And so the other end of the scale, the college president. He too is said sometimes to be discontented; and again his discontent may assume either one of two forms. He may be ambitious of size and _réclame_ for his institution, and may measure his dignity by the number of students over whom he presides. His alumni are likely to encourage him in this, and I have myself known the head of an ancient university in the East who used to scan the catalogues of the great Western institutions year by year with bitter jealousy and heart-burning as their register of students gradually approached his own, and then shot beyond it. Inevitably such discontent leads to a lowering of standards, mitigated by the pious belief that that form of education is noblest which is desired by, and accessible to, the largest number of paying candidates. Thus a debasement of education becomes identified in his mind with social service. But one can imagine another kind of discontent, which should pursue just the opposite course. Its standard would be qualitative, not quantitative, and it would fear the temptation of size, not the murmurs of ambitious alumni. It would look for its reward not in a swelling registration or spreading houses or additional courses of study, but to its success in attracting the better minds and the stronger characters and in directing these in the narrow and tried paths. It might even go so far--though this is confessedly a fairy-tale--as to lay a rough, restraining hand on that most corrupting nurse of materialism in our schools, professional athletics.
However it may be with the plumber and the college president, clearly these words, content and discontent, are replete with ambiguity; they are consequences rather than motives of conduct, and we cannot safely argue upon them until we lave looked more closely into the springs of action which control respectively the religious and the natural life. And here I must beg you to indulge me in a bit of pedantry. Our English speech, with all its practical efficiency, has never developed a very precise ethical terminology, and so to get at the distinction I have in mind I am going to ask you to consider two rather outlandish-sounding Greek words which were much in use among the early moralists of our era. One of them is _tapeinophrosynê_, the other is _pleonexia_.