number of
superior men that it harbors. In the practical realm it has always
recognized this, and known that no price is too high to pay for a great
statesman or great captain of industry. But it is equally so in the
religious and moral sphere, in the poetic and artistic sphere and in
the philosophic and scientific sphere. Geniuses are ferments; and when
they come together as they have done in certain lands at certain times,
the whole population seems to share in the higher energy which they
awaken. The effects are incalculable and often not easy to trace in
detail, but they are pervasive and momentous. Who can measure the
effects on the national German soul of the splendid series of German
poets and German men of learning, most of them academic personages?

From the bare economic point of view the importance of geniuses is only
beginning to be appreciated. How can we measure the cash-value to
France of a Pasteur, to England of a Kelvin, to Germany of an Ostwald,
to us here of a Burbank? One main care of every country in the future
ought to be to find out who its first-rate thinkers are and to help
them. Cost here becomes something entirely irrelevant, the returns are
sure to be so incommensurable. This is what wise men the world over
are perceiving. And as the universities are already a sort of agency
providentially provided for the detection and encouragement of mental
superiority, it would seem as if that one among them that followed this
line most successfully would quickest rise to a position of paramountcy
and distinction.

Why should not Stanford immediately adopt this as her vital policy?
Her position is one of unprecedented freedom. Not trammelled by the
service of the state as other universities on this coast are
trammelled, independent of students' fees and consequently of numbers,
Utopian in the material respects I have enumerated, she only needs a
boldness like that shown by her founders to become the seat of a
glowing intellectual life, sure to be admired and envied the world
over. Let her claim her place; let her espouse her destiny. Let her
call great investigators from whatever lands they live in, from
England, France, Germany, Japan, as well as from America. She can do
this without presumption, for the advantages of this place for steady
mental work are so unparalleled. Let these men, following the happy
traditions of the place, make the university. The original foundation
had somethi