May 31, 1912] 
as professors and later become presidents. 
They do not considerably, if at all, excel 
in character or ability beyond the average 
standard of the professorship, but they 
exploit before the world how high this 
standard is. The practise of many presi- 
dents is a sacrifice of their real convictions 
to the imagined exigencies of the situation. 
Most of them would agree that autoc- 
racy in the university is undesirable. Thus 
President Eliot writes: 
The president of a university should never exer- 
cise an autocratic or one-man power. He should 
be often an inventing and animating force, and 
often a leader; but not a ruler or autocrat. His 
success will be due more to powers of exposition 
and persuasion combined with persistent industry, 
than to any force of will or habit of command. 
Indeed, one-man power is always objectionable in 
a university, whether lodged in president, secre- 
tary of the trustees, dean or head of department. 
Dr. Seelye, then president of Smith Col- 
lege, at the inauguration of Dr. Rhees as 
president of Rochester University, said: 
Autoecracy, however, is a hazardous expedient, 
and is likely to prove ultimately as pernicious in 
a college as it is in a state. It induces too great 
reliance upon the distinctive characteristics of a 
despot, and too little upon those of a gentleman. 
One-man power is apt to enfeeble or to alienate 
those who are subject to it... . Successful auto- 
erats are few, and however long their term of 
service, it is short compared with the life of an 
institution. If they leave as an inheritance a 
spirit which has suppressed free inquiry, and which 
has made it difficult to secure and retain teachers 
of strong personality, the loss will probably be 
greater than any apparent gain which may have 
come through the rapid achievements of a Na- 
poleonie policy. 
Under existing conditions—at least in 
our proprietary universities—it appears 
that the place which the president now 
fills, or wobbles about in, might be divided 
into three parts. There might be a chan- 
cellor, as in the English universities, a man 
of influence and of prominence, represent- 
ing the corporation and the relations of 
SCIENCE 
847 
the institution to the community, concerned 
with increasing the endowment and pres- 
tige of the university. Then there might 
be a rector, as in the German universities, 
elected annually or for some other limited 
period by and from the faculties, presiding 
at academic functions and the like. In the 
third place, there would be a secretary or 
curator, an educational expert in charge of 
administrative details. In a real democ- 
racy and with a people appreciative of the 
needs and service of the university, the 
former two officials would become super- 
fluous. 
It must be admitted that the situation is 
difficult. The alumni are no longer pre- 
dominantly scholars or even professional 
men. They have more concern for football 
than for the work of the professor; any 
university club could get on better without 
its library than without its bar. But the 
alumni of a university should be not less 
intelligent and wise than the electorate of 
the nation. In both cases the ultimate con- 
trol must be democratic, unless perchance 
we are following false gods. Experts and 
intellectuals are not, as a rule, to be trusted 
to act for the common good in preference 
to their personal interests. The professors 
of an endowed university can not be given 
the ultimate control. A monastery or a 
proprietary medical school must ulti- 
mately be reformed from without. We 
need the referendum and the recall be- 
cause we can not trust those placed in au- 
thority, and we fear these measures be- 
cause we do not trust the people. An 
aristocracy is deaf; a democracy is blind. 
But it is our business to do the best we can 
under the existing conditions of human 
nature. Advancing democracy has burned 
its bridges behind it. No one believes that 
a city should be owned by a small self- 
perpetuating board of trustees who would 
appoint a dictator to run it, to decide what 
