The History of Dartmouth CollegeSmith, Baxter Perry
History
The History of Dartmouth College
Smith, Baxter Perry
Dartmouth College -- History
Rev. Samuel C. Bartlett, D.D., of the Chicago Theological Seminary,
was elected the eighth president of the college. We insert entire his
inaugural address, delivered at the Commencement, June, 1877:
"Certain occasions seem to prescribe their own themes of discourse,
and certain themes are endowed with perpetual life. There are problems
with which each coming generation and each last man grapples as
freshly as the first.
"How shall the ripest growth of the ages be imparted to one young
soul? Twice, at least, in a lifetime, is this great question wont to
rise solemnly before each thoughtful man--when he looks forward in
youthful hope, and when he looks back in parental solicitude. It is a
question of many forms and multiplying answers. Shall there be a long,
fundamental training, wide and general? or, shall it be closely
professional? Shall it be predominantly classic, or scientific, or
esthetic, or empiric? Many, or much? For accomplishment, or for
accomplishing? Shall it fit for the tour of Europe, or for the journey
of life? Masculine and feminine, or vaguely human? Shall it rattle
with the drum-beat, bound with gymnastics, court fame by excursive
"nines" not known on Helicon, and challenge British Oxford, alas? with
its boat crew? Shall the American College student follow his option,
or his curriculum? And shall the college itself be a school for
schoolmasters, a collection of debating clubs, a reading-room with
library attached, an intellectual quarantine for the plague of riches?
or, a place of close and protracted drill, of definite methods, of
prescribed intellectual work? Shall it fulfill the statement of the
Concord sage,--'You send your son to the schoolmasters, and the
schoolboys educate him?' or, shall a strong faculty make and mark the
whole tone of the institution?
"In these and other forms is the same fundamental question still
thrust sharply before us. I do not propose to move directly on such a
line of bristling bayonets, but to make my way by a flank movement
across this "wilderness" of conflict. It will go far towards
determining the methods of a liberal education, if we first ascertain,
as I propose to do, The Chief Elements of a Manly Culture.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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