THE GRADUATE
By Edwin H. Blashfield
From the mural painting in the Great Hall of the College of the City of New York.
Wisdom sits enthroned, a globe in her hands. Her placid head, covered with a fold of her mantle, is lighted from below by the flame on the altar at her feet. The light also illumines the globe which she holds. On either side of her pedestal, in a long curved row, sit the great centers of learning (Paris, Rome, Oxford, etc.) represented by graceful female forms, and in front of them are some illustrious representatives of the arts and sciences—Petrarch, Galileo, Shakespeare, and others. In the immediate foreground are young men of today—students on the right and aspirants on the left.
Directly in front of the altar is the Graduate, with academic cap and gown. Beside him stands Alma Mater, handsome and dignified, in a figured Venetian mantle, bearing a shield with a seal of the college and holding a scroll. She bids the young graduate go forth into the world, bearing the torch which he has lighted at the altar of Wisdom. In front of both, and a little to the right, is Discipline, or Self Control, holding in one hand a scourge and in the other a sword. She stands ready to accompany the young graduate on his journey through life.
Below the picture is the inscription: “Doth not Wisdom cry? She standeth in the top of the high places, by the way of the places of the paths. She crieth at the gates at the entry of the city, at the coming in at the doors.”
The Growth of Radicalism.—Two working principles have hitherto furnished the basis for political and economic organizations in such countries as the United States, Great Britain, and France. |Democracy and individualism.| Democracy, by which we mean the control of government by the whole people, acting chiefly through their representatives, has been the accepted basis of political institutions. Individualism, by which we mean an economic system founded upon the individual ownership of private property and, through private property, the individual control of industry has been in general the recognized foundation of economic institutions. By the masses of the people in all free countries the principles prefigured by these two words, democracy and individualism, have been tacitly accepted for fifty years or more as the groundwork of political and economic activity. Both were challenged from certain quarters; the socialists, for example, attacked the whole system of economic individualism; but in no country was the policy of individualism overthrown.
Should they be displaced?
During and after the war, however, the demand for a reconstruction of the world’s entire political and economic structure became more insistent. Radical ideas as to what ought to be done, and radical proposals as to how it ought to be done were brought forth and spread. The world found itself, almost in a day, face to face with demands for the complete repudiation of democracy as an ideal and of individualism as a principle of economic organization. Proposals for state socialism, guild socialism, communism, and a dictatorship of the proletariat were put forth aggressively on every hand. No country proved to be immune from this radical movement, although in some it made far greater headway than in others.