THE ADMINISTRATIVE PERIL IN EDUCATION 505 



Yet the charge of presumption recurs. Surely the cumulative wis- 

 dom that has gone into the guidance of universities would have recog- 

 nized these untoward influences, would have referred them to their 

 source, and disposed of them, if they were so real and so ominous as 

 this arraignment sets forth. 3 Such a view rests upon a naive faith in 

 the insight and consistency and vertebrate intellectual integrity of able 

 and intelligent men exposed to complex social pressure, which I can not 

 share, and for which history furnishes uncertain warrant. The best 

 intentioned and discriminating men are prone to worship idols or to 

 yield to those who do; the status quo of the standpatter easily becomes 

 an obstacle, if not an obsession. Eeforms have ever been necessary and 

 will ever be so, so long as new as well as ancient evils yield to an increas- 

 ing insight or a more sensitive conscience. Favorable or tolerable sit- 

 uations may degenerate as they persist and grow out of helpful re- 

 lation with the advancing forces that shape our ends. It is not vice 

 alone but many another if lesser untoward influence that first endured 

 or resisted is by familiarity cherished, through vested interests em- 

 braced. The personal equation enters; we defend what we have ac- 

 quired, established, contributed ; not " a poor thing, but mine own " but 

 " a good thing because my own " is the attitude assumed toward one's 

 house, or town, or club, or college or automobile. All this weakens the 

 test of fact — the vapid argument that whatever is, is best — and divests 

 radical scepticism of the charge of presumption. Experience requires 

 critical interpretation before it yields its true meaning. It is a com- 

 mon enough situation to find that men progress in their endeavors des- 

 pite the handicap of the means on which they depend. The successes 

 achieved under the present system are in my judgment partly due to the 

 compensations that lie in every system however unsuitable, yet more 

 largely to the mitigations exercised under considerations foreign to its 

 temper, more plainly to violations of its provisions, — to concessions 

 and forbearance. These the reforms advocated would establish as con- 

 stitutional rights, as constructive principles fertile in promise, inviting 

 embodiment in practical measures. The gains, the trophies, the tributes 

 are naturally in evidence and properly so; but what of the losses, the 

 ships that have gone down at sea ! Moreover bookkeeping in terms of 

 intellectual and spiritual incomes is so difficult ; values of ideas are so 

 subject to difference of appraisal by shifting standards, that university 



3 The appeal to experience is curiously partial. If the larger experience of 

 the old world be considered, the burden of proof falls the other way. Externalism 

 does not obtain there in the same manner or temper; presidential autocracy has 

 not been found necessary or desirable; faculty control exists in variable yet 

 always satisfactory measure; and the evils that flourish in American institutions 

 are minimized. It has not been shown that our educational requirements are so 

 wholly peculiar as to demand opposite provisions; it is fairly established that 

 the democratic traditions of the old-world are responsible for some of the miti- 

 gations and concessions which have prevented the system of imposed authority 

 from developing its direst possibilities. 



