speculate on what an observer would have found. We have a few clues from present circumstances. We can see the broad Outline, but that is all. In some areas, groups of farmers formed communes, holding their crop-producing acreages and their livestock by force of arms against hungry roving mobs. The cities became jungles in which pillaging combinations fought one another for the privilege of looting. Perhaps then, as now, local warlords attempted to found ruling houses, fighting with other warlords and, as now, going down one by one. In such a world—and this is true today as well as then—it was not possible for any man or band of men to achieve a power base that would serve for the building of an all-inclusive government.

The closest thing insofar as we are aware of in this area to the achievement of any sort of continuing and enduring social order is this university. Exactly how this center of relative order came about on these few acres is not known. That, once having established such order, we have endured may be explained by the fact that we are entirely defensive, at no time having sought to extend our domain or impose our will, willing to leave everyone else alone if they return the favor.

Many of the people who live beyond our walls may hate us, others will despise us as cowards who cower behind our walls, but there are some, I am sure, to whom this university has become a mystery and perhaps a magic and it may be for this reason that for the last hundred years or more we have been left alone.

The temper of communities and their intellectual environment would dictate their reaction to a situation such as the destruction of a technological society. Most would react in anger, despair and fear, taking a short-term view of the situation. A few, perhaps a very few, would be inclined to take the long-term view. In a university community the inclination would be to take a long-range view, looking not so much at the present moment but at the impact of the moment ten years from the present, or perhaps a century into the future.