You will soon learn, my son, that college men are, as a rule, sound in
body, sane in mind, in heart pure, in will vigorous, keen in
conscience, and filled with noble aspirations. Such men usually
interpret life, both academic and general, in sanity and in justice.
Yet, despite these happy conditions, there does prevail a danger of
college men making certain misconceptions of college life.
A misconception which is more or less common among students you will
soon have occasion to see relates to the failure to distinguish, on
the one side, knowledge from efficiency, and on the other, knowledge
from cultivation. In the former time, the worth of knowledge, as
knowledge, was emphasized in the college. The man who knew was
regarded as the great man. To make each student an encyclopedia of
information was a not uncommon aim. It is certainly well to know.
Scholarship is seldom in peril of receiving too high encomium. Yet,
knowledge is not power. Sometimes knowledge prevents the creation, or
retention, or use, of power. The intellect may be so clogged with
knowledge that the will becomes sluggish or irregular in its action.
Knowledge, however, is always to be so gathered that it shall create
power and minister to efficiency. The accumulation of information is
to be made with such orderliness, accuracy, thoroughness and
comprehensiveness, that these qualities shall represent the chief and
lasting result of knowledge. Facts may be forgotten, but the
orderliness, accuracy, thoroughness and comprehensiveness in which
these facts have been gathered are more important than the facts
themselves, and these qualities should, and may, become a permanent
intellectual treasure. These qualities are elements of efficiency.
They are forces for making attainments, for securing results. The
student, however, while he is securing the facts which lead to these
qualities is in peril of forgetting the primary value of the qualities
themselves.
On the other side, the student is also in peril of failing to
distinguish between knowledge as knowledge, and knowledge which leads
to personal cultivation. What is cultivation, and who is the
cultivated person? Some would say that the cultivated person is the
person of beautiful manners, of the best knowledge of life's best
things, who is at home in any society or association. Such a
definition is not to be spurned. For, is it not said that "Manners
make the man"? Manners make the man! That is, Do manners create the
man? that is, Do manners give reputation to the man? that is, Do
manners express the character of the man? Which of the three
interpretations is sound? Or does each interpretation intimate a side
of the polygon?
I know of a man put in nomination for a place in an historic college.
The trustees were in doubt respecting his bearing in certain social
relations. As a test, I may say, he was asked to be a guest at an
afternoon tea. Rather silly way, in some respects, wasn't it? I doubt
if he to this day is aware of the trial to which he was subjected. The
way one accepts or declines a note of invitation, the way one uses his
voice, the way one enters or retires from a room may, or may not, be
little in itself, but the simple act is evidence of conditions. For is
not manner the comparative of man? I would not say it is the
superlative.
Others would affirm that the cultivated person is the person who
appreciates the best which life offers. Appreciation is intellectual,
emotional, volitional. It is discrimination _plus_ sympathy. It
contains a dash of admiration. It recognizes and adopts the best in
every achievement, in the arts of literature, poetry, sculpture,
painting, architecture. The cultivated person seeks out the least
unworthy in the unworthy, and the most worthy in that which is at all
worthy. The person of cultivation knows, compares, relates, judges. He
has standards and he applies them to things, measures methods. He is
able to discriminate and to feel the difference between the Parthenon
and the Madeleine, between a poem of Tennyson and one of Longfellow.
His moral nature is fine, as his intellectual is honest. He is filled
with reverence for truth, duty, righteousness. He is humble, for he
knows how great is truth, how imperative, duty. He is modest, for he
respects others. He is patient with others and with himself, for he
knows how unattainable is the right. He can be silent when in doubt.
He can speak alone when truth is unpopular. He is willing to lose his
voice in the "choir invisible" when it chants either the Miserere or
the Gloria in Excelsis. He is a man of proportion, of reality,
sincerity, honesty, justice, temperance--intellectual and ethical.
The college man is in peril of forgetting the worth of cultivation.
Knowledge should lead to cultivation, but, as in the case of securing
efficiency, the mind of the student may be so fixed upon processes as
to fail to recognize the importance of the result as manifest in the
cultivation of his whole being.
In the case of both efficiency and cultivation, the student is to
remember there is no substitute. Intellectual power cannot be
counterfeited. Any attempt, also, to secure a sham cultivation is
foreordained to failure.