COLLEGE OR UNIVERSITY 199 



characterized by a keen interest in the advancement of learning. Those 

 who do not comprehend or sympathize with the investigator are defi- 

 cient in the mental traits which are preeminently characteristic of the 

 normal individual during the prime of life, and express the highest 

 aspirations of our race. The chief value of research to a university is 

 to be found in the presence of a body of men who, in spite of their 

 years, retain their interest and progressive ideas longer than those who 

 have more sympathy with the methods of the pedagogue than with 

 those who are desirous of learning. We may best maintain the tradi- 

 tions and the highest instinctive tendencies of our race by encouraging 

 productive scholarship. In a brilliant passage, the author of the 

 "Foundations of the Nineteenth Century" has shown that the spirit 

 of discovery is the conscience of Teutonic learning. When our ener- 

 gies are restricted merely to familiarizing ourselves with the learning 

 of the past, or in attempting to enter the domain of speculative thought 

 in which the Greek intellect reigned supreme, we throw away our 

 heritage and precipitate conflicts between inherited and acquired trends 

 of thought that often end in intellectual apathy. In order to vitalize 

 the knowledge of a dead past, we must inject into it the spirit of dis- 

 covery which alone reflects the highest aspirations of our race. The 

 lack of idealism and the spirit of indifference so often characteristic of 

 the graduates of many of our universities is in a large measure the 

 product of an educational system which, by ignoring objectivity in 

 teaching and failing to cultivate the spirit of enquiry, has ignored the 

 underlying trends of thought that, if properly directed, can bring us 

 nearer to the ideals compatible with our social traits. To endeavor 

 to satisfy the intellectual needs of our race by continually repress- 

 ing the spirit of enquiry and by driving students to contemplative 

 reflection upon the accumulated stores of knowledge, is equivalent 

 to exchanging the driving force or spirit, that is born in us, for 

 a suit of clothes. When the specific racial tendencies reflected in the 

 spirit of discovery are not intelligently directed they find expression in 

 utilitarian motives. By attempting, as does our educational system, to 

 force American students to become passive recipients of knowledge, we 

 are asking them to sell their heritage for a mess of pottage. 



When once the essential distinction that exists between university 

 and college is grasped, it is necessary to determine to what extent the 

 present system of organization is favorable or antagonistic to the devel- 

 opment of these two different types of institutions. An impartial 

 examination of the facts such as is given in the excellent exposition of 

 this entire subject by Cattell 1 shows how extremely difficult it will be 

 for most of the older institutions which have assumed the name of 

 university to prove their right to this title. As has already been 

 pointed out, the present system of administration is adapted merely to 



1 Science, May 24 and 31, 1912. 



