Apkh. 13, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



569 



the academic career partake altogether too 

 largely of the nature of an obstacle race. 



I am aware that the objection may arise 

 to the sombre tones of my pattette, that 

 will protest that such a delineation is the 

 natural result of viewing things through a 

 murky atmosphere or through congenitally 

 disposed obliquity of vision. The delusion 

 is, however, a rather general one; the dif- 

 ficulty is only that it does not find public 

 expression. It is in the confidential talk 

 with others of kindred spirit and experi- 

 ence that a man's real opinions come to the 

 fore. The front that he shows to the world 

 — and that without any fair charge of hy- 

 pocrisy—is wholly different from his pri- 

 vate opinion for home consumption only. 

 I have in mind a professor of national rep- 

 utation, with a quarter century of success- 

 ful experience in distinguished institutions 

 of the land, with many honors to his name, 

 and with many public addresses to his 

 credit extolling the successes of American 

 education. This scholar had no hesitation 

 in admitting to me confidentially, that in 

 any true sense, we had no universities in 

 this country, and certainly no academic 

 life; and that in his own career a larger 

 measure of his success than he eared to re- 

 flect upon, was probably due to his yielding 

 to influences that his ideals condemned. 

 With not the slightest breach of honesty in 

 his purpose as conceived by approved 

 standards, but with the inevitable compro- 

 mise to practical necessities, his career had 

 deviated from what under more favorable 

 conditions it might well have been. Such 

 a man is not to be censured ; he is the victim 

 of an unfortunate situation; and it is only 

 because such situations may in large meas- 

 ure be relieved by a proper administrative 

 temper, that it becomes proper to cite the 

 instance in this connection. 



It is well to return to the practical aspect 

 of the situation. What the average univer- 

 sity presents in lieu of an academic provi- 



sion is little more than a corporation of an 

 industrial type, in which groups of men 

 have been engaged to perform given tasks. 

 The tasks are often liberally conceived, and 

 personal worth properly regarded. Yet the 

 temper is such that commercial considera- 

 tions enter; and the tendency is rarely ab- 

 sent that makes the first duty of the man- 

 agement, that of securing the work done 

 upon the most economical basis possible. 

 The irrelevancy of this attitude is too com- 

 plex a tale to attempt to disentangle here. 

 Ideals and policy must come first; and 

 practise can only be worthy when the mo- 

 tive force of such ideals can find expres- 

 sion. With the absence of the weakness of 

 worthy ideals, lower ideals inevitably enter. 

 In the present consideration it may be em- 

 phasized that a university can be built up 

 about a group of professorships and about 

 nothing else. Academic benefactors will 

 not have accomplished their highest degree 

 of efficiency, until they recognize in such 

 endowments the most intrinsically valuable 

 form of aiding universities. Whatever 

 hastens the day of liberally provided pro- 

 fessorships will ennoble and simplify the 

 administrative problems of universities. 

 A further class of administrative meas- 

 ures relates to the direction of university 

 growth, the nature of its extensions, the 

 distinctive character of its purposes, its 

 mode of meeting public needs. These ques- 

 tions are far more pressing in so rapidly 

 developing a community as ours, than they 

 are in older civilizations in which the pur- 

 poses of university activity have become 

 fixed by convention. It is in regard to this 

 set of measures that the initiative is so com- 

 monly taken by the president alone ; and it 

 is precisely with regard to these that the 

 principles to which I adhere, favor and de- 

 mand a vital and authoritative considera- 

 tion on the part of the faculty. It is be- 

 cause a portion of these measures must be 

 determined by the provisions of the budget, 



