496 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



policies and problems of management. Faculties were small and in- 

 formal; the calls of committees not oppressive; problems of adjust- 

 ment relatively simple; rival interests were not yet disturbing. It 

 was not a golden age ; nor is its color-scheme in memory due to the 

 mellowing of years. There was an abundance of homelier metal; and 

 the process of refinement was uncertain and tedious. Yet there was an 

 orchestral harmony — a sense of being considered and of playing a part 

 — that can not be referred to an insensibility to discord, or to a blissful 

 ignorance of standards and possibilities. 



The period of transition came with a rush and was hurried to its 

 consummation. Everything grew, enlarged, expanded — grounds, 

 buildings, plans, facilities, positions, students and duties — most of all 

 students and duties, least of all salaries. Some of the maturer mem- 

 bers of the guild felt the change as delayed growing pains. The ad- 

 justment involved difficulties and a stern disregard for hesitation, a 

 brusque treatment of opposition. Size was truly a complication that 

 must be fairly met. Competition without and rivalry within became 

 conspicuous; the perspective of things changed notably. Administra- 

 tion became imperative. Correlation was urgently demanded and un- 

 flinchingly enforced. Standards and ideals were changing; whether for 

 good or ill was far more uncertain. The success of measures became 

 more momentous than the manner of securing them. Interests of an 

 academic type were confronted with interests of a measurably different 

 temper, and with the assertion of authority. Pressure from the outside, 

 from legislatures in state universities, from alumni and the public in 

 all, became differently insistent; dissensions complicated issues. The 

 administration which under older conditions had stood between the 

 board and the professor's security, came to carry the external pressure 

 to the academic career. The professor was diverted by manifold cares 

 beyond the class-room or laboratory or study; and found that his avail- 

 ability for the purpose of organization directly affected his influence, 

 his value, preferment, his status. Academic peace became as obsolete 

 as the cloister ; privileges of one order were sacrificed for advantages of 

 another that quite too commonly failed to appear. 



And now I may find relief in the use of the present tense. It is of 

 the actual situation and of the recent past that I speak, and that with- 

 out reticence. This is not a testamentary nor yet an elegiac occasion, 

 and by the same token not an apologetic one. I have indicated the con- 

 ditions under which certain convictions have matured, slowly and con- 

 fidently — convictions that carry a vital message of caution, of distrust. 

 The one paramount danger, the most comprehensively unfavorable fac- 

 tor affecting ominously the prospects of the higher education — and the 

 lower not less so, 1 though differently — is the undue dominance of ad- 



1 The danger of externalism — the theme of the present discourse — to the 

 public school-system is looked upon by Mr. J. F Munroe ("New Demands in 



