and
interests are shifting, successive, and distraught; they blow in
alternation while the pilot's hand is steadfast. He knows the compass,
and, with all the leeways he is obliged to tack toward, he always makes
some headway. A small force, if it never lets up, will accumulate
effects more considerable than those of much greater forces if these
work inconsistently. The ceaseless whisper of the more permanent
ideals, the steady tug of truth and justice, give them but time, _must_
warp the world in their direction.

This bird's-eye view of the general steering function of the
college-bred amid the driftings of democracy ought to help us to a
wider vision of what our colleges themselves should aim at. If we are
to be the yeast-cake for democracy's dough, if we are to make it rise
with culture's preferences, we must see to it that culture spreads
broad sails. We must shake the old double reefs out of the canvas into
the wind and sunshine, and let in every modern subject, sure that any
subject will prove humanistic, if its setting be kept only wide enough.

Stevenson says somewhere to his reader: "You think you are just making
this bargain, but you are really laying down a link in the policy of
mankind." Well, your technical school should enable you to make your
bargain splendidly; but your college should show you just the place of
that kind of bargain--a pretty poor place, possibly--in the whole
policy of mankind. That is the kind of liberal outlook, of
perspective, of atmosphere, which should surround every subject as a
college deals with it.

We of the colleges must eradicate a curious notion which numbers of
good people have about such ancient seats of learning as Harvard. To
many ignorant outsiders, the name suggests little more than a kind of
sterilized conceit and incapacity for being pleased. In Edith Wyatt's
exquisite book of Chicago sketches called "Every One his Own Way" there
is a couple who stand for culture in the sense of exclusiveness,
Richard Elliot and his feminine counterpart--feeble caricatures of
mankind, unable to know any good thing when they see it, incapable of
enjoyment unless a printed label gives them leave. Possibly this type
of culture may exist near Cambridge and Boston. There may be specimens
there, for priggishness is just like painter's colic or any other
trade-disease. But every good college makes its students immune
against this malady, of which the microbe haunts the neigh