PRESIDENT ELIOT IN UNION

President Eliot, for the first time since April 13, 1909, spoke to the students last night in the Union on the subject of "Unity and Diversity in Family, College, and State."

President Eliot said that careful students of democratic institutions have maintained that democracy tends to make a people uniform. They have said that the fundamental notion of democracy is equal opportunity, which brings uniformity of character. But equal opportunity is useless in bringing about uniformity, unless it is aided by equal capacity for seizing opportunity, and since equal capacity is impossible on account of differences in learning and talent, there is no such thing as equal opportunity. In our own country, a great, free democracy for more than a century, we have given a chance for equal opportunity, and yet we have a more prodigious difference in equality than any nation ever before. This is because the essence of democracy is the freedom of development of the individual, which from the lack of equality in capacity and tastes results in the greatest inequality of conditions and character. In three great units this inequality, mingled with certain strong traits of unity, shows itself: in the family, the college, and the state.

The feudal system of the middle ages was built entirely upon unity of family. The son never entered any other career than that which came to him by inheritance. But under our free institutions this hereditary retaining of family careers disappears and extraordinary diversity is found among the children of the same family. Some have maintained from the enormity of this diversity that there is no law of heredity, but modern natural science has shown that heredity is the cause of the diversity, in that it reproduces in the children the varying traits of many generations. Where are we to find unity in a family? The members do not show in a high degree a common disposition, though it is true that the good is inherited rather than the bad. Unity in family does not come in common opinions, beliefs, and characteristics; it comes from a community of ideals. These ideals come from common loves--ideals of virtue and goodness taken from the mother and of honor and uprightness taken from the father. This unity of ideals in love, purity, and honor is the true family unity and can be complete with the utmost diversity in traits and powers.

It is hard to imagine a place where diversities of tastes and dispositions can be greater than in Harvard. There is diversity in religion, races, households, mental gifts, and ambitions. The old prescribed course of study could not produce a uniform body of students, but great and ordinary men alike rose from it. In this immense diversity can there be any unity? There again we look toward a unity of ideals, which is different in each college and which creates the individuality of the college. At Harvard there are a few great ideals which unity the teachers, students, and graduates. These ideals are a love of freedom, which, as Emerson said, could be taken from men no more than the sun can be taken from the sky; and a desire to lead an honorable career by service to fellow men and country. The unity of ideals in college is great, and the diversity in characters always has been and always will be great.

In the state the great masses of various races which pour into the land differ not only from the native Americans but from one another. There is talk of assimilation and amalgamation, but blends lose the quality of the ingredients, and that is what we may look forward to when we attempt to amalgamate the widely different races which come to this country. This diversity of races in the state is going to exist for hundreds and thousands of years and is desirable, as natural history shows. For a third time we must look to ideals for unity and find them in a common admiration of the same sort of characters; the same love of freedom which we found in Harvard's ideals, freedom which always separates other men from savages and the barbarians; a conception of law as necessary to democracy; and an undying belief cherished by all Americans and newcomers in the dignity and worth of man and his power to rise indefinitely.