Great American Speeches

NEW YORK, N. Y., Dec. 22, 1877 - The humorous approach to grave questions that characterizes Dr. Charles W. Eliot, at 43 years of age already president of Harvard University for eight years, found sparkling outlet tonight as he punctured with ridicule a current movement for the founding by the Government of a national university.

Universities must be built upon the ideals of the nation, he said, and proceeded then briefly to tear apart the thesis that the Congress could operate such an undertaking. In fact, the transcript of his remarks shows insertion of the word "applause" at almost every period.

Dr. Eliot spoke at the annual dinner of the New England Society here, in response to the toast, "Harvard and Yale," honoring jointly the universities in New England that are respectively the first and second in the United States in age.

Mr. President and gentlemen: I am obliged to my friend Dr. Clarke (James Freeman Clarke, D. C.) for the complimentary terms in which he has presented me to you. But I must appeal to your commiseration. Harvard and Yale! Can any undergraduate of either institution, can any recent graduate of either institution, imagine a man responding to that toast? ...

We shall all agree that it is for the best interests of this country that it have sundry universities, of diverse tone, atmosphere, sphere, representing different opinions and different methods of study to some extent, and in different trainings, though with the same end.

Holding this view, I have been somewhat concerned to see of late that the original differences between Harvard and Yale seem to be rapidly disappearing. For example, a good many years ago, Harvard set out on what is called the {{elective" system, and now I read in the Yale catalogue along list of studies called "optional," which strikes me as bearing a strong re- semblance to our elective courses. ...

Now, it is unquestioned, that about the year 1700 a certain number of Congregationalist clergymen, who belonged to the Established Church (for we are too apt to forget that Congregationalism was the "Established Church" of that time, and none other was allowed), thought that Harvard was getting altogether too latitudinarian, and though they were every one of them graduates of Harvard, they went off and set up another college in Connecticut, where a stricter doctrine should be taught. Harvard men have rather nursed the hope that this distinction between Harvard and Yale might be permanent. But I regret to say that I have lately observed many strong indications that it is wholly likely to disappear.

For example, to come at once to the foundations, I read in the papers the other day, and I am credibly informed it is true, that the head of Yale College voted to install a minister whose opinions upon the vital, pivotal, fundamental doctrine of eternal damnation are unsound. Then, again, I look at the annual reports of the Bureau of Education on this department at Washington, and I read there for some years that Harvard College was unsectarian; and I knew that it was right, because I made the return myself.

I read also that Yale College was a Congregationalist College; and I had no doubt that that was right, because I supposed Dr. Porter had made the report. But now we read in that same report that Yale College is unsectarian. That is a great progress. The fact is, both these universities have found out that in a country which has no established church and no dominant sect you cannot build a university on a sect at all-you must build it upon the nation.

But, gentlemen, there are some other points, I think, of national education on which we shall find these two early founded universities to agree. For example, we have lately read, in the Message of the Chief Magistrate, that a national university would be a good thing. Harvard and Yale are of one mind upon that subject, but they want to have a national university defined. If it means a university of national resort, we say amen. If it means a university where the youth of this land are taught to love their country and to serve her, we say amen; and we point, both of us, to our past in proof that we are national in that sense. But if it means that the national university is to be a university administered and managed by the wise Congress of the United States, then we should agree in taking some slight exceptions.

We should not question for a moment the capacity of Congress to pick out and appoint the professors of Latin and Greek, and the ancient languages, because we find that there is an astonishing number of classical orators in Congress, and there is manifested there a singular acquaintance with the legislation of all the Latin races. But when it should come to some other humbler professorships we might perhaps entertain a doubt. For example, we have not entire faith in the trust that Congress has in the unchangeableness of the laws of arithmetic. We might think that their competency to select a professor of history might be doubted. They seem to have an impression that there is such a thing as" American" political economy, which can no more be than "American" chemistry or "American" physics. Finally, gentlemen, we should a little distrust the selection by Congress of a professor of ethics. Of course, we should feel no doubt in regard to the tenure of office of the professors being entirely suitable, it being the well-known practice of both branches of Congress to select men solely for fitness, without regard to locality, and to keep them in office as long as they are competent and faithful.

~ Postlogue ~
Had Dr. Eliot closed his career at this point, he would have been remembered as one of America's great educators, as well as the first layman and scientist to be chosen for the presidency of Harvard, instead of the customary clergyman. He had been called to this position, in fact, largely because of a paper on "The New Education," published in the Atlantic Monthly. But in 1877 Dr. Eliot was just beginning. He served Harvard for 40 years-as has been remarked, he found it a collection of small colleges and left it a great university.

Living until 1926, he used his "retirement" for a series of other activities that made him a world figure and, as probably his best known intellectual legacy to the public, he edited the collection of classics, still in constant demand, known throughout the world as "Dr. Eliot's Five Foot Shelf."