The Call of the Twentieth Century | Page 9

to do. It attested not that he was
wise or good or competent to serve, but that he was bred a gentleman
among gentlemen.
So long as the title of academic bachelor had this significance, the man
of action passed it by. It had no meaning to him, and the fine edge of
accuracy in thought and perception, which only the college can give,
was wanting in his work. The college education did not seem to
disclose the secret of power, and the man of affairs would have none of
it.
A higher ideal came from Germany,--that of erudition. The German
scholar knows some one thing thoroughly. He may be rude or
uncultured, he may not know how to use his knowledge, but whatever
this knowledge is, it is sound and genuine. Thoroughness of knowledge
gives the scholar self-respect; it makes possible a broad horizon and
clear perspective. From these sources, English and German, the
American University is developing its own essential idea,--that of
personal effectiveness. The American University of to-day seeks
neither culture nor erudition as its final end. It values both as means to
greater ends. It looks forward to work in life. Its triumphs in these
regards the century will see clearly. It will value culture and treasure
erudition, but it will use both as helps toward doing things. It will find
its inspiration in the needs of the world as it is, and it is through such
effort that the world that is to be shall be made a reality. A great work
demands full preparation. It takes larger provision for a cruise to the
Cape of Good Hope than for a trip to the Isle of Dogs. For this reason
the century will ask its men to take a college education.
It will ask much more than that,--a college education where the work is
done in earnest, students and teachers realizing its serious value, and
besides all this, it will demand the best special training which its best
universities can give. For the Twentieth Century will not be satisfied

with the universities of the fifteenth or seventeenth centuries. It will
create its own, and the young man who does the century's work will be
a product of its university system. Of this we may be sure, the training
for strenuous life is not in academic idleness. The development of
living ideals is not in an atmosphere of cynicism. The blasé, lukewarm,
fin-de-siècle young man of the clubs will not represent university
culture, nor, on the other hand, will culture be dominated by a cheap
utilitarianism.
"You will hear every day around you," said Emerson to the divinity
students of Harvard, "the maxims of a low prudence. You will hear that
your first duty is to get land and money, place and fame. 'What is this
truth you seek? What is this beauty?' men will ask in derision. If,
nevertheless, God have called any of you to explain truth and beauty,
be bold, be firm, be true. When you shall say, 'As others do, so will I; I
renounce, I am sorry for it--my early visions; I must eat the good of the
land, and let learning and romantic speculations go until some more
favorable season,' then dies the man in you; then once more perish the
buds of art and poetry and science, as they have died already in a
hundred thousand men. The hour of that choice is the crisis in your
history."
The age will demand steady headed men, men whose feet stand on the
ground, men who can see things as they really are, and act accordingly.
"The resolute facing of the world as it is, with all the garments of
make-believe thrown off,"--this, according to Huxley, is the sole cure
for the evils which beset men and nations. The only philosophy of life
is that derived from its science. We know right from wrong because the
destruction is plain in human experience. Right action brings
abundance of life. Wrong action brings narrowness, decay, and
degeneration. A man must have principles of life above all questions of
the mere opportunities of to-day, but these principles are themselves
derived from experience. They belong to the higher opportunism, the
consideration of what is best in the long run. The man who is controlled
by an arbitrary system without reference to conditions, is ineffective.
He becomes a crank, a fanatic, a man whose aims are out of all
proportion to results. This is because he is dealing with an imaginary
world, not with the world as it is. We may admire the valiant knight
who displays a noble chivalry in fighting wind-mills, but we do not call

on a wind-mill warrior when we have some plain, real work to
accomplish. All progress, large or small, is the