47Q THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ment, facilities, or pecuniary reward. Discouragement of the most 

 wearing kind will, in nine cases out of ten, be his lot. 



The American college system, then, is clearly an impediment in 

 the way of American science. It acts adversely in several modes, and 

 these I purpose tracing. 



There are to-day in America over five hundred institutions claiming 

 the name of college or university. Of these more than forty are in 

 the single State of Ohio. Some are exclusively for male students, 

 others receive only young ladies, the majority are arranged for the co- 

 education of the sexes. Every religious sect, or fragment of a sect, 

 is represented : Baptists, Free-will Baptists, Seventh-day Baptists, 

 Presbyterians, United Presbyterians, Cumberland Presbyterians, 

 Episcopalians, both High-Church and Low-Church, Methodists of 

 divers complexions, Adventists, Swedenborgians, Friends, Unitarians, 

 and Universalists : all control special institutions, equipped and en- 

 dowed with due reference to the perpetuation of sound faith, and, 

 incidentally, to the encouragement of what is supposed to be learning. 

 Among Catholics, who now control seventy-four colleges, the inter- 

 sectarian character is strongly marked, and institutions are recognized 

 as especially Jesuit, or Franciscan, or Benedictine, or managed by the 

 Christian Brothers, or by the Congregation of the Sacred Heart. 



Now, there are several ways by which this sectarianism in educa- 

 tion works mischief to science. The very fact that a college has been 

 established for theological purposes, or for ecclesiastical aggrandize- 

 ment, is adverse to good scientific research. Even though the teacher 

 of science may not be directly hindered, the studies which are of 

 especial value to theological students will be given undue prominence. 

 In fact, nearly every American college emphasizes the classics and 

 literary studies, and looks upon natural science as something of minor 

 importance, often as a dangerous accessory, which must be tolerated, 

 but not encouraged. A college catalogue which now lies open before 

 me, after announcing that full provision has been made in its course 

 for the inculcation of religion and morality, asserts that " scientific 

 culture is of value only in so far as it is based on a true conception 

 of God, and our relation to him." Such a statement as this, viewed 

 from the standpoint of any particular sect, will usually be found to 

 mean more than the mere words indicate. 



But the great injury to science is done by the unnecessary sub- 

 division of forces. Forty institutions spring up where only one is 

 needed, and nearly all of them are necessarily weaklings. Libraries, 

 cabinets, apparatus, buildings, and faculties, are foolishly duplicated. 

 Each college lives in a continual struggle for existence, doing inferior 

 work, and paying miserable salaries to an inadequate corps of teachers. 

 If there were such things as Presbyterian mathematics, Baptist chem- 

 istry, Episcopalian classics, and Methodist geology, such a scattering 

 of educational forces would be pardonable ; but, as matters really 



