hen American scholarship in science, in
language, in occidental or oriental letters, in philosophic and
historical methods, can court comparison with any other. In some branches
of research the peers of our scholars must be sought not in England but
in Germany. So that in one of the best fruits of a period of intellectual
agitation, scholarship, the restless movement has thoroughly vindicated
itself.

I have called your attention to this movement in order to say that it was
neither accidental nor isolated. It was in the historic line, it was fed
and stimulated by all that had gone before, and by all contemporary
activity everywhere. New England, for instance, was alert and progressive
because it kept its doors and windows open. It was hospitable in its
intellectual freedom, both of trial and debate, to new ideas. It was in
touch with the universal movement of humanity and of human thought and
speculation. You lose some quiet by this attitude, some repose that is
pleasant and even desirable perhaps, you entertain many errors, you may
try many useless experiments, but you gain life and are in the way of
better things. New England, whatever else we may say about it, was in the
world. There was no stir of thought, of investigation, of research, of
the recasting of old ideas into new forms of life, in Germany, in France,
in Italy, in England, anywhere, that did not touch it and to which it did
not respond with the sympathy that common humanity has in the universal
progress. It kept this touch not only in the evolution and expression of
thought and emotion which we call literature (whether original or
imitative), but in the application of philosophic methods to education,
in the attempted regeneration of society and the amelioration of its
conditions by schemes of reform and discipline, relating to the
institutions of benevolence and to the control of the vicious and
criminal. With all these efforts go along always much false
sentimentality and pseudo-philanthropy, but little by little gain is made
that could not be made in a state of isolation and stagnation.

In fact there is one historic stream of human thought, aspiration, and
progress; it is practically continuous, and with all its diversity of
local color and movement it is a unit. If you are in it, you move; if you
are out of it, you are in an eddy. The eddy may have a provincial
current, but it is not in the great stream, and when it has gone round
and round for a ce