With Perhaps
Ninety Per Cent Of Identity There Is Ten Per Cent Of Divergence, And
This Ten Per Cent I Have Emphasized Even To Exaggeration.
We know our
friends by their slight differences in feature or expression, not by
their common humanity.
Much of this divergence is already fading away.
Scenery and climate remain, but there is less elbow-room, and the
unearned increment is disappearing. That which is solid will endure; the
rest will vanish. The forces that ally us to the East are growing
stronger every year with the immigration of men with new ideas. The
vigorous growth of the two universities in California insures the
elevation as well as the retention of these ideas. Through their
influence California will contribute a generous share to the social
development of the East, and be a giver as well as a receiver.
Today the pressure of higher education is greater to the square mile, if
we pay use such an expression, than anywhere else in our country. In no
other state is the path from the farmhouse to the college so well
trodden as here. It requires no prophet to forecast the educational
pre-eminence of California, for the basis of intellectual development is
already assured. But however close the alliance with Eastern culture, to
the last, certain traits will persist. California is the most
cosmopolitan of all the states of the Union, and such she will remain.
Whatever the fates may bring, her people will be tolerant, hopeful, and
adequate, sure of themselves, masters of the present, fearless of the
future.
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