In sketching the ethical or spiritual side of the University, initial stress is to be laid on the meaning of the word _universitas_. The term as at present used hardly suggests more than all-inclusiveness. A modern university is an institution in which all the different schools, the school of engineering, the school of science, the school of philosophy, etc., _exist side by side_, under a single governing body, and in which the various branches of knowledge are pursued without any visible systematic connection between them! The spiritual ideal of a university is that of system, of organic connection, for this is what spiritual means. In looking back on the history of the higher institutions of learning one cannot but be struck by the close correspondence of those institutions to the general ideals of life of the people among whom they flourished. I call to mind the Hindu education with its Brahmanic background; the Mandarin education, with Confucianism as its inspiring principle; the musical education of the Greeks; the theological education of Jews and Mohammedans; then among the Western nations, the English university a seminary for training rulers of the Empire; the German university, a training institution for the higher bureaucracy; the French university, visibly reflecting the logical tendency of the French mind. We in America, instructed by the survey of the past, are bound to face the question: In what way shall the American university differ from universities elsewhere? What characteristic shape shall the American university take on? _How can the American university correspond to the American ideal of life?_ At present our notions in this respect are in a formative, not to say in a chaotic, condition. The college still survives—an institution designed for the education of gentlemen. Practical tendencies, looking toward materialistic success, prevail in many of our Western universities. The German research idea has come in as a third factor, penetrating deeply in some of our institutions, less deeply in others, but inharmonious everywhere with the rival conceptions that still persist.