cultural purpose predominates in the earlier courses, and the investigative and professional in the later; but both have a place in all and find their realization in a common method of treatment. While it is not expected that more than a small percentage of those who take the earlier courses will have professional or investigative work in view, it is believed that they will derive the largest and most distinctive returns from such shaping of the work. That special mental and moral discipline which is appropriate to the science can be secured only by wrestling with its problems as they actually present themselves to the investigator. A radically different discipline is secured from handling the subject in the simple didactic method. It is believed that those who enter upon any of the courses with an intelligent appreciation of the science as a growing body of truth and a progressive field of intellectual endeavor will desire to come into touch with its working methods and controlling spirit."
In his address before the Baptist Social Union of Chicago, Nov. 5, 1891, Dr. W. R. Harper set forth what might be expected of the new University of Chicago. Much has been accomplished along the lines indicated. Two or three passages in this notable utterance are worth repeating:
"In these days of specialists, the man who has passed through college has, after all, but a smattering of things. Possibly before his course is completed, and certainly at the close of it, he should have a chance to take some special subject and give it the continuous attention of months. Concentration on a given line, before graduation, should be encouraged. . . . The college system, as we all understand it, is not intended primarily to stock the pupil's mind with knowledge, but rather to develop it, to make it able to receive and apply truth from every source; in brief, to open the mind. . . . But it is not sufficient simply to be open to accept truth when it presents itself; to adopt new or modified methods, when they have been suggested by others. A university may not stop with this. Shall you not expect contributions, and these not small ones, to the sum of human knowledge? Shall you not expect a spirit pervading every department of the university life which will lead men from the lowest to the highest department to investigate and to experiment? A deal of truth, known for ages, if it is to exert any influence to-day, must be restated. Such restatement makes it practically new truth, and the contribution of the man who has done this is only less than that of him who first formulated it. Old forms of statement in every line of work have lost their force; they have been worn smooth, till now they are really valueless."
Hence the need, not only of specialists and laboratories, but of an endowed University Press for the publication of books and periodicals. This want has been supplied by the admirably edited journals of the University, which contain articles summing up the results of studies and experiments pursued in numerous lines of intellectual activity. Usually the head professor of the department is the editor, aided by his associates and by eminent scholars in other universities of America and Europe. It is not necessary to dwell on the merits of the 'Botanical Gazette,' the 'Journal of Geology,' the 'Journal of Political Economy' and the other monthlies and quarterlies issued from the University of Chicago Press. The value of this series is appreciated, and their success is a credit to American scholarship.
The keynote of the university spirit is devotion to the cause of truth for its own sake. This mental attitude was well described in Professor Chamberlin's convocation address (April 1, 1893) on 'The Mission of the Scientific Spirit':
"Simple observation is incapable of disentangling intricate phenomena and of discriminating with precision the several agencies and their varying results. Even when it discerns the agencies, the complexity of the combination baffles all efforts to evaluate the measure and degree of participation. In the varying degrees of participation of causes lies the greatest peril to safe conclusions.
"But by the devices of experimentation, each factor may be disentangled from its complex associations and made to reveal itself in its simple and naked reality. Experimentation, by its creative processes, opens a new world of observation; a world devised and controlled solely for the disentanglement of truth. The new potency thus added to observation and induction gave birth to modern science. By its aid the mass of crude facts previously gathered were
