Because you do profess to teach, and teach us nothing.
Feeding not the heart.
[Illustration: The Library and the Thomas Jefferson Statue,
University of Virginia]
To find not simply the laws of chemical and electrical action, but
also the laws of the mind and the spirit, the nature of life and
death, and the character of “that power not ourselves that makes
for righteousness”--all this should determine the lines of reading
for students outside of their specialty. Such reading is not for
acquisition, for attainment, or for facts alone; it is for
inspiration and ideals, and a realizing sense of that passionate
joy derived from all things real and beautiful.
THE PIONEER SPIRIT
College training brings with it responsibility and reward. The
responsibility is that of leadership--the kind of leadership which
comes to the man of advanced knowledge and unusual advantages, who
sees the needs of his time and does not flinch from the hardest
kind of sacrifice in view of those needs. The reward is not always
apparent to the world, but it is more than sufficient for the
worker. Indeed, the American undergraduate is becoming more and
more aware that his pay is not his reward. He is learning that
the world is not keen to pay the cost of new ideas or to reward
professional leadership with material values. Furthermore, his
half-paid service does not tell the whole story of his sacrifice.
His work is often lost in the successes of some other man who
follows him. But the college-trained man who has weighed well
these needs, and has deliberately chosen, is not to be pitied.
Indeed, it is doubtful whether any one is more to be envied. He is
under the impulsion of an inner sense of mission. The college has
given him faith in himself and his mission. Many a graduate, going
out from American halls of learning, feels somewhat as Carlyle
felt when he said: “I have a book in me; it must come out,” or as
Disraeli intimated in his answer when he was hissed down in the
House of Commons, “You will not hear me now, but there will come a
time when you will hear me.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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