President Eliot, of Harvard, thus indicates the results of this spirit, added to another which is still less pardonable: “In the absence of an established church, or of a dominant sect in the United States, denominational zeal has inevitably tended to scatter even those scanty resources which in two centuries have become available for the higher education; and this lamentable dissipation has been increased by the local pride of States, cities and neighborhoods, and the desire of many persons, who had money to apply to public uses, to found new institutions rather than to contribute to those already established--a desire not unnatural in a new country, where love of the old and venerable in institutions has but just sprung up. In short, the different social, political and religious conditions of this country have, thus far, quite prevented the development of commanding universities like those of the mother-country.” As the greater colleges increase in financial and intellectual strength, the weaker ones must either drop out of existence, or be satisfied to impart merely the high-school course of instruction, and prepare their more aspiring pupils to enter colleges worthy of the name. Ex-President White, of Cornell University, foreshadows their future as follows: “Our country has already not far short of four hundred colleges and universities more or less worthy of those names, besides a vast number of high-schools and academies quite as worthy to be called colleges or universities as many which bear those titles. But the system embracing all these has by no means reached its final form. Probably in its more complete development the stronger institutions, to the number of twenty or thirty, will, within a generation or two, become universities in the true sense of the word, restricting themselves to university work; beginning, perhaps, at the studies now usually undertaken in the junior year of our colleges, and carrying them on through the senior year, with two or three years of special or professional study afterward. The best of the others will probably accept their mission as colleges in the true sense of the word, beginning the course two years earlier than at present, and continuing it to what is now the junior year. Thus they will do a work intermediate between the general school system of the country and the universities, a work which can be properly called collegiate, a work the need of which is now sorely felt, and which is most useful and honorable. Such an organization will give us as good a system as the world has ever seen, probably the best system.” There is no lack of money for institutions of learning which show special aptitude in any direction. A belief in thorough education is common to almost all progressive men, whether they themselves are college graduates or “self-made” men. President White, after naming many men who have given largely to different colleges, says: