The best education for any man with brains and character should involve these three elements. It should have the final goal in view as soon as possible. It should be broad enough and thorough enough to develop cultured manhood and at the same time to furnish the strength needed to reach this goal. In other words, it should look to success in the profession and to success as a man. Toward both these ends the methods of finding the truth for oneself are vitally essential. The university should disclose the secret of power, and this secret lies in thoroughness. Science is human experience tested and set in order. The advance of science has come through the use of instruments of precision and methods of precision. Opinion, feeling, tradition, plausibility, illusions of whatever sort, disappear when the method of power is once mastered.
The college course should have a little of the professional spirit for its guidance, a little of the university spirit for its inspiration; the best interests of all three will keep them in the closest relation to each other. At the same time they must not starve each other. At the present time the needs of the college in most cases tend to dwarf the more costly functions of the university. The professors have their hands full of lower work. The books and material the university work demand are far more costly than the college can afford. The trustees still too often regard the graduate school as an expensive alien, and its demands in most quarters still receive scant attention. To train fifty investigators costs more than to give a thousand men a college education. The sciences cost more than the humanities, and the applied sciences, with their vast and changing array of machinery, are most expensive of all.
Equally unwise it seems to me, though less common, is the disposition to slight the college course for the sake of advanced research. Poor work, wherever done, leaves its mark of poverty. The great university of the future will be the one which does well whatever it undertakes, be it high or low. Better have few departments, very few, than that any should be weak and paltry. Better few students well taught than many neglected.
It is fair to judge a university by the character of its advanced work. Institutions can not be graded by the number in attendance. This is the most frequent and most vulgar gauge of relative standing. The rank of an institution is determined no more by the number of its students than by the number of rocks on its campus. What sort of men does it have and what are they doing? These are the living questions. Buildings are convenient; beautiful buildings have a great culture value. We should be the last to underrate the effect of the charm of cloisters and towers, of circles of palms and sweet-toned bells. But these do not make a university. Books are useful, they are vital to
