November 26, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



757 



to go on will often make it necessary for 

 members of the faculty to indulge in high- 

 priced gowns, cater to social conventions, and 

 perform all sorts of extra duties and burden- 

 some functions without the slightest addi- 

 tional compensation. In many cases even 

 evenings and Sundays are not respected, but 

 have constant inroads made upon them. 

 Some of these things may seem petty at times, 

 but they are often quite sufficient to clog 

 genius in all its higher and nobler activities. 

 It is expenditure of energy upon such things 

 and worry about them that not infrequently 

 sap body and brain together. Yet so many 

 heads of educational institutions have not a 

 twinge of conscience as they oversee, year in 

 and year out, genius suffering from such 

 menial tasks. 



3. Discrimination Against Women. — The 

 endowment of individuals would put an end 

 to the sex-criterion of remuneration for the 

 laborer in the field of science, for men and 

 women could then be paid according to their 

 needs and their abilities and not according to 

 their sex. Women of genius would be given an 

 equal opportunity with men of genius, and the 

 absurd distinctions of salary inherited from 

 the public schools would no longer be a drag 

 upon the scientific work of the university. 

 The woman of science, like the man, would be 

 worthy her hire. No woman seeking advance- 

 ment in the academic world would need to have 

 her position and her recompense determined 

 by a board of trustees consisting entirely of 

 men or be judged by a man president and 

 professors whose views on the " sphere " of 

 the other sex are almost medieval and whose 

 use for women at a university is merely a sort 

 of psychic polygamy, in which they can be 

 wedded to science without having any real 

 children of their own. It would make 

 women of talent and genius independent of 

 the male-manned faculties so often below 

 them in honor, honesty and devotion to sci- 

 ence and scientific ideals. 



4. The Question of Honesty. — It has been 

 urged by some that endowed men and women 

 could not be trusted to " earn their wjiges," if 

 they were not under the restraints of the 

 present system. This amounts to saying that 



the average man or woman of science to be 

 thus endowed is not the equal in honesty and 

 personal integrity of the average college or 

 university president, the average member of a 

 board of trustees or the average member of an 

 educational trust. And every one knows the 

 untruth of such a statement. Professorial 

 honor is just as great as presidential or execu- 

 torial. A " Lexowing " of educational insti- 

 tutions would not be all to the disadvantage 

 of the professors and to the credit of academic 

 heads and boards of government. Individuals 

 are quite as honest as institutions. 



5. Research and Teaching. — One of the most 

 wasteful and unjustifiable policies now in 

 vogue in higher education is the imposition 

 upon those engaged in scientific research of 

 mere routine teaching and lecturing. This 

 has killed off many a promising investigator 

 and is responsible to a considerable degree for 

 the surprisingly small output of original 

 ideas and discoveries in certain American 

 educational centers. The endowment of the 

 individual would help much here, where aca- 

 demic freedom of the highest type is so sorely 

 needed. Universities do not hesitate to de- 

 mand teaching or lecturing of every member 

 of the staff and sometimes the authorities 

 spend time and energy in seeking to increase 

 rather than decrease the hours thus employed. 

 A young man or young woman whom God 

 and nature intended to be a first-class in- 

 vestigator is, by the devices of a president or 

 the demands of a board of trustees, meta- 

 morphosed for a good part of the year into a 

 teacher of quite ordinary capacities toiling at 

 hack-work under factory-rules. No surer way 

 of atrophying real genius or killing it outright 

 could possibly be invented. Every fertile 

 hour of invention and production is subject 

 to the deadly interruption of the class-room 

 exercise. Yet it seems to delight so many 

 academic authorities to be able to report that 

 every professor spends his hours of " teach- 

 ing " every week, whether he has any talent 

 for it or not, or whether every moment thus 

 employed may be a distinct impediment to the 

 effectual exploitation of his genius for scien- 

 tific research. The true university of the fu- 

 ture must guarantee the real investigator 



