The History of University Education in Maryland Part 4

2. Religion has nothing to fear from science, and science need not be afraid of religion. Religion claims to interpret the word of G.o.d, and science to reveal the laws of G.o.d. The interpreters may blunder, but truths are immutable, eternal, and never in conflict.

3. Remote utility is quite as worthy to be thought of as immediate advantage. Those ventures are not always most sagacious that expect a return on the morrow. It sometimes pays to send our argosies across the seas,--to make investments with an eye to slow but sure returns. So it is always in the promotion of science.

4. As it is impossible for any university to encourage with equal freedom all branches of learning, a selection must be made by enlightened governors, and that selection must depend on the requirements and deficiencies of a given people, in a given period.

There is no absolute standard of preference. What is more important at one time or in one place may be less needed elsewhere and otherwise.

5. Individual students cannot pursue all branches of learning, and must be allowed to select, under the guidance of those who are appointed to counsel them. Nor can able professors be governed by routine. Teachers and pupils must be allowed great freedom in their method of work.

Recitations, lectures, examinations, laboratories, libraries, field exercises, travel, are all legitimate means of culture.

6. The best scholars will almost invariably be those who make special attainments on the foundation of a broad and liberal culture.

7. The best teachers are usually those who are free, competent, and willing to make original researches in the library and the laboratory.

8. The best investigators are usually those who have also the responsibilities of instruction, gaining thus the incitement of colleagues, the encouragement of pupils, the observation of the public.

9. Universities should bestow their honors with a sparing hand; their benefits most freely.

10. A university cannot be created in a day; it is a slow growth. The University of Berlin has been quoted as a proof of the contrary. That was indeed a quick success, but in an old, compact country, crowded with learned men eager to a.s.semble at the Prussian court. It was a change of base rather than a sudden development.

11. The object of the university is to develop character--to make men.

It misses its aim if it produces learned pedants, or simple artisans, or cunning sophists, or pretentious pract.i.tioners. Its purport is not so much to impart knowledge to the pupils, as to whet the appet.i.te, exhibit methods, develop powers, strengthen judgment, and invigorate the intellectual and moral forces. It should prepare for the service of society a cla.s.s of students who will be wise, thoughtful, progressive guides in whatever department of work or thought they may be engaged.

12. Universities easily fall into ruts. Almost every epoch requires a fresh start.

If these twelve points are conceded, our task is simplified, though it is still difficult. It is to apply these principles to Baltimore in 1876. We are trying to do this with no controversy as to the relative importance of letters and science, the conflicts of religion and science, or the relation of abstractions and utilities; our simple aim is to make scholars, strong, bright, useful and true.

Proceeding to speak of the Johns Hopkins University, the speaker then announced that at first the Faculty of Philosophy would alone be organized, where instruction would be given in language, mathematics, ethics, history and science. The Medical Faculty would not long be delayed. That of Jurisprudence would come in time. That of Theology is not now proposed.

The next paragraphs of the address will be given without abbreviation.

Who shall our teachers be?

This question the public has answered for us; for I believe there is scarcely a preeminent man of science or letters, at home or abroad, who has not received a popular nomination for the vacant professorships.

Some of these candidates we shall certainly secure, and their names will be one by one made known. But I must tell you, in domestic confidence, that it is not an easy task to transplant a tree which is deeply rooted. It is especially hard to do so in our soil and climate. Though a migratory people, our college professors are fixtures. Such local college attachments are not known in Germany; and the promotions which are frequent in Germany are less thought of here. When we think of calling foreign teachers, we encounter other difficulties. Many are reluctant to cross the sea; and others are, by reason of their lack of acquaintance with our language and ways, unavailable. Besides we may as well admit that London, Paris, Leipsic, Berlin, and Vienna afford facilities for literary and scientific growth and influence, far beyond what our country affords. Hence, it is probable that among our own countrymen, our faculty will be chiefly found.

I wrote, not long ago, to an eminent physicist, presenting this problem in social mechanics, for which I asked his solution, "We cannot have a great university without great professors; we cannot get great professors till we have a great university: help us from the dilemma."

Let me tell his answer: "Your difficulty," he says, "applies only to old men who are great; these you can rarely move; but the young men of genius, talent, learning and promise, you can draw. They should be your strength."

The young Americans of talent and promise--there is our strength, and a n.o.ble company they are! We do not ask from what college, or what state, or what church they come; but what do they know, and what can they do, and what do they want to find out.

In the biographies of eminent scholars, it is curious to observe how many indicated in youth preeminent ability. Isaac Casaubon, whose name in the sixteenth century shed l.u.s.tre on the learned circles of Geneva, Montpellier, Paris, London and Oxford, began as professor of Greek, at the age of twenty-two; and Heinsius, his Leyden contemporary, at eighteen. It was at the age of twenty-eight, that Linnaeus first published his _Systema Naturae_. Cuvier was appointed a professor in Paris at twenty-six, and, a few months later, a member of the Inst.i.tute. James Kent, the great commentator on American law, began his lectures in Columbia College at the age of thirty-one. Henry was not far from thirty years of age when he made his world-renowned researches in electro-magnetism; and Dana's great work on mineralogy was first published before he was twenty-five years old, and about four years after he graduated at New Haven. Look at the Harvard lists:--Everett was appointed Professor of Greek at twenty-one; Benjamin Peirce, of Mathematics at twenty-four; and Aga.s.siz was not yet forty when he came to this country. For fifty years Yale College rested on three men selected in their youth by Dr. Dwight, and almost simultaneously set at work; Day was twenty-eight, Silliman, twenty-three, and Kingsley, twenty-seven, when they began their professorial lives. The University of Virginia, early in its history, attracted foreign teachers, who were all young men.

We shall hope to secure a strong staff of young men, appointing them because they have twenty years before them; selecting them on evidence of their ability; increasing constantly their emoluments, and promoting them because of their merit to successive posts, as scholars, fellows, a.s.sistants, adjuncts, professors and university professors. This plan will give us an opportunity to introduce some of the features of the English fellowship and the German system of privat-docents; or in other words, to furnish positions where young men desirous of a university career may have a chance to begin, sure at least of a support while waiting for promotion.

Our plans begin but do not end here. As men of distinction, who have won the highest rank in their callings, are known to be free, we shall invite them to come among us.

If we would maintain a university, great freedom must be allowed both to teachers and scholars. This involves freedom of methods to be employed by the instructors on the one hand, and on the other, freedom of courses to be selected by the students.

But this freedom is based on laws,--two of which cannot be too distinctly or too often enunciated. A law which should govern the admission of pupils is this, that before they win this privilege they must have been matured by the long, preparatory discipline of superior teachers, and by the systematic, laborious, and persistent pursuit of fundamental knowledge; and a second law, which should govern the work of professors, is this, that with unselfish devotion to the discovery and advancement of truth and righteousness, they renounce all other preferment, so that, like the greatest of all teachers, they may promote the good of mankind.

I see no advantage in our attempting to maintain the traditional four-year cla.s.s-system of the American colleges. It has never existed in the University of Virginia; it is modified, though not nominally given up at Harvard; it is not an important characteristic of Michigan and Cornell; it is not known in the English, French or German universities.

It is a collegiate rather than a university method. If parents or students desire us to mark out prescribed courses, either cla.s.sical or scientific, lasting four years, it will be easy to do so. But I apprehend that many students will come to us excellent in some branches of a liberal education and deficient in others--good perhaps in Greek, Latin and mathematics; deficient in chemistry, physics, zoology, history, political economy, and other progressive sciences. I would give to such candidates on examination, credit for their attainments, and a.s.sign them in each study the place for which they are fitted. A proficient in Plato may be a tyro in Euclid. Moreover, I would make attainments rather than time the condition of promotion; and I would encourage every scholar to go forward rapidly or go forward slowly, according to the fleetness of his foot and his freedom from impediment.

In other words, I would have our University seek the good of individuals rather than of cla.s.ses.

The sphere of a university is sometimes restricted by its walls or is limited to those who are enrolled on its lists. There are three particulars in which we shall aim at extramural influence: first, as an examining body, ready to examine and confer degrees or other academic honors on those who are trained elsewhere; next, as a teaching body, by opening to educated persons (whether enrolled as students or not) such lectures as they may wish to attend, under certain restrictions--on the plan of the lectures in the high seminaries of Paris; and, finally, as in some degree at least a publishing body, by encouraging professors and lecturers to give to the world in print the results of their researches.

What are we aiming at?

An enduring foundation; a slow development; first local, then regional, then national influence; the most liberal promotion of all useful knowledge; the special provision of such departments as are elsewhere neglected in the country; a generous affiliation with all other inst.i.tutions, avoiding interferences, and engaging in no rivalry; the encouragement of research; the promotion of young men; and the advancement of individual scholars, who by their excellence will advance the sciences they pursue, and the society where they dwell.

No words could indicate our aim more fitly than those by which John Henry Newman expresses his "Idea of the University," in a page glowing with enthusiasm, to which I delight to revert.

What will be our agencies?

A large staff of teachers; abundance of instruments, apparatus, diagrams, books, and other means of research and instruction; good laboratories, with all the requisite facilities; accessory influences, coming both from Baltimore and Washington; funds so unrestricted, charter so free, schemes so elastic, that as the world goes forward, our plans will be adjusted to its new requirements.

What will be our methods?

Liberal advanced instruction for those who want it; distinctive honors for those who win them; appointed courses for those who need them; special courses for those who can take no other; a combination of lectures, recitations, laboratory practice, field work and private instruction; the largest discretion allowed to the Faculty consistent with the purposes in view; and, finally, an appeal to the community to increase our means, to strengthen our hands, to supplement our deficiencies, and especially to surround our scholars with those social, domestic and religious influences which a corporation can at best imperfectly provide, but which may be abundantly enjoyed in the homes, the churches and the private a.s.sociations of an enlightened Christian city.

_Citizens of Baltimore and Maryland_.--This great undertaking does not rest upon the Trustees alone; the whole community has a share in it.

However strong our purposes, they will be modified, inevitably, by the opinions of enlightened men; so let parents and teachers incite the youth of this commonwealth to high aspirations; let wise and judicious counsellors continue their helpful suggestions, sure of being heard with grateful consideration; let skilful writers, avoiding captionsness on the one hand and compliment on the other, uphold or refute or amend the tenets here announced; let the guardians of the press diffuse widely a knowledge of the benefits which are here provided; let men of means largely increase the usefulness of this work by their timely gifts.

At the moment there is nothing which seems to me so important, in this region, and indeed in the entire land, as the promotion of good secondary schools, preparatory to the universities. There are old foundations in Maryland which require to be made strong, and there is room for newer enterprises, of various forms. Every large town should have an efficient academy or high school; and men of wealth can do no greater service to the public than by liberally encouraging, in their various places of abode, the advanced instruction of the young. None can estimate too highly the good which came to England from the endowment of Lawrence Sheriff at Rugby, and of Queen Elizabeth's school at Westminster, or the value to New England of the Phillips foundations in Exeter and And over.

Every contribution made by others to this new University will enable the Trustees to administer with greater liberality their present funds.

Special foundations may be affiliated with our trust, for the encouragement of particular branches of knowledge, for the reward of merit, for the construction of buildings; and each gift, like the new recruits of an army, will be more efficient because of the place it takes in an organized and efficient company. It is a great satisfaction in this world of changes and pecuniary loss to remember what safe investments have been made at Harvard and Yale, and other old colleges, where dollar for dollar is still shown for every gift.

The atmosphere of Maryland seems favorable to such deeds of piety, hospitality and "good-will to men." George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, comes here, returns to England and draws up a charter which becomes memorable in the annals of civil and religious liberty, for which, "he deserves to be ranked," (as Bancroft says), "among the most wise and benevolent lawgivers of all ages;" among the liberals of 1776 none was bolder than Charles Carroll of Carrollton; John Eager Howard, the hero of Cowpens, is almost equally worthy of grat.i.tude for the liberality of his public gifts; John McDonogh, of Baltimore birth, bestows his fortune upon two cities for the instruction of their youth; George Peabody, resident here in early life, comes back in old age to endow an Athenaeum, and begins that outpouring of munificence which gives him a n.o.ble rank among modern philanthropists; Moses Sheppard bequeaths more than half a million for the relief of mental disease; Rinehart, the teamster boy, attains distinction as a sculptor, and bequeaths his hard-won acquisitions for the encouragement of art in the city of his residence; and a Baltimorean still living, provides for the foundation of an astronomical observatory in Yale College; while Johns Hopkins lays a foundation for learning and charity, which we celebrate to-day.

The closing sentences of the discourse were addressed to the young men of Baltimore and to the Trustees.

THE FACULTY.

One of the earliest duties which devolved upon the President and Trustees, after deciding upon the general scope of the University, was to select a staff of teachers by whose a.s.sistance and counsel the details of the plan should be worked out. It would hardly be right in this place to recall the distinctive merits of the able and learned scholars who have formed the academic staff during the first fourteen years, but perhaps the writer may be allowed to pay in pa.s.sing a tribute of grat.i.tude and respect to those who entered the service of the University at its beginning. To their suggestions, their enthusiasm, their learning, and above all their freedom from selfish aims and from petty jealousies, must be attributed in a great degree the early distinction of this inst.i.tution. They came from widely distant places; they had been trained by widely different methods; they had widely different intellectual apt.i.tudes; but their diversities were unified by their devotion to the university in which they were enlisted, and by their desire to promote its excellence. This spirit has continued till the present time, and has descended to those who have from time to time joined the ranks, so that it may be emphatically said that the union of the Faculty has been the key to its influence.

The first requisite of success in any inst.i.tution is a staff of eminent teachers, each of whom gives freely the best of which he is capable. The best varies with the individual; one may be an admirable lecturer or teacher; another a profound thinker; a third a keen investigator; another a skilful experimenter; the next, a man of great acquisitions; one may excel by his industry, another by his enthusiasm, another by his learning, another by his genius; but every member of a faculty should be distinguished by some uncommon attainments and by some special apt.i.tudes, while the faculty as a whole should be united and cooperative. Each professor, according to his subject and his talents, should have his own best mode of working, adjusted to and controlled by the exigencies of the inst.i.tution with which he is a.s.sociated.

The original professors, who were present when instructions began in October, 1876, were these: as the head and guide of the mathematical studies, Professor Sylvester, of Cambridge, Woolwich and London, one of the foremost of European mathematicians; as the leader of cla.s.sical studies, Professor Gildersleeve, then of the University of Virginia; as director of the Chemical Laboratory and of instruction in chemistry, Professor Remsen, then of Williams College; to organize the work in Biology (a department then scarcely known in American inst.i.tutions, but here regarded as of great importance with reference to the future school of medicine), Professor Martin, then of Cambridge (Eng.), a pupil of Professor Michael Foster and of Professor Huxley; as chief in the department of Physics, Professor Rowland, then holding a subordinate position in the Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst.i.tute, whose ability in this department had been shown by the contributions he had made to scientific journals; and as collegiate professor, or guide to the undergraduate students, Professor Charles D. Morris, once an Oxford fellow, and then of the University of the City of New York.

The names of the professors in the Faculty of Philosophy, from 1876 to 1890, are as follows, arranged in the order of their appointment:

1876 BASIL L. GILDERSLEEVE, LL. D _Greek_.

1876 J.J. SYLVESTER, LL. D _Mathematics_.

1876 IRA KEMSEN, Ph. D _Chemistry_.

1876 HENRY A. ROWLAND, Ph. D _Physics_.

1876 H. NEWELL MARTIN, Sc. D _Biology_.

1876 CHARLES D. MORRIS, A. M _Cla.s.sics, (Collegiate)._ 1883 PAUL HAUPT, Ph. D _Semitic Languages_.