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done by rules or systems or textbooks. It can come and can only come from the subtle, impalpable, and yet powerful influences which the spirit and atmosphere of a great university can exert upon those within its care. It is not easy to define or classify those 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 today, 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 is 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. But even if we were short of critics, it is a sad mistake to educate young men to be mere critics at the outset of life. It should be the first duty of a university to breed in them far other qualities. 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, for work, not for 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. Long ago Emerson pointed the finger of scorn at this type when he said: "There is my fine young Oxford gentleman, who says there is nothing new and nothing true and no matter." 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 are 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 the one of all others which a university should discourage instead of inculcating. Moreover, with such an attitude of mind toward the world of thought and action is always allied a cultivated indifference, than which there is nothing more enervating.

And these things are no pale abstractions because they are in their nature purely matters of sentiment and thought. When Cromwell demanded the New Model, he said, "A set of poor tapsters and town apprentices would never fight against men of honor." They were of the same race and the same blood as the cavaliers, these tapsters and apprentices; they had the same muscles and the same bodily form and strength. It was the right spirit that was lacking, and this Cromwell with the keen eye of genius plainly saw. So he set against the passion of loyalty the stern enthusiasm of religion, and swept resistance from his path. One sentiment against another, and the mightier conquered. Come nearer to our own time. Some six thousand ill-armed American frontiersmen met ten thousand of the unconquered army of Wellington's veterans hard by New Orleans. They beat them in a night attack, they got the better of them in an artillery duel, and finally they drove back with heavy slaughter the onset of these disciplined troops who had over and over again carried by storm defenses manned by the soldiers of Napoleon. These backwoodsmen were of the same race as their opponents, no stronger, no more inured to hardships, than Wellington's men, but they had the right spirit in them. They did not stop to criticise the works, and to point out that cotton-bales were not the kind of rampart recognized in Europe. They did not pause to say that a properly constituted army ought to have bayonets and that they had none. Still less did they set about finding fault with their leader. They went in and did their best, and their

best was victory. One example is as good as a hundred. It is the spirit, the faith, the courage, the determination of men, which have made the world move. These are the qualities which have carried the dominion of the English-speaking people across continents and over wide oceans to the very ends of the earth. It is the same in every field of human activity. The men who see nothing but the lions in the path, who fear ridicule and dread mistakes, who behold the faults they may commit more plainly than the guerdon to be won, win no battles, govern no states, write no books, carve no statues, paint no pictures. The men who do not fear to fall are those who rise. It is the men who take the risks of failure and mistakes who win through defeats to victory.

If the critical spirit govern in youth, it chokes action at its very source. We must have enthusiasm, not indifference, willingness to subordinate ourselves to our purpose, if we would reach results, and an imperfect result is far better than none at all. Abraham Lincoln said once, speaking of Henry Clay: "A free people in times of peace and quiet, when pressed by no common danger, naturally divide into parties. At such times the man who is of neither party, is not, cannot be, of any consequence. Mr. Clay was therefore of a party." This which Lincoln said of politics merely expresses in a single direction the truth that a man cannot succeed who is a mere critic. He must have the faith and enthusiasm which will enable him to do battle whether with sword or pen, with action or thought, for a cause in which he believes. This does not imply any lack of independence, any blind subservience to authority or prejudice. Far from it. But it does imply the absence of the purely critical spirit with no purpose but criticism, which dries up the very springs of action.

"That is the doctrine simple, ancient, true;

Such is life's trial, as old Earth smiles and knows.
Make the low nature better by your throes;

Give earth yourself, go up for gain above."

There is nothing fanciful in all this. It is very real, very near, very practical. You cannot win a boat-race, or a football match unless you have the right spirit. Thews and sinews are common

enough. They can be had for the asking. But the best will not avail if they are not informed with the right spirit. You must have more than trained muscles; you must have enthusiasm, determination, brains, and the capacity for organization and subordination. If the critical spirit prevails, and everyone is engaged in criticising, analyzing, and declaring how much better things would be if they were only different, you will not, you cannot win, other things being equal. Differences in physical qualities may often determine results, but such differences come and go like luck at a game of cards. But if the critical, indifferent spirit reigns, it means sure and continued defeats, for it saps the very roots of action and success.

As it is in the struggles of the playground or the river, so it is in the wider fields of serious life. If a university breeds a race of little critics, they will be able to point out other men's faults and failures with neatness and exactness, but they will accomplish nothing themselves. They will make the world no better for their presence, they will not count in the conflict, they will not cure a single one of the evils they are so keen to detect. Worst of all, they will bring reproach on a liberal education, which will seem to other men to be a hindrance when it should be a help.

The time in which we live is full of questions of the deepest moment. There has been, during the century now ending, the greatest material development ever seen, greater than that of all preceding centuries together. The condition of the average man has been raised higher than ever 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. The economic theories of fifty years ago stand helpless and decrepit in their immobility before the social questions which face us now. Everywhere today there is an ominous spirit of unrest. Everywhere there is a feeling that all is not well when wealth abounds and none the less dire poverty ranges by its side, when the land is not fully populated and yet the number

of the unemployed reaches to the millions. One is not either an alarmist or a pessimist because he recognizes these facts, and it would be worse than folly to try to blink them out of sight. I believe that we can deal with them successfully if we will but set ourselves to the grave task, as we have to the trials and dangers of the past. I am sure that, if these great social problems can be solved anywhere, they can be solved here in the United States. But the solution will tax to the utmost all the wisdom and courage and learning that the country can provide. What part 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 those 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 shady cloister mewed,

Chanting faint hymns to the cold, fruitless moon."

LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE1

ABBOTT LAWRENCE LOWELL

[Abbott Lawrence Lowell (1856- -) has been, since 1909, president of Harvard University. He is distinguished as an authority on the science of government, and is the author of many books and articles in this field.]

We are living in the midst of a terrific war in which each side casts upon the other the blame for causing the struggle; but in which each gives the same reason for continuing it to the bitter end that reason being the preservation from destruction of the essential principle of its own civilization. One side claims to be fighting for the liberty of man; the other for a social system based 1From Yale Review, vol. v, p. 741. (July, 1916.) Reprinted by permission.

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