Page:Moral Obligation to be Intelligent.djvu/76

 prophesied from a certain complacency in his sacrifice. If he looks down to those he serves, if the angle of his condescension is to himself the warrant of his well-doing, if football or the college dramatics be not really his career, but only an excuse for demonstrating to the youngsters that he can still revisit their point of view—then he has robbed them of what it is his profession to give; robbed them not simply in their greater dependence, in their lessening enthusiasm and ability to conduct their own affairs, but far more tragically in the defeat of their right to live in the presence, and profit by the inspiration, of a scholar who follows with his whole heart the great quest of truth. Whether or not it is the students' duty to study, it is their right to behold the scholar at his work, and to imitate him; for it is by comradeship and imitation that they