SEMI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 145 



nowhere else, are nourished and cherished the highest intellectual 

 and moral ideas. 



But here are institutions with new purposes and new rela- 

 tions. On their doorposts is written the word "practical," and 

 in their classrooms the student is asked to consider the vocational 

 side of life and he learns of machinery and slaughter-houses 

 and railroads and markets; in short, he learns of all that man is 

 doing, rather than of what man is thinking and dreaming and 

 hoping. Is the future investigator with his imagination fired by 

 ambitions for larger knowledge to come out of such an environ- 

 ment ? We may well be solicitous whether the spirit of learning 

 can survive in centers of thought where facts and principles are 

 so constantly weighed and measured with reference to their 

 material or commercial value. It is a serious matter if the new 

 education that is now attracting to it thousands of our young 

 men is to serve chiefly in commercializing, rather than intellec- 

 tualizing, the most virile manhood of a nation that is already 

 grossly materialistic. 



Friends and fellow-workers, these problems are your prob- 

 lems. Now that an apparent transition in the aims and meth- 

 ods of education is in progress, the institutions you represent, 

 founded as they are upon the broadest possible basis of educa- 

 tional function and leading as they do an invasion into new and 

 untried fields, occupy a position of critical responsibility. May 

 you possess such wisdom, and such initiative tempered by the 

 lessons of experience, that your efforts will advance the intelli- 

 gence and prosperity of the farm and shop, promote the love 

 of learning, and uphold the standards of the scholar. 



