Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/492

468 make a pretty fair showing, perhaps, because of the great facilities for research offered by our surveys and exploring expeditions. The newness of our country has also been of advantage to our zoologists, who have not failed to improve their opportunities. But in chemistry and physics, the two sciences most intimately connected with our greater industries, we have accomplished very little.

Several causes have combined to bring about this state of affairs. There is native ability enough in America to carry on work of the highest order, but inducements and opportunities have been lacking. The labor of developing new regions, of building up commerce, manufactures, and agriculture, of constructing railroads, bridges, and telegraphs, has diverted public attention from matters apparently of a more abstract and less immediately practical character. Material necessities have taken a natural precedence of intellectual wants. Now, having laid our foundations, we begin to think seriously about the future superstructure.

But apart from all these drawbacks to American scientific growth, there is yet another of almost equal magnitude. This is to be found in the system (or rather lack of system) which has shaped our higher education. Our country is dotted over with a multitude of so-called colleges and universities, which have sprung up, not in response to any well-defined necessity, not under the developing influence of broad and clear ideas, generous culture, and wise motives, but because of personal ambition, sectarian jealousy, or petty local pride. States have conferred charters almost indiscriminately, without reason or forethought. Any body of trustees, no matter how ignorant or how foolish, has had but to ask for university powers, and the request has been granted. Incapacity on their part, or injudiciousness in their plans, has seemed to offer no impediments. This policy may be democratic, but it certainly is not wise. Its chief result must invariably be to degrade the standard of education. A college or university charter should be issued only with extreme care, and to fully responsible persons. It ought to demand compliance with certain rigid conditions, and should be forfeited whenever the institution holding it falls below the proper standards. But the mischief has been done, and science has suffered. Let us see how.

In order that science may flourish in any community, several things are needful. There must be a general appreciation of its true value to the world, a clear understanding by men of culture as to the best means for its promotion, facilities for both study and research, and suitable inducements to attract intellectual labor. No matter how able and enthusiastic an investigator may be, he can do little without apparatus or specimens, encouragement, and the means of support. Indeed, the last-named, or bread-and-butter element, is a very important feature of the problem. The human brain is a marketable commodity, at the service of the best-paying master. Payment