Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1880 [PAGE 186]

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maintain the standing which, as a State University, we ought to maintain.while the members of our Faculty are crowded with such continuous class-room labor. In our best American institutions, one or two lessons or lectures a day are counted as the utmost of profitable requirement of a first-class professor, and in Germany no professor gives more than one lecture a day, and many give only two or three a week- It is this that enablesthem to make that profundity of investigation and high attainment in their branches which have given to the German universities their eminent standing, and attached to them the best students from all quarters of the globe. I would not ask that the work of our professors should be reduced to this amount, for much of it is, at present, necessarily elementary in character, and requires but little of special preparation, though it necessarily occupies the time and exhausts the strength of the professor. But no one who understands the nature and the exhausting demands of high scholarship will expect professors to attain it who are required to give four or five hours a day tothe instruction of classes. Before the University can attain the rank and reputation we all desire for it, its teaching force must be so increased that its leading professors, who represent branches of instruction, shall have ample leisure and strength for extensivestudy and investigation—su^h study and investigation as can alone place them among the great masters and authorities in their several branches. A true university must be a fountain of learning as well as a school of instruction. It must be a place where knowledge and science are discovered and perfected, as well as a. center for its dissemination. It is the presence of great masters, men of genius and learning and leaders of thought, which everywhere makes and marks the true university. Great numbers of students prove nothing unless they are attracted by the presence of great teachers. It is the presence of Curtius, Helmholtz and Kenke, and not its three thousand students, which gives to Berlin University its world-wide renown, The three, thousand students are but the natural fruit and consequence of the great teaching which the university presents. I know well that years must elapse before our young institution, in the midst of our young though thriving State, can hope to attain such dignity and distinction. But will not a wise Board of Trustees, understanding the real scope and high importance of their work, keep these grander aims always in mind? Does not duty to the great interests of learning, and to the great future of Illinois, justly demand that we shall plan and work steadily, not simply to establish and maintain a high school, but to give to the State, at the earliest possible hour, a true University— a center of learning and of education of the highest grade—a fit crown for the vast and costly system of public education which already so honors our State; a University none the le-s because it takes for its high mark and its ultimate purpose the discovery and diffusion of light for the great industrial activities and movements by which the life of our people is maintained and the public weal and political importance of our State are secured? Restricted by your narrow means, you have naturally been led to inquire whether the teachers already employed are doing all that each one is able to do, and sometimes, perhaps, to award your praise to those who work the most hours or teach the largest classes. But before a true University can arise, the question must be rather as to the thoroughness and high character of the work done, than as t*o the number of hours, through which it is spread. It is the aim of a University to lead well prepared students to the summits of learning, rather than to collect and conduct great numbers of immature minds along the lower and elementary paths. It should not encounter the rivalry of high schools, by intruding into their fields and attempting to do their work, but should inspire these high schools with a noble impulse to do their highest and best, by opening above them a field of learning so large, so rich, so attractive, and so useful, as to give to the high school pupils a new motive for their work in the preparation it provides for the higher and greater work of the University. These views may seem to some of you too elevated, if not also too vague, and I may be suspected of entertaining dreams of an impracticable character; but I know full well that the scholarship of the State and of the age will testify to the justness of my views, if they donot second the urgency of my appeal for this special Institution. The advancing science and scientific needs of the country will not allow the State to pass through another quarter of a century without at least one institution which may thoroughly represent the highest learning. The history of the States around us and east of us sufficiently proves this; and it is for you, as Trustees, to say whether the Industrial University shall meet this want, or whether the friends of higher learning in the State shall be left to demand the establishment of another State University. I am well aware that it is not the work of a day which I describe, and it is not by the resolutions of a single meeting that you can accomplish it; but it ought to lie before us clearly defined as our perpetual aim, and the necessary steps for its attainment should be well understood and constantly held in mind. No prominent appointment should be made but with reference to the capacity of the appointee to fill worthily a university chair, and the men already on the ground should, as far as possible, be allowed the time and facility to prosecute their higher studies. No man is worthy to remain among us in the occupany of a prominent chair who will not eagerly employ every leisure hour allowed him in the prosecution of his studies and in the advancement of science.

OUE NEED OF F U N D S .

I trust I shall be pardoned if I again call the attention of the Board to the vital and pressing necessity for an increase of the current revenue- of the University. The views above presented only make more obvious the need of more funds. I am glad to recognize the interest already assured in this question, and the active measures already on foot to secure the needed increase of income; nor do I dissent at all from the view that an appeal should be made to the Legislature of the State to imitate the worthy example of other States. But my sense of the immediate pressure of our needs compels me to ask