Word: national
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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There are numerous other ways in which the Nation exerts a bad influence. . . . . It is pessimistic, and accustoms us to an arrogant and self-sufficient style of thought; and we fall into the same habit from reading its columns...
...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...
This may be good or bad, and may be ascribed to such and such causes, as superficial ideas, lack of enthusiasm, pessimism of the Nation, or what not. This, however, is the mere appearance of indifference. With regard to real indifference which is the matter discussed, it is mere verbal gymnastics to call it anything else than laziness. There is individual indifference to mathematics or philosophy, resulting from mental characteristics, which of course is not termed laziness; but, these differences cancelling each other in one college as compared to another, there is that general trait whose causes may only...
...seems to me, was wrong in co-ordinating laziness and superficial ideas as causes of indifference; since indifference is laziness, though superficial ideas may quite probably be the causes of laziness. But the authors who have sought the origin of our indifference in the character of the Nation have suffered worse confusion of thought. For it is obvious that they have confounded the fact of our 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...
...course of an article in the last Advocate on the influence of the Nation in College, the writer has taken occasion to criticise rather sharply an essay which appeared in the last Crimson. As the author of that essay, I should be loath to occupy space in defending what was scarcely intended as an argumentative composition; but I feel it my due to call attention to some of the more glaring misrepresentations and inconsistencies of which the writer in the Advocate has made use in garbling the article in question. As he has employed a tone rather sarcastic than courteous...