was highly significant. At the outset, institutions of learning were very generally controlled by self-perpetuating boards of trustees, acting under charters granted or confirmed by the several States. Not infrequently state aid was granted in considerable amounts to these institutions and no condition of state control was added to such grants. For a time such institutions increased rapidly in numbers. Finally there arose an insistent demand that institutions of learning be under public direction and control; a demand which found expression in the Dartmouth College case, in the establishment of the University of Virginia, and in the beginnings of the highschool movement. For the past three-quarters of a century, we have seen schools of secondary and higher education growing up under systems of public administration, alongside of other schools which, however public in other respects, are under one form or another of private control. This is undoubtedly a part of the great movement which was sketched in the earlier portion of this discussion; and it is but fair to put to it the question which has been put to the movement as a whole, whether or not it tends to real freedom of instruction.

This question cannot be answered with a toss of the head. The two types of administration both have dangers of their own. The management of a school or college by a private corporation may readily tend to a kind of harmful isolation, to abstraction, to servitude under the dead hand of its own traditions, varied by occasional subjection to the irresponsible vagaries of erratic instructors. Such institutions need the shock of close contact or even conflict with other institutions and with the varied life of the people, for which their form of government does not of itself provide.

On the other hand, the school or college under public control may be unduly exposed to such shock. The danger here is not that the school will be subject to change, but that it will suffer from too abrupt and frequent change.

The demand for public control, as it appeared in the early part of this century, was in part a protest against ecclesiastical influence; but it was perhaps quite as much an expression of the purpose to make public schools directly responsible to the

public to which they ministered. But, as we have seen, an increase of responsibility is an approach toward real freedom; it being impossible that an irresponsible institution, if such a thing exists, should be really free. A mistake has been made, however, if public control is to mean that schools and universities must reckon with the first thoughts of the public. All will be well if their reckoning is to be with the public's second thought. First thoughts are too often exciting to the point of intoxication. In such a case, educational institutions may well appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober. Their strength is in the second thought, which they promote and encourage.

When a change of the party in power in a given State is immediately followed by sweeping changes in institutions of public instruction; when these changes involve the removal of competent and irreproachable teachers and the appointment in their places of others who are no better as teachers but are, personally or politically, allied with those who are for the time in control of the State government; especially when thoughtful and capable teachers of history or of economics, whose personal convictions ally them with the defeated party, are summarily displaced by others who belong to the party in power-in all such cases the proper interests of education suffer violence. The ultimate outcome cannot but be bad for the State as well as bad for the schools. Any plan of organization which gives opportunity and encouragement to such practices is bad.

On the whole it seems fair to say that the movement toward public control in this country as in others is a step in the direction of academic freedom-of academic freedom which is one with academic responsibility. The importance of this movement to our national life can hardly be overestimated. But schools and universities under private control cannot be dispensed with. If such did not exist, the public welfare would demand their establishment; for times will inevitably appear in our national life when the immediate pressure of governmental control will unduly restrain our State institutions. Nor can we suppose that the schools of the churches, where these exist, will not have their call, now and again, to take up

the theme and speak some free word of instruction which other institutions at the time fail to utter. John Stuart Mill was clearly justified in the contention that there should be no monopoly in education, whether of the government, of the clergy, or of philosophers.

This question of academic freedom is intimately bound up with the question of freedom of the press, of the sciences, of the arts. In our university organization of the future, these several interests may be found more and more incorporated in the system of educational administration. Here we find some

of the highest concerns of the state which cannot be compressed into mere governmental forms, which must grow up alongside of governments in a kind of independence which makes possible the best sort of co-operation.

In America the improvements which are most urgently needed in scholastic organization are such as will protect public schools against hasty and whimsical change; and will keep all other schools in close touch with the interests of the statemaintaining and increasing in them the sense of public responsibility. With such changes, both types of administration will tend toward the middle ground which may be expected to be most favorable to real liberty. The danger most to be feared in institutions of both types is internal, and appears in an inordinate desire for material prosperity. Nothing will more effectually stop the mouths of teachers whose utterances may be expected to check the inflow of funds for buildings and endowment. It is not necessary to maintain that wealthy patrons of educational institutions attach servile conditions to their gifts. It is a notable fact that this is very rarely the case. It is much more commonly the fear on the part of faculties and managing boards that frank utterance will lessen the income from gifts, which really impairs the freedom of teaching. Where this consideration merely restrains teachers from imposing private opinions upon their classes in the guise of instruction, its operation may be good. Where it restrains them from presenting well-established results of scientific research, its operation is wholly bad. And who shall draw the line between these two kinds of restraint?

After all is said and done, academic freedom cannot be expressed in formulas nor secured by mere systems of administration. It belongs to men who deserve it for pre-eminent worth and command it by the courage of well-reasoned conviction. No sort of freedom is worth having which can be marked out by fixed lines or maintained by inferior men without a struggle. It is a part of the mission of educational institutions to take their place and play their part in the conflicts which are necessary to the life of the peoples; and when their part assumes the form of a struggle for the right to teach the truth as they find it, the conflict itself may prove their best means of persuading men that truth is worth fighting for.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA,

BERKELEY, CAlif.

ELMER E. BROWN

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COLLEGE EDUCATION AND BUSINESS1

It would seem that the place of all places to discuss the topic of college education and business is The College Alumni Club. We have had the college education; we have tried the business. The purpose of the club is assumed to be one of heroic pilgrimage after truth; and if it cannot follow the "kindly light" whithersoever it leads us, on the question of whether college education as a factor makes or unmakes for the earning struggle of life, then we thereby allow by confession a good part of the argument against college training. If it does not teach us to be independent intelligences, to think, to seize the truth, what does it teach us?

I beg to make it plain in the beginning that I dedicate myself and us to untrammeled frankness in this discussion. We must settle into the investigating spirit. Absolute fairness, absolute hospitality to truth, must in turn be our captain and our guide.

1. Importance of business-We must begin with the realization that our subject has a much wider scope than merely financial profit. We enter a broad territory when we talk of the importance of business. Not only are the amenities of life, and the blessings of progress, and the prestige and power of a people, built upon business, but a moment's thought will teach us that business spreads the warp and woof of society. For what is society but organized exchange? What are personal ambition and character but the impulse and the intent to sustain one's self in this exchange? What is morality but highmindedness in that exchange, so that the balance shall be for the universal rather than the selfish good?

Business is not simply a matter of profit. Those who grasp it in a deserving way see that it is the builder of society and 'Read before The College Alumni Club, Bloomington, Ill., November 3, 1899.