THE COMMUNITY’S MIRROR

Evening Star, Issue 22336, 12 May 1936, Page 11

THE COMMUNITY’S MIRROR

TASK Of THE UNIVERSITY PRECARIOUS INSTABILITY OF SOCIETY DR G. E. THOMPSON’S GRADUATION ORATION An oration of the highest standard on the university in relation to the community and its appointed mission of being the most active centre of idealism in this “ highly efficient, pushbuttoned, upholstered, and limousined age,” and in teaching that the greatness of a nation is not measured by its smokestacks but by the cultural and spiritual achievements of its people, was delivered this afternoon by Professor G. E. Thompson, of the chair of languages, at the graduation ceremony of the University of Otago. “ Tho character of these proceedings and the composition of this assembly symbolise the two-fold purpose for which this ceremony is held/’ said Dr Thompson. “ The university as an academic body, heir to many ages, following the tradition of medieval Salerno, Bologna, Paris, Cambridge, Oxford, places on your brow the laurels of your achievements with a formality consecrated by ancient custom. The university again, as a member of the community which here encompasses you with so great a cloud of witnesses, welcomes you into the ranks of this democracy; and her hopes of you are the bearers of her dreams. This t moment, therefore, represents for you at once an end and a’ beginning, an exit and an entrance, the fall and the rise fo a curtain. A door is closed and a door is opened. _ And perhaps the traditional colours in whicli the university decks itself out to give a worthy impressiveness to the occasion may bo taken to represent for you ‘ the shadowed livery of the burnished sunset ’ of one closing day, and the rosy-fingered dawn of the next. Suggested by these pleasant excursions of an idle fancy are other symbols upon whicli the imagination may freely play. You are leaving a merry banqueting hall, and are about to emerge into the busy street. You arc a well-laden ship nosing its way out of the security of a snug harbour in the teeth ol a gathering gale. Or, still more appropriately, you are leaving a friendly circle seated round a camp lire, where you have warmed both bands before the glowing embers; the circle you are leaving may see you no more, but it will strain its ears to catch the sound of your footsteps ns you mount upward in the night.” Not into a vacuum, therefore, were they now emerging, but into a busy, restless, work-a-day world. In a farreaching simile more than one poet had likened this community to an ocean, for like the ocean it had its smiling surface and its secret depths, its sudden storms, its unchartered reefs, its wrecks lying deep down in its mysterious recesses. Like the ocean, too, it was the arena of heroisms and daring adventures, of selfsacrifice and courage; and it had its romances and its fascinations, its happy voyages, and the journeys that ended in lovers’ meetings. For each of them in the community they were about to enter there was the joy of the contest and there was the thrill of tho victory. For each of them there was a “ earriere ouverte aux talents,” and a marshal’s baton lay in every knapsack. They would, of course, have to earn their daily bread, With whatever additions were necessary to add interest to the diet. But they would not live by bread alone. They would not become a shadowy anonymity. An old scholastic aphorism declared that he who lived wholly detached from the world must be either an angel or a devil. From his personal knowledge of them he was convinced that they were neither .one nor the other. They would therefore play their expected part in the community, live in it, and be of it. When they had successfully passed the threescore and ten units prescribed for life’s graduation, may they be crowned with greater laurels than they had won that day. And might it also be said of them, gratefully and admiringly, as the highest of all tributes: “ He has lit many lires in dark rooms.” COMMUNITY’S SOUL MIRRORED. “ For this superstructure which it now rests with you to build, the uni-

vorsity has provided the foundation and the scaffolding, and perhaps the architect’s plans. To both you and the University a great part is allotted. The allotted task of the University—what is it? Like the University itself, discussions on its functions have an ancient lineage and an impressive historical continuity. Philosophers, educationists, statesmen have debated it, from the peripatetic philosopher Aristotle, as he walked up and down the shady groves of the Athens Lyceum, to the latest peripatetic parliamentary commission as it moved up and down the Dominion. The early Christian church moralised upon it, unfolding its conception gradually from a medieval and monkieji system to something approaching modern ideas. But ancient and medieval conceptions of the task of a university nifty here be ignored, for to the rabid modernity of the present day, these lucubrations of the long distant past would be interesting only for their cobwebs, And Mr Andrew Carnegie was no doubt speaking in jest when lie said of ono American university college that it was 1 a monastery mitigated by football.’ Of modern authorities who have endeavoured to express the spirit of our own age we may take the opinion of a great British philosopher-states-man. Lord Haldane, with centuries of previous theories before him as ho wrote, lias put his conception of a university in the following terms: — ‘ It is in a university that the soul of a community mirrors itself,’

Perhaps some may say that this is too abstract and general, that Lord Haldane’s definition is too vague, that it cOmes to us enshrouded in the mists of its brevity, that it would have gained in utility had he defined his terms, and that its vagueness merely excites a second problem instead of solving the first. For who can define the ‘ soul ’ of a community ? In what laboratory, scientific or psychological, can the soul of a community be isolated from the body, analysed and dissected, displayed in, all its elements, another mirrored for the guidance of a university? But a closer examination may pierce the superficial obscurity of Lord Haldane’s words and help us to catch the glimmer of a great meaning. In the difficult days that loom ahead both of the community and the University, it may solve as a beacon light. If Wo interpret it aright it may suggest ah answer to the question which so many centuries have urgently asked. THE CHANGING SCENES. If the University were called upon to be a faithful reflection of the visible community as they saw it, the mirrored image would be a kaleidoscope. University tradition would bo impossible, and the University itself would be a weather-vane. The community was not one but many. It varied chronologically and geographically. It had changed from age to age ever since communities began, and it was still changing. The community which moved along by oxcart or by stage coach was not the same community—mentally, morally, emotionally—as the community which dashed to and fro, hither and thither, by railway train and motor car. And different again in the near future would be the community in which the distance from London to New Zealand would bo no greater than that which a student of mediaeval Paris had to traverse if lie desired to continue his studies in Bologna. The community which once credulously accepted authority was not the community which now examined everything with an insatiable inquisitiveness. The slowness of man’s evolution in the past, broadening down

gently from precedent to precedent, allowed universities to keep pace with man’s higher needs. But tneir present historical epoch was not a mere change; it was a transformation. Evolution had given place to revolution, tradition to experimentation. The mental attitude originally confined to the favoured few was now the common possession of the unfavoured many. Mankind faced the world with a new faith in itself, willing to fly with its own wings, in awe of nothing, defying native and challenging even the gods. Society was no longer static; it was dynamic. It had passed from a social stability based on a relative absence of change to a precarious instability that sought an ever-moving equilibrium. Civlisation, in fact, had in the present age embarked on the supreme experiment in history. What part should the university play in it? Accompanying and intensifying this change of mental attitude was a change in their manner of living. Economic processes had long since moved one by one from the home and the village community to the factory; and now mass production had taken them up. Home and family life was changing before their eyes. The content of life was being transformed incredibly. A machine age, a civilisation becoming more and more mechanical, had given rise to a situation without parallel in the previous annals of the world, producing motonomy of work, monotony of leisure, monotony of relaxation. Leisure, once the privilege of the few, was now no longer confined to one class, and the right employment of vacant hours had become a great new problem affecting both tlie idle rich and the industrious poor. Inevitably there had arisen a restless craving for excitement, and a weak acceptance of amusements of various kinds and grades that fixed taste at low levels. Commercialised entertainments on an unprecedented scale began by meeting this new need, continued by encouraging it, and had ended by magnifying it, till what was once an .occasional luxury was now a constant, urgent necessity. To these inadequate agencies the community had handed over with outstretched bands the momentous task of providing relief work for its mentally unemployed. RACE OF CIVILISATION. To the problems arising from this situation other problems might bo appended as corollaries. The moral problem affrightened them. Moral standards seemed to be based on shifting sands; for with the waning of authority and tradition tlio question was ever present how they could keep moral responses and tho moral outlook abreast of tho changing times. There were also problems political, problems social, problems national 'and international—ail of them of appalling complexity. The world’s sceptre had passed from literature to science. Science had advanced with irresistible energy from triumph to triumph, till even a president of the British Association had expressed his misgivings that spiritual man bad not kept pace with scientific discoveries and might give way under their weight. The dispirited master was becoming enslaved to n brilliant, but tyrannical servant. Tho world was rushing it knew not whither. Two centuries ago Horace Walnulc wrote that “ ll:« world is a cornedv In tbese who think', a f rui-rdv In those who feel.” And Mr FI. CL Wells say, to-day that “ civilisation is a race between education and catastrophe.” But these forebodings related only to the “body'.’, of the community, that

part of the community which was ever changing, and of which change was a sign of fife For they ceased to change only in the tomb. There was also a “ soul,” a constant, permanent part, the spirit of humanity which had enabled man to weather many a previous storm in his via dolorosa, a part sound enough to find in each age a new and stable centre of equilibrium. What other view of humanity than that was put forward by Carlyle in the Clothes Philosophy of his Sartor Resartus—that all symbols, forms, and human institutions were properly clothed, and as such were temporary? Says old Teufelsdrockh in his speculations: “The thing visible, nay the thing imagined, the thing in any way conceived as visible, _ what is it but a garment, a clothing of the higher celestial invisible, unimaginable, formless, dark with excess of light .... all visible things are emblems: what thou seest is not there on its own account, but to represent some idea and body it forth.” If then it be true, according to Mr Well’s statement, that education stood as their only bulwark against catastrophe, education was the only secular agency that could reach this permanent soul of the community and take it by the hand. Education alone could foster it and supply it with the elements necessary to keep it fresh and active. He who sought to know what these elements were and therefore what tho soul of the community might be conceived to he, might, find them in the words of Cardinal Newman: “A university training aims at raising tho intellectual tone of society, at cultivating the public mind, at purifying the national taste, at supplying true principles to popular enthusiasm and fixed aims to popular aspiration, at giving enlargement and sobriety to the ideas of age, at facilitating tho exercise of political power, and refining the intercourse of private life. . . It teaches a man to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a confused skein of thought, to discard what is irrelevant. It teaches the repose of a mind which lives in itself and which has resources for its own happiness at home when it cannot go abroad- It confers a gift which serves a man in public and supports him in retirement, without which good fortune is but vulgar, and with which failure and disappointment have a charm.” TASK OF THE UNIVERSITY. “ The university therefore has as its appointed mission the task of being the most active centre of idealism in a very practical civilisation. In this higiily efficient, push-buttoned, upholstered, and limonsined age it must teach that the greatness of a nation is not measured by the counting of smokestacks, but by the cultural and spiritual achievements of its people; that in the long run, with time as its coadjutor, a cathedral may produce a greater measure of accumulated happiness than a factory; that a system of philosophy, similarly aided by time, aftects the destinies of a people more profoundly than scientific inventions; and that a great poem may likewise build or destroy, liberate or enslave an empire more certainly than the roar of guns. These statements are not more flowers of rhetoric. Each one of them can be proved.” Tho university, then, had to be a centre of knowledge, of taste, of culture. It had to study tho past which might shame the present, and the present which might blame the past. It bad to explore ancient theories of human nature ns well as modern practices of human behaviour. For contrast between the present and the past brought out the colours in both. It bad to shun the easy and court the difficult. Whatever hierarchy _ they might establish among these sections of its task, still stood its ancient sacrifice—the training in the power of thought. If, according to the old analogy, Francis Bacon, father of the inductive method, were to march down the avenue of three centuries, he would lay one hand on tho steam engine, the other on the electric telegraph, and ho would say, “ These are mine, for I taught men how to think.” _ In this .sense a new planet might be discovered in a university laboratory; and from tho humanistic studies of a university classroom might rise a movement that might sway the destinies of nations. Humanistic study of certain ancient literatures and languages was said to have contributed powerfully to the liberation of Greece and other Balkan States from Turkish rule ; for it revived the glory that was Greece. inspired poets to sing tho romance of a land “ immortal though no more. though fallen, great,” v. here “(lie mountains look on Mara Hum. and Marathon looks cm the sea.” Was it a mere flight of fancy to say that in this way a university might liold communion with the soul of the world, and serve the eternal interests of humanity ?.

NEW ZEALAND’S PROBLEMS

Between the Old World and the New was a distance that might lend enchantment to this view of the university ideal. This very enchantment should bring its inspiration. Nestling in an isolated corner of the greater humanity, partaking of its problems, and adding further problems of its own was their little New Zealand community. Particularly its own was its environment. just recently hewn out of primeval nature, and possessing tho excellences and the detects of a nation still in its youth. From its struggle with field and forest, road and river, it had still retained a natural absorbtion in its immediate needs and in the objective basis of life. Its view of education was short. It demanded quick returns, and estimated the profits accordingly. Examinations it regarded as a technique for discovering the Lord’s annionted. Tho practical man was still king; and he boasted of his royal birth. And their bridges were better built than their poems. The useful was interpreted in the light of to-day and to-morrow; for next year was the distant future, and next 'decade they viewed with the cheerful unconcern appropriate to a far-off divine event towards which the whole Creation moved. In educational matters this community presented a unique situation, with two determining factors. In no other part of the British Commonwealth of Nations were tho community and its educational institutions so intimately connected by every tie—historical, sentimental, social and political. And in no other part of this Commonwealth of Nations did the community he so far removed from the great of university tradition and practice. Could the joint significance of these two factors bo over-estimated? From one of these there resulted a general enthusiasm for education. But it would be a miracle if a community so isolated, and in a matter so subjective as education, could the dangers of in-breeding of educational ideals, methods, and standards which their pride in their institutions made them reluctant to admit. The influence of a university on a community was a well-worn topic, frequently discussed from platforms such as this. But a parallel question, not so familiar, and not so frequently made the subject of a graduation address, was rising in this land to a position of equal importance. That was the influence of the community on the university. . “ Need it be said that the whole subject of higher education in New Zealand is wrapped up in these two divergent and rival influences, and m the search for a compromise between them?” said Dr Thompson. “From them arise problems which the Old World scarcelj’ knows. Not mere problems are these. Problems may be solved if the requisite administrative wisdom be at hand. But these are dilemmas. Facing the University of New Zealand is the supremo dilemma: Should the university give to the community what it asks for, or what it needs? Should the university come down to the community, or raise the community up to it? Worthy of all honour is the philosophy of university education, based on democratic ideals, which demands the extension of university education to every member of the community who so desires it, and who. in a free democracy, is fully entitled to it. This is training for citizenship, fulfilling Cardinal Newman’s injunction that the university should train for ‘ good membership of society.’ Or should the university set its standards sufficiently high above the average intellectual level of the community to enable it to train for leadership—for tho leadership which democracy so urgently needs? And is it possible to combine both ideals within the framework of one human and limited institution within the framework of one human and limited institution without breaking it asunder? Of these two ideals the university holds one, being jealous of its standing in the university fraternity of the world; the community clinging with equal zealousness to tho right of a citizen to an institution which it lias itself established, is more and more insistently demanding the fulfilment of the other ideal.” The “ body ” of the community was already imposing its image on the mirror. Already the process was going on, bv slow degrees, piece by piece, with the inevitability of gradualness; and the future was overshadowed with misgivings lest, instead of training for democracy, they should come merely to train for mediocrity. SOLVING THE DILEMMA. An exit from this dilemma was not impossible. Both ideals might bo combined without detriment to either. The community might receive what it desired, and the university at the same

time might raise the community to it. Among all their institutions the uni versity, by its situation and the sphere of its activities, was specially privileged and’circumstanced, it was the fountain-head from which a vitalising stream (lowed to every nook and corner of this people. It sent out its doctors and its lawyers, its clergymen and its teachers. It taught the teachers and the teachers of its teachers, who in their turn taught the pupils of every grade of college and school, from the large city secondary school to the tworoomed country school by motor highway or connecting road. In this vast reticulation every city and township, every home by river, lake, or valley, felt the effect of the education it gave. The area to be served was large—could this education reach the peripheries? Lest this generalisation be insufficiently sharp-pointed, let them, take a concrete, familiar, and homely illustration. A reservoir of water was placed high above the level of the district it served so that the How of water might pulsate energetically through the reticulated area, through every city main and every connecting pipe, into every household water tap. Pressure would be lacking were the reservoir placed at too low a level. Let their imaginations play for a moment on the fate of their household economics if the How from the water taps, instead of being, as it should be, a gushing and spurting, merry and sparkling effervescent ana stimulating stream, were a slow and sluggish, dull and depressing, a languid, listless, and almost stagnant ooze. Exact in every detail was this pictorial parallel between the vitalising properties of good household water pressure, and the pervading influence of a university standard _ placed at a proper level, .further similarities will follow reflection. A low elevation of reservoir would leave higher geographical areas languishing from aridity, and panting like the heart for cooling streams. Higher mental levels in boy or girl or youth would similarly look in vain for intellectual inspiration from an educational stream not powerful enough to rise to them. Those whom they called trustees of posterity should not have it said of them that they looked for the best, which they expected, and could not find it.

“ Only by the highest of standards, therefore, only by the severest of disciplines, can a democratic university such as ours truly serve the democracy which called it forth,” he concluded. “ A great mission would it be, a divine mission, were the University and the community to rise together to the ideal of an educated democracy, approaching as near as we can to the highest knowledge, the highest culture, the highest intelligence, the highest judgment. Then might we draw near to the highest wisdom. And the soul of the community of which we have been speaking —what is it but wisdom, the collective wisdom of its members; —that wisdom which is the divinest gift granted by heaven to man, that wisdom which is the sanity of true genius and the genius of true sanity, that wisdom which has been called ‘ God in us,’ that wisdom which is its own wealth, its own relaxation, its own happiness—that wisdom which, among all earthly things, is the great avenue of approach to the threshold of the place where man wandereth into God’s presence, and where he may hear the beating of invisible wings.”