back what is fine and good, what is essential to the highest kind of
modern progress, and let them avoid what are the mere non-essentials
of the present-day civilization, and, above all, the vices of modern
civilized nations. Let these men keep open minds. It would be a
capital blunder to refuse to copy, and thereafter to adapt to your own
needs, what has raised the Occident in the scale of power and justice
and clean living. But it would be a no less capital blunder to copy
what is cheap or trivial or vicious, or even what is merely
wrongheaded. Let the men who go to Europe feel that they have much to
learn and much also to avoid and reject; let them bring back the good
and leave behind the discarded evil.

Remember that character is far more important than intellect, and that
a really great university should strive to develop the qualities that
go to make up character even more than the qualities that go to make
up a highly trained mind. No man can reach the front rank if he is not
intelligent and if he is not trained with intelligence; but mere
intelligence by itself is worse than useless unless it is guided
by an upright heart, unless there are also strength and courage
behind it. Morality, decency, clean living, courage, manliness,
self-respect--these qualities are more important in the make-up of a
people than any mental subtlety. Shape this University's course so
that it shall help in the production of a constantly upward trend for
all your people.

You should be always on your guard against one defect in Western
education. There has been altogether too great a tendency in the
higher schools of learning in the West to train men merely for
literary, professional, and official positions; altogether too great a
tendency to act as if a literary education were the only real