It is the few who are convinced of the value and seriousness of intellectual things, and who do not flinch from the self-sacrifice and apparently fruitless labour which the pursuit of such things involves, that humanity as a whole owes its progress. If it were not for these men, whom Bunyan would call the intellectual Greathearts of the community, we should still, as a race, be sunk in barbarism. Intellect in the average man is allowed to atrophy; in the small percentage who strive after culture it accomplishes nothing of value, but it is the latter people who form the rank and file of the intellectual army. Gradually, little by little, that army is advancing;. every now and then some great general appears--a Plato, a Shakespeare, a Newton, a Kant, a Darwin--and under his leadership a victory is won; now this outpost of the hosts of darkness is captured, now that, and the flag of the human intellect is raised upon its ramparts. Meanwhile, the mass of mankind trudges on heavily, often two or three centuries behind. Next arrive the inventors, the reformers, the men of constructive intellect, who take the results of the great thinkers and plan their application to life; and lastly come the men of "brains" in their fur coats and fair round bellies, promote their companies, organize their industries, make their political speeches, and finally gather in the shekels, and also most of the honour and glory. By this time the intellectual army is again far ahead, attacking the next outpost of the kingdom of chaos and Old Night. And so humanity moves onward and upward. What, then, is the function of the academic class in the community? Simply to keep the flag of human intellect flying, a work which, in most cases, involves some self-sacrifice in those who devote themselves to it. A professor, for example, though a man of intellect, is not necessarily devoid of brains, and he might well turn those brains to advantage in some more lucrative profession. As it is, he is compelled to a large extent to sacrifice his individuality, to degrade his intellect with drudgery which is beneath it, to stand as a mere intermediary or conduit-pipe between the student and knowledge. At the same time, if, out of the hundreds of students who pass through his hands in one academic year, he succeeds in inspiring even a single individual with a true desire for culture, his existence for that year is fully justified, for has he not added one member to the band of intellectual pioneers who will finally, we hope, take possession, in the name of humanity, of the whole universe of thought? Come, my friends, Push off, and sitting well in order, smite The sounding furrows, for our purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars until we die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down; It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. THE ETERNAL SILENCE