THE TRAINING OF INTELLECT

BY WOODROW WILSON

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 because I am disturbed by the fact that I have not seen the universities of this country achieving any remarkable or disconcerting success in that direction. I have found everywhere the note which, I must say, I have heard sounded again once or twice tonight-a note of 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 concession to bring that also within the circle of their interests.

Is it not time we stopt 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 that they have earned a right to take 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, and 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 the regular engagements in which I am necessarily involved at home. But when I was invited to a Phi Beta Kappa banquet, it had an unusual sound. 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 a position of distinction to men who win distinction in the class-room. Why don't we give the first scholars of the college the 'varsity Y here

and the P at Princeton? Because, after all, you have done the particular thing which should distinguish Yale or Princeton. Not that 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 midyear 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 undergraduate enthusiast was going from room to room to get the men out to the meetings, he found one door securely fastened, and upon it this notice: "I am a Christian, and studying for examinations." Now, I want to say that that was exactly what a Christian undergraduate ought to have been doing at that time of the year. He ought not to have been attending religious meetings, no matter how beneficial that would be to him. He ought to have been studying for examinations, not merely for the purpose of passing them, but from a sense of bounden duty.

We get a good many men at Princeton from certain secondary schools, which say a great deal about their earnest desire to cultivate character among their 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 is successfully 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 in so and so

from a certain school which he named. "But," I said, "he did not pass the entrance examinations." He went over the boy's moral excellences again. "Pardon me, said, "you do not understand. He did not pass the entrance examinations. I beg 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. The boy he spoke of had come from a school which cultivated character, and he was a fine, lovable fellow, with a presentable character. Therefore he ought to be admitted to any university? I fail to see it from that point of view, for a university is an institution of purpose. We have in some previous years had pity for young gentlemen who were not sufficiently acquainted with the elements of a preparatory course. They have been dropt at the mid-year examinations, and I have always felt that we had been guilty of an offense against good sense-that we have made their parents spend money to no avail and the youngsters themselves 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 intellectual training; as a university its only object is intellectual training. Among a body of young men there ought to be other things also; there ought to be diversions to release them from the constant strain of effort, there ought to be things that gladden the heart and many happy moments of leisure; but as a university, our 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 to the general life of the people is a very important one. Our whole theory of government 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 can not make a scholar of a man, except by some largess of Providence in his make-up, 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. It is evident, of course, that the most you can contribute to a man in his undergraduate years is not the complete equipment in exact knowledge which is characteristic of the scholar, but the 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 can not, therefore, be a spirit of pedantry. I suppose that it is a sufficient working conception of pedantry to say that it is knowledge divorced from life. It is knowledge so closeted, so desiccated, so stript of the significances of life, 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 scholarship was more needed in affairs than it is in this country at this time. But there is no place for pedantry.

We are thinking just now with our emotions and not with our minds; we are moved by impulse, and not by judgment. We are drawing away from things with blind antipathy. The spirit of knowledge is this, that you must base your conclusions on adequate grounds. Make sure that you are going to the real sources of knowledge, discovering what the real facts are before you move forward to the next process, which is the process of clear thinking. By clear thinking I do not mean logical thinking. I do

not mean that life is based upon any logical system whatever. Life is essentially illogical. The world is governed by a tumultuous house of commons made up of the passions, and we should pray God that the good passions should outvote the bad passions. But the movement of impulse, of motive, is the stuff of passion, and therefore clear thinking about life is not logical, symmetrical thinking; it is interpretative thinking, thinking that sees the secret motive of things, thinking that penetrates to the deep places where are the pulses of life. Scholarship ought to lay these impulses bare, just as the physician can lay bare the seat of life in our bodies. That is not scholarship which goes to work upon the mere formal pedantry of logical reasoning, but that is scholarship which searches for the heart of a man.

The spirit of scholarship gives us also catholicity of thinking, the readiness to understand that there will constantly swing into our ken new items not dreamed of in our philosophy; the readiness not simply to draw our conclusion from the data that we have, but also to understand that all this is under constant mutation, and that therefore new phases of life will come upon us and a new adjustment of our conclusions will be necessary. Our thinking must be detached and disinterested thinking.

The particular objection that I have to the undergraduate's forming his course of study on his future profession is this that from start to finish, from the time he enters the university until he finishes his career, his thought will be centered upon particular interests. He will be immersed in the things that touch his profit and loss, and a man is not free to think inside that territory. If his bread and butter are going to be affected, if he is always thinking in the terms of his own profession, he is not thinking for the nation. He is thinking of himself; and, whether he be conscious of it or not, he can never throw these trammels off. He will only think as a doctor, or as a lawyer, or as a banker. He will not be free in the world of knowledge and in the vast circle of interests which make up the great citizenship of the country. It is necessary that the