.

It has not escaped your attention that there are indications everywhere
of what may be called a ground-swell. There is not simply an inquiry as
to the value of classic culture, a certain jealousy of the schools where
it is obtained, a rough popular contempt for the graces of learning, a
failure to see any connection between the first aorist and the rolling of
steel rails, but there is arising an angry protest against the conditions
of a life which make one free of the serene heights of thought and give
him range of all intellectual countries, and keep another at the spade
and the loom, year after year, that he may earn food for the day and
lodging for the night. In our day the demand here hinted at has taken
more definite form and determinate aim, and goes on, visible to all men,
to unsettle society and change social and political relations. The great
movement of labor, extravagant and preposterous as are some of its
demands, demagogic as are most of its leaders, fantastic as are many of
its theories, is nevertheless real, and gigantic, and full of a certain
primeval force, and with a certain justice in it that never sleeps in
human affairs, but moves on, blindly often and destructively often, a
movement cruel at once and credulous, deceived and betrayed, and
revenging itself on friends and foes alike. Its strength is in the fact
that it is natural and human; it might have been predicted from a mere
knowledge of human nature, which is always restless in any relations it
is possible to establish, which is always like the sea, seeking a level,
and never so discontented as when anything like a level is approximated.

What is the relation of the scholar to the present phase of this
movement? What is the relation of culture to it? By scholar I mean the
man who has had the advantages of such an institution as this. By culture
I mean that fine product of opportunity and scholarship which is to mere
knowledge what manners are to the gentleman. The world has a growing
belief in the profit of knowledge, of information, but it has a suspicion
of culture. There is a lingering notion in matters religious that
something is lost by refinement--at least, that there is danger that the
plain, blunt, essential truths will be lost in aesthetic graces. The
laborer is getting to consent that his son shall go to school, and learn
how to build an undershot wheel or to assay metals; but why plant in his
mind those principles of taste which w