THE LIBRARY OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 
 NORTH CAROLINA 
 
 THE COLLECTION OF 
 NORTH CAROLINIANA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 Louis Round ViTilson 
 
 C378 
 
 UK3 
 1915 
 
UNIVERSJTYOF N,C, AT CHAPEL h 
 
 00039136675 
 
 FOR USE ONLY IN 
 THE NORTH CAROLINA COLLECTION 
 
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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
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 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hil 
 
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 SCHOOL AND SOCIETY 
 
 Volume I 
 
 Saturday, May 1, 1915 
 
 Number 18 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS AT THE UNI- 
 VERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINAi 
 
 Tins hiii:h fniumissioii I receive from the 
 state in a spirit of deep and reverent con- 
 fidence that does not springs from any 
 thought of personal resource. If all of the 
 wealth of treasured memory and hope that 
 this institution represents were an individ- 
 ual responsibility, it would be a burden too 
 heavy to be borne ; but this great company 
 of her sons, and her kindred, and her 
 friends is testimony to the wide and loyal 
 fellowship of learning that hedg&s her 
 securely round about, and makes the indi- 
 vidual heart strong enough for anything. 
 Nor less rea.ssuring, as the standard passes 
 to an untried hand, is the host of happy 
 thoughts released by the presence of those 
 who since the reopening gave themselves 
 to her guidance in wisdom and complete 
 devotion. To them to-day the institution 
 pays the perfect tribute of her abundant 
 life that they gave their strength to pro- 
 mote: to her latest leader, the architect of 
 her material rebuilding, whose w'ise and 
 patient care inwrought into her standard 
 the ideals of modern scholarship ; to his 
 predecessor, whose sympathetic insight and 
 statesman-like vision gave eloquent ex- 
 pression to the voiceless aspiration of his 
 people and made him their interpreter, both 
 to themselves and to the nation ; to his pre- 
 decessor, whose aggressive and brilliant 
 leadership performed the essential service 
 of making the university a popular right 
 and privilege; to his predecessor — the his- 
 
 1 Delivered by Dr. Edward Kidder Graham, Uni- 
 versity of Nortli Carolina, on April 21, 1915, on the 
 occasion of his installation as president of the Uni- 
 versity of North Carolina. 
 
 torian of her heroic past, on whoso heart 
 each syllal)le of her story Ls written — who 
 lived through a period of bitterness with- 
 out a hate, who endured poverty without 
 a regret, achieved honor without pride, 
 and who now so deeply sharas the eternal 
 youth about him that age finds him with a 
 heart so young and a life so full of affec- 
 tion and praise that he is the witness of his 
 own immortality. 
 
 As the mind dwells on all of this exalted 
 loyalty and unselfish devotion, once again 
 persons, even the most heroic, fade into the 
 background of the cause that evoked their 
 heroisms, and our present ceremonial be- 
 comes less the installation of an individual 
 than a reverent and passionate dedication 
 of all of us and all of the energies and 
 powers of all of us to the civilization that 
 the institution exists to serve. 
 
 The life of this institution began with 
 the life of the nation itself ; and the period 
 since its rebirth in 1875 is the great pe- 
 riod of national construction. In these 
 forty years the nation was caught up in the 
 giant's swing of its material release, and 
 through the exploitation and development 
 of its natural resources, through immi- 
 gration, invention, industrial combina- 
 tion, and commercial expansion constructed 
 a civilization startling and wonderful in 
 the things it fashioned, in the type of con- 
 structive genius it elicited, in the new tyr- 
 annies and ideals it evolved. In this nota- 
 ble half-century, all America became, in 
 the summarizing phrase of Mr. Wells, 
 "one tremendous escape from ancient ob- 
 sessions into activity and making." Its 
 liberated energies drew from the wealth 
 
614 
 
 SCHOOL AND SOCIETY 
 
 [Vol. I, No. 18 
 
 of the continent material achievements 
 and qualities of a sort unmatched in the 
 history of civilization, through which it 
 became, in its own brave acclaim of con- 
 quest and creation, "triumphant democ- 
 racy. ' ' 
 
 The section that this institution served 
 was only partly affected by this great 
 expansion; but for it, too, the period is 
 more than anything else a period of con- 
 struction and making. In the last ten 
 years of the existence of this institution 
 before the war, the wealth of the south 
 was about one half that of the whole 
 country. In these ten years, its wealth in- 
 creased one billion dollars more than that 
 of New England and the Middle States 
 combined. In 1875, when the university 
 began its life over again, the whole south 
 was bankrupt. 
 
 In these forty years of material rebuild- 
 ing it too has escaped from ancient ob- 
 sessions not a few, and has won, in patience 
 and fortitude under the austere discipline 
 of a fierce, unequal struggle, not only the 
 spiritual compensations of the struggle, 
 but material liberation that is not a prom- 
 ise but an immediate reality. And while 
 it is under the thrill of the prosperity 
 within its grasp, it is not primarily because 
 in the past ten years its bank deposits and 
 the capital invested in its manufactures 
 have increased tenfold, that half of the na- 
 tion's exports originate in its ports, that a 
 world treasure hidden in its oil, gas, coal, 
 iron, water-power and agriculture makes 
 certain the fact that the next great expan- 
 sion in national life will be here, and that 
 here will be "the focusing point of the 
 world's commerce" ; the summons that puts 
 the eager and prophetic tone in southern 
 life to-day is the consciousness that here 
 under circumstances pregnant with happy 
 destiny men will make once more the ex- 
 periment of translating prosperity in terms 
 
 of a great civilization. It is to leadership 
 in this supreme adventure of democratic 
 commonwealth building that the univer- 
 sities of the south are called, and their 
 real achievements depend upon the sure 
 intelligence, sympathy and power, with 
 which they perform their vital function, 
 and make authoritative answer to the com- 
 pelling question of the people as to what, if 
 anything, in the way of clear guidance they 
 have to offer, or must we look to another? 
 An institution to express and minister to 
 the highest aspirations of man was an im- 
 mediate provision of the founders of the 
 first states of the new republic. It was a 
 part of the organic law of North Carolina, 
 and the University of North Carolina was 
 the first of the state universities to be 
 chartered, followed quickly by those of 
 Georgia and South Carolina. They were 
 fostered, however, not by the whole peo- 
 ple, but by groups of devoted men who 
 sought to have them perform for the new 
 country the noble service of the historic 
 colleges of the old. It was the author of the 
 Declaration of Independence who by faith 
 saw in the new country a new civilization 
 with a new philosophy, and who saw im- 
 plicit in that a new institution for its reali- 
 zation. Jefferson sought to create in the 
 university of the state an institution that 
 would not only through traditional culture 
 values give to the state "legislators, and 
 judges . . . and expound the principles 
 and stnicture of government," but would 
 also "harmonize and promote the inter- 
 ests of agriculture, manufacture and com- 
 merce, and by well formed views of polit- 
 ical economy give free course to public 
 industry." To the traditional models then 
 existent he advocated an institution that 
 would meet all the needs of all of the state, 
 and to this end planned courses in manual 
 training, engineering, agriculture, horti- 
 culture, military training, veterinary sur- 
 
May 1, 1913] 
 
 SCHOOL AND SOCIETY 
 
 615 
 
 pery, aiul for suhnols of coinnnTce, manu- 
 faetnrinfj and tliploiiuR-y. and in tlie details 
 of its administration ho planned to keep it 
 flexil)le and responsive to the people's need. 
 
 But in spite of this splendid proufram 
 the state university could not come into its 
 own in the south, nor for a hundred years 
 be realized anywhere. The great American 
 idea that Jefferson conceived had to wait 
 until America itself could come into beinjr, 
 find the mission of interpretative leader- 
 ship passed to other hands, as the section 
 which gave it birth lost contact with the 
 spirit of national life. 
 
 The evolution of the American state uni- 
 versity during the past hundred years is 
 the record of the gradual fulfilling of Jef- 
 ferson's splendid vision. It represents the 
 vital history of the contribution of nine- 
 teenth-eenturj' America to the progress of 
 mankind. The diffusion of wealth and 
 knowledge, geographical and scientific dis- 
 covery, new inventions and new ideals, not 
 only put a power and a passion into mate- 
 rial making and construction, but they fash- 
 ioned institutions of training in whatever 
 vocation the all-conquering hand of mate- 
 rialism demanded, and these as they de- 
 veloped were added to those that other 
 civilizations had created. To the institu- 
 tions that seek to express man's inner life 
 and his relations to the past and the fixity 
 of those relations, it added institutions that 
 interpret his outer life, his relation to the 
 present and his infinite capacity for prog- 
 ress. It seeks to reassert for present civili- 
 zation what past civilizations say to Amer- 
 ica, together with what America has to say 
 for itself. Through its colleges of liberal 
 arts, pure and applied science, professional 
 and technical schools it repeats the culture 
 messages of the prophets of the nineteenth 
 century : Arnold's message of sweetness and 
 light; Huxley's message of the spirit of 
 
 iiii|uiry, and Carlyle's me.s.sage of the spirit 
 of work. 
 
 In this grouping, then, of the college of 
 culture, the college of research, the college 
 of vocation into a eompartniental organiza- 
 tion of efficient and specialized parts, sup- 
 plemented by the idea of centering its 
 energy and ingenuity in putting all of its 
 resources directly at the service of all the 
 people — is this the ultimate thought of this 
 greatest institution of the modern state, 
 and is its future to be concerned merely 
 with perfecting these parts and further ex- 
 tending their utility? 
 
 Culture as learning, science as investiga- 
 tion, and work as utility, each has an 
 eternal life of its own, and to perfect 
 each of them for the performance of its 
 special work will always be an aim of 
 the university. But this conception of 
 its function as a university is neces- 
 sarily partial and transitional. Tyndall, 
 in his great Belfast address made in 1874, 
 points out that it is not through science, 
 nor through literature that human nature 
 is made whole, but through a fusion of both. 
 Through its attempt to make a new fusion 
 of both with work during the great con- 
 structive years of the past half-century, our 
 civilization has caught the impulse of a new 
 culture center. It is this that the state uni- 
 versity seeks to express. It is more than an 
 aggregate of parts. As a university it is a 
 living unity, an organism at the heart of 
 the living democratic state, interpreting its 
 life, not by parts, or by a summary of parts, 
 but wholly — fusing the functions of brain 
 and heart and hand under the power of the 
 immortal spirit of democracy as it moves 
 in present American life to the complete 
 realization of what men really want. The 
 real measure of its power will be whether, 
 discarding the irrelevancies of the past and 
 present, it can focus, fuse and interpret 
 their eternal verities and radiate them 
 
616 
 
 SCHOOL AND SOCIETY 
 
 [Vol. I, No. 18 
 
 from a new organic center of culture. This, 
 let it tentatively define as achievement 
 touched bj' fine feeling — as truth alive and 
 at work in the world of men and things. 
 
 Such new centers are the vital source of 
 civilization, and the propulsive power of 
 progress. Every now and then in human 
 history men make a synthesis of their 
 ideals, giving redirection and increased pro- 
 jection to their energies on new and higher 
 levels of achievement. Truly great creative 
 periods thus result from the liberation of 
 men through new revelations of deeper 
 and richer values in their new relations. 
 Classical learning gave Europe such a 
 period in the Renaissance; science gave 
 the modem world such a period, each ex- 
 pressing itself through a great educational 
 institution, typifying the union of past 
 ideals into a new center of reality. The 
 American state university of the twentieth 
 century is an organism of the productive 
 state, striving to express in tangible real- 
 ities the aspirations of present democracy, 
 as it adjusts itself to the liberations of a 
 new humanism. 
 
 The evolution of the democratic state in 
 the past hundred years as an attempt to 
 actualize in human society the principles 
 of liberty, equality and brotherhood is 
 parallel to that of the state university. 
 Traditional ideals and institutions it, too, 
 inherited that it could not wilfully dis- 
 card; new ideals it, too, aspired to that it 
 could not immediately achieve. Its conti- 
 nental task of "construction and making" 
 made the production of material values its 
 necessary concern. The incarnation of 
 the great anti-feudal power of commerce 
 was inevitable, not only to break the bonds 
 of the "ancient obsessions," but to open 
 through its material might railways, steam- 
 ship lines, canals, telegraph and telephone 
 systems, good roads, schoolhouses and li- 
 braries, as avenues to liberation. In its de- 
 
 velopment it created its own abnormal 
 standards and tyrannies, and became so 
 obsessed with material freedom that equal- 
 ity seemed a contradiction and cooperation 
 the vision of a dreamer. Its life was in- 
 dividualistic, compartmental, and fiercely 
 competitive. Its ideal was efficiency; its 
 criterion, dividends; but present democ- 
 racy, if it has not yet focused the light to 
 the new center toward which it moves, is 
 steadily illumined by it. Democracy has 
 come to mean more than an aggregate of 
 vocations, grouped for the purpose of ma- 
 terial exploitation. The whole effort of 
 the productive state is to unify its life, not 
 by casting out material good, but by inter- 
 preting and using it in its symmetrical up- 
 building. 
 
 Great progress toward making the state 
 a cooperative organism in the equal dis- 
 tribution of all the elements of life to all 
 according to their capacity, has been made 
 in the evolution of business itself. "Busi- 
 ness is business" is no longer its ultimate 
 thought. In perfecting its parts for effi- 
 ciency it discovered, not merely the value 
 of cooperation in the individual business, 
 but in the larger aggregates of material 
 expansion that the cooperation of manufac- 
 tures, commerce and agriculture is neces- 
 sary to prosperity, and that the weakness 
 of one is the weakness of all. It has come 
 to see in addition to this extensive unity, 
 an intensive unity in its dependence on 
 knowledge, science and ethics; and more 
 deeply still that the organic center of all 
 of its actions and interactions for libera- 
 ting its efficiency and its life to a higher 
 level of productivity is in raising the pro- 
 ductivity of all of the men engaged in it 
 by liberating all of their wholesome facul- 
 ties. Scientific management, which will 
 in the present century mark as great prog- 
 ress in production as the introduction of 
 machinery did in the past century, shifts 
 
May 1, ]9I5] 
 
 SCHOOL AND SOCIETY 
 
 617 
 
 the main emphasis of production from tho 
 iiuifhine to the worker. The new freedom 
 in whatever form — in business, polities, re- 
 liiiion and philosophy — is a manifestation 
 (if the effort of democracy to establish the 
 supremacy of human values, and so to 
 make of itself the creative, spiritual or- 
 ^'anism it must be. From this new center 
 of constructive cooperation, it is already in 
 its effort to abolish ignorance, poverty, dis- 
 ease and crime, sendinp: confident premon- 
 itions of fuller life and new and braver 
 reconstructions. The productive demo- 
 cratic state would make of itself an organ- 
 ism, by making its eompartmental life a 
 I'.nion of all of its parts, as the nation made 
 of the states a territorial union. It would 
 perfect the parts through the stronger, 
 fuller life of the whole ; it would lose none 
 of the good of individual initiative and 
 material success, but would translate it all 
 into the whole term of higher human 
 values. It cries with the creative joy of 
 .spent life renewed : 
 
 All good things are ours, 
 Nor soul helps flesh more 
 Than flesh helps soul. 
 
 The state university is the instrument of 
 democracy for realizing all of these high 
 and healthful aspirations of the state. 
 Creating and procreated by the .state it 
 has no immediate part, however, in a spe- 
 cific social program. Its service is deeper 
 and more pervasive. It sees its problem as 
 positive, not negative ; as one of funda- 
 mental health, not of superficial disease. 
 It looks on the state as a producer; not as 
 a policeman. It is not so much concerned 
 with doing a certain set of things, as in- 
 fusing the way of doing all things with a 
 certain ideal. Not by spasmodic reform, 
 nor by sentiment, nor by the expiations 
 of philanthropy ; but by understanding, 
 criticism, research and applied knowledge 
 it would reveal the unitv of the channels 
 
 through which life flows, and minister to 
 the purification of its currents. It would 
 conceive the present state and all of its 
 jiractical problems as the field of its serv- 
 ice, but it would free the term service from 
 the narrowing construction of immediate 
 jiractise. The whole function of education 
 is to make straight and clear the way for 
 the liberation of the spirit of men from the 
 tyranny of place and time, not by running 
 away from the world, but by mastering 
 it. The univer.sity would hold to the truth 
 of practical education that no knowledge 
 is worth while that 's not related to the 
 jiresent life of man; it would reject it.s 
 error that only knowledge of nearby things 
 has such a relation ; it would hold to the 
 truth of classical education (I quote) that 
 "things high and far away often bestow 
 best control over things that are detailed 
 and near," and reject its error of conclud- 
 ing that because certain things are high 
 and distant they must passess that power. 
 It would emphasise the fact that research 
 and classical culture rightly interpreted 
 are as deeply and completely service as any 
 vocational service; but it would consider 
 their service too precious to be confined in 
 cloisters and .sutficiently robust to inhabit 
 the walks of men. The whole value of 
 university extension depends upon the va- 
 lidity' of the purity and power of the spirit 
 of the truth from which it is derived. Ex- 
 tension it would interpret, not as thinly 
 stretching out its resources to the state 
 boundaries for the purposes of protective 
 popularity, or as carrying down to those 
 without the castle gates broken bits of 
 learning; but as the radiating power of a 
 new passion, cariying in natural circula- 
 tion the unified culture of the race to all 
 parts of the body politic. It would inter- 
 pret its service, not as sacrifice ; but as life, 
 the normal functioning of life as fniitful 
 
618 
 
 SCHOOL AND SOCIETY 
 
 [Vol. I, No. 18 
 
 and fnndamental as the relation between 
 the vine and the branches. 
 
 It is this organic relation to the demo- 
 cratic state that puts the southern state 
 university at the vital center of the state's 
 formative material prosperity. "What 
 are southern universities doing," asks a 
 great industrial leader, "to give economic 
 independence to southern industry?" It 
 is a fair challenge, and the state univer- 
 sity joyfully acknowledges its obligation 
 fully to meet it. It is a part of the busi- 
 ness of laboratories to function in the pi*o- 
 ductive state by solving the problems of 
 embarrassed industry. Science has so 
 faithfully performed this obligation that 
 the main arch of modern industry rests on 
 the laboratory. Applied science no less 
 truly rests on pure science and the libera- 
 ting currents of the spirit of inquiry and 
 investigation that is the vital spark of mod- 
 ern life. The first great step in the in- 
 dependence of southern industry will be 
 the realization of its dependence. Our 
 whole electrical power liberation, signifi- 
 cant now in achievement and thrilling in 
 prophecy, is the cooperation of a hundred 
 forces, the most important of which is the 
 vital force of unknown investigators whose 
 labor and spirit opened the current to the 
 wheels of productive industry. Says 
 Walter Bagehot: 
 
 If it had not been for quiet people who sat still 
 and studied the sections of the cone, if other quiet 
 people had not sat still and worked out the doc- 
 trine of chances . . . ; if star gazers had not 
 watched long and carefully the motions of the 
 heavenly bodies, our modern astronomy would have 
 been impossible, and without our astronomy our 
 ships, our colonies, our seamen, and all that makes 
 modern life could not have existed. 
 
 The aniline dye industry of Germany is 
 not the product of the clever alchemy of a 
 laboratory merely. It is the logical result 
 of a great state replacing through its uni- 
 versity "by intellectual forces the physical 
 
 forces lost by war." It is the result, too, 
 of the fusion with this of industrial states- 
 manship; the result of a mastery of in- 
 dustry's extensive and intensive relations 
 in economic law, foreign commerce, sci- 
 ence and diplomacy. Says the Secretary 
 of Commerce: 
 
 Foreign trade begins inside a man 's head, in the 
 shape of knowledge of the country to which he 
 would sell — its customs, finances, language, 
 weights, measures, and business methods. 
 
 The state university would make clear 
 the fact that in its relation to southern in- 
 dustry, while it regards every practical 
 need as an opportunity for service, its still 
 larger service is in making clear the re- 
 lations that radiate from industry in con- 
 centric fields of knowledge that either en- 
 slave it if they are not understood, or lib- 
 erate it in ever increasing life and power 
 if they are understood. And their chief 
 liberation is the setting free of the master 
 of industry himself. All industry that is 
 worthy of absorbing a man's life is in the 
 grasp of the world relations and under 
 the grim test of world standards. Any 
 work that does evoke a man's full facul- 
 ties in mastering its relations is worthy 
 work. So it is the function of the univer- 
 sity, not merely to bring its resources to 
 bear in solving practical problems of in- 
 dustry and discovering through its inner 
 relations the field of southern industry as 
 a field of statesmanship, but in discovering 
 thereby the further truth that in perfect- 
 ing its relations it becomes a liberal voca- 
 tion in saving the man and all of his higher 
 faculties, not from business, but through 
 business. Salvation will come there or no- 
 where. The question for southern industry 
 is whether in the world opportunity that 
 opens ahead, it will attempt the futile ex- 
 periment of becoming big through super- 
 ficial and selfish efficiency, or whether 
 through a mastery of all of its relations, 
 
Mat 3, ]9]5] 
 
 SCHOOL AND SOCIETY 
 
 619 
 
 while becoming big it will also become 
 great. 
 
 One of the belatctl visions of southern 
 business and eilucational statesmanship is 
 that we can have here no full prosperity or 
 civilization unless agriculture is maile truly 
 productive. In our individualistic, polit- 
 ical and economic life we have flattered it, 
 ignored it, or exploited it. We have lately 
 awakened to the fact that it is an almost 
 dead center at the heart of southern prog- 
 ress, and we have had the vision that it is 
 our function to cooperate with it fully and 
 wholly. It is inevitable that society's need 
 will make farming efficient as a business. 
 In bringing this about one of two processes 
 is possible: that it be developed as other 
 great businesses are, with routine skilled 
 labor under captains of industry; or that 
 it be made a liberal human vocation, each 
 farm home the center of a whole and whole- 
 some life, and perfecting the development 
 of a definite and complete civilization. 
 What will make it realize its higher destiny 
 will not be a limited view of it as a manual 
 vocation. It is a manual vocation, and as 
 such should be trained to the highest hu- 
 man efficiency as a producer of wealth. It 
 must be more deeply interpreted, however, 
 if it is to attract and hold men of energy 
 and initiative. In its relation to nature, 
 to the applied sciences, to economics, and 
 the social sciences agriculture has rela- 
 tions that put it on the full current of the 
 forces that make for human cultiire through 
 right relations to it as work by evoking, 
 not only prosperity from the soil, but the 
 higher faculties of the man himself — ma- 
 king of the cropper, the farmer; and of the 
 farmer, man-on-the-farm. 
 
 The reality of the state university's 
 power to liberate the faculties and aspira- 
 tions of the workers in the productive state 
 depends on the force of that power as 
 generated in it as an association of teach- 
 
 ers and students, given wholly to the pur- 
 suit of truth and free from the distractions 
 of making a living. The heart of this as.so- 
 ciation, the college of liberal arts and sci- 
 ences, has as its mission now as always the 
 revelation of the full meaning of life in its 
 broad and general relations, and to fix in 
 the heart of its youth a point of outlook on 
 the field of human endeavor from which to 
 see it clearly and to see it whole. It fears 
 no criticism based on an interpretation of 
 its mission as "impractical"; but it does 
 regard as fatal any failure to evoke the 
 best powers of its own student body. Presi- 
 dent Wilson has spoken of present under- 
 graduate life as "a non-conducting me- 
 dium" of intellectual discipline, and Presi- 
 dent Pritchett sums up all possible con- 
 demnation when he says that it is an organ- 
 ization where conditions within are such 
 that success in the things for which it 
 stands no longer appeals to those within it. 
 Failure to appeal may not be laid to the 
 curriculum, nor to the spirit of youth, nor 
 to the spirit of the age. "The things for 
 which it stands" in the mastery of fact, the 
 mastery of method, and in spiritual tone 
 will come not because they are latent in 
 Greek or in physics; but because they are 
 made luminous there through a revelation 
 of the broad and liberal relations of these 
 studies to the life curiosities of the student. 
 A course in Greek may be as narrowing 
 and as blighting to a thirsty spirit as a 
 dissertation in medieval theology' ; a liberal 
 arts curriculum at its conclusion may be in 
 the mind of the young graduate not more 
 impressively unified and tangible than the 
 wreckage of a once passionate conte.st be- 
 tween literature and science. The line of 
 memory and repetition is the line of least 
 resistance to student and teacher as it is 
 in the dead routine of everj' field of effort ; 
 but the liberal arts course is not a mechan- 
 ical contrivance for standardizing the crude 
 
620 
 
 SCHOOL AND SOCIETY 
 
 [Vol. I, No. 18 
 
 material fed to it. It is the life history of 
 the human spirit and its wonderful adven- 
 tures in the world, unrolled to the eye of 
 aspiring youth setting out on its wonder- 
 ful adventure. For this great business of 
 touching the imagination and stirring the 
 soul to original activity, no formulas nor 
 techniqiie, however conscientious, will serve. 
 For liberal training to make its connec- 
 tions, eager sympathetic interpretation is 
 necessary, "with thought like an edge of 
 steel and desire like a flame." From the 
 center of every subject runs the vital cur- 
 rent of its inner meaning, and from all sub- 
 jects in the curriculum in converging lines 
 to the heart of our present civilization and 
 its culture message. Intellectual discipline, 
 special insights, and "success in the thing 
 for which it stands" will appeal to those 
 within, not by means of new subjects added 
 with the thought of gaining interest nor by 
 repeating the assertion that the old siib- 
 jeets ought to have cultural appeal; but by 
 having the thing for which it stands radi- 
 antly and constantlj^ clear to itself and the 
 touchstone of its activities. It is the incar- 
 nation in the individual of the spirit of the 
 institution as it focuses and reflects the in- 
 most message of the age. This is the source 
 of the student's special insights, his scent 
 for reality, and their fruitage is that pro- 
 ductive thinking that is the supreme test 
 of the college. 
 
 The association of teacher and student 
 in the professional schools must have the 
 same unifying point of view. Widely sepa- 
 rated as the professional schools are in sub- 
 ject-matter, they have not only a common 
 scientific method and spirit in their pur- 
 suit, but a common culture center in their 
 larger human relations. Arnold conceived 
 of the professional training given at Cor- 
 nell in the making of engineers and archi- 
 tects as an illustration of what culture is 
 not. The criterion of the American state 
 
 university is not a matter of the vocation; 
 but whether in making the student efficient 
 in his vocation it has focused through his 
 studies its own inner light so as to liberal- 
 ize him as a member of democratic society. 
 It is not the function of the university to 
 make a man clever in his profession merely. 
 That is a comparatively easy and negligible 
 university task. It is also to make vivid to 
 him through his profession his deeper rela- 
 tions — not merely proficiency in making a 
 good living, but productivity in living a 
 whole life. The professions of law, medi- 
 cine, the ministry, journalism, commerce, 
 and the rest are essential to the upbuilding 
 of a democratic commonwealth; but they 
 must be interpreted, not as adventures in 
 selfish advancement: but as enterprises in 
 constructive statesmanship, liberating both, 
 the state and the man. It is the function 
 of the university, not only to train men in 
 the technique of law, but to lift them to a 
 higher level of achievement by making them 
 living epistles of social justice ; not only to 
 make clever practitioners of medicine, but 
 to lift them into conservators of the public 
 health; not merely to train teachers in the 
 facts and the methods of education, but to 
 fire them with the conviction that they are 
 the productive creators of a new civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 It recognizes no antagonist in this gen- 
 eral business but ignorance. Ignorance it 
 conceives as the unpardonable sin of a 
 democracy and on it in every form it would 
 wage relentless warfare. To this end it 
 would unify and coordinate its whole sys- 
 tem of public education in a spiritual union 
 of elementary schools and secondary schools, 
 of agricultural and mechanical and normal 
 colleges, of private and denominational 
 schools and colleges, all as a means to the 
 end of the great commonwealth for which 
 men have dreamed and died but scarcely 
 dared to hope. Fully conscious of the con- 
 
May 1, 1915] 
 
 SCHOOL AND SOCIETY 
 
 621 
 
 fusions of prcjiulicp ami the bliiKl im- 
 roason of self-intorest and srived, it is even 
 more conscious of the curative powers of 
 the democratic state and its indomitable 
 purpose to be wholly free. So it would en- 
 list all vocations and all professions in a 
 comprehensive, state-wide projiram of 
 achieving as a practical reality Burke's 
 conception of the state as "a partnership in 
 all science, a partnership in all art. a part- 
 nership in every virtue and in all perfec- 
 tion, and since such a partnership can not 
 be attained in one generation, a partner- 
 ship between all those who are living, and 
 those who are dead, and those who are yet 
 unborn." 
 
 This is the understanding of the mean- 
 ing of life which represents the highest 
 level to which men of our civilization have 
 attained — the highest good at which the 
 state aims. The religious perception of our 
 time in its widest application is the con- 
 sciousness that our well-being, both mate- 
 rial and spiritual, lies in intelligent coop- 
 eration. The state university in its sym- 
 pathetic study of relations that reconcile 
 the divisions of society, while not concerned 
 with differences in religious organization is 
 inevitably and profoundly concerned with 
 religion itself. All of its study of men and 
 things leads through the cooperating chan- 
 nels that connect them beyond the sources 
 of immediate life to the one great unity that 
 binds all together. The human mind, what- 
 ever its achievement, in whatever fields of 
 endeavor, "with the yearning of a pilgrim 
 for its home, will still turn to the mystery 
 from which it emerged, seeking to give 
 unity to work and thought and faith." The 
 state university in its passionate effort to 
 fashion this unity into a commonwealth of 
 truly noble proportions of work and worth 
 and worship, reverently prays as it follows 
 the star of its faith: "Oh God. I think Thy 
 thoughts after Thee." 
 
 Such is the covenant of our immortal 
 
 iiiiither "with those who are living and 
 those who are dead and those who are 
 yet unborn," "building herself from im- 
 memorial time as each generation kneels 
 and fights and fades." She will hold se- 
 cure her priceless heritage from her elder 
 sons as the pledge of the faith she keeps; 
 and she will cherish the passionate loyalty 
 of her latest issue with the sacred pride 
 that only a mother knows; she will seek 
 guidance above the confusion of voices that 
 cry out paths of duty around her, in the 
 experience of the great of her kind the 
 world over; but she will not, in self-con- 
 templation and imitation, lose her own 
 creative power and that original genius 
 that alone gives her value in the world. 
 As the alma mater of the living state and 
 all of its higher aspirations she would 
 draw from it the strength that is as the 
 strength of its everlasting hills and give 
 answer in terms of whole and wholasome 
 life as fresh as the winds of the world that 
 draw new life from its pine-clad plains. 
 Eager, sympathetic, unafraid and with the 
 understanding heart "she standeth on the 
 top of the high places, by the way in the 
 places of the path; she crieth out at the 
 entry of the city, at the coming in at the 
 doore: 'Unto you, men, I call and my 
 voice is to the sons of men.' " 
 
 Edw.\rd Kidder Graham 
 
 HIGH SCHOOLS— NEW AND OLD' 
 
 The American high school is e.xperienc- 
 ing "growing pains." We are dissatisfied 
 with the old type of high school, and we 
 are vaguely feeling our way towards a 
 new type. We are driven to do this, for 
 one thing, because of the very magnitude 
 of public secondary education in this coun- 
 try. Our public high schools have over a 
 
 1 Notes of an address given by Commissioner 
 David Snedden, of Massachusetts, before the Phil- 
 adelphia High School Teachers ' Association, 
 March 20, 1915. 
 
622 
 
 SCHOOL AND SOCIETY 
 
 [Vol. I, No. 18 
 
 million pupils in constant attendance. 
 They cost the people of America enough 
 money every year to build four battleships. 
 They are receiving, on the whole, the 
 choicest of our youth — choicest, that is, 
 from the standpoint of heredity, picked 
 ability, good home environment, favorable 
 prospects. These high schools have the re- 
 sponsibility of making out of our youths 
 not only citizens and cultivated men and 
 women, but leading citizens and men and 
 women so cultivated that their example 
 shall be contagious. Very few careful stu- 
 dents of secondary education believe that 
 our high schools, as to-day constituted, in 
 reality do as much as they should towards 
 the making of good citizens and cultivated 
 men and women. They receive their boys 
 and girls from cultivated surroundings, 
 where a strong predisposition towards good 
 citizenship already exists. The schools in- 
 deed effect improvements in their pupils, 
 but rarely in proportion to the outlay of 
 time and money invested. Many of us con- 
 stantly repeat, until we accept almost as a 
 truism, the statement that what is taught 
 in the high school is taught mainly because 
 of tradition — sometimes as held by the pre- 
 possessions of teachers, more frequently as 
 defined by college entrance requirements. 
 We like to blame the system of college en- 
 trance requirements, but, as a matter of 
 fact, without the concrete aims set by them 
 few high-school teachers would know what 
 to do with their own time or that of their 
 pupils. It is college entrance require- 
 ments that most serve to give definiteness 
 to contemporary high-school work. 
 
 But there is a new high school in the ma- 
 king. It will eventually be the outgrowth 
 of our modern knowledge of social economy. 
 It will take some account of the psychology 
 of the adolescent — a subject as to which 
 many high school and college educators are 
 pleased to remain oblivious. Before we 
 
 shall have realized the new high school, 
 however, it will be necessary to have solved 
 a large number of problems, some of which 
 I think are in process of being defined and 
 analyzed to-day. In order to set forth 
 some of my conceptions as to these prob- 
 lems, a few contrasts between the old high 
 school, as I think it has been, and the new 
 high school, as I think I see it in formative 
 process, may be of interest. 
 
 I. The old high school had immediate 
 aims. It aimed to teach what the text-book 
 exhibited or what the college entrance re- 
 quirement plan suggested. The teacher 
 was dealing with a definite body of organ- 
 ized knowledge, as to the ultimate useful- 
 ness of which he had very little con- 
 ception, although he had much faith that, 
 somehow or somewhere, it would prove 
 worth while. It was the immediate aim of 
 the old high school, among other things, 
 that the pupil learning algebra should pass 
 in that subject with a "high per cent.," 
 and that pupils sent to college should not 
 fail in the entrance examinations. 
 
 II. The old high school also had what it 
 alleged to be general or ultimate aims. 
 It expressed these by vague "omnibus" 
 phrases. For example, it claimed to seek 
 as final goals the disciplined mind, the 
 cultivated individual, the socially efficient 
 person, or the man or woman qualified 
 for self-direction, possessed of good char- 
 acter, predisposed towards good citizen- 
 ship, and enriched as to personal culture, 
 and the like. In reality the production of 
 these qualities has never been, in the true 
 sense, the aim of the high school. The 
 schools have had aspirations towards them, 
 instead. These have not been aims, because 
 an aim presupposes some comprehension of 
 the stages that must be passed through 
 towards its realization. An aim also pre- 
 supposes some possibility of testing the ex- 
 tent to which it is realized by any partie-