The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1886-09-23

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| bound; for no matter how voluminous the
rules may be, the ingenuity of vicious
persons will devise ways to defeat and
evade them. The wisest plan and the
best plan for each of you to adopt, is to
regulate your conduct by the known and
accepted rules of good behavior.
Do what your own conscience tells you
is right, and refrain from doing what
If you adopt this practice,
my word for it, you will
never be troubled by the
faculty on account of conduct unbe-
coming student of the university.
emphasize these points now, because
my experience of twenty years, as an
instructor of young men, has taught me
that many a promising student has fallen
into bad habits and into evil ways because
of sudden temptation, against which he
had not been sufficiently warned. l am
not willing that you should lay such a
charge against the faculty of the univer-
sity. l want you to be forewarned and
hence forearmed against the temptations
and snares that lie before you.
Now, young ladies and gentlemen, let
me ask you an all important question.
Why are you here? Have you any clear,
distinct object before you, that induced
you to leave home, perhaps a distant
home, to come to this institution of learn
ing? Have you thought out clearly
what you want and the proper steps to
take in order to secure it? Perhaps you
will say that you are here to get an educa-
ton, or to complete your education, by
studying the languages or sciences, or the
law. Do you know what an education is I?
1t is not violent presumption that your
ideas about an education are vague and
indefinite. Indeed,it is an exception, when
we find a man who knows3what he it talk
ing about when he speaks of education;
who can clearly define an educated person?
Now, it is great help to know clearly
what one wants. 1t goes long way to-
wards enabling him to secure the object
of his desires, and it enables him to do so
with the least loss of time and with the
greatest economy of effort
Let me, therefore, briefly, though l
hope clearly, give you my idea of liber-
ally educated man. Let me indicate what
you must do to get an education; to com
plete your education. In the first place,
however, l wish to say that 1t is to a GER
vain NCSlCC, llllolOdulliSs w oPOuh VI SOu-
ting an education," of completing ones
education"
Many people speak of an education as
if it were a certain amount of special
knowledge which man must acquire in
order to start in life--just as a merchant
must lay in @ certain stock of goods in
order to start in trade. Many teachers
look upon education as the attainment of
certain degree of mental dexterity in
pursuits that men follow for livelihood
Just as a carpenter passes through an
premiership before he becomes a mas
ter workman. This is kind of educa
ton, but it is a narrow, imperfect kind of
training. An education is never really
finished; it is never a work complete and
perfect in itself; it is not a result, but a
growth; it is not an plishment,
it is not suit of clothes, but strength
ening of muscle, and sinew, and bone; it
is not mental outfit, but training,
broadening, strengthening of the mind
itself. But though an education in the
full sense of the word is never finished,
though man is, or ought to be, continu-
ally growing in knowledge and wisdom,
yet it is convenient to use the word to de-
note a certain stage in ones mental
growth; it is convenient to use the express
sion finishing ones education" to in
dictate the termination of a certain
period devoted exclusively to self i'm
provement-the period usually spent at
school, at the college, and at the univer-
sity.
So far as the instruction received at the
university is concerned, | am afraid some
of you may imagine an education to be a
kind of necessary result from your atten
dance upon our lectures. Students act
sometimes as if they thought all they
had to do was to enter the freshman class,
and that somehow, by some process of
manipulation, they would come out at the
end of the four years finished scholars
just as pieces of brass wire are put in at
one end of pin machine and come out at
the other sharpened, polished and fur
nished with-heads. OF course all such
expectations are ridiculous and absurd,
for it cannot be too forcibly insisted upon
that no one can be educated unless he ex
ert himself. Private munifcence and
public bounty may erect splendid build
ings, supply costly appliances and furnish
an able faculty, still the greater part of
the work required for an education must
be done by the individual student. The
buildings, books, apparatus and profess
sors are helps, but study,application and
conscious purpose on the part of the stu
dent are essentials.
This heipg understood, let me give you
my idea of an educated man. l believe
he should have acquired in some way the
habit of thinking. A habit is an internal
principle that leads US to do easily, natur-
ally and with growing certainty, what we
do often. The habit of thinking, then, is
that facility in its operations and that ex
actness in its work which the understand
ing acquires from constant practice. We
frequently hear of bad habits and the hold
they have ON their victims. We do not
hear of good habits so often, probably be-
cause they are rarer; but they have just
as strong hold, and, sometimes, are just
as easily acquired. When good and use
full habits are formed they are great helps,
for they enable US to do with but little eff
fort and with growing certainty good and
useful things. All the facility that is ac-
quired by practice, whether in the use of
the bodily organs or in the mental facul
ties, is the result of habit. The athlete
that carries off the prize from the dust
and heat Of the arena, and the orator that
guides his measures through the breakers
r 10 1ahofa aorh apnalIty in,