THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY 378 R448g 57 ~ m Return this book on or before the Latest Date stamped below. A charge is made on all overdue books. , University of Illinois Library APR ' MRV 1 8 1349 frL / M32 THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY 378 R448g 37 * m. Harrett Biblical Institute Evanston, IllinoU the LUnMW f . r UHWtham uf iLliMiS JONATHAN RIGDON. ft 3i 8 College Ideals BY JONATHAN RIGDON, Ph.D. PRESIDENT OF WINONA COLLEGE INDIANA PUBLISHING COMPANY WINONA LAKE, INDIANA COLLEGE IDEALS ... 50 cents By JONATHAN RIGDON, Ph.D. PRESIDENT OF WINONA COLLEGE Copyright, 1915 By JONATHAN RIGDON Nortoootr J. 8. Cushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. % -f - h jt ( • 3 & \io ro rJ tro HIS FORMER STUDENTS IN THE CLASSROOM AND IN TEACHERS’ INSTI- TUTES THIS LITTLE BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY AND GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR AS A TOKEN OF HIS CONTINUED INTEREST IN THEIR WELFARE June i, 1915. 939 1 3 i mM'j FOREWORD The title is slightly misleading. To be accurate it should read : Some Col- lege Ideals, but for the sake of brevity it may remain as it is. The contents of this little book were prepared for an address delivered at Winona Lake on College Day, July 1 6, 1914. In putting it forth in printed form it might be better to modify the phraseology and eliminate all reference to any particular college; but upon second thought it was decided to print it as it was originally written and spoken. If it be feared by any reader that such particular reference impairs the message or renders it worthless to him, he has been warned in time and continues at his own peril. VI Foreword The author issues the book primarily for his friends and former students. If it please some of them, their pleasure shall be his reward. Incidentally, how- ever, the book has a serious purpose and seeks a larger field. It is confi- dently believed that a careful reading of it by young men and young women early in their college course, — or be- fore they begin their college course, — will enable them to avoid some of the most costly and most fatal mistakes of college life and to make a college edu- cation mean vastly more than it com- monly does mean. That other college teachers, school principals and super- intendents, preachers, and directors of youth may share this belief, is the hope of the author. J. R. Winona Lake, Indiana, June 1, 1915. COLLEGE IDEALS Y OU will believe me, I am sure, when I tell you that I prize highly the privilege of being permitted to address this body of students, faculty, and friends on this, our Winona Col- lege Day. I have been puzzled not a little to find an appropriate name for what I have prepared to say. I am not sure that I have succeeded. If at the end of the hour you decide that what I have said belongs better under another heading, you are at liberty to rechristen it, to give it a nickname, or let it go with- 2 College Ideals out any cognomen at all. Dur- ing the hour, at least, I shall ask you to try to think whatever may be said in terms of College Ideals. By this name I wish to designate what a college stands for, or what it should stand for. If we as individuals are to keep ourselves out of the class of the submerged nine tenths, we must do it by our ideals. The same is true of an educational institution. What a college stands for deter- mines whether or not it is worthy to stand at all. What are some of these ideals ? Some, for I make no pretense of naming them all. With but little help from me, it will readily ap- pear that some are elemental, primary, indispensable things ; College Ideals 3 while others, though helpful, are secondary or incidental. I shall hope that you will allow all the things that I discuss to be neces- sary to the highest well-being of a college ; or, if we disagree, that you will at least hear me to the end. Work. — First of all, then, let me make it as strong as I can that a college has merit in proportion as it holds up as an ideal to its students hard and systematic work. There is not anything that can take the place of con- scientious effort in the prepara- tion of daily lessons. It goes without saying that there must be a strong faculty. Otherwise the main source of the student’s inspiration is cut off. But no brilliancy on the part of the 4 College Ideals teachers will compensate for the lack of industry in the students. I believe also that a college should be located in a beautiful park. It matters much where we put our factories, our shops, and our stores ; but the students of science and philosophy and poetry should be permitted to come and go among the flowers and trees, the by-ways and birdnotes, the landscape and the lake and the open sky. All this without question gives the mind a proper setting, prepares it for more efficient study, and makes possible larger labor with less fatigue. But if the study does not appear, if the labor is not constant, all these out- side things will not avail. I be- lieve too that if it is possible with- College Ideals 5 out exposing immature students to the dangers of a city, they should be permitted to live the time of their largest development in an en- vironment of music and art and oratory and healthful entertain- ment. No student can work all the time at his lessons. If he is so situated that in his rest time he can hear sermons and lectures that are uplifting, listen to music that is inspiring, look at pictures that make him forget his hours of toil, it is better and not worse, it is a gain and not a loss to his college life, to his entire life. But not any of these things nor all of them can take the place of everyday drudgery on the part of the stu- dent. A summer resort, if it is kept healthful and decent, is an 6 College Ideals ideal place for a college; but un- derstanding biology, mastering the laws of logic, deriving the binomial formula, reading Horace, or even giving an intelligent guess at what Browning is trying to have us get, — this is far from being a summer resort. Complete and interesting, even endurable, college life must have many phases besides hard study : There should be some athletics, — baseball, basket ball, and possibly football ; there must be the debat- ing teams and some public discus- sions ; there must be the dramatic society with an occasional public appearance ; there must be the physical culture drill and once in a while an entertainment by the class in elocution; there must be College Ideals 7 the literary and the choral socie- ties; there must be the art ex- hibits ; there must be musical and dramatic recitals, there must be readings, contests, and entire plays produced by the students, and it may be, occasionally a public ad- dress by the president on College Ideals ; — but not any of these nor all of them are the college. They are only the fringe to attract public notice and make people know there is a college. The college itself is the drudgery of daily lessons, it is the commonplace of everyday preparation, recitation, question, correction, criticism, and explana- tion. A few years ago the Cornell Agricultural College invited a num- ber of farmers to visit the institu- 8 College Ideals tion. They accepted and went for the day. They were shown the college farm, the college hogs and cattle, the college library, the col- lege campus, and the college build- ings. Late in the afternoon when they were about ready to leave for home, after a little conference among themselves, one of them said to the dean that if it would not be too much trouble, they would like for him to show them the college. Now the question in the mind of this unsophisticated farmer reveals clearly enough the distinction be- tween a college and its accessories. If I were a preacher, I would take as my text this morning the old adage about putting first things first. I wish I might present to these students to-day, and as College Ideals 9 strongly as I feel it, the thought that nine tenths of the value of a college course must come to us, if it comes at all, through hard work. Some years ago Woodrow Wil- son, in an address, incidentally dropped the remark that a college is not unlike a great show, with its main tent and its many side shows. This comparison has impressed me so that I have not been able to forget it. I think I might just as well take this audience into my confidence and tell you why I think Mr. Wilson’s trivial remark has stayed with me : When I was a boy, I do not know how old, but I hope not twenty-five, I went to my first great circus. My father and mother did not go with me, but allowed me to go sixteen miles in a io College Ideals farm wagon with some neighbors. We arrived in the town. The great gray city of canvas tents spread out before us, more wonderful to me than the pyramids of Egypt. One o’clock came. The man of the party, with the money my father had sent with him, purchased my tickets, — as I learned afterwards, one for 50 cents, one for 25 cents, and one for 10 cents. In some way I became separated from my party and wandered into the 10 cent tent. The only thing it contained was an educated monkey that could smoke a cigarette, and a man who made a loud noise in telling how wonderful was the feat and cited it as posi- tive proof that the lower animals as well as man could be edu- cated. Many other people as well College Ideals ii as myself were watching the won- der, but I failed to note that with one single exception the audience was continually changing. I had been told at home not to leave any performance until it was over. This one showed no signs of being over. The man in his announce- ments became louder and more elo- quent and the audience was larger than when I entered. Four o’clock came, I returned to the wagon, found my party, and we started home. On the way I was asked how I liked the children in their daring trapeze performance, the horseback riding, the clowns, the fifty-seven cages of wild animals, groups of boys posing to represent Greek statuary, and John Robinson himself as the modern Daniel in 12 College Ideals the lions’ den. But I had seen none of these things. What had I seen ? Only an educated monkey smoking a cigarette. Now the aptness of Mr. Wilson’s comparison is greater than any of you on the outside can suspect. Many and many a young man goes away to school, pays his carfare, tuition, board, room, laundry, and book bills, and then settles down contentedly in some side tent of the institution to admire a gang of his distant relations smoking cigarettes. Even young women are not al- ways free from this mistake. More than once I have known it to hap- pen that a father and mother would make great sacrifice to send their daughter to college only to learn, College Ideals 13 when it was too late, that the girl had got so mixed up with a monkey that she had missed the main show. The application I leave for you to make, but I beg you to believe that the chief concern of the college should be the daily lessons of its students. Forget my words if you will, but let me beg every college student to catch the inspiration in Angela Morgan’s Song of Triumph on Work, printed in the Outlook of December 2, 1914. Work! Thank God for the might of it, The ardor, the urge, the delight of it — Work that springs from the heart’s desire, Setting the soul and the brain on fire. Oh, what is so good as the heat of it, And what is so glad as the beat of it, H College Ideals And what is so kind as the stern command Challenging brain and heart and hand ? Work ! Thank God for the pride of it, For the beautiful, conquering tide of it, Sweeping the life in its furious flood, Thrilling the arteries, cleansing the blood, Mastering stupor and dull despair, Moving the dreamer to do and dare. Oh, what is so good as the urge of it, And what is so glad as the surge of it, And what is so strong as the summons deep Rousing the torpid soul from sleep ? Work! Thank God for the pace of it, For the terrible, keen, swift race of it; Fiery steeds in full control, Nostrils aquiver to greet the goal. Work, the power that drives behind, Guiding the purposes, taming the mind, Holding the runaway wishes back, Reining the will to one steady track, Speeding the energies faster, faster, College Ideals 15 Triumphing over disaster. Oh, what is so good as the pain of it, And what is so great as the gain of it, And what is so kind as the cruel goad, Forcing us on through the rugged road ? Work! Thank God for the swing of it, For the clamoring, hammering ring of it, Passion of labor daily hurled On the mighty anvils of the world. . . . Oh, what is so fierce as the flame of it, And what is so high as the aim of it, Thundering on through dearth and doubt, Calling the plan of the Maker out; Work, the Titan ; work, the friend, Shaping the earth to a glorious end ; Draining the swamps and blasting the hills, Doing whatever the spirit wills, Rending a continent apart To answer the dream of the Master heart. . . . Thank God for a world where none may shirk, Thank God for the splendor of work ! 1 6 College Ideals Religion. — Religion is now al- most universally conceded to be an essential element of human life. In the great laboratory of history it has been as well settled as his- tory can settle anything that a life, individual or national, without re- ligion is impotent and incomplete. It should therefore be the aim of every college, not to emphasize the antagonism between religion and reason, but rather to show the reasonableness of religion as a fac- tor of life. It need not be Methodist, or Presbyterian, or Baptist, but a use- ful college must be religious. If it exists primarily or chiefly to teach the tenets of any particular sect or denomination, it is not a college, but a theological factory. College Ideals 17 That God, in some way, his own way, created the world, is its pre- server and its ruler ; that he is the author of human life; that Jesus Christ is the son of God and is to be the world’s savior so far as it will allow itself to have a savior, — these, if I am not mistaken, are the essentials of religion toward which no college can afford to be in- different. Sometimes, however, in our foolish enthusiasm for the in- cidentals we drive students away from the essentials. We cannot save religion by destroying science and reason ; we cannot make men devout by keeping them ignorant. Whenever a teacher from the ros- trum or a preacher from the pulpit holds up to ridicule any theory or doctrine which science counts well 1 8 College Ideals settled, he hurts real religion in- stead of helping it. That God created the world, — this it is the business of religion to believe. The way or method by which he created the world, — this it is the problem of science to find out. I wish to be specific and declare that the scholarship of the world is not able to point to a conflict between the modern doctrine of evolution, which seeks to find out the way in which the world was created, and the essentials of religion, one of which is that God created the world. Let us then as a college remem- ber that wise training in the essen- tials of religion is an important part of our work; but let us as a com- munity be mindful that the sin of College Ideals 19 narrowness is the one from which the world has suffered most, and that bigness, breadth, charity, reasonableness, has always been and must always be its salvation. There are two boundaries that it will do well for every college man to mark. One is the boundary that separates religion from un- religion. This is a chasm that every day grows wider and deeper and more impassable. No college can command the respect and the patronage of our people if the pur- pose of its existence is to combat true religion. And no individual whose education has left him an- tagonistic or even indifferent to the essentials of religion can hope to have large efficiency for twentieth- century social service. The other 20 College Ideals boundary is that which in the past has kept the different denomina- tions apart and has caused them to spend in fighting each other and in fostering ill feeling the time and money and talents that should have been employed in Christian- izing the world. Less than fifty years ago, and in the city of Boston, a preacher in my own church said to a Presbyterian preacher: “I greet you as a gentleman but not as a preacher.” To which the Presbyterian brother is said to have made the very fitting response : “I greet you as a preacher but not as a gentleman.” Let us thank God that these silly sectarian bound- aries have become so low that any high-minded man can easily step over them. College Ideals 21 Morality. — Closely connected with the religious influences of a college is its moral atmosphere. Whatever course a student takes he must be provided with an op- portunity to develop a keen recog- nition of the distinction between what is right and what is wrong, and so far as possible his inclina- tion toward the right and from the wrong must be strengthened. Without this, no education can fit a man or a woman for social efficiency. The essentials of mo- rality, like those of religion, are comparatively simple : There is such a thing as right. The obliga- tion to do it is never absent. In claiming our own rights we are bound to be mindful of the rights of others. Simple enough, but a 22 College Ideals very important part of one’s edu- cation. State institutions have been criticized, and not always un- justly, for a moral shortcoming in the student body, but in this re- spect our denominational colleges are also not free from blame. Sometimes it happens in these institutions that some students make the mistake of assuming that the formality of regular attendance upon religious services gives them a kind of right to be lax in their moral obligations. So, students have been known to go directly from a Y. M. C. A. service of Bible reading and testimony and prayer to another meeting in which gam- bling and profanity and cigarette smoking and whisky and vulgar- ity were all strongly in evidence. College Ideals 23 These young men must have thought, if they thought at all, that their religious formality so far absolved them from all sins past and future that they might do with impunity what they would. But this is clearly an undue extension of the doctrine of atonement. Such practices on the part of stu- dents invite unfair criticism upon the institution and bring injury to the alumni. More is expected of institutions like our own that claim to be Christian, and greater is the injury of a shortcoming. A few years ago a boy with whom I was well acquainted finished his high school course in central Indiana, and naturally enough began, with the help of his father, to look round for a Christian col- 24 College Ideals lege in which to continue his edu- cation. At the suggestion of the mother they agreed upon one sup- ported by their own church. In response to an inquiry there came an invitation to visit the college and attend a banquet. The boy accepted. To his astonishment he found that for the last course in the very elaborate dinner each of the dozen or more high school graduates, away from home for the first time, all aglow with enthusiasm to catch their first glimpse of college ideals, was handed from a silver platter and upon a china plate, a cigarette and a match. There were toasts at the dinner. Much em- phasis was placed upon the fact that the institution was a Christian college and was run by the church College Ideals 25 in which the young men had been brought up. It was further pointed out that every member of the fraternity giving the dinner was a Christian young man, regular in his attendance at church, Sunday school, and prayer meeting. It was also made known to the dozen strangers that in addition to being Christians the college atmosphere had helped the fraternity men to be also gentlemen, able to smoke a cigarette without injury, dance with- out being awkward, gamble with- out losing respectability, drink occasionally without becoming in- toxicated, and swear without being profane. Any fraternity or organi- zation that, intentionally or other- wise, helps college boys to acquire such ideals, does an irreparable in- 26 College Ideals jury to the institution it professes to serve. Social Improvement. — A college education should contribute much to the improvement of social life. Not the so-called “high-life,” which, as a rule, is fast and foolish life; but the common, unspectacular, substantial social life, in which each student as a man or a woman may reasonably be expected to par- ticipate. A college course has not discharged its whole obligation when it has merely increased our knowledge and sharpened our wits as individuals. It owes to its graduates also an increased social efficiency that will enable them more effectively and with less friction to live together in the home, the church, the lodge, the factory, College Ideals 27 and in all other groups to which they may belong. A college education should en- able a young man and a young woman to reduce if necessary the cost of living without diminishing the happiness of their home. It should enable them to look at a long list of things it is possible to desire and pick out the few that are really essential to genuine hap- piness, and leave without regret the many that would only increase their care, create ostentation, pro- duce insincerity, and fail to satisfy. A college education should make a man willing to give and deter- mined to have a square deal, even if he has to fight for it. It should make him care more for the sincere wherever he sees it, and hate 28 College Ideals harder the sham in whatever form he finds it. A college education should even enable a man better to choose the wife with whom he is to live and labor and strive to solve their common problems and to work out together their fortune and their future. Here as elsewhere it will enable him to sense the sincere, to detect the sham, to distinguish nature from art. Not only will a college course enable him better to choose her; its discipline will give him the fortitude to bear his lot with patience and resignation if she turns him down. It may even give him that invaluable philosophy of life which teaches a man that next to the happiness that comes from the goods we attain should be College Ideals 29 placed the gratitude for the ills we have missed. I take it that this is true of almost every married man here to-day : Of all the blessings that have ever hung above his horizon he should be most grateful for the wife that he got; and next he should thank his stars oftenest for the two or ten or twenty others whom he once thought he could not live without but whom a kind providence helped him to miss. This bit of life philosophy I give the unmarried men of my audience and particularly the re- jected men of my audience. I learned it a few years ago while going with my teacher and his class in psychiatry through a Mas- sachusetts hospital for the insane. 3 ° College Ideals The first cell he took us to was that of a man completely beside him- self, wholly unable to distinguish the real from the imaginary, but not violent and probably not very different from what he had always been. All the time he stood before a bed post, which he gently stroked and to which he kept repeating such sentiments as: “You are more inspiring than all the muses. Your beauty alone would satisfy all my wants. You are as gentle as an angel,” etc. We asked the physician who he was and what had demented him. He told us that he went by the name of No. One, that he was only temporarily deranged by the refusal of a very beautiful girl three months before. Then we went down a flight of College Ideals 3i stairs into the basement, where the incurables were kept. The doctor took us to a room with no windows and no glass doors. He allowed us to look over the transom at a man violently insane. The walls of his room were all heavily padded, and constantly he kept backing out and running with all his might and butt- ing his head against the wall. Of course we were anxious to know the cause of the great calamity. The doctor made no explanation. All we could get out of him was : “ He is the man who married the girl that refused No. One.” College Spirit. — College spirit is another ideal, of minor importance it may be, but yet of inestimable value. It is hard to define and many times misunderstood. So 3 2 College Ideals far as I understand it, it is a loyalty among the students, deep but not necessarily loud. It springs from the students’ belief that the institution is sincere in its motives and honest in its endeavor to help young men and young women. The essence of college spirit is enthusiasm. College students can- not be dead, dull, stale, unprofit- able, indifferent, lifeless things. They cannot mope and poke around and yawn and sleep, for the soul is dead that slumbers and these spirit- less people are precisely the worth- less things that they seem. Col- lege spirit makes one awake, alert, on his guard, afire with enthusi- asm to do something. Do what ? That depends upon the kind of College Ideals 33 college spirit one has. And that in turn depends upon the ideals of the institution. For these, the president, the faculty, the trustees, the alumni, and the student body are jointly and severally to be held accountable. There are at least two distinct types of college spirit. One is the roughhouse brand that burns build- ings, breaks up theater parties, disturbs public meetings, smears red paint on beautiful buildings, and disfigures sidewalks with the number of the year in which, by the mercy of God and the leniency of the faculty, the midnight prowler is supposed to complete his course of study. This kind of college spirit is never helpful, but always hurtful, to the institution. It may 34 College Ideals go right along with the bolting of recitations, disrespect for the faculty, and complete indifference for the welfare of the school. This kind of college spirit misses completely the perspective of col- lege life, of all life. It subordinates the course of study to games and sports. It degrades college ath- letics by mixing with them com- mercialism and professionalism. It plays, but does not play the game. It loses sight completely of the dis- cipline that comes from a lost game coupled with the consciousness of clean play. It would rather play dirty and win than play clean and lose. It needs a bath. Here it is : VOTE LAMPADA There’s a breathless hush in the Close to-night — College Ideals 35 Ten to make and the match to win — A bumping pitch and a blinding light, An hour to play and the last man in. And it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat, Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame, But his captain’s hand on his shoulder smote — “ Play up ! play up ! and play the game !” The sand of the desert is sodden red — Red with the wreck of a square that broke — The gatling’s jammed and the colonel dead, And the regiment blind with dust and smoke. The river of death has brimmed his banks. And England’s far, and honor a name. But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks, “ Play up ! play up ! and play the game ! ” This is the word that year by year, While in her place the School is set, Every one of her sons must hear, 36 College Ideals And none that hears it dare forget. This they all with a joyful mind Bear through life like a torch in flame, And, falling, fling to the host behind — “ Play up ! play up ! and play the game ! ” — Henry Newbolt. Then there is that college spirit which is never noisy, but which never fails to let others know the good the institution is doing. The progress of a college depends quite as much upon such a spirit in its student body as upon the labors of the president and faculty. Every school can furnish examples. I shall give but a few. Nearly two years ago I received a letter from Miss Faye Brecken- ridge, saying : I greatly appreciate what Winona College has done for me and am telling it to my friends College Ideals 37 in Colorado. I am teaching my first school and have just drawn my first pay. Here is $5 of it. Sister Marie also sends $5. We both wish we could send more. Please use this $10 in any way that will make the college more helpful to students. This may sound to you like a fish story, constructed by my imagi- nation and read only to hint to you what to do with your first salaries ; but if you will come to the college office, I will show you the letter the substance of which I have quoted, and then if you will visit the dining room of our do- mestic science department, I will show you the dishes, knives, forks, and spoons which the $10 helped to pay for. 38 College Ideals Another example : During the present year the young women of the college raised the money, about $150, purchased rugs for our chapel stage and shades for all the 100 windows of the Mount Memorial Building, and our 1914 college graduates installed at their own expense a beautiful drinking foun- tain in the Mount. At any rate, let me commend to you this as the right kind of col- lege spirit and congratulate our own institution for having so much of it. Pride. — Pride, the right kind of pride, is another college ideal which every course of study should stimulate in its students. A man without pride cannot aspire. In- deed he will not long keep himself College Ideals 39 decent. One who has gone through the eight grades, worked through a four-year high school course, and in addition to that has done the drudgery of a four-year college course has a right to be proud. Pride is strong enough in most of us. It needs not so much to be strengthened as to be directed. There is a false as well as a true pride. A school or college can do few better things for a boy or young man than to help him to see what things he may and what things he may not be proud of. Any man has a right to be proud of what he is and what he has done ; no man, of what he owns or what he has on. One of the best illus- trations I have ever had of mis- directed pride came to me one 40 College Ideals night a number of years ago on a boat between Providence and New York. Among the number of us who were unable to secure state- rooms for the night there was a young man with front locks of long, bushy hair. On the crown of his head, throughout the night, he wore a cap but little larger than a postage stamp. He kept himself constantly in view of a group of girls and seemed to be enamored of the tuft of hair that fell over his receding forehead and proud of the skill with which he could toss it back. He was proud also of the cap on the crown, which was just large enough to say to the eye : “Come on back here, there’s noth- ing going on up in front.” Now I assure you I do not mention this College Ideals 41 incident to criticize the boy, but only to let it illustrate a type of misdirected pride of which we are all at times guilty and which it is the business of the college to eliminate. For illustrations of this irrational pride we are unfortunately not obliged to go to boys with receding foreheads. About a year ago a woman of central Indiana, whose husband had suddenly become rich, conceived the brilliant idea of wearing diamonds in her shoe heels. And so she did. When she had provided herself with half a hundred pairs of shoes, the heels of which were all set and scintillating with the precious gems, she set out upon a tour to conquer New York and Washington and the 42 College Ideals East. For a time all the yellow papers of the United States flashed forth the brilliancy of Mrs. ’s shoe heels. Again I wish it to be understood that I am not criticizing the woman. She was entirely within her rights. Any woman who prefers to have the strange men of the street stare at her heels rather than to have the people of her community ad- mire her mind for reflecting the beauties of Browning and Tenny- son, deserves credit for the good judgment that tells her in what part of her personality the greater promise lies. I am likewise grate- ful that the style she launched did not become general. I be- lieve I am safe in saying that not a single lady member of our College Ideals 43 faculty has adopted diamonds for her shoe heels. Pride will help mightily in the saving of men and women, but it must be of the right kind. Not pride in clothes or wealth, but pride in one’s own achievement, — this is always commendable, never harmful. This pride, pride in achievement, the college should help its young men and women to cultivate, and they in turn will save the college. Interest. — The college must im- part knowledge, accurate and defi- nite, and so well organized that it may be used. It must provide the student with an opportunity to develop the power of forceful, in- dependent, and consecutive think- ing. But a greater function is the 44 College Ideals creation of interest. What is the very essence of life ? Certainly not food and clothing and shelter. These we must have, but the things that our lives really feed upon are our interests. The truly rich man is the one whose life is filled with interests, large and intense ; and the poor man, he whose life is dead and dull and destitute of in- terest. We must accept the philosophy of our friends who insist upon the simple life, but not for the mind. The real value of one’s life lies in the breadth and intensity of his thought ; but plain living is not a hindrance but rather a help to large and high thinking. So far as the mind is concerned life must be elaborate, not simple. College Ideals 45 The college makes a mistake when its chief aim is the creation of specialists whose lives are neces- sarily narrow. Specialization is the exclusive function of the uni- versity and the technical school, not of the college. Life is only the exercise of interests. Death is the realization that one has no interests to exercise. Littleness of life is almost our only danger; largeness of life our only safety. Robert Louis Stevenson says in his autobiography that he never had a dull hour in his life. A rare testimony. How far we are able to approach it will be determined by the largeness of our lives, the range of our interests. The records of our insane hospitals show that while the mental lives of a few 46 College Ideals may have been distracted by diver- sity of interest, the lives of many, many more have been literally starved by nothing to think of and nothing to care about. Wants and satisfactions are cor- relative things. Most of us spend our lives as if our only concern was to provide satisfactions for our wants, but if I am not mistaken, one of the chief functions of a col- lege is to create wants for the satis- factions God has put into his world. Poverty is always a lack, a need, and is always painful. But we need to be reminded, as we have been reminded, that there are two kinds of poverty : There is lack of goods for higher wants, and this is bad ; then there is lack of wants for higher goods, and this is in- College Ideals 47 finitely worse. To have a hungry mouth and nothing to eat, this is painful and inconvenient ; but to have lying all about you good things to eat and no mouth to eat them, this is certainly not less undesirable. A body shivering in the cold and no clothes to put on it, pain and poverty we must admit ; but clothes galore and no body to put them on, this is an equally unpleas- ing prospect. Now this has an easy and significant application to our mental lives. Think for a moment of minds thirsting for knowledge and no things to learn, pain and poverty again; but a world full of fascinating things to be learned and no minds to learn them, — this would be the supreme tragedy of all the ages. Let in- 4 8 College Ideals terest be absent and we have this death of the mental life. The dead man is he whose mind is destitute of interest. Nine tenths of an education should be the creation of interests. A course of study is only a means, and the mastery of a branch only an inci- dent. Interests may arise apart from school and may fail to arise in school ; but it is true now, and through all the future it must re- main true, that, with all its short- comings, the school is the greatest institution available for creating interests. It is to be accounted both a gain and a loss that the business of teaching our largest and most important lesson — that of our spiritual relations — the school has turned over to the College Ideals 49 church. These relations can be apprehended only through in- struction, and this is the cue from which the church must take its bearings. Its efficiency will end whenever it ceases to be a teacher or whenever it forgets the lesson it is its mission to teach. We of the school may prove our place and point with pride to Mark Hopkins and Horace Mann ; but the church, to establish its right to be a teacher, needs only to point to the Man of Galilee, who was even greater as teacher than as preacher, — or shall I say, was the greatest preacher the world has ever known in that he was the greatest teacher the world has ever known ? Of the shortcomings of the church in teaching the lessons that So College Ideals have been allotted to it, many others are better able to speak, but I am very sure there are some de- fects in the school due to our atti- tude toward the matter of interest. A diploma will sometime come to have a different meaning. Instead of a record of credits, it should be a guaranty of interests, — interests large and intense. If one’s interest in a subject has been aroused, his credits will come. I should like to see even the pictures on our diplomas changed. Instead of that symbol of omnis- cience that sits in majestic sov- ereignty upon an engraving of the globe, surrounded by all the instru- ments of science and the emblems of art, with an atmosphere of all regions explored, all problems College Ideals SI solved, and all deeds done, I would substitute simply the picture of a boy or girl in the attitude of awakening interest, — it would matter little whether searching the seashore for a smoother pebble, the fields for a more fragrant flower, or the heavens for a more brilliant star. And certainly the reading on our diplomas should be changed. Too many times, if we read between the lines, our diplomas say : This is to certify that Mr. Blank has completed so many High School credits in the following subjects, all of which he thoroughly de- spises ; it will nevertheless admit him to college, where with the aid of more distractions and more ex- asperating teachers he can com- 52 College Ideals plete his hatred of all fields of knowledge. I would recommend the following : This certifies that although Mr. Blank has not yet been able to make credits in many subjects, he has acquired an un- quenchable interest in all of them. What interests does a man have to live on ? This is the most im- portant question that can be asked concerning the world that now is. And if I mistake not, it is more elemental than any question that can be asked concerning the world that is to be. For, as we are all agreed, our life there depends upon the start we make here. In God’s economy we shall begin there where we leave off here. So far as human efforts are concerned, the here and the now are all-important. In all College Ideals 53 the aeons of endless centuries we shall doubtless make progress, but we shall never quite correct a mis- step made here or fail to benefit by a moment here properly used. What should be the interests of a man’s life to make it larger and more abundant, and how can the college best create them ? Vision. — Life is reality and not dreams, but a man without a vision is but little more than a beast. The college must teach well its les- sons in science and language and mathematics, but it must also impart a vision to every graduate. Most of our failures come from our being unable to see beyond the present moment. If a handsome young man of eighteen could see his ugly self at sixty, he would not 54 College Ideals stain his teeth and unsteady his step and wreck his nerves with cigarettes. Socrates held, and rightly I think, that all error is due to failure to see ; that no man who sees right will go wrong, that no one would make a mistake if he could see all time as he sees this time. Has our college course helped us to have a vision ? The follow- ing questions were prepared by a professor in the University of Chicago. How we are obliged to answer them will help us to know whether or not we have a vision. Here are his questions : Has education given you sympathy with all good causes and made you espouse them ? Has it made you public-spirited ? Has it made you a brother to the weak ? College Ideals 55 Have you learned how to make friends and keep them ? Do you know what it is to be a friend yourself ? Can you look an honest man or a pure woman straight in the eye ? Do you see anything to love in a little child ? Will a lonely dog follow you in the street ? Can you be high-minded and happy in the meanest drudgeries of life ? Do you think washing dishes and hoe- ing corn just as compatible with high thinking as piano playing or golf? Are you good for anything to yourself? Can you be happy alone ? Can you look out on the world and see anything except dollars and cents ? Can you look into a mud puddle by the wayside and see the clear sky ? Can you see anything in the puddle but mud ? Can you look into the sky at night and see beyond the stars ? College Ideals 56 If a college has helped a student to give an affirmative answer to these questions, it has imparted to him a vision that will save him. In this connection I cannot re- frain from quoting David Starr Jordan’s Appeal to Boys. He says : “Your first duty in life is toward your afterself. So live that your afterself — the man you ought to be — may in his time be possible and actual. “Far away in the years he is waiting his turn. His body, his brain, his soul are in your boyish hands. He cannot help himself. “ What will you leave for him ? “ Will it be a brain unspoiled by lust or dissipation, a mind trained to think and act, a nervous system true as a dial in its response to the truth about you ? Will you, Boy, let him come as a man among men in his time ? Or will you throw away College Ideals 57 his inheritance before he has had the chance to touch it? Will you turn over to him a brain distorted, a mind diseased ? A will untrained to action ? A spinal cord grown through and through with devil grass of that vile harvest we call wild oats ? “Will you let him come, taking your place, gaining through your experiences, hallowed through your joys; building on them his own ? “ Or will you fling his hope away, decree- ing wantonlike that the man you might have been shall never be ? “This is your problem in life; the prob- lem of more importance to you than any or all others. How will you meet it, as a man or as a fool ? “When you answer this, we shall know what use the world can make of you.” Yes, and we shall know whether you have the vision that will enable you to make use of the world. Good, honest, hard work and 58 College Ideals plenty of it ; a religious training that is not narrow and bigoted but reverent and sincere ; a morality that enables the student to respect the person and the property of an- other; the maximum of social im- provement ; a college spirit that is free from malice and not akin to vandalism ; pride in achievement and not in clothes ; an interest that glows and kindles into a passion for truth ; a vision that helps the boy of to-day to catch a glimpse of the world of to-morrow and the man he might be ; — there are doubtless other college ideals, but speaking for myself, and I hope also for you, I shall be satisfied to pin to these the faith and the fortune and the future of our college. ■