JANUABY 22, 1909] 



8CIENGM 



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college presidents has brought into being will 

 serve to make his mantle fall heavily upon him 

 who must now take it up. To bear it as it has 

 been borne wiU prove no easy task. — Boston 

 Evening Transcript. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 

 ELIOT AND THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY' 



PoETY years ago, there was chosen to the 

 presidency of Harvard College, a young pro- 

 fessor of chemistry, who had none of the quali- 

 ties then commonly supposed to be necessary 

 in the position which he held. He was not a 

 clergyman, not a teacher of philosophy, not 

 venerable and not spiritual, merely young, in- 

 dustrious, clear-sighted, scholarly and fearless. 

 Harvard College was in those days only a 

 small institution, chiefly for boys, " a respect- 

 able high school where they taught the dregs 

 of learning," as its most popular teacher then 

 described it. StiU it was the best we had and 

 our own " our oldest, richest and freest uni- 

 versity," even as it is to-day. 



In 1868, the young president found an in- 

 stitution of the old type, with some most 

 charming and gifted professors, and others dry 

 as dust. Its work was all elementary in char- 

 acter, the subjects taught were held to be of un- 

 equal value, the Greek and the Latin standing 

 in official precedence, Of advanced study 

 there was little, and that little existed in the 

 unique personality of Louis Agassiz and of 

 Asa Gray. It was essentially a boys' school, 

 and a school of the type which forces set tasks 

 on unwilling youth. One of the graduating 

 class of 18Y3 said to the present writer, at the 

 time that in his class there were but two 

 men (J. W. Fewkes was the other) " who had 

 any interest in natural history or in anything 

 else." Doubtless this was an exaggerated 

 statement, but it represented fairly the atti- 

 tude of the college boy in those days of pre- 

 scribed courses and text-book recitations in 

 elementary subjects. In those days, too, the 

 professional schools had no foundation in sci- 

 ence or in culture, and the instruction given 

 in them was guiltless of pedagogic methods or 



* " University Administration," by Charles W. 

 Eliot, Boston, Houghton, Mifflin Co. 



ideals. In almost all departments of Harvard 

 College advanced education was a grind re- 

 warded by a degree. The degree was a badge 

 of social and intellectual achievement, not a 

 disclosure of the secret of power. 



To change all this was not an easy task, and 

 the young president had grown middle-aged 

 before the greater part of his work was 

 achieved. He rightly interpreted his position 

 as representing in no sense a fact accom- 

 plished. It was of necessity a continuous 

 struggle; a struggle for greater means, for 

 better men and for higher ideals. An Ameri- 

 can university is never finished. 



Fortunately for himself and for the nation. 

 Dr. Eliot has lived to wear out all opposition; 

 he has seen Harvard College made over after 

 his own fashion, and he has seen it lead the 

 race in a long procession of institutions, one 

 and all endeavoring to follow in its trail. The 

 various impulses of originality in other in- 

 stitutions, notably those originating with 

 Andrew D. White, at Cornell, and with Daniel 

 C. Gilman, at Johns Hopkins, have been 

 absorbed by Harvard, and in general carried 

 to the greatest success yet possible under 

 American conditions. To Cornell we owe 

 originally the doctrine of the democracy of 

 studies, the idea that no one shall say which 

 subject or which discipline is best until we 

 know the man on whom it is to be tried. To 

 Johns Hopkins we owe the idea that advanced 

 work in any subject has a greater culture value 

 than elementary work in the same or other 

 subjects. Both these doctrines have found 

 their place in the elective system at Harvard. 



In the lectures on university administration 

 at Northwestern University, President Eliot 

 explains in detail, in simple undramatic 

 fashion, the plan of his work at Harvard, its 

 methods and its results. That the most suc- 

 cessful of college administrators should regard 

 the methods which he has himself used as 

 typical and desirable, is natural enough. If 

 other methods had seemed better, he was per- 

 fectly free to use them. This volume is there- 

 fore an exposition of what Harvard actually 

 is, and the reasons why it is so, in so far as 

 these depend on administrative methods of 



