674 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXX. No. 776 



tion; nor do they foster productive scholarsliip 

 enough among those members of their staflfs wlio 

 are capable thereof. 



These words, indicative as they are of a 

 courageous desire to attempt the mastery of 

 one of the most complex problems of higher 

 education of the day, I heard uttered by 

 President Lowell in his inaugural address in 

 the Harvard Tard. 



In some respects the aims of the college and 

 of the university are different or even antag- 

 onistic. The college strives to impart knowl- 

 edge, the university to extend its boundaries. 

 The college is the husbandman, the university 

 the explorer in intellectual fields. Without 

 the explorer's spirit for research knowledge 

 crystallizes into mere erudition, but the col- 

 lege itself is of more fundamental importance, 

 for without its fostering influence culture 

 itself must wither into barbarism. 



Indeed, our times demand a broad founda- 

 tion in general culture for the erection of the 

 pinnacle of special training, and thus it is 

 that our best schools of law and medicine are 

 now demanding that those who enter shall be 

 college graduates. It is the aim of modern 

 education to teach the student to know a little 

 of many things and much of some one thing, 

 and even more important is it for the graduate 

 to realize that he knows but little of all things, 

 and that far beyond the range of his intel- 

 lectual vision stretches the unknown inviting 

 his exploration. There are, therefore, two 

 sharply contrasted aims in higher education — 

 the foundation in general culture which it is 

 the duty of the college to impart, and sur- 

 mounting it that special training which only 

 the professional school can give. 



In other words, the wealth of modern knowl- 

 edge has brought about a separation in aims 

 between the college and the university, and 

 necessitates a segregation of their faculties, 

 while at the same time making the university 

 more than ever dependent upon the college 

 for that basic store of learning from whose 

 safe boundaries expeditions into the unlvnown 

 may be launched. Tet in America to-day our 

 so-called universities are but overgrown col- 

 leges, and their graduate departments are still 

 mainly normal schools for the training of 



college teachers. Moreover, the historic ex- 

 periments in education evidenced by Johns 

 Hopkins and Clark Universities have shown 

 that in our country the university can not 

 stand alone without the coordinated support 

 of its preparatory school — the college. 



Eesearch suffers grievously in our over- 

 grown colleges through our failure to realize 

 that there are two sorts of intellectual leaders 

 in the world — ^those who are erudite expound- 

 ers of learning, and those who advance its 

 boundaries. 



In manufacturing and in commercial walks 

 of life it has long been known that the highest 

 results are achieved only through a judicious 

 division of the tasks with respect to the several 

 abilities of those who are to perform them, 

 and in our system of education the greatest 

 efficiency will be attained only when the pro- 

 ductive student is not overburdened with ele- 

 mentary teaching, and the erudite is expected 

 to teach rather than to discover. Tet at the 

 present day little or no such segregation is at- 

 tempted, and indeed the tendency is increas- 

 ingly to overwhelm the young investigator 

 with pedagogical duties. 



Most pernicious to the development of the 

 spirit of research is the extraordinary growth 

 of summer schools in connection with our col- 

 leges; and the consequent demand that young 

 instructors forego research and teach through- 

 out the year. In many of our colleges the 

 young men are now forced to teach in summer 

 schools, but even where this is not actually 

 obligatory their small salaries practically ne- 

 cessitate it. 



There have been summer schools such as 

 that of Penikese years ago, whose ideal was 

 research and whose aim was discovery, but the 

 hurried and superficial teaching of the pres- 

 ent-day college summer school places it not 

 among these. But while it is the proper aim 

 of the college to develop and above all to im- 

 prove the summer school, its presence in its 

 present form is most hurtful to the progress 

 of university research. 



It is the aim of the college to teach, it is the 

 hope of the university to discover; and the 

 demand of the university spirit of the day is 



