TEE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY. 175 



pathies and emphasizes our common interests, not that which forms an 

 exclusive clique. On the whole the sciences in their application to 

 human life seem more likely to form an adequate basis for a common 

 culture than the dead languages. But intellectual training demands 

 specialization, whereas the emotions are more nearly shared in equal 

 measure by all. Civic life or art, if we but had a native art, seems 

 to be a better basis for common culture than any special sort of 

 knowledge. 



In my opinion the university is or should be a group of professional 

 schools, giving the best available preparation for each trade and pro- 

 fession. It is more feasible to give such training than to teach cul- 

 ture or research. These, like the building of character, are not the 

 result of any particular kind of curriculum. Culture comes from 

 daily and immediate association with the best that the world has; and 

 this should be found at the university. The leader is born a leader; 

 what the university can do is to give him an opportunity. The kind 

 of research that may be taught to the second-rate man is not the 

 highest ideal of the university. The presumption is that the new 

 facts recorded by the student are unimportant; just because they are 

 new and discovered by the student. But if by research we mean the 

 discovery of new truth and the creation of new lines of activity, then 

 research is indeed the highest function of the university. When 

 we find the man who can advance knowledge and the applications of 

 knowledge to human welfare, be he student or professor, him we should 

 all serve and reverence. But we do a grievous wrong if we assume 

 that this man is found, and should be found, only in the faculty of 

 philosophy. I am glad that our great leader, President Eliot, in his 

 address at the inauguration of President Remsen, emphasized partic- 

 ularly the forward movement made by the establishment of the Johns 

 Hopkins Medical School. Not because it requires for entrance the 

 equivalent of the bachelor's degree, but because we have there the best 

 specialized training, united with the highest culture and the freest re- 

 search, it will become and has become the model for our medical schools, 

 and for our schools of law, theology and technology. So long as we must 

 have degrees, let the A.B., the A.M., the M.D. or other professional 

 degrees, and the Ph.D., each mean, according to its measure, culture, 

 expert training and independent research. 



The general public doubtless regards the university as simply a 

 place for the teaching of students, and there may be some justification 

 for this opinion in the actual state of affairs. But over the doorway 

 of the building in which is my laboratory of psychology we have 

 inscribed the words 'For the advancement of natural science.' His- 

 torically the university has been far more than a school for boys. In 



