Harvard University - Red Book Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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l Erwin Panofsky of the Institute for Advanced Study held the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetry last year. Yearly appointments to this famous Chair are made at infrequent intervals. fact that their very existence and nature are clues to essential ways of thought and life. If the arts are merely decorations for living, or idle diversions, they need little study, if they are only tools for the psychologist, economist, or historian, they are useful but only as imperfect instruments. Only when they are seen as in their own right fundamental elements in the Order of human life, expressions of basic modes of thought, and the ultimate communication of essential experience and faith, do they appear in their true colors, and only in that light does their study produce the values we need. To quote once more the writer of Harvard Today in the 1943 Album, the fight of students of the humanities will not end even when peace has been restored . In the war years their weapons were guns, tomorrow, as educated men, their weapons will JAMES WARE FREDERIC L, WELLS Assn:-inte l,I'UfL'HHlYI' of Chinese Asaislxuili lliwfi-ssui' of Psyi-lmlngy elsif ' JOSHUA WHATMOUGH lk . N , , , DONALD CARY WILLIAMS roll-ssnr of cf1lllIDlLl'3lflYl' Pllilnlngy 11,-,,ft.gs,,r,,f philnsnlyhv HARRY A. WOLFSON GEORGE KINGSLEY ZIPF N:i!h:m Litliuu-r l'rofa-ssur of Lluiwl-,lily 1,4-4-g,,m.r lluhrow lilfil'l'lliilll't' :mud Pliilnsnplly ' be their ideas. It is now tomorrow. The battle has not ended with the promise of peace. Ideas are still weapons, and it is still the opportunity and the obligation of the teacher and student of the humanities, in college or out of it, to fight with them for the salvation ofa gravely threatened world. Arthur Darby Nock, an encyclopedia of early Christian and Hebrew lore, is noted for his sharp wit, cane, and swinging stride.

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liz Author of several volumes of poetry, Theodore Morrison edited Five Kind! oflV1'iti11g, the English A Bible. it less than those who are not, and men of real promise, cap- able of distinguished achievement, are deprived of the chance to develop their full powers by being denied a useful educa- tional aid for that development. If it is true, as it surely is, that in the humanities the The late Frederick G. White UMD, formerly instructor in English, chortles with Professors james B. Munn, Howard M. jones, and educational advantages of the tutorial system were greater than those of any substitute plan thus far tried, it behooves everyone interested in humane education to seek for means either of restoring the tutorial plan as it used to be or of de- vising some other scheme that will work as well. Dean Chester N. Greenough once declared that Where there is an educa- tional necessity there is no such thing as an administrative impossibilityf' This is a statement of an ideal which Harvard has pretty well lived up to in the past, there is every reason to hope that when it is recognized that the full tutorial plan in the humanities is a necessity, or at the very least, a major desir- ability, administrative impossibilityu will not be allowed for long to stand in the way of its restoration or of the provision of some truly adequate educational substitute. It is Now Tomorrow In the last analysis, however, the present and future of the study of the humanities at Harvard do not depend on formal methods. General Education, the tutorial plan, skilful lecturing, valid testing of aptitudes, and a host of other devices can all be of service, but ultimately success or failure comes from the quality of the teacher and the taught and the quality of their relation. The central value of humane study is that it takes its devotees into the heart of life, not into a realm apart. It involves not merely the individual's appreciation of objects which please or interest him but far more importantly his power to construct standards by which to live, to make wise human judgments, to develop enduring equalities of character, and to fill a worthy place in a healthy society. Books, music, and objects of art have no lasting virtue when they are divorced from a living context. The problem for the teacher and the student is to study them first in and for themselves and to know them for what they are, without ever losing sight of the H. E. Rollins in Warren House. Munn gives courses on the Bible and Browning, Rollins is a scholar of the Romantic Period. .-t, ,,,,,n,.,,,,..,.,f-..,-, .M - - rv' ' pri k '5

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