Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1915-09-24
115 NEW STUDENTS.
[Continued from Page IL

to withstand the ever-present drag
towards ignorance, cruelty, and bestial-
ity, and to lead and strengthen the
forces which make for enlightenment
and freedom and spiritual worth
1.-The curriculum of a college is a
summary of the triumphs of the human
spirit in the principal fields of mans
endeavor. Every study is a record of
some notable achievement in human
ity's rise toward freedom. There pass
before the student in magnificent array
the great creators and discoveries of
the human race, the men who have
built its enduring institutions and
stamped their thought upon nations and
generations of men.
The result of living in such an at
mosphere can scarcely fail, with a SYM
pathetic mind, to be an awakening to
new ambitions and new powers. The old
spirit of work, if it was at all listless
and careless, seems entirely unworthy
and is resolutely put aside One has
been brought into new fellowship and
must conduct himself accordingly.
There is new goal for the ambition
and in the press toward it a new man.
hood comes to be.
We often hear tributes to an inspir-
ing teacher, some one to whom an es-
pecial debt of gratitude is acknowledged
because of certain awakening to new
possibilities and ideals of life. Some
times such teacher deals with subjects
in which the student has little natural
interest and which he does not care to
pursue in after life. That does not d.
minish the teachers value, because his
service is not the communication of a
body of knowledge, but insight into
great principles of life-an awakening
to the world, this world of which man
is determined to be master, for which
mastery humanity is engaged in stu
pendous and magnificent fight, and in
which fight it is possible to bear a part
of honor.
with an awakened mind old time
obstacles are surmounted and difficulties
disappear. 1t is as if scales had fallen
from ones eyes. Sometimes there is a
fire kindled within a man that makes
him hundred times his former self.
The spirit worketh all things as well as
searcheth them, and a man who has
won a new spirit of enthusiasm and of
mastery will accomplished tasks which
were once far beyond his powers.
81 have tried to bring before you two
truths, apparently inconsistent yet both
unmist akably true, in which the full
truth lies, as it so often does, in COM
bination or synthess of both On the
one hand. man must be judged by his
record and his past is likely to be the
prophecy of his future. We may say we
are through with the old days, but the
old days are by no means through with
us. We propose to turn over a new
leaf but we find the old one clamped
down by bands of steel.
But, on the other hand, man is
not a slave, not even the slave of his
own past. New occasions make new
men. Contact with new personalities,
men who have struggled and suffered
and triumphed and won their freedom,
quicken the nerves and inhame the
mind till one is ashamed of his sloth,
reused from his dullness, and empow.
! arad m daado his old fr;apdo mould =, -,
have dreamed. The old days may not
be through with us, but they need not
command US. The new leaf we wish
to turn may be clamped down, but the
clamps may be broken. The new
habits and the new associations may be
hard to acquire, but the story of the
worlds leaders is full of instances
of those who have broken with their
past and stood forth strong in new
triumphant manhood.
''In various ways we want a new
Middlebury, in quality not less than in
size. Let US bring every tradition and
custom to the bar of judgment and
make the future not the weak repeti-
ton of the past but new era accord
ing to our highest ideals and our purest
judgment. Let me remind you of some
stanzas Carlyle found in Goethe, as
particularly appropriate to our situa-
ton.
So here hath been dawning
Another blue Day:
Think wilt thou let it
Slip useless away.
Out of eternity
This new Day is born
Unto Eternity,