that they now occupy no small part of the emotional interest of undergraduates and absorb easily their more superficial enthusiasms. These games represent, too, the point where the public, through the newspaper, most readily touches undergraduate life and affairs.

There are other distinct concrete features of the American university which should be included in this sketch. Among them are the alumni associations, the

system of fraternities, and the university clubs.

The alumni association of a college is simply a society of its graduates. In certain cases it is incorporated; in more, not. It represents those who have received a degree from the institution. Its chief meeting is at the annual commencement time, its chief business making vital the relationship of the graduates with their college. Every association of this sort is of direct and important support to the college. Its members either individually or as a body are among the benefactors, and its interest never ceases in "alma mater.”

The association of students with each other is a constant form of university life throughout the world. At Upsala it takes the form of the nation's houses; in Germany, of corps of various forms; in Oxford and Cambridge, of the fellowship of the common room, and in America, of the fraternity. In American colleges and universities of conspicuous power and place are some thirty different fraternities. They enroll among their graduates and undergraduates more than 100,000 members. The largest of them has a membership of 15,000. Each society represents a common fellowship in each college. Each society of its name in one college represents cooperation with other branches of the same name in other colleges. The fraternity system is a vital and lasting force in academic life and personal character. Through the fraternity the graduate members keep in touch with the undergraduates and with the university. The fraternity represents a mighty force in college order and organization. It has been suggested that the fraternities in different colleges might become the foundation of the English college and university system in America. Recent developments, however, give no evidence of such a result.

At should also be said that what are known as university clubs are found in each of the great cities. These clubs are an association of gentlemen who have received degrees from universities, either American or foreign. These societies are primarily social, and secondarily are remotely scholastic. In these clubs in America are probably enrolled not less than 7,000 members, and they hold property of at least a million dollars. The university club in America represents the point at which the university life touches the communal life and also the point at which the life of the community may put itself in touch with the relations of the higher education.

I have so far considered the history of American universities largely as independent foundations and monuments. But these universities do not exist for their own sake. They represent important functions in the American community and in the American commonwealth. To a few of these functions I wish to refer.

One function of a university in a democracy is the promotion of the unity of the intellectual life. In a prosperous democracy the tendency is strong to break with all the past. A prosperous democracy desires to make all things new, for it is in peril of becoming intoxicated with its own past triumphs. In this condition the university stands as the preacher of conservatism. It draws from the past its experiences for the enrichment and ennoblement of the present. It declares that man is still man in all times. The value of the university in promoting the oneness of the intellectual life through conservatism it is hard too highly to esteem. The peril of the democracy is that in breaking with the past it will speedily enter into intellectual bankruptcy. It seeks to pay intellectual demands with drafts on the emotions. In respect to intellectual conservatism, promoting unity, the uni

versity represents the great law of evolution; the present receiving the past, and the future receiving what is now the present-enlarging, enriching, and developing it. The university also represents the intellectual oneness of the community through its own unities and associations. A democracy tends toward disintegration-the centrifugal tendency is stronger than the centripetal. Institutions of different classes and of different sections war against each other. Universities, through the associations of the student body, as seen in fraternities, debating leagues, political organizations, and scholastic associations, tend to unite all parts of the diverse democratic body.

The relation, too, of the American university to the American democracy concerns what may be called spiritual ideals. This relation is of large and of serious worth. It applies to and for itself the laws of self-preservation. That its own integrity may be assured, it is inclined to be content with the customary and the commonplace. The relationship content with the positive is not apt to end with the superlative or even to reach the comparative. Democracy seeks the greatest good for the greatest number, as it ought, but in this seeking it is inclined to consider the greatest number of the present time and to take no cognizance of the yet greater number of the future.

Every great nation and every great age devotes itself to some supreme object. In the Hebrew time and nation its devotion was to religion; in the Greek, to literature and art; in Roman, to law and to empire; in medieval Italy it was to the church; in America it is, or was, to liberty. But at present the American commonwealth seems to find its chief ambition in the making of power through material forces. This ambition emphasizes the fact that a democratic and prosperous people does need the constant inspiration of the highest ideals-a constant incoming of strength other than material. It is inclined to allow a material contentment to satisfy the desire for a higher enrichment. Therefore a democratic people needs the constant inspiration of highest ideals and the constant supply of the strongest strengths. This filling of its needs is most efficiently done by the university. Itself seeking the highest ideals, untouched by selfishness, the university is able to move democratic communities unto the highest and the best. The university should constantly keep before the democratic community the duty of a love for truth, of a love for moral excellence, and an appreciation of the beautiful. The appreciation of beauty exercises itself in the fine arts. A political democracy is prone to make its fine arts merely decorative. It is hard to teach or to convince people that the fine arts minister to the highest education of man. The university, however, through both teaching and example should impress upon the democratic community that painting and poetry, architecture, sculpture, and music represent fundamental desires, passions, and needs of the human character. It should also show to the community that such ideas as truth, sincerity, purity, and honesty are most impressively embodied for the benefit of humanity on the canvas and in the marble. But, be it said that the worth of the fine arts in a democracy is not so great as the worth of a university, which not simply inspires an appreciation of the fine arts, but also arouses and quickens the love for truth and the love for moral excellence.

Among the most important spiritual ideals and conditions of a democracy is literature.

The relation of the university of a democracy to the literature of a democracy is at once of general and of particular import. The relation is not simply that the university gives an education to poet, essayist, historian, although this relation is significant. For one does not forget that if Shakespeare was trained as an actor and not as a student the names of his contemporaries, even if less great, and of his successors are found in the matriculation registers of the English universities. With the exception, too, of Heine, who has left on record his contempt of uni

versity men and of universities themselves, the great names in the literature of Germany are names found on the university rolls. One can not forget, moreover, that in the year 1775 the Earl of Chatham paid, in the House of Lords, a most eloquent tribute to the intellectual force, the literary sympathy, and the decorum of the state papers recently transmitted from America, papers then lying upon the table of the House of Lords, which proved that the little colleges of the American colonies had served to constitute those colonies not only an integral part of the civilized world, but had also made America a member of the republic of letters. (Tyler's History of American Literature, vol. 2, p. 310.)

But one is also more impressed with the general truth that the university represents and prepares the general condition out of which a national literature grows. The university teaches men to study themselves; it promotes self-reflection. The university teaches men to study nature; it promotes observation. The university teaches men to study history; it promotes wisdom. Self-reflection, observation, and wisdom are the materials out of which literature is developed. "While I was musing the fire burned, then spake I with my tongue." Scholarship may not be literature, but without scholarship there would not long be a worthy literature in any nation; and the university is the mother of scholars and of scholarship. Learning may not be literature; but it is the brick kiln, or at least the clay pit, from which the house of literature is built; and the university is the mother and nurse of learning. The university represents all that man has aspired unto and failed to reach and also all that he has achieved. The university promotes those spiritual conditions of largeness of intellectual vision, of purity of heart, of dignity of conduct and of social relationship-conditions for the creation and the growth of literature. The university represents those atmospheres and relations of both the individual and the whole community which are necessary to the progress of the literary art.

Yet one is obliged to confess that the effect of the forces of the American university on American literature in recent decades is not so great as in the earlier. From the discipline of a single college, and from the tuition of a single teacher of English in this college, were reared such writers as Emerson, Andrew P. Peabody, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles Sumner, John Lothrop Motley, Richard Henry Dana, James Russell Lowell, Henry D. Thoreau, Edward Everett Hale, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and Charles Eliot Norton. At the present time in this college, having many teachers of English, no such personalities or writers are appearing. What is the reason that under the great Channing so many great writers appeared and that at the present time so few great writers are appearing? One scholar declares that the reason lies in our neglect of Greek literature. But the reason is more fundamental. The reason lies in the absorption of men in things material.

A most important function of the university in a democratic, as, indeed, in any government is its duty of promoting research. What is technically known as research is simply the inquiry for truth. This inquiry is pursued for its own sake. Truth for truth's sake is the great rallying cry of research in the last decades. This research is, of course, pursued systematically. The enlargement of human knowledge respecting man and respecting the world in which he lives has been the endeavor of man ever since he has known or reasoned at all. Two great periods of investigation has the race passed through, been impressed by, and used. One was the Renaissance, and the other began fifty years ago and is still continuing. The Renaissance had relation primarily to the world of man; it was humanistic. The present awakening has relation to the world of nature; it is scientific. When one thinks how long man has lived in the world, daily seeing the sun rise and set, nightly beholding the stars move in their orbits, impressed by the phenomena of light and darkness, of heat and cold, of forces

and of facts, it is a surprise that his knowledge of the material world is so inadequate, superficial, narrow. But the world is still comparatively unknown.

Man himself still is hardly better known than the exterior world. Even that most manifest part, his body, is still the object of prolonged inquiry. As a physiologist has lately said:

Although we have a considerable acquaintance with the gross structure of the body, this is by no means complete. Microscopical investigations, especially of the nervous system, promise rich results of great practical importance. Our knowledge of the physical and chemical structure of the cell is still very crude, although these form the basis of its life and functions, and therefore of the functions of the entire body. What we know of these functions is restricted to their ultimate mechanical, chemical, or structural phenomena. The mechanism by which these phenomena are brought about is an almost complete mystery to us, although the greater number of investigators who have penetrated most deeply into this question consider that its solution is not impossible. (The Needs of Medical Research, by Prof. Torald Sollman. Western Reserve University Bulletin, Nov., 1902, p. 133.)

If the body of man is still so unknown, what shall be said regarding the ignorance on the part of man of his own spiritual organization?

For the better knowledge, therefore, of the world without and of the world within, scholars should devote all their powers and attainments. For such devotion are necessary, first, the love for truth as truth; second, the undying passion for searching for truth, and, third, the conditions necessary for finding the truth. The conditions necessary for finding the truth are, (a) the giving to the scholar time, (b) freedom from interruption, (c) freedom from care as to his material support, and (d) ability to coordinate and to concentrate efforts in research. As the investigator from whom I have already quoted says:

Organized cooperation may be expected to prove as beneficial in scientific research as it has proved in commercial enterprises and in similar directions, by supplying a graded system which will obtain from every man the best work which is in him; by preventing wasteful competition and enterprise along unprofitable lines, and by effecting a saving of plant, material, and opportunities. This organization of research would naturally and gradually follow the other improvements which I have suggested, and is in no way revolutionary. The larger laboratories throughout the world have tended toward such organization as the principles which have been exposed in the preceding pages were more and more clearly recognized and as the means for carrying them into effect were provided.

Certain of these four (a) (b) (c) (d) conditions are not infrequently found existing in men of inherited or acquired riches. One of the most useful investigators of electricity has, through the practical results of his investigations, made himself a rich man. He uses the leisure which his riches allow him to enjoy in theoretical investigation. One of the most useful astronomers is using inherited wealth in building observatories in remote parts of this country and in foreign parts as well. The number of such independent investigators will undoubtedly increase. But the peril attending research done under these conditions is that it will be spasmodic, in method unsound, and also unworthy of the time and money spent upon it. The field chosen for investigation, too, may not be worth investigation. The investigations, too, may not be conducted in wisdom. Investigations have been carried on, and of course are still carried on, by independent researchers who depend on some regular vocation for their support. This method was approved of by John Stuart Mill and was followed by this great thinker for himself. But this method is open to the objection of duplication and of amateurishness. Research is severe toil, or ought to be, and it can not be done but as an avocation. Either the research suffers or the researcher suffers. Therefore, be it said, the best method for inquiry after truth is found in and under the university. The university is a collection of trained workers. Each worker helps every other worker; inspiration is gained. The university represents the materials for the

study of all truth; truth is a unity, and the truths of one department bear close relation to the truths of many other departments; proportion is secured. The university sets before the researcher investigation as a duty and also as a part of the birthright of academic freedom. Indolence or indifference should have no power over him, and his work should be done in freedom. He should be trusted, and he should be trusted because he is worthy of trust. But it may be said that the university may be unwise in the conditions with which it surrounds the investigator; it may be arbitrary in the commands or suggestions which it lays upon him. It is certainly true that all the advantages for research do not rest on the side of the university. In general it may be said that in England most researches have been conducted privately, and that in Germany most researches have been conducted under the auspices of a university. Charles Darwin at Down, on his own estate, an estate difficult to reach or to go from, moving the world from his little laboratory, is the type of the normal English searcher for truth. Immanuel Kant, at Koenigsberg University, occupying a professorship, lecturing to a few students, moving in the free atmosphere of scholarship, writing his blind books which are yet to open the eyes of mankind, is the type of the German searcher for truth.

The duty of research in the United States is urgent. The peril of a democracy is that it will search for truth not for truth's own sake, but for the sake of what truth will do or bring. It makes investigation into electricity to get light, or heat, or power, not to discover the laws, nature, and relations of electricity. But be it said, truth is primary, and the search for truth for its own sake is a primary duty. The great thinker who gave as a reason for his passion for the theory of numbers that it is a pure virgin that never has been and never can be prostituted to any practical application whatsoever, represents the type of the wisest investigator. This lesson of the value of truth for its own sake is a lesson that every democracy should learn. It is a lesson which the university is of all human forces best fitted to teach a democracy. Democracies, too, are naturally fickle. The search for truth, therefore, should be conducted under the most stable and permanent of all human institutions-the university.

This conclusion is practically embodied in the most important agency for research ever founded, the Carnegie Institute. The larger share of its immense annual income, approaching a half million of dollars, is devoted to the prosecution of investigation by university professors. From this foundation richest results may with reason be expected.

The university also bears a very direct relation to what is called the Government. For the American Government, as a distinct institution, the American university should do three things: First, it should aid in disseminating a sound idea of the nature of government; second, it should, as a process of carrying forward the Government, make plain that government by parties, the natural method in a democracy, is a means and never an end; third, it should train men who may become worthy officers of the State.

The university should train gentlemen who may become worthy officers of the State. It may educate men for service of two sorts: The one kind is the clerical and the less arduous administrative type. Such is the training given to the young Englishmen who are to occupy positions of a clerical grade in the colonial service. The training is valuable and leads to resulting values in the interest of the Government and of humanity. The other kind of training is less direct, and yet it is the more valuable as it is the less directly immediate in its purpose. It relates to general preparation for the most important administrative and executive places. It is a preparation which is general. The primary purpose of such a preparation is identical with the primary purpose of education. It seeks to make each man a thinker, a weigher of evidence, and judge of relations. It does not fit one to become a Presi