THE NOBILITY OF KNOWLEDGE, 613 



not from any want of proper aims in our scholars, but simply from the 

 circumstance that our people do not sufficiently appreciate the value 

 of the higher forms of literary and scientific work to bear the burden 

 which the production necessarily entails. Scholars must live, as well 

 as other men, and in a style which is in harmony with their surround- 

 ings and cultivated tastes, and their best efforts cannot be devoted to 

 the extension of knowledge unless they are relieved from anxiety in 

 regard to their daily bread. 



In our colleges the professors are paid for teaching and for teaching 

 only, while in a foreign university the teaching is wholly secondary, 

 and the professor is expected to announce in his lectures the results of 

 his own study, and not the thoughts of other men. Until the whole 

 status of the professors in our chief universities can be changed, very 

 little original thought or investigation can be expected, and these in- 

 stitutions cannot become what they should be, the soul of the higher 

 life of the nation. It is in your power, however, to bring about this 

 change, but the reform can be effected in only one way. You must 

 give to your universities the means of supporting fully and generously 

 those men of genius who have shown themselves capable of extending 

 the boundaries of human knowledge, and demand of them, only^ that 

 they devote their lives to study and research, and let me assure you 

 that no money can be spent which will yield a larger or more valuable 

 return. 



If you do not look beyond your material interests, the higher life 

 of the nation, which you will thus serve to cherish and foster, will 

 guard your honor, and protect your home ; and, on the other hand, 

 what can you expect in a nation whose highest ideal is the dollar, or 

 what the dollar will buy, but venality, corruption, and ultimate ruin ? 



But, rising at once to the noblest considerations, and regarding 

 only the welfare of your country and the education of your race, what 

 higher service can you render than by sustaining and cherishing the 

 grandest thought, the purest ideals, and the loftiest aspirations, which 

 humanity has reached, and making your universities the altars w^here 

 the holy fire shall be kept ever burning bright and warm ? 



Do you think me an enthusiast ? Look back through history, and 

 see for yourselves what has made the nations great and glorious. 

 Why is it that, after twenty centuries, the memory of ancient Greece 

 is still enshrined among the most cherished traditions of our race? 

 Is it not because Homer sang, Phidias wrought, and Plato, Aris- 

 totle, Demosthenes, Thucydides, with a host of others, thought and 

 wrote ? Or, if for you the military exploits of that classic age have 

 the greater charm, do not forget that, were it not for Grecian litera- 

 ture, Thermopylae, Marathon, and Salamis, would have been long since 

 forgotten, and that the bravery, self-devotion, and patriotism, which 

 these names embalm, were the direct fruits of that higher life which 

 those great thinkers illustrated and sustained. And, coming down to 



