RESPONSE BY JACOB GOULD SCHURMAN, PH.D., LL.D., FORMER PRESIDENT OF
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
This splendid dinner, so characteristic of the generous hospitality of the
South, marks the close of three of the four days set apart for your Centennial
Celebration.
It is difficult to imagine what remains for you to do to-morrow. Certainly
the past three days have been for us all days of noble and elevated
joy. We have been genuinely conscious of a fraternal communion and interchange
of spirit and sentiment. Not only the speakers, but the great company
of delegates and visitors have joined in the well-merited congratulations
and cordial good wishes which the speakers brought you on behalf of
sister institutions.
Have the triumphs of truth and reason in this University been eloquently
set forth? The silent auditors, as you might have recognized from
many signs of approval, make those eloquent tributes their own. Has the
influence of this University in molding the religious life of the Nation been
justly assessed? The audience joins you in the testimony that man lives
not by bread alone—nor yet by bread and science together. Have you set up
memorials to your heroic dead? In the presence of your tears, in the hearing
of your prayers, we bow our heads and devoutly give thanks that the
University of Virginia has been so preëminent in the training of men for the
service of the Republic.
Not only oratory, you have invoked also music and art and pageantry
to give worthy expression to the spirit of this occasion. And the spirit seems
to me as manifold as the media of its expression are varied. No doubt the
primary note is the exaltation of the scientific and scholarly mind, for the
formation of which universities were called into being and after the lapse of
so many centuries still continue to exist and flourish. But life is more than
intellect. And the university is in close and friendly alliance with the
church, the state, and every other institution which makes for the improvement
and advancement of mankind. Thus, most appropriately, you have
made your high celebration a means not alone of stimulating intellect, but
also of awakening historical imagination, of quickening patriotism, and of
deepening the sense of the religious significance of life.
All this might have been done, nay, all this I have seen done, by other
universities at home and abroad. But there is one feature of your Celebration
which is absolutely unique. No other historic university could have
arranged to make a pilgrimage to the home of its founder and under the very
roof where he spent his mortal days pay honor to his memory as we this
afternoon at Monticello all-hailed the Father of the University of Virginia.
There is often a contrast, which may amount even to contradiction,
between the founders and benefactors of colleges and universities and the
proper ideals of the institutions which they have called into existence. The
things which give them pleasure, the objects they pursue from day to day,
the literature they read, the thoughts which make the furniture of their
minds, may be entirely alien to the life of the devoted scholar or scientist.
And their conception of his function, and of the ways and means of performing
it, are likely to differ entirely from his. Here lies the possibility of fatal
collisions! The millionaire benefactor, apart from his benefaction, has
seldom been an object of enthusiasm either on the part of teachers or
students. Nor can I imagine that Henry VIII or even Wolsey was ever
regarded as an exemplar for the young gentleman of Christ Church. It was
not merely cynicism that inspired Goldwin Smith's
bon mot that the proper
place for a Founder was in marble effigy in the College chapel!
The University of Virginia is in this regard fortunate in her Founder.
No doubt Jefferson's thorough-going democracy predisposed him in some
matters to defer too much to popular opinion; and the principle of vox populi
vox dei is fatal to the life of a university. But it was only in politics that he
would determine truth by counting noses. In other spheres he insisted on
evidence, and if evidence were lacking he suspended judgment. In this
respect he was the very embodiment of scientific method. Indeed, all things
considered and all necessary abatements made, you will find a remarkable
harmony between the mental postulates, operations, and outlook of Jefferson
and the spirit of a genuine university. Here and now I can signalize only
one or two of these features.
In the first place, Jefferson was above everything else an idealist.
Those who would disparage him called him an impractical visionary. Certainly
he was ready to theorize on any subject which engaged his thought.
The force of his penetrating intelligence could not be restrained by any
convention, however respectable, or by any tradition, however venerable.
He was a thinker who must see and understand for himself. The dread of
new ideas, which is a universal characteristic of mankind, had no place in the
composition of that daring spirit. On the contrary, the fact that a theory
was new commended it to one who, like Jefferson, ardently believed in
progress and zealously strove for the advancement of mankind. He did not
mind being branded as a radical or a revolutionist. His sanguine taste for
novelty was exhibited in all his activities—in agriculture, in which he was all
his life an enthusiast, as well as in politics, in which for forty years he was an
unrivaled leader. And no consequences deterred him from following the
principles he had embraced to their logical conclusions. If the "rights of
man" signified to his mind an almost entire absence of governmental control
he did not hesitate to declare that "a little rebellion now and then is a good
thing."
Now this hospitality to new ideas, even to the extent of being enamoured
by their novelty, and this readiness to follow new ideas whithersoever
they lead—till they eventually proved themselves true or false—is the
animating spirit of a genuine university. On this more than anything else
whatever the intellectual progress of mankind depends. Has not Darwin,
indeed, taught us that the evolution of life, from lower to higher forms, is due
to the survival of characteristics which on their first appearance can only be
described as "sports" or freaks? And, in the realm of mind it is just by
means of the "freakish" ideas of dreamers and visionaries that successive
steps of progress are effected. In the highest conception of it a university
is an organ for the creation, development and dissemination of new ideas.
I do not recall any time when this high and vital function of the university
stood in need of greater emphasis. We are to-day living in one of
those periods of reaction which invariably follow war. The exhibition of
physical power which for four and a half years convulsed the world still
dominates our habit of thought. The invisible world of ideas seems weak
and insignificant beside that colossal empire of all-compelling might. And
if the two come, or appear to come, into conflict men invoke force to suppress
new theories, which can always be branded as dangerous, if not also
disloyal. But vis consili expers mole ruit sua.
Now the university is the nursery of new ideas. Its members are, in the
fine phrase of Heine, "knights of the holy spirit"—the holy spirit of truth
and culture. I trust that a fresh dedication to that noble service may be one
of the results of this celebration of the Centennial of the University founded
by Jefferson.
There is a second service rendered by Jefferson to this University which
you will perhaps grant me the time briefly to mention. I can describe it
best by contrast. All institutions tend to lose themselves in their own instrumentalities.
A university has buildings to care for and funds to invest
and enlarge and routine business to administer. But a university is a spiritual
institution. It has to do with mind, and exists for mind. The danger
to-day is that the real university shall be submerged by its "plant" and
"business."
Are not universities corporations? And should they not be conducted
like financial or manufacturing corporations? Nay, should not heads for
them be found in the offices of Wall Street or the factories of Pittsburg?
These are the questions we hear in the marts and markets to-day.
In contrast with the implications of these questions, stands Jefferson's
just and noble conception of a university. He clearly perceived that it was
the Faculty that made the University. And that the Faculty might not be
dislodged from the high place that naturally belonged to it, he would have
no president at all but leave the administration of the institution in their
hands.
I think Jefferson sacrificed to this fine idea the obvious means of administrative
efficiency. And I argued that thesis in a long letter fifteen or
twenty years ago when your Trustees did me the honor of soliciting my
opinion regarding the creation of the presidential office in this University.
Undoubtedly the course of university development in the United States
had made such an office a necessity. But even that reform would have been
purchased too dearly, if it had involved the abandonment of Jefferson's
conception in respect of the supremacy rightfully belonging to the Faculty.
Nothing whatever can change the fact that in relation to the teachers and
investigators, not only all material appliances, but also all governing and
administrative officials—even the highest—exist solely that they may do
their work in quiet and freedom and utter devotion with the minimum of
distraction and the maximum of efficiency.
Happily the University of Virginia found the right man for the new
office. We join you in rejoicing over the success of President Alderman's
administration! Long may he continue to go in and out among you as your
intellectual leader and the worthy exponent of your spirit.
But though methods of administration vary, Jefferson's conception of
the place and function of the Faculty is so true and precious that the University
can never afford to part with it. It is through the eminence of its
professors that the University of Virginia has attained the great influence
and the high standing which it to-day enjoys. May their tribe continue and
increase! So shall the noble University which they serve and of which all
America is proud fulfill the universal heart's desire: Semper Floreat!
