August 16, 1912] 



SCIENCE 



207 



high schools to what it ought to be unless 

 the grade work is done properly. 



I desire again to call attention to the 

 importance to educational advance of se- 

 curing a national formulation, a national 

 organization of the educational idea and 

 educational ideal. 



There is a subtle moral and psycholog- 

 ical reaction upon the people, as a whole, 

 arising from the formulation and incorpo- 

 ration of a national ideal in a practical 

 national policy which spells progress and 

 success for movements which are able to 

 find such national expression. 



As suggested above, when education is as 

 regularly the subject of national debate 

 and national conflict as the tariff, banking 

 and currency and internal improvements, 

 we shall take another long step forward 

 in our educational development. 



What I have thus far said applies to all 

 grades of edueation alike, and it is upon 

 this foundation that in my advocacy of a 

 national university I take my stand. If 

 the views thus far advanced command 

 your assent, I believe I shall have your 

 consent to the further proposition I ad- 

 vance, namely, that one of the essential 

 elements of our American system of edu- 

 cation is the kind of r university which 

 the federal government can build and 

 which shall stand, so to speak, at the apex 

 of our educational pyramid, or if you choose 

 to reverse the simile, it is all one to me — 

 which shall be the foundation stone upon 

 which the pyramid of national edueation 

 shall be erected; for all history shows that 

 from the universities, from the highest 

 schools, have gone forth steadily those in- 

 fluences which have molded and shaped 

 and fashioned the popular education in all 

 times and in all countries. 



I mean by a national university, an in- 

 stitution sufficiently like the ordinary in- 

 stitutions with which you are all acquainted 



to be thoroughly familiar to you. A teach- 

 ing and training, as well as an investiga- 

 tive institution, manned with the best men 

 in all departments in which the human in- 

 tellect has exercised itself, drawn from 

 the entire world, equipped with all that 

 money can provide, for the purpose of 

 stimulating and increasing our interest in 

 the world of tbe spirit and the world of 

 sense about us. 



Now one of the fundamental purposes of 

 a university system is to beget, diffuse and 

 establish, in the mind — nay, I will say also 

 in the heart of the people, the scientific 

 spirit and the scientific method. If this can 

 be accomplished, the face of the world will 

 be changed. Now this can be done in cer- 

 tain respects more easily and more thor- 

 oughly and more rapidly by means of a 

 system of state and national universities 

 than by any other means. 



In what I am about to say I am not ani- 

 mated by any spirit of opposition to the 

 historic, private institutions of this coun- 

 try. He would be an ungrateful American 

 indeed who would cast any slur upon Har- 

 vard and Yale and Princeton and the 

 scores of more recently founded private 

 universities, like Hopkins, Chicago and Le- 

 laad Stanford and Northwestern, which 

 are such an honor to our country and our 

 civilization. I should certainly consider 

 myself an ingrate if I should say anything 

 derogatory of Harvard or Pennsylvania 

 or Chicago or Northwestern, where as stu- 

 dent or professor or president I had an op- 

 portunity to prepare myself for public 

 service, and to have had some small part in 

 the glorious work of these institutions. 

 All honor to them, and increasing power 

 and glory and prosperity! But, friends, 

 however great they may become — and may 

 their shadow never grow less — they can 

 never accomplish the purposes we have 

 here in mind, namely, to incorporate in a 



