UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO 3 1822 01561 0512 g 'ilt*0 'uo^jojg JH0NI8 131Hd|tfvT P-toi V*°5 THE STUDENT'S GOAL Baccalaureate Address to the Graduating- Class New Mexico Normal University by EDGAR L. HEWETT Director of the School of American Research Santa Fe, New Mexico New Mexican Publishing Corporation Santa Fe, New Mexico WD THE STUDENT'S GOAL Baccalaureate Address to the Class of 1919 New Mexico Normal University "Give me now wisdom and knowledge." Members of the Graduating Class: Twenty years ago upon this platform I com- menced a cycle of baccalaureate addresses which continued over five successive graduat- ing seasons. It is with no illusions as to the continuing value of these that I have given each of you a copy of them. Little that was written on education twenty years ago is worth reading now. That was a time of great unrest in edu- cational science. An old order was passing and prophets of the new day were beyond their depths. Education has, in twenty years, made ad- vances comparable to those of surgery, pre- ventive medicine, engineering, transportation, and government. So do not look in those lect- ures for up-to-date pedagogical thought. They had a certain inspirational value in their time, and of that they may not be devoid even now. They reflect the attitude of mind of a young executive in a new and stimulating communi- ty, surrounded by a youthful and inspiring fac- ulty and student body, acting and re-acting in a finely responsive way upon one another's minds and characters. BACCALAUREATE ADDRESS Those were the original factors in this, school — community, faculty, students — the same factors that compose it today. We met here twenty years ago to found an educational institution. A part of the program fell to me, and the way in which I did my part was deter- mined vitally by the influence of the ripened characters with whom it was my privilege to sit in council; the comradeship of young and eager associates on the faculty and the inspira- tion of youthful minds that were here as stu- dents. These lectures then, express, I am sure, a united effort and not solely my individual thought. Whatever of value they now have lies in the extent to which the ideals therein upheld have been found worthy to enter into the permanent structure of this institution. If those ideals are gone, then it is because they were not worthy ideals or else this Normal University has gone wrong. If its ideals were right and this school has grown aright, then they rest as perpetual foundation stones. It is only for this that I have had printed for the graduates of the Nor- mal University these thoughts of the past — that they may know more of the spirit of their institution, may know and measure its ideals. For this is your school. You should know its history from the foundation up. You, the grad- uates, are the ones who will carry its spirit out to the people of the state. As I read these talks over again, for the first time in years, I reach some conclusions about 6 THE STUDENT'S GOAL them which may be worth stating ; namely, that they assert from beginning to end that life must have a spiritual basis. They uphold sci- ence and literature and art in education but emphasize them particularly for their value in spiritual development, and make religion the corner stone in educational foundations. They support the principle that freedom is the su- preme attainment through education. They constitute an effort to find and express the aim of all study, the purpose of institutions of learning. That is, obviously, an object that calls for frequent re-investigation. So I come back after these years to try again to state what is the student's goal. I hardly think any other theme worth talking about on Baccalaureate Sunday. You will perhaps com- pare this with the former efforts and your conclusions will be valuable, for you are of the maturer time ; your existence has been entirely in the riper years of the world. To the wisdom of that day has been added the experience of the greatest years in history and you are now at the threshold of still greater times, of yet larger responsibilities. The years ahead are yours, what is your goal? A great conflict is just finished. As it pass- es into history, we realize that we have been participants in events so stupendous that the mind can not yet grasp their meaning. Words fail to express even the little that is under- stood. We have seen in these crowded years nations in their birth, nations in their death BACCALAUREATE ADDRESS throes, and nations in their resurrection. To have seen as much in any former time, we should have had to live a millennium. The fall of ancient dynasties from their pinnacles of power and glory and the rise of new men from the soil to take up the scepters of leadership have become familiar occurrences. Vast ex- periments in human government have gone down in dismal failure after centuries of trial. New experiments, originating in chaos, have begun the age-long struggle — to what end only Omnipotence can tell. These mighty events have transpired from day to day before our eyes to the accompany- ing crash of battles heretofore impossible. Car- nage unspeakable has held humanity appalled- All the tragedies of by-gone ages rolled togeth- er have been re-enacted in these swift years. Single days of this conflict surpassed in slaught- er all the combats of the Homeric Age and every deed of valor on the plains of ancient Troy has been matched on the battlefields of Europe by our own and our neighbors' sons. Through ages to come historians will be gather- ing data, recording events, and interpreting episodes of these great years. Libraries on the World War will grow to enormous proportions and still fail to adequately chronicle the events of these times. It requires the long perspective of the ages to enable us to interpret such times and events as these and assign them to their proper place in the evolution of civilization. But the heart- THE STUDENT'S GOAL throbs of the people as they answered the sum- mons to war are understood by those who shared them. The feelings of brave sons as they tendered their lives to the Nation are known to those who looked into their eyes as they marched away. But this is past. We face the great days of peace. We look out over ho- rizons that embrace a myriad of new problems, calling for clearer vision, appealing for vastly more spiritual power in all of us. The physical test of war was no greater than will be the spiritual test of peace. We have a vast inheritance of thought. For ages men have been students and some have en- shrined their thought in immortal expressions. What goal have the greatest men set for them- selves; what have they most desired? There was one of old, King Solomon, of whom our fathers have been wont to speak as the wisest man of all time. So, naturally, it occurs to us to inquire what he considered the highest good, for we are told that to him was put the problem by the Almighty himself, "Ask what I shall give thee." Here was a young man facing a vast undertaking and certain things such as riches, honor, victory over his enemies, long life, were greatly to be desired; but his reply was simply, "give me now wisdom and knowl- edge." There are many goals to strive for in life ; many worthy purposes on which to fix our minds. When the great ones of the past choose objectives which they place above everything BACCALAUREATE ADDRESS else under the sun, they must be worth in- quiring into. May we know what wisdom is and where it is to be found? Yes. May we ac- quire if in school? I do not know. It is cer- tain that nothing can be put into the mind. Education can only draw out or develop what is there. Knowledge we can surely gain in school and in daily life ; wisdom is not so easily accounted for. The ancient Greeks thought much on this subject. Athena was their Goddess of "Wis- dom. Athena was born full panoplied from the brain of Zeus. In other words, wisdom was conceived to be of divine origin. It was the offspring of Infinite Mind. Athens was the city of Athena ; the city of wisdom. There was the temple of Athena in which was enshrined the marvelous statue which the master, Phidias, wrought in ivory and gold as an expression of the beauty and majesty of wisdom, which meant so much to the Greek that it had to be deified. The citizen of Athens was a devotee of wis- dom. His life was an aspiration to higher things, to do more, to be greater. He thought of his city as a place for noble -people to spend their lives in, for noble ends. This was wis- dom not only deified, but lived in every day af- fairs. In their sculptures warriors are seen killing the centaurs, loathsome creatures, half beast, half man — the poetic way of proclaim- ing the victory of the true man over the baser self. Suppose the citizens of Las Vegas thought 10 THE STUDENT'S GOAL always, "how can we make our city finer? how can we beautify it? how can we make it the loveliest place in the world? how can we make these people nobler?" "Is there loathsome vice here? Then let's put it down, let's slay the ugly, brutal thing, so that our young men and women may be fairer, and the city that we love clean and fine." Every citizen thinking of his city as a place for noble people to spend their lives in for noble ends and shaping his own life accordingly. Would this not soon be the modern Athens? "Would not people come from the ends of the earth to see and live in Las Vegas? Would this not be truly a city of wisdom, of striving to do more, to achieve some- thing higher? This represents my idea of wisdom — the im- pulse to the higher endeavor, to nobler living — a truly divine gift. Possessing it, you can never rest content with present conditions ; you must do more. You want a fairer world; you want more beauty in it ; more goodness in it, and you set about making it so. You create beauty and goodness in yourself, in others, in the world about you. You can make the place where you live vibrant with new aspirations. Twenty years ago this spring we greeted in this city a young warrior, here to meet his regi- ment on the anniversary of its baptism of fire in Cuba. A few weeks ago this knight without fear and without reproach, closed his eyes upon a world that he had electrified. Twenty years spanned the period of his life as a national fig- 11 BACCALAUREATE ADDRESS ure. In that time he thrilled the conscience of his countrymen. He set a mark for high en- deavor that moved every young man in Ameri- ca to action when the great days came. Theo- dore Roosevelt lived every day to do more, to inspire his countrymen to make a better nation. One day, some years ago, a man who has been and always will be my chief, whose life has been a steady, certain movement to the highest station attainable in his science, told me in a simple sentence the whole story of his inspiring career. He said: "I have simply made it a rule to always do more than was ex- pected of me." I commend to you this ex- pression of direct, simple wisdom. I have put down as the second object of the scholar, knowledge. That sounds very common- place. Who does not know what everybody goes to school for? Is it not to acquire knowl- edge? Yes, of course. Then I did not need to tell you that at all. But let's see. Suppose I have the annoying habit that Socrates had, of questioning people about these commonplace things which they say they know all about, and I say to you, "yes, but I am terribly ignorant; won't you please tell me what knowledge is?" You say, "yes, why certainly, knowledge — well knowledge is — why everybody knows what knowledge is; why do you ask such a simple question as that anyway?" Then I say very humbly, as Socrates always did, "really, I do wish you would tell me what knowledge is; I have asked a great many people and found 12 THE STUDENT'S GOAL them very hazy on the subject. I assure you I am desperately anxious to know and you who are about to graduate from this great Normal University can surely enlighten me." You, feeling that the reputation of your alma mater is at stake, say, "well, knowledge is what we know, or no, it is what we are sure of." Then I say, "oh, I am so much obliged to you; now I can get on. Won't you please now tell me something you are sure of so I can have an ex- ample of real knowledge? ' ' And you say ' ' cer- tainly, here is an example ; I know that we are going to have a League of Nations very soon;" And I say, "well, well, how did you find that out?" You reply, "why, the newspapers all say so and the magazines and some of the pub- lic speakers ; it must be so." And I say, "well, were you in Las Vegas one day last fall when news came over the wires that the armistice was signed and the war ended?" "Yes, and we all turned loose and had a great celebration at once. And about the time we got through cele- brating, another news agency sent word over the wires that it was not so, and sure enough, we had, all over the United States, celebrated something that had not happened." Reports, then, must not be accepted as facts. Uncer- tainty is not knowledge. You want another trial. You say "put your hand in that fire and it will he burned." I answer, "thank you, I won't try that, I have done it before, and I know what happens. I 13 BACCALAUREATE ADDRESS believe you do know what knowledge is. We will graduate you." But let us go a step farther together. Socra- tes was not such an unmitigated nuisance after all. Let us examine a serious question. We take up a current magazine ; let us call it, say, the "New Democracy." We read in the first editorial paragraph "Fiume is to be made an in- ternational port for ten years under the League of Nations and then to revert to Italy; mean- time international assistance for the Jugo-Slavs in the construction of a new port on the Adri- atic. That, we are told is the agreement which brings the Italians back to Paris. It is not so satisfactory a solution as the permanent in- ternationalization of Fiume would be, for it means a perpetuation of rivalry in the ports of the Adriatic." Have you gained some knowl- edge from this? I doubt it. The statements set forth as facts have since been denied; but if true, what of the conclusion drawn? Is it an unsatisfactory solution? What do we know of the future results of this arrangement? Abso- lutely nothing. Then this is not knowledge ; this is simply opinion. I go on through the pag- es; over twenty-two editorial paragraphs; eve- ry one a statement of a proposition followed by an elaborated conclusion designed to convince you and me. I find only three or four of the twenty-two based on fairly well established facts. The method of every paragraph is to announce a proposition on which to base an opinion. The opinion is the thing that is made 14 THE STUDENT'S GOAL prominent ; that is advanced with all the finali- ty of absolute knowledge. There is awful in- difference to facts. Looking at the title page of the magazine I find that it does not claim to be a magazine of truth. It calls itself "a magazine of opinion." What a vast proportion of the things we read in newspapers, magazines, text books, are simply opinion deliberately in- tended to bias our judgment; sheer propagan- da — a word that is becoming hateful to us. Watch this propaganda system that has become so prevalent. The most vicious cause under heaven organizes its propaganda, its agents, its organs of publicity, and it makes converts of the unthinking, of those weak enough to be moved by the mere opinion of others. How I should like to see, instead of so many journals of opinion, a journal of fact, dedi- cated to truth only ; to the publication of facts without comment, of truths that are worth knowing; a presentation of facts displaying wisdom of selection. What a combination this would be and how economical in these days of expensive paper. How I should like to see such a journal placed in your hands and you allowed to do your own thinking, to form your own judgments. I would have great respect for your conclusions, for you bring to these facts the power of the educated mind. If humanity can only get the truth, it is always safe; but the illiterate mind has no means of getting at the truth; hence the fertile field for the mob orator, who works solely upon the emotions, 15 BACCALAUREATE ADDRESS the passions, the lower instincts. Ignorance is the one dangerous foe of democracy. Ignorance is all that is the matter with Russia. Knowl- edge is our rock of ages. To know is to pos- sess absolute truth. What a spiritual disci- pline science is ! Only a single purpose in view — to find out truth. So I beg of you to hold yourselves to a very stern definition of knowledge. The greater part of what goes by that name is only opinion ; or only the word of man, sometimes mistaken, often deliberately false, handed on from one to another for ages and blindly accepted. Let us stand for knowledge that means nothing short of the possession of incontrovertible truth. I am sure that is what Solomon meant when he asked that he be given wisdom and knowledge. It is what we tried to build into the foundations of this institution years ago. Let us get the habit of inquiring very closely into all propositions on which important con- clusions depend. Particularly be on the look- out for phrases that carry premature convic- tion. "Forward looking" has been in high favor of late years. Every one must be a "for- ward looking man." It sounds well, but I should dissect all such expressions before ac- cepting them as guides in life. I believe in look- ing forward, yet the future can only be known at all through the past. Man has been slowly groping his way for ages; looking forward, to be sure, but guided in his onward course by past experience, by knowledge gained. Cease 16 THE STUDENT'S GOAL to look back over the slow gains of the ages; cease to heed the facts established by countless experiences and we court swift destruction. All improvement is the result of the aspiring wis- dom which impels to seek the higher state, and the application of the knowledge we have gained through inheritance and experience. Let us look forward with eager hope, but back- ward too with reverent quest for the wisdom and knowledge on which to base every act of life in the future. It is a strange and interesting trait of human nature that it so generally requires the stress of dire necessity to impel it to wise action. Fortunate that the mysterious reserves of pow- er are then available. It took the shock of war to drive us to the use of the most vital things of human knowledge. Never before had we made an appraisement of our human re- sources. For years systematic evaluation of economic conditions has been customary. The prospective crops of grain and live stock are es- timated and reported months in advance, but there has been no exact knowledge of the avail- able man power of the country. No one could give much information as to the condition of the children or their prospects for reaching useful maturity. The unnecessary loss of chil- dren was appalling ; the amount of preventable disease and consequent misery and poverty among adults no less so. Of a million men in the prime of life, scarcely half were fit for duties requiring high efficiency. 17 BACCALAUREATE ADDRESS The war brought these questions to the front and in such an imperative way that they at once ceased to be debatable and commanded in- stant action. The army called for men of maxi- mum power; men free from disease, clear-eyed, alert in all their senses. Health was prompt- ly made obligatory. Army traditions of long standing were swept away. The moral code of the soldier became higher than that of the college student of past years. Army life was freer from vice than civilian life. Eagerly our young men obeyed the call to physical and moral cleanliness. It became the pride of the soldier. It seems a bit strange that it was not to the colleges and universities that our young men went to learn and prize the highest attri- butes of manhood, but to the training camp. What university executive will take the lead in demanding that student life shall be as clean as soldier life is now required to be? The prosepect of huge losses of the male pop- ulation turned attention to the saving of infant life and from one end of the country to the other, the physical and mental examination of the children was started. As a result, child- hood is in a fair way to get a square deal. The right of the child to a clean ancestry, to a wholesome birth, to protection from infection, to freedom from physical, mental, and moral contamination during the period of helpless- ness, to sanitary food and clothing and shelter, and to education is a mandate of our time. The state that lacks child conservation laws will 18 THE STUDENT'S GOAL soon be considered uncivilized. Banish the han- dicaps of childhood — bad heredity, infections, mal-nutrition, ignorance and the fight against poverty and crime is won. Women gained in four years what they have been struggling centuries to obtain. As the women of the country silently stepped into place in every line of activity, short of actual battle, and with marvelous devotion and un- suspected endurance stood up to the hardest tasks, it became obvious that here was a line of defense not to be ignoied. In every sense they were fighters. They fought to send sub- sistence to the front. They fought disease. They fought for the lives of the wounded. They toiled with needle and sewing machine until they were ready to drop, but none ever fell. If called to danger they faced it boldly, for the risk of life is no new experience to them Courageous, determined, quick-witted — they were from the first like veterans in the prompt- ness and precision with which they went to their tasks. They did not wait to be mobilized. "Drives" were not necessary to spur them to action. They reached to the uttermost limits of the war. Not a returning soldier but testi- fies that whether in camp or cantonment, on land or sea or in the air, in front line trenches and in the valley of the shadows, he was never beyond the reach of what women were doing for him. In the fires of this conflict men's souls have been purged and the New Chivalry is born. Count this among the supreme gains. 19 BACCALAUREATE ADDRESS It is safe to say that henceforth no civilized country will underrate the worth of its women in public affairs, and even in war their place will be as important, as honorable, as that of the men. My young friends, the goal of life has not changed in four years, nor in twenty years, nor in three thousand, nor ever can it change. "Give me now wisdom and knowledge." This, through all the ages has been the cry of the real student. So accustomed are we to the words that they seem commonplace, but they embrace all that is worth striving for. Just so long as man continues to long for wisdom and knowl- edge will we go onward. For wisdom is that sublime impulse to high endeavor, to noble liv- ing; and knowledge is the everlasting founda- tion on which we may build with absolute se- curity. Given these two endowments and life becomes a certainty — a period of controlled purposeful action, of creative achievement, of destiny made real through self determination in harmony with Infinite Mind. I find myself still holding the thesis that ed- ucation means evolution, and through evolution freedom. I care less and less for the words "teaching" and "instructing" for they imply the imposition of my thought, my view, upon others. I care more and more for "education." It implies, drawing out, unfolding, developing what is in you. You have no right to make another accept what you think, what you be- lieve. But you have the sublime privilege of 20 THE STUDENT'S GOAL cultivating mind and character and of setting free the human spirit. And a supreme duty is to aid in bringing that freedom of the individ- ual into the larger freedom of association with others. Only as the freedom of self is subordi- nated to the freedom of society is progress made toward democracy. We have a country of free institutions, but they can only exist and we enjoy them through the scrupulous ob- servance by each one of us of the crystalized agreements that we have entered into which we call law and order. This is freedom through discipline. From boyhood I have lived and worked a- mong my neighbors. I have always lived under law. To my knowledge I have never broken a law. I am sure I never have an impulse to break one. Yet I feel that no human being ever lived a more independent life. I have sim- ply been privileged to live in a country of lim- itless opportunities, the chief of all being the opportunity to achieve my absolute freedom through co-operation with my fellow men. I trust that all who come from foreign lands to live among us may be made clearly acquainted with this spirit of our laws ; that the individual is absolutely free if he subordinates the desires of self to the good of all. If they think other- wise they must be sternly told to go elsewhere. Every activity in which we have co-operated in this last great crisis has been a lesson^ in freedom through mutual aid — has been an im- pulse toward true Democracy. As the meaning 21 BACCALAUREATE ADDRESS of that word becomes clear — as the ideal there- in contained becomes the possession of all the people — we approach the realization of man's fondest dream. In Democracy, every concep- tion of freedom, every aspiration of which the human spirit is capable, is attainable. Not so- cial Democracy — just plain American Democ- racy, the kind that ninety-nine per cent of the American people want and are going to have. If any prefer anarchy, syndicalism, Bolshevism or any other brand of social and political ter- rorism, let them live where those insanities breed. In Europe one may have a large choice. There may be no simon-pure Prussianism left, but Bolshevism will answer the same purpose. Kaiserism was organized, efficient despotism. Bolshevism is despotism minus efficiency, equally criminal — headed toward the same end, the bondage of the many to the will of the vicious few. Members of the Class of 1919 ; I greatly prize this opportunity to come to you with the first words of your commencement week. It was a beautiful courtesy of your President to invite me to do this. Not mine alone are these words of greeting. All who have had to do with this institution since its birth are here with their benediction now. The years have gone, leaving gentle memories of lives that endeared this place to us and time has brought us into wider horizons. We who have spent some years as builders in this state look upon scenes like this with satisfaction that is beyond words. This 22 THE STUDENT'S GOAL is the vision that we had. You, the never end- ing stream of youth, coming on from year to year to keep life an eternal morning; going out into our country, among our people to serve them. There is your supreme happiness — in service. We are going to confer upon you this week a distinguished honor and a serious responsibility. This great institution is going to proclaim you its standard bearers. This great state is going to vouch for you with all the authority it has. We, all the people, are going to back you up in your life work, just so long as you are not afraid to choose the hard road. What a marvelous development this is ! We provide for our youth the best opportunities for self development that can be afforded. If they are faithful and courageous, if they stand the test as to character and knowledge and dis- cretion, we vouch for them for life. It is an expression of supreme trust in our youth ; and who shall say that our faith has ever been mis- placed? We have called them to the everyday duties of life and they have never disappointed us. We summoned them to battle that simple justice "and righteousness and decency should prevail among men, and they responded with their lives. Sixteen thousand of New Mexico's young men answered that call, four hundred of whom will return to us only in loving mem- ory. An uncounted host of young women si- lently formed a second line of defense and for- got weariness, forgot the sweet joys of youth, 23 BACCALAUREATE ADDRESS to toil in the great service, to help, to help as only women can, in the supreme tests and sac- rifices of life. And so we can trust and vouch for our youth. In you, members of this class, we salute the youth of our land — those who knew no holding back in the great crisis; those who made sacred to us the soil of distant lands and the depths of the sea where their young bodies rest ; and all of you who are now going into the no less serious work of the coming years with the same spirit of courageous en- deavor. We know you, we respect you, we trust you. We place upon you vast responsi- bility and you will justify our faith. 24 IHEG\0NM-U MWFAWUft BR^t