Page:Challenge of Facts and Other Essays.djvu/451

 ADDRESS BY HENRY DE FOREST BALDWIN, YALE, 1885

I was an undergraduate we were lately launched upon a new epoch. The world had been assimilating Darwin's "Origin of Species" about twenty years. The intellectual world was looking at things from a new point of view. Tradition was less sacred, authority less compelling to us than it had been to our predecessors. We revered and admired the old men, but they did not altogether meet our needs. The college had not then departed very far from the old curriculum which characterized institutions of learning for the three or four previous centuries. From all I can learn, there has been more change in the college curriculum from 1880 to the present time than took place from the foundation of the college to the time when I entered it. We were looking for a teacher who we felt could free himself from the old ways of thought, and whom we could rely upon to speak boldly, honestly, and clearly from the new point of view. We found our intellectual leader in Sumner. He did not appear to be afraid of talking over our heads. We felt he was giving the best he had to give, and that he believed what he taught. We knew he was devoting his great talents to us and had stores of wealth to give us, if we chose to listen to him. As a scholar he asked no quarter from an antagonist. As a teacher he did not ask blind acceptance of his ideas from his pupils. He stated his views without any concessions to make them acceptable to his hearers and without