54 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



"We are, however, concerned with the sense or nonsense of the 

 ideas of President Seelye, Mr. Ely, and their coterie of professorial 

 socialists, only in a secondary degree. Our purpose is to show that 

 the old Oxford spirit is being bred again in this country through the 

 agency of highly-endowed educational institutions. Here, as always, 

 where artificial protection is afforded to incapacity and medievalism, 

 we find the old neglect of facts, the old servility to prejudice and 

 power, the same proneness toward the past, the same complacent care- 

 lessness and assurance of statement. Here, as ever, we find the old 

 protective tone, the old ecclesiastical air the old air of taking the 

 public under the writer's wing. Had we space, numerous passages 

 might be cited showing the patronizing and wholly foreign way in 

 which the laboring-classes are regarded. And, of course, the same 

 class-spirit is shown, as it always has been, in the bearing toward classes 

 who are rising by their own unaided exertions to predominance (not, 

 of course, of the political kind else malign complexions would grow 

 smiling) in the country. And the resistance of the Oxford bishops to 

 Cobden and to Gladstone is singularly well paralleled by the jealousy 

 shown by our endowed professors toward the great railroad managers, 

 the great bankers and merchants and manufacturers, who are doing 

 more for the comfort and happiness of mankind than any equal num- 

 ber of individuals in the world. And " The Nation's " remark (No. 

 1110), at the close of a review of one of Professor Ely's books, that 

 " Dr. Ely seems to us to be seriously out of place in a university chair," 

 was, while conceived in the right spirit, not literally true ; for such 

 men inevitably gravitate toward such positions. 



Now, what is the rationale of the matter ? Why is it that specially- 

 protected classes acquire such a pronounced class instinct as is found 

 in English clergy, in state officials, and in endowed professors ? In 

 the first place, every agency has a tendency to persist in those activi- 

 ties and modes of thought in which it set out ; and when new agen- 

 cies spring out of old ones, the result is the same. Thus, through 

 educational institutions, the eighteenth century forces its ideas on the 

 nineteenth, Europe on America, and Harvard on California and Michi- 

 gan. Then there is the natural class jealousy, exhibited by all organ- 

 isms ; by France as against Germany, America as against England, 

 labor against capital, spiritualist against materialist, by every man 

 against a rival. And when endowments or state support render a 

 class totally distinct and altogether independent of those influences 

 which govern the rest of mankind, both causes work great effects. 

 The result is similar to the coagulation of the blood caused by tying 

 up a limb and preventing a free circulation within it. First there is 

 annoyance, and then the isolated part becomes the seat of a disturb- 

 ance which may threaten the life of the organism. I believe that any 

 person who observes the air, the social temper, which surrounds edu- 

 cational institutions, especially those richly endowed, will find the effect 



