TEE AMEBIC AN UNIVERSITY 315 



one of our most influential newspapers and denounce the great major- 

 ity of college and university presidents as habitually guilty of false- 

 hood and selfish intrigue. Indeed, such a charge is to be convicted of 

 the untruth of exaggeration. It is quite enough to point out that the 

 accusation itself, accompanied by the fact that it could find admission 

 to a respectable weekly paper and be so largely credited as it undoubt- 

 edly was, offers strong reasons for devising some system of governing 

 our universities which shall help to remove the temptation on the part 

 of any of its officers to resort to such means of carrying their measures ; 

 and so make the charge intrinsically impossible and absurd. We de- 

 sire, then, to keep in the background all suspicion of indulging in per- 

 sonalities, favorable or unfavorable to particular persons, while treat- 

 ing freely of the person of the president, its power and relations to the 

 true functions of the university, in the prevailing system of university 

 government. 



And now let us consider what are some of the more important ob- 

 jections to the workings of the form of administration almost univer- 

 sally in vogue. These may be all summed up in saying that, in many, 

 if not in the majority of cases, it hinders rather than helps the smooth- 

 est working and most valuable results of a university education. At 

 once we must plant ourselves squarely and immovably upon the propo- 

 sition that all the legitimate work of the true university culminates in 

 its teaching. From this it follows that all the acquisitions of the uni- 

 versity are subordinate to the quality and force of its faculties. Such 

 an " institution of learning " may offer fine and even luxurious dormi- 

 tories, and a cheap and well-served dining-hall for its students ; it may 

 give them agreeable and even refining opportunities for social life; it 

 may have expensive appliances and large and splendid fields for athletic 

 sports and culture; but if it has not the sufficient number and right 

 sort of men in its faculties, it fails just where success is most impera- 

 tively demanded of it. All these other advantages, so far as the worh of 

 the university is concerned, are entirely subordinate. All the other offi- 

 cers are the servants of the teachers. Good health is indeed of vital 

 importance; but in securing it, to refrain from dissipation and to take 

 an abundance of open air in unexhausting exercise, is vastly more 

 profitable than the existing extravagances and absurdities of college 

 athletics. Social life is indispensable for the best development of the 

 human individual; but it is not best obtained in the saloons, or clubs, 

 or even in most of the sodalities popular with university students. I 

 repeat : Everything else must be kept subordinate to the efficiency of the 

 teaching, if the university is to discharge satisfactorily its chief func- 

 tions. But that I am pleading for no narrow conception of these func- 

 tions, let me refer to the sentences quoted above. It then appears that, 

 not the students alone who are gathered under her walls are the pupils 



