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The work of these 144 would have been strengthened by an addition, to their resources, represented by the endowments of Baltimore and Chicago, and sufficient to add perhaps one professor to the staff of each. Would the result have been better than it actually has been? Have we not gained anything by allowing the argument to be forgotten in the cases of these two institutions? I do not believe that any who carefully look at the subject will hesitate in answering this question in the affirmative. The essential point is that the Johns Hopkins University did not merely add one to an already overcrowded list, but that it undertook a mission which none of the others was then adequately carrying out. If it did not plant the university idea in American soil, it at least gave it an impetus which has now made it the dominant one in the higher education of almost every state. The question whether the country at large would have reaped a greater benefit, had the professors of the University of Chicago, with the appliances they now command, been distributed among fifty or a hundred institutions in every quarter of the land, than it has actually reaped from that university, is one which answers itself. Our two youngest universities have attained success, not because two have thus been added to the number of American institutions of learning, but because they had a special mission, required by the advance of the age, for which existing institutions were inadequate. The conclusion to which these considerations lead is simple. No new institution is needed to pursue work on traditional lines, guided by traditional ideas. But, if a new idea is to be vigorously prosecuted, then a young and vigorous institution, specially organized to put the idea into effect, is necessary. The project of building up in our midst, at the most appropriate point, an organization of leading scientific investigators, for the single purpose of giving a new impetus to American science and, if possible, elevating the thought of the country and of the world to a higher plane, involves a new idea, which can best be realized by an institution organized for the special purpose. While this purpose is quite in line with that of the leading universities, it goes too far beyond them to admit of its complete attainment through their instrumentality. The first object of a university is the training of the growing individual for the highest duties of life. Additions to t
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