Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/133

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THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY.
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facts he is but concerned in so far as they are his tools. Knowledge is not repetition but reproduction. The guide to the halls of learning has no other duty but to stimulate the energies of the mind confided to his leadership to reproduction. Method, the power to control facts, the means to discover facts, not the transmission of knowledge, is the ultimate design of all true teaching. This has always been the view of German pedagogics. In winning recognition for this elementary but all important conception, the American scholar has opened for himself another opportunity, admitting him to science's holy of holies. He, condemned so long to act the part of the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, may now aspire to the very high priest's tiara. To teach is not his sole preoccupation. To search for new truths is also his obligation. Knowledge is not a fixed quantity. Her realm has no boundaries beyond which there is no need to push on. The university professor, and so is the university student, is the Columbus of unknown seas, the Livingstone of unvisited continents. What he knows, is for him an indication of what still remains unknown. What others have found, must always suggest to him that more things are hidden waiting for the explorer's eye!

The American university has in these days found this, to it so long denied, supreme opportunity. Its new sense of independence inspires it also with self-confidence that among the busy pathfinders its sons shall not be the last nor the least. The sky which arches over our continent is studded with interrogation points as richly as is the firmament of the Eastern hemisphere. The American astronomer, therefore, cannot complain of lack of opportunity for original investigation. Our rocks and rivers, our fauna and fiora, our mountains and cafions, spell solicitous invitations for geologists and botanists and biologists promising ample rewards to him who refuses them not the tribute of devoted attention. Indeed, no words are needed to prove the assertion that America has not been step-motherly to the loving suitor who would have her tell him the innermost secrets of her birth and growth. In fact, American scientific men, whatever their