The Cap and Gown

by Charles Reynolds Brown

He should know something of history. There is too much of it for any one man to master it all, but he should have some genuine understanding of the chief sources of history, and of the main courses and movements of thought and life in the world. He should enlarge his own brief and local experience by some participation in age-long, national, and international experience.

He should know something of science. The general method of science is the same, whether observed in chemistry, zoology, botany, or elsewhere. One may never be a specialist in any single science, yet he may know the scientific habit of mind and appreciate the fundamental positions of science sufficiently to make him a more effective worker in his own chosen field, which may, indeed, lie quite over the divide from any directly scientific pursuit.

He should know something of the organized life of men through the study of sociology, economics, and civics. He should have some understanding of institutional life in its various industrial, political, and ecclesiastical expressions.

He should feel in some measure the power of that group of studies which have to do with mental and moral processes considered apart from the world of outward phenomena, psychology, ethics, philosophy, religion. He needs to relate his individual activity to the larger life of the whole by some genuine grasp of fundamentals in his thinking.

No single student can be at his best in all these or can even make any two of them his major interest, but a certain elementary knowledge of all these fields, thorough as far as it goes, is a better foundation for a genuine education than the most elaborate training in any one specialty.

When one builds a pyramid it must come to a point somewhere. It can only be built, with the conditions as we find them, at a certain angle, for material will not lie on a slope too steep. How high it may be, therefore, when the apex is reached will depend upon the breadth of the base. In your education, you are building character and personality, which is much more important than any special ability for money-making, and the apex of that personality will be high in proportion as you avoid the narrow base which results from too much specializing in the earlier years. Let the foundation which precedes your special or professional training be as broad as it lies within your power to make it.

If you specialize rigidly in the early years, you may a little later change your purpose in life and find yourself handicapped by the former narrow outlook. The college is a place where many a fellow finds himself for the first time, and the fellow he finds is oftentimes another and perhaps a better man than the one he had planned for in the earlier years. He may take his college course expecting to be a lawyer, but that spiritual impulse, which lands many a man in the ministry, may be at work beneath the surface, none the less potent for being one of those unseen things which are eternal. If in his college days he entirely ignores Greek or turns his back on philosophy and ethics as having little practical worth, he will find himself at a great disadvantage if he finally faces about toward the pulpit. As Cromwell said to the theologians who were so cock-sure in their opinions, “Beloved brethren, I beseech you by the mercies of God believe it possible that you may be mistaken.” You may be mistaken as to the work you will do in life. It is unwise therefore to discount that possible future by narrowing down too soon to some specialty which may prove to be off the turnpike when you make final selection of your life-work.

The selection of habits in a modern university is left almost entirely to the judgment of the individual student. The college rules grow fewer year by year. Personal supervision becomes impossible where the enrolment reaches into the thousands. Parents are sometimes unaware of the measure of liberty accorded. College presidents entertain each other with experiences which come to them in the way of letters from anxious mammas. One president tells us of a letter received from a fond mother whose son had just entered—“I shall expect you to send me a long letter each week telling me how my darling boy is doing.” Another reports a letter from a father—“Please send me each week a full report of my son’s absences, of his failures in recitation, and your own impression as to the progress he is making.” The very humor of these suggestions indicates to what measure the freedom of the student has been extended. It would be somewhat difficult for President Lowell or President Hadley, for President Jordan or President Wheeler to see to it that the boys and girls eat the proper amounts of wholesome food and put on their rubbers when it rains.

University life is not a personally conducted tour with the trains and hotels, the points of interest and suggestions as to clothing, all printed in the schedule. It is a case of going abroad upon the continent of learning, relying upon your own letter of credit to draw supplies from the banks of opportunity open to you, with the necessity upon you of learning to speak the language and order your trip for yourself in a way to gain the utmost possible good. The sheltered life policy, suitable for little boys, must come to an end some time and the young man be compelled to face the good or bad results of his own choices. The beginning of the college course is no doubt an appropriate time to inaugurate this new régime.

You will enter college without any definite college habits. This will be at once an advantage and a peril. Habits are sometimes heavy, troublesome chains; they are sometimes the best friends in sight. In driving over a mountain road on a dark night when one cannot see even his team, the deep ruts are a comfort and a safeguard—as the driver hears the wagon chuckling along in the ruts he knows that he is not on the point of going over the grade. Certain useful habits, which come from doing certain things in certain ways over and over again, are beneficial in that they take sufficient care of those lines of action and leave the man’s will and attention free to deal with other problems.