THOUGHTS ABOUT UNIVERSITIES. 349 



education and of all matters of public interest and importance to 

 the majority. 



The danger so clearly pointed out is real, beyond question ; but 

 I can not agree with the author that it is exclusively or distinctively 

 modern. If some in our day interpret the belief that the voice of 

 the people is the voice of God, as conviction that the loudest voice 

 is most divine; if they assert that the man with pure and lofty 

 ideals of education and duty and loyalty is a public enemy; we must 

 remember that so wise a man as Aristotle taught, in the day of 

 Athenian democracy, that the man who is virtuous in undue meas- 

 ure is a moral monster, as justly repugnant to his neighbors as one 

 pre-eminent in vice. 



If the first book calls Aristotle to mind, one must often think 

 of Jeremiah while reading the second, for its author is a dismal 

 prophet, who holds that, formidable as unbridled democracy seems, 

 it is helpless in the struggle with organized plutocracy, and that its 

 efforts to shake off the restraints and limitations of social exist- 

 ence can end in nothing but a more crushing despotism, while sub- 

 mission may bring such rewards of merit for good behavior in the 

 past and such prizes for good conduct in the future as seem to the 

 givers to be good investments. 



Both writers draw many of their illustrations from the history 

 of our own country, and they hold that our great political contests 

 are struggles between those who wish to maintain our institutions 

 for the sake of what they can themselves make out of them, and 

 those who seek to wreck the ship of state for very similar reasons. 



Some hold that, these things being true, they can show the 

 learned professor how he may win back, through the struggle be- 

 tween these two great classes of mankind, some of that confidence 

 in his wisdom which his predecessors enjoyed. They tell him he 

 may make his learning represent the people if he will extend his 

 university until it becomes as universal as the kindergarten, and 

 that he may at the same time increase his popularity with the select 

 if he will devote more of his time and more of his energy to that 

 branch of learning which was in olden times pursued in that secluded 

 cloister called the campus, although it is better known to the polite 

 society of our day through the banjo club, the football team, and 

 the mask and wig club. 



If he will cultivate these two fields, and, refraining from the 

 theoretical pursuit of empty generalities, will enter upon a three 

 months' campaign of education at some time when men's minds are 

 stimulated by the heat of faction to welcome calm discussion of the 

 principles of common honesty and good citizenship, he can not fail 

 to win the respect and confidence of all. 



