536 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIII. No. 588. 



Columbia must open wide the flood gates of 

 knowledge, but it must not sully the 

 stream of education. It must be no mere 

 department store for the delivery of intel- 

 lectual commodities; there are bargain- 

 counters for that elsewhere. Graduate or 

 undergraduate, liberal or professional, 

 male or female, every holder of a Columbia 

 degree must be stamped with a hallmark of 

 genuineness; must be sterling, or at least 

 exactly as represented, if we are to serve 

 the community which maintains and sup- 

 ports us. 



Finally, though our task be a very hard 

 task indeed, the hardest of all tasks, the 

 task of setting a good example, let us still 

 take courage. The history of our country 

 is not one of degeneracy from noble origins. 

 We are not like the potato, with the best of 

 us underground. Just as our tasks have 

 become more and more complicated and 

 our responsibility heavier and heavier, our 

 wits have grown keener and our shoulders 

 broader. Never yet have we shirked when 

 Apollyon offered us battle. Sound money, 

 the civil service, the emancipation of the 

 slave ; these are some of the problems which 

 the fathers bequeathed and we solved. 

 Our Anglo-Saxon universities have made 

 the new Japan, the new Egypt, the new 

 Balkan kingdoms; at least their makers 

 were men with the inspiration of either 

 English or American universities— and 

 other men of like training seemed destined 

 to regenerate the whole Orient. At home 

 the great offices in church, state and in- 

 dustry are held in the main by those who 

 are trained to the flexibility of the univer- 

 sity mind, men who, with the few excep- 

 tions which emphasize the rule, practise at 

 the same time the flrmness, toleration and 

 moderation which have been our theme. 

 What others have done and are now doing 

 we may do in even higher measure; but 

 only by keeping the fountain pure. If we 

 are to deliver to New Yorkers the 



which New Yorkers need, we must not 

 stand nor recede, but improve both the 

 quantity and the quality; we must make 

 them attractive and trustworthy; we must 

 label them as they are; and as we succeed 

 or fail, we show our viability or our un- 

 fitness. 



Platitudes are a stumbling block to the 

 shallow novelty hunter, and axioms are a 

 weariness to the multitude; but to the 

 earnest they are the renewal of wisdom 

 every morning; they rekindle and illu- 

 minate the common sense of humanity 

 which at times burns very low. Those 

 which we have considered are among the 

 most helpful. Three things are vain in our 

 university life: faith without works, mo- 

 rality without religion, and precept with- 

 out example. All our investigating and 

 teaching and professing; all our sapience 

 and assurance and mannerisms, will go for 

 naught without a labor which is worship, 

 a sympathy which is self-denial, and per- 

 manent standards which we adopt only for 

 the better realization of the ideals which 

 they express. Complexity without con- 

 fusion is essential to high living; the won- 

 derful organism of Columbia seems made 

 for the task of harmonizing the discords in 

 its urban home. 



William Milligan Sloane. 



THE ORGANIZATION OF UNIVERSITY 

 GOVERNMENT. 



The ideals and methods of university 

 government have received considerable at- 

 tention of late, stimulated by the recent 

 discussions at the Conference of University 

 Trustees at University of Illinois. There 

 have been several able presentations of dif- 

 ferent points of view respecting the rela- 

 tive functions of trustees, president and 

 faculty in the control of the university. 

 From these discussions it would appear that 

 while the responsibility for financial and 

 legal affairs, and, in certain emergencies. 



