Kansas University Weekly.
7
The Student's Capital, Purpose and Aim
Annual Opening Address delivered by Richard Corley D. D. in University Hall, Friday, Sept. 11.1896.
I esteem it a great privilege, and a great responsibility to be permitted to speak the word for which the Regents and Faculty of the University have provided at the opening of the college year. To many it is not only the opening of the college year, but the beginning of the college course. In a very real sense, these are the picked youth of the State of Kansas. This University stands at the head of the educational system of the state. That system is one of graduation from beginning to end, sifting out along the whole process. The grammar grades sift out from the primary, and the high school sifts out from the grammar grades. At the end of each grade only a portion pass on. Then the University sifts from high schools, and receives those who plan for a larger culture and a longer course. It is a sort of survival of the fittest from the first primary to the final graduation. I do not mean by this that all the best minds and best scholars of the high schools come to the University. But it may be safely said that those who have the desire and the courage to undertake a college course are as a whole, the selected product of our school system. They have been sifted out from the thousands who began with them in the lower grades, and have left their companions at different stages as the process went on. In a very real sense we have here the picked specimens of the products of our public schools. This company represents the whole people more truly than any body which assembles. You not only come from all over the state to receive the impress of this institution, but you will go back again to those from where you came, to use your enlarged lives in moving affairs and moulding sentiment. Here is a choice body of youth who have come for enlargement, for strengthening, for refining. It is selected
material from the highest processes of our educational methods.
Youth is itself the interesting season of life. It is the season of hopefulness and inspiration, it is the season of expanding life and of great expectations. It is the season of growth, and the consciousness of growth is the consciousness of strength. The sense of incremeant is a source of satisfaction. It is a sense of daily acquisition, every day a little more, every day a little higher. There is something sad, even though it were satisfactory, in the declaration of John Baptist when he referred to Jesus: "He must increase but I must decrease." His star is in the ascendant but my star is declining. His career is before him, my career is behind me. With the young, life is before them, expressed in possibilities and shrouded in mystery, yet glowing with promise and radiant with hope.
And this spirit of hopefulness and expectancy is not a delusion. It is justified by the situation. Any youth may hope to attain what will justify his dreams. The elements of life are in his hands as he stands at the parting of the ways. It is this which gives every crisis its meaning, and every influence its significance.
You,young men and young women,stand to day at the fountain and within your limit you may take as you will. If we should measure the elements which enter into your career,we could determine the outcome of that career. But there are unknown quantities in the problem and we must wait for the solution.
I want to speak this morning of the elements that measure a student's success and determine his value to himself and the world. I will cluster what I have to say under the points: The Student's Capital; the Student's Purpose and the Student's Aim. In other words we will ask, what has he received of capacity, what will he make of it by training, what will he do with it in life? I speak of the power received, the training given, and the end sought. What has been given him? What will he make of it? What will he do with it?
And first of all we will consider, "the stu-