SCIENCE AND THE COLLEGES. 727 



department, but to stimulate all the others ? — not that the zoologi- 

 cal school grows too fast, but that the others do not grow fast 

 enough ? This sounds invidious and perhaps somewhat boastful, 

 but it is you," he said, "and not I, who have instituted the com- 

 parison. It strikes me that you have not hit upon the best 

 remedy for this want of balance. If symmetry is to be obtained 

 by cutting down the most vigorous growth, it seems to me it 

 would be better to have a little irregularity here and there. In 

 stimulating, by every means in my power, the growth of the 

 Museum and the means of education connected with it, I am far 

 from having a selfish wish to see my own department tower 

 above the others. I wish that every one of my colleagues would 

 make it hard for me to keep up with him, and there are some 

 among them, I am happy to say, who are ready to run a race 

 with me." 



In these words of Agassiz may be seen the keynote of modern 

 university progress. The university should be the great refuge 

 hut on the ultimate boundaries of knowledge, from which daily 

 and weekly adventurous bands set out on voyages of discovery. 

 It should be the Upernavik from which polar travelers draw their 

 supplies, and, as the shoreless sea of the unknown meets us on 

 every side, the same house of refuge and supply will serve for a 

 thousand different exploring parties, moving out in every direc- 

 tion into the infinite ocean. This is the university ideal of the 

 future. Some day it will be felt as a loss and a crime if any one 

 who could be an explorer is forced to become anything else. And 

 even then, after countless ages of education and scientific progress, 

 the true university will still stand on the shore, its walls still 

 washed by the same unending sea, the boundless ocean of possible 

 human knowledge. 



The new growth of the American university which we honor 

 to-day is simply its extension and its freedom, so that a scholar 

 can find place within its walls. The scholar can not breathe in 

 confined air. The walls of medisevalism have been taken down. 

 The winds of freedom are blowing, and the summer sunshine 

 quickens the pulse of the scholar in the deepest cloister. In the 

 university of the future all departments of human knowledge, all 

 laws of the omnipresent God, will be equally cherished because 

 equally sacred. The place of science in education will then be 

 the place it deserves — nothing more, nothing less. 



Many influences have combined to bring about the emancipa- 

 tion of the American college. Not the least of these is the growth 

 of the State university as an institution existing for all the people, 

 and for no purpose but that of popular instruction. It is a part 

 of the great training school in civics, morals, and economics which 

 we call universal suffrage. 



