796 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVII. No. 960 



QUOTATIONS 



UNIVERSITY LIFE IN KANSAS 



The vague feeling of unrest that has pre- 

 vailed among the members of the university 

 faculty on account of sweeping changes that 

 might be made by the new board of adminis- 

 tration has deepened into real alarm with the 

 announcement from the board that all posi- 

 tions at the university have been declared 

 open. 



This is understood to mean that when the 

 new board takes charge formally July 1. the 

 entire faculty must be reengaged. The fact 

 that a member has been elected a permanent 

 member of the faculty by the board of regents 

 in previous years after serving an apprentice 

 term of years would not necessarily count at 

 all with the new board. The board has by its 

 announcement indicated that it will feel free 

 to drop any member of the faculty it pleases. 



That such will be the attitude of the new 

 board is indicated by its action at a meeting 

 last week when Chancellor Strong and Presi- 

 dent Waters were "reelected" to the posi- 

 tions they now occupy. As there was no deii- 

 nite limit to their " terms " it is hard to ex- 

 plain the action of the board other than by 

 the supposition that it is its intention to wipe 

 the slate clean and build the university anew 

 " from the ground up." If any person has a 

 position on the faculty after July 1, he will 

 hold it directly from the new board of admin- 

 istration and not by virtue of the fact that he 

 has grown old in the service of the institution. 



Naturally, this plan of procedure has made 

 the faculty very uneasy. It has been cus- 

 tomary to reelect a new member for a number 

 of years, until he had proved his worth to the 

 institution, and then the regents would elect 

 him a " permanent member " of the faculty. 

 Under the new rule the old members are 

 placed in the same boat with instructors of 

 a single year's standing. None of them will 

 know until after the " election " whether they 

 are to be turned on the faculty. It is not an 

 uncommon thing for a professor to have ene- 

 mies. How is he to know that his enemies 

 may not have the ear of the board, spreading 

 little stories that reflect upon him? The old 



board of regents made it a practise to pay 

 very little attention to such stories, although 

 they heard plenty of them. But what the new 

 board will do is entirely a matter of conjec- 

 ture. 



The most envied members of the faculty at 

 the present time are those who have had offers 

 of situations elsewhere. Of course everything 

 may turn out all right, but, on the other hand, 

 men who otherwise would have nothing to be 

 alarmed at may be eliminated when the new 

 broom begins to give its exhibition of clean 

 sweeping. And a good many teachers have re- 

 marked privately in the last few months that 

 they intended to take the first fair offer from 

 elsewhere that presented itself. The talk about 

 abolishing and consolidating and transferring 

 courses was enough to make them uneasy, but 

 the announcement now made that every 

 teacher is likely to be treated as if he were for 

 the first time an applicant for a position at 

 the university has caused a decided feeling of 

 insecurity. — Laivrence Gazette. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 

 A History of European Thought in the Nine- 

 teenth Century. By John Theodore Mehz. 

 Vol. III. (Part II., Philosophical Thought). 

 New York, Charles Scribner's Sons. 1912. 

 Pp. xiii + 646. 



Nothing so well illustrates the profound in- 

 terest of the great subject undertaken by Dr. 

 llerz as the contrast between his work and 

 Whewell's " History of the Inductive Sci- 

 ences " (3d ed., New York, 1858). The evi- 

 dent superiority of the later history, especially 

 in intensive treatment and exact Facharheit, 

 is in itself an index of the wonderful progress 

 that characterized the nineteenth century, 

 notably after " The Origin of Species." For- 

 tunately, too. Dr. Merz has been content to 

 take time. His first volume was published in 

 1896 (3d ed., 1907), and in it he grappled with 

 the physical sciences. The second volume fol- 

 lowed at an interval of seven years, and com- 

 pleted the task, as concerned the " sciences of 

 nature." These volumes should be in the 

 hands of every builder of " natural knowledge." 

 It is to be hoped that the appearance of the 



