The Call of the Twentieth Century | Page 9

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 resultant of many forces. We cannot single out any one of these as of dominant value, and ignore or despise the others. In moving through the solar system, the earth is falling toward the sun as well as flying away from it. In human society, egoism is coexistent with altruism, competition with co-operation, mutual struggle with mutual aid.