Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/136

 124 lay. For she has assumed David's part and sings to Saul, an ancient world sunk into melancholic surfeit of life, the story of the brighter hope spurring on western manhood to new conquests. So does today American scholarship, like American literature, hold the expectant attention of every land. Its own periodicals command respect and its sturdy yeomen are not infrequent nor minor guests at the symposia of European academicians.

But the American university must be and is more. Scholarship and culture cannot be divorced in this country, however lax our courts may be in judging the binding character of the vinculum matrimonii. Whatever growing prominence the graduate school shall attain, the college forms an organic part of the university. Both departments gain infinitely by the maintenance of this historically developed interdependence and interinfluence. The specialist is thus preserved from fatal bigotry; he is kept in touch with the warm currents of youthful, vigorous life. He is not allowed to forget that there is more in this life and to it than a digamma or a twin star; that men are more than consumers of salts and fats. But if by this happy union the scholar is saved from fossilization and ossification, the college student is as effectually protected against shallowness, the stagnation of routine, the ridiculous presumptiousness of sophomorism. The culture studies are as great a solicitude for the American university as are the specialities of the methodic scholar. In this the American is distinct from the European university. What culture implies has been the bone of contention these weary years of educational controversy. Is my belief that our university has solved this perplexity in the truly new American, i. e., non-dogmatic spirit, a delusion to which the wish is father? The Shibboleths of the conflict on either side are certainly misleading. The humanities or the natural sciences, so has been pointed the issue. But are these antithetical? I hold not. It depends upon our point of view whether we affix to one of the same branch this tag or the other. It is only a conventional division which has no real distinction and existence that would draw an