Newark post., 1914-12-09
THE SOCIAL CENTER
A MEANS OF COMMON UNDERSTANDING

terests of persons whom she had al
ways thought unlike herself, so that
the community of the human heart
was revealed to her, the singleness
of human life.
Now if this thing does that, it is
worth any effort to promote 1t. 1t
it will do this, it is the means by
which we shall create communities.
And nothing else will produce lib
erty-you cannot have liberty
where men do not want the same
liberty, you cannot have it where
they are not in sympathy with one
another, you cannot have it when
they do not understand one another
you cannot have it when they are
not seeking common things by COM
mon means, you simply cannot have
it; we must study the means by
which these things are produced.
In the first place don't you see
that you produce communities by
creating common feeling? I know
that a great emphasis is put upon
the mind, in our day, and as a uni
versity man l should perhaps not
challenge the supremacy of the in
tellect. but | have never been con-
vinced that mind was really mon
arch in our day, or in any day that
I have yet read of, or, if it is mon
arch, it is one of the modern mon
archs that rules and reigns but
does not govern.
| once made this statement, that
university was intended to make
young people just as unlike their
fathers as possible. By which l do
not mean anything disrespectful to
their fathers. but merely, by the
time a man is old enough to have
children in college, his point of
view is apt to have become so spec
ialized that they would better be
taken away from him and put in a
place where their views of life will
be regeneralized and they will be
disconnected from the family and
connected with the world. That, |
understood to be the function of
education, of the liberal education.
Now kind Of liberal education
must underlie every wholesome
political and social process, the
kind Of liberal eductaion which con-
meets a man s feeling and his COM
prehension with the general run Of
mankind, which discOnnects him
from the special interests and mar
ries his thought to the common in
terests of great communities and of
great cities and of great states and
of great nations, and, if possible,
with that brotherhood of man that
transcends the boundaries of ma
tions themselves.
Theses are the horizons to my
mind of this social center move
ment, that they are going to unite
the feelings and clarity the COM
prehension of communities, of bod
les of men who draw together in
conference.
! And so it seems to me that what
is going to be produced by this
movement,-not all at once, by slow
and tedious stages, no doubt, but
nevertheless very certainly in the
end,- in the first place a release
of common forces now undiscover-
ed. now somewhat banked up, and
now somewhat unavailable, the re-
moval of barriers to the common
understanding, the opening of
mind to mind, the clarification of
the air and the release in that clari-
fed air of forces that can live in it,
and just so certainly as you release
those forces you make easier the
fundamental problem of modern
society, which is the problem of ac-
commodating the various interests
in modern society to one another.
| do not wonder that men are ex-
hibiting an increased confidence in
the judgments of the people, be-
cause whenever you give tne peO-
pie a chance such as this movement
have given them in the schoolhouse,
they avail themselves Of it. This
is not a false people, people
guided by blind impulses, this is a
people who want to think, who
want to think right, whose feelings
are based upon justice, whose in
stincts are for fairness and for the
light. So what / see in this move.
ment is recovery of the construc.
tive and creative genius of the
American people, because the
American people as people are SC
far different from others in being
able to produce new things, to
create new things out Of old.
I have often thought that we