722 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 410. 



its interests begin to touch the ends of the 

 earth. It needs efficient and enlightened 

 men. The universities of the country' must 

 take part in supplying them. 



American universities serve a free nation 

 whose progress, whose power, whose pros- 

 perity, Avhose happiness, whose integrity 

 depend upon individual initiative and the 

 soimd sense and equipment of the rank and 

 file. Their history, moreover, has set them 

 apart to a character and service of their 

 own. They are not mere seminaries of 

 scholars. They never can be. Most of 

 them, the greatest of them and the most 

 distinguished, were first of all great col- 

 leges before they became universities; and 

 their task is twofold: the production of a 

 great body of informed and thoughtful men 

 and the production of a small body of 

 trained scholars and investigators. It is 

 one of their functions to take large bodies 

 of young men up to the places of outlook 

 whence the world of thought and affairs is 

 to be viewed; it is another of their func- 

 tions to take some men, a little more ma- 

 ture, a little more studious, men self- 

 selected by aptitude and industry, into the 

 quiet libraries and laboratories where the 

 close contacts of study are learned which 

 yield the world new insight into the pro- 

 cesses of nature, of reason, and of the hu- 

 man spirit. These two functions are not 

 to be performed separately, but side by 

 side, and are to be informed with one 

 spirit, the spirit of enlightenment, a spirit 

 of learning which is neither superficial nor 

 pedantic, which values life more than it 

 values the mere acquisitions of the mind. 



Universities, we have learned to think, 

 include mthin their scope, when complete, 

 schools of law, of medicine, of theology, 

 and of those more recondite mechanic arts, 

 such as the use of electricity, upon which 

 the skilled industry of the modern world 

 is built up ; and, though in dwelling upon 

 such an association of schools as of the gist 



of the matter in our definitions of a uni- 

 versity, we are relying upon historical acci- 

 dents rather than upon essential principles 

 for our conceptions, they are accidents which 

 show the happy order and system with 

 which things often come to pass. Though 

 the university may dispense with profes- 

 sional schools, professional schools may not 

 dispense with the university. Professional 

 schools have nowhere their right atmos- 

 phere and association except where they 

 are parts of a university and share its 

 spirit and method. They must love learn- 

 ing as well as professional success in oi-der 

 to have their perfect usefulness. This is 

 not the verdict of the universities merely, 

 but of the professional men themselves, 

 spoken out of hard experience of the facts 

 of business. It was but the other day that 

 the Society for the Promotion of Engineer- 

 ing Education endorsed the opinion of their 

 president, Mr. Eddy, that the crying need 

 of the engineering profession was men 

 whose technical Imowledge and proficiency 

 rest upon a broad basis of general culture 

 which slioi;ld make them free of the wider 

 worlds of learning and experience, which 

 should give them largeness of view, judg- 

 ment, and easy knowledge of men. The 

 modern world nowhere shows a closeted 

 profession shut in to a narrow round of 

 technical functions to which no knowledge 

 of the outside world need ever penetrate. 

 AVhatever our calling, our thoi;ghts must 

 often be afield among men of many kinds, 

 amidst interests as various as the phases 

 of modern life. The managing minds of the 

 world, even the efficient working minds of 

 the world, must be equipped for a mastery 

 whose chief characteristic is adaptability, 

 play, an initiative which transcends the 

 bounds of mere technical training. Tech- 

 nical schools whose training is not built 

 up on the foundations of a broad and 

 general discipline cannot impart this. The 

 stuff they work upon must be prepared for 



