Word: mental
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Dates: during 1900-1909
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...does Harvard alone attest his greatness. His mental precision and unusual capacity for lucid and apt discrimination have enabled him to treat public questions with singular authority and with an unerring instinct for the aspirations and needs of society. He has touched no subject without illuminating it; he has stood firmly for collegiate and civic righteousness; and so sane have been his counsels, so masterly his power of statement, that he not only commands today the attention of America, but he is honored by scholars and thinkers throughout the world. He has set an example to all by the simplicity...
...institution of learning is to provide intellectual training. There are ways and ways of bringing this about, of course, but the fundamental way on which Harvard University as well as most of the universities of today was founded, is to provide a wholesome and keen enthusiasm for serious mental effort for the sake of the people who enter its doors. Other activities and aspects of the life have their value, largely in proportion to the moderation with which they are practiced, but it remains for the intellectual efforts and ambitions to be the basis for a college's real excuse...
...expectation, in which we may fairly acknowledge the benefits we receive as University men. Without this day of appreciation we are all too likely to pass over our special privileges,--the association with men of high standards, the claim to noble tradition, the opportunities for sound moral and mental development, and assume as no more than our deserts the favors which the University bestows. But these favors are so varied and the sources from which they arise so numerous, that we cannot always be blind to them, and it is well that we have this occasion to pause and fell...
...labor, beginning with the entrance examinations which distinguish Harvard almost alone among American institutions. From entrance examinations to graduation and then on in business life extends a series of competitions, for the world at large has not yet accepted the elimination of competition. Men come here to acquire the mental power, mental alertness, the perspicacity that is essential for success...
...money which interfere with a man's possibilities and foremost among these are intellectual possessions. These hinder the fulfillment of intellectual possibilities in three ways. First, many men of exceptional intellectual endowments waste themselves and their abilities just because their very brilliancy makes them unwilling to undergo necessary mental drudgery. Again, a man's academic possessions interfere with his possibilities when they are accompanied by academic snobbishness which leads them to disdain the wisdom of intelligent but nonacademic persons. And thirdly, a man's intellectual possessions may be injurious to his mental possibilities if he allows what has been taught...