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The Academic Administration
97

which he is endowed, and unless he shall be found to measure up to expectations in kind and degree in this matter he will go in the discard, and his personal ideals and initiative will count as little more than a transient obstruction. He will hold his place, and will count as a creative force in his world, in much the same degree in which he responds with ready flexibility to the impact of those forces of popular sentiment and class conviction that have called him to be their servant. Only so can he be a "strong man"; only in so far as, by fortunate bent or by its absence, he is enabled to move resistlessly with the parallelogram of forces.

The exigencies of a businesslike administration demand that there be no division of powers between the academic executive and the academic staff; but the exigencies of the higher learning require that the scholars and scientists must be left quite free to follow their own bent in conducting their own work. In the nature of things this work cannot be carried on effectually under coercive rule. Scientific inquiry can not be pursued under direction of a layman in the person of a superior officer. Also, learning is, in the nature of things, not a competitive business and can make no use of finesse, diplomatic equivocation and tactful regard for popular prejudices, such as are of the essence of the case in competitive business. It is, also, of no advantage to learning to engross the trade. Tradition and present necessity alike demand that the body of scholars and scientists who make up the university must be vested with full powers of self-direction, without ulterior consideration. A university can remain a corporation of learning, de facto, on no other basis.

As has already been remarked, business methods of course have their place in the corporation's fiscal affairs and in the office-work incident to the care of its material