January io, 1890.] 



SCIENCE 



21 



■chosen point was typically illustrated in a man I knew. With the 

 -dignity and sense of finality of the American senior' year quick 

 within him, his first teacher in Germany told him to study experi- 

 mentally one of the score of muscles of a frog's leg. He feared 

 loss and limitation in trying to focus all his energies upon so small 

 and insignificant an object. The mild dissipation of too general 

 culture, the love of freedom and frequent change, aided by a taste 

 for breezy philosophic romancing, almost diverted him from the 

 frog's leg. But as he progressed he found that he must know in a 

 tnore minute and practical way than before — in a way that made 

 previous knowledge seem unreal — certain definite points in elec- 

 tricity, chemistry, mechanics, physiology, etc., and bring them to 

 bear in fruitful relation to each other. As the experiments pro- 

 ceeded through the winter, the history of previous views upon the 

 subject were studied and understood as never before, and broader 

 biological relations gradually seen. The summer, and yet another 

 year, were passed upon this tiny muscle, for he had seen that its 

 laws and structure are fundamentally the same in frogs and men, 

 that just such contractile tissue has done all the work man has ac- 

 complished in the world, that muscles are the only organ of the 

 will. Thus, as the work went on, many of the mysteries of the 

 universe seemed to centre in his theme ; in fact, in the presence 

 and study of this minute object of nature he had passed from the 

 ■attitude of Peter Bell, of whom the poet says, 



" A cowslip by the river's brim 

 A yellow cowslip was to him, 

 And it was nothing more," 

 'up to the standpoint of the seer who " plucked a flower from the 

 <;rannied wall," and realized that could he but understand what it 

 was, " root and all, and all in all, he would know what God and 

 man is." Even if my friend had contributed nothing in the shape 

 of discovery to the great temple of science, he had felt the omne 

 ■tutu pimchcm of nature's organic unity, he had felt the profound 

 and, religious conviction that the world is lawful to the core ; he 

 had experienced what a truly liberal education, in the modern as 

 ■distinct from the mediseval sense, really is. We may term it non- 

 professional specialization. 



Perhaps the most thorough and comprehensive government re- 

 ports ever made in any language are those of the English parlia- 

 mentary commissioners on endowments. The first of these occu- 

 pied nearly nineteen years, and fills nearly two-score heavy folio 

 volumes. In all, about twenty thousand foundations, new and 

 centuries old, large and small, devoted to a vast variety of uses, 

 good and questionable, were reported. The conclusions drawn 

 ■from this field of experience, which is far richer and wider in Eng- 

 land than elsewhere, was, that, of all the great popular charities, 

 higher education has proven safest, wisest, and best, and that for 

 two chief reason : first, because the superior integrity and ability 

 •of the guardians who consented to administer such funds, the in- 

 telligence and grateful appreciation of those aided by them, and 

 the strong public interest and resulting publicity, all three com- 

 bined to hold them perpetually truest to the purpose and spirit of 

 the founders ; and secondly, because in improving higher education, 

 all other good causes are most effectively aided. The church can in 

 no other way be more fundamentally served than by providing a 

 still better training for her ministers and missionaries. Charity for 

 hospitals and almshouses is holy, Christ-like work, but to provide 

 a better training for physicians and economists, teaches the world 

 to see and shun the causes of sickness and poverty. Sympathy 

 must always tenderly help the feeblest and even the defective 

 classes, but to help the strongest in the struggle for existence, is to 

 help not them alone, but all others within their influence. 



Of all the many ways of supporting the higher education, indi- 

 vidual aid to deserving and meritorious students is one of the most 

 approved. In the University of Leipzic, e.g., four hundred and 

 seven distinct funds can aid eight hundred aud forty-nine students. 

 Of these funds, the oldest was established in 1325, and they are 

 increasing in number, more new ones having been given between 

 1880 and 1885 than in any entire decade before. In size they 

 range from thirty-five thousand to fifty dollars ; in Berlin, from one 

 hundred and forty thousand to one of less than forty dollars. In 

 ■cases where conditions are specified, the most frequent limitation is 

 to students from a certain locality, and next, to those of a certain 



family. By the older founders students of theology were more 

 often preferred, but the more recent funds are for medicine, law, 

 philology, and pure science; and a fund of over two hundred 

 thousand lately given the University of Marburg is for advanced 

 students in those sciences which underlie medicine. These funds 

 are often given, named for, held, and sometimes awarded by 

 churches or their pastors, magistrates, heads of fitting schools, 

 boards of education, representatives of prominent families, for stu- 

 dents of their name, the donor himself or herself, individual pro- 

 fessors, etc., subject of course to satisfying the university exami- 

 ners. Many are tenable for one, more for three, and some for five 

 and six years. The funds must be invested with pupilary security, 

 and with interest commonly less than four per cent. In Cambric'ge 

 and Oxford provision is made for nearly one thousand fellows and 

 eight hundred scholars, not to mention the exhibitions at Oxford. 

 The fellowships are more lucrative, and are designed for more ad- 

 vanced men than are provided for in the German universities, the 

 fellows aiding the master in internal administration. In England, 

 besides the religious and other founders, as in Germany, the great 

 historic industrial and mercantile corporations provide many of the 

 fellowships and scholarships, particularly those of the sixteenth 

 and seventeenth centuries ; and they are granted by bishops, cu- 

 rates, heads of business corporations, masters of the great schools, 

 heads or fellows of colleges. In France, where these foun- 

 dations were swept away by the Revolution, stipends and bursaries 

 are provided annually by the government. New appropriations for 

 the most advanced students of all was the secret of the remarkable 

 Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, founded in 1868, of which a 

 recent report just printed for the Exposition says, condensing its 

 substance, that its purpose has always been to foster scientific zeal 

 with no shade of temporal interest, that it restored the almost ob- 

 literated idea of higher education, gave unity to scientific interests 

 throughout France, and made her feel the scholarly desiderata of 

 the age ; made young professors not only well instructed, but 

 trained in good methods ; that, although its profound researches 

 are not manifest to the public, it has given a more scientific charac- 

 ter to all the faculties, and rendered a service to the state out of all 

 proportion to its cost. In France individuals co-operate with the 

 state in this work. 



Has there ever been devised a form of memorial to, and bearing 

 the names of, husbands, wives, children, or parents, by which even 

 the smallest funds could be bestowed in a way more lastingly ex- 

 pressive of the individuality, spirit, and the special lines of interest 

 of the donor, more worthy the dead and more helpful to the high- 

 est ends of life? Since the first endowment of research in the 

 Athenian porch and grove, thousands and thousands of donations 

 of this sort have borne tangible witness to the sentiment so often 

 and vividly taught by Plato, that, in all the world, there is no ob- 

 ject more worthy of reverence, love, and service than eugenic, eu- 

 peptic, well-bred, gifted young men, for in them is the hope of the 

 world. 



The more advanced our standards are to be, the fewer will be 

 our students, and the more expensive their needed outfit of books 

 and apparatus. If we divide our running expenses only by the 

 number of students our present fellowships and scholarships allow 

 us to receive out of our two hundred and fifty, applicants, the 

 amount we spent per student, the first year, will probably be with- 

 out a parallel. Besides this, for a number of students with impor- 

 tant researches on hand, we are expending hundreds of dollars 

 each for their individual needs, and should be glad to do so for 

 more as good men. The best students very often graduate with 

 empty pockets, but with their zeal and power at its best, and when 

 an extra year or two would make a great difference in their entire 

 career. Also, as the field of knowledge grows more complex, the 

 economy of energy needed for concentration is impossible without 

 the leisure secured by comfortable support. 



Connected with all the protection, exemptions, and privileges so 

 dearly prized and tenaciously clung to by the mediseval universi- 

 ties, there have always been dangers, sometimes grave and not yet 

 entirely obviated. The new charity is often popularly called a sci- 

 ence as well as a virtue. Its axiom is that no man has a right to 

 give doles to beggars without satisfying himself personally or 

 through some agency to that end that his gift will do good and not 



