THE SIX OFFICERS OF THE FRENCH MILITARY MISSION TO HARVARD UNIVERSITY. THE SEP 13 1017 HARVARD GRADUATES' MAGAZINE. VOL. XXVI. - SEPTEMBER, 1917. — No. CI. FIAT JUSTITIA-THE COLLEGE AS CRITIC. BY ALEXANDER MEIKLEJOHN, PRESIDENT OF AMHERST COLLEGE.1 I COME to-day to talk with you about colleges. I have not in mind Harvard, nor even Amherst - but just colleges in the large, especially American colleges. We shall be concerned not with technical schools or professional schools or even with universities, but with plain, oldfashioned colleges of liberal culture. I feel justified in presenting this theme to-day because of the relationship between the society of Phi Beta Kappa and the liberal college. I suppose a member of the society may be defined as "a person who has been very successful in a liberal college." To know one of these two institutions is then to know the other. If we can know what a college is and so what success in a college is, we may be able to tell the members of Phi Beta Kappa just what they are. I am sure they would be interested to know. But if, on the other hand, they already know what they are and will tell us, we may reverse the procedure. If what they have done constitutes success in college life, and if they will tell us what they have done, we then, knowing what success in college is, may learn what a college intends to be and do. That surely we should be interested to know. As between these two procedures, courtesy would suggest that we assume that the members of this society do know what they are about. propose, therefore, that we take the society and its principles for granted, and that from these as our starting-point we attempt to define the nature of the college, its aims, and its problems. What, then is the society? Does it describe itself; does it set forth its purpose and ideal? It flies a pennant, as you all know well. Those letters of its name are not mere empty sounds. They mean a 1 Address before the Harvard Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, June 18, 1917. thought, iλooopía Bíov kvßeprýtns, which is, being translated, "Learning at the helm of life." I love the figure which those words suggest: the bark of life adventuring out into the open sea, tossed by the waves which bear it up, driven by the winds, carried by the currents, swinging with the tides, but ever as it goes, with learning at the helm -learning which knows the waves and watches them, learning which spies upon the winds and turns the bark to use them, learning which measures the currents and the tides and plays the winds against them, learning which knows the port behind and sees the port before, learning which does not fetch or carry, which does not drive or batter, learning which sees and guides — learning, the pilot, at the helm of life! Yes, I think we know. The members of Phi Beta Kappa are the men who fly that pennant. They have not all been elected to the society, and perhaps some men have been voted in who have never looked aloft to see the pennant where it flies. But whether in or out, those are the men of whom we talk to-day. These men have taken learning as their guide. Let strength and custom bear them up and carry them on, let feeling drive them forth, let mood and circumstance divert their course, let yearnings sweep them here and there, but yet they try to see, to know, to understand, to tell whither they ought to go and how it shall be done. Learning at the helm of life! I greet the goodly fellowship of those who fly that flag. But now what is a college? Why, it is that in which to fly this flag is to succeed and to fly another, any other, is to fail. A college is a place, a group, a comradeship of those who follow learning as their guide and who welcome others in the same pursuit. A college is a spirit, a way of life, a manner of being; it is the will to see the way we go. And we who set our bounds by fence and yard, by brick and stone, credits and tests, books and degrees, what does the college think of us? These days of strife are days when men must tell what flag they fly, what leader they obey, what loyalty they own. I am inclined, therefore, as speaker for the society of those who follow learning, to demand of colleges that they present themselves and give account of what they have done and failed to do in striving for our goal. My proposal is that we summon to the bar of judgment of this society those groups of men who call themselves the sons and servants of Alma Mater. Let them appear in turn, graduate, undergraduate, teacher, president, trustee, benefactor, friend. Let each one come and we will see how he comports himself in presence of the flag we raise. |