University of Santa Clara - Redwood Yearbook (Santa Clara, CA)

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16 THE REDWOOD men spend their life in fierce pursuit of. Its first step is a turning away forever from anything that might distract them from their appointed life-work. At once upon enlistment in the great cause of education they make the move that more than anything else in their wonderful discipline accounts for their extraordinary results — they put off the feeble incentives by which men of the world are impelled to the limited achievements with which the world is satisfied, and they put on the sharp- pointed spurs that through the ages have made men all but divine in their devotion and service to truth and right. And then they enter upon laborius years, disciplining their characters, and storing their minds with the learning and wisdom of the centuries, and all at the feet of masters who know no other task. And they take no heed of daylight or darkness. And their clois- ters have no windows for the world ' s distractions. And their hearts have no chords for the frivolities of life. And their days have no room for the petty interests that engross us little men. And their blood runs steady with their steady purpose and it knows not the flames of passion and pride for it feeds not on their fuel. And then and not till then are they sent forth with the charter of Loyola in their hands,— the finished products of seventeen years of un- matched preparation, equipped not only with those potent forces of quality and character but profound in scholarships and masters of the books as well. This is the company, this is the soci- ety, this is the atmosphere ' this is the influence, in which the characters are formed, the minds are trained, and the ideals fixed, of those fortunate fellows of whose education these men take charge. An ancient Greek master, who had been taught by Socrates, and who knew that the educator transmits to his stu- dents the types and ideals by which he himself was formed, called his pupils the disciples of Socrates. And so may the men who study here, if they but hold themselves open to the influ- ences that are all about them, partici- pate in the ideals and perfection of their educators and borrow from them the benefit of the unexampled careers that have brought them finally to their wonderful development. What of the other side of the system of education here? What are its ideals? What sort of culture does it aim at? What kind of equipment does it pro- fess to fit men out with? In a word, what kind of an education is it? It was well said of a system of educa- tion prevalent in the last century, as it is commonly to be found today: The common run of students leave their place of e ducation simply dissi- pated and relaxed by the multiplicity of subjects which they have never really mastered, and so shallow as not even to know their own shallowness. One of the most finished scholars in American life, Wendell Phillips, in fine contempt for spurious standards, said: Education is not the chips of arichme- tic and grammar, nouns, verbs and the multiplication table. Neither is it that last year ' s almanac of dates or series of

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THE REDWOOD 15 genius loci of this ancient institution? What are the ideals which govern edu- cation here? What are the ideals that are built up here? And on what forces is reliance mainly put to set up these standards ? In a word, what is the atmosphere from which the students of Santa Clara College draw their mental and moral fibre ? In the delicate work of education in its proper sense, — the actual taking hold of the plastic mind and soul and character of the student, with all their faculties and functions, and drawing them out and giving them their due form and development, — I can conceive of no more important forces than the character and quality of the educator. The part these elements play is mani- fold. They bring the student into what we might call an attitude of hospital- tality to the work in hand. They hold him in unreserved submission to the operation. They rouse him to forthright co-operation with his educator. They compel a recognition and appreciation of the full authority and weight of the instruction given. They persuade the student to a meek and utter surrender to all the influences of his teacher. The importance of such attitude on the part of a pupil is universally recog- nized. It goes a long way toward the full results of the educator ' s work. It is like the preparation and cultivation of the soil to receive the seed and to work in harmony with nature ' s forces as they bring it to fruition. But the character and quality of the educator do not stop at that. They run throughout the entire process, leaving imprints for good or evil that, as the life of the student runs on, prove more im- portant than all the direct lessons he was told by teacher or drew from books. In his panegyric on William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips said: This is only another instance added to the roll of the Washingtons and Hampdens whose root is not ability, but character; that influence which, like the great Master ' s of Judea(humanly speak- ing), spreading through the centuries, testifies that the world suffers its grand- est changes not by genius, but by the more potent control of character. So too does the individual student in the course of his education suffer the grandest changes not by the influence of the genius of his educator but by the more potent control of his character. Where in all the world does this great principle find fuller acceptance, where is it put into larger play, where does it find more emphatic exemplifica- tion, than in the educational scheme of the sons of Loyola, the Society of Jesus? In very many of the most responsible departments of life men equip them- selves for and complete their careers in shorter time than these men put in in a term of probation and preparation be- fore they receive the credentials which entitle them to just commence their work. And what a preparation and proba- tion it is! The world shudders at the thought of its rigor. It begins with a renunciation of all the pleasures, prizes and rewards that the vast majority of

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THE REDWOOD lies agreed upon which we so often mistake for history. Onr in- fluence in the community does not spring from superior attainments, but from this thorough training of our faculties To ripen, lift and educate a man is the first duty. And so too the educational authori- ties of the world. After much wander- ing and much experimenting, they are coming back with astonishing unanim- ity to the ancient principle to which the Jesuits have uncompromisingly clung from the beginning — that the thorough training of the forces with which man is endowed is the only edu- cation worthy of the name. It is the education, says Newman, which gives the man a clear conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them and a force in urg- ing them. It teaches him to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought, to de- tect what is sophistical, and to discard what is irrelevant. It prepares him to fill any post with credit and to master any subject with facility. Listen to Newman ' s answer to an oft- repeated objection to this system of education: This then is how I should solve the fallacy, for so I must call it, by which L,ocke and his disciples would frighten us from cultivating the intellect, under the notion that no education is useful which does not teach us some temporal calling, or some mechanical art, or some physical secret. I say that a cultivated intellect, because it is a good in itself, brings with it a power and a grace to every work and occupation which it undertakes, and enables us to be more useful, and to a greater number. There is a duty we owe to human society as such, to the state to which we belong, to the sphere in which we move, to the individuals to whom we are vari- ously related, and whom we success- ively encounter in life; and that philo- sophical or liberal education, as I have called it, which is the proper function of a University, if it refuses the foremost place to professional interests, does but postpone them to the formation of the citizen, and, while it subserves the larger interests of philanthropy, pre- pares also for the successful prosecu- tion of those merely personal objects, which at first sight it seems to dispar- age. Is that all there is to the Jesuit ideal of education ? Is the refinement of the intellect and the strengthening of the other faculttes all that it strives for? Does that make the compieted man? Do they teach the young man here that a head full of philosophy suffices for this life and tor the life to come? The inadequacy of all this even for the battle of life has been magnificently expressed by the master authority of the last century, and it is an essential part of the creed of education professed and followed here. He says: From the time that Athens was the University of the world, what has phil- osophy taught men, but to promise without practising, and to aspire with- out attaining? What has the deep and lofty thought of its disciples ended in