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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLI. No. 1059 



equipment have on the whole been well met 

 in this country; and our relative lack of 

 scientific productivity has little if any rela- 

 tion to lack of equipment. Nor is it for 

 lack of numbers and organization that the 

 universities fall short in scientific produc- 

 tivity. Everything that organization and 

 system can do is done in our larger univer- 

 sities. Officers from the president down 

 are numerous and minutely graded, hier- 

 archy within hierarchy; there are depart- 

 ments and subdepartments ; every subject 

 is represented by one or more specialists; 

 the courses given in a large department are 

 numerous and detailed and cover all phases 

 of the subject. The work of students is 

 carefully supervised ; so many credits go to 

 the making of a master's, so many to a 

 doctor's degree. No one is idle for a min- 

 ute. The mere mechanism requires exacting 

 care; the head of a department must often 

 be primarily an executive; much of the 

 time is given to duties of management ; the 

 telephone, the typewriter and the card- 

 index are as much a part of his equipment 

 as of the business magnate's. It would 

 seem as if all of this machinery ought to be 

 effective. Yet misgivings force their way 

 in. There is reason to think that this faith 

 in the efficacy of organization in university 

 work is not derived from experience, but 

 rather from a preconceived belief that 

 methods which are so effective in practical 

 life ought to be equally so in the intellec- 

 tual life. But is this really so? Many of 

 us have grave doubts. In our own private 

 studies devotion to card-catalogues and 

 notebooks can go too far, as many a man has 

 found from bitter and paralyzing experi- 

 ence. Is it really true that the letter killeth, 

 but the spirit giveth life? There must be 

 conditions more important than equipment 

 and organization — conditions which are 

 somehow lacking. What are they and how 

 can they be furnished? 



It is for the universities to make the right 

 answer to this question, and also to rectify 

 the conditions. The majority of produc- 

 tive scholars and investigators are connected 

 with universities. If the scientific produc- 

 tivity of the nation is less than it ought to 

 be, as we see when we compare ourselves 

 with Germany, Prance or England, we can 

 only ascribe the deficiency to the presence 

 of unsatisfactory conditions in the univer- 

 sities. What are these? and how are they 

 to be removed? 



Such a question carries very far and ad- 

 mits of no off-hand answer. The univer- 

 sities represent the intellectual tendencies 

 of the country. They are, or ought to be, 

 one of the chief sources of what is highest 

 in its civilization. Why do fundamentally 

 important contributions to science or schol- 

 arship come so infrequently? and is there 

 any way of making them come more fre- 

 quently ? What man has done man can do : 

 there must be some restricting and remov- 

 able conditions which either prevent orig- 

 inal investigators from doing their full 

 quota of good work, or it may be prevent 

 the creative type of scholar from finding his 

 way into the universities in the numbers 

 that we have a right to expect. What the 

 chief of these conditions are, and how all 

 those interested in the welfare of our insti- 

 tutions of learning can aid in their removal 

 and replacement by better, is what I shall 

 now try briefly to indicate. I ought per- 

 haps to say that I offer my suggestions in 

 a far from dogmatic spirit, being aware 

 that the problem is highly complex, and 

 that no one man can be fully familiar with 

 all of its aspects. 



When we look at our universities we are 

 impressed with certain obvious peculiarities 

 — their size, their wealth, the variety and 

 complexity of their activities and of their 

 organization. We may agree that size and 

 wealth with the resources that they bring 



