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^p William ^tWitt ^pKe 
 
 THE COLLEGE MAN AND THE COLLEGE 
 
 WOMAN. 
 JESUS' WAY. 
 GOD'S EDUCATION OF MAN. 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 Boston and Nbw York 
 
THE COLLEGE MAN AND 
 THE COLLEGE WOMAN 
 
THE COLLEGE MA^ AKD 
 THE COLLEGE WOMAl!^ 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM DeWITT HYDE 
 
 President of Bowdoin College 
 
 ^!53mmsm 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
COPYRIGHT 1906 BY V'lLLIAM DEWITT HYDE 
 AJ.I. RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published March /gob 
 
 ENGLISH 
 
THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 WHO AS LEGISLATOR, COMMISSIONER, SECRETARY 
 
 COLONEL, AUTHOR, GOVERNOR 
 
 VICE-PRESIDENT, PRESIDENT AND PEACEMAKER 
 
 HAS WROUGHT IN THE WORLD 
 
 WHAT HE WAS TAUGHT IN COLLEGE 
 
 AND SHOWN THE POWER FOR GOOD 
 
 A COLLEGE MAN CAN BE 
 
 424625 
 
• ••••• 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Now that we have about sixty thousand men and 
 thirty thousand women in the colleges of the United 
 States, the College Man and the College Woman 
 deserve sympathetic interpretation and intelligent 
 appreciation. To reveal to themselves and to the 
 world these college men and women as they are, 
 and as they are capable of becoming, is the purpose 
 of this book. It deals with the personal, ethical, 
 spiritual side of college life, and with organization 
 and administration only incidentally. It presents 
 as the best spiritual drink for college youth a blend 
 of Greek sanity and Christian service. 
 
 Nearly everything in it has been presented to 
 college audiences at Harvard, Yale, Pennsylvania, 
 Syracuse, Chicago, Northwestern, Amherst, Bow- 
 doin, Dartmouth, Williams, Haverford, Colgate, 
 Mount Holyoke, Rockford, Smith, Vassar, or 
 Wellesley. Nearly all of it has been printed in 
 "The Atlantic Monthly," "Scribner's Magazine," 
 "The Educational Review," "The International 
 Monthly," "The Outlook," CroweU's "What is 
 Worth While " Series, or pamphlets published by 
 colleges to which the addresses were delivered. 
 Taken as a whole, they represent what twenty 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 years of life in a college have taught me, and 
 what I in turn have tried to teach others, about 
 what college students mean to be, and what coUege 
 graduates may be expected to become. I trust it 
 may assure over-anxious parents that not every 
 aberration of their sons and daughters while in 
 college is either final or fatal ; persuade critics of 
 college administration that our problem is not so 
 simple as they seem to think ; and inspire the pub- 
 lic with the conviction, cherished by every college 
 officer, that college students, with all their faults 
 and follies, are the best fellows in the world ; and 
 that notwithstanding much crude speculation about 
 things human, and some honest skepticism concern- 
 ing things divine, the great social institutions of 
 family and industry and church and state may be 
 safely intrusted to their hearts and hands. 
 
 The literary form of the second chapter, though 
 unusual, was unavoidable. The college undergrad- 
 uate is a being of too complex and swiftly clianging 
 phases for external description to catch and repro- 
 duce. If he is to be truthfully depicted at all, the 
 only way is to place him in intimate and confiden- 
 tial relations and let him "give liimself away." 
 
 The one biographical chapter is introduced be- 
 cause the office of college president is preeminently 
 a personal office, and is best described in terms of 
 a life and work which express a personal character. 
 
 I have ventured to recognize the fact that man 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 and woman are not just alike, and to suggest that 
 what God has put asunder man cannot satisfac- 
 torily join together. 
 
 While I have introduced two or three college 
 sermons, it will be evident that the main reliance 
 of a college for its moulding of men and women is 
 not preaching or exhortation, still less rules and 
 regulations, least of all threats and penalties ; but 
 actual living, in an atmosphere of freedom, where 
 each person has returned to him frankly, swiftly, 
 mercilessly, the social judgment that his acts invite 
 and his character deserves. The ethical and spir- 
 itual fruits of a college course, likewise, are not to 
 be measured mainly by verbal professions of piety 
 and virtue, but by those deep-grooved sub-conscious 
 habits of good-fellowship and courtesy, kindliness 
 and courage, thoroughness and patience, sincerity 
 and sympathy, serviceableness and self-sacrifice, 
 which, whether in the press of business and the 
 clash of politics, or in the quiet of home and the 
 joy of the social circle, are the marks of the true 
 College Man and College Woman. 
 
 William DeWitt Hyde. 
 
 BowDoiN College, 
 Brunswick, Maine. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. The Offer of the College . . 3 
 II. The Transformation of the Under- 
 graduate 4 
 
 III. Greek Qualities in the College Man 46 
 
 IV. The Career of Self-Conquest . . 81 
 V. The Continuity and Contrast of 
 
 College and the World . . 114 
 
 VL The More Excellent Way . . 129 
 
 VII. The Sacrifices of a College Man . 150 
 
 VIII. The Creed of a College Class . 169 
 
 IX. The Choice of the College Woman 175 
 
 X. The Worth of the Womanly Ideal 194 
 
 XI. The Earnings of College Graduates 219 
 
 XII. A Great College President . 223 
 
 XIII. The Personality of the Teacher . 247 
 
 XIV. The Six Partners in College Ad- 
 
 ministration .... 275 
 
 I XV. The College 306 
 
 XVI. Alumni Ideals • • • • 332 
 
THE COLLEGE MAN AND 
 THE COLLEGE WOMAN 
 
THE COLLEGE MAI^ AXD 
 THE COLLEGE WOMAN 
 
 I 
 
 The Offer of the College 
 
 (r MO be at home in all lands and all ages; to 
 JL count Nature a familiar acquaintance, and 
 Art an intimate friend ; to gain a standard for the 
 appreciation of other men's work and the criticism 
 of your own ; to carry the keys of the world's li- 
 brary in your pocket, and feel its resources behind 
 you in whatever task you undertake ; to make 
 hosts of friends among the men of your own age 
 who are to be leaders in all walks of life ; to lose 
 yourself in generous enthusiasms and cooperate 
 with others for common ends; to learn manners 
 from students who are gentlemen, and form char- 
 acter under professors who are Christians, — this 
 is the offer of the college for the best four years 
 of your life. 
 
 V 
 
 
'\ 
 
 • • • • 
 • •* • I. 
 
 • • 
 
 
 n 
 
 The Transformation of the Undergraduate 
 
 FKESHMAN SORROWS 
 
 Bbadfobd College, October 24, 1901. 
 
 DEAR Father, — Your letter, with welcome 
 check inclosed, is at hand. I note your ad-, 
 vice to " wear the same-sized hat, and keep sawing 
 wood ; " but really I did n't need it, for the Sophs 
 attend to the former, and the Profs provide for 
 the latter. 
 
 No, I am not suffering from " swelled head " yet. 
 You know you wished me to keep up my music. 
 Last week a notice was put up on the bulletin-board, 
 inviting all candidates for the College Glee Club 
 to appear at a certain room, at nine o'clock Satur- 
 day evening. Among the candidates who came were 
 two other Freshmen and myseK. They told us that 
 we must all put on dress suits, as personal appear- 
 ance was a large element in fitness for the position. 
 As I did not have any, they lent me one, or rather 
 parts of two, — waistcoat and trousers that were far 
 too small, and a coat that was miles t6o big. Then 
 they had us come in and make bows, and show how 
 we would lead in a prima donna. Then they had 
 us stand on our heels and sing low notes ; stand on 
 
THE TRANSFORMATION 5 
 
 tiptoes and sing high notes; sing everything we 
 knew from comic songs to the doxology in long me- 
 tre ; and finally, about half -past eleven, dismissed 
 us with thie statement that the other two were the 
 better singers, but that my presence and personal 
 appearance was greatly in my favor ; and that the 
 decision would be announced on the bulletin-board 
 the next morning. We had not been out of the 
 room two minutes before we recognized that we had 
 been awfully " taken in." I did not sleep much 
 that night ; and whenever I fell into a doze, the 
 vision of that bulletin-board would dance before 
 my eyes and wake me up. If ever I wished I was 
 dead and buried, I did that night. It seemed as if 
 I could never get up and go to breakfast, where they 
 would all be talking about it, and walk into chapel 
 with everybody knowing what a fool I had made of 
 myself the night before. It made me wish I either 
 had taken my dose of this sort of thing three years 
 ago at a fitting school, or else had gone to one of 
 the great universities, where a fellow can be simply 
 a unit in the vast whole, of whom nobody takes the 
 slightest notice. But you always said that the small 
 colleges have a great advantage over the large ones, 
 in the fact that here the individual is made to be 
 somebody, and take the consequences of his own 
 action upon his own head. Well, I have made an 
 ass of myself to begin with ; and everybody knows 
 it and is guying me about it. But I am getting 
 
6 THE TRANSFORMATION 
 
 used to it, and don't mind it as much as I did. 1 
 have had a good many calls by way of congratula- 
 tion on my election to the Glee Club ; and as these 
 were the first calls of persons I had not had the 
 privilege of knowing before, it seemed appropriate 
 (and I was informed that it was an established col- 
 lege custom) that I should treat. I think that by 
 taking the thing good-naturedly, and entertaining 
 my guests handsomely, I have made more friends 
 than I have lost. 
 
 Your affectionate son, 
 
 Clarence Mansfield. 
 
 Bradford College, November 6, 1901. 
 
 My dear Mother, — You say you are " afraid 
 I am homesick ; " for I write all " about things at 
 home and nothing about things here.'* Well, I have 
 been just a bit homesick, but I am getting bravely 
 over it. This time I will try to tell you the things 
 you want to know. 
 
 You need n't worry about my clothes ; they are 
 all right. 1 tore a three-cornered hole in my trousers 
 the other day ; but I fixed it up first-rate. I tried 
 one of those fine needles to begin with ; but it was 
 no use. So I fished out a darning-needle, got some 
 black linen thread, and went at it. I took the thread 
 double and twisted, left a long end at the beginning ; 
 sewed it over and over, as you call it, taking stitches 
 about a quarter of an inch apart, fetched back the 
 
OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 7 
 
 end next to the needle to the long end I left at the 
 beginning, and tied them together. Some Sophs 
 made great fun of it ; wanted to know if I was 
 trying to demonstrate the pons asinorum on my 
 trousers leg. That night I ripped up the whole 
 seam, or whatever you call it, I had made, turned 
 the trousers wrong side out ; proceeded as before 
 except that I took stitches only half as big ; tied 
 the ends on the inside where they don't show ; and 
 the trousers look as good as ever. 
 
 You ask particularly about my religious life. I 
 don't know what to say. The first morning I went 
 to chapel, some one who seemed to be the usher 
 asked me if I would like to rent a sitting. I was 
 fool enough to give liim a dollar for a seat ; and 
 then he ushered me into a pew at one side near 
 the front which is reserved for the Faculty. I tell 
 you I didn't feel much like praying that morn- 
 ing. 
 
 The first really familiar and home-like thing I 
 found when I came here was the Y. M. C. A. re- 
 ception to the Freshmen. A large number of the 
 students and several of the Faculty were present. 
 There were a few addresses of an informal nature 
 by the professors. Then we sang hymns, and re- 
 freshments were served. I got acquainted with three 
 of the professors, to one of whom I recite ; and 
 the whole affair went a long way toward making 
 me feel at home here. 
 
8 THE TRANSFORMATION 
 
 As for the meetings : well, I go to them regu- 
 larly. I camiot say I altogether enjoy them. Some 
 of the fellows have such wonderful experiences of 
 grace, that I don't know what to make of it. I 
 never had anything of the kind. If that is essen- 
 tial to a man's being a Christian — why, I simply 
 am not in it. I can't conceive of myseK as feeling 
 like that. I don't see the sense of it. It does n't 
 seem natural. I want to do right. I know I do 
 wrong, — I know I need to be turned right about 
 face once in so often, or else I should go straight 
 down hiU. And I am glad to spend an hour each 
 week with the fellows who are trying to get a brace 
 in the same direction. 
 
 To tell the truth I don't get much out of church 
 here. The ministers are smart enough, and they 
 roll out great glowing periods. But when they are 
 through I cannot tell for the life of me what they 
 have been driving at. You hear a lot about jus- 
 tification, sanctification, and atonement ; and then 
 you hear a lot about Phrygia, Pamphylia, and Mes- 
 opotamia. Once in a while there comes along a 
 man who seems to understand us. He wiU throw 
 out some practical and moral problem that we are 
 grappling with ; pile up the arguments in favor 
 of the indulgence just as they pile up in our own 
 minds ; and then turn around, knock them all to 
 splinters, and show how much more noble and 
 manly it is to overcome temptation ; and show us 
 
OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 9 
 
 Christ as the great champion in the moral and 
 spiritual warfare of the world. 
 
 It is a good deal harder to be a Christian here 
 in college than it was at home, and the things that 
 ought to be a help seem to be a hindrance. I ex- 
 pect to have rather a sorry time of it here for a 
 while; but by far the greatest of my sorrows is 
 that I have not been more faithfully, 
 
 Your dutiful and grateful boy, 
 
 Clarence Mansfield. 
 
 Bradfobd College, May 30, 1902. 
 Dear Helen, — I wonder if time flies as 
 swiftly with you Willoughby CoUege girls as with 
 us ? It seems but yesterday that we were gliding 
 along together to the music of the merry sleigh- 
 beUs over the glistening snow. Of course you have 
 your good times there. Your afternoon teas ten- 
 dered by Sophomores to Freshmen ; your debates 
 in the gymnasium on municipal suffrage for women ; 
 your Halloween frolics ; your basket-ball contests ; 
 your boat-races rowed for form only ; your midnight 
 lunches interrupted by " the Pestilence that walketh 
 in darkness " — that nickname of yours for a med- 
 dlesome Prof, beats the record — are all very de- 
 lightful as portrayed in your charming letters ; but 
 compared with foot-ball and base-ball, boxing and 
 fencing, rushes and tugs-of-war, turkey suppers on 
 the Faculty table with any one of three parties, 
 
10 THE TRANSFORMATION 
 
 the owner of the turkeys, the college authorities, or 
 the upper-classmen, liable to swoop down on you at 
 any moment and gobble up the feast, I must con- 
 fess that your worst dissipations seem a little tame. 
 
 I have no doubt, however, that you make up in 
 study what is lacking in sport. I have n't seen any- 
 body here quite so completely carried away with 
 Sophocles, or so in love with the Odes of Horace, 
 or so fascinated with German syntax as you seem 
 to be. Your lamentations over spherical trigonome- 
 try, however, would evoke many a responsive moan. 
 That was really credible from a college man's point 
 of view ; but if I were not so sure of your thorough 
 genuineness and sincerity, I should set down those 
 raptures about philologies and trilogies either to 
 satire or to affectation. We men are not taken 
 that way. I am glad you like them, though. To 
 see a little gleam of sense, real or imaginary, 
 through the interminable technical jargon a fellow 
 has to grind out, must be a relief. I am heartily 
 glad for you if the gods have granted you such a 
 special dispensation. 
 
 I must confess, though, that I am beginning to 
 get a real hold of Greek. Professor Bird has us 
 read the whole of an author in translation ; write 
 essays on the times, characters, customs, and insti- 
 tutions ; and then read in the original such pas- 
 sages as are specially significant in throwing light 
 on the main characters and events. We get the 
 
OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 11 
 
 life first in this way ; and the letters afterward as 
 the expression of that life. Then, too, he shows 
 pictures of Greek architecture and art with the 
 stereopticon in the evening ; tells us the story of 
 the statues of which we have casts in the Art Build- 
 ing, and of the coins and vases in the cases there. 
 Life is interesting in all its forms ; and it is slowly 
 dawning upon me that these old fellows lived about 
 the gayest, freest, loveliest life men ever lived on 
 earth. But from the way Greek was ground out in 
 the high school one would never have dreamed the 
 old dry roots once had such sweet juice in them. 
 ,And some of the other languages here are taught 
 by young fellows fresh from German, or German- 
 American institutions, who regard the text, even 
 of Horace or Goethe or Moliere, as just so much 
 grammatical straw to thrash the syntax out of. 
 When I see what Greek is, and what the other 
 languages and literatures might be if only we had 
 a man and not a thesis in cap and gown to teach 
 them, it makes me mad. And yet you girls fall 
 down and worship just that sort of a creature ! 
 
 Boys and girls make very different kinds of stu- 
 dents. I think we get along better apart than to- 
 gether. You are docile, conscientious, and at least 
 outwardly courteous. You eat whatever is set be- 
 fore you, asking no questions for conscience's sake. 
 You study just as hard whether you like a subject 
 or not. You do your best every time. 
 
12 THE TRANSFORMATION 
 
 Now that is very sweet and lovely. But I should 
 think it would spoil your teachers to treat them 
 that way. With us it is different. If we don't like 
 a thing, we say so. As for these feUows that try 
 to cram their old philology down our throats, we 
 make their existence pretty uncomfortable. The 
 other day the Latin tutor asked a f eUow the gender 
 of onum^ and he answered, " You can't tell until 
 it 's hatched." They won't teach us anything we 
 want to know, and so we won't learn anything 
 they want to teach. We keep asking the same 
 old question over and over again ; and make him 
 explain the simplest of all his favorite fine dis- 
 tinctions every time it occurs. Well, I must stop 
 somewhere. I really did not know I was so inter- 
 ested in my studies, or had so many theories of 
 education. You always understand me better than 
 anybody else does. When I began this letter, I 
 did n't think I cared much about these things any- 
 way. But you are so in earnest about them, that 
 I believe I have caught the inspiration. I am a 
 many-sided being ; some sides are good and some are 
 bad ; some are wise and some are very foohsh. You 
 always bring out the best side ; and for fear of de- 
 ceiving you and making you think I am better than 
 I really am, I have to let you inside, and show you 
 just how foolish and light-minded I am. If I al- 
 ways had you to talk to, I think I should be a very 
 much more diligent student than I am. Not that I 
 
OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 13 
 
 crave coeducation. Oh, no ! What Emerson says 
 of friendship is especially true of the friendship of 
 college boys and girls : " The condition which high 
 friendship demands is ability to do without it. 
 There must be very two, before there can be very 
 one. Let us buy our entrance to this guild by a 
 long probation." I wish you would read the whole 
 essay. I am immensely fond of it ; and I always 
 think of you when I read it. The two writers I 
 love best are Carlyle and Emerson; although I 
 don't profess to understand much of either of them. 
 Carlyle braces me up when I am tempted to loaf 
 and shirk. Emerson tones me down when I am 
 tempted to pretense and insincerity. Both tend to 
 make me more simple and true and real — more 
 like what you are and what I fondly fancy you 
 would like to have me be. 
 
 Your faithful friend, 
 
 Clarence Mansfield. 
 
 sophomore conceits 
 
 Bradford College, October 25, 1902. 
 
 Dear Father, — Now that it is all over, I sup- 
 pose I may as well teU you about it. Perhaps you 
 saw in the " Herald " that we came near having a 
 class rebellion here yesterday. 
 
 Two or three of us ventured to wear, into Pro- 
 fessor Bird's recitation-room the other morning, 
 some vestiges of the attire which had done duty in 
 
14 THE TRANSFORMATION 
 
 a parade the previous evening. Professor Bird said 
 that if we wished to make fools of ourselves on the 
 public streets he, as an individual, had nothing to 
 say about it; but that when it came to bringing 
 such nonsense into his recitation- room he would not 
 stand it, and we might leave the room at once. 
 
 Immediately after recitation the class held a 
 rousing indignation meeting in Old College Hall, 
 and passed the following resolutions : " That we, 
 the members of the Class of 1905, most emphati- 
 cally and indignantly protest against this act of 
 tyranny and usurpation ; and that we will attend 
 no more college exercises until this wrong shall be 
 redressed.'* 
 
 As I was one of the persons especially aggrieved 
 I was made chairman of a committee of three, which 
 was appointed to wait upon, the president and pre- 
 sent our resolutions. 
 
 He listened very respectfully to our representa- 
 tions. When we had finished he said that there 
 seemed to be a hopeless division of opinion on the 
 subject, — the faculty being firmly and finally com- 
 mitted to the position taken by Professor Bird, 
 and the class being equally tenacious of the posi- 
 tion taken in the resolutions. Accordingly, he pro- 
 posed that we should refer the whole subject to a 
 committee of three alumni, of whom the class should 
 name one, the president should name one, and the 
 two thus appointed should name the third. 
 
OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 15 
 
 The class, after some discussion, voted to accept 
 the president's proposition ; and we appointed as 
 our representative on this committee a young grad- 
 uate of the previous year who had been a leader in 
 all manner of deviltry while he was in college, and 
 is hanging around the college this year as a self- 
 appointed coach of the foot-ball team until he can 
 find something to do. We went back and reported 
 that we had accepted his proposition, and named 
 our referee. The president then gravely announced 
 that he had selected you as his representative on 
 the committee to which the matter should be re- 
 ferred ; that he would telegraph for you at once ; 
 and that he should expect me and the others inter- 
 ested to appear before the committee in tlie precise 
 apparel which had been the occasion of the con- 
 troversy. 
 
 You can imagine that I was a good deal taken 
 back. I did not relish having you called down here 
 from your business, two hundred miles, to sit in 
 judgment on that question. I thought I could an- 
 ticipate the decision and the manner in which it 
 would be delivered. So I persuaded the class to 
 drop the matter, and we have resumed attendance 
 at recitations. 
 
 I give you the full account. This is all there is in 
 it. The reporters got hold of it and have written 
 it up with a great deal of exaggeration and embel- 
 lishment. So if you read my name or see my photo- 
 
16 THE TRANSFORMATION 
 
 graph in connection with the instigation of a great 
 rebellion, don't be disturbed, and tell mother not to 
 worry. Your affectionate son, 
 
 Clarence. 
 
 Bradford College, November 30, 1902. 
 
 My dear Helen, — The foot-ball season is over, 
 and I must tell you about it. As you know, we won 
 the championship ; and I happened to play quite an 
 important part in it. The opposing team was made 
 up of great giants from the farms ; while our team 
 were mostly light city boys, quick as lightning, and 
 up to all the tricks and fine points. Their game 
 was to mass themselves on one weak point in the 
 line, and pound away at that time after time. In 
 spite of all that we could do they would gain a few 
 feet each time ; and it looked as though they would 
 win by steadily shoving us inch by inch down the 
 field. When they had it almost over, we made a 
 great brace and held them and got the ball. 
 
 Then we made a long gain, bringing the ball 
 within forty yards of their goal. The time was 
 nearly up ; and if we had lost it again, the game 
 would have been either a tie or a defeat. As a 
 last resort, the signal was given for a goal from the 
 field. The ball was passed to me : I had just time 
 for a drop kick in the general direction of the goal, 
 without an instant for taking aim, when their big- 
 gest man came down on me; and that was the 
 
OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 17 
 
 last I can remember. As all my force had gone 
 into the kick, and I was standing still and had 
 almost lost my balance ia the act of kicking ; while 
 he weighed seventy pounds more than I, and was 
 coming at full speed, you can imagine that I went 
 down with a good deal of force onto the frozen 
 ground. 
 
 The next thing I knew I was in my room, and the 
 doctor was working over me. To my first question, 
 " Was it a goal ? " the Captain replied, " Yes, old 
 man, you won the game for us." My injury proved 
 to be nothing serious ; and a few stitches in a scalp 
 wound was all the medical treatment necessary. 
 By the way, don't mention this part of the affair 
 around home, where the folks will be likely to 
 hear of it. They would worry, and that would do 
 no good. I was at some loss how to charge up the 
 doctor's bni on my cash account; but in view of 
 the stitches, I charged it to "sewing." I am just 
 having a glorious time of it this year. There are 
 lots of foolish girls here, as there are everywhere ; 
 and I don't see why a fellow should not have some 
 fun with them. My foot-ball prowess has opened 
 the doors of all the best society to me ; and I am 
 lionized wherever I go. I can take my pick of the 
 girls; and I get along with them first-rate. They 
 talk foot-ball as soon as they are introduced ; and 
 that is a subject on which I feel perfectly at home. 
 There are half a dozen on whom I have made a 
 
18 THE TRANSFORMATION 
 
 perfect masli ; and perhaps I ought to confess that 
 there is one in particular toward whom I am in- 
 clined to reciprocate. She is a little older than I 
 (some of the fellows who are jealous of me call 
 her the coUege widow), but with shrugging of her 
 shoulders and elevating her eyes when one makes 
 a particularly piquant remark, she is young enough 
 in her manner. We led the dance the other evening, 
 and it was great fun to see the fellows green with 
 envy, and the longing looks of more than one girl 
 whose eyes as much as said, "Oh, if I were only 
 where that girl is." 
 
 I was considerably amused at the account you 
 gave of your harmless serenade under the windows 
 of the obstreperous Miss K. ; but I was disgusted 
 at the specimen of petticoat government that fol- 
 lowed. How perfectly absurd to scold a set of 
 such innocent and guileless creatures, who never 
 entertained so much as a shadow of a naughty 
 thought in all your lives ! 
 
 Our dean would n't have made such a fuss over a 
 little thing like that. Let me tell you what hap- 
 pened here the other night. We have an instruc- 
 tor whom we hate. I don't know just why. He is 
 a wooden fellow. He tries to apply high-school 
 methods of discipline and instruction to coUege 
 men ! Just think of it ! We don't propose to stand 
 it. So we "fixed" his recitation-room the other 
 night, and among other things propped up the 
 
OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 19 
 
 skeleton from the Medical School in his chair, and 
 put between his teeth strips of paper on which the 
 instructor's oft-recurring phrases were inscribed. 
 I was in it. The dean got onto it, and I was sum- 
 moned to his office. I expected I should catch it, 
 and wds making arrangements to leave town on 
 an early train. 
 
 The dean, however, did not refer to the affair 
 once. He said that he was afraid that I was not 
 giving to my studies the undivided attention that 
 they deserved, and asked what was the trouble. 
 We talked over my plans and purposes in so far 
 as I have any ; and then he tried to show me how 
 these studies in general, and the one which is taught 
 in that room in particular, have a vital relation to my 
 whole intellectual future. I never realized before 
 how hard the college is trying, with very scanty re- 
 sources, to provide for us a satisfactory course, or 
 how interested in our individual welfare the officers 
 of it are. I came away with a very much better 
 understanding of what I am here for. I had a very 
 pleasant interview, and was almost glad to have had 
 it ; though after the tacit understanding to which 
 we came, it would be fearfully embarassing to have 
 another based on a similar offense. I shall give the 
 college no further trouble along that line, I assure 
 you. 
 
 Now, was not this masculine mode of discipline 
 better than yours? Women seem to read their 
 
20 THE TRANSFORMATION 
 
 Scriptures to the effect that without shedding of 
 tears, there shall be no remission of mischief. We 
 men don't take much stock in tears. And such 
 tear-provoking talk as seems to be so efficacious 
 with you girls would run off from our toughened 
 consciences like water off a duck's back. 
 
 Now, my dear Helen, if I seem to hold women 
 in general, and women's ways of doing things, in 
 somewhat light esteem, you know I regard you as a 
 shining exception ; and think whatever you do is 
 perfect ; and know you must have looked perfectly 
 lovely even in those absurd and wasted tears. 
 Faithfully your friend, 
 
 Clarence Mansfield. 
 
 Bbadfobd College, April 8, 1903. 
 
 My dear Mother, — That is just like you, 
 mother, " to look with more favor on my friendship 
 for Helen than on my passion for Kate," or the 
 "coUege widow," as you hatefully insist on calling 
 her. You are a woman, and you can't see things 
 as I do. Why, Kate just adores me ; idolizes me ; 
 says that in all the history of the college there 
 never was a fellow quite like me. Now, that is the 
 sort of a girl for me. She makes me feel satisfied 
 with myself. And she is pretty and fascinating. 
 
 As for Helen, what do you think she had the 
 impertinence to write to me? I had written her a 
 nice letter, in which, to be sure, I made one or two 
 
OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 21 
 
 slighting and patronizing references to women in 
 general and petticoat government for colleges in 
 particular, and this is what I got : — 
 
 " You HORRID, CONCEITED THING, No, thank 
 
 you. If you cannot respect my sex, and speak re- 
 spectfully of my college, please pay no more of 
 your silly compliments to a ' shining exception.' 
 
 " P. S. If in addition to the fact of feminine fool- 
 ishness, of which you are so well assured, you wish 
 to continue your studies into the philosophy of the 
 phenomenon, and in spite of her being a woman 
 will for once consult the world's greatest novelist 
 (perhaps you can bring yourself to it, in view of 
 her masculine pseudonym), you are most respect- 
 fully referred to a remark of Mrs. Poyser on the 
 subject." 
 
 Now, you surely don't suppose a college Sopho- 
 more is going to stand such talk as that. The 
 remark referred to is, "I 'm not denyin' that 
 women are foolish; God Almighty made 'em to 
 match the men." 
 
 I have had enough of Helen. What a fellow 
 wants of a girl is some one to reflect with a halo 
 of sympathy and admiration his own views and 
 opinions. He does n't want to be stirred up and 
 set to thinking. Now, you know I want to please 
 you in everything. But in these matters you must 
 admit that I am a more competent judge of what 
 suits me than anybody else can be for me. I 
 
22 THE TRANSFORMATION 
 
 always respected Helen, and do still. But fop 
 real solid happiness all to ourselves, give me Kate 
 every time. So don't worry. Mother. It will all 
 come out right in the end, and you will come to 
 see these things as I do. 
 
 As for the Y. M. C. A. and that sort of thing 
 which you inquire about, to tell the truth I have n't 
 been much lately. Between foot-ball and society 
 my time has been pretty well taken up. I believe 
 in having a good time, and letting everybody else 
 have the same ; I believe in father's version of the 
 Golden Rule, which is, you know, " Do to others 
 as you think they would do to you if they had a 
 chance." I don't see why we should try to cast our 
 lives in the narrow and contracted grooves marked 
 out for us in primitive times, when the world was 
 just emerging from barbarism. 
 
 I recognize, of course, that life, like every game, 
 has its rules, which you must obey if you want to 
 get any fun out of it. But it strikes me that for 
 the rules of life you must go to the men who have 
 studied life from its first beginnings in plant and 
 animal up to its latest development in the modern 
 man. Mill and Spencer, Huxley and Tyndall, 
 ought to be better authorities on the rules of this 
 game than the ingenious priests who relieved the 
 monotony of exile by drawing up an ideal code and 
 attributing it to Moses ; men on whose minds the 
 first principles of the synthetic philosophy had never 
 
OP THE UNDERGRADUATE 23 
 
 dawned, and who had no more conception of the 
 conditions which evolution has brought about in our 
 day than the man in the moon. 
 
 Now, I mean to do my best, as soon as I get 
 time, to find out what the rules of life are accord- 
 ing to the most approved modern authorities ; and 
 then to play the game of life as I do the game of 
 foot-ball, fair and hard. I shall never cheat, never 
 shirk, never be afraid. There 's my creed up to 
 date. If there are any other rules delivered by 
 competent authority, and accepted by all players of 
 good standing, I shall obey them too. 
 
 So don't be anxious about my religious condition. 
 If you don't like my creed, my practice is aU right. 
 I have n't done anything I would be ashamed to 
 have you know; except a little foolishness that 
 does n't amount to anything, and is n't worth men- 
 tioning. And as long as I honestly try to do as 
 you would have me, I can't go far astray. 
 Your affectionate 
 
 Clarence. 
 
 junior misgivings 
 
 Bbadfobd Oollboe, October 14, 1903. 
 My dear Mother, — Well, you were right, after 
 all. My affair with Kate is off ; and my only re- 
 gret is that it was ever on. She is a sweet crea- 
 ture, and I am sorry to have caused her pain. But 
 she is light-hearted, and she will soon get over it* 
 
24 THE TRANSFORMATION 
 
 She was in love with being in love, in love with 
 the good times I gave her, never in love with me. 
 We never really cared for the same things. That 
 whirl of gayety she likes to live in would be fear- 
 fully sickening to me if I had to have it long. We 
 were not happy together, unless we were going 
 somewhere, or had some excitement or other on 
 hand. She will not long remain inconsolable. 
 
 Of course I shall come in for a liberal amount 
 of criticism at the sewing circles and afternoon teas, 
 and the women's club. I know I have done wrong, 
 but I did n't mean to. And reaUy it is n't as bad as 
 it looks. We never were engaged, though people 
 may have thought we were. That I have made the 
 biggest kind of a fool of myself, I must of course 
 acknowledge. 
 
 One thing is sure. I shall have nothing more to 
 do with young ladies. I am going to give my en- 
 tire attention to my studies. The great economic 
 and social questions that are pressing for solution 
 demand the undivided attention of every serious 
 man. I am coming to feel more and more as though 
 my mission in life might lie in that direction. Once 
 in the thick of the fight for economic justice and 
 social equality, I shall have little time to think of 
 private domestic happiness. I shall never marry. 
 AH petty personal pleasures must be cast aside as 
 cumbersome impediments by one who wiU serve 
 the cause of the poor and the oppressed. You, dear 
 
OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 25 
 
 Mother, -will be henceforth my only feminine con- 
 fidant and counselor. 
 
 As for those religious matters which seem to be 
 your main concern, I am afraid I can't give you 
 much satisfaction. I have discovered that the rules 
 of the great game of life are not so simple as I at 
 first supposed. I see at last what you mean by your 
 doctrine of self-sacrifice. In base-ball we often have 
 to make what we call a sacrifice hit, which brings 
 in another runner while the batter himself gets put 
 out. Then, too, the question sometimes comes up 
 whether to try for a very hard ball, and take ten 
 chances to one of making an error and spoiling 
 your individual record ; or only pretend to try and 
 miss it, and so save your individual record at the 
 expense perhaps of losing the game. Essentially 
 the same principle comes out in all our games. In 
 hare and hounds the hares run over the most diffi- 
 cult and devious course they can find, dropping 
 pieces of paper behind them at intervals for scent. 
 Then the hounds come after them on this trail. All 
 goes weU as long as the trail is clear and the scent 
 is good. Then we come to a point where all scent 
 stops. Then the lazy shirks sit down and wait, while 
 the energetic fellows strike out in all directions, 
 until one of them finds the trail. He shouts to the 
 others, and they aU follow him. Now, this willing- 
 ness to strike out and help find the trail for the 
 rest, instead of sitting down and resting and letting 
 
26 THE TRANSFORMATION 
 
 some one else do it, is, I suppose, what you mean 
 by self-sacrifice. Now, I accept all that. But it 
 seems to me that the sacrifices demanded in real life 
 are not stereotyped, cut-and-dried forms of tradi- 
 tional self-denial. Life is just like the game. So- 
 ciety is all the time being brought up short at places 
 where it is impossible to tell which of several pos- 
 sible courses it is best to pursue. Then we need 
 men who are not afraid to strike out and find a way, 
 where no sure way appears. Then we need men 
 who have the courage to make necessary mistakes. 
 
 Now, this willingness to take on one's self the 
 risk and responsibilities of leadership in matters 
 which are still imcertain seems to me to be the very 
 essence of the heroism modern society requires. If 
 there is any type of men I hate, it is the stupid, timid 
 conservatives, who stand still or turn back whenever 
 they come to a novel problem or a hard place ; and 
 then boast that they never go astray. Of course 
 they don't. But, on the other hand, they never help 
 anybody to find the way ; they are not leaders. 
 
 Now, I gladly admit that Jesus taught the world 
 once for all the great lesson of this self-devotion 
 of the individual to the service of society. While 
 others had anticipated special aspects and applicar 
 tions of this principle, he made it central and su- 
 preme. In doing so he became the Lord and Mas- 
 ter of all who are willing to become humble servants 
 of their fellow-men. 1 acknowledge him as my Lord 
 
OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 27 
 
 and Master ; and that, too^ in a much prof ounder 
 sense than I ever supposed the words could mean. 
 I do not, however, find much of this which I regard 
 as the essence of Christ's teaching and spirit, either 
 in traditional theology or conventional Christianity. 
 Orthodox theology seems to have been built up 
 around the idea of saving the merely individual 
 soul, while Christ's prime concern was to show men 
 how to lose that selfish sort of soul. 
 
 In short, I propose to tackle the most pressing 
 problem of the present day, that of the just dis- 
 tribution of the products of human toil ; and I pro- 
 pose to give my time and talents and to throw away 
 my wealth and position, for the sake of contribut- 
 ing what I can to its solution. That is what, as I 
 conceive it, Jesus would do were he in my place 
 to-day. Now, if leaving all and following Jesus is 
 Christianity, I am and mean to be a Christian. But 
 if you insist on the ecclesiastical definition of the 
 term, then I am not a Christian, and probably never 
 shall be. Whatever I am, I shall always be 
 Your obedient and devoted son, 
 
 Clarence Mansfield. 
 
 Bradfobd College, January 26, 1904. 
 My dear Nellie, — So you have made up your 
 mind to go into a college settlement. Well, I con- 
 gratulate you. Still, I don't quite like it. To be 
 sure, it is a good thing in itself, but it does n't seem 
 
28 THE TRANSFORMATION 
 
 to me tliat it is the best thing for you. If I had 
 the disposition of your fate I think I could find 
 something better than that for you. With your 
 gentle, sensitive nature, it has always seemed to me 
 that you were better fitted to make some one man 
 happy and some one home sweet and beautiful than 
 to go into the wholesale benevolent business. How- 
 ever, I ought not to find fault, for I am thinking 
 seriously of doing something very much like that 
 myself. Instead of trying to relieve here and there 
 a few cases of misery and degradation, as promis- 
 cuous charity tries to do, and instead of trying to 
 elevate the tone of this, that, and the other plague 
 spot in the social system, as the settlement does, 
 I mean to strike at the root of the whole evil and 
 try to remove the causes of which all these notori- 
 ous evils you refer to are the corollaries and effects. 
 
 In other words, I intend to devote my life to the 
 cause of labor, and to the prosecution of such re- 
 forms as may be necessary to secure for labor its 
 just share of the wealth which it produces. 
 
 I will not weary you with a lengthy account of 
 all the details of my programme. In fact, they are 
 not very clear in my own mind yet. 
 
 I have expected to find myself a lonely and re- 
 jected social outcast in consequence of the adop- 
 tion of these views and devotion to this work. But 
 knowing that you feel the evils of the existing order 
 as keenly as I do, and are to devote your life to 
 
OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 29 
 
 binding up the wounds they cause, as I am to devote 
 mine to finding a substitute for the cruel competi- 
 tion which does the cutting, I feel renewed comfort 
 and confidence and courage in my undertaking. 
 Assured of your sympathy and appreciation, I shall 
 not mind what the rest of the world may say. 
 Even if we do not see each other often, our work 
 will be in common for the same great ends. And 
 while I am struggling to secure for the bread-win- 
 ner a larger portion of the product of his toil, you 
 will be teaching the wife and daughters how to 
 make better use of their increased earnings. 
 
 I may as well confess that I had begun to cher- 
 ish the hope of a closer union ; but it seems that the 
 call for renunciation of private happiness has come 
 to us both alike, and I suppose we must be content to 
 lose all thought of individual happiness in the con- 
 sciousness of devotion to a common cause. I cannot 
 tell you how great a support even this connection 
 with you is to me. It is so much so that I am 
 sometimes afraid it is the desire to be in sympathy 
 with you, quite as much as my own consecration to 
 the cause, that has led me to renounce my opportu- 
 nity for worldly success, and enlist in this crusade 
 in behalf of the poor and the oppressed. Still I 
 shall endeavor to serve the cause for its own sake, 
 for I know no other motive for it would find favor 
 in your eyes. 
 
 In the earnest hope that I may be found worthy 
 
30. THE TRANSFORMATION 
 
 to be your humble co-worker in this glorious cause, 
 I am Most sincerely yours, 
 
 Clarence Mansfield. 
 
 Bbadfobd College, February 22, 1904. 
 
 My dear Father, — Your question as to what 
 I am going to do when I get through college has 
 set me to thinking. The more I think, the less I 
 am able to answer it. The fact is, I am all stirred 
 up and unsettled. College has raised a thousand 
 questions, and thus far seems to have answered 
 none. I am as much, yes, rather more of a Chris- 
 tian than when I came here ; but the creed which 
 I accepted then as a matter of course, now bristles 
 with interrogation points, to say the least, on every 
 side. So that the ministry is out of the question, 
 even if I were adapted to it. I am not a book- 
 worm, and so I stand no show for teaching. I am 
 not a good debater; I should never do for law. 
 For medicine I have not the slightest taste. I am 
 afraid I never shall be good for anything. 
 
 Business seems to be the only opening ; and 
 yet I don't like to take that as a last resort. One 
 ought to feel drawn toward that, if he is going into 
 it, and not be driven to it like a slave. 
 
 Besides, I am beginning to question whether there 
 is any chance for an honest man in business now- 
 adays. I have been reading a good deal of socialis- 
 tic literature lately, and I am not sure that they 
 
OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 31 
 
 may not be right, and the rest of us all wrong. It 
 does n*t seem quite the fair thing that I should be 
 here, living in idleness and comparative luxury, 
 with a practical certainty of a competence all my 
 days whether I do any work or not, while millions 
 of my fellow-men are toiling for the bare necessities 
 of a miserable subsistence. 
 
 I can't see why, just because grandfather hap- 
 pened to settle when the town was a wilderness on 
 a farm which included the whole mill-privileges of 
 the present city — I really can't see why we should 
 be practically levying an assessment on every poor 
 weaver with a big family of children, and every 
 hard-worked woman with aged parents to support, 
 that works in our mills or lives in our tenements. 
 
 Then your joining the trust last year was the 
 last straw on the breaking back of my lingering 
 faith in the present industrial system. If a trust 
 is n't robbery with both hands, forcing down the 
 wages of the laborer, and putting up the price of 
 goods to the consimier, I should like to know what 
 is. Has not the thing a trust aims to accomplish, 
 been forbidden by law ever since English law be- 
 gan to be framed ? Have not the legislatures of 
 half our States passed enactments against it ? Is it 
 not denounced on the platform and in the press as 
 the most glaring injustice and iniquity of the pre- 
 sent generation ? 
 
 I know that you are scrupulously honest and up- 
 
32 THE TRANSFORMATION 
 
 right ; and that you would not do anything unless 
 you were first convinced of its justice. But I have 
 come to look at these things in the light of abstract 
 principles ; and in that light they stand before my 
 mind convicted of injustice and condemned to be 
 superseded by more equitable arrangements. Just 
 what that better order is to be, I am not sure. Per- 
 haps I am in the condition of a socialistic speaker 
 I went to hear the other night, who in reply to a de- 
 mand from the audience for a definite statement 
 of his proposed remedies, replied, " We don't know 
 what we want, but we want it right away, and we 
 want it bad." Well, I must confess that these no- 
 tions of mine have not been very clearly thought 
 out. In the meantime I am unsettled, dissatisfied, 
 miserable. And when I try to answer your question 
 about my future work, I am made more conscious 
 than ever of my wretched intellectual condition. So 
 you must have patience with my heresies and my 
 imcertainties ; and perhaps matters will clear up 
 before the time for the final decision comes. 
 Your affectionate son, 
 
 Clarence Mansfield. 
 
 senior prospects 
 
 Bradford College, January 23, 1905. 
 
 My dear Father, — I have at last made up my 
 mind what I shall do after graduation, and make 
 haste to teU you first of all. I am going into the mills 
 
OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 33 
 
 with you. I shall make manufacturing my business ; 
 and what time I can spare from business I shall 
 give to politics. 
 
 A good stiff course of political economy for the 
 past year and a half has entirely knocked out of 
 me those crude notions about the inherent wicked- 
 ness of capital, the tyranny of ability, and the sole 
 and exclusive claim of labor to divide among its 
 own hands the entire joint product of the three 
 great agencies. What you told me, too, about your 
 running at a loss during these hard times, has 
 thrown a new light on the matter. I fuUy appre- 
 ciate the force of your remark that the problem of 
 industry is not how to divide the spoils, but how to 
 distribute responsibility. I have also gotten over 
 my horror of the trust. I recognize that the in- 
 creased efficiency of machinery, the cheapening of 
 transportation, the swift transmission of intelli- 
 gence, the factory system, the massing of popula- 
 tion in cities, the concentration of capital in large 
 corporations with extensive plants and enormous 
 fixed charges, the competition of all relatively im- 
 perishable and transportable products in one vast 
 world-market have radically changed the conditions 
 of production, and made old-fashioned small-scale 
 production, and free competition between petty 
 competitors, impossible. No, Father ; I don't think 
 you are a robber-baron, because you have joined 
 the trust. I begin to realize the tremendous pres- 
 
34 THE TRANSFORMATION 
 
 sure a corporation is under when it must pay in- 
 terest, keep up repairs, and meet fixed charges, and 
 can come much nearer meeting these obligations 
 by producing at a loss than by not producing at 
 all. I see that the cutting of prices below cost by 
 old concerns trying to get out of speculative com- 
 plications, and by new concerns eager to get a footing 
 in the market, makes effective combination an ab- 
 solute necessity. I see that the trust is simply an 
 effective way of doing what was ineffectively at- 
 tempted by informal agreements as to trade customs, 
 listings, quotations, and schedules of prices ; writ- 
 ten agreements limiting output and fixing prices ; 
 the appointment of common agents to market the 
 product, and the like. I accept the trust as the 
 stage of economic evolution which the world is now 
 compelled to enter. 
 
 So much for business. Now, as to politics. You 
 say that if I am going into business I had better 
 let politics alone. I can't agree with you. What 
 you say about the difficulties, discouragements, and 
 disadvantages of meddling with politics I know to 
 be true. But I am not going into it for what I can 
 get out of it, but for what I can put into it. You 
 may be right in saying that I shall find it impos- 
 sible in the cold, hard world of fact to make all my 
 fine ideals real. Well, if I can't make the ideal real, 
 I can at least do something toward making the 
 real a little more ideal. 
 
OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 35 
 
 Through a corrupt civil service, honeycombed 
 with sinecures and loaded with incompetence ; 
 through valuable franchises, given away, or sold 
 for a song, or bought by bribery ; through the 
 sacrifice of efficient municipal administration to the 
 supposed exigencies of national politics ; through 
 discriminating legislation, wasteful expenditure, and 
 unnecessary taxation ; through the universal fail- 
 ure to find a satisfactory method of dealing with 
 the liquor problem, the poor man is squeezed, and 
 gouged, and plundered by idle office-holders, and 
 fat contractors, and favored corporations, and sleek 
 saloon-keepers, and bribe-taking bosses, and un- 
 righteous rings. 
 
 I am going into politics to fight these concrete 
 evils. I am not going to try to do the working- 
 man's work for him. I don't believe he really wants 
 anybody to do that. And I am sure that it would 
 be the worst thing that could happen to him, if he 
 did. But I am going to try to give him a chance 
 to do his work under fair conditions ; and make it 
 impossible for pensioners or politicians, directly or 
 indirectly, to take a penny of his hard earnings 
 from him without giving him a penny's worth of 
 commodities or services in return. And as for trusts 
 and corporations which derive their existence and 
 protection from the State, I propose to do my ut- 
 most to enforce on them publicity, and the respon- 
 sibility that goes therewith. I would have their 
 
36 THE TRANSFORMATION 
 
 books open to the best expert accountants the State 
 could employ ; and I would have some way of find- 
 ing out how much of the vast savmg in production 
 these enormous aggregations of capital undoubtedly 
 effect goes to the proprietors, and how much goes 
 to the community. 
 
 There, Father, you have my programme : Through 
 business to earn an honest living for myself, and 
 through politics to help every other man to a fair 
 chance to do the same. 
 
 In these ways, my views on the relations of 
 capital and labor have undergone a pretty radical 
 change. I could not teU you the whole story in a 
 letter. But suffice it to say : While I stiU believe 
 that there are grave defects in the existing indus- 
 trial system, and believe that there are many ways 
 in which it might be improved, I see that such 
 improvement must be a long, slow process of evo- 
 lution, in which one defect after another must be 
 sloughed off gradually. I see that such a desire to 
 improve the system, and gradually to substitute 
 better features in place of those which now exist, 
 is not inconsistent with one's working practically 
 under the system as it is. Indeed, I am convinced 
 that the desired improvement must come, not 
 through agitators, who seek to apply abstract prin- 
 ciples from without, but through manufacturers 
 and merchants, who understand the present system 
 in its practical internal workings, and are thus able 
 
OF THE UNDERGRADUATE ll^; 37 
 
 to develop the new out of the old. I believ^ that 
 my proper place as a reformer is inside, not out- 
 side, of the industrial system that is to»be ref9rmed. 
 That is the extent of the socialism there is left 
 in me. At the same time I feel that the strong 
 dose of socialism I have taken during the past year 
 or more has done me good. Unless I had been 
 through this stage of striving to set all things 
 right, I am afraid I should h^e settled down into 
 the conventional ruts of^. theS^ere business man, 
 who is content to make m^fll^ little pile in his 
 own way, leaving society t(0take care of its own 
 affairs. I am glad that my choice of business coin- 
 cides with your long-cherished wishes ; and I hope 
 that you will see that my political purposes are not 
 altogether destituf^ (^justice and sound sense. 
 Your^fPeitionate son, 
 
 ^^ Clarence Mansfield. 
 
 *^v Bradford College, March 2, 1905. 
 
 "M/jT DEAR Mother, — You already know, from 
 my letter to Father, my final decision about a pro- 
 fession. I am glad it pleases him, and my only 
 regret is that it may not be equally acceptable 
 to you. I know you hoped I should be a minis- 
 ter, or at least a doctor or lawyer. I recognize the 
 many attractive things about all these professions ; 
 but I do not believe I was cut out for either of 
 them. If you will pardon once more an illustration 
 
38 THE TRANSFORMATION 
 
 from your chief abomination, the foot-ball field, I 
 can show you how I feel about it. Business and 
 politics seem to me like being actually in the game, 
 playing it for aU you are worth. The lawyer strikes 
 me as a sort of umpire, to declare and apply tho 
 rules in case of fraud or foul play, or the member 
 of the athletic committee who conducts the diplo- 
 macy. The doctor strikes me as the fellow who 
 stands along the side lines, ready to bind up the 
 bruised heads and broken limbs. The journalist is 
 the man who takes notes and writes it up afterward. 
 The minister seems like the man who sits on the 
 grand stand and explains the fine plays and errors 
 to the ladies. My heart would not be in any of 
 these things, and consequently I should not do 
 either of them well. The studies of the last part 
 of the course, now that they are elective, and one 
 carries them far enough to really get into them, 
 sift men out for the right professions, without their 
 knowing when or how it happens. 
 
 The fellows that take to biology, that are handy 
 with the microtome and the microscope, go on into 
 medicine as a matter of course. The fellows that 
 get waked up in philosophy, and take the problems 
 of the universe upon their shoulders, naturally go 
 into the ministry. The men that take to history 
 and political science are foreordained to law. Now, 
 while I have been interested in three or four lines, 
 my only genuine enthusiasm has been economics. 
 
OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 39 
 
 Industry and commerce seem to me the basis on 
 which everything else rests. I think that I can do 
 more good as a business man and an active force 
 in politics, with a successful business behind me, 
 than in any other way. The business man and the 
 politician seem to me to be dealing with the real 
 things, while the professional men seem to be deal- 
 ing only with the symbols of things. 
 
 A man's vocation ought to be the expression of 
 his ideal. My ideal is to be an effective member 
 of the social order that now is, and an efficient pro- 
 moter of the better social order that is to be. 
 
 You complain that I do not say much about re- 
 ligion nowadays. As I have told you often, religion 
 is not to my mind an external form superimposed 
 upon life from without, but is the informing spirit 
 of life itself. In striving to do with my might the 
 thing my fellow-men need most to have done for 
 them, I feel that I am at the same time doing what 
 is most acceptable to God, and most conformable 
 to the teaching and example of Jesus Christ. 
 
 At the same time I have gotten over that antipa- 
 thy to religious institutions which I have had for 
 a year or two. I have gone back to the Christian 
 Association here in college ; and whether the change 
 is in them or in me I don't know, but I find my- 
 self able both to do good and to get good in their 
 meetings. In fact, unless there were some such 
 meeting-ground for the expression and cultivation 
 
40 THE TRANSFORMATION 
 
 of our ideals, I don't see how they could be kept 
 from fading out. It is a great help to feel that in 
 spite of the diversity of taste, talent, and vocation, 
 so many earnest fellows are going out into the world 
 as sincere servants of the one God, followers of the 
 one Lord, and workers in the one Spirit. 
 
 I shaU also connect myself actively with the 
 Church. I do not profess to have solved all the 
 problems of theology, and fortunately our Church 
 does not require of laymen like me subscription to 
 an elaborate creed. I see that the cry " Back to 
 Jesus " in religion, is as foolish as the cry " Back 
 to Phidias " in art, or " Back to Homer " in poetry. 
 
 We cannot go back to primitive simplicity and 
 naivete in any department of life. The subsequent 
 development is part and parcel of our spiritual in- 
 heritance, of which it is impossible to divest our- 
 selves. The Church, as the organized, institutional 
 expression of the life of the Spirit of God in the 
 heart of humanity, I accept as a spiritual neces- 
 sity. And I should no more think of trying to 
 serve God and my fellow-men apart from it, than 
 I should think of shouldering my individual mus- 
 ket and marching across the fields on my own pri- 
 vate account to defend my country against an in- 
 vading army. Christian kindness. Christian justice. 
 Christian civilization. Christian culture, the Chris- 
 tian family, and above all a Christian mother like 
 you, I believe in and love with all my heart. And 
 
OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 41 
 
 now that the Church has come to represent to my 
 mind, symbolically at least, all these most precious 
 and beneficent influences that have entered into 
 the structure of my character and life, I cannot 
 do less than freely give my influence and support 
 to the institution from which, indirectly if not di- 
 rectly, I have freely received so much. 
 
 So, my dear mother, if you will look beneath 
 the outward form to the underlying spirit, I hope 
 you will see that after all I am a good deal of a 
 Christian ; and mean to be in my own way some- 
 thing of a minister too. 
 
 Your affectionate son, 
 
 Clarence Mansfield. 
 
 Bradford College, June 15, 1905. 
 
 My dearest Nell, — You should n't complain 
 that my letters for the past six weeks have been 
 all about you, and nothing about myself. How can 
 a fellow help it, when you have made him the 
 happiest being in the world? Still, if you com- 
 mand, I must obey, and begin the story of my 
 poor self where I left off. Let 's see. Where was 
 it ? It seems so long ago and so far away that I 
 can scarce recall it. 
 
 " How soon a smile of God can change the 
 world ! " 
 
 Oh ! I remember. The agreement was that you 
 were to quit the role of St. Catherine, and conde- 
 
42 THE TRANSFORMATION 
 
 scend to enter a home instead of a settlement ; and 
 I was to abjure the vows of a St. Christopher to 
 right at once all the wrongs of the universe by my 
 own right arm, before entertaining the " thought 
 of tender happiness." We were two precious fools, 
 were n't we ? Yet it was a divine folly after all. 
 Goethe is right in his doctrine of renunciation. If 
 we had not faced fairly the giving up of all this 
 bliss, it would not be half so sweet to us now. And 
 please don't tell me I have " smashed at one blow 
 all your long-cherished ideals of social service." 
 It is not so. The substance of all those social aims 
 of yours is as precious to us both as it ever was, 
 and we will find ways to work them out together. 
 Not one jot or tittle of the loftiest standard you 
 ever set before yourself shall be suffered to pass 
 away unfulfilled. Your aims and aspirations are 
 not lost, but transformed, aufgehohen^ as the Ger- 
 mans say of the chemical constituents of the soil 
 when they are taken up to form the living tissue 
 of plant or animal. 
 
 There is nothing you ever thought of doing in a 
 settlement that we wiU not do better in our home. 
 We shall not give less to the world, because we are 
 more ourselves. We shall not be less able to com- 
 fort those who sorrow, because our own hearts 
 overflow with joy. Because we are rich in each 
 other, we shall not be less generous to all. You 
 shall have all the classes and schools and clubs and 
 
OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 43 
 
 meetings you wish ; and they will not be the least 
 bit less successful for being in the home of a miU- 
 owner in our native city of fifty thousand people, 
 instead of in some neglected quarter of a city ten 
 times as big. 
 
 Do you know, Father is so delighted with what 
 he calls the " recovery of my reason," that he has 
 promised to build a house for us this fall. We will 
 work up the plans together this summer. One fea- 
 ture of it, though, I have fixed on already, which 
 I know you will approve. Our library wiQ be a 
 long room, with a big fireplace on one side and a 
 cosy den at each end, marked off by an arch sup- 
 ported by pillars. These dens we will fit up with 
 our college books and furniture, and make them 
 jtst as nearly like our coUege rooms as we can. 
 And then in the long winter evenings we will come 
 out of our dens before the fireplace ; and you wiU 
 be my private tutor, and with your patient tuition 
 I shall perhaps get some good after all out of the 
 Horace and Goethe and Shelley and Browning, 
 which you understand and love so weU ; but which, 
 to teU the truth, I have n't got much out of thus 
 far. Somehow we fellows don't get hold of those 
 things as you do. 
 
 Is n't it glorious that my examinations come so 
 that I can get off for your class day and com- 
 mencement ! To be sure, I shall probably forget 
 the fine points in political economy and sociology, 
 
44 THE TRANSFORMATION 
 
 in which I have been working for honors the past 
 two years. But then, honors or no honors, I have 
 got the good out of them anyway ; and what are 
 honors at the end of college compared with love at 
 the beginning of life ? 
 
 I am delighted that you are coming to my com- 
 mencement. My part is a dry, heavy thing, which 
 I don't expect to make interesting to anybody else ; 
 but it is intensely interesting to me, for it sums 
 up the inner experience which I have been going 
 through these past four years, and has helped to 
 give me my bearings as I go out into life. My 
 subject is, " Naturalness, Selfishness, SeK-sacrifice, 
 and Self-realization." You who have known me as 
 no one else has all these years, you will see what 
 it all means. You catch the idea. 
 
 First: We set out as nature has formed and 
 tradition has fashioned us ; innocent, susceptible, 
 frail. The hard, cruel world comes down upon us, 
 and would crush us under its heavy unintelligible 
 weight. 
 
 Second : We rise up against it, defy tradition 
 and throw convention to the winds. We in turn 
 strive to trample others under foot. But though 
 we wear spiked shoes, we find the pricks we kick 
 against harder and sharper than our spikes. 
 
 Third: We surrender, abjectly and uncondi- 
 tionally ; cast spear and shield away in the extreme 
 of formal, abstract self-denial, and ascetic, egotis- 
 
OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 45 
 
 tical self-sacrifice. This in turn betrays its hoUow- 
 ness and emptiness and uselessness and unreality. 
 
 Fourth : The Lord of life, against whom we Ve 
 been blindly fighting all the while, lifts us up in his 
 strong arms ; sets us about the concrete duties of 
 our station ; arms us with the strength of definite 
 human duties, and cheers us with the warmth of 
 individual human love ; and sends us forth to the 
 social service which to hearts thus fortified is per- 
 fect freedom and perennial delight. 
 
 Such a process of spiritual transformation I 
 take to be the ti"ue significance of a college course. 
 To be sure in college, as in the great world of 
 which it is a part, none see the meaning of the 
 earlier phases until they reach the later ; and con- 
 sequently many never see any sense in it at all. 
 For the great majority of men go through college, 
 as the great majority go through life, without get- 
 ting beyond the first or second stage, and graduate 
 as Matthew Arnold says most men die, " Unfreed, 
 having seen nothing, still unblest." 
 
 There, NeU, have n't I been as egoistic this time 
 as your altruistic highness could desire ? 
 Your devoted lover, 
 
 Clarence Mansfield. 
 
Ill 
 
 Greek Qualities in the College Man 
 
 WHETHER in Cuba or in the Klondike, in 
 camp or in college, wherever men live to- 
 gether in close quarters, there they form a moral 
 code. 
 
 The codes of college students, like the codes of 
 mining camps, are couched in grotesque, slangy 
 terms ; but the heart of them is sure to be sound. 
 
 For the strictly limited purposes of a college code 
 — that is, for healthy, wealthy young fellows who 
 have no immediate concern about earning their liv- 
 ing, and who are free from domestic, business, and 
 political responsibilities — these college codes serve 
 fairly weU. That our college youth, in entire un- 
 consciousness of what they are doing, and without 
 the remotest intention of drawing up a moral code, 
 come to a tacit acceptance of principles so profound, 
 so searching, and so comprehensive, is a magnificent 
 witness to the soundness of young men's ethical 
 insight. 
 
 The Greeks worked out an ethical code for them- 
 selves in as direct a contact with actual social needs 
 as is felt by our miners and soldiers and ranchmen 
 and college students. Though there were many 
 
GREEK QUALITIES 47 
 
 points which their code did not cover, yet it was 
 much broader than any of these special codes which 
 are being developed to-day, and with adequate am- 
 plification can be made to include the whole social 
 duty of man. Their ethical efforts came to so little, 
 not from lack of insight so much as from lack of 
 motive. To unite the ethical insight of the Greek 
 with the spiritual motive of the Christian would be 
 the salvation of individual or country or race. 
 
 If we are to see life with the eyes of the Greeks, 
 we must first free our minds of the notion that any- 
 thing in the world, any appetite or passion of man, 
 is either good or bad in itself. Life would be simple 
 indeed if only some things, like eating and studying 
 and working and saving and giving, were absolutely 
 good ; and other things, like drinking and smoking 
 and spending and theatre-going and dancing and 
 sexual love, were absolutely bad. To be sure, men 
 and schools and churches have often tried to dissect 
 life into these two halves ; but it never works well. 
 \Material things and natural appetites are in them- 
 selves neither good nor bad; they become good \ 
 when rightly related, and bad when wrongly related. /"^ 
 
 WISDOM IN INVESTMENT 
 
 The first Greek virtue is wisdom. Wisdom, in 
 the ethical sense of the term, is a very different 
 thing from book-learning. Illiterate people are fre- 
 quently exceedingly wise, while learned people are 
 
48 GREEK QUALITIES IN 
 
 often the biggest fools. Wisdom is the sense of 
 proportion — the power to see clearly one's ends, 
 and their relative worth ; to subordinate lower ends 
 to higher without sacrificing the lower altogether ; 
 and to select the appropriate means to one's ends, 
 taking just so much of the means as will best serve 
 the ends, — no more and no less. It is neither the 
 gratification nor the suppression of appetite and 
 passion as such, but the organization of them into 
 a hierarchy of ends which they are sternly compelled 
 to subserve. 
 
 Of the many ends at which a wise man aims, 
 such as health, wealth, reputation, power, culture, 
 and the like, a single subordinate phase of a single 
 end, the investment of savings, will bring out the 
 essential feature of wisdom. Now, the end at which 
 a man aims in investment of savings is provision 
 for himself and his family in old age. It is the part 
 of wisdom to keep that end constantly before the 
 mind — not allowing other ends to be substituted 
 for it ; and to choose the means which strictly sub- 
 serve that end — not the means which are attractive 
 in themselves, or promise to serve some other end. 
 Yet simple as this matter is, not one investor of 
 savings in twenty has the wisdom to do it. 
 
 Investment of savings is an entirely different 
 thing from the investment a merchant or manufac- 
 turer makes for purposes of profit; and to keep 
 this distinction clear is one of the greatest signs of 
 
THE COLLEGE MAN 49 
 
 practical wisdom. The prime consideration in in- 
 vestment of savings should be security. The wise 
 investor of savings will remember two principles : 
 first, high interest is another name for poor security ; 
 second, large profits is another name for extreme 
 risk. He will confine his investment to building 
 and loan associations, savings banks, government 
 and conservative municipal bonds, real estate ; first 
 mortgages on real estate worth twice the face of the 
 mortgage, which is producing income considerably 
 in excess of the interest on the mortgage, and is 
 owned by some one who has other property besides 
 that on which the mortgage is held ; and finally, 
 local companies which serve essential local needs, 
 like light, water, and transportation, provided they 
 are honestly and economically managed. These, in 
 about the order named, are the only safe and there- 
 fore the only wise forms of investment for savings. 
 The expert banker and financier may seek larger 
 profits where he pleases ; but the man who puts his 
 savings, be they small or large, on which he relies 
 for old age, into any forms of investment more 
 risky than these is a fool. There is nothing more 
 pitiful than to see men and women, who have 
 worked hard and lived close year after year, flat- 
 tered and wheedled into putting their savings into 
 some specious scheme which promises six or eight 
 per cent interest, or the chance in a few years to 
 double their money, and then fails altogether just 
 
50 GREEK QUALITIES IN 
 
 when the money they have saved is most needed, 
 and the power to earn wages or salary has gone. 
 
 To sum up the dictates of wisdom on this point 
 in a few simple rules, wisdom says : " Avoid high 
 rates of interest ; seek no business profits beyond 
 the range of your own immediate and expert obser- 
 vation ; lend money as a favor to no one, unless 
 you are able and willing, if need be, to give the 
 money outright ; have no business dealings with 
 your relatives in which business and sentiment are 
 mixed up ; sign no notes and assume no financial 
 responsibilities for other people ; keep your money 
 where you can watch the men who manage it for 
 you ; never put a large part of your savings into 
 any one investment." He who keeps these rules 
 may not grow suddenly rich, but he will never be- 
 come suddenly and sorrowfully poor. 
 
 This simple yet very practical example may serve 
 as the type of all wisdom. It simply demands that 
 we be perfectly clear about our ends, and the part 
 they play in our permanent plan of life ; and then, 
 that we never leave or forsake these chosen ends 
 to chase after others which circumstance or flattery 
 or vanity or indolence or ambition may chance to 
 suggest. 
 
 JUSTICE AND MODERN STEALING 
 
 If man dwelt alone in the world of things, wis- 
 dom to subordinate things to his ends would be 
 
THE COLLEGE MAN 51 
 
 the principal virtue. The form of the perfect char- 
 acter would be a circle, with self as the centre. 
 The fact that we live in a social world, where other 
 persons must be recognized, is the ground of jus- 
 tice, the second Greek virtue. Justice requires the 
 subordination of the interests of the individual 
 to the interests of society, and the persons who 
 constitute society, in the same way that wisdom 
 requires the subordination of particular desires to 
 the permanent interests of the whole individual to 
 whom they belong. For the individual is a part of 
 society in the same vital way in which a single de- 
 sire is part of an individual. To indulge a single 
 desire at the expense of the permanent self is folly ; 
 and to indulge a single individual, whether myself 
 or another, at the expense of society is injustice. 
 
 The essence of injustice consists in treating peo- [ 
 pie, not as persons, having interests and ends of ' 
 their own, but as mere tools or machines, to do the 
 things we want to have done. The penalty of injus- | 
 tice is a hardening of heart and shriveling of soul ; 
 so that if a person were to treat everybody in that 
 way, he would come to dwell in a world of things, 
 and, before he knew it, degenerate into a mere 
 thing himseK. Lord Eosebery points out that this 
 habit of treating men as mere means to his own 
 ends was what made Napoleon's mind lose its sanity 
 of judgment, and made his heart the friendless, 
 cheerless desolation that it was in his last days. 
 
52 GREEK QUALITIES IN 
 
 We have all seen persons in whom this harden- 
 ing, shriveling, drying-up process had reached al- 
 most the vanishing-point. The employer toward his 
 " hands ; " the officer toward his troops ; the teacher, 
 even, toward his scholars ; the housekeeper toward 
 her servants ; all of us toward the people who cook 
 our food, and make our beds, and seU our meat, 
 and raise our vegetables, are in imminent danger of 
 slipping down on to this immoral level of treating 
 them as mere machines. Royce, in his " Religious 
 Aspect of Philosophy," has set this forth most for- 
 cibly among English writers ; though it lies at the 
 heart of aU German formulas, like Kant's " Treat 
 humanity, whether in thyself or in others, always as 
 an end, never as a means,'* and HegeFs " Be a per- 
 son, and respect the personality of others." Royce 
 says: "Let one look over the range of his bare 
 acquaintanceship ; let him leave out his friends, and 
 the people in whom he takes a special personal in- 
 terest ; let him regard the rest of his world of fel- 
 low-men, — his butcher, his grocer, the policeman 
 that patrols his street, the newsboy, the servant in 
 his kitchen, his business rivals. Are they not one 
 and all to him ways of behavior toward himself or 
 other people, outwardly effective beings, rather than 
 realized masses of genuine inner sentiment, of love, 
 or of felt desire ? Does he not naturally think of 
 each of them rather as a way of outward action than 
 as a way of inner volition ? His butcher, his news- 
 
THE COLLEGE MAN 63 
 
 boy, his servant, — are they not for him industrious 
 or lazy, honest or deceitful, polite or uncivil, useful 
 or useless people, rather than self-conscious people ? 
 Is any one of these alive for him in the full sense, 
 — sentient, emotional, and otherwise like himself, 
 as perhaps his own son, or his own mother or wife, 
 seems to him to be ? Is it not rather their being for 
 him, not for themselves, that he considers in all his 
 ordinary life ? Not their inner volitional nature is 
 realized, but their manner of outward activity. 
 Such is the nature and ground of the illusion of 
 selfishness." 
 
 This passage from Royce lays bare the source of 
 the greater part of the social immorality in the 
 world, and accounts for nine tenths of all the world's 
 trouble. 
 
 What wonder that a man of this type cannot 
 succeed in any large work of administration ! He 
 treats men as things. But men are not things. 
 They rise up in indignation against him. Every 
 man of them is instantly his enemy, and will take 
 the first chance that occurs to betray him and cast 
 him down. A man of that type cannot run a mill 
 or a store or a school or a political campaign or a 
 hotel a week without being in a row. He cannot live 
 in a community six weeks without having made more 
 enemies than friends. The first time he trips, every 
 one is ready to jump on him. And in aU his trouble 
 and unpopularity, and failure and defeat, the beauty 
 
54 GREEK QUALITIES IN 
 
 of it is that he is getting precisely what he deserves, 
 and we all exclaim, " It 's good enough for him ! " 
 Selfishness is closely akin to folly. The fool treats 
 things as if they were mere qualities, and had no 
 permanent effect. But the effects come back to 
 plague and torment him. The selfish man treats 
 men as if they were mere acts, and had no perma- 
 nent selves. He may at the time get out of them 
 the act he wants, but in doing so he makes them 
 his enemies ; and no man can permanently prosper 
 with every other man openly or secretly arrayed 
 against him. The most fundamental question a man 
 can ask about our character is whether and to what 
 extent we habitually treat persons as persons, and 
 not as things. The answer to that question wiU teU 
 us whether we shall succeed or fail in any enterprise 
 which has an important social side ; will tell whether 
 we shall make a home happy or wretched ; will tell 
 whether we are more of a blessing or a curse to the 
 world in which we move. And the test is to be 
 found, not in our attitude toward the people whom 
 we consider our superiors and equals ; not in the 
 appearance we make in what is technically called 
 society. There we have to be decent, whether we 
 want to or not ; there we have to treat, or appear 
 to treat, persons as persons, not as things. Little 
 credit belongs to us for all that. But when it comes 
 to our relations with the people of whom Royce was 
 speaking, there we seem to be under no such social 
 
THE COLLEGE MAN 65 
 
 compulsion. There our real character gets blurted 
 out. How do we think and feel and speak and act 
 toward our washerwoman or the man who does our 
 humblest work for us ? That determines whether 
 we are at heart Christians or barbarians, whether a 
 gentleman or a brute sits on the throne of our soul. 
 For whether a fellow-man is ever a means instead 
 of an end, whether the personality of the humblest 
 ever fails to win our recognition, inasmuch as we 
 do it or do it not unto the least of our breth- 
 ren, determines our moral and social status, as the 
 men of insight, like Kant and Hegel and Jesus, 
 define it. 
 
 One of the most important forms of justice is 
 honesty in services and material goods. To be hon- 
 est means that we refuse to be partner to a trade 
 or transaction in which we would not willingly 
 accept its consequence to all parties, provided we 
 were in their places. Any transaction that involves 
 effects on another we would not willingly, under 
 the circumstances, accept for ourselves, is fraud 
 and robbery. The man who pilfers goods from a 
 pocket or a counter is the least of the thieves of 
 to-day. He is only doing, in a pitiful way, the 
 devil's retail business. The men who do his whole- 
 sale business often move in the best of society, 
 and are even the makers and executors of our laws. 
 Wholesale stealing has numerous forms, but it is 
 nearly all reducible to two well-marked types. 
 
66 GREEK QUALITIES IN 
 
 First, stealing is carried on by issuing repre- 
 sentations of what does not exist as represented. 
 Stealing of this sort is really lying. Adulteration 
 of goods, watered stock, false accounts, are the 
 grosser forms of this stealing. The more adroit 
 of these rascals, however, take to the promotion 
 of spurious enterprises. They form a company to 
 work a mine which has ore, but which they know 
 cannot be worked at a profit ; or they build a rail- 
 road between points where there is not traffic or 
 travel enough to pay a fair rate of interest on the 
 capital invested. They appropriate to themselves 
 a generous block of the stock as the price for 
 their work of organization. They put in the most 
 expensive plant and equipment. For the first few 
 months, when there are no repairs needed, by arti- 
 ficial stimulus and by various devices of book- 
 keeping, or by leaving some bills unpaid, they 
 make a showing on paper of large earnings above 
 running expenses. On this fictitious showing they 
 sell their stock to investors at a distance, who 
 think they are being specially favored in being let 
 into a chance to earn dividends of ten per cent. 
 Then comes the crash ; the poor fools that in- 
 vested in the stock find it worthless, and even the 
 bonds which represent its construction fall below 
 par. Then the poor robbed, cheated, deluded in- 
 vestors look to the promoter for redress ; and lo I 
 he has unloaded his stock, and is planning another 
 
THE COLLEGE MAN 57 
 
 mine in inaccessible Tennessee mountains, or sell- 
 ing lumber that no team can haul out of some 
 impenetrable Florida swamp, or booming city lots 
 staked out on some unbroken Kansas prairie, or 
 running an electric railroad through the pastures 
 and woodlands that connect out-of-the-way hamlets 
 in Maine. Justice and honesty demand that we 
 shall read that man's character in the light of the 
 losses he inflicts on hard-working farmers, depend- 
 ent widows, poor men and women who have toiled 
 all their lives, and are looking for rest in old age. 
 In that clear light of consequence to their fellows, 
 the acts of these unscrupulous promoters stand 
 out in their naked hideousness and deformity. The 
 man who promotes a scheme of this kind, know- 
 ing or having good reason to believe that his gain 
 is represented by widespread robbery of the inno- 
 cent, and plunder of the unprotected, is a thief 
 and a robber ; and the place where he belongs 
 is at hard work in striped clothes, by the side of 
 the defaulter, the burglar, and the picker of pock- 
 ets. The fact that he does not get there, but fares 
 sumptuously in a palace he rears with his ill-gotten 
 gain, is one of the chief reasons why men still be- 
 lieve and hope there is a hell. 
 
 The other type of stealing which flourishes in 
 modern conditions is the misuse of one's repre- 
 sentative or delegated influence. A thief of this 
 sort uses his position in one corporation to let 
 
68 GREEK QUALITIES IN 
 
 favorable contracts to himself in another corpo- 
 ration in which he is directly or indirectly con- 
 cerned. He uses his position as purchasing or sell-' 
 ing agent for a company by which he is employed, 
 to induce the seller or buyer to make a special 
 rebate or bonus to him in his private capacity; 
 thus charging his employer with an unrecognized 
 salary in addition to the one he is supposed to 
 receive. He uses his political influence to promote 
 his personal fortunes, or those of his friends and 
 retainers, at the public expense. Wherever a repre- 
 sentative or delegated power is used for personal, 
 private, friendly, family, or any ends whatever other 
 than the single interests of the constituents or firm 
 or institution represented, there is a case of whole- 
 sale stealing of the second type. 
 
 Opportunities for the successful practice of these 
 two types of wholesale stealing are incidental to 
 our highly complex political and industrial life. 
 Exceptional talent and industry and enterprise may 
 8tiU manage to make money without them. But 
 most of the great fortunes which are rapidly made 
 rest on one or the other of these two types of theft. 
 The temptations to resort to them in these days 
 are tremendous. Yet it is no new discovery that 
 wrongdoing is profitable and easy, while virtue is 
 costly and hard. The first step toward righteous- 
 ness in these matters is to define clearly, in modem 
 terms, what honesty is ; and to brand all whose 
 
THE COLLEGE MAN 59 
 
 gains rest on the losses of others as the thieves and 
 villains they are. 
 
 Justice, if left to the feeble hands of individuals, 
 would be but poorly executed, even if the indi- 
 viduals concerned were most justly and generously 
 disposed. It is through institutions that justice 
 most effectively works. Loyalty to institutions is 
 a higher and more universal form of justice. 
 
 Loyalty to the family involves the recognition 
 that the family is prior to the individual. Into the 
 family we are born ; by our parents we are trained 
 and reared ; from parents, brothers, and sisters we 
 first learn hfe's most precious lesson of love. The 
 loyal son must ever hold the family as a dearer 
 and better seH. Its interest must be his interest; 
 its requirements, his wiU; its members, members 
 of himself, to be honored, cherished, defended, sup- 
 ported, so long as he has strength and means to 
 support them, heart and soul wherewith to love. 
 
 Loyalty to one's own home carries with it, as 
 its counterpart, a respect for the home and family 
 life of others. Chastity is the great virtue that 
 guards the sanctity of the home. Approached from 
 the point of view of the family and the home, chas- 
 tity is one of the most reasonable and imperative 
 requirements which justice and loyalty lay upon 
 men. To the libertine justice puts the searching 
 questions : " How would you like to have been born 
 as the product of the passing passion of a man who 
 
60 GREEK QUALITIES IN 
 
 was too mean to acknowledge either you or your 
 mother? How would you like to have your own 
 sisters treated in that way? How would you like 
 to look forward to rearing your own daughters for 
 the brief, bitter life of the brothel ? " These are 
 hard questions, no doubt, the very suggestion of 
 which gives one a feeling of horror. But just those 
 questions the libertine must answer before he can 
 ever think guiltlessly of a licentious life for him- 
 self. For these wretched women whom he meets 
 on the street after nightfall, or goes to a brothel 
 to find, were once the dear daughters and sisters 
 of fond fathers and mothers and brothers ; and 
 God meant them to be the happy wives of good 
 husbands, fond mothers of sweet children to grow 
 up and honor and love them in turn. To lead one 
 such woman astray, or to patronize an institution 
 which ruins such women by the wholesale, is to be 
 a traitor to the great and blessed institution of 
 home ; to make impossible for others that pure, 
 sweet family life to which we owe all that is best 
 in our own lives, and which holds in its beneficent 
 keeping all the best gifts we can hope to hand 
 down to our children. Chastity is no mere con- 
 ventional virtue, which a young man may lightly 
 ignore, under some such pretext as " sowing wild 
 oats." It is rooted and grounded in justice to 
 others, and loyalty to the benign institution of 
 home. 
 
THE COLLEGE MAN 61 
 
 THE COURAGE OF SPACE AND TIME 
 
 If man were merely a mind, wisdom to see par- 
 ticular desires in the light of their permanent con- 
 sequences to self, and justice to weigh the interests 
 of self to the impartial scales of a due regard for 
 the interests of others, would together sum up all 
 virtue. Knowledge, in these two forms, would be 
 virtue, as Socrates taught. 
 
 We feel, however, as well as know. Nature, for 
 purposes of her own, has placed the premium of 
 pleasure on the exercise of function, and attached 
 the penalty of pain to both privation of such exer- 
 cise, on the one hand, and over-exertion, on the 
 other. Nature, too, has adjusted the scale of in- 
 tensity of pleasures and pains to her own ends ; 
 placing the keenest rewards and the severest penal- 
 ties on those appetites which, like nutrition and 
 reproduction, are most essential to the survival of 
 the individual and the race ; thus enforcing by her 
 rough process of natural selection a crude wisdom 
 and justice of her own. Moreover, these premiums 
 and penalties were adjusted to the needs of the 
 race at a stage of evolution when scanty and pre- 
 carious food-supply and a high death-rate, due to 
 the combined inroads of war, famine, and pesti- 
 lence, rendered nutrition and reproduction of vastly 
 more relative urgency, in comparison with other 
 interests, than they are to-day. 
 
62 GREEK QUALITIES IN 
 
 Pleasure and pain, therefore, though reliable 
 guides in the life of an animal struggling for exist- 
 ence, are not reliable guides for men in times of 
 artificial plenty and elaborate civilization. To fol- 
 low the strongest appetites, to seek the intensest 
 pleasures and shun the sharpest pains, is simply to 
 revert to a lower stage of evolution, and live the 
 life of a beast. Hence that combat of the moral 
 nature with the cosmic process to which Mr. Hux- 
 ley recently recalled our attention ; or rather, that 
 combat of man with himself which Paul and Au- 
 gustine, Plato and Hegel have more profoundly 
 expressed. This fact that Nature's premiums and 
 penalties are distributed on an entirely different 
 principle from that which wisdom and justice mark 
 out for the civilized man renders it necessary for 
 wisdom and justice to summon to their aid two 
 subordinate virtues, courage and temperance, — 
 courage to endure the pains which the pursuit of 
 wisdom and justice involves; temperance to cut 
 off the pleasures which are inconsistent with the 
 ends which wisdom and justice set before us. 
 
 The wide, permanent ends at which justice and 
 wisdom aim often involve what is in itself, and for 
 the present, disagreeable and painful. The acqui- 
 sition of a competence involves hard work, when 
 Nature calls for rest ; the solution of a problem 
 requires us to be wide awake, when Nature urges 
 sleep ; the advocacy of a reform involves unpop- 
 
THE COLLEGE MAN 63 
 
 ularity, when Nature suggests the advantages of 
 having the good opinion of our fellows ; the life of 
 the country calls for the death of the soldier, when 
 Nature bids him chng to life by running away. 
 
 Now, since we are not ascetics, we must admit 
 that per se pleasure is preferable to pain. If it 
 were a question between rest and work when weary, 
 between sleep and waking when tired out, between 
 popularity and unpopularity, between life and 
 death, every sensible man would choose the first 
 alternatives as a matter of course. Wisdom and 
 justice, however, see the present and partial pain 
 as part of a wider personal and social good, and 
 order that the pain be endured. True courage, 
 therefore, is simply the executor of the orders of 
 wisdom and justice. The wise and just man, who 
 knows what he wants, and is bound to get it at all 
 costs, is the only man who can be truly brave. For ( 
 the strength of one's courage is simply the strength ] 
 of the wise and just aims which he holds. All 
 bravery not thus rooted and grounded in the vision 
 of some larger end to be gained is mere bravado 
 and bluster. 
 
 Of the many applications of courage, two of 
 the simplest will suffice for illustration : the cour- 
 age of space, to take the pains to keep things in 
 order ; and the courage of time, to be punctual, or 
 even ahead of the hour, when a hard task has to 
 be done. 
 
64 GREEK QUALITIES IN 
 
 Even if our life is a small, sheltered one, even 
 if we have only our house or rooms to look after, 
 things tend to get out of order, to pile themselves 
 up in heaps, to get out of our reach and into each 
 other's way. To leave things in this chaos is both 
 unwise and unjust ; for it will trouble us in the 
 future, and trouble the people who have to live 
 with us. Yet it costs pain and effort to attack this 
 chaos and subject it to order. Endurance of pain, 
 in the name of wisdom and justice, to secure order 
 for our own future comfort and the comfort of our 
 family and friends, is courage. On the other hand, 
 to leave things lying in confusion around us ; to 
 let alien forces come into our domain and encamp 
 there in insolent defiance of ourselves and our 
 friends, is a shameful confession that things are 
 stronger than we. To be thus conquered by dead 
 material things is as ignominious a defeat as can 
 come to a man. The man who can be conquered 
 by things is a coward in the strict ethical sense of 
 the term ; that is, he lacks the strength of will to 
 bear the incidental pains which his personal and 
 social interests put upon him. 
 
 The courage of time is punctuality. When there 
 is a hard piece of work to be done, it is pleasanter 
 far to sit at ease for the present, and put off the 
 work. " The thousand nothings of the hour " claim 
 our attention. The coward yields to " their stupe- 
 fying power," and the great task remains forever 
 
THE COLLEGE MAN 65 
 
 undone. The brave man brushes these conflicting 
 claims into the background, stops his ears until the 
 sirens' voices are silent, stamps on his feelings as 
 though they were snakes in his path, and does the 
 thing now which ever after he will rejoice to have 
 done. In these crowded modern days, the only 
 man who " finds time " for great things is the man 
 who takes it by violence from the thousands of 
 petty, local, temporary claims, and makes it serve 
 the ends of wisdom and justice. 
 
 There are three places where one may draw the 
 line for getting a piece of work done. One man 
 draws it habitually a few minutes or hours or days 
 after it is due. He is always in distress, and a 
 nuisance to everybody else. There is no dignity 
 in a life that is as perpetually behind its appoint- 
 ments as a tail is in the rear of a dog. 
 
 It is very risky — ethically speaking, it is cow- 
 ardly — to draw the line at the exact date when 
 the work is due ; for then one is at the mercy of 
 any accident or interruption that may overtake 
 him at the end of his allotted time. If he is sick or 
 a friend dies, or unforeseen complications arise, he 
 is as badly off as the man who deliberately planned 
 to be late, and almost as much to blame. For a man 
 who leaves the possibility of accident and interrup- 
 tion out of account, and stakes the welfare of him- 
 self and of others on such miscalculation, is neither 
 wise nor just; he is reckless rather than brave. 
 
66 GREEK QUALITIES IN 
 
 Even if accidents do not come, lie is walkiQg on 
 the perilous edge all the time ; his work is done in 
 a fever of haste and anxiety, injurious alike to the 
 quality of the work and the health of the worker. 
 
 The man who puts the courage of punctuality 
 into his work wiU draw the line for finishing a piece 
 of work a safe period inside the time when it is 
 actually due. If one forms the habit and sticks to 
 it, it is no harder to have work done ten days, or 
 at least one day, ahead of time than to finish it at 
 the last allowable minute. Then, if anything hap- 
 pens, it does no harm. This habit will save literary 
 workers an incalculable amount of anxiety and 
 worry. And it is the wear and tear of worry and 
 hurry, not the amount of calm, quiet work, that 
 kills such men before their time. 
 
 I am aware that orderliness and punctuality are 
 not usually regarded as forms of courage. But the 
 essential element of all courage is in them, — the 
 power to face a disagreeable present in the interest 
 of desirable permanent ends. They are far more 
 important in modem life than the courage to face 
 bears or bullets. They underlie the more spectacu- 
 lar forms of courage. The man who cannot reduce 
 to order the things that are lying passively about 
 him, and endure the petty pains incidental to doing 
 hard things before the sheer lapse of time forces 
 him to action, is not the man who will be calm and 
 composed when angry mobs are howling about him. 
 
THE COLLEGE MAN 67 
 
 or who will go steadily on his way when greed and 
 corruption, hypocrisy and hate, are arrayed to resist 
 him. For, whether in the quiet of a study and the 
 routine of an office or in the turmoil of a riot or a 
 strike, true courage is the ready and steadfast ac- 
 ceptance of whatever pains are incidental to secur- 
 ing the personal and public ends that are at stake. 
 
 TEMPERANCE IN DRUGS 
 
 Temperance is closely akin to courage ; for as 
 courage takes on the pains which wisdom and jus- 
 tice find incidental to their ends, so temperance cuts 
 off remorselessly whatever pleasures are inconsis- 
 tent with these ends. The temperate man does not 
 hate pleasure, any more than the brave man loves 
 pain, for its own sake. It is not that he loves pleas- 
 ure less, but that he loves wisdom and justice more. 
 He puts the satisfaction of his permanent and 
 social self over against the fleeting satisfaction of 
 some isolated appetite, and cuts off the little pleas- 
 ure to gain the lasting personal and social good. 
 There is a remark of Hegel which gives the key to 
 all true temperance : " In the eye of fate all action 
 is guilt." Since we are finite, to do one thing is to 
 neglect all the competing alternative courses. We 
 cannot have our cake and eat it too. As James 
 puts it : " Not that I would not, if I could, be 
 both handsome and fat and well-dressed and a great 
 athlete, and make a million a year ; be a wit, a 
 
68 GREEK QUALITIES IN 
 
 honr^ivant^ and a lady-killer, as well as a philoso* 
 pher; a philanthropist, statesman, warrior, and 
 African explorer, as well as a ' tone-poet ' and saint. 
 But the thing is simply impossible. The million- 
 aire's work would run counter to the saint's ; the 
 bovrvivant and the philanthropist would trip each 
 other up ; and the philosopher and the lady-killer 
 could not weU keep house in the same tenement of 
 clay. So the seeker of his truest, strongest, deepest 
 seK must review the list carefully, and pick out the 
 one on which to stake his salvation." 
 
 Some selection there must be between competing 
 and mutually exclusive goods. The intemperate 
 man selects what appeals most forcibly to his sen- 
 sibilities at the moment. The temperate man se- 
 lects that which best fits his permanent ends. There 
 is sacrifice in either case. The intemperate man 
 sacrifices his permanent and social self to his tran- 
 sient physical sensations. The temperate man sac- 
 rifices his transient sensations in the interest of his 
 permanent and social self. 
 
 The temptation to intemperance comes chiefly 
 from a false abstraction of pleasure. Finding that 
 some function is attended with pleasure, we per- 
 form the function for the sake of the pleasure, for- 
 getting to consider the end at which the function 
 aims, or even disregarding the end altogether. A 
 man seizes on one or another of the more sensitive 
 parts of his nervous system, and then contrives ways 
 
THE COLLEGE MAN 69 
 
 to produce constant or frequently recurrent excita- 
 tion. Thus the glutton crams his stomach, not for 
 the nourishment and vigor food will give him, but 
 for the sensations of agreeable taste and comfortable 
 distention. Muscle must toil, brain must plan, and 
 every other organ do extra work, simply to give 
 the palate its transient titillation and provide the 
 stomach its periodic gorge. The drunkard gets the 
 whole sympathetic system of nerves into an excita- 
 tion so intense as to drive away all concern for other 
 things, and fill his consciousness completely full of 
 the glorious sense that all is well with his physical 
 organism. Tobacco gives a pleasure still farther 
 removed from any rational end. With a minimum 
 of physical substance, a man can get the sensation 
 of working his jaws and lungs, secreting saliva, and 
 being in a tranquil state of body and mind. 
 
 Yet if one is bound to have agreeable sensations, 
 regardless of their permanent effects, there is a way, 
 quick, sure, cheap, refined, convenient, unobtrusive, 
 far beyond the crude, clumsy devices of glutton, 
 drunkard, snuff-taker, chewer, or smoker. With a 
 powder so small that it can be held on the tip of a 
 penknife, with a tablet a whole bottle of which can 
 be carried in the pocket, with a drop injected by 
 the hypodermic syringe, one may invoke the magic 
 potency of morphine, hashish, or cocaine. 
 
 Such are the latest refinements of intemperance, 
 the most improved devices for stimulating our phys* 
 
70 GREEK QUALITIES IN 
 
 ical and nervous functions into pleasurable activity, 
 apart from aU consideration of the normal ends the 
 functions were evolved to serve. It would be easy 
 to hold them up to ridicule. If, in a book of travels, 
 we were to read of a tribe in some remote island 
 who spent a large portion of their substance gorg- 
 ing themselves with a dozen kinds of food at a sin- 
 gle meal ; pouring down liquid which made them 
 silly and stupid, and therefore careless and happy ; 
 stuffing vegetable matter up their noses, or chewing 
 it and spitting out the juice, or rolling it up in 
 tubes, or putting it in bowls and setting fire to it 
 for the fun of pulling the smoke into their mouths 
 and puffing it out again ; or injecting under their 
 skins substances which would make them lose aU 
 sense of reality and responsibility, and live in a 
 dream world where wishes were horses and beggars 
 might ride ; and if we had never heard of such 
 practices before, we should not rank them very 
 high in the scale of civilization. 
 
 Yet we cannot, if we would, dispose of these 
 forms of intemperance by ridicule. In each case 
 some pleasure is gained, and that pleasure is so far 
 forth a real good. Let us be serious and fair with 
 them all. 
 
 The glutton's gorging of his stomach, in so far 
 as it produces a pleasurable feeling of distention, 
 is good. If a man were nothing but a stomach, and 
 that were made of cast iron, then gluttony would 
 
THE COLLEGE MAN 71 
 
 be not only good, but the highest good. If a man 
 were nothing but a bundle of nerves, and these 
 were of wire and never subject to reaction, then the 
 man who could keep them thrilling most intensely 
 by whiskey and champagne would be the wisest 
 one of us all. So if man were nothing but a nose, 
 and that had the lining of a boiler, then snuff- 
 taking would be the acme of virtue. If man were 
 reduced to a pair of huge jaws, the^ chewing would 
 be virtue for him. If one were a heating-plant 
 chimney, then smoking would be the best he could 
 do. If a man need do nothing but dream, then to 
 neglect the joys of opium or cocaine would be 
 superlative folly. 
 
 The evil of these things is due to the greater 
 good they displace. Man is more than stomach or 
 nerves or nose or jaws or chimney or dreamer ; and 
 indulgence in these departments of his life, unless 
 very carefully controlled and restricted, involves 
 injury to more important sides of life, out of all 
 proportion to the petty gains in these special de- 
 partments in question. 
 
 The folly or evil of these practices differs greatly 
 in degree, though they are all branches from the 
 same psychological root, — the quest of sensations 
 divorced from the normal ends the stimulated func- 
 tions serve. The list of branches from this same root 
 could easily be enlarged. Theoretically, the high- 
 est wisdom, the strictest temperance, would elimi- 
 
72 GREEK QUALITIES IN 
 
 nate them all ; not, however, on ascetic grounds, but 
 on the rational ground that the wisest man can find 
 better use for his time and money, his vitality and 
 strength, than in any of these abnormally evoked 
 sensations. Yet, practically, something must be con- 
 ceded to human weakness and infirmity. To say 
 that all these things are theoretically foolish, and 
 therefore immoral, does not carry with it the posi- 
 tion that every man is a fool and a knave who 
 practices them. Gluttony, the use of snuff, and 
 chewing, once as prevalent and popular among 
 those who could afford them as smoking is now, 
 have receded before the advancing march of a 
 higher civilization, until they are hardly consistent 
 with our ideas of a gentleman. Drunkenness is 
 rapidly going into the same category. A century 
 ago a man was thought no less a gentleman because 
 he was occasionally or even frequently drunk. To- 
 day, a man who permits himself to be seen drunk 
 is not wanted for employee or partner or son-in-law 
 or intimate friend. The victim of drug habits we 
 all pity, loathe, and distrust. Moderate drinking 
 and smoking are the two forms in which the quest 
 for abnormal or non-functional sensation is stiU in 
 vogue. All the other forms of intemperance cited 
 have so far received the stigma of social disappro- 
 val that their gradual descent through lower and 
 lower strata of society to final disuse is merely a 
 question of time. 
 
THE COLLEGE MAN 7d^ 
 
 Moderate drinking and smoking undoubtedly 
 have still a long lease of life. There is a good deal 
 to be said in behalf of them both. Moderate drink- 
 ing temporarily aids digestion, increases good-fel- 
 lowship, dispels anxiety and care, and serves one of 
 the two purposes of food. "We all know multitudes 
 of men who have practiced it for years, and are ap- 
 parently little the worse for it. To them its discon- 
 tinuance would be a real hardship ; costing, perhaps, 
 in mental strain and effort and temporary physical 
 discomfort, more than the resulting physical gain 
 to themselves as individuals. That multitudes of 
 people will continue the practice, and wiU do so 
 imder the impression, right or wrong, that they are 
 doing what is wisest and best for themselves, there 
 can be no doubt. Such people are not to be con- 
 demned as intemperate. Whatever the final ver- 
 dict of physiology may be, so long as these people 
 believe on the testimony of expert authorities whose 
 judgment they trust, and on their own experience 
 so far as they are competent to interpret it, that 
 moderation in the use of alcoholic drink is good for 
 them, they are wise and temperate in its use. For 
 morality is not a matter of right or wroug opinion 
 about physiological or social questions. It is a ques- 
 tion of personal attitude towards the opinions which 
 one holds. 
 
 The man, however, who knows or believes that it 
 injures him, and helps materially to injure others, 
 
74 GREEK QUALITIES IN 
 
 and still continues to use it, thereby confesses him- 
 self to be a fool and a slave, and merits our severe 
 condemnation. The fundamental elements of man- 
 hood are wanting in that man. His rank is lower 
 than the beasts ; for they cannot violate a reason 
 they do not possess. Instinct does for them what 
 the consciously intemperate man lacks the stamina 
 to do for himself. In view of the doubtful nature 
 of the gain which moderate use of alcoholic liquor 
 brings even to those who interpret temporary ex- 
 hilaration as permanent benefit ; in view of the 
 danger that moderation will slip into excess, and 
 be caught in the chains of habit ; in view of the 
 havoc and misery which liquor causes in the world ; 
 in view of the extreme difficulty of securing the 
 temperate individual use without complicity in its 
 terrible social abuse ; in view of the certainty that in 
 the long run the individual would be quite as well 
 off without it, and that society as a whole would be 
 infinitely the gainer if it were universally discarded 
 as a beverage, — the man who seeks to be guided 
 in his life by the highest wisdom and the sanest 
 temperance, though he have not a particle of ascet- 
 icism in his make-up, though he grudge no man 
 the joy he gets from a social glass, though he will 
 judge no man who conscientiously uses it as either 
 morally or spiritually inferior to himself in conse- 
 quence, yet, in the present state of physiological 
 knowledge and the existing social conditions that 
 
THE COLLEGE MAN 76 
 
 attend the use of alcoholic drinks as a beverage, 
 will find the better part for himself and the high- 
 est service to society in a moderation so strict as 
 to amount to practical abstinence. 
 
 Smoking, so easily disposed of on ascetic princi- 
 ples, presents, from our point of view, a very diffi- 
 cult and delicate question. There is a good deal to 
 be said in its behalf. It is a solace of solitude. It 
 is a substitute for exercise. It promotes digestion. 
 It brings people together on terms of easy and rest- 
 ful intimacy ; taking away the chill and stiffness 
 from social intercourse, much as an open fire in the 
 fireplace adds a cheer to a room, quite independent 
 of the warmth it generates. The advantages from 
 smoking are not confined exclusively to the imme- 
 diate physical sensation. 
 
 Futhermore, when once the habit is established, 
 the body adapts itself to it, and contrives, through 
 lungs, skin, and kidneys, — though not without 
 scenting the clothing with foul exhalations, and 
 tainting the breath with offensive odors, — to throw 
 the poison off. Hence men who have once formed 
 the habit ; who feel that they can afford its con- 
 siderable expense, and can find no better use for 
 the money it represents ; who gain a good deal of 
 pleasure from it, and are able to detect no serious 
 physical effects, may well believe (although, if they 
 were to look the matter up impartially, the weight 
 of scientific testimony would be against them) that, 
 
76 GREEK QUALITIES IN 
 
 on the whole, for them, situated as they are, the 
 continuance of the habit represents the greater 
 good. Here, again, it is not for us to judge indi- 
 viduals. All we can say is that this is a possible, if 
 not the impartial and scientific way of looking at 
 the matter. Many do look at it in that light. In 
 so far as they are honest in taking that view of the 
 matter, they are wise and temperate in smoking 
 as they do. If, however, they know it is injuring 
 them; if they have a sneaking suspicion, which 
 they dare not follow up with a thorough investiga- 
 tion, that the practice is injurious in general, and 
 is harming themselves in particular, then they are 
 fools and slaves to persist in the practice. But 
 that is a judgment which the individual, who alone 
 knows the facts from the inside, must be left to 
 pass upon himself. We who stand on the outside 
 cannot get at the inner facts, and so have no right 
 to pass such a judgment. At all events, the young 
 man who would attune his ILf^ to the highest wis- 
 dom, and control it by the firmest temperance, wiU 
 not permit himself to form the habit before he has 
 attained his full physical and mental stature, and 
 has proved his ability with his own hand or brain 
 to earn for himself whatever necessities and com- 
 forts of life he believes to be more fundamental 
 and important than the inhalation and exhalation 
 of smoke. 
 
 Let us be careful not to confound a wise temper- 
 
THE COLLEGE MAN 77 
 
 ance witli the absurdities and rigors of asceticism. 
 Asceticism hates pleasure, and sets itself up as some- 
 thing superior to pleasure. Hence it is sour, nar- 
 row, repulsive. As Macaulay said of the Puritans, 
 " They hated bear-baiting, not because it gave 
 pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to 
 the spectators ; " so the ascetic seems to hate the 
 pleasure there is in things, and to begrudge other 
 people their joys and consolations. Temperance 
 work has too often fallen into the hands of these 
 ascetic cranks, who pose as the apostles and mar- 
 tyrs of the true and only temperance. 
 
 True temperance is modest. It is nothing in 
 itself, but, like courage, simply the handmaid of 
 wisdom and justice to carry out their commands. 
 Temperance does not hate pleasure. Temperance 
 loves pleasure more wisely — that is all. The 
 temperate man recognizes that the pleasure of an 
 act is a pretty sure indication that the act has 
 some elements of good. But temperance denies that 
 pleasure is an indication of the relative worth of 
 different acts. Reason, not pleasure alone, must 
 decide that point. Temperance never cuts off an 
 indulgence, unless it be to save some greater and 
 more valuable interest of life. Temperance is al- 
 ways, if it is modest, and keeps its proper place 
 as the handmaid of wisdom, engaged in cutting off 
 a lesser to save a greater good. Its weapon and 
 symbol is the pruning-knif e ; and its aim and justi- 
 
78 GREEK QUALITIES IN 
 
 fication is that the vine of life may bear more and 
 better fruit. To erect temperance into a positive 
 principle, to be merely a temperance man or wo- 
 man, to cut off the fair leaves of pleasure merely 
 for the sake of cutting them off, is monstrous, un- 
 natural, perverse. The great moral motive power 
 of life must lie in the positive and pleasurable 
 interests which wisdom and justice and faith and 
 love lay hold upon. To cast out evil as an end in 
 itself is as futile as to try to drive the air out of 
 a room with a fan. 
 
 Temperance, indeed, often finds itself arrayed 
 against the lower and intenser forms of pleasure. 
 That is because, for purposes of her own. Nature 
 has attached the keenest pleasure to those instincts 
 wliich are most fundamental to the preservation of 
 the individual and the perpetuation of the spe- 
 cies. But temperance, if it be wise, — if, that is, it 
 be truly moral, — must ever justify itself by those 
 personal and social goods at which wisdom and 
 justice aim. Hence temperance, though an impor- 
 tant virtue in its place, is yet a strictly subordinate 
 one. No man can amount to much without con- 
 stant practice of stem self-denial and rigid self- 
 control. But a man who does nothing but that ; 
 the man who erects temperance into a positive 
 principle, who believes that the pruning-knife can 
 bear fruit of itself, and despises the rich soil that 
 feeds the roots and the sweet sap that nourishes 
 
THE COLLEGE MAN 79 
 
 the branches of the vine of life, is no man at all. 
 The measure and value of our temperance is, not 
 the indulgences which we lop off from the branches 
 of life here and there, but the beauty and sweet- 
 ness and worth of the fruit which is borne by our 
 lives as a whole. 
 
 Such are the counsels a Greek philosopher would 
 give us, could he return to earth to-day. Would 
 give, I say ; for I am well aware that the points I 
 have chosen for illustration are, for the most part, 
 points on which Plato and Aristotle touched very 
 lightly, if at all ; and that on the most important 
 of them their precept and practice were in open con- 
 tradiction to the precepts I here have set forth. 
 I have followed the logic of their principles rather 
 than the letter of their precepts. Like a fluid in 
 connected vessels, the spiritual life of an age cannot 
 rise, in its ethical precept and practice, above the 
 level of the prevailing religious conceptions, literary 
 standards, political institutions, and social customs. 
 No one knew this better than Plato, as is evident 
 from his attack on the current literary and religious 
 standards of his day, and his attempt to construct 
 an ideal republic, where philosophers should be 
 kings. Christianity, democracy, and the deepening 
 recognition of the rights of personality in men and 
 women, children and servants, have lifted the level 
 of spiritual life to heights imdreamed of by Plato, 
 
80 GREEK QUALITIES 
 
 and pronounced by Aristotle to be impossible. On 
 this higher level, the old formulas of the Greeks 
 receive a vastly richer content and an infinitely 
 wider application ; but as forms of statement they 
 never have been and never will be surpassed. 
 
 However deep, and wide, and full man's life, 
 under Christian influence and inspiration, may 
 come to be, it will ever retain the form the old 
 Greeks stamped upon it. Man will ever approach 
 perfection in proportion to the wisdom with which 
 he grasps the permanent ends of his life, and sub- 
 ordinates all means to those ends ; the justice with 
 which he weighs the interests of his fellows in the 
 same scales as his own ; the courage with which he 
 greets all pains incidental to the prosecution of his 
 own ends and those of his fellows ; and the tem- 
 perance with which he cuts off whatever pleasure 
 proves inconsistent with the steadfast adherence 
 to these personal and social ends. For thus to live 
 a wise, just, brave, temperate life is to be rightly 
 related to the world, to one's fellows, and to one's 
 true self ; and therefore sums up, as far as ethics 
 apart from politics and religion can do it, aU the 
 virtues and duties of man. 
 
IV ^ 
 
 The Career of Self-Conquest 
 
 I. FORESIGHT AND REPENTANCE 
 
 SINCE psychology and ethics are partners, ethics 
 is bound to take the first chance to return 
 psychology's lead. As long as psychology put full- 
 fledged faculties of free will and conscience into the 
 soul's original outfit, it was all very well for ethics 
 to respond with inexplicable intuitions and categori- 
 cal imperatives. Now that psychology is telling us 
 that the will is simply " the sum total of our mental 
 states in so far as they involve attentive guidance 
 of conduct," and its sole sphere of action " the 
 attentive furthering of our interest in one act or 
 desire as against all others present to our minds at 
 the same time," ethics can no longer put us off with 
 cut and dried rules for keeping a fixed, formal self 
 out of mischief, but must show us how, from the 
 raw materials of appetites, passions, and instincts, 
 with the customs, institutions, and ideals of the race 
 for our models, to create, each man for himself, an 
 individuality of ever tightening coherence and ever 
 expanding dimensions. 
 
 This twofold task, to preserve the unity of life at 
 the same time that we multiply and magnify the 
 
82 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 
 
 interests we unify, gives to ethics at once its diffi- 
 culty and its zest. Either half of this task would 
 be easy and stupid. If unification, simplicity, peace, 
 is our sole aim, we have but to call in the monks and 
 the mystics, the lamas and the mental healers, for 
 a haK-dozen lessons and treatments. If, on the 
 other hand, we aim at bulk, complexity, tension, 
 almost any business man, or club woman, or " globe- 
 trotter," or debauchee can teach us as much as 
 that. To challenge the simple unity of our habitual 
 lives by every interest that promises enlargement 
 and enrichment, and in turn to challenge each new 
 interest in the name of a singleness of purpose 
 which it may stretch as much as it please, but on 
 no account shall break, — this double task is hard 
 indeed ; the zest of this game is great. 
 
 In a task so difficult as this of relating ever new 
 materials to each other in the unity of an organic 
 whole, failure is the only roadway to success. For 
 there are ten thousand possible combinations of our 
 appetites, desires, interests, and affections, of which 
 only one precise, definite way can be right, and all 
 the rest must be wrong. As Aristotle learned from 
 the Pythagoreans, virtue is definite or limited ; vice 
 is indefinite, or infinite. It is so easy to miss the 
 mark that any fool can be vicious ; so hard to hit 
 it that the strongest man's first efforts go astray. 
 " Adam's fall " was foreordained by stronger powers 
 than even the decree of a God. For every son of 
 
THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 83 
 
 Adam, sin, or the missing of the perfect mark, is a 
 psychological necessity. Nothing short of a miracle 
 could prevent a man's first, experimental adjust- 
 ments of his environment to himseK from being the 
 failures they are. For in every art and craft, in 
 every game and sport where skill is involved, the 
 progressive elimination of errors is the only way to 
 a perfection which is ever approximated, but never 
 completely attained. 
 
 Yet the difficulty of the moral life is at the same 
 time its glory. For the very source of the difficulty 
 may be turned into a weapon of conquest. The 
 difficulty is all due to the organic connection of ex- 
 perience. If experiences stood alone, disconnected, 
 the moral problem would be simple indeed. Hun- 
 ger feasting is better than hunger starved ; thirst 
 drinking is better than thirst unquenched ; weari- 
 ness resting is better than weariness at work. If 
 the feast, or the drink, or the rest were the only 
 things to be considered, then the gratification of 
 each desire as fast as it arose would be the whole 
 duty of man. None but a fool could err. But, on 
 the other hand, the wise man would be no better off 
 than the fool. There would be no use for his wis- 
 dom, no world of morals to conquer. 
 
 Foresight is the first great step in this career of 
 moral conquest. The mind within and the world 
 without are parallel streams of close-linked se- 
 quences, in which what goes in as present cause 
 
84 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 
 
 comes out as future effect. This linkage at the 
 same time binds and sets us free. It binds us to 
 the effect, if we take the cause. It sets us free in 
 the effect, if the effect is foreseen, and the cause 
 is chosen with a view to the effect. These streams 
 of sequence repeat themselves. They are reducible 
 to constant types. They can be accepted or rejected 
 as wholes. To accept such a whole, taking an un- 
 desirable present cause for the sake of a desirable 
 future effect, is active foresight, or courage. To 
 reject a whole, foregoing a desired present cause in 
 order to escape an undesirable future effect, is pas- 
 sive foresight, or temperance. Foresight reads into 
 present appetite its future meaning ; and if backed 
 up by temperance and courage, rejects or accepts 
 the immediate gratification according as its total 
 effect is repugnant or desirable. 
 
 It is at this pomt that vice creeps into life. If 
 virtue is choosing the whole life history, so far as it 
 can be foreseen, in each gratification or repression 
 of a particular desire, vice is the sacrificing of the 
 whole self to a single desire. How is this possible? 
 
 Partly through ignorance or lack of foresight. 
 Yet vice due to ignorance is pardonable, and is 
 hardly to be called vice at all. It is sheer stupid- 
 ity. This, however, which was the explanation of 
 Socrates, lets us off too easily. 
 
 Vice is due chiefly to inattention ; not ignorance, 
 but thoughtlessness. " I see the better and approve, 
 
THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 85 
 
 yet I pursue the worse." In this case knowledge 
 is not absent, but defective. It is on the margin, 
 not in the focus, of consciousness. In the language 
 of physiological psychology, a present appetite pre- 
 sents its claims on great billows of nerve commotion 
 which come rolling in with all the tang and pungency 
 which are the characteristic marks of immediate pe- 
 ripheral excitation. The future consequences of the 
 gratification of that appetite, on the contrary, are 
 represented by the tiny, faint, feeble waves which 
 flow over from some other brain centre, excited long 
 ago, when the connection of this particular cause 
 with its natural eiffect was first experienced. In such 
 an unequal contest between powerful vibrations shot 
 swift and straight along the tingling nerves from 
 the seat of immediate peripheral commotion, and 
 the meagre, measured flow of faded impressions 
 whose initial velocity and force were long since 
 spent, what wonder that the remote effect seems 
 dim, vague, and unreal, and that the immediate 
 gratification of the insistent, clamorous appetite or 
 passion wins the day ! This is the modem expla- 
 nation of Aristotle's old problem of incontinence. 
 
 Whence, then, comes repentance? From the 
 changed proportions in which acts present them- 
 selves to our afterthought. " The tumult and the 
 shouting dies." The appetite, once so urgent and 
 insistent, lies prostrate and exhausted. Its clamor- 
 ous messages stop. The pleasure it brought dies 
 
86 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 
 
 down, vanishes into the thin air of memory and 
 symbolical representation, out of which it can only 
 call to us with hollow, ghost-like voice. On the 
 contrary, the effect, whether it be physical pains, or 
 the felt contempt of others, or the sense of our own 
 shame, gets physical reinforcement from without, 
 or invades those cells of the brain where memory 
 of the consequences of this indulgence lie, latent 
 but never dead, and stirs them to the very depths. 
 Now all the vividness and pungency and tang are 
 on their side. They cry out Fool ! Shame I Sin ! 
 Guilt ! Condemnation ! Then we wonder how we 
 could have been fools enough to take into our lives 
 such a miserable combination of cause and effect as 
 this has proved to be. The act we did and the act 
 we repent of doing are in one sense the same. But 
 we did it with the attractive cause in the fore- 
 ground, and the repulsive effect in the background. 
 We repent of the same act with the repulsive effect 
 vivid in the foreground of present consciousness, 
 and the attractive cause in the dim background of 
 memory. Then we vow that we will never admit 
 that combination into our lives again. 
 
 Will we keep our vow? That depends on our 
 ability to recall the point of view we gained in the 
 mood of penitence the next time a similar combi- 
 nation presents itself. It will come on as before, 
 with the attractive offer of some immediate good in 
 the foreground, and the unwelcome effect trailing 
 
THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 87 
 
 obscurely in the rear. If we take it as it comes, 
 adding to the presentation no contribution of our 
 own, we shall repeat the folly and vice of the past, 
 — become again the passive slaves of circumstance, 
 the easy prey of appetite and passion, the stupid 
 victims of the serpent's subtlety. 
 
 Our freedom, our moral salvation, lies in our 
 power to call up our past experience of penitence 
 and lay this revived picture of the act, with effect 
 in the foreground, on top of the vivid picture which 
 appetite presents. If we succeed in making the pic- 
 ture that we reproduce from within the one which 
 determines our action, we shall act wisely and weU. 
 By reflecting often upon the pictures drawn for us 
 in our moments of penitence, by reviving them at 
 intervals when they are not immediately needed, 
 and by forming the habit of always calling them 
 up in moments of temptation, we can give to these 
 pictures, painted by our own penitence, the control 
 of our lives. This is our charter of freedom ; and 
 though precept, example, and the experience of 
 others may be called in to supplement our own per- 
 sonal experience, this power to revive the actual op 
 borrowed lessons of repentance is the only free- 
 dom we have. Call it memory, attention, foresight, 
 prudence, watchfulness, ideal construction, or what 
 name we please, the secret of our freedom, the key to 
 character, the control of conduct, lies exclusively in 
 this power to force into the foreground considera- 
 
88 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 
 
 tions which of themselves tend to slip into the back- 
 ground, so that, as in a well-constructed cyclorama, 
 where actual walls and fences join on to painted 
 walls and fences without apparent break, the im- 
 mediately presented desire, backed up by all the 
 impetus of immediate physical excitation, shall 
 count for precisely its proportionate worth in a re- 
 presentation of the total consequences of which it 
 is the cause. 
 
 II. SOCIAL SYMPATHY AND RESPONSIBILITY 
 
 If I were the only person in the world, if all the 
 other forces were material things, with no wiUs of 
 their own, then the single principle of inserting into 
 the stream of sequence the causes which lead to the 
 future I desire for myself, and excluding those of 
 which I have had reason to repent, would be the 
 whole of ethics. Fortunately life is not so simple 
 and monotonous as all that. The world is fuU of 
 other wills as eager, as interesting, as strenuous, 
 as brave as we, in our best moments, know our 
 own to be. By sympathy, imagination, insight, and 
 affection we can enrich our lives an hundred-fold by 
 making their aims and aspirations, their interests 
 and struggles, their joys and sorrows our own. Not 
 only can we do this, but to some extent we must. 
 It is impossible to live an isolated life, apart from 
 our fellows. Man is by nature social. Alone he be- 
 comes inhuman. A life which has no outlet in 
 
THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 89 
 
 sympathy with other lives is unendurable. If 
 men cannot find some one to love, they insist on at 
 least finding some one to quarrel with, or defy, or 
 maltreat, or at least despise. Even hatred and 
 cruelty and pride have this social motive at their 
 heart, and in spite of themselves are witnesses to 
 the essentially social nature of man, and the soul 
 of latent goodness buried beneath the hardest of 
 corrupted and perverted hearts. 
 
 Our social nature complicates and at the same 
 time elevates enormously the moral problem. It is 
 no longer a question of dovetailing together the 
 petty fragments of my own little life so as to make 
 their paltry contents a coherent whole ; I now have 
 the harder and more glorious task of making my 
 life as a whole an effective and harmonious element 
 in the larger whole which includes the lives of my 
 fellows and myself. Here again there is a vast task 
 for the imagination to perform ; a more spacious 
 cyclorama for it to construct. Not merely the effects 
 upon myself, but the consequences for as many of 
 my fellows as my act directly and traceably affects, 
 I must now represent. Before I can permit an act 
 to find a place in my present conduct I must fore- 
 see, not only what it means for my own future, 
 but for the future of all my neighbors who come 
 within the range of its influence. 
 
 For their future is, in proportion to the close- 
 ness of the ties that bind us, almost as completely 
 
90 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 
 
 in my control as it is in their own. Indeed, if I be 
 the stronger person, if I have clear foresight where 
 their prevision is dim, if I grasp firmly aims which 
 they hold but feebly, their future may be even 
 more in my hands than it is in their own. Thus 
 the parent is more responsible for the child's fu- 
 ture than is the child himself. The husband often 
 holds the alternative of life or death for his wife 
 in his hands, according as he is patient, forbearing, 
 considerate, and kind, or exacting, inconsiderate, 
 cross, and cruel. The wife, on the other hand, 
 more often holds the future of her husband's 
 character in her hands, making him sober and hon- 
 est if she is winsome and sincere, driving him to 
 drink if she is slovenly and queridous, leading 
 him into dishonesty if she is extravagant and vain. 
 Every person of any considerable strength of char- 
 acter can recall many an instance in which by a 
 half-hour's conversation, followed up by occasional 
 suggestions afterward, he has changed the whole 
 subsequent career of another person. To one who 
 has discovered the secret of this power, a week per- 
 mitted to pass by without thus changing the life- 
 currents of half a dozen of his fellows would seem 
 a wicked, wanton waste of life's chief privilege and 
 joy. I could name a quiet, modest man who at a 
 low estimate has changed directly and radically for 
 the better a thousand human lives ; and indirectly, 
 to an appreciable degree, certainly not less than a 
 
THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 91 
 
 hundred thousand. He is no professional preacher 
 or evangelist; and the greater part of this vast 
 work has been done in quiet conversation, mainly 
 in his own home, and by correspondence. 
 
 Such power of one man over another is in no 
 way inconsistent with the freedom and responsi- 
 bility of them both. In psychical as in physical 
 causation many antecedents enter into each effect. 
 When I pull the trigger of my shotgun, and by so 
 doing shoot a partridge, I am by no means the 
 only cause of the bird's death. The maker of the 
 powder, the maker of the shot, the man who put 
 them together in the cartridge, the maker qf the 
 gun, the dog that helped me find the bird, and 
 countless other forces, which we express in such 
 general terms as the laws of chemistry and physics, 
 enter into the production of the effect. Neverthe- 
 less, my pulling the trigger, though not the whole 
 cause, is a real cause. Precisely so when I offer my 
 boy a quarter for shooting a partridge, and under 
 the influence of that inducement he goes hunting, 
 he is just as free in trying to secure the reward as 
 I am in offering it. Both my desire for the par- 
 tridge, which leads me to offer the prize, and his 
 desire for the quarter are factors in producing the 
 result. We are both free in our acts, and both 
 share responsibility for the shooting of the bird. 
 For that act figured alike in his future and in my 
 future as an element in a desired whole. The same 
 
92 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 
 
 external fact may enter as an element in the free- 
 dom of thousands of persons. A great work of art, 
 for example, is an expression of the freedom not 
 only of the artist who paints or writes, but of all 
 who see or read in it that which they long for and 
 admire. The goods of the will and the spirit, un- 
 like the goods of the mill and the market, are '* in 
 widest commonalty spread." They refuse to make 
 objects of exclusive possession. I cannot intensely 
 cherish an idea, or entertain a plan, for which my 
 fellows shall not be either the better or the worse. 
 Every conscious act deliberately chosen and ac- 
 cepted is an act of freedom, and every word or 
 deed goes forth from us freighted with social con- 
 sequence, and weighted to that precise extent with 
 moral responsibility. 
 
 Hence social imagination or sympathy is the 
 second great instrument of morality, as individual 
 imagination or foresight was the first. If our in- 
 dividual salvation is by foresight and repentance, 
 our social salvation is through imagination and 
 love. No logical "reconciliation of egoism and 
 altruism " is possible ; for that would involve re- 
 ducing one of the two elements to terms of the 
 other. Both are facts of human experience, found 
 in every normal life. I live my own life by setting 
 before myself a future, and taking the means that 
 lead thereto. I find this life worth living in pro- 
 portion to the length and breadth and height of 
 
THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 93 
 
 the aims I set before myself, and the wisdom 
 and skill I bring to bear upon their achieve- 
 ment. But I cannot make my own aims long, 
 wide, or high, without at the same time taking 
 account of the aims of my fellows. I may clash 
 with them, and try to use them as means to my 
 own ends. That leads to strife and bitterness, 
 sorrow and shame. Either my own ends are de- 
 feated, if , as is generally the case, my fellows prove 
 stronger than I ; or else they are won at such cost 
 of injury to others that in comparison they seem 
 poor and pitiful, not worth the winning. This is 
 the experience of the normal man; and though 
 by pride and hardness of heart one may make shift 
 to endure a comparatively egoistic life, no person 
 can find it so good as never to be haunted by vis- 
 ions of a better, which sympathy and love might 
 bring. 
 
 On the other hand, if I generously take into 
 account the aims of my fellow-man, and live in 
 them with the same eagerness with which I live 
 in my own, using for him the same foresight and 
 adaptation of means to ends that I would use for 
 myself, throwing my own resources into the scale 
 of his interests when his resources are inadequate, 
 sharing with him the sorrow of temporary defeat, 
 and the triumph of hard-won victories, I find my 
 own life more than doubled by this share in the 
 life of another. The little that I add to his fore- 
 
94 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 
 
 sight and strength, if given with sympathy and 
 love, when added to the energy, latent or active, 
 which he already has, works wonders out of all 
 proportion to the results I could achieve in my 
 life alone, or which he alone could achieve in 
 his. Love not merely adds ; it multiplies ; as in 
 the story of the loaves and fishes. It not only 
 increases ; it magnifies the life, alike of him who 
 gives and him who receives. Just why it should 
 do so is hard to explain in purely egoistic terms ; 
 as hard as to explain to an oyster why dogs like 
 to run and bark ; or to a heap of sand why the 
 particles of a crystal arrange themselves in the 
 wondrous ways they do. It is a simple, ultimate 
 fact of experience that just as a life of individual 
 foresight is on the whole better worth living than 
 the life of hand-to-mouth gratification, so the life 
 of loving sympathy is a life infinitely more blessed 
 than the best success the poor self-centred egoist 
 can ever know. If a selfish life were found on the 
 basis of wide experience and comprehensive gen- 
 eralization to be a more blessed and glorious life 
 than the life of loving sympathy, then the selfish 
 life would be the life we ought to live : precisely 
 as if houses in which the centre of gravity falls 
 outside the base were the most stable and graceful 
 structures men could build, that would be the style 
 of architecture we all " ought " to adopt. Ethics 
 and architecture are both ideal pursuits, in the 
 
THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 95 
 
 sense that they have as their object to make a 
 present ideal plan into a future fact. But both 
 must build their ideals out of the solid facts of 
 past experience. It is just as undeniable, unescap- 
 able a fact of ethics that the aim of a noble and 
 blessed life must fall outside its own individual in- 
 terests, as it is an undeniable, unescapable law of 
 architecture that the centre of gravity of a stable, 
 graceful structure must fall within its base. 
 
 Still the appeal to brute fact, though valid, is 
 not ultimate. There is a reason for the fact that 
 structures in which the centre of gravity falls out- 
 side the base are unstable ; and physics formulates 
 that reason in the law of gravitation. So there is 
 a reason why a selfish life is unsatisfactory ; and 
 ethics formulates that reason in the law of love. 
 These facts are so ; but they have to be so because 
 they could not find a place in the total system of 
 things if they were otherwise. A universe of con- 
 sistent egoists would not be a permanent possi- 
 bility. It could only exist temporarily as a hell in 
 process of its own speedy disruption and dissolu- 
 tion. 
 
 Yet just as a man can forget his own future, 
 and in so doing wrong his own soul, a man can 
 be blind to the consequence of his act for his 
 neighbor, and in so doing wrong society and his 
 own social nature. The root of all social sin is this 
 blindness to social consequence. Hence the great 
 
96 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 
 
 task of sound ethics is to stimulate the social im- 
 agination. We must be continually prodding our 
 sense of social consequence to keep it wide awake. 
 We must be asking ourselves at each point of con- 
 tact with the lives of others such pointed questions 
 as these : How would you like to be this tailor or 
 washerwoman whose bill you have neglected to 
 pay ? How would you like to be the customer to 
 whom you are seUing these adulterated or inferior 
 goods ? How would you like to be the investor in 
 this stock company which you are promoting with 
 water ? How would you like to be the taxpayer of 
 the city which you are plundering by lending your 
 official sanction to contracts and deals which make 
 its buildings and supplies and services cost more 
 than any private individual would have to pay? 
 How would you like to be the employer whose time 
 and tools and material you are wasting at every 
 chance you get to loaf and shirk and neglect the 
 duties you are paid to perform ? How would you 
 like to be the clerk or saleswoman in the store 
 where you are reaping extra dividends by impos- 
 ing harder conditions than the state of trade and 
 the market compel you to adopt? How would you 
 like to be the stoker or weaver or mechanic on the 
 wages you pay and the conditions of labor you im- 
 pose ? How would you like to live out the dreary, 
 degraded, outcast future of the woman whom you 
 wantonly ruin for a moment's passionate pleasure ? 
 
THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 97 
 
 How would you like to be the man whose good 
 name you injure by slander and false accusation ? 
 How would you like to be the business rival whom 
 you deprive of his little aU by using your greater 
 wealth in temporary cut-throat competition ? 
 
 These are the kind of questions the social im- 
 agination is asking of us at every turn. There are 
 severe conditions of trade, politics, war, which 
 often compel us to do cruel things and strike hard, 
 crushing blows. For these conditions we are not 
 always individually responsible. The individual 
 who will hold his place, and maintain an effective 
 position in the practical affairs of the world, must 
 repeatedly do the things he hates to do, and file 
 his silent protest, and work for such gradual change 
 of conditions as will make such hard, cruel acts no 
 longer necessary. We must sometimes collect the 
 rent of the poor widow, and exact the task from 
 the sick woman, and pay low wages to the man 
 with a large family, and turn out the well-meaning 
 but inefficient employee. We must resist good 
 men in the interest of better things they cannot 
 see, and discipline children for reasons which they 
 cannot comprehend. Yet even in these cases where 
 we have to sacrifice other people, we must at least 
 feel the sacrifice ; we must be as sorry for them as 
 we would be for ourselves if we were in their place. 
 We must not turn out the inefficient employee, 
 unless we would be willing to resign his place our- 
 
98 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 
 
 selves, if we held it and were in it as inefficient as 
 he. We must not exact the rent or the task from 
 the poor widow or the sick saleswoman, unless on 
 the whole if we were in their places we should be 
 willing to pay the rent or perform the task. Even 
 this principle will not entirely remove hardship, 
 privation, and cruelty from our complex modern 
 life. But it will very greatly reduce it ; and it will 
 take out of life what is the crudest element of it 
 all, — the hardness of human hearts. 
 
 To sternly refuse any gain that is purchased by 
 another's loss, or any pleasure bought with an- 
 other's pain ; to make this sensitiveness to the in- 
 terests of others a living stream, a growing plant 
 within our individual hearts ; to challenge every 
 domestic and personal relation, every industrial 
 and business connection, every political and offi- 
 cial performance, every social and intellectual aspi- 
 ration, by this searching test of social consequence 
 to those our act affects, — this is the second stage 
 of the moral life ; this is one of the two great com- 
 mandments of Christianity. 
 
 III. AUTHORITY AND PUNISHMENT 
 
 To see the whole effect upon ourselves, and upon 
 others, of each act which we perform is the secret 
 of the moral life. Yet we are shortsighted by na- 
 ture, and often blinded by prejudice and passion. 
 The child at first is scarcely able to see vividly and 
 
THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 99 
 
 clearly beyond the present moment and his individ- 
 ual desires. And in many respects we all remain 
 mere children to the end. Is not the moral task 
 then impossible ? 
 
 Hard it is indeed. Impossible, too, it would be, 
 if we had no tools to work with ; no helps in this 
 hard task. Fortunately we have the needed helps, 
 and they come first in the authority of our parents 
 and rulers. Their wider experience enables them 
 to see what the child cannot see. Their command- 
 ments, therefore, if they are wise and good, point 
 in the direction of consequences which the child 
 cannot see at the time, but which, when he does 
 see, he will accept as desirable. An act which leads 
 to an unseen good consequence, done in obedience 
 to trusted authority or respected law, is right. 
 The person who does such an act is righteous. And 
 the righteousness of it rests on faith, — faith in 
 the goodness and wisdom of the person he obeys. 
 Righteousness at this stage, therefore, is goodness 
 " going it blind," as the slang phrase is ; or, in 
 more orthodox terms, walking by faith, and not by 
 sight. 
 
 As long as the child walks in implicit trust in 
 the wisdom and goodness of his parents he cannot 
 go far astray. Ignorant, shortsighted, inexperienced 
 as he is, he nevertheless is guided by a vicarious 
 intelligence, in which the wisdom and experience 
 of the race are reproduced and interpreted for him 
 
100 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 
 
 in each new crisis by the insight of love. What 
 wonder, then, that the commandment, Honor thy 
 father and thy mother, whether in Hebrew or Chi- 
 nese legislation, is the great commandment with 
 promise ! Not only does the obedient child in par- 
 ticular cases get the consequences which he after- 
 wards comes to see were desirable, but he acquires 
 habits of doing the kind of acts which lead to de- 
 sirable consequences, and of refraining from the 
 kind of acts which lead to undesirable consequences. 
 These habits are the broad base on which all subse- 
 quent character rests, as on a solid rock deeply sunk 
 in the firm soil of the imconscious. As our bodies 
 are first nourished by our mother's milk, our souls 
 are built up first out of the habits of acting which 
 we derive directly from doing what our mothers tell 
 us to do in thousands of specific, concrete cases, and 
 refraining from doing the things their gentle wis- 
 dom firmly forbids. The love of mothers is the cord 
 that ties each newborn soul fast to the wisdom and 
 experience of the race. " We are suckled at the 
 breast of the universal ethos," chiefly through the 
 vicarious maternal inteUigence. Hence the awful 
 waste, amounting to a crime against both the hard- 
 won ideals and standards of the race and the fu- 
 ture character of the child, when indolent, or vain, 
 or ambitious mothers turn over the formative years 
 of their children to ignorant, undeveloped nurses I 
 Though the chances are that the average nurse will 
 
THE CAREER OF Sl^LF-CONQUEST 101 
 
 prove qtiite as wise and good a guide fco the yornig 
 mind as a mother who is capable of turning her 
 child over to the exclusive training of any other 
 guide than herself. The pity is hot so much that 
 the ambitious mother relinquishes her highest and 
 holiest function as that there are children bom who 
 have mothers capable of doing it. Given such 
 mothers, the nurses are often a great improvement 
 on them. 
 
 The derivative, vicarious nature of righteousness 
 at this stage makes clear the need and justification of 
 punishment. The mother sees a great, far-off good, 
 which the child cannot see at all. She commands 
 the child to act in a way to secure this good as a 
 consequence. He disobeys. He loses the conse- 
 quence which she desires for him. He weakens the 
 indispensable habit of obedience, on which count- 
 less other great goods beyond his vision depend. 
 He cannot see vividly either the specific good at 
 which she aims or the general good that flows 
 from the habit of implicit obedience. She then 
 brings within the range of his keen and vivid ex- 
 perience some such minor and transitory evil as 
 a spanking or being sent supperless to bed, and 
 makes him understand that, if he cannot see the 
 good of obedience, he can count with certainty on 
 these evils of disobedience. Punishment, then, is an 
 act of the truest kindness and consideration. It is 
 a help to that instinctive and implicit obedience to 
 
102 THE CARfibR OF SELF-CONQUEST 
 
 autndrity, t)ij \viiicfi the child's greatest good at this 
 stage of his development depends. No child will 
 permanently resent such well-meant punishment. 
 As Mrs. Browning says : — 
 
 A mother never is afraid 
 Of speaking angerly to any child, 
 Since love, she knows, is justified of love. 
 
 The withholding of punishment in such cases is 
 the real cruelty, and the mother who is weak 
 enough to do it is a mawkish sentimentalist, to 
 whom a few passing cries and tears are of more 
 consequence than the future welfare and perma- 
 nent character of her child. From this point of view, 
 punishment is an act of mercy and kindness, as 
 Plato shows us so clearly in the Gorgias. Every 
 mother who believes her child to be ever so little 
 below the angels is bound to substitute the gentler 
 evils of artificial punishment for the greater evils 
 of a life of unpunished naughtiness. 
 
 All moral punishment, whether inflicted by par- 
 ents, schools, colleges, or courts of justice, is of this 
 nature. It helps the offender to see both ends of 
 his deed. When he commits the offense, he sees 
 vividly only one end of it, the temporary advantage 
 to himself as an individual. He does not see with 
 equal vividness the other end, — the injury to the 
 interests of others, and to his own best self as a 
 potential participant in these larger interests. Pun- 
 ishment attempts to bring home to him, if not in 
 
THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 103 
 
 the precise terms of his offense, an eye for an eye, 
 a tooth for a tooth, at least a partial equivalent, in 
 privation of money or liberty or public favor, the 
 other end of his act, which at the time of acting he 
 did not keenly and vividly appreciate. Such strict 
 retribution is the best favor we can confer on an 
 offender, so long as he remains unrepentant. To 
 give him less than this is to cut him off from his 
 only chance to get a right view of his own wrong 
 act. It is the only way to open his eyes to see his 
 act in its totality. 
 
 What if a man repents ? Shall we still punish 
 him? Not if the repentance is genuine and thor- 
 oughgoing. What, then, is true repentance? An 
 evil act, as we have seen, has two ends : one attrac- 
 tive to the individual, for the sake of which he does 
 it ; the other injurious to his own better self and to 
 the interests of others. This second end the wrong- 
 doer does not see clearly when he commits the 
 offense. Afterwards he sees it, in its natural con- 
 sequences, — in the indignation of the offended, in 
 the condemnation of society, in the imminence of 
 punishment. This second part of his act, when it 
 comes home to him, he does not like, but wishes him- 
 self well out of it. This, however, is not repentance ; 
 and no amount of tears and promises and impor< 
 tunities should ever deceive us into accepting this 
 dislike of unpleasant consequences for a genuine 
 repentance of the wrong act. Every wise parent, 
 
104 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 
 
 every efficient college officer, every just judge, must 
 harden his heart against all these selfish lamenta- 
 tions, and discount them in advance as a probable 
 part of the culprit's natural programme. Dislike 
 of unpleasant consequences to one's seK is not 
 repentance. Repentance must reach back to the 
 original act, and include both the pleasant cause 
 and its unpleasant consequences to others, as well 
 as to one's self, in the unity of one total deed, and 
 then repudiate that deed as a whole. When re- 
 pentance does that, it does the whole moral work 
 which punishment aims to do. To inflict punishment 
 after such repentance is inexcusable and wanton 
 brutality. 
 
 The theory of punishment is clear ; its applica- 
 tion is the most difficult of tasks. It is very hard 
 to discriminate in many cases real repentance from 
 dislike of unpleasant personal consequences. Then 
 it is hard to justify severity toward one who is be- 
 lieved to be unrepentant, and absolute forgiveness 
 to one who has shown evidence of true penitence. 
 Whoever has to administer punishment on a large 
 scale, and attempts to be inflexibly retributive to 
 the impenitent and infinitely merciful toward the 
 penitent, must expect to be grossly misunderstood 
 and severely criticised for all he does and all he 
 refrains from doing. If the way of the transgressor 
 is hard, the way of the moral punisher is harder. 
 The state practically confesses its inability to dis- 
 
THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 105 
 
 criminate true from false repentance ; and lowers 
 its practice from the moral plane of retribution or 
 forgiveness to the merely legal plane of social pro- 
 tection, giving to the executive a power of pardon 
 by which to correct the more glaring mistakes of 
 the courts. In view of the clumsiness of the means 
 at its disposal, the great diversity of moral condi- 
 tion in its citizens, and the impersonality of its re- 
 lations, probably this protective theory of punish- 
 ment, which says to the offender, " I punish you, 
 not for stealing sheep, but to prevent other sheep 
 from being stolen," is the best working theory for 
 practical jurisprudence. But it is utterly unmoral. 
 It has no place in the family. Only in extreme 
 cases is it defensible in school and college. In set- 
 tling personal qurrrels it should have small place. 
 Uncompromising retribution to the impenitent, un- 
 reserved forgiveness to the penitent, which Chris- 
 tianity sets forth as the attitude of God, is the 
 only right course for men who are called to per- 
 form this infinitely difficult task of moral punish- 
 ment. 
 
 IV. THE SY^IBOLICAL VALIDITY OF MORAL LAWS 
 
 The success of the ethical life depends on keep- 
 ing the consequences of our acts, for ourselves and 
 for others, vividly in the foreground of the mind. 
 Personal authority of parents and rulers, supported 
 by swift, sure penalties for disobedience, is the first 
 
106 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 
 
 great help to the good life. But we cannot always 
 have parents, tutors, and governors standing over 
 us to tell us what to do and what not to do ; to 
 reward us if we do right and punish us if we do 
 wrong. Still less can we afford to rely on natural 
 penalties alone, as they teach us their lessons in 
 the slow and costly school of experience. The next 
 stage of moral development employs as symbols of 
 the consequences we cannot foresee and appreciate 
 maxims to guide the individual life, and laws to 
 represent the claims of our fellows upon us. These 
 maxims and laws have no intrinsic worth. Their 
 authority is all derived and representative. Yet 
 inasmuch as they represent individual or social con- 
 sequences, they have all the authority of the conse- 
 quences themselves. More than that, since con- 
 sequences are particular and limited, while these 
 maxims and laws are universal, these maxims and 
 laws, derivative and representative s3rmbols though 
 they are, have a sacredness and authority far higher 
 and greater than that of any particular consequences 
 for which in a given case they happen to stand. 
 
 These maxims and laws are like the items on 
 a merchant's ledger ; or, better still, like the cur- 
 rency which represents the countless varieties of 
 commodities and services we buy and sell. The 
 items on the ledger, the bills in the pocketbook, 
 have no intrinsic value. Yet it were far better for 
 a merchant to be careless about his cotton cloth or 
 
THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 107 
 
 molasses or any particular commodity in which he 
 deals, than to be careless about his accounts, which 
 represent commodities of all kinds ; better for any 
 one of us to forget where we laid our coat or our 
 shoes or umbrella, than to leave lying around loose 
 the dollar bills which are symbols of the value of 
 these and a thousand other articles we possess. 
 Precisely so, the authority and dignity of moral 
 maxims and laws are in no way impaired by frankly 
 acknowledging their intrinsic worthlessness. To 
 violate one of these maxims, to break one of these 
 laws, is as foolish and wicked as it would be to 
 set fire to a merchant's ledger, or to tear up one's 
 doUar bills. These maxims and laws are our moral 
 currency, coined by the experience of the race, and 
 stamped with universal approval. Their authority 
 rests on the consequences which they represent; 
 and their validity, as representative of those con- 
 sequences, is attested by the experience of the race 
 in innumerable cases. A moral law is a prophecy 
 of consequences based on the widest possible in- 
 duction. Hence the man who seeks a satisfactory 
 future for himself, and for those his act affects, in 
 other words the moral man, must obey these max- 
 ims and laws in aU ordinary cases without stopping 
 to verify the consequences they represent, any more 
 than an ordinary citizen investigates the solvency 
 of the government every time he receives its legal 
 tender notes. 
 
108 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 
 
 This illustration at the same time reveals the 
 almost universal validity of moral laws, and yet 
 leaves the necessary room for rare and imperative 
 exceptions. A man may find it wise to burn dol- 
 lar bills. If he is in camp, and likely to perish with 
 cold, and no other kindling is available, he will 
 kindle his fire with dollar bUls. He will be very 
 reluctant to do it, however. He will realize that 
 he is kindling a very costly fire. He will consent 
 to do it only as a last resort, and when the fire is 
 worth more to him, not merely than the intrinsic, 
 but than the symbolic value of the bills. Now 
 there may be rare cases when a moral law must be 
 broken on the same principle that a man kindles 
 a fire with dollar bills. The cases will be about as 
 rare when it will be right to steal or lie as it is rare 
 to find circumstances when it is wise to build a fire 
 with dollar bills. They come perhaps once or twice 
 in a lifetime to one or two in every thousand men. 
 The breaking of a moral law always involves evil 
 consequences, far outweighing any particular good 
 that can ordinarily be gained thereby, through 
 weakening confidence and respect for the validity 
 and authority of the law itself. Yet there are ex- 
 ceptional, abnormal conditions of war, or sickness, 
 or insanity, or moral perversity, where the defense of 
 precious interests against pathological and perverse 
 conditions may warrant the breaking of a moral 
 law, on the same principle that impending freezing 
 
THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 109 
 
 would warrant the lighting of a thousand-dollar 
 fire. 
 
 One hesitates to give examples of circumstances 
 which justify the breaking of a moral law, for fear 
 of giving to exceptions a portion of the emphasis 
 which belongs exclusively to the rule, and falling into 
 the moral abyss of a Jesuitical casuistry. Yet it is 
 an invariable rule of teaching never to give an ab- 
 stract principle without its accompanying concrete 
 case. Hence, if cases must be given, the lie to di- 
 vert the murderer from his victim, the horse seized 
 to carry the wounded man to the surgeon, the lie 
 that withholds the story of a repented wrong from 
 the scandalmonger who would wreck the happiness 
 of a home by peddling it abroad, are instances of 
 the extreme urgency that might warrant the build- 
 ing of a thousand-dollar bonfire which takes place 
 whenever we break a moral law. The law against 
 adultery, on the other hand, admits no conceivable 
 exception ; for no good could possibly be gained 
 thereby that would be commensurate with the un- 
 dermining of the foundations of the home. 
 
 Moral laws are the coined treasures of the moral 
 experience of the race, stamped with social ap- 
 proval. As such they are binding on each individ- 
 ual, as the only terms on which he can be admitted 
 to a free exchange of the moral goods of the society 
 of which he is a member. No man can command 
 the respect of himself or of society who permits 
 
110 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 
 
 himself to fall below the level of these rigid re* 
 quirements. 
 
 The mere keeping of the law, however, does not 
 make one a moral man. It may insure a certain 
 mediocrity of conduct which passes for respecta- 
 bility. But one is not morally free, he does not get 
 the characteristic dignity and joy of the moral life, 
 until he is lifted clear above a slavish conformity 
 to law into hearty appreciation of the meaning of 
 the law and enthusiastic devotion to the great end 
 at which all laws aim. A juiceless, soulless, loveless 
 Pharisaism is the best morality mere law can give. 
 To protest against the slavery and insincerity of 
 such a scheme was no small part of the negative 
 side of the mission of Jesus and Paul. 
 
 Yet the freedom which Jesus brings, the free- 
 dom which all true ethical systems insist on as the 
 very breath of the moral life, is not freedom from 
 but freedom in the requirements of the law. It is 
 not freedom to break the law, except in those very 
 rare instances cited above, where the very principle 
 on which the law is founded demands the breaking 
 of the letter of the law in the interest of its own 
 spiritual fulfillment. It is doubtless true that no 
 man keeps any law aright who would not dare to 
 break it. I lack the true respect for life which is 
 at the heart of the law against murder if I would 
 not kill a murderer to prevent him from taking the 
 life of an innocent victim. I do not really love the 
 
THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 111 
 
 right relation between persons which is the heart 
 of truth if I would not dare to deceive a scandal- 
 monger, intent on sowing seeds of bitterness and 
 hate. I do not love that welfare of mankind which 
 is the significance and justification of property if 
 I would be afraid to drive off a horse which did 
 not belong to me to take the wounded man to the 
 surgeon in time to save unnecessary amputation or 
 needless death. I do not believe in that union of 
 happy hearts which is the soul of marriage if I 
 would not, like Caponsacchi, risk hopeless misun- 
 derstanding, and shock convention, in order to let 
 the light of love shine on a nature from which it 
 had been monstrously, cruelly, wantonly withheld. 
 There is nothing antinomian in this freedom in 
 the law. He who will attempt the role of Capon- 
 sacchi must, like him, have a purity of heart as 
 high above the literal requirements of external law 
 as are the frosty stars of heaven above the murky 
 mists of earth. He who drives off the horse to the 
 surgeon honestly must be one who would sooner 
 cut off his right hand than touch his neighbor's 
 spear of grass for any lesser cause. He who will 
 tell the truthful lie to the scandalmonger must be 
 one who would go to the stake before he would give 
 the word or even the look of falsehood to any right- 
 minded man who had a right to know the truth for 
 which he asks. He who will slay a murderer guilt- 
 lessly must be one who would rather, like Socrates, 
 
112 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 
 
 die a thousand deaths than betray the slightest 
 claim his fellows have upon him. No man may 
 break the least of the moral commandments unless 
 the spirit that is expressed within the command-, 
 ment itself bids him break it. And such a break-, 
 ing is the highest fulfillment. 
 
 This theoretical explanation of moral laws, with 
 its justification of exceptions in extreme cases, is 
 absolutely essential to a rational system of ethics. 
 Yet it must not blind us to the practically supreme 
 and absolute authority of these laws in ordinary 
 conduct. These moral laws are, as Professor Dewey 
 happily terms them, tools of analysis. They break 
 up a complex situation into its essential parts, and 
 teU us to what class of acts the proposed act belongs, 
 and whether that class of acts is one which we 
 ought to do or not. 
 
 The practical man in a case of moral conduct 
 asks what class an act belongs to ; and then, hav- 
 ing classified it, follows implicitly the dictates of 
 the moral law on that class of cases. Gambling, 
 stealing, drunkenness, slandering, loafing he will 
 recognize at a glance as things to be refrained from, 
 in obedience to the laws that condemn them. He 
 will not stop to inquire into the grounds of such 
 condemnation in each special case. To know the 
 ground of the law, however, helps us to classify 
 doubtful cases, — as, for instance, whether buying 
 stocks on margins is gambling ; whether the spoils 
 
THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 113 
 
 system in politics is stealing; whether moderate 
 drinking is incipient drunkenness ; whether good- 
 natured gossip about our neighbor's failings is slan- 
 der ; whether a three months' vacation is loafing, 
 and the like. Once properly classified, however, the 
 man who is wise will turn over his ordinary conduct 
 on these points to the automatic working of habit. 
 Habit is the great time-saving device of our moral 
 as well as our mental and physical life. To translate 
 the moral laws which the race has worked out for 
 us into unconscious habits of action is the crowning 
 step in the conquest of character. These laws are 
 our great moral safeguards. They come to us long 
 before we are able to form any theory of their ori- 
 gin or authority, and abide with us long after our 
 speculations are forgotten. If ethical theory is 
 compelled to question their meaning and challenge 
 their authority, it does so in the interest of a deeper 
 morality, which appeals from the letter of the law 
 to the spirit of life of which all laws are the sym- 
 bolic expression. 
 
The Continuity and Contrast of College and 
 the World 
 
 He that is not against yon is for you. — Lnke ix. 50. 
 He that is not with me is against me. — Lnke xi. 23. 
 
 / rpiHE contrast between college life and life in 
 ^ JL the outside world is happily indicated in these 
 contrasted texts. In college the lenient law, He that 
 is not against you is for you ; in the world outside 
 the severe standard, He that is not with me is 
 against me, prevails. A moment's reflection on the 
 different conditions in college and in the outside 
 world will make plain the reason for the different 
 laws. 
 
 College life is artificially simple. With the single 
 exception of club life, it is the narrowest life a man 
 can live. The great realities that condition life in 
 the outside world — the care of the aged, the rearing 
 of the young, the struggle for daily bread, the strain 
 of business, the stress of politics, the weight of pro- 
 fessional and administrative responsibility — are 
 either entirel}" absent or present only in artificial 
 miniature. Welcome checks for the wealthy, gen- 
 erous scholarships for those whose fortune is chiefly 
 their own talent and industry, eliminate the fierce 
 
COLLEGE AND THE WORLD 115 
 
 struggle for existence from tMs charmed circle of 
 midergraduate life. The absence of the fair sex re- 
 moves at least to a distance the chief source of emo- 
 tional interest in real life. Where men touch each 
 other only at a few points, such as social intercourse, 
 class, college, and society politics, college publica- 
 tions, and athletics, the man who can't pass muster 
 on these easy terms must be a hopeless case. With 
 health, wealth, youth, leisure, choice companionship, 
 regular and inspiring but not too difficult tasks, 
 and the enthusiasm of great contests, all provided 
 and thrown into his lap, a man may indeed be dull, 
 selfish, censorious, conceited, cowardly, contempti- 
 ble. But if he is, sharp eyes are swift to detect and 
 punish him. He is speedily dubbed a " dope " or 
 a " stiff " or a " tripe " or a " snob " or a " berry," 
 or some other of the grotesque, slangy terms, more 
 forcible than elegant, by which college students 
 brand the fellows who are sleepy and tactless, irri- 
 table and complaining, self-centred and treacherous. 
 Thus the man who is cheap, the man who " swipes," 
 the man who is swelled-headed, and the man who is 
 sandless either gets these obnoxious qualities taken 
 out of him in the earlier part of his college course, 
 or else is distinctly marked off as a man who is 
 against you. Under this summary treatment, almost 
 every student sooner or later comes to terms ; and 
 by the time Junior year is reached, pretty nearly 
 every member of the class has been brought into 
 
116 THE CONTINUITY AND CONTRAST 
 
 line as at least not against you in these cheap forms 
 of self-conceit and self-assertion, of courting favor 
 or dodging difficulty. When Class Day comes, 
 therefore, it finds a group of men who have been 
 trained by each other to be wide-awake and tactful, 
 genial and courteous, kindly in comments on one an- 
 other, generous in small things as well as in great, 
 and cheerful when tilings don't quite suit them : men 
 who will give each other their best, and take from 
 their fellows nothing they have not fairly earned ; 
 men who can lose all thought of themselves in devo- 
 tion to common ends, and who will put forth the 
 last ounce of energy in them before they wiU be 
 beaten in the game they set out to play, or give up 
 the work they " go in for," or go back on the friends 
 whom they love. Having learned not to be for 
 themselves, and against you, they are rightly re- 
 garded as for you, and counted as fi^ends and good 
 fellows for all the rest of your lives^ 
 
 Henceforth you take your places in the great 
 world of men and women, scholars and toilers, busi- 
 ness and politics. The principles which prevail 
 there are precisely the same as those which you have 
 discovered and enforced on each other here. But 
 there is this great difference. Here it is easy to be 
 a good f eUow ; there it is much harder. Here you 
 live so close to each other that bad traits are quickly 
 detected and punished ; there they can be concealed 
 for a time, and the penalty may be long delayed. 
 
OF COLLEGE AND THE WORLD 117 
 
 Here the social forces are all tending to make you 
 a good fellow ; there the dominant forces are work- 
 ing the other way. (To be a good feUow in college, 
 as we have seen, means that you shall give your 
 best to your fellows, and take nothing from them 
 you do not fairly earn ; that you shall be brotherly 
 and seK-sacrificing) To do these same four things, 
 not in the artificial and sheltered environment of a 
 coUege, toward a little group of congenial and cul- 
 tivated men, but in the wider relations of domestic, 
 economic, professional, and political life, toward 
 men and women, high and low, rich and poor, 
 learned and ignorant ; toward all persons in aU the 
 broad relations of life to give your best, and take 
 nothing you do not fairly earn, to be brotherly and 
 to be seH-sacrificing, — that is what it means in real 
 life to be good fellows, gentlemen. Christians. Let 
 us consider these traits one by one. 
 
 First: Give your best. When a young man 
 graduates he is bound to take one of two courses. 
 Either he will look for a place ready-made to fit 
 him, or else he will set out to fit himself for a place. 
 The economic difference between a cheap man and 
 a man who gives his best first comes out there. Ed- 
 mond DemoHns, a French writer on " Anglo-Saxon 
 Superiority : To What it is Due," points out that 
 Anglo-Saxon superiority is due to the fact that the 
 young Anglo-Saxon at once sets out to make a 
 career for himseK by his own initiative, originality, 
 
118 THE CONTINUITY AND CONTRAST 
 
 and independence ; while the young Frenchman ex. 
 pects his father to provide him with a government 
 office, a wife, and a dowry. " Ask a hundred young 
 Frenchmen just out of school," he says, " to what 
 careers they are inclined ; three quarters of them 
 will answer you that they are candidates for govern- 
 ment offices." This dependence on " ready-made 
 situations, in which advancement is the reward of 
 patience rather than of constant effort," with its 
 attendant negation of initiative, passive obedience, 
 uniformity of opinions and ideas, and absence of 
 individuality, he declares to be the open secret of 
 French inferiority. To cast about to find a soft 
 berth, a good salary, which can be secured by in- 
 fluence and held by inertia, is to start out in life a 
 cheap man. The true Anglo-Saxon is he who looks 
 for a chance somewhere to begin at the bottom, 
 master some single department of this great indus- 
 trial order, and show to the world that he can do 
 that thing better than any other available man ; 
 not to get onto the pay-roU of some big corporation, 
 or fill a government post which a hundred other 
 men could fill just as well, but to prepare himself 
 to do something so well that the corporation or the 
 government wiU find his services essential to their 
 highest efficiency. That is the first mark of a high- 
 priced man in the actual life of the world. In pri- 
 vate business not to be a parasite, but a sound and 
 healthy member of the working whole ; in political 
 
OF COLLEGE AND THE WORLD 119 
 
 action to support the government, not simply to be 
 supported by it, is what it means to fulfill in the 
 great outside world the first qualification of a gen- 
 tleman and a Christian, which you have learned to 
 recognize here in your small student world. 
 
 Second : Take nothing you do not pay for, and 
 pay the full price. I will not detain you to speak 
 of literal running in debt, nor of passes, or rebates, 
 or discounts, or favors gained through family in- 
 fluence or professional status or political pull. The 
 honest man will have none of them. I speak of 
 more vital matters. One half of the great world 
 you now enter are women, and they are the better 
 half by far, as all who have known a mother attest. 
 The very best thing in the world is a good woman's 
 love. You can pay for it with nothing less precious 
 than the entire respect and reverence of your own 
 heart. To receive a woman's love, or even the 
 physical symbol of it, and offer in payment merely 
 transient and unmeant endearment, or, worse still, 
 to offer money, is the meanest form of getting 
 something for less than its price to which a man can 
 descend. I might point out that it is undermining 
 the most sacred social institution which generations 
 have toiled to evolve ; I might say that it is poison- 
 ing life at its source ; I might introduce the loath- 
 some details and the cruelty to innocent wives and 
 children which the physician so well understands. 
 Here to-day I put it on the plain ground you all 
 
120 THE CONTINUITY AND CONTRAST 
 
 appreciate and approve, — on the ground of simple 
 honesty and common honor, which scorns to get 
 anything under false pretences, and least of all will 
 take from a woman her most precious jewel and 
 not pay its full price. 
 
 Third : Be brotherly. You remember how dis- 
 agreeable it was to have young fellows coming here 
 with their heads full of their own family or wealth 
 or school achievements or personal importance, and 
 how essential it was to give them to understand 
 that the university was of quite as much conse- 
 quence as they thought themselves to be. When 
 you go out into the world, don't make the same 
 mistake that these swelled-headed fellows made 
 when they came here. Not one man in a thousand 
 in this work-a-day world has had the advantages 
 you have had. But that is no reason why you 
 should hold yourself aloof from these hard-working, 
 plain-living brothers of yours. You eat the bread 
 the farmer, the ranchman, the butcher, the grocer, 
 prepare for you. You live in houses the forester, 
 the stone-cutter, the carpenter, the mason, the 
 painter, the upholsterer furnish for you. You 
 wear the clothing which the shepherd, the plan- 
 tation hand, the mill-operative, the shopkeeper, the 
 seamstress, the tailor provide for you. You sit by 
 the fire the miner, the locomotive engineer, the 
 brakeman, the sailor, the teamster has built in 
 your grate. Have you yet done anything for them 
 
OF COLLEGE AND THE WORLD 121 
 
 that is worth as much as these things they are 
 daily doing for you ? If not, then look up to them 
 with heartfelt gratitude and admiration, as the 
 soldier says to the water-carrier in Kipling's line, — 
 
 You 're a better man than I am, Gunga Din. 
 
 When you get your work well in hand, then, 
 indeed, you may look on these toiling millions as 
 your brothers, provided you go about your work as 
 cheerfully and steadily and faithfully and efficiently 
 as they on the whole do theirs. But never, never 
 shall you look on them with indifference or con- 
 descension. If ever you are able to do your work 
 exceptionally well, if ever it is given you to occupy 
 positions of great influence, then if you are true 
 men, with the true instinct of human brotherhood, 
 the chief satisfaction you will find in it all wiU be 
 the thought that the efficiency of the corporation 
 you control, or the soundness of the professional 
 counsel you give, or the beneficence of the public 
 policy you carry out, or the justice of the views 
 you disseminate, may help to make the laborer's 
 work more steady and his wages more fair, his 
 street more healthful and his home more happy, 
 his government more pure and his lot in life more 
 worthy of man. You may or may not enter into 
 distinctively settlement and philanthropic work. 
 Valuable as these things are, they can do little 
 more than alleviate symptoms. Even that every 
 
122 THE CONTINUITY AND CONTRAST 
 
 man ought to engage in who can. The solution, 
 however, of our great social problem must come 
 through just such well-trained, energetic, ambitious 
 fellows as you, who get professional skiU, corporate 
 wealth, political power in their hands, and then use 
 it, not, like the first souls Dante discovered in 
 hell, " for themselves," but to give every worker 
 his chance of steady employment and his fair share 
 of the worth of his work, and to make possible for 
 the working man and working woman a domestic, 
 social, intellectual, moral, and spiritual life that is 
 really worth living. The man who goes into life 
 with such a sense of brotherhood and an earnest 
 desire to add his little mite to the common stock of 
 human welfare wiU not be much troubled with the 
 sense of his own self-importance. 
 
 Fourth : Be self-sacrificing. Hegel tells us in 
 one of his profoundest passages that in the eye 
 of fate all action is guilt, for it is necessarily 
 one-sided, — for the sake of one set of interests 
 it sacrifices another set of interests equally vital. 
 You must sacrifice; you must suffer. The great 
 claims we have been considering and the clamor of 
 our petty appetites and passing passions never co- 
 incide, but are in perpetual warfare. You may side 
 with the petty private good, which circumstances 
 and companions are never wanting to reinforce ; 
 but in order to do that you sacrifice the large social 
 claims, the wide area of human good. In doing so 
 
OF COLLEGE AND THE WORLD 123 
 
 you array these larger powers against you. They 
 visit you with disease, degradation, disgrace, dis- 
 aster, death. The best part of you suffers ; the 
 suffering is imposed upon you by alien and hostile 
 forces. You live the life of an outlaw, and you die 
 the death of a slave. 
 
 Or you may serve the larger good, and live in 
 loyalty to the claims of human brotherhood and 
 the social law of God. Then it wiU be the lower 
 and the lesser side of you on which the suffering 
 falls, and even that will be freely chosen and cheer- 
 fully endured for the sake of the larger good. To 
 suffer in this way is to be free and strong and brave. 
 In the language of the Second Epistle of Peter, it 
 is to suffer, not as an evil-doer, but as a Christian. 
 
 Start where you will in the moral world, if you 
 foUow principles to their conclusions they always 
 lead you up to Christ. He touched life so deeply, 
 so broadly, and so truly that all brave, generous 
 living is summed up in him. Starting with the code 
 you have here worked out for yourselves, translat- 
 ing it into positive terms, and enlarging it to the 
 dimensions of the world you are about to enter, 
 your code becomes simply a fresh interpretation of 
 the meaning of the Christian life. All that we have 
 been saying has its counterpart in that great life 
 of his. He gave his best ; and how good and bene- 
 ficent it was ! A few years of kindly ministry to 
 human needs as he found them, in the street and 
 
124 THE CONTINUITY AND CONTRAST 
 
 in the home, on the highway and in the temple ! 
 A few discourses to unappreciative crowds gathered 
 on the hillside or by the lake-shore, with patient 
 interpretation to a little group of learners, only 
 slightly less dull and slow than the masses whence 
 they came ! Yet what countless homes have been 
 made happier, what a mighty mass of misery has 
 been lifted, what priceless blessings have been con- 
 ferred by institutions his spirit has informed, what 
 splendid nobility of character has been inspired in 
 millions of his followers, through love to him who 
 in this brief, simple life in an obscure Roman pro- 
 vince gave to the world his best ! To be for him 
 in this twentieth century means that in all the com- 
 plexity of business, political, and social life, whether 
 it is asked or declined, whether it is appreciated or 
 criticised, whether it is admired or condemned, you 
 give to the world your best. 
 
 He took nothing he did not pay for. To minis- 
 ter rather than to be ministered unto was his aim. 
 He had not where to lay his head. The world was 
 his debtor. The extreme simplicity of life which 
 he found incidental to the life of a teacher in an 
 ancient oriental community is by no means en- 
 joined upon you. Large work in these days gen- 
 erally requires considerable of what Aristotle called 
 " furniture of fortune." The banker, the railroad 
 president, the corporation counsel, the mayor can- 
 not do their best work on the terms on which the 
 
OF COLLEGE AND THE WORLD 125 
 
 foxes and the birds of the air do theirs. But the 
 principle of Jesus, the principle that no poor man 
 shall work the harder, no woman shall be sadder, no 
 good institution shall be weaker, and no bad cus- 
 tom more prevalent, for aught that we have done 
 or left undone ; that principle holds for us as firmly 
 as it did when Jesus first proclaimed and practiced 
 it. So to live is to be for Christ. To take from 
 man or woman, private corporation or government 
 office, anything for which you do not give a full 
 equivalent, is to be against Christ to-day. 
 
 He said and did nothing of himself, nor for his 
 own glory. He simply said and did what the situ- 
 ation called for, and tact, sympathy, friendliness, 
 and brotherhood suggested. The only greatness he 
 encouraged in his followers was the greatness of 
 service. To be for Christ is to have the sense that 
 the lowliest who are affected one way or the other 
 by your action are, unconsciously and indirectly 
 and incidentally for the most part, but yet genu- 
 inely and substantially, made a little richer, wiser, 
 healthier, happier, by what you are doing. 
 
 He suffered. If you put aside the veils of inter- 
 pretation theologians have drawn over that simple 
 fact, his suffering speaks for itself. He had the 
 choice that comes to all. On the one side he saw 
 personal popularity within the narrow circle of his 
 few chosen friends and admirers, yet with it the 
 certainty that his name and his work would did 
 
126 THE CONTINUITY AND CONTRAST 
 
 with him, — leaving the national sins unrebuked, 
 the national religion unreformed, the world's sin- 
 fulness unexposed, the true life of man and the 
 great love of God unrevealed. On the other side 
 he saw his work put on a world-wide basis, his 
 message and spirit bequeathed to mankind for all 
 time ; but for himself, the envy of pontifical cliques 
 and the hatred of political rings ; the scourge, the 
 thorn-crown, and the cross. The latter he cheer- 
 fully chose. 
 
 To be for him in our day is to be for the costly 
 right against the profitable wrong ; for unpopular 
 truth against unanimous error ; for patient, plod- 
 ding details of duty, against specious and tawdry 
 abstractions ; for the exposed frontier of progress, 
 against stagnation intrenched in tradition. 
 
 The college, like the Christian home, is so or- 
 ganized that mere non-resistance, mere acceptance 
 of the influences that surround you, tends to make 
 one a gentleman and a Christian. Even if a man 
 inclines to drop below the standard which the col- 
 lege community sets up, keen eyes are on him, and 
 kindly criticism promptly calls attention to his de- 
 fects. He that is not against you is for you. 
 
 In the world the other law prevails. The ten- 
 dencies are strong against the higher life. There 
 non-resistance is destruction. For in the complex- 
 ity of social life the average man does not see the 
 bearing of these baser traits as you see them among 
 
OP COLLEGE AND THE WORLD 127 
 
 yourselves here. A man can palm off poor work, 
 and get something for nothing ; he can put on airs 
 in public and be a coward at heart, and deceive 
 the world for a time. In offices and stores, in rail- 
 way trains and hotel corridors, in factories and 
 mines, in court-rooms and lobbies, the pressure of 
 the environment is not up, but down ; not toward 
 the just, generous, brave, brotherly life, but toward 
 selfish indulgence and gain at no matter what cost 
 of cruel injustice to the people who afford you 
 amusement or out of whom your money is made. 
 
 The Christ of the twentieth century is not ex« 
 actly the same as the sectarian Christ of the nine- 
 teenth, or the dogmatic Christ of the sixteenth, or 
 the official Christ of the thirteenth, or the metar 
 physical Christ of the fourth, or even the Christ 
 after the flesh, which Paul had already outgrown 
 in the first century. The Christ of the twentieth 
 century is preeminently the social Christ, and is 
 greater than all that has- gone before. He is the 
 Christ who wiU give of his best to the world, and 
 take no more than he gives ; the Christ who calls 
 the poorest his brother, and will endure all things 
 for his sake. 
 
 There is not a man among you who wishes to be 
 against such a glorious Christ as that : who would 
 get his living or any part of it out of the world 
 without giving at least as good as he gets, who 
 would make the lot of the world's toilers the harder 
 
128 COLLEGE AND THE WORLD 
 
 by shifting his own load onto them. Yet that is 
 precisely what you will find yourselves doing, un- 
 less you are positively and earnestly for Christ. 
 The only way to escape it is to give yourselves to 
 him in entire consecration as you now go out into 
 life ; and then as opportunity offers, whether in 
 Catholic cathedral or Methodist chapel, whether in 
 the crowded streets of noisy cities or alone upon 
 the prairie under the silent stars, to renew day by 
 day your devotion to him, and the just, generous, 
 brotherly, brave social service for which the Christ 
 of the twentieth century stands. 
 
VI 
 
 The More Excellent Way 
 
 Covet earnestly the best gifts : and yet show I unto you a more 
 excellent way. — 1 Cor. xii. 31. 
 
 MY theme is not the familiar and funda- 
 mental distinction between good and evil. 
 Taking that for granted, my text proceeds to sub- 
 divide the good into degrees ; contrasting the good 
 and the more excellent. 
 
 I might set forth the difference between the two 
 ways by abstract definition, and say that one is sub- 
 jective, the other objective ; one introspective, the 
 other self-f orgetf ul ; one abnormal and artificial, 
 the other healthy and natural ; one cold and cal- 
 culating, the other hearty and generous. I might 
 picture the seK-conscious struggle for personal ex- 
 cellence, with its morbid conscientiousness, its per- 
 petual alternation of hope and despair, its frequent 
 self-examinations, its rigorous, self-imposed exac- 
 tions, its close and stifling atmosphere of self-cen- 
 tred solicitude ; and over against all that portray 
 the cheerful confidence, the exulting eagerness, the 
 glorious liberty to be found in that more excellent 
 way which leads along the sunlit heights of ardu- 
 ous endeavor for the love of God and for the help 
 of man. 
 
130 THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 
 
 Verbal definition and description, however, give 
 us at best only faint images, while what we want is, 
 if possible, to grasp the idea itself. Now an idea, 
 if true and real, always has more than one em- 
 bodiment, and crops out in many spheres. Uni- 
 versality of application is the test of the truth of 
 an idea. Let us then try first to discover our idea 
 in the more familiar spheres of every-day affairs. 
 If we can find it in the gymnasium and study, we 
 shall be all the better able to apprehend it when 
 we come back to the chapel. 
 
 There are two ways of physical development: 
 one good, the other more excellent. One way says, 
 Covet earnestly the best physical gifts. Aim di- 
 rectly at the cultivation of health, strength, and 
 symmetry. Follow out minutely the directions laid 
 down in the Handbook of Developing Exercises. 
 Keep the eye constantly upon the lines of the An- 
 thropometric Chart. Test your development by 
 frequent examinations and measurements. 
 
 This method is good. It is infinitely better than 
 no method. For students, for men and women 
 whose occupations confine them within doors the 
 greater part of the day, this is the best method 
 available. For you, as you are situated here, it is 
 the essential and indispensable condition of main- 
 taining health and increasing strength. 
 
 Yet for those who can avail themselves of it 
 there is a more excellent way. Forgetting all 
 
THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 131 
 
 about muscles and their measurements, the Hand- 
 book and its directions, the gymnasium and its 
 apparatus, the man who follows the more excellent 
 way will live an outdoor life. He will hunt and 
 fish, fell trees and make hay, build fences and lay 
 stone walls, plough and sow and reap and thresh. 
 The woman who follows the better way will walk, 
 skate, row, ride horseback, climb mountains, bathe 
 in the surf, do housework, have a garden of her 
 own, and take care of plants and animals. 
 
 The first method gives muscle ; the second gives 
 muscle and nerve both. One gives strength ; the 
 other gives vigor, vitality, and endurance. One 
 produces for the time a great many points of spe- 
 cial excellence ; the other builds up and holds in 
 reserve a store of energy lasting for years, and con- 
 vertible into any form which the occasion may re- 
 quire. 
 
 Thus the objective method, which loses thought 
 of self -development in the pursuit of definite exter- 
 nal ends, not only accomplishes its immediate aims, 
 but at the same time gives a physical development 
 compared with which the development of the mere 
 pupil of gymnastics is in every essential respect 
 inferior. 
 
 There are two ways in the intellectual life, — one 
 good as far as it goes, the other more excellent. 
 The first way is the way of intellectual ambition. 
 It says, "Covet earnestly the best intellectual 
 
132 THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 
 
 gifts." It seeks culture for the sake of having it, 
 and strives for intellectual accomplishments for 
 the pride it has in their possession. It studies for 
 rank, and is covetous of academic degrees and 
 honors. 
 
 Now, this is not altogether bad. As compared 
 with idleness and indifference, it marks a great 
 advance. At certain stages in student life this in- 
 tellectual ambition ought to be stimulated and en- 
 couraged. 
 
 Yet, sooner or later, every student who is to be- 
 come a scholar must enter upon a more excellent 
 way, as far above mere intellectual ambition as 
 that is above indolence and mental sloth. In the 
 course of your studies has there ever appeared to 
 you a vision of one or another of the sisterhood 
 of sciences — Philology, Mathematics, History, 
 Chemistry, or Literature — claiming you as her 
 servant by the divine right of the affinity of her 
 truths for your mind ? And, in response, has there 
 stirred within you a burning desire to have the 
 vision become to you an abiding presence, a per- 
 petual inspiration ? Have you felt eager and glad 
 to devote your life to making the vision of that 
 truth first of all distinct and clear to your own 
 eyes, and then to become the interpreter of its 
 majesty and beauty to the world ? And have you 
 so surrendered yourself to this high and holy ser- 
 vice of the truth that all concern as to what of 
 
THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 133 
 
 honor or neglect, fame or obscurity, wealth or pov- 
 erty, may come to you in consequence of your 
 scholarly pursuits, is lost in the fullness of joy 
 which the nearer and clearer communion with your 
 science gives from day to day ? 
 
 If you have thus seen and felt truth's compeUing 
 charm, and if you have found out the delight of 
 studying for truth's sake, then you know that he 
 that is least in the kingdom of such genuine scholar- 
 ship is greater than the greatest of those who strive 
 to climb to distinction on the ladder of intellectual 
 ambition. 
 
 If you have seen no such vision and responded to 
 no such call, then indeed you may be useful and 
 honorable in other spheres and relationships of 
 life ; you may do good service in the lower grades 
 of teaching ; you may know many things and win 
 much fame for your cleverness ; but the highest 
 spheres of intellectual life, with their " calm pleas- 
 ures and majestic pains," must remain for you for- 
 ever closed. 
 
 It makes all the difference in the world — intel- 
 lectually it is a question of health and life or dis- 
 ease and death — whether you find this better way 
 or not. The student who is animated by mere ambi- 
 tion does not hold out long after leaving college. 
 The actual world has no ranking system, no scheme 
 of so much honor for so much toil, no food pre- 
 pared at stated intervals for intellectual vanity to 
 
134 THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 
 
 feed upon. Truth herself, however, to her true fol- 
 lowers then becomes most sweet and sustaining 
 when artificial stimulus is withdrawn. 
 
 Hence the one way renders the student proud, 
 haughty, and exacting. The other way keeps the 
 student meek, modest, and gentle. The follower of 
 the one grows sour and bitter as the dragging years 
 bring less and less of recognition. The disciple of 
 the other grows sweet and cheerful as the busy, 
 eager days bring fresh food for thought and in- 
 quiry. 
 
 The one is boastful of what he has done and can 
 do, but in time of real trial he is found wanting. 
 The other is unconscious and distrustful of his 
 powers ; but put him face to face with concrete dif- 
 ficulty and duty, and he is equal to the task. 
 
 If now we have formed an idea of the distinc- 
 tion between the good and the more excellent way 
 in physical and intellectual pursuits, we are pre- 
 pared to appreciate the difference between the two 
 ways of spiritual life. 
 
 One method says : Covet earnestly the best spir- 
 itual gifts. Be anxious about your individual souFs 
 salvation. Make sure of an abundant entrance into 
 heaven. Cultivate assiduously the Christian graces. 
 Examine yourself frequently to see whether you are 
 making satisfactory progress. 
 
 According to this method the fundamental ques- 
 tion is, " What shall I do to be saved ? " The start- 
 
THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 135 
 
 ing-point is the man himseK ; and God is thought 
 of primarily as the instrumentality by which this 
 salvation is to be wrought out. To be sure, this 
 method includes the thought and the desire that 
 other individuals must be saved according to the 
 same plan. Herein lies its missionary motive. And 
 a powerful motive it has been, and noble is the 
 work it has accomplished. 
 
 Indeed, it is to the strong infusion of this way 
 of thinking, permeating the religious life of New 
 England for a quarter of a millennium as the salt 
 permeates the waters of the sea, that we owe what 
 is grandest and noblest in our life at home, and 
 what is most potent and beneficent in the influence 
 of New England over other sections of our own 
 country and on foreign missionary ground. A full 
 and generous recognition of the goodness of this 
 way, however, ought not to prevent us from seeing 
 and pursuing a way more excellent, if such there 
 be. 
 
 What, then, is this more excellent way ? It is 
 the devotion of heart and life to God's loving will, 
 revealed in Christ, whose object is the well-being 
 of mankind. 
 
 Wherein does this differ from the previous way ? 
 Its starting-point is God and his eternal love, not 
 man and his lost condition. Its characteristic ques- 
 tion is not that of the terrified Philippian jailer, 
 who, in his confusion and despair, and on the point 
 
136 THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 
 
 of suicide, cried out, " Sirs, what must I do to be 
 saved ? " That was the question of a man of whom 
 we know nothing more than that he and his house- 
 hold were baptized and made happy. 
 
 That is good ; but the question characteristic of 
 the more excellent way is the question of the Apoa- 
 tle himself, who, when the vision of the Christ came 
 to him, exclaimed, " Who art thou. Lord ? " This 
 is the question of the man whose conversion carried 
 with it the conversion of the Western world. 
 
 Not anxious solicitude to make the best possible 
 provision for self here and hereafter, but eager ear- 
 nestness to know God and to serve him now and 
 evermore, — this is the starting-point in the more 
 excellent way. Not the salvation of self, not the 
 cultivation of private graces and personal gifts, but 
 the knowledge of God and the service of our fellow- 
 men, God's children, is its end and aim. Not our 
 own blessedness as a consequence of God's special 
 favor to us as individuals, but the greatness of 
 God's love and the joy we may have in sharing 
 vrith God this universal love of his to all his chil- 
 dren, — this is the motive and inspiration of this 
 better sort of religious life. 
 
 The better way is consistent with the possession 
 of the highest gifts. Indeed, it calls for them, it 
 uses them, it makes the most of them. But it seeks 
 them not for their own sake, not for the sake of the 
 satisfaction the individual takes in having them, 
 
THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 137 
 
 not for the promise they give of future happiness, 
 but for the worth they have as instruments for 
 expressing and realizing the glorious love of God 
 toward all his children. Yet while this more ex- 
 cellent way makes the best and highest use of all 
 religious gifts, it is still something more and higher 
 than any or aU these gifts. One may have all faith 
 and all orthodoxy ; one may be active in prayer- 
 meeting and Sabbath-school ; one may engage in 
 charitable and missionary work ; one may be first 
 in all these things, and at the same time be last 
 in the identification of heart and life with God's 
 loving will toward all his children, which is the 
 essence of the better way. 
 
 Wherever, underneath our church attendance, 
 our Bible reading, our prayers, our contributions, 
 there lurks a secret sense that in some way or other 
 these are things which we must do, conditions we 
 must fulfill, if we are to be saved, there the charac- 
 teristic excellence of the purest, noblest Christian- 
 ity is marred, defaced, and obscured by slavish bond- 
 ^g®? by hard legalism, by ignoble fear. Wherever 
 duty is done, as in the case of Aurora Leigh's 
 dutiful aunt. 
 
 As if fearful that God*s saints 
 
 Would look down suddenly and say, " Herein 
 
 You missed a point, I think," 
 
 the Christ-likeness of such Christianity is altogether 
 wanting. The more excellent way rises above and 
 
138 THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 
 
 beyond these "miserable aims tliat end in self." 
 Just as the opportunity to do a daring deed calls 
 out the strong man's strength, with no conscious 
 deliberation whether he wants exercise or not ; just 
 as the inherent charm of truth draws to itself the 
 scholar's mind by a force of such resistless majesty 
 and might that all the proffered supports of per- 
 sonal advantage and ambition are brushed contempt- 
 uously aside as hindrances rather than helps, — so 
 to the soul destined to enter the more excellent 
 way of the religious life there comes a sense of the 
 high calling of God in Christ Jesus. 
 
 Those grand old words, " calling and election," 
 have a meaning, — lost and obscured and much mis- 
 understood indeed, but well worth our effort to find 
 out again. God's call may come in many ways. 
 The reading of the Gospel story, to such as, amid 
 the jargon of interpretation that clouds it in our 
 day, can read it in its simplicity and purity, — the 
 simple reading of that story is enough to call a 
 chosen soul to God. This Son of Man, going about 
 among his fellow-men to do them good, healing the 
 sick and warning the wayward, robbing death of 
 its terrors and giving to the wedding feast a pre- 
 ternatural joy, doing the grandest work of revo- 
 lutionizing the spiritual life of a nation and of 
 the world with childlike modesty and meekness 
 and performing the meanest services in the royal 
 majesty of love, always on terms of friendly human 
 
THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 139 
 
 helpfulness with those whose character and lives 
 most needed it, and pouring scorn and contempt on 
 the pretentious affectations of religion, making his 
 life a constant ministry, his death a crowning sac- 
 rifice for the redemption of the race, — has the read- 
 ing of that sublime story ever made you feel that 
 there is portrayed a life so noble, an aim so high, 
 a spirit so holy, a work so grand and glorious, that 
 apart from it you can conceive no life, no aim, no 
 work worthy of being cherished? If the story of 
 our Lord's life and death has this supreme attrac- 
 tion for you, this is God's call to you. 
 
 The occasion of God's call may be the instituted 
 worship of the church, the words of a preacher, the 
 example of devout father or mother, friend or neigh- 
 bor, the silent meditation of the soul in seeming 
 solitude. In some way or other, there comes to every 
 soul destined to walk in the more excellent way a 
 conception of the nobility, the glory, the supreme 
 worthiness, the absolute divineness of that ministry 
 to the highest well-being of man which Jesus per- 
 fectly embodied and in which pure Christianity con- 
 sists. This conception of the supreme worthiness 
 and attractiveness of the Christian ideal, which 
 comes in some form or other to each of God's chosen 
 ones, — this is the call of God. 
 
 The sense that this life of loving cooperation 
 with God and Christ in serving your fellow-men, 
 God's children, is the true life, the real life, the only 
 
140 THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 
 
 life in which you can find freedom and joy, the 
 scope for action and the secret of repose, — this 
 conviction wrought within you is the evidence that 
 you are one of God's chosen ones. And to rise and 
 obey that call, actually to repent of and renounce 
 all lower and less noble aims and purposes, and to 
 devote heart and life to the doing of that loving 
 wiU of God, in Christ-like service of your fellows, 
 — this is the way to " make your calling and elec- 
 tion sure." 
 
 This disposition to put God first rather than sec- 
 ond, this tendency to find in God's eternal love in 
 Jesus Christ the all-sufficient motive to Christian 
 conduct and character, in private and in public, 
 in the individual and in the church, at home and 
 abroad, — this is the theological foundation on 
 which the more excellent way of religious thought 
 and life must rest. 
 
 Our fathers brought with them to this country 
 the phrases of this prof ounder creed. How came it 
 about, then, that we have so far drifted away from 
 it? The trouble was that the children gradually 
 forgot the simple and obvious meaning of these 
 terms. God's call came to mean something myste- 
 rious, something exclusive, something to be waited 
 for. Election came to be viewed as an arbitrary 
 transaction performed ages ago somewhere in the 
 skies. 
 
 Such nonsense as that, shrewd Yankee common 
 
THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 141 
 
 sense rightly rejected. And so we came to have 
 here in New England a theology which starts with 
 the powers of the human will, and appeals to 
 human self-interest, instead of the theology which 
 starts with the eternal, redeeming love of God re- 
 vealed in Christ, and appeals to the all-powerful 
 attractiveness which this Divine Ideal has for as 
 many as are able to appreciate and receive him. 
 
 To recover the plain meaning of these deep 
 truths, and to restore the eternal love of God in 
 Jesus Christ to its rightful place as the supreme 
 and sufficient motive to Christian life and work, is 
 the theological problem of our day ; the indispen- 
 sable prerequisite to any considerable and perma- 
 nent advance in the more excellent way of practical 
 religious life. 
 
 La conclusion, let us consider two points of su- 
 periority which the method of devotion to God's 
 loving will for all his children has over the method 
 of solicitude about the saving of our individual 
 souls. The two chief points of superiority are gen- 
 tleness and strength. 
 
 By gentleness we mean that quality which makes 
 easy adjustment with others, which springs from a 
 delicate appreciation of others' feelings, which al- 
 ways takes into account the point of view of others, 
 and so renders the individual's conduct not the 
 arbitrary seK-assertion of his own separate will, 
 but the resultant of all the wills that are rightfully 
 
142 THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 
 
 concerned in his conduct and are affected by it. 
 Hence gentleness toward others is kind, long-suf- 
 fering, not easily provoked ; because the interests 
 of others, their pomts of view, their trials, their 
 temptations, are ever present to its thought. To- 
 ward itself, gentleness is not puffed up, does not 
 behave itself unseemly, vaunteth not itself ; simply 
 because it has something better to do than always 
 to be thinking about itself. 
 
 The whole secret of gentleness, you see, lies in 
 this : that its thought is not concentrated upon it- 
 seK, but is bestowed freely on others. Hence the 
 coveting of the best gifts and solicitude about the 
 present state and future prospects of our individ- 
 ual souls beget a habit and temper of mind which 
 is the direct opposite of the habit and temper on 
 which gentleness depends. A certain hardness, 
 harshness, severity, and readiness in condemning 
 others; a corresponding pride, self-sufficiency, in- 
 sistence on one's own forms of worship, modes of 
 statement, and hopes of heaven as better than every- 
 body's else, is the logical outcome of this exag- 
 geration of the subjective side of the religious 
 life. 
 
 On the other hand, that method which appre- 
 hends the love of God in Christ for all mankind, 
 and eagerly devotes itself to cooperation with that 
 loving will because it feels and knows that this 
 is the highest, noblest, truest way of life, — this 
 
THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 143 
 
 method falls in with that very manner of thinking 
 on which, as we have seen, gentleness depends. If 
 we can learn to think of the people whom we meet 
 in some measure as the loving Father thinks of 
 them, pitying their infirmities and failings, ready 
 to pardon their sins at the first dawn of penitence, 
 entering with sympathetic appreciation into their 
 joys and sorrows, their hopes and fears, and seek- 
 ing for them in everything their highest good, we 
 should thereby acquire the secret of that gentleness 
 which rejoices with those that do rejoice and weeps 
 with those that weep; which is so glad in others' 
 prosperity that there is no room for envy, and so 
 sorry for others' shortcomings that there is no 
 place left for rejoicing in their iniquity ; which is 
 so intent on others' good that there is no time left 
 for a seeking of its own advantage, and no energy 
 left to splend in feeding and fattening its own sepa- 
 rate selfhood. To see in every fellow-being a child 
 of the heavenly Father, and to stand ready by every 
 appropriate word and deed to manifest the Father's 
 loving regard for each child of his, irrespective of 
 the wealth or poverty, the high or low degree, the 
 attractiveness or the uncongeniality, the friendli- 
 ness or enmity in which this child of the Father 
 comes to you, — this is at once the secret of Chris- 
 tian gentleness and the characteristic of the more 
 excellent way of Christian life. 
 
 The other point of superiority of the more excel- 
 
144 THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 
 
 lent way is strength ; strength both for endurance 
 and for work. 
 
 Now, both methods have strength. Neither is 
 altogether weak. Compared with the mere child of 
 nature, the Stoic, the Abstract Idealist, the Puri- 
 tan, the man who covets the best gifts, the man 
 who, in one form or another, sets up a standard of 
 what his own individual soul must attain, — that 
 man is a man of mighty strength. And yet there 
 are elements of weakness in this type of character 
 from which the more excellent way makes one free. 
 
 What, then, is strength of character? Strength 
 is the ability to make one's outward act the ex- 
 pression and realization of one's inward purpose. 
 Hence a man's strength depends ultimately on the 
 purpose which he cherishes, and is proportioned 
 to the length and breadth and depth of that pur- 
 pose. The man without a purpose is utterly weak, 
 the sport of circumstances, the football of society. 
 The man of limited purpose is strong within the 
 limits which his purpose embraces. The highest 
 strength, however, goes with a purpose wide and 
 comprehensive enough to embrace the whole of 
 life. Coveting the best gifts, self-perfection, the 
 seeking of salvation, is a comparatively broad 
 purpose. It is much broader and higher than the 
 pursuit of wealth, fame, or knowledge ; and conse- 
 quently it makes a stronger man than any of these 
 motives. 
 
THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 145 
 
 Yet it has its limitations. Put your Stoic or 
 your salvation-seeker, — for their attitude is essen- 
 tially the same, except where salvation is thought 
 of as future happiness, in which case the salvation- 
 seeker must rank not with the Stoics, but with the 
 Epicureans, — put this type of character in a place 
 where there is no chance of making converts to 
 his views, compel him to associate with stupid and 
 uninteresting people, subject him to the vexations 
 and irritations of a life of obscure drudgery, expose 
 him to the opposition and enmity of evil men. He 
 will not give up the fight, but he will draw into 
 himself, and limit the contest to the inner citadel 
 of his own mind. Trials he will use as occasions 
 for the development of fortitude and the exercise 
 of faith. Vexations will be accepted as a discipline 
 in patience. Injury and abuse will be welcomed 
 as affording occasion for growth in meekness and 
 resignation. Wrong and evil will afford opportu- 
 nity for forbearance and forgiveness. And losses 
 and privations will be hailed as helps to self-denial 
 and self-conquest. 
 
 That there is a good deal of strength of character 
 involved in taking the world in this way we all 
 admit. And yet it strikes us, after all, as forced, 
 unnatural, and artificial. This sort of talk reminds 
 us always of the boy who whistles when he goes 
 through the cemetery at night to keep his courage 
 up. Strength there is ; but it is not sufficient to 
 
146 THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 
 
 gain a thorough mastery over life, and to maintain 
 an easy and permanent supremacy. It is forever 
 on the rack of exertion, and the exhausting efforts 
 it is compelled to make in order to maintain itself 
 betray the presence of weakness and distrust. 
 
 Very different is the strength afforded by the 
 more excellent way. He who can see in every 
 sphere God's loving will, and finds his joy in the 
 doing of that will, never can be placed in circum- 
 stances of which he is not the perfect master. 
 Poverty and obscurity, drudgery and toil, no less 
 than wealth, fame, leisure, and publicity, afford 
 abundant opportunity for the doing of the Father's 
 will. 
 
 His loving-kindness includes the unthankful and 
 the evil, as well as the grateful and the good ; and 
 toward the one class the will of God can be done 
 by us just as effectively, just as thoroughly, just as 
 cheerfully and gladly, as toward the other. People 
 may come to us with enmity and hate, with treachery 
 and malice ; but that need not prevent us from 
 finding our peace and joy in doing God's will of 
 love and kindness toward them. 
 
 You can never be placed in circumstances so 
 unfavorable, you can never be brought in contact 
 with a person so mean and hateful, that this devo- 
 tion to the loving will of God as applied to those 
 circumstances and that person will not give you 
 strength to do the right, true, noble, loving act; 
 
THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 147 
 
 and so to overcome evil with good. This better 
 way is not content with grimly holding its own 
 within the contracted citadel of self. It goes out 
 on every occasion to conquer the world by righteous- 
 ness and love. Its strength is not absorbed in per- 
 petual self-defense. It is ever aggressive, and gives 
 you power to love your enemies, to bless them that 
 curse you, and to pray for them that despitefully 
 use you and persecute you. God's loving will for 
 all his children, as it is revealed to us in Christ, 
 taken up as the substance and aim of the individual's 
 personal will, is the secret of this highest strength, 
 the strength that beareth all things, believeth all 
 things, hopeth all things, endureth all things ; that 
 never fails of doing righteously, joyfully, lovingly, 
 successfully, whatever it undertakes ; that, in con- 
 flict with the worst that malice and spite and 
 wrong and hate can do, is able not only to abide 
 invincible, but to come off more than conqueror. 
 
 Every great institution has its own type of 
 thought and life. From every meeting-point of 
 human souls radiate far and wide influences benign 
 and helpful in proportion to the excellence of the 
 life which animates the central source. 
 
 In its earlier days, our country has been blessed 
 with noble institutions devoted to the education of 
 women. They were on a lower intellectual level 
 than the college ; and their religious life moved 
 more largely on what by contrast we are compelled 
 
148 THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 
 
 to call the lower or self-conscious plane. Yet their 
 influence for good, intellectually and spiritually, 
 upon our American life and in missionary work in 
 foreign lands, has been incalculable. 
 
 The colleges for women have, for the most part, 
 their career still before them. Intellectually, they 
 mark an immense advance over the academies and 
 seminaries which preceded them. May we not hope 
 and believe that, with the rise and growth of these 
 colleges, there shall be given to our land a type of 
 piety at once higher and healthier, more gentle and 
 more strong ? The world looks to you for a religious 
 life which, without morbidness, shall be intense and 
 earnest ; without sentimentality, shall be winsome 
 and attractive ; without weakness, shall be mild and 
 gentle ; and, without bigotry, shall be robust and 
 strong. 
 
 You cannot rise to the high level of these demands 
 by the method of seK-seeking in religious things. 
 Relying on that method alone, there will be an un- 
 healthiness, an unpracticalness, an unreality and 
 emptiness about your religious life painfully sug- 
 gestive of the sounding brass and the tinkling 
 cymbal, and mournfully prompting the sad con- 
 fession, "All this profiteth me nothing, and I 
 myself am nothing." 
 
 Seek not, then, merely to save your own souls. 
 Seek first of all to know God in Jesus Christ, and 
 to be known of him. And then strive that in and 
 
THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 149 
 
 through your lives and labors, your words and 
 deeds, your powers and your opportunities, the 
 loving will of God, revealed in Christ, may have 
 expression and fulfillment in the renovating of 
 human lives, the gladdening of human hearts, the 
 bettering of society, and the redemption of the race. 
 Thus, walking in the more excellent way of self- 
 devotion to the Divine Father's loving will for his 
 human children, you shall have true fellowship with 
 our great Elder Brother, whose person and life 
 and work are the full and perfect incarnation of 
 this better way ; and, in losing the life of separate 
 selfhood, you shall find the life of eternal blessed- 
 ness which is hid with Christ in God. 
 
VII 
 
 The Sacrifices of a College Man 
 
 And David longed, and said, Oh that one would grive me water 
 to drink of the well of Bethlehem, which is by the gate I And the 
 three mighty men brake through the host of the Philistines, and 
 drew water out of the well of Bethlehem, that was by the gate, 
 and took it, and brought it to David: but he would not drink 
 thereof, but poured it out unto the Lord. And he said. Be it far 
 from me, O Lord, that I should do this : shall I drink the blood 
 of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives ? therefore he would 
 not drink of it. — 2 Samuel xxiii. 15-17. 
 
 AMID the rough realities of Cripple Creek or 
 Klondike one often sees gleams of heroism 
 for the like of which, amid the refined convention- 
 alities of Fifth Avenue or Beacon Street, one would 
 look long in vain. Civilization and culture, indeed, 
 have a heroism of their own ; but it is modest and 
 retiring, and it takes a practiced eye to discern the 
 face of it behind the veil. In primitive communi- 
 ties, on the contrary, virtue and vice alike stand 
 out 80 plain that he who runs may read. This text 
 relates a scene from the lives of the outlawed ad- 
 herents of an outlaw chief. We must not idealize 
 these men because their deeds have been enshrined 
 in Holy Writ. In fact, the Scripture record, 
 rightly read, permits no pious illusions as to the 
 sort of men who gathered in this camp. Here is 
 the list : Every one that was in distress, and every 
 
THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 151 
 
 one that was in debt, and every one that was dis- 
 contented, gathered themselves unto David ; and 
 he was captain over them : the very classes, you 
 perceive, who flock to the standard of a Catiline or 
 a Coxey. Yet out of the rude camp of these rough 
 men there flashes forth the essential splendor of all 
 chivalry and all nobility. The chief longs for a 
 drink of the water of the well which used to quench 
 his childhood's thirst, but which is now within the 
 lines of the Philistine camp. It is a mere passing 
 whim, a bit of human sentiment. It is a wish, not 
 a will ; a yearning, not a command. Yet, to gratify 
 that whimsical wish, that sentimental longing, three 
 mighty men cut their way through the hostile lines, 
 and at the risk of their lives bring back the wished- 
 for water. Then comes David's great response. He 
 will not drink the water, but pours it out unto the 
 Lord. " And he said, Be it far from me, O Lord, 
 that I should do this : shall I drink the blood of 
 the men that went in jeopardy of their lives ? there- 
 fore he would not drink of it." To give one's life 
 is a noble thing. To recognize the sacredness of 
 the gift, and to receive it worthily, is a higher, 
 rarer form of nobleness. It is by this high stand- 
 ard that I invite you to measure yourselves. The 
 sacredness of the things that are bought with hu- 
 man life, and the way a true man treats them, — 
 that is my theme. 
 
 You all admire David for refusing to drink the 
 
152 THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 
 
 life-blood of his friends. You would despise him 
 had he drank it. You all feel sure that you would 
 have done as he did, in the same circumstances. 
 Well, admiration at long range is good. But I must 
 press home the harder question. What are you do- 
 ing in actual conditions which involve the same 
 essential principle? This simple story from the 
 crude conditions of primitive warfare is to serve as 
 a clue to the intricate labyrinth of modern social 
 life. For these modern social conditions are ever 
 offering to us the life-blood of our feUows ; and the 
 souls are rare that have the heroism to put the 
 costly cup away, still rarer the souls who combine 
 with this heroism the wisdom to make of this pre- 
 cious cup an acceptable offering to the Lord. Let 
 us, then, apply this principle to four aspects of our 
 life, — wealth, pleasure, politics, faith. 
 
 First, Wealth. Do you realize how much of hu- 
 man life there is stored up in what we eat and wear 
 and spend and use ? Food and raiment, fire and 
 light, shelter and rest, are bought for us by the 
 exposure of the lone shepherd on the mountain-side, 
 the weary weaver at her loom, the weather-beaten 
 sailor before the mast, the engineer driving his 
 train against the storm, the miner in the bowels of 
 the earth, the woodsman in the depths of the forest, 
 uhe fisherman off the foggy banks, the plowman in 
 the monotonous furrow, the cook drudging in the 
 kitchen, the washerwoman bending over the tub, 
 
THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 153 
 
 and the countless host of artisans and teamsters and 
 common laborers who form the broad, firm base on 
 which our civilization rests. 
 
 Because of this high human cost of material 
 goods, all waste is wickedness, all ostentation is dis- 
 grace, all luxury that is not redeemed by uses to 
 be explained later is criminal. The food or raiment 
 that you waste is simply so much human toil and 
 sacrifice which you by your wastefulness render 
 null and void. The wealth and state you ostenta- 
 tiously display simply show the world how much of 
 the vitality of other men and, women you burn up 
 in order to keep your poor self going. To boast of 
 riches, to take pride in luxury, is as though an en- 
 gine should boast of the quantity of coal it could 
 eonsiune, regardless of work accomplished; as 
 though a farm should be proud of the fertilizer 
 spread upon it, regardless of the crop raised in re- 
 turn. What is the real nature of the idle rich? 
 Precisely what do they amount to in the world ? 
 To eat the bread that other men have toiled to 
 plant and reap and transport and cook and serve ; 
 to wear the silk and woolen that other women have 
 spun and woven and cut and sewed ; to lie in a 
 couch that other hands have spread, and under a 
 roof that other arms have reared ; not that alone 
 — for we all do as much — but to consume these 
 things upon themselves with no sense of gratitude 
 and fellowship toward the toiling men and women 
 
154 THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 
 
 who bring these gifts ; with no strenuous effort to 
 give back to them something as valuable and pre- 
 cious as that which they have given to us ; that is 
 the meanness and selfishness and sin and shame of 
 wealth that is idle and irresponsible. Against riches 
 as such no sane man has a word to say. Against 
 rich men who are idle and irresponsible, against 
 rich women who are ungrateful and unserviceable, 
 the moral insight cries out in righteous indignation, 
 and brands them as parasites, receiving all and giv- 
 ing nothing in return ; in the language of our text, 
 gulping down the life-blood of their fellows, with- 
 out so much as a " thank you " in return. 
 
 That brings us to the old question, Can a rich 
 man enter the kingdom of heaven ? Assuredly, yes. 
 All things are possible with God, and to right- 
 minded men. It is, indeed, harder for a rich man 
 than for a poor man, for obvious reasons. Being a 
 Christian, or entering the kingdom of God, simply 
 means that, instead of setting up yourself and your 
 possessions as ends in themselves, you shall make 
 yourself, and all you have, organic, functional, in- 
 strumental, serviceable to the great and glorious 
 purposes of God, for the welfare and blessedness of 
 men. And the more you are and the more you have, 
 the harder it is to bring yourself and your posses- 
 sions into this organic and functional subordina- 
 tion to the will that makes for human happiness 
 and social virtue. But just because it is so hard, 
 
THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 155 
 
 therefore it is all the more glorious. The rich 
 Christian is God's finest masterpiece in the world 
 to-day. 
 
 The man whose office is a pivot around which 
 revolve in integrity and beneficence the wheels of 
 industry and commerce, affording employment and 
 subsistence to thousands of his feUows ; the woman 
 whose home is a centre of generous hospitality, 
 whence ceaseless streams of refinement and charity 
 flow forth to bless the world ; the person whose 
 leisure and culture and wealth and influence are 
 devoted to the direction of forces, the solution of 
 problems, the organization of movements which re- 
 quire large expenditure of time and money — these 
 men and women who are at the same time rich and 
 Christian, these are the salt of our modern society ; 
 by such comes the redemption of the world ; of such, 
 no less than of the Christian poor, is the kingdom 
 of heaven. No honest man grudges these Christian 
 rich their wealth. It matters not whether their in- 
 come is five hundred or fifty thousand a year. The 
 question is whether the little or the much is made 
 organic to the glory of God and the good of human- 
 ity. And the greater the amount of wealth thus 
 organized and utilized, the greater the glory and the 
 larger the good. That is what it means in terms of 
 wealth for the modem man to refuse to drink the 
 precious water from the well of Bethlehem, and to 
 pour it out unto the Lord. 
 
156 THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 
 
 Second, Pleasure. Pleasure is Nature's premium 
 on healthy exercise of function. The more of it the 
 better. There is no asceticism about the Gospel of 
 Jesus Christ, though his followers have often tried 
 to tack it on. We all like pleasure, and are not 
 ashamed to own it. Not suppression but fruition 
 is the ideal of our nature. The modern world 
 agrees with Beecher when he says, "My concep- 
 tion of religion is to let every faculty effulge, touched 
 with celestial fire." The Son of Man came eating 
 and drinking and rejoicing, and shedding joy and 
 gladness wherever he went. And the man who 
 catches his spirit will find his own life more and 
 more full of happiness. And I mean by that real, 
 live, human happiness, not the pale, sickly counter- 
 feit that lights up the countenances of emaciated 
 hermits and psalm-singing pietists. Whatever min- 
 isters to the exaltation of body or of mind, what- 
 ever stirs the blood and quickens the pulses and 
 thriUs the nerves, is so far forth a good to be de- 
 sired. There is not a bad appetite or passion in our 
 nature, unless perversion makes it so. Our bodies 
 are good ; and every physiological function is good, 
 and the pleasure that comes of it a thing to be 
 rejoiced in as the seal of vigor and vitality. Our 
 minds are good ; and all the joys of mental exercise 
 are glorious witnesses to the divine image in which 
 we are made. Our hearts' loves are good, and ten- 
 der ties that bind us together in families and friend- 
 
THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 157 
 
 ships and mutual affections are the best gifts of God 
 to men. 
 
 There is, however, one condition of all noble plea- 
 sure. You must not buy it with the life-blood of 
 your fellows ; you shall not purchase it at the cost 
 of human degradation. The attempt to regulate 
 pleasure and amusement by rule is mischievous and 
 futile. The attitude of many good people toward 
 cards and billiards, the theatre and the dance, is a 
 concession to the devil of things that are altogether 
 too good for him to monopolize. All these and 
 kindred things are good, provided you do not pay 
 too high a price for them. When billiards or cards 
 are used to undermine the foundations of honest 
 industry in a feUow-man ; when they are used to 
 make one man's gain conditioned on another's loss ; 
 when they divert the wages of the breadwinner 
 from the support of his family to the till of the 
 gambler or the saloon-keeper, then these things, 
 innocent and beneficent in themselves, become 
 heavy with the weight of human misery, black with 
 the odium of human degradation. 
 
 The beauty of the human form and the charm 
 of graceful movement, when wedded to expressive 
 speech or entrancing song, are sources of the noblest 
 and keenest of our delights. Against opera or drama 
 no lover of his fellows has a word to say. 
 
 When, however, for the spectacular embellish- 
 ment of the performance, woman is asked to put 
 
158 THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 
 
 off that modesty which is her robe and crown, when 
 the accessories of the exhibition are such that you 
 would be unwilling to have one dear to you take 
 part in it, then you are buying your pleasure with 
 the red blood of a human heart and the stained 
 whiteness of a sister's soul, — a price no true man 
 win let another pay to procure for him a passing 
 pleasure. 
 
 The real reason why a true-hearted, noble man 
 cannot walk in the ways of licentiousness is not 
 the selfish fear of physical contamination or social 
 reprobation. It is because he cannot take pleasure 
 in the banishment of a daughter from the household 
 of her father ; in the infamy of one who might have 
 been a pure sister in a happy home ; in the degrad- 
 ation of one who ought to be a wife, proud of the 
 love of a good man and happy in the sweet joys of 
 motherhood. On this point our social standards are 
 still barbarous and our moral insight undeveloped. 
 The man who has eyes to see these things as they 
 are, the man who can realize the cost of shame and 
 degradation to others which they involve, the man 
 who can see this and still seek pleasure there, is a 
 man whose moral affinities are with the bygone 
 brutality of the Eoman populace that found delight 
 in seeing gladiators die, with the slave-drivers who 
 forced human beings to labor with the lash. I care 
 not how high such a man may stand in social cir- 
 cles. He is a man with a cold, hard, cruel, callous 
 
THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 159 
 
 heart ; a creature capable of finding a beastly satis- 
 faction in drinking human blood. He has no part 
 nor lot in the true nobility which flashed forth in 
 the splendid deed of David, and finds its highest 
 consummation in the pure, strong, loving heart of 
 Christ. 
 
 Can pleasure, then, lil?:e riches, be redeemed and 
 made an acceptable offering to the Lord ? Is there 
 a heaven for the pleasure-seeker and the pleasure- 
 giver, as well as for the rich ? Most certainly. Nor- 
 mal pleasure is the counterpart of healthy function, 
 and blesses the giver no less than the recipient. 
 The practice of any worthy art is ennobling, and 
 gives more pleasure to the artist than to the looker- 
 on. The actor, the singer, the painter, the poet, is 
 not degraded, but uplifted, by the joy he gives. 
 When you sail the seas or explore the wilderness, 
 you make the skipper or the guide the sharer of 
 your joys. And so with all the pure domestic and 
 social pleasures that enrich the life of man. The 
 test is so simple and clear that a fool can't miss 
 it, though a knave may. Is the act that gives you 
 pleasure at the same time, aU things considered and 
 in the long run, counting all the costs and conse- 
 quences, a source of permanent pleasure and well- 
 being to the other persons who are affected by it ? 
 The pleasure that fulfills this test is an acceptable 
 offering to the Lord. All other pleasure is an abomi- 
 nation in his eyes. Searching and severe as this test 
 
160 THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 
 
 is, there is n't a particle of asceticism about it. It 
 simply asks you to do to others as you would that 
 they should do to you, or to those whom you love 
 best. That is what it means for us to make our 
 theatres and places of amusement, our recreations 
 and our pleasures, an ojffering to the Lord. 
 
 Third, Politics. Of aU the freely flowing waters of 
 our modern civilization, there is no portion which has 
 literally been brought to us at such risk of life and 
 cost of blood as our political liberties and civic in- 
 stitutions, From Marathon and Salamis, from the 
 Netherlands under William the Silent, from the 
 British sailors who fired the Spanish Armada, from 
 Cromwell's Ironsides at Marston Moor, from the 
 plains of Abraham, from Bunker Hill and Benning- 
 ton, from Quebec and Saratoga, from Trenton and 
 Yorktown, from Shiloh and Antietam, from Gettys- 
 burg and the Wilderness, from aU the brave souls 
 who have risked their lives for liberty and law, for 
 justice and humanity, we receive to-day the blessings 
 they bought us with their blood. 
 
 To drink of these waters unworthily means that 
 we receive our liberties and institutions as a mere 
 matter of course, with no sense of gratitude to God 
 and the brave men who gave them to us. It means 
 that we use the greatness of our country as a means 
 to our petty, private ends. It means that we seek 
 for ourselves or help secure for others offices and 
 emoluments for which we or they are unfit. It 
 
THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 161 
 
 means that by our indifference or preoccupation 
 with our private affairs we permit others to do 
 what we would be ashamed to do ourselves. It 
 means that we find it, on the whole, cheaper and 
 more economical to endure a worse government 
 and pay a heavier tax rather than bestir ourselves 
 to do our part toward securing efficient adminis- 
 tration and honest government. It means that we 
 acquiesce in corruption in elections and favoritism 
 in appointments, and legislation by private purchase 
 and irresponsible influence. 
 
 Now, we all tolerate a great deal of this wrong- 
 doing ; we all drink these dearly bought waters un- 
 worthily, because in times of peace and plenty the 
 evil consequences of our misdoing are obscured. 
 The taxes levied by public authority are heavier ; 
 the assessments imposed by party bosses are higher ; 
 the streets are filthier ; life and property are less 
 secure ; the owners of franchises pay bigger divi- 
 dends and the laborer pays more for his water and 
 light and transportation ; disease is more conta- 
 gious, and the death-rate higher. But these evils 
 are distributed over such wide areas and such long 
 periods, and fall on such vast multitudes of peo- 
 ple, that the individual scarcely feels or notices 
 his added share. Even a War Department in time 
 of peace and plenty may be administered on prin- 
 ciples of personal patronage and private profit and 
 political pull, and no great harm is manifest. It is, 
 
162 THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 
 
 however, one of the few advantages of war that it 
 puts men and principles to the test, and with ita 
 keen-edged sword cuts out their unrighteousness 
 and rottenness so cleanly that all men may see and 
 understand. Then we see what privilege and pull 
 and spoils and iacompetence and inefficiency mean, 
 not in vague, general terms, but in terms of starva- 
 tion and inefficiency and disease and death. It is 
 a wholesome thing that, now that our brief war 
 with Spain is over, we have not a particle of ani- 
 mosity or resentment against the poor Spaniards 
 who stood up at their posts and fired their bullets 
 bravely at our breasts ; but that the men whom we 
 find it the hardest to forgive are those who failed to 
 send up to our own brave soldiers at the front, or 
 even in their camps, the reasonable requirements of 
 health and healing, of vigor and efficiency. The 
 men the nation blames most bitterly to-day are 
 those who, in places of responsibility, where the lives 
 and hopes of thousands of men and families, as well 
 as the nation's fortune and honor, were intrusted to 
 them, had the audacity to hold these tremendous 
 responsibilities in their hands, and then — to use 
 the mildest term the whole vocabulary of whitewash 
 affords — failed to grasp the situation in which the 
 lives of these men and the fortunes of the nation 
 by their authority were placed. 
 
 If any great, lasting good shall come out of this 
 late war, it will not be the speedy humiliation of 
 
THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 163 
 
 Spain which every one foresaw, not the sudden ac- 
 quisition of remote possessions which no one had 
 anticipated ; it wiU be the recognition of the truth 
 that the man who puts himseK, or helps to put 
 others, into positions of public responsibility for 
 which he or they are unfit, is guilty of the only form 
 of treason a great republic has to fear. 
 
 What, then, is it to drink worthily the water of 
 our dearly bought liberties and institutions ? It is 
 simply to fit ourselves, and to hold ourselves in 
 perpetual readiness, for the highest service to our 
 country which we are capable of rendering ; and to 
 see to it that unfit men are not allowed to crowd 
 out their betters from the responsibilities of public 
 service. Let each man, to the fuU extent of his 
 ability and influence, do these two things, and he 
 will do his part to solve the still unsolved problem 
 of republics ; he will drink worthily, in this impor- 
 tant sphere of politics, the precious water of the 
 well of Bethlehem. 
 
 Fourth, Faith. The spiritual faith which comes 
 to us to-day free as the water of the well was once 
 red with martyr's blood. Through the great com- 
 pany of missionaries, martyrs, confessors, apostles, 
 who were persecuted and put to death for their 
 fidelity, we trace this faith back to the Christ who 
 was crucified because he brought it to a mercenary, 
 hypocritical, and hostile world. Jesus found the 
 world believing in a pompous potentate who would 
 
164 THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 
 
 exact the last farthing of debt from his abject and 
 superstitious subjects. He gave the belief in a lov- 
 ing Father who seeks the good of all his children. 
 Jesus found men believing in the God of the Phar- 
 isee, — the God of people who think themselves 
 better than their neighbors. He gave us the faith 
 in the God of the lowly and the penitent. The 
 world was seeking salvation by hardness and force. 
 He brought it salvation through gentleness and 
 mercy. The world believed in a taskmaster and a 
 lawgiver. Jesus showed himself our Saviour and 
 our friend. Jesus found cruelty, and left kindness ; 
 Jesus found lust, and left purity ; Jesus found pride, 
 and left meekness ; Jesus found oppression, and 
 left liberty. The hard, cruel, coarse, brutal, selfish, 
 sensual world to which he came was loath to give up 
 its hardness and greed, its sensuality and its hypoc- 
 risy. Jesus nevertheless carried his gospel of love 
 and kindness and purity and truth right into the 
 very camp of the scribes and Pharisees, the hypo- 
 crites and pretenders, the extortioners and tyrants. 
 In rescuing the water of a sweeter, purer, lovelier 
 life from the camp of the Pharisees and priests, 
 Jesus not only risked, he actually laid down, his 
 life. They indeed killed him, but he broke in pieces 
 the cruel creed, the mercenary rites, the pretentious 
 hypocrisy with which they had fenced in the well 
 of spiritual life, and made free for aU men evermore 
 the divine forgiveness of the penitent, the divine 
 
THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 165 
 
 strength for the weak, the divine sympathy for the 
 poor, the divine comfort for the troubled, the divine 
 kingdom for the humble, the divine blessedness for 
 the pure in heart. Theories of atonement may 
 come and go ; the great historic fact remains that 
 Jesus found a world of lust and cruelty and hypoc- 
 risy and hate ; that he attacked those powers of 
 evil with all his might ; that, in consequence, the 
 evil forces of the world, the hypocrites and tyrants 
 and extortioners, envied and hated and scourged 
 and crucified him. Hence it is not a mere theo- 
 logical theory, it is a plain historic fact, that he 
 bore the sin of the world in his own body, and 
 bought the world's emancipation from it with his 
 blood. 
 
 Hence for us to live the life of pride and sen- 
 suality and selfishness and sin is not only to be 
 guilty of doing these wrong things. For us to live 
 the life of sin when he has won for the world the 
 life of love and service, for us to sink into the sen- 
 suality of brutes when he has shown us our fellow- 
 ship with God ; for us to do these things to-day, is 
 to throw away, so far as it is in our power, the 
 costly benefits which he has purchased for us ; it is 
 to drink unworthily the water of the well of Beth- 
 lehem ; it is to make the sacrifice of Christ for us 
 and for the world, so far as we are concerned, of 
 none effect. It is to let him live and die for us, and 
 then to go on in our sloth and selfishness as if no- 
 
166 THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 
 
 thing had happened, and no solemn and sacred 
 obligation rested upon us to receive it worthily. 
 
 Ajid to make this water of life which Jesus pur- 
 chased with his blood an acceptable offering to the 
 Lord, — that means for you and me that we shall 
 let the precious life of purity and kindness and gen- 
 tleness and courage and love, which he brought 
 to the world, come into our hearts, transform our 
 lives, and go forth from us to help and bless man- 
 kind. 
 
 The noble life, or, what comes to the same thing, 
 the Christian life, you see, is a very simple thing. 
 It consists in rising above the petty selfishness and 
 meanness of our individual, animal nature, and mak- 
 ing our possessions, our pleasures, our politics, our 
 faith functional in the greater organism of society 
 for the accomplishment of that will of God which 
 seeks the good of man. This noble life is open to 
 us all ; and yet no man may carry into it a single 
 penny of his wealth, a single indulgence of his ap- 
 petites, a single department of his work, a single 
 article of his creed, which has not first been offered 
 up in service to the higher will of God and the larger 
 good of man. Failure will be forgiven, mistakes 
 overlooked, sins pardoned, repentance accepted, until 
 seventy times seven, if only the noble purpose is 
 really in the heart. The purpose, however, must be 
 there. And that, too, not in a vague, general, sen- 
 timental way. It must be there as a definite and 
 
THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 167 
 
 earnest purpose to bring just such concrete things 
 as money and pleasure and study and politics and 
 society and business into functional subjection to 
 this wiU of God which serves the good of man. With- 
 out such a ruling purpose controlling the concrete 
 conduct of daily life, no man can live the noble life, 
 no man can cross the threshold of the kingdom of 
 God, no man can enter into the glorious fellowship 
 of brave and chivalrous men, no man can be a fol- 
 lower of the great and glorious Christ. 
 
 These conditions are indeed hard ; harder for the 
 rich than for the poor, harder for the strong young 
 man full of vigorous physical life than for the feeble 
 and the weak, harder for the man of position and 
 influence in a busy city than for the hermit. But 
 the greater the difficulty the greater the glory. And 
 I know not by what authority I should offer you 
 the noble life on cheap and easy terms. To be a 
 Christian is not easy ; character is not to be bought 
 at a bargain ; and you who know the severe terms 
 on which excellence in business or professional life 
 must be purchased will not expect to gain Christian 
 character without strenuous effort and serious sac- 
 rifice. I tell you frankly that to make your money, 
 your pleasure, your politics, and all the other rela- 
 tions of your daily lives functional in the great pur- 
 pose of God for the blessing of mankind is a very 
 much harder and severer thing than luxury and in- 
 dulgence and indolence. And it is just because it 
 
168 THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 
 
 does call for this heroism and self-sacrifice that I 
 commend it to you with confidence. 
 
 Let us, then, make David's noble deed the touch- 
 stone of the worth of our wealth, the purity of our 
 pleasures, the righteousness of our public service, 
 and the vitality of our faith. Let us betake our- 
 selves anew to the Christ in whom this nobleness, 
 which flashed forth for a brief moment in the rude 
 life of David, found constant and unwavering ex- 
 pression. Let us use the spiritual aids without 
 which no man can lift his life to this high plane, 
 still less maintain it there. Let us conquer one 
 by one the details of daily living, and win them 
 over from servitude to our selfish and sensual de- 
 sires, into the glorious liberty of that kingdom of 
 God which is the commonwealth of man. 
 
vm 
 
 The Creed of a College Class 
 
 IT is the custom in the course in government at 
 Bowdoin College to require each student to 
 write out his individual political platform ; so that 
 in case of future Fullers, Fryes, and Reeds we can 
 trace the development of their opinions from their 
 college views. One's religious creed bears much 
 the same relation to the study of philosophy that 
 one's political platform does to the theoretical study 
 of government. Accordingly, I asked a class of 
 sixty students, mostly seniors, to write out their 
 individual creeds. In these individual creeds I 
 asked each man to state as exactly as possible both 
 his belief and his unbelief ; and to define, as far 
 as possible, the sense in which he held the things 
 in which he believed and the sense in which he 
 rejected the things he did not believe. I then re- 
 duced these sixty creeds to a single composite creed. 
 Into this composite creed I put everything which 
 any student had affirmed, except what some of 
 them had denied, — aiming in this way to get a 
 class creed to which each individual member would 
 assent. I distributed copies of this composite creed 
 to each member of the class, and invited criti- 
 cism and amendment. We then spent two hours 
 
170 THE CREED OF A COLLEGE CLASS 
 
 together in discussing the articles of the creed one 
 by one, making such modifications and concessions 
 at each point as were necessary to secure their 
 unanimous acceptance by the class. At the end 
 of the second hour the creed was adopted by a 
 unanimous vote. 
 
 Of course a creed composed in this way is by 
 no means an ideal or model creed. Many of the 
 individual creeds were far more positive and com- 
 prehensive than this composite creed. As showing, 
 however, the things on which a typical college class 
 can agree, this creed may be of interest. While 
 many things are of necessity left out which we 
 would like to see included, yet the fact that a 
 typical college class can agree on as much as is 
 included here is a sufficient assurance that the 
 great institutions of Family, State, and Church 
 will be safe in their hands ; and that their funda- 
 mental attitude toward God, duty, and life, if not 
 quite the traditional one, is yet positive, whole- 
 some, and reverent. I present three creeds : one 
 of the more conservative type, one of the more 
 radical type, and one the composite creed agreed 
 upon by all the class. 
 
 A CONSERVATIVE COLLEGE CEEED 
 
 I believe in 
 
 1. God as the central power of the universe, 
 present alike in the works of man and nature. 
 
THE CREED OF A COLLEGE CLASS 171 
 
 2. Christ as the truest expression of the char- 
 acter of God and the supreme example for man to 
 pattern after. 
 
 3. In the Holy Ghost as that which urges man 
 to better and higher things, and especially that 
 which creates in the breast of man the love and 
 trust in the Infinite and the satisfaction and peace 
 at the knowledge of doing his wiU. 
 
 4. Prayer as the effective means of obtaining 
 what is for our permanent good when coupled with 
 the efforts and faith of the asker. Also as the 
 surest way to keep before man's consciousness the 
 example of Christ's life. 
 
 5. I believe in the eternal life as the survival 
 after death of the mind of man. 
 
 6. In heaven as the knowledge that we have 
 lived to the best of our ability after the teachings 
 of Christ. 
 
 7. In heU as the realization of falling below our 
 ideals through our own faults. 
 
 8. In salvation as the conscious choosing by man 
 of the life of Christ as his ideal and pattern. 
 
 9. In the whole Bible as the inspired word of 
 God to man. In that all that which is high and 
 noble comes from God. Also that the Bible is, 
 as a whole, the truest expression of God's will to 
 man. 
 
 If perhaps some things appear to be beyond the 
 understanding of man, and apparently contrary to 
 
172 THE CREED OF A COLLEGE CLASS 
 
 science, I remember that science is the product of 
 man's observation, and that there may have been 
 extra-scientific things beyond the comprehension of 
 man. Again, there is so much symbolism through- 
 out the Bible that it is hard to separate it from 
 what was intended as fact. Therefore it is possible 
 for me to see truth in the whole of the New Testa- 
 ment, either actual or symbolical. 
 
 A RADICAL COLLEGE CREED 
 
 What I do not believe, 
 
 I do not believe in the doctrine of original sin, 
 nor in the various Biblical miracles, nor in the 
 divine conception of Jesus, nor in the doctrine of 
 atonement, nor in the Trinity, nor do I deem it 
 necessary to believe these in order to be a Chris- 
 tian. 
 
 What I do believe, 
 
 I believe in the existence of God, a divine Cre- 
 ator and Ruler, who is only personal to the extent 
 that he has purposes and effects results. 
 
 I believe in the fundamental, immutable prin- 
 ciple. Truth, akin to God, if not synonymous with 
 God; that this Truth is the only imperishable 
 thing in the universe, and that all other things are 
 ephemeral. 
 
 I believe that as certain human beings have to 
 a finite extent apprehended a bit of the Truth and 
 
THE CREED OF A COLLEGE CLASS 173 
 
 promulgated it, they have become known as great 
 teachers, and won followers through the mherent 
 yet passive force of the Truth. 
 
 I believe Jesus Christ to have been the greatest 
 of these teachers, inasmuch as he apprehended the 
 Truth to a greater degree than all others. 
 
 I believe his doctrines to have spread, not 
 through the agency of any active spiritual essence 
 known as the Holy Ghost, but because of their 
 own inherent immortality and the transitoriness of 
 all opposition. 
 
 I believe Jesus Christ to have been divine only 
 as he expounded the Truth, even as Confucius and 
 Buddha, Socrates and Mohammed, may likewise 
 be called divine, though to a less degree. 
 
 THE CREED OF THE CLASS OF 1903 
 
 I believe in one God, present in nature as law, 
 in science as truth, in art as beauty, in history 
 as justice, in society as sympathy, in conscience 
 as duty, and supremely in Christ as our highest 
 ideal. 
 
 I believe in the Bible as the expression of God's 
 will through man ; in prayer as the devotion of 
 man's will to God ; and in the church as the fel- 
 lowship of those who try to do God's will in the 
 world. 
 
 I believe in worship as the highest inspiration 
 to work ; in sacrifice as the price we must pay to 
 
174 THE CREED OF A COLLEGE CLASS 
 
 make right what is wrong ; in salvation as growth 
 out of selfishness into service ; in eternal life as 
 the survival of what loves and is lovable in each 
 individual ; and in judgment as the obvious fact 
 that the condition of the gentle, the generous, the 
 modest, the pure, and the true is always and 
 everywhere preferable to that of the cruel, the sen- 
 sual, the mean, the proud, and the false. 
 
IX 
 
 The Choice of the College Woman 
 
 M A ^^ college women happier or unhappier than 
 l\ other people? This is the rather delicate 
 and dangerous question I propose to raise. The 
 answer is easy, but the reasons for the answer are 
 more subtle and difficult/ Inasmuch as men's an- 
 swers are occasionally wrong and women's answers 
 are invariably right, while men's reasons are pre- 
 dominantly right and women's reasons are occasion- 
 ally wrong, I do not hope to change the opinion of 
 any one of you about the answer to this question ; 
 but even if you aU reject my answer, I may still 
 hope to interest you in the reasons by which it is 
 supported. 
 
 (My answer would be that if college women re- 
 main college women, and try to bring the world to 
 
 ^ them, they will be very unhappy ; but if they go 
 into the world forgetting that they are different 
 from other people they will be the happiest persons 
 there. Some years ago we had a student who was 
 a devoted lover of everything Greek. (This is so 
 rare an occurrence in men's colleges to-day, that 
 you will pardon the pride with which I mention it.) 
 One day he fell in love, or what with men some- 
 times passes for the same thing, he thought he did. 
 
176 THE CHOICE OF 
 
 He became engaged to a charming young lady. One 
 moonlight evening as he was sitting with her on 
 the lawn he dropped the fatal remark, " My dear, 
 I am afraid we shall never be happy unless you 
 learn Greek." Do you ask how it came out ? The 
 girl never did study Greek. Ten years later I vis- 
 ited her charming home, and found her the happiest 
 wife and mother I have seen in many a day, but — 
 with another man. We who had congratulated our 
 Greek on his engagement, had been obliged to con- 
 gratulate her on breaking it ; and we added the 
 comment, in which 1 am sure you all mentally join 
 me, " She served him right." 
 
 This little story is about the college woman. The 
 day of graduation marks her engagement to the 
 world. If you say to the world as my Greek said 
 to his fiancee, "My dear world, I am afraid we 
 shall not be happy together unless you acquire the 
 equivalent of a college education," the world will 
 contrive to be happy with somebody else, and leave 
 you very unhappy.) ^ 
 
 Perhaps you reply, " I never would be such a fool 
 as that. Did I not say that the girl in the story 
 served the young pedant just right, when she sent 
 him about his business and married the other 
 man?" 
 
 Yes. You all say that about the girl in the story, 
 but in your own persons you wiU be sorely tempted 
 to take the attitude of my young Greek. For 
 
THE COLLEGE WOMAN 177 
 
 stripped of its setting in the moonlight on the lawn, 
 what he said was this : " My dear, I am afraid we 
 never shall be happy unless I keep the interests I 
 have, and you acquire these same interests too." 
 Now I contend that anybody, man or woman, rich 
 or poor, married or single, educated or uneducated, 
 who says that to the world is doomed to be deserv- 
 edly miserable. And I am afraid that college grad- 
 uates, both men and women, have peculiar tempta- 
 tions to take precisely that attitude. I am afraid 
 that their comparative freedom from the immediate 
 necessity for earning their living gives college wo- 
 men who are inclined to take that attitude a better 
 opportunity to do so than comes to college men. 
 That is my reason for believing that a certain class 
 of coUege women are not only more unhappy than 
 other people, but are about the most unhappy people 
 in all the world, and that they deserve aU the un- 
 happiness they get. 
 
 On the other hand I believe that whoever says, 
 " Dear world, I am sure I shall not be completely 
 happy until I have made your interests mine " — 
 whoever says that, whether man or woman, rich 
 or poor, learned or ignorant, famed or obscure — 
 will be growing happier and happier every day, and 
 become one of the happiest persons in the world. 
 I believe their education and their comparative 
 economic freedom gives coUege women the best 
 chance to take this attitude in life, and therefore 
 
178 THE CHOICE OF 
 
 the best opportunity for achieving the highest hap- 
 piness. 
 
 Inasmuch, then, as college women have more 
 chance to choose than other people, and rather more 
 temptation in some ways to choose wrongly, I have 
 taken this Choice of the CoUege Woman for my 
 theme. Perhaps you expect me to set forth this 
 choice as the familiar one between selfishness and 
 service. No. If I were preaching a baccalaureate 
 sermon, I might fall back on that; though it 
 would be bringing coals to Newcastle to present to 
 college women the superiority of the unselfish hfe. 
 No. Deep as that moral difference is, I shall ask 
 you to choose to-day between something deeper 
 still. Your choice to-day is between aristocracy and 
 democracy, — between the sense of superiority and 
 the feeling of community, between the effort to 
 shine and the wUlingness to share. In the home, 
 in the market, in society, yes, even in charity work 
 and in the social settlement, this deep distinction 
 runs through all you do. Though the aristocratic 
 attitude tends to coincide with the selfish, it is not 
 quite identical with it. Though democracy has an 
 affinity for service, the two terms are by no means 
 interchangeable. 
 
 A person may be democratic in his selfishness, or 
 aristocratic in his service. One may try to shine as 
 a stenographer, or simply share his best with others 
 as a statesman or an artist. Deeper than vocation, 
 
THE COLLEGE WOMAN 179 
 
 more closely related to happiness than even moral- 
 ity itself, yes, even more fundamental than religion 
 sometimes goes, is the Choice of the College Woman 
 I to-day shall call on each of you to make. For in 
 the last analysis it is nothing less than whether in 
 the most comprehensive relation to your environ- 
 ment you stand off and say, " you and I " with the 
 accent of implied superiority on the " I," or clasp 
 hands with your environment in a genuine accept- 
 ance of the pronoun " we." 
 
 Inasmuch as one who takes the democratic side 
 of this choice lays himself open to the charge of 
 being a Philistine, partly by way of self-protection 
 and partly because the concrete pictures of poetry 
 bring out distinctions better than the pale abstrac- 
 tions of prose, I have cast the discussion in the form 
 of a running commentary on Stephen Phillips's ex- 
 quisite poem, "Marpessa;" so that my fidl title 
 is, " Apollo or Idas : The Choice of the Col- 
 lege Woman." You recall the situation. Like you 
 Marpessa is called to choose between shining down 
 on the world with a god above it, or sharing its toil 
 and sorrow with a shepherd, on a level with his 
 humble human lot. 
 
 When the long day that glideth without cload, 
 The summer day was at her deep blue hour 
 They three together met ; on the one side, 
 Fresh from diffusing light on all the world 
 Apollo ; on the other without sleep 
 Idas, and in the midst Marpessa stood. 
 
180 THE CHOICE OF 
 
 First the god, assuming the rights of the supe- 
 rior, sprang to embrace her. But they 
 
 Heard thunder, and a little afterward 
 The far Paternal voice, " Let her decide." 
 
 Then in turn Apollo and Idas, the god and the 
 shepherd, present their suits. Precisely so these 
 two radically different attitudes toward life con- 
 front the college woman at the noon hour of the 
 day she graduates. Many, perhaps most of you 
 stand ready to place the keeping of your lives in 
 the hands of the divine Apollo. To shine down on 
 the world with the light of literature, of music, of 
 art, or failing that, in the gentle ministry of the 
 social settlement, the charity organization, is the 
 ideal to which you have devoted your future lives. 
 This is a beautiful ideal ; I know how it charms 
 and attracts the earnest college woman. Yet in the 
 name of the " far Paternal voice " I must ask you 
 to listen impartially to the god and to his human 
 rival, — I must ask you to hear the claims of 
 this life of shining from above and the claims of 
 the life of sharing on a level; I must set over 
 against each other the artistic elevation of the 
 world, or its socialistic reformation from the out- 
 side, and the simple living out of the world's 
 homely himian interests from the inside ; and then 
 ask you to choose. More than you can dream or 
 imagine, your individual happiness through all the 
 
THE COLLEGE WOMAN 181 
 
 coming years of life, and the estimation of col- 
 lege women as a class, depend on this momentous 
 decision. First let us listen to the god, — a voice 
 familiar to you all, and to which I am sure many of 
 you are on the point of yielding. 
 
 Apollo says : — 
 
 "lUve 
 Forever in a deep deliberate bliss, 
 A spirit gliding through tranquillity ; 
 Yet when I saw thee I imagined woe, 
 That thou, who art so fair, shouldst ever taste 
 Of the earth-sorrow : for thy life has been 
 The history of a flower in the air, 
 Liable but to breezes and to time. 
 As rich and purposeless as is the rose : 
 Thy simple doom is to be beautiful. 
 Thee God created but to grow, not strive, 
 And not to suffer, merely to be sweet." 
 
 ** But if thou 'It live with me, then shalt thou bide 
 In mere felicity above the world. 
 In peace alive and moving, where to stir 
 Is ecstasy, and thrilling is repose." 
 
 " And I will carry thee above the world, 
 To share my ecstasy of flinging beams. 
 And scattering without intermission joy." 
 
 " Or since thou art a woman, thou shalt have 
 More tender tasks : 
 To lure into the air a face long sick. 
 To gild the brow that from its dead looks up, 
 To shine on the unforgiven of this world : 
 With slow sweet surgery restore the brain. 
 And to dispel shadows and shadowy fear." 
 
182 THE CHOICE OF 
 
 Such and so persuasive is the appeal of the ar- 
 tistic life, the life of the social reformer. To feel 
 that we belong above and apart ; and yet that 
 we send down an illuminating radiance, a healing 
 effluence, — that appeals to us as something divi- 
 ner than just being one of the toiling, suffering 
 masses on whom the light is shed. To travel, and 
 get impressions of art and music ; to read, and get 
 stores of literature and science ; to give lectures, 
 or write articles, or work out some social reform 
 — be honest now and tell me, is not something of 
 this sort the ideal of life that is hovering over you 
 as the best use to which a college woman can put 
 her college education ? 
 
 Now I will not attempt to deny that there is 
 beauty and worth in this ideal. All I ask is that, 
 before you accept it as the highest, you hear what 
 can be said for the humble, homely human sharing 
 of the world's experience from within, as one of 
 the rank and file. And since we have had the 
 former plea in its poetic form, to be fair, let the 
 poet plead again. 
 
 When he had spoken, humbly Idas said : 
 " After such argument what can I plead ? 
 Or what pale promise make ? Yet since it is 
 In woman to pity rather than to aspire, 
 A little I will speak." 
 
 Then comes the great statement of woman's mis- 
 sion in the world, not as one of remote and isolated 
 
THE COLLEGE WOMAN 183 
 
 illumination, as of a sun in the heavens, but of 
 sympathy, enlargement, and inspiration, as of a 
 modest common candle lighting its little sphere in 
 the surroimding dark. It does not ask for radi- 
 ance and glory to reform things from above. It 
 pleads for the comradeship and kindliness that 
 shall lift the common human task up into its infi- 
 nite and eternal significance, and make earth a 
 part of heaven ; the present the heir of all the rich- 
 ness of the past, and the promise of all the glory 
 
 that is to come. 
 
 " I love thee then 
 Not for that face that might indeed provoke 
 Invasion of old cities ; no, nor all 
 Thy freshness stealing on me like strange sleep. 
 Not for this only do I love thee, but 
 Because Infinity upon thee broods ; 
 And thou art full of whispers and of shadows. 
 Thou meanest what the sea has striven to say 
 So long, and yearned up the cliffs to tell ; 
 Thou art what all the winds have uttered not, 
 What the still night suggesteth to the heart. 
 Thy voice is like to music heard ere birth, 
 Some spirit lute touched on a spirit sea ; 
 Thy face remembered is from other worlds. 
 It has been died for, though I know not when, 
 It has been sung of, though I know not where. 
 It has the strangeness of the luring West, 
 And of sad sea-horizons; beside thee 
 I am aware of other times and lands, 
 Of birth far back, of lives in many stars. 
 O beauty lone and like a candle clear 
 In this dark country of the world ! Thou art 
 My woe, my early light, my music dying." 
 
184 THE CHOICE OF 
 
 I shall not detain you to-day to draw out at 
 length the prose equivalent of these poetic pleas. 
 I simply place before you these two alternatives : 
 to be a brilliant benefactress in some special way, 
 and to be a simple sharer, in humble helpfulness, 
 of the common human lot, lifting your little place 
 and station by the inspiration of your culture and 
 your kindliness, instead of shedding a dazzling radi- 
 ance on some vast problem of the world at large. 
 Before leaving our poet, however, I must give you 
 briefly the answer of his maiden, an answer which 
 in substance I hope will be the answer of each one 
 of you. Taking the shepherd's human hand in hers, 
 she thus addressed the god : — 
 
 " Fain would I know 
 Yon heavenly wafting through the heaven wide, 
 And the large view of the subjected seas, 
 And famous cities, and the various toil 
 Of men: all Asia at my feet spread out 
 In indolent magnificence of bloom I 
 Africa in her matted hair obscured, 
 And India in meditation plunged ! " 
 
 " But dearest, this. 
 To gild the face that from its dead looks up, 
 To shine on the rejected, and arrive 
 To women that remember in the night ; 
 Or mend with sweetest surgery the mind. 
 And yet, forgive me if I can but speak 
 Most human words." 
 
 " As yet I have known no sorrow; all my days 
 Like perfect lilies under water stir, 
 
THE COLLEGE WOMAN 185 
 
 And God has sheltered me from his own wind ; 
 The darling of his breezes I have been." 
 
 " Yet as to one inland, that dreameth lone, 
 Seafaring men with their sea^weary eyes 
 Round the inn-fire tell of some foreign land, 
 So aged men, much tossed about in life, 
 Have told me of that country. Sorrow far." 
 
 " And most I remember of all human things 
 My mother ; often as a child I pressed 
 My face against her cheek, and felt her tears ; 
 Even as she smiled on me, her eyes would fill, 
 Until my own grew ignorantly wet ; 
 And I in silence wondered at sorrow." 
 
 " Out of our sadness have we made this world 
 So beautiful." 
 
 " To all this sorrow I was bom, and since 
 Out of a human womb I came, I am 
 Not eager to forego it ; I would scorn 
 To elude the heaviness and take the joy." 
 
 The college woman who plunges immediately 
 into scholarly, artistic, literary, or even into set- 
 tlement or philanthropic work, though she sheds 
 light on the problems and comforts the sorrows 
 o£ others, in so doing is really shirking her own 
 hardest problem, and eluding for herself the most 
 trying of personal sorrows. I have not a word to 
 say against these forms of service when rightly 
 approached, but on the contrary the highest com- 
 mendation. I simply tell you that the right ap- 
 
186 THE CHOICE OF 
 
 proach to these things is not straight from a college 
 commencement. College life is abnormal; it is 
 artificially shielded. AU your days " like perfect 
 lilies under water stir." You have been these four 
 years sheltered from God's wind, the darlings of 
 his breezes. What have you known of the dreary 
 drudgery that underlies the happy life of a grow- 
 ing family of children ? What do you know of the 
 tremendous crush of cruel competition ? What do 
 you, you who have been the special objects of hun- 
 dreds of thousands of dollars of invested capital 
 and scores of expert instructors and sympathetic 
 advisers, — what do you know of the coldness and 
 hardness and indifference of a world where each is 
 supremely intent on his own selfish ends, and treats 
 you merely as an obstruction, a rival, or at best as 
 a tool ? You must bear on your own back your 
 share of the world-burden, and feel in your own 
 heart your part in the world-sorrow, in normal ex- 
 perience within the home, the shop, the market, 
 before you have the slightest possibility of being 
 able profitably to shine down upon it from above 
 with artistic radiance or social reformation. Ask 
 any editor, and he will tell you how worthless is 
 your poetic effusion ; ask any head worker and he 
 will tell you how superfluous your social service 
 must be, until in some normal relation you have 
 first learned to bear your own burden, and take 
 your fair share of the homely toil and humdrum 
 
THE COLLEGE WOMAN 187 
 
 discomfort of which every useful life is full. After 
 you have borne your own share of the world's bur- 
 den and sorrow, you may be promoted to express 
 the feelings of the world in letters, or to comfort 
 its heart in social service. But you must first serve 
 the long apprenticeship to real life, of which as yet 
 most of you have not the faintest conception. 
 
 Yet I would not leave the impression that joy is 
 to be found with Apollo, and only suffering with 
 Idas. True to life, our poet teaches us precisely 
 the reverse. ApoUo grows weary of his devotee. 
 It is not in the power of the human mind to be 
 perpetually brilliant. An ardent lover, Apollo is 
 a very exacting and indifferent husband. The 
 deeper sort of men soon learn that little real satis- 
 faction is to be gained through either intellectual 
 brilliancy or public service. They seek their deeper 
 joy in simpler ways, from more homely, fireside 
 sources! 
 
 With women the inadequacy of the literary or 
 public life to afford real happiness is much more 
 apparent. 
 
 Whether for man or for woman, but far more 
 for woman than for man, true and lasting happi- 
 ness is to be found not in the brilliant intellec- 
 tual or social performance, but in the plain hand- 
 in-hand walking with a comrade along the dusty 
 streets of daily duty, and in the peaceful glades of 
 private life. All this Marpessa has told so well in 
 
188 THE CHOICE OF 
 
 her rejection of Apollo and her acceptance of Idas, 
 that she shall be our final spokesman here to-day. 
 
 ««Ah,I 
 Should ail beside thee, Apollo, and should note 
 With eyes that would not be, but yet are dim, 
 Ever so slight a change from day to day 
 In thee my husband ; watch thee nudge thyself 
 To little offices that once were sweet. 
 I should expect thee by the Western bay, 
 Faded, not sure of thee, with desperate smiles, 
 And pitiful devices of my dress 
 Or fashion of my hair ; thou wouldst grow kind, — 
 Most bitter to a woman that was loved. 
 I must ensnare thee to my arms, and touch 
 Thy pity, to but hold thee to my heart. 
 But if I live with Idas, then we two 
 On the low earth shall prosper hand in hand 
 In odours of the open field, and live 
 In peaceful noises of the farm, and watch 
 The pastoral fields burned by the setting sun." 
 
 " Or at some festival we two 
 Will wander through the lighted city streets ; 
 And in the crowd I '11 take his arm and feel 
 Him closer for the press. So shall we live." 
 
 « There shall succeed a faithful peace; 
 Beautiful friendship tried by sun and wind, 
 Durable from the daily dust of life." 
 
 " But we shall sit with luminous holy smiles, 
 Endeared by many griefs, by many a jest. 
 And custom sweet of living side by side; 
 And full of memories not unkindly glance 
 Upon each other." 
 
THE COLLEGE WOMAN 189 
 
 " Still like old friends, glad to have met, and leave 
 Behind a wholesome memory on the earth." 
 
 You have my answer to the question concern- 
 ing the happiness of college women, and the rea- 
 sons therefor. In conclusion, to sum it all up in 
 condensed and abstract form, differentiation and 
 specialization are essential to the largest usefulness 
 and the highest happiness. The college has made' 
 you different from other people, and fitted you for 
 a highly useful and honorable service to the world, 
 and thus placed the possibility of happiness within 
 your reach. 
 
 But the consciousness of being different from 
 other people, the sense of superiority, the disposi- 
 tion to look down upon them, is highly injurious 
 to usefulness, and absolutely fatal to happiness. 
 The aristocrat, whether his aristocracy be based 
 on birth or wealth or station or culture, is always 
 an unhappy man. All the pessimists and cynics, 
 all the world-weary and the disconsolate, if you 
 probe the secret source of their complaint, betray 
 the fatal germ of aristocracy preying on their hearts. 
 There is a deep reason why this must be so. Happi- 
 ness and unhappiness register the sense of transition 
 as we go out of our constant, neutral, normal state 
 of feeling which we carry with us all the time, to 
 some state induced in us by contact with the world. 
 Now the modest person, the democrat, always finds 
 in the world outside, and in the other people in it, 
 
V 
 
 190 THE CHOICE OF 
 
 something as good as himself, or a little better; 
 consequently his sense of contact with the world is 
 always agreeable, and registers itself in the form 
 of happiness. The aristocrat, on the other hand, 
 never gets anything that is better than himself ; 
 and in the majority of his contacts he strikes what 
 he regards as worse. Hence his chronic unhappi- 
 ness, and the wail of pessimism in which he pro- 
 claims his misery to the world. 
 
 Every genuine and modest democrat, man or 
 woman, rich or poor, learned or ignorant, beautiful 
 or plain, famous or obscure, is bound to be predom- 
 inantly happy. The laws of psychology, the nature 
 of things, the constitution of the universe, the de- 
 crees of God, compel them to be happy. For every 
 touch brings a thrill of sympathy; every contact 
 expands ; every relation enlarges ; every experience 
 enriches ; every outlook uplifts ; every glance dis- 
 covers good ; every breath draws inspiration : the 
 whole world is ablaze with glory, and the meanest 
 thing and the lowliest person are links that lift 
 one into fellowship with what is felt to be better 
 than one's self, chains that draw one toward the 
 omnipresent throne of the Most High. 
 
 All persons who are tainted with the disease of 
 aristocracy, whether the fancied superiority rest on 
 birth or wealth or beauty or skill or education, 
 whether men or women, old or young, in public 
 or in private life, are bound to be at heart bitter, 
 
THE COLLEGE WOMAN 191 
 
 lonely, and unhappy. All the principlefl of psy- 
 chology, all the laws of society, all the decrees of 
 God combine to doom them to ever-present and 
 everlasting misery. Turn where they will, they 
 meet what, judged by the standard they have set 
 up within their own conceit, seems base, low, dull, 
 stupid, uninteresting. Misery is the loathsome in- 
 side of the living sepulchre of which aristocracy is 
 the whited exterior. There never was a man who 
 on any ground considered himself superior to the 
 rank and file of his fellows who was really happy. 
 And just because woman is more sensitive to these 
 personal relations, there never was a proud woman 
 who was not, as the inevitable counterpart of her 
 pride, eating her heart out in the gall of bitter- 
 ness. 
 
 There is no law of nature more inevitable, no 
 decree of God more inexorable than this, — that the 
 democrat, with his modest sense of equality and 
 his readiness for admiration and respect toward 
 his fellows, must be happy ; and that the aristocrat, 
 with his sense of superiority and habit of contempt, 
 must be wretched. You college women have some- 
 thing which the rest of the world has not. Forget 
 it, — think of the farmer, the mechanic, the clerk 
 as your brothers ; the seamstress, the shop-girl, the 
 factory hand as your sisters ; respect and reverence 
 their contribution to the world as highly as you re- 
 spect and reverence your own ; look forward to the 
 
192 THE CHOICE OF 
 
 time when, after years of apprenticesliip to real 
 life, you may do your little part with something of 
 the patient, modest, cheerful unpretentiousness and 
 genuineness with which they already are doing 
 theirs ; and they will welcome and appreciate you 
 as the most exalted of their sisters ; you will be 
 happy in your own usefulness and in the honor they 
 will freely bestow on you and the class of women 
 you represent. 
 
 On the other hand, if you dare to think of your- 
 selves as superior to them, if you draw yourselves 
 apart, if you condescend to them even to pity or 
 to serve, if you put up the bars of intellectual and 
 social aristocracy between them and you, they wiU 
 hate you, and despise you, and ridicule you ; and 
 the sense of your own isolation and alienation will 
 burn itself into your soul like a withering, scorching 
 curse. There will be no lost wretch in the slums, 
 no downtrodden drudge in the tenements, no day 
 laborer in the ditches, no obscure toiler at the looms 
 with a heavier, sadder heart than you. 
 
 The choice is momentous. The issues for the 
 individual are those of happiness or misery ; for 
 society, whether, now that the old aristocracies of 
 state and church are broken down, we shall have 
 new aristocracies of wealth and culture to corrupt 
 and embitter alike despisers and despised. The 
 college man, for the most part to-day, becomes a 
 democrat of necessity ; for there are not enough 
 
THE COLLEGE WOMAN 193 
 
 aristocratic stations to go around, and the world 
 no longer bestows a living on either hereditary 
 or professional aristocratic pretensions. May our 
 college women do in freedom what their college 
 brothers do under economic compulsion ! May they 
 be the comrades of all who labor, the sisters of all 
 who serve I 
 
The Worth of the Womanly Ideal 
 
 MR. DOOLEY once remarked to Mr. Hen- 
 nessey that in his youth he wrote a book 
 about woman ; but when in maturer life he came 
 to publish it he added at the end what the scientists 
 call Errata^ in which he requested his readers, 
 wherever in its pages they found " is " to substi- 
 tute " is not," and wherever they found " is not " to 
 substitute "may be," "perhaps," or "God knows." 
 Pretty much everything that has ever Jbeen said 
 on the subject of women's rights, whether by men 
 or women, whether on the one side or the other, 
 requires to-day the radical revision to which Mr. 
 Dooley subjected his youthful manuscript. 
 
 Though individual women still suffer grievous 
 wrongs, yet, broadly speaking, women's rights are 
 won. Women's rights are all within her grasp, or 
 at least within her reach. We can say with John 
 Davidson : — 
 
 Free to look at fact, 
 Free to come and go, 
 Free to think and act. 
 Now you surely know 
 The wrongs of womanhead 
 At last are fairly dead. 
 
WORTH OF THE WOMANLY IDEAL 195 
 
 The solution of one social problem, however, 
 prepares the way for another. Now that women 
 can have anything they want, the question arises, 
 % "^ What do women want ? What career is best for 
 them? In other words, the modern question is 
 no longer one of women's rights. It has become 
 the question of the Womanly Ideal. 
 
 When we pass from rights to ideals, when we 
 stop asking what can women be permitted to have, 
 and ask instead, what do women reaUy want, then 
 we get our answer no longer in terms of equal- 
 ity, but in terms of difference. The demand for 
 women's rights got for its answer. Let us try to 
 make men and women as nearly alike as possi- 
 ble ; let us give them the same education and set 
 them the same tasks; let us measure them by 
 the same standard and pay them in the same coin. 
 The recognition of the W^orth of the Womanly 
 Ideal wiU give us as its fulfillment a deepening of 
 the differences between men and women. It wiU 
 teach us to train men and women in different ways 
 . for different tasks. It will estimate their success 
 on an entirely different scale, — offer them differ- 
 ent rewards for success, and punish their failures 
 by different penalties. 
 
 First, what is the difference between the eco- 
 nomic ideal for men and that for women ? The most 
 fundamental distinction in economics is between 
 production and consumption. The two, though dis- 
 
196 THE WORTH OF 
 
 tinguisliable, like the convex and concave aspects 
 of a curve, are practically inseparable. Production 
 is for the sake of consumption. Consumption pre- 
 supposes production. A person who does not share 
 the proceeds of his production with others is a 
 money-mad miser. The person whose consumption 
 does not rest on production is a thieving parasite. 
 Of course production may be vicarious ; husband 
 and father producing for wife and children ; and 
 consumption may be delegated, wife or daughter 
 taking charge of the whole family expenditure. 
 
 In a broad way, subject to exceptions and quali- 
 fications to be made a little later, the manly eco- 
 nomic ideal is the effective direction of production ; 
 the womanly ideal is the beneficent ordering of 
 consumption. Let us consider the womanly ideal 
 first. 
 
 Goods are not immediately useful when produced 
 in large quantities. Food must be prepared and 
 served. The house must be furnished and kept in 
 order. Cloth must be fitted to the person who 
 is to wear it, and kept cleanly and presentable. 
 Children must be separately reared and individu- 
 ally trained. Hospitality must be extended. The 
 sick must be nursed and the aged must be cared 
 for. 
 
 The right rendering and ordering of these and 
 kindred services is woman's distinctive economic 
 function. Happy is the woman who as daughter, 
 
THE WOMANLY IDEAL 197 
 
 sister, wife, mother, finds herself excused from the 
 task of direct economic production by the gen- 
 erous devotion of father, brother, husband, or son, 
 and can find the economic justification of her life 
 in this ministry and superintendence of the common 
 household consumption. For it is a function just 
 as necessary, just as useful, just as honorable as 
 law, or banking, or commerce, or agriculture, or 
 manufacture, or transportation. It is a function for 
 which women are by nature and taste eminently 
 fitted, and for which most manly men are conspicu- 
 ously unfit. It is a wise distribution of economic 
 functions which assigns in this broad way the 
 direction of economic production to men, and the 
 ordering of economic consumption to women. 
 
 If this beneficent ordering of consumption in and 
 through a home which is provided by the productive 
 labor of others is the best opportunity for the 
 expression of the womanly ideal, what remains for 
 the women, of whom there are some five million in 
 this country, who are compelled to earn the whole 
 or a portion of their living ? They of course must 
 seek employment. What sort of employment shall 
 they seek? 
 
 In attempting to answer this question, you must 
 allow me to make one somewhat technical distinc- 
 tion, — the distinction between production for im- 
 mediate consumption, in a specific locality, for per- 
 sons who are well known, and with whom there is 
 
198 THE WORTH OF 
 
 or can be established some personal relationship, on 
 the one hand ; and production for what economists 
 call the speculative market, " conjunctive produc- 
 tion," as the German economists call it ; production 
 which is determined by the play of world-forces, 
 for a general market, in unrestricted competition 
 with every other producer. Examples of produc- 
 tion for immediate consumption are nursing, domes- 
 tic service, teaching, type-writing, retailing in small 
 communities, work for wages or salaries in factories 
 or offices, the practice of medicine, acting, music, 
 the management of such local industries as serve 
 patrons personally known to the manager. In all 
 these forms of production for immediate consump- 
 tion, the fidelity, the thoroughness, the tact, the 
 courtesy, the sympathy, the aesthetic sense and so- 
 cial grace of woman give her a certain advantage 
 which partly or wholly — and sometimes more than 
 wholly — offsets the superior physical strength of 
 man. 
 
 These are the careers in which women who have 
 to earn their own living, or that of persons depend- 
 ent upon them, will find their best satisfaction and 
 success. A woman can succeed in these callings ; 
 and what is of more consequence, she can succeed 
 with no loss of that generous interest and kindly ser- 
 vice for others which is such an essential part of the 
 womanly ideal. Indeed, in aU these callings women 
 contrive to become more rather than less womanly. 
 
THE WOMANLY IDEAL 199 
 
 enlarging the circle of those whom they love and 
 serve with true womanly devotion to include their 
 pupils, their employers, their customers, their pa- 
 trons, and their patients. 
 
 What then remains exclusively for men ? From 
 what economic activities does the womanly ideal 
 exclude woman altogether? This exclusively mas- 
 culine sphere is production on the large scale, pro- 
 duction for the speculative market, conjunctive 
 production; production in competition and colli- 
 sion with the vast, shifting, hostile, stubborn facts 
 and forces of the world. 
 
 Here woman is doomed to financial failure if she 
 enters the arena, and even if she should succeed 
 financially, as in one case in ten thousand I should 
 admit that she might, it would be at a cost to her 
 physical health or to her personal character and 
 womanly nature which would make her financial 
 success more pathetic than financial failure. To 
 this statement I of course admit the rare exception. 
 Indeed, when I go to New York I sometimes call 
 on a lady, an old friend of my school-days, who has 
 made a fortune in mining, and is secretary and di- 
 rector of several successful mining enterprises, and 
 whom I find as charming as ever. But then when 
 I come back to Boston I find one of my Harvard 
 classmates a very successful dressmaker, having 
 made a good deal more money in this business than 
 most of us who have followed more masculine vo- 
 
200 THE WORTH OF 
 
 cations. One case is just as extremely exceptional 
 as the other, and neither invalidates the general 
 principle that mining is on the whole a masculine, 
 and dressmaking a feminine vocation. 
 
 These exclusively masculine vocations, such as 
 mining, manufacturing, transportation, law, bank- 
 ing, commerce, wholesale trade, involve a degree of 
 strain, a kind of contact, a sort of emotional and men- 
 tal attitude which not one woman in a million can 
 stand without either disaster or deterioration. For 
 the producer of a general commodity comes into in- 
 tense competition with everybody in his line of busi- 
 ness. He is exposed to severe strain, enormous risk, 
 frequent quarrels, perpetual antagonism. He must 
 be constantly alert to adapt methods and processes 
 to changing conditions and varying demands. He 
 must make important decisions instantaneously ; 
 take risks by telegraph which hang in the balance 
 between profit and loss for weeks and months ; 
 strike hard blows swiftly ; deal resolutely with dis- 
 honest contractors, insolvent debtors, striking work- 
 men, incompetent agents, unscrupulous competitors, 
 corrupt politicians, fickle customers, treacherous 
 friends, and secret enemies almost every day of his 
 active business life. In this strife of contending 
 interests, where good and bad meet on equal terms, 
 asking no favor and giving no quarter, in the face 
 of enmity and calumny, fraud and deception, men 
 manage to turn out their product, and make their 
 
THE WOMANLY IDEAL 201 
 
 enterprises a success, without a very large propor- 
 tion of physical breakdowns, and without the de- 
 struction of their personal character. Under these 
 conditions the normal woman could not succeed in 
 more than one case in ten thousand ; and even then 
 she would be almost sure to perish on one of the 
 two rocks that guard this narrow passage, — nervous 
 prostration or hardening of heart. No law to-day 
 forbids a woman from entering these competitive 
 careers. The womanly ideal forbids it; and it does 
 so on the ground that the womanly ideal is of such 
 supreme worth, to herseK and to her children, to 
 her family and to the world, that she ought not to 
 run the risk of losing it for the sake of the largest 
 rewards these competitive careers hold out to the 
 winners. 
 
 The feminine ideal, to make toil tolerable, and 
 leisure enjoyable, and home habitable, and, in Ste- 
 venson's phrase, life livable, by the beneficent 
 ordering of consumption, and the gentle ministry 
 to individual persons, whether in the home or in 
 some not too exacting and impersonal vocation, — 
 this is so supremely precious that the woman who 
 risks it for an attempt to imitate or rival the activ- 
 ities of men in conjunctive production wrongs her 
 own soul, and in so doing robs the world of her 
 most distinctive and valuable contribution. 
 
 In scholarship this same distinction between pro- 
 duction and the beneficent ordering of consumption 
 
202 THE WORTH OF 
 
 will guide us to the distinction between the mas- 
 culine and the feminine ideals. It is needless to 
 say that the pretty ignoramus, the regular-featured 
 nonentity, has ceased to be either the ideal women 
 cherish for themselves, or the one which men have 
 for them. We all agree that there should be ele- 
 mentary education for all women ; secondary edu- 
 cation for those whose parents can afford to give 
 it to them ; college education for those who have 
 the financial means and physical health ; graduate 
 education for those who add to these qualifica- 
 tions marked capacity in some special line. Having 
 granted these rights, the question remains. What 
 is the ideal for women, and how does it differ 
 from the ideal for men ? 
 
 Women are larger consumers and better dis- 
 tributors of knowledge than men. They read more 
 books, and get more satisfaction out of intellectual 
 pursuits than men. Put boys and girls together in 
 school and college, and if you are foolish enough 
 to give them their relative rank, and to offer them 
 prizes, the girls will win much more than their 
 proportion. Indeed many coeducational institutions 
 have been forced to put up some sort of protec- 
 tive barrier in order to give the poor boys half a 
 chance. The problem of women's education is not, 
 as in the case of men, to provide spurs for the 
 flanks of laziness, and blinders against temptations 
 to dissipation, but to devise sufficiently effective 
 
THE WOMANLY IDEAL 203 
 
 checks and hold-backs to keep them from drafting 
 off into intellectual and social activities the vital- 
 ity which nature intrusted to them for more funda- 
 mental functions. The one danger is that woman, 
 driven by keen intellectual ambition, and backed 
 by an uncompromising conscience, will spend so 
 freely of her vital forces on study, and the social 
 interests which study stimulates, that she will 
 lose what for her are infinitely more important, 
 — healthy outdoor life, superabundant physical 
 vigor, democratic interests, cheerful temper. Piti- 
 ful beyond expression is the mistake of those 
 women who squander the wealth of physical vital- 
 ity meant for twenty generations to gain some 
 paltry academic honor or ephemeral social success. 
 Terrible are the penalties nature exacts, — muscu- 
 lar flabbiness, nervous exhaustion, sharp-featured 
 irritability, flat-chested sterility. The over-ambi- 
 tious society girl or schoolgirl who diverts into 
 channels of her individual social vanity or intel- 
 lectual ambition, during the first few years of her 
 lifetime, what nature lent her as a trust for the 
 benefit of future generations, is guilty of a sin 
 against the fountain-head of humanity, a crime 
 against the race. And the fact that this crime is 
 being committed by thousands of the most sweet- 
 natured, conscientious, and self-sacrificing girls in 
 the civilized world does not in the least mitigate the 
 heinous nature of the offense, nor will it diminish 
 
204 THE WORTH OF 
 
 by a single stripe the inexorable penalty which out- 
 raged nature will exact. In her own interest, in 
 the interest of her family, and in the interest of the 
 race, woman's education shoidd never be permitted 
 to intrench on perfect health, normal functions, 
 habitual cheerfulness, contagious happiness. The 
 high school is far more perilous than the college ; 
 and it is at this stage of their education that girls 
 need most careful protection against the combined 
 strain of severe mental work and absorbing social 
 interests. 
 
 Of course standards of attainment must be main- 
 tained for women as for men. But beyond know- 
 ing whether she has passed or failed to pass the 
 minimum requirement, no school or college girl 
 ought to be bothered with the knowledge of whether 
 her rank is high or low in comparison with that 
 of other boys and girls ; and she should never be 
 tempted by the offer of a prize. These spurs, which 
 may be necessary for indolent and conscienceless 
 boys, are mischievous and injurious when applied 
 to responsive and often over-ambitious girls. No 
 trace of the competitive element should enter into 
 the education of girls. So far as possible they 
 should be tested by regular performance from day 
 to day, rather than subjected to the strain of high- 
 pressure examination periods on which their intel- 
 lectual fate is supposed to hang. A larger immu- 
 nity from abstruse subjects like mathematics should 
 
THE WOMANLY IDEAL 205 
 
 Le accorded to those who have no taste for these 
 studies. They should be encouraged, wherever health 
 seems to require it, to take a four years* course 
 in five years ; and they should have greater free- 
 dom as to when to attend and when not to attend 
 exercises. Healthy and happy enjoyment of study, 
 without external stimulus, and in freedom from 
 all competitive considerations, are the educational 
 ideals at which high schools and colleges should 
 aim in their dealing with girls. Boys and girls 
 are very different, and the methods of their educa- 
 tion should be different. What is wholesome medi- 
 cine for one is fatal poison for the other. In educa- 
 tion as elsewhere, now that equal rights have been 
 won, differing ideals is the next stage of advance. 
 
 What, then, is the womanly as distinct from the 
 manly ideal in scholarship ? What is the beneficent 
 ordering of intellectual consumption ? It is the 
 appreciation and appropriation of whatever is true 
 and interesting in science, literature, art, and na- 
 ture, and the interpretation and expression of these 
 things so that they may become interesting and 
 enjoyable to others. Intelligent conversation, oral 
 reading, the rendering of music, certain forms of 
 art, dramatic representation, discussion of social 
 questions, and especially the training and teaching 
 of children, — these are some of the intellectual 
 services an educated woman can render; and in 
 many of these woman is superior to man. In cer- 
 
206 THE WORTH OF 
 
 tain forms of story-telling, character-delineation, 
 and description women writers are supreme. 
 
 If this appropriation and transmission of the 
 treasures of truth and beauty is woman's distinc- 
 tive province ; if more and more of this high func- 
 tion is being given over into woman's hands, as all 
 our statistics of teaching show that it is, what in- 
 tellectual province remains for men ? 
 
 A very important, a very arduous, if less con- 
 spicuous and less popular part remains, and prob- 
 ably will remain almost exclusively in the hands 
 of men, — the part of productive scholarship. By 
 productive scholarship is meant the power to grasp 
 as a whole some great department of human know- 
 ledge ; keep abreast of every advance that is made 
 in it ; from time to time add some contribution to 
 it, and above all so vitally to incorporate it, so 
 vigorously to react upon it, and so systematically 
 to organize it, that the scholar puts his individual 
 stamp upon it, and compels whoever would master 
 the subject to reckon with the individual form 
 which he has given to it. Productive scholarship 
 of this high sort is very rare, whether in men or 
 women. Its price is very high, — in time and 
 strength, in withdrawal from other interests and 
 concentration upon one's chosen subject, in sacri- 
 fice of domestic and social claims. 
 
 In these days no one disputes the right of women 
 to pursue this exacting ideal of productive scholar- 
 
THE WOMANLY IDEAL 207 
 
 ship, no one denies that a few very exceptional 
 women have succeeded in attaining it : enough, in- 
 deed, to supply our few women's colleges with pro- 
 fessors who are productive scholars. This gift, rare 
 in men, is, however, far more rare in women. Su- 
 preme in acquisition, unequaled in transmission and 
 distribution, when it comes to this distinctively 
 creative act, this organizing of facts in the light of 
 the universal principles which bind them into sys- 
 tematic unity, women as a rule have far less of this 
 essential of productive scholarship than men. The 
 very tendencies which make them win more than 
 their share of the prizes in the high school and the 
 receptive college courses become their handicap 
 when they enter the graduate school, and still more 
 when they attempt to compose music, or write 
 dramas, or produce scientific treatises, or narrate 
 a nation's history. It is not a defect, but it is a 
 difference. The absorption and communication of 
 details as details make woman as a rule a better 
 teacher in the elementary grades of teaching than 
 man can ever be. The grasp of underlying general 
 principles often unfits the productive scholar for 
 elementary instruction. This differentiation of func- 
 tion is a decree of nature, and one which it is use- 
 less for us to fight against, and highly profitable 
 for us to recognize, — for nineteen women out of 
 every twenty who set before themselves the ideal 
 of productive scholarship will be doomed to disap- 
 
208 THE WORTH OF 
 
 pointment. They will make vast acquisitions, and 
 impart them to others skillfully and effectively; 
 only the very exceptional few will achieve that or- 
 ganic insight, that masterly unification, which will 
 make their contribution to the subject individual 
 and enduring. 
 
 Still, while productive scholarship is so rare a 
 gift in women that nothing less than the most un- 
 mistakable compulsion of genius should ever lead 
 a woman to stake her happiness and success in life 
 on its achievement, some women have this capacity, 
 and as we all agree a perfect right to its exercise. 
 Then arises the further question. Can she afford to 
 follow this ideal, even if there is a prospect of suc- 
 cess ? Is success worth achieving, considering the 
 high cost at which it comes ? I am not speaking of 
 the writing of stories and verses, and kindred forms 
 of serving up nature and human experience for 
 agreeable consumption, in which women easily and 
 conspicuously excel. I am speaking of strictly sci- 
 entific work. We have already seen what an ab- 
 straction from life, what an absorption in dry and 
 dreary details, what a withdrawal from the lighter 
 and gayer sides of life this usually involves for 
 men. Knowing this tremendous cost, could you 
 wish it for a daughter whom you love ? Can you 
 choose it for any considerable nmnber of women ? 
 For my part, I think not. It is neither for the 
 happiness of individual women nor for the welfare 
 
THE WOMANLY IDEAL 209 
 
 of the world that many should set their hearts 
 upon productive scholarship as the goal of their 
 ambition or the test of their success. 
 
 I have in mind a woman who received, on grad- 
 uation from college, the highest academic honor 
 then attainable in this country, became a favorite 
 pupil of learned German professors, and published 
 an erudite treatise on the most out-of-the-way and 
 unprofitable subject which German ingenuity could 
 set a promising pupil to studying. She had every 
 prospect of distinction as a grammarian and philo- 
 logist. Suddenly she gave up all aspiration in this 
 direction with the remark, " The price of produc- 
 tive scholarship is one few women can afford to 
 pay," and entered heartily and enthusiastically into 
 all womanly interests and social enjoyments. She 
 felt that she could do either one of these two things, 
 but could not carry both together, and she chose 
 the womanly in preference to the scholastically 
 productive as the better part. To be sure she con- 
 tinued to be a imiversity professor for several years. 
 From a fairly intimate acquaintance with her both 
 before and after this change in ideal and ambition, 
 I am confident that she lived a vastly happier life 
 herself, and contributed a vast deal more that was 
 of value to the world, by this deliberate abandon- 
 ment of the ideal of scholarly production, and the 
 acceptance of the ideal of giving and receiving in- 
 tellectual and social enjoyment. Woman sells her 
 
210 THE WORTH OF 
 
 birthright for a mess of miserable pottage when- 
 ever she sacrifices her womanly ideals of perfect 
 health for self and offspring, radiating happiness 
 for herself and her family and friends, for aca- 
 demic honor, or public fame, or social distinction. 
 
 There will always be some scholarly and admin- 
 istrative work, some speaking on platforms, some 
 organization of clubs, some leadership in social 
 movements for women to do ; and there will always 
 be raised up women who, while their hearts are set 
 on higher and better things, will do these things 
 brilliantly and effectively, modestly confessing to 
 themselves and to their intimate friends that all 
 these things are for them merely a second best. 
 All honor to these noble women who do such manly 
 work with no loss of loyalty to the distinctive 
 womanly ideals. 
 
 But woe to the woman who for an instant lets 
 herself suppose that these things in themselves 
 are her supreme ideals, who sighs for them if she 
 has them not, or is vain or even contented if she 
 has them alone. In scholarship and the public life 
 to which scholarship affords the introduction, man 
 and woman have equally honorable though dif- 
 ferently specialized faculties and functions ; and 
 though in actual practice there will be considerable 
 interchange of work, there never ought to be the 
 slightest confusion of ideals. Men must be judged 
 mainly by the work they do, and forgiven for what 
 
THE WOMANLY IDEAL 211 
 
 they are not. Women must be judged for what they 
 are, and for the happiness that radiates from their 
 presence ; and even when to what they are and 
 what they give they add conspicuous performance, 
 we shall continue to esteem them not for the work 
 performed, but for the love and joy that shine 
 through their life and work. Man's intellectual 
 work is done like the work of a mill-stream, by 
 conscious and deliberate direction. Woman's in- 
 tellectual work is done chiefly like that of the sun, 
 — by unconscious and unpretentious radiation. 
 
 In politics the distinction between production 
 and consumption likewise will guide us to a true 
 discrimination between the manly and the womanly 
 ideal. No one to-day expects or desires woman to 
 be a mere passive spectator of public events. Public 
 sentiment rules the Republic; and in the formsu- 
 tion and direction of public sentiment woman is 
 expected to do her full share. On questions of 
 personal and public morality, on all questions of 
 education, on questions that affect the family, on 
 questions of health and sanitation, on questions 
 that involve peace or war, on questions of parks 
 and playgrounds, on questions of child labor, on 
 questions of honest and efficient administration, 
 woman's interest is as great, and her influence on 
 public sentiment ought to be as potent, as the in- 
 fluence of man. The woman who cares for none of 
 these things is unfit for the distinctively domestic 
 
212 THE WORTH OF 
 
 duties, unworthy to train the children of the Re- 
 public. 
 
 Because at these and similar points woman feels 
 the effects of good or bad government more in- 
 tensely; because she is more sensitive to the suf- 
 fering caused by bad measures and the happiness 
 insured by good measures and good institutions, or 
 in other words, because she is the more appreciative 
 and discriminating consumer of the benefits which 
 good government confers, her intelligent interest in 
 these matters, her honest praise, her frank criticism, 
 her individual and collective expression of judgment, 
 are most welcome and valuable additions to the 
 forces which make for good government and free 
 institutions. When in social settlements she comes 
 into close first-hand contact with the darker side of 
 our civilization, then she speaks with an authority 
 on certain aspects of the social problem which men, 
 if they are wise, must implicitly obey. 
 
 More important than all this, however, is the 
 service which modest, unassuming women render 
 in their families and homes, by making home so 
 sweet a place, famUy ties so dear a bond, that they 
 give to country its tenderest associations and its 
 most priceless worth ; so that men count it a glo- 
 rious privilege to serve and labor, and live and die 
 to upbuild and defend their native land. If men 
 furnish the power by which, women contribute the 
 ends for which, the country is maintained. Though 
 
THE WOMANLY IDEAL 213 
 
 of a different order, these quiet, silent, modest ser- 
 vices of women are no less vital and no less honor- 
 able than the services of men in legislative haUs or 
 on the field of battle. 
 
 On the other hand, political production, the 
 formulation of public policy, the enactment and 
 enforcement of law, the administration of the 
 machinery of government, the conduct of diplo- 
 macy and war, the imposition of taxes and the 
 appropriation of revenue, the appointment and 
 direction of the vast army of employees in the civil 
 service is best left in the hands of men. For all 
 this is simply business on a grand scale, compli- 
 cated, however, by the corruption of spoilsmen, the 
 heat of party strife, the vicious notion that getting 
 something for nothing out of the public is not quite 
 the same thing as stealing from one's neighbor. 
 
 All this is rough work. To accomplish the ideal 
 is out of the question. The best one can do is to 
 aim at justice, and get as much of it accomplished 
 as the men one has to deal with and the conditions 
 under which one has to work will permit. Mistakes 
 are unavoidable, compromises are inevitable, asso- 
 ciation with corrupt and dishonest men unescapable. 
 
 Now the plain fact is that men can bring a fairly 
 decent order out of this moral chaos, and they can 
 do it without serious impairment of their personal 
 character. Between standing out for an impossible 
 abstract perfection, on the one hand, and letting 
 
214 THE WORTH OF 
 
 evil go unhindered and unpunished, men know how 
 to steer a middle course which gives good govern- 
 ment and just laws on the whole, and puts a limit 
 if not an end to fraud and corruption. 
 
 Women as a rule, by the very fineness of their 
 nature, the sharpness of their moral distinctions, 
 the uncompromising character of their personal 
 likes and dislikes, are unfitted for this task of get- 
 ting the best that is practically attainable out of 
 conditions where abstract insistence on the ideal 
 best often only amounts to practical surrender to 
 the actual worst. I should admit rare exceptions 
 here as everywhere. But not one woman in ten 
 thousand is by nature fitted to enter this arena 
 without either injury to the public or else harden- 
 ing and deterioration for herself. 
 
 The separation of production and consumption 
 - — of efficient cause by which and of final cause for 
 which the Kepublic is maintained — is grounded 
 in an eternal distinction of nature which runs in- 
 finitely deeper than any question of merely formal 
 right. The arrangement by which women mould 
 sentiment, and men cast and count the ballots that 
 register it, by which men make laws and women 
 inspire the loyalty and self-control that obeys them, 
 by which women give to institutions a sacredness 
 which makes men glad to lay down their lives in 
 their defense, is a wise and beneficent arrangement ; 
 and any tinkering of men or meddling of women 
 
THE WOMANLY IDEAL 216 
 
 to bring about a change or confusion of these func- 
 tions will involve a weakening of men and a coars- 
 ening of women, and tend toward the deterioration 
 of society and the downfall of the state. 
 
 In politics, as in business and scholarship, the 
 question is not one of abstract rights. The only- 
 foundation of right is the good. If women would 
 be happier, and make happier homes, if they could 
 contribute a refining influence to politics without 
 becoming themselves coarsened and hardened by 
 dwelling in the atmosphere of selfishness and strife, 
 if unrestricted participation in politics was what any 
 considerable number of sane women wanted for 
 themselves, or any sane men wanted for their wives 
 and sisters and daughters, of course they could have 
 it for the asking. But the work to be done, the 
 conditions under which it must be done, are so for- 
 eign to the true feminine ideal, and the feminine 
 ideal is of so much more value to the country and 
 to the world than any poor, ineffectual attempt to 
 imitate the masculine ideal ever could be, that we 
 may confidently trust that the day when women will 
 desert the feminine for the masculine contribution 
 to the pohtical life of the country is put farther off 
 by every attempted agitation in its behalf. The 
 more woman's true contribution to national preserva- 
 tion, national integrity, and national honor is rightly 
 appreciated, the more all sane men and wise women 
 will unite in the determination that it shall never 
 
216 THE WORTH OF 
 
 be abandoned or exchanged for the slight and dubi- 
 ous addition she might make to political legislation 
 and administration. The more we respect and honor 
 woman, the more we shall understand that she al- 
 ready has what, if a different, is a coordinate part 
 and privilege in determining the character and des- 
 tiny of the Republic. 
 
 The masculine and the feminine ideals are equally 
 precious; and we respect and preserve their pre- 
 ciousness, not by merging them into a neutral and 
 colorless identity, but by emphasizing to the utmost 
 the deep distinctions between them. You confer no 
 favor upon two mountains by filling up the valley 
 between them, but rather reduce them both to the 
 dead level of a monotonous and uninteresting table- 
 land. In industry and education, in politics and in 
 religion, our aim henceforth should be not toward 
 a stupid equality, with interchange of imitated func- 
 tions, but toward differentiation, — giving as far as 
 possible the direction and control of economic pro- 
 duction to strong and forceful men, and the super- 
 intendence and ministry of consumption to wise and 
 gentle women ; giving for the most part the hard, 
 dry task of scholarly investigation and formulation 
 to the absorbing and protracted toil of men, and 
 the appreciation of results and the impartation of 
 established knowledge to the quick wits of women ; 
 giving the strife and turmoil, the compromise and 
 diplomacy of politics to the firm will and sound 
 
THE WOMANLY IDEAL 217 
 
 judgment of men, and the things that make a 
 country worth living and dying for to the warm 
 hearts of our women. 
 
 f Still though thus clearly distinguishable, like the 
 convex and concave aspects of our curve, these two 
 are inseparable. Each requires the grafting upon it 
 of the virtues of the other to make itseK complete. 
 When we are once assured that the boy is strong, 
 sturdy, brave, resolute, a hard worker, a fierce 
 fighter, a close thinker, a clear reasoner, then the 
 more aesthetic gi*ace and social charm he inherits 
 from his mother, or borrows from his own or other 
 people's sisters, the better. But after all we really 
 weigh and measure him in terms of the manly 
 ideal; and no adventitious feminine accomplish- 
 ments can save him from our contempt, if he has 
 given in exchange for them aught of masculine 
 ruggedness and manly power to make his wiU effec- 
 tive in the hard world of stubborn physical facts 
 and hostile human forces. 
 
 (Precisely so, when once we are assured that the 
 woman holds the womanly ideals of modest ministry, 
 generous sympathy, unselfish service and unnoted 
 sacrifice closest to her heart, then we are glad if 
 to these she adds business efficiency, scholarly at- 
 tainments, public influence. All we insist upon is 
 simply this: that as the manly ideal is so essential 
 to man that in comparison with it for him all fem- 
 inine graces and embellishments are but as the dust 
 
218 WORTH OF THE WOMANLY IDEAL 
 
 in the balance, so for woman the womanly ideal is 
 the one thing needful ; and however much she may 
 add to it in the way of masculine achievement, the 
 womanly ideal remains to the end the only and all- 
 sufficient condition of her real happiness and her 
 highest usefulness ; her unique ar i supreme claim 
 to personal friendship and affection, to social con- 
 sideration and esteem. So precious to woman her- 
 self, so priceless to the world, is the inalienable 
 worth of the womanly ideaL\ y 
 
XI 
 
 The Earnings of College Graduates 
 
 THE value of a college education cannot be 
 measured in money. No graduate would give 
 up what his college education has done for him, if 
 offered two or three times his present remunera- 
 tion in exchange. To do so would be selling a large 
 part of his soul. Neither does any worthy grad- 
 uate select his vocation mainly with a view to the 
 remuneration it will bring. He chooses the voca- 
 tion which appeals to his capacity and interest. 
 
 Still the pecuniary aspects of college education" 
 and professional success are interesting, and may 
 serve to reassure persons who for themselves or their 
 children choose college and vocation on higher 
 grounds. I have asked such of the graduates of 
 Bowdoin College as were willing to do so to give 
 me their annual earnings, their class, and their vo- 
 cation. Of those who are engaged in remunerative 
 employment 774, which is about half the number 
 of graduates in such employment, have replied. 
 The replies give earnings, not income, — which 
 in most cases would be considerably more. Those 
 whose earnings are largest, for obvious reasons were 
 most reluctant to reply. Although several are earn- 
 ing more than 117,000, none who were earning 
 
220 THE EARNINGS OF 
 
 more than that amount replied. In the case of 
 journalism the number engaged in that profession 
 is too small to make the returns valuable ; and the 
 fact that there are two or three exceptionally suc- 
 cessful editors in this smaU number gives to the 
 results in that profession a more optimistic aspect 
 than wider induction would confirm. While returns 
 from haK the graduates of a single college are not 
 conclusive, yet in a general way they indicate the 
 pecuniary value of a coUege education, and the 
 relative remuneration to be obtained in different 
 professions. 
 
 The table gives the result classified by decades, 
 and also by vocations. Vocations represented by 
 not more than ten persons, like civil engineering 
 and farming, are classified as miscellaneous. Since 
 the first ten years are hardly a fair test, I have 
 added to the averages for each decade, and for the 
 total period, the average for those who have been 
 out of college more than ten years. This latter 
 average is the most instructive. It shows that, after 
 the first ten years, medicine leads, with an average 
 remuneration of $4687. Law comes second, with 
 $4577. Journalism third (though as explained this 
 is probably misleading), with f4271. Business 
 fourth, with 13790. Banking fifth, with 13718. 
 Government Employment sixth, with $3230. 
 Miscellaneous pursuits seventh, with $2867. Ed- 
 ucation eighth, with $2258. The Ministry ninth 
 
COLLEGE GRADUATES 
 
 221 
 
 •ps^oi 
 
 lO CO e^ eo 
 
 eo «o S 
 
 'snoaireiiaoBiH 
 
 •!)n8ai/Coic[ma 
 
 r-l C< Cq (N «0 « 
 
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 *689inBns 
 
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 *Qisi|viunof 
 
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 2 g 
 
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 *Xj!^8nii|{ 
 
 s i s I 
 
 cq c^ 00 eo 
 
 '9inaipd]\[ 
 
 s ^ 
 
 •M.VJ 
 
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 •9391100 
 
 § §§ 
 
 O -| -81189^ U9I 
 
 T ■§ MAO 98anoo 
 »o H }0 ^no 
 
222 EARNINGS OF COLLEGE GRADUATES 
 
 and last, with $1559. (.The average earnings of the 
 493 persons reporting who have been out of college 
 more than ten years is $3356. 
 
 Medicine is the profession in which one may 
 acquire considerable earning power most quickly, 
 though the earning capacity of the lawyer holds out 
 better in the later years. 
 
 In law, medicine, journalism, business, and mis- 
 cellaneous pursuits the best period is from thirty to 
 forty years out of coUege ; that is, between the ages 
 of fifty and sixty. In the ministry, on the other 
 hand, this period, with the exception of the first 
 and last years, is least remunerative of all. 
 
 While in the earlier years the college graduate 
 
 I, like other people, a hard struggle financially, 
 earning on an average only $1312 during the first 
 ten years ; yet after that time he earns much more 
 than the average man of good heredity and good 
 '^opportunities who has not had a college education, 
 land his earning power holds out well through life.*S 
 
XII 
 
 A Great College President 
 
 CONSIDERED merely as a literary product, 
 the collected educational addresses of Presi- 
 dent Eliot, published in book form, are in no wise 
 remarkable. The unit of his style is the word ; 
 that is always exact, always weighty. Hence in 
 inscriptions and characterizations where heroic 
 achievements are cast into a sentence or a scholarly 
 career is coined into a phrase, he is incomparable. 
 In " Educational Reform " there is an occasional gem 
 like this : " Two kinds of men make good teachers, 
 — young men and men who never grow old." For 
 the most part, however, we get plain truths plainly 
 stated, with little of that magic power to light up 
 present facts with glowing reminiscences of kindred 
 facts and fancies drawn from far-off lands and days, 
 and to set the sentences to throbbing in rhythmic 
 sympathy with the pulsations of the thought, which 
 makes literary form as precious as the substance 
 it conveys. Nor is the sum total of ideas set forth 
 so very great. One who undertakes to read the col- 
 lection through consecutively is soon reminded of 
 the jury lawyer's remark, " Reiteration is the only 
 effective figure of speech." 
 
 Nevertheless, this book marks with absolute pre- 
 
224 A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 
 
 cision our one great educational epoch. For the 
 author is no mere essayist or orator. As we flock 
 to hear Nansen's lectures, not for their literary 
 charm or the range of new information they con- 
 vey, but because we want to see the man who flung 
 his ideas in the face of incredulous geographical 
 societies, and built them into the Fram, and froze 
 them into the ice floe, and drifted on them month 
 after month, and drove them into his dogs in that 
 last desperate dash for the pole, — so here we see 
 the man who for thirty critical years, as prime 
 minister of our educational realm, has defied pre- 
 judice, conquered obstacles, lived down opposition, 
 and reorganized our entire educational system from 
 top to bottom. As Wordsworth said of his French 
 revolutionary friend, Beaupuis, we feel that our 
 educational institutions are 
 
 standing on the brink 
 Of some great trial, and we bear the voice 
 Of one devoted, one wbom circumstance 
 Hath called upon to embody his deep sense 
 In action, give it outwardly a shape, 
 And that of benediction, to the world. 
 
 The one supremely eloquent feature of these 
 essays and addresses is the dates they bear. To 
 appreciate their significance, it is necessary to re- 
 call briefly educational history since he became 
 President of Harvard. Our first witness shall be 
 the Harvard Catalogue for the year 1869-70. 
 
A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 225 
 
 Tbere is a single set of requirements for admis- 
 sion : the traditional Latin, Greek, and mathema- 
 tics, with so much ancient history as, in the words 
 of the President, "a clever boy could commit to 
 memory in three or four days." Though some dozen 
 electives are offered in each of the last three years, 
 yet the backbone of the curriculum consists of 
 prescribed studies^ supposed to be equally essential 
 and profitable for all. Among the many things 
 required of Freshmen are Champlin's " First Prin- 
 ciples of Ethics " and Bulfinch's " Evidences of 
 Christianity." "The Student's Gibbon, about 
 twenty selected chapters," " Stewart's Philosophy 
 of the Mind, about 350 pages," and " Cooke's 
 Chemical Philosophy, about 180 pages," are among 
 the half-dozen things all Sophomores are compelled 
 to learn. "Bowen's Logic, 313 pages, Reid's 
 Essays (selections), Hamilton's Metaphysics, 300 
 pages, and Lardner's Optics, chapters i-vii, xiii, 
 and portions of chapter xiv," are required of all 
 Juniors. Li the first term of Senior year the re- 
 quirements are, " Philosophy, Bowen's Ethics and 
 Metaphysics, Bowen's Political Economy, Modem 
 History, Guizot's and Arnold's Lectures, Story's 
 Abridged Commentaries on the Constitution ; " 
 and in the second term, " History, Hallam's Middle 
 Ages, one volume, Religious Instruction, Political 
 Economy, Bowen's finished." It is not so much 
 the extent as the nature of these requirements — 
 
226 A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 
 
 the large place given to metaphysics, and that of 
 a single school in dogmatic form, finally narrowed 
 down to the single learned author in charge of the 
 department ; the specification of the precise num- 
 ber of pages and fractions of a chapter ; the fact 
 that instruction in science is primarily concerned 
 with pages and chapters anyway ; and the notion 
 that whether in one book or many a subject like 
 political economy can be " finished " — that makes 
 us rub our eyes and look twice at the title-page, to 
 see if this indeed can be a catalogue of Harvard 
 under President Eliot. 
 
 Against this hide-bound uniformity, this dead 
 prescription, this dogmatism of second-rate minds, 
 this heterogeneous aggregate of unrelated frag- 
 ments of instruction, elementary from beginning to 
 end, by which, as he says, " the managers of Amer- 
 ican colleges have made it impossible for the stu- 
 dent to get a thorough knowledge of any subject 
 whatever," the young President hurled his ideas of 
 liberty in the choice of studies ; absolute freedom 
 of investigation in teacher and taught; science by 
 first-hand observation and fresh experiment and 
 careful induction ; philosophy and religion by can- 
 did criticism of all proposed solutions of the prob- 
 lems of the spiritual life ; the supreme worth of 
 the differences of individuals from one another in 
 aptitude for acquisition and capacity for service. 
 This, which has been one of his greatest contri- 
 
A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 227 
 
 butions to education, was not so hard a task to 
 accomplish at Harvard as it would have been else- 
 where ; for a respectable beginning had already 
 been made, and the needed funds for its develop- 
 ment were forthcoming; yet it was not without 
 hard and steady fighting for each inch of ground 
 that the principle was finally established through- 
 out the college, when the Freshman work became 
 largely elective in 1884. The triumph of the prin- 
 ciple in the matter of requirements for admission, 
 with all the added reality and life that it brings to 
 secondary instruction, did not find complete accept- 
 ance with the faculty until 1897. 
 
 In the meantime President Eliot was fighting 
 the same battle in behalf of the colleges of the 
 country at large. Though wielding the enormous 
 power and resources of Harvard with tremendous 
 vigor, and making every move redound to her glory 
 and advantage, he has ever had the most generous 
 desire that others should share in whatever good 
 thing Harvard has wrought out. Doubtless his 
 mode of tendering his assistance has been open to 
 misunderstanding on the part of those who did not 
 know the man. Year after year, from 1870 down 
 to 1888, he went into the Association of New Eng- 
 land Colleges, pointing out to the representatives 
 of sister institutions the defects of prescription and 
 the blessings of freedom. A single specimen of 
 the frankness he was wont to exercise in the pre- 
 
228 A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 
 
 sentation of this theme is preserved in an essay 
 now reprinted from the " Century Magazine " for 
 1884, in which he says : " No knowledge of either 
 French or German is required for admission to 
 Yale College, and no instruction is provided in 
 either language before the beginning of the Junior 
 year. In other words, Yale College does not sug- 
 gest that the preparatory schools ought to teach 
 either French or German, does not give its stu- 
 dents the opportunity of acquiring these languages 
 in season to use them in other studies, and does 
 not offer them any adequate opportunity of be- 
 coming acquainted with the literature of either 
 language before they take the Bachelor's degree. 
 Could we have stronger evidence than this of the 
 degraded condition of French and German in the 
 mass of our schools and colleges ? " Inasmuch as 
 men like President Porter and President Seelye 
 were not always able to appreciate the disinter- 
 ested devotion to the true welfare of their respec- 
 tive institutions which President Eliot was wont 
 thus to manifest on aU occasions, the meetings 
 of the Association of New England Colleges were 
 often quite animated, in the days when this reform 
 was being extended from Harvard to her sister in- 
 stitutions. To these meetings he has always come 
 early, and he has stayed late ; bringing with him 
 definite topics for discussion, and urging his asso- 
 ciates to some positive educational advance. In 
 
A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 229 
 
 1894 he urged in the Association, and later re- 
 peatedly elsewhere, the establishment of a common 
 board of examiners which should hold examinations 
 at two or three hundred points throughout the 
 United States, and whose certificates should be 
 accepted by all the cooperating institutions. Al- 
 though a large number is desirable for such coop- 
 eration, he proposed to start with five colleges be- 
 sides his own. And yet not five institutions could be 
 found sufficiently ready to cooperate in such a vital 
 and far-reaching scheme for elevating secondary 
 education throughout the country, and saving us 
 from the Dead Sea of superficiality. So very rare, 
 even in educational institutions, is the disposition 
 to put the interests of the community first, and 
 to find the true interest of a particular college 
 in generous devotion to these objective ends, that 
 even the disinterestedness of this measure was sus- 
 pected in quarters which ought to have been above 
 the capacity for such suspicion. 
 
 At the very first President Eliot took in hand 
 the improvement of professional training. In 1869 
 he found the Medical School little more than an ir- 
 responsible commercial venture. There were no re- 
 quirements for admission ; attendance was required 
 for two courses of lectures only, brief in themselves, 
 and still farther abbreviated by the failure of the 
 great majority of students to attend during the 
 summer term. A student who passed successfully 
 
230 A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 
 
 five out of nine oral examinations, of a few min- 
 utes' duration each, received a diploma; although 
 as came out in the discussion of this matter in the 
 Board of Overseers, he might not know the limit of 
 safety in the administration of morphine, and one 
 had actually killed two early patients in conse- 
 quence. As the President says, " Under this system 
 young men might receive the degree of Doctor of 
 Medicine who had had no academic training what- 
 ever, and who were ignorant of four out of nine 
 fundamental subjects." At his suggestion, the finan- 
 cial administration of the school was placed at once 
 in the hands of the treasurer of the imiversity ; the 
 course of instruction was extended to three years 
 of two equal terms at which attendance was required ; 
 the course was made progressive throughout the 
 three years ; laboratory work was added to the 
 didactic lectures ; and written examinations were 
 distributed through the three years, all of which 
 each student was required to pass. By 1874 the 
 students were divided into three classes, with 
 rigid requirements for promotion. In 1877 physics 
 and Latin were required for admission. To these 
 requirements additions have repeatedly been made ; 
 so that now candidates must present a degree from 
 a reputable college or scientific school unless ad- 
 mitted by special vote of the faculty in each case. 
 In 1892 the course was extended to four years. 
 Since 1888 the elective principle has been recog- 
 
A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 231 
 
 nized in tbe latter part of the course. President 
 Eliot's influence has done much to raise the pro- 
 fession of medicine from the refuge of "unculti- 
 vated men, with scanty knowledge of medicine or 
 of surgery," to a position in which it is fully wor- 
 thy of his high tribute when he says, " It offers 
 to young men the largest opportunities for disin- 
 terested, devoted, and heroic service." 
 
 The Harvard Law School in 1869 was another 
 illustration of the remark which President Eliot 
 made in an address at the inauguration of President 
 Gilraan : " During the past forty years the rules 
 which governed admission to the honorable and 
 learned professions of law and medicine have been 
 carelessly relaxed, and we are now suffering great 
 losses and injuries, both material and moral, in con- 
 sequence." Dean LangdeU describes the condition 
 as follows : " In respect to instruction there was no 
 division of the school into classes, but with a single 
 exception all the instruction given was intended for 
 the whole school. There never had been any at- 
 tempt by means of legislation to raise the standard 
 of education at the school, nor to discriminate be- 
 tween the capable and the incapable, the diligent 
 and the idle. It had always been deemed a prime 
 object to attract students to the school, and with 
 that view as little as possible was required of them. 
 Students were admitted without any evidence of 
 academic acquirements ; and they were sent out 
 
232 A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 
 
 from it, with a degree, without any evidence of legal 
 acquirements. The degree of Bachelor of Laws 
 was conferred solely upon evidence that the stu- 
 dent had been nominally a member of the school 
 for a certain length of time and had paid his tui- 
 tion fees, the longest time being one and a half 
 years." At once a new course was established, and 
 an examination was held for the degree. Early in 
 the next academic year the first recorded faculty 
 meeting was held ; and of the 198 meetings regu- 
 larly held during the succeeding twenty-four years, 
 the President of the university presided at all but 
 five. In 1877 the coarse of study was extended to 
 three years, and the tuition fee was raised to $150. 
 Since 1896 only graduates of approved colleges 
 have been admitted as candidates for the degree. 
 
 The Divinity School in 1869 was a feeble insti- 
 tution, to which only six pages were assigned in the 
 university catalogue ; requiring no academic prepa- 
 ration beyond " a knowlege of the branches of ed- 
 ucation commonly taught in the best academies and 
 high schools." Only five of the thirty-six students 
 had received a degree of Bachelor of Arts or Mas- 
 ter of Arts, whereas six needy persons who were 
 recipients of such degrees could have 1350 apiece 
 each year for the asking ; and a fund yielding from 
 $150 to $200 apiece was divided among all appli- 
 cants in the regular or partial course, regardless of 
 ability or scholarship. The five professors were all 
 
A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 233 
 
 adherents of a single sect. President Eliot from 
 the first contended that " the gratuitous character 
 of the ordinary theological training supplied by 
 denominational seminaries is an injury to the Pro- 
 testant ministry. It would be better for the pro- 
 fession, on the whole, if no young men could get 
 into it except those whose parents are able to sup- 
 port them, and those who have capacity and energy 
 enough to earn their own way. These tests consti- 
 tute a natural method of selection, which has long 
 been applied in the other learned professions to 
 their great advantage. Exceptions should be made 
 in favor of needy young men of decided merit and 
 promise, to whom scholarships should be awarded 
 on satisfactory tests of ability and character." Ac- 
 cordingly, in the year 1872-73 the promiscuous 
 distribution of aid to aU applicants in equal parts 
 was stopped, and scholarships were established in 
 its place. In order that " the mendicant element 
 in theological education might be completely elimi- 
 nated, and the Protestant ministry put on a thor- 
 oughly respectable footing in modern society," the 
 President recommended in 1890 that the tuition 
 fee be raised to the same amount as in other de- 
 partments of the university. After much doubt and 
 misgiving on the part of the friends of the school, 
 this bold step was taken in 1897. Since 1882 a 
 coUege education or its equivalent has been required 
 of candidates for the degree of Bachelor of Divinity, 
 
234 A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 
 
 The President has always been the earnest advo- 
 cate of absolute freedom in theological study. In his 
 essay On the Education of Ministers, he commends 
 the scientific spirit in these terms : " This spirit 
 seeks only the fact, without the slightest regard to 
 consequences ; any twisting or obscuring of the fact 
 to accommodate it to a preconceived theory, hope, 
 or wish, any tampering with the actual result of 
 investigation, is the unpardonable sin. It is a spirit 
 at once humble and dauntless, patient of details, 
 passionless but energetic, venturing into pathless 
 wastes to bring back a fact, caring only for truth, 
 candid as a stiU lake, expectant, unfettered, and 
 tireless." All this, and much more to the same ef- 
 fect, is admirable, and highly needed as a prophy- 
 lactic against what he calls " the terrible stress of 
 temptation to intellectual dishonesty" which besets 
 the clerical profession. Yet when, as in his report 
 for 1877-78 he went so far as to say, " The vari- 
 ous philosophical theories and religious beliefs should 
 be studied before, and not after, any of them are 
 embraced," he fell into a one-sided intellectualism 
 which gave some occasion for the widespread dis- 
 trust of Harvard's religious leadership that prevailed 
 twenty-five years ago. Intimate acquaintance with 
 him, however, is pretty sure to convince one of the 
 truth of the remark which President Tucker once 
 made, speaking of persons engaged in coUege work, 
 " President Eliot is the most religious man among 
 
A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 235 
 
 us." His earnest efforts in establishing the present 
 system of religious worship at Harvard, together 
 with the influence of the philosophical professors 
 in their doctrines of the glory of the imperfect, 
 the world of description and the world of appre- 
 ciation, and the will to believe, have done much 
 to correct the earlier tendency, and to reestablish 
 Harvard in the confidence of the community, as a 
 centre of virtue and piety as well as of learning 
 and research. 
 
 President Eliot is a Unitarian, and glories in 
 the critical candor and intellectual honesty of 
 which, until quite recently, that denomination had 
 held too nearly a monopoly. Yet he is too broad 
 and fair-minded to think for an instant of leaving 
 the theological department or the religious life of 
 a great national university in the hands of a sin- 
 gle sect, least of all in the hands of a sect which 
 represents but one tenth of one per cent of the 
 nation's population. Under his administration the 
 Divinity School has become unsectarian in reality, 
 as it always was in name. 
 
 The condition of graduate work at Harvard in 
 1869 can be inferred from the fact that the degree 
 of Master of Arts was given to all graduates of 
 three years' standing and of good moral charac- 
 ter on payment of five dollars ; and no other de- 
 gree beyond the Bachelor's was offered. The new 
 President at once gave notice that the granting of 
 
236 A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 
 
 Master's degrees on these easy terms would cease 
 in 1872. After a year or two of fruitless experi- 
 mentation with " university lectures," in 1872 the 
 degrees of Master of Arts, Doctor of Science, and 
 Doctor of Philosophy were offered on definite and 
 exacting terms. In his report for 1876-77 we find 
 the President quietly dropping the remark that, 
 " for a few years to come, it is to the improvement 
 of this department of the university that the at- 
 tention of the governing boards may be most pro- 
 fitably directed." As a result of that profitably 
 directed attention. Harvard performed successfully 
 the arduous and delicate task of rearing a great 
 graduate school on the broad foundation of under- 
 graduate work, without injury, but with positive 
 inspiration and elevation to the latter. It was the 
 surplus intellectual resources accumulated under 
 the elective system which made possible that un- 
 precedented educational feat. The graduate school 
 has never resorted to the expedient of hiring its 
 students by guarantees of large pecuniary assistance. 
 President Eliot was among the first to perceive the 
 danger of repeating the error which has resulted 
 in overcrowding the clerical profession with weak- 
 lings of all sorts, and thus lowering the tone of 
 manliness and self-respect in the men who are to 
 be college professors. There has been no disposi- 
 tion to turn out Doctors as a matter of course after 
 three years of mechanical work at some trivial 
 
A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 237 
 
 task devised for the express purpose of grinding a 
 thesis out of it. The school has steadfastly refused 
 to confer the degree of Doctor on any man who 
 has not grasped the subject as a whole, as well as 
 developed some special aspect of it sufficiently to 
 render him a competent, and, so far as training 
 can contribute to it, an inspiring teacher. Not 
 every one of the Doctors it has turned out will 
 make a successful professor; but the system is 
 not one which, by concentrating half-trained men 
 almost exclusively on the narrowest of technical 
 investigations, makes failure the rule, and success 
 the miraculous exception. 
 
 Having thus started every department of the 
 university upon the pathway of reform, President 
 Eliot next turned his attention to the secondary 
 schools. As far back as his report for the year 
 1873-74, he had called attention to "the great 
 importance to the colleges and to the community 
 that the way be kept wide open from the primary 
 school to the professional school, for the poor as 
 well as for the rich," and had said, " The desired 
 connection between the secondary schools and the 
 colleges might be secured by effecting certain 
 changes in the requisitions for admission to college 
 on the one hand, and in the studies of the existing 
 high schools on the other. But this is not the place 
 to discuss these changes at length." 
 
 Seventeen years later he found the place for 
 
238 A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 
 
 such discussion at the meeting of the National 
 Educational Association, in a speech which led to 
 the formation of the famous Committee of Ten, of 
 which he was appointed chairman. By his prodi- 
 gious labors on that committee he secured national 
 sanction for his long-cherished views as to the 
 worthlessness of short, scrappy information courses ; 
 the earlier beginning in the elementary schools of 
 such subjects as algebra, geometry, natural science, 
 and modern languages ; " the correlation and asso- 
 ciation of subjects with one another by the pro- 
 grammes and by the actual teaching ; " emphasis 
 on the supreme importance of thorough training in 
 English ; the doctrine that secondary schools sup- 
 ported at public expense should be primarily for 
 the many who do not pursue their education far- 
 ther, and only incidentally for the few who are 
 going to college ; the doctrine of the equal rank, 
 for purposes of admission to college, of all subjects 
 taught by proper methods with sufficient concen- 
 tration, time allotment, and consecutiveness ; and 
 the corollary thereof, that college requirements for 
 admission should coincide with high-school require- 
 ments for graduation. At the same time he secured 
 the working out in detail of the practical applica- 
 tion of these measures by representative experts in 
 all the departments involved ; thus giving to second- 
 ary education the greatest impulse in the direction 
 of efficiency, variety, serviceableness, and vitality it 
 
A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 239 
 
 has ever received, and winning the grandest vic- 
 tory ever achieved in the field of American edu* 
 cation. 
 
 Nor did he stop there. Finding by actual experi- 
 ment with schoolboys brought to his own study that 
 the entire reading-matter included in a grammar- 
 school course covering six years could be read aloud 
 in forty-six hours, and that the work in arithmetic 
 done during two years by giving one fifth of all the 
 time of the school to it could be done by a bright 
 boy fresh from the high school in fifteen hours ; 
 finding by actual reading of everything used in that 
 grammar school that the entire course was dull and 
 destitute of human interest, consisting chiefly in the 
 exercise of mere memory on such relatively useless 
 matters as the capitals and boundaries of distant 
 States ; finding that the children and the commu- 
 nity alike were suffering irreparable harm because 
 the peculiar natural aptitudes of individual children 
 were not appealed to, and consequently not devel- 
 oped, — in 1891, after considerable discussion, and 
 in spite of some opposition directed from the head- 
 quarters of conservatism, he secured from the As- 
 sociation of New England Colleges, at its annual 
 meeting at Brown University, an indorsement of his 
 plan for " shortening and enriching the grammar- 
 school course." The recommendations then made 
 covered five points : elementary natural history in 
 the earlier years, to be taught by demonstrations 
 
240 A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 
 
 and practical exercises, with suitable apparatus, 
 rather than from books ; elementary physics in the 
 later years, to be taught by the laboratory method ; 
 algebra and geometry at the age of twelve or thir- 
 teen ; and French, German, or Latin, or any two 
 of these languages, from and after the age of ten. 
 During the years immediately following he was 
 busy advocating these reforms in primary and sec- 
 ondary education ; always resting his argument on 
 the supreme importance, both for the children and 
 for the community, that each individual's peculiar 
 powers should be trained to the highest degree, as a 
 means to that equality of opportunity which is the 
 glory of a true democracy, and that diversity of 
 talent and function which is essential to happy and 
 useful social life ; and pointing out that these re- 
 forms were quite as much in the interest of the 
 many whose education ends at the grammar school 
 or high school as for those who go to college. 
 
 In psychological analyses of the process of " ap- 
 perception " and the related realm of " child study," 
 President Eliot has had but scanty interest. He 
 has rather taken it for granted that if the table 
 is spread with a feast of sufficient freshness and 
 variety, and presided over by a tactful and gener- 
 ous host or hostess, the children can be counted on 
 to get enough to eat ; even if no prepared food is 
 provided in powdered form, and although the host- 
 ess herself may be unable to delineate the precise 
 
A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 241 
 
 details of the physiological processes of mastica- 
 tion, swallowing, digestion, and assimilation. His 
 emphasis has always been upon the substance of 
 the truth presented, not on the form of its appre- 
 hension by the receiving mind. 
 
 There have been men in our colleges more gifted 
 than President Eliot in supplementing scanty re- 
 sources and meagre equipment by the power of 
 direct personal inspiration ; though in recent years 
 he has made great gains in this respect, and his 
 addresses on enlistment at the outbreak of the 
 Spanish war, and on a memorial for those who 
 died, rank among the most influential and uplift- 
 ing counsels ever given by college officers to college 
 students. And while other presidents may have 
 been more expeditious in creating culture out of 
 cash, he has never forgotten that " a quarter of one 
 per cent means a new professorship ; " has never 
 been backward either in creating financial demands 
 or in searching for fresh sources of supply. Yet he 
 has never been in the least degree servile toward 
 rich benefactors, but rather inclined to err in the 
 direction complained of by an early benefactor 
 whom Professor Dunbar reports as saying of the 
 President, " He comes to me for my money and 
 my advice ; and, like the women in the Scripture, 
 the one is taken and the other left." 
 
 Even in the brief sketch of reforms given above, 
 the reader must have noticed the long lapse of time 
 
242 A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 
 
 between the first prophecy of a reform and its ful- 
 fillment. When President Eliot was elected, George 
 S. Hillard, meeting him on the street, said to him, 
 " Do you know what qualities you will need most 
 out there at Harvard?" President Eliot replied 
 that he supposed he would need industry, courage, 
 and the like. "No," said Mr. Hillard. "What 
 you will need is patience — patience — patience." 
 So it has proved. AU these reforms have required 
 ten, twenty, or thirty years for their accomplish- 
 ment. Yet this marvelous patience has been no 
 idle waiting for the lapse of time, but the steady 
 pressure of one who was confident that he was 
 right, and sure that, if urged at every opportu- 
 nity, the right would gain adherents and ultimately 
 prevail. 
 
 President Eliot's reforms have all been rooted in 
 principles and purposes which at bottom are moral 
 and religious. He has gone up and down the whole 
 length of our educational line, condemning every 
 defect, denouncing every abuse, exposing every 
 sham, rebuking every form of incompetence and 
 inefficiency, as treason to the truth, an injury to 
 the community, a crime against the individual. To 
 his mind, intent on making God's richest gifts 
 available for the blessing of mankind, a dull gram- 
 mar school is an instrument of intellectual abor- 
 tion ; uniformity in secondary schools is a slow 
 starvation process ; paternalism and prescription in 
 
A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 243 
 
 college is a dwarfing and stunting of the powers on 
 wluch the prosperity of a democratic society must 
 rest; superficial legal training is partnership in 
 robbery; inadequate medical education is whole- 
 sale murder; dishonest theological instruction is 
 an occasion of stumbling more to be dreaded than 
 " that a great miUstone should be hanged about 
 his neck, and that he should be cast into the depths 
 of the sea." 
 
 Such has been the work of this educational re- 
 former. What, then, has been his reward? For 
 the first twenty-five years he was misunderstood, 
 misrepresented, maligned, hated with and without 
 cause. It may be that it is an essential element of 
 the reformer's make-up that, in order to hold firmly 
 and tenaciously his own views against a hostile 
 world, he should be somewhat lacking in sensitive- 
 ness, and at times appear to take a hostile attitude 
 toward those who differ from him. This, at any 
 rate, seems to have been characteristic of President 
 Eliot during the early years of his long fight for 
 educational reform. In later years, now that most 
 of his favorite reforms are well launched, and his 
 services in their behalf are acknowledged with grati- 
 tude on all sides, there has been manifest a great 
 change, amounting to the kindliest appreciation of 
 temperaments widely different from his own. Even 
 in the days of his apparent hardness he was never 
 known to cherish personal animosity on account of 
 
244 A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 
 
 difference of views. At the time when the fight 
 was hottest in his own faculty, meeting an assistant 
 professor, most outspoken in antagonism to all his 
 favorite measures, who had received a call to go 
 elsewhere, he said to him, " I suppose you under- 
 stand that your opposition to my policy wiU not in 
 the slightest degree interfere with- your promotion 
 here." Partly owing to the triumph of his views 
 even in the minds of most of his old opponents 
 who survive, partly owing to the change which the 
 years with their increasing cares and sorrows have 
 wrought in the man himseK, he has come to be 
 universally trusted, admired, and loved by all who 
 know him well. Yet his chief reward has been 
 that which he commended to another, " the great 
 happiness of devoting one's self for life to a noble 
 work without reserve, or stint, or thought of self, 
 looking for no advancement, hoping for nothing 
 again." 
 
 No one can begin to measure the gain to civ- 
 ilization and human happiness his services have 
 wrought. As compared with what would have been 
 accomplished by a series of conservative clergy- 
 men, or ornate figure-heads, or narrow specialists, 
 or even mere business men such as by the unin- 
 formed he has most erroneously sometimes been 
 supposed to be, his leadership has doubled the rate 
 of educational advance not in Harvard alone, but 
 throughout the United States. He has sought to 
 
A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 245 
 
 extend the helping hand of sympathy and appreci- 
 ation to every struggling capacity in the humblest 
 grammar grade ; to stimulate it into joyous blos- 
 soming under the sunshine of congenial studies 
 throughout the secondary years ; to bring it to a 
 sturdy and sound maturity in the atmosphere of 
 liberty in college life ; and finally, by stern selec- 
 tion and thorough specialization, to gather a har- 
 vest of experts in all the higher walks of life, on 
 whose skill, knowledge, integrity, and self-sacrifice 
 their less trained fellows can implicitly rely for 
 higher instruction, professional counsel, and public 
 leadership. In consequence of these comprehensive 
 reforms, we see the first beginnings of a rational 
 and universal church, not separate from existing 
 sects, but permeating aU ; property rights in all 
 their subtle forms are more secure and well de- 
 fined; hundreds of persons are alive to-day who 
 under physicians of inferior training would have 
 died long ago ; thousands of college students have 
 had quickened within them a keen intellectual in- 
 terest, an earnest spiritual purpose, a "personal 
 power in action under responsibility," who under 
 the old regime would have remained listless and 
 indifferent; tens of thousands of boys and girls 
 in secondary schools can expand their hearts and 
 minds with science and history and the languages 
 of other lands, who but for President Eliot would 
 have been doomed to the monotonous treadmill of 
 
246 A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 
 
 formal studies for which they have no aptitude or 
 taste ; and, as the years go by, hundreds of thou- 
 sands of the children of the poor, in the precious 
 tender years before their early drafting into lives 
 of drudgery and toil, in place of the dry husks of 
 superfluous arithmetic, the thrice-threshed straw 
 of imessential grammar, and the innutritions shells 
 of unrememberable geographical details, will get 
 some brief glimpse of the wondrous loveliness of 
 nature and her laws, some slight touch of inspira- 
 tion from the words and deeds of the world's 
 wisest and bravest men, to carry with them as a 
 heritage to brighten their future humble homes 
 and gladden all their after-lives. In such " good 
 measure, pressed down, shaken together, running 
 over," has there been given to this great educa- 
 tional reformer, in return for generous and stead- 
 fast service of his university, his fellow-men, his 
 country, and his God, what, in true Puritan sim- 
 plicity, he calls "that finest luxury, to do some 
 perpetual good in this world." 
 
xin 
 
 The Personality of the Teacher * 
 
 SOME people can teacli school and other people 
 can't. Some teachers have good order, as a 
 matter of course, as soon as they set foot in a school 
 class-room. Other teachers can never get anything 
 more than the outward semblance of decorum, try 
 as hard as they will ; and often cannot get even 
 that. Some teachers the scholars all love. Other 
 teachers they all hate. 
 
 Some teachers a superintendent or president will 
 jump at the chance to secure after a five minutes' 
 interview. Others, equally scholarly, equally expe- 
 rienced, equally weU equipped with formal recom- 
 mendations, go wandering from agency to agency, 
 from one vacant place to another, only to find thaf 
 some other applicant has secured or is about t<? 
 secure the coveted position. 
 
 For nearly twenty years I have had to employ 
 teachers every year, and to recommend teachers 
 to others. I have seen many succeed, and some 
 fail. But I have never seen a success that could 
 
 ^ A more complete account of the philosophical principles here 
 condensed and applied to the specific problems of the teacher may 
 be found in From Epicurus to Christ, published by the Macmil- 
 lan Co. 
 
248 THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 
 
 be accounted for by scholarship and training alone. 
 I have never seen a failure that I could not account 
 for on other grounds. What is it, then, that makes 
 one teacher popular, successful, wanted in a dozen 
 different places ; and another equally weU trained, 
 equally experienced, a dismal failure where he is, 
 and wanted nowhere else ? 
 
 The one word that covers all these qualities is 
 personality ; that is the thing aU wise employers of 
 teachers seek to secure above all else. In colleges 
 for men in New England it is absolutely imperative. 
 In elementary and secondary schools, in coUeges in 
 other sections of the country, a teacher with serious 
 defects of personality may be carried along by the 
 momentum of the system, and the tact of superin- 
 tendents and presidents. But in a men's coUege in 
 New England a professor with seriously defective 
 personality is simply impossible. The boys wiU 
 either make him over into a decent man by the 
 severest kind of discipline, or else they will turn 
 him out. I have seen them do both more than 
 once. A man who is egotistical, insincere, diplo- 
 matic, mean, selfish, untruthful, cowardly, unfair, 
 weak, is a person whom New England men stu- 
 dents will not tolerate as a teacher. No amount of 
 knowledge and reputation, no amount of backing 
 from the administration, can save him. On the 
 whole, I am glad that this is so. It makes the 
 responsibility of selecting professors tremendous. 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 249 
 
 But, on the whole, it secures in the end a better 
 type of men for college professors than we should 
 be likely to get if the office could be held on any 
 easier terms. 
 
 Now, personality is very largely a matter of 
 heredity. Some people are born large-natured ; 
 other people are born small-souled. The former are 
 born to succeed; the latter are born to fail in any 
 work in which personality counts for so much as it 
 does in teaching. People with these mean natures 
 and small souls never ought to try to teach. They 
 ought to get into some strictly mechanical work 
 where skilled hands count for everything and 
 warm hearts count for nothing. 
 
 Still, personality, though largely dependent on 
 heredity, is in great measure capable of cultivation. 
 If it were not, it would be useless for me to talk 
 about it here. Some teachers would be foreordained 
 to succeed, others foreordained to fail ; and nothing 
 but the process of natural selection after actual 
 experience could separate those who are personally 
 fit to teach from those who are not, and never can 
 be. Our personality is largely an affair of our own 
 making. Those who have weak points may, by 
 thoughtfulness and resolution, strengthen them; 
 and those who are naturally strong, by effort may 
 grow stronger stiU. How this may be done is what 
 I am to try to tell. Fortunately, it is not a new 
 story, but a very old one, at which the world has 
 
250 THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 
 
 been working a long while. To our problem of 
 personality the world has found five answers : the 
 Epicurean, the Stoic, the Platonic, the Aristotelian, 
 and the Christian. I shall present these five answers 
 in order. Some of you will doubtless find that 
 you can apply one of these principles ; others will 
 find another principle the one of which they stand 
 in need. I shall not undertake to make all that I 
 say consistent. I shall be simply the mouthpiece 
 of those five types of personality; and leave the 
 reader to select what he needs ; and reject the rest 
 as unprofitable. These five answers in brief are 
 as follows. 
 
 The Epicurean says: "Take into your life as 
 many simple, natural pleasures as possible." The 
 Stoic says : " Keep out of your mind all causes of 
 anxiety and grief." The Platonist says : " Lift up 
 your soul above the dust and drudgery of daily 
 life, into the pure atmosphere of the perfect and 
 the good." The Aristotelian says : " Organize your 
 life by clear conception of the end for which you are 
 living, seek diligently all means that further this 
 end, and rigidly exclude all that would hinder it or 
 distract you from it." The Christian says : " En- 
 large your spirit to include the interest and aims of 
 all the persons whom your life in any way affects." 
 
 Any man or woman of average hereditary gifts, 
 and ordinary scholarship and training, who puts 
 these five principles in practice, will be a popu- 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 251 
 
 lar, effective, happy, and successful teacher. Any 
 teacher, however well equipped otherwise, who 
 neglects any one of these principles will, to that 
 extent, be thereby weakened, crippled, and disquali- 
 fied for the work of teaching. Any person who 
 should be found defective in the majority of these 
 five requirements would be unfit to teach at all. 
 Let us then take them in order, and test ourselves 
 by them. First, the Epicurean. 
 
 The Epicurean gospel is summed up best in 
 Stevenson's lines, " The Celestial Surgeon : " — 
 
 If I have faltered more or less 
 In my great task of happiness; 
 If I have moved among my race 
 And shown no glorious morning face. 
 If beams from happy human eyes 
 Have moved me not; if morning skies. 
 Books, and my food, and summer rain 
 Knocked on my sullen heart in vain — 
 Lord, thy most pointed pleasure take 
 And stab my spirit broad awake: 
 Or, Lord, if too obdurate I, 
 Choose thou, before that spirit die, 
 A piercing pain, a killing sin. 
 And to my dead heart run them in. 
 
 The one thing in which the teacher on no account 
 must fail is this which Stevenson calls " Our great 
 task of happiness." The world is a vast reservoir 
 of potential pleasure. It is our first business here, 
 so says the Epicurean, for whom I am speaking 
 now, to get at aU costs, save that of overbalancing 
 
252 THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 
 
 pain, as many of these pleasures as we can. Doubt- 
 less you will say, this is a very low ideal of life. 
 Well, I admit that there are higher ideals, for the 
 sake of which this ideal, to a considerable extent, 
 must be sacrificed. I admit that the mother with a 
 sick child, the scholar with a difficult problem, the 
 statesman in a political campaign, all of us, in fact, 
 ought to have higher ideals, and sacrifice this ideal 
 of pleasure to them. But you cannot sacrifice it 
 unless in the first place you have it, and care very 
 much for it. 
 
 If we grant that it is a low ideal, it is all the 
 more shameful if we fall below it. And a great 
 many teachers fall below it, and enormously dimin- 
 ish their usefulness in consequence. What, then, 
 is the Epicurean ideal for the teacher ? Plenty of 
 good wholesome food, eaten leisurely in good com- 
 pany and pleasant surroundings. No hurried break- 
 fasts of coffee and doughnuts ; no snatched lunches 
 or dinners. A comfortable room where you can be 
 quiet by yourself and not have to talk when you 
 do not want to. Now, in the old days of boarding 
 the teacher around, these things, perhaps, were not 
 possible. But, in the long run, these fundamentals 
 of a pleasant room and a good boarding-place are 
 half the battle ; and before accepting a position a 
 teacher should make sure that these fundamental 
 requisites can be had. Don't save money by deny- 
 ing yourselves these necessities when they can be 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 253 
 
 had ; and don't stay long in any place where they 
 cannot be had. No one can permanently be a good 
 teacher without a background of restful quiet, and 
 a basis of wholesome food. Next comes exercise in 
 the open air. How many hours of every day do you 
 spend outdoors, free from care, enjoying the sun- 
 light, the fresh air, the fields, the flowers, the birds, 
 the hills, the streams ? To be sure, there are voca- 
 tions which do not permit this. But the teacher, 
 shut up in close air under high nervous tension 
 for five or six hours, can and must offset all this 
 abnormality by at least an hour or two of every 
 school day, and more on Saturday and Sunday, 
 under the open sky, as care-free and light-hearted 
 as the birds that sing in the tree-tops. Are you 
 living up to your Epicurean duties in this respect? 
 Of course you have games you are fond of play- 
 ing. A teacher who works at such exhausting and 
 narrowing work as instructing thirty or forty rest- 
 less children, and does not counteract it by plenty 
 of play, is not only committing slow suicide, but he 
 is stunting and dwarfing his nature so that every 
 year will find him personally less fit to teach than 
 he was the year before. With walking, riding the 
 bicycle, driving, golf, tennis, croquet, skating, cards, 
 checkers, billiards, rowing, sailing, hunting, fishing, 
 and the endless variety of games and sports avail- 
 able, a teacher who does not do a lot of them in 
 vacations, and a good deal of them on half-holidays, 
 
254 THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 
 
 and some of them almost every day, is falling far 
 below the Epicurean standard of what a teacher 
 ought to do and be. Play and people to play with 
 are as necessary for a teacher as prayer for a 
 preacher, or votes for a politician, a piano for a 
 musician, or a hammer for a carpenter. You simply 
 cannot go on healthily, happily, hopefully, without 
 it. If I should learn of any candidate for a posi- 
 tion as professor in Bowdoin College that he did 
 and enjoyed none of these things, though he should 
 be backed by the highest recommendations the 
 leading universities of America and Europe could 
 bestow, I would not so much as read the letters that 
 he brought. For, however great he might be as a 
 scholar, I should know in advance that he would be 
 a failure in the teaching of American youth. There 
 are probably just enough exceptions to this rule to 
 prove its truth. But even those exceptions, so far 
 as I can think of them, are due to invalidism, for 
 which the individuals at present are not responsi- 
 ble. Are you playing as much as Epicurus would 
 tell you that you ought to play ? 
 
 Do you sleep soundly, as long as nature requires, 
 never letting the regrets of the day past nor the 
 anxieties of the day to come encroach upon these 
 precious hours, any more than you would that 
 greatest of abominations — the alarm clock? Do 
 you lie down every night in absolute restfulness, 
 and thankfulness, and tranquillity ? Do you live 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 255 
 
 in care-proof, worry-tight compartments, so that 
 the little annoyances of one section of your life are 
 never allowed to spUl over and spoil the other sec- 
 tions of your lives ? In short, to quote one who is 
 our most genial modern apostle of Epicureanism, 
 do you recognize and arrange your life according 
 to the principle that 
 
 " The world is so full of a number of things, 
 That I 'm sure we should all be as happy as kings " ? 
 
 Have you friends with whom you spend delight- 
 ful hours in unrestrained companionship? Have 
 you books which you read for the pure fun of it ? 
 Do you go to concerts and entertainments and plays 
 as often as you can afford the time and money? 
 Take it altogether, are you having a good time, or, 
 if not, are you resorting to every available means 
 of getting one? Then, not otherwise, will you pass 
 this first examination as to your personal fitness to 
 be a teacher. None of us are perfect on this point. 
 None of us are having nearly so good a time as we 
 might. But we ought to fall somewhere above 
 seventy or eighty on a scale of a hundred on this 
 fundamental question. Let us hereafter mark our- 
 selves as rigidly on this subject as we do our schol- 
 ars in arithmetic and geography. They are mark- 
 ing us all the time on this very point ; only they 
 do not call it Epicureanism, or record the result in 
 figures. They register it in slangy terms of their 
 own likes and dislikes. 
 
256 THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 
 
 Second. Be a Stoic, which means keep your 
 mind free from all worry, anxiety, and grief. You 
 say, " That is impossible. The world is f uU of evils 
 and we can't help worrying about them and being 
 depressed by them." "Yes, you can," the Stoic 
 tells us ; for things out there in the external world 
 never trouble us. It is only when they get into our 
 minds that they hurt ; and whether they shall be 
 let into our minds depends entirely on ourselves. 
 You make a mistake on Monday morning. That is 
 an external fact to be acknowledged and corrected 
 as promptly as possible. If it makes you nervous 
 all Monday afternoon, and takes away your appe- 
 tite Monday evening, and keeps you awake Mon- 
 day night, and starts you out on Tuesday morning 
 enfeebled, distrustful, and consequently ten times as 
 likely to make mistakes as you were the day before, 
 that is entirely your own affair and, if it happens, 
 your own fault. You have allowed that external fact 
 that ought to have been left in the outside world, 
 where it belongs, to come in and take possession of 
 your mind and drive out your normal mental, emo- 
 tional, and physiological processes. 
 
 Stoicism is fundamentally the doctrine of apper- 
 ception applied to our emotional states. Stoicism 
 says that our mental states are what we are, that 
 no external thing can determine our mental state 
 until we have woven it into the structure of our 
 thought and painted it with the color of our domi* 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 257 
 
 nant mood and temper. Thus, every mental state 
 is for the most part of our own making. Of course 
 this Stoic doctrine is somewhat akin to the doc- 
 trine of Christian Science. Yet there is a decided 
 difference. Christian Science and kindred popu- 
 lar cults deny the external physical fact altogether. 
 Stoicism admits the reality and then makes the 
 best of it. For instance, the Christian Scientist 
 with the toothache says there is no matter there 
 to ache. The Stoic, both truer to the facts and 
 braver in spirit, says there is matter, but it does n't 
 matter if there is. Stoicism teaches us that the 
 mental states are the man; that external things 
 never, in themselves, constitute a mental state ; 
 that the all-important contribution is made by the 
 mind itself ; that this contribution from the mind 
 is what gives the tone and determines the worth 
 of the total mental state, and that this contribu- 
 tion is exclusively our own affair and may be 
 brought entirely under our own control. As Epic- 
 tetus says, "Everything has two handles, — one by 
 which it may be borne, another by which it cannot. 
 If your brother acts unjustly do not lay hold of the 
 affair by the handle of his injustice, for by that 
 it cannot be borne ; but rather by the opposite, — 
 that he is your brother ; that he was brought up 
 with you; and thus you will lay hold on it as it is 
 to be borne." Again, he says men are disappointed 
 " not by things, but by the view which they take 
 
258 THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 
 
 of things. When, therefore, we are hindered, or 
 disappointed, or grieved, let us never impute it to 
 others, but to ourselves, that is, to our views." AU 
 this, you see, is the fundamental principle that 
 the only things that enter into us and affect our 
 states of thought, and will, and feeling are things 
 as we think about them, forces as we act upon 
 them; and these thoughts, feelings, and reactions 
 are our own affairs, and, consequently, if they are 
 not serene, tranquil, and happy, the fault is in our- 
 selves. 
 
 Now, we can all reduce enormously our troubles 
 and vexations by bringing to bear upon them this 
 Stoic formula. There is a way of looking at our 
 poverty, our plainness of feature, our lack of mental 
 brilliance, our unpopularity, our mistakes, our phys- 
 ical ailments, that will make us modest, contented, 
 cheerful, and serene. The blunders we make, the 
 foolish things we do, the hasty words we say, though 
 they, in a sense, have gone out from us, yet once 
 committed in the external world they should be left 
 there ; they should not be brought back into the 
 mind to be brooded over and become centres of 
 depression and discouragement. Stoicism teaches 
 us to shift the emphasis from dead external facts 
 beyond our control to the live option which always 
 presents itself within. It teUs us that the circum- 
 stance or failure that can make us miserable does 
 not exist unless it exists by our consent within our 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 259 
 
 own minds. To consider not what happens to us 
 but how we take it ; to measure good in terms not 
 of sensuous pleasure but of mental attitude; to 
 know that if we are for the universal law of right, 
 it matters not how many things may be against us ; 
 to rest assured that there can be no circumstance 
 or condition in which this great law cannot be done 
 by us and, therefore, no situation of which we can- 
 not be more than masters through obedience to the 
 great law that governs all, — this is the stern and 
 lofty law of Stoicism. 
 
 Carried too far, Stoicism becomes hard, cold, 
 proud, and, like its popular cults of to-day, gro- 
 tesque. But there is a healing virtue in its stem 
 formula after all ; and when things do not go as we 
 should like, when people maltreat us and find fault 
 with us, when we meet our own limitations and 
 shortcomings, it is good for us to know that these 
 external facts have no more power to worry us and 
 depress us and unfit us for our work than we choose 
 to let them have. 
 
 A teacher's life is probably more full of con- 
 scious failure, of personal collision, severe criticism, 
 and general discouragement than almost any pro- 
 fession. The ends at which the teacher aims are 
 vast and indefinite, the material is perverse and 
 recalcitrant, the resources available are often 
 meagre, and the outcome is always far below what 
 one would wish. But the Stoic formula, faithfully 
 
260 THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 
 
 applied, will help us frankly to recognize these facts 
 and at the same time to overcome them. We shall 
 save ourselves many a troubled day and sleepless 
 night if we learn to bring this Stoic formula to bear 
 whenever these evils incidental to our arduous pro- 
 fession press too heavily upon us. 
 
 The third of the world's great devices for the 
 development of personality is Platonism. The Epi- 
 curean tells us to take in all the pleasure we can 
 get. The Stoic shows us how to keep out grief and 
 pain. But it is a constant strife and struggle in 
 either case. The Platonist bids us rise above it all. 
 " The world," says the Platonist, " is very imper- 
 fect, almost as bad as the Stoic makes it out." We 
 must live in this imperfect world after a fashion 
 and make the best of it while it lasts. This, how- 
 ever, he tells us, is not the real world. Individual 
 people and particular things are but imperfect, 
 faulty, distorted copies of the true pattern of the 
 good which is laid up in heaven. We must buy and 
 sell, work and play, eat and drink, laugh and cry, 
 love and hate down here among the earthly shades ; 
 but our real conversation aU the time may be in 
 heaven with the perfectly good and true and beau- 
 tiful. This doctrine, you see, is very closely akin 
 to much of the popular philosophy which is gaining 
 so many adherents in our day. A little of it is 
 a good thing, but to feed on it exclusively or re- 
 gard it as the final gospel is very dangerous. These 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 261 
 
 Platonists go through the world with a serene smile 
 and an air of other-worldliness we cannot but ad- 
 mire ; they are seen to most advantage, however, 
 from a little distance. They are not the most agree- 
 able to live with ; it is a great misfortune to be tied 
 to one of them as husband or wife, college or busi- 
 ness partner. Louisa Alcott had this type in mind 
 when she defined a philosopher as a man up in a 
 balloon with his family and friends having hold of 
 the rope trying to pull him down to earth. Pretty 
 much all of the philosophy of Christian Science, 
 and a great deal that passes for Christian religion, 
 is simply Platonism masquerading in disguise. All 
 such hymns as " Sweet Bye and Bye," " O Para- 
 dise, O Paradise," and the like are simply Platonic. 
 Thomas a Kempis gives us Platonism in the form 
 of mediaeval Christian mysticism. Emerson has a 
 large element of Platonism in all his deeper pas- 
 sages. In all its forms you get the same dualism 
 of finite and infinite, perfect and imperfect ; un- 
 worthy, crumbling earth-mask to be gotten rid of 
 here on earth, and the stars to be sought out and 
 gazed at up in heaven. 
 
 It is easy to ridicule and caricature this type of 
 personality. Yet the world would be much the 
 poorer if the Platonists and the mystics were with- 
 drawn. The man or woman who at some time or 
 other does not feel the speU or charm of this mood 
 will miss one of the nobler experiences of life. 
 
262 THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 
 
 In spite of this warning against Platonism ac- 
 cepted as a finished gospel, it contains truth which 
 every teacher ought to know and on occasion to 
 apply. When one is walking thi-ough the forest 
 and knows not which way to go, it is a gain some- 
 times to climb a tree and take a look over the 
 tops of the surrounding trees. The climbing does 
 not directly help you on your journey, and, of 
 course, if you stay in the tree-top you wiU never 
 reach your destination ; but it does give you your 
 bearings and insures that the next stage of your 
 journey wiU be in the right direction. Now the 
 teacher lives in a wilderness of dreary and monoto- 
 nous details which shut out the larger horizon as 
 completely as the trees of the forest. Every teacher 
 ought, now and then, to climb the tall tree, or to 
 leave the figure, to go away by himself and look 
 at his life as a whole. A traveler in a Southern 
 forest found an aged negro sitting with his banjo 
 under a tree ten miles from the nearest settlement. 
 In his surprise, he asked the negro what he was 
 doing off there so far in the wilderness alone, and 
 he replied, " I 'm just serenading my own soul." 
 Platonism teaches us to get out of the bustle and 
 tangle of life once in a while and serenade our 
 own souls. We need, at times, to look at ourselves 
 in the large, to make clear to ourselves the great 
 purpose for which we are living, and the ideal of 
 character toward which we aspire. We need to 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 263 
 
 commune with the better self that we hope to be 
 and take our bearings anew for the immediate jour- 
 ney before us. Most people get this Platonic refuge 
 in religion ; some get it in music, some in art, some 
 in intimate personal friendships. In some way or' 
 other every teacher should have some sphere of life 
 apart from the daily routine in which he can dwell 
 undisturbed and find everj^thing serene, perfect, and 
 complete. When one comes down, as come down 
 one must, from these mounts of transfiguration, or, 
 to use Plato's figure, " when one returns from the 
 sunlight back into the cave," when one takes up 
 again the duty and drudgery of life, though at first 
 it wiU seem more impossible and irksome than ever, 
 yet in the long run he will find a cheerfulness and 
 serenity in the doing of these hard, homely duties 
 which he never could have gained unless for these 
 brief periods he had gone up into the summits where 
 he sees the world as a whole bathed in unclouded 
 sunshine. A teacher will hardly be able to keep his 
 poise, his temper, and his cheerful outlook upon life 
 without the aid in some form or other of these Pla- 
 tonic resources. Yet I must conclude this word 
 about Plato as I began with a warning. It must be 
 taken in moderate doses, and every added outlook 
 and emotion derived from Platonic sources must be 
 followed immediately by prompt and vigorous atten- 
 tion to the duties that await us at the foot of the 
 mount. The mere Platonist who is that and nothing 
 
264 THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 
 
 more, whether he call himself mystic, monastic, 
 Catholic, Evangelical, Protestant, Theosophist, or 
 Christian Scientist, must remember that, though 
 he draw his inspiration from above the clouds, the 
 real tests of life are found on the solid earth be- 
 neath his feet. The Platonist of all these types 
 should take to heart the lesson conveyed in Steven- 
 son's " Our Lady of the Snows." 
 
 And ye, O brethren, what if God, 
 When from heav'n's top he spies abroad, 
 And sees on this tormented stage 
 The noble war of mankind rage, 
 What if His vivifying eye, 
 O monks, should pass your corner by ? 
 For still the Lord is Lord of might. 
 In deeds, in deeds he takes delight ; 
 The plough, the spear, the laden barks, 
 The field, the founded city, marks ; 
 He marks the smiler of the streets, 
 The singer upon garden seats ; 
 He sees the climber in the rocks ; 
 To Him, the shepherd folds his flocks. 
 
 For those He loves that underprop 
 With daily virtues heaven's top. 
 And bear the falling sky with ease, 
 Unfrowning caryatides. 
 Those He approves that ply the trade, 
 That rock the child, that wed the maid, 
 That with weak virtues, weaker hands, 
 Sow gladness on the peopled lands, 
 And still with laughter, song and shout. 
 Spin the great wheel of the earth about. 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 265 
 
 But ye ? O ye who linger still 
 Here in your fortress on the hill, 
 With placid face, with tranquil breath, 
 The unsought volunteers of death. 
 Our cheerful General on high 
 With careless looks may pass you by. 
 
 The fourth great lesson of personality was taught 
 the world by Aristotle. According to Aristotle, man 
 is to find his end, not in heaven in the hereafter, but 
 here and now upon the earth. The end is not some- 
 thing to be gained by indulgence of appetite with 
 the Epicurean, by superiority to passion with the 
 Stoic, by solitary elevation of soul with the Platon- 
 ist ; the end is to be wrought out of the very stuff 
 of which the hard world around us is made. From 
 the Aristotelian point of view nothing is good in it- 
 self ; nothing is bad in itself. The goodness of good 
 things depends upon the good use to which we put 
 them, and the badness of bad things depends like- 
 wise on the bad use to which we put them. 
 
 From this point of view personality depends on 
 the sense of proportion. This sense of proportion 
 is the most essential part of a teacher's equipment. 
 Every teacher has opportunity to do twenty times 
 as much as he is able to do weU. The important 
 thing is to know which twentieth to do and which 
 nineteen twentieths to leave undone. Between 
 mastery of subjects taught, general reading, profes- 
 sional study, exercise, recreation, social engagements, 
 
266 THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 
 
 personal work with individual scholars, private af- 
 fairs, correspondence, the regular work of the class- 
 room, the correcting of papers, preparation of par- 
 ticular lessons, church, clubs, there is obviously far 
 more draft on the teacher's time and strength than 
 can be met with safety. Teaching is an extra-haz- 
 ardous profession, so far at any rate as the nervous 
 system is concerned. Into each of several of these 
 lines one might put his whole energy and still leave 
 much to be accomplished. The teacher's problem, 
 then, is one of proportion and selection, to know 
 what to slight and what to emphasize. The elements 
 that enter into the problem are different in each 
 person. Consequently, no general rules can be laid 
 down. The teacher should have a pretty clear idea 
 of what he means to do and be. That which is es- 
 sential to this main end should be accepted at all 
 costs ; that which hinders it should be rejected at 
 all costs. When the choice is between things which 
 help it more and help it less, those which help it 
 more should be taken and those which help it less 
 should be rejected. The teacher should learn to say 
 " No ! " to calls which are good in themselves, but 
 are not good for him. For instance, amateur the- 
 atricals are good in themselves, but no teacher who 
 is teaching five or six hours a day can afford to give 
 three or four evenings a week to lengthy rehearsals. 
 Church fairs are good in themselves, but the wise 
 teacher will leave the management of such things to 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 267 
 
 persons who have much more leisure. Church atten- 
 dance on Sunday is a good thing in itself, but one 
 service a day is as much as the average teacher 
 can attend who would do his best the five working 
 days of the week. Sunday-school teaching is an 
 excellent thing in itseK ; but as a rule it is the one 
 thing above aU others from which the conscientious 
 public-school teacher will most rigidly refrain. For 
 Sunday-school teaching puts the teacher on what 
 should be the chief day of rest into precisely the 
 same state of nervous tension that must be main- 
 tained during the greater part of the week. Sunday- 
 school teaching for a public-school teacher is very 
 much the same misuse of Sunday that taking in a 
 big Sunday washing would be for a washerwoman 
 who had washings to do on all the other six days 
 of the week. Making out absolutely accurate rank 
 and reading carefully all the written work of a 
 large class of pupils is a good thing in itself ; but 
 wise superintendents will save their teachers as 
 much of that work as possible, and teachers them- 
 selves will understand that if anything is to be 
 shirked this is the best place to economize nervous 
 force. Of course, if it is done at all, it must be done 
 honestly. But the difference between rapid glancing 
 and quick final judgment in such matters, and min- 
 ute perusing and prolonged deliberation in each case 
 is of little advantage to the pupils in the long run, 
 and is often bought at excessive cost of vitality and 
 
268 THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 
 
 strength of the teacher. Emphasize essentials, slight 
 non-essentials. Do the thing that counts. Leave 
 things that do not count undone or get them done 
 quickly. Remember that physical health, mental 
 elasticity, and freshness and vivacity of spirits must 
 be maintained at all costs in the interests of the 
 school and the scholars no less than as a matter of 
 imperative self-preservation. The wise teacher will 
 say to himself, " I must know the lessons I teach." 
 " I must do some reading outside." "I must take 
 an interest in my individual scholars." " I must 
 keep myself strong and happy and well." " These 
 are essential, and for the sake of these things I 
 stand ready to sacrifice aU mere red tape." "I stand 
 ready to be misunderstood by good people who know 
 nothing of the strain I am under." " I stand ready 
 even to shrink and to slight minor matters when it 
 is necessary to do so in order to do the main things 
 well." In the great name of Aristotle, then, resolve 
 to observe and apply this fundamental sense of pro- 
 portion. Be sure that what you do is right for you, 
 under the circumstances in which you are placed, 
 with the definite obligations that are laid upon you. 
 Never mind if you do not do everything that other 
 people expect you to do ; if you do not do things 
 which, though good in themselves and right for 
 other people to do, in your specific situation for you 
 would be wrong. In other words, have your own 
 individual ends perfectly clear, and accept or reject 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 269 
 
 the various calls that come to you according as they 
 further or hinder these clearly grasped individual 
 aims. 
 
 Now, we have four bits of advice from four of 
 the world's greatest teachers. There remains the 
 counsel of the greatest tea<iher of all. Christ says 
 to the teacher, " Make the interests and aims of 
 each one of your scholars your own." Whether a 
 teacher is a Christian in the profoundest sense of 
 the term depends not in the least on whether he is 
 a Catholic or a Protestant, a Conservative or a 
 Liberal. It depends on whether the teacher has 
 his own point of view, his personal interests, and 
 then regards the scholars as alien beings to be dealt 
 with as the rules of the school may require and as 
 his own personal interest and reputation may sug- 
 gest ; or whether in sympathy and generous inter- 
 est he makes the life and problems of each scholar 
 a genuine part of the problem of his own enlarged 
 nature and generous heart. The greatest differ- 
 ence between teachers, after all, is that in this 
 deepest sense some teachers are Christians and 
 some teachers are not. The teacher who is not a 
 Christian according to this definition will work 
 for reputation and pay, — will teach what is re- 
 quired and rule the school by sheer authority and 
 force. Between teacher and scholar a great gulf 
 wiU be fixed ; the only bridges across that gulf 
 will be authority and constraint on the part of 
 
270 THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 
 
 the teacher, fear and self-interest on the part of 
 the pupils. Such a teacher will set tasks and com- 
 pel the scholars to do them. Here such a teacher's 
 responsibility will end. 
 
 Precisely here, where the unchristian teacher's 
 work ends, is where the Christian teacher's best 
 work begins. Instead of imposing a task on the 
 scholars, the Christian teacher sets before scholars 
 and teacher alike a task which they together must 
 do ; the teacher is to help each scholar to do it and 
 each scholar is to help the teacher to get this 
 task done. It is a common work in which they are 
 engaged. If they succeed it is a common satisfac- 
 tion ; if any individual fails it is a common sor- 
 row. The Christian teacher will be just as rigid in 
 his requirements as the unchristian teacher, but the 
 attitude toward the doing of it is entirely differ- 
 ent. The unchristian teacher says to the scholars, 
 " Go and do that work : I shall mark you and pun- 
 ish you if you fail." The Christian teacher says, 
 " Come, let us do this work together ; I am ready 
 to help you in every way I can, and I want each 
 of you to help me." The Christian teacher looks 
 forward to each pupil's future, and enters sympa- 
 thetically into the plans which the child has for him- 
 self and his parents have for him. 
 
 Now undoubtedly this Christian attitude toward 
 each scholar is pretty expensive of the teacher's 
 time and strength. Doubtless, hitherto you have 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 271 
 
 thought me very selfish, hard-hearted, and parsi- 
 monious in the counsel I have been giving. I have 
 told you in the name of Epicurus to get all the 
 pleasure you can; in the name of the Stoics to 
 shut out all superfluous griefs and worry; in the 
 name of Plato to get above petty details and live a 
 life of your own, apart from mere humdrum rou- 
 tine ; in the name of Aristotle to develop a sense 
 of proportion, to shirk and slight and exclude a 
 thousand distractions that are well enough for other 
 people, but which you cannot afford. But in giv- 
 ing all this selfish, hard-hearted, coolly calculated 
 advice, I have asked you to save yourselves for 
 this Christian work, which is the best worth while 
 of all. Pour yourselves unreservedly, without stint 
 or measure, into the lives of your scholars. See 
 things through their eyes; feel keenly their joys 
 and griefs. Be sure that you share in sympathy 
 and helpfulness every task you lay upon them ; 
 that you rejoice in every success they achieve, and 
 that you are even more sorry than they for every 
 failure they make. Be a leader, not a driver, of 
 your flock : for to lead is Christ-like, to drive is 
 unchristian. The difference, you see, between the 
 teacher who is a Christian and the one who is not, 
 is not a difference of doctrine or ritual or verbal 
 profession. It is a difference in the tone, temper, 
 and spirit of the teacher's attitude toward the 
 scholars. It is a hard thing to define, but it is 
 
272 THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 
 
 something an experienced person can feel before 
 he has been in a class-room five minutes. In one 
 class-room you feel the tension of alien and an- 
 tagonistic forces, the will of the teacher arrayed 
 against the will of the scholars, and, as an inevi- 
 table consequence, the will of the scholars in latent 
 antagonism to the wiU of the teacher. In another 
 class-room there is tension, to be sure, as there 
 ought to be, but it is the tension of one strong, 
 friendly, united wiU of teacher and scholar directed 
 against their great common tasks. The Christian 
 spirit alone, without sufficient mental equipment 
 and force of will, will not teach school any more 
 than it will manage a factory or win a game of 
 football without technical training and equipment. 
 All this, however, I am taking for granted. As- 
 suming these general qualifications, it may be safely 
 said that every teacher who combines the five 
 qualities we have been describing will find teach- 
 ing a perpetual joy and will achieve a brilliant 
 success. 
 
 Such are the five points of personality as the 
 world's great teachers have developed them and as 
 they apply specifically to the work of the teacher. 
 Show me any teacher of sufficient mental training 
 and qualifications who is unpopular, ineffective, un- 
 happy, and I will guarantee that this teacher has vio- 
 lated one or more of these five principles of person- 
 ality ; either he has neglected diet, exercise, rest, and 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 273 
 
 recreation, and failed to have a good time ; or else he 
 has wasted his nervous substance in riotous worry, 
 and spent the energy needed to make things go 
 right to-day in regretting what went wrong yesterday 
 or anticipating what may go wrong to-morrow; or 
 else he has no life of his own outside of the school 
 and above it, from which he comes down clothed 
 with fresh inspiration and courage to meet the duties 
 and details of each new school day ; or else he has 
 missed the great sense of proportion and squandered 
 the energies which should have been devoted to the 
 few things that are needful on a variety of burdens 
 which the importunity of others or the false con- 
 scientiousness of himself had laid upon him ; or else, 
 and this is by far the most common and serious 
 cause, he has failed to merge his own life in the 
 lives of the scholars, so that they have felt him a 
 helper, a leader, a friend in the solving of their in- 
 dividual problems and the accomplishment of their 
 common work. 
 
 On the other hand, I will guarantee perfect per- 
 sonal success to any well-trained teacher who will 
 faithfully incorporate these five principles into his 
 personal life. The teacher who is healthy and happy 
 with Epicurus nights and mornings, holidays and va- 
 cations, at mealtime and between meals ; who faith- 
 fully fortifies his soul with the Stoic defenses against 
 needless regrets and superfluous forebodings ; who 
 now and then ascends with Plato the heights from 
 
274 THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 
 
 which he sees the letters of his life writ large, and 
 petty annoyances reduced to their true dimen- 
 sions ; who applies the Aristotelian sense of propor- 
 tion to the distribution of his energy, so that the 
 full force of it is held in reserve for the things that 
 are really worth while, and finally sees in the lives 
 of his scholars the supreme object for which all 
 these other accumulations and savings have been 
 made, and devotes himself joyfully and unreservedly 
 to the common work he tries to do with them, for 
 them, and through them for their lasting good, — 
 this teacher can no more help being a personal 
 success as a teacher than the sunlight and rain can 
 help making the earth the fruitful and beautiful 
 place that it is. 
 
XIV 
 
 The Six Partners in College Administra- 
 tion 
 
 THE last decade of the nineteenth century raised 
 the question of academic freedom in several 
 cases: at Brown University, Chicago University, 
 Kansas State Agricultural College, and Leland 
 Stanford Junior University. It is not my purpose 
 to discuss any of these cases. For every college 
 president knows that there are many things on the 
 inside of such questions which cannot be made to 
 appear to the public as they really are. What one 
 of us has not, time and again, been compelled to 
 hold his peace while the public was making all sorts 
 of unjust criticisms, simply because telling the whole 
 truth would do more harm to the institution and to 
 other persons than the criticism could do to us ! 
 
 This question of academic freedom did not arise 
 so long as the colleges were content to teach Latin, 
 Greek, mathematics, and a little science and phi- 
 losophy, for the simple reason that nobody cared 
 much, one way or the other, what was taught about 
 these things. Most of these subjects were so formal 
 and dead that serious difference of opinion about 
 them was impossible. No one cared to interfere 
 
276 THE SIX PARTNERS 
 
 with the liberty of a professor to translate a pas- 
 sage of Virgil, to solve an equation, or to demon- 
 strate a proposition in any way he might please. 
 Interference with liberty comes only when the sub- 
 jects taught are those for which the people care. 
 When people felt that theological questions were 
 most vital to their welfare, they hedged about their 
 theological seminaries with creeds, and bound pro- 
 fessors to teach according to the letter of the 
 creed. In times of intense political activity, as in 
 the Revolution and the Civil War, political opin- 
 ions were the battle-ground of academic freedom. 
 Now that economic and social questions have come 
 to the front, it is with these that troubles have 
 arisen. It is no accident that all four cases cited 
 above arose in connection with utterances on eco- 
 nomic and social questions. Theological persecutions 
 we have inherited in connection with creeds, fast 
 growing incredible, to which chairs of instruction 
 are tied. The troubles at Union and Andover came 
 from this source ; and soon or late every seminary 
 that is tied to a creed wiU have to face that kind 
 of trouble. If there is less persecution of heretics 
 to-day than formerly, we have reason to fear that 
 indifference to the issues is the cause. Political per- 
 secution we have spasmodically in political cam- 
 paigns ; but the storm of protest which such perse- 
 cution raises is so intense that the persecutors suffer 
 more damage than the persecuted. 
 
IN COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION 277 
 
 Social and economic questions, however, are des- 
 tined to divide the public more sharply than ever 
 before. Unless we can come to a clear understand- 
 ing as to the mutual duties and rights of the sev- 
 eral partners in college administration, professor- 
 ships of economics and sociology will be as perilous 
 positions in a democracy as chairs of politics ever 
 were under an absolute monarchy, or chairs of the- 
 ology in the palmy days of papal power. 
 
 Who, then, are the partners in coUege administra- 
 tion ? The parties to this partnership are six. First, 
 the founders, donors, and benefactors. Second, the 
 State. Third, the trustees, regents, or overseers. 
 Fourth, professors and instructors. Fifth, the stu- 
 dents. Sixth, the constituency of the college, that 
 portion of the public from which money and stu- 
 dents come, and to whom the institution must look 
 for interestj guidance, and support. The most im- 
 portant element in this portion of the public, which 
 I have called the constituency of the institution, is 
 the institution's own alumni. 
 
 To assign to each of these six parties to col- 
 college administration their respective rights and 
 duties, is the problem which we must try to solve. 
 First, the rights and duties of founders, donors, and 
 benefactors, the men from whom the money comes. 
 The founder has a right to determine the general 
 purpose and scope of the institution which he 
 founds, subject to the approval and acceptance of 
 
278 THE SIX PARTNERS 
 
 the State. He has the right to select the first trus- 
 tees, and to outline in a general way the policy 
 and procedure the new institution shall adopt. 
 Subsequent donors and benefactors have the obvi- 
 ous right to satisfy themselves as to the efficiency 
 of the trustees, and the wisdom of the policy of the 
 institution to which they give their money. They 
 also have the right to determine to what particular 
 departments, within the general scope of the insti- 
 tution, their special benefactions shall be devoted. 
 This is the limit of the donor's right. He may give 
 or he may not give, but when he has given his 
 money, it should be as completely beyond his indi- 
 vidual control as is a thrown stone after it has left 
 the hand. A donor has no more right to dictate what 
 views an institution shall teach than a stockholder 
 of a steamship company has a right to direct the 
 pilot how he shall steer the ship to which a thou- 
 sand lives have been intrusted. The moment a 
 donor has given his money, he has entered into a 
 partnership with the five other parties to an insti- 
 tution, and his rights must be limited by the rights 
 which belong to them. Neither may he legitimately 
 draw up a creed or statement of opinion which the 
 professors in the institution shall be bound to teach. 
 To do that would be like sending a boat to sea with 
 the tiller lashed in position, and with instructions 
 to the sailors on no account to touch it, even though 
 the boat might be making straight for the icebergs 
 
IN COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION 279 
 
 or the rocks. The attempt of a donor to dictate the 
 views which a professor shall teach is to arrogate 
 to himself the attributes of omniscience, omnipo- 
 tence, and immortality, — an arrogance of which no 
 mortal man would care to be guilty. This limitation 
 of a donor's rights may seem severe and extreme, 
 yet it is the foundation stone on which academic 
 freedom rests. 
 
 A donor may indicate the general purpose to 
 which his gift shall be devoted. He has no right 
 to dictate the specific views which shall be incul- 
 cated under that general purpose. Wherever found- 
 ers, donors, or charters have ventured to prophesy, 
 evil has resulted. Wise as was Johns Hopkins, and 
 great as was his gift, how much wiser he would 
 have been, and how much more useful would have 
 been his gift, had he not tied his institution to the 
 uncertain fortunes of the Baltimore and Ohio Rail- 
 road ! Much as Clark University under its able 
 president has been able to accomplish, it would 
 have done five times as much if the founder had 
 merely given his gift in cash, and turned over aU 
 questions of building, equipment, personnel, and 
 curriculum to the president and the very compe- 
 tent board of trustees whom he selected. Other 
 institutions have failed to get financial support be- 
 cause the founders have been supposed to carry 
 the keys of the safe in their pockets. 
 
 Financial interference, however, is the least seri- 
 
280 THE SIX PARTNERS 
 
 ous of the errors of founders and benefactors. For, 
 as a rule, finance is the one thing in which such 
 founders are experts. Their interference becomes 
 intolerable and fatal the moment they attempt to 
 dictate the specific opinions which shall or shall 
 not be taught. It were better that a million doUars 
 should be sunk in Boston Harbor, Lake Michi- 
 gan, or San Francisco Bay, than that the donor 
 of it should influence, in the slightest degree, the 
 utterance of a professor at Cambridge, Chicago, or 
 Berkeley. For an institution of learning is a part- 
 nership, and the determination of precisely what 
 shall or shall not be taught rests chiefly with the 
 other partners. 
 
 The second of the six partners in the college 
 is the State. The contribution of the State con- 
 sists in exemption from taxation, which increases 
 by one third the value of productive funds, and 
 the degree-conferring power, which gives to the 
 graduates of the college official recognition and 
 standing in the conmiunity. It is the duty of the 
 State to protect the public against misdirection of 
 funds and the cheapening of degrees. An institu- 
 tion founded for the propagation of alchemy, as- 
 trology, palmistry, theosophy, or Christian science 
 would have no claim to exemption from taxation 
 or the conf-erring of degrees. For some of these 
 subjects have been proved to be without founda- 
 tion ; and others, to say the least, have yet to make 
 
IN COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION 281 
 
 good their claim to public confidence. There is no 
 reason why the public at large should contribute to 
 the support of such institutions, or place confidence 
 in their graduates. Consequently a charter grant- 
 ing exemption from taxation and the degree-con- 
 ferring power to institutions of this kind would 
 be a partnership of the State in purely private 
 interests. Furthermore, the State should refuse 
 charters to institutions which propose to duplicate 
 means of instruction which are already adequate. 
 The State should not support ten colleges when 
 ^Ye are adequate to serve its educational needs. 
 Again, charters should be refused to institutions 
 which fail to give promise of adequate means for 
 the prosecution of the work they undertake. Some 
 indulgence doubtless is necessary to struggling in- 
 stitutions in new communities. On the frontier, an 
 institution may be founded on a lot of land given 
 to it as a means of booming the town, the build- 
 ings may be built by mortgaging the land, the pro- 
 fessors may be employed with money raised by a 
 mortgage on the buildings, and finally the money 
 to prevent foreclosure may be raised from credu- 
 lous donors in the East. I once visited such a col- 
 lege and inquired of the janitor, who was a student 
 in the institution, as to the financial basis and 
 prospects of the institution. He told me that it 
 had no president, only four professors, and thirty- 
 two students. When more closely questioned, he 
 
282 THE SIX PARTNERS 
 
 confessed that of those thirty-two students, thirty- 
 were in the preparatory department. I asked him 
 if there were any other competing institutions, and 
 he replied that there was a State university in the 
 city, and that a Presbyterian college was in pro- 
 cess of erection. When asked as to the financial 
 support of the institution, he replied that it had 
 the entire denomination of the State behind it. I 
 asked him how strong the denomination was in 
 that State, and he replied that there were nine 
 churches in the State, of which two were self- 
 supporting. In new communities it may be neces- 
 sary to encourage such infant industries by grant- 
 ing charters with great freedom, trusting to natural 
 selection to weed out, in due time, the feebler 
 ones; but in established communities it is the 
 duty of the State to assure itself that a proposed 
 institution wiU have sufficient means to give the 
 instruction which it offers by approved methods 
 and under competent instructors. Where strong 
 institutions are so numerous and easily available 
 as they are in most of our Eastern States, it is 
 a great wrong to the community to encourage the 
 establishment of educational weaklings, which give 
 an inferior education to the deluded students who 
 resort to them, and which eke out a precarious 
 existence by systematic begging. It is the duty of 
 prospective donors and benefactors to discriminate 
 against these feeble and struggling institutions. 
 
IN COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION 283 
 
 The wise donor will see that the doUar which he 
 gives is multiplied by every dollar that the institu- 
 tion to which it is given already has. To give to 
 an institution which has only one or two hundred 
 thousand dollars of endowment is to make his 
 gift of much less educational value than if it were 
 given to an institution which had several millions. 
 " To him that hath shall be given " is a law which 
 wise friends of education should strictly observe in 
 their gifts. 
 
 The State should refuse to grant charters for the 
 promulgation of individual opinions and prejudices. 
 It should not allow an institution to bind itself 
 to teach either free trade or protection, either the 
 gold standard or the free and unlimited coinage of 
 silver at the ratio of sixteen to one, either imperi- 
 alism or anti-imperialism, either private or munici- 
 pal ownership of public-service corporations, either 
 Trinitarianism or Unitarianism, either universal 
 salvation or the endless punishment of the wicked, 
 either free will or determinism, either socialism or 
 individualism, either sacerdotalism or the inde- 
 pendence of the local church. These are matters 
 in which competent persons disagree. One side of 
 these questions has as much right to be impartially 
 presented as the other. The public, as such, has 
 no peculiar and exclusive interest in either one ; 
 consequently the State should not enter into part- 
 nership with either party to these and kindred con- 
 
284 THE SIX PARTNERS 
 
 troversies. There is, however, a way in which the 
 views of private parties may legitimately be taught 
 under the protection and sanction of the State. 
 As has already been said, the founders and donors 
 have a right to select the trustees who are to exe- 
 cute their trust. The State need not inquire into 
 the views of the donors or of the trustees whom 
 they select. The State deals with both donors and 
 trustees as citizens ; it does not inquire whether they 
 are individualists or socialists, protectionists or free- 
 traders, Catholic or Protestant, orthodox or liberal. 
 If they are sufficiently intelligent and competent 
 to administer the trust imposed upon them, the 
 State asks no questions about their views. Con- 
 sequently, it is perfectly possible for Catholics to 
 establish a Catholic university, controlled by Cath- 
 olic trustees under the sanction of the State. The 
 State does not thereby become a partner in their 
 peculiar views, as it would if the requirement to 
 teach those peculiar views were embodied in the 
 charter of the institution. Furthermore, where the 
 character of the institution is determined by men 
 rather than by document, there is ample oppor- 
 tunity for change with changing conditions. This 
 method of securing the teaching of special views 
 is well recognized among us. In future charters 
 this should be the only method of propagating 
 special opinions which is tolerated and sanctioned 
 by the State. 
 
IN COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION 285 
 
 The third partner in an educational institution 
 is the board of trustees. It is their duty to invest 
 the funds and to devote the income of the institution 
 to the needs for virhich it is established. The expert 
 financier is an indispensable member of every such 
 board of trustees, for the waste or misapplication 
 of funds is absolutely fatal to the life and work of 
 the institution. 
 
 Next in importance to the expert financier on a 
 board of trustees is the man of broad educational 
 ideas. This is the prime qualification of the president 
 of the institution. It is a serious mistake to put 
 the mere financier or the ornate figurehead or the 
 man of popular gifts or the prominent ecclesiastic 
 at the head of an institution. These other qualities 
 are, indeed, desirable, but not essential, for a pres- 
 ident. The expert financial ability may be supplied 
 from the trustees ; but the trustees as a whole can 
 never give the educational direction to an institu- 
 tion. That should be centred in one person, and 
 that person should be the president. The president 
 should be at the head both of the governing board 
 and the faculty of instruction. Wherever the board 
 of government and instruction is not thus united in 
 one head, there is sure to creep in all the ineffi- 
 ciency and indirection which is represented to our 
 minds by the word "lobbying." Our theological 
 seminaries which have not been connected with uni- 
 versities until recently have, as a rule, been organ- 
 
286 THE SIX PARTNERS 
 
 ized on this basis of mutual exclusion. As a result 
 their management has been far below the level of the 
 efficiency and the mutual understanding and good 
 will which characterize other institutions of learn- 
 ing. Tied to creeds and governed by trustees who 
 have known comparatively little of the inner work- 
 ing of the institution committed to their charge, 
 these theological seminaries have lagged far behind 
 other institutions of learning in the efficiency and 
 harmony of their administration. 
 
 It is the duty of the trustees to elect a president 
 and professors. In this election they are under 
 obligation to lay aside their private interests, pre- 
 judices, and predilections, and, with due regard to 
 the known purposes of founders and donors, to 
 select the best available men for the chairs of in- 
 struction. This is one place in the world where in- 
 fluence and patronage should never be permitted to 
 enter. In the selection of professors, the judgment 
 of the allied departments of instruction should 
 have great weight. The views of the faculty as a 
 whole should be consulted ; but the final authority 
 should rest with the trustees, and should be exer- 
 cised on the recommendation of the president. As 
 a rule, a man who is indorsed by the professors 
 in the same or closely allied departments, who is 
 approved by the faculty as a whole, and who is re- 
 conunended by the president, should be elected by 
 the trustees almost as a matter of course ; for the 
 
IN COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION 287 
 
 president and the professors in allied departments 
 are presumably experts in teclmical matters of edu- 
 cation, while a board of trustees composed of men 
 whose chief attention is given to business and pro- 
 fessional life are presumably not educational ex- 
 perts. At the same time, the trustees always have 
 the right for good and sufficient reasons to refuse 
 to elect persons so nominated. While they may re- 
 ject a nominee, however, it would hardly be within 
 their province to select a candidate of their own 
 and force him upon the faculty over the protest of 
 the president. The ultimate responsibility for the 
 educational conduct of the institution rests with the 
 president. He cannot expect to have everything 
 which he desires done by the trustees, but he has 
 a right to insist that no professor shall be imposed 
 upon him against his will. The election of a pro- 
 fessor or instructor whom the president did not 
 approve would be equivalent to a vote of want of 
 confidence in the president, and would naturally be 
 followed by his resignation. In municipal affairs, 
 the tendency is more and more toward the centrali- 
 zation of power. This is even more desirable in the 
 conduct of educational institutions. The men who 
 have clear views of educational policy, who have a 
 just sense of proportion between the several depart- 
 ments of instruction, who are able to judge men not 
 merely for their individual attainments, but for their 
 capacity to fit into a complicated intellectual ma- 
 
288 THE SIX PARTNERS 
 
 cliine, and contribute to the whole the most which 
 this particular position, under the given circum- 
 stances, is able to render, are not numerous. Either 
 a president is such a man, or he is not. If he is such 
 a person, the wisest thing a board of trustees can 
 do is to trust him implicitly. If he is not such a 
 person, the sooner they get rid of him the better. 
 Autocracy tempered by assassination is the ideal 
 coUege government. By autocracy I do not mean 
 arbitrariness or conceit or caprice. The educational 
 autocrat should consult the reasonable claims of 
 students, seek the advice of the faculty individually 
 and collectively, confer with members of his board 
 of trustees, get the views of experts in other in- 
 stitutions as to the qualifications of his candidate. 
 But when his mind is made up as a result of these 
 many inquiries and varied considerations, he has 
 a right to expect his judgment to carry more 
 weight than that of merchants or judges or clergy- 
 men, who, however eminent in those iBelds to which 
 they have given special attention, cannot in the na- 
 ture of the case have given as much consideration 
 to the particular problem in hand as it is his pre- 
 rogative and duty to do. The president has a right 
 to have each professor in the institution one whom 
 he has either accepted from his predecessor when 
 he took the office, or whom he has personally ap- 
 proved at the time of his election. There are great 
 risks in trusting so much power to any individual. 
 
m COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION 289 
 
 In the hands of an unwise man such power may 
 harm an institution for a generation, but the pol- 
 icy of divided counsels and appointments without 
 expert approval is an even greater risk, and will 
 ruin an institution forever. 
 
 The fourth partner in a college is the faculty. 
 It is the duty of a professor to be the master of his 
 department. He must know his subject. Know- 
 ledge is not an aggregate of isolated propositions ; 
 it is not merely an amount of information. It is 
 the apprehension of the whole system of relations 
 which his department includes, ability to see each 
 fact in the light of aU the other facts to which 
 it is intimately related, the power to grasp the 
 whole system to which the facts belong, the capa- 
 city to bring aU that is known about a subject to 
 bear upon any problem that may arise within the 
 department of knowledge to which it belongs. A 
 professor must be able to teach the whole subject 
 whenever he teaches any part of it, to answer off- 
 hand any ordinary question that may arise in con- 
 nection with it, or at least, if he cannot answer it, 
 to point the inquirer to the sources where the an- 
 swer may be found, if it is answerable. The pro- 
 fessor is the man through whom a department of 
 knowledge lives and thinks and speaks. If the 
 oracle is dumb, if he evades legitimate questions or 
 gives wrong answers without promptly acknowledg- 
 ing his error, he is not a real professor at all ; he 
 
290 THE SIX PARTNERS 
 
 is unfit for his place, and he should be removed at 
 once. Again, if a professor knows a subject but 
 cannot impart it as a living whole, so that it will 
 live and grow in the minds of honest and earnest 
 students, if he teaches the words of the book, or the 
 mere letter of his own lectures, or the equally dead 
 contents of his verbal memory, he is incompetent, 
 and should be discharged. The students in our 
 American institutions are very keen and competent 
 critics on this point. Disorder in the class-room 
 springs from this source more frequently than from 
 any other. The students render a valuable service 
 to education in helping to weed out these incom- 
 petent professors. As Dr. G. Stanley Hall says, 
 "Youthful sentiment is right. There is nothing 
 more worthy of being the butt of all the horseplay 
 of ephebic wit or practical joke than an instructor 
 from whose soul the enthusiasm of humanity has 
 vanished, who has ceased to know and grow, and 
 who serves up the dry husks of former knowledge 
 and peddles second and third hand information, 
 warmed up from year to year, rather than opening 
 new living fountains in which the burning thirst of 
 youth can be slaked. The latter's instincts are far 
 wiser than they know, for iconoclasm is never better 
 directed than against the literalist, formalist, and 
 sophronist." It must be frankly confessed that as 
 a rule American students, in time past, have been 
 better judges than presidents and boards of trustees 
 
IN COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION 291 
 
 of the fitness or unfitness of professors for their 
 places, and that they have shown a courage, enter- 
 prise, and efficiency in the discipline of incompetent 
 professors which presidents and trustees have sadly 
 lacked. Like all forms of natural selection, this 
 discipline of incompetent professors by students is 
 merciless ; but it is in the long run beneficent. It 
 protects the colleges from a horde of morally good 
 but intellectually weak, dull, dry, dead professors. 
 At last the presidents themselves have discovered 
 a way of solving this problem which combines effi- 
 ciency with apparent tender-heartedness. They 
 take advantage of the elective system to introduce 
 young and inspiring instructors, offering courses 
 that compete with the courses of the dead professor. 
 It is expensive, involving temporary duplication of 
 salaries. But in time it proves effective. The man 
 who in open competition fails to draw his fair pro- 
 portion of students, and that without resorting to 
 " snap " courses, has the propriety of his resignation 
 pointed out to him in terms which everybody else 
 can read, if he cannot. And in due time the desired 
 resignation is forthcoming. In the application of 
 this principle, proportion, not numbers alone, has to 
 be considered. For courses in advanced mathemat- 
 ics or physics never can appeal to numbers as do 
 elementary courses in literature, history, and econo- 
 mics. It is noticed that whenever this automatic nat- 
 ural selection of professors is applied through the 
 
292 THE SIX PARTNERS 
 
 elective system, there is an immediate falling off, 
 if not an absolute discontinuance, of the artificial 
 selection by irritation and horseplay and practical 
 jokes on the part of the students. 
 
 Removal of professors for incompetence is a duty 
 of trustees and presidents which they have never 
 half lived up to. To shift this duty onto students 
 as has been done in the past, or onto the elective 
 system, as is being done at present, is cowardly 
 negligence. The incompetent man should be dis- 
 missed at the first opportunity. Academic freedom 
 demands it. For the truth has a right to be uttered 
 through a voice competent to proclaim it. Kindness 
 to the incompetent is treason to the truth, a be- 
 trayal of the rights of the students. Not one appli- 
 cant in ten for a college professorship is fit for the 
 position for which he applies. The most ominous 
 sign in American education to-day is the fact that 
 a certain class of institutions are filling up their 
 chairs with men who have indeed met the techni- 
 cal requirements of graduate study, men who are 
 capped in a thesis and gowned in a doctor's degree, 
 but who lack the grasp of their subject as a living, 
 growing whole. 
 
 So much for a professor's duty to his subject and 
 to his students. His next duty is to his coUege. 
 Egotism and individualism are inconsistent with 
 the harmonious working of a faculty. Unless a 
 man can be courteous and generous in his relations 
 
IN COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION 293 
 
 with his colleagues and can cooperate with them 
 harmoniously and good-naturedly in common work, 
 he has no place on a coUege faculty. This matter 
 is much more important in small colleges than in 
 large universities. The egotist who would make 
 interminable trouble in the small circle of a country 
 coUege may be swallowed up and utilized to good 
 advantage in a university which is large enough to 
 ignore the personal equation of the individual. The 
 first few years of a professor's appointment should 
 be regarded as strictly provisional and temporary ; 
 and if incompatibility of temper develops in these 
 early years, it is safe ground for refusal to renew 
 the appointment. Unless a professor is prepared 
 to do a good deal of unrewarded drudgery, and to 
 cooperate with others in plans of which he does not 
 altogether individually approve, and to be at times 
 the agent of policies to which he cannot give his 
 hearty personal assent, above all if he cannot re- 
 cognize that other people have as much right to 
 their point of view as he has to his own, he never 
 will make the most useful member of a college 
 faculty. 
 
 Finally, a professor is under obligation to respect 
 the constituency of the college. Precisely what is 
 meant by this constituency will be considered later. 
 A professor has no right, deliberately and inten- 
 tionally, to offend the friends and supporters of 
 the institution which he is employed to serve. If 
 
294 THE SIX PARTNERS 
 
 he 18 a believer in the gold standard, he has no 
 right to denounce the advocates of free silver as 
 thieves and robbers. If he is a believer in free 
 trade, he has no right to call protectionists robbers 
 and plunderers of the poor. If he is an anti-impe- 
 rialist, he has no right to call expansionists hard 
 names. For the adherents to these views to which 
 he is opposed have certain rights in the institution 
 to which he belongs. They contribute indirectly, 
 through its exemption from taxation, to its support. 
 They send their children to it for education. They 
 look to it and to its graduates for counsel in pro- 
 fessional, and guidance in public affairs. He has 
 no right to become an agitator in behalf of views 
 and measures which are repugnant to considerable 
 portions of the constituency of the institution, — no 
 right, I say, to do these things as a professor. If 
 he wishes to do them as an individual, he of course 
 has a perfect right to do so. But he should first 
 hand in his resignation. In a free country every 
 man has a right to be a martyr to any cause which 
 he believes to be worthy of his individual sacrifice. 
 But no professor has the right to lay the institu- 
 tion which he serves upon the altar of his own 
 martyr zeal. An institution stands for the accu- 
 mulated wisdom of the world. To set that wisdom 
 forth in due proportion is its prime purpose. To 
 sacrifice its chief function for the sake of some 
 special view which an individual may desire to 
 
IN COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION 295 
 
 advocate, is a wrong to the institution which no 
 individual has a right to inflict. 
 
 In placing this limit on the utterance of profes- 
 sors, there is involved no unreasonable restriction 
 of liberty. As has been said, if a man feels called 
 upon to become an agitator, he is free to leave the 
 university. More than that, every professor is at 
 perfect liberty to give dignified and moderate ex- 
 pression to whatever views on political and social 
 questions he may hold. In private conversation, 
 in response to inquiry from the newspapers, even 
 in a public speech, he is at liberty to set forth 
 whatever views he holds and feels called upon to 
 express. In doing so, however, he should never 
 forget the dignity and impartiality and courtesy 
 which his position as an intellectual servant of 
 the public must always impose upon him. The 
 question of academic freedom, at this point, is 
 generally more a question of manners than of 
 morals, more a matter of tone and temper and 
 emphasis than of conviction. The distinction which 
 Mr. Cleveland attempted to draw between a mem- 
 ber of a party and an offensive partisan, is one 
 which applies to this question of a professor's free- 
 dom of speech. Membership in a political party 
 and frank avowal of one's views on political and 
 social questions are perfectly consistent with the 
 position of a professor. Neither president nor trus- 
 tee nor donor has the slightest right to inquire 
 
296 THE SIX PARTNERS 
 
 into a professor's views for the purposes of disci- 
 pline or removal, nor to prevent the reasonable and 
 moderate expression of such views. On the other 
 hand, a president and a board of trustees have 
 both the right and duty to suggest to a professor 
 that the immoderate and aggressive and vitupera- 
 tive reiteration of views which are repugnant to a 
 large portion of the constituency of an institution 
 are inconsistent with his largest usefulness as a 
 professor, and if he persists in such utterances, to 
 notify him to choose between the career of an agi- 
 tator and a professor. Every relationship implies 
 both rights and duties. A professor has duties to 
 an institution as well as rights in it. It is the duty 
 of the president and trustees of an institution to 
 protect a professor in his reasonable rights, and to 
 insist on his regard for the duties and obligations 
 which his membership in the institution involves. 
 
 The fifth partner in a college is the body of 
 students. Academic freedom is as necessary to the 
 students as to any other part in the university. In 
 early college days, no provision was made for the 
 free life of the students ; accordingly they created 
 such a sphere for themselves. By robbing the hen- 
 roosts of neighboring farmers, translating live stock 
 to the roofs of college buildings and establishing 
 them in the recitation rooms, by greasing black- 
 boards and barricading lecture-rooms, by torment- 
 ing tutors and annoying freshmen, — the students 
 
IN COLLEGE ADMlNISTRAlION 297 
 
 made for themselves an artificial world in which 
 they foimd the freedom that the rigid curriculum 
 and the paternal discipline of the college refused to 
 provide for them. A few of the wiser presidents of 
 those days recognized the educational and spiritual 
 necessity of such a vent for youthful spirits, and 
 were content to perfunctorily deplore such acts, 
 without being too strenuous in punishing culprits ; 
 but no one was wise or strong enough to provide 
 the real freedom which alone could supersede it. 
 
 The necessity of freedom to student life has at 
 length gained official recognition. Dr. William T. 
 Harris in his " Psychologic Foundations of Educa- 
 tion " says : — 
 
 " Wherever there is much pressure laid on the 
 individual, there the reaction is violent, and pupils 
 in a governed school must have their forms of re- 
 action. In a coUege, where the pressure of prescrip- 
 tion is far greater, the reaction produces secret 
 societies, college songs, hazing, initiations, pranks 
 on the citizens, etc. The study of a dead language, 
 abstruse mathematics, and the discipline far re- 
 moved from the ordinary life of the age, produces 
 self-estrangement ; and the student preserves his 
 elasticity in the meantime by forming Greek-letter 
 societies wherein he caricatures his daily studies, 
 mocks them with inextinguishable laughter, and 
 forms for himself the consciousness of a new life, 
 — a coUege life of his own creation. He hazes the 
 
298 THE SIX PARTNERS 
 
 members of the lower classes, and initiates them 
 into the artificial college life by rites well planned 
 to shock the traditions of civil order." 
 
 In more recent years, improved laboratory facili- 
 ties, the increased use of the library, the introduc- 
 tion of the elective system, and the advent of ath- 
 letics have brought into student life a real freedom, 
 and to that extent have superseded the necessity of 
 that artificial freedom which, in former days, the 
 students were compelled to carve out for themselves. 
 No man can grow in character unless he is doing 
 freely and gladly something which he likes to do, — 
 something into which he can put the whole energy 
 of his will, the whole enthusiasm of his heart. The 
 modern college provides this freedom in study, in 
 athletics, and in a more dignified and enjoyable 
 social life of the students among themselves. The 
 elective system allows and encourages the student 
 to throw his whole energy into congenial intellect- 
 ual tasks ; athletics afford him a sphere in which 
 he can do something as well as it can be done, and 
 reap the glory of it for himself and for his uni- 
 versity; life in chapter houses and college clubs 
 gives the youth a sense of proprietorship and re- 
 sponsibility for the conduct of his own affairs which 
 he never felt so long as he lived in dormitories 
 erected by the college, and ate his meals at long 
 tables in the college commons. If the disorders 
 which used to mark the coUege dormitory life, with 
 
IN COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION 299 
 
 the attendant breaking in of doors and smashing 
 of furniture, if the rude manners and biscuit bat- 
 tles, like that at Harvard in which the historian 
 Parkman so nearly lost his eyesight, have disap- 
 peared, it is not because they failed to perform 
 an absolutely indispensable educational function in 
 the college of their day, but because a wiser educa- 
 tional policy has provided spheres of freedom by 
 which these rougher disciplines in independence have 
 been superseded. We can never make men out of 
 the boys who come to us unless, in some form or 
 other, we give them a career in which to work out 
 freely what is in them. Wherever prescription and 
 paternalism undertake to domineer the life of the 
 students, there we are sure to find either lawlessness, 
 rebellion, and all manner of boisterous mischief, or 
 else the product of such an institution will be a lot 
 of good-for-nothing, effeminate, namby-pamby weak- 
 lings. The only way to escape this alternative is to 
 provide for the students a physical, intellectual, 
 and social life which shall be not merely what the 
 mature, deeorous judgment of their elders declares 
 it ought to be, but, first of all, what the students 
 earnestly and enthusiastically and freely make for 
 themselves and cherish as their own. The question 
 of athletics is not the question of whether this or 
 that particular form of exercise is intrinsically good 
 or bad, nor how it will affect the symmetry of the 
 body as expressed on the anthropometric chart ; the 
 
300 THE SIX PARTNERS 
 
 question of the elective system is not the question 
 whether a student will always choose a wiser course 
 than a professor could mark out for him ; the ques- 
 tion of chapter houses, society halls, and univer- 
 sity clubs is not the question whether these things 
 are more expensive or clannish than accommoda- 
 tions which the college authorities could provide in 
 dormitories and commons. All these questions are 
 mere phases of the deeper question whether the 
 college shall hold its students in a state of tu- 
 telage as a benevolent empire rules its conquered 
 provinces, or whether it shall give to them the 
 largest liberty in the conduct of their personal af- 
 fairs which is consistent with their reasonable pro- 
 gress in the studies they come to the institution to 
 pursue, just as a republic grants to its constituent 
 States the largest measure of local self-government 
 that is consistent with the efficiency and dignity of 
 the nation. 
 
 The sixth and final partner in a college is its 
 constituency. This is a broad term, including the 
 students and the homes from which they come, the 
 geographical area from which the students are 
 largely drawn, the social class or denominational 
 body with which the institution is most closely 
 allied, and, above all, the alumni of the institu- 
 tion, who bear its name, and whose affections and 
 interests are bound up with its reputation and wel- 
 fare. The rights of this sixth partner have already 
 
IN COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION 301 
 
 been partially indicated in setting forth the duty 
 of the professor to respect them. One of the chief 
 duties of the constituency is to keep the institution 
 abreast of the times. The other partners incline to 
 conservatism. Founders and donors die. Founda- 
 tions and charters remain unchanged. The State is 
 conservative alike by instinct and necessity. Trus- 
 tees grow old, become absorbed in other interests, 
 and unconsciously think of an institution's needs 
 in terms of their own experience of forty years 
 ago. The faculty is always divided into two camps. 
 One type of professor is content to give the same 
 lectures, read the same passages, and teach the 
 same subjects in the same way in which he fell into 
 teaching them within the first five years of his pro- 
 fessional life. The professor of this type can make 
 a professor's chair the easiest and softest sinecure 
 to be found in the whole range of salaried positions. 
 Another type of professor is always living on the 
 frontiers of investigation and research, pushing for- 
 ward the boundaries of the known, and penetrating 
 into the confines of the unknown beyond. This type 
 of professor probably does more and harder work 
 for the money he receives than any class of men 
 in the whole economic world. It is the duty of the 
 constituency of an institution to watch those subtle 
 tendencies that bring institutions into decrepitude 
 and premature decay, to give their cordial appre- 
 ciation and approval to every effort to push the 
 
302 THE SIX PARTNERS 
 
 institution to the front, to insist that dead wood 
 shall be mercilessly cut out, that new methods 
 shall be adopted, new equipment secured, new 
 policies attempted as soon as educational progress 
 elsewhere, or the consensus of educational opinion, 
 demands them. The students are always a great 
 help in this matter, though, as has been previously 
 indicated, their help is often rendered in rude and 
 brutal ways. The alumni, especially the young 
 alumni, can render their alma mater the greatest 
 service at this point. They should compare the 
 courses of study in their institution with the best 
 courses that are offered elsewhere. They should 
 watch with jealous interest every new election and 
 appointment, and know precisely what the election 
 or the appointment means ; whether it is on the 
 side of retrogression or progress, whether it means 
 improvement or decline. 
 
 The increasing representation of the alumni on 
 boards of government in our universities and col- 
 leges is a most healthy and wholesome sign, though, 
 of course, it needs to be guarded. The selection of 
 alumni representatives should be made after care- 
 ful and deliberate canvass, and full discussions of 
 the qualifications and policies of candidates. No 
 more intelligent and devoted service can be found 
 than that which is freely and generously rendered 
 by the representatives of the alumni of our col- 
 leges and universities. It is for the alumni, and the 
 
IN COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION 303 
 
 friends whom they can interest, to supply our in- 
 stitutions of learning with the material equipment 
 which they need, and with the productive funds for 
 their adequate maintenance. Most enthusiastically 
 and generously this work is being done. There is 
 no more hopeful feature of American life to-day 
 than the generosity with which the alumni and 
 friends of our colleges rally to their support in time 
 of need. Magnificent buildings, splendid equip- 
 ments, munificent endowments are being given to 
 these institutions every year, partly by men who 
 have gained their own education from them and 
 gladly repay the debt they owe, and partly by men 
 who have appreciated the worth of education 
 through their own privation of it and generously 
 desire to give to others what they have personally 
 known only through the sense of loss. 
 
 Academic freedom is not the simple question of 
 whether a professor teaches or refrains from teach- 
 ing this or that. As Plato says of justice, that it 
 is the harmonious working of the several constitu- 
 ent elements, whether in the State or in the indi- 
 vidual, so academic freedom is the harmonious 
 working of the six constituent elements of the uni- 
 versity. An institution is enslaved when any one 
 of these parties encroaches on the rights of others. 
 Its slavery may come from either of the six sources, 
 — meddlesome founders and dictatorial donors ; a 
 State that is either too lax or too severe in its 
 
304 THE SIX PARTNERS 
 
 supervision; a president and trustees who are 
 either arbitrary and partial, or negligent and in- 
 competent ; professors who regard their mission of 
 agitation in behalf of their own peculiar views as 
 prior to their obligation to the interests of the in- 
 stitution and the proportions of truth ; obstreper- 
 ous and lawless students; and, lastly, indifferent 
 and easy-going alumni, who forget the duty they 
 owe to their alma mater, and permit her, without 
 protest, to lapse into fossilization. 
 
 A free institution, on the other hand, is one 
 founded and maintained by benefactors who add 
 to their gifts the greatest gift of all, a modest self- 
 abnegation which recognizes that truth is larger 
 than their private vision, and refuses to place per- 
 sonal preference above expert judgment ; fostered 
 by a State which is jealous for its efficiency ; ad- 
 ministered by trustees who are as single-minded in 
 the selection of the best men for its chairs of instruc- 
 tion as they are for the most safe and profitable 
 investment of their funds, and by a president who 
 has sufficient authority to select whatever men and 
 adopt whatever measures he finds essential to the 
 maintenance of a consistent educational policy; 
 manned by professors who love the truth and the 
 institution and the students first, and themselves 
 and their private fads last ; frequented by students 
 who are intensely interested in intellectual, social, 
 and athletic pursuits of their own selection and 
 
IN COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION 305 
 
 creation ; watched over by an alert body of alumni 
 and a vigilant public, ever insisting that what has 
 proved good elsewhere shall be instantly adopted, 
 and that their own institution shall take its fair 
 share of the risks of such educational experiments 
 as are essential to educational advance. 
 
I 
 
 XV 
 
 The College^ 
 
 THE best approach to a definition of the col- 
 lege is by closing in upon it from the two 
 sides of the institutions between which it stands, 
 the school and the university.) And as in the mari- 
 ner's compass not only is there a northeast be- 
 tween north and east, but several intervening 
 points, so we shall find between the school and 
 the college, a school-coUege, and between the uni- 
 versity and the coUege, a university-coUege, which 
 for our more accurate purposes we shall have to 
 take into account. Before defining the college, let 
 us define in order the school, the university, the 
 school-college, and the university-college. 
 
 The school imposes the symbols of communica- 
 tion, together with the rudiments of science, litera- 
 ture, and art, on the more or less unwilling child. 
 I know the words " impose " and " unwilling " sound 
 hard and harsh, and will evoke a protest from the 
 advocates of the sugar-coated education. But with 
 all due respect for what kindergarten devices, child- 
 
 ^ Paper read before the International Congress of Arts and 
 Science, Department 23, Section C (the college), at the Louisiana 
 Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., September 19-24, 1904. 
 
THE COLLEGE 307 
 
 study, and pedagogical pre-digestion can do to make 
 learning attractive, the school must be essentially 
 a grind on facts and principles the full significance 
 of which the child cannot appreciate, and which 
 consequently must appear hard, dry, and dull. The 
 world is so big and complex, the mind of the child 
 is so small and simple, that the process of the ap- 
 plication of the one to the other can scarcely be 
 effective without considerable pain. Consequently, 
 in the school there must be rigid discipline, judi- 
 cious appeal to extraneous motives, and a firm 
 background of unquestioned authority. I appreci- 
 ate most highly all that has been done in the ways 
 above referred to in the direction of mollifying this 
 discipline. But in a brief definition of a great in- 
 stitution, the essential, not the accidental elements, 
 the enduring features, not the latest phases of it, 
 must be emphasized. 
 
 AThe university, including in that comprehensive 
 term graduate, professional, and technical training, 
 is the exact opposite of the school. The school 
 brings together the large world and the child's 
 small mind, involving the pain of mental stretch- 
 ing to take in materials of which there is no con- 
 scious want. The university presupposes the en- 
 larged mind, which it applies to some small section 
 of truth, such as law, medicine, architecture, engi- 
 neering, dentistry, forestry, Latin, history, astro- 
 nomy, or chemistry^ This, too, is a somewhat painful 
 
308 THE COLLEGE 
 
 process, but its pains are of the opposite nature, 
 due to confining the enlarged mind, full of varied 
 human interests, to the minute details of a narrow 
 specialty. Of discipline the university has prac- 
 tically nothing. It requires only intellectual re- 
 sults. Such moral and spiritual influences as it 
 affords are offered as opportunities rather than 
 imposed as requirements. Its atmosphere is abso- 
 lutely free. Its professors are specialists. Its stu- 
 dents are supposed to be men. 
 
 Having briefly defined the two institutions on 
 either side, it might seem the proper time to pre- 
 sent the definition of the college. But on both 
 sides intermediary types have been evolved, which 
 must be carefully distinguished from the college 
 proper, — the school-college and the university- 
 college. 
 
 The school-college admits its students poorly 
 prepared, and gives them in the school-coUege the 
 work they ought to have done in the school. Its 
 professors are schoolmasters, teaching several sub- 
 jects, mainly by the school method of recitation 
 from the book or repetition of dictated lectures. 
 Laboratory work is confined chiefly to prearranged 
 illustrative material. The conduct of the students 
 is minutely supervised by the faculty. Little or 
 nothing inside or outside of the recitation rooms is 
 left to the initiative of the students. A considerable 
 proportion of the so-called colleges of the United 
 
THE COLLEGE 309 
 
 States are of this school-college type. They are 
 inexpensive, and curiously enough the less en- 
 dowment they have, the less it costs to attend 
 them. Their graduates, unless by virtue of native 
 wit, hardly have the breadth and initiative neces- 
 sary for leadership in commercial, professional, and 
 public life. 
 
 By the university-college, I do not mean neces- 
 sarily one connected with a university. A college 
 connected with a university may be a real college, 
 and a university-college may be connected with no 
 university. Its distinctive mark is the application 
 to immature students of methods of instruction and 
 discipline which are adapted only to the mature. 
 Its instruction is given in large lecture courses, 
 with little or no personal interest in his students 
 on the part of the lecturer, or required reaction 
 on the part of the hearer. This personal contact 
 is sometimes supplied vicariously in the person of 
 a graduate student, or recently fledged doctor of 
 philosophy, who quizzes fractions of the mass at 
 stated intervals. The information imparted is the 
 best and most advanced. The fame of the lecturers 
 is unsurpassed. But the appropriation of the mate- 
 rial presented is largely optional. As the personal 
 element in teaching is largely vicarious, learning in 
 turn tends to become vicarious also. Printed notes, 
 expert coaches, improvised " seminars," reduce to 
 comparatively few hours the labor of those who 
 
310 THE COLLEGE 
 
 register themselves as students. Affording splen* 
 did and unequaled opportunities for the earnest 
 and studious few, these university-colleges afford 
 the wealthy idler the elegant leisure that he craves. 
 
 For the great majority of the students in a 
 university-college, even athletics becomes likewise 
 vicarious, the exertions of the elegant idler being 
 confined mainly to the lungs j ind the pocketbook. 
 In so vast a body the opportunity for social leader- 
 ship and prominence in college affairs is confined 
 to the exceptional few, impossible for the average 
 many. The average boy of eighteen or twenty soon 
 drifts into the irresponsibility of an unnoticed unit 
 in the preponderating mass. Discipline in the uni- 
 versity-college becomes practically limited to the 
 requirement that the student shall exercise suffi- 
 cient control over his animal and social instincts 
 to maintain intense intellectual activity for two 
 periods of two or three weeks in each coUege year. 
 
 By thus closing in upon the college from both 
 sides, and marking off the institutions which come 
 so close to it that they are often confounded with 
 it, we have made the definition of the real college 
 comparatively easy. We are now ready to describe 
 its characteristic marks. 
 
 It requires as a condition of admission that the 
 work of the school shall have been thoroughly done. 
 Either by examination before entering, or by elimi- 
 nation at the first opportunity afterward, it strictly 
 
THE COLLEGE 311 
 
 limits its students to those who have had a thorough 
 school training. It does this because it is impossible 
 to give a college education to an untrained mind. 
 It is even more essential that a student shall have 
 done hard work before coming to college, than that 
 he shall do hard work while in college. The previ- 
 ously trained mind can get a great deal out of col- 
 lege with comparatively little work. The mind that 
 has not been previously well trained can get very 
 little out of college even by hard work. This may 
 be a stumbling-block to the school man, and fool- 
 ishness to the university man ; but the college man 
 knows that in spite of these criticisms from below 
 and from above an amount of leisure can well be 
 afforded in college, which would be fatal in either 
 academy or university. In order to be profitable, 
 however, it must be the leisure of a mind previously 
 subjected to prolonged and thorough discipline. 
 
 The method of teaching in the college is on the 
 whole different from that of either school or uni- 
 versity. In the school the abstract facts and prin- 
 ciples, as laid down in approved and authoritative 
 books, are transmitted by the teacher to the student. 
 The individual reconstruction of those principles 
 and facts in the mind of teacher and student, though 
 important, is relatively less essential. If by gift 
 of genius you get this element of individuality in 
 either teacher or student, you are profoundly grate- 
 ful ; but the school can, and in a vast majority of 
 
312 THE COLLEGE 
 
 cases must, get on without the interpreting individ- 
 uality of the teacher and the reconstructive unifi- 
 cation of the student. I am speaking not of ideals, 
 but of facts. 
 
 Now there is room for the schoohnaster in the 
 college, but his sphere is very limited. In formal 
 studies like mathematics, and the elements of such 
 languages as have not been previously acquired, 
 every college ought to have two or three thorough 
 drillmasters on. its faculty. There is nothing about 
 a college atmosphere that can make analytical geo- 
 metry easy, or the irregular French verb fascinat- 
 ing, or German prose sentences intelligible without 
 grammar. Such school work as our requirements 
 for admission permit to be postponed until after 
 admission to college must be done there in the hard, 
 exacting school way. 
 
 In the university it is the individuality of the 
 student that counts. Not the facts in the text-book, 
 not the insight and interpretation of the professor, 
 but the initiative of the individual student is what 
 the university is after. The college in the more 
 advanced courses must introduce also a moderate 
 degree of this university element. Most of our col- 
 leges, by the group system or by the requirement 
 of major and minor subjects as a condition of taking 
 the bachelor's degree, insist that something like a 
 fourth or a third of a student's courses shall lead 
 up to and culminate in such comparatively inde- 
 
THE COLLEGE 313 
 
 pendent work. In this way we give every college 
 student a taste of real scholarly work, and discover 
 the comparatively few who are fitted to prosecute 
 it to advantage in the university. 
 
 The college professor, the type to which the ma- 
 jority of the college faculty should belong, is very 
 different from either the schoolmaster or the univer- 
 sity specialist. He is a man who grasps his subject 
 as a whole, deals with each aspect of it in its rela- 
 tion to the whole, is able to make the subject as 
 a whole unfold from day to day, and grow in the 
 mind of the student into the same splendid propor- 
 tions that it has assumed in his own, and who 
 can put it to the test of practical application in 
 matters of current interest. If he is a chemist, he 
 is able to give expert testimony in court. If a geol- 
 ogist, he is able to take part in government surveys, 
 or lead in exploration. If an economist, he is able 
 to contribute something to the settlement of labor 
 troubles. If a historian or professor of government, 
 he must be able to bring ancient precedent and re- 
 mote experience to bear on current complications. 
 If a professor of the classics, he must love the mas- 
 ters of English prose and verse all the better for his 
 familiarity with the ancient models, and show how 
 much more the modern things mean when thrown 
 on the ancient background. College students de- 
 spise a professor who is so lost in his subject that 
 he cannot get out of it, prove its worth by some 
 
314 THE COLLEGE 
 
 concrete application, and make life as a whole the 
 larger and richer by the contribution he makes from 
 his special department. He must be human, in- 
 tensely interested in individuals, eager to see his 
 favorite authors, his beloved pursuits kindle into 
 enthusiasm the minds he introduces to them. The 
 college professor must know his subject ; he must 
 be a competent investigator in it, and a thorough 
 master of it. If as a badge of such mastery and apt- 
 itude for investigation he has the degree of Ph. D., 
 all the better. But this is not essential. He must 
 know men, and the large movements and interests 
 of the world outside. He must present his subject, 
 lit up with the enthusiasm of a great personality, 
 an enthusiasm so contagious that the students can- 
 not help catching it from him, and regarding his 
 subject for the time being as the most compelling 
 interest in life. He must be genial, meeting stu- 
 dents in informal, friendly ways outside of lecture 
 rooms, either in general social intercourse or in little 
 clubs for the prosecution of interests related to his 
 subject. He must have high standards of personal 
 character and conduct, and broad charity for those 
 who fall below them. In short, he must be first of 
 all a man whom young men respect, admire, and 
 imitate, and love ; and then in addition he must 
 know the subject he professes in the broad, vital, 
 practical, contagious way described above. 
 
 The course of study in a college covers in a broad 
 
THE COLLEGE 316 
 
 way the main departments of language and litera- 
 ture, science and art, history, economics, and philo- 
 sophy. At least four languages besides English : 
 Latin, Greek, French, and German ; mathematics ; 
 at least four sciences : physics, chemistry, biology, 
 and geology or astronomy ; history both ancient and 
 modern, both American and European ; both ortho- 
 dox economic theory and current economic heresy, 
 together with special study of such subjects as bank- 
 ing, taxation, transportation, trust and labor prob- 
 lems ; the principles and problems of government, 
 both national and municipal; literature studied 
 as literature, and not merely the corpse of it in 
 the shroud of grammar and the coffin of philology; 
 philosophy, or the attempted answer to the per- 
 petual problems of ontology, cosmology, conduct, 
 and human aspiration ; enough of fine art to make 
 one at home in the great buildings and galleries of 
 the world — these are the essentials of the college 
 curriculum. 
 
 Each of the leading subjects should be presented 
 in at least three consecutive courses extending over 
 a year each, — one elementary ; one or more broad, 
 general, interesting, practical ; at least one specific, 
 intensive, involving research, initiative, and a chance 
 for originality. These broad middle courses are the 
 distinctive feature of the college, and they are the 
 hardest to get well taught. For one man who can 
 teach a college course of this nature well, you can 
 
316 THE COLLEGE 
 
 find ten who can teach a university specialty, and a 
 hundred who can teach the elementary school course. 
 But if you dare to leave out these broad, compre- 
 hensive college courses, or if you fail to get men 
 who are broad and human enough to teach them, 
 you miss the distinctively college teaching alto- 
 gether ; you have in place of the college one or an- 
 other of the four institutions previously described. 
 
 These real coUege professors, — these men who 
 can make truth kindle and glow through the dead, 
 cold facts of science, who can reveal the throbbing 
 heart of humanity through either ancient or modem 
 words, who can communicate the shock of clashing 
 wiUs and the struggle of elemental forces through 
 historic periods and economic schedules, who can 
 make philosophy the revelation of God, and ethics 
 the gateway of heaven, — these men are hard to 
 find, infinitely harder to find than schoolmasters 
 on the one hand and specialists on the other. Yet 
 imless you can get together at least half a dozen 
 men of this type, you must not pretend to call your 
 aggregation of professors a college faculty; you 
 cannot give your students the distinctive value of 
 a college course. 
 
 The discipline of a college is different from that 
 of either a school or a university. The true college 
 maintains a firm authority, and will close its doors 
 rather than yield any essential point of moral 
 character or intellectual efficiency to student clamor 
 
THE COLLEGE 317 
 
 and caprice. Yet this authority is kept well in the 
 background, delegated perhaps to some form of 
 student government, and is used only as a last 
 resort when all the arts of persuasion and all the 
 influences of reason fail. Not more than once or 
 twice in a college generation of four years will it 
 be necessary to draw the lines sharply, and fight 
 out some carefully chosen issue on grounds of sheer 
 authority. 
 
 On the other hand, the college has much of the 
 liberty of the university ; yet in such wise that it 
 cannot be perverted into license to do whatever 
 may seem for the time being right in the eyes of 
 immature and inexperienced youth. Spies and 
 threats, and petty artificial penalties, are as foreign 
 to a true college as to a university. Yet the college 
 does make the way of the transgressor hard, much 
 harder than the university ever attempts to do. 
 
 What, then, is the secret, what is the method 
 of true college discipline, which avoids both these 
 extremes, yet secures the advantages at which both 
 school and university aim ? It is personal friend- 
 liness, intelligent sympathy, appealing to what is 
 best in the heart of the college student. By inti- 
 mate appreciation of all worthy student interests, 
 ambitions, and enthusiasms, the college officer comes 
 to understand by way of contrast wliatever is base, 
 corrupt, and wanton in the life of the little com- 
 munity, and to know by intuition the m'en who 
 
818 THE COLLEGE 
 
 are caught in tlie toils of these temptations. Any 
 competent college officer can give you, if not off- 
 hand, certainly after a half-hour's consultation, an 
 accurate account of the character of any student in 
 his institution ; his haunts, his habits, his companions, 
 his ways of spending time and money, and all that 
 these involve. Where it seems to be needed, either 
 some professor or the president has a friendly con- 
 ference with the student, — bringing him face to 
 face with the facts and their natural consequences, 
 but making no threats, imposing no penalties, 
 simply calling the student's attention to principles 
 with which he is already perfectly familiar, and 
 offering him whatever help and encouragement 
 toward amendment friendly interest and sympa- 
 thy can give. Usually the whole matter is strictly 
 confidential between officer and student; though 
 when this proves inadequate the aid of students 
 likely to have influence is secured, and in extreme 
 cases the cooperation of parents and friends at 
 home is invoked. Information that is directly or 
 indirectly acquired through this close sympathy 
 with student life is never made the basis of any 
 formal discipline whatever. A student may persist 
 in evil ways, and be known to persist in them, and 
 be treated by the college in no other way than he 
 would be treated in similar circumstances by his 
 father and mother at home. If he performs his 
 work and avoids scandal, he may go on and gradu- 
 
THE COLLEGE 319 
 
 ate, precisely as lie might continue to live under 
 his father's roof. If his evil courses lead to fail- 
 ure in his work, or if they bring scandal upon the 
 college through overt acts or obviously injurioufc, 
 influence, then he is asked to withdraw. 
 
 Such, in brief, is the spirit of coUege discipline. 
 It fits neither the immature nor the mature, but 
 youth who are passing from immaturity into ma- 
 turity. It appeals to the highest and best motives, 
 and scorns to deal with any others. It brings to 
 bear the strongest personal influences it can sum- 
 mon, but deigns to use no others. It sometimes 
 fails, but is usually in the long run successful. It 
 presupposes absolute sincerity, perfect frankness, 
 endless patience, infinite kindliness on the part of 
 the college officer. It is sure to be misunderstood 
 by the general public. It takes the average student 
 about half his college course to come to an under- 
 standing of it. It lays those who employ it open 
 to the charge of all manner of partiality, weakness, 
 inefficiency, from those who look at the outside 
 facts and do not comprehend the inner spirit. But 
 it is the only discipline that fits the college stage of 
 development ; it does its work on the whole effec- 
 tively ; it turns out as a rule loyal alumni, moral 
 citizens. Christian men. 
 
 In its religious life the coUege should be as little 
 as possible denominational. The narrowness of sec- 
 tarianism and the breadth of the college outlook are 
 
320 THE COLLEGE 
 
 utterly incompatible. Denominations may lay the 
 eggs of colleges ; indeed, most of our colleges owe 
 their inception to such denominational zeal. But 
 as soon as the college develops strength, it passes 
 inevitably beyond mere denominational control. 
 Church schools are often conspicuous successes. 
 Church colleges are usually conspicuous failures. 
 A church university is a contradiction in terms. 
 
 It is equally necessary that the coUege should 
 be intensely Christian. The administrative officer 
 should believe in the power of the best motives 
 over the worst men and the application of great 
 principles to little things. He should know that 
 persons are more than the acts that they do. He 
 should believe what most people practically deny, 
 — that a sinner can be saved ; and that he is worth 
 saving. It is only on such a profoundly Christian 
 basis that a coUege can be successfully conducted. 
 A college which is not Christian is no college at 
 all. For the faithful, hopeful, loving treatment of 
 persons as free beings of boundless capacity and 
 infinite worth is at once the essence of Christianity 
 and the distinguishing mark of the true college. 
 
 Christianity in the college, as everywhere else 
 in the world, presents the two aspects which Jesus 
 contrasted in the parable of the two sons whom 
 the father asked to work in his vineyard. There 
 is the conscious, professed, organized Christianity, 
 which joins the church and the association, attends 
 
THE COLLEGE 321 
 
 and takes part in meetings, and casts about to find 
 or invent ways to make both the world and one's 
 self better than they otherwise would be. Some- 
 times, unfortunately, the Christian of this type 
 neglects that devotion of himself to such forms of 
 good as are already established, — the intellectual 
 tasks, the athletic interests, the social life of the 
 institution. In that case the result is that, good as 
 it means to be, good as in many respects it is, this 
 type of Christianity fails to be appreciated by the 
 majority of the students ; the leadership of all 
 forms of college life passes into other hands, and 
 this avowed, expressed, organized Christianity lives 
 at a poor dying rate, by faculty assistance and 
 student toleration. People who forget the lesson of 
 the parable that there are two types of Christianity, 
 and confound this type with the whole of Christian- 
 ity, sometimes take a very discouraged view of the 
 condition of Christianity in our colleges. 
 
 What, then, is the other, the relatively uncon- 
 scious, unprofessing type? Who is the Christian 
 who, as Jesus says, in the judgment day will be 
 surprised to find that he was a Christian at all? 
 He is the man who lives for something bigger and 
 better, loses himself in something wider and higher 
 than himself. He does his work with a sense of 
 responsibility for the honest improvement of his 
 powers and opportunities, or, better still, with de- 
 votion to some aspect of scientific truth or human 
 
322 THE COLLEGE 
 
 welfare that has gotten hold of him. He enters 
 heartily into the sports and enthusiasms of his 
 fellows, sacrificing comfort and convenience to the 
 promotion of these common ends. He shares his 
 time and property with his friends, and supports 
 generously their common undertakings. He stands 
 up for what is right,- yet always has a helping hand 
 for the fellow who has fallen down. He looks 
 forward to life as a sphere where he is going to 
 serve public interests and promote social welfare, 
 at the same time that he supports himself and his 
 family. 
 
 Now, if this is Christianity, if the cultivation of 
 these traits and aims is growth in Christian char- 
 acter, then our colleges are mighty agencies for the 
 spread of Christianity. No man can go through 
 one of them, and catch its spirit, without becoming 
 a better Christian for the remainder of his days. 
 
 Of course it is higlily desirable that these two 
 types of Christianity should understand and ap- 
 preciate each other. Especially fortunate is the 
 college where these two types coincide, where the 
 most prominent members of church and association 
 are at the same time the best fellows, and where 
 the best fellows give their influence and support 
 as officers and workers in distinctively Christian 
 organizations. In some men's colleges, and in most 
 women's colleges, this is happily the case. If, how- 
 ever, we can have but one of the two types, as 
 
THE COLLEGE 323 
 
 often happens, we must agree with Jesus that good 
 work and good fellowship on a basis unconsciously 
 Christian are better than a conscious profession 
 which remains self-centred and self-satisfied, out- 
 side the more genial and generous current of the 
 life of the community. \ 
 
 The last feature of the college, but by no means 
 the least significant, is this genial, generous, social 
 life. Even if nothing were learned save by absorp- 
 tion through the pores, the intimate association 
 with picked men of trained minds for the most im- 
 pressionable years of one's life would almost be 
 worth while. To take one's place in such a com- 
 munity, to bear one's share in its common in- 
 terests and common endeavor, to take the social 
 consequences of one's attitude and actions in a 
 community which sees clearly and speaks frankly, 
 rewards generously and punishes unmercifully, is 
 the best school of character and conduct ever yet 
 devised. 
 
 This is the leading consideration in determining 
 the desirable size of a college. As Plato says of 
 the state we may say of the college, it should be 
 as large as is consistent with organic unity. If 
 some types of life and character — the rich or the 
 poor, the independent or the conservative, the high 
 scholar or the good fellow, the athlete or the man 
 of artistic temperament — are left out, then it is 
 too small. If, on the other hand, a man can be a 
 
324 THE COLLEGE 
 
 mere unit in a mass toward which he feels little 
 or no definite responsibility, — if his specific con- 
 tribution is not needed and his individual opinion 
 does not count, if the games are played, and the 
 papers are edited, and the societies are managed, 
 and things generally are conducted by experts 
 whom he merely knows by sight and reputation, 
 — then that college is too large for him ; he wiU 
 probably come out of it as smaU as he went in. 
 
 For the most enjoyable and profitable social life 
 the college community inevitably breaks up into 
 little groups, — fraternities, musical associations, 
 athletic teams, and clubs for scientific, literary, 
 historical, and philosophical study. Extension and 
 intensity are inversely proportional ; and a man 
 who misses the closer contact and warmer fellow- 
 ship of these smaller groups misses much that is 
 most valuable in college life. Athletics are carried 
 to excess, as is everything else in which youth 
 take a leading part. But the incidental excesses 
 of a few individuals are much more than counter- 
 balanced by the increased physical health, moral 
 tone, and freedom from asceticism and effeminacy 
 in the college community as a whole. Cut off as 
 they are from the natural outdoor tasks and sports, 
 from chores and workshops, from hunting and fish- 
 ing, from sailiug and riding, some artificial outlet 
 for physical vigor is absolutely essential. Some ob^ 
 ject for community enthusiasm, community loyalty, 
 
THE COLLEGE 325 
 
 and community sacrifice is equally a moral and 
 a social necessity. The worst evil of athletics is 
 not the effort put forth by the athletes themselves, 
 but the extent to which these interests absorb the 
 time and conversation, the thought and aspiration, 
 of both combatants and non-combatants. Even this 
 evil, great as it is, is small in comparison to the 
 moral evils which would infest a group of vigor- 
 ous young men from whom some such outlet was 
 withheld. 
 
 The fraternities and societies likewise have slight 
 possibilities of evil, but accomplish an overwhelming 
 preponderance of good. It is through them, directly 
 or indirectly, that the most effective personal and 
 social influence can be brought to bear on those 
 who need it. Occasionally a fraternity drops to the 
 level of making mere good fellowship an exclusive 
 end, to which scholarship, morality, efficiency are 
 merely incidental. A college is fortunate which at 
 any given time does not have one or two frater- 
 nities that are tending in this direction. But the 
 contempt of their rivals, the influence of their 
 graduates, the self-respect of the better members 
 themselves, together with direct or indirect fac- 
 ulty remonstrance, serve to bring a fraternity to 
 its senses in a quarter of the time it would take 
 to straighten out an equal number of isolated indi- 
 viduals. Isolated good and isolated evil are more 
 nearly on an equality. But good influence can be 
 
326 THE COLLEGE 
 
 organized and mobilized a hundred times as quickly 
 and effectively as evil influence ; and where the 
 moral forces in faculty and students are alert, the 
 fraternities serve as rallying points for the concen- 
 tration of the good and the dispersion of the evil. 
 
 Departmental clubs, in which one or two mem- 
 bers of the faculty meet informally with a few 
 of the more interested students for conference on 
 some phase of their subject, are perhaps the con- 
 summation of the college spirit. Modern methods 
 of instruction, however, make contact in the lab- 
 oratory over experiments and in the library in 
 research so close that many of the regular classes 
 assume more the aspect of a club than a class. 
 The newest and best college libraries provide small 
 rooms for the use of books by professors and 
 students together in each literary and historical 
 department, and regard such rooms quite as indis- 
 pensable as the room where books are stored. 
 
 There is one serious danger, and only one, that 
 besets the college. The ordinary objections, hazing, 
 excessive athletics, dissipation, lawlessness, idleness, 
 are due either to exaggeration of exceptional cases, 
 or the unwarranted expectation that large aggre- 
 gations of youth will conduct themselves with the 
 decorum that is becoming where two or three ma- 
 ture saints are gathered together for conference 
 and prayer. I grant that a man who cherishes this 
 expectation will be disappointed ; and if he chances 
 
THE COLLEGE 827 
 
 to be a college officer, and undertakes to realize 
 this expectation, he wiU be deservedly miserable. 
 (With aU its incidental follies and excesses, college 
 conduct is more orderly, college judgment is more 
 reasonable, college character is more earnest and 
 upright, than are the judgment, conduct, and char- 
 acter of youth of the same age in factories, offices, 
 and stores, or on farms or on shipboard. As far 
 as these matters go, college is, physically, mentally, 
 and morally, the safest place in the world for a 
 young man. 
 
 The one serious danger is so subtle that the 
 public has never suspected its existence ; and even 
 to many a college officer the statement of it will 
 come as a surprise. It is the danger of missing 
 that solitude which is the soil of individuality and 
 the fertilizer of genius. College life is excessively 
 gregarious. Men herd together so closely and con- 
 stantly that they are in danger of becoming too 
 much alike. The pursuit of four or five subjects 
 at the same time tends to destroy that concen- 
 tration of attention to one thing on which great 
 achievement rests. The same feverish interest in 
 athletics, the same level of gossip, the same atti- 
 tude toward politics and religion tend to pass by 
 contagion from the mass to the individual, and 
 supersede independent reflection. The attractive- 
 ness and charm of this intense life of the college 
 group tends to become an end in itself, so that 
 
328 THE COLLEGE 
 
 the very power which wholesomely takes the stu- 
 dent out of himself into the group, invites him to 
 stop in the group instead of going on into those 
 intellectual and social interests which the college 
 is supposed to serve. This devotion to college rar 
 ther than to learning, to the fellows rather than 
 to humanity, to fraternities and teams rather than 
 to church and state, is a real danger to all stu- 
 dents, and a very serious danger to the exceptional 
 individuals who have the spark of originality hid- 
 den within their souls^ The same forces that ex- 
 pand small, and even average, men may tend to 
 repress and stunt these souls of larger endowment. 
 To guard against this — to make sure that the 
 man of latent genius is protected against this dead- 
 ening influence of social compulsion toward me- 
 diocrity — is one of the great duties of the wise 
 college professor. He must show the student of 
 unusual gifts that he is appreciated and under- 
 stood, and encourage him to live in the college 
 atmosphere as one who is at the same time apart 
 from it and above it. The formation of little groups, 
 temporary or permanent, among the more earnest 
 students for mutual recognition and support, groups 
 which actually do for a student while in college 
 what Phi Beta Kappa attempts to do in a merely 
 formal and honorary way afterwards, may help 
 these choice minds to stem this tide of gregarious 
 mediocrity. Wherever the faculty is alert to detect 
 
THE COLLEGE 329 
 
 its presence, even genius can thrive and flourish in 
 a college atmosphere. 
 
 Such is the college. It is an institution where 
 young men and young women study great sub- 
 jects, under broad teachers, in a liberty which is 
 not license and a leisure which is not idleness, 
 — with unselfish participation in a common life 
 and intense devotion to minor groups within the 
 larger body and special interests inside the general 
 aim ; conscious that they are critically watched by 
 friendly eyes, too kind ever to take unfair advan- 
 tage of their weaknesses and errors, yet too keen 
 ever to be deceived. 
 
 The function of the college follows so obviously 
 from the concept that it requires but a word to 
 draw the inference. It makes its graduates the 
 heirs of all the wisdom and experience of the ages, 
 placing, if not within their actual memories, at 
 least within the reach of their developed powers 
 and trained methods, any great aspect of nature or 
 humanity they may hereafter wish to acquire. It 
 gives each one of them a sense of achievement and 
 mastery in some one subject of his choice, giving 
 him, in that one department at least, the impulse 
 to read its books and study its problems as long 
 as he shall live. It places its alumnus on a plane 
 of social equality with the best people he will ever 
 meet, and gives him a spirit of helpfulness toward 
 the lowliest with whom he will ever come in con- 
 
330 THE COLLEGE 
 
 tact. It makes him the servant of the state in wise 
 counsel and effective leadership. It gives to the 
 church ministers who can do more than turn the 
 cranks of ecclesiastical machinery and repeat ritu- 
 alized tradition, prophets who gain first-hand con- 
 tact with the purposes of God. It prepares men 
 who will bring to the study and practice of law 
 ability to apply eternal principles and ancient pre- 
 cedents to the latest phases of our complex civiliza- 
 tion. It trains its graduates who practice medicine 
 to give each patient the benefit of whatever science 
 is developing of healing efficacy for his particular 
 case. It trains men who are to be engineers, bank- 
 ers, manufacturers, merchants, to put the solidity 
 and integrity of natural law into the structures 
 that they rear, the institutions they control, the 
 fabrics they produce, and the transactions they 
 direct. It trains men and women who will give to 
 domestic and social life that unselfishness and gen- 
 iality which come of having the mind lifted above 
 the selfish, the artificial, the petty, into sincere and 
 simple intercourse with the good, the true, and the 
 beautiful. 
 
 IXhe function of the college, then, is not mental 
 training on the one hand nor specialized knowledge 
 on the other. Incidentally, it may do these things 
 at the beginning and at the end of the course, as a 
 completion of the unfinished work of the school, 
 and a preparation for the future pursuits of the 
 
THE COLLEGE 331 
 
 liberal / 
 great / 
 of the I 
 
 university. The function of the college is libe 
 education, — the opening of the mind to the 
 departments of human interest ; the opening 
 heart to the great spiritual motives of unselfishness 
 and social service ; the opening of the will to op. 
 portunity for wise and righteous self-control. ) Hav- 
 ing a different task from either school or university, 
 it has developed a method and spirit, a life and 
 leisure, of its own. Judged by school standards it 
 appears weak, indulgent, superficial. Judged by 
 university standards it appears vague, general, in- 
 definite. Judge it by its true standard as an agency 
 of liberal education, judge it by its function to 
 make men and women who have wide interests, 
 generous aims, and high ideals, and it will vindi- 
 cate itself as the most efficient means yet devised 
 to take well-trained boys and girls from the school 
 and send them either on to the university or out 
 into life with a breadth of intellectual view no 
 subsequent specialization can ever take away ; a 
 strength of moral purpose the forces of material- 
 istic selfishness can never break down ; a passion 
 for social service neither popular superstition nor 
 political corruption can deflect from its chosen 
 path. 
 
XVI 
 
 Alumni Ideals 
 
 TO weigh material goods in the scales of per- 
 sonal values, and measure life by the standard 
 of love; to prize health as contagious happiness, 
 wealth as potential service, reputation as latent 
 influence, learning for the light it can shed, power 
 for the help it can give, station for the good it can 
 do ; to choose in each case what is best on the 
 whole, and accept cheerfully incidental evils in- 
 volved ; to put my whole self into all that I do, 
 and indulge no single desire at the expense of my- 
 self as a whole ; to crowd out fear by devotion to 
 duty, and see present and future as one; to treat 
 others as I would be treated, and myself as I would 
 my best friend ; to lend no oil to the foolish, but 
 let my light shine freely for all ; to make no gain 
 by another's loss, and buy no pleasure with another's 
 pain ; to harbor no thought of another which I 
 should be un willing that other should know ; to say 
 nothing unkind to amuse myself, and nothing false 
 to please others ; to take no pride in weaker men's 
 failings, and bear no malice toward those who do 
 wrong; to pity the selfish no less than the poor, 
 the proud as much as the outcast, and the cruel 
 
ALUMNI IDEALS 333 
 
 even more than the oppressed ; to worship God in 
 all that is good and true and beautiful ; to serve 
 Christ wherever a sad heart can be made happy or 
 a wrong will set right ; and to recognize God's 
 coming kingdom in every institution and person 
 that helps men to love one another. 
 
ROUTINE AND IDEALS 
 
 By Le Baron R. Briggs, President of Radr 
 
 cliffe College, 
 i6mo, $i.oo, neL 
 
 " Common sense enriched by culture de- 
 scribes everything which Dean, or, as he 
 ought now to be called, President, Briggs 
 says or writes. The genius of sanity, sound 
 judgment, and high aim seems to preside 
 over his thought, and he combines in an un- 
 usual degree the faculty of vision and the 
 power of dealing with real things in a real 
 way." — The Outlook^ New York. 
 
 SCHOOL, COLLEGE, AND 
 CHARACTER 
 
 By the Author of " Routine and Ideals.** 
 i6mo, $i.oo, neL 
 
 " With the soundest good sense and with 
 frequent humorous flashes, Dean Briggs 
 takes students and parents into his confi- 
 dence, and shows them the solution of col- 
 lege problems from the point of view, not 
 of the 'office' but of a very clear-think- 
 ing, whole-souled man in the * office ' " — The 
 World's Work, New York. 
 
 |)otis^ton f^iiiXiXi Companp, |)uiilt6i!)er0 
 
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