foremost of
the older institutions; they were not made, they grew. There was a
deep necessity for their existence in the intellectual and spiritual
condition of the times, and they sprang into being here and there, in
Italy, France, Spain, and England, in response to that need. They were
notable, at the beginning, not for academic calm, but for turbulence
and vitality; for they were not universities of science, they were
universities of persons. The differences of scholastic rank were not
very sharply defined. In early days, whenever the university body was
formally addressed by Pope or Emperor, the students were named in the
same sentence as the masters.

It is unnecessary to recall here the changes in condition which have
separated the student class sharply from the teaching body and
divorced it almost entirely from governmental functions. What is
significant for the purpose of this article is an apparent disposition
in many quarters to recede from the extreme position of entire
exclusion of the student body and a tendency to move in the other
direction. That tendency may become very marked and lead to a very
radical change of policy in the government of colleges, a change so
radical as to be revolutionary in its effect. It is certain that the
government of colleges, like that of states, must from time to time
undergo marked modifications if it is to remain vitally representative
of, and harmonious with, the growing and changing life of the college.
In healthy institutional life there is free play and interaction of
all the forces that go to make up the organic life, and a certain
flexibility is involved in all growth. The student community, is,
after all, in most institutions the prime object of interest. A few
foundations exist for the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake,
instruction being incidental; in most institutions, however,
instruction is the foremost and absorbing function, and the student's
welfare is, therefore, the controlling factor. In western colleges,
where the edge of hunger for knowledge has not yet been dulled by
opportunity, it is not an unknown thing for a committee of students to
wait on a president or chancellor and announce the failure of some
professor to prepare himself for recitations by fresh study of his
subject. It would be well if students in eastern colleges would
sometimes put on a similar boldness; they would help heads of colleges
out of very trying difficulties with well-meani