Deceubeb 4, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



799 



Sucli assistants as there are are personal help- 

 ers of the professors, below whom there is a 

 great gulf fixed, and administration is divis- 

 ible among two score heads instead of being 

 centered in one office. Each professor is the 

 head of his own department of Anstalt, and 

 quite independent in most of his afFairs. He 

 is his own president, and the university is no 

 more than the sum of all its parts. 



The American universities are not yet uni- 

 versities. They are destined to become such, 

 but not until as a first step the first two years, 

 the students and the teachers of the junior 

 college are relegated to the high school, or the 

 college. To abolish the president, or to cut 

 off his salary, to change his powers materially, 

 or to find some other type of man, would not 

 affect the case materially, so long as teaching 

 of boys is regarded as university business. 

 This is college business. The college is a co- 

 operating organism far more than the sum of 

 all its parts. It has moral duties, more vital 

 than its duties to research. So long as the 

 institution tries to carry this double function 

 of college and university in the same build- 

 ings with the same staff, the present difficul- 

 ties must persist. In this same period we 

 must bear the double criticism that our pro- 

 fessors do not do their part in the advance- 

 ment of science, and on the other hand that 

 they talk too much of research and give too 

 little attention to mental driU, and to the 

 moral and social development of boys under 

 their charge. 



Besides all this, all our universities or col- 

 leges are still in process of creation. Not one 

 of them is an existing institution. The 

 president must furnish the initiative, set the 

 pace, mark the color of a growing institution. 

 He must consider relative values, what ex- 

 penditure of money will count for most in the 

 long run, and the ways and means by which 

 the necessary money can be obtained. The 

 Duke of Wellington once observed that an 

 army may be commanded by a very ordinary 

 man, but " not by a debating society." " An 

 institution is the elongated shadow of a man." 



Taking any of our great state universities 

 as an illustration, can we believe that any one 



of these has reached its final status? Do we 

 not feel sure that every one of these wiU have 

 in another ten years double the resources, 

 double the equipment, double the prestige it 

 has now ? Do we believe that in any case this 

 change would be possible unless the university 

 had the service of individuality in its execu- 

 tive relations? The people pay for the uni- 

 versity, and the people in America pay not 

 because the maintenance of universities is a 

 function of government, but from the feeling 

 that the university is doing their work and 

 that there is no better use to be made of 

 their money. The universities on private 

 foundation depend equally on public apprecia- 

 tion, and in equal degree they are forced to 

 appeal to their own public. So long as no 

 single institution of higher learning in 

 America has its permanent form, so long as 

 its administration is a struggle, not a func- 

 tion, so long as we all agree that each school 

 must and should die if it can not progress 

 rapidly and toward some ideal, every college 

 or university will recognize some leader, and 

 this leader will have most of the functions of 

 a college president. This fact will not justify 

 all the things any college president may do, 

 not even most of the things some individuals 

 among them do. Still on the whole their 

 operations have been marked by wise patience 

 and well considered action. We can not do 

 without them yet. No one will look forward 

 more eagerly than they to the time when they 

 and their kind will be found unnecessary in 

 the higher education of America. — President 

 David Starr Jordan in The Independent. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 

 Principles of Microscopy, heing a Handbooh 

 to the Microscope. By Sir A. E. Wright, 

 M.D. (Dublin), F.E.S., Director in Medical 

 Charge of the Department for Therapeutic 

 Inoculation, and Pathologist, St. Mary's 

 Hospital, London, W. Pp. xxii 4-250; 18 

 plates and 9Y figures in the text, also a 

 diffraction plate for use in the experiments. 

 New York, The Macmillan Company, 

 1907. 

 The distinguished author of this treatise is 



