JuLT 12, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



39 



name of the king; the king is the head of 

 the university, as of the state; and the 

 king, or the king's minister, determines the 

 course the univei-sity is to pursue. The 

 early American colleges were all chartered 

 by the king; even parliament had no part 

 in the matter. In the midst of the revolu- 

 tion, just following the defeat of St. Leger 

 at Oriskany, of Clinton in his movement 

 up the Hudson, and of Burgoyne at Sara- 

 toga, when neither king nor parliament 

 were much in vogue in New York, and 

 when a petition was presented to the young 

 state government for the chartering of 

 Union College, there was not a little em- 

 barrassment as to whether it should be ad- 

 dressed to the governor or to the legisla- 

 ture, and as to which should deal with it. 

 Yankee ingenuity met the difficulty by ad- 

 dressing the prayer to both, and statecraft 

 split the difference by creating the board 

 of regents to deal with such matters. But, 

 however chartered, the board of trustees 

 stands for the donors, the creators and the 

 public, in giving trend to the course of the 

 university. The point of it is that the 

 founders, either the donors or the public, 

 or both, are represented in the matter. 



There is no office like our presidency in 

 foreign universities. The reason for this 

 appears in the fact that there is no faculty 

 to be gathered, assimilated, partly elimi- 

 nated, reinforced, and dealt with, according 

 to our usage. The reason for this is that 

 the intellectual provender is provided upon 

 the European rather than upon the Ameri- 

 can plan. You pay for what you get, 

 rather than pay for everything and then 

 take what you like. The charges are for 

 single courses. The professor gets the fees. 

 The thing works automatically. If he can 

 not teach he lacks students and soon oblit- 

 erates himself. So far it is well. If an- 

 other comes along who can gather students, 

 he is welcome. There is something to be 

 said for the system, but it lacks compre- 



hensiveness, grasp, and the strength to bear 

 responsibility for the balanced training of 

 youth and the harmonious evolution of 

 character. It will suffice where the institu- 

 tion has no care about intellectual balance 

 or morals, and therefore it will not do in 

 this country. The office of president holds 

 things together, makes the parts fit into 

 each other, stands for the public, the trus- 

 tees, the teachers, the parents and the 

 students, and carries the whole forward to 

 the great ends for which a wealth of 

 money, and of holy effort, and of the 

 world's wisdom, has been put into it. 

 And there is nothing clearer than that the 

 university flourishes, that is, that the pur- 

 poses of all that eentei's in the creation are 

 most completely accomplished, when it has 

 a sane and capable all-round executive who 

 can mark out a good way and has will 

 enough to make it go. 



The early Ajnerican colleges, copied 

 upon foreign prototypes, have had to do so 

 much readjusting that their old friends 

 would not recognize them, and the ones 

 which came a little later have naturally 

 been created to fit a situation and fall in 

 with a very general order. From now on 

 they will not be able, and probably they 

 will not be disposed, to dominate university 

 policy in the United States. They will be 

 obliged to work in accord with the over- 

 whelming number of universities, colleges 

 and secondary schools taken together. 

 They will have to accept students who can 

 do their work and who want to do it, with- 

 out so much reference to how or what they 

 have studied somewhere else. The western 

 boys and girls say that under the accredit- 

 ing system, by which institutions are ex- 

 amined more than students, it is easier to 

 get into western than into eastern uni- 

 versities, but that, once in, it is hard to 

 stay in a western university, while one who 

 gets into an eastern university can hardly 

 fail to be graduated if he will be polite to 



