Page:Challenge of Facts and Other Essays.djvu/449

430 tion of every argument against the admission of the Chinese. The human rivalries of workmen were not to mar the comprehensive chart of the world studied as a whole. To a teacher, fundamental propositions must not be affected by local color.

Truth was a world-wide proposition founded on the testimony of the ages, and any community which found it useful to vary these laws for purposes of revenue, growth, or government would do so at its peril and with full notice.

And so Sumner convinced us and we students scattered from New Haven and drifted where we might, free-traders to the core — and economically sure of it until, later, contact with the world began to modify our ideas, adapting them to the local needs and conditions of some small industry in which we were trying to survive. We found pure economics somewhat theoretical and that many men must be consulted as to how governments may obtain revenue. In life few can have all they ask, and we ventured occasionally to take a liberty with a verity to meet an exigency, to clothe as it were a too naked truth.

The world happened to be already populated and must be operated by human beings. If we could begin anew it would be as he said, and as far and as fast as possible his laws must be arrived at, for fundamentally he was always right. Live and let live had nothing to do with truth as he taught it.

We never forgot what he said or how he said it or the tones of his voice or his gestures. They were stamped into our minds by his powerful, incisive personality and his rare gift of expression and illustration. He was a wonderful teacher without the slightest unpleasant accompaniment which some teachers have with unwilling