Decembek 22, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



855 



ment and the -wise administration of travel- 

 ing fellowships, first at Harvard and then, 

 to a much less degree, elsewhere. We shall 

 return to this important matter of study 

 abroad in a later section. 



2. The Foundation of Johns Hopkins 

 University. — The magnificent bequest of 

 Johns Hopkins of $3,500,000 for the foun- 

 dation of a university in Baltimore, and 

 his wisdom in leaving his board of trustees 

 a free hand in the organization of the insti- 

 tution resulted in the adoption, on Presi- 

 dent Oilman's initiative, of a plan whereby 

 the ordinary undergraduate instruction 

 was relegated to a subordinate position 

 from the very start, so that the new univer- 

 sity stood before the American public as 

 the standard bearer of the higher educa- 

 tion. This was of inestimable benefit in 

 strengthening the hands of those members 

 of the faculties of the older universities 

 who had been struggling to establish and 

 develop graduate instruction at their own 

 institutions. The presence of the eminent 

 English mathematician, Sylvester, as pro- 

 fessor of mathematics during the first seven 

 years of the Johns Hopkins University had 

 also a marked effect in stimulating interest 

 in advanced mathematical studies in Amer- 

 ica, though it is easy to overestimate his 

 direct influence, as he was a poor teacher 

 with an imperfect knowledge of mathemat- 

 ical literature. He possessed, however, an 

 extraordinary personality, and had in re- 

 markable degree the gift of imparting en- 

 thusiasm, a quality of no small value in 

 pioneer days such as these were with us. 



3. The Elective System. — At the begin- 

 ning of the period under consideration the 

 lack of students qualified to undertake ad- 

 vanced work was most keenly felt and 

 made any large success in the establish- 

 ment of graduate instruction an impossi- 

 bility. The adoption under the lead of 



President Eliot, first at Harvard and then 

 to a greater or less extent throughout the 

 country, of a far-reaching elective system 

 in the four-years' undergraduate course 

 furnished a possibility for the gradual ex- 

 tension of instruction in the special fields. 

 Without entering on the question of the 

 advantages and disadvantages of the elec- 

 tive system for the college itself, we may 

 safely say that it provided a basis for 

 advanced instruction without which any 

 considerable development of such instruc- 

 tion, at least during the years of which 

 we are now speaking, would hardly be 

 conceivable.^ 



At the close of the period we are consid- 

 ering, when the idea of graduate instruc- 

 tion had alreadj' taken a firm hold on many 

 of the stronger institutions of the country, 

 the founding of Clark University exclu- 

 sively for graduate study in mathematics, 

 psychology, biology, physics and chemistry 

 gave a further impetus to specialization in 

 advanced work, and the opening of the 

 University of Chicago in 1892 may almost 

 be said to mark an epoch in the develop- 

 ment of graduate instruction in the west 

 and middle west; for, though that univer- 

 sity had from the start an undergraduate 

 department, it stood out, through the char- 

 acter of its faculty and the emphasis laid 

 on research work, as a strong exponent of 

 the graduate idea. 



While in these universities, as well as at 



''Cf., however, the closing remarks of section II. 

 What we desire to emphasize here is that an 

 elective system so arranged as to allow some spe- 

 cialization in individual departments, not merely 

 the choice between various elementary subjects, 

 permitted a gradual development of more and 

 more advanced instruction, the students being at 

 first mainly undergraduates. Such a development 

 could go on simultaneously at many places, while 

 even a single attempt to duplicate the Johns Hop- 

 kins experiment would probably have quickly led 

 to disastrous failure. 



