diploma also expressed the hope that " you so comport yourselves on the great mission of life on which you are now about to enter, that you may be ornaments to your country, blessings to mankind, and faithful servants of Almighty God." Horace Mann also brought rare ability as a fine and inspiring executive. The history of his twelve years of service as secretary of the newly created Board of Education of Massachusetts is evidence of this unique power. Furthermore, Horace Mann was a speaker of great force and effectiveness. His addresses were the exponent of a heart great in its love for humanity and warm with a desire to promote humanity's welfare. He was moreover, as a college president, a lover of the individual student. In his personal relation with the faithless ones he was often in his earnestness moved to tears. On his deathbed he called the students to him and gave to individuals, as well as to the body, religious and ethical counsel.

But, despite these great qualities, which under ordinary conditions would have insured success, failure was inevitable. For there were serious deficiencies in his intellectual character. He was not a philosopher in education, and he was not a scholar. He was a man of action. Beyond the practical value of the different studies he had little appreciation of their worth. The type of his mind was discursive, not critical. His inaugural address comprised more than twenty thousand words, and his first baccalaureate more than twelve thousand. His heart constantly overflowed into the intellect, and at times seemed to congest it. In his tremendous earnestness was found little or no place for humor.

In the six years in which he served as president he frequently, in his letters to Theodore Parker, to Thomas Star King, and to other friends, refers to his work as the planting of a seed. In 1853 he writes:

"I am well aware that the seed which I hope to sow will hardly come up in my day." 2

"Life and Works of Horace Mann," vol. v, p. 499. 'Ibid., vol. i, p. 446.

In 1856 he wrote to Charles Sumner:

"Principles are the seeds to be sown in this field of time. The order of Nature, which is God's providence, will mature the fruit."1

His phrases remind one of the speech of Sir Walter Mildmay made to Queen Elizabeth about the foundation of Emmanuel.

Almost fifty years have passed since Horace Mann finished his work at Antioch College. Was he a true prophet in interpreting his work as the sowing of seed? As one thinks of the great purposes one is obliged to come to the conclusion that the interpretation was not so true as he believed. He had, indeed, uttered a protest against sectarianism, although it was sectarianism that, in no small share, caused the collapse of the College. He also, and with the utmost emphasis, made a declaration in favor of coeducation. The declaration was not needless, although Oberlin was embodying this method of training. The spirit of the times has, on the whole, aided in the recognition of this method as one of the primary methods of the higher education. The principle of antislavery, which was dear to his heart, and which as a Congressman he had done much to promote, was to be fought out on the fields of blood, and not to be decided in lecture rooms. Phrenology, to which he clung to the last, has been proved to be largely irrational. The principle of anti-emulation has also been proved to have a far narrower application than he believed. The war against tobacco was not, as has been intimated, important enough to represent and to command his great ability. The principle, moreover, of teetotalism was and is, like the principle of antislavery, one belonging rather to practical ethics than to the discussions of the college.

The work in and for the institution which he did has largely vanished. But the work which he did for the students of his brief administration lasts as long as character endures.

In the address introducing Horace Mann at the time of his inauguration it was said by the presiding officer:

"Under your administration, may this Institution flourish and grow as the cedars of Lebanon, and as the clouds send forth rain to fertilize the

1 "Life and Works of Horace Mann," vol. i, p. 496.

earth, may the streams of knowledge which go forth from this fountain, enrich the minds of rising generations for ages to come."

" 1

As one to-day visits Antioch College at Yellow Springs, and as one thinks of the collapse of the College soon following his own death, the conclusion is inevitable that the prayer uttered at the inauguration has been answered only in part.

"Life and Works of Horace Mann," vol. v, p. 312.

CHAPTER XIII

THE COURSE OF STUDY

For almost two hundred years after the foundation of Harvard College its course of study remained, in essential elements, unchanged. The great-great-grandchildren of Saltonstall, Wilson and Hubbard, of its first Class of 1642, were pursuing the same studies which their elders had pursued. But beginning with the first decades of the nineteenth century the course received significant enlargement. From that time to the present the development has been constant. The law of the growth of the course of study is the law of adaptation to environment. It is the law that as knowledge has grown the course itself has grown. Every enlargement of the domain of knowledge has ultimately resulted in the enlargement of the academic field. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the growth of knowledge was slow and slight; the change in the academic course was also slow and slight. In the nineteenth century the growth of knowledge has been rapid and great and the enlargement of the academic course has been consequently great and rapid.

In the first quarter of the nineteenth century all students of all the colleges were pursuing practically the same course. The common branches were Latin, Greek and Mathematics, including, in some colleges, on the one side arithmetic, and in some, on the other side, Calculus.1 Of the classical authors a larger part was read than is now usually read except by those who specialize in this department. The two chief ancient languages and mathematics represented the leading pursuits of the first three years. In the Senior year philosophy became dominant. Butler's" Analogy," Paley's "Evidences," Stewart's or Brown's

sion.

1 In 1816 at Harvard College arithmetic became a requirement for admis

"Philosophy," and Locke's "Essay on Human Understanding were the more common books read. In most institutions natural philosophy was required in at least a single year. Logic still held a place, but the place was not so large as in the former time. In a few colleges Hebrew was yet retained, although in most colleges it had been dropped. French, Spanish, Political Economy, Chemistry, Geology and Botany had begun to appear.

The most conspicuous and impressive addition made to the course of study in the first decades of the last century we find in the field of science. Chemistry was the first to secure a more worthy place. The vast discoveries made in chemistry in the last decades of the eighteenth and the first decades of the nineteenth century were presently incorporated into the course of academic instruction. Priestley's electro-chemical experiments upon ammonia gas made in 1775, Lavoisier's contributions to the logic of the science, the investigations of Nicholson and Carlisle made in 1800 upon the decomposition of water, represent significant methods and results. Sir Humphry Davy, Berzelius, and others in the first years of the first decade were making investigations which led, either immediately or remotely, to the vast increase of knowledge of the constitution of matter.

The first teaching of chemistry in American institutions was professional: it formed a part of the instruction in Materia Medica in medical schools. The Medical School of the University of Pennsylvania, in 1768, the Medical School of Harvard and the Medical School of Dartmouth College, in 1783 and 1798 respectively, introduced the subject. At William and Mary there was a professor of chemistry and natural philosophy as early as 1774, and Princeton, in 1795, appointed a professor of the subject. Within the first years of the new century at least five colleges introduced instruction: Columbia in 1802, Yale in 1803, Bowdoin in 1805, South Carolina, and Dickinson College in 1811. The struggle which the science had to secure an adequate place for itself is illustrated in the endeavors of the first Professor Silliman of Yale and of Professor Cooke at Harvard. The laboratory which was built for Silliman was, if not the first, among the first specially constructed in an American college. It was some fifteen or sixteen feet below the surface of the