34 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVI. No. 654 



the universities of the old countries that 

 they are able to understand the spirit and 

 meet the educational needs of the United 

 States only with the greatest difficulty and 

 only in the most apprehensive, ponderous, 

 and distressing kind of way. And there 

 are universities in all countries which have 

 inbred so much, which are so self-satisfied, 

 "which have got so much transmitted 'cul- 

 ture' which did not come through heavy 

 work, that they are innocently unjust and 

 necessarily imfair to the people upon whom 

 they must depend for the continuous rein- 

 forcement of virile life. There is a scholar- 

 ship so unemotional as to be gloomy, so 

 aristocratic as to be useless, so 'cultured' 

 as to be insipid, so cynical as to be torment- 

 ing ; but scholarship of the modern type in 

 America has little in common with it. 



The great fact that makes a university 

 commencement in our country of such ab- 

 sorbing popular interest is that it is the 

 annual occasion of an American university. 

 The world sees, if willing to see, a new type 

 of university in this country in the last 

 half-century. Let us inquire, with neces- 

 sary brevity, how it has come to be, and 

 what are the features which distinguish it. 



All of the older social systems of the 

 world, no matter how proficient in political 

 philosophy or in the arts and sciences of 

 civilization, have shown a distinct cleavage 

 between the upper and the nether classes. 

 The names of things have been different 

 in different countries and the things them- 

 selves, have had all manner of forms and 

 colorings, but the fact has been well-nigh 

 universal that there have been two great 

 classes and that a small higher class has 

 ruled a much larger lower class. As uni- 

 versally as this has been true, the universi- 

 ties have been the creations and have re- 

 fleeted the outlook and executed the pur- 

 poses of the higher class. The outlook of 

 the higher class has seldom caught a 



glimpse of the wisdom of giving every one 

 his chance, and the self-interest of that 

 class has never been much tempered by 

 anxiety for widely diffusing a imiversal 

 learning. The change has come through 

 the fact that in this country the larger 

 class is having something to say about it. 



Until in our country, and practically in 

 our time, the university has stood for some 

 manner of eselusiveness. It may have 

 been for a monarch and what he implies; 

 it may have been for a more or less con- 

 stitutional state; it may have been for a 

 church; it may have been for a profession 

 or a guild : never, until now and here, has 

 it stood for all learning and for all the 

 people. 



This was almost as true of early Amer- 

 ican as of foreign colleges or universities. 

 We too oiten forget— if, indeed, we have 

 ever realized— that our American democ- 

 racy, with its great elements of toleration, 

 equality before the law, free right of op- 

 portunity for all, no special privileges, and 

 with its public institutions of equal service 

 to all, did not all at once come full-fledged 

 into the world by the migration of a few 

 thousand people of well-settled notions 

 across the sea. The common thought and 

 the social and institutional life of the old 

 world persisted in the new world. Har- 

 vard, William and Mary, Tale, Princeton, 

 Columbia, Pennsylvania, Eutgers, Brown, 

 Dartmouth, all stood for aristocracy in the 

 state, for denoininationalism in religion, 

 and for a learning which was exclusively 

 culturing and professional. They never 

 dreamed of uplifting the common people or 

 of applj'ing scientific research to the indus- 

 tries of the country. 



It does not signify any lack of apprecia- 

 tion of the great qualities which the early 

 settlers brought to this country, to say that 

 the dominant and distinguishing thought 

 of the nation has come from the compound- 



