mer who takes for granted that its
principles are true. They gave us Chicago, the Amazon who stands yonder
with _I will_ written upon her shield and a throng of men who are fit to
serve her will. They gave us a Civil War--men who could fight it and
afterwards live together in peace. They gave us industry, law, democracy.
But not science, not art. These were not wholly absent, but they were
guests. They were here in the persons of a few men who in spite of all
difficulties did work at them as a life business.

In this far western village, for example, we had two men who brought here
the old English classical learning, two who more than fifty years ago had
been trained in the universities of Europe, and one whom the radical
instinct which set science going in the first place, called from a village
academy into membership in the international guild of scholars. What these
men did for sound learning and what they did through their pupils to uplift
every occupation in the State, it is wholly beyond our power to measure.
But one thing they could not do. They could not furnish to society more men
who should devote themselves to learning than society would furnish a
living for. And the bare fact is that there was a living for very few such
men in America in the days before the war. Within the past quarter-century
there has been a change in this respect so great that none fails to see it.
The millions that we have spent upon universities and high schools, the
vast plant of buildings and libraries and laboratories, fill the public eye
with amazement. But all this is the husk of what has happened. The real
thing is that these millions, this vast plant, these thousands of
_positions_ demanding trained men, have brought to life upon this ground
the guild of scholars. We do not need any more to exhort men to become
scholars. The spirit which was in Thales and Copernicus, in Agassiz and
Kirkwood, calls to the Hoosier farmboy in its own voice, and shows him a
clear path by which, if he is fit, he may join their great company.

And, if I am not mistaken, Art, which has also been a guest, is ready at
last to become a citizen. Why should it not? What is lacking? Yonder are
the works of art and the men who know. Here are the youths some share of
whom must by right belong to the service of Art. And here are the millions
which go to support men in every molehole of scientific research and other
millions spent stupidly and wantonly for whateve