it may seem to some of you that i am continually talking to you about education—the right kind of education, how to get an education, and such kindred subjects—but surely no subject could be more pertinent, since the object for which you all are here is to get an education; and if you are to do this, you wish to get the best kind possible.
you will understand, then, i am sure, if i speak often about this, or refer to the subject frequently, that it is because i am very anxious that all of you go out from here with a definite and correct idea of what is meant by education, of what an education is meant to accomplish, what it may be expected to do for one.
we are very apt to get the idea that education means the memorizing of a number of dates, of being able to state when a certain battle took place, of being able to recall with accuracy this event or that event. we are likely to get the impression that education consists in being able[pg 112] to commit to memory a certain number of rules in grammar, a certain number of rules in arithmetic, and in being able to locate correctly on the earth's surface this mountain or that river, and to name this lake and that gulf.
now i do not mean to disparage the value of this kind of training, because among the things that education should do for us is to give us strong, orderly and well developed minds. i do not wish to have you get the idea that i undervalue or overlook the strengthening of the mind. if there is one person more than another who is to be pitied, it is the individual who is all heart and no head. you will see numbers of persons going through the world whose hearts are full of good things—running over with the wish to do something to make somebody better, or the desire to make somebody happier—but they have made the sad mistake of being absolutely without development of mind to go with this willingness of heart. we want development of mind and we want strengthening of the mind.
i have often said to you that one of the best things that education can do for an individual is to teach that individual to get hold of what he wants, rather than to teach him how to commit[pg 113] to memory a number of facts in history or a number of names in geography. i wish you to feel that we can give you here orderliness of mind—i mean a trained mind—that will enable you to find dates in history or to put your finger on names in geography when you want them. i wish to give you an education that will enable you to construct rules in grammar and arithmetic for yourselves. that is the highest kind of training.
but, after all, this kind of thing is not the end of education. what, then, do we mean by education? i would say that education is meant to give us an idea of truth. whatever we get out of text books, whatever we get out of industry, whatever we get here and there from any sources, if we do not get the idea of truth at the end, we do not get education. i do not care how much you get out of history, or geography, or algebra, or literature, i do not care how much you have got out of all your text books:—unless you have got truth, you have failed in your purpose to be educated. unless you get the idea of truth so pure that you cannot be false in anything, your education is a failure.
then education is meant to make us just in our dealings with our fellow men. the man or woman[pg 114] who has learned to be absolutely just, so far as he can interpret, has, in that degree, an education, is to that degree an educated man or woman. education is meant to make us change for the better, to make us more thoughtful, to make us so broad that we will not seek to help one man because he belongs to this race or that race of people, and seek to hinder another man because he does not belong to this race or that race of people.
education in the broadest and truest sense will make an individual seek to help all people, regardless of race, regardless of colour, regardless of condition. and you will find that the person who is most truly educated is the one who is going to be kindest, and is going to act in the gentlest manner toward persons who are unfortunate, toward the race or the individual that is most despised. the highly educated person is the one who is the most considerate of those individuals who are less fortunate. i hope that when you go out from here, and meet persons who are afflicted by poverty, whether of mind or body, or persons who are unfortunate in any way, that you will show your education by being just as kind and just as considerate toward those persons as it is possible for you to be. that is the way to test[pg 115] a person with education. you may see ignorant persons, who, perhaps, think themselves educated, going about the street, who, when they meet an individual who is unfortunate—lame, or with a defect of body, mind or speech—are inclined to laugh at and make sport of that individual. but the highly educated person, the one who is really cultivated, is gentle and sympathetic to everyone.
education is meant to make us absolutely honest in dealing with our fellows. i don't care how much arithmetic we have, or how many cities we can locate;—it all is useless unless we have an education that makes us absolutely honest.
education is meant to make us give satisfaction, and to get satisfaction out of giving it. it is meant to make us get happiness out of service for our fellows. and until we get to the point where we can get happiness and supreme satisfaction out of helping our fellows, we are not truly educated. education is meant to make us generous. in this connection let me say that i very much hope that when you go out from here you will show that you have learned this lesson of being generous in all charitable objects, in the support of your churches, your sunday schools,[pg 116] your hospitals, and in being generous in giving help to the poor.
i hope, for instance, that a large proportion of you—in fact all of you—will make it a practice to give something yearly to this institution. if you cannot give but twenty-five cents, fifty cents, or a dollar a year, i hope you will put it down as a thing that you will not forget, to give something to this institution every year. we want to show to our friends who have done so much for us, who have supported this school so generously, how much interest we take in the institution that has given us so nearly all that we possess. i hope that every senior, in particular, will keep this in mind. i am glad to say that we have many graduates who send us such sums, even if small, and one graduate who for the last eight or ten years has sent us ten dollars annually. i hope a number of you in the senior class that i see before me will do the same thing.
education is meant to make us appreciate the things that are beautiful in nature. a person is never educated until he is able to go into the swamps and woods and see something that is beautiful in the trees and shrubs there, is able to see something beautiful in the grass and flowers[pg 117] that surround him, is, in short, able to see something beautiful, elevating and inspiring in everything that god has created. not only should education enable us to see the beauty in these objects which god has put about us, but it is meant to influence us to bring beautiful objects about us. i hope that each one of you, after you graduate, will surround himself at home with what is beautiful, inspiring and elevating. i do not believe that any person is educated so long as he lives in a dirty, miserable shanty. i do not believe that any person is educated until he has learned to want to live in a clean room made attractive with pictures and books, and with such surroundings as are elevating.
in a word, i wish to say again, that education is meant to give us that culture, that refinement, that taste which will make us deal truthfully with our fellow men, and will make us see what is beautiful, elevating and inspiring in what god has created. i want you to bear in mind that your text books, with all their contents, are not an end, but a means to an end, a means to help us get the highest, the best, the purest and the most beautiful things out of life.
