1856.] Dedication of Polytechnic Hall — Address. 535 



mucli, is entirely too narrow for these times, and for tliis age. The 

 platform, to use a word common in our political vocabulary, savors 

 of the one plank kind, and that a very narrow one. We object not 

 that our course is too extensive, by no manner of means, but that it 

 is not extensive enough. There are men to whom classical studies 

 and pursuits are as the breath of life, and such greatly improve lit- 

 erary and classical taste, and add refinement to our morals and liter- 

 ature; and I trust the day is far distant when these long revered 

 and cherished authors of antiquity — now made ahsulutely necessary to 

 obtaining a diploma from any college in the United States — shall be 

 discarded, or left out of a liberal course of mental training and 

 mental discipline. To a large class, such attainments are necessary — 

 to professional men and teachers, especially so — beneficial would they 

 be to all classes, yet absolutely necessary to eminence, to but few; 

 and no proposition can be more conclusively evident than that our 

 colleges as now organized and conducted, are so far from being thor- 

 ough, that the tendency of the course pursued is to the extreme of 

 superficiality, and serves but to degrade, rather than exalt, classical 

 or any other kind of liberal learning. The system now uniformly 

 adhered to, was devised and adopted in a less enlightened age. It 

 was well devised, and has been productive of incalculably beneficial 

 results. It was planned for the benefit of the few — it is still prose- 

 cuted for their highest good; for those who especially aspire to pro- 

 fessional eminence, and the opportunities now ofi'ered in our better 

 institutions have been, and are still, almost exclusively preoccupied 

 by those who would qualify themselves for professional life. To 

 those who would qualify themselves in an eminent degree for any of 

 the industrial pursuits, there are no opportunities for so doing, ex- 

 cept through the same routine. It need not be said that these in- 

 stitutions have their scientific departments, for any young man 

 would be wanting in self respect, who would toil for six or eight 

 long years, and be told at last he was unworthy a diploma ; or what 

 is equivalent, that he must take a certificate of less value than the 

 Diploma, which the youth of no ordinary ability of sixteen bears 

 away merely because he has preferred to take Latin and Greek. 



It does not answer the objection to say that he can prepare 

 himself afterwards for such industrial pursuits, as the professional 

 man does, and that he is unprepared to prosecute science suc- 

 cessfully without it. We freely admit that the more preparation the bet- 

 ter : but a man must stultify his intellect, and especially his reason- 



