in our essential function of indicating the better men, we now have formidable competitors outside. mcclures magazine, the american magazine, colliers weekly, and, in its fashion, the worlds work, constitute together a real popular university along this very line. it would be a pity if any future historian were to have to write words like these: by the middle of the twentieth century the higher institutions of learning had lost all influence over public opinion in the united states. but the mission of raising the tone of democracy, which they had proved themselves so lamentably unfitted to exert, was assumed with rare enthusiasm and prosecuted with extraordinary skill and success by a new educational power; and for the clarification of their human sympathies and elevation of their human preferences, the people at large acquired the habit of resorting exclusively to the guidance of certain private literary adventures, commonly designated in the market by the affectionate name of ten-cent magazines.
must not we of the colleges see to it that no historian shall ever say anything like this? vague as the phrase of knowing a good man when you see him may be, diffuse and indefinite as one must leave its application, is there any other formula that describes so well the result at which our institutions ought to aim? if they do that, they do the best thing conceivable. if they fail to do it, they fail in very deed. it surely is a fine synthetic formula. if our faculty and graduates could once collectively come to realize it as the great underlying purpose toward which they have always been more or less obscurely groping, a great clearness would be shed over many of their problems; and, as for their influence in the midst of our social system, it would embark upon a new career of strength.