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Kansas University Weekly.
poorest teachers men have gone out well taught. This is no disparagement of teachers or school, but simply affirms that teachers and school can do nothing for a man who will do nothing for himself. Every man must be first of all God-made and it is no discount on this statement when we add, that every man must also be Self-made. It is working together with God; God giving the faculties, and man subjecting himself to conditions of culture. The gifts of manhood do not make a man, unless there be joined with them the manly purpose.
In coming to this University you have shown your appreciation of the larger life possible to you. You will here have the best faculties the state can furnish, and the best teachers the state can secure. You will have libraries and laboratories, apparatus and museums to aid you in your work. I know I am safe in saying, that you come here with a high purpose. You mean to make the most of the opportunities afforded you. Youth is the season of high purpose and noble resolve. The sordid days have not yet come. The groveling spirit has not yet been developed. Young men and young women want to be something and to do something. Not often do they come to a school like this with anything less than the highest aim. But a high aim is not enough. It is the steady aim which attains its end. The men who have failed had a high aim once. But they fell from it. They took hold of the larger life but they let go again. President Ingalls of Dury College, used to say: "It is easier to start than to stick." It is the men who "stick" that win, whether in business or culture. The men who reach the goal are the men who keep pressing towards it. It is the steady purpose which the foes of life assail. The adversary of men does not care how high your resolve if it be not steady. He only has to wait for you to come down. Satan would just as soon have a ninety days Saint as a life long sinner. It is the men who enlist for the war who conquer the foe. The high resolve which brought you here will not serve you, unless you maintain it. The
test will come in keeping it up to grade. A spurt of good resolution may bring you to college, but it will not make a scholar of you Every enemy of the students life will combine against the steadiness of the students resolution And you will be tempted to relax by things which in themselves are right. Your social nature is as much a part of your being as your intellectual nature. If you live a recluse in college you will graduate half a man. But social demands will be numberless and imperious and will tend to absorb your thought, break up your habits and sap the fidelity of your purpose. Unless you stand like a rock to the purpose of a scholar's life you will fail in the thing you came for. Your purpose here is to win the crown of scholarship. "Let no man take thy crown."
You will be tempted too on the side of your physical vigor and bodily health. A cultured mind in a sickly body is a poor and puny thing. "Mens sana in corpore sano" is as true now as in the days of the old Romans. You must maintain your bodily vigor by inceasing care, and abundant exereise. All the manly sports are in order, and you should avail yourself of them. But do not forget that the body is the servant of the mind not its master. You must maintain the body that you may do the better work. You train the body that you may the better train the mind. It must not be permitted to become a hindrance and a limitation. Paul, who has left his impress on nineteen centuries said." I keep my body under." We know he does not mean by this that he neglected his body, but he made it serve the high purpose of his life. The student should join in all the exercises and sports that may give him vigor for better work. But the lower must be kept subordinate to the higher. When he has come to the point when he can hear the shout of a foot-ball team farther than he can hear the sound of the college bell, he no longer "keeps his body under," but has let it master him. His hope of intellectual supremacy has been put in peril.