previous next
[159] their land in proportion to that which God had given them. With the increase of prosperity, they have given not more liberally but more largely, until, to-day, the value of the possessions of the university in land, buildings, and money amounts to fully thirteen millions of dollars. Of this more than eight millions represent what may be called ‘quick capital;’ five millions are invested in lands, buildings, and collections used for university purposes. The lands owned and occupied by the university, the College Yard and the adjoining fields, the Soldier's Field, the Gardens, the Observatory grounds, the Arboretum, the Bussey lands and other lands in Cambridge, Boston, and neighboring towns, amount to nearly seven hundred acres. The buildings owned by the university and occupied for its purposes are more than sixty: of the principal buildings fifteen are dormitories; thirty-five are variously used as lecture-rooms, offices, observatories, laboratories, museums, libraries, dining-halls, and buildings devoted to athletic purposes. From its invested funds, tuition-fees, rents, and other sources of income, the university received, in 1894-95, one million eighty-four thousand and ninety dollars, of which fully ninety thousand dollars was awarded to meritorious students in the form of scholarships, fellowships, and various other aids.

Such is the outward, the physical Harvard. More important, however, than the outward showing of a college is the spirit which animates its students. Unthinking men have long misunderstood the spirit of Harvard, perhaps because at Cambridge men do not talk much of spirit; they know that talk means little in the struggle of life, that action counts. Even graduates of the university fail to realize how strong this spirit is in the college world.

From the world outside there comes a cry that Harvard is indifferent,—yet nothing is falser; men do not rightly judge the attitude of the college. From its foundation Harvard has stood for the cultivation of the individual, and those who do not think say this is selfishness. It is its opposite. Harvard individualism means that every man shall develop what is best in him, that thus he may fit himself to serve his fellows. Toward this ideal the university has struggled for two centuries and a half, and in these later years, with the rapid development of the elective system, by which each man has fitted his studies to his needs, the university has come nearer to it. To one who

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
John Harvard (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
1895 AD (1)
1894 AD (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: