Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/730

678 in the world, and touched life on different sides, and taken part in various labors, and carried burdens, and been buffeted, and learned how other men live, and what they need. Great is the specialist and precious! but I think we still have a use for masters of the old type, who knew many things, and were broadened by experience, and had the power of vital inspiration, and could start their pupils onward and upward through the struggles and triumphs of a life-long education.

There is much discussion nowadays of the subjects which may be, or perhaps must be, taught in a college. A part, at least, of the controversy is futile. For the main problem is not one of subjects, but of aim and method. "Liberal studies," says one of the finest of living English teachers, "pursued in an illiberal spirit fall below the mechanical arts in dignity and worth."

There are two ways of teaching any subject: one opens the mind, the other closes it. The mastery of the way to do things is the accomplishment that counts for future work. I like the teacher who shows me not merely where he stands, but how he got there, and encourages and equips me to find my own way through the maze of books and the tangled thickets of human opinion. Rules are good, and definitions are useful, and a supply of sound and trustworthy judgments on various subjects is like a traveller's stock of condensed provisions: but best of all is a knowledge of the art of travel, how to use maps and follow indications, how to choose the best road and keep it, how to get the good of the journey and reach the goal.

Let us keep our colleges and universities true to their function, which is preparatory and not final. Let us not ask of them a yearly output of "finished scholars." The very phrase has a mortuary sound, like an epitaph. He who can learn no more has not really learned anything. What we want is not finished scholars but equipped learners; minds that can give and take; intellects not cast in a mould but masters of a method; people who are ready to go forward wisely toward a larger wisdom.

The chief benefit that a good student may get in a good college is not a definite amount of Greek and Latin, mathematics and chemistry, botany and zoology, history and logic, though this in itself is good. But far better is the power to apprehend and distinguish, to weigh evidence and interpret facts, to think clearly, to infer carefully, to imagine vividly. Best of all is a sense of the unity of knowledge, a reverence for the naked truth, a perception of the variety of beauty, a feeling of the significance of literature, and a wider sympathy with the upward-striving, dimly groping, perplexed, and dauntless life of man.

I will not ask whether such a result of college training has any commercial value, whether it enables one to command a larger wage in the market-place, whether it opens the door to wealth, or fame, or social distinction; nor even whether it increases the chance of winning a place in the aristocracy of "Who's Who." These questions are treasonable to the very idea of education, which aims not at a marketable product, but at a vital development. The one thing certain and important is that those who are really nurtured and disciplined and enlightened in any college enter the School of Life with an advantage. They are "well prepared," as we say. They are fitted to go on with their education in reason and righteousness and service, under the Great Master.

I do not hold with the modern epigram that "the true university is a library." Through the vast wilderness of books flows the slender stream of literature, and often there is need of guidance to find and follow it. Only a genius or an angel can safely be turned loose in a library to wander at will.

There is a certain kind of reading that is little better than an idle habit, a substitute for thought. Of many books it may be said that they are nothing but the echoes of echoing echoes. If a good book be, as Milton said, "the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured," still the sacred relic, as in the vial of St. Januarius at Naples, remains solid and immovable. It needs a kind of miracle to make it liquefy and flow,—the miracle of interpretation and inspiration,—wrought most often by the living voice of a wise master, communicating