SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVI. No. 053 



not do if teaching or administration, or 

 both, take up all his time or all his energy. 

 He should therefore aim at regulating his 

 academic life in such a way that these 

 higher purposes may be fulfilled; and this 

 good end in each individual case should be 

 furthered by every academic aiithority and 

 influence. These are some of the subtler 

 elements in a vi^ell-composed academic free- 

 dom. 



Professors and other teachers, who should 

 be always teaching or making researches, 

 need to be relatively free from pecuniary 

 cares ; so that their minds may run on their 

 work. To this end they should have fixed 

 salaries, and retiring allowances; so that 

 they may adjust their scale of living to 

 their earnings, and not have to think about 

 making money, or to feel anxiety about dis- 

 ability or old age. This detachment from 

 ordinary pecuniary or livelihood anxieties 

 is an important element in their mental 

 freedom, and for the right kind of person 

 a strong inducement to the profession. The 

 teacher ought always to be a person dis- 

 posed to idealism and altruism; and he 

 should have abandoned once for all the 

 thought of measuring his success by the 

 size of his income. 



In the best managed universities, col- 

 leges, and school systems a teacher is al- 

 ways free to accept promotion in another 

 institution or school system, although in 

 most cases he may properly consider him- 

 self bound to finish, where he is, an aca- 

 demic 'year begun. It is inconvenient for 

 the institution which the promoted teacher 

 leaves to lose him ; but in the long run insti- 

 tutions which are liberal and cordial in 

 such dealings will have a better staff than 

 they would have if they tried to hold their 

 successful teachers to long contracts against 

 the will and to the disadvantage of those 

 teachers. This feature of academic free- 

 dom has far-reaching good effects on the 



profession and the nation, as appears con- 

 spicuously in the educational history of 

 Germany, and the present condition of the 

 leading educational institutions in the 

 United States. 



Finally, academic freedom for teachers 

 is properly subject to certain limitations 

 which may best be described as those of 

 courtesy and honor. They resemble the 

 limitations which the manners of a gentle- 

 man or a lady impose on personal freedom 

 in social intercourse. The teacher in a 

 school, or the professor in a college or uni- 

 versity, may properly abstain from saying 

 or doing many things which he would be 

 free to say or do if it were not for his offi- 

 cial position. He may properly feel that 

 his words and acts must inevitably have an 

 effect on the reputation and influence of 

 the institution with which he is connected. 

 This sentiment undoubtedly qualifies or 

 limits the freedom he would otherwise exer- 

 cise and enjoy. Many a professor in this 

 country has felt acutely that he was not 

 entirely free to publish in journals or books 

 just what he thought on controversial sub- 

 jects, if he put in connection with his sig- 

 nature his official title as professor. Doubt- 

 less some difScult cases of this sort arise in 

 which the reputation of an institution is 

 unfavorably affected temporarily by the 

 publications, or public speeches of one or 

 more of its officers; but no satisfactory de- 

 fense against this kind of injury has yet 

 been invented, since the suppression of 

 such publications does infinitely more harm 

 to the general cause of education than it 

 can do good to the institution concerned. 

 Most learned societies declare in some con- 

 spicuous place within their customary pub- 

 lications that the society is in no way re- 

 sponsible for the opinions or conclusions of 

 the individual contributors ; but it is hardly 

 practicable, even if it were desirable, for 

 a university, college, theological seminary 



