Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/138

 126 It cannot be content with being a cloistered company of cultured and scholarly men and women. Let the stream of its tendencies by all means take rise in the Alpine altitudes of pure thought; let its mother source be among the glacier lakes whose crystal waters are not passion swept or churned by prejudice. But as the rill descends to the lowlands it must widen; it must meet the sister rivulets and open its arms to them; it must roll on through the plains and hurry to throw itself into the embrace of the ocean of humanity. In other words, the American scholar cannot be a recluse. Though, he like the lonely lens-grinder of Amsterdam, must seek to understand all things, he cannot consent to forswear his human affections. He must preserve his capacity for indignation and admiration.

The nation has claims upon him. She is his mother and into her household he is expected to introduce his bride, his science. He must not be the hermit but the prophet, seeking his kind to speak the voice of warning and clarion the appeal to action. In our democracy, the aristocracy which Plato dreamt of as the rulers of his model community must strive for the scepter by winning over to their clearer way of thinking the multitude. The American university has the function of the Gulf Stream. Its influence must belt the broad Atlantic of the people's public life, temper indifference into enthusiasm and fanaticism into tolerance. Our universitiy extension, the very summer quarter, are proof that in this spirit this university was conceived. But this spirit must prophesy over many dead bones, that our people shall respond to the vernal call of the resurrection. No lover of our country and its institutions but must have in his thoughtful moments taken notice of the flight of black-winged petrels foretelling the gathering of a storm. The danger which none may blink arises as much from an overdose of chlorals called conservatism as from too free an indulgence in nerve tonic, labeled radicalism. The demagogue is busy compounding his drugs; it is he that reaps the harvest, while we alternate between languor and paroxysms of fever. The conservatism of American institutions has often been commented on. It has stood us in good