300 A League of Learning
Again, the great medical practitioner, coming down to a
little village and finding there a humble physician, recognizes
him as a member of his own profession, and in that respect
as an equal. The university professor and the village
schoolmaster should be on the same terms, for they are,
and ought to be, members of a League of Learning devoted
to the world’s greatest good. It is not right that the educa-
tion of the people should be to so great an extent in the
power of persons to whom education is a secondary matter
as compared with political or economic issues, while those
who live by it and for it have so little say. I do not find
business men commit the charge of their own monetary con-
cerns to the town council or the county council. National
education will prosper only in the hands of a League of
Learning. University men must be trusted with the respon-
sibility of education, and university men will not be doing
their duty until they take that responsibility upon themselves.
Those whose dedicated lives prove that they believe that a
generous education is one of the best things that a people
can have, should possess the authority and the power to
make good their views in the life of the nation; and it is
the duty of such men to claim the authority and welcome the
responsibility.
The analogy of the medical profession is instructive in
other ways. It is a league of health which would secure the
physical well-being of every man, woman, and child. Its
methods are becoming more and more preventive. It would
forestall illness and turn it aside. In a similar way, a
League of Learning should have as its aim that every one
shall be educated. Ignorance, like ill health, is always dead
loss. The care for the mind of the nation should be as con-
stant and universal as the care for its physical well-being.
What would you think of a nation which resolved by law