al search for
the unsullied truth in the interests of all the people; this is the holy
grail of the universities.

That they may perform their work they must be left free, as the pioneer
was free, to explore new regions and to report what they find; for like
the pioneers they have the ideal of investigation, they seek new
horizons. They are not tied to past knowledge; they recognize the fact
that the universe still abounds in mystery, that science and society
have not crystallized, but are still growing and need their pioneer
trail-makers. New and beneficent discoveries in nature, new and
beneficial discoveries in the processes and directions of the growth of
society, substitutes for the vanishing material basis of pioneer
democracy may be expected if the university pioneers are left free to
seek the trail.

In conclusion, the university has a duty in adjusting pioneer ideals to
the new requirements of American democracy, even more important than
those which I have named. The early pioneer was an individualist and a
seeker after the undiscovered; but he did not understand the richness
and complexity of life as a whole; he did not fully realize his
opportunities of individualism and discovery. He stood in his somber
forest as the traveler sometimes stands in a village on the Alps when
the mist has shrouded everything, and only the squalid hut, the stony
field, the muddy pathway are in view. But suddenly a wind sweeps the fog
away. Vast fields of radiant snow and sparkling ice lie before him;
profound abysses open at his feet; and as he lifts his eyes the
unimaginable peak of the Matterhorn cleaves the thin air, far, far
above. A new and unsuspected world is revealed all about him. Thus it is
the function of the university to reveal to the individual the mystery
and the glory of life as a whole--to open all the realms of rational
human enjoyment and achievement; to preserve the consciousness of the
past; to spread before the eye the beauty of the universe; and to throw
wide its portals of duty and of power to the human soul. It must honor
the poet and painter, the writer and the teacher, the scientist and the
inventor, the musician and the prophet of righteousness--the men of
genius in all fields who make life nobler. It must call forth anew, and
for finer uses, the pioneer's love of creative individualism and provide
for it a spiritual atmosphere friendly to the development of personality
in all uplifting ways. It must