Graduation Address

"Liberal Education" (17 May 1951). (UA Case 67, Box 2)

Your honour, Mr. Chancellor, Mr. President and Members of the Senate, Members of the Faculty, Friends of the University and Members of the Class of 1951-

Confidentially, this part of our closing exercises is a tradition of the past. It comes from a time when people had very firm convictions; in particular convictions of the soundness of our civilization and man’s ability to guide his own destiny. We are not so sure about that now. I have heard between thirty and forty addresses delivered to classes like yours. Most of them were too long and the speakers often seemed compelled to give advice which they had never followed themselves. I shall not try to compete with them in either respect, particularly in the last, for I have found over the years that students are especially resistant to advice. Their resistance goes up, I should say, with about the fifth power of the frequency with which it is offered.

Since I have been chosen to speak to you this year, I have grouped what I would like to say under the heading, “A LIBERAL EDUCATION”. Instead of the word liberal, I suppose I could use the words, ample, unrestricted, or abundant. Such an education should give to you, if you possess it, certain things which have become part of you and will never leave you for the rest of your lives.

There must have opened up before you during the four years you have been students, the realization of the slowness with which truth has come to mankind. “The night of time far exceeds the day”, and while we know that man has been living on the earth for a very long time, it is only during this past 6000 years that we have any records. We are heirs today, however, of all the past experience of mankind and nobody has an ample or abundant education who has not on file in his brain an outline of the history of his own species, as far as it is available. Education is a structure that takes a long time to build - a life long time. During the past four years you have been merely selecting the wings which you think you can best use. These wings have been fashioned by men of the past with great labour. They are the thoughts of giant men recorded in books. Do not make the mistake of assuming that because one wing does not lift you it will not lift another. Some of you graduate today with the B. A. Degree. It is the oldest degree which we and other Universities give. The “Artes Liberales” of the Romans was the knowledge which a free man should have. Some of you are here today, deciples of the great English jurist Blackstone exponent of justice and ethics. But we are not living in the time of the Romans or even of Blackstone and the “Artes Liberales” of their time are not by themselves good enough. We do live in an age of Science which has its history too, its men whose lives inspire, its beauty shining in crystal or colour. Some of you find your inspiration there in the Science degree. What I am trying to say is that what is included in the word culture in our age, cannot be interpreted or defined as it was at the beginning of this century. The changes have been too startling, and rapid, a few years, equivalent to centuries gone before. I saw in a printed article not long ago an interesting analysis illustrating this. Suppose the past 500,000 years during which man has been developing, is compressed into the fifty years of this century, which is a time interval that we can more readily comprehend. On this scale man would have required forty-nine years to learn, enough to desert, here and there, his wandering habits and settle down in villages. Half way through the fiftieth year writing would be discovered and practised within a very limited area, thus supplying one of the chief means for perpetuating and spreading culture. The achievements of the Greeks would be but three months work, the prevailing of Christianity two; the printing press would be a fortnight old, and man would be using steam for hardly a week. The peculiar conditions under which we live would not come about until 31st of December of the fiftieth year.

So my suggestion is that you cannot live in the past alone, valuable as a knowledge of it may be, you really live in the present only.

I think the best that we could wish for you all, as you leave us, is that your thinking of the past, and knowledge, should bring to your lives a kind of music. Not the kind of music Shakespeare speaks of, although he was pretty definite about the essential nature of that:

“The man who hath no music in himself
Nor is not moved by concord of sweet sounds
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils.
The motion of his spirit is dark as night.
And his affections dark as Erebus,
Let no such man be trusted,”

The music I speak of pervades the Universe.

Long before our knowledge of astronomical mechanics, and the forces which keep the planets in their places, Pythagoras, a Greek philosopher of Samos, about 580 B.C. had a theory that the ideals to be obtained were order, proportion and harmony. He was interested in sound and the numbers their pitches represented. He knew the relation between a tone and its octave, two to one, the interval known as a fifth three to two, a fourth four to three. He saw such order and pleasing harmony in sound, that he concluded the planets were held in their orderly position by sound given out by the heavenly bodies as they rotated, in blended harmony too sweet for mankind to hear. There should come to each life, as years ripen experience and knowledge, the same kind of soothing conviction. Some find it in the beauty of art and language. Others find it in the secrets of nature, in the unchanging physical laws which govern the Universe. It does not matter much from what source it comes so long as it is there.

“For God fulfills himself in many ways
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.”

Then there is another thing which I think should result from an ample education. That is freedom from fear, and a kind of confidence born of the knowledge of what great things men have done in the past, coupled to the hope that there are still great things to be done - the hope that each one has power and potential energy in reserve which will meet an emergency when it comes. This is best expressed I think in the word “poise”. The curse of the world today is fear. It has lost its “poise”, and its actions today are anxious and unpredictable. Why? There are many answers. Some people blame the scientific age for wars and the rumour of wars. They claim that the humanities and the social sciences are the foundation of our Civilization and even advocate that science should stand still because it breeds more terrible destructive possibilities year by year. This is hardly logical for there were wars before there were scientists, and if the humanities are the foundation of civilization perhaps they had better hand them over to the scientists, for the results they are obtaining, everybody will agree are at present far from reassuring! We cannot stop progress any more that we can stop the tides of the Bay of Fundy, for mankind has an unfulfilled curiosity not only for material things but for spirit and mind. We cannot go back to the philosophies of the past we must make new and better ones. I have a collection of a few old firearms which I value and admire for the design end workmanship of their creators, but when I want to really shoot ducks I take a modern pattern.

Let me say too that scientists never started a war. The findings of scientists have been used for war purposes, yes, but by people who were not scientists. Archimedes who lived three centuries before Christ, used his invention of the Catapult to hurl large stones and sink the galleys of Marcellus at the siege of Syracuse, but Archimedes was no warrior! He asked that a drawing of a solution of a problem in mathematics be inscribed on his tomb. Is it not that the world is losing confidence in its ability to rise to an emergency? Have hope, be unafraid!

What is true for the race may be true for an individual. There may be someone in the class who views with fear the years ahead and doubts his background and ability in the competition of the days to come.

I think I have time to tell you a story. It may relieve for a moment what you may otherwise regard as a dry and uninteresting address. I first heard this story over forty years ago. It was told me by a college professor who said it was a true story. But you will agree, I am sure, that college professors make often such incredible statements that it may not be true. I have always doubted it. The story has two chapters.

CHAPTER I.

Away up in the mountains of Italy, in a village, there lived a little dog. He had no pedigree, in fact his antecedents and species were entirely unknown and he had no social standing whatever. He was just known as the little yellow dog and was treated with contempt. There wasn’t a dog in the whole village which had not whipped him, or a boy who had not chased him every time he appeared on the street. The little dog was after a while himself convinced that he was just no good, and his fear kept him hidden most of the day. In fact he did most of his strolling after dark when the streets were deserted.

CHAPTER II.

Still higher up in the mountains there lived a bear. He was very fond of chicken and frequently dined in the village much to the annoyance of all people concerned. The men of the village decided something must be done, so they dug a deep pit in the road by which the bear's raids were made.

The little yellow dog on his way for a stroll one evening fell into the pit. Soon afterwards the bear came along end suffered the same fate. The bear looked at the dog and the dog looked at the bear. The bear said to himself, “Well, I started out for chicken, but it looks like yellow dog for me tonight.” But the little yellow dog was saying, “You've got to fight! This time you've got to fight! If you don’t fight now you will never fight again.” So before the bear could start he made one leap and caught the bear by the nose, and no matter how herd the bear tried he could not shake him off. When the men come in the morning they found a sulky bear in one corner and a small dog alert and watchful in the other. They tossed the little dog out of the pit with hardly a glance and the bear - well the bear is not the hero of the story anyway. But something had happened to the little yellow dog. He walked back to the village and when a big dog ran pretending he was going to eat him up, the little dog said, “Stop, last night I licked a bear, and I can lick any dog in this village,” You see, he did not know he had it in himself.

Just one thing more which I think a liberal education should bring. It is enjoyment of life and enjoyment of work. You remember what Carlyle said, “Blessed is the man who has found his work, let him ask no other blessedness. All things like doubt, despair fly off to their caves the moment he gives himself to work.” It may be true that one crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name, but for most of us our lives are not glorious. They are very ordinary both to ourselves and to others. It is true that it takes patience to cover the course that is before us, and patience is not usually a youthful virtue. Find the work you think you can do best and be patient to prepare yourself for it. Kepler the great astronomer spent nineteen years before he was able to state the three laws which form the basis of our astronomical observations Even Jesus Christ spent thirty years of his life preparing for the three years in which his work was done. There is no hope for the one who as the years pass comes to the final conclusion that “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity”. It is not true, for if history teaches anything it is that while there are many things which are temporal, it is also true that there are things of the mind and spirit which are eternal and abide.

So you and I both go out this year, you with a long look ahead, mine of necessity mostly backward. I hope that when the time comes for you to glance back you can say, as I can now say, life has been good.