28o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



professor, however responsible in study or class-room, has as a rule 

 little sense of the dignity and responsibility of his office as a member 

 of the faculty. And it is also true that many men are admitted to our 

 faculties who, by reason of inexperience and immaturity, or of con- 

 stitutional lack of culture and self-respect, should not be entrusted with 

 the office. Nothing better demonstrates this than the fact that meas- 

 ures pass to which a large majority are heartily and sincerely opposed 

 — measures which, it may be, are clearly to their disadvantage. Let it 

 be known, however, that the measure is the president's own, there will 

 be few to vote against it, almost none to speak against it. The majority 

 conceal their want of frank courage under a Pickwickian conception of 

 " loyalty." 



Thus it has come about that the seat of authority in college matters 

 has passed to a large extent from the faculty to the president, who, 

 then, by analogy with commercial ideals — to which college men are 

 often curiously deferential — has been invested with the character of 

 captain of industry. Now the captain of industry may be necessary in 

 the business world, where, perhaps, most men are fit only to be led. 

 And I do not doubt that the modern college will need an executive head, 

 whatever be his relations, on the one hand to the trustees, and to the 

 faculty on the other. But that the college professor should himself 

 adopt the entrepreneur-theory of the office, as he frequently does, and 

 should even glorify " the rule of the strong man " — over himself, can 

 stand only for an utter contradiction between the idea of his profession 

 and its present actuality. In a word, it is an incredible attitude in one 

 who believes himself to be a scholar and a gentleman and who attaches 

 any moral significance to the fact. If the democratic principle is to 

 hold anywhere, it should hold here. But it can hold nowhere unless 

 men have the courage to say what they mean and a responsible meaning 

 to express. 



Accordingly, as the first feature in the program of self-assertion, 

 the college professor should seek both to strengthen his authority as a 

 member of the faculty, and as such to secure for himself a more com- 

 prehensive representation in the government of his university. In this, 

 while cooperating with the president and the trustees for the welfare 

 of the institution, he will at the same time act with an explicit refer- 

 ence to his own. There is no reason why the attitude of any of the 

 parties to the situation should be purely impersonal. The welfare of a 

 university is represented in the fulfilment of the numerous interests 

 which it may be conceived to represent, and these interests are in last 

 analysis personal. The aim of college policy is their coordination, and 

 in the college especially, a broad computation of each should leave little 

 margin for dispute. But if all computations are to be impersonal there 

 will be few suggestions of value to interchange and few data either for 



