Elon University - Phi Psi Cli Yearbook (Elon, NC)

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ro ooue y In such a place as a college it is true that the student, or scholar if you will, finds himself enclosed in a heap of thoughts and facts springing from books and minds and past and present and future to which there seem to be no top nor bottom nor side nor limit in any direction. It seems that he could learn forever and still not have made the slightest dent in knowledge though he had the ability of Apollo ' s silver shafts to pierce the knotty quirks of learning and drive straight to the throbbing center of a question. Why then should he seek to learn? Oh, monstrous question. Immediately the philosopher springs to his toes and, with graceful discourse on the integrity of the single soul and the universality of the single soul and the unity of men and the dignity of the individual, con- vinces the bewildered scholar that his question was indeed poorly asked. And now, having lost the easiest way out, that of not seeking to learn, the scholar puts his shoulder once more to the overly symbolic wheel and asks, How then do I penetrate this mass of learn- ing and so at last arrive at my individ- ual degree of the universal Socratic happiness? The answer comes in not so direct an argument as in a true one. Truth is often illusive like Frost ' s something white in the well bottom.

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First consider this mass of learning. The scholar is indeed faced with much to learn, but he sometimes forgets that he has learned much. Nonetheless, his minuteness is evident. Con- sider then the whole of all learning and of all existence. This is indeed infinite, but it is not chaotic. Take a galaxy in mind, pinwheel-like and moving. At the center is a sun, and out from the sun come planets and from the planets, moons. Even the galaxy itself is an extension of a local group of galaxies and this group too is a part of the expanding substance in space. The same order is true of knowledge. Lan- guage, to take one instance, is merely a portion of a more complete existence if it is noted that need gives vent to expression, expression to words, words to language, language to under- standing, understanding to creation, creation to beauty. . .