Maech 5, 1897.] 



SCIENCE. 



379 



to try to do a thing until we are pre- 

 pared to do it well ; but our weakness is 

 that, being a young and inexperienced 

 people, whose growth has been rapid be- 

 yond precedent, we are not willing to wait 

 for things to grow. We believe in making 

 things outright by our might or buying 

 them with our money. We do, indeed, 

 possess magnificent powers of initiative, 

 but we trust too much to those powers to 

 accomplish our purposes, and oftentimes 

 try to do things before the conditions are 

 present and the times are ripe for them. 



Our people believe in the power of the 

 legislative fiat, and think they can accom- 

 plish anything by passing an act through 

 Congress or a Legislature. Born legislators, 

 every one of us, we think we can educate 

 the people by law and make them good by 

 law. ' Be it enacted ' is our method of 

 making all improvements and our remedy 

 for all social ills. 



A multi-millionaire who was considering 

 the plans for a great university which he 

 proposed to establish is said to have asked 

 the distinguished president of an institution 

 which he had just inspected by way of in- 

 forming himself with regard to such mat- 

 ters, " Well, you have a big plant here ; 

 how much does it stand you in ?" In like 

 fashion, the ordinary American business 

 man thinks, no doubt, that when we all de- 

 cide that we want it we will appropriate a 

 vast sum of money, erect a magnificent pile 

 of buildings, and establish a board of re- 

 gents made up of distinguished men, who, 

 in turn, will organize a series of great 

 faculties, and that these faculties will go to 

 lecturing at once in beautiful halls to ex- 

 pectant crowds of young people, and there 

 is the National University. 



Every student knows that even with all 

 this grand outfit we should still not have a 

 true National University until we also have 

 great scholars, thinkers and investigators 

 to teach, and great laboratories and libraries 



in which they and their students can 

 work. Congress can not create thinkers 

 or build laboratories or collect libraries, 

 even in a decade. Even with all these 

 things present, there would still be lacking 

 the university spirit and atmosphere, which 

 are the results of development and the 

 products of national culture. 



We have not had a National University 

 because we were not prepared for it. We 

 were not competent to maintain or appre- 

 ciate it. A National University is the 

 richest fruit of the civilization of a people, 

 and we shall see our great University opened 

 when we are noble and cultured enough to 

 build it. Washington foresaw clearly the 

 necessity for such a university and provided 

 for it as far as he could; but even he could 

 not forsee that it would require a hundred 

 years for the nation to take its primary, 

 high school and collegiate training and so 

 be prepared for the graduate course. If 

 the times are now ripe for a National Uni- 

 versity, as many of us believe they are, it 

 is because we have as a people completed 

 our preparatory course, and are now ready 

 to improve the opportunities afibrded by 

 such an institution. If the time has 

 arrived to begin the work of its organiza- 

 tion, it is partly because the scholars and 

 thinkers are here, because many of the 

 laboratories are already built, and our 

 various National libraries are full of books; 

 but, if we are ripe for the National Uni- 

 versity, it is chiefly because the spirit of 

 study and research is beginning to stir our 

 whole people. Because the real National 

 University already exists in spirit, in the 

 great scientific and historical establishments 

 in Washington and throughout the country, 

 the time has come to give it a body. 



In an article in Science for January 15th 

 the writer enumerated the scientific estab- 

 lishments of the government designed to 

 develop the natural resources of the coun- 

 try, for the purpose of pointing out the ne 



