Johns Hopkins University

“ When the Johns Hopkins University was opened in 1876, it adopted the wise policy of spending its means on men rather than on buildings. Its laboratories are. however, admirably equipped, and with its medical school—unfortunately at some distance from the other departments—it offers all needed facilities for a large scientific meeting. ”

“ Putting aside tentative and unsuccessful attempts to develop genuine university instruction much earlier, it may safely be said that the opening of the Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore in 1876 began the present movement to organize carefully advanced study and research, requiring a college education of those who wish to enter upon it. ”

“ The states to the south and west are not adequately supplied with institutions of higher learning, and for a long while the Johns Hopkins University will set a model for that region, whose industrial development will surely be followed by an intellectual renaissance. ”

“ That the Johns Hopkins University should require of all its undergraduate students such studies as logic, psychology, and ethics, must seem a trying thing to many of the younger materialists. That these subjects should be given preference over Latin and Greek as furnishing a culture required for all undergraduates can not but seem incredible to thousands of classical instructors. ”

“ I congratulate you, gentlemen, Trustees of the Johns Hopkins University, upon the noble work which is before you. A great property, an important part of the fruit of a long life devoted with energy and sagacity to the accumulation of riches, has been placed in your hands, upon conditions as magnanimous as they are wise, to be used for the public benefit in providing for coming generations the precious means of liberal culture. ”

“ Things move quickly in a country where each generation undertakes to make precedents, and an imitative subserviency follows the flag of heralded success. I began my career under the impulse of a quickened interest in intellectual callings, for which at the time the Johns Hopkins University was the progressive sponsor. The spirit of the movement was the emphasis upon the personality and training of those who were and were to be intellectual leaders. I found myself in an intensely alert democracy of learning. ”

“ Nearly every respectable college in America is hindered in this way. Even Harvard and Yale, old and powerful as they are, feel the bad influence. Perhaps the Johns Hopkins University, protected by its great wealth, may escape from the evil tendency. ”

“ On account of the thoroughness of the German teaching, many American students have gone to Germany for their university course. A sincere effort has been made in America to develop universities according to the German concept, with its detailed study of particular topics based on a thorough general education. Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, opened in 1876, has done most along these lines.
During the century a determined and successful effort has been made to break down the old-fashioned college curriculum, with its absolute and unvarying requirements from every student. ”

“ His influence upon higher education in America was great, especially at Johns Hopkins, where many wise details of administration, the plan of bringing to the university as lecturers for a part of the year scholars from other colleges, the choice of a singularly brilliant and able faculty, and the marked willingness to recognize workers in new branches of science were all largely due to him. ”

“ By publications, by lectures, by review and magazine articles, by letters to the daily press, Mr. Gilman has desired the Johns Hopkins University always to keep in touch with public opinion. In France we form a more mystical, and at the same time a more practical, notion of science; more "practical" because many of our young men see little in it but a matter of examinations or an occasion of diplomas; and more "mystical" because we too often affect to be afraid lest we should vulgarize it by dissemination. ”

“ The graduate school offers courses in philosophy and psychology, physics, chemistry and biology, historical and economic science, language and literature, and confers the degree of Doctor of Philosophy after at least three years’ residence. From its foundation the university had novel features and a liberal administration. Twenty annual fellowships of $500 each were opened to the graduates of any college. Petrography and laboratory psychology were among the new sciences fostered by the new university. ”

“ The university at once became a pioneer in the United States in teaching by means of seminary courses and laboratories, and it has been eminently successful in encouraging research, in scientific production, and in preparing its students to become instructors in other colleges and universities. It includes a college in which each of five parallel courses leads to the degree of Bachelor of Arts, but its reputation has been established chiefly by its other two departments, the graduate school and the medical school. ”

“ At one time he was general manager of the Baltimore and Ohio under John W. Garrett. In order to raise money for his projected extensions, Garrett had gone to Europe. The times were financially very difficult. Johns Hopkins, the famous philanthropist, died. His immortal monument is the Johns Hopkins University and Medical School. Everybody in Baltimore attended the funeral. Among the leading persons present was another John King, a banker, who was Hopkins's executor. ”

“ But, at times, money for this work is very scarce. Nothing can come from Johns Hopkins University, as it has lost so much of its endowment that its work is greatly hampered. Thus, Prof. Rowland, in the prime of his life, and at the age of greatest mental activity, finds himself compelled to relinquish carrying out many of his best ideas. He has determined, if possible, to remedy the defect himself. Whether he will be able to do so remains to be seen, but he has never failed to accomplish his purposes, and those who know him best have found that discouragements only spur him to greater effort. ”

“ The fine new buildings and campus have not to my mind compensated for a considerable lowering of intellectual ideals and accomplishments. Money getting is horribly dangerous to institutions as well as to individuals, and the Johns Hopkins University has been out to get money. It is true that this money has been given for education and not for profit, and yet even so, there may be the insidious temptation of adopting purely business standards. ”

“ His and his students’ researches in solar spectra and in other problems of higher physics made that spirit the dominating influence among the rising generation of physical science in America. It was universally acknowledged that Johns Hopkins was a real university. ”

“ I found only one professor at Johns Hopkins who was willing to be quoted in my book. This gentleman I met at luncheon in the University Club of Baltimore, and he indulged himself in bitter sneers at the so-called “radical” type of professor. I myself could name about twelve really radical American college professors; but from the talk of this Johns Hopkins professor you would have thought there were thousands. To be a “radical” was the way to get promotion, said this JohnsJohns Hopkins man; to attract notoriety to yourself and make yourself somebody. ”

“ The medical department, inaugurated in 1893, is closely affiliated with the excellently equipped Johns Hopkins Hospital (opened in 1889) , and is actually a graduate school, as it admits only students holding the bachelor’s degree or its equivalent. The degree of Doctor of Medicine is conferred after four years of successful study, and advanced courses are offered. The department’s greatest teachers have been William Osler (b. 1849) and William Henry Welch (b. 1850) .
The buildings of the university were in 1901 an unpretentious group on crowded ground near the business centre of the city. ”

“ In Canada there is the McGill University, and in nearly every place one goes to there is a university, like the Johns Hopkins at Baltimore, where Johns Hopkins left 3,500,000 dollars to be devoted entirely to educational purposes; and that university is under the management of one of the most enlightened men in America, Professor Grillman, and he has as his lieutenants Professors Rowland, Mendenhall, and other well-known men, and each professor is in his own line particularly eminent. ”

“ Eliot said: "In the natural course of your life you will not see any large part of the real fruits of your labors; for to build a university needs not years only, but generations." This is only partly true. The traditions and ideals of the university are a long growth, but they may be transplanted to a new soil and flourish there. Relatively to other institutions at least, it is probable that the Johns Hopkins will never again be so great as it was in the eighties, and Harvard will never again be so preeminent as it is at the close of Mr. Eliot's administration. ”

“ Upon its foundation the chief aim was announced to be the development of instruction in the methods of scientific research. The influence of this institution upon the development of higher education in the United States has been incalculably great. Johns Hopkins was not a transplanted German university. The unique place of the college in American education was shown by the fact that graduate schools have followed the lead of Johns Hopkins in building upon the college. Even Clark University at Worcester, founded in 1889 upon a purely graduate basis, established an undergraduate college in 1902. ”

“ A certain inner instability or lack of self-mastery is reflected in the outer moral or conventional waywardness which, except for a few years at Johns Hopkins, caused him to be excluded from a university career, and thus deprived him of much needed stimulus to ordinary consistency and intelligibility. ”