June 28, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



989 



It is in the undergraduate department — 

 the college, as we like to call it— that the 

 university can best exert its broadening 

 power, can bring men from different places 

 into closer fellowship and thereby give 

 them common ideals and a national type of 

 manhood. So far as college students are 

 serious-minded— and they are so more than 

 they always like to admit themselves— they 

 are thinking not of training themselves to 

 earn a livelihood, but in a more or less con- 

 scious way of some portion of the riddle of 

 the universe. Moreover, they come to col- 

 lege at an impressionable age, when their 

 ideas and characters are easily molded 

 into new shapes which are often retained 

 through life. At such a time an acquaint- 

 ance vrith men from distant states, and 

 especially a real friendship with one or two 

 of them, will have an effect in slackening 

 prejudices, and creating common ideals, 

 that might come later only after years of 

 experience, if at all. Some time ago one 

 of my students from the far south said that 

 it would doubtless have been pleasanter for 

 him to have gone to a southern college, but 

 he knew that if he did so he would be a 

 southern man, whereas he wanted to be a 

 national man, and therefore had come to us. 

 Before he left Cambridge he became very 

 intimate with a student from the state of 

 Washington, and they are now both prac- 

 tising law in New York. It is needless to 

 say that my friend is a national man, and 

 the kind of man whose presence will be a 

 benefit to New York, or any other place 

 where he may live; to say nothing of the 

 fact that his being in New York will also 

 be a benefit to the southern state from 

 which he came, by helping the people of 

 the north to understand the feelings of the 

 south. That such an object should be de- 

 liberately sought and followed is perhaps 

 unusual, and proves rare perception, or 

 maturity, on the part of my friend; but 

 that it tells unconsciously with many men, 



and that thousands more have got the bene- 

 fit of the principle without ever having 

 thought of it, is undoubtedly true. 



At one time the Italian government was 

 in the habit of sending the young recruit 

 in the army to a garrison town in a distant 

 part of the country. The Piedmontese 

 might go to Calabria, the Neapolitan to 

 Tuscany and the Venetian to Rome; the 

 object being to break down sectional feel- 

 ing, and bring about a stronger national 

 sentiment and a greater sympathy between 

 the different provinces. The same object 

 on a far higher plane is attained to some 

 extent by our own colleges. 



The value to civilization of the great 

 European universities at the close of the 

 middle ages, with their swarms of students 

 from every part of Christendom, can hard- 

 ly be overestimated. They brought all 

 educated men into a single intellectual fel- 

 lowship, and prepared the way for the 

 reception of new ideas, and the expansion 

 of thought. It is not easy for us to realize 

 how great a part they played in the life of 

 their time, because thereafter the universi- 

 ties dwindled in size, and only in recent 

 times have they begun again to rival in 

 numbers the crowds that gathered from 

 every nation in Europe at Salerno, at 

 Bologna, and at Paris. Hence one finds it 

 hard to shake off the impression that they 

 are a modern growth. In America the 

 aggregate body of students at institutions 

 of higher learning has been increasing 

 rapidly for many years, not only in actual 

 numbers, but also in proportion to the pop- 

 ulation. Our universities are not only 

 growing larger, but their influence is ex- 

 tending in wider and wider lines through 

 the body politic. Instead of being merely 

 places where young men of means could 

 enjoy the luxury of a liberal course of 

 study, and where the youth aiming at a 

 professional career could get their training, 

 with such a general education as was 



