The History of Dartmouth CollegeSmith, Baxter Perry
History
The History of Dartmouth College
Smith, Baxter Perry
Dartmouth College -- History
"It is of equal importance, that our colleges should be furnished with
the materials of study. It was a significant maxim, I think of
Juvenal, that it is a great part of learning to know where learning
may be found. For, after ascertaining the place of treasure, it is
usual to feel the kindling desire of acquisition, and the mind at once
receives a corresponding impulse to exertion. The man who has wasted
his best days in mental inaction, may feel himself so humbled amidst
the productions of genius and learning, which have not instructed him,
and instruments, of which he knows not the use, and specimens and
models whose properties and beauties he cannot distinguish, that he
will wish rather to retreat and forget his poverty, in the
gratifications of inferior appetite. But, on these same scenes, the
fires of youthful unprostituted ambition glow with a new intensity,
and the mind, here waking to the consciousness of its own energies,
aspires to the elevation and dignity for which it is designed. The
well stored library and philosophical room and cabinet, create an
atmosphere, in which it acts with an unwonted freedom and force, and
strengthens itself for the high and laborious service to which it is
devoted.
"But, apart from the influence of such scenes and their associations,
there are more palpable reasons, which especially at this day, call
for a great increase of books and apparatus in our literary
institutions.
"The time has been, when a few worn out text books, descending from
one generation of students to another, were thought sufficient for the
purposes of a liberal education. But, in that wider range of
investigation, to which the mind is now directed, in all departments
of study, every source of information requires to be laid open. It is
not the lesson from a single author, that is alone sufficient to be
committed, but the _subject_, of which possibly a score have treated,
that requires to be examined and understood. And neither can the
teacher nor the student feel himself adequate to the services before
him while any valuable authority, on the broad field of his inquiries,
is not accessible, or any means of illustration are unattempted. But
these facilities are clearly beyond the resources of individuals, and
however voluntary associations of students may, to some extent,
compensate for private inability, there is a point beyond which public
sentiment declares this to be a burden; and it demands that the
institutions themselves, which proffer the benefits of education,
should supply the means by which this end is to be attained. The
question between different places of education, is coming to be
decided, more frequently, by reference to the comparative advantages
which they afford in this respect; and, however it may be necessary
that a college should hold out some show of other accommodation, yet
neither the convenience of its situation, nor the splendor of its
edifices, nor the number and variety of its departments and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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