854 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. YoL. XL. No. 1041 



ought to have country colleges to give the stu- 

 dents general culture, city technical schools to 

 train them for their several callings, and re- 

 search foundations, apart from college or 

 technical school, to promote scientific dis- 

 covery and other forms of intellectual achieve- 

 ment, by relieving the man who does creative 

 work from the necessity of teaching. 



Let us first examine the arguments of those 

 who say that research ought to be separated 

 from teaching. 



The qualities of the investigator and the 

 qualities of the teacher are quite different. A 

 man may be good in one of these lines and 

 bad in another. If investigators and teachers 

 are associated in a university under the com- 

 mon title of professor, the tendency is to 

 require every man who seeks a position at the 

 head of his department to do something in 

 both lines. The college is so largely depend- 

 ent upon teaching for its revenue that it can 

 not make any adequate payment to the inves- 

 tigator who does not teach. It is at the same 

 time so dependent upon investigations for its 

 outside reputation that it can not give the 

 highest recognition and promotion to the 

 teacher who does not investigate. Under these 

 circumstances we get no proper division of 

 labor. The man who ought to be making dis- 

 coveries is compelled to waste his time in 

 teaching students who can not appreciate and 

 understand him. The man who ought to be 

 teaching classes inspiringly and eifectively 

 feels himself compelled to do second-rate work 

 of investigation which is of no inspiration to 

 him or to anybody else. What is true of sci- 

 ence is true of letters. The man who should 

 be a creative author is made to do bad teach- 

 ing. The man who should be an effective 

 teacher is encouraged to write bad prose or 

 worse poetry. To secure the advantages which 

 the community can derive from proper divi- 

 sion of labor — advantages which the commu- 

 nity secures in every line of productive work 

 except science and letters — we ought to have 

 foundations which, by relieving our univer- 

 sities of the responsibility for progress in sci- 

 ence and letters, will enable them to spend 

 their money in paying adequate salaries to 



men who can teach. Such are the views of 

 those who argue for the extrusion of research 

 from our universities. 



These arguments are plausible; to a certain 

 extent, they are sound. Foundations to pro- 

 mote scientific discovery or literary production 

 are admirable things. There are some men 

 who can work more effectively without a uni- 

 versity connection than with one; and it is 

 most important to provide such men with op- 

 portunities. But if this idea were carried to 

 the extreme, and it were understood that the 

 universities were places for teaching and not 

 for investigation, the result would certainly 

 be bad for the universities themselves, and 

 would probably be bad for the progress of sci- 

 ence and letters as a whole. 



For while it is true that the work of the 

 investigator and the work of the teacher are 

 different, it is not true that they are habitually 

 separate or antagonistic. There are some pro- 

 ductive scholars that can not teach at all ; but 

 the majority of them can teach remarkably 

 well if you give them the opportunity to do it 

 in the right way. On this point I may be per- 

 mitted to quote a paragraph from my report 

 of eight years ago: 



We are not dealing with an ordinary case of di- 

 vision of labor. The chief argument for division 

 of labor is that it makes each man more expert 

 and more efficient in his own field of work. In 

 university work, however, the man who tries to in- 

 vestigate without teaching is apt to become sterile, 

 while the man who attempts to teach without in- 

 vestigating becomes a worse teacher instead of a 

 better one. We want the opportunities for re- 

 search and investigation distributed as widely as 

 possible throughout the teaching force and the 

 student body. We want to impress upon every 

 man that teaching and discovery are both done at 

 their best when done in combination. Not that 

 every man should be compelled to lecture to 

 classes, whether he is able to do so or not. There 

 is a great deal of valuable teaching which is not 

 done in the class-room, or even in the laboratory. 

 There are some men who teach best by their 

 writings, their conversations, their intelligent sug- 

 gestions for the work of others; but they should 

 understand that they are part of the teaching 

 force, and are simply doing their teaching in a dif - 



