38 On the Campus 



men with the history of the plant; and so the famous 

 orator flashed all the mystery and the beauty of those 

 natural, visible processes among the plants into the 

 richness of one fine metaphor, "Cultura animi philos- 

 phia est" philosophy is the culture of the soul ! 



By philosophy in this case Cicero refers, of course, to 

 all the phases of intellectual activity in which the men 

 of his time indulged. He had before him all Greek lit- 

 erature, Greek art, all the wisdom of the Egyptians; all 

 the science of the ancient world ; the deep things of Aris- 

 totle, Thales, and Pythagoras; and it occurred to him 

 that by bringing all these things into contact with our 

 mental powers, effects comparable to those seen in the 

 vegetable world, out in the fields, might well be expected. 

 Cicero evidently thought the thing practicable ; the ques- 

 tion for us to decide is : if practicable, is it also practical ? 

 Is it worth our while? 



It is evident that if we wish to improve to our greater 

 pleasure the plants with which we have to do, we must 

 cultivate them; and so among the generations of men, 

 Cicero would intimate; if we would have olives and ap- 

 ples and peaches, and daisies, and even cabbage-heads, 

 and not mere cabbages, we must apply definite processes 

 and principles of culture, somewhat as these obtain in 

 the physical world. 



No figure, of course, may be more than illustrative; 

 nevertheless, that involved in our present use of the word 

 culture is unusually far-reaching in application. It is 

 more than illustrative; it is illuminative. Let us com- 

 pare a little physical fact and mental accomplishment. 



In the first place, as a botanist I know not a single 



