and for the sufficient test of the answer, I allowed no en-
gagement for Sunday to interfere with this fixed engage-
ment. I resolved also that except in cases where some
consecutive treatment of a subject was necessary, each
service should have the freedom of subject to which it
might seem to be entitled. It remained only that I should
hold consistently to certain objects which, though per-
sonal and unannounced, should guide me in the conduct of
the service and in the choice of subjects. The time allotted
in the service for direct address was fifteen minutes — an
allowance which I determined should not be exceeded, re-
garding adherence to it to be as much a matter of intel-
lectual discipline on my part, as of honest conformity to
academic limitations. The honesties which inhere in the
THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 341
use of time are taught and practiced more faithfully in
the classroom than in the pulpit.
I did not assume in this determination to gain access to
the mind of the College, that I had the full understanding
of it. It was to be a matter of continued study; but I was
quite sure of the fact, since stated with fine discrimination
by President Lowell, that "college work may affect the
fortunes of a life-time more profoundly than the studies
of boyhood or of the professional school, but the ordinary
student does not know it." This unrealized meaning of the
college discipline is a state of mind to be recognized but
not accepted. Full realization may not be expected and
premature realization is not to be desired, but the process
of self-realization in and through the environment of the
College is a part, and a very important part, of the process
of education. The work of the College in all of its depart-
ments tended, of course, directly or indirectly to this end;
but as I saw the situation, there were definite points of
which the classroom could not take cognizance or upon
which it could not lay sufficient emphasis. It seemed to
me to be necessary, as a complement to the work of the
classroom, that there should be some direct and authorized
endeavor to stir up the mind of the College to the under-
standing of the meaning of its own personality, individual
and collective; to keep its mind open and sensitive to that
human world of which it was a part, though for a while
detached, that in due time it might enter more fully into
its life; and also to give the mind of the College some
vision of that larger environment, whose boundaries are
discernible and accessible to faith. In other words, there
was need of some agency in and of the College which
should pursue in all fitting variety of form the one object,
342 MY GENERATION
to interpret and quicken the sense of the personal, the
sense of the human as felt in the life of the world, and the
religious sense. As the situation then was at Dartmouth,
this specific task fell, as I have said, to the lot of the
President, and I accepted it as an opportunity not to be
set aside.
In accepting it, however, in this light, I recognized clearly
the fact that there were certain characteristics of the col-
lege period which were to be accepted with it, and were
in no case, even when their liabilities were most evident,
to be disregarded. In fact they were, as I regarded them,
rather the necessary conditions of fulfilling the college
function in the educational system. The first of these con-
ditions was freedom — freedom as understood elsewhere
and in other relations. This condition applied especially
to the development of personality, where on account of
the transition of the average student from a previous stage
of restraint, the temptation was at times great to continue
the process of repression. I found it necessary to keep
constantly in mind the fact that there could be no awak-
ening of the mind to the real meaning of personality, with-
out a quickening of the sense of personal power; and
further, that in this quickening of the sense of personal
power, lay the chief safeguard of freedom of thought and
action. It also seemed necessary to make clear to the
student mind the distinction between the development
of individuality and the development of personality —
the former the measure of the difference between one man
and another or between one and the many, the latter the
measure of the fullness of one's own nature. This alone
when realized, as I sought to show, is the distinction of all
true greatness; this individualizes the really great man
THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 343
and makes the essential diflFerence between him and other
men.
In "Personal Power," published after my retirement,
I gathered up a considerable number of sermons and ad-
dresses, in which the spirit and aims of the chapel talks
were embodied. This volume was not at all a reproduction
of the chapel talks, for these were entirely informal, but a
more formal expression of the same purpose and method
which had guided me in the attempt to develop the sense
of personality in the college man.
\' Next to the development of the sense of the personal, I
put the development of the sense of the human, the sensi-
tive consciousness, that is, of one's part in the life of the
world. Rut here again it was necessary to have regard to a
characteristic of the college period, in some respects con-
tradictory in its effect, namely, a certain formal detach-
ment from the more responsible and burdened life of the
world. This detachment was a recognized condition of
the college discipline to insure the command of time, and
necessary to give the right perspective through which to
view the world. It implied the possibility not only of seeing
things in their proper relations and proportions, but also
the possibility of looking upon them with a mind freed
from passion and prejudice. Rut to offset the manifest
danger from this detachment, there was need of holding
the mind of the College in serious contact with its larger
human environment. The thought of the average student
about the world is quite irresponsible. He turns to the
outer world for amusement, or if he is poor, for aid to self-
support. Otherwise his personal interest is limited, and
seldom passes over into any form of concern for its welfare.
Of course, the immediate and perhaps more permanent
344 MY GENERATION
loss from any such intellectual or moral indifference falls
more heavily upon the student himself than upon the
world. For interest in the broadly human he substitutes,
though often unconsciously, some form of class conscious-
ness. His danger is not so much that of relapsing into mere
individualism as of allowing himself to be segregated in a
class. This habit once acquired, the pitfalls of a large part
of the unhumanized world await him — the various pit-
falls of class consciousness, in place of the broad vital
consciousness of the human, the social class, the money
class, the labor class, the party, the profession. His danger
is really that of becoming a mere fragment, rather than an
integral part of the life about him.
"Public-Mindedness," a volume of my public addresses
on various aspects of good citizenship, reflects the spirit
and tone of the familiar talks at Rollins Chapel on the
sense of the human, as a part of the moral equipment of
the college man in his contact with the world.
I refer to the religious sense last because it seemed to
me that it was to be assumed. As the old-time "Preacher"
put the matter with such convincing finality — Eccle-
siastes iii: 11 — "He hath made everything beautiful in
its time: also He hath set eternity in their heart, yet so that
man cannot find out the work that God hath done from
the beginning even to the end." This implanting of
"eternity" in the heart of man, it is to be assumed, has
made the religious sense an abiding force in the midst
alike of the distracting beauty of the world, and the be-
wildering mystery of the universe. There are unrealities
in many of the conventional beliefs of men, but I know of
nothing in them to compare with the absolute unreality
of mere unbelief. But here again, as in the development
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THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 345
of the sense of the personal and of the sense of the human,
it became evident to me that the development of the re-
ligious sense must accord with the habit of mind induced
by academic training, namely, the questioning habit. The
academic approach to a subject, the attack if the subject
be difficult, is through the question. The question persisted
in becomes research, and the cumulative result to the
questioner the scientific habit of mind. But one of the
unconscious effects is often seen in a certain sag of the
mind, the easy relapse into a merely questioning mood, in
which subjects of high moment may be set aside for pos-
sible consideration without regard to their intrinsic im-
portance. And this laissez-faire state of mind may be
coupled with such pride of intellectual freedom as to create
a well-nigh insufferable conceit. It was doubtless such an
exhibition of conceit as called out the impatient reply
of the jNIaster of Balliol to the casual remark of a student
who presented himself for matriculation, one of the con-
ditions being the assent of the applicant to an article
affirming the existence of God, "Well, I haven't made up
my mind on that subject" — "I'll give you fifteen min-
utes to make it up." But I always felt that any like ex-
hibition of ephemeral conceit was to be carefully dis-
tinguished from doubt. The doubting mind always seemed
to me to be a part of the believing mind, and to be so
classed. The genuinely doubting mind welcomes the inter-
pretation of truth in place of fruitless argument and
discussion.
The College Chapel, as I believe, should allow the spirit
of the philosophical classroom, but it has its own atmo-
sphere. It seeks not only the demonstration of truth, but
the impression of truth. Religion has its times and seasons
346 MY GENERATION
which may properly be utilized. I never hesitated to ob-
serve the seasons of Advent and Lent for direct religious
impression. Academic religion has its limitations, but it is
not straitened in itself, or in any use of rational means
for the development of the religious sense. The college
environment may not shut out that larger environment of
the human world; much less may it shut out that far
greater environment which corresponds to the "eternity"
set in every human heart.
I hesitate to go further. The remembrances of the fifteen
years of contact with the mind of the College, through the
Sunday Vespers in Rollins Chapel, are in many ways too
personal even for the pages of an autobiography. The
generations of college men as they came and went, filling
the rows of the chapel benches, still pass before me in the
orderly procession of the years. But the service itself as
a medium of personal contact with the College, may be
noted as an illustration of one method through which so
desirable an end may be reached. More frequent use has
been, and is still being made of the classroom. Other ways
are yet more individual. Some men have the gifts of the
"ofiice" quite as marked in their influence as the gifts of
the "chair." The chapel service came to me as my op-
portunity, and soon became recognized as such, for seeking
to affect the college morale. I may therefore quote in this
connection the opinion of two or three who have put on
record their lestimate of the meaning of the service. In a
paper read by Professor Asakawa of Yale at the fifteenth
reunion of his own class (1899) at Dartmouth, and printed
in the "Dartmouth Alumni Magazine" of March, 1915,
the writer enters into a most critical interpretation of this
particular service rendered by "our teacher," as he applies
THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 347
to me the term of such honor to the Eastern mind. The
whole paper interprets the intent and method of the serv-
ice with an insight and miderstanding which humbled
me as I read it. I was greatly pleased with this mark of Dr.
Asakawa's fine discernment: "How many of us reahzed
that while we were being stimulated by Dr. Tucker, he
himself was drawing inspiration from his work for us?
. . . So there w^as give-and-take between him and us; no
doubt he gave us more than we ever knew, and took
from us more than we were able to take from him."
In a brief review of the period of my administration con-
tributed to the College "^Egis" of 1911, Professor Charles
F. Richardson gave the following estimate of the relative
value of this service as compared with the external results
of the administration: "In my opinion his (President
Tucker's) largest, most important and enduring achieve-
ment has been . . . the effect of his personality and his
teachings upon . . . the undergraduate body. This influ-
ence has been made manifest . . . most of all in his Sun-
day evening talks at Rollins Chapel. These have been
virtually unique. . . . Every Dartmouth alumnus of the
past sixteen years will agree with me that whatever he has
got from the classroom, societies, friendships, or the ath-
letic field, nothing quite takes the place in his tenderest
memories of college days, of Dr. Tucker's vesper talks
Sunday after Sunday."
I cannot refrain from adding to these expressions of
opinion from within the College, this interpretation by
Professor Francis G. Peabody of the characteristics of the
type of preaching disclosed in the volume of sermons
based on the chapel service. I am indebted beyond all
claims of personal friendship for such a recognition of the
348 MY GENERATION
purpose of these sermons, by one who is the acknowledged
master in the college pulpit of New England. Contrasting
the different methods pursued by English and American
college preachers in an article on "University Preaching"
in the "Harvard Theological Review" for April, 1916, he
passes on to the discussion of the possibility of combining
the more intimate approach of- the American preacher
with the larger horizon of the English preacher:
This synthesis of vitality with wisdom, of personal appeal with
philosophical insight, is not without distinguished illustration in
the university preaching of the United States. "The Counsels
to College Men," the sub-title of "Personal Power," by Pres-
ident Tucker of Dartmouth College, for example (one of sev-
eral volumes of college sermons referred to), combine in a
striking degree the intimate approach and the large horizon.
In their primary concern for students as hearers they depart
from the English tradition; but in their sweep of thought and
large conclusions they are of the school of Newman and Mozley.
"Let me speak to you of the satisfactions of life," begins one of
these discourses, as though preacher and student stood together
on the level of ordinary experience; but the same sermon ends
on the heights of mature and prophetic vision: "The modern
world will not long be the world which marked a sudden shift
from mediaevalism. The reaction is spent. Neither is it the
world of raw force or of rank material power. The noise and
smoke of its work, its sudden and unstable wealth, its pride
and vain-glory, its impossible art, its commercialized morals, its
crude, self-sufficient, unbelieving men — all these are fast going
the way of their kind. These do not make up the world of to-
morrow, the world in which your achievements are to be ranked
and in which you are to be measured. You are in a world which
will have ample room in it for the intellectual life, for rewarding
action of every kind, for sincere and satisfying companionship,
and for faith. Do not miss your place in it. Do not live out of
date. Make your own generation. Take the better fortune of
THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 349
your own time." Again the same preacher begins, with persua-
sive simpHcity, " I want to speak to you about Jesus' test of
moral maturity" ; but near its close he rises to the passage:
" I count it a great moral obligation of all believing men to
have faith in the working power of Christ's sayings. . . . Be-
lieve in men against appearances. Do not take men at their
word when they talk below themselves. Use the true, never
the false in human nature, and persist in doing this. So shall
you«gain access, every one of you in his own way, to the heart
of humanity." Here is movement, lift, enlargement, surprise.
Through the narrow door of personal experience the hearer is
led into the great temple of a rational faith. Moral insphation
and intellectual precision meet, and from their fusion proceed
light, heat, and power.
V
An Advanced Policy toward Non-Professional Graduates
College education in this country was from the very
beginning set to some definite end outside and beyond
itself. This end has been for the most part satisfied in the
relation of the colleges to the professions. A liberal educa-
tion has never been allowed to become the mere perquisite
of a leisure class. We have accepted the English require-
ment that it must be "fit for a gentleman," but we have
added the implication — a gentleman at work. With us
the natural complement of a liberal education has been a
professional life.
Dartmouth has always kept faith with the professions,
and never more strictly than in support of the recent
efforts for the advancement of professional standards.
There have been times, it is true, of an unapprehended
danger to the promotion of professional standards from
the stirrings of the university idea. The position of Dart-
mouth, relatively remote from the centers, but central to
350 MY GENERATION
a large and somewhat distinct territory, has frequently
suggested the ambition to assume the functions of a
university, which if reahzed would have added one more
to the aggregation of minor professional schools. The
presence of the medical school, existing almost from the
first in various relations to the College, has been a local
reminder of natural possibilities in this direction. Even
so sane a mind as that of President Lord was at one time
seriously infected with the university idea. In 1841, stim-
ulated by the largest enrollment in the history of the Col-
lege, placing it on a full numerical equality with an^ of
the New England colleges, he urged upon the Trustees the
restoration of the Chair of Divinity to active use, saying
that "another step," referring to the possible provision
for a law professorship, "will then place the College in the
position of a university, to which Divine Providence has
been so evidently leading it, and for which public opinion
is in a great degree prepared." The unaccountable decline
in the number of students which soon followed, though
temporary, and the consequent decline in current income,
put the project permanently out of thought during his
administration. The "idea," however, survived in a plan
to organize a "learned Society that should be nearly re-
lated to the College and serve to concentrate upon it the
moral and intellectual resources of the Northern part of
New England." This plan was consummated in the or-
ganization of the Northern Academy, which flourished for
quite a number of years as a literary society, and later was
resumed for a time as a scientific society, finally leaving as
its memorial a creditable collection of literary and scien-
tific works to be absorbed into the college library.
The university idea made a still stronger appeal to the
THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 351
vivid imagination of President Smith, and during his ad-
ministration came much nearer to realization. It was his
aim to concentrate the higher educational interests of the
State at Hanover, and through his efforts the New Hamp-
shire College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts was
first located there. The Thayer School was established in
his administration practically on the basis of a graduate
school. There was the definite promise, according to public
announcement, of three large bequests which had they
become available in his time, would have materially aided
in the working-out of his large plans. Their failure to
"arrive" till it was too late for his uses, was a pathetic
illustration of the saying as applied to successions in a
college presidency — "one soweth and another reapeth."
The subsequent removal of the Agricultural College to
Durham, which took place just before the close of Pres-
ident Bartlett's administration, closed the door to further
efforts in behalf of a university based on State needs or
resources. The sympathies and activities of President
Bartlett were altogether in favor of the development of
the College as such. It was through his negotiation with
the heirs of the estate of Chief Justice Joel Parker that the
bequest left to the College for the establishment of a Law
School was converted into the foundation of a professor-
ship of Law and Political Science, and into a library fund
for its uses. I recall, however, in the early part of my ad-
ministration, a correspondence with one of our ablest legal
graduates, Professor William C. Robinson of the Yale
Law School, urging upon me the recovery of this fund to
its first proposed use, with an appeal to the alumni and
to the State to supplement the fund with an amount suf-
ficient for the endowment of a School. He urged this on
352 MY GENERATION
the ground largely of state advantage, declaring that New
Hampshire was, with one exception, the only State in the
Union without a law school. I replied that I failed to see
the local necessity in view of the proximity of neighboring
schools of recognized merit, and that I could not advise
the establishment of a law school in connection with
Dartmouth which might fall below their standard. I
argued that Dartmouth in this matter owed more to the
profession than to the State.
In regard to the Medical School, so long and honorably
identified with the College, it may be said that it was
brought step by step into harmony with the progress of
medical instruction — first in 1890, near the close of
President Bartlett's administration, by making it a four
years' course, then some years later during my adminis-
tration, by requiring a college training or its equivalent
for admission, and finally in President Nichols's adminis-
tration, being unable to satisfy the full requirements of
the American Medical Association in the matter of hospital
service, by giving up the last two years, that the school
might retain in the first two years its A standing among
the schools.
For the teaching profession, the College has not at-
tempted to establish a Graduate School. Graduate study
has been confined to a few departments which have had
at times special facilities for carrying it on successfully.
In one way or other — in its earlier history by the force
of circumstances and in later times by fixed purpose —
Dartmouth had been preserved from becoming the danger
to the professions which the small university, with its
inferior facilities for reaching the higher professional
standards, presents. In its numerical accounting with the
THE DARTMOUTH PERIOD 353
professions, the account of Dartmouth represented very
nearly the entire contribution of its graduates, until the
responsibility of the College to its non-professional grad-
uates became more urgent, if not more important.
^Mien I recall the historic position of Dartmouth and
its relation to the apparently conflicting demands of lib-
eral and professional education, I am ready to accept in
its behalf the congratulatory words of President Hadley
of Yale on the occasion of the rebuilding of Dartmouth
Hall: "Yale sends congratulations on the rebuilding of
what has been in many senses a historical edifice in the
American college world. For nearly three half-centuries
Dartmouth has occupied an exceptional position: in the
first generation as the northern outpost of American
science and religion — hke Durham of old;
Half house of God, half castle 'gainst the Scot;
in the next generation as the training place of one who,
amid his many titles to fame and honor, has this special
claim upon the remembrance of American scholars, that
his efforts made our college charters eternally secure; and
during later generations as an institution whose work for
the cause of higher learning is thrown into salient relief
by the fact that where so many institutions claim to do
more than they actually accomplish, Dartmouth accom-
phshes more than she claims."