Culture is so different from training or favoring the
acquirement of knowledge that it is so often totally lacking in men
who have carried both processes to great length; it is indeed rarely
conveyed, though it may be greatly aided, by definite instruction. It
cannot be said of the great mass of college graduates that they are
men of culture. Culture comes, in a sense, by indirection, a man
absorbs it and furnishes the conditions for its growth, but he cannot
receive it directly from his teachers. There are, in every college,
teachers, who stimulate culture in students not so much by reason of
their scholarship as by reason of their attitude toward what they
know. For culture is always a personal quality; a ripeness which comes
from the generous enrichment of a man's nature by contact with the
best things. In certain atmospheres men ripen, as in certain others
they remain hard and unaffected.
The atmospheric quality of a college is determined largely by the
character and traditions of undergraduate life. If that life has
generous ideals, sound impulses, and traditions which appeal to the
imagination, the atmosphere will do as much for many men as the formal
instruction they receive.
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