90
Kansas University Weekly.
teaches him, in a measure, how truth is really propagated; that is, by reason and persuasion and love, and not by force and threat and hatred. All this begets tolerance. Tolerance is not indifference; tolerance is good; indifference is worse than bigotry. Tolerance implies positive conviction. If a man doesn't care, he is simply careless, he is not tolerant. "Tolerance," says Mr. Brooks, "is the willing consent that other men should hold and express real opinions with which we disagree until they are convinced by reason that those opinions are untrue."
Tolerance does not mean that you leave the victim of free trade heresy alone. You do not, You go at him hammer and tongs, only in the right spirit and the right way. You do not wilfully misquote authorities to him; you do not use arguments you know to be false; you do not tell him he is a fool; you do not try to force him by stirring up prejudices against him; by belittling him and deriding him. You go at him fairly, by reason and persuasion to convert him. And if it ends by your converting yourself to his views, so much the better.
Thoughtful men expect that you will help solve the difficult political, social and economic problems which beset us. You will do this by strengthening the faith of the multitude in reason and righteousness. Faith in reason: Here, for example, is an ignorant man who has a little piece of cloth, and on that cloth is a spot of blood, and he wants to know whether that blood is human or animal blood. He does not know, and more than that he does not know that science can tell. He has no knowledge of scientific processes and no confidence in them. He consults a fortune teller or clairvoyant. Or perhaps he puts the question to a vote, instead of going away and consulting a man of science.
In just this same way we. the American people, want to know about some of these economic questions, and we go and consult the clairyovants, or we make it a party issue and take a vote on it. Here is a sick child and the question is whether the disease is smallpox or scarlet fever. Let us vote on it. The majority rules. The question is how to keep cholera out of the country, and
one party says throw salt in the sea, while the other says inject oxygen into the air, and we take a vote on it Now, there are a good many questions in life that you cannot get at in that way and some of these economic questions I believe are among the number. Science and reason cannot settle every question which may arise, but science and reason can help and we must have faith in them.
There is one great concern of human government and one great ever-present question which everybody discusses and which you don't want to hear about now, and that is the matter of capital and labor. I am not going to discuss it nor am I going to make any lugubrious prophesies There was a father once who, fearing an earthquake in the region of his home, sent his two little boys to distant friends until the peril should be past. A few weeks later he received this brief note: "Please take your boys home and send us the earthquake," Our land is full of soothsayers and oracles foretelling a tremendous social earthquake. Sometimes, in moments of irritation, we feel like exchanging the prophets for their earthquake; and yet seriously, it is surprising how many wise and good and courageous men are dejected over the matter and apprehensive. A vigorous attack is indeed being made upon the institution of private property in this country, or upon some forms or incidents of that institution as at present understood. "Your idea of the absolute sacredness of private property is grinding labor to the dust," thunders one party. "There can be no civilization, no material security for any one, where the right of private property is not held absolute and sacred," is the reply. This question of the distribution of property, this question of the rich and the poor, of capital and labor, may indeed sometime lead to civil war. But it is a question which cannot be solved by war; it cannot be settled by force. You might as well try to chop up currents of electricity with an axe. The forces at work are too deep-seated and subtle. The matter cannot be settled by ignorance and selfishness of any kind, whether it be the ignorance and selfishness of the poor, or the ignorance
and selfishness of "those comfortable moles whom what they do teaches the limit of the just and the true." Wisdom and righteousness alone will settle it and you are expected to help.
You will be counted on in all the reforms and especially in the reform of the reformers and their methods. Educated men know—and it is an eternal and fundamental truth which ought to be heralded perpetually in song, in art, in literature, in the press and the pulpit and on the platform and in our legislatures—educated men know that the way to every real reform is through the mind and the conscience of the individual man; and the way to get into the mind and conscience of the individual man is to take him when he wears kilts—or earlier. If you want to reform this great world with its billions of blind, unhappy, selfish, struggling people, gather your stores of wisdom and virtue and piety and wealth and skill and strength and put them reverently down at the feet of this little girl in short dresses. If you want to reform men, reform the man; and if you want to reform the man, take him when his hair is softer than silk—and his conscience is softer than that; take him when his eye is clearer than crystal—and his mind clearer still; take him when his cheek is lovelier than the apples blossoms and his soul is more beautiful than any material or earthly thing. Take him then and hang on to him.
If our houses are all tumbling down about our heads, let us not go on building them in the same old way and trying to prop them up with cornstalks or beanpoles. Laws and institutions have their place. Political agitations and movements and revolutions may gain temporary ends. But all real and permanent reform must begin with the boy and girl in school. Only a little can be accomplished by going down to congress We had men and miseries before we had legislatures. Human life and welfare and happiness lie within the domain of law only to a limited extent. Improvement comes from within, not from without All methods of reform must fail in the end which do not address themselves to individual motives and individual motives are determined in youth. You are expected to serve your
cour
frier