Orthodoxy in Massachusetts 1630-1950

In 1928, as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, I unaccountably found John Winthrop’s Journal exerting upon me a baneful spell. I resisted manfully, as long as I could, but Governor Winthrop irresistibly lured me to the brink of commitment, and so I threw myself from the precipice of twentieth-century prejudice into the maelstrom of his epoch.

One of my most revered instructors tried to prevent me. This, he said, was an ignis fatuus. All the hay of New England Puritanism had been threshed. I would wreck my career, even before it commenced, crawling through the dry stubble hoping to pick up stray gleanings.

His counsel was generous and, furthermore, seemed at that time the soul of prudence. Some perversity of temper would not let me yield. Another beloved teacher, Percy Holmes Boynton, encouraged me to risk the try. Without him, I would have faltered. As I now look back on that academic drama, I realize that he was working on the principle which always made his tuition exciting: namely, that a student should be given enough rope to hang himself, if this he was resolved to do. Wherefore I dedicated the book to him. Wherefore I have endeavored to accord the same privilege to my own students.