Text Of President's Baccalaureate Address

The following is The Baccalaureate address delivered yesterday afternoon in The Memorial Church by President Conant.

Gentlemen of the Class of 1937:

A layman's address on Baccalaureate Sunday is by custom designated a sormen. Perhaps I may be permitted, therefore, to sum up all I have to say in advance by quoting the famous text from St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans:

"And be not conformed to this world; but he ye transformed by the renewing of your mind."

With a layman's proverbial disregard for Biblical scholarship, I venture to place these words before you this afternoon torn from their context and ask you to read them with twentieth century eyes. If you will follow me in this I suggest you will have in hand an epitome of what you have been striving to attain during the last four years--an education.

"Be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind." There have been few periods in the history of this republic, I am inclined to think, when it has been more difficult to follow the injunction,-- "be not conformed to this world." Of course, I am not referring to trivial matters. I am not discussing external modes of behavior--manners and social customs. Superficial non-conformists are often spiritual slaves to a special set of ritualistic dogmas. A considerable degree of uniformity among a group of people in regard to everyday behavior is not to be despised; on the contrary, the beneficial effects of such a constant environment on the life of an individual make for sanity and happiness. But being one of a harmonious group, though essential for the well balanced life of most of us, carries with it a constant threat, a constant insidious pressure to conform to the very bottom of our souls. How to resist this pressure without migration to a lonely mountain top is one of the main problems of the modern man who would be free.

Hits at Germany, Russia

It is not one world, one flesh and one devil which we must combat or flee. Today there are many--many at least in appearances; one devil at the bottom of them all, perhaps, if your theology inclines you so to state the case of man's ever-recurring ills. Each worlds has its own formulas, its own incantations, its own tests of conformity, its own methods of excommunication. In some lands the more independent spirits are physically coerced if the social forces are not sufficiently powerful to keep the waiverer in line. In these countries where the improved modern methods of appealing to the mob coupled with the actual use of force have been successful, an approach to homogeneity has been attained. Here is one world, and woe to the man who does not conform to it in thought as well as in action. I hardly need give illustrations. We are all too familiar with them, --the news from Russia and Germany almost daily illustrates the intellectual tyranny of a totalitarian state. There can be little room, indeed, for a nonconformist in a country where the Minister of Education declares: "The old idea of Science based on the belief in the supremacy of the abstract intellect is finished. The new Science is sharply differentiated from the conception that its honor lies in the everlasting nature of the search for truth." And now much room for spiritual freedom is there in a land where one of the scholars writes that "The teachings of Marx and Lenin have been incarnated in life. The socialist reconstruction of society is not a distant prospect but a definite plan of great work .... And as in all epochs in reconstructing social relationships we are reconstructing science."

Recalls War Propaganda

And when we turn our eyes from Europe and examine dispassionately our own country, what do we find? A serene and tolerant atmosphere? Quite the contrary--we find the contending worlds right here within the United States. Compare the two quotations from Germany and Russia which I have just read with the words of one of American's most gifted poets at a recent Phi Beta Kappa meeting:

"O scholars schooled upon the books:

Rise from you labor now? Enlist

For warfare in this fighting age

"No longer may your learning wear

The neutral truth's dispassionate peace:

There are none neutral in this war:

There are but friends: and enemies."

On all sides we see to plainly the reflections of the European struggle. We feel the emotional violence of conflicting groups, each exerting its own social pressure, each bent on conformity. Not since the days immediately after the war have the citizens of this country been subjected to such powerful forces. In fact there are many analogies between the emotional atmosphere of today and that which existed during the first years of the European struggle. I cannot help drawing a parallel between the American scene into which you graduate and that into which I was graduated in 1914. One difference there is, and that a major one. You are already aware of the stresses and strains present in Europe and those which have been set up by induction in the United States. To the members of the class of 1914, on the other hand, the situation you regard as usual came with all the blackness and suddenness of a tropical storm. In June there was one climate of opinion and by September there was another; and with each succeeding month the atmosphere became more electric, the storms more frequent and more violent. Members of the Harvard faculty who had been bosom friends became vituperative enemies. In February 1914 a certain professor referred to the absurdities of the latent hostility to Germany during the Spanish War of 108 and mentioned the strong ties binding the scholars of the United States to the land ruled by the Kaiser. Before the year passed the same professor wrote one of the thousand articles to show why this country must needs be even in thought passionately pro-Ally and anti-German. Separate worlds formed within this country and soon ceased to communicate with each other by rational speech: the pro-Ally camp, the pro-German group, the neutrals hated by both, then the pacifists and the militarists. All this while we were still only spectators of the configuration which was consuming Europe.

The state of mind of this country from August 1914 we entered the war was the state of mind of the helpless observer of a great calamity. The sides formed, the propaganda rained, every day heightened the emotional tension but in this country there was no valid way for an individual to relieve his sense of frustration. There was nothing to do but about and boat the air like the frenzied rooter at a football game nothing to do but join the chorus of that particular world which was your own. And not to conform to one world or another during that period was to incur a potent blast of hostil criticism from every side.

The situation today is not dissimilar. First it was Russia,--and the repercussions of the Bolshevik revolution are with us yet. Then it was the failure of parliamentary government to maintain itself in Italy. Next came the advent of the Nazi regime in Germany, and now we witness actual warfare with all its barbarism in Spain. Finally we have seen the hopes of peace through collective security appear to fade and now the threat of rearmament hangs over all of Europe. There have been problems and disturbances of our own, of course,--problems grave enough to produce a tension in the most serene of temperaments. But the tension in the last few years has certainly been heightened by the emotions generated in our collective psyche by the horror and dread of what we have seen in Europe.

Excuses Passionate Errors

It is so easy to be tolerant in retrospect, so hard to be unmoved by the hatreds of the moment. The emotions of 1914-1917 and those of today represent the psychological disturbances of a people at peace. By estimating the magnitudes of these strains we can at least understand better the irrational vindictiveness of a people at war. The protestations of even intelligent. Northerners when Robert E. Lee was made President of Washington College at Lexington, Virginia, shortly after the close of the Civil War seem strange to this generation which in every part of the country recognizes Lee's greatness and nobility. In the "Nation" for September 14, 1865 there appeared the following comment:

"General Lee has been elected president or rector of Lexington College .... We protest against the notion that he is a good instructor for youth or that he is fit to be put at the head of a college in a country situated in Virginia. A man who can do what he has done, take arms for a cause which nothing but his intellectual approval could justify his serving but which his intellect condemned is hardly a fit person either to train or to 'influence' young men. No amount of good talk now or hereafter about the 'duty of the citizen towards the general government' will ever do away with the effect of his example.... No crime against society to which faction or sophistry or passion can tempt will ever equal that to the commission of which he has devoted the last four years of his life. Unless his first appearance in the college is marked by a frank and hearty act of repentance, the influence of his character, on which his votaries now rely to fit him for his position, must be bad and only bad."

In 1937 we can read these words without admiration of the sentiments expressed but with understanding of their origin in the misery of four years of carnage. May our children's children feel that our passionate errors of today are equally to be excused.

Makes Plea For Individualism

Past or present, no matter where you turn the problem of spiritual conformity can not be escaped. The inhabitants of the various contending worlds may flatter themselves that they alone are free, but do not be misled by such self-deluding propaganda. Moving from left to right or vice versa provides no solution for an individual; the scenery of each world is illumined by a different portion of the spectrum, to be sure, but the hypnotic effect of the dazzling glare is the same for red light as for blue.

To combat the forces of conformity one can rely only on oneself. To escape the claims of the outer world one must first have come to terms with the problems of his own inner life. The courage and fortitude necessary to maintain even a slight degree of independence are not to be found in the hearts of those of little faith. To your own satisfaction you must have answered that most devastating of human questions,--why? "And be not conformed to this world" says the text, but why? St. Paul's answer is given by the remainder of the verse: "And be not conformed to this world:" said Paul, "but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God." One of the great writers of the eighteenth century and a great heretic of those days, a deist, used these words: "The God of Nature has written his existence on all his works and his law in the heart of man." Whatever phraseology each one of you may choose to employ, if you would be free you must first of all state to yourselves with convincing clarity your philosophy of life, the fundamentals of your faith. Then like a traveller through a forest who is equipped with a chart and compass, you need not join with others or follow the well-marked paths--you may dare to be alone.

But no matter how stalwart is your faith, how firm your grasp on what you yourself believe to be the significant aspects of human existence, you require something more to live an active and self-directed life in this complex modern world. A man requires an education commensurate with the intellectual burdens he is to carry. A man must have the ability to deal with the situations he is to face, and today these situations lost intellectual capacity as well as character. Courage and integrity are as essential as ever but they have need of powerful allies. Unless a man's character is steadied by a philosophic appreciation of the past, he is ill equipped to meet the future.

A distinguished American writing about aesthetics has said, "A judgment as an act of controlled inquiry demands a rich background and a disciplined insight." Is not this equally true in all the countless affairs of life where judgments must be made? And unless a man can make a satisfying pattern of his own individual judgments he is under a great temptation to accept some one else's pattern; in other words to conform.

We are familiar with the "glided dogman" which passes as counterfeit coin for real aesthetic criticism. We can readily identify the same type of spurious currency stamped with social and political symbols rapidly passed about from hand to hand by the inhabitants of each conforming world. But if we are to reject this false metal we must be prepared each one of us to mint our own--we must be prepared to make our own judgments of the most intricate and complex situations. To do this with any degree of success requires, indeed, "a rich background and a disciplined insight."

Continual Struggle For Education

You gentlemen of the graduating class have made a beginning in attaining such a background. Will you continue to enrich it through earnest study as the years go on? Will you still turn for nourishment to the great art and literature which was never so freely accessible as to the seekers of today? You have at least some understanding of the distinction between a disciplined and an undisciplined insight. Is it your opinion that the former is worth the toil and labor it involves? Has your ambition been aroused to sharpen daily your own intellectual weapons? In short, are you going to continue your education or will you soon throw it overboard and with it your independence as a modern man?

In his famous essay on "Self Reliance", you may recall, Emerson says, "It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." If you will be an active participant in the affairs of modern life and pass unruffled through an unruly crowd, you must fight hard indeed for his "independence of solitude." To attain it is denied, perhaps, to most of us but to approximate it at least is possible for all--possible by a continual struggle in which a formal education is but the opening round. There is no retreat to a pastoral life for most of us, physical solitude is impossible, an unlettered independence of mind almost inconceivable; but in spite of the complexities of this century the solitude of which Emerson spoke is still within our sight. For all who are caught in the web of twentieth century civilization, one escape is clear and it is no retreat. We may commune with the sages of the past, we may share the accumulated spiritual wealth of humanity. By the daily "renewing of our minds" we may hope for that "newness of our understanding" which will assure us eventually the real liberty of an independent soul.