Apkil 13, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



563 



principles, upon a diiferent administrative 

 temper. 



Doubtless many of the conditions, both 

 favorable and unfavorable, have grown up 

 in very indirect connection with any well- 

 matured policy. They have taken shape 

 rather by the stress of circumstance, by 

 provisional expediency, by the necessity of 

 advancing as one could if one were to ad- 

 vance at all; and this fact offers not only 

 a large measure of excuse for existing de- 

 ficiencies, but also lightens the task of those 

 who question whether future wisdom lies 

 where the prudent compromise of the past 

 has directed. I repeat, then, that the 

 fundamental standard by which "adminis- 

 trative means are to be judged is that of 

 meeting the cultural ends for which univer- 

 sities are called into being. And with 

 equal confidence it is urged that those 

 whose training and talents and purposes in 

 life are concerned professionally with these 

 cultural ends are best fitted and most justly 

 entitled to the shaping of the policy and 

 the practical direction of affairs of the in- 

 stitutions whose guidance is an intimate 

 part of their lives. The appeal of these 

 principles to the judgment of those either 

 conversant with or appreciative of matters 

 intellectual, seems to me so overwhelmingly 

 strong, that the mere placing of them in 

 this fundamental formative position is ade- 

 quate to command general assent. 



The practical interests transfer the dis- 

 cussion to the limitations and possible 

 dangers of too formal a following of this 

 doctrine. For above all, the situation is a 

 practical one; here, as elsewhere, a condi- 

 tion confronts us, but also here, as else- 

 where, a condition that derives illimiina- 

 tion from the application thereto of an ap- 

 propriate theory. American conditions, as 

 they affect universities, are so complex, so 

 unprecedented and so entirely unprovided 

 for by governmental or other regulations, 

 that we must solve the problems of their 



maintenance more independently than 

 would be the case in older communities. It 

 has been our national fate to be called upon 

 to feel our way by practical wisdom, often 

 by a hand-to-mouth policy, with justifiable 

 satisfaction at the notable achievements 

 that followed so closely upon the remote- 

 ness from opportunity of the pioneer. 

 This intensely practical development found 

 natural expression in assigning the man- 

 agement of academic, as of all other pub- 

 lic concerns, particularly as matters of 

 finance, to a non-professional body of citi- 

 zens; and to this body has been given the 

 largest authority and indirectly a pecul- 

 iarly formidable control of the entire 

 university interests. That this control 

 has in the past been variously unfortunate 

 is not a point upon which I wish to dwell. 

 Let the past stand as it is, and serve its 

 worthiest purpose in warning against the 

 dangers of the future. The practical issue 

 arises not so much from the constituted au- 

 thority as from the mode of using it. Here 

 is the nub of the whole matter; and here 

 some measure of human psychology enters. 

 It seems difficult for our civilization to 

 foster the type of man who has authority, 

 but finds the highest use of this possession 

 in the restraint thereof, holding it in check 

 for an emergency. Why have authority if 

 not to exercise it freely and conspicuously, 

 even to the show of power for the sake of 

 showing power ! Other ways may be better ; 

 but what we say ' goes, ' as the phrase of the 

 street has it. Naturally such an impulse 

 can find consoling excuse for its distrust to 

 yield to others any share of vested author- 

 ity, can readily overlook that not the statu- 

 tory provisions, but the spirit in which they 

 are carried out, forms the essence of all 

 that is writ in the laws and the prophets. 

 It is possibly because this quality of human 

 nature — for which the American idiom has 

 evolved the term ' boss ' — is less pro- 

 nounced in the academic man than in 



