Angell's Inaugural Address

JAMES BURRILL ANGELL

INAUGURATION ADDRESS

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, 1871

This University sustains vital relations to the State whose name it bears. Though it owes its chief resources to an endowment from Congress, its organization, its work, and its fortunes have been so largely under the control of the State that it may be justly termed the child of the State. If we may regard the repeated appropriations of money to the University by the Legislature as establishing the policy of the Commonwealth to recognize a parental duty to this school of learning, that simple fact implies a just and lofty conception of the function of the State and of the University. Such action argues large and generous ideas of the powers and duties of the State. It contemplates civil society as charged not merely with the negative work of repressing disorder and crime, but also with the higher positive office of promoting by all proper means the intellectual and the moral growth of the citizens. It repudiates the teachings of those shallow and short-sighted economists who would limit the public provision of educational facilities to the minimum with which the State can possibly exist. It assumes that it is just and wise for the State to place the means of obtaining generous culture within the reach of the humblest and poorest child upon its soil. It has lying behind it the old Aristotelian conception of political society, as existing "not merely for the sake of joint livelihood, but for honorable deeds." It is in complete harmony with John Milton's grand idea of the State as instituted for something far higher than mere material interests. Is not that the only conception of the State which Christian philosophy will justify?

The distinguishing glory of several of the younger States of the Union is not found chiefly in that marvelous energy and unparalleled material prosperity which are so often and so justly the theme of praise, but in that wise prevision with which, while roads and bridges and comfortable houses and many of the other necessities of civilized life were still unsupplied, they consecrated a liberal share of their wealth of lands to the endowment of schools. Many of the founders of these States are still living to enjoy the beneficent triumphs, which are due to their foresight. They see about them not only thoroughly organized systems of common school education, but also colleges and universities, which may soon rival in the amplitude and completeness of their outfit the oldest and strongest in the nation. As we gather here with glad hearts on this festival day, we cannot but recognize it as a fresh honor to the State that on yonder Campus a new and spacious hall is soon to lift its fair proportions towards the skies to testify, so long as it stands, to the abiding and increasing interest of the State in the welfare of this Institution an interest evinced not more by the liberality of the legislative appropriation than by the heartiness and promptness with which it was granted.

If the State, which thus establishes and sustains its University, shows a high ideal of work, so must the University, which worthily serves such a State, be ever inspired by the loftiest conceptions of its duty. In training the citizens, who are to shape the destinies of the State, it must aspire to the Miltonian conception of education, and do its utmost to fit them "to perform justly, skillfully and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war." It was with no exaggerated estimate of the functions and power of a university that Stein and William von Humboldt and Niebuhr and Schleiermacher and Savigny and their coadjutors laid the foundations of that splendid school at Berlin as the mightiest instrumentality in lifting Prussia from her deep abasement to that height of power from which she could look down in defiance upon her conqueror from beyond the Rhine. Could the world ask for a more brilliant vindication than it has just witnessed, of the wisdom of Prussia and the other German States, which have so generously sustained their great schools of learning? It was the scholarship and genius and discipline of Kant and Nitzsch and Mueller and Vangerow and Liebig and such as they, no less than the administrative ability of Von Roon and the strategy of Von Moltke, which bore the banners of the Fatherland in triumph across the murderous ravines of Gravelotte and encompassed Sedan in the fatal walls of fire. The University must interpret its vital connection with the State as a call to the largest and best work attainable with its means. In that call it must find the stimulus to all strenuous endeavor. It may determine the culture, the civilization, nay, it may save the very life of the State, and is justly held responsible for the faithful discharge of its sacred duty.

The University in performing this work must have many fruitful relations besides these to the State, which nourishes it. It cannot lead a life of isolation. It cannot bound its vision or its work by the narrow lines of a State or of a nation. It is a part of the great world of scholars. It hospitably flings its gates wide open to all seekers after knowledge, wherever their home. Remembering that it is one of the great sisterhood of schools, it constantly welcomes the light which the experience of other universities may shed upon its path. The unprecedented interest, which is felt both in Europe and in this country, in determining the aims of higher education, and the best methods of conducting it, lends a new charm and importance to the life of every university. It gives fresh impulse and enthusiasm to us all to feel that the scholars of every nation are profoundly concerned in our work, and are aiding in solving the educational problems which are tasking our powers. Never before was the high calling of the teacher so delightful to the true man, who has his mind open to the suggestions which come pouring in upon him from every quarter, and who knows that the whole world is ready to weigh with candor any worthy suggestions which he may be prepared to offer. The public mind is now in a plastic, impressible state, and every vigorous college, nay, every capable worker, may help to shape its decisions upon education.

In England the discussion which has been going on for the last twenty-five years concerning reform in the great schools and universities continues with unabated zeal, grows more and more searching, and engages the most gifted minds. The ablest scholars are employed by Parliament to expose to the light of day the defects of the English schools, and to hunt through the world for ideas which may serve to improve the English methods of instruction. Almost every leading man in Great Britain has been constrained to discuss in some form the educational questions of the day. It is fresh in the recollection of all how the present brilliant and eccentric Chancellor of the Exchequer has caricatured the Oxford training in that fascinating style which he owes in so great measure to that very training, and has pierced his venerable mother with arrows which he drew from her own quiver. Mr. Froude left his portrait of Elizabeth unfinished on his easel and journeyed to Scotland to astonish the world with his commendation of what the Germans might call a bread and butter education. While Oxford scholars were disparaging the classics, Mr. Mill, the great utilitarian, came forward to delight and instruct his hearers with a hearty recognition of the value of classical culture, and with a most admirable presentation of the relations of the various departments of human knowledge. The echoes of the recent discussions in the House of Lords on the influence of Oxford life on religion have hardly died away on our ears. Carlyle, Bain, Spencer, Farrar, Huxley, Arnold, and how many others have been making invaluable contributions to the elucidation of the questions which are raised in the work of education.

Germany was never more busy than now in perfecting her systems of higher education. Almost the first utterance of the French Academy of Science, after the fall of the late imperial government permitted freedom of speech, was an urgent demand for the reorganization of the University to carry the higher education of France up towards the German standard. Austria is showing that the secularization of education has opened a new career to her schools. And Italy is striving to renew the faded glory of those ancient universities which once drew thousands of students from the whole civilized world.

If we turn to this country, we see that during the present generation there has been more discussion

One of the problems of collegiate and university training than had been known before since the planting of the New England colonies. College life in the main flowed on in one unbroken current from the foundation of Harvard College till the fifth decade of this century. Our colleges were constructed on the English model, and were all conducted in essentially the same spirit. There was nowhere such questioning of the wisdom of the one course as was raised so long ago as Bacon's time concerning the English colleges.

During the last twenty years not only educational journals, but the secular and the religious journals, the magazines and reviews, college faculties and corporations, the patrons of colleges, and all that great company of people who are interested in the character of our higher education, have been vigorously arguing to determine what the American college should aim to be and to do. This has been a period of groping, of theorizing, of experimenting, rather than of confident progress in any one path, which all would be ready to approve as the true one. Perhaps the element of highest value in this movement has been the wellnigh universal avowal of the belief that there is something yet to be learned concerning the aims and methods of higher education. This expectant, receptive, hopeful attitude of the guides of academic work has been itself a prophecy and a guaranty of improvement. Stolid complacency in a stereotyped system is the one insuperable barrier to advance. Such epochs of nascent, formative life, what the Germans would call eras of becoming, of development, are always the most intensely interesting in history.

And it is in precisely this epoch that this University has been growing from infancy to maturity, and it is its glory and the glory of the wise and good men who have shaped its fortunes that it has played a most important and honorable part in solving the collegiate problems of the day. Its great influence in academic circles is admitted even by those who do not sympathize with the views which have here been cherished. It is too early to sum up the arguments in the discussions which have been carried on by college men for the last few years, and to expect that all will acquiesce in any verdict which can yet be rendered. But twenty years suffice to show whether there is a real drift of the main tide of intelligent public opinion in any direction. And there can be no doubt that there has been a real drift towards some of the important positions early taken by this University.

Two of these positions in particular may be named: first, the provision for a choice between different courses of study, and secondly, the furnishing of larger opportunities in the Modern Languages, in History, and in the Natural Sciences than were formerly afforded. Nearly every college in the land has made changes in its plan of work which recognize in a greater or less degree the desirableness of accomplishing these ends. It may be fairly claimed that the satisfactory results of the experiments here have not been without a decided influence upon some of the older institutions of the East, while they have evidently determined the form of the State Universities which have been springing up in the West. These are facts on which this University may fairly congratulate itself. These are triumphs for which it should gratefully cherish the names of my learned and efficient predecessors and of their faithful coadjutors in the Board of Regents and in the Faculty.

But never in this era of educational discussion and experimental activity has there been a moment when the University could hope to learn so much from looking abroad as at the present, or when its own example could so profoundly affect other schools of learning; for at no time have the colleges and universities been so energetic in the trial of various methods, and at no time have they been so ready to welcome new ideas of college work, from whatever source they may come. While our contributions to the solution of all the problems of university life will be measured at their true value, we may perhaps well remember that academic circles just now watch with especial interest for the light which our experience may furnish on two points: first, the consequences in the long run of the dependence of the University on the State, and secondly, the results of the admission of women to the University.

It is still asked with some solicitude at the older denominational colleges whether the State can be relied on to furnish the needed support for this large and growing University, and whether the University can be guarded against the perils of partisan strife. The rapid progress of the Institution thus far, in spite of its various and grave embarrassments, has been a series of happy surprises to many who have watched it with interest. We at least will not doubt that the wisdom and the generosity of the State to whose usefulness and renown it has contributed! so much, even in its brief career, will make its future yet richer in beneficence than its past, and will remove from the public mind every lingering doubt of the feasibility of building up a State University, which shall flourish and expand as long as the State shall prosper.

If the admission of women to this University is followed by no undesirable results of importance, then this action will, in my opinion, have a more marked influence on the colleges and professional schools of the country than any other event in the history of the Institution has ever had. The question of opening the halls of colleges to both sexes, which seems to be practically settled in the West, is attracting deep attention in the East. I think I do not err in saying that the number of academic men in that section of the country who are in favor of this measure is rapidly increasing. I believe that when it can be said with confidence that the University of Michigan feels itself justified in declaring the experiment beyond dispute successful, the doors of several Eastern colleges will open to young women. And it is not extravagant to believe that the effect may be felt at some of the great European schools. The relation of this University to its sister institutions of high grade was therefore never so important as it is today. It becomes us to remember the high responsibility which this fact lays upon us. Noblesse oblige.

Honorable as has been the history of the University, there is no friend of it who does not wish to see it doing yet higher and larger work. The desire of intelligent men throughout the country for a few American universities which shall be to our high schools and even to some of our colleges what the universities in Europe are to the secondary schools of England, the lycees of France, and the gymnasia of Germany is so strong and pervading that it may be regarded as a prediction of the up building of such institutions of highest grade. If the saying which Goethe somewhere gives us, "what one longs for in youth, one will have in advanced years," has any foundation of truth in the experience of Germans, it has yet more in the life of this nation whose energy makes a wish the prophecy of attainment. We must have these universities in time. But they cannot be imported ready-made. They cannot be extemporized. Like governments, they must grow. Most of them will be developed from existing institutions. Their roots will be found in the colleges. It would not be difficult to indicate which colleges in New England give the largest promise of reaching the true university standard of attainment.

I hope it may not be deemed improper for me to say, as one who has not been identified with this University in the past, that either the State or the University will be unworthy the vantage ground which has been gained here with so much money and toil, if this is not the first of the Western schools to satisfy the demand for the highest order of university work. Never for an instant should legislators or citizens or Regents or Faculty or students lose sight of that goal. Till that end is reached, our opportunities are not seized. Nothing less than that must content us. Precisely how or when this or any other American institution is to attain this development, or exactly what will be the organization and all the methods of the enlarged universities, we may not now be able to say. We Americans must feel our way carefully. As Lord Bacon says, "we must use Argus' hundred eyes before we raise one of Briareus' hundred hands." The work is one which requires great wisdom and patience.

Let us carefully guard against one peril. While aiming to reach university work at last, let us not underrate or neglect the strictly collegiate work to which the academic Department must for some time be mainly confined. Excessive haste and impatient ambition may spoil good colleges without making even poor universities. It needs still however to be remembered in this country that calling an institution a university does not make it so. Neither do buildings, however imposing, nor endowments, however splendid, constitute a university. Nor does it convert a college into a university to abolish recitations and give all the instruction by lectures. I fear that the public do not sufficiently understand that the essential thing in a university is men, both in the students' seats and in the professors' chairs. Students who possess sufficient maturity of body, of mind, and of character, and sufficient intellectual furniture and training, to carry on with earnestness and persistence a high order of work till they can reap

"A harvest of wise purposes

Sown in the fruitful furrows of the mind;"

and instructors who are competent to guide and inspire such students, these make a university. Wherever such pupils and such teachers are pursuing the most generous culture of a civilized age, there are the essential constituents of a university, though, as in Bologna in the thirteenth century, the instruction is given in private houses of most modest structure, or though masters and disciples dwell in hovels of osier and thatch, like Abelard and his followers on the wild banks of the Ardrissan. The youthful Plato hanging on the lips of the barefooted Socrates in the streets of Athens, can we find in the world a picture of a more fruitful university culture than that? Give us Platos as professors and Aristotles as pupils, and though yonder halls be razed to the ground and our endowments swallowed up by disaster, we can still have in this quiet inland city a University which shall draw the studious youth even from beyond the utmost seas and shed its benign light over the whole world.

How many of our well-meaning countrymen have given their tens of thousands of dollars for the material homes of colleges and universities, and have made no adequate provision for securing the most gifted and devoted teachers? When will even good men learn that to endow a university with brains and heart, and not alone with bricks and mortar, is the part of true wisdom? The ideal teacher is a rare man, for whose coming, when he is found, the University and the State should give thanks. It seems to have dawned but recently on men's minds that teaching in the college or university is a special profession, in which as a rule a man can no more attain high usefulness without natural aptitude and appropriate training than he can in any of the other learned professions.

A man may have eminent success as a lawyer or a clergyman or a literary writer or even as a school-teacher, and may yet prove a very indifferent professor. If he is to succeed in university work, he must have, first, in the very make of his mind and soul, the divine call to teach, and secondly, he should have a large general culture and a thorough special training in his own department. Unless he has the first of these qualifications, no degree of excellence in the second will crown him with success. He may be as learned as Scaliger or Erasmus, but if he has not in him the power of kindling another mind with the fire which burns in his own, if he cannot bring his soul into such close and loving contact with that of a receptive pupil that the latter shall be stirred by his impulses and fired with his enthusiasms and imbued with his passionate love of the truth he teaches, he has not in the highest sense the teaching power. The best part of the help which a genuine teacher gives to his pupil often consists not in the formal information he communicates on this or that topic, but in the magnetism, the inspiration, the impartation of his own scholarly and truth-loving spirit. To this enkindling power he should add a kind of perpetual youthfulness, a freshness of spirit, which keeps living and warm his sympathies with the young, and which enables him to see things from the student's point of view as well as from the professor's. He must also possess the ability and the desire to be ever learning. When a man stops acquiring knowledge, it is time for him to stop teaching. He cannot produce attractive and nutritious food for his pupils by incessantly threshing, in the same monotonous way, the very same straw which he has been turning over and pounding with his pedagogic flail for an indefinite period. With this rare combination of talent, scholarship, and temperament he must also unite a pure and manly character and a certain heroic disregard of the high pecuniary remuneration which other callings in life offer to men like him.

Tell me if men who have wretchedly failed in other professions are likely to have sat for the portrait I have attempted to sketch? Tell me if men who are worthy of this vocation of the teacher do not deserve to be encouraged and honored and rewarded by the State which they serve? As Milton says, after completing his scheme of work for the school, "Only I believe that this is not a bow for every man to shoot in that counts himself a teacher, but will require sinews almost equal to those which Homer gave Ulysses." Happy is this University that it has had and still has so many such men in its corps of teachers. To them more than to any peculiarity of your methods is due whatever large and lasting influence the University has exerted.

Men are of more consequence than methods. Small men will accomplish little with the best methods. Men of large scope and culture will do much with any method which they will be willing to adopt. There is much discussion just now concerning collegiate methods, and it bids fair to be fruitful of good results. But under any system of college life which is likely to be followed in this country, the best work will probably be done where the students are best prepared for their study and the professors best prepared to instruct. As the soul of a nation is in the spirit of the people rather than in the words of their constitution, so the soul of a university is in the men who compose it rather than in its plan of organization. If it is to have the highest success, it must be able to command the services of the choicest teachers and to remunerate them so that they can give their best vigor to their professorial work.

If now we are to lift the grade of university work, we must lift the grade of preparatory work and receive our students only at a more advanced stage of training than they at present reach before entering the Freshman class. I learn from the interesting Report of President Frieze that the average age of the students who are admitted here is very nearly that of the university students in Germany. Could they thoroughly accomplish the collegiate work of the first two years before commencing here, we might make their course compare favorably with that of the European universities. For the superiority which the graduates from the German gymnasia have over our Junior classes in the knowledge of the classics would be, I think, in part at least counterbalanced by a superiority of the American student over the German in a larger general knowledge of matters beyond the range of his school studies, and in a greater readiness in the practical application of his learning.

Now the addition of the studies of the first two years to the preparatory course would be no greater advance upon the present work of the schools than has actually been achieved since the beginning of the century. Already there are not a few schools in the country which can give and would gladly give the instruction of the Freshman year. The time is not distant when the better and stronger institutions can safely push up their requirements for admission to the standard now reached at the beginning of the Sophomore year, and I am confident that the day is not very remote when they can secure yet higher attainments. The teachers of academies and high schools are generally more than willing to do their part in accomplishing the result, since the character of their work and the tone of their schools are thereby necessarily raised.

So far as I have observed., this enlargement of preparatory work is easily attainable, and is even more necessary in the scientific than in the classical department of our colleges. The mathematical course, at least up to trigonometry, the elements of physiology, botany, and physics, some help in French, and a year's study or more of Latin may now be furnished in many of the high schools of New England and, I doubt not, in many schools in the West. So much, I think, it would be very desirable to secure at an early day from those who pursue scientific courses. The Latin indeed may be waived for a time, but the best scientific schools abroad and here are agreed that it is very helpful to their pupils.

To secure this elevation of our work there must be the heartiest co-operation of the University and the schools. It would have been a happy completion of the public school system of the State if an organic connection like that between the German Universities and the gymnasia had been established. But there may be such a virtual, if not a formal, connection, and to accomplish this end the University should spare no efforts.

It must be confessed that generally the schools in this country are quite as ready to furnish the advanced instruction as colleges are to insist on it with rigor as the indispensable condition of admission. The courage of most college faculties or corporations wavers when a considerable number of applicants for entrance are about to be cut off by a new rule. Of course good sense must be used in deciding how fast and how far the standard shall be raised. But the courageous course here as in other matters is often the best rewarded. As a rule the colleges whose classes are increasing most rapidly are those whose requirements for admission and whose scale of work are highest. The better and more aspiring students justly conclude that from such institutions they will receive the most benefit. Certain it is that the best interests of this University and of good learning require us to make increasing, earnest, and judicious efforts to push the work of the preparatory schools to a higher and higher plane.

If properly supported, the University can by wise and persistent endeavor continually approach its ideal of giving the largest general culture and the most thorough and extended special training in technical and professional study. It would seem superfluous to remark that, at least throughout the undergraduate department, the instruction should be so shaped as to make the development and discipline of the faculties the primary object, were it not questioned by some whether it is expedient or even practicable to conduct such scientific courses as are given here with that high aim. Now without opening the vexed question of the relative value of the culture which flows from the humanities and of that which is given by the natural sciences, every one must admit that these latter studies can be so pursued as to give admirable training to the faculties of observation, imagination, and reasoning. It is not easy to see how they can be efficiently taught without producing that result. They should be taught with a disciplinary as well as a practical aim, because thus will the most valuable practical results be achieved. For what is disciplinary instruction in a science except instruction in the processes of observation, induction, and deduction, by which the principles of the science are established or verified, and such instruction as shall lead the student to perform those processes himself? Shall we be told that the student will be best or more rapidly fitted for the practical application of the science by using formulae and facts as his tools, without attempting to comprehend the underlying principles?

To ask the question in this presence is to answer it, and I appeal to any teachers of natural science to tell me whether the clear perception by the pupil of the practical bearing of his study upon the work of his life ever lessens his interest in the fundamental principles of it, or weakens his susceptibility to the culture to be derived from a thorough comprehension of those principles? Other things being equal, will not those persons who are most interested in a study receive the best culture from it? Only in this possibility of imparting genuine culture to students by the use of the mathematics and the natural sciences can be found the intellectual justification of the plan pursued here of uniting classical and scientific students in the same classes. If the scientific and mathematical training of any candidate for graduation has not fitted him to use all the faculties, which have been appealed to in his course, for effective service outside as well as inside of his particular profession, then it has failed of its highest usefulness, and his profession will be exercised by him only as a trade.

Our schools of law and medicine have contributed much to the renown of the University. Some of the best professional schools in the country are, like the colleges, trying important experiments in courses and methods of instruction, and these will receive the attention of our vigilant Faculties. It is universally confessed, I believe, that it would be advantageous to secure some larger qualifications in those who are allowed to matriculate in the American schools than are now required of them. At present the obstacles to such a reform seem to be very grave. But we must hold ourselves ever ready to take such action in common with other guides of professional learning as is worthy of our position and history.

It is to be hoped that we may soon induce a considerable number of young men to pursue what may be termed graduate work in other departments besides those of law and medicine. The increasing desire for large attainments in linguistic studies and in the natural sciences, the pressing necessity of training a numerous class for the chairs of instructors in our higher schools and colleges, the facilities which we have for beginning this work of advanced instruction, and the example of the leading universities in the Eastern States are so many arguments in favor of trying this important step in genuine university work, whenever students are ready to receive this help at our hands.

There are other studies in which our graduates may perhaps yet be led to labor for some time. For instance, the increasing number of alumni who are entering the important profession of journalism, which is constantly drawing men of higher talent and attainments to its service, and which is certainly second in influence to none of the so-called learned professions, might profitably pursue special studies in history, literature, political economy, political philosophy, and international law. While it may perhaps be as truly said of the great editor as of the great poet, nascitur, non fit, still the truth should be recognized both by students and by universities that most valuable preliminary training may be furnished for the duties of the journalistic profession.

Many, who are best fitted to judge of the intellectual needs of our country, are so deeply impressed with the importance of securing advanced instruction for our most promising students that they are recommending men of generosity to endow fellowships, which shall enable a certain number of picked scholars to prolong their course of study. This is a kind of benefaction which may well claim the attention of those who wish to devise liberal things for the young men and the young women of the West. Some of the Eastern colleges have already received such an accession to their resources and are beginning to perceive the beneficent results.

May we not indulge the hope that not only in this way, but in various ways, the University may profit by the generosity of her sons and of many other friends of sound learning? She is, and perhaps must be, dependent on the State for her chief help. But now that for more than a score of years she has been sending forth her sons into all honorable callings and professions, may she not reasonably expect that those who have been crowned with prosperity will rejoice to testify their indebtedness to her by increasing her power and usefulness? Many colleges find this grateful and active help of their alumni a perennial source of refreshing and strength.

The Library, the Museum of Art, and the Observatory already bear witness to the deep interest of large-hearted men in this University. For some years successive graduating classes have been leaving behind them tokens of their generous and filial love for the University, and to my mind there is and can be no more convincing proof of the healthy life of the Institution. The benediction which her parting sons pronounce is at once a benison and a prevalent prayer for future blessings. These gifts of our young friends, we may well believe, are the first-fruits of that harvest with which the University shall be enriched by private munificence. Let it not be thought that the aid furnished by the State leaves no room for such munificence. Any one familiar with the University can readily suggest uses to which benefactions may be wisely devoted. Endowments of professorships, a gymnasium, which shall furnish opportunities for physical training, a building suited to accommodate the Library and the Art collections, a Laboratory with the needed apparatus for experimental instruction in physics, these, the most casual observer would say, are much to be desired.

There is no more creditable chapter in American annals than that which records the liberality of our citizens to our institutions of learning. Never before has that liberality been so marked as during the last ten years. It may now be accepted as a settled principle in American life that no college of established strength and reputation, which is so conducted as to deserve to have its life continued, shall long lack for the supply of its substantial wants. But it is of vital consequence that this University, or any one which deserves the public favor, should be constantly improving in some respect. If it is resting on its laurels, if it is sitting down satisfied with its past achievements, if it is not incessantly asking "how can I do more or better work," it does not deserve to be favored or helped. It is in danger of dying of dry-rot. It is not well to have spasmodic periods of advance followed by decline. Every year should bring some gain. In this day of unparalleled activity in college life, the institution which is not steadily advancing is certainly falling behind.

An argument for generous and increasing aid to the stronger colleges is found in one embarrassment to which they are just now more subjected than the weaker ones. This embarrassment consists in the great increase of students, whose numbers often multiply more rapidly than the resources of the colleges. The tendency to centralization which is seen in many characteristics of American life is notably prominent in the colleges. Students are more and more inclined to resort to the institutions which have large classes and resources. This subjects such colleges and universities to a new stimulus, but also to new responsibilities, often to new embarrassments. The stimulus must incite them to shoulder the responsibilities with courage and to push through or over all the obstacles. No better illustration of such action could be found than is afforded by the history of this University during its years of wonderful growth. With heroic endeavor and untiring patience its officers have met the rapidly increasing demand upon them with a success which even they would not have dared to predict. Still the number of applicants for admission swells year by year, and no reason appears why it may not continue to increase so long as the University continues to multiply its attractions and enlarge its facilities for instruction.

This fact should not only spur the instructors to their best efforts, but also should move the patrons of the University to give us the means with which to discharge the duty that the very prominence of the University lays upon us. No one would wish us to fall back to the second rank of higher schools. No one ought to be satisfied with our remaining where we are. The steady enlargement and improvement of the work of a university like this means constant and important increase of resources.

This is a fact which we may ask the State and all friends of the University to bear ever in mind. The State as the great patron and protector of the University has a right to ask that it do the best work possible with the means at its command, that with enlarged resources its activity and usefulness be increased, that it do not become the refuge of dawdling dilettanti or of curious pedants, either as students or teachers, that the Christian spirit, which pervades the laws, the customs, and the life of the State, shall shape and color the life of the University, that a lofty, earnest, but catholic and unsectarian Christian tone shall characterize the culture which is here imparted. It may fairly demand that the University do not, as some institutions have done, when they have waxed strong and rich, shut itself off from living sympathy and contact with the great body of honest, toiling men who help to sustain it, but that it show in the lives of its graduates how its culture enriches and strengthens and adorns the whole life of the State, that it make it plainly manifest to each intelligent citizen that every appropriation to the University sows seeds in the most fruitful of all soils, and swells that rich harvest of intellectual force and manly character which is the greatest treasure and highest glory of any commonwealth.

The right of the State to ask all this implies also the right of the University to expect that the State will furnish the most efficient aid which it can afford. Nor should this aid be regarded as a charity, any more than the appropriations for public schools or for the support of the judiciary. If the State has deemed it wise to found and aid the University, it is the part of common prudence and good sense for the State to sustain it generously and to give it the greatest practicable efficiency. A crippled institution, which can only half do its work, is hardly worth supporting at all. In maintaining schools and colleges liberality is true economy.

Again, the University cannot do its work with the highest success unless it have a certain degree of independence and self-control. It has therefore a right to expect that this privilege will be conceded to it. Written law or the unwritten law of common consent should shield it from the sudden outbursts of partisan passion and from the assaults of designing men. It must be able to have some fixed and definite plan and purpose running on through a series of years. It must have stability of character and life. The general nature and the details of its work should be determined by those who are charged with the immediate responsibility of administering its affairs. No other men in the whole State can have so deep a personal interest in securing its prosperity as the Regents and the Faculty. The brilliant success which they have achieved for it in the past justifies the belief that the direction of its policy cannot be confided to better hands than theirs.

No undue restraints should be laid upon the intellectual freedom of the teachers. No man worthy to hold a chair here will work in fetters. In choosing members of the Faculty the greatest care should be taken to secure gifted, earnest, reverent men, whose mental and moral qualities will fit them to prepare their pupils for manly and womanly work in promoting our Christian civilization. But never insist on their pronouncing the shibboleths of sect or party. So only can we train a generation of students to catholic, candid, truth-loving habits of mind and tempers of heart.

The State and the University should feel that their interests are identical. The prosperity of the University is bound up in that of the State. Michigan cannot grow stronger, wiser, and happier without strengthening her principal seat of learning. The University is therefore constrained by every motive of enlightened self-regard, as well as by her unquestioned loyalty, to remain true to the interests of the State.

On the other hand, the State can hardly overestimate her indebtedness to the University. This school has shed its blessings upon all classes and professions of men. It has given the best culture of the times to the poor as well as to the rich. In this respect its bounty has been even more marked than that of the common school. For hardly any boy is so poor that he might not, if necessary, obtain at his own cost the rudiments of education. But how few of our young men who have, almost without price, enjoyed the benefits of the ample resources of this University could possibly have paid the actual cost of their collegiate education. A great University like this is thus in one sense the most democratic of all institutions and so best deserving of the support of the State. This school has flooded with its light and strengthened with its strength all the subordinate schools. It has helped to lift the whole system of education in the State through the agency of the parents, teachers, and superintendents, who have carried from its halls lofty ideals of intellectual work. It has won for the State an enviable renown among all friends of learning in this land, and has caused the name of Michigan to be spoken with gratifying praise beyond the Atlantic.

All history attests that there is no instrumentality by which modern nations have done so much to increase their strength and happiness, to perpetuate the influence of their ideas, to win the honor and gratitude of mankind, as by their great schools of learning. Bologna, Salerno, and Padua thus stretched the sway of Italy far into transalpine lands. Paris has for centuries been the intellectual exchange of Europe. Oxford and Cambridge have helped to mould the lives and daily thought of every one of us. The sceptre of Berlin and of Bonn rules over a territory a hundred-fold wider than that which Bismarck has laid at the feet of his Imperial master. Dynasties come and go, Bourbons, Napoleons, Tudors, Hohenstaufens appear and disappear, kingdoms and States rise and fall, but amid all the vicissitudes of earthly affairs the great universities are the most vital and enduring of all human institutions.

This University is yet comparatively in its infancy. Citizens of Michigan, you who are now building its walls are really laying foundations. Let no penny wise economy tempt you to use untempered mortar. Divine Providence has opened to you a golden opportunity, such as comes not often in the history of a State. Seize upon it with thanksgiving. Show by the largeness of your work that you appreciate the call, and the favor of Heaven shall rest upon you and generations shall rise up to call you blessed.