The University of Kansas. 
 
 C ommencement Addresses. 
 
 McCook, Snow, Gleed. 
 

 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2013 
 
 http://archive.org/details/universityofkansOOuniv 
 
THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS. 
 
 ADDRESSES 
 
 CONCEBNING 
 
 The Chancellorship, 
 The University, 
 Higher Education 
 
 COMMENCEMENT: JUNE, 1890. 
 
 LAWRENCE, KANSAS. 
 
 TOPEKA: 
 
 KANSAS PUBLISHING HOUSE: C.C.BAKER, STATE PRINTER. 
 1890. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The Regents of the Kansas State University beg leave to 
 present in this form three Commencement addresses which 
 they believe will be particularly interesting and instructive 
 at this time to the people of Kansas, and to all readers out- 
 side of Kansas who are- concerned in the work which the 
 State is doing through her chief educational institution at 
 Lawrence. The inauguration of Chancellor Snow on Wed- 
 nesday, June 11th, 1890, occasioned his address and that 
 introducing him by Charles S. Gleed on behalf of the Re- 
 gents. The address by Col. John J. McCook, of New York 
 City, was made as the annual University oration, in Uni- 
 versity Hall, June 10th, 1890. The addresses by Chancel- 
 lor Snow and Regent Gleed relate directly to the University 
 and its newly-chosen chief executive, while the address by 
 Col. McCook is recommended to all readers as a powerful 
 appeal for higher education, made by one of the foremost busi- 
 ness and professional men in the United States. The Regents 
 respectfully urge for these three addresses the most careful 
 attention of every thoughtful Kansan. 
 
 941203 
 
Introductory Address for the Board 
 of Regents. 
 
 CHARLES S. GLEED. 
 
 Mere ceremony is not tolerated as it once was. 
 Formality is an outcast. Time has grown scarce, 
 and those who wait begrudge the moments of 
 their detention. Pleadings at law are directed to 
 be "clear and concise," and inaugurations and 
 graduations, if ostentatious and vain-glorious, are 
 derided. A parade without good purpose is 
 child's play or worse. 
 
 The present ceremony has a purpose. The 
 Regents of the University have chosen Francis 
 Huntington Snow as chief executive of the insti- 
 tution, to succeed ex- Chancellor Lippincott. The 
 choice has been made, the tender has been ac- 
 cepted. With nothing further said or done the 
 new chief could go on with his new work. But 
 the Regents, mindful that this is an institution 
 of the people, for the people and by the people, 
 have determined to make known, in this simple 
 way, something of their convictions as to the in- 
 stitution and its chief executive, and to give that 
 
 (5) 
 
6 
 
 chief executive an opportunity, not particularly 
 to unroll Lis own personal or official program, 
 but rather to outline so much of his theory and 
 knowledge of university work, here and else- 
 where, as will best secure him the needed co- 
 operation of all the people of Kansas. 
 
 And before all else should be spoken souk- 
 words of commendation. 
 
 To ex- Chancellor Lippincott is due the grati- 
 tude of Kansas for six years of the most devoted 
 attention to the interests of the University. His 
 patience, his impersonal zeal, his genial courtesy, 
 his unflagging industry, combined to make his 
 administration one of peace and prosperity. 
 Under him new men of rare merit were added 
 to the faculty, and new buildings and large gains 
 in other ways were made. In his varied experi- 
 ence have been solved many problems for those 
 who are to come after him, and while the his- 
 tory of the University of Kansas is read his 
 name will suggest faithfulness and kindness and 
 success. 
 
 Again, deep gratitude is due to Mr. Spangler, 
 whose vigilance and skill have so thoroughly 
 bridged the administrative chasm between Chan- 
 cellor Lippincott and his successor. No other 
 man outside the faculty could have done so well. 
 All the trying features of the situation Avere met 
 with courage and dignity, and no mistakes were 
 made. For this faithful service Mr. Spangler has 
 
the thanks of his associates of the Board of Re- 
 gents, and, I am sure, of all concerned. 
 
 Again, to Professor James H. Canfield are due 
 compliments and congratulations of an unusual 
 sort. The embarrassments of his position were 
 many, hut they were nobly met. He neither lost 
 his head at the flood of kind things said of him, 
 nor his temper at the things not so kind. For 
 his serenity, his dignity, and his many direct 
 helps — such as his early nomination and steady 
 support of the man finally chosen — the members 
 of the Board of Regents and all friends of the 
 University will never cease to be grateful. 
 
 And lastly, to the people of Kansas who waited 
 patiently, considerately, kindly for the Board to 
 choose a Chancellor, every member of it is under 
 the greatest obligation. 
 
 When Chancellor Lippincott resigned, every 
 member of the Board felt almost jealously fear- 
 ful that an error would be made in the choice of 
 his successor. From the first every possible ob- 
 jection to every possible man was kept constantly 
 in view. So dreaded were all these objections 
 that no two members were often found of the 
 same opinion. Objections that to one seemed 
 great to another seemed small. But at no time 
 was there a disposition to select by other than a 
 unanimous vote, and never was there the slightest 
 danger of an improper selection being made. No 
 
8 
 
 man was ever seriously considered who would not 
 have given the place as much as the place could 
 give him. In this the Regents were a unit fron] 
 the first. They may have been slow, never slov- 
 enly. They may have been timid, never trifling. 
 They may have been visionary, never viciou-. 
 They regretted that the advocates of every 
 worthy candidate could not be gratified. They 
 regretted every unhappy word or deed, and they 
 sympathized deeply with every embarrassment 
 which came to any friend of the University, near 
 or remote. So painfully keen were these feelings 
 that a straight course could scarcely have been 
 kept but for the closest adherence to the ideas 
 that the University, as a whole, is more and of 
 more worth than any individual in or near it; 
 that nothing should be sacrificed, either in the 
 personal and professional worth of the man 
 chosen or in the general harmony, inside and 
 out, which is necessary for the health and use- 
 fulness of the institution; that mere precedent, or 
 policy, or faction, or personality, or temporary 
 consideration of any sort should not govern. 
 Thus adhering, thus persevering, they came at 
 last into the good graces of Francis Huntington 
 Snow. 
 
 ^J[In the battered old book containing the first 
 University records may be seen this entry, of date 
 July 19th, 1866: "Prof. F. H. Snow was nomi- 
 
Dated for the chair of mathematics and the nat- 
 ural sciences, and receiving a majority of the votes 
 was declared elected." 
 
 On the 1st day of September, 1866, Prof. Snow 
 began his work for Kansas — a work which he 
 has to this hour pursued with perpetual motion 
 and no back tracks. He has since received from 
 Kansas neither a smaller annual salary than his 
 first few hundred dollars, nor a much larger 
 one. For this magnificent pecuniary reward he 
 has given Kansas a quarter of a century of per- 
 sonal service, has secured for her a natural his- 
 tory collection easily marketable for, say, four 
 times what the State has ever paid him as 
 salary, with interest counted, and has, besides, 
 brought to Kansas from far-away Massachusetts, 
 through his generous friend, William B. Spooner, 
 a magnificent donation of upwards of a quarter 
 of a million dollars. Something might also be 
 said of his own personal sacrifices, financially, for 
 the University's benefit; but true charity neither 
 vaunteth itself nor likes to be vaunted. 
 
 In the outset, he was required to know every- 
 thing about all branches of science, to get his own 
 books, and to provide the museums and apparatus 
 for his scientific work; and the way he did this 
 challenges the records of Caesar, Napoleon, and 
 Grant. Had the signal- service bureau of Noah's 
 time announced the deluge, Noah could not have 
 been more popular in the animal kingdom than 
 
10 
 
 Chancellor Snow has been. Every form of ani- 
 mate and inanimate thing has got into his ark 
 with marvelous haste. He lias been the most 
 magnetic of men. The Leviathan has come up at 
 the end of his line as docile as a cow. Into his 
 presence the ambulatory measure- worm has kinked 
 itself most willingly. He has conjured up snakes 
 innumerable without the aid of prohibited liquors, 
 and he has coaxed all the birds of the air to get 
 their tails salted in his shop. Even the thought- 
 less and unreasoning petrifactions of ages long 
 dead have aroused themselves to the demands of 
 fashion, and have joined the procession towards 
 Snow Hall. 
 
 And Snow Hall ! Few people know how it 
 came into being. Only those know who stood by 
 the man for whom it was named among the State's 
 law-makers, and saw him win the votes of men 
 who knew nothing of his sciences or his learn- 
 ings, but who did know that they were elected 
 on platforms calling for the most rigid economy. 
 One after another those bronzed and work-worn 
 law -makers saw things through the perfect lenses 
 of the little scholar's eyes and cast their ballots 
 right ; and at least one hand feels to this day the 
 vise -like grip of joy and triumph which the lit- 
 tle scholar gave it when the last necessary vote 
 had been recorded. And — mark this — the joy 
 behind his grip was not that Snow had won, but 
 that Kansas for herself had done the right thing. 
 
11 
 
 The victory which he won from his fellow-citi- 
 zens of the Legislature was not a victory of in- 
 trigue, or conspiracy, or questionable acuteness of 
 
 any sort, but rather one of honest archery with 
 the bow of truth and a quiver full of facts. 
 Such are all his victories. 
 
 Honest work has characterized every step of his 
 progress. Year in and year out he has remitted 
 nothing. His vacations have brought only change 
 of work, and his recreations have been times of 
 learning. And yet he is in no sense a man made 
 dull by "all work and no play." Not one who 
 has ever heard him sing the songs of his college 
 days, not one who has ever seen him under the 
 spell of fine music, not one who has ever ex- 
 changed smiles with him over things bright and 
 situations amusing, will ever accuse him of hav- 
 ing: worked his mind to dullness. 
 
 Allusion has been made to Chancellor Snow as 
 a "little scholar." This means that he is small 
 of stature. For some purposes this is a disad- 
 vantage. Large men challenge attention and get 
 on in the world with fewer brains than small 
 men. Said ex -Justice Kingman of a portly can- 
 didate for office: "He is physically the most in- 
 tellectual man in Kansas." Chancellor Snow is 
 not thus fortunate, and yet he is a fine example 
 of perhaps the most effective sort of physical 
 strength. Giants are too often of soft metal 
 which soon fails, or else are prodigal of their 
 
12 
 
 strength and by mere wantonness exhaust it. The 
 nerve-strong men who in the beginning are put 
 under bonds to conserve what strength they have 
 are the men who most often stay through the 
 race and win it. This country has produced a 
 wonderful lot of men strong in this way — Jay 
 Gould, Samuel J. Tilden, Stephen A. Douglas, 
 Thaddeus Stevens, and thousands of others. Thus 
 Chancellor Snow, though physically slight, is 
 nervously a giant. He is never ill, and never 
 seems tired. His application to study for a quar- 
 ter of a century has been remarkable, and noth- 
 ing but genuine physical strength could ever 
 have carried him through. 
 
 His step is elastic, quick, and firm. His dark- 
 blue eyes, clear and calm, never nutter and never 
 dodge, always see everything in sight, and yet 
 always show a fullness of merriment, gentleness, 
 and love. His features are regular and strong. 
 His upper lip means business, and his mouth, 
 though kindly, is wholly resolute. There is not 
 a weak or slovenly line in his countenance. His 
 hand is quick and warm, and his handwriting, 
 though it does not suggest John Hancock^ reck- 
 less extravagance of ink and space, is graceful, gen- 
 erous and full of character. His voice is clear 
 and fine, and peculiarly his own. His whole 
 presence is cheerful. Sweetness and light are 
 with him always. 
 
 In the earliest pages of Ben-Hur are described 
 
13 
 
 the three men who met in the desert. This de- 
 scription of the Greek is a description of Chan- 
 cellor Snow: "The last comer was unlike his 
 friend; his frame was slighter; his complexion 
 white; a mass of waving light hair was a per- 
 fect crown for his small but beautiful head; the 
 warmth of his dark -blue eyes certified a delicate 
 mind, and a cordial, brave nature. . . . Fifty 
 years had spent themselves upon him with no other 
 effect apparently than to tinge his demeanor with 
 gravity and temper his words with forethought. 
 The physical organization and the brightness of 
 soul were untouched. No need to tell the student 
 from what kindred he was sprung; if he came not 
 himself from the groves of Athene, his ancestors 
 did." 
 
 And what this Greek says of himself is surely 
 what Francis Huntington Snow would say of 
 himself had he to speak: "The most that I am 
 sure of is, that I am doing a Master's will, and 
 that the service is a constant ecstacy. When I 
 think of the purpose I am sent to fulfill, there is 
 in me joy so inexpressible that I know the will 
 is God's." 
 
 Chancellor Snow stands for the highest type of 
 Christianity. Nurtured from childhood in the 
 orthodox church of New England and a student 
 in her highest school of theology, he retains to- 
 day the strength and beauty of that church, 
 minus its localisms and personalities. The prin- 
 
14 
 
 ciples of justice applied in Kansas courts to-day, 
 under a simple code, are the same as those ap- 
 plied a hundred years ago under the insuperable 
 perplexities of the English practice. Thus the 
 evolution of Chancellor Snow's mind has for him 
 banished whence they came all technicalities and 
 non-essentials, and brought into whitest light that 
 which is unimpeachably true. Starr King says : 
 u Blind conservatives never stop to make accurate 
 classifications of their opponents. They make no 
 account of the various moods and spirit in which 
 dissent is made and the frequent affirmations that 
 accompany denials." No such blind conservative 
 is Chancellor Snow, for he remembers that u who- 
 soever shall humble himself as this little child, 
 the same is greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. 1 ' 
 He knows that righteousness exalteth a nation, 
 and that nothing else does. He knows that 
 nothing can take the place of an absolute accept- 
 ance of the idea of God and a future life which 
 the wise men of all ages have approved, and 
 which guides and guards the soul through all 
 dangers, keeps it pure and brings it finally to 
 that peace which passeth all understanding. 
 
 Intellectually, Chancellor Snow's position is 
 well defined. A chip of the old New England 
 block, he is also in line with that new Old Eng- 
 land, which is to-day the intellectual monarch of 
 the world. His place is among such men as 
 Agassiz, Emerson, Thoreau, Huxley, Spencer, 
 
15 
 
 Tvndal, and Darwin. His scholarship is genu- 
 inely broad. An ardent student of the classic 
 literatures, an equally ardent student in the realm 
 of theology, he has done in science things for 
 which the world knows him. Such a man with 
 such a record cannot fail to have a vision as 
 broad as the broadest Kansan could wish. 
 
 His mind is in every way poised and self- 
 mastered. Emerson says : " Health is the condi- 
 tion of wisdom, and the sign is cheerfulness — an 
 open and noble temper.'' 1 And Emerson quotes 
 in connection with this remark : 
 
 "Oft have I heard, and deemed the witness true, 
 Who man delights in, God delights in, too." 
 
 He has also what Emerson says is a sure trait 
 of true success : " The good mind chooses what 
 is positive, what is advancing — embraces the af- 
 firmative." Negative positions to Chancellor Snow 
 are hateful. 
 
 The quality of his mind is such that it never 
 seems to be clogged or muddy. His great learn- 
 ing has not left him inert or other than alert 
 and quick. It has not spoiled his balance or his 
 equanimity. He is never found in the paroxysms 
 of intellectual gastralgia, or in that stuffed and 
 undigesting condition which curdles the temper 
 and warps the judgment. 
 
 It is from this knowledge of Chancellor Snow's 
 mind that his methods are foreseen. He has been 
 called, with some degree of depreciation, "a spe- 
 
16 
 
 cialist," He is ; but one specialty differeth from 
 another in magnitude, and it seems to those who 
 know him best that over and above his special- 
 ties in science, literature or the arts should be 
 set his specialty of doing well whatever he under- 
 takes. His passion for attending to his own busi- 
 ness is his master and renders him invincible. 
 Now that the whole University is his business, it 
 will be his specialty. He has burned the bridges 
 behind him, and Snow Hall will not hereafter in 
 any respect limit his affections. 
 
 He will not be so demonstrative as the burn- 
 ing and brilliant John Fraser, ex- Chancellor of 
 blessed memory, but his enthusiasm will be none 
 the less real; and he will follow the wholesome 
 example of ex- Chancellor Marvin, whose vigilance 
 in the stewardship of the State's money and 
 property was once exemplified so perfectly in his 
 stoppage of the work on a staircase within one 
 tread of the top because the appropriation was 
 exhausted. 
 
 He will be able to say no without its being 
 harsh, and also without its being sugar-coated so 
 as to mean yes. Most executive heads of educa- 
 tional institutions are so lax about this saying of 
 no that they soon get the reputation of being 
 liars. An educational corps is not organized on 
 the military basis where nothing is assumed not 
 specifically granted, but rather on an amicable 
 basis where no man cultivates the methods or the 
 
17 
 
 manners of a master. But none the less, educa- 
 tional machinery lias to run and to that end de- 
 cisions must be made, and they should be made 
 as clearly as in military or railway work. Chan- 
 cellor Snow will say no when he means no, and 
 however kind he may be in all he does, he will 
 never be called a dissembler, a fumbler, or a 
 liar. 
 
 This leads to the point that one of the chief 
 characteristics of Chancellor Snow is his courage. 
 His courage is not of the sort that requires to 
 be labeled. He carries no flags and blows no 
 trumpets affirmative of his courage, and the only 
 way he does affirm it is by never showing con- 
 sciousness of fear. He is never a prophet of evil. 
 In all the hard years of our first quarter -century, 
 years when hope was often scarcer even than cash, 
 he was never heard to wail or whimper. When 
 the State has been crippled and his own fortunes 
 have crumbled about him, no man ever heard him 
 speak discouragingly of the State or its institu- 
 tions. As soon would a loving mother foretell 
 evil of her children! And, speaking of courage, 
 he knows that jealousy is a sign of weakness, 
 self -distrust, and cowardice, and that it is irra- 
 tional, even to insanity. 
 
 He knows that honesty is the best policy — 
 that fraud is always a treacherous servant whose 
 aid means ruin. He knows that pretense breeds 
 vermin to disintegrate and destroy. He will tol- 
 
18 
 
 erate no shams. He knows that the people of 
 Kansas must never be deceived as to their chief 
 school. He knows that its exact status should 
 be confessed and only its absolute position, 
 achievements and merits be claimed. 
 
 He has the characteristics of the true general, 
 who does not fix his optics on the trifles about 
 him while the main issues of the battle are being 
 neglected. He knows that no general is worthy 
 the name who does not perfect his plan logically, 
 choose his subordinates wisely, trust them largely, 
 watch them closely that they do not trespass on 
 one another, demand results or resignations, and 
 keep his battle -front strong at all points. He 
 knows that a general has no time to be a police- 
 man, or an amateur detective with a codak in 
 one hand and a dark lantern in the other. He 
 knows that a general, never being able to do all 
 that might be done, must choose for his first 
 attention the things of chief importance. 
 
 He will have patience with the juvenile haste 
 which demands perfection without evolution, and 
 with the idealist who grandly waives away the 
 difficulties of which time is one of the indispen- 
 sable solvents. But he will not have patience 
 with cases of intellectual lumbago — those people 
 who squeeze their way into educational institu- 
 tions that they may grow fat on inactivity and 
 nod away their lives in the sunshine of collegiate 
 respectability. 
 
19 
 
 It is true that Chancellor Snow, as Chancellor, 
 is an experiment. He has the task before him 
 of proving our opinion good. That he will do 
 it we may have no fear; but we dare not on 
 that account withhold every help that can be de- 
 vised. The desire of his heart must be ours. 
 As a unit we must push on towards the time 
 when love of learning is truly dominant in Kan- 
 sas, when our standing among the people of the 
 earth will not depend on our bushels or our 
 dollars, when we shall have filled our annals with 
 those achievements of the mind which the world 1 s 
 record shows us have glorified the bleakest, rock- 
 iest and most stingy acres under the sun. 
 
Inaugural Address, Responding to 
 the Board of Regents. 
 
 FRANCIS HUNTINGTON SNOW, Ph.D., LL. D. 
 
 Before proceeding to the more formal presen- 
 tation of an inaugural address, I desire to make 
 a brief response to the generous words of the 
 preceding speaker. The support which has 
 been so heartily accorded in advance to the new 
 management of University affairs, has made a 
 profound impression upon my mind and heart, 
 and has inspired me with an enthusiastic expec- 
 tation that the future of this institution will 
 justify that action of the Board of Regents which 
 has rendered necessary the proceedings of this 
 day. Sustained by a united Board of Regents, 
 a harmonious Faculty, an enthusiastic body of 
 students and alumni, a sympathetic public press, 
 and above all by the good - will of the people of 
 the great State of Kansas, whose institution we 
 are, the new administration could hardly have 
 entered upon its arduous duties under more fa- 
 vorable auspices. That the present era of good 
 feeling may be indefinitely prolonged, is a con- 
 
 (21) 
 
22 
 
 summation devoutly to be wished. Differences 
 of opinion will undoubtedly arise in shaping the 
 policy of the institution, but no such differences 
 can be allowed to interfere with the continuance 
 of the enthusiasm for University education which 
 must always find its highest manifestation when 
 attention is directed to the State school upon 
 Mount Oread. 
 
 In what I have to say to-day, I shall lead 
 you to a consideration of what the University of 
 Kansas has been, now is, and is to be. Of the 
 character of the first two of these forms of exist- 
 ence, we may speak with some degree of cer- 
 tainty, as our knowledge on these points is based 
 upon actual occurrences ; of the third, or future 
 form of existence, we may rest assured of the fact, 
 but must depend for its character upon our own 
 ideal of what the Kansas University ought to be, 
 and of the nearness of approach to that ideal 
 which we may think the State of Kansas is likely 
 to accomplish. In regard to the }3ast character of 
 the University, my personal connection with it 
 since its establishment in 1866 will enable me to 
 speak with the assurance of actual contact with 
 the original sources of information. When Pro- 
 fessors Robinson, Rice and myself met each other 
 for the first time to plan for the opening of the 
 institution, we found not a single genuine High 
 School in existence in the entire State of Kansas. 
 It therefore became necessary to begin the Uni- 
 
23 
 
 versity as a High School, — just what my distin- 
 guished patriotic friend and adviser, Mr. Amos 
 A. Lawrence, .had told me it would be, before I 
 left the State of Massachusetts. And we contin- 
 ued to be a o;ood Hig;h School for a number of 
 years, so that the name sometimes bestowed upon 
 us by our legislative opponents in those early 
 days, and intended as an opprobrious epithet — 
 "The Lawrence High School" — was in reality a 
 true designation of our character, and not at all 
 to our disparagement. But in seven years' time 
 the four collegiate classes were all represented in 
 our roster of students, and in 1873 we held 
 our first Commencement Exercises. In plans and 
 aspirations, however, we were a University from 
 the 1st of September, 1866. 
 
 In founding a LTni versity on virgin educational 
 soil, Ave discovered and improved some rare op- 
 portunities for avoiding mistakes which had been 
 woven into the very texture of the most eminent 
 eastern colleges. We had it in our power so to 
 determine the character of the student body and 
 the scope of our curriculum that the institution 
 should start into life with its entire system per- 
 meated with the fresh air of the last half of the 
 nineteenth century, while the New England col- 
 leges were still struggling against a considerable 
 amount of the asphyxiating atmosphere of the 
 middle ages. At a time when even in the West 
 co-education in institutions of collegiate rank was 
 
24 
 
 considered to be a dangerous experiment, the 
 Legislature of Kansas decided that in her Uni- 
 versity the young women should have the same 
 advantages as the young men; and the Univer- 
 sity faculty have never introduced, nor even dis- 
 cussed the introduction, of a modified curriculum 
 for the so-called weaker sex. As convincing evi- 
 dence that this experiment has become a pro- 
 nounced success, and has not interfered with the 
 natural employments of women, I will refer to 
 Mr. Wilson Sterling's Alumni Catalogue, from 
 which it appears that an astonishingly 
 large proportion of our women graduates 
 are engaged in domestic duties, and at the same 
 time are making themselves known in the domain 
 of literature, science, and the arts. The trustees 
 of Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Princeton, Will- 
 iams, and many other high-grade Eastern colleges 
 still regard the simple agitation of the subject of 
 co-education as a bomb -shell of sufficient size and 
 force to threaten the disruption of the educational 
 body-politic. But this great question of woman's 
 equal educational privileges was settled once for 
 all a quarter of a century ago at the Kansas Uni- 
 versity. 
 
 Again, in framing the courses of study for the 
 University of Kansas, the first faculty had an ir- 
 resistible opportunity of putting modern science 
 into natural relations with the ancient classics, 
 the mathematics, and the wide expanse of his- 
 
!iO 
 
 torical, literary, and philosophical studies. In the 
 year of our beginnings, the best eastern colleges 
 postponed the most elementary consideration of 
 the physical and biological sciences to the Junior 
 and Senior years, and then allowed an insignifi- 
 cant amount of time for a very unsatisfactory 
 presentation of these rudiments. The faculty of 
 this University placed the most distinctively ob- 
 servational of the sciences, as botany, zoology, 
 physics and chemistry, partly in the Preparatory 
 Department and partly in the Freshman and 
 Sophomore years, in correspondence with that 
 stage in the mental development when the per- 
 ceptive faculty is naturally most active, and 
 demands systematic exercise upon appropriate 
 objects. In this way the natural trend of the 
 individual mind was often clearly indicated with- 
 out loss to the general culture of the student. 
 In the Junior and Senior years opportunities 
 were afforded for a more thorough training of 
 the observational powers, with the result that 
 even in the first half of our two dozen years of 
 life, a very creditable proportion of enthusiastic 
 and accurate scientific workers were launched 
 upon successful careers as original investigators. 
 In proof of this assertion, reference is again made 
 to our Alumni" Catalogue, which indicates that 
 members of some of our earliest classes have 
 achieved a national reputation, by the publica- 
 tion of many valuable original contributions to bi- 
 
26 
 
 ological and chemical science. During the second 
 half of our incorporate existence, the Dumber of 
 scientific graduates already occupying enviable 
 positions, by reason of the acquisition at the 
 University of independent methods of research, is 
 too large for specific mention. Whether scattered 
 over the world, from Oregon to Southern Africa, 
 or retained in the immediate personal service of 
 their alma mater, their lives are a continual 
 tribute to the excellence of their University 
 training. 
 
 The introduction of the laboratory method of 
 instruction in natural science, which was hardly 
 known in eastern institutions in connection with 
 required courses of study, became a prominent 
 feature with us even in our elementary courses; 
 and it is a noteworthy fact that practically the 
 same method of instruction has been extended to 
 all departments of the University of Kansas. Stu- 
 dents in historical and political science, in ancient 
 and modern languages, in philosophy, music and 
 art, are to-day feeling the impulse of the method 
 adopted in the early years. They are cautioned 
 by all our professors to beware of servile depend- 
 ence upon any author or text-book, and are con- 
 stantly encouraged to investigate the original 
 sources of information, in the lecture-room, the 
 library and the private study, as well as in the 
 laboratory, the apparatus -room and the field. The 
 success of our graduates in journalism, politics, 
 
27 
 
 literature, pedagogics, and in more strictly profes- 
 sional life, lias been hardly less marked than in 
 scientific lines. In these pursuits, also, they have 
 shown the ability to attain conspicuous pre-emi- 
 nence. The attempt to enumerate the notable 
 examples of post-graduate success would result in 
 the special mention of a very large number of the 
 names upon our roll of Alumni. 
 
 Summarizing my conception of what the Uni- 
 versity has been, I should say that for the first 
 six years of its history it was a High School, 
 pure and simple, with some premonitions of an 
 approaching collegiate character ; for the next 
 twelve years it was a college as to its anterior 
 portion, but with a very extensive High School 
 posterior appendage. And as in the embryonic 
 development of every individual animal of the 
 highest morphological rank, this appendage is 
 gradually abbreviated until externally, at least, 
 it is entirely obliterated, so the Preparatory De- 
 partment of this University has been gradually 
 diminishing from view during the last six years, 
 until one more year will witness its complete ex- 
 tinction. This long -looked -for result has been 
 somewhat precipitated by formal act of the last 
 session of the Legislature. What now remains 
 of the Preparatory Department, although dignified 
 by the term Sub - Freshman class, may be fairly 
 considered as in the nature of a rudimentary 
 organ, at the present time rather useless or in- 
 
28 
 
 jurious, than beneficial to the institution, but 
 indicating a former lower stage of development 
 in which it was absolutely essential to the exist- 
 ence of the organism. In our first catalogue 
 we announced that the Preparatory Department 
 would be discontinued in a few years, and it 
 might have tempted some members of the Fac- 
 ulty to present their resignations if announce- 
 ment had been made that a quarter of a century 
 would elapse before its removal would become 
 complete. 
 
 We come next to consider the question of the 
 present condition of the institution. It has been 
 a High School, a College, and it is now in the 
 transition stage from College to University, with 
 some of the best points of the college, and some 
 of the peculiar characteristics of a University. 
 The college, as I take it, is an institution in 
 which a certain definite course of study, limited 
 in range from limitation of endowment or equip- 
 ment, leads to a certain definite degree, all stu- 
 dents being required to pursue the line of study 
 laid down in the curriculum with the minimum 
 amount of deviation in the way of elective studies. 
 The ideal University is an institution in which 
 all branches of learning are thrown open to the 
 student, who presumably has reached full maturity, 
 and is therefore allowed to choose freely for him- 
 self his course of study, without prescriptive ac- 
 tion on the part of the University authorities. 
 
29 
 
 The present condition of this institution there- 
 fore cannot be that of an ideal University, since 
 in the first place it is not within the possibility 
 of our present equipment received from the State 
 of Kansas to offer to Kansas youth the best in- 
 struction in all branches of learning. But we 
 need not feel ashamed of our limitation in this 
 respect, since no University in existence, even 
 among the famous institutions of Germany, has 
 attained the perfect ideal of faultless instruction 
 in all departments of knowledge. The student 
 goes to Berlin for its supremacy in certain de- 
 partments, to Leipzig, Heidelberg, Gottingen, for 
 their pre-eminence in other departments. It is 
 not within the bounds of possibility that the ab- 
 solute ideal should be attained by any one insti- 
 tution. But we can continually make advances 
 toward the loftiest conceptions in the full con- 
 viction that in Kansas, if any State in the Union, 
 liberal provision will be made for the best pos- 
 sible instruction of our young men and women. 
 
 Nor, in the second place, are we an ideal Uni- 
 versity, because the young people who graduate 
 from the High Schools of the State have not 
 reached that maturity which would justify their 
 being permitted to make an unrestricted choice 
 of their studies during the entire four-years course 
 which the institution requires for graduation. I 
 do not say this to the disparagement of the young 
 people of the High Schools of the State of Kan- 
 
30 
 
 sas, for I am convinced that the High Schools of 
 no State in the Union are able to furnish the 
 maturity of mind in their graduates which would 
 justify their immediate entrance upon a purely 
 University system. A University whose attendance 
 should be strictly limited to graduate students, 
 corresponding with the theoretical, but not actual, 
 organization of Johns Hopkins University, would 
 be able to make a very near approximation to 
 this ideal; but the undergraduate students of the 
 two lower classes of all our American colleges 
 and universities are, in the great majority of 
 cases, both too young and immature to make it a 
 safe experiment to fully entrust to them the se- 
 lection of their studies. I would, however, allow 
 to Freshmen and Sophomores the choice of the 
 general course of training to be pursued, the 
 range of their choice extending to no less than 
 six prescribed two-year courses in this institution 
 at the present time. At the beginning of the 
 last two years of the University quadrennium suf- 
 cient maturity of judgment has, by our own 
 experience for the past five years, been demon- 
 strated to be in the possession of the average 
 undergraduate to justify the extension to him of 
 a free choice of his studies for the Junior 
 and Senior years. The freedom of the choice, 
 however, should be limited to such an extent 
 as seems necessary to secure on the one hand 
 a positive and practical concentration of effort 
 
31 
 
 in some one favorite direction, and on the 
 other hand a breadth of knowledge and cul- 
 ture which will rescue the student from the 
 belittling influence of a narrow, intense spe- 
 cialization. To indicate the range of possibilities 
 in the choices of the two upper classes of this 
 institution, it will suffice to state that no fewer 
 than ninety-three courses of study, in seventeen 
 different departments of investigation, are now 
 offered to the Juniors and Seniors. 
 
 The introduction of this system of regulated 
 optionals has proved to be a great success. On 
 the one hand, our students, freed from the arbi- 
 trary, iron-bound prescriptive system of former 
 days, enter into their work with the satisfaction 
 and enthusiasm which inevitably accompany the 
 exercise of a choice involving personal responsi- 
 bility. On the other hand, the members of the 
 faculty, entering unconsciously into friendly com- 
 petition for students to pursue their offered op- 
 tionals, are stimulated to greater personal effort 
 for the improvement of their qualifications for 
 giving instruction. The most abstruse and tech- 
 nical branches of literature and science are thus 
 made to assume the greatest possible degree of 
 attractiveness, and it is an extremely rare occur- 
 rence for any one of the large number of offered 
 courses to be destitute of students. It cannot, 
 however, be considered a legitimate inference that 
 the value of an optional course and the ability 
 
32 
 
 of a professor to give, instruction in li is depart- 
 ment are to be measured solely by the number 
 of students to be found in these courses. The 
 quality of the half-dozen students selecting a 
 certain course will be a better recommendation 
 of both course and professor, than the quantity, 
 by the dozen, of students in some other course 
 not requiring the same amount of labor from 
 either student or professor. 
 
 It has become a marked characteristic of our 
 University, that the relations of students and 
 faculty are to a large extent free from that re- 
 straint which in many high-grade educational in- 
 stitutions springs from the imposition upon the 
 body of students of unyielding courses of study. 
 It does not facilitate the growth of personal friend- 
 ship between professor and student to allow no 
 value to the student's personal likes and dislikes. 
 "When the student recites to a professor solely be- 
 cause he is compelled to, there is sure to be a 
 chasm of separation when the topic of study is 
 distasteful to the student. But when a course of 
 study is voluntarily selected by the student him- 
 self, although the choice is regulated by certain 
 rules, and when the student recites to a professor 
 because the subject is attractive, the conditions 
 are all favorable for intimate personal relation be- 
 tween the parties to the contract. The informal 
 conversational style of communication which pre- 
 vails in our laboratories and libraries, as well as 
 
33 
 
 in the lecture-rooms, the seminaries, and the lit- 
 erary and scientific clubs, is possible only among 
 friends mutually absorbed in considering great 
 themes. 
 
 Summarizing m}^ conception of what the Uni- 
 versity now is, I repeat that it is in a state of 
 transition from the College to the University. 
 
 My conception of what it will become in the 
 future is perhaps of more significance on the 
 present occasion, as giving some indication of the 
 probable policy of the incoming administration. 
 While thoroughly believing in the uplifting in- 
 fluence of a perfect ideal, and acknowledging to 
 the fullest extent the imperative obligation which 
 rests upon the University authorities to make the 
 nearest possible approach to this perfect ideal, I can 
 not overlook the fact that it would be suicidal to 
 attempt the sudden transformation of the institu- 
 tion, as it now is, into the faultless educational 
 structure which it may become with a more 
 favorable environment in the far-distant future, 
 but which has no actual illustration either in 
 Europe or America. The great European Uni- 
 versities, and the best American Universities, are 
 the product of a gradual development of educa- 
 tional ideas through a long series of years. 
 Harvard is Harvard, and Yale is Yale, and 
 Princeton is Princeton to -clay, because of the pe- 
 culiarities of Massachusetts and Connecticut and 
 New Jersey life which have entered into the fun- 
 
34 
 
 damental structure of those institutions, making 
 them to differ from each other as the political 
 and ecclesiastical history of their respective States 
 has continually differed. And so the University 
 of Kansas must be a Kansas University. It can- 
 not be a mere ideality, offering to Kansas youth a 
 theoretical culture adapted to a state of society as 
 pictured by Edward Bellamy for a far-away fu- 
 ture time. It must be adapted to actual Kansas 
 of the last decade of the 19th century, and not 
 to actual Massachusetts, or Connecticut, or New- 
 Jersey, or England, or Germany. By these state- 
 ments I must not be interpreted as holding that 
 the process of development of our Kansas Univer- 
 sity will be as painfully slow as that of Harvard, 
 which has required a quarter of a thousand years 
 to reach its present condition. The development 
 of the University of Kansas must keep rapid pace 
 with the development of the State itself. The 
 State of Kansas has accomplished as much, in each 
 brief year of its existence as a State, as has been 
 accomplished in ten years in the history of the 
 most highly favored of the New England States. 
 There has been no more magnificent spectacle in 
 American history than the almost magical rapid- 
 ity with which Kansas has been transformed from 
 the hunting-ground of the Indian and the pasture- 
 land of the bison into a great agricultural em- 
 pire, with population already greater than that of 
 Massachusetts when Kansas was admitted to the 
 
35 
 
 Union. The University lias kept even pace with 
 the State in its remarkable progress, and must 
 continue to advance as rapidly as will be consist- 
 ent with the safe preservation of its precious gains 
 and conducive to the most perfect harmony of its 
 condition with that of its protecting parent. For- 
 tunate in having been able to avoid the introduction 
 into its organization and methods of administration 
 of some elements of weakness which kindred in- 
 stitutions of older States are still struggling to 
 overcome, it is now in an efficient working con- 
 dition, ready to improve every opportunity to 
 make further advances toward the unattained and 
 ever unattainable ideal. 
 
 If I am not mistaken, the most important step 
 towards making this institution in reality, what it 
 is in name, a genuine Kansas University, is the 
 establishment of a closer and more vital connec- 
 tion with the entire public -school system of the 
 State. In the brief time which has elapsed since 
 my personal attention was more especially called 
 to this subject, I have discovered in my visits to 
 High Schools that the University is hardly re- 
 garded as sustaining a more intimate relation to 
 these schools than any private denominational 
 college in Kansas, or even than colleges in other 
 States than Kansas. I have found principals of 
 these schools in some cases not only failing to 
 recognize the natural organic unity which by the 
 very law of its incorporation binds the Univer- 
 
36 
 
 sity to the schools, but expressing unfeigned 
 surprise when their attention is called to the 
 fact. I have found other public school officials 
 instead of directing the attention of their grad- 
 uates to the State University as the most 
 natural and desirable institution of learning 
 wherein to obtain collegiate training, actually 
 neglecting to mention this institution with 
 favor, and directing their young men and wo- 
 men to institutions in which the educational 
 equipment is so manifestly inferior, that to 
 spend four years within their walls involves not 
 only a wasteful expenditure of time and money, 
 but a serious crippling of the intellectual powers 
 for which no subsequent regrets can make amends. 
 Sending a boy to an inferior college when a su- 
 perior one is within ready reach, is like dwarfing 
 his physical nature by feeding him upon a starva- 
 tion diet when an abundant supply of nutritious 
 food is to be had for the asking. The remedy 
 for this condition of ignorance and shortsighted- 
 ness will consist in an organized effort on the 
 part of the friends of our public -school system 
 to secure the recognition of the fact that the 
 University is as indissolubly connected with the 
 public High Schools as is the High School with 
 the grammar schools, or the grammar school with 
 the primary grades. And this organized effort 
 must continue until the passage of a student from 
 the High School into the State University shall 
 
37 
 
 be made with the same facility with which he 
 now passes from the lower grades into the High 
 School. For the wide -spread ignorance in large 
 portions of the State in regard to the character 
 of the University, an ignorance most extreme 
 among that large class of otherwise well-informed 
 citizens who have never heard of the existence 
 of such an institution, the University authorities 
 themselves are, perhaps, largely to blame. It 
 should be made known in every township in the 
 State, by a free distribution of printer's ink and 
 by visits from University officials, that the State 
 of Kansas places within the reach of every child 
 within her borders, without money and without 
 price, a wide range of educational culture, clas- 
 sical and scientific, theoretical and practical, 
 either alone or all combined. Letters are almost 
 daily received inquiring what charges are made 
 by the University for her superior privileges. 
 Let it be proclaimed so that every earnest 
 young Kansan may clearly understand the fact, 
 that the State offers here advanced educational 
 advantages entirely without charge for entrance 
 fees or tuition. Let it be universally under- 
 stood that while other institutions impose upon 
 each student an annual tuition fee of from 
 fifty to two hundred dollars, our own great- 
 hearted commonwealth bestows a free scholarship 
 at her University upon every one of her sons and 
 daughters who is prepared to make use of her 
 
38 
 
 generosity. Let it be everywhere made known 
 that at the University of the State, every BOB 
 and daughter of the State may receive the special 
 training which makes chemists, naturalists, ento- 
 mologists, electricians, engineers, lawyers, musi- 
 cians, pharmacists and artists, or the broader and 
 more symmetrical culture which prepares those 
 who receive it for that general, well - rounded 
 efficiency which makes the educated man a suc- 
 cess in any line of intellectual activity, ten years 
 earlier in life than the uneducated man. In 
 short, a good deal of judicious advertising out- 
 side of the customary distribution of the annual 
 catalogue, will at the present juncture be of in- 
 calculable advantage to the University of Kansas. 
 And while this general distribution of funda- 
 mental facts is being made, let the effort to more 
 thoroughly harmonize the University with the 
 High Schools be persistently carried forward. A 
 very erroneous impression has in some quarters 
 prevailed in regard to the attitude of the Univer- 
 sity in reference to the accomplishment of this 
 desirable result. It has been thought that this 
 movement was a purely selfish one for the pur- 
 pose of multiplying the number of u feeders" for 
 the Freshman class. But this is far from being 
 the case. The University was established by the 
 State, and is now being generously supported by 
 the State, in order that the largest possible num- 
 ber of earnest-minded young Kansans may reap 
 
39 
 
 the benefit of her generosity. And it is a most 
 encouraging circumstance connected with the pres- 
 ent discussion of this important question, that the 
 discussion originated among the High- School men 
 themselves, who invited the Faculty of the Uni- 
 versity to hold a friendly conference with them on 
 the 6th of April last. At this convention a strong 
 conviction was expressed by the representatives of 
 the High Schools that the University require- 
 ments for admission to the Freshman class were 
 so far in advance of the capacity of the average 
 High School as to produce an impassable chasm, 
 whereby large numbers of the brightest Kansas 
 boys and girls were kept from entering the Uni- 
 versity, and were thereby compelled to enter infe- 
 rior colleges whose requirements were less rigorous. 
 The sincerity of these High -School principals made 
 a deep impression upon the University Faculty, 
 and the problem of bridging the chasm of separa- 
 tion without essentially lowering the standard of 
 admission was referred to a committee of confer- 
 ence. The final outcome of this friendly meeting 
 was the recommendation of an additional High- 
 School course preparatory to the Freshman class, 
 in which only one of the two foreign languages 
 required in the other courses was retained, the 
 place of the second foreign language being sup- 
 plied by the careful study of our own mother- 
 tongue. Thus has arisen the so-called Latin - 
 English preparatory course, which was more fully 
 
40 
 
 elaborated at the City Superintendents 1 Conven- 
 tion at Topeka, May 9th, and put into shape for 
 official recommendation to the High Schools of 
 Kansas. This recommendation, proceeding from 
 the school officials and not from the University, 
 has been heartily approved by our Faculty and 
 Board of Regents, and will doubtless meet with a 
 favorable reception on the part of the schools. 
 It is a three-years course, in which Latin, English 
 and Mathematics constitute the bulk of the work, 
 with the addition of enough history, physical sci- 
 ence, civil government and drawing to comply 
 with the University demands. It is conceded by 
 all that this course furnishes a good practical 
 training for the majority of our High-School grad- 
 uates who never go beyond the High- School cur- 
 riculum. It therefore fully meets the objection 
 that the High-School courses should not be ar- 
 ranged solely to suit the demands of the minority 
 who go on with their studies in the University 
 or in some other institution. It is a good course, 
 both for those who go and for those who do not 
 go to the higher schools of learning, and will un- 
 doubtedly be the means of bringing into connec- 
 tion with the University many whose education 
 would otherwise have ended with the High School. 
 It is not intended as a substitute for the Latin 
 and Greek, the Latin and German and the French 
 and German preparatory courses, but as an addi- 
 tional course, which will prove attractive to many 
 
41 
 
 who believe that the study of the English lan- 
 guage can be made as profitable for mental train- 
 ing and as valuable for information as the study 
 of a foreign language. 
 
 To connect with this new Preparatory course, 
 the Faculty and Regents have established two 
 new University courses for the Freshman and 
 Sophomore years, one of which involves a con- 
 tinuation of the Latin-English studies, while the 
 other is termed a General Language course, and 
 admits of the pursuit of any two of the three 
 foreign languages — Greek, German, and French. 
 Each of these new courses leads to the Junior 
 and Senior optional system, and the student at 
 graduation is awarded the degree of Bachelor of 
 Arts. Each new course, having been made equal, 
 in capacity to confer discipline and information, 
 to the Classical and Modern Literature courses, 
 is placed upon a full equality with them in the 
 resulting degree, instead of being stigmatized as 
 inferior by the concoction of some new combina- 
 tion of honorary letters. Thus our beloved Uni- 
 versity, while still retaining and holding in high 
 estimation the old classical training in Latin and 
 Greek, admits to a full and honorable equality 
 the combination of Latin with the modern lan- 
 guages, including our own complex and sturdy, 
 not always euphonious, but always expressive, 
 mother -tongue. 
 
 Dr. Allen Starr, Chairman of the Committee 
 
42 
 
 on the Princeton College curriculum, in a recent 
 carefully prepared paper on the methods now in 
 use at his alma mater, gives hint of a possible 
 future change in the requirements for admission 
 to that college, by which the necessity for mak- 
 ing up deficiencies in Greek may he avoided. 
 What Princeton and other eastern colleges are 
 strongly desiring, but hardly daring to suggest 
 except in almost inaudible whispers, viz., the ad- 
 mission of candidates for the degree of Bachelor 
 of Arts without a knowledge of the Greek lan- 
 guage, has for many years been an accomplished 
 fact in the Modern Literature course of the Uni- 
 versity of Kansas, and is now made also possible 
 in our Latin English and General Language 
 courses. It is in this way that a nearer approach 
 is being made to the true University ideal, which 
 regards mathematics, science, language, and the 
 other humanities as necessarily represented in 
 every properly organized curriculum for general 
 culture, bnt leaves largely to the selection of the 
 individual student the specific branches under 
 each of these four divisions. 
 
 If yonr attention has been held by the preced- 
 ing recital of what has transpired in the past 
 three months in the direction of harmonizing the 
 University with the High Schools, you will have 
 come to the conclusion that much has already 
 been accomplished toward placing the institution 
 in its true position as the Kansas State Univer- 
 
48 
 
 sity. It will l>e the policy of my administration 
 to adopt all reasonable measures to increase the 
 strength of this bond of union between the head 
 and the body of the public-school system. 
 
 In the next place I shall look for a financial 
 support from the State Legislature which will 
 enable us to retain the strong men now included 
 in the corps of instruction. These men should 
 receive such salaries that the tempting offers of 
 large compensation from eastern colleges will not 
 deprive the youth of Kansas of the best talent 
 available for their instruction. So long as the 
 Kansas University constitutes a promising recruit- 
 ing ground for the Presidents of eastern colleges, 
 it will be impossible for her to accomplish re- 
 sults which come only by the persistent effort of 
 able men to build up their several departments. 
 It may be a matter of pride to us that our Uni- 
 versity should have furnished professors to Cornell, 
 to Williams, and to Harvard, but such pride can 
 be indulged in only at the expense of the men- 
 tal development of our own sons and daughters. 
 The exercise of that business sagacity which 
 would secure the retention of a professor at an 
 increased salary, would be far preferable to un- 
 profitable pride in connection with his departure. 
 The self-respect of a professor should not be too 
 heavily sacrificed to his patriotic desire to serve 
 the State of Kansas. 
 
 The strength of the University will depend on 
 
44 
 
 the strength of the men who make up its faculty. 
 Brains, and not "bricks nnd mortar alone, give a 
 University prestige and renown. It is now time 
 to turn the tables upon the eastern colleges by 
 calling from them their best men for the educa- 
 tional service of the Sunflower State. A good 
 beginning has just been made by the election of 
 a professor of Yale University to the chair of 
 Geology and Paleontology. It may however be 
 doubted if the appointment would have been 
 accepted, at a pecuniary sacrifice, if the appointee 
 had not been a Kansas man, whose great ambition 
 has always been to develop the geologic wealth 
 of his native State in the service of her Univer- 
 sity. The State should take pride in honoring 
 the services of such patriotic men by relieving 
 them from the necessity of anxious thought for 
 the pecuniary needs of the future. Relief from 
 a burden of this character will increase the value 
 of the services of any professor to a much greater 
 proportional extent than the amount of the addi- 
 tion made to his salary. 
 
 But salary alone will not keep the right sort of 
 men in a University faculty. There are other con- 
 siderations more potent than pecuniary ones which 
 influence an able professor to begin and continue 
 his connection with an institution of learning. 
 Of even more importance than salary is the 
 equipment of the department which demands his 
 services. No man with the right sort of ambi- 
 
45 
 
 tion will be satisfied to remain in a college whose 
 managers decline to furnish a generous provision 
 in the line of apparatus, books, and properly 
 constructed lecture-rooms and laboratories. Other 
 things being equal, that University which can 
 furnish the most efficient and abundant literary 
 and scientific tools of instruction will secure and 
 retain the most competent faculty. Libraries, 
 museums, chemical, physical and philosophical ap- 
 paratus are essential to the permanent retention 
 of the best professors as well as for the attraction 
 of the best students. 
 
 Still another requisite for the enlistment and 
 retention of the most valuable men in an educa- 
 tional institution is the opportunity afforded them 
 for original investigation in their favorite lines of 
 research. The professor whose mental energy is 
 exhausted by from three to six hours per day in 
 the class-room or students 1 laboratory, will be 
 unable in his own laboratory and library to pro- 
 duce results which will make his University 
 famous for the discovery of new truths in any 
 branch of learning. In the model University 
 which our own institution aspires some clay to 
 become, it will be considered incumbent upon the 
 members of the faculty not only to teach the old 
 truth, but also to discover new truth. And the 
 professor who reveals the ability to add to the 
 stock of human knowledge by his own investiga- 
 tions, should be encouraged to make the most of 
 
4<; 
 
 his ability by being released from a large portion 
 of the class-room work which others, not possess- 
 ing his genius, can even more successfully under- 
 take. There are professors at Harvard, Johns 
 Hopkins and Clark Universities who are entirely 
 relieved from the work of instruction, because by 
 their original investigations they are thought to 
 confer greater distinction upon the institutions 
 which command their services, and thereby attract 
 more students within their walls, than if they were 
 required to devote their chief energies to the work 
 of instruction. But there is a golden mean, here 
 as everywhere else, and it will be found that a 
 fair amount of class instruction is a stimulus 
 rather than a hindrance to original work. 
 
 Recapitulating my conception of what the Uni- 
 versity of Kansas is to be in the future, I insist 
 upon these points as essential. In the first place, 
 it is to be a thoroughly Kansas institution. It is 
 to be an indissolubly integral part of the public - 
 school system, in complete harmony with it and 
 worthily crowning it. In the second place, it 
 is to hold its pre-eminent position in the State 
 of Kansas and among the great educational insti- 
 tutions of the United States by calling and 
 keeping in its service, against all competition, a 
 strong body of professors with an unquenchable 
 enthusiasm of learning. The State is to retain 
 these intellectual and moral guides of her sons 
 and daughters by furnishing them with adequate 
 
47 
 
 pecuniary remuneration, and by giving them such 
 apparatus for instruction and such opportunities 
 for discovering truth as to satisfy their most 
 earnest cravings for intellectual growth. With 
 such a faculty, and such a connection with the 
 lower public schools as I have described, the Uni- 
 versity of Kansas will suffer no lack of noble- 
 minded students from every county in the State. 
 There will be no occasion for any citizen to send 
 his sons and daughters to distant States and climes 
 to seek that educational equipment which can 
 . be obtained with greater facility within the walls 
 of this University. For the accomplishment of 
 this great result, the generous financial support 
 of the State of Kansas must be freely extended, 
 not in advance of her actual ability, but in fair 
 proportion to her increasing pecuniary capacity. 
 Appropriations for the feeble-minded, the unsound- 
 minded, the physically deficient, the pauper and 
 the criminal, should not be reduced in amount; 
 but it should be distinctly remembered that sound- 
 minded, able-bodied boys and girls are entitled 
 to an opportunity for securing the be st possible 
 preparation for life, in the University of a State 
 which never does anything by halves, and has 
 ever shown a disposition to manifest especial lib- 
 erality where the educational needs of her children 
 are concerned. 
 
 I look forward with confidence to a period in 
 the lifetime of many within the hearing of my 
 
48 
 
 voice to-day, when by public generosity aided by 
 private munificence Mt. Oread shall be covered 
 with educational structures, faultlessly planned, 
 devoted to the various departments of science 
 and the humanities, thronged with thousands of 
 students from this and other States intent upon 
 the greatest possible development of the immortal 
 mind and soul. For the hastening onward of 
 this educational millennium let every loyal Kan- 
 san bend his strongest energies until no township 
 in this great commonwealth shall be so remote as 
 to fail to receive some degree of inspiration to 
 right thinking and right living from the far- 
 reaching and ever- elevating influence of the Uni- 
 versity of Kansas. 
 
Relations between the University 
 and Material Progress. 
 
 COL. JOHN J. McCOOK, A.M., LL D. 
 
 Moke than merely formal thanks are due to you 
 for having invited me to come from the East and 
 address the authorities, students and friends of this 
 great Western seat of learning. There we are so 
 so overwhelmed by the marvelous material prog- 
 ress of the country beyond the Mississippi, that 
 we are sometimes inclined to forget the simulta- 
 neous growth of the Western universities, which 
 are working silently, but powerfully, and without 
 which all material progress is barren and unendur- 
 ing. 
 
 Among all human institutions, universities are 
 the most lasting. They survive changes of gov- 
 ernment, the strifes of factions, the revolutions of 
 religion. They seem almost to contradict the 
 statement of Hume, that we cannot expect that 
 stability in the works of man which the Almighty 
 has denied to His own creations. It is, however, 
 the rapid development of higher education in con- 
 nection with the great advance of practical inter - 
 
 (49) 
 
50 
 
 ests in the United States, which ha- Led me to 
 suggest to you to-day a few thoughts on the sub- 
 ject of the relation existing between the university 
 and material progress. 
 
 It has been observed by the English historian, 
 Mr. Lecky, that where great political activity 
 prevails, men are but little disposed to make 
 theories, but that in more tranquil periods men 
 turn to reflection. There is a plausibility about 
 this view which disappears when one looks at 
 history. 
 
 If we take, for example, the condition of an- 
 cient Greece, we find that the time of its greatest 
 political activity was also the time of its greatest 
 intellectual advancement. The age of Pericles, 
 the Augustan age of the Greeks, w^as that which 
 witnessed the career of Socrates, the rise of the 
 Academy and of the Lyceum, the establishment 
 of the schools of Sophists, and the development 
 of a critical historical spirit. 
 
 The time of the Caesars, when what was rela- 
 tively the greatest object of Koine's ambition, 
 the conquest of the world, was sought, was also 
 the time when Latin literature reached its high- 
 est point of excellence, and was preparing the 
 inspiration of European literature throughout 
 many centuries. 
 
 Even the middle ages, beginning with the reign 
 of Charlemagne, were marked by striking contem- 
 poraneous movements of activity and thought. 
 
51 
 
 With the eastward advance of European armies 
 toward the Holy Sepulchre, was contemporary the 
 westward march of oriental philosophy for the 
 conquest of catholic thought. Side by side with 
 feudal castles, the centers of all that was most 
 conspicuous in the world of action, rose the mo- 
 nastic schools with their speculations and doctrines 
 of metaphysical theology. The struggle of indi- 
 vidual European States to emerge from Feudalism 
 and to make Monarchy supreme finds its counter- 
 part in the strife of scholastic theologians and 
 the union of all under the sway of Koine. 
 
 That great series of events which we call the 
 Reformation, was indeed an age of practice, but 
 of theory as well. The discovery of America, the 
 voyages of Columbus and Cortes, the unsurpassed 
 results achieved by Copernicus and Galileo, cannot 
 be dissociated from the new theological revolu- 
 tion, the Renaissance, and the rise of modern 
 philosophy. 
 
 Coming to our own century, where so much 
 political activity has prevailed and material prog- 
 ress has been made, we find an immense .advance 
 in scientific life, the proposition of new and far- 
 reaching systems of philosophy, and the multipli- 
 cation to an unprecedented extent of educational 
 and literary institutions. 
 
 If history teaches anything, it teaches that the 
 closest relationship exists between the seething 
 world of action and the calmer world of thought 
 
52 
 
 and theory. In whatever direction we look, we 
 sec that the two advance together. Germany 
 shows it in the immense scientific development at 
 a time when she was fighting to secure her Im- 
 perial Constitution and her independence of action 
 as the leading state of Europe. Italy shows it 
 by the second Renaissance, which began at the 
 overthrow" of the temporal power of the Papacy 
 and has continued during the critical youth of 
 her newly- established kingdom. England, and 
 even republican France, have shown it by their 
 contributions to thought and letters during the 
 troubled times of internal conflicts. 
 
 It must be freely admitted that there is an 
 important difference between the university ideals 
 of Europe and America, particularly between 
 that of Germany and America. The construction 
 of the German State is such that the University 
 course is a necessary preparation for many 
 branches of public life, is indeed a process by 
 which an intellectual bureaucracy is created. 
 This is not so much the case in America. While 
 it is true that the Law is often called the step- 
 ping-stone to public preferment, it is a fact that 
 many of our most eminent and useful statesmen 
 have not had a legal training. Even the require- 
 ments of the Civil Service do not involve a col- 
 legiate education, and conversely the collegiate 
 courses are not expressly arranged for those who 
 propose to enter official life. The Government 
 
53 
 
 interferes only indirectly in the higher education 
 of its citizens ; and in a democracy, as a rule, 
 the people are not willing to be taxed for insti- 
 tutions which do not meet the general demands 
 of the many. 
 
 In the Greek democracy powerful schools for 
 instruction in Rhetoric, Logic, Philosophy and 
 Politics arose for the enlightenment of those who 
 wished to enter public life; but these were for 
 the few rather than for the multitude, and re- 
 ceived no support from the State. It is the same 
 in our own Republic. 
 
 In Europe most of the universities have a po- 
 litical significance — as in Russia, where they are 
 jealously watched as centers of sedition or revo- 
 lution; as in Germany, where they are more or 
 less controlled by the Imperial Government; as 
 in England, even, where they are represented in 
 Parliament. 
 
 In this country universities are created to sup- 
 ply the demand for higher education. They de- 
 pend, in but few instances, on ancient and 
 conditional endowments; they are in most cases 
 independent of State control. In Europe the 
 curriculum is not merely for the purpose of sup- 
 plying a demand, but is independent of such a 
 demand. The emptiness of an auditorium or lab- 
 oratory does not displace the professor nor cause 
 the disappearance of his specialty. Investigation 
 
54 
 
 and discovery are and should be ranked with 
 education and instruction. 
 
 So great is the thirst for knowledge, that there 
 is a pursuit, not merely of sciences which bring 
 bread and butter to their devotees, but there is 
 a multitude of men willing to forego the luxuries 
 of this life for the sake of Greek syntax, of the 
 higher mathematics, of archaeology and philoso- 
 phy. For them there is often no material re- 
 ward, for the number of specialists in science and 
 letters is far greater than that of university 
 chairs. 
 
 The work of the University in Europe, as well 
 as here, is supplemented by schools which pre- 
 pare men for commercial and industrial pursuits. 
 In such a country as this of ours there is a large 
 place for institutions like the latter, and there 
 are many who would encourage only commercial 
 and polytechnical education. Such a practical 
 tendency indicates a failure to see the true origin 
 and source of such technical subjects. That they 
 should either form part of a university course, or 
 be closely related to it, may be freely admitted, 
 but the fons et principium of all true practice 
 lies in intelligent theory. For Art is dependent 
 on Science. Doing is dependent on Thinking. 
 
 Mechanical Art, when it passes beyond the 
 simple handiwork of the laborer to the great con- 
 structions of the engineer, finds its support in the 
 
55 
 
 science of mechanics, and this is in turn founded 
 on mathematics. 
 
 The Art of Medicine is dependent not only on 
 the Sciences of Anatomy and Physiology, but 
 also on that of Chemistry, and needs for its in- 
 vestigation as well as its furtherance the help of 
 languages both living and dead. 
 
 The Art of Finance in minor trades and smaller 
 commercial transactions may require only common 
 sense and a knowledge of arithmetic; but beyond, 
 the greater movements, involving the relations be- 
 tween Capital and Labor, between the Govern- 
 ment and the People, are the laws of Social and 
 Political Economy. A man may have knowledge 
 of these and be unsuccessful in affairs, just as a 
 great physician may be an indifferent chemist, or 
 a great preacher a man ignorant of abstruse the- 
 ological questions. But the theory is related to 
 the practice as the source or the unimportant rill 
 which flows from it is to the mighty river that 
 fructifies a continent and bears the peaceful arma- 
 das of commerce to the sea. 
 
 But technical education is not the only education 
 that is needed by the man of technical pursuits. 
 The complaint is often made that the theorist is 
 not well fitted for practical action. His knowl- 
 edge is a knowledge of /the mere student or re- 
 cluse, a knowledge of the laboratory or of the 
 library, rather than the broader knowledge re- 
 quired to make practice useful and effective. In 
 
56 
 
 like manner it may be objected that the technical 
 specialist is too little of a theorist. Without ex- 
 aggeration it may be said that an exclusively tech- 
 nical education has a constraining and limiting 
 effect on the mind. Art and practical action may 
 be followed so specially as to shut the eyes of 
 practical men to the greatest objects which are to 
 be gained by a more general and liberal education. 
 Late in life the man of practical affairs, who 
 has achieved great material results and perhaps 
 has accumulated great wealth, begins to look with 
 longing eyes toward that vast treasure-house of 
 thought and letters from which he is shut out by 
 the limitations of his earlier training. Before this 
 time it had seemed to him only a dreary temple, 
 to be entered by those whose life was removed 
 from practical affairs. Its riches were, as he 
 thought, of no use in carrying out great practical 
 enterprises and winning wealth, and applause, and 
 fame. But after these are achieved by any man, 
 there often comes over him, however ignorant he 
 may be, at least a curiosity, and very often a sad 
 and hopeless longing to be a dweller in that cul- 
 tivated country where results are not to be meas- 
 ured by the senses nor to be recorded in the 
 ledger. It must be said, that men who later in 
 life have these feelings have been among the 
 noblest friends that American universities have 
 known. Go where you will to the richly- endowed 
 institutions in which young men are gaining this 
 
57 
 
 higher education, and everywhere you will be able 
 to trace, by the generous shifts of those who have 
 taken no degree in Art and Science, the indica- 
 tion of that dee]) regret which has led the givers 
 to furnish for others that which they have lacked 
 themselves. 
 
 I take it that one of the noblest characteristics 
 of our people is that desire which so many feel, 
 and often so earnestly express, that their children 
 may learn to know that fertile and radiant land 
 of which the parents catch but a passing glimpse. 
 For them the wheel of practical life, with its loud 
 distracting revolutions, cannot altogether hush the 
 voice which speaks to them from a remote antiq- 
 uity, from period after period of classical history 
 and classical song. The hopes of a great material 
 future in which the forces of nature are to be 
 held by a Promethean hand, cannot make them 
 forget altogether the highway of the past along 
 which the scholar lingers in an atmosphere of 
 philosophy and poetry and art. And almost in- 
 stinctively they know that the newer vintages 
 which practical science and contemporary litera- 
 ture set before them, have not the classic purity 
 and sweetness of those less exciting but nobler 
 products of an earlier day. Hence the almost 
 pathetic eagerness of men who spend the twilight 
 hours of useful lives in hoarding upon book 
 shelves or in art galleries that which their earlier 
 education has not enabled them to enjoy, but the 
 
58 
 
 value of which their declining years have forced 
 them to appreciate. 
 
 Even if mere utility be regarded as the stand- 
 ard by which the value of higher education is to 
 he measured, it will be found that the university 
 courses in the classics, and what in Scotland are 
 called the humanities, are of great importance in 
 many walks of practical life. Theologians must 
 be trained, and besides a knowledge of Hebrew, 
 Greek and Latin, they require a literary educa- 
 tion, or are the better for a literary education. 
 It is doubtful whether in any other profession 
 there is so great an opportunity of using knowl- 
 edge of history, of poetry, of psychology, logic 
 and ethics. Almost every branch of learning can 
 be employed to illustrate their preaching and 
 teaching. And what is true of the clergy is true 
 also of other classes in the community to a 
 greater or less extent. There are medical men 
 and scientific men, there are lawyers and engi- 
 neers, whose knowledge would be of far greater 
 use to the world had they enjoyed the cultivat- 
 ing influence of a general, as well as of a special 
 training. 
 
 I will not enter into a consideration of the 
 vexed question as to how far classical training 
 is a waste of time to professional men, but I 
 would suggest that those who would minimize 
 its importance seem to me to take a superficial 
 view of the intellectual world in which we live. 
 
59 
 
 Shining examples may be brought forward of 
 men, who, in their thought and in the expres- 
 sion of their thought are unsurpassed, although 
 they have no direct knowledge of the ancient 
 languages. But it must be remembered that 
 from their educational surroundings we cannot 
 eliminate that classical influence which permeates 
 modern literature, without which modern litera- 
 ture would not be what it is. It is by the clas- 
 sical standard that we judge the style even of 
 those who never have read a line of Plato or 
 Demosthenes, to whom Cicero and Quintilian are 
 known only by name. 
 
 Beside all this, one who has once joined that 
 company which is led by the Muses of the 
 Classic age can never feel himself to be alone. 
 However arduous his life, however rude his sur- 
 roundings, however far he may be removed from 
 society which is cultivated and civilized, he can 
 join in the exalted strain of the Roman poet, 
 changing only what is geographical and retain- 
 ing all the inspiration of that ancient lyric apos- 
 trophe : 
 
 "Vester, Camenre, vester in arduous 
 Tollor Sabinos, seu mihi frigidum 
 Pneneste seu Tibur supinum 
 Seu liquids placuere Baise. 
 Utcunque mecum vos eritis, libens 
 Insanientem navita Bosporum 
 Tentabo et urentes arenas 
 Littoris Assyrii viator; 
 Visam Britannos hospitibus feros 
 
60 
 
 Et lifctum equino sanguine Concanum, 
 
 Visam pharetratros Gelonos 
 
 Et Scythicum inviolatus amnem. 
 
 Vos Ca3sarem altura, militia simul 
 
 Fessas cohortes addidit oppidis, 
 
 Finire quierentem labores 
 
 Pierio recreatis antro. 
 
 Vos lene consilium et datis et dato 
 
 Gaudetis almse." 
 
 The pursuit of the historical method at our 
 universities seems to me to be of the highest im- 
 portance, not only to professional men in general, 
 but to practical professional men ; not only to 
 practical professional men, but to non-professional 
 men. No one who has watched the development 
 of science in the present century can fail to have 
 noticed the important part played by historical 
 study in this great advancement. The theory of 
 evolution, for example, is founded on the natural 
 history of the universe, and when presented it 
 forms, as it were, the biography of Nature. If 
 one would avoid error and useless effort, one 
 must use assiduously the historical method. We 
 should find great fault to-day with an inventor 
 who might claim to have just planned the tele- 
 graph or telephone, and should tell him that 
 every child knows about these inventions, and 
 that we had known of them for years. It is al- 
 most as strange to find many professing to have 
 constructed theories which they suppose to be 
 new and which in reality have long been ex- 
 ploded, or setting forth as new that which is old 
 
61 
 
 and long since known by those who have studied 
 the past. 
 
 The present can be truly understood only by 
 those who understand the past, and in this sense 
 all the sciences, both theoretical and practical, are 
 historical sciences. Indeed, many of the most prac- 
 tical truths cannot be learned on the exchange, in 
 the factory, in the courts of law, in laboratories, 
 in hospitals, or in the busy life around us, but 
 must be learned from the failures and successes 
 of the race in its past struggles. To appreciate 
 this is the best preventive of a dangerous radical- 
 ism on the one hand, and of a timid conservatism 
 on the other. 
 
 I cannot refrain from noticing one point of re- 
 lationship between the university and practical 
 life, with which you are all familiar, but which 
 seems to me worthy of especial consideration. I 
 refer to that existing between our higher institu- 
 tions of learning and the physical interests of the 
 American people. In a country where the ma- 
 terial resources have to be developed, and rapidly 
 developed, to meet the wants of a vast population 
 which is growing every day, the whole man, body 
 and soul, must go at a fast pace, which is a con- 
 stant menace to the robustness of the nervous sys- 
 tem and to the health of the community. You 
 are familiar with this phase of life here. In the 
 East we watch the vast procession of immigrants 
 which is sweeping westward, and we know how 
 
02 
 
 the great Americanizing mil J of this part of the 
 country must work to adapt them to the condi- 
 tions of our civilization. 
 
 It is an office of the University to teach men 
 that there is need of reflection as well as ener- 
 getic action, and so to keep within safe limits the 
 exuberant growth and expansion of Society. But, 
 besides this, one of the characteristics of the Amer- 
 ican, as of the English, University, is what I may 
 describe as Dorian — a care of man's body as well 
 as the development of his mind. By the gener- 
 ous rivalry of the various schools and colleges in 
 gymnastic and athletic sports, the physical as well 
 as the mental part of the student receives great 
 benefit; and so far from being "sicklied o'er with 
 the pale cast of thought," men find it quite easy 
 to acquire a high degree of scholarship without 
 finding in the end that their nerves are ruined 
 and their lungs contracted. Statistics inform us, 
 as common -sense might do, that the qualities which 
 favor healthy life, which put a crew at the head 
 of a river or win games of foot-ball or base-ball, 
 are not entirely divorced from those which Avin 
 by application and steady perseverance the more 
 enduring laurels of academic fame. 
 
 In this respect I venture to say, university 
 authorities have something to learn from the 
 undergraduates — the inspiration of healthy com- 
 petition — competition in the field of scholarship 
 such as those instructed by them display in the 
 
63 
 
 athletic world. It would be a great stimulus to 
 university life were the rivalry greater in this 
 respect. Believe me, gentlemen, the place of an 
 university intellectually is not to be determined 
 by the number of professors in its faculty, nor 
 the number of students on its rolls. There are, 
 it is true, some of our Eastern institutions of 
 learning which belie their name, and have in- 
 creased the number of their undergraduates by 
 lessening the value of their degree. Let us see 
 to it that we encourage men in every possible 
 way to enter our colleges, but having entered 
 them let us not be satisfied — as is the case in the 
 far East — with calling a man Bachelor of Arts 
 whose university course has fitted him to be little 
 more than an accomplished dancing-master or a 
 third-rate actor. It is true that we may measure 
 the greatness of an imperial University like Ber- 
 lin by numbers as well as scholarship, but a 
 truer idea of the meaning of a high standard is 
 gained by comparing Baliol with other far larger 
 colleges in the University of Oxford. Superiority 
 in scholarship is not altogether dependent on the 
 personnel of the faculty, (although here at Law- 
 rence you may see what a power that is,) but is 
 the result of the maintenance of a high standard 
 and a thorough earnestness on the part of both 
 professors and students to win a victory in com- 
 petition with sister institutions. It is the result 
 
04 
 
 of an enthusiasm in the cause of learning for 
 learning's sake. 
 
 You will freely admit that we, all of us, East 
 and West, have had much to learn from Europe 
 
 in the formation and development of our intel- 
 lectual life. The time is at hand when in many 
 respects the positions of teacher and learner must 
 be reversed, and the eyes of the Eastern seers 
 will be fixed occasionally on the star of empire 
 in its westward course. Here in the West, with- 
 out the fetters of tradition, you have had and 
 have the opportunity of making new experiments 
 and substantial advances in educational methods. 
 It is true that this is a dangerous responsibility, 
 but it is for you to feel the responsibility and 
 rest assured that as each advance is crowned 
 with success, there are in the older countries and 
 States receptive minds which are ready to follow 
 you. 
 
 It is an often -repeated boast that as civiliza- 
 tion in America advances, the school -house is 
 one of the first buildings to appear in a new 
 community. One may truly add that where ma- 
 terial development is most conspicuous, there 
 university life is ultimately vigorous. We find a 
 proof of this in Massachusetts and Connecticut, 
 for example, where institutions of learning flour- 
 ish within the sound of mills and factories ; in 
 Ohio, where the agriculture and industry seem 
 to be symbolic of growth and work in the 
 
65 
 
 world of intellect ; in California, which looks 
 over the Western sea towards the home of sci- 
 ence and civilization ; and especially here in 
 Kansas, the very center of this country, con- 
 nected by arterial systems of railroads with 
 every part of the great beating heart of the 
 American continent, where you are so actively 
 engaged in those pursuits which make a nation 
 not only rich and strong, but also wise and 
 good. 
 
 It is thus the chief function of the University 
 to know and to teach the truth. The history of 
 intellectual progress is the history of an attempt 
 to answer the question of the vaccillating Judean 
 governor, What is Truth? The University must 
 say to those who come to it for light, paraphras- 
 ing the old saying, " Nihil veri alienum putavi" 
 And, if this be so, it is impossible for any one 
 to raise the question of utility with reference to 
 the University course. Again, a high authority 
 tells us, "The truth shall make you free."" Truth 
 is the way to liberty. The inspired epigram 
 shows the logical order of surveying these two 
 priceless benefits. Kousseau tells us that " Man 
 is born free, but everywhere he is in chains, and 
 that he covers with flowers and calls it freedom." 
 But we know very well that the only true free- 
 dom is the effect of enlightenment. " The truth 
 shall make you free" had primarily a religious 
 meaning ; but in this saying we recognize the ex- 
 
66 
 
 pression of an universal verity. It is indeed 
 religious truth which shall make us free — free 
 from sin, free from the baser passions and the 
 lower instincts ; free from the punishment that 
 is sure to follow the violation of the moral Jaw. 
 But the Truth gives us Freedom in a wider 
 sense. History records many noble and passion- 
 ate efforts for the attainment of human freedom. 
 It records no instance in which Ignorance has 
 emancipated men from any kind of thralldom. 
 The yoke of ancient Egypt was endured by the 
 enslaved Israelite in spite of the taskmaster's whip 
 and the oppressive laws of the Pharaohs. The 
 leadership of Moses was crowned Avith success be- 
 cause he w^as the revealer of Truth, learned dur- 
 ing his earlier years in the court of the tyrant, 
 learned in many a vigil during his pastoral life 
 in Horeb. The freedom of Attica was no mere 
 accident. Attic wisdom and Attic liberty cannot 
 be thought of apart from one another. When 
 the Reformation in modern Europe began, the 
 Truth, which had long languished in the midst of 
 superstitions, oppressions, priestcraft, unworthy tra- 
 ditions, was crowned again. Chains were broken, 
 ungenerous laws were repealed, Society was to 
 know that the Kingdom of God was not a despot- 
 ism, that it was a kingdom of intelligence. It was 
 not a revolution led by a rebellious monk — it was 
 the culmination in action of a revival of Truth. 
 It is no mere accident that the reformed churches 
 
67 
 
 have so often been on the side of religions freedom. 
 Dark spots there are on the fame of some reform- 
 ers in those intolerant times. Bnt if yon would 
 see an illustration of the emancipating power of 
 the Truth, you need only look at the fiery conflict 
 of Huguenot, Covenanter, and Puritan, in which 
 the flowers of Ritual, Sensuality, worldly pros- 
 perity, ecclesiastical pride, were stripped from the 
 chains in which Europe had for so long been lan- 
 guishing. There could be no more cogent proof 
 of this particular power of truth than the fact 
 that the liberty of Europe was only a possibility 
 after Science, substantial religion, Literature and 
 knowledge of the spirituality of real religion had 
 been born again. Liberty is not a thing to be 
 achieved by the blind agitation of ignorant men. 
 It is the child of truth, and " Truth is the daughter 
 of Time." Freedom has indeed a bastard sister 
 which respects neither property, the family, nor Re- 
 ligion. Against this perverted creation of our time 
 we have to be on our guard. There may be many 
 respects in which we do not enjoy our proper meas- 
 ure of liberty, but our safeguard against such dan- 
 gers is the education of our citizens. The leaders 
 of the French Revolution had a faint appreciation 
 of this when they defied Reason in their efforts to 
 attain to liberty, equality, and fraternity. But 
 with their eyes open to one side of the truth, they 
 were in most cases blind to the verities of mor- 
 ality and religion. To that sightless eye, raised 
 
68 
 
 to a Godless heaven, there appears no vision of 
 true Liberty. Around us everywhere we may 
 read the same lesson. Blind rage at political 
 abuses, the bitter bread of poverty, the weariness 
 of unprofitable labor, the vicious examples of those 
 who use their wealth for the gratification of Lust 
 and ambition — these are the motive power of so- 
 cialism, communism, and anarchy. But these the- 
 ories are only attempts to tear the chains from the 
 limbs of some, to fasten them on the limbs of 
 others. All of these blind strivings of the poor, 
 the discontented, the oppressed, the unfortunate of 
 every kind, even the guilty for release from the 
 thralldom which they endure, are voices appealing 
 to our universities. They are not to be suppressed 
 by sneers, nor to be drowned with the shedding 
 of blood. The darkness which seems sometimes 
 to threaten our social conditions can be relieved 
 in only this way. Men have endured martyrdom 
 for far worse causes than the natural, nay, the 
 divine impulse to rise from degradation, poverty 
 and slavery. Upon all such darkness the light 
 of Truth must shine. Truth is the only beacon 
 which can save distressed society from shipwreck. 
 All impulses, however noble or natural, or divine 
 or powerful they may be, must be guided by 
 Truth if they are to be made effective, happy 
 and enduring in their results. The gallows may 
 be planted in the camp of the enemy to society, 
 gold may be given to the leaders of discontent, 
 
69 
 
 and many loud voices will be silenced ; but, me- 
 thinks, after all this prevention I still hear that 
 portentous undertone which may one day burst 
 into a roar like the sound of many waters. It 
 seems to many to be only a cry of discontent ; 
 but he who is a wise interpreter will recognize 
 in these disaffected mutterings and in these tur- 
 bulent cries an unconscious appeal for the Truth 
 which shall make these people free. In its radi- 
 ant light our society need not find Plato's de- 
 scription of the multitude a reflection of reality. 
 Like cattle with their faces turned, they feed 
 and breed and butt and kick at one another 
 with horns and hoofs which are made of iron, 
 for they are filled with that which is unsubstan- 
 tial. Rather will they be like those described 
 by the same philosopher who no longer linger 
 in the shades of the cave of ignorance with bod- 
 ies chained and with eyes fixed on the images 
 cast by passing objects on the dreary walls, but 
 will emerge into the light of day, for the Truth 
 shall make them free. 
 
 We are told on high authority that "Man shall 
 not live by bread alone, but by every word that 
 proceedeth out of the mouth of God" — a saying 
 which indicates the necessity of something higher 
 and greater than material prosperity. This truth 
 has a secular as well as a religious application, 
 and suggests our proper attitude in the midst of 
 
70 
 
 the bewildering rapidity with which America 
 is accomplishing in a short space of time what 
 
 other nations have patiently awaited for ages. 
 "Man shall not live by bread alone," but by 
 learning that the mind is to be fed as well as 
 the body. "Man shall not live by bread alone," 
 but by reading on dark or splendid pages of 
 history the failures and triumphs of nations in 
 the past; by penetrating through other languages 
 than his own the habit of thought, the liter- 
 ature, and the character of other times and 
 other lands; by studying in the mathematical 
 sciences the relations of that Infinite Space 
 in which Matter is known, or of that Infinite 
 Time, on which our idea of number depends. 
 "Man shall not live by bread alone," but by 
 reading upon the starry face of night the secrets 
 of other worlds by looking back through age 
 upon age toward the origin of this universe, and 
 forward to the mystery of its destiny. There will 
 always be minds starving for this kind of food, 
 and they must be fed. With all its many pur- 
 poses, the University of Kansas may claim this 
 proud object as its highest and best. It is this 
 to which its energies are directed, and on which 
 its hopeful eyes are fixed. If anything were 
 needed to prove the truth of what I have been 
 endeavoring to suggest and to express, and to 
 show that it has been the inspiration of others, 
 
71 
 
 I would only point to this great institution, which 
 now combines the health and promise of youth 
 with the vigor and activity of manhood. 
 
UNIVERSITY OF ILUNOI8-URBANA 
 
 3 0112 039794687