The Teacher and the State 79 



all these things, who does not somehow find perpetual 

 recreation in some form of self -culture ; and so in the 

 third place I have ventured to suggest the teacher's duty 

 to himself the duty of continued intellectual effort in 

 some field of intellectual delight. 



Let us speak not now of organized graduate study; 

 what I urge is broader than that, and will apply after all 

 formal graduate work has been completed. I refer to 

 the student's own care of his own intellectual life. No 

 student passes through an institution such as this with- 

 out finding somewhere his interest quickened, his taste 

 aroused, so that he realizes his preference for some one 

 definite thing for language, science, mathematics, lit- 

 erature. Let him follow his preference. Let him by 

 private study become the best arithmetician, the best 

 astronomer, the best physicist in Iowa; let him pursue 

 to the last detail the science of field and river, as every- 

 where such is now accessible ; let him study his favorite 

 language, his favorite page of history. In all these things 

 rather in some one of them, he shall find the pathway of 

 life. Perhaps literature he affects. How fair the field ! 

 How great the opportunity! How needed in Iowa the 

 art ! Study literature, read it, create it. On these rich 

 fields its coming is delayed. But it yet shall rise from 

 the spirit-peopled mists where our prairie rivers wind, 

 from the golden shadows that move across our corn- 

 embroidered fields, from the haunting memory of red 

 man and pioneer, as these move dimly now by forest, 

 grove, and spring. 



These are some of the things that shall save the teacher, 



