936 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXII. No. 835 



each taught by an instructor who is a cog- 

 wheel in the machine. The master under 

 whom he would seek inspiration is busy 

 with the planning of additional cog wheels 

 or the oiling of the machinery. Or, more 

 often, there is no master teacher at all. 

 The machinery is there and at his hand. 

 He has but to touch the button and he has 

 alcohol, formal, xylol or Canada balsam, 

 whatever he needs for his present work. 

 Every usable drug and every usable instru- 

 ment is on tap; all we need, degrees and 

 all, are made for us in Germany. Another 

 button will bring him all the books of all 

 the ages, all the records of past experience, 

 carrying knowledge far ahead of his pres- 

 ent requirements, usually beyond his pos- 

 sible acquirements. The touch of person- 

 ality, the dash of heredity, is lost. Worse 

 than all this, for the student who is worth 

 while will orient himself even among the 

 most elaborate appliances and the most 

 varied concourse of elective, is the fact that 

 he is set to acquire training without en- 

 thusiasm. Sooner or later he receives a 

 fellowship in some institution which is not 

 the one to which he wishes to go. Virtually, 

 he finds himself hired to work in some par- 

 ticular place, not under the man of all men 

 he has chosen to know. He is given some 

 petty problem; it seems petty to him and 

 to others. He takes this as his major, with 

 two convenient minors, and at last he is 

 turned out with his degree to find his 

 own life if he can. His next experi- 

 ence is to starve, and he is not so well 

 fitted for this as he would have been had he 

 begun it sooner. If he finds himself among 

 facilities for work, he will starve physic- 

 ally only. If he marries, he starves in 

 good company, but more rapidly and under 

 greater stress. If chance throws him into 

 a college without facilities, he will starve 

 mentally also. In any case, he will lament 

 the fact that the university has given him 



so much material help, so little personal 

 inspiration and at the end values its prod- 

 uct so low, that with all the demands of 

 scholarship and scholarly living his pay is 

 less than that of the bricklayer or the hack 

 driver. For he has attained a degree of 

 scholarship without a corresponding de- 

 gree of compelling force. His education 

 has not given him mastery of men, because 

 its direction has not been adequately his 

 own. It is always the struggle which gives 

 strength. Learning or polish may be 

 gained in other ways, but without self- 

 directed effort there is not much intellec- 

 tual virility. Good pay, like some other 

 good things, comes to the man who com- 

 pels it. To make oneself indispensable, 

 real, forceful, with a many-sided interest 

 in men as well as in specialized learning is 

 the remedy for low salaries. As college 

 men we get all that we are worth on the 

 average. Our fault is that we are in the 

 average. We need more individuality. 



In. so far as the viniversities can remedy 

 this, it would lie in the encouragement of 

 men to take their advanced work in actual 

 centers of inspiration. No one university 

 has many such. Let the fellowships lead 

 men to the few. Or let them be traveling 

 fellowships available at the best centers of 

 inspiration in this or any other country. 

 Or, if the choice among departments be too 

 delicate a matter for university officials to 

 undertake, let the distribution of fellow- 

 ships be confined to the men who already 

 are on the ground. These men, in one way 

 or another, have shown their confidence, 

 have chosen their master. If the univer- 

 sity wishes now to smooth their path to 

 success, it would give pecuniary assistance 

 without hiring them to go where they do 

 not wish to go. There is no nobler am- 

 bition for a great investigator than to hope 

 from a school of science to continue his own 

 kind, by his own method, his own inspira- 



