II
But notorious facts make this much plain, that civilized
mankind looks to this quest of matter-of-fact knowledge as its
most substantial asset and its most valued achievement, -- in so
far as any consensus of appreciation or of aspirations is to be
found among civilized mankind; and there is no similar consensus
bearing on any other feature of that scheme of life that
characterizes modern civilization. It is similarly beyond dispute
that men look to the modern system of schools and related
establishments of learning for the furtherance and conservation
of this intellectual enterprise. And among the various items of
this equipment the modern university is, by tradition, more
closely identified with the quest of knowledge than any other. It
stands in a unique and peculiarly intimate relation to this
intellectual enterprise. At least such is the current
apprehension of the university's work. The university is the only
accepted institution of the modern culture on which the quest of
knowledge unquestionably devolves; and the visible drift of
circumstances as well as of public sentiment runs also to making
this the only unquestioned duty incumbent on the university.
It is true, many other lines of work, and of endeavor. that
may not fairly be called work, are undertaken by schools of
university grade; and also, many other schools that call
themselves "universities" will have substantially nothing to do
with the higher learning. But each and several of these other
lines of endeavor, into which the universities allow themselves
to be drawn, are open to question. Their legitimacy remains an
open question in spite of the interested arguments of their
spokesmen, who advocate the partial submergence of the university
in such enterprises as professional training, undergraduate
instruction, supervision and guidance of. the secondary school
system, edification of the unlearned by "university extension" and similar excursions into the field of public amusement, training of secondary school teachers, encouragement of amateurs by "correspondence," etc. What and how much of these extraneous activities the university should allow itself is a matter on which there is no general agreement even among those whose inclinations go far in that direction; but what is taken for granted throughout all this advocacy of outlying detail is the secure premise that the university is in the first place a seminary of the higher learning, and that no school can make good its pretensions to university standing except by proving its fitness in this respect.(4*)
The conservation and advancement of the higher learning
involves two lines of work, distinct but closely bound together: (a) scientific and scholarly inquiry, and (b) the instruction of students.(5*) The former of these is primary and indispensable. It is this work of intellectual enterprise that gives its character to the university and marks it off from the lower schools. The work of teaching properly belongs in the university only because and in so far as it incites and facilitates the university man's work of inquiry, -- and the extent to which such teaching furthers the work of inquiry is scarcely to be appreciated without a somewhat extended experience. By and large, there are but few and inconsequential exceptions to the rule that teaching, as a concomitant of investigation, is distinctly advantageous to the investigator; particularly in so far as his work is of the nature of theoretical inquiry. The instruction necessarily involved in university work, therefore, is only such as can readily be combined with the work of inquiry, at the same time that it goes directly to further the higher learning in that it trains the incoming generation of scholars and scientists for the further pursuit of knowledge. Training for other purposes is necessarily of a different kind and is best done elsewhere; and it does not become university work by calling it so and imposing its burden on the men and equipment whose only concern should be the higher learning.