July 8, 1921] 



SCIENCE 



21 



to research? And what is its significance to 

 education and its methods? I suggest that 

 this matter is so important that it requires a 

 new and particular examination of the univer- 

 sity and general educational situation as re- 

 gards research and training for research. 



The N'ational Research Council has tried to 

 become acquainted in some more exact degree 

 than could be achieved by a perusal of college 

 catalogues, or even an extended question and 

 answer correspondence, with the present re- 

 search situation in the colleges and universi- 

 ties of the country by means of a protracted 

 series of personal visits by representatives of 

 the council to some of these institutions. Up 

 to the present one hundred and forty colleges 

 and universities have been thus visited. This 

 number includes enough institutions and in- 

 stitutions of enough variety to give us a fairly 

 clear idea of the status of research and train- 

 ing for research in the colleges and universi- 

 ties of the land. Some day we may be inclined 

 to publish a report or discussion of this situa- 

 tion as based on the information derived from 

 these friendly visits. 



But, for the moment, we may assume that 

 we are all suficiently informed in general of 

 the state of our institutions of higher learn- 

 ing and the state of American higher educa- 

 tion to warrant me in expressing certain opin- 

 ions about the matter of research in the uni- 

 versities which your own knowledge will en- 

 able you to reject or confirm. 



In the first place university research con- 

 fronts a serious difficulty inherent in the very 

 make-up and method of the peculiar American 

 institution we call university. This institu- 

 tion is a university because it does university 

 work. It isn't a university because it does 

 much work that is not university work. To 

 house under the same roofs, mix in the same 

 laboratories, lecture- and class-rooms, and 

 have sitting at the feet of the same instruc- 

 tors both preparatory and university students, 

 is to produce an educational situation unique 

 and very difficult — I should call it impossible 

 — of successful carrying on. It is carried on, 

 but not too successfully. 



In the second place to give most of the at- 



tention, energy and money available to this . 

 curious institution to the preparatpi-y .'stun.iUh iy' 

 dents in it, because there are moie'^gf "tliem 

 than of the advanced students, is 'to place in 

 secondary position the real universi'fy inieiest J J / (j 

 and members of this institution. K 



In the third place to give more s^tmtion 

 and effort, as we really do, to the less cap^ii^pl M uS 

 the uninterested, the non-attaining students 

 than to the more capable, the interested and 

 the attaining students, both in preparatory 

 and university groups, is a menace to the 

 highest usefulness of the institution if it is to 

 exercise its true university function, which is 

 the development of thinkers and leaders for 

 the country. We may all be equal in our right 

 to receive a common measure of service from 

 the state but we are not all equal in our ca- 

 pacity to give service. The state, which is 

 simply all of us, needs the benefit of the best 

 use of our best brains, and to get it we must 

 see that these best brains have the best of 

 training. 



In the fourth place to encourage the non- 

 intellectual activities of the institution, such 

 as its mere expansion in size, its display, its 

 prowess in athletics, at the expense of its 

 truly intellectual activities and achievements, 

 is not grateful to the eyes of believers in the 

 great need and importance to the nation of a 

 university system of highest standard. 



All these conditions, characteristic of the 

 present American university, as I believe all 

 you who know our universities intimately will 

 admit, are serious difficulties in the way of 

 the successful prosecution of research and 

 training for research in these institutions. 

 And this is true even when we construe re- 

 search not in the narrow sense to which a 

 growing technical and reverential use of the 

 word tends to limit it, but in the most gener- 

 ous way in which it is entitled to be used, 

 namely, simply as a going on in the quest for 

 knowledge from that which is now known to 

 that which is now unknown. 



These conditions to which I have just re- 

 ferred are not only difficulties in the way of 

 the development and achievement of research, 

 and specific training for research, as such, but 



