Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1924-07-17

! CONSTITUENCIES CULTURE AND CHAR
/ ACTERLESS EDUCATION
BY BISHOP w.

ACTERLESS EDUCATION
TIME Leopold-Loeb atrocity in Chicago, in
which two students in the Chicago Uni
versity kidnapped and then brutally
murdered a young boy, is causing not a few
people = reconsider their views concerning
the power of mere education to purify per-
sonal character and promote social order and
civic welfare.
Discussing the matter, the Los Angeles
Times says
What does it mean to be 'educated?' Let
some university president tell US. r.. . What
is the university going to lead out, a moral
idiot. sane citizen with conscience? If
sensible men are going to be asked to endow
the Chicago University and other schools,
these men are going to ask with fresh en-
phasis What sort of citizens are you going
to train? Are you going to lay more stress
en- chemistry than character? Are you
going to have sneering professors make light
of the everlasting verties? =. What avails
chemistry without character? What use has
mathematics without manhood? Who can
trust the sharp mentality of the moral
idiot? :. > Wanted: Schools that teach the
essential worth of the human soul-colleges
that put first in Importance conscience and
character"
The Times-Picayune, of New Orleans,
speaks very much to the same purpose as
follows
THAT intellectually and morality are in
terrelated is SO far from true that we wonder
why astonshment is ever expressed when
mental phosphorescence is found associated
with the vilest of behavior. The Chicago
murder case is a shining instance, and last
Monday one no less apparent took place in
New York, the latter proving that the police
themselves may be misled into confusing
clevern,-s with honesty
."OnIy six months ago one Vincent de Pas
cal secured his release, on parole, from the
Wa III tato ofnTr for nina Iyt he
hypnotic appeal of four excellent essays on
advertising. One so capable should be per-
mitted to show his full worth'-So reasoned
the authorities, with commendable kindness
Of heart This week the youth is headed
back for long term in the penitentiary for
having perpetrated a most audacious swndle,
his only excuse having been that he could not
get on upon the $35 week he had been able
legitmately to earn since his release from
custody Mind, but no morals. Brain, but
no stabiliZer!"
These thoughtful editors are not advocat-
ing ignorance nor attacking education. They
are not pleading for the return of "the Dark
Ages and the extin guishment of the light of
learning. But they are teaching a lesson
which mutitudes of people sorely need to
learn, namely that intellectual culture alone
is not a cure for moral corruption nor a pre-
yentive of crime.
Very many people put upon education such
appraisement of it amounts to a veritable
superstition. They imagine that all sin pro-
ceeds from ignorance and that every form of
virtue rises spontaneously and inevitably
from enlightenment. This was the delusion
of the ancient Greeks, and the downfall of
their republics, which persisted when the peo-
pie Of Athens and Sparta were most cultured,
ought to be sufficient disproof of this ILL
conceived theory.
acknowledge is power said Sir Francis
Bacon, and it is. But the power which
knowledge supplies will be good or bad &C
cording to the character of the man who
Yields it. Indeed, Bacon himself exemplifies
the truth of this statement. He possessed
almost limitless knowledge and he used it
with almost limitless meanness Hence, he
has been justly characterized as "the wisest,
meanest of mankind
Nero was educated and had for his teacher
the philosopher, Seneca, who bears testimony
to the amiablity of his youthful pupil; but