The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-06-28
THE COLLEGIATE BATTALION.

paper) and "bid adieu to their alma mater"
Four hundred fantastic canes, 400 silk hats,
400 essays and orations, dipping boldly into
the infinite mysteries, settling all questions
of science, ethics, aesthetics politics, theology,
religion. The Journal welcomes them joy
ously, hopes they may attain to their ideals,
and not at forty find themselves constructing
woodsheds with the material of their present
air castles What will become of themY Some
will teach, some preach, some enter on the
study of law, medicine or literature.
Some will 60 to Greece or Harvard.
Some to England or to Rome;
Some will go to see their uncle,
More perhaps will stay at home,
the old college song puts it.
1t is the stay-at home element the Journal
is interested in. The fraction of the male
population which secures a college education
in the United States is per cent. 1t is
small body, but it only needs glance at the
record Of the useful and successful in life to
see that in the college men we have the saving
remnant. College men will direct the society
of the future, and by their acts promote the
well or ill being Of the coming generation
The question of the college is not the froth
culture on the one hand and of scientific
training on the other. The line between Mr..
Huxley and Mr.. Arnold in England, or be-
tween Presidents Eliot and McCosh in our
country, is not the line which divides the
thought of the day The central thought of
the college faculty, the college trustee and the
college student should be higher than that of
professional education, for this simply
means that which shall enable the possessor to
pursue, with advantage to himself some
wealth producing speciality Such an educa-
ton makes the individual useful to his fellows,
who must have doctors, preachers, lawyers,
journalists; but its ultimate object is to gain
living for the individual himself.
Still higher is the object commonly known
as culture, the acquisition of those ideas and
knowledges and the training of those powers
which conduce to the happiness of the indi-
vidual. Culture, in this light, may be consid-
cred an end unto itself; it rises and culmi-
mates with the Individual; it is high, but not
the highest.
The view Of college life and education that
is growing in the eyes of the public does not
stop with the benefit accruing to the individ-
ual, simply because Of his acquisitions he may
take advantage of his fellows, or be socially
and Intellectually self-sustaining and indie
pendent-his mind to him kingdom. The
college education that keeps up with the best
thought and hope of the present will be
neither classical nor scientific in the present
restrictive sense of these terms; it will be
universal. It's end, the usefulness of the stu
dent not only to himself and his fellows in
business, but to society at large. The techni-
calities Of science are not an end in them
selves; only as they Undue the mind with
general and abstract ideas do they have in
inculcate the scientific spirit, which is the
love of truth for its own sake, that they are
Of value. Language and history are to be
studied to the same end and in the same way
These have no use in themselves, and are
only of value as the modern scientific idea of
method and use is applied to them. The old
speakers and ideas are dead. In fifty
years the four hundred in whom is
our hope and trust will have passed away.
The schools which study the best that has
been thought and said in the world as an end
in itself, will be closed, their own progeny
must be mastered with the Darwinian idea
that they must be known in order that
the student may know himself; must be taken
into his consciousness before he car achieve
freedom. History enables the student to see
himself through the eyes of the past; it also
reveals potentially what is in the individual,
and so what is in the race.
The problem Of the student, then, is in the
future even while he works in the present
Man and his institutions are subject to slow
progressive change. The policy of each gen.
GRAFTON determines largely that of the next
The happiness of those who follow is, in the
widest philanthropy, as important as that of
the present generation.
The education Of these four hundred is not
completed. 1t is commencement; and so
should be the colleges they leave behind
them. Only scholars are masters; only to
man thinking will the people yield. If these
who come from our schools will lay aside self
ishness, stand by their ideals, take things by
the right handle study the future in the
mast thew will not err with mankind or forfeit