August 24, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



291 



It is a common statement that large uni- 

 versities are no places for undergraduates, 

 as they are turned over to the younger in- 

 structors and do not meet the heads of de- 

 partments. Theoretically this is a serious 

 charge, but practically it is a wise arrange- 

 ment, for in general it is true that the un- 

 dergraduate would do well to beware of the 

 old instructor, unless it is his wish to be 

 neglected. The instructor who is a noviti- 

 ate will work hard for him, even to the 

 point of drudgery, even if he does not al- 

 ways work effectively. 



I must not be misunderstood. Those 

 who are born to teach will always teach 

 when placed before a class, and every uni- 

 versity has its share of such teachers, and 

 the older they get, the more effective do 

 they become ; but I think I am right in 

 claiming that the majority of instructors 

 who have been brought into the universi- 

 ties within the last decade or two are teach- 

 ing as an incident to investigation. I am 

 not blaming these instructors, for I enter 

 into their feelings most sympathetically. I 

 am merely stating a problem which must 

 be solved. We must have production or 

 teaching will become a treadmill and real 

 universities will have no reason for exist- 

 ence ; but we must also have effective teach- 

 ing. The problem is, how can we have 

 both ? The answer is simple, but hard of 

 application, for it involves the natural lim- 

 itations of men, which they are slow to 

 recognize. Some are born to teach and 

 some are born to produce, and these two 

 classes should be recognized and utilized by 

 the University, but self-recognition is more 

 difficult. As it is, every instructor feels 

 upon himself a pressure to produce, for it 

 is in the atmosphere to-day ; but in the 

 majority of cases yielding to this pressure 

 involves a waste of valuable time and 

 energy without any adequate result. Such 

 instructors are unwilling to acknowledge, 

 even to themselves, that they have not 



the initiative for proiitable investigation, 

 whatever may have been their prepara- 

 tion. 



On the other hand, the born investigator 

 is nearly as slow to recognize that he is 

 probably not a successful teacher. With 

 born teachers trying to investigate, and 

 born investigators trying to teach, and still 

 others born to do neither, the average uni- 

 versity becomes a good illustration of mis- 

 directed energy. If in any way the lines 

 could be drawn so that the two classes 

 could be recognized by themselves, as they 

 already are by their associates, the problem 

 would be solved. 



In my judgment it would be fatal abso- 

 lutely to restrict either to his own field, for 

 the teacher, in his own interest rather than 

 that of his subject, must produce enough 

 to retain and develop his inspiration, and 

 to appreciate the methods and results of 

 investigation; while the investigator, in 

 his own interest rather than that of his 

 students, must teach enough to retain his 

 breadth of vision and to cultivate the power 

 of clear and apt expression. 



In connection with any claim for the 

 great and peculiar contributions of science 

 to education, it seems pertinent to refer to 

 a complaint heard now and then that the 

 encroachment of science upon university 

 attention has changed the atmosphere from 

 one that is literary to one that is commer- 

 cial. A common phrase is : ' the commer- 

 cializing tendency of modern education.' 

 The idea seems to be that a certain fine 

 flavor of thought and expression is becom- 

 ing less evident, and that the somewhat 

 indefinite but soaring balloon is being re- 

 placed by the locomotive. Without calling 

 attention to the fact that if one wants to 

 get anywhere at any definite time the loco- 

 motive is more effective than the balloon, 

 and without inquiring into the personal 

 training or idiosyncracies of those who 

 make the complaint, I wish to call atten- 



