Within College Walls
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. THE COLLEGE FORMING CHARACTER. The college is to discipline character. Its duty is as broad as the humanity of each person. The college is prone to be content with giving an intellectual training simply. It is too much inclined to be satisfied with making thinkers, learners, scholars. What the student learns in college represents only a small share of what the college should give to him. The character, says Emerson, is higher than the intellect; and the college in educating the lower is not to neglect the higher. When Matthew Arnold says, "The true aim of schools of instruction is to develop the powers of our mind and to give us access to vital knowledge," he may be right and he may be wrong. He is rightif by mind he means man, and by vital knowledge, knowledge that relates to all life. The college, a
...ppealing immediately to the mental part, is yet to train every part. The college is doing its duty only when it causes men to regulate appetite, to crush passion, to guide desires, to quicken affections, to prevent wrong, and to stimulate right, choices. Which is the more important: for the student to know how to decline virtus, or to practise virtue ; to know the fundamental ethics of Kant, or so to regulate his conduct that it may worthily become a universal rule ; to demonstrate all the propositions of plane geometry, or to form his own character along the lines of righteousness ? Shall the college teach us sciences, and never lift the ear to Him who is omniscient ? Shall the college teach us philosophy and psychology, and never quicken us to heed the responsibilities of free volition ? Shall the college teach us laws, and never whisper a syllable as to theexistence of the Lawgiver ? Every institution should in fact illustrate the truth ttiat conduct, which is the expone...
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