Proceedings of the Inauguration 
51 
complished. The very idea of a scientific evolution compels us 
to recognize that we cannot truly know our own time without 
knowing it genetically. The College may be held, therefore, as 
bound to introduce its students to the significance of the great 
lines of inheritance already mentioned. Doubtless the modern 
college cannot give the same proportionate amount of time to 
Greek and Latin, for example, as the older college course, but it 
ought not to make the mistake of cutting its students off from 
the rich lessons to be learned from the study of Greek and 
Roman and Jewish and English literature and history, as related 
to modern life and problems. How can a man be an educated 
man who has not worked his way through some of the problems 
presented in Literature and Art. One thing that may startle 
the tables here is that there are not a few doctors of philosophy 
who can not give an elementary presentation of Christianity. 
Our heritage is among them. 
But the whole task of education may be said to be that of 
fitting a man to enter intelligently and unselfishly into the life 
and work of his own generation, as well as to get such a genetic 
understanding of the civilization of his own time as has been 
already mentioned. We cannot really understand our present 
culture unless we link it up with the past. For our own time 
this peculiarly means that the college should help its students 
to some genuine personal sharing in the scientific spirit and 
method, in the historical spirit, in the philosophic mind, in 
esthetic appreciation, in the social consciousness (including in- 
sight into economic conditions), and in religious discernment and 
commitment; and every one of these great outstanding charac- 
teristics of our time is very closely related to the Christian spirit 
that would inform the whole life of the Christian college. 
i 
I 
I really do not believe that a man is intelligently fitted to 
come into the life of the present who has merely heard of the 
problems of today but who has been in them. We boast a sci- 
entific age but this should mean that the leaders of this age 
should occasionally have shared it and not only hear about it. 
It is to the honor of Denison University that its students have 
been trained in science. It should mean that the students have 
formed the habit of reporting exactly, — that is involved in the 
scientific spirit. 
