proved themselves so lamentably unfitted to exert, was assumed with rare
enthusiasm and prosecuted with extraordinary skill and success by a new
educational power; and for the clarification of their human sympathies
and elevation of their human preferences, the people at large acquired
the habit of resorting exclusively to the guidance of certain private
literary adventures, commonly designated in the market by the
affectionate name of ten-cent magazines."

Must not we of the colleges see to it that no historian shall ever say
anything like this? Vague as the phrase of knowing a good man when you
see him may be, diffuse and indefinite as one must leave its
application, is there any other formula that describes so well the
result at which our institutions _ought_ to aim? If they do that, they
do the best thing conceivable. If they fail to do it, they fail in very
deed. It surely is a fine synthetic formula. If our faculties and
graduates could once collectively come to realize it as the great
underlying purpose toward which they have always been more or less
obscurely groping, great clearness would be shed over many of their
problems; and, as for their influence in the midst of our social system,
it would embark upon a new career of strength.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 43: First published in 1908. Reprinted by permission from
_Memories and Studies_, 1911. (Messrs. Longmans, Green and Co.)]




THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS[44]