-4 SUNDAY, MAY 15, 3753 THE DAILY TAR HEEL PAGE TWO 4, . - Striking 'Co' From 'Ed' "I wish you'd just forbid the use of the word 'coed' in your newspaper," we were told by our good friend, Miss Mary Gilson, the other night. "It sets the woman student apart as something different from other stu dents." ' The more we think about it the more we agree with Miss Gilson. If the fairer sex are "coeds" we reckon we're "eds" but our ex clusive claim to the "ed" doesn't make sense at all as long as we're both supposedly being educated. It's pure discrimination and we are hereby agin' it. We've given the girls the vote, we've given them a seat in the classroom; and as a matter of Sonth'n gentlemanliness we'll strike the "aV from "ed." 'The Time Has Come, The Walrus Said, To Talk Of Many Things' Sometimes we tire of trying in our inade quate way to carry on the great Socratic tra dition of gadflyism, of buzzing and worrying and trying to sting our readers about the is sues thai really count. If we tire, we are sure you must too. We would like to sit here with the type writer keys under our fingers and produce a column of comment and agreement on Dr. Ad as s penetrating address, which we would and do hope you will read anyway. Kingdoms rise and fall, but the crucial matters of mind and state and metaphysics so many of which Dr. Adams touches upon stay at a rising pitch that never falls far, if at all. .We would like to talk about them. , Hut this tifne, hoping as we write that to day is one of those sunny and unhurried days in Chapel Hill, one more fit for communion than conflict, we will, in keeping with that hope, play the role of the examiner of a needle in a haystack. Hy saying this needle lies in a haystack, however, we don't mean we think this is a trivial matter; this is a needle, and it lies at the heart of what Dr." Adams talks about: Even in a university, there is not much time to wear a thinking cap, to brood, to contem plate . . . Students . . . are endlessly active, they live in an atmosphere of noise, they study with a radio turned on; and if a period of quiet comes that might be an interval of contempla tion, like Joe the Fat Boy they fall asleep. But the malady goes beyond Chapel Hill, of course; it goes beyond the university. Not many hours after the address had been made, another X. C. paper reprinted this cry from The Boston Herald, a cry which Ave don't consider too far removed from the question of contemplation and noncontemplation: Where is the village green, the town square, the plaza which yesterday graced our communi ties and served as places for gathering and gossip? "Gossip" here is the unfortunate word, but "village green" and "gathering" go together. The green, the square, the plaza, the post olfice have ceased to be places of gabfest as in the days when Chapel Hill's original gad fly, Horace Williams, had the campus talking and contemplating about why dogs catch rab bits or why Bob Ingersoll was (or was not) an "evil" man. Think back, as we did, to the oldest of academies and you have a different story. Academy, academic: Those words crowd the campus. But one begins to wonder if their real meaning has an application any longer. When Plato founded his academy he named it so because "academe" meant grove; and he and Aristole and the others who plied the mind at that first academy strolled up and down along the shady "peripatos" as academ ic learning was born. Among the trees. We know we have served up a lot of tan gents with that original needle we set out to talk about. But some editorial writers, just can't stick to the subject. Wat Bath? ar The official student publication of the Publi cations Board of the University of North Carolina, . where it is published daily except Monday and examination and vacation periods and f ed as second cla sf matter at .the post of- fice in Chapel Hill, N. u., under tne Act ot March 8, 1879. Sub scription rates: mail ed. $4 per year, $2.50 a semester; delivered, $8 a year, $3.50' a semester. Carolina Front Swiftly, Grimly, They Remain Lean Souls . If r (Viatot) filf .i i Sttwf the Vmvfrsrty' 4 4 Niwt'i Cafes-rut 1 J ill- tn jttiuuuy . Editors ED YODER, LOUIS KRAAR Managing Editor - - FRED POWLEDGS Business Manager TOM SHORES Sports Editor BUZZ MERRITT Associate Editor News Editor J. A. C. DUNN JACKIE GOODMAN Advertising Manager Circulation Manager Subscription Manager Assistant Business Manager Assistant Sports Editor Dick Sirkin ; Jim Kiley . Jack Godley Bill Bob Peel Ray Linker J. A. C. Dunn "QUITE EARLY IN the his tory of medecine the doctors found out that a man could di gest his food best if he ate it with pleasure among cheerful friends. So it is with books. You may devour vl thousand, swift - , N J ly and grim- tw , 'w and yet re if- - main, the lean soul that you were. The only mental food that will turn to new tissue within you, and build itself into your mind, is that which you eat with a good surge of joy and surprise that anything so excit ing should ever have been writ ten." This passage we discovered in a small Pelican book entitled A Writer's Notes on his Trade, by a gentleman named C. E. Montague, who used to write for the Manchester Guardian. It seems to apply particularly apt ly to the general state of aca demic mind which we have ob served in a large number of peo ple during the past couple of weeks. As a matter of fact we are suffering from, this same state of mind ourself. WE DO NOT feel lazy, nor do we think anyone else feels lazy. The mental malady which seems to be spreading with epidemic force over the campus does not stem from that old dodge, spring fever. We had an interesting comment from a man who has been around here for some time now and who has seen this men tal slump take the student body by the scruff of the neck and force it into a state of near col lapse many times. "It isn't that the students don't want to work," he said. "They do. They realize perfectly well that exams are coming and that the culmination of the semester's work is just over the next rise. The trouble is that they've had enough. "Ever since September they've been sitting down in the even ing or in the" afternoon, or every other evening, or every other week, or when ever it is they study (which, by the grades in my course now, appears to be never), and plugging know ledge into their heads. They sit still and read or do math pro blems, or lab execises or some thing, and use nothing but their heads. This gets tiresome. Young people are' not built to sit still all the time; they have to get out and move around, make noise, do something. This does not mean that most 0f them do not do something when they are not studying or in classes. But after a while, just the fact that they have to look forward to eventually getting back to the books and plugging more know ledge in is enough the send them fleeing uptown for a beer or a movie. "They're stale. They don't want to learn anymore. They want to get outside and forget they ever learned how to read and then change the face of the earth. "Saturday classes accentuate this trouble. This prevalent state of mind is why we have panty raids. I think Mr. Lewis Brum fielcPs recent remark that there is not enough to do in the dorms is an extremely acute observa tion. Any student who has trouble studying at this time of year I don't blame a bit. I have trouble sometimes making my self sit down to grade papers." MuJii editor lur thia 'Issue .Hob Dillnrd THIS IS GOOD. At last some one we agrees with us. The trouble with the people who doze off in the Library and the people who just "lie down for a little nap," and wake up at six next morning is not that they are really sleepy. They have simply got to the point where they are reading books, "swiftly and grimly," and yet remaining "the lean souls that they were." We do not offer any 'solution to this problem. We merely point it out as consolation for those wh0 are worried about the amount of work they are getting done.. Intervals Of Contemplation Now Lost In The Grinding Of Collegiate Wheels Dr. Raymond B. Adams (The 'following excerpts are from an address heard by the new imtiates of the University Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa on May 12. Dr. Adams is Professor of English and acting head of the department in the absence of Dr. Dougald M cMillan ) The great Phi Beta Kappa ad dress was, of course, the address Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered at Harvard in 1837; it was, wrote the poet Lowell, "an event with out any former parallel in our literary annals, a scene to be al ways treasured in the memory for its picturesqueness and its inspiration. It was our Yankee version of a lecture 6y Abelard," you see, the Middle Ages keep insinuating themselves into our poets' sentences. Custom dictated the title of Emerson's address, Phi Beta Kappa addresses at Har vard in those days were always titled "The American Scholar." But when Emerson's address was reprinted that year in England, where even Harvard custom had no force, the pamphlet had a bet ter title. It was "Man Thinking." And, sure enough, Emerson's scholar is not particularly Amer ican; but he is thinking man any where. Anywhere, . but not anyhow;. Man's thinking is systematic: The scholar of the first age received into him the world around; brooded thereon; gave it the new arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it a gain. It came into him life; it went out from him truth. It came to him short-lived ac tions; it went out from him immortal thoughts. It came to him business; it went from him poetry. It was dead fact; now, it is quick thought. It can stand, and it can go. It now endures, it now flies, it now inspires. Precisely in proportion to the depth of mind from which it issued, so high does it soar, so long does it sing." That is to say, the creative thing e"r is not merely an accumulator of facts. Carol Linnaeus illus trates the process. He gathered data whenever and wherever he could, friends sent him materials, flowers, leaves, root systems, fruits, higgledy-piggledy as they happened to be available. And when the data was in, Linnaeus brooded over it, he contemplat ed it, he took time to bring some order out of the seeming chaos, he indulged in an interval of contemplation until all the hodge podge items of data arranged themselves around a principle that emerged in his mind until it seemed as if they had polarity in relation to his principle; and the result was the Linnaean sys tem of plant classification, still in use, almost a law of nature. What came to him data went from him a great truth but not until there had been an interval of contemplation during which the bread and wine of data were transsubstantiated into the body and blood of truth. You've had it happen to you, for ever schol ar in his way is a priest of truth. You've gathered data from here and there for a term paper; and then you've brooded over the batch of material; and out of the brooding has come an order ly term paper that made a con tribution toward the event of to night. It will happen to you again and again. The cares that infest the day, the little nameless acts of kindness and of love, the in cidents of business and of home life will come to you a hit-and-miss medley; you will brood on them in some blessed interval of contemplation until order ap pears and a "philosophy the guide of life" results which, if you are lucky, will satisfy you forever. NO TIME TO BROOD But no good term paper, no creative piece of literature, no abiding scientific theory, no phil osophy of life Can appear with out its interval of contemplation. Dead fact cannot become quick thought until the fact has passed through the alembic of thought fulness. That word alembic lit erally means cap, and in this process of creative thought we can let it mean thinking cap. So what we are saying is that you cannot amount to much as a thinker until you will put on your thinking cap. The "brood ing thereon" of the Emersonian scholarly process is an essential element, a sine qua non. But in 1955, even in a Univers ity, there is not much time to wear a thinking cap, to brood, to contemplate. Students certain ly find little time for intervals of contemplation, and they make for themselves even less time than they might otherwise find. These are times that try young people's souls. So even college students join the general public in the avoidance of thinking, They are endlessly active, they live in an atmosphere of noi;fe, they study with a radio turned on; and ir a period of quiet comes that might be an interval of contemplation, like Joe the Fat Boy they fall asleep. Many have concluded that it won't do to think too much; so- shrewd students make do what will do. Faculty members can secure few intervals of contemplation either. A great influx of stu dents a,nd a great efflux of rela tive income from appropriations or endowments has left the tea cher little time for creative thinking. The machinery of a uni versity down in the ratchets and escapements where the classroom teacher is one of the cogs (that is down where the machine real ly ticks) has truly become a fan tastic mechanism consuming time and energy when it should be salvaging time and energy. With what result? With .the result that in a modern university, especial ly in a modern state university, 'very little creative thinking is done by the faculty. Articles get published; but most of them are gatherings of data that never went through the alembic but ap peared in print as items of data properly footnoted. Books get edited. But how few books get written! One can gather data on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and on Saturday afternoon unless the lawn needs mowing and get a reputation as a scholar thereby. But one won't get a reputation as a thinker that way. NO GLORY FOR A DEAN Nor is it any better among the big wheels of the collegiate ma chine. The intervals of contem plation never come for the dean and cannot come in the very na ture of a university these days. So challenging statements of pur- pose seldom come'fromthe dean. Creativeness doesn't have a chance. Being the dean must be a good deal like being a dish washer, no sooner do you get one mess cleaned up than the next mess starts demanding at tention. There's no perspective and no future in being a dish washer. It was never much help to that functionary to call him a "pearl diver." And I suspect the college functionary doesn't think there's much percentage in being called "dead." But depart ments and schools hunger for challenging policies and for ar ticulate men free enough to take the short-lived actions into an in terval of contemplation so that before it is too late we can have for our generation some immor tal thoughts. Presidents and chancellors need to be articulate too. But are they allowed to be creative thinkers? I suppose, looking at them from the vantage point of a cog down where the machine does its real ticking, that these top functionaries have the least time of all to be creative. They must be glad-handing every vis itor,, smoothing down every ruf fled feather that lifts a pinion on the campus, making a few remarks to every gathering of visiting firemen, seeking monefr, and (I am sure) dropping ex hausted into bed night after night. Statesmanship is postpon ed. It cannot be delegated to a committee nor to a conference nor to a chain of command. A committee never contemplated anything. Creative thinking is not a cooperative venture. It is a venturing by one man into the unexplored. That man deserves to be given the intervals of con templation without which states manship cannot come to a uni versity nor a business nor a gov ernment nor to a single man that most independent and most important state of all. Yet from universities and businesses and governments and individuals we have taken , away intervals of quiet, knowing all the while that without them life will never be transmuted into truth, actions will never be transmuted into thoughts, business will never be come poetry, and the morale in a university will break because the sense of the campus will be that educational occasions are tid ied over rather than seized with the firmness and vision that might have been brought to bear had there been an interval of ' contemplation when creative thinking could have been done. THE EDUCATED MUST BE BRAVE Thus Emerson, speaking for Phi Beta Kappa, prescribed for those young scholars, for. all scholars, and for us what Dante centuries before had called "the excellent delight . . . the true blessedness which is gained by the contemplation of the truth." Blessed are those who have in tervals of contemplation, for they shall have creativeness; and out of creativeness, certainty; and out of certainty, bravery. One cannot hold a truth unless he has worked his way through details to the principle that underlies the details; and one cannot be brave unless he holds fast to a truth. And the educated man man must be brave. We fear, and rightly, suddeii bombardment and the shattering of our skies by guided missies carrying hydrogen warheads. Our conscience has not been very good since Hiroshima, and we are not sure that those who took up the atom may not perish by the atom. Such is a natural fear probably good for our corporal soul provided we can keep cor poration and soul together. But we fear one another; we fear in formers amongst us; ' we fear to go on record in any positive way lest at a later and worse time those positive ideas shall have become unpopular and the rec ord then may rise up against us. So at last we fear the very in tervals of contemplation we so much need, for the latter end of contemplation is truth amidst the appearances. We know too (for we have not come through college without catching hints of the obligations of intellectual in tegrity) we know that once we by ourselves and for ourselves find truth, it will not be gain said. Then we must take a stand or hate ourselves ever after. It ,is more comfortable to be dec orous and yield to the lesser fears than to run the risk of taking a stand. Yet decorousness is not comf stable either, for then we shall have yielded, a very unsatisfying performance. It's an old dilemna. There is comfort to be bought by not fac ing up to the truth; but there is no comfort within ourselves un less we face up. Shall we have comfort around us or shall ve have comfort within us? It seems we cannot have both. THE MOST DEPRESSING PROBLEM . . . There"will be forever with you one problem that has vexed man through all history: the problem of a free mind. The issue of intellectual freedom arises to acuteness in every human gener ation and forces itself upon ev ery thinking person. It is com mon; but it does seem particular with us. Communism dare not permit the free mind; fascism dare not permit it. And unfor tunately democracy, fearful of both communism and fascism, thinks in its fear, that freedom of mind cannot be permitted ei ther. Little un-free minds think in terms of knowledge that must be classified away from open dis cussion. In the name of preserv ing democratic freedom small minded men have been withhold ing information and deciding what shall be withheld from thfe rest of us, delighting in playing a cloak-and-dagger game, until our democratic freedom even in simple and harmless matters is threatened by a breed of mart inet such as has not operated in America before. This is likely to be the problem that will depress you most and challenge you most. In some measure it has faced ev ery educated person. It happens to be facing educated people now in an aggravated form and demanding of them more crea tive thought than it has demand ed of some college generations in quieter times. It will be no trouble to gather data about the problems. The times will see to that, the data will come merely because we are thinking beings in a living so ciety. You know, of course, that there are no ivory towers any more. But there will be difficulty in securing the intervals of con templation which thinking beings need as the data accumulates. The times will see to that difficulty also, for life these days hurries us and leaves no intervals. I have envied people of one and two centuries ago who managed things better, wrote hundreds (even thousands) of marvelous letters, read thousands of pages of fine print, indulged in the now forgotten art of conservation,1 made long slow journeys, did a life's work, and found, time for. it all. It would; seem that thi3 twentieth century could have sav ed time for us; but its time-saving gadgets have lost us time it self. So just on the score of in terruption and pressure of de mands on our time it will Ss dif ficult to find the intervals. Fac ing the facts will be difficult also because we are romanticists anft would rather escape. And convic tion wijV be diffacult because around every one of the impend ing problems partizans and zeal ots will be lining up on both sides with their nasty selfishnesses and prejudices. So, when finally you shall have thought your way through to a firm conviction about the issue and taken a stand, you will perforce associate with partizans and zealots; and un thinking people, partizans and zealots of , the other camp, will regard your firm conviction merely as so much more parti zanship and illiberality. With problems come dilemmas if one thinks. WHAT COLLEGES ARE FOR I am not going to close any Phi Beta Kappa address with a sug gestion that members of this fra ternity should not think in the face of what is likely to come in the next twenty years, or forty years, or even sixty years for life expectance increases and all of you may live to be eighty. Like all times, these are times of cri sis, no worse than all times, but no better either. The world al ways needs thought brought to bear on its problems. Perhaps the best thought will be brought to bear by non-college thinkers. Unfortunately the world, has not found out how to anticipate them. If they come, so much the bet ter. Meanwhile the world has built colleges by way of provid ing itself with thinkers in an ticipation of problems to come. It has not been the world's idea that colleges would be used for the selfish dilettantism Dante de scribed as being "friendly with wisdom in some direction because of some certain delight." Nor, I am convinced, has it truly been he world's idealhat colleges would be used for the equally selfish commercial vocationalism which Dante called being "a friend of wisdom for profit." The world has known that problems will perennially arise which no thing short of creative thinking can solve, so it has been the world's idea that colleges would be used over and above immedi ate and practical objectives to move educated men and women with "that most excellent delight which suffers no interruption nor defect, to wit the true bles sedness which is gained by the contemplation of the truth," as Dante described it. This sounds very noble; but it may not seem noble three or four years from now at a work bench or at a desk, in a barracks or in a kitchen. Idealism has a hard time in such areas of bread and butter affairs where it is hard to apply "Philosophy the Guide of Life" as a slogan. It will take all the "three o'clock in the morning courage" you can mus ter to make for yourself an in terval of contemplation leading to an utterance of truth in so cramped a form. If under these circumstances this process of cre ative thinking doesn't seem to matter to ybu, then truly for you it won't matter, for almost cer tainly with that attitude you will not achieve better circumstances. But if the problems of the great world do seem to matter in the little world where you work and live, then you will be revealing qualities that the great worM wants. I have no belief in "mute, inglorious Miltons." I am Carly lean enough to believe that tie world calls forth its spokesmen, and idealist enough to believe that Miltons will not, cannot re main mute because "if these shall hold their peace, the stones will cry out." The World then, and your University, and the So ciety in whose name all this is said tonight, regardless of your vocations or avocations, your places or prospects, expects you to do creative thinking and has sealed that expectation in your case by the symbol of a Phi Beta Kappa key, hopeful that in years to come there will be intervals of contemplation when you can wear that key proudly. Politics Of Parity, Idiot Boards, And TV Gerald Johnson The House Democrats pulled a rank political rfrai when they drove through that farm bill restor er riid parity prices at 90; but it was not a bit aLer tZa the one. Canute Eisenhower pulled 15 wheft.he told the farmers .that 90 not enough, that. he favored: 1001; and then, after he was elected, recommended .75 . The truth is they are all playing politics wih farm legislation, and the consumer .s the gnat. Ihe only sensible idea yet for dealing with farm sur pluses was the Brannan Plan, and both, parties de nounced, that. The only time you can count on the Democrats , and . the Republicans to agree is when somebody offers a plan with some sense in it. They can usually agree to kill it. ( r BRANNAN'S IDEA Brannan's idea was to give the farmer his parity prices, but also to, give the consumer a break. Let the government buy up the stuff but never put a in storage; throw it on the market for what it will bring and pay. the farmer the difference by direct subsidy out of the Treasury. This would run up the deficit, to.be sure, but it would pull down the cost of living; and as the .cost of living came down, gradually parity would come down. In the end we might get hack to a general price level at which we could do business with the rest of the world without artificial aids. Yet nobody would be badly hurt. When you took out of the consumer's pocket in taxes you would put back in. a lower cost of living; and eventually, as parity came down with the reduced cost of living, you could ease off on taxes. Yet the Bran nan Plan was denounced by all Republicans and a good many Democrats as the most insane idea of the whole New Deal-Fair Deal era. ! MARK HANNA DAYS " 1 The law that the Democrats have just put through is half the Brannan Plan. It gives the far mer his parity price, as Brannan recommended; but it doesn't give the consumer a break to balance the benefit to the farmer. The Republican measure was even more cynical. It simply cut down parity without benefiting either the farmer or the consumer. It was a reversion to the old policy that prevailed in the Mark Hanna days when things get tight, throw the farmer to the wolves first. The Democratic variation on that is save the farmer and throw the consumer to the wolves. It may be an improvement, but I can't see it that way; it looks more like a political dodge to avoid the policy of saving them both. Both could be saved, but only by dragging the whole business out into the open, where everybody could see it. If the differ ence between parity and market price were paid out of the Treasury we should know to a dollar what the farm program costs; but as long as it is paid by keeping up the price of farm products the cost is concealed, at least in part. FAGIN'S STATESMANSHIP If this is statecraft, then Fagin was a statesman. His business, you remember, was to teach the boys how to pick your pocket neatly, quickly and without the slightest pain, in fact without your being aware that it had been picked. That was and is the es sence of farm legislation from time immemorial, and it doesn't lie in the mouth of either party to howl about the low morals of the other: for they have both played politics to the limit and both are playing politics now, with Eisenhower leading the game. Senator Neuberger, of Oregon, is a man whose ideas are always interesting and amusing and quite frequently right, but I can't follow him in his recent demand .that no politician shall appear on television in make-up, or read his stuff from an "idiot board" that is, copy held up out of sight of the camera unless the fact is announced. Senator Neuber-cr says he is opposed to fraud and wants the vot?n public to see politicians as they arc. ANOTHER SIDE This sounds fine, but there is another side to it If there is anything that can improve a poli tician, mentally or physically, I am all for it The public is going to suffer enough under anv condi tions; why put it to avoidable pain? I admit that some cynics might use this as an excuse to rule out elevision in politics altogether. Isn't it cnouah. without hArt,haVe l liStGn to the P-iei-without having to look at them too? "'.f0" carfy argument that far, vou Play right into Senator Neuberger's hands It i doable to make voters face the facL I remember aorA n t R Wer a"d Stevensn had both "no I t0le"S1On' nVeI1'" she "id ruefully no matter how the election comes out we are 2 ;ng to have f bald-headed President." Havln i Xl iu uscen to the arguments. I maintain in spite of the scoffers that n-n- are human beings, and a little maTe tW,"' more unpleasant ' trymg to imke

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