Januaey 1, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



9 



is revolutionary, but it can not be said to 

 be impracticable or Utopian; for upon pre- 

 cisely such ideals the most successful uni- 

 versity systems in the world have been 

 built. 



That this type will bear transplanting to 

 American soil was triumphantly demon- 

 strated in the work of Daniel C. Gilman, 

 who gave the Johns Hopkins University at 

 its inception the essential characteristics of 

 the German universities as regards re- 

 search. This successful experiment should 

 have marked an epoch in the history of 

 higher education, but a generation has 

 passed and we have not as yet a university 

 system devoted primarily to the advance- 

 ment of learning. We still consider in- 

 vestigation merely as a desirable adjunct to 

 university activities: never as the thing 

 for which the university exists. 



Germany, on the other hand, has for a 

 century consistently developed the uni- 

 versity as a center of research and through 

 the promotion of pure science in the uni- 

 versity has made German civilization what 

 it is to-day. 



I would not be understood as urging 

 German or other European methods in all 

 details upon a country where quite dif- 

 ferent conditions exist but one general 

 principle is of universal application. In 

 whatever we have to do, whether it be 

 municipal administration, sanitation, road- 

 making, the construction of water-ways, 

 the development of industries, or the con- 

 servation of natural resources, the fullest 

 and latest scientific knowledge should be 

 utilized. Practise should not be permitted 

 to lag indefinitely behind theory and that 

 they may go hand in hand public work and 

 private enterprises should be in the hands 

 of those who know. At the same time sci- 

 ence should be persistently advanced by 

 every possible agency. 



As American men of science we should 

 demand for America also universities 



whose purpose is the production of knowl- 

 edge. There are those who will reply to 

 such a demand that we need not look 

 abroad ; that we are already developing an 

 educational system better for our purposes 

 than any that has hitherto existed. So be 

 it, but whatever pedagogical experiments 

 we may choose to try, science and the 

 advancement of learning must not be for- 

 ever sacrificed to them. We need not 

 merely research in the universities hut uni- 

 versities for research. 



To my mind the future of science in 

 America as elsewhere is essentially a ques- 

 tion of the future of the universities. It 

 is conceivable that our institutions may so 

 long continue blind to their chief function 

 as to be supplanted by some new agency 

 called into existence to take up their 

 neglected work. Already great endow- 

 ments for the promotion of research quite 

 without any pedagogical feature, have 

 come into existence. For all such science 

 has need and will have increasing need as 

 our situation becomes more acute and we 

 are brought closer to the great crisis. 



But it will be found that the conditions 

 for maximum scientific productiveness are 

 precisely those which would exist in the 

 ideal university. All attempts at a ma- 

 chine-made science are doomed to failure. 

 Science-making syndicates are likely to 

 meet ship-wreck on the very rocks on which 

 our American educational system is already 

 aground. No autocratic organization is 

 favorable to the development of the scien- 

 tific spirit. No institution after the com- 

 mercial models of to-day is likely to be 

 generously fertile. You can contract for a 

 bridge, according to specifications. If a 

 railway is to be built and operated a highly 

 organized staff with superintendents and 

 foremen and an elaborate system reaching 

 every detail may be made to yield the 

 desired results. No one, however, can 

 draw up specifications for a scientific dis- 



