February 18, 1»87.1 



SCIENCE. 



147 



reaches. It certainly cannot reach women as a 

 sex any more than it now reaches men as a sex. 

 It may be that the clasFes of women, the majority 

 who work hard and the minority who lead a life 

 of relative ease, have become so far distinct that 

 the same argument will not apply to both. If so, 

 considerations drawn from the study of the class 

 which the higher education is not expected to 

 reach, become no longer pertinent when applied 

 to the class of women who will, if any, receive 

 the benefits of the proposed training. There is, 

 unquestionably, much hasty and impulsive ex- 

 pression of opinion on this important question, 

 but may it not also be true that there is some 

 loose thinking concerning it ? 



The eleventh annual report of President 

 Oilman to the trustees of the Johns Hopkins uni- 

 versity is largely a retrospect of what the uni- 

 versity has accomplished during the decade of its 

 existence. Much that the president says, he has 

 told us before, or it has been embodied in the uni- 

 versity publications. The aim of the collegiate 

 instruction is defined to be, "the training of the 

 mind and character to habits of fidelity, attention, 

 perserverance, memory, and judgment,'" and in 

 pursuance of that aim, the well-known group 

 system has been put in operation, so as "' to secure 

 a positive amount of regulation with a certain 

 amount of freedom."' During the decade, fellow- 

 ships have been bestowed upon one hundred and 

 ^ thirty-four individuals, and to this fellowship sys- 

 tem President Gilman ascribes — and with reason 

 — much of the success of the university. By far 

 the major number of these fellowships have been 

 bestowed upon students of science, — biology, 

 chemistry, mathematics, physics, geology, and 

 engineering having had seventy-eight fellows, 

 while all the languages, together with historical 

 science and philosophy, have had but fifty-six 

 allotted to them. In apparatus, library, and pub- 

 lications, the university is well supplied, though 

 much remains to be done in all these directions. 

 President Gilman also has something to say re- 

 garding the effect of scientific advance on the 

 moral and spiritual nature of man. He expresses 

 the conviction that " man's consciousness of his 

 own personality, with its freedom and responsi- 

 bility, his belief in a Father Almighty, his hopes 

 of a life to come, his recognition of a moral law 

 and of the authority of an inward monitor, will 

 stand firm, whatever discoveries may be made of 



the evolution of life, the relation of soul and body, 

 the nature of atoms and of force, and the concep- 

 tions of space and time. Science shows us that 

 all knowledge proceeds from faith, — the assump- 

 tion of premises in which the investigator be- 

 lieves." 



An interesting feature of the report is the selec- 

 tion made by President Gilman from papers sub- 

 mitted to him by the several heads of departments, 

 summarizing the work performed by each, and the 

 theory on which the department has been organ- 

 ized. Of the classical instruction, Professor Gil- 

 dersleeve writes : " In organizing the classical de- 

 partment, the importance of both sides, the 

 scientific and the literary, was carefully consid- 

 ered. Without scientific study, the cultivation of 

 the literary sense is apt to degenerate into finical 

 aestheticism ; kept apart from the large and 

 liberal appreciation of antique life in all its 

 aspects, the scientific study of the classic languages 

 divorces itself from sympathy with tradition, and 

 relinquishes its surest hold on the world of culture, 

 on which the structure of the university must rest. 

 . . . All university students should work in com- 

 mon. The leader should assign no work that is 

 without its lesson to the most experienced student, 

 or without its stimulus to the merest- novice. . . . 

 The history of the last ten years shows that the 

 stead fast adherence to these lines of work has won 

 for the university an influence that manifests 

 itself far beyond the domain which it now occu- 

 pies, and which it has been persistently extend- 

 ing." The work in history and political science is 

 adapted to the needs of three classes of students, 

 the undergraduates, the undergraduates who want 

 to give special attention to historical studies, and 

 the graduate students. Professor Remsen's idea 

 has been, that it is better " to train thoroughly a 

 small number of chemists than to make a large 

 number of mere analysts," And in a similar way 

 other professors outline their scheme of work. 

 Thus, President Gilman has brought together, 

 not merely data of interest to the friends of Johns 

 Hopkins university, but expressions of opinion 

 from eminent men as to how higher instruction 

 in their several specialties can best be organized. 



Some educational journals, in taking notice, 

 as we did, of the action of the authorities of a state 

 teachers' association in mitigating the text-book 

 and school-journal peddling nuisance at a recent 

 meeting, are disposed to blame the authorities for 



