INSPIRATIONAL TEACHERS

That very fine study of the late President Eliot which appears in the current number of Harper's inadvertently demonstrates once again the very great influence which personality has upon the undergraduate. Alumni out 20 or 30 years repeatedly approached President Eliot in his old age with the remark that the most lasting memory that they carried away from Harvard was the sight of the President walking to his office every morning.

Because personal, inspiration is almost impossible to isolate or to define it is very easy to pass it over with a sneer about "another myth", or some similar remark. Nevertheless it remains true that long after the date of the invention of gunpowder in the Occident, or the meaning of a certain Shakespearean passage, or even the scores of Harvard-Yale football games are forgotten, the graduate will still carry with him memory of some inspiring teacher with whom he has come in contact and whose influence, exerted perhaps indirectly, has been a vital factor in his life. Professor Copeland has a club in New York made up of alumni who felt his influence. Probably two out of three undergraduates now in Cambridge whose fathers are alumni who felt his influence. Probably two out of three undergraduates now in Cambridge whose fathers are alumni have been exhorted to take Professor Kittredge's courses on Shakespeare, not primarily because of their matter, which has for been forgotten, but because of Professor Kittredge's personality. These are only two of many examples which could be offered.

The four years spent at college are in many ways the most impressionable of a man's life, not only intellectually, but emotionally and spiritually as well. To the average undergraduate "Christo of Ecclesiae" no longer fills his emotional and spiritual needs. Philosophy, merely as a science, does not fill it either. Contact with the inspirational personality of some faculty member may very well take the place of both, or at least tide over the critical period. Certainly it is a conclusion well worth thinking about, both for those who choose, the faculty and those who work under their leadership.