Alumni Oration

"Dr. MacRae’s Address" University Monthly 5, 9 (June 1886): 138-141. (UA Case 67a, Box 1)

Mr. President, Members of the Senate, Ladies and Gentlemen:

The first duty incumbent on me, as having been, until today, an almost entire stranger to the large number of your membership, is dictated by your generosity. It is to thank you for the honor of being invited to address you on this occasion of annually recurring interest, your society’s encaenial gathering. Though only accidentally associated with your honourable body, It would be unnatural were one, who has been a student, entirely insensible to the emotions with which you assemble at such periods, within the walls of your alma mater.

The tie binding a young man to his foster relations in those Scottish Highlands with which, by descent, I am connected, is one of peculiar tenderness and strength. The foster mother, brother or sister, is loved with an affection hardly less lively than that linking its subjects to their actual parents or other kindred by blood. The rank in the clan of these new relatives may be sufficiently humble. But the feeling of attachment formed around the knees of the nursing mother, ignores class distinctions, and, as shown in many a tale of pathos, becomes the basis or fountain of an interest terminating only with life. Somewhat of a like feeling, it may be assumed, animates all present who are alumni or nurslings of the University of New Brunswick, toward the institution where you received the nutriment of your intellectual childhood and youth. And, whether you have but come beneath the fostering care, or are anticipating with ardor the hour of your escape from what you may have, perhaps, regarded as her two severe restrictions upon youthful sallies, or have looked in after an absence of years, more or fewer, to inquire after the good dame’s welfare, the spirit actuating you for the moment is one. And my duty, my privilege, let me rather say is, by your kindness to share in that spirit and to attempt expression of some of the thoughts in which it will find utterance.

It is not possible for a student, after any lapse of years, to mention or hear mentioned the name of the institution where he received his intellectual development, where he was equipped for, and whence he was started upon his career in life, without some thrill of filial reverence. "Her very dust to him is dear." All the more, however, have we to guard against suffering this praiseworthy feeling to degenerate into a superstition, the conceit that, because the institution did good work in the past–the proof being that you or I am the result–therefore it is perfect and incapable of improvement, or that, therefore, it would be sacrilegious to attempt or suggest a single addition, adjustment or alteration as regards its equipment and methods.

We live in an age we labor in lands, we are members of communities among which the doctrine of the divine right of what has been enjoys little respect. We pride ourselves upon being a practical people, intent upon results, and open-minded to receive any and every suggestion that may bear most speedily and effectively upon the attainment of results. We profess, and up to a certain limit with justice, that we believe in the benefits of education. Up to a certain limit. The common schools of this province, alike the system and its fruits, will bear favorable comparison with any other existing up to the standard at which they aim, whether in the old world or in the new. Beyond that limit, however, much, you will, I think admit, remains to be done in order to place our beautiful province abreast of the age, whether as compared with the great neighboring republic, or with our sister provinces of Canada. And to aid in doing somewhat of that much I take to be the work which it is fitting that this association ought to keep resolutely before the minds of its members, as an achievement worthy to engage your efforts.

I am assuming, you will observe,—am surely justified in making the assumption—that this society is composed of men who believe that our beautiful province should possess a University, and that it should be an institution in which our sons (and why not our daughters) should feel pride. There are, of course, men in abundance throughout our land, even professional men, who scoff at the word. They point you to one here and there, who has "made his pile," and say "so and so was never at a University." They point you to successful lawyers, men of business, members of parliament, editors. Not one of these, say they, wore gown or cap, received a degree, or possibly, knows the very meaning of the word alumnus, to say nothing of encaenia. And they will point you to other men who have enjoyed all these so-called advantage, and who, yet measured by the grand, all applicable pecuniary standard of our age, have turned out failures,—failures as regards political wire-pulling or newspaper-slashing article-writing, or legal fee-extracting, or, in general, professional or other success, whether clerical, medical or commercial. And it is all undeniable. Universities do not make men. Men must be men—ere they come to Universities. Weeds will be only more luxuriant weeds for having grown in a richly fertilized and carefully cultured farm or garden. Are gardens or farms to be, therefore, condemned as worthless?

What is the idea—what the purpose of a University? Now, definitions resemble what Max Muller says of letters in Etymology. In Etymology, the consonants count for very little, and the vowels for simply nothing. Some definition, however, is provisionally serviceable. I shall not weary men fresh from the study of classical literature by showing that, in its Latin form, the word, in old Rome, denoted its corporations of priests, taxgatherers, musician, or it might be of butchers and bakers. Academically, the word may be considered from two almost absolutely opposite, mutually exclusive points of view. Either, on the one hand, we may have in mind things, or, on the other, persons. Either we may contemplate the subjects taught or the persons teaching and being taught or educated.

Under the former view, of the subjects expected to be taught, most men, I judge from remarks continually occurring, think what a University is, or should be. It ought, they suppose, to be a universal school; a school of universal learning, where every branch of knowledge that can engage human attention ought to be open to acquisition, where every aspect under which the materials of human knowledge can be contemplated ought to be exhibited, and where degrees, expressive of the height reached in acquaintance with one or other or all of these branches should be conferred. Four faculties in particular are singled out, in which [ ] [ ] currently supposed that a University, to merit the [ ] all must be prepared to grant degrees to worthy recipients, the faculties, to wit, of Theology, Law, Medicine, and Arts, this latter being a vague name "de omnibus [re us] et quibusdam alus." Need I say that this conception so to call it, is simply the sheerest nonsense, alike historically, and as a matter of existing, actual or possible fact?

At time was, indeed, when a University did mean a place where what was supposed to embrace the sum total of knowledge attainable by man was actually taught. What was the sum total? It consisted of the mystic number of seven elements, answering to the seven cardinal virtues, seven deadly sins, seven sacraments so called, seven days a week, "et hoc genus omne." It included grammar, rhetoric and logic, music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy, meaning astrology. Even this meager bill of fare was sub-divided. He who partook of only the first three dishes, called trivium, was reckoned an intellectually well fed man; he who with appetite unabated, grappled at one or more of the succeeding courses—the Quidrivium—was accounted a prodigy of condition. And if to these he added some familiarity with the physical accomplishments of fencing, boxing, leaping, dancing, which belonged not to the academy but to chivalry, the young many was an admirable "Crichton."

In our age the curriculum of learning has somewhat expanded. [Ologies] by the score have been added regardless of the mystic sanctity of the number seven. A University, to meet the requirements of today, in the direction of embracing all the subjects of human investigation, and all the aspects in which they are being or may be regarded, would need to be a miniature universe. Where, indeed, ought you, logically to draw the line? What ought you, under this view, to exclude from the available curriculum of a thoroughly equipped university of things? Cooking, e.g. is of no mean importance to the comfort of a well-regulated society. The boys may deem football and cricket entitled to a professorship, and when or where room is made in academic halls for the other—shall I say better—certainly fairer,—half of the human creation, the girls might justly demand training on the piano, lecture on the mysteries of fashion, the evolution of dudes and of dress.

It is under this view that we hear urged as a duty incumbent on Universities as such, the qualifying of lads for success in special departments of life, for trades, pursuits, professions. And we hear of slurs cast upon Universities because they do not thus qualify their students. Why should money, it is contended, be devoted to the maintenance of men for teaching, as result of whose labor, lads return to their homes unable to keep their father’s business books, to superintend mill machinery, to give advice about mines and manners, to navigate ships or harangue about politics, or, in short, attempt skillfully any one process bearing upon the bread and butter of life? And where, I ask in return, ought you to, or can you draw the line, under this view of what a University is taken to mean? Shall I tell the story of that university in Scotland , in which, to keep up the credit of Britain, James I alleged to a foreign ambassador that there was a professor of signs? And why not? The deaf and dumb are a not unimportant body in point of numbers in our communities. And to train them is, in its own place, as requisite and indispensable as any other fact of life.

Meanwhile, this mode of regarding the University is alike historically and as a matter of actual or possible fact a sheer blunder. Not things but persons have we to think of. A University meant of old, and means today. "The whole members of our incorporated body teaching and learning one or more departments of knowledge, and empowered by the authorities to confer degrees in one or more branches or faculties."

Of such a body a lad becomes a member, with what aim in view? With the view of being introduced, under trained guidance, to two worlds; and of acquiring a method, habits of study, reflection, observation, which may direct him in after years, in the journeys he may make through these two worlds. These two worlds are, the world of literature and the world of science, or otherwise regarded, the literature of knowledge, and the literature of power. And the purpose of a university career is: Having familiarized the mind with a method of surveying these two worlds, boundaries of which continually overlap, or the elements of which at ten thousand points interlace, the purpose of a university is, to aid the student in answering the question, what will he do with it? Self-culture with the ancient Greek, or self-sacrifice with the ancient Romans which? Or, a just blending of both, and to what intent?

Which of these worlds, of literature or of science, of power or knowledge, is the more important to the right conduct of life? This question lies at the root of a much vexed, never-ending discussion, into which I dare not now intrude, the question whether a classical or a scientific education is in itself the more valuable? Both, I believe are best, each sovereign in its own respect, each lending a grace to the other, and becoming, rightly regarded, a powerful means of mental training. As to science in these days utilitarianism, and the sway of Herbert Spencer and his school, its value will be admitted. And as to the classical, the literature of power, is it not worth while keeping in view that every great original writer "brings into the world an absolutely new thing, his own personality, with its unique mode of viewing life and nature, and that in each true student he creates a new thing, a new nerve of feeling, or a new organ of thought, a new conception of life, or a new thrill of emotion?" Such a writer reveals the widening possibilities of life, vaster horizons of thought, a broadening faith and unimagined ideals. And by what noble creatures it has been justly said, is that world of literature inhabited, men and women, Achilles and Hector, Prometheus and Oedipus, Helen and Antigone, the Poet of purgatory, and the Knight of La Manchu, and all the creations of a Shakespeare and a Milton? That we should understand the facts and laws of this ideal world is surely little less important to us than that we should compute the courses of a planet, or explore the universe that lies in a drop of stagnant water? That is a thrilling moment or epoch of life, when the youthful student, having mastered the drudgery of grammar and vocabulary, is able to throw himself back in an easy-chair, and enjoy the beauties or respond to the passion of a Homer, or a Grecian tragedy, as he would to those of an author writing in his own mother tongue. He who knows but one language knows no language, it has been said, and has it not been said with no little truth? But the theme is endless. For the University, the duty, I take it, is to combine in such proportions as the right and experience have indicated to be best adopted to the educing into activity of the students varied equipment of mental force, studies in those respective departments or directions. A university cannot undertake to secure capacity on the part of those seeking for light at its torches, or to create that capacity where it is lacking, or to dictate the use that shall be made of that capacity. But where given average ability exists, what is the business, duty, delight of the teaching staff of a university? It is to conduct its alumni to an eminence, whence looking out, their cry shall be with Xenophon’s 10,000 Greeks, "Thalatta, thalatta!" But at this point each student must take his own course. The sea, to the survey of which he is conducted, is the ocean of life, and to each who adventure that ocean, whether in the direction of literature or of science, or of any of the pursuits to which the method he has acquired of regarding these subjects may be adapted, the allegory implied in Coleridge’s Ancient Marine will come home: — "He is the first that every burst into that silent sea."

And so the practical question is: Is this University adequately equipped with a view to enable its teaching staff satisfactorily to guide its pupils up to the height at which they may and must be left to advance for themselves, or down to the shores whence they may each safely launch forth in every age, the outcome of which promises to be prosperous? I have said that the object of a university is, not to impart universal knowledge, but mainly, a method of learning. And I venture to pronounce the curriculum prescribed and pursued in this institution, so far as means will prevail, to be skillfully adapted to impart and illustrate such a method, and to create a taste for the yet further pursuit. But the members of a university would be glad to be in a positions to aid in that further pursuit. Is this university in that position? From the variety and amount of toil devolving upon the existing staff, in the first place, I hazard the opinion that to do so to any satisfying extent is simply sheerly beyond their power. While it is not the duty or business of a university, as such to turn out ministers competent to preach, or lawyers competent to practice, or physicians competent to prescribe, it ought to be within its scope to offer aid to persons able and desirous to press on to the attainment of a higher degree of familiarizing with literature or science, one or both, or with some branch of these studies than is requisite for a mere pass examination.

Can this be expected from the University of New Brunswick, as at present equipped? Whether in literature or science, access to a large and rapidly growing library is the very first condition of pursuit. Is yours, however good so far as it goes, worthy of the name of a university library? For science, particularly, again, an extensive and increasing museum is indispensable. The question revolves: What does New Brunswick possess that merits this title? Laboratories are needful. Where are they? A vast variety of costly scientific instruments ought to be accessible. Who shall furnish them? Competent assistant tutors, or if possible, men especially devoted to one or other of the large and fruitful directions in which both literature and science have opened up in our day, ought to be available; men who should be at once students and teachers. Where is the provision for their support? And scholarships, fellowships, means of sustaining the students thus devoting themselves, there ought to be. But these, also, are as yet in the air.

The Alumni Association—Your object being, in part, to render this institution a source of distinction to our Province—has ample work cut out for it. Meanwhile, the work actually done with the aids actually available, is creditable, let me say emphatically, alike to the teaching staff and to the learners. This university, despite its inadequacy of equipment, has no reason to blush for its sons—I would that I could add its daughter—either upon this or on the other side of the Atlantic. May it speedily be so enriched with funds and men as that you may point to it with pride, justified in claiming that the education it provides stretches up to the highest summit attainable by man—in all worthy sense the intellectual head of our Province, sending out fresh pulses of life-blood to its utmost extremities. Despite every drawback, this to a large extent, is being done. Could we persuade our people that liberality in the interests of higher education pays—that aid in this direction would be the worthiest use that could be made by our shipping and lumber kings of the revenues derived by them from our rapidly disappearing forests, that this would be the surest means of stimulating the future greatness of a province second to none in the inducements which, in that case, it would offer to the better class of emigrants. Education pays. Our wide awake cousins to the south have learned that secret. One of the most hopeful anguries for the future of our race may be seen in the scale on which wealthy men in the states devote their millions to the education of the coming generations. Sooner or latter, thought turns into gold. At this moment what used to be called the poorest country in Europe—Scotland—is on the average, man for man, the wealthiest.

But I have come down from the heights of Parnassus, and am inviting you, you may complain, to view your studies with the eyes of Midas rather than of Socrates—appealing to the sordid passion for gold rather than the generous ambition for wisdom. Let us then ascend, once more for a moment. Every age has the conceit to deem itself the most important that has ever dawned upon humanity. And ours is almost weary of hearing the changes rung upon its advantages, prospects and progress. Yet it is true that, in all respects, these are great. And some of us could well nigh find it in our hearts to envy you young men, the position which you occupy in the files of the generations. Another century will dawn ere most of you who are now pursing the career of students shall have found your fitting place in the workings of society, and have shaped your course and outlook over the ocean of life. For to you it ought to belong to be among the pilots of your country’s destinies, and you are here to receive the sort of training which should qualify you to hold the helm firmly, to trim the sails skillfully—in storm or calm to prove yourselves men in whom your fellows less favoured may confide as navigators worthy of their trust. Before me are, it may be, the governors, chief justices, prime ministers of the future, to say nothing of the conspicuous places in other pursuits and professions. Do not be afraid that you can become too learned. A jar of olives or a barrel of nuts, say the Eastern apophthegm, has room still, however full for qualities of oil. And one small brain may be a mirror polished so as to reflect a universe. After all our utmost possible knowledge but amounts to a speck of light amid an infinitude of darkness. The true student is he who learns that he knows nothing—his learning is conscious ignorance. Out of our dungeon, or cave, to glance at that Plato with whose thoughts some present have been made so profoundly conversant, one shaft opens with the unseen. We call in faith; and the steps to the observatory whence we can best avail of its light are three: "Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control," proceeding from and ripening into the love of God.

Mr. President, again thanking you for the honor of addressing your association, I pray for its success in all the purposes for which it has been established.