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

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It will naturally be asked — what are thepiocesses and methods of self-culture ? They are very simple, because perfectly scientific. The first step is em- bodied in the maxim — Know thyself. This we must do, and do thoroughly and fearlessly, or all the rest of our labor will be futile. One can not expect sound conclusions from false premises. All true self-knowledge must come from constant and impartial self-inspection and criticism. We are most of us too indifferent, many of us too cowardly to do this. We fear that we shall find flaws that we do not know how to mend, blemishes that we would never even acknowlege to ourselves. But one must learn to trust himself, to understand his own char- acter, to measure his own possibilities, before he can hope to elavate the one, or to develop the other. When you can truly say — I know what manner of man I am, then you can begin to mould the manner of man you would be. Again since culture depends upon adjustment to environment, we are called upon to place ourselves in harmony with our own surroundings. By the term environment, I here mean everything with which our individualities are brought in contact. Not only our immediate surroundings, but the times in which we live, the state of society in which we find ourselves, our own education, our own habits and thoughts, our own tastes and sympathies. All these are parts of environment, and enlightened self-culture tries to understand and use them all. We have to sift it ; to pick out that which is purest and truest and best, that, in short, which will help us to grow, and then assimilate it, make it part of ourselves: and we have to detect that which is evil and low and base, that which will cause degenera- tion, and then cast it out and away from us. Thus habit, self-control, clearness of judgment, all aid in this process of selection and assimilation. When a man has so adjusted himself to his en- vironment, he has become all that he can become in it. Hence, unless he is content to cease growing, he must extend and widen the environment itself. The man who is so content with his circle of exist- ence we call narrow, and the world is full of narrow men. Such men have lost the principle of growth : their environment fits them : they will never need a larger garment. Again, all men do not develop equally, that is, with equal rapidity, or with equal results. How could they, since the basis of their growth is indi- vidual ? They hold to different standards in morals, in intellectual beliefs, in art, in science. And here a word as to our choice of standards. The materials of self-culture, so to speak are our individual im- 23

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A perfectly educated man, like a periectly cultivated rose is a work of art, but of art that is not his own. Has education, then, no part in that which we call self-culture? Most certainly it has: it is its foundation: self-culture begins where education stops. He who would cultivate himself must first have something to cultivate. Is it not possible, however, that a man to whom the advantages of an education have been denied may yet be capable of self-culture, may refine, elevate, develop himself without the aid which training by others could give hiui? It is possible, certainly, but not probable. And we must not fall into the error of imagining that all education is necessarily formal: there are more kinds of education than one. Poverty, adver- sity, experience, travel — these are often better edu- cators than the curricula of the college and univer- sity. But all other things being equal, the well- educated man is best able to cultivate himself. Education, then, must probably be regarded as a means to an end, and not the end itself. And this will be more apparent when we recognize clearly and fully what is the true aim of all culture, external and internal in origin. It is simply that the plant, animal or man may be something better than now. Self-culture helps us to be something : not to do something only, but to be something. And what is this goal, this ideal at which self-culture aims ? Clearly nothing short of the highest possible good. Its aim is to produce the highest type of manhood. Not to produce merely a well-educated man ; not even to produce a man who is a specialist or an expert, or who knows one thing perfectly, but to have as its finished product a man whose tastes, impulses, habits, moral sense, powers of thought, grasp of things tangible and ideal, all have been trained, con- trolled and developed to the very highest point that time and opportunity and natural gifts will allow. This is the true meaning of culture. There is abso- lutely no li.iiit to the possibilities of our being. Mind is not finite ; and self-culture has no limitations. There is always clearer, purer air beyond : there is always room for greater fullness of life. The perfect union of our physical, mental and moral activities make us capable of we know not what grandeur of thought, sublimity of conception, nobility of action. We are not clods of the earth, and therefore wholly earthy, although, if we so will it, we may allow the purely animal in us to dominate, and that will make us so. We are possessed of powers and poten- tialities within us, that rightly cultured, controlled and directed may carry us far beyond the realm of the common-place, and into the world of lofty im- aginings, profound truths and creative impulses. 32

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pulses and tastes, onr mental powers, and last but not least, our habits — habits of doing and habits of thinking. But no one can build well without the plans of an architect, nor mould a character without an ideal. We must have ideal types, and these types must be the highest. We may feel that some knowledge is too wonderful ; it is high, and we can not attain unto it — but that is no matter. Approximation is in itself growth and development. A goal wholly gained means effort ended ; and without growth we will certainly have degeneration. As to what the final end of self-culture may be, we can not say. We do no not recognize anything final in it. Growth is endless, and self-culture has no limitations. But what are its practical results to the individual who practices it? If nothing else, these: First, fullness of life, that is, life whose every moment has a meaning and a purpose, life full of interest, because full of thought and work, life that is above the commonplace and mean, life that satisfies. Second, force of character, decision, clear- ness of purpose, with all the respect and confidence from others that this insures. Last, the conscious- ness of being somc In ' iig, a real entity, self-made, self-controlled, self-owned. Such a consciousness alone is worth a lifetime of effort, and more than compensates for every loss occasioned in its getting. 24