692 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



voted by the citizens themselves, local elective boards to spend the money- 

 raised by taxation and control the schools, and for the higher grades 

 of instruction permanent endowments administered by incorporated 

 bodies of trustees. This is the American voluntary system, in sharp 

 contrast with the military, despotic organization of public instruction 

 which prevails in Prussia and most other states of Continental Europe. 

 Both systems have peculiar advantages, the crowning advantage of 

 the American method being that it breeds freemen. Our ancestors 

 well understood the principle that, to make a people free and self-re- 

 liant, it is necessary to let them take care of themselves, even if they 

 do not take quite as good care of themselves as some superior power 

 might. 



And now, finally, let us ask what should make a university at the 

 capital of the United States, established and supported by the Gen- 

 eral Government, more national than any other American university. 

 It might be larger and richer than any other, and it might not be ; 

 but certainly it could not have a monopoly of patriotism or of catho- 

 licity, or of literary or scientific enthusiasm. There are an attractive 

 comprehensiveness and a suggestion of public spirit and love of coun- 

 try in the term " national ;" but, after all, the adjective only narrows 

 and belittles the noble conception contained in the word " university." 

 Letters, science, art, philosophy, medicine, law, and theology, are 

 larger and more enduring than nations. There is something childish 

 in this uneasy hankering for a big university in America, as there is 

 also in that impatient longing for a distinctive American literature 

 which we so often hear expressed. As American life grows more 

 various and richer in sentiment, passion, thought, and accumulated ex- 

 perience, American literatm*e will become richer and more abounding, 

 and in that better day let us hope that there will be found several 

 universities in America, though by no means one in each State, as free, 

 liberal, rich, national, and glorious, as the warmest advocate of a 

 single crowning university at the national capital could imagine his 

 desired institution to become. 



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AGASSIZ AND DAKWINISM. 



By JOHN FISKE, 



KEOENTLY LECTTTBEB ON PHILOSOPHY AT HABVABD TTNTYEBSITY. 



ONE Friday morning, a few weeks ago, as I was looking over the 

 Nation, my eye fell upon an advertisement, inserted by the 

 proprietors of the New - York Tribune, announcing the final destruc- 

 tion of Darwinism. What especially riveted my attention was the pe- 

 culiar style of the announcement : " The Darwinian Theory utterly de- 



