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INAUGURAL SPEECHES

INAUGURAL ADDRESS

BY A. LAWRENCE LOWELL

Among his other wise sayings, Aristotle remarked that man is by nature a social animal; and it is in order to develop his powers as a social being that American colleges exist. The object of the undergraduate department is not to produce hermits, each imprisoned in the cell of his own intellectual pursuits, but men fitted to take their places in the community and live in contact with their fellow men.

The college of the old type possest a solidarity which enabled it to fulfil that purpose well enough in its time, altho on a narrow scale and a lower plane than we aspire to at the present day. It was so small that the students were all well acquainted with one another, or at least with their classmates. They were constantly thrown together, in chapel, in the classroom, in the dining hall, in the college dormitories, in their simple forms of recreation; and they were constantly measuring themselves by one standard in their common occupations. The curriculum, consisting mainly of the classics, with a little mathematics, philosophy, and history, was the same for them all; designed, as it was, not only as a preparation for the professions of the ministry and the law, but also as the universal foundation of liberal education.

In the course of time these simple methods were outgrown. President Eliot pointed out, with unanswerable force, that the field of human knowledge had long been too vast for any man to compass; and that now subjects must be admitted to the scheme of instruction, which became thereby so large that no student could follow it all. Before the end of the nineteenth century this was generally recognized, and election in some form was introduced into all our colleges. But the new methods brought a divergence in the courses of study pursued by individual students, an

intellectual isolation, which broke down the old solidarity. In the larger institutions the process has been hastened by the great increase in numbers, and in many cases by an abandonment of the policy of housing the bulk of the students in college dormitories; with the result that college life has shown a marked tendency to disintegrate, both intellectually and socially. To that disintegration the overshadowing interest in athletic games appears to be partly due. I believe strongly in the physical and moral value of athletic sports, and of intercollegiate contests conducted in a spirit of generous rivalry; and I do not believe that their exaggerated prominence at the present day is to be attributed to a conviction on the part of the undergraduates, or of the public, that physical is more valuable than mental force. It is due rather to the fact that such contests offer to students the one common interest, the only striking occasion for a display of college solidarity.

If the changes wrought in the college have weakened the old solidarity and unity of aim, they have let in light and air. They have given us a freedom of movement needed for further progress. May we not say of the extreme elective system what Edmond Sherer said of Democracy: that it is but one stage in an irresistible march toward an unknown goal. Progress means change, and every kind of growth is a transitional era; but in a peculiar degree the present state of the American college bears the marks of a period of transition. This is seen in the comparatively small estimation in which high proficiency in college studies is held, both by undergraduates and by the public at large; for if college education were now closely adapted to the needs of the community, excellence of achievement therein ought to be generally recognized as of great value. The transitional nature of existing conditions is seen again in the absence, among instructors as well as students, of fixt principles by which the choice of courses of study ought to be guided. It is seen, more markedly still, in lack of any accepted view of the ultimate object of a college education.

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