Thomas Jefferson - Third President Of The United States And Founder Of The University Of Virginia

( Originally Published 1913 )

DELIVERED AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA ON FOUNDER'S DAY, APRIL 13, 1908.

No one can stand here without thinking much and wishing to say much about Thomas Jefferson, the founder of this famous University, and next to George Washington one of the two or three most remarkable men that Virginia has given to the United States and to the world. Yet I must refrain from attempting to describe his striking personality. Not that there is anything to deter me personally or officially from attempting the task. To-day nothing need prevent the representative of the great grandson of King George the Third from paying a tribute to the gifts and the achievements of the draftsman of the Declaration of Independence. Nor ought I forget, in this connection, to remind you that Jefferson was in his later days the disinterested advocate of the most friendly relations with England, the policy of which he had so often opposed. But hours, rather than the few minutes at my disposal, would be needed to do justice to a character so varied and so complex, to a career connected with so many great events and entangled into the web of so many personal and political controversies. Moreover, in painting the portrait it would not be right to give the lights without giving also the shadows ; and this is not the place in which one could bring oneself to speak any-thing but praise of the illustrious founder of an illustrious institution.

It is easy to pick holes in the Declaration of Independence, and to decry, as one of your own distinguished men did, its "glittering generalities." But under the rhetoric and the overbold and overbroad assertions of doctrine it contains, there is a condensed and concentrated force which few documents have equalled, and which accounts for the immense power it has exerted. There is, however, I may say, one matter on which all are agreed whether or no they approve the principles and the doings of Jefferson. He was a man of a wonderfully vigorous and many-sided activity. Scarcely a subject of enquiry lay outside of the range of his versatile intellect. Whether you like him or not, you cannot help being attracted by him. Whether you think his influence on American politics and thought to have been in the main wholesome or pernicious, you must admit that influence to have been pervading and permanent. How far it is still a really effective influence, now that the conditions of the United States have become so different from those which surrounded him, I will not attempt to determine. His writings are no longer widely read; his name is more often on the lips than are his ideas fresh in the recollection of those who profess themselves his disciples and seek to conjure with his authority. But that men should still call themselves his disciples and should, nearly a century after his death, claim to be maintaining his traditions, is a remarkable tribute to his gifts; and a remarkable evidence of the power he exerted in his own time upon the great party that still looks back to him as its founder.

He had a lively interest not only in human affairs but also in all matters of natural history, an interest which sometimes led him into odd hypotheses, as when he conjectured that the bareness of the Western prairies which were being explored in his day was due to the action of the mastodons, — the remains of those primeval monsters had been recently discovered — who had devoured all the trees. But this sort of interest strikes us as being all the more remarkable because he was in a notable degree a man of the eighteenth century. His whole way of thinking is unlike our way of to-day, and we might say that compared with such contemporaries as Bentham, Burke, Alexander Hamilton, and still more if he be compared with such much younger con-temporaries as Goethe and Coleridge, Jefferson is almost archaic. Yet having a bright, keen, inventive mind, which played freely round many subjects, he was sometimes in advance of his time, and hit upon ideas characteristically modern.

Of all Jefferson's ideas and projects none lay nearer to his heart and none deserve such unqualified praise as his faith in education and his efforts to diffuse it.

He desired to establish in Virginia a scheme of general elementary instruction and to create therewith a system of upper secondary schools corresponding broadly to the grammar schools of England, though with a less purely classical curriculum, and then to complete the fabric by a University whose aims should be commensurate with all human knowledge and which should recognize, both in the variety of its studies and in the range of choice allowed among those studies, as well as in the absence of ecclesiastical control and even of coercive discipline, those principles of liberty which he held so dear.

It was a fine and fertile conception. It does all the more credit to Jefferson because nearly all the colleges of the United States were in those days classical or mathematical academies attached to particular denominations and with a narrow range of subjects, drilling their pupils thoroughly, but drilling them on old-fashioned methods. Ardently interested in all sorts of studies, natural as well as civil or humanistic, Jefferson desired a University which should take, as Bacon said, all knowledge to be its province, and should provide instruction in every subject that men sought to study. This view of a university — the old true view of those early Middle Ages when universities first arose but when there were few subjects to study — had been almost forgotten. We are so familiar with it now that we scarcely realize how novel it was when propounded by Jefferson, and how much it transcended the common notions of his own times when, in England, Oxford and Cambridge were just beginning to awake from their long torpor, days during which it had been left to the Universities of Scotland to keep ablaze the sacred torch in Britain. Jefferson lit the torch afresh in the South. In 1779 he tried to secure a scheme for establishing popular education. In 1794 he sought to transfer bodily to Virginia the whole faculty of the University of Geneva, threatened by the progress of the Revolution in France, a really brilliant idea, which ought to have been carried out, for the gain to America would at that time have been greater than the loss to Geneva. Never thereafter did he desist from his efforts, till in 1819 the Legislature passed an act, which, while providing primary schools, crowned the edifice by making an appropriation for the University of Virginia. You remember his own words, "Our University, the last of my mortal cares and the last service I can render to my country."

Jefferson carried further than any other man of equal ability and equally large practical experience has done, for we need not place in the category of practical men the contemporary visionaries of France, a faith in the politicial perfectibility of mankind. He believed, or at least he frequently declared, because we cannot be sure that all he said represented his permanent convictions, that the greatest evil from which men suffered was the control of other men. He liked to call that control Tyranny, but the language he sometimes used was applicable not merely to a despotic and irresponsible power but to many other kinds of authority. He would appear to have thought that liberty was so much the best thing in the world that with enough of it all human affairs would go well, and he so heartily distrusted authority as to conceive that insurrections were needed every now and then to check the misdeeds of rulers.

When one reads Jefferson's writings and examines his conduct, considering on the one hand his faith in the people, the average uninstructed people, of his day, and on the other hand his high sense of the value of knowledge and his constant efforts to spread university instruction, three questions present themselves to our minds — questions of permanent interest for all students of politics.

The first of these questions is, How far is it true that the people are sure to go right ? As you here would express it in familiar terms, Is the average man --the farmer or the artisan — "fit to run a democracy" ? He is always being told so on public platforms. But is he really so ? and do those who tell him so always believe what they say ? If freedom alone is enough to enable a people to govern themselves well, that is to say, if the impulses of man are preponderatingly good, if the masses may be trusted to know their own true interest, and to select the proper means to secure it, the average man ought to be able to do so. Yet Jefferson evidently had his misgivings. Though he refrained from the condemnation which he ought to have passed on the excesses committed by some of his French Revolutionary friends, he knew well enough that a great deal more than the abolition of monarchy and "aristocracy" was needed to secure good government ; and his own experience in office was amply sufficient to show him how many knots there are that the "average man" cannot untie.

This question is so large that I must not attempt to discuss it here. I am content to commend it to your reflection as one of the most momentous and fundamental questions of politics that has ever occupied men's minds. We are always getting fresh light upon it every year, and from every part of the world where power has been placed in the hands of the multitude. It has appeared in a somewhat new form in the extension which men seek to give to the principle of direct legislation by the institutions of the Initiative and the Referendum. The amount of truth contained in Jefferson's sanguine view of human nature is really the basic problem of all politics and of all government, which men are continually trying to solve, and no doubt we have advanced further towards a knowledge of its conditions than had the founders of your republic and of the French Republic of those days, for the world has had a much ampler experience of popular governments, or at least of governments claiming to be popular. That experience ranges downward from republics so well governed as Switzerland and the Orange Free State to republics of the class to which Nicaragua and Hayti belong.

A second question suggested by Jefferson's ideas and efforts is this: What ought to be, and what has usually been, the effect of education on the highly educated man so far as politics are concerned ? Have knowledge and training been found to give him a deeper sympathy with the people and a greater fitness for leading the people, or do they rather cut him off from the masses, making him detached, perhaps supercilious, possibly even scornful or cynical ?

The question I put to you is not that which is often debated in Europe, though seldom here, whether the masses of the people on the one hand, or the wealthier and educated class on the other, are more generally likely to be right — that is, to be shewn by the result to have been right — in their attitude on political questions. It is rather this question : What is the effect of the highest education, coupled with superior intellectual gifts, on a man's political attitude and tendencies? Will it tend to increase or to reduce his faith in popular government ?

You may say that this will depend upon his temperament, whether he is hopeful and buoyant, or timid and despondent. No doubt temperament, which itself depends largely on physical health, does make a difference. But the average of cheerful and gloomy temperaments, or of bad and good digestions, is pretty much the same in the best educated and the least educated classes, so the element of temperamental difference may be eliminated.

Instead of trying to discover a priori what sort of influence high intellectual capacity and a store of knowledge might be expected to have on a man's political tendencies, let us see what has in fact been the attitude of such gifted men towards the politics of their own countries. We shall find plenty of instances on both sides. If you take those republics of antiquity which the contemporaries of Jefferson were so fond of talking about, you will find some great thinkers on the side of democracy and some against it. This happened also in modern Europe. In England, for instance, Milton, Locke, Addison, Adam Smith, Bentham, Romilly, Mackintosh, were in their days more or less on the popular or reforming side, while Hobbes, Swift, Bolingbroke, David Hume, Samuel Johnson, were on the other. Some great men, such as Burke, Coleridge, and Words-worth began in the one camp and ended in the other, altering their position as life went on under what people call the teaching of events.

Is there then no general principle to be discovered affecting the attitude or sympathies of leading thinkers, and are they divided between Liberals and Conservatives just like other men ?

Let me suggest to you such a principle, the hint of which comes to me from what we have seen happen in Europe during the last fifty years.

Fifty years ago there were in Continental Europe no free governments except in some small States, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, and the Scandinavian countries. In some countries, such as Russia, Austria, the whole of Italy, except Piedmont, and to some ex-tent in France under Louis Napoleon's sway, there existed not only arbitrary rule but an administration which was oppressive and generally inefficient. In Prussia, and some other German states, the administration was good, but the people had little influence upon it. Now, in all these countries at that time the great majority of superior minds were strongly liberal. They saw the evils of the existing system more clearly than did other men in their own rank of life ; and whether or no they suffered personally from misgovernment, they were disgusted by it and anxious to over-throw it.

Today in Continental Europe the position is different. I will not attempt to decide to which side the preponderance of men distinguished in literature and science belongs. Many might be named as conspicuous on each side. But such men, taken as a whole, are more generally conservative in temper, and less heartily democratic in opinion, than men of the same type were in 1858. Why is this? Because the facts are different. The liberty formerly sought has, in most European countries, now been attained, while the administrative evils which then excited indignation have now been largely removed. Experience has, moreover, disclosed evils incident to some forms of popular government which were not and could not have been felt while arbitrary government held the field, and because demands are now made.

in the name of liberty for further changes, political or economical, which many deem to be dangerous. Democracy has not brought with it all the benefits that were expected, so there has been a certain revulsion of feeling against democratic government. Many of the most powerful minds are occupied in trying not to broaden and deepen its channel, but to erect barriers that may check or guide its flow. But if arbitrary government were in any country to gain once more the upper hand, a thing very improbable (so far as we can look forward) either here or in western Europe, no doubt there would, among the thinkers in such a country, be as strong a tendency away from it back toward popular government as there was fifty years ago.

History will supply you with many other instances to illustrate this law of a reaction of great thinkers against the tendencies of their own time. Plato's criticism of the Athenian democracy is the most familiar instance. The explanation is simple enough. Penetrating minds see the causes of the evils that exist around them more clearly than other men do, and ardent minds have a stronger impulse to sweep away those evils. Men of imagination have a finer vision of what the world might be, and incline to condemn what exists because they believe in the possibility of something better. Whatever the actually existing institutions may be, they see the faults of those institutions. They despise the catchwords of a dominant party, they see the hollowness of current prejudices and the weakness of many a current theory; they condemn the tendency to push a principle to extremes, and the intoxication with its own power which sometimes seizes upon the multitude. The same tendency that makes the great thinker in an age of despotism an advocate of popular government may make him conservative in an age when popular government seems to him to be in danger of going too fast or too far. So we may say, speaking broadly, that the philosopher and the idealist tend to be in opposition to the prevalent tendencies of their own time, be those tendencies what they may. Such men are apt to be in the minority. One might almost say that they belong rather to the future (or perhaps, like Dante, to an idealized past) than to the present ; because it is they who are most exempt from the habit of blind obedience and the sway of custom, and are least inclined to acquiesce in what exists merely because it exists.

The moral of this is — a moral fit to be stated and reiterated and emphasized in a University — that no one must ever be afraid of being in a minority. Where at any rate the question is not of immediate action in a matter lying within the competence of the average man, for in such things the average man may fairly claim to prevail, but a question requiring wide knowledge or serious and independent thought, he who is in a minority is at least as likely to be right as he who is in a majority. The majority must no doubt prevail, for no means has been discovered of weighing as well as counting votes. But to prevail and to be right are not the same thing; and in a democracy men must never be dissuaded, because they have been out-voted, from continuing to assert their convictions. Obey the majority while they are the majority, but do not for a moment suppose that because they are the majority they are right.

Thus the finest kind of mind may be, according to the circumstances of his time, either a liberal or a conservative, a man who cries "Forward" or a man who cries "Walk warily." But he will usually be one who rises above the passions and prejudices of the moment, who refuses to follow the crowd, who is not moved by popular cries. It is well that this should be so, — provided always that the detachment of the independent thinker does not go so far as to put him out of touch with the sentiment of his country and so prevent him from serving it. The great thinker who tries to be also a good citizen will have enough sympathy with his fellow-men to see that he must adapt his counsels to their needs, and must, instead of soaring above them, place himself on their level, and speak to them in a language they can understand. He ought to be independent ; he must not stand apart in isolation.

This brings me to the third question, which a reflection upon Jefferson and his faith in university education suggests. What should a university do for its students in the way of fitting them for a life of learning or a life of public service ? That it should give them knowledge is obvious enough. But it should also give them what is even better than knowledge; that is, Wisdom, — by which I mean the power to apply an intelligent criticism to facts and ideas, to look at things all round, to know how to get principles out of facts, and to test the worth of ideas by their conformity to facts.

It should also teach them public spirit and the love of truth.

Public spirit is often spoken of as a moral virtue. That it is, — but it is a virtue which intellectual training may help to form. The function of Philosophy and History is so to enlarge our minds that we may see how each man's highest interest, conceived in its true moral aspect, is bound up with the public weal, and how nations and states prosper or decline just in proportion as the public interest prevails in their government or as that interest is allowed to be overborne by the selfish interest of classes or of individuals.

Still more evidently is it the duty of a university to instil a devotion to truth. Knowledge and wisdom and practical shrewdness, a sense of how to adapt means to ends, are needed in all the walks of life any one may have to tread. But in whatever work is to be done for the permanent benefit of mankind, be it for learning or science, be it for theology or politics ; and also for all the higher kinds of practical achievement that the service of the Church or the State demands, the one vital and supreme requisite is a de-sire to find the truth and a resolve to follow it when found. The temptation that most easily besets us all is to let personal interest, or vanity, or party spirit, or friendship, or even the sense of beauty, distract us from the pursuit of truth. Now the habit of seeking truth, though it is rightly counted among the moral virtues, is a habit which University training can help us to acquire through the examples set by great scholars and historians and investigators of nature, and by the practice of critical methods applied with scrupulous accuracy. It is the ever-present note of the real scholar, the real philosopher, the real historian.

The bitterest critics of Thomas Jefferson have never denied his patriotic devotion to the interests of Virginia nor ever disparaged his zeal for the spread of knowledge. It was the union in him of these two passions that prompted his life-long labors for the establishment of your University. There are no excellences which he would have more desired that it should implant in its students. Nor has its career belied his hopes. The University of Virginia has always sent forth men eminent both in learning and in the field of public life. She has never condescended to the superficial or the meretricious. Her standards of attainment have been high and her scholars have maintained them. She has been also a home of patriotism and civic virtue. Many of her sons have done splendid service for the nation, and have reflected glory upon this seat of learning and on the Commonwealth of Virginia. May this oldest of all your States, the mother of Washington and of so many other illustrious figures in American history, ever hold high that banner of freedom and enlightenment which her founders planted on the shores of the New World three hundred and one years ago.