ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT AT THE OPENING OF COLLEGE
On the opening day of the one hundred and forty-third year of the continuous life of Dartmouth College it is right and suitable that we should seek to arrive at some common point of view concerning the end we are all here to accomplish, that we may work toward it as unitedly as an army moves forward with solid front and skirmish lines to effectively achieve results. Many of you are here for the first time, yet more have the background of one or more years of membership in the College. It is important, therefore, that new and old should focus then eyes on the same object.
The appeal of the modern college is for the symmetrical development of the whole man. Now the whole man is an indivisible and personal unit, but the various manifestations of this personality may for convenience be artificially separated into three realms of action; bodily acts, mental acts, and moral acts, the last extended to cover all acts of will, conscience, and feeling.
The man must stand or fall, succeed or fail, in proportion to the quality and balance of these separate parts of is three-sided nature. If he meet disaster or complete breakdown in one of these domains he is undone. If his body breaks he dies. If his mind shatters he becomes insane. If his morals go wholly wrong, he ends in prison, or worse.
Body, mind, and morals all depend for normal health and vigor on the right exercise and training of each. Inasmuch as 'the body is allowed to absorb what should be spent on mind and spirit, in the same measure does the man descend toward savagery. further if mind is developed to the neglect of right feelings, the-man becomes the effective instrument of low cunning, unscrupulous greed, and selfishness. Finally, a lofty and unselfish zeal for the uplifting of men if undirected by a sound mind and a clear judgment is but actively futile. Such a man is oftener a common nuisance than a power for righteousness.
Taking clearly into account these various types of failure due to lack of symmetry or faulty balance, our modern educational ideas have been worked out as the result of long experience based on observation. They represent nobody's whim or caprice but the consensus of .sober judgment. From time to time such changes are made as a farsighted experience suggests, but every promising - departure must be tested in practice before it can be approved. The times are crucial, and sane and thoughtful observers are trying to meet the educational needs of a newer social order and changing civilization, not by revolution but by evolution.
In what ways then does the college strive to meet this demand for balanced and symmetrical development of the whole man ?
To develop the body it makes the requirement of a certain amount of physical training and wisely encourages further bodily exercise in competitive outdoor sports. It seeks to develop a healthy body to render sturdy and obedient service to mind and spirit; a body strong enough to stand the strain of severe and consecutive mental activity not an over-developed body, which for its extravagant upkeep must draw time and attention away from the large requirements of steady mental labor nor clog the brain with useless blood unless the muscles are daily exercised to fatigue, after the custom with horses. On the other hand, the student who denies his body its proper care, even though it be through a genuine enthusiasm for scholarship, is often of a sad color in college, and he may easily disqualify himself for robust living while conscienciously preparing himself for for life.
What a man wants of his body is a servant, not a master. He wants alert and uncomplaining service without need of coddling or compromise.
While a man's motives, purposes, and enthusiasms arise in his moral nature, and his will, which gives him persistence and driving power, traces back to the same service, yet the. balanced judgment, the power of accurate comparison, and the effective methods without which these purposes come to nought, are forged in the intellect. Hence the burden of the formal curriculum in college is intellectual training. We train the man's intellect that he may the better accomplish the ends he seeks, and at the same time we try so to inform his mind and enrich his soul that he may give his consent and support to no unworthy enterprise.
A man's mind should be a trained and efficient workman at whatever tasks he sets it to perform. It should be developed in penetration, scope, and power.
The College seeks to give background and balance to thought and action by familiarizing men with the length and breadth of human achievement, a foundation upon which each generation must build intelligently and progressively. It strives to bring men into mental and spiritual contact with the best that the ages have produced, and to store the man with enough resources to enable him to hold his balance in success and in adversity;" and above all to make of him a worthy companion for himself as well as for others.
The aim of the college is to mould men of judgment, poise, independence, initiative, resourcefulness, endurance, courage, honor, reverence, and large capacity for friendship.
A larger proportion of these qualities grow out of faithful drudgery in studies than at first appears, provided broad choice is made among elective subjects; but it cannot be too strongly emphasized that in study rather than studies lies salvation. Every hour a student honestly works his head and his heart, he extends the reach of his mental and spiritual vision. The influence of the curriculum and the generous social life of the college conspire to stimulate the growth of these attributes.
In our day we hear a deal of ill- considered talk about useless studies, time wasted in gaining knowledge one can never use to earn a living. The chief end of man, to be sure, is not to earn a living, but to live worthily before God, and happily with his neighbors; but putting higher motives out of the account and descending to the lowest, it may reasonably be doubted if one man in a hundred ever takes any single fact from college which he can turn into money. What he should take from college are well trained faculties which he can turn into anything he chooses. It does not matter so much in what studies these faculties have been trained, but it does matter much .how much and in what spirit he has worked over them.
The lad who in fresh-baked wisdom refuses to study Greek or Latin for no better reason than that one can no longer make a living by reciting Homer or Virgil in the market place, is bedfellow to the boy of undeveloped body who will have nothing to do with outdoor sports because he can see no use in them to one who is training himself to read proof in a newspaper office.
Football, which is not played professionally in this country, is ,the leader among non-bread-earning sports, while Greek is the leader among non-bread-earning studies. To the vision of those who' can only see across the market place, Greek and football must appear equally unpractical. That one provides vigorous mental, the other vigorous physical training may thus escape notice.
The lad who comes to college to learn the details of any of the bread-earning arts is sure to be disappointed, for neither in the classroom nor upon the athletic field will he find the instruction he seeks. Let us then put aside shallow and illusive considerations of practicality, and recognize unreservedly in each subject of study what its vigorous pursuit may yield to mind and spirit in giving us a truer sense of lasting values. Let us measure its power to toughen mental sinews, to extend and refine man's stock of intellectual and spiritual holdings.
The college ideal is the whole man, a well-developed body and a well-furnished mind, both under the enlightened control of a generous spirit, a wide, sweeping, well-rounded arch of personality with, no weak faulty stone in its structure to imperil its lasting stability.
The official method of rating intellectual achievement in college is based on scholarship rank. That this is a reasonably safe measure of mental power is shown by looking up the college records of men who have reached eminence after graduation. It may not always hold true for single individuals, for there are so many causes of a man's success or undoing apart from his mental acumen and facility, as I have already tried to show. Yet high rank in college gives evidence of powers which will contribute to future achievement. Hence the college delights to honor those of its number who show this larger promise in their undergraduate days.
It is appropriate, therefore, at the beginning of the year to announce the names' of those who have gained honor rank or taken prizes in the work of the previous year.
NOTE: The President concluded his address by reading the scholarship honor list for 1910-11.
