^^TO^P^^IS^t^' .^;
..: ^v■^
"^ / /^^.■•-^ji
'/.' ^>^jiH
— ■'/ /^^^'.^i^
' ^^ .^flr
o
PRELIMINARY STATEMENT 33
unit between the Auditorium and the Hoose and Stowell
Halls. On the ground floor it furnishes the main en-
trance to the Auditorium. On the third floor of the
tower is a lecture room, while on the fourth story is found
the Hall of Debate and Orator}'. The top floor of the
tower is an observation room, affording an enchanting
\'iew of the citv and surrounding countr)'. The statues
on the tower are representative of the progress of civil-
ization. Facing the east, from right to left, are the stat-
ues of John Wesley, founder of Aiethodism, and Bishop
Alatthew Simpson, great preacher and college president.
On the north front, facing the old campus, are the Ameri-
can statesmen, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roose-
velt. The statues on the west front commemorate class-
ical achievement, representing Cicero, the orator, whose
statue adorns the northwest corner, and Plato, the philos-
opher, on the southwest corner. On the south front are
the statues of Phillips Brooks and Borden P. Bowne,
American leaders in religious and philosophic thought,
embodiments of spiritual ideals linked to wisdom and
learning.
The Auditorium, with a seating capacity of 2,000, is
directly back of the tower and the cloister. The ground
floor has 1,078 seats, while the two balconies have some-
what less than 500 each. The stage is 56 feet wide and
30 feet deep, and has a seating capacity of 250. Sixteen
exits lead from the auditorium, and patent opening doors
are provided to prevent jamming in case of panic or ex-
citement.
The Organ^ in the auditorium, is the largest and finest
instrument in the Southwest and, with the exception of
the municipal organ in San Francisco, the largest on the
Coast. The instrument is located on both sides of the
stage and in the triangular chambers formed between the
34 DEDICATION EXERCISES
wings of the stage and the walls of the auditorium. The
echo organ is located in the ceiling. Perhaps the most
remarkable feature of the organ is the inclosing of all
pipes save the pedal bourdon in swell boxes, which gives
the organist expressive control over all of the tones.
Eleven sets of movable shutters in these boxes furnish the
means of control. The total number of movements is
179, including 80 stops, 34 couplers, 44 thumb pistons,
three expression pedals, and one crescendo pedal ; the total
number of pipes in the instrument is about 5,000. The
console or kev desk is movable within a radius of iiftv
feet. The action is electro-pneumatic and the wind is
furnished by a twenty-five horsepower fan. Three dif-
ferent wind pressures are used, 3^, 6 and 15 inch. The
stops are in the form of stop keys arranged in one horse-
shoe-shaped row, and the couplers are shorter keys above
the solo keyboard. The stop keys are colored accord-
ing to the classification of tone which they control — the
diapasons are white, the flutes are blue, the strings amber,
and the reeds red. The combination pistons visibly af-
fect the stops and are all adjustable through the drawer
system. The largest pipes, 32 feet long and large enough
for a good-sized man to crawl through, gave a pitch nearly
one octave lower than the lowest tone of the piano, while
the smallest, about the size of a slate pencil, speaks at a
pitch one octave above the piano. The instrument was
built by the Robert Morton Company of Van Nuys, at a
cost of $35,000.
The James Harmon Hoose Hall of Philosophy con-
sists of the two upper floors of the north wing or unit of
the composite structure. The ground floor contains the
offices of the President, a public waiting room, and Parlors
A, B, and C, the last of which is a large social hall for
the students, and, with the completely equipped kitchen-
PRELIMINARY STATEMENT 35
ette, is available for social functions of various kinds.
Furnishings for the first floor have been donated by Bar-
ker Brothers, with a total ^'alue of about $15,000. Par-
melee-Dohrmann have contributed the equipment of the
kitchenette at a value of $1,000. The second floor con-
tains the offices and lecture rooms of the departments of
Philosophy and Psychology, and, at the west end of the
hall, the lower lecture hall, with a seating capacity of 307.
The third floor contains a number of class rooms, and, at
the west end, the upper lecture hall, with a seating capa-
citv of 307. At the east end of the floor is located the
Philosophv Seminar Room.
The Thomas Blanchard Stowell Hall of Educa-
tion consists of the two upper floors of the south unit or
wing of the Administration Building. On the ground
floor are the offices of the Dean of the Graduate School,
the offices of the Registrar, together with the fireproof
\'ault in which are kept the records of the university, and
the offices of the Treasurer, Comptroller, and Business
A4anager. In the basement are the men's locker and
wash rooms. In the cloister just north of the Registrar's
office, are the offices of the superintendent of buildings,
and the faculty mail boxes. The second floor is given
over to offices of various departments. On the third floor
are numerous class rooms, and, at the east end, the Edu-
cation Seminar Room.
THE PLANS OF THE UNIVERSITY
The University of Southern California will remain per-
manently a city university. The present campus con-
tains 15 acres, consisting of the old campus and the west
frontage on Universit}' Ave. between 34th St. and Exposi-
tion Boulevard. Upon this site will be erected from time
36 DEDICATION EXERCISES
to time the remainder of the series of buildings housing
the Greater University, of which the George Finley Bovard
Administration Buildng is the first. Plans call for a
University Library Building, a Science, a Commerce and
Business Administration Building, a home for the Maclay
College of Theology, and buildings for other departments
and colleges.
PART FIRST
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK
SPEECHES IN CONNECTION WITH
DEDICATION EXERCISES
"I AM DEBTOR"
Sermon of Dedication
bishop adna wright leonard, d.d., l.l.d.
Text: Romans 1:14
''/ am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the
Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise."
The classilication of the human race that is here made
has respect rather to the various culture, or social condi-
tion of men, than to their nationalities.
Originally, it was a Greek designation for themselves on
the one hand and for the rest of the world on the other.
All who were not Greeks were Barbarians, that is, they
were foreigners to the Greeks.
After Alexander's time, B.C. 323, the Greek language,
the language of culture, became cosmopolitan and the
word "Greeks" began to denote the great civilized, domin-
ant races.
After the conquest of Greece by the Romans, B.C. 146,
the Greek language and culture largely prevailed at Rome.
"Captive Greece captured its rude victors," and the Ro-
mans, from this point of view, were classed, as Paul class-
ed them, as "Greeks." From that time on the word barbari-
ans denoted all the uncivilized world besides. Although
in this grouping the Jews seem to be omitted, they came
into view later, where from the Jewish standpoint the
world is divided into Jews and Greeks.
40 DEDICATION EXERCISES
The most striking feature of this statement is not that
Paul made a classification of the human race according
to the custom of the time, but rather that he regarded
himself as a debtor. He was a debtor to those who had
preceded him and he was glad to admit it.
Malcolm J. McLeod makes this clear when, in speaking
of scholars who today are endeavoring to found a system
of morals independent of the Christian religion, he says:
"Some of them are positivists, some are secularists, some
are atheists, all are agnostics as far as spiritual faith
is concerned." He then mentions a number of the more
illustrious of that class and says, "Was not the soil in
which they grew a Christian soil.^ The atmosphere they
breathed, was it not a Christian atmosphere.^ How much
of their wealth do they owe to a Christian environment.^
Is it possible to separate the river from its banks and its
tributaries — and its sources.^ The tree is rooted in the
ground and the ground contributes ever}'thing to the tree.
To boast of independence here were vain and idle boast-
ing." Is it not a well-known fact that sometimes a plant
will live on for years after its life-giving sustenance is
withdrawn, just as the momentum of the engine keeps it
moving after the steam is shut off. Such men as John
Morley, Edmund Gosse, Ernest Haeckel, Maurice Mae-
terlink and others could not dissociate themselves al-
together from the Christian environment in which they
were reared.
Did it mean nothing to Herbert Spencer that his father
was a Weslevan non-conformist? Did David Hume, the
"prince" of agnostics, owe nothing to the fact that his
mother was a Christian of the Susanna Wesley type.^
Huxley was brought up in the strictest school of evangelic-
al orthodoxy. Tom Paine was a lay preacher in the Wes-
leyan Church of England before coming to America. The
father and grandfather of Nietzsche were Lutheran clergy-
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 41
men. Did it count for nothing that these men were born
in Christian homes and were given the advantages of an
environment that was shot through and through with
Christian ideahsm? They were debtors to the past in a
most profound sense of the term and most of them ad-
mitted that thev owed much to the Christian enclosure in
which thev had been nurtured.
The modern mind believes profoundly in progress. Ev-
olution has a definite place in its thought. It is convinced
that to-day is superior to yesterday. If, however, we be-
lieve in a God, in a pre-existent absolute Being, from
whom all things have come, and in whom all things con-
sist, we realize that our notion of progress is, after all, a
relative one. As Brierly says, "There has always been
something better than our best," and "the past has con-
tained a quality of being which has surpassed infinitely our
greatest ideas."
Christian education demands growth on our part and
adopts, as its chief end, the development of character. The
demand of the materialist is almost irrational, for while
he assures us that we are simply the product of the forces
which have gone before us, he nevertheless insists that we
shall surpass our ancestors. He says master your diffi-
culties and rise above untoward conditions, but he has
already taught us that we are nothing but the product of
our environment.
Bishop Bashford is authority for the statement that a
United States Senator once visited the birthplace of Pat-
rick Henry. As he stepped out of the car and gazed up-
on the loftv mountains, he exclaimed with delight: "No
wonder Henry was such an orator. These mountains
could not have produced a type of eloquence less sublime
than his." An old farmer at the station heard what the
senator said and called out, "These mountains have been
here a long time, stranger, but they have not produced an-
42 DEDICATION EXERCISES
other Patrick Henr}'." The Bishop's comment is to the
point when he says, "Henry was not the product of his
environment. It was the lofty soul within him that spoke
in sublime eloquence. Christianity does not come to a
man and say that at best he is only an animal, and then
make the impotent demand that he shall grow into a
Christlike character." The truly Christian person is not
concerned, at any rate, he is not troubled, regarding the
method by which God, our Heavenly Father, has brought
the human body into existence. The creative hand of the
Almighty God may be seen just as plainly in a theory of
evolution as in that of a direct creation. Of one thing he
is sure and that is that God is the author of his life, that
He has breathed into the human soul and that man has
become a living spirit. Growth in character is the cease-
less demand of Christianity and fundamental to this de-
mand is Christianity's insistence upon man's divine origin
and destiny. The Christian man beholds Him, who "hum-
bled Himself and became obedient unto death," that He
might take our human nature up into His divine nature,
revealing to us man's divine capacity by and through Him.
When the whole mind is opened to Christ and all things
are brought into subjection to His holy will, then are we
truly Christian. This has been the faith of the Church
throughout the centuries. It is our rich inheritance. We
are indebted to a glorious past.
fVe are debtors to the past. But for the past there could
not be any history. The knowledge of the present has
come out of the past. We are the rich heirs of all that has
gone before us.
The great religions of the zvorld have come out of the
past, and the experience of by-gone generations teaches us
what are the things to which we should hold fast and what
are the things we should let go.
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 43
Our patriotism is not based upon merely the present,
hut it roots hack into the past. Our patriotism is stirred
as we think of the Pilgrim Fathers estabUshing a new or-
der of things on the shores of this western hemisphere.
Our hearts are warmed as we think of George Washington,
the Father of his Countr\', and all the events of the early
days of our nation that gather around that name. So with
Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War; William McKinley
and the Spanish-American War; and even now, we are
moved tremendously as we think of the sacrifices that
have been made in the recent war and the price the nations
of the world have had to pay in order that peace might
be permanently established. Our patriotism is not, there-
fore, a thing of the present merely, but it is definitely re-
lated to the past.
The Bible has come out of the past. It has done far
more for the world than any other book and occupies a
primacy all its own. It is the master word that rebukes
shams and evil of every character. It has a moral urgency
characteristic of no other book and tells not only of some
other world at some future time, but it admonishes that
here and now we are to develop our powers and face life's
tasks with courage, faith and determination. It teaches
that whatever hampers the spirit in performance of life's
great tasks must be mastered. Evil cannot lift its ugly
head in the face of the Bible without shrinking, and tremb-
ling and fleeing. It teaches that the highest life is the life
of sacrificial service.
None of us, whatever his mental attitude, can dis-
sociate himself absolutely from the past. Behind us there
are nineteen Christian centuries which throb and beat in
our pulses to-day. When men talk of "the new order"
and of the "clean slate," as some revolutionaries are talk-
ing, they need to be reminded not only of their debt to the
past, but also of the fact that they cannot absolutely dis-
44 DEDICATION EXERCISES
connect themselves from that which has preceded them.
We must, however, he carejul not to disparage the pres-
ent in glorification of the past.
Nations and individuals have suffered from the pull of
the past.
Until the era of modern Christian Missions, the heathen
and pagan peoples suffered from the pull of the past. Of
all nations, China affords the m.ost striking example.
Chinese civilization became arrested because of its unreas-
oning devotion to ancestors. As a nation, the Chinese have
been held back, not by the men around them, but by the
generations of the past. To be sure, there are some other
causes for the immobility of China, such as its seclusion
from Europe by mountain ranges and deserts and its long
inaccessibility by sea. Its main cause, however, is its
glorification of the past.
When Sun-Yat-Sen was chosen provisional President
of the Chinese Republic in 1912, one of the first public
acts was to visit the "JVIing tombs" near Nanking, where
the emperors of the great Ming dynasty are buried, and in
solemn ceremony to "inform" his official ancestors of his
accession to power.
It was the pull of the past that caused the arrested civi-
lization of China. She is a striking illustration of what
may befall any nation that fails to master her environment
and that does not adapt herself to changing conditions.
Her reverence for the past took from her all initiative and
she became satisfied w4th traditions of an ancient past.
Behold her to-day ! How impotent against the encroach-
ments of Japan. But for the Christian nations her teem-
ing millions would long since have come under the control
of her ambitious neighbors. Her unreasonable, if not her
fanatical, reverence for the past, has well nigh cost her a
place among the other nations of the world.
When the Russians were defeated by the Japanese, Ad-
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 45
miral Togo sent the following telegram to his emperor:
"The virtue of your majesty and the help of our ancestors
have won for us the victor}\"
In Africa no sa\'age is free from the customs of the past
by which he is held under absolute control.
So it is with India where the caste system roots itself in
the generations of past centuries. And so it is with other
ancient peoples. Oh, the enervating and deadly pull of the
past!
The religion of Jesus Christ alone is capable of furnish-
ing the dynamic that can accomplish what cannot be
brought about by marching armies.
It contemplates the reconstruction of society and already
there are indications of the coming victor}\
China is awakening to a new day.
Africa is rubbing the sleep of centuries from her eyes.
India, feeling the uplift of the mass movement of that
great land, is announcing that the Kingdom is coming.
The fact is the old civilizations are not only crumbling,
they are crashing to pieces. The new day is at hand! But
this day has long been delayed because the older nations
have for centuries been facing the past.
So with the man who glorifies the past unduly. There
are those who are such slaves to the past that anything
that can now be done is feeble and not worth doing. Such
an attitude paralyzes the present, kills effort and robs life
of dignity. The present exists only that it may be carried
forward into a nobler future. We are heirs of the wisdom
of the ancients, with advantages of knowledge and greater
opportunities than ever generations of the past dreamed of
possessing.
That which bulks biggest in the thought of the present
is reverence jor human life.
The world to-day has a sense of the worth, the dignity
and the divinitv of man such as it has never had before.
46 DEDICATION EXERCISES
A modern historian finds this key to the difference be-
tween ancient and modern ciUvization :
Ancient civiHzation was concerned solely with the in-
terests of the favored few. The thought of the living pres-
ent is the welfare of the people. Slavery was the common
lot of the common people in the first century of the Chris-
tian Era. In Paul's day three out of five people in the
city of Rome, which then numbered a million and a half
of souls, were slaves.
A famous thinker of antiquity was accustomed to speak
of "tools, living and lifeless." A slave was a living tool.
What changed this view and led the world to an apprecia-
tion of the value of the individual man, woman and child .^
There is but one answer and that is Jesus Christ and His
gospel. No one was more to Christ because of his riches
and no one was less because of his poverty. He cared
nothing for rank and social distinctions. The incarnation
reveals not onlv the sacrificial love of the Father, but also
the glory of man.
It has taken the world a long time to understand this
and to come to it, but the present conditions of society and
of the world although in some respects alarming, in others
give evidence that it is beginning to realize the significance
of it all.
The whole world has been brought to a fresh recognition
of the worth and dignity of the individual. The ideals of
Jesus Christ are being given world-wide recognition as
never before.
I have no doubt but that most, if not all, in this audien?e
will agree with me v/hen I say that there are certain social
philosophies abroad in the world to-day that are utterly
destructive of democracv and aim at nothing less than the
overthrow of all democratic governments. Among these
are Bolshevism, which is becoming increasingly a world
menace, and other phases of radicalism such as are involv-
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 47
ed in communism and political socialism. Those who es
pouse such social theories demand the abolition of the
United States Senate, the election of all judges for short
terms onh', and the taking away from the Supreme Court
the right to pass on the constitutionality of legislatiye en-
actments. They also demand that the yeto power of the
President be withdrawn and do not hesitate to declare that
those who shaped and fashioned the American constitution
were grafters, men of inferior mental calibre and mere
attorneys for the capitalistic class.
With these neither you nor I will agree and America
cannot afford to temporize with them. Though they be
\yrong and antagonistic to the best interests of society and
of the state, if you were to run back the social discontent
to which they giye expression, you would find that it is
due to the emphasis that is being placed upon the rights
and prerogatiyes of the indiyidual. True, they mistake
liberty for license and know nothing apparently of "liberty
defined and assured by law," but the whole social upheayal
runs back to the appeal that is made to the indiyidual on
the ground of his personal rights.
All those who come to this country to enjoy the priyi-
leges and blessings which America youchsafes to those who
come to make this countr}^ their home, must know that
the American people will brook no interference with our
American institutions and that we will not tolerate within
our borders aliens who become the enemies of our goyern-
ment and the destroyers of our Christian civilization.
The teachings of Jesus haye literally saturated literature,
created new social ideals, influenced the education of
statesmen and public leaders, and haye dominated the so-
cial conscience throughout the world. The Christian
Church has passed through many crises. She was com-
pelled to determine what her attitude should be toward
the Roman Empire and toward Greek philosophy. In the
48 DEDICATION EXERCISES
middle ages she had to face the question of her relation to
those processes which were bringing into existence a new
Europe. During the Renaissance she was confronted by
the problem of the new learning. In the Reformation she
struggled with the question of her relation to the new in-
dividualism in religion and politics, and in the period of
revolutions, wrestled with the theories of natural rights
and vested privileges. These are all great crises, but none
were more vital to the well-being of the world than that
through which she is now passing. The past twenty-five
years have witnessed an earnest effort on the part of the
Church to recover the social impulse of her earliest days.
Prior to this time, she was in grave danger of losing her
social vision. With changing social conditions, the Church
too frequently withdrew from the field and sought "a more
favorable location." Instead of placing herself in a posi-
tion whereby she could understand and sympathize with
the masses, again and again the Church moved away,
leaving the community and its far-reaching interests to
the mercy of street preachers and agitators, whose ideals
were in direct antagonism to those for which the Church
stands. Her face is now set steadfastly toward the future
and her ministr}', while increasingly social, is also increas-
ingly spiritual. The present is to be carried forward into
a nobler future.
Fully recognizing the social obligation that rests up-
on us and welcoming all that is truth, the positive note
that will tell of our loyalty to the cardinal doctrines must
be sounded again and again. The effect that certain teach-
ing has had is to do away almost entirely with the positive
note in our faith and belief. The most serious defect in
the teaching process of modern education as it exists to-
day is the lack of the developing of strength and skill in
moral living. What is taught is not put to use as it should
be, and there is practical need that secular as well as re-
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 49
ligious teachers learn how to put the positive, ethical,
motor note into their teachings. Without positive faith we
have no guarantee that will make effort purposeful. When
unwavering faith takes hold on God and affirms that Jesus
Christ and His Gospel are the one and only answer to the
problems of life, we face the future unafraid. There must
be injected into the future a more definitely spiritual em-
phasis.
This alone will -prevent our faith from becoming deca-
dent.
The students of this University are debtors to the past.
When we remember those who founded this institution of
learning and recall their sacrifices in making this work
possible, we are inspired because of what they did and be-
cause of what they planned.
The University of Southern California has had a long
and creditable career. Like all other schools of learning, it
has had its ups and downs, and sometimes its downs seem-
ed more numerous than its ups. However, with the belief
the founders had in the Christian ideals encouraging mod-
ern education, they refused to give up the task and have
pushed the battle until to-day it stands as one of the great-
est institutions of its kind in the country- — the third larg-
est in student enrollment of the colleges under the owner-
ship and direction of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
While it is a distinctly denominational school of learning,
it is operated on the broadest lines consistent with
loval adherence to the doctrine of Christian faith. All
creeds and colors are welcome to the halls of learning here,
provided the applicants are of a moral character to warrant
their admission and are honest seekers after truth.
To-day we assemble for the first time as a University in
the George Finley Bovard building, pronounced by com-
petent architects and leaders in education to be one of the
most complete buildings of its kind in this or any other
50 DEDICATION EXERCISES
State. This marks the beginning of a new epoch for this
University. The success of this entire enterprise is due
more largely to President George F. Bovard than to any
other one person. For seventeen years he has been the re-
sponsible head and president of this great institution and
the manner in which he has financed it and carried it
through troublous financial times is a marvel to those
who are intimately acquainted with all the facts. It is
fitting and proper that this building should be named
after him for it will be an unperishing testimony to the
devotion that this educator has shown to the cause of
Christian education. We honor him to-day for what he
has been as a leader and for his statesmanship in the field
of modern education.
The students and alumni of any worthy University will
be true to her past ideals only as they do not fail in their
present duties. This institution aims at helping her stud-
ents, not only to master the past, but to relate themselves
practically to the present in order that they may achieve
future success.
God bless the Class of 1921 as they go out into the wide,
wide world to contribute their share to the progress and
uplift of the race.
We are debtors to the past but, with uplifted counten-
ances, we face the future of unparalleled opportunity.
FRATERNAL GREETINGS.
THE RE\'EREXD CARL S. PATTON, D.D.
First Congregational Church, Los Angeles.
One of the greatest tasks of the church has always been
the task of education. Our pubHc school system, with
the kindergarten at the bottom of it and the state uni-
versity at the top, looks so big we are apt to forget how
young it is. Even the free grammar school was a slow
growth in America. For many years after it was estab-
lished it was not at all clear that the state had a right to
spend the people's money for the luxur}' of a high school
education. And it is only within a comparatively short
time that twtrf state in America has had a department
of Public Instruction, under which the whole system from
kindergarten to university has been tied into one.
The state, in other words, is a new comer into the field
of education. The church was the pioneer. Among the
Jews the rabbi was teacher and interpreter of the sacred
law; and the school he taught was part and parcel of the
Jewish religious system. In the middle ages, the mon-
asteries were the only schools, and out of them the uni-
versities grew. In England and on the continent, the uni-
versities established by the church are three or four hun-
dred years older than those founded by states or munici-
palities. Even in America the older universities, like
Harvard and Yale, were founded by the church from a
hundred and fifty to two hundred years earlier than any
state university. Even those branches of the Christian
church that do not depend upon the intelligence of their
people have realized that they must have an educated
52 DEDICATION EXERCISES
clergy. The book they had to interpret, the tradition
they had to record and preserve, the whole mission that
God had given them, was not to be accomplished by un-
instructed men. The churches of freer and more forward-
looking spirit have had a gospel that required for its un-
derstanding an educated laity. Education has therefore
always been one of the functions of the church, — necessary
to her life and in some degree at least a measure of her
success.
The church has not confined herself to the teaching
of religion, but has spent much time and energy teaching
things only loosely connected with it. And this she must
always do. There is no sacred mathematics, which a boy
can learn in a religious school, and which will be different
from the mathematics he might learn in some other.
Chemistty is the same in a Methodist college or a state
university. There is no Baptist astronomy, differing from-
undenominational astronomy. But the period of life dur-
ing which young people receive their formal education is
the formative period of their lives in spiritual matters
as well. It is the time during which boys and girls emerge
from the religion of their childhood or of their fathers
and mothers and find one of their own. As in the bodies,
so in the minds, of young people at this school age, more
reconstruction takes place, more old faiths are laid aside
and more new ones are taken on than in any other period
between birth and death. There is a way, also, of teach-
ing even the simplest and the least spiritual subjects,
there is a spirit in which it is done, and a personal influ-
ence that is diffused in it, that predisposes people toward
or against religion. And it has been the aim of the church
to produce in every generation not merely greatness or
culture alone but that temper that is conducive to godli-
ness. In this aim she would quite have failed if she had
tried to teach only religion, leaving all subjects not closely
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 53
connected with it to someone else.
Indeed, if the church had taken any other view, and
had attempted to teach reUgion without teaching many
other subjects, it would have proved quite impossible.
For religion goes back to the beginnings of things. And
when you teach any theor)" of creation you come up a-
gainst the ancient cosmogonies and the modern theories
of evolution, and vou are involved at once in some sort
of scientific teaching. Religion has to do with God's rev-
elation of himself; and whatever part of that revelation
He has made through human beings, the record of his do-
ings over a vastly longer period of time, is written in the
rocks, — and you come to geology. There is a revelation of
God outside of and bevond this little world, — that revela-
tion one reads through the telescope ; and none can read it
who does not know something, at first or second hand,
about astronomv. God is revealed in human life, — and
so you come to histor\'. He is revealed in the human
mind, — and so you come to psychology. You cannot teach
anything about God, — about what sort of God he is and
why he acts in one way instead of another, without reason-
ing about him, — and so you come to philosophy. Men
who are not distinctly religious have their ideals also, and
conduct, even with them, is three-fourths of life. And
when you ask about the bearing of religion upon conduct,
you come to the whole sphere of ethics. If you study the
histoPy' of religion, whether your own or others', you come
to the study of ancient languages. You cannot under-
stand the course of religion in the past apart from the
customs and ideas with which it has been entangled nor
evaluate the religion of the present without knowing how
men live now, and so you come to sociology. Religion,
in a word, is not and never has been, confined in a cir-
cle of its ovv'n. Like ever}^thing that is alive and growing,
it is always a part and parcel of human life. No teach-
54 DEDICATION EXERCISES
ing of religion is possible that does not run off at every
step into the teaching of something else.
The obverse of this fact, even the secular institutions of
learning ought for the good of society to know. Man is
essentially a spiritual creature. Religion has been
throughout all human history one of his two or three
great and permanent concerns. Wherever you find people
you find religion. There is no histor}' of the Jews apart
from Judaism ; or of the Persians apart from Zoroastrian-
ism; or of the middle ages apart from monasticism and
the Catholic church ; or of Scotland apart from the Coven-
anters ; or of France apart from the Huguenots ; or of New
England apart from the Puritans. Take out Moses, and
Gautama, and Isaiah, and Paul, and Augustine, and Mo-
hammed, and Luther, and Knox, and Wesley, and
Edwards, and the clue to whole periods of life and even to
whole populations and continents, is lost. That a man
can graduate from any great university, and know noth-
ing about the spiritual histor)^ of the human race, is a re-
flection not upon religion but upon education. I wish the
great state universities, that enroll so large a proportion
of the boys and girls of all our churches, remembered all
this, understood that no man is truly educated who is ig-
norant of the most significant chapter in the histor}' -^f the
human race.
What the Christian Church believes is, not only that
there is this spiritual element in all life, and that therefore
there must also be this same spiritual element in all o;ood
education, but that there is a natural, necessar}', and
friendly relation between knowledge and religion. She
has never stultified herself by the assumption that the less
you know about the human family and the universe iji
which it lives, the easier it will be for you to be devout.
Underlying all her founding of great schools has been her
conviction that the same God who made the truth
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 55
made the human mind to discover it, and that whenever,
and in whatever realm, that truth is uncovered, some part
of the infinite Ufe of God is made more manifest. Her
interest in education rests upon the fact that whatever
man discovers, God reveals. It is against the background
of this great truth, and as a commentar}^ upon it, that her
schools and colleges range over the entire field of human
knowledge, rounding out all their teaching with the teach-
ing of the highest and best part of man's development,
his search for and his knowledge of the living God.
While, therefore, I do not begrudge to the state her
growing interest and influence in education, I rejoice all
the more in the growth of great Christian colleges and uni-
versities. Free from merely clerical domination they must
always be, — not timid, nor circumscribed, but looking
with eager eyes for the truth, even though it may now and
then contravene some cherished tradition. But religious
and Christian they will always be, seeking behind and
within all knowledge the truth that makes men free, and
producing not merely the temper that makes for progress
but the spirit that makes for godliness. I rejoice in the
progress that this day signalizes ; and upon all the labor
which this day crowns with success, and all the promise
that it speaks of a better commonwealth wise in the things
of the spirit. I, a representative of a sister church equally
interested in education, bring you my heart felicitations.
God bless the University of Southern California, and make
her, in His kingdom, a city set upon an hill that cannot
be hid.
PROLOGUE AND PRAYER
AT THE DEDICATION OF THE ORGAN
DR. \V. E. TILROE.
Maclay College of Theology.
Through lengthening years these stately halls will hail
the tread of tramping feet. Along their fretted aisles wise
voices of the great and good will quiet folly and allay un-
rest. Eager men and women of the morrow will bring
their questionings and csLvr)' hence the wondrous peace of
knowledge and sage counsel. Under this roof, fathers,
mothers, brothers, neighbors, friends, eyes winning and
wet with smiles and tears, will greet and grace high days
when dreams come true. The home, the church, the mar-
ket, the desk, the fatherland, all will come to harbor here
as sailors from the seven seas. It is our joy that the an-
cient solemn speech of the great organ, king among the
princes of music, is to be our company in all our goings.
It w^ill cheer us when the road is heav}^ It will bid us
stand and wait when we would rush to weariness and
trouble. It will say, "Peace, be still," and storms will die
to calm. Nor will the hours be few when it will open
heaven and give us a vision of God. With prayer and song
we dedicate today this dream of our pride and love. May
its mighty voice tell endless generations the kindly tale of
our alma mater, the University of Southern California.
May it bless the world and honor the Giver of all good.
DEDICATORY PRAYER
O God of all the earth. Father, Redeemer, our Strength
and Joy: we bow at Thy appearing: we sing Thy praise.
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 57
The good that crowns our days is never other than Thy
gift. Our hopes of the immortal ages are of Thy begetting.
We rest in Thy holy keeping. The thought of our hearts,
our love, the works of our hands, are precious in Thy sight.
We bring the far-flung voice of the great organ into Thy
ser\dce assured that we have Thy smile. Is it not written
in the book: "Let everything that hath breath praise the
Lord.f"' As the pilgrim upon his staff we shall lean upon
its guiding in our convocations, and be glad. It will sanc-
tify our joys. It will comfort our grief. That it is with
us many an evening shadow shall be light. Into our noon-
time it will not rarely bring a shining above the sun. To
the culture of youth, the help of human kind, the glory of
our God, we give this kindly voice of worship and delight.
May the day of its silence be far away. May they be many
who sit at the feet of the Heavenly Father, because it is
here. Amen.
UNDERSTANDING OF THE TIMES
Sermon by
THE RIGHT REVEREND BISHOP WILLIAM BERTRAND STEVENS
Ph.D., LL.D.
Men that had understanding of the times,
to kfiozu tvhat Israel ought to do.
— I Chron. 12: J2.
These were men of the tribe of Issachar, who under
David were to be the agents of a new social era. They
were men of great courage. They were men of self-sac-
rifice and devotion to duty. But the quality that made
them stand out among their fellows was their gift of an-
alyzing the need of the day and age. They had "under-
standing of the times to know what Israel ought to do."
They were of the type which ever)" generation needs in
its period of emergency, of the type which the world needs
today as seldom ever before.
There have been three great crises in the Christian era.
The first was that which we call the Christological crisis,
in the third and fourth centuries of the Church's life
when men were obliged to define their conception of Jesus
of Nazareth. If, as you read the story of the early coun-
cils, dignity and reverence seem to have been forgotten,
remember it was a life and death matter to the early
Church. The second crisis is that known as the soteri-
ological when at the Reformation period the Church
found it necessary to describe man's relationship to the
Divine. And the third is that which we have been con-
fronting for some decades and which we call the social
crisis.
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 59
There is no general agreement as to what the social
crisis is. To some it is primarily religious, to others
moral, and to still others economic. It is probably all of
these. Certainly when we read that great states in the
Union are eightv-five per cent unchurched, we may be-
lie\'e it is religious. When we see the loosening of re-
straints and connections all about us, we suspect that it
is moral. When we are confronted with all the malad-
justments and inequalities of our industrial system, we
know it is economic. Can the Christian church offer any
solution.^ It can by raising up a generation of men that
have "understanding of the times to know what Israel
ought to do."
In considering ways and means of securing a maximum
of effectiveness from the Christian church, it may help
you to recall what it was doing for several decades pre-
ceding nineteen hundred fourteen, to meet the so-called
social crisis. For the most part, the Church's solution of
social problems was thought to be in the institutional
Church. We saw the success of the Young Men's Christ-
ian Asociation and kindred institutions and decided that
the fundamental duty of organized Christianity was to
touch life at a dozen points instead of one. We honestly
believed that if religion could extend its influence through
clubs and classes and gymnasiums to the unchurched, a
new social order might be created. As a result, there
sprang up all over the country, parish houses that were
perfect beehives of industry and activity. From many
points of view, it was decidedly worth while. In any case
the institutional church in one form or another is with
us to stay and most of us are content to have it so. One
result, however, we did not anticipate. In the extension
of parochial interests, we developed a generation of clergy
whose prophetic functions became subordinated to the ad-
ministrative. In a bright little book written some years
60 DEDICATION EXERCISES
ago by Doctor John W/atson the situation was analyzed
thus ; "As the social tendency of the congregation is be-
coming more marked every }'ear and new inventions are
being added, it is vain to urge a return to the simplicity
of the past when a congregation was a body of people v/ho
met to worship God and study His will. For this kind
of institution, a teacher to expound the Bible, or a pastor
to train the character of his people, is hardly needed and
certainly he would not be appreciated. The chief requi-
site demanded is a sharp man with the gifts of an im-
presario, a commercial traveler, and an auctioneer com-
bined with the slightest flavor of a peripatetic evangelist.
Instead of a study lined with books of grave divinity and
classical literature, let him have an office with pigeon-
holes for his programs and endless correspondence; a
cupboard for huge books, with cuttings from newspapers
and reports of other organizations, a telephone ever ting-
ling and a set of handbooks 'How to make a Sermon in
Thirty Minutes' or 'One Thousand Racy Anecdotes from
the Mission Field.' " This was illustrated in the war in an
interesting way. The head of the Southern Department
of the Army Young Men's Christian Association said he
found it easier to get Christian ministers for a social or
an educational program than for a religious program. It
was not altogether the fault of the clergy. Through cir-
cumstances, they had become administrators and turned
instinctively to the practical tasks they could do best.
The time is ripe for a revival of lay leadership. The
clergy must be men of vision and insight, but they can-
not be if they spend their time in serving tables. No one
wants the minister merelv to preach vague abstractions
and the laity to see nothing beyond the temporal neces-
sities, but is it not possible to have clergymen faithful in
preaching the word and in administering the sacraments
and, standing shoulder to shoulder with them, strong vig-
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 61
orous lavmen ready to "carry on" in every department of
the Church's Hfe? The Church needs more laymen that
have understanding of the times who will Hve and preach
in their own way a gospel for today.
Today's gospel must be a gospel of enthusiasm. If
I had a more facile pen I would write a thesis on the re-
lation of enthusiasm to religion and morality. In the
first chapter of Dean Church's History of the Oxford
Movement, the author describes the fear of enthusiasm
in early eighteenth century England. It was in that
period that conditions were at their worst, — morally and
religiously — in England. "Every one laughs," said Mon-
tesquieu, "if vou talk of religion." Bishops boasted that
they had seldom been in their dioceses. "Drunk for a
penny, dead drunk for tuppence," was a street motto;
England was rescued from all this by the enthusiasm of
the Wesley an and Oxford revivals. I believe a similar
connection could be traced through all history.
It is obvious that today the fine flavor of apostolic en-
thusiasm has been somewhat lost. Organized Christianity
with all of its great achievements and noble ideals may
be said to be in a dangerous state of "normalcy." The
Church's problem is intensive as well as extensive and
your task as followers of Christ is to be what may be
called (if I may be pardoned a cheap and thread-bare
phrase,) one hundred per cent Christians, men and wom-
en Vv^ho are ready to live out their faith to its ver}' last
implication, men and women who, as the Bisiiop of Wor-
cester puts it, will not shrink from the crispness of re-
ligion, men and women who are ever seeking a fresh bap-
tism of the Holy Spirit. You know the story told by
Robert E. Speer of the voung Chinese from a remote
province who after telling Mr. Speer many things of the
mission work in his province, turned to him and said, "Mr.
Speer, there is one question I want to ask of you about
62 DEDICATION EXERCISES
the Christians in your country. Are they men and
women of burning hearts?"
Today's gospel must be a gospel of intelligence. In
so many phases of our Church life the impulse of the
heart and the impulses of the mind seem arrayed against
each other. In particular does this seem true in our at-
titude towards industrial questions. Prejudice and class
consciousness close our minds to the problems of labor.
Vague benevolence on the part of our clergy stands in the
way of any real contribution to the solution of those prob-
lems. How rarely is there any attempt to know the facts.
The program of the British Labor Party says, "We must
have more warmth in politics ; but warmth without know-
ledge is like heat without light." In a recent magazine a
chemist has written an article in which Einstein's theory
of relativity is applied to life. There is one wtvy suggest-
ive sentence in it: "Ignorance in action is an offence
against public welfare because understanding is a dimen-
sion of conduct." Oh, Christian people, Christianity does
not demand anv definite standard of intellectual attain-
ment. It is its glory that it can appeal to ever}' man. And
yet it does ask that we use the brains that we have. Some-
one has said that it doesn't take much of a man to be a
Christian but it takes all there is of him. Enthusiasm
without intelligence is useless. You mav recall the old
stor)' of the colored preacher who was praying, "Lord
give me more power, give me more power, give me more
power," and a young negro in the rear shouted, "Parson,
it isn't more power you need, it's more light."
Today's gospel must be a gospel of faith. Christianity
is irrepressibly optimistic. Through its optimism it turns
defeat into victor}\ By its faith it can venture and en-
dure. The world craves religion. A purely humanitari-
an gospel may satisfy for a time but ultimately it will be
rejected. Apart from religious faith we are in a cul-de-
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 63
sac and nothing could be more short-sighted than to cut
off our means of escape. A dramatic story is told of the
assassination of James I of Scotland by some of his lords
in fourteen hundred thirty-seven. The conspirators were
about to invade the royal apartments. The queen and
some of her attendants were letting the king down through
the floor into a vault beneath from which there was an
exit to safety. At the great door, leaned Catherine Doug-
las, one of the queen's ladies, her face distorted with pain ;
in place of the heav}^ bolt which had been mislaid, her
bare arm was thrust through the carriers. This heroic
defence served long enough for the king to drop down
through the door to the imagined safety. The conspirators
readily found the door, and descending found there the
king. The means of exit he had counted on was blocked.
Some time before he had the opening walled up because
it interfered with his tennis game. The king had courage
and ingenuity on his side but by his own forgotten act
he had made escape impossible. Whether true or not,
the stor}' is a forceful parable. The world may have
courage and ingenuity but it cannot escape from its pres-
ent chaos except through the religion of Jesus Christ.
"I am the door; by me if any man enter in, he shall be
saved and shall go in and out and find pasture." All this
must men of understanding of the times realise.
George Washington once stood before a regiment of
Connecticut troops and said "I am counting on you men
from Connecticut." Is it too much to imagine that God
is looking down on you, the intellectually privileged, and
saying, "I am counting on you, counting on you to be men
of understanding.?"
EXERCISES IN RECOGNITION OF
DELEGATES
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS
RECOGNITION DAY, JUNE 21, 1921,
DEAN ROCKWELL D. HUNT,
Presidiyig.
The presence of this body of distinguished guests on
the platform today, and of this audience of citizens and
friends, does great honor to the University of Southern
Cahfornia. Special honor is most worthily bestowed up-
on the one man who stands easily first among educators
of Southern California, the man whose name has with
singular appropriateness been given to this magnificent
building, — President George Finley Bovard.
We are highly honored, I say, to have present with us
the Governor of the great Commonwealth of California,
our distinguished State Superintendent of Public Instruct-
ion, presidents of sister institutions, and professors of col-
leges and universities : but all will heartily agree with me,
I am sure, when I affirm that the one figure that dominates
this occasion, and around which all others circle to do
obeisance, is the towering figure of President Bovard.
Two days ago this noble edifice was solemnly dedicated
to the high purpose of Christian education. On yesterday
the north wing was appropriately dedicated as an enduring
memorial to James Harmon Hoose ; and only a few hours
ago the south wing was similarly dedicated to Thomas
Blanchard Stowell. At this time we have assembled our-
selves — hosts and guests — to rejoice together and to re-
count our aims, renew our hopes, and re-affirm the ideals
of Christian education.
w
u
o
o
a:
Oh
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 65
This exercise, in dedication of George Finley Bovard
Administration Building, marks the beginning of a new
era for the University of Southern CaHfornia. Time does
not permit us to recall its histor}' and yet we must afford
a glimpse or two into the past.
In 1902-03, the first year of President Bovard's en-
cumbency, the total enrolment in the University number-
ed but a few score of students ; the total enrolment for the
year just now ending (1920-21) is shown to be 4859 dif-
ferent students. The Graduate Department of the Uni-
versity was established in 1910-11, and 10 years later it
was organized into the Graduate School of Arts and Sci-
ences. The enrolment in the Graduate School for 1920-21
was 211. In 1911 the University of Southern California
was duly authorized by the State Board of Education to
issue the formal recommendation for the California High
School Teacher's Certificate, placing it on the same basis
as the University of California and Stanford University
in this respect. Since that date (including the present
class) the High School Credential has been granted to 920
candidates, and today our graduates are found in instruct-
orships and administrative positions in more than 200 of
the State's high schools. Since the establishment of the
Graduate Department in 1911, 270 candidates have been
awarded the degree of Master of Arts, and 10 candidates
the degree of Master of Science. The total number of
graduates for the current academic year in all depart-
ments is 487.
It is obvious that the University of Southern California
is rendering an educational service to the City of Los An-
geles and the State of California of no mean magnitude,
without, on the other hand, receiving any direct appro-
priation whatever from either City or State. The indirect
value and general benefit of a great university to the com-
munity it serves are of course quite incalculable. The
66 DEDICATION EXERCISES
city should cherish the University in its midst as the ap-
ple of its eye.
As a direct financial asset, likewise, the University has
attained ver\^ substantial proportions. The tuition re-
ceipts alone for the current year approximate $275,000.
It would be comparatively easy to estimate the total a-
mount of money brought to Los Angeles and diffused
throughout the community by the great body of students
attending the University. And the budget grows rapidly
larger from year to year.
The University of Southern California was founded in
1879 in response to the earnest feeling that the interests
of Christian education demanded the establishment of an
institution of higher learning in Southern California. In
accordance with the fundamental aims of its founders the
University, while requiring no particular creed or faith
on the part of its instructors or its students, has consist-
ently stood, and stands today, for the effective promotion
of Christian culture. It recognizes that the essential
meaning of life is spiritual. Because the object of life is
growth, and the true ground of culture lies in his own
nature, because of his masterful intellect and the divine
powers of his soul. Christian scholar is a nobler title than
prince or potentate.
The scholar is a god-imaging man, in whose intellect
is the world incarnate. He is equipped with the armor
of the ages. "The universe is rifled to furnish him." If
you would seek admittance into the temple of scholarship,
you must enter through the courts of an unbiased educa-
tion, pass through the portals of humility and reverence,
cross the vestibule paved with obstacles overcome, and
rise on the elevator of faith to the serene heights where
you become the pupil of nature, of man, of God. Without
a liberal culture one may never hope to enter into the in-
heritance prepared by native endowment and the history
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 67
of succeeding ages. The scholar is the heir of the ages.
Likewise the present makes large demands upon him, and
upon his fidelity rests the civilization of the future.
In this day of the pre-eminence of the college man, in
the midst of a distraught and well-nigh despairing world,
it is meet, right, and the bounden duty of us to whom is
committed the task of the higher culture of men to re-
examine the foundations of modern scholarship, scrutiniz-
ing the pages of history for a sign, yet not worshiping the
past, pointing the arduous way to the interior life in the
midst of outward change, yet not shrinking from rude con-
tact with brother men in the mass. Think it not ungen-
erous if a promising youth consumes many years in com-
parative isolation the better to prepare himself to meet
the rigorous demands of modern society. He may be in
training, as was Moses, for a national deliverance ; he may
be living with generations yet to be. "I may well vv'aJt a
hundred years," said Kepler, "for a reader, since God Al-
mighty has waited six thousand years for an observer like
mvself."
Nevertheless the scholar, once equipped, has, and ought
to have, positive and immediate relationships to society.
Education will always fall short of perfection until it
achieves the universal implantation of the ideal of social
service. The scholar must address himself to the great
social tasks of America and to the intricacies of inter-
national problems : state and church are exactly right in
looking to the colleges and universities for leaders who
can bridge the chasm between ignorance and intelligence,
lessen the distance between misery and opulence, dethrone
vice, exalt justice, and advance the general welfare.
The object of all true education, therefore, is the more
abundant life and the fine art of social living together.
The scholar cannot do all things well, but in order to
do one thing well he must be able to do more than one.
68 DEDICATION EXERCISES
We admire singleness of purpose in the midst of versa-
tility of accomplishment. The scholar who is a statesman
must also be a philanthropist; a politician, also a social
reformer; a preacher, also a teacher. Society demands not
so much that he be strongly intrenched behind the breast-
works of his profession as that in his chosen profession he
be unselfishly and nobly himself.
National prosperity — civilization itself — depends upon
a widely-cultured, broad-visioned citizenship. Martin
Luther is thus quoted: "The prosperity of a country de-
pends not on the abundance of its revenues, not on the
strength of its fortifications, not on the beauty of its pub-
lic buildings ; but it consists in the number of its cultivat-
ed citizens, in its men of education, enlightenment and
character; here are to be found its true interest, its chief
strength, its real power."
On the occasion of the formal opening of the American
University in Washington, D.C., in 1914, President Wood-
row Wilson said: "The object of scholarship, the object
of all mankind, is to understand, is to comprehend, is to
know what the need of mankind is. That is the reason
why scholarship has usually been more fruitful when as-
sociated with any religion, and scholarship has never, so
far as I can at this moment recollect, been associated with
any religion except the religion of Jesus Christ. The re-
ligion of humanity, and the comprehension of humanity
are of the same breed and kind, and they go together. It
is very proper, therefore, that under Christian auspices, a
great adventure of the mind, a great enterprise of the
spirit, should be entered upon."
The University of Southern California takes this aus-
picious occasion to reaffirm the high purposes that called
it into being, to set up a new milestone in its onward way,
and to pledge its faith as a guardian of the future.
The dedication of Bovard Building is made the occasion
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 69
of an intellectual feast, and to this feast we have invited
friends of education from far and near. Congratulator}'
replies have been received from scores of institutions, and
a goodly number are personally represented by delegates.
For this generous response the University is deeply
grateful.
Delegates, friends, representatives of America's best and
civilization's dearest, the University of Southern Califor-
nia welcomes and salutes you all ! And we now propose
that you permit us to introduce each of you in order that
this audience may rejoice with us at your presence in our
midst.
RESPONSE OF THE HONORABLE E. P. CLARKE
PRESIDENT OF THE STATE BOARD OF
EDUCATION OF CALIFORNIA
There were enrolled In the high schools of California
last year over 160,000 students — the largest high school
enrollment of any state in the Union. The enrollment
for the year just closing has probably been greater than
this and California without much question has maintained
her lead in high school attendance. There were over 25,-
000 young people in the fourth year class of the high
schools last year and the time is near at hand when there
will go out from the high schools of the state every year
some 15,000 young people who are ready and eager to
enter college. That fact is tremendously significant, and
it is certainly an inspiring thought that an army like this,
of choice young men and women, is started on the way
every year for the portals of our colleges and universities.
It would be a tragedy, moreover, if provision were not
made, by the state or by private institutions, for the higher
education of these youths who are so earnest in their desire
for it. All of us, therefore, who are interested in education
ought to rejoice, and we do rejoice, in every notable in-
crease in buildings, equipment, and faculty on the part
of institutions of higher education anywhere in the state.
That is why this occasion is such a happy one, not merely
for the University of Southern California but for all
friends of education.
It is not enough, however, that we point with pride to
the mere numbers who are graduating from our high
schools and enrolling in our colleges and universities. We
ought to go a step farther and ask ourselves, Why are they
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 71
doing this? \\^hat is their purpose in seeking a college
training, and what does the college course oflFer them?
We must agree that a college training does not neces-
sarily mean greatly increased power to earn money. When
the bricklayer can earn more than the college professor
and the ditch digger may receive a larger wage than the
high school teacher or the minister, this can hardly be
true. The college does not offer the pecuniar}' reward
as an inducement and, in general, our young people have
a more serious and a more unselfish purpose in going to
college.
I quote the words of a distinguished American, Vice-
President Coolidge, as to the purpose of a college educa-
tion. In a recent address at Wesleyan University he said:
"There is an inherent nobility in man that responds to
leadership, responds to a presentation of the truth, and
responds to a sense of duty, for man is more than selfish-
ness. He has a desire in him for attainment, and he finds
his ultimate satisfaction in the ser\dce of his fellow men.
Hence, while we may not look ultimately to an increase in
compensation, we can look now and forever to the sense of
duty that is in our fellow men to preserve and safeguard
the foundations of our republic. This end will be attained
through the teachings of our schools, our colleges and our
universities. Those spiritual foundations that came to
us in the teachings of Wesley and Edwards, those we can
recreate from day to day. With ever)' commencement
season, let us renew our allegiance to those principles and
reaffirm our conviction that on them depend the true sal-
vation of our countr}' and the presenilation of our liber-
ties sound and secure for even*' man."
I desire to add the testimony of a British authority —
a man who is an educator as well as a statesman Not
long ago I heard Sir Auckland Geddes, British
ambassador, say that the diadems in the crown of popular
72 DEDICATION EXERCISES
education in England are these: courage, humor, cheerful-
ness, sympathy, loyalty, humility. Those are diadems
that may well be made the aim of education in America
as well as England; and in general I believe the purpose
of our college faculties is to inspire in their students those
noble qualities, and I am inclined to think the noblest of
them all is humility.
"The tumult and the shouting dies;
The Captains and the Kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart."
One of the world's wisest of men long ago said, "Where
there is no vision the people perish." The most urgent
need of America today in this after-war crisis is vision —
the power to see clearly the sophistries of the cruel creed
of Bolshevism and the selfish principles of the ruthless
power of autocracy as represented by some of the organ-
ized forces of "big business." For the mass of the people
that gift of vision, the just sense of proportion, the ability
to see what is the "good, the beautiful and the true" can
only come from trained, sane, unselfish, inspired leader-
ship. That training for leadership it is the highest mis-
sion and the greatest opportunity of our universities to
give. With all the fickleness and perversity of human
nature, the underlying instinct of people is to do right and
follow wise leadership. Give the people of America true
leaders, and they will keep step to the drum-beat of prog-
ress.
Sad indeed it would be if the wonderful impetus that
the war gave to the spirit of altruism should now be lost.
"Peace hath her victories no less renown'd than war," and
her obligations, too. The red menace of anarchy is today
as real as was the gray menace of the Huns. As a nation
we are bowing down to the god Mammon and yielding to
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 73
the spirit of indifference to the obUgations of good citizen-
ship and religion. There never was a time in our history
as a people when we had more need of the righteousness
that exalteth a nation. Our universities ought to help lead
the people up to higher levels ; they ought to send forth
their graduates as evangels, bearing the lighted torch that
shall kindle anew the fires of education, patriotism, and
righteousness.
o
The true test of success for the university is the test of
service — the test that shall iind its product not mere filing
cases packed with assorted facts, as Edison would have
us believe, or machines equipped to make money ; but men
and women touched with the prophet's power of vision and
the Nazarene's love for service.
Edwin Markham has well said,
"We are blind until we see
That in the human plan,
Nothing is worth the making,
If it does not make the man.
"Why build these cities glorious
If man unbuilded goes.''
In vain we build the world unless
The builder also grows."
It is because I believe the University of Southern Cal-
ifornia is making men, because this new building is to be
dedicated to that high purpose, that I bring you greetings
and congratulations today from the state department of
education.
RESPONSE BY MRS. SUSAN M. DORSEY
SUPERINTENDENT OF LOS ANGELES
CITY SCHOOLS
Public education in Los Angeles owes something to
the University of Southern CaUfornia and takes pleasure
in acknowledging the debt. In this institution many of
our teachers have gained a new insight into the problems
of education, and their satisfactory solutions have broad-
ened their vision of the social service involved in public
education and have added to their professional training.
I well remember this University in the days of its be-
ginnings. As I compare its extensive campus and fine
buildings with the one small structure and the limited
grounds of not so many years ago, I am forced to believe
that into the upbuilding of this great school has been put
much of intensive and concentrated human energy.
It must have taken patience on the part of those who
have presided over the destinies of the University of South-
ern California to meet the difficulties of the years of pio-
neering, to persist in improving standards when economies
counseled compromise. It must have taken faith to vision
the institution of today and to believe all through the years
that accomplishment and yet more accomplishment was
the destined portion of this University. It must have
taken courage to persevere through the lean years, — there
have been many such, for even in California not all years
are golden. It must have taken much of sweetness of
spirit to prevail so happily, for there have doubtless been
periods when jangling councils needed the gentle word
and the spirit of self-restraint.
Methodism commands the respect of the world for two
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 75
reasons : because it believes in God and because it believes
in itself.
The Superintendent of the public schools of Los AjI-
geles brings to the delegates here assembled the heartiest
congratulations for the achievements and the bright pros-
pects of the University of Southern California.
RESPONSE OF PRESIDENT BLAISDELL
OF POMONA COLLEGE IN BEHALF OF
COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES
It is a very pleasant charge that is laid upon me to
express on this happy occasion the felicitations of the col-
leges of Southern California, for in a peculiar sense there
has been a mutual interest among us all. The colleges
have sprung out of the religious impulse and purpose.
Kindred, thus, in birth, they have shared a common strug-
gle, ought to serve a common mission, and are growing
up into efficiency for a common cause.
This day marks, as it seems to me, an epoch in the
educational life of Southern California. Adequate invest-
ment for education is not characteristic of the initial days
of a pioneering community. There are physical problems
which must first be faced. There are roads to be built,
railroads to be laid, harbors to be built. After rhis comes
the period of commercial expansion, with all that is in-
volved in the creation of trade and the organization of
finance. Only after these are well on their way does there
come that large consciousness of the intellectual needs of
the community which prompts those ample gifts which re-
source great educational institutions. This building stand-
ing in its glory is a testimony to the fact that we are com-
pleting these earlier periods and that the citizenship of
the Southland is entering into some conception of those
munificent bestowments which can alone make education
efficient. We look backward therefore across the path
we have come and we honor the struggles and the self-
sacrifice of those who have made this day possible.
The day is epoch-making also because we look not only
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 11
backward but forward. Here is one adequate building
for a great university. It is the prophecy of other build-
ings which are to come, so that the homes of learning in
the West shall be sufficient for the high work which should
be done for a noble and worthy civilization. In all this,
past and present, the sister colleges of Southern California
and the countr}' unite. We rejoice in the fortune that
has befallen this institution in this day, and we wish it
God-speed in even better days that are to come.
ANNUAL ALUMNI ADDRESS
THE NEW INDIVIDUALISM
THE REVEREND WILLIAM S. BOVARD, D.D, LL.D.
Corresponding Secretary, Board of Sunday Schools of the
Methodist Episcopal Church.
Mr. Chairman, Members of the
Alumni Association and Friends : —
It seems almost incredible to me that all we mean of
equipment, resources and achievement when we say "Uni-
versity of Southern California" should have been brought
to pass within the past four decades. There are some of
us here tonight who would not confess to have passed the
period of seasoned youth who remember distinctly the
modest beginnings of this institution.
The young man who has presided over the growth of
the University for more than half its life was a member
of the first graduating class, the class which founded the
Alumni Association. The class of 1888 to which I have
the honor to belong was inducted into the Association
when the entire membership was less than twenty. To-
day nearly 15,000 sons and daughters of the University
scattered throughout the world are giving a good account
of themselves in worthy service. Mr. President, on behalf
of each of these I wish to assure you that the alumni of the
University of Southern California appreciate their Alma
Mater and pledge loyal and substantial support.
I now wish to consider with you a theme vibrant with
present day interest. I choose to phrase it as The New-
Individualism. Any unbiased student of the movements.
80 DEDICATION EXERCISES
in the human world will agree that we are making notable
progress toward the goal of world brotherhood. The so-
cializing movement is not optional but inevitable. We are
under the inexorable law of the solidarity of humanity. We
belong together whether we like it or not. "We are mem-
bers one of another." The barriers which once separated
nations are now become the boundaries binding them in
one great neighborhood. The perils of this enforced con-
tiguity can only be overcome by learning how to live to-
gether in the spirit and practice of brotherhood. The
frontiers have vanished, there is no longer a geographical
provincialism, and that fact greatly hastens the passing
of the provincial type of mind. This is the day of world
citizens. Without discussing further the quite obvious
fact that the social conception of life is bound to prevail
throughout the world, I raise the question as to what effect
this must have upon the individual.? There are those who
are very jealous of the integrity, freedom and initiative of
the individual. They look with alarm upon the entang-
ling alliances in which individuals are involved in an ever
enlarging social group. As individuals they know they are
free, and they are conscious of an urge toward large self-
realization ; social restraints are oppressive and they shrink
from being lost in the mass.
On the other hand there not a few individuals who have
been fighting a losing battle in the competitive struggles
of an individualistic order, and are exceedingly weary.
They hail with enthusiasm a co-operative order of burden
sharers. It appears perhaps to some of them as a kind of
Nirvana where defeated individuals may lose themselves
in the group. They point out with force the folly of the
man who thinks it heroic to attempt an ocean voyage in
his own row boat. It may be exhilarating for a while in
the harbor; but once out on the turbulent sea, he finds
that his activities are hopelessly limited. He must bend
jik m
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 81
constantly to his oars, he cannot eat, nor sleep nor read.
How long should it take him to appreciate the great ocean
liner, the symbol of co-operation? By such a system of
navigation the mere matter of existence is made relatively
secure, and the larger interests of life may have attention.
My main contention is that the more thoroughly the
human world is socialized the greater are the demands
made upon the individual, the challenge to the individual
for self-realization and growth being commensurate with
the demands. In a co-operative order service becomes the
determining principle and not self-interest. The friendly
competition as to who shall be the most effective servant
promotes brotherhood. We must not fall into the fallacy
of thinking that individuals coalesce in the social group
as drops of water appear to be lost in the sea. The in-
vincible integrity of the individual is as much a funda-
mental law of God as is the solidarity of the race. The
socializing of individuals is not a process of amalgamation,
but of co-ordination. The multiplied contacts of a social
organization require unusual strength in the individual
units comprising that organization. A building unit, a
brick for example, may serve a useful purpose in a small,
cheap structure even though it is poorly pressed or burn-
ed, but if it is to have a place in a great expensive and use-
ful structure such as this college building, it must pass the
tests of strength and endurance. Let no individualist
think for a moment that the intimate alliances of a social
order relieve the individual of initiative or circumscribe
his legitimate aspirations. On the contrar}- he identifies
himself with the group, and seeks to grow to such pro-
portions as shall enable him really to help the group to
attain its loftiest purposes.
One of the most picturesque characters in the union
army during the Civil War was General Wilder. He left
a lucrative manufacturing business near Richmond, In-
82 DEDICATION EXERCISES
diana, volunteered as a private soldier, and in a remark-
ably short time became a Brigadier-General. He conceiv-
ed the idea that he could greatly increase the effectiveness
of his brigade if he could only mount his soldiers. The
government could not for some reason accede to his re-
quest for horses. He took the matter in hand and gave
his personal receipt to the farmers of Tennessee for horses
enough to mount his brigade. The government of course
later remunerated the farmers on the strength of the gen-
eral's receipt. When the first repeating rifle had been
tried out and found practical, General Wilder wanted to
multiply his force by arming his soldiers with guns that
would shoot seven times. Again his request was denied
by the government, but he appealed to the bankers of his
home town to loan him the necessary funds and take a
mortgage on his business. The Quaker bankers loaned
the money but refused to mortgage the property of their
patriotic neighbor, and Wilder's brigade mounted and
armed with repeating rifles became a fighting unit which
won great renown. One day I asked the fine old general,
who lived to a ripe old age loved by thousands, to tell me
in a word the secret of -his unique success as a soldier and
he gave this significant answer — "/ made the war my own!'
It is the challenge of the group life and the struggle to
every individual who is a part of it to make the problems
and purposes of the whole group his own, and so to live
and grow and serve as to help the whole group to trium-
phant success.
May I be permitted to indicate brieflv a few of the
characteristics which should mark the individual who is
to be strong enough to be a useful unit in the social order .f"
1. He must have the inner or soul resources greatly en-
riched and strengthened, so that he shall always be master
of that without, and never merely a victim. How much
of the complex of the social world can one make his own 1
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 83
It takes more than deeds recorded, more than money paid
and receipts in hand, to give possession, more than official
title to guarantee administration. The soul must have
great appropriating and assimilating power. The psycho-
logists tell us that man is two-thirds will. There are
times when the man might well be ninety-nine one-hun-
dreths will, when he must extend his control over areas
of external resources and forbidding circumstances.
I have always been fascinated by the vivid picture given
by the psalmist when he referred to the "man who was
enclosed in his own fat." Thinking of a small, weak soul
entombed in the bodv which should be directed as an in-
strument ! Todav Charles Paddock, one of vour own stud-
ents, broke five world records on the running track. Much
might be said in praise of his physical training, the splen-
did co-ordination of all his muscular powers, but I am
sure that the explanation of his notable achievement is to
be found mainly in the strong will to win. The spiritual
tenant of that fine athletic body is master and compels
victor}^
In society of human interdependence, where ser\'ice is
the governing principle, the individuals have it within
their power to enlarge their personalities by investing ma-
terial resources, organizations, and institutions with their
own directing spirit and controlling purpose.
2. The new individual who may be expected to measure
up to the demands of a social order, must have a dominant
passion for the immortal values in human life. His motive
must be rooted and grounded in human worth. Such
a primacy of character classifies all else in the realm of
means. Materials institutions and activities find their
right to be, and their right to abide in their service, to so-
cialized character. Thev must be tested bv this demand
for spiritual production or we will find ourselves mak-
ing the too frequent mistake of regarding means as ends.
84 DEDICATION EXERCISES
Some of the most ancient and sacred institutions must rest
their claim for perpetuation upon their contribution to
the deepest needs of Ufe. The Scriptures hold a place of
power in the world to-day not because certain defenders of
the faith stand guard, but because the Scriptures find us
at our deepest depth with inspiration and wisdom.
No ecclesiastical institution, no ancient definitions of
Christian doctrine, are to be preserved for their own sake,
but wholly because of their service to life and character.
When the master said, "The Sabbath was made for man,"
he expressed the final cause of all organized religion.
The same discriminating insight is needed to-day in
the industrial world. Capital must not be exalted as an
end in itself; it belongs in the realm of means; it must
be valued in terms of human need and character enrich-
ment. People who seek to possess wealth must understand
that they are after instrumentality with which to serve the
socialized human world. Labor organizations are thought
of by many of their promoters as something to be kept up
with unmodified integrity. Such is not the case. They
have only to show their productiveness in increased in-
telligence, high honor, fair play and social improvement
to maintain their place among the agencies serving the
recognized needs of man. The church as a servant of hu-
man life on behalf of the virtues of character has not al-
ways been administered as a means, but it has been
thought of as an end to be served. There is a vast differ-
ence between "church work" and the "work of the church."
Church work is concerned with the outfit, and the work
of the church is to furnish output. The justification of
church work is to be found in the better doing of the work
of the church. The workman must give some time and
careful effort to the improvement of his machiner}% but
it is in order that the material commodities may be pro-
duced. This distinction runs all the way through the
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 85
world of human activity as the proper organizing principle.
If we seek first the goal of genuine brotherhood, all things
and all organizations which can justify themselves in
terms of this supreme goal shall abide, and all destructive,
delaying factors must pass away. One of the most hope-
ful signs of the advance of brotherhood is the increasing
exaltation of human values high over all.
3. One more insight should mark the new individual in
the socialized world. It is that the expansion of the spirit
of brotherhood is by small essential groups being mul-
tiplied and their integrity preserved as they are co-or-
dinated into larger groups. God "hath made of one every
nation of men to dwell on the face of the earth." He has
also "set the solitary in families."
It is the utmost folly from the standpoint of inevitable
interdependence to ignore, much more deliberately to as-
sail the integrity of such a social institution as the family.
The family is the abiding unit of society. One might as
well hope to preserve this great college building after dis-
integrating the individual bricks and stones as to maintain
a social order after the destruction of the family unit.
The unpractical and impatient victims of the fallacy of
the universal want to see a unified humanity. They want
a short quick realization of a world unity. They over-
look the fact that "humanity" has never had its picture
taken, for the good and sufficient reason that it is nothing
apart from the co-ordinated individuals, and small groups
making it up.
The achievement of world unity must make room for
well-nigh infinite diversity. Unity must not be identified
with uniformity. "We do not have to be twins in order to
be brothers." With a clear recognition of ample room for
the free play of diverse individuals and small groups in
the only Kind of unity that is practical in a human world,
we may well rejoice that the Master's prayer of long ago
86 DEDICATION EXERCISES
is being answered, "That they all may be one."
"The crest and crowning of all good,
Life's final star, is Brotherhood;
For it will bring again to earth
Her long-lost Poesy and Mirth;
Will send new light on every face,
A kingly power upon the race.
And till it comes, we men are slaves,
And travel downward to the dust of graves.
Come, clear the way, then, clear the way:
Blind creeds and kings have had their day.
Break the dead branches from the path:
Our hope is in the aftermath —
Our hope is in heroic men.
Star-led to build the world again.
To this Event the ages ran;
Make way for Brotherhood — make way for man."
Markham
COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS
THE UNIVERSITY: ITALY TO CALIFORNIA
PROFESSOR ROBERT VV. ROGERS
Drew Theological Seminary
Bidden hither by your high and gracious courtesy, I
have left mine own Atlantic, to me most dear from my
earliest youth, and am come to speak to you, in whose
ears is the heavy and solemn roar of the Pacific. The
past, irreparable, safe beyond cavil and impervious to
fate, lies in Eastern climes; the future, as I am glad to
admit, seems to lie not in the East, but in your great,
brave, uplooking, ever-expanding and expansive West.
The occasion bids me speak modestly, and impulse within,
as strong as any impact without, is of the same color.
I have no mood of dogmatism, nor patience with its ex-
ercise, and venture to speak at all only because I have
spent my life teaching, and love it more than ever; and
having wandered far, seeing many universities, and, better
still, hearing many men of distinction or of commanding
authority, might at long last cease to hold my peace and
the rather speak out the faith that is in me, and let en-
thusiasm for learning, admiration for scholarship, and
glowing hope for yet better days find eager and passion-
ate utterance.
Let us find places on the magic carpet and be wafted
far from the Pacific, aye and from the Atlantic's western
shores, until we make footfall by the shores of the Medi-
terranean, most interesting by far of all the seas of earth ;
and when we have beheld just one fair spot upon its
borders, make thence to the northern Adriatic that in
swift glances we may discern the very beginnings of that
great system of instruction, inspiration and research, one
88 DEDICATION EXERCISES
of whose later manifestations is before us to-day in this
goodly place.
Our first landfall is at Salerno, at the head of its beauti-
ful bay, the Gulf of Salerno. The town rises on its fair
hillside, shimmering white in the morning sunlight, and
the most conspicuous of its buildings is the Cathedral of
St. Matthew, dedicated in honor of the Evangelist St.
Matthew, whose bones are supposed to rest in its cr)'pt.
The sacred edifice was erected in 1070 by Robert Guis-
card, and many a stirring historic event has its solemn
bulk witnessed. In the south aisle is the tomb of Hilde-
brand, afterward Pope Gregory VII, who died in the
little city on the 25th of May, 1085, after his banishment
from Rome by Henry IV. His dust would make renown
for any place, but Salerno has greater fame than he could
give, and to that our thoughts may justly turn to-day.
Behind the city of Salerno there is a medicinal spring of
kindly healing waters known, as were so many other
springs about the Mediterranean basin, to the Romans.
Perhaps because of its virtues, real or supposed, the art
of healing comes very early to note in Salerno. We know
the name of a physician there in the year 848, and before
946 a French bishop in arte medicinae pertissimus, met
at the court of Louis IV a practitioner from Salerno less
learned than he, but possessed of such skill as great ex-
perience could give. Was this unnamed man represent-
ative of a school.? We do not know, but soon after his
day we learn that Adalbert, bishop of Verdun, came to
be cured by its doctors, and thenceforward allusions be-
come so frequent that we come naturally to the conclu-
sion that a school to train men for that noble profession
whose praise is world-wide was already in existence, and
its European celebrity certainly goes back to the middle
of the eleventh centurv\ The city was then called upon
its coins Civitas Hippocratica, and that gives us an inter-
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 89
esting clue to the basis of its teaching. Its students were
learning the rudiments of their art of medicine and sur-
gers' from Hippocrates, the famous Greek physician, whose
Aphorisms and Prognostics and other works were turned
into Latin. He was born on the island of Cos about 460
B. C, and here we find him the chief teacher in Salerno
sixteen centuries later.
From humble beginnings there gradually arose an or-
ganized school or college of doctors in Salerno, and thither
resorted in 1099 Robert, Duke of Normandy, to be cured
of his wound received in the Crusades, and to him was
later dedicated Salerno's chief medical book, written in
metre and containing medical aphorisms, some of which
still live as proverbs of more or less wisdom. Here then
in Salerno, in the teaching and practice of medicine, are
the beginnings of university life and thought. In some
sense ever>^ medical school that now adorns the globe may
hark back to call Salerno mater gloriosa, and to take
pride in her fame. Much has been learned of the human
body and the healing of its ills since that remote day, and
not seldom have men gone backward and were then com-
pelled to turn and take place once more in the ranks
which Salerno first formed. No greater illustration of
this truth is needed than that Salerno had among its
medical practitioners, teachers, and writers, several
women, and it is not so long ago that women were newly
admitted to that profession after a long exclusion in
Europe and America. But let us away upon our magic
carpet from Southern Italy and its fair Mediterranean
shores, and having passed above the waters of its sister
sea, the deep blue Adriatic, make landing fifty miles inland
at the big city of Bologna, more than four times the size
of Salerno. The city has for its motto only one word, but
that a word of glor}^ and of hope, Libertas, and on its old
coins were the words of a splendid boast, Bononia docet.
90 DEDICATION EXERCISES
Few cities in the world might boast more nobly, for to
practice liberty and teach mankind these were noble func-
tions indeed; and Bologna has much cause to feel a not
ignoble pride.
The range of teaching at Salerno was disposed on the
whole to be what we should now call professional, though
there is no good reason to doubt that the Liberal Arts had
masters and learners. In Bologna, on the other hand, at
least as early as 1000 A. D., there was a fully recognized
School of the Liberal Arts which attracted students from
the far away city of Genoa, and more wonderful still we
even hear that a famous teacher travelled all the way from
Paris to study dialectic, and another perhaps scarcely less
famous went to the same shrine to unlearn what he had
previously known, and then returned to Paris and "un-
taught" the same to his pupils.
It is enough. Bologna was indeed a famous school
in the liberal sense. It was, however destined to a great-
er distinction because it became a supreme School of
Law. There had been schools of law before it in Rome,
Pavia and in Ravenna, only fifty miles away by the Adri-
atic. None of these, however, may now claim such honors
as rightly belong to Bologna in this noble science of the
law. The rise to distinction is due to one man, Irenius,
whose name is immortal. He was a master of the Liberal
Arts and set himself to the study of law. His books
were derived from Ravenna in part at least, and down
he sat to study them alone and without a master. Let
me remind you of the significance of the statement. We
are living in an age of ever-expanding courses of lectures
in our universities, and we are rearing generations of
youth in the belief, and still worse in the active practice
of the idea, that he who would learn anything must hie
away to some university and take a course in it. It is a
silly heresy, and I despise it most heartily. There's far
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 91
too much lecturing going on, and much too Uttle insistence
upon personal effort, private study. Let the teacher teach
the beginnings, the A B C of the arts and sciences, and
show the learner how to work, where to seek the know-
ledge, how to obtain it, and then, noblest and highest of
all, how to advance and extend it. He who thus points
the way, shows the landmarks, indicates the pitfalls, sets
imagination on fire, and kindles enthusiasm, is a great
teacher, and has no need to lecture on every phase of his
subject. On the other hand, he who does not make course
after course until college and university catalogues show
almost unending lists in which knowledge of ever}^ detail
has covered learning like a forest dark and forbidding, he
who so fulfils the teacher's office makes his pupils parrots
and not men, stifles imagination, smothers initiative and
destroys originality. Irenius was not thus stifled. What
he had learned was his very own, and with that possession
he began to lecture on law as no man before him had
done in Bologna. In due time, we know not how soon,
all Europe knew that a great teacher had come, that a
genius of commanding powers had risen, and students
came. He seems not to have been a great writer. We
possess indeed glosses of his which are still preserved
which he wrote as he expounded the laws of Justinian.
Nay, his greatness was as a teacher, and his books were
the lives of his pupils, and they came from all Europe and
went home again to sound their master's praises and to
carry on their work. It was he who gave Bologna its re-
nown as a School of Law, and it was he who, though
he knew it not, became one of the founders of the whole
university system, and we who now stand by the great
Pacific sound his praise once more and remember the
shores of the Adriatic.
First a School of Liberal Arts, then a far more re-
nowned School of Law, so did Bologna move onwards
92 DEDICATION EXERCISES
toward university character as students flocked to it from
the West far beyond the beautiful Alpine borders of Italy.
Then came swarms of youth from Germany, and Bologna
became a cosmopolitan centre of learning ; and then older
men, ecclesiastics, sons of noble families, men of mature
age who had already won position in the world by their
own well-used experience of it; and as their numbers in-
creased to three thousand, and then to five thousand, and
then in 1262 to nearly ten thousand students, Bologna
was now a student university, and all Europe made up
its body of learners. It was now an open doorway to
that profession which has always had political and
commercial power and has it still as none other of the
learned professions.
A place so great could not be left to students of the
Liberal Arts, and to Doctors of Law. Another profession
almost as lucrative in the middle ages as law, the practice
of medicine, would deserve and demand a place and Saler-
no could point the way. There are names of physicians
in" Bologna documents from the beginning of the eleventh
century, and by the second half of it there were doctors
and professors of medicine and surger}', and graduations
in these began, such as before had been in Arts and Law.
The scientific school of medicine in Bologna begins with
the great name of Thaddeus, who came from Florence and
began to teach in the year 1260. With him began the
study of anatomy, and under him the human body was
dissected in the presence of students. Mundinus stood
by him and became the father of modern anatomy, writ-
ing a text-book which continued in use for more than two
centuries. There surely is glory enough for any citv in
all this, yet — did not time fail or patience forbid — there
were far more to tell. I might show that its university was
far in advance of its own age, and perhaps in some ways
even of our age also. It early had women among its pro-
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 93
fessors, and among them Novella d'Andrea in the four-
teenth centur)^ whose personal attractions were so great
that she had to lecture concealed from the eyes of her
pupils by a curtain, perhaps lest beauty should fire imag-
ination, and learning cease to entice when delivered by a
teacher of such witching mien.
Ah, Bologna, how splendid was her contribution to art,
to law, to medicine, how glorious the annals of her teach-
ing work! I have walked her streets with reverence,
peeped into lovely gardens through dim renaissance gate-
ways, and felt a glow of happiness to behold the city
which had made a contribution so noble to the modern
history of learning, and a gentle and modest pride that I
belonged in manner however humble to the ranks of
teachers whose greater glories were Irenius and Thad-
deus.
I have some fear lest I may have overtaxed your pa-
tience by speaking so long of Salerno and of Bologna, but
I have taken the risk, and there was method in my mad-
ness. I have merely made these two universities object
lessons from which I would now deduce some general
principles and seek a lesson for this place and its beau-
tiful environment. Let me mention the general principles
first.
What is a university.? There is a widespread notion —
it is only a notion and a very erroneous one — that a uni-
versity means a school where all the faculties or branches
of knowledge are represented, or, to put it more crudely, a
place where a student may learn any subject. There has
seldom found place in the human mind a greater vagary,
a more stupid misunderstanding. How shall we escape
from it.? There is but one sure way, and as safe as it is
sure, and that is to go back down the long avenue of his-
tory and see what the word university really did mean
in the beginning, and then see how the word was applied
94 DEDICATION EXERCISES
to typical institutions later. Let us then understand dis-
tinctly and clearly that universitas means merely a
number of persons. At the end of the twelfth and
beginning of the thirteenth centuries the word is ap-
plied to a body of masters and students, or to either one
or the other. It is in the beginnings not applied to a place,
or to a school or to an institution, but, as I have been
saying, is applied to the men who teach or the men who
study. The correct phrase is always, "The University of
Masters," or the "University of Scholars," or the "Uni-
versity of Masters and Scholars." What was the word
for the institution in which the "University of Masters
and Scholars" had their abiding place.? The academic
institution was called Studium, not a University. And
what was a studium.'* It was what we might call a school,
it was the place or institution in which the University
of Masters and Scholars, the teachers and the taught, were
at work. Now a Studium might be a local institution
in which were gathered as learners only the youth of some
town or city. Whenever it rose above the rudiments,
the beggarly elements of instruction, and acquired a repu-
tation sufficient to attract students from a distance, it
was then called a Studium Generale, and that expression
signifies not a place where everything was taught but a
place where one of the higher faculties was taught, name-
ly, theology, law, or medicine, and taught in such fashion
as to be able to invite students from beyond local borders,
and to attract them. At the beginning of the thirteenth
century there were only three institutions which dared
claim the great title of Studium Generale, and they were
Paris, with faculties of theology and liberal arts, Bo-
logna, with a faculty of law, and Salerno with a faculty
of medicine. When the fifteenth centur)^ came, the word
Studium Generale dropped slowly out of use and the word
university supplanted it, and acquired the general mean-
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 95
ing of the institution as well as the doctors, masters, and
scholars who formed it.
In its original historical sense, and its only correct
sense, a university is not a place where every subject may
be taught or where every faculty is represented, but an
institution where students may find instruction in one or
more of the higher branches, or in one or more of the pro-
fessional studies. Salerno was a university when it
taught nothing but law, and it was neither more nor less
a university when it added the liberal arts, nor when it
began the cultivation of medicine. Paris was a university,
aye, and a great university, when it taught only theology
and the arts. I repeat that the test is that the instruction
shall be higher and not in elementar)^ subjects and that
it shall be so well ordered, so skillfully given, as to attract
not a Studium Locale, but a Studium Generale. As in
those days, so also in these days wherever the word uni-
versity is correctly used, it has that significance and no
other.
In 1876 there was opened in Baltimore a school of
the higher learning, and it taught only by one faculty call-
ed the Faculty of Philosophy, which is the modern term
for what was in the Middle Ages the Faculty of Liberal
Arts, but, it was a university, it was the Johns Hopkins
University, and it had every claim, every just and right-
eous claim to that style. It was a university though it
had few, very few professors, but they were supreme, each
in his own field, and they attracted students at once not
from Baltimore or from Mar}dand only, but from Mass-
achusetts, and Ohio as well, and soon the fame of that
university was world-wide, and Germans, English and
French came gladly to its hospitable halls. It was small
wonder that they came, for Silvester was professor of
mathematics, Gildersleeve was professor of Greek, (where
else was there a Hellenist his superior.?), and Morris,
96 DEDICATION EXERCISES
teacher incomparable, was there to represent collegiate
Greek and Latin, and Remsen was professor of Chemistr)"
and Martin of Biology and Rowland, professor of Physics,
a genius indeed. And they who stood by them to help or to
direct in other studies were Adams in histor)^, Elliott in Ro-
manic languages, but little less distinguished in promise,
if not in performance. O, aye, the Johns Hopkins
University was a real university when it had only its
Faculty of Philosophy and it had no other when I came
within its inspiring influence in 1883. It has a Faculty
of Medicine now, and a Faculty of Engineering, but is
not one whit more a university now than it was then.
The ideal is not many faculties, vast ranges of subjects,
multitudinous courses ; it is men of distinction as teachers
learned each in his own subject, scholars in that lofty and
ennobling sense, men of light and of burning, blazing en-
thusiasm, men whom Chaucer described in the musical
phrase:
j., "Gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche."
Anything more.? Yes, — students, students who study, stu-
dents who feel within their glowing veins the warming
fires of ambition, not crazed with an absorbing athleticism,
not dull, witless, stupid, blase, not careless, shiftless, time-
wasters, not dull driven cattle, beaten into a semblance of
industry by a vast machiner)^ of coercion administered by
a resistless Dean. Professors make or unmake a university,
but so also do students. They must work together. They
must be fellow soldiers, commilitones as they were often
called in my university days in Germany long ago. Let us
not forget the old phrase in the Middle Ages, "University
of Masters and Scholars." If the professors have responsi-
bility in making a university so also have the students. The
■ students of to-day will be alumni or alumnae to-morrow,
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 97
and into their several walks of life must carry the habits
formed in student days either as they now are, or begin a
fierce battle to supplant them by newer and better. During
all the rest of their lives they will be representing the uni-
versity, and in some or many particulars influencing its
decisions, and raising or lowering its prestige. The in-
fluence of students far outlasts that of the professors. The
professors die or retire while the students who have filled
their lecture rooms survive them by years or decades.
Surely this is no light responsibility. Would there were
found some way of impressing every freshman with its
grave reality.
Come now, let me turn and apply some of these lessons
from a glorious past to a living present, and so far as may
be to a future of hope and actuality. You have honored
me with a commission to speak to this University, to the
Faculty whom I may salute as colleagues, though my own
seat of learning be far from them, to men and women now
in the next moments to be admitted by the conferring of
degrees to this brotherhood begun in Salerno and Bologna
ten centuries ago, and still growing and developing, and
to such others of the student body as voice may reach
today in this charming environment. I have somewhat
to say to you collectively if not individually, as a whole
if not in classes, diff^erentiated by age or opportunity.
The first word is this, that this is a university; it has
earned and deserves that splendid appellation. It is a
Studium, a place of higher studies, a place admirably qual-
ified to admit the youth to the ancient degree of Bachelor
of Arts, and it is in that ancient and venerable sense al-
so a Studium Generate, a place fit to attract and able to
attract students from a distance, and not only from this
rich and beautiful city. That being true and beyond all
dispute on solid historical grounds, it is doubly and treb-
ly true when one remembers that besides the College of
98 DEDICATION EXERCISES
Liberal Arts this University rises to the mediaeval stand-
ard in the possession of faculties of theology, law and
medicine. There is no need to labor the point. Let all
who share its life, whether as teachers or taught, lift heart
and soul in a great and noble pride in that already achiev-
ed, in the place which the University of Southern Califor-
nia justly holds as an heir of Salerno and Bologna, aye of
Paris and of Oxford and Cambridge, and of the earlv
foundations of learning in our own land. This Univer-
sity is sister to the best of them, and may claim the right
to emulate their glories and so far as may be to escape
their mistakes. It is a high calling and ver)- deeply re-
sponsible, and in modest hesitation I must speak about
it and ask you to consider how it should be met.
The first question is, what shall there be taught to those
who seek the baccalaureate degree."^ I am scarcely old
enough to face the embattled hosts which threaten any man
who in this day dares to suggest any subject as necessary.
Every subject has its defenders, and so it should ; but alas !
every subject has its opponents. I shall not speak dog-
matically, nor ex cathedra. What is now to be spoken is
a declaration of faith, not a challenge to controversy. I
shall decline the tournament, refuse to enter the lists. I
shall flee and let those who remain and whose business it
is to decide, to declare their faith, announce their principles
and put their conclusions into effect as they have author-
ity and right to do, and then to forget all that I have said.
What subjects should here be taught.'' O, I have no hesi-
tation in declaring my faith that they should be classics,
mathematics, histor)', philosophy, modern languages and
one science.
I have mentioned science last, not as a climax,
for my climax is at the other end of the line, but be-
cause I would say a word about that first; and I am so
old a hand at teaching as to know that the thing mention-
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 99
ed last needs an early word of re-enforcement or it will
follow its predecessors out of memor}' into vacuity. I
feel quite sure that a man who has to live in the world
of the present ought to know something about scientific
methods of thought, processes and research, and the
quickest and surest way to give such an insight is to teach
one science, teach it well, teach it fundamentally and as
much of it as the reasonable partition of time would al-
low. One science and one only, not chips and bits and
smatterings of two or three sciences, as is too often the
custom in America, with the result that the befuddled mind
carries away no real knowledge, no sure grasp of the scien-
tific method.
What beside this then.'' Surely, enough of two
of the modern languages to be able to use them as tools,
as reading tools, and no more, because no more is likely
really to be possible. Philosophy, aye, enough of an in-
sight into the methods of philosophical thinking that the
educated man may at least have heard of the problems of
thought, of the universe and of man upon which the wisest
men of all ages have most seriously have considered.
History; yea, that the youth who are to be to-morrow's
men and women may catch at least a fleeting glimpse of
the long procession of civilized men coming up through
barbarism out of savagery. Mathematics, that the mind
may see the foundations of all physics and all astronomy in
that glorious science of numbers, the one sure and surely
known science which deserves the high epithet pure, — pure
science. The classics, — it is my climax and so it deserves
to be. Our civilization, the whole of it stands supported
on two great columns, one of them is Hebrew, for our relig-
ion is Hebrew in origin whether we be Christians, Jews or
Muhammadans, for all three are rooted in that same soil
so amazingly rich in religious ideas and aspirations, so
charged with a passion for God. The second column is
100 DEDICATION EXERCISES
Greek, and the major part of all beside religion that
our civilization boasts is derived either directly from the
Greeks or indirectly from the Romans. O, how in in-
expressibly sad will be the state of the coming generations
if educated men and women are denied the classical train-
ing, whether the denial come through their own stupid
refusal, or because of the mistaken policy of the educa-
tional leaders who are gradually elbowing the classics
out of college and school. I make bold here and now
to utter this protest in the ears of all who hear, and to
beg all of a different opinion once more to weigh and
consider the claim, the just and reasonable claim; of the
classics, to a high and secure, though not an exclusive
place in education.
In some such way as this so briefly sketched I should
wish every man or woman to be educated in college, for
I am fully convinced that with this foundation any
structure might be reared. Whatever the future career,
whether in one of the learned professions or in science,
literature or fine arts, music, sculpture or painting, the
Bachelor of Arts would be ready to rear a substantial
structure of high ideals and modest or lofty achievement.
Yet when all is said it matters far less what is studied,
what subjects are pursued, than that what is done be
done thoroughly. It is far more important to know a
few things well than many things superficially. Let me
speak boldly. The curse of American education is two-
fold multiplicity and superficiality. Our boys and girls
from their youth to manhood are taught too many things,
and few or none deeply and broadly. We graduate from
schools and colleges hosts who are clever in speech, some-
times brilliant, who can keep up a conversation on almost
anything from astronomy to zoology, but who know noth-
ing well, nothing thoroughly. I have spent much time
in Europe, and everywhere in my experience and every-
SPECIAL EVENTS OF tHE WEEK 101
where the testimony of others is the same. Nobody
knows anything as do the Enghsh, German and French
students of the same age. A graduate student who has
spent four years in college and is promoted Bachelor of
Arts comes forw^ard as a candidate for the higher degrees
in philosophy or theology and brings to the new task so
little, so pathetically little that is definite, sure, positive,
reliable. He has studied German but he cannot read
some scientific papers in that language. Is he a student
of Histor)^^ He has read Latin in college, but he can-
not read a document in Mediaeval Latin. He goes to
Oxford for higher studies and is hopelessly outclassed
by a boy five years his junior who has just come up from
Eton or Winchester, and can really read Latin. O, I
have often been sick with shame to have heard Oxford
professors declare that some American is clever, but that
he knows nothing, and worst of all to hear them prove
it. If there were some way by which every student should
be compelled to study half as many subjects he would know
four times as much about any one of them. The cry
and call of the age is for men and women who know
something and can do something with it. Fewer subjects,
a greater intensity, and the beginning is made. Yet even
that is only a beginning. Our next generation must do
much better than we have done, or it will not do so well.
It must learn a few things and learn them well, it must
learn the supreme gifts of patience and perseverance. It
dare not face a future greater than the past which now
stretches behind us until it is willing to pay for a higher
excellence in terms of toil, patient, persistent until the
goal be won.
The whole learned world on the Atlantic seaboard was
ringing, as I set my face westbound toward you, with
plaudits of a woman and her splendid achievement. A
quiet, modest little ladv had come from Paris, Madame
102 DEDICATION EXERCISES
Curie, to receive the gift of a gram of radium, and colleges
and universities clamored for the honor of doing honor
to her, and naught that could be said of her was fulsome
or overwrought. It sounds like a romance, but it is the
romance of labor, prolonged, patient persevering. Here
is a woman of unusual gifts and of sound preliminary
training. She is born Marie Sklodowska in Warsaw and
is a student of chemistry and metallurgy in Paris under
Pierre Curie, whose wife she afteru^ard became. They
worked together in his laboratory and there, while examin-
ing specimens of pitchblende from which the element Ura-
nium is extracted, she had the splendid good fortune to
discover a new element which she named Polonium, in
honor of Poland, her native countr}^ There might be
some other mvsterious element concealed in that same
pitchblend, large residues of which were found in Austria.
In that search she handled twenty to thirty tons of these
residues, dissolving, fractionating by re-crystallization
with ever increasing strength until at last her unflagging
perseverance was rewarded by the discover)'" of yet another
element with the strongest radioactive properities yet
known. She had discovered Radium, an element, her own
element. Her early training, you may be sure, was sound
and thorough, not scattered, aimless, discursive like an
American elective course. Yet good as it was it would have
been in vain but for that magnificent display of hard and
continuous labor. There is no other way, and if education
fails to make that lesson plain it has failed to educate; the
next generation will not rise to its opportunities nor
achieve its possibilities. Am I sounding what may seem to
be a minor note.'* Nay, far from it, this is a clarion call to
this sovereign commonwealth, to this astoundingly beauti-
ful, this lordly and puissant city here, to build gloriously a
great university worthy of the past and its present achieve-
ment, but worthy also of the unmeasured and immeasur-
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 103
able opportunity of to-morrow. Nothing is too great, no
ideal too lofty, no hope too rich and deep for what may here
be achieved. Upon these foundations already well and
truly laid let great and numerous buildings stand. Let
their halls resound with the hurr^dng feet of tens of thou-
sands of high-spirited youth, making haste to laboratories,
libraries, lecture rooms and seminaries of the highest re-
search. Challenge the greatest universities from here all
the way to Harvard, to Oxford and Cambridge, to Dublin
and Edinburgh, to Paris and to Berlin. Emulate their
achievements, learn to avoid their mistakes, and be con-
tent with naught less than equality with their best and
noblest. Gather here the most gifted, the most ambitious,
the most industrious youth, and bid them sit humbly at
the feet not of cheap pedagogues, but before the faces of
the most learned, the most skilful, the most inspiring men
and women as their teachers. Let those who teach re-
member the glorious succession in which they stand from
Irenius in Bologna to our day, and as they think how
narrow was the Adriatic, and how vast the Pacific, how
insignificant Bologna, how great and prosperous Los An-
geles, let them do and dare mighty things undreamt be-
fore, nor yield to the enticement of any lesser ambition.
The past is secure, the future is here in the making, and
the responsibility is ours. I have spoken with passionate
earnestness, mindful of the past, eager to see a greater
present, and full of hope for a larger future. The present
only is ours in this mighty and inspiring task of education.
I am not tremulous with fear, but buoyant with hope, and
grimly determined to give my best to my profession, the
profession of teaching, and to honor all who serve in a call-
ing so ennobled by the past, so deeply needed in the present,
and the present is only a moment, a fragment of time.
SPECIAL EXERCISES IN CONNECTION
WITH JAMES HARMON HOOSE
HALL OF PHILOSOPHY
THE MISSION OF PHILOSOPHY
PROFESSOR JOHN WRIGHT BUCKHAM
Pacific School of Religion.
California has passed off the pioneer stage into the
constructive period, — a fact which this substantial and
beautiful building, with the mental construction which it
is to foster, attests.
It is a question of great moment what sort of philosophy
this great commonwealth on the shores of the Pacific will
construct. That this opulent and favored land, with the
smile of nature resting upon it, is to play a large part in
the future of civilization, none of us doubts. What will
be the color and character of the thought-life of the Pa-
cific slope.? That is a subject for serious and responsible
consideration.
It is a cause for congratulation and gratitude that the
foundations of philosophy in California have already been
strongly and, as it seems to us, soundly laid. At all events
they have been laid in an idealism which accords well with
the wide and hopeful outlook of our state, and by two men
whose names rank with the highest in American philoso-
phy, — Josiah Royce and George H. Howison.
It is one of the significant incidents — no accident — in
the history of human thought that America's greatest
thinker, after Jonathan Edwards, was born in a California
mining town, caught from California hillsides and water
106 DEDICATION EXERCISES
the light that never was on land or sea, was inducted into
the priceless treasures of human thought and imagination
in the library of the University of California, began his
career as a teacher in the same institution, and laid the
foundations of his comprehensive and majestic system of
idealism here in the breadth and freedom of our unfettered
life.
It is fitting, too, that his literary executor, and leading
interpreter. Professor Loewenberg, should also be teaching
at the same University.
Nor was it an accident that our most stalwart and forth-
right American advocate and defender of pure personal
and theistic idealism, George H. Howison, wrought and
taught in California, proving himself one of the most vig-
orous and able teachers of philosophy our country has pro-
duced, training in his classrooms California youth to be-
come influential teachers of philosophy and leaving the
stamp of his firm and intelligent convictions, his moral
earnestness and his faith in the soul of man, deeply im-
printed upon the life of this coast.
These two men, with their pupils and sympathizers, to-
gether with such teachers of idealism as James Hoose and
aided by such discerning lovers of philosophy and of Cal-
ifornia as Professor George H. Palmer, have given direct-
ion and character to our Pacific Coast philosophy.
And now in this university has sprung up the earnest
and able advocacy of another form of idealism needed to
augment and supplement — should I rather say to crown
the idealism of Royce and Howison, in the Personalism
indelibly associated with a name that belongs with those
of Edwards and William T. Harris and Royce and Howi-
son as the fifth in our great pentad of idealists, Borden
Parker Bowne.
It means much for California to have such a philosophy
taught here and promulgated through The Personalist.
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 107
May it find wide acceptance and appreciation.
This deep and thorough grounding of the philosophy of
California in a vital idealism, moral and religious as well
as critical, is surely most propitious for the future. Yet
if it should mean the restriction of our philosophy to the
mere defense and maintenance of a closed system of ideal-
ism the issue would be quite unworthy of the high calling
of a progressive social community.
As one looks out upon the field and task of philosophy
today, he cannot but be struck by the urgent summons
that comes to this ancient and indispensable servant of
the intellect and life for the enlargement of its scope and
a more adequate conception of its mission.
Owing in part to the breaking down of authority, in
part to the vast accumulations of knowledge, and in part
to the intellectual, moral, and religious confusion follow-
ing the Great War, there is at present a chaos and be-
wilderment in the general view which philosoph^^ is call-
ed upon to do its part to solve. And it is a large part.
The peculiar need of our day is not so much investiga-
tion as interpretation. I do not mean that investigation
has not been of the utmost service, or that its task is
complete — far from it. Nor do I overlook the fact that
we are sorely in need of motive, which it is the function
of religion to furnish. But we are in danger of being
crushed under the accumulated stones of investigation,
and of being unable to release the fine power of motive,
until we can reach a clearer conception of the universe,
of life, of ourselves and our duties and possibilities ; in
a word, a more ordered and unified thought-world.
Now it is the ofiice and task of philosophy to do this.
Science (and by science I mean, of course, natural science)
108 DEDICATION EXERCISES
cannot do it, her outlook is too restricted ; art can not do
it ; religion can not do it. Philosophy is the appointed in-
terpreter. Here is the rational and ordained task of in-
tellectual interpretation. Not that this is her only task.
She is also the critic of life, but true criticism is part of
interpretation. She has her especial tasks as well, episte-
mology, ontology, logic, psychology — these are important
provinces within her vast domain. Within each of these
it is her duty to toil arduously and incessantly, to special-
ize, to perfect a technique. Yet that is not all of her duty.
These things ought she to have done and not have left the
other undone. And the other — i.e., the task of surveying,
determining, relating, evaluating the process and control
of knowledge — is a mission, the neglect of which leaves
the human world in confusion and in mental and spirit-
ual incompetency.
Instead of exercising this essential office, what have we
had of late, as the dominant types of philosophy.? Prag-
matism, which has elevated a truth about truth, — i.e., that
it ought to work — into the place of truth itself; Instru-
mentalism, which has reduced philosophy to the apologetic
and handmaid of science.
All of these recent developments are, to be sure, correct-
ions and contributions. It was time that idealism should
be called upon to show its faith by its works. It was time
that the instrumentality of truth for action be recognized.
It was time that the truth of science, for scientific pur-
poses, should be given its place, as having a reality of its
own. But to make any one of these aspects of truth a
sufficient philosophy, laying its mandates and restrictions
upon all active philosophies, is surely as unphilosophical
as it is ill-balanced and hampering.
No, philosophy has a larger and more essential vocation
than this. With all its esoteric and technical problems —
and they are many and difficult — it is charged with a far
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 109
wider mission and may not rightly leave us in a time like
this, in an uninterpreted, unrelated, un-unified world such
as that in which we are living, while it spends itself in the
elaboration of its technique and in contests over intricate
issues.
Where there is no vision the people perish. Where
there is no interpretation of life the people wander in dark-
some paths ; and philosophy lapses into "lunar politics" or
becomes, as Falton Taylor describes it, a swamp in which
the fire-fiies flash and flash and all is dark again.
II
What is interpretation and why is this the task of phi-
losophy }
Interpretation is the bringing out into more intelligible
form and relations of inner meaning and significance.
But is not that the work of science.^ No; science has
to do, not at all with intrinsic meaning, but only with ex-
trinsic meaning, with method and utilitv.
Well, then, is not interpretation the office of poetr}'
and of art.^ No; the mission of literature and of art is
rather that of expression than of interpretation.
Not that expression is less essential and vital than in-
terpretation. Experience must find expression in order
to come to its fulfilment and its power of communication.
But experience is not interpreted until its interior mean-
ing, with reference to experience as a whole and knowledge
as a whole, is clarified and explicated; and that is the
office of philosophy, by the way. I do not mean, of course
that philosophy should or could monopolize interpreta-
tion. Imagination is essential to interpretation, and hers
is intellectual rather than imaginative interpretation.
Incidentally, this is the reason why philosophy deserves
an ample and honored place in university and college ed-
no DEDICATION EXERCISES
ucation. It is essential to a Lebenanschauung as well as a
Weltanschauung.
This is not to say that all minds feel equally the need of
philosophic inquiry.
In my own college, the University of Vermont, where
philosophy has had a large and honored place, under the
aegis of James Marsh, the American exponent of Cole-
ridge, the Senior Class in my day — thank Heaven! was
required to take a course in Watson's Selections from
Kant's Critique, under Professor Henry A. P. Taney, a
worthy compeer of Bowne and Royce and Howison. There
were two brothers in college at that time who took this
course successively. The elder was a poet and humorist to
whom Kant seemed the prince of befoggers. The only
effect of the course upon him was to stimulate him to
write, though not to publish, a burlesque which he en-
titled, "A Critique of Pure Unreason."
The younger brother came to the course, with a different
mental make-up and interest, and to him Kant brought
awakening, nutriment, light, and leading.
Are all poets .'' Are all philosophers? Have all the gift
of expression or interpretation .f* And yet the more ex-
cellent way is, with charity toward all, to recognize that
in the academic body there is need not only for investiga-
tion and for utilization but more abundant need for ex-
pression and for interpretation.
What are some of the particular tasks in interpretation
for which we look to Philosophy?
In the first place, we look to her for a philosophy of
science, or should I call it a philosophic interpretation of
science, for an answer to the question: What kind of
reality does it furnish? How far is the scientific know-
ledge of our world a final and complete knowledge? \»'hat
are the values and what the limitations of science'
Science herself cannot answer these questions, for her
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 111
vision is limited to her own realm; nor can a philosophy
of science that has no prerequisites save those of science
herself.
And yet there is a large company of educated men and
women todav who have no vision bevond science ; to whom
science is coterminous with truth itself.
It is the ancient error of the borer in the log taking his
log for the universe. The world of science is a vtrj real,
big, and expanding world ; but it is not the total world of
realitv. Who shall teach the scientist that fact.? Who
but the philosopher.'' But the scientist will not listen if the
philosopher begins by deriding his world and denying it
all reality and worth. Let the philosopher first learn some-
thing of what science means in its own right, and then he
will be able to interpret that meaning as well as the lim-
itations.
If it is a sign of ignorance and provincialism in the
scientist to "vanquish Berkeley with a grin," so is it for the
philosopher to vanquish Einstein with a "What ! At last !"
Then there is Religion. Who will give us a philosophy
of religion, tell us the meaning of religion, its place in life,
the nature of its experiences and convictions, as related to
the whole experience and life and knowledge.'* Not the
man of religion himself. He knows what religion is in
itself, to be sure, for he has had the experience, and he will
rightly distrust and ignore anyone who tells him that it
is not a reality. But religion is not all of life, nor all of
truth. Who shall say what kind of truth it is, what are
its guarantees, how it is related to other forms of know-
ledge, to life, to the universe.'' The theologian.'' No, not
he; at least not unless he is also philosopher and can not
only interpret religious truth to itself in terms of doctrine
but can also relate it to the whole sphere of truth and life,
of which may we not say it is the center.
A philosophy of religion — yes, and of Christianity — we
112 DEDICATION EXERCISES
are suffering for that — a clear and intelligent appraisal of
the place and meaning and warrant of religion ; and until
we have it many thoughtful minds will not enter into the
full possession of the pearl of great price.
And History — what do we need just now more than a
philosophy of history, — not a lean Hegelian logic super-
imposed upon history — not merely an outline sketch with
side remarks such as that with which Mr. H. G. Wells
has at once regaled and tantalized us ; but a genuine phi-
losophy of history that is able to decipher the moral and
spiritual as well as the natural laws that run through it
and to reveal something of the movement and purpose — if
such there be — that guide its mysterious interplay of free-
dom and determinism, of trial and error, of progress and
retrogression, so that we may know whether we may in-
deed believe that
"thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs."
One of the most interesting and suggestive philosophical
queries raised of late is : What is the meaning of the con-
cept progress.^ How much more is there in it than the
passage from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a
definite — coherent heterogeneity.'* How much of moral
purpose, of end-seeking.
And a social philosophy — to supplement and carry for-
ward into today and tomorrow the increments of the past.
How greatly do we need that! Not a new appendage of
sociology and economics, but a true social philosophy.
What in fine does this strange yet homelike, trust-
worthy-deceptive, beautiful-deformed, happy-wretched,
progressive-battling, good-evil, true-false old world mean
anyway, and what does life mean, and what do we men
and women mean.? That, in short, is the problem of phi-
losophy, not to be solved by her alone, without aid, but
surely not to be solved even tentatively without her. A
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 113
hard and complex and continuous problem, but it is not
an importunate one and men will not let philosophy turn
aside from it to any temporizings of pragmatism and in-
strumentalism, to any burying of her head in the sands of
agnosticism and refusal to answer it, or to do her best.
These age-long questions of ultimate meanings are not
gratuitous, nor will they yield to any world-weary ennui
or occupation with transient practical concerns. They
confront us upon these fair lethal shores, where it is not
always afternoon, any more than anywhere else in God's
world, just as they confronted the awakened minds of
Athens and Alexandria, of Jerusalem and Ephesus, of
Paris and Jena, of Oxford and Edinburgh, of Concord
and St. Louis. And unless we play the man and face
them freely and bravely and seriously, no conquests of the
material universe nor triumphs of applied science, no de-
light in the beauties of nature, nor joy in the creation of
art will satisfy that longing to know which disturbed and
rewarded the minds of Job and Heraclitus, of Paul, and
Origen and Aquinas and Berkeley and Kant and Cole-
ridge and Edwards and Royce and Howison and Bowne.
I am not saying that it is the pr6vince of philosophy to
completely solve these profound problems nor even to
reach down into the very heart of ultimate reality. Ex-
perience alone can reach the ultimate realities. But it is
the necessary function of philosophy to examine, to criti-
cize, to interpret and to relate our experiences, and thus
to bring us out into the light.
There are two other cognate tasks of philosophy of which
I can speak but very briefly. One is that of evaluation.
This is a task that lies so close to that of interpretation
as to be almost identical with it. And yet it is not quite
the same. It is the field especially of ethics.
Since Lotze and Ritschl, we have heard much of the
philosophy of values. It is well that we have. Philosophy
114 DEDICATION EXERCISES
itself is a process of evaluation, an assessment of values,
or worths. We have been confounding value with utility
long enough; thereby gaining the whole world and losing
our own soul. Philosophy cannot itself give us the pro-
found values, but it can tell us where they lie and teach us
to take nothing else for them.
A third task of philosophy is that of unification. This
too is a most real necessity if we are to live in an in-
telligible and coherent universe.
Doubtless the zeal of Platonists and Hegelians, and of
Professor Royce, carried their principle to an extreme,
imposing upon this "mosaic" world a unity which flies in
the fact of its multiformity. It was just and pertinent for
Professor James to deride a unity that gives us "a black
universe, rounded in and closed."
We may not rightly ask for unity at the expense of
reality. Nevertheless if there is some sort of unity in the
flowing world of experience as well as in the perceiving
and conceiving mind, it is no less than a life and death
matter that we find it and live in accordance with it. It
is the task of philosophy to enable us to do this.
It is hardly within the range of my subject or the limits
of my time, to go on to describe the type of philosophy such
as is alone adequate to give us an ordered and unified
thought-world.
Yet I cannot refrain from stating openly what has al-
ready been implied, that I can conceive of no philosophy
at all adequate to undertake the interpretation, evalua-
tion, and unification of knowledge save one that grounds in
idealism, that begins with the mind itself, or rather with
that which underlies and includes the mind — the person.
Start with the external world and when you reach mind,
consciousness, the self, it is likely to appear only in a phe-
nomenon, or — Oh, final disenchantment — epiphenomenon
of nature, and we find ourselves in the midst of that
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 115
mud and scum of things where nothing sings, which Pro-
fessor Bowne entitled philosophical naturalism.
Start with the self, the person — and where else can one
start? — and you have, first of all, other selves with whom
one is indissolubly bound up in a society of selves, then Su-
preme Self from whom the selves come and in whom they
live and move and have their being; and beside these a
body of a nature, an external world, to which also we are
most intimately related yet not indissolubly — and of which
we have a knowledge, real and reliable in its kind, but
secondary to that of each other and of God.
The day for the extreme idealism of Berkeley, or for
the dualism of Descartes, or the critical and agnostic ideal-
ism of Kant, or for the monistic idealism of Royce, or for
he nature-ignoring idealism of Howison, has passed. We
need an amplified idealism, — one that is more deeply per-
sonal, social, spiritual, yet that also recognizes an external
world which has its own degree and kind of reality, a world
which we can understand and use aright only as we make
it serve a higher moral and intelligent creative will.
Yet I am not here to plead for idealism, or for personal-
ism, but for an enlarged conception of the mission of phi-
losophy, for a philosophy broad enough and brave enough
to unify, evaluate, and relate the varied forms of know-
ledge, and serious and wise enough to define and interpret
our manifold experiences and the ultimate realities which
sometimes loom and sometimes gleam through our mys-
teries ; a philosophy that will give us a unified and evaluat-
ed thought- world in which we can live sanely, reverently,
rationally, and construct a civilization meet for such a
great God-given commonwealth as this on the shores of
a world-uniting sea.
To such a philosophy may this Hall be dedicated!
DOCTOR HOOSE AS COLLEAGUE
ROCKWELL D. HUNT.
Dean of the Graduate School, University of Southern California.
There is something presumptuous in my speaking of
James Harmon Hoose as my colleague : to me he was more
like father than brother, — and yet he was the most broth-
erly of men and paternalistic not at all.
My personal acquaintance with Doctor Hoose dates
from my coming to the University of Southern California
in 1908. Yet I had already learned of him as a leading
force in the University.
At once I perceived his dominant place among his col-
leagues. Highly respected by all, transparently genuine
in his qualities of manliness, he excited the jealousy of
none, but won the esteem of each.
Doctor Hoose gathered up into his life a wide range
of experience. His educational work included all grades
of instruction from the secondary school to the graduate
work of the university. He organized the Normal School
at Cortland, New York, and was for many years its presi-
dent. He was much in demand as a lecturer before teach-
ers' institutes. As a teacher of teachers he was a shining
light. In the course of his university experience he taught
many subjects; histor)", economics, sociology, philosophy,
pedagogy, and still other branches, but primarily he was a
teacher not of subjects at all but of men. This fundament-
al human element he consistently instilled into the minds
of his students, many of whom are today vitalizing and
enriching their teaching and their preaching because they
once sat at the feet of this great teacher.
118 DEDICATION EXERCISES
While not placing his main reliance in a multitude of
books and not given to the use of many "authorities," Doc-
tor Hoose did not neglect the best sources of information
nor the helpfulness that comes from associations in learn-
ed societies. He was a member of the National Education-
al Association, the National Council of Education, and the
Southern California Teachers' Association. For many
years he maintained membership in the American Histor-
ical Association, the Historical Society of Southern Califor-
nia, and the American Association for the Advancement of
Science. His relation to the Holland Society of New York
perhaps betrayed in him something of ancestral pride: to
those who knew him his Phi Beta Kappa key, so modestly
worn, was scarcely needed as an outward symbol of his
sturdy scholarship.
Doctor Hoose was intelligently and sympathetically in-
terested in the work of his colleagues while at all times a
staunch and loyal supporter of the President of the Uni-
versity. President Bovard could always rely upon him
for wise counsel, mature judgment, and broad vision
when confronted by grave problems of administration.
To his younger colleagues he was always an inspiration.
The fact that one occupied a department only remotely
related to his made no difference; his interests — big, cul-
tural, human, — knew no departmental bounds. He treated
even the inexperienced, the mere embryonic professor, with
distinguished consideration. He had a happy faculty of
removing the sting, where criticism was richly deserved,
and leaving only the helpful, constructive suggestion.
A few brief sentences from younger colleagues will ex-
press the high esteem in which he was held far better than
any words of mine.
Roy Edwin Schulz:
"Dr. Hoose — our 'grand old man', than whom no young
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 119
instructor ever had a better friend, a more fatherly adviser,
a more wilHng helper. His kindly criticism, his generous
praise, and his inspiring encouragement are among the
most pleasant memories of service in the University of
Southern California."
Ruth W. Brown:
"Many of the most valued memories of my first years
upon the faculty of my Alma Mater center about Dr.
Hoose, who was then a dominating figure in the institution.
Dr. Hoose possessed the simplicity and kindliness that ac-
company true greatness, and his cordial and sincere con-
sideration for his younger colleagues tended to strengthen
self-respect and to create a sense of mastery in those with
less experience than his own. Thus the gratitude and
reverence that I had felt for Dr. Hoose, the teacher, were
deepened and enriched by later association."
Hugh C. Willett:
"Amongst the many influences woven into my life dur-
ing student and early teaching days at the University of
Southern California, I can now trace most clearly the in-
fluence of the life and teaching of Dr. Hoose. He was a
great teacher and a good man. His method of teaching
demanded straightforward, clear-cut and rigorous think-
ing on the part of his students. His philosophy, life and
manhood commanded the admiration and respect of all
who knew him."
Not only was Doctor Hoose broader than any depart-
ment of study, — than all departments in combination ; his
perspective was that of life itself. It may be said that the
motto of his life was, "Light, more light !" He delighted in
120 DEDICATION EXERCISES
the youthful Hfe about him ; the strength of mature man-
hood challenged his admiration; the mellow tints of age
found response in his heart of hearts. In 1907 he gave a
toast at the Annual Banquet of Phi Alpha fraternity on
"Living While You're Young," in which his closing thought
was this :
"Young life is beautiful;
Adult life is grand;
Old age is sublime; —
provided, the life is stalwart in noble purpose."
How delightful it was to observe the affectionate esteem
in which he was held by the students, to note his loyal en-
thusiasm at an athletic or forensic contest, to see him in
action before a student rally! No faculty member was
more consistent than he in attending exercises where stu-
dents participated ; none more faithful to visit the sick or
unfortunate; none more loyal in upholding the fair name
of the university.
If a colleague did well. Doctor Hoose never withheld his
praise or commendation; if he did ill, the genial Doctor
generously refrained from carping criticism and spoke
words of kindly helpfulness. He could be emphatic but
never rude; straightforward and sincere, he knew not how
to equivocate ; he condoned no faults, but was never bitter.
Such was my colleague, James Harmon Hoose, he who
wrought so valiantly with strong hand, flashing eye, and
stalwart mind, and into the fruits of whose labors we enter
this day. I have now reached well into middle life. As a
student I have had a few great teachers; as a teacher I
have had many promising students : of my numerous col-
leagues Doctor Hoose stands forth as the type 'par ex-
cellence.
In contemplation of such a character we may take a
lesson from the life of him who gives name and spirit to
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 121
the memorial we gratefully dedicate this day. May the
kindly spirit, the noble idealism, the inspiring comradeship
'of James Harmon Hoose never depart from this building.
And may the University of Southern California ever hold
him in faithful, grateful remembrance who gives his honor-
ed name to James Harmon Hoose Hall of Philosophy !
DOCTOR HOOSE AS TEACHER
PRESIDENT TULLY C. KNOLES
College of the Pacific.
It is ver)^ difficult for me to speak upon this occasion,
for my feelings are comparable to the feelings of a son
speaking of his father. My relationship with Dr. James
Harmon Hoose, to whom this beautiful section of the
George Finley Bovard Building is dedicated, was so inti-
mate for so many years that I came to look upon him not
only as my close personal friend, my best teacher, but my
intimate companion and guide : my relationship was filial.
For thirteen years I had the great honor and privilege of be-
ing associated with him as an undergraduate and a gradu-
ate student, a part of that time teaching as an assistant to
him, and for the rest of the time as head of the depart-
ment of History.
It is only fair to Doctor Hoose to say that he had to
win his way in the University of Southern California.
After spending twenty-two years as President of the Cort-
land Normal School in the State of New York, he came to
California with what he thought was a competence. In-
vesting in California lands, which were not profitable at
that time because of continued drought, he found it nec-
cessary to begin again and was offered a position in the
University of Southern California where, in all frankness,
he was not appreciated by the trustees ; and I break no con-
fidence when I say that the President at that time, Doctor
George W. White, found it necessar)' to pay a part of Dr.
Hoose's salary for two years out of his own funds in order
to retain him in the institution until the Trustees were sat-
isfied with his work. The present President, Dr. George
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 123
F. Bovard, who sits on this platform today, was asked if
he intended to keep Doctor Hoose in the institution when
he assumed the responsibiUties of the Presidency in 1903,
and his answer was, "Most assuredly." Today all of the
trustees who have serx^d since Doctor Hoose became a
professor are united in doing honor to him and in recog-
nizing him as the great scholastic force in the building of
the Greater University in the first decade of the twentieth
century.
From the very first, Doctor Hoose was cordially received
and appreciated by the members of the Faculty. They
at once saw his worth and knew his inspirational value to
themselves as well as to students. To show his influence
and also the strength of his service it is only necessary to
note that today more than a score of men are giving fuU^
time to the classes which he formerly taught.
The growth of the popularity and influence of Doctor
Hoose followed the same line with the students that it
did with the trustees ; for instance, when he first began to
teach, a picture of the door of his classroom was printed in
the college annual with the legend, "Abandon cum laude,
all ye who enter here." For years before his death his
classrooms were so crowded that it became necessary for
him to meet them in sections, and the students knew that
the grades they received in his department meant his best
judgment of them, and they desired the work and ex-
perience much more than they desired the grades. Of all
teachers I have ever known he had least respect for persons.
His most intimate friends were treated exactly as were
those who were scarcely acquainted with him. Two in-
stances stand out as typical of his attitude: At one time
Doctor Hoose was in the habit of sending every member
of the class to the blackboard to answer certain questions
which he would propound. One young man was in the habit
of taking a position midway from the ends, and know-
124 DEDICATION EXERCISES
ing that the good Doctor invariably asked for recitations
beginning at one end or the other, he was sure to make
an excellent recitation no matter what he had written up-
on the board. On one occasion, after having made a very
brilliant recitation, which recitation had no connection
with the material he had in view on the board. Doctor
Hoose said very quietly, "There is nothing personal in
what I am about to say, but I once knew a man in New
York who knew nothing of therapeutics or materia medica,
but he was great on fits. If he could throw a patient, no
matter what his difficulty was, into fits he could cure him.
Next, please."
On one other occasion six of us, all graduates and all
teachers, were taking a course in Kant's "Critique of Pure
Reason ;" we met but once a week for a two-hour session.
We were just seated when Doctor Hoose asked your speak-
er to read a certain sentence on a certain page. He did
so and was told to explain it. He replied "I am not able
to do so." Like a thunder clap Doctor Hoose said, "Class
excused." Your speaker said, "Doctor, we have studied
this carefully but cannot at present understand it. Will
you be willing to give us some references that will throw
some light upon the problem.?" "Class excused," he thund-
ered. We went out very much crest-fallen. One week
later we returned, and as if nothing had happened the good
Doctor said "Page — , line — , Knoles read." Knoles read;
then the command, "Knoles, explain." The reply was the
same as the week before. Rubbing his glasses he looked at
your speaker saying, "You wanted to read a dozen books
before you could read one." Then he sat back in his chair
and for an hour and a half poured out the most wonderful
explanation of the Kantian philosophy that it had ever
been our privilege to hear.
Today we dedicate these beautiful halls and this mag-
nificent seminar room to the honor of a man who, like
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 125
Socrates and the greatest teacher of them all, never wrote.
Many, many times I go into my library and long for the
privilege of pulling down a volume written by this great
man, but it cannot be done. Is it such a loss, for when-
ever I find men and women who have come under the in-
spiration of James Harmon Hoose I find living epistles.^
He wrote not upon marble, parchment, or paper, but on the
plastic minds of those who are even now multiplying his
writings.
SPECIAL EXERCISES IN CONNECTION
WITH THOA/[AS BLANCHARD STOWELL
HALL OF EDUCATION
THE EFFECT OF CHANGING CONCEPTIONS
OF GOVERNMENT ON EDUCATION
WILL C. WOOD.
State Superintendent oj Public Instruction
Men born of the Spirit welcome the dawn of each new
day, because its span of working hours is filled with op-
portunities for purposeful activity and service. It is em-
inently fitting that man should emulate the blithe and
happy skylark who sings in anticipation of what the new
day may bring. No people are so successful as those who
sing while they spin, for the strands and skeins of song be-
come no small part of the warp and woof of the tape3try
of life, giving it resistance against wear and tear and mak-
ing it beautiful to look upon. It was Paul the Apostle
who bade the Ephesians "be filled with the Spirit, speak-
ing to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,
singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord."
It is in such a spirit of song and thanksgiving that we
are gathered here today to dedicate this hall to the great
work of keeping alive the fires of the spirit. From a hum-
ble beginning this institution has grown to high estate be-
cause its workers sang and made melody in their hearts
while they labored. Hope has been realized; faith has
been rewarded ; the unquenchable spirit has taken on new
light. Today we are assembled to witness the housing of
that spirit in a new temple, named in honor of one of its
128 DEDICATION EXERCISES
elders and chief priests and dedicated to a larger useful-
ness. It is indeed a fitting recognition of the work of a
devoted man, a scholar, broad in learning and human
sympathy; a character without a blemish; a teacher in
the image and spirit of the Great Teacher. Doctor Thomas
B. Stowell, the first dean of the School of Education of
the University of Southern California, has laid its founda-
tions broad and deep, and strengthened them with the but-
tresses of faith and hope. As Superintendent of Public
Instruction of the great commonwealth of California, I
bring this tribute, and attest his usefulness to the state
and his unselfish devotion to the cause of education. It
is fitting that this building shall bear his name.
On such an occasion it is appropriate that we consider,
in the light of present and prospective needs, the future
of institutions dedicated to the great work of shaping and
molding the ideals of education, and relating these ideals
to the needs of the state. It was Alexander Pope who
wrote in Augustan verse:
"Tis education forms the common mind;
Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined."
I take it that no one in this twentieth century will chal-
lenge the supreme importance of education in the life of
a commonwealth. The German people, converted to the
ideals of militarism and world domination within three
generations, chiefly through education in the state schools ;
the French people, schooled in thrift and steeped in the
ideals of resistance to Prussian attack in a highly central-
ized school system — both are striking examples of the part
education plays in the life of a nation. The ideals of a
nation are shaped in the schools of that nation. The shap-
ing of ideals is done chiefly by the teachers employed by the
state. And the teachers of America are trained, for the
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 129
most part, in teachers' colleges and schools of education. It
is clear, then, that the training of teachers is of supreme im-
portance in. a commonwealth. The ideals of American life
that are being interpreted in the teachers' colleges today are
the ideals which, by these teachers, will be interpreted to the
children of America during the next decade. They are the
ideals which will dominate American life away out in the
middle of the twentieth century, when these children have
grown to full estate and responsibility. Schools of ed-
ucation and teachers' colleges, charged with the supreme
responsibility of shaping the life of the American state, are
institutions of primar}' importance which we can not af-
ford to neglect.
It is not an easv task to analyze the ideals which should
dominate the teacher-training institutions of America. The
American people are a mixed people, analogous in some
respects to a conglomerate rock. Now a conglomerate rock
is composed of many smaller rocks and pebbles formerly
independent but now more or less firmly cemented to-
gether. Each of these pebbles making up the conglomerate
mass formerly had its own center of gravity. In the con-
glomerate mass, the pebbles have lost their hundred or
thousand individual centers of gravity and a new center
of gravity for the entire mass must be found. It is easy
to find by inspection the center of gravity in a rock of uni-
form texture, but very difficult in a conglomerate mass
because of the varying textures of the fragments compos-
ing the mass. Moreover, each accretion to the mass causes
the old center of gravity to shift and makes necessary the
establishment of a new one. Carrying out the analogy,
accretions to the conglomerate mass of our population
have been so many and of such varying mass and texture,
that it is difficult to determine just where is the center of
gravity in America today or where it will be tomorrow.
The ideals of America, like the center of gravity in a con-
130 DEDICATION EXERCISES
glomerate rock, are hard to define because of the changing
mass and character of our population.
It is in their government, perhaps, that the common
ideals of the American people find most direct expression.
For that reason I have chosen to discuss some phases of
our government and their bearing upon education. Dur-
ing the hundred and thirty-four years of our national
history, the political theories that have dominated Amer-
ican life and government have not been static. On the
contrary they have been shifting and variable, and on the
whole progressive. At the ver}' outset we discover two
divergent theories struggling for supremacy — on the one
hand, the theor}' of a strong national government which
would gradually absorb many of the functions exercised
by the states and smaller subdivisions, justifying such ab-
sorption by the doctrine of public welfare; and, on the
other hand, the theors' of a constitutionally restricted
national government based upon the doctrine of state and
local rights. The chief protagonist of the strong national
government in Washington's cabinet was Alexander Ham-
ilton; the chief protagonist of the opposing theory was
Thomas Jefi^erson. Underneath the surface of the current
of discussion of the nature of our national government
there ran a stronger current. Hamilton and his followers
were opposed to the application to American life of the
extreme individualistic, or laissez-faire, doctrine. The
great exponent of a strong national government believed
in the extension of Federal power to the regulation of
banks and other matters of general concern. Thomas
Jeff"erson, on the other hand, being a disciple of Rousseau,
preached the doctrine of individualism, summing up his
attitude by declaring "that government is best which gov-
erns as little as possible." In justice to Jefferson, it must
be said that when charged with official responsibility, he
sometimes forgot his dictum.
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 131
During the first quarter of the nineteenth century the
executive and legislative branches were dominated very
largely by the ideals of Thomas Jefferson. The conditions
of pioneer life made possible the application of the politi-
cal theories of states' rights and individualism. However,
the Supreme Court of the United States during this period
was influenced largely by Chief Justice John Marshall,
who, like Hamilton, was the apostle of a strong national
government. It was he, who, by sweeping decisions, based
upon splendid analyses and careful reasoning, extended
the limits of Federal power. In the case of Marbury vs.
Madison, he asserted the doctrine that the Federal Su-
preme Court could annul a law of Congress ; in Fletcher
vs. Peck he established the doctrine that the Federal
Courts could annul an act of a state legislature; In Mc-
Culloch vs. Marvdand he set forth the doctrine that the
Federal government has all the powers implied in the act
of its creation. It was this last decision, upholding the
theory of implied powers, which has been invoked so
many times subsequently to break down the doctrine of
state and local rights and shatter the ideals of political
individualism. Since Marshall's time the powers
of the Federal government have greatly expanded;
many governmental functions formerly limited to
states and local jurisdictions have been centralized
at Washington, and Federal regulation of com-
merce and industr}', generally in the interest of
the public welfare, has gone on apace. At the beginning
of the twentieth centun^ we face an anomalous situation.
We find the political party which celebrates the birthday
of Thomas Jefferson, its founder, responsible for more
laws for the centralization of government at Washington
and more laws providing for regulation of business and
industr}' enacted during the administration of a single
president, than were enacted during any preceding quar-
132 DEDICATION EXERCISES
ter of a century. And we find the opposing party, which is
reputed to have inherited the ideals of Alexander Ham-
ilton, standing firmly, yet anomalously, upon the principle
of less centralization of government at Washington, "less
government in business," and less regulation of commerce
and industry by the government. However the parties
may divide on the questions of nationalism and central-
ization, the fact stands out that our national government
is becoming daily more complex and its functions are mul-
tiplying. A democratic government can continue to exist
only so long as it is generally understood. In consequence,
the centralization of functions at Washington and the con-
tinued differentiation of functions make the problems of
government more complex and, by doing so, lay a greater
burden on the schools in training for citizenship.
Since the theory of laissez-faire, on the one hand, and
the theory of extension of government, on the other hand,
have dominated and still dominate the governmental act-
ivities and attitudes of America, these theories are worthy
of some analysis without reference to the political parties
espousing them. The theory of laissez-faire found its
strongest expression in Europe at about the time our gov-
ernment was founded. Before the eighteenth centur\' a
characteristic feature of the industrial and commercial
development of England and other European countries
had been careful regulation and control of trade and in-
dustry, first by the guilds and later by the government.
This regulation had been carried to extreme lengths. State
interference extended to the fixing of prices of food and
apparel ; prohibiting the wearing of certain kinds of cloth-
ing, restricting the manufacture of certain articles by ap-
prentices, regulating the wages of labor, forbidding the ex-
portation of certain goods, forbidding the use of certain
machiner)' in manufacturing, prescribing where factories
should be located, discouraging certain industries by taxa-
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 133
tion, encouraging other industries by bounties, prohibiting
combinations among workers, restricting certain trades to
guild members, prescribing the number of meals one
should eat, the size of buttonholes, the length of shoes and
the cut of one's dress and even naming the kind of ma-
terial in which the dead should be buried. According to
John Stuart Mill, legions of inspectors, measurers, and
commissioners saw that the conditions prescribed by the
state were observed. A history of such regulation in Eng-
land during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries reads
verv much like recent indictments of national and state
governments in America. Buckle, in his "History of Civi-
lization," says the legislators of the time "went blundering
along in the old track, believing that no commerce could
flourish without their interference and hampering that
commerce by repeated and harassing regulations."
In the eighteenth centur}' there was a reaction from this
system of control and regulation, which found expression
in the doctrine of laissez-faire. Supporters of this individ-
ualistic or "let alone" theor}^ believe that the sphere of
state activity "should be restricted to the narrowest pos-
sible limits consistent with the maintenance of peace, or-
der and security." The state is necessar)', they say, to
keep order, enforce contracts, protect life and property and
repel attacks from without. That the doctrine of laissez-
faire persists in pristine form even in the twentieth century
may be confirmed by reading an article by Samuel Spring
in the Atlantic Monthly of June, 1921, in which the writer
holds that taxation, that is, the raising of money for the
support of government, is "at best an interference with
economic tendencies, a poison administered in small
doses." The individualist holds that the state exists to
restrain crime and breaches of faith, not to direct and pro-
mote the general welfare. "Individualists," says Huxley,
"condemn all sanitary legislation, all attempts on the part
134 DEDICATION EXERCISES
of the state to prevent adulteration or to regulate injurious
trades ; all legislative interference with anything that bears
directly or indirectly on commerce, such as shipping, har-
bors, railways, cab fares, and the carriage of letters ; and
all attempts to promote the spread of knowledge by the
establishment of teaching bodies, examining (and licen-
sing) bodies, libraries and museums ; all endeavors to ad-
vance art by the establishment of schools of design, or
picture-galleries, or by spending money upon an architect-
ural public building where a brick box would answer the
purpose. According to their views, not a shilling of pub-
lic money must be bestowed upon a public park or pleasure
ground; not a sixpence upon the relief of starvation or
the care of disease."
A twentieth century American may regard the individ-
ualistic theon' as absurd. However, he should be remind-
ed that it has been indorsed by such men as Adam Smith,
Ricardo, Malthus, John Stuart Mill, De Tocqueville,
Taine, Kant, Fichte and Herbert Spencer. It is held by
many Americans today and is manifested most frequently
at the time that taxes fall due. Herbert Spencer, in his
"Social Statics," maintains that happiness does not come
through state action but by being left alone ; that the sphere
of government should be negatively regulative; that the
state should seek to redress evils, not try to make
men happier by helping them to do what they can do as
well, or better, by themselves. Concerning education,
Spencer held that "taking away a man's property to edu-
cate his own or other peoples' children is not needful for
the maintenance of his rights and hence is wrong." Hum-
boldt inveighs against "over-government" not only be-
cause it restricts freedom but also because it "superin-
duces national uniformity" by its tendency to reduce so-
ciety to a dead level. The individualists stand for free
competition and for the free play of the doctrine of sur-
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 135
vival of the fittest. Men will be stronger and better, they
say, if they are left to develop and to work without inter-
ference. Unrestricted competition, they hold, will produce
not only a stronger, fitter race, but also more and better
goods, thus solving at one stroke our economic and social
problems. It must be remarked, in passing, that this
argument for the free play of brute forces is strikingly
similar to the justification of the war for world dominion
put forth by German philosophers and statesmen in 1914.
Opposed to the extreme individualistic theory which we
have discussed, is the extreme socialistic theory. The hold-
ers of this theor)^, far from regarding government as an
evil, look upon it as a positive good and hold that its ac-
tivities should include the promotion of the common eco-
nomic, moral and intellectual interests of the people. The
extreme socialists advocate collective ownership and man-
agement of all industries, including land and capital and
the instruments of production and transportation. They
would substitute state management for private manage-
ment. They decrv" the evils of competition and the con-
centration of wealth in the hands of a few. They main-
tain that much of the materiahsm, dishonesty and lower-
ing of standards of character that mark present-day civi-
lization is due to the competitive principle. In support of
their doctrine, they cite the success of certain experiments
in government ownership and operation of public utilities.
The American policy has been to steer a middle course
between the two extremes, verging toward one or the other
according to the exigencies of the time. The individual-
istic idea borders one bank of the stream of American
thought and practice and the extreme socialistic idea
borders the other bank. To approach either bank too close-
ly is to run the risk of being stranded on a sand bar. For
a hundred and thirty-four years the ship of state has held
to deep water in the main current of the stream. The
136 DEDICATION EXERCISES
American people recognize the dangers of extreme indi-
vidualism, in injustice to the individuals, communities and
whole regions. The free play of competition resulted in
grinding poverty, long hours for workers, child and woman
labor, and in a high death-rate among workers. Individ-
ualism carried to the extreme robbed vouth of education
and opportunity and threatened the destruction of democ-
racy. If unmitigated competition holds sway in industry,
why not in political life.? If only the strongest are to sur-
vive in industry' under the merciless working of unrestrict-
ed competition, why should not the strongest survive in
political affairs.? When the strongest rule in the state by
overcoming, coercing and trampling, upon their fellows,
we shall have a despotism or an oligarchy, not a democra-
cy. The theor)' of laissez-faire and the theor}- of democra-
cy are in no slight degree opposed. The principle of surviv-
al of the fittest undoubtedly applies in unmitigated form to
the brute and plant world. But man, unlike the brute, is
endowed with a soul which would be maimed and strangled
if it were to win a brute triumph by the cramping or death
of other souls. If man is to keep his soul, he cannot maim
or cramp or kill the souls of fellow men or the souls of
women and children. We must have regulation of in-
dustr}', sanitation, control of disease, education, recreation,
poor relief, water systems, public hospitals and public im-
provements as wtII as police forces, fire departments and
courts of justice, if civilization is to survive. It is idle to
maintain that these matters should be left to private in-
itiative. It is equally idle to deny that individuals act-
ing together, in many matters, can secure more good for
all by so acting, than they can by acting alone.
In rejecting the extreme of individualism, we need not
embrace the extreme of socialism. Like individualism, it
has its points of weakness and its positive dangers. The
mainspring of human action has been, and I believe ever
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 137
will be, private ownership. I have seen too much neglect
of public property and too much tolerance of the neglect of
public business, to have faith in the theor}' of collectivism
or communism, I have had too much experience in the
education and training of human beings to believe that
human nature can' be changed by legislative fiat or eco-
nomic revolution. The path of human kind upward is
a long and arduous path; there are few short-cuts and
they are indeed ver\' short. We learned during the war
that sudden prosperity is fraught with possibilities of evil ;
that human beings really value only that which they earn
or deserv-e. If all the wealth of the world were confiscated
and redistributed, the greatest injur)' would be done, not
to the man whose property was taken, but to the man Vv'bo
received wealth he did not earn or deserve. The wicked
carnival of senseless spending, superinduced dv profiteering
and unearned wages during the war, bears witness to fool-
ishness of reaping where one has not sown ; of getting what
one has not earned or deserved. It is an injur}^ to the in-
dividual who seemingly profits by it, and it is an injur)^ to
society.
What theory' then shall we hold as defining the pur-
pose of the modern American state .^ I am convinced that
the answer is neither individualism nor socialism. Profes-
sor Ritchie, in his "Principles of State Interference," holds
that the purpose of the state is the realization of the best
life by the individual. Laboulaye, the French professor of
political science, says, the "role of the state is to assure to
the individual his entire development — the full enjoyment
of his physical, religious, intellectual, and moral powers;
to remove obstacles and restraints ; and to promote the
general progress by multiplying the means of education
and putting it at the door of the most ignorant and poor-
est." Dr. James W. Garner offers as a statement of the
modern American view the following: "The original, pri-
138 DEDICATION EXERCISES
mar)' and immediate end of the state is the maintenance
of peace, order, security and justice among the individuals
who compose it. Secondly, the state must look beyond
the needs of the individual as such to the larger needs of
society — the welfare of the group. It must care for the
common welfare and promote the national progress by
doing for society the things which the common interests
require but which cannot be done at all or done efficiently
by individuals acting singly or through association."
Accepting Doctor Garner's statement of purpose of the
state as representing fairly the American view, how does
education enter into the scheme.? At the risk of appearing
platitudinous, I maintain that education is one of the
chief functions of the state because, by broadening the
mind, by training and disciplining the individual, educa-
tion is a primary and indispensable means for realizing
the primary end of the state, namely, "the maintenance
of peace, order, security and justice among individuals."
Peace and order depend upon a common acceptance of the
principles of right and justice — and education makes for
such common acceptance. Security of life and property
depends upon a recognition of the difference between li-
berty and licence — and education seeks to define that dif-
ference. But education goes farther — it enables the state
to promote the common welfare by raising the level of in-
telligence and character among citizens, and by training
experts who may do for the common welfare what such
welfare demands.
In recent years we have witnessed many experiments in
national and local government. The powers and functions
of the national government have expanded, but in many
instances these functions have been badly performed. Vast
sums have been wasted because of the incompetence of
the public servants. The responsibility rests chiefly upon
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 139
the public, which has been so fearful of experts that it has
tolerated politicians in places where expert ser\''ices are
needed. The American people must be educated to the
point where they will demand expert rather than political
service in places of responsibility. They must be trained
to be critical of the results of public service rather than
the details thereof. They must be educated to this point
where they will pa}' competent state employees the wages
of competency; where they will hold responsible the of-
ficial who clings to the policy of the out-worn spoils system.
The government at Washington may be recognized; the
pawns may be shifted in the game of politics ; but efficien-
cy and extravagance will continue in spite of it unless
there is more expertness and business in government. It is
to the schools that we must look for the training in citizen-
ship which will demand and supply the type of men need-
ed to make American government successful, efficient and
economical. Only thus can the government be made to
realize the secondary purpose of the state, namely, promo-
tion of the general welfare.
With the expansion of our national government, the
growth of population, the development of industr)', and
the tendency to congestion in large centers, there has come
a demand for regulation along many lines including in-
dustr}', transportation, housing, and sanitation. Unregu-
lated, a railroad may kill a town which has offended it, by
the simple method of extorting high rates or moving its
tracks. Unregulated, an industr\" may kill and maim
many of its laborers by neglected safety appliances, thus
throwing upon the state the burden of caring for crippled
men or for bereft widows and children. Unregulated, a
filthy family may pollute the water supply of a city and
spread disease and death among thousands. The extreme,
individualistic theor}' of "let alone" may work on the
plains of Mesopotamia or Timbuctoo, where the popula-
140 DEDICATION EXERCISES
tion is scattered, but it will not work in New York or Chi-
cago or Los Angeles, where the population is congested.
During recent years, the policy of state regulation has ex-
panded rapidly. Industrial accident and workingmen's
compensation laws, laws regulating automobiles and traf-
fic, laws regulating transportation and public utilities,
laws regulating traffic in drugs, laws regulating moving
pictures, laws regulating building and housing, laws regu-
lating employment, especially the employment of women
and children in industr)% laws regulating weights and
measures, and the issuance of stocks and bonds,
have been put on the statute books. Most of
these laws are the outgrowth of congestion in cities
and changes in industr}'. They have been deemed
necessan' for the public welfare. Already there is
a tendency to react against regulation in many
matters, not so much because regulation is deemed un-
necessar}' as because much of the regulation has been
lacking in intelligence. If we are to have regulation, it
must be intelligent and based upon facts, not upon theories
or political expediency. This means that the public ser-
vice must be manned by trained people rather than by
men and women who must be taken care of as rewards
for political service. The time has come when public
ser\'ice should be made a career justifying education and
training, which the school must supply. Moreover, regu-
lation, to be effective, must be backed by civic and public
opinion based upon general recognition of the needs and
means of regulation. If our young people are properly
educated in citizenship, the violations of necessar}' regula-
tions will tend to become fewer. The growth of the move-
ment to expand governmental powers in the promotion of
the public welfare, throws an added burden on the schools
in the training for citizenship. If necessar)' regulation
fails, it will be due to unintelligent administration and
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 141
lack of the backing of intelligent public opinion. And if
regulation fails, we shall probably have to choose between
a reaction to individualism, with its brute appeal to the
doctrines of survival of the fittest, on the one hand, or
socialism, with its dangers of mediocrity, dead-level uni-
formitv and lack of spur to effort, on the other hand. The
schools must rise to the responsibility of maintaining the
American ideal, which is neither individualistic nor social-
istic, but which embraces the best in both theories of po-
litical action.
In local government, also, we face a ver)^ real situation.
Great cities have built water systems and aqueducts,
bought parks and playgrounds, built up street departments
and fire departments and constructed sewer systems. Some
cities have embarked upon the policy of owning and op-
erating such public utilities as light plants, gas plants, and
street railways. Municipal governmental functions are
expanding daily, but municipal government has not kept
pace with the expansion. - We adopt new charters and
change ordinances in the hope of relief, but generally we
do not find it. The ward system of electing a city council
gives way to election at large. The Mayor and council
give way to the commission form of government. The
commission gives way to the city manager — all in the
hope that a change of machinery- will give results. But
the change has not worked wonders — in most instances
the change has succeeded only so long as the enlightened
civic interest which forced the change persists in the gov-
ernment itself. American cities will never be permanently
redeemed from bondage to master-politicians until intelli-
gent public opinion becomes permanently interested in
municipal affairs. In municipal affairs, as well as in na-
tional and state affairs, there is need for expert administra-
tion, responsible, not to master-politician, but to intelli-
gent public opinion constantly and vigilantly functioning.
142 DEDICATION EXERCISES
To develop this expert public service and to train the peo-
ple to habits of participation in government, the schools
must bend their energies. It is a mighty task which must
be attacked by mighty spirits, but the task is not insur-
mountable.
The problems of America in the twentieth century are
indeed great and towering. We hear the call to world
trade and world service. Such a call means further ex-
pansion of governmental activities. As these activities
expand and make demands upon public agencies, the call
will come for greater simplicity in government at home.
Better organization and co-ordination of public agencies
will help, but it will not be sufficient. As functions ex-
pand and the burden of performing them becomes greater,
the demand for simplicity in government will increase.
The individualists will argue for a return to the principles
of laissez-faire; the socialist will argue for reorganization
on the basis of socialism, which he holds is a simple pro-
gram. The confused citizen may yield to one or the other
in the midst of confusion. If he yield to extreme individ-
ualism he will yield to brutal competition in which, in the
last analysis, children will compete against fathers, wives
against husbands, as well as men against men, in the piti-
less struggle for survival. He will also yield democracy
and all her precious fruits. If he yield to extreme social-
ism, he will yield to mediocrity, to the herd without a uell-
wether, to a system lacking the spur to genuine progress.
Progress does not lie in either direction; it is not to be
found on either bank of the stream but straight ahead.
The future of democracy, the future of America, all are
enfolded with the future of education. And education
in America must awake to its high responsibilities, which
are no less than the preservation of the inalienable lights
of man, of the institutions of our fathers and of govern-
ment of the people, by the people, and for the people.
TO DEAN THOMAS BLANCHARD STOWELL
EMORY S. BOGARDUS
University of Southern California.
Dean Thomas Blanchard Stowell honors us today
by his presence, and we would honor him in the dedication
of Stowell Hall. He may be said to have entered upon
his scholastic career at the age of nine years when in a
private school in the city of Buffalo he began the study of
the classics. At the age of nineteen he was graduated from
Genesee College, now Syracuse University, having been
honored in his junior year with the Greek oration and in
his senior year with the Latin oration. While still in his
teens he was elected to the principalship of the Addison
Academy in New York. A year later he assumed charge
of the Academic Department of the Union School at Mor-
risville, New York, and in the following year he was ap-
pointed professor of mathematics in Genesee Wesleyan
Seminar)'.
While still at the beginning of his twenties he became
principal of the Morris High School, Leavenworth,
Kansas, where he had the supervision of 1000 pupils, with
sixteen associate teachers. He soon received another pro-
motion — to the chair of natural science in the State Nor-
mal School at Cortland, New York, where he crowned
twenty years of service with remarkable success.
He then became principal of the State Normal and
Training School, Potsdam, New York, where he rounded
out another twenty years of still greater educational
achievements. He then came to Southern California. As
dean of the School of Education and dean of the Graduate
School, Dr. Stowell contributed ten more busy years of his
144 DEDICATION EXERCISES
life to the cause of education. The brief review discloses
in part the scope and volume of the prodigious educational
labors with which Dr. Stowell spanned more than half a
century of successful endeavors.
From his alma mater Dr. Stowell received the degree of
Master of Arts and also the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
St. Lawrence University honored itself by conferring up-
on him in 1909 the degree of Doctor of Laws. At the
Anderson School of Natural History, Dr. Stowell studied
under the direction of the illustrious Agassiz. His sum-
mer vacations were utilized in the field, collecting materials
for scientific investigation. His excellent training was
supplemented by travels at home and abroad.
The son of accomplished parents, he added culture un-
to culture by his marriage with the daughter of Reverend
and Mrs. George H. Blakeslee. It is clear that the mar-
velous success which has been attained by Dr. Stowell is
due in no small degree to the support which he has stead-
fastly received from his active, inspiring, ever-youthful, ac-
complished wife — Mary Blakeslee Stowell.
Dr. Stowell's extraordinar)' versatility is demonstrated
by the fact that he achieved prominence as a teacher of
mathematics, of chemistr}^, of biology, of neurology, of
psychology, and of education. In all these fields he at-
tained prominence not only as a teacher, but also as an
investigator, and moreover, as an executive.
As a teacher. Dr. Stowell's personality is an outstand-
ing force. He inspired in his pupils, young and old, not
only an abiding interest in facts, details, principles, but
also a deep-seated love of nature, of little children, of men,
and of God.
As an investigator, he held persistently to the inductive,
laboratory method of inquiry. He was equally insistent
that his students in science proceed from and maintain
a sound and constructive philosophy of life.
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 145
The vast swing of his intellect is seen in the number
and variety of his publications, which are found in the
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, of The
American Association for the Advancement of Science,
of The Am.erican Microscopical Society, of The Society of
American Anatomists, of The National Educational As-
sociation, in The Journal of Comparative Neurology, in
The Personalist, — not to mention many other articles and
books of which he is the author.
In my acquaintance with Dr. Stowell during the past
ten years I have marvelled repeatedly at his ability to
carry responsibility and to achieve results in several im-
portant directions simultaneously. At times it would
seem that he was doing the work of three full-sized men,
and yet he was anxious and willing to do more. His
never-failing courtesy should not go unmentioned. Wheth-
er busy at his desk, or in the midst of discussing knotty
administrative problems, or at the end of a long and tire-
some day, his fine sensibilities would respond promptly,
revealing the highly trained heart of a gentleman and the
finest courtesy of a king's court.
One of his former students, the head of the Department
of Compulsor}^ Education and Child Welfare of the Los
Angeles Public Schools, Dr. E. J. Lickley, says: "In the
years of my delightful association with Dr. Stowell I have
always thought of him as the man with the understanding
heart." Mr. Arthur C. Brown, principal of the McKin-
ley Intermediate School of Los Angeles, says : "Dr. Stowell
was ready at all times to help us over the difficult places.
I cannot adequately express in words my appreciation for
this great scholar and teacher, who had a big, understand-
ing heart and who proved himself at all times to be a loyal,
sympathetic friend." Note the significance of these words
from Mr. W. W. Tritt, principal of the Thirtieth Street
Junior High school of Los Angeles : "Dr Stowell, scholar.
146 DEDICATION EXERCISES
teacher, friend, gentleman, is endeared to all who know
him. His service to the teaching profession for more than
a decade in this community is without equal."
In concluding this tribute to our distinguished colleague
I offer the following statement from Dr. Rockwell D.
Hunt, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
and director of the College of Commerce and Business
Administration, as being altogether fitting: "During the
happy years of our active association, Thomas B. Stowell
was to me more than a colleague, — he was counselor and
friend. There was always something heartening about
his generous spirit and urbane manner. His interests were
never confined within departmental barriers, — they were
as broad as life. An intense worker in the field of exact
scholarship, he yet found time for the aesthetic and the
spiritual : whatever he did was done with a zest that was
fairly contagious. I think of my honored colleague as a
life-sized man of wide learning, planetar}^ experience, ripe
judgment, thorough-going loyalty, — a rare ornament to
Christian civilization and a friend of man."
A PERSONAL APPRECIATION OF
DOCTOR STOWELL
DEAN EZRA A. HEALY.
Maclay College of Theology
Thomas Blanchard Stowell is an American gentle-
man of the finest tvpe. I say of the finest type for the
reason that the American type has not yet been stereotyped.
Our records exhibit many kinds of Americans. We have
the semi-aristocratic Enghsh type of which the illustrious
example is seen in the Father of his Countr)-. A variety,
now nearly extinct, may be represented by the frugal, phil-
osophic Benjamin Franklin. Let James Russell Lowell
stand for the American of fine aesthetic sensibility and
literar}' culture, and his own "Biglow Papers" forever em-
balm the traditional Yankee. The immortal Lincoln,
cloud-piercing seer and saviour of his countn', shall stand
alone, while we come back to earth in contemplation of
the sturdy and militant type of reformer and statesman of
which the finest exhibit is found in the Knickerbocker
American world citizen, Theodore Roosevelt.
If you will carefully hold the difference between sim-
ilarity and identity I unhesitatingly choose the George
Washington class for the man in whose honor we are to-
day assembled.
Courtesy unfailing, dignity never sacrificed, both con-
trolled by a true democratic brotherliness, mark the type.
"Three generations," said the Autocrat," are required to
make a gentleman." I have been busy on Doctor Stowell's
backward track and I find about three centuries conspir-
ing to produce our honored guest.
148 DEDICATION EXERCISES
A peculiar graciousness in speech and manner, per-
haps the first thing to impress an acquaintance, is found
by most intimate associates to have its root in a kind-
Hness, inborn and inbred, which is the spirit of the man.
Think for a moment of Doctor Stowell's record of at-
tainment and achievement, so graphically given us just
now by Doctor Bogardus, and you are prepared to asso-
ciate the qualities I have tried to describe with the virili-
ties of the staunchest manhood. Sophistry and pretense
have never made headway in Doctor Stowell's class-rooms.
I have seen the tyro in philosophy, or, perhaps, in the
science of education, caught in exploiting some false theory,
so smilingly and yet so sharply corrected that I have
thought of the scimitar of the Saracen so polished and so
keen that its victim did not know he had been struck un-
til, nodding assent, his head fell off !
The modesty of Doctor Stowell, which though he is
here keeps him out of sight while we talk about him, will
not, I trust, be too seriously invaded if we dwell yet a mo-
ment on some phases of his work.
• As a teacher of teachers it has been his privilege to
multiply a thousand fold the influence of one good man.
Go back in thought to Cortland and Potsdam.
Toward the latter city I turn with affectionate interest,
for in its own pioneer days it was the birth-place of my
father. Governor Nathan Miller, of the Empire State,
was a student in Cortland. If you can remember the old
village school and how the arithmetic tormented you, from
"long division" to "permutations," you are prepared to
give proper credit to the eminent Professor David Eugene
Smith, another of these favored pupils.
Over our country. East and West, during the last ten
years in the High Schools of California, are found men and
women who cherish as an inspiration the memory of their
years with this beloved teacher.
SPECIAL EVENTS OF THE WEEK 149
No lover is more constant, no patriot more loyal than
he in whose honor we dedicate todav the "Hall of Educa-
tion." When more than iifty-one years ago Thomas B.
Stowell and the gifted and beautiful Mar}^ C. Blakeslee
pledged their faith, each to the other, until death should
part them, they established and have kept holy through
all the years, America's most sacred treasure, a Christian
home.
When I add that Doctor Stowell is a Republican of the
Lincolnian-Rooseveltian type, and that his religion is
evangelical Christianity with the Methodiot label, we may
surely say that in Thomas Blanchard Stowell we see the
full stature of a man.
PART SECOND
EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCES
PHILOSOPHY CONFERENCE
VALUES AS DOGMA IN PHILOSOPHY
WILBUR HARRY LONG
University of Southern California.
The average man lives, completes the law of his being,
and never very seriously criticises what he does or why he
does it. Philosophy and speculation, criticism and ration-
ality, are the avocation of the few, the vocation of the
fewer. Yet speculation and life go hand in hand ; and it
is too true that, although thought can give much to life,
it can also throw sand in the machinery of civilization
and do much damage to human existence itself. Skep-
ticism often confronts the practical man of the world. In
such times the living man may do one of two things, him-
self unable to cope with the arguments of professional
naturalism ; he may be beguiled into playing the game with
the rules of the professional rationalist, or he may close
his ears to the siren call of "reason," and take his stand
firmly upon the instincts, the intuitions, the necessary de-
mands of his own spirit: in other words, he may all the
more deeply ground himself in practical life. If he take
the former course, he will probably lose, as most of us do
when we play the game of a novice against that of a profes-
sional, with the rules which he lays down. If our common
man take the latter course, he is safe.
Somehow, fortunately and significantly, life goes on in
spite of the bungling of thought, in spite of the tampering
into its machinery by skeptic fingers. Life is healthy, life
154 DEDICATION EXERCISES
is insistent, and, happily, life knows better than man. To
this truth Bliss Carman testifies when he exhorts :
"Live on, love on: Let reason swerve;
But instinct knows her own great love."
Life is both insistent and persistent; somehow it takes
its own way down the ages. Not like a forsaken child is
man cast upon the shore of being, and abandoned by alien
hands to the shifting fate of his own blundering struggle — •
a struggle both pathetically impossible and blind. Man
has not been left to his'own hopeless wanderings toward a
destiny he may not hope to attain. Beneath life are be-
neficent arms, guiding man quietly but surely toward a
goal which some of us surmise, but which none may kno\'^
positively. It is not without deep significance that we
hope on regardless of what men say or "prove" ; we pray
and believe, regardless of "scientific" devil-laughter; we
catch the mystic gleam of dawn, we hear the silent music
of life, we fling yearning and grasping fingers out into the
invisible, and know the touch of infinite peace and satis-
faction and quiet and love.
After all, something is wrong when so much philosophy
of the day, as of all days, contradicts the deeper experiences
and demands of the spirit and of human life. If man, in
repudiating rational skepticism, moves steadily toward
the goal of self-realization at which cynics scoflF and to
which they fail to attain, what is the trouble, and where
lies the solution.? Is man justified in holding to life re-
gardless of shifting argument and theory.'* The great poets
and prophets down the ages have so affirmed. Is philoso-
phy prior to life, and is its potential skepticism toward the
imperative demands of human life, rational.'^ If not, per-
haps speculation misunderstands itself. There is a health
in life that, however it may be perverted or checked, will
EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCES 155
not down. The great values of life, expressing, as one
must believe they do, the law and the will of the energy
beneath life, may be crushed down by the perversity, the
stupidity, the narrowness of vision of man, but sooner
or later each reappears again in human life and human
institutions. The truths of life remain, — the hope, the
wonder, the joy, the worship, the love, the loyalty to good-
ness, the beauty, the light. And beneath changing in-
tellectual credos is that eternal liber of truth which is the
permanent core of human life and destiny. Such is the
meaning of John Neihardt's observation that
"Always the Fact shall perish
And only the Truth survives."
That life or man, however we may define or understand
them, is sovereign over its own parts is a universal convict-
ion of mankind at large, save for the occasional dissenting
voice of the specialist, the professional rationalist. This
common note is sounded, oddly enough, by such a strange
and unsvnchronous choir of voices as French voluntarism,
continental irrationalism, Russian nihilism, decadent in-
dividualism and aestheticism, pragmatism (humanism and
instrumentalism), and personalism. Among one of these
movements, it would seem, there should arise a philosoph-
ical justification and investigation of the significant truth
of life. As a matter of fact, it is to the latter, personalism,
with its wider vision of values — its faith in rationality, its
individualism, its humanism, its love of life, its moral
vision, its spiritual insight and aspiration — that the task
falls of giving rational form to this common tenacious be-
lief. And such is the field of the new philosophy of values,
which must arise as a synthesis of philosophy with psy-
chology and sociology.
Many fundamental problems of philosophy must await
156 DEDICATION EXERCISES
for their solution the rise of a full-fledged philosophy of
values. In fact, philosophy can never understand itself, its
ground, its authority, and its relation to life and man,
until such a fundamental contribution has been given it.
Nor can it hope sooner to solve the problems relating to
the meaning of concrete thought, concrete experience,
value-judgment, common sense, and intuition. And, for
example, of what use is it to talk glibly of proof, truth,
knowledge, reality, and to proceed dogmatically toward the
search for truth, until we learn why man thinks, why he
philosophizes, why he disagrees with his neighbor, why men
think differently in different ages, and what authority
philosophy can show for its axioms and dogmas. Such
questions can only be answered by a psychology of phil-
osophy and a philosophy of axioms or dogma. From
these we learn that the only authority in philosophy
is an indomitable impulse v/ithin man to have faith
in his conviction regarding powers of knowing an ex-
ternal world. These studies show that the funda-
mental passion and dogmas of philosophy arise out
of the good old earthy stalk and root of human
desire, and take their place as one value among those fun-
damental values of life which reveal themselves in per-
sonality, society, and civilization. Such fundamental or
imperative values of life are dogmas of human existence
which will never be silenced, for they express that will and
law of the energy beneath human life which is pushing
man up to self-realization in personality and civilization.
The philosophy of values, if its findings prove true, will
blot out all specialization theories, and all skepticisms
that contradict total life. To such a philosophy the pres-
ent discussion attempts to be a suggestion.
The time is past when dogmatic rationalism in the form
of materialism, or skepticism, can destroy the high needs
and aspirations of man, or set itself against life with a pre-
EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCES 157
sumptive assertion of Final Truth with a flaunting sneer
in the face of humanity, "If the world like it not, so much
the worse for them." Smart dogmatism in philosophy
still captivates the unwar)', yet when the rubber balloon is
pricked by criticism, all that remains is a piece of husk
which proves to be an accepted axiom. The divine right
of science or of rationalism, the authority of "Reason,"
the sneer at "emotion" and "religion" — such lose all of
their convincing "punch" when traced to their sources.
Salome can no longer dance in the presence of King
Thought with the head of John on the silver platter.
All philosophies which repudiate life are much like the
famous luckless courtier of whom Carlyle tells, who en-
veloped himself in enormous habiliments artifically swol-
len-out on the broader parts of the body by introduction
of bran, "who having seated himself on a chair with
some projecting nail on it, and therefrom rising, to pay
his devoir on the entrance of Majesty, instantaneously
emitted several pecks of dry wheat-dust: and stood there
diminished to a spindle, his galoons and slashes dangling
sorrowful and flabby round him." Divine-right rational-
ism, dogmatic realism, and other sundry philosophic im-
positions and quackeries which pose as transcendent ver-
ities not to be handled, prove to diminish into a spindling
assumption, once their exterior gets caught on the nail of
criticism. Such arbitrary dogmatists "have dreamt for ages
of a priori philosophies without presumptions or assump-
tions," writes Schiller;^ "whereby being might be conjured
out of Nothing and the sage might penetrate the secret of
creative power. But no obscurity of verbiage has in the
end succeeded in concealing the utter failure of such pre-
posterous attempts. The a priori philosophies have all
been found out." Ward hits the nail on the head when he
remarks:" "This notion of being absolutely thorough-go-
^Uumamsm, XVIII. '^Reahn of Ends, 225, 26.
158 DEDICATION EXERCISES
ing, of building up a metaphysic without presuppositions,
one that shall start from nothing and explain all, is, I re-
peat, futile. Such a metaphysic has its own assumption,
and that an absurd one, namely, that nothing is the logical
prius of something." Such remarks apply equally well to
metaphysics and logic. Philosophy which drops from an-
other planet, and is therefore from some supra-human
sphere and not to be traced to its source in the good root
of persistent human desire and need, is the silly supposi-
tion of pure stupidity.
When one inquires into the authority of metaphysical
speculation, or into the authority of reason, pure or other-
wise, or into the authority of scientific "realism," he re-
ceives the same repl}' that it is an "instinct" of man. "Met-
aphysics," remarks the oft-quoted Bradley,'"^ is the finding
of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct, but to
find these reasons is no less an instinct." He elsewhere
writes of man's "instinctive longing to reflect," and can
justify thought only because it is a "want of your nature,
a refuge for the man who burns to think consistently."
(Ibid. p. 5) Even talk about a knowable cosmos and about
an external world at all, is an assumption. "We simply
must assume that the world is an intelligible world, if
we are to live in it," writes Schiller.^ As a matter of fact,
we do assume it, all except a few who bury their dissent
in the seclusion of the madhouse. Is the assumption con-
firmed.^ Yes, in the only way in which such funda-
mental assumptions ever are confirmed: the further we
trust it the more we know, the more confident in it we
grow. The assumption of a moral cosmos is made and
confirmed in the same way."
In turning to the demand for thought, the presumptive
demand for a thought valid for reality, for a thought
which shall be totally rational and consistent, for a thought
"^Appearance and Reality, Xl\'. ^Ilumamsm, 262.
EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCES 159
amenable to formal logic, one may well ask what authority
logic can show for its pretensions. One may be shocked
to find that all the dogmas or axioms of logic are postulates.
Schiller is right^ when he affirms, as a representative of that
school which is pointing out the animistic nature of all
thought, that logical causality, identity, and teleology, for
example, arise from the experience of these qualities in
self. The only proof of logical postulates, as Aristotle
first declared,*^ is that of subjective conviction. The ulti-
mate logical postulate, asserts Boyce Gibson,' "is the post-
ulate of the radical intelligibility of experience. We have
only to add that this postulate is not optional. We cannot
think at all without making it. "But no one is compelled
to think, save for the internal compulsion of his own will.
Logic is a great faith, "an evidence of faith that truth is
consistent and whole." Yet nobody has ever shown that
reality can be consistent and whole. Discrepancies and
antinomies and contradictions lie scattered about in every
direction in the field of philosophy, and the philosophy of
two-and-a-half millenniums has not removed them. That
the possibility of ultimate truth is not self-evident nor be-
yond dispute is well known by those who are familiar with
the histor}' of philosophy. It is a sufficient demonstratior
of this fact to point to the Socratic and Kantian skept-
icism, Comtean positivism, modern irrationalism, nihilisn:.,
and aestheticism, and the whole pragmatic movement.
Logic is a great system of dogmas. The whole system is
based upon the siimmum genus, infima species, proper
name, and the concrete individual, yet in each of these
cases we land in the undefinable. Actual, concrete real-
ity, it appears, then, cannot be defined ; and logic, the pre-
tensive absolute science of human thought, rests, like the
°See his monographs "Axioms as Postulates" in Personal Idealism.
^Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, 1, 155.
"^Problem of Logic, 78.
160 DEDICATION EXERCISES
ancient world, on an elephant and a tortoise. Such con-
cepts as "I," "Now," "Here," etc., admits Boyce Gibson,'
"belong, as perhaps all concepts ultimately do, whether
directly or indirectly, to the tree of self-knowledge which is
rooted in immediate experience. For this reason it is im-
possible without a logical circle to define adequately in
language what it is we refer to when we say 'now' or T.
This is impossible because we can only express in language
the relatively complex cognition of which immediate ap-
prehension is an element. What is immediately appre-
hended cannot be so detached as to become by itself a
distinct object of knowledge. It is not nameable except
as being an element of a relatively complex object. Thus,
if I am right, when the application of words to particular
existents is directly determined by immediate experience,
it ought to be impossible to explain what is meant without
a vicious circle. The only escape that I can discover lies
in frankly admitting that there is a direct apprehension
of particular existence as it is actually existing."
Even the recognition of self and the assumption of self-
direction is an adventure of will. Self-consciousness is
a value — something not to be proved, but to be grasped by
experiencing it. "The immediacy of self-consciousness"
writes Miss Calkins,^ "is the starting-point of all philoso-
hpy, the guarantee of all truth. The meaning of 'immedi-
ate,' which is unreasoned, and consequently not demanding
proof." Nor are we able to demonstrate theoretically the
existence of other personalities. In connection with a
desperate but futile search to find theoretical proof for the
existence of other personal beings, Bertrand Russell com-
ments: "It must be conceded that the argument in favor
of the existence of other people's minds cannot be con-
clusive."^*^ Yet the existence of persons is one of the three
^Tke Problem of Logic, g7. ^Persistent Problems of Philosophy, 409.
lor/j^ Problems of Philosophy, 93fl.
EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCES 161
or four supreme dogmas and axioms of life, and one of
the most (intuitively) certain. If such a man as Gorgias
states that there is nothing, we can disagree with his ni-
hilism, but all that can be done with the gentleman is to
lock him up for safe keeping.
In life, chronic pessimism is generally the folly of sick
cynics and dyspeptic sensualists. Yet, as Lotze declares,
pessimism cannot be theoretically refuted. ^^ Likewise
Schiller writes : ^" "Pessimism should be taken in a far wider
and more fundamental sense than is commonly assigned
to it, and — when this is done — it forms an attitude towards
the ultimate questions of philosophy which is not suscept-
ible of being resolved into any other and cannot be re-
futed, but only accepted or rejected. It forms one of those
ultimate alternatives the choice between which rests es-
sentially upon an act of will."
Science itself is based upon the postulate or dogma of
a reality external to us which is amenable to classification,
meaning, ordered thought, and to permanent law. It is
for this reason that science jumps from a given number
of cases to a generalization, and forms a rational schema
which shall be universally valid in nature. But in order
to do this it is forced to abandon a theory of probability for
a faith in natural necessity. The first truths in science are
undemonstrable definitions.^^ In mathematics all is ax-
iom. In the first law of exponents we go back to empiri-
cal counting. And, for example, there is no proof for the
community of laws, which is assumed in algebra. Nor
can we even affirm that simple mathematics is a neces-
sary category of all reality, for it is perfectly easy to con-
^-^M'lcrocosmus, II, 716ff.
^^Humanism, 157.
l^Schiller's comparison of science and religion is worthy of note. Humanism, XV:
"The identity of method in Science and Religion is far more fundamental than
their difference. Both rest on experience and aim at its interpretation: both pro-
ceed by postulation; and both require their anticipations to be verified. Ihe dif-
ference lies only in the mode and extent of their verification."
162 DEDICATION EXERCISES
ceive of an order in which some synthetic law would al-
ways make 2 plus 2 to become 5 or 7, just as in our own
sphere hydrogen and oxygen lose their properties and be-
come another phenomenon distinct from either and both.
Everywhere, then, we find life and all of its activities
based upon dogma and axiom, that is, upon values which
are not amenable to intellectual proof, but arise out of
the demands of life itself and are dogmatically accepted
by life. Dogma in thought, dogma in science, dogma in
religion, dogma in ethics, dogma in human existence — dog-
mas are everywhere; some justified by intuition and uni-
versality, others merely the product of personal whim and
lack of balance. "To assert anything dogmatically is to
pretend that criticism of the assertion has no standing
ground, and is therefore to attempt to hide any possible
weakness there may be in it," states Sidgwick;^^ yet the
criticism itself is a dogmatic demand. Thus, Bradley's
sonorous manifesto that "There is nothing [in experience]
which is sacred. Metaphysics can respect no element of
experience except on compulsion. It can reverence noth-
ing but what by criticism and denial the more unmistak-
ably asserts itself,"^^ should be revised in the light of a phil-
osophy of dogma. High-handed sentences such as the
above usually hide with a superior and innocent air of fact
the truth that they themselves are also children of dogmas.
Bradley's contention about metaphysics includes a whole
host of dogmas, the most startling of which is his statement
of the supremacy of "rigor and vigor method" in specula-
tion.
Take any presumptuous and high-handed proclama-
tion, and you will find it full of hidden dogmas. For ex-
ample, note the two following quotations from Bertrand
Russell and De Witt Parker:
i* Application of Logic, 202.
"^^ Appearance and Reality, 207.
EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCES 163
"A truly scientific philosophy will be more humble, more piece-
meal, more arduous, offering less glitter of outward mirage to
flatter fallacious hopes, but more indifference to fate, and more
capable of accepting the world without tyrannous imposition of
our human and temporary demands." [As though every demand
of philosophy mentioned here were not a 'human and temporary'
demand !!]i*^
"Ideally the speculative philosopher has no concern with the
specifically human interests. His is an effort at complete dis-
passionateness, [except several peculiar passions of his own, in-
cluding the passion to know reality, the belief that he can know
it, the assumption that it can be found by dissociating himself
from life and from human experience, and the assumption that
his method is the method that is able to secure the knowledge of
reality!!] To survey all time and all existence without foreboding
and without hope, is his aim. The time is past for men to ask of
either philosophy or religion a guarantee of the satisfaction of any
of their mundane personal interests. "^^
Such sentences fairly bristle with dogma, the first being
a personal and human demand for abstract theory, and
the second for that demand to be fulfilled without the as-
sistance of any subjective or personal reactions and val-
ues. The whole world of values is thus thrown out bodily,
save the one value of speculation, and this in a very limit-
ed and sectarian form. Take it where you will, all pre-
sumptuous and high-handed philosophies ultimately are
mere expressions of dogma, axiom, and assumption. James
made no mental slip when he remarked that "The solving
word, for the learned and the unlearned man alike, lies
in the last resort in the dumb willingness and unwilling-
ness of their interior characters, and nowhere else." It
would appear, then, that all science, all speculation, all
theory, goes back for its justification in an indomitable
burning or will to think, a will to believe in an external
'^^Mysticism and Logic, 32.
^TThe Self and Nature, 299.
'^^Essays in Popular Philosophy, 215.
164 DEDICATION EXERCISES
universe, a will to believe in natural necessity, a will to
accept the validity of thought and experience for reality.
In the final issue, these branches of human activity land
in immediate desire and immediate experience and judg-
ment. Now this throws us back again upon a theory of
intuition which the philosophy of values has not yet given
us, but it demonstrates how identical are the values and
axioms of science and speculation with those of the rest
of life.
The significant point of the survey of axiom and value
is to note how insistently we are thrown back upon a con-
viction of the unity of life, and the supremacy of the or-
ganic whole of human desire and experience. Hence, phil-
osophy as a summary of man and his world in terms of
truth, is never safe apart from the total experience and
total reaction of man to his world. And psychologically,
the failure of compartment philosophy to give man a
whole and sane view of reality is due first of all to vicious
compartment existence and the specialized world of every-
day living and investigation. And such vicious and in-
adequate philosophy can never become superseded by one
which makes provision for all of the fundamental values
of life until our investigators and philosophers become
deep and comprehensive in their personal life, in their
appreciation of vital human values, and in their keener
personal reactions and judgments.
It is therefore dangerous to philosophy to forget
that thought and all of dogma, of speculation and
of rationality, in common with all other phases of human
activity, spring out of the unseen causes which have made
both man and the universe, and that in every department
of human life in human society, in the human soul, are
values and axioms just as fundamental and just as valid
as those of science and speculation. In each case the
validity of the value and its dogma in human activity is
EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCES 165
justified by its relation to human and social self-realiza-
tion (under point of departure of the Good), and the
final proof of any such values or axioms is a faith in life
and willingness to be guided by its demands and its higher
impulses. Rationality and the external world of things
and persons are values which express the will of the en-
ergy beneath life and in life, and man will therefore per-
sist, as he will persist in its other laws, in expressing it.
Can this will be trusted.^ Yes, if we have health, and
faith in the goodness of the energy beneath life.
It would seem, then, that philosophy is the institutional
form of one imperative value of human life, and that the
only true philosophy is that which is based in the total
will of the energy beneath life, that is, in the total group
of imperative values. What are the imperative values of
human life.^ What are the values which persist through-
out history.? We can find the answer partially by intro-
spection upon those values within ourselves which will
not down ; and we can find the answer partially by refer-
ence to psychology and sociology. Unfortunately, limi-
tation of space allows for a mere suggestion of the
thought, with no chance to defend the position taken. But
would not any list of fundamental values or dogmas or
axioms of life include the following.?
1. Personality. Anti-nihilism. Postulate of the self as a
living agent, or center of experience.
2. Society. Anti-solipsism. Postulate of other like-
minded selves with whom we can communicate.
3. Thought. Anti-skepticism. Thought valid for an
objective world, and an objective world real and valid for
thought.
4. Science. Order in the universe; systematic and
universal connections among phenomena.
166 DEDICATION EXERCISES
5. Life evaluation. Optimism. Life is worth liv-
ing ; there is attainable worth in life and reality.
6. Morality. Reality of higher law in man, and of
presence of evil to be overcome; reality of moral and
righteous order through which or whom virtue will be
rewarded, and evil punished.
7. Art. Reality and validity of intensity, beauty, and
dramatic values in life and in nature.
8. Religion. Existence of an object of worship of
such character that man finds in loving submission to
God's will ultimate peace and rest, removal of the sense of
sin, satisfaction for infinite and pure companionship, and
the finding of one's true place in the plan and purpose
and law of the universe.
9. Immortality. Hope which surmounts transitory
tragedy. Eternity of existence, without which life is value-
less, and the satisfaction of the other passions of values
of man futile.
10. Freedom. Reality of the power of self-direction,
decision, and self-determination in man, and contingency
in nature.
These are the values which have persisted and will per-
sist in life as long as man is true to his spiritual nature.
What is their significance for philosophy .f*
When one digs to the depths of human existence, he
finds activity and assertion in definite directions. These
lead toward human self-realization (personality), and so-
cial self-realization (civilization). And here one stands
on the rim of the impenetrable, and, with open eyes, real-
izes that all of life rests upon faith in the goodness and in-
tegrity of these forces which are pushing man toward his
objective. Such a faith underlies philosophy and the de-
mand for speculation, and one must either accept it, or
EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCES 167
deny with the sickly and empty voice of skepticism. With
this reaUzation in view Truth must be defined anew. It
appears, then, that imperative value is Truth, or that in-
dividual and social self-realization is Truth, or that
fulness of life is truth. Such is the intellectual credo of
a study of the grounds of theoretical activity and its re-
lation to the rest of man's activity. It is at this point
that pragmatism and its sister-irrationalisms break down.
For the demand for rationality and thtorf, one must re-
member, is one of the imperative values, and to deny the
dignity of the mind and the knowability of the external
world is to repudiate the conclusion of the study of ax-
ioms and values. It is only when the whole of life or one
of its imperative values is denied that rationality is to be
questioned. And such questioning will not lead to in-
tellectual skepticism, but to a rejection of the specific
theory involved as false or inadequate.
Value is Truth and imperative values are the truest
Truth — such is the deepest epistemology to which man
has recourse by any law of reason. There is nothing
deeper than hope, faith, worship, joy, character, righteous-
ness, emotional insight, love, wonder, inspiration. The
spiritually-minded, common-sense man is perfectly right
in turning in disgust from the skepticism of rational so-
phistry. His is the innate philosophy of life, an intui-
tive philosophy of values.
Life, then, is a faith, a health. Fulness of life, self-real-
ization, is the supreme health and faith. This health is
the final truth we know, and no theoretical objection a-
gainst the health of life is rationally justifiable. The
choice in philosophy is between faith, assertion, life; and
death, vacuity, nothingness. The choice must be person-
al, and in this choice philosophy flattens back into our
whole evaluation of and reaction toward life.
168 DEDICATION EXERCISES
Four questions, no doubt, have arisen, and in the limit-
ed space allotted, they can only be mentioned and their
solution suggested. First, it may be objected that some
fundamental values may be accepted, and others reject-
ed ; that, for example, the dogmas and values of truth and
logic and science may be accepted, but not the values of
hope, immortality, and righteousness. Here one must
admit that we may read life and history differently. If
we have eyes to see and see not, or see astigmatically, there,
is no cure but the cure of the spirit, of the heart, of the
evaluating mechanism, and this is the function of art
and religion. One may, however, turn the question by
asking what right we have to accept a part of life and
repudiate the rest. Secondly, it may be objected that evil
is universal enough to appear as a fundamental value or
law of reality. The reply is merely to point out that evil
is a problem, and therefore not in the will of self-realiza-
tion. It is that which destroys the will and expression of
life. It is therefore not a part of the law beneath life, but
the denial of the law. Goodness is the fundamental
point of departure in life and in philosophy : in life, from
the moral affirmation of self ; in philosophy, because with-
out goodness and integrity in both ourselves and in the
world-ground, we are lost, and our faith is vain. Thirdly,
it is objected that our philosophy opens the way for the
dogmatic validity of personal whims and wishes. But I
have not argued for whims, but for the acceptance of the
broad desires and affirmations of life. And who shall say
that the demand of the human heart for God and immor-
tality is any the less a true affirmation than a similar de-
mand for truth and an external world.'* Last, it is object-
ed that there are values and insights which are not uni-
versal, but which belong to the spiritual and aesthetic aris-
tocracy of the earth. Are these values to be excluded
from reality because they are not universal.'' Value is
EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCES 169
truth, and those value-experiences, those hours of insight,
of beauty, of depth, of mystery, of expansiveness, of faith,
bearing, as they do, the affirmation of our noblest selves,
these are the high water-marks of life, and the guiding
stars which lead the world to its intellectual, spiritual,
and utilitarian goal. To trust our best moments is per-
fectly rational. Why should we not do so.? Failure to
do so is to join the "spirit that denies." Eternity, one be-
lieves, will affirm the conception of an hour. And, in
some form, one must hold to the truth of Sir Oliver
Lodge's assertion that "I will not believe that it is given
to man to have thoughts, higher and nobler than the real
truth of things."
The first justification of life is the health of life itself;
the final justification of any of the values of life, includ-
ing the value of speculation and science, is life likewise;
and the final authority and criterion of truth is life also.
There is no logical way out of such a conclusion, although
the rationalist may chafe under it. And to the question
"What is life.?" one can only turn to himself and to man-
kind in the human drama, can only turn to the higher
convictions and imperatives which come forth as songs
from the soul of him who seeks and obeys the higher law
of righteousness. There is an upward striving in reality.
In the clod there is something which struggles upward in-
to life; something there is in life which struggles upward
into man ; and there is something in man which struggles
upward — to God. This tendency we may follow if we
will, and to one who does so comes the conviction born
of insight that such also must be the way of philosophy
if it would know truth. And here it is that philosophy,
after all, flattens back into the personal vision, for which
there is no substitute. If man hath no eyes with which
to see, that is his misfortune or his punishment; and as
170 DEDICATION EXERCISES
Ibsen has said, "The Devil has no stauncher ally than
want of perception."
By all rational standards, then, one is compelled to af-
firm that the imperative values of life are dogmas or ax-
ioms to be accepted by philosophy in its search for theo-
retical formulation of truth. The deepest truth available
to us is the truth of life and the values of life, and among
these values the dignity of human thought is one. But
life itself, with its noble hungers and thirsts, its unity, its
fulness, its spiritual affirmation, is the final authority and
the final dogma which thought reaches. Here we reach
the truth that life is affirmation, affirmation is faith in the
inner compulsions of our being, and faith is health. There
is no other way known into the sheepfold of truth.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF AMERICAN LIFE
BERNARD C. EWER.
Pomona College
A Great philosophy is a point of view rather than a
system of concepts. More than one great historic philos-
phy, in fact, has received its systematic formulation long
after the death of its originator. Many an imposing sys-
tem, too, wrought out in ponderous volumes of topics and
subtopics, has proved lifeless. Philosophic vitality lies
in the central idea, the living soul of thought.
We have had in American philosophy one vital spark
of originality, and, so far as I am aware, only one. This
is not to say that our country has lacked philosophic learn-
ing, or has failed to make notable contributions to syste-
matic reflection. The work of Ladd, Bowne, Royce, and
their disciples will always command respect and afford
philosophic sustenance for the thoughtful. Some of this
work seems to me distinctly the best literary expression
which has been given to certain historical points of view.
But it does not possess the peculiar characteristic of ex-
pressing the essential spirit of a time or people, of depict-
ing in conceptual terms the mental life of a nation. It is
this characteristic which distinguishes the philosophic ut-
terances of William James and John Dewey. Their phi-
losophy, commonly called pragmatism, is a revelation of
certain moods of the human spirit, and, I believe, uniquely
expressive of the soul of America.
In the few minutes during which I may claim your at-
tention I should like to indicate briefly the systematic out-
lines of this philosophy, i.e., its principal concepts in the
fields of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and the philos-
172 DEDICATION EXERCISES
ophy of religion. This is not a discipular advocacy of
pragmatism, or a critical attempt to evaluate its merits.
I wish simply to exhibit the logical skeleton of a philoso-
phy the living power of which seems to me very great, and
which possibly is destined to play an increasingly large
part in the affairs of mankind.
First, then, with regard to its metaphysical basis, let us
note its fundamental assertion that reality is active ex-
perience. This doctrine is sharply distinct from other
types of metaphysical theory, (a) It is not to be confused
with the metaphysical dualism which finds reality to be
ultimately of two kinds, matter, or physical energy, and
mind. It is true that some of James' utterances, especially
in his earlier writings, have a dualistic sound. But this, I
think, is merely the inevitable use of language which was
not constructed for philosophic purposes. James' real
thought in the matter seems to me to be found rather in
his later essays, particularly "Does Consciousness Exist?"
and "A World of Pure Experience." Dewey's position is
harder to discern, but such notes as I have made on the
point seem to me to indicate the same metaphysical as-
sumption, (b) This assumption is opposed to the ideal-
isms which declare that reality is a transcendent or abso-
lute experience, or system of ideas, or act of will. It has
a certain puzzling kinship with voluntaristic idealism, but
it emphasizes the reality of the finite being and repudiates
the Infinite or Absolute Self and all its works. In this
sense it is pluralistic. You will perhaps recall James' de-
structive analysis of the concept of relation, a concept
which is the corner stone of absolutist philosophical struct-
ure. Dewey's thought here again is less explicit, but it is
clearly enough implied in his teaching of the possibility of
real accomplishment in this world of particulars, (c) It
is also to be distinguished from such an empiricist meta-
physics as that of John Stuart Mill. Reality, for our
EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCES 173
American pragmatists, is active experience. Never in the
previous history' of thought, so far as I am aware, has
empiricism been stated in precisely this form. Experience
has been regarded as passive. According to this philoso-
phy we make our own real universe, in reaction to our en-
vironment.
Experience in its highest form is both social and scien-
tific, or rather is scientifically guided. How these features
are blended we shall see presently. Here we may note
simply that pragmatist philosophy reflects the contempo-
rary preeminence of scientific study, and the new scientif-
ic and humanitarian interest in the phenomena of society.
So much for the metaphysical theory of pragmatism.
Its epistemology has been a battle-ground which it is hard-
ly necessary to review in this meeting. I may remark
briefly that the functional conception of knowledge, i.e.
the conception of it as the active operation of ideas, the
truth of which is identical with the success of operation,
stands in contrast to the dualistic view that truth is the
agreement of ideas with their objects, the said objects be-
ing generally independent of our ideas about them. Ac-
cording to pragmatism, objects are aspects of our pur-
poses ; in other words, we come back to the metaphysical
assumption that reality is active experience. Further, the
pragmatic doctrine stands in contrast to the teaching of
idealism that truth is the agreement of finite ideas with
the thought or feeling of the Absolute Mind. It seems
to me virtually to abolish the historic distinction between
the phenomenal and the noumenal, between appearance
and reality, though of course the ordinary unphilosophical
meaning of the terms remains. Facts are real as we di-
rectly experience them or study them scientifically, and
there is no satisfactory evidence of a more "ultimate"
reality. James' antipathy to Kant is especially significant
in this respect. Scientific investigation is not the mere
174 DEDICATION EXERCISES
deciphering of symbolic characters on a veil which ever
conceals the real stage, but is a really illuminating ad-
vance into the unknown. Experimentation is therefore a
a vital necessity of the mind in its search for truth. We
create our truth, in fact, by the process of experiment.
Passing to the field of ethics, I have the impression that
pragmatism is concerned less with the traditional concept-
ual problems of the subject, e.g., the ultimate nature of
goodness and the moral possibility of indeterminism, than
with what may be called ethical methodology, and the
practical business of making improvements in this wtvy
sad world. James seems to take it for granted that we
know well enough what to aim at, at least ordinarily, and
that our difficulty is that of earnestly realizing our aims.
This difficulty is due to the imperfection of human nature,
and accordingly he addresses occasional hortatory remarks
to the will, remarks which grip us as moral exhortation
seldom does. Dewey is less inclined to emphasize individual
responsibility and the unique force of active personal con-
science. His contribution to the subject is mainly meth-
odology, which seems to me his greatest philosophical ac-
complishment. According to it socialized effort, frankly
experimental but scientifically guided, is the supreme duty
of mankind. The distinction between this point of view
and the traditional one of assuming absolute principles
of right and wrong which we obey or disobey can hardly
be exaggerated. One who finds, as an increasing number
of thoughtful persons are finding, that mankind, and es-
pecially the rulers of mankind, actuated by other principles,
have made a sorry mess of human aff"airs, naturally looks
with favor upon ethical pragmatism.
This matter is so important as to deserve one or two
concrete illustrations. James, like the rest us, looked up-
on war as an evil. But he saw psychologically its te-
nacious roots which do not yield to moralistic exhortation,
EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCES 175
and he saw also its genuinely virtuous side. So he pro-
posed in his essay, "The Moral Equivalent of War," a
substitute which would exhaust the pugnacious energy of
war makers in constructive rather than destructive ways.
The enrollment of the fighting forces of society in the
more hazardous occupations on the ocean, in the mine,
in reclamation works, and the like, is an idea which every
fair-minded person will regard as at least worth trying.
Peculiarly instructive for our present purpose are Dew-
ey's articles on political topics, particularly his current
ones on Far Eastern questions. They are characterized by
keen observation of fact, a democratic social idealism, and
reiterated recommendation of experimental method. As
opposed to the sort of talk and surreptitious performance
which are prodding and dragging the world into another
war, they exhibit pragmatism in its most dignified aspect,
and suggest that it, quite as much as the absolute idealism
of German thought, may have tremendously important
political implications.
It is in the field of religion that I find pragmatism least
developed. Dewey appears to lack interest in the subject.
Some of his pupils have discussed it genetically, histor-
ically, and psychologically with acumen ; but their discus-
sion can hardly be said to cr}^stallize in the doctrines of a
philosophy of religion. We are perhaps justified in say-
ing that religion itself, pragmatically speaking, is an en-
ergetic social idealism or "meliorism." James has not only
given us a psychological justification of religion in its
usual meaning of belief in a transcendent power, but has
offered also some metaphysical suggestions concerning the
relation between God and man. His characteristically
empirical attitude toward the problem of the survival of
personality is likewise noteworthy. That problem seemed
to him best dealt with by experiment along lines of so-call-
ed "psychical research." So far as I am aware, however.
176 DEDICATION EXERCISES
these suggestions have had no great influence in the ranks
of students of philosophy.
But the significance of pragmatism, as I said at the be-
ginning of this paper, Ues less in its formal conceptual
statements than in its central point of view, the peculiar
attitude with which it faces the universe and human life.
This attitude is youthful, adventurous. The pragmatist
finds present experience real and animating. He discovers
truth in practical ways. He works experimentally to bet-
ter human life. And he is rather unobtrusive in religious
matters apart from their ethical implications. On the
whole I am inclined to think that this attitude is increas-
ingly prevalent, and that there are many American citizens
who have no technical or literary acquaintance with prag-
matism, but are nevertheless in this state of mind. More
than any other point of view and scheme of thought it
seems to me to constitute the philosophy of American
life.
ON LOGIC AS SCIENCE AND AS ART
ERNEST C. MOORE.
University of Califor7iia, Southern Branch.
When the will of the late Dr. Charles Arthur Mercier
came before the Probate Division of the London courts it
was found that he had provided for the setting up of a
professional chair of logic and scientific method.
"This purpose of this foundation is that students may be
taught not what Aristotle or some one else thought about
reasoning, but how to think clearly and reason correctly,
and to form opinions on rational grounds.
"The better to provide that the teaching shall be of this
character, and shall not degenerate into the teaching of
rigid formulae and worn-out superstitions, I make the fol-
lowing conditions:
"The professor is to be chosen for his ability to think
and reason and to teach, and not for his acquaintance with
books on logic, or with the opinions of logicians or philos-
ophers.
Acquaintance with the Greek and German tongues is
not to be an actual disqualification for the professorship,
but, in case the merits of the candidates appear in other
respects approximately equal, preference is to be given first:
"To him who knows neither Greek, nor German.
"Next, to him who knows Greek, but not German.
"Next, to him who knows German, but not Greek.
"Last of all, to a candidate who knows both Greek and
German.
"The professor is not to devote more than one-twelfth
of his course of instruction to the logic of Aristotle and the
schools, nor more than one-twenty-fourth to the logic of Hegel
and other Germans.
178 DEDICATION EXERCISES
"He is to proceed upon the principle that the only way
to acquire an art is by practicing it under a competent in-
structor. Didactic inculcation is useless by itself. He is,
therefore, to exercise his pupils in thinking, reasoning and
scientific method as applied to other studies that the stud-
ents are pursuing concurrently, and to other topics of liv-
ing interest.
"Epistemology and the rational ground of opinion are to
be taught. The students arc to be practiced in the art of
defining, classifying, and the detection of fallacies and incon-
sistencies."
Logic is an old study. It was begun by Socrates, de-
veloped by Plato and formulated by Aristotle. Before
their time men had thought; in Babylonia and Egypt there
had been a good deal of thinking about those race-old fun-
damentals — food, clothing, and shelter — and about such
secondary things as gods, priests, kings, soldiers, tax-
gathers, etc ; but the Greeks were the first to think about
thoughts, to ask what they meant, how men came to have
them, what reliance they could place upon tliem, and how
they could perfect them. At that point began a struggle
to understand what knowledge is and how men get it,
which goes on to this day and which will most Hkely go
on as long as folks endure. Knowledge — the knowledge of
the farmer, the carpenter, the shoemaker, the pilot, the
general — seems to be a simple thing. But knowledge is not
a simple thing, but almost ineradicable confusion.
There are three great names in the history of logic and
two lesser names, and all of them are the names of men
who failed in their undertaking. Aristotle is the first.
Socrates spent his life in urging men to develop the same
sort of knowledge of thinking, of goodness, of ruling that
their fellowmen already had of carpentry, weaving, temple
building, pottery and shoemaking. If we want to know
anything, he said, we must find out what it is for. We
EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCES 179
must work out a notion of what it means and, having that
notion, we can then use it. What does it mean to be just
or to govern? What is justice? What is statesmanship?
What is truth? What is beauty? These questions he
thought could be answered in just the same way as the
question; What does it mean to make a pair shoes, to
build a house, to carve a statue, to pilot a ship ? If one is
tr}dng to cure a disease, he must have a notion of what
health is and a notion of what this disease is, and he must
so work upon the disease that it will be transformed to
health. Knowledge for Socrates is practical. One gets it
by means of getting notions of what he wants to produce
and of what he has and of how to produce what he wants
from what he has. He works on things by means of no-
tions. These notions are not things but thoughts; and
these thoughts are very mysterious. Where do they come
from? One never sees equality or justice or health or
a point or a straight line or a circle. He only thinks them.
The things which we see are more or less like them but
there is no circle in nature, no exact justice, no perfect truth
or beauty in things. Are they then intimations of our pre-
vious beatific existence, recollections of experiences in
the Elysian fields, memories of what we knew in heaven
before our birth? The things of this world are many and
not one of them is perfect. They are born and pass away,
but that which is perfect cannot pass away. Equality,
justice, truth, wisdom must endure.
All knowledge was practical at first — for Socrates it was
just finding out what we must do and know and how to
do it. I think it was the same for Plato, too ; but Plato
was a poet as well as a Socratic and hypostatized justice
and beauty and truth and wisdom and talked of them
sometimes as though they were not thoughts which we
make and use but heavenly existences, more real and more
worthy than the things of this world. You have all seen
180 DEDICATION EXERCISES
the figure of Justice on the courthouse. Plato sometimes
talks as though that figure were not there to remind men
of the justice which should be in their hearts and in their
deeds, but to remind them of that awful Justice which
stands as an archangel before the throne of God. Our
thoughts, you see, can be instruments if we take them as
Socrates took them; they can be images of existences if
we take them as Plato is said to have taken them.
Right here the woes of logic begin. Is it a human in-
strument helping us in human ways to a larger knowledge
of human things or is it an oracular science giving abso-
lute truth.?
Aristotle's logic is for certainty. Science is demonstra-
tion. Mathematics is its type, and whatever truths are
scientifically arrived at must come in the same manner.
If we measure the angles of a triangle and find that they
equal two right angles, we cannot be said to have scienti-
fic knowledge that their sum is two right angles. We
must prove that by considerations which follow the defini-
tion of a triangle and the axioms of geometry. Reasoned
truth — nothing merely empirical — but conclusions flow-
ing inexorably from their premises, truth founded, but-
tressed, impregnable, absolute, is what logic must provide.
Did you ever stop to think of the falsehoods which
mathematics is responsible for.? It was the pattern science
for Plato and Aristotle. The objects with which it deals
are not points or lines or circles from the sense world;
the rain does not wash them out or the grass efface them.
They are eternal and unchanging and the truths which
thinking can demonstrate concerning them are eternal
and unchanging. Logic must follow its model. It must
give us eternal and unchanging truths, too.
You have heard of the pride of the Pope due to his pos-
sessing the power to bind and to loose here and hereafter.
Just so the Aristotelian had an imperious nature. He pos-
EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCES 181
sessed the certainty of absolute knowledge. He reasoned
by syllogisms. "Syllogism is a discourse," said Aristotle,
"wherein certain things [premises] being admitted, some-
thing else different from what has been admitted follows
of necessity because the admissions are what they are." Its
typical form is :
All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
.•. Socrates is mortal.
Now let us ask Aristotle what degree of certainty we
have here and just how much more the conclusion tells
us than we knew in the major premise.
How can we ever know that all men are mortal } Some
may have gone to heaven in a chariot of fire. "All" applies
to all who are to come through all the ages. It may be
that death is a penalty of our ignorance. In days to come
it may be conquered. At any rate, how do we know of
a certainty that all men must die or that any assertion
which we can make will include all the subjects of which
the assertion is made.'' Aristotle says no science proves its
beginning axioms. Its first principles cannot be demon-
strated. They are indemonstrable. Experience calls at-
tention to them. They are apprehended as self-evident
intuitions of mind. If your reasoning from your premises
is faultless you can arrive at conclusions which are just
as certain as your premises. But now you are a long way
from absolute certainty, for something has happened to
mathematics in recent days which shows that its axioms
are by no means so reliable as they were once thought to
be. They have been found to be postulates, merely po-
sitions taken, so that all mathematical reasoning now
takes the hypothetical form — if space is three dimensional,
parallel lines will not meet; and in the new logic all ab-
182 DEDICATION EXERCISES
stract universals are hypothetical, "All men are moral"
being no more universal than: If I had a toothache, I
should be wretched ; or. If this man has taken that drug,
he will be dead before tomorrow. Certainty disappears,
postulation or supposing takes its place. But, is it true
that the conclusion of the syllogism gives a new truth.?
Does it lead to something different from what is admitted
when the premises are taken.? The truth is that there must
be no more in the conclusion than in the premises. The
conclusion is not discovered by means of the premises but
only uncovered in them.
Another doctrine for which Aristotle is responsible is
the doctrine of natural kinds or fixed species or real defi-
nitions. To define anything, we must say what its kind
is and then specify its difference from other varieties. To
define Socrates, we must say he is a man. We cannot say
he is a philosopher, a patriot, the inventor of knowledge,
the wisest of the Greeks; but only that he is a man. I
had an experience some years ago which brought out the
futility of that view of definition. There is a series of
classics published in what is called "Ever)^man's Librar)^"
They are printed in England and imported by Dutton and
Company, who pay an import duty upon them. Now it
happens that many of these volumes are used as textbooks
and that textbooks come in free of duty while other Eng-
lish books must pay duty. The firm of Dutton and Co.,
brought a suit in the Appraiser's Court in Boston to es-
tablish the fact that certain of these volumes should come
in duty free, and called several Harvard professors who
were using them in their classes to establish that fact. I
was asked by the U. S. Attorney, "What is a textbook.?
I replied, "It is a book used as a text for classroom dis-
cussion." "But must it not have an introduction, notes,
explanations, a glossary- .?" he asked; and for a half-hour
we battled over the question of whether a textbook is a
EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCES 183
textbook in its nature or in its use. Aristotle taught that
there are natural kinds, that they are fixed and definite.
Darwin found out that kinds are not the fixed furniture
of the world but that kinds flow into each other. Our
classifications now-a-days are recognized as being group-
ings which we ourselves make on whatever principles may
be pertinent to our inquir)''. As a consequence we make
as many definitions of a class as there are principles or
ways of grouping or regarding its members. We are no
longer limited to the definition according to nature of Ar-
istotle.
It is, I take it, quite impossible for any one who is now
alive to imagine the intellectual despotism by which
through the ages Aristotle earned the designation of *'the
master of them that know."
About 1527, a young lad, the son of a charcoal burner,
his name Peter Ramus, came to Paris and hired himself to
a rich student as his servant. He studied at night anci
made himself the foremost teacher of his time. He tried
to reform the study of logic. "When I came to Paris," he
says, "I fell into the subtleties of the sophists and they
taught me the liberal arts through questions and disputes
without ever showing me a single thing of profit or ser-
vice. Never amidst the clamor of the college where I pass-
ed so many days, months, years, did I ever hear a single
word about the application of logic. I had faith then
[the scholar ought to have faith, according to Aristotle]
that it was not necessar}^ to trouble myself about what
logic is and what its purpose is, but that it concerned it-
self solely with creating a motive for our clamors and our
disputes. I therefore disputed and clamored with all my
might. If I were defending in class a thesis according to
the categories I believed it my duty never to yield to my
opponent, were he one hundred times right, but to seek
some subtle distinction in order to obscure the whole is-
184 DEDICATION EXERCISES
sue. On the other hand, were I disputant, all my care and
efforts tended not to enlighten my opponent but to beat
him by some argument good or bad ; even so had I been
taught or directed. The categories of Aristotle were like
a ball that we give children to play with and that it was
necessary to get back by our clamors when we had lost it.^
He took his master's degree with the thesis that all that Ar-
istotle said is false. But Peter Ramus did little to create
a new logic.
Then came a new time, a veritable age of discoveries,
when a few men quit threshing the straw which Aristotle
had left and began by independent study to make discover-
ies, huge discoveries. Such men were Columbus, Magellan,
da Vinci, Kepler and Galileo. With them modern science
was born. Francis Bacon (1561) is sometimes named as
it founder. He was rather its literary promoter. In 1620
he published a new logic built upon the thesis that know-
ledge is power. He did not approve of what had been ac-
complished thus far. "Men have entered into the desire
of learning and knowledge, seldom sincerely to give a
true account of their gift of reason to the benefit and use
of men, but as if they sought in knowledge a couch where-
on to rest a searching and wandering spirit; or a terrace
for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down
with a fair prospect ; or a tower for a proud mind to raise
itself upon ; or a fort or a commanding ground for a strife
and contention; or a shop for profit and sale; and not a
rich storehouse for the glor)^ of the Creator and the relief
of man's estate." Knowledge, the new knowledge, is not
to be for consolation or delight or vaunting or strife or
money, but for use. Men must lay aside all prejudices.
They must employ a new method — that of observation and
induction. But when he comes to the details of the meth-
od of discovery to be followed he describes the process as
^Studies hi Dialectics, Book I\', p. 151. Quoted in Grave's Ramus.
EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCES 185
the accumulation of facts and subsequently abstracting
their identities and differences and so deriving laws or
principles from them. "The value of this method," says
Professor Jevons, "might be estimated historically by the
fact that it has not been followed by any of the great
masters of science." So Bacon, great as was his guiding
of those who came after him, failed in his undertaking.
We come next to that mighty tour de force of philosophy,
the logic of Hegel, the natural history of the eternally self-
thinking truth. Hegel's logic is a dialectical deduction
from consciousness of the nature of ultimate reality, a
huge and glorious anthropomorphism making God and all
things in the image of mind. To its author it was a dem-
onstration of what mind must think, and what mind must
think is. Subject and object are one. The mind of the
thinker and the mind of the universe are identical. When
we think existence, existence thinks in us. Hegel's system
claims to be the philosophy itself, final and conclusive. Is
it a mystic dance of bloodless categories or a true calculus
of being.? Is it the highest and most dazzling expression of
Germany's empire of the air or is it the very texture and
body of truth.? Only the ages can tell. At any rate it
has German lineaments. It is the most supremely con-
iident and daring announcement of the human spirit in
all history, and Dr. Mercier does well to insist that his
professor of logic shall give himself to more commonplace
and assured matters.
Last of all comes the so-called empirical logic of John
Stuart Mill. He abjures metaphysical speculation. He
will plant his feet on the firm ground of experience alone.
Just as Hegel tried to invent a logic which was wholly
deductive and failed, so Mill tried to formulate a logic
which was wholly inductive, and failed. Mill's, says Hoff-
ding, "tried to spin the forms of thought from their con-
tent, Hegel the content of thought from its forms." How
186 DEDICATION EXERCISES
do we know that the sun will rise tomorrow morning?
Because it has always risen ever}^ morning thus far. But
what does what has been tell as about what will be? The
major premise of every conclusion in science is, says Mill,
that nature is uniform. How do we know that? We have
experienced it so. We arrive at it by induction. But can
experience go beyond experience and tell us for certain
about what has not yet come to pass? Mill's answer is
"Yes." Ours today is "No." Science does not give us cer-
tainties. It gives us probabilities and probability is, as
Bishop Butler said, the guide of life. We do not know
that the sun will rise tomorrow morning — nobody does —
it may have generated nitrogen gas in such quantity as to
explode before morning. Science does not give us abso-
lute knowledge. Its declarations are hypothetical decla-
rations. Its laws are hypothetical laws. It calls for faith
no less certainly than religion does. Whatever else it is
for, logic is not for certainty and it is worth while to know
that. Dogmatism and fixed opinions die with that in-
sight.
Thus far we have been talking of logic as a science. It
is also an art. Its one object, whether as a science or an
art, is to help us to learn to distinguish between good and
bad reasoning. There is no such thing as logical proof
that leads to absolutely conclusive truths, but in reason-
ing about matters of fact we can learn to be on our guard
against certain ancient errors of procedure and certain
habits of thinking which are dangerous and menacing.
Can one learn to be logical? Can one learn to reason?
"Of course," says Carveth Read, "logic does not in the
first place teach us to reason. We learn to reason, as we
learn to walk and talk, by natural growth of our powers,
with some assistance from friends and neighbors. But
to be frank, few of us walk, talk, or reason remarkably well ;
and, as to reasoning, logic certainly quickens our sense of
EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCES 187
bad reasoning, both in others and in ourselves. It helps
us to avoid being misled by others and to correct one's
own mistakes. A man who reasons deliberately manages
it better after studying logic than he could before — if he
tries to, if he has not a perverse liking for sophistr}', and
if he has the sense to know when formalities are out of
place. There are some mental qualities that a man can
only get from his father and mother." "As a science,"
says President Hibben, "thinking has its fundamental
laws, its logic ; as an art it has no body of set rules which
we may learn once for all, and ever after slavishly and
blindlv follow. There is no formula for wisdom. The
art of thinking requires a command of all the resources
of skill and inventive device of which our natures are
capable."
The first point to remember is that one cannot think
without a problem — that all thinking is due to perplexity
or trouble and that the first step in thinking is to define
the question, locate the difficulty or formulate the problem.
The second step is to collect the facts which bear upon it —
thinking is facing the facts.
Observation is not preliminar}" to it but is an essential
part of it. Thinking which tries to go on without obser-
vation is intellectual somnambulism. The greatest charge
against formal logic is that it is formal, that it neglects the
context, that the middle term in the syllogism is frequently
not the same in both premises — that it has the appearance
of stating the facts and drawing its conclusion but really
leaves them out of consideration. I saw an advertisement
of a truck company in last Sunday's Times which ran some-
thing like this: The flow of commodities is what is re-
quired above ever}^thing else at the present time. Motor
trucks are the chief agencies for the flow of commodities.
But just at the time that ever)^thing which furthers the
unhampered distribution of products is of the utmost im-
188 DEDICATION EXERCISES
portance, your legislature considered a proposal to inter-
fere with the business of trucking. At first glance that
looks like a plain and convincing statement of facts. But
I happen to know that Professor Derleth and some other
engineers have been studying the roads in California to
find out if possible how to build them so that they will not
wear out so rapidly; they have been checking the loads
which motor trucks carry and find them far in excess of
the indicated load. In one case they found a seven-ton
truck carr)dng twenty-two tons.
Some time ago the Ex-Secretar)^ of the Treasury, Mr.
McAdoo, said in a public speech here that some of the coal
companies had reported a profit as high as 2000 per cent per
year. Mr. Robinson told me that when he became a mem-
ber of the Coal Commission it determined to smoke out
the facts in the Treasury Department about that matter.
It found that three coal companies had reported a profit
of more than 500 per cent, one of them being of 2000 per
cent, but that the total capitalization of those three com-
panies was $11,000.00. Along with observation goes in-
ference, a constant search for meaning. At first our con-
clusion is tentative, hypothetical, an hypothesis — we must
test it. My automobile develops a squeal ; that is my prob-
lem. I do my best to locate it, collecting as many facts
concerning it as I can. I guess it is in the engine; that
is my hypothesis. I test it by running the engine with the
clutch thrown out. There is no squeal. It must be in the
transmission. I go through the same process of locating
it once more and finally determine that it is the body of
the car. This may be taken as a typical illustration of
reasoning, real reasoning — not disputing as a game. In
it deduction and induction work together as warp and woof
of the investigation. We start with facts — with a prob-
lem which requires us to interpret them — we collect such
of them as seem to have a bearing on our problem. We
EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCES 189
make a guess or construct a theory as to the answer to
our problem. We deduce from that guess that if it is
true certain things will follow from it if we tr)' it out un-
der test conditions. We do so and arrive at our result.
The function of logic is to help common sense out of the
difficulties which it comes to. The old view of the syl-
logism will not aid very' much in convincing an unwilling
opponent. The greatest use it can serve perhaps is to
indicate the exact nature of the reasoning which is being
employed. It is well, therefore, to throw the argument
which is being used into syllogistic form. That will not
settle the question of itself, but reducing what is being said
to syllogistic terms will usually help to disclose its weak-
ness or its strength.
EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCE
HOW TO STIMULATE INTELLECTUAL AND
SOCIAL ATTAINMENTS ON THE PART OF HIGH
SCHOOL GRADUATES
Synopsis of Talk Given by
PRESIDENT HARRY N. WRIGHT.
Whittier ColUge.
The problem is fundamentally a spiritual one and
hence hinges largely upon the personality of the teacher.
Those employing teachers should give more attention to
other elements of personal equipment than scholarship.
We should not decrease our emphasis upon scholarship,
but should give stronger and more pointed emphasis to the
spiritual and moral equipment of the teacher.
The stimulation of intellectual attainments in a High
School student depends more upon the methods of teach-
ing than upon the content of the course of study. In this
connection it is notably important to teach in such a way
as to develop initiative and independence in the student.
By the project method and similar means we should seek
to develop in the student of any age the spirit of research.
Obviously the social life of the high school deserves
more attention in the way of directing it and improving
it than it now has. The school administration should
make provision for this as purposefully as provision is
made for the teaching of any of our usual courses.
SOCIOLOGICAL CONFERENCE
A JUSTIFIABLE INDIVIDUALISM
FRANK WILSON BLACKMAR.
Dean of the Graduate School, University of Kansas
This is an era of social service. The stupendous de-
mands of the world to care for the less fortunate members
of society have quickened the philanthropic spirit to do for
others to an extent heretofore unknown in the history of
the human race. The movement is marked by thousands
of organizations and societies collecting millions of dollars
to relieve suffering, to improve material comforts, and to
make a better social life. While not ignoring individual cul-
ture, the basis of the activity is to make this world a fit
habitation for all members of the human race. Speaking
sociologically, it is the fulfillment of the latest phase of
practical civilization which teaches men to live together
justly, righteously, and harmoniously. Speaking ethically,
it is an attempt to realize upon the teachings of the man
of Galilee the duty of man to his fellows — of brotherly
love and sacrifice for others. It is, in fact, the ethical re-
demption of the race. From these two sources a wave of
philanthropy has generated and spread over the world.
War and its terrors and the suffering caused by it have
quickened the philanthropic pulse and stimulated altruis-
tic motives.
Simultaneous with this movement is the agitation for
universal democracy and social and economic equality, the
tendency of which has been to absorb the individual in the
192 DEDICATION EXERCISES
mass, and subject him to a rule of the many. It has aug-
mented the power of institutions and suppressed individ-
ual initiative.
The aspects of modern civilization give a vision of a
machine-made world. Our ethics and our economics and
our politics are machine-made. We go to the industrial
world for our economic standards. Smaller grows the in-
dividual influence, greater the limiting power of the mass ;
everywhere is the command, fall in line. When the so-
cialist takes up the defense of the individual, he ends with
making the compact more binding. When the anarchist
preaches his theory of individual independence, he ends by
suppressing liberty and increasing the dominant power of
authority.
The coin that formerly was bestowed by the giver to
relieve the immediate sufferings of the neighbor now trav-
els thousands of miles and is administered by great or-
ganizations to relieve distress and to reform the human
race. The products of the toil of the laborer enter a great
economic system run by power machinery and managed by
an endless organization before it returns to him the neces-
sities of life. He becomes a mere cog in the great in-
dustrial machine. The churches and the religious societies
are co-operating in tremendous organizations in mass for-
mation to carry the gospel to the world. The former simple
duties of the citizen have been extended to embrace a world
democracy. Based on the master}^ of natural powers, the
industrial world becomes a vast mechanism. Based on the
industrial mechanism, society becomes a vast machine in
which the individual sinks into insignificance.
If one stands on a lofty peak in the Sierras with the
broad expanse of the mountain ranges extending in every
direction, or gazes into the vast expanse of the starry
heavens above, the consciousness of the littleness of the
individual is overwhelming. He is powerless, awe-strick-
. EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCES 193
en before the great creation. Likewise standing at the
doorway of the future and catching a vision of the vast
mechanism of society, the individual reaUzes his insig-
nificance. He lives his little round of duties according to
order and when he has finished the great social machinery
sweeps on without him. Yet this individual is greater
than a galaxy of the heavens.
While these great movements of the social life are to be
praised as the products of human endeavor, is it not time,
"lest we forget," to consider that they depend for their suc-
cess upon a justifiable individualism; and that without
this type of individualism the industrial, political, and re-
ligious systems of the world — yes, the whole social fabric,
will eventually fail.''
All achievement starts and ends with the individual be-
ing. He is the material out of which the super-structure
of civilization is reared. This little human dynamo is the
source of power in which the world takes pride. While
our education, our religion, our social reform have become
mass plays, it must be understood that political, religious,
or social organizations will not in themselves redeem the
human mind from error nor establish happiness among
mankind. The world cannot be redeemed by formula ;
men may not be educated or reformed in phalanxes. The
great group activity of modern life has thrust aside the in-
dividual as an ideal. The old theory^ that if the individual,
sound in body, sound in mind, with sterling moral quali-
ties were properly trained he would carr\' into the world
the leaven of righteousness and leaven the whole lump, has
been overshadowed by the gigantic mass play of social re-
form and human progress. The reason for this change
has its source in the fact that the individual has not been
transformed to satisfy the demands of the social order.
So the conclusion is reached by many reformers that in-
dividualism has no place in social progress. The error con-
194 DEDICATION EXERCISES
sists in repudiation instead of regeneration. Even the so-
ciologists deny the existence of the old individual and de-
mand a new type created by society itself.
While it is inevitable that this old-time individual
should be thrust aside as inadequate it is well to remem-
ber the source of his creation and his failure to function.
It should not be forgotten that there is a foundation for
this individualism which is deep-seated in nature. Nature
has much to do with the creation of this neglected individ-
ual, and no social formula that does not recognize this can
hope to get very far in the improvement of the race. It is
necessary to work with nature to secure progress ; even
then we must be very wise, for nature has no ideals, no
aims, but moves in accordance with well-defined laws ex-
ternal to self-determination.
Not only are men born into this world with different
mental traits and unequal capacities, but their effort to
survive makes traits and capacities more divergent in their
adoption — for nature's processes accentuate inequalities
rather than diminish them. This same nature has im-
planted in man a desire for individual survival. His first
interest was self-interest ; his first love was self-love. Prim-
itive morality increases the opportunity to survive, but
does not destroy the individual desires. The law of sur-
vival applies to man's spiritual existence as well as to his
physical life; he desires spiritual survival as well as phys-
ical. The chief difference rests in the fact that primarily
he is governed by the laws of organic evolution, while in
the spiritual development he sets up an ideal and by effort
and will-force attempts to approximate it. More than this,
he seeks to raise the standard of his ideals, struggling to
higher planes of spiritual existence. Yet there are spirit-
ual difference and different spiritual capacities. His pro-
cess of accomplishment is through association with his
fellows. The law of love is added to the law of physical
EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCES 195
process. Even this adds to his individual powers. He
solves the social paradox by gaining strength through as-
sisting his fellows. He learns that "It is more blessed to
give than to receive," because it is ethical and scientific as
well.
The environmental conditions, social and industrial, fre-
quently determine the character of individualism. In the
early histor)- of the nation in a sparse population and a
simple life, great emphasis was placed upon individual ef-
fort; indeed the master}^ of a new country demanded it.
The Puritan conscience stimulated it and the moral doc-
trines of the time preached thrift and the accumulation of
property as necessary qualities of righteousness. The laws
provided amply for the protection of property rights and
the constitution perpetuated and enforced them. The idea
of success primarily based on righteousness gradually came
to be shifted to the accumulation of property as a meas-
ure of success.
The idea of early democracy enhanced the importance
of the individual, for democracy had for its ideal the free-
dom and independence of the individual. In the mastery
of the Mississippi Valley the stern efforts of the individual
to subdue the soil and to build homes on the frontier made
this individualism supreme. Not until this class of West-
ern pioneers expressed themselves at the polls was real
democracy born in America. This simple, frugal, hard-
working life, built on thrift and conscience, represents one
of the best phases of American life.
But in the latter part of the nineteenth century, with
increased wealth, with population of great cities and the
development of manufactures by the introduction of the
machine, the passion for great wealth changed the attitude
of the individual. The glor}- of the individual was not in
achievement of moral values, but success was measured
by the accumulation of wealth. Gradually the individual
196 DEDICATION EXERCISES
became commercialized and spurious, and group activity
became dominant.
The same laws of survival apply to the organized
group in its relation to other groups. While the progress
of the law of love and the establishment of justice among
men has been slow to manifest itself, individuals in their
relations to one another may obey and practice it, but as
soon as they become members of a group they follow the
group. Too frequently a group organized economically,
politically, or religiously, seeking its own survival, man-
ifests all the fangs and claws of red-handed nature. It
proposes to survive in its contest with other groups by de-
struction or domination of its enemies. A person may be
to all intents and purposes a Christian, but when he joins
such a group the result of his action is pagan. The group
becomes non-ethical, and no ethical social order can be
put into practice where communities are dominated by
selfish groups struggling with each other for supremacy
and destroying and trampling upon the rights of individ-
uals.
I know a man who appears to be honest in his dealings
with his neighbors and a devout member of the church
but who strikes hands with political demagogues and shy-
sters, and develops a venal political gang. I know a man
who in all his personal dealings with his neighbors and
friends is controlled by the law of social ethics, but he
joined an incorporated body of citizens who were seeking
to amass wealth regardless of social welfare. He became
one of the predatory band combined to carr}^ out his
selfish purpose regardless of the effect on the rights of in-
dividuals and of community welfare. As an individual he
is a Christian, as a member of the corporation he is a pagan
dwelling with pagans and fighting a pagan's battle.
We have not been able to project our idealism into
practical life. Practically we are ruled by commercialism,
EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCES 197
we are materialists ; theoretically we are spiritual. A man
will talk democracy, swear by the principles of Jefferson
and the Constitution, talk justice and equality to all, and
then enter a combination with his fellows to put over a
political scheme or commercial combination for the per-
petuation of group selfishness. If he could be oriented from
practice he is a Christian and a democrat, but as part of
a group he is an autocrat and a pagan. Individually and
theoretically he is controlled by the law of love, but as a
member of a group he is controlled by organic evolution
or the survival of the fittest. As an individual he is spirit-
ual ; as a member of the group he is materialistic. Until
this spiritual life can be made to permeate all activities,
large or small, we ma}' not hope for a homogeneous work-
ing society.
In the social ethics of the business world the German
people ranked high, but Germany as a political group was
non-ethical. She was red-handed in a ruthless struggle
for survival. She taught and practiced dominance at the
expense of others. As a nation she was a monster of moral
apostasy. The individual conscience was submerged by
the selfish greed of the group, and until that individual
conscience is again free to act there is no hope of a regen-
erated Germany. The whole world has revealed the sel-
fishness of the political and the economic group. The only
redemption is the leavening influence of the quickened
conscience and consecrated will of the individual.
Again, the problems of the practical life enforce the idea
of individualism. To make better individual men and
women is, after all, the universal aim of the social process.
If a teacher in a college or university did not make better
men and women of those under his direction, he would be
an acknowledged failure. If a minister of the gospel did
not make better men and women of those under his care
he would be an admitted failure. But is the principle in-
198 DEDICATION EXERCISES
volv^d in regard to the employer of labor different? The
man in control of the shoe factory is doing a great public
service when he co-operates with labor to make good shoes
for the public, but has he done his full duty as trustee for
social production, unless he makes better men and women
of those in his employ? Has the great railroad company
fulfilled its whole duty when it has furnished transporta-
tion at a reasonable rate? Should it not be held responsible
for making better men and women of those in its employ?
Capital and labor, employer and employee, co-operate to
make a finished product for the service of mankind. Should
they not co-operate in making better men and women?
Tradition has said that the preacher and the teacher are
missionaries of moral responsibility. Are they any more
responsible for the welfare of those associated with them
in their business than those who control the great bus-
iness enterprises around which cluster the masses of hu-
manity? No man has a right to individual control of
business solely for his own gain; no one is justifiable in
his individualism who does not assume responsibility for
the moral and economic condition of those with whom he
associates. The only individualism that is justifiable is
that which is built up in the service of others.
The labor-capital problem is still unsolved. Indeed, un-
der present conditions it is a menace to justice. How little
we know about it ; how little the contending parties know
of each other! The main difficulty is found in misunder-
standing. There is too much mass treatment of humanity,
and too little opportunity for the exercise of individual
choice and responsibility. All our social work with the
laboring population has left the great problem unsolved.
Irregularity of employment, subservience to forces beyond
his control and no security of life, make the laborer an
irregular and irresponsible worker, and an irregular and
irresponsible man.
EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCES 199
The great problem of the relation of organized capital
and organized labor today hinges on the status of the in-
dividual laborer. What does he want? True, he wants a
living wage, but greater than this is his desire for oppor-
tunity to be somebody. With him the job with a living
wage is a means to an end. He wants approbation; he
wants the human touch of life more than anything else.
He wants a belief in himself as an individual. He wants
an opportunity to show his fellows in his group the kind
of workman he is, and not to be a mere cog in a compli-
cated machine. Until he has an opportunity for this ap-
preciation he will not be a successful individual. He must
appreciate the importance of his work and be made to
feel that he is rendering an appreciated service. Funda-
mentally a living wage and shorter hours of labor are
necessary, but this will not solve the labor problem.
The desire to become part manager in the business
does not dominate the individual laborer to the extent
which agitators and writers seem to indicate. Deep in his
heart he wishes friendly co-operation with others in mak-
ing better living conditions with liberty of action as a man.
He does not want charity, he does not want philanthropy,
he does not want to be patronized, he wants to be a man
am.ong men. Wherever this fundamental cause does not
exist among laborers it should be inculcated, for only
through this can self-respect and character be developed.
The independent conscience is submerged in group
activity. The group is frequently lacking in ethical
nature. Its conscience is not the conscience of the in-
dividual members of the group. It has not been grounded
in moral principle, for it is still a provincial race morality.
But failure of individual conscience cannot be overcome
by group morality or by group action of any kind.
Individual morality must be put on a higher plane.
It must be based on keen insight, a quickened conscience,
200 DEDICATION EXERCISES
and an individual responsibility of life. More of its ideal-
ism must be merged into the practical service to the larger
humanity of mankind. Ideals must be reduced to a
working basis. We need a new individualism, not of
Adam Smith, of John Locke, nor indeed the individualism
of the early pioneers of American achievement, but an in-
dividualism that rises supreme in conscience and char-
acter above the fogs of social order. This new indi-
vidualism is not triumphant overlordship of fellow work-
ers, but one whose right to existence is founded on indi-
vidual character and social achievement. This individ-
ualism must have a broader base than mere earning capa-
city; it is the individualism of service; it is the glory of
excellence of work, of accomplishment, something worth
while; it is a disinterested attempt to put value into the
world, not an inglorious attempt to take unto itself the
products of what others have wrought.
Before this old individualism is transformed, a social
justice must prevail that gives each one an opportunity
for life and success. It is the long sought square deal of
humanity. Jealousy and env)' of individual rights and
privileges must be replaced by zeal for social responsibility.
To survive in the modern social order, is to be the best
as well as the fittest. No individual may achieve real
success at the expense of the suffering and failure of his
fellows. Through necessar)^ organization of effort a great
social machine was developed in which the ordinan,^ in-
dividual became a mere cog. Only those who by insight
or ruthless endeavor were able to control the commercial
and industrial forces became dominant individuals. These
became the group that is known as profiteers. To take
profit becomes the ideal of life. The simple righteousness
of individual thrift thus becomes a menace to social order,
when worked out with multiplied power of industrial de-
velopment and industrial opportunit}'. This incongruity
EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCES 201
of democratic life led to a call for social service. But
social service failed to remedy the deep-seated evils en-
gendered by the enormous importance placed on the own-
ership of wealth. The next phase of thought was to do
away with individualism and develop socialism, commun-
ity ownership and equality in the production and the use
of wealth. This idea has degenerated into the extreme rad-
icalism of today, which is nothing more than an attempt
to put into practice the spurious doctrines of Marxian
socialism. Socialization of the conscience and the will,
and indeed of the memory, will succeed but socialization
of property will not.
Instead of seeking a remedy in the extension of in-
dividualism it should be sought in creating a new regen-
erated individualism — an individualism that seeks to sur-
vive only through co-operation with and service to others.
The individual who has accumulated wealth thus be-
comes a trustee of that wealth with a view to the better-
ment of society. This might be extended to all powers of
the individual, inherited or obtained through education.
He becomes a trustee of those powers for social better-
ment.
Our educational system is showing the dominance of
the social order. The growth of higher educational
institutions has conformed to an expanding civilization;
first, the college following the main thought of the English
universities, with the main purposes of educating min-
isters and Indians ; then the college of liberal learning for
the educated few, emphasizing the classics and the literary
studies, and introducing natural science and modern
languages, histor}^ and political science and sociology;
then the special schools of medicine, law, and engineering ;
and finally, vocational training. Gradually the field of
education has been expanded to teach ever}^thing that the
variety of life of the public demanded. Gradually the
202 DEDICATION EXERCISES
plans of college education were lowered to take in all
classes of people. An institution once sacred to the few
elect becomes a place where the sons and daughters of
wage earners, artisans, professional people, the rich and
the poor from every walk of life mingle together on a
common basis. This no doubt is as it should be, but the
excessive demand of the public has forced the program
of the college to educate everybody in everybody's own
way. As a result we have developed quantity schools in-
stead of quality schools, and have mass education instead
of individual instruction. We have been forced to teach
subjects rather than teach men and women. We have paid
too little attention to superiors and wasted our energv in
trying to elevate mediocrity.
What is needed is to return to the starting point of de-
marcation, and build up a new individualism in educa-
tion.
It is common talk that colleges develop leadership, but
the selection and training of leaders is not practiced. Too
many of the thousands who attend our colleges are theie
because it is a mode of life, or because of a desire for com-
mercialized use of education. Each year the tide of high
school graduates rises ; each year more flow into the uni-
versities and colleges. The remedy is found in more and
better equipment, better teachers, fewer students per teac li-
er and individualism in instruction, and a better system
of weeding out those who are not inspired to higher learn-
ing. A college education is a sacred thing, something to
be cherished in itself, something to be consecrated to the
service of others. In the school as elsewhere in life there
are two classes of people, those who do the work and those
who