940 



SCIENCE 



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



school at Penikese its unique position. As 

 to tliis school, I once used these words : 



With all appreciation of the rich streams which 

 in late years have come to us from many sources, 

 and especially from the deep insight and resolute 

 truthfulness of Germany, it is still true " that 

 the school of all schools which has most influence 

 on scientific teaching in America " was held in 

 an old barn on an uninhabited island some 

 eighteen miles from the shore. It lasted for three 

 mouths, and in effect it had but one teacher. 

 The school at Penikese existed in the personal 

 presence of Agassiz; when he died, it vanished. 



Contact with great minds is not so com- 

 mon to-day as it was when the men of the 

 old school were the leaders of the new. The 

 enthusiasm of struggle, the flash of orig- 

 inality, grows more rare as our educational 

 machinery becomes more perfect. If our 

 present system fails, it is in the lack of 

 personal contact and personal inspiration. 

 If we can not create new Darwins, the raw 

 material being found, it is because they 

 can not walk with Henslow. Henslow is 

 somewhere else, perchance in some govern- 

 ment bureau of science, or if he is present 

 he has too much on his mind to be a good 

 Avalker. We do not value him enough to 

 make him free. 



We have too much university in Amer- 

 ica, and too much of what we have in a boy 's 

 school. The university as such is a minor 

 affair, an exotic attachment. Should a 

 great teacher, a real man of God, of the god 

 of things as they are, arise in the faculty, 

 he becomes a department executive. More 

 than half his students are of gymnasium 

 grade, and nine tenths of his teaching is 

 done by young men, men who have not 

 made their mark or who have made it only 

 as cog wheels in the machine. Too often 

 these are caught in the grind and are never 

 able to show what they might have been if 

 their struggles had been towards higher 

 ends. Smith teaching zoology 10; Brown, 

 botany 7, and Robinson, geology 3, can not 



lead their students or themselves to look on 

 nature in the large or to see the wonderful 

 vistas beheld by a Lyell or a Humboldt. 

 The university in America is smothered by 

 the college. The college has lost its refine- 

 ment of purpose through coalition with the 

 university. The two are telescoped to- 

 gether to the disadvantage of both. The 

 boy has the freedom and the facility of the 

 university when he can make no use of it. 

 The u.niversity man is entangled in the 

 meshes of the college. University facilities 

 we have enough for ten times — twenty 

 times — the number of students. We go 

 into the market to hire young men to avail 

 themselves of them. There is no corre- 

 sponding emphasis laid upon men, and 

 men of the first rank are no more numerous 

 to-day than they were in the days of 

 Agassiz, Lowell, Longfellow, Gray, Holmes, 

 Dana, Silliman, Gibbs, Leidy, Goodwin, 

 Angell, White and Goldwin Smith. It is 

 the man who makes the school, and who 

 completes the chain of heredity from the 

 masters of the last century in Europe to 

 the masters of the twentieth century in 

 America. Excellent as our facilities are, 

 complete as are our libraries, our labora- 

 tories and our apparatus, easy as is our 

 access to all this, we have only made a be- 

 ginning. Another ten years will see it all 

 doubled. What we have is far from com- 

 plete. But the pity of it is, our students 

 will not guess its incompleteness. Half as 

 much or ten times as much, it is the same 

 to them as the doubling of the bill of fare 

 at the Waldorf-Astoria Avould be un- 

 noticed by the guests. A still greater pity 

 is this, even the teachers will not know the 

 difference. They can use only what they 

 have time and strength for. The output is 

 no greater for the helps we give. The 

 greatest teacher is one who is ruler even 

 over his books, and who is not smothered 

 by them. 



