| UNIVERSITY-BUILDING. |
By President DAVID STARR JORDAN,
LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR 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 different 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.
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 training. 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 Hopkins did not need, books he even despised. The medium of a forgotten language and an outworn philosophy served him as well as anything else in impressing 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 shortcomings 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
