Colleges in America Part 4

The fine natural instincts of the majority of American people are repelled at such physical prowess. It is not necessary to introduce the element of pugilism in order to give vent to the superabundance of youthful animal spirits.

The abuse of these outdoor sports should not make us blind to the fact that they have a legitimate use. It is wiser to control and direct them than to curb the exuberance of good feeling which they call forth, and which might find expression in less appropriate channels.

It should be borne in mind that all physical training is a failure unless the aim is to maintain and develop health, to make the student symmetrical, strong, graceful and better fitted for the duties of living.

A symmetrical development involves, likewise, _the cultivation of the moral and spiritual nature_.

The Christian religion affords the broadest educational basis, because it presents the most exalted notion of personality and its development. It takes account of the deepest facts of our nature, and teaches philosophical principles that are true for all created intelligences. Hence it is that Christianity is essential to the best educational system. It precedes and governs true education. A narrow and false conception of man leads to building only one side of his nature. The will, the conscience, the emotional and spiritual natures demand a share in the broadest culture. We cannot divide these essential elements against themselves. The religious sentiment is so interwoven with our being that it cannot be eliminated or dethroned.

It takes no subordinate place, because it is supreme. There is no true theory of life without the spiritual element. All theories of education and principles of action that do not recognize the relations of the human soul to the supernatural are out of harmony with the laws governing human life.

These truths have been impressed on the n.o.blest minds. "The greatest thought," said Daniel Webster, "that ever entered my mind, is the thought of my personal accountability to G.o.d." And Channing says that "man's relation to G.o.d is the great quickening truth, throwing all other truths into insignificance, and a truth which, however obscured and paralyzed by the many errors which ignorance and fraud have hitherto linked with it, has ever been a chief spring of human improvement. We look to it as the true life of the intellect. No man can be just to himself, can comprehend his own existence, can put forth all his powers with an heroic confidence, can deserve to be the guide and inspirer of other minds, till he has risen to communion with the Supreme Mind; till he feels his filial connection with the Universal Parent; till he regards himself as the recipient and minister of the Infinite Spirit; till he feels his consecration to the ends which religion unfolds; till he rises above human opinion, and is moved by a higher impulse than fame."

The Christian religion is in harmony with intellectual activity, because it favors application to study, and enjoins the duty of seeking truth, as well as awakens and intensifies the love of the good and beautiful. In fact, the human intellect owes its greatest triumphs to Christianity. From the beginning, the Christian religion has a.s.similated and employed human learning, and has become a great formative force in modern intellectual movements. It favors a broad catholic spirit, and is the counterpoise and remedy of a narrow range of intellectual activity. History teaches that it has been a strong incentive in the search after truth, and the chief factor in training the race to a higher civilized life. The changes in the progress in modern civilization are stimulated and guided by Christian knowledge.

The whole trend of modern thought and instruction in the higher intellectual circles is to apply Christian principles to the problems of life. In every age it has stimulated and invigorated the human mind. It has introduced n.o.bler and better ideas of life, given impetus to self-development, and has produced the highest types of manhood and of womanhood. The inspiration and encouragement in advancing general intelligence and founding the higher inst.i.tutions of learning is princ.i.p.ally due to the Christian religion.

"From the days of the Apologists onwards," says Prof. John De Witt, "learning has always advanced under the fostering care of our religion. In the schools of Antioch and of Alexandria, in Carthage and Hippo, in the old Rome on the Tiber, and in the new Rome on the Bosphorus, throughout the period of the ancient church, religion is the great inspiration of intellectual labor. How true this is of the Middle Age I need not stop to say. Religion in Anselm a.s.similates the philosophy of Plato. In the Anglican doctor it employs the dialectic and metaphysics of Aristotle. And the true father of the inductive philosophy, who antic.i.p.ated the Organon and the very Idola of his great namesake, is Roger Bacon, the Franciscan brother. It was to this wonderful and unique power of Christianity to a.s.similate and employ all the triumphs of the human intellect, that the Western World is indebted for the universities by which, most of all, learning was increased and transmitted from generation to generation. Bologna and Naples, the school of Egbert at York, the schools of Charlemagne in the New Christian Empire, with Alcuin as minister of education; the later universities, with their tens of thousands of eager students--Paris, Cologne, and Oxford--sprang into being obedient, indeed, to a thirst for knowledge, but a thirst for knowledge which, in turn, owed its existence and intensity to the unique fact that Christianity alone among religions can a.s.similate and employ all the truths of human philosophy, of science, and of literature."

The importance of promoting religious culture in our colleges cannot be overestimated. Dr. Thomas Arnold has spoken words that should be preserved in letters of gold. "Consider," he says, "what a religious education, in the true sense of the word, is: It is no other than a training our children to life eternal; no other than the making them know and love G.o.d, know and abhor evil; no other than the fas.h.i.+oning all the parts of our nature for the very ends which G.o.d designed for them; the teaching our understandings to know the highest truth; the teaching our affections to _love_ the highest good!" One of the greatest teachers, Mark Hopkins, on the fiftieth anniversary of his connection with Williams College, said: "Christianity is the greatest civilizing, molding, uplifting power on this globe, and it is a sad defect in any inst.i.tution of higher learning if it does not bring those under its care into the closest possible relation to it." The profound French philosopher, Victor Cousin, declares that "any system of school training which sharpens and strengthens the intellectual powers without supplying moral culture and religious principle is a curse rather than a blessing." And President M. E. Gates says: "In place of the fermenting despair of nihilism, the reckless immoralities of atheism, and the suicidal negations of agnosticism which have cursed liberally-educated Europe, if we are to have here in America an influence strong, binding and beneficient in our social system, as the result of collegiate education, it must be, it can be only by retaining in that system a clear faith in G.o.d, and by making prominent, as the highest aim of life, the service of G.o.d in serving the best interests of one's fellow-men."

The goal of all education is fulness of stature of men and women in Christ. Art and science are a vain show without this aim. A man may have a brain as keen as a Damascus scimiter, and yet he is wanting without piety. This moral and religious equipment is necessary for right conduct which, Matthew Arnold says, is three-fourths of life.

Other things being equal, the student that is touched and saturated with the religious life will be under the strongest motives and attain the highest culture and efficiency in life. A pure heart and a clear brain are closely related. "Our education will never be perfect unless, like the ancient temples, it is lighted from above." Martin Luther said: "To have prayed well is to have studied well," which accords with the idea of the best scholars in former days at Cambridge: _Bene ora.s.se est bene studisse_.

The Christian spirit is eminently favorable to culture and to the promotion of literary productivity. It helps to make brilliant and earnest teachers, and lends zest to professional ambition. "Other things being equal," says Noah Porter, "that inst.i.tution of learning which is earnestly religious is certain to make the largest and most valuable achievements in science and learning, as well as in literary tastes and capacities."

President Gates forcibly expresses the thought in these words: "Man is not, and was not meant to be, pure disembodied intellect. True philosophy, as well as common sense, teaches that the heart and the will have their rightful domain in every man's life. If the understanding becomes arrogant and spurns the aid of the other powers of the mind, not only does the man become an incomplete man, but his intellect itself inevitably loses poise and clearness. The man ceases to be a man, and becomes a calculating machine, and his intellect becomes subject to those sudden reversals of legitimate processes and results which the law of construction for calculating machines renders inevitable in them, but from which _life_ saves the living man, the feeling, wors.h.i.+ping soul."

There is nothing more important to equip the complete scholar and gentleman than the Christian religion. Tennyson's poetic interpretation of this truth is thus beautifully expressed:

"Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverence in us dwell, That mind and soul, according well, May make one music, as before, But vaster."

The _methods of promoting religious life in college_ are widely varied. One of the most effective means is the positive Christian faith and the personal religious influence of the college professors.

The student enters college at a vital and perilous period of life. The judgment is often immature and the life principles unsettled. In this speculative period the student may be blindly endeavoring to adjust his faith to his reason. Especially at this time he needs professors of superior reason, strength of faith and spiritual discernment to unveil the divine mysteries and aid in dispelling doubt. Ex-President Seelye, of Amherst, once said: "We should no more think of appointing to a post of instruction here an irreligious man than we should an immoral man, or one ignorant of the topics he would have to teach." It is certainly no narrow bigotry that leads the Christian public to demand that the colleges select professors loyal to the truth and the Christian Church. United with their scientific culture and professional ability as teachers they should embody Christian earnestness and purity of life, and aim to send out students with a positive and rational faith.

The parent who realizes that the moral character of his children will be fixed, in a large measure, while in college, believes that it would be moral suicide to permit them to come under the influence of a professor whose religious indifference, or unfavorable remarks about Christianity, might infuse the poison of skepticism, doubt, or indifference, and perhaps unsettle their early religious convictions, and "send them forth confused and adrift on the endless sea of conflicting notions."

The courses of study in college should be arranged so as to favor the study of the essential facts and truths of the Christian religion, and through them promote practical piety. There is no valid reason why the Christian religion, which is the chief energy and force in all intellectual culture, should not be distinctly and permanently recognized in the college curriculum. The well-established and accepted facts of the Christian religion should be gathered and studied with as much painstaking care, freedom of spirit, and loyalty to truth as the scientist studies his facts and constructs his theories. This method implies that the teacher and pupil hold in abeyance all those probable theories, speculations, and conjectures which are not established, as irrelevant to the work in hand. When this scientific spirit is more effectively introduced into the study of the Christian religion in our colleges, it will prepare the way for the restatement of doctrine so as to commend it with increasing force to every intelligent student. Christian truth is capable of being built up into a system as scientific as any other. The professor, in leading the earnest student in search of spiritual truth, will exercise tolerance and tact, so that he will not awaken suspicions of being actuated by a narrow bigotry, or appear as a lover of dogmatic teachings.

Again, it is better to select text-books that have been written by capable men who are in sympathy with the Christian religion. The student with an immature mind, who seeks to build his faith and theories of life on the teachings of those whose predilections are away from Christianity, will find it fatal to his lofty ideals and aspirations, while instruction based on Christian theism tends to lift the mind upward, and to foster a hopeful and earnest moral and intellectual life.

We grant that Christian character can only be incidentally produced through the subjects studied. The same study may be taught in different ways, and with entirely different results. The intellectual processes involved in study do not necessarily exert a spiritual influence. The aim and spirit of the professor and student will determine whether the study pursued shall contribute to the cultivation of greater reverence and exaltation of the soul. The charm of scientific study may so occupy the student's attention as to exclude all thoughts of the spiritual and eternal, or he may "look through nature up to nature's G.o.d." The student may be so absorbed with the human events and material conditions of history as to overlook the light of G.o.d's presence and guiding hand in it all.

To be liberally educated in Christian America, one should have a knowledge of the English Bible. It is the fountain and conservator of pure English and the storehouse of the most inspiring thought. Its cla.s.sic beauty and lofty speculations and sublime morality are essential to a liberal education. "Froude calls the Bible the best of all literatures. Daniel Webster read the Bible through every year for its effect upon his mind. Charles Sumner kept the Bible at his elbow on his desk, and could find any pa.s.sage without a concordance. Great men have found the Bible a great inspiration. But not this alone--as a great and inspiring literature,--but as a source of spiritual life and power, the Bible is the basis of true collegiate growth."

The study of the English Bible in colleges is important in developing the will and the conscience, and in evoking religious feelings which have a practical influence on conduct. It certainly imparts a vigorous character to education, and brings men face to face with the facts of sin and its remedy. The presence of Christianity in the intellectual life of the student is corrective of selfishness and other vices which enslave the intellect and render life a disastrous failure.

It is encouraging to note that the study of the Bible is finding a place in the American college curriculum on a level with other studies, and time is allotted to attain a certain intellectual mastery of it. The active cla.s.s instruction is as exacting and exhausting as any part of the college course. The student is led to trace the historic movements and to perceive the organic character, the literary forms and personal factors in its composition. The inductive method adopted develops original and independent students of the Word. The intellectual, devotional, and practical ends attained by this study are a powerful factor in upholding and maintaining the moral and spiritual character of the students.

Another method is that of _religious wors.h.i.+p_. Students living in a community with a separate intellectual and social life should be required to meet daily for religious wors.h.i.+p and instruction. The sacred moments spent in the college chapel by the whole college community are an appropriate recognition of the worth and power of the Christian religion, and do something to meet the spiritual needs and aspirations of the human soul. The daily gathering of the academic body to listen to a brief but suggestive exposition of scripture, and to unite in praise and prayer, cultivates reverence and devotion in the student, and will be regarded by many of them in after years as among the most delightful experiences in college life. If the religious services are not made perfunctory, but attractive and inspiring, in college, the students may pa.s.s to the university in their maturer years with devotional habits, and, likely, to avail themselves of its voluntary system of daily religious exercises.

The colleges should ever keep in view the original aim of the founders to make them centers of evangelical power. Piety, however, should not be a subst.i.tute for honest scholarly work. They should never permit their enthusiasm for an intellectual training and the growth of the sciences to obscure or conceal Him who is the Light and Life of all men. Their immediate and primary aim should be to promote intellectual culture, but this in nowise involves a departure from the spirit of the forefathers who made them agencies for defending and propagating the gospel, and for leading the youth to remember that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."

It is evident, then, that the function of the college is to unfold the intellectual, physical, moral, and spiritual life of the young people, and especially to form character that shall be fully equipped for carrying out the divine purpose of life.

THE ADVANCEMENT OF KNOWLEDGE.

Another function of the American college is to extend the objective field of knowledge. The enlarged range of knowledge in our day is owing princ.i.p.ally to the clear thinking and earnest, original, productive work done by college professors and students. They have done more to extend the empire of thought than any other cla.s.s of intellectual workers. The college is the home of the arts and sciences, and it exists to teach and promote them. Professors should have the ability and the time, more and more, to make investigations, to extend the domain of truth, and to give philosophical and scientific guidance to the nation.

The university proper, as now being developed, regards as its special function the training of men for research and professional work. Its ample facilities and its methods of work give advanced students rare privileges in any department of research.

"The modern university," says Professor Josiah Royce, "has its highest business, to which all else is subordinate, the organization and advance of learning. Not that the individual minds are now neglected.

They are wisely guarded as the servants of the one great cause. But the real mind which the university has to train is the mind of the nation--that concrete social mind whereof we all are ministers and instruments. The daily business of the university is, therefore, first of all, the creation and the advance of learning, as the means whereby the national mind can be trained."

The constructive intellectual spirit so paramount in the university begins in the college. The more formal methods of disciplinary work at the beginning of a collegiate course gradually shade off, during the closing years, into the methods and spirit of original discovery adopted in university work. In the college there is kindled in the student the love of new truth and an enthusiasm for the advancement of learning. He is led to undertake creative work, and become an active, intellectual producer, with aspirations to widen the horizon of thought and weave the best results of his discoveries into the warp and woof of the social organism.

The steps leading up to the important period in the student's life where research is for the sake of fruitfulness are traceable in the historic development and requirements of college studies. In nearly all the colleges there is manifest a growing spirit of freedom in pursuing a course of study. There is little doubt that elective courses of study are a recognized necessity and benefit. It remains, however, an open question what studies should be required and what elected, and when the work of specialization should begin. If we keep in view the fact that the primary aim of a college education is to elevate and broaden the student by training him to clear and exact thought and accurate observation and expression, we will see that, whatever the course or subject of study chosen, it is only the means to this end.

Required studies should be based upon the principle of the instrumental, substantive and interpretative elements in a liberal education. For example, the study of language is important as the instrument of thought. A knowledge of the rich and copious foreign languages opens up the wisdom of the past and present, and their study develops memory and precision, as well as stimulates and provokes thought. A knowledge of some of them is essential to the highest professional success. The student who can read and appreciate the foreign languages and appropriate their contents has a decided advantage.

Mathematics is, likewise, an instrument of thought. It is the foundation of the physical sciences and the framework of the material universe. Its study trains the mind to think in relations and quant.i.ties, and helps to obviate loose and confused thinking. Logic and psychology are also important factors in developing the power of orderly and protracted thought.

The substantive element in a liberal education is found in the study of the natural and moral sciences. The study of them is both attractive and stimulating, and helps to store the mind with useful facts and principles. A general study of science should be required. A knowledge of any favorite science involves in some measure a knowledge of others. Physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, are all more or less related. There is an interacting and interweaving of the facts and principles. Aside from the information imparted, there is no other cla.s.s of study that will so effectively train the mind to accurate habits of observation.

Philosophy is the interpretative element in education, and helps to give unity to our knowledge. No one can reasonably lay claim to be liberally educated who has not some knowledge of the philosophical principles which underlie and explain the phenomena of history and life.

These required studies should be embraced and upheld in all college courses in order to give unity and consistency to the knowledge of the student. The value of these different studies cannot be reasonably doubted. The colleges of the past developed strength by studying these few subjects. No technical studies or professional training can be subst.i.tuted for this scholastic training. The professional man especially needs this general culture, in order to escape the danger of concentrating and contracting his intellectual interest. Colleges may vigorously adhere to these scholarly requirements, and yet advantageously introduce the elective system. The student must have depth as well as breadth of scholars.h.i.+p. This can be effectively done by the specialization which the elective system affords. The character of the different studies chosen, however, should have a cohesive and logical connection in order to secure concentration and attain the best results.

The student who has had the advantages of a thorough preliminary training for admission to college, and has done faithful work in the required studies of the Freshman and Soph.o.m.ore years, should have acquired such mental discipline and reached such a plane of scholars.h.i.+p that he is prepared for the more advanced work in special studies looking toward his life work. He should then be allowed to choose, within reasonable limits, those subjects for study during the Junior and Senior years in which his natural apt.i.tudes and modes of thought would lead him to seek the highest degree of proficiency. This plan accords with the German system of education at the point where the student leaves the required work of the gymnasium and enters upon the elective work of the university. The most aggressive colleges in America have adopted this method, and are satisfied with the results.

The elective system is beset with difficulties. Liberty is always subject to abuse, but the best attainments are found where negligence and mental trifling are possible. The advantages, however, are many.

When the student decides upon a course of study suited to his real or imaginary needs, he exhibits more enthusiasm than if it is imposed.

He is spurred on to his best effort, and develops personal power in original work. He gains depth and breadth of training, and is better fitted for more extended study in a university where the means and facilities are unlimited for the highest attainments in technical and professional training.

This is the sure way to raise up a cla.s.s of experts and investigators who will keep in touch with the sources of knowledge, and, by doing original work, contribute something new that will widen the horizon of knowledge and extend the empire of thought.

PREPARATION FOR SERVICE.

The function of the college is something more than developing men and women and promoting knowledge. Its aim is, likewise, _to prepare the student for service_. The knowledge and culture gained in college are only a means to an end. The student must not only know something, but be able to do something in the sphere of life. The ultimate object of all culture is to equip a person for life's work. Milton declares that the proper system of training is "that which fits man to perform justly and skillfully and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war;" and Herbert Spencer says that "the function which education has to discharge is to prepare us for complete living." And again, "the great object of education," says Emerson, "should be commensurate with the objects of life." The mind, placed in actual conscious relations with existing realities and phenomena, should be prepared for the largest service. To know, see, and learn the truth is a preparation for doing. The high type of manhood and womanhood which a liberal culture in college aims to promote should fit the student for every walk of life, in the family, society, church, and state.

The purpose of a college education should be twofold--_professional_ and _humanitarian_--to prepare for one's vocation in life, and to cultivate humanitarian sympathies for the largest service. A person possessed of the humanitarian spirit realizes that the individual life is rooted in G.o.d, and consequently has a broader and deeper sense of human brotherhood, which enables him to keep in vital and sympathetic relation with human activity and experience. When these two aims blend, the best results are obtained, both for the individual and the community.

Aside from the scientific pa.s.sion for knowledge, there is a view of culture, as Matthew Arnold puts it, "in which all the love of our neighbor, the impulses toward action, help, and beneficence, the desire for removing human error, clearing human confusion, and diminis.h.i.+ng human misery, the n.o.ble aspiration to leave the world better and happier than we found it--motives eminently such as are called social--come in as a part of the grounds of culture, and the main and pre-eminent part."

It is to be feared that in some colleges the ideals and spirit are such as to lead the student to place power on wealth above culture, and social position above usefulness. Professor J. M. Hart estimates that nearly one-half of the students who attend Cambridge and Oxford Universities, in England, do so not for the sake of study, but in order to form good social connections. Liberal culture should not be sacrificed to preparing men for idle social life and paying places.

Colleges do not exist to train the students' powers for personal benefits, but to promote culture, to the end that a larger service may be rendered to human progress. "An education," says President Hill, "that fails in producing lofty character, sustained and nourished by a pure faith, may, indeed, fill the world with capable and masterly men in their vocation; but, unless it can soften the heart of success and open the palm of power, it only strengthens the grasp of greed, and misses the making of n.o.ble men."

The true conception of man and his duties leaves but little room for individualism or insolent self-a.s.sertion. No one can divorce himself from his fellow-men and their interests without lowering and debasing his own vocation in life, and becoming enfeebled and stunted in his own development. "The supreme object of the college," says President M. E. Gates, "is _to give an education for power in social life_."

Every advancement in knowledge should tend to strengthen the bonds of human sympathy. Learning should be turned to the advantage of the people, and thus cause intelligence and helpfulness to go together.

The great example of Christ teaches that a life of service is the only real human life. The quality of the student's character will be determined by his use or abuse of opportunity for service.