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 1910 
 
 MAIN 
 
 JC-NRLF 
 
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LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 
 
 Class 
 
 
AR 19 1912 
 GIFT 
 
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 MILLS COLLEGE FOUNDERS' DAY 
 'MAY 4, 1910 
 
\ 
 
,. 
 
 FRANK LINCOLN GOODSPEED, D. D. \ C) \Q 
 
 Address delivered at Mills College on Founders' 
 Day, May 4, 1910. 
 
 T IS FITTING for an institution, 
 as well as for an individual, to 
 stop occasionally and go back to 
 the sources of its life, to pay 
 homage to its founders and renew the visions 
 and ideals which at the beginning led onward 
 into the future. This, as I understand it, is 
 the first institution founded on this Western 
 Coast for the higher education of women. Its 
 founders were educational pioneers. They were 
 not originators of the movement, but they threw 
 themselves into the currents of the movement 
 which has resulted in the establishmei$^Qf 
 Christian colleges for women the world over. T1: 
 is the high honor of Mrs. Mills that she was a 
 pupil of Mary Lyon and later a co-teacher with 
 her in Mt. Holyoke, and that the ideals of that 
 great woman became the inspiring force in the 
 building of this school. The disciple has been 
 worthy of the teacher. The life of Mary Lyon 
 was a life wonderful in its simplicity and un- 
 ostentatious beauty. Obscure in parentage, but 
 endowed with marvelous gifts and mighty in 
 
 236815 
 
: AIMS OF EDUCATION. 
 
 her holy purpose, she will ever rank as one of the 
 greatest of women, in native talent,r-in untiring 
 industry and in far-sighted and prophetic gen- 
 ius. The founders cff. this College are there- 
 fore in the direct line of this holy succession. We 
 are here today to , acknowledge our debt to a 
 faith in the founders that rose triumphant over 
 every obstacle, to rejoice in the realization of 
 their .aspirations and in the victories which are 
 the fruit of their high constancy and their trust- 
 ful courage. '* 
 
 THIS Is A 'WONDERFUL AGE. 
 
 s 
 There has never been an age in history 
 
 more interesting, heroic'and poetic, than this. So 
 far from being dull and prosaic, so far from our 
 civilization today being "effete," it is the most 
 engaging era in the career of man. Think of the 
 great Arctic and Antarctic explorations calling 
 forth endurance and resource unsurpassed even 
 by Columbus. On the table-lands of Central 
 Asia, England and Russia stand face to face. 
 Persia and Turkey and China are coming to 
 self-government and freedom. Nations, long 
 asleep, are awaking. In America we see a 
 marvelous assembling and commingling of strange 
 peoples, men of every nation meeting here to be 
 moulded into one new race which we trust will 
 be the ideal of all races. The pen is proving 
 mightier than the sword and the arbitrament of 
 
THE TRUE AIMS OF EDUCATION. 
 
 reason is superceding the appeal to arms. The 
 Parliament of man and the federation of the 
 world is now seen to be no ideal poetic dream, 
 but a practical possibility to international comity. 
 No less brilliant are the victories of natural 
 science. The imaginative pictures of former 
 days are becoming the realities of this. Edison 
 is our poet laureate. We shall soon achieve 
 even the conquest of the air. 
 
 Chivalry was tame compared with that 
 higher chivalry which finds expression in crim- 
 inals reformed, disease cured, ignorance en- 
 lightened^ vice banished, continents evange- 
 lized the dream of universal education and 
 Christian civilization. The historic Crusades 
 were tame in comparison with this high crusade. 
 The old feudalism of a Charlemagne pales be- 
 fore the possibility of a nation of equals who 
 are also brothers. Let no young person think 
 that there is nothing romantic in the world to- 
 day. In fact the world is as fresh and fair as 
 it. was the* morning God set it spinning. And 
 no generation since then has had an opportunity 
 at all comparable with that which is vouchsafed 
 to us, the latest sons of God. 
 
 THE PERFECTING OF ONE'S POWERS. 
 
 The first aim of education is to cultivate and 
 enlarge one's own powers. The educated man 
 possesses the constant delight of acquisition. 
 
4 THE TRUE AIMS OF EDUCATION. 
 
 He sees more. Life for him will be forever 
 larger and fuller and more blessed. The lights 
 that flame in his intellectual horizon will never 
 go out. Narrowness, which shows itself in vari- 
 ous forms in religious bigotry, in partisan pol- 
 itics, in the dogmatism of science, in the pitiable 
 pride of an illiberal and irreverent culture all 
 such intolerance is alien to the ideal and spirit 
 of true education. And fortunately such na- 
 tures are an exception. For a generous training 
 exerts a broadening influence and tends to make 
 even the narrow and intolerant mind mellow, 
 receptive, and expansive. The study of other 
 ages, civilizations and literatures, the deeper 
 understanding of human life and the natural 
 universe, <the companionship with the master 
 spirits of the race, all tends to rid one of the 
 narrowness and -uncharitableness which often 
 mark the non-educated or half-educated man. 
 
 But this toleration must not become indif- 
 ference. This liberalism must not degenerate 
 into a lazy acquiescence in all opinions. The 
 educated man is equipped to form his owft opin- 
 ions. The highest tolerance is not that which 
 cares na whit as to what is truth, but that which 
 holds firmly its own convictions and yet is hos- 
 pitable to all truth from whatever source it 
 springs. Opinions are worthless until they have 
 been tried and have stood the test. But how you 
 meet opposition and conflict discloses whether 
 
THE TRUE AIMS OF EDUCATION. . 5 
 
 you possess the spirit of the well-bred student or 
 not. The quack depends upon deceit or the 
 loudness of his protestations. The real scholar 
 depends upon the might of his naked truth. 
 Strength, patience and generosity are marks of 
 the cultivated mind. The scholar has convic- 
 tions, but is always open to conviction. He is 
 hospitable to all well-grounded opinions; but he 
 never sinks into flimsy indifference or a toler- 
 ance which lacks fibre and settled and profound 
 persuasion of the truth. 
 
 The method of education in vogue today 
 tends to develop the whole man. The old sponge 
 method, where the mind simply gathers up facts 
 and dates and information as the sponge soaks 
 up water is now happily a thing of the past. We 
 have found that it is not what we stuff and cram 
 into the mind that develops it, but wjiat we 
 draw out of the mind in the healthful exercise of 
 all its faculties. The very word education, 
 which means to draw out or lead out, gives us 
 the key to the right method. In " Paracelsus" 
 Browning tells us that 
 
 "to know, 
 
 Rather consists in opening out a way 
 Whence the imprisoned spirit may escape, 
 Than in effecting entry for a light 
 Supposed to be without." 
 
 And Ruskin says, "Education is leading human 
 souls to what is best, and making what is best 
 
6 THE TRUE AIMS OF EDUCATION. 
 
 of them." It is the awakening of the heart, the 
 arousing of the spirit. It is not the amassing of 
 truths, but the deep realization of truth. Edu- 
 cation arouses, develops and directs the powers 
 of the whole man. It does not create those 
 powers. It cannot make a fool into a wise 
 man it can only make him a greater fool. Edu- 
 cation, without ability and conscience, makes 
 the charlatan. As Pope long ago expresses it, 
 "So by false learning is good sense defaced ; 
 Some are bewildered in the maze of schools, 
 And some are quacks whom nature meant for 
 
 fools." 
 
 The correct method of education develops 
 and trains all the powers for use toward a 
 worthy end. It is the tilling of the whole in- 
 tellectual, moral and spiritual acreage of life. 
 It is the man coming to himself and taking pos- 
 session of himself. According to the sponge 
 method, the teacher imparts knowledge as a 
 manufactured article. According to the modern 
 method, which is only the revival of the So- 
 cratic method, he furnishes the raw material 
 and inspires the pupil to take it and manufacture 
 for himself. In the former, the student is 
 wholly dependent. In the latter, he acquires 
 something of originality and 'facility, and is 
 learning to be able by and by to take the capi- 
 tal of the world's wisdom and knowledge and 
 do business for himself. 
 
THE TRUE AIMS OF EDUCATION. 
 
 The true and false method of study and' 
 research has been aptly compared by an illustra- 
 tion taken from the spider, the ant, and the bee. 
 Some, like the spider, spin out of themselves 
 their web. Some, like the ant, only heap up' and 
 use, as need requires, their gathered store. But 
 others, like the bee, extract sweet matter from 
 the flowers of garden and field, but like the bee, 
 add to it of their own life and fashion and 
 elaborate it by their own efforts to suit their 
 highest purpose. That is the true method. It 
 gathers, not to lay up in memory raw and un- 
 assimilated facts; but to remodel the material 
 and add personality to the process of making 
 beautiful and useful. 
 
 If this is true, then it will be evident that 
 the man or the woman who stands up before the 
 young mind as its teacher is of infinitely more 
 importance than the tools, the architecture, the 
 apparatus or the course of study. Says Presi- 
 dent King of Oberlin in his volume on "Per- 
 sonal and Ideal Elements in Education," "We 
 are in danger of forgetting that in education, in 
 ethics, and in religion, and in all true living the 
 most important facts are persons." The teacher 
 is the maker of motive. We have long heard 
 that a liberal education is a boy on one end of a 
 log and President Mark Hopkins on the other 
 end, which is only a picturesque way of expres- 
 sing the absolute necessity of character in the 
 
8 THE TRUE AIMS OF EDUCATION. 
 
 teacher. In writing to his daughter about her 
 choice of studies, Emerson said, "It matters not 
 so much what you study as with whom you 
 study." "Education," says Matthew Arnold, "is 
 an atmosphere, a discipline, a life." The richer 
 the nature, the nobler the spirit, the finer the 
 instincts and training of a teacher, the more 
 he becomes the incarnation of all desirable 
 qualities. In his own personality truth must first 
 be embodied and vitalized. It is the teacher that 
 makes the school, the generous, wise, magnani- 
 mous teacher who admires rightly, whose soul- 
 life is lived with masterpieces, whose intellectual 
 being is fed by the best food, whose presence 
 creates an atmosphere where young souls' tend- 
 rils, reaching out, are fed and satisfied. When 
 mind confronts mind and character grapples with 
 character, the vital human element in the teacher 
 is the well-iaigh all-important question. Give 
 me a b^re room, if you give me also an Arnold 
 of Rugby. Give me a plain and severe Puritan 
 house, if only Milton, the vigorous and high- 
 souled young scholar presides there. They will 
 inspire thinking and they Will lead the life on 
 to being and doing. At the old tumbledown 
 schoolhouse near Stratford where Shakespeare 
 taught school they may have learned "small 
 Latin and less Greek;" but I venture they got 
 something more and infinitely better from that 
 myriad-mind. Education is not much more nor 
 
THE TRUE AIMS OF EDUCATION. 9 
 
 less than this what the mind of the teacher can 
 do for the mind of the pupil. Compared with 
 that all else is accessory and unimportant. True 
 teaching is inspirational. The best teacher does 
 not teach for mere financial reward, else his en- 
 trance to a school-room profanes the sacred 
 name of teacher and the more sacred name of 
 youth. Training is good, but impulse is bet- 
 ter, that power which cannot be defined, but 
 which lifts the student up into great enthusiasms 
 and works in him as commanding personality, 
 which does for him something of what Paul did 
 for Timothy, what Aristotle did for Plato, and 
 Goethe and Cromwell did for Carlyle, and Dante 
 did for Longfellow, and Thomas Arnold did for 
 multitudes of English youth, and Mark Hop- 
 kins did for those who came in contact with his 
 imperial character. It is the crowning of knowl- 
 edge with wisdom, the imparting of skill so that 
 the pupil shall know not merely how to get a 
 living but how to live, and' the difference is 
 the whole distance between the animal and the 
 archangel. The true teacher thinks only of his 
 opportunity to lead living souls to the largest 
 and richest intellectual life, to the highest ex- 
 pansion of thought, to a loving communion with 
 the great forces and ideals of the world, to 
 citizenship in the republic of truth and beauty, to 
 the full exercise of all those gifts that shall most 
 enhance the glory of God and the good of men. 
 
IO THE TRUE AIMS OF EDUCATION. 
 
 CULTIVATION OF SELF MASTERY, 
 
 ; The next aim of true education is to make 
 the student master of himself. We talk much 
 of culture. What is culture ? Is it not this, the 
 perfect mastery of all one's powers, the perfect 
 control and use of all one's faculties? Culture 
 is you taking possession of yourself. Our ac- 
 complishments must grow into us and become 
 part and parcel of us. Education is reality. It 
 is a call to life. It is a summons to virtue and 
 conscience. It makes a man so rich that it makes 
 him willing to be poor and patient, because more 
 noble souls have perished from luxury than from 
 hunger. True education has power to breed bet- 
 ter thoughts, to lift .us above ourselves, power 
 to help us control ourselves and master our cir- 
 cumstances. It excites and expands, chastens 
 and nourishes, produces an, . intellectual climate, 
 makes one a citizen of the commonwealth of in- 
 telligence. Learning is not a staff by which a 
 man climbs above his fellows, but a torch by 
 which he lights the way for his less fortunate 
 fellows. It is not. a negative thing or a critical 
 thing at all; but positive, constructive, helpful. 
 The royal souls are the generous souls. 
 
 "Thyself and thy belongings 
 Are not thine own so proper, as to waste 
 Thyself upon thy virtues, them on thee. 
 Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, 
 
THE TRUE AIMS OF EDUCATION. U , 
 
 Not light them for ourselves, for if our virtues 
 
 Do not go forth of us, 'twere all alike 
 
 As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely 
 
 touched, 
 But to fine issues." 
 
 Possession is opportunity. Noblesse oblige! 
 Trusts must either be defaulted or executed. If 
 this age is to be true to its vast chance, if the 
 shadows are to flee away, if falsehood is to die, 
 then our young men and women must hear the 
 challenge of the times and bear on helmet and 
 on brow and deep within the heart, the motto of 
 the German Emperors ? "Ich dien", ^1 serve. 
 God can never use a cynic who snarls, or a pes- 
 simist who hopes for the worst, or a sardonic 
 soul who sneers in bitter irony. Leaders are 
 always great believers. Doubt palsies. Faith is 
 the victory for those who would help their gene- 
 ration and would work constructively toward 
 that far-off divine event to which the whole crea- 
 tion moves. This is the difference between the 
 prophet and the clown, between the hero and the 
 coward. It is the difference of outlook. The 
 greatest of earth are seers. They take time to 
 think. Even 'Sir Galahad must have some 
 shaded nook where he may rest and pray, or he 
 will not have strength out "where the foul foe 
 hovers and the battle waits." Not otherwise is 
 the Holy Grail recovered. Not otherwise are 
 men fitted for their tasks and for their victories. 
 
12 THE TRUE AIMS OF EDUCATION. 
 
 The fine ministry of education is to make men 
 masters of themselves and this fair earth, to help 
 them see and enjoy and do. It is to give the 
 soul self-expression, making it free and strong 
 and true and rich and loving and complete. 
 
 EDUCATION Is FOR CHARACTER. 
 
 Character, then, is the real and high aim 
 of the educational process. "The true aim of 
 the highest education," says Mark Hopkins, "is 
 to give character rather than knowledge, to 
 train men to be rather than to know/' 
 
 Ideals change as one goes on in life. Youth 
 seeks happiness, midlife strives for success and 
 power, and old age is cheered by the vision of 
 peace. Prof. Blaike, in his autobiography, tells 
 us how in the days of youth he wrote to the 
 young lady who was to be his life companion that 
 they would together find in future years supreme 
 good in united lives, their union making, as he 
 believed, unalloyed happiness. Later pn he 
 found that happiness was not the highest aim 
 of life. Experience and observation had taught 
 him that the things to be coveted were three, 
 a great goal, a great struggle, and a great vic- 
 tory. And then he adds what seems to be an 
 afterthought, that there should be a third 
 quality. And what he seems to put last I would 
 put first, namely, a great inspiration. ' Here 
 is the life that leads to the heights of being: a 
 
THE TRUE AIMS OF EDUCATION. ij 
 
 great inspiration, a worthy goal, a manly struggle, 
 and victory crowning all. Happiness will come, 
 but it is not a primary consideration, nor is it 
 to be sought directly. Happiness is life's by- 
 product. We meet it in the way of duty, never 
 by direct search, or selfish pursuit; but only as 
 the companion of service, the reward of well- 
 doing. "Duty done is the soul's fireside." Set 
 yourself, therefore, upon some worthy goal, 
 espouse some high cause, hitch your wagon to a 
 star, get an inspiration and an ambition noble 
 enough to swallow up all other ambitions, or to 
 include them all, and then life will be rich and 
 rewarding and victorious. To whomever wrote 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews the controlling, 
 steadying inspiration was this, "Looking unto 
 Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith." 
 
 With our New England forefathers educa- 
 tion and religion went hand in hand. They did 
 not wait until the building of a colleg'e was an' 
 easy task. Within sixteen years after the land- 
 ing at Plymouth Rock, in the midst of bitter 
 poverty and privation/ they founded Harvard 
 College, as her motto declares, "Pro Christo et 
 ecclesia," for Christ and the Church, each free- 
 holder of the infant colony being taxed one shil- 
 ling or a peck of corn. The impulse that founded 
 Yale College was a religious one, and the oldest 
 college in Virginia was chartered, as the record 
 declares, "That the youth of Virginia might be 
 
14 THE TRUE AIMS OF EDUCATION. 
 
 piously educated." Heroism, faith and sacrifice 
 went into the foundation stones of all our early 
 colleges. If you seek for the brain and con- 
 science of New England in the early days, you 
 will find them in the colleges which assumed the 
 intellectual and moral leadership of the new 
 nation. They shaped our institutions and 
 moulded our civilization. One historian de- 
 clares that "a failure to plant and endow Har- 
 vard college for twenty-five years would have so 
 stunted and paralyzed the social progress of 
 Massachusetts as to have altered essentially 
 the whole course of events bearing on our na- 
 tional history in which Massachusetts had any 
 part:" 
 
 The secret of all this lies in the fact that 
 the strength of a man's mind is meas- 
 ured by the strength of the purpose that con- 
 trols it. A strong, pure purpose means char- 
 acter, and character clarifies the mental vision. 
 Selfishness clogs the faculties and obstructs the 
 vision. Unselfishness alone is able to see things 
 in their right relations. It imparts clarity to the 
 mental faculties and gives to the life a splendid 
 poise. Once the earth was supposed to be the 
 center of the universe, and as a consequence 
 astronomy was full of error and confusion. So 
 a self-centered, self-seeking life is nevef at rest, 
 never at peace. Nor can it be a truly efficient 
 life. Only as life finds its center in God does 'its 
 
THE TRUE AIMS OF EDUCATION. 
 
 'confusion vanish and its activities issue in order 
 and nobleness. Then the great volume of na- 
 ture is illumined ; it reveals its hidden beauties ; 
 familiar things take on new value ; the soul be- 
 comes both telescopic and microscopic, and finds 
 
 "Tongues in trees, books in the running- 
 
 brooks, 
 Sermons in stones, and good in everything/' 
 
 These, then, are some of the things for which 
 this School stands. It is well that the purpose 
 and the toil of its founders should from time to 
 time be recalled and their high aims rehearsed 
 in the presence of those who here drink at the 
 fountain of learning. It was their; wish that this 
 College should ever stand for Christian char- 
 acter, the highest type of culture and of faith. 
 At the close of "Tom Brown at Rugby," you 
 will remember how Tom is pictured as coming 
 back to the old school and sitting in the old seat 
 in the chapel. How it brings up the image of 
 his sainted teacher! And how he longs -to see 
 that teacher again and tell him the measure of 
 his love and reverence and how he would be the 
 man the teacher wanted him to be through life 
 and death ! And the sun glints in through the 
 window and rests upon the grave beneath the 
 altar there and the place is transfigured. And 
 somehow the memory of that earthly teacher 
 becomes mingled with the feeling of the presence 
 
l6 THE TRUE AIMS OF EDUCATION. 
 
 of the Great Teacher who spake as never man 
 spake, and the brave heart goes out into the 
 world in the spirit and knowledge of Him who is 
 on earth the embodiment of purity and tender- 
 ness and love. It is indeed a divine business, a 
 work which cannot be measured by human 
 measurements or computed by any human 
 arithmetic. As it was the wish of the founders, 
 so let it be our prayer and our endeavor that 
 this School may always lead and point to the 
 Divine Teacher of men. Thus far it has grown 
 like the trees, planted hereabouts by the founders, 
 that draw their sustenance from the earth and 
 air. I boldly prophesy that the years to come, 
 as the years past, will find it sending out bless- 
 ings into the world as many as the leaves and 
 blossoms on these trees, the blessings of trained 
 intellects, of womanly lives, of Christian ideals, 
 of unselfish ministry to a needy world, all of 
 these being leaves of that divine tree which is 
 for the healing of the nations. Thus and only 
 thus will the purpose of the founders bej realized, 
 amd their lives reappear in the enrichment of the 
 generations yet to be. 
 
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