University of California Berkeley - Blue and Gold Yearbook (Berkeley, CA)

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University Spirit. University is not merely a group of buildings, present or to come, on a certain beautiful spot opposite the Golden Gate. Nor is it wholly a mechanism made up of offices, statutes, curricula, class combinations and other forms for work and play and suffering. We i do not get beyond an outside view even by thinking of it as an aggre- gate of men and women, or as the sum-total of their activities. In order to know what the University of California really is, we need to regard it as a system of ideas that we university people are thi nking more or less clearly, coherently and unanimously, which we are converting, each in his own way, into motives, ideals, and aspirations, and which we are daily embodying with varying degrees of success in our conduct, and in the products of our brains and hands. In a very real sense then the University has existence here and now only in and through the common or social thinking, feeling, willing, that result from the action and reaction of mind upon mind within our own particular university community. Without at least one student and one professor the University would cease to exist. It is, accordingly, not simply a figure of speech when we ascribe personality to the University and speak of a university spirit. Obviously, too, as long as this university spirit is true to itself it is always at one with the high interests to which it owes its existence. Puerilities are not one of its manifestations ; though ever youthful, it is a grown-up spirit. It is not a spirit of license ; the University points to self-control as the corner-stone of liberty. It is not snobbish ; the University makes fine manhood and womanhood the sole criterion of worth. It excludes study for revenue only, because such study is antagonistic to the search after truth and the up-building of character. That the wretch who spreads lies or unverified rumor as university news has no share in this spirit is patent without argument, howl he ever so loudly at a foot-ball game. It is a corporate spirit involving loyalty, service, self-sacrifice, and reaching outward far beyond the pale of the University. It is as wide as humanity, for, as a university, we know nothing of political divisions, or of race, or station, or sex. The truest patriotism enters into it, for as an American university our country ' s welfare is our own. The feeling of oneness with our whole State is inseparable from it, for, as the University of Cali- fornia, our loftiest ambition can only be to incarnate the higher life of the State in our teaching, our study, and our actions, and to minister to that life so uplift- ingly and so abundantly as to make our land of sunshine a province of the kingdom of reason and righteousness. But, as already intimated, the ethical ideals of the University are rational and the in-dwelling university spirit is a rational spirit. Unless a rooter ' s mouth-piece is connected somewhere and somehow with a thinking head-piece there is nothing to prevent his exhibiting equal enthusiasm in defacing or destroying State property. Divorced from a sense of discrimination, the university spirit turns into a blind demon of mischief, as in the case of the university man, who, with the most loyal 11

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full credit for the work done here. But this is the bright side, and there is still much room for improvement. Our graduate work is much hampered by the fact that very many of our best students are obliged to carry on their studies while engaged in teach- ing, or in some other occupation for self-support. This outside work consumes their energies and prevents that complete absorbtion in study which is so essential to the highest success. Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Cornell, and Chicago are all well provided with graduate fellowships, which are given to ambitious students purely on the ground of scholarly promise, and these are a means of attracting to those institutions the ablest and most energetic students. Until the University of California is similarly endowed, we cannot hope to compete on equal terms with our eastern rivals. A gift of two hundred thousand dollars for the establishment of twenty fellowships would do more to build up the graduate , work, and so the scholarly reputation, of our University than any other use to which a similar amount of money could be put. Along with our lack of fellowships must be mentioned the inadequacy of our library. Seventy-five thousand volumes, well-chosen though they are, seem insig- nificant in comparison with the hundreds of thousands in the libraries of Harvard, Yale, and Chicago. Harvard expends at least twenty thousand dollars annually for books. We have barely three thousand. The library is the heart of the University, and here, too, the slender funds which our Regents have at their disposal must be eked out by private gifts. The limits of my space will allow me to touch but very briefly upon the interesting topic which remains. It must suffice to say that the number of our graduates who enter upon careers of scholarship is constantly growing, and the recognition which many of them have obtained is more than we could expect, when we remember that the oldest of our alumni have hardly yet reached their full maturity. In the single department of Philosophy, for example, Professor Royce of Harvard, Professor Mezes of Texas, Professor Bakewell of Bryn Mawr, Professor McGilvary (soon to be) of Cornell, all hold degrees from this University, and all, except Professor Royce, received most of their philosophical training here. Nor is it our philosophers alone who have received recognition abroad, as the names of Stanford ' s chemist, Professor Stillman (of our class of ' 74), Professor Adolph C. Miller ( ' 87), of the University of Chicago, and many others, will testify. Meantime much of the best scholarly ability of our graduates has been employed at home, almost forty of the professors and instructors at Berkeley being them- selves alumni. To conclude this very inadequate sketch, I will express what I believe is the feeling of every loyal member of the University. While we are not ashamed of the position which our University has already attained, and while we believe that no other American university, save Johns Hopkins and Cornell, can show a record for its first thirty years which approaches ours in brilliancy, still we are far from satisfied. But we hope that at least solid foundations have been laid, and that in the era of expansion which seems to lie before us, the scholarly reputation of the University may keep pace with its fame for beauty of situation and splendor of architecture. EDWARD BULL CLAPP. Chicago and Stanford, fortunately for this statement, are not yet thirty years old. 10

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intentions, is always trying to boom his university without knowing what he is booming, what he ought to boom, to what end he is booming, and who feels very sad perhaps because his university pours out showers of blessing without stage thunder and lightning for the gallery gods of the world. Rational and discriminating, the university spirit is guided by the historic sense which no genuine university student is without. As university men and women we are aware of the past in the present; we are conscious, dimly though it be, of walking in the ways of predecessors. From the acts of the Regents to the first uncertain steps of a freshman, from the ceremonies of matriculation to the sym- bolic rites of Class Day, nowhere does tradition entirely release its hold ; nowhere is there a safe path to the new except through the old. Until a certain well- known structure shall possess the inherited emotional value a Yale man associates with his fence, we shall always in the depths of our hearts prefer to sit on some- thing else. We realize, too, that this continuity of life is our very own. The University of California is not Harvard, nor Yale, nor Michigan. Neither is it an applied definition. It came into existence with an individuality of its own, acquired a strength of its own, and slowly matured a character of its own, and all this in and through a vital union with a commonwealth of its own, a union so vital that without it neither University nor State can attain to full stature. Our past, our present, our future, all are indissolubly connected with what our State is, has been, and will be. It is from this point of view we need to catch a glimpse of ourselves if our university spirit is to have any meaning and purposeful direction. And a professor from elsewhere must do more than catch a glimpse. As long as he thinks, and feels, and talks, and acts like an alien his usefulness is sadly impaired, no matter how yellow his jacket or how gorgeous his feathers. We cannot, however, know ourselves as a collective personality with a soul of our own, without realizing that our faces are set toward a goal common to other universities, although the paths leading thither differ and will differ as long as men and communities are not alike. One university may lay special stress on training those that are born men to that which is human ; another may make the distribution of the inherited treasures of knowledge its chief function; a third may aim chiefly at teaching how to get at the truth and how to add to it, still, according to the best that has been thought and said concerning universities, each is only emphasizing one aspect of the same organized university idea, and perhaps must do so if it is to be true to its day and generation. To be instructed by that idea is therefore as essential to the university spirit as knowledge of what citizenship means is to the civic spirit. The very name that we bear should always make it impossible for us to follow every new tin horn that toots among us or to go through the motions of university men and women in stupid, provincial self-satisfaction. To strive for clear and coherent university ideas is one of the duties we owe to ourselves as individuals and as citizens of our University, of our country, and of the world. For this end the California Union was founded. As was recently suggested, something similar to the Oxford Union wtiuld doubtless advance us in the same direction if wisely adapted to our conditions. The good services rendered by our university papers and maga- 12