would demand special training for astronomy or mathematics, but almost any clerical gentleman would serve for philosophy! (Unfortunately, the practice continues among certain of the smaller denominational colleges of America to this day.) While Chapin was on leave in 1867-68 his work was borne by Erastus Otis Haven (Wesleyan '42, A.M. ibid. '45, D.D. hon. Union '54, LL.D. Ohio Wesleyan '63), Tappan's successor in the presidency and at that time also Professor of Logic and Political Economy. On Chapin's resignation in 1868 Haven became Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy.
Haven was, of course, a very able man, but philosophy was not his field. Even the students were aware of what was needed, for in the Chronicle (1: 25), we may read: "We want a man who has made this study his specialty and can infuse life into the dry bones of philosophical discussion." But when President Haven resigned in 1869, the Reverend Benjamin Franklin Cocker (D.D. DePauw '70) was appointed, a man of no university training at all in any subject, who, after an adventurous career in business, had drifted into preaching, in which occupation he had won fame for his eloquence. He occupied the chair of philosophy for fourteen years, that is to say, until 1883. On Cocker's behalf, however, it should be said that he was a man of vigorous personality and of a certain native acuteness of mind, that he exerted a large and beneficent influence on his students, and that he made a heroic effort to compensate for his shortcomings in education by prodigious labor and reading. The extent of his effort is apparent in the books he wrote during his professorial career: Christianity and Greek Philosophy (1870), Lectures on the Truth of the Christian Religion (1873), The Theistic Conception of the World (1875), Evidences of Christianity (1882), and, finally, a Student's Handbook of Philosophy (1881). These books are for the most part of the defensive, apologetic type, and are constructed very largely from secondary sources. Greek philosophy, for example, is viewed as a mere preparation for Protestant Christianity. As for the chaotic Handbook of Philosophy, it must have been a heavy, indigestible meal for the students; yet with Cocker as the one who served it, they seem to have liked it. And, in his other works, there are occasional gleams of insight. Perhaps a summary of his report to the Regents (P.R., 1871-72, pp. 38-39) will throw some light upon his ideas and methods of instruction. Regarding psychology as the fundamental study, "inasmuch as it deals with mental principles and laws which underlie logic and ethics," he had devoted the whole of the first semester to this study alone and had endeavored to do the work thoroughly. The second semester he said he had devoted to the teaching of history of philosophy, applied logic, and ethics, together with the bearing of these studies on the evidences of Christianity. Yet he gave small attention to this last in class, since it was the subject of his Sunday afternoon lectures. He regretted that he had not found a textbook in metaphysics, but hoped to prepare one himself. (As we have seen, this hope was fulfilled.) He wished that he could have two hours a day with his class and that the professor of moral and intellectual philosophy could be relieved of other work. (He was in charge of the instruction in social science as well as of that in philosophy.)
A new spirit came into the teaching of philosophy at the University when, in 1881, George Sylvester Morris (Dart-mouth '61, Ph.D. hon. Michigan '81) was made Professor of Ethics, the History of Philosophy, and Logic, and Cocker became Professor of Psychology, Speculative
