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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXX. No. 770 



hand; and, except that the work is being so 

 hurried as to make scholarship a secondary 

 consideration, these notes and glossaries 

 should be excellent. We must remember, too, 

 that Dr. Eliot is not only a sincere lover of 

 popular education, but is sincerely ignorant 

 of what constitutes higher education. 



But what shall we say of the trustees, who 

 apparently are in complete ignorance that 

 they are holding the segis of the university 

 over the book trade? Does this seem to you 

 to be a small matter, or a matter for laughter ? 

 For what purpose does a university exist ex- 

 cept to be a guide to the people in true 

 scholarship, to be a light and not a false 

 beacon to the half-educated, to be a touch- 

 stone and a safe counselor to those who 

 honor learning and who desire to be led 

 toward her? 



There never was a country in the whole 

 history of the world, where the people stood 

 so much in need of honest dealing from their 

 intellectual leaders as they do in the United 

 States to-day. These hordes of well-meaning 

 people, uneducated and yet hungry for edu- 

 cation, are apt to believe what any clever 

 person tells them. They become the prey of 

 educational mountebanks, of tawdry impostors, 

 of innocent quacks. "Prophesy unto us 

 smooth things " is their cry. Show us that 

 culture is easy, tie it up in ribbons, let it be 

 a " crimson effect " and bear a souvenir 

 water-mark. Show us that a man may be- 

 come an educated man by reading for fifteen 

 minutes a day in some certain books, and 

 give us all of them — on a sheK, every one — 

 on the instalment plan. 



Culture of this kind our people must have 

 and will have, and it is right that they should 

 have it. They require to be spoon-fed, and 

 we need not have any fear that they will not 

 get their food. But it makes a great differ- 

 ence, to the whole of America, who holds the 

 spoon. Harvard College can not hold it with- 

 out abandoning her true mission. 



n. Harvard 

 Liberty of spirit and of speech is the great 

 gift that education brings with it. A univer- 

 sity is a censer of sacred fire at which young 



men may light their torches, and go out in- 

 vigorated into the world. They remain 

 throughout life, no matter how uninspired 

 their lives may be, in some sort of touch with 

 the influences of their university. They never 

 lose their enthusiasm, at least, for the name 

 of the place which once evoked it. Amid all 

 the emptiness of college shouting there is the 

 ring of a little golden bell of truth, a senti- 

 ment of reverence for intellect, a feeling of 

 unity with the history of mankind. It is this 

 thing, which all universities have in com- 

 mon, that makes them valuable; and not the 

 divergencies upon which they pride them- 

 selves. They brag, they compete, they strut; 

 and yet the thing they would bring into 

 honor can only be diminished by competition, 

 and extinguished by bombast. 



The fomenting of a " Harvard sentiment '* 

 is an injury to Harvard intellect. This esprit 

 de corps has been developed to such a pitch 

 of tyranny in some of our colleges that the 

 brains of the boys are often a little addled for 

 life by it. I believe that Harvard has a more 

 liberal tone than the other American colleges. 

 This is due to her antiquity and to her prox- 

 imity to Boston — ^for Boston feeds and 

 nourishes Harvard, and educated people have 

 more influence in Boston than elsewhere in 

 America. 



It is with a kind of joy that I attack 

 Harvard College, knowing that Harvard sup- 

 plies the light and the liberalism — ^hardly 

 elsewhere to be found in America — ^by which 

 I am permitted to proceed. I should grieve 

 to have this freedom extinguished, as it would 

 be if the alumni were forbidden to take a 

 critical interest in the institution. Loyalty 

 to truth is a fine thing; but loyalty to any- 

 thing else is an attack upon truth. 



It is supposed that Harvard's leadership has 

 been due to her numerical superiority, and that 

 this numerical superiority must therefore be 

 maintained at all costs. It is probably true 

 that Harvard is morally and intellectually in 

 advance of the other American colleges; and 

 it seems likely that she will lose her leader- 

 ship through her attempts to retain it. She 

 can not compete in size with the state univer- 



