no new
processes and no new wealth to the learning which he had achieved.
Now, I have said that we are glad to have you see us. You have already
treated us to a very unique piece of work in this reception, and we are
expecting perhaps that the world may be instructed after you are safely
on the other side of the Atlantic in a more intimate and thorough manner
concerning our merits and our few faults. [Applause and laughter.] This
faculty of laying on a dissecting board an entire nation or an entire
age and finding out all the arteries and veins and pulsations of their
life is an extension beyond any that our own medical schools afford. You
give us that knowledge of man which is practical and useful, and
whatever the claims or the debates may be about your system of the
system of those who agree with you, and however it may be compared with
other competing systems that have preceded it, we must all agree that
it is practical, that it is benevolent, that it is serious, and that it
is reverent; that it aims at the highest results in virtue; that it
treats evil, not as eternal, but as evanescent, and that it expects to
arrive at what is sought through the aid of the millennium--that
condition of affairs in which there is the highest morality and the
greatest happiness. [Applause.] And if we can come to that by these
processes and these instructions it matters little to the race whether
it be called scientific morality and mathematical freedom or by another
less pretentious name. [Applause.] You will please fill your glasses
while we propose the health of our guest, Herbert Spencer. [Continued
applause.]
* * * * *
THE CLASSICS IN EDUCATION
[Speech of William M. Evarts at the Thanksgiving Jubilee of the Yale
Alumni, New York City, December 7, 1883. Chauncey M. Depew presided.
Mr. Evarts responded for the Alumni.]
MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE ALUMNI:--I congratulate you,
Mr. President, on having such a noble, such a generous, such a patient,
such an appreciative body to preside over. I congratulate you,
gentlemen, on having a President who combines in himself in a marked
degree these two great traits of a presiding officer:--confidence in
himself [great laughter], and distrust of all who are to come after him.
[Laughter.] I remember forty years ago to have heard a Senator of the
United States, making a stump speech in a quiet town in Vermont, amuse
his audience with a
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