Christianity and Problems of To-day: Lectures Delivered Before Lake Forest College on the Foundation of the Late William BrossFinley, John H. (John Huston)
Religion
Christianity and Problems of To-day: Lectures Delivered Before Lake Forest College on the Foundation of the Late William Bross
Finley, John H. (John Huston)
Christianity -- 20th century
And so the other end of the scale, the college president. He too
is said sometimes to be discontented; and again his discontent may
assume either one of two forms. He may be ambitious of size and
_réclame_ for his institution, and may measure his dignity by the
number of students over whom he presides. His alumni are likely
to encourage him in this, and I have myself known the head of an
ancient university in the East who used to scan the catalogues of
the great Western institutions year by year with bitter jealousy and
heart-burning as their register of students gradually approached his
own, and then shot beyond it. Inevitably such discontent leads to a
lowering of standards, mitigated by the pious belief that that form
of education is noblest which is desired by, and accessible to, the
largest number of paying candidates. Thus a debasement of education
becomes identified in his mind with social service. But one can
imagine another kind of discontent, which should pursue just the
opposite course. Its standard would be qualitative, not quantitative,
and it would fear the temptation of size, not the murmurs of
ambitious alumni. It would look for its reward not in a swelling
registration or spreading houses or additional courses of study,
but to its success in attracting the better minds and the stronger
characters and in directing these in the narrow and tried paths. It
might even go so far--though this is confessedly a fairy-tale--as
to lay a rough, restraining hand on that most corrupting nurse of
materialism in our schools, professional athletics.
However it may be with the plumber and the college president, clearly
these words, content and discontent, are replete with ambiguity;
they are consequences rather than motives of conduct, and we cannot
safely argue upon them until we lave looked more closely into the
springs of action which control respectively the religious and the
natural life. And here I must beg you to indulge me in a bit of
pedantry. Our English speech, with all its practical efficiency, has
never developed a very precise ethical terminology, and so to get at
the distinction I have in mind I am going to ask you to consider two
rather outlandish-sounding Greek words which were much in use among
the early moralists of our era. One of them is _tapeinophrosynê_, the
other is _pleonexia_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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