CHAPTER XXII

GENERAL RESULTS

As I review the history of the higher education in the United States for more than two and one-half centuries the question emerges, What has been the result of this education upon the American people? For the lives that have been lived in the service of this cause have been many, the treasure expended and the devotion given have been very great. Are the results worthy of the manifold expense?

One great result of the higher education has been the promotion of the intellectual unity of the American people with the history of the world. The modern world is the inheritance of the most precious treasures of the ancient. The noblest results which the Hebrew obtained through right conduct and holiness of character have, by intellectual interpretation, entered into the life of every civilized people. The sense of apprecia tion and of beauty which Greek culture enlarged, and the sense of force, of government, and of action which Roman civilization developed, have become a constituent part of modern life, national and individual. These principles, appreciations, and applications of great human forces of twenty and more centuries have been largely maintained by the university. One should not allow himself to say that had there been no university of Bologna, of Paris, or of Oxford, that the most precious results of the highest civilization of the great peoples of history would have been utterly lost; but the conditions do oblige one to affirm that had there been no universities in Italy or France or England, when the light of the Renaissance shone the earliest or the brightest, the treasure-room of the universities' storehouse would have lost not only many of its noblest glories, but also it would have been deprived of those works through which the universities have

largely contributed to the worth of the whole world. It is certainly true that had there been no universities or colleges established in America, the relation of America to ancient civilization, and even to that of the Middle Ages, would have been very slight. The American institution has brought America into unity with the life of civilization.

This result becomes all the more significant by reason of the tendency of a prosperous democracy to break with all the past. A prosperous democracy desires to make all things new. It does make, or at least in its own thought it does succeed in making, a new heaven and a new earth. For the prosperous democracy is in peril of becoming intoxicated with its own triumphs. It is inclined to believe that it has no relations with anybody or anything. In this condition, which calls out at once both admiration and lamentation, the university stands as the preacher of conservatism. It declares that the past bears to the present its experiences quite as thoroughly as to-day offers to the present its duty. It declares that man is still man in all times. The questions which Socrates asked are the questions which Browning propounds, and those questions are still as commonly put forth as when Socrates stood in the market-place or Plato walked beneath the plane trees of the academy. Plato still rules in the realm over which time has no limits. In all modern works one hears the voice, and not the echo, of a still vital past.

The value of such a contribution to all intellectual life it is impossible to esteem too highly. How poor the intellectual or social life of the individual which begins without at least some heritage! The peril is that such a life will pass into intellectual bankruptcy even before it has conceived a noble thought or been moved by the noblest emotions. It is a life which dies before it is born. Humanity progresses because it receives the resultant of all the past. Education purifies, refines, ennobles, and enriches this resultant and then passes it over to the future. Such is the work of the university and such are its peculiar duties in a prosperous democracy. This condition is simply an application and illustration of the great law of evolution: the present receiving the past, the future receiving what is now the present, enlarging, improving, enriching, and developing. Such a contribution of

conservatism has the American college made for the enrichment of American life.

In the application of the principle of intellectual unity the university has served to reconcile diverse educational ideals. In the higher education several ideals are emerging with distinctness and several forces moving. One ideal which the university embodies, according to certain interpretations, is the giving of a practical education. Another ideal, according to other interpretations, is the giving of a scientific education. A third ideal, according to still other interpretations, lies in the giving of an education which is embodied in the word discipline. A still further ideal is represented in the word culture. It is also said by other masters that the education of the university should be professional. In behalf of each of these ideals much might be| offered. The education given by the university should be practi cal; it should relate to the practice of one's calling. It should be concerned with things and with actual life. It should, both as a cause or as a result, give one his living. But there is a practical that is high and a practical that is low. The most practical thing in education is to promote the power of thinking. Manual edu cation without cerebral is of small consequence. The most prac tical thing in the world is to make a man think. Such is the purpose of the university. The scientific ideal also is worthy. It has close relation to the practical. By many, a scientific edu cation is thought to be more practical than a linguistic or a philosophical education. A scientific education may be either professional or liberal. If designed to train one for engineering, it has all the merits and demerits of a professional training. If it is designed to train one for complete living, it is essentially liberal. Scientific studies are a means to an end, or in the case of professional training an end in themselves. The disciplinary ideal, moreover, has not passed away. Its primary purpose to transmute the student's mind into an engine for accurate, profound, comprehensive thinking. This ideal may be called primary, fundamental, comprehensive. It belongs in no small share to the high school; it belongs also to the professional school. It can never pass away as an element in any large conception of education. The ideal of culture is often made to appear an

is

tagonistic to the ideal of discipline. Culture represents the enrichment of the mind and discipline represents the power of the mind. The man of culture is the one who knows what is most worth knowing. It represents attainment rather than achievement, a condition rather than a force, an intellectual state rather than an intellectual energy. To the making of such a great type of humanity the university may well address itself. The professional ideal has in recent years emerged. Its emergence and prevalence threaten the continued and worthy existence of the undergraduate college. It is declared that in the receiving of a professional education the student may find at once the advantages of the disciplinary, of the cultural, and of the practical education. To such a conclusion the university cannot assent. Professional studies represent a necessity and a degree of intellectual power which can be best secured only through the undergraduate training. The questions involved in theology, medicine, pedagogy are abstruse, abstract, and complex. Only minds of the finer quality and largest power can secure the richest advantages through professional training.

For the educational process is to be consecutive rather than simultaneous. Primary, secondary, collegiate, professional represent the successive gradations. The university seeks to put every part and element of the educational programme in its proper place. It wishes to make accurate adjustments. It seeks to secure the proper relations of living to life, of educational theory to educational practice. It tries to make the practical scientific in method, if not scientific in content; to make the scientific disciplinary, to make that which is disciplinary cultural, and that which is at once practical, scientific, disciplinary, and cultural of consummate value in professional service as well as in largest and richest life. It seeks largeness, adjustment, wholeness.

But the function of the university of unifying intellectual interests applies in no small degree to all high conditions and relations. A democracy tends toward disintegration. The centrifugal tendency is stronger than the centripetal. The interests of different classes and of different sections militate against each other. The interests of a farming community like

Iowa is antagonistic to the interests of a manufacturing com monwealth like Pennsylvania. In this condition the university in a democracy represents a force of combinations and of coöperations. The associations into which not only the teaching force but also the student body organize themselves throughout the country are many and of power. The fraternities of students, in which, too, are enrolled as honorary members many teachers, represent the more obvious form of this union. But besides this form are also found debating leagues, political organizations, and also many scholastic associations. These scholastic associa tions cover almost every form of college work and condition, physiological, scientific, historical, and economic. There is also, be it said, growing up among all the colleges an esprit de corps. This spirit shows itself in a feeling that if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; and if one member rejoices all the members rejoice with it. If, for instance, a president is asked to resign in a college in Maine for reasons that do not seem to be sufficient to the college presidents in Illinois, the college presidents in Illinois and neighboring states are inclined to inves tigate and to give judgment. If a professor in a college in California be removed in a way to show that academic freedom may be impaired, professors in colleges of New York and Mas sachusetts are inclined also to investigate and to give judgment; and in both instances not simply for the purpose of giving aid and comfort to the ones who are suffering, but also to prevent a repetition of similar offenses. The esprit de corps of the col leges is among the more recent of the academic growths, and it is full of promise for the happiness of the colleges and also for the unification of American life.

It may be added that in the colonial period the existence of the colleges was a potent means of colonial fellowship. Each college was a point of assemblage for its colonies. Each college also attracted students from other colonies. All the colleges formed a sort of fraternity in learning, and this sense of brotherhood reënforced the sense of brotherhood in civic destinies. The union of the colleges promoted the union of the colonies.1 The

1 Tyler's "History of American Literature,” vol. ii, pp. 308, 309.