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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 410. 



their consciences, and give them the catholic 

 vision of those who know their just rela- 

 tions to their, fellow men. Here in Amer- 

 ica, for every man touched with nobility, 

 for every man touched with the spirit of 

 our institutions, social service is the high 

 law of duty, and every American univer- 

 sity must square its standards by that law 

 or lack its national title. It is serving the 

 nation to give men the enlightenments of 

 a general training; it is serving the nation 

 to equip fit men for thorough scientific 

 investigation and for the tasks of exact 

 scholarship, for science and scholarship 

 carry the truth forward from generation 

 to generation and give the certain touch of 

 knowledge to the processes of life. But 

 the whole service demanded is not rendered 

 until something is added to the mere train- 

 ing of the undergraduate and the mere 

 equipment of the investigator, something 

 ideal and of the very spirit of all action. 

 The final synthesis of learning is in phi- 

 losophy. You shall most clearly judge the 

 spirit of a university if you judge it by the 

 philosophy it teaches; and the philosophy 

 of conduct is what every wise man should 

 wish to derive from his knowledge of the 

 thoughts and the affairs of the generations 

 that have gone before him. We are not 

 put into this world to sit still and know; 

 we are put into it to act. 



It is true that in order to learn men must 

 for a little while withdraw from action, 

 must seek some quiet place of remove from 

 the bustle of affairs, where their thoughts 

 may run clear and tranquil, and the heats 

 of business be for the time put off; but 

 that cloistered refuge is no place to dream 

 in. It is a place for the first conspectus 

 of the mind, for a thoughtful poring upon 

 the map of life; and the boundaries which 

 should emerge to the mind's eye are not 

 more the intellectual than the moral bound- 

 aries of thought and action. I do not see 

 how any university can afford such an out- 



look if its teachings be not informed with 

 the spirit of religion, and that the religion 

 of Christ, and with the energy of a positive 

 faith. The argument for efficiency in edu- 

 cation can have no permanent validity if 

 the efficiency sought be not moral as well 

 as intellectual. The ages of strong and 

 definite moral impulse have been the ages 

 of achievement; and the moral impulses 

 which have lifted highest have come from 

 Christian peoples— the moving history of 

 our own nation were proof enough of that. 

 Moral efficiency is, in the last analysis, the 

 fundamental argument for liberal culture. 

 A merely literary education, got out of 

 books and old literature, is a poor thing 

 enough if the teacher stick at grammatical 

 and syntactical drill ; but if it be indeed an 

 introduction into the thoughtful labors of 

 men of all generations it may be made the 

 prologue to the mind's emancipation: its 

 emancipation from narrowness— from nar- 

 rowness of sympathy, of perception, of 

 motive, of purpose and of hope. And the 

 deep fountains of Christian teaching are 

 its most refreshing springs. 



I have said already, let me say again, 

 that in such a place as this we have charge, 

 not of men's fortunes, but of their spirits. 

 This is not the place in which to teach men 

 their specific tasks— except their tasks be 

 those of scholarship and investigation; it 

 is the place in which to teach them the rela- 

 tions Avhich all tasks bear to the work of 

 the world. Some men there are who are 

 condemned to learn only the technical skill 

 by which they are to live ; but these are not 

 the men whose privilege it is to come to a 

 university. University men ought to hold 

 themselves bound to walk the upper roads 

 of usefiilness which run along the ridges 

 and command views of the general fields 

 of life. This is why I believe general train- 

 ing, with no particular occupation in view, 

 to be the very heart and essence of univer- 

 sity training, and the indispensable founda- 



