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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIII. No. 588. 



The hour for discussion, profession and ex- 

 periment has passed, our worlvs must now 

 speak for us. 



Far and near throughout the country 

 this university morality, this mental pose 

 and whatsoever proceeds from it, have in a 

 high degree displaced the older sanctions 

 and been erected into a sort of cult. This 

 will prove a disaster, unless we are most 

 conservative. Our standards, though not 

 very precise as yet, are very genuine and 

 very real. As yet, too, they have en- 

 grossed attention from the inner circle 

 only, and have not engaged the critical at- 

 tention of the great world. But the tran- 

 sition is on us and is beginning; here we 

 stand. We make our appeal for support 

 in the new era, no longer to sympathetic 

 friends alone, but to all givers— to the com- 

 munity, for money and for sympathy. 

 The community asks : what do you want it 

 for? Because of the service we render. 

 And, pray, what is the service? We fur- 

 nish the best citizens. Is that so sure? 

 Many worshipers of the main chance are 

 university men. We advance knowledge : 

 Give the items. We mould opinion: That 

 is an open question. And so on, and so on. 

 On all these points we can offer proof and 

 make a stand; but the proof is not con- 

 vincing to every one. We are compelled to 

 go further back and state our principles ; to 

 say, what we exist for is the maintenance 

 of standards; the service we render is the 

 creation of ideals by faith and sympathy, 

 and, far above this, the practice of what 

 we profess, the realization of those ideals 

 in education, citizenship, politics and reli- 

 gion. Our banner is a tricolor and its 

 stripes are three: firmness, tolerance and 

 temperance. 



No wonder that men worship at the 

 shrine of natural science. Before and 

 since Pilate, men have been asking: What 

 is truth? As the world understands it, 

 science professes to tell us first that the 



search is vain, there is no absolute truth; 

 and secondly, that what relative truth 

 there is, she alone has discovered and of it 

 she is the sole guardian. This is a proud 

 claim, and science, like many men, has been 

 largely taken at her own estimate of her- 

 self ; especially since by her means the face 

 of nature has, within a century, been 

 changed more than in all the centuries pre- 

 ceding taken together. Especially since 

 further, the man of science, fearless, daunt- 

 less, adventurous, self-confident, steps forth 

 with an imperious demand for leadership. 

 Faith and ideals seem to be hollow terms in 

 his ears : reality, investigation, knowledge, 

 utility, these are the staple terms of his 

 vocabulary. Yet his firmness is not that of 

 which we speak and for which we plead, or 

 at least not all of it, nor even much of it. 

 In no period known to me, throughout the 

 course of history, has the 'cocksureness of 

 science' aroused such antagonism. Just in 

 proportion as it has seemed to say : all truth 

 is relative and material, the common soul 

 has cried louder for pity, for sympathy, for 

 balm in suffering and for the sustenance 

 of love. Never have we known such a re- 

 crudescence of superstition, nor a longer 

 catalogue of mysteries, each and all protests 

 against the limitations of natural science 

 and its scanty supply of food for the soul. 

 A starved soul is, as the Romans thought, 

 a malignant ghost, the most dangerous dis- 

 turber of the public peace. When fed on 

 negations, or on materialism, or on any 

 husks which human experience has long 

 since rejected, the natural, kindly, human 

 mind becomes either a credulous dupe or 

 a wolfish freebooter. Both sorts abound 

 among us in dangerous proportions. 



This, I suppose, is what my predecessor 

 on this stage intended, when he wittily di- 

 vided the field of knowledge into humani- 

 ties and inhumanities. If I caught his idea, 

 I can not altogether agree, for the con- 

 trast is not so alarming as that. One with- 



