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

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At Princeton the hun: ' .nities have long been regarded as the main instrument in the liberal education to which the University seeks to expose each of its students. A liberal education, we do well to remember, is liberal when it frees, not when it hands out a bargain package of easy knowledge without activation of mind or imagin- ation. There are countless ways in which the humanities may free the mind and the imagination, for the human individual, past and present, remains an end in himself and a creature of marvellous variability. Perhaps, how- Professors T. C. Young. Chairman, L. V. Thomas, Department oj Oriental Languages and Literatures !!!!!:»■■ ' ttmrrinMM Professors L. uoil. Chairman, R. M. Scoon. Departnirnl of Fhilosuphy Professors E. Forbes. R. Sessions, 0. Sirunk, J. M. Knapp. Department of Miisir 17

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Professor R. F. Goheen, Department of Classics HUMANITIES By Robert Francis Goheen. Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Classics Exteniall ie vecl. tlie humanities at Princeton are nine departments of study and four special programs. Sucii a view is skin-deep. The life and substance of the humani- ties are within. They are the expressions of human con- sciousness, the varied records of individual and group ex- perience, the probing insights and the reaches of the creative imagination, the ever-renewed efforts to find coherence and significance, which form the record of man ' s spiritual and cultural existence through the ages. They afford the subject-matter of the courses in the several departments and programs. Viewed this way. the humanistic pr ocess is never static and it never ceases. For student and teacher ( at best only a more advanced student ) study in the humanities involves constanth fresh need to interpret the past against the present, match one area of experience against another, compare one man s insight against those of other writers or philoso- phers. Professors J. W. Smith, A. Szathmar . W. A. Kaufmann, Department of Philosophy Professors R. R. Cawley. C. H. Baker, Chair- man, L. R. Thompson. Deiiartment of English

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Professor I. (). Wade. (Juiinnaii. Department of Modern Langnaiies and Literatures ever, the humanities principally liberate by opening to individuals the experience and culture of other men in iitlier times and regions than their own. Whether ap- proached as artistic expression or as history or as philos- ophy, the subject matter of humanistic studies requires a reaching beyond the localisms of one ' s own race, nation, time and epoch. The invitation and challenge is to an alert, disciplined and sufficiently broad understanding for the sound conduct of personal and national life. Professors A. T. MacAllister. R. S. Willis. A. L Foulet, Department oj Modern Languages and Literatures Professors H. Cottier, C. T. Dunklin. L. A. Lanila, H. L. Savage, Department oi English - ' rofcssor A. Mendel. ( hairnian. Department oi Music