University of Maryland College Park - Terrapin / Reveille Yearbook (College Park, MD)

Page 27 text:

Self-Culture, BY PROFESSOR R. H. ALVEY. TO the student of to-day, walking in the light of modern science and trained in the methods of the lab oratory, the terms culture, cultiva- tion and the like possess a peculiar significance and embody a profound scientific principle. He knows that culture implies such modification of environ- ment, such control and direction of external condi- tions, as tend to aid evolutionary growth, and to bring the subject treated to its highest possible state of development, whether it be plant life, animal life, oi minute microbe organism. What ever we wish perfect, we cultivate. Applied science has rightly been called the hand-maid of Nature. Again, while recognizing the principle of develop- ment and growth in natural law, we know, too, that a contrary tendency exists in all animate things, — a tendency beginning with arrested development and resulting in degeneration and reversion to type. Here again applied science assists nature by combat- ting this tendency. Culture is both positive and negative. It is perhaps the most striking point of difftrence between man and the rest of animate creation, that to him alone is given the power to apply this thing we call self-culture. Plants, animals, bacteria may be cultivated, their environment may be modified, their upward growth assisted, their tendency to degeneration checked ; but they can not help them- selves. Yet the evolution of a man has in it a potent factor working from within ; he can cultivate himself. Education is not self-culture ; and it is not selt- culture because the forces that control and direct it come mainly from without. The living brain is there, it is true, receiving, reasoning, thinking ; so is the living sap in the cultivated plant; so is the living bone and blood and tissue in the well-bred animal ; but the powers that direct the growth are external.