THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 



759 



The University Twenty Years Ago. 



renewing body of non-experts, in whose 

 hands the entire legal control has us- 

 ually been placed " ; and the first of the 

 ten questions proposed for discussion 

 was : " What should be the real ad- 

 ministrative body of a college or uni- 

 versity, the faculty or the trustees ? " 



The clear and frank statement of the 

 problem in the invitation was main- 

 tained in the papers and discussions. 

 Dr. Draper opened the conference with 

 an eloquent address on the university 

 presidency. He held that the chief 

 duty of the trustees is to select a 

 great man for president and thereafter 

 to give him a free hand in all direc- 

 tions. He should be the supreme legis- 

 lator, executive and judge. This point 

 of view was questioned by Mr. J. P. 

 Munroe, a trustees of the Massa- 

 chusetts Institute of Technology, Pro- 

 fessor Joseph Jastrow, of the Univer- 

 sity of Wisconsin, and Professor C. E. 

 Bessey, of the University of Nebraska. 

 It was argued that while the auto- 

 cratic president may gather wealth and 

 produce an efficient machine, such an 

 officer is subversive of democratic 

 ideals and true scholarship, tending in 

 the end to demoralize the academic 

 career. 



Dr. Draper was careful to abstain 

 from any laudation of what he had 

 himself accomplished during his presi- 

 dency of the University of Illinois, but 



the impressive material progress of the 

 institution was evident on all sides, and 

 was the strongest argument in favor 

 of a benevolent despotism. It seems 

 therefore fair to call attention to two 

 facts. It is not certain that the Uni- 

 versity of Illinois is as great a center 

 of education, scholarship and research 

 as might be hoped from its generous 

 support, and its material progress may 

 have been due to a socialistic governor 

 of the state rather than to an auto- 

 cratic president of the university. 



It is indeed on open question as to 

 how far the increasing wealth of our 

 universities, whether from private gifts 

 or from legislative appropriations, is 

 due to the office of the president. It 

 may be that the office is the result of 

 the fact that wealth and numbers have 

 increased more rapidly than they can be 

 assimilated. The ways of scholarship, 

 like the ways of democracy, are slow; 

 but creative scholarship and a free de- 

 mocracy are high ideals, not to be 

 lightly sacrificed to machinery whose 

 only possible use would be the attain- 

 ment of such ideals. 



THE DISTRIBUTION OF STARS. 



Man has speculated on the extent 



and structure of the visible universe 



ever since the beginning of history. But 



however ingenious and plausible some 



