42 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXI. No. 524. 



are probably more apparent than real to 

 US; for this is a i^niversity assembly, and 

 it is one of the highest functions of a uni- 

 vereity to examine the various aspects of 

 debatable questions without suppression of 

 candor and without loss of humor. 



The typical American university of our 

 time is a complex organization which has 

 grown up rapidly from the typical Amer- 

 ican college of a half century ago. It has 

 its undergraduate, its pi-ofessional and its 

 post-graduate schools, as we see them in 

 Columbia University to-day. It has a 

 heterogeneous aggregate of students ani- 

 mated by a great variety of aims and pur- 

 poses. Its curricula embrace courses of 

 study and research quite unknown to the 

 educated public of thirty or forty years 

 ago ; and its degrees recognize professions 

 quite unheard of before the middle of the 

 nineteenth century. Moreover, the modern 

 American university has broken to a large 

 extent with custom and tradition. It is 

 an institution characterized by intellectual 

 agitation, by adjustment and readjustment, 

 by construction and reconstruction, the end 

 of which is not yet in sight. This complex 

 organization is the resultant of the more 

 or less conflicting educational activities of 

 our times. It is a resultant due in part 

 to world-wide influences; it expresses a 

 generalized academic ideal. 



"Whatever may be our inherited prej- 

 udices or our calmer judgments, the attain- 

 ment of this ideal must be regarded as a 

 remarkable achievement. Here, for ex- 

 ample, in this institution, we find all kinds 

 of subjects ()f study, from the most ancient 

 to the most modern, from the most prac- 

 tical to the most theoi'etiea], from the )nost 

 einpirical to the most scientific, from the 

 most materialistic to the most spiritualistic, 

 all on a plane of intellectual e(|uality and 

 all equally available to those fitted 1o pur- 

 sue them. Litlle surprise is manifested at 

 llic close juxtaposition of a professor of 



metallurgy and a professor of metaphysics, 

 and it has actually been demonstrated that 

 professors of poetry and professors of 

 physics can dwell in peaceful activity un- 

 der the same roof. Here too the ten or a 

 dozen faculties and the various student 

 bodies mingle and intermingle in a spirit 

 of cooperation and mutual regard almost 

 unknown outside, and hitherto little known 

 within, the academic world. 



The mere atmosphere, then, of a modern 

 university must energize and elevate all 

 those who come within its infliaenee. But 

 the domain of this atmosphere is not 

 bounded by academic walls. It is not a 

 limited medium within, but is actually a 

 part of, the unlimited medium of the intel- 

 lectual w^orld; for the modern university 

 has broken also Avith custom and tradition 

 in allying itself closely with the external 

 world of thought. Through interaction of 

 the intramural and the extramural spheres 

 of thought the instructor and the student 

 are kept face to face with the vantage 

 ground of contemporary life, whence they 

 may look forward as well as backward. 



The modern university is an institution 

 of learning in the full sense of the word; 

 an institution wherein instructors teach 

 students, and wherein, reciprocally, to a 

 very important degree, students teach in- 

 structors; for that instructor is fossilized 

 who does not learn more per year from his 

 students, if they are worthy of the name, 

 than they learn from him. Together they 

 work diligently not only to become ac- 

 quainted with the known, but still more 

 diligently to penetrate the secrets of the 

 unknown. Among them there is a senti- 

 ment that condemns alike the instructor 

 who would impart knowledge by the meth- 

 od of the rotary calabash, and the student 

 who, with saturnine stolidity, would ab- 

 sorb only the information poured into his 

 ears. Dwelling thus at a university, not 

 apart from, but actually in, the world of 



