Address in Praise of Founders

"The Encoenial Exercises. Prof. Rivet's Oration on behalf of the Faculty" The University Monthly IV, 9 (June 1885): 130-132. (UA Case 71)

Three things chiefly appear to enlist men's attention and to divide their time : Their political happiness, their future destiny and their intellectual development. To attain the former, for ages, theories of every kind, some utopian in the extreme, some full of wisdom, have been propounded and attempted ; laws have been enacted, revised, and incessantly amended, and differing, in part or in whole, in each country. Thus, for instance, in the republics of Minos and Lycurgus the citizen was condemned to a uniform and monotonous existence. He was subjected to wearisome regulations, which extended even over his meals and leisures ; he could control neither the moments of his day nor the different periods of his life ; a severe sacrifice of his taste was required of him ; he had to love, think and act according to the laws ; in a word, he had been deprived of his will, in order to be happy. On the contrary, in England, Belgium and most of the modern countries a law that would restrain the peaceful citizen in the free exercise of all his faculties, would be considered vexatious and tyrannical. Equally unfortunate in all that pertains to the spiritual life, they fluctuate from sentiment to sentiment, from thought to thought ; their affections have the fickleness of their opinions escape them like their affections. And if by chance they succeed in fixing their belief, often it happens that that belief is entirely opposed to old dogmas received and practised by long generations of men.

Thus, even before the Great Law-Giver of the Israelites to the present time, legislators and theologians of every clime have endeavored to solve that double and vexatious problem and they have only partly succeeded.

But if men have failed to find a true solution to ameliorate their political condition, and if they still hold views so entirely opposed to one another on religious matters, they agree admirably on the course to pursue to train their mental faculties, for the system of higher education, adopted everywhere, is one of the most uniform and venerable systems. Every civilized people proceed from one common base. The Jewish exclusivism, the Mahometan fatalism, and the progressive influence of Christianity have never changed its fundamental principles or essentially modified its methods. Go where you may among the civilized nations and you will find the same elements in vogue to train the mind and develop its powers and capabilities. Constantinople, Heidelberg, Paris, Oxford, Harvard and Fredericton have their classics, their mathematics, their natural sciences and their modern languages. Fredericton, did I say? Undoubtedly; it possesses all those branches. If the University of New Brunswick has not as many subjects to choose from as older and richer universities it has the essential ones, and as many as it is possible for any student to grasp during the ordinary college course.

Honor then to the founders who have organized and given us an institution like this, which has for so many years been the means of doing such a noble and useful work, and which is continuing more brilliantly than ever, for scarcely eleven months have passed away since one of its graduates competed with nearly a thousand of the picked students of the whole British empire and came out at the head of them all.

Among the various subjects found in the curriculum of any university worthy of that name, some are taught especially with the view of training the mind, others for a more practical use. The higher mathematics and, in a great measure, Greek are to most men of no practical utility, for scarcely one out of a thousand ever makes use of them after leaving the college halls. If the benefits they bestow were the same as those expected in the study for a certain profession they would have been abandoned by many long before now. But experience has clearly shown that they are powerful factors in fitting a man for the battle of life. Although it must be admitted it is quite possible to overrate their importance, and, no doubt it has been done often for educationalists of high standing, both on this continent and across the Atlantic, are commencing to realize the fact and are advising the substitution of other subjects in a great many cases.

But should some branches receive more attention than others? In most cases this would depend largely on a variety of circumstances: the taste, the aptitude, and the intended calling of the student. It is evident that the civil engineer will require more mathematics than classics, and the physicians more chemistry and anatomy than either of those, and while one should take advantage of all the means afforded for his intellectual training and get proficient in every subject it would pay him to give a special care to the one bearing directly on the profession he intends to follow. On the other hand, there are men to whom a particular subject is most hateful and for which they have no aptitude; they are entirely incapable of every advancing in it with any degree of satisfaction; others are so constituted that certain studies would carry to a fatal extreme. The student possessed with an impetuous, dashing and too prolific imagination needs above al the sever precision and methodical process of the exact sciences to rectify his reasoning and to classify his thoughts. If, on the contrary, a young man, who has never exercised his faculties of thinking, is taught those very sciences, which in themselves give few thoughts, you run the risk of drying in him the sources of those thoughts; to impair the most beautiful imagination perhaps; to narrow the broadest understanding; you accustom him to rest satisfied with a given sum, to proceed only with the aid of theory and to never make use of his strength.

But if a careful discrimination is necessary in this respect, no exception should be made concerning the native tongue, which ought to have precedence over all others; as it is the first in every case, it becomes the most important and, consequently, indispensable. The Englishman must know, and know well, the language of his country, and it is the same for inhabitants of any other land. Real education is impossible without it. A graduate of a university might be excused for not knowing the various classifications of the natural sciences, but he would never be forgiven if he could not speak and write his native tongue correctly and elegantly.

Now the question arises what is the language of our Dominion? I suppose there ought to be only one answer to this. Canada is an English possession, we acknowledge the British flag, and any other raised in defiance would be torn down and trampled under foot. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the fact that the French element forms a third of our entire population, and that that element is strongly united, vigorous and intelligent, and, although receiving no aid from immigration, is increasing at an enormous rate. It is fast invading the New England States; crowding out the English speaking people from eastern Ontario, and planting everywhere in the West large and prosperous colonies. And when we remember what were the Acadians, of only a very few years ago--unknown, illiterate, with scarcely any exception, despised often--with what they are now, whose influence is beginning to be felt even at Ottawa, and who possess very efficient colleges in all the large centres where they are to be found, we are forced to admit that importance of that element and to recognize that in Canada we have two languages. The hope of doing away with the French must be abandoned forever. Fifty years ago it might have been possible; to-day, it is impracticable. We have to submit to fate and realize fully that soon the most successful politicians, the officials, merchants and others in our Dominion will be those who can understand and speak both languages. In Switzerland, where a portion of the population is French and the other German, all public men have found it necessary to learn equally well the idioms of both peoples. Our circumstances appear similar. there are many, I am well aware, who are disposed to deplore and regard this growing necessity as a sad and serious drawback to real progress. The intermingling of races and the existence of two languages in the same country have never been injurious to prosperity. In Belgium, where the study of French and Flemish is encouraged, Scotland which has recently founded a chair of Gaelic in the University of Edinburgh and Switzerland, already referred to, notwithstanding their respective physical disadvantages, are prosperous and happy. The fall of the Roman empire did not commence when its philosophers and orators had to make long and tedious voyages to learn the languages of their chief colonies, but rather, when the Romans ceased to practice tolerance and when, in their indolence, they employed slaves to do what they should have done themselves.

But apart from this view of the question, the study of French presents others which should not be overlooked by the student desirous to train his mental faculties and to examine for himself one of the richest, most brilliant and polished modern literatures. Matthew Arnold, the eminent English writer, says somewhere in one of his works, that he acquired from it a newness, an elasticity and a freshness of style which he sought vainly in the ancient classics. President McCosh, of Princeton University, and President Elliott, of Harvard, in discussing recently the relative merits of different branches, both recognized its great importance and expressed a strong desire to see it places, in every case, among the first subjects to be taught; and C.F. Adams, jr., in his now celebrated address, delivered before an assembly similar views and concluded with these views: "I am no believer in that narrow technological training which now and again we hear extolled. A practical and too often a vulgar money making utility seems to be its outcome. On the contrary, the whole experience and observation of my life lead me to look with a greater admiration, and an envy ever increasing, on the broadened culture which is the true aim of the university."

During the whole of the seventeenth century, in eloquence, in poetry, in literature and books of morals, the French were the legislators of Europe, and, if since other nations have shared with them that honor, none have surpassed them yet. A literature which can boast of containing the eloquent productions of Bossuet, Massillon and Bourdalone, the masterpieces of Corneille, Boileau, Moliere, Racine and La Fontaine, the profound writings of the thinkers and moral philosophers such as Pascal, Descartes and La Buryere, the scientific discoveries of the great mathematicians and the works of the astronomers forms an imposing and majestic edifice of an incomparable beauty, full of eloquence and dignity; one worthy to receive a careful attention and to occupy a high place in the University.

But I suppose enough has been said on the relative merits of these subjects, for after all, success does not depend so much on any particular one of them; more is needed. Unless a student has before him a well known purpose, unless he has made up his mind to overcome all the difficulties he is certain to encounter in his work, and unless he is possessed with the necessary enthusiasm and confidence, it matters not what his choice may be, he is sure to fail. We have often heard of a small band of soldiers, persuaded of the skill of their general, accomplish wonders. Thirty-five thousand Greeks followed Alexander to conquest and conquered everything before them. Columbus, alone among his contemporaries, persistently believed in the existence of a new world, and a new world sprang up from the waves. There is power only in conviction. A reasoning is strong, a poem is divine, a painting is beautiful only because the mind or the eye which judges it is convinced of a certain truth concealed in that reasoning, that poem or that picture. If that is true for the young man who strives to win honors during his college course it becomes doubly so for you, who to-day are going to bid farewell to the place where the most of the last three years of your life have been spent. How swiftly and pleasantly they have passed away! It seems only yesterday, when full of a noble ambition and resolved to master the long list of studies, you entered within these walls. Now it is over, but difficulties of a more responsible character will soon present themselves to you; you will have to choose a profession which will task all your energies, and which you can adorn if you are faithful and true in all your dealings. But whatever you do remember that, in receiving the education the University has given you, you have contracted a debt towards your friends, your country and your Alma Mater. And happy if at the end you have the conscientiousness that it is all paid.