In spite,however,of these disagreeables,I should recommend any student to suffer them with Spartan courage,as the benefits he receives should repay him an hundredfold for them all.The life of the debating society is a handy antidote to the life of the classroom and quadrangle.Nothing could be conceived more excellent as a weapon against many of those PECCANT HUMOURS that we have been railing against in the jeremiad of our last 'College Paper'-particularly in the field of intellect.It is a sad sight to see our heather-scented students,our boys of seventeen,coming up to College with determined views -ROUES in speculation -having gauged the vanity of philosophy or learned to shun it as the middle-man of heresy -a company of determined,deliberate opinionists,not to be moved by all the sleights of logic.
What have such men to do with study?If their minds are made up irrevocably,why burn the 'studious lamp'in search of further confirmation?Every set opinion I hear a student deliver I feel a certain lowering of my regard.He who studies,he who is yet employed in groping for his premises,should keep his mind fluent and sensitive,keen to mark flaws,and willing to surrender untenable positions.He should keep himself teachable,or cease the expensive farce of being taught.It is to further this docile spirit that we desire to press the claims of debating societies.It is as a means of melting down this museum of premature petrifactions into living and impressionable soul that we insist on their utility.If we could once prevail on our students to feel no shame in avowing an uncertain attitude towards any subject,if we could teach them that it was unnecessary for every lad to have his OPINIONETTE on every topic,we should have gone a far way towards bracing the intellectual tone of the coming race of thinkers;and this it is which debating societies are so well fitted to perform.
We there meet people of every shade of opinion,and make friends with them.We are taught to rail against a man the whole session through,and then hob-a-nob with him at the concluding entertainment.We find men of talent far exceeding our own,whose conclusions are widely different from ours;and we are thus taught to distrust ourselves.But the best means of all towards catholicity is that wholesome rule which some folk are most inclined to condemn -I mean the law of OBLIGED SPEECHES.Your senior member commands;and you must take the affirmative or the negative,just as suits his best convenience.This tends to the most perfect liberality.It is no good hearing the arguments of an opponent,for in good verity you rarely follow them;and even if you do take the trouble to listen,it is merely in a captious search for weaknesses.This is proved,I fear,in every debate;when you hear each speaker arguing out his own prepared SPECIALITE (he never intended speaking,of course,until some remarks of,etc.),arguing out,I say,his own COACHED-UP subject without the least attention to what has gone before,as utterly at sea about the drift of his adversary's speech as Panurge when he argued with Thaumaste,and merely linking his own prelection to the last by a few flippant criticisms.Now,as the rule stands,you are saddled with the side you disapprove,and so you are forced,by regard for your own fame,to argue out,to feel with,to elaborate completely,the case as it stands against yourself;and what a fund of wisdom do you not turn up in this idle digging of the vineyard!How many new difficulties take form before your eyes?how many superannuated arguments cripple finally into limbo,under the glance of your enforced eclecticism!
Nor is this the only merit of Debating Societies.They tend also to foster taste,and to promote friendship between University men.This last,as we have had occasion before to say,is the great requirement of our student life;and it will therefore be no waste of time if we devote a paragraph to this subject in its connection with Debating Societies.
At present they partake too much of the nature of a CLIQUE.
Friends propose friends,and mutual friends second them,until the society degenerates into a sort of family party.
You may confirm old acquaintances,but you can rarely make new ones.You find yourself in the atmosphere of your own daily intercourse.Now,this is an unfortunate circumstance,which it seems to me might readily be rectified.Our Principal has shown himself so friendly towards all College improvements that I cherish the hope of seeing shortly realised a certain suggestion,which is not a new one with me,and which must often have been proposed and canvassed heretofore -I mean,a real UNIVERSITY DEBATING SOCIETY,patronised by the Senatus,presided over by the Professors,to which every one might gain ready admittance on sight of his matriculation ticket,where it would be a favour and not a necessity to speak,and where the obscure student might have another object for attendance besides the mere desire to save his fines:to wit,the chance of drawing on himself the favourable consideration of his teachers.This would be merely following in the good tendency,which has been so noticeable during all this session,to increase and multiply student societies and clubs of every sort.Nor would it be a matter of much difficulty.The united societies would form a nucleus:one of the class-rooms at first,and perhaps afterwards the great hall above the library,might be the place of meeting.There would be no want of attendance or enthusiasm,I am sure;for it is a very different thing to speak under the bushel of a private club on the one hand,and,on the other,in a public place,where a happy period or a subtle argument may do the speaker permanent service in after life.Such a club might end,perhaps,by rivalling the 'Union'at Cambridge or the 'Union'at Oxford.