Arts and Letters

The legend that Arthur Twining Hadley came into the world speaking Greek suggests the origin of some ancient myths. His brilliancy of mind was such that stories were invented to account for his genius. But as some ancient said of Plato's Phaedo, "If Plato did not write me there were two Platos;" so if Hadley did not say these things there were two Hadleys, which is not to be imagined, much less admitted. God made no replica of his quick and quickening wit.

He must have been born full-panoplied. The son of the famous Greek scholar "remarkable for the extent of his acquisitions," he seemed to support the theory of the transmission of acquired character, so extraordinary an acquaintance did he show with a variety of subjects even in his earliest years. He led in everything to which he gave himself and had an intellectual range astounding to the ordinary man. He could use many languages effectively, improvising even on occasion, and he possessed a basic knowledge of every liberal discipline. The old Greek poet Aleman had a word for him, phrasidorkon (φρασίδορχον) one "that looks with the mind," not only in memory backward but forward in prevision. And it also suggests one who looks "quick-sightedly" and "accurately," as a gazelle,—one who speaks and acts from quick, clear sight. "No prophet," said Professor Seymour in his admirable memorial address, "ever translated his principles into actual life more completely than he…. He constantly preached the necessity of intelligence; he invariably utilized it and flexibly." He carried in his writings and conversations "the flower of Socratic talk.”

When elected President of Yale University he was regarded as a very young man for the position, but such was his reputation for scholarship, his acquaintance with practical affairs (being considered even then as a foremost authority on transportation) and his popularity with students and alumni, that he overcame the handicaps of slight experience in academic administration. He was even assisted and endeared by the very eccentricities of mind and body which would seem to a stranger to disqualify him.

My first memory of him recalls him at the last baccalaureate service of President Dwight, just after his own election, when the voice of Old Yale called down the blessing of Heaven upon this nervous young scholar. And I can't forbear to speak of the next, in which President Hadley appeared again, this time as leader, and men protected by oilcloth capes (Otto Bannard, his classmate, 1876, foremost among them) carried the old-fashioned smoking torches in procession in a cheering lampadedromy.

He justified his selection. The shining of his intellect, which was as a star of the first magnitude, drew men of scholarly tastes to Yale, and the soundness of his judgment in economic matters kept the academic house in order. It was a period of laying foundations for an expanded and enriched institution. But with it all he was not so overwhelmed by the myriad details as to lose sight of the ideals. They were fixed in his own fortunate heritage and his own university disciplines, and he was true to them to the end. In the memorable closing words of his last baccalaureate address he set forth the crowning values of life as he, a foremost economist, a very practical man of affairs, estimated them:

So to live and so to think that those about us will have more courage and self-sacrifice and larger and truer vision of what is required of man—these things are more important than all the scientific principles we can discover or all the material results we can achieve.

It is not strange that he should have dwelt so much of late upon the freedom of the individual; for his philosophy always emphasized the mind of man and its release for its own highest functioning. He was an expert of high authority in certain economic fields, but his lasting fame will be associated with his distinguished, humanistic direction of Yale University, and his speaking from that platform to an audience that reached around the world.

His effectiveness in speech was not in grace of utterance with coordinate gesture, but in the perfection of phrase and the appeal of his clear thinking. He seemed at times as primitive man, but of powerful mind, fighting for the future of mortal breeds. His bodily exuberance of expression was compelling because it had back of it the conviction of his whole mind and soul. There could not be the slightest shadow of dissimulation in anything that he said or did, and there never was "a whisper of envy."

Simonides, in a fragment that has survived the centuries, laments the passing of one whom the lot of death overtook wandering in a distant sea because he failed "of sweet and dear home coming." But President Hadley was not a stranger in any part of the earth, and by his very death in a far land he brought it nearer to us and ours to it.

Μέγα γείτονι γείτων

(Neighbor is great thing unto neighbor),

So long as Yale herself is known
Will be remembered his high labor.