548 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLVII. No. 1223 



common. A university is a postgraduate 

 school devoted to the pursuit of truth re- 

 gardless of its material usefulness. A state 

 university may be only a college, by which 

 I mean a sort of advanced high school. 

 Thus the word "university" designates a 

 distinct entity; while "state university" is 

 a title of dignity. 



Wherever there is a university there is 

 also a tendency for the formation of other 

 educational units, a college, professional 

 schools, technical schools and art schools, 

 and the name "university" tends to be 

 stretched to cover all these. "Whatever 

 may be the original character of a state 

 university, it tends to develop a postgradu- 

 ate school after the model of the university 

 and ultimately to comprise, in addition to 

 this postgraduate school, a college, profes- 

 sional, technical and art schools. The for- 

 mation of these large educational aggre- 

 gates is a feature of the times. They are 

 the results of economy and convenience. 



Naturally the close association of several 

 component institutions causes great modi- 

 fication in all of them through mutual in- 

 teraction, so that we might expect to find 

 the postgraduate school of a state uni- 

 versity, like the University of "Wisconsin 

 for example, somewhat different from, let 

 us say, the Johns Hopkins University in 

 the eighties or Clark University at the 

 present time. The degree and character of 

 the development of the various constituent 

 organizations which go to form such an 

 educational aggregate as above referred to 

 will depend largely upon the special causes 

 which have brought the institution as a 

 whole into being and those by which it is 

 maintained. 



From the foregoing and from the title of 

 this address, "University Ideals," it might 

 be expected that this discussion would con- 

 cern itself with the ideals of an isolated 

 post-graduate school. Strictly speaking 



this is not the ease. For practical reasons, 

 which I need not stop to enumerate, I shall 

 discuss an institution where in addition to 

 the work of the university proper, under- 

 graduate teaching is carried on to at least 

 a small extent. 



It may be remarked, however, that al- 

 though I speak specifically of science and 

 the scientific, I believe that, mutatis mu- 

 tandis, for example the substitution of the 

 word "creation" for the word "discovery," 

 the statements which I am about to make 

 would apply to any component art or liter- 

 ary institution. 



The ideals of a university concern its ac- 

 tivity and its attitude. The former, as 

 already stated, is the pursuit of truth re- 

 gardless of its material usefulness and in so 

 far as the college is concerned with the ex- 

 position of this truth to the undergradu- 

 ates. The ideal attitude of the university 

 is characterized by its being agnostic (a 

 term which will be carefully defined later) 

 and also what I shall designate for want of 

 a better word universal. To a considera- 

 tion of these we shall now turn our atten- 

 tion beginning with a discussion of the 

 search for truth. 



Guizot once said: 



Science has its sublime speculators who are, so 

 to speak, its prophets who detect instantly the 

 great laws of the universe and grasp them, as 

 Columbus discovered the New World, hastening to 

 the search in the faith of an idea. Around them 

 are drawn up the sagacious observers who excel in 

 searching out, establishing particular truths, de- 

 scribing them and uniting them successively to the 

 domain of science. And into this domain so en- 

 riched enter the legislative minds who classify the 

 facts received, note their relations and determine 

 their laws, and transform them into those general 

 formulas which define the present state of science 

 and become the points of departure and the in- 

 strument of future conquests.2 



^Quoted by E.-F. Dubois, "Eloges lus dans les 

 stances publique de 1 'Academic de MSdecine, ' ' II., 

 p. 116. 



