July 17, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



89 



writing — all of it brilliant. Nevertheless, lie 

 represents an ideal of accomplishment and 

 achievement toward which the English univer- 

 sity teacher more or less consciously strives. 

 In America, on the other hand, this notion of 

 the scholar and man of letters combined in one 

 person is but dimly conceived by most mem- 

 bers of the academic body; and it has appar- 

 ently never entered the heads of many college 

 trustees. We have had a Longfellow and a 

 Lowell; and among the living we might name 

 a few more who enjoy something beyond 

 parochial fame; but the vast majority can hope 

 to be nothing more than competent teachers 

 and the editors of useful text-books — a re- 

 spectable but not an inspiring career. 



The reasons for this shortcoming — if we 

 may use so harsh a word — are not far to seek. 

 We need only refer to the fact that in but 

 few places in this country is any tradition of 

 culture firmly established. We have not half 

 a dozen university seats where a man like Jebb 

 would have received strong encouragement, to 

 say nothing of stimulation. Moreover, he 

 would be something of an alien within the \mi- 

 versity itself. The steady mediocrities and 

 the glib talkers who figure so largely in our 

 boards of trustees and who are not infre- 

 quently chosen to college presidencies, are 

 naturally biased by an unconscious but none 

 the less genuine distrust of men who are not 

 of their own kind. These authorities, though 

 they nominally desire to encourage scholarly 

 production, really like best the solid teacher 

 who carries a huge amount of class and com- 

 mittee work capably and without flinching, or 

 that other one who dissipates his energies in 

 keeping the college constituency " warm " — 

 talking at all the teachers' meetings and simi- 

 lar gatherings. These are the activities that, 

 in the eyes of college administrators, actually 

 count, and therefore win solid rewards. Nor 

 is this surprising. Most American colleges 

 are much straitened for money. The one 

 thing which they must do is to maintain the 

 class-room instruction as well as may be, and 

 keep growing in numbers so as to appeal to 

 the public as an institution deserving of more 

 liberal support. To these two ends other aims 

 are, by the pressure of a growing population, 



clamorous alumni, and an empty treasury, 

 ruthlessly sacrificed. 



To the merchants, manufacturers and bank- 

 ers, who constitute the backbone of our intel- 

 ligent and public-spirited boards of trustees, 

 it appears absurd that a professor should find 

 fifteen or twenty hours of class-work a week 

 a heavy load. Three or four hours of teach- 

 ing or lecturing a day, for nine months in the 

 year, seems to your business man mere play. 

 Yet the truth is that six or eight hours a week 

 of first-rate class work, informed as to the 

 latest results of research, thoroughly digested, 

 and carefully presented, will keep a professor 

 busy. If he attempts more, he degenerates 

 into a machine; he offers the same lectures 

 and cracks the same jokes year after year; 

 he becomes a mere dealer in routine. That is, 

 he has no chance to refresh himself, to get 

 new points of view, in fine, to think. Far tha 

 professor the time spent in experimentation 

 that is not immediately productive of striking 

 results, in reading, in mulling over his ideas 

 while he walks, plays golf, or rides the bicycle, 

 and in discussing with a colleague the newest 

 theory as to the constitution of matter or tha 

 recently discovered fragment of Menander, is 

 not pure loafing or genteel recreation. This 

 is the very process by which he subjugates his 

 facts, assimilates his learning, and ripens his 

 scholarship. But the unhappy truth is that 

 thinking is a luxury in which our average 

 underpaid and over-driven college teacher can 

 not afford to indulge. Whatever his personal 

 inclinations, he knows that the people to whom 

 he must look for approval, for means to extend 

 his department, for library books and labora- 

 tory apparatus, for bread and butter for him- 

 self and his children — that these people are 

 primarily interested in other things; and that 

 he is at liberty to do only so much thinking 

 as is compatible with devoting all his time 

 and energy to classes and committees. — New 

 York Evening Post. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 

 Text Books of Physical Chemistry. Stoichio- 

 metry. By Sydney Young, D.Sc, F.R.S., 

 Professor of Chemistry in the University of 



