Eliot's Reply Reviews Period of Struggle In Early Days

"Dear Friends:--The affectionate note of this tribute goes straight to my heart. It fills me with wonder and astonishment. But it touches me deeply. This day is going to be one of the happiest and dearest of my memories.

"I have received the encomiums of the speakers with a certain sense that I have not fully understood. One of them said that I had an unsual amount of courage. That has never entered my mind. I confess to recognizing another quality to which President Lowell referred--a readiness for combat. I look back upon my life as a boy sometimes engaged in those rough and tumble fights which we used to have on Boston Common, and I recognized there at a tender age that I did display considerable enjoyment in fighting.

"Look Forward, Not Back"

"But when it comes to maturer life, I find that the source of this quality described as courage is simply this--that I never stopped any attempts of mine because I looked forward to opposition. I was regardless of risks and opposition. I was eager to do something in the future. It was that part of my nature which, by its expression, enabled me to look forward and not back, to look out and not in. Now at the close of my life, I do not know any better advice to give to the graduates of Harvard College or to the undergraduates of Harvard College than that contained in those two phases: 'Look forward and not backward. Look out and not in.'

Good Health A Blessing

"I confess I receive with great delight what the President of the University said about the spreading influence of Harvard in the present day. I recognize that I have been unusually strong and had unusually good health, and that a great deal of the influence I have exerted,--what has been described as my personality, is derived from those two facts,--strength and health. And with those two things, strength and health, went a great joy in work, just in work. I need not stop to consider why I had joy in work. I never looked in enough to think of that even. But joy in work has been the source of a very large part of my life.

"Now that is just a gift of nature-- from grandparents as well as from parents. Those inheritances determined my life in many respects. They determined my natural disposition towards work, towards research, towards persistent inquiry.

Always Seeking Professors

"To go back to Cambridge as described by one of the speakers in respect to my conduct as President, I may say that I recognize the accuracy of his description, particularly when he said that I was probably, in listening to debates at the college and in inviting my opponents, pursuing with a good deal of perspicacity a study of those men-- that I was making up my mind to see whether these zealous opponents were of the right stuff to be made professors in Harvard University. That is just what I was doing.

Worked In Time Of Change

"Consider now the sources of my career as a teacher. The sources were in the times. In that wonderful period of human history in which my whole career was laid. Think of it. When I was going on as a teacher in Harvard, the great prophets and exponents of experimental science were taking possession of that great field. Think how the philosophers of the world were preaching attention to the individual preaching the immense variety of human nature. Think how James Russell Lowell was telling us that democracy must not only raise the average mass, but it must give a free field to all the finest qualities of human nature, for that is the only salvation for democracy. Think how Oliver Wendell Holmes enlarged the conception of human sagacity, penetration, and discrimination combined with great power, of expression in both prose and poetry. Think how Asa Gray, Benjamin Pierce, and others, were the leaders of thought in science and especially in American science and the methods of teaching.

"All that came when I was a teacher in Harvard, and out of the times, the extraordinary period, have come the ideals and the lessons which I have pursued all through my activity. Then as the years went by and the period of combat and persistent effort against opposition passed and the new structure of Harvard University began to take effect, think how it gave me the opportunity to see where modern education was going, and where it ought to go. Now and then I could help their labors, especially in the medical faculty, but it was the strength of the Harvard faculties themselves which filled me with strength and what is called leadership. I gave expression to their hope, aspirations, and devotions, and great was the privilege of so doing. You must therefore attribute the successes which I have been privileged to win to the very fortunate circumstances of my life, to the extraordinary leadership of philosophers and scientists of my time.

"And now I want to say a word to the graduates of Harvard here assembled. I do not think I could say better than I said it in my inaugural address in 1869 in speaking of the erection of Memorial Hall. The words are:

Points To The Future

"There have been doubts in times yet recent, whether culture were not selfish; whether men of refined tastes and manners could love Liberty, and be ready to endure hardness for her sake: . . .

"In yond old playground, fit spot whereon to commemorate the manliness which there was nurtured, shall soon rise, a noble monument which for generations will give convincing answer to such shallow doubts: for over its gates will be written: "In memory of the sons of Harvard who died for their country." The future of the University will not be unworthy of its past.'

"How the young Harvard men have demonstrated in the World War that that last line is true...The future of the University will not be unworthy of its past. But let me finally emphasize the beauty of Harvard men, of all educated men. To serve their country in peace as well as in war. I call upon the young Harvard graduates, and by and by I will call on the undergraduates, to serve their country with devotion and sacrifice in peace as well as in war.