Title Iimpriiit ifi^S»iV»- I I THE College Man t An Address before the Convention oi the I National Alumni Association of Princeton University held in St. Louis February 12, 1921 By I. H. LIONBERGER J I Putliskc J ty The American CreditJndemnityCo. St. Louis, Mo, 1921 Copies to be had of the Company on Application I ^4. THE j College Man i I An Address before the Convention of the i National Alumni Association of Princeton | University held in St. Louis I February 12, 1921 | ^9 f^ By j I/H.' LIONBERGER j i I o I o I J o I PuDiisned by | The American Credit -Indemnity Co. j St. Louis, Mo. i 1921 I Copies to he had of the Company on Application I GFFT WRS. WOOD ROW WfLSOM NOV. 25, 1939 ^^ THE COLLEGE MAN This Convention is important. The first of its kind, it may mean something or nothing. The general objects which have inspired it are obvious. We wished mutual understanding and mutual liking but, subconsciously, I think we meant more. Perhaps you will expect me to discuss the whole state of Princeton's great university, to enumerate its achievem.ents, applaud its great men and reveal to you its aspirations; but, lacking eloquence, I will not attempt so lofty a flight. Permit me to perform a more himible service. Every one of us at graduation had to confront problems which were at once vexing and perplexing. What had we derived from college, what should we have got from it, whose fault was it that we were so little regarded, why was it so hard to get on, what was the value of the instruction we had received, was it our fault or the fault of the college that we seemed so worthless to the community and our- selves? These are important questions, fit I think for the consideration of this Ecumenical Council of graduates. If our instruction was faulty, we should understand where and why it failed, and perhaps suggest a remedy. If ourselves and not the college were to blame, we might advise others of the blunders we committed. [3] THE COLLEGE MAN Let US try at the outset to understand what a university is and what it can and cannot do. It is composed of teachers and scholars, both of whom are human beings and therefore imperfect. Not every man Imows how to teach. The teacher is bom, not made. One may be diligent, learned, thoughtful, thorough, yet if he lack elo- quence he cannot teach; to know is not necessarily to be able to tell. However careful, however liberal a college may be, it cannot always find good teachers, and I am inclined to think that its sys- tem does not allow enough play to the law of natural selection. We choose, and choosing blim- der, for we select the best scholar we can find, forgetting that the faculty to pass a brilliant ex- amination by giving the right answers does not necessarily involve either great intellectual power or the capacity to arouse enthusiasm. Moreover, the work we assign and the life we offer to instruct- ors are not calculated to bring out what is best in them. To set lessons, to ask questions, mark answers and grade pupils is a killing trade, de- structive of that vivacity which should character- ize teaching. The relationship between instructor and inferior is of itself demoralizing, for a superi- ority which is constantly asserted tends to self- sufficiency and stays progress. The college pro- [4] THE COLLEGE MAN fessor is apt to be a specialist, and confinement to one department of knowledge tends always to a narrow thoroughness which results in lean little- ness. I do not mean that there are no teachers who are broad men, but I do mean that few have either the faculty or the opportunity to become what their high calling requires. On the other hand, we have the average school- boy, who has somehow got it into his head that learning can be poured into him as we pour milk into a pitcher; who expects to be educated and not to educate himself; who inclines to repetition rather than understanding and is content if by giving the expected answers he can pass his exami- nations; who can repeat the rule governing the ablative absolute, but will not take the trouble to inquire the meaning either of ablative or abso- lute; who is in fact a manufactured product of a very bad method of instruction called cramming. Such a boy, so taught and so inclined, usually the offspring of the prosperous class, undisciplined by hardship of any sort, never having had to think seriously, comes to college expecting not an educa- tion, to be laboriously acquired, but enjoyment; and of such the student body of every university is composed. It is hard to make scholars of this misinformed, affluent, superior and rather conde- scending product of the average school. [5] THE COLLEGE MAN Of these two, the average teacher and the aver- age boy, the university must be composed. Equip- ped as it is and must be, what can the college accomplish for those who resort to it? We cannot hope to fashion them into philosophers and states- men, nor even into financiers or captains of indus- try. No factory can produce such goods. We must be content with a more humble and more achievable task, and I think the university wise which promises nothing more to its students than opportunity to acquire that sort of culture which will enable them to be what we call in a vague way open-minded, apprehensive, tolerant, clear- seeing, honorable, interesting men of the world. If we consent to sink lower and try to turn boys into mere architects, builders, traders, manu- facturers, brokers and bankers, we cannot hope to compete with the studio and workshop; if we try to rise higher and achieve the lofty aspirations of a Plato or a Milton, adopting their aurea dicta in lieu of a more modest curriculum, we shall be apt to burn our wings in a foolish flight toward the unattainable. Choo^ng the middle way, what can college do for its young men with the vast foundations bene- factors have established for their instruction? I think we can do a great deal, and I base my con- £6] \ THE COLLEGE MAN viction upon the steadfast fact that we have done a great deal. The college man is not like other men. Somehow he has been fashioned into some- thing slightly perhaps, but obviously superior; not by learning, for he carries no such burden, but by influences which tend to the production of a distinct type, marked and set apart from his fel- lows. He is a distinct type; his point of view is not that of the self-made man, it is not that of the craftsman, artist or philosopher. He is a simple, intelligible, fairly well informed, polite, unashamed man of good sense and breeding whom we call a gentleman. He does not know so much as to offend, nor so little as to distress us. We trust him and like to associate with him. He can under- stand us and we him. If he is not wise, he is usually modest, for he is intelligent enough to know that he may also be ignorant. If he is not very industrious, he is never quite worthless. He values happiness more than wealth. He has a clean body and a clean mind, and I do not think he lacks the virtues which most become a man. The "fianneled fools" of Oxford and Cambridge were not less manly than the disciplined hordes of their adversaries, and when the call for volunteers came from President Wilson every college in the land was deserted. [7] THE COLLEGE MAN Granting that a university can find neither teachers nor students ideal in character and faculty, nevertheless it has somehow accomplished much good; and I, who have been out of college many years and had opportunity to observe and consider, frankly declare that I have little fault to find with Princeton. Its tradition is sound, its instruction useful. To insist that it is imperfect is perhaps to emphasize infirmities which inhere in every human institution. Yet there is room for kindly criticism. After graduation it was my good fortune to be the companion of superiors, and they taught me many things— roughly perhaps, but thoroughly; and I know that in my own case college did not turn out anything like an educated man. Its instruc- tion was not calculated to produce such a result. I was taught to rely more on faith than reason, and to say what men should think rather than why they should think it; and having been filled with comfortable and useful prejudices, found no way to improve them. Superiority did not at once influence me, for knowing a little of every subject I was rather content to listen than com- prehend another's point of view. I lacked that conviction of sin which is the beginning of re- demption. What I thought I knew repelled that [8] THE COLLEGE MAN of which I was ignorant. I had been taught in college what to admire, and it never occurred to me that I had to understand Shakespeare or Milton or Bacon in order that the greatness of these men might become evident to me. Nothing that was old was quite understood, for I did not ponder upon it. Not in truth but in the opinions of others I found all that I sought in truth. There was no department in the university which taught me how to defend myself against imposture, quackery, plausibility or fanaticism. None told me either the meaning of words or how to repel their tyranny. I had no opportunity to ask questions. My teachers, having adopted the maxim of the preach- ers that as the twig is bent the tree will incline, sedulously inculcated doctrines and convictions which they deemed wholesome, and I was unable to resist them however incredible they might have been. What I had been taught I stuck to, and it stuck to me. Ihad become in fact as docile as a certain creature much talked of by children — Everywhere that Mary went The lamb was sure to go — If I may dare to assume that others were fash- ioned like myself, I may say that new things seemed to us more true than old, because we had not been taught what to think with respect to them. Gener- 19] THE CX)LLEGE MAN ous in character, modest perhaps, we inclined to embrace every specious suggestion of sentimen- tality, and a new name was more influential than an old principle. We followed blindly the uplifter and the reformer, because we did not know how to resist their plausibilities. We liked the "chatter of irresponsible frivolity" and were carried away by an idea because we could not understand that it was apt to be no more than a foolish craving for a change in circumstances. The baccalaureate sermons were influential with us. I have heard many and none which did not tell the graduates that they had been equipped to make the world a better place to live in. Every one of them enjoined the duty to influence, to improve, to raise others to our own level; and not one of them explained precisely what it m.eant us to be or to do. Mr. Wilson, for example, claimed for us the spiritual leadership of the world, but he did not tell us on what ground he based his claim, nor to what goal we should lead the world. Peace, the right of self-determination, righteousness, are words, high-sounding perhaps but still mere words, for there is a peace which is dishonorable, and righteousness may be what I think and not what another conceives it to be, and not what is in fact righteous. Such vague notions, eloquently ex- [10] THE COLLEGE MAN pressed, captured our fancies and filled us with a comfortable self-complacency, for they required no thinking and gave a certain emotion which seemed not altogether ungenerous. So instructed and so inclined, we entered upon a puzzling, complicated, unintelligible world teem- ing with strange problems which did not seem quite like those we had been prepared for. Some- how, our knowledge had not been suited to the exigencies of actual life. Let me illustrate what I mean. The recent war shattered the conventions by which we lived. Every tradition was disregarded, every institution was challenged. We conscripted our sons and sent them to fight an alien's battle, dedicating them to sacrifice on strange altars; we appropriated private property scornfully, as if the owner were a thief; we forbade men to use wine even to strengthen the bonds of amity or celebrate a marriage; we emancipated women to sordid uses and thrust them into offices and duties which cannot but impair the peace and serenity of the home. We convinced the laborer that the commu- nity owed him a living, and even tried by law to compel employers to pay $2 for work worth $1. We told the farmers that they had a right to exact more for wheat than it was worth in the market, 111] THE COLLEGE MAN and we said to the borrowers you may borrow more than the banks have to lend, and to the banks you may lend more than your resources justify. Scorning the work of patient time, , we tore asunder the laborious fabric of centuries of progress and shattered old nations in order to set up mushroom states which had never known the problems of liberty. A new creed was substituted for the old: riches without work, liberty without character, the franchise without responsibility, happiness without goodness, the right to live at another's cost. Dissatisfied with the old laws interpreted by the courts and therefor intelligible, we made new ones — rashly, inconsiderately, im- patiently. We created an amazing number of new ofifices, and eagerly rushed to strange, untried and silly expedients to raise money. We taxed prop- erty, services and the income from property. We searched, seized and deported without a hearing, and gave to the executive authorities an unfettered power such as no tyrant had ever enjoyed; heed- lessly disregarding the limitations of fundamental law and time-honored principles as though they were obsolete barriers to progress. Having in- vented many new words and perverted to strange uses old ones, we called this man * 'profiteer" and that one ''bolshevist" and used him accordingly. Fascinated by the word ''propaganda", we filled [12] I THE COLLEGE MAN the newspapers of the land with the partisan reports of paid officials. We complained of the high cost of living and encouraged the "stabiliza- tion of prices". Having invented a reserve sys- tem, we approved the issue of fiat money and made finance corporations and manufactured credit. Under the guise of government ownership, we crippled the railroads and impaired their service. We pretended that conscripted soldiers were all heroes. Having fought for the freedom of the seas and the removal of economic barriers, we set up a multitude of little states to vex each other by customs laws and acknowledged the right of England to prevent access to its enemies even by seizures in mid-ocean. None of these agitating innovations were quite understood by us: we lacked the faculty to judge of them. Roused by sensational newspapers, de- nied the opportunity to hear the other side, we were swept along the current of what we deemed public opinion to all sorts of strange extravagances, and mightily rejoiced in our patriotic emotions. The university mighit have made us less credulous. Never before was there a more urgent demand for that "complete and generous education which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnani- mously all the offices, both public and private, of 113] THE COLLEGE MAN peace and of war." What is a university but a great treasury of experience? It teaches the past and pretends to interpret that past, but it does not do so. It has made us familiar with dates and names, but it has not explained to us the meaning of history, literature, politics or science. It did not give us that knowledge which might have enabled us to realize that there is nothing new under the sun, that the problems of today ex- pressed in A B and C, are but the problems of yester- day which were expressed inXYand Z;that from the beginning what is good and bad, what is expedient and inexpedient, what is just and imjust, what is new and old, have been in incessant conflict and that over and over again the same expedients have been tried with the same results. College might have taught us that mere laws have never secured good government, and that a sumptuary law which denies temptation to weak- ness cannot result in anything but a cloistered and fugitive virtue unsuitable to the manly charac- ter. It might have told us that since the begin- ning none has been able to eat bread save in the sweat of his face; it might have pointed out the innumerable instances in which price regulation has resulted in the very evils against which it was directed; it might have told us the meaning of 1141 THE COLLEGE MAN "not worth a continental" and all the miseries which resulted from the use by our ancestors of paper money, and warned us against inflation and artificial credits and finance corporations; it might have taught us that inflation always increases the cost of war, and that exports are profitable only when they result in the exchange of goods for goods. It might have taught us the value of free speech and the dangers involved in midnight searches and seizures; the economic value of capital and the perils involved in excessive waste and taxation; that the sanctity of treaties has never depended upon the engagement of words; that since the days of Solon no league has ever curbed the rapacity of the strong; that our own solemn league of confederated colonies, composed of people of the same blood engaged in a common struggle for emancipation from a common tyranny, failed in every crisis of that struggle; and that Napoleon tried to set up a barrier against his enemies by the creation of the Rhine Federation, which afforded a basis for the German Empire. It might have presented to us that amazing series of sins and punishments, blunders and afflictions, aims and disappointments which constitute the history of the world; but it did not. If you insist that it did and that all the facts and events I have mentioned were familiar to you, [15] THE COLLEGE MAN then I say so much the worse for the college instruc- tion. To tell a boy a fact and not explain its significance, to declare a principle and not make it evident that under like circumstances it may always be relied on, is to give stones instead of bread. For instance, if I say paper money is not money and do not explain its promissory character, I confuse the student for he can buy with it and will not believe me. Not one college man in a thousand understands why inflation must result in affliction soon or late. A college professor is today teaching students how to stabilize prices by vary- ing the quantity of gold in a dollar, and few per- sons perceive that you cannot make scarce goods cheap nor abundant goods dear by any such silly expedient. College might have made us wiser — and I mean by wiser, more competent to apply an old principle to a new case. If it could not endow us with that complete and generous education which Milton describes, it might at least have started us right by communicating to us an intelligent appreciation of the experiments of mankind, his failures and triumphs; and so started, we might have been more apt to achieve the comprehensive tolerant, apprehensive point of view which should charac- terize an educated man. [161 THE COLLEGE MAN If you say these things are impossible where a university consists as I have admitted, of average teachers and average students, and is managed as it is now managed — by system — I will confess that you are right; but it need not be so managed. Our system is wrong. It rests upon the notion that boys may be forced to learn. Enlightenment comes by loving. Today and always the normal man has been eager to learn. If a crank stands on a street corner, he will not lack an audience. When I con- sider how many flock to hear the politicians during a campiaign and applaud with unfeigned enthusi- asm, I am amazed at the eagerness of men to understand what concerns them. A wish to know is not dead in us. We are perplexed by the prob- lems of today and by the conventional institutions which hedge us in. We have never understood them, and we wish to understand them, and of all learners the boy is the most inquisitive. Other universities of other times have used a different method. The Greeks established educa- tion upon a foundation of contact and discussion. Knowing that the prosperity of an idea depended upon the character of the student, they adapted instruction to that character and tried to rouse the faculty of thinking not by the scourge of vexing examinations but by explaining to him the signifi- [17] THE COLLEGE MAN cance of what he thought he knew. They were not rash enough to tell any what to think, they attempted to find out what he did think and to show him the consequences which flowed from foolish opinion. They not only asked but an- swered questions, and were careful to avoid doc- trine, and taught by example, simply. Let me illustrate what I mean. When a certain city, fairly well governed by a tyrant, was threat- ened by mob violence, a philosopher checked dis- order not by preaching a civic doctrine but by the following fable. **Day after day", he said, **the butchers selected from the herd one for slaughter, and those that were left, alarmed by the danger got together to devise a remedy. 'Shall we who are strong humbly submit, or use our strength to end these depredations?' was put to them, and they resolved upon war. As the oxen were plowing up the groimd with their hoofs and sharpening their horns in the stiff earth, an old one asked to be heard. 'Why do you do these things', he asked. *Is it because you mean to kill the butchers? I beg you to consider that man is a flesh-eating animal, and we are inferior to him in power and imder his protection. If you kill those craftsmen at slaughter who know how to put us to death instantly and without pain, we shall be pierced [18] THE COLLEGE MAN with arrows and torn to pieces by those who lack practice.' " Such a method of instruction is not only simpler but more effective than a labored effort to tell men why they are unfit to be free. Consider how easily we might have punctured the recent economic bubble called a boom. Every man was complain- ing of the profiteer and exorbitant wages, and none could tell us how we might escape from our affliction. Thousands of words were published and we read eagerly but remained perplexed. If some thoughtful man had repeated to us the familiar jingle, Jack and Jill went up the hill To fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown And Jill came tumbling after — we might have perceived a profound economic principle and escaped a most vexing and distressing perplexity. The fool who goes up a hill to get a pail of water is not less foolish than the employer or employe who expects to find prosperity at the top of a market. If we did not perceive the reason, we might at least have become interested in the explanation of the collapse which now afflicts us. [19] THE COLLEGE MAN The Greeks proceeded upon the principle that he who would drive fat oxen must himself be fat, or seem so. They did not scourge the scholar to make him keep pace with them, they kept pace with him. So did Christ. He told parables and conferred with those who jfiocked to him. Plutarch gave us a sketch of a great man and we were roused to emulation. We attempt to make a philosophy of things which should be taught by fairy-tales. The average mind is no better than it was a thousand years ago — it is still simple, and it must be taught simply. A fable, a parable, an example is interesting; a principle kills inquiry. Drudgery repels, curiosity invites diligence. We make a task of what should be delightful. Consider how we were taught the Anabasis. We proceeded laboriously from word to word and sentence to sentence, parsing as we went, and were never taught the splendor of Xenophon's amazing achievement. We learned from astronomy not the glories and vastness of the Universe, but how men of science calculated the movements of the planets. We regarded the Greek plays not as criticisms of life written in the most perfect language of all time, but as the repositories of the strange phanta- sies of an incomprehensible nation of dreamers. (20] THE CXDLLEGE MAN Skimming the salient events of human experience, we skipped the significance of those events and it never occurred to us that since the beginning there has been a struggle between men constituted as we are for what they and we call liberty, order and justice, and that such struggle must go on from generation to generation. As it was taught to us, even religion became a doctrine and that which is after all the most wonderful sweet thing in the world became a rigid barrier between neighbors. The university is too lavish in its teaching and cloys the appetite of youth. If we pour a glut of water upon a bottle, little water will enter. Each must receive according to his structure and capac- ity; yet if a boy likes what he is being taught he will take more than where instruction is forced upon him. Truth and beauty are not unpalatable unless we make them so, for an eager empty mind — and such is the mind of all healthy young men — will not shrink from gratification. The amiable parts of learning are not distasteful. If the uni- versity will but spread the feast, the student will eat. It cannot force him to learn. If you think we cannot revert to the old method because our students are too numerous, or tell me we now practice it with our tutorial systems, I say [21] THE COLLEGE MAN a teacher's influence is as far-reaching as his character and voice, and that there were more students in the universities then than now, and that Pythagoras did not reach the scholars who flocked to him by any such tutorial system: he spoke direct; it was he whom they wished to hear, not another and inferior. Many men can be reached by one. Consider how amazingly influential the great men of the past have been. Why was Socrates put to death — was it not because a great city feared that his influence might destroy the religion of the State? Confucius was influential, St. Francis of Assisi sent forth an army of devout men to set an example of poverty and piety, John Wesley made Methodists of tens of thou- sands. Even today such a preposterous fool as Coxey can induce a multitude to follow him blindly, trustfully and hopefully across a continent. What we are apt to assume is not true. Our system is less wise than another, and that other is still as capable as it ever was of inducing young men to wish to understand. When men mingle and talk together, each helps the other, for each brings his acquisitions into the common stock and shares what others contribute. So all genuine culture is acquired. Poets were fashioned at the Mermaid, painters and sculptors 122] THE COLLEGE MAN within the walls of Florence. Hume and Adam Smith learned political economy at a coffee-house, French manners and civility and clarity were practiced in the salon. There were movements at Oxford when Colet and Erasmus, Newman and Jowett taught. It is foolish to say ignorant men cannot be reached by men of sense. What is lack- ing is opportunity for questions and answers. Nothing in all the world is so powerful as personal influence, and yet we do what we can to destroy it, xirging instruction rather than inviting conference. To enlighten a man, we must find out where he is dark and what obscures his vision, and hold the torch. The university is apt to be a pile of fagots: it might, kindled by enthusiasm, become a great light, shining and beckoning. You may think I urge upon you a silly dream, but I think it an achievable aspiration. There have been great universities and their influence has been immediately felt and has endured from generation to generation, and none of them were fashioned or managed as ours are. If we ask why Horace and Cicero and many others embarked upon a perilous journey and sought out the teach- ers of Athens, we will discover that they wished to know how to speak and think by practice and example. We who value above all else physical [231 THE COLLEGE MAN prowess, have learned how to develop it. We have tracks and fields and gymnasia and swim- ming pools and tennis courts, and encourage men to use their brawn in order that they may become strong, agile and adroit. So the Greeks encour- aged men to use their brains. We may find today as much useful instruction in the Memorabilia of Socrates as in a year at college, for what Socrates asked and said still rouses the dormant faculties and makes them eager and acquisitive. Let me be ever so commonplace, yet if I am allowed an intimate association with a wise man I cannot choose but catch from him something to make me wiser, — a point of view perhaps, a way of approach- ing a subject, a capacity for detecting an error, a craving for truth, a wholesome incredulity. The Greeks by their methods taught not only the Romans but all Christendom. Their influence has not yet subsided. The Augustan age was the effect of the Greek influence, and that influence still guides and has never ceased to guide seekers after truth and beauty. We can trace that influ- ence from nation to nation and century to century across the dark history of the Middle Ages and today detect it in the lectures of the class-room and the lessons of the text-books. The amazing renascence of the 13th century was the indirect result of its inspiration. The Greek culture in- [24] THE COLLEGE MAN Spired the greater renascence of the 15th and 16th centuries. Colet went to Italy to learn Greek and taught it at Oxford. Erasmus, a pupil of Colet, translated the New Testament. More wrote his Utopia in emulation of Plato. Caxton set up his printing press and issued his precious volumes of translations, spreading among the peo- ples the enlightenment which had been smothered in the monasteries. The Bible was done into Eng- lish and set up in the churches. Chapman trans- lated Homer, North, Plutarch, and, inspired by the new learning, England shook off its lethargy and the conventions of a thousand years and achieved a new joy, a new liberty, a new life. Feudalism vanished, the serfs were emancipated, the Roman Church was shorn of its ecclesiastical jurisdictions and kings of their arbitrary preroga- tives, and letters flourished and all that lay in the dust arose and sang. These amazing historical events were the imme- diate results of the Greek method of instruction. It taught not what to think but how to think. It was at once interesting and stimulating, and none who felt it could resist its fascination. Long, long ago, nearly seven hundred years, men began to teach in Italy the literature of Rome. Cicero and Virgil and Tacitus were taught, and thousands 125] THE COLLEGE MAN in distant parts of the world, hearing strange rumors of the new learning, flocked to listen and learn, and having tasted of the waters of life scattered over Europe fructifying as with affec- tionate rain the arid souls of Christendom. One stood upon a corner in a remote province and cried his wares, offering "Knowledge, Knowledge, Knowledge", and a new imiversity was established. Oxford was founded in the 13th century, and many another seat of learning. It was never difficult to persuade men to wish to know. Knowledge is good, wisdom is excellent. We have managed somehow to make them uninterest- ing, hateful perhaps, and I meant to show that by other methods we might have done better. Da\dd supplicated God to give him understanding. Maybe it can be got nowhere else. There is a significance in the serpent of Eden. The Greeks conceived truth to be a beautiful woman with snaky hair, whom to look upon was death. But I think these images were intended rather to entice than to frighten us. Adam dared purchase knowledge with his life, and the Gorgon was overcome by a brave adventurer. Every youth has in him the pro- pensity of the knight errant: he wishes to go into the world and encounter its perils and problems. There is a fascination in learning. Every day we [26] THE COLLEGE MAN may make new discoveries. When we graduate we do not end but commence' that real education which ends only with life. I know that culture is a slow progress from prej- udice to prejudice, to be measured not by truth but by what seemed true and now seems false, yet it is worth striving for. It helps us to understand our fellows and reconciles^us to them; it protects us against imposture; it is a broad highway to strangers, and a pleasant by-path between neigh- bors; it gives pleasure and gets pleasure by con- ference, and I think it should be the aspiration of all social beings. To be fit for the best society should be the aspiration^of every gentleman. I like the college character even though I refuse to admire the systems of our colleges. I know that they let students help themselves by affording place and opportunity for mutual influence, but I think they should do more. They might let learning become what it should be — attractive, alluring, fascinating; and I dare affirm that such a consummation is not beyond the reach of Princeton. Consider what one school of learning founded upon a sound principle has achieved for mankind. Dedicated to the culture of truth, beauty and ex- cellence in accomplishment, untrammeled by con- [27] THE COLLEGE MAN vention, open-minded, willing to hear and discuss and improve, inviting opposition, encouraging scru- tiny, deprecating fanaticism, understanding em- phasis and arrangement, and wishing clarity; com- posed of a few great men of great minds, it lured to its groves all the eager spirits of antiquity and by its methods taught them an art and a capacity which enabled them to produce a literature so great that it became a powerful and significant influence throughout the world for two thousand years. Do you think I exaggerate? None who are familiar with the classics and their tremendous influence upon the human mind can think so. Like a torch they kindled and consumed the rub- bish which impeded the progress of many nations, and none touched by its flame failed to achieve a new hope, a new liberty and a new prosperity. Christ alone has accomplished more, and even Christianity is indebted to them. We owe the Reformation to the classics. Is it foolish to hope that Princeton, enriched and fortified by the old culture, can make of the young men who flock to its halls from every part of this great republic worthy successors to the poets, historians, philosophers and statesmen of a more primitive and barbaric age, or must we be content 128] THE COLLEGE MAN with mediocrity and the patterned fabrics of a factory, lacking variety and lacking vivacity? I cannot conclude and ignore the day. Lincoln was bom on the 12th of February. His life, his service and his sacrifice none can ignore. He was not a college graduate, yet he was fit for his high calling. His character was eloquent and his word ran to the remotest confines of his country. He righted a great wrong, daring to fight for right- eousness, and he won by the nobility of his charac- ter the gratitude even of his enemies. If we ask why he was so great, men will tell you he was humble-minded and wished to understand. To implant such a wish should be the object of a university. In conclusion, I venture to quote a familiar passage from Cardinal Newman. Whether such an ideal be achievable or not, it is worth striving for. "A imiversity training is a great ordinary means to a great ordinary end. It aims at raising the intellectual tone of society, at cultivating the pub- lic mind, at purifying the national taste, at supply- ing true principles to popular enthusiasm and . fixed aims to popular aspiration, at giving enlarge- ment and sobriety to the ideas of the age, and facilitating the exercise of political power and [29] THE COLLEGE MAN refining the intercourse of ppvate life. It is the education which gives a man a clear, conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them and a force in urging them. It teaches him to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought, to detect what is sophistical, to discard what is irrelevant. It prepares him to fill any post with credit and to master any subject with facility. It shows him how to accommodate himself to others, how to throw himself into their state of mind, how to bring before them his own, how to influence them, how to come to an understanding with them, how to bear with them. He is at home in any society, he has common ground with every class, he knows when to speak and when to be silent, he is able to converse, he is able to listen, he can ask a question pertinently and gain a lesson seasonably; he is ever ready yet never in the way, he is a pleasant companion, a comrade you can rely upon, he knows when to be serious and when to trifle, and he has a sure tact which enables him to trifle with gracefulness and to be serious with effect. He has the repose of mind which lives in itself while it lives in the world and which has resources for its happiness at home when it cannot go abroad. [301 THE COLLEGE MAN He has a gift which serves him in public and sup-' ports him in retirement, without which good for- time is but vulgar and with which failure and disappointment have a charm. The art which tends to make a man all this is, in the object which it pursues, as useful as the art of wealth, though it is less susceptible of method and less tangible, less sure in its result." Editorial from the Harvard Alumni Bulletin of March IGiK 1921. The recent meeting of the National Alumni Association of Princeton, held in St. Louis on Lincoln's Birthday, was a remarkable demonstra- tion of college loyalty and of the value of alumni discussion and co-operation. The high level of the program arranged for this meeting is illustrated by the address of Mr. Isaac H. Lionberger, Prince- ton 75, from which selections are printed in the present issue of the Bulletin. The topic is one on which all deliberations of this kind must centre. What ought to be the distinguishing characteristics of the college man? What, in other words, is the quality of the product which it is the business of colleges to deliver to the nation? That Mr. Lionberger has answered this question correctly, cannot, we think, be denied. He says [31] THE COLLEGE MAN in effect that what the cpllege may reasonably hope to cultivate is an awakened critical conscious- ness, or the power to think for oneself. College cannot give a man the discipline that comes from a struggle for livelihood, or the mastery of any art, or the ripeness and detachment of scholarship. It can, however, teach a man to distinguish knowl- edge from ignorance, to see human limitations, es- pecially his own, to defend himself against error and superstition, and to profit by the mistakes of history. The college man, in this sense, will be marked by the absence of credulity and of complacency. Knowing the genuineness and urgency of human problems, he will be "apprehensive"; knowing their complexity, he will be modest and tolerant. That this quality of mind has not been more suc- cessfully cultivated by American colleges in the past is in part the fault of the student and in part the fault of the teacher. The former because of his youth and relatively prosperous circumstances does not realize his own spiritual needs. Youth, in other words, is a time of plenty rather than a time of famine. The starved mind does not awaken to its condition until later when it is too late. The teacher, on the other hand, is too likely to feel his self-sufficiency and superiority, or to fail in the [ 32 ] THE COLLEGE MAN happy faculty of enlivening his subject and stimu- lating his student. It is suggested that the teacher who is selected for his scholarly attainment is peculiarly liable to these failings. But is not pedantry rather the cap and bells of scholarship which marks its oppo- site? A scholar is not a self-sufficient man lording it over the ignorant, but a self-critical man humb- ling himself before truth. Nor is he disposed to deal with knowledge in bulk, and to pour it into receptive minds. As a scholar he knows where knowledge comes from, and he is much more con- cerned with the problems that remain than with the truths that have been achieved. As a real scholar he will know the real problems, and will infallibly lead his students into their presence. Mr. Lionberger exemplifies a service which an alumnus who has spent many years in active life is peculiarly fitted to render. He may seek from his own experience to determine what are the enduring values of his education; or what among the qualities that he now esteems might properly have been inculcated back in the inexperienced and unforeseeing years of early youth. [331 ^^^S5j?ftiisyfrf'^*;^i^i^rf:.ij(,.,,;^^^^