their life-work tend not to be taken seriously, in contrast with an often intense concern with those which visibly do. Engineering undergraduates seem to show more diligence and interest than those in arts. As Dr. Meiklejohn says, in effect, in the address earlier quoted, a father often wishes his son to have the fullest training for his profession or business, but is willing that he shall take matters which affect him merely as a human being and a citizen, such as his religious and economic views, from his father or from the air. But we do not need the president of Amherst to tell us, as he does as one of his chief points, "that in the activities common to all men the guidance by ideas is quite as essential as in" the special activities of different groups of men.

The competition of other interests against the free intellectual is seconded by the pervasive spirit of the age. Wisdom used to be found in the past, in the Bible and other religious tradition, and in the great classical tradition. The tools which the studious acquired were the ancient languages which enabled each for himself to dig down anew to the foundations on which our civilization is built and base himself on that. Now we come to college to get not wisdom but knowledge, and the knowledge that we crave is in the outer world of the present and future. The center of gravity has changed from religion and the purely intellectual to practical work, affairs, and business. The ideal of the day is not to do good, as two thousand years ago, or to be good, as a thousand, or to feel good, as a hundred; our ideal is to make good. The boy admires those who have risen to conspicuous power and made vast fortunes by their own efforts. Many of those leaders to whom the rising generation looks up have had no college education at all, and few have been educated at colleges which have left a deep intellectual impress. Students with practical aims and without interest in ideas have the momentum of the age back of them, and certain

attractive personal traits perhaps especially common in them make others ashamed to be "high-brow." For we Americans are the most conventional people on earth, next to such savages as still remain unspoiled. Our standards grow toward the standards of the street; ordinary vaudeville sets the pace for college shows and pony choruses, and the college girl aspires to be a broiler. I am not bewailing all this, for it may be a sign of vigor and normality. Since we have undertaken to educate everybody, we must meet the world halfway. But it is a question if it is the duty of the university to lead in all the tendencies of the age. Humanity advances like a boat beating to windward, now too far one way, now another, but the intellectual leaders (and where should they resort if not to universities?) should luff at every chance. We must keep the sympathy of the world, but must frequently offer an elastic resistance in view of the teachings of history and a sound human norm, and if necessary be dragged after only with dug-in heels.

It will be seen that I am not a pessimist about our college students. It would be futile to be. They are our material, as marble is the sculptor's. To borrow a not inappropriate commercial maxim, "The student is always right." One reads many unreasonable criticisms of the situation, which contradict each other. A writer in the March Atlantic Monthly laments the student's lack of miscellaneous information, his ignorance of the location of the thyroid gland, the nature of the chameleon and the fact that Mr. A. Brisbane is a journalist. What can we do about that? A professor of Latin opines in the Bulletin of the Association of American University Professors that the best cure for degenerate education is for everybody to study Latin. What are we going to do about that? Universities in general cannot exclude all but the patently best. They must stimulate the intellectual possibilities of those who seem average, for from them may emerge superiority.

And some professor-critics are just as vainly pessimistic about the professors, scold each other as narrow specialists, or write with that air of gentle amusement at each other which is coming to be the orthodox way nowadays for professors in public to foul their own nest; as who should say, I belong to an absurd profession, but I am man of the world enough to know it; or, what is as bad or worse, I belong to an absurd profession, and I'm another. When we consider that the duty of a university is to teach a grasp of some one subject and an acquaintance with many, accuracy in detail and comprehension of large ideas, appreciation of the fine and sympathy with cold reality, passive information and ability to solve a problem, a wide view of the past and alert intelligence as to the world about us (including the chameleon and Mr. A. Brisbane), that the duty of every college teacher is to do pretty much all of this, I for one do not feel like being unreasonable and belittling in my criticism. I have said that the professor of a century ago does not improve particularly on acquaintance; I see no reason to think he shames his successor. I do not believe he was so good at stimulating a generally alert habit of mind, as well as teaching his subject; or at giving a sense of More Beyond, and making others realize the ignorance of the best of us before infinite truth; or even at encouraging enquiring students to remain after a lecture to discuss it. I do not believe he was better as a teacher, in throwing out suggestive obiter dicta, in fertility in side-ideas, in avoiding the substitution for them of one or two hobbies (not to say complexes), in connecting his subject with the students' other studies and interests, in touching on semi-popular books to be read voluntarily on this or that side-point or even on other subjects, in alternating the dogmatic attitude with the open-minded and questioning, in satisfying so far as he can (and then some, perhaps) the young student's instinctive desire for generalizations, formulas, master

keys, yet making him see the beauty of getting to the bottom of something, in startling by paradox yet reconciling apparent contradictions. I do not know whether he realized as well as we that on the whole it is better for a college class, as well as for the good of the society we serve, to draw out the brilliant and able than to labor long and publicly with the dull and negligent. I do not know how far the older professor would agree with us, or how far we should agree with each other, as to the relative value of a survey of the whole of a subject and thorough study of a specimen part; or as to whether there is not danger of forestalling difficulties so much as to make the student helpless. I am not sure that earlier the colleges were much, if at all, better off than we in the presence in each of one or two men of such attractive and inspiring personalities that most students feel they cannot afford to miss them, whatever subjects they teach; men who lectured on art, like C. E. Norton, or on geology, like N. S. Shaler. Every university needs a few such courses; let them be "snap," "snide," or "pipe" courses, if you please, with no tincture of dry erudition. But as to the philippics against specialists and doctors of philosophy, of which we read so many from the pens of masters of arts, I feel sure the gain is far greater than the loss in composing our faculties largely of persons trained in scientific method and interested in research. Professors may exist whose thoughts rarely stray beyond the iota-subscript or the hooked-e, the law of gavelkind or the germinal spot in the egg of Triton, but I have never met them. It requires no rare tact to avoid boring immature students with such things, and that man is inferior (or very young) in any case who is spoiled as a teacher by interest in specific intellectual problems, and whose independent investigation of them is not fruitful of fresh and broad views. Whatever may be the matter with professors, it is not that they know too much. In this kind of thing we must

beware of post hoc ergo propter hoc. Good students are inspired by feeling their teacher to be a recognized authority. And in this connection I will add that I believe undergraduate instruction is only improved by the existence beside it of a strong graduate school. Mature and zealous young scholars such as come to a strong graduate school have some effect on their juniors, and are a reservoir of competent assistants to the professors; it is also more efficient for a university to pick as young instructors the best of its own products than to take those who can be spared by other institutions.

The academic mind has been so much concerned of late with the problem of stimulating the undergraduate that there has been no lack of expedients suggested and tried. Many of us say, let us get away from the idea of "lessons." The drill-and-mill conception of education, especially among dutiful young girls, is distressing. Some years ago a German youth was imported by a Middle Western university to teach his native language. One evening he was informed by his landlady that a young lady had come to see him. Much impressed, he put on his evening clothes, and betook his blond pompadour downstairs, expecting I know not what of romance. A young woman in a tam o'shanter greeted him with, "Say, professor, I came to see if the lesson goes to page 34 or 35." But is there a way to lead young students beyond this point of view, and make them work at all? As to more positive devices or proposals, wherever two or three are gathered together there is no lack of them. The adoption has been suggested of the English plan of dividing students into honor-men and pass-men, the former including most of the able and ambitious students and receiving especial attention. An informal plan not unlike this perhaps most college teachers follow. formally adopted I fear it would let down the bars for the idler, and increase some of our academic ailments. The peculiar and conspicuous position in England of

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