Honor Night

The second annual meeting of Dartmouth College for the bestowal of scholarship honors was held in Webster Hall on the evening of October 31. While the attendance was grieviously small, there is reason to believe that an unfortunate choice of date was more responsible than student indifference for the poor showing. In any event, the College is not yet prepared to follow Harvard's example and relegate Honor Exercises to a secondary place on the Commencement program instead of making them a distinct feature of the academic year. As on the previous occasion President Nichols conducted the exercises until the time when Professor Richardson, as president of the local chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, assumed charge of initiating the candidates for admission into that order. The evening was brought to a close with the singing of the Dartmouth Song.

The speaker of the evening was Nathan Whitman Littlefield, Esq., of the class of 1869. Mr. Littlefield presented a carefully prepared and interesting address, a condensed version of which follows :

MR. LITTLEFIELD'S ADDRESS

THE VALUE OF SCHOLARSHIP

President Lowell in his Inaugural Ad- dress says, "No one will deny that in our colleges high scholarship is little admired now, either by the undergraduates or by the public."

If this statement be approximately true, as presumably it is, it denotes a grievous inability on the part of the public to comprehend its indebtedness, direct and indirect, to high scholarship for nearly everything of real value in our civil and religious institutions and our entire social and intellectual life; and it also denotes a deplorable failure on the part of our colleges in preserving and maintaining the spirit .and purposes which animated their founders and in resisting the currents of public opinion in present and recent times setting with hellgate urge and speed toward sensuous enjoyment and material aggrandisement. The reason for this change of public sentiment toward scholarly attainments is not far to seek.

In "the early days of the country and until recent times, most of the prizes for which men strove were won by men who had been trained in the schools. The learned professions offered the sure and almost only avenues to preferment and honor. But with the enormous development of the material resources of the country have come opportunities and means for acquiring great fortunes and the power which wealth confers without the aid of much learning.

Naturally many of the possessors of these fortunes despise or affect to despise the learning which they do not possess and without which they have acquired great material success and power; not having the faintest conception, of the causes, remote and near, which have created the conditions that have made possible their astonishing rise in the social scale.

In public life, while men of scholarly training and habits have by honorable methods risen to positions of power and leadership, great numbers of unlearned men, some by honorable methods and many by the arts of the demagogue and by ways that are dark and tricks that are not vain, have achieved equal success. In many cases they have been able to seize the government of cities and states and to climb to the highest positions in the legislative, and all but the highest positions in the executive departments of the national government.

Is it strange that the colleges have felt the pressure of strong public opinion depreciative of, and derogatory to scholarship? It was inevitable that the student body should be greatly influenced by the examples of success achieved without the aid of scholarship and by an atmosphere which chilled scholarly aspiration and destroyed the most impelling motives for study.

Intellectual torpor was creeping over some of our American colleges when President Eliot made the heroic attempt to arouse the student body of Harvard to new life and vigor by throwing overboard the ancient curriculum of discipline and culture and substituting therefor a sort of perpetual intellectual food fair, called the elective system, imported from Germany where it was established, not in the schools which correspond to our colleges, but in the universities which resemble our professional or postgraduate schools.

The invitation to pursue the line of least resistance was joyfully accepted by the students. The result has been disappointing.

The new method, from which so much was expected, has not, where it entirely supplanted the old, produced, to say the least, any better results. Professor Munsterberg sums up his observations of the working of this system in this sentence: "Every one who was not deceived by a showy exterior soon discovered the mental flabbiness and superficiality which soon resulted from the go-as-you-please method."

Undoubtedly the judgment pronounced by Professor Munsterberg was intended to be a general summary of the results of the elective method, and would be held by him to be subject to some qualifications and exceptions, yet, if the public foolishly supposed it could dispense with mental training and discipline, the intelligent part of it knows that it has no use for mental flabbiness and superficiality.

Shall our colleges then be closed or changed into professional schools, as some have suggested, and the. education of our young men be limited to the curricula of the secondary and professional schools? Certainly, if our colleges are not producing scholars, and if scholarship is of little or no advantage to a man in the struggle of life, then the usefulness of our colleges is at an end; for the theory on which colleges were founded is that scholarship is a desirable thing, and that it is valuable preparation for life.

These questions, therefore, arise:

Is it worth while for a college man to go in for high standing in his work?

Is the honor man any more likely to succeed in business and professional life than the man who dawdles through his college course content with barely passing marks?

Is high scholarship worthy of respect and honor?

I have been summoned as a witness, as it were, presumably somewhat qualified by nearly thirty-five years' experience and observation as a member of a profession which certainly affords opportunities equal to any for judging the effect and value of thorough training and discipline of the mental faculties and the acquisition of learning as a preparation for business and professional life, and I unhesitatingly and without qualification answer every one of these questions in the affirmative; and making use of the privilege of a witness to explain his answers, I will give some reasons therefor.

The benefits of high scholarship are twofold; first, to its possessor; and second, to that portion of mankind to which his influence extends. The end of all education, whether the so-called classical or scientific, is the same, to give power, efficiency and character to the individual as a member of society.

The fundamental condition of power and efficiency is self knowledge. A man must first of all find himself. He must learn his powers, aptitudes, weaknesses. The ancient and oft quoted precept written above the entrance of the temple at Delphi "Know Thyself", can be fulfilled, not simply or mainly by the introspective study of the workings of the mind, but by the reaction upon the individual of his environment, physical, and human, both of living men and of the recorded experiences and thoughts and deeds of the dead.

True scholarship,—the long, loving, and intimate companionship with great souls of ancient and modern times and the knowledge of the best creations of the human mind in literature, science, art, and philosophy results in that almost indefinable thing called culture. Though scholarship without culture is possible, culture without scholarship is impossible.

If a man is to succeed worthily, he must have power, skill, wisdom, and character. In so far as scholarship produces these, it prepares a man to live a useful and successful life among his fellow men, according to the measure of his native ability. True scholarship produces mental power; because it brings a man into contact with ideas and ideals which are the greatest forces in the world. The thoughts of the master minds of the race never die and they never lose their power. As radium without cessation and without exhaustion sends forth radiations which powerfully affect living tissues, so the emanations of their genius permeate the intellectual fiber of all who come within range of their influence.

Sophrosune is the last and highest word of the philosophy of Socrates and Plato. Virtus to the Roman was the highest attainment of a perfect human life. In Hebrew life and literature the purpose of their laws, the teachings of their prophets, the song of their poets, all found their end and consummation in the great word, Wisdom, and in that one divine man, "who of God was made unto us Wisdom." None of these words is a barren philosophic abstraction, but the summing up of these qualities, self-control, courage, vigor of mind and body, and reverence for that which is divine, which make a human being, a man.

What are the chances of success in life for men who have power, skill, wisdom, and character? To ask the question is to answer it. There never was a time in the history of the world when men of high scholarship were more needed and in greater demand.

Of all the idola theatrae which have deceived mankind, none has been more specious and pernicious than the notion which has prevailed in some quarters that high scholarship unfits a man for success in business and professional life. It might as well be argued that because some distinguished college athletes have not proved successful in business or professional life, therefore all athletic training is useless. It is true that men of high scholarship have sometimes failed to attain the same superiority in after life which they manifested in college, but to assume that their scholarship was the cause of their failure is to beg the question completely. They probably failed in spite of their scholarship, not because of it.

In every department of public life the call is for experts, for men trained to the highest point of mental efficiency. The old weapons with which ambitious men fought their way to place and power, corruption, chicanery, log-rolling, and demagoguery in general, are fast losing their effectiveness. The times when an applicant for a place in the service of the United States, who was informed that competitive examination would be necessary and innocently asked whether the examination was competitive in scholarship or in pull, has long since passed. There is still an abundance of men in our state and national legislatures and in executive positions who have no mental training worthy of the name, who cannot think straight, who are many of them intellectual and moral crooks, mere pawns to be moved about on the political board by the masters of the game, but the men of real influence and power and leadership in Congress and in our state legislatures are and have been, with few exceptions, men of superior education.

The great debates during the last session of Congress upon the Tariff Bill and the Railroad Bill, so-called, have demonstrated the superiority of the men of learning and trained intellectual powers. When in those splendid contests that handful of Progressives lined up against the host of Conservatives, confident in the strength of numbers and of long continued prestige, success,and power, the odds seemed hopelessly against Progressives. But from start to finish they had the ball in their opponents' territory all the time. This is not the time nor the place to discuss the merits of the cause, and I pronounce no judgment thereon, but those debates will go down to history as among the greatest and perhaps the very greatest forensic efforts of modern times.

Two men stand forth in those conflicts, the protagonists of their respective forces—Aldrich and Dolliver. One trained in the school of practical politics, master of all the arts and knowledge of the experienced legislator, self taught and admittedly profoundly learned in the commercial and industrial history of the country, great in the art of disconcerting his opponent by a well directed question or a terse statement of fact, unequalled in running debate, and generally supposed to be the best informed man in the United States Senate on questions of tariff and finance: the other man of broad and generous scholarship, conspicuous in college for his industry and ability, endowed by nature with the gift of eloquence, trained by his experience as a lawyer in the art of persuasive and convincing reasoning, and accustomed to long continued mental effort.

When these giants grappled in debate, the Senate listened and the country read. They were not greatly surprised that the younger man should far outmatch his rival in the power and brilliancy of his speeches, for they knew his great gifts as an orator; but they were amazed, chagrined, or delighted, according to their predilections to see the great constructor of tariffs time and again overthrown and his shoulders placed squarely to the floor on questions of fact. Dolliver triumphed mainly because he knew more than his opponent in his opponent's chosen field, and also because he had cultivated to the highest degree his great natural gifts of expression and reasoning.

The diplomatic service, long distinguished for the eminent scholars who have occupied its highest places, men like the Adamses, father, son and grandson, Jay, Pinckney, Phelps, Lowell, White, Hay, and Choate, to mention only a few of the scores of men eminent for learning who have filled the office of ambassador and minister plenipotentiary, must now be entered in its lower grades through the door of a most rigid and exacting examination, through which only men of thorough scholarship can hope to pass, and the highest grades are now generally reached by gradual promotion from the lower.

The same high standards of mental training are required for success in the professions.

Admision to the bar can only be gained today through the door of a rigid examination in all jurisdictions where important legal business is transacted.

Only college graduates can obtain admission to the best of our law schools, and men who maintain the highest standing, graduating from those schools, are in great demand by the leading law firms of the country to fill positions in their offices.

As a rule the men who excel as students in college, excel in the professional schools and in the practice of their professions.

The table prepared by Professor Lord of this college and published in the ALUMNI MONTHLY MAGAZINE showing the relative accomplishments in business and professional life of Dartmouth graduates of the higher and lower grades, demonstrates the value of high scholarship as a preparation for a man's lifework.

We do well, therefore, on this occasion to honor those men who, by their industry, native ability and conscientous discharge of their duties as students, have won distinguished honors.