198 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XX. Ko. 502. 



any state in America, that it had shown 

 Avillingness to support a university of the 

 highest class; but now several state insti- 

 tutions are recognized as standing in the 

 first group among American universities. 

 These institutions are mainly supported 

 through taxation imposed bj^ a democracy 

 upon itself, for the sons and daughters of 

 the state, poor and rich alike. Until this 

 movement of the state universities had 

 developed, the advantages of all educa- 

 tioual institutions of the highest rank in 

 all countries had been restricted to one 

 sex, and even now it is practically impos- 

 sible for the sons of artisans and laborers 

 to enter the doors of manj'. In state insti- 

 tutions, where education is maintained by 

 the people for the good of the state, no 

 restriction as to class or sex is possible. 

 A state university can only permanently 

 succeed where its doors are open to all of 

 both sexes who possess sufficient intellectual 

 endowment, where the financial terms are so 

 easy that the industrious poor may find the 

 way, and where the student sentiment is 

 such that each stands iipon an eqi^al foot- 

 ing Avith all. This is the state university 

 ideal, and this is a new thing in the world. 

 The older universities of America have 

 developed from small colleges. The earlier 

 colleges of the United States were modeled 

 upon Oxford and Cambridge. We turn for 

 a moment to these institutions, in order to 

 understand the nature of their influence 

 upon the American university. If one 

 were to name the most fundamental char- 

 acteristic of these English institutions, it 

 would be the system of halls of residence, 

 involving commons, unions and athletic 

 fields. The communal life of instructors 

 and students in work, in play and in social 

 relations is the very essence of the spirit of 

 Oxford and Cambridge. It might almost 

 be said that this constitutes Oxford and 

 Cambridge. So fundamental have the 

 English regarded the system that, from 



time to time, Avhen the students have be- 

 come too numerous for accommodation in 

 existing quadrangles, another college has- 

 been founded upon the pattern of the 

 others. If one were to consider the 

 modern demands upon a vmiversity and 

 especially the demands for wide oppor- 

 tunity to study science, pure and applied, 

 he could scarcely imagine a more antiquated 

 system than that represented at Oxford 

 and Cambridge. Indeed, the old system 

 has failed to meet the new conditions, and 

 Cambridge especially is being rapidly modi- 

 fied under them, the various colleges con- 

 tributing jointly for laboratories in pure 

 and applied science, which may be utilized 

 by the students of all the colleges. But, 

 in making these radical changes, there is no 

 thought of abandoning the halls of resi- 

 dence, with their communal life. Rather 

 than 'surrender these, the authorities would, 

 I believe, give up all modern lines of work. 

 The college system of Oxford and Cam- 

 bridge may seem absurd, but for some rea- 

 son these universities have produced an 

 astonishingly large proportion of great 

 statesmen, writers and scientists. The men 

 of Oxford and Cambridge have been largely 

 instrumental in extending the empire of 

 Britain over the earth; they have contrib- 

 uted liberally to the greatest literature of 

 the world; they have furnished many 

 fundamental ideas to science. In view of 

 these stupendous results we need scarcely 

 wonder that the Englishman is not eager 

 to make over Oxford and Cambridge after 

 the Yankee or the German model. 



In the early days of the University of 

 "Wisconsin, when the only college buildings 

 were North and South Halls, when Pro- 

 fessor Sterling, his family, several instruc- 

 tors and a majox'ity of the students lived in 

 these halls, we had the essentials of the 

 English system. Even when President 

 Bascom came here in 1874 the remnants of 

 the system still existed. Many of the men, 



