Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

I

CLAYTON COLMAN HALL

T is a coincidence that the three most prominent candidates

for the office of President of the United States at the re

cent election are all university graduates and more or less closely associated with university administration. Mr. Taft is a graduate of Yale and a member of the corporation; Mr. Roosevelt is a graduate of Harvard and one of its board of overseers; while Mr. Wilson is a graduate of Princeton and also of the Johns Hopkins University, where he took his degree as doctor of philosophy, and was for eight years, before his election as Governor of New Jersey, president of Princeton, having previously been a member of the faculty in that university and at Johns Hopkins.

Mr. Taft, before his election to the Presidency, had held high judicial office, and was at one time indorsed by his predecessor and political foster-father as specially qualified for the office of Chief Executive, having received a special course of training in public affairs as a member of the Cabinet, by experience on special diplomatic errands to Japan and the Vatican, and as Civil Governor of the Philippine Islands.

Both Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Wilson are prolific writers. Many of the books of the former relate to his personal experiences in ranch life, in the hunting of big game and in campaigning with the rough riders during the war with Spain, and well illustrate the remarkable vitality and versatility of the author. The books of Mr. Wilson relate to American history and the principles of government as established in the United States.

For the proper performance of work involving responsibility and requiring skill, whether it be the building of a railroad bridge, the healing of the sick, or the making of a watch or a pair of shoes, it is generally recognized that special preparation by long and careful training is required; in short, that before a man can deal successfully with a difficult subject it is necessary for him to understand it.

In the selection of candidates for the high office of President

of the United States this qualification has not always been deemed necessary. Party expediency has been the first consideration, and a capacity to hold the party together and to get votes has been considered the first requisite in a candidate, who must therefore be acceptable to the party politicians. In this way the qualities of a successful politician have too often been regarded as of paramount importance, and statesmanship has been deemed a secondary consideration.

So much has this been the case that a correspondent of the London Daily Mail writing in July last of the nomination of Mr. Wilson, in whom he recognized an accomplished student of history, of civilization and of the science of government, pronounced his nomination to be a new departure in American politics, declaring that "He belongs, in fact, much more to the class of public men we are accustomed to in England than to the class that has hitherto pretty well dominated American affairs."

The founders of the American Republic were statesmen, the peers of those of the old world who were trained in the exercise of statecraft. Professor Taussig, in the Tariff History of the United States, notes the evidence of a decline in statesmanlike ability in this country in the way the tariff came to be treated as a political rather than an economic question, about fifty years after the time of the Revolution. He says of the tariff of 1828: "Taken by itself, that act is but a stray episode in our political history. It illustrates the change in the character of our public men and our public life which took place during the Jacksonian time."* And again of the tariff act five years later: "Considered as a political measure the act of 1833 may deserve consideration. As an economic measure there is little to be said. about it." The influence of party politics has dominated subsequent tariff legislation.

But if there has been a decline in statesmanship, there has been of recent years an abundance of intellectual activity in other fields. The strides of science have been long and rapid. In medicine, in surgery, in physical and chemical science the progress is continuous, and the fascination of searching into and finding

*Taussig: p. 107.
Taussig: p. 111.

out the secrets of nature has enlisted the best efforts of many minds.

[ocr errors]

In an editorial article in the New York Evening Post of July 10, 1912, there is given under the title The Scientific Atmosphere a picture of the attitude of real scientists. The occasion of the article was a notice of an address by Mr. Balfour at the unveiling of a statue of Lord Bacon in front of Gray's Inn, London, on June 27, in which he dwelt upon the influence of Bacon in pointing out the true methods of scientific investigation and thus leading to the formation of what is now called "the scientific mind." The article, enlarging upon the subject, continues: To-day we have the great company of thinkers and investigators round the globe devoting themselves to the refinements of research into nature. Coöperation in science is increasingly efficient. One discovery prompts another, and each new triumph of man over the forces of nature-each new conquest of disease, each advance in the amelioration of the conditions under which men must live and work-is the signal for another. Scientific ideals were never so high in the hearts of students as they are to-day, nor did the great task still before scientific investigators ever more powerfully appeal to devoted workers for the good of their kind."

[ocr errors]

This is an inspiring picture and we may admit that it is not overdrawn. But do these high ideals and this spirit of altruism always prevail where scientific study is pursued? The pioneers in the field of modern scientific discovery were seekers after truth and sought nothing else. Its discovery was their sole, and was deemed their exceeding great, reward. But upon the heels of new discoveries as to the forces of nature the spirit of invention was quick to follow. The practical application of new discoveries in chemistry and physics led to vast improvements in the methods of agriculture, and to the wonders of the manifold uses of electricity in transportation, in the transmission of speech, and of telegraphic communication through aerial spaces without visible medium of conduction. Great inventions have been accompanied by great pecuniary rewards to the inventors. And so the study of science has taken on a new aspect, and students have flocked to scientific schools not for any special love of

science or of truth, but in order to learn the secrets of science that they may turn the knowledge to profitable account. account. This is a natural result, but under these conditions a school of science becomes in effect a school for technical training and ranks only with other professional schools, whether of law or engineering.

The effect of the enlargement of the field of activity in the domain of science has naturally resulted in great changes in the methods and requirements at the great universities. The attraction of science and the prospect of material reward from its pursuit have led to the neglect of those studies which two generations ago were held to comprise the whole of a liberal education-the humanities. The popular tendency is to magnify the importance of the schools of exact science at the expense of the schools of history, of philosophy, of literature and languages-those which tell of the development of humanity, and of the organization of human society and of civilization. This has conduced to a certain arrogance of mind on the part of some scientists who, themselves trained upon one line only, in the stern mental discipline of scientific investigation, imagined that by that training and that discipline alone is intellectual power developed. Some thirty years ago a professor in one of our great universities, a distinguished scientist, notable for his brilliant scientific achievements, but inconspicuous for any attainments in letters, was heard to rebuke a graduate student who had made some error in laboratory work which provoked the professor's ire, in these words: Why do you try to study science? Why don't you go over to the literary side of the university where brains are not required?" It is in this contemptuous manner that minds narrowed by too intense specialization have sometimes been led to view the liberal arts.

At the commencement exercises of the Johns Hopkins University in June, the plans for the arrangement of buildings upon the new site at Homewood were made public. The published report of the announcement contains this statement: "On either side this (the main) quadrangle will be flanked by the four great laboratories of physics, geology, chemistry and biology, and at its western end will rise the largest building of the university, the academic or Gilman building, serving for both graduate and

undergraduate work and at the same time housing the university's library and reading room."

Now what is the nature of the "graduate and undergraduate work" thus briefly referred to, that is to be conducted in this one building, described as the largest of the group, and the first, according to the announcement, upon which the work of construction will be begun? In it will be the schools of history, of philology, of literature, of political and economic science; here will be viewed in perspective the rise and fall of dynasties and of nations, and their causes sought; and here will be traced the evolution of civilization and the rules by which human society must be organized if stability is to be secured. Here too must be the schools of metaphysics, of ethics, of logic and of pure mathematics: in short, all that was formerly deemed necessary in a university, and without which it would not be entitled to the

name.

These schools were not particularly mentioned in the announcement, probably because they were assumed to be present in the minds of all men when the university was spoken of, as though comprehended in the word. But unfortunately this cannot be assumed with certainty. On all sides are heard laments of the growth of commercialism, of utilitarianism, in education. And it is a natural growth if professional equipment be the sole end in view. We hear constantly of the contributions which science makes to industrial and material development, and the man in the street naturally comes to think that that is the aim and use of science, and that a school of science is valuable just in so far as it serves this end. In this way the true conception of a university and of its higher functions becomes obscured.

This confusion of purpose cannot attach in the same degree to the study of the liberal arts, the decline of which is now deplored. They were and are studied not so much with a view to immediate reward, but primarily with a view to the enlargement of the mind and the broadening of the mental vision; and it is in this field of study that a correct view of public questions may be obtained and their solution worked out. Here too is the place for setting up the highest ideals for the State and for the individual in his relations thereto.

« AnteriorContinuar »