act by the innovators, it has generally held true that the
accredited learned class and the seminaries of the higher learning
have looked askance at all innovation. New views, new departures in
scientific theory, especially in new departures which touch the theory
of human relations at any point, have found a place in the scheme of
the university tardily and by a reluctant tolerance, rather than by
a cordial welcome; and the men who have occupied themselves with such
efforts to widen the scope of human knowledge have not commonly been
well received by their learned contemporaries. The higher schools have
not commonly given their countenance to a serious advance in the methods
or the content of knowledge until the innovations have outlived their
youth and much of their usefulness--after they have become commonplaces
of the intellectual furniture of a new generation which has grown
up under, and has had its habits of thought shaped by, the new,
extra-scholastic body of knowledge and the new standpoint. This is true
of the recent past. How far it may be true of the immediate present it
would be hazardous to say, for it is impossible to see present-day
facts in such perspective as to get a fair conception of their relative
proportions.

So far, nothing has been said of the Maecenas function of the
well-to-do, which is habitually dwelt on at some length by writers
and speakers who treat of the development of culture and of social
structure. This leisure-class function is not without an important
bearing on the higher and on the spread of knowledge and culture. The
manner and the degree in which the class furthers learning through
patronage of this kind is sufficiently familiar. It has been frequently
presented in affectionate and effective terms by spokesmen whose
familiarity with the topic fits them to bring home to their hearers the
profound significance of this cultural factor. These spokesmen, however,
have presented the matter from the point of view of the cultural
interest, or of the interest of reputability, rather than from that of
the economic interest. As apprehended from the economic point of view,
and valued for the purpose of industrial serviceability, this function
of the well-to-do, as well as the intellectual attitude of members of
the well-to-do class, merits some attention and will bear illustration.

By way of characterization of the Maecenas relation, it is to be noted
that, considered externally, as an