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William Wirt: Address at Rutgers College—Education

Democratic Thinker, American Thought

In 1830, William Wirt—late retired as U.S. Attorney General—delivers a speech before a group of students at Rutgers College. The address, widely reprinted—his opening statement particularly—, inspired generations of students.

But, both the acquisition of solid learning, and the sagacious observation of life, demand a clear and sound judgment. This is, indeed, an indispensable ingredient in that strength of character, which is certainly to fix your grade in society. Hence, gentlemen, it is to the cultivation of a sound judgment that you must direct your chief mental efforts.

OUR knowledge is a compound of what we derive from books, and what we extract, by our own observation, from the living world around us. Both of these are necessary to a well-informed man: and, of the two, the last is, by far, the most useful for the practical purposes of life. You all know that the mere cloistered scholar is one of the most impotent and helpless of beings, when called to actual scenes of business. The worms, that feed on his books, are scarcely more imbecile. Whereas, on the other hand, the man who is wholly unlettered, but who has been from his childhood a keen and vigilant observer of what is passing around him, will acquire a sagacity and a tact that will make him a shrewd and dexterous manager of his own affairs, and often, a useful adviser to his neighbors. But, he will be exceedingly apt to be a cunning man, rather than a wise one; and he will be a prodigy, indeed, if he possess much of that liberality and elevation which literature is so eminently fitted to give. It is only the man who combines the teaching of books, with the strong and close observation of life, that deserves the name of a well-informed man, and presents a model worthy of your imitation. Such were Oxenstiern of Sweden, Ximenes of Spain, Sully of France, and Cecil, Lord Burleigh, of England. Such have been the most distinguished men of your own country; and such is every man who is at once the scholar and the man of business.