Woodrow Wilson ’79 As A Thinker

[Following is the address by Dr. Jacobus at the memorial service for President Wilson held in Alexander Hall, February 24.]

Among the many appreciations of Woodrow Wilson, I have been impressed with one which made its background that famous saying of Emerson’s “Beware, when God lets loose a Thinker on this earth.”

Of course, I do not wish it imply that thinking differentiated Woodrow Wilson from other great men, of his own or of any time, for men are great because they are thinkers – thinkers different from the thought of their day, thinkers even opposed to the thought of their day.

The thinking of the man we have in our minds and hearts this afternoon was all of this. But, as it was disclosed to me as I was particularly brought in contact with it, it had a quality which put it at the front of the thinking we are accustomed generally to associate with great men.

It did not move along lines that showed him to be a thinker simply different from those around him, one who had merely different ideas from others, who looked at things from a different point of view and put them in a different light.

That sort of thinking many men can carry on, and not, after all, be what we would call great men.

Nor did it move on lines that showed him to be a thinker simply contending against the thought which moved around him, bringing it into question, putting it to criticism, opposing it, condemning it, robbing it of its power.

That sort of thinking also many men can accomplish and yet not be great men.

Nor did it simply move ahead of the thinking of his day, holding the future before itself, entering into a vision of what was to come, leading the thought of others into a forward progress.

That sort of thinking, to be sure, belongs naturally to great men, for only by that sort of thinking do men acquire the power of leadership which makes them great.

It has seemed to me, however, as I have reviewed the thinking which, as an Educator, he disclosed in and out of the Committee room, that the quality in it which impressed one was that it was peculiarly and singularly elemental.

One felt somehow that it got back to the beginning of the question that was up for consideration, that it laid hold of the primary principles that underlay the discussion, that it got one where could be seen the thoroughfare one must travel, not simply to get out of the debate, but to get to the place where one could get a vision of the new ground that lay ahead.

That was why it had about it an atmosphere of newness, of freshness, of discovery, that was why it was recognized as the thinking of an idealist, because idealism is, after all, not mere dreaming but thinking so elemental that it breaks its way through into new conditions, into a new situation, into a new world.

But being elemental, it was naturally simple. Elemental things are generally simple, integral. They are generally things one can grasp, and grasping, move with them in their progress to the vision they disclose.

And further, being elemental, it was a thinking that was naturally responsible, that recognized its responsible relations to truth. Elemental things are not dissociated things, unrelated to the things around them, isolated, alone. Rather, being elemental, they lay hold of that which gets things together, that so related them that they move constructively through confusing difficulties into a consciousness of new action and new life.

It was this sort of thinking that to me explains much in his reconstruction of Princeton’s educational work and life. When he entered upon the presidency of this University, he found a long accumulated confusion in its curriculum, and in its teaching administration. The elemental simplicity of his thinking made his first accomplishment the reform of this into a simplicity that disclosed the rational value in the studies and the rational privilege in the teaching of them.

But he was quick to see what confronted him was not simply a confusion in the conditions under which education was offered, but an irresponsible attitude of mind towards the process by which it was acquired, and so the elemental responsibility in this thinking made his next task the reforming of this into an attitude of conscious responsibility. In that reforming he gave to Princeton her Preceptorial System.

For in that System, he summoned the student to realize that he could not really be educated unless he assumed a responsibility in the educating of himself. For to his mind, education was not merely the acquiring of knowledge, but the training of one’s mind to think through the knowledge placed at one’s disposal so that it could be applied to life.

Consequently, he not only summoned the student to recognize the responsibility to the education offered him, but he summoned to the Preceptorship men who would recognize their own responsibility in the guiding and directing of the student who ventured his craft out upon these new waters of discovery.

For behind and beneath all his theory of education was the elemental idea that its purpose was to make it possible for the student to discover himself, to find his powers of mind, and to find that he could use them; so that to him the class room was less significant than the preceptorial hour, and even that hour less in value than the intimate hour between the Teacher and the Student, where more than in any other hour were born the inspirations that led the mind and soul to the discovery of themselves.

This being his thinking as I have tried to analyze it, this is what it discloses to us of the man himself and of his work. I cannot believe, gentlemen, that this afternoon we are closing a chapter in Princeton’s life. Rather, as in reverent memory we turn its pages, we are conscious that in the years that have followed his Presidency we have been and are making a history that will continue that chapter into a greater Princeton than even than which came to him in his vision.

For as I have looked over the letters that came to me through the eight years of his Presidency, I have realized, as perhaps I was unable to at the time, not only how elementally this ideal of education entered into his thinking, but how profoundly it lay upon his heart, and how his soul was refreshed as step by step he saw it begin to realize itself in the Princeton that he brought to a first place among the Universities of the land – the Princeton that all his life he loved. That thinking and that love we share today, and because we do, we will see to it that they are not disappointed in their results.

This was originally published in the March 5, 1924 issue of PAW.