St Louis University - Archive Yearbook (St Louis, MO)

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ji --,I ,f g j g N 4 sg .Sung ., ik zfggn, 6 M, l 1 X -3 71 2535, ci . 'f l 33597-. YA K Vmk LJ F5 l ff Q V pg, A . K I if if 433' NE' f 4 Q' L is - . Q. f '- Ew- I - ' 4 fl V. N -s if fa, W Q its J sf ' QPF ,v .R , ,ff .1 .-55551 ry fxiif ' f says? 1 - . - 6 5, . 1- Aging! is if fig, VX 5 ,ifw Q, fag , TTT' at ' 11 'il sa NQQJ 'Q 539 hi if 4.,, r sf , 'J I lk. lt it fi f -N. S f S i X 7 W M BSESSED by the microscopefmind, our dizzy decades of this twentif E 'I eth century-afraid to think, afraid to touch rock bottom-have it ,ff unceremoniously relegated the metaphysical with its principles of deduction to some mustied, yellowed tome far up on the shelf of man's knowledge. With ignorant arrogance they have attempted to build With, out design or purpose, Without plan or foundation, With arrogant ignorance they have dismissed the fundamental principle of causality, so that they have institutions Without ends, undertakings Without understanding. Industry has become a senseless process of standardizing men, nothing more. This because the metaphysical order has been obscured by the dollar sign, by Science, by those things which are, in very definition, beneath the metaphysical. Considering this university then from the view of one seeking its metaphysical causes, it must be in disharmony with the jazzed saxophones of the modern madhouse, strangely in tune With the immortal melody which keeps this World at pitch When its madness is maddest. V V The university displays an interplay of causes, the material cause shaped by the efficient cause producing the formal cause to the end of the final cause. Each cause is important, each merits attention as an essential to the Whole, for if-as is the case in a plethera of the citadels termed colleges-a single cause be not adverted to, the result is trackless education, v4v

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656 Gfrckive Of lf. .goals Univer5ify for file W ,935 V

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education awry. Their interplay is subtle like the blending of colored beams of light, and if a single one be off focus, the Whole suffers. There is first, the material cause-that of Which a thing is made-in the university, the student. Modern interpretation has confused material and mass. The student is no longer an integer in the process of education, he is a number in a registrar's recordfbook used to determine the profit in the business of selling education. Such is the modern perversion, it is hardly the correct translation. As great sculpture is the realization of the potency in the stone from which it is carved, not the arbitrary imposif tion of a desired form upon any nearby rock, so great education, real education is the realization of the possibilities in each student it touches. It is the student Who matters. V Upon him Work the efficient causes in the university-faculty, administration, extrafcurricular organizations, athletic teams. These are not techniques to be applied by diagram and chart, they are dynamic con- cretions of the spirits in men. There has been no inadvertence to this, the efficient cause, that by which a thing is made. Only the characteristic chaos in actualization. Magnificent stadiums, gigantic gymnasiums, elaborate buildings-are these, empty of vital contact with the material cause, excellent of themselves but having no real part in the making of men, are these not failures? It is the actual meeting of men, the balance v5v f a 66 N . gf' .1 . g xi F55 Wx