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

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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

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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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Lf, ? X A Af gsm., fi 'wxirgg vm 'ix 'H ,M Wim is Typ., glefff, gsfffc at ii ,Q M57 .Wi Fil We M? c' 'YV L5 Axvklfi 'LFEFQ gc... ...fa wfragh fr., ,,-', ,gap a QE Bl C , raw. if Db 051.24 T, fy' 44. Tilgsg ,537 gif in if Q 1 X .Jim ET . -4 X' Ya fag ,f f X Y 1' .5 , A .L H WSW 565, 1-.EQ el 1-' K .iw M? -.455 ,fmifg Qiim. i T wx gfni A.. 01? ,i Vs in 2 'Quai' fr: '-.1 4 .- . mg 9 -ni,-fl QS. .. ff. 5 FG if , 5? Et, C f . .4 f i 521 .Qxii-9 S6241 -QA ,F 654. A 'Exif-ri. 65,3-iiifigi iff' qt-75? xx Ly,-x r ww 'lgji Wi, Q! M9371 , fjfui ,, Qin? All wg, 1 iilffjffg WZ: 4 -Cacti rf . lssrij' Q Q13 45.4-f ,wdwbj 7 'X Ffa. ,1 ' .44 if, ffffhs gl ANN ll F ?5i.Fsf' '?QQs3'?'j G , Q5 Mi lf 01 1 ,lf , 1, 15 ' if il. Zmlusfwi it W 4 ' .. Q ff Qgiiia- TJ lfzrfglfiffkfef- .1-14 'si v Jim, Af Y Kxgxmf P .wx v 4-14124. +1'zf, 1' 3, X, 'Jin wg gigs, 4 Mi g . , .nqwj of pressures they exert which is the eH:1cient cause. When building and accoutrements separate the material and the shaping powers, when the log which should connect Mark Hopkins and student becomes a barrier, there is no efficient cause. When there is no Mark Hopkins, there is no efficient cause. And there is no education. V For the formal cause-the graduate-has never been touched. Worse, he is no longer the material cause, pliant and flexible, that should have been formed. He has become a dissociated mass of Hcontactsu and facts, a man trained to be a misfit. No college was ever begun for the production of a winning team, no college should ever be begun as a haven for men seeking seclusion -from life. The university is made to train men, the graduate is her primary object. Her every organization, her every teacher, her every detail of administration must make for the construction of that end product, that product who is not a Grand Rapids chair to be turned out in quantities at high speed, a duplicate of every other man awarded a degree. He is the formal cause shaped to the pattern and made for the purpose of the Final Cause-God. For the Ultimate is the end of man, and the end, too, of education. All is good in that it comes from Him Who made all, all can be good in so far as it conforms to His plan. The Final Cause- that for which a thing is made, that which must dominate and direct each lesser cause, that which gives meaning to the whole. Man, the egoist, would ever like to hurl defiance to his God, to shout, This is mine, this meant for me. The very shouting drains the object of its meaning. Forget the Final Cause, shape education by some other pattern, for some other purpose? As soon order the orbits of the stars to your whim. You can ignore God, but you can not remove Him by your ignorance. V And as Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam we give you this Archive, a formal cause in itself. Through its pages we have attempted a refocussing on the causes of this, St. Louis University. The material cause, the efficient cause, the formal cause, and-ever upmost in mind and purpose-the great Final Cause. That for which this University and this annual were made. v6v