1897.] Editor’s Table. 139 
EDITOR’S TABLE. 
Waite the primary object of the University is instruction, there are 
several reasons why original research is of more than incidental im- 
portance to its prosperity. The mastery of his subject, which is charac- 
teristic 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 gen- 
eral 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, success- 
ful original work.is incomparable. It serves this purpose in quarters 
where the detailed work of the university is of necessity unknown. We 
know how it is with our estimate of institutions of foreign lands; we 
know them by the work of their professors in original research. We 
believe that those universities which permit of the production of orig- 
inal work by those of its professors who have proven themselves com- 
petent 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 pros- 
perity. We regret to learn that a tendency to the latter course is in- 
creasingly 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, Pennsylvania 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 becoming the means of choking their 
vitality of these their life centers, by the increase of drudgery which 
it brings. The managers will be wise to preserve for these men suffi- 
cient 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 1t 18 
their business to teach to the growing intelligences of the nation. By 
all means nourish the nuclei of the mental life, which will thus preserve 
the vitality of the cytoplasm of society, and protect them from being 
smothered by it into stagnation and ultimate crystallization. 
