Page:The Wisconsin idea (IA cu31924032449252).pdf/45

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE SOIL
21

ceased to have, and certain ideals of service which can be found in no other universities to-day, except perhaps in Germany.

It is significant that among the first regents of the university was Carl Schurz, the great hater of bad government, the enthusiastic, patriotic statesman, the powerful champion of civil service. Instituted as it was by these liberty-loving people, it is not strange that the university should have had as one of its great presidents, John Bascom, a man of the highest type of New England character. Bascom was an economist; he was more than an economist. Political economy to him was not a dismal science; it was a science by means of which order, morality and statesmanship could live; it had a moral force.

He declared "that, while the laws of legitimate acquisition look to the good of all, and not to the plunder of any, any illegitimate action which violates a higher, a moral law, will usually violate a lower, an economic law, and measure the gains of one by the losses of another. There is a harmony of productive action by which the gains of all are secured, and the laws of this harmony are those of Political Economy. Intimately connected with this view, is that by which the harmony of the lower laws of acquisition with the higher laws of morals is seen, and the mutual strength which they lend to each other. The state of highest production not only may be, but must be, the state of highest intelligence and