1705038162

1705038163 We of the colleges must eradicate a curious notion which numbers of good people have about such ancient seats of learning as Harvard. To many ignorant outsiders, that name suggests little more than a kind of sterilized conceit and incapacity for being pleased. In Edith Wyatt’s exquisite book of Chicago sketches called Every One His Own Way, there is a couple who stand for culture in the sense of exclusiveness, Richard Elliot and his feminine counterpart—feeble caricatures of mankind, unable to know any good thing when they see it, incapable of enjoyment unless a printed label gives them leave. Possibly this type of culture may exist near Cambridge and Boston, there may be specimens there, for priggishness is just like painter’s colic or any other trade disease. But every good college makes its students immune against this malady, of which the microbe haunts the neighborhood-printed pages. It does so by its general tone being too hearty for the microbe’s life. Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and disdains—under all misleading wrappings it pounces unerringly upon the human core. If a college, through the inferior human influences that have grown regnant there, fails to catch the robuster tone, its failure is colossal, for its social function stops; democracy gives it a wide berth, turns toward it a deaf ear.

1705038164

1705038165 “Tone,” to be sure, is a terribly vague word to use, but there is no other, and this whole meditation is over questions of tone. By their tone are all things human either lost or saved. If democracy is to be saved it must catch the higher, healthier tone. If we are to impress it with our preferences, we ourselves must use the proper tone, which we, in turn, must have caught from our own teachers. It all reverts in the end to the action of innumerable imitative individuals upon each other and to the question of whose tone has the highest spreading power. As a class, we college graduates should look to it that ours has spreading power. It ought to have the highest spreading power.

1705038166

1705038167 In our essential function of indicating the better men, we now have formidable competitors outside. McClure’s Magazine , the American Magazine , Collier’s Weekly and, in its fashion, the World’s Work , constitute together a real popular university along this very line. It would be a pity if any future historian were to have to write words like these: “By the middle of the twentieth century the higher institutions of learning had lost all influence over public opinion in the United States. But the mission of raising the tone of democracy, which they had proved themselves so lamentably unfitted to exert, was assumed with rare enthusiasm and prosecuted with extraordinary skill and success by a new educational power; and for the clarification of their human sympathies and elevation of their human preferences, the people at large acquired the habit of resorting exclusively to the guidance of certain private literary adventures, commonly designated in the market by the affectionate name of ‘ten-cent magazines.’”

1705038168

1705038169 Must not we of the colleges see to it that no historian shall ever say anything like this? Vague as the phrase of knowing a good man when you see him may be, diffuse and indefinite as one must leave its application, is there any other formula that describes so well the result at which our institutions ought to aim? If they do that, they do the best thing conceivable. If they fail to do it, they fail in very deed. It surely is a fine synthetic formula. If our faculties and graduates could once collectively come to realize it as the great underlying purpose toward which they have always been more or less obscurely groping, a great clearness would be shed over many of their problems; and, as for their influence in the midst of our social system, it would embark upon a new career of strength.

1705038170

1705038171 Notes

1705038172

1705038173 hear the question raised, hear the question brought up or asked.

1705038174

1705038175 nonplused, puzzled; reduced to hopeless perplexity.

1705038176

1705038177 offhand, without previous study or preparation; extempore.

1705038178

1705038179 pithiest, most forceful; concise; most terse.

1705038180

1705038181 on your respect, in your particular case; with respect to you.

1705038182

1705038183 aspire, desire earnestly; hope.

1705038184

1705038185 women’s as of men’s colleges, because very often there are separate colleges for men and women.

1705038186

1705038187 abstraction, theory; an idea stripped of its concrete accompaniments, sometimes visionary.

1705038188

1705038189 historical perspective, the faculty of seeing into things from a point of view that is based upon the evidence or investigation of history.

1705038190

1705038191 petroleum, rock oil, kerosene.

1705038192

1705038193 suffuse, overspread, as with a fluid, tinge, or tint; fill.

1705038194

1705038195 “good company” of you mentally, so train your mind that you are a more pleasant companion to talk with.

1705038196

1705038197 boorish or caddish mind . Boorish refers to gross lack of breeding or to rudeness of manner; caddish refers to low-brow, presuming, mean, vulgar manners. A person with a boorish or caddish mind is one who is not fit companion to talk with because his interests are so narrowed down to the mean and vulgar things of life.

1705038198

1705038199 how much does this signify? How much of this is true, worth while?

1705038200

1705038201 pleading at the bar, that is what the lawyer does.

1705038202

1705038203 second-rate, second class; not of the best.

1705038204

1705038205 first-rate, first class; of the best.

1705038206

1705038207 in his own line, in his own field of interest or business; in his own profession.

1705038208

1705038209 slack, loose, careless.

1705038210

1705038211 sham, unsound, false.

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