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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL. No. 1038 



democratization and do his utmost to develop 

 it, regardless of his own personal or official 

 prestige or authority. On the continent, 

 mayors are trained professional experts, and 

 cities vie veith each other competitively for 

 their services and find they can well afford to 

 do so, for their special training means vast 

 economies. Universities in this country, if 

 not the world over, are more nearly ready than 

 are cities to profit by this example, and their 

 gain thereby would be even greater. Twenty 

 years ago Professor Paulsen, of Berlin, the 

 best representative of the higher pedagogy I 

 plead for which that country has yet produced, 

 warned German universities of the very dan- 

 gers which have now waxed so grave, and with 

 which they are battling, and the presidents 

 here have only too good reason to look either 

 with jealousy or with hope, according to their 

 temperaments, upon the now rapid addition of 

 the higher story of academic pedagogy to the 

 old schoolmaster's pedagogy of the grammar 

 and high school, and development in this di- 

 rection is another of the pregnant signs of 

 the future. 



Think of the changes since we began. Many 

 special lines of research have tlieir own insti- 

 tutions where little or no formal teaching is 

 done, like astronomic observatories, the Eocke- 

 feller Institute, Wood's Hole, Cold Spring 

 Harbor, the Carnegie Institution, with all the 

 possibilities of his will, the question of a na- 

 tional university, always with us, just now of 

 the Fess hundred-million-dollar type, to be de- 

 voted chiefly to research, the enormous expan- 

 sion of teacher-training in nearly every higher 

 institution of this country, a movement that 

 is almost without precedent in its magnitude 

 and suddenness, the augmented stress laid 

 upon practical applications of pure science — 

 these constitute a new environment, as also 

 do the active and well-organized but silent 

 field agencies of most large institutions both 

 to recruit students, with competing agents at 

 the ear of every boy who thinks of going on, 

 and also to place their graduates in every 

 academic vacancy. These are problems to 

 which a presidential or other agency must 

 give great and growing attention and for 



which the president of the future must have 

 special training, and in which also the fac- 

 ulty must share the burdens of administrative 

 responsibility since questions must often be 

 decided one way or the other, while those who 

 determine them are uncertain, themselves, so 

 that criticism accumulates. 



As to professors, the best of them make an 

 almost unprecedented sacrifice and could have 

 achieved the highest success in financial, pro- 

 fessional, political (witness President Wil- 

 son) and other lines. They know the price 

 they pay and are willing to pay it, but must 

 have as their compensation the boon of secur- 

 ity and liberty to teach and investigate freely 

 what and how they will. The university pro- 

 fessorate, too, means not only the cult of 

 specialization but of individuality. Even 

 idiosyncrasies are to be not only tolerated but 

 respected and perhaps welcomed. The uni- 

 versity should be the freest spot on earth, 

 where human nature in its most variegated 

 and acuminated types can blossom and bear 

 fruit. The factory type of efficiency has no 

 place there. Each must make himself as effi- 

 cient as possible, but in his own way and inde- 

 pendently of all external circumstances, and 

 without the multiplication of machinery, so 

 that an able organizer with nothing to do but 

 to administer might prove an unmitigated 

 curse to all the best things a professor and 

 even a university stand for. 



Thus now I, who with one tiny exception, 

 have never, during all these twenty-five years, 

 to a single citizen of Worcester hinted at a 

 donation, will say a word which I wish all 

 would hear and consider. We greatly need 

 and shall always need more funds to 

 strengthen existing and to found new depart- 

 ments. Though we bear another name, we 

 are, fellow citizens, your University of Wor- 

 cester. In all the spheres we touch, we have 

 spread the name and added to the fame of this 

 Heart of the Commonwealth. If we had ten 

 million dollars more, not one of us would gain 

 personally, but should only have more work, 

 for we are only administering the highest of 

 charities. 



If you doubt that this is the highest, listen 



