136 



SCIENCE, 



[N. S. Vol. XXIV. No. 605. 



however wide their Icnowledge, are not fitted or 

 expected to carry on original investigation. 



Now to the definite answer to your question. 

 If under existing circumstances a man is found 

 who is capable of extended research — one who can 

 attract young graduates to him, give and take 

 fruitful ideas with them, found a ' school ' of 

 sound scientific inquiry — then I should think that 

 such a man ought to be highly cherished and 

 privileged; that he should be called upon to set 

 his own amount of teaching work. Some teach- 

 ing, especially to the very beginners in his sub- 

 ject, he would probably always want to do. But 

 he should, in my opinion, be freed from the inter- 

 mediate work of imparting information to stu- 

 dents in the mid-period of their training. That 

 such a man should be required, day in and day 

 out, to give his best hours to the routine of in- 

 struction, has always seemed to me to be a bit of 

 sheer folly on the part of university authorities. 



I am obliged to append a postscript. It is use- 

 less to grant leisure, whether to all alike or to a 

 favored few, unless an adequate salary goes with 

 it. It is pitiful to see men who are able to do 

 new work spend their summers in summer schools, 

 or devote what scanty time they now have to 

 routine work for the press, for cyclopedias, etc. 

 Even the arrangement of the sabbatical year is 

 really farcical for men who have only their pro- 

 fessorial income to rely upon: to take it one 

 must either have ' married money ' or have written 

 a successful text-book whose sale adds to one's 

 income. If professors engaged in research were 

 relieved from the work of instruction, with no 

 further change made, I am afraid that they would 

 at once begin — most of them — ^to devote their 

 leisure time to the acquisition of scholarly ap- 

 purtenances and various comforts of living: I do 

 not think that the output of research work would, 

 at least for some time, materially increase. 



But leisure without responsibility rapid- 

 ly deteriorates, except with the superior 

 man, to whom all things are possible. The 

 fellowship system of Oxford and Cam- 

 bridge in hundreds of cases has degener- 

 ated to simple graft, with the same evil 

 effect on English education that American 

 forms of parasitism have had on our own 

 local politics. The sinecure and the exam- 

 ination paper are the two burdens borne by 

 higher education in Great Britain — evil in- 

 fluences from which the American univer- 



sity is relatively free, though every land 

 has its own troubles. There is, again, a 

 distinction between instruction in a man's 

 own line of work and the so-called routine 

 teaching of elementary facts to boys with- 

 out interest in them. The doors of our 

 universities ought to swing more freely 

 both ways, and the student who doesn't 

 care for his own education should find a 

 M^ay out more readily than he does now, 



A few of my correspondents emphasize 

 the value of research professorships as cor- 

 rective of the tendency to regard routine 

 work as the whole function of the univer- 

 sity. Without going quite so far as some 

 others, one correspondent has the following 

 suggestive words : 



The burdening sense of accountability under 

 which the American professor suffers is to my 

 mind the real danger point of the situation. * * * 

 It is the advancement, even the rehabilitation of 

 the academic career, that is concerned. To render 

 that career an inviting one for the ablest minds, 

 to give the career the recognition — social, finan- 

 cial; in honor and dignity and general esteem — 

 that it should have to serve the intellectual in- 

 terests of the nation best, is the larger end in 

 which your special problem finds a place. The 

 present status of the professor lacks much that 

 is desirable and possible; and part of his difficulty 

 lies in the interpretation of his duties, and even 

 more in the emphasis of that portion of his 

 activities for which he isi most esteemed, most 

 rewarded. At present I should say that his ad- 

 vance in most institutions depends upon his serv- 

 iceability to the university on committees and in 

 its general administrative business; and next upon 

 his ability to achieve a certain sort of popularity 

 amongst the students. To subordinate these modes 

 of estimating his services to the far more essential 

 traits that give worth to a man's services, decided 

 infiuences should be set into action. Among them 

 I should attach high value to any emphasis of 

 the value of research as an integral part of a 

 professor's life work, as one of the preeminent 

 considerations that justify his place in the uni- 

 versity faculty. Any such recognition seems to 

 me a decided, and at the moment a much needed, 

 step in advancing the academic career; and for 

 this reason my view upon your special problem 

 takes decided and emphatic shape. 



