NOVEMBEK 20j 1914] 



SCIENCE 



733 



done, with an admirable library, tbe creation, 

 body and soul, of Dr. "Wilson, who has the 

 greatest genius of friendship of us all, with 

 the reestablishment of the department of 

 chemistry, which was dropped for a few years, 

 with the increase of salaries, from time to 

 time, as far as means permitted, inadequate 

 though most of these still are compared with 

 the increased cost of living; with more de- 

 partments and professors and instructors — ^we 

 seem to have entered upon a settled period of 

 prosperity and growth that promises that the 

 next quarter of a century will far transcend 

 the past, and, now that all the perturbations 

 of the first formative era are over, we can 

 look forward with confidence that the univer- 

 sity will go on in the general direction it has 

 already so faithfully held to during its period 

 of storm and stress, in scecula scecularum. 



We have no greater distinction than that 

 which has come from always preferring qual- 

 ity, attainment and ability to numbers, and 

 that these standards may never be lowered is 

 the most heartfelt wish and prayer of all of 

 us. My greatest joy to-day is in the spon- 

 taneous testimonials of appreciation and loy- 

 alty of our alumni in leaving their work and 

 coming here, at this most inconvenient sea- 

 son and sometimes from a great distance, and 

 giving us or wording their cordial personal 

 greeting and Godspeed, and even in contrib- 

 uting, not out of their abundance, for most of 

 them are moderately paid professors like our- 

 selves, but from a sense of gratitude and as 

 a token of good will, to the fellowships which 

 constitute our very greatest need. 



Turning to the future, the changes we need 

 here are largely but by no means wholly in 

 harvesting what we sowed at the start and 

 assiduously cultivated ever since, for which 

 the time is now ripe. It would be preposter- 

 ous to lay out our course now for another 

 quarter century. We must always maintain 

 keen orientation in an ever wider and more 

 intricate field. To my mind there should al- 

 ways be a specialist here and in every institu- 

 tion in what might be called the higher 

 pedagogy and in academic history, whose 

 business it is to keep keenly alive to all that is 



doing in academic life the world over. Espe- 

 cially now, when these changes are so rapid, 

 some one must spend much time in the out- 

 look tower, and I would even hazard the strong 

 opinion that, had foreign institutions had a 

 specialist in the conning tower, intent on 

 studying the ever changing signs of the times 

 and trained in academic statesmanship, many, 

 if not most, of the errors that have caused 

 our own and foreign universities so much 

 waste of energy in recent years, might have 

 been avoided. 



The time is at hand when university reotor- 

 ates, presidencies, ehancellorships, or whatever 

 their name, can no longer be filled by any 

 professor or even outsider who can secure elec- 

 tion, but will require men who, whatever else 

 they are or know, are experts in the history of 

 the higher culture and its institutions, from 

 the four great academies of antiquity down, 

 who know the story of mediaeval universities 

 of the church and then of the state, of the 

 guilds of scholars, the rise and present status 

 of learned societies and academies, the great 

 reforms of the past and the yet more signifi- 

 cant reconstructions now evolving, the govern- 

 mental patronage of learning and research, 

 from the day of the Medici down to contem- 

 porary legislation for higher institutions, na- 

 tional and state, present-day centralization 

 and the efforts against it in France, the many 

 universities lately established by colonial pol- 

 icies, the world-wide movement of university 

 extension. He must suggest ways and means 

 to his colleagues for achieving their own even 

 if unconscious ideals; help free investigators 

 to be the supermen they are called to be, each 

 in his own way, have a minimum of arbitrary 

 authority and a maximum of faculty coopera- 

 tion, catch and sympathetically respond to 

 and find his chief inspiration in the' fondest, 

 highest, if secret, aspirations of each of his 

 coworkers, who must not be content with the 

 stale ways of the present perfervid competi- 

 tion for dollars and students or with the mere 

 horizontal expansion, the multiplication of 

 machinery or devices for efficiency of factory 

 type, but study precedents, culture trends, and 

 believe profoundly in the power of faculty 



