Chapter XV: Part 15

_The Beechers._--Lyman Beecher (1775-1863) represents the other extreme, of traditional orthodoxy, and the reaction against the trend of Unitarianism. He was a stern and virile personality, rigorous in habit, and in his expectation of righteousness in others, withal friendly and benign. His son, Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), according to the testimony of the daughter and sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, as a child was deficient in verbal memory--a thing which he never outgrew,--diffident, sensitive, thick and indistinct in his speech. In the midst of a talented family that was much given to theological argument, his powers were gradually developed. At Laurenceburg, Ohio, his first charge, he was sexton as well as preacher. He came before the public through his defence of the negro in _The Cincinnati Journal_. At Indianapolis his reputation grew, for his independent spirit and direct, informal style proved very attractive; and when he had been called to Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, the people crowded over from New York to hear him. Beecher studied every-day life in the streets and shops of the metropolis; his discourses on popular topics, good government and the like, unconventionally treated, gave his audiences what they liked. His sympathies were non-sectarian, he had his finger on the pulse of every gathering, his well of common sense was overflowing, and he was fearless to the point of audacity, carrying the art of the mimic into the very pulpit. His preaching, in fact, sometimes bordered upon dangerous self-assertion. He rose to eminence, as Bacon might say, by a combination of good with questionable arts. But the mixture was mainly good. In Beecher’s discussion of slavery, Calhoun, who was not easily deceived, saw that the preacher knew how to get to the bottom of his subject. His good-humour, and pluck, and immense patriotism before hostile crowds in England (1863) greatly helped to deter that nation from recognising the Southern Confederacy.

=Theorists on Pulpit Eloquence.=--Beecher’s “Yale Lectures on Preaching” disclose how large an element there was in his oratory of conscious adaptation of means to ends. They belong to an extensive and interesting branch of American literature, to which Phillips Brooks, J. A. Broadus, E. G. Robinson, R. S. Storrs, J. W. Alexander, and many others have made contributions. James Waddell Alexander (1804-1859), son of Archibald Alexander of Princeton Seminary, left his “Thoughts on Preaching” to be published in 1864. “The Preparation and Delivery of Sermons,” by John Albert Broadus (1827-1895), President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, represents the theory of a trainer of preachers, himself a winning orator with a consciously developed instinct: “Everybody who can speak effectively knows that the power of speaking depends very largely upon the way it is heard, upon the sympathy one succeeds in gaining from those he addresses.” To insure sympathy--his watchword,--Broadus preached without manuscript. In general, as here, his syntax is not finely moulded. With these might be mentioned another clergyman, Chauncey Allen Goodrich (1790-1860), for forty-three years professor at Yale, whose “Select British Eloquence” set a standard of illuminating scholarship.

_Richard Salter Storrs._--Dr. Storrs (1821-1900), descended from a line of clergymen, was from 1846 on in high repute as a preacher in the Church of the Pilgrims, Brooklyn. He was also in demand as a lecturer, and contributed freely to the _Bibliotheca Sacra_ and other periodicals. His “Conditions of Success in Preaching without Notes” partly tells the secret of his own eminence; his rich voice, distinct utterance, and stately bearing further explain it. In youth a student of the law, he caught something of his eloquence from Rufus Choate. But the moral elevation of character in Storrs was the ultimate support of all his art.

_T. De Witt Talmage._--In Brooklyn, where he preached from 1869 to 1894, Thomas De Witt Talmage (1832-1902) had a “Tabernacle,” as it was called, to which everyone was welcome, and which commonly was filled by an audience of four thousand. In 1894 he removed to New York. For twenty-nine years the sermons of Talmage were published every week, latterly in countless journals; they have had an immense circulation, not alone in his own country, being translated into many foreign, even Asiatic languages. It is possible that no other preacher in the world has during life enjoyed so extensive and regular a following. His physical activity was unbounded; his utterance clear, though his voice was not pleasing, and his message simple, violent, and undiscriminatingly conservative. In espousing what he took to be orthodox, he was hasty and inaccurate; he was utterly careless, too, what means he used to work upon his hearers. To the cultured his writings have little worth. His value to the state and the great world is not so easily decided.

_Phillips Brooks._--Phillips Brooks (1835-1893), after Henry Ward Beecher the greatest pulpit orator in America since the Civil War, was a native of Boston, nurtured in the best traditions of New England. A brilliant and popular undergraduate at Harvard, he strangely enough failed in his subsequent brief experience in teaching. He then studied for the ministry, at the Episcopal Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia. As a young rector in Philadelphia, he showed his power and fearlessness in his patriotic sermons during the Rebellion. “In their relation to the politics of the land,” he contended, “the great vice of our people ... is cowardice.” He himself dared openly to lay the crime of Lincoln’s martyrdom, not alone upon the assassin, but upon the supporters of slavery in the South. From Philadelphia, he went to Trinity Church, Boston, in 1869. Two years prior to his death he was made Bishop of Massachusetts. “The Yale Lectures on Preaching,” delivered in 1877, “constitute,” says Allen, his best interpreter, “the autobiography of Phillips Brooks.... It is a book which owes nothing to predecessors in the same field.... He confines himself to preaching as he had experienced its workings, or studied its method, or observed its power.... The book captivates the reader, simply for this reason alone,--the transparency of the soul of its writer, between whom and the reader there intervenes no barrier.” This was the quality also of his sermons.

He stands in the pulpit [reported an observer] smooth-faced,
full-voiced, as self-reliant a man as ever occupied such a station.
He indulges in few gestures; he has no mannerisms. If, under any
circumstances, he might realise the popular conception of an
orator, he does not betray the possibilities here. He provokes
no attention to predominant spirituality by inferior vitality.
There is a splendid harmony of strength, bodily and mental, which
prevents the measurement of either. It is only when he is out of
his desk and level with his audience that you realise his stature.
In the lecture-room or crowded street, he stands like Saul among
the people. The well-balanced head and strong shoulders draw
your eyes at once. He dresses well, lives well, and holds his
own decidedly in social circles.... His power is not limited to
his church ministrations, nor is he making himself known by some
brilliant special development. It is the whole man--mentally,
morally, and spiritually, leader, helper, friend--which is
attaining such pre-eminence. But when he preaches, you are carried
away to the need of men and of your own shortcomings, and have
no present consciousness of the personality of the speaker. A
transparent medium is the purest. You do not think of Phillips
Brooks till Phillips Brooks gets through with his subject.

Brooks was a wide reader and a careful and original student of church history and theological discussion; he was not the profound and searching scholar that Renan vainly sought in America. He had a roomy mind, a teeming imagination, and a heart full of generosity, energy, and optimism. He lived by admiration, hope, and love. His ideas, which were large and luminous, although they did not have the final tempering that comes from passage through the slow fire of a rigorous critical method, became vital from sharing in his warmth and purity of sentiment.

In regard to his intellectual habits and methods [remarks Allen]
one thing is clear, that Phillips Brooks worked through the
poetic imagination rather than by the process of dialectics,
although he could show great dialectic subtlety when occasion
demanded. When we conjoin this power of the poetic imagination and
his other gifts, the “unparalleled combination of intensity of
feeling with comprehensiveness of view and balance of judgment,”
we can understand how he could quickly penetrate to the heart of
intellectual systems, how a hint to his mind was like a volume to
others, and he preferred to work out the hint in his own way.

VI. THE SCIENTISTS.

=General Remarks.=--The beginnings of science in America date from colonial days and have been touched upon by Professor Tyler. The interest of Americans in science has never abated. Readers of standard scientific literature are numerous. _The Scientific American_, founded in 1845, _The Popular Science Monthly_, founded in 1872, _Science_, dating from 1883, and several other journals of science are read by many non-professional persons. The various sciences have, in the last quarter-century at least, won a place of prominence in our college curricula. The number of disinterested scientific observers and investigators has always been large. The largest scientific organisation in the United States, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which developed from the old Association of American Geologists and Naturalists in 1847, now has a membership of over five thousand; and in addition to this and other general scientific bodies there is for workers in nearly every individual science a national organisation, meeting regularly and publishing the results of investigations. In almost every science America has produced scholars of note; in some she has furnished leaders of the world.

This is not, of course, the place, even if the writer were competent to furnish it, for a narrative of American scientific achievement. We can only touch upon a few of the greater names in mental and moral, political and legal, ethnological and linguistic, and natural and physical science.

=Mental and Moral Science.=--It cannot be said that America has taken a place of pre-eminence in the philosophical thought of the nineteenth century. English, French, and German savants still lead in this realm of thought. Yet American philosophy has made enormous strides in the last half-century and many of its exponents have won universal recognition. Porter and McCosh have expounded the views of the Scottish School; German thought has been elucidated and criticised by Harris, Bowne, and Royce; the writings of Draper, Fiske, and Schurman on the evolutionary theories of Darwin and Spencer are well known. The psychologists Ladd, Stanley Hall, Baldwin, Titchener, and James have international reputations. In the number and equipment of her psychological laboratories America leads the world. The number of periodicals devoted to psychology, ethics, and cognate sciences is considerable. Philosophical studies enjoy great favour at our universities, both as electives and as required subjects. Some of the men briefly considered below are perhaps more famous as teachers than as writers; yet all have left their mark on the philosophical thought of their day.

_Francis Wayland._--Francis Wayland (1796-1865), a Baptist clergyman and for twenty-eight years (1827-1855) president of Brown University, wrote several well-known works on moral and political science. After graduating from Union College in 1813, he studied medicine and began practice at Troy, New York; but from 1816 on devoted himself to the ministry. His “Elements of Moral Science” (1835), his greatest work, was long a standard text-book. “The Elements of Political Economy” appeared in 1837; “Limitations of Human Reason,” in 1840; “Thoughts on the Present Collegiate System of the United States,” in 1842; and “Elements of Intellectual Philosophy,” in 1854. Wayland is most important as a teacher of morals. For him education and religion went hand in hand. Although he was not a thinker of the highest order, his treatises were lucid, exact, and attractive. He was one of the great educational and religious leaders of his day.

_Mark Hopkins._--Another great educator was Mark Hopkins (1802-1887), whose birthplace was Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and who graduated from Williams College in 1824. Like Wayland, he first practised medicine, then became a minister and teacher of moral philosophy. He was professor of moral philosophy at Williams for fifty-seven years, and president from 1836 till 1872. He wrote “The Influence of the Gospel in Liberalising the Mind” (1831), “The Connexion between Taste and Morals” (1841), “The Evidences of Christianity” (Lowell Institute lectures, 1844), “Miscellaneous Essays and Reviews” (1847), “Moral Science” (also Lowell lectures, 1862), “The Law of Love and Love as a Law” (1869), “An Outline Study of Man” (1873), “Strength and Beauty” (1874), and “The Scriptural Idea of Man” (1883). Few men in America have been more potent as intellectual and moral forces than was Mark Hopkins. President Garfield used to say that a student on one end of a log and Mark Hopkins on the other would make a university anywhere. Great as an original thinker and expounder, he was greater as a teacher; “he built himself into the mental fabric of two generations of men.”

_Laurens P. Hickok._--Laurens P. Hickok (1798-1888), a Congregational clergyman, and professor successively in Western Reserve College, Auburn Theological Seminary, and Union College (of which he was virtually president 1860-1868), wrote a number of philosophical and theological works, among which are “Rational Psychology” (1848), “Moral Science” (1853), “Mental Science” (1854), “Rational Cosmology” (1858), “Humanity Immortal” (1872), “Creator and Creation” (1872), and “The Logic of Reason” (1875). He also contributed to theological and philosophical reviews.

_Francis Bowen._--A conservative resolutely opposed to the teachings of Fichte, Kant, and Mill on the one hand and of Darwin on the other, Francis Bowen (1811-1890) is remembered as a strong and clear writer and an enthusiastic teacher. Nine years after his graduation from Harvard (in 1833), we find him editing Virgil and publishing “Critical Essays on Speculative Philosophy.” He edited _The North American Review_ from 1843 till 1854, then became Alford professor of natural religion, moral philosophy, and civil polity in Harvard College. Of his voluminous writings we can mention only a few: “Lectures on the Application of Metaphysical and Ethical Science to the Evidences of Religion” (1849), “Lectures on Political Economy” (1850), “The Principles of Political Economy” (1856), an edition of “The Metaphysics of Sir William Hamilton” (1862), “Modern Philosophy from Descartes to Schopenhauer and Hartmann” (1877), and “A Layman’s Study of the English Bible” (1885).

_Noah Porter._--Professor of moral philosophy and metaphysics at Yale College for forty-six years, and president of Yale University for fifteen years, Noah Porter (1811-1892) made a strong impression in both the philosophical, and the educational world. He was the son of the Rev. Noah Porter, for fifty years minister of the Congregational Church in Farmington, Connecticut, and graduated at Yale in 1831. He was a minister at New Milford, Connecticut, and Springfield, Massachusetts, for ten years; then he assumed his chair at Yale. His chief work, “The Human Intellect” (1868), ably champions the theistic view of the universe, and has had wide use as a text-book, as has also his “Elements of Intellectual Science” (1871). He wrote also “The Elements of Moral Science” (1885) and “A Critical Exposition of Kant’s Ethics” (1886); besides several books on education, of which we may mention “American Colleges and the American Public” (1870) and “Books and Reading” (1870). He also edited the revised editions (1864, 1890) of Webster’s Dictionary.

_James McCosh._--The Scottish philosophy was vigorously championed in America by President James McCosh (1811-1894). Born in Ayrshire, Scotland, of a sturdy middle-class family, he was educated at Glasgow and Edinburgh. His graduation essay on the Stoic philosophy won him the honorary degree of A.M. Becoming a minister of the Established Kirk, he seceded with Chalmers and rendered valuable service to the Free Church. His “Method of the Divine Government, Physical and Moral” (1850) laid the foundation of his fame as a philosophical writer, and doubtless led to his appointment in 1852 to the professorship of logic and metaphysics in Queen’s College, Belfast. From Belfast, after an active literary and educational career, he was called to the presidency of Princeton College, and thenceforward was a distinguished figure in the American intellectual world. His numerous writings after 1868 include “The Scottish Philosophy, Biographical, Expository, Critical” (1874), “The Emotions” (1880), “Philosophical Series” (1882-1885, eight volumes), “Psychology of the Cognitive Powers” (1886), “Realistic Philosophy Defended” (1887), “The Religious Aspect of Evolution” (1887), and “First and Fundamental Truths” (1894). Dr. McCosh was one of the first to point out the theological bearing of Darwinism and to announce his acceptance of it when properly understood. “Touching the thought of his time,” says Professor Sloane, “at its salient points and with tremendous vitality, he constantly insisted on the few central truths of his system in their application to each new question as it arose. Incisive, intense, and real, or rather concrete in his thinking, he felt a loyalty to truth which he sought to instil with all his might into the minds of others.”

_William Torrey Harris._--William T. Harris (born in 1835) left Yale in 1857 to become a teacher in St. Louis, where he was superintendent of schools from 1867 till 1888. From 1889 till 1906 he was United States Commissioner of Education. Although leading a busy life as a teacher, he found time for philosophical work. He founded (1867) and has since edited _The Journal of Speculative Philosophy_, the first philosophical periodical in English. His “Hegel’s Logic” (1890), while highly technical, is one of the clearest and most scholarly expositions of Hegelian thought. He has written also “An Introduction to the Study of Philosophy” (1889), “Psychologic Foundations of Education” (1898), and many smaller educational and philosophical studies.

_John Fiske._--One of the greatest of modern expositors of science was John Fiske (1842-1901). He was born at Middletown, Connecticut, and entered Harvard as a sophomore in 1860, graduating in 1863. The works of Spencer and Darwin opened a new world to his vigorous imagination and he devoted many years to elucidating and applying their doctrines, in “Myths and Myth Makers” (1872), “Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy” (1874), “The Unseen World” (1876), “Darwinism, and Other Essays” (1879), “Excursions of an Evolutionist” (1883), “The Destiny of Man Viewed in the Light of His Origin” (1884), and “The Idea of God as Affected by Modern Knowledge” (1885). His later years were devoted to studies in American history, the events of which he interpreted as the result of evolutionary processes. His work reveals a uniform optimism.

=Some Living Writers.=--Among living writers on philosophical themes space will permit the mention of only two or three. The son of Henry James, the theologian, and the brother of Henry James, Jr., the novelist, William James (born in 1842) was educated privately and at Harvard, from which he received the degree of M.D. in 1870. Two years later he became an instructor and in 1881 a full professor, the subjects of his later interest being psychology and philosophy. He has written, among a large number of books and articles, “Principles of Psychology” (1890), “The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy” (1897), “Human Immortality” (the Ingersoll Lecture, 1898), “The Varieties of Religious Experience” (Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh University, 1902), and “Pragmatism” (1907). Especially noteworthy is his work in analytical psychology. Always clear and fresh in style, his writings have exerted a marked influence on thought both in Europe and in America.

Borden Parker Bowne (born in 1847), who, after graduating at New York University in 1871, studied at Halle, Göttingen, and Paris, in 1876 became professor of philosophy at Boston University. He has written “The Philosophy of Herbert Spencer” (1874), “Studies in Theism” (1879), “Metaphysics” (1882), “Introduction to Psychological Theory” (1886), and “Principles of Ethics” (1892).

Jacob Gould Schurman (born in 1854) has made some worthy contributions to the literature of ethics; it is a matter of regret that administrative work has of late kept him from writing more for the general public. He was born at Freetown, Prince Edward Island, and studied at Acadia College. In 1875 he won the Gilchrist Dominion Scholarship in the University of London, from which he graduated in 1877. He later studied at Edinburgh, Heidelberg, Berlin, and Göttingen, and in Italy. From 1886 till 1892 he was professor of philosophy in Cornell University, of which he became president in 1892. He has written lucid studies of “Kantian Ethics and the Ethics of Evolution” (1881), “The Ethical Import of Darwinism” (1888), “Belief in God” (1890), and “Agnosticism and Religion” (1896).

Josiah Royce (born in 1855), a Californian who studied at the University of California, Leipsic, Göttingen, and Johns Hopkins, has done much to interpret and popularise the thought of Hegel, and has made valuable original contributions to contemporary idealistic thought. His philosophical works include “The Religious Aspect of Philosophy” (1885), “The Spirit of Modern Philosophy” (1892), “The Conception of God” (1895), “Studies of Good and Evil” (1898), “The Conception of Immortality” (1900, an Ingersoll Lecture), and “The World and the Individual” (1900-1901). A close thinker, he writes in a remarkably fresh, vigorous, and informal style.

=Political and Legal Science.=--In the fields of political, economic, social, and legal science the most that can be claimed for American writers is that a fair number of them have achieved genuine distinction and enjoy international reputations. America is still too young to be expected to have produced independent schools of thought in these lines. What Dr. Sherwood says of the economists may have a larger application here:

The chief reason for our failure to make large contributions
to economic science [he remarks in his “Tendencies in American
Economic Thought”] is the same reason which explains the meagreness
of our contribution to general science, viz., the all-absorbing
problem of making use of the advantages within our grasp. Within a
century we have been compelled to work out several most difficult
problems: how to unite in a solid empire many vigorous, large,
and discordant nationalities; how to stretch this empire over the
adjacent territories, so as to remove dangerous enemies; how to
get rid of slavery without disrupting the Union; how to make our
general education keep pace with our growth in numbers and with
the advance of science; how, with the rapidly shifting forms of
industrial organisation, to maintain purity of government and
social order; how to govern an empire without an emperor; how to
push forward material civilisation without going backwards in
intellectual and moral civilisation; how to stimulate invention so
as to win wealth for all, with inadequate labour and capital.

These practical problems have kept us from producing men with wealth and leisure for working out solutions of the large abstract questions raised in these sciences. Nor have our writers yet succeeded in handling large masses of facts with the skill of some foreign writers. The best comprehensive work on American institutions remains Bryce’s “American Commonwealth,” the work of an Englishman. Yet in Marshall, Kent, and Story we have produced some great jurists; in Wheaton, Lawrence, and Woolsey some great writers on legal science; in Carey, Wells, Walker, and George writers of commanding importance in the sphere of political economy.

_John Marshall._--Pre-eminent among the jurists of America is John Marshall (1755-1835), for thirty-four years Chief-Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Marshall served as an officer in the Revolution; in 1780, being without a command, he attended Chancellor Wyeth’s lectures on law at William and Mary College. Entering upon the practice of law, he quickly became known for his acumen. His accession to the Supreme Court bench (1801) marks an epoch in our legal and constitutional history. He had, as it were, to blaze a trail. The Constitution had been adopted; it had yet to be construed. A thousand questions arose as to what it meant, what it included, what it was meant not to include. Marshall’s decisions, recorded in thirty-two volumes of reports, reveal the impartial workings of a master legal mind. Such men do not often appear; it was fortunate that the American Government in its early years was guided by Marshall’s constitutional constructions. They virtually form a system of law, a system which has not since been seriously modified. “The judge who rears such a monument to his memory,” says Mr. Magruder, his biographer, “will never be forgotten; in the united domain of English and American jurisprudence there are not half a dozen such memorials; but not the least distinguished is that of Marshall.”

_James Kent._--It has been said of Kent’s “Commentaries upon American Law” (1826-1830) that they had a deeper and more lasting influence upon the American character than any other secular book of the nineteenth century. James Kent (1763-1847) graduated from Yale in 1781 and then practised law, first at Poughkeepsie, and after 1793 in New York City. In the same year he became professor of law in Columbia College. The Federalist leaders rapidly advanced him; he was made Chief-Justice of the New York Supreme Court in 1804 and Chancellor in 1814. Retiring in 1823, he resumed his teaching at Columbia, and later published many of his lectures in the “Commentaries.” His Chancery decisions, to be found in Caines’ and Johnson’s reports, were of fundamental importance and form the basis of American equity jurisprudence.

_Joseph Story._--With Chancellor Kent, Joseph Story (1779-1845) shares the glory of having laid the foundations of American equity jurisprudence. Story graduated from Harvard in 1798 and was admitted to the bar in 1801. Becoming a leader of what was later the Democratic party, in 1808 he entered Congress and in 1811 was appointed an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. From 1829 on he was also a professor of law at Harvard. For some time after Marshall’s death he was acting Chief-Justice. Many of his opinions in patent and admiralty law are still authoritative. Some of his writings are “Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States” (1833), “The Conflict of Laws” (1834), “Commentaries on Equity Jurisprudence” (1835-1836), and treatises on agency, partnership, bills, and notes.

_Henry Wheaton._--Less known than Story, yet in his day a prominent figure in the legal world, was Henry Wheaton (1785-1848), of Providence, Rhode Island, a graduate of Brown University in the class of 1802. He was a lawyer, an editor, and a diplomatist (from 1837 till 1846 Minister Plenipotentiary to Prussia). His “Elements of International Law” (1836, republished in several editions, and translated into French, Chinese, and Japanese) remains one of the leading authorities. Another important work was his “Histoire du progrès des gens en Europe depuis le paix de Westphalie jusqu’au Congrès de Vienne” (1841, English translation 1846). He was widely respected for sound learning and diplomatic ability.

_Francis Lieber._--Francis Lieber (1800-1872), a native of Berlin and a Ph.D. of the University of Jena (1820), came to America virtually a political exile, and, though an ardent worshipper of freedom, was at first, as Dr. Harley remarks, obliged to make his home in the very heart of the slave power. For twenty-one years he was professor of history and political economy in South Carolina College, being “the first great teacher in this country of history and politics as co-ordinated subjects.” From 1856 till 1860 he held the chair of political economy in Columbia College; and from 1860 till his death he was professor of political science in the Columbia Law School. The great works on which his fame rests are his “Political Ethics” (1838), “Legal and Political Hermeneutics” (1839), and “Civil Liberty and Self-Government” (1853). In writing these books he was a pioneer, and pointed out some important principles of American liberty. In his later years he gave much attention to international and military law. From his proposals originated the Institut de Droit International, started at Ghent in 1873, “the organ for the legal consciousness of the civilised world.”

_William Beach Lawrence._--Another writer whose name is linked with Columbia College is William B. Lawrence (1800-1881). Born in New York City, he graduated from Columbia in 1818, was admitted to the bar in 1823, and gave attention chiefly to international law. For a time he lectured at Columbia on political economy, defending free trade. Removing to Rhode Island, he served as acting Governor in 1852. In 1872-1873 he lectured on international law in the Columbian University at Washington. His works are marked by breadth of view and soundness of judgment. They include “The Bank of the United States” (1831), “Institutions of the United States” (1832), “Discourses on Political Economy” (1834), “The Law of Charitable Uses” (1845), “Commentaire sur les éléments du droit international” (1868-1880), and “The Treaty of Washington” (1871).

_Theodore Dwight Woolsey._--Theodore D. Woolsey (1801-1889) had a varied preparation for his notable career. Graduating at Yale in 1820, he studied law in Philadelphia, theology at Princeton, and Greek at Leipsic, Bonn, and Berlin. From 1831 till 1846 he was professor of Greek at Yale. Becoming president of Yale in 1846, he thenceforward confined his teaching to history, political science, and international law, and became eminent as a writer on subjects in these fields. Among his works are “An Introduction to the Study of International Law” (1860), “Essays on Divorce and Divorce Legislation” (1869), “Political Science” (two volumes, 1877), and “Communism and Socialism, in Their History and Theory” (1880).

_Henry Wager Halleck._--Chiefly known as a soldier, and as general of the armies of the United States from July, 1862, till March, 1864, Henry W. Halleck (1815-1872) was after all more skilled in the science of war than in its practice in the field. He studied at Union College and West Point, from which he graduated in 1839. Before the Lowell Institute in 1845 he lectured on the science of war; his lectures, published as “Elements of Military Art and Science,” were much used later as a training manual. The chief of his other works, “International Law, or Rules Regulating the Intercourse of States in Peace and War” (1861), abridged in 1866 for college use, still ranks among the highest authorities.

_Henry Charles Carey._--In his day the foremost champion of governmental protection to private industry was Henry C. Carey (1793-1879). The eldest son of Matthew Carey, the Philadelphia publisher, he devoted his early years to carrying on the bookselling and publishing business, retiring in 1835. His essay on “The Rate of Wages” (1835) was soon expanded into “The Principles of Political Economy” (1837-1840), which found favour abroad and was translated into Swedish and Italian. His other leading works were “The Credit System of France, Great Britain, and the United States” (1838), “The Past, the Present, and the Future” (1848), “Letters on the International Copyright” (1853), “The Principles of Social Science” (1858), and “The Unity of Law” (1873). Carey was originally a free-trader, but early became a supporter of protection on the ground of temporary expediency. Some of his views have been attacked as unwarranted and dogmatically expressed; it must be conceded, however, that he had a strong grasp of facts and that his works are an invaluable contribution to economic and social science.

_David Ames Wells._--For many years, it is safe to say, the leading economist in America was David A. Wells (1828-1898). He was descended from Thomas Welles, Governor of Connecticut in 1655-1658, was born at Springfield, Massachusetts, and was graduated from Williams College in 1847 and from the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard in 1852. For some years he taught physics and chemistry, and was engaged also in writing school text-books on these subjects. An essay (“Our Burden and Strength”) on the resources and financial ability of the United States (1864) brought Wells into prominence, while it did much to restore confidence in the Federal Government. President Lincoln summoned Mr. Wells to Washington, and appointed him chairman of the Revenue Commission of 1865-1866. As special commissioner of the revenue (1866-1870) he completed vast reforms in the complex system of revenue which had grown up during the war. Thereafter he was largely engaged in writing and speaking on economic topics. Among his books are “Robinson Crusoe’s Money,” illustrated by Nast (1876), “Our Merchant Marine: How It Rose, Increased, Became Great, Declined, and Decayed” (1882), “Practical Economics” (1885), “A Study of Mexico” (1887), “The Relation of the Tariff to Wages” (1888), and “Recent Economic Changes” (1898).

_Francis Amasa Walker._--Born in Boston, Francis A. Walker (1840-1897) graduated from Amherst at twenty, then served in the Union Army, becoming a brigadier-general. In 1869 he was put at the head of the Bureau of Statistics; he was superintendent of the Ninth and the Tenth Census, and held other prominent positions, including (1873-1881) the professorship of political economy and history at the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale and (1881-1897) the presidency of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a prolific writer; of his economic works we can mention only “The Indian Question” (1874), “The Wages Question” (1876), “Money” (1878), “Money in its Relations to Trade and Industry” (Lowell Institute lectures, 1879), “Political Economy” (1883), “Land and its Rent” (1883), and “International Bimetallism” (1896). Walker’s influence as an economist was felt especially in connection with the theory of wages. “The central idea of his theory,” says Dr. Sherwood, “that the amount of wages under free competition tends to equal the product due to the labour, has been generally accepted, although not altogether as the direct result of his writing.”

_Henry George._--The theories of Henry George (1839-1896) have been widely discussed. They were first put forth in “Our Land and Land Policy” (1871), in which he held that the burden of taxation should be borne by the land and not by industry, and that thus opportunities for progress would be equalised. His most important book was “Progress and Poverty” (1879), which in a few years made George virtually the apostle of a new economic and social creed. Conservative economists have been slow to accept his single-tax theory; it has, however, called attention to the enormous waste and wrong that result from granting public franchises to private corporations without due compensation. His theory of wages, that they arise from a value created by the efficiency of the labourer, has been generally accepted and may be regarded as a real contribution to economic science.

=Some Other Writers.=--More than a generation of Williams College men sat under the teaching of Arthur Latham Perry (1830-1905), for thirty-eight years professor of history and political economy. Perry published his “Elements of Political Economy” in 1865; some twenty editions have since appeared. His advocacy of free trade in the sixties cost him many friends. He published also a work on “International Commerce” (1866) and smaller treatises on political economy. Elisha Mulford (1833-1885), a graduate of Yale College and an Episcopal clergyman, was the author of two highly powerful and stimulating books: “The Nation” (1870), dealing with the philosophy of the state, and “The Republic of God” (1880), a religious work of similar character. William Graham Sumner (born in 1840) became prominent for his advocacy of free trade and of the gold standard. Graduating at Yale in 1863, he studied at Göttingen and Oxford, then took orders in the Episcopal Church. Since 1872 he has been professor of political and social science at Yale. He has written “A History of American Currency” (1874), “Lectures on the History of Protection in the United States” (1875), “What Social Classes Owe Each Other” (1882), “Collected Essays in Political and Social Science” (1885), “The Financier and Finances of the American Revolution” (1892), and “A History of Banking in the United States” (1896). Another well known political economist is Richard Theodore Ely (born in 1854), a graduate of Columbia College (1876) and of Heidelberg (Ph.D. _summa cum laude_, 1879), who, as director of the School of Economics, Political Science, and History in the University of Wisconsin, has trained more teachers of economic science than any other American living and has exerted marked influence on the thought of his time. He has to his credit a long list of valuable publications; some of them are “French and German Socialism in Modern Times” (1883), “The Labour Movement in America” (1886), “Taxation in American States and Cities” (1888), “Socialism, an Examination of Its Nature, Its Strength, and Its Weakness, with Suggestions for Social Reform” (1894), “The Social Law of Service” (1896), and “Monopolies and Trusts” (1900). The tendency of the Government to regulate economic movements is in harmony with a doctrine of which he has been a bold champion. Another equally high authority on trusts and currency problems is Jeremiah Whipple Jenks (born in 1856), since 1891 professor of political economy at Cornell University. His “The Trust Problem” (1900) and “Trusts and Industrial Combinations” (1900) have circulated widely. President Woodrow Wilson (born in 1856) of Princeton, discussed elsewhere as a historian, must also be mentioned here for his standard work on “The State: Elements of Historical and Practical Politics” (1889), “An Old Master, and Other Political Essays” (1893), and “Mere Literature, and Other Essays,” in which large and sound views of government and its functions are set forth in a clear and attractive style.

=Ethnological and Linguistic Science.=--In the broad field of ethnological research the work of American scholars has been chiefly devoted to the native and primitive races of America. This offers, as has been pointed out by Mr. McGee,[23] “the finest field the world affords,” exhibiting nearly every stage of development and nearly every type of mankind; and American contributions to ethnology and anthropology have been correspondingly important. The names of Gallatin, Schoolcraft, Morgan, Powell, Brinton, will be at once recalled; probably the last named is our best known ethnologist. In the science of language our showing is, in point of numbers, somewhat more creditable. The lexicographical work of Webster, Worcester, Whitney, and March, and the grammatical work of Child and Gildersleeve have been recognised and appreciated the world over. In these sciences America’s debt to Germany is a heavy one. Most of our greater teachers of language received their professional training in Germany; and while fewer of our students now go to Germany for the doctor’s degree, the influence of German scholarship is still strongly felt among us.

_Pierre Étienne Duponceau._--Duponceau (1760-1844) was one of the pioneers of American philology. Born in France, he came to America in 1777 as secretary to Baron Steuben, served in the American army as captain till 1781, and afterward practised law in Philadelphia, becoming well known. He wrote treatises on law: “Exposition sommaire de la constitution des États-Unis d’Amérique” (1837); and in linguistics: “English Phonology” (1818), “Mémoire sur le système grammatical des languages de quelques nations indiennes de 1’Amérique du Nord” (1838), which was awarded a medal by the French Institute, and “A Dissertation on the Nature and Character of the Chinese System of Writing” (1838).

_Albert Gallatin._--The long and illustrious political career of Albert Gallatin (1761-1849) must not detain us here. Most of his literary and ethnological work was done in his later years. In 1836 he published his “Synopsis of the Indian Tribes within the United States, East of the Rocky Mountains, and in the British and Russian Possessions in North America.” In 1845 appeared his “Notes on the Semi-Civilised Nations of Mexico, Yucatan, and Central America.” He founded the American Ethnological Society in 1842; and he is rightly known and will be remembered as the father of American ethnology.

_Henry Rowe Schoolcraft._--Among the most prominent of early American ethnologists was Henry R. Schoolcraft (1793-1864). His grandfather, James Calcraft, formerly a British soldier under Marlborough, had kept a large school in Albany County, New York, and because of this his name was changed to Schoolcraft. At an early age Henry Schoolcraft became a student of mineralogy, chemistry, natural philosophy, and medicine. In connection with his father’s glass-making enterprises in New Hampshire, Vermont, and western New York, he was engaged for some time in building glass-works, and in 1817 began to publish a work on “Vitreology.” Conceiving a desire to travel in the Far West, he started in 1818 on a journey down the Ohio and up the Mississippi. A book resulting from this, on the mineralogy of the West, made him well known. Another expedition was described in “Travels in the Central Portions of the Mississippi Valley” (1825). In 1828 he was the leader in founding the Michigan Historical Society and in 1832 he helped found the Algic Society, for the reclamation and study of the Indians. A narrative of his work and experiences was embodied in “Personal Memoirs of a Residence of Thirty Years with the Indian Tribes on the American Frontiers, 1812 to 1842,” a work full of the flavour of the primitive West. Other works were “Algic Researches” (1839), a collection of Indian allegories and legends; “Oneota, or The Characteristics of the Red Race in America” (1844-1845); “The Red Race of America” (1847); and “American Indians, their History, Condition, and Prospects” (1850), an immense work covering a wide range of subjects. His books did much to promote knowledge of Indian life and thought.

_Charles Pickering._--Another well-known ethnologist, Charles Pickering (1805-1878), born in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, graduated at Harvard College in 1823 and took his degree in medicine in 1826. He accompanied Commodore Wilkes in the _Vincennes_ on its exploring voyage around the world in 1838-1842 and later visited India and Eastern Africa. His great work was “The Races of Man and their Geographical Distribution” (1848); later works of importance were “The Geographical Distribution of Animals and Man” (1854) and “The Geographical Distribution of Plants” (1861).

_Lewis Henry Morgan._--Lewis H. Morgan (1818-1881), born at Aurora on Cayuga Lake, New York, and graduated from Union College in 1840, became interested in studying the Indians through having organised a society called “The Grand Order of the Iroquois,” which he wished to model after the ancient Iroquois Confederacy. The first literary fruits of his studies were his “Letters on the Iroquois” (in _The American Review_ in 1847). Finding that he must neglect his law practice or abandon his Indian studies, he determined to publish all his materials and then cleave to law. In 1851, then, appeared “The League of the Iroquois,” in which were fully explained the organisation and government of the celebrated Iroquois Confederacy, and which formed the first scientific account of an Indian tribe. A few years later, urged by Henry, Agassiz, and others, he took up his studies again, and began an investigation which was extended to embrace the whole world, and which resulted in his scholarly “Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family,” published in 1871, as No. 17 of the Smithsonian “Contributions to Knowledge.” In 1881 he gathered his materials on tribal organisation into an epoch-making philosophical treatise on “Ancient Society,” which materially helped to lay the foundations of our modern science of governmental institutions.

_John Wesley Powell._--Major John W. Powell (1834-1902) became conspicuous both as a geologist and an anthropologist. He studied at two or three small Western colleges, served in the Civil War, and then taught geology in two Illinois universities. In 1867 he travelled in the Colorado Rockies and thenceforward for many years was busied with surveys and explorations of the Far West. From 1881 till 1894 he was director of the United States Geological Survey, resigning to become director of the Bureau of Anthropology. He made many important contributions to the sciences which interested him, publishing “Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries” (1875), “Report on the Geology of the Uinta Mountains” (1876), “Report on the Arid Region of the United States” (1879), “Introduction to the Study of the Indian Languages” (1880), “Studies in Sociology” (1887), “Canyons of the Colorado” (1895), and “Physiographic Processes, Physiographic Features, and Physiographic Regions of the United States” (1895).

_Daniel Garrison Brinton._--Daniel G. Brinton (1837-1899) of Philadelphia was one of the leading archæologists of the New World. Graduating at Yale in 1858 and at the Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, in 1860, he served as a surgeon in the war and from 1867 to 1887 was editor of _The Medical and Surgical Reporter_. From 1886 until his death he was professor of American linguistics and archæology at the University of Pennsylvania. He has to his credit a long list of important books and papers, only a few of which can be mentioned here. He began to publish in 1859 (“The Floridian Peninsula, Its Literary History, Indian Tribes, and Antiquities”). From boyhood he took a deep interest in the study of the American Indians; and in 1868 he published “The Myths of the New World.” He also wrote, on Indian subjects, “American Hero Myths” (1882), “The American Race” (1892), and numerous ethnological and linguistic papers. He also both edited (for the most part) and published “The Library of Aboriginal American Literature” in eight volumes (1882-1885). In the controversies between science and theological dogma he was a pronounced radical. Along with his scientific labours Dr. Brinton found time for some studies in poetry, especially of Browning and Whitman.

_Noah Webster._--Among students of linguistic science the first to be mentioned in point of time, and one of the first in importance, is Noah Webster (1758-1843), a native of Hartford, Connecticut, and a graduate of Yale College, whose “Grammatical Institute of the English Language” (spelling-book, grammar, and reader) appeared in 1783-1785. These books had an immense sale. The grammar showed originality, but was partly superseded by Murray’s. Webster published also “Dissertations on the English Language” (1789), a more advanced “Philosophical and Practical Grammar of the English Language” (1807), and “Origin, History, and Connection of the Languages of Western Asia and of Europe” (1807); the last being one of the first fruits of Sir William Jones’ identification of Sanskrit in 1786. The great work of Webster’s life, however, was his “American Dictionary of the English Language,” first published in 1828. Revised in 1847, 1864, and 1890, this is now the “International” and enjoys a large sale. The edition of 1901 contains 2528 pages.

_Lindley Murray._--Lindley Murray (1745-1826), a native of Pennsylvania, made a fortune in trade at the time of the Revolution, and then settled at Holdgate, near York, England. Here he wrote his “Grammar of the English Language” (1795), which by 1816 had swollen to two volumes. In 1818 he published an “Abridgement,” which went through some six-score editions. It laid great stress on syntax, and was a terror to generations of students.

_Joseph Emerson Worcester._--For many years the only rival of Webster’s Dictionary was Worcester’s. Like Webster, Joseph Emerson Worcester (1784-1865) was a graduate of Yale College. After teaching for a time at Salem, Massachusetts, he settled at Cambridge. After various lexicographical labours, he issued “A Universal and Critical Dictionary” (1846), containing “in addition to the words found in Todd’s edition of Johnson’s Dictionary, nearly 27,000 words for which authorities are given.” In 1860 this was expanded into the quarto “Dictionary of the English Language,” which included about 104,000 words. In a memoir of Dr. Worcester, Ezra Abbot said:

The tendency of his mind was practical rather than speculative. As
a lexicographer, he did not undertake to reform long-established
anomalies in the English language: his aim was rather to preserve
it from corruption; and his works have certainly contributed much
to that end. In respect both to orthography and pronunciation, he
took great pains to ascertain the best usage; and perhaps there
is no lexicographer whose judgment respecting these matters in
doubtful cases deserves higher consideration.

_Goold Brown._--Most of our grandfathers got their knowledge of English grammar from the text-books of Goold Brown (1791-1857). His education was obtained at the Friends’ School in Providence, Rhode Island, his birthplace. He became a successful teacher and for twenty years conducted an academy in New York City. His “Institutes of English Grammar” appeared in 1823 and with an elementary work had an enormous circulation. His “Grammar of English Grammars” (1851), which brought him wide reputation, has been called “the most exhaustive, most accurate, and most original treatise on the English language ever written.” This is absurdly high praise; yet the book is undoubtedly a monument of industry, and has been for many earnest souls “a court of last resort on matters grammatical.”

_George Perkins Marsh._--In his day a distinguished diplomatist and man of letters, George P. Marsh (1801-1882) made substantial contributions to philology. He graduated at Dartmouth College in 1820 and studied law. He soon turned to studies in language and in 1838 printed privately a translation of Rask’s “Icelandic Grammar.” His “Lectures on the English Language” (1861) were delivered originally at Columbia; his “Origin and History of the English Language” (1862) was a course of Lowell Institute lectures.

_Samuel Stehman Haldeman._--Samuel S. Haldeman (1812-1880) attained a respectable place as a philologist, but was also known as a naturalist and an archæologist. He went to Dickinson College two years, but not liking the course of study, left to study by himself. Shortly after his marriage in 1835, he settled at Chickies, Pennsylvania, became a silent partner with two brothers in the iron business, and spent most of his time in his library, where, for many years, he worked sixteen hours a day. His nature-studies resulted in “Fresh-Water Univalve Mollusca of the United States” (nine parts, 1840-1845); “Zoölogical Contributions” (1842-1843); “Zoölogy of the Invertebrate Animals” (1850); and more than seventy papers. He began early to take interest in the Indian languages, and published papers on them, as well as on the languages of Europe and China, and on spelling reform. These writings are now valuable chiefly as landmarks in the history of linguistic science; but this does not impair Haldeman’s contemporary reputation as a learned and accurate linguist. His last works were a monograph on “Pennsylvania Dutch” (1872) and “Outlines of Etymology” (1878).

_James Hammond Trumbull._--Well known as a thorough student of Indian languages was James H. Trumbull (1821-1897) of Hartford, Connecticut. He studied at Yale in the class of 1842, but was prevented by ill health from graduating. On linguistics he wrote “The Composition of Indian Geographical Names” (1870), “The Best Methods of Studying the Indian Languages” (1871), “Notes on Forty Algonkin Versions of the Lord’s Prayer” (1873), and “Indian Names of Places in and on the Borders of Connecticut, with Interpretations” (1881). He also edited Roger Williams’ “Key into the Language of America” (1866).

_Francis James Child._--Francis J. Child (1825-1896), created a tradition of zeal for broad and sound learning, the influence of which is still strong. A Boston youth, he stood at the head of his class at Harvard, that of 1846. For forty-five years he was a professor in Harvard. In addition to some excellent editions of texts, he published an epoch-making monograph, “Observations on the Language of Chaucer” (1862), “Observations on the Language of Gower’s Confessio Amantis” (1866), and a monumental edition of “English and Scottish Popular Ballads” (1857-1858, revised and enlarged edition in ten volumes, 1882-1898), which is a model of accurate, comprehensive work, and which it is safe to say will not soon be superseded. It is due largely to Child that Harvard has become one of the leading centres of English study in America.

_Francis Andrew March._--The Nestor of living American philologists is Professor Francis A. March (born in 1825), since 1855 a teacher in Lafayette College. He graduated at Amherst College in 1845. At first he pursued philosophical studies, but was later drawn to the study of language. His “Method of Philological Study of the English Language” appeared in 1865. His “Comparative Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon Language” (1870) was a pioneer, and with the “Anglo-Saxon Reader” (1870) did good service in introducing the subject into American colleges. For many years Dr. March has been an ardent apostle of spelling reform.

_William Dwight Whitney._--Probably William Dwight Whitney (1827-1894) is best known as a writer of textbooks and popular expositor of linguistic problems. Among scholars, however, his chief monument is his work in Sanskrit. Born at Northampton, Massachusetts, he was graduated at eighteen from Williams College. In the winter of 1848-1849 he began the study of Sanskrit; this study he continued under Salisbury at Yale, Weber at Berlin, and Roth at Tübingen. In 1854 he was appointed professor of Sanskrit and comparative philology at Yale, and held this chair until his death; being for many years accounted the leading philologist in America. He was a most industrious and systematic worker. His bibliography includes 360 titles. He wrote simple and lucid grammars of English (1877), French (1886), German (1869), and Sanskrit (1879); “Language and the Study of Language” (1867); “Oriental and Linguistic Studies” (1873-1874); “The Life and Growth of Language” (1875); several translations, with commentaries, of Sanskrit texts; and numerous papers and reviews. He was also editor-in-chief of “The Century Dictionary” (1889-1891) and read every proof of its 21,138 columns. But his greatest service to the cause of science was in holding up to his pupils a lofty ideal and a rigorous scientific method.

Hellenists, Latinists, and linguists of every sort [said Professor
Perrin in a memorial address], and even historical students in the
more restricted sense, all over this country and Europe, are now
labouring, each in his chosen field, with a more equable spirit, a
broader method, and a loftier ideal, because they have caught them
all, directly or indirectly, from the master whose memory we honour.

_Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve._--Valuable work in classical philology has been done by Basil L. Gildersleeve (born in 1831). After graduating at Princeton in 1849, he studied at Berlin, Bonn, and Göttingen, receiving the degree of Ph.D. from Göttingen in 1853. For twenty years (1856-1876) he was professor of Greek (for five years, of Latin also) at the University of Virginia. In 1876 he was called to a similar chair at Johns Hopkins University, which he has since held. He founded (1880) and has since edited _The American Journal of Philology_, and has published, among other books, “A Latin Grammar” (1876, twice revised), “Essays and Studies, Educational and Literary” (1890), “The Syntax of Classical Greek” (part i., 1900, with Charles W. E. Miller), and editions of Justin Martyr, Persius, and Pindar.