Among the forces which shape young men and women in our educational institutions, none is more potent than that indefinable, intangible, powerful thing we call school spirit, or college spirit, as the case may be. Students are often mistaken in the expression of it, but the spirit is right, though the expression may be wrong. School spirit always represents an unselfish attitude of the student. He has heard the call of something larger than himself.

Though school spirit may be only a sentiment, it is that which gives its deepest richness to the life of a good school. It belongs to an epoch in the life of the student that can never be repeated and never forgotten. It is the source, not only of much of the truest happiness of the precious school days, but of stimulus to high endeavor.

While there are many day schools that have a fine and strong school spirit, it reaches its height only in those schools and colleges where the students live a common corporate life, away from their homes and other influences which tend to separate them instead of unite them. Such communities foster the closeness and intimacy necessary to that complete solidarity essential for strong school spirit.

Many things operate to draw the members of a student body together. The games and sports, the fun and frolic, are shared by all. The work, if not the same, is done under the same conditions. All inherit the common school traditions and the same ideals of life are put before all. These things tend to eliminate distinctions and to make for democracy. In short, they foster school spirit.

The life of a corporate group is something different from the lives of the individuals who compose it. The members of such a group act and react upon one another. Their impulses and emotions, their words and even their deeds take different tone and shape when in the midst of numbers of others similarly circumstanced. There is a latent fire in the soul which is fanned to flame by the contact of life with life. This infection of nature by nature operates for evil as well as for good. Its harmful influence is seen at its worst in what is called mob spirit or mob rule. The mob may be guilty of deeds which not a single individual in it would countenance if left to himself.

By the mere fact of your coming together, then, surrounded by the same influences, under the spell of the same traditions and ideals, you create an element of life which did not exist before and which reacts powerfully upon every one of you. This is of the greatest importance in the growth of character, especially in these formative years. If you are ever to come to complete self-realization, you must breathe the atmosphere of pure and wholesome social influences. You should ask yourself, then, concerning the joint social life which you are living from day to day, what you are gathering from it and what you are contributing to it.

As I stood once in the chapel of Eton College, England, I noticed upon the walls certain scrolls and tablets containing hundreds of names in letters of gold. These were the names of graduates of Eton who had in after years brought distinction to their college. I noticed the same family names, recurring over and over again, and I was told that these same names are still upon the school rolls. I could not help asking myself, How can any young man who enters Eton, bearing one of these honored names, be anything but his best self? His family, his school, his country expect it. Perhaps that is one reason he so often is his best and that the same families generation after generation have so large a share of good and great men. And I thought, too, what a stimulus there must be in the very atmosphere of that splendid, five-hundred-year-old school, to spur these young men on to their highest endeavor! They were honored in being members of Eton and they in turn must honor Eton.

In this country we have no schools as old as Eton; yet all good schools have their fine traditions. The true-hearted service of noble lives has gone into the making of them. Of all such schools it may be said that among their sons or daughters are those who have loved their Alma Mater so well that being a credit to her they have counted among their chief aims in life. Only the student who is moved by such motives as these has the true school spirit. Such a student longs that his school shall be stamped with the stamp of true worthiness.

I suppose the most evident, certainly the most picturesque, exhibition of school spirit is to be seen in connection with athletics, and it reaches its climax in an inter-school game. The authorities of some schools say frankly that they permit such games, with their interruption of serious work and other disadvantages, chiefly because they tend to develop school spirit and school loyalty. Athletic contests are good, for they give training in self-subordination, self-control, alertness, and dogged perseverance. The individual loses himself in the good of the whole. This makes for character and good citizenship. We must not underestimate the value of the enthusiasm which comes from rallying against a common antagonist. When the rivalry is good-natured and every rule of fair play is observed, the effect is wholesome.

Yet it is not always the student who cheers most loudly for the team and who is most carried away by school spirit on public occasions who is at heart most loyal to the school. There is a greater loyalty even than that generous spirit which prompts one to rejoice in victory. It is the desire that one’s school shall stand only for that which is right. It is the determination that it shall be respected, and still more, that it shall be worthy of respect.

Now, the first and most obvious thing about any school is that it is an educational institution, and as such it must stand or fall. If a school is an educational failure, what avails its success in some subordinate thing? No one can take pride in an easy-going school to which any one can gain admission, and in which any one can remain, regardless of attainment. Students are not likely to think of this aspect of the case when they neglect their studies. They think the matter wholly personal and believe that only they are the sufferers. It is not so. By slack, indifferent work you are lowering the standard of your school, and you are thus disloyal. By your act you say that you do not care to have your school respected. This shows a lack of a sense of indebtedness on your part to the corporate group of which you are a member. It means a failure to apply school spirit where it was most needed. It is easier to sing and cheer on some moving occasion, but which does your school need more at your hands?

What I have said about upholding the intellectual standards of the school applies equally to its standards in other matters. By your dress, by your manners, by your behavior you indicate, wherever you go, the character of your school. You are its product. The world does not stop to ask what is going on inside of a school or what its influences are. The world judges a school by its results. If you want your school to be respected you cannot be too careful to represent it worthily at all times and in all places.

You come to school to get knowledge, but it would be a pity if that were all you were to get. A young man and a young woman, each of whom had been out of college several years, were discussing the advantages of a college education. One said to the other, “Looking back over your college days, what do you now regard as the most valuable thing you got out of college?” “Inspiration,” promptly came the answer; and both were agreed upon this.

School days deal with an earlier period of life than the college age, when the student is usually more susceptible to strong influences. The school that first gave you the determination to do something worth while in the world, the school that called forth your best self and set your heart on fire with a noble purpose, has a claim upon you that you can never forget.

Every school that has this transforming power is what it is by virtue of the personalities that have been connected with it. Ask yourself what you are doing to make your school in the future as inspiring a place for others as others have made it for you. Ask yourself what you can contribute to the enrichment of the life of your school. Be not over-anxious about what you shall receive.

Students rarely realize how much they leave behind them when they depart from a school. Something of you remains, mysteriously interwoven in the life of the school. “I am a part of all that I have met,” says Tennyson’s Ulysses. Just as you embody in yourself the influences that hundreds of other lives have exerted upon you, so others are bearing and will always bear the marks of your influence.

To be a worthy member of a good school is a great privilege, furnishing as it does a stimulus to high endeavor which rarely comes in any other way. It is a distinct honor to sustain and enhance a worthy name. If you have the right school spirit, you can do nothing less than throw all the power of your influence into the task of making your school a place where future students may learn how to meet and be true to the responsibilities and obligations of life. The atmosphere which makes easy this kind of growth is created only by living personalities, by the touch of life upon life.