THH SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATOR 243 
much upon the finding of the right road. Only the Universalgenie, 
if such exist, could arrive at the goal by any of the divergent roads. 
The true aim and project of the university seems to me to be, in the 
first instance, to help the man to find himself, and only in the second 
instance to educate him. For the reason that this may appear an 
unusual view it should be explained. Universities arose out of the 
desire for freedom of thought, out of the wish to break the fetters of 
formalism. At various times, at Salamanca and Bologna, Strassburg, 
Paris and Oxford, assembled groups of men who had become dissatisfied 
with the crystallized curriculum offered by the church schools, who felt 
the curb on thought. Consequently they segregated, and from their 
number selected those men as teachers who had new and fertile ideas. 
Thus within such an assemblage all subjects came gradually to be pro- 
fessed, and each man chose his disciplines according to his inclinations. 
That is to say, universities in their inception were places for freedom 
of choice of subject, and this has remained the ideal in at least the more 
influential continental universities. One expression of it is our elective 
system, but it is pursued still more broadly in Germany. There the 
student comes from the fairly rigid curriculum of the Realschule, or the 
still narrower course of the gymnasium, to the university where he may 
select just as many courses and just what ones he cares for. The result 
is a double one: he frequently chooses as few lectures as possible, and 
then enjoys several Bummeljahre; but drones are no honey getters, and, 
provided he need a profession, he sooner or later comes to hear lectures 
on a great variety of subjects until he finds the one that most engrosses 
his attention, when he devotes himself to that. This system, in the 
nearly complete freedom of choice it allows, offers the fruits of all Sci- 
ences, so that by browsing in this diverse orchard the student may find 
his peculiar taste. 
A graduate department is not an Eden simply because all are com- 
manded to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Men come to it 
from undergraduate courses where they have followed rather delimited 
curricula; in it they are free to make choice of the profession of their 
lives. It is the duty of the graduate school, the university proper as 
seen in the historical setting, to help each man to find himself, which is 
but a paraphrase of the Socratic “know thyself.” 
Students come with different innate propensities ; they should choose 
the fruit that comes nearest their hearts. The decisive step towards 
success is to choose wisely, which means simply to elect that which 
attracts most strongly. That is, one should place himself in the soil 
for which providence or his inheritance meant him, for only by so doing 
can one develop his capabilities to the full. And if there be one duty 
set upon us, a duty to our neighbors as well as to ourselves, it is to do 
that for which we are best fitted, granted only that a man be of sane 
social judgment. 
