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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XV. No. 382. 



labor with us— North, South, East and 

 West — and our nation's schools, higher and 

 lower alike, how much they have taught us, 

 and by what bonds of affection and fellow- 

 service we are linked to them. 



All these themes crowd the mind as we 

 reflect upon the significance of the ideals 

 which we are gathered to celebrate; for 

 this is no personal function. The passing 

 of position or power from one servant of 

 the university to another is but an inci- 

 dent; the university itself is lasting, let us 

 hope eternal. Its spirit and its life, its 

 usefulness and its service, are the proper 

 subjects for our contemplation to-day. 



The shifting panorama of the centuries 

 reveals three separate and underlying 

 forces which shape and direct the higher 

 civilization. Two of these have a spiritual 

 character, and one appears to be, in part 

 at least, economic, although clearer vision 

 may one day show that they all spring from 

 a common source. These three forces are 

 the church, the state and science, or, bet- 

 ter, scholarship. Many have been their 

 interdependences and manifold their inter- 

 twinings. Now one, now another, seems 

 uppermost. Charlemagne, Hildebrand, 

 Darwin are central figures, each for his 

 time. At one epoch these forces are in 

 alliance, at another in opposition. Socrates 

 died in prison, Bruno at the stake. Marcus 

 Aurelius sat on an emperor's throne, and 

 Thomas Aquinas ruled the mind of a uni- 

 versal church. All else is tributary to these 

 three, and we grow in civilization as man- 

 kind comes to recognize the existence and 

 the importance of each. 



It is commonplace that in the earliest 

 family community, church and state were 

 one. The patriarch was both ruler and 

 priest. There was neither division of labor 

 nor separation of function. Wlien develop- 

 ment took place, church and state, while 

 still substantially one, had distinct organs 

 of expression. These often clashed, and 



the separation of the two principles was 

 thereby hastened. As yet scholarship had 

 hardly any representatives. When they 

 did begin to appear, when science and phi- 

 losophy took their rise, they were often 

 prophets without honor, either within or 

 without their own country, and were either 

 misunderstood or persecuted by church and 

 state alike. But the time came when 

 scholarship, truth-seeking for its own sake, 

 had so far justified itself that both church 

 and state united to give it permanent or- 

 ganization and a visible body. This organ- 

 ization and body was the university. For 

 nearly ten centuries— a period longer than 

 the history of parliamentary government 

 or of Protestantism — the university has 

 existed to embody the spirit of scholarship. 

 Its arms have been extended to every sci- 

 ence and to all letters. It has known 

 periods of doubt, of weakness and of 

 obscurantism; but the spirit which gave it 

 life has persisted and has overcome every 

 obstacle. To-day, in the opening century, 

 the university proudly asserts itself in 

 every civilized land, not least in our own, 

 as the bearer of a tradition and the servant 

 of an ideal without which life would be 

 barren and the two remaining principles 

 which underlie civilization robbed of half 

 their power. To destroy the university 

 would be to turn back the hands upon the 

 dial of history for centuries; to cripple it 

 is to put shackles upon every forward move- 

 ment that we prize — research, industry, 

 commerce, the liberal and practical arts 

 and sciences. To support and enhance it 

 is to set free new and vitalizing energy in 

 every field of human endeavor. Scholar- 

 ship has shown the world that knowledge 

 is convertible into comfort, prosperity and 

 success, as well as into new and higher 

 types of social order and of spirituality. 

 'Take fast hold of instruction,' said the 

 wise man; 'let her not go; keep her; for 

 she is thy life.' 



