George Herbert Palmer remains almost alone of the great generation of men like Royce and Santayana, that surrounded President Eliot during the early years of his administration. In a very real sense, Professor Palmer is a powerful bond connecting the little New England college of the seventies with the University of today. He is one who grew with the growth of Harvard; who saw, the while his own name attained distinction, the institution he represented increasing likewise in influence and renown. His life through the years of his active teaching here ran a course of development parallel to that of Harvard; nor has he allowed himself since his retirement to follow merely at a distance the march of the University. His dwelling, and in the fuller meaning, his life, have remained within the gates of Harvard.

One who considers his career finds it an organic, continually expanding entity. A graduate in 1864, he returned to teach Philosophy in 1872, and assumed in 1889 the wider duties of the Alford Professorship of natural religion, moral philosophy, and civil polity. Through the period of his teaching, he wrote works on philosophy, education, and English, with the concrete directness of a popularizer of knowledge who could still retain dignity. This attitude was progressive; an ideal of both the University and the man.

The years since his retirement have seen Harvard continue on the road of progress marked for it by him and his contemporaries; but he himself has never rested on the knowledge of his accomplishments. Writing, studying, and understanding, he has maintained his contact with the changing present: and the present will have, at his lecture, opportunity to feel this contact. The title "Growing Old" is significant only when one realizes he grows old with such grace that he seems to live a perpetual youth.