SCIENCE AND THE COLLEGES. 723 



had no part in the college system ; or, if on sufferance he found a 

 place, his time was devoted to anything else rather than to the 

 promotion of science. It is not many years since the faculty of 

 one of our State universities Spent a whole afternoon discussing 

 a proposal to abolish laboratory work in science, and the substi- 

 tution for it of good text-books and suitably illustrated lectures. 



All this time, as Emerson has said, "the good spirit never 

 cared for the colleges, and, while all men and boys were being 

 drilled in Greek, Latin, and mathematics, it had left these shells 

 high on the beach, and was making and feeding other matters in 

 other parts of the world." These other matters were the study of 

 men and plants and animals, the laws and forces of Nature, the 

 laws which govern human life, and the manifold laws of divine 

 workings — to which we give the name of science. Everywhere 

 in Europe and America men were eagerly devoting their lives to 

 this work, but in nineteen cases out of twenty these men were 

 outside of the colleges. 



Have I drawn the picture in colors too dark ? In an address 

 given in Detroit eighteen years ago, Andrew D. White used these 

 words : " While the United States has pushed the roots of its 

 public-school system down into the needs and feelings of the 

 whole people, and thus obtained a deep, rich soil which has given 

 sturdy growth, it has pushed the roots of advanced education 

 down into a multitude of scattered sects, and has obtained a soil 

 wretchedly thin and a growth miserably scant. 



" Within the last twenty years I have seen much of these insti- 

 tutions, and I freely confess that my observations have saddened 

 me. Go from one great State to another, in every one you will 

 find that this unfortunate system has produced the same miserable 

 results — in the vast majority of our States not a single college or 

 university worthy the name ; only a multitude of little sectarian 

 schools with pompous names and poor equipments, each doing its 

 best to prevent the establishment of any institution broader and 

 better. 



"The traveler arriving in our great cities generally lands in a 

 railway station costing more than all the university edifices in the 

 State. He sleeps in a hotel in which is embarked more capital 

 than in the entire university endowment for millions of people. 

 He visits asylums for lunatics, idiots, deaf, dumb, and blind, nay, 

 even for the pauper and criminal, and he finds them palaces. He 

 visits the college buildings for young men of sound mind and 

 earnest purpose, the dearest treasures of the State, and he gener- 

 ally finds them vile barracks. 



" Many noble men stand in the faculties of these colleges, men 

 who would do honor to any institution of advanced learning in the 

 world. These men of ours would, under a better system, develop 



