These things are right, but are mainly
accessory. We have not all of a university when we have men and
buildings, money, students, brains. Back of a university there lies its
foundation-idea, that of academic control.
What is academic rule? It is rule over the pride of man. A college is a
place whose chief power is to inculcate humility by the means of true
learning; to establish intellectual honor and integrity by searching out
the ways of God in nature, science, and philosophy, and in letters
and in art.
It is the primary work of a university to make men humble. The Freshman
is not teachable. The Sophomore is an intellectual upstart. But by the
time a man has been beaten and conquered by the great ideals of the
world, which have pierced his bones and humbled his conceit--by the time
the race-passions and the race-sorrows have crept across his spirit, by
the time that he has been confronted with the achievements of Homer,
Empedocles, Hippocrates, Michelangelo, Socrates, Buddha, Plato, Emerson,
Gladstone, Bismarck, Lincoln, and Carlyle--his self-exaltation drops
from him like a garment.
Pages:
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100