Princeton University - Bric A Brac Yearbook (Princeton, NJ)

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In sincere and grateful appreciation of all he has done for Princeton during his first twenty years as President of the University, we, the editors of the 1953 Bric-a-Brac, dedicate this book to Harold Willis Dodds — an excellent administrator and a great humanitarian. Harold Willis Dodds Ph.D., L.L.D., Litt.D. President of Princeton University to the 1953 BRIC-A-BRAC I am honored and grateful that the 1953 edition of the Brk-a- Brac has been dedicated to me as a friendly recognition of my com- pletion of twenty years as President of the University. This is rather a long time in the life of any man. While I am personally keenly sensitive of the honor, I interpret the dedication to be an expression of approval of the course of the past two decades which has helped to fix the kind of education which the present generation of students came here to obtain. I am therefore delighted to respond to the invitation of the Bric-a-Brac to say a word about our philosophy of a liberal arts education. There are many definitions of the purposes of a liberal education, but the best one I know was given by Princeton ' s President Wither- spoon in the Eighteenth Century when he said that the end of a liberal education was to set all human powers in motion. This is another way of saying that the purpose is to cultivate all the po- tentialities of the individual to make him an effective person. A liberal education is directed at one of the most dangerous tendencies of the human mind; namely, to concentrate on one segment, perhaps a very small one, of the world of knowledge and ignore the rest. Thus, while liberal education at Princeton properly involves fields of concentration and a degree of upper- class specialization, care should always be taken that one ' s work in a department is rounded out by contacts with other fields. The idea of liberal education does not repudiate professional or voca- tional values (the possession of a trained mind is in itself a voca- tional asset) ; but it does resist over-emphasis on professional or vocational interests and insists that the dominant emphasis should be towards the generalist . It is often said that a liberal education is designed to develop the whole man. Thus our curriculum is arranged in three broad divisions — the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the human- ities. Each division deals with man in one of his three chief rela- tionships. Natural science, together with applied science, is concerned with man ' s relation to nature. Study of science leads to a greater understanding of natural laws, how they are discovered and how they may be utilized to improve human welfare. But man lives in relationship with others as well as with physical nature. The capacity of one human individual to communicate with another individual, which far exceeds that of even the highest animal, has brought about our modern complex society. So man ' s social life is becoming

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increasingly complicated and significant. For ex- ample, to be an informed citizen one must know more about economics and government than ever before. And he can ' t understand current social problems and institutions unless he has knowledge of the history behind them. It is with matters such as these that the social sciences deal. The third relationship which each one is under is his relation to himself as a human being who is more than an animal or a chemical equation or a physical com- position of pipes and tubes. Here we turn to the humanities for knowledge and wisdom about our spiritual aspirations and our human cravings for justice, beauty, honor, integrity, art, and all those elements which relate to what a philosopher calls the good life. All these matters make up the subject matter of a liberal arts curriculum. The residential life on the campus is designed to supplement the curriculum