August 3, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



137 



I believe that a large measure of elasticity 

 should enter into the definite assignment of duty, 

 that the minimum requirements should be small. 

 We can not accept either the German, French or 

 English view of the situation. We hold a man to 

 a far more rigorous task, leave less to his decision 

 than do any of these foreign institutions. Our 

 professors are more distinctly engaged to teach. 

 Yet it seems to me so hopeless to look for the 

 career of research in many departments of learn- 

 ing outside of the universities, and its presence 

 in the university is so helpful, that the wiser 

 solution seems to me frankly to include the re- 

 search program within the larger cultural and 

 practical ends for which universities exist, and 

 thus to afford the professors whose interests lie 

 that way the largest possible relief from teaching, 

 to devote themselves to so integral a part of their 

 function as investigation occupies. 



This should apply as well to the younger men. 

 The great point that is made in favor of the 

 German ' Decent ' system is that it leaves men free 

 at the most energetic periods of their lives to 

 pursue their o^vn interests. They are accountable 

 to no one; have acquired the privileges of teaching, 

 but no duties other than those voluntarily as- 

 sumed; they are to work out their careers as 

 freely as they like, and frequently are given the 

 facilities that they need. This again we can not 

 do; but I believe it may stand as an emphasis of 

 the influences that our imiversities can wisely 

 cherish, though they must use other means to 

 express their esteem of this part of the academic 

 career. 



I do not see how the practical side of the issue 

 raised can be met by any formula. Having ex- 

 pressed the trend that seems to me to be worth 

 faA^oring, the actual determination of ways and 

 means involves a series of practical considerations, 

 often of local considerations, that resist formula- 

 tion. Taking the provisions that the most en- 

 lightened of our universities make for research 

 (and they are considerable), I am willing to ven- 

 ture the opinion that these could be distinctly and 

 liberally enlarged without, in my opinion, render- 

 ing the universities open to the charge of over- 

 emphasizing this portion of their functions, or of 

 failing to interpret properly the functions of the 

 professor and his duties towards the university 

 from which he obtains his support. 



Another correspondent attacks one more 

 phase of our difficulty, the waste of our 

 resources through trying to do too many 

 things. He says: 



The chief factor in determining from decade to 

 decade the actual course of study in American 

 universities has been, as I think, the pressure of 

 new subjects for recognition. This pressure 

 changed the pressure of seventy-five years ago, 

 with its slender list of subjects, into the cur- 

 riculum of forty and twenty-five years ago, whose 

 aim was to compress a bit of each sort of learn- 

 ing into a four years' course. When this became 

 impossible, two courses of study were made and 

 then three. The ground must be covered. No one 

 student could cover the ground, but the catalogue 

 must do so. 



The same pressure, growing always greater, 

 caused the so-called all-round course of study to 

 blow up from within, leaving its debris in many 

 new and strange forms of educational prac- 

 tise. * * * 



Finally, the same pressure which has caused 

 the multiplication of departments has caused the 

 multiplication of specialties Avithin departments. 

 Science has developed such and such new fields of 

 learning. They demand recognition. They are 

 recognized at such and such institutions. We 

 must recognize them here. We must cover the 

 ground. No student can cover the ground, but 

 the university must do so. 



If a university were rich enough to cover the 

 whole ground of learning with first-rate intro- 

 ductory courses on the freshman-sophomore level 

 and then to cover the Avhole ground again on the 

 junior-senior level, with a vast array of electives, 

 and finally to support research in a correspond- 

 ingly adequate measure, we might say let it be 

 so; let this limitlessly rich university do by itself 

 what it is really the business of all the universi- 

 ties and learned societies combined to do. It is 

 fine to imagine an institution where every science 

 and every art might be studied upon every level, 

 with no lack of money or of men, or of leisure for 

 the men who do productive work. It is not sur- 

 prising that this splendid conception, which must 

 be the ideal of the imiversity world as a whole, 

 should be more or less consciously the ideal of 

 particular universities. But in point of fact, the 

 whole university world is not at present rich 

 enough for the full realization of this ideal. And 

 when a single university, even the richest, at- 

 tempts to do everything on every level, the 

 inevitable failure of the imdertaking is sure to 

 appear in some way. 



The failure does appear very generally in two 

 well-known ways — first, in the cheapening of the 

 elementary collegiate work; and second, in the 

 restriction of productive research work. 



