176 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



medieval Italy, France and Germany, men of maturity, usually 

 attracted by a great personality, came together for mutual stimulus. 

 The colleges of Oxford and Cambridge were monasteries for learned 

 men before they became boarding schools. It may be our part here 

 in America to develop the true university: A place where each would 

 gladly learn and gladly teach; open summer and winter, night 

 and day; a center in each community for the conservation of the 

 best traditions and for the origination of the newest ideas; closely in 

 touch with every forward movement of civic and national life; a home 

 from which will go out, and to which will return, our leaders in every 

 department of human activity. Twenty-five years ago perhaps only an 

 Eliot or a Gilman could have realized the future of the American Univer- 

 isty, but to-day even the man in the street must have some vague notion 

 of its possibilities. Our college presidents and professors are called upon 

 for the most important and difficult public functions. When New 

 York City needs its leading citizen it finds him in the presidential chair 

 of Columbia University. When Mr. Cleveland retires from public 

 life, he allies himself with a university. There is no other office so 

 fit for a past president of the United States as the presidency of a uni- 

 versity. 



The university is those who teach and those who learn and the 

 work they do. The progress of the university depends on bringing to 

 it the best men and leading them to do the best work. Our president, 

 Mr. Eemsen, in his admirable inaugural address, told us that the 

 chief function of the university president is to find the right man, 

 and his chief difficulty the lack of enough such men to go round. 

 He considered the question of how far an increased salary would add 

 to the supply of good men. I quite agree with Mr. Remsen that a 

 professor will do about the same kind of work whether his salary is 

 $4,000 or $10,000. If anywhere, in the university it should be to 

 each according to his needs, from each according to his ability. The 

 professor who must live in a city or who has children to educate should 

 be given the necessary income. He should have an adequate pension in 

 old age or in case of disablement; the university should insure his life 

 in a sufficient sum to provide an income for his wife and minor chil- 

 dren. The professorial chair can be made attractive by freedom, 

 responsibility and dignity, rather than by a large salary. Still it must 

 be remembered that we live in a commercial age, and men are esteemed 

 in accordance with their incomes. While it may not, or at all events 

 should not, matter greatly to the professor, it may be well for the 

 community that those who do the most for it should be paid on the 

 same scale as those of equal ability in other professions. It may not 

 be necessary to double the salaries of all university men, but it would 

 probably be desirable to have certain prizes that would represent to the 



