Professor Francke this afternoon has spoken of the intense spirit of individualism that characterizes German life and animates the works here shown. Our University, like our old Bay State, has always been noted for its individualism. Like recognizes like, and leaps to meet it. As children of Harvard, we see here in the concrete the very heritage whose faith we have unconsciously kept. We discern some of the roots of our own being, and appreciate one side of our own character better—both as loving it and as noting where its weak points lie—when we see it thus remotely working in a bygone world and under outlived fashions, yet keeping so intimately true to the genius of the type. We get a glimpse of our vocation, see that we stand for a spirit that human life will always need to have expressed.
I said just now that we are not all Teutomaniacs, but in one sense our University, like most American Universities, is Teutomaniac. Its ideals of scholarship and of the scholarly character have been inspired by German rather than by French or English models. Research into minute points, first-hand contact with some bit of the crude fact, the student pushing into holes and corners some methods of investigation invented by the master—this is the basis of our higher teaching, and this is all that we have absolutely required of our disciples. This method, of course, like all things human, has defects. Lack of urbanity, so to call it, is its chief shortcoming—poor literary form often, redundancy of detail, or oddity of emphasis. But the virtues that go with it are the fundamental ones: sincerity, veracity, fidelity and patience—all these go with what Professor Francke so affectionately terms the German “Lust am Kleinen”—and, out of the many details, if the workers all keep faithful, we trust that the great edifice of truth will in the end be reared. The results are already encouraging. We have to-day in nearly every sphere of learning a genuine “Gelehrtes Publikum” in America; and if our major-generals are still rather disproportionately few for the strength of our scholarly army in petty officers and privates, that is a fault to which the lying-in hospitals and other sources of nativity in our country may any day bring a remedy. The field lies ready for the geniuses at any rate, whenever it shall please them to be born here.
