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America how to think. Twenty-five years ago, even ten or fifteen years ago, we all disparaged the doctrine of mental discipline. We said it had gone by the board, that there is no such thing as general mental power but only unrelated powers. But today that old doctrine is being rehabilitated by some of our best psychologists. It will never come back in its old form, in that old pure abstraction, which was first presented; but we are coming to believe that there is a possibility of so developing the personality that it can grapple with more than one task in life and fill more than one sphere.

I received some years ago a letter from the head of one of the largest industrial enterprises in this country. And, if I mistake not, some of the other college executives here tonight received one also. He said: "We want to get a man to take charge of our two thousand employees. We want him to engage and dismiss them and train them for their work." He sent me a chart of the qualities required; and I wish I had that chart here tonight. It came from a man whose whole life has been spent in the industrial world. "The man we want," he said, "first of all must be a good analyzer. Secondly, he must be able to observe the limitations of men. Third, he must be able to discern the possibilities of men. Fourth, he must be able to perceive by what course of training these men may be made to realize their possibilities and so be promoted." I sent the names of two or three men, but my suggestions did not seem to take effect. The man he chose had those qualities. He was last week inaugurated as President of Dartmouth College. If a man could accurately read men's limitations and possibilities and lead men out of limitations to possibilities he could have almost any job that the world could offer.

When I spent a few days in Singapore, out under the equator, a few years ago, I met there an agent of the Standard Oil Company, and we talked about the young men they were putting into the various positions through

out the Orient. He said: "A few years ago we used to train our men in America, and after testing them at the home offices we brought them here. We have dropped that now. For the very training in America sometimes spoiled them for this region. The very things that will fit one for the position in the home office in America may unfit him for the position here in the Orient. Now we are taking young men without any business experience whatever, we are taking them from the commencement platform in the American college, and we plunge them into the Oriental business. To succeed out here we feel that the man should have a broad view; he should have a trained mind; he should have the ability to concentrate; he should have the ability to adapt himself to all climates and all kinds of people; and we find we can do best today by getting the graduates of our American colleges, who may know nothing about business but who are ready for life." The business leaders are looking today to the American college more than ever before in the history of our country for the material with which to build their organizations.

Now, on the other side, just a moment. These state educational enterprises in this land are giving to our older institutions a new and deep conception of their public duty and of the possibility of public service. I have not used the phrase "private institutions" tonight, for there is no private institution in the country. No one has any business to say his college is a private institution. It may be privately endowed but it is publicly responsible.

What is a good man? What makes a good citizen today? You may judge of an era by its definition of goodness. In the Middle Ages the good man was typified as standing on his pillar amid the scorching heats of summer, drawing up by a cord the food the people brought him as they stood at the base of the pillar adoring the good man. No one of us accepts that conception of a good man today. We know what the good man was

according to John Bunyan. To John Bunyan the good man was the escaping man, the man in flight. There is truth in that allegory, but by no means the whole truth, and anyone who accepts that as a complete picture of the truth is totally out of sympathy with the needs of the twentieth century.

What is a good telephone? A good telephone is not only made of the right material or of correct pattern, but it is primarily one that is in touch with all other telephones on the line; one in communication with the central telephone exchange and so in touch with all of the other telephones in the homes and offices of the city. To be good is to be in right relation with our fellow men, and the very essence of goodness is in that rightness of relation.

"When ye pray," says the New Testament, "when ye pray, say Our." Not only when we pray but when we toil, when we plan, when we study, when we educate, we must say, "Our." The lost boy in the great city of New York is our boy and we are responsible for his being lost. That lost girl is our girl, and her fall is a part of the fall of the social order that tolerates and produces her. That case of infantile paralysis in the tenement is our paralysis, and if we ignore it the disease will come creeping down the street and into the room where our little ones lie in the cradle. Not only when we pray, but when we build cities, when we build our colleges, when we come out on nights like this into the greater sphere of greater American education, we are learning to say "our." Then we go back to our task heartened and inspired, each one of us facing his own private difficulty, each one to bear his own personal burden, each one to fight his own private battle, with new courage and hope because of this feeling that all his colleagues with him are saying, "This is our task, our battle, our country that we are trying through these colleges to serve." That, after all, is the great benefit of this academic festival. It is more than parading in bright colors; it is more than listening to

after dinner speeches. It is the assurance that each one of us acquires that his life is a contribution to the life total, that his problems are not individual problems but part of the nation's task. And so we go back to our task when the festival is over with a new zest; the drudgery is illuminated and the burden is lightened, and our petty problem becomes a problem for the whole country to solve.

If our colleges, founded before the Revolution, can retain that power to develop well nurtured, well developed personality; and if, in addition, they can acquire that corporate consciousness, that sense of social responsibility, that silent partnership with the state which has come to some of them, they will not be found wanting in the crises of the nation's life.

A friend of mine years ago was watching the building of the Houses of Parliament in Ottawa, since half ruined by the great fire. He spoke to three stone cutters. To the first one he said: "What are you working for?" And the man said, "If you want to know, I am working for two dollars and a half a day." That was all he could see; he had no thought beyond it. Then he said to the second: "What are you doing here?" And, pointing to the blueprint, the second replied, "I am trying to cut this stone so it will look like this blueprint." There was a man who had some little understanding of his task as related to the tasks of other men. Then he said to the third stone cutter: "What are you doing here today?" And, pointing up to the rising walls and parapets and pinnacles of the great home of legislation for that part of the British Empire, he said: "I am trying to do my part in making that." There was a man whose daily drudgery was redeemed by his vision, who realized the relation of the work of his hands to the building of the world.

May this festival bring this consciousness to Rutgers College; and not to Rutgers alone, but to all of us who today have enjoyed its abundant and gracious hospitality.

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