Page:Challenge of Facts and Other Essays.djvu/417

398 tion. Our educational institutions are far short of what they ought to be because they cannot be entrusted to the care of the state, and, on the other hand, our educated men miss their share, their due influence on the public life of the nation. They are regarded almost like foreign intruders on that field. What then? Ought we to commit these institutions to the state as it is? We dare not and cannot. The fate of the churches which have made this alliance and the shameful history of the agricultural college land-grants forbids it. We must, however, understand that the regeneration of our political system is on that account only the more imperative and that we must seek its regeneration by returning to first principles and applying them with scientific rigor. I propose to give a course of lectures on the political and financial history of the United States, in which I shall try to set forth the mistakes of which we now see the fruits.

I hasten on, however, to speak in a similar brief manner of the department which now more especially demands our attention — political economy. This branch of political science has at present the most vital importance for the American people. I measure its importance not by the stir which it is now making in party politics, for that is slight enough. A languor and apathy have settled upon the people. This is a remarkable phenomenon, but I suppose that it may be a nervous reaction after the period of war and reconstruction, similar to that which overcomes an individual after a great nervous excitement. A movement has indeed originated in the West from which something may eventually come, though as yet I see in it no signs of that sober desire to investigate causes which must precede any successful attempt at cure, nor any of those plans and methods of