i The news in this publi-
I cation is released for the
j press on receipt.
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA
NEWS LETTER
Published Weekly by the
University of North Caro
lina for the University Ex
tension Division.
0CT03ER 7, 1925
CHAPEL HILL, N C.
THE UNIVERSITY OP NORTH CAROLINA PRESS
VOL. XL NO. 47
Editorial Board: E. C. Branaon, S. H. Hobbs, Jr.. L. E. Wilson, E. W. Knight, D. D. Carroll, J. 13. Bullitt, H. W. Odum.
Entered a.s second-class matter November 14. 1914. at the Postolnce at Chapel Hill, N, C., under the act of August 24, 1912
S«T£LL£CTUAL FREEDOM AND HONESTY
[We are reprinting in full in this issue
of the News Letter the address deliv
ered by President Chase of the Uni
versity of North Carolina to the student
body at the formal opening of the 132nd
year of the institution.]
A year ago, at our opening meeting,
I spoke of the intellectual responsibility
which any University worthy the name
must assume. This is the responsibility
to put its students into touch with the
best of modern knowledge and culture,
to set high intellectual standards, to
maintain the sort of environment that
makes for mental growth and honest
work. Such a responsibility can be dis
charged only in an atmosphere of free
dom to teach, to learn, and to investi
gate. Universities can function only
when there is freedom of thought and
discussion. What makes such freedom
essential is not, of course, any particu
lar satisfaction which may be derived
from its exercise. The man who sees
in an environment of intellectual free
dom only an opportunity to be sensa
tional, to bid for notoriety, to feed fat
his own grudges and display his own
mental kinks and quirks—such a man
is blind to the real meaning of freedom,
and to' the reasons which make^ita
preservation so essential. These reasons
were admirably stated the other day by
Mr. Charles E. Hughes, in his presi
dential address to the American Bar
Association. He said:
“If we sum up the comforts, the con
veniences, the privileges and the oppor
tunities of our life in the twentieth
century, if we look back upon the priva
tions, the menaces, the exposures from
which the progress of civilization has
gradually relieved not only the most
fortunate, but the vast masses of the
people in enlightened countries, we
must realize that these benefits are due,
nojt so much to governments, or politics,
or the strivings and issues of campaigns,
but to the ceaseless and unobstructive
endeavors, and the un((uencbable zeal,
of the pioneers and their devoted fol
lowers in the quest of knowledge, who
in the study of the earth and the uni
verse have enlarged the inheritance of
the race and vindicated the capacity and
worth of the human spirit. Believing,
as I do, that the freedom of learning is
thT vital breath of democracy and
progress, I trust that a recognition of
it i supreme importance will direct the
hand of pow’er . . . and tbtTt our
f-iachers and professors may be encour
aged, not to regard themselves as the
pliant tools of power, but to dedicate
tlieir lives to the highest of all purposes,
to know and to teach the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
This is the path of salvation of men
and democracy. ’’
Freedom to Teach
Such a statement as this goes to the
root of the whole matter. If social
progress is to be secure, if civilization
is Lo advance, men must be free to think
and to teach. History bears emphatic
witness to the truth that when men
have attempted to curtail thought, to
hold it in bondage to authority, they
have achieved only sterility and stagna
tion. Surely, if men are to be educated
men, they must learn to look the world
squarely in the face, to respect facts,
to weigh evidence, to follow truth
wherever it may lead. Only out of such
an environment can there come great
leaders to set forward the clock of
history.
I hold, therefore^, that it is a respon
sibility which any University owes its
students and its public, that it be intel
lectually free and intellectually honest.
An atmosphere of evasiveness, of sup-^
pression, of mental bondage, is alto
gether out of place in university life.
But—and this is the point I want par
ticularly to stress this morning—I do
not for a moment believe that this or
any university has fulfilled its whole
responsibility when it has set up an en
vironment in which men are free to
think. This is a point which, I fear, is
sometimes overlooked in the heat of
discussion. What a university tries to
say to its students, in many ways and
in varied language is, I think, some
thing like this: “Look at your world.
Look at human life. Here is what
science says about it, and literature,
and history and philosophy. You are
free to explore what men have said and
written and lived and thought and
proved and guessed. Try to understand
something about these things. We will
help you to the best of our ability to
try to understand them. You cannot
be an educated man unless you do sin
cerely and honestly try to see what is
true, and we are not doing our duty as
teachers if we hold back your minds
from ranging freely. But it is not
enough just to understand this and that
fact, to possess this bit of knowledge
and that fragment of truth. Out of it
all there must come a constructive
philosophy of life, an outlook, an atti
tude, a spiritual, a religious, insight
that makes of you a whole man ready
to throw yourself with broad sympathy
and a deep passion for righteousness
into the world's work.”
Knowledge and Faith
That is the sort of thing that every
university worthy the name is constant
ly saying to its students, sometimes ex
plicitly in words, more often perhaps
by indirection and through the whole
tenor of its life. Men must be free in
order that they may come to under
stand, but if indeed the teaching and
the learning of truth is “the salvation
of men and democracy,” it is because
and when there is added to the clarity
of the understanding the urge of the
spirit to high and worthy endeavor.
There has never been a greater need
than today for a firm alliance between
the things of knowledge and the things
of the spirit. There is much about this
present time that makes men hesitant
and bewildered, that breeds restlessness
and apprehension and a sense of frus
tration. Problems crowd in upon us,
and our attempts to deal with them
seem only too often to raise new diffi
culties greater than those with which
we began. The machinery of our tre
mendously complex and intricate civil
ization jars and creaks and every now
and then important parts of it threaten
to break down altogether. “Culture is
dead” said a distinguished European
critic the other day. Crime, says the
statistician, is increasing. The ade
quacy of present-day standards of moral
conduct is persistently questioned. Prob
lems of capital and labor, race relation
ships, and a host of others of the grav
est social and economic importance,
puzzle and vex us. Every type of insti
tution, government, the church, the
school, the home, is subjected to a run
ning fire of criticism. The criticisms of
higher education in America that have
appeared in the last ten years- works,
essays, reports, monographs—would in
themselves fill a small library. There
has come into being what Glenn Frank
has called a “literature of despair”; a
multitudinous and varied output of
warnings and gloomy prophecies that
the downfall of modern civilization it
self is possible or even highly probable.
I need not go on citing illustrations.
Anyone who pays any sort of attention
to the currents of modern thought is;
aware how deep is the note of pessimism
and uncertainty, how widespread is the
recognition that the modern world faces
problems that challenge the height of
its intelligence and the depths of its
spiritual power.
Effects of Invention
I think we must admit that we have
not altogether learned bow to live in
the new world to which invention and
discovery have so suddenly introduced
us. The conditions under which men
lived when this university was founded
and the problems they faced resembled
in many respects more nearly those of
men in the days when Abraham went
out from Ur of the Chaldees than they
resemble our own. Life for the aver
age man has changed more in the last
century and a half than in all the previ
ous centuries since the dawn of civiliza
tion. The whole industrial organization
of society, everything that we know as
modern transportation, all swift means
of communication, the entire develop
ment of printing on a scale that has
brought books, magazines, newspapers,
within the reach of the average man
and so profoundly modified his outlook
on life; these and a thousand others,
great and small, have cast the lives of
men into new patterns of a variety and
strangeness that the world has never
known. These enormous releases of
physical power have brought in their
train such transformations in every
phase and element of our common life
that we have not yet mastered itsprob-
NORTH CAROLINA CLUB
The North Carolina Club at the
University held its first meeting of
the new college year on September
21. President Chase addressing the
Club praised its work highly and
commended its ideals and purpose.
Professors Connor, Koch, and Brad
shaw also made short talks.
The Club is this year studying
Town and Country Interdependences.
The program will be carried over
fourteen meeting nights and is
planned as follows:
Oct. 6.—Can the Conflicting Inter
ests of the Town and Coun
try Be Reconciled?
Oct. 19.—Complementary Contribu
tions of the Town and
Country.
Nov. 2.—The Federation of Agen
cies and Institutions for
Local Community Welfare.
Nov. 16.—The Rural Mind: Is It a
Myth?
Nov. 30. —RaceCoopt-rationforTown
and Country Advancement,
Dec. 14.—Town and Countryside un
der One Local Government.
Jan. 11.—Mercantile Service Rela
tions between Town and
Country.
Jan. 25.—The Local Market Problem.
Feb. 8.—The Problem of Communi
ty Tenancy.
Feb. 22.—Should the Consolidated
School Be Located in the
Country or in the Town or
Village?
Mar. 8. —A Community Program
for the'^chool.
Mar. 22.—A Community Program
for the Church.
Apr. 19.—A Community Program
for the Bank.
May 3. —RuralUseofTownvService.
Club Yearbooks
The 1924-1926 Yearbook of the
North Carolina Club is off the press
and ready for free distribution to
North Carolinians who write for it.
It is the third yearbook bearing the
query What Next in North Carolina?
Copies of these back yearbooks for
1922 23 and 1023-24 are also available
free of charge. In addition there
are a few copies remaining of the
State Reconstruction Studies, the
North Carolina Club Yearbook for
1919-1920. Requests should be ad
dressed to Extension Division, Uni
versity of North Carolina.
lem of living with, of dominating, ’ not
being dominated by, the creations of
our own knowledge and skill. We are
like men from a quiet village who have
come up to a great metropolis, and are
too stunned to adjust ourselves alto
gether to the immensity and intricacy
of its life.
And, because we have come to see so
clearly the disorganization of much that
is traditional in the old human ways of
life, and the difficulty of finding new
adjustments that are adequate and com
prehensive, we are restless and seem
ourselves to fumble blindly about for a
better ordered way of life.
In such an atmosphere fear and sus
picion tend naturally to rear their heads.
One of the marked characteristics of
life today, indeed, is the exaggerated
sense of division and hostility with which
men of different viewpoints regard each
other. There is a tension about discus
sion, a lack of attempt at mutual under
standing and sympathy, that arrays
men sharply in opposing camps. Con
servatives drift toward reaction, liberals
toward radicalism. A new and painful
chapter is added to those that chronicle
the conflict between science and the
ology. Social and economic problems
are debated in an atmosphere clouded
by epithet and headed by distrust.
Fear of Despair
Now if from such a situation there is
to be any issue save the issue of failure
and despair, it will be as understanding
and spirit, knowledge and faith, science
and religion, eager pursuit of the truth
and the passion for putting- truth to
work in noble ways—as those things
join hand in hand for the tatk. It is
clearly hopeless to attempt to master
modern life without understanding it;
as hopeless as to try to drive a high-
powered automobile without knowledge
of how it starts and stops and guides.
We need every bit of truth that can be
coaxed from its hiding places. We need
unhampered freedom to find that truth
and to proclaim it. Never before, per
haps, did attempts to interfere with
the freedom to think promise more dis
astrous possibilities.
But it matters not how well men may
come to understand the conditions and
problems of our life if they do not add
to their understanding a deep and sure
sense of spiritual values. The great
issues in our common life, as in our in
dividual lives, are in the last instance
spiritual issues. Material prosperity
and convenience alone are not the salva
tion of men and nations. This is achieved
only as men and nations shall go
about their business with open minds,
with broader sympathies, with a deeper
faith, with a greater measure of the
love of God in their hearts.
What I have been trying to say is
that it is the chief business of our day
to try to come to terms with the civiliza
tion that human ingenuity has created.
But what has our university community
to do with all this? it is my earnest
conviction that it has very much to do
with it. For as soon as we ask our
selves what must be done if men are to
; attain to a better ordered way of life,
1 we come on three great tasks that uni
versities, by thfeir very nature, are
i challenged to perform. Let me men-
j tion these very briefly.
The Three Tasks
First, there is the task of getting and
of communicating knowledge, of teach
ing what is known and of pioneering
into the unknown. I have already had
something to say of the necessity of
this task, and of the freedom to think
which is essential to its performance.
Second, there is the task of putting
knowledge together in orderly and use
ful ways, so that mei^^ay achieve in
some measure a broad and unified out
look on life. I mean that modern knowl
edge is so partitioned off into specialties
and compartments that it is ever becom
ing more difficult to view it in broad
outline and determine what it really has
I to teach us about life and conduct. We
j need to pay more attention to the or-
I ganization of what we know. We need
; to think more,- teachers and students
' alike, of education in the large. What
j does it mean to be an educated man in
1 the twentieth century? I cannot be-
: lieve that it means to be a man who
I knows a great deal about two or three j
I things and nothing about the bearings i
; of these on the remainder of our store .
I of knowledge or on life. It is difficult j
j to see how we may come to an ordered i
i way of life without a background of!
j ordered knowledge. We must weave.;
I knowledge into patterns to make our ;
j tapestry of civilization. No matter how j
! brightly colored may be the individual j
. threads, it is their use in terms of eacffl
j other, the studied relation of one to an-
: other and of ail to the whole, that alone ;
1 makes possible the emergence of Jhe j
final pattern. W'e need, not only to see ;
I life steadily, but to see it whole. j
I Unify and Simplify
I I have come to the belief that we j
i must simplify and unify our educational'
plan. There is today no small amount:
of knowledge in the possession of spe-1
cialists that has definite bearings on the :
problems that civilization is facing, but
which either does not become part of
the mental possessions of most college
and university graduates at all, or comes
to them in such a way that they see it
in isolation, not as something bearing
on their own philosophy of life. We
need to remember that every age must
answer anew for itself the question
“What knowledge is of most worth?”
I believe that if our educational institu
tions would set themselves seriously
and systematically to work out a new
unification of knowledge, as men have
done from time to time in the history
of thought, a flood of light would be
thrown on many dark places in modern
civilization. Such a task may be the
work of a generation, but both its diffi
culty and its importance would consti
tute a challenge to us all. |
Spiritual Values
The third great task is that of main- i
taining in the hearts of men the endur-1
i ing spiritual values upon which alone :
any stable civilization can be built. A |
world that increases knowledge,, that;
organizes knowledge, and yet lacks the |
spirit of Christ, is a world of selfish
advantage, of hostile camps and of
gross materialism. The cynic never
made a civilization. The man devoid
of faith never made one. The man de
void of religion, without the spirit of
Christianity in his heart, is no safe guide
for us. The Pole Star by which our
civilization must steer is not of the
earth, it is in the heavens.
I cannot hold to the doctrine that
there is ar^ essential contradiction be
tween modern knowledge and faith. I
can conceive of nothing more tragic for
the future of men and nations than that
the science that we need and the relig
ion that we must hold by should come
in any permanent way to conceive of
themselves as opposed, the one to the
other. Christianity has always shown
itself vital enough to assimilafe what
ever of new knowledge the scientist
has found. It will always show itself
vital enough to do this. There can be
no real contradiction between the reve
lation that God makes of Himself
through Christ and that which He makes
through nature.
Knowledge Deepens Faith'
Rather should knowledge deepen and
enlarge our faith, and a spirit of greater
reverence grow within us as we •come
to know more and more of God's ways
with the world. In a great statement
that has a particular significance for us
today, Paul has summed up the whole
matter. “I will pray”, he says, “with
the spirit, and I will pray with the
understanding also.” To Paul, every
bit of the science and philosophy of his
time wove itself into the pattern of
Christianity. The understanding and
the spirit were joined in a common plan
that unified thought and faith into one
great dynamic impulse that the world
might be saved.
Once again today we need to achieve
such a unification of faith and knowl
edge; a unification that takes account
of all our knowledge and renews and
deepens our faith. Unless this can be
done, we may well despair of the future.
Here is an occasion for open-minded
ness, for wide and tolerant sympathy,
in a great cause. It can never succeed
in any other atmosphere than that of
informed and sympathetic and patient
discussion, that keeps always in mind
the great end to be achieved.
A university must always be conscious
of the spiritual values of life. To for
get those values, to turn out into the
world men of understanding but with
out faith, would be to help on the
wreckage of modern civilization, notits
advancement. I have known men who
went out pf colleges and universities
without faith. But 1 know enough of
the temper and tenor of higher educa
tion in America to know^that these men
lost themselves, not because of their
environment, but in spite of it. There
is no institution that I know that is not
genuinely and deeply interested that its
students should maintain and strengthen
their faith, and is not steadily at work
toward that end. The mission of a uni
versity is not to destroy, but to con
struct. It calls on its students to open
their minds, to enlarge their under
standings, and likewise to vivify their
knowledge with faith. It could not,
from its very nature, from its funda
mental beliefs about the character of its
task and about the needs of modern life
—it could not conceivably take any other
position.
These three things, then, universities'
find themselves called upon to do as
their part in this great enterprise in the
aiding of the salvation of men and
democracy. They must advance and
dispense knowledge; they must strive
to help forward a better organization
and unification of what is known, that
men may orient themselves better to
life and to the world; and they must do
their utmost to further, in men and in
society, that cooperation between
knowledge and faith, that abiding sense
of spiritual values joined with ampler
understanding which is alone the guar
antee of life's advance and the triumph
of humanity. The performance of these
three tasks is something that is bred in
the ideals of this University community
as year by year it goes about its great
mission for those it serves.
And now, as we go our various ways
about the work and play of our uni
versity year, let us bear ourselves in
the spirit of men who are trying to make
ourselves whole men, men of under
standing and men of faith, men uf
knowledge animated by religion to dj
God's work in the world.