Address in Praise of Founders

"The University. The Encoenia-Dr. Harrison's Oration ..." The Daily Telegraph (21 June 1878): 3.

May it please your Honor, Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Senate, Ladies and Gentlemen:

Last year, when we were assembled in this place for a purpose similar to that which has brought us here again, to-day, our minds and hearts were filled with apprehension and fear from the half-ascertained fact that St. John was in ashes.

Since then the history of another Academical year has been written, and once more our spirits are cast down, but from a different cause. This University, as it is at present constituted, has recently lost its chief founder. It is unnecessary for me to speak of his public career; it is known to you all; it is imperishably recorded in the annals of New Brunswick; it has, since his lamented death, been described in graceful and appropriate language by the press of this province and, indeed, of the Dominion; all agree that New Brunswick has lost one of her ablest and most devoted sons, one of her brightest ornaments.

This University mourns the loss of an enlightened lover and champion of the higher education. A lover of sound literature, he was desirous that the knowledge of it should be accompanied by grace of outward expression; a lover of reason, he was watchful lest it should be divorced from faith; a lover of science, he was also zealous that she should ever remain the handmaid of religion. We sadly miss our venerable friend on this encoenial day. His fine presence and benevolent look; the graceful, eloquent and impressive manner with which he was accustomed to present a medal or a prize; the hearty "Hear, hear!" that came naturally and spontaneously from his lips when any of us uttered a sentiment that seemed to him to be good and noble; alas! they are things of the past. Death has laid his icy hand on a true-born leader of men; we have lost a valiant standard-bearer; and the time of transition from the old and the tried to the new and the untried is always a time of anguish and of fear.

Let us remember what he himself was constantly impressing upon us that our faith must only rest in Him who is the invisible leader of the armies of men, who changes not, who is the same yesterday, to-day and forever.

On the same day and almost at the same hour that closed the earthly career of our revered friend, there passed from our midst a gentlemen of high culture who had spent the greater portion of a long and active life in the cause of education in this community. His descent to the grave was gradual and we were prepared for the change, yet his scholarly character and the unvarying courtesy of his manners will not soon be forgotten, and his death makes us all feel that we are sailing out of sigh of the ancient land-marks. We have also lost, too recently for time to hide our loss, a distinguished graduate who took a lively interest in the welfare of this university. Young in years but mature in good deeds, he was beloved by all who had the happiness to know him. He was known by his Christian life and by his successful efforts for the good of his fellow-men as well in London and Toronto as in St. John and Fredericton. His noble and useful life bore in some circumstances a striking parallel to that of his brother clergyman who died not long since in the vicinity of our city, and whose loss is also still keenly felt.

On a day like this my mind is irresistibly led to revert to old familiar scenes and old familiar faces that I have never looked upon since the day I left my own college many years ago. The ancient halls stand where they stood with their past association inseparable and, indissoluble, but the old faces will never meet where once they met. Many of my college friends either to earn an honest living or in obedience to the call of higher duties are now expatriated. Settled here and there in widely distant countries; a few highly favored ones are allowed by their Alma Mater to have a life-long home within her sheltering walls; some with whom I once took sweet counsel and whose memory is endeared to me by past acts of brotherly-kindness are gone to the undiscovered country, and will be seen no more in this world of mingled pleasure and pain, meeting and parting. How strong is the chain that binds us to the scene of our youthful studies; how might, though invisible, is the power exerted by a university. One very great disadvantage incurred in going to a foreign University is that old classmates after graduating are generally separated forever. The student may never return to his Alma Mater, never feel again the inspiration of her presence. I envy you gentlemen Alumni who meet one another here to-day and revive the memory of your college pleasures; I envy you gentlemen who are about to proceed to your degrees in this University, because it is near the probable scene of your future labors. How it must brace you up for many a hard contest in life to know that your brother-collegians and former tutors are looking on with sympathy and with the old faith in your mental calibre and in your goodness of heart. You may enjoy "that mutual intercourse and mutual aid by which great deeds are done and great discoveries made." All honors to the founders of this University, and especially to the memory of that great and good man so suddenly taken from us, who wisely foresaw that without this Institution some of the finer springs of human action must lie motionless in the hearts of the young men of New Brunswick.

Just 50 years ago the wall of the College were built. Thenceforward this hill was called the College Hill; these woods became the College grove. From that time to his this there have been accumulating on this chosen spot books for the library, specimens for the museum, apparatus for the laboratory, instruments for the observatory. During these mighty 50 years undergraduates have come and gone. University senates have met and deliberated. Professors have lectured and vacated their chairs. After half a century has passed in the history of the College, we, the tutors and undergraduates of the year 1878, find ourselves in possession of numerous and increasing educational advantages; we are the heirs of a goodly heritage, the successors of men of learning and repute, of men whose intellectual attainments have been recognized in the old world and in the new. It is our duty and pleasure now, as it was theirs in the past, to frequent the student's bower, to drink of the life-giving waters that flow from the Pierien springs, to keep the lamp of Reason and of Knowledge trimmed and brightly burning in this temple of human learning.

We are not called upon to deal with the questions of the day in a noisy, public and contentious manner. It is no part of our duty to strive, or cry or cause our voice to be heard in the street, or from the platform of public debate. Our College work is chiefly a silent work of preparation. Our two-fold aim is to be able to hold communion wit nature and with the mighty minds of the past. But the untrained intellect is not equal to either task. The mind must be strengthened by a course of study before it can hope either to penetrate into the mysteries of nature, or to know the best that has been thought and said by the intellectual sovereigns of our race. The problem of mental training is therefore one of primary importance.

The beginning is half the whole difficulty. A thousand things detract our attention when we first enter upon any new study. A thousand stumbling blocks lie at the threshold of every new department of knowledge. The senses have to be trained to subjection. The eye at first takes notice of objects the most foreign to our purpose; the ear solicits our attention to every strange sound; more than that, the intellectual powers yield is reluctant obedience to the student's will. The memory calls up a troop of thoughts which we do not want; the imagination is slow to picture the ideas which we wish to dwell upon. The whole man rebels against the plain living and high thinking necessary for all successful intellectual work. Much determination is required, even when we are under the best instructors. But after habitual and persevering  effort things seem easier. The memory and the imagination become quick, obedient and willing; the eye of the mind gains control over the eye of the body; the ear is deaf to outward sounds; the whole mental energy becomes concentrated on the particular subject. Is the student a mathematician--he talks mathematics aloud to himself in his daily walks, unconscious of the beauties of nature, indifferent to the charms of companionship. Is he a classical man--the centre-point of his thoughts is not in the present but in the far past. Is he a metaphysician--he regards even the most familiar objects around him as shrouded in impenetrable mystery. Is he a moralist--the supremacy of conscience, the tumultuousness of the passions, the standard of virtue, the freedom of the will are his favorite themes. And so on through every department of the thought. The whole man comes under the influence of the particular study for the time being. And here let me express a doubt of the scholarship of that man who has never felt any subject take the hold upon him which I have endeavoured to describe. "Thoroughly to master one noble subject is the only way to produce the strong mind." I believe it. There is only a certain amount of mental energy, and if this is simultaneously distributed over too great a variety of subjects the inevitable result is inability to go far in any one, and this means that the student will be only half-educated, and half-educated men are the curse of the liberal professions.

I said that our college work is chiefly a silent work of preparation. Our business is with nature and with books. Students may therefore be classified as either scientific or literary. It is the business of science to clip the wings of soaring oratory and strengthen the legs of sure-footed study. Nature is deaf to the arts of rhetoric and elocution. She differs from man in this, that she pays not the slightest attention to harangues and popular addresses. Observation and experiment are in her case the only instruments of interrogation. They have shown the falsity of many of the brain-spun theories of men of bright fancies, and they will show the falsity of many more. It is of the last importance to the progress of humanity that the veil should be still further withdrawn from the face of nature; that she should be compelled to answer many questions about which we are yet in ignorance.

The painstaking inquirer to whose obstinate questionings reluctant nature reveals some of her mysteries, must with an humble mind spend days and years in silent communion with her. All honor and encouragement then are due to our students of science. It seems to me that equal honor and encouragement are due to our students of literature. The study of letters give the mind what Wordsworth calls "That apprehensive power by which she is made quick to recognize the moral properties and scope of thing." The grand masters of our literature from Chaucer to Tennyson appeal to a part of our nature that is untouched by the teaching of science. They have sung of "All thoughts, all passions, all delights, whatever stirs this mortal frame," whether the exciting cause lie in the mind itself or in the external phenomena that envelope and mould our life. Poetry interprets the mental world to  us in a way unknown to Logic and Metaphysics; it interprets the phenomena of the material world in a way unknown to natural science. The poet's teaching affects the emotional part of our nature and finds a lodgement in the heart; whilst the man of science appealing chiefly to our powers of perception often fails to make any impression upon that inward eye which is as Wordsworth says "The bliss of solitude," the happiness of our reflective moments. For instance this is the way in which the Botanist speaks of the Daisy. "Composite family, heads many flowered, radiate; the rays numerous, pistillate; scales of the involucre herbaceous, equal , in about two rows; receptacle conical, naked; achenia obovate, flattened, wingless, without any pappus. Low herb." This low herb of the Botanist was the "wee modest crimson-tipped flower" that filled the soul of Burns with tender thoughts.

"Could blew the bitter, biting north
Upon they early humble birth:
Yet cheerfully though glinted forth,
Amid the storm,
Scarce reared above the parent earth
Thy tender form."

"Sweet, silent creature." Wordsworth exclaims addressing the same flower,

"That breathest with me on sun and air,
Do thous as thous art wont repair
My heart with gladness and a share
Of thy meek nature."

Here are two interpretations of the life of this little flower. Which is the more refining and humanizing? As with flowers so with birds, the deeper meaning of their life is not to be learnt from the descriptions and classifications of the naturalist. From Barnefield to Keats the song of the nightingale has filled the soul of our English poets with ecstasy, has taught them to bear or to forget "the weariness, the fever and the fret here where men sit and hear each other groan."

The poets are, in many respects, better teachers than your mathematicians and mental philosophers.

I can imagine how a man of exclusively mathematical and philosophical training might be hopelessly in the dark on coming to that well known passage in which the divinely inspired Isaiah, in poetic and prophetic mood declares, "the child shall die an hundred years old;" but the student of our English literature, who is familiar with the following little poem, can hardly fail to catch a part, at least, of the prophet's meaning:--

"It is not growing like a tree,
In bulk, doth make man better be,
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last dry, bald, and sere.
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May, Although it fall and die that night,
It was the plant and flower of light,
In small proportions we just beauties see,
And in short measures life may perfect be."

The child shall die an hundred years old.

The child living but a short time may yet fulfill a long time. But time fails me for further illustrations. I will sum up and conclude. Having in my capacity as a tutor in this college been obliged to think daily of the problem of mental training I believe with the present Head Master of Uppingham, the friend and counsellor of the Head Master of our own collegiate school that "thoroughly to conquer one noble subject is the only way to produce the strong mind." I hold that the man who has never felt himself wholly under the influence of a particular study cannot be called a scholar in the higher sense of the term. I hold that this thoroughness in one great subject is sure to beget such a love of other great subjects that the whole man hungers and thirsts after knowledge. If a student has not reached this stage the scales have not fallen from his eyes, having eyes, having ears he hears not, he has latent powers but they are undeveloped. The self made men who have become great in the world although they have never entered a University have nevertheless been characterized by thoroughness, singleness of purpose, and a patient mastery of whatever their hands found to do. By not trying too many things at a time they have taken honors in the school life, in nature's great university.

At a time when science is all the fashion, and in little danger of being undervalued, encouragement is necessary for the study of literature. Science cultivates the intellectual at the expense of the emotional part of our nature. There is a chord ready to vibrate in every human heart which is touched by no other study but that of literature. It is a glorious privilege to be able to hold converse day by day with the intellectual sovereigns of the past, who being dead, yet speak to us by their recorded thoughts which shall endure forever. Our human nature, with is unsatisfied longings, with is inherent capabilities, with its baser and its higher tendencies, is revealed to us in the light of literature. "We feel what others are, and know ourselves to be men." By this study we are lifted out of the narrow present, we live in the past, and can say with the Psalmist: "I have considered the days of old, they years of ancient times."

In one sense we all live in this past. A day and scene like this carry us back in thought over the journey we have made since our last Encoenia. Fire and death we find, like two greedy monsters, have laid low both friends and homes, and we must pursue the journey of life under altered circumstances. When oppressed with the feelings caused by loss of property and loss of great and useful lives; when our spirits are cast down with a sense of unceasing changes going on around us there is an irresistible longing in the human heart for something fixed on which to rest its hopes, for some Being who possesses the attribute of unchangeableness. If we turn for guidance and comfort to the Old testament Scriptures we find that Hebrew prophets felt all anguish of heart that we feel, yet they had sublime faith in One who revealed Himself to them in the character. "I am the Lord: I change not."

If we turn to the New Testament, there also is revealed to us One who is the same yesterday, to-day and forever; human, yet unchangeable, and, therefore, divine.

Though founders die, though professors vacate their chairs, though class after class of graduates leave our halls, yet the College remains beautiful in situation, equipped for future usefulness [----]ing kept pace to the extent of its limited means with the rapid strides made in human progress during the last fifty years.

As a University man who loves the very sight of a college, as a parent who has sons to educate, as a New Brunswicker hopeful about the future of this native Province, as a Canadian with strong faith in the predestined greatness of this Dominion, I am constrained to say: All honor to the memory of the men who have laid broad and deep the foundation of our Provincial University, and who have thrown open wide to every young man in New Brunswick the treasure-houses of science and literature.