Thought For Today

When the appointment of a man of advanced and perhaps somewhat radical views to the faculty of Dartmouth College was under consideration someone wrote indignantly and sarcastically to President Hopkins that he might as well invite Lenin (who was alive at the time) or Trotzky to instruct the students. To this President Hopkins replied that, if Lenine and Trotzky were available, he certainly would invite them to do that very thing.

Here we have the true educator, the true educational spirit. President Hopkins would have presented to the students of historic old Dartmouth any man, any interest that might stir the mind of the undergraduate, lead him to think for himself, to form his own conclusions as to what is true and what is false. That is the liberal and hopeful attitude. Conservatism, timidity, bigotry say: We must not let the youth hear anything in which we do not believe, for fear it may start him to thinking for himself and put false notions into his head. Liberality, courage, tolerance say: We want the youth to hear everything that may lead him to think for himself; we want him to keep his mind wide open to all the evidence and to decide for himself where truth and wisdom lie.

Conservatism, timidity, bigotry have a strange idea of what education is. Education is the development of the individual spirit and they would hem it in and cramp it so that it could not possibly develop. They would turn a flower pot upside down over a young plant and think: How safe it is! But liberality, courage, tolerance would give it all outdoors to take its chances in.

That steadfast friend of the College, TheManchester Union also had little difficulty in comprehending President Hopkins: In its editorial, "Hearing the Other Fellow" the Union said :