"TO WEIGH AND CONSIDER"

"Reading maketh a full man," says Francis Bacon.

"Full of what?" retorts the ready but shallow sophomore. And that depends upon what you read. The Syraeuse University Bookstore reports that its best seller is Papini's "Life of Christ". A gentle raising of the critical eyebrow marks Harvard's reserved surprise at this announcement. In the CRIMSON Bookshelf for November the Community Bookshop states that Harvard's "great interest these days is in the works of the modern sophisticates, Mencken, Nathan, Van Vochten, Machen, Dreisen, and others, that stimulate the critical faculties."

From these reports it would seem that Roman idealism attracts the Syracusans. Indeed, it is not strange that an institution of learning which starts with an a priori preconception of truth should extend hearty welcome to Papini. "The massive brain and eagle eye" of the Methodist Church presides over the destinies of young Syracuse, and brings it up in the way it should go. Not only does this tend to promote among undergraduates that state of mind called "Fundamentalism", but also to attract embryonic Fundamentalists to its sympathetic bosom.

John Harvard's progeny, on the other hand, would appear to lean toward rationalism with a German accent. Harvard freshmen may still take the naive attitude of "Here I am. Educate me if you can." But before many months' residence they come to question that attitude. False opinions of education as a "pouring-in process" are likely to be rudely shaken by the November examinations. And by the Mid-Year period they must have begun to see that education--at least the Harvard brand of it--tries to stimulate active, critical research for truth. To fail to see it is to run serious danger of terminating one's academic career.

So opposed are these conceptions of education that it is almost a general truth that religiously endowed universities can rarely see eye to eye with those not so endowed. Syracuse need not be surprised, therefore, if Harvard tuns an indifferent back upon Papini. Harvard's reaction to the entire book does not differ greatly from its rejection of Papini's major premise as stated in the introduction, that "He who accepts the four gospels must accept the four gospels must accept them wholly, entire, syllable by syllable, or else reject them from the first to the last and say: 'We know nothing.'"