opinion on this subject, while some of the newspapers have expressed another. Under such circumstances it would seem that persons soberly in search of truth would decide that, even if they cannot accept the assurances of the University as finalities, suspension of judgment is necessary until demonstrative evidence appears.
Professor Bemis is a contributor to this number of the Journal, and we shall be glad to publish articles from his pen in the future upon any subject which he is competent to discuss. We should be especially pleased to present his own exposition of any doctrines which any person of authority or influence in connection with the University of Chicago has ever called in question. The liberty assured to him here is in no respect greater than that which every instructor enjoys as a matter of course at Chicago. In other words, as representatives of the University have repeatedly testified, and as we personally know to be the fact, freedom of thought and freedom of instruction is in no way involved in Professor Bemis' relations with the University. "A determination to throttle free investigation" has never in any way made its appearance in this or any other case within the University, except in the imagination of interested parties.
We reiterate this oft-repeated statement not because the affairs of the University of Chicago deserve special prominence in this Journal, but to show the irrelevance of our correspondent's allusion, and the inconsequence of his reasoning. Even if these assertions are of no more intrinsic weight than those of editors and reporters who make contradictory representations, they are certainly of sufficient significance to raise doubts in a scientific mind about the validity of the inference concerning this Journal.
In the third place, the letter exemplifies one of the most vicious forms of a priori reasoning. Its circle of fallacy is: first, all institutions founded by private wealth are the tools of private interest; second, because The University of Chicago is a tool of private interest, therefore no good thing can come from it in the way of social science. Argument of this sort proves nothing except the unscientific attitude of the minds which it satisfies. The foundation of the University of Chicago was hardly announced when the same kind of dogmatism settled the character of the religious influence which it would exert. "An institution founded by a single religious denomination must be narrow and bigoted; ergo, etc." Facts, with their traditional stubbornness, have already estopped that line of attack, but now an altera-
