Extracts from Addresses 377
ments and moral rectitude and generosity and liberty. National envy
in matters of the spirit is unpardonable. But I think you will pardon
me for refusing to admit that the first right to train further your
aspiring youth, and to go hand in hand with you in educating the world
towards all those things which are honest and noble, belongs to a people
who in science and learning have been splendid copyists rather than
creators, and in affairs of national conduct and character have shown
that moral blindness and confusion and vulgar pride and ambition which
has brought them not good, but the greatest ruin that has ever befallen
a great nation.
There is one respect in which their reputation will continue unrivaled,
and in which their scholars will continue to be useful to the world. A
learned man writing a learned book finds it necessary to add a foot-note
on some side issue, too insignificant to be more than mentioned in the
text; and he wants more information about it, trivial as it is. In
Germany he will find that some one or other has dedicated a long life
to that petty, useless subject—if, indeed, there be any learning that is
quite useless. This is common experience, and the conclusion is natural
—“What a learned nation the German is,” when really the conclusion
ought to be, what a number of men amongst this people starved their
own souls by their industrious stupidity.
Let me give you, in conclusion, one example of it. A Scottish pro-
fessor of theology, an old fellow-student of mine in Glasgow, was
interested in ancient sacrifices. He searched first our own, and then
the German libraries for some particular fact connected therewith;
and found in Germany an author, whom he named to me, who had written
learned volumes, as the result of years and years of research in the
early forms of civilization, dedicating his whole life from his student
days on to prove that the lamb of sacrifice was always of the male sex.
The conclusion which he came to as the crown of glory of his long,
earnest, laborious life, and his contribution to the well-being of the
humanity of the future, was that the phrase “lamb of God” should be
translated “ram of God.”
We cannot in England promise your students the luxury of such
specialized learning, but I think we can promise to them, in every one
of the British universities, the example and the inspiration of sound
minds dedicated to great causes.
Dr. Willett: I appreciate very deeply the privilege of being at the
Rice Institute. I have watched the growth of this institution from afar,
and on one previous occasion, when your buildings were hardly ready for
occupancy, I had the pleasure of being here, and I have been amazed