Mabch 19, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



459 



If I were president of Tale, and had the 

 necessary power and the necessary backing, 

 this I would surely do. I would make it Tale 

 CoUege or else Tale University. For the 

 questions would lie heavily on my conscience 

 — Should a hoy go to a university for college 

 work? Should a man go to a college for uni- 

 versity work? Should a school for boys try 

 to teach also men? Should a school for men 

 teach also boys, under the same conditions and 

 regulations, and with the same teachers? 



I read not long since a well-written book, 

 " What College for the Boy ?" In this volume, 

 Tale College receives favorable mention, and 

 most justly. Can I imagine a cognate volume 

 in Germany ? " Welche TJniversitat fur den 

 KJiaben?" The very title is absurd on the 

 face of it, for the place of " Knabe " is not in 

 the "TJniversitat." Conversely, the function 

 of a university is not to teach the boy but the 

 man. 



The name "university" has in Germany 

 and in continental Europe a fairly definite 

 meaning. In America, it means nothing in 

 particular, except a higher school, higher than 

 the high school. In England it often means 

 still less — an examining board authorized to 

 confer degrees. Let us take the German 

 meaning — a school for men, who have finished 

 their general culture, have ceased to be boys, 

 and have begun preparations for life work as 

 professional men, as teachers or as investiga- 

 tors. This is the meaning Johns Hopkins has 

 brought to America, and which is recognized 

 as a valuable but exotic attachment at Har- 

 vard, at Tale and with the rest of us. 



On the other hand, we have adopted the 

 English term " college " for a group of schools 

 progressively diverging from the English 

 standards, but which agree in this. Their 

 fitrst function is to make men out of boys, and 

 to secure the boys' cooperation and interest in 

 the process. Where this is best done is in the 

 " college for the boy." Where the demands 

 of scholarship are most strenuous, where ex- 

 peditions are constantly undertaken for the 

 conquest of the unknown, where books, appa- 

 ratus and collections are greatest, that is the 

 university for the man. 



In this transition stage, we have lost sight 

 of both ideals. Rather, we behold one of them 

 for a time, then the other, and we rush like a 

 school of herrings toward the light that we see 

 for the moment. 



A few years ago, almost every college pre- 

 tended to be a university. Almost every col- 

 lege teacher thought himself engaged in re- 

 search and pretended to hold in contempt the 

 " boy " and all his own duties toward the boy. 

 So the boy became estranged from his work, 

 and made trouble. Thus the college ideals are 

 again insistent. Good teaching is again the 

 demand, and the tireless attention to details 

 that make boy-training possible, and which 

 shut out the teacher from research of any 

 intensive character. 



All honor to the college teacher who in all 

 these years has never lost his head, and who 

 has steadily, consistently and without self- 

 compromise done his duty in making boys into 

 men. He finds them just as plastic as they 

 ever were, and his reward as ever is in the 

 doing. 



All honor to the university teacher who 

 abates none of his ideals, who sees the uni- 

 verse with a keener eye than the rest of us, 

 and who never forgets his first duty as a seer, 

 a prophet, a founder of a school of thought, a 

 leader of men. 



The college and the university are here, are 

 here to stay, and here to grow and develop; 

 but not in the same space, and still less as, at 

 present, telescoped together. Sooner or later, 

 we must recognize the two different functions. 

 Sooner or later we must see that the college with 

 its boy's play, its foot-ball team, its glee club, its 

 need of personal inspiration, its need of rigor- 

 ous moral discipline, its need of absolute inhi- 

 bition of vinous conviviality, its demand for 

 insistent training rules to prevent grafting 

 and dissipation, is an end in itself. The glory 

 of Tale has been that of Tale College, and 

 Tale will have fulfilled all that a nation can 

 ask of it if it makes Tale College the culmi- 

 nation of its activities. Or, Tale University 

 may be the glory of the future — ^the thorough 

 professional and technical training of men 

 already broad-minded, clean-souled, and well- 



