Mark Hopkins | |
|---|---|
 Mark Hopkins from adaguerreotypec. 1840s | |
| Born | February 4, 1802 |
| Died | June 17, 1887 (1887-06-18) (aged 85) |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 10, includingHenry Hopkins |
| Relatives | Samuel Hopkins (great-uncle) |
| Honours | American Hall of Fame |
| Academic background | |
| Education |
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| Academic work | |
| Notable students | James A. Garfield |
| President of theAmerican Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions | |
| In office 1857–1887 | |
| 4th President ofWilliams College | |
| In office 1836–1872 | |
| Preceded by | Edward Dorr Griffin |
| Succeeded by | Paul Ansel Chadbourne |
Mark Hopkins (February 4, 1802 – June 17, 1887) was an American educator and Congregationalist theologian, president ofWilliams College from 1836 to 1872. An epigram — widely attributed to PresidentJames A. Garfield, a student of Hopkins — defined an ideal college as "Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other."[1]
Great-nephew of the theologianSamuel Hopkins, Mark Hopkins was born inStockbridge, Massachusetts. He graduated in 1824 fromWilliams College, where he was a tutor in 1825–1827, and where in 1830, after having graduated in the previous year from theBerkshire Medical College atPittsfield, he became professor of Moral Philosophy and Rhetoric. In 1833 he was licensed to preach inCongregational churches. He was president ofWilliams College from 1836 until 1872. He was one of the ablest and most successful of the old type of college president.[2] He married Mary Hubbell in 1832 and together they parented ten children.
His volume of lectures onEvidences of Christianity (1846)[2] was delivered as a series of lectures at the Lowell Institute in January 1844. The book became a favorite textbook[2] in AmericanChristian apologetics being reprinted in many editions up until 1909. Although not trained as a lawyer Hopkins held a lifelong interest in the law and aspects of his argument in Evidences of Christianity reflects legal metaphors and language about the veracity ofeyewitness testimony to the events in the life ofJesus Christ. Much of his apologetic arguments though were a restatement of views that had been previously presented by earlier apologists such asWilliam Paley andThomas Hartwell Horne.
Of his other writings, the chief wereLectures on Moral Science (1862),The Law of Love and Love as a Law (1869),An Outline Study of Man (1873),The Scriptural Idea of Man (1883), andTeachings and Counsels (1884). Hopkins took a lifelong interest in Christian missions, and from 1857 until his death was president of theAmerican Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions[2]—the foreign missions board for American Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and other Reformed Protestant churches. He died atWilliamstown, on June 17, 1887.
President James Garfield had attended Williams College in the 1850s. At an 1871 dinner of Williams alumni, Garfield paid tribute to Hopkins, defining an ideal college as Hopkins and a student together in a log cabin. The epigram became more widely known in the pithier form retold byJohn James Ingalls, in which a log was substituted for the log cabin.[3] In the later judgment of university historianFrederick Rudolph, "no one can properly address himself to the question of higher education in the United States without paying homage in some way to the aphorism of the log and to Mark Hopkins".[4]
In his 1903 essay "The Talented Tenth,"W. E. B. Du Bois opined, "There was a time when the American people believed pretty devoutly that a log of wood with a boy at one end and Mark Hopkins at the other, represented the highest ideal of human training. But in these eager days it would seem that we have changed all that and think it necessary to add a couple of saw-mills and a hammer to this outfit, and, at a pinch, to dispense with the services of Mark Hopkins. I would not deny, or for a moment seem to deny, the paramount necessity of teaching the Negro to work, and to work steadily and skillfully; or seem to depreciate in the slightest degree the important part industrial schools must play in the accomplishment of these ends, but I do say, and insist upon it, that it is industrialism drunk with its vision of success, to imagine that its own work can be accomplished without providing for the training of broadly cultured men and women to teach its own teachers, and to teach the teachers of the public schools."
In 1915 Hopkins was elected into theAmerican Hall of Fame.[5]
In 1964,Walter F. Hendricks founded Mark Hopkins College in Vermont in his honor. It closed in 1978.
His son,Henry Hopkins (1837–1908), was also a president of Williams College. Mark Hopkins's brother,Albert Hopkins (1807–1872), was long associated with him at Williams College, where he graduated in 1826 and was successively a tutor (1827–1829), professor of mathematics and natural philosophy (1829–1838), professor of natural philosophy and astronomy (1838–1868) and professor of astronomy (1868–1872). In 1835 he organized and conducted a natural history expedition toJoggins, Nova Scotia, said to have been the first expedition of the kind sent out from any American college, and in 1837, at his suggestion and under his direction, an astronomical observatory was built at Williams College, said to have been the first in the United States built at a college exclusively for the purposes of instruction.[2]
An address, delivered in South Hadley, Mass., July 30, 1840, at the third anniversary of the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, Northampton: Printed by J. Metcalf, 1840.
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Hopkins, Mark".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 13 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 684–685.
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