Kansas University Weekly.
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tion and strength which will not fail through all the coming years, whether they are successful or unsuccessful, whether you are rich or poor, whether you be great or small in the eve of the world.
Does not the educated man know where to find that which will minister to his mood—not harmfully, but helpfully? Has he not so often thrown the search light down into his soul that he comes to know himself as a physician should know his patient, so that when he finds himself ailing he is not without a remedy? The educated man lays up for himself memories and associations and sympathies and friendships which not only give him a fuller measure of happiness in after years, but which put their arms about him and sustain him when his hour of weakness comes?
Is not this substantial? Is this not just as surely good as houses and gold and stocks and bonds? Can you not imagine that the riches of culture may give you just as much happiness as material riches—that friends in nature and friends in art and friends in literature and history and philosophy will be just as true and unfailing as friends in the business or political world? And can you not see that all this tends to strengthen in you the very commercial virtues I have talked about-your courage, your integrity, and your endurance?
I have discussed what you may expect from the business world. I shall close with a few words about what the business world expects of you.
Colleges and universities are not established for the sole selfish advancement of the students who attend them, and this is especially true of state institutions. An alleged laboring man whom I chanced to meet in Chicago the other day near a group of university buildings, told me that people built colleges and sent their children there to learn Latin, Greek and Hebrew that they might thereby enslave the people. This poor fellow seemed to believe it. It came out as an interesting fact which I might or might not, know about, and in the company of many similar facts summoned to sustain an argument and embellish a tirade. We know that this is not true. The people of Kansas are not spending
cheir money here for your benefit alone. They expect a return. This is not intended to be as the school of the Sophists, where young men went to learn oratory and the art of persuasion, so they might go about advancing their own interests by fooling the people. The founders of this institution did not design it as a place where clever and enterprising young rascals might come and sharpen their wits and sweeten their tongues. They rather designed it to be a school over which the benign spirit of goodness, truth and beauty should brood as long as the state should stand—a fountain head out of which should flow to all the people a beneficent stream of purifying, regenerating influence. And such it is, and such may it remain, and long may it stand to enrich, embellish and ennoble the lives of the people who sustain it. And if ever the people find it fostering cynicism, caste, bigotry,cruelty, selfishness or other enemies to good republican government and good American happiness, then let the people tear it down forthwith.
Thoughtful men in the business world look to liberal education,look to you,the liberally educated, for the preservation of all that is good in our civil institutions; for the promotion of good government upon the earth.
They see, for example, the tremendous evil of blind partisanship in politics. They see the citizens of a common country, the children of a common mother, divided into hostile camps. They see the leaders of one camp inflaming their followers against their fellow-citizens in the other camp. They see these leaders construct horrid images with flaming eyes and red, gaping mouths, with dragons' heads, with slimy serpents' bodies; and they parade these images up and down the ranks and say, "See, these are the images of your fellow citizens in the other ranks. They want to subvert liberty, to destroy happiness, to bring down ruin on the country. They are called democrats—republicans—populists—as the case may be. Now, you must hate them and fight them. Self-preservation is the first law of life and this is a war of extermination. All means are allowable and no quarter is to be given." The children born in the camp remain there as a matter of
course. For a man to pass from one camp to the other is to be a traitor, hated at home and suspected abroad. You must stand by your side, right or wrong: you must fight for your party, right or wrong; and take your share of the spoil according to the fortunes of war.
To abandon the figure of speech, you see that the political system is wooden. The electors as a mass have no liberty. Public sentiment has no real outlet. We cannot vote on the merits of questions as they arise. If republicans take up a good measure, we, as democrats, cannot give it active support, we cannot believe it is really good; because it has a tag on it marked 'republican.' We cannot give it active support, we cannot even keep quiet; we must go down to the electors and sophisticate and throw dust in their eyes and defeat the measure because forsooth the damage to the country which would come by republican supremacy overbalances the good of the proposed reform. I am a party man first, an American second, and an honest, truthful man last.
We let prejudices and names lead us about by the nose. I heard a politician express his sincere happiness at being out of office. He told of the torments of distributing patronage, the friends he had lost, the enemies he had made. He had been a good officer; he had selected his subordinates for efficiency and integrity and not for political service; but he had been in perpetual hot water. I said to him when he got through, "Well, you must be a civil service reformer by this time." A profane but expressive dissent fairly took my breath away. He had a prejudice against a phrase. There is everything in a name, everything in a trademark.
Now, it seems to me that liberal education should and does beget political tolerance. Liberal education gives a man some love of the truth and the whole truth. It teaches him how difficult it is to get hold of the whole truth; it puts him on his guard against the tricks of words and phrases, against the frauds of passion, against the deceits of reason. It informs him of the largeness of truth so that he never thinks he has caught the whole universe under his hat. And, more important than this, it