University of Virginia Library

IV. Love of Science

We have now come to a third characteristic of Jefferson,
which we will find infused into the entire round of instruction
of the infant university,—this was the breadth,
versatility, and what may be called, the modernity of his
scientific outlook. If it is imperative to dwell upon his
political and religious opinions in order to obtain a just
conception of the institution at the start, it is equally necessary
to dwell, in a preliminary way, on his extraordinary
esteem for knowledge, and his unfailing interest in
all its departments. He had none of the spirit of the
specialist, which would have given a preponderance to
some one province in which he happened to be learned.
If he exhibited any preference at all, it was for architecture,
and even in this, he was, perhaps, chiefly influenced
by his anxiety to create a proper setting for his projected

university. All the different chairs which he established
enjoyed an equal dignity in his mind. Roundness and completeness
in each school was all that he aimed at. This
was as true of law as it was of the languages and the
sciences, although, as we have seen, he required that only
certain political doctrines and principles should be taught
in it; but his political creed he considered to be as much
the truth in an advanced form as the latest discoveries
brought to the attention of the students in the School of
Medicine or of Natural History.

Jefferson thought his early lessons to be so valuable
that he would often say that, if he were asked to choose
between the large estate devised to him by his father,
and the education bestowed upon him by the same bounteous
hand, he would select the last as that one of the
two benefits which he considered to be the most indispensable.
His tuition up to his fourteenth year was received
from a learned Scotchman; the next two years
were passed at the Maury School, famous in its day for
its classical thoroughness; and in his seventeenth year,
he entered the College of William and Mary. This was
in 1760, when he is said to have been very shy and
awkward in manner, rawboned in frame, with sandy hair
and a freckled face. The most fruitful side of his life
in Williamsburg was his intimate association with William
Small, professor of mathematics, and for a time
also of ethics, rhetoric, and belles-lettres, who had
brought over from his native Scotland an uncommon
share of the learning which had conferred such celebrity
on its universities. He was remarkable not only for his
knowledge of the sciences, rare in Virginia at that time,
but also for his ability to impart it; and he was still
more remarkable for the liberality of his opinions.

It was probably through the friendship of Small that

Jefferson first came to enjoy the companionship of Wythe
and Fauquier, the two most accomplished men of that day
in the Colony. At the table of Fauquier, he often
formed the fourth in what he dubbed the partie quarrée,
to which he owed the most instructive hours of this
period of his life. There, from Small he learned of that
vast field of natural science, in which he was to continue
to feel so keen an interest until the end; from Wythe,
of those great principles of jurisprudence which were
to enable him to become one of the foremost of American
social and political reformers; and from Fauquier, of the
arts of government as well as of the graces of courtly
bearing and the charms of urbane conversation. Such
familiar and constant intercourse must have deeply confirmed
those aptitudes which he, as a college youth, had
brought down to Williamsburg from his mountain home:
love of science, appreciation of literature and law, and
a relish for intellectual companionship.

He was as diligent a student throughout his college
course as he had been while still a pupil in the lower
schools. Indeed, he never sat down in idleness. "Even
in my boyhood," he once said to a grandson, "when
wearied of play, I always turned to books." It was to
the literature of Greece and Rome that he reverted with
the liveliest and most unfailing sense of enjoyment. It
was "a sublime luxury," he declared, to read the works
of the great classical authors,—that "rich source of
delight," as he also described them in a letter to Dr.
Priestley. "I would not exchange them for anything
which I could have acquired, and have not since acquired."
He often asserted that "these models of pure taste" had
saved English literature "from the inflated style of
our Teutonic ancestors, or from the hyperbolical and
vague style of the Oriental nations." "I have given up

newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides,"
he wrote John Adams, in 1812, "and I find myself much
the happier." And in his old age, when the energies
of his mind, as he said, had sunk in decay, he would turn
"to the classical pages to fill up the vacuum of ennui."

It is remarkable how slightly he depended for recreation
on the variety and beauty of the literature of his own
language. He seems to have been indebted to it only for
the clarity and precision of his flexible style. Unlike
many of his contemporaries, he had no familiar knowledge
of Shakespeare, and his letters are never garnished
by a quotation from that author, or indeed from any
English author of celebrity, with the possible exception
of Pope. His taste in English literature seems to have
been meretricious. "I think this rude bard of the North
(Ossian)," he wrote, "the greatest poet who has ever
existed." He preferred Homer to Milton and Polybius
to Gibbon. The profound impression which he made on
the character of the University of Virginia is revealed in
no particular more plainly than in the history of its school
of languages. His interest in the ancient tongues caused
him to employ the ablest scholars for those professorships
who could be procured from Europe; but the nearest
approach to an English chair was a barren school of
Anglo-Saxon. Is it the shadow of his comparative indifference
to English literature, projected through the century
which has followed, that explains the failure of the
University of Virginia to produce successful authors in
the normal proportion to successful lawyers, physicians,
clergymen, engineers, and men of business? As a
fructifying force in the field of even Southern literature,
the institution has not gained the reputation which it has
won in all the other departments of mental culture and
practical efficiency.

Although a classical scholar of merit, and a student of
several modern languages, it was toward natural science
that the intellectual curiosity of Jefferson was chiefly
directed. Nature, he wrote to Du Pont, in 1809, had
designed him for the tranquil pursuits of science by rendering
them his supreme delight. Small, he declared,
had fixed the destinies of his life. "From my conversations
with him, I got my first view ... of the system
of things in which we are placed." He was equally impatient
with the ignorant adult who raised a hue and cry
against science, and with the supercilious youth who
looked upon its acquisition as a waste of time. He had
a keen taste for mathematics, and in 1811, when he undertook
to instruct his grandson therein, he spoke of himself
as resuming its study with avidity; but, in reality,
he had far more relish for the investigation of Nature,
especially in the departments which would increase the
ease and wholesomeness of life. When he arranged for
a botanical garden at the University of Virginia, he gave
direction that only those plants should be cultivated which
were certain to be of practical use to his countrymen.
"The main object of all science," he said, "was the freedom
and happiness of man"; and no detail of it was too
small or too insignificant apparently to enlist his attention
if it should tend to secure these benefits.

This was signally true of agriculture, a pursuit which
always deeply interested him. His knowledge of it, in
every feature, was unfailingly at the service of his friends,
who were constantly seeking his advice. We find him
offering suggestions to both Cabell and Cocke as to the
hedges which they should plant for fences on their
farms to shut out the vagrant hogs and cattle. Would
barriers of holly, haw, cedar, locust or thorn be the best
for the purpose? He decided in favor of the thorn

for reasons based on his personal experiments. During
many years, he kept a meteorological record that was so
minute in its details as to excite the wonder of all who
read it. "It is astonishing," writes Cabell, "how you
could find time, in the midst of your other engagements,
to make such a prodigious number of observations." A
subject of long rumination with him was as to how to
contrive the mould-board of a plough that would offer
the least resistance in breaking up the ground. Concentrating
whatever inventive talent he possessed on this
problem, he sought its solution with the patient diligence
of a trained mathematician; and the upshot was the production
of a model so excellent that it won the formal
approval of the English Board of Agriculture, and the
gold prize from the Society of Paris. He imported
from Scotland a reaping machine that was expected to
hasten and cheapen the harvest; and he brought into
Albemarle county strains of foreign stock,—sheep,
hogs, and cattle, both male and female,—which would
improve the native breeds. He put himself to extraordinary
inconvenience while abroad to procure rice and
olives for testing in the soil of South Carolina, while his
garden-book brings to light his long course of experiments
with vegetables and fruits. He frequently distributed
seeds, roots, and plants among his correspondents, or sent
them to agricultural societies; and on one occasion at
least, he received from a friend in London in return,
specimens of every kind of pea and vetch that was grown
in English ground.

No prevailing heat of partisan controversy was
allowed to divert his thoughts from the branches of natural
history that interested him most. In 1798, when
the uproar of the threatened war with France was at
its height, he was writing to Mr. Nolan for information

about the herds of wild horses which were reported as
roaming over the western prairies; and during the following
year, when Federalists and Republicans were
fighting each other with tooth and claw, he exhibited the
keenest curiosity about the possibilities of Watt's new
application of the power of steam. Even when his
chances of election to the Presidency in 1801 were wavering
to and fro, he is found composing letters of eager
speculation over the origin of the mammoth bones then
recently exhumed in Ulster county, New York; the nativity
of the wild turkey; and the influence of the moon
on the turn of weather. In 1808, when a war-cloud was
looming between the United States and Great Britain,
three hundred bones from the prehistoric beds of Big
Lick were heaped up in a room of the White House
awaiting scientific classification,—a fact strongly reminiscent
of the wagon-load that had followed him to Philadelphia
for Dr. Wistar's inspection, when he went
thither to take the post of Vice-President.

It was Jefferson who dispatched Lewis and Clark on
their romantic expedition to the Columbia; and no one
gave Pike warmer and more intelligent encouragement in
his western explorations than he. It is precisely correct
to say of him that the enlightened policy which the
National Government has always pursued towards
scientific objects had its earliest impulse in his own liberal
attitude as Chief Magistrate. While American Minister
to the Court of Versailles, he never failed to inform
the Faculties of Harvard, William and Mary, Yale and
Pennsylvania, of all the recent acquisitions to science,
such as new data relating to astronomy, improvements in
agricultural and mechanical methods, and further discoveries
in the wide province of natural history. "He
was always on the lookout," says an English friend, who

was habitually in his company at this time, "to find new
ideas to send home." In the course of his residence in
Paris, he took a conspicuous part in a controversy over
the true reason for the presence of marine shells on
mountain-tops; and he successfully disputed the assertion
that the animal frame dwindled after several generations
passed in the climate of America. Buffon maintained
that the chemical laboratory was not superior in dignity
or value to the ordinary kitchen. "I think it amongst
the most useful of sciences," retorted the far-sighted
Jefferson, "and big with future discoveries for the utility
and safety of the human race. It is yet indeed a mere
embryo." But he did not show the same prescience
about geology; he obtusely enough took little interest in
that science because he was not able to foresee its practical
helpfulness to men. "What difference does it
make," he asked, "whether the earth is six hundred or
six thousand years old? And is it of any real importance
to know what is the composition of the various strata,
if they contain no coal or iron or other useful metals?"

Jefferson evinced only a respectable ingenuity in invention.
He was often spoken of as the "Father of the
Pension Office," which was established by authority of
Congress during the time he occupied the post of Secretary
of State, but his talents for mechanical contrivance
do not seem to have risen any higher than a mould-board,
a walking-stick that could be spread out to form a seat,
or a chair that revolved on a screw. Was a tribute to
his convivialty or to his genius in small though useful
inventions, intended by William Tatham in submitting to
him a device by which full decanters could be passed
more rapidly around the table? He showed a prophetic
interest in the plans to build torpedoes and sub-marines;
and writing to Robert Fulton, recommended that a corps

of young men should be educated exclusively for their
service. Although much disposed to have a jocular fling
at physicians, he was, nevertheless, an ardent student of
the subjects which engage their attention. Dr. Dunglison,
a member of the original Faculty of the University,
frequently remarked that Jefferson could have made himself
a master of the art of surgery,—so great was the
amateur skill which he exhibited in sewing up a wound,
or in setting a broken leg. It was characteristic of him
that he was one of the first Americans to submit to vaccination
as a preventive of smallpox.