54 
Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
shouter of empty slogans. Emma Goldman—of all people!—turns 
state’s evidence on this point. ‘‘The average radical,” she says, 
“ is as hide-bound by mere terms as the man devoid of all ideas. 
‘Bloated plutocrats,’ ‘economic determinism,’ ‘class consciousness,’ 
and similar expressions sum up for him the symbols of revolt. His 
hearing is dulled by the din of stereotyped phrases.” The world 
is indeed rife with special pleadings by doctrinaires. We cannot 
with confidence seek our truth in the printed organ of the socialist 
party, the religious journal, or in the publications of the “wets.” 
Such literature serves its purpose, which is essentially propagan¬ 
dist, but practically none of it is free from the taint of prejudice. 
To make the cause prevail—this is the primary purpose, and argu¬ 
ment and data are selected and displayed to that end. It would 
be foolish to seek for an unbiased presentation of truth in any 
one of them. 
In this intellectual chaos, it would not perhaps be unfair to 
say that scholarship, in its pure and detached form, is about the 
only agency engaged in a wholly disinterested search for truth— 
the scholarship of teacher and writer as we find them in their 
highest realization, the scholarship of the man working in the 
field of the pure sciences, the scholarship of the discriminating 
teacher of history, of the keen analyzer of our social unrest. In 
this statement no reference is made to things of purely spiritual 
content, except as they rest on scientific fact and so depend for 
their convincing power on the truth of a cosmic philosophy. If 
scholarship does occupy and can continue to maintain such a 
unique position in a world of flux, its power as a guiding and con¬ 
trolling force is inestimable. If it can draw to itself the best 
minds of the nation, men of intellect, poise, and devotion, men 
capable of mental perspective and detached judgment, it' has a 
high destiny before it. It would be the supreme court in the 
world of the mind, judicial, wise, incorruptible. Such a court 
would command respect and win confidence wherever its qualities 
were recognized. The insurgency of college students has some¬ 
times troubled good faculty members. They look askance at the 
welcome accorded at the universities to the preacher of heresies 
in religion and political economies, at the applause which a stirring 
apostle of radicalism wins in the college chapel. But if a college 
faculty is worthy of the great traditions and ideals of scholarship, 
and by its devotion to truth and untainted judgment has won 
the confidence of those it teaches, there will be little danger that 
