Alumni Oration

"The Alumni Oration" Brunswickan 42, 7 (August 1923): 271-276. (UA Case 67a, Box 1)

Bliss Carman, the alumni orator, said:

It is to be supposed that the alumnus of a university returning to Alma Mater after years of absence might have stores of new knowledge to impart to his academic fraternity, some experience to report, or some advice of great worth to offer his studious fellows. At least that would have been so in earlier ages, when means of communication were few. And even now one might expect some message of importance from an old graduate, if he were a great scientist or divine or an eminent man of affairs. We might look for a word of wisdom on some theme of novel interest. But that picture does not fit the present case. Your speaker this afternoon is neither a ripe scholar nor a master of a learned profession, nor a successful man of action. His years of absence have been passed in a very quiet and absorbing occupation, rather apart from the main currents of our modern life. The work of a creative artist, however modest, must always be done in quietness and requires a good deal of semi-solitude for its ripening. He can scarcely be expected to have become extremely wise in worldly experience nor shrewdly versed in the conduct of public affairs.

So that you will understand anything your present speaker may have to say must of necessity arise from that inner life of reflection and imaginative activity in which it has been his fortune to spend his time since he passed from the tutelage of this beloved university.

And it is only an echo of our Alma Mater's voice which you will hear, a faint reverberation of those ideals with which she imbued her sons. If anything can be said worthy of your attention, you will know it is only the matured fruit of the seed planted long since and nourished in the favoring light and air. The true university is like the universe, she gives without stint and her teaching is never wholly lost. Her children return to her at last to bear testimony to her good will and the invaluable endowment long ago on the eager and serious youth within her care.

The Artist's Life

When I speak of the artist's life as one of imaginative activity, I by no means wish to imply that it is a more precious life than any other, but simply that the artist in whatever field is remarkably dependent upon what we call inspiration. He must be essentially a mystic whether he is consciously aware of it or not. He is always listening for the oracles, whether any whisper or revelation ever comes to him or no. For him there can be no real and lasting success without an actual, though often unrecognized, alliance with the creative spirit of the universe. All his learning, all his skill, all his science and philosophy, go for nothing without a touch of the mysterious fire. So that we are quite right in looking upon the prophets of antiquity as inspired beings. We are right, too, in speaking generally as we do of the inspiration of the artist. For his happiest phrase in music or verse, his most ravishing tint in painting, his loveliest line in sculpture come to him he knows not whence or how—just as a remembered name, momentarily forgotten, is dropped into the mind.

Now the truth is, let me hasten to add, that the artist is not unique among men, but only typical. We are all dependent upon imaginations from the unseen, whenever we would rise to our highest achievement. The curious contriving mind, and the restless physical force, great and essential as they are, must fail without initial inspiration, without a touch from the ever-brooding creative spirit. We are all alike afloat upon the urge and drift of the tide which seeps between the stars.

If we say that inspiration is necessary in life, that does imply that spiritual culture alone can prevail. The prime impulse must be guided to its ends by the clearest rational thought of which we are capable, and its purposes carried out with unflagging diligence and skill. This is the process of creation that the artist learns to recognize in his own endeavors; which, it is true, never quite reach ambitious expectations, and which, he perceives, are only infinitesimal replicas of some perfection beyond his ken.

Education

Speaking then as a student of one of the fine arts, I would say, since you do me the honor to ask for a word in such an assembly as this, where we are all mainly interested in the welfare of our college and province, that the best education must follow the artist's experience and provide a threefold training. It must, I believe, in order to be successful in the widest way, take care of our spiritual and physical faculties along with our mental powers. And this, modern education as at present constituted, does not do. We none of us have any doubt of the value of education. I believe it to be our only hope of salvation in a distracted and chaotic time. And, it seems to me, the crux of the matter lies just where I have stated, in the need for a less partial, less exclusively mental training. Since we humans are what we are, with our lot cast in a world such as this, our only aim must be to harmonize life with environment. Having three phases or sides to our nature, are we not always coming to grief whenever any one of these phases is neglected or thwarted of its rightful growth and function, or whenever any one is developed at the expense of the others. This is the one grain of experience I count of most value.

It is not a finding fault with things as they are so much as a suggestion for new reaches of education which have never yet been attempted. In essence it is a plea not so much for new fields of study and training as for a harmonizing of personal development. A whole balanced and harmonized personality is the ideal to be attained as a means of success in life.

The World Today

Think a moment of the world today as compared with that our fathers knew. A man may breakfast on Monday morning within the sound of the Atlantic and eat his luncheon next day on the shores of the Pacific. A continent traversed over night. You may sit in your parlor at home and listen to a concert in St. Louis or Chicago, or even hear your friend's voice in London or Paris, without so much as a thread's connection. Suddenly the concert is interrupted, and a voice announces that all broadcasting is to cease temporarily. There is a ship on fire in mid-ocean, sending out news of her condition and whereabouts, with a call for aid. So you are in instant communication with the daily life of the world by land and sea, and you take it all as calmly as you butter your toast or put sugar in your tea. We live in an age of miraculous invention and discovery—that is to say in an era dominated by intelligence, putting its trust in machinery, and thinking to grasp happiness through physical control of the material world. We are misled. Happiness is not so easily secured.

It does not come at the lure of wealth or convenience merely nor follow after every mechanical invention, however ingenious. It cannot be compassed by cleverness and skill alone. Its origin is elsewhere and it eludes our most deliberate pursuit.

Again, think for a moment of the world in which we must live, not the material world in which we have worked our wonders, but the world of conduct and feeling and ask how our inventions and discoveries have affected our lives. The outer world has changed more in the last few decades than in a thousand years before, so swift and compelling has been the working of human intelligence. His environment has indeed been made subject to man's will, but with what result? Are laws, order, decency, safety or life and property, happiness and wisdom more assured and widespread than a generation ago or not? Is justice more prompt and impartial? Are nations more peaceful? Are individuals glad and more peaceful? Are governments wiser and more liberal? Are people freer and more law abiding?

Room For Optimism

There is always room for optimism and you may answer these questions as you please. I suppose you will hardly contend that Russia is a shining example of happiness and prosperity achieved through modern rationalism. No state could well be more pitiable—a prey to the tyranny of a gross and Godless materialism. The days and ideals of savagery returned to earth. If this is a revolting incident in current history, I cannot see that we of the happier communities can flatter ourselves. I cannot see that personal liberty is as secure as we like to fancy it. The hand of the fanatic is everywhere attempting to reimpose an acrid Puritanism upon a tolerant world. There seems to be a tendency abroad to conceive of the moral law or the law of spiritual life in a very narrow way, as a series of petty censorships, vice crusades and sumptuary regulations and prohibitions; whereas in reality the law of our spiritual life is something much more cheerful and positive and vital than that. Exact and hard in thought as the fanatic has always been, his devotion to a limited and ungenerous culture has cut him off from the truer and deeper stream of progress. We do not get ahead by being forbidden, but by being heartened. Meanwhile, along with the Communist and the Marxian, the modern self-appointed inquisitor endangers our freedom.

High Hopes

Our young men went to war in all the light-hearted credulity of youth. They returned, when they did return, with high hopes for better things as a result of their devotion. Have we given them anything which their hearts desired or imagined beyond a material recompense? Do they not remain after five years confused, aimless, disillusioned, pessimistic? Where is the new day which was to dawn over their heroic efforts? Where is the assurance of peace that was promised? Where is God in the world?

They ask and we have to answer. They see their countries still governed in the same old bungling way, by the same old worlding politicians, with little vision, with little wisdom, helpless before the problem of reorganizing a shattered economic world. The same old trust in machinery, in chicanery and cleverness, and little trust in anything better.

Does it not seem it is the life of the spirit which needs refreshing and replenishing? You may overturn Empires, and reform the churches, and found libraries and museums, and establish public institutions of learning and research, and endow schools and colleges, and multiply scholarships, and wallow in democracy to your heart's satiety. But your ends are not served. What we want is a leader, an ideal, a breath from the open, a whisper from the eternal deep. Still the voice delays and we can only await its coming. Meanwhile may it not be possible and advisable to review the training we give our children? Perhaps we can improve our present system, so that they shall be able to order the world more happily than we have done. Perhaps those things which the artist finds so necessary in his life for carrying on his work may prove the very ones which all people must most need. Perhaps the fault is that we have all relied far too much on the power of knowledge, and have ignored other means of happiness equally vital and needful.

This is a subject on which I have harped so much that I would hesitate to say more here even if there were time; yet there is no other word which seems to be of equal importance. I by no means wish to imply that we know too much or are over-equipped mentally. I think every one should have adequate training in some exact science in order to think clearly and logically and to become aware of the excellence and beauty of truth and the authority of reason. But I think equal attention should be given to the culture of our spiritual or moral faculties. For it is there that our life has its roots and only by free and legitimate exercise of those faculties is a happy and successful life to be achieved. Our usual method of education gives almost no opportunity for the exercise of these natural creative powers through self-expression, as it very well might do. There might very well be training in some art or handicraft to accompany the training of the mind—greatly to the benefit of character in power and satisfaction, as well as in usefulness.

If poetry itself is nothing more than a means of expressing truths old and new in a beautiful guise, to become effective for the increase of gladness and understanding and success in life, education is only another and more specific means to the same end. I trust, therefore, that I shall not seem to have spoken altogether incongruously here and now, in touching this great theme. In any event I have spoken out of a sincere devotion to our common ideals. That our University may ever flourish and do for many yet unnumbered sons and daughters what she has so unselfishly done for those who have already passed through her doors must be the wish of all of us today.