It is unnecessary to recall here the changes in condition which have separated the student class sharply from the teaching body and divorced it almost entirely from governmental functions. What is significant for the purpose of this article is an apparent disposition in many quarters to recede from the extreme position of entire exclusion of the student body and a tendency to move in the other direction. That tendency may become very marked and lead to a very radical change of policy in the government of colleges, a change so radical as to be revolutionary in its effect. It is certain that the government of colleges, like that of states, must from time to time undergo marked modifications if it is to remain vitally representative of, and harmonious with, the growing and changing life of the college. In healthy institutional life there is free play and interaction of all the forces that go to make up the organic life, and a certain flexibility is involved in all growth. The student community, is, after all, in most institutions the prime object of interest. A few foundations exist for the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, instruction being incidental; in most institutions, however, instruction is the foremost and absorbing function, and the student's welfare is, therefore, the controlling factor. In western colleges, where the edge of hunger for knowledge has not yet been dulled by opportunity, it is not an unknown thing for a committee of students to wait on a president or chancellor and announce the failure of some professor to prepare himself for recitations by fresh study of his subject. It would be well if students in eastern colleges would sometimes put on a similar boldness; they would help heads of colleges out of very trying difficulties with well-meaning but incompetent or indolent professors. Undergraduate popularity is often illusive and unstable, but undergraduate perception of incompetency is often very keen and discriminating.
But whether admitted to, or excluded from the government of the college, the student community plays a part not always recognized in its educational influence and work, and many men receive more influential impressions from the atmosphere in which they live and the men with whom they associate during their college career than from their instructors. Nothing is so pervasive as an atmospheric influence, and, in its way, nothing is so important. It is significant that foreign students rarely speak of Oxford without commenting on its atmosphere; something in the air of the old town which, although intangible in its operation, is a positive factor in the educational result. Specific courses of instruction are less numerous than in many other places, and such instruction as is offered is often defective in methods and spirit; but the life of the place is adjusted to intellectual work; the library facilities are great, the traditions which seem to be part of the very structure of the colleges are liberalizing and make for generous culture. In such an air it is easy to study by one's own impetus and to develop in ourselves the passion for perfection. Culture is so different from training or favoring the acquirement of knowledge that it is so often totally lacking in men who have carried both processes to great length; it is indeed rarely conveyed, though it may be greatly aided, by definite instruction. It cannot be said of the great mass of college graduates that they are men of culture. Culture comes, in a sense, by indirection, a man absorbs it and furnishes the conditions for its growth, but he cannot receive it directly from his teachers. There are, in every college, teachers, who stimulate culture in students not so much by reason of their scholarship as by reason of their attitude toward what they know. For culture is always a personal quality; a ripeness which comes from the generous enrichment of a man's nature by contact with the best things. In certain atmospheres men ripen, as in certain others they remain hard and unaffected.
The atmospheric quality of a college is determined largely by the character and traditions of undergraduate life. If that life has generous ideals, sound impulses, and traditions which appeal to the imagination, the atmosphere will do as much for many men as the formal instruction they receive. It will inspire self-respect, firm ambitions, and general dignity and nobleness of nature. Men will be drawn together by the sympathy of aspiration, rather than by mere congeniality of habit, and their daily association will have an educational influence of the most lasting kind. It is this association which often leaves its mark on men who have failed to make right use of the opportunities for specific instruction which surround them. A college education is complete, so far as any provisional education is complete, only when the student receives the strong impress of both teachers and associates; when instruction is competent and vital, and undergraduate life is wholesome, generous, and aspiring.
It is a significant fact that when a group of men develop creative gifts in later life it will generally be found that their undergraduate life together discovered strong sympathetic aspirations which bound them together and gave their intercourse a very stimulating quality. The action and reaction upon each other of a group of young men of generous aims are peculiarly delicate and influential, affecting the very sources of individual strength and impulse.
Such influences are intermittent and irregular; it would be a great gain if they could become continuous and, in a flexible sense, organic. Student life has been, at times, highly organized and penetrated by intellectual impulses. Colleges differ greatly in this respect, but in American institutions the student life of to-day does not anywhere near realize its rich possibilities. Its interest in athletics is so great that in this single field it may be said to be fairly well organized and fairly effective in securing the end for which it works; but in no other field is a similar activity discoverable, unless it be in that of journalism. One of the most interesting features of the intellectual and moral revival now going on in France is the notable change that has come over student life, a change shown in a revival of song, of old student customs, of solidarity of feeling, and of a generous enthusiasm for the common traditions and views. May not American students learn something from this contemporary illustration of the possibilities of organized student life?
Literary Monthly, 1893.
SELF-MADE MEN
I.—B. PRATT
ALFRED C. CHAPIN '69
There are themes which no man can cope with. There are times when those ordinarily confident shrink back at the thought of grappling with the mighty issues that lie before them. There are minds of a structure so singularly complex and unique, that one leaves the study of them impressed only with a deep, abiding sense of his inability to fathom them. We have in our midst one such, the penetration of whose manifestations and phenomena is well calculated to baffle the most zealous investigator. Reared among the rugged hill-sides and verdant vales of Williamstown, his character and oratory bear the evident impress of his nurturing. If to Elihu Burritt belongs the title of "The Learned Blacksmith," not less to William Pratt is due that of "The Eloquent Wood-sawyer." Though he cannot, like Elihu, claim a knowledge of eight languages, he can at least use the one of which he is master, in a manner at once astounding and gratifying. No son of Williams needs to be told who he is; yet for the benefit of those unacquainted with his genius and oratorical ability, we will endeavor briefly to sketch his early career before enlarging upon the grander triumphs of his later years.