er, June 24, 1903, after
receiving an LL.D. degree. Printed in the _Graduates' Magazine_ for
September, 1903.

III. STANFORD'S IDEAL DESTINY[1]

Foreigners, commenting on our civilization, have with great unanimity
remarked the privileged position that institutions of learning occupy
in America as receivers of benefactions. Our typical men of wealth, if
they do not found a college, will at least single out some college or
university on which to lavish legacies or gifts. All the more so,
perhaps, if they are not college-bred men themselves. Johns Hopkins
University, the University of Chicago, Clark University, are splendid
examples of this rule. Steadily, year by year, my own university,
Harvard, receives from one to two and a half millions.

There is something almost pathetic in the way in which our successful
business men seem to idealize the higher learning and to believe in its
efficacy for salvation. Never having shared in its blessings, they do
their utmost to make the youth of coming generations more fortunate.
Usually there is little originality of thought in their generous
foundations. The donors follow the beaten track. Their good will has
to be vague, for they lack the inside knowledge. What they usually
think of is a new college like all the older colleges; or they give new
buildings to a university or help to make it larger, without any
definite idea as to the improvement of its inner form. Improvements in
the character of our institutions always come from the genius of the
various presidents and faculties. The donors furnish means of
propulsion, the experts within the pale lay out the course and steer
the vessel. You all think of the names of Eliot, Gilman, Hall and
Harper as I utter these words--I mention no name nearer home.

This is founders' day here at Stanford--the day set apart each year to
quicken and reanimate in all of us the consciousness of the deeper
significance of this little university to which we permanently or
temporarily belong. I am asked to use my voice to contribute to this
effect. How can I do so better than by uttering quite simply and
directly the impressions that I personally receive? I am one among our
innumerable American teachers, reared on the Atlantic coast but
admitted for this year to be one of the family at Stanford. I see
things not wholly from without, as the casual visitor does, but partly
from within. I am probably a typical observer. As my i