the building, and they hoist the ladders, and they run up with the hose, and the orders are given, and the engines begin to work, and beat down the flames that smote the heavens. And the hook and ladder company with long arms of wood and fingers of iron begin to feel on the top of the hot wall and begin to pull. She moves! She rocks! Stand from under! She falls! flat as the walls of Jericho at the blast of the ram's horns, and the excited populace clap their hands, and wave their caps, shouting "Hurrah, hurrah!" [Applause.] Now, in an age like this, what will become of a man if in every nerve and muscle and bone he does not have the spirit of enthusiasm and enterprise? Why, he will drop down and be forgotten, as he ought to be. He who cannot swim in this current will drown. Young man, make up your mind what you ought to be, and then start out. And let me say, there has never been so good a time to start as just now. I care not which way you look, the world seems brightening. Open the map of the world, close your eyes, swing your finger over the map of the world, let your finger drop accidentally, and I am almost sure it will drop on a part of the world that is brightening. You open the map of the world, close your eyes, swing your finger over the map, it drops accidentally. Spain! Quitting her cruelties and coming to a better form of government. What is that light breaking over the top of the Pyrenees? "The morning cometh!" You open the map of the world again, close your eyes, and swing your finger over the map. It drops accidentally. Italy! The truth going on from conquest to conquest. What is that light breaking over the top of the Alps? "The morning cometh!" You open the map of the world again, you close your eyes, and swing your finger over the map, and your finger drops accidentally. India! Juggernauts of cruelty broken to pieces by the chariot of the Gospel. What is that light breaking over the tops of the Himalayas? "The morning cometh!" The army of Civilization and Christianity is made up of two wings, the English wing and the American wing. The American wing of the army of Civilization and Christianity will march across this continent. On over the Rocky Mountains, on over the Sierra Nevada, on to the beach of the Pacific, and then right through, dry shod, to the Asiatic shore. And on across Asia, and on, and on, until it comes to the Holy Land and halts. The English wing of the army of Civilization and Christianity will move across Europe, and on, until it comes to the Holy Land and halts. And when these two wings of the army of Civilization and Christianity shall confront each other, having encircled the world, there will go up a shout as the world heard never: "Hallelujah, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!" [Applause.] People who have not seen the tides rise at the beach do not understand them. Some man who has never before visited the seashore comes down as the tide is rising. The wave comes to a certain point and then retreats, and he says: "The tide is going out, the sea is going down." No, the tide is rising, for the next wave comes to a higher point and then recoils. He says: "Certainly, the tide is going out, and the sea is going down." No, the tide is rising, for the next wave comes to a higher point and then recoils, and to a higher and higher and higher point until it is full tide. So with the advance of Civilization and Christianity in the world. In one decade the wave comes to a certain point and then recoils for ten or fifteen years, and people say the world is getting worse, and the tides of Civilization and Christianity are going down. No, the tide is rising, for the next time the wave reaches to a still higher point and recoils, and to a still higher point and recoils, and to a higher and a higher and a higher point until it shall be full tide, and the "Earth shall be full of the knowl edge of God as the waters fill the sea." At such a time you start out. There is some special work for you to do. I was very much thrilled, as I suppose you were, with the story of the old engineer on his locomotive crossing the Western prairie day after day and month after month. A little child would come out in front of her father's cabin and wave to the old engineer and he would wave back again. It became one of the joys of the old engineer's life, this little child coming out and waving to him and he waving back. But one day the train was belated and night came on, and by the flash of the headlight of the locomotive the old engineer saw the child on the track. When the engineer saw the child on the track a great horror froze his soul, and he reversed the engine and leaped over on the cowcatcher, and though the train was slowing up, and slowing up, it seemed to the old engineer as if it were gaining in velocity. But, standing there on the cowcatcher, he waited for his opportunity, and with almost supernatural clutch he seized her and fell back upon the cowcatcher. The train halted, the passengers came around to see what was the matter, and there lay the old engineer on the cowcatcher, fainted dead away, the little child in his arms all unhurt. He saved her. Grand thing, you say, for the old engineer to do. Yes, just as grand a thing for you to do. There are long trains of disaster coming on toward that soul. Yonder are long trains of disaster coming on toward another soul. You go out in the strength of the Eternal God and with supernatural clutch save someone, some man, some woman, some child. You can do it. "Courage, brother, do not stumble, Though thy path be dark as night; There's a star to guide the humble; Trust in God and do the right. "Some will love thee, some will hate thee, § 95 THE TRAINING OF INTELLECT By Woodrow Wilson (An address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Yale University in 1908.) MR. TOASTMASTER, MR. PRESIDENT, AND GENTLEMEN :—I must confess to you that I came here with very serious thoughts this evening, because I have been laboring under the conviction for a long time that the object of a university is to educate, and I have not seen the universities of this country achieving any remarkable or disturbing success in that direction. I have found everywhere the note which I must say I have heard sounded once or twice to-night-that apology for the intellectual side of the university. You hear it at all universities. Learning is on the defensive, is actually on the defensive, among college men, and they are being asked by way of indulgence to bring that also into the circle of their interests. Is it not time we stopped asking indulgence for learning and proclaimed its sovereignty? Is it not time we reminded the college men of this country that they have no right to any distinctive place in any community, unless they can show it by intellectual achievement? That if a university is a place for distinction at all it must be distinguished by the conquests of the mind? I for my part tell you plainly that that is my motto, that I have entered the field to fight for that thesis, and that for that thesis only do I care to fight. The toastmaster of the evening said, and said truly, that this is the season when, for me, it was most difficult to break away from regular engagements in which I am involved at this time of the year. But when I was invited to the Phi Beta Kappa banquet it had an unusual sound, and I felt that that was the particular kind of invitation which it was my duty and privilege to accept. One of the problems of the American university now is, how, among a great many other competing interests, to give places of distinction to men who want places of distinction in See page 488. the classroom. Why don't we give you men the Y here and the P at Princeton, because, after all, you have done the particular thing which distinguishes Yale? Not that these other things are not worth doing, but they may be done anywhere. They may be done in athletic clubs where there is no study, but this thing can be done only here. This is the distinctive mark of the place. A good many years ago, just two weeks before the mid-year examinations, the faculty of Princeton was foolish enough to permit a very unwise evangelist to come to the place and to upset the town. And while an assisting undergraduate was going from room to room one undergraduate secured his door and put this notice out: "I am a Christian. and am studying for examinations." Now I want to say that that is exactly what a Christian undergraduate would be doing at that time of the year. He would not be attending religious meetings no matter how beneficial it would be to him. He would be studying for examinations not merely for the purpose of passing them, but from his sense of duty. We get a good many men at Princeton from certain secondary schools who say a great deal about their earnest desire to cultivate character among our students, and I hear a great deal about character being the object of education. I take leave to believe that a man who cultivates. his character consciously will cultivate nothing except what will make him intolerable to his fellow men. If your object in life is to make a fine fellow of yourself, you will not succeed, and you will not be acceptable to really fine fellows. Character, gentlemen, is a by-product. It comes, whether you will or not, as a consequence of a life devoted to the nearest duty, and the place in which character would be cultivated, if it be a place of study, is a place where study is the object and character the result. Not long ago a gentleman approached me in great excitement just after the entrance examinations. He said we had made a great mistake in not taking so and so from a certain school which he named. "But," I said, "he did not pass the entrance examinations." And he went over the boy's moral excellencies again. "Pardon me," I said, "you do not understand. He did not pass the entrance examinations. Now," I said, "I want you to understand that if the angel Gabriel applied for admission to Princeton University and could not pass the entrance examinations, he would not be admitted. He would be wasting his time." It seemed a new idea to him. This boy had come from a school which cultivated character, and he was a nice, lovable fellow with a presentable character. Therefore, he ought to be admitted to any university. I fail to see it from this point of view, for a university is an institution of purpose. We have in some previous years had pity for young gentle men who were not sufficiently acquainted with the elements of a preparatory course. They have been dropped at the examinations, and I always felt that we have been guilty of an offense, and have made their parents spend money to no avail and the youngsters spend their time to no avail. And so I think that all university men ought to rouse themselves now and understand what is the object of a university. The object of a university is intellect; as a university its only object is intellect. As a body of young men there ought to be other things, there ought to be diversions to release them from the constant strain of effort, there ought to be things that gladden the heart and moments of leisure, but as a university the only object is intellect. The reason why I chose the subject that I am permitted to speak upon to-night-the function of scholarship-was that I wanted to point out the function of scholarship not merely in the university, but in the nation. In a country constituted as ours is, the relation in which education stands is a very important one. Our whole theory has been based upon an enlightened citizenship and therefore the function of scholarship must be for the nation as well as for the university itself. I mean the function of such scholarship as undergraduates get. That is not a violent amount in any case. You cannot make a scholar of a man except by some largeness of Providence in his makeup, by the time he is twenty-one or twenty-two years of age. There have been gentlemen who have made a reputation by twenty-one or twenty-two, but it is generally in some little province of knowledge, so small that a small effort can conquer it. You do not make scholars by that time; you do not often make scholars by seventy that are worth boasting of. The process of scholarship, so far as the real scholar is concerned, is an unending process, and knowledge is pushed forward only a very little by his best efforts. And it is evident, of course, that the most you can contribute to a man in his undergraduate years is not equipment in the exact knowledge which is characteristic of the scholar, but an inspiration of the spirit of scholarship. The most that you can give a youngster is the spirit of the scholar. Now, the spirit of the scholar in a country like ours must be a spirit related to the national life. It cannot, therefore, be a spirit of pedantry. I suppose that this is a sufficient working conception of pedantry to say that it is knowledge divorced from life. It is knowledge so closeted, so desecrated, so stripped of the significances of life itself, that it is a thing apart and not connected with the vital processes in the world about us. There is a great place in every nation for the spirit of scholarship, and it seems to me that there never was a time when the spirit of scholar |