| COMRADES IN ZEAL.[1] |
By DAVID STARR JORDAN,
PRESIDENT OF LELAND STANFORD JR. UNIVERSITY.
THE Society of Sigma Xi was founded in 1880 at Cornell University. Its godfather was Henry Shaler Williams, and its name, σπουδῴν ξυνῴνητ, companions in zealous research, comrades in zeal, indicates as well as two words can, even in that wonderful language of the Greeks, the purpose of the society. It was intended to bind together scientific thought and action, the workers in pure science and those who dignify it by its application to human affairs.
The society has now its chapters in 16 American universities. Its members number upwards of 2,500, about 500 of them active, that is, still lingering about the university which is the center of the collective efforts of Sigma Xi, the rest scattered over the world in the various avocations appropriate to the zealous comradery.
The society of Sigma Xi stands for the glory of research, the joy of knowing, the uplift which comes from 'seeing things as they really are,' and the doing the thing that such seeing shows us ought to be done. Its essence is in Huxley's phrase the 'fanaticism for veracity,' the zeal for fair play, that would not have even the least of nature's records slurred over or wrongly interpreted. It stands at the same time for the zeal for action, for the strenuous use of the knowledge already acquired in the affairs of men. For pure science and applied science it finds place alike, for each has its roots in independent research, and in each the fanaticism for veracity is fundamental to the highest work. Its purpose is to excite this fanaticism for veracity, and zeal for action among the university students of America, and to foster it by means of the fellow-feeling among free spirits, 'Gemeingeist unter freien Geistern,' which was once declared to uphold scholarship in Germany.
For the Sigma Xi is a university organization dealing with university men, and not directly with any others. Moreover, the society is not the university itself. It is a small part of any one institution—a large part only when taken in the aggregate. It gives no material aids to scholarship. It builds no laboratories, establishes no libraries, endows no fellowships, offers no prizes, grants no honors worthy of the name. In its elections it picks out youth of promise, enlisting them as privates in its service. It undertakes to crown no achievement. It
- ↑ Address at the first annual banquet of the Honorary Society of Sigma Xi, St. Louis, December 31, 1903.
