The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1907-02-23

Continued from Page one.)
it is demanded by your own self-re-
spect. unless you are content to &C
knowledge that you are unfit to gov
ern yourself and have to submit to the
| rule of somebody else as a master
and this is what it means if you do
not do your own part in government
Where Education Fails.
Like most other things of value,
education is good only in so far as it is
used Alright, and if it is misused or if
it causes the owner to be so puffed up
with pride as to make him misestimate
the relative values of things it becomes
a harm and not a benefit There are
few things less desirable than the arid
cultivation. the learning and refine
ment which lead merely to that intel
lectual conceit which makes a man in
demo cratic community like ours
hold himself aloof from his fellows
and pride himself upon the weakness
which he. mistakes for supercilious
strength. Small is the use of those
educated men who in after life meet
no one but themselves, and gather in
which they do not understand and to
advocate remedies which have the
prime defect of being unworka bic. The
judgment on practical affairs, political
and social, of educated men who keep
aloof from the conditions of practi-
cal life, is apt to be valueless to those
other men who do really wage effec-
tive war against the forces of baseness
and of evil. From the political stand
point education is harm and not
benefit to the men whom it serves
an excuse for refusing to mingle with
their fellows and for standing aloof
from the broad sweep Of our national
life in a curiously impotent spirit of
fancied superiority. The political
wrongheadedness of such men is quite
as great as that of wholly uneducated
men; and no people could be less
trustworthy as critics and advisors.
The educated man who seeks 10 con-
sole himself for his own lack of the
robust qualities necessary to bring sue
cess in American politics by moaning
over the degeneracy of the times in
stead of trying to better them, by rail-
ing at the men who do the actual work
of political life instead of trying him
self to do the work, is a poor creature
and, so far as his feeble powers avail,
is damage and not a help to the
country. You may come far short of
this disagreeable standard and still be
a rather useless member OF society.
Your education, your cultivation, will
not help you If you make the mistake
of thinking that it is a substitute for
ties which in the struggle of life bring
success to the ordinary man without
your advantages. Your college train
ing confers no privilege upon you save
IL.
1t puts upon you the obligation to
show yourselves better able to do GER
tain things than your fellows who have
not had your advantages. If it has
served merely to make you believe
that you are to be excused from effort
in after life. that you are. to be excus-
ed from contact with the actual world
of men and events. then it will prove
curse and not blessing. If on the
other hand you treat your education
as a weapon the more in your hands.
a weapon to fit you to do better in the
hard struggle Of effort, and not as ex-
cusing you in any way from taking
part in practical fashion in that strlle7
gle, then it will be a benefit to you
Let each of you college men remem-
Der in after life that in the funda-
mentals he is very much like his fell
lows who have not been to college, |
and that If he is to achieve results, in |
stead of combining, himself exclusively
to disDaragement of other men who