THE UNDERGRADUATE’S PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE
But this hint at the somewhat free-and-easy life of the fraternity chapter-house should not leave the impression that the American undergraduate is, as a rule, a thoughtless creature or that he fails to formulate a philosophy of life. Gilbert K. Chesterton remarks, “There are some people, and I am one of them, who think that the most practical and important thing about a man is still his view of the universe.” Certain beholders of collegiate conditions have evidently become acquainted with only those students who have thoughtlessly taken their serious views, in second-hand fashion, from their ancestors or from current opinion. These spectators have perhaps justly concluded that the undergraduate has no view of life—no view, at least, which is complimentary to him.
The Main Hall, University of Wisconsin
Such an impression is not general among those who are familiar with the inner working of the undergraduate mind and have watched the result of his philosophy in practical works. Many of the vital movements of the time have originated among these seemingly thoughtless college men. It was in a small room at Princeton, in the year 1876, that Cleveland H. Dodge, W. Earl Dodge, and Luther D. Wishard, after earnest conversation regarding the moral and religious life of the institution, decided to send delegates to the next year’s Convention of the International Committee of Young Men’s Christian Associations, held in Louisville, Kentucky. This delegation presented to the International Committee plans for the Student Young Men’s Christian Association at Princeton. Other groups of undergraduates took similar action both in America and in other countries, until at present the World’s Student Christian Federation includes 148,300 students and professors in its membership. These federated movements represent twenty-one nations. In connection with these societies during the last college season 66,000 students met regularly for Bible study.
These associations at the colleges have given rise to many other organizations which have stimulated the educated life of the world. The Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, which originated in connection with a student conference at Mount Hermon, Massachusetts, in the year 1886, has been responsible for enlisting thousands of collegians who have been sent by churches and Christian organizations to serve in foreign lands. This student missionary organization is also accomplishing an educational work in familiarizing undergraduates with the social, political, and religious conditions of foreign nations. The college Christian associations now have 163 graduates among their employed officers in the institutions of higher learning in North America.
Undergraduate philosophy of life is an evolution. It consists of three stages: the first is characterized by a sense of calamity or fear as the student leaves behind the observances and conventional creeds of childhood, held with unquestioning and often unthinking assent. He begins to think for himself. He enters an atmosphere of thoughtfulness and scientific discovery, an environment in which facts come before opinions. His first alarm is because he thinks he is losing his religion. He says, like the prophet Micah, when the hostile Danites took away his images, “Ye have taken away my gods ... what have I more?”
In the second period of his thinking he changes his early ceremonial god for breadth of mind. He revels in his impartial view of men and the universe. By turns he calls himself a pantheist, a pragmatist, or an agnostic. His religious position is at times summed up in the description of a young college curate by a bishop who said the young man arose in his pulpit with a self-confidence begotten of fancied wisdom, saying to his expectant hearers: “Dearly beloved, you must repent—as it were; and be converted—in a measure; or be damned—to a certain extent!”
The third stage of the undergraduate’s philosophy is usually in line with constructive action. He begins to be interested in doing something, and practice for him, as for men generally, helps to solve the riddle of the universe. The best test of college theology or college philosophy is its serviceableness, its power to attach the student to something which needs to be done, and which he can do. Many an undergraduate whose college course has seemed an intellectually unsettling period has found himself upon solid ground as soon as he has begun seriously to engage in the world’s work.
Indeed a strikingly aggressive social propaganda is now in operation in the North American colleges. The college student, like the modern American, is a practical being and is interested in securing practical results. His first question regarding any movement usually is, “What is it doing that is really worth while?” Recently a graduate of an Eastern university was secured to give his entire time to the study and promotion of social service in the colleges of the United States and Canada.
An example of such service is demonstrated by the social work that the University of Pennsylvania is doing in connection with its settlement house in Philadelphia, which is owned and conducted by the Christian Association of the university. The settlement, erected in the river-front district, immediately opposite the university, at Lombard and Twenty-sixth streets, consists of a group of buildings built at a cost of $60,000; a children’s playground adjoining the house; an athletic field across the river; and, forty miles from Philadelphia, a beautifully situated farm of sixty-four acres, used for a camp for boys and girls, for mothers and children, in the summer months. Every year one hundred students and members of the faculty take part in the active service and support of the settlement. Among the activities are the following: Boys’ and girls’ and adults’ clubs; industrial classes; athletics; dispensary; modified milk station; visiting physician; resident nurse; public lectures; entertainments; religious meetings; social investigation; political work; and the usual activities of a playground, athletic field, and summer camp. Former residents and volunteer workers of the settlement are scattered throughout the world engaging in social and religious work. Four are medical missionaries in China, one is a missionary in Persia, another in Honolulu, another in South America, while three are holding prominent positions in social work in this country.