I suppose it is not altogether the fault of the majority that the true relation of culture to common life is so misunderstood.  The scholar is largely responsible for it; he is largely responsible for the isolation of his position, and the want of sympathy it begets.  No man can influence his fellows with any power who retires into his own selfishness, and gives himself to a self-culture which has no further object.  What is he that he should absorb the sweets of the universe, that he should hold all the claims of humanity second to the perfecting of himself?  This effort to save his own soul was common to Goethe and Francis of Assisi; under different manifestations it was the same regard for self.  And where it is an intellectual and not a spiritual greediness, I suppose it is what an old writer calls “laying up treasures in hell.”

It is not an unreasonable demand of the majority that the few who have the advantages of the training of college and university should exhibit the breadth and sweetness of a generous culture, and should shed everywhere that light which ennobles common things, and without which life is like one of the old landscapes in which the artist forgot to put sunlight.  One of the reasons why the college-bred man does not meet this reasonable expectation is that his training, too often, has not been thorough and conscientious, it has not been of himself; he has acquired, but he is not educated.  Another is that, if he is educated, he is not impressed with the intimacy of his relation to that which is below him as well as that which is above him, and his culture is out of sympathy with the great mass that needs it, and must have it, or it will remain a blind force in the world, the lever of demagogues who preach social anarchy and misname it progress.  There is no culture so high, no taste so fastidious, no grace of learning so delicate, no refinement of art so exquisite, that it cannot at this hour find full play for itself in the broadest fields of humanity; since it is all needed to soften the attritions of common life, and guide to nobler aspirations the strong materialistic influences of our restless society.

One reason, as I said, for the gulf between the majority and the select few to be educated is, that the college does not seldom disappoint the reasonable expectation concerning it.  The graduate of the carpenter’s shop knows how to use his tools—­or used to in days before superficial training in trades became the rule.  Does the college graduate know how to use his tools?  Or has he to set about fitting himself for some employment, and gaining that culture, that training of himself, that utilization of his information which will make him necessary in the world?  There has been a great deal of discussion whether a boy should be trained in the classics or mathematics or sciences or modern languages.  I feel like saying “yes” to all the various propositions.  For Heaven’s sake train him in something, so