Page:The Pacific Monthly vol. 14.djvu/926



The college year has begun, and at its end the young man will vault over the bars;, and, pointing his diploma at the world, will shout, "Hold up your hands." But, alas, the world will not stand and deliver for a volley of sheepskins. Hamlet says: "Is not parchment made of sheepskins . . . and of calfskins, too? They are sheep and calves which seek out assurance in that."

So I say they be but sheep and calves who find assurance in a diploma. It is at best but an honorable certificate as to time and course; it cannot of itself impart knowledge. It is not to be conjured with. If the knowledge be not in the brain, the diploma is use- less; and if it be in the mind, the diploma is unnecessary. The struggle to get a diploma by cramming and cribbing is only self-deception. The diploma without the brain-digested knowledge is a mere sheepskin.

The Spanish for "You cannot make a silk purse of a sow's ear" is "Although you dress a monkey in silk, he will still be a monkey. ' '

Although you dress a youth in diplomas, he will still know no more than he knows. But the college life and training are of great value. The college itself is a time-saving, labor-saving device, but it is not a factory of either brains or character. It may develop both, but the germ must be inborn. Few of us realize how little we have to do with the making of ourselves. There is no self-made man. The qualities he has and the will power to develop those qualities are mere inheritances, like the weaknesses of his less fortunate brother, and the lack of will power to resist those weaknesses.

The college life is of as much value, or more, than its studies.

From this reservoir, the college, we may more quickly fill our bottles than if we dug each spring for ourselves; but the size, shape and color of the bottles remain unchanged. The monkey dressed in the silk gown of a college education will still be a monkey.

I am an advocate of college training. It is a luxury none should reject who can have it. It offers ore already dug, and a harvest of friendships; but each man must refine his own ore and win his own friends. The college cannot and does not create one elemental trait. Only the thoughtless and foolish believe a college can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

I know a man who has quite a bundle of learned degrees. He regards them as the mere incidents of his search for what he really wanted to know. And being told a degree was due him from a certain college if he would apply for it, he replied: "What for? I have the knowledge." That is the true light in which to view diplomas, and I hope the rigid diploma will some day give way to the certificate, varying in each case, stating exactly what the holder has done.

The universities have always been the storehouses of learning, and from the Dark Ages till now have been resorted to by those thirsting for knowledge; but, like all established institutions, especially such as are supported by the state or by the wealthy, they have always been conservative, the universities of Russia being only an apparent, not a teal, exception to the rule. Perhaps it is well that they should be conventional as well as conventual, but, valuable as is the college training, he who misses it can take comfort