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

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CJie Kjollecje of Ofrh ana Sciences Rev. Wilfred M. Mallon, S.J., Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences; Rev. Thomas M. Knapp, S.J., Dean of the College of Arts and Sci- ences and Chancellor of the University. The preservation of things of enduring value has long been man ' s most difficult task. Time and man ' s own destructive folly bring to decay and ruin his most vaunted material achievements. We know the ruin in which the traveller found the statue and the realm of Ozymanidas, meant to be everlasting; and we can but wistfully imagine the glory that was Greece reconstructed about the exquisite frag- ments that we call the Elgin Marbles. The genius of man has, perhaps, been a little more successful in the realm of intellect; and, since the coming of Christ and the foun- dation of His indestructible Church, has been far more successful in the field of spiritual values. And it has been the good fortune of the ever-increasing treasury of human thought to be preserved through the centuries in the strong arms of this custodian of the Divine. Human learning owes an inestimable debt to the Catholic Church. The source of man ' s spiritual wealth, she has with fitness been at the same time the fostering mother of the natural enrichment of man ' s intellect, of what may be summed up, with the enlargement of the phrase, as the best that is known and thought in the world. She has cultivated and stimulated the arts and the sciences, indeed the whole field of human knowledge. In the crude frontier city of St. Louis at the beginning of the last century, it was quite natural that the authorities of the Church should have been the first to establish an insti- tution of higher learning, a College wherein Christ ' s mandate, going, therefore, teach ye all nations , could be carried out in the fullest sense in which the Church has always accepted it. And it is equally natural and appropriate that during the next hundred and twenty years there should have grown from and around this College a great Catholic University with its 24

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PAPIN AERIAL PHOTC COLLEGES

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SSi |!£pg i!i:;J-= While the theory in the College of Arts and Sciences is attained primarily in the classroom and the practice, in the laboratory, the library unites and blends the efforts of both. Lejt — Chemistry experiments are carried on in the laboratories located in the Medical School building. Center — The Arts library contains over 80,000 volumes. R: ht — A class in analytic geometry discusses the properties of a circle. many schools and departments as illustrated in this Archive. A thing which seems most strange is the fact that in so many of the modern educational institutions the elementary principle of educa- tion is lost sight of. The house is built with- out a foundation. The tendency is to turn ever more and more towards intense speciali- zation in a given field with absolute disregard for the necessity for at least some semblance of that broadening of view which a liberal education imparts. The lesson of all history that this liberal education has, through all the centuries, been accepted as the means whereby culture and civilization have come down to us, is utterly ignored. The consequence is the loss of the fullness of intellectual growth in the individual man with the consequent weak- ening in the nation made up of such individ- uals, and even in the Church if her member- ship should follow the prevailing trends. At the base of all this confusion of purpose and ideal is the false doctrine of Pragmatism or ad hoc ism. In accordance with its falla- cious precepts, everything which, in the past, has been revered as liberal and cultural, is discarded. Whereas, in all the preceding centuries, the study of the classics has been considered the very seat and source of all culture and learning, the modern tendency is, in most cases, to relegate it to a very insignifi- cant position in the college curriculum, and, in many cases, to drop it entirely. If there is to be any hope for the future, if there is ever to be any emergence from the chaos in which the world finds itself today, that hope lies in the men who are trained thinkers, the men who are versed in literature, the clas- sics, history and Christian philosophy. And though it may seem idealistic to expect the youth of the world suddenly to awaken to the problems that confront them, or will confront them in the very near future, yet it is con- ceivable that repeated and continued adversity may arouse a sufficient number of them to save the situation by an introspective attitude that will turn their minds to a contemplation of God. It is still the peculiar function of the Col- lege of Arts and Sciences of any Catholic university to share in a special way, by her delegation, the role of fostering mother exer- cised to the full by the Church. Under the influence of the spirit of Catholicism, there should flourish in every Catholic college a strong alliance and intertwining of the highest intellectual aspirations of man with his spirit- ual life and his supernatural destiny. Here man ' s Christ-given heritage of divine truth is bestowed on youth; and here youth ' s soul is enriched with the heritage also of human thought. This combination of spiritual wealth, divine and human, makes up Christian culture, the primary objective in a Catholic university. It gives life, and gives it ever more abundantly. It perpetuates Christocracy. 25