976 
universities add annually to the ‘‘litera- 
ture’’ of science, and in the great numbers 
of elementary students to be cared for I 
think we can all see one great reason why 
the contributions of promising American 
scientific men have reached no higher level. 
Turning now to the endowed university, 
it is obvious that its officers need spend no 
time at the capitol, for its income can not 
there be increased; they need make no con- 
cessions in order to keep Greek from dis- 
appearing from the catalogue; they can let 
others wrestle with the problems of ‘‘edu- 
cational psychology,’’ ‘‘humanies’’ and 
“‘live stock practise’’ while devoting them- 
selves to psychology, sociology and zoology. 
The endowed university may go its own 
way independent of the currents of fashion 
and of popular whim. It is naturally shel- 
tered from those influences. It is only 
when its leaders attempt to duplicate the 
work of the state university that it finds 
itself exposed to the same influences. And 
when it exposes itself to these influences, it 
does so without the defenses of the state 
university. 
The opportunity of the endowed univer- 
sity is a great one, inspiring to contem- 
plate. It, or its directing administration, 
may determine its course, select the subjects 
it will teach, specialize instead of general- 
ize, foster pure science and the arts. 
Whether American universities be democ- 
racies or autocracies, all or some of the 
officers of the endowed universities have the 
opportunity, and the obligation, to decide 
what these universities will do—whether to 
compete on unequal terms of wealth and of 
other forms of support with the state uni- 
versities, to seek numbers, to strive for big- 
ness, to submit to the fashion, to comply 
with the current wish: or to decide what it 
will attempt, what subjects it will culti- 
vate, to teach and to investigate and to 
develop these to a degree unequaled else- 
SCIENCE 
[N.S. Vou. XXXV. No, 913 
where; to pursue the studies of pure sci- 
ence, the humanities and the arts as assidu- 
ously and as devotedly as if they were 
themselves the keys to wealth. 
The endowed universities may select their 
students on any basis that they will; may 
pick the children of the well-to-do or young 
people whose unprogressive parents have 
cruelly limited them to schooling in Latin, 
Greek and mathematics when they might 
have ‘‘taken’’ hygiene, civics and ‘‘voca- 
tional subjects’’; may, on the other hand, 
welcome the exceptional as well as admit- 
ting the usual; may cultivate and encour- 
age the best. The endowed university may 
as consciously and as definitely prepare for 
the few, for the unusual, the most original 
and the most stimulating student as the 
state university must certainly prepare for 
unsifted numbers. 
The masses of a democracy recognize 
present wants more surely than they an- 
ticipate: future needs. They require an 
immediate supply to meet an existing de- 
mand. They consider their state univer- 
sity to be well fulfilling its functions when 
it furnishes such a supply. How well it 
succeeds in this the fair-minded observer 
admiringly acknowledges. But the whole- 
sale business of the state university limits, 
if it does not practically prevent, that 
attention to the exceptional student which 
may result in training a leader of his gen- 
eration, a seer who, divining the future 
needs of the state, may begin to prepare to 
meet them, a man who, profiting by the 
recorded experience of the past, may mold 
as well as meet conditions. The training 
of workers is the duty of the state and of 
the endowed university; the training of 
leaders is the privilege more especially of 
the endowed universities for the reasons I 
have given. How well some of the en- 
dowed universities have apprehended and 
lived up to this privilege the records of 
