UNIVERSITY-BUILDING. 337 



ments should be equal to make the university real. It was enough at 

 Harvard to have Agassiz and Gray, Lowell, Goodwin and Holmes to 

 justify the name of the university. Silliman and Dana made a uni- 

 versity of Yale. Such men are as rare as they are choice, and no uni- 

 versity faculty was ever yet composed of them alone, and none ever yet 

 had too many of them. President Gilman has wisely said : 



In the conduct of a university secure the ablest men as professors regard- 

 less of all other qualifications excepting those of personal merit and adaptation 

 to the chairs that are to be filled. Borrow if you cannot enlist. Give them 

 freedom. Give them auxiliaries. Give them liberal support. Encourage them 

 to come before the world of science and of letters with their publications. 

 Bright students soon to be men of distinction will be their loyal followers and 

 the world will say amen. 



The merit of a university depends on the men who are called to conduct 

 it, upon them absolutely if not exclusively, for although the teacher must have 

 such auxiliaries as books and instruments, books are nothing but paper and ink 

 until they are read, and instruments but brass and glass until craft and skill 

 are applied to their handling. 



But it is in its men that the real university has its real being. 

 Through the work of such men it stands in the vanguard of civiliza- 

 tion. By such men it counts the milestones in its course, and no trick 

 of organization, no urging of the printing press, no subsidy of students 

 can be made to take their place. 



A final word as to the practical side of advanced research. Mr. Car- 

 negie once ascribed the foundation of his great fortune to the fact that 

 he first employed trained chemists where other manufacturers chose 

 workmen skilled in making steel by rule of thumb. His chemists were 

 able to suggest improvements. They devised ways of making better 

 steel, cheaper still, and at the same time of utilizing the refuse or slag. 



In the future the success of each great enterprise must depend on 

 the improvements it makes. The nation successful in manufacture and 

 commerce will be the one richest in labor-aiding devices. All these 

 nmst depend on the advancement of knowledge. Pure science must 

 precede applied science. 



Once the manufacturer or the nation could employ its chemists as 

 it needed them. ISTow it must make them. The advancement of any 

 branch of science depends on the mastery of what is known before. 

 Everything easy and everything inexpensive has been found out. To 

 train the chemist of the future, we need constantly finer instruments 

 of precision for his advanced work; access to greater and greater libraries 

 that he may know what is already done, for each generation of scien- 

 tific workers must stand on the shoulders of those gone before, else it 

 can make no progress beyond them. The scholars of to-day would be 

 helpless were it not that they can save time by drawing freely on the 

 accumulated knowledge of the past. 

 vol. lxi. — 22. 



