he field of optics on the one hand, and of the experts in
quantity production on the other, we were making thirty-five hundred
pairs of field glasses each week. There are many other adaptations of
scholarship to industry that are awaiting similar practical solutions.
One of our most distinguished scholars in physics has said publicly that
the day is past when one can defend any distinction between pure and
applied science. One might as well try to distinguish between pure and
applied virtue.

I said at the outset that I would venture later on an enlargement of the
conception of the American scholar, in the light of what the past two
years have made so clear. The scholar himself as well as those of us who
are not scholars, needs, I think, to get a somewhat broader conception
of the term; to develop it from its present popular connotation so that
the attributes which come to one's mind will no longer be the static and
selfish, but rather the dynamic and social. Emerson, in his essay on the
American Scholar, seems to have some prophetic glimpse of this broader
conception. He says, for example, that "action is with the scholar
subordinate, but it is essential; that without it, he is not yet man;
that the true scholar grudges every opportunity of action passed by, as
a loss of power"; and elsewhere, "that a great soul will be strong to
live, as well as strong to think." The old idea of the scholar was the
recluse, the individual; the new, it seems to me, should be one of a
company of builders, each bringing to the common task, for the general
welfare, his training and craft, his knowledge and ideas, to combine
them with the gifts which his fellows are bringing.

* * * * *

Thus far almost all my modern instances have been taken from the realms
of natural science. I need not remind you, however, that although
science has tremendously broadened the range of scholarship,
nevertheless the scholarship which is a practical asset is not and never
will be limited to natural science. The record of the past two years has
many an example of the essentially important work of scholars in other
fields. The records are not so clear-cut, the results are perhaps more
often negative; but the work was done and it counted. In the field of
public information our American scholars in the political sciences did
excellent work under the direction of a Doctor of Philosophy of this
University, and their record for fai