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

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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

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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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i8 THE REDWOOD but eloquent words ? Nay, what has its teaching ever meditated, when it was boldest in its remedies for human ills, beyond charming us to sleep by its les- sons, that we might feel nothing at all? Like some melodious air, or rather like some strong and transport- ing perfumes, which at first spread their sweetness over everything they touch, but in a little while do but of- fend in proportion as they once pleased us. Did philosophy support Cicero under the disfavour of the fickle popu- lace, or nerve Seneca to oppose an im- perial tyrant? It abandoned Brutus, as he sorrowfully confessed, in his great- est need, and it forced Cato, as his pan- egyrist strangely boasts, into the false position of defying heaven. How few can be counted among its professors, who, like Polemo, were thereby con- verted from a profligate course, or like Anaxagoras, thought the world well lost in exchange for its possession? The philosopher in Rasselas taught a super- human doctrine, and then succumbed without an effort to a trial of human affection. No. Man has passion in his make- up and he has pride. He has an ani- mal nature as well as human. There is conflict, there is riot among the ele- ments that go to make him the dual be- ing that he is. There is a never-ceas- ing struggle going on within him that has nothing to do with his intellectual side. And there is the great problem of the welfare of his being hereafter as well as here. There are the important spheres of morals and religion. To take no account of all this in edu- cation is but to make a man a cultivated slave who must feel and live the degre- dation of his captivity all the more keenly from the very illumination with which you flood his intellectual vision. The obstinate notion is fast losing its hold, that by the development of a man ' s brain-power you safe-guard his morals. As was eloquently said to the educat- ors of England many years ago: Quarry the granite rock with razors, or moor the vessel with a thread of silk; then may you hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to con- tend against those giants, the passion and the pride of man. These, gentlemen, are the high ideals of Santa Clara College, and these are the great and noble men whose teach- ing and example are their foundation and strength. These are the educa- tional principles that Ignatius of Loy- ola welded together. This is the giant force he launched into the world. This is the dedication he made of the order he founded. This is the well-keDt faith of his resolute disciples. This is the banner that has led the march of edu- cation around the world for the last four hundred years. These are the princi- ples that were planted here before the primitive peoples who roamed these regions had lost their sway; and these are the ideals that it is our hope to-day this ancient institution may live and flourish to perpetuate through all the years that are yet to be. John J. Barret, A. B. ' 92.