726 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



I could give more illustrations, and from better schools, show- 

 ing that the demand of the colleges of twenty years ago was always 

 a demand for docility and versatility, never for thoroughness or 

 originality ; and, as a rule, the progress of science in America 

 came from men outside of the college, and in a great part outside of 

 college training and college sympathies ; that to promote science 

 or to extend knowledge was not often one of the college ideals, and 

 that the colleges' chief function was to keep old ideas unchanged. 

 What was safe in times of old will he safe to-day, and safety, 

 rather than inspiration or investigation, was the purpose of the 

 college. From time immemorial until now Oxford and Cam- 

 bridge, the schools of clergymen and gentlemen, have been the 

 center of English conservatism. The American colleges — dilute 

 copies of Oxford and Cambridge — were likest their models in their 

 retention of old methods and old ideas. The motto, once sug- 

 gested for a certain scientific museum, " We will keep what we 

 have got," might have been taken by the American college. There 

 was no American university then, unless a few broad-minded 

 teachers — such men as Lowell, Gray, Silliman, Henry, Baird, and 

 Agassiz — could, as so many individuals, be properly regarded as 

 such. 



In a high sense, as I elsewhere have said, the coming of Agas- 

 siz marked the foundation of the first American university. Agas- 

 siz was the university. The essential character of the university 

 is Lernfreilieit, freedom of learning, the freedom of the student to 

 pursue his studies to the furthest limit of the known, the freedom 

 of encouragement to invade the infinitely greater realm of the un- 

 known. It is from this realm that come the chief rewards of the 

 scholar. The school from which no exploring parties set out has 

 no right to the name of university. In the progress of science, and 

 the application of its methods to subjects not formerly considered 

 scientific, the German university has its growth and development. 

 In like progress must arise the American university. 



You remember the story of the discussion, some forty years 

 ago, between Emerson and Agassiz, as to the future of Harvard. 

 Emerson, himself one of the sanest and broadest of men, saw in 

 the work of Agassiz elements of danger, whereby the time-hon- 

 ored symmetry of Harvard might be destroyed. In a lecture on 

 universities, in Boston, Emerson made some such statement as 

 this : That natural history was " getting too great an ascendency 

 at Harvard " ; that it " was out of proportion to other departments, 

 ' and hinted ' that a check-rein would not be amiss on the enthusi- 

 astic professor who is responsible for this." 



" Do you not see," Agassiz wrote to Emerson, " that the way 

 to bring about a well-proportioned development of all the re- 

 sources of the university is not to check the natural history 



