OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 7 



and meat, there are prosperity and the possibilities of a larger life 

 for all in it. But we must beware of falling too deeply into the 

 current of mere getting and spending. Commerce is good — but 

 commercialism is bad. To devote ourselves wholly to business 

 may at times be as necessary as for a soldier to devote himself 

 wholly to battle-. But human nature cannot endure the strain 

 very long without becoming degraded in its finer fibre and vul- 

 garized in soul. Always to be thinking money, always to be hunt- 

 ing it, is what no man can endure without the loss of his intellec- 

 tual birthright. And only second to commercialism in its nar- 

 rowing influence is professionalism ; the shutting up of our life 

 within the limits of the work by which we earn our bread ; the 

 provincialism, the bigotry, the philistinism of the lawyer who is 

 nothing but a lawyer ; of the doctor who is nothing but a doctor ; 

 of the preacher who is nothing but a preacher ; of the banker who 

 is nothing but a banker — of any drudge who is nothing but a 

 drudge. An institute of art and science in a community is a break- 

 water against commercialism and professionalism. The creed 

 you proclaim is that while it is necessary to have knowledge and 

 professional skill which we can turn into cash it is also necessary 

 to have knowledge which we can convert into mental tissue, into 

 intellectual largeness and soundness, into life and life's worthier 

 delights. You will say to the community that truth and beauty 

 are needful to life in a deeper sense than bread and meat ; that a 

 mind without curiosity to know the truth of this divine world we 

 live in, and a soul without a hunger for the beautiful, are little 

 nobler than the mechanisms they ply, or " sheep and goats that 

 nourish a blind life within the brain." The real value of life you 

 will say is not measured by what it lays up in our safes but by 

 what we lay up in mind, heart and spirit. 



We live in a time when large numbers of men have ceased to 

 be interested in churches and the religious life ; not so much be- 

 cause they are devoting themselves to vicious things, as because 

 they are unable to believe what the churches teach, or what they 

 suppose it teaches. They are 



" Wandering between tw'6 worlds, one dead, 

 The other powerless to be born." 



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