Word: evils
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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...suitable candidates to draw the suffrages of the class, who shall say that this artificial stimulus in eliciting the best men for the places is not laudable? This is the new regime, and demands that each element shall present its strongest men as the condition of representation. The evil is for two, three, or any number of elements to come together, as of old, and formally partition out the offices to the various "elements" to be filled as the cliques and lobbyists decide...
...remaining part of the article, which takes up the question of the evil influence of the Nation on the student mind, has so many of the peculiar faults of that journal, that it must necessarily have some of its excellences; but the argument is most curiously inconsistent. After condemning several student characteristics in a manner truly searching and Nationesque, the writer suddenly turns around and condemns that journal for the very faults which are most conspicious in his own article. He actually out Nations the Nation in pessimism, and then, probably remembering the Golden Rule, quotes the Nation's words...
...receiving pessimistic theories with the fact of subscribing to them in blind faith. In so far as the authority of the Nation closes the eye of reason, thus far is it productive of sloth. Not pessimism, but to be cowed into pessimism or anything else, therefore, is the evil. I question whether pessimism, as such, does not tend to increased activity of mind, whatever blight it may cast upon the moral sense, as involving critical examination into things ordinarily unquestioned, and a constant warfare with the received optimism. I might quote the extraordinary activity of the German Schopenhauer...
Noticing the fact that indifference, though a momentary evil attendant on our first introduction to liberal thought, is by no means a permanent result, we pass to the passage reading: "His elaborate application of Mr. Spencer's doctrine would be only amusing, did it not result in such astounding conclusions . . . . the knowledge which considers such theories the legitimate outcome of the doctrine of evolution is certainly superficial." Superficial writings have certainly the merit of being easily understood, and if such were here the case, the epithet would indeed be welcome; but this profound specialist seems to have failed to comprehend...
...this indifference is the necessary, though temporary evil - if it be an evil - which attends the growth of our old College into a modern University; and is both the evanescent result and the prerequisite of modern modes of thought. From this general and comparative view of history, philosophy, science, and language, springs that broad, dynamic method, which considers things both in their past, their future, and their relations with coexistent things; a method which narrow-minded specialists have so often and so falsely termed atheistic or utilitarian, but which embodies and necessitates the highest possible conception...