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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 405. 



activities. The great problems of principle 

 in all departments of knowledge, not only 

 in natural science, need their temple. The 

 method of the most intimate seminary 

 where in the discussion Avith mature schol- 

 ars the thoughts of the leaders develop 

 themselves, would be still more important 

 there than the laboratory method. 



The honor of such a supreme court as the 

 highest goal of a scholar would add essen- 

 tially to the dignity and attractiveness of 

 the academic career. As I said in my 

 'American Traits,' there are three ways to 

 gain first-class men for productive scholar- 

 ship, first, advancement in the academic 

 career must be made entirely dependent 

 upon printed achievement; secondly, the 

 beginner must have a chance to remain in 

 the atmosphere of real universities instead 

 of being obliged to go as teacher to inferior 

 colleges, and thirdly, the career must be 

 made more attractive by great social pre- 

 miums. My words have been sometimes mis- 

 construed to mean only that a scholar would 

 be a better scholar if he had more of the 

 luxuries of life. Even that I believe to be 

 true within certain limits; a larger income 

 would keep more men free from the evil 

 temptations of cheap, paying outside work 

 and other functions ruinous to real scholar- 

 ly production. But a second-class scholar 

 would not produce first-class work with a 

 steel trust salary. The chief point is not 

 that the men who are inside the fence .shall 

 have a better time, but that better men shall 

 go inside because they see what good times, 

 what honors and premiums and laurels 

 await them. And as in every profession 

 the young men are always attracted by the 

 few great premiums at the top, such an 

 overuniversity might do much to gain the 

 first-class men who to-day prefer too often 

 law and business. 



That is the point; we have not enough 

 fine men at work and it is not true that the 



trouble lies in our not discovering them. 

 More than in any other country it is easy 

 in America to discover the first-class man 

 in scholarship if he is really on the ground 

 and has not preferred to go over into bank- 

 ing or law or industry. The American uni- 

 versity gives to every man the fullest 

 chance, much more than in Germany, to 

 show his powers, and yet the men are not 

 found. I know one department in which 

 last year three of our leading universities 

 wanted to fill full professorships with first- 

 class young men ; two of the places are still 

 unfilled because in spite of the most care- 

 ful search the men could not be found ; and 

 from the most different departments in the 

 country I get every year inquiries concern- 

 ing German scholars, on account of the lack 

 of really productive men in those special 

 fields here. There is no need of new 

 schemes to discover the extraordinary man ; 

 there is need only of schemes to keep him, 

 in the midst of American surroundings, in 

 the field of scholarship, and a new crown at 

 the top of all our universities would be the 

 strongest power. Scholarship would get a 

 new standing in the land and it would be 

 the logical development of the characteris- 

 tic American factors. American scholar- 

 ship has suffered enough from the necessary 

 defects of its system; let us not ruin the 

 strength of the system by patchwork inter- 

 positions which paralyze the peripheral en- 

 ergies and let us not have unused the tre- 

 mendous powei's of our system, which, 

 through its principle of the sliding scale, 

 allows at every point reached a noble devel- 

 opment to a higher creation. 



Hugo Munstbrberg. 

 Harvard University. 



After the first feeling of happiness over 

 the foundation of the Carnegie Institution, 

 probably every one really interested was 

 forced, consciously or unconsciously, to 

 ask himself in what way this splendid en- 



