from the world and engaged within a narrow field of investigation, he undertakes to instruct his colleagues or the public concerning matters in the world at large in connection with which he has had little or no experience.

Now, while all university men will doubtless agree with President Harper when he says "freedom of expression must be given to members of a university faculty, even tho it be abused, for the abuse of it is not so great an evil as the restriction of such liberty," yet it is clear that the presence of these personal elements detracts very much from the simplicity and significance of an issue regarding academic freedom. For reasons into which I cannot fully go, I am convinced that it is now well-nigh impossible to have raised, in any of the true universities of this country, a straight out-and-out issue of academic freedom. The constantly increasing momentum of scientific inquiry, the increasing sense of the university spirit binding together into one whole the scattered members of various faculties thruout the country, the increased sensitiveness of public opinion, and the active willingness of a large part of the public press to seize upon and even to exaggerate anything squinting towards an infringement upon the rights of free inquiry and free speech-these reasons, among others, make me dissent most thoroly from the opinion sometimes expressed that there is a growing danger threatening academic freedom.

The exact contrary is, in my judgment, the case as regards academic freedom in the popular sense, that is to say, of dictatorial interferences by moneyed benefactors with special individual utterances.

It does not follow, however, that there is no danger in the present situation. Academic freedom is not exhausted in the right to express opinion. More fundamental is the matter of freedom of work. Subtle and refined danger is always more to be apprehended than a public and obvious one. Encroachments that arise unconsciously out of the impersonal situation are more to be dreaded than those coming from the voluntary action of individuals. Influences that gradually sap and undermine the conditions of free work are more ominous than those which attack the individual in the open. Ability

to talk freely is an important thing, but hardly comparable with ability to work freely. Now freedom of work is not a matter which lends itself to sensational newspaper articles. It is an intangible, undefinable affair; something which is in the atmosphere and operates as a continuous and unconscious stimulus. It affects the spirit in which the university as a whole does its work, rather than the overt expressions of any one individual. The influences which help and hinder in this freedom are internal and organic, rather than outward and personal.

Without being a pessimist, I think it behooves the community of university men to be watchful on this side. Upon the whole, we are pretty sure that actual freedom of expression is not going to be interrupted at the behest of any immediate outside influence, even if accompanied with the prospective gift of large sums of money. Things are too far along for that. The man with money hardly dare directly interfere with freedom of inquiry, even if he wished to; and no respectable university administration would have the courage, even if it were willing, to defy the combined condemnation of other universities and of the general public.

None the less the financial factor in the conduct of the modern university is continually growing in importance, and very serious problems arise in adjusting this factor to strict educational ideals. Money is absolutely indispensable as a means. But it is only a means. The danger lies in the difficulty of making money adequate as a means, and yet keeping it in its place-not permitting it to usurp any of the functions of control which belong only to educational purposes. To these, if the university is to be a true university, money and all things connected therewith must be subordinate. But the pressure to get the means is tending to make it an end; and this is academic materialism-the worst foe of freedom of work in its widest sense.

Garfield's conception of the college as a bench with a student. at one end and a great teacher at the other, is still a pious topic of after-dinner reminiscence; but it is without bearing in the present situation. The modern university is itself a great economic plant. It needs libraries, museums, and laboratories,

numerous, expensive to found and to maintain. It requires a large staff of teachers.

Now the need for money is not in itself external to genuine university concerns; much less antagonistic to them. The university must expand in order to be true to itself, and to expand it must have money. The danger is that means absorb attention and thus possess the value that attaches alone to the ultimate educational end. The public mind gives an importance to the money side of educational institutions which is insensibly modifying the standard of judgment both within and without the college walls. The great event in the history of an institution is now likely to be a big gift, rather than a new investigation or the development of a strong and vigorous teacher. Institutions are ranked by their obvious material prosperity, until the atmosphere of money-getting and moneyspending hides from view the interests for the sake of which money alone has a place. The imagination is more or less taken by the thought of this force, vague but potent; the emotions are enkindled by grandiose conceptions of the possibilities latent in money. Unconsciously, without intention, the money argument comes to be an argument out of proportion, out of perspective. It is bound up in so many ways, seen and unseen, with the glory and dignity of the institution that it derives from association an importance to which it has in itself no claim.

This vague potentiality, invading imagination and seducing emotion, checks initiative and limits responsibility. Many an individual who would pursue his straight course of action unhindered by thought of personal harm to himself, is deflected because of fear of injury to the institution to which he belongs. The temptation is attractive just because it does not appeal to the lower and selfish motives of the individual, but comes. clothed in the garb of the ideals of an institution. Loyalty to an institution, esprit de corps, is strong in the university, as in the army and navy. A vague apprehension of bringing harm upon the body with which one is connected is kept alive by the tendency of the general public to make no distinction between an individual in his personal and his profes

sional capacity. Whatever he says and does is popularly regarded as an official expression of the institution with which he is connected. All this tends to paralyze independence and drive the individual back into a narrower corner of work.

Moreover, a new type of college administration has been called into being by the great expansion on the material side. A ponderous machinery has come into existence for carrying on the multiplicity of business and quasi-business matters without which the modern university would come to a standstill. This machinery tends to come between the individual and the region of moral aims in which he should assert himself. Personality counts for less than the apparatus thru which, it sometimes seems, the individual alone can accomplish anything. Moreover, the minutiæ, the routine turning of the machinery, absorb time and energy. Many a modern college man is asking himself where he is to get the leisure and strength to devote himself to his ultimate ends, so much, willy-nilly, has to be spent on the intermediate means. The side-tracking of personal energy into the routine of academic machinery is a serious problem.

All this, while absorbing some of the energy which ought to find outlet in dealing with the larger issues of life, would not be so threatening were it not for its association with the contemporary tendency to specialization. Specialization, in its measure and degree, means withdrawal. It means preoccupation with a comparatively remote field in relatively minute detail. I have no doubt that in the long run the method of specialization will justify itself, not only scientifically, but practically. But value in terms of ultimate results is no reason for disguising the immediate danger to courage, and the freedom that can come only from courage. Teaching, in any case, is something of a protected industry; it is sheltered. The teacher is set somewhat one side from the incidence of the most violent stresses and strains of life. His problems are largely intellectual, not moral; his associates are largely immature. There is always the danger of a teacher's losing something of the virility that comes from having to face and wrestle with economic and political problems on equal terms with competitors.

Specialization unfortunately increases these dangers. It leads the individual, if he follows it unreservedly, into bypaths still further off from the highway where men, struggling together, develop strength. The insidious conviction that certain matters of fundamental import to humanity are none of my concern because outside of my Fach, is likely to work more harm to genuine freedom of academic work than any fancied dread of interference from a moneyed benefactor.

The expansion of the material side of the modern university also carries with it strong tendencies towards centralization. The old-fashioned college faculty was pretty sure to be a thorogoing democracy in its way. Its teachers were selected more often because of their marked individual traits than because of pure scholarship. Each stood his own and for his own. The executive was but primus inter pares. It was a question not of organization or administration (or even of execution on any large scale), but rather of person making himself count in contact with person, whether teacher or student. All that is now changed-necessarily so. It requires ability of a very specialized and intensified order to wield the administrative resources of a modern university. The conditions make inevitably for centralization. It is difficult to draw the line between that administrative centralization which is necessary for the economical and efficient use of resources and that moral centralization which restricts initiative and responsibility. Individual participation in legislative authority and position is a guarantee of strong, free, and independent personalities. The old faculty, a genuine republic of letters, is likely to become an oligarchy--more efficient from the standpoint of material results achieved, but of less account in breeding men. This reacts in countless ways upon that freedom of work which is necessary to make the university man a force in the working life of the community. It deprives him of responsibility, and with weakening of responsibility comes loss of initiative.

This is one phase of the matter-fortunately not the whole of it. There has never been a time in the history of the world when the community so recognized its need of expert guidance as to-day. In spite of our intellectual chaos,