Mark Hopkins

Mark Hopkins (born Feb. 4, 1802, Stockbridge, Mass., U.S.—died June 17, 1887, Williamstown, Mass.) was an American educator and theologian of whom U.S. President James A. Garfield, a former student, once declared, “I am not willing that this discussion should close without mention of the value of a true teacher. Give me a log hut, with only a simple bench, Mark Hopkins on one end and I on the other, and you may have all the buildings, apparatus, and libraries without him.”

Hopkins graduated from Williams College, Williamstown, Mass., in 1824 and from Berkshire Medical College, Pittsfield, Mass., in 1829. He practiced medicine briefly in New York City, but in 1830 he returned to Williams, where he instructed the senior class in moral philosophy and rhetoric and, from 1836 to 1872, served as president of the college. Although he had no formal training in theology, he was ordained a Congregationalist minister in 1836. His strong religious convictions were reflected in his teachings, which stressed piety and moral values as much as, or even more than, intellectual achievements. He also emphasized self-education, preferring the Socratic method of teaching to more dogmatic or didactic forms, and placed great importance on material prosperity, which he believed should be treated with the responsibility of Christian stewardship. His influence spread beyond the college when a series of lectures he delivered at the Lowell Institute in Boston were published in Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity (1846), Lectures on Moral Science (1862), The Law of Love and Love as a Law (1869), and An Outline Study of Man (1873), all of which went through several editions.