may induce business men to enlarge the scope of their life plans. The scholar's duty is to aid in forming a judicial public opinion, as distinguished from the public opinion of a class and its special pleaders.
It is the duty of the scholar, if he is a living member of contemporary society and something beside an archaeologist, to secure a public recognition of all the elements of welfare. Such a scholar will give due place to what Carlyle calls the "preliminary item," bread, but he will help his fellows to see and realize that "man cannot live by bread alone." For this purpose is the scholar supported by society, in order that he may be its mentor and seer. It is true the idealist does not see intuitively how far or by what means these higher factors of good may be secured, but he can remind men by his own life and works that wealth is only a preliminary item, a means but not an end of life. And if a business man deserves the title of captain or king he will appreciate the social service which reminds him of the real dignity of his ofiice.
It is the function and the duty of the social theorist to keep attractively before "practical men" all the known and tried methods of obtaining the elements of human well-being. In performing this social duty the literary worker is not shut up to the meager resources of his own invention. If his suggestions of method are laughed out of court as the visionary schemes of a cloistered fanatic, his defense lies in a prosaic description of facts. When his plan of amelioration is pronounced impossible, he can bring to bear the resources of his knowledge of social experimentation. If inhuman greed, or routine habit, or vested interests oppose his suggestions on the ground that they are chimerical and millennial, he can set ingenious philanthropy over against obstructive avarice. And it is his social function as a scholar to make the great world act upon the mean world. It is only in such service that he can earn his salt.
It is not the function of the scholar to bury the dead past, nor to paint the future in pessimistic charcoal or optimistic vermilion, for the entertainment of the public. He is called to select
