a part, but unless he makes some rational connections concerning it he could scarcely endure for a single day. Even the act of eating is in a sense a venture on faith. His dealings with his fellow-men cannot go on in any considerable and successful scale without the dogma of belief in the general honesty and integrity of his fellow-men. He surely could direct his life to no goal, achieve no ambition far seen along the horizon dim of dreams were it not for his dogmatizing tendencies. Out of his dogmatizations things come to pass that were undreamed by others and are translated into fact. But always it is the play of the double forces like the manifestations of two worlds that lead him on. If he wearies of dreams and dogma and starts to live his life without them he is prone to become dogmatic simply in another direction and usually with a fiercer dogmatism than he had ever known before. He is dogmatically undogmatic. What he really does is to exchange one set of ideals for another. He shows an incurable tendency to faith. If it be not faith in the Faith then it burns with fiercer glow as a faith in Unfaith. He cannot be an unbeliever. And this is well, for skepticism merely cancels itself. It can never form the foundation of science, religion or life.

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR1

EMORY S. BOGARDUS

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Scholarship has three primary sources.

In the first place scholarship may be the fruit of the creative impulses of a genius. There is here and there an individual in whom inventiveness, aesthetic ability, or penetrating analysis seem to run wild. Perhaps the individual possesses a prodigious memory, and an uncanny disregard for conventional thinking, or an unusual versatility in classifying and organizing ideas.

In the class-room such an individual may recite brilliantly without much preparation, ask new and perhaps embarrassing questions of his instructor, or clear up the muddled thinking of his classmates with impatient lucidity. To the life of the world such a person may contribute a Miltonian epic, a Malthusian doctrine of population, a Marconi system, or a theory of fourth dimensions. The born genius of the type that I have described is likely to be scholarly in some one direction, but in other ways to be impracticable, visionary, perhaps impetuous, or even a crank. He may consent to the burning of a Servetus, suffer the spells of insanity of an Auguste Comte, or even fall into the drunkard's grave of a Poe. Nature has been generous to him and he in turn often spends his godlike abilities lavishly wherever his fancy may lead.

In the second place scholarship has its chief source in a stimulating mental environment. An individual may inherit ordinary mental ability, but be blessed with parents

'Address delivered before the Scholarship Society of the University of Southern California.

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who nourish him in an atmosphere of high aspirations. If he be responsive, he concentrates his average ability in specific undertakings. Noting his earnestness and his devotion to duty, his teachers show a special interest in him, and give him the training he needs in order to transform his ordinary mental energies into extraordinary achievements. Circumstances may be kind, freeing him from the daily struggle for bread and butter. In other words, as a result of the aspirations of his parents, the encouragement of his teachers, the kindly ministrations of society, and the mental stimulations of his environments as a whole, an individual with an ordinary mind may attain to the rank of scholar. If he so succeeds, he is likely to be better balanced, less erratic, more democratic and social than the born genius. The environment genius is less brilliant, more methodical, and more dependable than the born genius.

In the third place, scholarship can be traced to the individual's own initiative and determination. A person may inherit normal ability, but he may not have parents who give him special encouragement. He may be hindered by serious economic handicaps, but despite these adverse circumstances, he sets his mind toward an intellectual goal. He pushes on past one mental milestone after another. He passes other persons in the race, talented persons perhaps, who have stopped to indulge in mental loitering. He finally reaches the rank of scholarship. Sometimes, he has to pay too high a price, for example, he may sacrifice his health. All things considered, however, the hard work genius deserves higher praise than the born genius or the environment genius. He has exhibited admirable determination in the face of obstacles which cause most persons to turn back. He truly knows the value of scholarship.

In all three types of scholarship to which I have made

allusion, the underlying trait is concentration of attention, or better still, as Lester F. Ward puts it, focalization of psychic energy. In the case of the born genius, nature has focalized the individual's psychic energies for him along definite channels. In regard to the environment genius circumstances have been largely instrumental in focalizing and directing the individual's energies. With reference to the hard work genius, it may be said that the individual has risen to the high plane where he focalizes his own energies, and, moreover, chooses the direction in which they are focalized.

The task of focalizing psychic energy is becoming increasingly difficult. In our day of speed and jazz and noise, it is almost impossible to focalize one's psychic powers. In this day of parades, fashion shows, movie films, and fleet automobiles, it is more and more difficult to command one's own resources and direct them in line with definite purposes. Telephone wires are increasing in number and reach, newspapers are expanding in size, social organizations with their persistent obligations are multiplying. Life in a metropolitan city is almost a continuous problem of deciding what not to do next and of explaining why. Where are people to get the time and opportunity in which to focalize their mental abilities upon the pressing public questions of the age? The hard work genius, with eyes blind to the attractive extravagances of the hour, and with ears deaf to the mad roar of get-rich-quick whirlwinds, the hard work genius, I repeat, holds in the swing of his mental processes the solution of perplexing national problems and of world confusion.

Wherever true scholarship is found, whether with the hard work genius, the environment genius, or the born genius, it manifests standard attributes. (1) It is democratically human.. It is not pedantic. The scholar is not the grind, the bookworm, or teacher's pet. If scholar

ship was once a sign of the cloister, it can not longer claim such a relatively harmless distinction. Even the American Scholar whom Ralph Waldo Emerson described so well in 1837 has changed materially. The American Scholar of today is throbbing with more life, more interest in daily human affairs, more democracy than the Scholar of 1837.

Scholarship gives no one a right to feel superior to his fellows. Scholarship entitles no one to engage in a mental dress parade. It justifies no one in playing "smart tricks" on his fellows. It betrays its own inner nature if it opens the gates to exploitation. There was an age-perhaps we are still in it—when superior mental ability was used to extract wealth from one's fellows without rendering just returns, or to gather power and honor as means of securing selfish praise. Let us unite to destroy all such undemocratic and anti-human purposes to which scholarship has been put.

Scholarship is altruistic. If it leads to individual success alone, it is a failure. Society has become so bewilderingly complex that a few powerful but independently minded individuals cannot alone maintain it. In 1917, trained railroad leaders in the United States admitted their failure and participated in a uniform governmental control of the railroads in order that men, provisions, and ammunitions might be moved speedily across the continent and over the Atlantic. In 1920, we find almost hopeless freight delays and congestion, and that railroad representatives, according to press dispatches, are asking for unification through Federal control. At any rate, a small number of able but independently minded persons, much less a single leader, such as a Senator Lodge or a President Wilson cannot efficiently manage the social processes of a whole nation.

The solution lies not in establishing all-powerful pater