The legends of the Wild West still color many people’s impression of the United States of America. Unfortunately, the romanticized Hollywood cowboys and Indians have given a distorted picture of what really happened. Certainly, America’s western expansion was in many ways an epic of courage and endurance. Dogged pioneers opened up new territory and forged a nation from the wilderness. This is the stuff of legends. But there was a dark side to this story. For the Indians it was a sad, bitter tale of misunderstanding, greed and betrayal — and we should know that too.
If a practical end must be assigned to a University course, I say it is that of training good members of society. Its art is the art of social life, and its end is fitness for the world. It neither confines its views to particular professions on the one hand, nor creates heroes or inspires genius on the other hand. Works indeed, of genius fall under no art; heroic minds come under no rule; a University is not a birthplace of poets or of immortal authors, of founders of schools, leaders of colonies, or conquerors of nations. It does not promise a generation of Aristotles or Newtons, of Napoleons or Washingtons, of Raphaels or Shakespeares, though such miracles of nature it has before now contained within its precincts.
