33Q POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



UNIVEKSITY-BUILDING. 



By President DAVID STARR JORDAN, 



LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY. 



WITH the end of our republic's first century we had the first clear 

 vision of the greatest of republican institutions, the American 

 university. It was even then only a vision. It is not yet realized, but 

 we know something of what it is to be. Out of the struggles and the 

 prayers, the hopes and the efforts of good men and good women we see 

 it taking form. A university, as fair as those which England has 

 known for a thousand years, as sound and as strong as the deep-rooted 

 schools of Germany, with something of both, yet different from either, 

 is the coming university of America. There will be many of these 

 institutions, for our land is very wide, and they will differ from each 

 other somewhat in kind and as one star differeth from another in glory, 

 still of the same general pattern all must be. They will be schools for 

 training American boys and girls to be American men and women. 

 They will express the loftiest ideals of higher education within our great 

 democracy. 



The American college, as it existed thirty years ago and more, and 

 as it still exists in some quarters, is distinctly a school for personal 

 culture. Its strongest agency has been the personal influence of 

 devoted men. It has made no effort to give professional training. It 

 has made no pretense of leading in scientific research. A log with 

 Mark Hopkins at one end of it and himself at the other was Garfield's 

 conception of such a college. Even the log is not essential. The 

 earnest teacher is all in all. Apparatus Mark Hopkins did not need, 

 books he even despised. The medium of a forgotten language and an 

 outworn philosophy served him as well as anything else in impressing 

 on his boys the stamp of his own character. It was said of Dr. Nott 

 of Union College that 'he took the sweepings of other colleges and sent 

 them back to society pure gold.' Such was his personal influence on 

 young men. A notable example of the college spirit was Arnold of 

 Eugby. Another was Jowett, master of Baliol. A teacher of this type 

 in greater or less degree it was the privilege of every college student 

 to know, and this knowledge still reconciles him to his alma mater, 

 however many her shortcomings in subject or method. But times have 

 changed since the days of Mark Hopkins. The American college, 

 English born and English in tradition, under the touch of German 



