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 quarree, 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 anal 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.