'Bismarck and von Moltke were but tools in the hands of my august grandfather.' To furnish more such tools and in all the range of human activity, the University of Berlin was established.
In like manner the great historical churches and their lesser branches have founded universities each in its degree, because of the church's need of men. It has demanded trustworthy agents, expert dialecticians, great persuaders and spiritual leaders, and these have arisen in the church universities in obedience to the demand.
A like need of leaders is felt in democracy. It has a work to do greater than that of king or church and this work must be done by skilful and loyal hands. Democracy means opportunity. The greatest discovery of this most democratic twentieth century will be that 'the straight line is the shortest distance between two points.' This is a geometric definition of democracy. It trusts not to Lord this and the Earl of that. Its leaders are not chosen arbitrarily as the earliest offshoot from each link in the strain of heredity. When democracy has a man's work to do, it calls on the man who can do it. Such men it creates, and wherever they spring up they are developed in the sunshine of popular education. Democracy does not mean equality, a dead level of possession, happiness or achievement. It means equality before the law, that is the abolition of artificial distinctions made in the dark ages. It means equality of start, never equality of finish, and the most absolute equality of start makes the final equality the greater. As democracies need universities, so do universities need democracy as a means of recall to duty. Lincoln used to say that 'bath of the people' was necessary now and then for public men. This 'bath of the people' the university needs lest it substitute pedantry for wisdom, or lest it become a place for basking instead of an agency for training.
An Oxford man said not long since: 'Our men are not scholars; our scholars are not men.' Those we call scholars are bloodless pedants, finical and ineffective. Those we call men, strong, forceful, joyous, British boys, have no adequate mental training. Whether this be true of Oxford, it is often true in all universities. It is the sign that there is something wrong in practise or ideals. Scholarship should be life, and life should be guided by wisdom. The university should be a source of power, not an instrument in social advancement. Its degree should be not a badge of having done the proper thing, a device to secure the 'well-dressed feeling,' given also by 'Boston garters' and by faultless ties. The college degree is an incident in scholarship, a childish toy, so far as the real function of building up men is concerned. Prizes, honors, badges and degrees—all these matters have no necessary place in the machinery of higher education. If our universities had grown up in response to the needs of the people,
