Swarthmore College - Halcyon Yearbook (Swarthmore, PA)

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'aw agus'- FACULTY A few rather formal pictures and some words about the faculty cannot convey accurately its importance to Swarth- more. Even the students will admit that next to himself the pro- fessors are the most important part of a college community. Some of them may not be able to afford the price of a haircut, but they are at their best when they are spendthrifts of their learning.

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Helen F. North, Chairman Division of the Humanities THE HUMANITIES . . . Perhaps we enter the hu' manities with the notion that it is vaguely the way to truth and with the precise assurance that we will never be rich. For some it must be because the only method of ordering the dark chaos of the mind is through the eyes of what is abstract, impractical, and rarely without paradox. For others perhaps it is that they were never much good at anything else anyway. And in very rare cases, all the possible fields of knowledge have been scanned, intricately, objectively, without prejudice of temperament. The scales are prepared, the humanities and the sciences put side by side, the judge stands erect and with eyes open-and a foreign object hurtles into the eye. The judge rubs it, and when it ceases to blur, finds himself studying philosophy. fAnd there we would all be together, surrounded by a Glow of En- lightenment, professor and student, Socrates and pupil, floating in a mesmerising sacredness of thought and theory, discovering those Eternal Truths.j VVe are rather amazed that we can read a book, look at a picture, examine our faith-and all for credit. Where are we, then, four years later? Perhaps we have regretted our folly, and have decided to make some money after all. Or we have reaffirmed it, in graduate schools. fThere we are, all together, rediscovering those Eternal Truths.j lfVe were never much good at anything else anyway. Barbara Behnke