, 1905-06-19

Thus the university assumes the du-
ties of both the prophet and the deliv-
erer of democracy. Democracy is
sometimes Respondent seeing only dis
and darkness, thinking perhaps
of life in crowded cities.
There among the glooming alleys Pro
gress halts on palsied feet
Crime and hunger cast maidens by
the thousands on the street.
There the Master scrimps his haggard
semstress of her daily bread,
There a single sordid attic holds the
living and the dead.
There the smouldering fire of fever
creeps across the rotted floor,
And the crowded couch of incest in the
warrens of the floor"
No wonder that the laborer especial
ly in the great cities is Respondent,
standing between organized wealth on
the one hand and organized labor on
the other; told by organized wealth
that he must work for a certain wage
or quit, and often told by organized
labor that he must not work at all.
To democracy in its dependency
comes the university with its wider
vision and prophecies that oppression
shall be removed and heralds a govern
ment Of justice. 1t proclaims that the
world is not running down a steep
place into the sea like the devil-pos-
sessed swine OF the scripture, but NOV
ing steadily to that far-off divine event
toward which the whole creation
moves.
1t does still more. It helps men to
see life in its proper prospective and
to estimate comparative values. Most
men live too near to life constantly to
see it in its proper perspective.
You have seen a range of mountains
near at hand. All its inequalities were
accumulated, all its Irregularities mark
ed. What was near seemed out of pro
portion to what was more remote. You
could not see the entire range in its
unity and symmetry. But move to a
distance and how changed is the pic
ture. The rough and barren places are
no longer obtrusive. Inequalities van
ish, irregularities r subdued. The
various parts drop into symmetrical
relations. Peak answers to peak tow
in perfect harmony. So it is with life.
If you live close to it constantly and
never emerge from its hurly-burly, you
see no harmony there. The immediate
evil looms large. The remote good
seems problematic. Everything is
crude, in~harmonious. But remove you
self a little by study n reflection.
Petty details become Insignificant. The
heights of life emerge in their proper
relations. Peaks answer to peak tow
ering heavenward in harmony. To men
absorbed in the practical, the common
place, and the sordid the university
brings the enlargement of mind and
spirit which zones from a study OF
pure science looking far back into the
remote post Il penetrating illimit-
able space, from the knowledge of con-
temporary life bringing the whole
world within the sweep of the vision,
and especially from the study of lit
%erature summing up the best which has
been thought and said in the world.
In every age there have been a few
men endowed with genius OF insight,
who have seen deeper into life than
their contemporaries and made saner
Interpretation of its inner meaning.
These great personalities are nc more
to be neglected than the great events
of the world. There is Cervantes, the
great Spaniard, whom the world has
been celebrating in a peculiar way dur.
ing the last month on account Of the
three h%undredth anniversary of the
publication of his Don Quixote. Here
is a nan who saw life steadily and
saw it whole" By nature an ardent
idea'ist, he left his native Spain at an
early age in the suit of a distinguish.
ed ccclesiastic and made his way to
Rome; here fired by religious zeal he
joined the Crusade as a common sol.
der and fought with honor in the
famous sea fight of Lepanto. Cap
turei and taken to Africa where he
lived for five years as a slave. Upon
returning to Spain he entered a liter
airy life and filled a small government
Office which took him into every part
of Spain and brought him into contact
with every phase of Spanish life. In
him were fused the ideal and the prac-
teal. He knew the weakness of pure
idealism. He knew the weakness and
sordidnessof the purely practical; and
he embodied these two phases of life
into the great characters, Don Quixote
and Sanco Penny. One a man Of the
higher nature deluded by his own no
bility; the other a man of a lower ma.
utre duped by his own baseness.
Through fine satire, therefore, he work
ed out a fine balance Of the practical
and the ideal, a profound and sane in
depreciation Of life. And Cervantes is
only one example of the personalities
of which 1 speak.
The authors of the Homeric poems.