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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Education: How Old The New, by James J. Walsh
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Education: How Old The New
+
+Author: James J. Walsh
+
+Release Date: January 13, 2011 [EBook #34938]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EDUCATION: HOW OLD THE NEW ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Don Kostuch
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's note]
+
+  This is derived from a copy on the Internet Archive:
+    http://www.archive.org/details/educationhowold00walsgoog
+
+  Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly
+  braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page breaks occurred
+  in the original book.
+
+  Obvious spelling errors have been corrected but "inventive" and
+  inconsistent spelling is left unchanged. Unusual use of quotation
+  marks is also unchanged.
+
+  Extended quotations and citations are indented.
+
+  Footnotes have been renumbered to avoid ambiguity, and relocated
+  to the end of the enclosing paragraph.
+
+[End Transcriber's note]
+
+
+EDUCATION
+
+HOW OLD THE NEW
+
+
+BY
+
+
+JAMES J. WALSH, M.D., Ph.D., Litt. D.
+
+Dean and Professor of the History of Medicine and of Nervous Diseases
+at Fordham University School of Medicine; Professor of Physiological
+Psychology at the Cathedral College, New York.
+
+
+
+SECOND IMPRESSION
+
+
+
+NEW YORK
+
+FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS
+
+1911
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT. 1910, BY
+
+JAMES J. WALSH
+
+
+
+Published October 20th, 1910
+
+Second Impression March 20th, 1911
+
+
+  THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS
+  RAMWAY, N.J.
+
+
+
+TO THE
+
+_Xavier Alumni Sodality_
+
+Most of the thoughts contained in this volume were originally
+expressed at our breakfasts. It seems only fitting, then, that on
+presentation to a larger audience they should be dedicated to you.
+
+J. J. W.
+_Our Lady's Day._ August 15, 1910
+
+
+{v}
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+The reason for publishing this volume of lectures and addresses is the
+persuasion that present-day educators are viewing the history of
+education with short-sighted vision. An impression prevails that only
+the last few generations have done work of serious significance in
+education. The history of old-time education is neglected, or is
+treated as of at most antiquarian interest and there is a failure to
+understand its true value. The connecting link between the lectures
+and addresses is the effort to express in terms of the present what
+educators were doing in the past. Once upon a time, when I proclaimed
+the happiness of the English workmen of the Middle Ages, the very
+positive objection was raised, "How could they be happy since their
+wages were only a few cents a day?" For response it was only necessary
+to point out that for his eight cents, the minimum wage by act of
+Parliament, the workman could buy a pair of handmade shoes, that being
+the maximum price established by law, and other necessaries at similar
+prices. If old-time education is studied with this same care to
+translate its meaning into modern values, then the very oldest
+education of which we have any record takes on significance even for
+our time.
+
+{vi}
+
+While it is generally supposed that there are many new features in
+modern education, it requires but slight familiarity with educational
+history to know that there is very little that is novel. Such
+supposedly new phases as nature-study and technical training and
+science, physical as well as ethical, are all old stories, though they
+have had negative phases during which it would be hard to to trace
+them. The more we know about the history of education the greater is
+our respect for educators at all times. Nearly always they had a
+perfectly clear idea of what they were trying to do, they faced the
+problems of education in quite the same spirit that we do and often
+solved them very well. Indeed the results of many periods of old-time
+education are much better than our own, even when judged by our
+standards.
+
+Unfortunately there exists a very common persuasion that evolution
+plays a large role in education and that we, "the heirs of all the
+ages in the foremost files of time," are necessarily in the forefront
+of educational advance. There has been much progress in education in
+the last century, but it would, indeed, be a hopeless world if there
+had not been progress out of the depths in which education was plunged
+in the eighteenth century. There were a number of reformers in
+education at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the
+nineteenth century. It was rather easy to be an educational reformer
+at that time. The lowest period in the history of {vii} education was
+about the middle of the eighteenth century. It has been assumed that
+since we are far ahead of that generation we must be still farther
+ahead of the people who preceded them. That is the mistake. There are
+periods of education of very great significance centuries long before
+that time.
+
+In educational lectures and addresses for the past five years, I have
+been trying to translate into modern terms the meaning of these old
+periods of education. A great many teachers have thought the ideas
+valuable and suggestive and so I am tempted to publish them in book
+form. There is an additional reason, that of wishing to create a bond
+of sympathy between the two systems of education that have grown up in
+this country. For some three generations now Catholic educators have
+been independently building up a system of education from the
+elementary schools to the university. The American world of education
+is coming to recognize how much they have accomplished. There has even
+been some curiosity expressed as to how it was all done in spite of
+apparently insuperable obstacles. One phase of Catholic education, its
+thorough-going conservatism and definite effort to value the past
+properly and take advantage of its precious lessons, is here
+represented.
+
+My own educational interests have been taken up much more of late
+years with medicine than with other phases of this subject. Hence the
+{viii} volume contains certain addresses relating to the history of
+medical education. They are more intimately linked with the general
+subject of education than might perhaps be thought. We have had finely
+organized medical education at a number of times in the past, and,
+indeed, at the present moment can find inspiration and incentive in
+studying the legal regulation of medicine and of medical education in
+what might seem to be so-unpromising a time as the thirteenth century.
+For true educational progress there has always been need of close
+sympathy between the non-professional and the professional department
+of universities. Only when the professional schools are real graduate
+departments, requiring under-graduate training for admission, is the
+university doing its work properly. This was the rule in the
+past--hence the precious lessons for the present in the story of
+these old-time universities.
+
+These lectures and addresses were actually delivered, not merely read.
+They were written with that purpose. Certain repetitions that would
+have been avoided if the articles had been prepared directly for
+reading and not for an audience, may be noted. Some of the subjects
+overlap and certain phases had to be treated usually in variant form
+in different lectures. For these faults the reader's indulgence is
+craved.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER                                               PAGE
+
+I.    EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW                         8
+
+II.   THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY                       63
+
+III.  MEDIAEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES                 93
+
+IV.   IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION                          155
+
+V.    CYCLES OF FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE       199
+
+VI.   THE CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION                273
+
+VII.  ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION                    299
+
+VIII. THE MEDICAL PROFESSION FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS    349
+
+IX.   UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS                       377
+
+X.    THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE                          403
+
+XI.   NEW ENGLANDISM                                   433
+
+
+
+
+EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW
+
+
+
+
+  "Nothing under the sun is new, neither is any man able to say:
+  Behold this is new: For it hath already gone before in the ages that
+  were before us."
+  --_Ecclesiastes i:10_.
+
+
+  "Nullum est jam dictum, quod non dictum sit prius."
+  --Terence, _Eun. Prol.,_ 41.
+  [Nothing is now said which was not said before.]
+
+
+  St. Jerome relates that his preceptor Donatus, commenting on this
+  passage of Terence, used to say: "Pereant qui ante nos nostra
+  dixerunt."
+  [May they perish who said our good things before us.]
+
+
+{3}
+
+EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW [Footnote 1]
+
+  [Footnote 1: Material for this lecture was gathered for one of a
+  course of lectures on Phases of Education delivered at St Mary's
+  College, South Bend, Ind., at the Sacred Heart Academy, Kenwood,
+  Albany, N. Y., and at St. Mary's College, Monroe, Mich, 1909. In
+  somewhat developed form it was delivered to the public school
+  teachers of New Orleans at the beginning of 1910. In very nearly its
+  present form it was the opening lecture at the course of the
+  Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, on "How Old the New Is,"
+  delivered in the spring of 1910.]
+
+Popular lectures are usually on some very up-to-date subject. Indeed,
+as a rule they are on subjects that are developing at the moment, and
+the main aim of the lecturer is to forecast the future. It is before a
+thing has happened that we want to know about it now, and though, as
+not infrequently occurs, the lecturer's forecast does not in the event
+prove him a prophet nor the son of a prophet, for nature usually
+accomplishes her purposes more simply than the closet philosopher
+anticipates, at least we have the satisfaction for the moment of
+thinking that not only are we up to date but a little ahead of it.
+Unfortunately I have to claim your indulgence this evening in this
+matter, for taking just the opposite course. I am to talk about the
+oldest book in the world, its old-fashioned yet novel contents, its
+up-to-date applications, and its significance for the history of the
+race and, above all, the history of education. The {4} one interesting
+feature, as I hope, of what I have to say, is that old-time methods in
+education as suggested by this little volume are strangely familiar
+and its contents are as significant now as they were in the old time
+from which it comes. The book was written almost as long before
+Solomon as Solomon is before us, yet there is a depth of practical
+wisdom about it that eminently recalls the expression "there is
+nothing new under the sun."
+
+So much attention has been given to education in recent years, we have
+made such a prominent feature of it in life, have spent so much money
+on it, have devoted so much time and thought to its development and
+organization, that we feel very sure that what we are doing now in
+every line of educational effort represents--indeed must represent--a
+great advance over anything and everything that was ever accomplished
+in the past. To say anything else would seem to most people pure
+pessimism. It would mean that in spite of all the efforts of men we
+were not making advances. As a matter of fact, all of us know that it
+is quite possible to make heroic efforts so sadly misdirected that
+they accomplish nothing and get us nowhere. Progress depends not on
+effort but on the proper direction of the effort. We are supposed,
+however, to represent one phase and that at the front rank of an
+inevitable advance in things human, pushed forward, as it were, by the
+wheel of evolution in its ceaseless progress, and bound {5} therefore
+to make advancement. It is with this idea, so commonly accepted, that
+I would take issue by showing how much was accomplished in the past
+that anticipates much of what we are occupied with at the present
+time, and that serves to show what men can accomplish at any time when
+they set themselves to doing things with high ideals, well-considered
+purpose and strenuous effort.
+
+There are those who insist that unless men have the encouraging
+feeling that they are making progress, their efforts are likely to be
+less strenuous than would otherwise be the case. There are those who
+think apparently that compliments make the best incentive for
+successful effort. Some of us who know that the world's best work, or
+at least the work of many of the world's great men, has been done in
+the midst of opposition, in the very teeth of criticism, in spite of
+discouragement, may not agree with that opinion. The history of
+successful accomplishment seems to show, indeed, that incentive is all
+the stronger as the result of the opposition which arouses to renewed
+efforts and the criticism which strips whatever is new of errors that
+inevitably cling to it at the beginning. On the other hand, if there
+is anything that the lessons of history make clear it is that
+self-complacency is the very worst thing, above all for intellectual
+effort of any kind, and that criticism, when judicious, is always
+beneficial.
+
+Above all, comparisons are likely to be {6} chastening in their
+effects to make us realize that what we are doing at any particular
+time does not mean so much more than what many others have done and
+may indeed even mean less. It is rather interesting, then, to set our
+complacent assurance that we are doing such wonderful work in
+education and represent such magnificent progress over against some of
+the educational work of the past. After all we are not nearly so
+self-congratulatory about our education, its ways and methods and,
+above all, its success as we were a dozen years ago. There are many
+jarring notes of discordant criticism of methods heard, there are many
+deprecatory remarks passed with regard to our supposed success, and
+there have been some educators unkind enough,--and, unfortunately,
+they are often of the inner circle of our educational life,--to say
+that we are lacking in scholarship to a great degree, and that much of
+our so-called educational progress has been a tendency toward an
+accumulation of superficial information rather than a training of the
+intellect for power. The absolute need of the distinction between
+education for information and for power has been coming home to us.
+Above all, we have felt that we were not a little deceived by
+appearances in education and so are more ready to listen to
+suggestions of various kinds.
+
+Under these circumstances it has seemed to me, that a calling of
+attention to what was accomplished at certain long-past periods for
+{7} education, would not only be of interest as information for
+teachers, but might possibly be helpful or at least suggestive, in the
+midst of the somewhat disordered state of mind that has resulted from
+recent criticisms of our educational methods and success, by men whose
+interest in education cannot be doubted and whose opportunities for
+knowing are the best. For we are in a time when nearly every important
+educator, president of a university, dean of a department, old-time
+teacher or old, thoughtful pupil with the interest of _Alma Mater_ at
+heart, who has had something to say with regard to education has said
+it in rather derogatory fashion. Perhaps, then, it will do us good to
+study the periods of the past and see what they did, how their methods
+differed or still more often were like our own, what their success was
+like and what we may learn from them. The surprising thing is the
+number of repetitions of present-day experiences in education that we
+shall find in the past. This is true, however, in every mode of
+thinking quite as well as in education, once careful investigation of
+conditions is made.
+
+If we begin at the beginning and take what is sometimes called the
+oldest book in the world, we shall see how early definite educational
+ideas took form. It is a set of moral lessons or instructions given,
+or supposed to be given, by a father to his son. The father's name was
+Ptah Hotep. He was a vizier of King Itosi of the Fifth Dynasty in
+Egypt, some time about 3500 B.C. {8} The Egyptologists used to date
+him earlier than that, but in recent years they have been clipping
+centuries off Egyptian dates until perhaps King Itosi must be
+considered as having lived probably not earlier than 3350 B.C. That
+makes very little difference for our purpose, however. The oldest
+manuscript copy of the book was written apparently not later than 2900
+b.c. It exists as the famous Prisse Papyrus in the Bibliotheque
+Nationale in Paris. There is another copy in the British Museum. There
+is a pretty thorough agreement as to these dates, so that we can be
+sure that this little book which has come to be known as the
+Instruction of Ptah Hotep, or the Proverbs of Ptah Hotpu--another form
+of his name with a variation in the title--represents the wisdom of
+the generations who lived in Egypt about 5000 years ago. It was
+written, as I have said, almost as long before Solomon as Solomon is
+before us, so that the character of the moral instructions which it
+contains is extremely interesting.
+
+There must have been a number of copies of it made. This and books
+like it were used as schoolbooks in Egypt. They were employed somewhat
+as we employ copybooks. The writing of the manuscript is the old
+hieratic, cursive writing of the Egyptians, not their hieroglyphics,
+and the children used portions of this book as copies, listened to
+dictation from it and learned to write the language by imitating it.
+Of books similar to it we have a number of manuscript copies. Some {9}
+of these copies preserved from before 2000 B.C. are full of errors
+such as school children would make in taking down dictation. This was
+their method of teaching spelling, and after the children had spelled
+the words the teacher went over them and corrected the mistakes. These
+corrections were made in a different colored ink from that used by the
+pupils! The whole system of teaching, as it thus comes before us,
+resembles our own elementary school teaching much more than we might
+think possible. Spelling, writing, composition are all taught in this
+way yet, or at least they were when I was at school, and while I have
+heard that some of the old-fashioned methods were going out, I have
+also received some hints of the reaction by which they are coming in
+again, so that the Egyptian methods take on a new interest.
+
+Perhaps there is no more interesting feature of the education of that
+olden time than the fact that these books which were used as copybooks
+in the school contain moral lessons. We have been neglecting these in
+our schools and have come to recognize the danger of such neglect.
+Definite efforts at the organization of moral teaching in some form
+are being made by many teachers, and their necessity is recognized by
+all educators. All of these old Egyptian books, then, will have a
+special claim on our interest at the present time. Above all, the
+oldest of them, though it is literally the oldest book in the world,
+merits {10} our attention, because its moral teaching is very
+clear-cut and its emphasis on ethical precepts very pronounced.
+
+We would be very prone to think that what an old father has to say to
+his boy over fifty centuries ago would have, at most, only an
+antiquarian interest for us. It is not easy even to imagine that the
+old gentleman could have known human nature so well and written from
+so close to the heart of humanity because of his love for his boy,
+that his words would always have a practical application in life.
+Such, however, is actually the case. Any father of the modern time
+would be proud to be able to give to his boy the eminently practical
+maxims that this old father has written down. If there is any advice
+that will be helpful for youth, for the young usually demand that they
+shall have their own experience and not take it at second hand, this
+is the advice that is of value. Only fools, it is said, learn by their
+own experience, but then there is good Scripture warrant for believing
+that they were not all wise men in the olden time, and we are pretty
+well agreed that all the fools are not dead yet. If advice can be of
+service, however, from one generation to another, then here is the
+wisdom of age for the inexperience of youth. At least it will serve
+after the event to show youth that it was properly warned and that it
+is entirely its own fault if it has been making a fool of itself--as
+other generations have done before.
+
+{11}
+
+It might be expected that at least in form these old-time maxims would
+be rude and crude, expressed with an old man's loquaciousness and with
+many personal foibles. Fortunately for us, while to his son Ptah Hotep
+was very probably an old man, he was not what most of us would call
+old. In Egypt they married comparatively young. This boy was probably
+the oldest son. It is usually for the oldest that such advice is
+treasured up and written out. The father then, giving his advice just
+as his son was leaving the paternal household when he had married a
+wife and was about to set up a home of his own, was probably not more
+than forty. To seventeen or eighteen, forty is quite ancient. To most
+of the rest of us it is entirely too young to be trusted absolutely in
+serious matters. Aristotle declared that a man's body reaches physical
+perfection at thirty-five and his mind reaches intellectual maturity
+at forty-nine. His students were inclined to think that this age was
+entirely too old, his philosophic contemporaries of his own generation
+and the members of national academies and learned societies of most of
+the generations since, have been quite sure that the term set was
+entirely too young.
+
+Ptah Hotep's son, then, very probably looked on his father as most
+sons under twenty are prone to do, as a dear old-fashioned gentleman
+(he does not like to use the word old fogy for his father, reserving
+it for the fathers of others), who would {12} be quite tolerable if he
+only had a little more sympathy with the wonderful advance that is in
+the world in this new generation. The real young man of the time,
+however, was the father who wrote his maxims, the condensed wisdom of
+his experience of life, with a directness, an absolute clarity, an
+occasional appeal to figures of speech and a variety of expression so
+striking as to make his work literature. As such it has come down to
+us. It is eminently human in every way, and while there is here and
+there an unfortunate tendency to repeat words of similar sound and
+different meaning, after the fashion of what we call punning, this is
+pardonable enough since so many of our friends indulge in it and give
+us practice in pardoning, while, on the whole, the old man wrote as
+wisely as Polonius, and in a style not quite as artificial as that
+which Shakespeare has invented as suitable to the old Danish Prime
+Minister, whom the ancient vizier of Egypt recalls so vividly in many
+ways.
+
+No idea is probably more ingrained in modern thinking, no opinion is
+more generally accepted, no conclusion is surer to most people, than
+that we are in the midst of marvellous progress in this little world
+of ours, and that our generation is somewhere at the apex of the
+Pyramid of Progress, elevated thereto by the attainments of the
+generations that have preceded us. As the Poet Laureate put it at the
+close of the nineteenth century, "we are the heirs of all the ages in
+the {13} foremost files of time"; and because we have the advantage of
+our predecessors' progress in their time, we are, of course, in all
+that makes for human happiness and fulness of life, very far ahead of
+those gone before us. The farther back we go in history, then, the
+lower down men are supposed to be found in all that stands for
+intellectuality and in all that represents the possibilities of human
+achievement at its best. It is now well understood that the
+generations of the past are not so much to be blamed for their
+backwardness as to be pitied for the misfortune that, having come
+earlier in the world's history, they could not have the advantages
+that we enjoy, and therefore could only attain much lower stages in
+human progress than ours.
+
+Apparently, there are very few people who do not share in the opinions
+thus expressed. The nineteenth century has been proclaimed the century
+of evolution; and the idea of evolution has become so much a part of
+the thought of our time that man also is assumed to be in the midst of
+it, and history is presumed to show distinctly the wonderful advance
+that humanity has made. As a matter of fact, it is extremely difficult
+to point out definitely where progress in humanity may be observed.
+Ambassador Bryce was asked, two years ago, to deliver an address
+before Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard, and took for his subject "What is
+Progress?" Phi Beta Kappa is the fraternity that admits into its
+classes only the best {14} students,--men who have proved their
+ability by success. Mr. Bryce, speaking to the most intelligent
+university graduates, might be expected to make much of our wonderful
+recent progress. The address subsequently appeared in the _Atlantic
+Monthly_ for August, 1907. Far from any glorification of progress, the
+historian of the American Commonwealth, who has demonstrated his
+breadth of view and his notable lack of British insularity by the
+large way he has written about us, so that we have adopted his work as
+a text-book of information about ourselves, is very dubious as to
+whether there is any progress in the world. There is certainly no
+progress in man's highest expressions of his intelligence. As Mr.
+Bryce says: "The poetry of the early Hebrews and of the early Greeks
+has never been surpassed and hardly ever equalled. Neither has the
+philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, nor the speeches of Demosthenes and
+Cicero." No one pretends that there is any progress in art. The
+masterpieces of architecture, sculpture, and painting date as a rule
+from long before our time, some of them nearly twenty-five hundred
+years back.
+
+As has been very well said, the man who talks much about progress in
+our time usually knows only the history of human thought in his own
+generation, and not very much about that. In nearly every important
+phase of human achievement, we are, in present accomplishment, far
+behind the great predecessors. In our generation, {15} we are
+confessedly imitators in every phase of aesthetic expression. In
+painting, sculpture, art and literature, our models are all in the
+past, and we are quite frank in confessing that we are doing no work
+at all so good as the work of our forefathers of many generations and
+sometimes many centuries ago. Whence, then, comes the idea of
+progress? It has obtained most of its vogue from the theory of
+evolution; and the lack of evidence for evolution in general, in spite
+of the persuasion on the part of many educated people that there are
+proofs for it, can be very well judged from the corresponding lack of
+evidence with regard to progress in humanity. There is complete
+absence of proof for this latter, when the situation with regard to
+human achievement in the really great things of human life is
+examined. Indeed, it would be amusing were it not amazing to think how
+readily we have come to accept notions for which there is so little
+substantiation. To many this will doubtless seem a surprising
+declaration to make, after all that has been written, and universally
+accepted as most people think, with regard to evolution by the great
+minds of the nineteenth century. What evolution means, however, is
+summed up in the theory of descent, that is that living things as we
+know them now, have all come from simpler forms and perhaps all from a
+single form. The only other phase of interest in evolution is what
+concerns the theory of natural selection, which is supposed by many
+people to {16} have been demonstrated in the nineteenth century. It
+may be well for those who think thus to have recalled to them what a
+recent writer on the subject, himself a distinguished investigator in
+biology, a professor at Leland Stanford University, where under the
+influence of President Jordan biology is thoroughly yet conservatively
+cultivated, has to say with regard to these theories and the objective
+evidence for them. Professor Vernon L. Kellogg in his "Darwinism
+To-day," [Footnote 2] p. 18, though himself an evolutionist and a
+Darwinian, says: "What may for the moment detain us, however, is a
+reference to the curiously almost completely subjective character of
+the evidence for both the theory of descent and natural selection.
+Biology has been until now a science of observation; it is beginning
+to be one of observation plus experiment. The evidence for its
+principal theories might be expected to be thoroughly objective in
+character; to be of the nature of positive, observed and perhaps
+experimentally proved, facts. How is it actually? Speaking by and
+large, we only tell the general truth when we declare that _no
+indubitable cases of species forming or transforming, that is of
+descent, have been observed; and that no recognized case of natural
+selection really selecting has been observed._ I hasten to repeat the
+names of the Ancon sheep, the Paraguay cattle, the Porto Santo rabbit,
+the Artemias of Schmankewitch and the de Vriesian {17} evening
+primroses to show that I know my list of classic possible exceptions
+to this denial of observed species forming, and to refer to Weldon's
+broad-and-narrow fronted crabs as a case of what may be an observation
+of selection at work. _But such a list, even if it could be extended
+to a score, or to a hundred, of cases, is ludicrous as objective proof
+of that descent and selection, under whose domination the forming of
+millions of species is supposed to have occurred."_ (Italics mine.)
+
+  [Footnote 2: Henry Holt and Co., New York, 1907.]
+
+Mr. Kellogg, as might be expected from this, objects very much to the
+application that has been so heedlessly made of certain supposed
+principles of evolution to pedagogy. In practically every science to
+which Darwinian principles have been applied it is the weakest of the
+principles that have been appealed to as the foundation for presumedly
+new developments in the particular science. With regard to the
+so-called science of education Professor Kellogg says:
+
+  "In Pedagogy it is also the theory of descent rather than the
+  selection theory which has been drawn on for some rather remarkable
+  developments in child study and instruction. Unfortunately it is on
+  that weakest of the three foundation pillars of descent, namely the
+  science of embryology with its Muellerian-Haeckelian capitulation
+  theory or biogenetic law, that the child-study pedagogues have
+  builded. The species recapitulates in the ontogeny (development) of
+  each of its individuals the course or history of its {18} phylogeny
+  (descent or evolution). Hence the child corresponds in different
+  periods of its development to the phyletic stages in the descent of
+  man. As the child is fortunately well by its fish, dog and monkey
+  stages before it comes into the care of the pedagogue, he has to
+  concern himself only with safe progress through the various stages
+  of prehistoric and barbarous man. Detect the precise phyletic stage
+  cave-man, stone-age man, hunter and roamer, pastoral man,
+  agriculturalist, and treat with the little barbarian accordingly!
+  What simplicity! Only one trouble here for the pedagogue: _the
+  recapitulation theory is mostly wrong and what is right in it is
+  mostly so covered up by the wrong part, that few biologists longer
+  have any confidence in discovering the right._ What, then, of our
+  generalizing friends, the pedagogues?"
+
+It is in educational matters, above all, then, that we must be careful
+about assumptions with regard to evolution and supposed inevitable
+progress because we must, forsooth, be taking advantage of the
+accumulated experience of previous generations. There is no
+inevitability about progress in any line. The attainment of any
+generation depends absolutely on what that generation tries to do, the
+ideals that it has and the fidelity with which it sets itself to work.
+We can make just as egregious mistakes, and we have made them, as any
+generation of the past. We can foster delusions with regard to our
+all-knowingness just as {19} many another foolish people before us
+have done, and our one hope of real accomplishment for ourselves and
+our generation is to choose our purposes carefully and then set about
+their accomplishment with strenuous effort. The lessons of the past in
+history are extremely precious not only because they show us where
+others made mistakes but also because they show us the successes of
+the past. The better we know these, the deeper our admiration for
+them, the better the outlook for ourselves and our accomplishment.
+This is the ideal that I would like to emphasize in this series of
+lectures and addresses and in this, far from there being any
+pessimism, there is, as it seems to me, the highest optimism. Any
+generation that wants to can do well, but it must want to do
+efficaciously.
+
+Any one who thinks that education, in the sense of training of
+character or advice with regard to practical, every-day life, has
+evoluted in the course of time, should read this little book that I
+bring to you this evening. Indeed, it is as the first chapter in the
+history of education that it finds its most valuable place in
+literature. This teacher of the old-time, who had his boy's best
+interest at heart, not only knew what to say but how to say it so as
+to attract a young man's attention. Of course it is probable that,
+even with all this good advice, the young man went his way in his own
+fashion; for that is ever the mode of the young. But, so far as the
+experience of another {20} could supply for that personal experience
+which every human being craves, and will have, no matter what the
+cost, surely this oldest book in the world supplies the best possible
+material. As literature, it has a finish that is quite surprising. Art
+is said to be the elimination of the superfluous. Surely, then, this
+is artful, in the best sense of that word, to a supreme degree. It is
+surprising how few repetitions there are, how few tergiversations, how
+few unnecessary words; and yet the style is not so austere as to be
+dry and lacking in human interest.
+
+Probably the most interesting feature of the book is the fact that in
+it God is always spoken of in the singular. It is not the "gods" who
+help men, who punish them, who command and must be obeyed, whose
+providence is so wonderful, but it is always "God." The latest
+editor,[Footnote 3] Mr. Battiscombe G. Gunn, in his version always
+inserts the definite article before the word God because, he says, in
+different places there were different local gods, and the idea of the
+writer was to emphasize the fact that the god of any particular
+locality would act as he declared in his instructions. There are many
+distinguished Egyptologists, however, who insist that the expression
+"the God," which occurs not only in this but in many other very early
+Egyptian writings, is a {21} monotheistic deity whose name is above
+all names, and transcends all the power of humanity to name him, and
+hence is spoken of always without a name but with the definite
+article.
+
+  [Footnote 3: "The Instructions of Ptah Hotep." Translated from the
+  Egyptian, with an Introduction and an Appendix, by Battiscombe G.
+  Gunn. E. P. Dutton & Co. Wisdom of the East Series, 1909.]
+
+It is curious indeed to find that the very first bit of instruction
+given to his son by this wise father is, not to be conceited about
+what he knows. How striking the expression of his first sentence of
+this oldest book: "Be not proud because thou art learned." And the
+second is like unto the first: "But discourse with the ignorant man as
+with the sage." And then at the end of this very first paragraph comes
+the first figure of speech in human literature that has been presented
+for us. It is as beautiful in its simplicity and illuminating quality
+as any of the subsequent time. "Fair speech" (by which is meant
+evidently kindly speech toward those who know less than we do) "is
+more rare than the emerald that is found by slave maidens on the
+pebbles." Then there comes a series of directions as to how the young
+man should treat his superiors, his equals and his inferiors. If in
+argument he is worsted by some one who knows more than himself, he is
+cautioned. "Be not angry." If some one talks nonsense. "Correct him."
+If an ignorant man insists on arguing, "Be not scornful with him, but
+let him alone; then shall he confound himself"; for "it is shameful to
+confuse a mean mind."
+
+The advice may be summed up. Do not argue with your superiors, it does
+no good; nor with {22} your equals, state your case and let it go; but
+above all, not with your inferiors; let them talk and they will make
+fools of themselves.
+
+Kindness is always insisted on as the quality most indispensable to a
+man. "Live therefore," says the father, "in the house of kindliness,
+and men shall come and give gifts of themselves." There are lessons in
+politeness as well as in kindliness. For instance: "If thou be among
+the guests of a great man, pierce him not with many glances. It is
+abhorred of the soul to stare at him. Speak not till he address thee.
+Speak when he questioneth thee; so shalt thou be good in his opinion."
+Again, he wants his son not to eat the bread of idleness: "Fill not
+thy mouth at thy neighbor's table." He insists much on the lesson that
+God helps those who help themselves. "Behold," he says, "riches come
+not of themselves. It is their rule to come to him that actively
+desires. If he bestir him and collect them himself, God shall make him
+prosperous; but He shall punish him if he be slothful." On the other
+hand, the gaining of riches for riches' sake is not worth the while.
+"When riches are gained, follow the heart; for riches are of no avail
+if one be weary." As much as to say, after having gained a competency,
+do not spend further time in amassing wealth, but enjoy in a
+reasonable way that which has been obtained.
+
+There are certain things, however, that a man should not follow; they
+are unworthy of his {23} nature as a man. "As to the man whose heart
+obeyeth his belly, he causeth disgust in place of love. His heart is
+wretched, his body is gross. He is insolent toward those endowed by
+God. He that obeyeth his belly hath an enemy." While the old man warns
+his son against gluttony and against sloth, he has much to say with
+regard to covetousness: "If thou desire that thine actions may be
+good, save thyself from all malice, and beware of the quality of
+covetousness, which is a grievous inner malady." This expression is
+rendered still more striking by what is added to it; for the father
+insists that it is particularly relatives-in-law who quarrel over
+money. "Covetousness setteth at variance fathers-in-law and the
+kinsmen of the daughter-in-law. It sundereth the wife and the husband;
+it gathereth unto itself all evils. It is the girdle of all
+wickedness." It needed only the next sentence to make these
+expressions supremely modern: "Be not covetous as touching shares, in
+seizing that which is not thine own property."
+
+The God of this earliest book that we have from the hand of man has
+nearly all the interesting and important qualities that we refer to
+the Deity. He is looked up to as the giver of all good things. He
+loves his creation, and above all loves man, and observes men's
+actions very carefully, and rewards or punishes them according to
+their deserts. He desires men to be fruitful, and to multiply upon the
+earth for their own good and {24} for his glory. Nothing unworthy of
+the Deity, as he is known by the most educated people, is attributed
+to this God, who transcends a personal name. There is an utter
+disregard of all trivial mythology and of all mysterious riddles,
+though these trimmings of truth are to be found constantly in other
+Egyptian works of later date. Indeed, the picture of God is as
+striking a presentation of the fatherliness and the providence of the
+Almighty and of most of the lovable characteristics of the Deity as
+there is to be found anywhere in literature until the coming of the
+Saviour.
+
+One might think that after having warned his son about most of the
+Seven Deadly Sins as we know them--pride, covetousness, gluttony,
+envy, sloth and anger,--at least we should not find lust touched on in
+the modern way. There is, however, in this matter an extremely chaste
+bit of advice that sums up the whole situation as well as a father can
+tell his son. The writer says: "No place prospereth wherein lust is
+allowed to work its way. A thousand men have been ruined for the
+pleasure of a little time short as a dream. Even death is reached
+thereby. It is a wretched thing. As for the lustful liver, every one
+leaveth him for what he doeth; he is avoided. If his desires be not
+gratified, he regardeth no laws."
+
+The father tells his son, straightforwardly and emphatically, that
+indulgence in this vice inevitably leads to loss of friends, of
+health, of {25} everything that the world holds good; and that once a
+man has started down this path he has no regard for law or order or
+decency or self-respect. This eighteenth paragraph on a thorny subject
+is probably one of the most wonderful passages in this advice of a
+father to his son. Fathers of the modern time ask what shall they say
+to their boys. Here is something to tell them that does not excite
+pruriency, that does set the full state of the case before them and
+represents probably all that can be said with assurance and safety.
+
+In recent years we have heard much of moral and social prophylaxis and
+the necessity for giving precious information with regard to this
+subject that may prove helpful to young people. Most people are sure
+to think that this is the first time in the history of the race that
+there has been an awakening to the necessity for this. Of course there
+is no doubt that owing to delayed marriages and unfortunate social
+conditions in our large cities we have more need of it than past
+generations, yet here in this old schoolbook from Egypt we have very
+definite and very wise teaching in the matter. A physician is prone to
+wonder what did the old man mean by "a thousand men have been ruined
+for the pleasure of a little time short as a dream. Even death is
+reached thereby." Is it possible that he knew something of the
+physical, or let us rather say, the pathological dangers of the vice?
+In the discussion of the pictures of old-time surgery in {26} _The
+Journal of the American Medical Association_ I suggested that these
+generations seem to have known more about this phase of pathology than
+we are inclined to admit.
+
+On the other hand, the father emphatically warns his son that his
+happiness will depend on loving his wife and caring for her to the
+best of his ability; though some of the details of that advice are so
+naively modern in their expression that it seems almost impossible to
+believe that they should have been spoken nearly six thousand years
+ago. He says: "If thou would be wise, provide for thine house, and
+love thy wife. Give her what she wants to eat, get her what she wants
+to wear [literally, fill her stomach, clothe her back]. Gladden her
+heart during thy lifetime, for she is an estate profitable unto its
+lord. Be not harsh, for gentleness mastereth her more than strength."
+
+There is a variant translation of this passage quoted in Maspero's
+"The Dawn of Civilization," which brings out even more clearly the
+ideas that seem most modern, and which makes it very sure that it is
+not the translator who has found in vague old expressions thoughts
+that, when put into modern words, have modernized old ideas. Maspero
+reads: "If thou art wise, thou wilt go up into thine house and love
+thy wife at home; thou wilt give her abundance of food; thou wilt
+clothe her back with garments; all that covers her limbs, her
+perfumes, are the joy of her life. As {27} long as thou lookest to
+this, she is as a profitable field to her lord [master]."
+
+The old gentleman's idea evidently was that, looked at merely from a
+material standpoint, it was worth a man's while to spend as much time
+caring for his wife as for his estate. She meant just as much for his
+happiness in the end and might mean probably more for his unhappiness.
+It is a very practical way of looking at the subject and perhaps the
+romancists might think it sordid. It must not be forgotten, however,
+that this is only the secondary motive suggested. At the beginning he
+commands him to love his wife for her own sake, and then, after
+suggesting the material benefit that comes from caring for her, he
+says that "gentleness mastereth her more than strength."
+
+Immediately after this valuable advice with regard to the care of the
+principal member of his household the old man turns to the question of
+the care of his servants. We are surely prone to think that the
+servant problem at least is a new development in this little world of
+ours. Many literary works serve to foster the impression that in the
+old days servants were easy to obtain, that they were always
+respectful, that they could readily be managed and life with them was,
+if not one sweet song, at least a very smooth course. Men, however,
+have always been men, and women and even servants have always had
+minds of their own, and strange as it may seem to us there has always
+{28} been a servant problem and there was one in Egypt 5,500 years
+ago.
+
+Ptah Hotep said: "Satisfy thine hired servants out of such things as
+thou hast; it is the duty of one that hath been favored of God. In
+sooth, it is hard to satisfy hired servants. For one saith, 'he is a
+lavish person; one knoweth not that which may come from him.' But on
+the morrow he thinketh, 'he is a person of exactitude (parsimony),
+content therein.' _And when favors have been shown unto servants, they
+say 'we go.'_ (Italics mine.) Peace dwelleth not in that town wherein
+dwell servants that are wretched."
+
+A difficult problem; presents will not solve it but only complicate
+it, exact justice is necessary, but the peace that follows is worth
+the trouble it entails. The principle would be valuable in many a
+squabble of corporate employer and hosts of servants in the modern
+time.
+
+For domestic happiness, it needed only the advice given a little later
+in this instruction: "Let thy face be bright what time thou livest.
+Bread is to be shared. He that is grasping in entertainment himself
+shall have an empty belly. He that causeth strife cometh himself to
+sorrow. Take not such a one for thy companion. It is a man's kindly
+acts that are remembered of him in the years after his life."
+
+There is one phase of life in which Ptah Hotep differs entirely from
+the present generation,--at least if we are to judge the present
+generation {29} from its results in this matter. Of course there are
+many of us who consider that, in spite of six thousand years of
+distance in time, the old Egyptian prime minister is far ahead of our
+contemporaries in this important subject. He thought that obedience
+was the most important thing in life. For him independence of spirit,
+in a young person particularly, was an abomination. In spite of the
+tendency to loquacity and to repeat itself, often said to be so
+characteristic of old age, the father, who in all his instructions has
+never sinned against this literary canon, almost seems to do so when
+it comes to the question of obedience. Over and over again he insists
+that obedience is the one quality that must characterize a man if he
+is to get on in life, and if he is to secure happiness, and have a
+happy generation of his own group around him. The sentences read more
+like a Kempis or some mediaeval writer on spirituality, and seem meant
+for monks under obedience rather than for a young man of the world,
+the son of a prime minister, just about to enter on his life work in
+business and politics. Two of the paragraphs are well worth quoting
+here:
+
+  "A splendid thing is the obedience of an obedient son; he cometh in
+  and listeneth obediently. Excellent in hearing, excellent in
+  speaking, is every man that obeyeth what is noble. The obedience of
+  an obeyer is a noble thing. Obedience is better than all things that
+  are; it maketh good will. How good it is that a son should take {30}
+  that from his father by which he hath reached old age [obedience]!
+  That which is desired by the God is obedience; disobedience is
+  abhorred of the God. Verily, it is the heart that maketh its master
+  to obey or to disobey; for the safe-and-sound life of a man is his
+  heart. It is the obedient man that obeyeth what is said; he that
+  loveth to obey, the same shall carry out commands. He that obeyeth
+  becometh one obeyed. It is good indeed when a son obeyeth his
+  father; and he (his father) that hath spoken hath great joy of it.
+  Such a son shall be mild as a master, and he that heareth him shall
+  obey him that hath spoken. He shall be comely in body and honored by
+  his father. His memory shall be in the mouths of the living, those
+  upon earth, as long as they exist.
+
+  "As for the fool, devoid of obedience, he doeth nothing. Knowledge
+  he regardeth as ignorance, profitable things as hurtful things. He
+  doeth all kind of errors, so that he is rebuked therefor every day.
+  He liveth in death therewith. It is his food. At chattering speech
+  he marvelleth, as at the wisdom of princes, living in death every
+  day. He is shunned because of his misfortunes, by reason of the
+  multitude of afflictions that cometh upon him every day."
+
+Of one thing the old prime minister was especially sure. It was that
+employment at no single occupation, no matter what it was or how
+interesting soever it might be, could satisfy a man or even keep him
+in good health. He felt, {31} probably by experience, the necessity
+for diversity of mind and of occupation, if there was to be any
+happiness or any real success in life. He has a quiet way of putting
+it, but he says, as confidently as the most modern of pedagogues, that
+all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and all play and no work
+makes it impossible for Jack to get on. But a proper mixture of both
+makes life livable; and if a man has only the work that he cares for,
+and can get some of his pleasure in life out of his work, then is all
+well. "One that reckoneth accounts all the day passeth not an happy
+moment. One that gladdeneth his heart all the day provideth not for
+his house. The bowman hitteth the mark, as the steersman reacheth
+land, by diversity of aim. He that obeyeth his heart shall command."
+
+There are some conclusions in the philosophy of life that we are very
+much inclined to think are the products of modern practical wisdom,
+and it is rather surprising to find them stated plainly in this
+old-time advice of the father to his boy. If there is one idea more
+than another that we are confident is modern, and are almost sure to
+attribute to the social development of our own generation, it is that
+riches do not belong to the man who makes them to be used for his own
+purpose alone, but their possession is justified only if he uses them
+for the benefit of the community. This is so up-to-date an idea indeed
+that it is startling to find it expressed in all its {32} completeness
+in this oldest of books. Ptah Hotep said: "If thou be great after
+being of no account, and hast gotten riches after poverty, being
+foremost in these in the city, and hast knowledge concerning useful
+matters so that promotion is come unto thee, then swathe not thine
+heart in thine hoard, for thou art become the steward of the
+endowments [of God]. Thou art not the last; another shall be thine
+equal, and to him shall come the like [fortune and station]."
+
+After all this it may be necessary to trace the pedigree of the book,
+since it might seem to be possible that it was a modern invention. The
+original of it is the so-called "Prisse Papyrus," which is well known
+by name to all students of archaeology and especially of Egyptology,
+and the contents of which are familiar to all who are acquainted with
+Egyptian history and literature. It appears to have been found at
+Thebes, but the exact place is not known. M. Prisse d'Avennes, the
+well-known French archaeologist after whom it is named, is said to
+have bought it from one of the Egyptian native workmen, or _fellahin,_
+whom he had hired to make excavations in the tombs of Thebes.
+Egyptologists generally have accepted the idea that it was actually
+taken by this workman from the tomb of one of the Kings Entef, who
+were of the Eleventh Dynasty and reigned about 3000 B.C. This is not
+certain, however. After publishing a translation in 1847, M. Prisse
+presented the precious papyrus to the {33} Bibliotheque Royale (now
+Nationale). There it may still be seen. Spread out flat, it measures
+about twenty-four feet in length and six inches in width. There are
+about eighteen pages of clear red and black writing in the Hieratic
+character.
+
+The first part of this manuscript is a portion of another book, the
+so-called "Instructions of Ke'gemni." [Footnote 4] This is, however,
+only a short fragment, though probably of even older date than the
+"Instructions of Ptah Hotep." This work we have in its entirety.
+Doubtless its preservation was due to the fact that many copies of it
+had been made, though only two have come down to us.
+
+  [Footnote 4: These Egyptian names are spelled differently by
+  different modern scholars, according to their idea of the value of
+  certain sounds of the older language as they should be expressed in
+  the modern tongue to which they are most familiar. Many English
+  scholars spell this as I have done, Ke'gemni. Maspero, however, and
+  most of the French scholars, spell it Qaqimni. Maspero prefers the
+  form Phtah-Hotpu to that of Ptah Hotep, which has been adopted by
+  English scholars.]
+
+There is a second manuscript of the "Instructions of Ptah Hotep,"--or
+the "Proverbs of Phtahhotpu," as the book is called by Maspero. This
+was discovered not long ago in the British Museum, by Mr. Griffith;
+and, while it is not so complete as the French copy, there is such an
+agreement between the two manuscripts that there is no doubt about the
+authenticity of the book and of the fact that it represents the oldest
+book in the world.
+
+Its date would be about 3650 B.C. if we were {34} to follow,--as does
+the translator of the most easily procurable English edition, Mr.
+Gunn,--the chronology of Flinders Petrie. Recent advances in our
+knowledge of Egyptology, however, have brought the dates nearer to us
+than they were placed before. Such men as Breasted of Chicago, and
+Maspero, would probably take from three hundred to five hundred years
+from this date. There is a definite tendency in all the histories to
+bring dates much nearer to the present than before. For a time, the
+older one could place a date the more scholarly seemed to be the
+appeal of such an opinion. Now the tendency is all the other way. Even
+the latest date that can be given for Ptah Hotep, or Phtahhotpu, would
+still make his little book the oldest book in the world, however.
+
+Fortunately for us the manuscripts of the instructions of Ptah Hotep
+that have come down to us are in much better condition than those of
+most of the other instructions of similar kinds formerly used in the
+schools that have been preserved. In some of these there are a great
+many errors of writing, spelling and grammar with the corrections of
+the master above in a different-colored ink. Verily, education has not
+changed much in spite of six millenniums, or very nearly so, of
+supposed progress since these were written, for the whole process is
+as familiar as it can be. As Mr. Battiscombe Gunn says in his
+Introduction to his edition "a schoolboy's scrawl over 3,000 years
+{35} old is no easy thing to translate." We would seem, however, to
+have been blessed in the preservation of this oldest book in the
+world, either of the original copies set by the masters or of such
+copies as were made by advanced students. The series of lucky chances
+that have combined to bring to us, in the comparatively perfect form
+in which it exists, this oldest book in the world is interesting to
+contemplate. Without them we would have no idea of how closely the
+first people of whom we have any definite records in history resembled
+us in every essential quality of humanity, even to the ways and modes
+by which they tried to lift humanity out of the barbaric selfishness
+inherent in it to what is higher and nobler in its nature.
+
+With this surprising resurrection of our school-teaching methods from
+the past it is interesting to study other phases of the education of
+these early times, and at the same time to note the accomplishments of
+the men, of the period, their tastes, the state of their culture as
+regards the arts and crafts and personal adornment and the decoration
+of their houses and buildings of various kinds. Flinders Petrie, the
+distinguished English Egyptologist, in an article on "The Romance of
+Early Civilization," printed recently in _The Independent_ (New York),
+said:
+
+  "We have now before us a view of the powers of man at the earliest
+  point to which we can trace written history, and what strikes us
+  most is how very little his nature or abilities have changed in {36}
+  seven thousand years; what he admired we admire; what were his
+  limits in fine handiwork are also ours. We may have a wider outlook,
+  a greater understanding of things, our interests may have extended
+  in this interval; but as far as human nature and tastes go, man is
+  essentially unchanged in this interval."
+
+We have enough of the products of the arts and crafts of these early
+Egyptian generations to show us that there must have been no
+inconsiderable training of the men of this time in the making of
+beautiful art objects. For instance, the interior decoration of their
+tombs shows us men skilled as designers, clever in the use of colors,
+with a rather extensive knowledge of pigments and with a definite
+tendency not to repeat designs but to create new ones. Most of the
+diapered designs of modern interior decorations were original with the
+Egyptians, and some of those found in the tombs uncovered in recent
+years have been adopted and adapted by modern designers. It is in the
+matter of jewelry particularly that the ability and the training of
+the old Egyptian workmen are most evident. It would be quite
+incredible to think that these workmen developed their artistic
+craftsmanship without training, and therefore there was at least the
+germ of a technical school or set of schools in oldest Egypt. It would
+be quite impossible to believe this only that we know so much more
+about other features of Egyptian education as anticipations of our
+own. {37} A special word about their jewelry then, because it
+illustrates a definite training quite different from that of our time,
+will not be out of place.
+
+Their jewelry, it may be said at once, is in striking contrast with
+what we call jewelry in our time. It is true that we are in the midst
+of one of the worst periods of jewelry-making, but then we are so
+prone to think of anything very modern as representing the highest
+evolution, that the contrast is chastening and illuminating. Mr.
+Petrie has insisted on the beautiful jewelry, carved precious stones
+and gold ornaments of the very early period in Egypt. In our time we
+have no jewelry that deserves the name. I doubt whether we even know
+the real definition of jewelry, so I venture to repeat it. Jewels are
+precious stones themselves of value, usually of a high degree of
+hardness so that they do not deteriorate with time or wear, to which a
+greatly enhanced value is added by the handiwork of man. Jewels are
+made by artistic carving and cutting so that besides their precious
+quality as beautiful colored stones, they have an added charm and
+interest from human workmanship. We wear no such jewelry in our
+generation. What we have are merely precious stones. These by an
+artificial rigging of the market and a combination of the great
+commercial agencies that control the sale of diamonds and other
+precious stones, remain very expensive in spite of their comparative
+abundance. They are worn only because they are a display of the {38}
+amount of money that a person can afford to spend for mere ornaments.
+
+There is nothing in these precious stones themselves that carries an
+appeal to the educated mind. It is true that they are pretty, but only
+with the prettiness of the play of rainbow colors that delights a
+childish or uncultured eye. It requires no taste to like them, no
+culture to appreciate them, and their cost alone gives them value.
+This is so true that those who possess a magnificent _parure_ of
+diamonds often also have an imitation of them in cheaper stones that
+may be worn on most occasions. The danger of loss or the risk of
+robbery is so great that it has seemed worth while to have this
+imitation made in many cases. No one except an expert will recognize
+the difference, and if you are known to possess the real stones it
+will of course be supposed that you are wearing them. What gives them
+value as an adornment in the eye of the possessor, and presumably also
+of the onlookers, is the fact that they must have cost such a large
+sum of money. They are a vulgar display of wealth. They are typically
+barbaric and, worn in the profusion now so common, carry us back to
+the uncultured peoples who like to wear gaudy things. The taste is
+perhaps a little better, but the essential quality of mind that
+dictates the wearing of heavy brass rings and strings of beads and
+that which impels to the display of many diamonds, is hard to
+differentiate.
+
+Artistic objects produce a sense of pleasure in {39} the beholder, an
+appreciation of the beautiful handiwork of man. Precious stones worn
+as is now the custom produce only a sense of envy. Of course envy
+comes only to baser minds, but it is perfectly clear that most of
+those who are supposed to be affected by the sight of diamonds worn in
+profusion have this particular quality rather well developed. This
+distinction is often forgotten. Personal adornment as well as the
+adornment of one's house should be in order to give pleasure to
+others, and not merely a display of wealth for wealth's sake in such a
+way as is likely to produce envy. The old Egyptians made their jewelry
+with the true artistic sense. Flinders Petrie has told how beautifully
+they carved hard gems of various kinds and how the remains of these
+show us a people of good taste, even though their technique in the
+manufacture of such objects may have left something to be desired. In
+connection with this oldest of books it is important to recall this,
+for it shows that not alone in the applied wisdom of life and the
+knowledge gained from personal experience were these Egyptians of over
+5,000 years ago brothers and sisters beyond whose wise saws we have
+not advanced, but also in the realm of art their work takes its place
+beside what is best in the modern time.
+
+Some may be inclined to say that while the Egyptians may, as indeed we
+must admit they did, know many things about art and literature and
+practical wisdom, yet they did not have exact {40} knowledge. Their
+knowledge, though large and liberal, had not become scientific. This
+will scarcely be maintained, however, by any one who realizes how much
+of applied science there was in the building of the old temples and
+pyramids and how much they must have developed mechanics, applied and
+theoretic, in order to accomplish the tasks they thus set themselves.
+Cantor, the German historian of mathematics, acknowledged this and
+paid a worthy tribute to the old Egyptians' development of
+mathematics, pure and applied, in discussing the expression that had
+been used by Democritus, the early Greek geometer, who once declared
+that "In the construction of plane figures with demonstrations no one
+has yet surpassed me, not even the rope fasteners (harpedonaptai) of
+Egypt." For a long time this word harpedonaptai was a mystery, but
+Professor Cantor cleared it up, and explaining for us the exact
+meaning of the compound which means literally either rope fasteners or
+rope stretchers, he says, "There is no doubt that the Egyptians were
+very careful about the exact orientations of their temples and other
+public buildings. Old inscriptions seem to show that only the North
+and South lines were drawn by actual observation of the stars. The
+East and West lines were drawn at right angles to the others. Now it
+appears from the practice of Heron of Alexandria and of the ancient
+Indian and probably also the Chinese geometers, that a common method
+of {41} securing a right angle between two very long lines was to
+stretch round three pegs a rope measured in three portions which were
+to one another in the ratio 3:4:5. The triangle thus formed is
+right-angled. Further the operation of rope stretching is mentioned in
+Egypt, without explanation, at an extremely early time (Amenemhat I).
+If this be the correct explanation of it, then the Egyptians were
+acquainted 2,000 years B.C., with a particular case of the proposition
+now known as the Pythagorean theorem."
+
+This may not seem to mean very much. Yet what it illustrates is just
+this. These men wanted a certain development of mathematics. They
+needed it for the work that they were engaged at. They set themselves
+to the solution of certain problems and in doing so evolved a theorem
+in pure mathematics and an application of it which greatly simplified
+construction and gave an impetus to mechanics. In so doing they
+anticipated the work of a long after time. This is what I would insist
+is always true with regard to man. When he needs some intellectual
+development he makes it. When he requires an application of it he
+succeeds in working it out. Later ages may go farther, but had he
+needed further developments he evidently had the power to make them
+and probably would have made them.
+
+The old Greeks had a much better opportunity to study Egyptian remains
+than we have, and especially was this true after the foundation of
+{42} Alexandria. There must have been a lively interest in things
+Egyptian aroused in the Greek minds by this Greek settlement in old
+Egypt. It is not surprising, then, to find some magnificent
+compliments to the old Egyptians in the mouths of some of the writers
+about the time of the foundation of Alexandria. Eudemus, for instance,
+the pupil of Aristotle, wrote the history of Geometry in which he
+traces its invention to the Egyptians, and states that the reason for
+its invention was its necessity in the remeasurement of land demanded
+after the removal of landmarks by the annual rise of the Nile. Always
+does one find this, that when there is a serious demand for an
+invention in theory or practice men make it. It is not a change or
+development in man that brings about inventions, but a change in his
+environment which causes new necessities to arise, and then he
+proceeds with an ability always the same to respond properly to those
+necessities.
+
+Eudemus says: "Geometry is said by many to have been invented among
+the Egyptians, its origin being due to the measurement of plots of
+land. This was necessary there because of the rising of the Nile,
+which obliterated the boundaries appertaining to separate owners. Nor
+is it marvellous that the discovery of this and other sciences should
+have arisen from such an occasion, since everything which moves in
+development will advance from the imperfect to the {43} perfect. From
+mere sense-perception to calculation, and from this to reasoning, is a
+natural transition."
+
+The old Egyptians made some fine developments of arithmetic. These
+were afterwards lost and were reinvented probably several times. I
+have already quoted from Cantor the opinion that the Egyptians were
+familiar with the properties of the right triangle whose sides were in
+the ratio 3:4:5 over 4,000 years ago. In the _Papyrus_ of Ahmes, whose
+contents probably come from before 2400 B.C., there are the solutions
+of many problems which show how far the Egyptians had gone in
+arithmetical calculations. For instance, there are methods of
+calculating the solid contents of barns. The solutions are not
+absolute but are very closely approximate. Ahmes has problems that
+were solved in connection with the pyramids, which make it very clear
+that the old Egyptians had more than a little knowledge of the
+principles of proportion, of certain geometrical figures and probably
+were familiar also with the simpler phases at least of trigonometry.
+The area of a circle is found in Ahmes by deducting from the diameter
+one-ninth and squaring the remainder, which gives a value for the
+ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle much more
+nearly correct than that used by most writers until comparatively
+recent times.
+
+As a teacher of the history of medicine with certain administrative
+functions in a medical {44} school, I have been very much interested
+in the old-time medicine and above all the details of medical
+education that we find among the Egyptians. Ordinarily it would be
+assumed that there was so little of anything like medical education
+that it could be scarcely worth while talking about it. On the
+contrary, we find so much that is being constantly added to by
+discoverers, that it is a never-ending source of surprise. There is a
+well-grounded tradition founded on inscriptions that Athothis, the son
+of Menes, one of the early kings, wrote a work on anatomy. This king
+is said to have died about 4150 B.C. There are traces of the existence
+of hospitals at that time in which diseases were studied and medical
+attendants trained. Even earlier than this there was a great
+physician, the first physician of whom we have record in history,
+whose name was I-Em-Hetep, which means "the Bringer of Peace." He had
+two other titles, one of which was "the Master of Secrets," partly
+because he possessed the secrets of health and disease, very probably
+also because so many things had to be confided to him as a physician.
+Another of his titles was that of "The Scribe of Numbers," in
+reference, doubtless, to the fact that he had to use numbers so
+carefully in making out his prescriptions.
+
+His first title, that of the bringer of peace, shows that very early
+in the history of medicine it was recognized that the physician's
+first duty was to bring peace of mind to his patients. A {45}
+distinguished French physician (Director) of the department of
+physiology of the University of Paris, Professor Richet, said not long
+since, that physicians can seldom cure, they can often relieve, but
+they can always console, and evidently this oldest physician took his
+duty of consolation seriously and successfully. He lived in the reign
+of King Tehser, a monarch of the Third Dynasty in Egypt, who reigned
+about 4500 B.C. or a little later. How much this first physician was
+thought of will be best appreciated from the fact that the well-known
+step pyramid at Sakkara, the old cemetery near Memphis, is called by
+his name. So great indeed was the honor paid to him that after his
+death he was worshipped as a god, and so we have statues of him seated
+with a scroll on his knees, with an air of benignant knowledge, a
+placid-looking man with a certain divine expression of sympathy well
+suited to his name, the bringer of peace. While they raised him to
+their altars he does not wear a beard as did all their gods and their
+kings when they were raised to the godly dignity, but evidently they
+felt that his humanity was of supreme interest to them.
+
+There is another monument at Sakkara that is of special interest to us
+in its consideration of old-time medicine. I discussed it and its
+inscriptions in the _Journal of the American Medical Association_
+(Nov. 8, 1907). It is the tomb of a surgeon, decorated within with
+pictures of surgical operations. The grandeur of the tomb and its {46}
+location show us that the surgeon must have held a very prominent
+place in the community of that time. The date of this tomb is not
+later than 2500 B.C. Certain of the surgical operations resembled
+those done at the present time. There is the opening of a carbuncle at
+the back of the neck which shows how old are men's diseases and the
+modes of their treatment. After this the oldest monument in the
+history of medicine is documentary, the Ebers Papyrus, the writing of
+which is probably not much later than 1700 B.C. This consists,
+moreover, of a collection of older texts and suggestions in medicine,
+and some of the idioms are said to belong to several distant periods.
+It is probable that certain portions of this papyrus were composed not
+much later than the oldest book in the world, and that they date from
+nearly 3000 B.C. This papyrus is as interesting and as startling in
+its anticipation of some of our modern medical wisdom as is the
+Instruction of Ptah Hotep in the practical wisdom of life. This seems
+a good deal to say, but there is ample evidence for it.
+
+According to Dr. Carl von Klein, who discussed the "Medical Features
+of the Ebers Papyrus" in some detail in the _Journal of the American
+Medical Association_ about five years ago, over 700 different
+substances are mentioned as of remedial value in this old-time medical
+work. There is scarcely a disease of any important organ with which we
+are familiar in the modern {47} time that is not mentioned here. While
+the significance of diseases of such organs as the spleen, the
+ductless glands, and the appendix was of course missed, nearly every
+other pathological condition was either expressly named or at least
+hinted at. The papyrus insists very much on the value of
+history-taking in medicine, and hints that the reason why physicians
+fail to cure is often because they have not studied their cases
+sufficiently. While the treatment was mainly symptomatic, it was not
+more so than is a great deal of therapeutics at the present time, even
+in the regular school of medicine. The number and variety of their
+remedies and of their modes of administering them is so marvellous,
+that I prefer to quote Dr. von Klein's enumeration of them for you:
+
+  "In this papyrus are mentioned over 700 different substances from
+  the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms which act as stimulants,
+  sedatives, motor excitants, motor depressants, narcotics, hypnotics,
+  analgesics, anodynes, antispasmodics, mydriatics, myotics,
+  expectorants, tonics, dentifrices, sialogogues, antisialics,
+  refrigerants, emetics, antiemetics, carminatives, cathartics,
+  purgatives, astringents, cholagogues, anthelmintics, restoratives,
+  haematics, alteratives, antipyretics, antiphlogistics,
+  antiperiodics, diuretics, diluents, diaphoretics, sudorifics,
+  anhydrotics, emmenagogues, oxytocics, ecbolics, galactagogues,
+  irritants, escharotics, caustics, styptics, haemostatics,
+  emollients, demulcents, protectives, antizymotics, {48}
+  disinfectants, deodorants, parasiticides, antidotes and
+  antagonists."
+
+Scarcely less interesting than the variety of remedies were their
+methods of administration:
+
+"Medicines are directed to be administered internally in the form of
+decoctions, infusions, injections, pills, tablets, troches, capsules,
+powders, potions and inhalations; and externally, as lotions,
+ointments, plasters, etc. They are to be eaten, drunk, masticated or
+swallowed, to be taken often once only--often for many days--and the
+time is occasionally designated--to be taken mornings, evenings or at
+bedtime. Formulas to disguise bad tasting medicaments are also given."
+We have no advantages over the early Egyptians even in elegant
+prescribing.
+
+The traditions with regard to Egyptian medicine which came to the
+Greeks seemed so incredible as we found them in the older historians
+that they used to be joked about. Herodotus came in for a good deal of
+this scoffing. He was said to be entirely too credulous and prone to
+exaggerate in order to add interest to his history, but every advance
+in our knowledge in modern time has confirmed what Herodotus has to
+say. In the eighteenth century Voltaire said of him, "The Father of
+history, nay, rather the Father of lies." That was Voltaire's way.
+Anything that was above him he scoffed at. Homer was a wandering
+minstrel such as you might find in the streets of Paris, Dante was a
+mediaeval barbarian, {49} our own Shakespeare was a dramatic butcher,
+producing his effects by bloodshed and cruelty upon the stage. The
+nineteenth century has reversed Voltaire in every point of this,
+though some still listen to him in other matters. Above all, Herodotus
+has been amply justified by modern investigations. Herodotus tells us
+of the tradition of the number of different kinds of medical
+specialists in existence among the Egyptians. We are very prone to
+think that specialism is a development of modern medicine. What we
+know of Egypt shows us how old it is and makes it very clear that
+there must have been specialized modes of medical education for these
+many doctors who treated only very limited portions of the body and no
+other.
+
+Herodotus tells us, to quote for you the quaint English of one of the
+old translations:
+
+  "Physicke is so studied and practised with the Egyptians that every
+  disease hath his several physician, who striveth to excell in
+  healing that one disease and not to be expert in curing many.
+  Whereof it cometh that every corner of that country is full of
+  physicians. Some for the eyes, others for the head, many for the
+  teeth, not a few for the stomach and the inwards."
+
+The Ebers Papyrus shows us that the specialties were by no means
+scantily developed. We have traditions of operations upon the nose, of
+remedies for the eyes there are many and the diagnosis and treatment
+of eye diseases are rather well {50} developed. The filling of teeth
+seems even to have been practised, [Footnote 5] and while the
+traditions in this matter are a little dubious, the evidence has been
+accepted by some good authorities. This specialism in Egyptian
+medicine probably existed long before Herodotus, for he seems to speak
+of it as a very old-time institution in his time, and indeed Egypt had
+degenerated so much that it would be hard to believe that there was
+any such development there in his time. In the old temples they seem
+to have used many modes of treatment that we are likely to think of as
+very modern. Music for instance was used to soothe the worried,
+amusements of various kinds were employed to influence the disturbed
+mind favorably. In many ways some of the old temples resembled our
+modern health resorts. To them many patients flocked and were treated
+and talked about their ailments and went back each year for "the cure"
+once more, all the while being more benefited, as is true also in our
+own time, by the regularity of life, the regulation of diet and the
+mental influence of the place, than by any of the drugs or even the
+curative waters.
+
+  [Footnote 5: Burdett: "History of Hospitals."]
+
+In a word, our study of old Egypt and Egyptian education shows us men
+doing things just about the way that our generation does them and
+succeeding just about as well as we succeed. They taught writing,
+spelling and composition as we do and the moral content of their
+teaching is admirable. They had training schools for the arts {51} and
+crafts, their taste is better than ours in many things, above all,
+they trained workmen very well, and the remains of their achievements
+are still the subject of our admiration. They solved mechanical
+problems in the building of the pyramids quite as well as we do. They
+made enough experiments that we would call chemical, to find enduring
+pigments for decorative purposes and they succeeded in making tools
+that enabled them to carve stonework beautifully. Even their
+professional education was not very different from our own and its
+results, particularly in the line of specialism, are startling
+anticipations of the most modern phase of medicine. They anticipated
+our interests in psychotherapy and some of them were mental healers,
+and more of them used the influence of the mind on the body than our
+physicians have been accustomed to until very recent years. Their
+physicians and surgeons were held in the highest veneration, and what
+we know of them shows that the judgment of the old Egyptians in this
+matter was very good and better than the average appreciation of
+physicians at the present time.
+
+After all is said no one with any pretence to knowledge of the past
+would claim for a moment that we were doing better work in anything
+than men have done at many times in the history of culture. Our idea
+of progress is just one of these vague bits of self-sufficiency that
+each generation has had in its own time and that has made it feel {52}
+that somehow what it is accomplishing means much in the world's
+history. It is rather amusing to compare the estimate that any
+generation has of itself with the appreciation of it by succeeding
+generations. Especially is this true for generations separated by 100
+years or more. Generations are only made up of men and women, and what
+man or woman is there who has not thought many times during life that
+though his or her work might not be estimated very highly by those
+close to it, this was due but to a sad lack of proper appreciation,
+since it represented certain qualities that well deserved admiration?
+We are all gifted with this precious self-conceit, which is not so bad
+a thing, after all, since it makes us work better than if we had a
+proper but much less exalted appreciation of our real worth. It is
+much easier to encourage people to do things than to scold or
+criticise them into doing them. We shall not quarrel with our
+generation, then, for being self-conceited,--it is made up of human
+beings,--but we shall try and not let a due appreciation of our
+accomplishment be smothered entirely, by this self-conceit.
+
+After all, did not our favorite English poet of the late nineteenth
+century declare us to be "the heirs of all the ages in the foremost
+files of time," and how could it be otherwise than that we should be
+far ahead of the past, not only because the evolution of man made him
+more capable of handling difficult problems, but also because we {53}
+had the advantage of the accumulated wisdom such as it was of the
+past, of the observations and the conclusions of our forefathers and,
+of course, we were far ahead of them. This idea, however, so widely
+diffused that it might almost be spoken of as universal, has received
+many jolts in recent times, since we have come to try to develop the
+taste and the intellect of our people and not merely our material
+comforts and our satisfaction with ourselves. It has been pointed out,
+over and over again, in recent years that, of course, there is no such
+thing as progress in literature, that in art we are far behind many
+generations of the past, that in architecture there is not a new idea
+in the world since the sixteenth century, that in all these modes of
+human expression we are mere imitators and not originators. Our drama
+is literally and literarily a farce, and no drama that any one expects
+to live has been written for more than a century. Our buildings are
+replicas of old-time structures, no matter what their purpose, whether
+it be ecclesiastical, or educational, or municipal, or beneficiary.
+
+Of course from the scientific standpoint this is, after all, what we
+might expect. In all the years of history of which we have any record
+there has been no change in the nature of man and no modification of
+his being that would lead us to expect from him anything different
+from what had been accomplished by man in the past. There is no change
+in man's structure, in the size of his {54} body in any way, in his
+anatomy or his physiology, in his customs, or ways of life, or in his
+health. The healthy still have about the same expectation of life, to
+use the life insurance term, and though we have increased the general
+average duration of life this has been at the expense of other
+precious qualities of the race. The healthy live longer, but the
+unhealthy also live longer. The weaklings in mind and body whom nature
+used to eliminate early are now a burden that must be cared for. In
+general it may be said, and Virchow, the great German pathologist, who
+was one of the world's great living anthropologists of his time--and
+that but a few years ago--used to insist, that man's skeleton and,
+above all, his skull as we can study them in the mummy of the olden
+time, were exactly the same as those that the race has now. Man cannot
+by thinking add a cubit to his stature, nor an inch to the
+circumference of his skull. The seventh generation of an academic
+family each member of which has been at the university in his time, is
+not any more likely to have special faculties for the intellectual
+life, indeed it is sometimes hinted that he has less of a chance than
+if his parents had been peasants for as long as the history of the
+family can be traced. Of course this has no proper bearing on
+evolution from the biological standpoint, for the length of time that
+we have in human history may be conceded to be entirely inadequate to
+produce any noticeable changes on man's body or mind, {55} granting
+that such were in progress. At the most we have 7,000 years of history
+and the evolutionists would tell us that this is as nothing in the
+unnumbered aeons of evolution. In the popular estimation, however,
+evolution can almost be seen at work just as if one could see blades
+of grass growing by watching them closely enough. This impression of
+man's progress supposed to be supported by the theory of evolution is
+entirely unfounded. Just as his body is the same and his brain the
+same size, and the relative proportion of brain weight to body weight
+or at least to skull capacity the same now as they were 6,000 years
+ago; and this is true for both sexes, so that because women have
+smaller bodies by one-eighth they also have smaller skulls, and this,
+too, occurs among the mummies in Egypt quite as in our own time; so in
+what he is able to do with body and mind man is unchanged. Something
+of dexterity, of facility, of self-confidence and assurance of results
+is gained from time to time in history, but lost as often, because a
+few generations fail to be interested in what interested their
+immediate predecessors immensely.
+
+It is not surprising, then, that history should show us at all times
+men doing work about like that which they did at any other
+time--provided they were deeply interested enough. The wisdom of the
+oldest book in the world, a father's advice to his son, is as
+practical in most ways as Gorgon Graham's letters to his boy--and ever
+so much {56} more ethical and true to life. The decorations of the old
+Egyptian tombs, the architecture of their temples, their ways and
+habits of life so far as we know them, all proclaim them men and women
+just like ourselves, certainly not separated from us by any gulf or
+even streamlet of evolution. What are more interesting than any
+supposed progress in mankind, are the curious ups and downs of
+interest in particular subjects which follow one another with almost
+definite regularity in history as we know it. Men become occupied with
+some phase of the expression of life, literature, architecture,
+government, sometimes in two or three of these at the same time, and
+then there comes a wonderful period of development. Just when this
+epoch reaches an acme of power of expression there come a
+self-consciousness and a refinement, welcomed at first as new
+progress, but that seem to hamper originality. Then follows a period
+of distinct decadence, but with a development of criticism of what was
+done in the past, with the formulation of certain principles of
+criticism. Just when by this conscious reflection it might be expected
+that man would surely advance rapidly, further decay takes place and
+there is a negative phase of power of expression, out of which man is
+lifted by a new generation usually neglectful of the immediate past,
+sometimes indeed deprecating it bitterly, though this new phase may
+have been awakened by a further past, which gets back to nature and to
+expression for itself.
+
+{57}
+
+The most interesting feature of history is how men have done things,
+wonderful things that subsequent generations are sure to admire and
+continue to admire whenever they have sense and training enough, yet
+forget about them. This is true not only for artistic productions but
+also for practical applications in science, for inventions, useful
+discoveries and the like. In surgery, for instance, though we have a
+continuous history of medicine, all of our instruments have been
+re-invented at least three or four times. After the reinvention we
+have been surprised to discover that previous generations had used
+these instruments long before us. Even the Suez Canal was undoubtedly
+open at least once before our time. Personally I feel sure that
+America was discovered at least twice before Columbus' time and that
+during several centuries there was considerable intercourse between
+Europe and America. It is extremely important for us then to realize
+these cycles in human progress and not to deceive ourselves with the
+idea that because we are doing something that immediately preceding
+generations knew nothing of, therefore we are doing something that
+never was done in the world before. This is particularly important for
+us now, for in my estimation the eighteenth was one of the lowest of
+centuries in human accomplishment, and therefore we may easily deceive
+ourselves as to our place in human history in this century.
+
+{58}
+
+Reflections of this kind are, it seems to me, particularly important
+for educators, especially in the midst of our tendency to accept
+evolution unthinkingly in this generation. Man's skull has not
+changed, his body has not been modified, his soft tissues are the same
+as they used to be. His brain is no different. Why, then, should he
+not have done things in the olden time just about as he does them now?
+We do not think that acquired characters are inherited. Oliver Wendell
+Holmes talks of Emerson as the seventh generation of an academic
+family, but there are none of us who think that this made it any
+easier for Emerson to acquire an education, or gave him a better
+development of mind. Those of us who have experience in education know
+that the descendant of a family of peasants for centuries or of
+farmers for many generations, easily outstrips some of the scions of
+academic families in intellect. It is the man that counts and not his
+descent.
+
+Just this is true of generations as well as of individuals. Whenever
+men have set themselves to doing things they have accomplished about
+as good results at any time in history as at any other. We apparently
+do not benefit by the accumulation of the experience of our
+predecessors. At least we can find no trace of that in history. For a
+certain number of enterprising generations there is manifest upward
+progress. Then something always happens to disturb the succession of
+ideas, sometimes it is nothing more than {59} an over-refinement that
+leads to bad taste, and decadence takes the place of progress. The
+accomplishment of any particular generation, then, depends not on its
+place in any real or fancied scheme of evolution, but on its own
+ideals and its determined efforts to achieve them.
+
+There are people who insist that this doctrine is pessimistic and
+discouraging and that, if we do not keep before men the consoling
+feeling that they are advancing beyond their forebears, there is not
+the same incentive to work as there would be under other
+circumstances. On the contrary, as it seems to me, this other idea
+that everything depends on ourselves and not on our predecessors,
+constitutes the highest form of incentive. We at the present time are
+far below many preceding generations in art, literature, architecture,
+arts and crafts and many developments of taste. Here is no evolution,
+but the story of how each generation sets itself to work. Why, then,
+should we think that in education, one of the highest of the arts, the
+moulding of the human mind into beautiful shapes instead of the
+moulding of more plastic material, we should be far ahead of the past
+and, therefore, in a position to find no precious lessons in it? The
+history of education not alone of the last three centuries of
+education, but of at least 6,000 years of education, is worth while
+knowing and it magnificently exemplifies how old is the new in
+education.
+
+{60}
+
+{61}
+
+THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY
+
+{62}
+
+  "What is it that hath been? The same thing that shall be. What is it
+  that hath been done? The same that shall be done."
+  --_Ecclesiastes i:10._
+
+
+  "To one small people . . . it was given to create the principle of
+  Progress. That people was the Greek. Except the blind forces of
+  nature, nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its
+  origin."
+  --Maine.
+
+
+{63}
+
+THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY [Footnote 6]
+
+  [Footnote 6: The material for this address was gathered for lectures
+  on the History of Education at St. Mary's Seminary, Scranton, Pa.,
+  and St. Joseph's College, Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia. It was
+  largely added to for the introductory lecture in a course to the
+  teachers of the parochial schools of Philadelphia, March, 1910. Very
+  nearly in its present form it was delivered before the Brooklyn
+  Institute of Arts and Sciences as the second lecture in the course
+  on "How Old The New Is," April, 1910.]
+
+
+We are very prone to think that our universities represent new
+developments in the history of humanity. We are aware that there were
+great educational institutions in the world at many times before the
+present, and that some of them profoundly affected the intellectual
+life of their time; we are likely to think, however, that these
+institutions were very different from our modern universities. They
+were not so well organized, they lacked endowments, their departments
+were not co-ordinated, they did not have the libraries and, of course,
+not the laboratory facilities that our modern universities have, and
+then, above all, they did not devote themselves to that one department
+of knowledge, physical science, in which absolute truth can be
+reached, and in which each advance in knowledge as made can be
+chronicled and set down as a sure basis for future work and workers in
+the same line for all time. {64} The older institutions of learning
+were given up to speculation, to idealism, to metaphysics, and, of
+course, therefore, their work, as many educated people are now prone
+to look at it, was too shadowy to last, too cloudy to serve as a
+foundation for any enduring scientific knowledge. I do not think that
+I exaggerate when I make this as the statement of the thought of a
+good many people of our time who are at least supposed to be educated
+and who consider that they are reasonably familiar with the
+educational institutions of the past.
+
+It has seemed to me, then, that it would be interesting and opportune
+to trace the origin, the development and the accomplishments of the
+first institution of learning that is very similar to our own; and to
+retrace some of the achievements of its professors, the circumstances
+in which they were done and the conditions surrounding an ancient
+school which I think our study will make clear as well deserving of
+the title of the first modern university. This was not the collection
+of schools at Athens, though there is no doubt at all that great
+intellectual and educational work was accomplished there, but not in
+our modern university sense. The schools were independent, and while
+the rivalry engendered by this undoubtedly did good so long as genius
+ruled in the schools, it brought about a degeneration into sophistry,
+from here comes the word, and argumentativeness, once the great master
+had been {65} displaced by disciples who were sure that they knew
+their master's mind, and probably thought, as disciples always do,
+that they were going beyond their master, but who really occupied
+themselves with curious and trifling tergiversations of mind within
+the narrow circle of ideas laid down by the master,--as has nearly
+always been the case.
+
+The first modern university was that of Alexandria. It was quite as
+much under Greek influence as the schools of Athens. There have been
+commentators on the story of Cleopatra, who have suggested that her
+African cast of countenance did not prove a deterrent to her success
+as a conqueror of hearts, and who argue from this to the fact that it
+is not physical charm but personality that counts in woman's power
+over men, quite forgetting, if they ever knew, that Cleopatra was a
+Greek of the Greeks, a daughter of the line of the Ptolemys, probably
+a direct descendant though with the bar sinister of Philip of Macedon,
+born of a house so watchful over its Greek blood and so resentful of
+any possible admixture of anything less noble with itself, that for
+generations it had been the custom for brother to marry sister, in
+order that the race of the Ptolemys might be perpetuated in absolute
+purity. Alexandria, while a cosmopolitan city in the inhabitants who
+dwelt in it and in the wide diffusion of commercial interests that
+centred there as a mart for East and West, was absolutely ruled by
+Greeks and represents for many centuries after {66} the decline of
+Athens had come, the brightest focus of Greek intellectual life, Greek
+culture and art, Greek letters and education and every phase of that
+Greek influence in aesthetics which has always meant so much in the
+world's history.
+
+The interesting fact about Alexandria in the history of education, is
+that it was the home of a modern university in every sense of that
+term, having particularly the features that many people are prone to
+think of as representing modern evolution in education. The buildings
+of the university were erected practically by a legacy left by the
+great Conqueror himself, Alexander. The central point of interest in
+the university was a great library, the nucleus of which was the
+library of Aristotle, tutor of Alexander, which had been collected
+with the help of that great Conqueror and was the finest collection of
+books in the world of that time. The main subject of interest in the
+university was physical science and its sister subject mathematics,
+which raises mere nature-study into the realm of science, and this
+scientific physical education was conducted in connection with the
+great museum or collection of objects of interest to scientists that
+had also been made partly by Aristotle himself and partly for his
+loved tutor by the gratitude of Alexander during his conquering
+expeditions in the far East. Finally professors were attracted to
+Alexandria by the offer of a better salary than had ever been paid at
+educational institutions before this, and {67} by the additional offer
+of a palace to live in, supplied by the ruler of the country. It is no
+wonder, then, that in attendance also, as well as in the prestige of
+its professors, Alexandria resembled a modern university.
+
+It was its devotion to science, however, that especially characterized
+this first great institution of learning of which we have definite
+records. This devotion to science went so far that even literature was
+studied from the scientific standpoint. Such details as we have of the
+instruction at Alexandria and the books that have come down to us, all
+show men interested in philology, in comparative literature, in
+grammar and comparative grammar, rather than in the idealistic modes
+of knowledge. We have commentaries on the great authors, but no great
+original works of genius in literature from the professors of
+Alexandria. The translation of the Septuagint version of the Old
+Testament is a typical example of the sort of work that was being done
+at Alexandria. They collected the documents of the nations and
+translated them for purposes of comparative study. It was an education
+for information rather than for power. The main idea of the time and
+place was to know as much as possible about literature, rather than to
+know what it represented in terms of life, and the real meaning of
+both literature and life was obscured in the study about and about
+them. People studied books about books rather than the books {68}
+themselves. There was much writing of books about books, and it was
+nearly always comparatively trivial things in the great authors that
+attracted most attention from the many scholiasts, critics, editors,
+commentators, lecturers of the time.
+
+Personally I could well understand such an incident happening at
+Alexandria as is said to have happened at a well-known English (of
+course not American!) university not long ago. The class was
+construing Shakespeare and one of the students asked the professor
+what the meaning of a particular figure used by the great dramatist
+was. The professor replied that they were there to construe
+Shakespeare's language and not bother about his meaning--yet it was a
+class in literature. Literature in recent years as studied at the
+universities has come to be quite as scientific in its modes and
+methods as it was at the University of Alexandria. May I also add that
+it has become quite as sterile of results of any importance. There is
+very little real study of literature, practically no encouragement of
+the attempt to draw inspiration from the great authors, but all
+devotion to the grammar, to the philology, to comparative literature
+as exemplified in the old writers.
+
+Books were the great essentials at Alexandria. This is not surprising
+seeing that the university was founded around a great library, and
+that this library continued to be the greatest in the world in its
+time. Every student who came to Alexandria bringing a book with him of
+which there was {69} no copy in the library, was required by a decree
+of the authorities to leave a copy behind him. In all the university
+towns of the times--and there were many founded in the rising eastern
+cities of Alexander's empire, as it gradually crumbled into smaller
+pieces providing new capitals with less power but with quite as much
+national feeling as the capital cities of larger states, libraries
+became the fashion and a city's main claim to prestige in education
+and the intellectual life was the number of its books. Antioch,
+Tarsus, Cos, Cnidos and Pergamos are examples of this state of
+affairs. Pergamos was so jealous of the prestige of the Alexandrian
+Library that it forbade the exportation of parchment, an invention of
+Pergamos which received its name from that city. Petty jealousies were
+quite as much the rule among educational institutions then as they
+have been at any time since.
+
+To many people it will seem quite absurd to talk of Alexandria as
+having done serious scientific work because the methods of science and
+scientific investigation are supposed to have been, as they think,
+discovered by Lord Bacon in the seventeenth century. It is curious how
+many educated people, or at least supposedly educated people, have
+this as their basic notion of the history of science. Men wandered in
+the mazes of inductive reasoning utterly unable to bring observations
+together in such a way as to discover laws, utterly incompetent to
+note phenomena and {70} bring them into relations to one another so as
+to show their scientific bearing, until Queen Elizabeth's Lord
+Chancellor came to show the way out of the labyrinth and leave the
+precious cord through its corridors, by which others may easily thread
+their way into the free air of scientific truth. I know nothing that
+is more absurd than this. It is a commonplace among educators,
+however; it is frequently referred to in educational addresses as if
+it were a universally accepted proposition, and to dispute it would
+seem the rankest kind of scientific heresy to these narrow minds.
+Fortunately there are two writers, Macaulay and Huxley, to whom even
+these people are likely to listen, who have expressed themselves with
+regard to this precious historic superstition that Lord Bacon invented
+the inductive method of reasoning with what my long-worded friend
+would call appropriate opprobrium.
+
+Macaulay says: "The inductive method has been practised ever since the
+beginning of the world by every human being. It is constantly
+practised by the most ignorant clown, by the most thoughtless
+schoolboy, by the very child at the breast. That method leads the
+clown to the conclusion that if he sows barley he shall not reap
+wheat. By that method the schoolboy learns that a cloudy day is the
+best for catching trout. The very infant, we imagine, is led by
+induction to expect milk from his mother or nurse, and none from his
+father. Not only is it not true that {71} Bacon invented the inductive
+method; but it is not true that he was the first person who correctly
+analyzed that method and explained its uses. Aristotle had long before
+pointed out the absurdity of supposing that syllogistic reasoning
+could ever conduct men to the discovery of any new principle, had
+shown that such discoveries must be made by induction, and by
+induction alone, and had given the history of the inductive process,
+concisely indeed, but with great perspicuity and precision."
+
+And Huxley quite as emphatically points out: "The method of scientific
+investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of
+working of the human mind. It is simply the mode by which all
+phenomena are reasoned about--rendered precise and exact."
+
+While the whole trend of education, even that of literature, was
+scientific at Alexandria, the principal feature of the teaching was,
+as we have said, concerned with the physical sciences and mathematics.
+It is in mathematics that the greatest triumphs were secured. Euclid's
+"Geometry," as we use it at the present time in our colleges and
+universities, was put into form by Euclid teaching at the University
+of Alexandria in the early days of the institution. Euclid's setting
+forth of geometry was so perfect that it has remained for over 2,000
+years the model on which all text-books of geometry of all the later
+times have been written. There seems no doubt that {72} writers on the
+history of mathematics are quite justified in proclaiming Euclid's
+"Geometry" as one of the greatest intellectual works that ever came
+from the hand of man. The first Ptolemy was fortunate in having
+secured this man as the founder of the mathematical department of his
+university. His example, the wonderful incentive of his work, the
+absolute perfection of his conclusions, must have proved marvellous
+emulative factors for the students who flocked to Alexandria.
+
+Commonly mathematicians are said to be impractical geniuses so
+occupied with mathematical ideas that their influence in other ways
+counts for little in university life. If we are to believe the stories
+that come to us with regard to Euclid, however, and there is every
+reason to believe them, for some of them come from men who are almost
+contemporaries, or from men who had their information from
+contemporaries, Euclid's influence in the university must have been
+for all that is best in education. Proclus tells the story of King
+Ptolemy once having asked Euclid, if there was any shorter way to
+obtain a knowledge of geometry than through the rather difficult
+avenue of Euclid's own text-book, and the great mathematician replied
+that there was "no royal road to geometry." Stobaeus relates the story
+of a student who, having learned the first theorem, asked "but what
+shall I make by learning these things?" The question is so modern that
+Euclid's {73} answer deserves to be in the memory of all those who are
+interested in education. Euclid called his slave and said, "Give him
+twopence, since he must make something out of everything that he does,
+even the improvement of his mind."
+
+Probably even more significant than the tradition that Euclid did his
+work at this first modern university, and that besides being a
+mathematician he was a man of very practical ideas in education, is
+the fact that he was appreciated by the men of his time and that his
+work was looked up to with highest reverence by his contemporaries and
+immediate successors as representing great achievement. It is not ever
+thus. Far from resenting in any way the magnificent synthesis that he
+had made of many rather vague notions in mathematics before his time,
+his contemporaries united in doing him honor. They realized that his
+teaching created a proper scientific habit of mind. Pappus says of
+Apollonius that he spent a long time as a pupil of Euclid at
+Alexandria and it was thus that he acquired a thorough scientific
+habit of mind. After Euclid's time the value of his discoveries as a
+means of training the mind was thoroughly appreciated. The Greek
+philosophers are said to have posted on the doors of their schools
+"Let no one enter here who does not know his Euclid." In the midst of
+the crumbling of old-fashioned methods of education in the
+introduction of the elective system, in the modern time, many of our
+best educators have insisted {74} that at least this portion of
+mathematics, Euclid's contribution to the science, should be a
+required study, and most educators feel, even when there is question
+of law or medical study, that one of the best preparations is to be
+found in a thorough knowledge of Euclid.
+
+Almost as wonderful as the work of Euclid was that of the second great
+mathematician of the Alexandrian school, Archimedes, who not only
+developed pure mathematics but applied mathematical principles to
+mechanics and proved besides to have wonderful mechanical ability and
+inventive genius. It was Archimedes of whom Cicero spoke so feelingly
+in his "Tusculan Disputations," when about a century and a quarter
+after Archimedes' death, he succeeded in finding, his tomb in the old
+cemetery at Syracuse during his quaestorship there. How curious it is
+to think that after so short a time as 127 years from the date of his
+death Archimedes was absolutely forgotten by his fellow-Syracusans,
+who resolutely denied that any trace of Archimedes' tomb existed. This
+stranger from Rome knew much more of Archimedes than his
+fellow-citizens a scant four generations after his time. Not how men
+advance, but how they forget even great advance that has been made,
+lose sight of it entirely at times and only too often have to
+rediscover it, is the most interesting phase of history. Cicero says,
+"Thus one of the noblest cities of Greece and one which at one time
+had been very {75} celebrated for learning, knew nothing of the
+monument of its greatest genius until it was rediscovered for them by
+a native of Arpinum"--Cicero's modest designation for himself.
+
+We have known much more about Archimedes' inventions than about his
+mathematical works. The Archimedian screw, a spiral tube for pumping
+water, invented by him, is still used in Egypt. The old story with
+regard to his having succeeded in making burning mirrors by which he
+was enabled to set the Roman vessels on fire during the siege of
+Syracuse, used to be doubted very seriously and, indeed, by many
+considered a quite incredible feat, clearly an historical
+exaggeration, until Cuvier and others in the early part of the
+nineteenth century succeeded in making a mirror by which in an
+experiment in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris wood was set on fire at
+a distance of 140 feet. As the Roman vessels were very small,
+propelled only by oars or at least with very small sail capacity, and
+as their means of offence was most crude and they had to approach
+surely within 100 feet of the wall to be effective, the old story
+therefore is probably entirely true. The other phase of history
+according to which Archimedes succeeded in constructing instruments by
+which the Roman vessels were lifted bodily out of the water, is
+probably also true, and certainly comes with great credibility of the
+man of whom it is told that, after having studied the lever, he
+declared that if he only had {76} some place to rest his lever, he
+could move the world.
+
+The well-known story of his discovery in hydrostatics, by which he was
+enabled to tell the King whether the royal goldsmiths had made his
+crown of solid gold or not, is very well authenticated. Archimedes
+realized the application of the principle of specific gravity in the
+solution of such problems while he was taking a bath. Quite forgetful
+of his state of nudity he ran through the streets, crying "Eureka!
+Eureka! I have found it! I have found it!" There are many other
+significant developments of hydrostatics and mechanics, besides
+specific gravity and the lever, the germs of which are at least
+attributed to Archimedes. He seems to have been one of the world's
+great eminent practical geniuses. That he should have been a product
+of Alexandria and should even have been a professor there would be a
+great surprise if we did not know Alexandria as a great scientific
+university. As it is, it is quite easy to understand how naturally he
+finds his place in the history of that university and how proud any
+modern university would be to have on the rolls of its students and
+professors a man who not only developed pure science but who made a
+series of practical applications that are of great value to mankind.
+Such men our modern universities appropriately claim the right to
+vaunt proudly as the products of their training.
+
+When we analyze something of the work in {77} pure mathematics that
+was accomplished by Archimedes our estimation of him is greatly
+enhanced. His work "On the Quadrature," that is the finding of the
+area of a segment of the parabola, is probably his most significant
+contribution to mathematical knowledge. His proof of the principal
+theorem in this is obtained by the "method of exhaustion," which had
+been invented by Eudoxus but was greatly developed by Archimedes. This
+method contains in itself the germ of that most powerful instrument of
+mathematical analysis in the modern time, the calculus.
+
+Another very important work was "The Sphere and the Cylinder." This
+was more appreciated in his own time, and as a consequence, after his
+death the figure of a sphere inscribed in a cylinder was cut on his
+tomb in commemoration of his favorite theorem, that the volume of the
+sphere is two-thirds that of the cylinder and its surface is four
+times that of the base of the cylinder. It was by searching for this
+symbol, famous in antiquity, that Cicero was enabled to find his tomb
+according to the story that I have already related.
+
+Within the last few years the reputation of Archimedes in pure
+mathematics has been greatly enhanced by the discovery by Professor
+Heiberg of a lost work of the great Alexandrian professor in
+Constantinople. Archimedes himself stated in a dedication of the work
+to Eratosthenes the method employed in this. He says: "I have thought
+it well to analyze and lay down for you {78} in this same book a
+peculiar method by means of which it will be possible for you to
+derive instruction as to how certain mathematical questions may be
+investigated by means of mechanics. And I am convinced that this is
+equally profitable in demonstrating a proposition itself, for much
+that was made evident to me through the medium of mechanics was later
+proved by means of geometry, because the treatment by the former
+method had not yet been established by way of a demonstration. For of
+course it is easier to establish a proof, if one has in this way
+previously obtained a conception of the questions, than for him to
+seek it without such a preliminary notion. . . . Indeed, I assume that
+some one among the investigators of to-day or in the future, will
+discover by the method here set forth still other propositions which
+have not yet occurred to me." On this Professor Smith comments:
+"Perhaps in all the history of mathematics no such prophetic truth was
+ever put into words. It would almost seem as if Archimedes must have
+seen as in a vision the methods of Galileo, Cavalieri, Pascal, Newton,
+and many other great makers of the mathematics of the Renaissance and
+the present time."
+
+Many other distinguished professors of mathematics have, since this
+declaration of Archimedes came under their notice, declared that he
+must have had almost a prophetic vision of certain developments of
+mathematics and especially applied {79} mathematics and mechanics and
+their relation to one another, that were only to come in much later
+and indeed comparatively modern times. Undoubtedly Archimedes' works
+proved the germ of magnificent development not only immediately after
+his own time but in the long-after time of the Renaissance, when their
+translation awakened minds to mathematical problems and their
+solutions that would not otherwise have come.
+
+We know much less of the life of the third of the great trio of
+teachers and students of Alexandria, Apollonius of Perga. Perhaps it
+should be enough for us to know that his contemporaries spoke of him
+as "the great geometer," though they were familiar with Euclid's book
+and with Archimedes' mighty work. Apollonius was surely a student of
+Alexandria for many years and he was probably also a professor of
+mathematics there. He developed especially what we know now as conic
+sections. His book on the subject contains practically all of the
+theorems to be found in our text-books of analytical geometry or conic
+sections of the present time. It was developed with rigorous
+mathematical logic and Euclidean conclusiveness. These three men show
+us beyond all doubt how finely the mathematical side of the university
+developed.
+
+After Archimedes the greatest mechanical genius of the University of
+Alexandria was Heron. To him we owe a series of inventions and
+discoveries in hydrostatics and the {80} construction of various
+mechanical toys that have been used in the laboratories since. There
+is even a little engine run by steam--the aeolipile--invented by him,
+which shows how close the old Greeks were to the underlying principles
+of discoveries that were destined to come only after the development
+of industries created a demand for them in the after time. Heron's
+engine is a globe of copper mounted on pivots, containing water, which
+on being heated produces steam that finds its way out through tubes
+bent so as to open in opposite directions on each side of the globe.
+The impact of the escaping steam on the air sets the globe revolving,
+and the principle of the turbine engine at work is clear. We have used
+steam for nearly 200 years always with a reciprocating type of
+movement, so that to apply energy in one direction the engine has had
+to move its parts backwards and forwards, but here was a direct-motion
+turbine engine in the long ago. Our great steamboats, the _Lusitania_
+and the _Mauretania,_ now cross the ocean by the use of this principle
+and not by the reciprocating engine, and it is evident that it is
+along these lines the future developments of the application of steam
+are to take place.
+
+Another extremely interesting invention made by Heron is the famous
+fountain called by his name, and which still is used to illustrate
+principles in pneumatics in our classrooms and laboratories. By means
+of condensed air water is made {81} to spring from a jet in a
+continuous stream and seems paradoxically to rise higher than its
+source. Probably his best work in the domain of physics is that on
+pneumatics in which are given not only a series of discussions, but of
+experiments and demonstrations on the elasticity of air and of steam.
+These experiments could only have been conducted in what we now call a
+physical laboratory. Indeed these inventions of his are still used in
+laboratories for demonstration purposes. While we may think, then,
+that the foundation of laboratories was reserved to our day, there is
+abundant evidence for their existence at the University of Alexandria.
+We shall return to this subject a little later, when the evidence from
+other departments has been presented, and then it will be clear, I
+think, that the laboratory methods were favorite modes of teaching at
+the University of Alexandria and were in use in nearly all departments
+of science both for research and for demonstration purposes.
+
+The work of the other great teacher at Alexandria which was to
+influence mankind next to that of Euclid, was not destined to
+withstand the critical study of succeeding generations, though it
+served for some 1,500 years as the basis of their thinking in
+astronomy. This was the work of Ptolemy, the great professor of
+astronomy at Alexandria of the first century after Christ. It is easy
+for us now to see the absurdity of Ptolemy's system. It is even hard
+for us to {82} understand how men could have accepted it. It must not
+be forgotten, however, that it solved all the astronomical problems of
+fifteen centuries and that it even enabled men, by its application, to
+foretell events in the heavens, and scientific prophecy is sometimes
+claimed to be the highest test of the truth of a system of scientific
+thought. Even so late as 1620 Francis Bacon refused to accept
+Copernicanism, already before the world for more than a century,
+because it did not, as it seemed to him, solve all the difficulties,
+while Ptolemy's system did. As great an astronomer as Tycho Brahe
+living in the century after Copernicus still clung to Ptolemy's
+teaching. It must not be forgotten that when Galileo restated
+Copernicanism, the reason for the rejection of his teaching by all the
+astronomers of Europe almost without exception, was that his reasons
+were not conclusive. They preferred to hold on to the old which had
+been so satisfying than to accept the new which seemed dubious. Their
+wisdom in this will be best appreciated from the fact that none of
+Galileo's reasons maintained themselves.
+
+Though his system has been rejected, still Ptolemy must be looked up
+to as one of the great teachers of mankind and his work the "Almagest"
+as one of the great contributions to human knowledge. The fact that he
+represented a climax of astronomical development at Alexandria some
+four centuries after the foundation of {83} that university, serves to
+show how much that first modern university occupied itself for all the
+centuries of its highest prestige, with physical science as well as
+with mathematics. Astronomy, physics, especially hydrostatics and
+mechanics, were all wonderfully developed. Generations of professors
+had given themselves to research and to the publication of important
+works quite as in the modern time, and Alexandria may well claim the
+right to be placed beside any university for what it accomplished in
+physical science, and rank high if not highest in the list of great
+research institutions adding new knowledge to old, leading men across
+the borderland of the unknown in science and furnishing that precious
+incentive to growing youth to occupy itself with the scientific
+problems of the world around it.
+
+The most important part of the scientific work of the University of
+Alexandria to my mind remains to be spoken of, and that is the medical
+department. It is a well-known law in the history of medicine that,
+whenever medical schools are attached to universities in such a way
+that students who come to the medical department have been thoroughly
+trained by preliminary studies and have such standards of scholarship
+as obtain in genuine university work, then great progress in medicine
+and in medical education is accomplished. This was eminently the case
+at Alexandria. The departments of the arts, of linguistics and of
+philosophy were gathered {84} around the great building known in Greek
+as the Mouseion, a word that has come to us through the Latin under
+the guise of Museum. This temple of the Muses contained collections of
+various kinds and near it was situated the great library. Not far away
+was the Serapeum, or Temple of Serapis, the Goddess of Life, around
+which were centred the biological sciences, and close by was the
+medical school. As teachers for this medical school some of the
+greatest physicians of the time were secured by the first Ptolemy and
+a great period in medical history began.
+
+The practical wisdom guiding the Ptolemys in the organization of this
+medical school will be best appreciated from the fact that they took
+the first step by inviting two distinguished physicians, the products
+of the two greatest medical schools of the time, to lay the
+foundations at Alexandria. They were probably the best investigators
+of their time and they had behind them fine traditions of research,
+thorough observation and conservative reasoning and theorizing on
+scientific subjects. Erasistratos was a disciple of Metrodoros, the
+son-in-law of Aristotle. He had studied for a time under another great
+teacher, Chrysippos of Cnidos. We are likely to know much more of Cos
+than of Cnidos because of the reputation in the after time of
+Hippocrates, whose name is so closely connected with Cos that the two
+are almost invariably associated, but Cnidos was one of the great
+university towns of the later Greek {85} civilization. Eudoxus the
+astronomer, Ctesias the writer on Persian history, and Sostratos the
+builder of the great lighthouse, one of the seven wonders of the
+world, the Pharos at Alexandria, were products of this university. Its
+medical school was famous when Cos had somewhat declined, and
+Chrysippos was one of the leading physicians of the world and one of
+the acknowledged great teachers of medicine when Erasistratos studied
+under him at Cnidos, and obtained that scientific training and
+incentive to original research which was to prove so valuable to
+Alexandria.
+
+His colleague, Herophilos, was quite as distinguished as Erasistratos
+and owed his training to the rival school of Cos. Whether it was
+intentional or not to secure these two products of rival schools for
+the healthy spirit of competition that would come from it, and because
+they wanted to have at Alexandria the emulation that would naturally
+be aroused by such a condition, is not known, but there can be no
+doubt of the wisdom of the choice and of the foresight which dictated
+it. Herophilos had studied medicine under Praxagoras, one of the
+best-known successors of Hippocrates. While distinguished as a surgeon
+he had more influence on medicine than almost any man of his time,
+except possibly Erasistratos. He was, however, a great anatomist and,
+above all, a zoologist who, according to tradition, had obtained his
+knowledge of animals from the most {86} careful zootomy of literally
+thousands of specimens. His fair fame is blackened by the other
+tradition that he practised vivisection on human beings--criminals
+being turned over to him for that purpose by the Ptolemys, who were
+deeply interested in his researches. The traditions in this matter,
+however, serve to confirm the idea of his zeal as an investigator and
+his ardent labors in medical science. Tertullian declares that he
+dissected at least 600 living persons. We know that he did much
+dissection of human cadavers and there is question whether
+Tertullian's statement was not gross exaggeration due to confusion
+between dissection and vivisection.
+
+Both of these men did some magnificent work upon the brain. This being
+the first period in the history of humanity when human beings could be
+dissected freely, it is not surprising that they should take up brain
+anatomy with ardent devotion, in the hope to solve some of the many
+human problems that seemed to centre in this complex organ. Before
+this anatomy had been learned mainly from animals, and as human beings
+differ most widely from animals by their brain, naturally, as soon as
+the opportunity presented itself, anatomists gave themselves to
+thorough work on this structure where so many discoveries were waiting
+to be made. After the brain and nervous system the heart was studied,
+and Erasistratos' description of its valves, of its general structure
+and even of its physiology, show how much he {87} knew. To know
+something of the work of these two anatomists is to see at once what
+is accomplished in a university medical school where medical science,
+and not the mere practice of medicine alone, is the object of teachers
+and students. I have told the story of this in my address before the
+graduates of the St. Louis Medical University Medical School, and here
+I shall simply refer you to that. [Footnote 7]
+
+  [Footnote 7: The details of what was accomplished in the Medical
+  Department at Alexandria were given to some extent at least in the
+  lecture in Brooklyn, but are omitted here in order to avoid
+  repetitions in the printed copy.]
+
+Of course all these studies at the university could not be conducted
+without laboratory equipment. Of itself the dissecting room is a
+laboratory and until very recent years it was the only laboratory that
+most of the medical schools had. The numerous experiments in
+vivisection, if they really took place, required special arrangements
+and could only be conducted in what we now call a laboratory of
+physiology. This is not idle talk but represents the realities of the
+situation. Other laboratories there must have been. It would be quite
+impossible to conceive of a man like Archimedes carrying on his work,
+especially of the application of mathematical principles to mechanics,
+of the demonstration of mechanical principles themselves and of the
+invention of the many interesting machines which he made, without what
+we call laboratory facilities. The Ptolemys were {88} interested in
+his work, they supplied him with a place to do it, many of his
+advanced students at least must have been interested in this work so
+that, as I see it, there was what we would now call a physical
+laboratory in connection with his teaching at the University of
+Alexandria.
+
+What we know about the development of zoology under Erasistratos and
+Herophilos would seem to indicate that there must have been such
+special facilities for the investigation of zoological problems as we
+would call a laboratory of physiology. A magnificent collection of
+plants was made for the university and these were studied and
+classified, and while we hear nothing of their dissection, there were
+at least botanical rooms for methodical study, if not botanical
+laboratories. Ptolemy's work represented the culmination of
+astronomical information which had been gathered for several
+centuries. This could only be brought together in what we would now
+call an observatory and this represents another laboratory of physical
+science. Our laboratory work, therefore, must have been anticipated to
+a great extent. We must not forget that our university laboratories
+are only a couple of generations old altogether and that they
+represent a very recent development of educational work. It is
+extremely interesting, therefore, to find them anticipated in germ at
+least, if not in actuality, at the first modern university of which we
+have sufficiently complete records to enable us to {89} appreciate
+just the sort of work that was being done and the ways and modes of
+its education.
+
+I think that even this comparatively meagre description of the first
+university of which we have knowledge makes it very clear that
+Alexandria deserves the name of the First Modern University. It
+resembled our own in so many ways that I, for one, find it impossible
+to discover any essential difference between them. At Alexandria they
+anticipated every phase of modern university education. Their
+literature was studied from a scientific standpoint. They devoted
+themselves to an overwhelming extent to the study of the physical
+sciences and mathematics, their professors were inventors, developers
+of practical applications of science, experts to whom appeal was made
+when important scientific questions had to be settled, and their
+teaching was done with demonstrations and a laboratory system very
+like our own. Nothing that I know illustrates better the tendency of
+human achievement not to represent advance but to occur in cycles than
+the story of this first modern university. That is why I have tried to
+tell it to you as an exquisite illustration of How Old the New Is in
+Education.
+
+{90}
+
+{91}
+
+MEDIAEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES
+
+{92}
+
+  "Qui ad pauca respiciunt faciliter pronuntiant."
+  --AN OLD PHILOSOPHER.
+
+  [Those who know little readily pronounce judgment.]
+
+
+{93}
+
+
+MEDIAEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES [Footnote 8]
+
+  [Footnote 8: The material for this address was originally gathered
+  for a lecture in a course on the History of Education delivered to
+  the Sisters of Charity of Mount St. Vincent's, some 500 in number;
+  teachers in the Catholic public schools of New York City, and for
+  corresponding lectures to the Academy of the Sacred Heart, Kenwood.
+  The address was delivered substantially in its present form at the
+  Catholic Club of Cornell University, under the title "The Relations
+  of the Church to Science."]
+
+
+Probably nothing is more surprising to any one who knows the history
+of science and of scientific education than the attitude of mind of
+the present generations, educated as they are mainly along scientific
+lines, toward the supposed lack of interest of preceding generations
+in science. Our scholars and professors seem to be almost universally
+of the opinion that the last few generations are the first who ever
+devoted themselves seriously to the study of science, or who, indeed,
+were free enough from superstitions and persuasions and beliefs of
+many kinds to give themselves up freely to scientific investigation.
+In the light of what we know or, perhaps I should say, what we are
+coming to know now with regard to the educational interests of the men
+of the various times, this would be an amusing, if it were not an
+amazing, presumption on our part. Over and over again in the world's
+history men have been {94} interested in science, both in pure science
+and in applied science, in the culture sciences and in the practical
+sciences.
+
+Apparently men forget that philosophy is science and ethics is science
+and metaphysics is scientific and logic is science and there is a
+science of language. Of course the protest that will be heard at once
+is that what we now mean by science is physical science. Even taking
+the word science in this narrower sense, however, how can people
+forget that our mathematics comes to us from the old Greeks, that old
+Greek contributions to medicine and, above all, to the scientific side
+of it still remain valuable, that physical science, pure and applied,
+developed wonderfully at the University of Alexandria, that there was
+a beginning of chemistry and the great foundations of astronomy laid
+in the long ago, and that men evidently were quite as much interested
+in the problems of nature around them as they have been at any time:
+Archimedes insisting that if he only had some place to rest his lever
+he could move the world, inventing the screw pump, fashioning his
+great burning-mirrors, and a little later Heron inventing the first
+germ of the turbine engine, while all the time their colleagues and
+contemporaries were developing the mathematics in connection with
+them, are studying both pure and applied science. It is simply failure
+to state in terms of the present what was accomplished in the past,
+that has permitted people to retain {95} curious notions of the
+absence of science in antiquity.
+
+Probably most people would be quite ready to concede, and especially
+after even a brief calling to their attention of some educational
+facts, that the old Greeks did enjoy a scientific educational
+development; it would probably even be admitted that the traditions of
+science of various kinds from Egypt, from Chaldea, from Babylonia
+point to previous eras of scientific development. They would probably
+still insist, however, that there had been a long interval of utter
+neglect of science lasting nearly 2,000 years and that our interest is
+properly a resurrection of science-study after a long burial. They do
+not even hesitate to blame the educational authorities of the interval
+for their failure to occupy themselves with scientific ideas and are
+prone to find reasons of various kinds to account for this failure. As
+the Church was dominant in education during the Middle Ages this makes
+a ready scapegoat, and so we have heard much of the repression of
+scientific study by the ecclesiastical authorities, and the determined
+effort made to keep men from inquiring about the problems of nature
+around them, because this would lead them to think for themselves and
+have doubts with regard to faith. Indeed this attitude of mind in the
+history of science is so usual that it is a commonplace, and men who
+are supposed to be scholars talk off-handedly of direct Church
+opposition to science.
+
+{96}
+
+There is no doubt at all that the Church was the commanding influence
+in education during the Middle Ages. Whatever was studied was taken up
+because the Church authorities were interested in it. Whatever was not
+studied was absent from the curriculum because of their lack of
+interest. While study was magnificently encouraged there were many
+subjects, though not near so many as is often thought, that were
+repressed. The Church must certainly be held responsible in every way
+for the teaching of the Middle Ages, both as regards its extent and
+its limitations. The charters of the universities were granted by the
+Popes. The universities themselves usually were cathedral schools
+which had developed, and to which had become attached various graduate
+departments. The ecclesiastical authorities were in control of them.
+The rector of the university was usually the archdeacon of the
+cathedral or the chancellor of the diocese. The professors at the
+universities were practically all of them in clerical orders, and the
+great body of the students were clerics, in the sense that they had
+assumed at least minor orders and were supposed to be in preparation
+for a clerical life. This was, indeed, the one sure way to secure
+exemption from the military duties of the time and to prevent
+interference of various kinds by the civil power with the leisure
+necessary for study. No man had any essential rights in the Middle
+Ages except such as were conferred on him by some organization {97} to
+which he belonged, and the clerical order was particularly powerful.
+
+Now the interesting phase of the education afforded by these
+universities under ecclesiastical control with clerical students and
+professors constituting the large majority of members, with the
+influence of the religious orders paramount for centuries, is that it
+was entirely scientific in character and largely occupied with the
+physical sciences, though the culture sciences formed the basis of it.
+Huxley, though he is surely the last man of recent times who would be
+suspected for a moment of exaggerating the scientific significance of
+mediaeval education, recognized this fact very well and stated it very
+emphatically. In his Inaugural Address on Universities Actual and
+Ideal, delivered as Rector of Aberdeen University after discussing the
+subject with evident careful preparation, he said:
+
+  "The scholars of the mediaeval universities seem to have studied
+  grammar, logic and rhetoric; arithmetic and geometry; astronomy,
+  theology and music. Thus, their work, however imperfect and faulty,
+  judged by modern lights, it may have been, brought them face to face
+  with all the leading aspects of the many-sided mind of man. For
+  these studies did really contain, at any rate in embryo, sometimes
+  it may be in caricature, what we now call philosophy, mathematical
+  and physical science and art. {98} _And I doubt if the curriculum of
+  any modern university shows so clear and generous a comprehension of
+  what is meant by culture, as this old Trivium and Quadrivium does."_
+  (Italics mine.)
+
+Of course Huxley says, "sometimes it may be in caricature." We must
+not forget, however, that first even Huxley hesitates to say that it
+is caricature, for he knows how easy it is to be mistaken in our
+estimation of the true significance of an old-time mode of thought,
+and then, too, he knew comparatively how little we were sure of the
+real thoughts and conclusions of these men of the olden time because
+of defective sympathy and even defective knowledge of their work. Our
+knowledge in this matter has greatly increased since his time. As a
+matter of fact, the more we know about these old masters and the
+mediaeval universities the less are we likely to think of their work
+as lacking in seriousness in any sense. The quarter of a century that
+has elapsed since Huxley so cogently urged this at Aberdeen has
+brought many facts unknown to us before and has shown us what good
+work, even in the physical sciences, was accomplished in these
+old-time universities.
+
+For instance, nothing is more common in the mouths of certain kinds of
+scholars than the expressions of wonder as to why men did not study
+nature more assiduously before our time. Here is a magnificent open
+book full of the most alluring lessons which any one may study for
+himself, and that somehow it is presumed men neglected {99} down to
+our time. We are the age of nature students, and preceding times are
+looked at askance for having neglected the opportunities that lay so
+invitingly open to them in this subject. It has always been a wonder
+to me how people dare to talk this way. Our old literatures are full
+of observations on nature. In my book on "The Popes and Science" I
+take Dante as a typical product of the universities of the thirteenth
+century, and show without any difficulty as it seems to me, that there
+is no poet of the modern time who can draw figures from nature which
+demand even a detailed knowledge of nature with so much confidence as
+Dante. He knows the most intimate details about the birds, about many
+animals, about the ways of flowers, about children, describes some
+experiments in science, has a wide knowledge of astronomy and in
+general is familiar with nature quite as much if not more than any
+modern writer not _ex professo_ a naturalist. He describes the
+metamorphosis of insects, how the ants communicate with one another,
+knows the secrets of the bees and exhibits wide knowledge of the
+secrets of bird life.
+
+The presumption that people did not study nature in the olden time is
+quite unjustified. They did not write long books about trivial
+subjects of nature-study. They did not conclude that because they were
+seeing something for the first time, that that was the first time in
+the world's history it had ever been seen. They were gentle, {100}
+kindly scholars who assumed that others had eyes and saw too, and as
+fortunately there was no printing press there was not that hurried
+rushing into print, with superficial observations and still more
+superficial conclusions, which has characterized so much of our recent
+literature of nature-study and that has been so well dubbed "nature
+faking." Of course we have had faking of the same kind in nearly
+everything else: we have history faking in our supposed historical
+romances, science faking in our pseudo-science, science-history faking
+in our ready presumption that the men of the olden time could not have
+had our interests, and, above all--may I now say it?--in our cheap
+conclusion that there must have been some reason for their lack of
+interest in science, and then the assumption without anything further,
+that it must have been because of the Church.
+
+Just as soon as there is question of there having been any serious
+scientific study during the Middle Ages, in the sense of observations
+in physical science, investigation of the physical phenomena of nature
+and the drawing of conclusions from them and the evolving of laws,
+there are a large number of people who consider themselves very well
+informed, who will at once object that this must be quite absurd,
+since at this time Lord Chancellor Bacon had not as yet laid down the
+great foundations of the physical sciences in his discussion of
+inductive reasoning. I have already {101} ventured to suggest, in the
+address on "The First Modern University," how utterly ridiculous any
+such notion is. I have quoted Lord Macaulay and Huxley as ridiculing
+those who entertained such an idea. Here I may be permitted to recur
+to the subject by quotations from the same authorities. I have often
+found that anything I myself said in this matter was at once
+considered as quite incredible, since my feelings were entirely too
+favorable toward the Middle Ages and then my religious affiliations
+are somehow supposed to unfit me for scientific thinking. Fortunately
+Macaulay and Huxley have expressed themselves in this matter even more
+vigorously than I would be likely to, and so I may simply quote them.
+
+As Lord Macaulay wrote in his well-known essay:
+
+  "The vulgar notion about Bacon we take to be this, that he invented
+  a new method of arriving at truth, which method is called induction,
+  and that he detected some fallacy in the syllogistic reasoning which
+  had been in vogue before his time. This notion is as well founded as
+  that of the people who, in the Middle Ages, imagined that Virgil was
+  a great conjurer. Many who are far too well informed to talk such
+  extravagant nonsense entertain what we think incorrect notions as to
+  what Bacon really effected in this matter."
+
+Still more apposite is what Professor Huxley has to say. Discoursing
+on the phenomena of {102} organic nature, after warning his auditors
+not to suppose that scientific investigation is "some kind of modern
+black art," he adds: "I say that you might easily gather this
+impression from the manner in which many persons speak of scientific
+inquiry, or talk about inductive and deductive philosophy, or the
+principles of the 'Baconian philosophy.' To hear people talk about the
+great Chancellor--and a very great man he certainly was--you would
+think that it was he who had invented science, and that there was no
+such thing as sound reasoning before the time of Queen Elizabeth.
+
+  "There are many men who, though knowing absolutely nothing of the
+  subject with which they may be dealing, wish nevertheless to damage
+  the author of some view with which they think fit to disagree. What
+  they do is not to go and learn something about the subject; . . .
+  but they abuse the originator of the view they question, in a
+  general manner, and wind up by saying that, 'After all, you know,
+  the principles and method of this author are totally opposed to the
+  canons of the Baconian philosophy.' Then everybody applauds, as a
+  matter of course, and agrees that it must be so."
+
+Lord Bacon himself so little understood true science that he condemned
+Copernicanism because it failed to solve the problems of the universe,
+and condemned Dr. Gilbert, the great founder in Magnetism, whose work
+was the best {103} exemplification of inductive science of that time.
+Of course Bacon did not invent science nor its methods. He was only a
+publicist popularizing them. They had existed in the minds of all
+logical thinkers from the beginning. His great namesake, Friar Bacon,
+much better deserves to be thought a pioneer in modern physical
+science than the chancellor,--and he was a mediaeval university man.
+
+We are prone to think of the old-time universities as classical or
+literary schools with certain limited post-graduate features, more or
+less distantly smacking of science. The reason for this is easy to
+understand. It is because out of such classical and literary colleges
+our present universities, with their devotion to science, were
+developed or transformed during the last generation or two. It is to
+be utterly ignorant of mediaeval education, however, to think that the
+classical and literary schools are types of university work in the
+Middle Ages. The original universities of the thirteenth and
+fourteenth centuries paid no attention to language at all except
+inasmuch as Latin, the universal language, was studied in order that
+there might be a common ground of understanding. Latin was not studied
+at all, however, from its literary side; to style as such the
+professors in the old mediaeval universities and the writers of the
+books of the time paid no attention. Indeed it was because of this
+neglect of style in literature and of the niceties of classical Latin
+that the university men of recent centuries before our own, {104} so
+bitterly condemned the old, mediaeval teachers and were so utterly
+unsympathetic with their teaching and methods. We, however, have come
+once more into a time when style means little, indeed, entirely too
+little, and when the matter is supposed to be everything, and we
+should have more sympathy with our older forefathers in education who
+were in the same boat. We have inherited traditions of
+misunderstanding in this matter, but we should know the reasons for
+them and then they will disappear.
+
+As a matter of fact, exactly the same thing happened in our modern
+change of university interests during the latter half of the
+nineteenth century as happened in the latter half of the fifteenth
+century in Italy, and in the next century throughout Europe. With the
+fall of Constantinople the Greeks were sent packing by the Turks and
+they carried with them into Italy manuscripts of the old Greek
+authors, examples of old Greek art and the classic spirit of devotion
+to literature as such. A new educational movement termed the study of
+the humanities had been making some way in Italy during the preceding
+half-century before the fall of Constantinople, but now interest in it
+came with a rush. The clergymen, the nobility, even the women of the
+time became interested in the New Learning, as it was called. Private
+schools of various kinds were opened for the study of it, and
+everybody considered that it was the one thing that people who {105}
+wanted to keep up to date, smart people, for they have always been
+with us, should not fail to be familiar with. The humanities became
+the fashion, just as science became the fashion in the nineteenth
+century. Fashion has a wonderfully pervasive power and it runs in
+cycles in intellectual matters as well as in clothes.
+
+The devotees of the New Learning demanded a place for it in the
+universities. University faculties perfectly confident, as university
+faculties always are, that what they had in the curriculum was quite
+good enough, and conservative enough to think that what had been good
+enough for their forefathers was surely good enough also for this
+generation, refused to admit the new studies. For a considerable
+period, therefore, the humanities had to be pursued in institutions
+apart from the universities. Indeed it was not until the Jesuits
+showed how valuable classical studies might be made for developmental
+purposes and true education that they were admitted into the
+universities.
+
+Note the similarity with certain events in our own time in all this.
+Two generations ago the universities refused to admit science. They
+were training men in their undergraduate departments by means of
+classical literature. They argued exactly as did the old mediaeval
+universities with regard to the new learning, that they had no place
+for science. Science had to be learned, then, in separate institutions
+for a time. The scientific {106} educational movement made its way,
+however, until finally it was admitted into the university curricula.
+Now we are in the midst of an educational period when the classics are
+losing in favor so rapidly that it seems as though it would not be
+long before they would be entirely replaced by the sciences, except,
+in so far as those are concerned who are looking for education in
+literature and the classic languages for special purposes.
+
+It will be interesting, then, to trace the story of the old mediaeval
+universities as far as the science in their curriculum was concerned,
+because it represents much more closely than we might have imagined,
+or than is ordinarily thought, the preceding phase of education to the
+classical period which we have seen go out of fashion to so great an
+extent in the last two generations. We shall readily find that at
+least as much time was devoted in the mediaeval universities to the
+physical sciences as in our own, and that the culture sciences filled
+up the rest of the curriculum. Philosophy, which occupied so prominent
+a place in older university life, was not only a culture science, but
+physical science as well, as indeed the name natural philosophy, which
+remained almost down to our day, attests.
+
+Physical science was not the sole object of these mediaeval
+institutions of learning, but they were thoroughly scientific. The
+main object of the universities in the olden time was to secure such
+{107} discussion of the problems of man's relation to the universe, to
+his Creator, to his fellow-creatures and to the material world as
+would enable him to appreciate his rights and duties and to use his
+powers. Huxley declared that the trivium and quadrivium, the seven
+liberal arts studied in the mediaeval universities, probably
+demonstrate a clearer and more generous comprehension of what is meant
+by culture than the curriculum of any modern university. Language was
+learned through grammar, the science of language. Reasoning was
+learned through logic, the science of reasoning; the art of expression
+through rhetoric, a combination of art and science with applications
+to practical life. Mathematics was studied with a zeal and a success
+that only those who know the history of mediaeval mathematics can at
+all appreciate. Cantor, the German historian of mathematics, in
+hundreds of pages of a large volume, has told the story of the
+development of mathematics during the centuries before the
+Renaissance, that is from the thirteenth to the fifteenth, in a way
+that makes it very clear that the teaching at the universities in this
+subject was not dry and sterile, but eminently productive, successful
+in research, and with constant additions to knowledge such as live
+universities ought to make.
+
+Then there was astronomy, metaphysics, theology, music and law and
+medicine. The science of law was developed and, above all, great {108}
+collections of laws made for purposes of scientific study. Of
+astronomy every one was expected to know much, of medicine we shall
+have considerable to say hereafter, but in the meantime it is well to
+recall that these mediaeval centuries maintained a high standard of
+medical education and brought some wonderful developments in the
+sciences allied to medicine and above all in their applications to
+therapeutics. Surgery never reached so high a plane of achievement
+down to our own time, as during the period when it was studied so
+faithfully and developed so marvellously at the mediaeval
+universities. It was inasmuch as a knowledge of physics was needed for
+the development of metaphysics that the mediaeval schoolmen devoted
+themselves to the study of nature. They turned with as much ardor and
+devotion as did Herbert Spencer in the nineteenth century, to the
+accumulation of such information with regard to nature as would enable
+them to draw conclusions, establish general principles and lay firm
+foundations for reasonings with regard to the creature and the
+Creator. It is, above all, this phase of mediaeval teaching work, of
+the schoolmen's ardent interest that is misunderstood, often ignored
+and only too frequently misrepresented in the modern time.
+
+For instance, in the discussion of the status of matter in the
+universe the scholastics and notably Thomas Aquinas had come to the
+conclusion that matter was absolutely indestructible. He {109} even
+went so far as to say that man could not destroy it, and God would not
+annihilate it. _Nihil omnino in nihilum redigetur_--nothing at all
+will ever be reduced to nothingness, was his dictum as the conclusion
+of a course of lectures on this subject. He saw the changes in matter
+all round him that were supposed to be destructive, the burnings, the
+vaporizations, the solutions, the putrefactions and all the rest, but
+he knew that these only brought changes in matter and not destruction
+of the underlying substance. For him, as for all the scholastic
+philosophers, matter was composed of two principles, as they were
+called. One of these was prime matter and the other form. To prime
+matter, one of these, matter or substance owed all its negative
+qualities, inertia and the like. To form, the dynamic element or
+principle, it owed all its individuating qualities. Prime matter was
+the same in all things. Form was the energy or bundle of energies, the
+dynamic principle, as we have said, which entering into prime matter,
+made the different kinds of matter that we speak of.
+
+It is extremely interesting to compare this old scholastic teaching
+with the modern ideas of the composition of matter and especially the
+notions which have come to us from researches in physical chemistry in
+recent years. Our scientists no longer believe that we have some
+eighty different elements, essentially different kinds of matter, that
+cannot by any chance or process be changed one {110} into another. We
+have seen one form of elementary matter changing into another, helium
+emanations becoming radium, have heard of Professor Ramsay's
+transmutation of various elements, and have about come to the
+conclusion that in the radio-active substances we have a wonderful
+transmuting power. A prominent American professor of chemistry
+declared not long since that he would like to treat a large quantity
+of lead ore in order to extract from it all the silver which so
+constantly occurs in connection with it in the natural state, and then
+having put the lead ore aside for a score of years, would like to
+examine it again, confident that he would find traces of silver in it
+once more, which had developed as a consequence of the radio-activity
+present in the substance and which is constantly changing lead into
+silver in small quantities. Newton's declaration, when he saw crystals
+of gold in connection with copper, that gold had been developed from
+the copper, seemed very foolish a century ago, but no one would
+consider it so at the present moment.
+
+We are prone to think that these old mediaeval philosophers accepting
+to some extent at least the philosopher's stone with its supposed
+capacity for changing baser metals into precious, and with their
+acceptance of the transmutation of substances, cannot have had any
+real scientific bent of mind. We are coming to the realization,
+however, that in many ways by pure reasoning, in {111} conjunction
+with such observation as they had at hand, they anticipated our most
+recent conclusions in very marvellous ways. We know now that radium,
+or at least radio-active substances, represent the philosopher's stone
+of the olden time. We are not surprised at the transmutation of metals
+and of substances, on the contrary, we are looking for it.
+
+I remember once stating the old theory of matter and form to a
+distinguished professor in chemistry in this country, and he was
+struck by the similarity of it to what are the present accepted ideas
+of the composition of matter. He asked why this teaching was not more
+generally known. I had to tell him that in every Catholic school of
+philosophy, it was taught as a basic doctrine, and that far from being
+concealed it was the very touchstone of Catholic philosophic teaching,
+and had often been the subject of deprecation and contemptuous remarks
+on the part of those who thought that it represented somewhat foolish
+old-fashioned teaching handed down to us from the backwardness and
+abysm of time.
+
+We have demonstrated the indestructibility of matter in modern times
+by experimental methods. The mediaeval schoolmen reached similar
+conclusions, however, by strict reasoning from the premises of
+observation that they had in the olden times. We may be apt to think
+that they knew very little about nature and the details of physical
+science, but that will be only because we do not {112} know their
+great books. Albertus Magnus is a typical example of a renowned
+teacher of the thirteenth century who was, however, at the same time a
+highly respected member of his order, holding important official
+positions in it and thoroughly honored and respected by his
+ecclesiastical superiors so that he was made a bishop, yet writing
+volumes of observation with regard to nearly every phase of physical
+science. A list of his books reads like a section of a catalogue of a
+library of physical science. I have told the story of his career in
+the second series of "Catholic Churchmen in Science," but the names of
+his volumes are sufficient to show what sort of work he was doing. He
+has volumes on chemistry, botany, on physics, on cosmography, on
+animal locomotion, on respiration, on generation and corruption, on
+age and death and life, on phases of psychology, the soul, sense and
+sensation, memory, sleep, the intellect and many another subject.
+Those who think that there was no attention paid to science in the
+Middle Ages must know nothing at all of Albertus Magnus' work.
+
+Above all, those who talk thus are entirely ignorant of all that Roger
+Bacon did. Roger Bacon himself was a student of the University of
+Paris. He was a professor there. He corresponded with the scientists
+of Europe quite as frequently or at least as significantly as
+professors of the modern time do with each other. Students submitted
+their discoveries to him. We {113} have Peregrinus' letter to him with
+regard to magnetism and electricity and know of others. We have his
+own books, in which he treats not only the scientific problems, but
+inventions and applied science of all kinds. At the present time his
+interest in aeronautics has a special appeal to us. He was sure that
+men would sometime make a successful airship. He even thought that he
+could make one himself, but his experiments proved unsuccessful. His
+theory of it was very interesting. In his work "De Secretis Artis et
+Naturae Operibus" he writes that a machine could be constructed in
+which a man sitting in the centre might move wings by means of a crank
+and thus, quite after the fashion of birds, fly through the air. It
+was he who wrote that the time would come when carriages would move
+along the roads without men or horses to pull them. At the moment he
+was experimenting with gunpowder. He realized, therefore, that
+sometime men would harness explosives and use them for motor purposes.
+That is, of course, just what we are doing with gasolene.
+
+He suggested that boats would run over the water without oars and
+without sails. He was anticipating our motor boat. He taught that
+light moves with a definite rate of velocity, though that fact was not
+demonstrated for several centuries after his time. He worked out most
+of the theory of lenses as we have it at the present time. He was sure
+that experiment and {114} observation constituted the only way by
+which knowledge of nature could be obtained. In this he was but
+following his great teacher Albertus Magnus, who insisted that in
+natural philosophy experiment alone brought sure knowledge;
+_"Experimentum solum certificat in talibus."_ are his own words. Roger
+Bacon's devotion to mathematics shows how thoroughly scientific was
+the trend of his mind. Without mathematics he was sure that one could
+not reach scientific knowledge, or that what one did get was without
+certainty. Some of his expressions in this matter are strikingly
+modern. It is no wonder that his writings and teachings were so great
+a surprise to his generation that the Pope ordered him to write out
+his knowledge in books. Without this order we would not have had Roger
+Bacon's great works, for his vow of poverty voluntarily taken forbade
+him to be possessed of sufficient money to enable him to purchase
+writing materials, which were then very expensive.
+
+Indeed the mathematics of the mediaeval universities is the best proof
+of the seriousness of their devotion to science and, may it also be
+said, of their success. Cantor, in his "History of Mathematics," and
+he is the great authority in the matter, devotes nearly 100 pages of
+his second volume to the mathematicians of the thirteenth century
+alone, two of whom, Leonard of Pisa and Jordanus Nemorarius, did so
+much in arithmetic, in the theory of numbers, and in geometry, {115}
+as to work a revolution in mathematics. They had great disciples like
+John of Holywood (probably a town near Dublin), Johannes Campanus and
+others. No wonder that at the end of the century Roger Bacon said,
+"For without mathematics nothing worth knowing in philosophy can be
+obtained," and again, "for he who knows not mathematics cannot know
+any other science; what is more, he cannot discover his own ignorance
+or find its proper remedy." The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries saw
+even more important work done. Cantor has half a dozen men in the
+fifteenth century to whom he devotes more than twenty-five pages each.
+How the place of this in mediaeval teaching can have escaped the
+notice of those who insist so much on the neglect of science during
+the Middle Ages, is hard to understand. This alone would convict them
+of ignorance of what they are talking about.
+
+The educational genius of the great university century, the
+thirteenth, the man who influenced his contemporaries and succeeding
+generations more than any other, was Thomas Aquinas, to whom the
+Church, for his knowledge and goodness, gave the title of saint. If
+any further proof that these centuries were interested in science were
+needed, or that the universities in which he was the leading light as
+scholar and professor in the thirteenth century, and as the great
+master to whom all looked reverentially after, were developing
+scientific studies, it would be found in {116} his works. Philosophy
+is developed scientifically in his "Contra Gentes" and theology,
+scientifically in his great "Summa." It is the very austerity of the
+scientific qualities of these books that have made them forbidding for
+many modern readers, who, therefore, have failed to understand the
+scientific spirit of the time. St. Thomas Aquinas, however, was, as I
+suggested at the beginning of this, deeply interested in every form of
+information with regard to what we now call physical science. He
+evidently drank in with avidity all that had been observed with regard
+to living creatures and, when we come to analyze his works with care
+and read his books with the devotion of his own students, we find many
+anticipations of what is most modern in our science.
+
+The indestructibility of matter, matter and form, that is the doctrine
+of the unity of the basis of matter, the conservation of energy in the
+sense that the forms of matter change but do not disappear, all these
+were commonplaces in his thought and teaching. I have recently had
+occasion to point out how close he came to that thought in modern
+biology which is probably considered to be one of our most modern
+contributions to the theory of evolution. It is expressed by the
+formula of Herbert Spencer, "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny."
+According to this the completed human being repeats in the course of
+its development the history of the race, that is to say, the varying
+phases of foetal development {117} in the human embryo, from the
+single cell in which it originates up to the perfect being as it is
+born into the world, retrace the history by which from the single-cell
+being man has gradually developed. The whole theory of evolution is
+supposed by many people to be modern, but of course it is not. This
+particular phase of it, however, is thought surely to be modern. It is
+sometimes spoken of as the fundamental law of biogeny. In recent years
+serious doubts have been thrown on it, but with that we have nothing
+to do here.
+
+It is very curious to find, however, that St. Thomas, in his teaching
+with regard to the origin and development of the human being, says,
+almost exactly, what the most ardent supporters of this so-called
+fundamental biogenetic law proclaimed in recent years. He says that
+"the higher a form is in the scale of being and the farther it is
+removed from mere material form, the more intermediate forms must be
+passed through before the finally perfect form is reached. Therefore,
+in the generation of animal and man--these having the most perfect
+forms--there occur many intermediate forms in generations and
+consequently destruction, because the generation of one being is the
+destruction of another." St. Thomas does not hesitate to draw his
+conclusions from this doctrine without hesitation. He proclaims that
+the human material is first animated by a vegetative soul or principle
+of life, and then by an animal soul and only ultimately, when the
+matter has {118} been properly prepared for it, by a rational soul. He
+said:
+
+  "The vegetative soul, therefore, which is first in the embryo, while
+  it lives the life of a plant, is destroyed, and there succeeds a
+  more perfect soul, which is at once nutrient and sentient, and for
+  that time the embryo lives the life of an animal: upon the
+  destruction of this there succeeds the rational soul, infused from
+  without."
+
+His discussion of the position of the Church and of faith to science
+is extremely interesting, because here once more he faces a modern
+problem. Aquinas was very sensitive with regard to the imposition upon
+Christians of things which supposedly they had to believe on the score
+of faith, though they were really not of faith at all. Some of his
+expressions in this matter are very strong and he was especially fond
+of quoting St. Augustine, who was very emphatic on this point. One of
+these typical passages deserves to find a place here because, while
+the word philosophy is used, it is evidently science in our modern
+sense of the word that is intended. Augustine talks of what the
+philosophers have said of the heavens or the stars and the motion of
+the sun and moon, meaning of course the astronomers, who were in the
+old days classed as natural philosophers. This passage, then, which
+contains the opinions of the two greatest teachers of the Church in
+the West may well serve as a guide for those who are interested in
+science, and a warning for those who would {119} obtrude faith too far
+into scientific questions, and thus limit investigation and hamper
+that freedom of intellect which is so important for the development of
+science. St. Thomas said in his introduction to the reply to Master
+John of Vercelli:
+
+  "I have endeavored to reply but with this protest at the outset,
+  that many of these articles do not pertain to the teachings of
+  faith, but rather to the dogmas of the philosophers. But it works a
+  great injury either to assert or deny as belonging to sacred
+  doctrine such things as do not bear upon the doctrine of piety. For
+  Augustine says, 'When I hear certain Christians ignorant of those
+  things (namely, what philosophers have said of the heavens, or the
+  stars, or the motion of the sun and moon) or misunderstanding them,
+  I look with patience upon such men: nor do I see any reason to
+  hinder them, when of thee, Lord Creator of all things, they do not
+  believe unworthy things, if perhaps they be ignorant of the
+  structure, and condition of corporal creatures. But they are a
+  hindrance if they think these things belong to the very doctrine of
+  piety; and more, pertinaciously, dare to affirm that of which they
+  are ignorant.' But that they may be the cause of injury Augustine
+  shows. 'It is very disgraceful,' he says, 'and pernicious and
+  especially to be avoided, that a Christian speaking of these things
+  as though according to Christian teaching should so rave that any
+  infidel may hear; so that, as it is said, seeing him altogether in
+  the wrong, he may {120} scarcely contain his mirth. And it is not so
+  hurtful that one man should be seen to err, as that our writers are
+  believed by those who are without [the Church] to have such
+  opinions, and to the ruin of those whose salvation is our care they
+  are scorned and contemned as unlearned.' Whence it seems safer to me
+  that those things which philosophers have commonly held, and are not
+  repugnant to our faith, should neither be asserted as dogmas of
+  faith, although at times they may be introduced under the names of
+  the philosophers, nor so denied as contrary to the faith, as to give
+  occasion to the wise of this world of contemning the teaching of the
+  faith."
+
+Is it any wonder that Professor Saintsbury of the University of
+Edinburgh, whose training in the old Scotch universities has given him
+a breadth of sympathy not common in our time, and whose wide knowledge
+of the literature of that period as well as its philosophy and
+education, and whose training in the discussion of the criticism of
+all time in his "History of Criticism" has made his opinion of special
+value, should have sympathetically turned to these old teachers and
+deprecated a little bitterly the modern attitude towards them? He
+said:
+
+  "Yet there has always in generous souls who have some tincture of
+  philosophy, subsisted a curious kind of sympathy and yearning over
+  the work of these generations of mainly disinterested scholars, who,
+  whatever they were, were {121} thorough, and whatever they could not
+  do, could think. And there have even, in these latter days, been
+  some graceless ones who have asked whether the science of the
+  nineteenth century, after an equal interval, will be of any more
+  positive value--whether it will not have even less comparative
+  interest than that which appertains to the scholasticism of the
+  thirteenth."
+
+I have always considered, however, that the easiest way to show the
+modern student of science how supremely scientific in his temper was
+St. Thomas, is to quote for him the passage from that great teacher
+with regard to the Resurrection. In every way, that is typically
+modern. St. Thomas faces the question that after death men's bodies
+decay, the material of them is taken up and used in many other living
+beings, so that how can we dare to believe that we shall rise again on
+the last day with the same bodies that we now have? St. Thomas
+discusses this knotty problem straightforwardly and solves it more
+satisfactorily, even for all the knowledge that we have of it now,
+than has ever been done.
+
+  "What does not bar numerical unity in a man while he lives on
+  uninterruptedly clearly can be no bar to the identity of the arisen
+  man with the man that was. In a man's body while he lives there are
+  not only the same parts in respect of matter, but also in respect of
+  species. In respect of matter there is a flux and reflux of parts.
+  Still that fact does not bar the man's numerical unity {122} from
+  the beginning to the end of his life. The form and species of the
+  several parts continue throughout life, but the matter of the parts
+  is dissolved by the natural heat, and new matter accrues through
+  nourishment. Yet the man is not numerically different by the
+  difference of his component parts at different ages, although it is
+  true that the material composition of the man at one stage of his
+  life is not his material composition at another. Addition is made
+  from without to the stature of a boy without prejudice to his
+  identity, for the boy and the adult are numerically the same man."
+
+The most important feature of the scientific teachings of the
+mediaeval universities has been left till the last because it is the
+clinching confirmation of a claim that these were essentially
+scientific universities. It is to be found in the position of the
+medical schools and the state of medical teaching during the Middle
+Ages. So curiously has the history of education been written, and,
+above all, of medical education, that to most people this would seem
+to be surely the department of education which would prove just the
+opposite. We have heard so much about Church opposition to anatomy and
+Church opposition to surgery, of its repression of the development of
+medical science and even medical art, because the Church wanted to
+make people believe in the value of masses, relics and prayers--and
+pay for them--that most people are quite sure that there {123} was no
+medical education of any significance in the Middle Ages. Nothing
+shows more clearly how viciously the history of education has been
+written than the existence of such false impressions. Not only are
+they utterly unfounded, but they are based on supreme ignorance of one
+of the greatest periods in the history of medicine that we have in all
+the world's history. Not only were the schools excellent and the
+teaching progressive, but there was a fine development of medical
+science and, above all, of surgery. Surgery is supposed to be
+particularly the department of medicine that did not develop. We have
+learned better in recent years, and now we know that there was no
+greater period in the history of surgery than that from 1200 to 1400
+when, alas! following so-called history, we used to think there was no
+surgery.
+
+The first question that any one who knows anything about the subject
+asks with regard to the progress in medicine of a particular time or
+country is, what was the standard of its medical education? What was
+the standard of admission to the medical schools, how many years of
+medical studies were required? To this question the Middle Ages have a
+wonderful answer that has not been realized until recent years. We now
+have Frederick II's famous law for the regulation of the practice of
+medicine and the maintaining of standards in medical schools. This law
+was promulgated in the Two Sicilies, the southern part of {124} Italy
+and Sicily proper. According to it no one was allowed to practise
+medicine who had not studied for four years in a recognized university
+and then practised for one year with a physician before receiving his
+license to practise by himself. If he wanted to practise surgery he
+had to spend an additional special year in the study of anatomy. The
+university medical schools were graduate schools and did not admit a
+student unless he had completed the undergraduate course.
+
+Of course it may be thought that this was due entirely to the great
+Emperor Frederick, who was far ahead of his time and who, therefore,
+anticipated the progress of medical teaching by many centuries. We
+have, however, many other documents which illustrate the state of
+medical education at this time. The charters of the medical schools
+were granted by the Popes and were very explicit in what they required
+of the new faculties in order that standards might be maintained. Pope
+John XXII, for instance, at the beginning of the fourteenth century,
+issued charters for medical schools at Perugia and Cahors. He required
+that there should be four years of medical study and three years of
+preliminary work. He went into details to secure the maintenance of
+standards. The original faculties of these schools would all have to
+be doctors in medicine from either Paris or Bologna, and it must be
+their duty to establish in the new schools the standards of their
+{125} Almae Matres. Examinations were to be conducted under oath, men
+were not to be granted degrees unless they deserved them, the votes of
+professors rejecting candidates or graduating them were to be under
+oath-bound secrecy, so as to have them absolutely free from personal
+influence, and every precaution was taken to secure the highest
+possible standards.
+
+It was as a consequence of their direct attachment to these old
+mediaeval medical schools that the medical schools founded here in
+America in the sixteenth century at once began with high standards.
+Three years of preliminary work was required and four years of
+medicine. In the United States no preliminary requirements were
+demanded; and for a full century only two years of medical study,
+which really consisted of but two terms of four months each, was the
+requirement. The old mediaeval medical schools were originally
+attached to the universities, and it is a well-known rule in the
+history of education that whenever the medical schools are independent
+then standards are sure to be low. Whenever the university controls
+the medical school and it is a real graduate department, then
+standards of admission and of graduation are properly maintained. It
+is surprising to think that the old mediaeval universities should be
+able to give us lessons in this matter and should put us to shame for
+our slip-shod nineteenth-century medical education in the United
+States, but this is a simple fact. Contrast {126} the South American
+countries where the mediaeval traditions with which they were founded
+constrained them to give four, five and even six years to medicine
+before granting a degree. Go a step further and see how devoted to
+science were the Universities of Lima (Peru) and Mexico, centuries
+before we did any serious scientific work in the United States, and
+all because they were direct descendants of the old mediaeval
+universities.
+
+The feeling of certain modern educators would be that it did not
+matter how much time these mediaeval universities gave to medicine
+since, after all, they had nothing of any value to teach in medicine.
+Even educated people have been led to believe that there was nothing
+in medicine and, above all, in the surgery of those times to be of any
+value. Probably no opinion is more foolishly ignorant or more
+ridiculously absurd than this, though it is a commonplace among people
+who are sure they know something about history, and, above all, among
+those who consider themselves authorities in the history of education,
+and of the development of science. In surgery a magnificent
+development was made at this time of which I shall have something to
+say later. In medicine there was much less anticipation of our modern
+progress, but even here there was much that demands our respect. One
+of the university men, Simon of Genoa, worked out the dosage of opium
+and indicated its uses. Anodyne drugs were {127} employed much more
+generally and successfully than we are apt to think; various methods
+of anaesthesia, one of them by inhalation, of which I shall say more
+when talking of surgery, were invented and a large number of drugs and
+simples were experimented with. Down at Montpellier Bernard Gordon
+suggested red light for smallpox.
+
+This is not much of a record, perhaps, but we must not forget what
+Professor Richet, the Director of the Physiological Laboratory of the
+University of Paris, said not long since in an article on "Physicians
+and Medicine" in _La Revue de Deux Mondes._ It is startling but
+chasteningly true. "The therapeutics of any generation has always been
+quite absurd to the second succeeding generation." Indeed it is one of
+the almost disheartening things in the history of medicine to see how
+treatments come in, are widely accepted and hailed as great advances
+in therapeutics and then gradually disappear. They bled a great deal
+and they purged not a little, in accordance with the teaching in the
+medical schools of the universities of the thirteenth and fourteenth
+centuries, but then they bled a great deal and purged a great deal
+more, according to the teaching of the medical schools of the
+beginning of the nineteenth century. There have been many periods in
+the interval when purging and bleeding were, and very properly, not
+nearly so popular.
+
+It was in preventive medicine particularly that {128} these
+progressive medical men of the early university days secured their
+triumphs. They made separate hospitals for the lepers all over Europe,
+and by segregation succeeded in wiping out that disease, though it was
+as widely spread as tuberculosis in our day and presented just as
+serious a problem. Indeed the most encouraging incentive for our
+present tuberculosis campaign is drawn by many authorities from the
+experience with leprosy, which was eventually obliterated as an
+endemic popular disease, by strict segregation methods. These same
+generations created special hospitals for erysipelas and thus
+prevented the spread of this disease in the ordinary hospitals, where
+it used to be so serious a factor for morbidity if not for mortality.
+Men forgot this later and the disease became a serious problem once
+more in all the hospitals of even a generation ago. The hospital
+organization worked out by these university men is the finest jewel in
+the crown of their accomplishment as applied scientists. Pope Innocent
+III, himself a University of Paris man, founded the Santo Spirito
+Hospital in Rome, summoning for that purpose the best authority on
+hospitals in Europe, Guy of Montpellier, and then required the bishops
+of the world to erect similar hospitals in their dioceses. This was
+done, and it is Virchow, whose sympathies were anything but favorable
+to the Popes, who has been most loud in his praise of the wonderful
+hospital organization of these centuries. Every town in {129} Europe
+of 5,000 inhabitants or more had a hospital, and there were hospitals
+in many of the smaller towns.
+
+It would be easy to think that these hospitals were rudely built, were
+badly ventilated, were ill-arranged and, above all, were likely to be
+houses for the perpetuation of disease rather than for the regaining
+of health. We are prone to think that we are the first generation to
+solve the problem of hospital construction. We know what
+poorly-constructed, badly-planned institutions were the hospitals of
+three generations ago. What, then, must have been the hospital
+buildings of centuries ago? This argument has no place in history; the
+worst hospitals in the world and in history were erected at the end of
+the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. Some of
+the best hospitals ever constructed date from the thirteenth,
+fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This was a time when great
+architects were successfully solving the construction problems for
+cathedrals, municipal buildings, colleges and the like, and they
+solved them quite as successfully for hospitals. Some of these
+hospitals were models in their way. One of them, built toward the end
+of the thirteenth century, by the sister of St. Louis, Marguerite of
+Bourgogne, with its large windows high in the walls, in single-story
+buildings, with arrangements for the segregation of patients, with the
+kitchens in a separate building, with beautiful {130} frescoes on the
+walls so that patients' minds might be occupied and not left to their
+own often disturbing devices as with our bare wall, with a stream of
+running water divided so as to pass on both sides of the hospital, is
+a model of construction for all time.
+
+It was in surgery rather than medicine, however, that these great
+mediaeval university medical schools left their impress upon the
+history of medicine. During the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth
+centuries we have a series of wonderful teachers of surgery, whose
+achievements we know not by tradition nor by fragments of their
+writings, but by the text-books which they wrote and which constituted
+the teaching for generations and sometimes for centuries after their
+time. Gurlt, the great German historian of surgery, devotes some 300
+pages of the first volume of his "History of Surgery" to the surgical
+accomplishments of the Middle Ages. He even protests that space
+compels him to abbreviate the story of what these old-time masters of
+surgery did to lay the foundation of modern surgical practices. It is
+a commonplace in the American writing of history that there was no
+surgery at this time. President White says that, "for over a thousand
+years surgery was considered dishonorable until the German Emperor
+Wenceslas, in 1403, ordered that it should be held in honor again."
+The two centuries immediately preceding this date represent the {131}
+greatest period in the history of surgery down to our own time, and
+because of its originality probably greater in real achievement than
+even our vaunted age.
+
+It is sometimes the custom to say that this surgery was derived from
+the Arabs. This is supposed to rob the mediaeval universities of any
+prestige that may come to them for this marvellous progress. Gurlt,
+however, in his "History of Surgery," in his sketch of Roger
+(Ruggiero), who was the first of the great surgeons of the thirteenth
+century, who taught at the Italian universities, says: "Though Arabian
+writings on surgery had been brought over to Italy by Constantine
+Africanus 100 years before Roger's time, these exercised no influence
+over Italian surgery in the next century, and there is not a trace of
+the influence of the Arabs to be found in Roger's work." When Gurlt
+says this it is because he has deliberately studied the question, and
+we can be absolutely sure, therefore, that whatever we find in surgery
+at this time comes to us from these great mediaeval universities
+themselves, and is not imported from abroad.
+
+After Roger, who was at Bologna for a time after having been in Paris,
+and who then became a Papal physician, there are a series of great
+names that deserve to be mentioned. Four names are connected together
+by association as master and pupil for what may be termed four
+generations of surgical progress. From the birth {132} of the first to
+the death of the last represents about 100 years. That 100 years is a
+gloriously fruitful century in the history of surgery. The first of
+the group is William of Salicet, of whom Professor Clifford Allbutt,
+the Regius Professor of Physic at the University of Cambridge, in his
+address on the "Historical Relations of Medicine and Surgery to the
+End of the Sixteenth Century," delivered by special invitation at the
+Congress of Arts and Sciences at the World's Fair in St. Louis in
+1904, has the highest praise. Allbutt says: "Like Lanfranc and the
+other great surgeons of the Italian tradition, and unlike Franco and
+Pare, William had the advantage of the liberal university education of
+Italy; but like Pare and Wurtz, he had a large practical experience in
+hospitals and on the battlefield and fully recognized that surgery
+cannot be learned from books only." Allbutt praises him and rightly
+for his careful notes of cases and then tells us something of his
+accomplishments in surgery. He says: "William discovered that dropsy
+may be due to a _durities renum_ six centuries before Bright; he
+substituted the knife for the Arabist abuse of the cautery; _he
+investigated the causes of the failure of healing by first intention_
+(Italics ours), he described the danger of wounds of the neck; he
+sutured divided nerves; he forwarded the diagnosis of suppurative
+diseases of the hip; and he referred chancre and phagedaena to their
+proper causes."
+
+{133}
+
+His pupil Lanfranc equalled his master in devotion to practical
+surgery and surpassed him in his development of the great science of
+medicine. Pagel, the well-known German historian of medicine, says
+that, in his text-book Lanfranc has excellent chapters on the
+affections of the eyes, the ears and mouth, the nose, even the teeth,
+and treats of hernia in a very practical common-sense way. He warns
+against the radical operation and says, in words that come home to us
+with strange familiarity at the present time, that many surgeons
+decide on operations too easily, not for the sake of the patient but
+for the sake of the money that is in them. Lanfranc's discussion of
+cystotomy, Pagel characterizes as prudent but rational, for he
+considers that the operations should not be feared too much but not
+delayed too long. In patients suffering from the inconvenience which
+comes from large quantities of fluid in the abdomen he advises
+_paracentesis abdominis_, but warns against putting the patient in
+danger from such an operation without due consideration. Pagel says
+that Lanfranc must be considered as one of the greatest surgeons of
+the Middle Ages and the real establisher of the prestige of the French
+school of surgery which maintained its prominence down to the
+nineteenth century.
+
+Lanfranc had been invited to Paris to take the chair of surgery,
+because the authorities of the university wanted to add prestige to
+the medical school, which was not as well known as the school {134} of
+philosophy. The fame of William of Salicet had spread throughout
+academic Europe, and so Lanfranc was offered the chair at the
+University of Paris in order to carry his master's message there. The
+next in the succession of great teachers at Paris was Mondeville, who
+found less to do in an original way than his master Lanfranc and his
+protomaster William, but who accomplished much for surgery. All that
+he did was thrown into the shade by what was accomplished for
+succeeding generations by the next in the series, Guy de Chauliac, who
+studied for a time in Paris under Mondeville, though his early medical
+education was obtained at Montpellier, but had also had the advantage
+of spending a year in Italy at the various medical schools which were
+famous at that time. These two incidents, Lanfranc's invitation to
+Paris to be a teacher there from Italy more than a thousand miles
+away, and Guy de Chauliac's studies in all the important universities
+of Europe of the time before he took up his own work, illustrate
+better than any words of ours can the ardent enthusiasm for study, the
+thoroughgoing anticipation of our most modern methods in education.
+Mondeville, like Chauliac, had made very nearly the same round of the
+universities. It is a custom, not a chance incident, that we have to
+deal with here.
+
+Guy de Chauliac has been given the name of the father of modern
+surgery. Any one who wants to see why should read the text-book on
+surgery that {135} Chauliac wrote and which for two centuries after
+his time (he died about the middle of the fourteenth century)
+continued to be the most used text-book of surgery in the medical
+schools of Europe. Chauliac, for instance, describes the treatment of
+conditions within all three of the important cavities of the body, the
+skull, the thorax and the abdomen. Pagel has three closely-printed
+pages in small type of titles alone of subjects in surgery which
+Chauliac treated with distinction. His description of instruments and
+methods of operation is especially full and suggestive. He describes
+the passage of a catheter, for instance, with the accuracy and
+complete technique of a man who knew the difficulties of it in
+complicated cases from practical experience. He even recognizes the
+dangers for the patient from the presence of anatomical anomalies of
+various kinds and describes certain of the more important of them. He
+has very exact indications for trephining. For empyema he advises
+opening of the chest and indicates where and how. He says very frankly
+that in wounds of the abdomen the patient will die if the intestines
+have been perforated and left untreated, and he describes a method of
+suturing wounds of the intestines in order to save the patient's life.
+
+His treatment of bone surgery and of fractures and dislocations is
+especially interesting and shows how far these very practical men had
+reached conclusions resembling those of our time. {136} It was in
+hernia particularly that Chauliac's surgical genius manifested itself.
+He operated for hernia and its radical cure, placing the patient in an
+exaggerated Trendelenberg position, head down, feet fastened to a
+slanting board. For such work anatomy had to be known very well, and
+Chauliac had made special studies at Bologna under Bertruccio, the
+successor of Mondino. Chauliac once declared that the surgeon ignorant
+of anatomy carves the human body as a blind man would carve wood. Of
+ulcers of all kinds Chauliac writes from a knowledge evidently derived
+from experience. Of ulcers due to cancer he has much to say. He
+considers them hopeless unless they can be excised at a very early
+stage and the incision followed by caustics. For carcinomatous ulcers
+there is not much that we can do beyond this, even in our day. It is
+no wonder that the great historians of medicine have been unanimous in
+praise of this wonderful scientific genius. For my lecture on
+"Old-Time Medical Education," before the Johns Hopkins Historical
+Club, last year, I quoted some of those opinions. Portal, for
+instance, says of him, "It may be averred that Guy de Chauliac said
+nearly everything that modern surgeons say and that his work is of
+infinite price, but unfortunately too little pondered." Malgaigne
+declares Chauliac's "Chirurgia Magna," "A masterpiece of learned and
+luminous writing." Pagel says, "Chauliac represents the summit of
+attainment in mediaeval {137} surgery, and he laid the foundation of
+that primacy in surgery which the French maintained down to the
+nineteenth century." Professor Clifford Allbutt says of Chauliac's
+treatise, "This great work I have studied carefully and not without
+prejudice; yet I cannot wonder that Fallopius compared the author with
+Hippocrates or that John Freind calls him the prince of surgeons. The
+book is rich, aphoristic, orderly and precise." In a word it has all
+the qualities that are usually said to be lacking in the work of
+mediaeval scientists, and it is a standing reproach to those who
+ignorantly have made so little of the work of these wonderful men of
+the olden time, who anticipated so many of the features of our modern
+medicine and surgery that we are prone to think of as representing
+climaxes in human progress, indications of a wonderful human
+evolution.
+
+Two other names of great professors of surgery deserve to be mentioned
+because they make it very clear that this wonderful development of
+surgery was not confined to France and Italy, but made itself felt all
+over Europe. One of these is John Ypermann, a surgeon of the early
+fourteenth century, of whom almost nothing was known until about
+twenty-five years ago, when the Belgian historian, Broeck, brought to
+light his works and gathered some details of his life. He was a pupil
+of Lanfranc, and at the end of the thirteenth century studied at Paris
+on a scholarship voted by his native town of Ypres, {138} which
+provided maintenance and tuition fees for him at the great French
+university expressly in order that he might become expert in surgery.
+We are likely to think of Ypres as an unimportant town, but it was one
+of the great industrial centres of Europe and one of the most
+populous, busy towns of Flanders in the Middle Ages, noted for its
+manufacture of linens and fine laces. The famous Cloth Hall, erected
+in the thirteenth century, one of the most beautiful architectural
+monuments in Europe, and one of the finest buildings of its kind in
+the world, was the result of the same spirit that sent Ypermann to
+Paris.
+
+After his return Ypermann settled down in his native town and obtained
+great renown not only at home, so that in that part of the country an
+expert surgeon is still spoken of as an Ypermann, but he became famous
+throughout all the Teutonic countries. He is the author of two books
+in Flemish. One of these is on medicine. Pagel calls it an unimportant
+compilation. The terms that occur in it, however, are enough to show
+us how much more than we are likely to think, these old masters in
+medicine discussed problems that are still puzzling us. He treats of
+dropsy, rheumatism, under which occur the terms coryza and catarrh,
+icterus, phthisis (he calls the tuberculous tysiken), apoplexy,
+epilepsy, frenzy, lethargy, fallen palate, cough, shortness of breath,
+lung abscess, hemorrhage, blood-spitting, liver abscess, hardening of
+the spleen, affections of the kidney, {139} bloody urine, diabetes,
+incontinence of urine, dysuria, strangury, gonorrhea and involuntary
+seminal emissions--all these terms are quoted directly from Pagel.
+
+His work in medicine, however, is as nothing compared to his writings
+on surgery. A special feature of his book is the presence of seventy
+illustrations of instruments of the most various kinds, together with
+a plate showing the anatomical features of the stitching of a wound in
+the head. Even Pagel's brief account of its contents will be a source
+of never-ending surprise for those who think that surgery has
+developed entirely in our time. Even in this work on surgery, however,
+there are many things that we now treat under medicine. As this gives
+us an opportunity to show how much more of medicine was known at this
+time than is usually thought, I venture to quote some of Pagel's brief
+resume of the contents of a single chapter. This is a chapter devoted
+to intoxications, which includes the effect of cantharides as well as
+alcohol, and treats of the bites of snakes, scorpions and of the fatal
+effects of wounds due to the bite of mad dogs.
+
+The other great surgeon and surgical writer of the time, for there
+must have been many distinguished surgeons and only a few writers, if
+we can trust to common experience in that matter, was John Ardern, an
+English surgeon. He was educated in Montpellier, practised for a time
+in France, then settled for some years in the {140} small town of
+Newark in Nottinghamshire, and then for nearly thirty years in London.
+His "Practice of Surgery," as yet existing only in manuscript, is
+another one of these wonderful contributions to the applied sciences
+of anatomy and medicine at a time when such applications are often
+supposed to have been absent. He was an expert operator and had a wide
+reputation for his success in the treatment of diseases of the rectum.
+He was the inventor of a new clyster apparatus. Daremberg, the medical
+historian, who saw a copy of Ardern's manuscript in St. John's
+College, Oxford, says that it contained numerous illustrations of
+instruments and operations. We fortunately possess an excellent
+manuscript copy in the Surgeon General's Library at Washington, and
+sometime it is hoped this will be edited and published.
+
+The most interesting feature of the work of all of these men is their
+dependence on personal observation and not on authority. Guy de
+Chauliac's position in this matter can be very well appreciated from
+his criticism of John of Gaddesden's book in which he bewails the
+blind following of those who had gone before. His bitterest reproach
+for many of his predecessors was that, "They followed one another like
+cranes, whether for fear or love he would not say." Pagel praises
+Ypermann for the well-marked striving which he has noted in him to
+free himself from the bondage of authority, and because most of his
+therapeutic {141} descriptions rest upon his own experience. William
+of Salicet, at the beginning of this great period of surgery, had
+insisted that notes of cases were the most valuable sources of wisdom
+in medicine and surgery. The last of them, Ardern, gave statistics of
+his cases and was quite as proud as any modern surgeon of the large
+number that he had operated on. He gives these carefully and
+accurately.
+
+I have dwelt on the medical side of these universities mainly, of
+course, because this is more familiar to me as a historian of medicine
+than their work in other scientific departments, but also to a great
+extent because the medical schools gathered unto themselves nearly all
+the scientific knowledge of the time. Botany, mineralogy, climatology,
+meteorology were all studied for the sake of what could be learned
+from them for the benefit of medicine. Even astronomy which was then
+the old astrology, was cultivated seriously, because of the supposed
+effect of the stars on human constitutions. For this we surely cannot
+blame these mediaeval students of science since four centuries later
+Galileo and even Kepler were still making horoscopes for their patrons
+and laying down laws from astronomy that were supposed to be
+applicable to medicine. Even Copernicus studied astronomy and medicine
+side by side and this combination of studies was not at all
+infrequent.
+
+The medical schools, then, are the real index of {142} the serious
+interest of the mediaeval universities in science. Our scientific
+departments in modern universities have developed other interests,
+because of various applications that these have to life and its
+concerns. Always in scientific universities applied science is sure to
+encroach upon the domain of pure science, and no one knows that better
+than we do, for we have been bewailing the presence of machine shops
+and boiler factories on the university grounds. The old universities
+did not teach applied mechanics or engineering, but that does not mean
+that these subjects were not taught. There were special technical
+schools conducted by the gilds by means of apprenticeship and the
+journeyman training, which enabled them to teach those who cared to
+have it all the knowledge necessary for construction work of various
+kinds. The wonderful architectural engineering exhibited in the
+cathedrals, university buildings, town halls and castles of this time,
+and the magnificent bridges, some of which are still in existence,
+show us that the technical subjects were by no means neglected.
+[Footnote 9] Our mediaeval forefathers in education had the wisdom not
+to let the technical subjects interfere with pure science too much, as
+they inevitably do whenever the two are brought too closely together.
+Culture is always overshadowed by the practical, but not to the
+ultimate benefit of the race.
+
+  [Footnote 9: See Address on "Ideal Education of the Masses."]
+
+The proof for us here in America, close at {143} hand, that these
+universities of the Middle Ages were thoroughly scientific in spirit
+and not only capable of, but actually active and successful in
+scientific investigation, is to be found in our earliest American
+universities. We are prone to think, because of the curiously
+defective way in which our histories of education have been written,
+that the only things worth while talking about in the origins of
+education here in America are to be found in English America. Recent
+investigations have shown how utterly deceived we were by foolish
+self-conceit in this matter. Long before the English-American
+universities were founded, and still longer before they began to do
+any serious work in education, there were important universities
+having literally thousands of students in attendance in the
+Spanish-American countries. The University of Mexico and the
+University of Lima in Peru were both founded about the middle of the
+sixteenth century. Harvard came nearly a century later, Yale a full
+century and a half, Princeton more than two centuries. The contrast
+between our English-American institutions of learning, however, and
+their Spanish-American rivals in accomplishment and numbers in
+attendance is still more striking than the mere dates of foundation.
+
+Of course there were chairs of many sciences, strange as that may seem
+to us with our ridiculous traditions with regard to the history of
+education. These Spanish-American universities were {144} the direct
+descendants of the old mediaeval universities. They were in close
+relationship with Salamanca, Valladolid and Alcala. They were the
+progeny of scientific universities and they were, of course, occupied
+mainly with science. In spite of the fact that already the influence
+of the Renaissance, with its classical studies as the basis of
+education, had begun to make itself felt, these Spanish-American
+universities retained, to a great extent, the scientific curriculum.
+Nor must it be thought that they were shilly-shally institutions of
+learning, doing nothing in reality, but making a great pretence of
+studying many things. To know the very opposite we turn to Bourne,
+himself at the time a professor at Yale, and writing one of the
+volumes of a series edited by Professor Albert Bushnell Hart, who
+holds the chair of history at Harvard, to be told in very definite
+emphatic terms how successfully investigations in science and
+scientific education were carried on in Mexico. Professor Bourne says:
+
+  "Not all the institutions of learning founded in Mexico in the
+  sixteenth century can be enumerated here, but it is not too much to
+  say that in number, range of studies and standard of attainments by
+  the officers they surpassed anything existing in English America
+  until the nineteenth century. _Mexican scholars made distinguished
+  achievements in some branches of science, particularly medicine and
+  surgery, but pre-eminently linguistics, history and anthropology._
+  {145} Dictionaries and grammars of the native languages and
+  histories of the Mexican institutions are an imposing proof of their
+  scholarly devotion and intellectual activity. Conspicuous are
+  Toribio de Motolinia's 'Historia de las Indias de Nueva Espana,'
+  Duran's 'Historia de las Indias de Nueva Espana,' but most important
+  of all Sahagun's great work on Mexican life and religion."
+
+The scientific products of these universities in America are
+interesting because almost as a rule we know absolutely nothing about
+them in English America, and, therefore, conclude there must have been
+none. The first book written on a medical topic in America was the
+"Secretos de Chirurgia," written by Dr. Pedrarias de Benavides, which
+was published at Valladolid in Spain in 1567. The first book on
+medicine actually published in this country was "Opera Medicinalia,"
+by Francisco Bravo. [Footnote 10] On Columbus' second expedition,
+however, a Dr. Chanca who had been physician-in-ordinary to the King
+and Queen of Spain, was sent with the expedition as what we would now
+call a scientific attache. On his return he wrote a volume of
+scientific observations that he had made in America. Some of these
+were doubtless written while he was over here, though the book was
+published in Spain. Dr. Ybarra of New York recently published a resume
+of this in the Smithsonian Publications and an article on it in the
+_Journal of the American Medical Association_. {146} It shows very
+well how wide were the scientific interests of the physicians of the
+time and how ardent their investigation of science, for there is
+scarcely a phase of modern science that would be touched on by the
+corps of scientists now attached to such an expedition which does not
+receive some serious treatment in Dr. Chanca's book. Thus early did
+the Spanish-Americans take up scientific investigation seriously.
+
+  [Footnote 10: Published in Mexico, 1570.]
+
+Professor Bourne of Yale, in his chapter on the "Transmission of the
+European Culture," in the third volume of the American Nation Series,
+[Footnote 11] says (p. 17): "Early in the eighteenth century the Lima
+University [Lima, Peru] counted nearly 2,000 students and numbered
+about one hundred and eighty doctors [in its faculty] in theology,
+civil and canon law, medicine and the arts. Ulloa reports that 'the
+university makes a stately appearance from without, and its inside is
+decorated with suitable ornaments.' _There were chairs of all the
+sciences_, and 'some of the professors have, notwithstanding the vast
+distance, gained the applause of the literati of Europe.' The coming
+of the Jesuits contributed much to the real educational work in
+America. They established colleges, one of which, the little Jesuit
+College at Juli, on Lake Titicaca, became a seat of genuine learning."
+
+  [Footnote 11: Harpers, New York, 1908.]
+
+A distinguished professor of medicine in this country to whose
+attention this state of medical {147} education in the
+Spanish-American countries, so different from what is thought, was
+called, said: "What a surprise it is to find that while we have been
+accustomed to think that the _primum mobile_ [the active initiative]
+in education in this country came from the Anglo-Saxons, we now find
+that they were long anticipated in every department of education by
+the Spaniards, though we have been rather accustomed to despise them
+for their backwardness." With regard to the establishment of the first
+American medical school, it is no longer a surprise to find that it
+was established in Mexico, just as soon as we realize that the Mexican
+University was closely in touch with the traditions of the mediaeval
+universities generally and these all established medical schools as
+university departments. The standards of these mediaeval medical
+schools were transported to America and maintained. Our medical
+schools in the United States got away from the universities, became
+mere preparatory institutions, granted degrees for just as little
+study as possible, two terms of four months each in most cases,
+sometimes given in the same calendar year and requiring no preliminary
+training. We are reforming this now for a generation, but just
+inasmuch as we are, far from advancing, we are going straight back to
+the mediaeval universities and their standards and methods.
+
+With all this evidence before us it seems perfectly clear that these
+old mediaeval universities {148} must be considered to have been
+scientific universities in our fullest modern sense of the term. They
+devoted all their time to the study of phenomena around them and the
+attempt to find the principles underlying them. They went at it
+somewhat differently in many departments of science than those which
+are now employed, but in all their practical work at least, they
+anticipated our methods as well as many of our results. The great
+professors wrote text-books and students who were ardent in the
+pursuit of knowledge copied out those text-books by hand. They had no
+way of easily multiplying them almost indefinitely, as we have at the
+present time. Probably nothing shows so well the enthusiastic zeal of
+these times in the pursuit of scientific knowledge as the fact that so
+many copies of these textbooks still remain for us. Much has been lost
+by war and fire, and still more by wanton destruction by people who
+could not understand, for there were many intervening generations that
+sold these old manuscripts by the ton for the use of grocers to wrap
+up butter and any other commodity. If we only had the wealth of
+manuscript that was originally created it would be easy to fill in the
+gaps in our knowledge, and show the wonderful scientific scholarship
+of these mediaeval universities.
+
+As it is, there cannot be the slightest doubt that these were great
+scientific universities. How, then, has the opposite tradition of
+science only {149} coming to cultivation in our time obtained a
+foothold; above all, how has it happened that men have insisted that
+there was no science in these old days because the Church was opposed
+to science and would not permit its study or allow of scientific
+investigation? If we were to believe many writers who have been taken
+very seriously, anatomy was conducted only under the pain of death,
+chemistry made one liable to all sorts of penalties and other forms of
+science were absolutely banned. There is no reason at all for any such
+declarations from what we know of the history of science. The place
+where such groundless assertions are found is in the so-called history
+of religion. The _odium theologicum_ was very bitter, and ignorant men
+said things without knowing, and then their statements were copied by
+others who knew even less.
+
+Probably there is no more serious blot on the history of education
+and, above all, the history of science, than the fact that men
+supposed to be scholarly have been so ready to accept absolutely
+ignorant statements with regard to the state of science during the
+Middle Ages. It would be amusing, if it were not so amazing, to recall
+the utter lack of scholarship that characterized the men who wrote
+such things, but above all the generations that accepted such history
+as solemn truth and even conferred academic dignities and degrees on
+such men. Take a book like Dr. Draper's "Conflict of Science and
+Religion." It {150} is founded on the uttermost lack of knowledge of
+the subjects of which he speaks. It is true that he has consulted
+historical writers. They were all secondary authorities. He had never
+gone back to look up a single original document of any kind. He was a
+physician; supposedly at least, then, he should know the history of
+medicine. He knows nothing at all about the great medical schools of
+the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; of the great period of
+surgery that occurred at this time he has no inkling. Had he cared
+really to know anything about the period he could have seen some of
+the text-books written by these men. Instead we have an exhibition, in
+his book, of the most consummate assumption of knowledge associated
+with sublime ignorance and bitter condemnation for old institutions,
+educational and ecclesiastical, in matters of which he knows nothing,
+though if he did know, his opinion would surely be just the opposite
+to that he has expressed.
+
+To a great degree this is true of President White's "A History of the
+Warfare of Science with Theology." Secondary authorities constantly
+figure in it, and they are quoted from, as a rule, with the definite
+idea of proving a particular thesis--that theology is opposed to
+science. Of course it is very different to that of Draper, there is
+much more of true scholarship in it, but it is sad to think that the
+prestige of a president of a great university who had been a professor
+of {151} history should have been lent to statements so egregiously
+misleading as those which are constantly to be found in his work. Even
+sadder it is to think that this has been accepted by many people as a
+scholarly work and as representing the last word on the subject.
+
+The "Cambridge Modern History" in its preface said, that history has
+been a long conspiracy against the truth and that we must now go back
+once more to the original documents. "It has become impossible," the
+editors declare, "for the historical writers of the present age to
+trust without reserve even to the most respected secondary
+authorities. The honest student continually finds himself deserted,
+retarded, misled, by the classics of historical literature, and has to
+hew his own way through multitudinous transactions, periodicals and
+official publications in order to reach the truth." In no department
+of history is this expression more true than in that of education, and
+especially of science and the relation of educational institutions to
+scientific development. No man should now dare venture to say anything
+about the state of science at any time in the world's history who has
+not seen some of the books written at that time. Above all, no one
+should venture to make little of the past on the strength of what
+religiously prejudiced writers have said about it.
+
+This story of the mediaeval universities is most illuminating from
+that standpoint. They were {152} scientific universities closely
+resembling our own. It has become the custom to talk of them as if
+they were institutions of learning that accomplished nothing, and
+wasted their time over trifles. We often hear of how much time was
+wasted in dialectics in the Middle-Age universities, but surely it was
+not more than is wasted over technics in our modern university.
+Hundreds of books were written about the quips and quiddities of
+logic, but thousands of volumes are full of technics and most of our
+scientific journals are crowded with it. Let us, then, if for no other
+reason than our fraternity with them, begin to do justice to these old
+universities. Their scholars were ardent and zealous, their professors
+were enthusiastic and laborious. The tomes they issued were larger and
+their writings more voluminous than those of our own professors. They
+are hard reading, but no one must dare to criticise them unless he has
+read them, and, above all, no one must make little of them without
+knowing something about them at first hand. This is scholarship; the
+secondary information that has been popular is sciolism. Let us get
+back to scholarship. That is what we need just now in America.
+
+
+{153}
+
+IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION
+
+
+{154}
+
+  "According to my view he who would be good at anything must practise
+  that thing from his youth upwards, both in sport and earnest, in the
+  particular way which the work requires: for example, he who is to be
+  a good builder, should play at building children's houses; and he
+  who is to be a good husbandman at tilling the ground; those who have
+  the care of their education should provide them when young with
+  mimic tools. And they should learn beforehand the knowledge which
+  they will afterwards require for their art. For example, the future
+  carpenter should learn to measure or apply the line in play; and the
+  future warrior should learn riding or some other exercise for
+  amusement, and the teacher should endeavor to direct the children's
+  inclinations and pleasures by the help of amusements to their final
+  aim in life. The sum of education is right training in the nursery.
+  The soul of the child in his play should be trained to that sort of
+  excellence in which, when he grows up to manhood, he will have to be
+  perfected. Do you agree with me thus far?"--Plato, _Laws_ (Jowett),
+  Vol. IV, p. 173. Scribner, 1908.
+
+
+  "There will be gymnasia and schools in the midst of the city, and
+  outside the city circuses (playgrounds) and open spaces for riding
+  places and archery. In all of these there should be instructors of
+  the young."--Plato, _Laws_ (Jowett), Vol. IV, p. 82. Scribner, 1902.
+
+
+{155}
+
+IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION [Footnote 12]
+
+  [Footnote 12: The material for this lecture was collected for a
+  course on the History of Education delivered to the Sisters of
+  Charity of Mount St. Vincent's, at St Stephen's Hall, New York City,
+  in January and February, 1909. The material was subsequently
+  developed for a similar set of lectures for the religious teachers
+  in the parochial schools of Philadelphia in the spring of 1910.]
+
+
+We have come to realize in recent years that in many ways our
+education of the masses is a failure. Teaching people to read and
+write and occupying them with books till they are fifteen years of
+age, when all that they will use their power to read for is to devote
+themselves to three or four editions of the daily paper and the huge,
+overgrown Sunday papers on their only day of leisure, with perhaps
+occasional recourse to a cheap magazine or a cheaper novel, in order
+to kill time, as they frankly declare, is scarcely worth while. Indeed
+we have even come to realize that such education gives opportunity
+rather for the development of discontent than of happiness. The
+learning to write which enables a man to be a clerk, or a bookkeeper,
+the occupations that are, as a rule, the least lucrative, that are so
+full that there is no question of organizing them, that confine men
+for long hours in dark rooms very often and furnish the least possible
+opportunity to rise, is of itself not ideal. With some rather {156}
+disconnected information this is practically all that our ordinary
+education teaches people, and yet we spend eight years and large sums
+of money on it. We are just beginning to realize that other forms of
+education and not these superficial introductions to supposed
+scholarship, which can mean so little, constitute realities in
+education.
+
+We have come to realize that Germany, where it is said that more than
+sixty per cent. of the population has its opportunity for some
+technical training, so that men are taught the rudiments of a trade or
+a handicraft or some occupation other than that which shall make them
+mere routine servants of some one else, does far better than this. By
+contrast it is remarked that less than one per cent. of our children
+have the opportunity for such training. We are very prone to think,
+however, that the technical school is a modern idea. We assume that it
+owes its origin to the development of mankind in the process of
+evolution to a point where the recognition of the value of handiwork
+and craftsmanship has at length arisen. Nothing could well be less
+true than this. It is true that the eighteenth century saw practically
+no education of this kind and it was only at the end of the nineteenth
+century that any modern nation even began to wake up to the necessity
+for it. In the older times, however, and, above all, in the thirteenth
+and fourteenth centuries, there was a magnificent training afforded
+the masses of the people in all sorts of arts and {157} crafts and
+trades and occupations, such as can now be obtained only in technical
+schools. They did not call these teaching institutions technical
+schools, but they had all the benefits that we would now derive from
+such schools.
+
+This training the people of these times owed to the gilds. These were,
+of course, of many forms, the Arts Gilds, the Crafts Gilds, the
+Merchants Gilds, and then the various Trades Gilds. Boys were
+apprenticed to men following such an occupation as the youth had
+expressed a liking for, or that he seemed to be adapted to, or that
+his parents chose for him, and then began his training. It was
+conducted for five or six years usually in the house of the master or
+tradesman to whom he was apprenticed. The master provided him with
+board and clothes, at least, after the first year, and he gradually
+trained him in the trade or craft or industry, whatever it might be.
+After his apprenticeship was over the young man of eighteen or so
+became a journeyman workman and usually wandered from his native town
+to other places, sometimes going even over seas in order to learn the
+foreign secrets of his craft or art or trade, and after three years of
+this, when ready to settle down, presented evidence as to his
+accomplishments, and if this was accepted he became a master in his
+gild. If he were a craftsman or an artisan he made a lock or a bolt or
+some more artistic piece of work in the metals base or precious, and
+if this sample was {158} considered worthy of them by his
+fellow-gildsmen he was admitted as a master in the gild. This was the
+highest rank of workman, and the men who held it were supposed to be
+able to do anything that had been done by fellow-workmen up to that
+time. The piece that he presented was then called a masterpiece, and
+it is from this that our good old English word masterpiece was
+derived.
+
+This might seem a very inadequate training, and perhaps appeal to many
+as not deserving of the name of technical training or schooling. The
+only way to decide as to that, however, is to appreciate the products
+turned out by these workmen. It was these graduates of the
+apprentice-journeyman system of technical training who produced the
+great series of marvellous art objects which adorn the English
+cathedrals, the English municipal buildings, the castles and the
+palaces and the monasteries of the thirteenth century. It was the
+graduates of these schools, or at least of this method of schooling,
+who produced the wonderful stained glass, the beautiful bells, the
+finished ironwork, the surpassing woodwork, the sculpture, the
+decoration,--in a word, all the artistic details of the architecture
+of the wonderful Gothic periods of the thirteenth and fourteenth
+centuries,--which we have learned to value so highly in recent years.
+If we wanted to produce such work in our large cities now, we would
+have to import the workmen. These wonderful {159} products were made
+in cities so small that we would be apt to think them scarcely more
+than insignificant towns in our time. No town in England during the
+thirteenth century, with the possible exception of London, had more
+than 25,000, and most of the cathedral towns were under 15,000 in
+population and many of them had less than 10,000.
+
+The extent to which this teaching went and how much it partook of the
+nature of real technical training can be very well appreciated from
+recent studies of these early times. There has probably never been
+more beautiful handicraftsmanship nor better products of what we now
+call the arts and crafts than during the thirteenth and fourteenth
+centuries, when this system of educating the masses became thoroughly
+organized. Any one who knows the details of the decoration of the
+great Gothic cathedrals or of the monasteries and castles and
+municipal buildings of these centuries will be well acquainted with
+these marvels of accomplishment, scattered everywhere throughout
+England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain in this period. Something of
+the story of it all I tried to tell, as far as the cathedrals are
+concerned, in my book, "The Thirteenth the Greatest of Centuries."
+Those who care to see another side of it will find it in Mr. A. Ralph
+Adams Cram's "The Ruined Abbeys of Great Britain." [Footnote 13] Mr.
+Cram, himself a {160} successful modern architect, does not hesitate
+to declare some of this work as among the most beautiful that ever was
+made, even including the ancient Greek and Roman productions. In his
+searches into the ruins of these old abbeys he has found mutilated
+fragments so consummate in their faultless art that they deserve a
+place with the masterpieces of sculpture of every age.
+
+  [Footnote 13: New York, The Churchman Company, 1905.]
+
+It was not alone, however, in the arts of sculpture and decoration,
+that is in those finer accomplishments that would occupy only a few of
+the workmen, but in every detail of adornment that these artistic
+craftsmen excelled. The locks and bolts, the latches and hinges, the
+grilles, even the very fences and gates made in wrought iron, are
+beautiful in every line and in the artistic efficiency of their
+designs. The carved woodwork is in many places a marvel. When a gate
+has to be moved, or a hinge is no longer used, or a lock or even a key
+from these early times goes out of commission, we would consider it
+almost a sacrilege to throw it away; it is transported to the
+museum--not alone because of its value as an antique but, as a rule,
+also because of its charm as a work of art. When a bench-end is no
+longer needed it, too, finds its way into the museum. As Rev. Augustus
+Jessopp has shown very clearly in his studies of the old English
+parishes, these marvels of iron and woodwork were made, in most cases,
+respectively by the village blacksmith and the village carpenter. In
+the archives of {161} some of the parishes of the Middle Ages the
+accounts are found showing that these men were paid for them. When the
+village blacksmith and the village carpenter becomes the artist
+artisan capable of producing such good work, then indeed is there an
+ideal education at work and a technical training that may be boasted
+of.
+
+The most important feature of this education remains to be spoken of,
+however. It consisted of the fine development and occupation of the
+mind that came from this system. Men found happiness in their work. In
+a population of less than 3,000,000 of people many thousands of
+workmen, engaged in building these magnificent monuments of that old
+time, reaped a blessed pleasure in the doing of beautiful things.
+They, too, had a share in the great monument of which their town was
+worthily proud and the opportunity to make something worth while for
+it. Instead of idly envying others they devoted themselves to making
+whatever their contribution might be as beautiful as possible. It
+might be only the hinges for the doors or the latch for the gates, it
+might be only the stonework for the bases of pillars, though it might
+be the beautiful decoration of their capitals; but everything was
+being done beautifully and an artist hand was required everywhere. Men
+must have tried over and over again to make such fine things. They
+were not done at haphazard nor at one trial. There must have been many
+a spoiled piece {162} rejected, not so much by the foreman as by the
+critical, educated taste of the workmen themselves who were able to
+make such beautiful things. Men who could make such artistic products
+must have labored much and begun over and over again. This must have
+made the finest occupation of mind that a great mass of people has
+ever had in all the world's history.
+
+American millionaires model the gates of their parks and the grille
+doors of their palaces under the wise direction of modern architects
+who fortunately know enough to follow the designs created by these
+village workmen of the olden time. Modern palatial residences are glad
+to have samples of the wood-carving of the thirteenth and fourteenth
+centuries as models for their decoration, and as attractive pieces
+around which present-day work may be done. We have to import our
+workmen, even our large cities cannot supply all that we want of them,
+and yet little towns of a few thousand inhabitants had them in
+sufficient abundance in the olden time to enable them to make every
+portion of their great monumental buildings, cathedrals, abbeys,
+universities, castles and town halls beautiful in every way. This
+represents the triumph of a technical training afforded by the gilds
+of workmen of the olden time. We have to insist on this because our
+present generation has been so sure that ours was the first generation
+that gave any serious attention to the education of the masses, that
+it is important to show by {163} contrast how much of a mistake we
+have made and how well an older generation accomplished its purpose.
+
+The chapter of the "Lost Arts" might well be told with regard to this
+old time. They had secrets in glass-making which were the tradition of
+the teaching of particular gilds that we have been unable to find
+again in the modern time. There is a jewel-like lustre to their colors
+that is sometimes simply marvellous in its depth and purity. At
+Lincoln the contrast between old and new glass can be seen very well.
+The old windows of the thirteenth century time were stoned out by the
+Parliamentarians when they captured the town, because forsooth they
+could have no such idolatry as that in their presence. The old sexton,
+who as man and boy for over sixty years had lived his life under the
+beautiful tints of the old glass, now saw it scattered upon the floor
+in fragments. He could not part with it thus and so he gathered it up
+into bags, broken to pieces though it was, and hid it away in the
+crypt. In the nineteenth century when they were restoring the
+cathedral they found these fragments of the old windows. They pieced
+them together and they proved to be so beautiful that, though they
+could not fit them as they were in the olden time, at least they
+succeeded in making a beautiful patchwork of colored glass.
+
+Over on the other side of Lincoln Cathedral they then placed some new
+windows of the {164} modern time. These were made in France, I
+believe. They were made about the middle of the nineteenth century,
+when stained-glass making was almost at its lowest ebb. They were
+considered to be very beautiful, however, and something like L20,000
+sterling was paid for them. The contrast between the two sets of
+windows is very striking. The old windows are so beautiful, the new
+ones are so commonplace. The visitor, even though he knows nothing
+about art, notices the contrast and, if he has an eye for color, views
+with something of a shock this attempt of the nineteenth century to do
+something that had been so well done by the gild-trained workmen of
+the technical schools of the Middle Ages. Though they are represented
+here only by patched fragments of their work he can scarcely repress a
+smile at the effect of their work in cheapening the modern. Everywhere
+it is the same way. Mr. F. Rolfe, writing from Venice, where he has
+been studying thirteenth-century glass, and talking of its wonderful
+beauty as compared to anything modern, says: "There are also fragments
+of two windows, pieced together and the missing parts filled in with
+the best which modern Murano can do. These show the celebrated
+Beroviero Ruby Glass (secret lost) of marvellous depth and brilliancy
+in comparison with which the modern work is merely watery. (The
+ancient is just like a decanter of port wine.)"
+
+This is the story, no matter where one goes, {165} throughout Europe.
+At York they would not surrender the town to the Parliamentary army
+until a guarantee had been given them that their cathedral would not
+be devastated as had been the case elsewhere. Besides General Ireton
+was a friend of the Yorkists and he was ready to agree to the
+stipulation. The agreement was not fully carried out, fanatic soldiers
+could not be entirely restrained, but some of the old glass remains.
+There is probably nothing more beautiful in all the realm of artistic
+glass-making than the famous Five Sisters window at York. In France
+the Revolution repeated what the Puritans accomplished of ruin in
+England. Notre Dame has no trace of its old glass. In some of the
+cathedrals, however, there has fortunately been preserved for us
+enough of it to know how wonderfully the makers of it must have been
+trained, and to let us realize how much of experiment, of
+investigation, of study that we would now call applied chemistry must
+have gone to the making of this wonderful old glass. These technical
+schools were not merely passing on arts and crafts traditions, but
+each generation was adding to the secrets of the gilds by original
+research of its own. We are prone to think that such work of original
+investigation was reserved for our time, but that is only because of
+the foolish self-complacency which blinds us to what other generations
+did.
+
+The stained glass of the cathedrals of Bourges {166} and of Chartres
+shows the marvellous success of these old workers in glass and their
+power to make enduring products. It is a mystery to see how their
+blues have lasted while the sun has shone through them all these years
+and caused no deterioration or only such as softens and adds to beauty
+but not really causes to fade. Blue had to be used in great profusion
+on the windows because the symbolism of color was well determined and
+blue stood for the virtue of purity and was the Blessed Virgin's
+color. It had to come in, therefore, on nearly all occasions. Usually
+by irradiation blue causes surrounding colors to lose something of
+their tint, and by contrast often spoils what would ordinarily be
+expected to prove beautiful color effects. These old workmen had found
+the secret of using it in such a way as not thus to spoil surrounding
+colors, not to permit it to be too assertive, yet we have wonderful
+enduring blues that have come down to us practically unchanged through
+all these centuries. Where the workmen of the old time set themselves
+producing pure color effects, their windows look like jewels and
+coruscate in the light of the setting sun--for their most charming
+effects were particularly obtained in the west windows--with a
+glorious beauty that has appealed to every generation since.
+
+It was not alone in the building trades, however, that these fine
+things were accomplished. Bookmaking reached a degree of perfection
+that {167} has never been excelled. Humphreys, the authority on
+illuminated books, declares that the manuscript volumes of the
+thirteenth century, illuminated as they are by the patient labor and
+the finely developed taste of this time, are the most beautiful ever
+made. We have one example of the thirteenth-century illuminated book
+in the Lenox Library in New York for which, I believe, the museum
+authorities were quite willing to pay some $18,000, and it is worth
+much more than that now, for it is a wondrously beautiful example of
+the illuminations of the time. Like the glassmakers, these bookmakers
+had secrets that have been lost, and that we with all our knowledge of
+science and of art in the modern time, or at least our fondly
+complacent notion of our knowledge of art and science, are unable to
+find the formulas for. They used blues in their illuminating work that
+have never faded, though blues are so prone to fade on parchment. They
+managed their blues in wonderful way and they still are as fresh and
+as undisturbing of the harmony of other colors as in the long ago.
+They could burnish gold and it stays as bright as when it was first
+applied to the leaves, even after seven centuries. We have lost the
+art of burnishing gold in such applied work and ours becomes dull
+after a time.
+
+Nor was this teaching of technics confined only to the men. From this
+period we have the most beautiful needlework in the world. The famous
+{168} Cope of Ascoli has recently attracted wide attention. Mr.
+Pierpont Morgan purchased it and was willing to pay $60,000 for it,
+though the jewels that had been on it originally had been removed. His
+experts assured him that it was the most beautiful piece of needlework
+in the world. Afterwards it was found to have been stolen, and so he
+restored it to the Italian Government, who did not return it to the
+little convent of Ascoli in North Central Italy, from which it had
+been stolen and where it was made at the end of the thirteenth century
+(1284), Elsewhere in Europe they were doing just as charming work with
+the needle. In fact England, not Italy, was the acknowledged home of
+it. The English Cope of Cyon is another notable example of needlework
+from this time. Thirteenth-century work with the needle is famous in
+the history of the art. It was the product of just the same forces
+that gave us the wonderful stained glass. They, too, used colors and
+applied great art principles to this unpromising mode of expression
+and accomplished great results. I have had the privilege of seeing the
+copy of the Cope of Ascoli that was made while in Mr. Morgan's
+possession, and, like the stained glass of York or Bourges or
+Chartres, it is one of the things not likely ever to be forgotten, so
+beautiful a realization is it of what is best in taste and art.
+
+The supremely interesting feature of this popular education was its
+effect upon the lives, and {169} minds, and happiness of the workmen.
+Men got up to their work in the morning not as to a routine occupation
+in which they did the same things over and over again, until they were
+so tired that they could scarcely do them any more, and then came home
+to rest from fatigue in weariness of mind and of body. But they awoke
+from sound sleep with the memory that ideas had been coming to them
+the day before, and especially towards evening that, now with fresh
+bodies, they might be able to execute better, and that it would surely
+be a pleasure to work out. They came to their work with an artist's
+spirit, hopeful that they would be able to express in the material
+what they saw so clearly with their mind's eye. It was tiresome
+working but the hours were not long, and always there was the thought
+of accomplishment worthy of the cathedral or the abbey or the town
+hall, worthy to be placed beside the masterpieces in the best sense of
+that dear old word, that their fellow-workmen of the other gilds were
+accomplishing around them. They went to bed healthily tired but not
+weary, sometimes to dream of their work, not as a nightmare, but as
+something that represented possibilities of accomplishment. When
+technical schools can lift men up to this plane then, indeed, there is
+a chance for happiness even for the workmen.
+
+Compare with this for a moment the lot of the modern workman. He goes
+out in the morning to work that seldom is interesting, that he {170}
+practically never cares to do only that he must get money enough to
+support himself and his family, and that requires the frequent
+repetition of routine movements until he is weary, body and soul. He
+must work or starve. He has very little interest in it as a rule,
+often none at all, and sometimes he is thoroughly disgusted with it.
+He must earn money enough to get bread to live to-day so that he shall
+be able to go and work again tomorrow. And so the humdrum round from
+day to day with nothing to relieve the prospect until the darkness
+comes when no man can work. As to dreams of accomplishment or pleasure
+in his work, as the artist has, there is practically none. He needs
+must go on, and that is all about it. Is it any wonder that this
+breeds discontent?
+
+Happy is the man who has found his work. There is only one happiness
+in this little life of ours and that consists in having work to do
+that one cares to do, and the chance to do it in such order and with
+such rewards as make life reasonably pleasant, satisfying from the
+material side. There are no pleasures in life equal to the joy of the
+worker in his work when he cares for it. Pleasures are at most but
+passing incidents. The work is what counts. These workmen of the
+Middle Ages taught in the technical schools of that olden time had
+chances for happiness, chances that were well taken, such as perhaps
+no other generation of workmen could have.
+
+Of course it may be said that, after all, there {171} were only
+opportunities for a few to work at the great architectural monuments
+of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In a sense this is true,
+but it must not be forgotten that without modern mechanical means and
+with the slow, patient laborious effort required to raise these huge
+edifices, much time and many men were required. Besides the cathedrals
+and the abbeys there were many private castles and town halls, and
+then in many places the homes of the gilds themselves, some of which,
+as, for instance, the famous hall of the clothmakers at Ypres, are
+among the most beautiful monuments of the architecture of that period.
+In everything, however, the workmen had a chance to do beautiful work.
+In the textile industries this is the time when some of the most
+beautiful cloth ever made was invented and brought to perfection.
+Linen was woven with wonderful skill, satin was invented and brought
+to perfection, silk brocades of marvellous designs of many kinds were
+made, threads of gold and silver were introduced into the textures,
+wonderfully fine effects were studied out and applied in the
+industries, and just as in the decorative arts so in the arts of
+cloth-weaving and of many other forms of human endeavor, there was an
+artistic craftsmanship such as we have lost sight of to a great extent
+in our age of machinery.
+
+The Irish poet, Yeats, in bidding a group of American friends good-bye
+some five years ago, said that we had many opportunities for culture
+{172} in life here in America, but we must be careful to take them
+fully and not deceive ourselves with counterfeits, or we would surely
+miss something of the precious privilege and development that might be
+ours. Among other things he said, that we must not forget "that until
+the very utensils in the kitchen are useful as well as beautiful no
+nation can think of itself as really cultured." If men and women can
+bear without constraint to handle things that are merely useful
+without beauty in them, there is something seriously lacking in their
+culture. Whatever is merely useful is hideous. Nature never made
+anything that was merely useful in all the world's history. The things
+of nature around us are all wonderful utilities and yet charmingly
+beautiful. The pretty flowers are seed envelopes meant to attract
+birds and insects, so that the seeds may be scattered. The beautiful
+fruits are other seed envelopes meant to attract man and the animals,
+so that the seeds may be carried far and wide. The leaves of trees are
+eminently useful as lungs and stomach and yet are beautiful and have a
+wondrous variety and a charm all their own.
+
+This precious lesson of nature they seem to have understood well in
+the Middle Ages and applied it with marvellous perfection. It has
+often been called to attention that portions of Gothic edifices in
+dark corners, out of the sight of the ordinary visitor, are just as
+beautifully decorated in their own way as those which are {173}
+especially on exhibition. The gravestones in their churches, though
+meant to be trodden under foot and often covered by the dirt from the
+shoes of passersby, yet had bronze ornaments that are so beautiful
+that in the modern time artists take rubbings of them so as to carry
+the designs away with them. While every portion of the church is
+beautiful, the same thing was true in the castles and to a great
+extent in their own homes. The furniture of that time, even in the
+houses of smaller tradesmen, was beautiful in its simplicity, its
+solidity, its charm of line, and then, above all, its absolute
+rejection of all pretence of seeming to be anything other than it was.
+Their drinking cups were beautiful, their domestic utensils of various
+kinds had charming lines and, though they did not have as many as we
+have in the modern time, what they had were so beautiful that now we
+find them on exhibition in museums, and we are beginning to imitate
+them in order that the wealthy may have as bric-a-brac ornaments in
+their houses, the utensils which were in ordinary use in the homes of
+the middle classes of the thirteenth century.
+
+There was a satisfaction for the workman in making all these beauteous
+things. He knew, as a rule, for whom they were to be made. He knew
+where they were to be placed. He often saw his handiwork afterwards.
+His reputation depended on it. There was a happiness then in doing it
+well, and in taking his time to it, that surpasses {174} any idle
+pleasure away from his work, as happiness always surpasses pleasure.
+There was the joy of the doing, and joys we are coming to appreciate
+mean ever so much more than pleasures. What we want at the present
+time are more joys and less pleasures. How many men and women were
+blessed in that time because they had found their work. That is the
+only real happiness in life. How profusely it was scattered over the
+mediaeval world.
+
+Almost nothing that was made was of a character that could be done by
+mere routine. A man had to occupy both mind and body in the making of
+the textiles, of the kitchen utensils, of the furniture, of the
+various metal utensils required for houses, and so for nearly
+everything else. It is the workman who has mere routine work that has
+opportunity to think about other things and brood over his lot and
+grow more and more dissatisfied. It is the man who does not have to
+give his mind to what he is doing, but who while his body grows more
+and more tired accomplishing a limited set of constantly repeated
+movements, may allow his mind to ponder gloomily over his condition,
+compare it with that of others and grow envious, who has the worst
+possible seeds of discontent in his occupation.
+
+Men who did this sort of work that required active mental attention,
+learned to think for themselves. When they had moments of leisure, not
+having newspapers and superficial shallow books {175} to waste their
+time on, they did some thinking. Any one who has had a little intimate
+contact with the old-fashioned artisans, the shoemakers, the
+harnessmakers, the cabinetmakers who work at benches, the woodcarvers,
+men who have real trades, knows how often one finds among them a deep,
+serious thinker with regard to the problems of life around. They do
+not drink in other people's opinions and then think that they are
+thinking, because they are able to repeat some formulas of words. Such
+men are not easily led. They make good jurymen, they have logic; above
+all, they are thoughtful. There must have been much of this in the old
+time among the handicraftsmen of the Middle Ages. It is doubtless to
+this that we owe the fact that these men were gradually organized in
+many wonderful ways into the basic democracy on which the liberties of
+the English-speaking people of the world are founded. We shall have
+much more to say of this in treating of the wonderful fraternal
+organizations, with solutions for nearly every problem of social need,
+which these men succeeded in working out for themselves in times
+considered to have been benighted.
+
+There was another phase of the education of these members of the gilds
+that is even more interesting because it trenches particularly on the
+intellectual side of life, the provision of entertainment and solves
+an important social problem. This was the organization of dramatic
+{176} performances for the people in which the members of the gilds
+took part. The stories of the Old Testament and of the New, and of the
+lives of the Saints, and of various incidents connected with Church
+history, were worked up into plays and were presented in the various
+cities. We have the remains of many cycles of these plays. They
+represent the beginnings of our modern dramatic literature. They were
+simple and very naive, but they were interesting and they concerned
+some of the deepest and most beautiful thoughts with which man has
+ever been concerned. The members of the gilds and their families took
+part in them. The principal sets of plays were given in the springtime
+at the various festivals of the Church, so frequent then. Most of the
+spare time from Christmas on, especially the long hours of the winter
+evenings, were occupied in preparations of various kinds for these
+spring dramatic performances. It is impossible to conceive of anything
+more likely to give people innocent and joyful yet absorbing
+occupations of mind than these preparations.
+
+Some of the young men and women were chosen as the actors and had to
+learn their parts and be rehearsing them. Choruses had to be trained,
+costumes had to be made, some scenery had to be arranged, everything
+was done by the members of the particular gild for each special
+portion of the cycle of the play assigned to them. Garments had
+actually to be manufactured out of the wool, {177} the dyeing of them
+had to be managed, spangles had to be made for them, there must have
+been busy occupation of the most interesting kind for many hands. Of
+course it is easy to say that these naive productions could not have
+meant very much for the people. Any one who thinks so, however, has
+had no experience with private theatricals, and above all has never
+had the opportunity to see how much they mean for the occupation of
+young folks' minds and the keeping of them out of mischief during the
+winter months when they are much indoors. When the Jesuits founded
+their great schools in Europe they laid it down as one of the rules of
+the institute to be observed in all their schools, that plays in
+certain number should be given every year, partly for the sake of the
+educational effect of such occupation with dramatic literature, but
+mainly because of the interest aroused by them and the occupation of
+mind for young folks which they involve.
+
+As to how much they may mean, perhaps the best way for those of our
+day to realize it is to take the example of Oberammergau with its
+great Passion Play still given. Here we have a typical instance of a
+Passion play of the olden time maintaining itself. The preparations
+for it occupy the villagers in their mountain home not for months
+only, but for years before it is given. It represents the centre of
+the village life, is the main portion of its activities. The place of
+a {178} family with regard to the play constitutes its position in the
+village aristocracy. Something of this must have been true in the
+gilds of the Middle Ages in these dramatic performances. Just as at
+Oberammergau nearly every one of the villagers has something to do or
+is in some way connected with the preparation of the play, so most of
+the members of the particular gilds and probably their families had
+some connection with their plays. The children had their interest and
+curiosity aroused and were allowed to help in their measure, and then
+when the glorious day of the performance came, there must have been
+joy in the hearts of all and rejoicing over its success. This is the
+sort of occupation of mind that we would like to be able to provide
+for our people in the cities and towns, but circumstances are such
+that we cannot.
+
+Those who would think that these old Passion and mystery plays meant
+very little for the people who did not take part in them and, above
+all, very little for the spectators, in an educational way, forget
+entirely that this side of the work of the old plays can also be
+studied at Oberammergau. This little town of 1,400 inhabitants
+occupies itself for years to such good effect that, when the
+performances are given crowds flock from all over the world to witness
+them. When I was there in 1900 I think that I saw the most
+cosmopolitan gathering that I had ever been in, though I have been to
+several International {179} Medical Congresses. There were Russians
+and Poles, and Scandinavians and Americans and Australians, and there
+stayed in the house with us a little party from Buenos Ayres, and our
+seat companions in the train were English, who had been born in India,
+and they pointed out to us some South Africans who had come to see the
+Passion Play. This village of 1,400 inhabitants succeeds in producing
+actors who are capable of arousing thus the interest of the world, and
+they have artistic taste enough to mount it well, and they manage
+their performances in thoroughly dignified fashion, and yet in many
+ways they have the simplicity and, above all, the dear old simple
+faith of the mediaeval people from whom they come. This is the best
+possible evidence that we could have of the place of the old plays in
+the life of the people.
+
+We have another form of evidence that is extremely interesting. Out of
+these old mystery plays, dramas of the Nativity and of the Passion
+with the introductions and interludes to these central facts of
+creation, there developed first the morality plays and then the drama
+of the modern time. Twice in the history of the world, each time quite
+independent of the other, the drama has originated anew out of
+religious ceremonials. In old Greece this is the origin of the drama;
+in the Middle Ages exactly the same thing happened. Nor was this
+origin unworthy in any way of the great development that came. Some of
+the old {180} mystery plays were written with wonderful dramatic
+insight and with a capacity to bring out dramatic moments that is very
+admirable. As for the morality plays we have had one of them repeated
+to us in recent years, "Everyman," and well it has served to show how
+able was the genius of these old dramatic writers. People of the
+modern sordid time listened for two hours enraptured and then went
+away, paying the tribute of silence to this wonderful arrangement of
+the ideas connected with such a familiar theme as the four last things
+to be remembered--death, judgment, heaven and hell. Fine as is
+"Everyman," there are some critics who think the "Castle of
+Perseverance," written about the same time, the latter part of the
+fifteenth century, an even greater play.
+
+The most important feature of this work in dramatics of the old gilds
+was not the entertainment, though with what we know of how low
+entertainment can sink and how much it can mean for degradation,
+surely that would be sufficient, but the fact that all of the workmen
+and their families in the towns were occupied with the high thoughts
+and the beautiful phrases and the uplifting motives and the deep
+significance of the Bible stories. These are so simple that no one
+could fail to understand. They are written so close to the heart of
+human nature that even the simplest child can appreciate their
+meaning. They are full of the most precious lessons, yet without {181}
+any of that moralizing that is often so sterile and so characteristic
+of what we call mere preaching. All the townspeople were occupied for
+months beforehand with these stories. They got ever closer and closer
+to the heart of the mystery in them. They got closer thus to the heart
+of the mystery of life. They were made to feel the presence of the
+Creator and of Providence while occupying themselves with thoughts
+that are the essence of deepest poetry. What would one not give to be
+able to occupy a great number of people, for many hours every winter,
+with such thoughts, not alone for their moral effect but their real
+educational value. They did not add useless information to useless
+information, but they did bring development of mind and, above all,
+heart. In my book "The Thirteenth the Greatest of Centuries,"
+[Footnote 14] I tell the story of how the various trades gilds in the
+towns divided these phases of the mystery plays among themselves.
+Every one had an opportunity to do something. They were the tanners
+and the plasterers, the cardmakers and the fullers, the coopers, the
+armorers, the gaunters and glovers, the shipwrights, the pessners,
+fishmongers and mariners, the parchment-makers and bookbinders, the
+hosiers, the spicers, the pewterers and founders, the tylers and
+smiths, the chandlers, the orfevers, the goldsmiths, the goldbeaters,
+the money-makers, and then many other trades whose names sound curious
+to us of {182} the modern time. The bowyers or makers of bows; the
+fletchers or arrow featherers; the hay-resters or workers in
+horsehair, the bowlers or bowlmakers, the feystours, makers of
+saddle-trees; the verrours, glaciers; the dubbers, refurbishers of
+clothes; the lumniners or illuminators, the scriveners or public
+writers; the drapers, the mercers; the lorymers or bridle-makers; the
+spurriers, makers of spurs; the cordwaners; the bladesmiths; the
+curriers; the scalers, and many others, all had their chances to take
+part in these old plays.
+
+  [Footnote 14: Catholic Summer School Press, New York, 1907.]
+
+They were not being entertained, but were themselves active agents in
+the doing of things for themselves and for others. This is what brings
+real contentment with it. Superficial entertainment that occupies the
+surface of the mind for the moment means very little for real
+recreation of mind. What men need is to have something that makes them
+think along lines different to those in which they are engaged in
+their daily work. This gives real rest. The blood gets away from parts
+of the brain where it has been all day, flows to new parts, and
+recreation is the result. Such entertainment, however, must occupy the
+very centre of interest for the moment and not be something seen in
+passing and then forgotten. The modern psychotherapeutist would say,
+that no better amusement than this could possibly be obtained since it
+brought real diversion of mind. Above all, we of the modern time who
+know how vicious, how immoral in its tendencies, how {183} suggestive
+of all that is evil, how familiarizing with what is worst in men until
+familiarity begets contempt, commercial entertainment in the shape of
+dramatics, so-called at least, may be, cannot help but admire and envy
+and would emulate, if we could, this fine solution of a very pressing
+social problem that the gilds found in an educational feature that is
+of surpassing value.
+
+There are three post-graduate courses in modern life that are quite
+beyond the control of our educational authorities, though we talk much
+of our interest and our accomplishments in education. These three have
+more influence over the people than all of our popular education. They
+are the newspaper, the library and the theatre. Some of us who know
+what the library is doing are not at all satisfied with it. We are
+spending an immense amount of money mainly to furnish the cheapest
+kind of mere superficial amusement to the people of our cities. In so
+doing we are probably hurting their power of concentration of mind
+instead of helping it, and it is this concentration of mind that is
+the best fruit of education. This is, however, another story. Of the
+newspaper, as we now have it, the less said the better. It is bringing
+our young people particularly into intimate contact with many of the
+vicious and brutalizing things of life, the sex crimes, brutal murders
+and prize-fights, so that uplift and refinement almost become
+impossible. As for the theatre, no one now thinks of it as {184}
+educationally valuable. Our plays are such superficial presentations
+of the life around us that once they have had their run no one thinks
+of reviving them. This is the better side of the theatre. The worst
+side is absolutely in the hands of the powers of evil and is
+confessedly growing worse all the time.
+
+Besides these indirect educational features the gilds encouraged
+certain formal educational institutions that are of great interest,
+and that have been misunderstood for several centuries until recent
+years. In many places they maintained grammar schools and these
+grammar schools were eminently successful in helping to make scholars
+of such of the sons of the members of the gilds as wanted to lift
+themselves above their trades into the intellectual life. We know more
+about the grammar school at Stratford-on-Avon than of any of the
+others. The reason for this is that we have been interested in the
+antiquities of Shakespeare's town and the conditions which obtained in
+it, before as well as during his lifetime. The Gild of the Holy Cross
+of Stratford maintained a grammar school in which many pupils were
+educated. That this was not a singular feature of gild work is evident
+from what we know of many other gilds. These gild schools were
+suppressed in the reformation time and then later had to be replaced
+by the so-called Edward VI grammar schools, in one of which it is
+usually said that Shakespeare was educated. As the English {185}
+historian Gairdner declared not long since in his "History of the
+Pre-Reformation Times in England," Edward has obtained a reputation
+for foundations in charity and in education that he by no means
+deserved. The schools founded by him particularly were nothing more
+than re-establishments of popular schools of the olden time whose
+endowment had been confiscated. The new foundations were makeshifts to
+appease popular clamor.
+
+The old gilds did not believe in devoting all the early years of
+children to mere book-learning. Some few with special aptitudes for
+this were provided with opportunities. The rest were educated in
+various ways at home until their apprenticeship to a trade began, and
+then their real education commenced. Our own experience with education
+in the early years from six to eight or nine is not particularly
+favorable. Children who enter school a little later than the legal age
+graduate sooner and with even higher marks than those who begin at the
+age of six. This has been shown by statistics in England in many
+cities. What is learned with so much fuss and worry and bother for the
+children and the teachers from six to eight, is rapidly picked up in a
+few months at the age of eight or nine, and then is better
+assimilated. The grammar schools of the gilds took the children about
+the age of nine or ten and then gave them education in letters. That
+education, by the way, began at six in the morning and, {186} with two
+hours of intervals, continued until four in the afternoon. They
+believed in the eight-hour day for children, but they began it good
+and early so that artificial light might not constitute a problem.
+
+The best schooling, however, afforded by the gilds, after that in
+self-help of course, was that in mutual aid. We are establishing
+schools of philanthropy in the modern time and we talk much about the
+organization of charity and other phases of mutual aid. In this as in
+everything else we map out, as George Eliot once said, our ignorance
+of things, or at least our gropings after solutions of problems, in
+long Greek names, which often serve to produce the idea that we know
+ever so much more about these subjects than we really do. The training
+in brotherly love and helpfulness in the old gilds was a fine school.
+Those who think that it is only now that ideas of mutuality in sharing
+responsibilities, of co-operation and co-ordination of effort for the
+benefit of all, of community interests, are new, should study Toulmin
+Smith's work on the gilds, or read Brentano on the foreign gilds.
+There is not a phase of our organization of charity in the modern time
+that was not well anticipated by the members of the gilds, and that,
+too, in ways such as we cannot even hope to rival unless we change the
+basis on which our helpfulness is founded. Theirs was not a stooping
+down of supposed better, or so-called upper classes, to help the
+lower, {187} but organization among the people to help themselves so
+that there was in no sense a pauperization.
+
+Every phase of human need was looked to. We are just beginning to
+realize our obligations to care for the old, and the last twenty years
+has seen various efforts on the part of governments to provide old-age
+pensions. In the Middle Ages according to the laws of the gilds the
+man who had paid his dues for seven years would then draw a weekly
+pension equal to something more than five dollars now, for all the
+rest of his life if he were disabled by injury, or had become
+incapacitated from old age or illness. Then there were gilds to
+provide insurance against loss by fire, loss by robbery on land and
+also on sea, loss by shipwreck, loss even by imprisonment and all
+other phases of human needs. If the workman were injured his family
+nursed him during the day but a brother member of the gild, as we have
+said, was sent to care for him at night, and a good portion of his
+wages went on, paid to him out of the gild chest. If he died his widow
+and orphans were cared for by a special pension. The widow did not
+have to break up the family and send the children to orphan asylums.
+There were practically no orphan asylums. The gilds cared for the
+children of dead members. As the boys grew up special attention was
+given them so as to provide a trade for them, and they were given
+earlier opportunities than others to get on in life. {188} The orphans
+were the favorite children of the gilds, and instead of a child being
+handicapped by the loss of his parents when he was young, it sometimes
+happened that he got better opportunities than if his parents lived.
+
+These gilds provided opportunities for social entertainment and
+friendly intercourse and for such acquaintanceship as would afford
+mutual pleasure and give opportunities for the meeting of the young
+folks,--sons and daughters of the members of the gild. They had their
+yearly benefit at which the wives of the members and their sweethearts
+were supposed by rule to come, and then they had other meetings and
+social gatherings--picnics in the country in the summer, dances in the
+winter time and all in a circle where every one knew every one else,
+and all went well. These are some social features of these gilds
+educational in the highest sense that we can well envy in the modern
+time, when we find it so difficult to secure innocent, happy pleasures
+for young people that will not leave a bad taste in the mouth
+afterwards. When a member of the gild died his brother members
+attended the Mass which was said for him and gave a certain amount in
+charity that was meant to be applied for his benefit. The whole
+outlook on life was eminently brotherly. There has never been such a
+teaching of true fraternity, of the brotherhood of man, of the
+necessity for mutual aid and then of such practice of it as makes it
+easy, as among these old gilds.
+
+{189}
+
+The finest result of this teaching is to be seen in the democratic
+spirit that gradually arose as a consequence of these gilds and their
+teaching of self-government in all local affairs to the people. The
+gilds were arranged and organized in the various parishes. These
+parishes were independent communities for local affairs who had charge
+of the police system, the health, the road-making, the path-keeping,
+the boundary-guarding and, in general, the comfort and convenience of
+the community. The gildsmen, more than any others, were the factors in
+these parishes. They accumulated money for the various purposes and
+had great influence in the development of the community life and the
+solution of local government problems.
+
+It would be very easy to think that the gilds could not have fulfilled
+all these duties and subserved all these needs. If we recall, however,
+that there were 80,000 gilds in England at the end of the fifteenth
+century, when there were not more than 4,000,000 of people in the
+whole country, then we can see how much could be accomplished. Alas,
+at the beginning of the next century all their moneys were
+confiscated, and because they were Church societies, every one of them
+requiring attendance at Church duties and at Mass, as well as at the
+Masses for the dead, but, above all, for the crime of having money in
+their treasuries at a time when the King needed money and his appetite
+had been whetted by the spoil of the {190} monasteries and the
+churches, the gilds were obliterated. Only a few of them in London
+that had powerful protectors and that escaped on the plea that they
+were commercial organizations and not religious societies, were able
+to preserve something of their old-time integrity. These are now so
+rich that they are the wonder of those who know them. They give us a
+good idea, however, of the deep foundations that had been established
+out of the common chest in the purchase of property for these gilds.
+
+In solving the problems of industrial insurance, of providing for the
+widows and the orphans, of securing annuities when they would be
+needed, these gilds set us an example that it would be well for us to
+follow. The insurance money was not accumulated in such huge sums that
+it would be a constant temptation for exploitation on the part of
+officials. It was distributed in comparatively small sums in many
+thousands of treasuries, and was under the surveillance of those most
+interested in it. The old-age pensions were not governmental, issued
+in large numbers and open to inevitable abuses, but were given by
+those who knew, to those whose necessities were well known.
+
+No wonder that we find democratic government developing co-ordinately
+with these gilds. At the beginning of the thirteenth century Magna
+Charta was signed. About the middle of it the first English Parliament
+met, before the end of it the proper representation of the cities and
+{191} towns which were mainly controlled by the gilds was secured and
+during the last quarter of it the English Common Law came into effect
+so as to secure the rights of all. Bracton's great "Digest of the
+English Common Law" was written about 1280, and it is still the great
+sourcebook of the principles of law in English-speaking countries. In
+many of the States of our Union the Supreme Courts still make their
+decisions on the basis of the English Common Law, and until a decade
+or two ago all of them did. The people's rights were secured by the
+education of the people and the property laws and those for the
+guardianship of the person and for the prevention of autocratic
+interference with liberty were all of them put into effect as a
+consequence of this education in democracy.
+
+This, then, was surely an ideal teaching of the masses, a teaching of
+the arts and crafts, a teaching of mutual aid, a teaching of true
+fraternity, a teaching of book-learning whenever that was considered
+necessary or advisable, a teaching of the rights of man and a
+wonderful development of laws as a consequence, and all of this
+accomplished not by the upper classes, stooping to lift the lower
+classes, but out of the conscious development of the lower classes
+themselves, so that there came a true evolution and not merely a
+superficial influence from without. If we want to know how to teach
+the masses and to help them to contentment, happiness, occupation of
+mind, {192} uplifting entertainment, cheerful amusement and, above
+all, to conscious democratic government, here is the model of it as it
+can be found nowhere else. I commend it to those who are teaching and
+who, realizing the failure of our modern education in many ways, are
+looking about for the remedies that will help to make our popular
+education more efficient.
+
+The soul of this ideal education of the masses was the training of
+character. They had no illusions that the mere imparting of
+information would make people better nor that the knowing of many
+things would make them more desirable citizens. Probably they did not
+consciously reason much about these subjects, but their instincts led
+them straight. Mr. Edward O. Sisson, writing in the _Atlantic Monthly_
+for July, 1910, says that the final question regarding education is
+whether it avails to produce the type of character required by the
+republic (nation) and the race. To accomplish this we need to fit our
+practice to Herbart's great formula that, "the chief business of
+education is the ethical revelation of the universe." Take any part of
+this system of education that I have called the ideal education of the
+masses and try it by that standard and see how high its mark will be.
+Their handiwork is mainly an act of devotion to the God of the
+universe and its products are the most beautiful gifts that ever were
+offered to him. Cathedral stonework, glass-work, ironwork, beautiful
+sacred vessels, handsomest {193} vestments ever made, needlework,
+lacework, the beautiful setting of the cathedral; what an act of
+worship it all was! When it was finished, it belonged to no class but
+to the whole people. It was theirs to be proud of and to worship in.
+
+Their very amusements were often acts of worship. Their plays
+concerned the revelations of God to man, for they were all founded on
+the Bible, and even for those who may not accept those revelations as
+divine the fact that the men and women, the masses, the handworkmen
+and the little traders, were for many months in each year engaged with
+the high ethical thoughts that constitute the greatest contribution to
+the ethical revelation of the universe that we have in literature,
+must of itself be an eminently satisfying feature of this old-time
+education. As regards the Creator, these people were constantly made
+familiar with Him, His works and ways. Their holidays were holy-days.
+They were anniversaries in the life of the God-Man or His chosen
+servants. The men and women whom they celebrated on those days were
+chosen characters who had devoted themselves unselfishly to others, so
+that the after-time hailed them as saints because of their
+forgetfulness of self. We know what this constantly recurring reminder
+of the lives of great men and women may be, and then we must not
+forget that on these days in their great cathedral they heard the
+story of the life of the saint of the day, and often a discourse on
+the qualities that {194} stamped him or her as worthy of admiration.
+Let us remember, above all, that there were as many women saints as
+men, and that these were held up for the admiration and emulation of
+growing youth. This was ethical training at every turn in life.
+
+Above all, there was constant training in that thoughtfulness for
+others that means so much in any true system of education. When
+members of the gilds fell ill, their families nursed them during the
+day, but members of the gilds chosen for that purpose nursed them at
+night. It was felt that the family did quite enough not to exhaust
+itself by night watching. When brother members of the gild died their
+fellows attended their funeral in a body, and, above all, took part in
+the Mass for their souls. People who do not understand the Catholic
+idea of Mass for the dead will not appreciate this in the way that
+Catholics do, but at least they will understand the brotherliness of
+the act and the beautiful purpose that prompted so many to gather, in
+order that even after death they might do whatever they could for this
+departed brother. Besides the death of a brother gildsman was the
+signal for the giving of alms because the merit of these alms, it was
+felt, could be transferred to his account, and so the bond of
+fraternity continued even in the life beyond. The ethical effect of
+all this on the minds of people who sincerely believed can scarcely be
+exaggerated. Here is a training of the will and {195} of character,
+and a teaching of the relationship of man to man and of man to the
+Creator carried out into all the smallest details of life.
+
+Above all, these generations had a training in personal service for
+one another. Every one exercised charity. It was not a few of the very
+wealthy who practised philanthropy. They had safeguards which, as far
+as is possible, prevented abuse of this charity. The alms, for
+instance, that was given on the occasion of a brother's funeral was
+not distributed hit or miss and all at one time, but members of the
+gild bought from the treasurer tokens which might be redeemed in bread
+and meat or in cast-off clothing or in some other way. These were
+distributed to the poor as they seemed to need them. If you met a poor
+man who seemed really in want you could give him one or more of these
+tokens and then be sure that while he would get whatever was necessary
+to supply his absolute needs, he would not be able to abuse charity.
+In our time we constantly have stories of large accumulations on the
+part of street beggars who own valuable property and have accounts in
+savings banks and the like. There was no possibility of this under the
+mediaeval system and yet charity was widely exercised, every one took
+some part in it, and there was that training, not only in effective
+pity for affliction, but also in helpfulness for others, which means
+so much more than the exercise of occasional charity, because, for the
+moment, one is touched by the {196} sight of suffering or has remorse
+because one feels that one has been indulging one's self and wants the
+precious satisfaction that will come from a little making up for
+luxurious extravagance.
+
+In our time, when we have gradually excluded moral teaching and
+training almost entirely from our schools and our methods of
+education, this phase of the ideal education of the masses is
+particularly interesting. Milton declared that "the main skill and
+groundwork of education will be to temper the pupils with such
+lectures and explanations as will draw them into willing obedience,
+inflamed with the study of learning and the admiration of virtue,
+stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men and worthy
+patriots." Their great stone-books, the cathedrals, where all who came
+could read the life of the Lord, the frequent reminders of the lives
+of the saints, doers among men who forgot themselves and thought of
+others, the fraternal obligations of the gilds and their intercourse
+with each other, all these constituted the essence of an education as
+nearly like that demanded by Milton as can well be imagined. It seems
+far-fetched to go back five, six, even seven centuries to find such
+ideals in practice, but the educator who is serious and candid with
+himself will find it easy to discover the elements of a wonderful
+intellectual and, above all, moral training of the people, that is the
+whole people from the lowest to the highest, in these early days.
+
+
+{197}
+
+CYCLES OF FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE
+
+{198}
+
+  "And if I am right nothing can be more foolish than our modern
+  fashion of training men and women differently, whereby one-half of
+  the power of the city is lost. For reflect--if women are not to have
+  the education of men some other must be found for them, and what
+  other can we propose?"
+  --Plato, _Laws_ (Jowett), p. 82. Scribner, 1902.
+
+
+{199}
+
+CYCLES OF FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE [Footnote 15]
+
+  [Footnote 15: The material for this was gathered for a lecture on
+  the History of Education delivered for the Academy of the Sacred
+  Heart, Kenwood, Albany, N. Y., and St. Joseph's College, Chestnut
+  Hill, Philadelphia, Pa. Very nearly in its present form the address
+  was delivered before the League for the Civic Education of Women, at
+  the Colony Club, New York City, in the winter of 1910.]
+
+
+Nothing is commoner than to suppose that what we are doing at the
+present day is an improvement over whatever they were doing at any
+time in the past in the same line. We were rather proud during the
+nineteenth century to talk of that century as the century of
+evolution. Evolutionary terms of all kinds found their way even into
+everyday speech and a very general impression was produced that we are
+in the midst of progress so rapid and unerring, that even from decade
+to decade it is possible to trace the wonderful advance that man is
+making. We look back on the early nineteenth century as quite
+hopelessly backward. They had no railroads, no street-car lines, no
+public street lighting, no modes of heating buildings that gave any
+comfort in the cold weather, no elevators, and when we compare our
+present comfortable condition with the discomforts of that not so
+distant period, we feel how much evolution has done for us, and
+inevitably {200} conclude that just as much progress as has been made
+in transportation and in comfort, has also been made in the things of
+the mind, and, above all, in education, so that, while the millennium
+is not yet here, it cannot surely be far off; and men are attaining at
+last, with giant strides, the great purpose that runs through the
+ages.
+
+Probably in nothing is the assumption that we are doing something far
+beyond what was ever accomplished before, more emphatically expressed
+than in the ordinary opinions as to what is being done by and for
+women in our generation. We have come to think that at last in the
+course of evolution woman is beginning to come into something of her
+rights, she is at last getting her opportunity for the higher
+education and for professional education so far as she wants it, and
+as a consequence is securing that influence which, as the equal of
+man, she should have in the world. Now there is just one thing with
+regard to this very general impression which deserves to be called
+particularly to attention. This is not the first time in the world's
+history, nor the first by many times, that woman has had the
+opportunity for the higher education and has taken it very well.
+Neither is it the first time that she has insisted on having an
+influence in public affairs, but on the contrary, we can readily find
+a very curious series of cycles of feminine education and of the
+exercise of public influence by women, with intervals of almost
+negative phases in these matters that {201} are rather difficult to
+explain. Let us before trying to understand what the feministic
+movement means in our own time and, above all, before trying to sum up
+its ultimate significance for the race, study some of the
+corresponding movements in former times.
+
+The most interesting phase of the woman movement in history is that
+which occurred at the time of the Renaissance. Because it is typical
+of the phases of the feministic movement at all times, and then, too,
+because it is closer to us and the records of it are more complete, it
+will be extremely interesting to follow out some of the details of it.
+It may be necessary for that to make a little excursion into the
+history of the period. During the early fifteenth century the Turks
+were bothering Constantinople so much, that Greek scholars, rendered
+uncomfortable at home, began making their way over into Italy rather
+frequently, bringing with them precious manuscripts and remains of old
+Greek art. Besides commerce aroused by the Crusades was making the
+intercourse between East and West much more intimate than it had been
+and, as a result, a taste for Greek letters and art was beginning to
+be felt in certain portions of Italy. When Constantinople fell, about
+the middle of the fifteenth century, the prestige of the old capital
+of the Greek empire was lost, and scholars abandoned it for Italy in
+large numbers. This is the time of the Renaissance. The rebirth that
+the word {202} signifies, is not a rebirth of art and architecture and
+literature into the modern world, as if there had been nothing before,
+for Gothic art and architecture and literature is quite as wonderful,
+if not more so, than anything that came after, and there are good
+authorities who insist that the Renaissance hurt, rather than helped,
+Europe. The Renaissance was a rebirth of Greek ideas and ideals in
+aesthetics into the European world, and while we may not agree with
+Sir Henry Maine that whatever lives and moves in the intellectual
+world is Greek in origin, there is no doubt that Greek can be the
+source of most wonderful incentive and such it proved to be during the
+fifteenth century.
+
+Men and women began to study Greek and they paid much more attention
+as a consequence to the Latin classics modelled on the Greek, and so
+the New Learning, the so-called humanities, became the centre of
+intellectual interest. They were studied first in private schools, but
+before long a place for these new studies was demanded in the
+curriculum of the universities. The universities, however, were
+occupied with the so-called seven liberal arts, which were really
+scientific studies. There was geometry, astronomy, music, grammar,
+rhetoric, logic and metaphysics, with considerable ethics and
+political science, so that they resembled in many ways our modern
+universities as they have been transformed since the re-introduction
+of scientific studies into them. {203} The university faculties were
+content and conservative after the fashion of universities ever, and
+they quite naturally refused to entertain the notion of such a radical
+change as the introduction of classical studies into the curriculum.
+This is just exactly what the classical universities of the early
+nineteenth century did when they were asked by scientific enthusiasts
+to re-introduce scientific studies into the curriculum, which in the
+course of 800 years had come to be made up almost exclusively of
+classical studies. In this curious way does history repeat itself.
+
+Unable to obtain a place for the studies in humanism in the
+universities, ruling princes and wealthy members of the nobility
+proceeded to found special schools for these subjects. In these
+schools without the traditions of the past, the women asked and
+obtained the privilege of studying. There had come a noteworthy change
+in intellectual interest, a novelty was introduced into education.
+Whenever that happens woman always asks and always obtains the
+privilege of the higher education. During the Renaissance period she
+proceeded to show her intellectual power. Many of the women of the
+Renaissance became distinguished for scholarship. Perhaps one thing
+should be noted with regard to that. Their reputation for scholarship
+was largely confined to their younger years. They were more
+precocious, or applied themselves better to their studies, and
+accordingly knew more of the classics {204} at twenty than their male
+relatives who had the same opportunities. Indeed we hear of them as
+brilliant scholars at sixteen and seventeen and eighteen. They took
+part in Latin plays that were brilliantly performed before the
+nobility, higher ecclesiastics, cardinals and even the Popes. They
+were brilliant in music, in the languages and in their taste for art.
+Later on in life we do not hear so much of them. They evidently were
+ready to leave the serious work of scholarship to the men and content
+themselves with being enlightened patrons of literature, beneficent
+advocates of the arts, liberal customers of the artistic geniuses of
+the time. Above all, we find no great original works from them. They
+are charming appreciators but not good inventors--at this time, of
+course.
+
+While they do not occupy themselves with dry-as-dust scholarship,
+there is no doubt at all that much of the glory of the Renaissance,
+with its great revivals in art and letters, is due to the women of the
+time. It was they who insisted on the building of the town houses,
+finely decorated and with charming objects of art in them. It was for
+them that the artists of the time made many beautiful things. They
+were very often the patrons who enabled churches to obtain from
+artists the wonderful paintings of the time. The sculptors made for
+them many charming pieces of bric-a-brac. The artists laid out
+beautiful gardens that we are only just beginning to {205} appreciate
+again now that our taste for outdoor life is being properly
+cultivated. They bought the books that were issued by the Manutiuses
+at Venice. Isabella D'Este had a standing order that all the books
+issued from this great Venetian press should be sent to her. Books
+were costly treasures in these times. A single volume of one of these
+incunabula of printing so beautifully issued from Manutius's printing
+establishment was worth nearly one hundred dollars in our money.
+
+The women designed their own dresses. They encouraged the miniature
+painting of the time and the illumination of books and occasionally
+took up these arts themselves. They fostered the development of
+textile industries, lacemaking and the various kinds of figured cloth,
+so that we have some of the most beautiful inventions in this kind at
+this time. Tapestry-making took on a new vigor and beauty because of
+their patronage. They wanted beautiful glass, and new periods of
+marvellous development of glass-tinting and making were ushered in. As
+can be readily understood these are the sort of things that men are
+not interested in, and whenever in the history of the race we find a
+period of development of this kind we can be sure that educated women
+are responsible for it. These women of the Renaissance decorated their
+homes beautifully, had them built substantially, with wonderful taste
+and, above all, had them set charmingly in the Italian {206}
+Renaissance gardens that are so deservedly admired.
+
+While they were thus occupied with the beautiful things of life some
+of them wrote poetry that has lived (Lucrezia Tornabuoni dei Medici,
+Vittoria Colonna), some of them indulged in fiction (Marguerite of
+Navarre) that is still read, and a great epoch of fiction-writing
+responded to their interest as readers; some of them mixed in politics
+and proved their power, at times some of them acted as regents for
+their sons (Forli, D'Este), and succeeded magnificently, so that we
+have every phase of development of woman's power. There can be no
+doubt that at this period woman was afforded every opportunity for the
+development of her intellectual life, and that she took her
+opportunities with great success.
+
+We have from this time probably the names of more distinguished women
+than from any other corresponding period in the world's history. There
+was a wonderful group of women at the Court of Giovanna of Naples in
+the first half of the fifteenth century, because Naples got her
+Renaissance impulses first, being closer by sea to Constantinople and
+having many Greek traditions from the old days when Southern Italy was
+Magna Graecia. Then there are a series of finely educated women
+connected with the Medici household at Florence. The mother of the
+great Lorenzo is the best known of them, and her poems show real
+literary power. The D'Este family is {207} better known generally, and
+then there were the Gonzagas, some of the women of the house of Forli,
+Vittoria Colonna, whose influence over art and artists shows her
+genius quite as well as does her writing, and many others. Everywhere
+women are on a footing with men as regards the intellectual life.
+Everywhere they direct conversations seriously with regard to literary
+and artistic subjects, and, indeed, it is they who, in what we would
+now call salons, serve to make intellectual subjects fashionable, and
+so concentrate attention on them and secure the patronage so necessary
+for artists and writers if they are to subsist while doing their work.
+
+It would be a great mistake, however, to think for a moment that it
+was in Italy alone that such opportunities for higher education and
+intellectual influence were allowed to women. Just as the Renaissance
+movement itself spread throughout Europe affecting the education, the
+literature, the art, the architecture, the arts and crafts of the time
+and the nations, so did the feministic movement spread, and everywhere
+we find striking expressions of it. In France, for instance, the
+Renaissance can be traced very easily in letters and architecture, and
+was not much behind Italy in feminine education. Queen Anne of
+Bretagne organized the Court School of the time, and interest in
+literature became the fashion of the hour. Marguerite of Navarre is a
+woman of the Renaissance, and so is Renee of Anjou, while the name
+{208} of Louise La Cordiere shows, for _la cordiere_ means the
+cord-wainer's daughter, that higher education for women was not
+confined to the nobility. Mary Queen of Scots, educated in France,
+whose letters and whose poetry with occasional excursions into Latin,
+show us how thoroughly educated she was,--it must not be forgotten
+that she was put into prison at twenty-four and never again got
+out,--is a typical woman of the French Renaissance. Sichel has told
+the story of these women of France very well, and those who want to
+know the details of the feministic movement of the time should turn to
+him.
+
+In Spain, too, the Renaissance movement made itself felt in every
+department. Most of Spain's cathedrals were finished during the
+Renaissance time, and some of the work is the admiration of the world.
+Spain's literary Renaissance came a little later, but when it did it
+contributed at least two great names to the world
+literature--Cervantes and Calderon. The women of the nation were also
+affected, and Queen Isabella was a deeply intellectual woman of many
+interests. Spain contributed to the feministic movement probably the
+greatest name in the history of feminine intellectuality in St.
+Teresa. How much of sympathy there was with this great expression of
+feminine intelligence will be best appreciated from the fact that
+Spanish ecclesiastics talk of Teresa as their Spanish Doctor of the
+Church, and that in Rome there is amongst the statues {209} of the
+Doctors and the Fathers in the Church one woman figure, that of St.
+Teresa, with the title _mater spiritualium_--mother of spiritual
+things. Her books, profoundly admired by the Spaniards, Were the
+favorite reading for such extremely different minds as Fenelon and
+Bossuet, and have been the storehouse ever since for German mystics.
+They were beautifully translated by Crashaw into English, and have
+been the subject of great interest during the present feministic
+movement, especially since George Eliot's reference to her in the
+preface of "Middlemarch."
+
+In England the Renaissance did not affect art much, nor architecture,
+though it did profoundly stir the men of letters, and the great
+Elizabethan period of English literature is really an expression of
+the Renaissance in England. Here almost more than anywhere else in
+Europe the women shared in the uplift and devotion to things
+intellectual that developed. Queen Mary was a well-educated woman,
+Queen Elizabeth read Greek as well as Latin easily, Lady Jane Grey
+preferred her lessons in Greek, under Roger Ascham, to going to balls
+and routs and hunting parties, and was a blue-stocking in the veriest
+sense of the term. It has been hinted that it was perhaps this that
+disturbed her feminine common sense and allowed her to be led so
+easily into the foolish conspiracy in which she lost her life. The
+losing of one's head in things deeply intellectual may sometimes mean
+the losing of it {210} more literally when crowns are at stake. There
+are many other names of noble women of this time that might be
+mentioned and that are well known for their intellectual development.
+That the movement did not confine itself to the higher nobility we can
+be sure, for when the better classes do ill they are imitated, but so
+also are they imitated when they do well. Besides, the story that we
+have of Margaret More and her friends shows that the middle classes
+were also stirred to interest in things intellectual.
+
+The usual objection, when this story of the Renaissance and the
+feministic movement connected with it is told, if the narrator would
+urge that here was an earlier period of feminine education than ours,
+is that, after all, the education of this period was confined to only
+a few of the nobility. This is not true, and there are many reasons
+why it is not true. First, the upper classes are always imitated by
+the others, and if there was a fashion for education we can be sure
+that it spread. We have not the records of many educated women, but
+those that we have all make it clear that education was not confined
+to a few, and that those of the middle classes who wanted it could
+readily secure it. There were probably as many women to the population
+of Europe at that time enjoying the higher education as there are
+proportionately in America at the present time. Europe had but a small
+population altogether in the fifteenth century. There {211} were
+probably less than 4,000,000 of people in England at the end, even, of
+the sixteenth century. In Elizabeth's time when the census was taken,
+because of the Spanish Armada, these were the figures. There were not
+many more people in all Europe then than there are now in England. If
+out of these few, comparatively, we can pick out the group of
+distinguished women whom I have just spoken of, then there must have
+been a great many sharing in the privileges of the higher education.
+[Footnote 16]
+
+  [Footnote 16: What an interesting reflection on the notion of
+  supposed progress is the fact pointed out by Ambassador Bryce in his
+  address on Progress (_Atlantic_ July, 1907), that while out of
+  40,000,000 of people there were so many genius men and women
+  accomplishing work that the world will never willingly let die, we
+  with a population ten times as great cannot show anything like as
+  many. Most of the great names that are most familiar to the modern
+  mind come in a single century,--the sixteenth. At the present time
+  the western civilization then represented by 40,000,000 has near to
+  500,000,000 of people. We make no pretension at all, however, to the
+  claim that we have more great men than they had. We should have ten
+  times as many, but on the contrary we are quite willing to concede
+  that we have very few compared to their number and almost none, if
+  indeed there are any, who measure up to the high standards of
+  achievement of that time more than four centuries ago. It is
+  thoughts of this kind that show one how much we must correct the
+  ordinarily accepted notions with regard to progress and inevitable
+  development, and each generation improving on its predecessors and
+  the like, that are so commonly diffused but that represent no
+  reality in history at all.]
+
+
+It is true that it was, as a rule, only the daughters of the nobility
+who received the opportunity for the higher education, or at least
+obtained it with facility. It must not be forgotten, however, just
+what the nobility of Italy, and, {212} indeed, of other countries
+also, represented. The conditions there are most typical and it is
+worth while studying them out. The Medici, for instance, of Florence,
+whose women folk were so well educated, were members of the gilds of
+the apothecaries, as their name indicates, who made a fortune on drugs
+and precious stones and beautiful stuffs from the East, and then
+became the bankers of Europe. Noblemen were created because of success
+in war, success in politics, success in diplomacy, but also because of
+success in commerce, and occasionally success in the arts. Not many
+educators and artists were among them any more than in our time,
+because they were not, as a rule, possessed of the fortune properly to
+keep up the dignity of a patent of nobility. The daughters of the
+nobility of Italy, however, were not very different, certainly their
+origin was very similar to that of the daughters of the wealthy men of
+America, who are, after all, the only ones who can take advantage of
+the higher education in our time. We must not forget that, compared to
+the whole population, the number of women securing the higher
+education is very limited.
+
+To think that the Renaissance with this provision of ample
+opportunities for feminine education was the first epoch of this kind
+in the world's history would be to miss sadly a host of historical
+facts and their significance. Unfortunately history has been so
+written from the standpoint of {213} man and his interests, that this
+phase of history is not well known and probably less understood.
+History has been too much a mere accumulation of facts with regard to
+war, diplomacy and politics. While we have known much of heroes and
+battles, we have known little of education, of art, of artistic
+achievement of all kinds. We have known even less of popular
+movements. We have known almost nothing of the great uplift of the
+masses which created the magnificent arts and crafts of the Middle
+Ages, that we are just beginning to admire so much once more, and our
+admiration of them is the best measure of our own serious artistic
+development. Kings and warriors and kings' mistresses and ugly
+diplomacy and rotten politics, have occupied the centre of the stage
+in history. Surely we are coming to a time when other matters, the
+human things and not the animal instincts, will be the main subject of
+history; when fighting and sex and acquisitiveness and selfishness
+shall give place in history to mutual aid, uplift, unselfishness and
+thoughtfulness for others.
+
+As soon as history is studied from the standpoint of the larger human
+interests and not that of political history, it is easy to find not
+only traces but detailed stories of feminine education at many times.
+Before the Renaissance the great phase of education had been that of
+the universities. The first of the universities was founded down at
+Salerno around a medical school, the {214} second that of Bologna
+around a law school and the third that of Paris with a school of
+philosophy and theology as a nucleus. This seems to be about the way
+that man's interests manifest themselves in an era of development.
+First, he is occupied mainly with his body and its needs; then his
+property and its rights, and finally, as he lifts himself up to higher
+things, his relations to his fellow-man and to his Creator come to be
+profound vital interests. Such, at least, is the story of the origin
+of the universities in the thirteenth century.
+
+The surprise for us who are considering the story of feminine
+education and influence is what happened at Salerno. Here some twenty
+miles back from Naples, in a salubrious climate, not far from the
+Mediterranean, where old Greek traditions had maintained themselves,
+for Southern Italy was called Magna Graecia, where the intercourse
+with the Arabs and with the northern shores of Africa and with the
+Near East, brought the medical secrets of many climes to a focus, the
+first modern medical school came into existence. In the department of
+women's diseases women professors taught, wrote text-books and
+evidently were considered, in every sense of the word, co-ordinate
+professors in the university. We have the text-book of one of them,
+Trotula, who is hailed as the founder of the Salernitan School of
+Women Physicians, the word school being used in the same sense as when
+we talk of a school of {215} painting, and not at all in the sense of
+our modern women's medical schools. Trotula was the wife of the
+professor of medicine at the university, Plataerius I, and the mother
+of another professor at the university, Plataerius II, herself a
+professor like them.
+
+There are many other names of women professors at the University of
+Salerno in this department. Women, however, were not alone allowed to
+practise this single phase of medicine, but we have licenses granted
+to women in Naples, of which at this time Salerno was the university,
+to practise both medicine and surgery. It seems to have been quite
+common, I should say, at least as common as in our own time for women
+to study and practise medicine, and their place in the university and
+the estimation in which their books were held, show us that all the
+difficulties in the way of professional education for women had been
+removed and that they were accepted by their masculine colleagues on a
+footing of absolute equality.
+
+Probably the most interesting feature of this surprising and
+unexpected development of professional education for women is to be
+found in the conditions out of which Salerno developed. The school was
+originally a monastic school under the influence of the Benedictine
+monks from Monte Cassino not far away. The great Archbishop Alphanus
+I, who was the most prominent patron and who had been a professor
+there, was himself {216} a Benedictine monk. How intimately the
+relations of the monks to the school were maintained can be realized
+from the fact that when the greatest medical teacher and writer of
+Salerno, Constantine Africanus, wanted to have leisure to write his
+great works in medicine, he retired from his professorship to the
+monastery of Monte Cassino. His great friend Desiderius was the abbot
+there, and his influence was still very strong at Salerno. Desiderius
+afterwards became Pope, and continued his beneficent patronage of this
+Southern Italian university. In a word, it was in the midst of the
+most intimate ecclesiastical and monastic influence that this handing
+over of the department of women's diseases to women in a great
+teaching institution occurred. The wise old monks were thoroughly
+practical, and though eminently conservative, knew the needs of
+mankind very well, and worked out this solution of one series of
+problems.
+
+When the next great university, that of Bologna, was founded, it
+developed, as I have suggested, around a law school. Irnerius revived
+the study of the old Roman law, and his teaching of it attracted so
+much attention that students from all over Europe flocked to Bologna.
+Law is different from medicine in many respects. The right of women to
+study medicine will readily be granted, their place in a system of
+medical education is manifest. With regard to law, however, there can
+scarcely be grave question as to the {217} advisability of woman
+studying it unless economic conditions force her to it. This was
+particularly true at a time when woman could own no property and had
+no rights until she married. In spite of the many inherent
+improbabilities of this development, the law school was scarcely
+opened at Bologna before women became students in it. Probably
+Irnerius' daughter and some of her friends were the first students,
+but after a time others came and the facilities seem to have been
+quite open to them. As out of the law school the university gradually
+developed, opportunities for study in the other higher branches were
+accorded to women at Bologna. We have the story of their success in
+mathematics, in philosophy, in music and in astronomy.
+
+According to a well-known and apparently well authenticated tradition,
+one distinguished woman student of Bologna, Maria Di Novella, achieved
+such success in mathematics about the middle of the thirteenth century
+that she was appointed professor of mathematics. Apparently the
+faculty of Bologna had no qualms of educational conscience nor betook
+themselves to such halfway measures as one of our modern faculties,
+which accords a certificate to a woman that she has passed better in
+the mathematical tripos than the Senior Wrangler, though they do not
+accord her the Senior Wranglership. The story goes on to say that
+Signorina Di Novella, knowing that she was pretty, and fearing that
+her {218} beauty would disturb the minds, at least, of her male
+students, arranged to lecture from behind a curtain. This would seem
+to indicate that the blue-stockings of the olden time could be as
+surpassingly modest as they were intelligent. I remember once telling
+this story before a convent audience. The dear old Mother Superior,
+who had known me for many years, ventured to ask me afterwards, "Did
+you say that she was young?" and I said yes, according to the
+tradition; "and handsome?" and I nodded the affirmative, "Well, then,"
+she said, "I do not believe the rest of the story." But then, after
+all, what do dear old Mothers Superior know about the world or its
+ways, or about handsome young women or their ways, or about the
+significance of traditions which serve to show us that even pretty,
+intelligent women can be as modestly retiring and as ready to conceal
+their charms as they are to be charmingly courteous and careful of the
+feelings of others?
+
+It was not alone in law and mathematics, however, that women were
+given opportunities for the higher education and even for professional
+work at the University of Bologna. In medicine, as well as in law,
+women reached distinction. The first great professor of anatomy of
+modern times is Mondino, whose text-book on dissection, published at
+the beginning of the fourteenth century, continued to be used in the
+medical schools for two centuries. One of his assistants was {219}
+Alessandra Giliani, one of the two university prosectors in anatomy.
+At the Surgeon General's Library in Washington, in one of the early
+printed editions of Mondino's work, the frontispiece shows a young
+woman making the dissection before him preparatory to his lecture. To
+her, according to an old Italian chronicle, we owe the invention of
+methods of varnishing and painting the tissues of cadavers so that
+they would resemble more their appearance in the living state, that
+they might be preserved for further use, thus avoiding to some extent
+the necessity for constant repetition of the deterrent work of
+dissection, even more deterrent at that time.
+
+It is curiously interesting to find that another great improvement in
+the teaching of anatomy, invented in Italy nearly four centuries
+later, came also from a woman teaching at an Italian university,
+Madame Manzolini. The tradition connecting these two women is
+unbroken. There is not a century from the thirteenth to the eighteenth
+in which there were not distinguished women professors at the
+universities of Italy, and, therefore, also students in large numbers.
+
+Just how many women students there were we do not know. It might seem
+to be a comparatively easy problem to find out just how many there
+were at any given time by looking up the registers of the
+universities. Once in Bologna itself I got hold of the old university
+registers, confident that now I would learn just what was {220} the
+proportion of women students at the university. I was utterly
+disappointed, however, Italian mothers had, so far as the settlement
+of this question is concerned, the unfortunate habit occasionally of
+giving boys' names to girls, and girls' names to boys. They called
+their children after favorite saints. A girl might well be called
+Antonio, for the feminine form was not in common use in earlier times.
+Many boys had for first name Maria. It used to be the custom in Venice
+for every child, no matter what its sex, to receive from the Church
+the two names Maria Giovanni, and then the parents might add what
+other names they pleased. The names of royalty, with their frequent
+use of mingled masculine and feminine names, show how much confusion
+can be worked to any scheme for the determination of the sex of
+students at the old universities by this, for us, unfortunate habit.
+
+Curiously enough, it was during the thirteenth century when the
+development of feminine education in the early university period was
+at its height, that certain changes in the domestic economy of the
+Bolognese are worthy of notice. Two kinds of prepared food became
+popular, if they were not, indeed, both invented at this time. One of
+them, bearing the classic name Bologna, is still with us, has spread
+throughout the world, and is likely to continue to be an important
+article of food for many centuries more. Another form of prepared food
+was a sort of dessert called Bologna {221} pudding, prepared from
+cereals, and which can still be purchased in Bologna, though
+foreigners, as a rule, do not care much for it. These two articles of
+food modified materially the preparation of food for meals at this
+time. It was possible to buy both of these, as now, ready made, and so
+the housewife was spared the bother and trouble and expenditure of
+time required for this work. We have here one phase of the origin of
+the delicatessen stores. This sort of change in domestic economy has
+always been noted whenever women have gone out of the home for other
+occupations and have become something less--or more--than the
+housewives and mothers they were before. Such changes in the dietary,
+however, in the direction of ready-made food are never popular with
+men. One German historical writer has been unkind enough to say that
+this is one of the reasons why the higher education gradually became
+much less popular, or at least attracted less attention than before.
+"Women want things for themselves, and if they are opposed insist on
+getting them," is the way this cynic Teuton puts it. "If, after a
+time, however, having got what they want, they find that the men do
+not like them to have it, they gradually abandon it." According to him
+Bologna and Bologna pudding saved the stooping over the kitchen range,
+or whatever took its place in those days, and gave all classes of
+women more opportunity for intellectual development or at least {222}
+for occupation with things different from household duties, but after
+a time the more or less resentful attitude of the men brought about a
+change. However that may be is hard to say.
+
+Another interesting feature of the history of these times connected in
+some way with feminine education or, at least, with feminine
+occupation with other things besides their households, was a great
+devotion to a particular breed of pet dogs of which one hears much in
+the accounts of the life at Bologna at this time. Here, once more, the
+German cynic has had his say. He has suggested that, whenever women
+became occupied with things outside their home, with a consequent
+diminution in the number of children, they are almost sure to find an
+outlet for their affections in devotion to dogs and other pets.
+Apparently he would suggest that they literally go to the dogs. It is
+very curious that just during this thirteenth century, when feminine
+education at Bologna is at its height, one hears so much of these
+pets. At other times in the world's history, when women have taken to
+intellectual interests and especially when there has been a fall in
+the birth-rate, this same attention to pet animals is worthy of study.
+
+After the thirteenth century there seems to have been a reaction
+against these pets. It is to be hoped that there is no connection
+between this and the prepared foods spoken of, but the decline in the
+popularity of pets and of woman's {223} occupation with intellectual
+interests went hand in hand. For all of this I am indebted to German
+authorities whose attitude towards feminine education may somewhat
+prejudice them and, indeed, probably does so, but these things are
+only mentioned as showing certain views that are held. The interesting
+thing for us is that after a period of somewhat more than a century of
+rather intense interest on the part of the women in nearly every phase
+of the intellectual life, there is then a diminution of interest, so
+that by the end of the fourteenth century women, even where feminine
+intellectual life was vigorous, are occupied almost without exception
+as they were before the university period, mainly with domestic
+concerns.
+
+While feminine education was so common in the ecclesiastically ruled
+universities of Italy, the custom did not spread in Western Europe.
+The reason is not far to seek. All of the western universities owe
+their origins to Paris. Oxford was due to a withdrawal of English
+students from Paris, Cambridge to a similar withdrawal from Oxford.
+Many of the Scotch universities are grandchildren of Paris. All of the
+French universities are direct descendants, except Montpellier. The
+Spanish universities have a similar relation. The experience with
+feminine education at Paris had been unfortunate. The Heloise and
+Abelard incident came in a formative stage of the university. It
+settled unfavorably the {224} whole question of feminine attendance at
+universities for the west. It seems a small thing to have such a wide
+and far-reaching influence, but it is very often on little things that
+the success or failure of great social movements of any kind depends.
+We have practically no record of any relaxation of university
+regulations in this matter in the west. Perhaps the Teutonic character
+was opposed to it, perhaps the Teutonic women were less anxious for
+it, being more occupied with Church and children and their home, but
+there was none, and its absence is responsible for the feeling so
+common among us, that now for the first time in the world women are
+enjoying the opportunity for the higher education.
+
+Even the university epoch, however, is not the first phase of
+opportunities for the education of woman in modern history. Far from
+it, indeed, we can find much more than traces of a feminist movement
+in other centuries before this, and, indeed, in many of them. When
+Charlemagne established schools for his people and invited Alcuin, the
+English monk, to develop educational institutions for his people, the
+first and most important school was that of the imperial palace where
+Alcuin himself taught. In this the women of Paris were given
+opportunities quite as well as the men; indeed, they seem to have
+taken a more vivid interest and their example seems to have been the
+highest incentive for many of the men to take up a work so foreign to
+their natures, {225} for as yet they had all the barbarous instincts
+of their Gothic ancestors, only slightly tamed and modified by two or
+three centuries of gradual uplift and religious training of character.
+There are letters from the women of the palace, and especially
+Charlemagne's daughter, to Alcuin, discussing phases of his teaching
+and suggesting problems and questions with regard to the matters which
+he had been making the subject of his instruction.
+
+It would be easy to think that this incident of the Palace School did
+not mean very much and that its passing influence did not make itself
+felt widely nor for long. The state of education at this time must not
+be forgotten. Only the clergy, as a rule, had leisure for it. All the
+rest of the world were engaged either in the frequent wars or in a
+tireless struggle for subsistence as farmers, merchants and craftsmen.
+The nobility neglected education just as much as the upper classes
+always do, though there were certain fashions which gained a foothold
+and that seem to show that they had some interest. Many a nobleman of
+the mediaeval centuries, however, boasted that he could not sign his
+own name. He was rather proud of the fact that he had not lowered
+himself to mere book knowledge. There were large numbers of the clergy
+and the monks, however, and these were the scholars of the period.
+
+There were also at this time large numbers of religious women, and
+these in their leisure hours {226} spent much time at educational
+matters and some of them accomplished lasting results. The mother of
+the family, the court dame, the wife of the nobleman, whose castle was
+much more the home of work than it has ever been at any time since,
+had but little leisure for the intellectual life. The nuns devoted
+themselves to beautiful handiwork, to the composition as well as the
+transcription of books and to the cultural interests generally.
+
+It has always been true, as a rule, that the woman who accomplished
+anything in the intellectual life must be either a celibate, or at
+most, the mother of but a child or two. The mother of a large family,
+unless she is extremely exceptional, cannot be expected to be
+productive in the intellectual life. She has not the time for original
+work, and still less for the filing process necessary for appropriate
+expression. There are rare exceptions, but they only prove the rule.
+One of the two forms of production apparently women must give up to
+devote themselves to the other. The nuns in the Middle Ages, in the
+retirement of their convents, gave themselves much more than we are
+likely to think possible, to literary and scientific production.
+Within the past year I have published sketches of two distinguished
+women of the tenth and twelfth centuries whose books show us the
+intellectual interests of the women of this time. Only that women were
+having opportunities for mental development {227} these would not have
+been written, and as they were written for women, it is evident that
+those interests were quite widely diffused. One of these two authors
+comes in what is sometimes called the darkest of the Dark Ages, the
+tenth century; the other was born in the eleventh. They serve to show
+how much more intense than we are likely to think was the interest of
+the time in things intellectual. Without printing and without any
+proper means of publication, somehow these women succeeded in making
+literary monuments that have outlasted the wreck and ruin of time, and
+that have been of sufficient interest to mankind to be preserved among
+vicissitudes which seemed surely destined to destroy them.
+
+One of the two ladies was Roswitha, or Hrotswitha, a nun of
+Gandersheim, in what is now Hanover, who in the tenth century wrote a
+series of comedies in imitation of Terence, probably not meant to be
+played but to be read. She says in the preface that the reason for
+writing them was that so many religious were reading the indecent
+literature of classical Rome, with the excuse that it was necessary
+for the cultivation of style or for the completion of their education,
+that she wanted and had striven to write something moral and Christian
+to replace the older writings. That preface of itself ought to be
+enough to show us that in the nunneries along the Rhine, of which we
+know that there were many, there must have been a much more {228}
+widespread and ardent interest in literature, and, above all, in
+classic literature, than we have had any idea of until recently.
+Hrotswitha, to give her her Saxon name, was only a young woman of
+twenty-five when she wrote the series of stories and plays thus
+prefaced, and while her style, of course, does not compare with the
+classics, worse Latin has often been written by people who were sure
+that they knew more about Latinity than any nun of the obscure tenth
+century could possibly have known.
+
+The other woman writer of about this time was Hildegarde, the abbess
+of a monastery along the Rhine, born at the end of the eleventh
+century, who wrote a text-book of medicine, which was the most
+important document in the history of medicine in this century. The
+nuns were the nurses and the hospital attendants and in the country
+places, to a great extent, the physicians of this time. In the cities
+there were regular practitioners of medicine, but the infirmarian of a
+monastery cared for the ailing monks and the people on the monastery
+estates when ill, and often they were many in number, and the
+infirmarian of a convent did the same thing for the sisters and for at
+least the women folk among the people of the neighborhood. It was in
+order to gather together and preserve the medical traditions of the
+monasteries and convents that Hildegarde, who afterwards came to be
+known as St. Hildegarde, wrote her volume on medicine. It has been
+recently {229} issued in the collection of old writings called
+"Migne's Patrologia," and has drawn many praises from historical
+critics for the amount of information which it contains. These two,
+Hroswitha and Hildegarde, furnish abundant evidence of the
+intellectual life of the convents of this old time and more than hint
+at how much has been lost that might have helped us to a larger
+knowledge of them.
+
+With this in mind it will be easier to understand a preceding phase of
+the history of feminine education in Europe. The first nation that was
+converted to Christianity in a body, so that Christian ideas and
+ideals had a chance for assertion and application in the life of the
+people, was Ireland. Christianity when introduced into Rome met with
+the determined opposition of old paganism. After the migration of
+nations and the coming down of the barbarians upon the Roman Empire,
+there was little opportunity for Christianity to assert itself until
+after these Teutonic peoples had been lifted out of their barbarism to
+a higher plane of civilization. In Ireland, however, not only did
+conversion to Christianity convert the whole people, but it came to a
+people who possessed already a high degree of civilization and
+culture, a literature that we have been learning to think more and
+more of in recent years, many arts, and the development of science, in
+the form of medicine at least, to a high degree. The law and music,
+the language and the literature of {230} the early Irish all show us a
+highly cultivated people. When Christianity came to them, then,
+education became its watchword. Schools were opened everywhere on the
+island. Ireland became The Island of Saints and of Scholars, and
+literally thousands of students flocked from England and the mainland
+to these Irish schools. The first and the greatest of these was that
+founded by St. Patrick himself at Armagh. During the century after his
+death there were probably at one time as many as 5,000 students at
+Armagh. Only next in importance to this great school of the Irish
+apostle was that of his great feminine co-worker, St. Brigid, who did
+for the women of Ireland what St. Patrick had been doing for the men.
+It is probable that there were 8,000 students at Kildare, Brigid's
+great school, at one time. It is curious to think that there should
+have been something like co-education 1,500 years ago, and, above all,
+in Ireland, but Kildare seems to have had a system not unlike that in
+vogue at many of our universities in the modern time. The male and
+female students were thoroughly segregated,--may I say this is not the
+last time in the world's history that segregation was the
+distinguishing trait of co-education,--but the teachers of the men at
+Kildare seem also to have lectured to the women. The men occupied an
+entirely subsidiary position, however; even the bishops of Kildare in
+Brigid's time were appointed on her recommendation. For centuries
+{231} afterwards the Abbess of Kildare, Brigid's successor, had the
+privilege of a commanding voice in the selection of the bishop. The
+school at Kildare was conducted mainly by and for women, though there
+were men in the neighboring monastery who taught both classes of
+pupils.
+
+Perhaps the most interesting feature of the education of Kildare is
+that it was not concerned exclusively, nor even for the major part
+apparently, with book-learning. The book-learning of the Irish schools
+was celebrated. Down at Kildare, however, certain of the arts and
+crafts were cultivated with special success. Lace-making and the
+illumination of books were two of the favorite occupations of these
+students at Kildare in which marvellous success was achieved. The
+tradition of Irish lace-making which has maintained itself during all
+the centuries began, or at least, secured its first great prestige, in
+Brigid's time. Gerald the Welshman, sometimes spoken of as Giraldus
+Cambrensis, told of having seen during a journey in Ireland centuries
+after Brigid's time, but nearly a thousand years ago, a copy of the
+Scriptures that was wonderfully illuminated. He thought it the most
+beautiful book in the world. His description tallies very closely with
+that of the Book of Kells. Some have even ventured to suggest that he
+actually saw the Book of Kells at Kildare. This is extremely
+improbable, however, and the Book of Kells almost surely originated
+elsewhere. There {232} seems, however, to have been at Kildare some
+book nearly as beautiful as the Book of Kells, made there, and
+establishing peradventure the thoroughness of the artistic education
+given at Kildare at this time.
+
+So much for feminine influence and education under Christianity. Most
+people are likely to know much more of the place of women in Greece
+and Rome than during Christian times. We are prone, however, to
+exaggerate the dependence of woman among both Latins and Greeks and to
+think that she had very few opportunities for intellectual development
+and almost none for expression of her personality and the exertion of
+her influence. Here, once more, as in many other phases of this
+subject we are, through ignorance, assuming conditions in the past
+that are quite unlike those which actually existed. Recently in the
+_Atlantic Monthly,_ Mrs. Emily James Putnam, sometime the Dean of
+Barnard, in an article on "The Roman Lady," [Footnote 17] has
+completely undermined usual notions with regard to the position of the
+Roman woman. The Roman matrons had rights all their own, and succeeded
+in asserting themselves in many ways. There was never any seclusion of
+the women in Rome and the Roman _matrona_ at all times enjoyed
+personal freedom, entertained her husband's guests, had a voice in his
+affairs, managed his house and came and went as she pleased. Mrs.
+Putnam suggests that "in {233} early days she shared the labors and
+the dangers of the insecure life of a weak people among hostile
+neighbors. It may not be fanciful to say that the liberty of the Roman
+woman of classical times was the inherited reward of the prowess of a
+pioneer ancestress, in the same way as the social freedom of the
+American woman to-day comes to her from the brave Colonial
+housemother, able to work and, when need was, to fight."
+
+  [Footnote 17: _Atlantic Monthly,_ June, 1910.]
+
+Indeed the more one studies social life in Rome the more clear does it
+become that conditions were very similar for women to what they are in
+this latest of the republics here in America. This will not be
+surprising if we but learn to realize that the circumstances of the
+development of Rome itself, the environment in which the women were
+placed resembled ours of the later time much more closely than we have
+had any idea of until recent years. The Italian historian, Ferrero,
+has read new lessons into Roman history for us by showing us the past
+in terms of the present.
+
+The conditions that developed at Rome, as I have said, were very
+similar to those which developed in the modern American republic.
+Riches came, luxury arose. Eastern slaves came to do all the work in
+the household that could formerly be accomplished by the women, Greek
+hand-maidens particularly took every solicitude out of her hands, and
+then the Roman matron looked around for something to occupy herself
+with, and {234} it was not long before we have expressions from the
+men that would remind us of many things that have been said in the
+last generation or so. There is a well-known speech of Cato delivered
+in opposition to the repeal of the Oppian Law which forbade women to
+hold property, that is reported by Livy and sounds strangely modern.
+Mrs. Putnam talks of it very aptly, "as an expression of the ever
+recurrent uneasiness of the male in the presence of the insurgent
+female."
+
+"'If, Romans,' said he, 'every individual among us had made it a rule
+to maintain the prerogative and authority of a husband with respect to
+his own wife, we should have less trouble with the whole sex. It was
+not without painful emotions of shame that I just now made my way into
+the forum through a crowd of women. Had I not been restrained by
+respect for the modesty and dignity of some individuals among them, I
+should have said to them, "What sort of practice is this, of running
+out into public, besetting the streets, and addressing other women's
+husbands? Could not each have made the same request to her husband at
+home? Are your blandishments more seductive in public than in private,
+and with other women's husbands than your own?"
+
+"'Our ancestors thought it not proper that women should transact any,
+even private business, without a director. We, it seems, suffer them
+now to interfere in the management of state {235} affairs. Will you
+give the reins to their untractable nature and their uncontrolled
+passions? This is the smallest of the injunctions laid on them by
+usage or the laws, all of which women bear with impatience; they long
+for liberty, or rather for license. What will they not attempt if they
+win this victory? The moment they have arrived at an equality with
+men, they will become your superiors.'"
+
+The social conditions which developed at Rome are indeed so strangely
+like those with which we are now familiar as to be quite startling. As
+a mere man I should hesitate to suggest this, since it refers
+particularly to feminine affairs and domestic concerns, but since it
+has been betrayed by one of the sex perhaps I may venture to quote it.
+Once more I turn to Mrs. Putnam for an apt expression of the
+conditions. She says:
+
+  "The Greeks, who, to be sure, had nothing in their dwellings that
+  was not beautiful, had still supposed the great works of art were
+  for public places. With the Romans began the private collection of
+  chefs-d'oeuvre in its most snobbish aspect. The parts played by the
+  sexes in this enterprise sometimes showed the same division of labor
+  that prevails very largely in a certain great nation of our own day
+  that shall be nameless: the husband paid for the best art that money
+  could buy, and the wife learned to talk about it and to entertain
+  the artist. It is true that the Roman lady began also to improve her
+  mind. She {236} studied Greek, and hired Greek masters to teach her
+  history and philosophy. Ladies flocked to hear lectures on all sorts
+  of subjects, originating the odd connection between scholarship and
+  fashion which still persists."
+
+This subject may be pursued with ever-increasing recognition of
+similarity between that time and our own. For instance, Mrs. Putnam
+says: "A woman of fashion, we are told, reckoned it among her
+ornaments if it were said of her that she was well read and a thinker,
+and that she wrote lyrics almost worthy of Sappho. She, too, must have
+her hired escort of teachers, and listen to them now and then, at
+table or while she was having her hair dressed,--at other times she
+was too busy. And often while the philosopher was discussing high
+ethical themes her maid would come in with a love-letter, and the
+argument must wait till it was answered.
+
+"Nothing very important in the way of production resulted from all the
+lady's literary activity. The verses, if Sulpicia's they be, are the
+sole surviving evidence of creative effort among her kind; and,
+respectable as they are, they need not disturb Sappho's repose. It was
+indirectly that the Roman lady affected literature, since kinds began
+to be produced to her special taste; for it is hardly an accident that
+the _vers de societe_ should expand, and the novel originate, in
+periods when for the first time women were a large element in the
+reading public."
+
+{237}
+
+In our time it has been said, that one of the reasons why the young
+man does not marry is often that he is fearful of the superiority of
+the college-bred young woman. He knows that he himself has no more
+intelligence than is absolutely necessary for the proper conduct of
+life, and he fears that his "breaks" in grammar, in literature, in
+taste for art, in social things, may make him the laughing-stock of
+the educated woman. We would be reasonably sure, most of us, that at
+least this is the first time in the world's history that anything like
+this has happened. It is rather interesting, however, to read some of
+the reflections of the Roman satiric poets on the state of affairs
+that developed in Rome as a consequence of study and lectures and at
+least supposed scholarship becoming the fashion. "I hate the woman,"
+says Juvenal, "who is always turning back to the grammatical rules of
+Palaemon and consulting them; the feminine antiquary who recalls
+verses unknown to me, and corrects the words of an unpolished friend
+which even a man would not observe. Let a husband be allowed to make a
+solecism in peace." I recommend the reading of Juvenal to the college
+young woman of the modern time, not only for its classic but for its
+social value.
+
+Among the Greeks the position of women was quite different from what
+is usually supposed. It is only too often the custom to think that the
+Greek women, confined to a great degree to their {238} houses, sharing
+little in the public discussions, coming very slightly into public in
+any way, were more or less despised by the men and tolerated, but
+surely not much respected. The place of women in life at any time can
+be best judged from the position assigned them by the dramatic poets
+of any period. The larger the mind of the dramatic poet, the more of a
+genius he is, the more surely does his estimate expressed in
+literature represent life as he saw it. Ruskin pointed out that
+Shakespeare has no heroes and many heroines; that, while he has no men
+that stand in unmarred perfection of character, "there is scarcely a
+play that has not a perfect woman in it, steadfast in grave hope and
+errorless purpose; conceived in the highest heroic type of humanity."
+What is thus true of Shakespeare is just as true of the great dramatic
+poets of the Greeks. In practically all the extant plays of AEschylus,
+Sophocles and Euripides, women are the heroines. They are represented
+as nobler, braver, more capable of suffering, with a better
+appreciation of their ethical surroundings and the realities of life,
+than the men around them. As much as Antigone is superior to her
+quarrelsome brothers, as Alcestis rises above her selfish husband, as
+Tecmessa is superior to and would have saved Ajax if only he had
+permitted her, so everywhere do we find women occupying not a place of
+equality but a position of superiority.
+
+These plays were written by men. Just as in {239} the case of
+Shakespeare they were written by men mainly to be witnessed by men,
+for while three-fourths of our audiences at theatres now are women, at
+least three-fourths of the audience in Shakespeare's time were men,
+and in the old Greek theatre the men largely exceeded the women in
+attendance. These were masculine pictures of the place of woman,
+painted not in empty compliment but with profoundest respect and
+deepest understanding. We honor these writers as the greatest in the
+history of literature because they saw life so clearly and so truly.
+Literature is only great when it mirrors life to the nail. What the
+Greek dramatists had done, Homer had done before them. His picture of
+the older Greek women shows us that they were on an absolute equality
+in their households with the men, that not only were they thoroughly
+respected and loved for themselves, but, to repeat Ruskin, they were
+looked up to as infallibly wise counsellors, as the best possible
+advisers to whom a man could go, provided they themselves were of high
+character and their hearts, as well as their intellects, were
+interested in the problems involved.
+
+There are, of course, in all of the dramatists some wicked women. In
+the whole round of Shakespeare's characters there are only three
+wicked women who have degraded their womanhood among the principal
+figures. These are Lady Macbeth, Regan and Goneril. We have
+corresponding characters in the Greek dramatists. {240} Clytemnestra
+is the Lady Macbeth of Greek Tragedy. Euripides, the feminist as he
+has been called, has shown us, as feminists ever, more of the worst
+side of women than his greater predecessors AEschylus and Sophocles.
+He has exhibited the extent to which religious over-enthusiasm can
+carry women in the "Bacchae," and was the first to introduce the sex
+problem. In general it may be said, as Ruskin says of Shakespeare,
+that when a Greek dramatist pictures wicked women "they are at once
+felt to be frightful exceptions to the ordinary laws of life; fatal in
+their influence also in proportion to the power for good which they
+had abandoned." Indeed tragedy, as we see it in the great tragic
+poets, might be defined as the failure on the part of a good woman to
+save the men who are nearest and dearest to her from the faults into
+which their characters impel them. All the great dramatists, ancient
+and modern, represent women once more in Ruskin's words as "infallibly
+faithful and wise counsellors--incorruptibly just and pure
+examples--strong always to sanctify, even when they cannot save."
+
+How little there is in any question of evolution having brought new
+influence or higher place to woman may be very well realized from this
+position of women among the old Greeks. Gladstone has called attention
+to it very forcibly in his "Essay on the Place of Ancient Greece in
+the Providential Order," when he says, "Outside {241} the pale of
+Christianity, it would be difficult to find a parallel in point of
+elevation to the Greek women of the heroic age." He has taken the
+place of woman as representing the criterion by which the civilization
+and the culture of a people at any time may be judged, though he does
+not at all think that one finds a constant upward tendency in history
+in this regard. He says:
+
+  "For when we are seeking to ascertain the measure of that conception
+  which any given race has formed of our nature, there is, perhaps, no
+  single test so effective, as the position which it assigns to woman.
+  For as the law of force is the law of brute creation, so in
+  proportion as he is under the yoke of that law does man approximate
+  to the brute. And in proportion, on the other hand, as he has
+  escaped from its dominion, is he ascending into the higher sphere of
+  being and claiming relationship with Deity. But the emancipation and
+  due ascendency of woman are not a mere fact, they are the emphatic
+  assertion of a principle, and that principle is the dethronement of
+  the law of force and the enthronement of other and higher laws in
+  its place and its despite."
+
+Of course, of the formal education of the women of Greece we know very
+little. We do know that they would not have been respected as they
+were, looked up to by their sons and their husbands, honored as the
+poets have shown them to be, put upon the stage as the heroines of the
+race, only that they had been intellectually as well as {242} morally
+the equals--nay, the superiors--of the men around them. We do not know
+much about the teaching of women before and during the classical
+period, but we can understand very well from what we know of them that
+they must have had good opportunities for education. Plato, of course,
+insists that women should be educated in every way exactly as the men.
+He mentions specifically gymnastics and horseback riding, and says
+that women should be trained in these as well as things intellectual,
+for they should have their bodies developed as well as their minds.
+His reason for demanding equal education is very interesting, because
+it is an anticipation of what is being said rather emphatically at the
+present time. He says: "If I am right nothing can be more foolish than
+our modern fashion of training men and women differently, whereby
+one-half of the power of the city is lost. For reflect if women are
+not to have the education of men some other must be found for them,
+and what other can we propose?" His idea evidently was that only
+one-half those who ought to be citizens were properly trained for
+civic duties if the education of women were neglected.
+
+It is extremely interesting in the light of this to read some of
+Aristophanes' plays. Three of them, "Lysistrata," the
+"Thesmophoriazusae," which has a simpler name "The Women's Festival,"
+for it referred to the great feast of Thesmophoria in honor of Ceres
+and Proserpine, and {243} the "Ecclesiazusae." This last title may be
+rendered a little freely "The Female Parliament," for in it women
+secure, by a little fraud, the right to vote and vote themselves into
+office as the main portion of the plot of the play. All three of these
+plays refer particularly to the question of women's rights, and though
+"The Women's Festival" was written as a satire on Euripides it is
+evident that only this subject was about as prominently before the
+people of Athens as the question of votes for women is in our time,
+Aristophanes would not have written these satiric comedies. The
+subjects of his plays are always the very latest actuality in Athens.
+Socrates was satirized in "The Clouds" within a few months of his
+death. "The War" was written while Athens was actually engaged in it,
+and "The Peace" was written within a few months after the signing of
+the treaty.
+
+Votes for women must actually have been on the very centre of the
+carpet when Aristophanes wrote his "Ecclesiazusae" or "Feminine
+Parliament." Lest it should be thought that I intrude myself in any
+way in trying to boil down for you the old satiric comedy, or that I
+am modernizing Aristophanes in order to adapt the ideas of this play
+more fully to conditions that are around us at the present time, I
+shall read to you the excellent condensation of it made by the Rev. W.
+Lucas Collins, M.A., in his "Aristophanes," in the series of "Ancient
+Classics for English {244} Readers," that scholarly introduction to
+the classic authors of which Mr. Collins is the editor. He says:
+
+  "The women have determined, under the leadership of a clever lady
+  named Praxagora, to reform the constitution of Athens. For this
+  purpose they will dress like men--beards included--and occupy the
+  seats in the Pnyx, so as to be able to command a majority of votes
+  in the next public assembly, the parliament of Athens. Praxagora is
+  strongly of opinion with the modern Mrs. Poyser, that on the point
+  of speaking, at all events, the women have great natural advantages
+  over the men; that 'when they have anything to say they can mostly
+  find words to say it in.' They hold a midnight meeting for the
+  purpose of rehearsing their intended speeches and getting accustomed
+  to their new clothes. Two or three of the most ambitious orators
+  unfortunately break down at the very outset, much to their leader's
+  disgust, by addressing the assembly as 'ladies' and swearing female
+  oaths and using many other unparliamentary expressions quite
+  unbefitting their masculine attire. Praxagora herself, however,
+  makes a speech which is very generally admired. She complains of the
+  mismanagement hitherto of public affairs, and asserts that the only
+  hope of salvation for the state is to put the government into the
+  hands of the women; arguing, like Lysistrata in the comedy of that
+  name, that those who have so long managed the domestic establishment
+  {245} successfully are best fitted to undertake the same duties on a
+  larger scale. The women, too, are shown by their advocate to be
+  highly conservative, and, therefore, safe guardians of the public
+  interests:
+
+    "They roast and boil after the good old fashion,
+     They keep the holidays that were kept of old.
+     They make their cheesecakes by the old receipts.
+     They keep a private bottle like their mothers.
+     They plague their husbands--as they always did."
+
+Even in the management of a campaign, they will be found more prudent
+and more competent than the men:
+
+  "Being mothers, they'll be chary of the blood
+  Of their own sons, our soldiers; being mothers,
+  They will take care their children do not starve
+  When they're on service; and, for ways and means,
+  Trust us, there's nothing cleverer than a woman:
+  And as for diplomacy, they'll be hard indeed
+  To cheat--they know too many tricks themselves."
+
+Her speech is unanimously applauded; she is elected lady-president on
+the spot, by public acclamation, and the chorus of ladies march off
+towards the Pnyx to secure their places like the old gentlemen in 'The
+Wasps' ready for the daybreak.
+
+  "In the next scene, two of the husbands enter in great perplexity,
+  one wrapped in his wife's dressing gown, and the other with only his
+  under-garment {246} on and without his shoes. They both want to go
+  to the assembly but cannot find their clothes. While they are
+  wondering what in the world their wives can have done with them, and
+  what is become of the ladies themselves, a third neighbor, Chremes,
+  comes in. He has been to the assembly; but even he was too late to
+  get the threepence which was allowed out of the public treasury to
+  all who took their seat in good time, and which all Athenian
+  citizens, if we may trust their satirist, were so ludicrously eager
+  to secure. The place was quite full already, and of strange faces,
+  too. And a handsome fair-faced youth (Praxagora in disguise, we are
+  to understand) had got up, and amid the loud cheers of those unknown
+  voters had proposed and carried a resolution, that the government of
+  the state should be placed in the hands of a committee of
+  ladies,--an experiment which had found favor also with others,
+  chiefly because it was 'the only change which had not as yet been
+  tried at Athens.' His two neighbors are somewhat confounded at his
+  news, but congratulate themselves on the fact that the wives will
+  now, at all events, have to see to the maintenance of the children,
+  and that 'the gods sometimes bring good out of evil.'
+
+  "The women return, and get home as quickly as they can to change
+  their costume so that the trick by which the passing of this new
+  decree has been secured may not be detected. Praxagora succeeds in
+  persuading her husband that she had {247} been sent for in a hurry
+  to attend a sick neighbor, and only borrowed his coat to put on
+  'because the night was so cold' and his strong shoes and staff, in
+  order that any evil-disposed person might take her for a man as she
+  tramped along, and so not interfere with her. She at first affects
+  not to have heard of the reform which has been just carried, but
+  when her husband explains it, declares it will make Athens a
+  paradise. Then she confesses to him that she has herself been
+  chosen, in full assembly, 'Generalissima of the state.' She puts the
+  question, however, just as we have all seen it put by a modern
+  actress,--'will this house agree to it?' And if Praxagora was at all
+  attractively got up, we may be sure it was carried by acclamation in
+  the affirmative. _Then, in the first place, there shall be no more
+  poverty; there shall be community of goods, and so there shall be no
+  law suits, and no gambling and no informers._ (They promised more
+  even than our suffragettes--if possible.) Moreover, there shall be
+  community of wives,--and all the ugly wives shall have the first
+  choice of husbands. So she goes off to her public duties, to see
+  that these resolutions are carried out forthwith; the good citizen
+  begging leave to follow close at her side, so that all who see him
+  may say, 'What a fine fellow is our Generalissima's husband!'
+
+  "The scene changes to another street in Athens, where the citizens
+  are bringing out all their property, to be carried into the
+  market-place {248} and inventoried for the common stock. Citizen 'A'
+  dances with delight as he marshals his dilapidated chattels into a
+  mock procession--from the meal sieve, which he kisses, it looks so
+  pretty with its powdered hair, to the iron pot which looks as black
+  'as if Lysimachus' (some well-known fop of the day, possibly present
+  among the audience) 'had been boiling his hair dye in it.' This
+  patriot, at least, has not much to lose, and hopes he may have
+  something to gain, under these female communists.
+
+  "But his neighbor, who is better off, is in no such hurry. The
+  Athenians, as he remarks, are always making new laws and abrogating
+  them; what has been passed to-day very likely will be repealed
+  to-morrow. Besides it is a good old national habit to take, not to
+  give. He will wait a while before he gives in an inventory of his
+  possessions. (One might think of an income tax law in the United
+  States in the twentieth century.)
+
+  "But at this point comes the city-beadle (an appointment now held,
+  of course, by a lady) with a summons to a banquet provided for all
+  citizens out of the public funds: and amongst the items in the bill
+  of fare is one dish whose name is composed of seventy-seven
+  syllables--which Aristophanes gives us, but which the reader shall
+  be spared. (It has been boiled down by the American schoolboy to
+  just 'hash.') Citizen 'B' at once delivers it as his opinion that
+  'every {249} man of proper feeling should support the constitution
+  to the utmost of his ability,' and hurries to take his place at the
+  feast. There are some difficulties caused, very naturally by the new
+  communistic regulations as to providing for the old and ugly women,
+  but with these we need not deal. The piece ends with an invitation,
+  issued by direction of Praxagora through her lady-chamberlain, to
+  the public generally, spectators included, to join the national
+  banquet which is to inaugurate the new order of things."
+
+In a previous comedy Aristophanes had told of another interference of
+women in the political life of Athens that contains so many reminders
+of the modern time, and shows so definitely how old the new is, that
+it deserves a place here. Above all, the desertions from the cause of
+the women when they find that their political duties interfere with
+their home duties, and that they have to sacrifice many of the joys of
+life even though they are duties that may at times seem irksome
+enough,--children, household work, etc.,--for these newer obligations
+with which they have so little sympathy, is especially interesting.
+Once more I prefer to take the Rev. Mr. Collins' summary of the play
+in order that it may be clear that Aristophanes' meaning is not being
+stretched for the purpose of making points with regard to present-day
+conditions. After all, Mr. Collins' little book was written very
+nearly thirty years ago, when very little of the present feministic
+{250} movement, at least in the form in which we are now familiar with
+it, had asserted itself.
+
+  "They determine, under the leading of the clever Lysistrata, wife to
+  one of the magistrates, to take the question (of the ending of the
+  war) into their own hands. They resolve upon a voluntary separation
+  from their husbands--a practical divorce _a mensa et thoro_--until
+  peace with Sparta shall be proclaimed. It is resolved that a body of
+  the elder matrons shall seize the Acropolis and make themselves
+  masters of the public treasury. These form one of the two choruses
+  in the play, the other being composed of the old men of Athens. The
+  latter proceed (with a good deal of comic difficulty, owing to the
+  steepness of the ascent and their shortness of breath) to attack the
+  Acropolis, armed with torches and fagots and pans of charcoal, with
+  which they hope to smoke out the occupants. But the women have
+  provided themselves with buckets of water, which they empty on the
+  heads of their assailants, who soon retire discomfited to call the
+  police. But the police are, in their turn, repulsed by these
+  resolute insurgents, whom they do not exactly know how to deal with.
+  At last a member of the public committee comes forward to parley,
+  and a dialogue takes place between him and Lysistrata. 'Why,' he
+  asks, 'have they thus taken possession of the citadel?' 'They have
+  resolved henceforth to manage the public revenues themselves,' is
+  the {251} reply, 'and not allow them to be applied to carrying on
+  this ruinous war.' 'That is no business for women,' argues the
+  magistrate. 'Why not?' says Lysistrata; 'the wives have long had the
+  management of the private purses of the husbands, to the great
+  advantage of both.' In short, the women have made up their minds to
+  have their voice no longer ignored, as hitherto, in questions of
+  peace and war. Their remonstrances have always been met with the
+  taunt that 'war is the business of men;' and to any question they
+  have ventured to ask their husbands on such points, the answer has
+  always been the old cry--old as the days of Homer--'Go spin, you
+  jade, go spin!' But they will put up with it no longer. As they have
+  always had wit enough to clear the tangled threads in their work, so
+  they have no doubt of settling all these difficulties and
+  complications in international disputes, if it is left to them. But
+  what concern, her opponent asks, can women have with war, who
+  contribute nothing to its dangers and hardships? 'Contribute,
+  indeed!' says the lady; 'we contribute the sons who carry it on.'
+  And she throws down to her adversary her hood, her basket and her
+  spindle, and bids him 'go home and card wool,'--it is all such old
+  men are fit for; henceforth the proverb (of the men's making) shall
+  be reversed,--'War shall be the care of the women.' The magistrate
+  retires not having got the best of it, very naturally, in an
+  encounter of words; and the chorus of elders raise the cry--{252}
+  well known as a popular partisan cry at Athens, and sure to call
+  forth a hearty laugh in such juxtaposition--that the women are
+  designing to 'set up a tyranny!'
+
+  "But poor Lysistrata soon has her troubles. Her unworthy recruits
+  are fast deserting her. They are going off to their husbands in the
+  most sneaky manner--creeping out through the little hole under the
+  citadel which led to the celebrated cave of Pan, and letting
+  themselves down from the walls by ropes at the risk of breaking
+  their necks. Those who are caught all have excellent excuses. One
+  has some fleeces of fine Milesian wool at home which must be seen
+  to,--she is sure the moths are eating them. Another has urgent
+  occasion for the doctor; a third cannot sleep alone for fear of the
+  owls--of which, as every one knows, there were really a great many
+  at Athens. The husbands, too, are getting uncomfortable without
+  their housekeepers; there is no one to cook their victuals; and one
+  poor soul comes and humbly entreats his wife at least to come home
+  and wash and dress the baby.
+
+  "It is becoming plain that either the war or the wives' resolution
+  will soon give way, when there arrives an embassy from Sparta. They
+  cannot stand this general strike of the wives. They are agreed
+  already with their enemies, the Athenians, on one point--as to the
+  women--that the old Greek comedian's proverb, which we have borrowed
+  and translated freely, is true,--
+
+    "There is no living with 'em--or without 'em."
+
+{253}
+
+  "They are come to offer terms of peace. When two parties are already
+  of one mind, as Lysistrata observes, they are not long in coming to
+  an understanding. A treaty is made on the spot, with remarkably few
+  preliminaries."
+
+Whenever we have sufficient remains to illustrate the life of any
+period of history with reasonable completeness, we find women
+occupying a much more important place than is usually conceded to
+them. The trouble is that we assume that we know something about the
+past, because we have somewhere obtained a vague notion of it and then
+we fill in details in accordance with that preconceived notion. The
+general rule, unfortunately, is to make as little of the past as
+possible and to consider that, of course, they must have been very
+different from us, and surely far behind us in everything. The more
+one really knows of history, however, the less does one think this. We
+must not let our complacent self-satisfaction with our own generation
+disturb our proper appreciation of past generations, however. An
+English writer said not very long ago, and now that we have reviewed
+various periods in the history of feminine influence and of education,
+I think that you will recognize the justice of what he said, "It is
+too much the easy custom of the present self-admiring day--not a bit
+more self-satisfied, after all, than each day has been in its {254}
+turn--to hold the women of the past as something little better than
+dolls for their attainments, a little dearer than slaves for their
+position and despicably content therein." Nothing could well be less
+true than this.
+
+What is apt to strike us, however, after a review of the phases of
+feminine education and influence such as I have sketched, is that
+there are undoubtedly times during which very little is heard of
+feminine influence and almost nothing at all of feminine education.
+There are periods on the other hand when these subjects are the very
+centre of human interest. This interest waxes to a certain climax and
+then apparently wanes. What is the reason for these waxings and
+wanings? Is there anything that we know about them that will help us
+to account for them? If women have once achieved a certain position
+and have once secured certain privileges in the matter of education,
+it might reasonably be expected that, barring some great cataclysm or
+political upheaval, that completely disrupted society, they would not
+abandon these hard-won rights and precious privileges, and so we
+should not have to be going through the storm and stress of another
+period of discussion, controversy, opposition with regard to woman's
+rights. How is it that rights once attained--and never unless after a
+struggle, for no matter how civilized a period or how cultured a
+people, they do not grant rights to any class unless forced to do so--
+that these rights have afterwards been lost, or at least greatly
+diminished and partly forgotten?
+
+{255}
+
+In this we come upon one of the mysteries of history and of the life
+of man. How is it that men secure certain knowledge and then forget
+it--literally forget all about it--how is it that men make
+discoveries and then lose sight of them so that they have to be made
+over again; how is it that men even make useful inventions of all
+kinds and these are lost sight of and the invention has to be made
+over again in succeeding generations? How is it that the Suez Canal
+was opened at least once before our time and then allowed to fill up
+with sand, and we had to do the work all over again two generations
+ago? How is it that America was discovered at least twice, probably
+oftener, before Columbus' time, and yet his was a real discovery? We
+actually have Papal documents addressed to bishops in Greenland from
+Popes in the thirteenth century, mentioning missions on the mainland
+of America. There are traditions that seem to point beyond all doubt
+to the fact that the Irish monks were here in America in the eighth
+and ninth centuries. Those traditions come from three or four
+different sources. There was a reverence for the cross among the
+Indians in certain parts of the country. A tradition of white-robed
+priests who came from over the sea. The Norse name for America was
+Irland it Mikla, Ireland the Great, {256} that is, the island of the
+Irish, much larger than Ireland itself and lying beyond it in the
+seas.
+
+How is it, indeed, that there are many discoveries and rediscoveries
+of the same principle in science? Heron's engine at Alexandria was an
+anticipation of the turbine principle in the application of steam.
+When we dug up surgical instruments at Pompeii we were surprised to
+find that they had the form of many instruments that we thought we had
+invented in our time. In glass-making, in iron-working, in all the
+arts and crafts precious secrets are discovered, then lost, then
+rediscovered, and this may even happen several times. We find no sign
+of a continuous progress, but recurring phases that represent ups and
+downs in man's interest in certain things and his achievements
+corresponding to the intensity of his interest. Such a thing as a
+regular progressive advance one finds nowhere in history. Nations do
+not maintain their power after they have achieved it. Just as soon as
+the struggle to maintain themselves is over, internal troubles of
+various kinds set disintegrating factors at work and it is not long
+before decadence can be noted and then the disappearance of the people
+or at least of its national prominence becomes inevitable. We shall
+not be surprised to find ups and downs in the history of feminine
+influence and education, for this is the rule of history. We have only
+been laboring under the false notion that definite progress was the
+rule because of {257} over-absorption in the evolution theory--but it
+is not.
+
+There seems to be in this matter a certain check upon the occupation
+of woman with interests external to her household that would tempt her
+to occupy herself much with duties extraneous to the family life.
+After all, one thing is perfectly clear. Only women can be mothers. We
+have not succeeded even in getting the slightest possible hint of any
+method of continuing the race except by the ordinary process of
+maternity. Whatever of direct evolution the advocates of the theory of
+evolution have suggested as coming in humanity so that it may be the
+subject of observation, has been due in their minds to the lengthening
+of the period during which the young of the race are cared for. As we
+go up in the scale of life from the lowest to the highest, infancy--
+meaning by that the period during which the offspring is cared for by
+the parents--lengthens. In the very small beings there is none. As we
+ascend in the scale we find traces of parental care. Then comes
+occupation of the parents with their offspring from a few hours up to
+a day or two, and then finally months and years, until in the human
+race infancy has been gradually prolonged to twenty years. This is
+Herbert Spencer's observation and it is interesting and suggestive. A
+mother then especially, though also a father, must care for children,
+not alone for months before and after birth, but for a score of years.
+
+{258}
+
+Occupation with other things, though necessary, detracts from this
+care of children, and if exaggerated leads to the celibate condition
+or that approaching it, the limitation of families within narrow
+bounds. The mother of but two or three children may occupy herself
+with other things and, indeed, has to find other occupation of mind.
+At certain periods in the world's history a certain number of these
+women accumulate and the tendency to celibacy or to very limited
+maternity makes itself felt, and then this class of people usually
+fails to propagate enough of the species like themselves to take their
+places in the world. It is a matter of common comment at the present
+moment that if the women's colleges were to depend on the progeny of
+their graduates to fill the classes in succeeding years, the numbers
+at the schools not only would not increase but would constantly tend
+to decrease. Of course this same thing is true of the descendants of
+the male graduates of many of our Eastern universities, and I believe
+that attention has been particularly called to it with regard to our
+three oldest universities. Such are the risks of life and the
+fatalities incident to disease, even with our present improved
+hygienic conditions, that anything less than five or six children in a
+family will not prove sufficient eventually to replace the parents in
+their activities. When to small families is added the number of
+celibates consequent upon absorption in self-improvement, then the
+failure of the {259} cultured classes even to replace themselves
+becomes very manifest, and hence our dwindling native populations, if
+we take that word to mean the families that have been in the country
+for more than two generations.
+
+Nature does not confide conditions in humanity entirely to man,
+however. This would be to leave mankind subject to certain whims and
+fashions and the caprices of times and people. There are many
+biological checks which maintain mankind in a certain equilibrium. A
+typical example of it is the regulation of the number of each sex
+born. In general the proportion of the sexes to one another maintains
+a ratio very near that of equality under ordinary natural conditions.
+This obtains in spite of the fact that man is so much more subject to
+accidents than woman, so much more likely to catch and succumb to
+disease and so much more likely to wear himself out prematurely as the
+result of his labors. The death-rate among women at all ages is lower
+than that of men, yet a constant, definite equilibrium of the sexes is
+maintained with accurate nicety. There is evidently some check
+existing in nature itself that prevents any disturbance of this fixed
+ratio.
+
+Not only is nature able to maintain this, but in cases where, because
+of some serious disturbance of natural conditions, a decided
+inequality of the ratio occurs by accident, nature is able to restore
+conditions to the previous normal, without our being quite able to
+understand just how this is {260} accomplished. We do not know how sex
+is determined. There have been many explanations offered, but all of
+them have proved inadequate and most of them quite nugatory. In spite
+of our lack of knowledge there have been times in history when a
+striking manifestation of nature's power has occurred. For instance,
+after the Thirty Years' War in Germany the ratio between the sexes had
+been so much disturbed that, according to some historians, there were
+probably nearly twice as many women as men in existence in the
+Germanic countries. The men had been cut off by the war itself, by
+famines consequent upon it, by extreme and unusual efforts to support
+their families and by epidemic diseases in camps and campaigns. The
+disproportion was so great that a relaxation of the marriage laws was
+permitted for a time in certain of the countries and men were allowed
+to have two wives.
+
+Under these conditions nature at once began to reassert herself, the
+number of male births was greatly increased and the disproportion
+between the sexes immediately began to lessen. At the end of scarcely
+more than three generations the normal equilibrium of the sexes was
+restored and there was about an equal number of men and women again.
+Here we have the effect of one of these curiously interesting
+biological checks upon man's foolish quarrelsomeness which might
+result in a too great disproportion of the sexes.
+
+We shall not be surprised, then, if we find other {261} such
+biological checks and compensations exerting themselves. In recent
+years Sir Francis Galton, the cousin of Darwin, who is recognized as
+the best living authority in statistical biology, and Professor Karl
+Pearson, who has done more than any one else to bring out many curious
+and interesting but very important biological laws by the study of
+statistics, have insisted in their studies of the effect of the law of
+primogeniture, that when there are small families, the children are
+more likely to be nervous, oftener have an inclination to mental
+disease and have less resistive vitality against disease in general
+than the average child of the larger families. There is a small but
+significant advantage in vitality that accrues to later children of a
+family. This is so contrary to the frequently expressed opinion that
+only the children of small families can be brought up properly to
+resist disease and have such advantages in their education and
+nutrition as to be of better health, that I should hesitate to quote
+it, only that it has behind it the authority of such distinguished
+scientists as Galton and Pearson. They are both conservative
+Englishmen, they have no theory of their own that they are supporting,
+they have no axe to grind in things social and political for the
+launching of the new theory, they are only making observations on the
+facts presented and the data that have been collected.
+
+Here is another striking example of a check on certain tendencies in
+humanity that apparently {262} nature does not approve of, or to avoid
+personifying a process, we had better say are not according to
+nature's laws. The small family does not perpetuate itself. It has
+certain natural disadvantages that work against it. It gradually
+disappears and the races of larger families maintain themselves. We
+need not have had recourse to Galton's and Pearson's principle in this
+matter, for we see the results of the small family in present-day
+history. France is decreasing in population. Our own Puritan families
+are dying out. American families generally of more than three
+generations are not perpetuating themselves. The teeming fertility of
+the poor immigrants who come to us is, with immigration itself,
+supplying our increase in population. Our nation is, as a result,
+gradually becoming something very different from what our forefathers
+anticipated.
+
+What has apparently happened, then, in the history of feminine
+education and influence is that, whenever women became occupied with
+such modes of education, or the cultivation of phases of feminine
+influence that took them out of their houses, away from family life
+and far from the hearthstone, the particular classes of women who thus
+became interested did not propagate themselves, or propagated
+themselves to such a limited degree that, after a time, their kind
+disappeared to a great extent. The domestic woman with tendencies to
+care much more for her maternal duties than for any extra-domiciliary
+successes {263} propagated herself, raised her children with her
+ideals, cultivated domesticity and consciously or unconsciously
+fostered the mother idea as the main feature of woman's life and her
+principal source not only of occupation, but of joy in the living, of
+consolation and of genuine accomplishment. The tendency, as can
+readily be seen in our own time, of the other class of woman is
+largely to foster, often unconsciously, but of course often
+consciously also, the opposite notions. She talks of the slavery of
+child-raising, the limitations of the home woman, the drudgery of
+domestic life, forgetting that life is work and that the only
+happiness in life is to have work that you want to do, whatever it may
+be, but all this talk has its inevitable effect upon all but the born
+mother woman, and the result is the fad for public occupation instead
+of domestic life.
+
+It is easy to see what the result of the opposite opinion is. Every
+tendency of the intellectual woman so-called is to repress such
+natural instincts as lead to the propagation of the race and the
+continuance of her kind. Of course it will be said that intellectual
+women are quite willing to have one or two children. First, this is
+not true for a great many of them. Secondly, for those who have one or
+two children losses by death and failure to marry in the second
+generation, because of conscious or unconscious discouragements and
+the exaggeration of ideas with regard to the danger of maternity, lead
+often to a complete {264} suppression of the family in the second or
+third generation.
+
+Apparently the rule of history is that there are four or five
+generations of women interested in intellectual things particularly,
+who follow one another in these periods of special feminine education
+and exertion of influence outside of the home. Then there comes a
+distinct decadence of the feminist movement, because of the gradual
+diminution in number of women who are interested in such things, and
+then, while there are always certain women who develop great
+intellectual abilities which require a larger stage than the home for
+their display, and while there are always some who find an
+intellectual career or rather make it, very little is heard of
+feminism and women's claims. They are satisfied to rule their
+husbands, to raise their children, to be saints to their sons and
+elder sisters to their daughters, and the feminine world has its
+simple joys and not much fuss about rights.
+
+It may seem far-fetched thus to appeal to a biological check or a
+great underlying natural law in a matter of this kind, but in recent
+years biology has so often been appealed to to justify unsocial
+conditions that its true application needs to be pointed out. We have
+heard, for instance, much of the struggle for life and the competition
+that is supposed to be inevitable in nature, while all the time it has
+apparently been forgotten that there is no struggle for life within
+the species {265} except when there is some disturbance of the
+ordinary order of nature, as in times of famine, or when a mother is
+foraging for her children. On the contrary, mutual aid is the rule
+within the species and there is no animal small or large, from the ant
+to the elephant, that does not help its kind and has not certain
+wonderful instincts for helpfulness, the origin of which we do not
+know, but which are founded in nature itself. Man justifies inhumanity
+to man by the supposed struggle for life, while all the time nature
+teaches us the opposite law.
+
+Nature's way is that of elimination. Her interest is the race. She
+cares very little for the individual and guards only her great purpose
+of securing the propagation of the race. Apparently such intense
+preoccupation with the intellectual life as provides opportunity for
+serious education, for literary work and for the exertion of diffuse
+influence in a community, does not make for the propagation of the
+race or its proper preservation. We can see this easily in the world
+around us, in the limited progeny of those who live the intellectual
+or selfish life to the exclusion of racial interests. This is opposed
+to nature's purpose and she proceeds to eliminate those who stand in
+her way. This is not done by any cataclysmic process but by a law of
+nature. Those involved in the influence disturbing to her purpose
+eliminate themselves. This is as true for indulgence in toxic
+substances that produce certain personal {266} momentary good
+feelings, as for the more deliberate avoidance of certain of nature's
+burdens which brings about a certain negative pleasure at least by
+lessening the amount of pain that has to be borne and trouble to be
+endured. To these pains and troubles nature has attached some of the
+best of the compensations of life. The domestic joys are properly
+man's highest source of unalloyed pleasure without remorse.
+
+Our review of the phases of feminine education and influence would
+seem to show that there has occurred a series of cycles about three
+centuries apart in the history of the race, during which women become
+very much occupied with things external to their household. Such
+cycles are represented by our own period, that of the Renaissance in
+the sixteenth century, that of the university period in the thirteenth
+century, and then that at Charlemagne's court earlier, though the
+barbaric conditions following the migration of nations probably did
+not allow a natural expression of the tendencies at this time. Earlier
+in history, in the first century before Christ and just after and in
+the fourth century before Christ in Greece, there had been, as we have
+pointed out, such cycles. During the intervening centuries there is a
+negative phase in the movement, so that feminism, under which is
+understood woman's expression of herself outside of her home and the
+exertion of her influence apart from her family and immediate friends,
+is very little in {267} evidence. During these times the domestic
+woman reasserts herself. During the positive phases of the movement
+she continues to have her children, the feminists do not, or at least
+not to the same extent. They and their kind are gradually eliminated,
+at least to a great degree, and so the negative phase comes on.
+
+This is not an argument and is not meant as such. It is meant to be a
+scientific reading of the meaning of certain phases of the history of
+the race as they can be studied. I would be the last in the world to
+think that I could influence present-day activities by any such
+indications of a great law in the history of the race that takes three
+centuries from phase to phase. After all, who cares for a law that
+does not affect our generation, but at most the third and fourth
+succeeding generations, and the manifestation of whose phenomena can
+only be recognized in three-century periods?
+
+What I have tried to do is to point out just what are the cycles of
+feminine influence and education in the world's history, and then to
+work out the reasons why, quite contrary to what might be expected,
+these phases have not continued, but are interrupted by periods of
+utter decadence of feminine influence or interest in public life and
+education. Perhaps in our time we are going to change all that. That
+is the feeling that we are prone to have. Others may have made
+progress and forgotten about it, or {268} may have made mistakes and
+been eliminated for them, but we are so consciously active in our
+affairs that we cannot think of ourselves as likely to suffer the fate
+of our predecessors. There is much of that feeling abroad in the
+present day, there has always been much of that feeling abroad in
+every other day, for each succeeding generation in its turn is
+perfectly sure that what it is doing means more than ever before,
+though it can see very clearly the mistakes made by its predecessors.
+It is somewhat like our feeling towards other persons and their
+accomplishments in life as compared to our own. Most of us are quite
+sure that whatever we are doing is quite significant, though we can
+see plainly that what most of our friends are doing, or are trying to
+do, is altogether trivial and insignificant.
+
+In recent years we have come to realize more and more how much history
+needs to be studied in the light of biology. The decadence of Greece
+was probably due, to a great extent, to the bringing back by
+Alexander's conquering soldiers of malaria from the Orient, and thus
+the vanquished proved the ruin of their conquerors. The great plagues
+of the olden time which sometimes carried away nearly one-half the
+human race in a single visitation, were due to insect pests of various
+kinds, which all unknown to men conveyed the disease and diffused it
+widely. It will not be easy always to read the lessons of biology in
+history aright. Whether I have done so for you {269} or not, in this
+matter of the history of feminism, I cannot tell. The story, however,
+has been interesting to work out, and I do not think that its
+conclusions have ever been presented to the public in quite this form
+before. They are now presented not with the idea that they should be
+accepted as absolute, but for the criticism and consideration of those
+who are most vitally interested and who want to know all that can be
+known about the conditions surrounding woman's influence in the world
+and her place for good in the history of the race.
+
+
+{270}
+
+{271}
+
+   THE CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION
+
+{272}
+
+  "It is your duty to see that your daughter loves study and work,
+  securing this by the promise of rewards or some other means of
+  emulation. Above all you must take care not to give her disgust for
+  study for fear that this may continue as she grows older. Let her
+  not learn in her childhood what she should unlearn later in life."
+  --_Letter of St. Jerome to Leta, the wife of Toxolus, the son of St.
+  Paula_.
+
+
+  "The sum of education is right training in the nursery. The soul of
+  the child in his play should be trained to that sort of excellence
+  in which, when he grows up to manhood, he will have to be
+  perfected."
+  --Plato, _Laws_ (Jowett), Vol. IV, p. 174. Scribner, 1902.
+
+
+  "The minds of children are most of all influenced by the training
+  they receive at home."
+  --Pope Leo XIII.
+
+
+{273}
+
+THE CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION [Footnote 18]
+
+  [Footnote 18: The material for this address was gathered originally
+  for the normal courses on the History of Education for many of the
+  teaching sisterhoods in this country. In its present form it was the
+  address to the graduates of St. Elizabeth's College, Convent
+  Station, N. J., on the occasion of the celebration of the jubilee of
+  the foundation of its teaching work.]
+
+Lady Bachelors: I have had frequent occasions to address all sorts of
+bachelors on their graduation, of science and arts and letters and
+pedagogy, but this is my first opportunity to address ladies crowned,
+at least symbolically, with the laurel berries of the bachelorhood in
+art. We are apt to think of young ladies rather as masters of arts
+innumerable, and as needing no degree to attest their abilities. While
+I am glad, indeed, to address you as lady bachelors I do so with the
+fondest hope that you will all proceed to further degrees either
+academic or domestic and not remain in that nondescript class of
+bachelor-maids.
+
+I should like to be able to tell you how much pleasure it gives me to
+have the privilege of addressing you on this Fiftieth Anniversary of
+the Foundation of St. Elizabeth's. There is an apt illustration of the
+Communion of Saints in your title as a college. Founded in honor of
+that noble, saintly American woman, Elizabeth Seton, {274} and yet
+called particularly after that Saint Elizabeth whom the Mother of the
+Lord set out to visit as the first act of her Motherhood of the
+Church, there always rises in my mind besides, the thought of that
+other Saint Elizabeth whom the Germans delight to call the dear Saint
+Elizabeth, who, though she died when she was scarcely twenty-four, has
+left a name undying in the annals of helpfulness for others.
+
+This St. Elizabeth, whose name I recall with special willingness now
+that I see you ready to go out to do your world's work, lived in the
+midst of what has been until quite recent years the despised Middle
+Ages, out of which as little good might be expected as out of Nazareth
+in the olden time, yet she so stamped her personality on the world of
+her day that now the after-time, neglectful, as a rule, of the
+individual, so careless even of the world's (supposed) great ones,
+will not willingly let her name die. She is still with us as a great
+living force. They read a sketch of her life, I have heard, at the
+meeting of the Neighborhood House in New York within the last few
+months, as an incentive to that devotion to the needy that
+characterized her. She was a woman who thought not at all of herself,
+but all of others. As a consequence, mankind in its better moods has
+never ceased to turn to her. Evidently the formula for being
+remembered is to forget yourself. I am sure, however, that that has
+been brought home to you so well during your {275} years at St.
+Elizabeth's that it would, indeed, be bringing coals to Newcastle for
+me to say anything about it in the few minutes I have to talk to you.
+
+What I have chosen to say to you refers to that higher Catholic
+education for women of which you are now going out as the
+representatives. I do it all the more readily because, through the
+kindness of your beloved teachers, I have had the privilege of
+co-operating a little in that education, for I appreciate that
+privilege very much.
+
+Apparently a good many people cherish the idea that the Catholic
+Church is opposed to feminine education, or at least to the higher
+education of women as we know it now, and that in the past her
+influence has been constantly and consistently exerted against any
+development of this phase of human accomplishment. In the liturgy of
+the Church women are usually spoken of as the devout female sex, and
+it is supposed that the one effort of the Church itself, the unerring
+purpose of ecclesiastical authorities, was to prevent women from
+becoming learned lest they should lose something of their devoutness.
+Apparently it is forgotten that some of the greatest devotees in the
+Church, the saintly women who were held up to the admiration and
+emulation of their sisters in the after-time, women like St. Catherine
+of Sienna, St. Angela Merici, St. Jane Frances De Chantal and, above
+all, St. Teresa, {276} were eminently intellectual women as well as
+models of devotion.
+
+This same idea as to the Church deliberately fostering ignorance has
+been quite common in the writings of certain types of historians with
+regard to other departments of education, and those of us who are
+interested in the history of medicine have been rather surprised to be
+told that, because the Church wanted to keep people in readiness to
+look to Masses and prayers and relics and shrines for the cure of
+their ailments,--and, of course, pay for the privilege of taking
+advantage of these,--the development of medicine was discouraged, the
+people were kept in ignorance and all progress in scientific knowledge
+was hampered. It is, indeed, amusing to hear this when one knows that
+for seven centuries the greatest contributors to medical science have
+been the Papal physicians, deliberately called to Rome, many of them,
+because they were the great medical scientists of their day, and the
+Popes would have no others near. For centuries the Papal Medical
+School was the finest in the world for the original research done
+there, and Bologna at the height of its fame was in the Papal States.
+
+With so many other presumptions with regard to the position of the
+Church towards education, it is not surprising that there should be a
+complete misunderstanding of her attitude toward feminine education,
+an absolute ignoring of the realities of the history of education,
+which show {277} exactly the opposite of anything like opposition to
+be true. I have had a good deal to do in laboring at least to correct
+many false ideas with regard to the history of education, and, above
+all, with what concerns supposed Church opposition to various phases
+of educational advance. I know no presumption of opposition on the
+part of the Church to education that is so groundless, however, as
+that which would insist that it is only now with what people are
+pleased to call the breaking up of Church influence generally, so that
+even the Catholic Church has to bow, though unwillingly, to the spirit
+of the times and to modern progress, that feminine education is
+receiving its due share of attention. Most people seem to be quite
+sure that the first serious development of opportunities for the
+higher education of women came in our time. They presume that never
+before has there been anything worth while talking about in this
+matter. Just inasmuch as they do they are completely perverting the
+realities of the history of education, which are in this matter
+particularly interesting and by no means lacking in detail.
+
+Whenever there is any question of Church influence in education, or of
+the spirit of the Church with regard to education, those who wish to
+talk knowingly of the subject should turn to the period in which the
+Church was a predominant factor in human affairs throughout Europe.
+This is, as is well known, the thirteenth century. The {278} Pope who
+was on the throne at the beginning of this century, Innocent III, is
+famous in history for having set down kings from their thrones,
+dictated many modifications of political policy to the countries of
+Europe whenever secular governments were violating certain great
+principles of justice, and in general, was looked up to as the most
+powerful of rulers in temporal as well as in spiritual affairs. A
+typical example of the place occupied by the Church is to be seen when
+Philip Augustus of France repudiated his lawful wife to marry another.
+Pope Innocent set himself sternly against the injustice, and the proud
+French King, at the time one of the most powerful sovereigns of
+Europe, had to take back the neglected wife from the Scandinavian
+countries, the distance and weakness of whose relatives would seem to
+make it so easy for a determined monarch to put her aside. When King
+John in England violated the rights of his people, Innocent put the
+country under an Interdict, released John's subjects from their
+allegiance and promptly brought the shifty Plantagenet to terms. The
+Pope at the end of the century, the great Boniface VIII, was scarcely
+less assertive of the rights of the Church and of the Papacy than the
+first of the thirteenth-century Pontiffs. While he was not so
+successful as his great predecessor in maintaining his rights, the
+policy of the Church evidently had not changed. Most of the Popes of
+the interval wielded an immense influence for good {279} that was felt
+in every sphere of life in Europe in their time.
+
+Now it is with regard to this period that it is fair to ask the
+question, What was the attitude of the Church toward education? Owing
+to her acknowledged supremacy in spiritual matters and the extension
+of the spiritual authority even over the temporal authorities whenever
+the essential principles of ethics or any question of morals was
+concerned, the Church could absolutely dictate the educational policy
+of Europe. Now, this is the century when the universities arose and
+received their most magnificent development. The great Lateran
+Council, held at the beginning of the century, required every bishop
+to establish professorships equivalent to what we now call a college
+in connection with his cathedral. The metropolitan archbishops were
+expected to develop university courses in connection with their
+colleges. Everywhere, then, in Europe universities arose, and there
+was the liveliest appreciation and the most ardent enthusiasm for
+education, so that not only were ample opportunities provided, but
+these were taken gloriously and the culture of modern Europe awoke and
+bloomed wonderfully.
+
+Some idea of the extension of university opportunities can be judged
+from the fact that, according to the best and most conservative
+statistics available, there were more students at the universities of
+Oxford and Cambridge to the population of the England of that day,
+than there are {280} to the population of even such an educationally
+well provided city as Greater New York in the present year of grace
+1910. This seems astounding to our modern ideas, but it is absolutely
+true if there is any truth in history. The statistics are provided by
+men who are not at all favorable to Catholic education or the Church's
+influence for education. At this same time there were probably more
+than 15,000 students at the University of Bologna, and almost beyond a
+doubt 20,000 at the University of Paris. We have not reached such
+figures for university attendance again, even down to the present.
+Students came from all over the world to these universities, but more
+than twenty other universities were founded throughout Europe in this
+century. The population was very scanty compared to what it is at the
+present time; there were probably not more than 25,000,000 of people
+on the whole continent. England had less than 3,000,000 of people and,
+as we know very well by the census made before the coming of the
+Armada, had only slightly more than 4,000,000 even in Elizabeth's
+time, some two centuries later.
+
+Here is abundant evidence of the attitude of the Church towards
+education. Now comes the question for us. What about feminine
+education at the time of this great new awakening of educational
+purpose throughout Europe? If we can find no trace of it, then are we
+justified in saying that if the Church did not oppose, at least she
+did not {281} favor the higher education for women. Let us see what we
+find. The first university in our modern sense of the word came into
+existence down at Salerno around the great medical school which had
+existed there for several centuries. Probably the most interesting
+feature of the teaching at Salerno is the fact that the department of
+the diseases of women in the great medical school was in charge of
+women professors for several centuries, and we have the books they
+wrote on this subject, and know much of the position they occupied.
+The most distinguished of them, Trotula, left us a text-book on her
+subject which contained many interesting details of the medicine of
+the period, and we know of her that she was the wife of one professor
+of medicine at Salerno and the mother of another. She was the
+foundress of what was called the school of Salernitan women
+physicians, using the word school in the same sense in which it is
+employed when we talk of a school of painters.
+
+This is all the more interesting because the University of Salerno was
+mainly under monastic influence. Originally the schools in connection
+with the school of medicine were founded from the great Benedictine
+monastery of Monte Cassino not far away. The first great teacher of
+medicine at Salerno, Constantine Africanus, whose influence was
+dominant in his own time and continued afterwards through his
+writings, became a Benedictine monk in his early middle age. The {282}
+preparatory schools for the medical courses at Salerno were largely in
+the hands of the Benedictines. The university itself was under the
+influence of the Archbishop of Salerno more than any other, and the
+one who did most for it, the great Alphanus, had been a Benedictine
+monk. Ordinarily this would be presumed to preclude any possibility of
+the development of a great phase of education for women, and
+especially professional education for women at the University of
+Salerno. Just the contrary happened. The wise monks, who knew human
+life and appreciated its difficulties, recognized the necessity, or at
+least the advisability, for women as medical attendants on women and
+children, and so the first great modern school of medicine, mainly
+under monastic influence, had the department of women's diseases in
+the hands of women themselves.
+
+In Naples women were allowed to practise medicine, and we have some of
+the licenses which show the formal permission granted by the
+government in this matter. An almost exactly similar state of affairs
+to that thus seen at Salerno developed at Bologna, only there the
+university was founded round the law school, and the first women
+students were in that school. When Irnerius established his great
+lectureship of Roman Law at Bologna, to which students were attracted
+from all over Europe, he seems to have seen no objection to allow
+women to attend his courses, and we have the names of his daughter
+{283} and several other women who reached distinction in the law
+school. As the other departments of the University of Bologna
+developed we find women as students and teachers in these. One of the
+assistants to the first great professor of anatomy at Bologna,
+Mondino, whose text-book of anatomy was used in the schools for two
+centuries after this time, was a young woman, Alessandra Giliani. It
+is to her that we owe an early method for the injection of bodies in
+such a way as to preserve them, and she also varnished and colored
+them so that the deterrent work of dissection would not have to be
+carried on to such an extent as before, yet the actual human tissues
+might be used for demonstrating purposes.
+
+As the result of the traditions in feminine education thus established
+women continued to enjoy abundant opportunities at the universities of
+Italy, and there is not a single century since the thirteenth when
+there have not been some distinguished women professors at the Italian
+universities. Nearly five centuries after the youthful assistant in
+anatomy of whom we have spoken, whose invention meant so much for
+making the study of medicine less deterrent and dangerous, came Madame
+Manzolini, who invented the method of making wax models of human
+tissues so that these might be studied for anatomical purposes. Made
+in the natural colors, these were eminently helpful. In the meantime
+many women professors of many subjects had come and gone at {284} the
+Italian universities. In the thirteenth century there was a great
+teacher of mathematics who was so young and handsome that, in order
+not to disturb the minds of her students, she lectured from behind a
+curtain. It is evident that the educated women of the Middle Ages
+could be as modest as they were intelligent and thoughtful of others,
+quite as much as if they had devoted their lives to gentle charity and
+not to the higher education. Women physicians, educators,
+mathematicians, professors of literature, astronomers, all these are
+to be found at the universities of Italy while the Church and the
+ecclesiastics were the dominating influences in these universities.
+
+Unfortunately the spread of this feminine educational movement from
+Italy to the west of Europe was disturbed by the Heloise and Abelard
+incident at the University of Paris, and as all the western
+universities owe their origin to Paris, they took the tradition
+created there after Abelard's time, that women should not be allowed
+to enter the university. When, however, three centuries later, the
+Renaissance brought in the new learning, the schools of humanism
+independent of the universities admitted women on absolute terms of
+equality with men, and some of the women became the distinguished
+scholars of the time. The Church's influence is plainly to be seen in
+this, and the women took part in plays given in Greek and classic
+Latin before the cardinals and prominent ecclesiastics, and everywhere
+the {285} feeling developed that, if women wanted to have the higher
+education of the humanities or, as it was then called, the New
+Learning, they should have it. This feminine educational movement
+spread all over Europe. Anne of Bretagne organized a school at the
+French Court for the women of the court, and such women as Mary Queen
+of Scots, Margaret of Navarre, Renee of Anjou, Louise La Cordiere are
+a few of the French women of the Renaissance who attained distinction
+for broad culture and education at this time.
+
+Spain, too, had its women of the Renaissance. One of the first of them
+was Isabella of Castile, whose assistance to Columbus was no mere
+accident, nor due so much to personal influence exerted on her, as to
+her own broad interest in the things of the mind in her time. Her
+daughter Catherine, who became Queen of England, was deeply educated,
+while her daughter, Queen Mary of England, knew the classics and
+especially Latin very well. During her time in England many of the
+nobility of the higher classes were distinguished for education. Lady
+Jane Grey preferred to study Greek to going to balls and routs, and
+sacrificed hunting parties for her lessons under Roger Ascham, in the
+great Greek authors. Queen Elizabeth knew Greek and Latin very well.
+The famous Countess of Arundell at this time was a distinguished
+scholar. Margaret More is a bright example of opportunities for the
+higher education given and taken in the lower classes of {286} the
+nobility of the England of her time. One thing we can be sure of in
+the England of that time, if the Queen and the highest nobility were
+interested in education and devoted their time to it so sedulously and
+successfully, then without doubt those beneath them in rank did so
+likewise. The upper classes are not alone imitated in things unworthy,
+but also in what is best if they only provide the good example.
+
+To anyone who knows the history of the Church, however, these
+incidents in feminine education will not be surprising. Every time, as
+a rule, that there has been a great new awakening in education, women,
+too, have demanded the right to have their share in it, and the
+Church, far from discouraging, has always helped to provide
+educational opportunities. When in the ninth century Charlemagne
+reorganized the education of Europe, or, at least, reinstituted it for
+his people, the women of the Palace had their opportunities to attend
+the Palace school as well as the men. That Palace school was a very
+wonderful travelling university, wandering wherever the Court went. It
+was at Aix, it was probably at Paris for a time; when Charlemagne went
+down to Italy it went with him and seems to have held some sessions
+even while he was in Rome; there is a tradition of its existence while
+he stayed one winter in Verona. Though the teachers in it were monks,
+for Charlemagne and Alfred, the great, broad-minded rulers, who did so
+much for {287} their people, had no illusions about the high place
+that the monks held in life in their time, women were taught at the
+schools as well as men. Charlemagne and Alfred were in the best
+possible position to know who were the best teachers in their time,
+and they turned with confidence to the monks. People generally, and,
+above all, their great rulers, knew nothing of the condemnation of the
+monks in the Dark Ages which came a thousand years after their time;
+from people who knew nothing about them and who had even less sympathy
+with them. They both knew them and sympathized with all they were
+doing, therefore their cordial encouragement of them. Their attitude
+was eminently justified by the fact that the monks were broad enough,
+in spite of their monastic habits and their supposed lack of
+appreciation for women, to take up to a great extent even the teaching
+of women. There are letters from the women of the court of Charlemagne
+written to Alcuin and to other teachers of the time, which show how
+interested were the women in the school work.
+
+This is not surprising if we recall that, when Benedict founded the
+monks of the west, who were to provide the homes where culture was to
+be maintained and the classics preserved for us and education
+gradually diffused, his sister St. Scholastica did the same thing for
+the women as her brother was doing for the men. Anyone who knows the
+story of the Benedictine convents for {288} women and the books there
+produced, plays, stories, even works on medicine and other sciences,
+will realize how much was accomplished for the higher education of
+women in these institutions in unpromising times. The women who wanted
+to follow the intellectual life were given the opportunity and many of
+them did excellent work. Within the last year I have written and
+published sketches of the lives of St. Hildegarde, who wrote books on
+medicine in the twelfth century, and of Hroswitha, the nun of
+Gandersheim, who wrote Latin comedies in imitation of Terence in the
+tenth century. These serious literary and scientific writings by women
+in what is usually presumed to be the darkest period of the so-called
+Dark Ages, and preserved for us out of the wreck and ruin that came
+down on nearly everything produced in those times, shows us very
+clearly how much more than we have been accustomed to think these
+women of the Middle Ages were interested in the intellectual life.
+Books are written only when there are readers and appreciation for
+them, and the interest of contemporaries and the hope of future
+interest as an incentive.
+
+Of course, even before the foundation of the Benedictines we have a
+great living example of the encouragement of the Church for the higher
+education of women. It came at a time and under circumstances that
+furnish abundant evidence of how much the Church appreciates and is
+ready to encourage education and how precious she realizes {289} it is
+for her children. When the first nation was converted as a whole to
+Christianity, when the Irish people came over under the Apostolic
+Patrick's wonderful missionary zeal, the first thing that was done in
+this first Christian nation was to found schools. Ireland became the
+Island of Saints and of Scholars. While the barbarians had overrun
+Europe and destroyed the schools there, Ireland became the home of the
+best teachers in the world and men flocked to her from all over
+Europe.
+
+These schools, however, were not reserved for the men, but abundant
+opportunities were also afforded women for scholarship and for culture
+of every kind. Only second in importance to St. Patrick's great school
+at Armagh during the first century in the history of Ireland as a
+Christian nation was St. Brigid's school at Kildare. We know from
+Giraldus Cambrensis, now better known as Gerald the Welshman, that, in
+his travels in Ireland centuries afterwards, but before the
+destruction of Kildare, he saw many wonderful evidences of the
+intellectual life of that institution. Above all, he saw a famous copy
+of the Holy Scripture so beautifully illuminated that he thought it
+the finest book in the world. His description would show us that if
+this copy of the Scriptures which Gerald saw was not the book of Kells
+as some have ventured to suggest, it was at least a copy not unlike
+that famous illuminated volume which is, perhaps, the most {290}
+beautiful book that ever came from the hand of man. The arts and the
+crafts evidently were studied and practised as well as book-learning
+at Kildare, and Brigid's influence brought to her at her college of
+Kildare, literally thousands of the daughters of the nobility of
+Ireland, of England and of portions of the Continent, attracted by her
+sanctity and her scholarship and the wonderful intellectual and
+artistic work that was being accomplished there.
+
+With these facts in mind it is easy to see that the Church, far from
+opposing in any way the higher education for women, has not only
+encouraged but actually patronized it whenever there is a demand for
+it on the part of any generation in history. Feminine education comes
+and goes, so though in less markedly cyclical fashion does masculine
+education. Just what the law behind these cycles is we do not know as
+yet. One thing is sure, now that another cycle of interest has come to
+feminine education in the world, the Church is not only willing but
+anxious to give her children the benefit of it, and the growth of the
+higher education among Catholics for Catholic young women in America
+in the last decade is the best evidence of this. Our teaching
+Sisterhoods in this country have nobly lifted themselves up to the
+occasion demanded, and we may well be proud of our Catholic colleges
+for women. Personally I know what is being done at some half a dozen
+of them, and I have no hesitation {291} in saying that they are giving
+a better, solider, though perhaps, a less showy education than their
+secular rivals. Of your work at St. Elizabeth's I have had such
+personal information as makes me realize how thorough are the efforts
+to provide every possible opportunity for higher feminine education
+and how successful they are.
+
+Only less absurd than the notion that the Church is in any way opposed
+to feminine education is the thought that seems to be in many people's
+minds in our day, that the Church would prefer to keep woman in the
+background and does not want her to do great influential things when
+those are demanded of her. The feeling seems to be that only modern
+evolution has brought such opportunities for women to exert the
+precious humanitarian influence that is sometimes possible for her.
+How much those who talk thus forget the history of the Church if they
+ever knew it, but also of feminine influence in the world, is very
+clear from even a short resume of feminine achievements in Christian
+times. Whenever there has been a great movement in the Church that
+meant much for the men and women of a time, beside the man who
+initiated it, if she was not, indeed, the initiator herself, stood a
+great woman only a little less significant in influence, as a rule,
+and sometimes even greater than he. In the conversion of the first
+people to Christianity, beside St. Patrick stood St. Brigid. In the
+foundation of the monks of the west that {292} great institution that
+meant so much for the Church and for Europe, beside St. Benedict stood
+St. Scholastica, his sister, doing and organizing for the women of her
+time and succeeding generations, what her brother did for the men.
+When, in the newer dispensation of the foundation of the Mendicant
+Religious Orders, St. Francis came to bring a great new message to the
+world, beside him and only a little less influential than he in his
+lifetime, and saving his work for its genuine mission after his death,
+came St. Clare. When the tide of the religious revolt spreading down
+from Germany, was pushed back in Spain, beside St. Teresa, for here
+the greater protagonist of the movement was a woman, stood St. John of
+God. When St. Francis De Sales came to do his great work for education
+and for the uplift of the better classes, beside him and scarcely less
+influential than he in every way, was St. Jane Frances De Chantal. In
+the great new organization of modern charity under St. Vincent De Paul
+beside that wonderful friend of the poor whose work is the underlying
+impulse of all modern organized charity in the best sense of that much
+abused term, stood the modest and humble but strongly beautiful woman,
+the foundress of the Sisters of Charity, Madame Le Gras. Even in the
+nineteenth century with the newer organizations of education demanded
+by changed conditions, when such foundations as those of the Sacred
+Heart and of the Sisters of Notre Dame {293} came into existence, men
+and women co-operated in these works and only now are we realizing to
+the full the sanctity of such women as Blessed Madame Barat or the
+Venerable Julie Billiart and their adviser and friend, Father Varin,
+the Jesuit.
+
+Nor was it only in connection with work accomplished by men or
+initiated by them that we find women doing great work. It must not be
+forgotten that many of the religious orders which are accomplishing
+fine work in every line of helpful endeavor, often hundreds of years
+after their foundations, in conditions very different from those in
+which they were established, originated in the minds of women and had
+their constitutions worked out practically without any help from men,
+and often, indeed, against the judgment of men. The world of our day
+is not prone to appreciate at its proper worth these great works of
+women who took for an aim in life unselfish purpose, rather than any
+more personal ambition. It must not be forgotten, then, that the first
+settlement worker of modern times, the dear St. Elizabeth of Hungary,
+is one of the great influences that will never die. The cathedral
+erected in her honor within a few years after her death is the most
+beautiful monument to woman anywhere in the world. What St. Elizabeth
+was to the thirteenth century, St. Catherine of Sienna was to the
+fourteenth. Without her influence and her place in it, it would be
+impossible to {294} understand the history of that century, though
+sometimes history has been written without a mention of her. In the
+fifteenth century came Joan of Arc, in the sixteenth and seventeenth
+some of the brave women who founded great humanitarian works in
+connection with the early missionaries in this country. Everywhere in
+history you find Catholic women accomplishing great things.
+
+After all, this is only what is to be anticipated from what is
+symbolized and prefigured in the story of the foundation of the
+Church. When the Son of God came as the Redeemer of Mankind, beside
+Him in His life and mission, the highest of mortals in the influence
+that she was to have over all succeeding generations, stood the Woman,
+whose seed was to crush the serpent's head, the Mother from whom He
+had chosen to take His human flesh. The Mother of the Messiah became
+the Mother of the infant Church and the Mother of all Christians ever
+since. Surely this was given for a sign not to be contradicted in the
+after-time. As the Mother beside the Son, so was woman ever to stand
+as the most precious influence in the work of Christianity. As the
+great scheme of redemption was dependent on her consent, so ever was
+woman to be God's greatest auxiliary in the accomplishment of good for
+humanity.
+
+You can understand, then, that when I say to you graduates of St.
+Elizabeth's, go out and fulfill your missions, whatever they may be, I
+mean {295} that you shall be ready to take up any work for which your
+education and your training fit you, and God grant it may bring you
+such opportunities for good as have been exemplified in the lives of
+so many Catholic women all down the ages. There is nothing more than
+this that I could say to you. Our mother Church, far from wanting to
+keep women in the background, has always accorded them full and equal
+rights in their own domains and, above all, has given them absolute
+independence in the religious organizations as far as that is
+compatible with effective co-operation in good work. You may be sure,
+then, that any work that you find to do worthy of you, and that you
+take up whole-heartedly, will have not only her blessing but you shall
+find every encouragement. The glorious examples of the Catholic women
+of the past, educated, intellectual women, some of whom like St.
+Teresa, St. Catherine of Sienna, St. Jane Frances De Chantal and St.
+Brigid are high among the greatest intellectual women that ever lived,
+will be your guiding stars, and if you keep them in mind you shall not
+go wrong. Remember that we expect much and we have a right to expect
+much of the women graduates of our Catholic Women's Colleges--you have
+a great mission, you have put your hand to the plow, do not look
+back,--onward and upward. God's in his world and all's well. Only our
+co-operation is needed.
+
+{296}
+
+{297}
+
+ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION
+
+{298}
+
+  "Libenter homines id quod volunt credunt."
+  --Caesar, _Bell. Gall., iii:8._
+
+  [Men believe readily what they want to.]
+
+
+  "Great additions have of late been made to our knowledge of the
+  past; the long conspiracy against the revelation of truth has
+  gradually given away .... It has become impossible for the
+  historical writer of the present age to trust without reserve even
+  to the most respected secondary authorities. The honest student
+  finds himself continually deserted, retarded, misled by the classics
+  of historical literature."
+  --_Preface of "Cambridge Modern History."_
+
+
+{299}
+
+ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION [Footnote 19]
+
+  [Footnote 19: The material for this address was collected for a
+  lecture on the History of Education for the Sisters of Charity of
+  Mount St. Vincent's, New York, and the Sacred Heart Academy,
+  Kenwood, Albany, N. Y. Subsequently it was developed for an address
+  to the parochial school teachers of New Orleans and for the summer
+  normal courses of St. Mary's College, South Bend, Ind., and St.
+  Mary's College, Monroe, Mich. Very nearly in its present form the
+  address was delivered in a course at Boston College in the spring of
+  1910.]
+
+
+Here in the United States we have been somewhat amazingly ignorant of
+our brother Americans of Mexico and of South America. Our ignorance
+has been so complete as to have the usual result of quite intolerant
+bigotry with regard to the significance of what was being done in
+these Spanish-American countries. A distinguished ex-president of one
+of our American universities said in his autobiography, that a
+favorite maxim of his for his own guidance was, "The man I don't like
+is the man I don't know." If we only know enough about people, we
+always find out quite enough about them that is admirable to make us
+like them. Whenever we are tempted to conclude that somebody is
+hopelessly insignificant then what we need to correct is our judgment
+by better knowledge of them. For most Americans, for we have arrogated
+to ourselves the title of Americans to the exclusion of any possible
+share {300} in it of our South American brethren, Spanish America has
+been so hopelessly backward, so out of all comparison with ourselves,
+as to be quite undeserving of our notice unless it be for profound
+deprecation.
+
+Fortunately for us in recent years our knowledge of Spanish America
+has become larger and deeper and more genuine, and as a consequence
+there has been less assumption of knowledge founded on ignorance.
+Every gain in knowledge of Spanish America has raised Spanish America
+and her peoples in our estimation. Not long since at a public dinner
+the president of a great American university said, "We have only just
+discovered Spanish America." This is literally true. We have thought
+that we knew much about it, and that that much showed us how little
+deserving of our attention was Spanish America, while all the while a
+precious mine of information with regard to the beginnings of the
+history of education, of literature, of culture, nay, even of physical
+science on this continent, remained to be studied in these countries
+and not our own. Our scholars are now engaged in bringing together the
+materials out of which a real history of Spanish America can be
+constructed for their fellow-Americans of the North, and their
+surprise when it is placed before them is likely to be supreme. In the
+meantime there are some phases of this information that, I think, it
+will be interesting to bring together for you.
+
+{301}
+
+Josh Billings, writing as "Uncle Esek" in the _Century Magazine_ some
+twenty-five years ago, made use of an expression which deserves to be
+frequently recalled. He said: "It is not so much the ignorance of
+mankind that makes them ridiculous as the knowin' so many things that
+ain't so." We have a very typical illustration of the wisdom of this
+fine old saw in the history of education here in America as it is
+being developed by scholarly historical research at the present time.
+The consultation of original documents and of first-hand authorities
+in the history of Spanish-American education has fairly worked a
+revolution in the ideas formerly held on this subject. The new
+developments bring out very forcibly how supremely necessary it is to
+know something definite about a subject before writing about it, and
+yet how many intelligent and supposedly educated men continue to talk
+about things with an assumption of knowledge when they know nothing at
+all about them.
+
+Catholics are supposed by the generality of Americans to have come
+late into the field of education in this country. Whatever there is of
+education on this continent is ordinarily supposed to be due entirely
+to the efforts of what has been called the Anglo-Saxon element here.
+At last, however, knowledge is growing of what the Catholic Spaniards
+did for education in America and as a consequence the face of the
+history of education is being completely changed. Every {302} advance
+in history in recent years has made for the advantage of the Catholic
+Church. Modern historical methods insist on the consultation of
+original documents and give very little weight to the quotation of
+second-hand authorities. We are getting at enduring history as far as
+that is possible, and the real position of the Church is coming to
+light. In no portion of human accomplishment is the modification of
+history more striking than with regard to education. There was much
+more education in the past centuries than we have thought and the
+Catholic Church was always an important factor in it. Nowhere is this
+truth more striking than with regard to education here in America in
+the Spanish-American countries.
+
+Professor Edward Gaylord Bourne, professor of history at Yale
+University, wrote the volume on Spain in America which constitutes the
+third volume of "The American Nation," a history of this country in
+twenty-seven volumes edited by Professor Albert Bushnell Hart, who
+holds the chair of history at Harvard University. Professor Bourne has
+no illusions with regard to the relative value of Anglo-Saxon and
+Spanish education in this country. In his chapter on "The Transmission
+of European Culture" he says: "Early in the eighteenth century the
+Lima University (Lima, Peru) counted nearly two thousand students and
+numbered about one hundred and eighty doctors (in its faculty) in
+theology, civil and canon law, medicine and the arts." Ulloa {303}
+reports that "the university makes a stately appearance from without
+and its inside is decorated with suitable ornaments." There were
+chairs of all the sciences and "some of the professors have,
+notwithstanding the vast distance, gained the applause of the literati
+of Europe." "The coming of the Jesuits contributed much to the real
+educational work in America. They established colleges, one of which,
+the little Jesuit college at Juli, on Lake Titicaca, became a seat of
+genuine learning." (Bourne.)
+
+He does not hesitate to emphasize the contrast between Spanish America
+and English America with regard to education and culture, and the most
+interesting feature of his comparison is that Spanish America
+surpassed the North completely and anticipated by nearly two centuries
+some of the progress that we are so proud of in the nineteenth
+century. What a startling paragraph, for instance, is the following
+for those who have been accustomed to make little of the Church's
+interest in education and to attribute the backwardness of South
+America, as they presumed they knew it, to the presence of the Church
+and her influence there.
+
+  "Not all the institutions of learning founded in Mexico in the
+  sixteenth century can be enumerated here, but it is not too much to
+  say that in number, range of studies and standard of attainments by
+  the officers they surpassed anything existing in English America
+  until the nineteenth {304} century. Mexican scholars made
+  distinguished achievements in some branches of science, particularly
+  medicine and surgery, but pre-eminently linguistics, history and
+  anthropology. Dictionaries and grammars of the native languages and
+  histories of the Mexican institutions are an imposing proof of their
+  scholarly devotion and intellectual activity. Conspicuous are
+  Toribio de Motolinia's 'Historia de las Indias de Nueva Espana,'
+  Duran's 'Historia de las Indias de Nueva Espana,' but most important
+  of all Sahagun's great work on Mexican life and religion."
+
+Indeed, it is with regard to science in various forms that one finds
+the most surprising contributions from these old-time scholars. While
+the English in America were paying practically no attention to
+science, the Spaniards were deeply interested in it. Dr. Chanca, a
+physician who had been for several years physician-in-ordinary to the
+King and Queen and was looked upon as one of the leaders of his
+profession in Spain, joined Columbus' second expedition in order to
+make scientific notes. The little volume that he issued as the report
+of this scientific excursion is a valuable contribution to the science
+of the time and furnishes precious information with regard to Indian
+medicine, Indian customs, their knowledge of botany and of metals,
+certain phases of zoology, and the like, that show how wide was the
+interest in science of this Spanish physician of over four hundred
+years ago.
+
+{305}
+
+After reading paragraphs such as Professor Bourne has written with
+regard to education in Spanish America, how amusing it is to reflect
+that one of the principal arguments against the Catholic Church has
+been that she keeps nations backward and unprogressive and
+uneducated--and the South American countries have been held up
+derisively and conclusively as horrible examples of this. Even we
+Catholics have been prone to take on an apologetic mood with regard to
+them. The teaching of history in English-speaking countries has been
+so untrue to the realities that we have accepted the impression that
+the Spanish-American countries were far behind in all the ways that
+were claimed. Now we find that instead of presenting grounds for
+apology they are triumphant examples of how soon and how energetically
+the Church gets to work at the great problems of education wherever
+she gains a position of authority or even a foothold of influence.
+Instead of needing to be ashamed of them, as we have perhaps
+ignorantly been, there is a reason to be deservedly proud of them.
+Their education far outstripped our own in all the centuries down to
+the nineteenth, and the culture of the Spanish-Americans, quite a
+different thing from education, is deeper than ours even at the
+present time. It is hard for North America to permit herself to be
+persuaded of this, but there is no doubt of its absolute truth.
+
+It is only since the days of steam that the {306} English-speaking
+races in America have come to possess a certain material progress
+above that of the Spanish-American countries. Bourne says:
+
+  "If we compare Spanish America with the United States a hundred
+  years ago we must recognize that while in the North there was a
+  sounder body politic, a purer social life and a more general
+  dissemination of elementary education, yet in Spanish America there
+  were both vastly greater wealth and greater poverty, more imposing
+  monuments of civilization, such as public buildings, institutions of
+  learning and hospitals, more populous and richer cities, a higher
+  attainment in certain branches of science. No one can read
+  Humboldt's account of the City of Mexico and its establishments for
+  the promotion of science and the fine arts without realizing that
+  whatever may be the superiorities of the United States over Mexico
+  in these respects, they have been mostly the gains of the age of
+  steam."
+
+While we are prone to think that a republican form of government is
+the great foster-mother of progress and that whatever development may
+have come in South American countries has been the result of the
+foundation of the South American republics, Professor Bourne is not of
+that opinion and is inclined to think that if the Spanish Colonial
+Government could have been maintained at its best until the coming of
+the age of steam or well on into the nineteenth century, then the
+South American republics would have been serious {307} rivals of the
+United States and have been kept from being so hampered as they were
+by their internal political dissensions. His paragraph on this matter
+is so contradictory of ordinary impressions, here in the United States
+particularly, that it seems worth while calling attention to it
+because it contains that most precious of suggestions, a thought that
+is entirely different from any that most people have had before. He
+says:
+
+  "During the first half-century after the application of steam to
+  transportation Mexico weltered in domestic turmoils arising out of
+  the crash of the old regime. If the rule of Spain could have lasted
+  half a century longer, being progressively as it was during the
+  reign of Charles III; if a succession of such viceroys as Revilla
+  Gigedo, in Mexico, and De Croix and De Taboaday Lemos, in Peru,
+  could have borne sway in America until railroads could have been
+  built, intercolonial intercourse ramified and a distinctly
+  Spanish-American spirit developed, a great Spanish-American federal
+  state might possibly have been created, capable of self-defense
+  against Europe, and inviting co-operation rather than aggression
+  from the neighbor in the North."
+
+Lima was the great centre for education in South America, and Mexico,
+in Spanish North America, was not far at all behind. The tracing of
+the steps of the development of education in Mexico emphasizes
+especially the difference between the Spaniards and the Englishmen in
+their {308} relation to the Indian. Bishop Zumaraga wanted a college
+for Indians in his bishopric, and it was because of this beneficent
+purpose that the first institution for higher education in the New
+World was founded as early as 1535. At that time the need for
+education for the whites was not felt so much, since only adults as a
+rule were in the colony, the number of children and growing youths
+being as yet very small. Accordingly, the College of Santa Cruz, in
+Tlaltelolco, one of the quarters of the City of Mexico reserved for
+the Indians, was founded under the bishop's patronage. Among the
+faculty were graduates of the University of Paris and of Salamanca,
+two of the greatest universities of Europe of this time, and they had
+not only the ambition to teach, but also to follow out that other
+purpose of a university--to investigate and write. Among them were
+such eminent scholars as Bernardino de Sahagun, the founder of
+American anthropology, and Juan de Torquemada, who is himself a
+product of Mexican education, whose "Monarquia Indiana" is a great
+storehouse of facts concerning Mexico before the coming of the whites,
+and precious details with regard to Mexican antiquities.
+
+Knowing this, it is not surprising that the curriculum was broad and
+liberal. Besides the elementary branches and grammar and rhetoric,
+instruction was provided in Latin, philosophy, Mexican medicine,
+music, botany (especially with {309} reference to native plants), the
+zoology of Mexico, some principles of agriculture, and the native
+languages. It is not surprising to be told that many of the graduates
+of this college became Alcaldes and Governors in the Indian towns, and
+that they did much to spread civilization and culture among their
+compatriots. The English-speaking Americans furnished nothing of this
+kind, and our colleges for Indians came only in the nineteenth
+century. It is true that Harvard, according to its charter, was "for
+the education of the Indian youth of this country in knowledge and
+godliness," but the Indians were entirely neglected and no serious
+effort was ever made to give them any education. It was a son of the
+Puritans who said that his forefathers first fell on their knees and
+then on the aborigines, and the difference in the treatment of the
+Indians by the English and the Spaniards is a marked note in all their
+history.
+
+During the next few years schools were established also for the
+education of mestizo children, that is, of the mixed race who are now
+called Creoles. In fact, in 1536 a fund from the Royal Exchequer was
+given for the teaching of these children. Strange as it may seem, for
+we are apt to think that the teaching of girls is a modern idea,
+schools were also established for Indian girls. All of these schools
+continued to flourish, and gradually spread beyond the City of Mexico
+itself into the villages of the Indians. As a {310} matter of fact,
+wherever a mission was established a school was also founded. Every
+town, Indian as well as Spanish, was by law required to have its
+church, hospital and school for teaching Indian children Spanish and
+the elements of religion. The teaching and parish work in the Indian
+villages was in charge of two or more friars, as a rule, and was well
+done. The remains of the monasteries with their magnificent
+Spanish-American architecture, are still to be seen in many portions
+of Mexico and of the Spanish territories that have been incorporated
+with the United States, in places where they might be least expected,
+and they show the influence for culture and education that gradually
+extended all over the Mexican country.
+
+In the course of time the necessity for advanced teaching for the
+constantly growing number of native whites began to be felt, and so
+during the fifth decade of the sixteenth century a number of schools
+for them came into existence in the City of Mexico. The need was felt
+for some central institution. Accordingly, the Spanish Crown was
+petitioned to establish authoritatively a university. Such a step
+would have been utterly out of the question in English America,
+because the Crown was so little interested in colonial affairs. In the
+Spanish country, however, the Crown was deeply interested in making
+the colonists feel that though they were at a distance from the centre
+of government, their rulers were interested in {311} securing for
+them, as far as possible, all the opportunities of life at home in
+Spain. This is so different from what is ordinarily presumed to have
+been the attitude of Spain towards its colonies as to be quite a
+surprise for those who have depended on old-fashioned history, but
+there can be no doubt of its truth. Accordingly, the University of
+Mexico received its royal charter the same year as the University of
+Lima (1551). Mexico was not formally organized as a university until
+1553. In the light of these dates, it is rather amusing to have the
+Century Dictionary, under the word Harvard University, speak of that
+institution as the oldest and largest institution of learning in
+America. It had been preceded by almost a century, not only in South
+America, but also in North America. The importance of Harvard was as
+nothing compared to the universities of Lima and Mexico, and indeed
+for a century after its foundation Harvard was scarcely more than a
+small theological school, with a hundred or so of pupils, sometimes
+having no graduating class, practically never graduating more than
+eight or ten pupils, while the two Spanish-American universities
+counted their students by the thousand and their annual graduates by
+the hundred.
+
+The reason for the success of these South American universities above
+that of Harvard is to be found in the fact that Harvard's sphere of
+usefulness was extremely limited because of {312} religious
+differences and shades of differences. This had hampered all education
+in Protestant countries very seriously. Professor Paulsen, who holds
+the chair of philosophy at the University of Berlin, calls attention
+to the fact that the Reformation had anything but the effect of
+favoring education that has often been said. The picture that he draws
+of conditions in Germany a century before the foundation of Harvard
+would serve very well as a lively prototype of the factors at work in
+preventing Harvard from becoming such an educational institution as
+the universities of Lima and Mexico so naturally became. He says, in
+"German Universities and University Studies": "During this period
+[after Luther's revolt] a more determined effort was made to control
+instruction than at any period before or since. The fear of heresy,
+the extraordinary anxiety to keep instruction well within orthodox
+lines, was not less intense at the Lutheran than at the Catholic
+institutions; perhaps it was even more so, because here doctrine was
+not so well established, apostasy was possible in either of two
+directions, toward Catholicism or Calvinism. Even the philosophic
+faculty felt the pressure of this demand for correctness of doctrines.
+Thus came about these restrictions within the petty states and their
+narrow-minded established churches which well-nigh stifled the
+intellectual life of the German people."
+
+Because of this and the fact that the attendance {313} at the college
+did not justify it, the school of medicine at Harvard was not opened
+until after the Revolution (1783). The law school was not opened until
+1817.
+
+This is sometimes spoken of as the earliest law school connected with
+a university on this continent, but, of course, only by those who know
+nothing at all about the history of the Spanish-American
+universities. In the Spanish countries the chairs in law were
+established very early; indeed, before those of medicine. Canon law
+was always an important subject in Spanish universities, and civil law
+was so closely connected with it that it was never neglected.
+
+When the charter of the University of Lima was granted by the Emperor
+Charles V, in 1551, the town was scarcely more than fifteen years old.
+It had been founded in 1535. Curiously enough, just about the same
+interval had elapsed between the foundation of the Massachusetts
+colony by the Pilgrims and the legal establishment of the college
+afterward known as Harvard by the General Court of the colony. It is
+evident that in both cases it was the needs of the rising generation
+who had come to be from twelve to sixteen years of age that led to the
+establishment of these institutions of higher education. The actual
+foundation of Harvard did not come for two years later, and the
+intention of the founders was not nearly so broad as that of the
+founders of the University of Lima. Already at Lima schools had been
+{314} established by the religious orders, and it was with the idea of
+organizing the education as it was being given that the charter from
+the Crown was obtained. With regard to both Lima and Mexico, within a
+few years a bull of approval and confirmation was asked and obtained
+from the Pope. The University of Lima continued to develop with
+wonderful success. In the middle of the seventeenth century it had
+more than a thousand students, at the beginning of the eighteenth it
+had two thousand students, and there is no doubt at all of its
+successful accomplishment of all that a university is supposed to do.
+
+Juan Antonio Ribeyro, who was the rector of the University of Lima
+forty years ago, said in the introduction to "The University Annals
+for 1869" that, "It cannot be denied that the University of Peru
+during its early history filled a large role of direct intervention
+for the formation of laws, for the amelioration of customs and in
+directing all the principal acts of civil and private society, forming
+the religious beliefs, rendering them free from superstitions and
+errors and influencing all the institutions of the country to the
+common good." Certainly this is all that would be demanded of a
+university as an influence for uplift, and the fact that such an ideal
+should have been cherished shows how well the purpose of an
+educational institution had been realized.
+
+The scholarly work done by some of these professors at
+Spanish-American universities still {315} remains a model of true
+university work. It is the duty of the university to add to knowledge
+as well as to disseminate it. That ideal of university existence is
+supposed to be a creation of the nineteenth century, and indeed is
+often said to have been brought into the history of education by the
+example of the German universities. We find, however, that the
+professors of the Spanish-American universities accomplished much in
+this matter and that their works remain as precious storehouses of
+information for after generations. Professor Bourne has given but a
+short list of them in addition to those that have already been
+mentioned, but even this furnishes an excellent idea of how much the
+university professors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in
+Spanish America were taking to heart the duty of gathering, arranging
+and classifying knowledge for after generations. They did more in the
+sciences than in anything else. It is often thought that our knowledge
+of the ethnology and anthropology of the Indians is entirely the
+creation of recent investigators, but that is true only if one leaves
+out of account the work of these old Spanish-American scholars.
+Professor Bourne says:
+
+  "The most famous of the earlier Peruvian writers were Acosta, the
+  historian, the author of the 'Natural and Civil History of the
+  Indies'; the mestizo Garciasso de la Vega, who was educated in Spain
+  and wrote of the Inca Empire and De Soto's expedition; Sandoval, the
+  author of the {316} first work on Africa and the negro written in
+  America; Antonio Leon Pinelo, the first American bibliographer, and
+  one of the greatest as well of the indefatigable codifiers of the
+  old legislation of the Indies. Pinelo was born in Peru and educated
+  at the Jesuit College in Lima, but spent his literary life in
+  Spain."
+
+Of the University of Mexico more details are available than of Peru,
+and the fact that it was situated here in North America and that the
+culture which it influenced has had its effect on certain portions of
+the United States, has made it seem worth while to devote considerable
+space to it. The University was called the Royal and Pontifical
+University of Mexico, because, while it was founded under the charter
+of the King of Spain, this had been confirmed by a bull from the Pope,
+who took the new university directly under the patronage of the Holy
+See. The reason for the foundation of the university, as the men at
+that time saw it, is contained in the opening chapter of St. John's
+Gospel, which is quoted as the preamble of the constitutions of the
+university: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.
+The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him
+and without Him was made nothing that was made. In Him was Life, and
+the Life was the light of men." This they considered ample reason for
+the erection of a university and the spread of knowledge with God's
+own sanction.
+
+{317}
+
+The patron saints of the university, as so declared by the first
+article of the constitutions, were St. Paul the Apostle, and St.
+Catherine the Martyr. Among the patrons, however, were also mentioned
+in special manner two other saints--St. John Nepomucen, who died
+rather than reveal the secrets of the confessional, and St. Aloysius
+Gonzaga, the special patron of students. It is evident that these two
+patrons had been chosen with a particular idea that devotion to them
+would encourage the practice of such virtues and devotion to duty as
+would be especially useful to the students, clerical and secular, of
+the university. On all four of the feast days of these patrons the
+university had a holiday. This would seem to be adding notably to the
+number of free days in a modern university, but must have meant very
+little at the University of Mexico, they had so many other free days.
+The most striking difference between the calendar of the University of
+Mexico and that of a modern university would be the number of days in
+the year in which no lectures were given. There were some forty of
+these altogether. Besides the four patron saint days, the feast day of
+every Apostle was a holiday. Besides these, all the Fathers and
+Doctors of the Church gave reasons for holidays. Then there was St.
+Sebastian's Day, in order that young men might be brave, St. Joseph's
+Day, the Annunciation, the Expectation, the Assumption and the
+Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, the {318} Invention of the Holy Cross,
+the Three Rogation Days and the Feast of Our Lady of the Snows.
+Besides, there were St. Magdalen's, St. Ann's, St. Ignatius' and St.
+Lawrence's Day. These were not all, but this will give an idea how
+closely connected with the Church were the lectures at the university,
+or, rather, the intermission from the lectures. It might be said that
+this was a serious waste of precious time, and that our universities
+in the modern time would not think of imitating them, but such a
+remark could come but from some one who did not realize the real
+condition that obtained in the old-time universities. At the present
+time our universities finish their scholastic year about the middle of
+May and do not begin again until October--nearly twenty weeks. At
+these old universities their annual intermission between scholastic
+years lasted only the six weeks from the Feast of the Nativity of the
+Blessed Virgin, September 8, to St Luke's Day, October 18. They had
+five weeks at Easter time and two weeks at Christmas time. They spread
+their year out over a longer period and compensated for shorter
+vacations by granting holidays during the year. Their year's labor was
+less intense and spread out over more ground than ours.
+
+The development of the University of Mexico into a real university in
+the full sense of the old _studium generale_, in which all forms of
+human knowledge might be pursued, is very interesting {319} and shows
+the thoroughgoing determination of the Spanish Americans to make for
+themselves and their children an institute of learning worthy of
+themselves and their magnificent new country.
+
+Chartered in 1551, it was not formally opened until 1553. Chairs were
+established in this year in theology, Sacred Scripture, canon law and
+decretals, laws, art, rhetoric and grammar. Both Spanish and Latin
+were taught in the classes of grammar and rhetoric. To these was added
+very shortly a chair in Mexican Indian languages, in accordance with
+the special provisions of the imperial charter. The university
+continued to develop and added further chairs and departments as time
+went on. It had a chair of jurisprudence at the beginning, but its law
+department was completed in 1569 by the addition of two other chairs,
+one in the institutes of law, the other in codes of law. In the
+meantime the university had begun to make itself felt as a corporate
+body for general uplift by publications of various kinds. Its
+professor of rhetoric, Dr. Cervantes Salazer, published in 1555 three
+interesting Latin dialogues in imitation of Erasmus' dialogues. At the
+moment Erasmus' "Colloquia" was the most admired academic work in the
+university world of the time. The first of these dialogues described
+the University of Mexico, and the other two, taking up Mexico City and
+its environments, gave an excellent idea of {320} what the
+Spanish-American capital of Mexico was three centuries and a half ago.
+
+  "The early promoters of education and missions did not rely upon the
+  distant European presses for the publication of their manuals. The
+  printing press was introduced into the New World probably as early
+  as 1536, and it seems likely that the first book, an elementary
+  Christian doctrine called 'La Escala Espiritual' (the ladder of the
+  spirit), was issued in 1537. No copy of it, however, is known to
+  exist. Seven different printers plied their craft in New Spain in
+  the sixteenth century. Among the notable issues of these presses,
+  besides the religious works and church service works, were
+  dictionaries and grammars of the Mexican languages, Puga's
+  'Cedulario' in 1563, a compilation of royal ordinances, Farfan's
+  'Tractado de Medicina.' In 1605 appeared the first text-book
+  published in America for instruction in Latin, a manual of poetics
+  with illustrative examples from heathen and Christian poets."
+  (Bourne.)
+
+With the light thrown on the early history of printing on this
+continent by a paragraph like this, how amusing it is to be told that
+the tradition among the printers and the publishers and even the
+bibliophiles of the United States is that the first book printed in
+America was the Massachusetts Bay Psalm Book printed, I believe, in
+1637. There were no less than seven printing presses at work in Mexico
+during the sixteenth {321} century, fully fifty years before the
+Massachusetts Bay Psalm Book was issued. How interesting it is for
+those who still like to insist that the Catholic Church is opposed to
+the distribution of the Scriptures to the people or its printing in
+the vernacular, to find how many editions of it were printed in Mexico
+and in South America during the sixteenth century. This story of the
+printing press in Spanish America in the early days would of itself
+make a most interesting chapter in a volume on American origins, which
+could probably be extended into a very valuable little manual of
+bibliography and bibliophilic information that would arouse new
+interest in the accumulation of early American books.
+
+The university had been founded just twenty-five years when provision
+was made for the establishment of the medical department. According to
+most of the chronicles the first chair in medicine was founded June
+21, 1578, although there are some authorities who state that this
+establishment came only in 1580. I am a graduate of the University of
+Pennsylvania Medical School myself, and I yield to none of her sons in
+veneration for my Alma Mater, but I cannot pass over this statement of
+the foundation of the medical school in Mexico without recalling that
+we have been rather proud at the University of Pennsylvania to be
+known as the First American Medical School. This is, of course, only
+due to our fond United States way of assuming {322} ourselves to be
+all America and utterly neglecting any knowledge of Spanish America. I
+believe that there are tablets erected at the University of
+Pennsylvania chronicling our priority. One of them is to the first
+graduating class, the other to the first faculty of the medical
+school. I believe that between the erection of the two tablets there
+had come to be some suspicion of the possibility that South America
+was ahead of us in this respect and so the second tablet specifically
+mentions North America. When I talked some time ago before the College
+of Physicians of Philadelphia on this subject one of my friends, who
+was a teacher at the university, asked me what they should do with
+their tablets. I suggested that, by all means, they should be allowed
+to remain, and that as soon as possible an opportunity should be
+secured to erect the third tablet containing a statement of the real
+facts with regard to the place of the University of Pennsylvania as
+the protagonist in medicine in the United States. The tablets will
+then serve to show the gradual evolution of our knowledge of the true
+history of medical education in this country. It is all the more
+important that this should be the arrangement because the University
+of Pennsylvania has been a leader in "the discovery" of South America
+that has been made by us in the last few years.
+
+Between the date of the foundation of the first chair in medicine at
+the beginning of the {323} last quarter of the sixteenth century and
+the foundation of the city, Mexico had not been without provision of
+physicians. In the very first year of the existence of the University
+of Mexico, though there was no formal faculty of medicine, two doctors
+received their degrees in medicine from the university. They had been
+students in Spain and were able to satisfy the faculty of their
+ability. This shows that the institution was considered to have the
+power to confer these degrees upon those who brought evidence of
+having completed the necessary studies, though it was not in a
+position to provide facilities for these studies. It is evident that
+this custom continued in subsequent years until the necessity for
+medical studies at home became evident. The intimate connection
+between the universities of old Spain and of New Spain is a very
+interesting subject in the educational history of the time. Even
+before the foundation of the university, however, definite efforts
+were made by the authorities to secure proper medical service for the
+colonists and to prevent their exploitation by quacks and charlatans.
+
+Strict medical regulations were established by the Municipal Council
+of the City of Mexico in 1527 so as to prevent quacks from Europe, who
+might think to exploit the ills of the settlers in the new colony,
+from practising medicine. Licenses to practise were issued only to
+those who showed the possession of a university degree. {324} This
+strict regulation of medical practice was extended also to the
+apothecaries in 1529. Even before this, arrangements had been made for
+the regular teaching of barber-surgeons, so that injuries and wounds
+of various kinds might be treated properly, and so that emergencies
+might be promptly met, even in the absence of a physician, by these
+barber-surgeons. Dr. Bandelier, in his article on Francisco Bravo in
+the second volume of the Catholic Encyclopedia, calls attention to
+some important details with regard to medicine in Mexico in the early
+part of the sixteenth century, and especially to this distinguished
+physician who published the first book on medicine in that city in
+1570.
+
+Three years before that time Dr. Pedrarius de Benavides had published
+his "Secretos de Chirurgia" at Valladolid, in Spain, a work which had
+been written in America and contained an immense amount of knowledge
+that is invaluable with regard to Indian medicinal practice. Dr.
+Bravo's work, however, has the distinction of being the first medical
+treatise printed in America.
+
+The issuance of these books shows the intense interest in medicine in
+the sixteenth century, but there are other details which serve to show
+how thorough and practical were the efforts of the authorities in
+securing the best possible medical practice. In 1524 there was founded
+in the City of Mexico a hospital, which still stands and which was a
+model in its way. That way was {325} much better than the mode of the
+construction of hospitals in the eighteenth century, for instance,
+when hospitals and care for the ailing reached the lowest ebb in
+modern times. Other hospitals besides this foundation by Cortez soon
+arose, and the wards of these hospitals were used for purposes of
+clinical teaching. Clinical or bedside teaching in medicine is
+supposed to be a comparatively recent feature of medical education.
+There are traces of it, however, at all times in history and while at
+times when theory ruled the practical application of observation
+waned, it was constantly coming back whenever men took medical
+education seriously. Its employment in Mexico seems to have been an
+obvious development of their very practical methods, which began with
+the teaching of first aid to the injured and developed through special
+studies of the particular diseases of the country and of the methods
+of curing them by native drugs.
+
+A chair of botany existed already in connection with the university,
+and this, with the lectures on medicine, constituted the medical
+training until 1599, when a second medical lectureship was added.
+During the course of the next twenty years altogether seven chairs in
+medicine were founded, so that besides the two lectureships in
+medicine there was a chair of anatomy and surgery, a special chair of
+dissection, a chair of therapeutics, the special duty of which was to
+lecture on Galen _"De Methodo Medendi,"_ a {326} chair of mathematics
+and astrology, for the stars were supposed to influence human
+constitutions by all the learned men of this time and even Kepler and
+Galileo and Tycho-Brahe were within this decade making horoscopes for
+important people in Europe, and, finally, a chair of prognostics. Most
+of the teaching was founded on Hippocrates and Galen, and lest this
+should seem sufficient to condemn it as hopelessly backward in the
+minds of many, it may be recalled that during the century following
+this time Sydenham, in England, and Boerhaave, in Holland, the most
+distinguished medical men of their time and looked on with great
+reverence by the teachers of ours, were both of them pleading for a
+return to Hippocrates and Galen. As a matter of fact, the medical
+school of the University of Mexico was furnishing quite as good a
+medical training as the average medical school in Europe at that time,
+at least so far as the subjects lectured on are concerned. Indeed, it
+was modelled closely after the Spanish universities, which were
+considered well up to the standard of the time.
+
+In the meantime additional chairs in university subjects continued to
+be founded. Another chair in arts was established in 1586, and further
+chairs in law and grammar were added at the beginning of the sixteenth
+century. The Spanish Crown was very much interested in Mexican
+education, and King Philip II of Spain, who is usually mentioned in
+English history for quite {327} other qualities than his interest in
+culture and education, was especially liberal in his provision from
+the Crown revenues of funds for the university. At the beginning of
+the seventeenth century, according to Flores in his "History of
+Medicine in Mexico from the Indian Times Down to the Present," the
+total amount of income from the Crown allowed the University of Mexico
+was nearly $10,000. This was about Shakespeare's time, and so we have
+readily available calculations as to the buying power of money at that
+time compared to our own. It is usually said that the money of
+Elizabeth's time had eight to ten times the trading value of ours.
+This would mean that the University of Mexico had nearly an income of
+$100,000 apart from fees and other sources of revenue. This would not
+be considered contemptible even in our own day for a university having
+less than twenty professorships.
+
+The number of students at the University of Mexico is not absolutely
+known, but, as we have seen, Professor Bourne calculates that the
+University of Lima had at the beginning of the eighteenth century more
+than 2,000 students. The University of Mexico at the same time
+probably had more than 1,000 students, and both of these universities
+were larger in number than any institution of learning within the
+boundaries of the present United States until after the middle of the
+nineteenth century. After all, we began to have universities in the
+real sense of {328} that word--that is, educational institutions
+giving opportunities in undergraduate work and the graduate
+departments of law, medicine and theology--not until nearly the end of
+the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Our medical and law
+schools did not, as a rule, become attached to our universities until
+the second half of the nineteenth century, and even late in that. This
+was to the serious detriment of post-graduate work, and especially
+detrimental to the preliminary training required for it, and
+consequently to the products of these schools.
+
+Before a student could enter one of the post-graduate departments at
+the University of Mexico in law or medicine, he was required to have
+made at least three years of studies in the undergraduate departments.
+When we contrast this regulation with the custom in the United States,
+the result is a little startling. Until the last quarter of the
+nineteenth century students might enter our medical schools straight
+from the plow or the smithy or the mechanic's bench, and without any
+preliminary education, after two terms of medical lectures consisting
+of four months each, be given a degree which was a license to practise
+medicine. The abuses of such a system are manifest, and actually came
+into existence. They were not permitted in Mexico even in the
+seventeenth century.
+
+It might perhaps be thought that these magnificent opportunities in
+education were provided {329} only for the higher classes, or
+concerned only book learning and the liberal and professional studies.
+Far from any such exclusiveness as this, their schools were thoroughly
+rounded and gave instruction in the arts and crafts and recognized the
+value of manual training. We have only come to appreciate in the last
+few decades how much we have lost in education in America by
+neglecting these features of education for the masses. While Germany
+has manual training for over fifty per cent. of the children who go to
+her schools, here in the United States we provide it for something
+less than one per cent, of our children. They made no such mistake as
+this in the Spanish-American countries. Indeed, Professor Bourne's
+paragraph on this subject is perhaps the most interesting feature of
+what he has to say with regard to education in Spanish America. The
+objective methods of education, as he depicts them, the thoroughly
+practical content of education, and the fact that the Church was one
+of the main factors in bringing about this well-rounded education, is
+of itself a startling commentary on the curiously perverted notions
+that have been held in the past with regard to the comparative value
+of education in Spanish and in English America and the attitude of the
+Church toward these educational questions:
+
+  "Both the Crown and the Church were solicitous for education in the
+  colonies, and provisions were made for its promotion on a far
+  greater {330} scale than was possible or even attempted in the
+  English colonies. The early Franciscan missionaries built a school
+  beside each church, and in their teaching abundant use was made of
+  signs, drawings and paintings. The native languages were reduced to
+  writing, and in a few years Indians were learning to read and write.
+  Pedro de Gante, a Flemish lay brother and a relative of Charles V,
+  founded and conducted in the Indian quarter in Mexico a great
+  school, attended by over a thousand Indian boys, which combined
+  instruction in elementary and higher branches, the mechanical and
+  fine arts. In its workshops the boys were taught to be tailors,
+  carpenters, blacksmiths, shoemakers and painters."
+
+If there was all this of progress in education in Spanish-American
+countries in advance of what we had in the United States, people will
+be prone to ask where, then, are the products of the Spanish-American
+education? This is only a fair question, and if the products cannot be
+shown, their education, however pretentious, must have been merely
+superficial or hollow, and must have meant nothing for the culture of
+their people. We are sure that most people would consider the question
+itself quite sufficient for argument, for it would be supposed to be
+unanswerable.
+
+Such has been the state of mind created by history as it is written
+for English-speaking people, that we are not at all prepared to think
+that there {331} can possibly be in existence certain great products
+of Spanish-American education that show very clearly how much better
+educational systems were developed in Spanish than in English America.
+The fact that we do not know them, however, is only another evidence
+of the one-sidedness of American education in the North, even at the
+present time. Our whole attitude toward the South American people, our
+complacent self-sufficiency from which we look down on them, our
+thoroughgoing condescension for their ignorance and backwardness, is
+all founded on our lack of real knowledge with regard to them.
+
+The most striking product of South American education was the
+architectural structures which the Spanish-American people erected as
+ornaments of their towns, memorials of their culture and evidences of
+their education. The cathedrals in the Spanish towns of South America
+and Mexico are structures, as a rule, fairly comparable with the
+ecclesiastical buildings erected by towns of the same size in Europe.
+As a rule, they were planned at least in the sixteenth century, and
+most of them were finished in the seventeenth century. Their
+cathedrals are handsome architectural structures worthy of their faith
+and enduring evidence of their taste and love of beauty. The
+ecclesiastical buildings, the houses of their bishops and archbishops
+and their monasteries were worthy of their cathedrals and churches.
+Most of them are beautiful, all of them are dignified, all of them had
+{332} a permanent character that has made them endure down to our day
+and has made them an unfailing ornament of the towns in which they
+are. Their municipal buildings partook of this same type. Some of them
+are very handsome structures. Of their universities we have already
+heard that they were imposing buildings from without, handsomely
+decorated within.
+
+It must not be forgotten that the Spanish Americans practically
+invented the new style of architecture. How effective that style is,
+we had abundant opportunity to see when it was employed for the
+building of the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo. That style is
+essentially American. It is the only new thing that America has
+contributed to construction since its settlement. How thoroughly
+suitable it was for the climate for which it was invented, those who
+have had experience of it in the new hotels erected in Florida, in the
+last decade or so, can judge very well. Many of its effects are an
+adaptation of classical formulae to buildings for the warm, yet
+uncertain climate of many parts of South America. Some of the old
+monasteries constructed after this style are beautiful examples of
+architecture in every sense of the word. If the Spanish-American monks
+had done nothing else but leave us this handsome new model in
+architecture they would not have lived in vain, nor would their
+influence in American life have been without its enduring effects.
+This is a typical {333} product of the higher culture of the South
+Spanish-American people.
+
+With regard to the churches, it may be said that the spirit of the
+Puritans was entirely opposed to anything like the ornamentation of
+their churches, and that, indeed, these were not churches in the usual
+sense of the word, but were merely meeting houses. Hence there was not
+the same impulse to make them beautiful as lifted the Spanish
+Americans into their magnificent expressions of architectural beauty.
+On the other hand, there are other buildings in regard to which, if
+there had been any real culture in the minds of the English Americans,
+we have a right to expect some beauty as well as usefulness. If we
+contrast for a moment the hospitals of English and Spanish America the
+difference is so striking as to show the lack of some important
+quality in the minds of the builders at the north. Spanish-American
+hospitals are among the beautiful structures with which they began to
+adorn their towns early, and some of them remain at the present day as
+examples of the architectural taste of their builders. They were
+usually low, often of but one story in height, with a courtyard and
+with ample porticos for convalescents, and thick walls to defend them
+from the heat of the climate. In many features they surpass many
+hospitals that have been built in America until very recent years.
+They were modelled on the old mediaeval hospitals, some of which are
+very beautiful {334} examples of how to build places for the care of
+the ailing.
+
+Contrast for a moment with this the state of affairs that has existed
+with regard to our church buildings and our public structures of all
+kinds in North America, down to the latter half of the nineteenth
+century. We have no buildings dating from before the nineteenth
+century that have any pretension to architectural beauty. They were
+built merely for utility. Some of them still have an interest for us
+because of historical associations, but they are a standing evidence
+of the lack of taste of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors. The English poet,
+Yeats, said at a little dinner given to him just before he left this
+country ten years ago, that no nation can pretend to being cultured
+until the very utensils in the kitchen are beautiful as well as
+useful. What is to be said, then, of a nation that erects public
+buildings that are to be merely useful? As a matter of fact, most of
+them were barracks. The American people woke up somewhat in the
+nineteenth century, but the awakening was very slow. A few handsome
+structures were erected, but it is not until the last decade or two
+that we have been able to awaken public taste to the necessity for
+having all our public buildings beautiful as well as useful.
+
+The effect of this taste for structural beauty on the appearance of
+the streets of their towns was an important element in making them
+very different from our cramped and narrow pathways. {335} The late
+Mr. Ernest Crosby once expressed this very emphatically in an
+after-dinner speech, by detailing his experience with regard to
+Havana. He had visited the Cuban capital some twenty years ago, and
+found it very picturesque in its old Spanish ways. It is true the
+streets were dirty and the death-rate was somewhat high, but the vista
+that you saw when you came around the corner of a street, was not the
+same that you had seen around every other corner for twenty miles; it
+was different. It was largely a city of homes, with some thought of
+life being made happy, rather than merely being laborious. It was a
+place to live in and enjoy life while it lasted, and not merely a
+place to exist in and make money. He came north by land. The first
+town that he struck on the mainland, he said, reminded him of Hoboken.
+Every other town that he struck in the North reminded him more and
+more of Hoboken, until he came to the immortal Hoboken itself. The
+American end of the Anglo-Saxon idea seemed to him to make all the
+towns like Hoboken as far as possible. There is only one town in this
+country that is not like Hoboken, and that is Washington; and whenever
+we let the politicians work their wills on that--witness the Pension
+Building--it has a tendency to grow more and more like Hoboken.
+Perhaps we shall be able to save it. As for Havana, he said he
+understood that the death-rate had been cut in two, and that yellow
+fever was no longer {336} epidemic there, but he understood also that
+the town was growing more and more like Hoboken, so that he scarcely
+dared go back to see it.
+
+The parable has a lesson that is well worth driving home for our
+people, for it emphasizes a notable lack of culture among the American
+people, which did not exist among the Spanish Americans, a lack which
+we did not realize until the last decade or two, though it is an
+important index of true culture. The hideous buildings that we have
+allowed ourselves to live in in America, and, above all, that we have
+erected as representing the dignity of city, and only too often even
+of state, together with the awful evidence of graft, whenever an
+attempt has been made to correct this false taste and erect something
+worthy of us, the graft usually spoiling to a very great extent our
+best purposes, proclaim an absence of culture in American life that
+amounts to a conviction of failure of our education to be liberal in
+the true sense of the word.
+
+There were other products of Spanish-American education quite as
+striking as the architectural beauties with which Mexicans and South
+Americans adorned their towns. Quite as interesting, indeed, as their
+architecture is their literature. Ordinarily we are apt to assume that
+because we have heard almost nothing of Spanish-American literature,
+there must be very little of it, and what little there is must have
+very little significance. This is only another one of these examples
+{337} of how ridiculous it is to know something "that ain't so."
+Spanish-American literature is very rich. It begins very early in the
+history of the Spanish settlement. It is especially noteworthy for its
+serious products, and when the world's account of the enduring
+literature of the past four centuries will be made up much more of
+what was written in South America will live than what has been
+produced in North America. This seems quite unpatriotic, but it is
+only an expression of proper estimation of values, without any of that
+amusing self-complacency which so commonly characterizes North
+American estimation of anything that is done by our people.
+
+South American literature, in the best sense of that much abused term,
+begins shortly after the middle of the sixteenth century, with the
+writing of the Spanish poet, Ercilla's, epic, "Araucana," which was
+composed in South America during the decade from 1550 to 1560. This is
+a literary work of genuine merit, that has attracted the attention of
+critics and scholars of all kinds and has given its author a
+significant place even in the limited field of epic poetry among the
+few great names that the world cares to recall in this literary mode.
+Voltaire considered this epic poem a great contribution to literature,
+and in the prefatorial essay to his own epic, the "Henriade," he
+praises it very highly. The poem takes its name from the Araucanos
+Indians, who had risen in revolt against the Spaniards in Chile, and
+{338} against whom the poet served for nearly ten years. He did not
+learn to despise them, and while the literature which does justice to
+the lofty sentiments which sometimes flowed from mouths of great
+Indian chiefs, is supposed to be much more recent, Ercilla's most
+enthusiastically extolled passage is the noble speech which he has
+given to the aged chief, Colocolo, in the "Araucana."
+
+The expedition against the Araucanos inspired two other fine
+poems--that of Pedro de Ona, "Arauco Domado," written near the end of
+the century, and "Araucana," written by Diego de Santisteban, whose
+poem also saw the light before the seventeenth century opened. A
+fourth poet, Juan de Castellanos, better than either of these, wrote
+"Elegias de Varones Ilustres de Indias." He was a priest who had
+served in America, and who remembered some of the magnificent traits
+of the Indians that he had observed during his life among them, and
+made them the subject of his poetry. This was only the beginning of a
+serious Spanish-American literature, that has continued ever since.
+Father Charles Warren Currier, in a series of lectures at the Catholic
+Summer School three years ago, did not hesitate to say that the body
+of Spanish-American literature was much larger and much more
+important, and much more of it was destined to endure than of our
+English-American literature. In the light of what these Spaniards had
+done for education in their universities, and for the beauty of life
+in {339} their cities by their architecture, this is not so surprising
+a saying as it might otherwise be. All of these things stand together
+and are confirmations one of the other.
+
+The most interesting product of Spanish-American education,
+however,--the one which shows that it really stood for a higher
+civilization than ours,--remains to be spoken of. It consists of their
+treatment of the Indians. From the very beginning, as we have just
+shown, their literature in Spanish America did justice to the Indians.
+They saw his better traits. It is true they had a better class of
+Indians, as a rule, to deal with, but there is no doubt also that they
+did much to keep him on a higher level, while everything in North
+America that was done by the settlers was prone to reduce the native
+in the scale of civilization. He was taught the vices and not the
+virtues of civilization, and little was attempted to uplift him. Just
+as the literary men were interested in the better side of his
+character, so the Spanish-American scientists were interested in his
+folklore, in his medicine, in his arts and crafts, in his ethnology
+and anthropology--in a word, in all that North Americans have only
+come to be interested in during the nineteenth century. Books on all
+these subjects were published, and now constitute a precious fund of
+knowledge with regard to the aborigines that would have been lost only
+for the devotion of Spanish-American scholars.
+
+It is not surprising, then, that the Indian {340} himself, with all
+this interest in him, did not disappear, as in North America, but has
+remained to constitute the basis of South American peoples. If the
+South American peoples are behind our own in anything, it is because
+large elements in them have been raised from a state of semi-barbarism
+into civilization, while our people have all come from nations that
+were long civilized and we have none at all of the natives left.
+Wherever the English went always the aborigines disappeared before
+them. The story is the same in New Zealand and Australia as it is in
+North America, and it would be the same in India, only for the teeming
+millions that live in that peninsula, for whom Anglo-Saxon
+civilization has never meant an uplift in any sense of the word, but
+rather the contrary. The white man's burden has been to carry the
+Indian, instilling into him all the vices, until no longer he could
+cling to his shifty master and was shaken off to destruction.
+
+This story of the contrast of the treatment of the Indian at the North
+and the South is probably the best evidence for the real depth of
+culture that the magnificent education of the Spaniards, so early and
+so thoroughly organized in their colonies, accomplished for this
+continent. Alone it would stand as the highest possible evidence of
+the interest of the Spanish Government and the Spanish Church in the
+organization not only of education, but of government in such a way as
+to bring happiness and uplift for {341} both natives and colonists in
+the Spanish-American countries. Abuses there were, as there always
+will be where men are concerned and where a superior race comes in
+contact with an inferior. These abuses, however, were exceptions and
+not the rule. The policy instituted by the Spaniards and maintained in
+spite of the tendencies of men to degenerate into tyranny and misuse
+of the natives is well worthy of admiration. English-speaking history
+has known very little of it until comparatively recent years. Mr.
+Sidney Lee, the editor of the English Biographical Dictionary and the
+author of a series of works on Shakespeare which has gained for him
+recognition as probably the best living authority on the history of
+the Elizabethan times, wrote a series of articles which appeared in
+Scribner's last year on "The Call of the West." This was meant to undo
+much of the prejudice which exists in regard to Spanish colonization
+in this country and to mitigate the undue reverence in which the
+English explorers and colonists have been held by comparison. There
+seems every reason to think, then, that this newer, truer view of
+history is gradually going to find its way into circulation. In the
+meantime it is amusing to look back and realize how much prejudice has
+been allowed to warp English history in this matter, and how, as a
+consequence of the determined, deliberate efforts to blacken the
+Spanish name, we have had to accept as history exactly the opposite
+view to the {342} reality in this matter. Lest we should be thought to
+be exaggerating, we venture to quote one of the opening paragraphs of
+Mr. Sidney Lee's article as it appeared in Scribner's for May, 1907:
+"Especially has theological bias justified neglect or facilitated
+misconception of Spain's role in the sixteenth century drama of
+American history. Spain's initial adventures in the New World are
+often consciously or unconsciously overlooked or underrated in order
+that she may figure on the stage of history as the benighted champion
+of a false and obsolete faith, which was vanquished under divine
+protecting Providence by English defenders of the true religion. Many
+are the hostile critics who have painted sixteenth century Spain as
+the avaricious accumulator of American gold and silver, to which she
+had no right, as the monopolist of American trade, of which she robbed
+others, and as the oppressor and exterminator of the weak and innocent
+aborigines of the new continent who deplored her presence among them.
+Cruelty in all its hideous forms is, indeed, commonly set forth as
+Spain's only instrument of rule in her sixteenth century empire. On
+the other hand, the English adventurer has been credited by the same
+pens with a touching humanity, with the purest religious aspirations,
+with a romantic courage which was always at the disposal of the
+oppressed native.
+
+  "No such picture is recognized when we apply the touchstone of the
+  oral traditions, printed {343} books, maps and manuscripts
+  concerning America which circulated in Shakespeare's England. There
+  a predilection for romantic adventure is found to sway the Spaniards
+  in even greater degree than it swayed the Elizabethan. Religious
+  zeal is seen to inspirit the Spaniards more constantly and
+  conspicuously than it stimulated his English contemporary. The
+  motives of each nation are barely distinguishable one from another.
+  Neither deserves to be credited with any monopoly of virtue or vice.
+  Above all, the study of contemporary authorities brings into a
+  dazzling light which illumes every corner of the picture the
+  commanding facts of the Spaniard's priority as explorer, as
+  scientific navigator, as conqueror, as settler."
+
+Here is magnificent praise from one who cannot be suspected of
+national or creed affinities to bias his judgment. He has studied the
+facts and not the prejudiced statements of his countrymen. The more
+carefully the work of the Spaniards in America during the sixteenth
+and seventeenth centuries is studied, the more praise is bestowed upon
+them. The more a writer knows of actual conditions the more does he
+feel poignantly the injustice that has been done by the Protestant
+tradition which abused the good that was accomplished by the Catholic
+Spanish and which neglected, distorted and calumniated his deeds and
+motives. This bit of Protestant tradition is, after all, only
+suffering the fate that every other {344} Protestant position has
+undergone during the course of the development of scientific
+historical criticism. Every step toward the newer, truer history has
+added striking details to the picture of the beneficent influences of
+the Church upon her people in every way. It has shown up pitilessly
+the subterfuges, the misstatements and the positive ignorance which
+have enabled Protestantism to maintain the opposite impression in
+people's minds in order to show how impossible was agreement with the
+Catholic Church, since it stood for backwardness and ignorance and
+utter lack of sympathy with intellectual development. Now we find
+everywhere that just the opposite was true. Whenever the Reformation
+had the opportunity to exert itself to the full, education and culture
+suffered. Erasmus said in his time, "Wherever Lutheranism reigns there
+is an end of literature." Churches and cathedrals that used to be
+marvellous expressions of the artistic and poetic feeling of the
+people became the ugliest kind of mere meeting houses. Rev. Augustus
+Jessop, himself an Anglican clergyman, tells how "art died out in
+rural England" after the Reformation, which he calls The Great
+Pillage, and "King Whitewash and Queen Ugliness ruled supreme for
+centuries." The same thing happened in Germany, and education was
+affected quite as much as art. German national development was
+delayed, and she has come to take her place in world influence only in
+the nineteenth {345} century, after most of the influence of the
+religious revolt led by Luther in the sixteenth century has passed
+away. These are but a few of the striking differences in recent
+history that are so well typified by the contrast between what was
+accomplished for art and culture and architecture and education by the
+Catholic Spaniard and the English Protestant here in America during
+the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Truth is coming
+to her own at last, and it is in the history of education particularly
+that advances are being made which change the whole aspect of the
+significance of history during the past 350 years.
+
+
+{346}
+
+
+{347}
+
+THE MEDICAL PROFESSION FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS
+
+{348}
+
+
+  "Tu recte vivis si curas esse quod audis;
+  Neve putes alium sapiente bonoque beatum."
+  --Horace, _Ep_., 1, 16.
+
+  [You are living right if you take care to be what people say you
+  are. Do not imagine that any one who is really happy is other than
+  wise and good.]
+
+
+  "Quod ipse sis, non quod habearis, interest."
+  --Publius Syrus.
+
+  [The question is what you are, not what you are thought to be.]
+
+
+  "May you so raise your character, that you may help to make the next
+  age a better thing, and leave posterity in your debt for the
+  advantage it shall receive by your example."
+  --Lord Halifax.
+
+
+{349}
+
+
+THE MEDICAL PROFESSION FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS [Footnote 20]
+
+  [Footnote 20: This was the address to the graduates at the First
+  Commencement of the Fordham University School of Medicine, June 9,
+  1909.]
+
+
+I have felt that the first graduation of the youngest of the medical
+schools might very well be occupied with the consideration of the
+place of the medical profession in history. We are rather apt in the
+modern time to neglect the lessons of history and, above all, of the
+history of science, first because it is not always easy to get
+definite information with regard to it, and secondly and mainly
+because we are likely to imagine that scientific and medical history
+can mean very little for us. In America particularly we have neglected
+the history of medicine and it has been one of the definite efforts at
+Fordham University School of Medicine to renew interest in this
+subject. It is entirely too important to be neglected and it has
+valuable lessons for all generations, but especially for a generation
+so occupied with itself, that it does not properly consider the claims
+of the past to recognition for fine work accomplished, and for the
+exhibition of some of the best qualities of the human intellect in the
+pursuit of scientific and practical medical knowledge in previous
+generations.
+
+{350}
+
+At the earliest dawn of history we find institutions called temples in
+which men were being treated for their ailments. Those who treated
+them we have been accustomed to speak of as priests. And such they
+were, since their functions included the direction of religious
+services. These religious services, however, were not the exercises of
+religion as we know them now, but were special services meant to
+propitiate certain gods who were supposed to rule over health and
+disease. There were other kinds of temples besides these. We still
+talk of temples of justice meaning our law courts, and our phrase
+comes from an older time when people went to have their differences of
+opinion adjudicated by men who conducted the services of praise and
+prayer for particular deities who were supposed to mete out justice to
+men, but the temple attendants were at the same time expert in
+deciding causes, knowing right and wrong, wise in declaring how
+justice should be done. These early temples, then, in which the ailing
+were treated and over which experts in disease and its treatment
+presided, were not temples in our modern sense, but were much like
+hospitals as we know them now. They would remind us of the hospitals
+conducted by religious orders, trained to care for the illnesses of
+mankind and yet deeply interested in the worship of God.
+
+Human institutions are never so different from one another, even in
+spite of long distance of time {351} or place, as they are usually
+presumed to be. Men and women have not changed in all the period of
+human history that we know, and their modes and ways of life often
+have a startling similarity if we but find the key for the
+significance of customs that seem to be very different. These temples
+of the gods of health and of disease, then, were places where patients
+congregated and men studied diseases for generations, and passed on
+their knowledge from one to another, and accumulated information, and
+elaborated theories, and came to conclusions, often on insufficient
+premises, and did many other things that we are doing at the present
+time. The medical profession is directly descended from these
+institutions. They are among the oldest that we know of in human
+history. These special temples are only a little less ancient than
+other forms of temples if, indeed, they were not the first to be
+founded, for man's first most clamorous reason for appeal to the gods
+has ever been himself and his own health.
+
+With the reception of your diplomas this evening you now belong to
+what is therefore probably the oldest profession in the world. In
+welcoming you into it let me call your attention particularly to the
+fact that the history of our profession can be traced back to the very
+beginning of the course of time, for as long as we have any account of
+men's actions in an organized social order.
+
+{352}
+
+We are very prone in the modern time to think that what we are doing
+in each successive generation is of so much greater significance than
+what was accomplished before our time that it is really scarcely worth
+while to give much attention to the past. This self-sufficient
+complacency with regard to the present would be quite unbearable only
+that each successive generation in its turn has had the same tendency
+and has expiated its fault by being thought little of by subsequent
+generations. We shall have our turn with those we affect to despise.
+
+It is supposed to be particularly true in every department of science
+and, above all, in medicine that there is such a wide chasm between
+what we are doing now and what was accomplished by our forebears, no
+matter how intelligent they were in the long ago, that to occupy
+ourselves seriously with the history of medicine may be a pleasant
+occupation for an elderly physician who has nothing better to do, but
+can mean very little for the young man entering upon practice or for
+the physician busy with his patients. Medical history may be good
+enough for some book-worm interested in dry-as-dust details for their
+own sake and perhaps because he rejoices in the fact that other people
+do not know them, but can have very little significance for the
+up-to-date physician. This is an impression that is dying hard just
+now, but it is dying. We are learning that there is very little that
+we are {353} doing even now that has not been done before us and that,
+above all, the great physicians, no matter how long ago they wrote,
+always have precious lessons for us that we cannot afford to neglect,
+even though they be 300 or 600 or 1,800 or even 2,500 years ago. At
+all of these dates in the past there were physicians whose works will
+never die.
+
+In every department of human history the impression that we are the
+only ones whose work is significant has been receiving a sad jolt in
+recent years, and perhaps in no branch of science is this so true as
+in medicine. We are coming to realize how much the physicians and
+surgeons of long distant times accomplished, and, above all, we are
+learning to appreciate that they approached problems in medicine at
+many periods of medical history in the best scientific temper of the
+modern time. Of course there were abuses, but, then, the Lord knows,
+there are abuses now. Of course their therapeutics had many
+absurdities in it, but, then, let us not forget that Professor Charles
+Richet, the director of the department of physiology at the University
+of Paris, declared not long ago in an article in the best known of
+French magazines, the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, that the therapeutics
+of any generation of the world's history always contained many
+absurdities--for the second succeeding generation. The curious thing
+about it is that some of these supposed absurdities afterward come
+{354} back into vogue and prove to be precious germs of discovery, or
+remedies of value that occasionally even develop into excellent
+systems of treatment.
+
+Of course there were superstitions in the old days, but, then, there
+have been superstitions in medicine at all times. Any one who thinks
+that we are without superstitions in medicine at the present time,
+superstitions that are confidently accepted by many regular practising
+physicians, must, indeed, be innocent. A superstition is in its
+etymology a survival. It comes from the Latin _superstes_, a survivor.
+It is the acceptance of some doctrine the reasons for which have
+disappeared in the progress of knowledge or the development of
+science, though the doctrine itself still maintains a hold on the
+minds of man. Superstition has nothing necessarily to do with
+religion, though it is with regard to religion that doctrines are
+particularly apt to be accepted after the reasons for them have
+disappeared. In medicine, however, superstitions are almost as common
+as in religion. I shall never forget a discussion with two of the most
+prominent physicians of this country on this subject.
+
+One of them was our greatest pathologist, the other a great teacher of
+clinical medicine, who came into medicine through chemistry and
+therefore had a right to opinions with regard to the chemical side of
+medicine. We had been discussing the question of how much serious
+medical {355} education there was in the Middle Ages and how, in spite
+of the magnificent work done, so many superstitions in medicine
+continued to maintain themselves. I remarked that it seemed impossible
+to teach truths to large bodies of men without having them accept
+certain doctrines which they thought truths but which were only
+theories and which they insisted on holding after the reasons for them
+had passed away. I even ventured to say that I thought that there were
+as many superstitions now, and such as there were, were of as great
+significance as those that maintained themselves in the Middle Ages.
+My chemical clinician brother on the right side said, "Let us not
+forget in this regard the hold the uric acid diathesis has on the
+English-speaking medical profession." And the brother pathologist on
+the left side: "Well, and what shall we say of intestinal
+auto-intoxication?"
+
+Perhaps you will not realize all the force of these expressions at the
+present time, but after you have been five years in the practice of
+medicine and have been flooded by the literature of the advertising
+manufacturing pharmacist and by the samples of the detail man and his
+advice and suggestion of principles of practice, if you will listen to
+them, perhaps you will appreciate how much such frank expressions mean
+as portraying the medical superstitions of our time.
+
+Surely we who have for years been much occupied with the superstition,
+for such it now {356} turns out to be, of heredity in medicine, will
+not be supercilious toward older generations and their superstitions.
+Until a few years ago we were perfectly sure that a number of diseases
+were inherited directly. Tuberculosis, rheumatism, gout, various
+nutritional disturbances all were supposed to pass from father to son
+and from mother to daughter, or sometimes to cross the sex line. For a
+time cancer was deemed to be surely hereditary to some degree at
+least. Now most of us know that probably no disease is directly
+inherited, that acquired characters are almost surely not transmitted,
+and that while defects may be the subject of heredity, disease never
+is. Not only this, biological investigations have served to show that
+what is the subject of inheritance is just the opposite,--resistance
+to disease. A person whose father and mother had suffered from
+tuberculosis used to think it almost inevitable that he too should
+suffer from it. If they had died that he too would die. Our experts in
+tuberculosis declare now, that if tuberculosis has existed in the
+preceding generation there is a much better chance of the patient
+recovering from it, or at least resisting it for a long time, than if
+there had been no tuberculosis in the family. We had been harboring
+the superstition of heredity, the surviver opinion from a preceding
+generation, until we learned better by observation.
+
+Let us turn from such discussion to the {357} beginnings of the story
+of our medical profession as it has been revealed to us in recent
+years.
+
+The first picture that we have of a physician in history is, indeed,
+one to make us proud of our profession. The first physician was
+I-em-Hetep, whose name means "the bringer of peace." He had two other
+titles according to tradition, one of which was "the master of
+secrets," evidently in reference to the fact that more or less
+necessarily many secrets must be entrusted to the physician, but also,
+doubtless, in connection with the knowledge of the secrets of
+therapeutics which he was supposed to possess. Another of his titles
+was that of "the scribe of numbers," by which, perhaps, reference is
+made to his prescriptions, which may have been lengthy, for there are
+many "calendar" prescriptions in the early days, but may only refer to
+the necessity of his knowing weights and measures and numbers very
+exactly for professional purposes. I-em-Hetep lived in the reign of
+King Tchser, a monarch of the third dynasty in Egypt, the date of
+which is somewhat uncertain, but is about 4500 B.C. How distinguished
+this first physician was in his time may be gathered from the fact
+that the well-known step pyramid at Sakkara, the old cemetery near
+Memphis, is attributed to him. So great was the honor paid to him
+that, after his death he was worshipped as a god, and so we have
+statues of him as a placid-looking man with a certain divine
+expression, seated with a {358} scroll on his knees and an air of
+benignant knowledge well suited to his profession.
+
+I called attention in 1907 [Footnote 21] to the fact that the earliest
+pictures of surgical operations extant had recently been uncovered in
+the cemetery of Sakkara near Memphis in Egypt. These pictures show
+that surgery was probably an organized branch of medicine thus early,
+and the fact that they are found in a very important tomb shows how
+prominent a place in the community the surgeon held at that time. The
+oldest document after that which we have with regard to medicine is
+the "Ebers Papyrus," the writing of which was done probably about 1600
+B.C. This, however, is only a copy of an older manuscript or series of
+manuscripts, and there seems to be no doubt that the text, which
+contains idioms of a much older period, or, indeed, several periods,
+probably represents accumulations of information made during 2,000 or
+even 3,000 years before the date of our manuscript. Indeed, it is not
+improbable that the oldest portions of the "Ebers Papyrus" owe their
+origin to men of the first Egyptian dynasties, nearly 5,000 years B.C.
+To be members of a profession that can thus trace its earliest written
+documents to a time nearly some 7,000 years ago, is an honor that may
+be readily appreciated and that may allow of some complacency.
+
+  [Footnote 21: _Journal of the American Medical Association_,
+  November 8, 1907.]
+
+There is a well-grounded tradition which shows {359} us that an
+Egyptian monarch with whose name even we are familiar, though we may
+not be able to pronounce it very well--he was Athothis, the son of
+Menes--wrote a work on anatomy. The exact date of this monarch's death
+is sometimes said to be 4157 b.c. We have traces of hospitals in
+existence at this time and something of the nature of a medical
+school. Indeed, one may fairly infer that medical education, which had
+been developing for some time, probably for some centuries, took a
+definite form at this time in connection with the temples of Saturn.
+Priests and physicians were the same, or at least physicians formed
+one of the orders of the clergy and the teachers of medicine
+particularly were clergymen. This tradition of close affiliation
+between religion and medicine continued down to the fifteenth century.
+How few of us there are who realize that until the fourteenth century
+the professors of medicine at the great universities were not married
+men, because members of the faculty, as is true at the present time of
+many members of the faculty in the English universities, were not
+allowed to marry. The old clerical tradition was still maintaining
+itself even with regard to the medical teachers.
+
+Perhaps the most interesting thing about this early history of
+medicine in Egypt is that, with the very earliest dawn of medical
+history, we have traces of highly developed specialism in medicine.
+There were thirty-six departments of medicine, or {360} at least there
+were thirty-six medical divinities who presided over the particular
+parts of the human body. In the larger temples, at least, there was a
+special corps of priest physicians for each one of these departments.
+Herodotus, the Father of History, is particularly full in his details
+of Egyptian history, and though he wrote about 400 B.C., nearly 2,300
+years ago, his attention was attracted by this highly developed
+specialism among the Egyptians. He tells us in quaint fashion,
+"Physicke is so studied and practised with the Egyptians that every
+disease hath his several physician, who striveth to excell in healing
+that one disease and not to be expert in curing many. Whereof it
+cometh that every corner of that country is full of physicians. Some
+for the eyes, others for the head, many for the teeth, not a few for
+the stomach and the inwards."
+
+It is interesting to realize that the same state of affairs upon which
+you young graduates will come now that you are going out to find an
+opportunity to practise for yourselves at the end of the first decade
+of the twentieth century, is not very different from that which the
+great Father of History chronicles as the state of affairs among the
+Egyptians between 600 and 1,000 before Christ,--let us say about 3,000
+years ago. You, too, will find that every corner is full of
+physicians, some for the eyes, others for the head, many for the
+teeth, not a few for the stomach and everything else under the sun
+quite as in {361} ancient Egypt. After a time you will probably find
+that some little corner has been left for you, and you will work hard
+enough to get into it first, and then to fill it afterward. The story
+of how young physicians have got on in their first few years has
+probably been interesting at all times in the world's history. I think
+that I know about it at five different periods, and in every one of
+these there seemed to be no possible room, and yet somehow room was
+eventually found, though only after there had been a struggle, in the
+midst of which a certain number of the young physicians found another
+sphere of activity besides medicine.
+
+Of course it is easy to think that these specialties did not amount to
+much, but any such thought is the merest assumption. A single instance
+will show you how completely at fault this assumption is. Dentistry is
+presumed to be a very modern profession. As a matter of fact mummies
+were found in the cemetery of Thebes whose bodies probably come from
+before 3000 B.C., who have in their teeth the remains of gold fillings
+that were well put in, and show good workmanship, nearly 5,000 years
+ago. [Footnote 22] After dentistry, the specialty that we would be
+sure could not have had any significant existence so long ago would be
+that of ophthalmology. As a matter of fact, it is with regard to the
+knowledge of eye diseases displayed by these early teachers of {362}
+medicine that the "Ebers Papyrus" is most startling. It is especially
+full in diagnosis and contained many valuable hints for treatment. As
+for laryngology and rhinology, one of the earliest medical records
+that we have, is the rewarding by one of the kings of Egypt of an
+early dynasty (nearly 4000 B.C.), of a physician who had cured him of
+a trouble of the nose of long standing, that seems to have interfered
+with his breathing.
+
+  [Footnote 22: Burdett: "History of Hospitals."]
+
+It is easy to think in spite of all this, that the Egyptians did not
+know much medicine; but only one who knows nothing about it thinks so.
+According to Dr. Carl von Klein, who discussed the "Medical Features
+of the Ebers Papyrus" in the _Journal of the American Medical
+Association_ about five years ago, over 700 different substances are
+mentioned as of remedial value in this old-time medical work. There is
+scarcely a disease of any important organ with which we are familiar
+in the modern time that is not mentioned here. While the significance
+of diseases of such organs as the spleen, the ductless glands, and the
+appendix was, of course, missed, nearly every other pathological
+condition was either expressly named or at least hinted at. The
+papyrus insists very much on the value of history-taking in medicine,
+and hints that the reason why physicians fail to cure is often because
+they have not studied their cases sufficiently. While the treatment
+was mainly symptomatic, it was not more so than is a great deal of
+therapeutics {363} at the present time, even in the regular school of
+medicine. The number and variety of their remedies and of their modes
+of administering them is so marvellous, that I prefer to quote Dr. von
+Klein's enumeration of them for you:
+
+"In this papyrus are mentioned over 700 different substances from the
+animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms which act as stimulants,
+sedatives, motor excitants, motor depressants, narcotics, hypnotics,
+analgesics, anodynes, antispasmodics, mydriatics, myotics,
+expectorants, tonics, dentifrices, sialogogues, antisialics,
+refrigerants, emetics, antiemetics, carminatives, cathartics,
+purgatives, astringents, cholagogues, anthelmintics, restoratives,
+haematics, alteratives, antipyretics, antiphlogistics, antiperiodics,
+diuretics, diluents, diaphoretics, sudorifics, anhydrotics,
+emmenagogues, oxytocics, caustics, ecbolics, galactagogues, irritants,
+escharotics, caustics, styptics, haemostatics, emollients, demulcents,
+protectives, antizymotics, disinfectants, deodorants, parasiticides,
+antidotes and antagonists."
+
+Scarcely less interesting than the variety of remedies were their
+methods of administration:
+
+"Medicines are directed to be administered internally in the form of
+decoctions, infusions, injections, pills, tablets, troches, capsules,
+powders, potions and inhalations; and externally, as lotions,
+ointments, plasters, etc. They are to be eaten, drunk, masticated or
+swallowed, to be taken often once only--often for many days--and the
+time {364} is occasionally designated--to be taken mornings, evenings
+or at bedtime. Formulas to disguise bad tasting medicaments are also
+given." We have no advantage over the early Egyptians even in elegant
+prescribing.
+
+With all this activity in Egypt, it is easy to understand that the
+other great nations of antiquity also have important chapters in the
+history of medicine. The earliest accounts would seem to indicate that
+the Chaldeans, the Assyrians and the Babylonians all made significant
+advances in medicine. It seems clear that a work on anatomy was
+written in China about the year 2000 B.C. Some of the other Eastern
+nations made great progress. The Hindoos in particular have in recent
+years been shown to have accomplished very good work in medicine
+itself. Charaka, a Hindu surgeon, who lived not later than 300 B.C.,
+made some fine contributions to the medical literature in Hindostani.
+There were hospitals in all these countries, and these provided
+opportunities for the practice of surgery. Laparotomy was very
+commonly done by Hindu surgeons, and one of the rules enjoined by
+Hindu students was the constant habit of visiting the sick and seeing
+them treated by experienced physicians. Clinical teaching is often
+spoken of as a modern invention, but it is as old as hospital systems,
+and they go back to the dawn of history.
+
+It is among the Greeks, however, that the most {365} important
+advances in medicine, so far as we are concerned, were made. This is,
+however, not so much because of what they did as from the fact that
+they were more given to writing, and then their writings have been
+better preserved for us than those of other nations. The first great
+physician among the Greeks was AEsculapius, of whom, however, we have
+only traditions. He is fabled to have been the son of Apollo, the god
+of music and the arts, and therefore to have been a near relative of
+the Muses. The connection is rather interesting, because sometimes
+people try to remove medicine from among the arts that minister to the
+happiness of man, and place it among the sciences whose application is
+for his profit. Medicine still remains an art, however. The temples of
+AEsculapius were the first hospitals, though the priests were not the
+only ones who practised medicine, for there were laymen who, after
+having served for some time in the hospitals, wandered through the
+country under the name of Asclepiads, treating people who were not
+able to go to the hospitals or shrines. These evidently, then, were
+the first medical schools in Greece as well as the first hospitals.
+
+Six hundred years after AEsculapius came Hippocrates, of Cos, the
+Father of Medicine. He undoubtedly had the advantage of many Egyptian
+medical traditions and other Oriental medical sources, as well as the
+observations made in the hospitals and shrines of AEsculapius. He
+{366} wrote some great works in medicine that have never grown old,
+Young men do not read them, old men who are over-persuaded of how much
+progress is being made by their own generation in medicine neglect
+them. The busy practitioner has no time for them. The great teachers
+of medicine whom all the professors look up to and who think for us in
+each generation turn fondly back to Hippocrates, and marvel at his
+acumen of observation and his wonderful knowledge of men and disease.
+Sydenham thought that no one had ever written like him, and in our
+turn we honor Sydenham by calling him the English Hippocrates.
+Boerhaave, Van Swieten, Liancisi, the great fathers of modern clinical
+medicine, turned with as much reverence to Hippocrates as does Osler,
+the Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford, in our twentieth century.
+Hippocrates wrote 2,500 years ago, but his writing is eternal in
+interest and value.
+
+The famous oath of Hippocrates, which used to be read to all the
+graduates of medicine, well deserved that honor, for it represents the
+highest expression of professional dignity and obligation. There is a
+lofty sense of professional honor expressed in it that cannot be
+excelled at any period in the world's history. Among other things that
+Hippocrates required his adepts in medicine, his medical students when
+they graduated into physicians, to swear to was the following: "I will
+follow the system of regimen which {367} according to my ability and
+judgment I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from
+whatever is deleterious and mischievous. I will give no deadly
+medicine to man, woman, or child born or unborn. With purity and with
+holiness I will pass my life and practise my art, Whatever in
+connection with my professional practice, or not in connection with
+it, I see or hear in the life of men which ought not to be spoken of
+abroad, I shall not divulge, as reckoning that all such should be kept
+secret. While I continue to keep this oath inviolate may it be granted
+to me to enjoy life and the practice of my art respected by all men in
+all times; but should I trespass and violate this oath may the reverse
+be my lot."
+
+It is sometimes thought that after the Roman medicine, which was an
+imitation of the Greek (though Galen well deserves a place by himself,
+and Galen is usually thought of as a Roman though he wrote in Greek
+and had obtained his education at Pergamos in Asia Minor), there was
+an interregnum in medicine until our own time. This is, however, quite
+as much of an assumption as to suppose that the Egyptians had no
+medicine--as we used to until we knew more about them--or that
+old-time medicine is quite negligible because we were ignorant of its
+value, The Middle Ages had much more of medicine than we are likely to
+think, and just as soon as the great universities arose at the end of
+the {368} twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth centuries,
+medicine gained a new impetus and flourished marvellously. These
+university medical schools of the later Middle Ages are models in
+their way, and put us to shame in many things. According to a law of
+the Emperor Frederick II issued for the Two Sicilies in 1241,
+[Footnote 23] three years of preliminary study were required at the
+university before a student might take up the medical course, and then
+he had to spend four years at medicine, and practise for a year under
+the supervision of a physician of experience before he was allowed to
+practise for himself. The story of the medicine of this time is all
+the more wonderful because subsequent generations forgot about it
+until recent years, and supposed that all of this period was shrouded
+in darkness. It was probably one of the most brilliant periods in
+medical history. Some of the men who worked and taught in medicine at
+this time will never be forgotten.
+
+
+  [Footnote 23: For the complete text of this law, the first
+  regulating the practice of medicine in modern times, also the first
+  pure drug law, see Walsh's _The Popes and Science_, New York,
+  Fordham University Press, 1908.]
+
+
+Probably the greatest of them was Guy de Chauliac, a Papal
+chamberlain, whom succeeding generations have honored with the title
+of Father of Surgery. His great text-book, the "Chirurgia Magna," was
+in common use for several centuries after his death, and is full of
+surgical teaching that we are prone to think much {369} more modern.
+He trephined the skull, opened the thorax, operated within the
+abdomen, declared that patients suffering from wounds of the
+intestines would die unless these were sewed up, operated often for
+hernia in an exaggerated Trendelenberg position, with the patient's
+head down on a board, but said that many more patients were operated
+upon for hernia "for the benefit of the surgeon's purse than for the
+good of the patient." His directions for the treatment of fractures
+and for taxis in hernia were followed for full four centuries after
+his time. No wonder that Pagel, the great German historian, declared
+that "Chauliac laid the foundation of that primacy in surgery which
+the French maintained down to the nineteenth century." Portal, in his
+"History of Surgery," declares that "Guy de Chauliac said nearly
+everything which modern surgeons say, and his work is of infinite
+price, but unfortunately too little read, too little pondered."
+Malgaigne declared "the 'Chirurgia Magna' a masterpiece of learned and
+luminous writing."
+
+Chauliac's [Footnote 24] personal character, however, is even more
+admirable than his surgical knowledge. He was at Avignon when the
+black death occurred and carried away one-half the population. He was
+one of the few physicians who had the {370} courage to stay. He tells
+us very simply that he did stay not because he had no fear, for he was
+dreadfully afraid, but he thought it his duty to stay. Toward the end
+of the epidemic, he caught the fever but survived it and has written a
+fine description of it. He was looked upon as the leader of surgery in
+his time, and this is his advice as to what the surgeon should be as
+given in the introductory chapter of his "Chirurgia Magna": "The
+surgeon should be learned, skilled, ingenious and of good morals; be
+bold in things that are sure, cautious in dangers; avoid evil cures
+and practices; be gracious to the sick, obliging to his colleagues,
+wise in his predictions; be chaste, sober, pitiful and merciful; not
+covetous nor extortionate of money; but let the recompense be
+moderate, according to the work, the means of the sick, the character
+of the issue or event and its dignity." No wonder that Malgaigne says
+of him: "Never since Hippocrates has medicine heard such language
+filled with so much nobility and so full of matter in so few words."
+
+  [Footnote 24: For sketch of Chauliac see _Johns Hopkins Hospital
+  Bulletin_, 1909, or _Catholic Churchmen in Science_, second series.
+  Dolphin Press, Philadelphia, 1909.]
+
+The old-time medical traditions of education which in the mediaeval
+universities produced such men as William of Salicet and Lanfranc and
+Mondeville and Guy de Chauliac, persisted during the next two
+centuries in the southern countries of Europe, and then were
+transferred to America through Spain. The first American medical
+school was not, as has so often been said, at my own Alma Mater, the
+University of {371} Pennsylvania, which had its first lectures in
+1767, while the Physicians and Surgeons of New York did not come for
+some ten years later and Harvard only in the following decade, but in
+the medical school of the University of Mexico, where the first
+lectures were held in 1578, and where a full medical school was
+organized before the end of the sixteenth century. In this medical
+school, which during the seventeenth century came to have several
+hundred students, the university tradition of the olden time was well
+preserved. Three years of preliminary study at the university were
+required before a student could take up the course in medicine, and
+four years of medical study were required before graduation. We have
+some of the text-books, and know much about the curriculum of this old
+medical school, and in every way it is worthy of the old university
+traditions.
+
+Unfortunately our universities in what is now the United States
+developed very slowly. King's College (Columbia) did not become a
+university in the sense of having law and medical schools as well as
+an undergraduate department until the nineteenth century had almost
+begun. Harvard did not have a law school affiliated with it until the
+first quarter of the nineteenth century had almost run its course. The
+affiliations between the medical schools and the universities in these
+cases was only very slight, and the medical schools were entirely in
+the hands of the {372} medical faculty, whose main purpose during a
+great part of the nineteenth century was to make medical studies as
+short as possible and as inexpensive as they could possibly be made
+for the faculty, because that left so much more of the fees to be
+absorbed by the historic septennate of professors who ruled and
+managed the university. The consequence was that during most of the
+nineteenth century two terms of four months each were all that was
+required for the diploma in medicine in most American medical schools.
+Three schools maintained a very high standard by requiring twenty
+weeks in each of two calendar years. The medical school that was
+considered one of the best in the country, and whose graduates
+obtained the highest marks in the army and navy examinations, that of
+the University of Virginia, required but two terms of four and
+one-half months each which might be taken in the same calendar year,
+and then gave the doctor's degree.
+
+It may be as well to say that the doctor's degree or diploma was a
+license to practise. There were no State regulations for the practice
+of medicine, and no matter how obtained, a diploma allowed practise.
+As some one has well said the diploma, then, was a license to
+practise, not medicine, the Lord knows! but to practise on one's
+patients until one had learned some medicine. It is out of this slough
+of despond in medical education that we have climbed in the last
+thirty-five years. We are getting back to the {373} old-time
+university traditions. Let us hope that we shall not allow ourselves
+to get away from them again. There are ups and downs in medical
+practice and medical fashions and medical education, and all depends
+on the men who compose the profession at any one time and not on any
+mythical progress that holds them up and compels them to do better
+than those who went before them. The highest compliment that can be
+paid to American medicine and medical men is that, in spite of this
+handicap of education they did not utterly degenerate, but, on the
+contrary, somehow managed to maintain the dignity of the profession
+and do much good work.
+
+It is to you to-day, entering on this profession, that we look to do
+your share in keeping up the dignity of the medical profession and in
+maintaining standards in medical education. We have a glorious
+tradition of 6,000 years behind us with the great men of the
+profession worshipped as gods at the beginning, because men thought so
+much of them, and remembered fondly as great masters when they came in
+the after-time. From I-em-Hetep through AEsculapius and Hippocrates
+and Galen and Guy de Chauliac and Sydenham and Boerhaave down to our
+own time, the men whom we delight to honor are the ones who did not
+work with an eye single to their own success, but who tried, above
+all, to do things for humanity and for the profession to which they
+belonged. The man who is successful as a {374} money-maker in his
+profession is only doing half his duty. He must make medicine as well
+as money, that is, he must by his observations help others to
+recognize and treat disease better than they did before; he must labor
+for the benefit of humanity, and, above all, he must see that there
+are no decadence of professional spirit and no deterioration of
+medical education as far as his influence can go. It is men of this
+kind that we hope to send forth from Fordham, and you stand in the van
+of them all, and I wish you God-speed.
+
+
+{375}
+
+UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS
+
+{376}
+
+  "Knowledge comes but wisdom lingers."
+  --Tennyson, _Locksley Hall_.
+
+
+  "The foundation stones of the whole modern structure of human wisdom
+  have all been laid by the architects of yesterday. Thrice wise is he
+  who knows the quarries and builders of by-gone ages and is able to
+  differentiate the stones which have been rejected from those which
+  have been utilized."
+  --Anon.
+
+
+  "Ideo Medico id in primis curandum, ut ab aegro circumstantias omnes
+  accurate intelligat, intellectas consideret, ut inter curandum media
+  illa adhibeat, quae tollendo morbo apta sunt, ne ex medicina
+  nocumentum proveniat."
+  --Basil Valentine, _Triumphal Chariot of Antimony_.
+
+  [The physician must therefore especially take care that he
+  understand all the circumstances of his patient very clearly, and
+  after understanding them weigh them well, so that during his
+  treatment he may use those means which are especially suited to
+  control the disease, lest any harm should come from his medicine.]
+
+
+
+{377}
+
+UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS [Footnote 25]
+
+  [Footnote 25: Address to the graduates of St. Louis University
+  Medical and Dental Schools, May 31, 1910, at the Odeon, St. Louis.]
+
+
+It affords me great pleasure to accept the invitation of your Faculty
+to address the graduates of a university medical school here in the
+Middle West. I wondered, of course, what I should talk to you about,
+and have come to the conclusion that as an historian of medicine any
+message I may have for you is likely to come from my own subject. It
+so happens that we are just beginning to realize that the history of
+medicine may have much greater significance for us than we have
+usually been accustomed to think, and, above all, that it may mean
+much in furnishing incentive for the maintaining and raising of
+standards in medical education. In recent years there has come a very
+decided improvement in medical education in the United States. It is
+not hard to understand that the foreigner lifts his eyebrows in
+surprise when he is told that most of our medical schools a generation
+ago required but two terms of four months each, and that there was
+then just beginning to be a demand for a little more complete course
+and better facilities. There was a large number of medical schools,
+turning out graduates every year with the degree {378} of doctor of
+medicine, which was a license to practise in every state in the Union,
+for there were no state or federal laws regulating the practice of
+medicine. As for preliminary requirements the less said the better. If
+a man could write his name and, indeed, he did not have to write it
+very plainly, he found it easy to matriculate in a medical school and
+to be graduated at the end of two scant terms of four months each. He
+might come from the mines, or from the farm, or from before the mast,
+or from the smithy, or the carpenter shop; he need know nothing of
+chemistry, nor physics, nor of botany, nor of English and, above all,
+of English grammar, and he was at once admitted to what was called a
+professional school and graduated when he had served his time.
+Practically no one was plucked. The desire of the faculty for numbers
+of students forbade that in most cases. The two terms in medicine were
+not even successive courses. The second-year student listened, as a
+rule, to the same lectures that he might have heard the preceding
+year.
+
+We all know the reason now for this extremely low standard of medical
+education. Proprietary medical schools made it their one business in
+life to make just as much out of medical education as possible and the
+historic septennate of professors, or sometimes the Dean, pocketed the
+fees (I came near saying spoils) every year, and robbed medical
+American education of {379} whatever possibilities it might have for
+the real training of young men in the science and art and practice of
+medicine. Perhaps the most interesting feature of this maintenance of
+extremely low standards in medical education, however, is the fact
+that in spite of it, men, or at least some of them, succeeded in
+obtaining a good foundation in medicine and then by personal work
+afterwards came to be excellent practitioners of medicine. Professor
+Welch said not long since: "One can decry the system of those days,
+the inadequate preliminary requirements, the short courses, the
+dominance of the didactic lecture, the meagre appliances for
+demonstrative and practical instruction, but the results were better
+than the system. Our teachers were men of fine character devoted to
+their duties; they inspired us with enthusiasm, interest in our
+studies and hard work, and they imparted to us sound traditions of our
+profession."
+
+Nothing that I know is a better compliment to American enterprise and
+power of overcoming the difficulties of the situation than the life
+stories of some of the men who came from these completely inadequate
+schools. If with the maimed training and incomplete education given a
+generation ago American medicine not only succeeded in maintaining the
+dignity of the profession to a noteworthy degree, but also developed
+many men who made distinct contributions to world medicine, what will
+we not do now that {380} our medical education is gradually being
+lifted up out of the slough of despond in which it was and the
+preliminary education for medical studies set at a standard where real
+work of thoroughly scientific character can be looked for, from the
+very beginning of the medical course?
+
+Is it any wonder, then, that those of us who have the best interests
+of American medicine at heart are watching with careful solicitude the
+movement that is now reforming medical education in this country? The
+one hope of medical education is, and always has been, organic
+connection with a university. Real University Medical Schools, that is
+medical schools as the genuine Post-Graduate Departments of
+Universities with the fine training that they give, have opened our
+eyes to what is needed in medical education in this country. Some of
+the old-time medical schools here in the United States had been
+connected by name with universities but this was more apparent than
+real, and the medical faculty ruled absolutely in its own department
+and throttled medical education and divided the income of the college
+among themselves, devoting as little as possible to equipment, to
+laboratories, to all that was needed for medical education.
+
+Now has come the epoch of university medical schools in this country.
+I came near saying America, but we must not forget that the
+Spanish-American countries, having adopted their educational systems
+from the mother Latin country, {381} have always maintained the
+organic connection of the medical school with their universities, and
+as a consequence a good preliminary education, the equivalent of three
+years of college work with us, is required and has always been, and
+then some four years in the medical school and, indeed, in most of the
+countries five or six years and in one at least seven years of medical
+study required. I have thought, however, that this story of medical
+education in connection with universities and real university work
+will be especially interesting to the graduates of this thorough
+Western university, whose work in medicine is acknowledged as up to
+some of the best standards of professional attainment and whose
+organic connection with a great university assures not only the
+continuance, but the future development of medical education here
+along lines that shall place this among the serious progressive
+medical schools of the world.
+
+The first university medical school that well deserves that name is
+the one that came into existence in connection with the University of
+Alexandria. I have been at some pains, because it is so delightfully
+amusing, to point out how closely the University of Alexandria
+resembles our modern universities in most particulars. It was founded
+by a great conqueror, who had gone forth to conquer the world, and
+having attained almost universal dominion sighed for more worlds to
+conquer. Then he set about the foundation of {382} a great city that
+was to be the capital of his empire, and endowed a great institution
+of learning in that capital that was to attract students from all over
+the world. When he died prematurely the Ptolemys, who inherited the
+African portion of his vast dominions, carried out his wishes. Money
+was no object at Alexandria: they put up magnificent buildings,
+founded a great library, bought a lot of first editions of books in
+the shape of author's original manuscripts, stole the archives at
+Athens, used Alexander's collection (made for Aristotle) as the
+foundation of what we would call a museum, paid professors better
+salaries than they received at that time anywhere else and housed them
+in palaces. What a strangely familiar sound all this has! Then
+Alexandria proceeded to do scientific work.
+
+Euclid wrote his geometry, and, unchanged, it has come down to us and
+we still use it as a text-book in our colleges. Archimedes, following
+up Euclid's work, laid the foundation, of mechanics in his study of
+the lever and the screw, and of hydrostatics and of optics in his
+studies of specific gravity and burning mirrors and lenses. He made a
+series of marvellous inventions showing that he was a practical as
+well as a theoretic genius, who would be gladly welcomed, nay, eagerly
+sought for, as a member of the faculty even of a university of the
+highest rank or largest income in our modern times. Ptolemy elaborated
+the system of astronomy that had been so ably {383} developed by
+teachers at Alexandria before his time, and Heron invented his
+engines, which we have had as toys in our laboratories for centuries.
+We realized the true significance of one of them only when the turbine
+engine was invented and we found that the principle of it was in the
+toy engine of this old natural philosopher of Alexandria. They even
+did their literature scientifically at the University of Alexandria.
+We have no great original works from them in literature, but they
+invented comparative literature; for this making the Septuagint
+translation of the Holy Scriptures and doing the same for many other
+religious documents of the surrounding nations for comparative study.
+
+It is rather easy to understand, then, that a medical school arose in
+connection with this scientific university, and that it did excellent
+work. The collections of Aristotle contained many illustrations which
+served as the basis for zoology, botany, comparative anatomy and
+probably even comparative physiology. The Ptolemys were very liberal
+and allowed dissection of the human body, so that human anatomy
+developed from a definite scientific standpoint better then ever
+before. The number of strangers in the town and the rather unhealthy
+climate of Egypt left many unclaimed bodies. It has always been the
+difficulty of obtaining bodies much more than prejudice against the
+violation of the human body on any general principle, that has been
+the reason {384} for the absence of human dissection in many periods
+of the world's history. We object to having the bodies of friends cut
+up, but we do not mind much if the bodies of those who are unknown to
+us are treated in that way. So long as men did not travel much there
+were few unclaimed bodies. With the advent of travel came abundant
+material for dissection and the Ptolemys allowed the medical school to
+use it.
+
+Two great anatomists built up the structure of scientific human
+anatomy on the rather good foundation that had been laid on animal
+anatomy in the foretime. After all, the anatomy of the animal
+resembles that of man so much that very precious knowledge had been
+gained from zootomies in the previous ages. These two anatomists were
+Erasistratos and Herophilos. Both of them studied the brain
+especially, as might have been expected. For just as soon as the
+opportunity for dissecting man was provided, this, his most complex
+structure, attracted instant attention. Herophilos has named after him
+the _torcular herophili_, and the name he gave the curious appearance
+in the floor of the fourth ventricle--the _calamus scriptorius_--is
+still retained. He describes the membranes of the brain, the various
+sinuses, the choroid plexuses, the cerbral ventricles and traced the
+origin of the nerves from the brain and the spinal cord, recognizing,
+according to well-grounded tradition, the distinction between nerves
+of sensation and motion. {385} He described the eye and especially the
+vitreous body, the choroid and the retina. He did not neglect other
+portions of anatomy, however, and his power of exact observation, as
+well as his detailed study, may be judged from his remark that the
+left spermatic vein in certain cases joins the renal.
+
+Erasistratos, his colleague, was perhaps even a more successful
+investigator than Herophilos. He represented the best tradition of
+Greek medicine of the time. He had two distinguished teachers, one of
+them Metrodoros, the son-in-law of Aristotle. It was probably through
+this influence that Erasistratos received his invitation from the
+first Ptolemy to come to Alexandria. The scientific work of Alexandria
+was founded on Aristotle's collections, on his books, for his library
+was brought to Alexandria as the foundation of the great University
+Library, and then best of all on the direct tradition of his
+scientific teaching through this pupil of his son-in-law.
+Erasistratos' other great teacher was the well-known Chrysippos of
+Cnidos. Cnidos was the great rival medical school to that of Cos.
+Owing to the reputation of Hippocrates we know of Cos, but we must not
+ignore Cnidos.
+
+Erasistratos' discoveries were more in connection with the heart than
+anything else. He came very near discovering the circulation. His
+description of the valves and of their function is very clear. He
+looked for large-sized {386} anastomoses between veins and arteries
+and, of course, did not discover the minute capillaries which required
+Malpighi's microscope to reveal them nearly 2,000 years after. Like
+Herophilos, Erasistratos also studied the brain very faithfully.
+
+One story that we have of Erasistratos deserves to be in the minds of
+young graduates in medicine, because it illustrates the practical
+character of the man and also how much more important at times it may
+be in the practice of medicine to know men well rather than to know
+medical science alone. Erasistratos was summoned on a consultation to
+Antioch to see the son of King Seleucus. Seleucus was one of the four
+of Alexander's generals who, like Ptolemy, had divided the world among
+them after the young conqueror's death. His portion of the Eastern
+world, with its capital at Antioch, was probably the richest region of
+that time. There had been no happiness, however, in the royal
+household for months because the scion of the Seleucidae, the heir to
+the throne, was ill and no physician had been able to tell what was
+the matter with him, and, above all, no one had been able to do
+anything to awaken him from a lethargy that was stealing over him,
+making him quite incapable of the ordinary occupations of men, or to
+dispel an apathy which was causing him to lose all interest in affairs
+around him. He was losing in weight, he looked miserable, he seemed
+really to have been stricken by one of {387} the serious diseases as
+yet undifferentiated at that time which were expressed by the word
+phthisis, which referred to any wasting disease.
+
+As a last hope then almost, Erasistratos was summoned from distant
+Alexandria as a consultant in the case of young Seleucus. The
+proceeding, after all, is very similar to what happens in our own
+time. The head of an important department in medicine at a university
+is asked to go a long distance to see the son of a reigning monarch,
+or of a millionaire prince in industry, or perhaps a coal baron, or a
+railroad king, and a special train is supplied for him and every
+convenience consulted. A caravan was sent to bring Erasistratos over
+the desert to Antioch. It is such consultations that count in a
+physician's life. I hope sincerely that you shall have many of them
+and that you shall conduct them as successfully as Erasistratos this
+one.
+
+The young prince's case proved as puzzling to Erasistratos for a time
+as it had to so many other physicians before him. Like the experienced
+practitioner he was, he did not make his diagnosis at once, however.
+Will you remember that when you, too, have a puzzling case? It is when
+we do not take time to make our diagnosis that it often proves
+erroneous. Not ignorance, but failure to investigate properly, is
+responsible for most of our errors. He asked to see the patient a
+number of times, and saw him under varying conditions. Finally, one
+day, while he was {388} examining the young man's pulse--and I may
+tell you that Erasistratos made a special study of the pulse and knew
+many things about it that it is unfortunate that the moderns
+neglect--his patient's pulse gave a sudden leap and then continued to
+go much faster than it had gone before. At the same time there came a
+rising color to the young man's cheek. Erasistratos looked up to see
+what was the cause of this striking change, and found that the young
+wife of the King Seleucus, the prince's stepmother, had just come into
+the room. Seleucus, as an old man, had married a very handsome young
+woman, and it was evident that the young man's heart was touched in
+her regard, and that here was the cause of the trouble. Erasistratos
+did not proclaim his discovery at once. He did announce that now he
+knew the cause of the trouble, that it was an affection of the heart
+that would be cured by travel, and he proposed to take young Seleucus
+back with him to Alexandria. In private, very probably, he told his
+young patient that he had discovered his secret, and then persuaded
+him that absence would be the thing for him. Very probably the young
+man considered that cure was impossible, and with many misgivings he
+consented to go to Alexandria, and as has happened many times before
+and since, in spite of the patient's assurance to the contrary, the
+travel cure proved effective even for the heart affection.
+
+{389}
+
+I hope sincerely that you shall have as much tact, as much knowledge
+of men and women and as much success as this great teacher at the
+first of our modern university medical schools, when the great
+consultations do come your way, for it is easy to understand that when
+the young man recovered under the kindly ministrations of Erasistratos
+and the good effect of absence from the disturbing heart factor,
+Erasistratos was loaded with the wealth of the East and acquired a
+reputation that made him known throughout all the world of that time.
+There is a curious commentary on this story that I think you should
+also know. It is Galen who has preserved the incident for us. He does
+so in the book on the pulse, mainly in order to show, as he thinks,
+the fatuity of such observations. After giving the details he says,
+"Of course, there is no special pulse of love." Poor Galen, how his
+wits must have been wool-gathering, or how forgetful he must have been
+of his own youth writing in the serenity of age, or how lacking in
+ordinary human experience if that is his serious meaning. The older
+man was by far the better observer, and I hope that you shall not
+forget in the time to come that there are many things that affect men
+and women besides bacteria and auto-intoxications of various kinds and
+metabolic disturbances and nutritional changes. Erasistratos seems to
+have known very well how much the mind, or as they called it in the
+older terminology, and we {390} still cling to the phrase, the heart,
+meant for many a phenomenon of existence supposed to be physically
+pathologic and yet really only representing psychologic influences
+apart from the physical side of the being. I may say to you that the
+more you know about these old teachers of medicine the more you will
+appreciate and value their largeness of view, their breadth of
+knowledge of humanity and their practical ways.
+
+It is no wonder that students from all over the world were attracted
+to Alexandria for the next three centuries because of the
+opportunities, for the study of medicine afforded them there. After
+the first century of its existence not as much was accomplished as at
+the beginning, because what always happens in the history of medicine
+after a period of successful investigation, happened also there. Men
+concluded that nearly everything that could be, had been discovered
+and began to theorize. They were sure that their theories explained
+things. Men have persisted in spinning theories in medicine. Theories
+have almost never helped us and they always have wasted our time.
+_Observation! Observation_ is the one thing that counts, Alexandria
+continued to have her reputation, however, and in the first century of
+the Christian era was the centre of medical interest. It was probably
+here that St. Luke was educated, and as we know now from the careful
+examination of the {391} Third Gospel and of the Acts, he knew his
+Greek medical terms very well. Harnack has shown us recently once more
+how thoroughly Luke converted the ordinary popular terms of the other
+Evangelists into the Greek medical terms of his time. Luke must have
+known medicine very well. His testimony to the miracles of Christ is
+therefore all the more valuable, and so the Alexandrian medical school
+has its special place in the order of Providence.
+
+We are prone to think because of the curious way in which not only the
+histories of medical education, but of all education, have been
+written, that while there were some medical schools in the interval
+from the days of Alexandria and Rome down to the modern time, these
+were so hampered by unfortunate conditions that men practically did
+nothing in education and, above all, scientific and medical education
+until comparatively recent times. Nothing could well be more absurd
+than such an opinion. The great universities founded during the
+thirteenth and fourteenth centuries attracted more students to the
+population of the countries of the time than go to our universities to
+the number of our population in the present time. These universities
+are the model of our universities of the present time and, indeed, the
+history of many of the old European universities is continuous for
+seven centuries. They had an undergraduate department in which
+students were trained in grammar, rhetoric, logic, {392} arithmetic,
+astronomy, music and gymnastics, and graduate departments of law,
+theology and medicine. Professor Huxley, reviewing mediaeval
+education, once said that the undergraduate education of the mediaeval
+universities was better than our own. He doubted "that the curriculum
+of any modern university shows so clear and generous a comprehension
+of what is meant by culture as this old trivium and quadrivium did."
+
+Their post-graduate work was just as fine as their undergraduate work.
+They made the law of the world in the thirteenth century, and laid the
+foundations on which the philosophy and theology of the after-time
+have been built up. Strange as it may seem to many accustomed to give
+credence to far different traditions, they did the same thing in
+medicine. Take as a single example what they did for the regulation of
+medical education and practice. A law of the Emperor Frederick II,
+issued in 1241 for the Two Sicilies (Southern Italy and Sicily
+proper), required three years of preliminary training in the ordinary
+undergraduate course at the university before a man was allowed to
+take up medicine, and four years at medicine before he got his degree.
+But even this was not all; after graduation, a year of practice with a
+physician was required before he was allowed to practise for himself.
+If he were going to practise surgery an extra year of the study of
+anatomy was required. But it may {393} be said by those who cannot
+persuade themselves that the Middle Ages so far anticipated us: since
+they knew almost nothing of medicine and surgery, what did they spend
+their time at during these four years? The more we know about the
+details of that early teaching, the more we respect them and the more
+we admire the magnificent work of the old-time professors and their
+schools.
+
+Probably the most surprising feature of their teaching was surgery. We
+are rather likely to think that the development of surgery was
+reserved for our day. Nothing could be more untrue. The greatest
+period in the history of surgery, with the possible exception of our
+own time, is the century and a half from 1250 to 1400. What they
+taught in surgery we know not from tradition, but from the text-books
+of the great teachers which have been preserved for us, and which have
+been recently republished. Three men stand out pre-eminent: William of
+Salicet; Lanfranc, who taught at Paris, having been invited there from
+Italy, where he had been a pupil of William of Salicet, and Guy de
+Chauliac, to whom has been given by universal accord the title of
+Father of Modern Surgery.
+
+There is practically nothing in modern surgery that these men did not
+touch in their text-books. Perhaps the most surprising thing is to
+find that William of Salicet, in discussing his {394} cases, suggested
+that sometimes he succeeded in obtaining union by first intention by
+keeping his wounds clean. Alas for the surgery of succeeding
+centuries, Guy de Chauliac, a greater mechanical genius than William,
+insisted that union by first intention was an illusion and that it
+could only come through pus formation. Laudable pus became the
+shibboleth of surgery for centuries, imposed upon it by the genius of
+a great man. Most men think that they think, they really follow
+leaders, and so we followed blindly after Guy until Lister came and
+showed us our mistake.
+
+Guy was the professor of surgery down at Montpellier, and also the
+physician to the Popes, who for the time were at Avignon. His
+text-book of surgery is full of expressions that reveal the man and
+the teacher. He said the surgeon who cuts the human body without a
+knowledge of anatomy is like a blind carpenter carving wood. He
+insisted that men should make observations for themselves and not
+blindly follow others. He discussed operations on the head, the thorax
+and the abdomen. He said that wounds of the intestines would surely be
+fatal unless sewed up, and he described the technique of suture for
+them. His specialty was operation for hernia. There are pictures still
+extant of operations for hernia done about this time in an exaggerated
+Trendelenberg position. The patient is fastened to a board by the
+legs, head down, the board at an angle of {395} forty-five degrees
+against the wall. The intestines dropped back from the site of
+operation and allowed the surgeon to proceed without danger. Guy said
+that more patients were operated on for the sake of the doctor's
+pocket in hernia cases than for their own benefit. His instructions to
+his students, his high standard of professional advice, all show us
+one of the great physicians of all time and historians of medicine are
+unanimous in their praise of him.
+
+The next great development in medicine came at the time of the
+Renaissance with the reorganization of the universities. In the
+sixteenth century Italy particularly did magnificent work in the
+universities, stimulated by close touch with old Greek medicine. At
+Padua, at Bologna, above all, at Rome, the great foundations of the
+modern medical sciences were laid. I need only mention the names of
+Vesalius, Varolius, Eustachius, Fallopius, Columbus (who discovered
+the circulation of the blood in the lungs), Caesalpinus, to whom and
+rightly the Italians attribute the discovery of the systemic
+circulation nearly half a century before Harvey. These men all of them
+did fine work, everywhere in Italy. They were doing original
+investigation of the greatest value. Whenever anybody anywhere in
+Europe at this time wanted to do good work in science of any
+kind,--astronomy, mathematics, physics and, above all, in any of the
+medical sciences,--he went down to Italy; Italy was and continued for
+five {396} centuries after the thirteenth to be what France was for a
+scant half a century in the nineteenth, and Germany for a
+corresponding period just before our own time. How curiously the
+history of science and of medicine was written when it seems to
+contradict this.
+
+Above all, what ridiculous nonsense has been talked about Papal
+opposition to science. The great universities of Italy in the
+thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had charters from the Popes. They
+were immediately under ecclesiastical influence, yet they did fine
+work in anatomy and surgery. The Father of Modern Surgery was a Papal
+physician. The Papal physicians for seven centuries have been the
+greatest contributors to medicine. The Popes deliberately selected as
+their physicians the greatest investigators of the time. Besides Guy
+de Chauliac such men as Eustachius, Varolius, Columbus, Caesalpinus,
+Lancisi, Malpighi were Papal physicians. We have even a more striking
+testimony to the Papal patronage and encouragement of medicine and to
+the Church's fostering care of medical education, here in America. The
+first university medical school in America was not, as has so often
+been said, the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania
+founded in 1767, but the medical school of the University of Mexico,
+where medical lectures were first delivered in 1578. Our medical
+schools in this country have only become genuine university medical
+schools in the sense {397} of being organic portions of the university
+in the last twenty-five years. Before that their courses were brief
+and unworthy and no preliminary education was required.
+
+The universities of Spanish America from the very beginning required
+three years of preliminary training in the university before medicine
+could be taken up, and then four years of medical studies. These four
+years became five and six years in certain countries, and at no time
+during the nineteenth century did the medical education of Spanish
+America sink to the low level unfortunately reached in the United
+States. The lesson of it is clear. When medical education is seriously
+undertaken as a university department, all is well. When it is not,
+the results are disastrous.
+
+In our day and country another great awakening of university life has
+come and with it a drawing together in intimate union of universities
+and their graduate departments. Above all, the medical schools have
+profited by this closer connection with university work, and the
+prospects for medical education in the United States and a new period
+of wonderful progress in it are very bright. You have my hearty
+congratulations, then, on your graduation from a great university
+medical school here in the West, and I hope sincerely that you shall
+prove worthy of Alma Mater. You have had the privileges of university
+education and these involve duties. {398} This is ever true, though
+unfortunately it is somewhat seldom realized. _Noblesse oblige_. We
+hear much in these days of the stewardship of wealth, and do not let
+us forget that there is a stewardship of talent and education. Much
+more will be demanded of you because of your opportunities, and we
+look for an accomplishment on your part far above the ordinary in
+medical work and maintenance and uplift of professional dignity, that
+shall mean much for your fellows.
+
+Remember that you are doing only half your duty if you but make your
+living or even make money. You are bound besides to make medicine. For
+all that the forefathers have done for us we in this generation must
+make return by a broadening of their medical views for the benefit of
+posterity. If you were graduates of some fourth-rate proprietary
+medical school, perhaps it would be sufficient if you succeeded in
+making your living out of your profession. Perhaps even your teachers
+would then be quite satisfied with you. No such meagre accomplishment
+can possibly satisfy those who are sending you out to-day. Above all,
+you must remember that your education is not for yourself, but for the
+benefit of others as well. If, somehow, its influence becomes narrowed
+so as only to affect yourself and your intimate friends then it is
+essentially a failure. You must not only live your lives for
+yourselves, but so that at the end of them the community shall have
+been benefited and medicine {399} and its beneficent mission to
+mankind shall be broader and more significant because you have lived.
+With this message, then, I welcome you as brother physicians and bid
+you God-speed in your professional work.
+
+
+{400}
+
+{401}
+
+THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE
+
+{402}
+
+  "Non scholae sed vitae discimus."
+  --Seneca, _Epist._, 106.
+
+  [We learn for life not for school.]
+
+
+  "Nec si non obstatur, propterea etiam permittitur."
+  --Cicero, _Philip_., xiii, 6.
+
+  [And because a thing is not forbidden that does not make
+  it permissible.]
+
+
+ "Ubicunque homo est ibi beneficio locus est."
+  --Seneca, _De Vita Beata_, 24.
+
+  [Wherever man is there is room to do good.]
+
+
+  "Then let us not leave the meaning of education ambiguous or
+  ill-defined. At present, when we speak in terms of praise or blame
+  about the bringing up of each person, we call one man educated and
+  another uneducated, although the uneducated man may sometimes be
+  very well educated for the calling of a retail trader, or of a
+  captain of a ship, and the like. For we are not speaking of
+  education in this sense of the word, but of that other education in
+  virtue from youth upwards, which makes a man eagerly pursue the
+  ideal perfection of citizenship and teaches him how rightly to rule
+  and how to obey. This is the only training, which upon our view
+  would be characterized as education; that other sort of training,
+  which aims at the acquisition of wealth or bodily strength, or mere
+  cleverness apart from intelligence and justice, is mean and
+  illiberal, and is not worthy to be called education at all. But let
+  us not quarrel with one another about the name, provided that the
+  proposition which has just been granted hold good: to wit, that
+  those who are rightly educated generally become good men. Neither
+  must we cast a slight upon education, which is the first and fairest
+  thing that the best of men can ever have, and which, though liable
+  to take a wrong direction, is capable of reformation. And this work
+  of reformation is the great business of every man while he
+  lives."
+  --Plato, _Laws_ (Jowett), Vol. IV, p. 174. Scribner, 1902.
+
+
+
+{403}
+
+THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE  [Footnote 26]
+
+  [Footnote 26: This was the address to the graduates at
+  Boston College, June 29, 1910]
+
+
+Gentlemen of the Graduating Class: The custom is, I fear, for the
+orator who addresses the graduating class to talk over the heads of
+those who have received their degree to the larger audience who are
+assembled for the academic function. Now, that I do not propose to do.
+What I have to say is to you. My message is meant entirely for you.
+Since your friends are present I have to raise my voice so that they
+shall hear what I have to say, but I consider that they are here only
+on sufferance and that I am here to say whatever I can that may mean
+something for you in the careers that are opening up to you. Now, I am
+not of those who think that the main purpose of the eld is to give
+advice to the young. Man is so fashioned that he wants to get his own
+experience for himself. It is true that "only fools learn by their own
+experience," wise men learn by that of others. But then we have divine
+warrant for saying that there used to be a goodly proportion of fools
+in the world and human experience agrees in our own time that not all
+the fools are dead yet. Our advice may not be taken in all its
+literalness; that would be too much to {404} expect, but it has become
+an academic custom to give it, in the hope that it will be a landmark,
+perhaps an incentive, it may be a warning, surely some time a precious
+memory in the time to come. Few men who ever lived were less likely to
+think that their advice might mean very much than dear old Bobbie
+Burns, to whom one of your number referred, and yet some time I hope
+that in some serious mood you'll read and think well on the poetic
+epistle of advice to his youthful friend. There are some lines at the
+beginning of it that have haunted me at times these many years when I
+have been asked to address studious youth at the commencement, as our
+term for the occasion so well declares, of their real education in the
+post-graduate courses of that University of Hard Knocks which
+valedictorians at this season of the year are so prone to call the
+cold, cold world. The Scottish ploughman bard said in the choice
+English he could so well assume on occasion:
+
+  "I long hae tho't, my youthful friend,
+     A something to hae sent you.
+   Though it may serve no ither end
+     Than as a kind memento;
+   But how the subject theme may gang.
+     Let time and chance determine;
+   Perhaps it may turn out a sang
+     Perhaps turn out a sermon."
+
+One thing is sure, whatever I shall say to you shall not be a song,
+though, alas! addresses {405} of advice are prone to sound like
+sermons. Yet the sermon, after all, in the old Latin word _sermo_ is
+only a discourse, and I am going to make mine as brief as possible. It
+shall, I hope, serve to round out some of the things that you
+yourselves have been saying with regard to Catholics and social works
+and, above all. Catholic college men in social works.
+
+We are rightly getting to estimate the value of a man in our time in
+terms of what he accomplishes for others much more than for himself.
+Almost any one who devotes himself with sufficient exclusiveness to
+the business of helping himself will make a success of it, though some
+may doubt of the value of that success. What is difficult above all in
+our time, when the spirit of individualism is so rampant, is to make a
+success of helpfulness for others while making life flow on with
+reasonable smoothness for one's self. I do not hope to be able to
+impart to you the precious secret of how surely to do this, but
+something that I may say may be helpful to you in leading a larger
+than a mere selfish life, so that when the end shall come, as come it
+must, though one would never suspect it from the ways of men, the
+world will be a little better at least because you have lived.
+
+Education has become the fetish of the day and the shibboleth by which
+the Philistine is recognized from the chosen people of culture and
+refinement. Popular education has become the {406} watchword of the
+time, and all things are fondly hoped for and confidently promised in
+its name. We are somewhat in doubt as to the mode of education that
+will be surely effective for all good and we are not quite certain as
+to how the results are exactly to be obtained, but education is to
+make the world better; to get rid gradually, yet inevitably, of the
+evil that is in it; to lift men up to the higher plane of knowledge
+where selfishness is at least not supposed to exist, or surely to be
+greatly minimized, where crime, of course, shall disappear, and where
+even the minor evils so hide their diminished heads that the
+millennium can not be far distant. It is true that some of these
+glorious promises seem long in fulfilment to those who are a little
+sceptical of the influence of particular forms of education that are
+now popular, but, of course, the response to that is, that so far we
+have not had the time to have the full benefit of education exert
+itself.
+
+At the end of the eighteenth century the Encyclopedists in France, in
+their great campaign for the diffusion of information among the people
+and the spread of what they were pleased to call education, though
+some of us are prone to think that they hopelessly confused the
+distinction between education for power and education for information,
+confidently promised that when men knew enough, poverty, of course,
+would disappear and in its train would go all the attendant evils,
+{407} vice and crime and immorality, and with them, of course,
+unhappiness would disappear from the world. That is considerably over
+a century now, but we have not found it advisable as yet to do away
+with courts of law, nor jails, nor policemen, nor any of the mechanism
+of the law for the suppression of crime and immorality. Indeed, there
+are those who are unkind enough to say, that we now have to make use
+of more means than ever in proportion to the population for the
+suppression of vice and crime, and that they are more emphatically
+demanded even than at the time of the Encyclopedists. As for
+unhappiness and poverty, recent investigations in our large cities
+show so large a proportion of people willing yet unable to obtain a
+decent living wage, that it is quite startling. Our insane asylums are
+growing much more rapidly than the population, and not a few of the
+inmates are there because of immorality. Suicide is on the increase
+faster than the population and unfortunately the greatest increase is
+noted in the younger years. It is between fifteen and twenty-five that
+suicides are multiplying.
+
+Of course the answer to this is, that education is not as yet carried
+to that extent among the great mass of people which would enable it to
+have its full beneficial effects. Our common school education is not
+enough to bring people under the beneficent influence of this great
+civilizing factor for the development of mankind. {408} Educators
+would urge that it is the higher education which serves to obliterate
+the ills that human flesh is heir to, moral as well as physical, as
+far, of course, as that is possible in so imperfect a world as this.
+If we could but extend the advantages of the higher education, of
+college and university training to the majority of the people, then
+say the advocates of education as a panacea for human ills, we would
+surely have that approach to the millennium which intellectual
+development by the diffusion of information can and must give.
+
+It is worth while analyzing that proposition a little and applying it
+to present-day conditions as we know them. After all we have been
+turning out a large number of those who have had the benefit of the
+higher education from our colleges and universities during the last
+generation or so. They have gone out by the thousand to influence
+their fellows and presumably to be shining lights for profound
+improvement of life, striking examples that surely will prove an
+incentive and a source of emulation to others to do the right, avoid
+the wrong, be helpful instead of selfish and, in general, show the
+world how much education means for the happiness of all. There is a
+slang expression familiar in New York just now that you in New England
+may not know, for I understand that even the owls near Boston do not
+say "to-whit-to-whoo" but "to-whit-to-whoom," that may be quoted here:
+"Some men are born good, {409} some make good and some are caught with
+the goods on them." Not all of the graduates of colleges and
+universities were born good, of course. I wonder what we shall find
+with regard to the other two phases of existence. There are not a few
+who are critically perverse enough to say that, while many have made
+good, too many have been caught with the goods on them.
+
+Let us take the subject that is so strikingly brought before us in our
+everyday life in recent years, the question of political corruption.
+Of course it is to be presumed that it is the non-college men who are
+both corruptors and corrupted. It is, of course, just as confidently
+to be presumed, on the other hand, that it is the college men who are
+the forerunners in all the exposures of recent years. Alas! for human
+nature, it is just the contrary. The leaders in big corruption, the
+mainstays of what has come to be called "big political business," have
+nearly all been college men. This has been true in California, in
+Missouri, in Pennsylvania, in New York, in Illinois. It would be easy
+to add other states, but I am only mentioning those where
+investigations are not yet forgotten, though we American people have
+cultivated a really marvellous power of forgetting. The states are
+sufficiently far apart from one another to make it very clear that the
+condition is not limited to a particular locality but is practically
+universal. In recent years we have been getting closer to the {410}
+man higher up. In a great many of the cases, I should say in a
+majority of them, he has proved to be a university man, and if not,
+then university men have been his right hands in the accomplishment of
+evil. The boards of directors of corporations, life insurance, fire
+insurance, railroads, great industries and manufactures, even banks,
+who have known that laws were being violated and who have not cared
+because it was money in their pockets, have in many cases, perhaps
+even in the majority of cases, been college men. Certainly college
+graduates have not proved to be the little leaven that would leaven
+the whole mass for righteousness.
+
+In the even more dangerous evils of our time that have risked the very
+existence of democratic government, in the imposition on the people by
+the privileged classes of indirect taxes and tariffs that make life
+hard for the poor, but add largely to the wealth of the rich, college
+men have only too often been the active agents. Without their active
+co-operation certainly these crying injustices to the poor would never
+have been accomplished. They have often been adding useless millions
+to useless millions simply for the game; not caring how much the poor
+had to suffer. They have been accumulating at the expense of the
+working classes what Governor Hughes of New York so well called, not
+long since, a corruption fund for their children. They have been the
+prime factors in many agencies {411} for evil and they have not been
+the guardians of the rights of others, the weaker ones, that we have a
+right to expect of them. In the awful evils that have been exposed as
+a consequence of the fellow-servant doctrine and the contributory
+negligence principle at law, which have been the root of so much
+suffering in the world, college men have not helped to point out evils
+and organized for the solution of them, though they have been closely
+in contact with all the problems of them as judges, lawyers, directors
+of railroad companies, and industrial concerns. In general, while they
+have been in a position to know and alleviate some of the worst ills
+of our social system, they have done very little. They helped to bind
+fetters. It is men of much lower social station and education who have
+awakened us.
+
+The investigations of recent years as to the condition of wage-earners
+have shown us many unfortunate evils. It was known that one in four of
+the population in London was living in dire poverty and this was
+thought to be due to the special circumstances in London. An
+investigation of York in England showed, however, that smaller towns,
+even cathedral towns, that were supposed to be almost without poverty,
+were hot-beds of it and were nearly as bad as London. Then, we took
+the flattering unction to our souls that these were altogether foreign
+conditions. Such investigations as we could make in New York, however,
+showed that we were little if any {412} better than the reports from
+England and Germany revealed abroad. Then it was said that the large
+city, that brood-oven of vice and misery, was responsible. Pittsburg,
+for instance, set up the claim that while great fortunes were made
+there the workmen were paid better wages than any place else in the
+world. Alas for the fallibility of human judgment in social affairs!
+The Pittsburg Survey was made and it was found that while a few of the
+better-class workmen were paid very well, the great mass of the
+workmen were awfully underpaid, and it was impossible for the majority
+of them to live decently on what they received. Further investigations
+into industrial conditions have only emphasized the conclusions
+obtained from the Survey.
+
+Human life has become very cheap in this country. A prominent
+clergyman said not very long ago that it was safer to be a murderer in
+the United States than a brakeman. The expression is true if the
+proportion of brakemen who lose their lives to murderers who lose
+theirs in this country is taken. We are careless of the lives of the
+honest workman, and sentimentally over-careful of the lives and
+comfort of the criminal. Every now and then there are inevitable
+reactions against this laxity of the law, and as a consequence, while
+Canada has no lynchings and there are none in England, while peoples
+of our stock have no need to appeal to force, we lynch many more than
+we execute in this {413} country. The leaders of many of the mobs, as
+the directors of the industrial companies who knowingly allow the
+waste of life to go on, have had the benefit of our American
+education, such as it is. Educated people are responsible for things
+that are and unless they meet their responsibilities there will be no
+improvement.
+
+Some of these abuses have risen to a climax. Not long ago a story was
+told that illustrates, as it seems to me, some present-day feelings
+very well. A great steel company having a contract for a bridge in the
+Far East, was rushing the last steel beams for the completion of the
+contract. America is noted for its marvellous power to do work rapidly
+that other countries take time for. There was a heavy penalty attached
+if they did not complete the contract on time. A fast steamer was
+waiting in New York harbor all ready to take this last consignment out
+with it. A special train was standing in the yards of the steel plant,
+to be rushed to New York just as soon as the beams were completed. In
+the midst of all the hurry and bustle a workman got his foot caught in
+the huge crane which transports the immense beams from one portion of
+the plant to the other. An examination of the manner in which he was
+caught showed clearly that he could not be released without taking the
+crane apart. That would mean that thirty-six hours would have to be
+spent in the mechanical handling of that crane. If that were done it
+would be {414} quite impossible to make the shipment on time, so
+closely was the period of completion calculated. Not only was there a
+heavy money penalty, but there would be a decided loss of American
+prestige.
+
+The workman who was caught was only a foreigner. He was only getting
+$1.25 a day. Just one thing was to be done evidently, because that
+steamer had to sail on time and that freight train had to get out the
+next morning. The other foreign workmen were put out of the shops,
+only the confidential men were left, an ambulance was summoned; as it
+appeared in sight the crane was run over the portion of the foot that
+was caught, the man was removed to the care of the surgeon, his wound
+was dressed at the hospital, the contract was completed on time and
+American enterprise and power to do things faster than all the world
+was vindicated.
+
+We are making money. In the meantime the directors of companies under
+whom such things are done are mainly college men. Whether they feel it
+or not they are personally responsible for everything that happens in
+their business, for it is their business by which human life is
+sacrificed or human suffering increased, or human morality
+deteriorated. Probably the majority of the stockholders in the
+companies are college men. Some of them are college women. They are
+deriving incomes from forms of injustice, from conditions that cause
+human suffering that {415} might be avoided. They are, whether they
+know it or not, committing one of the crimes that calls to heaven for
+vengeance--defrauding laborers of their wages; because to pay a man
+less than a decent living wage is to defraud that laborer of his
+wages. No man has a right to go into the labor market and buy labor as
+cheaply as he can. Men must live, they must support their families,
+and to compel them to take less than a decent living wage is to hold
+them in slavery. Every man who derives an income from such sources
+must know whether there is injustice at work or not in whatever he
+benefits by. It is easy to plead ignorance, but the ignorance is no
+justification. When we take money from something we must know that
+that money has no taint of injustice about it. There is a startling
+passage in the Scriptures that I have often thought should be repeated
+more frequently in our time. It is, "From the sins we know not of, O
+Lord deliver us."
+
+There are many things that are done for the educated rich in our time,
+things that are full of injustice, yet from which the rich derive
+great benefits for which they will be held responsible. I cannot see
+it else. We hear much in our time of the stewardship of wealth, of the
+fact that if a man has much more money than others he is bound thereby
+to do more good with it, just inasmuch as he has superfluous means
+must he accomplish not only actually more but {416} proportionately
+more than those who are less wealthy around him. What is true thus of
+material wealth is even truer of intellectual wealth. The man who has
+more education than his neighbors is bound thereby to be helpful to
+his neighbors, to uplift them--how much one hesitates to use that
+much-abused word,--to help solve their problems, to make life happier
+for them; he is bound to use his faculties, God-given as they are and
+developed by intellectual opportunities, not for himself alone, but
+for all those around him.
+
+Unfortunately recent generations of college men have not taken this
+responsibility seriously, or have not seen the duty that lay before
+them and the burden imposed on them by the very necessity of
+conditions. As a consequence they have often been leaders in evil.
+They have almost invariably been protagonists of selfishness and of
+individualism. So long as they have gotten much out of life they have
+not cared whether others have had the paths for even reasonable
+happiness and some opportunities in life made smooth. Only too often
+they have been a stumbling block in the road for others less educated
+than they. They have been the men higher up, the bribers who are ever
+so much worse than the bribed, the company directors who have turned
+aside and seen evil and injustice and pretended in smug propriety that
+it was no affair of theirs, or perhaps have said in
+self-justification--and such self-justification!--that if they did not
+do it {417} others would; the wealthy men who have used every means to
+get around the law to oppress the poor, to add useless wealth to
+useless wealth at the cost of others, even at the risk of subverting
+liberty, overturning government and ruining this latest experiment in
+democracy. I am not a muckraker, but we cannot hide from ourselves and
+we must not miss the real meaning of the events in the life around us
+as it really is.
+
+When I think of the situation I am prone to compare with it other
+generations of college men and what they accomplished. History is not
+worth while if it tells us only of the past. It is of no more value
+than any other story, real or fictitious. History is significant only
+when the lessons of the past are valuable to the present. We are prone
+to think of education as influencing deeply only recent generations.
+Let me try and tell you briefly the story of some generations of
+college men who accomplished things that it will be worth while for us
+to consider to-day.
+
+When the universities came into existence in the early thirteenth
+century social conditions were about as bad as can well be imagined.
+The incursions of the Goths had rubbed out all the old Roman law and
+the customs of the various nations had been obliterated in the
+disorder of the migration of the nations, when might absolutely made
+right. Gradually out of the inevitable lawlessness of the Dark Ages
+the Church, by her beneficent influence, brought the beginnings of
+{418} law and order so far as barbarous peoples could be lifted up. In
+the sixth century there was nearly everywhere in Europe social chaos.
+During the next centuries came the gradual uplift. Christianity in
+Ireland did much even in the preceding century, and then helped in the
+regeneration of Europe in the succeeding centuries. Charlemagne helped
+greatly, as his name chronicles, and Alfred, well deserving of the
+name the Great, carried on his work. In the tenth century everywhere
+the dawn of better things was to be seen. In the eleventh century
+organization of civil rights begins to make itself felt; in the
+twelfth century the universities were coming into existence; and then
+with the thirteenth century there was a great rejuvenescence of
+humanity in every department, but, above all, in the social order.
+Under feudalism men had no rights of themselves except such as were
+conferred on them by some external agency. In the thirteenth century
+the essential rights of man begin to make themselves felt and find
+confident assertion.
+
+It is not hard to trace the steps of the development. Magna Charta was
+signed in 1215. The First English Parliament met in 1257. The
+representative nature of that parliament became complete in the next
+twenty years. The English Common Law was put into form about the
+beginning of the last quarter of the century and in 1282 Bracton
+published his great digest of it. The principle there shall be no
+taxation without {419} representation, our own basis for the
+Declaration of Independence five centuries later, was proclaimed as
+early as 1260 and was emphasized by the great Pope Boniface VIII at
+the end of the century. Early in the century, the great Lateran
+Council decreed that every diocese in the world should have a college
+and that the Metropolitan Sees at least should have such opportunities
+for post-graduate study as we now call universities. The first great
+Pope of the century, Innocent III, laid the foundation of a great City
+Hospital in Rome and required that every bishop throughout the world
+should have one in his See and that the model of it should be that of
+the Santo Spirito Hospital in Rome. Leprosy was an epidemic disease
+among the people, somewhat as tuberculosis is now; measures were taken
+for the segregation of lepers, leper hospitals were built for them
+outside of the town, and these great generations solved a problem in
+hygiene as difficult as is ours with regard to tuberculosis.
+
+Above all, the rights of the people were assured to them. At the
+beginning of the century probably the most striking thing among the
+population of the various towns, if a modern had a chance to visit
+them, would be the number of the maimed and the halt and the blind. We
+would be apt to wonder where were the industrial and manufacturing
+plants responsible for all this maiming of the people, and look in
+vain for the belching chimneys of factories or trains. It was {420}
+another form of selfishness that produced cripples in the twelfth
+century. Punishment was by maiming. For offences against property a
+man lost an eye, or a hand, or a leg. Very often the offences were of
+a kind that we would resent punishment for in the modern time. If a
+man were caught poaching on a nobleman's preserves of game, and
+sometimes it was the hunger of his children that drove him to it, he
+lost a hand. For a second offence, he lost an eye. For failures to pay
+various taxes, if the offence were repeated, maiming was likely to be
+the consequence. All this was in as perfect accordance with law as our
+fellow-servant or contributory-negligence doctrines. So that the
+sight of the maimed person might deter others from following this
+example of recalcitrancy, it was hoped that these cripples would not
+die, though in the imperfect surgery of the time they often did.
+Always the selfish pleasures of the upper classes so-called, when they
+are thoughtless, mean the loss of all possibilities of happiness for
+the lower classes. The ways of it all may be different from age to
+age, the results and the responsibility are always the same.
+
+In the thirteenth century all this was changed. St. Louis of France
+sent one of his greatest noblemen who had unreasonably punished
+student poachers on a penitential pilgrimage to the Holy Land and
+inflicted a heavy fine, and all notwithstanding the protest of the
+most powerful nobles {421} of his kingdom whose rights were invaded.
+How we do always hear about the invasion of the rights of the
+entrenched classes. In England men, even men without any patent of
+nobility or clerical privilege, began to have rights and others had
+duties towards them. Above all, men were given opportunities to bring
+out what was best in them. The great cathedrals were built, the great
+monasteries, some of the greatest castles, some of the fine colleges
+at the universities. Many of the municipal buildings were erected in
+the glorious architecture of the times. At these men were employed in
+what is probably the happiest work that a man can do. They had the
+chance to express themselves in the beautiful achievements of their
+hands. The village blacksmith made gates, and locks, and bolts, and
+hinges for cathedrals that are so beautiful that all the world has
+wondered at them ever since. The stained glass is the finest ever
+made. The illuminated books are beautiful beyond description, the
+handsomest of all times. The needlework of the vestments stands out as
+the most beautiful in history. The men and women who did these things
+were happy in the execution of beautiful works of art, and as the
+population was only scanty a large proportion of them were closer to
+beautiful things than the world has ever known.
+
+Blessed is the man who has found his work. These men had found their
+work and were happy. Instead of going out to the deadly routine of
+{422} work they did not like, but that they had to do, because they
+must earn enough so as to get bread enough to eat for themselves and
+family, so that they might live and go out and work once more
+to-morrow and to-morrow, and so on to the end of recorded time, the
+workman dreamt of the beauty that he might express; went out hoping to
+achieve it; failed often but still hoped, and hope is life's best
+consolation; came away reluctantly, thinking that surely he would
+accomplish something on the morrow. It is the difference between mere
+routine work and the handicraftsmanship that satisfies because it
+occupies the whole man. Is it any wonder that our workman is
+discontented; is it any wonder that the England of that time should be
+called merry England and the France and Italy gay France and Italy?
+
+All this organization of the workmen was accomplished by the
+university men of the time. They were mainly clergymen, but they had
+in them not only the wish, but the faculty to help those around them,
+and so there arose the beautiful creations of that time in art,
+architecture, literature and political freedom which did so much for
+the masses of the people. There were more students at the universities
+at the end of the thirteenth century to the population of the various
+countries of Europe than there are at the present time. That seems
+impossible, but so do all the other achievements of the thirteenth
+century,--their cathedrals, their arts and crafts, their {423}
+universities, their literature,--until you go back to study them.
+There is absolutely no doubt about these statistics. These university
+men were trained to self-government and to the government of others in
+the university life of the time. They took that training out with
+them, not for selfish purposes alone, but for the help of others. What
+they accomplished is to be found in the social uplift that followed.
+There is scarcely a right or a development of liberty that we have now
+that cannot be found, in germ at least, often in complete evolution,
+in the thirteenth century. The Supreme Courts of most of our states
+still make their decisions following the old English common law which
+was laid down in that century.
+
+But it will be said, while so much was done for the workman, have we
+not heard that his wages were a few cents, almost nothing, and that
+his hours were long and he was little better than a slave? Only the
+first portion of this has any truth in it. He did get what seems to us
+a mere pittance for his day's wages. As pointed out by M. Urbain
+Gohier, the French socialist, when he visited this country to lecture
+a few years ago, the workmen of this time had already obtained the
+eight-hour day, the three eights as they are called, eight hours of
+work, eight hours for sleep and eight hours for themselves. Besides
+they had the Saturday half-holiday, or at least, after the Vesper
+hour, work could not be required of them, and there was more than one
+holy-day of {424} obligation every two weeks, on which they did not
+work, and on the Vigil of which work ceased at four o'clock. As for
+their wages, by Act of Parliament they got fourpence a day at the end
+of the century and this does not seem much, but the same Act of
+Parliament set the minimum wage and the maximum price that could be
+charged for the necessities of life. A pair of hand-made shoes could
+be bought for fourpence, and no workman can do anything like that for
+a day's wage at the present or usually for more than double his daily
+wages. A fat goose cost but twopence halfpenny, and when the father of
+a family can buy two fat geese for his daily wages, there is no danger
+of the family starving. Our wages are higher, but the necessities of
+life have gone up so high that the wages can scarcely touch them.
+
+In the parliament that passed these laws the greater proportion were
+college men. I suppose probably three-fourths of the members of both
+houses had been at the university. Now that the question of the
+abolition of the House of Lords is occupying much attention, we
+sometimes hear of it as a mediaeval institution. It is spoken of as an
+inheritance from an earlier and ruder time. I wonder how much the
+people who talk thus know about the realities. They must be densely
+ignorant of what the House of Lords used to be. At the present moment
+there are in the English House of Lords 627 members, only {425} 75 of
+whom do not owe their position directly or solely to the accident of
+birth. Even about half of this seventy-five can only be selected from
+the hereditary nobility of Scotland and of Ireland. In the Middle Ages
+it was quite different. Until the reformation so-called the Lords
+Spiritual formed a majority of the House of Lords. They consisted not
+only of the bishops but of the abbots and priors of monasteries and
+the masters of the various religious and knightly orders. This upper
+chamber of the olden time was elected in the best possible sense of
+the word. They were usually men who had risen from the ranks of the
+people and who had been chosen because of their unselfishness to be
+heads of religious houses and religious orders. There were abuses by
+which some of these Lords Spiritual obtained their places by what we
+now call pull, but the great majority of them were selected for their
+virtues, and because they had shown their power to rule over
+themselves had been chosen to rule over others.
+
+They were men who could own nothing for themselves and families, and
+in whom every motive, human and divine, appealed to make life as happy
+as possible for others. They were all of them university men. Compare
+for a moment the present House of Lords with that House of Lords and
+you will see the difference between the old time and the present. No
+wonder England was merry England, no wonder historian {426} after
+historian has declared that the people were happier at this time than
+they have ever been before or since, no wonder men had leisure to make
+great monuments of genius in architecture, in the arts and in
+literature. No wonder the universities, in the form in which they have
+been useful to mankind ever since, were organized in this century; no
+wonder all our rights and liberties come to us. Great generations of
+the university men nobly did their work.
+
+Young men, you are graduating from a college that is literally a
+lineal descendant of those old-time universities. You have had the
+training of heart and of will as well as of mind that was given to
+these students of the olden times. You have been taught that the end
+of life is not self, but that life shall mean something for others as
+well as yourself, that every action shall be looked at from the
+standpoint of what it means for others as well as for yourselves, and
+that you shall never do anything that will even remotely injure
+others.
+
+You are not only going to lead honest but honorable lives. You are
+going to be true to yourselves first, but absolutely faithful to
+others. They are telling a story in New York now that, perhaps, some
+of you have heard. It is of the young man who had graduated at the
+head of his class at the high school and delighted his old father's
+heart. He kept up the good work, and came out first in his class at
+college. Then, when {427} he led a large class at the law school, you
+can understand how proud the old gentleman was. Tom came home to
+practise law in a long-established firm where there was an opening for
+him. Some six months later he said, one day, to his father, "Well, I
+made $10,000 to-day," and the old gentleman said, "Well, Tom, that is
+a good deal of money to make. I hope you made it honestly." The young
+man lifted his head and said, "You can be sure that I would not make
+it dishonestly." "That is right," the old man said. "Tell us how it
+came about." Then Tom told how he knew that a trolley line was going
+to run out far from town and that he had secured an option on some
+property through which it was going to pass. "You know old Farmer
+Simpson out on the Plank Road?" he said. "His boys have left him and
+gone to the city; he cannot work his farm any longer himself, and he
+cannot hire men for it, and he wants to get rid of it. I got positive
+information yesterday through one of our clients that a trolley line
+is going out through that farm. When I went out to see the old man he
+knew me at once, spoke about you, and when I offered to try to sell
+the farm for him and suggested the advisability of signing an option
+on it to me at a definite figure, so that I may be able to close the
+price with any one who wanted it, he signed at once at a ridiculously
+low figure because, though, as he said, he did not care to sign the
+papers for lawyer folk, {428} he knew I was different. I have got the
+farm at so low a price that $10,000 is the smallest profit I can look
+for. I think I will get that profit out of the company for the right
+of way, and then I will have the rest of the farm for myself. It will
+make a mighty nice country place."
+
+Then there was a pause. The old gentleman did not lighten up any over
+the story, as Tom seemed to think he would. After a minute's silence
+the old man said, "Well, Tom, that was not what I sent you to college
+and law school for, to come out here and take advantage of my old
+neighbors. I thought that you would be helpful to us all, and that
+there would be more of happiness in the world because of your
+education. You may call that transaction honest, and perhaps it is
+legal, but I know that it is dishonorable. Tom, if you don't give
+Farmer Simpson back his option I do not think I want you to live here
+with me any more. Somehow I couldn't feel as if I could hold up my
+head if ever I passed Farmer Simpson and his wife, if you did. You may
+act as his attorney if you will and take a good fair fee for it, but
+you must not absorb all the profits just because the old man is in
+trouble and is glad to trust an old neighbor's son."
+
+Of course Tom's father was dreadfully old-fashioned and out of date.
+Of course there are some people who will say that this sort of thing
+is quixotic. Now, this sort of thing is what higher education should
+mean, and does mean, in a {429} Catholic college. Your principles are
+not taught you for the sake of exercises of piety, nor attendance at
+religious duties. These you have got to do anyhow, but they are meant
+to inflow into every action of your life and to make the basic
+principle of them all, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."
+
+You are graduating from a Catholic college with high aims, you have
+had many advantages, more than are accorded usually in our time to men
+of your years in the training of heart and will as well as intellect,
+and much is expected of you. You are rich in real education and a
+stewardship of great intellectual and moral wealth is given over to
+you, and you must be better than others and be, above all, ever
+helpful to others. Your education was not given for your benefit, but
+for that of the community. Your neighbors are all round you. See that
+at the end of your life they shall all be happier because you have
+lived. If you do not do so you shall sadly disappoint the hopes of
+your teachers and, above all, you shall be false to the trust that has
+been confided to you.
+
+Pass on the torch of charity. Let all the world be dear to you in the
+old-fashioned sense of that dear old word charity, not merely
+distantly friendly in the new-fangled sense of the long Greek term
+philanthropy. Be just while you are living your lives and you will not
+have the burden of philanthropy that so many rich men are now
+complaining of in your older years, and, above all, {430} you will not
+have the contempt and aversion of those who may accept your bounty,
+but who know how questionably you acquired the means of giving it and
+are not really thankful.
+
+I have done but for just one word. Be just and fear not. If you will
+be just in your dealing with men, you will have no need for further
+advice and no need for repentance. I thank you.
+
+
+
+{431}
+
+NEW ENGLANDISM
+
+{432}
+
+  "It isn't so much the ignorance of mankind that makes them
+  ridiculous as the knowing so many things that ain't so."
+  --Josh Billings, _writing as "Uncle Esek" in the "Century."_
+
+
+{433}
+
+NEW ENGLANDISM [Footnote 27]
+
+  [Footnote 27: The material for this was collected for a banquet
+  address in Boston on Evacuation Day, 1909, before the Knights of
+  Columbus. It was developed for various lectures on the history of
+  education, in order to illustrate how easy it is to produce a
+  tradition which is not supported by historical documents. In its
+  present form it appeared as an article in the _West Coast Magazine_
+  for July, 1910, at the request of the editor, Mr. John S. McGroarty,
+  with whom, more years ago than either of us care to recall now, I
+  had learned the New England brand of United States history at a
+  country school.]
+
+
+There is a little story told of a supposed recent celestial
+experience, that seems, to some people, at least--perhaps it may be
+said without exaggeration, to most of those alas! not born in New
+England--to illustrate very well the attitude of New Englanders, and
+especially of the Bostonese portion of the New England population,
+towards all the rest of the world and the heavens besides. St. Peter,
+the celestial gate-keeper, is supposed to be disturbed from the
+slumbers that have been possible so much oftener of late years because
+of the infrequent admissions since the world has lost interest in
+other-worldliness, by an imperious knocking at the gate. "Who's
+there?" he asks in a very mild voice, for he knows by long experience
+that that kind of knocking usually comes from some grand dame from the
+terrestrial regions. The reply, in rather imperative {434} tone, is,
+"I am Mrs. Beacon from Boston," with emphasis on the Boston, "Well,
+madam," Peter says in reply, "you may come in, but," he adds with a
+wisdom learned doubtless from many previous incidents of the same
+kind, "you won't like it."
+
+Of course, the thoroughgoing admiration of New England people, and
+especially of Bostonians, for all that is New England, and, above all,
+all that is Boston, has been well recognized for a long while and has
+not failed of proper appreciation, to some degree at least, even in
+New England itself. To Oliver Wendell Holmes we owe that delightful
+characterization of it in the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,"
+"Boston State House is the hub of the solar system. You could not pry
+that out of a Boston man (and _a fortiori_ I think it may be said out
+of a Boston woman) if you had the tire of all creation straightened
+out for a crowbar." James Russell Lowell expressed the same idea very
+forcibly in other words in some expressions of his essay on "A Certain
+Condescension in Foreigners," that have been perhaps oftenest quoted
+and are dear to every true New Englander's heart. Of course, he meant
+it a great deal more than half in jest, but who of us who know our
+Down Easterners doubt that most of them take it considerably more than
+half in earnest? Their attitude shows us very well how much the
+daughter New England was ready to take after mother England in {435}
+the matter of thinking so much of herself that she must perforce be
+condescending to others.
+
+Lowell's expression is worthy to be placed beside that of Oliver
+Wendell Holmes for the guidance of American minds. They are keys to
+the situation. "I know one person," said Lowell, "who is singular
+enough to think Cambridge (Mass.) the very best spot on the habitable
+globe. 'Doubtless God could have made a better, but doubtless he never
+did.'" It only needed his next sentence fully to complete the
+significance of Boston and its academic suburb in the eyes of every
+good Bostonian. "The full tide of human existence may be felt here as
+keenly as Johnson felt it at Charing Cross and in a larger sense."
+
+Of course there is no insuperable objection to allowing New Englanders
+to add to the gayety of nations in this supreme occupation with
+themselves, and we would gladly suffer them if only they would not
+intrude their New Englandism on some of the most important concerns of
+the nation. But that is impossible, for New Englandism is most
+obtrusive. It is New England that has written most of the history of
+this country and its influence has been paramount on most of our
+education. It has supplied most of the writers of history and moulded
+most of the school-teachers of the country. The consequence has been a
+stamping of New Englandism all over our history and on the minds of
+rising generations for the better part of a century, with a {436}
+perversion of the realities of history in favor of New England that is
+quite startling when attention is particularly directed to it.
+
+The editors of the "Cambridge modern History," in their preface,
+called attention to the immense differences between what may be called
+documentary and traditional history. They declare that it has become
+"impossible for historical writers of the present age to trust without
+reserve even to the most respected secondary authorities. The honest
+student finds himself continually deserted, retarded, misled, by the
+classics of historical literature, and has to hew his own way through
+multitudinous transactions, periodicals, and official publications in
+order to reach the truth." Most people reading this would be prone to
+think that any such arraignment of American history, as is thus made
+by the distinguished Cambridge editors of history in general, would be
+quite out of the question. After all, our history, properly speaking,
+extends only over a couple of centuries and we would presumably be too
+close to the events for any serious distortion of them to have been
+made. For that reason it is interesting to realize what an unfortunate
+influence the fact that our writers have come mainly from New England
+and have been full of the New England spirit has had on our American
+history.
+
+Every American schoolboy is likely to be possessed of the idea that
+the first blood shed in the Revolution was in the so-called Boston
+Massacre. {437} It is well known that that event thus described was
+nothing more than a street brawl in which five totally unarmed
+passers-by were shot down without their making the slightest
+resistance, as an act of retaliation on the part of drunken soldiers
+annoyed by boys throwing snowballs at them. This has been magnified
+into an important historical event. Two months before it, however,
+there was an encounter in New York with the citizens under arms as
+well as the soldiers, and it was at Golden Hill on Manhattan Island
+and not in Boston that the first blood of the Revolution was shed.
+Miss Mary L. Booth, in her "History of the City of New York," says:
+"Thus ended the Battle of Golden Hill, a conflict of two days'
+duration, which, originating as it did in the defense of a principle,
+was an affair of which New Yorkers have just reason to be proud, and
+which is worthy of far more prominence than has usually been given it
+by standard historians. It was not until nearly two months after that
+the Boston Massacre occurred, a contest which has been glorified and
+perpetuated in history, yet this was second both in date and in
+significance to the New York Battle of Golden Hill."
+
+Practically every other incident of these times has been treated in
+just this way, in our school histories at least. Every American
+schoolboy knows of the Boston tea party, and usually can and does tell
+the story with great gusto because {438} it delights his youthful
+dramatic sense. Not only the children, but every one else seems to
+think that the organization of the tea party was entirely due to the
+New England spirit of resistance to "taxation without representation."
+How few of them are taught that this destruction of the tea had been
+definitely agreed upon by all the colonies and that it was only by
+chance that Massachusetts happened to be first in the execution of the
+project. My friend, Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, in his article on "Some
+Popular Myths of American History," in the _Magazine of History_
+(February, 1905), has stated this aspect of the question very
+forcibly. "Previous to the arrival of the ships in Boston, concerted
+action had been agreed upon, as has been already shown, in regard to
+the destruction of the tea, from Charleston, S. C., to Portsmouth, N.
+H. The people of Philadelphia had been far more active and outspoken
+at the outset than they of Boston, and it was this decisiveness which
+caused the people of Boston to act, after they had freely sought
+beforehand the advice and moral support of the other colonies."
+
+It would be utterly unjust to limit the movement which culminated in
+the Boston Tea Party to any one or even several of the colonies; to
+make so much of the Boston incident is to falsify history in fact,
+but, above all, in the impression produced upon the rising generation
+that Boston was a leader in this movement. The first {439} tea-ship
+arrived in Boston November 28, 1773, and two others shortly after, but
+it was not until the evening of December 16th that their contents were
+thrown overboard. Over six weeks before this a precisely similar
+occurrence had taken place in New York without any such delay, and
+though the movement proved futile because it was undertaken on a false
+alarm, it is easy to understand that due credit should be given to
+those who took part in it for their thoroughgoing spirit of opposition
+to British measures. On this subject once more Dr. Emmet, whose great
+collection of Americana made him probably more familiar with he
+sources of American history than any one of our generation, has been,
+in the article already quoted, especially emphatic.
+
+"On November 5, 1773, an alarm was raised in the City of New York to
+the effect that a tea-ship had entered the harbor. A large assembly of
+people at once occurred, among whom those in charge of the movement
+were disguised as Mohawk Indians. This alarm proved a false one, but
+at a meeting then organized a series of resolutions was adopted which
+was received by the other colonies as the initiative in the plan of
+resistance already determined upon throughout the country. Our
+schoolbooks are chiefly responsible for the almost universal
+impression that the destruction of tea, which occurred in Boston
+Harbor, was an episode confined to that city, while the fact is that
+the tea sent to this country was either {440} destroyed or sent back
+to England from every seaport in the colonies. The first tea-ship
+happened to arrive in Boston and the first tea was destroyed there;
+for this circumstance due credit should be given the Bostonians. But
+the fact that the actors in this affair were disguised as Mohawk
+Indians shows that they were but following the lead of New York, where
+this particular disguise had been adopted forty-one days before, for
+the same purpose."
+
+Just as the Boston Massacre has been insistently pointed out as the
+first blood shed for American liberty, so the Battle of Lexington has
+been drilled into our school children's minds as the first organized
+armed resistance to the British. Without wishing at all to detract
+from the glory of those who fought at Lexington, there is every reason
+not to let the youth of this country grow up with the notion that
+Massachusetts was the first to put itself formally under arms against
+the mother country. Lexington was not fought until April 19, 1775. The
+battle of Alamance, N. C., which occurred on May 16, 1771, deserves
+much more to be considered as the first organized resistance to
+British oppression. The North Carolina Regulators rather than the New
+England Minute Men should have the honor of priority as the first
+armed defenders of their rights against encroachment. The subject is
+all the more interesting because the British leader who tried to ride
+rough-shod over stout Americans in North Carolina and met {441} with
+open opposition was the infamous General Tryon of subsequent
+Connecticut fame. Every one knows of his pernicious activity in
+Connecticut, very few that he had been previously active in North
+Carolina. That is the difference between history as "it has been
+written" for New England and the South. That the Battle of Alamance
+was no mere chance engagement, and that the North Carolinians were
+aflame with the real spirit that finally gave freedom to the colonies,
+can be best realized from the fact that the first Declaration of
+Independence was made at Mecklenberg in North Carolina, and that some
+of its sentiments, and even perhaps its phrases, were adopted in the
+subsequent formal Declaration of Independence of all the colonies.
+
+For those who may be surprised that North Carolina should have been so
+prominent in these first steps in Revolutionary history and these
+primary developments of the great movement that led to the freedom of
+the Colonies, for we are accustomed to think of North Carolina as one
+of the backward, unimportant portions of the country, it may be well
+to say that at the time of the Revolution she was the third State in
+the Union in population, following Virginia and Pennsylvania in the
+number of inhabitants, exceeding New York in population by the total
+census of New York City and Long Island, and ahead of Massachusetts,
+which immediately followed it in the list by almost as many. The
+sturdy {442} inhabitants of the northern of the Carolinas had been for
+a decade before the Revolution constantly a thorn in the side of the
+British government and had been recognized as leaders in the great
+movement that was gradually being organized to bring all the colonies
+together for mutual help against the encroachments of the British
+government on their rights. Our school children fail almost entirely
+to know this because they have been absorbed by Massachusetts
+history--but then North Carolina did not have the good fortune to
+have writers of history. New England had them and to spare, and with a
+patriotic zeal for their native heath beyond even their numbers. Of
+course it may be said that these are old-time historical traditions
+which have found their way into history and are difficult to get out,
+though most of those who know any history realize their absurdity, and
+the modern historian, even though he may be from New England, holds
+the balance much more equitably between the different portions of the
+country. Apparently this is just what is not true, for New England
+professors of history and writers of history still continue to write
+in the same old strain of such surpassing admiration for New
+Englanders that every other portion of the country is cast into
+shadow. It was a distinguished professor of history at Harvard who,
+within five years, in an important historical work, [Footnote 28]
+said: "Whatever the social mixture {443} of the future, one thing is
+certain; the standards, aspirations and moral and political ideas of
+the original English settlers not only dominate their own descendants,
+but permeate the body of immigrants of other races--the Puritans have
+furnished the little leaven that leavens the whole lump."
+
+
+  [Footnote 28: "The American Nation," 27 vols.]
+
+
+One wonders just what such a sentence means and, of course, finds it
+in many ways amazingly amusing. One would think that the only English
+settlers were the Puritans, and that they had had great influence in
+the origin of our government. Apparently, for the moment at least,
+this Harvard professor forgot in his enthusiasm for the forefathers in
+Massachusetts that the other branch of English settlers, those of
+Virginia, were ever so much more important in the colonial times and
+for long afterwards, than the Puritans. Of the first five Presidents
+four were from Virginia. It is possible they forget now, in
+Massachusetts, that only one was from Massachusetts, and that that one
+did more to disturb government "of the people, by the people, and for
+the people" than any other, so that after four short years the country
+would have no more of him and no more of these Massachusetts Puritans
+for more than a quarter of a century. This dear, good professor of
+Harvard has deliberately called all the non-English elements in our
+population foreigners because of his absorption in New England. He
+said: "If the list of American {444} great men be scanned the
+contribution of the foreigner stands out clearly. The two greatest
+financiers of America have been the English West Indian Alexander
+Hamilton and the Genevan Albert Gallatin. Two Presidents, Van Buren
+and Roosevelt, are of Dutch stock; five others, Jackson, Buchanan,
+Grant, Arthur and McKinley of Scotch and Scotch-Irish descent." All
+"foreigners" except the New Englanders! Save the mark!
+
+It is rather interesting to find that their contemporaries of the
+Revolutionary period did not share that high estimation of the New
+Englanders which they themselves clung to so tenaciously and have writ
+so large in our history that the tradition of New England's unselfish
+wonder-working in that olden time has never perished. Most of us are
+likely to know something about the rather low estimation, at most
+toleration, in which during the Revolutionary period many of the
+members of Congress from New England were held by fellow-members of
+Congress from other portions of the country. They were the most
+difficult to bring into harmony with others, the slowest to see
+anything that did not directly enhance the interests of New England;
+they were more constantly in opposition to great movements that meant
+much for the future of the colonies themselves and the government of
+the United States afterward than any others. We are prone to excuse
+this, however, on the score {445} of their intolerant Puritanism, and
+taught by our New England schoolmasters, most of us, at least, fondly
+cherish the notion that all the New Englanders made supreme sacrifices
+for the country and did it with a whole-hearted spirit of
+self-forgetfulness that made every man, above all in Massachusetts, an
+out-and-out patriot. It is curious to find how different were the
+opinions of those from other portions of the country who came in
+contact with New Englanders at this time, from that which is to be
+found in their histories.
+
+Washington, for instance, had by no means the same high opinion of the
+New Englanders, and, above all, of the New England troops, that they
+had of themselves and that their historians have so carefully
+presented of them. It is said that Sparks edited many of Washington's
+criticisms of New Englanders out of his edition of the "Life and
+Letters." Certain it is that some of the letters which Sparks did not
+consider it proper to quote from, contain material that is very
+interesting for the modern historian who wants to get at contemporary
+documents, and for whom contemporary opinions such as that of
+Washington cannot but seem especially valuable. In a letter from the
+camp at Cambridge, August 20, 1775, to Lund Washington at Mt. Vernon,
+Washington said: "The people of this Government [Massachusetts] have
+obtained a character which they by no means deserve; their officers,
+generally {446} speaking, are the most indifferent kind of people I
+ever saw. I have already broke one colonel and five captains for
+cowardice, and for drawing more pay and provisions than they had men
+in their companies. There are two more colonels now under arrest and
+to be tried for the same offenses; in short, they are by no means such
+troops, in any respect, as you are led to believe of them from the
+accounts which are published; but I need not make myself enemies among
+them by this declaration, although it is consistent with truth. I dare
+say the men would fight very well (if properly officered), although
+they are an exceedingly dirty and nasty people. Had they been properly
+conducted at Bunker's Hill (on the 17th of June) or those that were
+there properly supported, the regulars would have met with a shameful
+defeat, and a much more considerable loss than they did, which is now
+known to be exactly 1,057, killed and wounded. It was for their
+behavior on that occasion that the above officers were broke, for I
+never spared one that was accused of cowardice, but brought them to
+immediate trial."
+
+One of the most interesting perversions of the history written by New
+Englanders is that in their emphasis of New Englandism they have
+sometimes signally failed to write even their own history as the
+documents show it. There has been much insistence, for instance, on
+the supposed absolute purity of the English origin of {447} the
+settlers in New England and especially in Massachusetts until long
+after the Revolution. Palfrey, in the introduction to his "History of
+New England," says: "The people of New England are a singularly
+unmixed race. There is probably not a county in England occupied by a
+population of purer English blood than they are." Senator Lodge, forty
+years later, in his "History of the Revolution," re-echoes Mr.
+Palfrey's words, and says that "the people were of almost pure English
+blood, with a small infusion of Huguenots and a slight mingling in New
+Hampshire of Scotch-Irish from Londonderry." During the past ten years
+the Secretary of State of Massachusetts, by order of the Legislature,
+has been compiling from the state archives the muster roll of the
+Massachusetts soldiers and sailors of the Revolutionary War. This does
+not bear out at all what Mr. Palfrey and Mr. Lodge have asserted so
+emphatically as to the exclusively English origin of the population of
+New England and, above all, of Massachusetts at this critical time.
+There is not a familiar Irish name that does not occur many times. The
+fighting race was well represented. There were 167 Kellys and 79
+Burkes, though by some unaccountable circumstance only 24 Sheas. There
+were 388 O'Briens and other O's and Macs galore. There are Aherns and
+Brannigans and Bannons and Careys and Carrolls and Connellys, Connors
+and Corcorans and Costellos and Cosgroves and {448} Costigans, and so
+on right through the alphabet. Curiously enough there are no Lodges on
+the muster roll, but there is not an Irish name beginning with "L"
+that is not represented. There are no less than 69 Larkins and some 20
+Learys and Lonergans and Lanigans and all the other Celtic patronymics
+in "L."
+
+Dr. Emmet, who has investigated very carefully the question of the
+deportation of the Irish to this country under Cromwell, says that
+many shiploads of them were sent to Massachusetts in the seventeenth
+century. He declares that enough Irish girls were sent over to
+Massachusetts at this time to furnish wives for all the immediate
+descendants of the Puritans. There are certainly many more Irish names
+than are dreamt of in the very early times. Priscilla Alden's name
+before she tempted John to give her his rather pretty name, has never
+found its way into poetry because no poetry would stand it--it was
+Mullen or Mullins.
+
+Even after the Revolution the place of New England, but especially
+Massachusetts, in the Republic has been sadly misrepresented in our
+American history as a rule, because our school historians at least
+have usually been Bostonians. When Washington, in 1789, made his first
+visit as President of the United States to New England, he was
+received very enthusiastically in Connecticut, though this state had
+not been wholly favorable to the new government, but in {449}
+Massachusetts his reception was distinctly cold, and indeed, almost
+insulting. John Hancock was Governor of this State and he absolutely
+refused to meet the President at the State line, though most other
+Governors had done this, and while President Washington was in Boston
+he declined even to call on him. The reason for this was the
+assumption of a characteristic Massachusetts attitude. There seems no
+doubt now that John Hancock, not because he was pompous John Hancock,
+not because he was the Governor of Massachusetts--and this idea had
+been fostered among his people--honestly believed that the Governor of
+Massachusetts was a greater man in every way than the President of the
+nation.
+
+There are many who might say that this state of mind has endured even
+to the present time. Certainly Massachusetts' representative men have
+constantly set the interests of their commonwealth above those of the
+Union. New England has always had a tendency that way. During the
+newspaper agitation over the recent tariff bill one of the cartoonists
+represented the United States as a puppy dog with New England as the
+tail, with the caption, "How long is the tail going to wag the dog?"
+During the second war with Great Britain in 1812 New England was the
+most recalcitrant portion of the Union, and another conceited Governor
+of the State hampered the nation in every way. Our histories for {450}
+schools, at least, have been so written as to produce the impression
+that only the South ever was dissatisfied with the Union, inclined to
+be rebellious and ready to talk about the nullification of the compact
+which bound the states together. The Hartford convention is mentioned,
+but not given near the place that it deserves, since it represents the
+feeling, very rife at that time, that such a procedure as
+nullification was quite justifiable. Twelve delegates from
+Massachusetts were present in this convention and there was a decided
+spirit of rebellion against the general government because, forsooth,
+the war had injured Boston's business.
+
+It is not alone in history, however, that New England's thoroughgoing
+admiration for herself has served to disturb the attainment of truth
+by the rising generation of Americans. Besides exaggerating the
+comparative influence of New England in the affairs of the country,
+they have exaggerated the place of favorite New England authors in the
+literature of the world to such a degree that growing young America
+cannot help but have a number of false notions of comparative literary
+values, which he has to rid himself of before he is able to attain any
+proper appreciation of world literature or even of English literature.
+A little group of New England literary folk came into prominence about
+the middle of the nineteenth century. Because they were the best that
+New England could produce, {451} apparently they were considered by
+New Englanders as the best in the world. English critics, of course,
+laughed at their self-complacency, but our New England schoolmasters
+took New England's writers so seriously and proceeded to write so much
+about them and make them so much the subject of teaching not alone in
+New England but in every part of the country, that now it is almost
+impossible to get our people to accept any true standards, since
+admiration for these quite unimportant New England writers has ruined
+any proper critical literary appreciation.
+
+As a consequence our rising generations for some time have been
+inclined to take Emerson seriously as a great philosopher, writer and
+thinker. They have been very prone to accept dear old Oliver Wendell
+Holmes, kindliest of men, charmingest of writers, as a great literary
+man. There have literally been hundreds of English writers such as
+these in the past three centuries of English literary history, who now
+take up at most but a few lines in even large histories of English
+literature. Taking Emerson seriously is fortunately going out of
+fashion. If one wanted a criterion of the depth of thought of the
+generation that accepted him originally and passed him along as a
+significant philosophic prophet, then surely one need go no farther.
+Our optimistic Carlyle, writing in a minor key, looms up so much
+smaller now than a generation ago that we can readily realize how
+{452} New Englandism infected literary and philosophic standards. What
+is thus said of Emerson may be repeated, with perhaps a little less
+emphasis, of the other writers whom New England has insisted on
+proclaiming to the world as representative of all that was best and
+highest in literature--because for a moment they commanded attention
+in New England.
+
+There was a time, not so long ago, when it was considered the proper
+thing in this country to talk of Longfellow as a great poet. Of
+course, no one does so any more. The devotion to him of so much time
+in our schools, while so many much more important contributions to our
+English poetry have but scanty attention paid them, is still producing
+not only a false impression on children's minds as to his proper place
+in literature, but is playing sad havoc with literary standards
+generally, so far as they may be the subject of teaching. Longfellow
+was, of course, nothing more than a pleasant balladist and a writer of
+conventional thoughts on rather commonplace themes in reasonably
+smooth verse. For really profound thought Longfellow's poetry has
+never a place. His loftiest flights of imagination do not bring him
+anywhere near the great mysteries of human life or the deep thoughts
+that run through men's minds when they are touched to the quick. Of
+the sterner passions of men he had scarcely an inkling.
+
+Whittier, of course, has much more real poetry {453} in his little
+store of verse than Longfellow, but Whittier's voice is only a very
+low treble and his religious training was too narrow to permit him any
+breadth of poetic feeling. No one thinks now that anything that
+Whittier wrote will live to be read by any but curious students of
+certain anti-slavery movements in connection with the history of our
+civil war. He will have an interest for antiquarian litterateurs,
+scarcely more than that. Of James Russell Lowell's rather charming
+academic verse one would prefer to say nothing, only that the serious
+study of it in our schools leads the present generation to think that
+he, too, must be considered seriously as a poet. It is doubtful if
+Russell Lowell ever thought of himself as a poet at all. Appropriate
+thoughts charmingly expressed for occasions, in verse reasonably
+tuneful, he could do better than most men of his time in America--that
+was all. Of real poetic quality there is almost none. Lowell's verse
+will not be read at all except by the professional critic before
+another generation has passed, and I am sure that no one realized this
+better than Lowell himself.
+
+What Longfellow and Lowell will be remembered for in the history of
+nineteenth century literature, most of the rising generation of
+Americans know very little about and the great majority of them
+completely ignore. It is for their critical and expository work in
+introducing great foreign authors--really great poets--to the {454}
+knowledge of their countrymen that both Longfellow and Lowell will
+deserve the gratitude of all future generations and some of their work
+in this regard will endure when their verse is forgotten. Longfellow's
+edition of Dante was not only well worth all the time he gave to it
+during thirty years, but represents a monument in American literature
+that will be fondly looked back to by many a generation of
+English-speaking people. Very probably of his work in verse the
+"Golden Legend" will mean more to a future generation than almost
+anything else that Longfellow has done. Above all, it was precious in
+making Americans realize how profound and how beautiful had been the
+work of the poets of Europe seven centuries ago.
+
+In the light of this gradual reduction of the value of New England's
+literature to its lowest terms it is extremely amusing to find
+occasionally expressions of the value of the New England period in
+English literature as expressed by enthusiastic New Englanders and,
+above all, by ardent--what, for want of a better term we must
+call--New Englanderesses. One of these, Miss Helen Winslow, has
+recently and quite deservedly been made great fun of by Mr. H. W.
+Horwin in an article in the _National Review_ (England), headed, "Are
+Americans Provincial?" which brings home a few truths to us in what
+concerns our complacent self-satisfaction with ourselves. Miss Winslow
+declares that the {455} great Bostonian period was "a literary epoch,
+the like of which has scarcely been known since the Elizabethan
+period." She proclaims that "The Papyrus Club [of Boston] is known to
+men of letters and attainments everywhere." She notes that "Scott,
+Balzac and Thackeray received a legal training," just when she is
+going to add that "Robert Grant is also a lawyer." She adds that
+"young people everywhere adore the name of Sophie Sweet" (whoever she
+may be). Is it any wonder that the ordinary non-New-England American
+"gets hot under the collar" for his countrymen under such
+circumstances?
+
+Two really great masters of literature we had in America during the
+nineteenth century, Poe and Hawthorne. Because of our New England
+schoolmasters, as it seems to most of us, Poe has never come into his
+own proper appreciation in this country. The French consider him the
+great master of the short story, and that has come to occupy such a
+prominent place in our so-called literature in America, that one might
+look for an apotheosis of Poe. He is the one writer whose works in
+both prose and verse have influenced deeply the literary men of other
+countries besides our own. No other American writer has been given the
+tribute of more than a perfunctory notice in the non-English-speaking
+countries. In spite of this Poe's name was kept out of the Hall of
+Fame at New York University, {456} which was meant to enshrine the
+memory of our greatest thinkers and literary men, though we had
+generally supposed that the national selection of the jury to decide
+those whose names should be honored, would preclude all possibility of
+any narrow sectional influence perverting the true purpose of the
+institution. Poe has never been popular in New England, nor has he
+been appreciated at his true worth by the literary circles of New
+England. Their schoolmasterly influence has been pervasive enough to
+keep from Poe his true meed of praise among our people generally,
+though all our poets and literary men look up to him as our greatest
+poetic genius.
+
+As for Hawthorne, there is no doubt that he is our greatest American
+writer in prose. He was the one man in New England with a great
+message. His writings came from deep down in the human heart, from the
+very wellsprings of human passion, and had their origin not far from
+where soul touches body in this human compound. The English, usually
+supposed to be slow of recognition for things American, acknowledged
+his high worth almost at once. Some of us here in America, indeed,
+have had the feeling that to a great extent our people have had to
+learn the lesson of proper appreciation for Hawthorne from the
+English-speaking people across the water. To Americans, for years, he
+was little more than a story-writer, not so popular as {457} many
+another writer of stories, and his really great qualities were to a
+great extent ignored. Because Puritan New England was out of sympathy
+with the mystical spirit of his writings only a late and quite
+inadequate appreciation of the value of his work was formed by his
+countrymen. Something of this unfortunate lack of appreciation crept
+into the schoolmastering of the country, and Hawthorne is probably not
+as highly valued in his native land as he is in England, though France
+and Germany have learned to look up to him as our greatest of American
+literary men--the one of our writers who, with Poe, attracts a world
+audience.
+
+When there is question of anything else besides literature, of course,
+New England has no claims at all to make, and she has stood for many
+unfortunate austere tendencies in American life. For anything like
+public spirit for art or music or aesthetics in any department the
+Puritan soul had no use. Consequently our artistic development was
+seriously delayed as a nation by the influence that New England had as
+the schoolmaster of the country. The consequence was that our churches
+were bare and ugly, our homes lacking in the spirit of beauty and our
+municipalities mere places to live and make money in, but with no
+provision for the enjoyment of life. It is in this that New England
+has doubtless done us most harm and it is for this reason that many
+people will re-echo that expression of a {458} descendant of the
+Puritans who declares that it would have been "an awfully good thing
+when the Puritans landed on Plymouth Rock if only Plymouth Rock had
+landed on the Puritans." It would have saved us an immense deal of
+inhibition of all the art impulses of this country, which were almost
+completely choked off for so long by the narrow Puritanism so rampant
+in New England and so diffusively potent in our educational system.
+
+In conclusion one feels like recalling once more Lowell's "Essay on a
+Certain Condescension in Foreigners." Surely the daughter New England,
+consciously or unconsciously, has treated the rest of the country very
+much like Mother England used to treat nascent English America long
+ago. There are many of us who in recent years have come to know New
+Englandism and its proneness to be condescending, who have felt very
+much like paraphrasing, with the addition of the adjective "new" here
+and there, certain of Lowell's best-known sentences. The new version
+will make quite as satisfactory a bit of satire on our Down East
+compatriots as Lowell's hits on the mother country and our English
+cousins across the water. Very probably there are more people who will
+appreciate the satire in this new application of the great American
+essayist's words than they did in its original form: "It will take
+(New) England a great while to get over her airs of patronage toward
+us, or even passably {459} to conceal them. She has a conviction that
+whatever good there is in us is wholly (New) English, when the truth
+is that we are worth nothing except so far as we have disinfected
+ourselves of (Neo-) Anglicanism."
+
+
+
+[Additional Material]
+
+THE POPES AND SCIENCE--The story of the Papal Relations
+to Science from the Middle Ages down to the Nineteenth
+Century. By James J. Walsh, M. D., Ph. D., LL. D. 440 pp.
+Price. $2.00 net.
+
+  Prof. Pagel, Professor of History at the University of Berlin: "This
+  book represents the most serious contribution to the history of
+  medicine that has ever come out of America."
+
+  Sir Clifford Allbutt, Regius Professor of Physic at the University
+  of Cambridge (England): "The book as a whole is a fair as well as a
+  scholarly argument."
+
+  _The Evening Post_ (New York) says: "However strong the reader's
+  prejudice * * * * he cannot lay down Prof. Walsh's volume without at
+  least conceding that the author has driven his pen hard and deep
+  into the 'academic superstition' about Papal Opposition to science."
+  In a previous issue it had said: "We venture to prophesy that all
+  who swear by Dr. Andrew D. White's History of the Warfare of Science
+  with Theology in Christendom will find their hands full, if they
+  attempt to answer Dr. James J. Walsh's The Popes and Science."
+
+  _The Literary Digest_ said: "The book is well worth reading for its
+  extensive learning and the vigor of its style."
+
+  _The Southern Messenger_ says: "Books like this make it clear that
+  it is ignorance alone that makes people, even supposedly educated
+  people, still cling to the old calumnies."
+
+  _The Nation_ (New York) says: "The learned Fordham Physician has at
+  command an enormous mass of facts, and he orders them with logic,
+  force and literary ease. Prof. Walsh convicts his opponents of hasty
+  generalizing if not anti-clerical zeal."
+
+  _The Pittsburg Post_ says: "With the fair attitude of mind and
+  influenced only by the student's desire to procure knowledge, this
+  book becomes at once something to fascinate. On every page
+  authoritative facts confute the stereotyped statement of the purely
+  theological publications."
+
+  Prof. Welch, of Johns Hopkins, quoting Martial, said: "It is
+  pleasant indeed to drink at the living fountain-heads of knowledge
+  after previously having had only the stagnant pools of second-hand
+  authority."
+
+  Prof. Piersol, Professor of Anatomy at the University of
+  Pennsylvania, said: "I have been reading the book with the keenest
+  interest, for it indeed presents many subjects in what to me at
+  least is a new light. Every man of science looks to the
+  beacon--truth--as his guiding mark, and every opportunity to
+  replace even time-honored misconceptions by what is really the truth
+  must be welcomed."
+
+  _The Independent_ (New York) said: "Dr. Walsh's books should be read
+  in connection with attacks upon the Popes in the matter of science
+  by those who want to get both sides."
+
+
+
+MAKERS OF ELECTRICITY--By Brother Potamian, F. C. S., Sc. D. (London),
+Professor of Physics in Manhattan College, and James J. Walsh, M. D..
+Ph. D.. Litt. D.. Dean and Professor of the History of Medicine and of
+Nervous Diseases at Fordham University School of Medicine, New York.
+Fordham University Press, 110 West 74th Street Illustrated. Price,
+$2.00 net. Postage. 15 cents extra.
+
+  _The Scientific American:_ "One will find in this book very good
+  sketches of the lives of the great pioneers in Electricity, with a
+  clear presentation of how it was that these men came to make their
+  fundamental experiments, and how we now reach conclusions in Science
+  that would have been impossible until their work of revealing was
+  done. The biographies are those of Peregrinus, Columbus, Norman and
+  Gilbert, Franklin and some contemporaries, Galvini, Volta, Coulomb,
+  Oersted, Ampere, Ohm, Faraday, Clerk Maxwell, and Kelvin."
+
+  _The Boston Globe:_ "The book is of surpassing interest"
+
+  _The New York Sun:_ "The researches of Brother Potamian among the
+  pioneers in antiquity and the Middle Ages are perhaps more
+  interesting than Dr. Walsh's admirable summaries of the
+  accomplishment of the heroes of modern science. The book testifies
+  to the excellence of Catholic scholarship."
+
+  _The Evening Post:_ "It is a matter of importance that the work and
+  lives of men like Gilbert, Franklin, Galvini, Volta, Ampere and
+  others should be made known to the students of Electricity, and this
+  office has been well fulfilled by the present authors. The book is
+  no mere compilation, but brings out many interesting and obscure
+  facts, especially about the earlier men."
+
+  _The Philadelphia Record:_ "It is a glance at the whole field of
+  Electricity by men who are noted for the thoroughness of their
+  research, and it should be made accessible to every reader capable
+  of taking a serious interest in the wonderful phenomena of nature."
+
+  _Electrical World:_ "Aside from the intrinsic interest of its
+  matter, the book is delightful to read owing to the graceful
+  literary style common to both authors. One not having the slightest
+  acquaintance with electrical science will find the book of absorbing
+  interest as treating in a human way and with literary art the life
+  work of some of the greatest men of modern times; and, moreover, in
+  the course of his reading he will incidentally obtain a sound
+  knowledge of the main principles upon which almost all present-day
+  electrical development is based. It is a shining example of how
+  science can be popularized without the slightest twisting of facts
+  or distortion of perspective. Electrical readers will find the book
+  also a scholarly treatise on the evolution of electrical science,
+  and a most refreshing change from the 'engineering English' of the
+  typical technical writer."
+
+
+
+
+CATHOLIC SUMMER SCHOOL PRESS SERIES
+
+The highest value attaches to historical research on the lines you so
+ably indicate, especially at the present time, when the enemies of
+Holy Church are making renewed efforts to show her antagonism to
+science and human progress generally. I shall have much pleasure in
+perusing your work entitled "The Thirteenth Greatest of Centuries."
+
+Wishing you every blessing, I am, Yours sincerely in Xt.,
+  R. Card. Merry Del Val.
+
+Rome, January 18th, 1908.
+  Jas. J. Walsh, Esq., New York.
+
+THE THIRTEENTH GREATEST OF CENTURIES
+--By James J. Walsh. M. D., Ph. D., Litt. D.. Dean and Professor of
+Nervous Diseases and of the History of Medicine at Fordham University
+School of Medicine; Professor of Physiological Psychology at Cathedral
+College, New York. Catholic Summer School Press. 110 West 74th Street,
+N. T., Georgetown University Edition. Over 100 additional
+illustrations and twenty-six chapters that might have been, nearly 600
+pages. Price, $3.50, post free.
+
+  Prof. William Osler, of Oxford, delivering the Linacre Lecture
+  before the University of Cambridge, said: "That good son of the
+  Church and of the profession, Dr. James J. Walsh, has recently
+  published a charming book on The Thirteenth as the Greatest of
+  Centuries. He makes a very good case for what is called the First
+  Renaissance."
+
+  _The Saturday Review_ (of London): "The volume contains a mass of
+  interesting facts that will start a train of profitable thought in
+  many readers' minds."
+
+  _The Educational Review_ said: "The title of Dr. Walsh's book, The
+  Thirteenth Greatest of Centuries, will startle many readers, but we
+  respectfully commend to the open-minded his presentation of that
+  great epoch. A century that witnessed such extraordinary
+  achievements in architecture, in arts and crafts, in education, and
+  in literature and law, as did the Thirteenth, is not to be lightly
+  dismissed or unfavorably compared with periods nearer our own."
+
+  _The Pittsburg Post_ said: "Dr. Walsh writes infused with all the
+  learning of the past, enthusiastic in modern research, and
+  sympathetic, in true scholarly style, with investigation in every
+  line. One need only run over a few of the topical headings to feel
+  how plausible the thesis is. The assemblage of the facts and the
+  elucidation of their mutual relations by Dr. Walsh shows the
+  master's skill. The work bristles on every page with facts that may
+  be familiar to many, but which were never before so arranged in just
+  perspective with their convincing force so clearly shown."
+
+  Cardinal Moran, of Sydney, Australia: "Just the sort of literature
+  we want for English readers at the present day."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Education: How Old The New, by James J. Walsh
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