intellectual development of mankind.

The reasons for the new foundation seemed to us, then, so cogent
that we expected the co-operation of all good citizens, and
anticipated no opposition from any source.

As I look back across the intervening years, I know not whether
to be more astonished or amused at our simplicity.

Opposition began at once. In the State Legislature it confronted
us at every turn, and it was soon in full blaze throughout the
State--from the good Protestant bishop who proclaimed that all
professors should be in holy orders, since to the Church alone
was given the command, "Go, teach all nations," to the zealous
priest who published a charge that Goldwin Smith--a profoundly
Christian scholar --had come to Cornell in order to inculcate the
"infidelity of the Westminster Review"; and from the eminent
divine who went from city to city, denouncing the "atheistic and
pantheistic tendencies" of the proposed education, to the
perfervid minister who informed a denominational synod that
Agassiz, the last great opponent of Darwin, and a devout theist,
was "preaching Darwinism and atheism" in the new institution.

As the struggle deepened, as hostile resolutions were introduced
into various ecclesiastical bodies, as honored clergymen solemnly
warned their flocks first against the "atheism," then against the
"infidelity," and finally against the "indifferentism" of the
university, as devoted pastors endeavoured to dissuade young men
from matriculation, I took the defensive, and, in answer to
various attacks from pulpits and religious newspapers, attempted