June 30, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



983 



to every activity of academic life, and or- 

 ganizes these into the strength and unity 

 which only a common aim can confer. 



Purpose steadily pursued creates a per- 

 suasive spirit, registers itself in institu- 

 tional character. Open-mindedness must 

 be a conspicuous trait of a true academic 

 community. The very search for new 

 knowledge, the effort to see the relations of 

 things, presupposes an attitude of enquiry, 

 a willingness to look at an idea or a fact 

 from many different standpoints. Open- 

 mindedness toward truth merges into toler- 

 ance and mutual respect as between the 

 individuals and groups who make up the 

 university. Narrowness or prejudice, a 

 patronizing attitude of one group toward 

 another, the discrediting of this calling as 

 compared with that, the limiting of the 

 conception of research to traditional fields 

 of enquiry — these things have no place in 

 an institution mastered by a sense of loyal 

 duty to commonwealth and nation. Gen- 

 uine culture consists largely in sympathy 

 with many kinds of men and in insight into 

 the widest ranges of human life. To live 

 in a highly specialized community and to 

 enter with appreciation into the activities 

 of one's colleagues in many fields is in it- 

 self a liberalizing experience. There is 

 place for generous rivalry in a great uni- 

 versity, but this rivalry must be kept on a 

 high level and not allowed to sink into 

 unworthy conflict and discord. Open- 

 mindedness, tolerance, high-minded rivalry 

 can not fail, under the guidance of a con- 

 trolling ideal, to fuse the university into a 

 genuine unity of comradeship and good- 

 will. When each man and each group can 

 see, not only through its own eyes but 

 through the eyes of other persons and 

 groups, the common problems of the insti- 

 tution, there must develop a keener sense 

 of team play, a quickened loyalty, a more 

 vivid corporate consciousness. 



The university, a servant of the common 

 life, exalting standards of efiiciency and 

 worth, summoning its members to a com- 

 mon task, must stand for the loftiest ideals. 

 It must inspire enduring faith. It must 

 exalt character above technical skill, men- 

 tal alertness, refinement of feeling. It 

 must lay hold of the fundamental motives. 

 The university rightly aims at leadership, 

 but in the words of Dr. Pritchett, it can 

 win this "only by inspiring the youth of 

 the democracy with a true, vibrant living 

 faith. . . . The American university is to- 

 day the home of that faith. It is the faith 

 of humanity in humanity . . . and the 

 American university, which embodies the 

 intellectual aspirations of a free people, is 

 becoming day by day the representative of 

 their spiritual aspirations as well." The 

 state university can not fulfill its true 

 function unless it rises to the higher level 

 of spiritual idealism. It may not ally 

 itself with any church or support any one 

 theology, but it must draw its inspiration 

 from an essentially religious view of life. 

 As the Sir Thomas More's Utopians toler- 

 ated many theologies of widely varying 

 kinds, but united in common worship of 

 the divine energy back of all nature and 

 human life, so the university welcomes men 

 and women of many faiths and rallies them 

 to a devoted loyalty to common ideals of 

 duty, service and reverent aspiration. 



In the "Republic" Socrates, in talking of 

 testing the young for leadership, declares, 

 "We must inquire who are the best guar- 

 dians of their own conviction that the 

 interest of the state is to be the rule of all 

 their actions. We must watch them from 

 their youth upwards and propose deeds for 

 them to perform in which they are most 

 likely to forget or be deceived, and he who 

 remembers and is not deceived is to be 

 selected, and he who fails in the trial is to 

 be rejected." The gentle sage goes on to 



