POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THOUGHTS ABOUT UNI\ri^:RSITIES. 



Bt WILLIAM KEITH BROOKS, 



PROFESSOR or ZOOLOGY IN THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, 



YOU are aware that the pedagogue is no longer treated with 

 that deference and respect which he feels to be due to his 

 love of learning. Past is all his fame. Past is the day when the 

 village all declared how much he knew. Nowadays he is accus- 

 tomed to be told by the rustics, who once gazed and wondered, that 

 he is old-fashioned and out of place in our modern world; that he 

 does not represent the nation; that the love he bears to learning 

 is at fault; and that the university the people want must be uni- 

 versal like an omnibus, with a place for all, either for a single square 

 or to the end. 



He is also used to hearing from those successful people of whom 

 all must speak with reverence — those who have demonstrated their 

 superiority by laying their hands on everything they think worth 

 the getting — that he is a mere ^" bookish theorist," and that they are 

 much more able to show him the path to success than he to tell 

 them anything to their advantage. 



Unless he can minister to their comfort or entertainment, or 

 make smooth the royal road to learning, or at the very least help 

 to maintain the patent office, he is told to be content with such 

 treatment as they think good enough for him, and to keep himself 

 to his work of teaching the lower classes to be lowly and reverent 

 to all their betters. 



I have been much interested of late by two books on certain 

 aspects of modern society. One treats of the dangers which threat- 

 en liberal culture and constitutional government, and all the best 

 products of civilization, through the increasing prevalence of the 

 belief that our institutions have been devised by a few for their own 

 selfish ends. So long as men differ in natural endowments the igno- 

 rant and the incapable and the unsuccessful must outnumber those 

 whose industry and energy and foresight insure success. As those 

 who have little have always outnumbered those who have much 

 of the desired fruits of civilization, this writer says that one of the 

 great questions of the day is whether, in last resort, the world 

 shall be governed by its ignorance or by its intelligence. He is 

 alarmed by the diffusion of belief that our established institutions 

 do not represent the people, and that they are hostile to the best 

 interest of mankind, and by the prevalence of the opinion that the 

 true way to reform the world and to secure rational progress is to 

 intrust the organization and administration of government and of 



