ritual tone.

The old notion that book learning can be a panacea for the vices of
society lies pretty well shattered to-day. I say this in spite of
certain utterances of the President of this University to the teachers
last year. That sanguine-hearted man seemed then to think that if the
schools would only do their duty better, social vice might cease. But
vice will never cease. Every level of culture breeds its own peculiar
brand of it as surely as one soil breeds sugar-cane, and another soil
breeds cranberries. If we were asked that disagreeable question, "What
are the bosom-vices of the level of culture which our land and day have
reached?" we should be forced, I think, to give the still more
disagreeable answer that they are swindling and adroitness, and the
indulgence of swindling and adroitness, and cant, and sympathy with
cant--natural fruits of that extraordinary idealization of "success" in
the mere outward sense of "getting there," and getting there on as big
a scale as we can, which characterizes our present generation. What
was Reason given to man for, some satirist has said, except to enable
him to invent reasons for what he wants to do. We might say the same
of education. We see college graduates on every side of every public
question. Some of Tammany's stanchest supporters are Harvard men.
Harvard men defend our treatment of our Filipino allies as a
masterpiece of policy and morals. Harvard men, as journalists, pride
themselves on producing copy for any side that may enlist them. There
is not a public abuse for which some Harvard advocate may not be found.

In the successful sense, then, in the worldly sense, in the club sense,
to be a college man, even a Harvard man, affords no sure guarantee for
anything but a more educated cleverness in the service of popular idols
and vulgar ends. Is there no inner Harvard within the outer Harvard
which means definitively more than this--for which the outside men who
come here in such numbers, come? They come from the remotest outskirts
of our country, without introductions, without school affiliations;
special students, scientific students, graduate students, poor students
of the College, who make their living as they go. They seldom or never
darken the doors of the Pudding or the Porcellian; they hover in the
background on days when the crimson color is most in evidence, but they
nevertheless are intoxicated and exultant with the nourishment they
find