tter, gluttony and concrete selfishness,
with gout on one end, paresis at the other and Bright's Disease between.
The hospice was a part of the monastery. It was a home for the homeless.
There met men of learning--men of wit--men of brains and brawn. You
entered and were at home. There was no charge--you merely left something
for the poor.
Any man who has the courage, and sufficient faith in humanity to install
the hospice system in America will reap a rich reward. If he has the
same faith in his guests that Judge Lindsey has in his bad boys, he will
succeed; but if he hesitates, defers, doubts, and begins to plot and
plan, the Referee in Bankruptcy will beckon.
The early universities grew out of the monastic impulse. Students came
and went, and the teachers were a part of a great itinerancy. Man is a
migratory animal. His evolution has come about through change of
environment. Transplantation changes weeds into roses, and the
forebears of all the products of our greenhouses and gardens once grew
in hedgerows or open fields, choked by unkind competition or trampled
beneath the feet of the heedless.
The advantage of university life is in the transplantation. Get the boy
out of his home environment; sever the cord that holds him to his
"folks"; let him meet new faces, see new sights, hear new sermons, meet
new teachers, and his efforts at adjustment will work for growth.
Alexander Humboldt was right--one year at college is safer than four.
One year inspires you--four may get you pot-bound with pedant prejudice.
The university of the future will be industrial--all may come and go.
All men will be university men, and thus the pride in an imaginary
proficiency will be diluted to a healthful attenuation. To work and to
be useful--not merely to memorize and recite--will be the only
initiation.
The professors will be interchangeable, and the rotation of intellectual
crops will work for health, harmony and effectiveness.
The group, or college, will be the unit, not the family. The college was
once a collection of men and women grouped for a mutual intellectual,
religious or economic good.
To this group or college idea will we return.
Man is a gregarious animal, and the Christ-thought of giving all, and
receiving all, some day in the near future will be found practical. The
desire for exclusive ownership must be sloughed.
Universities devoted to useful work--art in its highest sense: head,
hand and heart--wi
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