756 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXX. No. 778 



of by many schoolmen; and also the sacri- 

 fice of higher education to the fatal alliance 

 of undergraduate and post-graduate instruc- 

 tion. It would also preserve the summer 

 vacation from the inroads of presidents 

 and governing bodies of educational institu- 

 tions whose iU-concealed (sometimes openly 

 avowed) ideal is often that of an educational 

 factory running aU the year round on the 

 schedule of the overseer. It would do much 

 to end the spectacle of the sanus professor in 

 academia infirma, and prevent many of the 

 physical and mental break-downs resulting 

 from the atmosphere of colleges and universi- 

 ties so detrimental to the sympathetic develop- 

 ment and the sane and reasonable utilization 

 of the genius of the individual. Endowment 

 of the individual would also establish on a 

 firm basis the " sabbatical year," and other 

 needed provisions for prolonging the academic 

 life of the investigator. 



2. The Human Side of Scientific Life. — En- 

 dowment of the individual would go far toward 

 relieving, and, in the end abolishing alto- 

 gether, the long-existing situation by means 

 of which educational institutions as such have 

 profited at the expense of the family and hu- 

 man social instincts. No more would all 

 grades below that of full professor have at- 

 tached to them salaries whose size and static 

 character indicate, if not a desire to prevent 

 marriage, a more or less deliberate decision 

 to ignore the new conditions which it creates. 

 The true university must recognize that 

 bachelorhood, while it may be cheaper, is ulti- 

 mately no real gain to science and that, for 

 the purposes of research, as in every other 

 field of human effort, the best man is he who 

 is most of a man. A university of half-men 

 is but a torso after all. Science should be an 

 aid, not an impediment, to marriage. A man 

 and a woman working together, as far as pos- 

 sible, should be, here, as everywhere else, the 

 ideal condition. No more than any other 

 field of human endeavor can science refuse to 

 do homage to that divine union of man and 

 woman which has been the source of all things 

 good, beautiful and true since the race began. 

 A unisexual science is an evolutional anomaly, 

 the fad of a season, if the season does seem 



long-drawn out and some of the fashion-ma- 

 kers are the heatipossidentes of the educa- 

 tional world. The day of the hermit and the 

 recluse in science is by forever. Humanity 

 can not and will not permit individuals whose 

 aim in life is supposed to be the search after 

 truth and the increase of knowledge, to with- 

 draw themselves absolutely from religious, 

 social and political life. It will see to it that 

 their incomes are sufficient to enable them to 

 be a part of the human world about them and 

 share in its activities, as well as devote them- 

 selves to the various subjects of scientific re- 

 search of which they are the authoritative 

 representatives. This further humanizing of 

 men and women of science would come 

 through the endowment of the individual. 

 Academic freedom of the highest order would 

 have as its correlate a human devotion to the 

 needs of humanity, and the greater the man of 

 science, the greater his interest in, and his 

 contribution to, the solution of the essential 

 problems of human social existence. 



For many, if not, indeed, the great majority 

 of professors, exclusive of those who have in- 

 herited money, or married wives with incomes 

 of their own, an academic career means loss 

 not only of the reasonable luxuries of life, but 

 also of many of its common enjoyments, and 

 sometimes even of its chief necessities. The 

 treatment of a professor in the matter of 

 office room, stationary and other supplies, sec- 

 retarial and stenographic assistance, etc., 

 suffers altogether by comparison with similar 

 grades of officials in business houses that are 

 great, but institutions in no wise more im- 

 portant or better off financially than our 

 great universities. It is not uncommon that 

 an instructor or a professor, doing excellent 

 work, and recognized as an authority on his 

 special subject, with a salary hardly sufficient 

 to live upon (at the present moment, e. g., 

 with a purchasing capacity from 25 per cent, 

 to 40 per cent, less than what it had been five 

 or ten years before) has to pay his own ex- 

 penses to every scientific meeting he attends, 

 write everything he publishes with his own 

 hand, and pay for official letter-heads, en- 

 velopes, and even stamps out of his own pocket. 

 Moreover, institutions that allow such things 



