The History of Dartmouth College

by Baxter Perry Smith

CHAPTER XXV.

PROFESSOR STEPHEN CHASE.—PROFESSOR DAVID PEABODY.—PROFESSOR WILLIAM COGSWELL.

Professor Stephen Chase, who succeeded Professor Young in the chair of Mathematics, the latter retaining the department of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, was the son of Benjamin Pike and Mary (Chase) Chase, and was born at Chester, N. H., August 30, 1813.

The following notice of this distinguished mathematician is from a commemorative "Discourse" by President Lord:—

"In the first class that entered the college, after my connection with it, nearly twenty-three years ago, a young man, spare, tall, as yet unformed in manner, soon engaged the attention of his teachers. We marked his mild, serene, yet quick and penetrating eye, his independent, unaffected, yet modest and regulated movement, his lively, versatile, earnest, and comprehensive mind, his cheerful and honest diligence, his punctual attendance upon the exercises of the college, his respectful, but unstudied and confiding deportment towards his superiors, his frank and generous, but reserved intercourse with his fellow students, his care in selecting his most intimate associates, and his quiet, unpretending, yet exact and intelligent performance of all the studies of the course. An indifferent stranger would not have noticed him, except, perhaps, to criticize his unique exterior; and his fellow students, as is natural to young persons who are most impressed by æsthetical manner and accomplishment, did not dignify him as a leader or an oracle. But a deeper insight convinced his teachers that, whatever partial observers might think wanting in respect to artistic excellence, was well supplied by more substantial and enduring qualities. Their eye followed him, while here, as a sound-minded, true-hearted young man, and a thorough scholar; and, after he had graduated, as a teacher at the South, and in two of the oldest academies of New England. In these different relations he fully justified the good name which he had left behind him at the college, till, the proper occasions serving, he was called back to be first a tutor, and then professor of the Mathematics. The subsequent course of Mr. Chase proved that his instructors had not miscalculated his powers, nor over-estimated his qualifications for one of the most difficult and trying positions in a learned institution.

"Professor Chase performed the duties of his office without interruption till the close of the last term, during a period of about thirteen years; and died, after a short illness, in vacation, while yet a young man. He was scarcely thirty-eight years of age. Yet he was old, if we measure time, as scholars should, not by the motion of the heavenly bodies, but the succession of ideas. He had made great proficiency in knowledge. Well he might; for he had great susceptibilities. His temperament was ardent, his instincts were lively, his perceptions keen, his thoughts rapid, his reasoning faculties sharp, his imagination fiery, and his will determined. No man has all his active powers proportioned; for that would constitute perfection, which exists not in this world any more in physical than in moral natures. But his balance was less disturbed than most, and, consequently, he was capable of various and large attainments. What he could he did, for his spirit was earnest, and his industry untiring. He had become well founded and extensively versed in most departments of liberal study, and it would be difficult to say in what branch of knowledge he would have been most competent to excel. He was not a genius; that is, no one power of the mind absorbed the others, and his culture was not unequal. Therefore he would not have glared for a while, like a meteor, and then exploded, but he would have stood one of the pillars of learning, and a true conservator of society.

"A man of excellent constitutional faculties, like Mr. Chase, must use them, if Providence gives him opportunity. He has a self-moving power. He cannot be still. Use of the faculties increases their facility and productiveness; and the increase of products increases the love of acquisition. His gains, and his consequent love of gain, will be according to the Providential direction which he takes, whether to a trade, an art, a profession, to the pursuit of wealth, or power, or general knowledge. Mr. Chase's direction was to knowledge. He acquired it easily, his stores rapidly increased, and the love of it became a passion. He loved knowledge as some men love pleasure, and others gold, for its own sake. Yet not exclusively, for he was genial, warm-hearted, and humane. He appreciated the enjoyments of personal, domestic, and social life. No man could be more affectionate, kind, generous, or public-spirited. He was never a recluse or an ascetic. He was ready to take anything in hand, and liked to have his hands full. He desired an estate, he studied a profession, he amused himself with useful arts, he loved a farm, a garden, an orchard, a fruitery, an apiary; and occasionally, to do the work proper to them all himself; and he did it well. But knowledge, science, in the largest sense, was his beau ideal.

"Professor Chase, as might be expected, had great excellence as a teacher and governor of college. His ideal of education may be inferred from his personal culture. This had always been general and liberal. He omitted no branch of important knowledge. He accepted nothing partial. He believed in none of the romantic expedients which are often hastily adopted, and successively abandoned, for making scholars without materials, and forcing public institutions of learning, for a present popular effect, off from the methods which nature has prescribed, and experience has sanctioned. He regarded a college as a place not so much of learning, as of preparation for learning,—a school of discipline, to bring the student up to manhood with ability to perform thenceforth the hard work of a man in his particular profession. To that end no part of fundamental study could be spared. He would as soon have judged that young men could be trained to excellence in the mechanic arts, while they disused any important organ of the body; or a sculptor elaborate a perfect model by chiseling only the limbs. He would not expect such a mechanic, or artist, or educators of the same school, to find either honorable or lucrative employment, when society, though temporarily blinded by ingenious but visionary projects of improvement, should learn the practical difference between the whole of anything and its parts. He would not have consented that any other department of college study should be sacrificed even to the Mathematics.

"But he would have the Mathematics lie, physically, where God has placed it, at the foundation. He would have the student early settled and accustomed to the most approved methods and varieties of demonstrative science. He would discipline the mind among the certainties of numbers, that it might better search for truth among the probabilities of things; just as we learn to swim where we can touch bottom before it is safe to plunge into the deep. He judged soundly that one must learn to use his reason before he can wisely apply it to the purposes of life; and that without this preliminary training nothing else can be learned well; and that whatever otherwise seem to be accomplishments, turn out, at length, to be fantasies that vanish in the turmoil and struggle of life, or mislead men into a false and fickle management of affairs. Wherefore he felt the peculiar responsibility of his position with all the intenseness of his earnest and far-reaching mind. He knew that his department, though most difficult to be commended to young men in general, was most indispensable to their success, and he sought accordingly to magnify his office. That he was a complete master of it is out of question. Of this he has left enduring monuments; and not the least, I am happy to say, in minds which he had trained.