38 



SCIENCE 



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



if we can not be guided by the English or 

 French or German universities, we can not 

 be guided by any. We will take and we 

 will leave whatever wiU serve our ends 

 either by taking or leaving. We will build 

 up institutions which make for scholarship, 

 for freedom and for character, and which, 

 withal, wiU look through American eyes 

 upon questions of political policy, and train 

 American hands to deftness in the con- 

 structive and manufacturing industries of 

 most concern to the United States. 



There has been no more noteworthy or 

 promising development in our intellectual, 

 political, or industrial life than the flock- 

 ing of students in recent years to the uni- 

 versities which show a rational apprecia- 

 tion of the educational demands of our 

 American life, and a reasonable disposition 

 to meet the needs of the educational situa- 

 tion. Even where a university is not situ- 

 ated in a large city and is not sustained 

 by an attendance which will go somewhere 

 and can go nowhere else, it has stood in no 

 need of students or of support if it could 

 enter into the spirit of the Repiiblic and 

 would offer sound instruction which had 

 some human interest and some real bearing 

 upon practical training for our own profes- 

 sional and industrial life. 



A mere English or culturiag training, no 

 matter how excellent and necessary a thing 

 in itself, is no longer a preparation for the 

 professions. The legal profession demands 

 that and also a great and varied special 

 library; a knowledge of legal histary and 

 theory ; certainty about the statutes and the 

 decisions; aptness at associating all in a 

 comprehensive and logical whole, and 

 readiness at applying the correct parts to 

 new cases. It requires years of study 

 under expert and practical teachers, with 

 ample accommodations, in a special school, 

 almost necessarily associated with a uni- 

 versity. Medicine claims the English 



training, and then exacts years of research 

 in chemistry, zoology, bacteriology, physi- 

 ology and other fundamental and kindred 

 sciences, requiring great laboratories and 

 costly equipment which can hardly be pro^ 

 vided at aU outside of the great universi- 

 ties. After that, the theory and practise 

 specially appertaining to the profession 

 must have a special school, and again 

 almost necessarily, one associated with a 

 university. It is the same with architec- 

 ture, and engineering, and agriculture, and 

 all the professional and industrial activities 

 of the country. It is even largely so with 

 the fine arts. All demand the libraries, 

 and laboratories, and drafting rooms, and 

 shops, and athletic grounds, and gym- 

 nasiums, and kitchens, and all the other 

 things which only the large universities can 

 provide, and all students do their own work 

 more happily and absorb much from the 

 work of the others when they get their 

 training in association with the crowd in 

 the iiniversity. Wherever the university 

 offei-s all these things, there the students 

 gather; there thought is free— but is very 

 liable to have the conceits taken out of its 

 freedom; there the actual doing outweighs 

 the mere talk ; there practical research cuts 

 dogmatism to the bone; there honest work 

 has its reward, and pretense its quick con- 

 demnation; there men and women measure 

 up for what they are rather than for what 

 they claim; there inspiration is given to 

 every proper ambition, and there a great 

 and true American university develops. 



All this has led to some very sharp dif- 

 ferentiation between the external forms 

 and the manner of government and the 

 plan of woi'k of American and foreign luii- 

 versities. For example, the board of trus- 

 tees is largely peculiar to American uni- 

 versities. It stands for the mass in uni- 

 versity government and policy. On the 

 other side of the sea there is no mass in 

 university affairs. Charters run in the 



