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THE COLLEGE IDEAL.
For this knowledge is an inspiring knowledge, and the study of the greatest manifestations of human activity stimulates and arouses our own activities. But on the other hand, knowledge of the world, of nature and of man as a part of universal nature is also a formative knowledge. This the realists have perceived, and herein lies the strength of their positions.
Every man is born with certain aptitudes by whose means he best attains to intellectual life. These are either by the study of man and his works, or by study of nature and her works. Men who are gifted with fitness for both are very rare. But all minds might do much in both ways if it were made the aim of instruction so to direct these aptitudes that their correlation, their equilibrium, be preserved. Thus it will become the business of instruction to leave its pupils in ignorance of no part of the domain of knowledge. Still, the field is so vast, and human power so limited; it is through so few aptitudes that each individual makes his way to intellectual life, that instruction must effectually develop these aptitudes, and by directing attention to a few points bring about a better comprehension of the whole. Leaving nothing in the dark, but throwing at last the strongest light upon a few points, instruction will, by strengthening and training the pupil's faculties through special aptitudes, enable him to enter into a comprehension of all knowledge leading to intellectual life.
But neither the humanists nor the realists like to confess any training good save their own. The former, pointing to their record in the past, declare that theirs is the ouly way. Then the realists, beholding the preliminary rummaging in philological dust-heaps that has hitherto been considered the necessary gateway to the study of the science of antiquity, have cried out against this waste of time and strength, and flying to the other extreme have declared that there is no good to be gained save in the study of the actual.
human freedom, and human force, while the study of the real, of sciences, is the study of human bondage and limitation. The study of the powers and deeds of the human spirit awakens within us a corresponding activity that can never be aroused by the study of the actual, of nature, in which man is but the small part of an enormous and uncomprehended system.
But so long as the realists persist in dividing the domain of knowledge, so long, it seems to me, do they leave the better part to their adversaries. For the study of hu manities, of letters and arts, is the study of
Thus, men trained in the humanities, but profoundly ignorant of natural science, have taken, and still take the chief place in human affairs, because their training has powerfully awakened the human force within them. But the humanists suffer, and the world's work suffers, from ignorance of the universe, of nature, and of man as a part of nature. In the enlarged domain of knowledge, the intellectual insufficiency of the humanities alone is becoming more and more apparent. In the nature of things, letters alone must surpass science alone in giving formative knowledge, but the necessities of life have become such that neither alone is now sufficient.
The College Ideal can spare neither of them, nor can it exalt one at the expense of the other. The College Ideal will avoid the unequal mental growth of specialization, will shun the merely commercial, will teach each and every one of its students to know himself and to know the world, that by force of culture he may be able to increase the general intelligence, the general happiness, the mental and moral welfare of the commonwealth.
What we need in this Republic is the College Ideal. Let every graduate, every student, each and every one of us here make it his earnest and enduring purpose to bring about the College Ideal, that those who come after us may have therein better training, better culture than we have had, that they may be able more largely than we to increase the mental and moral welfare of the commonwealth.
If we not only believe and feel this, but do it, we may run our course with satisfaction to ourselves and benefit to others, and at last go down peacefully to our rest, conscious that each one of us has fully merited that grand old Roman sentence: "This man HAS DESERVED WELL OF THE REPUBLIC."