will care comparatively little whether they agree with him or not. If any community is to be an intellectual centre, where intellectual work is done, where all men learn what intellectuality is, and where some may be expected to contract it themselves, there must be a love of truth itself, and an earnest desire that it shall prevail, which is stronger than the love of any single opinion. There must be a sort of intellectual high spirits, in which one loves a brave foe more than a craven follower. It is often supposed that being tolerant means having no conviction. Thus Robert Browning said: "There are those who believe something, and therefore will tolerate nothing; and, on the other hand, those who tolerate everything, because they believe nothing." But it is not impossible, nor even rare, among persons of genuine intellectual zeal both to have convictions and also to love in others that quality of mind that will express itself in contrary opinions.

I think that the noblest words which were ever said of university education were those said of Harvard by William James upon the occasion of his receiving the LL.D. degree in 1903.1 He spoke as one who was in a certain sense an

1 1 Published under the title of "The True Harvard," in Memories and Studies, pp. 348-355.

outsider at Harvard, for he had never been an undergraduate of the college; he had never sat in the cheering section at football games, he had not been a member of undergraduate clubs, and it is altogether probable that he had never participated in any form of collective college enthusiasm. He had no class to walk with in the commencement procession. He did not seek to belittle these things because he had no part in them, but rather to describe another sort of loyalty which he and others like him felt no less deeply. We may value our college, he virtually said, as we value our family, merely because it is ours, because we are bound to it by so many associations and traditions; or we may value it because of our pride in its greatness. And he found the greatness of Harvard to lie, as he put it, in her being "a nursery for independent and lonely thinkers." Speaking of those who, like himself, did not belong to the Harvard family in the narrower or more clannish sense, he said:

"They come from the remotest outskirts of our country, without introductions, without school affiliations; special students, scientific students, graduate students, poor students of the college, who make their living as they go. They hover in the background on days when the crimson

color is most in evidence, but they nevertheless are intoxicated and exultant with the nourishment they find here. . . . .. When they come to Harvard, it is not primarily because she is a club. It is because they have heard of her persistently atomistic constitution, of her tolerance of exceptionality and eccentricity, of her devotion to the principles of individual vocation and choice. . . . Thoughts are the precious seeds of which our universities should be the botanical gardens. Beware when God lets loose a thinker on the world-either Carlyle or Emerson said that for all things then have to rearrange themselves. But the thinkers in their youth are almost always very lonely creatures. 'Alone the great sun rises and alone spring the great streams.' The university most worthy of rational admiration is that one in which your lonely thinker can feel himself least lonely, most positively furthered, and most richly fed."

There is no lover of Harvard who would not have Harvard be and remain deserving of such regard. There is no lover of any university who would not have his university cultivate and treasure this spirit, as the quintessence of liberal education. There is no true lover of America or of mankind who would not have this spirit dif

fused whether by the university or any other educational agency. It is the very savor of the salt of emancipation and liberty.

These are the qualities of mind in which true individualism is rooted: originality and independence, both in judgment and in imagination; a power to distinguish between knowledge and opinion, belief or information; a recognition of the limits and degrees of knowledge; a love of knowledge for its own sake; and a spirit of tolerant fellowship with all who love knowledge, whatever be the particular opinion that they hold. Only that which threatens these qualities of mind really threatens individualism. is external, of the body and the mechanism, not of the soul. So long as these qualities are fostered and diffused we need not fear whatever of disciplined will or of institutional organization may be necessary to carry forward the great designs of the national and collective life.

All else

X

EDUCATION FOR FREEDOM

T is unnecessary in these days to justify educa

IT

tion. If there is any single idea about education that is now generally accepted, it is the idea that education is useful to the individual and imperative for the community. We measure the civilization of any nation or section by the test of literacy, or by the educational facilities that are open to its people. Wherever democratic political ideals have come to prevail, it is a recognized duty of the state to provide education freely for all, in at least the rudiments of knowledge. In our own country we have virtually come to believe that mere poverty should not be allowed to stand in the way of even a college or university training for any individual who can demonstrate his capacity and ambition. Wherever high industrial or professional ideals prevail, the importance of a prolonged and thorough training in engineering, law, or medicine is no longer doubted. And wherever democratic social ideals prevail, as notably in this country, it is clearly