The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1905-04-02

Is the University Becoming
ASanCtuary Of MammOn?
BY sEYMo uR RANSOM.

tuted their character and their ability in
order to wheedle money out of fiamboy-
ant mlliionaires. The upshot of it all was
ehat university eenters throughout the
uiiioh became architectually more attrac-
I'VE and ethically more repelling.
IN what Is perhaps the most sublime and
the most beautiful specimen of prose In
me hngnsh language, Edmund Burke
says that with the French revolution
passed forever the age of chivalry, 70 be
succeeded by the age of calculators, eco
honlsts and sophists. With equal truth it
might be said that, Influenced by the Sc
ductiVe power of mammon, colleges and
universities throughout this country of
ours nave within the last three decades
iost tremendously in moral height,
FORGETTING as they have the proud posi-
ton OF seeking truth for truths sake and
becoming In many cases eloquent apostles
OF paneful isms." They have ceased to
think straight and to feel deeply and to
act sincerely.
Wealth" says Lowell, may be an ex-
cellent thing, for it means power, 1t
means leisure. 1t means liberty. But these
divorced from culture, that Is. from intel
ligent purpose, become the very mockery
or their own essence-not goods but evils
fatal to their possessor-and bring with
them, like the Nieblung board, doom In
stead of a blessing. A man rich only for
himself has life as barren as that of
the serpent set to guard a buried treas
ure. l am saddened when 1 see our sue
cess as nation measured by the number
of acres under tillage or bushels Of wheat
exported; for the real value of country
must be weighed in scales more delicate
than the balance of trade. The gamers
j of Sicily are empty now, but the bees
from all climes still fetch honey from the
| tiny garden plot of Theocritus. On map
of the world you may cover Judea with
| your thumb Athens with finger tip.
and neither of them figures in the Prices
Current; but they still lord 1t in the
thought and action of every civilized man.
Material success is well, but only as the
necessary preliminary of better things.
| The measure of a nations true success
! is the amount it has contributed to the
thought. the moral energy, the intellect
! ual happiness, the spiritual hope and con-
| ISOLATION Of mankind
How pregnant with truth are these
words when applied to a university! How
| bitingly do they condemn many a college
and many university throughout this
country today The ideal held up by Low
ell is, indeed, the very antithesis of all
that Is represented In many modern
University" backed though 1t be, by
millions, honestly or dishonesty come
| by. Wealth alone, however enormous.
cannot make a university great or
| keep 1t so. That can only be done by
| keeping faith with nigh ideals. Athen-
| ian, British, German and American
| culture are all In one line The
history of all these, though differing
In detail is yet identical in one essential
feature. The foundation of Greek cul-
ture was laid and It's development wrought
| in the days when Athenians. poor indeed,
were resisting the encroachments of Mace
don. Germany's intellectual renaissance
| the Towering of her great universities
| took place not in periods of imperial sue
cess but at the close of the Napoleonc
wars when the fatherand was torn and
bleeding and poor. oxford and Cambridge
became, and remained. the intellectual
glory of England long before a Cecil
Rhodes made his millions in South Africa.
| Aberdeen and Edinburg won lasting fame
centuries before a Carnegie came to en-
| dow them with his millions amassed be-
yond the seas. Harvard and Yale and the
| University of Virginia are monuments to
men and women who were self-sacrificing,
prayerful and not rich in this worlds
! goods.
1t is Ruskin who in his protest against
| the oommercialism of the age, says that
money cannot grow an avenue of oaks
| enc thousand years old" Neither can
| tho spirit of materialism-the dull-faced
| Philistinism of today--charm into being
I
the world in triumphs of applied science.
| In achievements of great scientific dis
| coveries-truths and principles that con-
| Tribute to 1.-The thought, the moral en-
eigy, the intellectual happiness, the
| spiritual hope and consolation of man
| kind''-this country of ours has not yet
| taken high rank. The reason for this
| deficiency is that the universities have
| became enslaved by what is known as
| the scientific spirit" In the modern
| university the man of letters is re-
| garded as an interesting antique-as a
| sort of anachronism-and is become
| the somewhat pitiful object of simulated
| sympathy He exists, If 1t all, by toll
erance and his shadow is rapidly grow
| ing less
| Mr.. Lowelrs Injunction uttered in 1887,
| has been ignored. Let the humanties,"
said he, BE maintained undiminished
| in their ancient right. Leave in their
| traditional pre-eminence those arts that
were rightly called liberal; those studies
! that manumitted the modern mind; those
| in which brains of finest temper have
| found alike their stimulus and their re-
pose taught by them that the power
| of intellect is frightened In proportion
| as 1t is made gracious by measure and
| symmetry. Give us science, too. but give
| first of all and last of all the science
| that ennobles life and makes Ii geenrous.
| / stand here as man of letters and must
| speak. But l am speaking with nc ex-
| elusive intention. No one believes more
| firmly than I in the usefulness. l might
we'll say the necessity, of variety in
study, and of opening the fullest scope
possible to the prevailing bent of every
mind when that bent shows itself to be
so predomnating as to warrant it.
| Many sdedness of culture makes our
| vision clearer and keener in particulars.
| For after all the noblest definition of sci
| ence is that breadth and impartiality of
| view which liberates the mind from spe-
| cialties, and enables it to organize what
| ever we learn. so that 1t become real
| knowledge by being brought into true
| and helpful relation with the rest"
| 1t is not in the larger sense of Lowelrs
that the modern scientific spirit has given
| impulse and direction to university life.
Rather has the scientific spirit been deter
mined, or at least content. to circumscribe
intellectual effort within severely narrow
limits, specializing in the extreme its
efforts resulting either in tentative propo-
sitions of little value on the one hand
| or in Immediately practical and temporary
results on the other. More unfortunate
| than all else is the fact that the UNIVERSE
| ties. enslaved by this scientific spirit are