EDUCATIONAL ENDOWMENTS. 537 



ceiving value for value given seems to be a conception which, though 

 it has reached many people in a confused way, has not yet penetrated 

 educational circles. These, like the clergy in former times, imagine 

 themselves independent of the rules governing other men in the struggle 

 for existence, and demand support as a caste, independently of the 

 quality of the individual service rendered, or the amount of demand 

 for it. This is the attitude of college men as a body. They have not 

 yet accommodated themselves to the new age, which recognizes no 

 privilege. And this feeling likewise governs the law, which still per- 

 mits men to set up perpetuities, and control the administration of 

 wealth years after they are in their graves, and after a society of which 

 they had no idea has arisen. 



The explanation is not as simple as the fact is plain. It is that 

 with the advance of the United States to the position of the wealthiest 

 nation of the earth, the wealthy and fashionable classes have naturally 

 reverted to European standards in education and fashion, and thus 

 a collegiate system which once fulfilled a real need in Europe, has 

 been transplanted into our own uncongenial soil. For it is true that 

 even the churning of Latin and Greek into unwilling minds once 

 had its use ; as is also true of slavery, of the feudal system, of church 

 establishments, and of all other things. That use consisted in the 

 social discipline involved in the creation of a class united by common 

 interests and ideas which could assist the ecclesiastics and the police 

 in restraining the barbaric vulgar. When modern educational insti- 

 tutions were founded the great necessity of society was the repression 

 of lawlessness, of private war, and of all the elements making for 

 social disorganization. Under the supreme instinct of self-preservation 

 every nation in Europe put forth vast institutions to uphold order 

 and some semblance of law. The feudal system, ecclesiastical power, 

 monarchy, and education, were the chief engines evolved for this pur- 

 pose. In turn, or at the same time, they fulfilled the need which pro- 

 duced them ; and since then they have each slowly declined and are 

 rapidly being forced to adapt themselves to the changed condition of 

 mankind. But every institution retains the instincts which gave it 

 birth ; the tendency of every structure is to persist in that mode of 

 activity with which it starts. So we find the aristocracy of England 

 still " willin','' like Barkis, to take care of the people, in spite of the un- 

 grateful and altogether improper ridicule of men like Mr. Labou- 

 chere ; and the late book of Mr. Mallock, " The Old Order changes," is 

 extremely interesting and instructive, both as the latest expression of 

 this pleasing willingness and in the ferocity with which it treats those 

 who object to being taken care of.* So with ecclesiastical systems, 

 in their decline as an autocratic caste, the same medisoval instincts show 



* Of Japhet Snapper (a caricature of a leading radical politician) he says, " his de- 

 sire to abolish the aristocracy is only a fermentation of his desire to lick their shoes." 

 This is pleasant. 



