ks it must be something else.
He thinks he ought to. It is a mere inference. At all events he has
little use for it unless he knows just how eternal it is. I am speaking
too strongly? I suppose I am. I am thinking of my four special
boys--boys I have been doing my living in, the last few years. I cannot
help speaking a little strongly. Two of them--two as fine, flash-minded,
deep-lit, wide-hearted fellows as one would like to see, are down at
W----, being cured of inferring in a four years' course at the W----
Scientific School. Another one, who always seemed to me to have real
genius in him, who might have had a period in literature named after
him, almost, if he'd stop studying literature, is taking a graduate
course at M----, learning that it cannot be proved that Shakespeare
wrote Shakespeare. He has already become one of these spotlessly
accurate persons one expects nowadays. (I hardly dare to hope he will
even read this book of mine, with all his affection for me, after the
first few pages or so, lest he should fall into a low or wondering state
of mind.) My fourth boy, who was the most promising of all, whose mind
reached out the farthest, who was always touching new possibilities, a
fresh, warm-blooded, bright-eyed fellow, is down under a manhole
studying God in the N---- Theological Seminary.

This may not be exactly a literal statement, nor a very scientific way
to criticise the scientific method, but when one has had to sit and see
four of the finest minds he ever knew snuffed out by it,--whatever else
may be said for science, scientific language is not satisfying. What is
going to happen to us next, in our little town, I hardly dare to know. I
only know that three relentlessly inductive, dull, brittle, _blase_, and
springless youths from S---- University have just come down and taken
possession of our High School. They seem to be throwing, as near as I
can judge, a spell of the impossibility of knowledge over the boys we
have left.

I admit that I am in an unreasonable state of mind.[3] I think a great
many people are. At least I hope so. There is no excuse for not being a
little unreasonable. Sometimes it almost seems, when one looks at the
condition of most college boys' minds, as if our colleges were becoming
the moral and spiritual and intellectual dead-centres of modern life.

[3] Fact.

I will not yield to any man in admiration for Science--holy and
speechless Science; holier than any religion