Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/149

Rh not going to be so indiscreet as to specify any of the courses which seem to me relatively or absolutely innocuous; but I am going to assume that our present opinion is, that the knowledge of good and evil is what the university really seeks to impart, and that it accepts, frankly and fearlessly, responsibility for creating shadows as well as light. In a certain sense, it may be said to produce evil as well as good; what it really does is to create judgments, whereby these ideas enter the field of human consciousness, in response to the stimulation of objective realities.

The university standard of success, as we must now regard it, is the ability to recognize values. In order to do this, it is necessary to heighten the consciousness of objective reality, and to develop especially a sense of that stability in things which we call truth. It is essential to cultivate imagination, controlled by reason, so that the value of the flower may be seen in the seed, the value of the soul in the form of clay.

Scholarship, culture, judgment, can not be bought at the secondhand store, "a little soiled, but as good as new." They must be created by the fiat of that divinity which we have assumed, re-made from the fruit of the tree in a process of transcendental assimilation.

It is for this reason that I think every university—some day perhaps every high school—should be a center of productive scholarship; not merely of some such, but should glow with the ardor of scientific, literary and artistic creation. Only so may the judgment of fitness be properly established; only thus may the divine gifts be widely received. True it is that comparatively few have strong creative power, such as attracts the attention of the world—but my proposition is that all have some, and that whatever there is, it is the true function of education to develop and sustain it.

This will be more apparent when the scope of recognized scholarship has grown broader. If one may be "a scholar and a gentleman," why not "a scholar and a merchant," or "a scholar and a farmer"? We are beginning to find out, indeed, that these latter professions call for a good deal more scholarship than was necessary for the dilettante gentleman of the old school. When the avenues for creative effort have grown wider and more numerous, and we have learned better to recognize this form of activity under its various aspects, it will no longer be said that all forms of original scholarship are the monopoly of doctors of philosophy.

To those who have tasted of the fruit of the tree, there has never been any doubt of the value of the experience. Whatever the disadvantage, the advantages are enormously greater. The curious point is, that this does not admit of argument, because it is exactly the power of judgment which decides the relative values. So well assured are we of the precious character of our value sense that we would not exchange