When the intellect has once been properly
trained and formed to have a connected view or grasp of things [unity], it
will display its powers with more or less effect according to its particular
quality and capacity in the individual. In the case of most
men [and women] it makes itself felt in the good sense, sobriety of
thought, reasonableness, candour, self-command, and steadiness of view,
which characterize it. In some it will have developed habits of business, power
of influencing others, and sagacity. In others it will elicit
the talent of philosophical speculation, and lead the mind forward
to eminence in this or that intellectual department. In all it will
be a
faculty of entering with comparative ease into any subject of thought,
and of taking up with aptitude any science or profession. [diversity]... He
profits by an intellectual tradition, which is independent of particular
teachers, which guides him in his choice of subjects, and duly interprets
for him those which he chooses. He apprehends the great outlines of
knowledge, the principles on which it rests, the scale of its parts,
its lights and its shades, its great points and its little, as he otherwise
cannot apprehend them. Hence it is that his education is called "Liberal." A
habit of mind is formed which lasts through life, of which the attributes
are, freedom, equitableness, calmness, moderation, and wisdom.... Moreover, such
knowledge is not a mere extrinsic or accidental advantage, which is
ours today and another's tomorrow, which may be got up from a book,
and easily forgotten again, which we can command or communicate at
our pleasure, which we can borrow for the occasion, carry about in
our hand, and take into the market; it is an
acquired illumination, it is a habit, a personal possession, and an
inward endowment.
With
this definition of composing a self, of permanent character change, as
the goal of a university education, let us return to our question, Why
are students of the University of Texas in particular expected to become
leaders in society? And
let us return to the Hall of Noble Words in the Main building. Lamar's
statement appears on the ceiling next to this one:
"The benefits of education and of useful knowledge, generally diffused through a community, are essential to the preservation of a free government."Houston's distinction between education and useful knowledge was a common one in the nineteenth century. Newman stresses that "education is a higher word; it implies an action upon our mental nature, and the formation of a character; it is something individual and permanent, and is commonly spoken of in connexion with. . . virtue." Newman elucidates not only Houston's statement, but also Lamar's stress on a "cultivated mind ... guided and controlled by virtue."
In
other words, when you matriculate at U. T., the State of Texas is investing
in your education because your leadership is
essential to maintaining democracy in this state and nation.
5. Thus, here at U.T. you are asked to become conscious
of your life as a journey motivated by a higher purpose, a
pilgrimage,
and of the
truth[s] that you seek and/or have found that will set you and others free.
As
the image of the
scallop shell below the motto on the tower reminds us,
particularly important are pilgrimage goals that can endow you with a
compelling vision that inspires others to follow you. Hence especially
valuable are truths that tap into that which is greater than the self,
truths that enable you to make a contribution to society that can be
thought of as your legacy when you are gone.
Consider
the student
at the university looking back on his or her freshman year. As
Newman says, "when he is
leaving for the University, he is mainly the creature of foreign influences
and circumstances, and made up of accidents, homogeneous or not, as
the case may be." Then,
if she or is a good student, she
will have experienced at least one "sensation which perhaps he
never had before. He has a feeling not in addition to or increase of
former feelings, but of something different in its nature. He will
perhaps be
borne forward,
and find for a time that he has lost his bearings. He has made
a certain progress, and he has a consciousness of mental enlargement;
he does not stand where he did, he has a new centre,
and a range of thoughts to which he was before a stranger... We
seem to have new faculties, or a new exercise for our faculties, by
this addition to our knowledge; like a prisoner, who,
having been accustomed to wear manacles or fetters, suddenly finds
his arms and legs free:
But
now for these students, Newman continues, "every event has
a meaning; they have their own estimate of whatever happens to
them; they are mindful of times and seasons, and compare the present
with the past; and the world, no longer dull, monotonous, unprofitable,
and hopeless, is a various and complicated drama, with parts and
an object, and an awful moral."
This
is the key to your leadership training at the University of Texas:
to transcend
the accidents of being born in a particular place and time, and to
mold your own character, to find your own truths that set you
free.
As you think about this, ultimately you will be hammering your self
into unity. You will be composing yourself. The word "compose" connects "pose," that
is "to
place," to "con" ("together"),
and its root meaning is thus "to place together," "To put
together (parts or elements) so as to make up a whole" (Oxford
English Dictionary). As
Newman puts it, your mind takes a "connected view of old
and new, past and present, far and near, and ... has an insight into the
influence of all these one on another; without which there is no whole,
and no centre. It possesses the knowledge, not only of things, but
also of their mutual and true relations." Such a mind "makes
every thing in some sort lead to every thing else; it would communicate
the image of the whole to
every separate portion, till that whole becomes in imagination like
a spirit, every where pervading and penetrating its component parts, and
giving them one definite meaning. Just as our bodily organs, when mentioned,
recall their function in the body, ... so, in the mind of the
[student], the elements
of the physical and moral world, sciences, arts, pursuits, ranks, offices,
events, opinions, individualities, are all viewed as one, with correlative
functions, and as gradually by successive combinations converging, one
and all, to the true centre."
What
is your true center? The answer should lead you to your leadership
vision embodying the
"living teaching" of your university, tapping into its "self-perpetuating
tradition," embodying the genius
loci of the University of Texas at Austin.
"Only
connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the
prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will
be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.”
E.
M. Forster, Howards End (1910), ch. 22
"We go for a walk in nature,
we see a beautiful sunset — we breathe the order in through our senses,
we feel connected. The inside begins to mirror the magnificent outside.
In the Vedic tradition that connectedness is called 'yoga.'”
Chris Adamason, Vedic Architecture http://www.newlifejournal.com/aprmay04/adamson_0504.shtml
‘One
day when I was twenty-three or twenty-four this sentence seemed to form
in my head, without my willing it, much as sentences form when we are half-asleep,
‘Hammer your thoughts into unity’. For days I could think of nothing
else and for years I tested all I did by that sentence [...]” William
Butler Yeats, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (cited in
Frank Tuohy, Yeats,
1976, p.51)
