John Harvard: when There's a Will There's a Way

John Harvard's own tolerance for difference-in people, in ideas, in issues and situations-is very apparent in the way he lived his life and in the classical writers he chose to emulate and to admire the most. By the time he finished his studies at Cambridge University, he was totally convinced that education's greatest role should be to teach people how to be tolerant of one another; never to allow their emotions to over rule the wisdom of their actions. And he had great hopes that the importance of tolerance among men would be a fundamental part of all learning in the new England, the land of hope. This story shows how John Harvard believed in and wanted this attitude for tolerance in education so much that on his death bed he suddenly decided to offer his sizeable and completely unexpected gift "to the new colledge", convinced that his bequest would help start the new college in the new land-sooner!