The question, then, concerns, not so much what a college imparts as what it implants; not so much the armor and the arms which she may gird upon her son, as the life behind helmet and corselet and good right arm, which she may inspire.

And so, as from time to time the sons come home from their varied quests, our alma mater has the right to ask, as with deep concern she does ask, "How fares my life in yours?" Perhaps she asks this question with deepest solicitude of us who come from business pursuits, because many still challenge the economy of a college training in business. The sneer at the "scholar in business" is, however, disappearing, as is that other sneer at the "scholar in politics." The changing conditions of business, the new and complex problems, commercial, political, social, economic, which confront business men as individuals and associations, on the one hand, and, on the other, a clearer conception of what a college education means of the little it means in comparison with the vast unexplored are causing men to recast their opinions. A recent issue of the Chicago Tribune had on one page an able editorial endorsing colleges and their influence in practical affairs, and on another page a paper, recently read at a convention of bankers, advocating the establishment of post-graduate schools to fit men more thoroughly for certain special lines of business administration.

But what is this life which the true college has and from which it gives? Cold analysis will not discover it. No refinement of definition can adequately reveal it. You who look back upon these years know what it is better than I can tell you or you can tell me. This we know that it is a real life and a manly, wholesome life. Perhaps if we say brain-life, heart-life, soul-life, giving to each its broadest and fullest significance, with the emphasis always on life, and think of these, not as struggling to keep alive, but as

in large and strong development, and in just the right combination, we are come as close as we may to what we mean by the life of the college, on the college side. Consider, for instance, intellectual life. My thought is that a man may know a good deal and still be intellectually dull. He may do his college work in a perfunctory way; certain mental faculties may be developed and still be inert. The great teacher is the one who awakens as well as instructs; who stirs the mind to eager life, so that by what it feeds on and does it grows not only large but strong, and not only strong but active. I do not mean simply a mental alertness, a smartness that counts for something in business life. I mean a mind alive, not to petty things, but to great things. A mind that hungers and thirsts; a mind that grasps and analyzes and constructs and formulates. But an intellectual life, however strong and eager, must have also the guidance of high moral principles, quick moral perceptions, the incentive of high sentiments and ideals. These can not be imparted by maxim. They must be implanted in the life and grow with the life. And then there is the culture of the divinely implanted spiritual life the spirit which is life. I pity the young man who can dwell for four beautiful years in an atmosphere so surcharged with inspirations and not feel within him the stirrings of a nobler life.

A college education, therefore, implies not only mental and moral furnishment and development, but these so energized and sensitized by the life of the college as to promise not only survival but further development and valuable result.

My theme thus defined greatly simplifies the old question of the influence, valuable or otherwise, of a college education upon a business career. If you ask, does a college course help a man in business? I answer, that depends on the college and on the man. If the man goes to college because it has become the proper thing to do, and is satisfied

to emerge with a Greek letter pin, a banjo and (possibly) a sheepskin; or, if he comes out clogged and crammed with a lot of lifeless erudition; if, like the man from the desert, he gets a brief revelation of himself in the mirror of truth, and then straightway forgetteth what manner of man he is, then I think it makes small difference either way. But if you ask, does the life of the college have worthy place and abundant scope in the life of a business man? Then I answer unhesitatingly, yes. Life is just what business must have. We say nowadays, "There is no life in business." Why? Because there has not been enough brain-life and heart-life and spirit-life put into it; because false theories have led to wrong policies and threaten worse; because men have measured success only in money, and have sometimes forgotten to be just.

"What!" says the man who still supposes that colleges exist chiefly for candidates for the ministry, "devote four years of these fleeting and unworthy lives to Greek and Latin and philosophy, and then be only a business man." "Only a business man!" I forgive the implication. Doubtless there are other pursuits nobler than to buy and sell and get gain, but business is, and must be, the life of the world, and these higher lives are nobler, if nobler, only because their aim is to make the business life nobler and higher. They work from the outside. Why not help from the inside?

"What!" says the arrogant and ignorant "self-made" man (a few of him still survive) "four years in college when the boy ought to be at work, earning money and making a man of himself, same as I did." Ah! my friend, it is because money does not make manhood, because business success is not measured wholly by bank accounts, because I want my boy to be not only a good business man, but something more, to be an intelligent, broad-minded, high-minded, good-hearted, cultured Christian gentleman that I shall send him to Beloit.

If however you ask, "Is a college education essential to highest and truest success in business or happiness in life?" We as promptly answer, "No." And while, as befits the occasion and the theme, we to-day exalt the college and congratulate the college man, by contrast we salute with deepest reverence the splendid men, so many in our business life, who, without the early impulse of a college course, by assiduous study in the "university of the world," by long hours in their libraries after long days of toil, by every careful culture and every developing use, have trained their powers far beyond the farthest point that the close of a college course can reach, and are entitled to the highest college honors. In presence of such men (and this platform is honored by some of them) the alumnus, who long ago ceased distinctive and persistent mental work, may well keep silence. These are the sort of "self-made men" whom the world delights to honor. A man does not advance through successive stages of highest responsibility and usefulness as a banker, and of recognition as a citizen in many ways of public service, from bank messenger at fourteen years of age to be the secretary of the treasury, in whose wisdom a nation puts its trust, to whose utterances the whole business world listens with hope, except that to him his library has been more than a whole college course to most men. In honoring such a man a college honors itself and its country, and such a name writ large upon the records of Beloit, is most fitting acknowledgment of a real "Life of the College in Business Life."

GREETINGS FROM PROFESSIONAL LIFE.

WALTER S. HAVEN, M. D., CLASS OF 1887.

RACINE.

In an age of intense activity and of diverse pursuits, when often the clash of contending interests is heard, it is well to pause a moment in the strife till the smoke of battle lifts away, that a clear and larger vision may be had. And on this glorious and sacred day which marks the fiftieth anniversary of our alma mater, we rejoice to bring our greetings fresh from the field of conflict and to declare once more our allegiance and our loyalty. For though time and space may have taken from you the sons who once were under your instruction, yet they belong to you still and must ever live beneath your sway. It is true, they may long since have said farewell, and left the places which they used to fill to be filled by others, and the haunts which they used to frequent to be visited by others, and may have handed down to the keeping of their successors the sacred traditions of college life, yet they cannot escape the influence of their college training, or outlive its perennial blessings. Wherever and whenever the human mind is devoted to the pursuit of truth, whether that devotion be in professional or other lines, there and then can the college ever find her most ardent advocates to champion the cause of education.

For there can be no real isolation between any of the callings of life. Each exists for all, and partakes in its movement of the harmony of all. The specialist must still ever be the priest of universal truth. And since truth is an or