The second thing I want to say to you is that I want you to be a gentleman. How absurd it is for me to write that to you. Of course, you are, and, of course, you will be one. In the creation of the gentleman as well as of the thinker, the personal equation counts. In fact, it counts for more in the making of the gentleman. For in this making truth is less important than the personality. In the gentleman intellectual altruism and moral appreciativeness are large elements. One has to see and to understand the personal condition with which he deals. If he is dull, his conduct is as apt to give unhappiness as pleasure.
In order to open the eyes of the heart, in order to create an intellectual conscientiousness, the study of great literatures must be assigned a high place. Constant and complex needs to be such study. Literature represents humanity. The humanities are humanity. Literature is style and style is the man. The gentleman as a product represents the homeopathic principle. The gentleman makes the gentleman. Certain colleges are distinguished by the type of gentleman which they create. It will usually be found, on observation or analysis, that colleges which are distinguished for the gracious conduct of their teachers toward their students are distinguished by the gracious bearing of their graduates.
As a gentleman you will be a friend and will have friends. In this relation of friendship in its earlier stages there is no part of life in which it is more important for you to exercise the virtue and grace of reserve. Be in no haste to make friends. Friendships are growths, not manufactures. These growths, too, are like the elm and the oak, not like the willow. At this point lies all I want to say to you about joining a fraternity. If the men you want to be your intimate friends are members and ask you to join, accept. If the men you do not wish to be your intimate friends wish you to go with them, decline. Do not join for the sake of a blind pool membership. Such a membership is really a sort of social insincerity, a lie.