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 Education, 
 and not 
 Instruction 
 
 By 
 
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 Fitz Randolph 
 

 
 
 
 
 
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EDUCATION, AND NOT INSTRUCTION 
 
 An Address Delivered at the Celebration of 
 
 the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the 
 
 Founding of Salem College, at 
 
 Salem, West Virginia, 
 
 June 12, 1913 
 
 By 
 CORLISS FITZ RANDOLPH 
 
 Pre.s of the American Sabbath Tract Society, Plainfield, N. J. 
 1913 
 

 Copyrighted, 1914, by 
 Corliss Fitz Randolph 
 
 FEB 6 1914 
 
 / 
 
 ©CI.A361898 
 
 ^o/ 
 
Education, and Not Instruction. 
 
 By Corliss Fitz Randolph. 
 
 A THOUSAND years ago, there swept 
 r\ out of the chilling regions of the 
 north, down along the coast of Scan- 
 dinavia, across the waters of the Ger- 
 man Ocean, from the land of the 
 Vikings, a mighty fleet of upwards 
 of 700 vessels and 40,000 fierce war- 
 riors. The flag-ship, named the Drag- 
 on, was fashioned from ancient oaks that 
 had defied the icy blasts of the storm- 
 swept mountains where they grew, into 
 the form of a dragon. She flew a sin- 
 gle cross-rigged sail of immense sweep 
 and ornamented with broad stripes of 
 brilliant blue, scarlet, and green and was 
 equipped with half a hundred pairs of oars, 
 some thirty feet in length, and manned by 
 at least four stalwart seamen to each oar. 
 The huge dragon's head at the prow was 
 covered with shining gold, and the stern, 
 ending in a dragon's tail of corresponding 
 proportions, was ornamented in a similar 
 manner. The Dragon alone carried a 
 crew, 700 strong. Each soldier bore 
 ? shield which reached from above the 
 
head well down toward the knees, and pro- 
 tected all the vital parts of the body. With 
 their shields, their owners had constructed 
 a border all around the outside of their 
 ship, by hanging them in a row at the top 
 of the hull, so that they overlapped each 
 other, alternating yellow and black, and 
 presenting a highly picturesque appear- 
 ance. 
 
 The other vessels of the fleet, though 
 smaller, were similarly constructed and 
 similarly equipped, and as their crews bent 
 to their oars or set the bellying sails, they 
 chanted their ancient Sagas, reciting vic- 
 tories of the past and the glories of other 
 days ; or they sang of the mighty Thor and 
 the all-powerful god, Odin, — the long- 
 bearded Thunderer, Father of Victory, 
 God of Hosts, and Father of All. As the 
 chorus of 40,000 lusty voices, commingled 
 with the strains of a thousand harps, was 
 caught on high by the swift winds that 
 bore them on their martial way, they were 
 all blended into one mighty, exultant paean 
 of confident victory in impending mortal 
 conflict, such as to mock the merciless 
 clamour of hungry ocean's roar in her 
 most threatening mood. 
 
On the foredeck of the imposing Dragon, 
 stood the commander of the fleet, of giant 
 stature and kingly mould. Across his 
 massive forehead ran an ornamental gold 
 band, set with gems as flashing and as 
 priceless as ever graced the diadems of the 
 far-famed rulers of Golconda. His long, 
 yellow hair, fair as mellow sunshine, fell 
 upon his broad shoulders, and his full 
 beard, tawny as a lion's mane, dropped half 
 way to his girdle. His face and hands 
 were bronzed from long exposure to storm 
 and wind. His eyes, a deep, dark blue, in 
 whose depths lurked smouldering fires of 
 passion, gave token of a determination and 
 will that brooked no defeat; while through 
 his veins coursed a torrent of such life- 
 giving blood as irresistingly impels the 
 victor of a thousand bloody battles to 
 plunge into a final struggle of life and death. 
 
 He was clad in bright-blue knee- 
 breeches, with gold-embroidered shoes, 
 made from walrus-skin, that reached more 
 than half way to his knees. The inter- 
 vening space between the shoe-tops and 
 knee-breeches was covered with heavy 
 bands of richly coloured silk. About his 
 body was a shirt-like garment of red silk, 
 
with long sleeves, which fellj below his 
 girdle and effectually concealed the indis- 
 pensable coat of mail. At his side hung a 
 long broadsword of shining, highly-tem- 
 pered steel, thickly encrusted with silver 
 ornaments, but, notwithstanding, betoken- 
 ing many a deadly encounter. Over all, 
 was thrown a heavy fur cape, lined with 
 velvet of a royal purple hue, which reached 
 to his shoe-tops, and was fastened at the 
 throat with a richly engraved golden clasp ; 
 and at his feet lay a battle-axe of such size 
 and weight as might well try the strength 
 of the arm of Hercules himself. 
 
 Thus he stood, bareheaded, the wind 
 playing with his hair, with his arms fold- 
 ed tightly across his chest, and buried in 
 thought, contemplating, with a certain su- 
 preme satisfaction, his vast fleet of battle- 
 ships, followed in their wake by several 
 hundreds of transports, bearing supplies of 
 food, tents, horses, — everything required 
 to equip and sustain so mighty an army on 
 land and sea for months. Not Solomon 
 with all his train of oriental splendour ; nor 
 Alexander, conqueror of worlds; nor Jul- 
 ius Caesar, builder of empires; nor Na- 
 poleon Buonaparte, who made a chess- 
 
board of the continent of Europe and 
 pawns of her crowned heads, ever saw 
 such a martial display. Not all the gal- 
 leys of Greece, nor all the ships that sail- 
 ed the Spanish Main, nor yet the Invincible 
 Armada, ever presented such a display of 
 naval power, moving with so irresistible 
 a sweep, and pregnant with as far-reaching 
 possibilities. 
 
 This was Hrolf, or Rollo, the last of the 
 Vikings, going forth, primarily to make 
 war upon the ancient Gallic domains of 
 imperial Caesar, but in reality to set in 
 motion forces that were to persist with an 
 accelerating momentum for a thousand 
 years, and bear manifold blessings to un- 
 told generations. As he stood in 
 silent meditation, we may not know 
 how far the Muse of History un- 
 rolled her tempting scroll to his im- 
 patient eyes, nor how far his prevision 
 may have penetrated the misty prospect 
 before him. To what extent his ambitions 
 may have been luring him to world-con- 
 quest, it will probably never be given us to 
 know. 
 
 The picture here sketched is realistic 
 to the last detail. The Bayeaux Tap- 
 
estry, the Sagas, and the ruins of the 
 long, fleeting, dead past, with their runic 
 inscriptions, and their mute, material evi- 
 dences of the life and warfare of this peo- 
 ple, bear ample testimony of that fact. But 
 of the possible Napoleonic dreams of this 
 heathen demigod as he fared forth to war, 
 history is either strangely silent, or 
 answers back in accents of hollow mock- 
 ery. Yet, upon a shred of the tottering 
 imperial realm which Charlemagne had 
 erected from the dying embers of 
 the Gallic Roman Empire, this pagan 
 barbarian, of such giant physique that 
 no horse could be found powerful 
 enough to carry him, saturated with 
 the spirit of the Norse theology of Thor 
 and Odin, was to cause to rise yet another 
 empire, dedicated to Christianity, in spirit as 
 in letter, to law and order, as well as life, 
 liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and 
 singularly free from avarice and dishon- 
 esty, whose national life was to endure 
 throughout an entire millennial epoch and 
 then enter upon another with a virility and 
 spirit of perseverance such as to augur 
 prosperity for its future. 
 
 He was projecting himself into western 
 
European civilization about the beginning 
 of the period known in the history of learn- 
 ing as the age of Scholasticism. A little 
 more than a century before, Charlemagne 
 had established monastic schools in France 
 and made what was probably the first at- 
 tempt in the history of the world to pro- 
 vide universal free primary education, and 
 to establish free higher schools. This 
 spirit the new ruler speedily caught, 
 and transmitted to his successors. About 
 a century and a half after Hrolf had 
 established himself in that part of France 
 that came to be known as Normandy, 
 his grandson in the seventh generation 
 of descent, William the Conqueror, ac- 
 companied by his immediate family, be- 
 sides his uncles, cousins, and others of his 
 numerous kindred, crossed the channel 
 which divided Normandy from the southern 
 part of England, crushed the English army 
 under Harold, killed their leader at the 
 Battle of Hastings, and reorganized the 
 government of the newly conquered soil. 
 Scarcely was the celebrated Domesday 
 Book engrossed, before schools and uni- 
 versities sprang up. The two great ancient 
 universities of Cambridge and Oxford were 
 
founded under Norman influence ; and be- 
 tween the Conquest and the death of King 
 John, there were established five hundred 
 and fifty-seven schools in England. The 
 spirit of education marked the Conqueror's 
 family circle no less than the State. His 
 son, Henry Beauclerc, was trained in the 
 sciences ; as were Henry II, and his three 
 sons, of whom Richard, the eldest, was a 
 poet. 
 
 Now awoke the genius of religious 
 and political freedom. In the veins 
 of Robert the Bruce, liberator of 
 Scotland, ran the blood of this Vik- 
 ing king; and when the Puritan Ref- 
 ormation arose in England and the Pil- 
 grims, after a career of varying fortune 
 in a foreign land, finally found rest on the 
 bleak shores of New England, there, too, 
 was found the fruit of the loins 
 of the regal Norseman ; and when, 
 after a hundred and fifty years more 
 had passed away and Lexington, Con- 
 cord, and Bunker Hill called for a 
 military commander of heroic stature 
 to lead the Colonial armies in their 
 struggle for freedom from oppression, 
 it was another descendant of the royal 
 
giant of the north that heard the 
 cry and rode away from his peaceful 
 Virginian plantation to lead to victory a 
 people who were to found another govern- 
 ment, which in the short space of a century 
 and a quarter, was to share with the proud 
 Briton, her cousin of Norse ancestry, the 
 boast that the sun never sets on her pos- 
 sessions, and to become the mighty empire 
 of the west, to be reckoned with by the 
 great powers of the world, and to be 
 known and read of by all men, of all na- 
 tions of the earth. 
 
 And, to carry the story to its final, logical 
 issue, when the village of Salem was 
 founded in the wilderness of the foot-hills 
 of the Alleghany Mountains some hun- 
 dred and twenty years ago, by a band of 
 courageous spirits, who sought a new home 
 in this strange, wild country, where they 
 might enter upon the heritage bequeathed 
 to them by Plymouth Rock and the Magna 
 Charta of '76, that triumphal progress was 
 led by another captain, the streams of 
 whose life current had their source in the 
 great heart- fount of the mighty son of Thor. 
 
 It has already been observed that no 
 sooner had the sturdy Norseman established 
 
his home in France and passed under Chris- 
 tian sway and embraced that faith, than 
 he became a great humanizing force. Awak- 
 ened from her apathy by his influence, 
 Christianity became a vi'talistic power of 
 itself. He crystallized the nascent humani- 
 tarian spirit of France inito the great Uni- 
 versity of Paris. He quickened and gave 
 being to the movement which culminated 
 in the English Renaissance, and made the 
 Elizabethan period the pride and glory of 
 English letters. He fostered organized 
 law. He encouraged, and helped to make 
 a living reality of civil and religious free- 
 dom throughout the entire English-speak- 
 ing world, and placed the peoples using 
 that language in a position where, today, 
 they practically hold the balance of power 
 among the nations of the earth. At the 
 close of the recent war between Russia and 
 Japan, it was not the belligerents who made 
 the treaty of peace. The President of the 
 United States of America brought the op- 
 posing powers together on the neutral foot- 
 ing of our hospitable shores, and the Prime 
 Minister of England, tactful but unyield- 
 ing, dictated the terms which ended that 
 bloody struggle. 
 
The beneficent force that has worked 
 out so many other great deeds of service 
 for modern civilization, has made, in this 
 great beloved country of ours, the best sys- 
 tem of free public education that the world 
 has ever known. It was the same benign 
 influence that inspired the American people 
 with the exalted opinion of higher edu- 
 cation that has characterized them from 
 the very inception of William and Mary 
 College to the present generation. And if 
 we stop and consider that the Norseman 
 was Germanic before he was Norse, we 
 may readily perceive that the very dynamic 
 spirit that inspired him to become the 
 patron of education in France, Great 
 Britain, the United States, Canada, and 
 Australia, likewise moved others to place 
 education upon the firm, scientific footing 
 it holds throughout Germanic, or central, 
 Europe today. Indeed, I may venture to 
 remark in passing, that Frederick the 
 Great, Bismarck the Iron Chancellor, and 
 Field Marshal Von Moltke, all were but 
 Vikings of the nineteenth century. When, 
 a few years ago, on a dreary, stormy day 
 in winter, in company with a fellow coun- 
 tryman of theirs on a railroad train, I 
 
passed the snow-clad tomb and former 
 home of Bismarck, the Sphinx of Europe, 
 the man of whom it was said he could be 
 silent in seven languages, I could but ob- 
 serve how fittingly both his former habita- 
 tion and his last resting-place connoted the 
 ancient fierce spirit of the North, so well 
 exemplified in our Viking hero. Nor could 
 I fail to observe the spirit of almost filial 
 veneration and respect which my compan- 
 ion displayed as we swept by this cold and 
 bleak German Valhalla. 
 
 Thus, the hand that a thousand years ago 
 laid such a mighty grip upon west central 
 Europe and inspired a nascent civilization 
 to spring into a living power for uplift and 
 culture, for progress and righteousness, is 
 today erecting the humble chapel on the 
 countryside and piling up massive masonry 
 into lofty cathedrals in splendid cities ; is 
 dotting this fair country of ours with rural 
 schools and small colleges as well as with 
 great busy school-hives for the children of 
 the populous commercial and manufacturing 
 centres, and with the magnificent universi- 
 ties which grace American soil from Atlan- 
 tic to Pacific shore; and from them all is- 
 sues the same clarion voice that called the 
 
fierce warriors of the North to conflict with 
 the powers of darkness, still calling from 
 the misty past upon all — men, women and 
 children, everywhere — to the worship and 
 adoration of their Maker, and all the chil- 
 dren, youth, and young men and young 
 women of the land to rally around the ban- 
 ner of enlightenment and avail themselves 
 of opportunities for acquiring an education 
 such as have never before been offered in 
 the history of the world. 
 
 But what is an education? Well may 
 we ask this question ; it has been asked for 
 thousands of years, and curiously enough, 
 the answer has always been the same. 
 True, in many, perhaps all, ages, there have 
 been those who have fancied that they re- 
 sponded in other tones, and some have ac- 
 tually said other things. But did you ever 
 stop to think that a given object appears 
 different to different people; that much, 
 and sometimes everything, depends upon 
 the point of view ? It makes all the differ- 
 ence imaginable whether one looks at the 
 world from the depths of a narrow valley, 
 or from the summit of a high mountain. 
 The giant oak, which lifts its head in tow- 
 ering majesty when one stands in its im- 
 
 13 
 
mediate presence, sinks into utter insignifi- 
 cance when seen in distant perspective. 
 Even the course of a mighty river, with all 
 its eddies and counter currents, might 
 easily be misjudged by one beholding it for 
 the first time. 
 
 The prophet, the real seer, whether it be 
 in religion, education, or State, is he who, 
 from the loftiest peak, surveys the prospect 
 before him without aberration of sight — 
 without the illusion of foreshortening or 
 mirage. So, in this discussion, let us lis- 
 ten to the voices of men who stand upon 
 the mountain tops of human history and 
 attainment. Three centuries before the 
 Christian Era began, Plato said : 
 
 "A good education is that which gives to the 
 body and soul all the perfection of which they 
 are capable." 
 
 One might fairly say that this declara- 
 tion from the lips of a pagan sage really 
 embodies the philosophy of Moses and the 
 wisdom of Solomon — the magi of the an- 
 cient Hebrews. Two thousand years af- 
 terward, Milton, whose Paradise Lost, no 
 less than his theological disputations, re- 
 moves him wholly from the suspicion of 
 undue pagan influence, in his memorable 
 
 14 
 
letter to his friend Hartlieb on the subject 
 of Education, amplified Plato's dictum into 
 the following: 
 
 "I call, therefore, a complete and generous 
 education, that which fits a man to perform 
 justly, skillfully, and magnanimously, all the 
 offices, both private and public, of peace and 
 war." 
 
 The modern definition that "education is 
 fitting oneself to one's environment," while 
 cryptic in its sound, and possibly in its in- 
 tended meaning, is really Plato stated in 
 fewer words, but without the directness 
 and simplicity of the latter. Some 
 modern writers distinguish carefully be- 
 tween education and instruction. Ac- 
 cording to these authorities, education is, 
 in brief, essentially the result of all the 
 conscious influences which impinge upon 
 and shape personal character; and instruc- 
 tion, in similar general terms, is what we 
 are wont to call "schooling." In other words, 
 education is the residuum of all one's ex- 
 periences of life, or in short, individual 
 character; while instruction is what we 
 have been accustomed to call education, — 
 "book-learning," if you will pardon so 
 homely a term. 
 
 Now, education, from the standpoint of 
 
 IS 
 
the practical educator, consists in the re- 
 sult of all the influences which he may be 
 able to bring to bear to give his pupils as 
 much as possible of the common stock of 
 knowledge essential for intelligent and ap- 
 preciative conduct of life. This includes, 
 in the main, two important factors ; name- 
 ly, the curriculum and the personality of 
 the instructor. Of course, the stu- 
 dent's associations with his fellows is 
 a third, not unimportant, consideration. 
 With particular reference to this view of 
 the question, education is classified as 
 physical, intellectual, and spiritual; and 
 again as utilitarian and cultural. The 
 former of these two classifications is log- 
 ical and scientific, while the latter is arti- 
 ficial and sophistical. 
 
 In our threefold classification of educa- 
 tion, naturally the first consideration is 
 physical. The body is the temple of our 
 spirit, and the home of our intellect. Nay, 
 more, it is the medium through which we 
 are able to use our spirit and intellect as it 
 was designed that they should be used; 
 and upon the careful development of the 
 body into symmetrical, physical manhood 
 and womanhood, depends the fulfillment of 
 
 16 
 
the hopes and obligations incurred by our 
 spiritual and intellectual being — the moral 
 and ethical manifestations of our existence. 
 
 Did it ever occur to you that, aside from 
 the ten precepts of the Decalogue, essen- 
 tially the entire Mosaic law pertained to 
 the physical well-being of the Hebrews? 
 Not only that, but therein may be found a 
 code of sanitary regulations, which, if rig- 
 idly enforced today among the entire citi- 
 zen body of the nation, would inure greatly 
 the physical and social welfare of human- 
 ity, irrespective of race, colour, or creed of 
 religious faith. 
 
 The Spartan code of training directed its 
 entire aim toward physical development, 
 and by the unrelenting enforcement of its 
 rules produced results that have made the 
 history of Lacedasmonia famous for all 
 time. This code recognized a fundamen- 
 tal truth, in that if society wants to per- 
 petuate the human species, it must insist 
 upon the rigorous enforcement of certain 
 sanitary canons for the care of the body. 
 No nation of physical weaklings ever en- 
 dures, or attains distinction. The recogni- 
 tion of this inexorable, basic mandate of 
 nature by savage and barbaric peoples is 
 
 17 
 
the real explanation of certain of their in- 
 human practices with reference to the ex- 
 posure and destruction of weak children. 
 It is but the practical application of the 
 stern edict of the "survival of the fittest," 
 or "natural selection," as modern scientists 
 have pointed out, by means of which nature 
 develops and perpetuates certain types of 
 both animate and inanimate creation. It 
 is of vastly more importance that a man 
 shall have the necessary strength and en- 
 durance to use carpenter's tools, than that 
 he should have the skill to use them. He 
 may have the cunning and skill to fashion 
 the rarest examples of his craft, but if he 
 have not the strength to use the tools neces- 
 sary to produce them, his skill is of no avail. 
 Then, aside from the bald question of 
 developing mere brute strength, there are 
 certain principles of sanitation and health 
 which need to be taught as of divine ori- 
 gin, since upon their intelligent observance 
 depends the freedom of the race from the 
 bondage of disease and premature decay. 
 The widespread interest in what is now 
 termed eugenics, augurs well for a sane, 
 efficient physical discipline. 
 
 By intellectual education, we mean the 
 development of our general intelligence. 
 
 18 
 
This includes not simply the acquisition of 
 that body of knowledge which the history 
 of civilization has shown to constitute the 
 essence of all that is rich and ennobling in 
 human experience, but also the de- 
 velopment of a discerning judgment 
 by which to classify and interpret it. 
 This body of knowledge, and its ad- 
 equate interpretation and classification, 
 constitute what is known as a liberal edu- 
 cation, and is to be carefully differentiated 
 from what is purely technical or profes- 
 sional. The liberal education is the great 
 chief corner-stone of enlightened civiliza- 
 tion. Plato, in his Republic, which was 
 really the first scientific treatise on this 
 subject, demanded little beyond what we 
 should call secondary education. Of its 
 higher form, he required a little of ad- 
 vanced mathematics (including astron- 
 omy), and philosophy. Of literature, as 
 we know it, there was none. Of course, 
 the poems of Homer were familiar to every 
 one, just as certain traditions of the Jews 
 are familiar to every Hebrew, and as the 
 Nibehingenlied was familiar in every 
 household in Germany in the Dark 
 Ages. But at that time, Homer's poems 
 were mere folklore, a national tradition, and 
 
 19 
 
had not yet risen to the dignity of pure lit- 
 erature. But from these matchless Homeric 
 legends ; from the historical, philosophical 
 discussions of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, 
 and their followers and successors; from 
 the spirit of mountains and valleys, their 
 purpling plains and chaste blue seas ; from 
 their wars, from victory, from defeat; 
 from their sunny skies and the joyous life 
 they led in the clear, pure, rarefied atmos- 
 phere of sunny Hellas, the Greeks created 
 literature, — a great, peerless body of it, — 
 into which they breathed their national life 
 and spirit, and even the whole sum of hu- 
 man existence — that which, next after the 
 Bible, is the best literature the world has 
 ever known. It palpitates with their hearts' 
 blood; it is exuberant with the joys of liv- 
 ing; and reeks with the real experiences 
 (even to their inmost thoughts) of actual, 
 God-made men and women. It is the 
 fountainhead, — the great source, — from 
 which all modern literature has been 
 drawn. 
 
 The Romans, who taught Greek litera- 
 ture in their schools, produced a literature 
 of their own, fashioned after that of the 
 Greek; they developed and organized juris- 
 prudence and the science of government; 
 
and, finally, before our very eyes, as it were, 
 they unrolled a splendid panorama, pictur- 
 ing forth the actual production and de- 
 velopment of a stately, sonorous tongue, 
 whose acquisition is sought today by a 
 greater aggregation of people than spoke 
 it when, at the height of her Empire, 
 Rome's mightiest legions thronged forth to 
 universal victory. Milton, the blind bard 
 of England's Commonwealth, whose poet- 
 ical genius is to the English language what 
 Vergil's was to the Latin, and Dante's 
 to the Italian,— a classical scholar of 
 marvelous attainment, — enunciated a dic- 
 tum to the effect that Greek and Latin were 
 the only languages of enlightenment, and 
 urged that they be acquired not merely for 
 the sake of the pure literature which they 
 embodied, but that at least some of the 
 technical and professional subjects, includ- 
 ing agriculture and architecture, might be 
 studied at their original sources. 1 
 
 i. It is interesting to note that Vitruvius is still 
 regarded as an authority on architecture. The stand- 
 ard modern edition is that edited by Rose (Leipzig, 
 1880). The standard English translation is that edited 
 by Gwilt (London, 1826; reprinted 1S74). , And since 
 this address has been put into type, there has appeared 
 an English translation of the agricultural treatises ot 
 Cato and Varro entitled, Roman Farm Management 
 The Treatises of Cato and Varro Done Into hnglisn 
 With Notes of Modem Instances. By A Virginia 
 Farmer (New York, 1913)- 
 
 21 
 
Perhaps in all the maddening vortex of 
 our complex modern life, there is no greater 
 feat of daily occurrence than that of edit- 
 ing successfully a great metropolitan daily 
 newspaper. Here is gathered together, in 
 the short space of a few hours, all the 
 news of interest that has just transpired 
 throughout the world. Swift express 
 trains, ships of the air, ocean cables, the 
 telephone carrying the sound of the human 
 voice for a thousand miles, and wireless 
 telegraphy — that greatest of all the great 
 miracles of modern times — are laid under 
 tribute to yield up their secrets from the 
 closets of the uttermost hidden parts of 
 the earth, to be proclaimed from the house- 
 tops of all the broad highways of civiliza- 
 tion. A vast army of tens of thousands 
 of tireless workers keep up a steady flow 
 of the never-ending streams of intelligence, 
 with all their tremendous volume, through 
 all these multifarious channels. The news 
 ranges all the way from the petty theft of a 
 cowardly, clumsy sneak-thief or pickpocket, 
 to the loss of millions through the most dar- 
 ing and skillful machinations of the experi- 
 enced embezzler ; from petty graft in a 
 country village to the widespread ramifica- 
 
(tions of the artful designs of the most cun- 
 ning diplomatists and statesmen of the 
 Great Powers plotting the dismemberment 
 of a decaying empire; from the election of 
 a justice of the peace at the mountain cross- 
 roads of Tennessee to the coronation of a 
 king, or the marriage of a princess of the 
 realm; from a common street brawl to the 
 bloody struggle of the battlefield where the 
 fate of nations hangs in a balance ; from a 
 hod-carrier tumbling from a ladder under 
 the weight of a load of bricks, with a 
 broken leg, to the wreck of a floating 
 ocean-palace at the cost of a thousand lives ; 
 from the childish games of a tiny kinder- 
 garten to the imposing commencement ex- 
 ercises of a great university; from the 
 publication of a new spelling-book in Au- 
 gusta, Maine, to the discovery, in the sands 
 of Egypt, of ancient papyri containing the 
 lost plays of Menander; from the tax- 
 budget of a small suburban town to the 
 finances of two worlds; from digging a 
 ditch for a small water main in a side street 
 of a mere rustic hamlet to the building of 
 the Panama Canal. All these and ten thou- 
 sand other happenings and transactions 
 with a million details, all come pouring into 
 
 23 
 
the office of an editor of such a newspaper, 
 and he must pass judgment upon their rel- 
 ative importance and their availability for 
 his use, oftentimes in the twinkling of an 
 eye. Can you conceive of a more complex 
 or a more difficult task? A careful student 
 of modern life, writing a few years ago, 
 said that if it were possible for us to send 
 to another planet some one thing which 
 would exemplify our civilization and pres- 
 ent-day attainments, he would select either 
 an encyclopaedia or a great daily newspaper. 
 
 What sort of man, then, is required to 
 produce such a newspaper? This coun- 
 try has produced many men who have at- 
 tained distinction in that field of activity. 
 But among them all, few, if any, attained 
 greater renown than Charles A. Dana, for 
 so many years the editor of the New York 
 Sun. Whatever opinion one may enter- 
 tain of Mr. Dana's personal views of mat- 
 ters politic, ethical, or otherwise, no one 
 questions his ability as an editor. The 
 purely intellectual quality of his pen has 
 seldom been surpassed, and the sanity and 
 accuracy of his news columns were all but 
 perfect. Surely, if there has ever been an 
 American newspaper man qualified to 
 
 24 
 
judge the attributes of a great editor, Mr. 
 Dana was such an authority. A very few 
 years before his death, he was invited to 
 deliver a series of lectures upon journalism 
 before the students of Union College. In 
 the course of one of these lectures, while 
 discussing the qualifications that an editor 
 should have, he said: 
 
 "I am myself a partisan of the strict old- 
 fashioned classical education. The man who 
 knows Greek and Latin, and knows it — I don't 
 me'an who has read six books of Vergil for a 
 college examination, but the man who can pick 
 up Vergil or Tacitus without going to the dic- 
 tionary, and the man who can read the Iliad in 
 Greek without boggling — and if he can read 
 Aristotle and Plato, all the better — and is fa- 
 miliar with the English Bible, that man can be 
 trusted to edit a newspaper." 
 
 Just what did Mr. Dana mean? 
 Merely this : That the man who is thus fa- 
 miliar with this body of literature, small 
 though it may appear, but which is the 
 very essence of polite letters, has not only 
 compassed the entire range of human ex- 
 perience, and become well versed in the 
 laws of God and man, but in addition, has 
 caught something of the spirit of intel- 
 lectual and political freedom of the Greeks ; 
 something of the genius and loftiness of 
 
 25 
 
their intellectual and spiritual attainment, 
 and of their poetry and music and song, 
 — in short, of the fine art of living; who 
 has also caught something of the spirit of 
 that national pride and patriotism which 
 culminated in the Republic upon which 
 Rome founded her great world-em- 
 pire. Again, he has caught something 
 of the spirit of simple faith in Jehovah 
 and the mysticism which made the Chil- 
 dren of Israel a chosen people, maintain- 
 ing their identity thousands of years 
 until they produced the Christ, and 
 then, despite their rejection of the 
 Messiah, remaining intact two thousand 
 years longer, though wanderers upon 
 the face of the earth ; and who final- 
 ly, through the King James interpre- 
 tation of the records of this eastern mysti- 
 cism, has caught something of the Norse 
 spirit which has transmuted Christianity 
 from a religion of empty form, into 
 which it had degenerated, into a living, 
 moving faith, which has rescued Christen- 
 dom from the terrors of the Dark Ages, 
 and founded empires, erected temples to 
 the living God, placed the Bible in every 
 home, established universal education for all 
 
 26 
 
classes of the State, and made civil and re- 
 ligious liberty a living- verity, — such a man 
 might well be trusted to edit a newspaper. 
 
 Already I have essentially defined the 
 third aspect of education, or spiritual de- 
 velopment, along with the intellectual. And 
 that was well-nigh inevitable, for while 
 academically, general intelligence, or intel- 
 lectuality, is distinguished from spirituality, 
 practically and logically they are insep- 
 arable. For without spirituality, intellect 
 becomes cold, and relentless, and merciless, 
 devoid of the milk of human kindness, so 
 wholly essential to human life. Without 
 spirituality, intellect becomes a mere 
 mechanism, an automaton, logical but life- 
 less. It is spirituality that enables a mu- 
 sician to transform mere atmospheric vi- 
 bration into harmonies all but divine; it is 
 spirituality that enables an artist to dip his 
 brush first into this pot of clay and then in- 
 to that and cause a human face to spring 
 from a sheet of dull, gray canvas, — a form 
 so real in appearance as almost to seem to 
 throb with emotion; it is spirituality that 
 makes all the world akin, which makes us, 
 all, each our brother's keeper ; that changes 
 man from a mere calculating machine into 
 
 27 
 
a creature made in the image of his Maker. 
 Spirituality bears the same relation to in- 
 tellect that the spark of protoplasm bears 
 to the constituent chemical elements of a 
 grain of wheat; together, they constitute a 
 living organism, big with all the possibilities 
 of the one mystery which has left baffled 
 science in hopeless despair in all ages. 
 Take the protoplasm away, and life vanishes 
 beyond the ken of the most discerning 
 chemist or astute philosopher, and leaves 
 behind a mere speck of inanimate dust. 
 When St. Paul said, "The letter killeth, but 
 the spirit giveth life," he not only enunciat- 
 ed a great theological and religious truth, 
 but laid down a fundamental law of science 
 as well. 
 
 In the last analysis, spirituality is the 
 very soul of all artistic and ethical and re- 
 ligious symbolism. The legend of the 
 golden harp of Orpheus, whose music not 
 only impelled all the wild beasts of the 
 jungle to follow, harmless, in his train, but 
 which thrilled the hearts of the tall trees of 
 the forest so that they bent their listening 
 heads, and made the cold, lifeless stones 
 to leap from the ground for very joy, is 
 but the poetical expression of a spiritual 
 
 28 
 
quality too real and too universal in hu- 
 man experience ever to be gainsaid. From 
 the faintest echoes of primordial life in 
 the incipient dawn of creation, to the 
 mightiest swell of the music of the spheres 
 throughout all the transcendent symphony 
 of eternity, music will ever touch, now in 
 a sad, plaintive minor key, and now in ex- 
 ulting, triumphant strains, all of the chords 
 of that lute hidden away in the spiritual 
 fibre of our nature; and whether it draws 
 angels down into the abysmal depths of 
 black despair, or bears mortals up to the 
 great white throne, will depend upon the 
 skill of the hand that sweeps the lyre, and 
 the motif of the strains awakened by the 
 deftness with which it touches the strings. 
 Do you remember the ancient legend 
 of the Lorelei sung by the poet Heine? 
 The scene is laid at a well-known pass on 
 the Rhine, where the river narrows between 
 dangerous rocks, above which, on one side, 
 arises a deep dark cavern, whence issue 
 strange voices, or echoes. In the depths 
 of this cavern was said to be the famed 
 treasure of the Niebelungs; and, as the 
 legend runs, in its mouth, sat a beautiful, 
 sensuous maiden, who, by the music of her 
 
 29 
 
harp, turned the heads of the fishermen as 
 they passed by in their boats, and lured them 
 to destruction on the black rocks beneath. 
 
 Contrast with that picture, another. In 
 all modern art, there is no more inspiring 
 picture than that of Watts' Hope, which 
 hangs in the celebrated Tate Gallery in 
 London. A figure of a woman symbolical 
 of humanity is seated on the top of the 
 world, with bowed head and a commingled 
 expression of faith and expectation upon 
 her face, peeping from beneath her bandag- 
 ed eyes, with ears strained to catch # the 
 solitary note her hand can draw 
 from the only remaining string of 
 her broken lyre. A single star shines 
 in the heavens. Amid conditions that 
 might betoken only despair, a subtle 
 divine effulgence of hope envelops all. 
 So magnificent is the artist's conception 
 of the picture, that no one, of whatever 
 religious faith, or of no faith at all, can 
 look upon it with a sympathetic eye with- 
 out a thrill of exultation that testifies, in 
 undeniable accents, to the spiritual nature 
 of man. 
 
 With reference to the classification of 
 education as utilitarian and cultural, it may 
 
 30 
 
be said that in the broadest and truest 
 sense, all education is utilitarian, in that it 
 seeks to render service of some kind; and 
 in a corresponding sense all education is 
 cultural. If all education be not both cul- 
 tural and utilitarian in this sense, it falls 
 far short of its mission. However, what 
 is, nowadays, spoken of so glibly as utili- 
 tarian education, is not education at all, in 
 the best, or real, meaning of that term. 
 
 Utilitarian education, so-called, is merely 
 another name for a certain highly specialized 
 technical training, pursued from a purely 
 mercenary point of view. It is the com- 
 mercialization, the prostitution, of educa- 
 tion ; nay, even more, it is a mere travesty 
 upon education. In other words it is a certain 
 training, often little, if anything, else, than 
 thie mere acquisition of a trade, sought 
 to be dignified by calling it education, a 
 training so tangible and so practical as to 
 be turned into a bank account on demand, 
 — a serious, but ludicrous, attempt to re- 
 duce education to such terms that it can 
 be sold by the yard or pound, so to speak. 
 
 After all, it is an old story, an ancient 
 will o' the wisp, in a new aspect, — the ever- 
 recurring attempt to transmute a baser 
 
 31 
 
metal into a finer, to turn brass into gold — 
 the empty, shimmering phantom that has 
 eluded the overcredulous alchemist, the 
 crazy fanatic, and the cunning charlatan, 
 in all ages, a tragic-comedy and a comic- 
 tragedy, that will persist until a golden mil- 
 lennium shall remove all ambition and ava- 
 rice and want and vanity afar from mankind. 
 This anomalous status of education is due 
 to the fact that modern commercial and in- 
 dustrial conditions have conspired to precip- 
 itate a certain crisis that has forced hasty 
 consideration; and our schools and institu- 
 tions of learning, generally, flushed with 
 the sparkling wine of an age which grovels 
 before the shrine of material wealth, have 
 all — from the kindergarten to the univer- 
 sity — gone on a long debauch. 
 
 Let us pause for a moment, and con- 
 sider. When this broad, fair land was first 
 settled by white men, its natural re- 
 sources were boundless. The virgin for- 
 ests, the natural fertility of the soil, and 
 the vast mineral deposits of ready access, 
 were all apparently inexhaustible. All that 
 any one had to do to become possessed of 
 any or all these riches was to reach forth 
 his hand and take them. But as time pass- 
 
 32 
 
ed, and civilization spread, and the popula- 
 tion increased, these capacious storehouses, 
 slowly at first, and then more rapidly, were 
 exhausted. The soil was drained of its 
 natural fertility, and the settler pushed his 
 home further and further away from the 
 eastern seaboard, until once more, as crops 
 grew light and game scant, he again set 
 the sails of his prairie schooner, and point- 
 ed westward, until finally he could go no fur- 
 ther, and civilization was everywhere. Vir- 
 gin soil and untrod forests were no more. 
 Timber, and coal, and iron, and all else 
 that so short a time before had been as free 
 as the wind that blows, had passed under the 
 lock and key of vast commercial interests. 
 Meanwhile, possibilities of fortunes such 
 as the keepers of the fabled treasure houses 
 of olden times never dreamed of, tempt- 
 ed numberless men to daring conquests of 
 trade and industrial activity — conquests in 
 which the merchant of modest means and 
 the individual manufacturer were merci- 
 lessly coerced into yielding up their indi- 
 viduality and their independence, and of- 
 tentimes all their material resources, to 
 satisfy the money barons' fierce brute thirst 
 for conquest. 
 
 33 
 
The introduction of improved machinery 
 which could be manipulated by inexperi- 
 enced help, drove skilled mechanics from 
 the factory and workshop in throngs, until, 
 after a few years, the manufacturers them- 
 selves were appalled at the profound dearth 
 of capable, intelligent help. They 
 had unwittingly laid the ax at the root 
 of their own fortunes. For, after all, 
 there must be practical mechanics to or- 
 ganize, install, and keep in repair and 
 improve these high-bred automata of shin- 
 ing steel. The former generation had vanish- 
 ed and left no successors. The time-honour- 
 ed apprentice system had shrunk away be- 
 fore the advance of new methods. The 
 old-time carpenter and cabinet-maker, and 
 mason — mechanics capable of producing al- 
 most anything that could be fashioned from 
 wood and stone, had disappeared. So swift 
 and sudden had been this metamorphosis, 
 that industrial life awoke with a common 
 start to a sense of the common peril. 
 
 Nor was the manufacturer alone in his 
 woe. The agriculturist, caught between 
 the Scylla of unproductive farms, and the 
 Charybdis of debt and increased cost of 
 living, was at his wits' end to repair his 
 
 .34 
 
broken fortunes. Hundreds of thousands 
 of small tradesmen and mechanics, discour- 
 aged and disheartened, — the former cun- 
 ning of their hands either forgotten, or at 
 best an iridescent dream of a departed past, 
 — sought, for the mere physical necessities 
 of themselves and families, relief from the 
 tyrannous oppression of existing economic 
 evils. What was to be done? Commerce 
 must not stop, the food supply must be 
 conserved, and the common people must be 
 made self-supporting. 
 
 While these changes had been taking 
 place, the school, college, and university 
 had become infected with the poison of in- 
 ordinate thirst for money. Men whose 
 passion in life had been to accumulate 
 money merely for the sake of doing so, 
 satiated and biases from the long indulgence 
 of their appetites, in their search for some- 
 thing new to stimulate their jaded senses, 
 now began to pour their wealth forth, with 
 amazing prodigality, into the laps of edu- 
 cational institutions. Proprietary colleges 
 and universities sprang up over night. 
 Established domiciles of education were 
 transformed in a single day. Mil- 
 lions upon millions of dollars were 
 
 35 
 
poured forth in this unparalleled way, 
 until, after the passing of two dec- 
 ades, the gift of a score of millions by- 
 some great capitalist to found a university, 
 or to increase the resources of one already 
 established, excites scarcely as much public 
 interest as the gift of that many thousands 
 excited forty years ago. 
 
 Now the use of money, even on so vast 
 a scale, for educational purposes, is a laud- 
 able one, when considered as a gift merely. 
 But the spirit of the age is such that it is 
 very difficult to dissociate the money 
 from its giver, and, in many instances, the 
 only too obvious reason for the gift. Time 
 may correct all this, and burn away the 
 dross that debases it now. But we are 
 compelled to face the living present, and 
 reluctantly forced to admit that education, 
 which, in the very highest and best sense, 
 should be altruistic in spirit, has shown too 
 obvious a tendency to be the exact reverse. 
 
 As a result, partly in the hope of ab- 
 stracting more money into their treasuries 
 from the fortunes of wealthy men, and 
 partly for the purpose of self -exploitation, 
 colleges and universities at once rushed 
 into this industrial breach, promising all 
 
 .36 
 
sorts of things, — that the curriculum should 
 be so modified as to include every phase of 
 agriculture, however trivial or minute in 
 detail; that trade schools should meet the 
 demand for an adequate supply of skilled 
 mechanics ; that economic conditions should 
 be so carefully inquired into, and the neces- 
 sary antidotes for their many ills so care- 
 fully and thoroughly administered, that ev- 
 erybody would promptly become self-sup- 
 porting ; and finally, that the educative pro- 
 cess should become so well "standardized" 
 as to give, in exact mathematical terms, the 
 precise commercial value of any academic 
 instructor. So that today certain of our 
 great universities bear a striking resem- 
 blance to a mediaeval castle; or, possibly 
 more accurately, to a large southern planta- 
 tion of ante helium days, organized on a 
 feudal plan. Here was the proprietor, him- 
 self a man of liberal education and culture, 
 possibly, but with a discerning eye for his 
 own commercial prosperity, providing his 
 sons with advantages for education and cul- 
 ture. About him were a certain few slaves of 
 intelligence, certainly of no education, but 
 skilled mechanics or workmen, withal, each 
 capable of undertaking the management of 
 
 37 
 
such department of the plantation as was 
 entrusted to him, with a horde of under- 
 lings merely to do his bidding, who, if not 
 utterly incapable of attaining to any higher 
 grade of intelligence, were certainly con- 
 tent with the simpler and more elementary 
 manner of life. 
 
 So today, in the great universities of the 
 country, is to be found first of all, a presi- 
 dent, possibly with a real education, but 
 chosen for this position, rather because of 
 certain qualifications he possesses for in- 
 creasing the material equipment of his re- 
 spective institution, than for any marked 
 ability to develop manhood and woman- 
 hood in students. In the student body is 
 a small group of workers dedicated to the 
 loftier aims of life — who seek ade- 
 quate equipment for rendering real 
 service to mankind and civilization by 
 grounding themselves in the humanities — 
 seeking to learn what life is and what it 
 really means ; and who are striving to catch 
 something of the highest attainment the 
 world has afforded the human race, that 
 they may interpret it to their fellows in 
 turn. These are the people who are scal- 
 ing the summits of lofty mountains, 
 
 38 
 
whence the prospects of life may be seen 
 in true perspective, devoid of inequalities 
 of vision, to the end that whatever 
 professional or other career they may 
 ultimately select, they will contribute 
 not merely to the material wealth 
 of the world, but rather something 
 to that intangible, but very real, qual- 
 ity of life, which for thousands of years, 
 has steadily striven to lift men away from 
 the darkness and doubt of materialism to 
 the perfect dawn of exalted ideals and aims. 
 Then follow a larger group, rooted 
 by nature and environment in material- 
 istic philosophy — brilliant, perhaps, but 
 ambitious — and dedicated to the one 
 proposition that the world owes them 
 the largest portion of material wealth 
 which they can extract, by hook or 
 crook, from its well-filled storehouses. 
 These are the men, who in law, med- 
 icine, and the ministry, bring their pro- 
 fessions into disrepute, by their constant 
 quest of self-aggrandizement; and who 
 in the technical professions and in commer- 
 cial life lay the foundations for the huge 
 scandals that cast so foul a blot on modern 
 business. 
 
 39 
 
And, finally, there is found a class in 
 great numbers who seek some royal road 
 to industrial success, in a mistaken effort 
 to acquire an education by merely learning 
 a trade in one of the many industrial de- 
 partments to be found in the back-yards of 
 some of our modern universities, ranging 
 all the way from blacksmithing and cab- 
 inet-making for the men, and dishwashing 
 and laundry-work for the women, to rou- 
 tine pharmacists and half-baked public 
 school teachers, or other weaklings, of both 
 sexes. The unsophisticated farmer's boy 
 is shown how to plant potatoes without re- 
 gard to the phases of the moon, and how to 
 feed calves scientifically ; his sister is shown 
 a better way to raise chickens, and beans, 
 and radishes, and both go home educated, 
 as they suppose. 
 
 Now it is perfectly true that all this sort 
 of instruction needs to be given. We need 
 high-grade mechanics ; the economy of the 
 household needs to be regulated in a more 
 rational manner; agriculture, in all its 
 moods and tenses, needs to be placed upon 
 a really scientific basis ; and the entire in- 
 dustrial world needs reformation, so as to 
 reduce waste, and drudgery, and poverty, 
 
 40 
 
and crime, all, to the lowest possible terms. 
 Honest labour should be dignified and ex- 
 alted. But industrial training is not educa- 
 tion; and it should not be placed in the 
 false position of being so-called; for such 
 a course only cheapens both, and defeats, 
 ultimately, the laudable and desirable pur- 
 poses of both, respectively. In the same 
 category, but in a higher scale, may be 
 placed training which is purely professional, 
 such as teaching, law, medicine, or even 
 the ministry. These subjects, pursued on 
 professional grounds alone, are utilitarian 
 and nothing less. They demand, first of 
 all, the broad, deep foundation of a liberal 
 education and of a humanitarian culture, 
 to enable them to dedicate men and women 
 and their professions to the uplift of man- 
 kind. 
 
 That this too patent perversion of edu- 
 cation to the commercial and utilitarian 
 spirit of the age can but profoundly 
 affect society, is, alas, not only truth, but 
 fact. Its blight is already upon the finest 
 flower of our civilization. For nearly a 
 generation, the church has deplored its 
 slackening grip upon its own membership, 
 no less than upon the world at large, — a 
 
 41 
 
condition, due in no small measure to the 
 fact that the ministry no longer attracts 
 men of as high intellectual and moral grade 
 as formerly — ; and the general spirit of 
 commercialism of the present age is threat- 
 ening not only the church, but society its- 
 self. As wealth and the lust of wealth have 
 brought luxury and idleness in their train, 
 the integrity of the home — the bulwark of 
 society for ages — is menaced, and menaced 
 to the extent that some of our thoughtful 
 observers of modern life are seriously 
 questioning if the home can long endure 
 under existing conditions. They are re- 
 luctant to make public admission of this 
 fact; but that they entertain such views is 
 nevertheless true, and there is real cause 
 for alarm. 
 
 Without presuming to prophesy what the 
 immediate outcome of the present struggle 
 will be, we are compelled to admit that 
 signs are not wanting that a period of de- 
 cadence is setting in; nay, has set in, — a 
 decadence such as preceded and ended 
 in the downfall of the Roman Empire and 
 western civilization, and plunged the 
 world into the Dark Ages for a thousand 
 years. Then, as now, great material pros- 
 
 42 
 
pen'ty brought luxurious idleness and vice 
 to sap the life of the nation. Then, as 
 now, education was subverted to the un- 
 worthy ambition of unscrupulous rulers of 
 state and wealth. After several centuries, 
 the chaotic industrial conditions precipitat^- 
 ed by Roman excesses were eventually cor- 
 rected through certain influences, among 
 which was the rise of the trade 
 guilds, which in their essence, closely re- 
 sembled industrial education, so-called, to- 
 day. Possibly the ultimate solution of our 
 own problem will be through some such 
 agency, stripped of the defects of its proto- 
 type. The most promising tendency in that 
 direction today, however, is the silent, but 
 phenomenally rapid growth of corporation 
 schools, like those of certain of the great 
 railroad systems of this country, and of the 
 Westinghouse Company of Pittsburgh, for 
 example, which seek to provide, in a very 
 practical and pointed manner, for the spe- 
 cific needs of these respective industries. 
 The universities and industrial training 
 schools, per se, are unable to meet such 
 competition, and will be obliged to recast 
 their plans for service and growth, again; 
 so that in due course of time, we may con- 
 
 43 
 
fidently expect a sloughing off to take 
 place, and the hideous nightmare of the 
 present to give way to the clearer light of 
 sanity and reason. The new adjustment 
 must be as slow as the present one has been 
 swift and headlong. For the deadly poison 
 has filled all the veins of society, even to its 
 very extremities, and the elimination of the 
 venom must necessarily be a prolonged, 
 tedious process. 
 
 Of the ultimate outcome, there can be no 
 doubt. One is forced to credit human his- 
 tory. That moves in certain cycles, in har- 
 mony with established law. An era of ad- 
 vancement is followed by a corresponding 
 period of retrogression. The upward 
 march of civilization may be liken- 
 ed to the progress of a tiny ant 
 along the closely wound coils of rope 
 about a gigantic, inclined spar, where one 
 half of every turn of the rope points down- 
 ward, and the other half points upward, 
 but a given segment of each turn reaches a 
 little higher up than the corresponding seg- 
 ment of the coil next below. Moreover, the 
 change from the upward to the downward, 
 or from the downward to the upward bent, 
 may be so slight as to be imperceptible to 
 
 44 
 
the minute traveler, who finds that it is only 
 by looking back upon what to him is a con- 
 siderable distance that he has covered, that 
 he can be sure of his ascent or descent, and 
 from a far prospect only can he see that, 
 even in his descent, he has made progress 
 over the preceding cycle. 
 
 So with humanity, every great epoch of 
 progress in its history has been both pre- 
 ceded and followed by a corresponding de- 
 cline, — long imperceptible perhaps, but none 
 the less true. Such convolutions have 
 marked the ascent of man ever since the 
 dawn of history, and in the light of that 
 fact, well may we expect them to continue 
 to the end of time. 
 
 Along with the acquisition of knowl- 
 edge comes a conscious growth of 
 national power, or sovereignty, which, to 
 mankind, is at first a tonic, then a stimu- 
 lant, and, finally, a deadly narcotic, stealing 
 away the sobriety and poise of nations no 
 less than of individuals; and, by impercep- 
 tible degrees, lulling its victims into a de- 
 licious, sensuous, poisonous slumber, so 
 deep and so prolonged that nothing short 
 of the crash of long-impending doom can 
 rouse them. 
 
 45 
 
The far-famed Alexandrian Empire that 
 stretched from the queenly Adriatic to the 
 distant jungles on the farther banks of the 
 Indus, and from the mountain fastnesses of 
 Macedonia and Thrace to the burning 
 sands beyond the Edenic valley of the Nile, 
 had crumbled into dissolving dust and the 
 name of its conquering hero become a mere 
 memory before the dawn of the Christian 
 Era ; mighty Rome, no less than her purpled 
 Caesars, sank into lethal oblivion, and car- 
 ried with her, into utter destruction, a civ- 
 ilization of a thousand years ; and, upon 
 the ashes of that millennium, we have 
 builded another civilization, of a greater 
 and more magnificent grandeur. But well 
 may we pause, and, after a long silent 
 retrospect, solemnly question whether the 
 glory of our pride, too, is not to be swal- 
 lowed up in a mighty cataclysm. Surely 
 we can do no less than patiently to study 
 these restless forebodings that so patently 
 characterize society today, and strive with 
 all the power of our being to apply the cor- 
 rective influences required to overcome the 
 decadent tendencies of this generation. 
 
 That there is a rising feeling of alarm 
 over our present conditions is a most hope- 
 
 46 
 
ful sign. From the very inception of the 
 commercialism of education, and church, 
 and society at large, there have been those 
 who have viewed this movement with man- 
 ifest apprehension. This class of thoughtful 
 observers, though small even yet, has grad- 
 ually grown in numbers, until today it finds 
 within its ranks not only educators, but law- 
 yers, physicians, clergymen, and even cold- 
 blooded men in commercial and industrial 
 life. In Germany, for example, a country 
 whose social and political fabric is ground- 
 ed upon a materialistic philosophy, that 
 dictates utilitarian training for the masses, 
 and reserves education and culture, in the 
 real sense, for the aristocracy, this alarm 
 has been manifest for some years, and 
 even among her so-called hardheaded busi- 
 ness men. The unsuccessful assault upon 
 the humanities in Oxford University, Eng- 
 land's most ancient stronghold of learn- 
 ing, is cause for hearty congratulation. 
 In our own country, the best known in- 
 cident indicating a possible reaction, and 
 an ultimate return to the humanities, is 
 that of a movement of the alumni of Am- 
 herst College, which is resulting in 
 a radical change in the curriculum of that 
 
 47 
 
well-known institution. While this action 
 leaves much to be desired, it is a happy 
 augury of the future. Among the larger 
 colleges and universities, however, there is 
 no apparent sense of danger yet. 
 
 But, after all, it is the small college to 
 which we must turn as the bulwark of our 
 strength against the pseudo-rationalism 
 which has invaded modern society. The 
 large college and the university, almost, if 
 not quite, without exception, have become 
 so entangled in the meshes of this false 
 philosophy that they will require a prolong- 
 ed struggle to shake themselves free from 
 its blighting influence. Nor can help be 
 expected from the free public schools and 
 the state universities, because they are too 
 subservient to the demands of the material- 
 istic calls of the unthinking proletariat to 
 permit the heads of such institutions to fol- 
 low the courageous dictates of their own 
 consciences. 
 
 But the small college, — one that is really 
 free and independent, as well as small, one 
 which has not entangled itself in unholy 
 alliances to obtain endowment and equip- 
 ment, one which has not sought to attract 
 patronage by questionable means for un- 
 
worthy ends, — is, what any college or uni- 
 versity irrespective of whether it be large 
 or small ought to be, — free and independ- 
 ent. For that reason, the very fact that 
 it is small, is, in the present exigency, at 
 least, an inherent advantage. Its strug- 
 gle for existence and growth carries with 
 it a very real appreciation of the service 
 it renders both the community which pat- 
 ronizes it, and the procession of earnest, 
 serious-minded young men and young 
 women that files through its halls. 
 
 Nor should the small college minimize 
 its faith in its own influence. Oftentimes 
 it is even the single individual who inspires 
 the world, and fixes the destiny of man- 
 kind. Pass by, if you please, the mighty 
 Viking warrior who has so profoundly in- 
 fluenced the millennium just closing, and 
 look back almost to the beginning of the 
 preceding millennial period, and behold 
 another man, faring up and down the hills 
 and vales of a small Roman province on 
 the eastern shore of the Mediterranean. 
 He is the most perfect example, in 
 all the history of the world, of that educa- 
 tion I plead for. His training was sym- 
 metrical in all its parts — physical, intel- 
 
 49 
 
lectual, and spiritual. At the age of twelve 
 years, his intellectual grasp of all that was 
 difficult and recondite in the teachings 
 of the sages of his people, and his keen 
 spiritual insight into, and his broad and 
 deep sympathy with, social conditions, en- 
 abled him to interpret his knowledge of 
 human nature and human society in such 
 a manner as to confound the most learned 
 doctors of the law ; and when subsequently 
 at the age of thirty years, he set out upon 
 his life-work of service to humanity, so 
 mature was his equipment, so well ground- 
 ed was his faith in the duty whereunto he 
 was called, and so profoundly was he dedi- 
 cated to this mission in every fibre of all 
 his being, that, in the short space of three 
 years, he created a revolution which has 
 persisted through all the shifting changes 
 of nineteen centuries of world-wide history, 
 a revolution whose genius has ever been 
 the hope and comfort and cheer of man- 
 kind, and made Christianity a dynamic 
 force throughout the earth. 
 
 For a quarter century, Salem College has 
 stood with outstretched hands, beckoning 
 the young men and young women of this 
 republic of mountaineers to come and 
 
 SO 
 
drink from the cup of wisdom, and wait- 
 ing throngs have hearkened to that call. 
 She has been loyal to the faith she has pro- 
 fessed. Her devoted perceptors, them- 
 selves, first drank deeply from the cup 
 which they, afterward, have held to the 
 lips of their disciples. Beneath its golden 
 brim is inscribed a legend which betokens 
 its draughts. Pause and read: 
 
 "And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, 
 shall be the servant of all." 
 
 But her work is not done; her fight is 
 not finished; her course is only just begun; 
 she is anointed with the oil of sacrifice, and 
 consecrated to the destiny ordained by her 
 founders. Today, still in the first flush of the 
 glory of her youth, this college stands at the 
 threshold of a magnificent opportunity. 
 Reared upon soil that has been stained by 
 the bloody footprints of devoted service to 
 humanity — a trail of footprints that ex- 
 tends, for a thousand years, all the way 
 from the embarkation of Hrolf, the majestic 
 Norseman, upon his voyage of adventure, 
 to this spot, whither his lineal descendant, 
 of kingly physique and fiery zeal, led a 
 company, more than six score years ago, to 
 establish new homes for themselves amid 
 
 Si 
 
the freedom of the wilderness — a wilder- 
 ness speedily transformed into comfortable, 
 hospitable homes dedicated to the faith and 
 mission of Palestine's Nazarene, and 
 where, but a generation ago, another son 
 of the warrior from the German Sea, his 
 life also dedicated to the uplift of human- 
 ity, performed the greatest service ever yet 
 rendered by any one man in all that part 
 of the state which constitutes the geo- 
 graphical setting of this temple of learn- 
 ing; reared upon such soil, I repeat, amid 
 the scenes of achievements which bear wit- 
 ness to the nobility of character that dis- 
 tinguishes the people who first made this 
 institution possible and then tenderly nurs- 
 ed it through all the anxious, precarious 
 years of its early existence, growing slow- 
 ly, but surely, into such sturdiness 
 of stature and character as to in- 
 spire generations yet unborn with lofty 
 zeal and purpose. 
 
 Salem is face to face with a tre- 
 mendous responsibility, — a responsibility 
 she can not escape if she would, nor 
 would she if she could. A flood of 
 golden opportunities is rising at her 
 portals in portentous volume — opportuni- 
 
 52 
 
ties which she can not afford to ignore 
 or lose. Upon the bosom of this flood is 
 borne her destiny. If in its physical, in- 
 tellectual, and spiritual fibre, the fabric of 
 her walls is strong enough to withstand 
 the mighty pressure to which they are sub- 
 jected; if the material of which they are 
 constructed is drawn from the storehouse of 
 enduring ages ; if the walls are rooted deep 
 down upon the solid rock of unselfish de- 
 votion to the eternal verities of humanity; 
 if thus imbedded, and then reared by hands 
 kept clean from the grime of unworthy 
 motive; then this college, strong in con- 
 scious rectitude of purpose, guided by a 
 discerning judgment of the elemental qual- 
 ities of life, no less than of the perfect, 
 delicate flower of its highest culture and 
 humanity, will be, through all the changing 
 years, an impregnable fortress against the 
 powers of ignorance and darkness and de- 
 cay,— a beacon light to guide the foot- 
 steps of wayfaring humanity, and to impel 
 to supreme effort, to noble purpose, and 
 to lofty aims. So standing, she will be- 
 come an enduring monument with a living 
 voice, a law and an oracle to the throngs 
 that hang upon her words, inspiring them 
 
 53 
 
FE3 6 1914 
 
 to zealous devotion, to high aspirations and 
 determined endeavor ; and the ever-widen- 
 ing circles of her influence, following swift- 
 ly, one upon another, ever increasing in vol- 
 ume and power, ultimately will extend to 
 the confines of the world, and bring joy 
 and hope and comfort and peace, with pur- 
 ity of life, strength of character, mag- 
 nanimity of courage, and glorious achieve- 
 ment, to successive multitudes through 
 coming centuries. 
 
 54 
 
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