University of North Carolina Chapel Hill - Yackety Yack Yearbook (Chapel Hill, NC)

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of Nero, Benedict Arnold, and Jess Willard ; but no less of Socrates, Shakespeare, Newton, Washington, Lincoln, Lee, Pasteur. Evei-y college man recognizes these two clear calls to him, and most men feel that in the ordinary life of every day there is a sharp contradic- tion between them : that there must be a surrender of one of them, that college life at best must be a compromise between one ' s youth and his maturity, what he is now and what he wants to be fifteen years from now — a truce between his happiness and his ambition. Now it is at this point, I think, that the college speaks its great word, and speaks the one that you have come to ask it to speak. You may think that you have come to ask it how to get into medicine, or how to make money, or how to make an N. C. sweater or a Phi Beta Kappa key, or how to be an engineer, or how to get into society — or any other of the thousand things that men work and die for. These are understandable motives for coming to college, and the college incidentally can respond to them all ; but it could not answer them successfully if there were no deeper motive behind them. The great question that you bring to the University today has a deeper center than a desire for either physical satisfaction or success in the world. It is the question that the young man came to the Master with — What shall I do to inherit life? — the larger, abundant life that will satisfy all of the finer passions of my life? The Master made this young man a fairly easy answer. He told him, for one thing, to play the game according to the rules laid down. The young man replied that he had always done that. Then the Master shifted the whole point of view to the heart of the mystery. He told him that the source of life is not a set of rules, a ceremonial, a doctrine, an organization ; but an attitude, an atmosphere, a life. And the answer of the university to your question — as the answer of the greatest of human institutions to the greatest of human questions — is the same as that of the Master. It answers, play the game according to the rules; but it, too, adds that this is only incidental. The education that it offers you is not in reality a mass of facts, a degree, a curriculum. Above and beyond all of that, it too is an attitude, an atmosphere, a way of life. It is the way of life based on the innate passion for the intelligent way of doing things. It is the intellectual way of life, and it declares that curiosity, the spirit of free inquiry, the passion to know, is as natural in a human being as the desire to breathe or to eat. It declares its faith in the controlling

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country in his odd moments if the president would only tell him what there was going on now to keep a fellow from being bored to death. Or, if he was not possessed of this confident spirit of let Hinton do it, he may have been of that other type that has no reaction whatever to the sharp challenge of opportunity and the appeal for a critical decision. He may have been like the darkey who passed a factory as the whistles were blowing for the critical hour of dinner: Blow, blow, he said, with calm resignation to his fate ; Dinner time for some folks ; but ' tain ' t nothin ' but twelve o ' clock for me ! There is plenty of evidence that James was keenly alive to the oppor- tunities offered him : he had an honorable college career, and an after career that was an honor to the college; but if I knew nothing whatever of his record I could say with assurance two simple things about him, as I think I can about you or any other average college man: (1) he wants to enjoy his youth, and gratify the thirst for use that every muscle and pore of his growing body craves. Life thru a hundred keys of interest appeals to him, and above them all he holds a sort of fierce, invincible belief that he has the right to immediate happiness. There wasn ' t anybody here in 1795 but Doctor Ker and Hinton and the Davie poplar, but one of the first things the boy did was to write an essay on The Pleasures of College Life. But he also wrote one on The Uses of the Sun, and another on The Effect of Climate on Human Life. And that suggests the other thing that I would know I could say about him or any other young man coming to college: (2) He not only wants to enjoy to the full the youthful, physical life that is his only once; but also he wants to realize the more keenly felt, tho less clearly defined, passion for something of larger, freer use, mere deeply rooted, of more permanent satisfaction. Thru the eating, drinking, and sleeping of every day, the buttoning and unbuttoning routine of existence, this deeper life of the mind and spirit sends up signals of its hopes and dreams, asking for expression and liberation, and to get born thru him in great forms of useful work, science, or art. Every man feels that passion as really as he does the other. It is the eternal essence of his manhood. There is something in him of the prodigal, of Esau, and of Saul — the men who sold out for a price they could clutch — who swapped their star dust for com- mon clay ; there is something also of the prodigal and Paul — the men who claimed their birthright back, who came to themselves, and came back. Every young man ' s life is an unprecipitated solution of all biography :

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power of the mind to find the best path in the confusions that beset a man ' s path, and its superiority in contrast with every other power, and in its technique, because it can be applied to every undertaking — not only in studies, but in industry, in public life, in business, in sport, in politics, in society, and in religion. To become a true University man it is necessary to come into this way of looking at things. It does not mean the abandonment of any legitimate sort of happiness whatsoever, nor the loss of any freedom. The adventure of discovering and liberating one ' s mind, far from being a dull and dreary performance, is the most thrilling of all youthful adven- tures. There is no question of self -punishment or external discipline; but only the freedom of becoming one ' s own master, instead of a slave to the tyranny of one ' s low and cheap desires. To come into this insight is to see this organized discovery of the mind that we call education, not as learning, but as a love of knowledge, not as a matter of being indus- trious, but of loving industry, not as a matter of giving us a good start toward a middle-age success, but to enable us to keep growing, and so lay hold on the eternal spring of life. What the University stands for is this natural loyalty to truth, to work, to life at its fullest and best that comes thru the intellectual way of life. Its faith is that thru that way it may lead men into the richest and most abundant expression of their best selves. Its mission, therefore, is to lead them to come to themselves in the highest degree, and so, thru whatever happy travail of spirit, to be born again. In this way, the University is truly our alma mater — mother of the best in men. True college or University spirit is generated out of that, and can have no other source. Its central concern is a quick and eager interest in ideas, and its temper a radiant enthusiasm for human excellence in all human pursuits. Consequently it stands not only for efficiency and excellence in studies, but for excellence in sports, in dress, in language, in manners; in sport, not as victory alone — tho the doctrine of human excellence insists on that — but sportsmanship ; in conduct, not on honesty alone, but honor. Nothing that interests a man is foreign to its point of view of present efficiency, steadily growing into the durable success and the happiness of an intelligently developed and complete life. It is not necessary to go to college to get this attitude of eager interest in the intelligent way of life. Many men outside of college walls have been true University men ; and many inside have been dead to its message.