November 17, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



613 



By this requirement of a liberal prepara- 

 tory training, the university is differ- 

 entiated from the technical school or trade 

 school of secondary grade. By the scien- 

 tific character of its training, it is differ- 

 entiated from a mere preparatory 'cram' 

 school for public examinations : such as 

 were so many of our private professional 

 schools down to a recent date. 



There are certain things, then, which 

 must mark this institution in order to 

 make it a true university. The most strik- 

 ing peculiarity is the scientific character of 

 the training which it affords. A consid- 

 eration of this feature— for to my mind it 

 is the fundamental and distinguishing 

 quality of the university— may properly 

 delay us for a moment. There are many 

 ways in which a man may be prepared for 

 a profession. He may have no school 

 training whatever of a special or profes- 

 sional kind. Having acquired a knowledge 

 of the elements of learning, he may be 

 thrust directly into the practise of a pro- 

 fession in order to learn 'by doing.' This 

 has been characteristic of most of our pro- 

 fessional work in this country down to 

 within a recent date. But even when 

 schools have been organized to afford such 

 training, they may still be of very different 

 kinds. Thus they may be merely institu- 

 tions to purvey what is already known in 

 the profession, their purpose being to fill 

 the minds of their pupils with knowledge 

 of what at present is known about the sub- 

 ject in hand; perhaps to enable them to 

 pass a state examination which may be 

 prescribed in this particular field, or to 

 pass a university examination set for the 

 purpose of testing one's knowledge rather 

 than one's power. 



A school may, on the other hand, be 

 organized on the theory that the best way 

 to prepare a man for the practical duties 

 of a profession, so far as it can be done in 



school, is to train him to be an independent 

 investigator in the domain appropriate to 

 the profession. Thus, from this point of 

 view, the best way to prepare a man for 

 a professorship in mathematics would be 

 to train him in mathematics in such a way 

 and to such a point that he might have a 

 power of independent judgment in the 

 domain of mathematical problems ; that in 

 an independent way he might discover the 

 possible mathematical problems for himself 

 and be equipped to handle them one after 

 the other as he might have occasion or 

 opportunity to take them up. In the same 

 way the best training for a lawyer or a 

 judge would be such a training in the sci- 

 ence of the law as would enable him to 

 have a power of independent judgment on 

 any legal question he might meet, such as 

 would qualify him to take up with entire 

 freedom and with a feeling of ability the 

 investigation of any topic which might 

 come before him. 



It is this latter idea which underlies the 

 German university and the German pro- 

 fessional school. According to the idea of 

 the Germans the way to prepare a man to 

 become a professional chemist is not tO' 

 load him down with all the knowledge of 

 chemistry which the world has thus far 

 acciunulated, though such an acquisition 

 under certain circumstances may be valu- 

 able, but to train him in the field of chem- 

 istry in such a way as to make him an in- 

 dependent investigator — one who will be 

 qualified to meet any chemical problem 

 coming up in the course of chemical work. 

 In the same way, to prepare a man to be 

 a professor of history is not, according to 

 the German idea, to fill him up with the 

 knowledge of all historical facts, for such 

 facts have already passed, in their multi- 

 tude and magnitude, beyond the power of 

 any man to grasp, even that of a von 

 Ranke; but to give to the man a historic 



