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cross-fertilization, or from crossing, and tries to apply the principle to the crossing of human races, he is evidently quite confused on fundamental questions. Crossing of different species nearly always results, but even then not always, in sterile hybrids. But the races of man are not species, but varieties, and certainly Mr. Cram must know, if he will think a minute, that no races among the races of man are known to have produced sterile hybrids. The whole question of the intermingling of the races and the results thereof is "shot through" with difficulties and complexities which do not allow of any simple interpretation, as is clearly shown by the numerous writings of our leading investigators and students of genetics and eugenics. Evidently without a knowledge of these numerous writings, Mr. Cram decides to settle the question by one sweeping statement. There still remains the gravest doubt in the minds of the most eminent students of the subject as to whether or not the intermingling of races in such a country as this, for example, and excluding the intermingling of the black with the white, is tending toward a better or an inferior population. In fact, the tendency of expert opinion seems to be in the direction of believing that the intermingling of races will result in improvement rather than in inferiority.

Many other quotations of a similar nature might be given to show Mr. Cram's total ignorance of the subject which he discusses at some length, namely, eugenics or some phases thereof, but lack of space forbids.

The essayist makes a further astounding assertion as follows: "With no defensible standard of comparative values, all the spiritual and mental force in man is turned toward the realization of the unimportant, to which accomplishment it is given with a prodigality hardly equalled in the middle ages when it was lavished on the realization of the essential." On what basis does Mr. Cram claim that human efforts are at the present

time dissipated on the unimportant? How can any person living in the twentieth century make any such assertion as that? What in heaven's name is the important in Mr. Cram's view? To criticize the status of man today is one thing, and no one more than the reviewer sees the need for sharp criticism, but to make sweeping assertions without any proof, especially when there is so much proof to the contrary, is not worthy of any one who would call himself intelligent and honest.

Finally, in the postscript which Mr. Cram wrote to his essay and which is dated 12 February 1919, he invalidates much of his own thesis, if not most of it, by making this statement: "By the time this postscript is published, not his alone [Clémenceau's] but other salient claims to man-mastership may have been decided either in the negative or the affirmative." Even one year has made this sudden change of attitude in the pessimistic essayist, who writing in 1918 referred to M. Clémenceau as superannuated." Mr. Cram refutes his own assertion that leaders may be estimated at the beginning of their life activity, or in the midst of it, by making the following statement: "Of the ultimate result for the world, it is still too early to venture a forecast. On the historians of the far future must fall the burden of estimate."

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I have attempted thus briefly to lead the reader of Cram's Nemesis of Mediocrity back to the path of clear and just thinking from which the specious rhetoric of that essay may have deflected him. In an age of the high scientific development which characterizes the twentieth century, it is not meet that our appraisal of men and things shall be conducted with no justifiable criteria and with the curse of bias and prejudice ever at our elbow. The time has arrived for truly scientific judgments of men and things, and when no scientific judgments are possible, because of lack of facts, for patient charity. In any event, I can see no reason to sigh so deeply for the lack of leadership when only the kind of leadership

has changed and when people have come to be so far emancipated as to require less leadership. Besides, leadership of the present is at a disadvantage when compared with leadership of the past, for the facts of the past are more dim and rare in our memories, and unpleasant memories, as is well known, depart sooner from human minds than the pleasant ones.

At all events, be it clearly understood that the claim that there is less leadership today than there was in past generations is not proved and I think I have proved above that the leadership of today is just as notable as that of an "elder age." Be that as it may, there is certainly no proof that democracy has contributed either to the disappearance of leadership or to the decay of its quality. Such an assertion on Mr. Cram's part constitutes merely a begging of the question. History, I think, clearly shows that the really great leaders come only rarely into our midst, appear with no regularity, and are not products so far as we can determine of any age or clime, but are synthesized through combinations of circumstances as regards inheritance and environment which we have not yet learned to understand and estimate. The leaders of the lesser magnitude, which class includes most of those whom history calls great, are found in every age, in every clime, in every walk of life, whether we in our limited vision can recognize them at close range or not.

I cannot see, therefore, any justification for the weeping and gnashing of teeth at the erroneously supposed influence of democracy in inhibiting the development of leaders. No one has yet proved that any democracy suffers because of a dearth of leadership. But if any one should actually adduce convincing proof in support of such an assertion, he must still prove that democracy is responsible for that undesirable condition. On the other hand, democracy is raising the level of the masses, and that does not necessarily imply any accompanying levelling of the "peaks" to the dead level, as

Mr. Cram would have us believe. We should therefore be grateful for the elevation of intelligence and civilization of the masses which democracy renders possible so quickly and so notably, and through which, I think there can be no question, the spirit of toleration has grown by leaps and bounds. It is this spirit, moreover, when fully developed, that will make possible the full consideration for the rights and feelings of one man by another which is more likely to constitute for us a real civilization than is the kind and degree of leadership for which Mr. Cram In democracy, therefore, if careful thought is given the situation, it will appear that we are losing little, if anything, over the régime of autocracy and we are gaining much in other directions.

Let it not be assumed that the writer is unmindful of the infelicities and inadequacies of our prevailing democracies. No thoughtful person of today can be blind to the weaknesses, the waste, the inefficiency, and the wholesale corruption which have crept insidiously into our body politic and have become inextricably woven into the warp and woof of our social fabric. As scientific men, we cannot deny facts. Nevertheless, it behooves us also to keep from condemning things or systems in their entirety because of the weak characteristics that blend with the strong ones. Particularly should we be cautious about drawing a conclusion such as Mr. Cram has drawn without indubitable facts in its support, and then to add insult to injury by ascribing the condition of that conclusion to an alleged cause which has not been proved to be a cause. Democracy, replete with variables and with opposing factors, is too complicated a structure to serve as a unit influence in any one direction, either as a stimulus to, or an inhibitor of the formation of leaders. I believe with Santayana that greatness is spontaneous, as history would seem to indicate, and that, within wide limits, it is independent of the medium from which it springs.

THE STUDENT AND THE SCHOLAR

RÉGIS MICHAUD

The Phi Beta Kappa Society has asked this year a professor of French and a citizen of France to deliver the annual address. The Phi Beta Kappa certainly did not expect him to compete with the masters of English speech, some of whom we have among us, but as a friend, an ally, and an acquaintance of several years, they expected him to put forth in clear and sincere language what he may have in mind concerning the student and the scholar and their interrelations.

Many words have invaded our modern world and made obsolete the word, scholar. For hundreds who speak every day of the physician, the electrician, the chemist, the journalist, how many mention the scholar? To be a scholar nowadays, does it not sound like being somewhat of a fossil? Is not the scholar a vague and too general disguise for the man who is unable to be anything in particular and who satisfies and prides himself in being everything in general?

To be a student has a meaning, and students know it well: to sit in classrooms for four years, to be tested, quizzed, examined, assigned, to be served with solemn warnings, hasty meals, hasty studies, to be able to face, at a moment's notice, a quick firing squad of questions. on any topic from Sanskrit up to veterinary science, and then to be dismissed with black cap and gown, the color of so many dead illusions. This disenchanted

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