, as now, in the virginal robes of winter, present such a scene of unwither- ing beatity as fascinates the insatiate eye, and ' ' to the heart inspires Vernal delight and joy, able to drive All sadness but despair." These are all aspects of Cornell University. And we do well to rejoice in the unmatched loveli- ness of our situation, the magnitude and variety of our material organization, and the rapidly in- creasing numbers of our students and professors. Yet these are not what I would call the idea of the university. And you must remember that Cornell is the exposition and embodiment of a conception never before realized in education. It is not a me- chanical copy of any existing model. It is an individual organism, with a soul of its own. And this soul, this constitutive idea of the structure, we must now attempt to determine. In order to bring the matter more clearly before you, I will ask you to glance hurriedly at the the- ories of education and the means of instruction that io Memorial Address. have obtained in other ages and countries. Man must live, Aristotle has truly observed, before he can live well. Accordingly, the most primitive kind of education is that which is confined to train- ing men to defend themselves and procure the natural means of subsistence. And the highest type of culture known to large portions of the human family is the combined perfection of the warrior and the hunter. These savage societies are, like everything else, subject to change ; and in the struggle for existence there is a continuous promotion of the higher forms. And as primitive man worships the stone that has brought him luck, so he deifies the institutions that have insured his social existence. The cake of custom, as Bagehot calls it, once formed, cannot be broken. Thus we reach the changeless civilization of those Oriental countries where the ideal of education was to mould men to their foreordained place in the estab- lished order of things. They had not the faintest conception of the infinite worth of personality, as it has been stamped by Christianity upon the con- sciousness of the modern world. The individual was subordinated to an external authority, which shaped him like a potter's wheel. A Peoples University. u In such a civilization education could not possi- bly consist in the harmonious development of all the natural powers of body and mind. Its aim in China was, by means of a severe and incredibly prolonged study of the national classics, merely to impress upon the students those traditional ideas, customs, and institutions in which the life of the people had become petrified, and which have been transmitted intact through at least sixty genera- tions. Under a course of training that excluded science and mathematics, language, history, and geography, the powers of observation, imagination, and reasoning could scarcely escape atrophy. For this inharmonious development and the astound- ing ignorance that accompanied it, even in a ma- ture graduate of four-score winters, there was noth- ing to atone but a prodigious memory and an ineradicable conservatism. What national customs were to the Chinese, the usages of his caste were to the Hindoo. But Hin- doo education comprised, in- addition to instruction in ceremonial usages and morality, such element- ary discipline as our children receive to-day, and an advanced curriculum extending over twelve years, intended primarily for the Brahmins. This extensive course included grammar and history, 12 Memorial Address. poetry and philosophy, medicine and law, astrono- my and mathematics, to the last of which the Hindoos have made notable contributions. In India only the lower caste was debarred alto- gether from mental training. In Persia none but the Magi, who were as learned as the Hindoo Brah- mins, seem to have enjoyed it. Herodotus tells us that to speak the truth and to ride on horseback were the fundamental requirements of Persian edu- cation. And all that we know of it shows that, as in Sparta, only those moral and physical qualities were cultivated which the despotic ruler found use- ful for the conduct of war and the administration of government. Passing from the Aryan to the Semitic race, we meet the Phoenicians; who invented our alphabet ; and the Jews, who gave us our religion. I need not say that, without great progress in intellectual culture, the Jews could not have left us the price- less heritage of their literature. But in the present connection it is more important to observe that with them originated a new ideal of education, whose vital significance the lapse of time can never exhaust. While other systems aimed at forming effective citizens or members of a class, the Jewish teacher and every father was a teacher strove to A Peoples University. 13 make his pupils faithful and obedient servants of the God of righteousness. Moses, we are told, "was learned in all the wis- dom of the Egyptians." And Egyptian civilization is, doubtless, the oldest in the world. It was a source of inspiration, both to Greeks and to Jews. The system of education concentrated all higher knowledge in the priestly class, as in India, though the other classes were not, as in Persia, left in entire ignorance. In science and culture the Egyptians were not surpassed by any oriental nations ; in the mechanic arts they were far in ad- vance of them, and their mechanical achievements were unique in antiquity. It is still a debated point how far Greek civiliza- tion was modified by the Egyptian. That the hoary culture of Thebes, Memphis, and Heliopolis had an irresistible fascination for the inquisitive and susceptible Ionian, we may still see from the de- lightful narrative of Herodotus ; and there can be no doubt that the greatest lawgivers, and some of the greatest philosophers of Greece, Plato and Pythagoras, as well as Solon and Lycurgus, repaired for wisdom to the garnered stores of Egypt. But it is also certain that the Greek types of education were not exotics, but native growths rooted deeply 14 Memorial Address. in the character and circumstances of the people. Sparta is inconceivable without its system of mar tial education. And Athens, " Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts And eloquence, native to famous wits Or hospitable," what spirit but hers could ever have brought to the birth that ideal of aesthetic education, named from the noblest words in the language, KctKoKctyaQia, and expressing the harmonious beauty of soul and body for which the national life was one continu- ous, intense, and gloriously triumphant aspiration. Beauty of body was cultivated by gymnastics, beauty of soul by music. Music and gymnastics were, therefore, principal factors in Athenian edu- cation. But mental culture also included the study of grammar, poetry, rhetoric, mathematics, and philosophy. In comparison with the beautiful, the useful was contemned, and even the moral was but inadequately recognized. Within its own limits, however, Greek training produced a manhood that has challenged the admiration of the world ; and in the calm marble figures their inimitable art has left us, each generation still finds with ecstasy the realization of its highest type of beauty. A Peoples University. 15 The Roman was hard, practical, utilitarian. His mission in the world was to conquer, to enact jus- tice, and to administer laws. He had little time to spend on a liberal education, and of the humanities, history was to him the most important. At fifteen he donned the toga virilis and made choice of his profession. In the acquisition of it, practice count- ed for more than theory. Agriculture he learned by farming ; the art of war in battle ; politics in the forum ; law in the courts ; oratory in the sen- ate. In the science and art of education, therefore, the Romans have done little for the world, though in other spheres their influence has been profound, pervasive, and -inexhaustible. In the thousand years that followed the fall of the Roman empire, the problem of life was to pre- pare for death. Man, as an heir of glory, became estranged to his earthly heritage, and disesteemed its uses and its beauty. Instead of the joyous worldliness of the Greeks, there prevailed what George Eliot has branded u other- worldliness," but what I should prefer to designate an absorbing sense of the supernatural and eternal. Men turned away from nature and disregarded the natural life of man. The system of education corresponded with the ideal of life ; and, speaking generally, the 1 6 Memorial Address. only faculties developed were the religious facul- ties, the only knowledge cultivated was religious knowledge. Before the period closed, however, Aristotle was dragged into the service of the church, and henceforth the intellectual culture of the Greeks and Romans, in such measure as successive generations were capable of interpreting it, went hand in hand with Christian theology in the edu- cation of mankind. And, with many modifica- tions, rendered necessary by the growth of the natural sciences and the expansion of other disci- plines, this combination has furnished the frame- work of most of the education that has prevailed up to the present day. I am not, ladies and gentlemen, of those who are so bedazzled with the enlightenment of the nine- teenth century that they cannot discern the lights along the times of old that were before us. And I have no sympathy with the superior wisdom that jauntily flings aside customs and institutions handed down to us with the accumulated sanctions of many generations of our fellow men. Not that I adore pachydermatous immobility. But I hold there is a more excellent way than either inane radicalism or blind conservatism. And that is the recognition that, while every system is valid for its A Peoples University. 17 age and generation, none is so absolutely complete as to suit other times and circumstances without change, or even without remodelling. What we have to do, therefore, is not to break with the past, but to consider how its institutions may be modi- fled to adapt themselves to the requirements of the present. And this method of procedure is equally advisable in dealing with education as in dealing with law, or politics, or religion. In order to find an educational ideal for our age, it will be necessary first of all to determine its characteristics, its essential difference from those preceding periods which we have all too briefly mentioned. Now, this is no easy task, for the course of history, as I need not remind this audi- ence, is not intersected by clear dividing-lines. The world's events form a seamless garment. There are, however, differences of shade and color. And, I venture to think, the last three or four cen- turies have received their tone from that unparal- leled movement of the human mind, which we ordinarily call the Reformation. It was, without doubt, primarily a religious movement ; but we ignore its many-sidedness when we overlook its in- fluence on politics and on general culture. It was a universal revolt against convention, and a return 1 8 Memorial Address. to the everlasting sources of tilings. There was to be an end of tradition and hearsay. God, nature, and man were to be considered as they are in them- selves, and not as report vainly gave them out to be. I need not tell you how our views of nature have since then changed. And though it would be in- teresting to trace the development of theology since this new departure, it would lead us too far from our subject. I can only observe that, with the downfall of the principle of established churches, has come the fulfillment of our Lord's prophecy of absolute individualism in religion: "Neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem." But what it especially concerns me now to emphasize is that the spirit of the reformation has leavened the mod- ern view of man. The teaching that effected such changes was not new. Greek Stoics and Roman jurists alike recognized the brotherhood of men. And the Divine Teacher whom the Reformers fol- lowed had solemnly proclaimed the infinite worth of the human soul. What is new in the modern period is the practical acceptance of this doctrine with all its consequences. Do not misunderstand me. I am not maintaining the milennium is here, neither in Washington nor in Paris. I am assert- A People's University. 19 ing that the characteristic of the modern world is its deeper consciousness of the truth that all men are free, equal, and inviolable ; and that this was the moving spirit of recent history, as we have its quintessence in the American and in the French Revolution. But I do not forget that, while con- duct has been nearer this theory than ever before in the history of the world, it still lagged so far be- hind that, though the Constitution of the United States is now in its second century, the generation is still in the prime of life that first saw its noble principles universally applied to practice. Never- theless, I adhere to my contention that the main distinguishing feature of our age is its living con- viction of the unspeakable worth and liberty of every human person. This has been the organizing idea of modern po- litical and ecclesiastical institutions. And, though great advance has been made in Europe, especially in England, the fullest development of the princi- ple has been attained on this North American con-, tinent. Here, and here alone, has been completely embodied, both in state and church, the idea of the liberty, equality, and fraternity of men. We have a people's government and a people's 2O Memorial Address. church. Have we a people's university ? If so, how is it constituted ? After what I have just said, we shall not find it difficult to answer this question. If the modern university is to reflect the spirit of the age, it must, like the modern state, recognize no distinctions of class or caste. Every human being will come be- fore it with the same infinite and inviolable person- ality. All will have the same claims upon it. Universality, therefore, is the first mark of such a university. There is no class, or no individual, to whom its doors are not open. And this is what distinguishes it from the educational institutions of all former ages. They were intended for cer- tain select portions of the people ; the majority were excluded from them. Take the most brilliant of these ancient systems, the Athenian. It ex- cluded slaves, who formed four-fifths of the popula- tion of Attica ; it excluded women, half the remain- ing one-fifth ; and of the small residue, the larger portion were practically excluded by the heavy cost entailed. Exclusiveness was the badge of ancient education. The modern university must know no limits but humanity. But the most significant characteristic has yet to be mentioned. If nothing were required in a peo- A People's University. 21 pie's university but open doors to all, then exam- ples of it might be found, though not in the ancient world, in every civilized country of modern times. But there is another requisite, and a very important one. The curriculum must be as varied as the wants of the people. And of how many of the great universities of the world, can this, I would ask, be claimed ? They care for theology, for law, for medicine, for the humanities, and, to some ex- tent, for the sciences of nature. But though it has been so assumed for some hundreds of years, I ven- ture to assert that mankind is not constituted by the minister, the lawyer, the doctor, and the master of arts, not even if you throw in a new-fangled bachelor of science. Here is the point at which the inherited ideal of education needs modification. It was excellent for an age that knew of a scientific basis for the professions of the classes, but of none for the occupations of the masses. But the day of the people has at last arrived. A revolution has taken place in the character of their employments. The introduction of machinery has developed upon nature what was formerly left to the uneducated and almost instinctive activity of the multitude. But to avail ourselves of the powers of nature, we must know her operations and her laws. Conse- 22 Memorial Address. quently the industrial pursuits of the present day are as much dependent upon scientific knowledge as medicine or law. Of course, not every manual laborer needs or can have this knowledge. One may attend to a machine without understanding the principles of its construction or operation. And there still remain many varieties of work to which machinery has not been applied. Neverthe- less, it is, broadly speaking, true that the industries of the people have, in these modern times, been or- ganized upon a new basis. Man has enlisted in his service the powers of nature. And if, since the foundation of Salerno, universities have been dedi- cated to the investigation of nature, with a view to providing a remedy for human diseases, they now assuredly need a fuller consecration to the same service for the additional purpose of rendering more available to our helpless race those natural powers and operations by which the works of man are effected and the life of man sustained. The fact is, we do not discern the signs of the times, or, as evolutionists say, we are not adjusted to our environment. I sometimes think we never do get adjusted until it is too late ; until the envir- onment has changed, or we are on the eve of quit- ting it. At any rate, we are slow to adapt our A Peoples University. 23 selves to new conditions, and slower still to recog- nize that the conditions are new. They change so gradually and imperceptibly, that as Darwin says of geological formations, they are not noticed till the slow hand of time has marked the close of one epoch and the opening of another. We are in the full stream of modern tendencies ; and yet our uni- versity ideals belong, for the most part, to a period anterior to the inventions of printing, gunpowder, the mariner's compass, and the telescope, and to the vast geographical and astronomical discoveries, which, with those inventions, form the beginnings of our modern civilization. The divorce between the universities and the activities of life is astound- ing. Who would ever suspect, from examination of a university curriculum, that man's dominion over nature was, after his own freedom, the great- est gain and the most characteristic feature of our age ? Yet, in truth, it is with us that the kingdom of man has come. The poetic vision of Shakes- peare, the prophetic aspiration of Bacon, first attain in this age their realization ; yet in how many uni- versities in which the Tempest and the Novum Organum are read, do you find any recognition of those potent arts whose magic they celebrate ? To be perfectly open, we are, in spite of our pro- 24 Memorial Address. fessed democracy, still aristocratic in university matters. We think there are some subjects too common for university instruction. But a people's university, if it is true to the spirit of our age, must hold all subjects equally reputable, and pro- vide instruction in all alike. Least of all can it afford to omit those industrial arts which lie at the foundation of our modern life. But with them it must include every interest of the people which ad- mits of scientific treatment. The masses and the classes must both be represented. Or, rather, such a university can recognize no such distinction, for the objects of every occupation must be esteemed equally significant. The analysis of soils is as important as the analysis of literature. The steam engine is as sacred as Greek. Philosophy is not more venerable than road-making. A house is as rational as the geometry it embodies. We must no longer dream that the little section of knowl- edge we cultivate is the holy of holies. Every atom of the universe is equally worthy of regard. All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body nature is, and God the soul. The spirit which sets up distinctions is that which of old separated the Greeks from the Bar- barians and the Jews from the Gentiles. Would A Peoples University. 25 to heaven we might once more see the sky open, and a great sheet let down to earth, with all man- ner of things therein, and hear again the voice speaking a second time, and saying: "What God hath cleansed, that call thon not common. " In God's universe there is nothing common or un- clean, and whatever is known about it must have a place in the curriculum of a people's university. Here, then, are two characteristics of a people's university. In contradistinction to the ideal of the ancient world of India, Egypt, Greece, etc. it proclaims that every person has the same right to knowledge. And, in opposition to the general practice of the modern world, it proclaims the equal worth of every sulfject of study. The first of these propositions, no American, at least, will call in question. The second I consider equally true. But in case the considerations already adduced do not carry to your minds the evidence and the con- vincing force I claim for them, it may be well to show that the second proposition is a necessary conse- quence of the first. For when you have once grant- ed the inviolable rights of every human person, you cannot take the needs of one soul as norm for an- other. The curiosity of one mind may direct itself upon languages, of another upon machinery. But if Sanskrit finds one man, sets him thinking, and 26 Memorial Address. develops his powers, and opens to him a storehouse of information, and if the steam engine does the same for another man, and brings him a livelihood as well, it is mere priggishness to call the one man educated and the other uneducated. The only reason of our doing so is that we are the slaves of a system of education which, though admirable for its day, is not comprehensive enough for the new conditions of this latest age of the world's progress. We profess to accept the modern principle of indi- vidualism, but in our educational theories we are still bound to oligarchy, if not to despotism. Here, however, the people are wiser than their official spokesmen. The practical sense of the community has long since recognized that*fe, man may be as truly educated in business or in the workshop as in the laboratory or the seminary. And the people's university must rest upon this indubitable insight. Its curriculum must embrace the inventions of our own day, the sciences of the moderns, the learning of the ancients, in a word, everything capable of theoretic consideration ; everything in which the mind of man is rationally interested. Such a uni- versal programme would also have a fine moral influence. Instead of puffing us up with conceit, and leading us to disparage those who have not taken our particular course, it would be a perpetual A Peoples University. 27 reminder of the limits of our attainments and of the variety of human interests, and it could scarcely fail to deepen our idea of that Infinite Mind in whom are contained all those treasures of wisdom and knowledge which man strives to apprehend in broken and disconnected fragments. Hegel was charged with constructing a political philosophy for the express purpose of justifying the constitution of Prussia. And it may be sus- pected that in my a priori deduction of a people's university, I had my eye on Cornell. Now I will say that Cornell is the only institution which, so far as I know, has attempted to embody the princi- ples here laid down in the constitution of a univer- sity. But I must protest I have reached these principles by independent reasoning. And I will- ingly leave it with you to determine how far the arguments are valid by which I have sought to deduce the constitution of an ideal university from the general spirit of our age, and the particular conditions of our modern life and culture. Our problem is now solved. We set out to de- termine the constitutive idea of this University. We seemed to digress into a discussion of a peo- ple's university. But we have found the two are the same. When Ezra Cornell (who, by the way, was a man of the people), said he would found an 28 Memorial Address. institution where any person could find instruction in any subject, his intention was to establish a uni- versity of the people, a university demanded by the democratic ideas of modern times, yet a univer- sity so broad that, while it is just to the present, it ignores nothing of the past, and is capable of ex- panding to the requirements of all that the future has in store for our race. Will you allow me to add a few observations be- fore relaxing the attention with which you have honored me ? There are certain peculiar features and dangers necessarily inherent in a people's uni- versity, which I should like to mention, with special reference to Cornell. The first is, that it is enor- mously expensive. It takes several millions of dollars to maintain our present organization. And did Cornell completely realize its ideal, I know not what additional millions would be required to pro- vide for all the subjects of human knowledge and practice yet tinrepresented in our curriculum. Even our inadequate approach to this ideal involves a fast increasing outlay, which taxes all our re- sources. But, besides the cost of equipment, Cor- nell makes heavy sacrifices, which only the few know of, to bring its facilities within the reach of all the people. Our fees are only from one-half to two-thirds of what is ordinarily exacted at other A People's University. 29 institutions of the same, or even of inferior rank. We offer free instruction to over five hundred stu- dents from the State of New York. And if other students are too poor to pay their tuition fees, we take their promises to pay, and give them an edu- cation. Now, with our present resources, this beneficence on the part of the university is neces- sarily limited. But the outlook is not dishearten- ing. No other institution in the world can appeal to the people with the same confidence of support. We are working for the people ; for every class and profession ; and the wealth of the country cannot pass us by. If our students are practicing the utmost economy, and some of them board and lodge for $1.40 per week; and if our trustees find that, with the best investments, our resources are not adequate to the work we have to do, and such is now the case, I have the fullest confidence that the sense of the monied men of the country will not be deaf to our appeal when we say : u Come to our help, and as you would do good to your fellowmen, aid us in multiplying means for their instruction ; aid us, by founding scholarships for needy students, to bring it within the reach of all. Here is a cure for anarchy, and baneful strife between classes of the people. Help us, in God's name, to fit every 30 Memorial Address. one who will come to us, to do his work in life in the best manner known to onr age." My second remark is that institutions so general in their scope are especially liable to be misunder- stood. People with hobbies will complain that they are neglected. Thus Cornell has been ac- cused of neglecting the so-called liberal arts, in her devotion to the mechanic arts. But the fact is, as we all know, Cornell stands up for all subjects alike. And it has steadily aimed, and at an enor- mous outlay, to make its departments of literature, language, philosophy, science, and the like, second to none in the country. And the recent unusual increase of students in these subjects shows that at last our efforts have been appreciated. From the same illiberal spirit that has declared us without culture, because we endeavored to supply all the means of culture, our university was formerly branded as godless, apparently because its ideal was to study all the works of God. Possibly some- thing was due to that clause in the charter which makes Cornell forever undenominational. But time and a mutual understanding have shown that a secular university is not irreligious, because it is not sectarian. And I should, at the present time, not be surprised to see the larger denominations availing themselves of our educational facilities by A Peoples University. 31 the establishment of theological halls and houses of residence in the immediate vicinity of the cam- pus, as they have done with such excellent results in connection with McGill University, Montreal, with the University of Toronto, with the Univer- sity of Michigan, and, on the opposite side of the globe, with the fine University of Melbourne. At any rate, we cannot but rejoice that at the present day, the work and spirit of Cornell are so rightly appreciated among all classes of our population. One remark more and I have done. In another year Cornell University will have come of age, and I trust the event will be worthily celebrated. It will then fall to the historian and no one can write that history but the distinguished first Presi- dent, who so largely made it to trace the develop- ment of your alma mater through all the varied phases of her glorious adolescence. There may be disappointments and failures to chronicle, for . . . a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for? Yet these shortcomings apart, and they are com- mon to every history, it will be a record of such wonderful growth, such many-sided and brilliant achievement as has no parallel, I believe, in the educational annals of our race. This retrospect will not fail to stimulate hope and engender extrav- agant expectations of the future. And it will be 32 Memorial Address. altogether fitting on that occasion that you give yourselves up to the enthusiasm which the picture is calculated to strike into the coldest heart. That will be a time to feel confidence and to exult in it, not to analyze its grounds. Good grounds, how- ever, there are ; and, under other circumstances, it were desirable you should cast about for them. But that the ecstasy of that high hour may not be sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, let me here anticipate, and, on a Founder's Day, devoted to more sober inquiries, assure you that the unpar- alleled prosperity of our University has been owing to the character of its constitutive idea, to that principle of universality and equality which it is the undying fame of Ezra Cornell to have con- ceived, and here first applied to education almost at the very time the nation was receiving a fresh consecration to it from the priestly lips of Lincoln, on the hallowed field of Gettysburg ; and let me further tell you (and these are the last words by which I would seek to attune you to that coming celebration) that our confidence in the future of Cornell University is due to an ineradicable con- viction, attested by the whole drift and spirit of the modern world, that, under God, education "of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not per- ish from the earth." Sclrarraan.J. A people' ^ 1 1* s university. LD1368 33 YC 04765 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY ' 1