The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
VOLUME XVI. Early National Literature, Part II; Later National Literature, Part I.
§ 14. Clerical College Presidents
Mark Hopkins was one of a group of clerical college presidents and teachers in whom the old interest in systems was transferred from theology to “anthropology.” The group includes men like Francis Wayland (1796–1865), President of Brown University (1827–55); Archibald Alexander (1772–1851), professor at Princeton; James McCosh (1811–94), President of Princeton (1868–88); and Noah Porter (1811–94), President of Yale (1871–86). All of these turn from dogmatic theology to psychology, ethics, and the relations of the human mind to Christianity. They produce textbooks on “Christian Evidences,” “Moral Science” or “Moral Philosophy,” and “Mental Philosophy,” for the most part in a vein of Scottish dualistic realism modified by Sir William Hamilton’s Kantian importations.