nations have been rich and prosperous and powerful. But the United
States has believed that it had an original contribution to make to the
history of society by the production of a self-determining,
self-restrained, intelligent democracy. It is in the Middle West that
society has formed on lines least like those of Europe. It is here, if
anywhere, that American democracy will make its stand against the
tendency to adjust to a European type.

This consideration gives importance to my final topic, the relation of
the University to pioneer ideals and to the changing conditions of
American democracy. President Pritchett of the Carnegie Foundation has
recently declared that in no other form of popular activity does a
nation or State so clearly reveal its ideals or the quality of its
civilization as in its system of education; and he finds, especially in
the State University, "a conception of education from the standpoint of
the whole people." "If our American democracy were to-day called to give
proof of its constructive ability," he says, "the State University and
the public school system which it crowns would be the strongest evidence
of its fitness which it could offer."

It may at least be conceded that an essential characteristic of the
State University is its democracy in the largest sense. The provision in
the Constitution of Indiana of 1816, so familiar to you all, for a
"general system of education ascending in regular gradations from
township schools to a State University, wherein tuition shall be gratis
and equally open to all," expresses the Middle Western conception born
in the days of pioneer society and doubtless deeply influenced by
Jeffersonian democracy.

The most obvious fact about these universities, perhaps, lies in their
integral relation with the public schools, whereby the pupil has pressed
upon him the question whether he shall go to college, and whereby the
road is made open and direct to the highest training. By this means the
State offers to every class the means of education, and even engages in
propaganda to induce students to continue. It sinks deep shafts through
the social strata to find the gold of real ability in the underlying
rock of the masses. It fosters that due degree of individualism which is
implied in the right of every human being to have opportunity to rise in
whatever directions his peculiar abilities entitle him to go,
subordinate to the welfare of the state. It keeps the av