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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVIII. No. 720 



of power is destined to spread further than 

 it has, in industry and government— in 

 every direction. It will be better bal- 

 anced because it will depend more on 

 natural and trained leadership. In the 

 past the masses have depended for leaders 

 on the capable few whose interests were 

 aristocratic, because they had no other 

 choice; and the present distrust of scholar- 

 ship is simply, in part at least, a revulsion 

 from this coercion. They will depend 

 again on a chosen scholarly few, and be- 

 cause they choose to do so they will pro- 

 vide for and command and control their 

 services in the interests of all. They will 

 create a scholarly class devoted to the serv- 

 ice of the people, supported by the people, 

 and entrance to which is free to all who 

 have natural talent and the capacity. The 

 masses will recognize more and more that 

 while seeking greater equality in civil and 

 political rights, in legal status, in indus- 

 trial opportunity and condition, the nat- 

 ural inequality based on differences of 

 capacity, ability and talent can never be 

 eradicated; that, therefore, they miist. be 

 utilized in the service of the people. That 

 to be devoted to the service of the people 

 they must be supported by the people and 

 must be looked to as the source of supply 

 of the ideals and the leadership needed to 

 keep active the intellectual and spiritual 

 life necessary to the permanence of demo- 

 cratic institutions. 



We must not shut our eyes to the fact 

 that scholarship supported by a democracy 

 is subjected to some peculiar dangers. In 

 the first place, the scholar can not com- 

 mand results, and there is danger that the 

 impatience of the public for results will 

 imperil the prolonged support necessary 

 for the quiet meditation without which 

 scholarship can not flourish at all. This 

 danger can be met only by educating the 

 public, and there are signs that the educa- 

 tive process has begun. 



In the second place, scholarship sup- 

 ported by democracy is subjected to danger 

 to liberty of thought and opinion— a dan- 

 ger to which the minority is always ex- 

 posed from the tyranny of the majority. 

 There is danger always that unpopular 

 truth will be rejected and its advocates 

 persecuted. True, there are some who be- 

 lieve that that danger is passing away. I 

 do not share their belief. I see no signs 

 that the tyranny of popular opinion is any 

 less to-day than it ever was, or that there 

 is likely to be greater liberty of opinion in 

 the future than in the past. It is true, 

 still, as it always has been, of all those who 

 are in advance of their times and who hold 

 the lamp of spiritual and intellectual truth 

 aloft for the guidance of the people that 



The age in which they live 



Will not forgive 



The splendour of the everlasting light 



That makes their foreheads bright, 



Nor the sublime forerunning of their time. 



There is no means of removing this 

 danger, although, fortunately, "in the de- 

 velopment of the policy of the great labor 

 organizations, there are signs that the wage 

 earners are learning the truth that liberty 

 is the mother of progress. " It is question- 

 able, however, whether it is a more serious 

 danger than befalls a scholarship sup- 

 ported by an aristocracy. There is as 

 much danger that in the latter case truth 

 will be colored to meet the ideas of the sup- 

 porters of the scholars and their work, as 

 that in the latter case it will be colored to 

 curry popular favor. The duty of the 

 scholar is plain — he must be the servant, 

 not the slave, of democracy. He must have 

 the courage of the seeker after truth. He 

 must be ready, if necessary, to be a martyr 

 to public opinion for the sake of the truth 

 he finds. The scholar must see to it, too, 

 that he does not yield to popular clamor 

 and emasculate education by popularizing 

 learning. He must ever "insist that 



