254 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL. No. 1025 



the world, and fill that place. In his specialty he 

 must think for himself, plan for himself, act for 

 himself. Here he must rest on no one, but be him- 

 self a support for others." 



The question may be asked, what is 

 scholarship 1 According to Professor F. C. 

 Brown, of the State University of Iowa, 

 the answer is: The discovering, the organizing and 

 the explaining of new facts. Only the uninformed 

 and unsoholarly are in the habit of designating the 

 mere diffusion of knowledge as scholarship.12 



Further on in this address on "The 

 Predicament of Scholarship in America" 

 Dr. Brown discusses its "situation in our 

 universities" and states that 

 they believe in general that productive scholarship 

 is the most important function of a university and 

 it is agreed that genuine scholars are of the most 

 rare and difficult type to develop. But the diffi- 

 culty with our universities is one that arises from 

 mixed ideals, particularly in our state universities. 

 The ideal of competition perhaps takes precedence 

 of all other ideals in practise, and along with this 

 is associated the ideal of efficiency in detail man- 

 agement of students. Surely a university wants 

 scholars, but it wants a large number of students 

 first. It wants more students in order to convince 

 the people of its greatness, so that it may get more 

 money so that it may establish more departments 

 and so get more students, and so on. It must do 

 extension work so that the work of scholars may 

 reach every citizen of the land within a few days 

 after it has been accomplished. Energy and re- 

 sources that might be directed toward scholarship 

 are scattered in every direction that human imagi- 

 nation can conceive of. The ideal in practise is not 

 how great scholarship, but how thin it can be 

 spread. In other words, there is in our scholar- 

 ship a strong tendency toward democracy gone 

 mad.13 



Or, as Professor George J. Pierce, of 

 Stanford University, says: 



The wholesale business of the state imiversities 

 limits if it does not prohibit that attention to the 

 exceptional student which may result in training 

 a leader of his generation, a seer who, divining the 



11 Professor Henry S. Williams, ' ' The Ideal 

 Modern Scholarship," 1887, pp. 7, 8. 



12 Science, N. S., Vol. XXXIX., April 24, 1914, 

 p. 587. 



13 Ibid., p. 589. 



future needs of the state, may begin to prepare to 

 meet them, a man who, profiting by the recorded 

 experience of the past, may mold as well as meet 

 conditions.!* 



The principal reason for your election 

 to this society, as the speaker sees it, how- 

 ever, is that you have either made some con- 

 tribution to science or that you give prom- 

 ise of being able to perform such service. 

 This idea was so clearly expressed by Pro- 

 fessor Titchener in his initiation address at 

 Cornell some fourteen years ago that I can 

 not refrain from quoting his remarks ad- 

 dressed personally to the members-elect of 

 that chapter. He said: 



Some of you are taken from the instructing staff 

 of the university. You, Instructors, we welcome 

 as proved men, tried servants of science, our com- 

 mon mistress. Many of you are drawn from the 

 ranks of the graduate students. You, Graduates, 

 we welcome, because you have paused now, at the 

 outset of your career, to do something for the 

 furtherance of human knowledge; and — ^what I 

 think is more important even than that — because 

 you have paused to prepare yourselves to carry the 

 message of science into all those various spheres of 

 activity to which you shall presently be called. 

 Many of you, again, are undergraduates. Yon, 

 Undergraduates, we welcome — not because you have 

 done good work in your courses; anybody can do 

 good work in his courses — but because we think we 

 discern in you some promise of ability to perform 

 scientific work, and some promise of good will to 

 realize that ability. Weigh that well, you who are 

 to form the youngest generation of this society of 

 the Sigma Xi ; do not think lightly of it, or of the 

 men whose opinion it now is. . . . Remember now 

 that there is not one of us, by whose voice you are 

 sitting here before me to-night, who has not worked 

 hard and woried successfully to swell the total of 

 human knowledge and of human achievement.is 



Therefore, young ladies and young 

 gentlemen, yoii see that this chapter of 

 Sigma Xi in electing you to its member- 

 ship believes you have the ability and pur- 

 pose to serve your generation in the dis- 



li Hid., p. 590. 



16 President's address to the Cornell Chapter of 

 the Society of the Sigma Xi, June 9, 1900, pp. 

 14, 15. 



