IN view of the fact that the authorities of Harvard College have voted to confer the degree of LL.D. upon President McKinley, the following contribution to the Boston Transcript, by William De Witt Hyde, D.D., LL.D., President of Bowdoin College, setting forth the significance of the degree, will be read with interest. President McKinley has been invited to attend the commencement exercises at Harvard next month, and it is thought the degree will be conferred at that time. It is interesting to recall that the first President of the United States re ceived the degree of LL.D. from Harvard College one hundred and twenty-five years ago.

President Hyde's paper is as follows:—

Some years ago I received a petition from the supporters of a country academy, in which the petitioners set forth the fact that the academy was declining, and needed something to bring it into prominence. They had finally concluded that the best thing they could do for the academy would be to secure an honorary degree for the principal. Accordingly they respectfully petitioned the trustees and overseers of Bowdoin College to grant to their principal the degree of LL.D. In order to make more explicit the precise thing they wanted, they added in brackets, after the letters LL.D. the explanatory clause "Doctor of Legal Laws." The Bowdoin trustees did not see their way clear to help out the academy in the manner proposed by the petitioners. Nevertheless, the candidate did not remain long unconsoled; for at that same commencement season, a week later, he received from a sister university the degree of Ph.D., which doubtless both he and his supporters regarded "equally as good."

While historically the degree of LL.D. undoubtedly goes back to the time when it represented sufficient attainments in jurisprudence to entitle the recipient to receive a doctorate of "Legal Laws," it long since ceased to have direct connection with it. and has come to signify proficiency in law in a broader and profounder sense. Whoever has reflected deeply on nature and human life has discovered that underneath phenomena there are certain spiritual principles, of which all phenomena are expressions These deeper principles Plato called "ideas;" the Hebrew proverbs grouped them together under the single name of "wisdom."

"I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth."

"By me kings reign, and princes decree justice, By me princes rule, and nobles even all the judges of the earth."

The modern world, however, has agreed to call these principles, whether in the sphere of nature or of human society, by the name of laws. The Doctor of Laws, there fore is a person in whose speech or action these laws have come to clear and definite expression. Such persons are comparatively rare. The majority of college graduates never get beyond that acquaintance with truth which through the thought and deed of others. They never attain original insight and independent initiative. They deserve merely the Bachelor's Degree, which which signifies that they have apprehended the laws of nature and human life at second hand.

Originally this Bachelor's Degree carried with it the right of teaching from a text book but the right to teach out of the accumulated stores of one's own information. The Master's Degree implied longer study and closer familiarity with a subject, and carried with it the right to give lectures of one's own. With us the degree of Doctor of Philosophy has come to mark this stage of intellectual independence, and the corresponding authority to teach. The degree of Doctor of Laws marks not merely the ability to make some little contribution to the sum of human knowledge, and on the basis of the ability shown in doing that to give lectures on a subject but has been reserved to indicate some substantial contribution either to science, if one is pre-eminently a scholar, or to public welfare, if one is a man of affairs.

Such achievement obviously cannot be measured by a formal examination, for it may well happen that the recipient of a degree is more competent to examine the body which confers it, than is this body to examine him. A man proves his worthiness to receive this degree by the acceptance of his work among those who are competent to judge.

His investigations if he is a scientist, his researches if he is a historian, his writings if he is a literary man, his decisions if he is a judge, his achievements if he is a statesman, are the basis on which the degree is conferred. Membership in learned societies and official position in the state may be indications of fitness for this degree, but they are merely indications. The real basis on which the degree rests is the fact that some department of human knowledge, or of human affairs, has come to individual expression through this man's words or deeds.

There are certain high positions, such as that of president of one of the leading universities, or the head of a department in such a university; such as the president or prime minister of a great nation; or the chief justice of the Supreme Court of a great or the great chief which it is almost inconceivable that a man should hold without having proved himself to the public as a man through whom the laws of nature or of human society have found expression. Exceptions, indeed, there may be to this rule; yet even in such extreme cases the valid ground for withholding it is not that the authorities of the universities differ from the policy of the man who holds the important office, but rather that judge him to have no principle or policy at all.

Difference of opinion is no ground for withholding a degree, for the laws which govern nature and human life are many and subtle. No individual is likely to grasp them all in due proportion. The question which a board of trustees must ask with reference to a candidate for the degree of Doctor of Laws is not whether they approve his opinions and policy, or not. It is the deeper question whether his opinions are the result of scholarly thought; whether his policy is the fruit of intelligent and conscientious action. John C. Calhoun and Daniel Webster held very different opinions; yet each of them had reached his opinions by a careful study of history and political science, and each was able to commend his opinions by scholarly and able argument. Both of these men. in their day, were worthy of the highest academic honor.

In the same way, Darwin and Agassiz differed as to the principles of classification of species; but both had reached their conclusions through patient and laborious investigation. Both were worthy of the doctorate of laws. Professor Miiller and Professor Whitney differed respecting the origin of language; but both were men through whom the science of philology was carried forward. In our own day certain groups of laws have pointed in the direction of free trade; other groups of laws have pointed to the direction of a high protective tariff. One group of laws have pointed toward the enlargement of the volume of our currency; another group of laws have pointed to the maintenance of a gold standard as the condition of our economic prosperity.

Still more recently one group of historic precedents and principles points toward the limitation of the territory of the United States to this continent; another group of tendencies and ideals point to the expansion of the country as the condition of our highest national influence and prosperity. Whoever has apprehended either of these groups of laws, and is able to give them their historic and philosophic setting; still more, whoever has been able to make either of these groups of principles effective in the determination of national policy, is justly entitled to the honor of the degree of Doctor of Laws. If agreement with the opinions of a man is to be the test of fitness for an honorary degree, the sooner college and university authorities cease to confer such degrees the better; for the inevitable outcome of granting degrees on such a basis would be not to crown scholars and men of action with the deliberate approval of learned bodies, but to bring the strife and jealousy and animosity of the marketplace and the lobby into our academic halls.

Among the first to receive the degree of LL.D. from Harvard College, was George Washington; who received the degree in 1776, at a time when there was no little difference of opinion as to the merits of the position which he occupied. The proper disregard of opinion as a basis for a degree has been happily illustrated in recent years in the college with which I am connected. The policy of Senator Hale just before the outbreak of the Spanish War was even less popular with the rank and file of Maine Republicans than has been that of Senator Hoar with the administration Republicans of Massachusetts. Yet, although probably at the time a considerable majority of the trustees and overseers of Bowdoin College were not in personal sympathy with the attitude taken by Senator Hale, they seized that very time as most appropriate for conferring upon him the degree of LL.D. For he was at the time the most conspicuous example of a man who was maintaining a difficult and prominent public position with ability, and courage, and conscientiousness. Last year, although the trustees and overseers of Bowdoin College include scarcely half a dozen Unitarians among their fifty or more members, yet they recognized the great service to religious thought which Unitarianism has rendered; and took the opportunity to confer the degree of Doctor of Divinity upon the president of the American Unitarian Association, who is doing so much to conserce and increase the effectiveness of Unitarian influence in the community.

Such is the true significance of honorary academic degrees. The newspaper discussion of the fitness of particular individuals to receive such a degree is discourteous to the individuals concerned; and most of it is as wide of the mark as was the ignorant attempt of the petitioners above referred to, to define the significance of the two Ls in the LL.D.