First of all there must be no blinking of the importance of the subject. “It is manifest,” wrote the acute Hobbes, “that the Instruction of the people, dependeth wholly, on the right teaching of Youth in the Universities.” Quaint as is the language in which he defends this proposition the argument which it contains is applicable with few changes to modern conditions. “They whom necessity, or couvetousnesse keepeth attent on their trades, and labour; and they, on the other side, whom superfluity, or sloth carrieth after their sensuall pleasures, (which two sorts of men take up the greatest part of Man-kind,) being diverted from the deep meditation, which the learning of truth, not onely in the matter of Natural Justice, but also of all other Sciences necessarily requireth, receive the Notions of their duty, chiefly from Divines in the Pulpit, and partly from such of their Neighbours, or familiar acquaintance, as having the Faculty of discoursing readily, and plausibly, seem wiser and better learned in cases of Law, and Conscience, than themselves. And the Divines, and such others as make shew of Learning, derive their knowledge from the Universities, and from the Schooles of Law, or from the Books, which by men eminent in those Schooles, and Universities have been published.”[48] In spite of the development of other intermediate agencies of public instruction since the seventeenth century, and particularly of the press and our elementary school system, the influence of universities and colleges was never greater than it is at present, and it is an influence which is constantly increasing in strength. The number of universities and colleges is larger, their work is more efficient, their curricula are broader, the number of college bred men in the community is greater, and their leadership therein more perceptible than ever before. Professors are enlisting in industrial, scientific, and social activities outside academic walls in a way undreamed of so long as the old monastic ideals held sway. By extension lectures and still more by books and articles they are reaching larger and larger masses of the people. Newspapers formulate current public opinion, but to the writer, at least, it seems plainly apparent that the best thought of the universities and colleges to-day is the thought that in all likelihood will profoundly influence both press and public opinion in the near future. Academic observers of the sound money struggle of 1896, for example, must have smiled frequently to themselves at the arguments employed during the campaign. There was not one of them which had not been the commonplace of economic seminars for years. The newspapers and the abler political leaders on both sides simply filled their quivers with arrows drawn from academic arsenals. Extreme cleverness was shown by many journalists and campaign orators in popularising this material, in adapting it to local conditions, and in