What University Instruction May Do To Provide Intellectual Pleasures For Later Life

( Originally Published 1913 )

ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, JUNE 11, 1907.

Yom. University is placed in a wonderful city. In the rapidity of its growth, in the expansion of its trade and population, it has no parallel in the modern world, not even in this Western world which has shown so many new and startling phenomena. It owes its prosperity, and it will owe that marvellous future to which it looks forward, to two things. One is the eager, ardent, restless spirit, keenly perceptive and unweariedly active, of your people. The other is modem science, which has made you the business centre of the great Northwest and has enabled vast industrial enterprises to be started all round the commercial heart of your city. James Watt and the other famous inventors who have followed him are the men who have made such a city as Chicago possible. Your people have turned the possibility into a reality. Two great departments of human activity, production and transportation, have been all over the world transformed by science, and the effect of the change is felt in every other department.

It must needs be felt in education also. Seventy years ago applied science was hardly taught at all in schools and universities, and theoretic science, except, of course, mathematics, not at all in schools and but little in universities. Now science has come to dominate the field of education, and in some countries is avenging herself for the contumely with which the old-fashioned curriculum used to treat her by now herself trying to relegate the study of language and literature to a secondary place. Nothing could have been more foolish than the way in which some old-fashioned classical scholars used to look down upon chemistry and physiology as vulgar subjects. But any men of science who wish to treat literature or history with a like arrogance will make just as great a mistake.

In England there are some signs of this, arrogance, and it is becoming necessary to insist upon the importance of the human as opposed to the natural or scientific subjects. Whether this is the case here also you know better than I do. It need excite no surprise that there should be a general rush at present towards those branches of study which have most to promise in the way of success in life. But I am glad to know that in the greatest universities of America ample provision is made for, and all due encouragement is given to, the humanistic and literary subjects. Assuming this to be so, assuming that for the purposes of a general liberal education and also for the purpose of special preparation for the various professions and occupations, all lines of study are here alike recognized and efficiently taught, I pass to another aspect of what university education may accomplish.

That which I ask you to join me in considering is the value and helpfulness to the individual man of scientific studies and of literary studies, respectively, not for success in any occupation or profession, nor for any other gainful purpose, but for what may be called the enjoyment of life after the days of university education have ended.

All education has two sides. It is meant to impart the knowledge, the skill, the habits of diligence and concentration which are needed to secure practical success. It is also meant to form character, to implant taste, to cultivate the imagination and the emotions, to prepare a man to enjoy those delights which be-long to hours of leisure and to the inner life which goes on, or ought to go on, all the time within his own breast.

All study contains or implies the pleasure of putting forth our powers, of mastering difficulties, of acquiring new aptitudes, of making the mental faculties quick and deft like the fingers. It is a pleasure to see the intellect gleam and cut like a well-tempered and keen-edged sword. This kind of pleasure can be derived from all studies, though not from all equally. Some give a better intellectual training than others ; some are better fitted for one particular type of mind than for other types. But with these differences I do not propose to deal today. I want you to think of the training of the mind, not for work or display, but for enjoyment.

Everyone of us ought to have a second or inner life of the intellect over and above that life which he leads among other men for the purposes of his avocation, be it to gain money or power or fame, or be it to serve his country or his neighbors. Considering himself as a Mind made to reflect and to enjoy, he ought to have some pursuit, some taste — if you like, even some fad or hobby — to which he can turn from the daily routine of his work for rest and for that change of occupation which is the best kind of rest, something round which his thoughts can play when he is alone and in which he can realize his independence of outward calls, his freedom from external demands and external restrictions. Whatever the taste or pursuit be, whether of a higher or of a commoner type, to have it is a good thing for him. But of course the more wholesome and stimulating and elevating the taste or pursuit is, so much the better.

Now the question I ask you to consider is this : What can instruction in natural science do, and what can instruction in the human or literary subjects do, to instil such tastes, to suggest such pursuits ? What sort of teaching and training can a university give to its student fit for him to carry away from the university as a permanent possession for his own private use and pleasure, to be added to by his exertions as he finds time and opportunity, not that he may be richer or more famous, but that he may be, if possible, wiser, and at any rate happier ?

The study of any branch of natural science has one great charm in the fact that it opens possibilities of discovering new truth. There is hardly a branch of physics or chemistry, or of biology or natural history, in which the patient enquirer may not hope to extend the boundaries of knowledge. This is what makes physical science, as a professional occupation, so attractive. The work is in itself interesting, perhaps even exciting, quite apart from any profit to one's self. One is occupied with what is permanent, one is in quest of reality, one may at any moment taste the thrilling pleasures of discovery.

But such work requires in most departments an elaborate provision of laboratories and apparatus, and (in nearly all departments of research) an amount of time constantly devoted to observation and experiment which practically restricts it to those who make it the business of their life, and puts it out of the reach of persons actually engaged in some other occupation. Discoveries have been made by scientific amateurs. Benjamin Franklin and his contemporaries, Cavendish and Priestley, are cases in point. But this is increasingly difficult. Few lawyers or merchants or engineers or practising physicians can hope for time to enjoy this pleasure. The best that a scientific education can do for them is to start them with enough knowledge to enable them to follow intelligently the onward march of scientific investigation.

There is also a pleasure in meditating upon the ultimate problems of matter, force, and life, even if one cannot do anything toward solving them. The unknown appeals to our imagination, especially if we have imagination enough to feel that the unknown is all around us, and to realize the grandeur and solemnity of nature. You all remember the majestic lines in which the Roman poet declares his passionate desire that the divine mistresses of knowledge should explain to him the secrets of the universe: —

Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musae,
Quarum sacra fero ingenti perculsus amore,
Accipiant, coelique vias et sidera monstrent;
Defectus solis varios, lunaeque labores;
Unde tremor terns; qua vi maria alta tumescant,
Objicibus ruptis, rursusque in se ipsa residant.'

The mysteries which chiefly excited Virgil's curiosity were the movements of the heavenly bodies, the eclipses of the sun and moon, the cause of earthquakes, and the theory of the tides. Of these the second and the last have so long ago been explained that they no longer greatly engage the thoughts of others than astronomers, while the causes that produce earth-quakes are at any rate partially known. Our curiosity regarding the first, now concentrated upon the movements of the so-called Fixed Stars, has of late years become keener than ever as new vistas of enquiry are opening themselves to view. Yet it is now that border-land of physics, chemistry, and metaphysics in which lie questions relating to the nature of matter itself and the persistence of force under diverse forms, which chiefly rouses our wonder, and makes us speculate as to whether light may be thrown from that side upon the relations of what is called Matter to what is called Mind. Whoever possesses even a slight acquaintance with chemistry and physics is more capable of following the course of investigation in this direction than are persons altogether without scientific training ; and these problems are no less fitted to touch a susceptible imagination than were those which Virgil vainly sought to comprehend.

In these ways natural science may appeal even to those whose daily course of life debars them from continuing to study it ; and this is one of the reasons which suggests that some knowledge at least of the method and the fundamental conceptions of science, mathematical and physical, is a necessary part of a liberal education.

What we call natural history (i.e. geology, botany, and zoology) stands on a somewhat different footing. No pursuits give more pleasure, or a purer kind of pleasure, than that given by these forms of enquiry. They take us into open-air nature, they make us familiar with her, and they generally involve active exertion of body as well as mind. The only drawback is that it is difficult for the dwellers in those vast cities, which have unfortunately grown up during the last hundred years, to enjoy these pursuits, except for a few holiday weeks in summer.

If, however, we revert to the question of how much science can do, in the case of those whose occupations forbid them to prosecute systematic scientific study, for the enrichment and refinement of that inner life whereof I have spoken, we shall find that the range of its influence is limited. It is only in certain aspects that it appeals to the imagination, nor does every man's imagination respond. To the emotions, other than those of wonder and admiration, it does not directly appeal. It is remote from the hopes, the fears, the needs, the aspirations of human beings. While you are at work on the hydrocarbons in the college laboratory, your curiosity and interest are roused by the remark-able phenomena they present. But they do not help you to order your life and conversation aright. Euclid's geometry is interesting as a model of exact deductive reasoning. One remembers it with pleasure. A man who has some leisure and some talent in this direction may all through his life enjoy the effort of solving mathematical problems. But has any one at a supreme moment of some moral struggle ever been able to find help and stimulus in the thought that the square described upon the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the squares described on the two other sides thereof ?

By far the larger part of the life of everyone of us as a being who thinks and feels is that part which puts him in contact with other human beings, either with the lives of those whom he meets or with the thoughts and deeds of those who in time past have done memorable acts, or have left written words round which his own mind can play. Man himself —"the little God of the world " as Mephistopheles calls him' — is the principal thing on this globe as we know it, and that which ex-plains him has after all the deepest interest for us.

Whatever be anyone's occupation, he spends most of his working hours in the company of his fellow-men. They may not delight him, as they did not delight Hamlet, or they may delight him, as they surely must have delighted Shakespeare. But whether they delight him or not, they are an inexhaustible field of study ; and the study becomes more interesting when we compare the persons whom we meet and observe with the figures that stand out in the works of those masters of fiction who have known how to make human nature as true in tale or drama as it is in fact. So is it, too, with those whose words and deeds have come down to us from the past. When one has gazed upon the portraits of famous men in the long and stately gallery of history, one can view with a more sympathetic or more humorous eye the endless picture-show that moves before his vision in the present.

Accordingly, when we turn from thinking of our active life in the world to the inner or personal life, it is the human subjects which are best fitted to nourish it and illumine it. Under the human subjects I include history, philosophy, and imaginative literature. History (of which biography is a part) covers all that man has thought and felt and said and planned and achieved. It is the best mirror of human nature, for it describes things in the concrete, human nature not as we fancy it but as it is. It reveals to us not only what has been, but how that which is has come to be what it is. It helps to explain to us our own generation as well as those that have gone be-fore. Rightly understood, it does this better than all the dissertations and exhortations, — plenius et melius Chrysippo et Crantore, — perhaps better even than the sermons. That there are many doubtful questions in history does not materially reduce its value. The trained historian smiles at those who say that history is false because some things are and some may even always remain uncertain ; though no one will be and ought to be more severe toward those who recklessly neglect or wilfully pervert the facts so far as ascertainable.

Psychology and ethics, though they are more and more seeking, like history, to follow scientific methods, approach the study of human nature in a more abstract and general way than history does. They have the great interest of appealing directly to individual consciousness, and whoever has formed a taste for them will find that he has an infinite field open for observing the phenomena which he himself and those around him present. He may even experiment on them, but such experiments, unless carefully conducted, may be as dangerous as those which chemists euphemistically describe as attended by a sudden and rapid evolution of sound, light, and heat.

Of literature, as apart from history and philosophy, there are many branches, but that branch which I seek to dwell upon for our present purpose is poetry and the imaginative treatment, whether in verse or in prose, of human themes. Epic and dramatic poems present pictures of life as the highest constructive minds have seen it. Reflective and lyric poems are the finest expression that has been found for human emotion. In their several ways they give voice to what in our clearest moments of vision or at our highest moments of exaltation, we ordinary mortals are able dimly to feel but faintly or feebly to express. In this way they both instruct us and stimulate us more than anything else can do ; and they also give a rare and delicate pleasure by the perfection of their form. In urging on you what universities may do to implant a love of literature which shall last through life, let me lay especial stress upon the literature of periods remote from our own. The narratives and the poetry of primitive peoples such as the ancient Hebrews, and the ancient Greeks, and our own far-off Teutonic and Celtic forefathers have the incomparable merit of presenting thought and passion in their simplest form. They do us an immense service in illuminating the annals of mankind as a whole, by making us feel our own identity with and yet also our differences from the earlier phases of human society. They give a sense of the growth and development of the human spirit which carries us out of our own narrow horizon, which makes all the movements of the world seem to be part of one great drama, which saves us from fancying ourselves to be better or wiser than those who went before, which ennobles life itself by the ample prospect which it opens.

Most though not all — of the literature I am speaking of can be fully enjoyed and appreciated only in the languages in which it was originally composed. These are vulgarly called "dead languages." Let no one be afraid of that name. No language is dead which perfectly conveys thoughts that are alive and are as full of energy now as they ever were. An idea or a feeling grandly expressed lives forever, and gives immortality to the words that enshrine it.

Let me add that it is in large measure through literature that we have been able to enjoy the pleasures of nature and those of art. Whoever possesses a sense for form and color may appreciate a fine picture without any knowledge of the technique of painting. But he will see comparatively little in it if his taste has not been formed and trained by the study of masterpieces and if his mind has not received the cultivation which letters and history give. So a man need not have read the poets to be able to find delight in a beautiful landscape. But he will enjoy it far more if he knows what Thomson, Cowper, Burns, Scott, Shelley, Ruskin, and above all, Wordsworth, have written. How much have they done to increase a sense of the charm of nature in all who use our tongue !

What are the practical conclusions which I desire to submit to you as the result of these suggestions ? They are two.

The ardour with which the study of the physical sciences is now pursued for practical purposes must not make us forget that education has to do a great deal more than turn out a man fitted to succeed in business. It must also endeavour to give him a power of enjoying the best pleasures. The physical sciences do open such pleasures, but these are not so easily obtained, nor so well adapted to stimulate and polish most minds, nor so calculated to strengthen and refine the character, as those which can be drawn from the human or literary subjects.

Secondly, in the study of such literary subjects as languages and history, we must beware of giving exclusive attention to the technicalities of grammar and to purely critical enquiries. There is some risk that in the eagerness to apply exact methods so as to secure accuracy and a mastery of detail, the literary quality of the books read and the dramatic and personal aspect of the events and persons studied may be too little regarded. Exact methods and the whole apparatus of grammatical lore have their use for the purposes of college training, but in after years it is the thoughts and style of the writers, the permanent significance or the romantic quality of the events, that ought to dwell in the mind. There is certainly in England a tendency, perhaps due to German influences, to hold that history ought, in order that it may be thoroughly scientific, to welcome dulness and dryness. It is said, I know not with what truth, that the same tendency is felt here. The ethical side and the romantic side may have been overdone in time past, but it must never be forgotten that one of the chief aims of history is to illustrate human nature. We need throughout life to have all the light thrown upon human nature that history and philosophy can throw; to have all the help and inspiration for our own lives that poetry can give. Much of everyone's work is dull and monotonous, perhaps even depressing, and that escape from the dulness of many a business career which the strain of fierce competition or bold speculation promises is a dangerous resource. It is better to nurture and cherish what I have ventured to call the inner life. Not all can succeed ; none can escape sorrows and disapointments. He who under disappointments or sorrows has no resources within his own command beyond his daily round of business duties, nothing to which he can turn to cheer or refresh his mind, wants a precious spring of strength and consolation.

Nowhere in the world is there so strong a desire among the people for a university education as here in America. The effects of this will no doubt be felt in the coming generation. Let us hope they will be, felt not only in the completer equipment of your citizens for public life and their warmer zeal for civic progress, but also in a true perception of the essential elements of happiness, an enlarged capacity for enjoying those simple pleasures which the cultivation of taste and imagination opens to us all.