The HUMANITIES in the EDUCATION of the FUTURE AND OTHER ADDRESSES AND PAPERS BY WILLIAM BAXTER OWEN, PH.D., LITT.D. Professor of the Latin Language and Literature in Lafayette College BOSTON SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 1912 \\ O COPYRIGHT, 1912 SHERMAN, FRENCH 6 s COMPANY PREFACE The addresses and papers that make up this volume have, with two or three exceptions ap- peared in print in various periodicals and publi- cations, and are now brought together in this more permanent form partly in recognition of the occasions on which they were delivered, and partly because of the steady and even increasing public interest in the topics discussed. The ad- dresses are educational, memorial, literary, post- prandial, chapel talks, glimpses of college life on its better side; in fact the atmosphere throughout is that of the college, and in par- ticular of the vigorous small college, to which we must still look for the most decisive and hope- ful influences in education. Easton, Pa, W. B. 0. CONTENTS PAGE I THE HUMANITIES IN THE EDUCATION OP THE FUTURE 1 An Address Delivered at the Chambersburg Academy on its Cen- tennial Celebration. II THE VALUE OF DISCIPLINE IN EDUCA- TION 17 Delivered at the Commencement of Franklin and Marshall college. Ill PROFESSIONAL STUDY IN COLLEGE . . 32 IV THE TEACHING OF THE CLASSICS: ARE WE SACRIFICING THE HUMANISTIC TO THE LINGUISTIC? 38 Read before the Ninth Annual Convention of the Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the Middle States and Mary- land. V HIGH SCHOOL TRAINING IN ITS BEAR- ING UPON Civic INTEGRITY ... 49 An Address before the Pennsyl- vania Educational Association. VI EFFICIENCY THE AIM OF EDUCATION . 58 Delivered at the Annual Banquet of the New York Alumni Associa- tion. CONTENTS PAGE VII SIMPLIFIED SPELLING 65 An Address before the Anthro- pological Society of Washington, D. C., in a Symposium on the Question, "Is Simplified Spelling Feasible?" VIII WILLIAM CASSIDAY CATTELL, D.D., LL.D 73 Founders' Day Address. IX PROFESSOR FRANCIS A. MARCH, LL.D., L.H.D 86 Memorial Address at Lafayette College. X PROFESSOR MARCH . . .... 100 Address at the Annual Banquet of the New York Alumni Associa- tion. XI INDELICACY IN LITERATURE . . .111 XII BOOKS TO BE READ BEFORE GRADUATION 122 XIII COLLEGE FRATERNITIES 129 Address before the Grand Chap- ter of the Zeta Psi Fraternity of North America, meeting at La- fayette College. XIV TOWN AND GOWN 137 Contributed to the " Lafayette," on the Proposal that the Seniors wear Oxford Hats. CONTENTS PAGE XV THE EASY CHAIR 143 XVI SOME FREAKS OF COLLEGE SENTIMENT 148 XVII WHAT THE PEWS REQUIRE OF THE PUL- PIT ... 154 At a Dinner Given to the Lehigh Presbytery, Easton, Pa. XVIII EZEKIEL'S WATCHMAN 158 To the Y. M. C. A., with Special Reference to Students for the Min- istry. XIX How SHALL I GIVE THEE UP, EPH- RAIM? 164 XX THE NOISE OF THEM THAT SING . .175 THE HUMANITIES IN THE EDUCATION OF THE FUTURE A hundred years of life and growth means a good deal, but in an institution of this kind, chiefly it should mean a readiness to enter confidently upon a second century of its growth. To a single phase of this outlook and your readiness for it, I would briefly direct your thoughts. We hear much of the new education and of educational reforms as they apply to courses of liberal training; that the courses must be mod- ernized. I shall best exhibit the motive of these agitations by noting a few facts about the prog- ress of science in these days. In any general consideration of this progress we are at once con- fronted by three lines of remark: 1st, The In- crease of Knowledge; 2d, The Question of Its Dissemination, and 3d, The Question of Its Uses. These lines of thought are familiar, but it is the educational corollary in which we are now con- cerned. First, as to the acquisition of new knowledge, the accumulation of the facts of nature, by scien- tific workers, the last fifty years has witnessed an 2 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION amazing advance. It is enough for me to men- tion it. To enlarge upon it might well consume all my time and more. I pass then to say in the second place, that the acquisition of knowl- edge is enormously in advance of its distribution. This great fund of truth is known after all to but few a mere handful of the race. It is at centers of learning, in the publications of learned societies, in the laboratories of workers. The highly educated classes are vastly in the minority, but even these cannot possibly go over the ground of the sciences, or do more than get the most general idea of them; while as to the masses, it is literally true that primitive ignorance still clings to the skirts of culture, groveling under the very shadow of libraries and colleges. I am not speaking now of illiteracy, or of those forms of ignorance that are detected by school exami- nations. My point is, that if tests of another kind were applied tests that would show the ad- justment of popular intelligence to the funda- mental truths of common life, masses of people would be found surprisingly ignorant of the world as it is known to science. The general intelligence is but dimly adjusted to the real truths of the world. To the masses the earth is still flat and motionless, the moon might as well be made of green cheese. To numbers larger than you would suppose this new knowledge of nature remains a sealed book. In the third place, the acquisition of knowledge HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION 3 is enormously in advance of its practical applica- tions. True, much has been done in the way of material progress in mechanical appliances, in labor-saving and time-saving machines, in pro- gressive inventions and discoveries so that Car-* lyle could say, "How have cunning workmen in all crafts, with their cunning head and right hand, turned the four elements to be their ministers, yoking the winds to their sea-chariot, making the very stars their nautical time-piece." And since Carlyle's time, what with steam and now this weird and nimble sister of the four elements electricity this progress has been a rare theme for the swelling periods of the orator. But this picture has another side. This progress is rela- tive and recent. Its benefits come to us in such questionable shape, with such obvious crudities and inequalities, that our condition now as com- pared with what would be possible were all that is known suitably applied, is as primitive rudeness to our present arts and industries. Of course we have to note, from this utilitarian point of view, that there is a vast amount of sci- entific investigation which has not as yet any practical outlook. There are vast areas of un- digested knowledge which have not yet emerged into the field of utility. Yet it remains true, as Bacon said, that all science should be a rich store- house for the glory of God and the relief of man's estate. All science. We have no right to assume that any branch, or any item of knowledge is use- 4 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION less. Every serious inquiry into the principles and forces of nature may justly arouse the ex- pectation of benefit. We have also to note that the most complete control and use of natural law by man is at present in the simpler sciences, while the more difficult and complicated sciences promise the most valuable results. Astronomy is simple, but of slight practical use. Physics, somewhat more complicated and vastly more useful, for in this region of natural law all the mechanic arts spring up. Chemistry is still more complex, and here is a field of utility which is only now opening to us its untold treasures. Biology and sociology are complex in the highest degree. Organic life and growth, e. g., present immense difficulties, and their mastery will some day bring inestimable benefits to man. We can readily see how impor- tant and practical these fields of knowledge will be, when we remember how much we depend even upon our superficial pursuit of such arts as animal domestication, and that economic cultivation of plants which we call agriculture and horticulture. We are using physical forces very freely, and directing them scientifically ; we are not giving scientific direction to vital, mental and social forces. The postponement of their application is due to obvious hindrances, among them this one which I now emphasize, viz: the meager dissemi- nation of the knowedge to the people at large. Then as to the mass of applied knowledge, even in the field of physics, the greater part of it is HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION 5 applied in so limited a way that the benefits are confined to comparatively few. Take so simple a matter as ventilation what an advance we should have if all that scientific doctors know were universally applied ! In the arts of life, where we get our comfort, and where our wants are sup- plied in building, plumbing, farming, mining, cooking we live and work on a plane far below what is possible in the present state of knowledge. Economic waste is appalling not merely the waste of prodigal extravagance, or of ruinous competition, but the waste by fire, by flood, by forest denudation some people know better; the masses do not. Then in matters far more serious and vital in the matter of food of biological laws involved in reproduction, of sanitation and the prevention of diseases there are suggestions trembling on the lips of science which would be of vital importance to the world. This failure of science to relieve the needs of life is of course most conspicuous in the condition of the masses. In the English higher classes, e. g., 18 per cent, of infants die before reaching the age of five years ; in the lower classes 55 per cent ! Death comes to all alike at some time, but hurries to the cabin and drags his slow approach to the palace as though he had lead in his heels. During the last few months 20,000,000 subjects of the richest empire on the globe have perished by starvation. Here, of course, we come up to the hard fact of social inequality. The poor 6 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION cannot afford the products of skill and invention. They cannot even get the necessaries of life. But I am only speaking of the fact. The fact re- mains that the material benefits of progress are not diffused. While this very starvation has been dragging its horrors along, that very empire has expended, directly or indirectly, $100,000,000 upon the pomp of a royal jubilee. We raise wheat plenty of it by improved methods, we grind it by improved machinery, we transport it by improved applications of motive power, and there is plenty of money to do all this but there is the starvation and there i$ the jubilee. The material benefits of progress are not diffused. The further fact that their diffusion widens, not in proportion to the increase of knowledge, but as they tell us, in proportion to the increments of its dissemination suggests that this great riddle of suffering and social wrongs may yet meet with its solution in universal education. The logical conclusion of all this is of course, educate! Hasten the radiation of knowledge to the masses ! Bring science with its benediction to the masses. What we want is to rapidly as- similate the results of scientific research, and pass them on to the arts, to legislation, and to the molding of popular opinions and modes of thought. Of course, when we speak of the universal dif- fusion of all knowledge, we are talking in a way that is plainly visionary ; but while it is impossible HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION 7 that all men should know all things, there are cer- tain classes of natural knowledge, and, if you please, certain specific lines of information with which the welfare of society requires every indi- vidual to be familiar. It would also seem that we have advanced far enough to be able to give more definite form to our ideals of education, by determining what these general and particular classes of knowledge are. That would fix the ideal curriculum of school in- struction. Text-books should then be prepared by acknowledged masters in each department, methods of instruction should be sought that will secure the utmost thoroughness in the inculcation of cardinal principles, then such reforms as will facilitate the most wearisome processes of pri- mary education, and save time for other studies. I do not think that the motive underlying the appeal for modern education could be more fairly exhibited than in such an outline as I have given. Many of you have doubtless already noticed the fundamental error to which I now call your atten- tion, viz : that in this outline I have had in view but one phase of educational results those look- ing toward material progress. This is the fatal error of those educational theories that are based upon the requirements of material growth. From that point of view education is chiefly, if not solely, the education of information, information about nature, the facts, laws and forces of nature. Not a word about the training of manhood. But 8 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION one may have a world of information about na- ture, and yet be without skill or taste or tact, without judgment, without culture, without con- science, without character. There is a skill in doing that is good, a breadth of information that is good too, but the supreme trait that determines the quality of a civilization is what its men and women are, not what they know. The greatest truths and the greatest influences in the world are those which are above nature. The greatest factor in this world of ours is the human factor ; and the humanities, so-called through all these twenty centuries, have to do with the intellectual, moral and spiritual life of the homo. Let me confirm this by the testimony of two witnesses whose authority will not be questioned. Dr. Samuel Johnson says : "The truth is, that the knowledge of external na- ture, and the sciences which that knowledge requires or includes, are not the great or frequent business of the human mind. Whether we provide for action or conversation, whether we wish to be useful or pleasing^ the first requisite is the religious and moral knowl- edge of right and wrong; the next is an acquaintance with the history of mankind, and with those examples which may be said to embody truth, and prove by events the reasonableness of opinions." And Professor Robert H. Thurston says: "The mission of science is the promotion of the wel- HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION 9 fare, material and spiritual, physical and intellectual of the human race . . . the use and the aim of scientific inquiry are to be sought in the region be- yond and above the material world to which those studies are confined." The master spirits even of science are contin- ually telling us that we must look up and away from the material trappings of our study. Experience furnishes as yet no alternative, and I see no escape from the conclusion that history, literature and the philosophies mental and moral must be heavily drawn upon to furnish the ma- terials of liberal education. I speak of literature as embodying the noblest part of human history the thoughts of great and gifted men. I make no narrower distinction at present about the lan- guages, ancient or modern; but the masterpieces as we have them in the world's best books, must remain the master instruments of an education that is to give liberal training. And now as to the value and uses of liberal education : it is one of the discouragements of col- lege work that the education we try to give there is felt to be of little use except for lawyers, doc- tors and preachers, and, perhaps, for teachers. As a matter of fact, however, the training a man has received tells to his advantage wherever he may be placed ; and even practical fitness for many kinds of work requires a broader basis of preparation than we are apt to suppose. Mr. 10 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION Dana said that to report a prize fight, a spelling match or a ball game, he had rather have a fellow who has read the Ajax of Sophocles, who has read Tacitus, and can scan every ode of Horace, than one who has never had these advantages. That represents fitness for the most practical features of journalism. I would not turn away from the practical, but would take a still larger view of it, and insist that there is no duty or labor which we may be called upon to perform, into which we may not inject, as an element of our fitness for it, the utmost meas- ure of the manhood or womanhood that we pos- sess. Just as a teacher cannot teach too well, or a preacher preach too well, or a lawyer plead too well, so there is a sense in which the life and work of the carpenter, the engineer, the farmer and the trader, make drafts upon them which require bet- ter than their best. They cannot be too diligent, too persevering, too accurate, too sagacious, too manly. Did you ever know a man doing a work which required skill, which he did too skillfully? that required watchfulness in which he was too vigilant? that required fidelity in which he was too faithful? Now the higher training of good schools is to develop these very traits. Besides it is not simply a man's daily work; it is his equipment to meet as worthily as he can the various relations in which he must live his relations in the family, his relations in the com- munity as neighbor and friend, his relations in HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION 11 the state as a citizen. In view of these many and varied relationships, what work a man can do is a fair question of course. But a greater one is, what kind of man is he? With what in- telligence and judgment to note and decide? with what capacities for growth in the graces of per- sonal life? with what spirit does he stand before tasks that require labor not only, but tact and patience? How does he stand in circumstances which test integrity? with what taste for the en- joyment of the beautiful? and with what capac- ities for the exercise of charity and benevolence toward others? Success, if we measure it by income and for- tune, is a paltry achievement in comparison with the better success measured on the scale of intel- ligence and character. I am well aware that the more delicate values of liberal education, unfortunately, cannot be ap- preciated by those who have not experienced them. That feeling of fellowship with the learned, the freedom to swing in the larger circle of great men's thinking, the constant expansion of the horizon of intelligence, the acquisition of the les- sons of history the mores hominum, the play of the universal conscience in man, the convictions of our race to know what qualities and what principles have been sovereign in human life; the scholar sets at a high value the freedom and in- sight which he gains in these directions, for they become a part of his mental furnishing. These 12 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION lessons are stamped not upon the memory, but upon the man, upon character, determining not only capacity in various directions, but his tastes, and the quality and style of his thinking. Among the more obvious and appreciable bene- fits, besides that general intellectual training which gives tact and judgment, readiness and accuracy, there is the effect of this training in giving command of the mother tongue. Clearness of thought and facility and accuracy in expres- sion are the special gifts of linguistic study; nor can any exercise in English composition be equal to the discipline of transferring thought from language to language. Words must be so care- fully selected and weighed; there must be a new balance in the clauses to preserve emphasis if not idiom ; shades of meaning must be recognized and transferred with all the delicacy and refinement which the student can command or acquire. Here is room for every shade of excellence, and the honest translator is from day to day making progress in ease and force and accuracy of ex- pression. And now, as ours should be a forward look, let me predict that the humanities in education will be not less, but more important in the coming century, and for the following very practical rea- son, in addition to the considerations already men- tioned, which give them a permanent value : The natural progress of scientific study to the more complex ranges of truth, will at length bring the HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION 13 interest of science itself into the region of hu- manism. I have already indicated in a general way this progress from the simpler to the more complex sciences from physics to sociology. We have had centuries of empiricism mingled with more or less of superstition in every field in physics, in chemistry, in biology, and in the arts, which are based upon these studies, in mining, in metallurgy, in medicine; we have now had about a century of science, truly so-called, with the em- phasis shifting upward in the scale, and now for thirty years pretty definitely placed upon biology. Many of you will remember that twenty-five years ago the attention of thinking men was concen- trated upon evolution, and that in its biological phases the descent of man was its culminating interest. This phase is passing, and already so- ciology looms big upon the horizon and sociology promises to be the great field for scientific re- search and experiment for the next few years, possibly for the next century. We shall study history and literature and philosophy and reli- gion as we never have studied them before, not for culture merely, but for the facts, for scientific induction, to construct and confirm our theories of social order. We shall have, as in fact we al- ready have, an enormous amount of theorizing, of speculation and experiment upon finance and big business, taxation, the tariff, and upon the suggestions of socialism, but the practical out- come, beyond these measures that come as a re- 14 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION suit of the swinging of the political pendulum from period to period, will be a more thorough and systematic study of the true social forces. We shall be doing in government what we have long been doing in physics, viz., using the forces of nature, directing them into channels of ad- vantage and working out by them results which can be definitely foreseen. Already many of our social problems are coming to the schools for their solution. It has long been so with problems turn- ing upon physics and chemistry, problems in manufacture, in agriculture, in transportation and the application of motive power; but now we are taking the temperance question to the schools ; the schools are contributing an important factor to the settlement of the woman question, by show- ing that women can teach as well as men and in many cases can learn better. The great problem of citizenship and fitness for the ballot depends for its solution upon what the schools are doing for men. Then in matters of economic theory and meas- ures of public policy, the universities and colleges are beginning to investigate and to inculcate doc- trine on their own account and college presidents and professors are becoming a factor in political issues. Half our college students in these days are diligent readers upon public questions, with opinions of their own, ample, original, refreshing, and, perhaps, the schools may yet show us how to deal with the trusts and with anarchy, how to HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION 15 settle the question of wages and rent and the deeper problems of industrial economy. I wish here to call your special attention to the fact that the center of scientific interest is advancing into this field where the materials are, in large part, to be derived from studies which we call the hu- manities. I do not mean merely the growth of the science of language. There are indications of the rise of a new and nobler enthusiasm for these studies, springing from the love of men. And when an enthusiasm for humanity shall su- persede this overwhelming enthusiasm for nature, when we study the social forces and the modes of applying them to secure the best results in the condition of men as we now study the facts and forces of nature we shall find that the products of human thought, and the history of human in- stitutions have a value which as yet even the wisest have but suspected. We may improve our methods of study, our methods of teaching. That we have been doing all along, so that classical study is not what it was three hundred years ago, or even what it was fifty years ago ; we may adapt our studies to these new purposes, discarding whatever is useless, whatever is dead and moldy ; though it is a grow- ing surprise to me the modernness of the ancient thinkers, the practical value of their thoughts and experiences, the pertinence of their insight. A hand-book for lawyers not only, but one for merchants might well be made up from the pages 16 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION of Cicero. But if for educational purposes Bacon is better than Cicero, if Boileau and Dr. Johnson are better than Horace and Juvenal, if Dante and Goethe are better than Homer and Euripides, if John Stuart Mill is better than Aristotle, we can easily make that exchange. It will only be replacing a book by a better book; but the study of man that we must have the best in man. Not his bones, not his muscles, not even the tis- sues of his nerves and brain, or the measurement of his facial angle, interesting as that is, but the knowledge of what he does and says, his wisdom, the supreme flights of his masterly thinking. II THE VALUE OF DISCIPLINE IN EDUCATION I bring 1 words of hearty greeting to Franklin and Marshall College as one of the strongholds of sound liberal training progressive certainly, with free and ready adjustment to new condi- tions, but in these adjustments, not yielding so much to the demand, e. g., for vocational studies as to thwart the main purposes of liberal train- ing. Colleges that have done that are now find- ing that they must come back; Franklin and Marshall need take no backward step. We do not object to the word "practical" if it is used in its larger meanings, but to "com- mercialize" if that term may be applied to our tendencies in education, we can hardly resist the impression of debasement, for in education we are dealing with the human spirit. "Standardize" is a good word, newly applied, and has an exact and scientific ring, but if it is intended to suggest to us an exact analogy between processes of edu- cation in a college and processes of manufacture in a mill, where your raw material is put in and your finished product comes out; and if there is 17 18 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION to be a strict commercial accounting of hours of study, of recitation, and of lecture, and an eco- nomic scrutiny of the use of floor space and all appliances, so that the ledger will show for every dollar of expenditure a dollar of return and a little more for profit, then that use of "standard- ization" will somewhat rasp our finer sensibilities mainly because in education we are dealing with values which do not yield themselves to measure- ment on the scale of dollars. I hope I do not caricature that very able and thoughtful document, Bulletin No. 5 of the Car- negie Foundation for the Advancement of Edu- cation. I do not mean to misrepresent it ; but the very terms in which the idea is expressed are such that the statement of the analogy sounds like caricature. Raw material, e. g. t what is it in this "industry" of education but the members of the Freshman class? Should we so designate them in the serious language of science? The flippant Sophomore may so name them, and they must endure it I suppose; but they do so with a shrug of resentment even in that case. Then "finished product." Your graduating Senior, now becoming keenly aware that instead of being "finished" he is only ready to begin, will blush at the phrase and wonder whether it is science or satire. In mere knowledge very likely we are on the lowest level of educational results, and even knowl- edge, while we can test the possessor of it by ex- DISCIPLINE IN EDUCATION 19 aminations, we cannot make any inventory of its value in terms of dollars. Knowledge of course is important, but rela-1 tively the least important element of education.) "Knowledge is power" we say, but we know very well that it is not power unless under special conditions. When it comes to that point where it utilizes the forces of nature, and masters the conditions of supplying the needs of life, we may call it power ; when in the processes of its handling there emerges some kind of capacity, then it is power; when it reaches that point where it can be trans- muted into character, then it is power; but the mere knowledge of facts as a personal accomplish- ment is not power, and has in itself little value of any kind. Now this passing of knowledge into something! finer by means of reflection, experience, the fa- 1 miliar handling of knowledge under circumstances such that it will yield up its best fruits this transmutation of mere knowledge into discern- ment, accuracy, judgment, prudence, wisdom shrewdness, duplicity, knavery, etc., is what chiefly concerns us in education. We note differ- ences here. To take a single contrast wisdom shrewdness. Wisdom that lifts a man to larger outlook in life, ennobling his whole nature, quali- fying him therefore to choose ends that may be pursued with safety and honor. Shrewdness the keen edge of expediency to note advantages 20 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION under given circumstances, with sharp outlook for the main chance, and that qualifies a man there- fore to devise means to any end, however wisely or unwisely that end may have been chosen. Your shrewd man may pervert the good and play tricks with conscience and with motives. You cannot trust him to apply your preachments of righteousness and mercy. He will apply every precept so as to place the duty on the other man and the benefit upon himself. Incidentally here, it were well to have knowledge ripen toward wis- dom rather than toward shrewdness. Then there are processes in the getting and handling of knowledge that give practice in thinking and growth in that power. But here we are in regions where the ad- vances of growth are not visible. If a man gain ten pounds avoirdupois, the scales will show that to the minutest fraction of an ounce, but there are no visible units of thought growth, or any tangible units in the texture of character, of whose increase one is immediately aware. A lad may pass an hour or two, under instruction, in learning how to adjust some deli- cate instrument, as a theodolite or a microscope; and may easily see in that manipulation his rapid advance in skill of eye and hand; but, in the* knowledge and the exercises that give discipline! of intelligence, and that deepen moral conviction,L the results are such as not to be immediately ob- vious. The man with the scales can detect no dif- DISCIPLINE IN EDUCATION 21 ference. The man with the ledger will be puzzled to know how much credit to give, or whether he shall give any. The student himself will be ten years in finding out what the study of Socrates in a certain class- room contributed to his moral fiber, and may be still longer in realizing the value to him, in the development of effective thinking, of his work in Trigonometry and in Cicero. After a long time he will begin to see it, and may go back at some commencement season and tell his Professor that such work was the most valuable part of his edu- cation, though at the time it seemed to him useless and irksome. The education of the utilities has therefore popularly an enormous advantage over the edu- cation of culture because it presents practical and obvious values. Culture is the refinement of in-j telligence. It will not be overlooked by the care- ful educator, though it may easily be overlooked by throngs of students. If then there be a great rush to vocational and utilitarian studies, on the part of those who might have and should have a broader training for their work, that does not prove the superior value of vocational studies ; it only suggests a possible lack of insight and mature judgment on the part of those who so choose. These considerations throw a welcome light on the subject of free electives. That a boy may study what he pleases in college suggests a peril- 22 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION ous extreme. Suppose it should please him to study nothing! You may have noticed that logic has a quaint habit of playing tricks when thus pushed to extremes. Peace! The world sighs for it, prays for it, groans under the horrors and the burdens of war- fare. How then shall we have peace? Why, build war ships so big, make cannon so mighty, projectiles so irresistible, make defensive armor so impenetrable, maintain armies in every nation so large and ready that war will be impossible ! If one bathe once a year, one is clean at long intervals; once a week, one is clean much oftener; every day, twice a day, clean all the time. Then the trick if one is clean all the time why need one bathe at all? Of the many reasons against free election, that against its principle and working should be suf- ficient the liability to error in precocious spe- cialization, subjects if left to the personal choice of students being so often selected upon grounds of superficial or even capricious interest. It is more important to know what a boy needs in edu- cation than what he likes, and what he needs is more likely to be thoroughly understood by those who have insight and experience and an enduring earnestness and sincerity in the work of educa- tion. What he really needs is discipline of thought. Note two or three elementary stages of this disci- pline very simply, without any garnishing of DISCIPLINE IN EDUCATION 23 psychological or pedagogical technicalities first to promote readiness of thought, ease and speed in its common movements. Not whimsical, invol- untary thinking; that accomplishes so little. What we must have is consecutive thinking under the control of the will. To hold in check the capricious impulses of thought to keep it active and also to hold the currents of it in definite channels this is one of the supreme values of school work, cultivating the power of attention, habits of study, accom- plished by personal supervision, but also and mainly through class drill, making thought obedi- ent to the call of questions. A class, say, of fifteen pupils, plied with rapid questions for thirty minutes, a hundred questions within that time perhaps twice that many, for they are easy, the easier the better, for the pur- pose is not to test knowledge but to train) thought; and the ideal situation is that every pupil will answer every question, not knowing who will be called upon to answer it aloud. Second, promptness in certain processes of ex- ^ act reasoning. This we get in the mathematics, from mental Arithmetic to the Calculus. Third, accuracy in the observation of simple facts to let simple facts lie clear and true upon the mind as they may lie upon the eye. Fourth, coming to correct conclusions from facts. This involves not only clear perception of the facts, but also the recognition of their relations to each other. 24 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION This is reasoning, a valuable quality. Without it we make mistakes and are failures. Indeed life's failures come mainly from this source. Cer- tainly there are other failures moral failures, that strew the ways of life with wrecks that chal- lenge our tears. Of these we do not now speak, but rather of our failure to do our common work. This comes from two sources lack of force, which , we often mistakenly call laziness, and lack of judgment. Here we are distinctly within the realm of the practical. In this gift of judgment we touch the* highest form of intellectual endowment. The man, who, in any given situation knows just what to do is the man of the hour. The man, who, in any difficult situation can instantly solve the situ- ation by a stroke of insight that goes straight to its heart is the great man in invention Edi- son, in finance Morgan, in war and state craft Julius Caesar. These are eminent instances, but the quality of which we are speaking is universally valuable through all the grades of work the maid in your kitchen wants it, your builder, your teamster as much in his sphere as the president of your bank or the governor of your state, and the work is as fatally vitiated by its absence in the one case as in the other. I am of course, well aware that the school can- not impart judgment; that at its foundation is mother wit, that fundamental stuff in men which DISCIPLINE IN EDUCATION 25 we call natural ability. But the school can help in two ways : It opens to us a large fund of recorded experience. Eight or ten years of school life gives us some sort of access to the ex- perience of three or four thousand years, and what we know about life, and how to do things comes to us largely in this way. But chiefly, the school helps in the development of such natural gifts as we may have. Without development they will be of little use, so the school undertakes to guide and train us in judgment by various methods doubtless and on various sub- jects, but I wish to emphasize the value of that training which comes from dealing with thoughts rather than with things. Reason must grow upon its own product that which expresses thought. In language we have the very implements of reason, and to learn its free use we must make ourselves masters of the processes of speech because these are the imple- ments of reason. We can hardly overestimate the value of lan- guage study in promoting growth in intelligence. Our earliest efforts in thinking are determined by the meanings which we gradually learn to at- tach to the words that we hear. We widen our thinking by getting new words and by going deeper into the significance of those we know. From first to last we are led on in pathways that are marked out by speech. In school or out of school we are drawing upon the wealth which has 26 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION accumulated in speech. Our very words are charged with a kind of vitality with the heart and thinking of the men who have used them. When a nation has been speaking and writing and printing a word for centuries, coloring it with the events of their public and personal life, expressing by it their temper, their courtesy, the results of their thinking, pouring into it their convictions and their passions you can easily see what a delicate and marvelous instrument we may have in a common word, as Shakespeare or Milton or Webster or Lincoln may use it. It should be the purpose of educational training to bring us into the fullest possible control of this stored-up wealth. So far on the side of facts, regarding words as facts. Then the handling of the elements of speech in their relations is an exercise of great value in the development of intelligence. The elements of speech are the implements of reason, and the proc- esses of speech are the methods of reason; so it is the patient handling of these elements in their relations that develops reasoning power. It is by working upon sentences, getting their mean- ing, and exercises in their formation, that the crude insights of the untrained mind are brought forward to something like sagacity. This seems so elementary that one hesitates to speak of it in such a presence as this ; yet in such a presence as this it is likely to be best understood DISCIPLINE IN EDUCATION 27 that what most boys and girls need on entering college is the power to grasp clearly the meaning of a paragraph of classic text. The relations of words in a clause, or of clauses to each other are not arbitrary or accidental, but are the essential relations of logic; so that in dealing with them day in and day out, through much of our school life, we get the habit of trac- ing relationship and the instinct of feeling it. This habit and this instinct lie at the foundations of reasoning power. These give readiness and ripeness to the mind liberally trained. I have no occasion at present to insist upon the use of the ancient classics as the master ma- terials of liberal training. Many do so insist, and under other circumstances I might have some- thing to say in that direction; but let me here admit that, except for convenience, better appli- ances and immemorial habit in education, the an- cient languages have no monopoly of disciplinary value over the modern ; but the best illustration of our present point will be found in a language that is at least foreign. Note the progress of a boy in mastering a new sentence in Goethe or Cicero from the time when it is almost a blank to the time when its meaning is clear to him. He must give each word its proper meaning; must fit words to each other which are in the sentence remote ; must see differ- ences between forms that look alike often resting a decision upon a minute distinction. 28 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION The dictionary may give a dozen meanings for some word, and that will open new vistas of sug- gestion and probability into which he must boldly walk and weigh conflicting claims. He must con- stantly revise previous impressions in the light of fuller knowledge. The main purpose of all this, in the stage of which I am speaking, is dis- ciplinary, viz, to cultivate those very activities of reason whose supreme value is put to the test in every emergency of life and work. I need not delay you to go through the steps in detail, but only to remind you that in every step of the proc- ess he has been grouping facts and forming judg- ments from their relations in a crude and halt- ing way of course, but he does better and better as he goes on. There is material here for proc- esses that develop the finest judgment, just as in translation there is room for the best that the best can give discernment, precision, delicacy of insight, felicity of phrase. Unconscious growth in the interpreting intel- ligence is the fruit of this drill. It ripens through familiarity with linguistic essentials, but the real gain is in the keen insights of intelligence, in memory, readiness, accuracy, and in the breadth and alertness of mental action. The time is too brief for me to dwell upon the valuable elements of training derived from the study of science. I had almost said equally valu- able, but it is different. There is manipulation and experiment, and these make knowledge more DISCIPLINE IN EDUCATION 29 definite and more permanent. There is training of the eye and hand as well as of the mind; and at times great use and culture of the imagination. Still we make little gain here in the growth of discriminating thought in the development of the interpreting intelligence. If we pass now from the quality of discipline to the quality of the truth acquired, we shall find that the claims of science cannot be passed over so lightly. Science opens to us the world of na- ture and we rise to the apprehension of it in pro- portion to our own powers of expanding thought. The objects we study draw us on by all de- grees of interest on every hand the unknown and its challenge to the instinct of investigation, ob- jects curious, useful, objects beautiful and wonderful. In mathematics not only, but in the study of types and laws and adaptations in nature, men seem to swing out into the in- spiring task of tracing the very thoughts of God ! How time is lengthened for us when we begin to realize the duration of geologic ages ! How space deepens when we observe a star that presents no parallax in all the wide swing of our annual motion! It would seem to fall in with such a course, if, so far as general education is concerned, students were brought forward rapidly to the results of scientific research, with only enough of the ele- mentary manipulation and experiment to make these results intelligible. Some of the sciences 30 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION should be represented in the required part of a liberal course, not with exhaustive and technical study of detail, but with adequate introduction and then freedom to range among the educating ideas of science. The specialist, of course, must go further for purposes of research, for teaching, and for the purposes of application to the utilities of life. But I speak now for the majorities of average men, and insist upon the educational rather than the practical values of science. Fortunately the masses of men may avail themselves of these prac- tical benefits without knowing much about the sciences, just as we may breathe the air without knowing of its constituent gases, or be nourished by our dinner without knowing anything about Dr. Wiley's analysis of the foods, or anything sci- entifically about the processes of nutrition. One man can build a bridge if he be a competent en- gineer, millions of men may cross it without be- ing engineers at all. Far otherwise is it with culture, with character, and the ideals of life. Every man must get these for himself or go without them. Elevating thoughts are of no use to us until they have passed into the processes of our own thinking. And so we enter the glorious realm of humane interests the record of human achievement full of inspira- tion and power; the noble thoughts of great thinkers, living truths wrought out of human ex- perience, and all shaped into beautiful expressions DISCIPLINE IN EDUCATION 31 under the creative imagination of gifted men the humanities, indeed, the inspiration and the nutri- ment of living souls. To this inheritance our general courses should introduce students. We should lift them toward the level of these thinkers not for selfish refine- ment, but for the symmetrical development of the whole mind and nature. Refinement indeed it is, but refinement of power, refinement of discrimina- tion in matters of thought and judgment and taste, of faith and morals, of every interest which the student's larger life may compass. Ill PROFESSIONAL STUDY IN COLLEGE The influence of ennobling study, not only to develop the capacity to do better work, but to promote a readiness to hear the higher calls of duty, suggests the question whether we are not, in our American colleges, in some danger of yield- ing up the liberal courses too far to the practical demands of special professional needs ; and whether, therefore, we are not to be congratulated that so many institutions of high standing have been slow to yield to these demands. Dr. Parkhurst, in a recent article on this sub- ject, speaking of the criticism of liberal educa- tion, "prompted by the utilitarian spirit," says : "It is a sad pity that our college authorities are to such a degree succumbing to this shallow skepticism, and that they are so largely allowing the idea that a college is an institution for thie comprehensive up- building of a man, to be replaced by the idea that it is a sort of whetting shop where dull steel can be ground to an edge, or a kind of cabinet shop where un- shaped timber can be worked down and fitted to a par- ticular niche in the business of life." Lay broad and deep the foundations. We all PROFESSIONAL STUDY 33 recognize the need of that foundations of intel- lectual capacity, of knowledge and of training; but the foundations are necessarily narrowed a little if the student begins early to trim off some studies and select others that have or seem to have a more direct bearing on what he proposes to do in the world. There may be some compensation in a gain in fitness for special work ; but the power to do spe- cific things however well, forms the least impor- tant part of a professional man's career. For the right use even of his professional skill, he re- quires knowledge, broad training and those ele- ments of general intelligence and character, which qualify him to think well and act well under many circumstances where his special skill would be of little avail. Besides, in narrowing the lines of preliminary study, we are throwing back upon academic years the conditions of practical life, and are in some danger of lowering our standards. In the region of the practical, men are always subject to a pressure forcing the"m down to the level of the mo- tives of common business. We yield only too read- ily to that pressure, some more quickly and more completely than others, but on the whole in busi- ness the commercial motive determines the moral level. The liberal courses of our colleges should give young men a stronger and a deeper hold upon wholesome moral convictions. What the world of 84 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION business needs, so far as educated men are con- cerned, is, not that they cultivate earlier the apti- tudes of competitive business, and thus earlier di- rect their energies into the channels of self-seek- ing; but that they come to their work, if later, then the better qualified to cherish true and strong ideals of manly living, and to impart a leaven of moral earnestness to the associations of later years. We should keep the period of education as free as possible from any mere commercial influence, and as sensitive as possible to those elevating forces which come from noble estimates of life. Such estimates we derive from the examples and thoughts of great and gifted men. They speak to us in literature. The masterpieces of litera- ture are perennial fountains of inspiration in the essentials of manliness, and must be the master instruments of liberal education. To such influences youth quickly responds. "Heaven lies about us in our infancy," says the poet, and that divine radiance still lingers about the growing boy ; but there comes a time when the blood cools, and the mature man sees the celestial glory "fade into the light of common day." And that is well so far as it is mere buoyancy of life ; but so far as this spirit of youth results from the vividness of moral impressions, so far as his work is ideal in this that it is to lie within the lines of certain great principles as integrity, fidelty to trust, self-sacrifice, so far as the glow that is put PROFESSIONAL STUDY 35 upon the future comes from a heart on fire with the inspiration of these principles, this spirit ought not to be quenched. Rather the man should be more earnest than the boy, his zeal and en-, thusiasm tempered with the strength of added years. It is exactly here in one important respect that broad educational foundations have their supreme value, viz: in giving solidity and permanence to the convictions of youth ; and here, therefore, that the specializing process in collegiate study will surely be found to be short-sighted. Perhaps the -case would appear stronger if it could be said 'that even for money-making the broadly educated man has, in the long run, the advantage over the specialist; and perhaps this might be truly said, but I prefer to take the higher ground that the obligations that are upon us to do good and true work do not rest upon the money-getting motive. Eminence in professional life involves other ele- ments of success than such as are measured on the scale of income. The educated man above all others should be the one to appreciate this fact and to know that while there are business aspects of work in any profession, they are of least im- portance in determining a man's rank and influ- ence, whether in his professional work or in the many relations which he must sustain in the com- munity, as citizen, brother, neighbor and friend. The relief of suffering and the elevation of hu- 36 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION man life are ends which bring all workers to one common ground, whatever their several voca- tions ; and they are ends to secure which in any degree we must mainly depend upon those who work in the professions. Their success must, therefore, be measured on the scale of their service in these directions. In journalism, if you were looking for the daily papers and the periodicals that do most to pro- mote sound intelligence, and that exert the most wholesome influence on home life and public senti- ment and public morals, you would hardly select those that are making the most money. The same is emphatically true of teaching and of preaching; it is true also of authorship. The best books and those that have done the most good are not the ones that have brought the largest financial returns. Nor is this less true surely in medicine and the law. In short there is no element either of intelligence or of righteousness which a man may sacrifice for money-making and not subject himself to the criti- cism of having made a bad bargain, his oivn criti- cism last of all and keenest of all. It is true, a course of study in literature, phi- losophy, history, science and mathematics, may not in every case produce the results in intelligence and manhood which we are here contemplating, for there are shallow and selfish men among those who have passed through college courses as well as among those who have not; but such studies PROFESSIONAL STUDY 37 faithfully pursued should promote and do ordi- narily promote breadth of intelligence and depth of character. The atmosphere which such studies create should be favorable to wholesome and last- ing convictions. The time so spent is by no means wasted, for these studies bring many rewards. The one which we are here chiefly considering, however, is that they furnish a remedy for that narrowness of thought and life, and that shallow- ness of professional purpose of which we see so many instances. IV THE TEACHING OF THE CLASSICS ARE WE SACRIFICING THE HUMANISTIC TO THE LINGUISTIC ? Some difficulty will be felt by those of us who are not thoroughly acquainted with the methods of pursuing the classics in use in the various in- stitutions. Some indication as to the subjects upon which linguistic investigators are working may be derived from their publications in the Journal of Philology, the Classical Review, their pamphlets, and the papers they read in the Philo- logical Association and other kindred societies. Judging from these, we get the impression that the aim of classical study is an exhaustive pursuit of certain minute and special lines of linguistic investigation. The field is full of busy searchers, intent and eager, turning over every old page and every monument of antiquity that contains even a fragment of a record of human speech, in the hope of finding some new piece of evidence on syntax, accent, or some phase of formal criticism. For such purposes, and with a view to the op- portunities it may offer for original work, a text 38 TEACHING OF THE CLASSICS 39 will often be valuable in proportion to its obscurity and its real insignificance. The Saturnian verses of Naevius are better than the letters of Horace or the moral essays of Cicero. Such study is car- ried to amazing heights of specialization and cer- tainly has its charms, no doubt also its uses, though it can hardly be regarded as very productive if we have in mind the culture of the humanities, or those practical results bearing upon human progress, of which scholarship should never lose sight. Such pursuits, however, do not, I presume, fairly rep- resent the work of the class-room. The glimpse I have had of the seminar in elective and post- graduate classes in some of our institutions, would suggest that a taste for this kind of linguistic work is cultivated. Most attention is given to the critical side of exegesis, in which respect the seminar has apparently undergone a remark- able change as compared with the model of its great originator, Wolf, who gathered about him groups of enthusiastic students, and with the straightforward procedure of a clear-eyed mas- ter, took them over sentences word by word, sounding every depth of meaning, and bringing to bear out of the stores of his own knowledge weightier matters connected with the larger prin- ciples of grammar and the philosophy of speech. This was as it should be. As most students are prepared, we have to de- vote a good deal of the first year or two to the linguistic side. It must be drill, severe and hard, 40 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION and all must go through it. It is to promote fa- miliarity with the linguistic essentials, to develop quickness of memory, readiness, accuracy, insight and alertness of mental action. It must not, of course, be carried on mechanically or without proper discrimination. One student is sensitive and must be dealt with delicately; another is dif- fident, and must have confidence imparted to him ; another is slow and must be handled with some patience ; another gets into an ungoverned haste, and must be taught to reflect, and be sure of these little items of knowledge. Apart from these and similar differences, I can see no significance in what the advocates of the "new education" are urging about the differentiation of pupils on the basis of psychology. No refinement of psycholog- ical analysis you can apply to the pupil can make anything but Latin out of the Latin. The Latin is there. It is sentences made up of words that are declined and conjugated and put together syn- tactically. Its elements must be mastered, and the linguistic drill here proposed is good for all. A portion of each session should be devoted to the repeated application of the grammar to the text read pronunciation and meters, and in con- nection with both these, quantity ; sounds and euphonic changes ; noun stems and declension ; verb stems and conjugation; the formation and derivation of words, and syntax all the time this makes a good outline of work for two years. It may, however, be much shortened so far as the TEACHING OF THE CLASSICS 41 drill is concerned if students are well prepared for college. During this time longer or shorter a good deal of text will have been gone over; and a good many linguistic principles made familiar and enforced. In the meantime, further valuable results may be reached, in three distinct lines, viz, carrying forward the mastery of the language as an instru- ment of thought, so that the student and the author may come together with as little hindrance as possible ; secondly, cultivating accuracy and habits of investigation, and dealing with linguistic details by processes of observation and reasoning that will develop the scientific habit of mind ; and thirdly, that cultivation in general which litera- ture imparts, awakening the susceptibility to its humanizing influence. The student is all the time broadening the way to a better knowledge of the mental and spiritual life of the people whose lit- erature he is reading. Later collegiate work in the class-room may aim more exclusively at results in these three directions, or, if you please mainly at the last, culture. Even in this case, however, there will be an advantage so far as method is concerned, in dealing with details, in giving a close and careful scrutiny to words, not only their ar- rangement, for emphasis and rhythm, not only the allusions, figures of speech, etc., that may be found in them, but the shades of meaning with which they are used. Careful discrimination in this matter is one of the most valuable gifts of 42 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION classical study; students are ordinarily so apt to pass over words with a vague and imperfect idea of their meaning. This difficulty confronts teach- ers of English most of all. I remember a paper on the study of English read before this associa- tion some years ago, by Professor March, in which, speaking of the talk about reading Latin and Greek as we do English, he said, "There ought to be more talk about learning to read Eng- lish as we do Greek." It should be said further that in the study of grammatical elements there may be a gradation of quality such as to adapt it to the capacity of the most advanced students, leading up, in fact, to the profoundest and most important questions of linguistic science. Euphonic laws, for ex- ample, may be based on the physiology of speech ; the study of nouns, adjectives and verbs may lead on to the origin and history of declension and con- jugation; it is a further and legitimate pursuit of syntax to base the rules on principles of thought ; then it is an advanced phase of rhetorical and historical interpretation to apply the ma- turer scholarly judgment to a text and determine its authenticity the ripest and noblest fruits of study. Such criticism has its aesthetic as well as its doctrinal and formal side a point to be noted in connection with the pursuit of classic literature for its humanizing influence. In every stage of study in the classics we should be awake to im- TEACHING OF THE CLASSICS 43 pressions of the beautiful and teach students to be so. This process has its difficulties. To subject any work of art to that analytic treatment which brings the elements of its beauty to light and makes them appreciable as elements of beauty is no easy task; partly, perhaps, because there is no theory of beauty upon which we are agreed, by the application of which, such analytic treatment may be realized. Probably it will often be best not to make any parade of a special aesthetic purpose, for we are on delicate ground. When we talk of beauty, un- less the boys and girls comprehend us, we shall seem to them like stilted and affected triflers. Real art may generally be depended upon to make itself felt, and to exert a silent influence by its own inherent power. By coming again and again under the influence of this power, we rise in cultivation to be intelligent lovers of the beau- tiful. We look at a great statue or a great pic- ture, or a landscape, or a fine building with in- creasing pleasure, if we look often; so with a poem, a play, or an oration. In literature, how- ever, we do not get our impressions of the whole by a simple look, but by reading or hearing, which takes time; and if there is some disadvantage in this, there is also, something gained in intelligence and thoroughness, for we have leisure to apply such analytic tests as we have at command. The artist builds stroke by stroke. Each trait has its place and its significance, and we must take 44 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION them in as he puts them on. There is a beauty of diction, for example, the more appreciated as the fund of knowledge about words increases; clever combinations which, as Horace says, make old and familiar words seem new; there are beautiful tropes ; there is a beauty of arrangement, a beauty of rhythm, a fitness of action, if it is narrative or dramatic, a beauty of imagery, a beauty of thought. A short passage, in fact, may be a work of art in itself and may be separately studied as such. The Tiberius of Tacitus is a "miracle of art," says Lord Macaulay, but it is a miracle of art whose beauties as a whole are hardly within the reach of the ordinary undergraduate. Students of Tacitus, however, will know what I mean when I say that a single chapter and sometimes a single sentence is a work of art, with appreciable ele- ments of beauty, as marked traits of individual style, felicitous combinations of words, poetic dic- tion, pleasant variations of syntax, and most of all the masterly marshaling of thought, giving decisive unity and at the same time a variety of emphasis. A familiar example is the opening sen- tence of the second chapter of the "Annals." A convenient working theory, by the way, is this one of variety in unity. Its application may be seen in Professor March's Method of Philological Study ; and I happen to know, by reading the es- says that are presented in the contests for the philological prize, that the students make an in- TEACHING OF THE CLASSICS 45 telligent use of it in their criticism of literature. This, however, has reference to the forms of classic literature, as they are shaped under the aesthetic faculty. I should suppose that the main point would be the contents, to lift the student toward the level of the author's thinking. I say "toward the level," for to raise him to it would be a tremendous lift. The authors should be the best authors, and the books their best books. It goes without saying that the teacher must himself rise to that level ; yet by that remark we are reminded of a standard of capacity and fitness, from the test of which perhaps some of us should be inclined to shrink. There is no magic in a mere professorship, that endows a man in that po- sition with omniscient insight to master an au- thor's meaning at a glance. The hardest study- ing in our colleges is done in the rooms of pro- fessors. The late Professor James Hadley, of Yale University, I am told, even after years of class-room experience that made him illustrious as a teacher, never felt fully prepared to meet his classes, and never did meet one without hav- ing spent two hours of study upon the lesson of that period. It gives a great advantage in this respect to keep to the same books, and go over them again and again ; not to lessen the labor, but to make the labor productive of new and greater results. There is no great book that doesn't deepen to us with repeated study. We find new thoughts on every page to say nothing of new 46 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION and better modes of bringing the thought out, and presenting and illustrating and impressing it matters of the greatest importance to the teacher. We can go to any depth and still find that we are in the realm of the classic thought. Tacitus, as statesmen and philosophers, as well as scholars suppose, is an unfathomed depth of wisdom, both practical and speculative. Then the masters of classic literature condense a good deal. We should hardly think so of some of them, Cicero, for example, who generally flows along with such full and rounded expression ; but even he can condense a whole speech to a sentence, and use expressions that are fairly bristling with suggestion. Mr. Emerson wrote an essay on old age, moved to it by reading again the "Cato Major," which he praises not, I fear, without some tone of pat- ronage and thinks he has a few points which did not occur to the writer of "De Senectute." Naturally our modern life has broadened the pic- ture a little, but nearly all, if not absolutely every one of his points, can be found on the classic page, in the possibilities of meaning covered by its terse and significant phrases. One of Emerson's best items, for example, is that old age "has found ex- pression," to which he devotes two pages. It is one word in Cicero, wxit, with an environment of context, that makes it pregnant with all this Emersonian meaning. Elsewhere Emerson de- votes half a dozen pages on travel, to what is sub- TEACHING OF THE CLASSICS 47 stantially an expansion of the six words in Hor- ace, Patrice quis exsul se quoqwe fugit. Mat- thew Arnold wrote an essay and a whole volume of criticism, in both of which the central thought was the single word from Aristotle axoudaedTyz and, in fact, it seems to be a prominent feature in the mission of modern literature to draw nutri- ment from the ancient and dilute it. A grand mission it is too. Just what I would urge upon the teacher of classic literature, to expand and bring home to students as they find it suitable, or can make it suitable, the truth in the old writ- ers. This is the source of their power to human- ize, and we should make the most of it. Xenophon and Cicero and Horace are as mod- ern as Tennyson, or Holmes, or Arnold, far richer in the fruits of practical and pertinent, as well as profound thinking. They discuss questions which still confront us, questions pertaining to political philosophy, government, society, business, morals, religion and personal life. We can derive from them a world of practical prudence for our daily doings, and those influences which develop the best qualities of mind and heart. In the linguistic part of our work the aim should be a scholarly mastery of the language, that the student may be able to appreciate the shades of thought con- veyed in the words, the grammatical forms and the idioms. The gist of a passage, however, or the thought to which it may lead up by some proc- ess of legitimate suggestion may be infinitely 48 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION more important than any modal shading in its grammatical forms, and it would be a pity if we were so intent upon impressing our pet theory about the imperfect indicative in the apodosis of a conditional sentence contrary to the fact, as to let the student miss the writer's main thought. HIGH SCHOOL TRAINING IN ITS BEARING UPON CIVIC INTEGRITY The phrase "civic righteousness," quite cur- rent of late, is a protest against the ways of many of our practical politicians. "Public office is a public trust" is another statement of it and a little older, going back to the times of Mr. Cleveland; "Thou shalt not steal," still older, go- ing back to the Ten Commandments. When individuals as members of political par- ties claim; public place as the reward of political service, that seems simple, and relatively inno- cent; but when the members of the controlling group stand together and seek personal gain, get office and also get the contracts, take advantage of the influence and opportunities of public posi- tion to promote in their own behalf graft and ex- tortion and all the methods of "shaking the plum tree," that is a more serious matter. If there is some difficulty in reaching with re- forming influences those who are now in active politics, we may at least reach those who are to be our politicians in the years to come. We should inculcate patriotic devotion, and prepare 49 50 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION for efficient service, but also and much more we should promote the growth of civic integrity. What we want, however, is universal integrity that kind of righteousness which will not allow a man in passing from one department of his life to another, to drop from one level of moral judg- ment and action to another. Men quite honor- able in private life, upright in dealing, esteemed as friends and neighbors, get into public life and their conduct often falls to a level that makes a stench, yet without violating their own notions of right and wrong. Our Capitol plunderers regard their prosecution by the state as a cruel persecu- tion, and they are dying of broken hearts as martyrs ! We want our boys and girls to be sound through and through. Of course we must be prepared to meet with moral immaturity. The ethical sense develops slowly. Boys especially pass through periods not only of thoughtlessness but also of cruelty, and depravity "pass through," thank God ! and come out safe and true on the upper levels the result in some sense of a nat- ural growth but also of necessary training, home training I should say first of all. A pertinent question right here is whether the lower moral tone in high schools is in part due to the growing absence of restraint and moral train- ing in the homes. My own impression is that the modern surging of our masses in the increasing hours of leisure, up and down our streets and out HIGH SCHOOL TRAINING 51 and in to our so-called "parks" in search of trivial amusement, is one of the causes of weak- ened moral fiber, though there be no positive im- morality in the amusements. If so, the entire home suffers father and mother with the boys and girls. If so further, the trolley car, the moving picture, and the comic supplement are not unmixed blessings. They have a mighty clutch upon us they give us so much for five cents. We should all hesitate to say, however, that there is a general falling back in morals. We recognize the fact that moral progress is not a uniform upward movement, but a rhythmic move- ment up and down, like a tide that flows and then ebbs again, and sometimes we lose nearly as much quite as much as we had gained. Men push on with earnestness in certain directions of re- form, and while the enthusiastic effort lasts, the movement is upward; but when the advancing force has spent itself, the reaction sets in. Then the wave drops back, and may reach or even fall below its old starting level. That is a common experience in political reforms. Yet in long pe- riods and when we compare the present with the remote past, we do see substantial gains. But moral influence in the training of the young should be without these rhythmic lapses. There must be vigilant effort to hold a steady and, if possible, a rising level. Teachers who keenly feel that responsibility are under a strain that is never released. 52 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION I have been used to dealing with students in col- lege and thinking of educational problems as they arise there. Ethical needs make a loud call there also, and there must be constant attention to their demands. These demands are not met by a term or two of lectures in moral science. The enforcement of ethical principles must be constant, and in connection with conduct. General courses may well include instruction in moral science, but that is a matter quite different, and pursued with a purpose quite remote from the instillation of fundamental moral principles. This last may be done without scientific instruction in ethics. In- deed, I think it may be done best incidentally in connection with concrete examples of the various virtues, especially if the presentation can be such as to rouse thought, and if possible feeling but without preachment. The opportunities for this come best in litera- ture, and this is one of the prime values of lit- erary courses. Our college reading offers abun- dant openings for it, and high school reading even more so, all Greek and Roman authors, with differences of course, and the modern languages too, especially the English Bacon, Bunyan, Burke, Ruskin and Tennyson. We must use examples. The virtues have to be embodied for teaching. The young especially must be lifted to a higher level of action and feel- ing through their imaginative sympathy with the lives of others. Utilitarian wisdom won't do. HIGH SCHOOL TRAINING 53 Anything like calculating prudence is suffocating. What we need, especially for the young, is high traditions of personal heroism and faith. They cannot make ideals of conduct from the proverbs of Solomon, wise as these are, soundly as they are based on human experience ; or from any form of literature in which wisdom is condensed into nuggets. There must be embodiment that which appeals in a lively way to the imagination. That brings us back to sympathetic contact with the persons and the situations of literature. These picturesque lessons add to the real life just as experience does. Effective moral ideals are not generated by physical surroundings such as grand buildings, or fine apparatus, or great li- braries except so far as particular books when we get into them may be to us the vehicles of per- sonal force. Ideals are not generated by pre- cepts of wisdom; ideals are generated by con- tagions, by the enthusiasms of personal contact with men and women who have spiritual fiber enough to project an ideal and to impress it upon those with whom they come in contact. Your young men who go into your markets and exchanges depending upon the commercial world for their ideals of honesty will sink to the level of the commercial world in that respect and the ideal will soon emerge in some such form as "Business is business." They will do pretty well if they live up to the saying, "Honesty is the best policy" ; but that is a low standard. You can 54 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION easily detect the commercial tone of it its calcu- lating prudence. The man who is honest on that principle will expect his honesty to pay. But let that boy go into daily fellowship with a teacher who is sincere and clean of heart and life, and he will soon know that he must be honest whether it pay or not; and by the same token he must be pure and kind and patient and just whether it pay or not. Every line of suggestion brings us back to the teacher, who must therefore be the best possible, and whose distinct personal force must not be lost in the elaborate organization of school work. That is one of our dangers, for organization has its obvious advantages, of which diminished cost is one and perhaps the main one, though there is also the charm of the smooth working of an uni- fied system. It is magnificent to see in a build- ing of, say, two thousand pupils, everything go- ing on like clock-work. But it may be just about as dead as a clock, just about as far away as a clock from any transfer of inspiring influence from life to life. I have noted schools where there were many teachers of varying capacity doubtless, but all brought to about one level by methods of organization that made them like cogs in a wheel. Routine often minimizes the personal element in education. We must get back to the personality of the teacher, and take advantage of every ele- ment of the situation, and every element of char- acter that makes the personality effective. HIGH SCHOOL TRAINING 55 Colleges and universities are feeling this and are meeting the need by an attempt to bring stu- dents to meet teachers personally, or in smaller groups. The smaller colleges are doing this with- out difficulty, for their groups are already small; but our larger institutions are making a notable move in this direction. "Individual Training in our Colleges," the title of a book that has been widely read, and "The Reorganization of our Colleges," a more recent book by the same author (Mr. Birdseye) give us a clear indication of the demand. Specialization of teachers in departments of in- struction may also be responsible for some with- drawal of emphasis from moral training; not (so much in high schools however as in colleges and universities. Men prepare themselves, by all de- grees of minute research, in some special branch, and, when they take positions as instructors or lecturers, they seem to feel responsible only for a certain modicum of instruction without much re- gard to personal influence and character. At the recent meeting of the International Kin- dergarten Union in Buffalo, Mr. Percival Chubb made an address in which he had something to say on the comic supplement. I saw a notice of the address in a recent weekly and should like to quote a few lines from it. "I found," he says, "no diminution of that distressing vulgarity which seems to be growing upon us in our great cities. Vulgarity a flaunting commonness of mind ap- 56 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION pears to be a product of the great city. I at- tribute the inroads of this vulgarity to the de- cline of reverence, the lack of any awed converse with great things, an insensitiveness to what is fine, distinguished, holy. It is what I have to cope with in the young city people, in high school and college, in attempting to quicken their deeper admiration for great literature; commonness of mind, a cheap flippancy, a lack of refined humil- ity; of reverence in short. It is vulgarity at its worst that thrusts its impertinent tongue at us in the comic supplements, in crude violence of color, in grotesque distortions of the human counte- nance and figure ... in the caricatures of elders, aunts and uncles, grandmothers and grand- fathers, aye, mothers and fathers, who are trans- formed to clowns in order that pert youngsters may have their little jokes. . . . More and more the function of the school and the teacher becomes that of providing a protective environ- ment in which for a few hours every day the child shall be surrounded with influences of health and quiet, of order and simple beauty. The school has to save the child from the unhealthy and un- lovely world outside. That is a deplorably nega- tive function. We cannot rest there. We must transform the environment. We must begin with ourselves by working for a clean press and, above all, for a dignified Sunday press." That is a notable point the "deplorably nega- tive function" of our work. In morals and in HIGH SCHOOL TRAINING 57 the building up of character in men and women it is mainly protective. We are in the midst of a widespread abandoment to superficial amuse- ment that is enervating, vulgarizing, in many in- stances demoralizing, and one of the duties that confront teachers is to create and stimulate a taste for better forms of amusement. The comic supplement, the moving picture and the suburban park will do anything to get the nickels. We must do our utmost to get the boys and girls. VI EFFICIENCY THE AIM OF EDUCATION The ideals of education are variously conceived and expressed, sometimes quite crudely. A New York daily paper recently, in response to the per- plexity of a college president who found in the assets of his institution $200,000 not invested, promptly replied that the proper thing to do would be to invest the money at five per cent, and secure one good professor at ten thousand dollars a year ! A heroic idea, but somewhat of a venture, there are so many items of qualification that money can not pay for or secure. You can pay for a man's time, for his knowledge, perhaps for his talent in certain directions, for his skill in do- ing specific things ; but his genius and the ability to inspire, you cannot pay for these, or demand them in fulfillment of a contract. They are too subtle and personal to be commercialized. Then, sympathetic insight into the real purposes of education ; devotion, a man's downright and life- long devotion to a good work for the making of men, can you buy these? or be sure of getting them by laying out a liberal sum in payment? 58 THE AIM OF EDUCATION 59 Then the element of mere size, I hesitate to say greatness, for while there are great teachers, there are not many ; but size at least, that breadth of thought and sympathy that gives a man an outlook beyond the margins of his own depart- ment, we must have that. One of the unfortunate tendencies in our ex- panding institutions of learning is that large faculties are likely to disintegrate, falling into groups or schools, and the groups into individuals, so that any one man, competent in his own place, meeting his own classes and busy with them, may so concentrate upon these subjects and these classes as to be narrowed to that specific line, his interest and his sympathies circumscribed, until he may come to think that his department is the whole thing. But in every intelligent scheme of education, the departments of instruction are not merely put side by side, articulated, but enter into each other as in an organic union. They have a com- mon vitalit}'. Knife the Mathematics and the Philosophy will bleed, History, the sciences all studies in fact in which accurate thinking is nec- essary. Strike the Latin and it is the English that gets a black eye. Men must be large enough in comprehension and quick enough in sympathy to see and feel this vital unity between the parts of a system and to give its real value to each branch though quite remote from his own. There are certain results that the college as a 60 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION whole must achieve and that are not reached by the mere imparting of a modicum of instruction in each department separately, but by coordina- tion; by each working with the others and each availing himself of the others' help ; and especially in inspiration, by each opening for men the gate- way to higher standards in the best things. That is the secret of efficiency even in matters the most practical. In doing the work of the world, we see that men must go up, or in the long run they must go out. Take the simplest illustration, the men that make the fires in locomotives on our railways ; out of every hundred, seventeen step forward to the throttle of the locomotive ; six of this seventeen are advanced to locomotives on what are called "passenger runs." There is this sifting of men on the basis of their capacity to take responsi- bility. What then becomes of the eighty-five? Well, there is room for them to rise in firing ; and so long as they increase in efficiency on their own level they are safe ; but if they do not so increase, there is other work for them in the switching crew, or the round house, or on the roadbed and they must go out. That is true of every level of labor. It is a law, inexorable; rather a grim law it would ap- pear at first glimpse, but really benevolent and cheerful, for it is the basis of the noblest optimism that we can entertain, and for this reason; it is easier to go up than to go down. Note the rise THE AIM OF EDUCATION 61 of a man in his business or his profession, and you will see that every step of ascent brings him to his own, to that in which he is at home; the lawyer, from the irksome task of writing, to dictation to a stenographer; from his petty cases to his impor- tant suits at law that involve great responsibility, in every item of his work or any man's work; even in so trivial a matter as his movements from his home to his business, from trudging on the sidewalk to riding in the trolley, from that to his carriage, and in each for the first time with the feeling and look of one in his native air. Next year you will see him in his Packard, and it fits him ! You might think he had been born in a Limousine ! Now put that man back from his Packard to his wheelbarrow and how does he look? And how does he feel? This is the hope of humanity, that men can go up and be at home. We can go down too, of course, but the whole atmosphere of a lower situa- tion is striking and offensive to us, and we can only by degrees and with resistance settle down to it. It is so in social adjustments, so in culture, so in art. Raise a man to better social conditions than those to which he has been accustomed and he will feel an expansive thrill of adaptation that will make him instantly at home. Let there be an uplift in culture, in literature, music, or any art and the soul flutters with the joy of a new possession, a new and congenial environment ; but 62 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION you can't go downward in society, in culture or in art without a chill. It is so in morals, so in the achievements of the spirit. There is no compulsion toward the downward way. No man can plead his evil in- clinations as an excuse for his fall. Dr. Osborn used to tell us that "total depravity can no more take a man to perdition, than gravi- tation can take him to the cellar." He can go to the cellar if he wants to, but if he wants to he can mount to the chamber of the king. Of course men do go down and it often seems like an easy drift; but the way of the trangressor is hard. Judas went down, was it easy? Nay, it was the hardest thing he ever did. Note his hesi- tation, his stings of conscience; note that every step must be taken against an inner protest, that the memory of his innocence brings a fresh smart at every turn. The poets from Homer to Tenny- son have been telling the world that "sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering better things." Judas had stood under the radiance of the Mas- ter's presence, on a level with those who could heal diseases by a touch or a word. He cannot de- scend from that height without the sorrows of a revulsion. He would gladly recall the deed if he could. He can take the silver back and fling it on the table of those with whom he has bartered, but, the deed remains, and he passes from regret to remorse, from remorse to despair and from despair to suicide. He is down and out! THE AIM OF EDUCATION 63 But note the other disciples who were obedient to the upward summons, drawing nearer and nearer to him who was the source of their life, always rising from one level of discipleship to a higher level; and was it hard? The easiest thing they ever did ! Rising in influence and power and each rising to that which was his own place. It is the very nature of spirit to be qualified by inspiration for these sudden betterments of condition. Any upward movement is in response to the natural aspiration of the soul; and uni- versally we go upward with joy, downward with regret and chagrin. This point may well be earnestly pressed, for it is the secret of efficiency, the animation of young life with a reasonable incitement to im- prove. None are more open to such wholesome ambitions than the young and it should be a ruling factor in the aim of those who teach to set for those they teach, high standards in the best things. It is important also that our progress in gen- eral, depends largely upon this spiritual uplift of individuals. I am not speaking of material progress. A high degree of advancement in externals, as in wealth, abundance and wonderful inventions, may co-exist with moral relapse and decay. But real progress is what we must seek, the increasing prevalence of ennobling ideas and aims in com- munities as wholes, growth in knowledge not 64 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION only, but in character and in general welfare. We see that the forward movement in these di- rections is exceedingly slow. It is impossible to lift masses of men bodily to these conditions and sometimes there is even a backward pull. Prog- ress appears to be rhythmic, rising and falling, and not infrequently each fall is deeper than the last. It is pendulous, swinging this way and that ; and sometimes the forward swing falls short of the one that preceded it. The more need then, of these personal influences that are the chief agencies of progress, not only that individuals may rise out of their environment, but may then turn and devote their lives to the task of improv- ing that environment. Higher education fails in its main purpose if the college does not set high standards for men and women in the best things, and thus qualify them to be themselves centers of this progressive influence. VII SIMPLIFIED SPELLING * The fraze "simplified spelling" limits the dis- cussion to the changes proposed by the philolog- ical societies. These changes hav receivd authori- zation by being introduced as a supplement into the Century Dictionary, and constitute a mod- erate stage of amendment as compared with the fonetic ideals of reformers; yet so difficult is it to introduce any variation from the establisht or- thografy that it becums a serious question whether even so small a change as this is feasibl. I shal discus a singl hindrance, viz, the feeling, amounting to a prejudice, in favor of the forms of words now familiar to the ey. We hav many and delicate associations with the writn or printed word, and any tampering with its form offends us. There ar literary and scolarly associations : it givs a Greek scolar a chil to see phlegm speld flem. There ar professional associations : a professor of physics would feel robd of half his dignity if it wer speld fysics; and there ar personal associa- tions of various kinds. Foren words, too, cling to their nativ habits, * The spelling in this address exhibits some of the changes recommended by the Simplified Spelling Board. 65 66 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION and it would seem proper that they should do so up to a certain point. When they hav becum thoroly naturalized they may wel yield to Eng- lish analogies. Very litl fault is found with pro- gram, brought into conformity with diagram, epi- gram, etc. It wil be useful to attempt a classification of our peple in their relations to this prejudice. There ar, first, those who ar set down in the census as illiterate, amounting to sumthing like seven mil- lions. Then a class not enumerated, perhaps two or three times as many as the illiterates viz, those who read, but who do so with so much diffi- culty, spelling and stumbling along, that the ac- complishment is a source of very litl plezure or profit to them. Then the foren born, who lern to speak English with no great difficulty, but rarely master the intricacies of English spelling. This clas wil fall litl if any below ten millions. Then, fourthly, scool children, a large majority of whom ar in daily strugl with the spelling book and the reader. Uniting these four classes we hav an ag- gregate of more than fifty millions to whom any amendment of orthografy that woud make lern- ing to read easier woud be an unmixt good. My point is that from these classes we should en- counter no prejudice. They must sacrifice noth- ing, not even feeling. Many of them know just enuf about our spelling to visit upon it, under the impulse of the clear instincts of truth and reason, the hatred it deservs. SIMPLIFIED SPELLING 67 A fifth class, from whom no prejudice would be encountered, comprises those who, whether as the promoters of scolarship and the science of lan- guage or from motives of economy and filan- thropy, favor the reform. In the remainder of our eighty-five millions we find the curious results of the habit of much read- ing. The art of printing found the English in rather a chaotic condition orthograficaly, and in course of time the printers gave it uniformity. They fixt it arbitrarily often, according to their conven- ience or their ignorant notions of what it should be. We read it as they printed it, and think it must be so it cant be otherwise. So vivid and permanent ar the impressions of eyesight that the printed word becums the word to us. We cum to luv even its silent letters and its uncouth combi- nations, and regard them as necessarily and organicaly a part of the word. Cut off the b from thumb and the word is left mangld and bleed- ing! A litl serious candid reflection would convince us that the writn word is a ded thing. The living word is that which is spoken. Whatever there is that makes a word analogous to an organism is to be found in the connection which exists be- tween the organ of the mind and the organs of speech, of such nature that states of mind produce movements in the latter. As we ar constituted the organs of speech ar vocal, tho we may eke 68 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION out meaning with what seem to be instinctiv ges- tures. The mind seeks to utter itself by vocal movements, not by movement of the musls that write or the musls that print. There seems to be a faculty of speech, the result of our natural constitution; but writing and printing ar inven- tions. Language has its natural growth and changes according to certain laws ; writing and printing ar mechanical operations, every detail of which may vary arbitrarily. Our attachment to the printed word, therefore, is a matter of associa- tion and habit. I hav brought this matter to a test in my own experience. I onse had a strong preference for the establisht spelling; a reluctance to depart from it ; a tendency to associate the fonetic forms of words with illiteracy and ignorance; but that feeling has holely past away. It has been my practice for many years in my own writing and very largely in my correspondence to spel accord- ing to fonetic standards. The result is that I hav broken up the habit of thinking and feeling that t-h-o must be written t-h-o-u-g-h. T-h-o is the word to me, nor do I hav to eke out its mean- ing by a mental picture of the larger form. Even in homonyms I hav no difficulty. Whether it is sum m/oney or a sum of money, it is all the same to me (provided it is enuf), and I instinctively spel it s-u-m in either case. I conclude, therefore, that those who think the printed form is properly the word are simply un- SIMPLIFIED SPELLING 69 der the influence of a very strange spel. When it cums to reasons, we are apt to base our preference for the establisht spelling ion the claim that it is historical; that it suggests the derivation of words, etc. In many cases, it is true, the silent letters ar the monuments of vanisht sound ; but it seems a strange economy to make the word itself, that must pass current in daily and hourly intercourse, the lumber-room of its own worn-out machinery. In a surprizing num- ber of cases, however, the spelling of English words is misleading as to derivation. The g in sovereign suggests a connection with reign; but it is from superanus. The s in island suggests isle and the Latin insula, with neither fof which it has anything to do. The word is properly Hand, and was so speld in erlier English. The s in isle also is a comparatively modern interloper; for tho the word is ultimately derived from insula it came into English in the form He from the French. The w in whole conceals the derivation of the word ; the I in could is a blunder ; so the h in ghost, the g in foreign, the i in parliament, and in scores and hundreds of words letters hav been introduced in reckless violation of etymology. Many of our spellings also ar simply pedantic. Indict came to us from the French in the form indite; but when Latin came to be studied again and it was discoverd that the ultimate derivation was from indictare, c was inserted as a record of what? Sumbody's erudition! So victuals Chaucer 70 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION spels vitaille, directly from the French. Our present spelling would suggest that the word came from Latin victualia, which is not true. And what shal we say of such cases as tongue? a simpl Anglo-Saxon word, of two syllabls origi- nally, but which lost its ending by fonetic decay and was then increast by the appendage ue either in burlesque or servil imitation of the French langue. I am, inclined to think it was a joke, as the playful paragrafers now put -ov&ky and -vitch after familiar English words in burlesque of Tol- stoi. But think of petrifying a stupid joke like that in the permanent forms of language ! Think of compelling a dozen generations of English- speaking children to lern it, and as many genera- tions of writers and printers to write and print it ! Then think of brilliant scolars, at the cloze of this nineteenth century, coming before us to defend the spelling on the ground that it is "pictur- esque !" Take now a case where the silent letter is justi- fied by etymology. The I in alms is historical, but how few there ar to whom it is significant of derivation; how few that regard it in any other light than a conventional flurish. Take your city, with its 250,000 or more peple, not 250 of them, not more than 25 of them, write the word and read it with any consciousness of the origin of the I. Must 250,000, then, be compeld to lern just where and how to place this I, which is never sounded, in order that 25 Greek scolars may hav the satisfac- SIMPLIFIED SPELLING 71 tion of being reminded of its derivation? Be- sides, you coud think of the derivation if you cared to just as wel without the silent letter. In fact, the I is a mere fragment of the history of the word. Why not hav a more complete and ampl record? Go a litl further back and we find almes; a litl further, almesse; then almpsen, almosna y almosina, elemosyna, until we reach the Greek eleemosune ( Asyfjtoffuvy ) . There would be sum advantage in this fuller etymological form. We should at least avoid in print the puzl of the final s, which tends to bring the word into use as a plural, whereas it is singular, as we see from Acts iii: 3, "askt an alms," and in Enoch Arden "Enoch set himself, Scorning an alms, to work whereby to live." It is fobvious enuf, however, that words need not carry their hole history about with them and dis- play it at every recurrence on the printed page. The history of words is recorded in literature, and it is the business of dictionaries like the Century and the great one of Dr. Murray to collect this history and exhibit it in convenient form for con- sultation. It would be a great gain in furnish- ing materials for the history of language if sounds should cease to be represented to the ey when they cease to be heard. If the I in alms had ceast to be writn when it was no longer pro- nounced we should be able to mark that point in 72 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION the history of the word with certainty for which we must now depend on other and less satisfactory evidence. To return for a moment to the classification of peple with reference to the ease with which they read. It is very far from true that the good readers easily lern to spel and lern onse for all. With most of us it is a life-long strugl. We ar slaves to the dictionary, and when there is none at hand we turn our frazes so as to avoid the doutful words. We want to write deferd, but ar not sure whether there should be one r or two, so we say postponed. Like the man who sent a writn message to his fysician, saying, "Cum over im- mediately; we hav a very painful case of small- pox at our house." The doctor hurried over in great alarm, examind the patient, and said, greatly relievd, "It's not smallpox; it's rheuma- tism." "I knew it," answered the man, "but there wasn't a soul in the house who coud spel rheuma- tism." We tamely submit to the hardships of English spelling under the mistaken impression that our words, if not speld as they ar, would not be Eng- lish words. Let us hope that as a result of these conferences the lerned societies of Washington, and especialy the Anthropological Society, may, on the authority of the filologists, make use of amended spelling in their publications, and thus aid in removing the hindrance offerd by unrea- soning prejudice. VIII WILLIAM CASSIDAY CATTELL, D.D., LL.D. There have been two heroic periods in the his- tory of Lafayette College. The one to which we look back with the most kindly glow of feeling is that which culminated in the early sixties, when our great war was going on. War, always bad, was particularly bad for Lafayette at that time, for it was one in a series of discouraging strokes. The income of the College was rapidly falling off, the President (Dr. McPhail) resigned, the faculty dwindled away because of the inability of the au- thorities to pay their salaries, the students, what few there were, were scattered, many of them to the army, and in 1863, the year that General Lee invaded Pennsylvania, there were no commence- ment exercises at all. It became a serious question whether the Col- lege could go on. In this crisis a few of the pro- fessors Professor Coffin, Professor March, Dr. Coleman, and Dr. Eckard volunteered to keep the doors 'open and keep the classes going for an- other year, satisfied with whatever might be forth- coming in the way of salary. That was a very 73 74 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION fitting action in a place known for "plain living and high thinking," but, as things go in the world, so uncommon that I call it heroic. Surely here the nobler life of the scholar was not stifled by greed. There was no attempt here to set up the value of the bread of life where it could be measured by commercial standards. It was a very fitting action also to be the start- ing-point for a career rof growth. These noble men had that reward, for it was in that very year that the Board called Dr. Cattell from his church in Harrisburg to the presidency of the College. The clouds broke at once. Everybody was glad. Dr. Cattell was already well known here. He had been a professor in the College for five years be- fore 1860, He was known to be a gifted man, with the tastes and ambitions of a scholar, the' refinement of a gentleman, the tender sympathies of a woman, and a strong man's force of char- acter. He was bold to undertake, alert and active to execute. He felt a strong love for Lafayette, and put his shoulder under her burdens with a smile of confidence that brought hope to the hearts of all her friends. The history of the College records the fulfill- ment of that hope. From thirty-nine students in 1863 there were that many nominally on the rolls the number rose steadily to three hundred and thirty-five in 1876. There was a correspond- ing increase in the number of professors from eight or nine to twenty-four. New courses of WILLIAM CASSIDAY CATTELL 75 instruction were soon added all the technical courses and the whole scientific department. Building after building arose Jenks Hall, the Observatory, the wings of old South, dwelling- houses and dormitories, with Pardee Hall as a central charm, but last of all the Gymnasium. The grounds were enlarged, graded, and beauti- fied. The Campus was like a kaleidoscope, to which every now and then a turn was given and a new combination of beauties flashed upon our sight. Dr. Junkin, the first President, lived to see the fulfillment of his dream of "lovely Lafay- ette." In twelve years the funds of the College were increased to something like a million dollars. There is not time here to speak of these benefac- tions in detail, or even to name the givers, some of whom are still living and still the firm friends of Lafayette. We never pass this point, how- ever, without mentioning one name, Mr. Pardee, whose original donation of twenty thousand dol- lars gave the first impulse of advance, so far as that depended upon money. When that check came Dr. Cattell was overwhelmed. He had worked for it, prayed for it, but it was too good to be true. Mr. Pardee later multiplied that gift by twenty, but no money ever came that caused greater joy than that check for twenty thousand dollars. Of course it would be too much to say or imply that Dr. Cattell built up all this upon nothing. There was a college here and had been for more 76 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION than thirty years. Its site was unexcelled for natural beauty and for the convenience and suit- ableness of its surroundings. It had done much good work and was beginning to have its honored traditions. It had thrown out some strong roots into the soil of this "Forks of the Delaware," but as yet had drawn through them only a precari- ous support. There had been and were then here some notable men of science and learning great teachers. Dr. James H. Coffin was here, Dr. Traill Green, both of them towers of strength. Dr. Lyman Coleman was here; so was Dr. Fran- cis A. March, a younger man than any I have yet mentioned, but Dr. March came early to be a master. Even at that time he had laid the foun- dations of that magnificent career in linguistic science and educational work which has long been and will ever be the pride of this College. Pro- fessor Youngman was here, a tutor then, vigorous, loyal, and rising to his high place as a teacher. Dr. Moore was here, just graduating, and get- ting ready for the splendid work he has since done and is still doing. While, therefore, those days of '63 were the days of small things at Lafayette, they were be- ginnings which had in them infinite promise. Dr. Cattell had the penetration to see that, and the ability to develop those promises in all the direc- tions of their prophetic outlook. In those be- ginnings let me not fail to note the speedy call- ing of Dr. Porter, in 1866, an alumnus, and now WILLIAM CASSIDAY CATTELL 77 a veteran in the service of the College, who has endowed it with the rich fruits of his scientific and literary labors ; and of Professor Bloombergh, in 1867, who brought to us the wealth of his Ger- man scholarship, and has been throughout one of Lafayette's main supports as a teacher. Such beginnings there were, such men did Dr. Cattell have about him and get about him, but the great force was in the man at the head. His was the impulse, his the directing energy. Noth- ing was done at random. Not a dollar was added to the endowment, not an acre of ground to the Campus, not a man to the teaching force, not a branch of study to the curriculum, not a building erected, not a path laid out or a shade- tree planted, but it had its particular place in the larger plan that lay very definitely in Dr. Cattell's mind. His purpose was to make this beautiful place the home of a great and useful institution. Scholar as he was, excellent preacher as he was, it soon became obvious that his best gifts lay in the larger field of administration. In the varied work of the College, in its enlarging sphere, he himself was the heart and center of it all. Every department, whether technical, scientific, or literary, had his cordial sympathy and his full support; and his counsel, kindly given, was al- ways judicious and enheartening. Students and professors alike felt a keen and tender sense of the presence of a strong and loving leader. It 78 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION was a master stroke of the Doctor's, and he made a habit of it, to foster favoring influences and wisely marshal their application. As I look back upon the days when I came to college, in 1868, I recall with growing admira- tion the hold which that man had upon this com- munity, not the College alone; that he seemed to have in his hand and to mold it easily to his desires, but this whole city. There was a time when these cities belonged to Dr. Cattell, and were in a high sense his for the College, never in his own purpose for himself. Every house was open to him, and in many and many a home there were men who were his brothers and women who were his sisters, who welcomed him as they would a dear pastor in times of festivity or sorrow, who liked to have him marry their sons and daughters, a kind of bishop of the town ; and many a story is quietly told of his kindly service that would be too personal and too tender for public speech. A strong and earnest man, devoted as he was to a good work, always gets a good grip. But add to these qualities a most genial temper, a very warm and sympathetic heart, and an ir- resistible grace and courtesy of manner, and we have a combination that gives a wonderful in- crement to a man's usual forces. Dr. Cattell used these helps to the full. He got friends for the College in that way, winning them first to himself and then securing their interest in the WILLIAM CASSIDAY CATTELL 79 institution. "He had wondrous winning ways," says Donald G. Mitchell. The success and permanence of Lafayette be- came his one ambition and grew mightily in him. He was young enough and free enough when he came to let it become a controlling factor in his career, to adapt himself to it, to enlist his powers in it, and let it give a strong tinge to all the motives of his personal life. Add to this the fact that the work was on that higher level where the qualities of a man's spirit appear in what he does, where he puts the stamp of his personal character upon it, and you will not wonder when I remind you that for years the College was Dr. Cattell and Dr. Cattell was the College. Of that group of noble men who stood by him as his helpers a few only are still with us, and these still at our President's right hand, Mr. Hollen- back, Dr. Knox, Dr. Curwen, Mr. Long. Others are now fittingly represented there by their sons, Dr. Waller, Dr. Hand, Mr. Pardee, Mr. Adam- son, Mr. Fox, Dr. Green, as if so noble a service should not be interfered with by the limitations of human life. Any of these older men could tell you far better than I can how Dr. Cattell carried this College upon his heart to the people, not only extending and multiplying' the sources of her help, but also enlarging the sphere of her influ- ence. We knew him better here in his relations to the inner life of the College. His thought 80 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION seemed to take in easily every detail of the great work; his hand was everywhere, but with a soft and winning touch; in discipline, if more firm, it was never hard always tender. There was nothing like official arrogance. He came down from the presidential chair and sat by the boy. I have been present at these interviews and heard him talk to one and another under censure. It was like the talk of a father or brother who loved them, not upbraiding them, or seeking to bring home to them a sense of the badness of their con- duct, they usually had that already, but speaking of the grace of God, and reminding them that all of us, whether president or pro- fessor or pupil, were in perishing need of that grace to keep us right. To discipline or have occasion to discipline one of the students was harder upon the good Doctor than upon the boy ; harder upon the good Doctor, if possible, than upon the boy's mother. And what genial soul he was! Socially a center too; ready and responsive, the delight of every company he entered. In those great days there was an unfailing flow of good fellowship and good spirit from him. He could mingle the playful with the serious with inimitable grace and with a tact that had in it a touch of magic. In the matter of discipline his constant effort was to prevent the occasions for it. He was al- ways seeking to create and foster a wholesome WILLIAM CASSIDAY CATTELL 81 College sentiment that would frown upon and prevent improper conduct. In this work he en- listed students and teachers alike. Events that might become occasions for discipline a class supper, an annual sleigh-ride, or a campaign of hazing were anticipated and controlled by bring- ing to bear upon all, and especially upon the master spirits, an influence that kept them within bounds. In these matters the use of his persuasive skill, turning upon traits I have already noted, almost amounted to a foible; I mean in his habitual re- sort to it, and his taking a kind of pride in it. He could wrap a committee of students about his linger like a plaything; with winning grace and sparkling pleasantry he would press his point even when seeming to make concessions, and could instantly turn objections into the persuasive points of his own argument. The result always was that the committee stood with the Doctor, but sometimes it was more because they were persuaded than because they were thoroughly convinced. Dr. Cattell was, as I have said, scholarly in his tastes and ambitions. He often delivered most acceptable lectures on learned subjects. He was a lover of the best things in literature and art, but especially fond of the ancient classics. He had made a special study of the original scrip- tures of the New Testament, both in doctrinal and linguistic directions ; and as for Latin, with- 82 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION out the least indication of pedantry, he would often quote a most apt and telling passage from Cicero or Vergil. He frequently spoke to me of his desire to make an edition of Lactantius, and in fact began it, but the calls upon his time were too many to permit him to finish it. The Doctor was a good preacher. This had originally been and in some sense always re- mained his life work. He had profound convic- tions as a man of God. He would base all the instruction of the College upon Christian culture, with the Bible as the foundation. Always in his heart and always ready to leap to his lips was an abiding anxiety for the spiritual welfare of the College. Its religious services were his, and he was never absent from them when he was in town ; and never during that time, so far as I can recall, did I hear such an expression as "compulsory at- tendance" of religious services, as though there were any compulsion about it ! Prayers were a part of the life of the institution, and always should be, and there was nothing in the atmos- phere of the place to suggest that it was an un- essential part of that life, and might therefore just as well be abolished. Dr. Cattell, as I said, was a fine preacher. He did not compass (as what man does or can com- pass?) all the avenues by which spiritual truth finds its way to the human heart ; but he gave good sermons, ringing with sound doctrine and rounded with polished phrase. On certain levels WILLIAM CASSIDAY CATTELL 83 of earnest personal appeal he was well-nigh ir- resistible. Such, in very brief and inadequate outline, was the man who was our President for twenty years from 1863 to 1883. It was a period of abounding life and enthusiasm. The College cheer was invented in that period about 1876 and the Campus began to resound with its ring- ing La-fay-ette. The Doctor himself fixed upon the maroon and white as the colors. Athletics began to be cultivated; College groups began to pose before the camera, and no group was com- plete without his genial face. Enthusiasm was aroused by creating and fostering here that which could become the center and the object of warm and loyal feeling. We learned to think of the College in that way, as a permanent institution not only, but also as a living thing which appealed to and re- sponded to affection. The founders had some- how breathed into it a life of its own. The Col- lege is a being analogous to an organism, but of a high kind: it feels, it rejoices, it hopes, it en- dures, by reason of the onflowing currents of its own life. What calamities it can suffer and still survive! I could tell you some of them; you yourselves know some of them. Twice Pardee Hall has been in ashes, a matter of no great con- sequence in either case. We thought otherwise at the time. We stood dumb when it was burn- ing, and wondered what was going to become of 84 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION Lafayette. But how easily we go on, only a little compression, a little inconvenience for a few weeks or a few months. Such a calamity does harm, of course, but not vital harm. You must go deeper than the buildings, deeper than the grounds, deeper even than the men who happen to be here, to make a fatal stroke at the life of the College. It can stand abuse; it can endure to be misrepresented to its public, to have the facts of its inner life distorted and falsified. It can have unruly students and still live. It can stand lukewarm or even disloyal alumni. It can stand incompetent professors, half a dozen of them, and still live; because in the opera- tions of its healthy life such errors will be cor- rected. A defeat, for example in an athletic contest, does not do us a hundredth part of the harm we imagine it does ; nor does a victory do us a hun- dredth part of the good we imagine it does, that is, imagining on the basis of our feeling at the moment of defeat or victory. The one factor which we leave out of the account in these hurried judgments of ours is the deep and constant flow of the College's life, so that occurrences on the surface affect it but slightly. It has had its birth; it has been fostered into vigorous growth and strength. I speak of these things because they have a special pertinence on an occasion like this. Every man who has lived here and done a good WILLIAM CASSIDAY CATTELL 85 work has made some contribution to the spirit of the institution, to its life. What a debt of gratitude we owe to the men of the early time who planted and fostered this growth ! And what a contribution to the life of Lafayette was made by Dr. Cattell, who poured into the fund of her vitality his thought, his spirit, and his devotion during those twenty years, and never ceased to cherish her to his last hour! We owe to him a monument. Each of us should rear in his heart a memorial to Dr. Cattell, and inscribe upon it, in grateful recognition of his worth, "A man of God, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." IX PROFESSOR FRANCIS A. MARCH. LL. D., L.H.D. It has not been easy to think of this occasion as a formal and stately memorial service, but rather as a more familiar and intimate conference suited to the gathering of this larger family of the College. To all but the most recent addi- tions to the Faculty, and to all students but the very latest class, Professor March was a familiar figure, present at all our games, or strolling about our campus or through our streets ; and even to those who did not know him as a teacher, he was pointed out reverently and well known as "Lafayette's Grand Old Man." A grand man indeed! One who has left to us the heritage of a great life, and not to us alone here at the College, but to this community and to the world-at-large. He was great in many directions, and many fields are claiming the fruit- age of his labors. What a lawyer he would have been ! What a legislator ! What a Judge in some great court ! Indeed his first resort to teaching was a makeshift, as often with young men of limited means, two years at Leicester and 86 FRANCIS A. MARCH 87 two at Amherst. But he had decided upon the Law as his profession and began the study of it during this last engagement. His further study and early practice of law was, however, inter- rupted by weakened health and he was obliged to seek a warmer climate, settling at last for a few years at Fredericksburg, Va. I note these few biographical details only to indicate how it was that he came to Lafayette. Dr. McPhail was the principal of the Academy in which he was teaching in Fredericksburg, and Dr. McPhail was soon called to the pastorate of the Brainerd church, Easton, and a little later was made President of the College. He knew this Francis A. March as a teacher and called him to Lafayette as a tutor in 1855, and two years later that tutor was made Professor of the Eng- lish Language and Comparative Philology. It was the fashion then in the progressive in- stitutions to recognize Comparative Philology as worthy of a place among the departments, or to share in a place. Usually it was Sanskrit and Comparative Philology, as at Yale and Harvard. It was the study of Sanskrit about 100 years ago that opened up the comparative study of languages. Few people knew much about the Sanskrit, but it seemed a fitting thing to place this venerable speech and literature of India, with Comparative Philology, in some dignified emi- nence upon a pedestal in great institutions of learning. It was therefore a bold innovation 88 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION on the part of the authorities at Lafayette to bring this science of Language down to the level of this modern vernacular of ours. But the in- novation was soon justified, for within a few years it was evident that Professor March, instead of lowering Comparative Philology, had raised the English and the Anglo-Saxon with their splendid classic literatures to the high level of the sister- hood of the Indo-European tongues. He had heard lectures of Noah Webster and had been under the instruction of Professor W. C. Fowler, author of what has always seemed to me the best English Grammar we have ; and he had ideas of his own about the teaching of English a philological method. There was then talk, and there has since been a good deal more of it that we should read Latin and Greek as we read Eng- lish. Professor March's idea was that we should read English as we do Latin and Greek! That is, with minute and critical inquiry into words, not only their history and forms and uses, but the laws of speech and the laws of thought, and all that is pertinent in geography and mythology and history the history of the times and the history of the race. For his students and for the teachers that were soon turned out by scores and hundreds, who were competent to conduct the teaching of English in a similar way, text-book were needed and within a few years came the "Method of Philological Study of the English Language," the "Parser FRANCIS A. MARCH 89 and Analyser," and soon, the "Anglo-Saxon Reader," and then the "Comparative Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon Language," a book that made an epoch in the progress of linguistic Science. The elements of the curriculum soon began to bend toward and find their unity in this course. All the language studies in particular reached their solid coherence in being so adjusted as to contribute, each in its own way, to the applica- tion of Comparative Philology. Professor March rose to be a peer of the Masters in this, the men under whose inspiration he caught his first im- pulse, Professor Max Miiller, Jacob Grimm, Fran- cis Bopp and George Curtius. To accomplish such a work in a special field might well be the height of a scholar's ambition, but we must not stop here. There are endow- ments that give the great and wise man freedom in all fields. We find our scholar not only fore- most in English and Comparative Philology but taking high rank as a clear and profound thinker and worker in other directions : in Philosophy, in Pedagogy, in Natural Science, in Lexicog- raphy, in Law. From time to time as needed he had classes in Greek and Latin and in the modern languages ; for years in political economy, and in Psychology to the end of his active life. Indeed his influence was felt throughout the teaching and governing forces of the College, molding its curriculum, its discipline, its policy, its educational methods. 90 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION The presidents leaned upon him. Dr. Mc- Phail, Dr. Cattell for twenty years, Dr. Knox, and Dr. Warfield, and no president ever had a more loyal colleague. On any important subject of faculty action, he would clearly state his views, and if the president hesitated to agree with him, and still hesitated to take a course in opposition I recall one memorable instance of the kind in the best days of Dr. Cattell Professor March quietly remarked to the great relief of the presi- dent, that he thought it his duty to state his views frankly in conference, but if the president wished to adopt a different policy, it was for him to recognize that there might well be more wise ways than one of meeting a crisis ; and when the president chose a course, it was for him to fall in and do his utmost in helping to carry it out. Then in the sixties came that great expansion in the study of the sciences, the applied sciences, our Technical courses. They came in response to the needs of our industrial environment this busiest end of the old Keystone State. Note right here at the Forks of the Delaware, the net- work of railway tracks, and the bridges that span our streams, the mineral resources near by that must find an exit here, and the many enterprises of manufacture whose success depends upon the results of the nicest chemical analysis. Of course there were other competent men here to ajd in this new departure Dr. Cattell himself FRANCIS A. MARCH 91 at the head of it, alert and keen-eyed, inspected technological institutions on both sides of the Atlantic; Professor James H. Coffin, a master in his department of physics and astronomy, and a brilliant pioneer in meteorology ; Dr. Traill Green, with a wide reputation as a physician and a chem- ist ; Dr. Thomas C. Porter, an authority in botany, and well versed in other natural sciences ; but every one of these would say what I now say, that in the organization of these courses and in that whole period of expansion as throughout, our genius in education has been Dr. Francis A. March. But in dwelling upon these broader aspects of educational work, all Lafayette men will feel that I am missing the main point Professor March as a teacher in the class-room. We thought him great in every field of learn- ing. We might have been mistaken in that, but in the weight and power of his personality we made no mistake. We made no mistake in think- ing him a wise man. That may include high at- tainments in learning, but beyond that we think of his profound discernment, of his judgment, sensitive to the guidance of conscience, coupled with a noble rectitude absolute intellectual and moral integrity; then his fortitude Cicero's fortis atque constans not however the stoical attitude of mere resolute submission to fate, but the nobler fortitude of a Christian faith in mat- ters pertaining to God, and of a clear and great 92 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION understanding in dealing with the problems which our life imposes as the tasks of our intelli- gence. He impressed us as so simply yet so grandly sincere. What he stated to us seemed the solid truth, clear in its statement and convincing, not by any show of wisdom, but by its very breadth and finality. In the class-room the subject was something, the text-book something, but the man was everything. He dealt with great subjects in their elementary aspects of course, but even there the clear depth was always revealed, and earnest students soon caught the habit of wait- ing for his least word of explanation with bated breath. To students of his, his personal influence on young men will appear to be his greatest achieve- ment. To win young men is a most fruitful form of success to help them discover their capacities, and learn how to use them, to inspire them with principles, and so come to their moral rescue at a critical time, to help them often to specific pro- fessional equipment lawyers, ministers, journal- ists, business men, teachers hundreds of them have gone out from Lafayette College, who have caught their most vital inspiration from him, and so far as possible his method and the quality of his spirit. He taught men to think. He kindled in them the love of truth, and then when their interest was aroused, would furnish their minds by the FRANCIS A. MARCH 93 ministration to them of the judgments of his own maturer wisdom. And how modestly he would do it ! One might think it much more important from his attitude, that the class should hear what some student thought about the subject, than what he thought. Always himself a learner, and a humble one, no matter what was the source of the knowledge. "Never a pair of eyes made that were not well worth looking through," he said. Then a man of high standards of conduct and duty ; one who with ease and confidence though with humility could walk out into the light of the divine requirement and measure the items of our human life with true measurements ; not an easy thing to do, so many little standards that we ap- ply to ourselves, comparing ourselves with our- selves or with others, that when we see one in greatness and simplicity of soul come out strong and square himself up to truth and God's stand- ard that's a man who lays hold of us with the power of those who walk in high places; and if, as it is said, 99 out of every 100 moral questions of life are to be decided in college, it is a grand thing for a student to have in any way the lifting fellowship of such a nature. No man who knows Professor March and has sympathetic apprecia- tion of him, can think of him and then turn and decide weakly or meanly any question of life's morals. Professor March was a diligent worker, took upon himself arduous tasks, but worked easily, 94 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION "with free mind" as he would say, and even in his hours of leisure was far from idle, being much given to easy and cheerful brooding. I say cheerful that you may not think of it as moodiness. "Simmering of thought" he called it. He would walk up and down, or latterly, sit at some of these points of vantage where there is a fine view, of which there are many here about us and thus leisurely taking the scene in, and thus filling the currents of his life with the best that nature could give would think not aimless and random thoughts but of some definite subject, with some definite aim. It was his theory of productive, and I may say of creative thought, that, with open mind and its processes gently di- rected in definite channels, letting the unforced activities of the mind flow easily on, that is the condition in which a man does his best intellectual work. He pondered much thus upon the unsolved problems of language, its origin, growth, and changes. On one occasion he spoke to me of a group of facts in our own language, hitherto un- explained, and said that he had thought more about it than about any other subject except, perhaps, some of the great moral questions. He solved it too, and the solution stands unchallenged in his Anglo-Saxon Grammar. I speak of it here only as a hint of his mental methods. It is well worth knowing how such a man gets hold of truth and forms conclusions. FRANCIS A. MARCH S5 He reached truth by keen and accurate ob- servation and by patient thought. Facts would lie clear and true on his eye, in their even value and relations, without any hindrance of distrac- tion, or any intervening medium of prejudice; and his sense went straight to the critical point of inquiry. Then he who notes truly the relations of facts will be able to organize the separate items of knowledge and arrive at laws and principle. This is a rarer, a larger, and a nobler work inas- much as in promoting the welfare of men, ideas and principles have a value far exceeding the value of facts. In Dr. March's case we come to this highest level of scholarly activity. He was a "worker for progress," "devoted to the con- quest of nature, the discovery of truth, and the welfare of the race." He looked out intelligently upon the busy world and knew the needs of men ; and while he felt to the full the charms of erudi- tion, his aim and his delight in scholarly pursuits was to do work whose results contained the prom- ise of utility. That is the golden motive of the "scholar of to-day." It was at his initiative that scholars and edu- cators of England and America took up the en- terprise of simplifying our English orthography. That was in the early seventies when he was, for the first time, President of the American Philo- logical Association. Eminent professors and edu- cators rallied around him, an association was 96 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION formed of which he was President, and an Inter- national Association in 1876, and in the course of a few years the scholars here and in England had done their work under the leadership of Pro- fessor March; that is, they had clearly pointed out the need, the method, and the processes of the reform, and had provided a suitable alphabet and a long list of words, about four thousand, in which the simplification might well begin. What remained to do was to overcome ignorant prejudice, mountains of it! It was not the work of a day, or a year, and the progress already made and still being made, quiet but substantial and even rapid, justifies the sublime faith of the leader that these mountains could be removed. Those who have been his students find them- selves, as the years pass, under a deepening sense of their obligation to Professor March. They speak of it in quiet tones of reverence not very definitely often not so much his teaching of Eng- lish, or Psychology, as something in HIM. It is not easy to speak definitely of the influence of personality. We must here take into account that transfer of power from life to life, those intellectual and spiritual contagions by which the strong impart themselves to others. The ideal situation for this transfer is that of discipleship. There is no dream of the mystic that is not realized in the working of mind upon mind and spirit upon spirit in this relation. Our FRANCIS A. MARCH 97 finest experiences come to us in this way the joys of discovery in the intellectual world, the sense of added power in the realm of personal force. There's healing in it, there's new birth in it. When it comes at the word or the look of the greatest of teachers, when the hem of his gar- ment is touched and the flow of blood is staunched, we call it miracle, and so it is ; but it is a miracle which in its lesser manifestation recurs in our daily experience. There is a teacher's touch at which the scales fall from the eyes, and the blind receive their sight ; and many an Elisha takes the mantle of the master, and with it parts the hin- dering elements, making a way for himself, in which he walks in the strength and in the spirit of the greater man who taught him. Such was the influence of Socrates not so much that he taught men though he did teach them, as that he inspired them; and of Scaevola -not so much for the soundness of his legal responses, as for the character of the man inspiring a confidence that nothing could shake. We name in this connection our great modern teachers, Dr. Arnold, Dr. Nott, Dr. Hopkins and others and we add to it the name of Dr. March, rich in the treasures of mind, strong in convic- tion, with a sincerity and a force of character that gave weight to his every word, and that made his very presence a benediction. He gath- ered class after class about him, became venerable in the work, and lived and still lives under a 98 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION widening halo of tender memories. I think of him often as a noble freeman in the commonwealth of intelligence, associating there with the great of all ages, uplifted by their fellowship, thinking their thoughts, warmed by their sentiments and cheered by their hopes. He has often spoken to me of Scipio's vision, that rarest gem of ancient literature, and I have sometimes wondered, without quite daring to ask him, what special feature of it pleased him most; whether that little drama of the human life con- tinued in the starry world, where the younger Scipio talks with Africanus and presently asks, "Is my father Paulus here ?" "Why, yes ; do you not see him coming to you now?" And the boy turns and rushes into the embrace of his father, pouring out as he says "a flood of tears" ; or whether the Platonic argument for immortality. Hardly that, however, for Professor March would not need Plato's argument though he might admire it; or perhaps the vast expanses of the starry universe. At one point they are trans- ported as in the speed of thought to the radiant circle of the milky way, and from there look back; but the earth and all the planets and their sun have dwindled to a mere point scarcely visible. I think I have noted that his eyes would brighten at that ; or whether the divine mission of our hu- man life, for the lad would stay with his father even as Peter would have stayed on the Mount of Transfiguration. "Not so," says Paulus, "lest FRANCIS A. MARCH 99- you seem to shirk the human service to which God has assigned you"; and then talked to him of his high duties to men. I am sure that no ideals were more firmly held or more tenderly cherished by Professor March than his ideal of loyal service to humanity. We have heard him read the strong words of appeal on this very subject in Phi Beta Kappa, and have seen how deeply they affected him. The lip would soon quiver, the eyes moisten, the voice falter and the hands so tremble that he could hardly hold the book. He could think big thoughts and thrill with fine sentiments. He lived very near if not well within the margins of that realm whose mighty realities hover over us, whether we know it or not, and whose forces are the forces of spirit and of truth. X PROFESSOR MARCH Your president has asked me to say a few words about Professor March. The time is too short for more than one or two glimpses, and these had better be in the way of reminiscence. Of course we feel not a little pride in the great- ness and fame of our "grand old man" ; and I would emphasize that last his fame, because a few months ago at the time of his death, some of the papers, especially here in your own city spoke with some discouragement about it. One of the best editorials I saw, in the main substance of it, was headed "An unappreciated scholar." It never would have occurred to me to think of Professor March as unappreciated. He had most sincere and discriminating recognition, at home in his own city even popular recognition. When we set aside a Founder's Day to honor him, as we did a few years ago, the city of Easton joined us most enthusiastically. The schools were closed so that teachers and children could come to the hill ; the Mayor and the city councils came in a body ; the stores were closed at certain hours and business men and citizens thronged to 100 PROFESSOR MARCH 101 the college; the Board of Trade came in a body and so of other civic organizations and the fire- men made it a day of parade. So popularly ; but in educational and scholarly circles he was held in highest appreciation. For years he was easily our foremost linguistic scholar and was twice president of the American Philological Associa- tion. The English universities gave him most distinguished honors and savants on the conti- nent, especially in Germany were singing his praises in a long chorus. But his fame is not our first or dearest thought even now; and certainly was not when we came to college twenty, thirty, or forty years ago. He was famous even then. He had published two or three articles on philosophy in the early sixties and they were within a few weeks reprinted in Edinburgh and made the Scotch and English philosophers sit up and rub their eyes, and even in France their great philosopher Cousin promptly sent to Professor March a request that he be the editor of the American edition of his works. Yet it was not his fame as I said, that we thought of first, but that we should go to his class-room Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, at 8 o'clock and perhaps at other pe- riods of the week. Those were glorious hours, long to be remembered! His masterly develop- ment of subject matter from the text-book, it didn't much matter what the text-book was any 102 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION old edition of Demosthenes, De Corona, any old text-book on the constitution, or mental philoso- phy Haven of all things in the world! The modern psychologist comes along and pushes it out as stuff; and rightly too, for the method of studying psychology is very different from that of forty years ago. But we had the man and the book did not matter. He opened for us the gates of thought, not merely that we might look within but that we might walk within. He taught us to think. There was a directness and simplicity in his method. We must stick to the main point never dodge the main issue and if we halted or had difficulty he would encourage us and guide our faltering steps. Those were strenuous hours, hours of conquest and all the pleasures of it, the joys of discovery in the world of the intellect and the sense of added power in the realm of personal force. The hours were too short for us. Do you remember how we lingered in the room when the period ended, not to interview the Professor, but from sheer reluctance to leave the place? And how patient he was ! and kindly and help- ful. Earnest students found in him most ready sympathy and aid in all their difficulties ; indiffer- ent and indolent ones also got what they needed and deserved, rebuke. So tempered with kindness often that the boy didn't feel the sting of it until he had had time to think it over; then he might feel a pricking under the fifth rib, not fatal though it felt so, but in the end salutary. PROFESSOR MARCH 103 I remember an instance when we were having a class conversation on culture and the studies that promote it. One fellow blurted out rather recklessly, "All studies are culture studies." The Professor's eyes twinkled a moment, then his face quickly sobered and nodding his head slowly, he said, "So, so ; then you are using the word culture in a sense that is unknown to me." That might be a confession of ignorance and the fellow might at first throw out his chest in conceit thinking, "Now I have arrived, for I have found a meaning of culture that Professor March did not know." But surely a little reflection would bring out that saving sting and if he went to his dictionary for definitions of culture, if he turned to his books to read about it, and to his fellow students and the professors to talk about it, if by any means he came to the first gleams of that truth that cul- ture is not knowledge or training, but is the re- finement of intelligence and of taste and of life and that if one get it, he gets it by mastering the thoughts of men whose thoughts have moved and are moving the world, by the ability to appreciate the creations of men whose work represents the best in art, and by winning to his intellectual and moral make-up the best in human life, if I say, he came to the first gleam of these realizations, he achieved that which in itself represents a value far above the cost of his whole college course. Such was very often the value of his keen, though kindly rebukes. 104 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION I remember one occasion when he administered such a correction to a whole class. Thursday mornings at eight, the whole college went to him for "Elocution." There would be declamations by a few members each of the three lower classes and short original orations by a few seniors. When the first of the Juniors had spoken there was generous applause to which the freshmen, present for the first time, added a noisy stamp- ing of feet. When it ceased Professor March said, "I would request the new students not to applaud with the feet. We don't do that here." Giving little heed to this request, the class, at the conclusion of the next declamation, repeated the offensive clatter of feet and the Professor quietly remarked, "I asked you not to applaud with your feet. If you are not sufficiently interested in a speech to keep still when it's ended, clap your hands !" I said a moment ago that he taught us to think; but there must be food for thought and first of all he taught us to read. We could run over the lines and pages glibly enough, but we got so little from them. Working with Professor March we soon saw that when an author has writ- ten out his thought, any word in that text may be a gold mine. Well do I remember our first recitation with him, in Trench "on the study of words." The first lesson had been announced: "the Preface." "The Preface indeed!" we thought, we sopho- PROFESSOR MARCH 105 mores who had acquired all the learning in sight and were crying out for more worlds to conquer, were we to be started out with a "preface"? We thought that an author might dawdle in his preface play with his subject; so also with the introductory lecture. What we wanted was to plunge at once into the very thick of his sub- ject-matter. So with some indifference we opened that preface those three or four pages of coarser print than the rest of the volume. How easy and simple it was ! We knew it at a glance and soon finished our preparation ; but the next morning at recitation we found that we knew nothing about it. What did we know of the "Diversions of Purleigh"? What did we know of the mistakes of Horn Tooke or of the fine figure of Coleridge that speech is like amber, .not only in its efficacy to circulate the electric spirit of truth, but also in embalming and preserving the relics of ancient wisdom. But we didn't get as far as that, floundering rather in the first page or two of that simple preface, learning to read. We were to learn it from his methods of handling a subject and from what he required of us. His first question was, "What is the first thought in the preface"? So we were to read by thoughts. The opening sentences seemed easy about the original audience, and the changes required to adapt the lectures to a larger circle ; little trou- ble here except with the puzzle of "those rather than these" ; but when we came to the statement 106 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION that "for many a young man his first discovery that words are living powers, has been like the dropping of scales from his eyes, like the acquir- ing of another sense, or the introduction into a new world," there we met our Waterloo. "What does Trench mean by 'words are living powers,' Mr. McKnight?" McKnight arose, blushed, rested his hands on the bench before him, wrin- kled his brow, and made a guess wide of the mark evidently, for without comment the Professor called Mr. Wiely. "Words are living powers, Mr. Wiely?" Wiely, impulsive, just then rather incoherent, stammered something that did not de- lay us long, for immediately Mr. Harris was called and Wiely sat down. "Living powers, Mr. Harris?" "A figure of speech," said Harris. "Ah." And we thought Harris had scored. "Please explain the figure." His explanation did not make it clear, and with a merry twinkle of the eye the Professor said, "You had better consider it plain speech, not figurative; living powers, Mr. Hudson?" And Harris took his seat. So with Hudson and Bradley, and Owen and Douglass. We were called by lot and awaited our turns with some trepidation now, wondering too why it had not occurred to us to think of all this and prepare for it. Then Lewis was called. "Powers, Mr. Lewis; are words powers at all?" "And what does that mean?" Here was a ray of light and a simpler beginning; a new advance also in the process of teaching us to read. First, PROFESSOR MARCH 107 read by thoughts ; secondly, when you come to a complex thought, analyze it. Lewis was of opin- ion that words are powers, and by hints and helps here and there, he and others brought out pretty clearly that words convey from mind to mind ideas, arguments, reasons, influences, and so are powers. "To return to 'living' powers, Mr. Watkins, what does he mean by 'living'?" "Clear, vivid." "Clear means bright by deriva- tion. Is a thing alive if it is bright?" "No, sir, not necessarily." "Then 'clear' will not help us. What does 'vivid' mean?" Watkins hesitated. "What is its derivation?" Watkins still hesi- tated, so while he stood, the question was referred to others informally, and it was soon found that by etymology "vivid" means "living," not an ex- planation but another word meaning the same thing. But Watkins thought that words made "vivid pictures." "Which is alive then, the word or the picture?" An audible smile here relieved the strain, and at this break the Professor took advantage of the moment and told us what Trench meant by "living powers." His few words went deep into the faculty of human speech, but were so strong and clear and true that I venture to say that no member of that class has forgotten them. " 'Like the dropping of scales from his eyes,' what is the allusion, Mr. Young?" Young arose, but at once took his seat again. Springer, a ministerial student, here made a "rush," telling 108 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION us about Saul of Tarsus and his experience at Damascus. The whole substance of the story was drawn out. Another hint about reading, viz, in reading a little book like Trench one may have to dip into a hundred other books. " 'Like the acquiring of another sense,' what does that mean, Mr. Barber?" "A sense in addi- tion to those we have." "How many have we?" And Barber could tell, and could name our five senses, another "rush" by the way. "What other sense might we have, Mr. King?" King is in doubt about it and prefers to sit down. So with Bryan and Swartz and Glover. Then, when we were all straining our thought, peering into vacancy for a new sense, came again a few keen, clear and strong words from the Professor, mak- ing us aware of the limitations of our senses, and of directions in which it is at least conceivable that we might have a larger access to the knowl- edge of things. In our preparation of the next lesson there was, you may be sure, a notable improvement in our method of reading. Pro- fessor March never lectured to us. He talked to us frequently in this way, always catching the psychological moment of keenest interest, when thought was alert, and all the avenues of intelli- gence clear and open ; then he would drop in these nuggets of truth, these judgments of wisdom, like germs in their possibilities of rapid growth. A thousand grateful tributes for these quiet talks rise from the hearts of his students. He PROFESSOR MARCH 109 found his way so easily to the deepest facts of science, and with equal ease and impressive unc- tion to the deepest principles of life, down to the substance and value of knowledge of training and of culture. We talk much and hear more of the "practical" in education, of the "utilities" in courses of training; but I want to say that I have never known a man who had a truer and a firmer grip on the practical values in education, or a finer touch of finger on the pulse of our human life in its vital needs and issues, than the man who in 1868, at Amherst college, delivered the Phi Beta Kappa address on "The Scholar of To-day." That was Professor Francis A. March. In that address, without knowing it very likely, and certainly without intending it, he drew his own portrait. Of course he couldn't but do so, for it was his ideal scholar, and toward that ideal, in his own life and labors he steadily advanced for the next forty years. He was a man of fine ideals. None held more firmly than he to the ideal of loyal service to humanity. While he was reading a strong pas- sage on this very subject from Emerson we have often, in Phi Beta Kappa, noted that his lip would quiver, his voice falter, his eyes moisten, and his hands so tremble that he could hardly hold the book; and the emotion of the reader touched us even more than the thought of the writer. 110 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION A modest man, modest but strong, with a large and worthy estimate of his office, and a solid re- alization of the sacred character and value of such a work as his a work great in itself and great in the spirit and purpose with which it is done ; and when we come to reflect that our char- acter is the result of the methods we employ, and the spirit that animates us in doing our work, we see what a fund of loyalty and power such a man gathers to himself, what a grasp of things that are best, what a measure of faith and of that divine patience which is the supreme solvent of life's problems. XI INDELICACY IN LITERATURE Bringing out new and attractive editions of certain alleged "classics" of English literature raises anew the question as to what books are fit for popular reading, and what ones should be put out of reach on the reserve shelves of public libraries and never looked at. The moralists who take the law in their hands as against the money- making book-sellers have a summary way of set- tling the question ; but the trouble with this method is that a good many of those who look on while the battle rages, feel a kind of sneaking desire to know how bad, after all, these books are. Pruriency is not checked but rather excited and guided into specific channels and they devise ways of getting hold of books secretly which they can- not get openly. Of course, indecency, which is nothing but sheer indecency, has no claim to toleration; but if a book is classical, if it has a certain fame on its literary merits, that fact reconciles the literary classes to its more objectionable features. It is as if we should say, "we will not allow men to circulate vile chromos of nude figures, but ill HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION Titian's 'Venus' is quite another thing." Mar- lowe's dissolute character finds abundant expres- sion in his plays, but there is a kind of rude great- ness in him ; and he stands in such a relation to the rise of the modern drama that his writings, the critics say, are entitled to a place among our books. Those whose ideas of literary propriety are formed upon our current reading, who find de- light in the clean pages of Dickens, Howells and Longfellow can form no adequate idea of the grossness of much of our earlier literature. Men and women seem to have delighted to hear all the incidents, drolleries, intrigues and vices of hu- man life plainly spoken of. In the times of Rich- ard II and Henry IV all England was reading or hearing the "Decameron" and laughing at its situations. In fact, as a nation, we were then following the fashions of Italy, as York says in the play: "Report of fashion in proud Italy, Whose manners still our tardy, apish nation, Limps after in base imitation." And no courts of Europe were more luxurious or more licentious then, than those of Italy, es- pecially that at Milan. Among other fashions this one of writing and reading bad books came in: "Lascivious meters to whose venom sound The open ear of youth doth always listen." INDELICACY IN LITERATURE 113 When an Englishman takes on Italian manners the result is something phenomenal; at least the Italians think so, for they have a saying : "Inglese Italianto e un diabolo incarnato." Perhaps a similar opinion came to prevail even in England; at least they could not fail to see that the travel- ers were bringing home foreign vices with them; and Ascham distinctly condemns the practice of sending young men to Italy for education, unless good monitors went with them. Was Byron then an Italianized Englishman? Surely Chaucer was not. He loved the southern poets, and entered with delight into their airy, joyous moods, got inspiration and material from them, but to the last and more and more he re- mained in seriousness and sturdy sense an Eng- lishman to the backbone. In point of delicacy and moral tone as well as grace, he is a vast im- provement upon Boccaccio, yet the "Canterbury Tales" reproduce for us only too faithfully the manners of a coarse and sensuous age. The books that best illustrate this trait of our literature are not much read now. Some of them have fallen into deserved oblivion, others are un- der the ban of a criticism inspired by a higher moral sentiment, and still others are practically sealed books except to scholars, being unintelli- gible by reason of the antiquated style and dic- tion. As for Shakespeare, he is above criticism on any ground that makes this or that trait the fashion. We read him without scruple in private, 114 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION and on public occasions simply skip the coarse passages or tone them down to our more refined standards of taste. Shakespeare, however, is among the best of his time in this respect. Even Spenser, who brought his rich imagination to the treatment of sacred themes, and whose life and nature were singularly pure, must be expurgated for modern readers. It is in the dramatists, however, that indelicacy reaches its highest point. Greene, Marlowe, Beaumont and Fletcher, Decker, Webster and Massinger, vigorous, free and fierce, ready at any point to leap into extravagance of profanity or passion. Indeed if the actors would "tear a passion to tatters to split the ears of the ground- lings," the play-writers gave them plenty of pas- sion to tear. Every scene has a murder or some bloodcurdling atrocity. In the midst of all this there was much unclean- ness, not only in language but in action. The pageants too included obscene exhibitions. Those who heard the plays and saw the festive proces- sions and read the books of Queen Elizabeth's time, heard utterances and saw scenes but little better in point of purity than those of which we get glimpses in the pages of Juvenal. The Puritans put a stop to this, but there came another reaction with the Restoration and the turbid stream came to the surface again in Wycherly, Congreve and Farquhar. These and other such corrupters of literature and the stage INDELICACY IN LITERATURE 115 did not go unrebuked. Jeremy Collier notably made a vigorous and heroic attack upon them in a treatise on the Profaneness and Immorality of the stage, the effect of which was to almost revo- lutionize public sentiment. The best rebuke, how- ever, has been the silent verdict of time and ad- vancing morals. Indecent works have dropped quietly out of thought and knowledge and only the pure survives. There has been a sure movement through the centuries from grossness toward refinement. Women have become not only readers but writers and actresses. Books are made for them and by them. The true spirit of chivalry, a growing regard for and delicacy toward woman prompts a fitting response to her presence in literary life and enables her to impress her own virtues upon language and thought as well as upon society. There are two phases of our present condition in this respect which claim notice. One is this fact of a substantial progress as compared with the past, in the direction of pure thinking, pure living and pure speech. The popular taste will not bear with the treatment of gross subjects, nor gross language in the treatment of any sub- ject, and there can be no question but that in this we have made a great gain for the cause of mor- ality. The other point is the tendency to erect con- ventional standards in language, so that we have more regard for the phrase than for the thing. 116 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION It leads to a species of euphemism which can hardly be called a gain. It is often merely the word that is objectionable, not the thought, for that we try to express by another word which, while it has not this meaning may by some easy turn of the mind be made to convey it. Our language in its history shows a consider- able drift of meanings as a result of this habit. The word "lewd" once meant no more than un- learned. "Vulgar," "lust," "paramour," "mis- tress," etc., have a history of the same kind; so also that whole group enumerated by Trench, which he says : "Men have dragged downward with themselves and make more or less partakers of their own fall." We see in these the record of the tendency to be scrupulous in the choice of phrases, they having been used at first by a kind of euphemism to con- vey grosser ideas without offense, then gradually appropriated to such uses. This fashionable delicacy runs out to absurd extremes. Common words come to be shunned for their very commonness. We must call a "spade" by some more elegant name, and in this way a good many every-day home words that contribute so much to the vigor and expressive- ness of our language are passing out of polite use with a positive loss to speech. Max O'Rell in his good-natured satire remarks, that Eng- lish women are much more easily shocked by the name of a thing than by the thing itself, and INDELICACY IN LITERATURE 117 characterizes the English tongue as "euphemis- tic," a language that uses undecided words and "always beats about the bush." I have no doubt that in many drawing-rooms, where these notions of delicacy prevail, to say "a meal of victuals" would be enough to put upon one the stamp of vulgarity. It is possible too that this fastidiousness may extend far enough to affect the makers of litera- ture, and thus set narrower limits to art, and even put genius under some restraint. In the ex- ercise of creative power, men need to be unfettered. All that is true must be open before them for their use. Humors, levities, even vices and sins as well as the higher and better features of life and character find a legitimate place in the best forms of art. The aim and effect may still be to elevate and purify; in fact if the truthful working up of the materials of nature into forms of beauty ever fails to have that effect, it is not because there are vicious characters and gross allusions, but because we stop at these, take them out of their relations and fail to see the work in its unity. "It is coarse in the subject-matter," says the Et- trick Shepherd of Pope's "Abelard and Eloise," "but, 0, sirs! powerfu' and pathetic in execu- tion ;" and the power is for good, and the pathos the genuine stirring of wholesome feeling. If the writer's fidelity to his subject is over- ruled by the dictation of material or form on the 118 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION part of his readers, there must be distortion some- where, some affectation, some reserve, some cov- ering up of a forbidden element at which, per- haps neither the moral instinct nor the instinct of art would take offense. Chaucer's "Miller" is a "cherl," but he is in the Canterbury party and must tell his tale, and that is the poet's apology. "I pray, For Goddes loves as deem not that I say Of evil intent, but that I mote reherse Hir tales alia, al be they better or werse, Or elles falsen som of my matire." lago is not too great a villain for the part he plays, but his villainy would not be half as vil- lainous if the core of it were not distrust of the virtue of women. Woman's fortress is her virtue ; man's is faith in her virtue ; but lago has no faith, he is dismantled, a loathsome wreck of manhood. The character would be but imperfectly drawn if this feature were not shown us, as it is, by his coarse speeches. He makes capital of his real character, and flings out his gross thoughts with a rudeness that sickens the sensitive Moor. And thus he plays his part. Hamlet's rude talk to the sweet Ophelia may be looked upon as a part of the unsolved prob- lem, which that great character presents, though most would be free to say that Shakespeare had better have omitted that part. Queen Elizabeth would see Falstaff in love, a passion of which this INDELICACY IN LITERATURE 119 "huge hill of flesh" was utterly incapable, that is, in any true and honorable sense of the word ; so the poet does the best he can in the "Merry Wives of Windsor." The thought arises then, that so far as a truly refined taste and a sense of real moral distinc- tions are the basis of our standards, there is no restraint upon genius nor any danger to morals ; but so far as our ideas are conventional, mere matters of fashion and affectation, the mincing proprieties of the parlor without the soul of moral sense, there may be both a restraint upon creative power and great danger to morals. The character of much of our late popular literature goes to show that we are too easily satisfied with the form of decorous language, for- getting that a gross thought may lurk in a decent phrase. It is here as in our spiritual conflicts the devil may clothe himself as an angel of light. The most dangerous representation of impurity and vice is not where it stands out in the clear light, but where it comes almost to the surface, and is veiled with elegance of phrase just thick enough to hide all its deformity. The suggestion gives play to the imagination which, in the young especially, is only too ready to take fire and dart out to the very extreme in the direction of im- purity. Much depends upon the writer's power. He may raise us to higher regions of thought and experience and rouse feelings such that any low 120 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION suggestion would be impertinent if not impossible. King Lear can start no commonplace associa- tions. Much too may depend upon the writer's man- ner and motive, upon whether or not he writes with a conscience. One feels no protection from the author's con- science in reading Dryden, or Swift, or Byron. "If you find anything bad here, make the most of it," is what we seem to read between the lines. Sterne will sacrifice dignity and decency alike, to raise a roar of laughter. He must move you, if in no other way he will mount the pulpit and in- stead of saying "let us pray," will toss his peri- wig at your head. We pass along from chapter to chapter in "Tristram Shandy" with a feeling not unlike that with which we watch the antics of a monkey. "What queer thing will he do next?" How different was Goldsmith! There is mat- ter in the "Vicar of Wakefield" that we should say must be handled with great delicacy, yet we see no trace of effort. With perfect frankness, ease, and purity the whole story is told. George McDonald and George Eliot have equal frank- ness and delicacy if not the same quaint sim- plicity. Becky Sharp is a fallen woman if ever there was one, yet there is no passage in "Vanity Fair" to which the most innocent and impressible nature may not turn without the least fear of contamination, INDELICACY IN LITERATURE To see vice and coarseness cannot harm one morally if he is made to turn from it with a shudder of disgust ; but to dress impurity up and make it seem attractive, to lead you almost up to it and make you wish to go further, as so many of the novelists do, is indeed to endanger morals. We should wisely discriminate and give no li- cense to "That soft persuasive art That can without the least offense impart The loosest wishes to the chastest heart." XII BOOKS TO BE READ BEFORE GRADUATION Anyone who goes far enough to make serious inquiry about what books to read is not likely to go astray for want of advice on that score ; for there is substantial agreement about a few great books, and the recognition of their excel- lence is widespread. At this stage of the inquiry it seems to me somewhat more important to touch upon matters connected with the purpose and method of reading. It would be a gain if students could earlier learn to regard the great books about which much college works centers, as other than mere school books, Milton, Bacon, Spenser, Goethe, Lessing, Moliere, Homer, Plato, Xenophon, Cicero, Horace, Tacitus. That change comes sooner or later to anyone who is to receive much benefit or pleasure from the best literature, and so I am in the habit of asking the boys not to sell their college books, and to dust them occa- sionally even after graduation. It is rather strange that such advice should be necessary, but it has been, and to some slight degree is even BOOKS TO BE READ 123 yet. It seems like sacrilege to dicker away one's college Homer or Horace for a paltry half-dollar. That is a great day in a student's experience, when some passage perhaps a single line from one of the old poets, or some glowing period from the old orators or historians, lifts him suddenly to the realization that these college task books are the sources of a mighty inspiration. So I would say learn to read the books of the curriculum, so far as they are books to be read, and cultivate a preference for one or another as it may make a special appeal to you by its form, its thought, or its suggestions, thus laying the foundation for a more thorough study of it as a part of your life habit. Such a hold upon a single book often proves to be an ample intellectual resource. It is not quantity but quality that tells in education. "Read much but not many works," says Sir Wil- liam Hamilton. If the object is to specialize and get together knowledge about any particular subject, that requires reading of another kind, and must be spoken of separately. That pre- supposes general culture, or the two processes may well go on together ; but in general, broad knowledge is not promoted by wide reading, but by close and studious reading; and for this pur- pose ten books would be better than a hundred, and possibly I may say that three would be bet- ter than ten. It may be well to make a note here of what 124 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION we mean by reading. Much of our talk about it sounds as though it were a simple and rapid process, and that reading a book were to go through it in this way, glancing over its sen- tences once for all. With many books that is true ; but with those here considered the method should be very different. Comprehension is the point, and these great books are not mastered at a glance. Their truths are too large to be conveyed immediately from the page to the mind, or even from one mind to another by speech. We find constantly that readers go over passages without getting more than a glint of the thought, sometimes not even that. We get on by train- ing, so as to read better; but ordinarily we come up to great truth slowly by leaps now and then, it may be, but creeping for the most part to- ward it at first, then nearer and nearer by repeti- tion until we get to it, that is apprehension; then, if we are capable and keep on, we get around it and above, seeing it from many sides, that is more like comprehension. Great books must therefore be carefully read, read time and again, if what is in them is really to be transferred to the mind and there be wrought out into ideal shapes. That is what makes them educational. This gradual catch- ing of great meanings is a wonderful developer of intellectual power. It feeds, too, as well as exercises. Speaking of working out the materials of lit- BOOKS TO BE READ 125 erature into ideal shapes brings up in another way the suggestion that mere reading is not enough. If one tells us he has read Emerson's essays on "Manners" and "Civilization," it may mean much or it may mean little. The impli- cation would, however, naturally be that he had read them and therefore knew what was in them. Even supposing that to be true, knowledge is not all. Such reading is for discipline and discipline in its results is partly knowledge, partly readi- ness of thought and judgment, partly the ca- pacity for noble action. Here is where reading touches or should touch that inner fiber which we call character. We do not read a book merely to know what is in it, or even to be able to tell what is in it, but also to construct for ourselves ideals which shall be guides in our thinking and living. Another point of great importance is that we should learn to take in a writer's truth just as he means it undistorted. The power to do that makes a very good measure of one's capacity to receive the highest benefit from education. In this we find great differences. Some men are so intensely preoccupied that it seems impossible to displace their own thoughts, and books in conse- quence make little impression upon them. We read our own ideas into the pages before us. I know a man who has been a close and careful student for forty years. He has a hobby, how- ever, and is perhaps what we should call a 126 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION "crank." At any rate he deliberately reads his own pet theories into every text he opens. That is an extreme case, but we are all tainted with that malady. We close our minds to any but our own truth. That we recognize with some fi- delity, but all the rest we either ignore, or give it some sort of relevancy to our sphere of inter- ests by distortion. A clear eye and an alert and unbiased mind that's what we want in reading. As Lucretius says to Memmius, apply to true philosophy ears disengaged (vacuas auris), a mind keenly alert (animumque sagacem), and free from cares (semotum a curis). I am not speaking now specifically of preju- dice, though it is very important to be free from that, to read both sides and all sides with even candor, and to give hospitable welcome to facts and opinions that are not like our own. I am speaking rather of preoccupation, and that inherent human weakness of ours, narrowness of interest. Such narrowness limits the field upon which our powers of mind have vivid play. Here we are again, right on ground where moral and intellectual culture go hand in hand; for this narrowness is essentially immoral. It results from the supremacy of self, and interest in the things that appeal to self. Take memory for example. It is one of the powers of the intellect, as we say, and yet moral BOOKS TO BE READ 127 traits very largely determine its qualities, not so much in its retentive power, but in the kind of things remembered. Everyone has a memory good for some things, events, dates, forms, persons, places, words, thoughts, principles, in general; or these and many trivial matters as they may come home to self, his own plans, conquests, doings, grievances, how long some people can remember a grudge! hardships, slights, mistakes, what is due him, or what has been paid him that was not due. There is in most of us an overweening self which becomes unconsciously the center of a little circle, and whatever comes within that circle is eagerly caught up and tenaciously held. Now in education and in that self-culture here considered, the point is to open the mind, and to impart to things worth remembering the same, or an equal interest with these trivial belong- ings. In many cases this is a difficult task. Selfishness is multiform, and so subtle in many of its forms, that while it may not appear, it will yet be working to make our minds impervious and prevent any enlargement of the range of interests. Many a learner brightens up with an interest apparently genuine, but which turns out to be another head of the hydra. The fact ap- pealed in some way to the old love, and the pupil had not really been born again. Regeneration, intellectual as well as spiritual, is the dethrone- ment of self. 128 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION Let me here quote a few words from Dr. Chan- ning to the same effect: "A man who rises above himself looks from an emi- nence on nature and providence, on society and life. Thought expands, as by a natural elasticity, when the pressure of selfishness is removed. The moral and religious principles of the soul generously cultivated, fertilize the intellect. Duty faithfully performed opens the mind to truth, both being of one family, alike immutable, universal and everlasting." By the way, that I may not close without recommending a single book outside the curric- ulum, let me suggest the works of William El- lery Channing as a book that every student should read. XIII COLLEGE FRATERNITIES It is a curious fact that college fraternities had their origin in a period of intense hostility to all secret societies. That hostility grew out of the anti-Masonic crusade, which followed the ab- duction of William Morgan in 1826. During the next few years these Greek letter societies sprung up rapidly in our eastern institutions. They were forbidden. Colleges expelled the members of them when known ; they lived, however, and throve in spite of persecution, perhaps partly by reason of it. They grew in concealment. Students promised not to join them, but they did join them. They wore badges, but in public the badges were pinned inside the vest pocket. They juggled, doubtless, with questions of conscience and duty. They resorted to casuistries and quib- bles, which now, when recalled, seem like pleasant jests, but then, no doubt, served a serious pur- pose. I find in our own records some evidences of this antagonism, the main foe being the faculty. "Not even the ban of that learned body," says the historian at one point, "or the hostility of 129 130 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION people at large was able to prevent the further- ance of real good." The element of secrecy seemed to be the main objection, as though secrecy were in itslf bad and sure to be a cloak for bad conduct. It would seem absurd to suppose that any group of average young fellows, not to say chosen fellows, would deliberately combine and make a secret bond to promote immoral ends. We must think better of our brothers, and if possible, bet- ter of our kind. Not every secret imagination even, is an unclean one. Not every hidden pur- pose of the individual heart is sinister or selfish. Men have good thoughts and good purposes as well. We shall deal more fairly with the fact of se- crecy if we remember the innocent fondness of youth for mystery ; and also the fact that at any time of life there are certain hopes and ideals that are so intensely personal, so a part of the life within that we guard them with instinctive deli- cacy. There may have been other objections to fra- ternities ; indeed, some faint echoes of other ob- jections may still be heard, as that they foster a spirit of exclusiveness, that they break up the natural bonds of fellowship between students of the same institution or the same class. We do not find it so at Lafayette. The men of these brotherhoods have free and friendly in- tercourse, and men who do not belong to any COLLEGE FRATERNITIES 131 fraternity mingle in cordial relations with the men of all fraternities. Social life on the campus seems now, in this respect, very much what it was in my own college days. It was no uncommon thing for our brothers to have among their close friends men of other fraternities and men of no fraternity. In the period following the Civil War there was a change of attitude toward these Greek- letter societies from hostility to tolerance, from tolerance to open recognition, from recognition to high favor until during these last few years they have become one of the most important fac- tors of our college life, contributing in the most natural and easy way to the solution of very difficult problems, the dormitory problem for one. You may see it here upon the campus students comfortably and cozily lodged in chap- ter houses. The problem of college government ; the problem of maintaining the spirit of faith- ful and honest work; and more important still, the problem of personal influence upon individuals, known to be the best element of our education. The professors used to hold that key, but they have lost it, especially in our larger colleges and universities, by the overwhelming increase of num- bers and subdivision of courses of instruction. A man may pass through one of our larger col- leges, I am told, without acquaintance with pro- fessors, without any of that vital personal touch with the best men of the Faculty, which might be 132 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION to them a source of inspiration and strength. In part, this loss is made up by personal con- tact among students themselves, and this contact is at its best where we have the brotherly and sympathetic association of kindred natures. The fraternity gives also, in this respect, the added advantage of intimate relations with its graduate members. At commencements and on great college occasions they come back in the years of their strength, they bring with them their larger experience and their warm hearts, to renew their youth in the magic circle of the college brotherhood. They get their warmest greeting at the chapter house, and it is here that they give their best in personal touch and in- fluence. Not only so, but resident alumni are always at hand and keep up a keen interest in the welfare of their younger brothers. We have in this an invaluable source of mature and thoughtful in- fluence, and almost always exerted to raise the mental and moral tone of the fraternity. Our youngest brothers keep themselves con- scious of the higher aims of this organization good fellowship, good morals, and fine personal qualities. We have none of the modern affecta- tion of contempt for scholarship, for we are stu- dents, and we know that scholarship is one of the noblest fruits of student life; but we put char- acter above everything else. We aim to develop our younger brothers in social qualities that have COLLEGE FRATERNITIES 133 the deepest value to develop them "through in- timate relations with a limited number of con- genial friends who are bound together in an organization where loyalty, truth, honor and fra- ternal affection are the guiding principles." I here draw near to precious "secrets" with which I may not freely deal to-day, but the secret that gives us life and power will be found to be one common to all true and noble hearts. This institution has to be interpreted in view of its fundamental aim to promote brotherly kind- ness. In that we do well, for we get pretty near the enduring foundations in human relationship when we get upon that rock bottom of brotherly love. Remember, these are the years of rapid growth in character and of kindling ideals. To me one of the joys of this association was the opportu- nities which it gave me for uplift in directions suggested by the character and the achievements of the men about me. There is no finer experience in life than that keen sense of strength and victory which comes to a youth when he reaches out and lays hold of ideals and presently finds that he is by them lifted to better levels. We do not forget that there are both good and bad ideals, and it is quite possible that in our chapters there may at times be men of question- able character and aims, whose influence might be bad, but I have great confidence in the choices 134 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION of young men of normal vigor and intelligence, especially when their choices may be guided by those who have their welfare deeply at heart. I love to think of young men with faces up- ward turned to the rising levels of life, ready for, as they are capable of, sudden uplifting. We leap upward thank God ! and are at once at home in better surroundings. We creep down- ward. And even when we are lured along the descending way by agreeable self-indulgence the whole atmosphere of a lower situation is striking and offensive to us, and we stay there if we stay reluctantly. That is our hope, brothers. The best oratory is none too good for the meanest of us, nor the best music, nor the best art, nor the best culture. We are dealing with that which has in it mighty possibilities of receiving and responding to good influence when we are dealing with the spirit of youth with its idealism and its high ambitions. Raise a young man to better social conditions than he has been accustomed to and there will be an expansive thrill of adaptation that will make him instantly at home. Given a sudden uplift in culture or in art, and the soul flutters with the joy of a new possession, within a new and congenial environment ; but you can't go downward either in society, in culture, or in art, without a chill. This is true in every field of ex- perience where you have to do with the spirits of men. COLLEGE FRATERNITIES 135 I will maintain optimism, therefore, against all who come, basing my belief upon this one truth of human nature, that we rise to a better life with a thrilling sense of strength and victory; and we sink to a worse life, stung with a sense of moral defeat. It is such considerations that bring home to us the opportunities of good that offer within this sacred circle. If there are weak brothers, erring brothers, there are strong ones too; and one strong man in a chapter may lay his hand nay, lay his love, on any brother and win him to the better way. I spoke just now of the "sacred circle" and a little before of the "magic circle." We instinct- ively select strong words to express that which passes from life to life in such relationship, yet these words are not strong enough. The old wonder tales in their use of magic, made proph- ecy that has been more than fulfilled before our eyes. A little scientific investigation, for ex- ample, the mastery of a few laws of nature and their use, has accomplished results, in comparison with which the genii of magicians are insignifi- cant. The lamp of Aladdin, the rugs of Houssain, and the golden apple of Ahmed are like children's toys when compared with the achievements of modern human art in the direction of the rapid creation of wealth, of transportation, of the lightning flight of intelligence, and the healing of disease. And greater works than these can we do in the 136 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION realm of spirit in the working out of human lives in giving power to the weak and ambition to the dull, in those transformations of the ignoble into the noble, of rudeness into refinement, of in- capacity into skill and readiness and power. Such are the tasks that are set before us and that should fire our hearts with zeal in the cause of Tau Kappa Phi. Do I set the standard too high? Well, it is the very nature of an ideal that it should be in advance of our actual attain- ments. We want it to draw us onward and up- ward. This is not a social union only, for mirth, or entertainment, or conversation, or festive en- joyment the mere intercourse of comrades; it is a fellowship of a high order, in which each min- isters of his best to his fellows, each finds his pleasure in promoting the best fruits of brotherly love. And so we come back to the point from which we started brotherly love. We may well be re- minded by that phrase that our fraternity is not an end in itself, but is educational, and there- fore a means to a larger end. We should make it a stepping stone to that wider brotherhood to which we all belong, and the realization of which we should all promote the brotherhood of man. XIV TOWN AND GOWN There are of course, differences between col- lege life and town life. A measure of separation from the outside world is a fact here, and leads to distinctions inevitable and for the most part desirable. The circumstances give college boys the advantage in most respects. The community is compact and isolated, so that organization and the resulting benefits come easily and naturally. Take the matter of recreation: College students can make better music, for example, than will ordinarily be heard among an equal number of young men in town life; better jokes; they have better methods of getting and spending holidays ; they have better games, for the discipline is more thorough and there is less vulgarity and ill-feel- ing in their contests. To my mind, when class meets class or college meets college on the ball field pluck against pluck and skill against skill we have a kind of ideal field sport. Then there are social differences to be noted. Students have better social clubs, and the spirit springing from class and college associations be- gets a prevalent feeling of good fellowship which 137 138 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION will not be found in an equal degree in town life. On the intellectual side, too, there are wide dis- tinctions. To say nothing now of the courses of study which make up the regular business of the student, there is access to books and the pres- ence of competent helpers. Outside of required work students have good societies for literary and scientific training. Their outside reading, too, is more systematic and judicious. Further, on the moral side, still more impor- tant distinctions appear. College life presents the opportunity of shaping the outlines of char- acter in an atmosphere as free as possible from perverting and mercenary influences. Students as a rule get to have clear convictions based upon honest sentiments. They may not be always right; it would be too much to say of any body of men, old or young, that they are always and infallibly right. But they are honest and candid in their convictions, and that which they are to approve must come to them with the stamp of sincerity and integrity upon it. Clear convictions are not common enough among young men to make this a difference of slight moment. Mr. By-ends, of Bunyan's time, with his rich kindred, as Mr. Smooth-man, Mr. Facing-both-ways and Mr. Anything, have spawned a numerous progeny upon this age, and they stand in the public walks of business and politics, as well as in religion, ready to turn aside, or go back or forward in the train of any master TOWN AND GOWN 139 who wears silver slippers. It is a good thing to let young men form moral habits under circum- stances such that they can discuss and decide their questions under the light of the best sentiments and the noblest states of mind. These are a few of the distinctions which pre- sent the best side of college life and which cannot be outwardly marked. They appear only when the facts are known. As to conventional outward distinctions, such, as wearing peculiar dress, carrying canes and the like, they are comparatively indifferent and are questions to be decided partly as matters of taste and partly of expense. Oxford hats are certainly unique and picturesque and have a scholastic air. No serious objection could be made to the introduction of such a fashion, unless it should seem undesirable to impose a new item of expense on the members of the class. Without discussing particular fashions, how- ever, two general considerations cause me to look with some regret upon the introduction of new customs which widen the difference between the little college world and the great world without. One, that the effect of these customs so often is to put emphasis, both in college and out, upon those features of college life which are not the best. The great public, so far as it is at all in- terested in us, will not come here and sit down to a careful observation of our modes of life and work, but will form its impressions of us from 140 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION those traits of our life which we ourselves make conspicuous. The annual "bowl fight" at a neighboring Uni- versity does more in all probability to determine the average public impression of university life in that city than any whole month of regular stu- dent work there. The same may be said of the annual burnings and burials of books. I do not say that impressions thus formed are correct, but they are facts. A little hazing gives us a bad name ; so, too, a rough and brutal method of play- ing foot-ball, or an exhibition in the cars or streets or other public places of conduct more than usually eccentric and demonstrative. The most casual reader of the newspapers cannot fail to see to what an extent the whole system of lib- eral education is judged in certain quarters, not from the kind of men our colleges turn out, or from the kind of work students do, but from the impression they make in their observance of gro- tesque traditional customs and in their jolly hours of freedom. The other thought is that with the increase of conventional distinctions, there grows up an artificial environment in which students form hab- its of living and ideas of life which disqualify many for the actual conditions which the world presents. It is said of the English universities that they turn out many sporting gentlemen who are un- fitted for the serious pursuits of the business TOWN AND GOWN 141 world; and that in general the graduates have formed habits of living which make any income less than five thousand pounds too small for them. It is not long ago that Mr. Depew said there were three thousand college graduates starving in New York city. If this is so, and if they are starving because they are graduates, how does college life clip the sinews of manly strength! Not because they study Greek instead of German, or the Calcu- lus instead of Chemistry, but because they live four years in another world and fail to acquire the power of adjusting themselves to the con- ditions of actual life. The world is strange to them. The college took them up out of it at one point and puts them down at another where the surroundings are new. Fortunately we may say that the tone and traits of our college life are mainly determined by young men who are earnest and who are seri- ously preparing for work. It would not be amiss, however, if students at all our colleges were watchful upon these points, viz: to see that their amusements, jokes and other doings remain ra- tional and manly, and such as will not call forth the unfriendly criticism of serious-minded people: and that they do not fall out of sympathy with the ways of the outside world or its wholesome ambitions. While it is well to be so far separate as to be able to pursue study free from the cares of busi- ness, and, perhaps, also from the distractions of 142 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION social life at home, it is not well, upon this dif- ference, to form new sets of habits which lessen our power to cope with the "stern realities." That world, after all, is where we must do our work and win our victories. If it 3'ields its hold upon us for a time, we should none the less note the pulse that beats in its strong hand, a hand that will presently close upon us with a grip all the more firm because we have had a period of freedom to prepare for its pressure. XV THE EASY CHAIR Looking back in leisurely retrospect, in the tem- per of one who has passed the examinations, last term was a very good one good in many ways, quiet in the first place; for the playful hostility of classes had been softened by friendly inter- course, to a feeling that was much better than mere tolerance of each other. The heroes of '99, and those of '00 marched to their class suppers cheered rather than molested. Verily it is a good thing to see these brethren dwelling together, and working side by side in peace and unity. Quiet in the second place, because we had no games at which we could make the welkin ring with our shouts : and so we had a chance to think over our victories. We did rehearse them in many a quiet evening hour, and felt a warming sense of satisfaction in them something akin to pride, yet not vainglorious boasting; for we should be a poor lot if we could not catch the contagion of a more manly spirit than that from the most modest team we ever had. But those were great games. Never mind the scores just now, but the way they were played, 143 144 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION the pluck, the determination, the undaunted spirit; the being stronger under discourage- ments. There were plays of which the twentieth memory is enough to kindle again our old en- thusiasm. Then our indoor life didn't allow us to forget that we still have muscle and agility. There were the mid-winter sports in the gymnasium, where the spectator could see men kicking well up to- ward the rafters, and could see that boxing is not all done with the mouth. Then the Glee Club made a good beginning, well followed up in the vacation trip. It was a good term for musical practice, and this plays a larger and better part in college life as time goes on. Last term any walker on Pardee ter- race, in the late afternoon when recitations were over, could hear a chorus, or catch now and then strains from the band, a little discordant, per- haps at times, but improving from day to day; and even at its worst how infinitely better than the howls and horn blowing with which the leisure of students might be filled in the old times. Then the Alumni reunions and banquets in Philadelphia. when the fires were rekindled and the life blood of old Lafayette went tingling out to the finger tips. Then the class-room work and the study lamp it was a good term for that; and that's the real thing. We may talk little of it, and catch only now and then a hint of it in college life as it THE EASY CHAIR 145 appears in the newspapers, especially in college newspapers ; but our real purposes, our real am- bitions and real hopes center about the proper work of the college. It was a good term in the main, in all the laboratories, in the English room, in the Greek and Latin rooms. Good hours for us are those we give to Milton, to Plato, to genial Horace, and those fervent songs with which the early church resounded. One drawback was those breaks in health which can be avoided in winter only by care, and the jolly college boy is a stranger to care. There was a good deal of real sickness. Possibly also some that is known as "college sickness," but it is reassuring to see a plucky fellow, when he has sprained his ankle, hobble up two long flights of stairs on crutches, so as not to miss recitation ! Many a fellow was in the class-room wheezing and coughing when he should have been bundled up in bed drinking catnip tea, or some other of mother's good remedies. But while we are speak- ing of "should have been's," we may go further back and say, they should not have caught the colds. Was I speaking of drawbacks? Well let by- gones be bygones for the most part; but before the genial optimism of good weather, good wheel- ing, good walking, fresh foliage, fair flowers and base-ball victories, has us completely shielded un- der its silver canopy, let us have one more good growl at the college paths. What with light 146 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION snows, light frosts thawing noonday's, and the composition of the paths themselves, how per- sistently sloppy they have been! And what a variety of sloppiness from melting snow, through thin muddy paste, down to the consistency of sticky clay well wet, that clings to your shoes and won't be shaken off, or scraped off, but when dry the next morning, will fall off, of its own weight, to be trodden into your Brussels carpet! Three, four, half a dozen times a day, three hundred of us more or less, have walked these trails of mortar, to dinner and back, to supper and back, to recitation and back, but have had our thoughts too firmly fixed on "higher things," to be much incommoded after all by such trifles. Yet, these very paths are sceleris vestigia nostri, and are proof enough, if proof were needed, that the "rolling years" have not yet brought back the golden millennial day. A good term for reflection too, with many oc- casions that invited it, and many opportunities for it. A good season to take in the seeds of truth and warm them into vitality in the soil of our thinking. And how an idea does grow when thus rooted and tended rising and taking us with it upward and outward in its growth. Student life is an atmosphere of thinking. There are the lecture rooms with their teaching and their enthusiasms communicable; there are great books, their pages bristling with thoughts. It lifts our natures a little even to feel their THE EASY CHAIR 147 covers ; but to have them opened and expounded, to have them at our elbows, to read and study them, to ponder over them as we sit in the easy chair, to talk them over at the fireside of a friend what a life to live ! bringing home to us, the blessed realization of our littleness and our power, and the greatness of truth, and all the time the great light flashing its gleams to us under the lifting mists. And the prayer hall, and the fellowship of fer- vent hearts in praise and petition. And the chapel pulpit, with its message of peace and in- spiration. No message is more welcome to us than this, if it be genuine. Such were those we had last term, from our own preachers, from Bishop Rulison a strong man, assuring us again of the strength and security of the Christian faith; from General Eaton, ripe in manifold ex- perience, testifying to the supreme utility of dis- cipline and religious training, from Mr. Jenanyan, the Armenian, telling us of conse- cration. Mr. Studd could not come to us. Was it a judgment upon us for the advertising we gave him a "cricket player" and an "athlete"? If a man be sincere and earnest, and have God's true message in his life and his voice, that is enough. If his theme be the deepening of the spiritual life, we shall be glad to hear him for that alone. These are the first, the last, and the best interests and need not be commended to us by an appeal to anything lower. XVI SOME FREAKS OF COLLEGE SENTIMENT Much that passes for student sentiment is not the average of actual opinion and feeling among the fellows, but an average of what is most ob- trusive and outspoken among them. Thus a false sentiment may seem to spring up from the feeling of a few, if the few are loud in the expression of it, and set it forth in phrases that are pat and catchy. It is only within recent years, for ex- ample, that we have heard the word "stuff" com- monly used to designate the subject-matter of any and every study. All the mathematics are "stuff" now, German also, Anglo-Saxon, Strength of Ma- terials, Chemistry, Histology, Homer, Horace, Shakespeare, even the Sermon on the Mount is "stuff" when the subject of study, and marked off in tasks. It must have started with some fellow who felt no interest in his task, and found it irksome, un- intelligible, and at last unendurable. We can see him fling it aside in disgust, and his simple ejacu- lation, "Stuff," was so shrewdly expressive that it struck a sympathetic chord in the experience of many another. The word may now be taken to 148 FREAKS OF COLLEGE SENTIMENT 149 indicate a general attitude and feeling toward study expressing therefore a quasi sentiment ; and the worst of it is, that the very phrase has helped to create and crystallize the sentiment. The word is not in every instance used with conscious disparagement, but it shades that way, and will seldom be heard without the suggestion of that reproach which attaches to the worst mean- ing of "stuff," viz, "worthless matter," "trash." Suppose some fellow, instead of disgust, had felt a thrill of pleasant appreciation over his Goethe or his calculus, and was so delighted with the results in working out a passage or a problem that in the moment of his victory he exclaimed "Pure gold !" as though he had found a treasure. Think of the sentiment that might arise if there were the same contagion of feeling as in the other case ! These two extremes mark the limits between which sentiment upon college studies may vibrate with a main tendency to the lower point we might suppose; but here again we should most likely be misled by the outspokenness of the mi- nority. Most students take a genuine interest in their studies. Many are fond of them. They do not proclaim their love from the housetops, how- ever. In fact the regular, diligent and virtuous student has no chronicler. The public is more interested in the other fellows they are piquant and they get into the papers. It would be a great gain if, in those estimates 150 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION that underlie college sentiment, the true interests of college life could have their real value. There is very little uncertainty as to what those inter- ests are, even in the minds of the most thoughtless. The purpose of going to college is mainly served by the course of study. Recreations are both pleasant and necessary; it is well now and then to have a good time ; the fellowships of the campus are delightful, and various student interests come in incidentally and serve a good purpose too, but we defeat the main end of a course in higher edu- cation when we regard the obligations of study as in some way an interference with our real business and wishes. I have thought of this in connection with cer- tain items and articles in The Touchstone. With that clever writer "Breezy Bill," study seems an impertinence. He flouts scholarly ambition, sneers at college honors, and in general dispar- ages diligence a strange attitude for a serious man. The fact is, he is not serious. Most of what he says is merely a conventional concession to that kiddish sentiment of aversion to work, which, whatever its following, finds large voice in the school and college world. Seen through that atmosphere, duty has no charms except for milksops and "grinds." Dis- cipline and recurring tasks are forms of weariness that seem but dim and distant as seen through the smoke that jolly fellows make in their hours of freedom. FREAKS OF COLLEGE SENTIMENT 151 "The Poler is an Animal," says our writer, "of unlimited capacity for study. Books are his com- panions ; problems his delight. . . . Friends are of small consequence to him. . . . Earthly joy is complete when engaged in polishing the questions of the quiz, or the shoes of the pro- fessor heavenly when listening to a didactic ser- mon in the chapel." So the poor "poler" goes on allowing "his body and his social nature to atrophy," wheels whirling in his deluded head. But from time to time, through the rings of curling smoke there come saner glimpses. "Yet eliminating all prejudice for the time, any sane- minded person must acknowledge that the poler is forming habits which will be of value to him when he has flown from under the wings of his Alma Mater. He studies hard and regularly. The continual effort to be perfect in his studies tends to render him accurate, painstaking and industrious." The writer confesses that the "poler" is con- demned by students, "not so much for studying all the time, as because the poler surpasses them in the same work, by studying while they are en- gaged in some kind of recreation." This freak sentiment of hostility to study there- fore is one of which the writer does not seriously approve. That which he lays aside to get glimpses of the real truth is a "prejudice." It seems a pity to create a sentiment that con- demns honest work; or to give currency to ideals 152 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION that handicap serious young fellows with a dis- paraging epithet. "Grind" is a hard name in college parlance. A fellow must be made of strong stuff not to wince under it. It may make little difference to those who can stand it, but the great harm comes to the scores of fellows who are not so strong, whose attitude toward serious work may be wholly determined by their fear of in- curring such a reproach. Can it be that good students must often make a secret of their diligence, and thus carry water on both shoulders? Alas, that any man in college should ever have to pretend indifference to study in order to stand well with his fellows ! Mr. Owen Wister, the other day at Harvard, told his audi- ence how he now regrets that in college he did not feel like associating with "grinds." Then the relation of students to members of the faculty. In that same false atmosphere of boyish sentiment the faculty seems to be the natural enemy. To "polish the shoes of the professor" is about the lowest depth of offending to which a man can sink, and has a name that carries more ignominy than any other epithet heard on any campus ; yet it seems a natural thought that the professor should be the student's best friend. True, the office itself does not make him so. Friendship must still depend upon qualities of heart and nature. The professor must be mag- netic if he would be attractive. It is entirely pos- sible that in individual cases, members of the fac- FREAKS OF COLLEGE SENTIMENT 153 ulty may lack genuine sympathy with student life, or may have personal qualities of disposition or character that make intimate relations with them quite undesirable, but the whole situation the very purpose of their association suggests that the student should find in his intercourse with his teacher the best fruits of helpful friend- ship. Is he free to seek that friendship? Is in- timacy with the professor entirely safe? Can a student show more than decent courtesy to his professor without incurring the odium of "polish- ing shoes" as though he were seeking favor by some shallow fraud? Perhaps I overstate the situation. I certainly do if we have in mind only this college. Per- sonal relations are surely very pleasant here, but in college life generally, intercourse between stu- dents and members of the faculty goes little be- yond the class-room and official college business a loss to both student and teacher. Indeed, in this relation the professor needs the student as much as the student the professor. Least of all should they be kept apart by any false or freak- ish sentiment or by any misconception of the re- lations in which they stand. IIAX WHAT THE PEWS REQUIRE OF THE PULPIT The speaker said, in part, the pew requires in general of the pulpit the highest form of pru- dence. Our American poet-philosopher tells us there are three levels of prudence ; I may not give his exact words, but his thought is something like this: On the first level are those who ap- preciate the utility of the symbol. That is com- mon sense; and these get health and wealth and all material good. On the second level are those who appreciate the beauty of the symbol. This is taste, and these get aesthetic enjoyment and culture and knowledge. On the third level they know the value of that which is signified by the symbol. That is spiritual insight; and these get reality. That is why we require this highest form of prudence of the pulpit. We want reality. We do so hunger for certainties to stand upon the rock, and have no shifting sands under our feet. There is no realm in which we are so much en- titled to this experience and feeling of solidity as in the realm of spiritual truth. Scientific 154 THE PEW AND THE PULPIT 155 truth may come into question, we may lose con- fidence in our social or political progress, but woe to us if we have not from the pulpit a clear and ringing note upon the eternal verities. Let Hy- mensens and Philetus and the other teachers of error say what they please so long as you breth- ren stand and say from your hearts what Paul said to Timothy "Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure." In your ministration of this truth, of course our requirements are high, for we have our ideals. But in this you are not alone. Every worker must confront a comparison of his work with that of the ideal worker in his department. If it is true that the preacher cannot preach too well, it is equally true that the teacher can- not teach too well, nor the physician heal too well ; and there is a sense in which the life and work of the engineer, the farmer and the carpenter make drafts upon them which require better than their best. They cannot be too diligent, too accurate, too sagacious, or too manly. No man ever did a work that required skill, too skillfully ; that re- quired watchfulness, with too much vigilance; that required fidelity, with too much faithfulness. Your work, however, is unlike that of other call- ings in the ideals of its spiritual quality and its high motive. Men may be conceited in other work if they must be well pleased with the way they sing or play or sell goods or write books or plead law, but the message of God's love passes from 156 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION simple heart to simple heart, and only through the medium of absolute sincerity. So much for quality; now as to quantity. I used to think that our modern inability to endure long sermons was a proof of degeneracy. I am not so sure of that now. Nor is it so very mod- ern. George II used to say of the fifteen minute discourses of Bishop Newton "Good short ser- mons." And he brought the bishop to that limit by frankly telling him that after listening fifteen minutes he was liable to take cold. But sermons used to be long, as though for discipline. I have even caught curious hints that the pulpit took a strange kind of pleasure in the weariness of the pew, as in the case of the Scotch clergyman who, being asked if it did not make him tired to preach so long, replied, "Na, na. I'm no tired ; but it wad do your heart guid whiles to see how tired the folk get." "Can he sit," says the stern covenanter in "Old Mortality," "can he sit six hours on the damp hill- side, listening to a sermon ?" Implying that if he can, then he stands the critical test. But, brethren of the pulpit, if it were a ques- tion of discipline, we now have other tests of en- durance, and you need not burden yourselves with that responsibility. So much the worse for you perhaps ; for it is easier to make a long sermon than a short one if, in the ease of the short one, what it lacks in length must be made up in point and power. It is easy to string out formal THE PEW AND THE PULPIT 157 treatises on theology one hour or two ; but if you are stating God's vital truth, and in such a way that every word feels the living touch of your own experience, ten minutes is a good while to talk. If you are saying, not something about the truth as you have read or heard it, but the truth itself as you know it, as you feel it, and as you are trying to live it, ten minutes, brethren, is a good while to talk. I think we require too much if we expect three such sermons a week. That task is beyond the capacity of the average man. A man like John Wesley could do it and even more fifteen ser- mons a week on the average for fifty years, and never weary ; but he was a man of peculiar power and vitality. I was speaking to a group of clergymen lately upon this point and asking them how they accom- plished such feats of labor. "By being method- ical in my work," answered one. That seemed significant and yet required further explanation, which was promptly forthcoming. "By being methodical; that is, I have a method, and my method is to preach one old sermon each Sunday." And why not? I've heard many a sermon which I would like to hear again and again. The pew should require of the pulpit nothing which will prevent the pulpit from making ju- dicious use of its past studies. XVIII EZEKIEL'S WATCHMAN Ezekiel xxxiii: 1-7. The situation contemplated is military, but is instantly turned by the prophet to a spiritual ap- plication the perils of wickedness. Men in sin must be faithfully warned. We must plead with them to turn from their evil ways. Not all are watchmen only one. "If the peo- ple of the land take a man of their coasts and set him for their watchman." Yet if we know the lost condition of men without God, how can we withhold the service of warning? If we know what deliverance is ; if we know the wretchedness and perils of men unsaved ; if we know how human destinies hang in the balance, quivering, and that a touch, a word may open some man's heart to the message of God, how can we withhold the word of warning? Each disciple must let his light shine; each must in his own way do his part to rouse men, and point them to the way of safety. But the regularly constituted watchman, the minister of God, is set apart in a special way and has fearful responsibilities. We should not urge men to enter the ministry ; 158 EZEKIEL'S WATCHMAN 159 we should rather urge them not to do so. If God's call is upon them, they cannot be turned aside. "Necessity is laid upon me," said Paul, "woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel." If God's call is not upon them, they should by all means be dissuaded. What the call is I cannot tell. You that have heard it know best. Judging from what I have seen I might venture to say that it is not piety, however fervent. Nor is it the gift of speech, however fluent. Words are nothing. Men can multiply words without knowledge. Far more likely that slowness of speech would be a sign of the call; for this message must be put in words carefully chosen. The great truth must be sim- ply and briefly told. The mightiest of God's ministers, Moses, was reluctant to accept his mission from this very mistake of supposing that a glib tongue was nec- essary. "I am of slow speech and of a slow tongue" he said. "And the Lord said unto him, who hath made man's mouth . . . Go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say." Speaking as we must from the human side, an important element of the call would seem to be an appreciation of the need of this service. That men are lost in sin, and that human life as we commonly live it is full of vanity are facts that must come very vividly before your mind and press upon your heart with such a burden that 160 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION you cannot restrain your hand from the task of plucking brands as from the burning. And you must know well the remedy, God's love in Christ. You must know it not as a theory, but as a fact, that has brought abounding joy and comfort to your own heart. Then, as to qualifications. In this record they are vigilance and fidelity. By implication there must be a strong sound body, for there is much hardness to endure. There must be a keen well- trained mind, for you must think with precision and if possible with force. These divine themes must be firmly held. Grasp them well and tighten your grip at every step in your discourse, for it is only by such treatment that the profound truths of scripture are adequately opened to the intelli- gence of hearers. We note I think too frequently in pulpit work, the lack of this firm and manly grip. The theme is a grand one, it opens with fair promise, but the thread of a great truth is presently lost, the fabric of the discourse falls flabby and at length unravels so that at the end there is nothing for us to carry home. Then as to the motive, it must be love of the Master and love of men. There must be no self in this work. In any man's pulpit work, the mo- ment it appears that what he is doing is in the nature of a performance, and that he is con- sciously prominent in it as a performer, from that moment his influence with us in divine things is EZEKIEL'S WATCHMAN 161 dead. We may admire his rhetoric, his language, his gestures, but his truth, even if he speak the truth, has lost its ring and falls flat. In this work any affectation whether of feeling or of vir- tue is abominable. If the bush burns before you and you turn aside to see why it is not consumed, there will come to you from the midst of the bush, the words, "Draw not nigh hither; put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." And you will hide your face. I must not shrink from talking to you very frankly about this and would have you examine yourselves very carefully. Does it seem to you that you do well in God's service? Your fervor, your unction, your eloquence do they seem to justify a reasonable complaisance? Does the gospel message seem to gather some momentum from you and your method? Face that error frankly, and correct it. If you cannot correct it, then be seriously counseled to choose some other work. A kindred thought is the danger of a profes- sional manner in what you do in this service. There are professional traditions in the pulpit that have great influence ; there are certain ex- ercises to be gone through again and again. Repetition and habit may lead to formality. But the message must come every time warm and di- rect from your heart. The burden of each 162 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION prayer as though it were the first you ever carried to the throne; each word of exhortation with the freshness of your first appeal to dying men. These are great truths with which you have to do. Momentous interests are involved in the immortal nature and destiny of your fellow men. Do you fully realize it? Do these truths touch your hearts? If they do, speak an honest word to us, a sincere word, right to the point, and straight from your convictions. Do that and we will go to hear you. We will go through rain and fire and flood to hear you. There is no call that so appeals to the deep and conscious needs of men as the call to repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. John preached it and the people flocked out to hear him. Many of his hearers he called a generation of vipers. He said the ax must be laid unto the root of the tree, and that the fact that Abraham was their father would do them no good ; yet they crowded out to hear him, all Jerusalem, all Judea, and the regions round about Jordan. Be not discouraged, brethren, though men harden their hearts and seem not to hear. Only speak a sincere word of warning and of hope, and the busiest man in Wall street will quit his gains and bend his ear to your voice. Elijah was dis- couraged and went into the wilderness, sent then to the mountain, where he saw exhibitions of power wind, fire, and earthquake, but God's real power came in less boisterous form, and he was EZEKIEL'S WATCHMAN 163 cheered and sent on his high errand. Seven thou- sand had not bowed the knee to Baal. The voice of the soul will be heard, and that voice is, "Give me the bread of life." XIX HOW SHALL I GIVE THEE UP, EPHRAIM? Hosea xi: 8. No thought here of an attempt to tell us what the love of God is, but a glimpse of the very love itself a kind of appealing picture of affection! Nothing subtle or complicated about it just a simple exhibition of a sublime love quite intelli- gible to us because it is so like the healthy action of human feeling. Like and yet unlike; for in the next verse, the ninth, we have this withholding of anger explained by the statement, "For I am God and not man." There appear notable differences of action as com- pared with what man would probably do. In dealing with the wayward we are very ready to suspect, to blame, to rebuke, to accuse, to con- vict, to punish. We have a feeling that the wicked and the criminal should be cast out. Even if we try to exhort and win the wayward back we soon reach the limits of our patience. But God cherishes the wayward and holds them in love. God lingers over them with patient ten- derness. It is just this quality of divine love that I wish you to think of this morning. 164, HOW SHALL I GIVE THEE UP? 165 There is no fact in this world that has greater value for us in our personal life than this clinging tenderness of God's love for us. "How shall I give thee up!" Of the love of God in general we are told here and there ; it is brought to us in providence some event that opens up the goodness of God to men ; or in personal experience some fine touch of divine grace in the inner life of which we could not adequately speak even if it were not too sacred to be the subject of remark. Then the words of the book about God's love. We like to turn to the golden text (John iii, 16) "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life." "The gift" you say. Nay, the gift is incidental only as the measure of the love. God so loved that he gave. Noth- ing can surpass the simple sweetness of that mes- sage. It lingers on human lips and is imprinted upon human hearts. We can't improve it by en- largement. Glowing narrative adds nothing to it, oratory nothing, the vivid reenactment of the crucifixion the nails and the arms outspread and the spear all its cruelties and horrors, the passion play itself; in fact these may fall rather flat upon the ear, because they may become con- ventional, but this little message "God so loved the world" is the real thing. It holds us with its own charm. Yet in matters of the spirit a full statement 166 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION often has less appealing power than a mere sug- gestion, because a suggestion is a challenge to the lightning quality of imaginative thought. You have noticed that a stroke of mere outline will be instantly filled out to its full form by the imagination. Listen to a dozen pages upon mother's love, all very good, but some significant act of motherly affection which you happen to see, will better open up the depths of that love to you than all that text. "How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kin- dled together." As though there were a mighty struggle between love and justice a debate and love wins in the argument ! A fine intuition of the prophet which gives a picture of the very at- titude of divine tenderness so beautifully and touchingly humanized, yet divine in the essence and power of it. How patient it is ! How tender and strong ! "How shall I give thee up ?" Anger would suggest instant judgment. Jus- tice with her fair claims would cut the offender off at once. But no emotion of anger can divert this purpose of love ; no claim of Justice can neu- tralize it. Think for a moment who Ephraim was, a tribe mighty but haughty and jealous, so eminent in numbers, in advantages and in guilt that the prophet could say "Israel" and mean Ephraim, or say "Ephraim" and mean all Israel. That tribe entered upon the fairest portion of HOW SHALL I GIVE THEE UP? 167 the land of promise, but its history is a sad story of descent from this high place, through dissention and distrust and ungodliness and idolatry ever downward, a sad picture of opportunities wasted and personal gifts abused, a history of sin and decay and dissolution. So the message of the prophet is a message about sin and judgment and love. The sin is the sin of infidelity to love, often, as in Hosea, presented under the figure of adultery, the most heinous of sins. We are left to conclude that it were better for Ephraim to have lived out in darkness with no knowledge of God, than hav- ing had the light, to turn back to darkness. Then the judgment upon this infidelity not a stroke of God inflicted upon a man as apart from his sin. The judgment is the working out of the sin itself. Infidelity can lead nowhere save to the unutterable darkness of pollution. But through all and over all and after all, the song of God's love ! The notes of it rise above every other note of these messages and in every note a prophecy of triumph, because love will pre- vail. That triumph will come through suffering, but love is willing to suffer ; through long waiting no matter, Ephraim may count upon the pa- tience of God ; the victory will cost, but love never counts the cost to be estopped by it. Right on- ward moves love and her song is a song of won- drous sweetness and of wondrous power. What a comfort for us in this appeal of divine 168 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION affection! For us, for we are like Ephraim, in the hardness of our hearts, in our indifference to the ordinary calls and obligations of the higher life; and this message is to us, not that we may merely contemplate the greatness of the love of God, but that we may yield ourselves to it, that we may come under the spell of its searching qual- ity, that we may know the power of it as a motive to righteousness. Is there not something in that loving appeal that tugs at our hearts? "How shall I let thee Go?" No attitude could be more winning than this yearning tenderness. Real love cannot give up its object, and the ob- ject itself, when it becomes aware of that love comes under an influence that it cannot long re- sist. We easily resist other appeals. It is amazing how men can resist satire for example, with its fine home thrusts a very ready weapon, keen, even venomous, if you please, hurled in bitterness and with unerring aim; but they at whom it is aimed are untouched. Men seem to be provided with an armor of conceit, or self-complaisance that turns away the shafts of satire, so that they fall broken and harmless at the feet of him whom they would wound. Sarcasm cuts and hurts both him that gives and him that gets it, but it heals neither. It is somewhat the same with law with its hard requirements, the same I mean, with reference to any winning appeal to the spirits of men. HOW SHALL I GIVE THEE UP? 169 You can't win men by legal enactment to sobriety or purity or any virtue. Rebuke? You can't re- buke a man into the spirit of obedience. You can't denounce a man into the kingdom of peace and righteousness. Thundering commands and threats and penalties in the waywardness of our stubborn hearts we stand unmoved by these, may even sneer at them in our indifference; but if a man love us we yield to that at last. We may hold out long, but love suffereth long and is kind. Love never faileth. That enduring tenderness that has the divine touch of patience if you find that the warm currents of it keep flowing into your life you'll respond to it some day or you are not a man. And that is the mighty hope of our race, that men will, must, come to know the love of God. "I drew them with the cords of a man" says Hosea, "with the bands of love" i. e. with all gentle means such as are suited to man's temper, to allure him, as it were, to obedience, laying hands upon him gently, to draw him into the right way. True, that even under these circumstances men are often obstinate. We persist in error after we have become aware of the error. Even Paul yielded reluctantly to the drawings of God's love. It drew upon him through conscience. Paul was a conscientious Pharisee, building therefore upon the observance of the law ; but candidly, in his own heart he knew he was not measuring up to the requirements of God's law, hence the stings 170 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION of conscience ; yet he persisted. He even in- creased the cruelty of his persecutions, "breathing out," as we read, "threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and desired of him letters to Damascus," that he might bring bound to Jerusalem any Christians he might find there. So when his vis- ion came he is still making that futile resistance. The Master knowing well the stubbornness of his human temper said, "It is hard for thee to kick against the goads ;" a homely figure, of the goaded ox and under the irritation of that sting he kicks back only to get a deeper thrust of the same goad. So we may learn not only the patient continuance of the love of God, but its increasing effectiveness . Note again who it is whom God loves Ephraim! Of whom it is said, "Ephraim com- passeth me about with lies." "Ephraim feedeth on wind and followeth after the East wind. He daily increaseth lies and desolation." The marvel is that God can so love Ephraim the unlovely. Our human affection offers but slight sug- gestion of the breadth and power of this love. We are narrowed by petty limitations in our love, by prejudices of race and condition and distance. What care we for China and the Chinese, or for the swarthy races of the dark continent? Really, I mean, really? It would be folly to deny, as I am certainly not here to deny, the possibility of a broad, unselfish HOW SHALL I GIVE THEE UP? 171 and generous human affection and the fact of zealous benevolence on the part of God's good children. The flaming heart is no idle symbol. At times there comes a great soul on fire with this zeal and wields a mighty power, marshaling the agencies of benevolence, so that under the spirit of God and by his blessing there dawns upon a whole continent the promise of regenera- tion ; as upon Africa under the inspiration of the noble work of David Livingstone. The wilderness rejoices and the islands are made glad, as the New Hebrides under the ministrations of Dr. John Paton. We rally to these standards as best we can, in missionary effort too often with a lack-luster zeal, a kind of faint and fad-like sentiment, God forgive us ! Where we lack is in affection and the power of it. We demand touch and eyesight, neighborhood and in it, beauty and grace and culture, congeniality of tastes qualities that are agreeable. Toward people of that kind and un- der such circumstances we can at least keep up a fair pretense of kindness ; but the outlying multi- tudes of the unattractive and the disagreeable, the thousands that are huddled together in want often and in forbidding and unsanitary condi- tions in the dark places of great cities ; and the millions in distant lands, remote from us not only by distance, but in civilization and mode of life what care we for them? The orient might be wiped off the map and all 172 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION the slums submerged at a stroke and their re- moval hardly touch our lives by the vibration of a thought or an interest or an affection. Their absence would not quicken or retard a pulse of our throbbing life ! I speak of this not as matter of rebuke to ourselves, though it might well be so, but to aid us in getting a conception of the love of God, the greatness of which we fail to grasp if we cling too closely to the feeble analogies of our human affection. God loves Ephraim ! The love of God goes out in its abundance to the lowest and the meanest and the most unpromising. It does not pry about and feel its way here and there among men, cau- tiously selecting this one and that one because some excellence appears in them that is worthy of love. It pours itself with increasing flow upon those that are unworthy as it seems to us, and Lo ! those unworthy lives are illumined into beauty, if we await the full measure of God's work. This is the point we must not fail to note, there is after all a worthiness in Ephraim in the possibilities of his spiritual betterment; but it took the father's eye to see that worthiness and it will take the love of the father's heart to quicken it, and bring Ephraim forward to right- eousness. As the sun pours its radiance on the cold areas of the north, not because there's beauty in them, for they are dark and bleak but because there is HOW SHALL I GIVE THEE UP? 173 light and warmth in the sun ; and these dark for- ests are illumined by it and are at length brought into verdure and goodly fruitage. The love of God is creative. The hope of the world lies here a magnificent basis for jubilant optimism that the creative spirit of love is sov- ereign in the world; that at the center of power there is a loving father employing the resources of infinite wisdom to uplift our human life. A love with power. Not a love that may be at any- time interpreted as approval of the sinner; not good nature, mere idle fondness ; not that frail and impotent feeling that spends itself in feeble emotion as of an overindulgent human parent; but a love that endures, that has in it energy and tension like a grip of steel, that can administer stings and sufferings as well as joys, whatever may be necessary to make the object more worthy. A renewing and vitalizing power. Notice the working of it in the story of the prodigal son. I like to think of that boy as go- ing home not because he was hungry but under the tension of the father's love for him, a love which he at length remembers and realizes again. It pulls him. The story has many turns of inter- esting incident, but the undertone of the whole is the greatness of the father's love. Read that into every phrase of the narrative of his disobedi- ence and wandering. "He took his journey, wasted his substance began to be in want." Through all the father loves him. Dazed by dis- 174 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION tracting pleasures he forgets it or loses the con- sciousness of it for a time, but in the intervals of memory it is there the father's love. Little by little it comes back to him and at last he "comes to himself." All this time the father's love has been tugging at his heart and his hunger is now the hunger of the heart. The tension of his father's love has made a permanent force into the currents of which he might have thrown himself at any time. That love has never wholly lost its power over him and now it asserts itself again with sufficient force to win his will. And note the attitude of the waiting father. He knows the boy will come back. He watches for him with eyes that have in them a light that will never fail even though the eyes themselves be darkened. He sees his son coming "when he is yet a great way off." Now there are for us two lessons here which I can state in a word ; first ; every wayward lad is somebody's son and if we would help to bring him back to his better life we can only do so by loving him. Secondly for ourselves, to remem- ber God's tender love for us in all our wandering and disobedience. That memory will be worth everything to us. If we believe that Ephraim will come back it is because we know that God, in the tenderness of his love, yearned over him and said : "How shall I give thee up, Ephraim?" XX THE NOISE OF THEM THAT SING And he said, It is not the voice of them that shout for mastery, neither is it the voice of them that cry for being overcome; but the noise of them that sing do I hear. Exodus xxxii, 18. Moses says this in a tone that implies intense disapproval. Not that there is anything wrong in singing except where it denotes a collapse of effort, the fatal letting down of life from strenu- ous and honorable endeavor. Moses detected that in this abandoned gayety of the people, the letting down, the yielding from the hard purpose upon which this whole enter- prise of getting out of Egypt and out of slavery, was based. This very deliverance was the mission of Moses. He knew its magnitude, its difficulties ; he was strengthened for it by more than a com- mon insight, being admitted to the very presence of God. He knew therefore, the significance of this fatal weakness of the people. Blind of heart, stubborn, faltering in courage, they would follow their leader when that meant an immediate relief from present hardship, but as soon as new hard- ships were encountered they murmured. Hunger 175 176 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION and thirst brought to mind all the comforts of their former condition, and they longed for them with that easy abandonment of aspiration and hope, which you will always find in weak and self- indulgent natures. They break down under slight burdens. Thirst brings down the price of the best and greatest things if we are offered water for them. Hunger cheapens the countless blessings of a birthright until a bowl of pottage is held to be a good price for it. "Behold I am at the point to die," says Esau, "and what profit shall this birth- right do to me?" The argument seems fair; but there is a fatal fallacy in it that death is an evil. The stomach always thinks so and argues upon that presump- tion with a cogency that it is hard to resist. The stomach is a good talker, keeping up the clamor of its demands; but it never listens. "It is a hard thing, my fellow citizens," said old Cato, "to talk to the belly, for the belly hath no ears." But men are more than mere stomach, and the function of reason and reflection is to give a fair court, in which the expediences of life are to be decided. These questions come up, of course, and they must be decided, but to do it fairly, not only to listen to the voice of hunger and consider the pottage, but to consider the birthright as well, to weigh death ; to weigh the value of heroic determi- nation, the value of consistency in maintaining an honorable purpose. NOISE OF THEM THAT SING 177 What this people lacked was steadfastness of conviction so easily turned aside from the sure pathway of obedience and hope ! It cut Moses to the soul to catch the first evidences of it in these thoughtless revelings. How could these people so soon forget that God who alone could guide them through the perils of their wilderness journey? So do not for a moment suppose that this dashing the tablets down and breaking them was an act of momentary petulance or passion. Rather it was a righteous indignation, a pro- found regret that lasted a lifetime, because he realized the painful fact of their weakness. He knew what it meant in the years of struggle that were before them, and he knew how to deal with it. Such weakness brings its natural penalty, to be forever cut off from the promise that is, simply to draw the curtain and close the future from them. But there was a remnant that could be schooled to obedience. It was a heroic discipline. They must take it, however. Their idol was ground to powder and the people were made to drink the dust of that bovine gold. Then the summons went forth: "Who is on the Lord's side?" And when a small part of them had gathered about Moses, the sons of Levi passed through the rest with reeking sword, filling their camp with blood and horror. That is what it comes to when wisdom calls and has in her voice the sanc- tions of visible authority. That is what it 178 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION means to us whether the penalty comes on the in- stant, or is delayed till the end of our genera- tion. And this lesson is for us, brethren, for us, who should go straight on in the narrow way, shrink- ing from no duties because they are hard. We need to be reminded of the perils of our weakness, the tendency to slip from under severer tasks, to shift the burden of thought, the burden of labor, the burden of a purpose steadily maintained, to yield to methods that invite and that promise easier ways or to indulgence, that fatal snare of industry to yield and slip into singing and dancing. "Not the voice of them that shout for mastery, neither is it the voice of them that cry for being overcome, but the noise of them that sing do I hear." These "voices" and "noises" here mentioned are the sounds that measure the quality of human en- deavor. The voice of hard and persistent effort when men hold steadily to their course there is a tonic in the very note of it, and there come moments of exhilaration when the battle is on and victory is in sight, the pulse beats high, hope flaunts her banners, and the eager host breaks forth in shouts of triumph. Then there is the cry of those who are over- come, not a glad cry, but of the same quality; for even an honorable cause must meet its defeats. NOISE OF THEM THAT SING 179 Nor is one or ten or a hundred defeats a proof of wrong. The hum of common industry is of this quality too, and is in fact a song of triumph. Although it has not that resonance of hearty acclaim which rings forth from the battlefield, it is a paean of victory and has more solid gladness in it than any other sound; for in it are mingled the harmonies of health, and hope, and home, and honor. But beside every seat of industry there is a nestling brood of the idle. Here are those who would shirk duty, throw off the harness of toil and slip away into the easy course of dalliance and singing. By every hard fought Waterloo there is a Bel- gium's capitol with its "beauty circle proudly gay" within sound of the cannon's opening roar, and many are there in festivity who ought to be in the fight. The hand of judgment is lifted against such dalliance. You can readily see that I am not decrying any particular form of pleasure, but the substitution of pleasure as such for the serious pursuits and purposes of manhood. We do not develop as we should that true and strong capacity to persevere in the way of achievement, though that way be steep and rugged. "We are a mere number," says Horace, "born to consume the fruits of the earth." Horace is speaking of Homer and the Homeric ideals of life, the splendid endurance of Ulysses, the beautiful 180 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION constancy of Penelope, but over against these are the suitors of Penelope, mere drones, and the dainty subjects of Alcinous, and we are like them a mere number born to consume the fruits of the earth, busied more than we should be in pamper- ing our precious bodies. Horace thinks the Homeric ideal is the true one. Let me say right here that the reward of such heroic achievement is rest and recreation, singing and dancing if you please, pleasure if you please, pleasure to which the sated Sybarite can never rise for it comes as a result, not as an end sought. Let me give you an example. In the earlier stages of this same Exodus, great faith and en- durance were required of the people from time to time. At the very outset they came down that valley to the seaside, the enemy in pursuit of them ; and there they were, the sea before them, a mountain on either hand and a foe pressing upon them from behind. The word from the Lord was that they go forward. Go forward! With those seemingly impassable barriers ! Yet forward they must go, and as they did so, the barriers were taken away, they walked through the sea, and when the enemy followed them, they were over- whelmed by the refluent waters, that was a time of gladness and of song; and so we have it in the record; then sang Moses and the children of Israel, this song unto the Lord and spoke, say- ing: "I will sing unto the Lord for he has tri- umphed gloriously, the horse and his rider hath NOISE OF THEM THAT SING 181 he thrown into the sea" there is a song for you. And Miriam, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances there is dancing for you. Talk of pleasure ! who can tell the exquisite de- light that thrilled the people on the occasion of so signal an achievement? Legitimate activity whets the appetite for that pleasure which comes as a reward. The very activity is pleasure for that matter, the more keenly felt as the pulse beats strong with exercise, and the faculties are alert and attuned to the play of helpful emotion. The wearied votary of pleas- ure is a stranger to that fresh and buoyant joy. I spoke of shrinking from burdens of thought. That opens another aspect of our subject. It is pitiful to note that intellectual and moral flabbi- ness which shrinks from the task of answering life's questions, because the answer isn't at once forthcoming. We cannot prove on the instant that the soul is immortal, we cannot demonstrate, in the scientific sense of demonstration, that there is a God. We have our instincts, our intuitions and even our reasons, but these do not pass in the laboratories of science. Now if a youth is unfortunate enough to come into doubt upon these or similar questions, you may not bring him conviction by quoting a text to him or by tripping through the forms of logic, or in his own case by any special siege of close 182 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION and hard thinking. Such problems have to be lived with. They are solved only by working them out and living them out. Obedience, with reference to these great doctrines of revelation, is the true solvent of incertitude. "If any man will do his will he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God." Our best answer to life's problems come with life's last crown. The heritage of gray hairs, what Lowell calls "that autumnal wisdom ripe and placid," is this very certitude upon matters which have been the lifelong questionings of the heart, a certitude which may still be confirmed by our last experiences and best insights. But if a youth winces under such burdens of thought, and wants to throw them off, if at his first defeat when thought is baffled, as it surely will be, he gives up, or takes up the easiest theory which presents itself as an alternative, that is bad. A very large share of the unbelief of men repre- sents the cheap despair into which they sink when they realize the difficulty of these problems, and they stray off after other gods or glide into an easy indifference. How many men are simply in- different upon these subjects because they can not immediately answer all the hard questions that arise in connection with them. That is what happened here in this narrative. Moses delayed his return, that is all. It was only a period of waiting, and those people should have been capable of that much faith in their leader, NOISE OF THEM THAT SING 183 if not in the God he represented. But no ! before many days they gathered themselves together unto Aaron and said unto him : "Up ! make us Gods who shall go before us." "As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not w T hat has become of him." Then came the earrings and then the golden calf. Any little visible thing would do for them to worship, so incapable were they of grasping and holding to a spiritual truth. And the words of God to Moses were : "They have corrupted them- selves, they have turned aside quickly out of the way which I have commanded them," and the form which their lapse took was idolatry and feasting and levity. "They sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play." Now I can anticipate your criticism upon this line of thought that life in this aspect of it is too forbidding, too severe and hard, unrelieved by mirth and pleasure. This world of ours is al- ready too somber, there is so much suffering, wrong, evil, so much hardship, a good deal of darkness, and that we ought to let in all the light, all the relief, all the joy that we can. I know how true that is, and would add to, rather than subtract from, any real relief and help that man and woman can get in bearing their burdens. I see plainly how blessed a gift it is to be able to endure all things with a cheerful and hopeful heart. But we must beware lest good cheer alone become our main purpose. We want so many 184 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION easements of toil ; there is such a passion for fun and hilarity, the ease of it, the lightness and ex- hilaration of it. The people are so fond of parades and masquerades and trivial diversions. If the world's work were done then we might set- tle down to enjoyment, fatal as that course would be to our true happiness ; but the world's work seems only begun. It is precisely because there is so much hardship, so much suffering, so many evils, such troops of black horses, on mountains of brass, because the kingdom of God is yet so far away from us that the serious business of life should take a deep hold upon us. I wonder sometimes what service they render in the providence of God, whose lives are devoted to pleasure, sipping here and there the sweets of diversion, flitting from scene to scene of gayety, with barely intervals enough to repair their shaken nerves or refresh their sated appetites. Relief, indeed! It is often a relief to such when there comes an enforced period of quiet and absti- nence. I am convinced that in fashionable circles there is a powerful motive for the outward observ- ance of Lent in the sheer weariness of pleasure- seekers at that season, and that they may be re- freshed and ready for a new plunge when the days of abstinence are over; and that is one of the reasons why Lent is becoming an institution of society as well as an institution of the church. It would seem the manly thing to contend for that nobler type of living that asks no questions NOISE OF THEM THAT SING 185 about pleasure that sets the face against it, if need be, in the firm pursuit of duty, pushing the legitimate enterprises of life toward accomplish- ment at whatever cost. Not that we are to banish all thought of reward; not that our reward shall be joyless. Indeed, there was joy in the motive of the Master himself, "Who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross despising the shame" not a selfish pleasure, but the joy of doing the work and being able to say, "it is finished." I want to assure you again and again that the rewards will take care of themselves in any career that is actuated by noble purposes, and that is pursued with unflinching fidelity, and every good cause must be wrought to its success in that way, if our world is to be made better. Somebody must work, somebody must suffer, somebody must wait in apparent disappointment. Think what is being done and how strong and noble natures are waiting in the cause of temper- ance ! To prevent cruelty to animals, e. g., what thankless labors through a whole generation to work up a public sentiment to get suitable laws passed and to get the means of enforcing them? What opposition Mr. Bergh met, what buffetings, what sneers ! never faltering, however. It would have been easier to relax the fiber of that purpose and drift along with the world in indifference to suffering, but would the pleasure of such ease have been at all comparable to the profound satis- 186 HUMANITIES IN EDUCATION faction of accomplishing so noble a purpose, and having the people whose hearts were made more tender by his ministry, rise up at last and call him blessed? Enterprises that enlist the affections and nobler human sentiments are sure of their reward in terms of satisfaction as profound and noble as are the sentiments themselves. There is a mag- nificent service in simple waiting. I wonder if that is not what is meant by "Waiting on the Lord." To wait on is to serve, primary to rest in expectation and hope. "They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength." As the father waits for the return of the prodigal with misgivings of course, with fear, yet waiting, for at the first indication of his coming, when he is yet a great way off, the father is ready to go and meet him, to fall on his neck and kiss him. Or as the mother waits for the return of her roving sailor lad, with a heavy heart at times it may be, but with a tenderness of longing that begets hope. She may grow pale and thin in waiting, but her keen eye never wearies, never does she lift it from the curved shore and the horizon over which his mast may climb, and though a thousand times she may fail to see him, every disappointment is the birth of a new hope. And if the good ship ever does come over the horizon, if she ever does hold him to her heart in a lov- ing embrace, there is not a thrill of joy she feels, NOISE OF THEM THAT SING 187 but she has felt it a thousand times by anticipa- tion. We cheapen life's true joys, we weaken life's true forces, if we are content with the superficial pleasures which appeal to our senses. 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. LIBRARY USE APR 1 6 IS- ? 261968 *& I L.D DEC - 1 258 CO LD 21A-50m-8,'57 (C8481slO)476B General Library University of California Berkeley to 298960 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY