Page:The Whitney Memorial Meeting.djvu/55

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PROFESSOR PERRIN'S ADDRESS.
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style in the pupil. This may well be still the collegiate ideal. But no true university work can be done until both instructor and pupil come under the influence of the larger ideal, the historical ideal. Language, literature, and institutions must all be studied as exponents of a great national life, in fierce contest for supremacy with other great national lives. It was the manifest desire in Professor Whitney to bring the national life and thought of India into fair comparison with those of the two great peoples of Greece and Rome, which most impressed those of his pupils who were classical philologists. And the fact that it was his privilege and his glory to do pioneer work in this comparatively new field, the fact that he was known to be an honored co-laborer with the best powers of England and the Continent in making the intellectual and religious life of a great ancient people, and the more obscure steps in the evolution of the greatest institutions of human society accessible to modern thought,—these facts not only increased the confidence and pride of his pupils in him, but opened their eyes to the essential solidarity of the highest intellectual life and effort of the present day,—to the internationality of the highest science. Hellenists, Latinists, and linguists of every sort, and even historical students in the more restricted sense, all over this country and Europe, are now laboring each in his chosen field, with a more equable spirit, a broader method, and a loftier ideal, because they have caught them all, directly or indirectly, from the master whose memory we honor.