728 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Most of these schools have celebrated their coming of age 

 within the last five years, and their growth is certainly one of the 

 most notable features in the intellectual development of Amer- 

 ica. The State university was founded as a logical result of the 

 American system of education. It was part of the graded system 

 through which the student was to rise step by step from the town- 

 ship school to the State university. It has grown because it 

 deserved to grow. When it has deserved nothing it has received 

 nothing. In the persistence of old methods and low ideals we 

 find the reason for the slow growth of some of the State univer- 

 sities. In the early dropping of shackles and the loyalty to its 

 own freedom we find the cause of the rapid growth of others. 



In its early years the State university was in aim and method 

 almost a duplicate of the denominational schools by which it was 

 surrounded. Its traditions were the same, its professors drawn 

 from the same sources, its presidents were often the defeated can- 

 didates for presidencies of the denominational schools. Men not 

 popular enough for church preferment would do for the headship 

 of the State universities. The salaries paid were very small, the 

 patronage was local, and the professors were often chosen at the 

 dictates of some local leader, or to meet some real or supposed local 

 demand. I can remember one case when the country was searched 

 to find for a State university a Professor of History who should be 

 a Democrat and a Methodist. All questions of fitness were subor- 

 dinated to this one of restoring the lost symmetry of a school in 

 which Presbyterians, Baptists, and Republicans had more than 

 their share of the spoils. This idea of division of spoils in schools 

 as in politics is only a shade less baleful than the still older one 

 of taking all spoils without division. And when the spoils sys- 

 tem was finally ignored, and in the State universities men were 

 chosen with reference to their character, scholarship, and ability 

 to teach, regardless of " other marks or brands " upon them, the 

 position of professor was made dignified and worthy. 



The first important step in the advance of the State univer- 

 sities came through the growth of individualism in education — 

 that is, through the advent of the elective system — and its first 

 phase was the permission to substitute advanced work in science 

 for elementary work in something else. It does not matter from 

 what source the idea of individual choice in education has arisen. 

 It may be a gift of far-seeing Harvard to her younger sisters ; or 

 it may be that in Harvard, as elsewhere, the elective system has 

 arisen from a study of the actual conditions. The educational 

 ideas which are now held by the majority of teachers in our 

 larger schools were long ago the views of the overruled minority ; 

 and for fifty years or more individuals in the minority have 

 looked forward to the time when inspiration and not drill would 





