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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVIII. No. 726 



have to get along in life without comforts 

 and reasonable pleasures that have hitherto 

 been within our reach. A cutting down of 

 the scale of living is one of the sources of 

 real suffering. 



Hence if we take, say, $2,000 as the average 

 salary of our college professors, we may say 

 that on the average our professors will be 

 drawn from homes where the scale of living 

 is adjusted to the same figure, or a little 

 more. But the children in such homes have, 

 in our day, few of the advantages of life — few 

 books, little or no travel, perhaps one may say 

 without offense, little social experience. That 

 was not so a generation ago, when salaries 

 were about the same, but the scale of living 

 totally different. Nowadays the college pro- 

 fessorship offers no material inducements ex- 

 cept to those who have been brought up in a 

 pretty severe economy, and who can get from 

 it all the comforts to which they have been 

 used, and perhaps something more, with often 

 an added pleasure in a certain prestige, which 

 is attractive. Many will say that the self- 

 made man is the grandest type of manhood 

 we can put before our young men, etc. But 

 the self-made man, admirable and effective 

 though he often is, is rarely a cultivated man, 

 and therefore can not give us all of what we 

 want in the college teacher. And then, the 

 self-made men on our faculties have so rarely 

 finished the job. 



Now a general rise in salaries would, I 

 think, make it possible for our undergraduates 

 to have for their intellectual guides not men 

 who merely know immeasurably more of Latin 

 or of botany than do the students themselves, 

 but men who bring with them fine traditions 

 of cultivated living and of " high thinking," 

 a wide experience of life and humanity. It 

 should, therefore, be the aim of the college to 

 pay such salaries to its professors as would 

 enable them to give to their own children 

 what the college would regard as a perfect 

 preparation for professorial work. Only in 

 this way can it draw its teachers from a class 

 in which such preparation is possible. 



The graduate student has totally different 

 needs, and in the university there should be 

 found room for both types of teachers, the 



man of cultivation and the man of knowl- 

 edge. Of these two the latter is more neces- 

 sary to the advanced student than the former. 

 I believe it is equally true that for the younger 

 student, the man of cultivation is more neces- 

 sary than the man of knowledge. 



Everything depends, however, on the point 

 of view, and no one can recognize more clearly 

 than the vsriter that his own is hopelessly 

 old-fashioned ; though in a time that we regret 

 and admire it was almost universal. 



S. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 

 Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer. By 



David Duncan, LL.D. 2 vols. 8vo, pp. 



xiii 4- 414 ; vii + 444. New York, D. 



Appleton and Company. 1908. 



Obviously enough, it is impossible at this 

 early date to offer a just estimate either of 

 Spencer the man, or of his " synthetic phi- 

 losophy." " The Autobiography," covering 

 sixty-two years of its author's life, and the 

 volumes now before us must always serve, 

 nevertheless, as primary sources for that more 

 objective appreciation to be undertaken, doubt- 

 less, after the lapse of years. In these cir- 

 cumstances, and in this journal, I shall con- 

 fine myself to certain points suggested by the 

 " Biography," and eschew excursions farther 

 afield. 



The contents of Dr. Duncan's work are as 

 follows : (1) Twenty-eight chapters of strict 

 biography, filling the whole of Volume I., and 

 245 pages of Volume II. The method em- 

 ployed is to rely largely upon Spencer's cor- 

 respondence, and to connect the scattered parts 

 by apposite comments which serve also to fill 

 out lapsed details. I am much struck by Dr. 

 Duncan's admirable restraint in subordinating 

 his ovsm personality, and permitting the events 

 to tell their ovm tale. (2) Two chapters, en- 

 titled, respectively, Characteristics and Per- 

 sonal Reminiscences, and Spencer's Place in 

 the History of Thought; in these the biog- 

 rapher speaks for himself, and, especially in 

 the former, introduces appreciations fui-nished 

 by intimate friends and familiar acquaint- 

 ances. (3) Five Appendices, whil fall into 

 two distinct groups, (a) Contributions from 



