212 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XVI. No. 402 



hut how differentiated, institutions have become in the field 

 of higher education. 



"In my trip, information was sought from every source. 

 Books, reports, and building-plans of many kinds were gath- 

 ered. Ministers of education, beads of uaiversities, and, 

 above all, leading scientific men, were visited. The infor- 

 mation and advice of the latter, always cheerfully given, and 

 in not a few cases in detail and in writing, constitute by far 

 the most valuable result of this trip, and will soon be re- 

 ported on at greater length. Much of this advice was confi- 

 dential, and involved personalities; some of it embodies long 

 and fondly cherished ideals of great men, nowhere yet 

 realized; but most of it represents the inner aims, methods, 

 and ideals of the best existing institutions, like those named 

 • above, and others. 



"The causes and the effects of all these movements and 

 ideals in Europe have been felt in other lands. After long 

 discussion, a new university, to which hundreds of Russian 

 patriots with exiled friends have contributed money, house- 

 hold treasures, and even prayers and tears, was at last 

 founded in Siberia, at Tomsk, and not at either of the chief 

 military centres, where freedom would have been impossible. 

 In Japan one of the most interesting universities in the 

 world has beeu developed as the centre and instrument of 

 most of the remarkable transformation in that country. In 

 Australia and South America new and vigorous universities 

 have beeu recently established. 



"The new movement is already upon us in this country, 

 and many significant facts show that the resultant interest 

 and opportunity here have never been so great. All such 

 facts and tendencies, and many more, opened a clear and 

 hroad field for us at Worcester, and unmistakably defined 

 •our work as follows: — 



"1. It must be of the highest and most advanced grade, 

 with special prominence given to original research. This 

 -our country chiefly lacks and needs for both its material and 

 educational welfare. This is in the current of all the best ten- 

 -dencies in the best lands, and is the ideal to-day of, I believe, 

 about every scientific man, who is able and in eai-nest, 

 ■throughout the world. For this our location offers the rarest 

 ■opportunities and inducements yet possible in this country. 



" 2. We must not attempt at once to cover the entire field 

 ■of human knowledge, but must elect a group of related de- 

 partments of fundamental importance, and concentrate all 

 'Our care to make these the best possible. Each science has 

 become so vast and manifold that it is impossible to cultivate 

 the frontier of all at a single univ«rsity. This is more and 

 more recognized abroad, and is still more true under our 

 American system of private endowment than on the Euro- 

 pean plan, with a national treasury to draw from. If com- 

 ing universities, instead of supplementing others, will elect 

 each its group of studies, all the gain in economy and effec- 

 tiveness which skilled labor has over unskilled will be se- 

 cured in the field of highest education. 



"3. For our group we chose at first five fundamental and 

 related sciences. Work in science can be quickest organized. 

 Great libraries and museums, and every tiling else that only 

 age can bring, can be dispensed with at first, and a complete 

 outfit of the best apparatus and of all needed books can be 

 gathered in a short time. Again, this is a practical country, 

 and its industries are sure to depend more and more on the 



progress of science. So far, we have utilized science with 

 extraordinary ingenuity in our inventions, but have done 

 comparatively little to create or advance it. We desired to 

 make a patriotic endeavor to develop American discoverers 

 as well as inventors. Finally, and above all, science, with 

 its modern methods, has become an unsurpassed school of 

 discipline, culture, and reverence. 



" 4. We must seek the most talented anJ best trained 

 young men. We must not exploit them, work them in a 

 machine, nor retard their advancement, but we must give 

 them every needed opportunity and incentive. As from 

 hundreds of applicants we have admitted but a very few of 

 the best students, because many would frustrate our plan, 

 so, from the many subjects found in most large universities, 

 we selected five to receive all our care, although later we 

 hope to increase both. 



"Mathematics is often called the queen of all the sciences. 

 As the latter become exact, they approximate it, and are 

 fructified by its spirit and its methods. Its antiquity, its 

 disciplinary value, its rapid and recent development, make 

 it obviously indispensable. Physics is the field of the most 

 immediate application of mathematics, and deals with the 

 fundamental forces of the world, — heat, sound, light, elec- 

 tricity, — and the underlying problems of form and motion 

 generally, with their vast field of application in such sci- 

 ences as astronomy and dynamic geology. Chemistry, with 

 its great sudden development, revealing marvellous order 

 and harmony in the constitution of matter, is rapidly ex- 

 tending its dominion over industrial processes. Biology, 

 which seeks to fathom the laws of life, death, reproduction, 

 and disease, that underlies all the medical sciences, in 

 its broader aspects has taught man in recent decades far 

 more concerning his origin and nature than all that was 

 known before. Psychology, or the study of man's faculties 

 and their education, is a new field into which all sciences are 

 now bearing so many of their richest and best ideas, and 

 now so full of promise of better things for the life of man. 

 These five we must have, and nowhere is man brought so 

 close to the primitive revelation of God in his works. 



" We have thus sought in these departments the highest 

 form of what is called the philosophical faculty, devoted to 

 non-professional specialization. We are not a graduate de- 

 partment in which most so called graduate students attend, 

 and most professors conduct undergraduate work. We are 

 not an institution like the Smithsonian, which does no teach- 

 ing; but oTjr teaching is so ordered that it is a direct stimu- 

 lus to research, and no one is so able and eager to teach the 

 few fit as a discoverer. We are not an academy of sciences, 

 but we have features of all these, and many more. This 

 work is the most laborious and the most expensive. It is 

 the most all-conditioning and the most central for any and 

 every new departure. An undergraduate department, a 

 medical school, a technical school, and, even still more, 

 specialization in the existing departments, or new ones of 

 any kind, could be developed from this basis with compara- 

 tively little labor, time, or expense. But the value of all 

 professional or industrial schools depends on the vigor and 

 dominion of the philosophical faculty, the heart of every 

 true university, from which they derive their life and light, 

 and where knowledge is pursued for its own sake, and 

 for its culture effect on the investigator. We are a school 



