146 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXIX. No. 734 



any sort. The book is the hest of reading for 

 college men, and to the college president it is 

 a veritable hand-book full of suggestiveness on 

 every page. 



The board of university trustees at Harvard 

 numbers seven, with the president of the uni- 

 versity as the executive head. This number is 

 most favorable to the management of business, 

 and this relation the one most likely to in- 

 sure devotion and continuity in executive 

 affairs. The disadvantages of large boards, of 

 honorary, ex-oifieio and absentee trustees, 

 clearly appear in the light of Harvard's ex- 

 perience veith a better way. The importance 

 of beginning with young men appears here as 

 elsewhere, and with this Dr. Eliot has the 

 significant remark, " Strangers will, as a rule, 

 not make so good trustees as the children of 

 the house." 



In the suggestions as to professors' salaries. 

 Dr. Eliot is rather conservative, especially as 

 regards the younger men, although the pro- 

 fessor is better paid at Harvard at present 

 than in any other American college or uni- 

 versity. The instructor, he thinks, should 

 begin on the amount a young unmarried man 

 can manage to live on. After a few years of 

 annual appointment, a permanent position 

 with a small increment should be given, and 

 still later, as assistant professor, he should re- 

 ceive a sum on which he may marry but with' 

 out luxury or costly pleasures. At forty, if 

 growth goes on, the teacher may hope for a 

 professorship, and a full salary at fifty or 

 fifty-five. One difficulty in all this comes 

 from the fact that growth is largely condi- 

 tional on travel, and travel is a " costly 

 pleasure." To starve a man until he is forty 

 is not to provide for a productive career for 

 the fifteen years that follow. 



In all financial matters. President Eliot has 

 been preeminently practical, and the para- 

 graphs relating to the business affairs of the 

 college are thoroughly wise and pertinent. 

 The exclusion of the college president from 

 initial responsibility in these matters is a 

 mistake, and one which has been adopted in 

 too many of our institutions. 



The coordination of the influence of the 

 alumni, as represented by the board of over- 



seers at Harvard, is a matter on which Dr. 

 Eliot justly lays especial emphasis. 



In the development of the faculty at Har- 

 vard, stress has been laid on the individual 

 teacher rather than on the department. As. 

 a result of this the department or group 

 executive appears rather as a servant or repre- 

 sentative, than as a director or manager of his 

 colleagues. The president stands in the same 

 relation to all the various groups. The sys- 

 tem, in vogue in many institutions, by which 

 the professors are brought together into groups- 

 under the headship of some dean, who rules, 

 over them, the dean in turn ruled over by 

 the president, has never taken root at Harvard. 

 Deans, or sub-executives, are doubtless neces- 

 sary in large institutions, but they should not 

 be created until they are needed. Above all^ 

 what is needed by the executive in all branches 

 is not so much authority to execute as the- 

 power and the duty to initiate. Nowhere is 

 the necessity for the concentration of initia- 

 tive so important as in the duty of the nomi- 

 nation of professors. President Eliot shows- 

 clearly the reasons why formal faculty initia- 

 tive fails in this regard. But there are good 

 reasons why formal faculty acceptance of 

 such nominations is also most desirable. No 

 professor should be added to the faculty 

 against the sober judgment of those who may 

 be his colleagues. 



President Eliot devotes one optimistic 

 chapter to the consideration of the greatest of 

 his educational innovations, the elective sys- 

 tem. This system has everywhere and of 

 necessity replaced the classical system, which 

 considered but two or three of the many phases 

 of scholarship and life. Eor Greek-minded 

 men, to use Emerson's phrase (and a very 

 noble type of men they are) the classical 

 training gave a basis of scholarship on which 

 later studies could build to advantage. But 

 the great body of our youth of promise are 

 anything but Greek-minded, and the old 

 classical course opened to them no door worth 

 their entering. The elective system opens 

 many doors and admits many types of men. 

 No two men need exactly the same sort of 

 training for their own best development. The 

 student is a better judge of his own needs than 



