Background
Taylor was born in Brooklyn, N. Y. , in 1848. He was the son of the Rev. Elisha E. L. and Mary Jane (Perkins) Taylor and the descendant of Edward Taylor who emigrated from England to New Jersey at the end of the seventeenth century.
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Vassar (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Vassar An absence of due praise to individu...)
Excerpt from Vassar An absence of due praise to individuals dear to memory will be felt by some readers. It has been a matter of self-denial on the part of the authors to refrain from the tributes that come spontaneously in thought of benefactors, colleagues, and alumnae, but discrimination would be an ungrateful task, and it has seemed best to follow a uniform policy of reticence regarding the living. Of even the dead it must be said that discrimination is ungrateful and many a one who is less known to fame has given a service as praise worthy as the most renowned. The difficulty of writing the history of the College during one 's own administration will be appreciated by everyone. I can only hope that the record will seem impersonal and fair, and as free from bias as we have tried to make it. Had the period not covered so large a part of the history of Vassar, it might have been omitted. J. M. T. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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Elements of Psychology (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Elements of Psychology In the preparation o...)
Excerpt from Elements of Psychology In the preparation of these notes the author has kept before him self three or four distinct aims. He has felt the need of a brief text book, for the sake of the student, and as inviting to fuller discussion in the class-room than is possible with a larger book. He has borne in mind that the general student will not pursue this study beyond the course compelled by the college curriculum, and has therefore deemed it necessary to state, for such, certain philosophical implications of psychological teaching. He has Wished to encourage independent reading on the part of the student. The references are accordingly made to the general works Within reach of the college student. They are but suggestions. The class-room furnishes abundant opportunity for their amplification. It seems important that the beginner should have some definite center from Which to reach out. And the book therefore aims to make brief statements, in positive form, of the positions that seem to the author justified by the facts. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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Practical or Ideal? (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Practical or Ideal? There may come an occas...)
Excerpt from Practical or Ideal? There may come an occasional doubt, indeed, to the most practical man, as to the sufficiency of this view of life, and education, and politics. When a close student of biology shuts himself for months in the humble little laboratory that they show you in Paris, and comes out with a discovery that saves for France more than all her huge debt of war has cost her, men glorify the name of Pasteur and forget the long years of impractical education, and the infatuation of the student's ideal which led up to the great discovery. When the scientist sits pondering his problems and working out the abstrusest calculations in mathematics, he is a dreamer, but when his dream is realized in the harnessing of electricity, and men reckon by amperes, in terms of his own name, dreams are seen to be practical and vision is found to have substance, and the highest problems of abstruse science are seen to have as close relation to real life as the very bread we eat. Practical men may well ask, then, whether bread, necessary though it is, is any more than the sustenance of life, and whether life itself, for every man and in every pursuit. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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James Monroe Taylor
Edit ProfileEducation
After five years schooling in the seminary at Essex, Connecticut, he entered the University of Rochester and graduated in 1868. In 1871 he was graduated at Rochester Theological Seminary. A year's study in Europe in 1872 had much influence on him.
Career
For fourteen years he preached, filling Baptist pastorates at South Norwalk, Connecticut, and Providence, R. I. ; and, in 1886, he was elected president of Vassar College, the third Baptist clergyman to hold this post.
The college was in sound condition, though suffering from ineffective administration and a certain complacency of attitude. He obtained ample powers from the trustees at the start, and with great energy, which fully made up for his own deficiency of experience in higher education, he flung himself into his task. Critical alumnae were reconciled and organized into effective battalions, and provision was made for their election as trustees. Incessant travel and public speaking made the college better known and made friends of the school world. Money was solicited under Taylor's watchword "Endow the college. " The will of John G. Vassar, Jr. (died 1889), brought several hundred thousand dollars to the college, and Taylor pleaded for the endowment of professorships. The trustees preferred to purchase land and to erect buildings. He succeeded, however, in raising $100, 000 before the panic of 1893, and over half-a-million dollars were raised after the panic of 1903, the total endowment due to Taylor's efforts being about one million dollars. This was a tremendous effort for one man, who at the same time was conducting daily chapel, teaching psychology, ethics, and philosophy, and administering the whole official college correspondence and registry with but slight assistance. Moreover, he found time for some writing: Elements of Psychology (1892), A New World and Old Gospel (1901), and Practical or Ideal? (1901), as well as Before Vassar Opened (1914) and, with E. H. Haight, Vassar (1915). It told heavily upon his health, and twice, in 1895 and 1905, he went to Europe for a year's rest.
He was one of the first to object to the current conception of the college president's duties as those of a promoter rather than those of an intellectual leader. During this whole period, the trustees maintained their interest in buildings.
His early training had been strongly conservative, but his sympathies were with youth, and he steadily broadened the curriculum, especially in the social sciences, in history, economics, political science, sociology, and religion. He obtained the recognition of art and music as academic subjects, and the teaching of science on strictly experimental bases. He created an intense personal devotion to himself and to his college, which for years distinguished Vassar graduates. His refusal of the presidency of Brown University in 1899 elicited marked evidence of this.
His later years in office were somewhat hampered by physical causes, and in 1914 he resigned. His death followed after only two years.
Achievements
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Taylor's greatest service to Vassar College, however, was the high standard he set for its academic work, a standard never relaxed. The college was freed from special and preparatory students, and became a compact, unified faculty of liberal arts. He gathered about him a strong group of teachers, highly individual and often of views on education opposed to his own, with whom he remained on the friendliest terms. Few presidents have held unwavering support for nearly thirty years, as he did. Memorials to him exist at Vassar in a gate, a stained-glass window, a professorship of philosophy, an endowment fund, a library fund, and Taylor Hall of Art. A portrait by William Chase was presented by the alumnae. All these are less significant than the innumerable memories of his idealism and genial humor in the unrecorded history of the college, and the loyalty that he guided to fruition in the college of today.
Works
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Practical or Ideal? (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Practical or Ideal? There may come an occas...)
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Elements of Psychology (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Elements of Psychology In the preparation o...)
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Vassar (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Vassar An absence of due praise to individu...)
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Practical or Ideal? (Classic Reprint)
Membership
He was for four years a member of the Carnegie Foundation, 1910-14.
Connections
On September 10, 1873, he married Kate Huntington of Rochester. Three sons and a daughter were born of this union.
References
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Born
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Died
February 19, 1916 (aged 67) -
Nationality
American