THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 243 



much upon the finding of the right road. Only the Universalgenie, 

 if such exist, could arrive at the goal by any of the divergent roads. 



The true aim and project of the university seems to me to be, in the 

 first instance, to help the man to find himself, and only in the second 

 instance to educate him. For the reason that this may appear an 

 unusual view it should be explained. Universities arose out of the 

 desire for freedom of thought, out of the wish to break the fetters of 

 formalism. At various times, at Salamanca and Bologna, Strassburg, 

 Paris and Oxford, assembled groups of men who had become dissatisfied 

 with the crystallized curriculum offered by the church schools, who felt 

 the curb on thought. Consequently they segregated, and from their 

 number selected those men as teachers who had new and fertile ideas. 

 Thus within such an assemblage all subjects came gradually to be pro- 

 fessed, and each man chose his disciplines according to his inclinations. 

 That is to say, universities in their inception were places for freedom 

 of choice of subject, and this has remained the ideal in at least the more 

 influential continental universities. One expression of it is our elective 

 system, but it is pursued still more broadly in Germany. There the 

 student comes from the fairly rigid curriculum of the Eealschule, or the 

 still narrower course of the gymnasium, to the university where he may 

 select just as many courses and just what ones he cares for. The result 

 is a double one: he frequently chooses as few lectures as possible, and 

 then enjoys several Bummeljahre; but drones are no honey getters, and, 

 provided he need a profession, he sooner or later comes to hear lectures 

 on a great variety of subjects until he finds the one that most engrosses 

 his attention, when he devotes himself to that. This system, in the 

 nearly complete freedom of choice it allows, offers the fruits of all sci- 

 ences, so that by browsing in this diverse orchard the student may find 

 his peculiar taste. 



A graduate department is not an Eden simply because all are com- 

 manded to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Men come to it 

 from undergraduate courses where they have followed rather delimited 

 curricula; in it they are free to make choice of the profession of their 

 lives. It is the duty of the graduate school, the university proper as 

 seen in the historical setting, to help each man to find himself, which is 

 but a paraphrase of the Socratic " know thyself/' 



Students come with different innate propensities ; they should choose 

 the fruit that comes nearest their hearts. The decisive step towards 

 success is to choose wisely, which means simply to elect that which 

 attracts most strongly. That is, one should place himself in the soil 

 for which providence or his inheritance meant him, for only by so doing 

 can one develop his capabilities to the full. And if there be one duty 

 set upon us, a duty to our neighbors as well as to ourselves, it is to do 

 that for which we are best fitted, granted only that a man be of sane 

 social judgment. 



