New England's Wise Man
420 THE COMMONWEAL September 8, 1926 ple-or by that inevitable deformation of the past would look like after it...
...The only trouble with this neatly labeled selecfrom abroad...
...imagination...
...Hawthorne was helpless after his return Shelf...
...Eliot...
...Neveryour emotion will adapt themselves to this purpose...
...There was a fierce hunger for To this fundament of its character, Dr...
...Charles ultimate victory over the Eliot idea is therefore only William Eliot, "grand old man of Harvard," whose a matter of time-because humanism is logically and span of life closed within eight years of a century...
...but so also has NEW ENGLAND'S WISE MAN been the increase in the crop of lawyers...
...It remains to be seen whether this to examine these diaries, memoirs, and letters-a deli- time will last much longer, or whether it is not already cate task which most people disregard entirely...
...ganization is about the only thing in the Church that Gone were the days when a chosen few could be segre- could be measurably bettered...
...can mind were great...
...Eliot, and whatever he did or said seemed to its duty, but there is a great deal of truth in the saybe part of a careful plan drawn up for an era when re- ing that the point about Dr...
...In so far as liberal which his circle, and to some extent, his age, professed...
...Instinctively your thought and the elective system and other proposed reforms...
...There was something uncannily well-regulated about One hesitates to make a phrase try to do more than Dr...
...psychologically correct...
...Humanism's better impression of the significance of Dr...
...He had dom declarations about the Catholic Church...
...In alesce harmoniously, it was necessary to find the his honest fashion he thought the "system" might be rhythm, the tempo, according to which the national improved-and in this, of course, he was right...
...But Catholicism is primarily-one may say, of the public trust...
...New England's own Augustan best fell early: enough, seems to have divined this fact in setting forth Melville sputtered out in unintelligible dithyrambs and the idea which led to the notorious Five-Foot Bookfinal silence...
...Eliot was that he distinsources were available to push enterprises to their guished between discipline and organization...
...Both the summoning to mind and then visualizing the effect humanists and the defenders of the ratio studiorum which the phrases you are employing will have upon discovered and exposed the manifold weaknesses of the person addressed...
...between conclusion...
...He immense faith in the institution and in the people who always admired the "Roman system," as it can so conwould take advantage of it...
...In so far as letters are concerned, the Fierce and lengthy debates have closed about the situation is hardly different...
...studies are concerned, the fact is already apparent It is curious to note how few of those who lived them- that the gathering of mere knowledge without referselves out as whole-hearted romantics, either in ence to the structure of the human person leads only America or other countries, endured long enough to to the impasse of meticulously reared and unusable speak wisely de Senectute in the manner of antique mountains of further knowledge...
...But after all, the weakpopular demand was for new, professional disciplines ness was typical of Americans of his kind...
...nearing a close...
...and poor Henry David Thoreau tion was that it did not educate or humanize...
...One must take time particular time...
...Whether it will pay the individual and the nation to continue T HE dissolution of Emerson's old age by physical at the present rate, is a serious question, upon the and mental infirmity was probably a kind of in- communal answer to which will depend the future index to the quality of that reckless spiritual dynamism terest in this kind of education...
...The missed the point by a mile...
...420 THE COMMONWEAL September 8, 1926 ple-or by that inevitable deformation of the past would look like after it had finished growing up, which follows the working together of memory and seemed out of date...
...theless, these endured and prospered because, as it A rectification is therefore required of those who seems to us, they were based upon a profound comprewould use these documents which, while no doubt sin- hension of what America wanted and needed at a cere, are not completely sincere...
...after all, these acts have been more orr less synonoBearing these things in mind, one can possibly get a mous with the purposes of the college...
...and watched his body collapse around his sturdy heart...
...This is borne out particularly well in his ranwhich was setting the pace for America...
...The practical needs of the Ameri- essentially-a discipline, a way of growing into life...
...His fortune was that, at an early age, growing into something and being made into somehe could take charge of an educational institution thing...
...Eliot was most intellectual liberalism, but this could be gratified only blind, and whenever he said anything about it he usually by subjecting it to the busier business of life...
...The old religious humanism, which began with Church in this country would be utterly different from a pretty definite vision of what the personality-tree what it is or what it ever has been...
...The growth of graduate law-schools, for instance, has been extraordinary...
...Eliot, curiously Cicero...
...To write to anyone means educational ideas sponsored by Dr...
...It is constantly being gated for the experience of a traditional intellectual changed, and constantly suffering from the failure of discipline, after which, as viri fortes in the old man- human nature to carry on certain routine matters sucner, they might find their places in the guardianship cessfully...
...Eliot succeeded...
...If the supplemented by liberal knowledge of a contiguous point could once be made clear, the position of the kind...
...Orexistence was really moving...
...But obviously, if the veniently be styled-the ability to marshal a great two elements -institution and people-were to co- many people to the support of an idea or a cult...
Vol. 4 • September 1926 • No. 18
