government. This Memorial Institution plan is hardly the shadow of a shadow of a university. The problem remains where it was before, to be solved by the friends, in this association and elsewhere, of a national university. I mean by a national university a great post-graduate institution-a greater than Berlin - wonderfully equipped, with professors representing the culture and progress of the world, with thousands of graduate students from all parts of the country and from all countries of the world, standing as an ideal interest of Congress and of the American people, in touch with the people, and helping the people come to a consciousness of the true ideals of democracy, and spreading those ideals over the civilized world. And they offer us this pitiful substitute !

With the opposition naturally stand a few great universities and a few religious denominations. President Gilman, in his article on a national university, is very frank and asks what Columbia and Harvard and Yale and Johns Hopkins will say to the idea of a university that might attract some of their best professors and students. We are told that the scheme is visionary. The American republic needs a true and far-reaching vision of greater things than average politics gives us. We are told that there are difficulties in the way. Shades of William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips! When shall the Anglo-Saxon American people be told that they are not to undertake a right thing because there are difficulties in the way?

I hope this Council of Education will affirm its belief in a national university. I hope further that in the business meeting of the active members of the general association a resolution will be passed reaffirming belief in a national university, and that a committee will be appointed, with funds for necessary publications, to aid the Committee of Four Hundred in securing its foundation.

This is not a question of the interest of a few great universities or of a few great religious denominations; but it is a question of fostering our public-school system, our public universities, all colleges and universities of the better class, democracy, progress, American scholarship, national ideals, and America's influence upon the world.

EX-GOVERNOR JOHN WESLEY HOYT, chairman of the National University Committee. Mr. President, Members of the Council: Before entering upon the subject under discussion I should, in justice to the cause itself and to the great committee of its promoters, whom I have the honor to represent, mention the facts personal to myself that being barely convalescent after a long illness and in no condition even to make the journey, it was the earnest requests of friends, and these alone, to which I yielded so far as finally to accept the invitation; and, secondly, that within three days of the date of necessary departure I had an alarming prostration by heat. That I am, therefore, in a totally unfit condition to appear before you will very certainly make itself manifest from beginning to end.

Nevertheless, I was sorry to hear from the presiding officer that I can have but a very short time, for there is much that I should like to say.

It had been my purpose, first of all, to offer a brief summary of what, in the judgment of the National Educational Association, some years ago, a national university should be; second, to remind the members of this great association what it actually did, a quarter of a century ago, toward securing the establishment of such a university; third, to present a résumé of the efforts of the National University Committee, and of the action of Congress, more especially of the Senate, in this same behalf, during the last decade; and finally to offer what, to my mind, are reasons more than sufficient why the remarkable report of your Committee of Fifteen should be emphatically disapproved by this Council and by the National Educational Association at large.

In view of the unexpected limitation, I shall find it difficult to rightly apportion the time.

Let me say, at the outset, that my own deep interest in the subject of a national university came of an inspection of the educational institutions of the Old and the New

World, made in my capacity as United States commissioner to the Paris Exposition of 1867, and by special authority of Mr. Seward, then secretary of state. It was my surprise and mortification, upon the conclusion of two years of travel and study (in the course of which I visited every university in Europe and America), that aroused me to efforts in behalf of university education, in which our deficiencies were most marked.

As many of you will recall, the National Educational Association, at Trenton, N. J., in 1869, adopted unanimously the following resolution:

Resolved, That, in the opinion of this association, a great American university is a leading want of American education, and that, in order to contribute to the early establishment of such an institution, the President of this association, acting in concert with the president of the National Superintendents' Association, is hereby requested to appoint a committee, consisting of one member from each of the states, and of which Dr. J. W. Hoyt, of Wisconsin, shall be chairman, to take the whole matter under consideration, and to make such report thereon, at the next annual convention of said associations, as shall seem to be demanded by the interests of the country.

I can now barely mention the facts that the committee's preliminary report, submitted at Cleveland, in 1870, was in itself unanimous, and was unanimously adopted by the association.

The report submitted at St. Louis, in 1871, likewise unanimously adopted by the association, among other things contained an outline of what a national university should be.

At the same time the national committee was made to consist of fewer members and was constituted "a permanent committee," with powers to frame a bill, to send the same to members and to leading citizens thruout the country, and, when ready, to offer it to Congress and press its passage.

You are aware that such a bill was finally, in 1872, introduced, and that it was unanimously reported by the house committee on education, which included many eminent members of that body, among them Mr. George F. Hoar, of Massachusetts. Of the long lapse of time, during which, owing to the protracted absence of members of the committee from the country, and the difficulty of enlisting active successors, little was done, I will only say that this has been to me a source of unending regret.

In so far as the National Educational Association is concerned, consolation is found in these two facts: First, that upon conclusion of a reply by the chairman of its committee, in this city of Detroit, in 1874, to an attack upon the national-university movement by the president of Harvard the year before (during the chairman's absence from the country), the following resolution was unanimously adopted by the association, and with special emphasis:

Resolved, That this association does hereby reaffirm its former declarations in favor of the establishment of a national university devoted, not to collegiate, but to university work, providing higher instruction in all departments of learning, and so organized as to secure the necessary independence and permanency in its management.

Secondly, that when the old-time chairman of the aforesaid committee had determined to resume his efforts for the university and repaired to Washington for that purpose, every member of the National Educational Association whom he was able to consult as to laying the matter again before that body at its next annual meeting, said in substance: "No, the association is sure, absolutely sure, already, and will be prepared, when the time shall have come for its co-operation — when, as a great and influential body, its help is needed. It is better that a new committee be formed, including, besides some of the leading members of the association, the strongest public men of the country in other fields of activity."

It was for this reason that the "National Committee to Promote the Establishment of the University of the United States" was formed in 1891, and embraces, besides the presidents of over two hundred leading colleges and universities and the state superintendents of public instruction, statesmen, jurists, scholars, scientists, and heads of national organizations enough to swell the number beyond four hundred.

You are doubtless familiar with the earnest enlistment of the able and honored Senator George F. Edmunds of Vermont in a revival of the national-university question, in 1890, by securing the appointment of a special Senate "committee to establish the University of the United States," with the introduction of a bill, and with its reference to said committee.

You may also know that, after his retirement from the Senate because of serious illhealth, the said committee was made a "standing committee;" that a unanimous report was submitted by Senator Edmunds' successor in the chairmanship of said committee, Chairman Proctor, of Vermont, in 1893, tho too late to secure action; and another report, also unanimous, by his successor, Chairman Hunton, of Virginia, in 1894, who succeeded in getting the bill ably discussed on the affirmative side, tho not in getting it to a vote, because of interference by the appropriation bills and the arrival of the time when, under the rules, a single vote was sufficient to prevent further action during that Congress. You may further know of the affirmative report afterward submitted by Chairman Kyle, of South Dakota, in 1896, with the inclusion of over three hundred letters in support of the measure from some of the ablest and most distinguished men of the United States; and that the bill so reported was prepared during three protracted sessions of the executive council of the National University Committee, the chief justice of the United States presiding, and every member but one being present.

That this bill, of which President David Starr Jordan of Leland Stanford University wrote, “Put it through without the change of a punctuation point," failed was due to the absence of the chairman of the Senate committee during almost the entire last session of the Fifty-fourth Congress (during the session of the South Dakota legislature), and to the natural reluctance of Senators John Sherman, Frye, and other members of the committee to take his place while daily expecting his return, especially since, meanwhile, a minority report (tho brief, weak, and ill-supported) had been offered.

The record of national-university efforts in the Senate puts it beyond question that, while the Senate itself has dealt most liberally and handsomely with the university question, there have been delays unpardonable on the part of two chairmen of the Senate committee, especially the last one-delays, too, in the latter case, which many friends of our measure insist have a mysterious connection with those of the Committee of Fifteen, but which I shall myself not here attempt to explain otherwise than to note that the actual work of said Committee of Fifteen may have devolved upon a very small number of its members.

As for the report of the Committee on a National University now under discussion, I regret to speak of it, for there are attached to it the signatures of distinguished men whom I have long highly respected, some of them members of the national-university committee. But, on the other hand, it is my necessity to speak of the results of their years of labor in terms of the severest condemnation, both on account of the unreasonable delays involved and because of the astonishing recommendation with which the report concludes - a recommendation which, carefully and dispassionately viewed, seems to be nothing less than an attempt to foist upon the National Educational Association and the country a weak and unworthy substitute for the noble national university to which the association stood so entirely committed in other years, and by which I firmly believe it will ever stand.

Did time permit, I would point out, right here, how this "memorial concern is practically made up of faults and deficiencies - that it is substantially confined to some sort of popular utilization of the scientific resources of the government at Washington, and that even in attempting this they have offered a scheme that must prove a failure.

I would show likewise how, as a private institution, it must necessarily fail of all those great educational, national, and even international ends which Washington, Jefferson, and the most illustrious of other of our presidents, as well as a multitude of

case

statesmen, scholars, scientists, and practical educators have had in view for a hundred years.

And, finally, I would remind you of the affront this "memorial" scheme offers to the Father of his Country. It was not a narrow, one-sided institute, originated by one or more of the worst enemies of the great idea he so cherished, and for whose final realization he made the best contribution he could in his last will and testament; it was not any such "institution" as we have outlined before us, worked up and now in control of national-university deserters, faint-hearted friends, and declared opponents of any university likely to become greater than their own, no matter what its claims on national and universal grounds; it was nothing of this sort that the immortal Washington was so profoundly interested in as they who devised and organized it very well know. And in his great name, we who have believed with him and have zealously worked for the needed realization of his noble aims, utterly repudiate, whatever claims its founders may make to consideration on national and patriotic grounds, this "Memorial Institution."

Using the "two minutes more" the chair has kindly granted me, let me declare my conviction that the "Memorial Institution" will prove a faux pas, and that the nationaluniversity movement will go forward. To friends of the national university who from the first have done little to help, trusting that other of its friends would carry it thru, with the help of Providence, and who have mistakenly assumed that the years of delay in the Senate were a symptom of a decline in interest to such it may seem strange; but, as for myself, these methods of the enemy, whom it seems we were destined to meet, have but increased my determination. With many years and many thousands of dollars of my own so freely given to the university cause already, I am newly nerved and consecrated.

I need hardly say to those who have known my past life—and yet, because of base intimations in one or two quarters, it may be my duty to say that a victory fully won could by no possibility have anything of personal advantage for me other than a consciousness of duty done - an elevating sense of labors performed and sacrifices made not in vain. For, if already established by act of Congress and to be organized tomorrow, the national university would include no official station that I could be induced to accept, if offered me, either then or at any time thereafter. As a determined promoter of the movement begun by Washington, I have been no less purely patriotic than he. For its realization I shall continue to labor, and am ready to lay down my life. With the distinguished President Gilman, of 1895, "I firmly believe that a national university will be established in Washington;" and with the eminent William R. Harper, president of the University of Chicago, "I have always believed in such an institution, and will continue to believe in it. There is everything to be gained and nothing to be lost."

THE IDEAL SCHOOL AS BASED ON CHILD STUDY

G. STANLEY HALL, PRESIDENT OF CLARK UNIVERSITY, WORCESTER, MASS.

I shall try in this paper to break away from all current practices, traditions, methods, and philosophies, for a brief moment, and ask what education would be if based solely upon a fresh and comprehensive view of the nature and needs of childhood. Hitherto the data for such a construction of the ideal school have been insufficient, and soon they will be too manifold for any one mind to make the attempt; so the moment is opportune. What follows is based almost solely, point by point, upon the study of the stages of child development, and might, perhaps, without presumption be called a first attempt to formulate a

my

limited space

I can

practical program of this great movement. In do little more than barely state the conclusions that affect the practical work of teachers.

The school I shall describe exists nowhere, but its methods, unless I err, are valid everywhere. Altho many of its features exist already, and could be pieced together in a mosaic from many lands and ages, it is essentially the school invisible, not made with hands. But, as there is nothing so practical as the truly ideal, altho my school today exists nowhere, it might be organized anywhere tomorrow; and I hope that the most and the least conservative will agree that it is the true goal of all endeavor, and will not differ except as to whether it may be realized at once or only at the end of a long period of labor. I confess that something like this has from the first animated all my own feeble educational endeavors, and that without it I should be without hope and without goal in the world of pedagogy.

Beginning with the deep philosophy often imbedded in words, school," or "schole," means leisure, exemption from work, the perpetuation of the primæval paradise created before the struggle for existence began. It stands for the prolongation of human infancy, and the no whit less important prolongation of adolescence. It is sacred to health, growth, and heredity, a pound of which is worth a ton of instruction. The guardians of the young should strive first of all to keep out of nature's way, and to prevent harm, and should merit the proud title of defenders of the happiness and rights of children. They should feel profoundly that childhood, as it comes fresh from the hand of God, is not corrupt, but illustrates the survival of the most consummate thing in the world; they should be convinced that there is nothing else so worthy of love, reverence, and service as the body and soul of the growing child.

Practically, this means that every invasion of this leisure, the provision of a right measure of which is our first duty to youth, has a certain presumption against it, and must justify itself by conclusive reasons. Before we let the pedagog loose upon childhood, not only must each topic in his curriculum give an account of itself, but his inroads must be justified in the case of each child. We must. overcome the fetichism of the alphabet, of the multiplication table, of grammars, of scales, and of bibliolatry, and must reflect that but a few generations ago the ancestors of all of us were illiterate; that the invention of Cadmus seemed the sowing of veritable dragon's teeth in the brain; that Charlemagne and many other great men of the world could not read or write; that scholars have argued that Cornelia, Ophelia, Beatrice, and even the blessed mother of our Lord knew nothing of letters. The knights, the élite leaders of the Middle Ages, deemed writing a mere clerk's trick beneath the attention of all those who scorned to muddle their wits with others' ideas, feeling that their own were good enough for them.