a ILLINOIS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 
sifting of materials and selection of workmen is coming with 
the changing conditions. If I read the signs correctly, this 
selection is going to eliminate from the work shop those who 
are not good teachers: but it is going to pass the straight and 
the crooked sticks through different shops instead of casting 
some aside. 
What are the ideals sought in a teacher? They appear to be 
an undying interest followed by ambition and culminating in 
a good workman’s love of his handiwork, in some field of 
knowledge, reinforced by adequate knowledge and wisdom and 
equipped with scholarly habits and a capacity to share with 
others what he has and in such a way as to vivify in them his 
own interest, knowledge, and productive talent, without him- 
self losing in either. 
So far as I know, there is only one way of achieving this— 
intimate personal contact with the truth; and that is all but 
synonymous with sustained contact with the scholarly progress 
of the world and with the underlying materials of such pro- 
gress. Does a man go into teaching without realizing this? 
In my judgment he mistakes his vocation. Does he enter the 
profession unequipped for it? If so he faces predestined fail- 
ure.- Does he think to lead a care-free life of respectable indo- 
lence? He should remember that his opportunity is desired by 
equally able men of higher ideals. 
In school and college few men, and they the exceptionally 
constituted, find time or opportunity for scholarly production 
beyond their grade; but if they see this door closed to them, 
it is because they have not lifted the latch rather than that noth- 
ing original has been left for them to do with limited oppor- 
tunity. The university nevertheless is the real workshop of 
our day and generation: it has found means of lightening 
the burden of service so that time and energy remain for re- 
search beyond the set task of teaching, and it offers appli- 
ances and materials adequate to such work of the more ad- 
vanced kind. By a process of natural selection misfit inves- 
tigators who cannot or will not teach and teachers who cannot 
or will not produce are eliminating themselves from its dual 
chairs. 
When I accepted a call to the University of Illinois, some- 
thing less than four years ago, I found reason to congratulate 
