My Dear Boy:--I am glad you want to go to college. Possibly I might
send you even if you did not want to go, yet I doubt it. One may send
a boy through college and the boy is sent through. None of the college
is sent through him. But if you go, I am sure a good deal of the
college will somehow get lodged in you.
You will find a thousand and one things in college which are worth
while. I wish you could have each of them, but you can not. You have
to use the elective system, even in the Freshman year. The trouble is
not that so few boys do not seem to know how to distinguish the good
from the bad, but that so many boys do not know the better from the
good and the best from the better. I have known thousands of college
boys, and they do not seem to distinguish, or, if they do, they do not
seem to be able to apply the gospel of difference.
You won't think me imposing on you--will you?--if before entering
college I tell you of some things which seem to me to be most worthy
of your having and being on the day you get your A. B.
The first thing I wish to say to you is that I want you to come out of
the college a thinker. But how to make yourself a thinker is both hard
to do and hard to tell. Yet, the one great way of making yourself a
thinker is to think. Thinking is a practical art. It cannot be taught.
It is learned by doing. Yet there are some subjects in the course
which seem to me to be better fitted than others to teach you this
art. I've been trying to find out what are some of the marks or
characteristics of these subjects. They are, I believe, subjects which
require concentration of thought; subjects which have clearness in
their elements, yet which are comprehensive, which are complex,
which are consecutive in their arrangements of parts, each part
being closely, rigorously related to every other, which represent
continuity, of which the different elements or parts may be prolonged
unto far reaching consequences. Concentration in the thinker,
clearness, comprehensiveness, complexedness, consecutiveness,
continuity--there are the six big C's, which are marks of the subjects
which tend to create the thinker.
To attempt to apply each of these marks to many different subjects of
the curriculum represents a long and unduly stupefying labor. Apply
them for yourself. Different subjects have different worths for the
students, but there are certain recognized values attached to each
coin of the intellectual realm.
Mathematics and pure physics eminently represent the larger part
of these six elements which I have named. Mathematics demands
concentration. Mathematics is, in a sense, the mind giving itself
to certain abstract truths. What is X^2 but a form of the mind?
Mathematics demands clearness of thinking and of statement.
Without clearness mathematics is naught. It also represents
comprehensiveness. The large field of its truth is pressed into
its greater relationships. Mathematical truth is complex. Part
is involved with part. It is consecutive. Part follows part in
necessary order. It is also continuous. It represents a graded
progress.
It is, however, to be remembered that the reasoning of mathematics is
unlike most reasoning which we usually employ. Mathematical reasoning
is necessary. Most reasoning is not necessary. That two _plus_ two
equal four is a truth about which people do not differ usually. But
reasoning in economics, such as the protective tariff; reasoning in
philosophy, such as the presence or absence of innate ideas; reasoning
in history; is not absolute. I have even wondered how far Cambridge,
standing for mathematics and the physical sciences, has helped to make
men great. Oxford is said to be the mother of great movements, and it
is. Here the Wesleyan movement, and the Tractarian movement and the
Social movement, as seen in Toynbee Hall, had their origins. Cambridge
is called the mother of great men. Is there any relation of cause and
effect, at Cambridge, between its emphasis upon mathematics and the
sciences and the great men whom she has helped to make?
Logic is the subject of a course which embodies the six marks I have
laid down. It demands these great elements in almost the same ways in
which mathematics demands them. Logic, in a sense, might be called
applied or incarnate mathematics. The man who wishes to be a thinker
should be and is the master of logic.
Language, too, represents almost one half of the course of the modern
college, and it represented more than one half of the course of the
older college. What merits has the study of language for making the
thinker? The study of languages makes no special demand on the
quality of concentration, but the study does demand and creates
comprehensiveness and clearness. The study represents a complex
process and requires analysis. The time-spirit has worked and still
works in languages unto diverse and manifold forms. Languages are
developed with a singular union of orderliness and disorderliness. The
parts of a language are in some cases closely related. The Greek verb
is the most highly developed linguistic product. It is built up with
the delicacy and poise of a child's house of blocks, yet with the
orderliness of a Greek temple. Each letter represents a different
meaning. Augment, prefix, ending has its own significance. I asked a
former Chinese minister to this country what taught him to think. His
succinct answer was "Greek."
In creating the thinker, the historical and social sciences have chief
value in their complex relationships. Select any period of history
pregnant with great results. For instance, select the efflorescence of
the Greek people after the Persian wars. What were the causes of this
vast advance? Take, for instance, the political and social condition
prevalent for thirty years in America before the Civil War. What were
the causes of this war? Or, take economic affairs--what are the
reasons for and against a protective tariff? What are the limitations
of such a tariff? Such conditions require comprehensive knowledge of
complex matters. From such mastery the thinker results,--the thinker
of consideration and considerateness. He can perceive a series of
facts and the relation of each to each.
The law of values of these different subjects in making the thinker,
is that the subjects which demand hard thinking are most creative.
Easy subjects, or hard subjects easily worked out, have little place
in the making of a thinker. One must think hard to become a hard
thinker. Subjects and methods which are hard create the inevitable
result.
Subjects which demand thinking only, however, sometimes are rather
barren in result. One likes a certain content or concreteness in the
thinking process. Abstract thinking sometimes seems like a balloon
which has no connection with the earth. If a balloon is to be guided,
it must be held down to _terra firma_. The ricksha men in Japan can
run better if the carriage has a load. The bullet must have weight to
go. A subject, therefore, which has content may quicken thinking and
stimulate thoughtfulness.
The thinker is not made, however, only by the subjects he studies. In
this condition the teacher has his place, and especially the methods
of teaching and the inspiring qualities of teaching which he
represents, have value. The dead lift of the discipline of the mind is
liable to be a deadening process. Every subject needs a man to
vitalize it for the ordinary student. Every graduate recalls teachers
of such strength. He holds them in unfading gratitude and often in
deathless affection.