EDGAR EVERHART—THE EDUCATIONAL NEED OF THE SOUTH. 27 
here is not enervating on the mind. We are in the temperate zone, 
and besides experience has demonstrated that climate has no influence 
on the intellectual activity of man. 
There is no doubt but that we are behind the age. No enterprise is 
undertaken here without resort to the North or West for capital to 
carry it on. No structure of any magnitude is built but that we send 
there also not only for money to build it but also for engineers to plan 
it and mechanics to construct it. No railroad is built without our get¬ 
ting engineers, mechanics, materials of construction and money from 
the North to put it in operation. No mechanical engineering feat of 
any kind is contemplated but that we seek the heads to plan and the 
hands to execute in any place but the South. Everything that requires 
expert knowledge for its completion seeks its experts elsewhere. 
Were this all, we might still be consoled with the thought that our 
intellectual ability was recognized here and elsewhere. But is this 
true ? How many men educated in the South, by their writings in the 
field of letters, of science, of religion, or of arts have attained a repu¬ 
tation other than provincial? They can be counted on the fingers of 
one hand. 
Many of the most brilliant Southern men have sought their educa¬ 
tion away from their native land, and obtaining it, have chosen rather 
to live abroad than exert their talents where they were born. 
There must be some radical evil that brings about this condi¬ 
tion of affairs. We belong to the same Anglo-Saxon race as the rest 
of our countrymen ; we are their equal intellectually, morally and 
physically ; our land is as susceptible of improvement as theirs ; we 
have as great natural resources in land, in water, in mineral wealth 
and the like ; and yet we are poorer financially and intellectually ; our 
trades and industries are in an embryonic state, and our intellects do 
not bear fruit that finds favor with the rest of the world. 
I believe that the answer to this conundrum can be found in study¬ 
ing the condition of our institutions of learning. The universities of 
a country make the country. The South for many years has been 
dominated in educational matters by an institution that held up to its 
youth false ideas of what is best in education. It gave pabulum to 
their minds that was insufficient for their growth. It warped the 
natural bent of their intellects. It stunted intellectual progress. In¬ 
stead of cultivating liberality of thought, it engendered a spirit of nar¬ 
row-mindedness. This institution, instead of fostering the sciences, 
and thus conferring upon the land of the South all the advantages 
reaped elsewhere by its students, contented itself with making the 
classics the sine qua non of education. That science which was taught 
was bare and meagre in the extreme, and utterly inadequate to the de¬ 
mands of the age. This policy of this university has reacted upon 
itself. From being considered at the time of its incipiency among the 
