Inaugural Address 



traditions and to enable them to form opinions worthy of the 

 new evidence each new day brings before them. An educated 

 man should not be the slave of the past, not a copy of men 

 who have gone before him. He must be in some degree the 

 founder of a new intellectual dynasty; for each new thinker 

 is a new type of man. Whatever is true is the truest thing in 

 the universe, and mental and moral strength alike come from 

 our contact with it. We may teach the value of truth to our 

 students by showing that we value it ourselves. In like manner, 

 the value of right living can be taught by right examples. In 

 the words of a wise teacher," Science knows no source of life 

 but life." The teacher is one of the accredited delegates of 

 civilization. In Heine's phrase, he is a Knight of the Holy 

 Ghost. The harvest is bounteous, but the laborers are still 

 all too few; for a generous education should be the birthright 

 of every man and woman in America. 



I shall not try today to give you our ideal of. what a uni- 

 versity should be. If our work is successful, our ideals will 

 appear in the daily life of the school. In a school, as in a fortress, 

 it is not the form of the building, but the strength of the ma- 

 terials, which determine its effectiveness. With a garrison of 

 hearts of oak, it may not matter even whether there be a fortress. 

 Whatever its form, or its organization, or its pretensions, the 

 character of the university is fixed by the men who teach. 

 The university spirit flows out from these teachers, and its 

 organization serves mainly to bring them together. "Colleges 

 can only serve us," says Emerson, "when their aim is not to 

 drill, but to create; when they gather from afar every ray of 

 various genius to their hospitable halls, and by their con- 

 centrated fires set the heart of their youth in flame." Strong 

 men make universities strong. A great man never fails to 

 leave a great mark on every youth with whom he comes in 

 contact. A professor to whom original investigation is un- 

 known should have no place in a university. Men of common- 

 place or second-hand scholarship are of necessity men of low 

 ideals, however much the fact may be disguised. 



And above and beyond all learning is the influence of char- 

 acter, the impulse to virtue and piety which comes from men 

 whose lives show that virtue and piety really exist. For the 

 life of the most exalted as well as the humblest of men, there 



