Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/523

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THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE
519

of the rich alumni. The Swan bequest of $300,000 for a graduate college then became available, and there was difference of opinion as to its site. Mr. W. C. Proctor at this stage offered to give $500,000 for the graduate college as planned by Dean West and on condition that an equal sum should be subscribed by others. There was again difference of opinion as to the site and the control of the college, and while the president and a committee of the trustees were trying to come to an agreement with Mr. Proctor, he withdrew his gift.

The question of site is somewhat trivial except in so far as it has become identified with policies. Whether the residence hall should be in the midst of the Princeton campus or on its outskirts can not be a matter of serious consequence. The fact is that the president of the university and some of the trustees were unwilling to place the dean of the graduate school in as complete control of its development as the acceptance of Mr. Proctor's gift might have implied. The real trouble is one of men rather than of measures.

It is a curious circumstance that President Wilson and Dean West are in pretty close agreement in favor of a financial democracy and of an intellectual aristocracy or snobbishness, as one may please to call it. When Dean West favors a residential college with oak-panelled dining hall in which the students shall dine in evening dress, he does so because he wishes to give the young men without money a chance to live in the environment which he regards as proper to the scholar and the gentleman. The ideal of such a college was well put in an address made some years ago. We read of

a place removed—calm Science seated there, recluse, ascetic, like a nun. not knowing that the world passes, not caring, if the truth but come in answer to her prayer; and Literature, walking within her open doors, in quiet chambers, with men of olden time, storied walls about her. and calm voices infinitely sweet; here "magic casements, opening on the loam of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn," to which you may withdraw and use your youth for pleasure.

Those who have followed the recent Princeton controversy may be surprised i to learn that this not a quotation from Dean West, but from the concluding part of Dr. Wilson's address on the occasion of the Princeton sesquicentennial celebration. It might be that President Wilson had learned new tilings in the meanwhile, but at the meeting of the Association of American Universities a couple of months ago, he presented a paper urging the old ideas of amateurism and dilletantism in college studies. He writes:

All specialism—and tnis includes professional training—is clearly individualistic in its object; that is, the object of professional training is the private object of the person who is seeking that training. . . . The minute professionalism enters learning, it ceases to wear the broad and genial face of learning. It has become a commodity; it has become something that a man wishes to exchange for means of support. It has become something that a man wishes to use in order to get the better of his fellow-men; to enhance his fortunes; to do all the things that center in and upon himself; and it is professionalism that spoils the game, the game of life, the game of humanity, the game of cooperation in social undertaking, the whole handsome game that we are seeking to throw light upon by the processes of education.

It is a remarkable and interesting fact that Princeton is becoming a great university and a great scientific center almost in spite of those in control. The large gifts made to the university have found their way to build fine laboratories and to secure scientific men of the first rank. The preceptors intended for less modern purposes brought to Princeton a large group of younger men from various institutions who have given it new life. The efforts for a graduate residential college, which in Dean West's words should "show that God is the end of all our knowing and