Decembeb 23, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



907 



the essential objects of a graduate school. These 

 are the enlargement of existing knowledge and the 

 training of yoimg men and women of superior 

 ability and education in methods of independent 

 investigation so that they too may in time make 

 some contribution to the stock of human knowl- 

 edge. A love of knowledge, and an ardent desire 

 to wrest something from the unknown, a convic- 

 tion that science and scholarship are along with 

 virtue the chief good of human life, would seem 

 to be the animating motives of a life of research. 

 Given this subjective equipment in combination 

 with superior powers of observation, reasoning 

 and imagination, and productive scholarship and 

 science are assured. But these gifts are not pos- 

 sessed by all professors, and still less by all 

 graduate students. . . . Similarly there should be 

 a differentiation among professors of those who 

 are qualified to engage in research and guide 

 others in tne same path, and those who are pre- 

 eminent as teachers and assimilative scholars. 

 Surely both are honorable careers, though dif- 

 ferent. That everybody is fit for everything is a 

 fallacy dangerous enough in politics, but in educa- 

 tion it is fatal and paralyzing. 



The problem, therefore, which confronts the 

 university in coimection with the graduate school 

 is to find the right sort of men for investigators 

 whether as professors or students. And having 

 foiujd them it is the duty of the imiversity to 

 provide the necessary means for the prosecution of 

 their work. This involves suitable salaries for 

 professors, leisure for productive work, and the 

 requisite apparatus and other instrumentalities 

 for research. 



A separately organized research faculty 

 is by no means necessary, and possibly not 

 the best agency, to accomplish the higher 

 part of the duty of the university. There- 

 fore, it is quite possible for any institution 

 to participate in the toilsome delights of 

 research. Where several enthusiastic men 

 are associated in the same department, 

 there ought to be that mutual inter-est, as- 

 sistance and encouragement, so helpful in 

 stimulating the spirit of investigation. 

 "Where but one man is in a department it 

 is with much greater difficulty that a living 

 active interest in research is maintained. 

 If laboratory and library facilities are 

 meager and the environment depressing, 



then interest wanes, action is deferred, and 

 ambition dies a lingering and rebellious 

 death, accompanied sometimes, too, by the 

 death of the interest in teaching. These, 

 it seems to me, are some of the chief and 

 fundamental disadvantages under which 

 smaller institutions labor. 



In further elaboration of my argument 

 let me quote from Professor Nichols's Bal- 

 timore address: 



But it will be found that the conditions for 

 maximum scientific productiveness are precisely 

 those which would exist in the ideal university. 

 All attempts at a machine-made science are 

 doomed to failure. Science-making syndicates are 

 likely to meet ship-wreck on the very rocks on 

 which our American educational system is already 

 aground. No autocratic organization is favorable 

 to the development of the scientific spirit. No 

 institution after the commercial models of to-day 

 is likely to be generously fertile. You can con- 

 tract for a bridge, according to specifications. If 

 a railway is to be built and operated a highly 

 organized staff with superintendents and foremen 

 and an elaborate system reaching every detail may 

 be made to yield the desired results. No one, 

 however, can draw up specifications for a scientific 

 discovery. No one can contract to deliver it on a 

 specified day for a specified price. No employee 

 can be hired to produce it in return for wages 

 received. 



There is another aspect to this question. 

 Whether in small or large institutions the 

 professor has certain natural rights and 

 privileges of which he can not justly be 

 dispossessed. He is employed by the in- 

 stitution at a certain remuneration to per- 

 form certain stipulated duties; yet he can 

 not be regarded merely as an employee of 

 the university. He is not selling anything 

 that belongs to the university ; but he him- 

 self possesses that which the university 

 sells. Without him the university has 

 nothing to offer the student. 



It has been asserted in extreme cases, 

 that even the book that a professor might 

 write is the property of his university. 

 The arguments with which anv one would 



