THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY. 171 



sects colleges multiplied like churches in a village, supported, so far 

 as they were supported, by religious zeal. Free education has been 

 fostered by our states as never before, and where the field was clear, 

 beginning with Michigan in 1837, state universities became the head 

 of the public school system. Technological schools and departments 

 — beginning with the Eensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1824 — were 

 founded in answer to the needs of a country requiring material de- 

 velopment. Independent or quasi-independent schools of divinity, 

 medicine and law gave the inadequate preparation that the pressing 

 demand for clergymen, physicians and lawyers allowed. University 

 work did not exist, and our B.A.'s swarmed to Germany, where ideals 

 of research and creative scholarship had arisen, which took kindly to 

 transplantation and an unexhausted soil. Certain native agencies, 

 the Smithsonian Institution, the scientific academies, the geological 

 surveys and the like, modestly furthered research and contributed to 

 the university ideal. 



In a general way the old Cambridge college, adjusting itself to the 

 practical needs of a democratic and industrial country, adding the 

 German faculty of philosophy, and gathering in the professional 

 schools, has given us our American university. These three elements, 

 represented by the bachelor's degree, the doctorate of philosophy and 

 the professional degrees, are variously combined and developed in our 

 different institutions; and this certainly gives great flexibility and 

 possibilities to university development. The foundation of new 

 universities — Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Stanford and Chicago — and 

 the enlargement of the resources of private and state institutions 

 have greatly favored progress and differentiation. We have no one 

 kind of university, but many types, each seeking to work out its own 

 salvation. Here surely is ground for hoping that we shall soon set 

 educational models. 



But twenty-five years is a short period, and it would be no cause for 

 surprise if it has given us more problems than solutions. The college, 

 originally for secondary education, but with higher education attached, 

 is in a state of unstable equilibrium. The distinction between courses 

 for culture, courses for higher specialized liberal training and courses 

 fitting for the professions appears to have a historical explanation rather 

 than a logical justification. Every student during all his course of 

 education — namely, from the time he is born to the time he dies — 

 should do the three things that are artificially separated in our uni- 

 versities. He must learn to do his share of the useful routine work of 

 the world, he should aim to improve the methods of doing this work 

 and he should have some acquaintance with the work of others. 



The prolongation of infancy marks off the higher animals from 

 the lower, and men from all others. If the sensori-motor arcs are 



