University of California Los Angeles - Bruin Life / Southern Campus Yearbook (Los Angeles, CA)

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2? ! . m ?X?) I: A MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR HERE IS a bit from Cowper which Sir WiUiam Osier, the great physician, was never tired of quoting. He said no one ever drew a more skillful distinction. Knowledge and wisdom, far jrom being one, Hat ' e o t-tnnes no connexion. Knou ' Iedge dwells In heads replete with thoughts of other men: Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. Knowledge is proud that he has earned so much: Wisdom is humble that he nows no more. Has any one told you that ignorance is sin? If you have missed that you have missed fellowing with themost inspinngteacherof the western world. He used to put it differently. He said, Knowledge is virtue. You will doubtless say, as many have said before you, That can ' t be true. If you say that, it is because you think of knowledge as acquaint- anceship, whereas Socrates thought of it as convic- tion. He did not make the distinction that Cowper makes. To him the only thing worth caring for or struggling for was a mmd possessing its own certain- ties and constantly engaged in knowing more and more. The greatest difference between men and stones is that men choose, they prefer, and when they choose, they reject and turn their backs upon more, much more than they cleave to and struggle for . To do that they must value, and to do that skilfully and un- erringly, their awareness of values must be unerring. Knowledge is right valuing, said Socrates. Knowl- edge made our own, deepened into conviction, is wisdom, said Cowper. That is the priceless thing, for it alone enables man to chooses aright and guide his life with holiness and strength. Aeschylus agrees with them, for he concludes that the spring of all wrong-doing is false coinage; that is, putting the wrong stamp on things, trying to make them pass for what they are not. This is a pretty solemn message to a graduating class, but graduating is a pretty solemn business. It invites one to box his compass and to note the course he has been sailing and the direction in which his wheel is set. If you have learned to try to distinguish right from wrong, true from false and beautiful from ugly deeds and hopes, you are in the way; you will make harbor. The years which are behind have not been easy and those which are ahead will not be easier. Life on this planet when it is on-going has never been other than a war- fare against our members to make them do what they must do. We received it from men and women who struggled with a wilderness and made it a habitation, who knew penis and journeyings, hunger and weari- ness, deprivation and watching. They set before themselves a great hope and relentlessly they drove them- selves to realize it. They gave us what we have; they made us what we are. They call us to value life as they valued it, to struggle unweanedly for understanding and with devotion to whatsoever things are pure and OR. ERNEST C. MOORE, PH.D