270 History of Universities
Yale graduates. The purposes of the College, as President
Johnson stated them in his first public announcement, were
“to instruct and perfect the Youth in the Learned Languages,
and in the Arts of reasoning exactly, of writing correctly,
and speaking eloquently”; in Mathematics, Physics, “and
everything useful for the Comfort, the Convenience and the
Elegance of Life,” and finally, “to lead them from the Study
of Nature to the Knowledge of themselves, and of the God
of Nature, and their Duty to him, themselves, and one an-
other”—a statement reflecting the fashionable philosophy
of the era. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this
earliest Columbia University advertisement is its consistency
with the recent correspondence-school literature emanating
from the same institution, so blithely ridiculed in Dr. Abra-
ham Flexner’s recent book. King’s College is already talk-
ing down to the public. President Johnson does not say
Logic, but the Art of Reasoning; instead of Natural Philoso-
phy, he specifies “Meteors, Stones, Mines and Minerals,
Plants and Animals,” in other words, Columbia thus early
proposes to reach out to the unlearned world for fresh college
material—and she certainly has succeeded!
Much the same trouble was experienced by King’s, as by
William and Mary, with inadequate preparation of her stu-
dents for college studies. “Our great difficulty,” wrote Presi-
dent Johnson in 1759, “is that our grammar schools are
miserable, so that we are obliged to admit them very raw.
Our first year is chiefly grammatical. We shall never do well
till we can have a good school of our own.” Accordingly, a
preparatory department was soon established; a few years
later, Queen’s College in New Jersey experienced the same
want, and found the same solution. President Johnson,
however, admitted no compromise as to the studies of the
higher classes, following Harvard and Yale in insisting on