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

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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.

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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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Horace Greeley had a sign outside the Tribune office: No college men or other horned cattle need apply. The Almighty has no prejudice for mere college graduates ; nor has the world. They have no permanent prejudices, except for the superior over the inferior. They ask not for men who are college men with a blind and sentimental passion to serve; but for men whose intelligent way of life has equipped them as superior agencies for doing the work of the world. The beginning of this great year finds you facing the world at a moment of extraordinary interest and inspiration to men as individuals, as citizens of the State and of the world. The immediate future, said President Wilson the other day, brings us squarely face to face with many exacting problems, requiring new thinking, fresh courage, and resourcefulness . . . stimulating us to the display of the best powers within us. In this splendid trial by battle of what men live by, you belong to the most privileged — I may say, the only privileged class in the world — not in that you are registered in a college, but in that you are permitted under the best conditions to work freely, loyally, and wholly for all that men hold precious. I have every confidence that, in this splendid business, you will so take your part that this year will mark a great and definite step in your individual growth, and make of this spot and of this institution the birthplace and mother of that best product of any civilization — masterful, intelligent men, eternally and invincibly loyal to their highest natures.