Leader
We appear to have been surrounded in these weeks by a polemic atmosphere. Tremendous controversies have proved and disproved the validity of Christianity, the inability of the Faculty and Corporation to make great men from Yale undergraduates, and whether we should be made to go to Chapel on Sundays and to recitations on other days. Editorials, communications, and private discussions continue to feed the maw of this wholesale argumentative machinery, and to the casual observer, a spirit of radicalism hovers above the campus, clouding or illuminating it as the individual chooses to suppose.
There is no place here to discuss the beneficial effect of controversy upon thought. Nor is there any need for pointing out the possibility of reform arising from the conviction which thought brings. It is the controversy itself which is interesting, especially in an institution where experience and tradition form the basis of the laws and customs. Controversy at Yale must mean an offensive begun by young minds upon what time has taught their controlling elders. And consequently, as is being seen, it takes a ton of controversy to germinate a pound of “reform”.
But young minds are impulsively active. They are impatient, and the distant hope of a change in a present state of affairs holds in itself a vast attraction. The philosophy of “all things must change”, applied to conditions as well as to matter, extends a sweet and optimistic prospect to youth. And it is to this natural tendency, as well as to any deep-rooted sincerity concerning evils, that much of our controversy may be attributed. And when a beginning has been made, a flaming question raised, there are the additional attractions of being given an opportunity to turn clever phrases, to appear in the public eye, to champion or rend in a spirit of battle. The argumentative machinery clanks frantically, and the sound and rhythm of it beats a false sincerity into the minds of the controversialists, a kind of belief founded more upon emotional than mental activity; more upon desire than knowledge.
A controversy may be said to be worth while to us only when it involves more thought than impulse. A questionaire has recently been sent broadcast through the University which is quite definite in its spirit of controversy, but which falls for no definiteness of thought. Rather, it requires the impulsive reply, the mere “yes” or “no” form. Do we (yes or no) think Sunday Chapel should be abolished? Are we (yes or no) in favor of unlimited cuts from recitations for those whose stand is above 70 per cent.? Although there is certainly no chance to turn phrases here, the philosophy of change readily asserts itself. It is so easy and delightful to change things with a slight swift affirmation or negation. Those who write “yes” to the suggestion of unlimited cuts may be the identical persons who have been complaining that certain professors require all cuts, even within the present limited range, to be made up. Nor do those hasty souls pause to consider that continuous attendance would be inevitably required under the new system through a more severe grading and a greater emphasis upon examinations. But it is so easy and delightful to write “yes”, whereas to reply in the negative would indicate a desire for the boring continuation of existing conditions!
Then, says the non-University man, what is the advantage of a system of education which stimulates emotional rather thanrational opinion? The answer is simply we learn through disappointments, and through a later realization of our childlike wistfulness for new things. This latter begins often as early as our Senior year, in which we realize other things as well, including our transience as undergraduates and our lack of time for conducting many of the new states of affairs which we advocate so heartily, such as complete student government. There is too much extra-curriculum activity already in our lives here to allow us to be administrators as well. Also, in Senior year, we tend to acquire more or less veneration for the force of experience and for the opinions of older minds than our own. The greatest lesson of life is dawning upon us,—that the truest form of living is one which is built upon simplicity, fundamentals, and a direction of our actions by old example.
University life, operating upon our intelligent spirit, is the emerging from the sensationalism of thought and action craved by youth, into the more simple contemplative nature of maturity. In our Freshman and Sophomore years we seek diversion almost wholly in gaudy forms. Then,—too soon, it seems—we find that we were wrong, that it is the life of the Quadrangle, the relationship of friends, the contact with the internal rather than with the external shows, which are the vital and permanent attractions. The fire-brand element is prone to vanish.
Whether all this may be considered too conservative in the present day and place; whether, in itself, it is a turning of phrases, or invites controversy byattackingcontroversy, is extraneous. Whether it may be thought to neglect too much the good influence of controversy upon right thinking, is another and fairer question. One thing it seeks to inculcate: a realization of the component parts of undergraduate controversy, a useful knowledge of the natural emotional forces involved which veil clarity; so that truth may be found more fully than in the replies to questionaires and in the disputes revolving about destructive editorials.
WINFIELD SHIRAS.