“To all her students alike it is Harvard’s duty to give that which will send them out from her gates able to understand and to sympathize with the life of the time. This cannot be done by rules or systems or text-books. It can come from the subtile, impalpable, and yet powerful influences which the spirit and atmosphere of the great university can exert upon those within its care. It is not easy to define or classify these influences although we all know their general effect. Nevertheless, it is, I think, possible to get at something sufficiently definite to indicate what is lacking and where the peril lies. It all turns on the spirit which inspires the entire collegiate body, on the mental attitude of the university as a whole. This brings us at once to the danger which I think confronts all our large universities to-day, and which I am sure confronts that university which I know and love best. We are given over too much to the critical spirit and we are educating men to become critics of other men instead of doers of deeds themselves.
“This is all wrong. Criticism is healthful, necessary, and desirable, but it is always abundant and infinitely less important than performance. There is not the slightest risk that the supply of critics will run out, for there are always enough middle-aged failures to keep the ranks full if every other resource should fail. Faith and hope, and belief, enthusiasm, and courage are the qualities to be trained and developed in young men by a liberal education. Youth is the time for action, not criticism. A liberal education should encourage the spirit of action, not deaden it. We want the men whom we send out from our universities to count in the battle of life and in the history of their time, and to count more and not less because of their liberal education. They will not count at all, be well assured, if they come out trained only to look coldly and critically on all that is being done in the world and on all who are doing it. We cannot afford to have that type, and it is the true product of that critical spirit which says to its scholars: “See how badly the world is governed; see how covered with dust and sweat the men who are trying to do the world’s business, and how many mistakes they make; let us sit here in the shade with Amaryllis and add up the errors of these bruised grimy fellows and point out what they ought to do, while we make no mistakes ourselves by sticking to the safe rule of attempting nothing.” This is a very comfortable attitude, but it is one of all others which a university should discourage instead of inculcating. Moreover, with such an attitude of mind towards the world of thought and action is always allied a cultivated indifference than which there is nothing more enervating.
“The time in which we live is full of questions of the deepest moment. There has been during the century just ending the greatest material development ever seen. The condition of the average man has been raised higher than before, and wealth has been piled up beyond the wildest fancy of romance. We have built up a vast social and industrial system, and have carried civilization to the highest point it has ever touched. That system and that civilization are on trial. Grave doubts and perils beset them. Everywhere to-day there is an ominous spirit of unrest. Everywhere is a feeling that all is not well, when health abounds, and none the less dire poverty ranges by its side, when the land is not fully populated and yet the number of unemployed reaches to the millions. I believe we can deal with these doubts and rents successfully, if we will but set ourselves to the great task as we have to the trials and dangers of the past. But the solution will tax to the utmost all the wisdom and courage and learning that the country can provide. What are our universities, with their liberal education to play in the history that is now making and is still to be written? They are the crown and glory of our civilization, but they can readily be set aside if they fall out of sympathy with the vast movements about them. I do not say whether they should seek to resist or to sustain or to guide and control these movements. But if they would not dry up and wither they must at least understand them.
“A great university must be in touch with the world about it, with its hopes, its passions, its troubles, and its strivings. If it is not it must be content.
‘For aye to be in the shady cloister mewed,
Chanting faint hymns to the cold, fruitless moon.’
“The university which pretends to give a liberal education must understand the movements about it, see whether the great forces are tending, and justify its existence by breeding men who by its teachings are more able to render the service which humanity is ever seeking.”
Professor Fried. Aug. Flückiger died on Dec. 11, 1894, at Berne. He was the foremost pharmacognosist and scientific pharmacist of his time. An extended account of his life and works will appear in a later issue of The Alumni Journal.