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