G. J. Adler

“ As my ears have almost daily been wounded by disorderly noises, not only from students, but (and mostly) from other [Pg 9] persons, who ought to blush for such base conduct, I cannot say, that I am unacquainted with the authors of the nuisance, and could easily designate to you at least half a dozen. Such cries as "Go on! Stop!—Out of the institution with that man!—Kill him!" besides multitudes of vulgar chuckles, screams and other horrid vociferations have been heard by me from well-known voices, until at times I felt as if I could support the vexation no longer. ”

“ He seemed to be ignorant of the fact, that I was both an alumnus and an officer of the Institution, and that as such I expected to be regarded in the light of a gentleman and of a scholar. By ignoring my protestations the Dr. treated me like a freshman, while his goings in and out of the building and his degrading alliance with the menials of the Institution, who were the accomplices of the disorder, gave him the character rather of a mechanic's "boss" watching over an apprentice than of a dignified president of a respectable literary institution. ”

“ As for myself I do not intend to be intimidated in the least, and if my life and health last, I shall find the means of defending both my honor and my position as a gentleman and a scholar. It is all idle to attempt to crush or gag a man by terror. The humbug of the spirit-rappers is no greater than the jugglery of door-and-desk-slamming, of vociferations and mystifications so successfully [Pg 28] employed at the University during the whole of last winter. ”

“ The attempts of certain parties in connection with the institution and ab extra to "smother" (to use one of their own cant words) and to crush my independence by gravely endeavoring to coerce me into an alliance with a questionable religionism, which is abhorrent to my ideas, my habits and my sentiments, and by fomenting internal disorders for the purpose of effecting an exclusion, are an unconstitutional, an unjust, an iniquitous invasion of my most sacred rights as a man, an American citizen, a scholar and a professor. ”

“ I recognize no sectarian guidance or control whatever in any of the independent sciences, cultivated from time immemorial at academic institutions, much less in the science of sciences, the very law and indispensable condition of which is absolute freedom from all external authority or restraint. ”

“ From all that I have had occasion to observe of social disorder and discontent in the city for several years past, I am sure that there are men who foment intestine commotions, who shamelessly and openly conspire against the honor and the interests, if not against the property and lives of their fellow-citizens, and whom the State ought to prosecute and punish as offenders against a clearly defined law of the statute-book. ”

“ My main object was of course to vindicate and defend my character, my professional honor and my most sacred rights as a rational man and as a public educator, against the invasions of narrow-minded and unjust aggressors, whose machinations have for several years been busily at work in subverting what other men have reared before them, in retarding and impeding what the intelligence of our age and country is eager to accelerate and to promote. ”

“ Do they perhaps think their conduct so outrageous, that the meekness of Moses could no longer endure it without resentment? I grant that a passionate man would be likely to take a more substantial revenge. I myself however have no inclination to degrade myself in any such way.—My confinement is on a false pretense, and if any made affidavit to my insanity, they most assuredly must have perjured themselves. ”

“ I also know, that a certain philosophy to which I was known to be particularly partial, is looked upon with jealous suspicion by certain superficial and insignificant pretenders to that science, whose ignorance and malice forges weapons of destruction out of the noblest and sublimest conceptions that have ever emanated from the intellect of man. ”

“ He gravely ignored the letter of complaint I had addressed to him a month before, or rather answered it by spectral demonstrations the night after its reception. Such mummery and such terrorism, practiced on an officer of a literary institution by a fellow-officer is surely out of place and Dr. Ferris has not yet learnt (it seems) the meaning of an A. M. and of certain other rights of Academic men, (to say nothing of the courtesy customary among men of letters of every age and in all civilized countries) , to introduce or suffer such singular proceedings in a respectable institution. ”

“ My salary in the institution being altogether inadequate for my support, I have been engaged for a number of years past in preparing works for publication, and this winter the ruin of my health from the causes already mentioned has also threatened me with the ruin of my income. ”

“ New appointments at the University, (some of them degradations to me, at any rate, employed for humiliating purposes,) and the petty jealousies, nay even animosities, which among men of a certain order of intellect are the natural consequence of such changes, soon introduced disorder into the Institution, fostered a spirit of rebellion against me, and before the end of the first term of the present year, my course of instruction was entirely broken up. ”

“ I now proceed to fulfil my promise, by offering to my personal friends, and to such as are interested in matters of academic education and morality, a few of the many letters written by me during the past year. I might have added others, both of an anterior and of a more recent date. The question however was not to write a volume, but simply a brief exposition, of a page or two from my life in connection with a public institution of the metropolis, and thus to bring a matter of private and iniquitous dispute before the forum of the public, after having vainly sought redress in private. ”

“ I have for a number of years past been connected with the University of the city of New-York, first as a resident graduate and lately as the Professor of a modern language, and have ever since my connection with the institution resided in the building on Washington Square, spending most of my time in authorship and instruction in a room, which for several years I have occupied for that purpose. ”

“ The right to such inalienable possessions is imprescriptible, and the act by which I become seized of my personality and of my substantial being, by which I make myself an accountable, a moral and a religious agent, removes these determinations from the control of all merely external circumstances and relations, which alone could give them the capacity of becoming the property of another. ”

“ The sudden suspension of my studies, and the consequent uncertainty of my affairs, however, have so seriously deranged my plans, that now I almost despair of being able to accomplish any of my more immediate and necessary purposes.—You will undoubtedly be surprised to learn, that I have been an inmate of the Lunatic Asylum, at Bloomingdale, for now nearly three months; your surprise will be still greater, when you come to learn, by what sort of machinations I have been brought here. ”

“ I have suffered encroachments on my personal safety to which no American citizen ought for one moment to submit. As I cannot afford, nor feel inclined to lose my time and health any longer, I would respectfully submit to your Honor's consideration my claim to the protection of the laws of the city in this respect, to which as an American citizen I am entitled, and the necessity of a sterner maintenance of order by the police of the city. ”

“ That that which the mind is per se and by its very definition should also become an actual existence and pro se, that consequently it should be a person, capable of holding property, possessed of morality and religion— all this is involved in the idea of the mind itself, which as the causa sui, in other words, as a free cause, is a substance, cujus natura non potest concipi nisi existens. ”

“ They are the iniquitous aggressors throughout. They have to endeavored to crush my intellectual independence by carrying the principle of conformity to a ridiculous extent, and by enforcing a submission to which no man of honor without the loss of all his intellectual powers could submit.—I told the chancellor on the spur and in the excitement of the moment what I thought of the falsehoods contained in his epistle and of his previous conduct which, if he is a gentleman, he is bound to justify. ”

“ The same may be said of all religious submission to a priest, who sets up for my father confessor (step-father, &c.) ; for a matter of such purely internal interest must be settled by every man himself and alone. A religiosity, a part of which is deposited in the hands of another is tantamount to none at all; for the Spirit is one, and it is he that is required to dwell in the heart of man; the union of the per and pro se must belong to every individual apart. ”

“ In that event I should have a witness and the detection and punishment of the offenders would exonerate all those who in case of my removal would have part of the criminal credit of molesting the private residence of a professor and a [Pg 29] scholar. 2d, The fear of personal injury from the hands of one, who for many years past has been known to be a man of peaceable and unexceptionable behavior and who never attacked or struck any man in his life, appears to have its origin in a consciousness of guilt and to be a virtual admission of it. ”

“ In consequence of some bad feeling towards me on the part of certain enemies of mine, who of late have done all in their power to annoy me, the quiet of my residence has been disturbed in a scandalous manner, by day and at all hours of the night, for weeks and months together, so as to inflict on me the torments of perpetual interruption not only in my work during the day, but of rest during the night, until my health was completely shattered ”

“ Bennet (I think) of the last class: "Give me liberty, or give me death!" fearfully emphasized, and your own voice echoed: "Death you shall have!" As at that particular time I underwent the crucifixion of college-disorder, at the same time receiving occasional intimations that either in my speculations or in my instruction I was going too far, and that on that account it was necessary for me to leave, I cannot possibly be mistaken in supposing, that both that horrible word of yours, as well as the frequent scandalous vociferations were intended as an insult for me ”

“ For several years past, I have been made the object of a systematic and invidious persecution, in consequence of which I have been obliged to shift my residence from one place to another, to spend my means in involuntary exile and unnecessary travelling, and altogether to lead a life of a discouraging uncertainty. ”

“ Ferris' insinuation as a maliciously astute and as a [Pg 13] false one, which of itself declares the Dr. incompetent to decide upon the merits of a real scholar, and utterly unfit for the important trust of presiding over the interests of any other but a sectarian institution of the narrowest description, of the most painfully exclusive moral perversity. ”

“ A rational trial before a tribunal, where each side of the question could have been produced, would have been the part of honorable men, conscious of their own rectitude, and of the justice of their cause. ”

“ Having most of these materials at hand, I have sometimes been tempted myself to try, whether by an exposition of the present state of that science, as cultivated by the Germans particularly, a new impulsion might not be imparted to it among ourselves. ”

“ It follows from the very nature of the case, that the slave has an absolute right to make himself free; that if any one has hired himself for any crime, such as robbery, murder, &c. this contract is of itself null and void and that every one is at full liberty to break it. ”

“ This would be an egregious logical fallacy, to which no intelligent physician in or out of the Lunatic Asylum could for one moment subscribe, without justly incurring the risk of being charged with an [Pg 15] inexcusable lack of professional knowledge and experience or what is still worse, with a criminal connivance at an unjust and inquitous conspiracy against the reputation and the life of an American citizen. ”

“ Numberless insults in the street and even menaces were constantly thrown out by a low gang, who were evidently hired for the vile purpose, and I have seen things, which I never witnessed before either in Europe or America. ”

“ Of the winter of 1852-'53 I only recollect, that subsequently to the dismissal of my class, which I could not in honor consent to hear any longer, I made a fruitless attempt to continue my private studies, and to finish a commentary on a Greek drama which I had begun at the commencement of the term, and that the ominous symptoms of external insanity about me soon increased to such an alarming extent, that I was [Pg 14] forced to lay aside my pen, unable to endure the outrage and annoyance any longer ”

“ That such a right exists, and that it is applicable to my case, the reader may learn from Sir William Hamilton's Essays on University Education, recently republished in America, to which I refer passim. I can therefore confidently challenge not only the chancellor, but, in case of a concurrence in his sentiments, the entire faculty of the University to the following proposition:—In case my capacity to teach or lecture academically is questioned, I propose to take, and I demand one of the following chairs ”

“ Dead, dead, dead, dead!" (by the voice of a certain popular preacher. ) "He is deceived, he is deceived!" (by the spokesman of a body of theological students in front of the neighboring Seminary, as I was passing.) And at times even: "Die!" ”