The record-union. [volume] (Sacramento, Calif.) 1891-1903, 1895-08-10
THE SCHOLAR AND PRACTICAL
AND POLITICAL ACTIVITY.

THE SCHOLAR AND PRACTICAL
AND POLITICAL ACTIVITY.
Bishop Potter in a recent address said
that the influence of educated men never
was greater upon the public mind than
to-day. He declared that not one in five
hundred of the sixty Or seventy mill
ions of people in the United States is
college graduate, nor will the proportion
ever be higher than that. While the
great mass of our people have common
school education, yet the Bishop is i'm
pressed with the belief that only very
moderate portion of the people coming
out of the schools do in busy life any
substantial reading. What they do read,
he says, is largely mentally facilitating
literature; they fall into habit that de-
prives them of thinking deeply through
grave problems. But, he added, the in
fuence of the thoroughly educated and
the Well-resd upon the others is great,
and is destined TO be much greater.
anu ILLS Is bIlS cast. Ieb lIlD hQNt, JuSb De-
cause our average American citizen who is
not 4 college graduate, while often unequal to
profound or acute original thinking, is,
nevertheless becoming more and more
trained to recognize tue characteristics and
often the force of the processes OF such rea-
sOning and 10 be increasingly Influenced by
them. Max Nordau says in his striking
work on degeneration" that to-day every
German peasant who buys a penny pa per
puts himself thereby IN touch with the in-
terestS and sutterings and fears and inspira-
III !,
whole civilized world. Yes, but who is to
guide him 10 interpret the larger signiti-
canoe Of what he reads as to make of him a
better citizen and better man?
II is here, as l conceive. That the Office of
the true scholar appears. You may exclaim
against social ana personal inequalities. as
you please. The time will never come when
a man VINO has not merely learned certain
chemical combinations SO that he can manu-
1acture a fertilizer, or certain mathematical
combinations SO that he can build railroad
but has also learned what made little pc
ninsula in the Adriatic the mistress
OF the world, or how Roman law be-
came the basis OF the Jurisprudence of
ChTiStend0m, or now the 1911 OF .empITes was
1OreSuaGOwed III the "Republic" of Plato or
now the growth OF a corrupt and privileged
ecclesiaSticism brought about the transform
alton OF modern Europe. the time viii never
come. say, when the man who has learned
these things, not Il parr0tlike learning. but
in the length ana breath of their vast and
enduring significance, viii not be, in every
highest sense, the master OF nlm who has
not. lie may not be as rich. adroit, as
aggressive, or apparently successful.
ne may be overlooked and forgotten
III tie mad scramble for place or
power, or in the vulgar conteDtions of
political conventions. But sooner or later
will come the moment when inferior men,
helpless and cropping, IN their ignorance, Will
be compelled once and again to listen 10 Lin
coin. graduate OF no university il is true but
rom the hour when, long, ungainly lad he
lay before the Ere IN his fathers cabin read
inv nv li4lr nine knot a II V on
4 0eyoUrer OF books, an inSatiate learner and
student reader and thinker, and seer as we'll
And so the Bishop thinks we should be
able to see that there is q large place for
the college 10 fill in our social economy,
and that we ought to perceive the in
fluence the educated man exercises in it.
Yet the Bishop believes that he will
be rebuked for saying as much, and that
mis- words will not meet with popular
favor. How he reaches such q conclu-
sion we do not understand. We are
aware that there is good deal of slight
ing talk about college and university
nose at the higher education of our youth
But this is not nearly so prevalent as
many suppose.
The American people as mass believe
in and respect and to a large extent lean
upon the trained thinker and thoroughly
informed man. They do good deal
more of solid reading, too, than the Bishop
else the book world is deceived
They are, however. shrewd enough to
realize that graduation from a college or
university is not conclusive evidence that |
the holder of a degree is thinker. or
one who can use the knowledge be has
acquired in the practical affairs of life.
The Bishop well says that the college /
in America should be the training school t
not merely of learners, but of thinkers,
and that the men it graduates should be |
the leaders not only in successful enter |