MORE DREAMS

From the window of his Faculty Club H. C. Sproul writes for the October "Scribner's" a whimsical defense of the mind which meanders through college without marking time to the beat of contemporary life. And he contents himself with that defense rather than with an attack upon the deum machinae of the university. In his opinion this type of spirit is ordained by its very being to wander through life, entering no fixed abode, enjoying perhaps the feel of a book, the form of a thought, the swing of a measure. A foe of the heaviness in living, it strolls on, devoted to its dreams, while progress eludes it as it eludes progress.

Yet Mr. Sproul, who is such a mind himself, is too reticent about striking a sufficiently salient blow for his cause. There is need for more dreaming in the American university. The progress of body, of mind is stressed too much,--the advance of fancy too little. When the wise men of his time asked Pythagoras his chief delights, he named children and stars. Most university dwellers forget the former while they hitch modernized wagons to the latter. They cannot trifle with dreams.