the things which live, for the things which enlighten, for the things which bind men together in unselfish companies. The love of men for their college is a very ennobling love, because it is a love which expresses itself in so organic a way and which delights to give as a token of its affection for its alma mater some one of those eternal, intangible gifts which are expressed only in the spirits of men.

It has been said that the college is "under fire." I prefer, inasmuch as most of the so-called criticism has come from the college men themselves, to say that the college is on fire; that it has ceased to be satisfied with itself, that its slumbering fires have sprung into play, and that it is now trying to see by the light of that flame what its real path is. For we criticize the college for the best of all reasons-because we love it and are not indifferent to its fortunes. We criticize it as those who would make it as nearly what we conceive it ought to be as is possible in the circumstances.

The criticism which has been leveled at our colleges by college men, by men from the inside, does not mean that the college of the present is inferior to the college of the past. No observant man can fail to see that college life is more wholesome in almost every respect in our day than it was in the days gone by. The lives of the undergraduates are cleaner, they are fuller of innocent interests, they are more shot through with the real permanent impulses of life than they once were. We are not saying that the college has degenerated in respect of its character.

What we mean I can illustrate in this way: It seems to me that we have been very much mistaken in thinking that the thing upon which our criticism should center is the athletic enthusiasm of our college undergraduates, and of our graduates, as they come back to the college contests. It is a very interesting fact to me that the game of football, for example, has ceased to be a pleasure to those who play it. Almost any frank member of a college football team will tell you that in one sense it is a punishment to play the game. He does not play it because of the physical pleasure and zest he finds in it, which is another way of saying that he does not play it spontaneously and for its own sake. He plays it for the sake of the college, and one of the things that constitutes the best evidence of what we could make of the college is the spirit in which men go into the football game, because their comrades expect them to go in and because they must advance the banner of their college at the cost of infinite sacrifice. Why does the average man play football? Because he is big, strong and active, and his comrades expect it of him. They expect him to make that use of his physical powers; they expect him to represent them in an arena of considerable dignity and of very great strategic significance.

But when we turn to the field of scholarship, all that we say to the man is, "Make the most of yourself," and the contrast makes scholarship mean as compared with football. The football is for the sake of the college and the scholarship is for the sake of the individual. When shall we get the conception that a college is a brotherhood in which every man is expected to do for the sake of the college the thing which alone can make the college a distinguished and abiding force in the history of men? When shall we bring it about that men shall be ashamed to look their fellows in the face if it is known that they have great faculties and do not use them for the glory of their alma mater, when it is known that they avoid those nights of self-denial which are necessary for intellectual mastery, deny themselves pleasure, deny themselves leisure, deny themselves every natural indulgence in order that in future years it may be said that that place served the country by increasing its power and enlightenment?

But at present what do we do to accomplish that? We very complacently separate the men who have that passion from the men who have it not-I don't mean in the classroom, but I mean in the life of the college itself.

I was confessing to President Schurman to-night that, as I looked back to my experience in the classrooms of many eminent masters, I remembered very little that I had brought away from them. The contacts of knowledge are not vital; the contacts of information are barren. If I tell you too many things that you don't know, I merely make myself hateful to you. If I am constantly in the attitude towards you of instructing you, you may regard me as a very well informed and superior person, but you have no affection for me whatever; whereas if I have the privilege of coming into your life, if I live with you and can touch you with something of the scorn that I feel for a man who does not use his faculties at their best, and can be touched by you with some keen, inspiring touch of the energy that lies in you and that I have not learned to imitate, then fire calls to fire and real life begins, the life that generates, the life that generates power, the life that generates those lasting fires of friendship which in too many college connections are lost altogether, for many college comradeships are based upon taste and not upon community of intellectual interests.

The only lasting stuff for friendship is community of conviction; the only lasting basis is that moral basis to which President Lowell has referred, in which all true intellectual life has its rootage and sustenance, and those are the rootages of character, not the rootages of knowledge. Knowledge is merely, in its uses, the evidence of character, it does not produce character. Some of the most learned of men have been among

the meanest of men, and some of the noblest of men have been illiterate, but have nevertheless shown their nobility by using such powers as they had for high purposes.

We never shall succeed in creating this organic passion, this great use of the mind, which is fundamental, until we have made real communities of our colleges and have utterly destroyed the practice of a merely formal contact, however intimate, between the teacher and the pupil. Until we live together in a common community and expose each other to the general infection, there will be no infection. You cannot make learned men of undergraduates by associating them intimately with each other, because they are too young to be learned men yet themselves; but you can create the infection of learning by associating undergraduates with men who are learned.

How much do you know of the character of the average college professor whom you have heard lecture? Of some professors, if you had known more you would have believed less of what they said; of some professors, if you had known more you would have believed more of what they said. One of the dryest lecturers on American history I ever heard in my life was also a man more learned than any other man I ever knew in American history, and out of the classroom, in conversation, one of the juiciest, most delightful, most informing, most stimulating men I ever had the pleasure of associating with. The man in the classroom was useless, out of the classroom he fertilized every mind that he touched. And most of us are really found out in the informal contacts of life. If you want to know what I know about a subject, don't set me up to make a speech about it, because I have the floor and you cannot interrupt me, and I can leave out the things I want to leave out and bring in the things I want to bring in. If you really want to know what I know, sit down and ask me questions, interrupt me, contradict me, and see how I hold my ground. Probably on some subjects you will not do it; but if you want to find me out, that is the only way. If that method were followed, the undergraduate might make many at consoling discovery of how ignorant his professor was, as well as many a stimulating discovery of how well informed he was.

The thing that it seems to me absolutely necessary we should now address ourselves to is this-forget absolutely all our troubles about what we ought to teach and ask ourselves how we ought to live in college communities, in order that the fire and infection may spread; for the only conducting media of life are the social media, and if you want to make a conducting medium you have got to compound your elements in the college,—not only ally them, not put them in mere diplomatic relations with each other, not have a formal visiting system among

them, but unite them, merge them. The teacher must live with the pupil and the pupil with the teacher, and then there will begin to be a renaissance, a new American college, and not until then. You may have the most eminent teachers and may have the best pedagogical methods, and find that, after all, your methods have been barren and your teachings futile, unless these unions of life have been accomplished.

I think that one of the saddest things that has ever happened to us is that we have studied pedagogical methods. It is as if we had deliberately gone about to make ourselves pedants. There is something offensive in the word "pedagogy." (Applause.) A certain distaste has always gone along with the word "pedagogue." A man who is an eminent teacher feels insulted if he is called a pedagogue; and yet we make a science of being a pedagogue, and in proportion as we make it a science we separate ourselves from the vital processes of life.

I suppose a great many dull men must try to teach, and if dull men have to teach, they have to teach by method that dull men can follow. But they never teach anybody anything. It is merely that the university, in order to have a large corps, must go through the motions; but the real vital processes are in spots, in such circumstances, and only in spots, and you must hope that the spots will spread. You must hope that there will enter in or go out from these little nuclei the real juices of life.

What we mean, then, by criticizing the American college is not to discredit what we are doing or have done, but to cry ourselves awake with regard to the proper processes. (Great applause.)

8 50

THE PRESIDENT

By William Howard Taft

(Delivered on November 16, 1912, at a dinner of the Lotos Club of New York

City.)

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE LOTOS CLUB: The legend of the lotos eaters was that if they partook of the fruit of the lotos tree they

WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, September 15, 1857; graduated from Yale, 1878; LL.B., Cincinnati Law School, 1880; admitted to the Ohio bar in 1880; Solicitor General of the United States, 1890-1892; United States Circuit Judge, 1892-1900; President of the United States-Philippine Commission, 19001901; Governor of the Philippine Islands, 1901-1904; Secretary of War in the Cabinet of President Roosevelt; elected President of the United States in 1908; Professor of Law, Yale University, since 1913.

forgot what had happened in their country and were left in a state of philosophic calm in which they had no desire to return to it.

I do not know what was in the mind of your distinguished Invitation Committee when I was asked to attend this banquet. They came to me before the election. At first I hesitated to come, lest, when the dinner came, by the election I should be shorn of interest as a guest and be changed from an active and virile participant in the day's doings of the nation to merely a dissolving view.

I knew that generally on an occasion of this sort the motive of the diners was to have a guest whose society should bring them more closely into contact with the great present and future, and not be merely a reminder of what has been. But after further consideration, I saw in the name of your club the possibility that you were not merely cold, selfish seekers after pleasures of your own; that perhaps you were organized to furnish consolation to those who mourn, oblivion to those who would forget, an opportunity for a swan song to those about to disappear.

This thought, prompted by the coming, as one of your committee, of the gentleman who knows everything in the world that has happened and is going to happen, and especially that which is going to happen, by reason of his control of the Associated Press, much diminished my confidence in the victory that was to come on election day. I concluded that it was just as well to cast an anchor to the windward and accept as much real condolence as I could gather in such a hospitable presence as this, and, therefore, my friends, I accepted your invitation and am here.

You have given the toast of "The President," and I take this toast not merely as one of respect to the office and indicative of your love of country and as typical of your loyalty, but I assume for the purposes of to-night that a discussion of the office which I have held and in which I have rejoiced and suffered will not be inappropriate.

It is said that the office of President is the most powerful in the world, because under the Constitution its occupant really can exercise more discretion than an Emperor or King exercises in any of the Governments of modern Europe.

I am not disposed to question this as a matter of reasoning from the actual power given the President in the Constitutional division of governmental functions, but I am bound to say that the consciousness of such power is rarely, if ever, present in the mind of the ordinary individual acting as President, because what chiefly stares him in the face in carrying out any plan of his is the limitation upon the power and not its extent.