Clancy—Floundering in Modernity, 
55 
student opinion will be swept off its feet by the facile and intoxi¬ 
cating appeal of any superficial speaker. Judgments will be held 
in abeyance for leisurely review. But if there were to lurk in the 
mind of the undergraduate a suspicion of the integrity of the 
scholarship and free mental processes of his instructor, the student 
will take supreme—and, indeed, well-justified^—^joy in exploding 
bomb after bomb within the unprofaned precincts of his college. 
The student of today is quick as a flash to catch the note of insin¬ 
cerity and weak compromise; though often he himself is given to 
specious argument, he is scathing in his criticism when he flnds 
such a defect in his instructor’s reasoning. Fundamentally, the 
college student is the most stalwart of moralists, he is insistent on 
fair play, and his chronic radicalism is his attempt to set the world 
right. But unfortunately, he is also the most lax of thinking 
beings, his contempt for things in high places is not a disciplined 
contempt, he seldom seeks his data far, or subjects himself to the 
rigors of logical and painstaking analysis. He has the failings 
of the generation he represents, he is curious about the new, dis¬ 
cards the old without compunction or regret, is hurried in his 
judgments and superficial in his culture; his ardor for things in¬ 
tellectual is unkindled. But his instincts are right and his capacity 
for devotion to what is fine is unlimited. 
In the midst of the college and of the broader world of which 
the college is a part, the scholar may hold a position of eminence. 
In his make-up there can be no suggestion of the mere prettiness of 
culture; his mentality rather connotes wrought-iron; he teaches 
the Greek virtues of discipline, measure, and proportion; the very 
essence of his nature is a protest against the facile thinking of 
the man who would reform the world in thirty days. In the midst 
of an acquisitive society curiously obsessed by material values, 
he looks for things that are enduring, things tried by the fierce 
fires of human experience and suffering. He knows that civilization 
has been won by painful struggle, that its finest achievements are 
the product of disinterested searchers for truth. The continuation 
of the sublime traditions of his profession is not an easy task 
in these days when a thousand discordant voices are crying in the 
wilderness, ‘‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord.” Vague and windy 
theorizing, glittering generalities, and sweeping denunciations must 
all be referred to the discriminating and wise scholarship which 
is the saving hope of our civilization. 
