January 12, 191 i] 



NATURE 



355 



ind, and meeting her early and persistently; third, the 



rsonal inspiration and enthusiasm derived from some 



eat teacher. In Darwin's case the raw material was of 



; ' highest order, the best which amphimixis ever put 



^ether. This material no university could spoil, though 



unbridge and Edinburgh confessedly tried their best. 



Iv-etles, racehorses, flowers and trees, contact with nature 



these kept up an enthusiasm promoted rather than 



i-'cked by the hopeless dreariness of his university 



\-rcises. These gave the second element, and the third 



ime from the privilege of the young Darwin to be " the 



1 in who walked with Henslow," and later with Sedgwick 



:-^0. 



In the .American universities, heredity plays her part; 



r limitations, whatever they may be, are racial, and our 



)ck is good. Nature is close at hand, closer than in 



e Old World, and whosoever is really filled with zeal 



' know her has not far to go. Agassiz remained in 



Inerica because in America he was 'nearer to his studies 



! m he could be in Europe. Here " nature was rich, 



hile tools and workmen were few and traditions none." 



.11 this our American universities offer in abundance. The 



lal question is, then, that of personality, and the ques- 



>n I would raise is whether, in accumulating tools and 



iditions even as in Europe, we are not failing in this 



ijard. Are we not losing sight of the man, of the thing, 



ove all others, which goes to the shaping of a great 



ituralist or a great scholar in any field? We may say 



at the machinery of our universities is developed, not 



r the shaping of a Darwin, but for the moulding of verv 



•inmonplace models. But so it is everywhere. Paulsen 



-aid never conceive that any of the great scholars of 



igland should be professors in an English university. 



le work of the university, with its gowns and hoods, 



- convocations and degrees, its taking seriously the State- 



verned Church and the hereditary aristocracy, seem so 



i-^n to the life of the great scholar that one cannot con- 



ive his taking part in them. Yet great scholars have 



•ne just this. They have developed in just this armo- 



here. drinking from the real fountains of learning hidden 



thin the university, and not from the drippings of the 



rgoyies with which mediaevalism has adorned its 



-:terior. 



In like fashion we could not conceive of the voung 

 Darwin, in a claw-hammer coat, in the afternoon defend- 

 ing his one major and two minors with a thesis which 

 no one will ever read, on a topic leading up a blind 

 alley, as a doctor in any German university. But even 

 this, or much worse or more incongruous, might happen 

 to a Darwin or a Huxley, or a Lyell or a Cray, or a 

 Helmholtz, an .Agassiz or a Gegenbaur, were such to 

 grow up into the universities of to-day. Externals count 

 for little, and all these things are external. The man, the 

 teacher, and the contact with nature — these are the only 

 realities. The beginning is in the man, his ability, his 

 "fanaticism for veracity," and his persistence in the 

 work. The university cannot make the man. It cannot 

 wholly shut him away from objective truth, even if it 

 tries desperately to do so, and its principal influence is 

 found in the degree to which its grants the inspiration of 

 personality. 



The reading of good books cannot be regarded as an 

 element peculiar to any sort of university training. A 

 good mind seeks good books and finds them. Shakespeare, 

 Coleridge, and Lyell were just as accessible to me or to 

 you as they were to Darwin. They are just as accessible 

 to anvbody anywhere. Time to read them is not even 

 essential. One secret of greatness is to find time for 

 everything in proportion to its worth to us. k further 

 advantage is ours in this generation. We have the 

 . Origin of Species " and the whole array of fructifying 

 literature arising from this virile stem. 



The only possible element in which the American 

 university could fail is that of the influence of personality. 

 Can it be that this influence is waning? Do our men no 

 longer " walk with Henslow," as once they walked with 

 Gray and Silliman and .Agassiz? 



Do our men go to the university for the school's sake 

 and not for the men who are in it? Is it true that as 

 our universities grow in numbers and wealth, their force 

 as personal centres or builders of schools of thought are 

 declining? To some extent this is certainlv true. Once, I 



NO. 2150, VOL. 85] 



when a young naturalist went in search of training and 

 inspiration, he went to Agassiz. He did not go to 

 Harvard. He scarcely thought of Harvard in this con- 

 nection. Agassiz was the university, not Harvard. The 

 botanist went to Cray. He did not go to Harvard. 

 Later the chemist went to Remsen, the physiologist to 

 Martin, the anatomist to Mall, the morphologist to Brooks. 

 That these four men happened to be together at Johns 

 Hopkins was only an incident. The student went out to 

 find the man, and he would have followed this man around 

 the world if he had changed from one to another institu- 

 tion. 



I saw the other day a paper of an irate German 

 morphologist who, in attacking a certain idea as to the 

 origin of fishes' arms and ours, denounced " die ganze 

 Gegenbaurische Schule " who followed Gegenbaur in his 

 interpretation of this problem. Never mind the contention. 

 The point is that there is a Gegenbaur school of 

 morphology. This school was not the university, but 

 Gegenbaur himself. \\e ought to have more such schools 

 in America, schools of advanced thinkers gathered around 

 a man they love, and from whose methods and enthusiasm 

 the young men go away to be centres of like enthusiasm 

 for others. I believe that our system of university fellow- 

 ships is a powerful agency in breaking up this condition. 

 If, by chance, it were possible for us to produce a Darwin, 

 the raw material furnished, it would be a difficult task 

 if a fellowship of 500 dollars has drawn him to the labora- 

 tory of some lesser plodder, preventing him for ever from 

 being " the man that walked with Henslow." 



The fellowship system keeps our graduate courses 

 running regardless of whether these courses have anything 

 to give. So long as our fellows are hired to take degrees, 

 then sent out to starve as instructors, so long shall we 

 find our output unworthy of our apparent advantages ; and 

 in our sober moments we shall say with Osborn, we do not 

 see how an American university could produce a Darwin. 

 .At the same time, professors in universities in other lands 

 will admit that the machinery for mediocrity offers little 

 promise to the great. Jacques Loeb tells the story of a 

 young man who applied through him for a fellowship in 

 physiology at Chicago. His admiration for Loeb's 

 wonderful genius as an experimenter and as an original 

 worker on the borderland of life and matter led him to 

 wish to work with Loeb above all other things. Loeb 

 wrote back that he had resigned his chair in the L'niversity 

 of Chicago to go to the University of California. Then, 

 said the candidate, " will you kindly turn over my appli- 

 cation for a fellowship to your successor at the University 

 of Chicago? " This single case is typical of the attitude 

 into which our fellowship system, as it is now adminis- 

 tered, throws the young digs who arise in our various 

 colleges. The embryo professor asks for his training, not 

 for the man of genius who will make him over after his 

 kind, but for the university which will pay his expenses 

 while he goes on to qualify for an instructor's position. By 

 this and other means we are filling the ranks of our teach- 

 ing force, not with enthusiasts either for teaching or for 

 research, but with docile, mechanical men, who do their 

 work fairly, but with few touches of the individuality 

 without which no Darwins nor Darwinoids can ever be 

 produced. It is a proverb at Harvard, I am told, that 

 " the worm will turn, and he turns into a graduate 

 student." 



Thirty-seven years ago it was my fortune as a beginner 

 in science to attend the meeting of this association at 

 Dubuque. The very contact with men of science which 

 this meeting gave was a wealth of inspiration. To hear 

 these men speak, to touch their hands, to meet them on 

 the street, to ride with them to the fossil-bearing rocks 

 or the flower-carpeted prairie, for the moment, at least, to 

 be counted of their number, all these meant wonderful 

 things. 



Of these men, let me speak primarily of the students 

 of natural history, for then, and even yet, I know little 

 of anything else. They w-ere naturalists " of the Old 

 School," these workers of the early 'seventies. Louis 

 .Agassiz, dean of them all, was not at Dubuque, but I 

 came to know him very soon after. There was .Asa Gray. 

 I heard at Dubuque some Harvard man say, " There goes 

 Asa Gray. If he should sav black was white, I should 

 see it looking whitish." There was Shaler, the many- 



