2 78 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



incompetency/' "demoralization," "discourtesy," "lack of discipline," 

 and "laziness" — if this term properly translates the statements that 

 " no original work worthy of note has been done by the members of the 

 faculty," and that "the professors are practically unknown to the litera- 

 ture of their respective subjects, even after long years of identification 

 with their respective departments of instruction." Truly the members 

 of university faculties may set forth not only the private tables of uni- 

 versity presidents, but also the extension dining tables of boards of 

 trustees. 



The near-professor recalled that he had once read the story of a 

 conversation between Browning and a Jewish friend in which the latter 

 had sought an explanation for the repugnance often inspired by some of 

 his race and found it, he thought, in the difEerence in appearance and 

 manner between the Jews and the Christians of a certain class. Brown- 

 ing replied : 



Naturally their characteristics ■would become more intensified through long 

 exclusion from other groups of men; their manners would be unlike those of 

 others with whom they were not allowed to mix. No wonder if, hedged in as they 

 were, those peculiarities took offensive shapes. Does not every development, to 

 become normal, require space? Why, our very foot, if you restrict it and hedge 

 it in, throws out a corn in self-defense! 



Still another reason assigned is that it is not the business of the 

 faculty. " The business of university faculties is teaching. It is not 

 legislation and it is not administration," is the emphatic statement 

 of one president. " The special office of the faculty is to teach," states 

 a second president. " The duties of a professor are investigation and 

 instruction," adds a third. No statement seems to be so generally 

 endorsed by college presidents as that "it is the business of teachers 

 to teach." 



It is altogether probable that college professors would agree that 

 their chief, if not their only, raison detre is teaching, if the term teach- 

 ing is made elastic enough to cover the time and opportunity needed to 

 pursue knowledge. For how can the blind lead the blind, how can we 

 make bricks without straw, are the ever iterated and re-iterated cries of 

 those weighed down with the burdens of daily teaching, of those who 

 have no opportunity themselves of drinking at the Pierian spring, yet 

 must hold the cup to the lips of others. " Our function in the educa- 

 tional system is indeed teaching," they may well say, " but we must our- 

 selves seek and find knowledge if we are to pass it on to others.'* 



But who shall define the limits of teaching, or prescribe the bound- 

 aries of the educational field, or determine the nature of those questions 

 that are " purely professional," or set now on this side and then on that 

 the subjects that concern special departments and those that concern 

 education in general? Teaching and new buildings, teaching and im- 

 proved equipment, teaching and additional instructors, teaching and 



