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fir. Sale, at tljr Annual (tammtnttmtnt of Sohart

. 3une 15tt|. 1911.
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fir. SaU. st Annual (Cnmutrnrrmntl of Sohart
3unr 15th. 1911.
 THE WORK OF BENJAMIN HALE
A Paper read at the unveiling of a monument to President Hale
in Coxe Hall, Hobart College, before the assembly of the Alumni at
the Annual Commencement, June 15, 1911,
By ANDREW DICKSON WHITE, LL.D.
(Yale, Johns Hopkins and Hobart), D. C. L. (Oxon.)

Sixty-two academic years have passed since, as a boy

entering college, I first saw him whom we now especially
commemorate. It was to him a happy day. The class of

1849, then graduating, contained a little brood of scholars

of which any university might be proud two of them
destined to high rank in the Episcopate. As he handed
them their diplomas from his Presidential chair in the nave
of Trinity Church his bent form became more erect, his eye
brighter, his voice even more than usually clear the toil,
:

the struggles, the disappointments were evidently for-

gotten. It was his hour of triumph. He had come again
with joy, bringing his sheaves with him.
Nine academic years later I saw him for the last time.
Quantum mutatus ab illo. The cares, the labors had told
heavily upon him The end of his work had come. Sup-
!

ported on the arm of one very dear to him he for a few

moments entered the hall where were assembled, for their
Encaenia, graduates he had known during his presidency of
more than twenty years there he heard the words of those
;

appointed to place in his hands a tribute of affection and

respect and he made brief but loving answer. It was the
last public utterance of one whose voice had been heard
with power for right reason in so many assemblies and to
such noble purpose. The rest was silence. By the seaside
which he loved so well there was a brief stay loving hands
;

made those last days especially happy; and we saw his

face no more.

240973
44 HOBART COLLEGE

And now as to the man and his work. His forefathers

were of hardy, sturdy New England stock, of settlers who
came over in early Puritan times. From his childhood he
was docile, kindly, open minded, interested in all worthy
things about him, bright, alert, effective. He had a pious
mother. He had good teachers, one or two of them
especially suggestive, and he profited well by their instruc-
tion studying faithfully and reading wisely. In his eigh-
teenth year he entered Dartmouth College, did well there,
and drew attention by his intellectual clearness and
strength. The religious influences about him were power-
ful,and although, later, the beliefs which he had inherited
were greatly modified, he always spoke with love and
respect of those who counselled him in that earlier religious
development.
The harsh climate of the New Hampshire mountain
region injuring him, he sought something more like his
milder native air, and after this first year at Dartmouth he
entered Bowdoin. It was a smaller college than that which
he had left and it lacked certain strong men whose influence
in the college atmosphere he prized. In letters written
late in life he mused over this change, and thought that his
mind might have been more helpfully stimulated by such
Dartmouth men of his time as Rufus Choate and James
Marsh. But he found good men at Bowdoin also, was
prompt to understand their value, and to profit by it, was
a recognized leader in all worthy college activities, intellec-
tual, moral, religious, and was graduated as the saluta-
torian of his class the class of 1818.
He sought employment as a village teacher, then
first

became a student at Andover, and, next, a tutor in the

Bowdoin faculty.
And now it was, in his twenty-fifth year, that he linked
 WORK OF BENJAMIN HALE 45

his name with one of the greatest and most fruitful educa-
tional movements of the nineteenth century one which is
still exertingpower with increasing vigor. At the little
its

neighboring town of Gardiner, in Maine, a public spirited

member of the family after which the town was named had
conceived ideas of bringing the physical sciences to bear
upon various industries, and turned to the young Bowdoin
tutor for advice and help. For this Mr. Hale was especially
fitted. Although he had always done his classical work
well, and, indeed, must have done it exceedingly well to
earn his high place in the list of college honors, his main
feeling throughout all those early years was evidently for
the physical sciences. The fame of Silliman at Yale, then
so renowned as a chemist, the direct influence of Parker
Cleaveland at Bowdoin, then eminent as a mineralogist,
and the movement in favor of natural science generally,
then beginning throughout the country, evidently wrought
greatly upon him. Into the organization of this new
institution known as the Gardiner Lyceum the young
tutor threw himself heartily and was appointed its Prin-
cipal. So was established the first technical school, in
any true sense of the word, ever founded in the United
States. It was no mere makeshift, no mere manual labor
school : as we look over the statements he then made of
itspurpose, the speeches which he made in its defense,
the calls which he issued to students, the addresses
which he made to his fellow citizens, and especially
his appeals to the state legislature, we see that he had
conceived, broadly in its scope and clearly in its details,
the idea which has since bloomed forth in the technical
schools, and indeed in the universities, which have as-
sumed such large proportions in every part of this coun-
try, and, indeed, throughout the world.
46 HOBART COLLEGE

A recent historian of education has declared that the

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute was the first of all such
schools on this continent. He is mistaken. Thanks to the
authorities of Bowdoin College I have been able to read a
documents, preserved in its library, includ-
series of printed

ing Mr. Kale's prospectus for the proposed technical

school, his address as Principal at its opening, its first
catalogue, and its curriculum, laid down by him, embracing
two years of regular work, and a third year of added work,
in all respects admirably stated, in view of the scientific
development and industrial needs of that day. These
show that the Gardiner Lyceum was incorporated in 1822
and was in operation early in 1823 with a goodly number
of students, divided between a first year and second year.
The Rensselaer Polytechnic School was not established
until 1824. (See note at end of address.)
The young Principal impressed his views on others, and
especially upon his coadjutor and friend, Mr. Gardiner.
He also found supporters in the state legislature of Maine,
and secured from them an appropriation for this new
school. He was its main instructor, at times its only
instructor, for those were the days when the whole range of
sciences were thought to be within the powers of a single
professor, and this young tutor seemed of that robust
Baconian type which took all knowledge for its province.
He soon drew other instructors to him, but he was the life
of the whole, not only a chemist and physicist, mineralogist
and mathematician, but a skillful draughtsman and,
indeed, an architect. His first book was a treatise on
practical carpentry. There is ample evidence that his
work of four years at Gardiner was thoroughly good, but
the times were not ripe for such an effort; the stupidity
and stinginess of legislators could not be long overcome ;
 WORK OF BENJAMIN HALE

legislative means of support were at last withdrawn, and

the Gardiner Lyceum, the first coherent effort to carry out
an adequate plan for bringing the physical sciences to bear
upon the industries of this country, after doing good work
during about ten years, faded from view. None the less,
the place of that young college tutor in the history of edu-
cation and of his country is secure; it is fixed fully and
irrevocably : the organizer of the first school for technical
education in the United States, the precursor of that vast
system which has spread with such effect through every
state of the American Union, and far beyond it, was

Benjamin Hale.
His personal success as a teacher is attested by the fact
that, though the Gardiner Lyceum ended, his reputation
increased. Even in those days when there would seem to
have been but small means of spreading a scholarly fame,
the good repute of his work had gone forth and he was
elected to the professorship of chemistry and kindred
branches at Dartmouth. That his work there was well
done is amply proven. There were, indeed, discourage-
ments : in spite of the growing interest of thinking men in
the natural sciences they were not taken very seriously by
the great body of students in those days. In the leading
colleges practical training of undergraduates in laboratories
had not been thought of. The only instruction save that
given in text-book recitations was derived from lectures,
and then and long afterward lectures upon natural science
were largely considered rather a profitable sort of pastime
than a means of either discipline or culture but in spite of
;

this difficulty he held his own during the eight years of his

professorship thoroughly well and won the respect both of

his colleagues and students.
Now came a time of trial for him. Just as in the early
48 HOBART COLLEGE

days of Harvard Henry Dunster was driven forth from its

presidency because, as Cotton Mather solemnly observed,
he had "fallen into the briars of Anti-Pedobaptism," just
as in recent days Dr. Woodrow was driven, for equally con-
vincing reasons from a professorial chair nobly occupied,
and Alexander Winchell similarly expelled from a univer-
sity presidency for which he was admirably fitted, so
Benjamin Hale under suspicion of dangerous opinions.
fell

He had come to believe in Episcopacy. There was nothing

forbidding this belief in the charter or laws of Dartmouth
College: on the contrary that institution claimed to be
especially free from denominational trammels; but none
the less the good men who bore sway there, in their fear of
an Anglican invasion, were led to commit an offence that
may be called, without exaggeration, an outrage. Secretly,
under the pretense of economy, they abolished the pro-
fessorship of chemistry, and without any form of pre-
liminary notice, left Mr. Hale, with his wife and child,
deprived of support; nor was this all: the publications
afterward issued in behalf of the Trustees, while they were
floundering in a stormy sea of public indignation, made
their offence worse. Mr. Hale showed nobler character-
istics. He wearied the public with no long arguments he ;

neither cringed nor threatened; he simply wrote a farewell

letter stating the case as it was a letter respectful and
manly. Friends came to his side, especially one of his
brother professors, and the result was that his reputation
was increased not only as a professor but as a man. He
now turned from scientific work and employed his pen
forcibly in the service of his religious ideas his
; power as a
preacher had also begun to be recognized and he was gladly
heard in some of the foremost churches of New England.
Academic recognition in the shape of a doctorate came
 WORK OF BENJAMIN HALE 49

from Columbia College, and then it was, in 1836, that he

was called to the presidency here, at Geneva.
The work thus assigned him was hard indeed. The Col-
lege, though young, was encountering distrust and opposi-
tion. Men who should have supported it stood aloof.
The endowment was next to nothing. The state was
induced to give a very small subsidy, but this was ere long
withdrawn and matters were worse than before. His
labors now became heroic as he afterward playfully said,
;

he was president, secretary, treasurer, and, almost, the

entire faculty. His small salary at least that part of it
which was paid he shared with the tutors and professors
whom he drew about him. But gradually, after many
heart breaking disappointments, and after self sacrifice
which approached the verge of martrydom, a better day
seemed to dawn. His eloquent appeals secured aid. Most
encouraging of all was it that he attracted into his classes
many promising young men who felt his value and profited
by it. First of all, he raised the reputation of the College
for sound scholarship. It was recognized beyond the
boundaries of the state: and well do I remember that
when President Woolsey received me on my entrance at
Yale, he expressed the hope that I might develop scholar-
ship like that which Henry Hadley and Francis Hodges had
recently brought from the college at Geneva.
Of Dr. Hale as a professor others must speak; during
my one year in the College, I did not come into his class-
room. But he greatly impressed me. As a preacher he
spoke both to heart and mind. There was a simplicity
and directness in his arguments, an aptness in his illustra-
tions, a fairness, sanity and strength in his whole treatment
of questions at issue which took strong hold of me.
Troublesome, indeed terrifying to many good men at
50 HOBART COLLEGE

that time, were questions looming up between science and

theology, but he was never thrown by them from his poise :

he met these, as he met questions, with candor and

all

reasonableness. Vigorous as his style of argument was,

there was nothing of the swashbuckler in his assertions or
methods, and whatever concessions he made to science, he
erected new fortresses for religion.
Nor did he reach his hearers through the pulpit alone.
That was the bloom period of the popular lecture system,
and I recall the pride which our little group of Geneva
College men felt in him as he spoke lucidly and cogently to
a large audience in the City Hall at Syracuse. I recall, too,
his powers as a conversationist, at father's table and
my
elsewhere. On the esthetic side, too, he exercised a happy
influence. Pardon an additional reference to myself as
showing how his winged words influenced young men. A
short talk of his on Gothic Architecture, his text being
photographs of York Cathedral as representing the
English spirit, and the Church of St. Ouen as representing
the French spirit, has influenced my thinking from that
day to this. Connected with the impulse given by Rus-
kin's early writings read in my college room here, it inspired
a passion which led me, during after years, to visit every
cathedral and town hall of note from Trondhjem to Mon-
reale, and from Dornoch and Durham to Seville.
Others, too, far more advanced in knowledge than my-
self, felt this happy influence, and I remember that Osborne

Gordon, Ruskin's tutor, at Christ Church College, Oxford,

spoke with especial satisfaction of his discussions with Dr.
Hale. The foremost of the Hobart students of his time
were those who most warmly acknowledged his influence,
and were such as James Morrison Clarke, William
of these
Paret, Henry Adams Neely and Robert Hamilton. He
 WORK OF BENJAMIN HALE 51

was, indeed, one of a body of strong men who did noble

work throughout the first half of the nineteenth century.
His was the type of Nott, Wayland, Mark Hopkins,
Alonzo Potter, Andrew Peabody and Henry Philip Tappan
broad, robust men of thought and of affairs.
But I have already hinted at an additional quality of his,
which I think none of these great contemporaries just
named exhibited a strong development on the aesthetic
side. I remember recognizing his artistic hand in the
little old wooden chapel of the College, and in his dwelling

house opposite, and above all in yonder parish church,

which, thanks largely to his counsels, remains a striking
example of the beautiful in art wedded to the beautiful in
nature.
In estimating his work we doubtless should call to mind
the privations he suffered in the inability to carry out his
most cherished ideas in the art which was to him greatest
architecture. It was be a pioneer, and in
his lot really to
the work which fell to him he found not opportunities for
realizing his artistic ideals, but more frequently, rough
encounters with those who misunderstood him, disappoint-
ments, distresses; yet he fought his way through these
manfully, and lived to establish his work firmly. It was a
life worth living true, good, heroic, fruitful.
A cynic may all was a life so full of toils,
ask "After
disappointments and sacrifices worth living?" Benjamin
Hale had to answer this question and he answered it
rightly. He saw the present need and future possibilities
of such colleges as this to which he gave himself. With his
earlier work for education in applied science he may well
have had faith also in the coming of great technical schools,
and, indeed, of universities which the development of
advancing studies in science, literature and the arts were
52 HOBART COLLEGE

sure to demand and to create, but he knew that, first of all,

there was a place, and that there must always be an increas-

ing place, for the American college. What we see today
proves that he was right and the college will soon come to
;

justify its existence even more fully than ever before.

The time is coming, nay it now is, when there is need of a
new division between the work of the colleges and that of
the universities: a differentiation is becoming more and
more urgent. May I, as one who has given much thought
to university education, during more than fifty years, ex-
press my conviction that one of the greatest educational
needs of these times is to stop the duplication of college

work in the universities, to take from the universities the

classes of the first two years and relegate them to the
col-

leges, to receive into the universities, as a rule, only such as

have taken Baccalaureate degrees in Arts, Science, or
Literature, and to have university education concentrated
upon the training of those who desire professional studies
or advanced studies in science, literature and the arts?
Some such division, in my opinion, ought to be made and
will be made. It will give the colleges a great work which
most naturally falls to them. It will enable the universities
to concentrate their resources upon that further work
which our country greatly needs and which should have its

academic reward in special, advanced and professional

degrees. It will give to the whole country men more

excellently trained for the most advanced work, and with a

great economy of time, money and effort. Benjamin
Male's writings as far back as 1822 and 1823 give ample
proofs that he divined this double need of modern states
and nations, and a differentiation such as I now advocate
would be a noble development out of the work which he
began so wisely at Gardiner, and which he finished so
nobly here at Geneva.
 WORK OF BENJAMIN HALE 53

You will remember, Alumni of Hobart, among the words

which the world will not willingly let die, those which
Pericles spoke over the heroes who were the first to fall in
the Peloponnesian war. The whole world, he said, is the
tomb of the hero, for throughout the world he is enshrined
in the hearts of all great and good men. If that was true

then, of the heroism of paganism and war, how much more

true is it now, of the heroism of Christianity and peace.
This prodigious extension of modern civilization over vast
spaces, in which Hellas and the world known to Hellas was,
geographically, but as a dot on the earth's surface; these
miraculous powers, God-given to us through modern
science,by which every deed well or ill done is instantly
jotted down in the hearts and minds of hosts of men and
women spread over the whole earth to whom the hosts of
Greece were, in numbers, but as a handful; that great idea
to which our common Christianity has given so vast an
impulse and development the brotherhood of man under
the fatherhood of God; all these conquests of the human
mind and combine to enhance the value of such a life
soul
as this which we this day commemorate, and to make it a
more and more precious addition to the treasures of
humanity enshrined in the hearts and minds of good and
true men.
The work of Benjamin Hale in welding science with
industry, in virtually re-founding this beautiful institution
of learning, in giving scholarly inspiration and manly direc-
tion to over twenty generations of its graduates an
inspiration and direction passed on by them to other
generations, and by these to others yet unborn, finds in the
hearts and minds of all these past, present, and to come
its greatest monument.
54 HOBART COLLEGE

We do well indeed to place here this bust and its adorn-

ments. They form President Hale's well earned memorial,
but we remember that this memorial is but a part of
are to
his monument: the monument for which he, himself,
fought so bravely and wrought so well is Hobart College.
In a larger sense than any memorial we can erect, the Col-
lege is his monument. Let this memorial of his services,
today unveiled, keep alive in all generous minds the

determination to develop more and more nobly this Col-

lege, and to make it the worthy visible sign and center of
that greatest monument of all the gratitude and affection
in all hearts, far and near, which have, directly or by trans-
mission, been quickened by his teachings and enriched by
his example.

NOTE For the claim made in behalf of the Rensselaer Poly-

technic Institution, see E. G. Dexter, "History of Education in
the United States," p. 344.
Professor E. P. Cubberley, of Stanford University, in his excellent
and most interesting "Syllabus of Lectures on the History of Educa-
tion" (New York, 1904), in sketching out the history of the "Fellen-
berg Manual Labor movement" in Europe and America, classes the
"Lyceum" at Gardiner, Maine, established in 1822-3, with the
school at Lethe, Abbeville District, South Carolina, established in
1797. In so doing, while he is correct in making the Lethe institu-
tion primarily a manual labor school, that is, a school designed for
enabling youth to support themselves upon a farm while obtaining
an education, his statement is defective in so far as it leads to the
conclusion that the Gardiner Lyceum had the same primary purpose.
While there was, indeed, at Gardiner a prospect held out in some of
the publications that opportunity would be afforded for young men
to support themselves, in part at least, by their own labor, that was
never the leading feature of the school and is hardly ever alluded to
after the first statements regarding it, it being evidently subordinated
completely to the main object, which was to bring studies in the
various sciences, including mathematics, chemistry, physics, etc.,
etc., to bear upon the improvement of various arts and industries.
This being the case, while the school at Lethe, established by De la
Howe in 1797, may be one of the first, or perhaps the first, of the
American "manual labor schools," the institution at Gardiner is,
so far as can be ascertained, the first of the modern "technical
schools," preceding the Rensselaer Polytechnic at Troy by between
one and two years. See Cubberley, as above, p. 352; also the
 WORK OF BENJAMIN HALE 55

Circulars of Information issued by the United States Bureau of

Education, in 1888, No. 4, containing Meriwether, "The History of
Higher Education in South Carolina," etc.
As to the school at Gardiner, see The Centennial of Gardiner
(Gardiner, Maine, 1903), p. 38; also An Address to the Public from
the Trustees of the Gardiner Lyceum (Hallowell, 1822); also Catalogue
of the Gardiner Lyceum and An Address of the Trustees (Hallowell,
Nov., 1823); also An Inaugural Address Delivered at Gardiner, Me.
Jan. j, 1823. By Benjamin Hale, Principal of the Gardiner Lyceum
and Lecturer on Natural Philosophy, (Hallowell, 1823). Beside
these, there is in the Bpwdoin College Library, a Report of the Com-
mittee on Literary Institutions [of the Maine Senate] on the Petition
of the Trustees of Gardiner Lyceum, February 25, 1832, (Augusta,
1832), which shows that there was attached to the school "a work-
shop with circular saws, moved by water power, free of charge to
the students, and fitted up for their use," and also a collection of
philosophical apparatus, books, models, minerals, specimens in
natural history, etc., with fourteen acres of land given to the institu-
tion for use by students in agriculture, with substantial buildings.
The number of students, beginning with about twenty, rose to over
sixty, and the institution existed for/ ten? years, when the with-
drawal of the legislative appropriation led to its discontinuance.

v
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