September 20, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



371 



capacity of the community in which it is 

 placed. 



Students who complete the work of the 

 high school at the age of eighteen can not 

 to advantage spend the four subsequent 

 years in a country club, where what time 

 can be spared from athletics and social 

 enjoyments may be given to studies that 

 are irrelevant to their work in life. Such 

 a system may be proper for a hereditary 

 aristocracy of wealth, but it no longer ob- 

 tains even in Great Britain. The newer 

 universities are primarily professional 

 schools, and Oxford and Cambridge are 

 continually moving in this direction. The 

 colleges of Oxford and Cambridge have on 

 the whole maintained high standards of 

 thinking and living, and many leaders 

 have gone forth from their gates. But 

 Oxford and Cambridge are great universi- 

 ties, not as the result of their curriculum 

 or their monastic life, but because the Eng- 

 lish are a great race. Besides it is not now 

 the "poll" course, but the highly special- 

 ized honor courses which attract the best 

 men. We may hope that our educational 

 system will ultimately set standards for 

 other nations, but we must first learn from 

 the experience of England, France and 

 Germany. 



Nearly all our colleges have been 

 founded and fostered by religious denomi- 

 nations. Our common schools have been 

 supported by taxation, and sectarian in- 

 fluences have been carefully excluded, 

 whereas our institutions of higher learning 

 have been dependent on private charity 

 for which denominational zeal appears to 

 have been requisite. Another circumstance 

 accounting for this somewhat anomalous 

 condition is the fact that the colleges were 

 largely training-schools for the gospel min- 

 istry, the only profession that usually re- 

 quired an academic course. Of the first 



277 alumni of Lafayette 112 became 

 clergymen. 



Lafayette was established under Presby- 

 terian influences, but by the act of incor- 

 poration the college was strictly undenom- 

 inational, and the governor of the state was 

 empowered to appoint visitors, whose re- 

 ports should be laid before the legislature. 

 In 1833 the legislature made an appropria- 

 tion of $4,000, and $2,000 a year for four 

 years. Financial need rather than reli- 

 gious devotion led Lafayette to place itself 

 under the care of the synod of Philadel- 

 phia in 1854. But it is not certain that 

 this step led to increased support. The 

 entire income of the college in 1862 was 

 $3,240. When in 1866 an urgent appeal 

 was made by the synod to the churches for 

 funds to erect a chapel, the sum of $360.21 

 was collected. In the same year Lehigh 

 University— whose funds now amount to 

 two and a half million dollars— was estab- 

 lished. It was at this time that the states 

 west of Pennsylvania were awakening to 

 the need of supporting higher education, 

 and it was in 1862 that the federal govern- 

 ment established the land-grant colleges of 

 agricultural and mechanic arts, which now 

 have an income from the nation and the 

 states of ten million dollars. 



If the resources of Lafayette and Lehigh 

 could have been united, and if the state of 

 Pennsylvania had learned the wisdom of 

 doing for higher education what the central 

 and western states have done, we might 

 have had here one of the great universities 

 of the world. Nor need religious or even 

 denominational training have been neglect- 

 ed,- for each sect might have established and 

 supported its own college. It is not neces- 

 sary that each of the thirty-four colleges of 

 Pennsylvania should become a great uni- 

 versity, but seven million people could well 

 afford to devote -annually a million dollars 

 to each of seven universities, placed say at 



