ests forever after the order of
humanity, whose flaming message burns from age to age in the great tree
of human existence, consuming and unconsumed. These books of power which
live that humanity may not die, and books of use that die that others
may live, divide literature between them. They constitute the warp and
woof out of which the university weaves the higher education. In its
last analysis a liberal training is the mastery of books of use and a
glad yielding to the mastery of books of power.

Controversy over the classics, wrangling over Greek, vain jangling over
required and elective courses--these are details. Direct contact between
the growing minds of each generation and the great minds of the
race--this is essential. We smile at the space given Confucius in
Chinese education; the Koran in Mohammedan schools; but this is only a
perversion of the sound instinct which everywhere puts the young to
school to the teachers of the race. Unless your education does this, it
stands where the electric telegraph did before its wires were
grounded--its batteries and instruments, its poles and wires useless
until they were in direct contact with the elemental source of electric
energy in the earth itself. So-called and mis-called practical systems
of education, _realschulen_, which omit these eternal realities of the
race, find when they have stuffed their pupils with the facts of the day
that they are still insulated from the thinkers of all time. Fortunately
for us and for our education, these books of power exist in more than
one language and are accessible through more than one channel of
learning. Thanks to the matchless translation of the Bible, one
incomparable group of books of power is taught in every Sunday-school,
though I doubt if this will be held sufficient reason for neglecting
their study in every university. Greek holds another group. But it is
the pitiful pedant's plea to urge their study because Greek is
difficult. It is not because Greek is Greek, but because Homer is Homer
that Chapman "spake out loud and bold" of the solitary text-book which
has held its own for 2500 years, and links, as may it forever link, this
university with the school of Athens.

"Yet still your Homer, living, lasting, reigning,
And proves how truth builds in poets feigning."

It is because these books of power hold the truth that makes men free,
working thoughts that perish never, that they live when the tongues in
w