June 30, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



981 



opportunities of men who accept a great 

 educational trust. 



Devotion to the common good lays upon 

 members of the investigating and teaching 

 staff duties they may not shirk. To 

 maintain worthy standards of scholarship, 

 to be loyal to these ideals, to be faithful to 

 the pursuit of truth, to conceive education 

 in its widest and most generous aspects, to 

 have sjonpathetic insights into the lives of 

 their students, to spend themselves freely 

 for the community — to these things the 

 vision of the university as a public servant 

 must draw the teachers and the investiga- 

 tors of a true university. This is the call 

 to the "scholarship whose devotees regard 

 themselves as holding a trust for the benefit 

 of the nation. ' ' 



The university fails of its purpose if its 

 students do not catch the inspiration of the 

 common ideal. To generous-minded young 

 men and women this thought of the univer- 

 sity must make appeal. It is the duty of 

 the institution to fix this image of the uni- 

 versity in the imaginations of its students. 

 From the day they enter to the day they 

 leave, this dominant purpose, this persua- 

 sive spirit should grow ever more potent 

 and fascinating. It would be well if stu- 

 dents could begin their college life with 

 formal ceremony so that at the very outset 

 they might feel more keenly the social obli- 

 gations they are assuming. Admission to 

 the university should seem to them initia- 

 tion into a high calling. It is a pity that 

 they should begin for the most part 

 thoughtlessly or with minds fixed solely 

 upon personal aims and plans. The state 

 is calling them to her service. She has a 

 right to insist that only those who are in 

 earnest, who have at least a dawning sense 

 of social duty, should seek admission to the 

 public training which can be justified only 

 by its service to the state. It should be 

 made clear that no one has the right to 



demand admission as a personal privilege. 

 Conformity with technicalities of entrance 

 must not blind us to the moral obligations 

 involved. Out of the common fund to 

 which all citizens contribute the state 

 erects and maintains not for personal ad- 

 vantage but for public good this West 

 Point of science, the arts and the profes- 

 sions. Every matriculant, therefore, by 

 virtue of admission is honor bound to meet 

 the state half way in her desire to prepare 

 soldiers of science for the battles of peace. 

 The university must unhesitatingly rid it- 

 self of individuals who are indifferent to 

 intellectual work or hostile to it. After 

 fair test, those who fail to show their sense 

 of the university's purpose must be dis- 

 missed. This is necessary not only in jus- 

 tice to the state, but in fairness to those 

 who show due appreciation of their oppor- 

 tunities and duties. 



The dominant university purpose gives 

 a proper setting to the activities of student 

 life and to the standards and conduct of 

 the groups into which the student com- 

 munity naturally falls. The contacts of 

 daily association and searching tests of 

 comradeship, the discovery and develop- 

 ment of leadership, the give and take of 

 social intercourse, the healthy recreation 

 of undergraduate life — all constitute an 

 environment which may afford admirable 

 discipline. There is large truth in the as- 

 sertion that the university is the world in 

 miniature and that it offers a social train- 

 ing which will be turned to account in the 

 wider life of the community. But all these 

 activities must be tested by the dominant 

 purpose of the university. The question 

 must always be, is this or that out of har- 

 mony with the ideal of the university as 

 an organ of the common life? Does this 

 student demonstration or that rollicking 

 festivity create in the public mind the feel- 

 ing that the university is living for itself 



