March 19, 1897.] 



SCIENCE. 



All 



currency as we can, and partly in order to com- 

 ment upon it: 



" While the primary object of the University is in- 

 struction, there are several reasons why original re- 

 search is of more than incidental importance to its 

 prosperity. The mastery of his subject, which is char- 

 acteristic of the man who advances the knowledge of 

 it, is an essential of a good teacher. The belief in 

 this truth is so general that the teacher who is known 

 as a discoverer will more successfully attract students 

 to his classes than he who is not so known. But, apart 

 from this, the general reputation of a school before 

 the public is more surely affected by the research 

 work that issues from its faculty than the managing 

 bodies of some of them seem willing to admit. As 

 an advertisement, successful original work is incom- 

 parable. It serves this purpose in quarters where the 

 detailed work of the university is of necessity un- 

 known. "We know how it is witli our estimate of in- 

 stitutions of foreign lands ; we know them by the 

 work of their professors in original research. We be- 

 lieve that those universities which permit of the pro- 

 duction of original work by those of its professors 

 ■who have proven themselves competent for it are 

 wise above those who do not do so. Those who load 

 such men with teaching, so as to forbid such work, 

 reduce their prosperity. We regret to learn that a 

 tendency to the latter course is increasingly evident 

 in some of our great schools. Who, in the chemical 

 world, does not think the more highly of Harvard on 

 account of the work of a Gibbs ; how much better is 

 Brown known through the work of a Packard, and so 

 on ? Chicago, Penn.sylvania and Cornell profit greatly 

 in various fields by the work turned out by certain 

 members of their faculties. Who does not know 

 Columbia, Princeton and Johns Hopkins as the seat 

 of the labors of men whose names are familiar to 

 every American ? Yet, in a few of these institutions 

 the prosperity brought by these very men is becom- 

 ing the means of choking the vitality of these, their 

 life centers, by the increase of drudgery which it 

 brings. The managers will be wise to preserve for 

 these men sufiicient leisure to enable them to advance 

 the frontiers of the known, and thus to obtain juster 

 views of things as they are, and to bring us ever 

 nearer to a comprehension of the great laws whose 

 expressions it is their business to teach to the grow- 

 ing intelligences of the nation. By all means nour- 

 ish the nuclei of the mental life, which will thus pre- 

 serve the vitality of the cytoplasm of society and pro- 

 tect them from being smothered by it into stagnation 

 and ultimate crystallization. ' ' 



We quite believe that research work adver- 

 tises a university, and in a more effective man- 



ner than athletic contests. But we do not think 

 that research is chiefly useful as au advertise- 

 ment, nor that instruction is ' the primary object 

 of the university.' Instruction, or better train- 

 ing, is the primary object of the college and 

 professional school. Research is not only the 

 primary object of the university ; it is the uni- 

 versity itself. Further, we think that this is 

 the view of President Eliot, President Low, 

 President Gilman, Provost Harrison and the 

 other able leaders who are now laying the 

 foundations of our universities. We do not see 

 any tendency ' increasingly evident in some of 

 of our great schools to load men with teaching 

 so as to forbid ' original work and ' choke their 

 vitality. ' Rather it is only within the past few 

 years that the university, as we understand it, 

 has been developed. A professorship, such 

 as the editor of the Naturalist holds at the 

 University of Pennsylvania, would not have 

 been possible twenty years ago. The university 

 professor must indeed learn that he may teach 

 and teach that he may learn. It would, per- 

 haps, be well if he more often gave a small part 

 of his time to carrying the spirit of the univer- 

 sity to the lower classes of the college. But 

 research is the university ; when both teachers 

 and students are not advancing knowledge and 

 applying it for the welfare of society, or learn- 

 ing how to do these things, they are only part 

 of the university as its impedimenta. 



SCIENCE IN THE NEWSPAPBES. 



The last number of Nature contains a leader 

 traversing an editorial in a recent issue of the 

 London Times. That journal is accused of an 

 ' outburst ' displaying ' misrepresentations ' and 

 ' absolute ignorance.' It is scarcely needful to 

 say that in the question at issue — the desirabil- 

 ity of establishing a National Physical Labora- 

 tory that will do for Great Britain what the 

 Reichsanstalt does for Germany — we entirely 

 agree with Nature. But the same number of 

 the rimes that the editor of iVatere finds 'painful 

 reading ' set the writer of this note to wonder 

 why the English daily press is so superior to 

 our own. Of the four editorial articles in the 

 Times of that issue, three were devoted to sub- 

 jects that might be regarded as belonging to 

 science. The point of view was, doubtless, that 



