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