PROBLEMS OF THE UNIVERSITY 169 



institutions than for those of older countries. The American 

 " university " is tending to become a huge magasin, an emporium 

 of learning, a sort of Ministry or Department of Education. In its 

 desire to be all things unto all men it is apt to lose sight of the logical 

 distinctions between different stages and fields of education, and to 

 assume that everything it does is exactly as important as every- 

 thing else done by it, or by any other institution. 



The first problem that presents itself is naturally that of money. 

 Probably no university exists which has all the money it needs ; 

 such a one would be an absurdity in the world of education. A 

 university which has all the money it needs does not deserve all that 

 it has; it condemns itself out of its own mouth, by confessing that 

 it can think of no new paths in which to strike out, or does not care 

 to enter upon them. A school, even a college, may conceivably 

 have money enough; not so a university. Instruction in methods 

 of research is well known to be the most expensive of all kinds. The 

 great specialists in medicine and law and engineering and chemistry 

 command, as practitioners, fees far in excess of anything that a 

 university could afford to pay them as salaries if it demanded all of 

 their time and activity. It is fortunate for the universities that 

 the profitableness of actual practice often does not appeal at all to 

 the men best fitted to instruct, and that in other cases men eminent 

 in practice, satisfied with the income produced by devoting part of 

 their time to it, use the rest in lecturing or conducting courses of 

 research in a university or professional school. It is plain to every 

 one that large and commodious laboratories are needed for even a 

 few advanced students, although fine laboratories and equipment do 

 not of themselves make investigators, any more than fine art schools 

 necessarily turn out great painters or sculptors, or fine conserva- 

 tories of music great composers - - the right kind of men must be 

 there to use them. The scientific spirit and insight and patience 

 and training which make discoveries would doubtless make them 

 anyway with the merely necessary materials at hand; but good 

 equipment makes for good work. The danger here lies in the tempt- 

 ation to mere splendor. The need of well-equipped libraries is less 

 evident to the outsider sometimes least evident to the Maecenas 

 from whom donations are fondly expected (I speak as an American) 

 yet it is not less great than that of laboratories. It is probably not 

 too much to say that the need least well supplied, in all universities 

 but a very few exceptionally favored ones, is that of proper endow- 

 ments for the constant purchase of books. Other equipments too 

 are requisite: museums and collections; and for the history of art, 

 casts, photographs, engravings, models, at least in universities where 

 there is not ready access to good public museums. The rapidity 

 with which large sums disappear when applied to such objects is only 



