760 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
sity of earning their daily bread by practical labor, so that they may keep on pushing upward in the attempt to reach the pin- nacle of human achievement. We ought not in this day and age of the world to be complaining about the expense of giving a few choice men a little food and clothing while they are try- ing to master for their own generation what the generations before have accomplished. Woe be to our civilization the moment it concludes, and acts upon its conclusion, that men are now studying too long, and that they ought to begin earning their living earlier! Our universities get a chance at but an infinitesimal part of humanity anyway just a handful of per- sons who, speaking generally, have the power to deal with complex things of an intellectual character. These need to be encouraged to keep on in their course ; the natural tendency is to stop, for the road is steep and rocky. We need not fear that too many people will follow the difficult path ; the chief source of danger is in the likelihood that too few of them will have strength and courage enough to scale the heights.
Of course, if they should all give their whole time to Hebrew, or Greek, or metaphysics, or philology, they would soon be a drug in the market; and this may account for the situation in Germany. But we need have no fear of such a catastrophe here. Science in all its ramifications, and history in its relation to present problems of government, and medicine and law and commerce and engineering in brief, everything that concerns the progress of mankind is too much in fashion in the universities of our country to admit of the development of a class of learned paupers. It is true, without doubt, that a man may become possessed of vast learning and not employ it for the good of his kind; but, taking the thing as a whole, the educated man in all times and places has served the community that begot him. If his service in the sum has not been as great as it should be, and if in individual cases nothing at all has been given, the defect must be due to the method of the teacher, who has either taught useless stuff, or who, while filling the heads of his students, has forgotten their hearts. He has left the springs of conduct untouched ; he has not fired them
