energy into the service of the people. The individual is hardly able to
resist the temptation; and certainly very many thus harm seriously their
best energies. Their popularization of knowledge diminishes their own
scholarship. They grow adapted to half-educated audiences; their
pleasure and capacity for the highest sort of scientific work are
weakened by the seductive applause which follows on every pretty turn of
thought, and by the deep effect of superficial arguments which avoid and
conceal all the real difficulties. This is most especially true of that
merely mechanical repetition which is encouraged by the possession of a
lecture manuscript. If it is true that Wendell Phillips repeated his
speech on the Lost Arts two thousand times, it was doubtless a unique
case, and is hardly possible to-day. Nevertheless, to-day we find most
regrettably frequent repetitions; and a few competent intellects have
entirely abandoned their activities on regular academic lines to travel
through the country on lecture tours. For instance, a brilliant
historian like John Fiske, would undoubtedly have accomplished much more
of permanent importance if he had not written every one of his books, in
the first instance, as a set of lectures which he delivered before some
dozen mixed audiences.
On the other hand, we must not suppose that these lectures before
educational institutions are all hastily and mechanically produced. If
the lectures were so trivial their preparation would demand little
energy, and their delivery would much less satisfy the ambition of those
who write them; and so, on both accounts, they would be much less
dangerous for the highest productiveness of their authors. The level is
really extremely high. Even the audience of the smallest town is rather
pampered; it demands the most finished personal address and a certain
tinge of individuality in the exposition. And so even this form of
production redounds somewhat to the intellectual life of the nation. The
often repeated attempt to depict some phase of reality, uniquely and
completely in a one-hour lecture, or to elucidate a problem in such a
short time, leads necessarily to a mastery in the art of the essay.
Success in this line is made easier by the marked feeling for form which
the American possesses. In a surprisingly large number of American
books, the chapters read like well-rounded and complete addresses. The
book is really a succession of essays, and if one looks more carefully,
one will often discover that each one was obviously first thought out as
a lecture. Thus the entire system of popular education by means of
lectures has worked, beyond doubt, harmfully on creative production, but
favourably on the development of artistic form in scientific exposition,
on the art of essay, and on the popular dissemination of natural and
social sciences and of history and economics most of all.
If one wished to push the inquiry further, and to ask whether these
advantages outweigh the disadvantages, the American would decline to
discuss the problem within these limits; since the prime factor, which
is the effect on the masses who are seeking cultivation, would be left
out of account. The work of the scholar is not to be estimated solely
with reference to science or to its practical effects, but always with
reference to the people’s need for self-perfection. And even if pure
science in its higher soarings were to suffer thereby, the American
would say that in science, as everywhere else, it is not a question of
brilliant achievements, but of moral values. For the totality of the
nation, he would say, it is morally better to bring serious intellectual
awakenings into every quiet corner of the land, than to inscribe a few
great achievements on the tablets of fame. Such is the sacrifice which
democracy demands. And yet to-day the pendulum begins very slowly to
swing back. A certain division of labour is creeping in whereby
productive and reproductive activities are more clearly distinguished,
and the best intellectual energies are reserved for the highest sort of
work, and saved from being wasted on merely trivial tasks.
But even the effect on the masses has not been wholly favourable. We
have seen how superficiality has been greatly encouraged. It is, indeed,
an artificial feeding-ground for that immodesty which we see to spring
up so readily in a political democracy, and which gives out its opinion
on all questions without being really informed. To be sure, there is no
lack of admiration for what is great; on the contrary, such admiration
becomes often hysterical. But since it is not based on any sufficient
knowledge, it remains after all undiscriminating; the man who admires
without understanding, forms a judgment where he should decline to take
any attitude at all. It may be, indeed, that the village population
under the influence of the last lecture course is talking about Cromwell
and Elizabeth instead of about the last village scandal; but if the way
in which it talks has not been modified, one cannot say that a change of
topic signifies any elevation of standard. And if, indeed, the village
is still to gossip, it will seem to many more modest and more amiable if
it gossips about some indifferent neighbour, and not about Cromwell.
On the other hand, we must not fail to recognize that, especially in the
large institutions, as the Chautauquas, and in the university extension
courses and the summer schools, everything possible is done to escape
this constant danger. In the first place, the single lectures are very
much discouraged, and a course of six to twenty lectures rather is given
on a single topic; then the written examinations, with their
certificates, and finally, the constant guidance in private reading have
their due effect. Indeed, the smallest women’s club is particular to put
before its members the very best books which relate to the subjects of
their lectures; and smaller groups are generally formed to study
carefully through together some rather large treatise.
The total amount of actual instruction and intellectual inspiration
coming to the people outside of the schools, is, in these ways,
immeasurable. And the disadvantages of superficiality are somewhat
outweighed by a great increase and enrichment of personality. Of course,
one could ask whether this traditional way is really the shortest to its
goal. Some may think that the same expenditure of time and energy would
give a better result if it were made on a book rather than on a course
of lectures. Yet the one does not exclude the other. Hearing the lecture
incites to the reading of the book; and nowhere is more reading done
than in the United States. There is one other different and quite
important factor in the situation. The man who reads is isolated, and
any personal influence is suppressed. At a lecture, on the other hand,
the peculiarly personal element is brought to the front, both in the
speaker and in the hearer—the spoken word touches so much more
immediately and vitally than the printed word, and gives to thought an
individual colouring. Most of all, the listener is much more personally
appealed to than the reader; his very presence in the hall is a public
announcement of his participation. He feels himself called, with the
other hearers, to a common task. And in this way a moral motive is added
to the intellectual. They both work together to fill the life of every
man with the desire for culture. Perchance the impersonal book may
better satisfy the personal desire for self-perfection, and yet the
lecture will be more apt to keep it alive and strengthen it as a force
in character and in life.
It is indifferent whether this system of popular education, these
lectures before the public, has really brought with it the greatest
possible culture and enlightenment. It is at least clear that they have
spread everywhere the most profound desire for culture and
enlightenment, and for this reason they have been the necessary system
for a people so informed with the spirit of individual self-perfection.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
_The Universities_
When American industry began, a short time ago, to disturb European
circles, people very much exaggerated the danger, because the event was
so entirely unexpected. The “American peril” was at the door before any
one knew about it, or even supposed that America really possessed an
industry which amounted to anything. It will not be long before Europe
will experience a like surprise in the intellectual sphere. A great work
will certainly appear, as if accomplished in a moment, before any one
supposes that America so much as dreams of science and investigation. At
the time, people tardily said to themselves that such industry could
only have been built on firm rock, and never would have been able to
spring up if American economic life had really been founded, as was then
supposed, on avarice and corruption. And similarly, in the intellectual
sphere, people will have to trace things back, and say in retrospect
that such achievements could not be brought forth suddenly, and that
serious and competent scientific work throughout the country must really
have gone before. It is not here, in this world of intellectual labour,
as in the economic world; there is no question of threatening rivalry,
there is no scientific competition; there is nothing but co-operation.
And yet even here no people can, without danger to its own achievements,
afford to ignore what another nation has done. The sooner that Europe,
and in particular Germany, acquaints itself with the intellectual life
of America, so much more organically and profitably the future labour in
common will develop. For any one who knows the real situation can
already realize, without the gift of prophecy, that in science more than
in other spheres the future will belong to these two countries.
On the part of Germany to-day there prevails an almost discouraging
ignorance of everything which pertains to American universities; and we
may say, at once, that if we speak of science we shall refer to nothing
but the universities. As in Germany, so it is in the United States, in
sharp and notable contrast to France and England, that the academic
teacher is the real priest of science. In England and France, it is not
customary for the great investigator to be at the same time the daily
teacher of youth. In America and Germany he is exactly this. America
has, to be sure, historians and national economists like Rhodes, Lodge,
Roosevelt, Schouler, and others who are outside of academic circles; and
very many lawyers, doctors and preachers, who are scientifically
productive; and her most conspicuous physicists, so far as reputation
goes, like Edison, Bell, Tesla, and so many others, are advancing
science indirectly through their discoveries and inventions. Strictly
speaking, the officials of the scientific institutions at Washington are
likewise outside of the universities, and the greatest intellectual
efficiency has always been found among these men. Nevertheless, it
remains true that on the whole, the scientific life of the nation goes
on in the universities, and that the academic instruction conveyed there
is the most powerful source of strength to the entire American people.
The German still has no confidence in American science, is fond of
dwelling on the amusing newspaper reports of Western “universities”
which are often equivalent to a German Sekunda, or on those
extraordinary conditions which prevailed “a short time ago” in the study
of medicine. This “short time ago” means, however, in the intellectual
life of Germany an entirely different length of time from that which it
means in the New World. One is almost tempted to compare the
intellectual development of Germany and America by epochs in order to
get a proper means of comparing intervals of time in these respective
countries. The primitive times of the Germans, from the days of Tacitus
down to their conversion to Christianity under Charlemagne in about the
year 800, would correspond, then, to the one hundred and fifty years
from the discovery of America up to the beginning of the Puritan era in
1630. The next period would embrace in Germany seven hundred years
more—up to the time when Germany freed itself from Rome. In America this
would be again a century and a half, up to 1776, when the nation freed
itself from England. Then follow after the Reformation during a period
of three hundred years, the Thirty Years’ War, the Renaissance of the
eighteenth century, the downfall of the Napoleonic influence, and,
finally, the war for freedom. And once again the corresponding intervals
on this side of the ocean have been of very much shorter duration;
firstly years of war, then the æsthetic rise in the middle of the
century, then the sufferings of the Civil War, the period of
reconstruction, and, finally, peace. After 1813 a new period commences,
which ends in 1870 with the German amalgamation into a nation.
Historically incomparable with Germany’s great war against the French,
America had in 1898 an insignificant war with Spain; but for the
national consciousness of the Americans it played, perhaps, no less
important a rôle. In fact, there began at that time probably a certain
culmination in American intellectual development which in its six years
is comparable in effect with what the Germans went through during
several decades after the Franco-Prussian War. Indeed, all that happened
in America a hundred years ago is felt to lie as far back as the events
which took place in Germany three hundred years ago; and, in matters of
higher education and scientific research, conditions have probably
changed more in the last ten years than they have changed during fifty
years in Germany.
The many false ideas, however, depend for credence, so far as they have
any foundation, not alone on the reports of the previous condition of
things, but also on misleading accounts of the conditions to-day. For
even the best-intentioned narrator is very apt to be misled, because he
finds it so hard to free himself from ordinary German conceptions. The
position of the German schools of higher education is so easily grasped,
while that in America is so complicated, that the German is always
tempted to bring clearness and order into what he sees as confusion, by
forcing it into the simple scheme to which he is accustomed, and thus to
misunderstand it.
The German traveller is certain to start from the distinction so
familiar to him between the Gymnasium and the university with four
faculties, and he always contents himself with making but one inquiry:
“Is this institution a university with four faculties?” And when he is
told that it is not, he is convinced to his entire satisfaction that it
is therefore only a Gymnasium. Indeed, very many of the educated Germans
who have lived in America for some decades would still know no better;
and, nevertheless, the conditions are really not complicated until one
tries to make them fit into this abstract German scheme. The principle
of gradations which is manifest in all American institutions is in
itself fully as simple as the German principle of sharp demarcations.
Most foreigners do not even go so far as to ask whether a given
institution is a university. They are quite content to find out whether
the word university is a part of its name. If they then ascertain from
the catalogue that the studies are about the same as those which are
drilled into the pupils of a Sekunda, they can attest the shameful fact:
“There are no universities in America to be in any wise compared with
the German universities.”
In the first place, it should be said that the word “university” is not
used in America in the same sense as in Germany, but is almost
completely interchangeable with the word “college,” as a rather
colorless addition to the proper name of any institution whatsoever, so
long only as its curriculum goes beyond that of the high school, and so
long also as it is not exclusively designed to train ministers of the
gospel, doctors, or lawyers. A higher school for medical instruction is
called a “medical school,” and there are similarly “law schools” and
“divinity schools,” whereas, in the college or university, as the term
is generally used, these three subjects are not taught. College is the
older word, and since the institutions in the East are in general the
older ones, the name college has been and still is in that region the
more common. But in the West, where in general the institutions are on a
considerably lower level, the newer name of university is the more
usual. No confusion necessarily arises from this, since the institutions
which are styled now college and now university represent countless
gradations, and the general term is without special significance. No one
would think of saying that when he was young he went to a university,
any more than he would say that on a journey he visited a city. In order
to make the statement entirely clear, he would add the explicit name of
the institution. Every specialist knows that a man who has spent four
years in Taylor University in Indiana or at Blackburn University in
Illinois, or at Leland University in Louisiana, or at other similar
“universities,” will not be nearly so well educated as a man who has
been to Yale College or Princeton College or Columbia College. The
proper name is the only significant designation, and the addition of
“college” or “university” tells nothing.
Out of this circumstance there has independently developed, in recent
years in pedagogical circles, a second sense for the word “university.”
By “university” there is coming to be understood an institution which is
not only a college or a university in the old sense, but which
furthermore has various professional schools. Even in this sense of the
word, it is not exactly the same as the German conception, since such an
institution includes the college, whereas there is nothing in Germany
which would correspond to this collegiate department. Moreover, here
belongs also a part of what the Germans have only in the technological
institute. Finally, there is one more usage which arises in a way from a
confusion of the two that we have mentioned. Some persons are inclined
to mean by “university” a first-class college, and by “college” an
institution of an inferior standard; and so, finally, the proper name of
the institution is the only thing to go by, and the entire higher system
of education in the country can be understood only in this way.
Therefore, we shall abstract from the designations of these
institutions, and consider only what they really are. We have before us
the fact that hundreds of higher institutions of learning exist without
any sharp demarcation between them; that is, they form a closely graded
scale, commencing with secondary schools and leading up to universities,
of which some are in many respects comparable with the best institutions
of Germany. In the second place, the groupings of the studies in these
institutions are entirely different from those which prevail in Germany,
especially owing to the fact that emphasis is laid on the college, which
Germany does not have. It could not be different; and this condition is,
in fact, the patent of American success. If we try to understand the
conditions of to-day from those of yesterday, the real unity of this
system comes out sharply. What was, then, we have to ask, the national
need for higher instruction at the time when these states organized
themselves into one nation?
In the first place, the people had to have preachers, while it was
clear, nevertheless, that the state, and therefore the entire political
community, was independent of any church, and must never show any favour
to one sect over another. And so it became the duty of each separate
sect to prepare its own preachers for their religious careers as well or
as badly as it was able. The people, again, had to have lawyers and
judges. Now the judges, in accordance with the democratic spirit, were
elected from the people, and every man had the right to plead his own
case in court:—so that if any man proposed to educate and prepare
himself to plead other men’s cases for them, it was his own business to
give himself the proper education and not the business of the community.
He had to become an apprentice under experienced attorneys, and the
community had not to concern itself in the matter, nor even to see to it
that such technical preparation was grounded on real learning.
School-teachers were necessary, but in order to satisfy the demands of
the times it was hardly necessary for the teacher to go in his own
studies very much beyond the members of his classes. A few more years of
training than could be had in the public schools was desirable, but
there was no thought of scholarship or science. On the lowest level of
all, a hundred years ago, stood the science of medicine. It was a purely
practical occupation, of which anybody might learn the technique without
any special training. He might be an apprentice with some older
physician, or he might pick it up in a number of other ways.
As soon as we have understood the early conditions in this way, we can
see at once how they would have further to develop. It is obvious that
in their own interests the sects would have to found schools for
preachers. The administrators of justice would of course consult
together and found schools of law, in which every man who paid his
tuition might be prepared for the legal career. Doctors would have to
come together and found medical schools which, once more, every one with
a public school training would be free to attend. Finally, the larger
communities would feel the necessity of having schools for training
their teachers. In all this the principle of social selection would have
to enter in at once. Since there were no formal provisions which might
prescribe and fix standards of excellence, so everything would be
regulated by the laws of supply and demand. The schools which could
furnish successful lawyers, doctors, teachers, and clergymen would
become prosperous, while the others would lead a modest existence or
perhaps disappear. It would not be, however, merely a question of the
good or bad schools, but of schools having entirely different standards,
and these adapted to purely local conditions. The older states would, of
course, demand better things than the new pioneer states; thickly
settled localities would fix higher requirements than rural districts;
rich districts higher than poor. In this way some schools would have a
longer course of study than others, and some schools demand more
previous training as a condition of entrance than others. So it would
soon come to mean nothing to say simply that one had taken the legal, or
medical, or theological course, as the one school might offer a four
years’ course and the other a course of two years, and the one,
moreover, might demand college training as preparation, and the other
merely a grammar-school education. Every school has its own name, and
this name is the only thing which characterizes its standard of
excellence. In this way there is no harm at all if there are three or
four medical schools in one city, and if their several diplomas of
graduation are of entirely different value.