Butler University - Carillon / Drift Yearbook (Indianapolis, IN)

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f-S ' S: - Purpose Astray ROM their first electric train, children of the twentieth century glorify in the magnificent achievements of this age of scientific progress. People are ever re- minded that fast automobiles, tall buildings, and radios are due to the advancement of Science. Little wonder that Science means nothing more for them than speed, efficiency, and production! The advancement of Science has done away with the superstitions of the past: it has put in their place little more than a cocky skepticism. As if a whirring motor were capable of spelling out the destiny of mankind! However, it can be seen that what is really being criticized here is not Science itself but rather that foreign element which dominates Science today — namely, the practi- cal. Modern scientific investigation began with a desire to give life a deeper interpretation. But the utility element has entered and spread with stupendous rapidity. Natural Science needs to be separated from practical materialism and regrounded in a purposeful connected whole of life. Chaos is Wrong The human mind demands order of its universe. In compliance with this demand has developed the oldest of all sciences — mathematics. The extreme exactness of this science is due to the abstract quality of its ideas which are capable of unusually sharp determination. However, mathe- matics does not rest on grounds which are ultimately unlike and independent of those of other sciences. For mathematics is the science of all exact thinking. The solution of algebraic equations, the classification of plants, and the framing of constitutions are all mental operations having order as their common aim and ground. Modern empiricism proceeds on the assump- tion that the world of nature is an orderly whole capable of mathematical comprehension. The resulting progress in natural science conceptions would seem to prove the validity of that as- sumption. We are beginning to understand the ancient Pythagorean postulate that number is the source of all things. Mr. Johnson

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g:?%M. ©g What ' s It All About, ? Anyh OWJ MERICAN school children arc taught so many myths that by tlic time they reach college their minds are almost completely and hopelessly made up for them, and lines of thought are carefully settled in grooves from which it is hard to escape. Phi osophy should try to get these children to think for themselves, to dislodge the gullible attitude they have always held and to put in its place a critical attitude. But philosophy, of course, must do more than cause disillusionment. Disillusionment usually leaves its victim in despair: the world he considered sound has been proved false, has gone to pieces, and he sees nothing but futility everywhere. Philosophy will show him that life is meaningful. It will lead him not to the despair of nothingness, but to the beauty of reality, reality as it has been conceived by the world ' s greatest minds. This Great Age People have been led to believe, by after-dinner speakers, campaign orators, and newspaper writers, that, because of its tremendous mechanical development, this is the world ' s greatest age. But is machinery absolutely beneficial to society? What use is radio, for instance, if over it one hears nothing but jazz music, vaudeville patter, church sermons, advertisements, and political propaganda? And do not forget, by the way, that modern advantages are enjoyed at the expense of men ' s souls, men ' s bodies, men ' s lives. Miners who work in black. dust-filled underground pits to supply with coal the factories that manufacture the advantages usually die before reaching middle age; human lungs and human minds, you know, can endure only so much. Men who build automobiles, men who have to work in hot factories for eight or ten hours every day, hearing always the ceaseless roar of the modern industrial plant — what does life hold for them? No matter what the politicians and jour- nalists say, this age is in a frightful mess. Do the sociologists know a way out?

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upon a Peak g: : §4i ©-g ?i EiM nr ss 2. » problem of modern labor-saving devices is that the comforts they produce make people lazy. Anyone who has a goal nowadays desires achievement without ef- fort. And that is why very few students at- tempt the study of Latin and Greek. They know those languages are difficult to learn. No teacher of classical languages will promise any short cut to either tongue. Mastery comes only after years of diligent study. But the teacher will go on to say that the mind, like the body, is developed by exercise, and that the very discipline which the student undergoes while studying Greek and Latin may enable him to understand and appreciate the works of classical writers Balboa and his men were weary, most likely, and the climb upward was probably steep and difficult and fraught with dangers. But the summit was at- tained: and there before them was an infinite stretch of waters, a mighty stretch of waters upon which they had never looked before. No wonder that they gazed at one another with wild surmise — Silent, upon a peak in Darien. Mr. Gelston Forgotten Treasures While movie audiences thrill nightly to screen dramas, the real characters and the genuinely dramatic situations of English literature remain unread in books on library shelves. Interest in good literature is not much in evidence anywhere nowadays. Persons who wish to read turn almost entirely to modern American writers. They await eagerly one best seller after another, satisfied with any book that is frank and of pleasing style and futuristic cover. There are countless writers in America today. Are they all masters? Why not read books that have been proved, through many years of intelligent criticism, to be truly worth- while. ' ' Classic writers are harder to read than the moderns, but isn ' t that so because there is much more contained in their works? Modern read- ers have taken the attitude that a writer ' s mes- sage must be easily grasped; otherwise he has failed. But is the reader developed or benefited by ideas handed to him on a silver platter? Modern literature has made the modern mind completely receptive. That is its great weak- ness. And that is why classical English liter- ature is being neglected. Mr. Harrison