THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 •1 , -/^ /^..c^^ J^,M^ 
 
 C^.^^-<^<,-C^K«^t« 
 
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 THE VOICE OF 
 THE SCHOLAR
 
 THE VOICE OF 
 THE SCHOLAR 
 
 WITH OTHER 
 
 ADDRESSES ON THE PROBLEMS 
 
 OF HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 Daviu Starr Jordan 
 
 President ok 
 Leland Stanford Junior Univi:rsity 
 
 Paul Elder and Company 
 Publishers, San Francisco 
 1903
 
 Lt 
 
 Copyright, 1905 
 by Paul Elder and Company 
 
 The Tomoje Press 
 Sail Francisco
 
 TO 
 
 ANDREW DICKSON WHITE 
 
 IN 
 
 TOKEN OF ADMIRATION AND 
 
 RESPECT
 
 The present volume contains a number of addresses 
 on educational subjects delivered by the author on 
 various occasions within the last five )'ears. Most of 
 them were first given to Stanford audiences. Of the 
 others, ' ' The University and the Common Man ' ' was 
 given at the University of Washington, that on the 
 ' ' Personality of the University ' ' at the University of 
 California, and that on ' ' College Spirit ' ' at the Uni- 
 versity of Missouri. That these discourses occasion- 
 ally repeat each other or double on the same track is 
 explained, if not excused, by the fact that the same 
 author, in such cases, is dealing again with the same 
 topic. The publishers express their indebtedness to 
 the editors and publishers of the Atla?itic Monthly, 
 the Popular Science Monthly, the Forum, the Cosmo- 
 polita7i Magazi?ie, and the Lidepcyident, for the privi- 
 lege of reprinting these addresses as published in the 
 magazines in question.
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 I. The Voice of the Scholar . . . . i 
 
 II. The Building of a University ... 26 
 
 III. An Apology for the American University - 44 
 
 IV. Relative Values in Knowledge - - - 70 
 V. Recent Tendencies in College Education - 99 
 
 VI. The Personality of the University - - 122 
 
 VII. The Higher Education of the Business Man - 128 
 
 VIII. A Business Man's Conception of the University 146 
 
 IX. The University and the Common Man - 167 
 
 X. The Woman and the University ... 191 
 
 XI. The University of the United States - - 212 
 
 XII. College Spirit - 225 
 
 XIII. Politics in the Schools 240 
 
 XIV. The Lessons of The Tragedy - - - 261 
 XV. The Hopes of Japan ----- 269
 
 THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR. 
 
 THE greatest need of popular government is 
 the university. The greatest need of higher 
 education is democracy. The scholar and 
 the man must work together. The free man 
 must be a scholar. The scholar must be a man. 
 
 It is not the necessary function of democracy to 
 do anything very well. There is nothing in collective 
 effort which ensures right action. Its function is to 
 develop intelligence and patriotism through doing for 
 ourselves all things possible which concern us individ- 
 ually or collectively. To take responsibility is the 
 surest way to rise to it, but the time may be long and 
 errors may be costly. Courage and willingness do 
 not guarantee success. Exact knowledge and thor- 
 ough training are essential to right results. In these 
 regards, democracy is, in the nature of things, defi- 
 cient. These the university must contribute. Gov- 
 ernment by the people needs its trained and educated 
 men more than any other kind of government ; for 
 while monarchy seeks far and wide for strong men 
 and wise to be used as its tools, strength and wisdom 
 is the daily life of successful democracy. But dem- 
 ocracy is always prone to undervalue wise men, and
 
 THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 imagines vainly that it can get along well enough 
 without their help. 
 
 On the other hand, the university needs the 
 people. In their wants and their uplifting it finds the 
 best reason for its existence. ' ' The bath of the peo- 
 ple," which Lincoln said was good for public men, is 
 essential to the university. It keeps it in touch with 
 life. It holds it to humanity. 
 
 Those who regard higher education as a social 
 ornament, valueless except as a badge for the delight 
 of its possessor, and those who regard culture as the 
 private perquisite of the elect few, are alike in the 
 wrong. The presence of men of culture and training 
 raises the value of everything about them. It ensures 
 the success of enterprise, the safety of person and 
 property, the contact with righteousness of thought 
 and action, which is the mainspring of right thought 
 and right deed in the future. 
 
 Moreover, if clear thinking with clean living is good 
 for the elect few, it is equally good for the mutable 
 many. Culture not only raises the man above the 
 mass, it turns the masses into men. That the mul- 
 titude may imagine themselves men before they hold a 
 man's grasp on life, is the grievous danger of democ- 
 racy. Here again the university plays its part, 
 teaching the relative value of ideals. Under its criti- 
 cism men learn that good results are better than good 
 intentions, and that they demand a far higher order 
 of skill and courage.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 I heard a man say the other day that the university 
 men were not on his side of a certain question. In 
 fact, he said, the college men are always on the con- 
 trary side on every question. This is probably true 
 in the sense he meant ; for it is the province of college 
 men to judge intentions and pretenses by ultimate 
 results. When the final end, according to the experi- 
 ence of human wisdom, is sure to be bad, wise men 
 must oppose the beginning. The universities have 
 many times stood in opposition to the popular feeling 
 of the time, but they have never found their condem- 
 nation in the final verdict of history. Only he who has 
 studied the affairs of men critically, impartially, coldly, 
 can discover the real trend of forces in the movements 
 of today. This the university has means to do. It 
 does not carry elections, in fact it has seldom tried to 
 do so ; for the results of an election play a very small 
 part in the evolution of democracy: not to carry 
 elections, but rather to carry wisdom to the people, 
 that is something worth doing. The words of experi- 
 ence which are wasted in the noise of the shoutings 
 become potent as the tumult passes by. 
 
 The people suffer many ills in our social order, for 
 most of which they alone are responsible. Because 
 men are not wise, they know not what to do. In 
 ignorance and weakness they find themselves the sport 
 of fate, the flotsam of "manifest destiny," the victims 
 of evils that wisdom and virtue instinctively avoid. 
 
 Next to knowing what to do, is the willingness to
 
 THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 believe that some one else possesses this knowledge. 
 Scepticism as to the existence of skill and intolerance 
 toward the possessor of knowledge are common 
 features of democracy. This is its vulgar side, the 
 disposition to do mean things in a mean way, doubting 
 that there exist any better things or better ways of 
 doing them. Through this kind of vulgarity, the 
 average American is his own physician, healing himself 
 with drugs of which he does not even know the name. 
 As a result, he suffers half his life from self-inflicted 
 poisoning. The American is his own architect, and for 
 this reason our cities are filled with buildings in which 
 nightmares might house, were it not for their fresh 
 paint and smart ornamentation. The American is his 
 own statesman, following his own impulses, guided by 
 his own prejudices. Thus he fills the land of the free 
 with oppression and injustice. When he can no longer 
 shut his eyes to the misery he has wrought he falls 
 back on his good intentions, casting the blame for his 
 blunders on impersonal destiny. 
 
 The sense of personal responsibility and personal 
 adequacy which democracy gives is of vital importance 
 in the development of man. But it has its bad side as 
 well as its good. It is the function of the university 
 to struggle against the bad, day and night, in season 
 and out of season, to convert it into the good. That 
 vulgarity is free to express itself in our system does 
 not exalt vulgarity. In the long run, vulgarity finds 
 its surest cure in freedom.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 The people at large even yet do not understand 
 nor value knowledge and power. Only those who 
 know well and see clearly can do well. Knowledge 
 does not flatter nor coddle, and men take to that which 
 pleases them. The fact that the majority do not 
 believe in knowledge is the reason why the university 
 must always be in opposition to prevailing sentiment 
 and current action. ' ' When were the good and true 
 ever in the majority ? ' ' There are not many of those 
 who speak and write on public affairs who really care 
 for what is just. The interest of most men lies in the 
 success of the "cause." But the "cause," what- 
 ever it may be, is only an incident in intellectual 
 awakening, a mere episode in social development. It 
 is in the actual truth that the public weal is bound up. 
 No honest or worthy cause appeals to the self-pity of 
 those it addresses. All calls to the weakness or vanity 
 or prejudice or passion of men are dishonest. All 
 dishonesty results in evil. Virtue that can last rests 
 on growing honesty and growing wisdom. Because 
 the university stands for the free search for truth, its 
 influence must be opposed to that of passion and preju- 
 dice. It must be above the heats of the hour, and 
 therefore in some degree antagonistic to them. Thus 
 those who strive on the sands of the arena find the 
 university distant and cold. This again is its danger, 
 that it shall be cold and distant. Never to ' ' vex at 
 the land's ridiculous miserie" was an old ideal of the 
 university. It is an ideal long cherished in the great
 
 THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 universities of England. But it was never a worthy 
 ideal. To exist for the needs of the people is a mis- 
 sion worthy of Oxford or Harvard or Berlin. It is 
 the final, highest function of all the glorious brother- 
 hood of plain life and high thought. 
 
 To keep up wisdom among men is the natural 
 function of the university. The need of the times is 
 not of men to die for the right, but of men to live for 
 it ; not of men to oppose popular feeling nor even 
 to rouse the pubhc conscience. Better than this, is to 
 train the public thought. What we want is not a 
 revival of zeal, even for the cause of righteousness, 
 but rather a revival of wisdom. This is followed by 
 no chill nor backsliding, while zeal, however well- 
 meaning, is subject to ebbs and flows. 
 
 I heard a very rich man say not long ago that he 
 had no faith in higher education. ' ' Nine college men 
 out of every ten, ' ' he said, ' ' build up a wall between 
 themselves and life. ' ' By life, he seemed to mean the 
 business of making money. If this be life, the state- 
 ment may be true, but even judged by this standard, 
 we must believe that it was an inferior kind of college 
 men who thrust themselves upon his notice. Some 
 people look upon men as useful only as they can use 
 them. The rest are merely competing organisms, poor 
 beggars who ought to be got under ground as soon 
 as possible, to save the cost of their keep. But it is not 
 true that most college men build up a wall between them- 
 selves and life. If this has been true in any individual 
 
 6
 
 THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 case, it was because the man was not worth educating 
 or because the education itself was spurious. For 
 higher education cannot make a man where manhood 
 did not exist before. It can only take a man already 
 created and raise him to higher efifectiveness. More- 
 over, there are frauds and imitations in education as 
 well as anywhere else, and misfit articles are thrown 
 on the market, cheap, every day. It is said that ' ' our 
 schools which teach young people to talk do not teach 
 them how to live." If this is true, it means that some 
 schools are shams, not giving real education. But it 
 is not by mistakes and misfits that higher education is 
 to be judged. It is by its finished and adapted pro- 
 duct. In every walk in life the higher education works 
 to the benefit of humanity. The man who knows one 
 thing well can do it well. His presence in life is a 
 help to his neighbor. He does not enter into compe- 
 tition, but into elevation. He makes respectable the 
 business of living. 
 
 In a recent number of the Atlantic Monthly, Dr. 
 William DeWitt Hyde gives a striking account of 
 the value of the life work of a single scholar, the 
 honored President of Harvard : 
 
 ' ' No one can begin to measure the gain to civiliza- 
 tion and human happiness his services have wrought. 
 His leadership has doubled the rate of educational 
 advance not in Harvard alone, but throughout the 
 United States. He has sought to extend the helping 
 hand of sympathy and appreciation to every struggling
 
 THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 capacity in the humblest grammar grade; to stimulate 
 it into joyous blossoming under the sunshine of con- 
 genial studies throughout the secondary years; to 
 bring it to a sturdy and sound maturity in the atmos- 
 phere of liberty in college life; and finally, by stern 
 selection and thorough specialization, to gather a har- 
 vest of experts in all the higher walks of life, on whose 
 skill, knowledge, integrity, and self-sacrifice their less 
 trained fellows can implicitly rely for higher instruc- 
 tion, professional counsel, and public leadership. In 
 consequence of these comprehensive forms, we see 
 the first beginnings of a rational and universal church, 
 not separate from existing sects, but permeating all; 
 property rights in all their subtle forms are more 
 secure and well defined; hundreds of persons are 
 alive today, who, under physicians of inferior train- 
 ing, would have died long ago; thousands of college 
 students have had quickened within them a keen intel- 
 lectual interest, an earnest spiritual purpose, a ' per- 
 sonal power in action under responsibility,' who under 
 the old regime would have remained listless and 
 indilTerent; tens of thousands of boys and girls in 
 secondary schools can expand their hearts and minds 
 with science and history and the languages of other 
 lands, who but for President Eliot would have been 
 doomed to the monotonous treadmill of formal studies 
 for which they have no aptitude or taste; and, as the 
 years go by, hundreds of thousands of the children 
 of the poor, in the precious, tender years before their 
 
 8
 
 THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 early drafting into lives of drudgery and toil, in place 
 of the dry husks of superfluous arithmetic, the thrice- 
 threshed straw of unessential grammar and the innu- 
 tritions shells of unrememberable geographical details, 
 will get some brief glimpse of the wondrous loveliness 
 of nature and her laws, some slight touch of inspira- 
 tion from the words and deeds of the world's wisest 
 and bravest men, to carry with them as a heri- 
 tage to brighten their future humble homes and glad- 
 den all their afterlives. In such 'good measure, 
 pressed down, shaken together, running over,' has 
 there been given to this great educational reformer, 
 in return for thirty years of generous and steadfast 
 service of his university, his fellow men, his country 
 and his God, what, in true Puritan simplicity, he calls 
 ' that finest luxury, to do some perpetual good in the 
 world.'" 
 
 Not long since one of our writers expressed regret 
 at the numbers of young men sent forth each year 
 from the universities to swell the educated proletariat 
 of America. His assumption is that each is to scram- 
 ble for his living, struggling with his competitors, 
 dissatisfied because his ambitions far outrun every 
 possible achievement. The very reverse of this is the 
 fact in America, whatever may be the case elsewhere, 
 as, for instance, under the "bed-ridden officialism of 
 France. ' ' The man of character who is educated aright 
 with us finds very soon his place in the community. 
 Before he came he may not have been wanted, but
 
 THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 once in his position, everybody seems looking for 
 him. The college men of America need no help and 
 no pity from any source. They can take care of 
 themselves and they can take care of others. To 
 them as to Emerson, "America means opportunity, " 
 and there are more opportunities today than ever 
 before to the man who is able to grasp them. But to 
 grasp the greater opportunities, the first essential is 
 not to despise the smaller ones. An education that 
 turns a man away from any honest work, however 
 humble, that lies in the line of duty, is not sound edu- 
 cation. Thfit some education is unsound and that some 
 men are unmanly in nowise shows that real training 
 does not strengthen real men. 
 
 Each year makes higher demands, it is true. 
 There are fewer things worth having to be had for the 
 simple asking. This is because the nation is growing 
 more critical. It is beginning to demand fitness, not 
 alone mere willingness. The opportunities it has to 
 offer are falling into the hands of trained men, and 
 these men demand still higher training from those 
 who are to be their successors. 
 
 A skilled engineer will not choose as his assistant 
 and successor a man who knows wheels and engines 
 only by rule of thumb. An educated chemist will not 
 make way for a druggist' s clerk ; nor a graduate of 
 West Point, for a politician's parasite whose military 
 training was gained as elevator boy or as driver of a 
 beer wagon. Training counts alike in all walks of
 
 THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 life, in a democracy not less than in an empire. As the 
 people come to understand the reality of knowledge, 
 so will they learn to appreciate its worth. 
 
 Another very rich man doubted the value of college 
 education; at the same time he placed the highest esti- 
 mate on applied chemistry, because through the skill 
 of the chemist employed in his steel manufactory, he 
 laid the foundations of his own wealth. But applied 
 chemistry rests on the broader chemistry not yet 
 applied, and is a part of higher knowledge. To train 
 chemists is likewise a part of the higher education. 
 Higher education consists no longer, as many seem to 
 suppose, in writing Latin verses, and reading mythol- 
 ogy in Greek. These things have their place, and a 
 great place in the history of culture, but it is to 
 ' ' Greek-minded men and Roman-minded men ' ' that 
 they belong. They form no longer the sole avenue 
 by which the goal of the scholar can be reached. 
 
 The keynote of the modern university is its use- 
 fulness. Its help is no longer limited to one kind of 
 man or one kind of ability, cramping or excluding all 
 others. It welcomes ' ' every ray of varied genius to 
 its hospitable halls." It is its highest pride that no 
 man who brings to its classrooms brains and courage 
 is ever turned away unhelped. 
 
 Because of this broadening of university ideals, 
 there are ten college students in our country today 
 where there was one twenty years ago. For this 
 reason, the same twenty years has witnessed a marvel-
 
 V 
 
 THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 ous expansion in all universities where generous ideals 
 have found lodgment. 
 
 Where the old notion that all culture runs in a 
 single groove, still obtains; where it is attempted to 
 train all men by one process, whatever this process be, 
 there is no growth in numbers, no extension of influ- 
 ence, no sign of greater abundance of life. Just in 
 proportion as constructive individualism in education 
 has been a guiding principle, have our universities 
 grown in numbers and influence. In this proportion 
 and for this reason have they deserved to grow. For 
 this reason James Bryce declares that of all results of 
 democracy, the American university offers the largest 
 promise for the future. 
 
 The scholar in the true sense is the man or woman 
 for whom the schools ha\-e done their best. The 
 scholar knows some one thing thoroughly and can 
 carry out his knowledge into action. With this, he 
 must have such knowledge of related subjects and of 
 human life as will throw this special knowledge into 
 proper perspective. Anything less than this is not 
 scholarship. The man with knowledge and no per- 
 spective is a crank, a disturber of the peace, who needs 
 a guardian to make his knowledge useful. The man 
 who has common sense, but no special training, may 
 be a fair citizen, but he can exert little influence that 
 makes for progress. There may be a wisdom not of 
 books, but it can be won by no easy process. To gain 
 wisdom or skill, in school or out, is education. To do
 
 THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 anything well requires special knowledge, and this is 
 scholarship whether attained in the university or in 
 the school of life. It is the man who knows that has 
 the right to speak. 
 
 That monarchy needs the university has been rec- 
 ognized ever since culture began. The universities 
 of Europe were founded by the great kings; the wiser 
 the king the more he felt the need of scholars as his 
 helpers. So Alfred founded Oxford and Charlemagne 
 the University of Paris, while the founder of the Uni- 
 versity of Berlin well deserved the name of ' ' Great, ' ' 
 even though it were for nothing else. In the darkest 
 days of Holland, William the Silent erected the Uni- 
 versity of Leyden. He needed it in his struggle 
 against Spain. He needed it in the warfare for inde- 
 pendence. A university breeds free men, men whom 
 physical force cannot bind. 
 
 But the need of the monarchy for men of high 
 culture and exact training is less than that of the 
 democracy. Under a monarchy such men must hold 
 office. In a democracy they must hold the people. 
 They must form fixed points in the civic mass, units 
 of intelligence, not to be bribed nor stampeded. 
 
 The presence of the king is not the essential fea- 
 ture of a monarchy. It is the absence of the people. 
 Where the people are not consulted, it is not vital to 
 the government that they be wise, nor even that wise 
 men should be among them. In fact they are more 
 easily handled without this kind of obstruction.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 Therefore the tendency of monarchy is to separate 
 the men from the mass, as we may choose the sheep 
 from among the goats. But in a democracy, those 
 who are ruled must also rule. They have no less 
 need of individual wisdom, but they must have it 
 diffused among themselves, not concentrated in a class 
 above. Nothing can be done for a democracy save 
 what the people do for themselves. It is impossible 
 to provide for it an educated oligarchy. Its public 
 servants are of its own kind, its agents or its attor- 
 neys, in no sense' its rulers, not often even its leaders. 
 For the most part, therefore, the wisest men in the 
 democracy will not be in office. The voice of w^isdom 
 should rise from the body of the people to the throne 
 of power. When a democracy needs a leader in the 
 seat of authority, it is because it has gone out of its 
 way in one fashion or other. Going out of its way, 
 it has come to a crisis. The cause of every crisis, in 
 a democracy, is a mistake of one sort or another. A 
 crisis arises with a question of right and wrong. Such 
 a question never becomes a burning one unless the 
 popular feeling has somewhere gone wrong and 
 worked itself out in wrong action. 
 
 When this is the case, it is the scholar's business to 
 know it. He is the sensitive barometer which first feels 
 the lowered pressure of rejected duty, the first warn- 
 ing of the coming storm. The warning he gives, his 
 neighbors will not receive with favor. He will not 
 xeceive a * ' donation party ' ' nor a vote of thanks, nor 
 
 14
 
 THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 a new pair of boots for giving it expression, but it is 
 his business to speak and he cannot remain a scholar 
 if he takes refuge in silence. Dr. Norman Bridge 
 has well expressed a similar thought in these words: 
 
 "The mere fact that one or two men in a hundred 
 are known to be uninfluenced by the clamors of any 
 rabble, good or bad, is to any community a force of 
 unspeakable value. The excitable ones know well that 
 the fiftieth man must be met and conciliated or over- 
 come in any hot-headed movement. He is a factor as 
 a voter and a citizen that cannot be ignored, and he 
 exercises a wholesome, regulating and modifying, 
 often repressive influence on the hasty tendencies of 
 the crowd. The thieves of the public treasury, of all 
 classes and shades, are afraid of him. Even one 
 forceful man in a hundred thousand may have an 
 amazing influence on public affairs if he has the time 
 and inclination to devote to disinterested care of the 
 public interests. There are a few such men in each of 
 our large cities. In one of the large centers of the 
 East a wealthy man of leisure was for many years a 
 terror to the hot-headed and the filchers of the public, 
 and solely because he gave himself to the task, and 
 they knew they would have to meet him at every turn. 
 This one man in the multitude may be called a croaker 
 or a fossil, but often he is the sole force that is able to 
 check the rising of the mob or the stampede of the 
 army, or to compel men to stop and think before 
 taking action that may be hasty or regretable.
 
 THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 The scholar will not go far out of his way in mat- 
 ters of this kind. Because his knowledge is intense, 
 it must be correspondingly narrow. The tendencies 
 to good and evdl in our social condition are so varied 
 and so intertangled, that those who trace out the rela- 
 tions of one set of combinations must perforce neglect 
 the others. The scholar who raises his voice against 
 unjust or unwise taxation may be silent on the ques- 
 tion of misapplied charity. The scholar who becomes 
 an authority on the purity of water cannot be an equal 
 judge of the purity of elections. The expert on elec- 
 tricity is not necessarily the best judge of ghost stories. 
 He may be so, but we cannot expect it. Each must do 
 his own part in his own way, in his own section of the 
 field of knowledge. Each must say his own word as 
 his own truth comes to him, though he know that his 
 own times let it pass unheeded, and though he know 
 that his voice be overborne by the louder tones of 
 mere pretenders to knowledge. For it is one of the 
 conditions of democracy that wisdom and its counter- 
 feit go along together side by side. There can be no 
 tag or label to mark one from the other, and the people 
 would not heed them if there were. We can only 
 know wisdom from imposture by its results, or by the 
 test of our own wisdom. The government cannot brand 
 a Keeley lest the public mistake him for a Faraday. A 
 Tesla and a Helmholtz pass as alike great, and for the 
 public he is greatest whose name is oftenest in the 
 daily newspapers. All this is well. It is better for 
 
 i6
 
 THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 men to choose the voice of wisdom for themselves 
 rather than to have it infallibly pointed out to them 
 by the government. For the seat of wisdom is in 
 the individual soul, and it grows through individual 
 effort. 
 
 The scholar is silent for the most part in the rush 
 and hurry of the world. When he has no reason for 
 speaking he reserves his strength for his own due 
 season and his own line of action. But he must be 
 free to speak when needs arise. He cannot breathe 
 in confined air, and his speech or his silence must be 
 at his own will, subject to his own conscience and to 
 the demands of truth. 
 
 In our days men talk too much, in the papers, in 
 the magazines, in the open atmosphere. They fill the 
 literary air with vain shoutings. But there can never 
 be too clear or too frequent statement of the results 
 of real knowledge. The old elementary truths of jus- 
 tice and humanity need to be recalled to us day after 
 day, while on the other hand the discoveries of science 
 give us better tools and surer command over the forces 
 of nature. The voice of the oldest and the newest 
 must together somehow reach our ears, if our actions 
 are to be righteous and our enterprises successful. 
 
 To the scholar we must look for this. Only he 
 who knows for himself some truth which rests on the 
 foundations of the Universe has a right to the name of 
 scholar. And the scholar will speak when the due time 
 comes for speaking. Whatever our creeds and con- 
 
 17
 
 THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 ventions, he will break through them with the truth. 
 He can never afford to do less, if the truth he utters 
 be really his own, and the outcome of his own contact 
 with the powers that never lie. No authority can bend 
 him to silence ; no title can bribe him ; no force can 
 close his mouth. He must, if need be, have the spirit 
 of the martyr. He must consider, not the conse- 
 quences to himself, to his business, to society, — only 
 the demands of truth. 
 
 That the scholar must speak, again emphasizes his 
 need of common sense. Common sense is that instinct 
 which throws all knowledge into right perspective. It 
 rests on sound habits of orientation. He who knows 
 where the sun rises never fails to make out all the 
 other points of the compass. This power the schools 
 alone cannot give. They can strengthen it, but they 
 cannot create it, and they must not take it away. It 
 is the foundation of all true culture, for science is only 
 enlightened common sense. 
 
 As a part of common sense, the scholar must dis- 
 tinguish his truth from his opinions. He must not 
 mistake for the eternal verity his own prejudice, his 
 own ambition, or his own desire. For he is human on 
 all his human sides and is subject to temptations that 
 master other men. He is in better form to resist, no 
 doubt, but that does not insure immunity. Moreover, 
 his truth may be only half truth at the best, and the 
 other half truths may seem to contradict it. To know 
 a half truth from a whole one is the part of common 
 
 i8
 
 THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 sense. But common sense is a possession still more rare 
 than learning. When scholars forget, their voices 
 arise in discord, and this discord casts discredit over 
 knowledge. When half truths are set off one against 
 another, we may find displayed all the vulgarity of 
 intolerance in quarters where intolerance should be 
 unknown. All this should teach the scholar modesty. 
 It should warn him of the need of charity, but it 
 should not silence his voice. 
 
 He must speak, he will speak, and it is for the 
 safety of democracy that sooner or later his word is 
 triumphant. The final outcome of all action rests with 
 the educated man. Not all the politicians of all the 
 parties in all the republics have secured so many final 
 victories in thought and action as the universities. 
 
 I read lately of an attempt to show that the scholar 
 or the clergyman should never write or speak on any 
 public or passing question lest he expose himself 
 to criticism or find his personality tumbled about in 
 the dust of the political arena. The clergyman 
 devotes his life to the study of moral questions in the 
 light of religion. The scholar devotes himself to 
 the study of truth wherever found and of the ways 
 by which truth may be available to men. If the 
 scholar and the clergyman are to be silent on ques- 
 tions of vital interest to men, who indeed is to 
 speak? Is it the politician of the day, a mere 
 echo without an idea of his own ? Is it the man of 
 money, who may have an axe to grind in every move- 
 
 '9
 
 THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 ment in public affairs, or who again may be seeking 
 undisturbed possession of that which justice would 
 place in other hands? Is it the popular agitator to 
 whom the social order is one long fit of hysteria? 
 Must we confine all public utterance to those whose 
 passions are excited or whose interests are touched ? 
 Shall Emerson and Lowell, Theodore Parker and 
 Phillips Brooks be silent when the fighting editor 
 speaks ? 
 
 The scholar should be above all influences of pas- 
 sion or profit. He should speak for the clear, hard, 
 unyielding, unflattering, unpitying truth. If he enters 
 the arena, he must as a man take his chances with the 
 rest. His thoughts must be his only weapon. Passion, 
 rhetoric, satire, these are arms for weaker men to use, 
 not for the scholar. His only sword is the truth. 
 His personal credentials may be challenged. He will 
 meet the scorn of men who do not know the truth 
 when they see it, and to whom thought seems but a 
 puny weapon. More than this, he will meet as adver- 
 saries scholars, real or pretended, men who see the 
 truth from a single side, or who have never seen it at 
 all, yet feign to be its defenders. 
 
 As to all this, the scholar must be patient. If he 
 is right, the ages will find him out. If he is wrong, 
 the fault is with his own weakness, not with truth. He 
 must be loyal to the best he knows, caring no more 
 for majorities than the stars do, unshaken by feeling, 
 by tradition, or by fear. The voice of the clamorous
 
 THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 mob on the one hand is no more to him than the 
 dictum of a pope or a king, or all antiquity. Nor is 
 it less ; for one or all of these are matters not to be 
 taken in evidence when the scholar makes his final 
 decision. 
 
 The rabble of today which the scholar has to face is 
 not the rabble of yesterday. The axe and the fagot, 
 the club and the paving stone have as means of argu- 
 ment gone out of date. The weapon of the mob of 
 today is mud. When a scholar stands for unwelcome 
 truth, the answer of the day is personal abuse. To a 
 man the rabble cannot understand are ascribed all the 
 vulgar motives of the rabble. His words and his 
 teachings are distorted and vulgarized until the multi- 
 tude recognize them as brought down to their own 
 level. 
 
 In this gloomy outlook, the scholar has two facts 
 of consolation. Truth is a statue to which mud can 
 never stick. The man without brains is the man with- 
 out influence. A little patience and the human storm 
 will pass by, the atmosphere will clear, and again, with 
 Emerson, the scholar shall behold above him "the 
 gods sitting alone on their thrones ; they alone and he 
 alone. ' ' 
 
 The university is an association of scholars. It 
 stands for the free judgment and the free proclamation 
 of truth ; without these it can stand for nothing else. 
 But our idea of academic freedom must be cast on 
 broad lines. It is the prerogative of high-minded
 
 THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 men, men of sound life and mature character, who 
 should deal with large issues sanely and seriously. 
 We may not dignify by the name of freedom the boy' s 
 play of scholarship or the issues of the debating soci- 
 ety. The privilege of college instructors to use the 
 academic halls as a safe shelter in which to spin 
 social cobwebs, or from which to throw epithets at 
 tradesmen or corporations, at churches or politicians, 
 is now in some quarters called academic freedom. By 
 some this is held to be the noblest privilege of the 
 scholar. It may indeed be something worth striving 
 for, but it is not the freedom for which our academic 
 fathers fought. The right to say anything anywhere, 
 to any audience, without regard to fitness, truth or 
 justice, is not a right of the real scholar in the real 
 university. It savors rather of the yellow journalism. 
 When unseemly things are done or done on un- 
 seemly occasions, they must be judged by society's 
 laws of fitness, not by any artificial code of the 
 academy. 
 
 "When serious people," says Francis F. Browne, 
 ' ' set themselves to discussing the principle of Lehr- 
 freiheit, they are thinking of something very differ- 
 ent. They are thinking of the deliberate attempts 
 of obscurantist and reactionary authorities to stifle in- 
 tellectual endeavor, and to impede the progress of great 
 creative ideas that from time to time transform our 
 modes of thought. They are thinking of such things 
 as the occasional official efforts made in Germany dur-
 
 THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 ing the last century to force all university teaching into 
 conformity with the ideas of the monarchy and the 
 established church. They are thinking of such things 
 as the effort, made so energetically in the generation 
 just preceding our own, to deny a hearing to the doc- 
 trine of evolution, and to discourage its promulgation 
 in the recognized institutions of learning. They are 
 thinking of all sorts of attempts to influence or cajole 
 or threaten thinkers of achieved reputation, in order 
 that the fabric of conventional falsehood may not be 
 undermined and totter to its fall. * * H^ It is 
 when we try to imagine a case of this sort that we 
 come fully to understand how securely the principle 
 of Lehrfreiheit is guarded by the authorities of our 
 great universities, and how certainly, should they once 
 fail in their trust, would they be forced back into the 
 path of duty by the overwhelming pressure of public 
 opinion." 
 
 Academic freedom therefore demands personal re- 
 sponsibility. There must be degrees in this as well as 
 in other sorts of freedom. We say sometimes that 
 certain men have the right to be heard. But one thing 
 gives this right, and that is the value of what they 
 have to say. This may be judged by the soundness 
 of their lives and the breadth of their previous expe- 
 riences. There can never be perfect freedom for 
 children or for fools. On the same principle, the 
 academic freedom of the college professor is a thing 
 that must be won by merit, not claimed as a privilege. 
 
 23
 
 THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 The right to proclaim truth belongs to him who has 
 shown that he knows truth when he sees her, and that 
 he knows how to find her when he does not see her. 
 It cannot exist in full degree for men without experi- 
 ence in life, for men who live in a visionary world, for 
 men whose ready eloquence takes the place of science. 
 The doctors of philosophy turned out in such num- 
 bers from the great hot-houses of university culture 
 are not always prepared for the freedom a grown man 
 must take. Their fitness to speak usually dates from 
 the period in which they make the discovery that they 
 are not yet ready. It is not the fear of the public, of 
 the press, of the rich or of the poor, that should deter 
 a young man from rash speaking. It is the fear that 
 he may not tell the truth, the fear that he may mislead 
 others or bring reproach on himself or his colleagues 
 by vmdue proclamation of his own crudity. The uni- 
 versities of the world have shown that they fear neither 
 man nor devil, if a struggle for principle is on. But 
 this they do fear, that in the multiplicity of speech and 
 writing for which they are held responsible, the truth 
 shall be lost in the heat of controversy or concealed in 
 meshes of eloquence. 
 
 The university must stand for infinite patience and 
 the calm discussion of the ideas and ideals which it 
 must leave to men of action to frame into deeds. The 
 passionate appeal is not part of its function. In order 
 that politics shall not creep into the university, the 
 men of the university must try not to creep into poU- 
 
 24
 
 THE VOICE OF THE SCHOLAR 
 
 tics. It is not because the university is afraid of re- 
 prisals. The politicians cannot hurt it much. It is 
 because the university fears degeneration within itself 
 if its energies are occupied with temporary ends. There 
 can be no greater foe to academic existence, and there- 
 fore to academic freedom than the professor who 
 makes his chair a center of propaganda of personal 
 opinions. Whether these are right or wrong, popular 
 or unpopular, makes little difference. The effect is the 
 same. The appeal is to prejudice and takes the place 
 of investigation. The function of the university in 
 public affairs must always be essentially judicial. This 
 does not mean that the scholar's voice should be silent 
 in times of moral issues. It is now and then the 
 scholar's sworn duty to take the great bull of public 
 opinion by the horns, regardless of results to himself 
 or to the association of scholars he represents. All 
 honor to the scholar who recognizes the moment of 
 great decision and seizes it, sparing neither himself nor 
 others. ' ' Once to every man and nation comes the 
 moment to decide." But such moments are not 
 matters of every day, and the small battles of society 
 must be fought by men of action who enroll them- 
 selves under banners which flutter for the hour. 
 
 ^S
 
 11. 
 
 THE BUILDING OF A 
 UNIVERSITY. 
 
 WITH the end of our Republic's first century 
 we had the first clear vision of the greatest 
 of republican institutions — the American 
 university. It was even then only a 
 vision. It is not yet realized, but we know something 
 of what it is to be. Out of the struggles and the 
 prayers, the hopes and the efforts of good men and 
 good women, we see it taking form. A university as 
 fair as those which England has known for a thousand 
 years, as sound and as strong as the deep-rooted 
 schools of Germany, with something of both, yet 
 different from either, is the coming university of 
 America. There will be many of these institutions, 
 for our land is very wide, and they will differ from 
 each other somewhat in kind, and as one star differeth 
 from another in glory, — still of the same general 
 pattern all must be. They will be schools for training 
 American boys and girls to be American men and 
 women. They will express the loftiest ideals of higher 
 education within our great democracy. One of this 
 great sisterhood of universities our own Stanford must 
 
 a6
 
 THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 
 
 become; hence it is fitting for us, from time to time, 
 to consider the present, and to forecast the future. 
 
 The American college, as it existed thirty years 
 ago and more, and as it still exists in some quarters, is 
 distinctly a school for personal culture. Its strongest 
 agency has been the personal influence of devoted 
 men. It has made no effort to give professional train- 
 ing. It has made no pretense of leading in scientific 
 research. A log with Mark Hopkins at one end of it 
 and himself at the other was Garfield's conception of 
 such a college. Even the log is not essential. The 
 earnest teacher is all in all. Apparatus Mark Hop- 
 kins did not need, books he even despised. The 
 medium of a forgotten language and an outworn phil- 
 osophy served him as well as anything else in impress- 
 ing on his boys the stamp of his own character. It 
 was said of Dr. Nott of Union College that " He took 
 the sweepings of other colleges and sent them back to 
 society pure gold." Such was his personal influence 
 on young men. A notable example of the college 
 spirit was Arnold of Rugby. Another was Jowett, 
 Master of Baliol. A teacher of this type, in greater 
 or less degree, it was the privilege of every college 
 student to know, and this knowledge still reconciles 
 him to his alma mater, however many her shortcom- 
 ings in subject or method. But times have changed 
 since the days of Mark Hopkins. The American 
 college — English -born and English in tradition — 
 under the touch of German influences, and in
 
 THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 
 
 response to actual needs, is changing to the American 
 university. It is no longer a school of culture alone, 
 a school of personal growth through personal example. 
 It is becoming, in addition to this, a school of research, 
 a school of power. It stands in the advance guard of 
 civilization, responsive not to the truth of tradition 
 alone but to the new truth daily and hourly revealed 
 in the experience of man. 
 
 In the movement of events the American university 
 unites in itself three different functions : that of the 
 college, that of the professional school, and that which 
 is distinctive of the university. 
 
 The college is now, as ever, a school of culture. 
 It aims to make wise, sane, well-rounded men who 
 know something of the best that men have thought 
 and done in this world, and whose lives will be the 
 better for this knowledge. It has not discarded the 
 Latin, Greek and Mathematics which were so long the 
 chief agents in culture, but it has greatly added to this 
 list. It has found that to some minds, at least, better 
 results arise from the study of other things. Culture 
 is born from mastery. The mind is strengthened by 
 what it can assimilate. It can use only that which 
 relates itself to life. We find that Greek-niindedness 
 is necessary to receive from the Greek all that this 
 noblest of languages is competent to give. We find 
 for the average man better educational substance in 
 English than in Latin, in the Physical or Natural 
 Sciences than in the Calculus. But more important 
 
 z8
 
 THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 
 
 than this, we find that it is safe in the main to trust 
 the choice of studies to the student himself. The 
 verj'' fact of choice is in itself an education. It is 
 better to choose wrong, sometimes, as we do a hundred 
 times in life, than to be arbitrarily directed to the best 
 selection. Moreover, so far as culture is concerned, 
 the best teacher is more important than the best study. 
 It is still true, as Emerson once wrote to his daughter, 
 that ' ' It matters little what your studies are ; it all 
 lies in who your teacher is. " A large institution has 
 many students. It has likewise many teachers ; and 
 an Arnold or a Hopkins, a Warner, a Thoburn or a 
 Richardson, can come just as close to the students' 
 hearts in a large school as in a small one. But ' ' the 
 knowing of men by name, ' ' the care for their personal 
 lives and characters, must be the essential element in 
 the new college course, as it was in the old. And the 
 college function of the university must not be despised 
 or belittled. Because Germany has no colleges, because 
 her students go directly from the high school at home 
 to the professional school or the university, some 
 have urged the abandonment by the American uni- 
 versity of this primal function of general culture. In 
 their eagerness to develop the advanced work some 
 institutions have relegated the college function almost 
 solely to tutors without experience, and have left it 
 without standards and without serious purpose. It is 
 not right that even the freshmen should be poorly 
 taught. On the soundness of the college training 
 
 29 
 
 V
 
 M 
 
 THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 
 
 everything else must depend. In the long run the 
 greatest university will be the one that devotes the 
 most care to its undergraduates. With the college 
 graduation higher education in England mostly stops. 
 With Germany here the higher education begins. 
 Higher education has been defined as that training 
 which demands that a man should leave home. It 
 means a breaking of the leading strings. It means 
 the entrance to another atmosphere. The high school 
 and the gymnasium cannot have the academic atmos- 
 phere, however advanced their studies may be. They 
 must reflect the spirit of the town which supports them, 
 and of which they are necessarily a part. They cannot 
 be free in the sense in which the universities are free. 
 A boy who lives at home in a city, and goes back and 
 forth on a train, cannot be a university student. He 
 may recite in the university classes, but there his rela- 
 tion ends. He gets little of the spirit which moves 
 outside of the classroom. He cannot enter the uni- 
 versity until he breathes the university atmosphere. 
 The ' ' Spurstudenten, " or " railway students, ' ' those 
 who come and go on the trains, are rightly held by 
 their fellows in Germany to be little more than Philis- 
 tines. Whatever the other excellencies of the German 
 system, the gymnasium, or advanced high school, is 
 an inadequate substitute for the American college. 
 
 The second function of the university is that of 
 professional training. To the man once in the path of 
 culture this school adds effectiveness in his chosen 
 
 30
 
 THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 
 
 calling. This work the American universities have 
 taken up slowly and grudgingly. The demand for 
 instruction in law and medicine has been met weakly 
 but extensively by private enterprise. The schools 
 thus founded have been dependent on the students' 
 fees, and on the advertising gain their teachers receive 
 through connection with them. Such schools as these 
 stand no comparison with the professional schools of 
 Germany. Their foundation is precarious, they can- 
 not demand high standards, nor look beyond present 
 necessities to the future of professional training. Only 
 a few of our professional schools today demand uni- 
 versity standards. Those which do not cannot share 
 the university spirit. They have no part in university 
 development. Only in the degree that they are part 
 and parcel of the university do they in general deserve 
 to live. The first profession to become thus allied is 
 that of engineering, thanks to the wisdom that directed 
 the Morrill Act. Following this, law, medicine, the- 
 ology, education, have, in some quarters, taken a 
 university basis, and the few professional schools in 
 which such a basis exists rank fairly with the best of 
 their class in the world. 
 
 The crowning function of a university is that of 
 original research. On this rests the advance of civil- 
 ization. From the application of scientific knowledge 
 most of the successes of the nineteenth century have 
 arisen. It is the first era of science. Behind the 
 application of such knowledge rests the acquisition of 
 
 3'
 
 THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 
 
 it. One Helmholtz, the investigator, is the parent of a 
 thousand Edisons, the adapters of the knowledge 
 gained by others. The great function of the German 
 university is that of instruction through investigation. 
 The student begins his work on a narrow space at the 
 outer rim of knowledge. It is his duty to carry the 
 solid ground a little farther, to drive back, ever so 
 little it may be, the darkness of ignorance and mys- 
 tery. The real university is a school of research. 
 That we possess the university spirit is our only excuse 
 that we adopt the university name. A true univer- 
 sity is not a collection of colleges. It is not a college 
 with an outer fringe of professional schools. It is not 
 a cluster of professional schools. It is the association 
 of scholars. It is the institution from which in every 
 direction blazes the light of original research. Its 
 choicest product is ' ' that fanaticism for veracity, ' ' as 
 Huxley calls it, that love for truth, without which man 
 is but the toy of the elements. Its spirit is the desire 
 ' ' to know things as they really are, ' ' which is the 
 necessary attribute of ' ' him that overcometh. ' ' No 
 institution can be college, professional school and uni- 
 versity all in one, and exercise all these functions fully 
 in the four years which form the traditional college 
 course. To attempt it is to fail in one way or another. 
 We do attempt it and we do fail. In the engi- 
 neering courses of today we try to combine in four 
 years professional training with research and culture. 
 This cannot be done, for while the professional work
 
 THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 
 
 is reasonably complete, culture is at a minimum, and 
 research crowded to the wall. The subject of law 
 requires three solid years for professional training 
 alone. Three or four culture years go with this, 
 and are surely none too many. The same require- 
 ment must soon be made in engineering. We cannot 
 make an engineer in four years if we do anything 
 else for him, and there are very many things 
 besides engineering which go to the making of a real 
 engineer. 
 
 But this we can do in the four years of college 
 culture: We can show the student the line of his 
 professional advancement, and can see him well started 
 in its direction before he has taken his first degree. 
 We can give in the college course something of the 
 methods and results of advanced research. In any 
 subject the advanced work has a higher culture value 
 than elementary work. Thorough study of one sub- 
 ject is more helpful than superficial knowledge of half 
 a dozen. To know one thing well is, in Agassiz's 
 words, "to have the backbone of culture." By lim- 
 iting the range of individual training to a few things 
 done thoroughly it is possible to give even to the 
 undergraduate some touch of real university method, 
 some knowledge of how truth is won. To accomplish 
 this is one vital part of the university's duty. It 
 welds together the three functions of a university, and 
 in so doing it will give the American university its 
 most characteristic feature. 
 
 33
 
 THE BUILDING OF AUNIVERSITY 
 
 The best education for any man with brains and 
 character should involve these three elements: 
 
 It should have the final goal in view as soon as 
 possible. 
 
 It should be broad enough and thorough enough to 
 develop cultured manhood, and at the same time to 
 furnish the strength needed to reach this goal. In 
 other words, it should look to success in the profession 
 and to success as a man. Toward both these ends the 
 methods of finding the truth for one's self are vitally 
 essential. The university should disclose the secret 
 of power, and this secret lies in thoroughness. Science 
 is human experience tested and set in order. The 
 advance of science has come through the use of instru- 
 ments of precision and methods of precision. Opinion, 
 feeling, tradition, plausibility, illusions of whatever 
 sort, disappear when the method of power is once 
 mastered. 
 
 The college course should have a little of the pro- 
 fessional spirit for its guidance, a little of the university 
 spirit for its inspiration; the best interests of all three 
 will keep them in the closest relation to each other. 
 At the same time they must not starve each other. 
 At the present time the needs of the college in most 
 cases tend to dwarf the more costly functions of the 
 university. The professors have their hands full of 
 lower work. The books and material the university 
 work demand are far more costly than the college can 
 afford. The trustees still too often regard the graduate 
 
 34
 
 THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 
 
 school as an expensive alien, and its demands in most 
 quarters still receive scant attention. To train fifty 
 investigators costs more than to give a thousand men 
 a college education. The sciences cost more than 
 the humanities, and the applied sciences, with their 
 vast and changing array of machinery, are most ex- 
 pensive of all. 
 
 Equally unwise, it seems to me, though less com- 
 mon, is the disposition to slight the college course for 
 the sake of advanced research. Poor work, wherever 
 done, leaves its mark of poverty. The great univer- 
 sity of the future will be the one which does well 
 whatever it undertakes, be it high or low. Better 
 have few departments, very few, than that any should 
 be weak and paltry. Better a few students well taught 
 than many neglected. 
 
 It is fair to judge a university by the character of 
 its advanced work. Institutions cannot be graded by 
 the number in attendance. This is the most frequent 
 and most vulgar gage of relative standing. The rank 
 of an institution is determined no more by the number 
 of its students than by the number of trees on its 
 campus. What sort of men does it have, and what 
 are they doing? These are the living questions 
 Buildings are convenient; beautiful buildings have a 
 great culture value. We should be the last to under- 
 rate the effect of the charm of cloisters and towers, 
 of circles of palms and sweet-toned bells. But these 
 do not make a university. Books are useful, they are
 
 THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 
 
 vital to research, — but wiser men than we have ever 
 known have grown up without books. Shakspere 
 had few of them, Lincohi but few. Homer and Jesus 
 none at all. Books serve no purpose if they are not 
 used. The man who reads it gives the book its life. 
 Specimens are inevitable in natural history. Appa- 
 ratus is necessary in physical science. Collections and 
 equipment are really the outgrowth of the men that 
 use them. You cannot order them in advance. Pro- 
 fessor Haeckel once said, bitterly, that the results of 
 research in the great laboratories were in inverse pro- 
 portion to the perfection of their appliances. An 
 investigation may be lost in multiplicity of details, or 
 in elaboration of preparation. Some men will spend 
 years in getting a microscope or a microtome just 
 right, and then never use it. It is said that the entire 
 outfit of Joseph Leidy, one of the greatest of our 
 microscopists, cost just seventy-five dollars. It was 
 the man and not the equipment that made his investi- 
 gations luminous. 
 
 Publication is necessary, but it would be the great- 
 est of mistakes to measure a university by the number 
 of pages printed by its members. Much of the so- 
 called research, even in Germany, is unworthy of the 
 name of science. Its subject matter is not extension 
 of human experience, but the addition to human 
 pedantry. To count the twists and turns of literary 
 eccentricity may have no more intellectual signifi- 
 cance than to count the dead leaves in the forest. 
 
 36
 
 THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 
 
 Statistical work is justified not by the labor it requires, 
 but by the laws it unveils. Elaboration of method 
 may conceal the dearth of purpose. Moreover, it is 
 easier to string the web of plausibility than to recover 
 the lost clue of truth. Of a thousand doctors' theses 
 each year, scarcely one in a hundred contains a real 
 addition to knowledge. When it does it may be that 
 the hand of the master placed it there. In too many 
 cases a piece of research is simply a bid for notice. 
 American universities are always on the watch for men 
 who can do something as it should be done. Work 
 is often done solely to arrest the attention of the uni- 
 versity authorities. A professorship once gained, 
 nothing more is heard of research. The love of nov- 
 elty with the itch for writing often passes for the 
 power of original research. The fanaticism for verac- 
 ity has nothing in common with versatile writing or 
 paradoxical cleverness. It took Darwin twenty-five 
 years of the severest work before he could get his own 
 leave to print his own conclusions. Other writers put 
 forth sweeping generalizations as rapidly as their type- 
 writers can take them from dictation. In certain 
 works which have arrested popular attention, the 
 investigations must have gone on at the highest speed 
 attainable by the pen of the gifted author. Such work 
 justifies Fechner's sarcastic phrase, "Cuckoos' eggs 
 laid in the nest of science." 
 
 The work of science is addressed to science, no 
 matter if half a dozen generations pass before another 
 
 37
 
 THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 
 
 investigator takes up the thread. The science of the 
 newspapers is of quite another type, and so is much 
 of the science of just now famous men from whom 
 newspaper science derives its inspiration. 
 
 While the university on its human side is inter- 
 ested in all that touches the life of today, on the 
 scientific side it deals with the eternal verities, and 
 cares nothing for those things which are merely local 
 or timely. 
 
 The university must conduct research to ends of 
 power. This it has hardly begun to do in America. 
 Half our graduate students are not ready for anything 
 worthy to be called investigation. They are not real 
 students of a real university. The graduate depart- 
 ments of our universities are now engaged almost 
 exclusively in training teachers. That profession may 
 be the noblest — where noble men make it so, but it is 
 only one of many in which success must rest on orig- 
 mal investigation. We are proud of our crop of 
 Doctors of Philosophy, dozens or hundreds turned 
 out every year. But most of them are trained only 
 to teach, and we know that half of them are predes- 
 tined to failure as college teachers. We must broaden 
 our work and widen our sympathies. We must train 
 men in the higher effectiveness in every walk in life, 
 men of business as well as college instructors, states- 
 men as well as linguists, and shipbuilders as well as 
 mathematicians, men of action as well as men of 
 thought. This means a great deal more than annual 
 
 38
 
 THE BUILDING OF A UNIVP:RSITY 
 
 crops of Doctors of Philosophy to scramble for the 
 few dozen vacant instructorships open year by year. 
 But with all these discouragements original research is 
 the loftiest function of the university. In its consum- 
 mate excellence is found the motive for its imitation. 
 
 There is but one way in which a university can 
 discharge this function. It cannot give prizes for 
 research. It cannot stimulate it by means of publica- 
 tion, still less by hiring men to come to its walls to 
 pursue it. The whole system of fellowships for ad- 
 vanced students is on trial, with most of the evidence 
 against it. The students paid to study are not the 
 ones who do the work. When they are such, they 
 would have done the work unpaid. The fellowship 
 system tends to turn science into almsgiving, to make 
 the promising youth feel that the world owes him a 
 living. 
 
 All these plans of university building, and others, 
 have been fairly tried in America. There is but one 
 that succeeds. Those who do original work will train 
 others to do it. Where the teachers are themselves 
 original investigators devoted to truth and skilful in 
 the search for it — men that cannot be frightened, 
 fatigued, or discouraged — they will have students 
 like themselves. To work under such men students 
 like-minded will come from the ends of the earth. It 
 is the part of the investigators to make the university, 
 as the teachers make the college. There never was a 
 genuine university on any other terms. It is not con- 
 
 39
 
 THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 
 
 ceivable that there should ever be one. It is not 
 necessary that all departments should be equal to 
 make the university real. It was enough at Harvard 
 to have Agassiz and Gray, Lowell and Longfellow, 
 Goodwin and Holmes, to justify the name of univer- 
 sity. Silliman and Dana made a university of Yale. 
 Such men are as rare as they are choice, and no uni- 
 versity faculty was ever yet composed of them alone, 
 and none ever yet had too many of them. President 
 Gilman has wisely said: 
 
 ' ' In the conduct of a university secure the ablest 
 men as professors, regardless of all other qualifica- 
 tions, excepting those of personal merit and adaptation 
 to the chairs that are to be filled. Borrow if you can- 
 not enlist. Give them freedom. Give them auxil- 
 iaries. Give them liberal support. Encourage them 
 to come before the world of science and of letters with 
 their publications. Bright students, soon to be men 
 of distinction, will be their loyal followers, and the 
 world will say Amen. 
 
 ' ' The merit of a university depends on the men 
 who are called to conduct it, upon them absolutely if 
 not exclusively; for although the teacher must have 
 such auxiliaries as books and instruments — books are 
 nothing but paper and ink until they are read, and 
 instruments but brass and glass until craft and skill are 
 applied to their handling." 
 
 But it is in its men that the real university has its 
 real being. Through the work of such men it stands 
 
 40
 
 THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 
 
 in the vanguard of civilization. By such men it counts 
 the milestones in its course, and no trick of organiza- 
 tion, no urging of the printing-press, no subsidy of 
 students, can be made to take their place. 
 
 A final word as to the practical side of advanced 
 research. Mr. Carnegie once ascribed the foundation 
 of his great fortune to the fact that he first employed 
 trained chemists where other manufacturers chose 
 workmen skilled in making steel by rule of thumb. 
 His chemists were able to suggest improvements. 
 They devised ways of making better steel cheaper 
 still, and at the same time of utilizing the refuse or 
 slag. 
 
 In the future the success of each great enterprise 
 must depend on the improvements it makes. The 
 nation successful in manufacture and commerce will be 
 the one richest in labor-aiding devices. All these 
 must depend on the advancement of knowledge. Pure 
 science must precede applied science. 
 
 Once the manufacturer or the nation could hire its 
 chemists as it needed them. The few asked for were 
 already made. Now they must make them. The 
 advancement of any branch of science depends on the 
 mastery of what is known before. Everything easy 
 and everything inexpensive has been found out. To 
 train the chemist of the future we need constantly finer 
 instruments of precision for his advanced work, access 
 to greater and greater libraries that he may know what 
 is already done, for each generation of scientific 
 
 41
 
 THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 
 
 workers must stand on the shoulders of those gone 
 before, else it can make no progress beyond them. 
 The scholars of today would be helpless were it not 
 that they can save time by drawing freely on the accu- 
 mulated knowledge of the past. 
 
 To learn the elements of any science costs little. 
 It can be learned at one end of a log with a great 
 teacher on the other. It can be even learned without 
 a teacher. But to master a science so as to extend its 
 boundaries — this is quite another thing. More than 
 a man can earn in a lifetime it costs to make a start. 
 For this reason a university which provides means for 
 such work is a very costly establishment. For this 
 reason the investigator of the future must depend on 
 the university. The nation with the best equipped 
 universities will furnish the best-trained men. On the 
 universities progress in manufactures and commerce 
 must depend. Through the superiority of training 
 Germany is passing England in the commercial world, 
 in spite of her handicaps of position and history. 
 Through the excellence of her universities, without 
 most of these handicaps, America is likely to excel 
 both Germany and England. 
 
 As men of science are needed, they cannot make 
 themselves. Those with power can help them. This 
 fact has given the impulse to the far-reaching gifts of 
 Stanford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Rhodes. These 
 are not gifts, but investments put to the credit of the 
 country's future. The people, too, have power to 
 
 42
 
 THE BUILDING OF A UNIVERSITY 
 
 give. The same feeling of investment has led them 
 to build their state universities, and to entrust to them 
 not only the work of personal culture, but of advance- 
 ment in literature, science, and arts. With general 
 culture and professional training must go the advance- 
 ment of knowledge, the progress of society, through 
 the advancement of the wisdom and the power of 
 man. 
 
 43
 
 III. 
 
 AN APOLOGY FOR 
 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY. 
 
 NOW and then in these days some successful 
 business man raises his eyes from his coun- 
 ter to question the American university's 
 right to exist. ' ' Does higher education 
 pay?" he asks, and from his own experience of tire- 
 less energy, and from his own contact with thin- 
 legged, white-faced collegians seeking a job, he gives 
 to this question a qualified negative. He further 
 claims, should he care to pursue the subject at greater 
 length, that opportunities for higher education are too 
 widely diffused, and that the American masses are vic- 
 tims of over-education. 
 
 If all this is true, it is time to call a halt and take 
 account of stock. We have invested too much in 
 universities — love and devotion, as well as bonds and 
 gold — for us to be indifferent to their usefulness. In 
 any case, it may be worth our while to spend half an 
 hour in considering this question, even though to you 
 and me, who are not in success as a life business, 
 such statements of men of business may seem belated 
 and absurd. 
 
 44
 
 APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 
 
 It is certain, in the first place, that to speak of 
 "over-education" is a misuse of terms. If education 
 is rational and effective, there cannot be too much of 
 it. It is not men trained and efficient who enter 
 into destructive competition. It is the ignorant and 
 ineffective who make the struggle for existence so dire 
 a battle. Whatever leaves men weak and ineffective 
 cannot justly be called education. There is nothing 
 more useful than wisdom, nothing more effective than 
 training, nothing more practical than sunshine. 
 Surely no one can claim that the American people are 
 too wise, too skilful, or too enlightened for their own 
 good. Yet to give wisdom, skill, and enlightenment 
 is the main function of higher education. It cannot 
 give brains, courage, and virtue where these qualities 
 were wanting before. It cannot make a man, but it 
 furnishes the best known means to help a man to make 
 himself. The gain through self-building often out- 
 weighs in value the original material. It may be more 
 important even than the finished product, as effort is a 
 greater source of strength and happiness to man than 
 final achievement. 
 
 What these critics usually mean to attack is misfit 
 education — the training or straining of the memory 
 rather than the acquisition of power to think and act. 
 They mean that the colleges give schooling rather than 
 training. They "teach young people how to talk 
 rather than how to live." This is still true to some 
 extent, in some places, but the whole tendency of 
 
 45
 
 APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 
 
 university movement is toward reality and practicality. 
 These critics have not watched this movement. They 
 do not draw their idea of a university from the power- 
 ful, well-organized institutions of the day, which lay 
 hold of every various power of humanity and seek to 
 draw it into effective, harmonious action. Rather they 
 picture to themselves the starveling colleges of their 
 youth, where callow boys were driven, against their 
 will, over race-courses of study, no part of which ap- 
 pealed to their own souls or was related in any way to 
 their lives. Such colleges and such ideals of educa- 
 tion exist in our time, in certain forgotten corners, but 
 they are in no sense typical of the American univer- 
 sity of today. Harvard and Cornell, and the great 
 and growing state universities of the West, are as 
 firmly and thoroughly devoted to the needs of Ameri- 
 can democracy as the modern harvester is to the 
 needs of the American wheat fields. 
 
 No doubt inferior methods, dull, stupid traditions, 
 can be found here and there under the name of higher 
 education, as rusty or worn-out machinery exists 
 under the name of agricultural implements. It is not 
 by these that the best we have should be judged. No 
 one knows better than our college authorities the mis- 
 fits and failures of education. No one strives half so 
 hard to prevent them, though in all large enterprises 
 no one can avoid a certain percentage of failure. 
 
 Not all the critics in business life taken together 
 have done one-tenth as much to make education prac- 
 
 46
 
 APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 
 
 tical as has any one of the great university presidents 
 of our time. Let us mention, for example, Eliot and 
 White and Angell and Tappan. Under the hands of 
 these men, and others like these, the whole face of 
 higher education in America has changed in the 
 last twenty years, and the change has been in every 
 way toward greater usefulness and practicality. As 
 the limited express of today compares with the cross- 
 roads accommodation train, so does the American 
 university we all know, or ought to know, compare 
 with the college of twenty years ago. The little cur- 
 riculum of the college, its Latin verses, mythology, 
 mathematics, and dilute philosophy covered but a 
 small arc in the grand circle. The entire range of the 
 activities of men constitutes the field of the university. 
 The keynote of railroad progress has been useful- 
 ness to the traveling public. The limited express 
 carries well, carries quickly, carries comfortably, accu- 
 rately, and safely the multitudes of people who 
 demand transportation. Its fresher paint, handsomer 
 cars, and softer cushions are only incidental to this. 
 So with the university of today. It aims to meet the 
 needs of all men, whatever these needs may be, and 
 of all women, too — all to whom higher training or 
 higher outlook is possible. It meets these needs accu- 
 rately, safely, and without waste of time or effort. Its 
 greater size and greater impressiveness of buildings, 
 libraries, and laboratories are only incidents. Its 
 purpose is direct, practical, and unflinching. Those 
 
 47
 
 APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 
 
 who criticise its results must take a broad view of its 
 purposes. Because a Harvard man once drove a street- 
 car in San Francisco, or because some despondent 
 invalid from Yale is seeking a third-class clerkship, is 
 no indictment of Harvard or Yale any more than a 
 chance tramp on a brake-beam is an impeachment of 
 the management of a great railroad. 
 
 If the passengers in general rode on the brake- 
 beams in preference to the coaches, it might give rise 
 to an indictment. If the Harvard man of today can- 
 not, as a rule, make use of his knowledge, if he cannot 
 take care of himself and open the door of opportunity 
 to others — if the more of Harvard the less of man — 
 then we may question Harvard's right to her endow- 
 ments. But, as a matter of fact, this is not true. 
 Among men in every walk of life, among our bridge 
 builders, our preachers, and our mechanics, our teach- 
 ers, our statesmen, and our naturalists, our bookmen, 
 our physicians, our financiers, our electricians, our 
 lawyers, and our journalists, the university men stand 
 everywhere at the front. They are effective, enlight- 
 ened, practical. They have had some one thing 
 clearly in view; they have striven to do it, and to do 
 it so well that their work needs no after-patching. 
 
 It is true that this has not always been so to the 
 degree that it is today. Once the college educa- 
 tion was not related to life. It did not pretend to be. 
 It had nothing to do with action. It was not even the 
 foundation of scholarship. The scholars of the early 
 
 4.S
 
 APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 
 
 days were as much self-taught as the merchants. The 
 school training was discipline only, a drill in memory 
 and discrimination, the things memorized and the 
 things studied to be forgotten when real life began. 
 The original investigator — that is, the real scholar, in 
 any field, in language even — had to begin at the bot- 
 tom when his college course was finished. He had to 
 find his own materials, devise his own methods, and 
 forge his own implements, just as the self-taught 
 scholar had to do. The man with definite purposes 
 saw his way to his goal outside of college, for the col- 
 lege would not swerve from its mediaeval English 
 ideals a hair's breadth to meet the need of the student. 
 
 Learning breeds vanity, some one has said; while 
 wisdom is the parent of modesty. The old-time col- 
 lege student had learning. He learned rules by heart, 
 and lists of exceptions. He learned the propositions 
 of Euclid, and could repeat every corollary by num- 
 ber. If he studied science, this too was made a matter 
 of names, definition, and exceptions. The best bot- 
 anist was the one who knew the most Latin names of 
 plants. The best historian knew the names and dates 
 of most kings and the details of the greatest number 
 of campaigns. 
 
 The college education was once valued for the 
 feeling of superiority which it engendered. The 
 bachelor of arts was as good as the best of men and 
 better than most. ' ' Of all horned cattle, ' ' said 
 Horace Greeley, " commend me to the college grad- 
 
 49
 
 APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 
 
 uate." He meant the kind which is filled with learn- 
 ing, with a fatuous vanity, which sprouted like the 
 calf's horns. If we define an educated man as one 
 who has learned the secret of power in nature or life, 
 he is not classified with horned cattle. He becomes a 
 man, and to send forth such is the work of the uni- 
 versity of today. 
 
 It is said by some one that the greatest joy on earth 
 with certain women — greater even than the pleasures 
 of hope and even the consolations of religion — is the 
 * ' well-dressed feeling. ' ' We know what this is like 
 and how it affects its possessor, even though we do not 
 share it ourselves. I saw an example the other day 
 on a railway train. A lady, not graceful nor gracious 
 nor beautiful, was dressed to her own perfect satis- 
 faction. I could not describe the details, which had 
 no special charm for me, but the aggregate was the 
 sure feeling of being well dressed. This showed itself 
 in the expression of her face, at once haughty and 
 beatific. The college degree of Bachelor of Arts con- 
 ferred on our fathers the well-dressed feeling. They 
 were at once haughty and beatific in the possession of 
 it, and to gain the degree, not to enter into the gath- 
 ered store of intellectual power, was their purpose in 
 running over the prescribed curriculum. 
 
 But whatever we may say of outworn methods, 
 they were not without their successes. In these the 
 olci college found ample justification. Mental keen- 
 ness follows mental friction. The spirit of comradery 
 
 5°
 
 APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 
 
 led to a higher spirit of friendliness and mutual help. 
 The debating society, where alone — outside of school 
 hours — real subjects were under discussion, laid the 
 foundation of many a statesman's prominence on the 
 floor of the senate. 
 
 To spend four formative years in life not sordid 
 has a moral reflex on the character. The weakest and 
 most illogical college course may be far better than no 
 college training at all. Men can make up for lost 
 time. It is harder to make up for lost inspiration. 
 The American college of the past was a feeble copy 
 of the colleges of England. The American university 
 of today draws its inspiration from the deeper, stronger 
 currents of German scholarship. 
 
 An Oxford man has recently criticised the splendid 
 aggregation of great boarding-schools, which modern 
 needs are slowly and reluctantly molding into Oxford 
 University. "Our men," he says, " are not schol- 
 ars; our scholars not men." The old ideals of educa- 
 tion still cherished at Oxford too often lead to this. 
 Those called scholars — the dig, the grind, the 
 pedant — are not men. Their worth is not related to 
 life, and they are not trained for living. The other 
 class — the athletes, the good fellows, the robust Brit- 
 ish gentlemen — these are not scholars. For the lines 
 of thought and action which interest the live man are 
 not yet reckoned as scholarship m England. 
 
 To know nature, life, art, one must go outside the 
 tripos or three sacred pedestals of learning — Latin, 
 
 SI
 
 APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 
 
 Greek, mathematics — -recognized by the conventional 
 college. To the university of Germany we go, or to 
 the university of America, and in these institutions of 
 reality every man in search of wisdom or power will 
 find his efforts strengthened, his success hastened. 
 The ideal of the American university of today is ex- 
 pressed in the words constructive hidividuality. It 
 would build up scholarship and character, but always 
 on the basis of the powers which nature gave the indi- 
 vidual. It is no abstract or ideal man with which it 
 deals, but real men, just as they are, the individuals 
 as created — no two alike, each with his own divine 
 gift of personality, which separates the man that is 
 from all the men that are, or were, or ever will be. 
 
 I have used the words ' ' college ' ' and ' ' univer- 
 sity " in an interchangeable sense. This I have done 
 on purpose, for I do not believe that the distinction, 
 which seems to exist, and on which some writers have 
 laid great emphasis, is one which can or ought to be 
 permanent. From the extension of the college the 
 American university has sprung, but every one of 
 these institutions still includes, and must include, the 
 college, which is the germ. Every successful college 
 points toward the university, and, so far as is possible, 
 it strives to become such. The university is the expres- 
 sion of thoroughness of training, and without thor- 
 oughness in something no institution can live. 
 
 It is said that the college is for the average man, 
 the university for the exceptional one. But this is not
 
 APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 
 
 true, as a matter of fact. The average man, the 
 exceptional man, and the man below the average are 
 found in all institutions. The ''' bemoostes Haupt''' 
 the moss-grown head, grown gray in the struggle for 
 a degree, is well known in the universities of Ger- 
 many, while the smallest college of the prairies has 
 been the cherishing mother of many a distinguished 
 scholar. 
 
 The fact is that the college is a temporary feature 
 of American educational history. The college is a 
 small university, antiquated, belated, arrested, starved, 
 as the case may be, but with university aspirations to 
 be realized in such degree as it can. The strongest of 
 these find an assured place by the side of the univer- 
 sities — Brown University and Amherst College, Wes- 
 leyan University and Williams College, Colgate 
 University and Bryn Mawr College. These belong 
 to a single general class, and differ only in name. 
 Each gives the best and broadest undergraduate 
 courses its finances afford, with as extended a course 
 in graduate study as circumstances make possible. 
 Harvard is the same in kind, though its extension is 
 greater, while the ambition of the college of the 
 prairies is not less nor different. 
 
 As time goes on, the college will disappear in fact, 
 if not in name. The best and richest colleges will 
 become universities, following the example of Har- 
 vard, Yale, and Princeton. The others will return to 
 their places as academies, fitting men for college, as
 
 APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 
 
 they now try to fit them for the university. Every 
 year shows both these forms of transition. In the last 
 ten years at least a half dozen of the California col- 
 leges have joined the ranks of the high schools, ceas- 
 ing to grant academic degrees. In other western 
 and southern States the same change has taken place. 
 On the other hand, twenty institutions, which have 
 prided themselves on their contentment as * ' mere col- 
 leges," have reached out, in one way or another, into 
 graduate work, and many rest their best fame on the 
 influence of some teacher whose originality and thor- 
 oughness gave his work the true university character. 
 
 Since Eliot became president of Harvard Univer- 
 sity, the number of college students in the United 
 States has increased perhaps a hundred -fold. This 
 is due to no educational fad, no passing whim of 
 the hour. Young men and young women do not rush 
 by thousands to the universities every fall because they 
 seek social recognition, because their fathers went to 
 college, because they need a college degree in their 
 business, because of the glory of the football team, 
 nor for any one of a hundred side reasons which might 
 be conjured up. They go to the university because 
 the university offers training which they want, and 
 which they cannot do without, except at a cost which 
 will narrow and cramp their whole after lives. 
 
 The student of today is far more advanced in 
 thought and action than the student of thirty years 
 ago. The graduate of Harvard under any of Eliot's 
 
 54
 
 APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 
 
 predecessors could barely enter the freshman class 
 in the Harvard of today. Not that he had not studied 
 enough things or spent time enough on them, but 
 because the work of earlier times lacked thorough- 
 ness, breadth, and vitality. In one or two narrow 
 lines some great teacher might make his work thor- 
 ough and real, but that a student should actually know 
 anything so as to be able to make a place in life by 
 means of such knowledge, was to most of Eliot' s pre- 
 decessors a new and dangerous notion. 
 
 This condition of things was changed, not by out- 
 side criticism, the chance slurs of men of business or 
 men of leisure, but by inside growth. 
 
 It was thirty years ago that Agassiz told his asso- 
 ciates that Harvard was no university — ' ' only a 
 respectable high school where they taught the dregs 
 of learning." He recognized that for most men the 
 sacred tripos was not the foundation of culture, but 
 the dregs of culture. Its place of importance was 
 assigned, not by hope, but by tradition. It was the 
 same good old Harvard which Emerson blamed for 
 never having led him to the tree of life. But even 
 Emerson was appalled when the study of realities in- 
 vaded Harvard College, and men began to give 
 themselves not to ideal and tradition, but to serious 
 preparation for the work of life. Once he hinted that 
 "a check-rein should be placed on the enthusiastic 
 young professor who was responsible ' ' for the destruc- 
 tion of Harvard's time-honored symmetry. 
 
 55
 
 APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 
 
 In Agassiz's answer we touch the keynote of uni- 
 versity progress — not to check the current of effort 
 for symmetry's sake, but to stimulate all possible 
 forms of intellectual growth. "If symmetry is to be 
 obtained by cutting down the most vigorous growth, ' ' 
 he said, ' ' it would be better to have a little irregularity 
 here and there. ' ' 
 
 It is thirty years since Herbert Spencer startled 
 the English educational world by his question : ' ' What 
 knowledge is most worth ? ' ' For the men of Oxford 
 and Cambridge did not value knowledge for its worth, 
 but rather for its traditional respectability. They de- 
 fined a university as "a place where nothing useful is 
 taught," and they had only contempt for "bread- 
 and-butter learning," or knowledge related to daily 
 life. This might do for the learned professions — 
 law, medicine, and theology — but even for these the 
 college gave no hint of direct preparation. Herbert 
 Spencer answered his own question in favor of science, 
 the facts and laws of human life and of external 
 nature. These have a real worth to man, which the 
 sacred tripos did not possess. On the belief that 
 knowledge of all kinds has real worth to some one the 
 modern university rests. 
 
 At Champaign, ten years ago, I had occasion 
 to say: "The university should be the great refuge 
 hut on the ultimate boundaries of knowledge from 
 which daily and weekly adventurous bands set forth 
 on voyages of discovery. It should be the Uper- 
 
 56
 
 APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 
 
 navik from which polar travelers draw their sup- 
 plies. As the shoreless sea of the unknown meets 
 us on every side, the same house of refuge and 
 supply will ser\'e for a thousand different exploring 
 parties moving out in every direction into the infinite 
 ocean. After countless ages of education and scien- 
 tific progress, the true university will stand on the 
 verge, its walls still washed by the same unending 
 sea, the boundless ocean of possible human knowl- 
 edge." 
 
 The college of the past dealt chiefly with record 
 and tradition. It sought no new truth and coveted no 
 action. The college life was a period of restful growth, 
 to be cherished for its fragrant memories. It was not 
 a time of forceful struggle for heightened power and 
 deeper wisdom. 
 
 The university of today is alert to all the problems 
 of social and political development. The poorhouse, 
 the jail, the caucus, the legislature, the army, the dis- 
 cordant demands of freedom and order, — all these 
 call for closest attention of the university student. 
 While one man studies the law of heredity as shown 
 in the structure of the body cells, another gives equal 
 attention to the fate of the tramp and the pauper. 
 One spends his strength on the economical transfer- 
 ence of electric force while another works on the 
 conservation of honesty in the public service. There 
 are just as many classical scholars today as there ever 
 were, but they no longer bar the way to men of other 
 
 57
 
 APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 
 
 powers and other tastes. The classics no longer close 
 the door to other forms of culture. He who writes 
 Latin verses still finds his place in the university, pro- 
 vided only that his verses are good enough to be worth 
 writing. But he no longer occupies the sole place of 
 honor, or even the front seat in the lecture hall. The 
 man who knows the steam engine has an equal place 
 in the university and an equal share in the honors of 
 scholarship. With the advent of realities, spurious 
 honors disappear. It is not for the university to 
 decide on the relative values of knowledge. Each 
 man makes his own market, controlled by his own 
 standards. It is for the university to see that all 
 standards are honest, that all work is genuine. To do 
 this, it must cast off many of its own shams of the 
 past. Its titles and privileges, its prizes and honors, 
 its distinctions and degrees, its caps and gowns, and 
 chaplets of laurel berries — all the playthings and mil- 
 linery of its youth it must cast away with its full 
 maturity. These prizes of learning are but baby toys 
 to the man of power. To send forth men of power 
 the university exists. 
 
 The value of the university has been under discus- 
 sion ever since the days of Alfred and Charlemagne, 
 and each nation in each century has formed its own 
 answer. Its value to a monarchy is not the same as 
 its worth to a republic. Its value to the all-embracing 
 church is not the same as its use to the individual man 
 and woman. The church looks to the university for 
 
 58
 
 APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 
 
 its defender and its apologist; the individual man for 
 his own enlightenment and strength. The king looks 
 to the university for agents and advisers, to democ- 
 racy for the antidote to the demagogue and spoilsman. 
 Emperor William is reported to have said : "Bis- 
 marck and von Moltke were but the tools by which 
 my august grandfather worked his will. ' ' To furnish 
 the emperor with tools of such edge and temper is 
 the function of the imperial university. Tools of a 
 still more august ruler are the statesmen of America. 
 Our Washingtons and Lincolns, our Sumners and 
 Hoars, our Lowells and Emersons — all these are the 
 tools by which the people of the Republic work their 
 will. 
 
 To such needs the modern university is fully alive. 
 Edward Everett Hale tells us that in i860, when 
 Robert Todd Lincoln entered Harvard College, bring- 
 ing letters of introduction from Abraham Lincoln and 
 Stephen A. Douglass, there was but one man in Har- 
 vard who had ever heard of Lincoln. This was Pro- 
 fessor James Russell Lowell, who said at the time: 
 "I suppose that I am the only man in this room who 
 has ever heard of this Abraham Lincoln, but he is 
 the person with whom Douglass has been traveling up 
 and down in Illinois, canvassing the state in their new 
 western fashion as representatives of the two parties, 
 each of them being the candidate for the vacant seat 
 in the senate. ' ' 
 
 That Harvard was not long indifferent to what 
 
 59
 
 APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 
 
 Abraham Lincoln stood for is shown by the roll of 
 names in her Memorial Hall; the list of 
 
 those whose faith and truth 
 On war's true touchstone rang true metal. 
 
 Once awakened to her public duty, our great univer- 
 sity has never since slept. Her hand is in all public 
 affairs. Whatever is well done is permeated by her 
 wisdom and zeal, and the courage and force of her 
 sister institutions. 
 
 One can count on his fingers today, taking every 
 one, university men without public office or likelihood 
 of any, investigators and professors, who exert a 
 greater influence in any political crisis than presidents 
 and cabinets, than orators and agitators, than admirals 
 and generals. The immediate responsibility for action 
 rests with the temporary official, but behind the inves- 
 tigator is the power of eternal truth. Whatever men 
 do or say or pretend, it is the truth that has the last 
 word. This is so sure in the affairs of men that when 
 truth appears plain before them they throw up their 
 idle weapons and call her God or fate. And these, 
 indeed, are other names for truth. For the worship 
 of truth the university must stand, and there is but 
 one tormula for her ritual. He shall seek her pa- 
 tiently, untiringly. If perchance he find her, then 
 shall he proclaim her without fear and without reserve. 
 
 The American university serves the American 
 republic in several ways. 
 
 60
 
 APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 
 
 It intensities individual force and effort. It takes 
 a man's best abilities and raises them to the second or 
 third or tenth power, as we say in algebra. The value 
 of the college-bred engineer is recognized in the rail- 
 roads, in the mines, in the factories. With the same 
 willingness to work as the man who has learned 
 engineering by rule of thumb, he has a far greater 
 adaptability, a far wider command of resources. This 
 fact may not appear in a day or a year; hence some 
 men prefer the ordinary practical man, because he is 
 less ambitious and can be had cheap. Sooner or later, 
 however, a condition arises which shows the difference. 
 The wise employer forecasts this and puts the respon- 
 sibility on the man who is surest to carry it when the 
 real trial comes. 
 
 What is true of the educated engineer is equally 
 true in other trades or professions. The ignorant 
 physician makes money because he deals with ignorant 
 men, and the grave covers his blunders. But sooner 
 or later truth turns her searchlight on pretense, and 
 the educated physician and the fraudulent healer are 
 no longer in competition. 
 
 The university of today has no new mission in 
 these regards. Its purpose has simply broadened 
 year by year till it covers the needs of every man 
 with brains and conscience. Not only for the Greek- 
 minded and Roman-minded men, but for the men of 
 dynamos and sewer trenches, the breeders of sheep 
 and the importers of silks; for the singer of songs and 
 
 6i
 
 APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 
 
 the writer of histories; for all men, of whatever call- 
 ing, the university has its word of welcome, its touch 
 of power. 
 
 The university should give to each man or woman 
 a broader outlook on the world, the horizon of the 
 scholar. No one has the right to the name of scholar 
 till he knows some one thing thoroughly, and enough 
 of other things to place this special .knowledge in 
 right perspective. The more deeply one enters into 
 his own thoughts, the more effective he is in accom- 
 plishing his own ends. The more broadly he enters 
 into the thoughts of others, the more clearly will he 
 understand his own relation to nature and society. 
 
 Through the medium of the university the student 
 is brought face to face with great thoughts and great 
 problems. The wise men of all ages and all climes 
 become his brothers, and the consolations of philos- 
 ophy to him are not meaningless words, but living 
 and helpful realities. 
 
 The university is a source of personal acquaint- 
 ance with the men and women who shall mold the 
 times to come. The university "gathers every ray 
 of varied genius to its hospitable halls, by their con- 
 centrated fires to strike the heart of youth in flame." 
 Each university has some great teacher, at least some 
 one who is relatively great. A great teacher leaves a 
 great mark on every student whose life he touches. 
 In my own education nothing meant so much to me 
 as the contact with a few great men whom I knew face 
 
 62
 
 APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 
 
 to face. Of these I place first Agassiz, with his 
 abounding life, his fearless trust in God and man, and 
 his vital interest in everything that God or man had 
 done. "There is no hope for you," says Thoreau, 
 ' ' unless this bit of sod under your feet is the best for 
 you in this world, in any world." Of such robust 
 optimism was the spirit of Agassiz. No obstacle 
 could break his courage, no failure could dim his 
 faith. To feel the influence and to share the help of 
 such men far outweighs the cost of any college course, 
 even though the college gave nothing else. 
 
 But there were many more among my teachers, 
 each great in his degree. I cannot take the time to 
 speak of each in turn, nor would it profit you to 
 listen. Two names may suffice: Andrew Dickson 
 White, the former high-minded and enlightened presi- 
 dent of Cornell, the ideal of our class, the pioneer 
 class of his administration in the new university of his 
 hands. To us he embodied all that a scholar should 
 be in the life of the Republic. And such an ideal of 
 the scholar in statesmanship President White remains 
 to us today. 
 
 The other name is that of James Russell Lowell. 
 I can hardly claim him as my teacher, for he did not 
 know me by name or face. I was too young and too 
 raw in his day to be knowable. Yet his rich voice and 
 manly figure are indelibly fixed in my memory, and 
 his noble face rises before me whenever I try to think 
 of the duty of the scholar in the crises of the day. 
 
 63
 
 APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 
 
 ' ' Once to every man and nation comes the moment 
 to decide," and to have known Lowell brings a pledge 
 for at least a conscientious decision. 
 
 But it is not alone through the teachers that the 
 university educates. The ' ' fellow feeling among free 
 spirits," which has been called the essence of the 
 German university, arises among the students as well. 
 Among the college students are the best young men 
 and w^omen of our time. They shape each other's 
 characters and mold each other's work. If the uni- 
 versity does nothing else, it finds its justification in the 
 friendships which it gives. In Agassiz's eulogy on his 
 friend and helper, Humboldt, he gives a most striking 
 account of the influence picked men exert upon each 
 other. Teachers and students alike in the University 
 of Munich used to gather in Agassiz's own chamber, 
 "museum, laboratory, library, bedroom, dining-room, 
 fencing-room, all in one." Students and professors 
 called it ' ' the little academy. ' ' 
 
 Here they worked and talked and thought, and 
 the discovery of one became the property of all, with 
 the same cheerful generosity by which they shared 
 their meals and their earnings. In the college you 
 find the men you trust in after life, and one who does 
 not fail you there will never after give you cause for 
 regret. 
 
 To the university we must look for the promotion 
 of true democracy. Its function as a part of public 
 education is to break up the masses that they may be 
 
 64
 
 APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 
 
 masses no more, but living men and women; to draw 
 fortii from the multitude the man. The mass is the 
 real (oe of democracy, for the slave in all ages has 
 woven his own lash. Where men are driven or sold 
 like sheep, there the tyrant rules. It matters not 
 whether the tyrant be a king in velvet and satin, or a 
 ward boss in a slouch-hat and striped waistcoat; when 
 individual intelligence does not rule, men are gov- 
 erned by brute force. 
 
 The function of democracy, as I have said many 
 times, is not good government. Its effect is to stimu- 
 late the people to broader outlook, to deeper interest 
 in public affairs. It is not to make good government, 
 but to make good citizens, that public affairs are con- 
 fided to the common man. The feeling of caste is 
 fatal to democracy. The fundamental tenet of civil 
 freedom is equality before the law. In other relations 
 it matters not what inequality develops; the more un- 
 likeness among men the better, because the more 
 varied the power and talents. But unlikeness is not 
 inequality. As "God is no respecter of persons," 
 so the law must not be. The state must show no 
 favoritism. It knows no black nor white, no wise nor 
 simple, no bond nor free. If it place one class above 
 another, it is a democracy no longer, and it is not a 
 democracy when any class of men tamely accept an 
 inferior place as theirs by right of birth. 
 
 The old education seemed to accentuate the ine- 
 qualities among men. This was because it took its tra- 
 
 ^5
 
 APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 
 
 ditions from aristocratic England, though its real effect 
 was to promote democracy. The great service of the 
 state university, the cap-sheaf of the public school 
 system, is that it carries the university into democracy 
 without impairing the essential qualities of either. It 
 furnishes a plain way for every student, the highest as 
 well as the lowest, from the commonest schooling to 
 the training that gives the highest power. So long as 
 the grass does not grow in ' ' the path from the farm- 
 house to the university, ' ' to borrow Ian MacLaren' s 
 phrase, so long is the Republic safe. So long as the 
 people can become enlightened and wise, rich and 
 poor alike, so long shall government of the people, 
 by the people, and for the people endure upon the 
 earth. 
 
 The need of democracy makes a special demand 
 upon the scholar. ' ' Eternal vigilance is the price of 
 liberty," and to the scholar on his watch-tower the 
 people look for this vigilance. It is the scholar's duty 
 everywhere, in season and out of season, to uphold 
 the sacredness of truth. He must possess, to quote 
 Huxley's words, "some knowledge, to the certainty 
 of which authority could add or take away neither one 
 jot nor tittle, and to which the tradition of a thousand 
 years is but as the hearsay of yesterday. ' ' The truth 
 it is the scholar's privilege to speak, his duty to pro- 
 claim, and that he does this is the best justification of 
 the university from which he drew his inspiration. 
 
 "Above all sects is truth." Above all parties and 
 
 66
 
 APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 
 
 conventions, above all pride and prejudice and passion, 
 arise the teachings of nature, the lessons of human 
 experience. To hear these teachings, to learn these 
 lessons, is the function of the university. To pro- 
 claim them wisely is the function of the scholar, and 
 it is his mission to help permeate the Republic with 
 his scholarship. The university must place as fixed 
 beacons in the swaying tides of democracy those men 
 and women who can never be moved by feeble cur- 
 rents, who know what to do, who have the will to do 
 it and the courage to abide the consequences. 
 
 And now, in a final word, I touch the university's 
 highest value. There is no good in a man's work 
 unless the man himself be good. The highest force 
 of the university lies in its moral training. Not in its 
 precepts and in its sermons, not by ceremonies and 
 formulae, are men influenced for good. If they were, 
 moral culture would be the easiest of all teaching. 
 Nothing costs less than words. But the experience 
 of the ages shows that words count for little in mat- 
 ters like this. It is the contagion of high thought, of 
 noble purpose, of lofty deed that "strikes the heart 
 of youth in flame." "Science," says William Lowe 
 Bryan, " knows no source of life but life. If virtue 
 and integrity are to be propagated, it must be by 
 people who possess them. If this child world about 
 us that we know and love is to grow up into righteous 
 manhood and womanhood, it must see how righteous- 
 ness looks when it is lived. That this may be so, 
 
 67
 
 APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 
 
 what task have we but to garrison our state witli men 
 and women? If we can do that, if we can have in 
 every square mile of our country a man or woman 
 whose total influence is a civilizing- power, we shall 
 get from our educational system all that it can give or 
 all that we can desire. ' ' 
 
 Wisdom, as I have said elsewhere, is knowing 
 what to do next. Virtue is doing it, and religion is 
 the heart-impulse that finds reason for wisdom and 
 virtue in harmony with the first cause at the heart of 
 things. To these matters the university can never be 
 indifferent. Wisdom, virtue and religion alike it is 
 its province to cultivate and intensify. It can accept 
 no shams in wisdom, still less in virtue or in religion; 
 but a life without these is the greatest sham of all. 
 The university cannot promote virtue and piety in any 
 machine fashion. If the college stand in loco parentis^ 
 with rod in hand and spy-glasses on its nose, it will not 
 do much for moral training. It will not make young 
 men moral nor religious by enforced attendance at 
 church or at prayer-meeting. It will not awaken the 
 spiritual element in their natures by any system of 
 demerit marks. This the college of our fathers in 
 English fashion tried to do, and with such ill success 
 that the university of today bears among the ignorant 
 the reproach of godlessness. 
 
 What the university can do is along manly 
 lines. It can cure the boy of petty vices and 
 childish trickery by making him a man, by giving
 
 APOLOGY FOR AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 
 
 him higher ideals, more serious views of life. It 
 may win by inspiration, not by fear. It must 
 strengthen the student in his search for truth. It 
 must encourage manliness in him through the putting 
 away of childish things. Let the thoughts of the stu- 
 dent be as free as air. Let him prove all things, and 
 he will hold fast to that which is good. Give him a 
 message to speak to others, and when he leaves the 
 university you need not fear for him, not the world, 
 nor the flesh, nor the devil. 
 
 The universities of America have grown enor- 
 mously in wealth and power within the last twenty- 
 five years. The next twenty-five years will tell the 
 same story. They have the confidence of the people 
 because they deserve its confidence, and the good 
 citizens of the Republic must give them trust and sup- 
 port. In the university, at last, the history of democ- 
 racy must be written. 
 
 69
 
 IV. 
 
 RELATIVE VALUES IN 
 KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 IT IS now forty years since Herbert Spencer 
 startled the educational world with this momen- 
 tous question, "What knowledge is of most 
 worth?" And. the schoolmen of that day in 
 England and America were thrown into dismay by the 
 question and its implication. For to many of them 
 the idea had never occurred that any knowledge had 
 any worth whatever. The value of higher education 
 in their eyes was mainly that of class distinction. It 
 marked out its possessor as one above the common 
 mass. It was the badge of having done "the proper 
 thing." It conferred for life upon the men who 
 received it the same satisfaction which is ascribed to 
 the "well-dressed feeling" among women. To dem- 
 onstrate its excellence required no analysis of its com- 
 ponent parts. For it was prescribed by the highest 
 authority known to the average Englishman, the au- 
 thority which has granted him the blessings of royalty, 
 of nobility, of ecclesiasticism — the authority of tra- 
 dition. And over higher education in England forty 
 years ago tradition exercised undisputed sway. The
 
 RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 badges of higher education were then of two sorts — 
 the pass badge, which conveyed social prestige only, 
 and the honor badge, which guaranteed intellectual 
 precedence, as none could bear it save after the se- 
 verest competitive struggles. Whether these struggles 
 were in themselves worthy, whether the senior wran- 
 gler had fought for anything of value to himself or to 
 any one else, few people gave themselves the trouble to 
 inquire. The honor of wrangling was its own reward. 
 
 But these few who did inquire led the intellectual 
 progress of the nation, and to their thoughts and 
 questionings the epoch-making essay of Herbert 
 Spencer gave voice. "What knowledge is of most 
 worth ? ' ' That knowledge may have intrinsic value, 
 Mr. Spencer insists. If this be true, the value of 
 some knowledge is greater than that of some other. 
 Furthermore, as life is short, and force is limited, the 
 useful knowledge should take precedence over the 
 less useful, the real over the conventional, the effective 
 over the ornamental. 
 
 It is clear that the knowledge is of most worth 
 which can be most directly wrought into the fabric of 
 our lives. That discipline is most valuable which will 
 best serve us in ' ' quietly unfolding our own individ- 
 ualities. ' ' 
 
 Thus far no standard had been agreed upon in 
 these regards, nor did those who had the affairs of 
 higher education in charge recognize even the pos- 
 sible existence of such a standard. To substitute a 
 
 71
 
 R E L A T I \^ E \^\ L U E S IN K N O W' L E D G E 
 
 rational curriculum for a traditional one, it is neces- 
 sary, Mr. Spencer maintained, to consider all these 
 matters soberly. ' ' We must settle which things it 
 concerns us most to know; or to use a word of 
 Bacon's, now unfortunately obsolete, — we must de- 
 termine the relative value of knowledges." 
 
 There are some forms of learning which can lead 
 to no generalizations, and can have no bearings, direct 
 or indirect, on the affairs of life. The study of old 
 coins is given by Spencer as an illustration of this. 
 Perhaps better examples could be drawn from our 
 ordinary courses of study. 
 
 Other forms of learning directly influence life. It 
 is the tendency of all knowledge to pass over into 
 action, for a thought is not completed until it is 
 wrought into deed. Therefore, that education which 
 leads men to better deeds is a gain to the individual 
 and to the community. It is well for the individual 
 and the community to give heed to this matter. We 
 should not merely think that a form of education is 
 good, trusting to tradition or to chance opinion. W^e 
 should know what it really signifies, and we should 
 not pass by the problem because its solution is not 
 easy. No social function or act is so important as 
 education. In the schools of today the history, per- 
 sonal, social and political, of the future is in large 
 part written. Therefore, no good thing is so desir- 
 able as good schools, no reform so far-reaching as 
 reform in education. 
 
 72
 
 RELATIX'E \'ALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 Mr. Spencer proceeds to ' ' classify in the order of 
 their importance the leading kinds of activity which 
 constitute human life. These may be naturally 
 arranged into: i. Those activities which directly 
 minister to self-preservation. 2. Those activities 
 which, by securing the necessities of life, indirectly 
 minister to self-preservation. 3. Those activities 
 which have for their end the rearing and discipline 
 of offspring. 4. Those activities which are involved 
 in the maintenance of proper social and political rela- 
 tions. 5. Those miscellaneous activities which make 
 up the leisure part of life devoted to the gratification 
 of the tastes and feelings. ' ' 
 
 These categories of effort are thus arranged, Mr. 
 Spencer claims, in something like their true order of 
 subordination. It is evident that without personal 
 sanity and safety, there can be no care for others. It 
 is clear that the development of the family precedes 
 that of the state, and that the performance of per- 
 sonal duties in general has first claim over the 
 enjoyment of art and the cultivation of the pleas- 
 ures of leisure. It is again evident that "acquire- 
 ment of any kind has two values — value as knowl- 
 edge and value as discipline, ' ' and both these values 
 must be considered in estimating their final influence 
 on conduct. 
 
 In the matter of self-preservation, the common 
 animal instincts are sufiicient to warn us against the 
 grosser dangers. But the less e\ident evils are not
 
 RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 the less real, and against many of these natural in- 
 stinct offers no protection. This is especially true of 
 the dangers which arise from the complexities of social 
 life, into which our gregarious impulses tend to drag 
 us, for with most men the instinct to follow the mass 
 is more powerful than the animal mstincts of warning. 
 The evils of bad food, bad air, of the use of stimu- 
 lants and narcotics, of dissipation and vice, are mat- 
 ters which an educated will ought to help us to avoid. 
 On all sides we find chronic ailment or physical weak- 
 ness which wisdom should have prevented. Hence 
 our education should strive to give wisdom. Weari- 
 ness, gloom, waste, ill health, due to avoidable causes, 
 are met everywhere about us, yet against these our 
 system of education provides no adequate safeguard. 
 
 "Is it not clear, ' ' says Mr. Spencer, ' ' that the 
 physical sins, partly our forefathers' and partly our 
 own, which produce this ill health deduct more from 
 complete living than anything else ? ' ' Besides the de- 
 terioration of life, we have the shortening of existence. 
 "If we call to mind how far the average duration of 
 life falls below the possible duration, we see how 
 immense is the loss. When to the numerous partial 
 deductions which bad health entails, we add this great 
 final deduction, it results that ordinarily more than 
 one-half of life is thrown away." 
 
 From this Mr. Spencer concludes "that, as vigor- 
 ous health and its accompanying high spirits are 
 larger elements of happiness than any other things 
 
 74
 
 RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 whatsoever, the teaching how to maintain them is a 
 teaching that should yield in moment to no other 
 whatever. ' ' 
 
 In this connection we may note that it is not merely 
 the rules of hygiene which are needed. It is such a 
 knowledge of the laws of bodily life as will enable the 
 student to develop his own rules of health. Hygiene 
 is applied physiology, but the physiology must come 
 first else it cannot be intelligently applied. The edu- 
 cated man should be placed in position to realize that 
 a science of physiology exists and that whatever is 
 done to the body has its certain inevitable effect. We 
 would not have "every man his own physician," but 
 we would give every man such a basis of scientific 
 knowledge and method that he could regulate his own 
 life safely and such that in critical cases he could rec- 
 ognize the presence of scientific knowledge in others. 
 He should have the training which would enable him 
 to tell a physician from a quack. 
 
 Most people, even those called educated, fail to 
 realize that there is such a thing as science or that 
 their own ignorance of law is not so good as some 
 other man's wisdom. A little real knowledge of their 
 own is needed to give respect for real knowledge. 
 Because of the fundamental value to the individual, 
 hygiene, with the laws and facts of physiology and 
 biology, should have a leading part in any well- 
 ordered scheme of education. 
 
 Under the second head come the details of profes- 
 
 75
 
 RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 sional training and of preparation for the special work 
 of life. Here again science plays a vastly greater 
 part than the special activities which at the time of 
 Mr. Spencer's essay monopolized higher education in 
 England and America. The sacred Tripos of Latin, 
 Greek and mathematics touched few matters vital to 
 the student's after-life. All practical success in almost 
 any of the specialized lines of effort must stand on a 
 foundation of science. Physics, chemistry, biolog}', 
 mechanics, rest at the base of all the great industries. 
 Yet the universities made scanty provision for these 
 subjects, and those who sought them were forced to 
 devote most of their time to artificial or irrelevant 
 studies which they did not want. All this involved a 
 great waste, and the waste was twofold. Science grew 
 up outside of the university and lacked what the uni- 
 versity alone could give. The practical men of science 
 were self-taught and therefore imperfectly taught. 
 They missed the university culture, its breadth and 
 severity of discipline, and they were likely to miss at 
 the same time the essence of science, the method of 
 patient investigation. The habit of snap judgment 
 and the method of the rule of thumb condemned most 
 of them to mediocrity. Here and there some strug- 
 gling genius, some Faraday or Huxley, was able to 
 rise to the height of the university-trained men of 
 science of Germany. But these cases were excep- 
 tional. Men of science in general were depriv^ed of 
 the university training they needed, because the uni- 
 
 76
 
 RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 versity was given to play rather than to work, to con- 
 ventionalities rather than to realities. 
 
 On the other hand, the man trained in the univer- 
 sity came into professional or scientific studies too late 
 for the best results. To acquire skill with the micro- 
 scope or scalpel, one must get at it betimes. It is too 
 late to wait till he has mastered the classics of Greece 
 and Rome. So with skill in chemical experiment and 
 physical manipulation. The student must have hand 
 and eye and brain alert before the formative period of 
 youth is over. He must keep in touch with his future 
 career throughout his university course if this course 
 is to be a real help in life. 
 
 It is surely a mistake to have any great break in 
 the continuity of education. The sooner one knows 
 what he is good for and strikes out for it the better, 
 though he rarely regrets the length or the fulness of 
 his preparation after his career is once decided. The 
 chosen career gives a clue through the labyrinth of 
 knowledge. It does not matter how long the way if 
 all the while he has a clue to follow. The ability to 
 see one's way to realities through a multitude of non- 
 essentials is the basis of personal success. 
 
 The first relation of the child to external things is 
 expressed in this: What can I do with it? What is 
 its relation to me? The sensation goes over into 
 thought, the thought into action. Thus the impres- 
 sion of the object is built into the Httle universe of the 
 mind. The object and the action it implies are closely 
 
 77
 
 RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 associated. As more objects are apprehended, more 
 complex relations arise, but the primal condition 
 remains, What can I do with it? Sensation, thought, 
 action — this is the natural sequence of each com- 
 pleted mental process. As volition passes over into 
 action, so does science into art, knowledge into power, 
 wisdom into virtue. 
 
 By the study of realities wisdom is built up. In 
 the relations of objects he can touch and move, the 
 child comes to find the limitations of his powers, the 
 laws which govern phenomena, and to which his 
 actions must be in obedience. So long as he deals 
 with realities, these laws stand in their proper relation. 
 * ' So simple, so natural, so true, ' ' says Agassiz. 
 "This is the charm of dealing with nature herself. 
 She brings us back to absolute truth so often as we 
 wander. ' ' 
 
 So long as a child is led from one reality to 
 another, never lost in words or in abstractions, so 
 long this natural relation remains. What is it to me ? 
 is the basis of personal virtue. What can I do with 
 it? is the beginning of wisdom. 
 
 It is the function of science to find out the real 
 nature of the universe. Its purpose is to eliminate 
 the personal equation and the human equation in 
 statements of truth. By methods of precision in 
 thought and instruments of precision in observation, 
 it seeks to make our knowledge of the small, the dis- 
 tant, the invisible, the mysterious, as accurate as our 
 
 78
 
 RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 knowledge of the common things men have handled 
 for ages. It seeks to make our knowledge of com- 
 mon things exact and precise, that exactness and pre- 
 cision may be translated into action. The ultimate 
 end of science, as well as its initial impulse, is the 
 regulation of human conduct. To make right action 
 possible and prevalent is the function of science. The 
 "world as it is" is its province. In proportion as 
 our actions conform to the conditions of the world as 
 it is, do we find the world beautiful, glorious, divine. 
 The truth of the world as it is must be the ultimate 
 inspiration of art, poetry and religion. The world as 
 men have agreed to say it is, is quite another matter. 
 The less our children hear of this, the less they will 
 have to unlearn in their future development. 
 
 When a child is taken from nature to the schools, 
 he is usually brought into an atmosphere of conven- 
 tionality. Here he is not to do, but to imitate; not to 
 see, nor to handle, nor to create, but to remember. 
 He is, moreover, to remember not his own realities, 
 but the written or spoken ideas of others. He is 
 dragged through a wilderness of grammar, with thick- 
 ets of diacritical marks, into the desert of metaphysics. 
 He is taught to do right, not because right action is in 
 the nature of things, the nature of himself and the 
 things about him, but because he will be punished 
 somehow if he does not. 
 
 He is given a medley of words without ideas. He 
 is taught declensions and conjugations without number 
 
 79
 
 RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 in his own and other tongues. He learns things easily 
 by rote; so his teachers fill him with rote - learning. 
 Hence, grammar and language have become stereo- 
 typed as teaching, without a thought as to whether undi- 
 gested words may or may not be intellectual poison. 
 And as the good heart depends upon the good brain, 
 undigested ideas become moral poison as well. No one 
 can tell how much of the bad morals and worse manners 
 of the conventional college boy of the past has been 
 due to intellectual dyspepsia from undigested words. 
 ' ' Sciences can be learned by rote, but wisdom not. ' ' 
 This is an old adage, going back to Tristram Shandy. 
 By rote one can learn sciences but not science. 
 
 In such manner the child is bound to lose his 
 orientation as to the forces which surround him. If 
 he does not recover it, he will spend his life in a world 
 of mixed fancies and realities. Nonsense will seem 
 half truth, and his appreciation of truth will be 
 vitiated by lack of clearness of definition — by its 
 close relation to nonsense. That this is no slight 
 defect, can be shown in every community. There is 
 no intellectual craze so absurd as not to have a fol- 
 lowing among educated men and women. There is 
 no scheme for the renovation of the social order so 
 silly that educated men will not invest their money in 
 it. There is no medical fraud so shameless that edu- 
 cated men will not give it their certificate. There is 
 no nonsense so unscientific that men called educated 
 will not accept it as science. 
 
 80
 
 RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 It should be a function of the schools to build up 
 common sense. Folly should be crowded out of the 
 schools. We have furnished costly lunatic asylums 
 for its accommodation. That our schools are in a 
 degree responsible for current follies, there can be no 
 doubt. We have many teachers who have never seen 
 a truth in their lives. There are many who have never 
 felt the impact of an idea. There are many who have 
 lost their own orientation in their youth, and who 
 have never since been able to point out the sunrise to 
 others. It is no extravagance of language to say that 
 diacritical marks lead to the cocaine habit; nor that 
 the ethics of metaphysics points the way to the higher 
 foolishness. There are many links in the chain of de- 
 cadence, but its finger-posts all point downward. 
 
 For the group of activities relating to the family, 
 the education of forty years ago made no sort of prep- 
 aration. Mr. Spencer imagines some antiquary puz- 
 zling over a pile of our school-books and college 
 examination questions and trying to derive from them 
 the theory of education on which they were based. 
 ' ' This must have been the curriculum for their celi- 
 bates, ' ' we may fancy him concluding. ' ' I perceive 
 here an elaborate preparation for many things : espe- 
 cially for reading the books of extinct nations and of 
 coexisting nations (from which indeed it seems clear 
 that these people had very little worth reading in 
 their own tongue); but I find no reference whatever 
 to the bringing up of children. They could not have 
 
 gi
 
 RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 been so absurd as to omit all training for this gravest 
 of responsibilities. Evidently, then, this was the 
 school course of one of their monastic orders." 
 
 As a result of this lack of knowledge, we have 
 thousands of needless deaths in childhood, other thou- 
 sands of those who survive feeble and who might have 
 been strong — events commonly regarded as misfor- 
 tunes, " as a visitation of providence." "Thinking 
 after the prevalent chaotic fashion, they assume that 
 these evils come without causes : or that the causes 
 are supernatural. ' ' Of a piece with the ignorance of 
 the basis of physical well-being in the family, is the 
 carelessness of its intellectual and moral well-being. 
 The unadapted education of the father, the frivolous 
 training of the mother, show their natural result in 
 neglected or wrongly educated children. The school 
 is an adjunct to the home, a continuation of the envi- 
 ronment of care which the parents bestow on the 
 children. If the home knows no wisdom in its rela- 
 tion to the child, the school, which is an outgrowth 
 from parental interest, will not do any better. And 
 in the education of forty years ago, Mr. Spencer found 
 no fitness for the development of wise parenthood. 
 There existed no reason why the senior wrangler of 
 Oxford should be wiser as a father, or the prize pupil 
 of the finishing school happier as a mother, than the 
 most illiterate peasant of the English fields. 
 
 Equally inadequate was the training for citizenship. 
 Economics as a science had no place in the curriculum. 
 
 82
 
 RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 Questions of justice, administration or jurisprudence 
 received little attention in the universities, while in 
 the study of history the realities were neglected, and 
 the mind was filled with useless names, dates, details 
 of wanton battles and the gossip of the idle. ' ' Fa- 
 miliarity with court intrigues, plots, usurpations, or 
 the like, and with all the personalities accompanying 
 them, aids very little in elucidating the principles on 
 which national welfare depends. ' ' The great mass of 
 so-called historical facts could in no way influence our 
 actions in life, could not help us in learning how to 
 live completely. Such are ' ' facts from which no con- 
 clusions could be drawn, unorganizable facts, and 
 therefore facts which can be of no use in establishing 
 principles of conduct, which is the chief use of facts." 
 ' ' What in history it really concerns us to know is the 
 natural history of society, ' ' and for this no provision 
 was then made in the schools of England, nor were 
 the professors of that day acquainted with its precepts 
 or in sympathy with its teachings. 
 
 In political and social relations the university 
 should be the center of progress. From its re- 
 searches should come gain to the individual man, the 
 growth of rational democracy. The universities of 
 England have been, on the other hand, the centers 
 of reaction. They were forty years ago wholly given 
 over to mediaevalism. The spirit of caste found in 
 them its strongest advocates, and their influence was 
 always on the side of larger power for those who 
 
 83
 
 RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 constituted the privileged classes. When this is true, the 
 university is not doing its part to make good citizens 
 of its students. Nor could it do so where the story 
 of the privileged classes constitutes the only history 
 with which it tries to deal. 
 
 In the fifth division of human activities, esthetic 
 culture and the charms of leisure hours, Mr. Spencer 
 finds the current system of education scarcely less 
 defective. These matters constitute the flower of edu- 
 cation. The florist cultivates the plant for the sake of 
 the flower, but he knows that without care of the roots 
 and leaves the production of the flower is impossible. 
 Just as roots and stem and leaves precede the flower 
 and are necessary to it, a flower being a branch 
 transformed in the interests of beauty, so must the 
 production of healthy civilized life precede esthetic 
 culture. 
 
 But the current education aims directly at the 
 flower. It neglects the plant for the sake of it. "In 
 anxiety for elegance it forgets substance." "Accom- 
 plishments, the fine arts, belles-lettres and all those 
 things which are the efflorescence of civilization should 
 be wholly subordinate to that knowledge and disci- 
 pline on which civilization rests. ' ' Moreover, ' ' the 
 highest art of every kind is based on science, — with- 
 out science there can be neither perfect production 
 nor full appreciation." "Innate faculty alone will 
 not sufiice, but must have the aid of organized train- 
 ing. Intuition will do much but it will not do all.
 
 RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 Only when genius is married to science can the high- 
 est results be produced." 
 
 Thus Mr. Spencer comes to the final answer to his 
 question: "What knowledge is of most worth?" 
 And to this question as a whole and to all parts of it 
 he finds one answer : ' ' Science. ' ' 
 
 Science is organized knowledge. It should take 
 precedence on the one hand over knowledge that is 
 disorganized, and on the other over classified informa- 
 tion of whatever sort which is merely conventional, 
 not resting on the eternal verities, nor pointing the 
 way to wiser conduct of life. 
 
 After this rapid survey of Mr. Spencer's position, 
 we may raise two inquiries. What change of per- 
 spective must we make as a result of forty years of 
 activity in education ? Do the keen criticisms of forty 
 years ago hold against the work of the American uni- 
 versity of today? 
 
 As to the first matter, the point of view seems 
 changed in one respect. Throughout his essay Mr. 
 Spencer seems to aim at building the ideal curricu- 
 lum, the course of study best suited to the develop- 
 ment and happiness of the average cultivated man. 
 The fact that there are other types of men than the 
 average, he seems in some measure to overlook. 
 There are some men, for example, who are born to 
 minister to the esthetic feelings of others and to these 
 alone. There are some men, "Greek-minded and 
 Roman-minded men," as Emerson called them, who 
 
 8S
 
 RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 will find no surer road to culture and effectiveness 
 than the one trodden in Oxford and Cambridge half a 
 century ago. The studies that ' ' open, invigorate and 
 enrich the mind," to borrow a phrase of Macaulay, 
 can never be obsolete with those whom they thus 
 affect. The thoroughness and continuity of these 
 courses at their best gives something of the exactness 
 of knowledge and loyalty to truth which characterize 
 the man of science. To force a musician or a poet or 
 a classicist to traverse the whole range of the sciences 
 might be as unwise or as futile as to keep a Faraday 
 writing Latin verses. Moreover, on the exactness of 
 this training in the old Tripos many great investigators 
 have based the thoroughness of their methods. It is, 
 again, not needful for all men to learn all science. If 
 it be needful, it is impossible. From one science the 
 methods of all science may be learned. Respect for 
 knowledge is one of the noblest lessons which real 
 knowledge teaches. 
 
 In other words, Mr. Spencer does not seem clearly 
 to realize that each course of study must be individual. 
 Each man should follow, as near as may be, that line 
 of effort which will do the most for him, which will 
 enable him to realize the best possibilities of his own 
 life. There is no single curriculum, no ideal curricu- 
 lum, and any prearranged course of advanced study 
 is an affront to the mind of the real student. We 
 may admit that the great need of civilized man in 
 each of Mr, Spencer's five categories is science. But 
 
 86
 
 RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 the need is rather that science should exist in the com- 
 munity, that men should realize the value of exact 
 knowledge and respect its teachings. Among men 
 must exist a division of labor. No one man can 
 master even a single branch of science. Mastery 
 means willingness to forego knowledge in other fields. 
 A fixed curriculum even in science, covering a wide 
 range, would necessitate superficiality in all. The real 
 need, as indicated by Mr. Spencer, is therefore met 
 by full provision for the teaching of each of the 
 sciences he names and many others, while among 
 these the student is free to choose for himself. We 
 ask not that science be placed in the curriculum, for 
 we can tolerate no curriculum. The course of study 
 itself is a relic of mediaevalism. We ask that science 
 be made accessible to all and in all stages of educa- 
 tion. The rest will take care of itself. 
 
 A minor criticism is this. Mr. Spencer seems to 
 lay all stress on the subject and to say little of the 
 teacher. He could have shown the unfitness of the 
 teaching force as readily as the unfitness of the sub- 
 jects taught. In fact, the two deficiencies go together. 
 A true teacher, thorough, alert, devoted, is not a re- 
 actionist. He will not place the millineries of culture 
 above the realities, and dead conventionalities above 
 the contact with the living laws of God. Wherever a 
 great teacher has arisen under any system in any sub- 
 ject, something of the facts and methods of science 
 has come in with him. In the very day in which 
 
 87
 
 R E L A T I \' E VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 Spencer wrote, Agassiz taught science in Harvard, 
 both subject and method being- dealt with in the most 
 modern fashion, one on which the twentieth century, 
 or the twenty- fifth, can offer no improvement. 
 
 Let me recall the discussion, also some forty years 
 old, between Emerson and Agassiz. 
 
 Emerson, himself one of the sanest and broadest 
 of men, saw in the work of Agassiz elements of 
 danger, whereby the time-honored symmetry of Har- 
 vard might be destroyed. In a lecture on universi- 
 ties, in Boston, Emerson made some such statement 
 as this: That natural history was " getting too great 
 an ascendency at Harvard ' ' ; that it ' ' w^as out of pro- 
 portion to the other departments." And he hinted 
 that ' ' a check-rein would not be amiss on the enthu- 
 siastic young professor who is responsible for this. ' ' 
 
 "Do you not see," Agassiz wrote to Emerson, 
 ' ' that the way to bring about a well-proportioned 
 development of all the resources of the university is 
 not to check the natural history department, but to 
 stimulate all the others? Not that the zoological 
 school grows too fast, but that the others do not grow 
 fast enough? This sounds invidious and perhaps 
 boastful somewhat; but it is you," he said, "and not 
 I, who have instituted the comparison. It strikes me 
 that you have not hit upon the best remedy for this 
 want of balance. If symmetry is to be obtained by 
 cutting down the most vigorous growth, it seems to 
 me it would be better to have a little irregularity here
 
 RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 and there. In stimulating, by every means in my 
 power, the growth of the museum and the means of 
 education connected with it, I am far from having a 
 selfish wish to see my own department tower above 
 the others. I wish that every one of my colleagues 
 would make it hard for me to keep up with him; and 
 there are some, I am happy to say, who are ready to 
 run a race with me." 
 
 In these words of Agassiz may be seen the keynote 
 of modern university progress. The university should 
 be the great refuge-hut on the ultimate boundaries of 
 knowledge, from which, daily and weekly, adventur- 
 ous bands set out on voyages of discovery. It should 
 be the Upernavik from which Polar travelers draw 
 their supplies, and as the shoreless sea of the unknown 
 meets us on every side, the same house of refuge and 
 supply will serve for a thousand different exploring 
 parties, moving out in every direction into the infinite 
 ocean. This is the university ideal of the future. 
 Some day it will be felt as a loss and a crime if any 
 one who could be an explorer is forced to become 
 anything else. And even then, after countless ages 
 of education and scientific progress, the true univer- 
 sity will still stand on the boundaries, its walls still 
 washed by the same unending sea, the boundless 
 ocean of possible human knowledge. 
 
 Emerson once wrote to his daughter: " It matters 
 little what your studies are: it all lies in who your 
 teacher is." For he saw clearly one of the most 
 
 89
 
 RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 important facts in education, that a great teacher never 
 fails to leave a great mark on every student whose life 
 he touches. 
 
 The essential character of the university is Lehr- 
 freiheit, the freedom of the teacher to give out the best 
 that is in him, and Lernfreihcit, the freedom of the 
 student to demand the best that the teacher can give. 
 The one develops the other. The freedom of the 
 student to ask what he needs stimulates the teacher to 
 give what he demands. The teacher who can give his 
 best and find it appreciated forthwith rises to higher 
 levels of power and the standard of his associates 
 must rise to keep pace w^ith him. 
 
 Do the criticisms of Herbert Spencer of forty 
 years ago apply to the American university of today? 
 Are the fundamentals of self-preservation, profes- 
 sional soundness, family integrity, good citizenship, 
 sacrificed to a conventional culture, part aesthetic, part 
 aristocratic, part traditional, and in all ways remote 
 from the needs of life? To say that this is not true in 
 the American university of today, is to say that its 
 work is democratic, practical, scientific and free. 
 That it IS all this, I believe we can readily show, and 
 the facts readily appear m the records of those institu- 
 tions which have been free to develop with the growth 
 of the Republic. We may take Harvard University 
 as an example, the oldest and best established, and on 
 the whole the most typical. Its ideals are certainly 
 very different from those of Oxford forty years ago, 
 
 90
 
 RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 equally different from those of the old Harvard. In 
 the first place, the institution is essentially democratic, 
 not aristocratic. Its work is planned to meet the 
 needs of the actual people, not to separate a choice 
 few as a class apart. Its function is to fill democracy 
 with men fitted to make the rule of the people the 
 best government that exists. And this fact the people 
 fully appreciate. It is the sons of men, not the sons 
 of aristocrats, who throng the halls of Harvard. The 
 large numbers testify to the largeness of the need 
 which Harvard meets. And the diploma of Harvard 
 no longer sets a man apart as a member of a special 
 or privileged class. It testifies simply that he is "a 
 youth of promise," fitted to take his place in the 
 work of the world. 
 
 With the democracy among students comes the 
 democracy of studies. The old-time Tripos held sway 
 because its chosen studies were sacred while all others 
 were plebeian. In the new education all powers of 
 the human mind are sacred alike. It is the business 
 of the university to train them, to stimulate them all, 
 not to repress the many for the sake of the few. The 
 student of the human body, the investigator of matter 
 and force, the lover of Greek art, all meet on equal 
 ground on the university's hospitable campus. No 
 longer are the prizes of scholarship offered for play 
 while the serious worker among things as they are 
 encounters a barred door. The rewards of knowing 
 and doing are offered to all alike, and these are the 
 
 91
 
 RELATIVE \' A LUES IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 only legitimate prizes within the scope of the univer- 
 sity. To place all men and all studies on one footing, 
 is to make a real Republic of the university. This 
 once done, the question of ' ' What knowledge is of 
 most worth ? " is one for each man to answer for him- 
 self. What knowledge is worth most to me? And 
 the very attempt to answer this question is in itself 
 one of the most important factors in higher education. 
 That each should answer it for himself is the essential 
 element in the freedom of the university, and each 
 year as it passes sees the American university more 
 democratic and more free. 
 
 That the work should be practical means that it 
 should be conducted by competent teachers. Darwin 
 tells us that the lectures in geology in Edinburgh in 
 his day were so "incredibly dull" that he resolved 
 that he would have ' ' nothing more to do with the 
 subject, nor ever to read a book upon it." Such 
 teaching was not practical, for the subject-matter of 
 geology is of interest to whoever comes into intelli- 
 gent contact with it. The most practical teaching is 
 that in which the subject is borne most strongly to the 
 student's mind. The professorship in Harvard, let us 
 say, is not given as a reward for social or ecclesias- 
 tical distinction, or for a competitive tour de force 
 in memory. It is given to those scholars who know 
 how to teach, who know how to reach the heart of their 
 subjects for themselves and to bring their students to 
 the same vitalizing contact. And in the choice of 
 
 92
 
 RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 teachers the demands of democracy are always con- 
 sidered. In each department is wanted the best that 
 there is, and no department of rational human interest 
 is overlooked or slighted. 
 
 Is the American university scientific? If we 
 answer Yes, we do not mean that science only is 
 studied, nor even that every individual student is 
 giving attention to science. * 'America means oppor- 
 tunity," and the American university is an intensi- 
 fication of this same definition of Emerson's. The 
 university does its part, not in forcing the student 
 over a curriculum of all sciences or of any sciences. 
 It has only to make generous provision for the teach- 
 ing of each and all of them, and to leave the rest to 
 the student. The cost of teaching science is far 
 greater than that of teaching language and mathe- 
 matics. The vast endowments of our great universi- 
 ties of today find their justification in this fact. These 
 schools are trying honestly to bring before the student 
 the possibilities of human knowledge. The individual 
 sciences are not favored at the expense of the tradi- 
 tional subjects. More money is spent on the teaching 
 of Greek today than ever before, but Greek no longer 
 occupies an exclusive position. It is not an object of 
 worship while physiology is an object of contempt. 
 Once thrown to the democratic level, we find the clas- 
 sics of Greece really exalted. Homer and Euripides 
 are studied now for their own sakes, not for the badge 
 or hood or gown or social distinction that they may 
 
 93
 
 RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 in a roundabout way confer. So they are studied by 
 scholars with the methods and purposes of scholars, 
 not by recalcitrant schoolboys, driven over an unwill- 
 ing race-course in response to the demands of tradi- 
 tion. To say that the university is scientific is to say 
 that it is genuine, that it is devoted to realities, not to 
 make-believes and shams. It is said that ' ' respect the 
 outside ' ' was a favored motto of the old education in 
 England. But science does not respect the outside. 
 It aims to go to the very heart of things, and in propor- 
 tion to the extension of its spirit do we witness the dis- 
 appearance of caste and conventions. The things men 
 agree to pretend to be true vanish at the touch of truth. 
 It is true that we have in America not a few insti- 
 tutions m which the traditional ideals are still cher- 
 ished and to which the criticisms of Mr. Spencer still 
 apply in full force. But these are few and not typical, 
 and their influence is not growing. The students go 
 where they can get what they want, and the Zeitgeist 
 responds to their demand. The American university 
 of today is molded by the best scientific thought of 
 the century. One of the voices to which it has re- 
 sponded is that of Herbert Spencer. And the essence 
 of his criticism has found positive expression in the 
 constructive work of the great university-builders of 
 our Republic. Let the young man or young woman 
 of today ask, ' ' What knowledge is of most worth to 
 me?" In the course of study of our American 
 universities will be found the unhampered answer, the 
 
 94
 
 RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 answer of Herbert Spencer, if you like, the answer 
 of Agassiz, or Emerson or Eliot or White, the ma- 
 terials for your own answer, whatever it be. And 
 whatever you may require, you will not be turned 
 away empty-handed. 
 
 The progress of the next half-century will be, not 
 in development of new lines in education, but in inten- 
 sification of the work we are now doing. It will be 
 in developing better teachers and in closer contact 
 between teacher and pupil. We must realize that the 
 needs of the student form the sole reason for the uni- 
 versity's existence. It is built that it may help men. 
 Forty years ago in English universities the good 
 teacher was the very rare exception and was prac- 
 tically found only among the private tutors dependent 
 for a living on the young men they taught. The 
 university professors held their positions as sinecures, 
 rewards for birth or breeding or efforts in the past, 
 but requiring no expenditure of force in the present. 
 This condition is not wholly vanished from the English 
 universities and its shadow still darkens even the uni- 
 versities of America. 
 
 There was a time when the ambition to be a good 
 teacher was regarded in our colleges as an ignoble 
 one. The college professor was a being of a higher 
 order, temporarily in hard luck, because he was 
 forced for a living to sit out his days before classes of 
 unwilling boys. To be above one's work was held as 
 the maintenance of proper academic dignity. 
 
 95
 
 RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 This condition is rapidly passing. The college 
 professor, like other men, is judged by what he does. 
 Yet even now, not half the men who hold the profes- 
 sor's chair can be called good teachers. The real 
 work of every institution rests on a very few men. 
 The others mark time and assign tasks, their per- 
 sonality counting for very little. The progress of 
 education demands that each man who holds a college 
 chair should directly contribute to higher education. 
 It is not his knowledge alone which concerns the stu- 
 dent. His effectiveness depends upon his personality. 
 The university of the future will demand the character 
 of the great teacher, the man who believes in truth, 
 who believes in men, and who knows how to lead men 
 to the highest truth he knows. 
 
 The best teacher, other things being equal, is the 
 one who comes nearest to the student. To bring the 
 teacher close to the student is to multiply his influ- 
 ence many-fold. The very usefulness of our univer- 
 sities tends to weaken' the bond of personal influence. 
 The man is lost in the mass, and because the mass is 
 so great, cheap or temporary help is brought in, and 
 the professor is pushed away still farther. It is the 
 problem of the modern university to remedy this con- 
 dition. In the old-time college every one knew every 
 one else, and if perchance in the small number one 
 great teacher found place, the lives of all the others 
 were richer in consequence. But in the university of 
 today, with its array of great teachers, of noble 
 
 9'-'
 
 R E L A T I \' E \' A L U E S IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 investigators, of men whose names are known wher- 
 ever civilization extends, the mere student may see none 
 of them. Temporary assistants at a thousand a year, 
 less experienced and less capable than those he left in 
 the academy, may be the only teachers he can reach. 
 When this is the condition, higher education has lost 
 a large part of its effectiveness. 
 
 The keynote to the education of the future must 
 be "Constructive Individualism." The foundation of 
 its method must be * ' knowing men by name. ' ' This 
 is no new discovery. It was not invented in Palo 
 Alto, nor yet in Harvard, nor in Michigan. It is as 
 old as Socrates or Plato. It has been recognized 
 wherever the training of men has been taken seriously. 
 
 A Japanese writer, Uchimura, says this of educa- 
 tion in old Japan: "We were not taught in classes 
 then. The grouping of soul-bearing human beings 
 into classes, as sheep upon Australian farms, was not 
 known in our old schools. Our teachers believed, I 
 think instinctively, that man (^persona ) is unclassifi- 
 able; that he must be dealt with personally — i. e., 
 face to face, and soul to soul. So they schooled us 
 one by one — each according to his idiosyncrasies, 
 physical, mental and spiritual. They knew each one 
 of us by name. And as asses were never harnessed 
 with horses, there was but little danger of the latter 
 being beaten down into stupidity, or the former driven 
 into the valedictorians' graves. In this respect, there- 
 fore, our old-time teachers in Japan agreed with 
 
 97
 
 RELATIVE VALUES IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 Socrates and Plato in their theory of education. So 
 naturally the relation between students and teachers 
 was the closest one possible. We never called our 
 teachers by that unapproachable name, Professor. 
 We called them Sensei, 'men born before' — so 
 named because of their prior birth, not only in respect 
 of the time of their appearance in this world, which 
 was not always the case, but also of their coming into 
 the understanding of the truth. It was this, our idea 
 of relationship between teacher and student, which 
 made some of us to comprehend at once the intimate 
 relation between the Master and the disciples which 
 we found in the Christian Bible. When we found 
 written therein that the disciple is not above his 
 master, nor the servant above his lord; or that the 
 good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep, and other 
 similar sayings, we took them almost instinctively as 
 things known to us long before. ' ' 
 
 Thus it was in old Japan. Thus should it be in 
 new America. In such manner do the oldest ideas 
 forever renew their youth, when these ideas are 
 based, not on tradition or convention, but in the 
 nature of man. 
 
 We may thus answer Mr. Spencer's question, 
 "What knowledge is of most worth?" in this way: 
 " That which is worth most to me." And the mis- 
 sion of the university is to furnish this knowledge, 
 just this knowledge which I want, and to furnish it 
 to me. 
 
 98
 
 V. 
 
 RECENT TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 IT HAS long been recognized that a four years' 
 college course, after the course in the secondary 
 school, and preceding the course in professional 
 training, holds the young man a very long time 
 in school. Few men are prepared for college, as 
 matters stand, before the age of seventeen or eighteen. 
 Few graduate under twenty-one or twenty-two, and 
 the professional school demands the years to twenty- 
 four, twenty-five or twenty-six. After this follows 
 another year or two of petty beginnings, and by 
 the time the young man is fairly under way, he 
 has reached the age of thirty. If from ill health, 
 hesitation of policy, or for any other reason, the 
 college course is delayed, the entrance on profes- 
 sional life becomes correspondingly later. By this 
 process, the ancient rule of health, "Rise early, be- 
 fore you are twenty-five, if possible," is persistently 
 violated. 
 
 There is no advantage in merely putting in time 
 m college at the expense of serious work outside. 
 Every day in school should justify itself. Wherever 
 
 99
 
 TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 
 
 time can be saved without sacrifice of results, it is a 
 real gain in education. 
 
 The college course has been systematically length- 
 ened within the past twenty years. It has been made 
 longer that it may be enriched and made effective. 
 To this end, subject after subject of an elementary 
 character has been thrown backward to the prepara- 
 tory schools. In this, there are some advantages. 
 The college with more advanced pupils becomes more 
 serious and more enlightened. It offers a broader 
 range of subjects, and touches the interests of a much 
 larger number of men. 
 
 On the other hand, students are often kept in 
 their local high schools until they are tired of the 
 place and tired of the work. Higher education begins 
 when a boy leaves home and learns to depend on 
 himself. Because the high schools have an inade- 
 quate and over-feminine teaching force, very many 
 boys who might have been helped by a college edu- 
 cation abandon school long before they are ready to 
 enter college. There is a constant pressure on the 
 preparatory school to undertake more work and to 
 do it more rapidly. The preparatory school tries to 
 do this, with some success and also with serious draw- 
 backs, because the results are tested by the quantity 
 rather than the quality of work done. 
 
 The college has not yet devised a qualitative scale 
 of admission. Not how much the student knows, but 
 what is the nature of his ability and training, should
 
 TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 
 
 be the test of preparation. The college ought to 
 insist that the student shall be able to go on with the 
 higher work successfully, rather than that he should 
 have to his credit such and such subjects, or their 
 equivalents. But it is easier to make numerical esti- 
 mates than to test the student's mettle. It is easier to 
 measure cordwood than culture, and our tests of prep- 
 aration are based on the method used in estimating 
 cordwood. 
 
 The college should receive men whenever they are 
 ready for its freedom and ready to do its work. If it 
 can devise a sure method, it may ' ' dip down ' ' into 
 the lower schools and take their best students when 
 they have reached fitness for independent study. 
 
 Having turned the freshman year of former days 
 over to the preparatory schools, the college can 
 now do correspondingly more in its senior year. 
 Shall it use this time for general culture, or for pro- 
 fessional training? Here the pressure to yield this 
 year to the professional schools makes itself felt. In 
 America, the professional schools have vainly tried to 
 train men who have no foundation of knowledge or 
 discipline; to make lawyers and physicians out of men 
 with neither scientific knowledge nor literary culture. 
 This has failed, and in its failure has brought all 
 American professions, except engineering, into disre- 
 pute. 
 
 The reputable professional school demands, or will 
 soon demand, a college education as a prerequisite for
 
 TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 
 
 entrance. No man with less training than this can 
 do specialized work in university fashion. The col- 
 lege course represents a degree of enlightenment and 
 a kind of training without which professional success 
 and usefulness are not possible. The extension of 
 the elective system has enabled the college to meet 
 the needs of all kinds of men of brains and force. 
 To shorten the college course to three years is to 
 yield the last year to the professional schools, and 
 these sorely need the time. 
 
 Another influence tending in this direction comes 
 from the German educational system. In Germany, 
 the local high school, or gymnasium, takes, let us 
 say, two of the years we give to the college. The 
 professional school or university takes the rest. The 
 university gives no general culture or general training. 
 The gymnasium gives nothing else, and its curriculum 
 is as rigid as that of the university is free. 
 
 While German educators are considering the pos- 
 sible introduction of the college as an intermediate 
 between the college and the university, there is in 
 America a tendency toward the obliteration of the 
 college, by merging its higher years into the univer- 
 sity, its lower into the preparatory school. 
 
 It is true that in the gymnasium students get on 
 faster than in our high schools and preparatory 
 schools. The German student is as far along in his 
 studies at sixteen as the American at eighteen. This 
 is due to the fact that American life makes more out- 
 
 lOl
 
 TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 
 
 side demands on boys than life in Germany does. 
 The American boy is farther along in self-reliance and 
 in knowledge of the world at sixteen than the German 
 at twenty. The American college freshman, espe- 
 cially if brought up in the West, knows a thousand 
 things, outside of his books and more useful, because 
 more true than most of what his books contain. He 
 can ride, drive, swim, row, hunt, take care of horses, 
 play games, run an engine, or attend to some form of 
 business, while the German boy cannot even black his 
 own shoes. As education is no perquisite of the rich, 
 the American boy has very likely been obliged to 
 earn the money he spends on his own education. To 
 do this he loses time in scholastic marks, but in the 
 long run this is clear gain, provided that he does not 
 abandon his education. The boy who graduates at 
 twenty-four is often more than three years ahead of 
 the one who takes his bachelor's degree at twenty- 
 one. To lose time in testing life is not a loss at all, 
 and the American boy is the stronger for his early 
 escape from leading strings. When his university 
 training is over, he is not merely learned; he is ade- 
 quate, and the higher ideal of personal effectiveness 
 supplements the German ideal of erudition, or the 
 English ideal of personal culture. 
 
 It is proposed now to let a man graduate in three 
 years, provided he can do four years' average work 
 in that time. This is no new proposition and needs 
 no discussion. Many men can do in three years more 
 
 103
 
 TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 
 
 than the average man can in four. In many institu- 
 tions, in most of those in the West, this privilege has 
 been allowed for many years. If guarded from abuse, 
 and if the possibility of mere cramming is excluded, 
 there can be no objection to it. In many institutions 
 a man graduates whenever he has done the required 
 work, and the propriety of this needs no argument. 
 
 But the average man cannot do the required work 
 in less than four years. What shall we do for him ? 
 It is practicable to reduce the amount of work re- 
 quired for graduation. This would still leave the 
 college course longer than it was twenty years ago, 
 because so much more is now required for admission 
 to college. 
 
 I do not believe that this is the best solution. It 
 is better, I believe, to bring the elements of profes- 
 sional knowledge and the beginning of advanced 
 research into the course itself. It is better to break 
 down the barrier between the college and the univer- 
 sity, by letting the university dip down into the col- 
 lege. For example, in making lawyers, the work in 
 the foundations of law can be relegated to the college, 
 as in making chemists we now teach elementary chem- 
 istry in the freshman year. In training physicians, 
 the elementary work, physiology, general anatomy, 
 histology, and chemistry, should all be in the college 
 course, and in making scientific men of any grade, 
 the senior year is none too early for the beginnings 
 of scientific research. I believe that the four years' 
 
 104
 
 TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 
 
 college course offers a great advantage. It is now 
 possible to offer the serious student, before graduat- 
 ing, the crowning value of the college course, — 
 something of the method of research. It is likewise 
 possible to offer the elements of professional training 
 inside the college course, and not as an affair wholly 
 separate. In fa\'or of this arrangement, the following 
 facts may be urged: 
 
 It is an advantage to college training to relate it 
 to life. The sooner a man knows what he is to do in 
 life, and gets at it, the better. This being admitted, 
 the fuller the preparation the better, provided the 
 final goal is always kept in view. To make a first- 
 rate surgeon, the scalpel should be in use from youth 
 onward. It need not be used on the human body, 
 but the methods of histology and anatomy should be 
 learned early and never allowed to fall into disuse. 
 To put an embryo physician through four years of 
 classics and mathematics, and then to turn him sud- 
 denly into dissection and clinic, is to invite failure. 
 He has learned nothing of research in his college 
 course, his hand has grown clumsy and his power of 
 observation is dulled. To be a good physician, he 
 should have turned his whole college course in that 
 direction, — not that he should have had less of litera- 
 ture and the humanities, but that these should aid 
 science, not displace it. 
 
 A young man makes a better lawyer if he is in 
 some degree a law student throughout his college 
 
 los
 
 TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 
 
 course, for six or seven years, not merely for three 
 at the end. Elementary equity is in no sense an 
 advanced study. It has a natural place in the college 
 curriculum, with just as much right as economics, or 
 the history of philosophy, and to the ordinary col- 
 lege course the universities should relegate elemen- 
 tary law, physiology, histology, comparative anatomy, 
 and all forms of science which are elementary and 
 fundamental to professional research. When this is 
 done, four years will be none too long for general 
 training, and the professional departments will deal 
 with men prepared to do serious work, men worthy 
 of the advantages the best libraries and laboratories 
 can have to offer. Then, if the time is to be short- 
 ened, the result can be reached by the higher demands 
 of the professional schools. It is absurd to call the 
 department of law "a graduate school" when half 
 its students are engaged with the a-b-c of equity, a 
 subject as elementary as trigonometry or qualitative 
 analysis. Let elementary law go with elementary 
 chemistry and the advanced school can devote itself 
 to advanced training, and a man who is to be a lawyer 
 can think in terms of law throughout his college 
 course. He will be a better lawyer for doing so, and 
 his work being better related to life, he will be in 
 every other respect a better scholar on account of it. 
 
 Leaving out ill-equipped or temporary schools, the 
 American professional school of the future will have 
 one or the other of two great purposes. The one is 
 
 io6
 
 # 
 
 TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 
 
 typified, perhaps, by the Professional Schools of 
 Michigan. The professional school will take the pro- 
 fession as it is and raise it as a whole. So many men 
 will be doctors, so many will be lawyers in Michigan. 
 Let us take them as we find them and make them just 
 as good lawyers and doctors as we can. Let us not 
 drive them away by requirements they cannot or will 
 not meet, but adjust the work and conditions to the 
 best they can meet, the best standards winning in the 
 long run and carrying public opinion with them. 
 
 The other ideal is perhaps typified by Johns Hop- 
 kins University. Let the university medical school 
 deal with the exceptional man of exceptional ability 
 and exceptional training. Give him special advan- 
 tages, send out a limited number of the best physi- 
 cians possible, and raise the standard of the profession 
 by filling its ranks with the best the university can 
 send. 
 
 The one ideal or the other will be, consciously or 
 not, before each professional school which strives to 
 be really helpful. It is not for me to say which is the 
 better. The one purpose naturally presents itself to 
 state institutions, or to institutions dependent on ap- 
 propriations or patronage. The other is more readily 
 achieved by institutions of independent endowment. 
 It is a matter of economy that all schools should not 
 be alike in this regard. 
 
 The high school course gives a certain breadth of 
 culture. The high school of today is as good as the
 
 TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 
 
 college of forty years ago, so far as studies go. It 
 misses the fact of going away from home and of close 
 relation with men of higher wisdom and riper experi- 
 ence than our high schools demand in their teachers. 
 It takes a broader mental horizon to be a physician 
 than merely to practice medicine, to be a lawyer than 
 merely to practice law. Those who want the least 
 education possible can get along with very little; they 
 can omit the college. But for large-minded, widely 
 competent men, men fit for great duties, not a moment 
 of the college course can be spared. Whether to 
 take a college education or not, depends on the man — 
 what there is in him — and on the course of study. 
 There is no magic in the name of college, and there 
 is no gain in wrong subjects, work shirked, or in right 
 subjects taken under wrong teachers. Studies, like 
 other food, must be assimilated before they can help 
 the system. 
 
 The great indictment of the college is its waste of 
 the student's time; prescribed studies taken unwil- 
 lingly; irrelevant studies taken to till up; helpful stud- 
 ies taken under poor teachers; any kind of studies 
 taken idly, — all these have tended to discredit the 
 college course. Four years is all too short for a lib- 
 eral education, if every moment be utilized. Two 
 years is all too long, if they are spent in idleness and 
 dissipation, or if tainted by the spirit of indifference. 
 
 The spirit of the college is more important than 
 the time it takes. The college atmosphere should be 
 
 io8
 
 TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 
 
 a clean and wholesome one, full of impulses to action. 
 It is good to breathe this air, and in doing so, it mat- 
 ters little whether one's studies be wholly professional, 
 half professional, or directed towards ends of culture 
 alone. 
 
 In city colleges where the students live at home, 
 traveling back and forth on street cars, a college 
 atmosphere cannot be developed. In these institu- 
 tions, as a rule, the college work is perfunctory, its 
 recitations being often regarded as a disagreeable 
 interpretation of social and athletic affairs. As a 
 rule, higher education begins when a man leaves 
 home to become part of a guild of scholars. The 
 city college is merely a continued high school, and 
 with both students and teachers there is a willing- 
 ness to cut it as short as possible, so that the young 
 men can "get down to business." In institutions 
 of this type, the professional school forms a sharp 
 contrast to the college in its stronger requirements 
 and more serious purpose. In other types of col- 
 lege, it is the general student who does the best work. 
 In many of them the professional departments are 
 far inferior in tone and spirit to the general academic 
 course. 
 
 It becomes, then, a question as to the college 
 itself, how long a student should stay in. If the 
 academic requirements are severe, just and honest; if 
 the idler, the butterfly, the blockhead and the para- 
 site are promptly dropped from the rolls; if the spirit 
 
 109
 
 TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 
 
 of plain living and high thinking rules in the college, 
 the student should stay there as long as he can, and, 
 if possible, take part of his professional work under its 
 guidance. The nearer the teacher, the better the 
 work. The value of teachers grows less as the square 
 of their distance increases. If the college course is a 
 secondary matter, with inferior teachers talking down 
 to their students, studies prescribed because the faculty 
 cares too little for the individual man to adapt its 
 courses to his needs, — an atmosphere of trifling, 
 or no atmosphere at all, — the sooner the student 
 gets into something real, the better. A good 
 university may develop in a great city, a good college 
 cannot, because students and teachers are all too 
 far apart. 
 
 In this matter the college degree is only an inci- 
 dent. It is the badge of admission to the roll of 
 alumni, a certificate of good fellowship, which always 
 means a little and may imply a great deal. But the 
 degree is only one of the toys of our educational 
 babyhood, as hoods and gowns represent educational 
 bib and tucker. Don't go out of your way to take 
 a degree. Don't miss it because you are in too great 
 a hurry. For the highest professional success, you 
 can afford to take your time. It takes a larger pro- 
 vision for a cruise to the Cape of Good Hope than for 
 a run to the Isle of Dogs. 
 
 The primitive American college was built strictly 
 on English models. Its purpose was to breed clergy-
 
 TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 
 
 men and gentlemen, and to fix on these its badge of 
 personal culture, raising them above the common 
 mass of men. Till within the last thirty years the 
 traditions of the English Tripos held undisputed sway. 
 We need not go into details of the long years in 
 which Latin, Greek and mathematics, with a dash of 
 outworn philosophy, constituted higher education in 
 America. The value of the classical course lay largely 
 in its continuity. Whoever learned Greek, the per- 
 fect language and the noble literature, gained some- 
 thing with which he would never willingly part. Even 
 the weariness of Latin grammar and the intricacies of 
 half-understood calculus have their value in the com- 
 radery of common suffering and common hope. The 
 weakness of the classical course lay in its lack of rela- 
 tion to life. It had more charms for pedants than for 
 men, and the men of science and the men of action 
 turned away hungry from it. 
 
 The growth of the American university came on 
 by degrees, different steps, some broadening, some 
 weakening, by which the tyranny of the Tripos was 
 broken, and the democracy of studies established with 
 the democracy of men. 
 
 It was something over thirty years ago when Her- 
 bert Spencer asked this great question : ' ' What 
 knowledge is of most worth?" To the schoolmen 
 of England this came as a great shock, as it had 
 never occurred to most of them that any knowledge 
 had any value at all. Its function was to produce
 
 TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 
 
 culture, which, in turn, gave social position. That 
 there were positive values and relative values was new 
 in their philosophy. Spencer went on to show that 
 those subjects had most value which most strength- 
 ened and enriched life, first, those needful to the per- 
 son, then those of value in professional training, then 
 in the rearing of the family, the duty as a citizen, and 
 finally those fitting for esthetic enjoyment. For all 
 these, except the last, the English universities made 
 no preparation, and for all these purposes Spencer 
 found the highest values in science, the accumulated, 
 tested, arranged results of human experience. Spen- 
 cer's essay assumed that there was some one best 
 course of study — the best for every man. This is 
 one of the greatest fallacies in education. Moreover, 
 he took little account of the teacher, perhaps assum- 
 ing with some other English writers that all teachers 
 were equally inefficient, and that the difference between 
 one and another may be regarded as negligible. 
 
 It has been left for American experimenters in 
 education to insist on the democracy of the intellect. 
 The best subjects for any man to study are those best 
 fitted for his own individual development, those which 
 will help make the actual most of him and his life. 
 Democracy of intellect does not mean equality of 
 brains, still less indifference in regard to their quality. 
 It means simply fair play in the schedule of studies. 
 It means the development of fit courses of study, not 
 traditional ones, of a "tailor-made" curriculum for
 
 TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 
 
 each man instead of the "hand-me-down" article, 
 misfitting all alike. 
 
 In the time of James II, Richard Rumbold "never 
 could believe that God had created a few men already- 
 booted and spurred, with millions already saddled 
 and bridled for these few to ride. " In like fashion, 
 Andrew Dickson White could never believe that God 
 had created a taste for the niceties of grammar or 
 even the appreciation of noble literature, these few 
 tastes to be met and trained while the vast body of 
 other talents were to be left unaided and untouched, 
 because of their traditional inferiority. In unison 
 with President White, Ezra Cornell declared that he 
 ' ' would found an institution where any person could 
 find instruction in any study." In like spirit the 
 Morrill Act was framed, bringing together all rays of 
 various genius, the engineer, and the psychologist, 
 the student of literature and the student of exact 
 science, "Greek-minded" men and tillers of the soil, 
 each to do his own work in the spirit of equality 
 before the law. Under the same roof each one gains 
 by mutual association. The literary student gains in 
 seriousness and power, the engineer in refinement and 
 appreciation. Like in character is the argument for 
 co-education, a condition encouraged by this same 
 Morrill Act. The men become more refined from 
 association with noble women, the women more 
 earnest from association with serious men. The men 
 are more manly, the women more womanly in co- 
 ns
 
 TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 
 
 education, a condition opposed alike to rowdyism and 
 frivolity. 
 
 In the same line we must count the influence of 
 Mark Tappan, perhaps the first to conceive of a state 
 university, existing solely for the good of the state, to 
 do the work the state most needs, regardless of what 
 other institutions may do in other states. Agassiz in 
 these same times insisted that advanced work is better 
 than elementary, for its better disciplinary quality. 
 He insisted that Harvard in his day was only "a 
 respectable high school, where they taught the dregs 
 of education." Thorough training in some one line 
 he declared was the backbone of education. It was 
 the base line by which the real student was enabled to 
 measure scholarship in others. 
 
 In most of our colleges the attempt to widen the 
 course of study by introducing desirable things pre- 
 ceded the discovery that general courses of study 
 prearranged had no real value. We should learn that 
 all prescribed work is bad work unless it is prescribed 
 by the nature of the subject. The student in electrical 
 engineering takes to mathematics, because he knows 
 that his future success with electricity depends on his 
 mastery of mechanics and the calculus. In the same 
 fashion, the student in medicine is willing to accept 
 chemistry and physiology as prescribed studies. But 
 a year in chemistry, or two years in higher mathe- 
 matics, put in for the broadening of the mind or 
 because the faculty decrees it, has no broadening 
 
 114
 
 TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 
 
 effect. Work arbitrarily prescribed is always poorly 
 done ; it sets low standards, and works demoralization 
 instead of training. There cannot be a greater edu- 
 cational farce than the required year of science in cer- 
 tain literary courses. The student picks out the 
 easiest science, the easiest teacher and the easiest way 
 to avoid work, and the whole requirement is a source 
 of moral evil. Nothing could be farther from the 
 scientific method than a course in science taken with- 
 out the element of personal choice. 
 
 The traditional courses of study were first broken 
 up by the addition of short courses in one thing or 
 another, substitutes for Latin or Greek, patchwork 
 courses without point or continuity. These substitute 
 courses were naturally regarded as inferior, and for 
 them very properly a new degree was devised, the 
 degree of B. S. — Bachelor of Surfaces. 
 
 That work which is required in the nature of 
 things is taken seriously. Serious work sets the pace, 
 exalts the teacher, inspires the man. The individual 
 man is important enough to justify his teachers in 
 takmg the time and the effort to plan a special course 
 for him. 
 
 Through the movement towards the democracy of 
 studies and constructive individualism, a new ideal is 
 bemg reached in American universities, that of per- 
 sonal effectiveness. The ideal in England has always 
 been that of personal culture; that of France, the 
 achieving, through competitive examinations, of ready- 
 
 "5
 
 TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 
 
 made careers, the satisfaction of what Villari* calls 
 "Impiegomania," the craze for appointment; that of 
 Germany, thoroughness of knowledge; that of Amer- 
 ica, the power to deal with men and conditions. 
 Everywhere we find abundant evidence of personal 
 effectiveness of American scholars. Not abstract 
 thought, not life-long investigation of minute data, 
 not separation from men of lower fortune, but the 
 power to bring about results is the characteristic of 
 the American scholar of today. 
 
 From this point of view the progress of the Ameri- 
 can university is most satisfactory, and most encour- 
 aging. The large tendencies are moving in the right 
 direction. What shall we say of the smaller ones? 
 
 Not long ago, the subject of discussion in a 
 thoughtful address was this: the " Peril of the Small 
 College." The small college has been the guardian 
 
 * " A consequence of cheap higher ism and Anarchism in Northern Italy 
 
 education in Italy is the vast and ever- or into the Mafia and the Catiioi i a w 
 
 increasing army of the educated un- the South. But a large number try to 
 
 employed [caW^A spostati]. Every obtain that panacea for all ills — Cio\- 
 
 year a large number of graduates in ernment employment. Inipiegomaiiia 
 
 law, medicine, belles-lettres and is a recognized disease in Italy, and a 
 
 science are turned out into the world youngnian whocanobtainanapponit- 
 
 to enter professions in which there is ment in a Government office, where he 
 
 no room for them. Their education has little work and a salary of ^50 or 
 
 has unfitted them for useful work ^6oayear.lhmkshimselfattneheight 
 
 without enabling them to succeed in of earthly bliss. Government employ- 
 
 the liberal professions. Men who in ment is the Holy Grail of three-quar- 
 
 England would go into business or ters of the university graduates. The 
 
 emigrate to America or the Colonies, most miserably paid impiegato or the 
 
 in Italy become lawyers without most unsuccessful professional man 
 
 clients, doctors without patients, regards himself as superior to the 
 
 journalists and litterateurs without most prosperous tradesman or skilled 
 
 readers, professors without pupils, mechanic." — I'illari — ' Village Life 
 
 Some succeed in getting a little work in Town and Country." 
 by underselling abler men, thus low- It is not the cheapness of higher 
 
 ering the already low professional education which is here at fault, but 
 
 incomes; others lead idle and vicious its misdirection and the wrong mo- 
 
 lives for a time, and drift into Social- tives ruling in Italian society. 
 
 116
 
 TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 
 
 of higher education in the past. It is most helpful in 
 the present and we cannot afford to let it die. We 
 understand that the large college becomes the univer- 
 sity. Because it is rich, it attempts advanced work 
 and work in many lines. It takes its opportunity, 
 and an opportunity which the small college cannot 
 grasp. Advanced work costs money. A wide range 
 of subjects, taught with men, libraries and labora- 
 tories, is a costly matter, but by a variety of supply 
 the demand is formed. The large college has many 
 students, because it offers many opportunities. Be- 
 cause large opportunities bring influence and students 
 and gifts, there is a tendency to exaggerate them. 
 It is easy to feel that the facilities we offer are 
 greater than is really the case. We are led to boast, 
 because only boasting seems to catch the public eye. 
 The peril of the small college is the peril of all 
 colleges, the temptation of advertising. All boasting 
 is self-cheapening. The peril of the small college is 
 that in its effort to become large it shall cease to be 
 sound. The small college can do good elementary 
 work in several lines. It can do good adv^anced work 
 in a very few. If it keeps its perspective, if it does 
 only what it can do well, and does not pretend that 
 bad work is good work, or that the work beyond its 
 reach is not worth doing, it is in no danger. The 
 small college may become either a junior college or 
 high-grade preparatory school, sending its men else- 
 where for the flower of their college education, or 
 
 117
 
 TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 
 
 else it must become a small university running nar- 
 rowly on a few lines, but attending to these with devo- 
 tion and persistence. Either of these are honorable 
 conditions. For the first of these the small college 
 has a great advantage. It can come close to its 
 students; it can "know its men by name." The 
 value of a teacher is enhanced as he becomes more 
 accessible. The work of the freshman and sopho- 
 more years in many of our great colleges is sadly 
 inadequate, because its means are not fitted to its 
 ends. In very few of our large colleges does the 
 elementary work receive the care its importance de- 
 serves. 
 
 The great college can draw the best teachers away 
 from the small colleges. In this regard the great col- 
 lege has an immense advantage. It has the best 
 teachers, the best trained, the best fitted for the work 
 of training. But in most cases the freshman never 
 discovers this. There is no worse teaching done under 
 the sun than in the lower classes of some of our most 
 famous colleges. Cheap tutors, inexperienced and 
 underpaid, are set to lecture to classes far beyond their 
 power to mterest. We are saving our money for 
 original research, careless of the fact that we fail to 
 give the elementary training which makes research 
 possible. Too often, indeed, research itself, the 
 noblest of all university functions, is made an adver- 
 tismg fad. The demands of the university press have 
 swollen the literature of science, but they have proved 
 
 ii8
 
 TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 
 
 a doubtful aid to its quality. Get something ready. 
 Send it out. Show that we are doing something. 
 All this never advanced science. It is through men 
 born to research, trained to research, choicest product 
 of nature and art, that science advances. 
 
 Another effect of the advertising spirit is the cheap- 
 ening of salaries. The smaller the salaries, the more 
 departments we can support. It is the spirit of adver- 
 tising that leads some institutions to tolerate a type 
 of athlete who comes as a student with none of the 
 student's purpose. I am a firm believer in college 
 athletics. I have done my part in them in college and 
 out. I know that "the color of life is red," but the 
 value of athletic games is lost when outside gladiators 
 are hired to play them. No matter what the induce- 
 ment, the athletic contest has no value except as the 
 spontaneous effort of the college man. To coddle the 
 athlete is to render him a professional. If an institu- 
 tion makes one rule for the ordinary student and 
 another for the athlete it is party to a fraud. Without 
 some such concession, half the great football teams of 
 today could not exist. I would rather see football 
 disappear and the athletic fields closed for ten years for 
 fumigation than to see our colleges helpless in the 
 hands of athletic professionalism, as many of them 
 are today. 
 
 This is a minor matter in one sense, but it is preg- 
 nant with large dangers. Whatever the scholar does 
 should be clean. What has the support of boards of 
 
 119
 
 TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 
 
 scholars should be noble, helpful and inspiring. For 
 the evils of college athletics, the apathy of college 
 faculties is solely responsible. The blame falls on us : 
 let us rise to our duty. 
 
 There is something wrong in our educational prac- 
 tice when a wealthy idler is allowed to take the name 
 of student, on the sole condition that he and his 
 grooms shall pass occasional examinations. There is 
 no justification for the granting of degrees on cheap 
 terms, to be used in social decoration. It is said that 
 the chief of the great coaching trust in one of our 
 universities earns a salary larger than was ever paid 
 to any honest teacher. His function is to take the 
 man who has spent the term in idleness or dissipation, 
 and by a few hours' ingenious coaching to enable him 
 to write a paper as good as that of a real student. The 
 examinations thus passed are mere shams, and by the 
 tolerance of the system the teaching force becomes 
 responsible for it. No educational reform of the day 
 is more important than the revival of honesty in regard 
 to credits and examinations, such a revival of honest 
 methods as shall make coaching trusts impossible. 
 
 The same methods which cure the aristocratic ills 
 of idleness and cynicism are equally effective in the 
 democratic vice of rowdyism. With high standards 
 of work, set not at long intervals by formal examina- 
 tions, but by the daily vigilance and devotion of real 
 teachers, all these classes of mock students disappear. 
 
 The football tramp vanishes before the work-test.
 
 TENDENCIES IN COLLEGE EDUCATION 
 
 The wealthy boy takes his proper place when honest, 
 democratic brain effort is required of him. If he is 
 not a student, he will no longer pretend to be one 
 and ought not to be in college. The rowdy, the 
 mucker, the hair-cutting, gate-lifting, cane-rushing 
 imbecile is never a real student. He is a gamin mas- 
 querading in cap and gown. The requirement of 
 scholarship brings him to terms. If we insist that our 
 colleges shall not pretend to educate those who cannot 
 or will not be educated, we shall have no trouble with 
 the moral training of the students. 
 
 Above all, in the West, where education is free, 
 we should insist that free tuition means serious work, 
 that education means opportunity, that the student 
 should do his part, and that the degree of the univer- 
 sity should not be the seal of academic approbation of 
 four years of idleness, rowdyism, profligacy or dissi- 
 pation. 
 
 Higher education, properly speaking, begins when 
 a young man goes away from home to school. The 
 best part of higher education is the development of 
 the instincts of the gentleman and the horizon of the 
 scholar. To this end self-directed industry is one of 
 the most effective agents. As the force of example 
 is potent in education, a college should tolerate idle- 
 ness and vice neither among its students nor among its 
 teachers.
 
 VI. 
 
 THE PERSONALITY OF THE 
 UNIVERSITY. 
 
 I AM asked, as a loyal citizen of California and as 
 a representative of a sister republic of letters, 
 which California cherishes across the bay, to add 
 a word to the generous welcome which Califor- 
 nia gives to the president of her university. My 
 words, Mr. President, shall be words of advice, not 
 that you need it, or should ever heed it, but because 
 there is no other article of value with which I can so 
 willingly part. 
 
 It is a saying of Emerson that ' ' colleges can only 
 serve us when their aim is not to drill but to create. 
 They draw every ray of varied genius to their hospit- 
 able halls, and by their concentrated influence set the 
 heart of our youth into flame." The most precious 
 thing in human life is personality. It is by this we 
 know our friends and for this we love them. In most 
 respects, as living organisms, men are alike. Each 
 has eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, aftections, 
 passions, is fed with the same food, hurt by the same 
 weapons, warmed or cooled by the same winter or 
 summer, and each in his degree is "pleased with a
 
 THE PERSONALITY OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 rattle, tickled with a straw." For all this we do not 
 care. What is all alike never interests us. It is the 
 slight and subtle elements of difference which help us 
 to know one man from another, which enable us to 
 love, to respect, to worship one man above his fellows. 
 Among a thousand vegetative characters, we are 
 touched by the one quality of personality, made up 
 of a dozen minor attributes of kindness, wit, gladness, 
 brilliancy, effectiveness, making a whole which we may 
 love, fear or obey. 
 
 In the same way, a university must have personality, 
 else it cannot be great. A university is an aggre- 
 gation of professorships, departments, buildings, books, 
 seminaries and laboratories. But it is more than this. 
 It is a place where students of all degrees come to- 
 gether in the democracy of learning. It is an alliance 
 of men devoted to the discovery and administration of 
 the truth. But this is not all of the university ideal, 
 for all universities, in their degree, are devoted to 
 the same ends. In superficial regards all univer- 
 sities are alike. All have buildings, libraries, mu- 
 seums, microscopes, professorships. These are the 
 university's vegetative organs. Without these it 
 would not live, but by these only one university would 
 not differ from another. It is not for these things all 
 have in common that we know universities. Just as 
 with men, it is the subtle element of personality. The 
 Harvard spirit, the Cornell spirit, the Yale spirit, the 
 spirit of Berkeley, the spirit of Stanford, all these are 
 
 123
 
 THE PERSONALITY OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 matters as real as the building or the books, and more 
 important. 
 
 For the most valuable feature of a university is its 
 character, the nature of its university atmosphere. 
 This atmosphere is the conscious or unconscious work 
 of the men who control. The atmosphere of greatness 
 gathers around great teachers. Werner at Freiberg, 
 Dollinger at Munich, Arnold at Rugby, Tappan at 
 Ann Arbor, Hopkins at Williamstown, Agassiz at 
 Cambridge, White at Ithaca — these serve only as 
 illustrations. As with these, so with all great teachers 
 everywhere. 
 
 As the universities of America are constituted, it is 
 the part of the president to create the university atmos- 
 phere. He must set its pace, must frame its ideals and 
 choose the men in whom these ideals can be realized. 
 It is through the men he chooses that the university 
 becomes a living person. The president is not himself 
 the king. His noblest work is that of maker of kmgs. 
 It is not what the president himself can do that first 
 concerns the university. His personal power, skill or 
 versatility are of little moment. It is what he can 
 discern and divine in other men that gauges success. 
 It is his instinct to know what the best work of others 
 may be and how he can use it in the fabric he is build- 
 ing. A long head and long patience he must needs 
 have, for he has often to wait years for men to grow 
 to what he expects of them, and others to find men to 
 ■whom he can look for the right kind of growth. He 
 
 12.4.
 
 THE PERSONALITY OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 must have the instinct to judge men and to estimate 
 what men say of men. He must be keen to recog- 
 nize in others qualities of worth he may not possess 
 himself. He must have the wisdom to foster indi- 
 vidual freedom and the firmness to check that free- 
 dom that spends itself in futile, erratic or sentimental 
 efforts. 
 
 Out of all this and a hundred other elements, it 
 is your place, Benjamin Ide Wheeler, as president of 
 the great university of our great state, to construct 
 your purpose and your policy, and to give the uni- 
 versity its personality, its color and its atmosphere. 
 Above all rests with you the forming of its moral tone, 
 for after all character-building is the noblest work of 
 the university, and I am one of those who believe that 
 in this work the university may be made the most 
 effective agency. I have known you for many 
 years. Dr. Wheeler — thirteen years, is it not, in 
 all? — always adequate to the work the gods set you to 
 do. I know that you can meet, and will meet, all that 
 the state expects of you. Because this is so, I regard 
 this day, this 25th day of October, 1899, as one of 
 the greatest, full of the fullest of hope, of all the days 
 in the calendar of California. 
 
 Just one word more. 
 
 Some time ago a regent of the university said to 
 me, "Now that we have Wheeler, we must change 
 our notion of rivalry. Henceforth it shall not be 
 Berkeley against Stanford, nor Stanford against
 
 THE PERSONALITY OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 Berkeley, but California against the world." Now in 
 all seriousness, why not? We recognize how natural 
 advantages count in every field of labor, horse-raising, 
 fruit-growing, ship-building. Why not in education ? 
 In the environment fittest for training young men and 
 women, there are three mighty elements — healthful- 
 ness, beauty, freedom. These three are the distinctive 
 characteristics of California. A perfect climate which 
 calls one out of doors at all times of the year, and re- 
 wards him for his coming, matchless beauty of moun- 
 tain and forest, of lake and of the sea, of hill and river, 
 and with endless elbow room, intellectually, physically 
 and morally ! If we add to this the two universities, 
 rival and cooperating, as well endowed as the best, and 
 fairer in houses and outlook than the most beautiful of 
 all the land, why should not California become a world- 
 center of education? Men once flocked to Athens for 
 such things. Why should they not come here ? Why 
 not Berkeley and Stanford, together and indivisible, 
 against the world ? 
 
 It has been Dr. Wheeler's good fortune and mine 
 to sit at the feet of the same great master, Andrew D. 
 White. We can remember President White's appeal 
 to his alumni, that, wherever we might go, we should 
 stand by "our state universities, for in them is the 
 educational hope of the South and West." We of 
 Stanford are not deaf to this appeal. We are citizens 
 of California loyal and true. We shall stand by our 
 state university, for in its development is the educa- 
 
 126
 
 THE PERSONALITY OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 tional hope of our Golden West, and we pledge to 
 President Wheeler our help in fullest loyalty, when- 
 ever and wherever and howsoever he may ask our 
 aid. 
 
 127
 
 VII. 
 
 THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF THE 
 BUSINESS MAN. 
 
 IN THIS discussion the business man is held to 
 be a man fitted to take charge of or assist in 
 large financial enterprises in manufacture, com- 
 merce, transportation or banking. In this sense 
 a salesman, stenographer or cash-boy is not a busi- 
 ness man. 
 
 By higher education we mean that intellectual 
 training in varied subjects to be had in a specialized 
 school, in general away from home, a school of such 
 breadth and intensity as to have a definite college or 
 university atmosphere. The ordinary business school 
 or trade school, teaching devices without mental train- 
 ing, would not meet this definition, and the classical 
 college with its limited range of instruction would 
 meet it only in part. 
 
 The man with brains needs a corresponding degree 
 of education. The greater the natural fitness the 
 greater the need for thorough training and the more 
 worthy the final result. 
 
 The best education for a man of brains and char- 
 acter involves three elements : 
 
 128
 
 HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 
 
 1. It should be directed toward a definite end. 
 The sooner this end is seen the better, and it should 
 always be kept in view. 
 
 2. Being- definite, the education should be broad 
 and thorough, including all that is finally essential to 
 the highest success. 
 
 3. It should be related to the future activities of 
 life, in part toward professional success, in part toward 
 success as a man. 
 
 Toward human success, the growth of character, 
 the college has always done its part. It has not al- 
 ways been mindful of the needs of the man as a worker 
 in society. To relate knowledge to life has been one 
 of its chief problems in recent years. To this end 
 the college must adapt its work to the individual man. 
 What one mind finds inspiring or helpful is useless to 
 another. By means of the element of choice, it has 
 been possible to broaden and deepen the work of the 
 college and to draw into its range an ever widening 
 circle of men. 
 
 To do justice to the business man, the college 
 should give him early skill in a few simple subjects, 
 which have little value in mental training. The college 
 will save his time by teaching these regardless of their 
 academic value. It can teach stenography, bookkeep- 
 ing and commercial law, as it now teaches woodwork- 
 ing, voice culture and punctuation. The student's 
 need is the college's justification. For the rest the 
 business man will find many of his special needs met 
 
 1:9
 
 HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 
 
 by studies which are distinctly academic ; among 
 these, Enghsh composition and Enghsh Hterature, 
 American history and modern history of Europe and 
 Asia, elementary law, international law, political 
 science, economics, finance, German, Spanish and the 
 serious drill of at least one of the sciences. Especially 
 valuable to the man of affairs is a practical familiarity 
 with the methods of scientific research, for by such 
 methods alone is research of any kind made effective. 
 
 By sound methods he should investigate such sub- 
 jects as these : the effects on business of gold and other 
 standards of value ; the effects of protective tariff and 
 other tariffs; the results on commerce of friendly nnd 
 unfriendly foreign relations ; the relation of trade to 
 the flag; the results, immediate and ultimate, of subsi- 
 dies, trusts and bounties; the possibilities of railway 
 control; the methods of dignified and economical local 
 government; the question of municipal control; the 
 meaning of civil service refbrm. To have worked out 
 some serious problem in science by sound methods 
 and then to have applied the same methods to the so- 
 lution of any one of these problems will be worth more 
 to the real business man than ten years of practical ex- 
 perience as cash boy, errand boy, floor-walker and 
 clerk. 
 
 These subjects and others of like character should 
 be studied not didactically, not emotionally, but by 
 practical investigation of the lines of actual business. 
 To give sound methods of investigation is the highest 
 
 130
 
 HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 
 
 duty of the real university. A system of training 
 which misses this should hardly be called education, 
 for It is the function of training to disclose the secret 
 of power. 
 
 To secure power no experience is so valuable as 
 that which may be obtained in college, and four years, 
 or even seven years, is a period all too short. Be- 
 cause it is short, there should be no waste of time, no 
 random effort. All work should look toward the 
 final goal, not forgetting of course the needs of per- 
 sonal culture. Thus a man may properly turn aside 
 from his life study to study Greek or music or botany, 
 not because he needs it in his business, but because he 
 loves it. 
 
 To the average business man who does not care 
 for Latin, Greek or Calculus, the old-fashioned clas- 
 sical course of thirty years ago had relatively little 
 value, yet even four years of quiet comradery and 
 intellectual zest were well worth taking before plung- 
 ing into the struggle of life. Many a business man 
 regrets that his college course was so narrow. I 
 never heard of one who would give up even the little 
 outlook on higher things this outworn course of study 
 represents. 
 
 So much for what the man of business asks today 
 of the university. What in turn can the American 
 university of today do for him .'' 
 
 The American university, after its long struggle 
 with poverty and tradition, is standing forth as a very 
 
 131
 
 HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 
 
 definite type of institution; very different from the 
 English college from which it sprang; very different 
 from the German university from which it draws its 
 inspiration, yet partaking somewhat of the character 
 of each. 
 
 It has now three principal functions: 
 
 1. That of general culture: to give a scholar's 
 horizon some idea of the best that has been thought 
 or done in the world's history; to give acquaintance 
 with men and women of the present or of the past 
 who have stood for noble ideals and hopeful aspira- 
 tion. This line of effort constitutes the college work, 
 when we use the word college in its traditional mean- 
 ing, or in contrast with the university and the profes- 
 sional school. 
 
 2. Professional training: the actual drill in the 
 knowledge needed in one's profession and the methods 
 used in successful practice. This is the work of the 
 professional school, to which the college course should 
 lead. 
 
 3. University training. The highest form of uni- 
 versity work is instruction through investigation. The 
 student learns the methods of research through actual 
 practice in the use of them. He learns the way to 
 truth by an actual extension in some one direction of 
 the bounds of human knowledge. The college does 
 not pretend to include professional training or scien- 
 tific research within the limits of its course of study. 
 The university includes both. Here the proper line 
 
 132
 
 HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 
 
 between college and university is drawn. Yet the col- 
 lege should forecast the university. In four years we 
 cannot compass very much, but in these years the 
 college can give, besides the general culture which is 
 its main work, the basis of professional training and 
 the impulse toward research as well. To this end it 
 should encourage the student to keep in mind his final 
 career and to shape his work so that mental culture 
 shall count as personal effectiveness. By means of 
 thorough inductive study in some one line, it should 
 introduce the student to methods of research. To 
 teach subjects which are listlessly received and which 
 are as soon as possible forgotten is a waste of 
 time and effort. It is a degradation of the means 
 and purpose of higher education. No one should be 
 encouraged or allowed to stay in college for per- 
 functory work. To go through the motions without 
 caring for the realities is an unwholesome kind of 
 training. Neither should the college allow itself to be 
 used by those to whom the college degree is a mere 
 badge of social distinction. The idlers in college con- 
 stitute a costly drag on its ambitions. The fees they 
 pay are a scanty return for the mischief done by their 
 presence. The university is false to its trust if it does 
 not relate its work to life and if it spends its strength 
 on the stupid, the indolent or the indifferent There 
 are too many real men in search of real education to 
 justify tolerance of shams. 
 
 In the practical organization of an American uni- 
 
 133
 
 HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 
 
 versity I cannot see that the needs of business demand 
 a separate branch or fundamental division. The course 
 of study as it is, is perhaps broad enough, and it can 
 easily be made broader without change of organization. 
 We do not need a separate school of commerce to ed- 
 ucate the business man any more than we need a sepa- 
 rate school to train the journalist or the poet or the 
 diplomatist. The culture studies necessary are already 
 given. For special research in economics, finance and 
 politics large provision is already made. It can be 
 made larger when necessary. It is not so much the 
 things studied in school as the way of looking at 
 them which is important. The student needs most of 
 all the ability to separate what is true from what is 
 plausible, to distinguish induction from deduction. 
 The university should not be too ' ' timely ' ' in its re- 
 lations to the student. It deals with eternal verities 
 and unchanging methods. It is safer for it not to be 
 too ' ' up-to-date. ' ' To meet each new call as it arises 
 is to make a good many false steps. 
 
 The fact that station agents, railway conductors, 
 bookkeepers and clerks are not usually college men has 
 been lately taken as a serious argument against higher 
 education. The simple fact is that the college student 
 can do better than to accept such places. If he has 
 the right stuff in him he is willing enough to begin 
 at the bottom, but it must be the bottom of an as- 
 cending series. There must be some prospect ahead. 
 You will find the graduate in mining in California 
 
 '34
 
 HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 
 
 working for his board in the mines of Angel's Camp 
 or Nevada City, but he knows that faithful service in 
 the ditch will carry him at one bound past all his un- 
 trained competitors. 
 
 If to be a bookkeeper, salesman or floor- walker is 
 final, the college man will not often enter the list. 
 For such places an apprenticeship as a cashboy or a 
 year in a business school may seem more useful than 
 four years of Latin and Greek or even of history 
 and science. It is worth more if you count not the 
 man but his trade. The cashboy' s experience might 
 be as helpful to the floor-walker as an exhaustive 
 knowledge of the whole business of the firm. It is 
 when exceptional effort or exceptional responsibility is 
 demanded that training shows itself The exceptional 
 man places himself in line for just such possibilities. 
 
 When certain business critics condemn the college 
 course for its lack of fitness and practicability, we are 
 obliged to ask what kind of college they have in 
 mind. There is as much difference among American 
 colleges as among American railroads or American dry 
 goods stores. 
 
 If a foreigner objects to the American railway 
 that it has no schedule and never gets anywhere, we 
 wonder whether he refers to the New York Central or 
 to some branch road in the black belt of the South. 
 We wonder, moreover, whether he has ever traveled 
 at home. So when the fitness of the American uni- 
 versity is challenged we should like to know whether 
 
 135
 
 HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 
 
 the critic has Harvard in mind or Michigan, or perhaps 
 ' ' Valparaiso University, ' ' or the crossroads college 
 at Hugginsville. Hartsville University, with two pro- 
 fessors, precedes Harvard in our alphabetical lists, and 
 Yellville stands next to Yale. 
 
 As a rule, the business man who does not believe 
 in colleges has in mind some classical school of his 
 boyhood where careless boys were drilled in unwilling 
 Latin. As to this, we may as well admit the facts. For 
 most practical purposes in life, either of culture or 
 action, the Latin grammar, to the average man, is the 
 poorest educational stuff the colleges yield. The pre- 
 dominance of Latin is a matter of tradition, not of 
 experience. Latin, Greek and Calculus have consti- 
 tuted for centuries the Tripos or three-legged stool 
 which bore up culture in the colleges of England. 
 Latin formed the chief part of the college course of 
 thirty years ago, and the business man of today who 
 thinks university building an ' ' absurd fad ' ' has in mind 
 the narrow work of the little colleges where he was a 
 boy. In so far as their work was efficient their power 
 lay in the influence of personality rather than in the 
 subjects they taught. ' ' A log with Mark Hopkins 
 at one end of it and himself at the other ' ' was 
 Garfield's conception of a university. It was said 
 of Dr. Nott, of Union College, that ' ' he took the 
 sweepings of other colleges and sent them back to 
 society pure gold. ' ' This was the influence of a great 
 personality, not of the Latin he taught, nor of his out- 
 
 136
 
 HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 
 
 worn metaphysics. With such narrow ideas of the 
 college as a school of Latin exercises it is no wonder 
 that many business men do not believe in it. They do 
 not find such a school useful in their business nor in 
 their lives. It is not very useful, in itself, except for 
 the rare man, "the Greek-minded man, the Roman- 
 minded," as Emerson calls him. I did not care for it, 
 myself, when it was first offered to me more than 
 thirty years ago. Then I turned aside from classical 
 Yale to the new hope of Cornell, where I could study 
 plants and rocks as well as Latin and Greek, and with 
 equal opportunity and equal encouragement. The 
 university of today recognizes the supreme majesty of 
 Greek for those who can enter into its spirit. It rec- 
 ognizes the large helpfulness of Latin in literary 
 matters. It gives far more attention to higher mathe- 
 matics than the classical college did, but for another 
 purpose. Its courses in engineering rest upon it. Its 
 range of studies is now broadened and enriched so as 
 to include whatever in any line the real student can 
 demand for any real purpose. 
 
 The professions that the university has especially 
 cherished have been those of law, medicme and theol- 
 ogy. To these, in America, have been added engi- 
 neering and teaching. For direct training in business 
 little demand has been made, perhaps because the 
 university gives already nearly all that can be asked 
 except practical experience. This it cannot yield, 
 though it can give better things. A very successful 
 
 137
 
 HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 
 
 mining engineer has lately maintained that the student 
 in the university has no time to spend on ' ' practical 
 work ' ' in mining methods. From the university he 
 gains inductive science and deductive theory, both to 
 be had from the university alone. He will have plenty 
 of time later to get practical acquaintance with crushers 
 and dumps. If he spends his precious university 
 time on practical details he will not be ready when 
 higher demands are made on him. 
 
 In business, as in mining, the university can save 
 the student's time by giving him methods of work and 
 methods of thought, which outweigh the value of lab- 
 oratory practice in the counting-house or the sales- 
 room. 
 
 It is very clear that the university-trained engineer 
 has an immense advantage over his self-taught com- 
 petitor. Not long since, I had an application from a 
 mine in Siskiyou County, California, for a trained min- 
 ing engineer. The writer went on to say, with much 
 severe language, which I shall leave blank, that he had 
 had enough of forty-niners — of practical mining men 
 — of men who knew the business from the bottom. 
 He had lost $6,000 in a month through their advice, 
 and he wanted ' ' some one who knew the business, not 
 from the bottom up, but from the top downward." 
 
 The late Irving M. Scott, of the Union Iron 
 Works of San Francisco, the builder of the "Ore- 
 gon," had among his employees numerous graduates 
 of Cornell and Stanford. He told me once that he 
 
 13S
 
 HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 
 
 regarded a university man as worth 50 per cent more 
 than a man who has come up to the same level by 
 practical experience. 
 
 A certain Stanford mining engineer six years out 
 of college now commands a salary greater than that 
 of all the self-taught mining engineers in California 
 put together. This is a very exceptional case, but 
 there are many who approach it. I am told that of the 
 Stanford electrical engineers there is not one who is 
 not " getting a larger salary then he deserves." If 
 this is true, it is because the engineers with whom 
 they compete are less than adequate. In civil en- 
 gineering the Western railroads give preference to 
 college men. There is no prejudice against them such 
 as exists sometimes in the East, because Western boys 
 have more practical experience than Eastern boys. 
 There have been breaks in their school life. Before 
 going to college they have already had some contact 
 with the inevitable and have learned patience, courage 
 and common sense. They enter college later, but in 
 the meantime they have learned to break horses and 
 to keep account books and to be masters of them- 
 selves in any situation. If more necessity for self- 
 help existed in our secondary schools we should turn 
 out a wiser brand of college students. A little con- 
 tact with the world is a great help in clearing the vision. 
 The young man who sees things as they are will 
 begin at the bottom with perfect cheerfulness. He 
 knows the way to the top, where there is always room, 
 
 139
 
 HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 
 
 which can never be found by the artisan who operates 
 by rule of thumb. 
 
 A large percentage of the college men of today, 
 especially in our state universities, work their own 
 way through college, and these may have a more ac- 
 curate and varied knowledge of affairs than is pos- 
 sessed by half the heads of business houses. A few 
 days ago such a man, lately graduated from Stanford, 
 was chosen to an important clerkship in a large busi- 
 ness house in San Francisco, being given precedence 
 over 200 practical, experienced or business school 
 competitors. 
 
 A recent writer asks, * ' Would you advise a young 
 man with $5,000 capital, intending to become a busi- 
 ness man, to spend that sum first on a college educa- 
 tion ? ' ' Certainly not. Let him work in vacation 
 and use only the interest of $5,000, and he will have 
 both his education and his principal when he gets 
 through. That some foolish parents spend a sum 
 like this each year on an effeminate or luxurious boy, 
 does not concern him. He can get a better educa- 
 tion in the same college by his own unaided efforts. 
 If our colleges insist that their students must get down 
 to work or go home, we should hear less of lavish ex- 
 penditure or of the complaint that colleges are for 
 rich men only. It is the college where the students 
 are poor that will some day have the rich alumni. 
 
 We know, of course, that business instincts are 
 inborn, not created by education. Some college 
 
 140
 
 HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS ]\IAN 
 
 graduates could never succeed in business, as others 
 could not succeed in engineering or in music. In the 
 lower grades of employment some will succeed, others 
 will not. The effeminate college life now passing out 
 of vogue in these strenuous times was poor training for 
 any purpose. It is now receiving less and less toler- 
 ance. When the demand for something above the 
 routine arises, the college graduate is always the picked 
 man. This fact has shown itself in the volunteer army 
 as in all other ranks of effort. Moreover, the young 
 men of force and action today are in college. They 
 cannot afford to do without a college course. Thirty 
 years ago this was not the case. Except for social 
 and athletic matters the classical college of that time 
 offered few attractions. 
 
 What the university training has done for mechan- 
 ical arts is clear, convincing, tremendous. It can do 
 the same for business, if men of business care to ask 
 its help. But to this end it must train men for busi- 
 ness by means of men who can use the methods of 
 science in the study of business. The university must 
 take its duty in this regard more seriously. We must 
 demand more serious preparation on the part of our 
 professors who deal with topics of the time. I doubt 
 if half the men who teach economics, finance or so- 
 ciology in American colleges today know what scien- 
 tific research actually means. In getting up a subject 
 the methods of the journalist are quicker and easier 
 to handle. Besides, plausibility looks as well as 
 
 141
 
 HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 
 
 truth. It makes a bigger book and has ten times the 
 s;ile. Until the university frees itself from that form 
 of cleverness which masquerades as science, whether 
 conservative, sensational or emotional, it will not do 
 its part toward the solution of our national problems. 
 Smartness without training makes bricks without straw. 
 
 The whole nature of American business is chang- 
 ing these changing years. The successful business 
 man cannot run his own little shop. He must be part 
 of a large system. The new conditions demand a va- 
 riety of talent, a range of adaptation, a breadth of 
 vision, far beyond that of even ten or twenty years 
 ago. It is the era of great projects, of great achieve- 
 ments, of great cooperation, and in this each must 
 be ready to take the part assigned to him. Whatever 
 we may think of the trust or combination, something 
 of the sort is here to stay. Combination demands 
 better training than individual shopkeeping. It de- 
 mands a higher degree of honesty. A great business 
 cannot rest on sharp practice. It must be above all 
 the devices of the shopkeeper or the drummer. Its 
 profit must lie in the dealer's legitimate percentage, 
 not in the results of haggling or bargaining. The 
 great fortunes of the future will be as great as in the 
 past, but they must be won in a more systematic way. 
 Courage and foresight must take the place of smart- 
 ness and selfishness, and our universities will supply 
 men of courage and foresight as this demand arises. 
 
 The business of today and of the future demands 
 142
 
 HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 
 
 a higher grade of intelligence and a more highly spe- 
 cialized ability than the individual commerce of a gen- 
 eration ago. It therefore demands higher traming. 
 It demands also a higher morality. No great business 
 can rest permanently on a cutthroat basis. In spite 
 of contrary appearances, business morality is on a 
 higher plane in these days of vast combinations than 
 it was when each merchant hunted, spider fashion, for 
 his prey, and clerks were paid to make black seem 
 -white and to lead the unwiUmg customer to buy what 
 he did not want. The profits of business are now the 
 legitimate gain of handling rather than the fluctuating 
 rewards of smartness. 
 
 In many ways our hope for relief from municipal 
 corruption and executive imbecility rests with our 
 young business men. Effective work for Civil Service 
 Reform is done, not by societies of preachers, college 
 professors, philanthropists or agitators, but by business 
 men who find that business principles in public admin- 
 istration are necessary to their own business. In such 
 organizations the college man of business makes hmi- 
 self felt. I know something of merchants' associa- 
 tions, East and West, and their far-seeing, practical, 
 virile way of taking hold of things is full of hope for 
 the future. In municipal reform we need first the 
 growth of the spirit of decency, which will demand 
 economy and dignity, and will be satisfied with noth- 
 ing else. Little is gained by sensational, emotional 
 spectacular reform. To dethrone a boss or send 
 
 143
 
 HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 
 
 a few bad councilmen to jail avails little if we stop 
 there. 
 
 It is said that as Chicaq;o has a great university 
 every great city needs one for the purification of her 
 public life. This may be true, but the influence of the 
 university cannot be direct and immediate. Impas- 
 sioned university extension lectures on civic reform 
 are not worth the atmosphere they consume. To 
 move the public and to entertain it are two different 
 things, and the orator is likely to choose the line of 
 least resistance. The work of the university professor 
 is best accomplished on his own ground. He sways 
 the next generation, and this vantage-ground he must 
 give up if he works for immediate results. The uni- 
 versity has a higher function than that of agitating for 
 virtue. By dint of sound methods and endless pa- 
 tience it should send forth men who can act for virtue, 
 not merely agitate. Its influence in politics is felt not 
 in direct efforts in the primary, on the rostrum, or in 
 the journals, but in its training of men. 
 
 Of all the business men of the world, those sent 
 out from the American university are the most alert, 
 the most enlightened, the keenest of mind and most 
 effective in action. These are our captains of indus- 
 try, and the young fellows who have worked their way 
 from the streets to the counting-room as cash boys, 
 errand boys and apprentices, must continue, a few 
 bright individuals excepted, to plod along in the ranks. 
 
 A recent writer, Mr. R. T. Crane, shows to his 
 
 144
 
 HIGHER EDUCATION OF BUSINESS MAN 
 
 own satisfaction that a college graduate in business 
 never gets his money back. To this he adds his own 
 opinion that the money one gets is ' ' seventy-five per 
 cent of the whole thing." By "the whole thing," 
 he means all joy and satisfaction, all happiness and 
 success in the world. 
 
 It may be, after all, the mission of the university to 
 give such a view of life and business that seventy-five 
 per cent of "the whole thing" cannot be measured in 
 money. If the possession of wealth is seventy-five per 
 cent of the whole thing, what a world of enjoyment 
 some of us college men have had to which we are not 
 entitled ! With ' ' health and a day, ' ' we have ' ' put the 
 pomp of emperors to shame, ' ' never dreaming that the 
 value of life was not expressed in terms of achievement 
 and enjoyment. 
 
 H5
 
 VIII. 
 
 A BUSINESS MAN'S CONCEPTION 
 OF THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
 ONE of the greatest of the joys we call aca- 
 demic is that of looking into the eyes of 
 young men and young women with the feel- 
 ing that some small part at least of their 
 strength is the work of our own minds and hearts. 
 Something of the teacher we see in the student, and, 
 from master to pupil, there is a chain of hereditv' as 
 real, if not as literally exact, as the bodily likeness 
 that runs in the blood. 
 
 To the founder of a university a kindred satisfac- 
 tion is given, and not for a day or a period only, but 
 for "changing cycles of years." It is his part to 
 exchange gold for abundance of life. It is his to 
 work mightily in the aftairs of men centuries after his 
 personal opinions and influence are forgotten. The 
 moral value of the possession of wealth lies in the use 
 to which it is put. There can be no better use than 
 that of making young men and young women wise and 
 clean and strong. 
 
 Of this right use of money your lives and mine 
 have been in large degree a product. This fact gives 
 
 146
 
 CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 me the theme of my discourse this morning, the work 
 of Leiand Stanford Junior University as it existed in 
 the mind of the founder before teachers or students 
 came to Palo Alto to make it real. 
 
 Our university is now just ten years old. Of all 
 foundations in America it is the youngest save one, 
 the University of Chicago. Yet as universities go, in 
 our New World, it has attained its majority. It is old 
 enough to have a character and to be judged by it. 
 
 For the broad principles of education all univer- 
 sities stand, but each one works out its function in its 
 own fashion. It is this fashion, this turn of method, 
 which sets off one from another, which gives each its 
 individual character. What this character shall be no 
 one force can determine. Its final course is a resultant 
 of the initial impulse, the ideals it develops, and the 
 resistance of its surroundings. No one influence can 
 control the final outcome. No one will can determine 
 the result, where a thousand other wills are also active. 
 Nor is the environment finally potent. Environment is 
 inert, except as the individual wills are pitted against it. 
 
 In our own university the initial impulse came from 
 the heart and the brain of Leiand Stanford. The ideals 
 it has upheld were his before they were ours. They 
 had been carefully wrought out in his mind before he 
 called like-minded m.en to his service to carry them into 
 action. It is well, once in a while, to recall this fact. 
 
 I need not repeat the story of Mr. Stanford's life. 
 He was long the most conspicuous public man of 
 
 147
 
 CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 California. He was her war governor, wise and 
 patient, and respected of all men before his railroad 
 enterprises made him the wealthiest citizen of the 
 state. His wide popularity, the influence, personal 
 and political, which he acquired, did not arise from his 
 wealth. Wealth, influence and popularity sprang 
 alike from his personal qualities, his persistence, his 
 integrity, his long-headedness and his simplicity, 
 which kept him always in touch with the people. 
 
 "He was active," it was said, "when other men 
 were idle ; he was generous when others were grasp- 
 ing ; he was lofty when other men were base." He 
 was in all relations of life thoroughly a man, and of 
 that type — simple, earnest, courageous, effective — 
 which we like to call American. 
 
 The need to train his own son first turned his 
 thoughts to educational matters. His early acquaint- 
 ance with Professor Agassiz, perhaps the greatest of 
 American teachers, helped to direct these thoughts in- 
 to channels of wisdom. From Agassiz he derived a 
 realizing sense of the possibilities of human knowledge 
 and the impelling force of man's intellectual needs, — 
 that hunger and thirst after truth which only the student 
 knows. " Man's physical needs are slight, " he said, 
 ' ' but his intellectual needs are bounded only by his 
 capacity to conceive. " In the darkness of bereavement 
 the thought came to Mr. Stanford that the duty of his 
 life should be to carry his plans of educating his own son 
 into effect for the sons of others. After the long vigil 
 
 148
 
 CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 of a dreary night he awoke with these words on his 
 lips: " The children of California shall be my chil- 
 dren. ' ' And with characteristic energy he made this 
 vision fact. Articles of endowment were drawn up, 
 lands and buildings and teachers were provided, and 
 on the first day of October, 1891, the new universit>' 
 opened its doors to the children of California, and to 
 those of the rest of the world as well. 
 
 With all bright auspices of earth and sky, of hope 
 and purpose, of wealth and generosity, the new uni- 
 versity began. In its history all who are here today 
 ha\e taken some part. With many of us it represents 
 the best portion of our lives. Of this I do not now 
 wish to speak, but rather to discuss the original impulse 
 of the founder. What was Leland Stanford's idea of 
 a university, its work and life ? 
 
 We learn, first, that he would leave the university 
 free to grow with the coming ages. He would extend 
 no dead hand from the grave to limit its activities or to 
 control its movements. The deed of gift is in favor of 
 education pure and simple. It has no hampering 
 clause, and the only end in view is that of the help of 
 humanity through the extension of knowledge. ' ' W^e 
 hope," he said, "that this institution will endure 
 through long ages. Provisions regarding details of 
 management, however wise they may be at present, 
 might prove to be mischievous under conditions which 
 may arise in the future." 
 
 As a practical man, accustomed to go to the heart 
 149
 
 CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 of things, Mr. Stanford had Httle respect for educa- 
 tional millinery, and for the conventionalities which 
 have grown up about the great institutions of the Old 
 World, He saw clearly the value of thoroughness, 
 the need of freedom, the individuality of development, 
 but cared little for the machinery by which these ends 
 were achieved. So it was decreed that the new uni- 
 versity should be simple in its organization, with only 
 those details of structure which the needs of the times 
 should develop within it. If it must have precedents 
 and traditions, it must make its own. ' ' I would have 
 this institution," he said, "help to fit men and women 
 for usefulness in this life, by increasing their individ- 
 ual power of production, and by making them good 
 company for themselves and others. ' ' 
 
 A friend at Aix-les-Bains once argued with him 
 that there is already too much education, and that to 
 increase it further is simply to swell the volume of dis- 
 content. ' ' I insisted, ' ' Mr. Stanford said, ' ' that 
 there cannot be too much education any more than 
 too much health or intelligence. Do you happen to 
 know any man who has been too well educated? 
 Where does he live? What is his address? If you 
 cannot find such a man, you cannot speak of over- 
 education." There has been unwise education or mis- 
 fit education. Some highly educated men are neither 
 wise nor fit, and there is a kind of education that 
 comes from experience and not from books. But with 
 all this, too thorough or too good a training no one 
 
 ISO
 
 CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 ever had. Ignorance is shadow. Education is Hght. 
 Nothing is more unpractical than darkness, nothing is 
 more practical than sunshine. 
 
 Mr. Stanford believed that no educational system 
 could be complete in which entrance to the university- 
 was a detached privilege of the chosen few. He be- 
 lieved in the unbroken ladder from the kindergarten 
 to the university, a ladder that each one should be free 
 to climb, as far as his ability or energy should permit. 
 He believed, with Ian Maclaren, in keeping the path 
 well trodden from the farmhouse to the university. 
 He asked that this sentence be placed on the University 
 Register : "A generous education is the birthright of 
 every man and woman in America." In Emerson's 
 words, "America means opportunity, ' ' and opportunity 
 comes through training to receive it. To have such 
 training is to be truly free born, and this is the birth- 
 right of each child of the Republic. 
 
 Science is knowledge tested and set in order, and 
 each advance in knowledge carries with it a corre- 
 sponding increment of power. A machine, to Mr. 
 Stanford, was not a mere saver of labor, but an aid to 
 labor, increasing its efficiency and therefore adding to 
 the value of men. By greater knowledge of the forces 
 of nature we acquire greater skill in turning these 
 forces into man's service through the harness of ma- 
 chinery. In increase of scientific knowledge he found 
 the secret of human power. An education which 
 does not disclose the secret of power is unworthy of 
 
 151
 
 CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 the name. ' ' We may always advance toward the in- 
 finite," was a favorite saying of his. He could find 
 no limit to the development of civilization. The 
 possibilities of human progress expressed to him the 
 measure of infinite goodness. In his own words, ' ' The 
 beneficence of the Creator toward man on earth, and 
 the possibilities of humanity, are one and the same." 
 
 But in his forecast of the myriad triumphs of ap- 
 plied science, he did not forget that knowledge itself 
 must precede any use man can make of it. Pure sci- 
 ence must always go before applied science. The 
 higher forms of thought have their place in mental 
 growth as necessities in the concrete preparation for 
 action. 
 
 In the new university he decreed that ' ' the work 
 in applied sciences shall be carried on side by side with 
 that in the pure sciences and the humanities, and that, 
 so far as may be, all lines of work included in the plan 
 of the university shall be equally fostered." 
 
 No other university has recognized so distinctly 
 the absolute democracy of knowledge. The earlier 
 traditions of Cornell pointed in this direction, and for 
 this reason Mr. Stanford found in Cornell, rather than 
 in Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, or Michigan, the 
 nearest existing approach to his own ideal. It was 
 Ezra Cornell's hope "to found an institution where 
 any person could find instruction in any study." 
 Cornell and Stanford, in so far as they are loyal to 
 these traditions, know neither favored students nor 
 
 152
 
 CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 favored studies. No class of men are chosen to the 
 exclusion of others, and no class of studies is given a 
 fiillacious importance through force of academic pres- 
 sure or through inertia of academic tradition. While 
 various kinds of knowledge are of varying worth to 
 different persons, each has its own value to the world, 
 and the value to the individual must be determined in 
 each case by itself. The university should be no re- 
 specter of persons. It is not called on to approve or 
 condemn the various orders of genius that come to it 
 for training. There has been no greater hindrance to 
 educational progress than the hierarchy of studies, the 
 fiction that certain kinds of work had an invisible 
 value not to be measured by tangible results. 
 
 Mr. Stanford shared with Agassiz the idea that the 
 essential part of education was a thorough knowledge 
 of some one thing, so firmly held as to be effective 
 for practical results. He believed in early choice of 
 profession, in so far as early choice could be wise 
 choice. The course of study, however broad and 
 however long, should in all its parts look toward the 
 final end of effective life. The profession chosen 
 early gives a purpose and stimulus to all the interme- 
 diate courses of training. He saw clearly the need 
 of individualism in education, and that courses of 
 study should be built around the individual man as he 
 is. The supposed needs of the average man as de- 
 veloped by a consensus of educational philosophers do 
 not suffice for the actual man as he is in actual life 
 
 IS3
 
 CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 We must be fed with the food that is good for us. It 
 is for us that it must be adapted, not for some average 
 man in some average age. The ready-made curricu- 
 lum belongs to the same category as ready-made 
 clothing. It is something cheap and easy for the man 
 without individual needs. 
 
 Mr. Stanford's belief that literature and engineer- 
 ing should be pursued side by side was shown by his 
 wish to provide for both with equal generosity. And 
 the students of each are the gainers by this relation. 
 The de\-otee of classical culture is strengthened by his 
 association with men to whom their college work is 
 part of the serious duty of life. The student of en- 
 gineering stands with both feet on the ground. His 
 success in life depends on the exactness of his knowl- 
 edge of machinery and of the basic principles of me- 
 chanics and mathematics. He must be in dead earnest 
 if he would succeed at all. On the other hand, the 
 student of realities gains by his association with the 
 poet, the philosopher and the artist. The finer as- 
 pects of life are brought to his notice, and from this 
 association results tolerance and breadth of sympathy. 
 
 That women should receive higher education as 
 well as men was an axiom to Mr. Stanford. Co-edu- 
 cation was taken for granted from the first, and the 
 young women of Stanford have never had to question 
 the friendliness of their welcome. "We have pro- 
 vided," Mr. Stanford says, "in the articles of endow- 
 ment, that the education of the sexes shall be equal — 
 
 '54
 
 CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 deeming it of special importance that those who are 
 to be the mothers of a future generation shall be fitted 
 to mold and direct the infantile mind at its most critical 
 period." 
 
 The leading argument for co-education is akin to 
 the one just indicated for the union in one institution 
 of the various lines of literature, art, science and ap- 
 plied technology. 
 
 In women's education, as planned for women 
 alone, the tendency is toward the study of beauty and 
 order. Literature and language take precedence over 
 science. Expression is valued more highly than ac- 
 tion. In carrying this to an extreme, the necessary 
 relation of thought to action becomes obscured. The 
 scholarship developed tends to be ineffective, because 
 it is not related to life. The educated woman is likely 
 to master technique, rather than art; method, rather 
 than substance. She may know a good deal, but be 
 able to do nothing. Often her views of life must un- 
 dergo painful changes before she can find her place in 
 the world. 
 
 In schools for men alone, the reverse condition 
 often obtains. The sense of reality obscures the ele- 
 ments of beauty and fitness. It is of great advantage 
 to both men and women to meet on a plane of equal- 
 ity in education. Women are brought into contact 
 with men who can do things — men in whom the sense 
 of reality is strong, and who have definite views in 
 life. This influence affects them for good. It turns 
 
 155
 
 CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 them away from sentimentalism. It is opposed to 
 unwholesome forms of hysterical friendship. It gives 
 tone to their religious thoughts and impulses. Above 
 all, it tends to encourage action governed by ideals, 
 as opposed to that resting on caprice. It gives them 
 better standards of what is possible and impossible, 
 when the responsibility for action is thrown upon them. 
 
 In like manner, the association with wise, sane 
 and healthy women has its value for young men. 
 This value has never been fully realized, even by the 
 strongest advocates of co-education. It raises their 
 ideal of womanhood, and the highest m.anhood must 
 be associated with such an ideal. 
 
 It was the idea of the founders that each student 
 should be taught the value of economy, — that lavish 
 expenditures bring neither happiness nor success. "A 
 student, ' ' it was said by one of the founders, ' ' will be 
 better fitted to battle with the trials and tribulations 
 of life, if he (or she) has been taught the worth of 
 money, the necessity of saving, and of overcoming a 
 desire to imitate those who are better off in the world's 
 goods. For, when he has learned how to save and 
 how to control inordinate desires, he will be relatively 
 rich. During the past three and a half years of close 
 observation on my part, the importance of economy 
 has impressed itself forcibly upon me, and I wish it to 
 be taught to all students of the university. Nature 
 has made the surroundings of the university beautiful, 
 and the substantial character of the buildings gives 
 
 is6
 
 CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 them an appearance of luxury. I wish this natural 
 beauty and comparative luxury to impress upon the 
 students the necessity of their preservation for the 
 generations that are to follow. The lesson thus taught 
 will remain with them through life and help them to 
 teach the lesson to others. The university buildings 
 and grounds are for their use while students, in trust 
 for students to come." 
 
 The value of the study of political and social 
 science as a remedy for defects of government was 
 clearly seen by Mr. Stanford. "All governments," 
 he said, " are governments by public opinion, and in 
 the long run every people is as well governed as it 
 deserves." Hence increase of knowledge brings 
 about better government. For help in such matters 
 the people have a right to look to their universities 
 and university men. It was his theory that the art of 
 government is still in its infancy. " Legislation has 
 not, as a rule, been against the people, but it has 
 failed to do all the good it might. " " No greater 
 blow can be struck at labor than that which renders 
 its products insecure." In the extension of voluntary 
 cooperation, he saw a remedy for many present ills, as 
 he saw in the law of mutual help the essence of our 
 Christian civilization. He said, in laying the corner- 
 stone: " Out of these suggestions grows the consid- 
 eration of the great advantages, especially to the labor- 
 ing man, of cooperation, by which each individual 
 has the benefit of the intellectual and physical forces 
 
 157
 
 CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 of his associates. It is by the intelligent application 
 of these principles that there will be found the greatest 
 lever to elevate the mass of humanity, and laws 
 should be formed to protect and develop cooperative 
 associations. . . . They will accomplish all that 
 is sought to be secured by labor leagues, trades unions 
 and other federations of workmen, and will be free 
 from the objection of even impliedly attempting to 
 take the unauthorized or wrongful control of the prop- 
 erty, capital, or time of others." 
 
 One result of voluntary cooperation, in Mr. Stan- 
 ford's view, would be the development of the spirit of 
 loyalty, the most precious tribute of the laboring man 
 in any grade, in any field, to the interest or cause 
 which he serves. One great evil of the present era 
 of gigantic industrial organizations is that it takes no 
 account of the spirit of loyalty, without which no man 
 can do his best work. The huge trust does away with 
 the feeling of personal association. The equally huge 
 trades union, in many of its operations, strikes directly 
 at the personality of the individual workman. It 
 makes him merely a pawn to be moved hither and 
 thither in the current of industrial war. In the long 
 run, no enterprise can flourish, unless those who carry 
 it on throw themselves, heart and soul, into its service. 
 On the other hand, no one can do a greater injury to 
 the cause of labor than to take loyalty out of the cate- 
 gory of working virtues. It is one of the traditional 
 good traits of the healthy college man to be loyal to 
 
 158
 
 CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 his college. This virtue Mr. Stanford would have 
 cultivated in all efifective ways, and in loyalty on both 
 sides he would find a practical solution of most of the 
 labor troubles of today. That he carried his ideas 
 into his own practice is shown by the unflinching devo- 
 tion of all his own employees of whatever grade 
 throughout his life. They were taught to believe in 
 him, to believe in the worth of their own work, and 
 thus to have respect for themselves. Much of the dis- 
 content of the day has its origin in lack of self-respect. 
 The pawn that is moved in the game of sympathetic 
 strike has no control over his own actions, and there- 
 fore no respect for his own motives. The develop- 
 ment of intelligent, voluntary cooperation, in the long 
 run, must make the workman more than a machine. 
 If he is such, in the long run again, he will receive 
 whatever he deserves. He will be a factor in civiliza- 
 tion, which the unskilled, unthinking laborer is not. 
 
 The great economic waste in labor often engaged 
 Mr. Stanford's attention, and he found its remedy in 
 education. "Once," he said, "the great struggle of 
 labor was to supply the necessities of life; now, but a 
 small portion of our people are so engaged. Food, 
 clothing and shelter are common in our country to 
 every provident person, excepting, of course, in occa- 
 sional accidental cases. The great demand for labor 
 is to supply what may be termed intellectual wants, 
 to which there is no limit, except that of intelligence 
 to conceive. If all the relations and obligations of 
 
 '59
 
 CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 man were properly understood, it would not be neces- 
 sary for people to make a burden of labor. The great 
 masses of the toilers now are compelled to perform 
 such an amount of labor as makes life often w^earisome. 
 An intelligent system of education would correct this 
 inequality. It would make the humblest laborer's 
 work more valuable, it would increase both the demand 
 and supply for skilled labor, and reduce the number of 
 the non-producing class. It would dignify labor, and 
 ultimately would go far to wipe out the mere distinc- 
 tions of wealth and ancestry. It would achieve a blood- 
 less revolution and establish a republic of industry, 
 merit and learning. 
 
 ' ' How near to that state we may be, or how far 
 from it, we cannot now tell. It seems very far when 
 we contemplate the great standing armies of Europe, 
 where over five millions of men (or about one for 
 every twelve adult males) are marching about with 
 guns on their shoulders to preserve the peace of the 
 nations, while hovering near them is an innumerable 
 force of police to preserve the peace of individuals ; 
 but when we remember the possibilities of civilization 
 and the power of education, we can foresee a time \/hen 
 these soldiers and policemen shall be changed to use- 
 ful, producing citizens, engaged in lifting the burdens 
 of the people instead of increasing them. And yet, ex- 
 travagant as are the nations of Europe in standing 
 armies and preparations for war, their extravagance in 
 the waste of labor is still greater. Education, by 
 
 1 60
 
 CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 teaching the intelligent use of machinery, is the only 
 remedy for such waste. ' ' 
 
 That the work of the university should be essential- 
 ly specialized, fitting the individual for definite forms 
 of higher usefulness, was an idea constantly present 
 with Mr. Stanford. He had no interest in general 
 education as an end in itself. He had no desire to fit 
 men for the life of leisure, or for any life which did 
 not involve a close adaptation of means to ends. 
 
 That the new university would in time attract great 
 numbers of students, Mr. Stanford believed as a mat- 
 ter of course, although he found few California teach- 
 ers who shared his optimism. But he was never de- 
 ceived with the cheap test of numbers in estimating the 
 value of institutions. He knew that a few hundred 
 men well trained and under high influences would 
 count for more than as many thousands, hurried in 
 droves over a ready-made curriculum by young tutors, 
 themselves scarcely out of college. So it was decreed 
 that numbers for numbers' sake should never be a goal 
 of Stanford University. And he further made the 
 practical request that not one dollar directly or in- 
 directly should be spent in advertising. The university 
 has no goods for which it is anxious to find customers. 
 
 Mr. Stanford insisted as a vital principle that the 
 university exists for the benefit of its students, present, 
 past and future. It has no existence or function save 
 as an instrument of education. To this principle all 
 others should be subordinate. In his opening address, 
 
 i6i
 
 CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 Mr. Stanford said to the students of the Pioneer Class: 
 ' ' You are the most important factor in this university. 
 It is for your benefit that it has been established. ' ' 
 
 The greatest need of the student is the teacher. 
 Mr. Stanford said : "In order that the president may 
 have the assistance of a competent staff of professors, 
 we have provided that the best talent obtainable shall 
 be procured and that liberal compensation shall always 
 be offered. ' ' Again he said : ' ' Ample endowment may 
 have been provided, intelligent management may se- 
 cure large income, students may present themselves in 
 numbers, but in the end the faculty makes or mars the 
 university. ' ' 
 
 Compared with the character of the faculty, e\'ery 
 other element in the university is of relatively little 
 importance. Great teachers make a university great. 
 The great teacher must always leave a great mark 
 on every youth with whom he comes in contact. 
 The chief duty of the college president is the choice 
 of teachers. If he has learned the art of surround- 
 ing himself with men who are clean, sane and schol- 
 arly, all other matters of university administration 
 will take care of themselves. He cannot fail if he 
 has good men around him. And in the choice of 
 teachers the element of personal sanity seemed of 
 first importance to Mr. Stanford — the ability to see 
 things as they are. The university chair should be a 
 center of clear seeing from which right acting should 
 radiate. 
 
 162
 
 CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 That the university should be a center of cooper- 
 ating research was a vital element in Mr. Stanford's 
 plans. A man content with the truth that now is, and 
 without ambition to venture into the unknown, should 
 not hold the chair of a university professor. The in- 
 centive for research should be within, not without. Its 
 motive should be not the desire of individual fame, but 
 the love of knowledge. 
 
 In proportion to the e.^tent to which it widens the 
 range of human knowledge and of human power, in 
 that degree does an institution deserve the name of 
 university. The value of its original work is the best 
 single test by which a university may be judged; and 
 as it is the best, so is it also the severest. 
 
 In its public relations, the university stands for 
 infinite patience, the calm testing of ideas and ideals. 
 It conducts no propaganda, it controls no affairs of 
 business or of public action. It is the judge of the 
 principles of wisdom and the ways of nature. The 
 details of action it must leave to men whose business 
 it is to guide the currents of the moment. 
 
 When Leland Stanford Junior University was 
 founded, it was provided that in its religious Hfe, as in 
 its scientific investigations, it should be wholly free 
 from outside control. No religious sect or organi- 
 zation and no group of organizations should have 
 dominion over it. The university should exist for its 
 own sake, to carry out its own purposes, and to bring 
 out its own results in its own way. 
 
 163
 
 CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 In this regard the die is cast, once for all. The 
 choice of the founders of the university was deliberate 
 and final. They chose the path of intellectual and 
 religious freedom, in the very interest of religion 
 itself. Religion is devotion in action. In its higher 
 reaches it must be individual, because it is a function 
 of the individual soul which must stand in perpetual 
 protest against the religion that finds its end in forms 
 and ceremonies and organizations. 
 
 Religion must form the axis of personal character, 
 and its prime importance the university cannot ignore. 
 To attain its culture it may use indirect rather than 
 direct means, the influence of effort and character 
 rather than the imposition of forms. To accept eccle- 
 siastical help is to invite ecclesiastical control toward 
 ecclesiastical ends. In the Grant of Endowment it 
 was required that the trustees should ' ' prohibit secta- 
 rian instruction, but have taught in the university the 
 immortality of the soul, the existence of an all-wise 
 and benevolent Creator, and obedience to his laws as 
 the highest duty of man." 
 
 This requirement was a simple reflection of Mr. 
 Stanford's own religious character, as expressed in 
 the words of one very near to him: " If a firm belief 
 in a beneficent Creator, a profound admiration for 
 Jesus of Nazareth and his teachings, and the certainty 
 of a personal life hereafter, constitute religion, then 
 Leland Stanford was a religious man. The narrow 
 walls of a creed could not confine him; therefore he 
 
 164
 
 CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 was not a professed member of any church, for in 
 each confession of faith he found something to which 
 he could not subscribe. But for the principles of 
 religion he had a profound veneration; in his heart 
 were the true sentiments of Christianity, and he often 
 said that in his opinion the Golden Rule was the 
 corner-stone of all true religion." 
 
 The founders believed truly that freedom of 
 thought and action would promote morality and reli- 
 gion, that a deeper, fuller religious life would arise 
 from the growth of the individual, that only where the 
 ' ' winds of freedom ' ' blow will spring up the highest 
 type of religious development. For character is 
 formed from within by the efforts and strivings and 
 aspirations of the individual. It can never be imposed 
 from without. The will is made strong from choosing 
 the right, not Irom having right action enforced upon 
 it. The life of man is ' ' made beautiful and sweet 
 through self-devotion and through self-restraint." 
 But this must be chosen voluntarily, else it fails of its 
 purpose. 
 
 The growth of Leland Stanford Junioi University 
 must remain the best evidence of its founder's wisdom. 
 He had the sagacity to recognize the value of higher 
 education and the patriotism to give the rewards of a 
 successful life to its advancement. He had the rarer 
 wisdom to discriminate between the real and the tem- 
 porary in university organization and management, 
 and his provision is for the genuine and the permanent, 
 
 i6s
 
 CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 not for that "which speedily passes away." Still 
 more rare, he had the forethought to leave to each 
 succeeding generation the duty of adapting its details 
 ot administration and methods to the needs of the 
 time. 
 
 If the founder we love and the founder whose 
 memory we revere had said, ' ' We will found a 
 university so strong that it may endure for all the 
 centuries, whose organization shall be so free and 
 flexible that in each age it shall reflect the best spirit 
 of the time," they could not have given it greater 
 freedom of development than it has today. For the 
 glory of the university must lie in its freedom, in that 
 freedom which cannot fall into license, nor lose itself 
 in waywardness, — that freedom which knows but one 
 bond or control, the eternal truth of God. 
 
 i66
 
 IX. 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE 
 COMMON MAN.* 
 
 IF YOU ever climb the hill above the Palace of 
 Justice in the city of Brussels, you will find in a 
 little house near the summit a strange gallery of 
 pictures wrought by the artist, Wiertz. Among 
 the nightmare products of his morbid genius there is 
 one canvas which commands attention. It is "The 
 Man of the Future and the Things of the Past." It 
 represents a naturalist holding in his right hand a large 
 magnifying-glass, while crowded in his left hand are 
 Napoleon and his marshals with their cannon and battle 
 flags and all the paraphernalia of the great campaigns. 
 He examines these through the glass, while a child by 
 his side looks on in open-eyed wonder, to see what a 
 grown man can find to care for in such little things as 
 these. 
 
 This allegory, painted within a dozen miles of the 
 field of Waterloo and but a few years after the echoes 
 of its cannon had ceased to reverberate, was meant to 
 show how small the place Napoleon really filled in his- 
 tory. When the smoke of battle faded away, with it 
 
 * Address at the inauguration of Dr Edward Pierrepont Graves. 
 167
 
 UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 
 
 vanished the great empire of Napoleon. His con- 
 quests, his victories, his glory and his defeat were but 
 side episodes in the march of events in the nineteenth 
 century. Now as this century comes to its end, we 
 find remaining in the social fabric of European civiliza- 
 tion not a trace to show that the great warrior ever 
 lived. 
 
 In all our study of history we find that the kings 
 are slipping into the background. Once English his- 
 tory was divided into eras, each named for the king 
 in power: the era of Edward I, of Edward III, of 
 Henry V, of Elizabeth and the rest. Now English 
 history is the story of the English people, and the 
 birth or death of no king affects its continuity. Once 
 in our schools we studied the record of the decline 
 and fall of the Roman Empire. Now we realize that 
 nothing that had life in it could decline and fall. The 
 decay of empires is but the breaking of the clods 
 above the growth of man. Books have been written 
 on the seven or eight ' ' decisive battles ' ' in the history 
 of the world. Great battles there have been, but the 
 stake in any battle is less than it appears. No strug- 
 gle of force against force can ever be decisive. Not 
 on the field of battle is the march of events deter- 
 mined. The growth of man goes on whether battles 
 are lost or won. It is written in the nature of man never 
 to be satisfied with wrong. A battle may decide 
 the fate of a king or a dynasty, but not the fate of 
 humanity. The spirit of freedom is in the heart of 
 
 i6g
 
 UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 
 
 man. Kings can never crush it. Priests cannot 
 smother it. It is never buried in the dust of defeat. 
 The growth of man goes on and on, and the develop- 
 ment of individual manhood is all that is vital in 
 human history. 
 
 Not long ago, Earl Roseberry, then Premier of 
 England, said, ' ' Royalty in England is no longer a 
 political but a social function." In other words, the 
 king no longer rules the body and the souls of men. 
 He is but an adornment to society, a piece of historical 
 bric-a-brac, which fills an ornamental niche about 
 which old memories cluster, but which has no regard 
 to present action. And this indeed is true. The good 
 Victoria was not a very queen in flesh and blood as 
 Mary was or Elizabeth. Her royalty w^as a beautiful 
 social fiction. Her will dictated the cut of the ladies' 
 dressesas they entered her parlors at Balmoral or Wind- 
 sor. Nothing more. No longer life and fame hung 
 on the queen's word; neither was the queen's will po- 
 tent for peace or war. Over not one of her majesty' s 
 ships could her majesty use the voice of command. 
 All that concerned the history of the Victorian Age 
 lay as far from the touch of the good Empress of 
 India as it lay from the Queen of Sheba. The Prince 
 of Wales no longer stands in his black coat of armor, 
 receiving the homage of the conquered hosts. In 
 black Prince Albert coat, the soul of propriety, he 
 may preside over agricultural fairs, and m questions 
 of social precedence his voice is still potent. 
 
 169
 
 UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 
 
 Even as the kings, the day of the nations is pass- 
 ing, Man reaches his hand across the artificial boun- 
 daries of states. The great forces of human growth 
 are everywhere at work, and the spirit of the times is 
 no respecter of nations. That the nations make gross 
 expenditures to pile up barriers along their frontiers, 
 is but a sign that barriers crumble and are held up by 
 force alone. The day of empire passes swiftly. Im- 
 perialism like feudalism is soon a thing of the past. 
 Whatever its name or apparent form the real govern- 
 ment of civilization is democracy. It is public opin- 
 ion that rules the common judgment of the common 
 
 man. 
 
 " God said, * I am tired of kings; 
 I suffer them no more, 
 For to my ear each morning brings 
 The outrage of the poor. 
 Think you I made this ball 
 A field of havoc and war 
 Where tyrants small 
 Should harry the weak and poor? ' " 
 
 And as the kings failed the sceptre of power fell 
 from their hands. The church could not retain it. 
 Through the centuries the priests had tried in vain to 
 control the destinies of men by holding them in masses. 
 But masses can never endure. By the movement of 
 the ages they break up into men. And each man 
 must seek his own salvation in fear and trembling even 
 as he seeks his own food by the sweat of his brow. 
 Even as the aristocracy of piety could not hold the 
 
 170
 
 UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 
 
 sceptre of power that the kings let fall, so could no 
 other aristocracy keep it long. The chosen of the 
 earth have dominion over themselves alone. They 
 cannot permanently rule over you nor me. Not the 
 caste of the wise, the learned, the strong of arm 
 or the blue of blood can permanently endure. All 
 that lasts is the man, the common man, and in his 
 hands, in your hands, in my hands today is the sceptre 
 of power, the sceptre kings and priests and lords could 
 never hold. What shall we do with it ? 
 
 For more than a century now the common man 
 has ruled America. How has he used his opportu- 
 nities? It is too soon to answer this question. A 
 hundred years is a time too short for the test of such 
 gigantic experiments. Here in America we have 
 made history already — some of it glorious; some of 
 it foolish; some of it wicked; much of it made up of 
 the old stories told over again. We have learned 
 that the social problems of Europe are not kept away 
 from us by the quarantine of democracy. We find 
 that the dead which the dead past cannot bury are 
 thrown up on our shores. We find that weakness, 
 misery and crime are still with us, and that wherever 
 weakness is there is tyranny also. The essence of 
 tyranny lies not in the strength of the strong, but in the 
 weakness of the weak. Even in the free air of America 
 there are still millions who are not free — milHons who 
 can never be free under any government or under any 
 laws, so long as they remain what they are. 
 
 171
 
 UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 
 
 The remedy for oppression, then, is to bring in 
 men who cannot be oppressed. This is the remedy 
 our fathers sought; we shall find no other. The 
 problem of life is not to make life easier, but to make 
 men stronger, so that no problem shall be beyond 
 their solution. It will be a sad day for the Republic 
 when life is easy for ignorance, indolence and apathy. 
 The social order of the present we cannot change 
 much if we would. The real work of each genera- 
 tion is to mold the social order of the future. The 
 grown-up men and women of today are, in a sense, 
 past savmg. The best work of the Republic is to 
 save the children. 
 
 The one great duty of a free nation is education — 
 education, wise, thorough, universal; the education, 
 not of cramming, but of training; the education 
 that no republic has ever given, and without which 
 all republics must be in whole or in part failures. If 
 this generation should leave as its legacy to the next 
 the real education, — training in individual power and 
 skill, breadth of outlook on the world and on life, — 
 the problems of the next century would take care of 
 themselves. There can be no industrial problem 
 where each man is capable of solving his own individ- 
 ual problem for himself. 
 
 In this direction lies, I believe, the key to all indus- 
 trial and social problems. Reforms in education are 
 the greatest of all reforms. The ideal education must 
 meet two demands: it must be personal, fitting a man
 
 UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 
 
 or woman for success in life; it must be broad, giving 
 a man or woman such an outlook on the world that 
 this success may be worthy. It should give to each 
 man or woman that reserve strength without which no 
 life can be successful, because no life can be free. 
 
 All education must be individual — fitted to indi- 
 vidual needs. That which is not so is unworthy of 
 the name. A misfit education is no education at all. 
 Every man that lives has a right to some form of 
 higher education. A generous education, as I have 
 said more than once, should be the birthright of every 
 son and daughter of this Republic. 
 
 To furnish the higher education that humanity 
 needs, the college must be as broad as humanity. No 
 spark of talent that man may possess should be out- 
 side its fostering care. To fit man into schemes of 
 education has been the mistake of the past. To fit 
 education to man is the work of the future. 
 
 The traditions of higher education in America had 
 their origin in social conditions very different from 
 ours. In the Golden Age of Greece, each free man 
 stood on the backs of nine slaves. The freedom of 
 the ten was the birthright of the one. To train the 
 tenth man was the function of the early university. 
 Only free men can be trained. A part of this training 
 of the tenth in the early days was necessarily in the 
 arts by whicn the nine were kept in subjection. 
 
 The universities of Paris and Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge were founded to educate the lord and the 
 
 »73
 
 UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 
 
 priest. And to these schools and their successors, as 
 time went on, fell the duty of training the gentlemen 
 and the clergy. Only in our day has it been recog- 
 nized that the common man had part or lot in higher 
 education. For now he has come into his own, and 
 he demands that he, too, may be noble and gentle. 
 
 The old traditions are not sufficient for him. The 
 narrow processes by which gentlemen were trained in 
 mediaeval Oxford are not adequate to the varied 
 demands of the man of the twentieth century. He is 
 more than a gentleman. Heir to all the ages he 
 must be; and there are ages since, as there were ages 
 before, the tasks set in these schools became stereo- 
 typed as culture. The need of wise choice has 
 become a thousand-fold greater with the extension of 
 human knowledge and human power. The need of 
 choosing right is steadily growing more and more im- 
 perative. If the common man is to be his own high 
 priest in these strenuous days, his strength must be as 
 great, his consecration as intense as it was with those 
 who were his rulers in ruder and less trying times. 
 The osmosis of classes is still going on. By its silent 
 force it has ' ' pulled down the mighty from their seats, 
 and has exalted them of low degree." Again, edu- 
 cate our rulers. We find that they need it. They 
 have in the aggregate, not yet the brains, nor the 
 conscience, nor the force of will that fits them for the 
 task the fates have thrown upon them. 
 
 If the wisdom of the one is shared by the ten, it 
 
 174
 
 UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 
 
 must increase ten-fold in amount. If it does not, the 
 Golden Age of modern civilization must pass away. 
 Every moment we feel it slipping from our hands. 
 Every moment we must strive for a fresh hold. 
 "Eternal vigilance," it was said of old, "is the 
 price of liberty." And this was what was meant. 
 The perpetuation of free institutions rests with free 
 men. The masses, the mobs of men, are never free. 
 Hence the need of the hour is to break up the 
 masses. They should be masses no longer, but indi- 
 vidual men and women. The work of higher educa- 
 tion is to put an end to the rule of the multitude, to 
 turn the multitude into men. 
 
 The university of today must recognize the need 
 of the individual student as the reason for its exist- 
 ence. If we are to make men and women out of 
 boys and girls, it will be as individuals, not as classes. 
 The best field of corn is that in which the individual 
 stalks are most strong and most fruitful. Class legis- 
 lation has always proved pernicious and ineffective, 
 whether in a university or in a state. The strongest 
 nation is that in which the individual man is most help- 
 ful and most independent. The best school is that 
 which exists for the individual student. A university 
 is not an aggregation of colleges, departments or 
 classes. It is built up of young men and women. 
 The student is its unit. The basal idea of higher edu- 
 cation is, that each student should devote his time and 
 strength to what is best for him; that no force of 
 
 175
 
 UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 
 
 tradition, no rule of restraint, no bait of a degree, 
 should swerve any one from his best educational path. 
 
 "The way to educate a man," Professor Anderson 
 has said, "is to set him to work; the best way to get 
 him to work is to interest him ; the best way to interest 
 him is to vitalize his task by relating it to some form 
 of reality." 
 
 Individualism in education is no discovery of our 
 times. None of us have any patent on it. It was by 
 no means invented at Palo Alto; neither was it born at 
 Harvard nor in Michigan. The need of it is written 
 in the heart of man. It had found recognition where- 
 ever the ' ' care and culture ' ' of man had been taken 
 seriously. 
 
 A Japanese writer, Uchimura, says of education in 
 old Japan: "We were not taught in classes then. 
 The grouping of soul-bearing human beings into 
 classes, as sheep upon Australian farms, was not 
 known in our old schools. Our teachers believed, I 
 think, instinctively, that man {persona) is unclassifi- 
 able; that he must be dealt with personally — i. e., 
 face to face, and soul to soul. So they schooled us 
 one by one — each according to his idiosyncrasies, 
 physical, mental and spiritual." Thus it was in old 
 Japan. Thus should it be in new America. In such 
 manner do the old ideas forever renew their youth, 
 when these ideas are based not on tradition or con- 
 vention, but in the nature of man. 
 
 The best care and culture of man is not that which 
 
 176
 
 UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 
 
 restrains his weakness, but that which gives play to 
 his strength. We should work for the positive side 
 of life. We should build up ideals of effort. To get 
 rid of vice and folly is to let strength grow in their 
 place. 
 
 The great danger in democracy is the seeming pre- 
 dominance of the weak. The strong and the true 
 seem never to be in the majority. The politician who 
 knows the signs of the times understands the ways of 
 majorities. He knows well the weakness of the com- 
 mon man. Injustice, violence, fraud and corruption 
 are all expressions of it, and on this weakness he plays. 
 Hence the emptiness of party platforms, the silliness 
 and immorality of partisan appeals. 
 
 The strength of the common man the leaders do 
 not know. Ignorant, venal and vacillating, the com- 
 mon man is at his worst; but he is also earnest, intelli- 
 gent and determined. To know him at his best, is 
 the essence of real statesmanship. His power for 
 good may be used as well as his power for evil. It 
 was this trust of the common man that made the 
 statesmanship of Abraham Lincoln. And under such 
 a leader the common man ceased to be common. 
 
 Should the common man remain common ? This 
 some have thought, and they have fought the public 
 school as though it were the advance guard of an- 
 archy. 
 
 My own great-grandfather, John Elderkin Waldo, 
 said in Tolland, Connecticut, a century ago, "that 
 
 177
 
 UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 
 
 there would never be good times in New England 
 again until each farm laborer was willing to work all 
 day for ' a sheep' s head and pluck. ' ' ' That ' ' the 
 times of contentment ' ' were gone, he thought ' ' was 
 due to the little red schoolhouses scattered over the 
 hills teaching the doctrines of sedition and anarchy." 
 But the movement of democracy has been just in the 
 opposite direction from that which good Gaffer Waldo 
 upheld. The laborers of Connecticut are the state of 
 Connecticut today. Those at the bottom a century 
 ago have risen highest and have demanded the most. 
 
 The movement of history, so far as man is con- 
 cerned, according to Sir Henry Maine, has been always 
 from status to contract. In ruder, coarser times a 
 man's state in life is determined by what his father 
 was. In civilization he is what he makes himself. In 
 barbarism, feudalism, imperialism, as Napoleon once 
 pointed out, woman has no rank at all. She is what 
 father, lover, master or fate may choose to make her. 
 In civilization she, too, has a soul, and her place, like 
 that of man, is that which she may choose or accept. 
 
 The ideal of the state of contract is, that each man 
 or woman, each unit of society or government, should 
 be free to make the most of himself. "A child is 
 better unborn than untaught." Or, in the words of 
 Emerson, "the best political economy is the care and 
 culture of men." Hence it is that the very essence 
 of republicanism is popular education. There is no 
 virtue in the acts of ignorant majorities, unless by dint 
 
 178
 
 UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 
 
 of repeated action the majority is no longer ignorant. 
 The very work of ruling is in itself education. As 
 Americans, we believe in government by the people. 
 This is not that the people are the best of rulers, but 
 because a growth in wisdom is sure to go with the 
 increase of responsibility. 
 
 The voice of the people is not the voice of God; 
 but if this voice be smothered, it becomes the voice 
 of the demon. The red flag of the anarchist is woven 
 where the people think in silence. In popular gov- 
 ernment, it has been said, ignorance has the same 
 right to be represented as wisdom. This may be true, 
 but the perpetuity of such government demands that 
 this fact of representation should help to transform 
 ignorance into wisdom. Majorities are generally 
 wrong, but only through experience of their mistakes 
 is the way opened to the permanent establishment of 
 right. The justification of the experiment of universal 
 suffrage is the formation of a training-school in civics, 
 which, in the long run, will bring about good gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 Our fathers built for the future — a future even yet 
 unrealized. America is not, has never been, the best 
 governed of civilized nations. The iron-handed dic- 
 tatorship of Germany is, in its way, a better govern- 
 ment than our people have ever given us. That is, it 
 follows a more definite and consistent policy. Its 
 affairs of state are conducted with greater economy, 
 greater intelligence and higher dignity than ours. It 
 
 179
 
 UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 
 
 is above the influence of the two arch-enemies of the 
 American state — the corruptionist and the spoilsman. 
 If this were all, we might welcome a Bismarck as our 
 ruler, in place of our succession of weak-armed and 
 short-lived presidents. 
 
 But this is not all. It is not true that the govern- 
 ment "which is the best administered is the best." 
 This is the maxim of tyranny. Good government 
 may be a matter even of secondary importance. Our 
 government by the people is for the people's growth. 
 It is the great training-school in governmental meth- 
 ods, and in the progress which it insures lies the certain 
 pledge of better government in the future. This 
 pledge, I believe, enables us to look with confidence 
 on the gravest of political problems, problems that 
 other nations have nev^er solved, and that can be 
 faced by no statesmanship other than 
 
 " The right divine of man, 
 The millions trained to be free." 
 
 And in spite of all reaction and discouragement, every 
 true American feels that this trust in the future is no 
 idle boast. 
 
 But popular education has higher aims than those 
 involved in intelligent citizenship. No country can 
 be truly well governed in which any person is pre- 
 vented either by interference or by neglect from mak- 
 ing the most of himself ' ' Of all state treasures, ' ' 
 says Andrew D. White, "the genius and talent of
 
 UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 
 
 citizens are the most precious. It is a duty of society 
 to itself, a duty that it cannot throw off, to see that the 
 stock of talent and genius in each generation may have 
 a chance for development, that it may be added to the 
 world's stock and aid in the world's work." 
 
 But the work of the free public school cannot stop 
 with the rudiments of education. Else the common 
 man would remain as common as ever. The open 
 door of education must be more than a door. It must 
 lead somewhere, and to something worth while. 
 
 I am not here to plead the value of higher educa- 
 tion. The man who doubts it is beyond the reach of 
 argument. The men who have made our country are 
 the educated men, not its college graduates, for until 
 within the last twenty-five years college men were not 
 themselves abreast of our own progress. The coun- 
 try was made by men of broad views and high ideals, 
 and these views and these ideals came from them to 
 the common man. 
 
 I do not plead even for state support of higher 
 education. That our people have taken for granted, 
 however niggardly has been their provision for it. If 
 the state makes no provision for higher education 
 there is no other agency on which we can depend to 
 supply it. Higher education by the state is the com- 
 ing glory of democracy. The state university is the 
 culmination of the state public school system. With- 
 out the head the system is itself ineffective. Each part 
 of the system draws its strength and its inspiration
 
 UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 
 
 from the part that is higher. Lop off the upper 
 branches of the tree, and the sap ceases to rise in its 
 trunk. If the state fails to furnish the means of edu- 
 cation, higher or lower, these means will never be ade- 
 quately supplied. The people must combine to do 
 this work, for in the long run no other agency can do 
 it. Moreover, any other means of maintenance of the 
 university sooner or later forms the entering wedge 
 between the school and the people. 
 
 Dr. Angell has lately said that the history of Iowa 
 is the history of her state university, the greatness of 
 the state has come through the growth of the men the 
 state has trained. What is true of Iowa is far more 
 true of Dr. Angell' s own state of Michigan. It is 
 true of Washington, of Oregon, of California, of all 
 the states, each in its degree. 
 
 In 1887 I spoke before the students of the Uni- 
 versity of Minnesota. Again, ten years later, I 
 stood on the same platform. The change in these 
 ten years seemed as the work of magic. A few hun- 
 dred students housed in coarse barracks, with few 
 teachers and scanty appliances in 1887; in 1897 ^ 
 magnificent university, that would no wise stand in 
 shame if brought in comparison with Oxford or Cam- 
 bridge or the still broader and sounder universities of 
 Germany. Beautiful buildings, trained professors, 
 adequate appliances — all gathered together by the 
 common people, all the work of the state, all part of 
 the system of public schools, with upwards of two 
 
 182
 
 UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 
 
 thousand students actually there in person, the con- 
 trolling percentage of the men and the women of 
 college age, in the whole great state. In this university 
 today is written the history of Minnesota for the next 
 century. It is an inspiring history, a history of free- 
 dom, of self-reliance, of wisdom and of self-restraint. 
 As I looked down into those bright young eyes I felt that 
 I was gazing forward into the future of American de- 
 mocracy, that I had looked into the middle of the next 
 century and I had found it good. 
 
 But more than one-third of these students were 
 girls, and some one at my elbow said, ' ' It looks like 
 a girl's school" ; so in fact it did. Then in thought, 
 I looked forward to the day when these six hundred 
 girls should, most of them, be centres of Minnesota 
 homes, — homes of culture, homes of power, through 
 whose noble influences the work of the university should 
 be multiplied a hundred-fold. Then I blessed the wis- 
 dom of the fathers, I rejoiced in the fact that our state 
 universities were schools for women as they are for 
 men. Within the control of the state universities are 
 the homes of the twentieth century, and from these 
 homes of culture, purity and power will come the for- 
 tunate students of the fortunate colleges of the years 
 to come. 
 
 James Bryce has said that of all institutions in 
 America it is of the universities that we have most 
 right to be proud. No other institution in America 
 holds such promise of the future. The state univer- 
 
 183
 
 UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 
 
 sity is the glory of our democracy. This I can realize 
 now that I stand outside its walls, with no part or lot 
 in its successes, even better than in the past when with 
 such force as I had, I did battle in its ranks. 
 
 Eighteen years ago it was my fortune to speak to 
 the students in the University of Washington. These 
 are not the same students before me now, not the same 
 professors. Hardly the same university. Only the 
 same green fir-forests, the same blue waters of the 
 Sound, the same clear winding lakes, the same snow- 
 capped Olympics, and Baker and Rainier, the same 
 freedom, the same hope. 
 
 In the frontier settlement of Seattle, on a hill in 
 the suburbs, stood the little territorial university. A 
 single wooden building with one professor, our vet- 
 eran friend, Mr. A. J. Anderson, or it may be two pro- 
 fessors, and a few dozen ill-trained but eager students. 
 That was all — only the germ of a university half 
 forgotten among the bustling industries of the frontier. 
 
 It may be that it is only a germ today, but the 
 foliage is expanding and there are signs of flowering 
 buds. It has begun to gather power, to make history, 
 and the history it has really made will appear in the 
 coming century when the boys and the girls before me 
 shall mold the social life and the political life of the 
 great state of the Northwest. 
 
 We are here to mark one great step in the growth 
 of the University of Washington, to set up a milestone 
 in her pilgrimage. 
 
 184
 
 UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 
 
 Mistakes have been made in her past history. 
 These need not concern us now, save to make us 
 hope that each has taught its own lesson. Mistakes 
 may be made in the future, but the uhimate result is 
 sure. The university by the lake is the most valuable 
 treasure your state will ever possess. As the state 
 grows, so will the university grow. As the university 
 stands among its sister schools, so will the state stand 
 among its sister states. You cannot make Washing- 
 ton great while you leave her university to starve. 
 One great mistake you have made — which I fear you 
 can never right again. You have divided between 
 Pullman and Seattle the strength that should never be 
 divided. There is power in concentration, and you 
 have wasted this power. You have weakened the 
 force of higher education at the behest of local ambi- 
 tion, or it may be sectional jealousy. 
 
 The University of Washington exists for the good 
 of its students. Through these it must justify its 
 existence. For this reason it should spend its money 
 and its strength on that only which makes for educa- 
 tion. There is no need to worry about attendance. 
 Students will come when their wants are met. They 
 will come to a good college and come in numbers, 
 though they have to walk a hundred miles to find it. 
 It is the teachers who make the university. * ' Have 
 a university in shanties, nay, in tents, ' ' said Cardinal 
 Newman, "but have great teachers in it." There is 
 no other requisite and there is no substitute. Build- 
 
 i8s
 
 UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 
 
 ings, libraries, departments, publications, names and 
 numbers do not make a university. It is the men that 
 teach. Once Emerson wrote to his daughter, "It 
 matters little what your studies are, it all lies in who 
 your teacher is." 
 
 The future of the University of Washington lies 
 in who its teachers are. To choose its teachers is to 
 write its future, and through the future of the univer- 
 sity to write the future of the state. I know of no 
 career more inspiring than that of the president of the 
 university of one of the free, generous, growing com- 
 munities we call the United States. In his hand is the 
 magic wand of power, and to zealously and jealously 
 guard this he must give the strength of his life. 
 
 To your newly chosen president let me say this: 
 It is for you to give color and character and direc- 
 tion to the work of the University of Washington. 
 The successful university, like the successful man, must 
 have an individuality of its own. It must stand for 
 something. Unless it has a definite character and 
 purpose it does not rise above the level of a cheese 
 factory. There are American universities in the vege- 
 table stage, without will or soul, with limp-handed 
 presidents and professors anxious only to retain their 
 salaries. Such universities do not justify their ex- 
 istence. Good students shun them. Good teachers 
 scorn them, and the good they do is half evil because 
 they stand in the way of something better. 
 
 It is for you to see that the University of Wash- 
 i86
 
 UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 
 
 ington is not of this character. It is for you to make 
 it great — not alone in its buildings or endowment or 
 the length of its roll of students. These are only 
 incidents. A university is great only in the spirit 
 that pervades it. What this spirit is depends on the 
 men that make its faculty. To choose these men is 
 your most sacred duty. This duty is yours and 
 yours alone. If others take it from you, they are 
 usurpers and it is your duty today and forever to 
 resent usurpation. If you are fit for the position you 
 hold then you are the fittest man in the state to choose 
 the state's professors. No Board of Trustees should 
 take this task from your hands; no honest board will 
 try to do so, unless, indeed, through lack of confidence 
 in you. If you cannot secure and hold the confi- 
 dence of honest men, you should not hold your 
 place. If you have to deal with men not honest, 
 then go down, if fall you must, with colors flying. 
 Never consent to a wrong appointment to make your 
 own position easy. 
 
 This only have you a right to consider in choosing 
 your coworkers. Do the best for the students you 
 can with the money you are able to spend. No citi- 
 zen in Washington has a claim on the university. 
 There is no man who has earned the right to be 
 appointed except by his own excellence in scholarship, 
 'his skill as a teacher and the loftiness of his character. 
 Neither personal nor political influence; not the de- 
 mands of churches, nor the claims of charity have you 
 
 187
 
 UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 
 
 any right to consider. No man fit for a professorship 
 will ever try to work such claims. Men have said 
 that the state universities lie at the mercy of poli- 
 ticians. If this be true it is because the doors are 
 left in charge of rascals. If politics, using the word 
 in the low sense, enter the University of Washington, 
 Dr. Graves, let it be over your dead body. There 
 are martyrs to the cause of education as well as to 
 other causes. The blood of the martyrs is the seed 
 of the church. The martyrdom of President Tappan 
 made the University of Michigan. The success of 
 Michigan, the first state university worthy the name, 
 gave a mighty inspiration to the whole system of pub- 
 lic schools that will some day make America. 
 
 Every man who has a right to enter these halls as 
 professor should be a man v/ho knows. He should be 
 a master of the work in hand, and above all he should 
 be a growing man. A growing man invites growth; 
 even mold will not grow on a fossil. The teacher 
 should have ' ' power enough to be productive. ' ' No 
 second-hand man was ever a great teacher. No 
 second-hand man, whether plodder or charlatan, 
 should have place within these consecrated halls. 
 
 To secure worthy men your state must pay worthy 
 salaries, salaries on which a young man can live and 
 grow. There is no profession that demands so much, 
 none that, on the average, is so poorly paid. This 
 is because presidents and boards lack discrimina- 
 tion. They pay the dullard and the charlatan the same
 
 UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 
 
 salary they pay the scholar. The scholar will leave 
 sooner or later for some place or work where he is 
 better appreciated. The salaries you pay here can 
 attract only young men or weak men. The young 
 men of power will make reputations and go some- 
 where else. Those who will be permanently satisfied 
 with fifteen hundred to two thousand a year are only 
 the dregs of the profession. A growing man must 
 travel, must have books, must be able to care for his 
 family. Without these he cannot grow. His ex- 
 penses must be large, his salary must be larger. 
 
 Doubtless the average professor isn't worth two 
 thousand a year. Doubtless you could fill every 
 chair here on five hundred. But that is not the 
 point. The fact is, the average college professor 
 is worth very little indeed. It is not average men but 
 real men that make a university. Some real men you 
 have and you know who they are. There is no 
 excuse for you to employ any others. Average men 
 and average teachers you can buy tied in bunches at 
 any price you choose to ofier; for real men you must 
 look far and wide, for they are in constant demand. 
 
 With thoroughness of training must go sympathy 
 and skill. The teacher must come near to the heart 
 of his students. The greatest teacher is the one who 
 never forgets that he was once a boy and who knows 
 the aspirations, the limitations and the ambitions of 
 the boys of today. 
 
 And with all this, more vital than all is the demand 
 189
 
 UNIVERSITY AND COMMON MAN 
 
 for character. Without character, — devoted, rugged, 
 strength of soul, — no man has a right to teach. 
 Along this line every year the profession is winnowed 
 of its chaff. Vacillating men, cynical men, perverse 
 men, tricky men, visionary men, smart men, hypo- 
 critical men, beastly men, men who are slaves of 
 habit, weakness or vice are cast out one by one from 
 the profession into which they have drifted. Let such 
 as these find no asylum with you. 
 
 The highest function of the university is the forma- 
 tion of character, the training of men and women, in 
 purity and strength, in sweetness and light. The 
 great teacher never fails to leave a great mark on 
 •every young man and young woman with whom he 
 comes in contact. 
 
 And this mark of greatness in its last analysis is 
 always a moral one. There is no real excellence in 
 all this world that can be separated from right living. 
 'The earth," says Emerson, "is upheld by the 
 \'eracity of good men. They make the world whole- 
 some. ' ' 
 
 190
 
 X. 
 
 THE WOMAN AND THE 
 UNIVERSITY. 
 
 THE subject of the higher training of young 
 women may resolve itself into three ques- 
 tions: 
 
 I. Shall a girl receive a college edu- 
 catio7i ? 
 
 2. Shall she receive the same kind of college edu 
 catio?i as a boy f 
 
 J. Shall she be educated i^i the same college ? 
 As to the first question: It must depend on the 
 character of the girl. Precisely so with the boy. 
 What we should do with either depends on his or her 
 possibilities. No parent should let either boy or girl 
 enter life with any less preparation than the best he 
 can give. It is true that many college graduates, 
 boys and girls alike, do not amount to much after 
 the schools have done all they can. It is true, also, 
 that higher education is not a question alone of pre- 
 paring great men for great things. It must prepare 
 even little men for greater things than they would 
 otherwise have found possible. And so it is with the 
 education of women. The needs of the time are im- 
 
 191
 
 THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 perative. The highest product of social evolution is 
 the growth of the civilized home, the home that only 
 a wise, cultivated and high-minded woman can make. 
 To furnish such women is one of the worthiest func- 
 tions of higher education. No young women capable 
 of becoming such should be condemned to anything 
 lower. Even with those who are in appearance too 
 dull or too vacillating to reach any high ideal of wis- 
 dom, this may be said — it does no harm to try. A 
 few hundred dollars is not much to spend on an ex- 
 periment of such moment. Four of the best years 
 of one's life spent in the company of noble thoughts 
 and high ideals cannot fail to leave their impress. To 
 be wise, and at the same time womanly, is to wield a 
 tremendous influence, which may be felt for good in 
 the lives of generations to come. It is not forms of 
 government by which men are made and unmade. It 
 is the character and influence of their mothers and 
 their wives. The higher education of women means 
 more for the future than all conceivable legislative 
 reforms. And its influence does not stop with the 
 home. It means higher standards of manhood, greater 
 thoroughness of training, and the coming of better 
 men. Therefore let us educate our girls as well as 
 our boys. A generous education should be the birth- 
 right of every daughter of the Republic as well as of 
 every son. 
 
 It is hardly necessary among intelligent men and 
 women to argue that a good woman is a better one for 
 
 192
 
 THE WOMAN AND THE UNI V E R S I T Y 
 
 having received a college education. Anything short 
 of this is inadequate for the demands of modern life 
 and modern culture. The college training should give 
 some basis for critical judgment among the various 
 lines of thought and effort which force themselves 
 upon our attention. Untrained cleverness is said to 
 be the most striking characteristic of the American 
 woman. Trained cleverness, a very much more 
 charming thing, is characteristic of the American 
 college woman. And when cleverness stands in the 
 right perspective, when it is so strengthened and 
 organized that it becomes wisdom, then it is the most 
 valuable dowry a bride can bring to her home. 
 
 Even if the four K's, " Kirche, Kinder, Kuchen 
 and Kleider," are to occupy woman's life, as Em- 
 peror William would have us believe, the college edu- 
 cation is not too serious a preparation for the profes- 
 sion of directing them. A wise son is one who has 
 had a wise mother, and to give alertness, intelligence 
 and wisdom is the chief function of a college educa- 
 tion. 
 
 2. Shall we give 07ir Girls the Same Education 
 as our Boys ? 
 
 Yes, and no. If we mean by the same, an equal 
 degree of breadth and thoroughness, an equal fitness 
 for high thinking and wise acting, yes, let it be the 
 same. If we mean this: Shall M^e reach this end by 
 exactly the same course of studies? then the answer 
 must be. No. For the same course of study will not 
 
 193
 
 THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 yield the same results with different persons. The 
 ordinary "college course" which has been handed 
 down from generation to generation is purely conven- 
 tional. It is a result of a series of compromises in 
 trying to fit the traditional education of clergymen 
 and gentlemen to the needs of a different social era. 
 The old college course met the needs of nobody, and 
 therefore was adapted to all alike. The great educa- 
 tional awakening of the last twenty years in America 
 has lain in breaking the bonds of this old system. 
 The essence of the new education is constructive indi- 
 vidualism. Its purpose is to give to each young man 
 that training which will make a man of hi77i. Not the 
 training which a century or two ago helped to civilize 
 the mass of boys of that time, but that which will 
 civilize this particular boy. The main reason why the 
 college students of today are twenty times as many as 
 twenty years ago is that the college training now given 
 is valuable to twenty times as many men as could be 
 reached or helped by the narrow courses of twenty 
 years ago. 
 
 In the university of today the largest liberty of 
 choice in study is given to the student. The profess- 
 or advises, the student chooses, and the flexibility of 
 the courses makes it possible for every form of talent 
 to receive proper culture. Because the college of 
 today helps ten times as many men as that of yester- 
 day could hope to reach, it is ten times as valuable. 
 This difference lies in the development of special Hues 
 
 194.
 
 THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 of work and in the growth of the elective system. 
 The power of choice carries the duty of choosing 
 rightly. The ability to choose has made a man out of 
 the college boy, and has transferred college work from 
 an alternation of tasks and play to its proper relation 
 to the business of life. Meanwhile the old ideals have 
 not risen in value. If our colleges were to go back 
 to the cut-straw of mediaevalism, to their work of 
 twenty years ago, their professors would speak to 
 empty benches. In those colleges which still cling to 
 these traditions the benches are empty today, or filled 
 with idlers. 
 
 I do not mean to condemn the study of the ancient 
 classics and mathematics which made almost the whole 
 of the older college course. These studies must 
 always have their place, but no longer an exclusive 
 place. The study of the language and literature of 
 Greece still ranks with the noblest efforts of the human 
 intelligence. For those who can master it, Greek 
 gives a help not to be obtained in any other way. As 
 Thoreau once observed, those who would speak of 
 forgetting the Greek are those who never knew it. 
 But without mastery tliere is no gain of strength. To 
 compel all men and boys of whatever character or abil- 
 ity to study Greek is in itself a degradation of Greek, 
 * as it is a hardship to those forced to spend their 
 strength where it is not effective. There are other 
 forms of culture better fitted to other types of man, and 
 the essential feature lies in the strength of mastery. 
 
 195
 
 THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 The best education for a young woman is surely 
 not that which has proved unfit for the young man. 
 She is an individual as well as he, and her work gains 
 as much as his by relating it to her life. But an insti- 
 tution which meets the varied needs of varied men can 
 also meet the varied needs of varied women. The 
 intellectual needs of the two classes are not very differ- 
 ent in may important respects. In so far as these are 
 different the elective system gives full play for the ex- 
 pression of such differences. It is true that most men 
 in college look forward to professional training and 
 that very few women do so. But the college training 
 is not in itself a part of any profession, and it is broad 
 enough in its range of choice to point to men and 
 women alike the way to any profession which may be 
 chosen. Those who have to do with the higher edu- 
 cation of women know that the severest demands can 
 be met by them as well as by men. There is no de- 
 mand for easy or "goody-goody" courses of study 
 for women except as this demand has been encouraged 
 by men. In this matter the supply has always pre- 
 ceded the demand. 
 
 There are, of course, certain average differences be- 
 tween men and women as students. Women have often 
 greater sympathy or greater readiness of memory or 
 apprehension, greater fondness for technique. In the 
 languages and literature, often in mathematics and 
 history, they are found to excel. They lack, on the 
 whole, originality. They are not attracted by un- 
 
 196
 
 THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 solved problems, and in the inductive or ' ' inexact ' ' 
 sciences they seldom take the lead. The ' ' motor ' ' 
 side of their minds and natures is not strongly de- 
 veloped. They do not work for results as much as 
 for the pleasure of study. In the traditional courses 
 of study — traditional for men — they are often very 
 successful. Not that these courses ha\'e a fitness for 
 women, but that women are more docile and less criti- 
 cal as to the purposes of education. And to all these 
 statements there are many exceptions. In this, how- 
 ever, those who have taught both men and women 
 must agree; the training of women is just as serious 
 and just as important as the training of men, and no 
 training is adequate for either which falls short of the 
 best. 
 
 J. Shall IVofnefi be taught in the Same Classes 
 as Me7i f 
 
 This is partly a matter of taste or personal prefer- 
 ence. It does no harm whatever to either men or 
 women to meet those of the other sex in the same 
 classrooms. But if they prefer not to do so, let them 
 do otherwise. No harm is done in either case, nor has 
 the matter more than secondary importance. Much 
 has been said for and against the union in one institu- 
 tion of technical schools and schools of liberal arts. 
 The technical quality is emphasized by its separation 
 from general culture. But I believe that better men 
 are made when the two are brought more closely 
 tog^ether. The culture studies and their students frain 
 
 197
 
 THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY * 
 
 from the feeling of reality and utility cultivated by 
 technical work. The technical students gain from 
 association with men and influences of which the 
 aggregate tendency is toward greater breadth of sym- 
 pathy and a higher point of view. 
 
 A woman's college is more or less distinctly a 
 technical school. In most cases, its purpose is dis- 
 tinctly stated to be such. It is a school of training 
 for the profession of womanhood. It encourages 
 womanliness of thought as more or less different from 
 the plain thinking which is called manly. The bright- 
 est work in woman' s colleges is often accompanied by 
 a nervous strain, as though its doer were fearful of 
 falling short of some outside standard. The best work 
 of men is natural, is unconscious, the normal result of 
 the contact of the mind with the problem in question. 
 
 In this direction, I think, lies the strongest argu- 
 ment for co-education. This argument is especially 
 cogent in institutions in which the individuality of the 
 student is recognized and respected. In such schools 
 each man, by his relation to action and realities, be- 
 comes a teacher of women in these regards, as, in 
 other ways, each cultivated woman is a teacher of men. 
 
 In woman's education, as planned for women 
 alone, the tendency is toward the study of beauty and 
 order. Literature and language take precedence over 
 science. Expression is valued more highly than ac- 
 tion. In carrying this to an extreme the necessary 
 relation of thought to action becomes obscured. The 
 
 198
 
 THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 scholarship developed is not efifective, because it is not 
 related to success. The educated woman is likely to 
 master technique, rather than art; method, rather than 
 substance. She may know a good deal, but she can 
 do nothing. Often her views of life must undergo 
 painful changes before she can find her place in the 
 world. 
 
 In schools for men alone, the reverse condition 
 often obtains. The sense of reality obscures the ele- 
 ments of beauty and fitness. It is of great advantage 
 to both men and women to meet on a plane of equal- 
 ity in education. Women are brought into contact 
 with men who can do things — men in whom the sense 
 of reality is strong, and who have definite views of 
 life. This influence affects them for good. It turns 
 them away from sentimentalism. It gives tone to 
 their religious thoughts and impulses. Above all, it 
 tends to encourage action as governed by ideals, as 
 opposed to that resting on caprice. It gives them bet- 
 ter standards of what is possible and impossible when 
 the responsibility for action is thrown upon them. 
 
 In like manner, the association with wise, sane and 
 healthy women has its value for young men. This 
 value has never been fully realized, even by the 
 strongest advocates of co-education. It raises their 
 ideal of womanhood, and the highest manhood must 
 be associated with such an ideal. This fact shows 
 itself in many ways; but to point out its existence 
 must suffice for the present paper. 
 
 199
 
 THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 At the present time the demand for the higher 
 education of women is met in three different ways: 
 
 1. In separate colleges for women, with courses of 
 study more or less parallel with those given in col- 
 leges for men. In some of these the teachers are 
 all women, in some mostly men, and in others a more 
 or less equal division obtains. In nearly all these 
 institutions, those old traditions of education and dis- 
 cipline are more prevalent than in colleges for men, 
 and nearly all retain some trace of religious or denom- 
 inational control. In all, the Zeitgeist is producing 
 more or less commotion, and the changes in their evo- 
 lution are running parallel with those in colleges for 
 men. 
 
 2. In annexes for women to colleges for men. \\\ 
 these, part of the instruction to the men is repeated for 
 the women, though in different classes or rooms, and 
 there is more or less opportunity to use the same libra- 
 ries and museums. In some other institutions, the 
 relations are closer, the pri\'ileges of study being sim- 
 ilar, the difference being mainly in the rules of con- 
 duct by which the young women are hedged in, the 
 young men making their own. 
 
 It seems to me that the annex system cannot be a 
 permanent one. The annex student does not get the 
 best of the institution, and the best is none too good 
 for her. Sooner or later she will demand it, or go 
 where the best is to be had. The best students will 
 cease to go to the annex. The institution must then
 
 THE WOMAN AND THE U N I \' E R S I T Y 
 
 admit women on equal terms, or not admit them at 
 all. There is certainly no educational reason why a 
 woman should prefer the annex of one institution 
 when another equally good throws its doors wide 
 open to her. 
 
 3. The third system is that of co-education. In 
 this system young men and young women are admit- 
 ted to the same classes, subjected to the same require- 
 ments, and governed by the same rules. This system 
 is now fully established in the state institutions of the 
 North and the West, and in most other colleges in the 
 same region. Its effectiveness has long since passed 
 beyond question among those familiar with its opera- 
 tion. Other things being equal, the young men are 
 more earnest, better in manners and morals, and in all 
 ways more civilized than under monastic conditions. 
 The women do more work in a more natural way, 
 with better perspective and with saner incentives than 
 when isolated from the influence of the society of men. 
 There is less of silliness and folly where a man is 
 not a novelty. In co-educational institutions of high 
 standards, frivolous conduct or scandals of any form 
 are rarely known. The responsibility for decorum is 
 thrown from the school to the woman, and the woman 
 rises to the responsibility. Many professors have en- 
 tered Western colleges with strong prejudices against 
 co-education. These prejudices have not often endured 
 the test of experience with men who have made an 
 honest effort to form just opinions.
 
 THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 It is not true that the character of the college 
 work has been in any way lowered by co-education. 
 The reverse is decidedly the case. It is true that 
 untimely zeal of one sort or another has filled the 
 West with a host of so-called colleges. It is true that 
 most of these are weak and doing poor work in poor 
 ways. It is true that most of these are co-educational. 
 It is also true that the great majority of their students 
 are not of college grade at all. In such schools low 
 standards rule, both as to scholarship and as to man- 
 ners. The student fresh from the country, with no 
 preparatory training, will bring the manners of his 
 home. These are not always good manners, as man- 
 ners are judged. But none of these defects is derived 
 from co-education; nor are any of these conditions 
 made worse by it. 
 
 Very lately it is urged against co-education that 
 its social demands cause too much strain both on 
 young men and young women. College men and 
 college women, being mutually attractive, there are 
 developed too many receptions, dances and other 
 functions in which they enjoy each other's company. 
 But this is a matter easily regulated. Furthermore, 
 at the most the average young woman in college 
 spends in social matters less than one-tenth the time 
 she would spend at home. With the young man the 
 whole matter represents the difference between high- 
 class and low-class associates and associations. When 
 college men stand in normal relation with college
 
 THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 women, meeting them in society as well as in the 
 classroom, there is distinctly less of drunkenness, 
 rowdyism and vice than obtains under other condi- 
 tions. And no harm comes to the young woman 
 through the good influence she exerts. To meet 
 freely the best young men she will ever know, the 
 wisest, cleanest and strongest, can surely do no harm 
 to a young woman. Nor will the association with 
 the brightest and sanest young women of the land 
 work any harm to the young men. This we must 
 always recognize. The best young men and the best 
 young women, all things considered, are in our col- 
 leges. And this has been and will always be the case. 
 
 It is . true that co-education is often attempted 
 under very adverse conditions. Conditions are ad- 
 verse when the little girls of preparatory schools and 
 schools of music are mingled with the college students 
 and given the same freedom. This is wrong, what- 
 ever the kind of discipline offered, lax or strict; the 
 two classes need a different sort of treatment. , 
 
 When young women have no residence devoted 
 to their use, and are forced to rent parlors and garrets 
 in private houses of an unsympathetic village, evil 
 results sometimes arise. Not very often, to be sure, 
 but still once in a while. These are not to be charged 
 to co-education, but to the unfit conditions that make 
 the pursuit of personal culture diiftcult or impos- 
 sible. Women are more readily affected by sur- 
 roundings than men are, and squalid, ill-regulated^ 
 203
 
 THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 Bohemian conditions should not be part of their higher 
 education. 
 
 Another condition very common and very unde- 
 sirable is that in which young women live at home 
 and traverse a city twice each day on railway or street 
 cars to meet their recitations in some college. The 
 greatest instrument of culture in a college is the "col- 
 lege atmosphere," the personal influence exerted by 
 its professors and students. The college atmosphere 
 develops feebly in the rush of a great city. The 
 ' ' spur-studenten ' ' or railway-track students, as the 
 Germans call them, the students who live far from the 
 university, get very little of this atmosphere. The 
 young woman who attends the university under these 
 conditions contributes nothing to the university atmos- 
 phere, and therefore receives very little from it. She 
 may attend her recitations and pass her examinations, 
 but she is in all essential respects ' ' in absentia, ' ' and 
 so far as the best influences of the university are con- 
 cerned, she is neither "co-educated" nor "edu- 
 cated." The "spur-student" system is bad enough 
 for young men, virtually wasting half their time. 
 With young women the condition of continuous rail- 
 roading, attempted study on the trains, the necessary 
 frowsiness of railway travel and the laxness of man- 
 ners it cultivates, are all elements very undesirable in 
 higher education. If young women enter the col- 
 leges, they should demand that suitable place be made 
 for them. Failing to find this, they should look for it 
 
 204
 
 THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 somewhere else. Associations which develop vul- 
 garity cannot be used for the promotion of culture 
 either for men or for women. That the influence of 
 cultured women on the whole is opposed to vulgarity 
 is a powerful argument for education, and is the secret 
 basis of much of the agitation against it. 
 
 With all this it is necessary for us to recognize 
 actual facts. There is no question that a reaction has 
 set in against co-education. The number of those 
 who proclaim their unquestioning faith is relatively 
 fewer than would have been the case ten years ago. 
 This change in sentiment is not universal. It will be 
 nowhere revolutionary. Young women will not be 
 excluded from any institution where they are now 
 welcomed, nor will the almost universal rule of co- 
 education in state institutions be in any way reversed. 
 The reaction shows itself in a little less ci\^ility of 
 boys toward their sisters and the sisters of other 
 boys; in a little more hedging on the part of the pro- 
 fessors; in a little less pointing with pride on the part 
 of college executive officials. There is nothing tan- 
 gible in all this. Its existence may be denied or 
 referred to ignorance or prejudice. 
 
 But such as it is, we may for a moment inquire 
 into its causes. First as to those least worthy. Here 
 we may place the dislike of the idle boy to have his 
 failures witnessed by women who can do better. I 
 have heard of such feelings, but I have no evidence 
 that they play much actual part in the question at 
 
 205
 
 THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 issue. Inferior women do better work than inferior 
 men because they are more docile and have much less 
 to distract their minds. But there exists a strong 
 feeling among rowdyish young men that the prefer- 
 ence of women interferes with rowdyish practices. 
 This interference is resented by them, and this resent- 
 ment shows itself in the use of the offensive term 
 "co-ed" and of more offensive words in vogue in 
 more rowdyish places. I have not often heard the 
 term "co-ed" used by gentlemen, at least without 
 quotation marks. Where it is prevalent, it is a sign 
 that true co-education — that is, education in terms of 
 generous and welcome equality — does not exist. I 
 have rarely found opposition to co-education on the 
 part of really serious students. The majority are 
 strongly in favor of it, but the minority in this as in 
 many other cases make the most noise. The rise 
 of a student movement against co-education almost 
 always accompanies a general recrudescence of aca- 
 demic vulgarity. 
 
 A little more worthy of respect as well as a little 
 more potent is the influence of the athletic spirit. In 
 athletic matters, the young women give very little 
 assistance. They cannot play on the teams, they can- 
 not yell, and they are rarely generous with their 
 money in helping those who can. A college of a 
 thousand students, half women, counts for no more 
 athletically than one of five hundred, all men. It is 
 vainly imagined that colleges are ranked by their ath- 
 
 206
 
 THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 letic prowess, and that every woman admitted keeps 
 out a man, and this man a potential punter or sprinter. 
 There is not much truth in all of this, and if there 
 were, it is of no consequence. College athletics is in 
 its essence by-play, most worthy and valuable for 
 many reasons, but nevertheless only an adjunct to the 
 real work of the college, which is education. If a 
 phase of education otherwise desirable interferes with 
 athletics, so much the worse for athletics. 
 
 Of like grade is the feeling that men count for 
 more than women, because they are more likely to be 
 heard from in after-life. Therefore, their education is 
 of more importance, and the presence of women im- 
 pedes it. 
 
 A certain adverse influence comes from the fact 
 that the oldest and wealthiest of our institutions are 
 for men alone or for women alone. These send out a 
 body of alumni who know nothing of co-education, 
 and who judge it with the positiveness of ignorance. 
 Most men filled with the time-honored traditions of 
 Harvard and Yale, of which the most permeating is 
 that of Harvard's and Yale's infallibility, are against 
 co-education on general principles. Similar influences 
 in favor of the separate education of women go out 
 from the sister institutions of the East. The methods 
 of the experimenting, irreverent, idol-breaking West 
 find no favor in their eyes. 
 
 The only serious new argument against co-educa- 
 tion is that derived from the fear of the adoption by 
 
 207
 
 THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 universities of woman's standards of art and science 
 rather than those of man, the fear that amateurism 
 uould take the place of specialization in our higher 
 education. Women take up higher education because 
 they enjoy it; men because their careers depend upon 
 it. Only men, broadly speaking, are capable of ob- 
 jective studies. Only men can learn to face fact with- 
 out flinching, unswayed by feeling or preference. The 
 reality with woman is the way in which the fact affects 
 her. Original investigation, creative art, the "reso- 
 lute facing of the world as it is" — all belong to man's 
 world, not at all to that of the average woman. That 
 women in college do as good work as the men is be- 
 yond question. In the university they do not, for this 
 difference exists, the rare exceptions only proving the 
 rule, that women excel in technique, men in actual 
 achievement. If instruction through investigation is 
 the real work of the real university, then in the real 
 university the work of the most gifted women may be 
 only by-play. 
 
 It has been feared that the admission of women 
 to the university would vitiate the masculinity of its 
 standards, that neatness of technique would replace 
 boldness of conception, and delicacy of taste replace 
 soundness of results. 
 
 It is claimed that the preponderance of high- 
 school-educated women in ordinary society is showing 
 some such effects in matters of current opinion. For 
 example, it is claimed that the university extension 
 
 208
 
 THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 course is no longer of university nature. It is a lyceum 
 course designed to please women who enjoy a little 
 poetry, play and music, who read the novels of the 
 day, dabble in theosophy. Christian science, or physic 
 psychology, who cultivate their astral bodies and think 
 there is something in palmistry, and are edified by a 
 candy-coated ethics of self-realization. There is noth- 
 ing ruggedly true, nothing masculine left in it. Cur- 
 rent literature and history are affected by the same 
 influences. Women pay clever actors to teach them — 
 not Shakespeare or Goethe, but how one ought to 
 feel on reading King Lear or Faust or Saul. If the 
 women of society do not read a book it will scarcely 
 pay to publish it. Science is popularized in the same 
 fashion by ceasing to be science and becoming mere 
 sentiment or pleasing information. This is shown by 
 the number of books on how to study a bird, a flower, 
 a tree, or a star, through an opera-glass, and without 
 knowing anything about it. Such studies may be 
 good for the feelings or even for the moral nature, 
 but they have no elements of that "fanaticism for 
 veracity," which is the highest attribute of the edu- 
 cated man. 
 
 These results of the education of many women 
 and a few men, by which the half-educated woman 
 becomes a controlling social factor, have been lately 
 set in strong light by Dr. Miinsterberg. But they are 
 used by him, not as an argument against co-education, 
 but for the purpose of urging the better education of 
 
 209
 
 THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 more men. They form likewise an argument for the 
 better education of more women. The remedy for 
 feminine dilettantism is found in more severe training. 
 Current literature as shown in profitable editions re- 
 flects the taste of the leisure class. The women with 
 leisure who read and discuss vapid books are not rep- 
 resentative of woman's higher education. Most of 
 them have never been educated at all. In any event 
 this gives no argument against co-education. It is 
 thorough training, not separate training, which is 
 indicated as the need of the times. Where this train- 
 ing is taken is a secondary matter, though I believe, 
 with the fulness of certainty that better results can be 
 obtained, mental, moral and physical in co-education, 
 than in any monastic form of instruction. 
 
 A final question: Does not co-education lead to 
 marriage? Most certainly it does; and this fact can- 
 not be and need not be denied. The wonder is rather 
 that there are not more of such marriages. It is a 
 constant surprise that so many college men turn from 
 their college associates and marry some earlier or 
 later acquaintance of inferior ability, inferior training 
 and often inferior personal charm. The marriages 
 which result from college association are not often 
 premature — college men and college women marry 
 later than other men and women — and it is certainly 
 true that no better marriages can be made than those 
 founded on common interests and intellectual friend- 
 ships.
 
 THE WOMAN AND THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 A college man who has known college women, as 
 a rule, is not drawn to those of lower ideals and in- 
 ferior training. His choice is likely to be led toward 
 the best he has known. A college woman is not led 
 by mere propinquity to accept the attentions of inferior 
 men. 
 
 Where college men have chosen friends in all cases 
 both men and women are thoroughly satisfied with the 
 outcome of co-education. It is part of the legitimate 
 function of higher education to prepare women, as 
 well as men, for happy and successful lives. 
 
 An Eastern professor, lately visiting a Western 
 state university, asked one of the seniors what he 
 thought of the question of co-education. 
 
 "I beg your pardon," said the student, "what 
 question do you mean?" 
 
 "Why, co-education," said the professor, "the 
 education of women in colleges for men." 
 
 "Oh," said the student, "co-education is not a 
 question here." 
 
 And he was right. Co-education is never a ques- 
 tion where it has been fairly tried.
 
 XI. 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF THE 
 UNITED STATES. 
 
 THE most important event in the history of 
 modern Germany has been the foundation 
 of the University of Berlin. The unifica- 
 tion of the German empire was a matter 
 of tremendous significance; the success of the Ger- 
 man armies has widened the sphere of Teutonic in- 
 fluence; the recently adopted uniform code of laws 
 marks the progress of national development; but 
 more important as an epoch-making event has been 
 the building of a great center of human wisdom in 
 Germany's chief capital. The influence of the Uni- 
 versity of Berlin not only shows itself in Germany's 
 jjreeminence in scientific investigation and the wide 
 diffusion of liberal culture, but is felt in every branch 
 of industrial effort. There is no trade or handiwork 
 in Germany that has not been made more effective by 
 the practical application of investigations made in the 
 great university. There is no line of effort in which 
 men have not become wiser through the influence of 
 the noble minds brought together to form this institu- 
 tion.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 Nor is the influence of this university and its noble 
 sister institutions confined solely or even mainly within 
 the boundaries of Germany, The great revival of 
 learning in the United States, which has shown itself 
 in the growth of universities, in the rise of the spirit 
 of investigation, and in the realization of the value 
 of truth, can be traced in large degree to Germanic 
 influences. These influences have not come to us 
 through German immigration, or the presence of 
 German scholars among us, but through the experi- 
 ence of American scholars in Germany. If it be true, 
 as Mr. James Bryce says, that ' ' of all institutions in 
 America," the universities "have the best promise for 
 the future, ' ' we have Germany to thank for this. It 
 is, however, no abstract Germany that we may thank, 
 but a concrete fact. It is the existence in Germany 
 of universities, strong, effective and free; and most 
 notable among these is the youngest of their number, 
 the University of Berlin. 
 
 This century has seen some epoch-making events 
 in the history of our Republic. The war of the Union, 
 the abolition of slavery, — one and the same in es- 
 sence, — mark the same movement of the Republic 
 from mediaevalism to civilization. But the great deed 
 of the century still remains undone. Ever since the 
 time of Washington, our law-givers have contemplated 
 building a university at the nation's capital. They 
 have planned a university that shall be national and 
 American, as the universities of Berlin and Leipzig 
 
 213
 
 UNIVERSITY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 are national and German; a university that shall be 
 the culmination of our public-school system, and that 
 by its vivifying influence shall quicken the pulse of 
 every part of that system. For more than a century, 
 wise men have kept this project in mind. For more 
 than a century, wise men have seen the pressing need 
 of its accomplishment. For more than a century, 
 however, the exigencies of politics or the indifference 
 of political managers have caused postponement of its 
 final consideration. 
 
 Meanwhile, about the national capital; by the very 
 necessities of the case, the basal material of a great 
 university has been already gathered. The National 
 Museum and the Army Medical Museum far exceed 
 all other similar collections in America in the amount 
 and value of the material gathered for investigation. 
 The Library of Congress is our greatest public library; 
 and, in the nature of things, it will always remain so. 
 The Geological Survey, the Coast and Geodetic Sur- 
 vey, and the biological divisions of the Department 
 of Agriculture are constantly engaged in investiga- 
 tions of the highest order, conducted by men of uni- 
 versity training, and possible to no other men. The 
 United States Fish Commission is the source of a vast 
 part of our knowledge of the sea and of sea life. 
 Besides these there are many other bureaus and divi- 
 sions in which scientific inquiry constitutes the daily 
 routine. The work of these departments should be 
 made useful, not only in its conclusions, but in its 
 
 ai4
 
 UNIVERSITY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 methods. A university consists of investigators teach- 
 ing. All that the national capital needs to make a 
 great university of it, is that a body of real scholars 
 should be maintained to train other men in the work 
 now so worthily carried on. To do this would be to 
 bring to America, in large degree, all that American 
 scholars now seek in the University of Berlin. Stu- 
 dents will come wherever opportunities for investiga- 
 tion are given. No standards of work can be made 
 too high; for the severest standards attract rather 
 than repel men who are worth educating. 
 
 It should not be necessary to bring arguments to 
 show the need of a national university in the United 
 States. A university, we may remember, is not a 
 school for boys and girls, where the elements of a 
 liberal education are taught to those who have yet to 
 enter upon the serious work of life. A university is 
 not a school maintained for the glory or the extension 
 of any denominational body. In its very definition a 
 university must be above and beyond all sectarianism. 
 Truth is as broad as the universe; and no one can 
 search for it between any artificial boundaries. As 
 well ask for Presbyterian sunshine or a Baptist June as 
 to speak of a denominational university. 
 
 It is said that in America we have already some 
 four hundred colleges and universities, and that, there- 
 fore, we do not need any more. Quite true; we need 
 no more like these. The splendid achievement and 
 noble promise of our universities, to which Mr. Bryce
 
 UNIVERSITY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 calls attention, is not due to their number. Many of 
 them do not show this promise. If such were to close 
 their doors tomorrow, education would be the gainer 
 by it. Many of the four hundred, as we well know, 
 are not universities in fact or in spirit. Most of the 
 work done in the best of them is that of the German 
 gymnasium or preparatory school. The worst of 
 them would in Germany be closed by the police. But 
 in a certain number of the strongest and freest the 
 genuine university spirit is found in the highest de- 
 gree. For more of these good ones there is a crying 
 demand. Their very promise is a reason why we 
 should do everything possible to make them better. 
 A school can rise to be a university only when its 
 teachers are university men; when they are men 
 trained to face directly and effectively the problems 
 of nature and of life. To give such training is the 
 work of the university. In an educational system 
 each grade looks to the one next higher for help and 
 inspiration. The place at the head of our system is 
 now held by the universities of a foreign land. 
 
 It is not the needs of the District of Columbia 
 which are to be met by a university of the United 
 States. The local needs are well supplied already. It 
 is the need of the nation, — and not of the nation 
 alone, but of the world. A great university in Amer- 
 ica would be a school for the study of civic freedom. 
 A great university at the caj^ital of the Republic would 
 attract the free-minded of all the earth. It would draw 
 
 216
 
 UNIVERSITY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 men of all lands to the study of democracy. It would 
 tend to make the workings of democracy worthy of re- 
 spectful study. The New World has its lessons as well 
 as the Old; and its material for teaching these lessons 
 should be made equally adequate. Mold and ruin are 
 not necessary to a university'; nor are traditions and 
 precedents essential to its effectiveness. The greatest 
 of Europe's universities is one of her very youngest. 
 Much of the greatness of the University of Berlin is 
 due to her escape from the dead hands of the past. 
 It is in this release that the great promise of the 
 American university lies. Oxford and Cambridge 
 are still choked by the dust of their own traditions. 
 Because this is so we may doubt whether England has 
 today any universities at all, but merely imgenious and 
 venerable substitutes. 
 
 The national university should not be an institu- 
 tion of general education, with its rules and regula- 
 tions, college classes, good-fellowship, and football 
 team. It should be the place for the training of inves- 
 tigators and of men of action. It should admit no 
 student who is under age or who has not a definite 
 purpose to accomplish. It has no time or strength to 
 spend in laying the foundations for education. Its 
 function lies not in the conduct of examinations, or 
 the granting of academic degrees. It is not essential 
 that it should give professional training of any kind, 
 though that would be desirable. It should have the 
 same relation to Harvard and Columbia and Johns 
 
 21 7
 
 UNIVERSITY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 Hopkins that Berlin University now holds. It should 
 fill, with noble adequacy, the place which the graduate 
 departments of our real universities partially occupy. 
 In doing so it would furnish a stimulus which would 
 strengthen all similar work throughout the land. 
 
 Graduate work has yet to be taken seriously by 
 American universities. Their teachers have carried 
 on original research, if at all, in hours stolen from 
 their daily tasks of plodding and prodding. The 
 graduate student has been allowed to shift for himself; 
 and he has been encouraged to select a university not 
 for the training it offers, but because of some bonus 
 in the form of scholarships. The ' ' free lunch ' ' in- 
 ducement to investigation will never build up a univer- 
 sity. Fellowships can never take the place of men or 
 books or apparatus in developing the university spirit. 
 Great libraries and adequate facilities for work are 
 costly; and no American institution has yet gathered 
 together such essentials for university work as already 
 exist at Washington. 
 
 If a national university is a national need, it is the 
 duty of the people to meet and satisfy it. No other 
 power can do it. As well ask wealthy manufacturers 
 or wealthy churches to endow and support our su- 
 preme court of law as to endow and support our 
 supreme university. They cannot do it; they will not 
 do it; and, as free men, we would not have them do 
 it if they would. As to this, Mr. John W. Hoyt — a 
 man who for years has nobly led in the effort to estab- 
 
 218
 
 UNIVERSITY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 lish a national university — uses these strong words: 
 "What should the nation undertake to accomplish? 
 What the citizen has not done and cannot do, is our 
 answer. The citizen may create a very worthy and 
 quite important private institution, some of which 
 may be named today, but no citizen, however great 
 his fortune, and no single commonwealth, much less 
 any sectarian organization or any combination of these, 
 can create an institution that shall be so wholly free 
 from bias of any and every sort; that shall complete 
 our public educational system; that shall exert so 
 nationalizing and harmonizing an influence upon all por- 
 tions of our great country; that shall be always ready 
 to meet the demands of the government for service in 
 whatsoever field, and that shall at the same time secure 
 to the United States an acknowledged ascendancy in 
 the ever- widening field of intellectual activity." 
 
 A university bears the stamp of its origin. What- 
 ever its origin, the university ennobles it. But a na- 
 tional university must spring from the people. It 
 must be paid for by them; and it must have its final 
 justification in the upbuilding of the nation. What- 
 ever institutions the people need, the people must 
 create and control. That this can be done wisely is 
 no matter of theory. With all their mistakes and 
 crudities, the state universities of this country con- 
 stitute the most hopeful feature in our whole educa- 
 tional system. Doubtless the weakness and folly of 
 the people have affected them injuriously from time to 
 
 219
 
 UNIVERSITY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 time. This is not the point. We must think of the effect 
 they ha\'e had in curing the people of weakness and 
 folly. "The history of Iowa," says Dr. Angell, "is 
 the history of her state university. ' ' The same thing 
 is grandly and emphatically true of Dr. Angell' s own 
 state of Michigan. In its degree the history of every 
 state is molded by its highest institution of learning. 
 As I have had occasion to say once before, — 
 ' ' Many trials are made in popular government ; 
 many blunders are committed before any given piece 
 of work falls into the hands of competent men. But 
 mistakes are a source of education. Sooner or later 
 the right man will be found and the right management 
 of a public institution will justify itself. What is well 
 done can never be wholly undone. In the long run, 
 few institutions are less subject to partisan influence 
 than a state university. When the foul grip of the 
 spoilsman is once unloosed, it can never be restored. 
 In the evil days which befell the politics of Virginia, 
 when the fair name of the state was traded upon by 
 spoilsmen of every party, of every degree, the one thing 
 in the state never touched by them was the honor of the 
 University of Virginia. And amid all the scandal and 
 disorder which followed our civil war, what finger of 
 evil has been laid on the Smithsonian Institution or 
 the Military Academy at West Point."* On that which 
 is intended for no \enal end, the people will tolerate 
 no venal domination. In due time the management of 
 every public institution will be abreast of the highest
 
 UNIVERSITY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 popular opinion. Sooner or later the wise man leads ; 
 for his ability to lead is at once the test and proof 
 of his wisdom." 
 
 Some of the half-hearted friends of the national 
 university have been fearful lest partisan influence 
 should control it. They fear lest it should become a 
 prey to the evils which have disgraced our Civil 
 Service; lest the shadow of the boss should darken 
 the doors of the university with the paralyzing influ- 
 ence which it has exerted on the employees of the 
 Custom House. I believe this to be a groundless 
 fear. All plans for a national university provide for 
 a non-partisan board of control. Its ex officio mem- 
 bers are to be chosen from the ablest jurists and wisest 
 men of science the country can claim. Such a board 
 now controls the National Museum and the Smithso- 
 nian Institution; and no accusation of partisanship or 
 favoritism has ever been brought against it. 
 
 A university could not be otherwise than free. Its 
 faculty could respond only to the noblest influences. 
 No man could receive an appointment of national 
 prominence, in the face of glaring unfitness; and each 
 man chosen to a position in a national faculty would 
 feel the honor of his profession at stake in repelling all 
 degrading influences. Even if occasionally an unwise 
 appointment should be made, the action would correct 
 itself. To a university, men and women go for indi- 
 vidual help and training. A pretender in a university 
 could not give such help. His presence is soon
 
 UNIVERSITY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 detected by his fellows and by his students. The latter 
 he could not harm, for he could not retain them. By 
 the side of his fellows he could not maintain himself. 
 No body of men is so resistant to coercion or con- 
 tamination as a university faculty. A scholar is a 
 free man. He has always been so. He will always 
 remain so. The danger, that a body of men such as 
 constitute the university faculty of Harvard or Yale or 
 Columbia or Princeton or Chicago or Cornell would 
 be contaminated by Washington politics, is sheer non- 
 sense. Such an idea has no basis in experience. It is 
 urged only for lack of better arguments. Such oppo- 
 sition to the national university as has yet appeared 
 seems to rest on distrust of democracy itself or on 
 concealed hatred of secular education. To one or 
 the other of these influences can be traced nearly 
 every assault yet made on any part of the system of 
 popular education. 
 
 The fear that the university would be contaminated 
 by political associations is therefore groundless. But 
 what about the hope from such associations? An edu- 
 cated politician may become a statesman, and we may 
 look for tremendous results for good from the pres- 
 ence of trained economists and historians and jurists 
 at the national capital. It would in itself be an influ- 
 ence for good legislation and good administration 
 greater than any that we know, /is President Cleve- 
 land said at Princeton University on the occasion of its 
 sesquicentennial celebration :
 
 UNIVERSITY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 "The worth of educated men in purifying and 
 steadying popular sentiment would be more useful if 
 it were less si)asmodic and occasional. . . . Our 
 people readily listen to those who exhibit a real fel- 
 lowship and friendly and habitual interest in all that 
 concerns the common welfare. Such a condition of 
 intimacy would not only improve the general political 
 atmosphere, but would vastly increase the influence 
 of our universities in their efforts to prevent popular 
 delusions or correct them before they reach an acute 
 or dangerous stage. ' ' 
 
 The scholars and investigators now maintained at 
 Washington exert an influence far beyond that of their 
 ofiicial position. If the Harvard faculty and its grad- 
 uate students met on the Capitol hill, if their influence 
 were in the departmental work, and their presence in 
 social life, Washington would become a changed city. 
 To the force of high training and academic self-devo- 
 tion is to be traced the immense influence exerted in 
 Washington by Joseph Henry, Spencer F. Baird, and 
 Brown Goode. Of such men as these are universities 
 made. When such men are systematically selected 
 from our body of university professors and brought 
 to Washington and allowed to surround themselves 
 with like men of the next generation, we shall indeed 
 have a national capital. By this means we shall create 
 the best guarantee of the perpetuity of our Republic; 
 that it shall not, like the republics of old, ' ' go down 
 in unreason, anarchy, and blood." In the long run, 
 
 2Z3
 
 UNIVERSITY OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 the voters of a nation must be led by its wisest men. 
 Their wisdom must become the wisdom of the many, 
 else the nation will perish. A university is simply a 
 contrivance for making wisdom effective by surround- 
 ing wise men with the conditions most favorable for 
 rendering wisdom contagious. There is no instru- 
 ment of political, social, or administrative reform to 
 be compared with the influence of a national uni- 
 versity. 
 
 224
 
 XII. 
 COLLEGE SPIRIT.* 
 
 COLLEGE SPIRIT is the esprit de corps 
 among college men, the feeling shared by 
 all who have breathed the same college 
 atmosphere. That each successful college 
 must have a college atmosphere and that this atmos- 
 phere must find its expression in college spirit we are all 
 agreed. We do not seem quite so sure as to the best 
 form this spirit should take. Doubtless the atmos- 
 phere should be one of plain living and high thinking, 
 with flashes of color from men of gifted personality; 
 one of mutual help and mutual forbearance, with the 
 struggles and rewards of after-life showing more or 
 less clearly in perspective. Doubtless the college 
 spirit should be one of comradery in worthy ambi- 
 tions, of full-tempered jollity, with a strong undercur- 
 rent of something which is very like patriotism. Not 
 "my college right or wrong," but "my college; 
 when she is wrong, I will do everything to make her 
 right. I believe in her. I glory in her good name. 
 I wish her degree to be a mark of honor. I will sac- 
 rifice my convenience, my fun, my success even to 
 save her good name from tarnish. ' ' 
 
 *Abstract ot an address delivered in April, 1903, at the 
 University of Missouri. 
 
 225
 
 COLLEGE SPIRIT 
 
 There is no better definition of the college spirit 
 than that given in the old University of Greifeswald 
 nearly 400 years ago. This was the phrase of Ulrich 
 von Hutten, "Gemeingeist unter freien Geistern, " 
 "Comradeship among free spirits." "Free should 
 the scholar be, free and brave;" for men whose minds 
 are free should find harmony in action. The true 
 college spirit is the working together of good men for 
 good ends, for broad, fearless, helpful life, arising 
 from sound impulses within. 
 
 We breed college spirit by the development of 
 college men of the broad, large, helpful, hopeful 
 type. To this end we must do away with the dread 
 of ' ' the rod behind the mirror. ' ' We must make 
 college work not a succession of pointless tasks, but 
 every part of it must be made real, vital, — a part of 
 life, "striking the heart of the youth in flame." We 
 must offer as rewards not cheap toys and prizes, but in- 
 centives which are natural and enduring. For him who 
 works, large room for work should be opened. The 
 idlers should be taken to the edge of the campus and 
 quietly dropped off". The privileges of the college be- 
 long to those who can use them. Coworking comes 
 from working. Without habits of industry there can 
 be no sound college spirit. Vices divide men. Vir- 
 tue brings them together. With idleness banished 
 from the campus, most of the other vices of academic 
 life would soon disappear. 
 
 In this matter false notions are prevalent. I have 
 226
 
 COLLEGE SPIRIT 
 
 heard college presidents, who have tried to promote 
 industry, accused of "breaking up college spirit," as 
 though idleness and trickery, in the topsy-turvy col- 
 lege world, had come to stand among the virtues. To 
 make the college a place of serious work is to prepare 
 the way for college spirit. It is clearing the ground 
 for better crops. The true college spirit considers the 
 good of the college, not the pleasure of the individual. 
 To do one's level best for the college and for one's 
 fellows, leaves no selfish residuum. It was a Prince- 
 ton man who, when his leg was broken in the football 
 field, rejoiced that it was not one of the first team 
 that was hurt. This is a type of the Princeton spirit, 
 and it rises from the football field to make its influ- 
 ence felt in other things. It is college spirit that leads 
 the player to struggle like a bulldog in the game when 
 a moment's weakening would mean defeat. It is col- 
 lege spirit of the same sort which leads the men to 
 cheer the good play of their rix-als. In little things as 
 in big, it is the one who is most courteous to his rivals, 
 most considerate among his equals, who will never let 
 go when he ought to hold on. 
 
 There are other kinds of spirit abroad in college 
 life and some of these the ignorant mistake for college 
 spirit. I have heard of spirits of mischief, of spirits 
 that dance by night, of spirits of rye, and spirits that 
 arise from a beer cask. There are some who think 
 that spirits of such sorts are all that a college can pro- 
 duce, and that college spirit at the best is but another 
 
 227
 
 COLLEGE SPIRIT 
 
 name for deviltry and dissipation. But the convivi- 
 ality of the ' ' beer-bust ' ' or the champagne supper is 
 but a spurious imitation of the good-fellowship of sane 
 men. 
 
 After a great game of football in a large city, I 
 passed, one evening, by the open door of a fashion- 
 able saloon. It was full of college boys, resplendent 
 in the green and gray of their college, celebrating on 
 unsteady legs their team's great victory. With faces 
 as red as the sweaters of their opponents they were 
 singing maudlin college songs, full of patriotic liquor. 
 They thought themselves possessed of college spirit. 
 But the passers-by did not look on the scene in that 
 light. It was clear to them that certain college men 
 mistook drunkenness for manliness, and after the 
 fashion of passers-by, they threw the whole blame on 
 the college. The students of a college fix its reputa- 
 tion, and it may take years of honest effort to out- 
 grow a single drunken escapade. 
 
 I once heard a graduate of the Boston Institute of 
 Technology make this plea to a body of students of 
 another institution: "Never carry your colors into a 
 saloon. If you must disgrace yourself, do it in the 
 name of some one else. When we visited a saloon 
 in Boston," he said, "we always gave the Harvard 
 yell. ' ' You may not care for your own disgrace, but 
 do not make your college party to it. If you must 
 visit saloons to express your feelings, do not take your 
 college with you. If you must scream, give the 
 
 228
 
 COLLEGE SPIRIT 
 
 other fellow's yell. Perhaps if you do this, sonie 
 other fellow may whip the breath out of you. Be a 
 martyr if it must be, but die rather than disgrace your 
 college. 
 
 To form a college atmosphere, there should be free 
 intercourse among students. The professional schools 
 of a university may be in a great city, but a college 
 should be in a town so small that college interests 
 overshadow all others. The college spirit burns dimly 
 in a great city. A small town and a large campus rep- 
 resent the ideal condition, with a great city not too far 
 away. Higher education mostly begins when a boy 
 goes away from home. You cannot get it on the street 
 cars. In the German universities they recognize two 
 classes of univ^ersity men, real students and "spur- 
 studenten," or railway-track students, those who live 
 at home and come and go without becoming an actual 
 part of the university. In a great city all students are 
 likely to be " spur-studenten. ' ' Unless men can get 
 together, college spirit and college atmosphere are 
 well nigh impossible. The unrest in regard to the 
 four years' college course in our great urban universi- 
 ties stands in evidence of this fact. The men want to 
 get into professional work, because the college course 
 lacks its best element, the force of comradeship. 
 
 If our college faculties had the academic courage 
 and academic patriotism which our people have the 
 right to demand of them, most of the evils of college 
 life would speedily disappear. The worst training a 
 
 229
 
 COLLEGE SPIRIT 
 
 young man can have is that of physical and intellectual 
 idleness. Free education should be reserved for those 
 who have the mind and the will to receive it. There 
 is no education without effort. Those who do not 
 want an education have no place in college. A firm 
 insistence on the demands of scholarship would do 
 away with rowdies and rowdyism. 
 
 It is not often the real scholar that leads in rushing 
 and hazing. The class rush is a product of sheer 
 rowdyism. It is the work of the college bullies. It 
 is dangerous because it has no time limit, no rules, 
 no training. When a man is hurt in its rough-and- 
 tumble activity, the blame falls and rightly so on the 
 college. 
 
 Of the same nature is hazing, with this difference 
 that hazing is essentially the coward' s part. It is half 
 a dozen against one, and always involves infringement 
 of the rights and the liberties of free men. Such affairs 
 are not indications of college spirit. They are not, 
 like amateur athletics, in aid of the good name of the 
 college. It does not enhance the reputation of one of 
 our great state universities that the papers are full of 
 the hair-cutting scrapes of her freshmen and sopho- 
 mores. It adds nothing to the glory of another insti- 
 tution of honored name that her sophomores break up 
 the freshman dance by throwing skunks into the ball- 
 room. It is against the good name of any college 
 that sophomore bullies carry away freshman class 
 presidents or lock up the escorts of ladies at a junior 
 
 230
 
 COLLEGE SPIRIT 
 
 ball. It is not to the credit of any institution that 
 bogus programs and anonymous insults, inane or 
 obscene, are circulated on its campus. Stealing ice- 
 cream is very much like ordinary stealing, and rowdy- 
 ism in all its forms makes the development of honest 
 college spirit hopeless. Comradeship among free 
 spirits, — what decent man cares to be the comrade 
 of a bully? 
 
 It is a weakness of our state universities that their 
 students sometimes mistake rowdyism for spirit and 
 brutality for democracy. These institutions are thor- 
 oughly democratic, that is a matter of course, but we 
 must not forget that democracy is not inconsistent 
 with courtesy. Other things being equal, the better 
 the manners, the better the man. The same spirit 
 that leads to rowdyism in a state institution reappears 
 as imbecility in some other kinds of colleges. There 
 is little choice between the two. It is lack of inventive 
 power that leads the midnight student to take the 
 president's carriage to pieces, to put his cow into the 
 bell-tower or to stack up the gates of the town in his 
 back yard. It is imbecility that leads college men to 
 assert their own independence by discourtesy to col- 
 lege women. It is imbecility that causes college 
 boys to take up one after another a series of unpleas- 
 ant fads, the fad of swiping signs, of stealing spoons, 
 of running away with some one's bric-a-brac. 
 
 Another peculiarly disagreeable fad, caught from 
 the street gamin, is seen or heard at some of our ath-
 
 COLLEGE SPIRIT 
 
 letic games. The mob at a ball game tries to rattle 
 the pitcher, to confuse the catcher, or to so crowd 
 about that an opposing team has not only the local 
 team to meet, but the whole student body as well. It 
 is not genuine college spirit that has turned many a 
 football game in the Middle West into something very 
 much like a riot. The institution that permits this 
 sort of thing consents to its own disgrace. It is upon 
 the apathy of college faculties that the blame must 
 finally rest. It is for such performances as these 
 that aristocratic Harvard has invented the term of 
 "mucker." Whatever else Harvard may be, she is 
 *"' anti-mucker" through and through. The move- 
 ment toward athletic courtesy perhaps had its origin 
 in Harvard, and I hope for the spread of its influence. 
 When a Yale batter strikes a foul and returns to his 
 base, he finds the Harvard catcher handing him his 
 bat. That a man may play a strenuous game, the 
 fiercest ever seen on the gridiron, and yet keep the 
 speech and the manners of a gentleman, is one of the 
 lessons Harvard may teach us, and we of the West 
 cannot listen to any better lesson in college spirit. 
 
 Our student bodies as well as our college faculties 
 have been too tolerant of petty trickery. This is 
 shown in student elections, which would often give 
 points to the most corrupt of city governments. The 
 man of college spirit will vote for the best representa- 
 tive of the college. The vulgar college politician sees 
 only the chance of combination. Many men will even
 
 COLLEGE SPIRIT 
 
 prostitute their fraternity relations by making that 
 association a mere means of poHtical influence. Presi- 
 dent White used to call "college politics a pewter im- 
 itation of a pinchbeck original." I have never known 
 a successful politician of the "win at any cost" sort 
 who became a useful man in after-life. I have known 
 some who have risen in politics — risen for a while 
 until they have been found out. As grown men they 
 have disgraced the state, just as, when boys, they 
 brought their college into ill-repute. Cheating in 
 examinations is of a piece with cheating in politics. 
 A sound college spirit finds no place for such things. 
 The same evil spirit which at times controls stu- 
 dent elections often works havoc with the usefulness 
 of athletics. I believe thoroughly in college athletics. 
 I ha\'e taken my part in them in college and out, and 
 I know that other things being equal, the athletic man 
 is worth more to the community than other kinds of 
 men. But other things may not be equal. The ath- 
 letic tramp should receive no academic welcome. The 
 athletic parasite is no better than any other parasite. 
 The man who is in college for athletics alone, disgraces 
 the college, degrades athletics and shuts out a better 
 man from his place on the team. In tolerating the 
 presence of athletes who do not study, the college 
 faculty becomes party to a fraud. Some of our great- 
 est institutions stand disgraced in the eyes of the col- 
 lege world, by reason of the methods employed to 
 w^in football victories. 
 
 -33
 
 COLLEGE SPIRIT 
 
 At the best, athletics is a by-play in the business 
 of education, most useful in their place, but most 
 damaging if it breaks down academic standards. To 
 relieve football men from all necessity of scholar- 
 ship during the football period is to strike a blow at the 
 dignity and honesty of the college. More than one 
 institution is doing this at the present time. The col- 
 lege that does its duty to its students is the one in 
 which the football tramp, the professional athlete, 
 finds no place. Nothing I have seen in the Univer- 
 sity of Missouri has pleased me more than the firm 
 stand it has taken for decency in athletics, and that 
 too when the traditions of fraud, the impulse to win at 
 any cost, were at their very strongest. 
 
 On the girls as well as on the boys falls the duty of 
 maintaining college spirit. To create the sense of 
 manly dignity is largely woman's work. To be 
 drawn into college combinations and voted like lambs 
 at the will of some shrewd manipulator has been too 
 often women's experience in college politics. Young 
 women, think for yourselves. Don't ask the politi- 
 cians how the candidates stand. You can get better 
 information from the registrar. Don't behave as if 
 you needed a guardian. Don't carry your social 
 affairs into the recitation rooms. Let society have its 
 place and time, but do not mix its demands with those 
 of study. If there are too many balls in college 
 society and they last too long, have the courage to 
 refuse to go, the courage to refuse to stay after it is 
 
 234
 
 COLLEGE SPIRIT 
 
 time for sleep. If dances run on without time limit, 
 as they do in some places, it is your duty to make 
 your own limit, before the faculty awakes to its re- 
 sponsibility and lays down your duty for you. Do 
 not be put into false positions. Young men value 
 young women more when their society is not to be 
 had too easily. I heard the other day these words 
 uttered by a student, and they were words of wisdom : 
 " When a girl's name is bandied about the campus, it 
 is a hard proposition for her to Hve it down." 
 
 The future of co-education rests with the young 
 women and with them alone. If they are worthy of 
 their opportunity, as the vast majority are, the cavil- 
 ing of provincial ignorance will not harm them. The 
 reputation of the college is made by its students, 
 women as well as men, and on the women rests a 
 large responsibility for the growth of a healthy college 
 spirit. 
 
 The process of "knocking" is opposed to the 
 growth of college spirit. There is no use in com- 
 plaining for complaint's sake. If you don't like 
 things as they are, turn in and make them better, or 
 go somewhere else. If the habit of faultfinding is 
 deep-seated, learn your college song. Practice at 
 nights upon your college yell. It will do you good. 
 There is a great moral lesson in learning to shout in 
 unison. To ' ' root ' ' in perfect time at the call of the 
 yell-leader is a college education in itself. To keep in 
 touch with men is the best antidote for cynicism. 
 
 235
 
 COLLEGE SPIRIT 
 
 Snobbishness is opposed to college spirit. It is 
 not a fault of the West, where few students are reared 
 on Mellin' s food and finished on champagne. We have 
 few young men who tread on velvet and take a col- 
 lege course by proxy. The Harvard man who keeps 
 a groom for his horse, a groom for himself, and a 
 groom for each of his studies, has few imitators in the 
 West. In the strenuous, rugged West, there is little 
 room for the ' ' Laodicean club, ' ' the association of 
 those who are neither hot nor cold, but altogether 
 luke-warm. 
 
 But if we lack the perfect aristocrat, we have in 
 the West our own cliques and divisions. The frater- 
 nity system at its best is an aid to scholarship, to 
 manners and to character; at its worst, it is a basis for 
 vulgar dissension. The influence of a fraternity de- 
 pends on the men who are in it. If these are above 
 the average in character and work, it is lucky for the 
 average man to be chosen into it. If they are below 
 the average in this regard, the average man loses by 
 joining his fortunes with it. When fraternities are 
 sources of disorganization, there is something wrong 
 in them or in the institution. 
 
 The evil of dissipation exists in college as outside 
 of it. The average boy, or rather the boy a little 
 below the average, believes that some degree of man- 
 liness inheres in getting drunk. Bismarck is reputed 
 to have said that in the universities of Germany "one- 
 third the students work themselves to death, one-third 
 
 236
 
 COLLEGE SPIRIT 
 
 drink themselves to death, and the other third govern 
 Europe. ' ' Something like this takes place in Amer- 
 ica, though the percentage of those who die of drink 
 is less and the percentage of those who die of hard 
 work is still lower. But too many of our college stu- 
 dents have wrecked their lives even before they have 
 realized the strength and the duties of manhood. 
 
 The finest piece of mechanism in all the universe 
 is the brain of man. In this complex structure, with 
 its millions of connecting cells, we can form images 
 of the world about us, correct so far as they go. To 
 retain these images, to compare them, to infer rela- 
 tions of cause and effect and to transfer thought into 
 action is man's pri\ilege. In proportion to the exact- 
 ness of these operations is the soundness, the value of 
 the man. The wise man protects his brain, and the 
 mind, which is its manipulator, from all that would do 
 harm. Vice is our name for self-inflicted injury, 
 and every stimulant or narcotic — every drug that 
 lea\'es its mark of weakness on the brain, is the begin- 
 ning of vice. Vice means brain decay. " Death is a 
 thing cleaner than vice," and in the long run it is 
 more profitable. False ideas of manliness, false con- 
 ceptions of good-fellowship, wreck many a young man 
 of otherwise good intentions. The sinner is the man 
 who cannot say no. 
 
 The young man's first duty is toward his after- 
 self. So live that your after-self, the man you ought 
 to be, may be possible and actual. Far away in the 
 
 ^37
 
 COLLEGE SPIRIT 
 
 twenties, the thirties of our century, he is awaiting his 
 time. His body, his brain, his soul are in your boy- 
 ish hands today. He cannot help himself. Will you 
 hand over to him a brain unspoiled by lust or dissipa- 
 tion, a mind trained to think and act, a ner\'ous sys- 
 tem true as a dial in its response to environment? 
 Will you, college boy of the twentieth century, let 
 him come in his time as a man among men? Or will 
 you throw away his patrimony ? Will you turn over 
 to him a brain distorted, a mind diseased, a will un- 
 trained to action, a spinal cord grown through and 
 through with the vile harvest we call ' ' wild oats ' ' ? 
 Will you let him come, taking your place, gaining 
 through your experiences, your joys, building on 
 them as his own? Or will you wantonly fling it all 
 away, careless that the man you might have been 
 shall never be ? 
 
 In all our colleges we are taught that the athlete 
 must not break training rules. The pitcher who 
 smokes a cigarette gives away the game. The punter 
 who dances loses the goal, the sprinter who takes a 
 convivial glass of beer breaks no record. His record 
 breaks him. Some day we shall realize that the game 
 of life is more strenuous than the game of football, 
 more intricate than pitching curves, more difficult than 
 punting We should keep in trim for it. We must 
 remember training rules. The rules that win the 
 football game are good also for success in business. 
 Half the strength of young America is wasted in the 
 
 238
 
 COLLEGE SPIRIT 
 
 dissipation of drinking or smoking. If we keep the 
 training rules of life in literal honesty, we shall win a 
 host of prizes that otherwise we should lose. Final 
 success goes to the few, the very few, alas, who 
 throughout life keep mind and soul and body clean. 
 
 " Gemeingeist unter freien Geistern," the "com- 
 radeship of free souls," — this is the meaning of true 
 college spirit. Freedom of the soul means freedom 
 of the mind, freedom of the brain. It is said in the 
 litany that His " ser\ace is perfect freedom." Igno- 
 rance holds men in bondage; so do selfishness, stu- 
 pidity and vice. The service of God and of man is 
 found in casting off these things. In freedom we 
 find abundance of life. The scholar should be a man 
 in the full life of the world. "The color of life is 
 red, ' ' and the scholar of today is no longer a dim- 
 eyed monk with a grammarian's cough. He is a 
 worker in the rush of the century — a lover of nature 
 and an artist in building the lives of men. 
 
 239
 
 XIII. 
 
 POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS. 
 
 THE conspicuous failure of democracy in the 
 United States has been in its inabihty to 
 conduct local business on business prin- 
 ciples. In the government of Great Britain 
 just the reverse has been true. In the management 
 of local and municipal matters the people of England 
 have been most signally successful. It is in this part 
 of the British government that government by the 
 people and for the people has had fullest play. With- 
 out going into details as to the failure of county and 
 of city government in America, we may accept a classi- 
 fication of the causes of such failure as lately given by 
 Dr. Walter F. Willcox of Cornell. 
 
 ' ' There are, ' ' says Dr. Willcox, ' ' three fundamen- 
 tal evils in the government of our cities. The first is 
 economic and consists in the waste of public funds. The 
 second is political in the true sense and consists in the 
 inadequacy of municipal service. The third is moral 
 and consists in the corruption of civic authority for the 
 furtherance of individual ends. The chief importance of 
 this third evil is that it throws politics into disrepute and 
 degrades civic ideals, thus rendering cooperation for the 
 attainment of truly political ends well nigh impossible." 
 
 240
 
 POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 
 
 To this analysis of sources of evil, which exist in 
 all countries and under all forms of government, we 
 may add three others, which are more or less peculiar 
 to America and scarcely less baneful in their influence. 
 These are, the influence of private control of public 
 functions, the federal organization of the city, and the 
 lack of serious interest on the part of our people. As 
 to the first of these, the use of public franchises by 
 individuals and corporations and their corrupt con- 
 trol of the ofiicers of city and state are already the 
 basis of a vast amount of discussion. Its natural 
 remedy is the public performance of public functions, 
 a system which has also its dangers and difficulties, 
 which it is not my purpose now to consider. 
 
 In the next place, we have been misled by false 
 analogies in forming our municipal charters. We 
 treat our cities as if each was a confederation of wards 
 and precincts in the same way that the United States 
 is a confederation of self-ruHng communities. This is 
 not true in fact and therefore works badly in practice. 
 The city is not a confederation of wards. It is an 
 association of men, and it is citizens and not wards 
 that should be represented in its councils. The prin- 
 ciple of proportional representation is therefore essen- 
 tial to its government by the people. Let the citizens 
 choose as their representatives those men who repre- 
 sent them best regardless of all questions of what 
 street they live on or in what quarter they do their 
 business. The municipality exists for the mutual bene- 
 
 241
 
 POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 
 
 fit and the mutual protection of its citizens. It is 
 not a creation of the separate wards and precincts 
 into which, for purposes of voting, the town may be 
 divided. To the persistence of the ward system, to 
 the use of the machinery of the federal United States 
 where federation does not exist, the failure of our city 
 charters is in great part due. 
 
 A further source of inefficiency in local govern- 
 ment lies in the fact that we have never yet taken it 
 seriously. As a people we have a fine sense of humor 
 and it is exercised impartially in all directions. A 
 piece of gross corruption or inefficiency serves as the 
 point of a joke. It ends with a newspaper cartoon. 
 And as a cartoon may be as unjust as any other form 
 of criticism, it fails to be taken in evidence by the 
 people. An administrative blunder or crime has no 
 adequate punishment. We never know the real facts 
 in the case and in the hopelessly good nature of the 
 American people, whether it has taken place or not, 
 it is equally and speedily forgiven. From this lack 
 of seriousness as to local matters which we can con- 
 trol, coupled with our universal interest in national 
 affairs on which even a whole state exerts but a trifling 
 influence, arises the subordination of local issues to 
 those which divide our two great political parties. 
 This subordination of local to national affairs is a 
 great source of weakness and corruption. The plea 
 that bad men must be chosen at home for the sake of 
 the party at large is heard at every election and it is 
 
 242
 
 POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 
 
 always false and degrading. It is said that the only 
 ' ' straight ticket ' ' a good citizen has the right to vote 
 is the "one with the crooked names scratched off 
 it." If this rule were followed by all that think 
 themselves good citizens, the record of city govern- 
 ment would be very different from what it is now. 
 
 But my purpose at this time is not to consider the 
 general failure of city administration but its particular 
 failure in the matter of public schools. Thus far most 
 of our cities have failed to give the people the school 
 system which they pay for, the one which they deserve, 
 and which is essential to the best development of their 
 children. 
 
 This failure falls under the second of Dr. Will- 
 cox's classes: "The inadequacy of municipal ser- 
 vice." But the cause of the failure lies mostly with 
 the third class of evils: "The corruption of civic 
 authority for the furtherance of individual ends," 
 In other words, the school service in most of our 
 cities is very bad and it is bad because the schools are 
 tampered with and used as tools to enrich or advance 
 those persons who have them in charge. This is what 
 is meant by the common phrase: "Our schools are 
 poor because they are in politics. ' ' 
 
 The necessity of schools is unquestioned and our 
 people from the first have met this need by coopera- 
 tive action. This results in free public schools, open 
 to all, and under the domination of no religious sect 
 and no political party. With some minor differences 
 
 243
 
 POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 
 
 of opinion, our people are all practically agreed on 
 this. Our schools from the kindergarten to the uni- 
 versity must be free, public, and uncontrolled by sect 
 or party. On no other principle of government is 
 there such perfect harmony. Because we make our 
 schools public and free their administration becomes 
 an affair of government. Our government is always 
 just as good as the people demand and never any 
 better. It must be the same with our schools. When 
 general politics are corrupt good public schools are 
 impossible. 
 
 Three elements are necessary in the administration 
 of public schools. First, the presence of a board of 
 control, representing the people, attending to the 
 finances of the school and giving to the promotion of 
 its interests a degree of time and attention which the 
 body of the people could not give. This we call the 
 Board of Trustees. Second, an educational expert 
 who shall know schools on the one hand, and teachers 
 on the other, who shall know educational aims and 
 ideals, their relative place and value and the means by 
 which they may be carried out. Such ends cannot be 
 served by the governing board because success de- 
 mands that this work be a life study, a profession, and 
 professional knowledge and training cannot be acquired 
 by men engaged in matters outside the schools. Such 
 an educational manager we term the superintendent 
 of schools. The third element is that of tramed and 
 competent teachers. To know these teachers and how 
 
 244
 
 POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 
 
 to secure them is of itself a life profession. Schools 
 do not build themselves up without intelligence and 
 effort, and to bring good teachers together, each in 
 his proper place, is the highest educational art. 
 
 While this art is frequently realized in our city 
 schools, it is the exception rather than the rule. In 
 most of our cities the schools are very inferior in 
 character and influence to what they might or should 
 be. They are often not as good as the private schools 
 they have displaced and not as good proportionally as 
 the ungraded district schools of the country. Such 
 failure, wherever it occurs, is traceable to one cause, 
 the presence of incompetent teachers, through failure 
 of the appointing power which is itself oppressed or 
 superseded by the pressure of personal influence. In 
 other words, what ails our schools is the meddling of 
 outside interests. This begins with the school board ; 
 its evils appear in the bad choice of teachers, and it is 
 the children, for whom alone the schools exist, who 
 finally suffer. 
 
 The school board is supposed to be made up of 
 men of wisdom, discretion and public spirit, who rep- 
 resent the interests of the people at large and to whom 
 the management of the schools can be safely entrusted. 
 It is the first duty of these men to associate with them- 
 selves an expert in education, a superintendent of 
 schools, a man competent to choose, control and dis- 
 miss individual teachers, one who has executive ability, 
 by which term is meant the power of working out a 
 
 245
 
 POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 
 
 policy through the agency of other men or women. 
 When these relations are normal we always have good 
 schools. The bad schools exist where the school 
 board wantonly betrays the trust of the people or 
 when its members are too ignorant to perform the 
 functions assigned to them. Schools are bad only 
 when they are in the hands of bad teachers, teachers 
 ignorant, indifferent or corrupt. Bad teachers are 
 chosen mainly by bad men, men who are ignorant, 
 indifferent or corrupt. Such choice may happen under 
 a good board which has made an unfortunate choice 
 of superintendent. But this does not often take 
 place, nor will its consequences last very long, for a 
 good board seldom repeats its mistakes. Sometimes 
 bad appointments are made knowingly by a good su- 
 perintendent, placed in a position where he thinks that 
 he cannot help himself. But this condition again 
 rarely lasts long, for the good superintendent forced 
 to do wrong either saves his honor by resigning or 
 saves his position by ceasing to be good. 
 
 We may classify the motives which lead school 
 boards to choose incompetent teachers under three 
 heads, party spoils, political perquisites, and personal 
 spoils. 
 
 When a city election is carried it sometimes hap- 
 pens that teachers do active service for the party. 
 Among those who have profited by these efforts may 
 be the school board itself, elected as partisans and 
 chosen from the list of minor political heelers by our 
 
 246
 
 POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 
 
 vicious ward system. The higher prizes are reserved 
 for those who make politics a business, but to the 
 teacher-politicians the party managers can offer places 
 in the schools. The political bosses of one party or 
 another order this, and the school board, their crea- 
 tures, simply register their decree. Coarse and un- 
 democratic as this procedure is, there are many 
 teachers in our state who strain every nerve to be- 
 come its beneficiaries. 
 
 Political perquisites occur when the school board 
 or its leaders are strong enough to repay by their 
 patronage those who have worked directly in their 
 interest. Thus a teacher who has worked success- 
 fully for the election of a member of the board from 
 his ward may reasonably look to being advanced 
 to a principalship. In such case, by an agreement 
 among themselves, the representatives of the domi- 
 nant party in each ward may take care of his own. 
 They divide up the places among themselves and for 
 each appointment made some particular member and 
 not the whole board is responsible. Usually there are 
 places enough to meet the needs of personal perqui- 
 sites as well as those of party spoils. Which demand 
 is attended to first depends upon the relative rank and 
 greediness of the bosses, big and little. 
 
 Both these forms of corruption are due to party 
 fealty and hence have to some degree a public rela- 
 tion. They may not even prevent the choice in many 
 cases of teachers of real efficiency because some mem- 
 247
 
 POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 
 
 bers of the board are all the more conscientious, since 
 they do not share their individual responsibility. 
 
 The third class is that of personal spoils. It some- 
 times happens that members of school boards look 
 upon their relation to the schools as purely personal, 
 rather than political. They have been chosen to this 
 position to repay them for their own work for some 
 candidate or party and this is the chance offered to 
 get their money back. They are not in politics for 
 their health nor for glory nor for praise. They look 
 only to what there is in it for them. Boards of this 
 sort are constantly beset with financial scandals. Every 
 purchase of school furniture, every adoption of school 
 text-books involves a ' ' rake-off' ' for somebody and 
 every rake-off gives a chance for a quarrel over the 
 plunder, and, perhaps, for an exposure. The percent- 
 age must be big enough to justify them m running 
 the risks. Such a board can be depended on to do 
 the worst the law will let them, taking their chances 
 of impeachment or the penitentiary. But even of this 
 they have no great fear, for their election or appoint- 
 ment indicates the presence of a " friend at court. ' ' 
 
 A board composed mainly of spoilsmen first 
 organizes a mutual society or trust by which the 
 spoilsmen stand for each other's interests, shutting 
 out the others from all responsibility for action, and all 
 divisions of the spoils. Such a trust is known as the 
 Solid Ten, or a Solid Eight or a Big Four or some 
 other number, and this combination will take what it 
 
 248
 
 POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 
 
 can get, permitting no nonsense. If the board elects 
 the superintendent, as it should under normal condi- 
 tions, this official becomes a tool of this solid combi- 
 nation and meekly carries out the orders they may 
 give him. If the superintendent is chosen directly by 
 the people, as in some cities, he finds himself in con- 
 stant friction with his board. The board snubs him 
 and ignores his plans and purposes, while for his part 
 he may try to do the best he can in a condition where 
 success is impossible. Still some good men who be- 
 lieved that ' ' a public office is a public trust ' ' have 
 served our cities well even under the most trying con- 
 ditions. Usually the Solid Eight divide the minor 
 places among their own number, giving each member 
 as many places to fill as he sees fit. This action is of 
 the same moral grade as the embezzlement of public 
 funds and its results are equtilly disastrous. 
 
 The statutes of the states require that each teacher 
 should know a little something of various matters 
 before receiving a license to teach. This minimum of 
 knowledge and training must be met by every teacher 
 who receives an appointment. Those teachers who 
 stand at the bottom of the teaching profession, the 
 least exacting of all professions, struggle for this min- 
 imum, and once attaining it, regard an appointment as 
 a favor, a piece of luck, and once on the pay-roll they 
 have no further interest in professional advancement. 
 The better class of teachers are in demand in better 
 schools, where the laborer is worthy of his hire. They 
 
 249
 
 POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 
 
 are not "hunting a job," nor are they ready to go 
 out of their way to secure one. Hence the appli- 
 cants with which mercenary boards have to deal 
 belong mainly to the lowest class of teachers, those 
 without professional interest, or child knowledge; 
 without character or determination, persons wishing 
 to get money with the least possible expenditure of 
 effort. With such candidates individual members of 
 boards have been known to do several things. Among 
 these are (a) selling places outright, (b) putting in 
 their own relatives, (c) trading them with other per- 
 sons for personal favors, (d) paying debts of various 
 sorts, sometimes those made most corruptly, (e) put- 
 ting in their own dependents or those of others, ( f ) 
 using them for purposes of charity. 
 
 The motive in each of these cases may be different. 
 The effect on the schools is alike evil. The children, 
 under the influence of spoilsmen and spoilswomen, 
 each day receive a dose of poison, of political corrup- 
 tion. Competent, capable, self-respecting men and 
 women will not take schools under any of these con- 
 ditions. Good schools cannot be made except by 
 such men and women. Of all these conditions, the 
 one which makes the teacher an object of charity is 
 perhaps the most mischievous. A good school can- 
 not be a hospital for its teachers. 
 
 The various forms of school corruption have a 
 variety of evil results. These we may analyze as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 250
 
 POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 
 
 1. They injure the schools by making good work 
 impossible. 
 
 2. They exclude good teachers. 
 
 3. They exclude those who strive to rise in the 
 profession by honorable means. 
 
 4. They render places in the schools unstable. 
 This evil has been remedied by a statute prohibiting 
 removals except by a formal trial. This is an evil 
 greater than instability as it tends to perpetuate the 
 results of corruption. There are cities in which a 
 statute against removal has led corrupt boards to enor- 
 mously multiply the number of useless teachers by 
 adding its own complement to those of its predeces- 
 sors, thus greatly increasing the cost of the schools 
 without good service. Where the spoils system ob- 
 tains, rotation in office does no additional harm. 
 Where good schools are desired the power of free 
 removal is scarcely less important than the power of 
 appointment. Competent superintendents will not 
 abuse this power. Good managers do not make 
 charges wantonly. 
 
 5. Corrupt conditions keep the best men out of 
 public school work. In general, a competent man 
 will accept a college position at a far lower salary than 
 he would demand in public school work. Graduate 
 students in universities will choose a laboratory posi- 
 tion at $600 to $1,000 in preference to a high school 
 instructorship at $1,500 to $2,000, or a superintend- 
 ency at $2,000 to $2,500. The university offers high 
 
 251
 
 POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 
 
 incentives, freedom from intrigue, and final reward for 
 superior service. The public schools cannot guaran- 
 tee anything. To be dismissed from any position in 
 some of our cities involves no professional discredit, 
 not even the need of explanation. The one thing to 
 be explained is the inducement which led the teacher 
 to accept such a position. 
 
 The conditions described prevent cities from se- 
 curing outside talent. In some great cities where the 
 spoils system has been unchecked, no competent out- 
 side teacher would ever think of applying for a posi- 
 tion. The superintendent never thinks of looking 
 outside for a teacher. A great city should be ever on 
 the watch for the best talent in the region tributary to 
 it. The city of San Francisco, for example, should 
 be alert to bring in the best teachers of the coast to 
 handle the work in its high schools and grammar 
 schools. I have heard (1899) of but one case of its 
 drawing a teacher from any other city or even of any 
 attempt to do so. The principle of keeping "our own 
 schools for our own girls, ' ' wherever accepted, works 
 badly for the schools. It is a species of educational 
 corruption. In some cases a local department called a 
 ' ' normal ' ' has been established so that ' ' the girls who 
 have to teach" will not need to go away from home 
 for their training. But to go away from home is a 
 necessary part of the teacher's training if teaching is 
 to be in any degree a profession. The schools need 
 .new blood. The teacher needs new outlooks. In a 
 
 252
 
 POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 
 
 well-managed system no teacher will be appointed 
 who has not had, as a teacher or as a student, some 
 experience somewhere else. 
 
 If teachers push themselves upward through un- 
 professional means, teaching cannot be made a pro- 
 fession. If intrigue and flattery, "wire-pulling" or 
 "leg-pulling," masculine arts or feminine arts of 
 swaying the appointing power, furnish means of ad- 
 vancement, the nobler qualifications of love of learning 
 and devotion to the needs of the children will not enter 
 into the competition. 
 
 Thus the ranks of our teachers become filled with 
 those who know nothing and have no care to know, 
 with those who use the ofiice of teacher while seeking 
 marriage or an opening in a law office; with those who 
 pay more for the dead birds on their hats than for all 
 the books they read, reckless of the fact that every 
 bird killed wantonly leaves this world a little less worth 
 living in; with those who know more of palmistry than 
 of psychology, of euchre or the two-step than of the 
 art of training children. 
 
 The right organization of our schools will leave no 
 place for this class of teachers. It will make teaching 
 a profession not to be lightly undertaken or carelessly 
 performed. It will bring back to the ranks of the 
 public schools many of our most gifted men and 
 women who now find their only attractive career in 
 the overcrowded ranks of the instructorships in the 
 colleges. 
 
 ^53
 
 POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 
 
 How shall we escape from the spoils system ? How- 
 shall we free our schools from personal interference in 
 the interest of personal ends? The best way to insure 
 good schools is to secure the best superintendent pos- 
 sible and then to give him full power to choose teach- 
 ers. By this means, and by this alone, is it possible 
 to adapt means to ends and make the school system 
 of a city an instrument which can produce the best 
 results. All great work is the realization of some 
 ideal, and ideal in education, as elsewhere, is the ideal 
 not of a board but of a man. When a man is in con- 
 trol of affairs, a limiting statute prescribing what he 
 shall not do is an impertinence. 
 
 The next best way is to secure a superintendent 
 through the means found necessary in the civil service. 
 Let him attend to clerical affairs and select his teachers 
 for him by competitive examination. Such a method 
 is pursued in the service of most enlightened nations, 
 and it has been found almost the only means of keep- 
 ing this service free from corruption. The competi- 
 tive examination is not an end in itself, but it is usually 
 the choice of evils. It is never the best way ideally 
 possible, for the surest way to select good servants is 
 to trust a capable and honest man to pick them out. 
 It becomes necessary when we have to deal with men 
 we cannot trust. The civil service methods are used 
 in default of capable and honest men. They serve to 
 pick out fairly good public servants and to exclude 
 political corruption and personal pulls. When the 
 
 -54
 
 POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 
 
 school service is beset by vulg-ar politicians and time- 
 servers anxious to help needy relatives and greedy 
 applicants, a system of civil service examinations 
 is our best remedy. But we must remember that 
 no form of competitive examination is an end in 
 itself. It is simply an evil which may be neces- 
 sary until a higher civic morality and a higher sense 
 of professional honor among teachers renders it 
 superfluous. 
 
 Without a competent and trusted superintendent a 
 school system of the highest grade is impossible. But 
 fair results of a lower order may be reached by the 
 choice of teachers through competitive examinations. 
 Without these, under the spoils system pure and 
 simple the schools will be as bad as the bosses dare 
 make them, and none can say that they are cowards. 
 There is not much which they dare not do. 
 
 Three ways to remedy the evils of politics in the 
 schools may be suggested: 
 
 I. We may appeal to statute. We may tie up 
 the school board and superintendent by laws which 
 shall make a personal or political appointment a mis- 
 demeanor. We may place such tampering on the judi- 
 cial level of embezzlement, where it morally belongs. 
 
 But such criminality is hard to define and harder 
 to prove. Besides, statutes avail little unless public 
 opinion backs them. Because the people at large 
 wink at politics in the schools, tolerate it, ignore it or 
 consider it smart, our school boards feel justified in 
 
 25s
 
 POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 
 
 dividing the spoils. And there is never much value 
 in restrictive laws. We have too many statutory- 
 crimes already. Criminal law cannot go beyond 
 public opinion without bringing itself into contempt 
 and thus into ineffectiveness. Only gross offenses, 
 such as sale of places for money or favor or giving 
 them through charity, could be clearly proved, and 
 under any statute even these could be seldom pun- 
 ished. But after all there is a great educational force 
 in the severe enforcement of a just law, even though 
 its purpose be at first not understood. 
 
 Negatively we can strengthen the case a little by 
 repealing all statutes that strengthen the teacher's 
 hold on his position. Most of these are in the interest 
 of the incompetent teachers. They are intended to 
 defend the beneficiaries of one administration from 
 being thrown out by the next. The removal of any 
 teacher that holds his place on a pull is likely to be a 
 good thing for the schools. It should be left as easy 
 as possible. 
 
 There are certain precedents and methods in the 
 schools of many cities which make it hard for teachers 
 from the outside to secure a foothold. Better employ 
 no native-born teachers than to accept no others. To 
 move about is part of education, and teachers that 
 have never been away from home are not likely to be 
 very stimulating in their professional work. 
 
 2. The second method is to educate the commu- 
 nity. Let the people know what good schools ought 
 
 256
 
 POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 
 
 to be and how much the children suffer from being 
 forced into any other kind. This is a slow method, 
 but it is effectual. For this purpose there is nothing 
 better than object lessons. There are certain cities in 
 California which are object lessons in this regard. We 
 cannot overestimate the value of their example. A 
 competent superintendent can usually purify the board 
 which selects him. Most political crimes come from 
 ignorance rather than from vicious intention. Very 
 many of our officials are inefficient or corrupt simply 
 because they do not know what the people have the 
 right to expect them to do. There are some such 
 who can be brought to take a pride in good schools, 
 if they really see and understand them. There are 
 some superintendents who do sound, honest work 
 trusted by their boards and by their communities. 
 Let the number increase. 
 
 3. Educate the teachers. Quite as necessary as 
 the training of the public is the bringing of the 
 teachers to higher standards of professional honor. If 
 the profession is to be raised above the level of wire- 
 pulling we must all do our part. Let us individually 
 cease to look toward pull and intrigue and favoritism, 
 and to trust to the goodness of our records as teachers 
 for our advancement. When our own records are 
 clean we can give attention to the records of others. 
 We should cease to honor wire-pullers by election to 
 office in our associations. We should go as far as the 
 demands of courtesy will let us in refusing them the 
 
 257
 
 POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 
 
 right hand of professional fellowship. We should not 
 vote for them when they are candidates for our 
 suffrages. There is as much need of a code of honor 
 in education as in medicine. When teaching becomes 
 a profession the code will be superfluous, for no 
 one really competent and enlightened will violate 
 its natural provisions. Most teachers find positions 
 through the help of other teachers. We should cease 
 to give such help to the wire-puller, the schemer, the 
 self- advertiser, the man who blows his own horn, what- 
 ever the key, whether basso or soprano or falsetto. 
 Some of our colleges refuse to recommend or even to 
 recognize their own alumni if these have sought to rise 
 in their profession by irregular means. 
 
 It would be well if all colleges and normal schools 
 should adopt this rule : That those who have sought 
 or accepted a political pull should never receive their 
 commendation, personal or official. It is not always 
 easy to prove the truth in matters of this kind, but as 
 such commendation is not a right, it is proper to with- 
 hold it in case of doubt. The teacher is an accredited 
 tribune of civilization. He should represent in the 
 community intellectual soundness and moral upright- 
 ness. In the minds of our forefathers his place as 
 moral and intellectual guide stood side by side with 
 that of the spiritual guide, the minister. If either 
 calling has fallen from its first estate of honor it is the 
 fault of the men who follow it. Clear-headed, simple- 
 hearted, pure-souled teachers ennoble the profession.
 
 POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 
 
 Stupid, untrained, tricky teachers degrade it. And of 
 this we may feel sure, our profession as a whole stands 
 just about where the outside world thinks it does. The 
 cold public hits the truth very exactly. Teachers are, 
 as a rule, overworked and underpaid. At least we 
 say so when we talk it over among ourselves. But 
 I am sure that on the whole teachers get all that 
 they are worth. The fault is in the lack of discrimi- 
 nation between good ones and poor ones. Some 
 teachers certainly are underpaid, grossly underpaid, 
 when we consider the rewards of equal success in 
 almost any other profession. But only real success of 
 one sort or another receives any reward at all in most 
 professions. The worthy and the worthless, the honest 
 and the tricky, the enterprising and the indolent, the 
 enlightened and the ignorant are not paid on the same 
 schedule in any other profession. There are men in 
 our public schools in California whose services would 
 be cheap to any town at $5,000 a year or even 
 $10,000. There are many others who would be 
 dearly bought at $S a month. And some of each 
 class are paid $1,000 or $2,000 or $3,000 alike, and all 
 are lumped together by the politician and the public 
 as * ' school teachers. ' ' Sooner or later our people 
 will see the difference and act accordingly. If we 
 want better pay we must bring in better men and 
 women, better personally and better professionally. 
 To this end we must so conduct our profession that 
 men and women cannot rise in it through unfair or 
 
 259
 
 POLITICS IN THE SCHOOLS 
 
 corrupt means, and we must give our help and recog- 
 nition to those who will not do so. 
 
 In the schools of today the history of the next 
 generation is written. If there is corruption in the 
 schools we shall see it in the body politic. The only 
 danger which besets democracy is that of political 
 corruption, of misuse of public funds and public trust 
 for personal ends. Democracy has nothing to fear 
 from outside force or domestic tyranny. Its worst 
 enemy is in the dry rot of popular indifference to 
 questions of right and wrong, which brings the wet 
 rot of official imbecility and corruption. Eternal vigi- 
 lance is the price of liberty, and the public school is 
 the watch-tower on the walls of democracy. If these 
 sentinels sleep, we shall waken to shame. 
 
 Eternal vigilance is another name for civic devo- 
 tion and moral awakening. And because the next 
 generation must be intellectually and morally the 
 reflex of the schools of today, reform in education 
 is the most vital of all reforms. 
 
 260
 
 XIV. 
 THE LESSONS OF THE TRAGEDY. 
 
 WE MEET today under the sway of a num- 
 ber of different emotions. We would 
 express our sorrow at the untimely death 
 of a good man. We would show our 
 regret that our nation has lost the Chief Magistrate 
 of its choice. We would express our sympathy with 
 the gentle woman who has been suddenly bereft of the 
 kindest and most considerate of husbands. We are 
 filled with shame that in our Republic, the land where 
 all men are free and equal wherever they behave them- 
 selves as men, the land which has no rulers save the 
 public servants of its own choosing, a deed like this 
 should be possible. We would express our detestation 
 of that kind of political and social agitation which finds 
 no method of working reform save through intimida- 
 tion and killing. We would wish to find the true les- 
 sons of this ev^ent and would not let even the least of 
 them fall on our ears unheeded. 
 
 And one plain lesson is this : Under democracy 
 all violence is treason. Whosoever throws a stone at 
 a scab teamster, whosoever fires a shot at the presi- 
 dent of the United States, is an enemy of the Republic. 
 He is guilty of high treason in his heart, and treason 
 
 261
 
 THE LESSONS OF THE TRAGEDY 
 
 in thought works itself out in lawlessness of action. 
 
 The central fact of all democracy is agreement 
 with law. It is our law ; we have made it. If it is 
 wrong we can change it, but the compact of democ- 
 racy is that we change it in peace. ' ' The sole source 
 of power under God is the consent of the governed. ' ' 
 This Cromwell once wrote across the statute books of 
 Parliament. This our fathers wrote in other words in 
 our own Constitution. The will of the people is the 
 sole source of any statute you or I may be called on 
 to obey. It is the decree of no army, the dictum of 
 no president. It is the work of no aristocracy ; not of 
 blood nor of wealth. It is simply our own under- 
 standing that we have to do right, shall behave justly, 
 shall live and let our neighbor live. If our law is 
 tyrannous, it is our ignorance which has made it so. 
 Let it pinch a little and we shall find out what hurts us. 
 Then it will be time to change. Laws are made 
 through the ballot, and through the ballot we can 
 unmake them. There is no other honest way, no 
 other way that is safe, and no other way that is 
 effective. To break the peace is to invite tyranny. 
 Lawlessness is the expression of weakness, of igno- 
 rance, of unpatriotism. If tyranny provokes anarchy, 
 so does anarchy necessitate tyranny. Confusion brings 
 the man on horseback. It was to keep away both 
 anarchy and tyranny that the public school was estab- 
 lished in America. 
 
 Three times has our nation been called upon to 
 
 261
 
 THE LESSONS OF THE TRAGEDY 
 
 pass into the shadow of humiliation, and each time in 
 the past it has learned its severe lesson. When Lincoln 
 fell, slavery perished. To the American of today 
 human slavery in a land of civilization is almost an 
 impossible conception, yet many of us who think our- 
 selves still young can remember when half of this land 
 held other men in bondage and the dearest hope of 
 freedom was that such things should not go on forever. 
 I can remember when we looked forward to the time 
 when ' ' at least the present form of slavery should be 
 no more." For democracy and slavery could not 
 subsist together. The Union could not stand — half 
 slave, half free. 
 
 The last words of Garfield were these : ^^Strangu- 
 latus pro Republica'" (slain for the Republic). The 
 feudal tyranny of the spoils system which had made 
 republican administration a farce, has not had, since 
 Garfield's time, a public defender. It has not vanished 
 from our politics, but its place is where it belongs — 
 among the petty wrongs of maladministration. 
 
 Again a president is slain for the Republic — and 
 the lesson is the homely one of peace and order, 
 patience and justice, respect for ourselves through 
 respect for the law, for public welfare, and for public 
 right. 
 
 For this country is passing through a time of storm 
 and stress, a flurry of lawless sensationalism. The irre- 
 sponsible journalism, the industrial wars, the display 
 of hastily gotten wealth, the grasping of monopoly, 
 
 263
 
 THE LESSONS OF THE TRAGEDY 
 
 the walking delegate, the vulgar cartoon, the foul- 
 mouthed agitator, the sympathetic strike, the unsym- 
 pathetic lockout, are all symptoms of a single disease 
 — the loss of patriotism, the decay of the sense of 
 justice. As in other cases, the symptoms feed the 
 disease, as well as indicate it. The deed of violence 
 breeds more deeds of violence; anarchy provokes hys- 
 teria, and hysteria makes anarchy. The unfounded 
 scandal sets a hundred tongues to wagging, and the 
 seepage from the gutter reaches a thousand homes. 
 
 The journal for the weak-minded and debased 
 makes heroes of those of its class who carry folly over 
 into crime. The half-crazy egotist imagines himself 
 a regicide, and his neighbor with the clean shirt is his 
 oppressor and therefore his natural victim. Usually 
 his heart fails him, and his madness spends itself in 
 foul words. Sometimes it does not, and the world 
 stands aghast. But it is not alone against the Chief 
 Magistrate that these thoughts and deeds are directed. 
 There are usually others within closer range. There 
 is scarcely a man in our country, prominent in any 
 way, statesman, banker, merchant, railway manager, 
 clergyman, teacher even, that has not, somewhere, his 
 would-be Nemesis, some lunatic, with a sensational 
 newspaper and a pistol, prepared to take his life. 
 
 The gospel of discontent has no place within our 
 Republic. It is true, as has often been said, that dis- 
 content is the cause of human progress. It is truer 
 still, as Mr. John P. Irish has lately pointed out, that 
 
 264
 
 THE LESSONS OF THE TRAGEDY 
 
 discontent may be good or bad, according to its rela- 
 tion to the individual man. There is a noble discon- 
 tent which a man turns against himself. It leads the 
 man who fails, to examine his own weaknesses, to 
 make the needed repairs in himself, then to take up 
 the struggle again. There is a cowardly discontent 
 which leads a man to blame all failure on his prosper- 
 ous neighbor or on society at large, as if a social sys- 
 tem existed apart from the men who make it. This is 
 the sort of discontent to which the agitator appeals, 
 that finds its stimulus in sensational journalism. It is 
 that which feeds the frenzy of the assassin who would 
 work revenge on society by destroying its accepted 
 head. 
 
 It is not theoretical anarchism or socialism or any 
 other ' ' ism ' ' which is responsible for this. Many of 
 the gentlest spirits in the world today call themselves 
 anarchists, because they look forward to the time when 
 personal meekness shall take the place of all statutes. 
 The gentle anarchism of the optimistic philosopher is 
 not that which confronts us today. It is the anarchy 
 of destruction, the hatred of class for class; a hatred 
 that rests only on distorted imagination, for, after all 
 is said, there are no classes in America. It is the 
 hatred imported from the Old World, excited by 
 walking delegates whose purpose it is to carry a torch 
 through society; a hatred fanned by agitators of what- 
 ever sort, unpractical dreamers or conscienceless 
 scoundrels, exploited in the newspapers, abetted by 
 
 265
 
 THE LESSONS OF THE TRAGEDY 
 
 so-called high society with its display of shoddy and 
 greed, and intensified by the cold, hard selfishness 
 that underlies the power of the trust. All these people, 
 monopolists, social leaders, walking delegates, agita- 
 tors, sensationalists, dreamers, are alien to our ways, 
 outside the scope of our democracy, and enemies to 
 good citizenship. 
 
 The real Americans, trying to live their lives in 
 their own way, saving a little of their earnings and 
 turning the rest into education and enjoyment, have 
 many grievances in these days of grasping trusts and 
 lawless unions. But of such free Americans our 
 country is made. They are the people, not the trusts 
 or the unions, nor their sensational go-betweens. This 
 is their government, and the government of the people, 
 by the people, and for the people shall not perish from 
 the earth. This is the people's president — our presi- 
 dent — who was killed, and it is ours to avenge him. 
 
 Not by lynch law on a large or small scale may we 
 do it; not by anarchy or despotism; not by the de- 
 struction of all that call themselves anarchists, not by 
 abridging freedom of the press nor by checking free- 
 dom of speech. Those who would wreak lawless ven- 
 geance on the anarchists are themselves anarchists and 
 makers of anarchists. 
 
 We have laws enough already without making" 
 more for men to break. Let us get a little closer to 
 the higher law. Let us respect our own rights and 
 those of our neighbor a little better. Let us cease to 
 
 166
 
 THE LESSONS OF THE TRAGEDY 
 
 tolerate sensational falsehood about our neighbor, or 
 vulgar abuse of those in power. If we have bad 
 rulers, let us change them peacefully. Let us put an 
 end to every form of intimidation, wherever practiced. 
 The cause that depends upon hurling rocks or epithets, 
 upon clubbing teamsters or derailing trains, cannot be a 
 good cause. Even if originally in the right, the act 
 of violence puts the partisans of such a cause in the 
 wrong. No freeman ever needs to do such things as 
 these. For the final meaning of democracy is peace 
 on earth, good-will towards men. When we stand for 
 justice among ourselves we can demand justice of the 
 monopolistic trust. When we attack it with clear 
 vision and cool speech we shall find the problem of 
 combination for monopoly not greater than any other. 
 And large or small, there is but one way for us to 
 meet any problem: to choose wise men, clean men, 
 cool men, the best we can secure through our method 
 of the ballot, and then to trust the rest in their hands. 
 The murder of the president has no direct connection 
 with industrial war. Yet there is this connection, that 
 all war, industrial or other, loosens the bonds of order, 
 destroys mutual respect and trust, gives inspiration to 
 anarchy, pushes a foul thought on to a foul word, a 
 foul word on to a foul deed. 
 
 We trust now that the worst has come, the foulest 
 deed has been committed, that our civil wars may 
 stop, not through the victory of one side over the 
 other, the trusts or the unions now set off against each 
 
 267
 
 THE LESSONS OF THE TRAGEDY 
 
 other, but in the victory over both of the American 
 people, of the great body of men and women who 
 must pay for all, and who are the real sufferers in 
 every phase of the struggle. 
 
 Strangulahis pro Republica — slain for the Re- 
 public. The lesson is plain. It is for us to take it 
 into our daily lives. It is the lesson of peace and 
 good-will, the lesson of manliness and godliness. Let 
 us take it to ourselves, and our neighbors will take it 
 from us. 
 
 All civilized countries are ruled by public opinion. 
 If there be a lapse in our civic duties, it is due to a 
 lapse in our keenness of vision, our devotion to jus- 
 tice. This means a weakening of the individual man, 
 the loss of the man himself in the movements of the 
 mass. Perhaps the marvelous material development 
 of our age, the achievements of the huge codperation 
 which science has made possible, has overshadowed 
 the importance of the individual man. If so, we have 
 only to reassert ourselves. It is of men, individual 
 men, clear-thinking, God-fearing, sound-acting men, 
 and of these alone, that great nations can be made. 
 
 268
 
 XV. 
 
 THE HOPES OF JAPAN. 
 
 OF ALL the lands in the world none other has 
 the peculiar fascination of Japan. Others 
 have equal beauty of scenery, greater 
 grandeur of mountain and shore, more 
 noble works of art, more complex problems of society. 
 But none other possesses an equal fascination. No 
 one who has been in the real Japan which lies outside 
 the treaty ports and the foreign hotels and railways ever 
 could or ever would forget his experiences. No one, 
 if he could, would ever fail to return. One goes out 
 each day with the certainty of finding a chain of adven- 
 tures, and not one of them dangerous or unpleasant. 
 The great secret of the charm of Japan lies with 
 the people themselves. They have made a fine art of 
 personal relations. Their acts are those of good taste 
 and good humor. Two cities of about the same size 
 and relative importance are Paris and Tokyo. No two 
 could show a greater contrast in spirit. Both are, in 
 a sense, cities of pleasure. Tokyo is a city of con- 
 tinuous joyousness, little pleasures drawn from simple 
 things which leave no sting and draw nothing from 
 future happiness. Compared with many of them, the 
 game of jackstraws would be wild revelry. Paris is. 
 
 Z69
 
 THE HOPES OF JAPAN 
 
 feverish and feels the "difference in the morning" 
 and the ' ' hard, fierce lust and cruel deed ' ' which go 
 with the search for pleasure that draws on the future 
 for the joys of the present. 
 
 No one who catches the spirit of Paris can fail to 
 miss the underlying sadness, the pity of it all. The 
 spirit of Tokyo — not of all Tokyo, but of its life as a 
 whole — is as fresh as the song of birds, as " sweet as chil- 
 dren's prattle is," and it is good to be under its spell. 
 
 Part of this charm lies in the fair scenery of Japan. 
 Great wooded mountains, snowy cones of volcanoes, 
 dashing rivers and resting lakes, each dropped into its 
 place with a wonderful eye to the picturesque. The 
 tall cryptomerias of the central forests rival their sister 
 sequoias and redwoods of the California slopes. The 
 long-armed pine, Chinese in origin, Japanese by 
 adoption {Phiiis thunbergi), is unique among trees, 
 for wherever it grows it stands as if posing for its 
 portrait, the center of each scene in which it occurs. 
 If there be an island of white ashes in some purple 
 bay, there will stand seven pines in a row across it, 
 each pointing its long arms in seven different direc- 
 tions. On the old royal highway of the feudal days, 
 from end to end of Japan, stand long rows of shelter- 
 ing pines as old as the dynasty, each with all the 
 individuality of one in the series of kings. The great 
 pine of Karasaki, on the Lake of Biwa, stretches 
 its long arms further, perhaps, than those of any 
 other tree whatsoever in any country.
 
 THE HOPES OF JAPAN 
 
 With the scenery goes the wealth of flowers, the 
 hum of singing insects, and in early days the song of 
 birds, also, until the soulless Paris milliner and the 
 woman with dead warblers on her hat wrought their 
 practical extermination. The geography and the his- 
 tory of Japan each has its charms as well, and these 
 sink deep into the hearts of the Japanese. Every 
 "moor of the red sedges" was once the scene of a 
 great battle. On every mountain pass great deeds 
 were wrought. Even though these names and deeds 
 have long since passed into mythology, yet they are 
 none the less potent to touch the heart of the new as 
 well as of the old Japan. From the great central 
 mountain axis of the main island rocky promontories 
 thrust themselves out across the rice fields far into the 
 sea. The warm Kuro Shiwo, or Black Gulf Stream, 
 comes up from the Philippines and Formosa and 
 washes the crags, Ise and Izu, Kii and Misaki, in 
 which these promontories end. In the warm water 
 and sultry vapor-laden air is developed the richest 
 marine life that dwells on any coast in the whole world. 
 And this abundance of life on land and sea by day or 
 by night is one of the joys of Japan. 
 
 With the people themselves the virtues of life are 
 all closely joined together. The name of Bushido, 
 "the warrior's way," means the spirit of honor, the 
 way a man should do things, and this honor covers all 
 the virtues of sobriety, honesty, hopefulness, patriot- 
 ism and religion. It is the heart of Japanese character. 
 
 271
 
 THE HOPES OF JAPAN 
 
 It makes this character and in turn is created by it. 
 
 The Shinto religion, the primitive religion of Japan, 
 is often defined as "ancestor worship." It is more 
 than this, far more, but it is also less than this. It 
 has been called no religion at all, because it has no 
 creed, no ceremonies necessary to its practice, no 
 sacred legends or mysteries, and nothing of the 
 machinery of spiritual power which characterize great 
 religions in other countries. It makes no proselytes. 
 It opposes no belief and insists on none. It is the 
 animating spirit that causes a Japanese to love his chil- 
 dren, to be kind to his wife, to help the stranger, to 
 be loyal to Japan, to devote his life to her service, 
 and, above all, to be worthy of the traditions of his 
 ancestry, to be a man, even as his great fathers were, 
 and to do no act which is unworthy of his class of 
 Samurai, of his education or of his training. 
 
 No other land has better soldiers than the 
 Japanese, not because of their strength or endurance, 
 for they are a small and feeble folk, but because they 
 will obey orders, because they wish to obey, for 
 in so doing they do their part in the glory and the 
 upbuilding of Japan. The Japanese students belong 
 largely to the Samurai class, the old feudal retainers, 
 and the feeling of loyalty to Japan is the animating 
 spirit in all their studies and in all their work. It is 
 the spirit of honor, the Bushido, the warrior's way, the 
 religion of Japan. 
 
 So long as the Japanese keeps this feeling he is 
 272
 
 THE HOPES OF JAPAN 
 
 worthy of trust. When he loses his religious spirit, 
 his spirit of personal pride, whatever his rank or 
 creed, he becomes a degenerate, open to the attacks 
 of all the vices. For this reason a Japanese who has 
 lost his self-respect and grown careless or indolent is 
 one of the least useful of men, and soon sinks to the 
 level of the similarly outcast Anglo-Saxon. 
 
 These facts will help us to understand certain criti- 
 cisms on Japan. The merchant complains that the 
 Japanese have no business head and are careless of 
 their contracts. In this connection we may note the 
 paradox in the relations of the Japanese and Chinese 
 to business methods and to public honesty. The 
 Chinese are the business men of the Orient. The 
 word of a Chinese is his bond, and his contracts are 
 carried out to the letter. In Japan the merchant who 
 has miscalculated asks his creditors to pay his debts. 
 This same good nature he shows to others, if con- 
 ditions are reversed. His sense of good taste is 
 stronger than his sense of equity. Yet, while from 
 the highest to the lowest the public life of China is 
 corrupt, there are few countries on earth so honestly 
 governed as Japan. The spirit of honor animates a 
 Japanese official, and a public office with him is a 
 sacred trust. 
 
 The contractor complains that the Japanese laborer 
 is lazy, drunken, overbearing. This is true in a de- 
 gree, for only the unemployed, the idle and thriftless 
 Japanese are likely to swell the ranks of unskilled or
 
 THE HOPES OF JAPAN 
 
 contract labor. This vicious system of semi-slavery, 
 the social curse and the financial gain of Hawaii, has 
 brought under our flag a class of Japanese not useful 
 to us and not creditable to Japan. 
 
 The missionary says that Japan is given over to 
 materialism, and that Herbert Spencer holds greater 
 sway over even the converts to Christianity than the 
 church. The man of science notes the preference of 
 the Japanese scholar for memorization of words or for 
 half-understood abstrusities of philosophy. It is said 
 that there is no philosophy in Japan, and into this 
 vacuum comes Herbert Spencer. The man of the 
 world finds the Japanese immoral, not remembering 
 that vice is everywhere near him that seeks it. 
 
 But all these criticisms are skin deep. Under all 
 is the great, loyal, generous nation, the embodiment 
 of good hope, good taste, and good-will, a people 
 who love their homes, their children and their country, 
 on whose soil no foreign invader has ever yet set foot. 
 
 The teachers of Tokyo once asked me to speak to 
 them on the subject of ' ' What Japan has to learn from 
 the educational experience of America. ' ' In response, 
 I told them that Japan has to learn the value of indi- 
 vidual initiative and individual adequacy, that equity is 
 higher than courtesy; that the cure for vice is found 
 not in prohibition, but in the strengthening of the 
 moral backbone of the individual man; that woman 
 must be trained to wisdom if homes are to be the cen- 
 ters of culture and purity, and that the final end of 
 
 274
 
 THE HOPES OF JAPAN 
 
 education is not official promotion, nor personal cul- 
 ture, nor the acquisition of knowledge for its own 
 sake, but the development of personal effectiveness. 
 A man should know the world and his place in it, 
 that he may do his part to the best advantage of him- 
 self and others. 
 
 But more important than the lessons which I tried 
 to emphasize was the spirit with which the lessons 
 were received. Eager to learn and eager to make use 
 of whatever was new, and behind it all a real prepara- 
 tion for new ideas. In my explorations of the natural 
 history of Japan, even in the most remote villages, I 
 found everywhere men glad to cooperate, with an in- 
 telligent comprehension of what I was trying to do. 
 As a Japanese friend remarked, this would not be the 
 case if Japan were not already a truly civilized country. 
 
 In returning from Northern Japan to the City of 
 Sendai, in which, on my way northward, I had been 
 most hospitably treated, I received a request from 
 the city officers that I would allow them to visit me 
 at my room. 
 
 About a dozen of them came, with editors, law- 
 yers, teachers and other persons of prominence. 
 After the usual compliments, the spokesman said that 
 they would like to know from me how they could 
 make Sendai a better city. He said that — 
 
 "Japan was like a country boy who had come to 
 town and found many things which are new and 
 strange. This boy found in America an elder brother, 
 
 275
 
 THE HOPES OF JAPAN 
 
 who could give true advice and honest help in all the 
 difficulties of the new situation. As an American 1 
 was welcome to Sendai, and Sendai would like from 
 me all the help I might be willing to give. ' ' 
 
 After a discussion of what could be done for the 
 clean and wholesome town of Sendai to make it even 
 more clean and wholesome, he touched on the ques- 
 tion of Japanese emigration. He was very sorry that 
 the government had allowed men to go out from the 
 cities of the Inland Sea to America as contract labor- 
 ers. Among these were many bad Japanese, and they 
 had produced a bad impression in America. Many 
 Americans had come to think that all Japanese were 
 like these. But those who, like me, had seen the Jap- 
 anese at home knew they were not. The government 
 of Japan understands this situation and will let no 
 more contract laborers leave the country. Only the 
 student, the skilled artisan, the good citizen of Japan 
 will be allowed to come to America, and any wish of 
 America, if courteously made known to Japan, will be 
 fully respected. 
 
 The Japanese everywhere feel toward America a 
 peculiar, almost romantic, gratitude. It was America 
 who in 1854 first opened Japan to the activities of the 
 West, and furnished the occasion for the downfall of 
 the outworn feudal system and the dual role of Shogun 
 and Mikado. It was America who led in the establish- 
 ment of the Japanese school system and the great 
 Imperial University at Tokyo. It was America who 
 
 276
 
 THE HOPES OF JAPAN 
 
 was first willing to allow Japan full jurisdiction in her 
 own ports, which had been opened to foreign residence 
 and foreign trade. To Japan, America is her nearest 
 and best friend among the nations, her guide and 
 leader in paths which are new and strange. 
 
 The lesson of the Shimoneseki incident in 1 863 has 
 never been lost on Japan. Every schoolboy knows it 
 and its meaning. Certain ships, Dutch, French and 
 American, passing through the Inland Sea, were fired 
 on at Shimoneseki. Afterward these, with a British 
 ship, bombarded and destroyed the town, collecting at 
 the same time $3,000,000 as indemnity, which was 
 divided among the Powers. Later investigation 
 showed that the blame was not all on one side, and 
 the United States returned the $750,000 to Japan. 
 This chivalrous act of common courtesy, never known 
 before or since among great Powers, at once placed 
 the United States in a class apart in dealing with affairs 
 in the Orient. When the vulgar politicians of Europe 
 whom we call the ' ' Great Powers ' ' ceased nagging 
 Japan, outrages and unfriendly feeling passed away. 
 The lesson of all this is worth heeding in the great 
 tragedy of the vivisection of China. For genuine 
 commerce rests on a basis of mutual trust and mutual 
 esteem. Trade cannot be built up by force of arms, 
 nor are its profits ever great enough to make good 
 the cost and waste of a great army. Of all the 
 nations of the Orient, Japan is the only one which can 
 in truth be called well governed. Japan is i;he only 
 
 277
 
 THE HOPES OF JAPAN 
 
 one which has had undisturbed possession of herself. 
 The Japanese choose their own ruler, make their 
 own laws, train their own armies, control their own 
 trade. They are the only Oriental people free 
 from the mighty curse of opium, for they have the 
 right to exclude it from their ports. The trade of 
 Japan is great and growing. The profits of this trade 
 must go to those from whom the Japanese may choose 
 to buy. To the end of controlling this trade and 
 through it the trade of the Orient to which Japan holds 
 the key, we have to offer only fair dealing, personal 
 courtesy, and the chivalrous spirit which draws to- 
 gether men and nations. 
 
 278
 
 Date Due AA 001 147 421 o 
 
 3 1210 00134 0965