August 3, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



139 



our greatest scholar to surrender a little of his 

 time to the freshman. But having asked this of 

 him as a duty of religion, we should spare his 

 leisure as the most precious asset of the univer- 

 sity. We should count it a sin to require such 

 a man to ' cover the ground.' We should sacrifice 

 the catalogue, make it thin and full of holes, 

 confine the students to a narrow range of typically 

 good choices, and by these inconsequential sacri- 

 fices preserve for the great man his chance to do 

 the work which he alone can do. 



( b ) There is an evil suggestion in the air that a 

 university should not attempt to do advanced 

 graduate and research work unless it is very rich. 

 I know of nothing to justify such a counsel of 

 discouragement. The history of learning, the 

 history of the little universities of Europe, the 

 current history of scholarly work in America, 

 all show that the conditions which permit a man 

 to do productive work may be created anywhere. 

 At the worst, some men in the smaller univer- 

 sities, in the little college^, and in whatever 

 places may seem more unlikely, will continue to 

 prove that creative work is free for all and is 

 the one thing which can never be controlled by a 

 monopoly. Wherever these men are, they prove 

 also, directly through their pupils or indirectly 

 through their colleagues, the vitalizing effect of 

 research upon teaching, and so demonstrate the 

 true bond of unity between the university and 

 the college. No institutional conditions can 

 wholly suppress these matters of the guild of 

 scholars. It is, however, our main business to 

 organize conditions which shall not tend to re- 

 press them, but which shall enable them to give 

 their whole service to society. 



In conclusion I will say that the problem of 

 selecting from all the things which might be done 

 the things which shall be done is the most diffi- 

 cult and the most imperative problem confronting 

 the whole school system. It is not an artificial 

 problem. The school must represent civilization. 

 When we have detected and dismissed the fads and 

 frills, there remains the great circle of sciences 

 and arts which will not suffer dismissal and yet 

 for which our long and expensive school system 

 has not yet found enough money nor enough time. 

 This means simply that the school has forced 

 upon it as never before the problem of selecting 

 its course of study. 



Some of my correspondents plead for 

 years or half years to be devoted exclu- 

 sively to research. Others think that re- 



search and advanced instruction should go 

 on simultaneously. Still others hold that 

 the elementary student has a special claim 

 on a little of the time of the master. Mani- 

 festly these are special cases to be treated 

 each in its own way according to the man 

 and the subject. 



In a recent address Professor George H. 

 Nuttall calls attention to the utter inade- 

 quateness of the provisions for research in 

 universities or outside, in both England 

 and America. Irrespective of the univer- 

 sities there should be an open career of 

 investigation and in all the various fields 

 of science. Such opportunities exist to a 

 limited degree in our scientific bureaus, 

 surveys and experiment stations, but these 

 should be greatly multiplied, at the same 

 time leaving them open to real talent only. 



Says the London Times: 



In one way or another every branch of research 

 loses promising men, who either go into practical 

 affairs with what knowledge they have or make 

 research itself subservient to money-getting by 

 selling crude inventions, by self-advertisement, or 

 by cooperation with financiers. We have no 

 hierarchy of students on a living wage basis; and 

 as a consequence we are very short of real teach- 

 ers even for practical purposes. ' For the real 

 teacher must be an advanced student, not a mere 

 parrot reciting other men's work. 



Another correspondent believes in the 

 exclusion of hack work, summer schools 

 and other matters of minor importance 

 which tend to lower the intellectual tone 

 of the university professor. He says: 



In cases where a chair is endowed for the ex- 

 pressed object of research, I would go so far as to 

 say that the professor should not only not be 

 required to lecture, but should not even be allowed 

 to lecture, except, if he desires, he might give a 

 course of not more than a dozen lectures con- 

 fined strictly to an exposition of the subject on 

 which he is engaged in investigating. Such 

 chairs are very few in number, but still there 

 are some. My reason for prohibiting lecturing in 

 such cases is that there is always a temptation 

 in universities for a professor to create a follow- 

 ing by appealing to an audience, and the tend- 



