6 INTRODUCTION 



institutions we owe much of the regard for scholarship 

 and much of the spirit of research that now characterize 

 our own universities. Wolcott Gibbs at Harvard, in 

 1863, and Oilman at Johns Hopkins, in 1876, definitely 

 fixed in our advanced courses the laboratory methods 

 they had learned in Germany. Since their time, in a 

 rapidly widening circle of universities, research leading 

 to the doctor's degree has become universal, greatly to 

 the advantage of American science. No faculty member, 

 if perchance half-hearted in his desire for new knowledge, 

 can afford to ignore completely the growing custom of 

 original research. To be most successful as a teacher 

 he must be counted among those who realize that in- 

 spiration springs from advancing knowledge not from 

 the sealed books of the Aristotelian, whose pedantic 

 vision, which paralyzed progress in the past, would be 

 no less deadly at the present day if the spirit of research 

 were destroyed. 



The influence of the German university on American 

 education has thus been of incalculable value. It has 

 taught the student to look beyond the bachelor's degree 

 to the possibility of advancing knowledge by his own 

 efforts, and to realize the high privilege of never-ceasing 

 research. It has also taught him the advantage of foreign 

 travel and experience, needed so imperiously in the midst 

 of our slowly decreasing insularity. But, in working so 

 much of good, it has almost inevitably involved an ele- 

 ment of harm, by centering our educational ideals too ex- 

 clusively in a single country. The time has surely come 

 to look farther afield. And in widening our vision, the 

 great debt we already owe to the ficole des Beaux Arts is 

 an ample assurance of the rich benefits we may reason- 

 ably hope to derive from the other schools of France. 



When Ticknor sailed from Boston in 1815, the Paris 

 Academy of Sciences was near the zenith of its fame. 



