characterized by a keen interest in the advancement of learning. Those who do not comprehend or sympathize with the investigator are deficient in the mental traits which are preeminently characteristic of the normal individual during the prime of life, and express the highest aspirations of our race. The chief value of research to a university is to be found in the presence of a body of men who, in spite of their years, retain their interest and progressive ideas longer than those who have more sympathy with the methods of the pedagogue than with those who are desirous of learning. We may best maintain the traditions and the highest instinctive tendencies of our race by encouraging productive scholarship. In a brilliant passage, the author of the "Foundations of the Nineteenth Century" has shown that the spirit of discovery is the conscience of Teutonic learning. When our energies are restricted merely to familiarizing ourselves with the learning of the past, or in attempting to enter the domain of speculative thought in which the Greek intellect reigned supreme, we throw away our heritage and precipitate conflicts between inherited and acquired trends of thought that often end in intellectual apathy. In order to vitalize the knowledge of a dead past, we must inject into it the spirit of discovery which alone reflects the highest aspirations of our race. The lack of idealism and the spirit of indifference so often characteristic of the graduates of many of our universities is in a large measure the product of an educational system which, by ignoring objectivity in teaching and failing to cultivate the spirit of enquiry, has ignored the underlying trends of thought that, if properly directed, can bring us nearer to the ideals compatible with our social traits. To endeavor to satisfy the intellectual needs of our race by continually repressing the spirit of enquiry and by driving students to contemplative reflection upon the accumulated stores of knowledge, is equivalent to exchanging the driving force or spirit, that is born in us, for a suit of clothes. When the specific racial tendencies reflected in the spirit of discovery are not intelligently directed they find expression in utilitarian motives. By attempting, as does our educational system, to force American students to become passive recipients of knowledge, we are asking them to sell their heritage for a mess of pottage.
When once the essential distinction that exists between university and college is grasped, it is necessary to determine to what extent the present system of organization is favorable or antagonistic to the development of these two different types of institutions. An impartial examination of the facts such as is given in the excellent exposition of this entire subject by Cattell[1] shows how extremely difficult it will be for most of the older institutions which have assumed the name of university to prove their right to this title. As has already been pointed out, the present system of administration is adapted merely to
- ↑ Science, May 24 and 31, 1912.
