THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Rabbi Ernest R. Trattner
 
 THE CARE AND CULTURE 
 
 OF MEN 
 
 A SERIES OF ADDRESSES 
 
 ON THE 
 
 HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 BY 
 
 DAVID STARR JORDAN 
 
 PRESIDENT OF LEI.AND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY 
 AND OF THE CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
 
 " The best Political Economy is the care and culture of men," 
 
 EMERSON. 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO 
 THE WHITAKER & RAY COMPANY 
 
 (INCORPORATED)
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1896 
 
 BY 
 DAVID STARR JORDAN
 
 College 
 Library 
 
 UB 
 
 TO 
 JANE LATHROP STANFORD 
 
 1G53338
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 THIS volume is made up of addresses relating to higher 
 education, delivered at different times before assemblies of 
 teachers and students. The writer is under obligation to the 
 publishers of the Popular Science Monthly, the Forum, and 
 the Occ/dental Medical Times for the permission to reprint 
 articles which have appeared in these periodicals. The arti- 
 cle on "The Evolution of the College Curriculum," first 
 published in "Science Sketches," is here reprinted by con- 
 sent of A. C. McClurg & Co., and that on "The Higher 
 Education of Women" is reprinted by consent of the Irving 
 Syndicate. Most of the articles have been freely retouched 
 since their original publication. 
 
 PALO ALTO, CAL., May 14, 1896.
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. THE VALUE OF HIGHER EDUCATION i 
 
 II. THE EVOLUTION OF THE COLLEGE CURRICULUM 24 
 
 III. THE NATION'S NEED OF MEN 57 / 
 
 IV. THE CARE AND CULTURE OF MEN 67 v 
 
 V. THE SCHOLAR IN THE COMMUNITY 76 
 
 VI. THE SCHOOL AND THE STATE 95 
 
 VII. THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN 123 
 
 VIII. THE TRAINING OF THE PHYSICIAN 133 
 
 IX. LAW SCHOOLS AND LAWYERS 150 
 
 X. THE PRACTICAL EDUCATION 163 
 
 XI. SCIENCE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL 173 
 
 XII. SCIENCE AND THE COLLEGES 183 
 
 XIII. THE PROCESSION OF LIFE 203 
 
 XIV. THE GROWTH OF MAN 208 
 
 XV. THE SOCIAL ORDER 2*8 
 
 XVI. THE SAVING OF TIME 236 
 
 XVII. THE NEW UNIVERSITY 259 
 
 XVIII. A CASTLE IN SPAIN . . 268
 
 THE CARE AND CULTURE OF MEN. 
 
 I. 
 THE VALUE OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 
 
 WHAT I have to say here is addressed to young 
 men and young women. It is a plea, as strong 
 as I know how to make it, for higher education, for more 
 thorough preparation for the duties of life. I know those 
 well to whom I wish to speak. And to such as these, 
 with the life and duties in the busy world before you, 
 the best advice I or any one can give is this: " Go to 
 college." 
 
 And you may say : " These four years are among the 
 best of my life. The good the college does must be 
 great, if I should spend this time and money in securing 
 it. What will the college do for me ? " 
 
 It may do many things for you, if you are made of 
 the right stuff; for you cannot fasten a two-thousand- 
 dollar education to a fifty-cent boy. The fool, the dude, 
 and the shirk come out of college pretty much as they 
 went in. They dive deep in the Pierian springs, as the 
 duck dives in the pond, and they come up as dry as 
 the duck does. The college will not do everything for 
 
 Address before the California State Teachers' Association at Fresno, 1892. 
 
 B i
 
 2 THE VALUE OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 
 
 you. It is simply one of the helps by which you can 
 win your way to a noble manhood or womanhood. 
 Whatever you are, you must make of yourself; but a 
 well-spent college life is one of the greatest helps to all 
 good things. 
 
 So, if you learn to use it rightly, this the college can 
 do for you: It will bring you in contact with the great 
 minds of the past, the long roll of those who, through 
 the ages, have borne a mission to young men and young 
 women, from Plato to Emerson, from Homer and Eu- 
 ripides to Schiller and Browning. Your thought will be 
 limited not by the narrow gossip of to-day, but the great 
 men of all ages and all climes will become your brothers. 
 You will learn to feel what the Greek called the ' ' conso- 
 lations of philosophy." To turn from the petty troubles 
 of the day to the thoughts of the masters, is to go from 
 the noise of the street through the door of a cathedral. 
 If you learn to unlock these portals, no power on earth 
 can take from you the key. The whole of your life must 
 be spent in your own company, and only the educated 
 man is good company for himself. The uneducated 
 man looks out on life through narrow windows, and thinks 
 the world is small. 
 
 The college can bring you face to face with the great 
 problems of nature. You will learn from your study of 
 nature's laws more than the books can tell you of the 
 grandeur, the power, the omnipotence of God. You 
 will learn to face great problems seriously. You will 
 learn to work patiently at their solution, though you 
 know that many generations must each add its mite to 
 your work before any answer can be reached. 
 
 Your college course will bring you in contact with
 
 THE IDEAL TEACHER. 3 
 
 men whose influence will strengthen and inspire. The 
 ideal college professor should be the best man in the 
 community. He should have about him nothing mean, 
 or paltry, or cheap. He should be to the student as 
 David Copperfield's Agnes, "always pointing the way 
 upward." 
 
 That we are all this, I shall not pretend. Most col- 
 lege professors whom I know are extremely human. 
 We have been soured, and starved, and dwarfed in many 
 ways, and many of us are not the men we might have 
 been if we had had your chances for early education. 
 But unpractical, pedantic, fossilized though the college 
 professor may be, his heart is in the right place ; he is 
 not mercenary, and his ideals are those of culture and 
 progress. We are keeping the torch burning which you, 
 young men of the twentieth century, may carry to the 
 top of the mountain. 
 
 But here and there among us is the ideal teacher, 
 the teacher of the future, the teacher to have known 
 whom is of itself a liberal education. I have met some 
 such in my day Louis Agassiz, Charles Frederick 
 Hartt, Asa Gray, George William Curtis, James Rus- 
 sell Lowell, Andrew Dickson White, among others, and 
 there are many more such in our land. It is worth ten 
 years of your life to know well one such man as these. 
 Garfield once said that a log with Mark Hopkins at one 
 end of it and himself at the other, would be a university. 
 In whatever college you go, poor and feeble though 
 the institution may be, you will find some man who, in 
 some degree, will be to you what Mark Hopkins was 
 to Garfield. To know him will repay you for all your 
 sacrifices. It was said of Dr. Nott, of Union College,
 
 4 THE VALUE OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 
 
 that he ' ' took the sweepings of other colleges, and 
 sent them back into society pure gold." Such was his 
 influence on young men. 
 
 Moreover, the training which comes from association 
 with one's fellow-students cannot be overestimated. Here 
 and there, it is true, some young invertebrate, overbur- 
 dened with money or spoiled by home-coddling, falls 
 into bad company, and leaves college in worse condition 
 than when he entered it. These are the windfalls of 
 education. However much we may regret them, we 
 cannot prevent their existence. But they are few among 
 the great majority. Most of our apples are not worm- 
 eaten at the core. The average student enters college 
 for a purpose ; and you will lose nothing, but may gain 
 much, from association with him. Among our college 
 students are the best young men of the times. They 
 mold each other's character, and shape each other's 
 work. Many a college man will tell you that, above all 
 else which the college gave, he values the friendships 
 which he formed in school. In the German universities, 
 the ' ' fellow-feeling among free spirits ' ' is held to be one 
 of the most important elements in their grand system 
 of higher education. 
 
 Many a great genius has risen and developed in soli- 
 tude, as the trailing arbutus grows in the woods and 
 scorns cultivation. Poets sing because their souls are 
 full of music, not because they have learned the gamut 
 of passions in schools. But all great work, in science, 
 in philosophy, in the humanities, has come from enter- 
 ing into the work of others. 
 
 There was once a Chinese emperor who decreed that 
 he was to be the first; that all history was to begin
 
 ENTERING INTO THE WORK OF OTHERS. 5 
 
 with him, and that nothing should be before him. But 
 we cannot enforce such decree. We are not emperors 
 of China. The world's work, the world's experience 
 does not begin with us. We must know what has been 
 done before. We must know the paths our predeces- 
 sors have trodden, if we would tread them farther. We 
 must stand upon their shoulders dwarfs upon the shoul- 
 ders of the giants if we would look farther into the 
 future than they. Science, philosophy, statesmanship 
 cannot for a moment let go of the past. 
 
 The college intensifies the individuality of a man. It 
 takes his best abilities and raises him to the second, or 
 third, or tenth power, as we say in algebra. It is true 
 enough that colleges have tried, and some of them still 
 try, to enforce uniformity in study to cast all students 
 in the same mold. Colleges have been conservative, 
 old-fogyish, if you please. Musty old men in the dust 
 of libraries have tried to make young men dry and 
 dreary like themselves. Colleges have placed readi- 
 ness above thoroughness, memory above mastery, glib- 
 ness above sincerity, uniformity above originality, and 
 the dialectics of the dead past above the work of the 
 living present The scepter of the Roman emperor has 
 crumbled into dust, but the ' ' rod of the Roman school- 
 master is over us still. ' ' 
 
 But say what you will of old methods, they often at- 
 tained great ends. Colleges have aimed at uniformity. 
 They did not secure it. The individuality of the stu- 
 dent bursts through the cast-iron curriculum. "The 
 man's the man for a' that," and the man is so much 
 more the man nature meant him to be, because his mind 
 is trained.
 
 6 THE VALUE OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 
 
 The educated man has the courage of his convictions, 
 because only he has any real convictions. He knows 
 how convictions should be formed. What he believes 
 he takes on his own evidence not because it is the 
 creed of his church or the platform of his party. So he 
 counts as a unit in his community not as part of a 
 dozen or a hundred whose opinions are formed by their 
 town's place on the map, or who train under the party 
 flag because their grandfathers did the same. ' ' To see 
 things as they really are," is one of the crowning priv- 
 ileges of the educated man, and to help others to see 
 them so, is one of the greatest services he can render to 
 the community. 
 
 But you may say: "All this maybe fine and true, 
 but it does not apply in my case. I am no genius; I 
 shall never be a scholar. I want simply to get along. 
 Give me education enough to teach a district school, or 
 to run an engine, or to keep account-books, and I am 
 satisfied. Any kind of a school will be good enough for 
 that" 
 
 ' ' The youth gets together his materials, ' ' says Tho- 
 reau, ' ' to build a bridge to the moon, or perchance a 
 palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle- 
 aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them. ' ' 
 
 Now, why not plan for a woodshed at first, and save 
 this waste of time and materials ? 
 
 But this is the very good of it. The gathering of 
 these materials will strengthen the youth. It may be 
 the means of saving him from idleness, from vice. So 
 long as you are at work on your bridge to the moon, 
 you will shun the saloon, and we shall not see you on 
 the dry-goods box in front of the corner-grocery. I
 
 THE MAN WHO CAN WILL. ^ 
 
 know many a man who in early life planned only to build 
 a woodshed, but who found later that he had the strength 
 to build a temple, if he only had the materials. Many 
 a man the world calls successful would give all life has 
 brought him could he make up for the disadvantages 
 of his lack of early training. It does not hurt a young 
 man to be ambitious in some honorable direction. In 
 the pure-minded youth, ambition is the sum of all the 
 virtues. Lack of ambition means failure from the 
 start. The young man who is aiming at nothing, and 
 cares not to rise, is already dead. There is no hope for 
 him. Only the sexton and the undertaker can serve his 
 purposes. 
 
 The old traveler, Rafinesque, tells us that, when he 
 was a boy, he read the voyages of Captain Cook, and 
 Pallas, and Le Vaillant, and his soul was fired with the 
 desire to be a great traveler like them. "And so I be- 
 came such," he adds shortly. 
 
 If you say to yourself, ' ' I will be a naturalist, a 
 traveler, an historian, a statesman, a scholar " ; if you 
 never unsay it; if you bend all your powers in that 
 direction, and take advantage of all those aids that help 
 toward your ends, and reject all that do not, you will 
 some time reach your goal The world turns aside to 
 let any man pass who knows whither he is going. 
 
 "Why should we call ourselves men," said Mira- 
 beau," unless it be to succeed in everything, every- 
 where ? Say of nothing, ' This is beneath me, ' nor feel 
 that anything is beyond your powers. Nothing is im- 
 possible to the man who can will. ' ' 
 
 "But a college education costs money," you may say. 
 " I have no money; therefore, I cannot go to college."
 
 8 THE VALUE OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 
 
 But this is nonsense. If you have health and strength, 
 and no one dependent on you, you cannot be poor. 
 There is, in this country, no greater good luck that a 
 young man can have than to be thrown on his own re- 
 sources. The cards are stocked against the rich man's 
 son. Of the many college men who have risen to prom- 
 inence in my day, very few did not lack for money 
 in college. I remember a little boarding-club of the 
 students at Cornell, truthfully called the " Struggle for 
 Existence," and named for short, "The Strug," which 
 has graduated more bright minds than any other single 
 organization in my Alma Mater. 
 
 The young men who have fought their way, have 
 earned their own money, and know what a dollar costs, 
 have the advantage of the rich. They enter the world 
 outside with no luxurious habits, with no taste for idle- 
 ness. It is not worth while to be born with a silver 
 spoon in your mouth, when a little effort will secure you 
 a gold one. The time, the money that the unambitious 
 young man wastes in trifling pursuits or in absolute idle- 
 ness will suffice to give the ambitious man his education. 
 The rich man's son may enter college with better prep- 
 aration than you. He may wear better clothes. He may 
 graduate younger. But the poor man's son can make 
 up for lost time by greater energy and by the greater 
 clearness of his grit. He steps from the commencement 
 stage into no unknown world. He has already measured 
 swords with the great antagonist, and the first victory is 
 his. It is the first struggle that counts. 
 
 But it is not poverty that helps a man. There is no 
 virtue in poor food or shabby clothing. It is the effort 
 by which he throws off the yoke of poverty that en-
 
 THE COW'S MAN. 9 
 
 larges the powers. It is not hard work, but work to a 
 purpose, that frees the soul. If the poor man lie down 
 in the furrow and say: "I won't try. I shall never 
 amount to anything. I am too poor; and if I wait to 
 earn money, I shall be too old to go to school. ' ' If you 
 do this, I say, you won* t amount to anything, and later 
 in life you will be glad to spade the rich man's garden 
 and to shovel his coal at a dollar a day. 
 
 I have heard of a poor man in Wisconsin who earns a 
 half-dollar every day by driving a cow to pasture. He 
 watches her all day as she eats, and then drives her 
 home at night. This is all he does. Put here your 
 half-dollar and there your man. The one balances the 
 other, and the one enriches the world as much as the 
 other. If it were not for the cow, the world would not 
 need that man at all! 
 
 A young man can have no nobler ancestry than one 
 made up of men and women who have worked for a liv- 
 ing and who have given honest work. The instinct of 
 industry runs in the blood. Naturalists tell us that the 
 habits of one generation may be inherited by the next, 
 reappearing as instincts. Whether this be literally true 
 or not, this we know : it is easy to inherit laziness. No 
 money or luck will place the lazy man on the level of his 
 industrious neighbor. The industry engendered by the 
 pioneer life of the last generation is still in your veins. 
 Sons and daughters of the Western pioneers, yours is 
 the best blood in the realm. You must make the most 
 ?f yourselves. If you cannot get an education in four 
 years, take ten years. It is worth your while. Your 
 place in the world will wait for you till you are ready to 
 fill it Do not say that I am expecting too much of the
 
 io THE VALUE OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 
 
 effects of a firm resolution; that I give you advice which 
 will lead you to failure. For the man who will fail will 
 never make a resolution. Those among you whom fate 
 has cut out for nobodies are the ones who will never try I 
 
 I said just now that you cannot put a two-thousand- 
 dollar education on a fifty-cent boy. This has been tried 
 again and again. It is tried in every college. It fails 
 almost every time. What of that? It does not hurt to 
 try. A few hundred dollars is not much to spend on an 
 experiment like that; the attempt to make a man out 
 of a boy whose life might otherwise be a waste of so 
 much good oxygen. 
 
 But what shall we say of a man who puts a fifty-cent 
 education on a ten-thousand-dollar, a million-dollar boy, 
 and narrows and cramps him throughout his after life ? 
 And just this is what ten thousand parents to-day in Cali- 
 fornia are doing for their sons and daughters. Twenty 
 years hence, ten thousand men and women of California 
 will blame them for their shortness of sight and narrow- 
 ness of judgment, in weighing a few paltry dollars, soon 
 earned, soon lost, against the power which comes from 
 mental training. 
 
 " For a man to have died who might have been wise 
 and was not this," says Carlyle, " I call a tragedy." 
 
 Another thing which should never be forgotten is this : 
 A college education is not a scheme to enable a man to 
 live without work. Its purpose is to help him to work 
 to advantage to make every stroke count. I have 
 heard a father say sometimes : "I have worked hard 
 all my life. I will give my boy an education, so that he 
 will not have to drudge as I have had to do." And the 
 boy going out in the world does not work as his father
 
 THE MAXIMS OF LOW PRUDENCE. n 
 
 did. The result every time is disappointment ; for the 
 manhood which the son attains depends directly on his 
 own hard work. But if the father says : ' ' My son shall 
 be a worker, too; but I will give him an education, so 
 that his work may count for more to himself and to the 
 world than my work has done for me." Then, if the 
 son be as persistent as his father, the results of his work 
 may be far beyond the expectations of either. The boys 
 who are setit to college often do not amount to much. 
 From the boys who go to college come the leaders of 
 the future. 
 
 Frederic Denison Maurice tells us that ' ' All experi- 
 ence is against the notion that the means to produce a 
 supply of good, ordinary men is to attempt nothing 
 higher. I know that nine-tenths of those the university 
 sends out must be hewers of wood and drawers of water; 
 but if I train the ten-tenths to be such, then the wood 
 will be badly cut, and the water will be spilt. Aim at 
 something noble. Make your system of education such 
 that a great man may be formed by it, and there will be 
 a manhood in your little men of which you did not 
 dream!" 
 
 "You will hear every day around you," says Emer- 
 son, " the maxims of a low prudence. You will hear that 
 your first duty is to get land and money, place and name. 
 'What is this truth you seek? What is this beauty?' 
 men will ask in derision. If, nevertheless, God has 
 called any of you to explore truth and beauty, be bold, 
 be firm, be true! When you shall say, 'As others do, 
 so will I. I renounce, I am sorry for it, my early visions. 
 I must eat the good of the land and let learning and 
 romantic expectations go until a more convenient season. '
 
 iz THE VALUE OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 
 
 Then dies the man in you. Then once more perish the 
 buds of art, and poetry, and science, as they have died 
 already in a hundred thousand men. The hour of that 
 choice is the crisis of your destiny." 
 
 But you may ask me this question : ' ' Will a college 
 education pay, considered solely as a financial invest- 
 ment?" 
 
 Again I must answer, " Yes." But the scholar is sel- 
 dom disposed to look upon his power as a financial 
 investment. He can do better than to get rich. The 
 scholar will say, as Agassiz said to the Boston publisher, 
 " I have no time, sir, to make money." 
 
 But in the rank and file it is true that the educated 
 men get the best salaries. In every field, from football 
 to statesmanship, it is always science that wins the game. 
 Brain-work is higher than hand-work, and it is worth 
 more in any market. The man with the mind is the 
 boss, and the boss receives a larger salary than the hands 
 whose work he directs. 
 
 George William Curtis has said: "I have heard it 
 said that liberal education does not promote success in 
 life. A chimney-sweep might say so. Without educa- 
 tion he could gain the chimney-top poor little blacka- 
 moor! brandish his brush and sing his song of escape 
 from soot to sunshine. But the ideal of success meas- 
 ures the worth of the remark that it may be attained 
 without liberal education. If the accumulation of money 
 be the standard, we must admit that a man might make 
 a fortune in a hundred ways without education. But 
 he could make a fortune, also, without purity of life, or 
 noble character, or lofty faith. A man can pay much too 
 high a price for money, and not every man who buys
 
 PRACTICAL WORTH. 13 
 
 it knows its relative value with other possessions. Un- 
 doubtedly, Ezra Cornell and Matthew Vassar did not go 
 to college, and they succeeded in life. But their success 
 what was it? Where do you see it now? Surely not 
 in their riches, but in the respect that tenderly cherishes 
 their memory, because, knowing its inestimable value, 
 they gave to others the opportunity of education which 
 had been denied to them." 
 
 Some time ago, Chancellor Lippincott, of the State 
 University of Kansas, wrote to each of the graduates 
 of that institution, asking them to state briefly the ad- 
 vantages which their experience showed that they have 
 derived from their college life and work. 
 
 Among these answers, I may quote a few: 
 
 One says : ' ' My love for the State grew with every 
 lesson I received through her care. I saved five years 
 of my life by her training, and I am a more loyal and 
 a better citizen." 
 
 Another says this : "I have a better standing in 
 the community than I could have gained in any other 
 way. ' ' 
 
 Another says : "I would not exchange the advantages 
 gained for a hundred times their cost, either to Kansas 
 or to myself." 
 
 Another declares: "It is financially the best invest- 
 ment I ever made. ' ' 
 
 To another it had given ' ' strong friendship with the 
 most intelligent young men of the State, those who are 
 certain to largely influence its destiny.' ' 
 
 One said: " It has given me a place and an influence 
 among a class of men whom I could not otherwise reach 
 at all."
 
 14 THE VALUE OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 
 
 Another said : "I am better company for myself, and 
 a better citizen, with far more practical interest in the 
 State." 
 
 Thus it is in Kansas, and thus it is everywhere. To 
 the young man or young woman of character, the col- 
 lege education does pay, from whatever standpoint you 
 may choose to regard it. 
 
 When I was a boy on a farm in Western New York, 
 some one urged my parents to send me to college. 
 " But what will he find to do when he gets through col- 
 lege?" they asked. " Never mind that," a friend said; 
 ' ' he will always find plenty to do. There is always room 
 at the top." There is always room at the top! All our 
 professions are crowded in America, but the crowd is 
 around the bottom of the ladder! 
 
 We are proud, and justly proud, of our common- 
 school system. The free school stands on every North- 
 ern cross-road, and it is rapidly finding its way into the 
 great New South. Every effort is made for the educa- 
 tion of the masses. There is no upper caste to reap the 
 benefits of an education, for which the poor man has to 
 pay. There is no class educated and ruling by right of 
 birth no hereditary House of Lords. Our scholars 
 and our leaders are of the people, from the people. The 
 American plan is making us an intelligent people, as 
 compared with the masses of any other nation. The 
 number of those indifferent or ignorant is less in our 
 Northern States than in England, or Germany, or France. 
 But our leadership is worse than theirs. We have, for 
 our numbers, fewer educated men than they have in any 
 of these countries. Our statesmen are but children by 
 the side of Gladstone or Bismarck. We are all too
 
 WASTE OF UNTRAINED TALENT. 15 
 
 familiar with the American type of ' ' statesman. ' ' The 
 cross-ties of the railroads which lead in every direction 
 out of Washington are every fourth year graven with 
 the prints of his returning boot-heels. He is the butt 
 of our national jokes, as well as the sign of our national 
 shame ! We have been too busy chopping our trees and 
 breaking our prairies to educate our sons. Thus it 
 comes, that in literature, in science, in philosophy, in 
 everything except mechanical invention, American work 
 has been contented to bear the stamp of mediocrity. 
 
 This is not so true as it was a few years ago; for Young 
 America has made great strides toward the front in all 
 these fields within the last twenty years. But it should 
 not be true to any extent at all. Nowhere in the world, 
 I believe, is the raw material out of which scholars and 
 statesmen should be made so abundant as in America. 
 Nowhere is native intelligence and energy so plentiful; 
 but far too often does it waste itself in unworthy achieve- 
 ment. The journalist Sala says that "nowhere in the 
 world is so much talent lying around loose as in Amer- 
 ica." In other words, in no other country are so many 
 men of natural ability who fail in effectiveness in life for 
 want of proper training. 
 
 In the different training-schools of California, large 
 and small, nearly two thousand young people are 
 gathered together to prepare for the profession of teach- 
 ing. Of these, not one in fifty remains in school long 
 enough to secure even the rudiments of a liberal educa- 
 tion. Fifteen minutes for dinner; fifty weeks for an 
 education! For the lowest grades of schools, there are 
 candidates by the hundred; but when one of our really 
 good schools wants a man for a man's work, it can make
 
 16 THE VALUE OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 
 
 no use of these teachers. We must search far and wide 
 for the man to whom a present offer of fifty dollars a 
 month has not seemed more important than all the grand 
 opportunities the scholar may receive. Many of our 
 young teachers are making a mistake in this regard. 
 Every year the demand for educated men and women in 
 our profession is growing. Every year scores of half- 
 educated teachers are crowded out of their places to 
 make way for younger men who have the training which 
 the coming years demand. What kind of a teacher do 
 you mean to be ? One who has a basis of culture, and 
 will grow as the years go on, or one with nothing in 
 him, who will hang on, a burden to the profession, until 
 he is finally turned out to starve ? What is the use of 
 preparing for certain failure ? The bird in the hand is 
 not worth ten in the bush. You cannot afford to sell 
 your future at so heavy a discount. 
 
 The general purpose of public education, it is said, is 
 the elevation of the masses. This is well; but as the 
 man is above the mass, there is a higher aim than this. 
 Training of the individual is to break up the masses, to 
 draw from the multitude the man. We see a regiment 
 of soldiers on parade a thousand men; in dress and 
 mein all are alike the mass. To the sound of the drum 
 or the command of the officer, they move as one man. 
 By and by, in the business of war, comes the cry for a 
 man to lead some forlorn hope, to do some deed of 
 bravery in the face of danger. From the mass steps the 
 man. His training shows itself. On parade, no more, 
 no less than the others; he stands above them all on the 
 day of trial. So, too, in other things, in other places; 
 for the need of men is not alone on the field of battle.
 
 BREAK UP THE MASSES. 17 
 
 Some fifty thousand boys are to-day at play on the 
 fields of California. Which of these shall be the great, 
 the good of California's next century ? Which of these 
 shall redeem our State from its vassalage to the saloon 
 and the spoilsman ? Which of these shall be a center of 
 sweetness and light; so that the world shall say, " It is 
 good to have lived in California." Good not alone for 
 the climate, the mountains, the forest, and the sea, the 
 thousand beauties of nature which make our State so 
 lovable; but good because life in California is life among 
 the best and truest of men and women. This record 
 California has yet to make; and there are some among 
 you, I trust, who will live to help make it. 
 
 These fifty thousand boys form a part of what will be 
 the masses. Let us train them as well as we can. Let us 
 feed them well. Let us send them to school. Let us 
 make them wise, intelligent, clean, honest, thrifty. Among 
 them here and there is the future leader of men. Let us 
 raise him from the masses, or, rather, let us give him a 
 chance to raise himself; for the pine-tree in the thicket 
 needs no outside help to place its head above the chapar- 
 ral and sumac. To break up the masses, that they may 
 be masses no more, but living men and women, is the 
 mission of higher education. 
 
 In medicine, America is still the paradise of quacks. 
 In law, the land is full of shysters and pettifoggers, and 
 doers of " fine work" ; but of good lawyers, the supply 
 never equals the demand. In education, no land is so 
 full as America of frauds and shams. The catalogues of 
 our schools read like the advertisements of our patent 
 medicines. They "cure all ills that flesh is heir to; one 
 bottle sufficient!" The name "University" in America 
 c
 
 1 8 THE VALUE OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 
 
 is assumed by the cross-roads academy as well as by 
 Harvard or Johns Hopkins. The name "Professor" is 
 applied to the country schoolmaster, the barber, and the 
 manager of the skating-rink. The bachelor's diploma 
 in half our States is given by consent of law to those who 
 could not pass the examinations of any decent high 
 school. Such diplomas do not ennoble their holders, 
 but they do serve to bring into contempt the very name 
 of American graduate. 
 
 One of the besetting sins of American life is its will- 
 ingness to call very little things by very large names 
 its tolerance of imposition and fraud. It is the mission 
 of the scholar in each profession to combat fraud; to 
 show men " facts amid appearances " ; to say that a pop- 
 gun is a pop-gun, though every one else may be calling 
 it a cannon! As our country grows older, perhaps the 
 number of bladders will diminish. If not, let us have 
 more pins! 
 
 What does the college do for the moral, the religious 
 training of the youth? Let us examine. If your 
 college assume to stand in loco parentis, with rod in 
 hand and spy-glasses on its nose, it will not do much 
 in the way of moral training. The fear of punishment 
 will not make young men moral and religious; still less 
 a punishment so easily evaded as the discipline of the 
 college. 
 
 If your college claims to be a reform school, your pro- 
 fessors detective officers, and your president a chief of 
 police, the students will give them plenty to do. A col- 
 lege cannot take the place of the parent. To claim that 
 it does so, is a mere pretense. It can cure the boy of 
 petty vices and childish trickery only by making him a
 
 RELIGIOUS TRAINING. 19 
 
 man, by giving him higher ideals, more serious views 
 of life. You may win by inspiration, not by fear. 
 
 Take those dozen students, of whom Agassiz tells us 
 his associates in the University of Munich. Do you 
 suppose that Dr. Dollinger caught any of them cheating 
 on examination? Did the three young men who knelt 
 under the haystack at Williamstown, the founders of 
 our Foreign Missions, choose the haystack rather than 
 the billiard-hall, for fear of the college faculty ? ' ' Free 
 should the scholar be, free and brave." "The petty 
 restraints that may aid in the control of college sneaks 
 and college snobs are an insult to college men and 
 women." And it is for the training of men and women 
 that the college exists. 
 
 So, too, in religious matters. The college can do 
 much, but not by rules and regulations. The college 
 will not make young men religious by enforced attend- 
 ance at church or prayer-meeting. It will not awaken 
 the spiritual element in the student's nature by any sys- 
 tem of demerit-marks. This the college can do for 
 religious culture : It can strengthen the student in his 
 search for truth. It can encourage manliness in him by 
 the putting away of childish things. Let the thoughts 
 of the student be as free as the air. Let him prove 
 all things, and he will hold fast to that which is good. 
 Give him a message to speak to other men, and when 
 he leaves your care you need fear for him, not the wor'd, 
 the flesh, nor the Devil ! 
 
 This is a practical age, we say, and we look askance at 
 dreams and ideals. We ask now: What is the value of 
 education ? What is the value of Christianity ? What is 
 the value of love, of God, of morality, of truth, of beau-
 
 20 THE VALUE OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 
 
 ty ? as though all these things were for sale in our city 
 markets, somewhat shop-worn and going at a sacrifice. 
 
 "My son," says Victor Cherbuliez, "my son, we 
 ought to lay up a stock of absurd enthusiasms in our 
 youth, or else we shall reach the end of our journey 
 with an empty heart; for we lose a great many of them 
 by the way. " 
 
 It is the noblest mission of all higher education, I be- 
 lieve, to fill the mind of the youth with these enthusiasms, 
 with noble ideas of manhood, of work, of life. It should 
 teach him to feel that life is indeed worth living; and 
 no one who leads a worthy life has ever for a moment 
 doubted this. It should help him to shape his own 
 ambitions as to how a life may be made worthy. It 
 should help him to believe that love, and friendship, and 
 faith, and devotion are things that really exist, and are 
 embodied in men and women. He should learn to know 
 these men and women, whether of the present or of the 
 past, and his life will become insensibly fashioned after 
 theirs. He should form plans of his own work for so- 
 ciety, for science, for art, for religion. His life may fall 
 far short of what he would make it; but a high ideal 
 must precede any worthy achievement. 
 
 A conviction or ideal in life must be a determination 
 to work and live toward some end. It must express 
 itself in action. It is destructive of mind and soul if 
 an ideal stands in the place of effort. No visions and 
 dreams uncontrolled by the will can be treated as 
 independent sources of knowledge or power. 
 
 I once climbed a mountain slope in Utah, in midsum- 
 mer, when every blade of grass was burned to a yellow 
 crisp. I look over the valley, and here and there I
 
 LENDING A HAND. 21 
 
 can trace a line of vivid green across the fields, running 
 down to the lake. I cannot see the water, but I know 
 that the brook is there ; for the grass would not grow 
 without help. Like this brook in the hot plains, may 
 be the life of the scholar in the world of men. 
 
 I look out over the struggling men and women. I 
 see the weary soul, the lost ambitions, 
 
 "The haggard face, the form that drooped and fainted 
 In the fierce race for wealth." 
 
 Here and there I trace some line in life along which I 
 see springing up all things good and gracious. Here 
 is the scholar's work. In his pathway are all things 
 beautiful and true the love of nature, the love of man, 
 the love of God. For best of all the scholar's privileges 
 is that of ' ' lending a hand. ' ' The scholar travels the 
 road of life well equipped in all which can be helpful to 
 others. He may not travel that road again (you remem- 
 ber the words of the old Quaker), and what he does for 
 his neighbor must be done where his neighbor is. The 
 noblest lives have left their traces, not only in literature 
 or in history, but in the hearts of men. " If the teacher 
 is to train others, still more must he train himself. The 
 teacher's influence depends not on what he says, nor on 
 what he does, but on what he is. He cannot be greater 
 or nobler than himself. He cannot teach nobly if he 
 is not himself noble. ' ' * 
 
 Not long ago, Professor William Lowe Bryan said: 
 "Two summers since, in a Southern Indiana country 
 neighborhood, I came upon the traces of a man. They 
 were quite as distinct and satisfactory as a geologist 
 
 *Dr. Weldon, Head Master of Harrow.
 
 22 THE VALUE OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 
 
 could have wished for in the case of a vanished glacier. 
 A good many years had passed away since the man was 
 there, but the impression of his mind and character was 
 still unmistakable. Long ago, when a boy of eighteen, 
 with no special training and no extended education, this 
 man went to Jefferson County to teach. What he did, 
 what he said, what methods or text-books he used, what 
 books or journals he read, I do not know. But if you 
 will go there to-day, you will find in that community, 
 among all classes and conditions of people, the most 
 satisfactory evidence that that boy-teacher was a man, 
 honest, sincere, energetic, inspiring." 
 
 So have I found, as I have gone over this land of ours, 
 traces here and there which show where a man has lived. 
 In greater or less degree, as we come to know the inner 
 history of some little town, we may find that from some 
 past life its sons and daughters have drawn their inspira- 
 tion; we may find that once within its borders there lived 
 a man. 
 
 One word more: You will go to college, for better or 
 for worse. Where shall you go ? The answer to this 
 is simple. Get the best you can. You have but one 
 chance for a college education, and you cannot afford to 
 waste that chance on a third-rate or fourth-rate school. 
 There is but one thing that can make a college strong and 
 useful, and that is a strong and earnest faculty. All 
 other matters without this are of less than no importance. 
 
 Buildings, departments, museums, courses, libraries, 
 catalogues, names, numbers, rules, and regulations do 
 not make a university. It is the men who teach. Go 
 where the masters are, in whatever department you 
 w'hh to study.
 
 GO TO THE MEN WHO KNOW. 23 
 
 Look over this matter carefully; for it is important. 
 Go for your education to that school, in whatever State 
 or country, under whatever name or control, that will 
 serve your purposes best ; that will give you the best 
 returns for the money you are able to spend. Do not 
 stop with the middle-men. Go to the men who know ; 
 the men who can lead you beyond the primary details to 
 the thoughts and researches which are the work of the 
 scholar. 
 
 Far more important than the question of what you 
 shall study is the question of who shall be your teachers. 
 The teacher should not be a self-registering phonograph 
 to put black marks after the names of the lazy boys. He 
 should be a source of inspiration, leading the student in 
 his department to the farthest limit of what is already 
 known, inciting him to make excursions in the greater 
 realms of the unknown. A great teacher never fails to 
 leave a great mark on every youth with whom he comes 
 in contact. 
 
 Let the school do for you what it can ; and when you 
 have entered upon the serious duties of life, let your 
 own work and your own influence in the community be 
 ever the strongest plea that can be urged in behalf of 
 higher education.
 
 II. 
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF THE COLLEGE CUR- 
 RICULUM.* 
 
 A RECENT writer on the German system of educa- 
 /~\ tion, turning aside from his subject for a moment's 
 contemplation of the American system, says that the 
 most striking characteristic of the latter is, simply, its 
 want of system. Instead of being part of a definite 
 whole, well ordered or ill ordered, as the case may be, 
 each feature of the American system has been developed 
 with little regard to its relation to others. 
 
 Our colleges are English in birth and in tradition; our 
 universities caught their inspiration from Germany; while 
 our high schools and professional schools are native to 
 the soil the former an outgrowth of the public-school 
 system, the latter of commercial enterprise. This confu- 
 sion in development has been made more striking by our 
 misapplication of names, an example of which is seen 
 in our indiscriminate use of the terms "college" and 
 "university." In many a so-called "college" in Amer- 
 ica the chief work done is the teaching of the elements 
 of grammar and arithmetic. The ' ' university idea ' ' 
 is often regarded as fully met by the addition to such a 
 college of a normal school, a professor or two in law or 
 theology, and a self-supporting ' ' college of music. ' ' 
 
 * President's Address, College Association of Indiana, 1887; reprinted from 
 "Science Sketches," (first edition; A. C.McClurg& Co., Chicago, 1888). 
 
 24
 
 THE AMERICAN COLLEGE. 25 
 
 Yet, in spite of all eccentricities in name or form, we 
 can recognize the existence of a certain definite type of 
 school, which we may call the "American college." 
 There are many variations in this type of school vari- 
 ations due to geographical position, to the excess or 
 deficiency in denominational zeal, or to the exigencies of 
 the struggle for existence. For the fiercest conflicts 
 of the average American college have not been with the 
 black giant Ignorance, but with the traditional wolf at 
 the door. In other words, this new country has not 
 been liberal in its support of higher education; and, 
 moreover, the funds available for this purpose have been 
 used for planting, rather than for watering to found a 
 multitude of weak schools, rather than to make a few 
 schools strong. There have been several reasons why 
 this is so, and there are some few reasons why it has 
 been well that it is so; but these questions I do not care 
 to discuss now. The law of the survival of the fittest 
 can be depended on to rectify sooner or later all mistakes 
 of this kind. Suffice it to say, that we recognize the 
 existence of the American college, and that this college 
 possesses a more or less definite college curriculum. Of 
 the changes in this curriculum I wish now to speak. 
 
 I shall not try to follow out in detail its history prior 
 to the time when its germs were brought to us from 
 England in the landing of the Pilgrims. We can go back 
 in England to the time when the philosophy of Aristotle 
 constituted the college course. Then the entire cur- 
 riculum was taught by a single teacher, the man of 
 universal knowledge. This teacher, for the most part, 
 gave his instruction by dictation. The students noted 
 down the contents of old books, which the master him-
 
 26 EVOLUTION OF THE COLLEGE CURRICULUM. 
 
 self had copied before; the place of the teacher was 
 simply that of a medium of communication between the 
 ancient manuscripts and their later duplicates. 
 
 With the revival of learning came the advent of the 
 study of Latin as a language having a literature, and, 
 later, the study of Greek, both Latin and Greek, as lit- 
 erary studies, being considered extremely dangerous as 
 well as heretical at the time of their introduction into the 
 curriculum. Both were then resisted by the full force 
 of the conservative party of the day. After the revival 
 of learning, came about with time the English college 
 curriculum, with its tripos, or three pedestals, of Greek, 
 Latin, and mathematics. Of this the American curricu- 
 lum has been a lineal descendant. 
 
 The American college curriculum at the time when 
 most of us became acquainted with it was a very definite 
 thing, time-honored, and commanding a certain respect 
 from its correspondence with the theory on which it was 
 based. Its fundamental idea was discipline of the mind. 
 Its mode of effecting this was, in large part, by shutting 
 the student's eyes to the distracting and inconsequential 
 present, and fixing his gaze on that which was great and 
 good and hard to understand in the past The main 
 work of the course consisted of drill in grammar and 
 mathematics, and the results of this training were bound 
 together by a final exposition at the hands of the presi- 
 dent of such of the speculations of philosophers as 
 seemed to him safe and substantial. This work lasted 
 for reasons so old as to be long since forgotten just 
 four years, and it was preceded by a certain very defi- 
 nite amount of drill, of much the same kind, which was 
 regarded as a necessary preliminary to the later work.
 
 THE CLASSICAL COURSE. 27 
 
 Whatever may be our opinion as to the desirability of 
 such a course for ourselves, or for our sons or daughters, 
 it is impossible not to regard the old-time classical course 
 with a feeling of respect. It was based on a theory of 
 education, and its promoters were loyal to this theory. 
 If only the boys for whom its pigeon-holes were arranged 
 could have been of uniform size and quality, the system 
 would have been perfect. That it was not quite perfect 
 was clearly the fault of human nature, which furnished a 
 very variable article of boy for the educators to work 
 upon, and caused them to reach by uniform processes 
 widely different results. What these variations were is 
 well known to us, and needs no explanation. We know 
 that there are some boys whose natural food is the 
 Greek root. There are others whose dreams expand in 
 conic sections, and whose longings for the finite or the 
 infinite always follow certain paraboloid or ellipsoid 
 curves. There are some to whom the turgid sentences 
 of Cicero are the poetry of utterance; and there are 
 others who, with none of these tastes, grow and blossom 
 in the sunlight of comradery, undisturbed by the harass- 
 ing influences of books and bookish men. To all these 
 kinds of students this old-time classical course brought 
 satisfaction, and the days they spent in Princeton, or 
 Harvard, or Amherst were the brightest of their lives. 
 Such have rarely failed to try to provide for their chil- 
 dren the same training which they found so satisfying 
 to themselves. 
 
 But there were other students, not less fond of study, 
 who were restless under these conditions. There were 
 some to whom the structure of the oriole's nest was more 
 marvelous, as well as more poetical, than the structure
 
 28 E VOL UT1ON OF THE COLLEGE CURRICUL UM. 
 
 of an ode of Horace. There were others who found in 
 modern history, or literature, or philosophy an inspira- 
 tion which they did not draw from that which is old. By 
 the side of this inspiration, the grammatical drill of the 
 schools seemed a lifeless thing. And so it has happened 
 that many whom we now regard as great in our literature 
 or our science were held in low esteem in the colleges in 
 which they graduated if indeed they ever graduated 
 at all. For the scale of marks connected with the col- 
 lege curriculum took little account of the soul of man, 
 but only of the docility and regularity virtues of them- 
 selves of no mean order with which the college disci- 
 pline was taken. And as these qualities are not alone 
 the qualities which win success, either real or spurious, 
 in after life, it came to be believed that college honors 
 meant future failure that the college valedictorian was 
 the man who was never to be heard of again; and in this 
 popular error, easily disproved by statistics, there was 
 just enough of truth to keep it from being forgotten. 
 
 No doubt the ancient classical course was a powerful 
 agency for culture to many to most students, perhaps, 
 who came within its influence. But it was not so to all. 
 Culture is an elusive thing, and the machinery which will 
 secure it for you may have no such effect on me. So, 
 among the students of the old regime, some never found 
 culture, and some found it only in a surreptitious study 
 of the world outside. Complaints were not wanting that 
 in this curriculum of Latin, Greek, mathematics, and a 
 varnish of philosophy, not all the studies pursued were 
 useful studies. Much of this complaint was unjust; for 
 higher education is not learning a trade, nor is its pur- 
 pose to enable its possessor to get a living. But some
 
 CULTURE AND MASTERY. 29 
 
 of this complaint has been just. No part of a man's 
 education is of much value to him, unless it is in some 
 way concerned with his future growth. Thousands of 
 students never look at a Latin book after leaving col- 
 lege. This matters nothing, if the skill they have 
 acquired in reading Latin gives them greater mastery 
 over their future study or a deeper insight into the prob- 
 lems of life. This matters much, if this knowledge has 
 in no wise given either insight or mastery. For in such 
 case a knowledge of Horace and Homer would be as 
 useless as the learning by heart of the laws of the Medes 
 and the Persians or an enumeration in order of all the 
 kings of Shanghai or Yvetot. The tree of knowledge 
 is known by its fruits. "Culture," says Judge O. W. 
 Holmes, "in the form of fruitless knowledge, I utterly 
 abhor." 
 
 Now, to those who found culture, the college course 
 had served its end; to others, it had not. It was good 
 or bad, not in itself, but in its results. It is idle for us to 
 say: " It is sufficient for all-" ; " It is sufficient for none" 
 The discussion of these rival theses has not helped much 
 in the solution of the educational problem. 
 
 Emerson says: "The ancient languages, with great 
 beauty of structure, contain wonderful remains of genius, 
 which draw, and always will draw, certain like-minded 
 men, Greek men, and Roman men, in all countries, to 
 their study ; but by a wonderful drowsiness of usage 
 they had exacted the study of all men. Once (say two 
 centuries ago) Latin and Greek had a strict relation to 
 all the science and culture there was in Europe, and 
 mathematics had a momentary importance at some era 
 of physical science. These things became stereotyped
 
 30 EVOLUTION OF THE COLLEGE CURRICULUM. 
 
 as education, as the manner of men is. But the good 
 spirit never cared for the colleges, and though all men 
 and boys were now drilled in Latin, Greek, and mathe- 
 matics, it had quite left these shells high and dry on the 
 beach, and was now creating and feeding other matters 
 at other ends of the world." 
 
 Thus, as the years went on, other sources of culture 
 became more and more emphatic in their claims. The 
 workers in the various fields of science, each year be- 
 coming more numerous and more active, opened out 
 great vistas of the works of God, and he who had seen 
 nothing of these might well have his claims to culture 
 doubted. Philology, history, philosophy other than that 
 stamped with the approval of the safe old masters, each 
 put in its claims, as also the vast wealth of the literatures 
 of modern Europe. A citizen of the republic must know 
 something of the laws which govern national prosperity, 
 and a teacher of the people should know something of 
 the theory according to which people are taught. When 
 these subjects are left out of the college curriculum, the 
 clamor for their admittance becomes unbearably loud. If 
 all are admitted, the same curriculum becomes like an 
 American horse-car, with standing room only, and no 
 space to turn around. 
 
 What shall the colleges do ? Shut out these subjects 
 they cannot; for to exclude all modern studies and mod- 
 ern ideas, to step out of the current of modern life, is 
 practically to exclude all students. Rightly or wrongly, 
 the students want these things, and sooner or later the 
 American college must give what the students want. The 
 supply must meet the demand, or there will be no de- 
 mand. It is possible, although by no means sure, that
 
 THE VALUE OF DEGREES. 31 
 
 we, as professors, know what is good for the student 
 better than the student does himself; but unless we can 
 convince him of that, we must let him have, to a great 
 extent, his own way as to what his studies shall be. We 
 can see that he does his work well, and we can help him 
 in many ways; but the direction of his efforts must in 
 the end rest with him. 
 
 The colleges of America stand in a different position 
 in this regard from similar schools in England or Ger- 
 many. These last are parts of a definite system. Their 
 financial support is such that there is no need of paying 
 any special attention to popular demands if these demands 
 are deemed theoretically undesirable. Moreover, the col- 
 lege degree in England, and its equivalent in Germany, 
 form a passport of admission to social, educational, or 
 political privileges inaccessible to tfie man without this 
 degree. Hence, entrance to the college, or gymnasium, 
 or the university is, among the higher-educated classes 
 in these countries, a matter of course to a much greater 
 extent than can be the case in America. The Bachelor' s 
 degree in America, or even the Doctor's degree, carries 
 no privileges of any sort worth the name. And in the 
 long run it is well for America that it does not. Very 
 few of our students would work for a degree if it were 
 believed that the title were all they got. Thus it comes 
 about that in America the average student goes to col- 
 lege or is sent to college for the help to be got from 
 study, rather than for the sake of graduation. And he 
 must be convinced, or his parents must be convinced, 
 that this good is a real good, or he will not seek it. Thus 
 the difference in the conditions under which our colleges 
 work has tended to modify and modernize the curriculum
 
 32 E VOL UTION OF THE COLLEGE CURRICUL UM. 
 
 more rapidly than has been the case in the corresponding 
 schools in Europe. 
 
 Many devices have been adopted for dealing with the 
 modern studies. Some have admitted them as extras, 
 or, in the expressive language of a New York college 
 president, as "side fixings," reserving the old-time 
 tripos as the solid part of the scholastic meal. But 
 no matter how little a hold these modern studies had, 
 their presence has weakened the force of the old-time 
 discipline. It is a law of physics that two bodies can- 
 not occupy the same space, even though one of them 
 be badly squeezed. And these subjects will submit to 
 squeezing no better than the others. So part of the old 
 course must be crowded out and part of the new must be 
 admitted on terms of more or less perfect equality with 
 the former, or else some degree of selection must be per- 
 mitted, that students may choose between new and new 
 or between new and old. 
 
 Another conceivable arrangement would be to omit 
 none of the old work, but to lengthen the course, with 
 each study added to the curriculum until each could 
 receive a proper share of the student's attention. But 
 this cannot well be done. Four years is the fixed length 
 of the American college course; and this being an arbi- 
 trary thing, with no sort of reason for it, there can be no 
 successful argument against it. Besides, we live in hur- 
 rying times; and to our students time is money, and the 
 only money some of the best of them have. To the 
 majority of those reached by our colleges, even the tra- 
 ditional four years seems a long time to spend in school 
 after reaching manhood. 
 
 For a time, in various ways, it was sought to harmo-
 
 THE PATCHWORK STAGE. 33 
 
 nize the new education with the old. But the average 
 American college has finally adjusted itself to a second 
 phase in the history of the curriculum, which, for con- 
 venience, I may call "the patchwork" stage. In this 
 arrangement most of the higher mathematics has been 
 crowded out, the Greek has been shortened, and the 
 Latin also; while other subjects, in greater or less 
 amounts, have been more or less grudgingly admitted. 
 The amount and kind of these subjects are rarely deter- 
 mined by any prearranged plan or in accordance with 
 any sort of definite theory of education. As a matter of 
 fact, each college has a certain number of professors 
 this determined by the board of trustees, in accordance 
 with real or imaginary needs of the college, or with the 
 real or imaginary claims of candidates for recognition. 
 Then, in the faculty meetings, each one of these profes- 
 sors claims what he wants, and receives what he can get. 
 in accordance with the law of the survival of the fittest 
 and the rule of the majority. Thus the curriculum in 
 each college becomes the resultant of many forces in a 
 condition of unstable equilibrium. It is altered, not in 
 accordance with the educational needs of the students, but 
 when one professor gives place in the faculty to another 
 more or less energetic or clamorous than he. 
 
 Occasionally in these patchwork courses of study, the 
 traces of some master-hand is visible some method in 
 its madness, which shows that somebody has tried to 
 work out an idea. But this is rarely so, I think; and in 
 the arrangement of most courses of study nothing higher 
 has been thought of than expediency and the exigencies 
 of compromise. From the struggle between the repre- 
 sentatives of rival subjects in an overloaded course has 
 D
 
 34 E VOL UTION OF THE COLLEGE CURRICUL UM. 
 
 come about, by way of compromise, the establishment 
 of different courses of study, in each of which it is as- 
 sumed that some scholastic faction will have the ascend- 
 ency. In some colleges these various courses have been 
 put on an exact equality; but in most cases a more 
 or less positive pressure has been brought to bear in 
 favor of the classical course, and especially away from 
 the sciences. This is well, I think; for in most of our 
 colleges the instruction in science is still absurdly inade- 
 quate, and wholly valueless for the main end of scientific 
 instruction the training of the judgment through its 
 exercise on first-hand knowledge. Wherever science 
 is yet in the meshes of bookishness it is best that stu- 
 dents should be turned away from it. Wherever its 
 limbs are free it will hold its own, whatever the pressure 
 from those who do not value it as a factor in education. 
 In other words, a competent teacher of science need 
 never complain of obstacles in his way ; for the odds are 
 all on his side. The same thing is true, I believe, of a 
 competent teacher in any other department. A growing 
 man incites growth; but even mold will not grow on a 
 fossil. Some fifteen years ago I heard a college president 
 boast that although his college had two other courses, 
 yet three-fourths of his students had been kept in the 
 classical course. My question was: "What sort of 
 teaching have you in science?" There was nothing 
 worth speaking of; only husks which the swine would 
 not eat, and the most hungry student could not 
 
 As I have said, I do not think that the average college 
 curriculum, as we have known it in this second stage, is 
 the result of any sort of theory of education, of any 
 appreciation of the relative value of studies, or of any
 
 POWER THROUGH CONCENTRATION. 35 
 
 thought as to the best order in which such subjects could 
 be arranged. I have myself taken part in the prepara- 
 tion of too many such courses to have much respect for 
 them. They are simply the results of an attempt to 
 put a maximum of topics into a minimum of terms to 
 squeeze ten years of subjects into four years of time. 
 The predominance of one group of subjects in a course 
 reflects the predominance of some professor in that line 
 of work. The idea of discipline, more or less prominent 
 in the lower years, is usually forgotten entirely in the 
 Junior and Senior years. The idea of the German schools, 
 that the source of all power is concentration, or, as Em- 
 erson expresses it, ' ' The one prudence in life is concen- 
 tration; the one evil, dissipation," was wholly aban- 
 doned. The theory arose that a college is not a place 
 for thorough work of any sort. Its purpose is to give 
 a broad and well-rounded culture; to train men to "stand 
 four-square to every wind that blows," such a culture 
 as comes from a slight knowledge of many things, ac- 
 companied by thoroughness in nothing. Indeed, the 
 desire of the student to know some one thing well was 
 characterized as ' ' undue specialization, ' ' and every effort 
 was made to induce the student to turn with equal eager- 
 ness from study to study to physics, logic, Greek, or 
 history, equally interested, equally superficial, in each. 
 The study of the text-book was exalted, and a subject 
 was said to be completed when its alphabet and a few 
 preliminary definitions were more or less perfectly mem- 
 orized. Thus it came about that the average student 
 regarded all studies with equal indifference. If a mo- 
 mentary spark of interest was evoked, it must fade out 
 in a few days, as the subject in question gave place to
 
 36 E VOL UTION OF THE COLLEGE CURRICUL UM. 
 
 some other. The procession moved in haste, and the 
 student could not loiter if he kept his place in the line. 
 
 It was said in justification of this course of study, that 
 the function of the college is to offer a taste of all sorts 
 of knowledge. The student could try all, and select 
 that which he liked best as the future work of his life. 
 Thoroughness is for men, not boys, and it is a part of 
 life-work rather than of school discipline. But every in- 
 fluence of the college was away from this end. The value 
 of persistent study was never made known to the stu- 
 dent. His professors were not specialists. They knew 
 nothing from first-hand, and they undervalued in all 
 ways the power which comes from knowing what one 
 knows. So they taught only definitions, and classifica- 
 tions, and names, and dates, and scrap-work generally. 
 There was little temptation to study; for the business of 
 the professor was repetition, not investigation. It was 
 in reference to such work as this that Agassiz said of 
 Harvard College, some twenty years ago, that it was no 
 university "only a respectable high school, where they 
 taught the dregs of learning. ' ' A candidate for a chair 
 in an Illinois college demanded of the board of trustees 
 that he must be allowed some time for study. He was 
 not elected; for the board said that they wanted no man 
 who had to study his lessons. They wanted a professor 
 who knew already all that he had to teach. But a man 
 contented with what he has learned from others can 
 never be a great teacher. Only a man who has himself 
 come into contact with nature at first-hand can lead 
 others in the search for truth. 
 
 The true teacher, Dr. Coulter tells us, should be "an 
 authority in the subject of his department, not a local
 
 THE INSPIRING TEACHER. 37 
 
 authority any charlatan can be that, but one among 
 his fellows. Such a man, ' ' he continues, ' ' will have power 
 enough to be productive. The notion of a teacher as 
 one whose whole business is that of a pump, simply to 
 be pumped full from some reservoir, that he may fill the 
 little pitchers held up under his nose, may be true, but 
 it is dreadfully belittling. He should rather be a peren- 
 nial spring, where refreshing waters are constantly bub- 
 bling forth, a center and source of supply. The man 
 who has neither power nor inclination to work in his own 
 department, not only demonstrates his unfitness for teach- 
 ing, but loses a great source of inspiration to his pupils. 
 Imagine the difference between two teachers before a 
 class; one carefully crammed with second-hand informa- 
 tion which he is there to impart; the other in the flush 
 and fire of his own thought and work, stepping aside a 
 moment, as an artist, with palette and brushes in hand, 
 to explain the beauties of some great picture which he is 
 painting. The one is a taskmaster, the other an inspira- 
 tion." 
 
 I am well aware that there is a cant of investigation, 
 as of religion and of all other good things. Germany, 
 for example, is full of young men who set forth to 
 investigate, not because they "are called to explore 
 truth," but because research is the popular fad, and 
 inroads into new fields the prerequisite to promotion. 
 And so they burrow into every corner in science, phil- 
 ology, philosophy, and history, and produce their petty 
 results in as automatic a fashion as if they were so many 
 excavating machines. Real investigators are born, not 
 made, and this uninspired digging into old roots and 
 " Urquellen " bears the same relation to the work of the
 
 3 8 E VOL UT1ON OF THE COLLEGE CURRICUL UM. 
 
 real investigators that the Latin verses of Rugby and 
 Eton bear to Virgil and Horace. Nevertheless, it is true 
 that no second-hand man was ever a great teacher. I 
 very much doubt if any really great investigator was ever 
 a poor teacher. How could he be so ? The very pres- 
 ence of Asa Gray was an inspiration to students of botany 
 for years after he had left the classroom. Such a man 
 leaves the stamp of his greatness on every student who 
 comes within the range of his influence. 
 
 One vice of the patchwork system is its constant im- 
 plication that when, after a few weeks, a study is dropped, 
 it is thereby completed, as though any subject could 
 be completed in a college course! For the first term or 
 the first year spent in the study of any subject whatever, 
 cannot give that subject. It gives only the elements of 
 it, the dregs of it, the juiceless skeleton, on which future 
 work must add the flesh and blood. Culture does not 
 consist in the knowledge of any particular subject or set 
 of subjects, nor is it the result of any order or method 
 by which such studies are taken. Its essential feature is 
 in the attitude which its possessor holds toward the world 
 and toward the best that has been or can be thought or 
 done in it. Its central quality is growth. The student 
 gets nutriment from what he digests. "A cultivated 
 woman," says a wise teacher of women, " can afford to 
 be ignorant of a great many things, but she must never 
 stop growing." Just so with the cultivated man. And 
 to the young man or young woman who would grow, 
 there is no agency so effective as the influence of a great 
 teacher. ' ' Under and around and above all mere 
 acquirements," says the writer whom I have just 
 quoted, ' ' is this subtle infection of character, making
 
 "LOWS AGASSIZ; TEACHER." 39 
 
 the essence of the higher education as different from 
 mere erudition as the fresh smell of the tender grape is 
 from sheepskin." The school of all schools in America 
 which has had the greatest influence on American scien- 
 tific teaching was held in an old barn on an uninhabited 
 island some eighteen miles from the shore. It lasted 
 barely three months, and in effect it had but one teacher. 
 The school at Penikese existed in the personal presence 
 of Agassiz; and when he died, it vanished. 
 
 The final theory of the patchwork stage of the curric- 
 ulum has been, as I have said, that of breadth of culture. 
 The student should possess the elements of everything, 
 that no part of the world should be a sealed book, that 
 no part of his mind should be developed at the ex- 
 pense of any other. But the result was, in a general 
 way, oftener confusion than culture. The bed-rock of 
 the mind was never reached. So far as mental training 
 was concerned, almost every result of this curriculum 
 was distinctly inferior to that secured by the old classical 
 course. In broadening and modernizing the curriculum, 
 its sharpness as an implement was lost. The only real 
 gain in the change, according to Professor Bain, has been 
 ' ' the relaxation of the grip of classicism. ' ' Another was, 
 perhaps, that many who got nothing from the old course 
 could, with the right kind of teachers, get something from 
 this. But a criticism I once heard at one of our college 
 exhibitions was still pertinent as to most of the work 
 done by either professor or student under this regime: 
 1 ' What the boys want is to plow a little deeper. There 
 is nothing like subsoiling. ' ' 
 
 From the second to the third stage in its history the 
 curriculum of the American college is now passing.
 
 40 EVOLUTION OF THE COLLEGE CURRICULUM. 
 
 This is marked by the advent of the elective system. It 
 is impossible to study everything, or even many things, in 
 four years. Thoroughness of any sort is incompatible 
 with the so-called breadth of culture characteristic of the 
 patchwork era. True breadth of culture comes from 
 breadth of life, and four years in college cannot give it. 
 The elective system, when carried out in its entirety, 
 involves the following elements: (i) A substantial and 
 thorough course of mental drill, preparatory to the col- 
 lege course, this course being measured by its effect on 
 the student's powers of study and of observation, not by 
 the amount of grammar, algebra, and rhetoric which has 
 been crammed into his head; (2) the placing of all sub- 
 jects taught in the college course on an equality, so far 
 as the degree is concerned. 
 
 The theory on which this system is based may be 
 briefly stated as this: No two students require exactly 
 the same line of work in order that their time in college 
 may be spent to the best advantage. The college stu- 
 dent is the best judge of his own needs, or, at any rate, 
 he can arrange his work for himself better than it can be 
 done beforehand by any committee or by any consensus 
 of educational philosophers. The student may make 
 mistakes in this, as he may elsewhere in much more 
 important things in life; but here, as elsewhere, he must 
 bear the responsibility of these mistakes. The develop- 
 ment of this sense of responsibility is one of the most 
 effective agencies the college has to promote the moral 
 culture of the student. It is better for the student him- 
 self that he should sometimes make mistakes than that 
 he should throughout his work be arbitrarily directed by 
 others. Freedom is as essential to scholarship as to
 
 FREEDOM IN SCHOLARSHIP, 41 
 
 manhood. Not long since, I met a young German 
 scholar, a graduate of a Prussian gymnasium, who has 
 enrolled himself as a student of English in an American 
 college. To him the free air of the American school was 
 its one good thing. It develops a self-reliant manhood 
 in the youth at an age at which the student of the gym- 
 nasium is yet in leading-strings. In furnishing the best 
 of mental training in certain fixed and narrow lines, the 
 German student is deprived of that strength which comes 
 from self-help and individual responsibility. It is no 
 mere accident that the need of severe college discipline 
 to guard against the various forms of traditional college 
 mischief has steadily declined with the advent of freedom 
 of choice in study. 
 
 The elective system, too, enables the student to bring 
 himself into contact with the best teachers, a matter 
 vastly more important than that he should select the best 
 studies. And this system, therefore, involves a not un- 
 healthy competition among the instructors themselves. 
 Incompetent, superficial, or fossilized men will be crowded 
 out or frozen out, and the law of the survival of the 
 fittest will rule in the college faculties as elsewhere in 
 nature. 
 
 The elective system has been adopted in greater or less 
 degree by most of our leading colleges; while there are 
 now very few schools, large or small, which do not make 
 some provision for elective studies. That some degree 
 of freedom of choice in higher education is desirable, no 
 one now questions. The main differences of opinion 
 relate to the proportion which these elective studies ought 
 to bear to those which are absolutely required, and to the 
 age or degree of advancement at which election is safe; for
 
 42 EVOL [77 ION Of THE COLLEGE CURRICUL UM. 
 
 no one advocates freedom of choice from infancy. There 
 is no such thing as a perfect curriculum, and all college 
 courses must represent in some degree a compromise 
 among varying influences, or else an adaptation to the 
 needs of a certain class of students to the exclusion of 
 others. All systems are liable to abuse; and as there 
 have been many students who made a farce of the classi- 
 cal course, or who made it a mere excuse for four years 
 spent in boating or billiards, or in social pleasures, so in 
 the same way can a farce be made of the freedom allowed 
 under the elective system. 
 
 Some of the chief deficiencies of the elective system 
 may be summed up under the following heads : 
 
 i. There are some students who, from pure laziness, 
 select only the easiest studies, and go through college 
 with the very easiest work which is possible. But this 
 is no new thing, and it is not for such students that the 
 colleges exist. The college should not obstruct the work 
 of its earnest men to keep its idlers and sneaks from 
 wasting their useless time. As Dr. Angell has said: " No 
 plan will make the college career of lazy men brilliant. 
 . . . The work of the college should be organized to 
 meet the needs of the earnest and aspiring students, rather 
 than the infirmities and defects of the indolent. ' ' That 
 most students, as a matter of fact, do select the easiest 
 studies is not true, as statistics certainly show. It is, in 
 fact, simple nonsense to call any study easy, if pursued 
 in a serious manner for a serious purpose. If any sub- 
 ject draws to itself the idlers solely because it is easy, the 
 fault lies with the teacher. The success of the elective 
 system, as of any system, demands the removal of ineffi- 
 cient teachers. The elective system can never wholly
 
 FAULTS OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM. 43 
 
 succeed unless each teacher has the power and the will 
 to enforce good work, to remove from his classes all 
 idle or inefficient students. 
 
 2. It is again objected that students having freedom 
 of choice are likely to select erratic courses in accordance 
 with temporary whims, rather than with any theory of 
 educational development. This again is true; but it is 
 likewise true that the course apparently the most erratic 
 may be the one which brings the student in contact with 
 the strongest men. If a Harvard student of a few years 
 ago could have made his college course exclusively of 
 botany, embryology, Greek, anatomy, and early English, 
 it would seem a singular combination. It would sound 
 differently if it were said that his teachers in college were 
 chiefly Asa Gray, Goodwin, Holmes, Lowell, and Agassiz. 
 It is also true, I think, that the average course as chosen 
 by the students themselves is as capable of serious defense 
 as the average established course evolved from the pull- 
 ing, and hauling, and patching, and fitting of the aver- 
 age college faculty. 
 
 3. Another criticism is, that the elective system 
 offers temptation to undue or premature specialization. 
 This is true, and premature specialization, like other 
 forms of precocious virtue, is much to be deprecated. 
 But experience does not lead me to think that the danger 
 of ' ' undue specialization " is at all a serious one. The 
 current, in college and out, is all setting the other way. 
 The fact that any man dares to specialize at all, shows 
 that he has a certain independence of character; for the 
 odds are against it. Specialization implies thorough- 
 ness, and I believe that thorough knowledge of some- 
 thing is the backbone of culture. Special knowledge of
 
 44 E VOL UTION OF THE COLLEGE CURRICUL UM. 
 
 any sort gives to each man the base-line by which other 
 attainments may be measured; and this unit of measure- 
 ment in scholarship can be acquired in no other way. 
 There can be, I think, no scholarship worthy of the name 
 without some form of special knowledge or special train- 
 ing as its central axis. The self-respect of the scholar 
 comes from thorough work. The man who feels sure that 
 he can know or that he can do something is assured at 
 once from the danger of turgid conceit as from that of 
 limp humility. He can hold up his head among men 
 with a 'certainty as to his proper place among them. 
 
 I have often heard college graduates complain: "Oh, 
 if I had only studied something in particular!" "Oh, if 
 I had only learned how to study!" "Oh, if the time 
 I have wasted in Latin had been spent in something else ! " 
 ' ' Oh, if the time I have wasted in something else had 
 been spent in Latin! " There are few college men of the 
 present generation who would not be better scholars 
 to-day if half their curriculum had been omitted (not 
 much matter what half), and the time had been spent on 
 the remaining subjects. But you may say: " Would you 
 let a man graduate ignorant of chemistry, of Latin, of 
 logic, of botany?" Well, yes, if superficiality in every- 
 thing is the alternative. It is well for a scholar to know 
 something of each of these and of each of the subjects 
 in the most extended curriculum. But he purchases this 
 knowledge too dearly if he buys it at the expense of 
 thoroughness in some line of study in which a real inter- 
 est has been awakened. 
 
 Then, again, with certain men in college the alterna- 
 tive is either a close specialization or no college life at all. 
 Sometimes a man may wish in college to devote his entire
 
 MEN OF ONE PURPOSE. 45 
 
 time to a single subject as physics or history, making 
 himself an authority on that subject, but without any 
 effort for broad culture at all. This is not often a wise 
 course; but, wise or not, no one will deny that a college 
 career spent in this way is better than none at all, and 
 in after years such men are rarely a source of shame to 
 their Alma Mater. There is a certain well-known natu- 
 ralist whom I could name, who some fifteen years ago was 
 excluded from the university of his State not because 
 he was idle, or vicious, or weak, but because he wanted 
 to spend most of his time in the study of natural history. 
 The college had then no place for such a man as that. 
 It had no use for bird-knowledge, though it came out 
 strong on irregular verbs. But the same college is proud 
 of him now, and twelve years later granted the degree 
 it had refused. Who is to say that it was better for him 
 to leave college than that he should be allowed to follow 
 his own bent ? No knowledge comes amiss to an inves- 
 tigator; but no investigator can afford to sacrifice his 
 speciality for the sake of breadth of culture. Thorough- 
 ness is the main point, after all, and should take prece- 
 dence over versatility. I do not mean to be understood 
 as advocating narrowness of sympathy or narrowness of 
 culture of any sort. The broadest education is none too 
 broad for him who aspires to lead in any part of the 
 world of thought. But the forces of the mind, to con- 
 tinue the figure, should not be scattered in guerrilla 
 bands, but marshaled toward leadership. 
 
 An advantage of the elective system, which has been 
 too often overlooked, is its reflex influence on the teacher. 
 If a good teacher is the essential element in a good school, 
 then anything which helps to make his work better,
 
 46 E VOL UTION OF THE COLLEGE CURRICUL UM. 
 
 more thorough, or more inspiring, is of the greatest value 
 to the student The great teachers of the world, for the 
 most part, have not been, and could not be, drill-masters. 
 The man who works with realities cannot become a mar- 
 tinet In the elective system, the teacher deals with 
 students who have chosen his courses for the love of the 
 work or for love of him. Contact with these classes is a 
 constant stimulus and a constant inspiration. No teacher 
 can ever do his best on required work or prescribed 
 courses, and the best that is in his teacher it is the stu- 
 dent's right to receive. 
 
 There is still much to be said in favor of the college 
 in which discipline pure and simple is made the chief aim 
 of all the work. In such a school those subjects lan- 
 guages, sciences, and philosophy which serve the ends 
 of training best should be taught, and such subjects only. 
 Whether anything more suitable for this purpose than 
 the ancient classics and mathematics has yet been found, 
 I shall not try to say; but the aims of such a course 
 should be the same in kind as that of the classical curricu- 
 lum. It may perhaps be possible to teach better things 
 and in a better way than was done in the classical schools; 
 but all attempts at combining in a prescribed curriculum 
 mental discipline and a wide range of subjects must re- 
 sult in failure, so far as training the mind is concerned ; 
 you cannot teach everything to every student either 
 the student or the college must choose. 
 
 4. Still another criticism of the elective system is just 
 the reverse of this. The elective system permits undue 
 scattering. It allows the student to flit from one subject 
 to another, thus acquiring versatility without real train- 
 ing. This seems to me a more serious fault than any of
 
 THE BACHELOR'S DEGREE. 47 
 
 the others. It can be remedied in part by a system of 
 major and minor studies, or a division of the work into 
 specialities which must be pursued for a considerable 
 length of time, and electives which may be dropped 
 after a simple mastery of their elements. Some such 
 arrangement as this seems to me a desirable check upon 
 the elective plan, as it tends to insure persistence in some- 
 thing, while retaining most of the flexibility of the latter 
 system. 
 
 Some of the weakest features of our college system 
 center, it seems to me, about the conventional term 
 of four years, and the conventional Bachelor's degree. 
 Students are encouraged to work for the degree, rather 
 than for culture; all work of the student is estimated by 
 the bulk, rather than by the quality. In an ideal condition 
 of things, the student's work ought not to be estimated 
 at all. Marks and terms are clumsy devices, more suit- 
 able for measuring cordwood than culture. The degree 
 is the official seal of completion set on something which 
 in the nature of things can never be completed. For the 
 college is not a machine for filling the student with wis- 
 dom and learning. It is, at best, a place for self-culture. 
 All culture is self-culture, or it is no culture at all. Libra- 
 ries, apparatus, museums, teachers even, are useless to 
 the student, unless the student use them. Teachers give 
 inspiration and criticism; fellow-students do the same: 
 but the road to wisdom is a solitary road, to be trav- 
 ersed in Indian file. 
 
 We may lay on the Bachelor's degree at once too much 
 stress or too little : too much, for the degree is treated 
 as if it were an end in itself; too little, for every college 
 in our land gives this degree to men whose sole claim to
 
 48 EVOL UTION OF THE COLLEGE CURRICUL UM. 
 
 higher education consists in a four years' residence in a 
 college town a four years' ' ' exposure to scholastic influ- 
 ences. ' ' They make their count of marks on the college 
 books, and if, by hook or crook, they can keep ' ' regu- 
 lar," the march of time will carry them through. Then, 
 again, the competition for numbers among our would-be 
 " populous schools ' ' often leads to discrepancies between 
 the actual requirements and those laid down in the pub- 
 lished catalogues. Thus low standards are adopted for 
 mere numbers' sake. And besides the reputable institu- 
 tions, all sorts of mushroom establishments, in private 
 hands, have in the Middle West been authorized by law 
 to grant the Bachelor's degree with practically no scho- 
 lastic requirements at all. 
 
 When the colleges in the patchwork era attempted to 
 teach in four years a little of everything, it was found 
 that by the same process a little of everything could 
 likewise be given in two years, or even in one year, by 
 carrying the process of condensation a little farther. I 
 received a letter not long ago from the president of an 
 alleged college in Kansas a school which gives the 
 Bachelor's degree on a course a year or two long, begun 
 at any time, and with no special preparation. He said that 
 he had exactly one year of daily recitations to devote to all 
 the sciences, each completed in turn. He was especially 
 anxious to make no mistake in the logical order of 
 arrangement of these sciences whether it should be 
 chemistry, physics, geology, physiology, zoology, and 
 botany, or whether the order would be better if reversed. 
 Of course, the only answer I could make was, that the 
 order was of little importance, and that if a year was all 
 the time he had for all of them, it would be better to omit
 
 "THE INDEPENDENT NORMAL COLLEGE." 49 
 
 any five, or at least any four, and to spend his time on 
 the rest. But to drop any science would be to drop the 
 pretense of offering a liberal education. I have no doubt 
 that he found room at last to work all of them in, and a 
 term of astronomy and one of political economy besides ! 
 
 I quote from the catalogue of an alleged ' ' college ' ' in 
 Indiana a statement in regard to its " scientific course ' ' 
 of one year's duration, which leads to a degree called 
 ' ' Bachelor of Science " : " The graduates [of this course] 
 are polished speakers as well as accurate mathematicians, 
 thorough scientists, and accomplished Latin scholars. 
 Graduates from this department fill good positions, and 
 are everywhere known as leaders, because of their 
 energy, perseverance, enthusiasm, and never-ceasing 
 activity," and so on. The so-called "insurmountable 
 barrier " to a degree ' ' formed by the long courses of the 
 colleges and State normal schools " is at once blown away, 
 and all obstacles which debar indolence and ignorance 
 from the privileges of scholarship once for all removed. 
 
 I have a friend in the city of Indianapolis, a most estima- 
 ble gentleman, in the real-estate and rental business, who 
 some forty years ago received from the Legislature of the 
 State of Indiana a charter which constituted him a ' ' uni- 
 versity," entitled to hold two hundred thousand dollars 
 in property free from all taxes, ' ' to confer all academic 
 degrees, and to enjoy all the rights and privileges of the 
 most favored institution." This gentleman has been mer- 
 ciful to his fellow- citizens. He has gone about his busi- 
 ness, and has conferred no degrees, not even on himself. 
 But he has the legal right to do it; and this incident 
 shows with what laxness the laws of our States view the 
 granting of collegiate degrees. Such is the degradation
 
 50 E VOL UTION OF THE COLLEGE CURRICUL UM. 
 
 of the Bachelor's degree, which has already brought the 
 name of American graduate into contempt! 
 
 Still, at the best, the Bachelor's degree is an empty 
 name. It is not in America, as in Europe, a key to any 
 sort of personal advancement. And it is better that it 
 should be so. It is better for each man to stand on his 
 own merits as shown by his own life, not as attested by 
 any college faculty. * ' The student may flourish his col- 
 lege diploma," says Dr. J. P. Lesley, "but the world 
 cares little for that baby badge. ' ' In certain educational 
 circles, perhaps, a college degree is a help, or, rather, it 
 may represent a certain minimum of culture which is ex- 
 pected of all its members. We suppose that a college 
 professor must hold a college degree. But this is not 
 always the case. I can count on my fingers, taking every 
 one, a list of some of the ablest of American college 
 teachers to-day, who have never been graduated from 
 any college. Most of these hold honorary degrees, it is 
 true; but such degrees are empty tributes of the college 
 to success of one sort or another, won without the col- 
 lege's help. 
 
 It is true, no doubt, that the hope of a degree coaxes 
 some men to stay in college longer than they otherwise 
 would. This seems a good thing but is it ? Higher 
 education is not working for a degree. It may be incom- 
 patible with it. It is putting a cheap price on culture to 
 induce the student to take it, not because he wants it, 
 but because he wants something else. If a student's 
 work is purely perfunctory, the sooner he leaves it for 
 something real the better. If the degree is merely a bait 
 to lure him on, it is unworthy alike of the college and of 
 the student.
 
 GIVING UP OF COLLEGE DEGREES. 51 
 
 Shall we, then, abandon the Bachelor's degree, and 
 give to each student merely the certificates of the profes- 
 sors under whom he has studied ? Some day, perhaps, 
 but certainly not yet. The French writer, Joubert, has 
 said: "All truth it is not well to tell; but all truths it will 
 be well to tell when we can all tell them together. ' ' There 
 is wisdom in this saying. Degrees are childish things, 
 and it would be well to lay them aside; but this we can- 
 not do till we can all do it together. Some ten years 
 ago. Chancellor Gregory, of the State University of 
 Illinois, held the opinion that the college degrees were 
 undesirable adjuncts of college training. It was decided 
 that by the University of Illinois no degrees should be 
 granted. But this decision worked adversely to the 
 interests of the college. Many students came there to 
 study, who went elsewhere to complete their work. The 
 degree might be useless, but the students wanted it. 
 Their lack of a degree was a hindrance in securing posi- 
 tions; and they went to other colleges where degrees 
 were still given. The times were not ready for this 
 change, and the giving of degrees has been resumed 
 wisely, I think, by the institution in question. 
 
 The same end is being reached in another way by the 
 University of Virginia and some other colleges of the 
 South. In these schools the Bachelor's degree receives 
 little or no attention, being practically merged in the 
 higher requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. 
 By merging both these in the still higher degree of Doc- 
 tor of Philosophy, we have a condition similar to that in 
 the German universities, where only the Doctor's degree 
 is now given. Toward this condition our universities 
 are tending; and, through the change of the college into
 
 52 EVOL UTION OF THE COLLEGE CURRICUL UM. 
 
 the university, the Bachelor degree may in time disap- 
 pear. But this reform if reform it be can be the 
 work of no one man or one school. It must come as a 
 natural result of the development of the college. 
 
 So much for the phases, past and present, of the col- 
 lege curriculum in America . What of the future ? Will 
 there be a fourth, a fifth, a sixth stage in its develop- 
 ment; or is the system now full grown, and the elective 
 plan, as we know it, its full fruition ? 
 
 We can be sure that the world is still moving. Noth- 
 ing is stable, nothing is perpetual, nothing is sufficient. 
 With the new needs and the new men of the future will 
 come new departments, new methods, and new ideas. 
 The curriculum, in its original sense of a little race-course, 
 with thirty-six hurdles to be leaped in thirty-six months, 
 with a crown of laurel berries at the end, will very soon 
 be no more. Special courses of study in as many special 
 departments are already taking its place. The traditional 
 four years of college training will disappear, and with it 
 the sharp lines which have so long set apart the Fresh- 
 men, Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors. Later on, but 
 not far in the next century, the Bachelor's degree will 
 cease to be regarded; its kindred, the Master's degree, 
 is dying already, and the degree of Doctor, the worthiest 
 of all, has no elements of immortality. All these things 
 are forms, and forms only, not substance; and the sub- 
 stance of our higher education is fast outgrowing them. 
 College marks, college honors, college courses, college 
 degrees, all these things belong, with the college cap and 
 gown and the wreath of laurel berries, to the babyhood 
 of culture. They are part of our inheritance from the 
 past, from the time when scholarship was not manhood,
 
 "LEHRFREIHEIT" AND " LERNFREIHEIT." 53 
 
 when the life of the student had no relation to the life of 
 the world. 
 
 The American college of the future will be a place for 
 self-culture. The chief need of a college organization is 
 to bring great teachers together, that their combined 
 influence may effect results which cannot be reached in 
 isolation. In other words, the use of a college is to 
 produce a college atmosphere, such an atmosphere as 
 forms itself around all great teachers everywhere. The 
 various so-called colleges and universities in America will 
 gradually differentiate into universities and preparatory 
 schools, and the line of direction will ultimately depend 
 on the available resources rather than on the ambition of 
 the school. To do university work requires better-trained 
 professors, and many more of them, than to teach the 
 elements of Latin, Greek, and mathematics. This means 
 more salaries and larger salaries than are now paid. 
 Schools ill endowed or not endowed at all cannot attempt 
 this. Those who can do it will do it. The ideas of 
 " Lehrfreilieit " and " Lernfreiheit" freedom of teach- 
 ing and freedom of study, on which the German 
 university is based, will become a central feature of the 
 American college system. 
 
 The college as a separate factor in our educational sys- 
 tem must in time disappear, by its mergence into the pre- 
 paratory school, on the one hand, and into the university, 
 on the other. In our Western States, the high school 
 and the State university already complete the educational 
 series. The college, as such, is already out of the cur- 
 rent of the educational stream. The most striking feature 
 of recent educational history has been the growth of the 
 State universities, the consummate flower of the public-
 
 54 E VOL UT1ON OF THE COLLEGE CURRICUL UM. 
 
 school system. It needs no prophet to see that the ulti- 
 mate growth of each and every one of these into real 
 universities, worthy of our country and worthy of the 
 coming twentieth century, is inevitable. 
 
 With time, we shall reach in America a condition of 
 things not unlike that seen in Germany, where nothing 
 intervenes between the public high school or gymnasium, 
 in which all work is prescribed, and the university itself, 
 in which all work is free. The position of the prepara- 
 tory school in this connection is by no means one to be 
 despised. A strong high school is far more valuable to 
 the community than a weak college. The work of the 
 secondary schools is the foundation of everything higher. 
 It should be broadened and deepened so as to include all 
 subjects which experience shows to belong to the acces- 
 sory groundwork of higher education. I need not go 
 over a list of these subjects. The future will make its 
 own list, and the efforts of the colleges will not change 
 it. But we may be sure that the ultimate demand of the 
 colleges will be for students who are trained to see and 
 to think, not for students who can merely remember. 
 The best studies for college preparation should be the 
 best studies for those who do not go to college. They 
 are studies which give power and skill, not those which 
 merely give information. 
 
 But here, it seems to me, is one of the chief difficulties 
 in the way of our colleges, East and West. No school, 
 it seems, is content to be a preparatory school; no school 
 is content to train for future work elsewhere. Each one 
 aims to give a general education; to be a university in a 
 small way, a " university for the poor," a poor uni- 
 versity. In the words of Lowell : ' ' The public schools
 
 THE HIGH SCHOOL. 55 
 
 teach too little or too much : too little, if education is to 
 go no farther; too many things, if what is taught is to 
 be taught thoroughly. And the more they seem to teach, 
 the less likely is education to go farther; for it is one 
 of the weaknesses of democracy to be satisfied with the 
 second best if it appear to answer the purpose tolerably 
 well, and to be cheaper, as it never is in the long run." 
 In other words, the high schools, too, are in the patch- 
 work era, and popular feeling tends to keep them there, 
 to satisfy by a show of education the vast majority of 
 their students who are likely to go no farther. The 
 growth in educational systems is from above downwards, 
 and the right kind of preparatory schools will arise only 
 in response to the demands of real universities. In his- 
 torical sequence, Oxford must precede Rugby, and the 
 German university must come before the gymnasium. 
 The American high school will not reach, I think, the 
 standard of the German gymnasium, which gives train- 
 ing not inferior in amount or kind to that of our best 
 classical colleges; for in the American system the univer- 
 sity methods of work will begin lower down than in Ger- 
 many. This is associated with our qualities as a people, 
 as compared with those of the Germans. The American 
 youth of twenty-one is more independent, more self- 
 reliant, and, so far as his relation to the world is con- 
 cerned, more mature than the average German student is 
 at twenty-five. America is, of all lands, the land of prot- 
 estantism; and in education, as in other things, every 
 American is a law unto himself This fact has its bad 
 side as well as its good side, but is a fact nevertheless; 
 and as educators of Americans, we must take it into 
 account.
 
 56 EVOLUTION OF THE COLLEGE CURRICULUM. 
 
 The old forms in education are passing away; the old 
 barriers are being taken down; the old restraints are being 
 removed or relegated to the days of boyhood and girl- 
 hood. All this we can see, for it takes place before our 
 eyes; it is taking place under our hands, and this whether 
 we wish it or not. The college boy is becoming a man, 
 and the college woman now stands beside him. Not all 
 are ready for freedom, perhaps, who have freedom thrust 
 upon them. There are not a few students to whom an 
 enforced discipline is the only road to scholarship. But, 
 with all imaginable drawbacks, our college work in Amer- 
 ica yields each year better results than it has ever yielded 
 before. We may be sure that in the future, even more 
 than in the past, the American college, the American 
 university, will stand in the front rank of civilizing influ- 
 ences.
 
 HI. 
 
 THE NATION'S NEED OF MEN.* 
 
 IF the experiment of government by the people is to 
 be successful, it is you and such as you who must 
 make it so. The future of the republic must lie in the 
 hands of the men and women of culture and intelligence, 
 of self-control and of self-resource, capable of taking care 
 of themselves and of helping others. If it falls not into 
 such hands, the republic will have no future. Wisdom 
 and strength must go to the making of a nation. There 
 is no virtue in democracy as such, nothing in American- 
 ism as such, that will save us, if we are a nation of weak- 
 lings and fools, with an aristocracy of knaves as our 
 masters. 
 
 There are some who think that this is the condition 
 of America to-day. There are some who think that this 
 republic, which has weathered so nobly the storms of 
 war and of peace, will go down on the shoals of hard 
 times; that we, as a nation, cannot live through the 
 nervous exhaustion induced by the financial sprees of our- 
 selves and others. We are told that our civilization and 
 our government are fit only for the days of cotton and 
 corn prosperity. We are told that our whole industrial 
 system, and the civilization of which it forms a part, must 
 be torn up by the roots and cast away. We are told that 
 
 * Address to the class of 1894, Leland Stanford Junior University; pub- 
 lished in the Popular Science Monthly, December, 1894.
 
 58 THE NATION'S NEED OF MEN. 
 
 the days of self-control and self-sufficiency are over, and 
 that the people of this nation are really typified by the law- 
 less bands rushing blindly hither and thither, clamoring 
 for laws by which those men may be made rich whom all 
 previous laws of God and man have ordained to be poor. 
 
 In these times it is well for us to remember that we 
 come of hardy stock. The Anglo-Saxon race, with its 
 strength and virtues, was born of hard times. It is not 
 easily kept down; the victims of oppression must be of 
 some other stock. We who live in America, and who 
 constitute the heart of this republic, are the sons and 
 daughters of " him that overcometh." Ours is a lineage 
 untainted by luxury, uncoddled by charity, uncorroded 
 by vice, uncrushed by oppression. If it were not so, we 
 could not be here to-day. 
 
 When this nation was born, the days of the govern- 
 ment of royalty and aristocracy were fast drawing to a 
 close. Hereditary idleness had steadily done its work, 
 and the scepter was already falling from nerveless hands. 
 God said: " I am tired of kings; I suffer them no more." 
 And when the kings had slipped from their tottering 
 thrones, as there was no one else to rule, the scepter fell 
 into the hands of the common man. It fell into our 
 hands, ours of this passing generation, and from us it 
 will pass on into yours. You are here to make ready for 
 your coronation, to learn those maxims of government, 
 those laws of human nature, without which all adminis- 
 trations must fail; ignorance of which is always punish- 
 able by death. If you are to hold this scepter, you must 
 be wiser and stronger than the kings; else you, too, shall 
 lose the scepter as they have lost it, and your dynasty 
 shall pass away.
 
 WEAKNESS DEMANDS TYRANNY. 59 
 
 For more than a century now the common man has 
 ruled America. How has he used his power? What 
 does history tell us of what the common man has done ? 
 It is too soon to answer these questions. A hundred 
 years is a time too short for the test of such gigantic 
 experiments. Here in America we have made history 
 already some of it glorious, som^ of it ignoble; much 
 of it made up of the old stories told over again. We have 
 learned some things that we did not expect to learn. We 
 find that the social problems of Europe are not kept away 
 from us by the quarantine of democracy. We find that 
 the dead which the dead past cannot bury are thrown up 
 on our shores. We find that weakness, misery, and 
 crime are still with us, and that wherever weakness is 
 there is tyranny also. The essence of tyranny, we have 
 found, lies not in the strength of the strong, but in the 
 weakness of the weak. We find that in the free air of 
 America there are still millions who are not free 
 millions who can never be free under any government or 
 under any laws, so long as they remain what they are. 
 
 The remedy for oppression, then, is to bring in better 
 men, men who cannot be oppressed. This is the remedy 
 our fathers sought; we shall find no other. The problem 
 of life is not to make life easier, but to make men stronger, 
 so that no problem shall be beyond their solution. It 
 will be a sad day for the republic when life is easy for 
 ignorance, indolence, and apathy. It is growing easier 
 than it was; it is too easy already. There is no growth 
 without its struggle. Nature asks of man that he use his 
 manhood. If a man puts no part of his brain and soul 
 into his daily work if he feels no pride in the part he 
 is taking in life, the sooner he leaves the world the
 
 60 THE NATION'S NEED OF MEN. 
 
 better. His work is the work of a slave, and his life the 
 waste of so much good oxygen. The misery he endures 
 is nature's testimony to his worthlessness. We cannot 
 save him from nature's penalties. Our duty toward him 
 may be to temper justice with mercy. This is not the 
 matter of importance. Our duty toward his children is 
 to see that they do not follow his path. The grown-up 
 men and women of to-day are, in a sense, past saving. 
 The best work of the republic is to save the children. 
 The one great duty of a free nation is education 
 education, wise, thorough, universal; the education, not 
 of cramming, but of training; the education which no 
 republic has ever given, and without which all republics 
 must be in whole or in part failures. If this generation 
 should leave as its legacy to the next the real education, 
 training in individual power and skill, breadth of out- 
 look on the world and on life, the problems of the next 
 century would take care of themselves. There can be no 
 collective industrial problem where each man is capable 
 of solving his own individual problem for himself. 
 
 In this direction lies, I believe, the key to all industrial 
 and social problems. Reforms in education are the great- 
 est of all reforms. The ideal education must meet two 
 demands: it must be personal, fitting a man or woman 
 for success in life; it must be broad, giving a man or 
 woman such an outlook on the world as that this success 
 may be worthy. It should give to each man or woman 
 that reserve strength without which no life can be success- 
 ful, because no life can be free. With this reserve the 
 man can face difficulties, because the victor in any 
 struggle is he who has the most staying power. With 
 this reserve, he is on the side of law and order, because
 
 RESERVES IN LIFE. 61 
 
 only he who has nothing to lose can favor disorder or 
 misrule. He should have a reserve of property. Thrift 
 is a virtue. No people can long be free who are not 
 thrifty. It is true that thrift sometimes passes beyond 
 virtue, degenerating into the vice of greed. Because 
 there are men who are greedy drunk with the intoxica- 
 tion of wealth and power, we sometimes are told that 
 wealth and power are criminal. There are some that hold 
 that thrift is folly and personal ownership a crime. In the 
 new Utopia all is to be for all, and no one can claim a 
 monopoly, not even of himself. There may be worlds 
 in which this shall be true. It is not true in the world 
 into which you have been born. Nor can it be. In the 
 world we know, the free man should have a reserve of 
 power, and this power is represented by money. If thrift 
 ever ceases to be a virtue, it will be at a time long in the 
 future. Before that time comes, our Anglo-Saxon race 
 will have passed away and our civilization will be forgot- 
 ten. The dream of perfect slavery must find its reali- 
 zation in some other world than ours, or with a race of 
 men cast in some other mold. 
 
 A man should have a reserve of skill. If he can do 
 well something which needs doing, his place in the world 
 will always be ready for him. He must have intelligence. / 
 If he knows enough to be good company for himself 
 and others, he is a long way on the road toward happi- 
 ness and usefulness. To meet this need our schools have 
 been steadily broadening. The business of education is 
 no longer to train gentlemen and clergymen, as it was in 
 England; to fit men for the professions called learned, 
 as it has been in America. It is to give wisdom and 
 fitness to the common man. The Great reforms in edu-
 
 62 THE NATION'S NEED OF MEN. 
 
 cation have all lain in the removal of barriers. They 
 have opened new lines of growth to the common man. 
 This form of university extension is just beginning. The 
 next century will see its continuance. It will see a change 
 in educational ideals greater even than those of the revi- 
 val of learning. Higher education will cease to be the 
 badge of a caste, and no line of usefulness in life will be 
 beyond its helping influence. 
 
 The man must have a reserve of character and pur- 
 pose. He must have a reserve of reputation. Let others 
 think well of us; it will help us to think well of ourselves. 
 No man is free who has not his own good opinion. A 
 r yman will wear a clean conscience as he would a clean shirt, 
 if he knows his neighbors expect it of him. He must have 
 a reserve of love, and this is won by the service of others. 
 " He that brings sunshine into the lives of others cannot 
 keep it from himself." He must form the ties of family 
 and friendship; that, having something at stake in the 
 goodness of the world, he will do something toward mak- 
 ing the world really good. 
 
 When an American citizen has reserves like these, he 
 has no need to beg for special favors. All he asks of 
 legislation is that it keep out of his way. He demands 
 no form of special guardianship or protection. He can 
 pay as he goes. The man who cannot has no right to 
 go. Of all forms of greed, the greed for free lunches, 
 the desire to get something for nothing, is the most de- 
 moralizing, and in the long run most dangerous. The 
 flag of freedom can never float over a nation of deadheads. 
 Then, again, education must take the form of real 
 patriotism of public interest and of civic virtue. If a 
 
 JL_*- A _ ^" - ---' V *^*" I C-*"*NX*- * *"" ~ - ~ Vj^X**" 
 
 republic be not wisely managed, it will fail as any other
 
 SETTLING QUESTIONS RIGHT. 63 
 
 corporation would; it will only succeed as it deserves 
 success. 
 
 The problems of government are questions of right 
 and wrong; they can be settled only in one way. They 
 must be settled right. Whatever is settled wrong comes 
 up for settlement again, and this when we least expect 
 it. It comes up under harder conditions, and compound 
 interest is charged on every wrong decision. The slavery 
 question, you remember, was settled over and over again 
 by each generation of compromisers. When they led 
 John Brown to the scaffold, his last words were: "You 
 would better all you people of the South prepare 
 yourselves for a settlement of this question, that must 
 come up for a settlement again sooner than you are pre- 
 pared for it. You may dispose of me now very easily," 
 he said; "I am nearly disposed of now; but this ques- 
 tion is still to be settled this negro question, I mean; 
 the end of that is not yet." 
 
 This, John Brown said, and they settled the problem 
 for the time by hanging him. But the question rose 
 again. It was never settled until at last it was "blown 
 hellward from the cannon's mouth." Then it was found 
 that for every drop of negro blood drawn by the lash, a 
 thousand drops of Saxon blood had been drawn by the 
 sword. 
 
 Thus it is with every national question, large or small. 
 Thus it will be with the tariff, with finance, with the civil 
 service. Each question must be settled right, and we 
 must pay for its settlement. It is said that fifteen per 
 cent of the laws on the statute books of the States of the 
 Union stand there in defiance of acknowledged laws of 
 social and economic science. Every such statute is blood
 
 64 THE NATION'S NEED OF MEN. 
 
 poison in the body politic. Around every such law will 
 gather a festering sore. Every attempt to heal this sore 
 will be resisted by the full force of the time-servers. Such 
 statutes are steadily increasing in number concessions 
 by short-sighted legislatures to the arrogant monopolist, 
 the ignorant demagogue, or the reckless agitator. This 
 must stop. " They enslave their children's children who 
 make compromise with sin, ' ' or with ignorance, or with 
 recklessness. " The gods," said Marcus Aurelius, "are 
 at the head of the administration, and will have nothing 
 but the best." 
 
 " My will fulfilled shall be; 
 In daylight or in dark, 
 My thunderbolt has eyes to see 
 Its way home to the mark! " 
 
 It was the dream of the founders of this republic that 
 each year the people should choose from their number 
 " their wisest men to make the public laws." This was 
 actually done in the early days; for our first leaders were 
 natural leaders. The men who founded America were 
 her educated men. None other could have done it. But 
 this condition could not always last. As the country 
 grew, ignorance came and greed developed; ignorance 
 and greed must be represented, else ours would not be 
 a representative government. So to our congresses our 
 people sent, not the wisest, but the men who thought as 
 the people did. We have come to choose, in our law- 
 makers, not rulers, but representatives; we ask not wis- 
 dom, but watchfulness for our personal interests. So we 
 send those whose interests are ours; those who act as our 
 attorneys. And just as the people do this, so do the 
 great corporations, who form a large part of the people
 
 AGENTS, NOT RULERS. 65 
 
 and control a vastly larger part. And as the corpora- 
 tions command the best service, they often send as their 
 attorneys abler men than the people can secure. And 
 so it has come about that demagogues and special agents 
 make up the body of lawmakers in this country, and this 
 in both parties alike. They represent, not our wisdom, . jr 
 
 * l ****'*^ If Y~**lP~***' f ***~*-"~'** f ~**** Vr *' L ~ f "~ """"'.J.^.V^.H^,^^. ^^f 
 
 but our business. They are the reflex of the people they 
 
 "l ' bt,..*****...^. J fm* 
 
 represent; no oetter, and certainly no worse. Those 
 whose interest lies in the direction of good government 
 alone are too often unrepresented. 
 
 In this degree republican government has failed. For 
 this failure there is again but one remedy education. 
 If the people are to rule us, the people must be wise. 
 We must have in every community men trained in social 
 and political science. We must have men with the cour- 
 age of their convictions; only education can give real 
 convictions. We must have men who know there is a 
 right to every question as well as many wrongs. We 
 must have men who know what this right is; or, if not 
 knowing, who know how the right may be found. Very 
 few men ever do that which they know and really believe 
 to be wrong. Most wrongdoing comes from a belief 
 that there is no right, or that right and wrong are only 
 relative. 
 
 Professor Powers has said : ' ' We are no longer guided 
 by wise men. We are guided by wise men's wisdom after 
 we have reviewed it and decided that it is wisdom. An 
 increasing proportion of our people are fairly independ- 
 ent in their thought, and vigorous in their assertion of 
 their convictions. These men common human men 
 without their knowledge or consent, come into the world 
 charged with the awful responsibility of managing inter-
 
 66 THE NATION'S NEED OF MEN. 
 
 ests compared with which the tasks of the old gods of 
 Olympus were but as children's play." 
 
 If representative government is ever to bring forward 
 wisdom and patriotism, it will be because wisdom and 
 patriotism exist and demand representation. In this 
 direction lies one of the most important duties of the 
 American university. Every question of public policy 
 is a question of right and wrong. To such questions all 
 matters of party ascendency, all matters of individual 
 advancement must yield precedence. There is no virtue 
 in the voice of majorities. The danger of ignorance 
 or indifference is only intensified when rolled up in ma- 
 jorities. Truth is strong, and error is weak, and the 
 majorities of error melt away under the influence of a 
 few men whose right acting is based on right thinking. 
 Right thinking has been your privilege; right acting is 
 now your duty; and at no time in the history of the 
 world has duty been more imperative than now.
 
 IV. 
 
 THE CARE AND CULTURE OF MEN.* 
 
 ' T^HE best political economy," Emerson tells us, "is 
 1 the care and culture of men." Culture is not 
 coddling, but training, not help from without, but 
 growth from within. The harsh experience of centuries 
 has shown that men are not made by easy processes. 
 Character is a hardy plant. It thrives best where the 
 north wind tempers the sunshine. 
 
 The life of civilized man is no simple art, no auto- 
 matic process. To make life easy is to destroy its effect- 
 iveness. The civilization to which we are born makes 
 heavy demands upon those who take part in it. Its 
 rights are all duties; its privileges are all responsibilities. 
 Its risks are terrible to those who do not make their 
 responsibilities good. And these responsibilities are not 
 individual alone. They fall upon all who are bound 
 together in social or industrial alliance. If we are to 
 bear one another's burdens, we must see that we lay 
 upon ourselves no unnecessary burdens by our indiffer- 
 ence or our ignorance. There is no safety for the 
 republic, no safety for the individual man, for whom the 
 republic exists, so long as he or his fellows are untrained 
 or not trained aright. 
 
 So there is no virtue in educational systems unless 
 these systems meet the needs of the individual. It is 
 
 Address to the class of 1895, Leland Stanford Junior University. 
 67
 
 68 THE CARE AND CULTURE OF MEN. 
 
 not the ideal man or the average man who is to be 
 trained; it is the particular man as the forces of heredity 
 have made him. His own qualities determine his needs. 
 "A child is better unborn than untaught." A child, 
 however educated, is still untaught if by his teaching we 
 have not emphasized his individual character, if we have 
 not strengthened his will and its guide and guardian, the 
 mind. 
 
 The essence of manhood lies in the growth of the 
 power of choice. In the varied relations of life the power 
 to choose means the duty of choosing right. To choose 
 the right, one must have the wit to know it and the will 
 to demand it. In the long run, in small things as in 
 large, wrong choice leads to death. It is not " punished 
 by death," for nature knows nothing of rewards and 
 punishments. Death is simply its inevitable result. No 
 republic can live no man can live in a republic in which 
 wrong is the repeated choice either of the people or of 
 the state. 
 
 All education must be individual fitted to individual 
 needs. That which is not so is unworthy of the name. 
 A misfit education is no education at all. Every man 
 that lives has a right to some form of higher education. 
 For there is no man that would not be made better and 
 stronger by continuous training. I do not mean, of 
 course, that the conventional college education of to-day 
 could be taken by every man to his advantage. Still 
 less could the average man use the conventional college 
 education of any past era. Higher education has seemed 
 to be the need of the few because it has been so narrow. 
 It was born in the days of feudal caste. It was made for 
 the few. Its type was fixed and pre-arranged, and those
 
 FITTING TRAINING TO MAN. 69 
 
 whose minds it did not fit were looked upon by the 
 colleges as educational outcasts. The rewards of investi- 
 gation, the pleasures of high thinking, the charms of 
 harmony were not for the multitude. To the multitude 
 they must be accessible in the future; but not as gifts 
 nothing worth having was ever a gift, rather as rights 
 to be talcen by those who can hold them. 
 
 To furnish the higher education that humanity needs, 
 the college must be broad as humanity. No spark of 
 talent man may possess should be outside its fostering 
 care. To fit man into schemes of education has been the 
 mistake of the past. To fit education to man is the 
 work of the future. 
 
 The traditions of higher education in America had 
 their origin in social conditions very different from ours. 
 In the Golden Age of Greece, each free man stood on 
 the back of nine slaves. The freedom of the ten was 
 the birthright of the one. To train the tenth man was 
 the function of the early university. Only free men can 
 be trained. A part of this training of the tenth in the 
 early days was necessarily in the arts by which the nine 
 were kept in subjection. 
 
 The universities of Paris, and Oxford, and Cambridge 
 were founded to educate the lord and the priest. And 
 to these schools and their successors, as time went on, 
 fell the duty of training the gentleman and the clergy- 
 man. Only in our day has it been recognized that the 
 common man had part or lot in higher education. For 
 now he has come into his own, and he demands that he, 
 too, may be noble and gentle. His own lord and king 
 is the common man already, and in the next century we 
 shall see him installed as his own priest. And through
 
 70 THE CARE AND CULTURE OF MEN. 
 
 higher education he must gain fitness for his work, if he 
 gain it at all. And he must gain it; for the future of 
 civilization is in his hands. The world cannot afford to 
 let him fail. All the ages have looked forward to the 
 common man as their ' ' heir apparent. ' ' The whole past 
 of humanity is staked on his success. 
 
 The old traditions are not sufficient for him. The 
 narrow processes by which gentlemen were trained in 
 medieval Oxford are not adequate to the varied de- 
 mands of the man of the twentieth century. He is more 
 than a gentleman. Heir to all the ages he must be; and 
 there are ages since, as there were ages before, the tasks 
 set in these schools became stereotyped as culture. The 
 need of choice has become a thousand-fold greater with 
 the extension of human knowledge and human power. 
 The need of choosing right is steadily growing more and 
 more imperative. If the common man is to be his own 
 lord and his own priest in these strenuous days, his 
 strength must be as great, his consecration as intense as 
 it was with those who were his rulers in ruder and less 
 trying times. The osmosis of classes is still going on. 
 By its silent force it has ' ' pulled down the mighty from 
 their seats, and has exalted them of low degree. ' ' Again 
 educate our rulers. We find that they need it. They 
 have, in the aggregate, not yet the brains, nor the con- 
 science, nor the force of will that fits them for the task the 
 fates have thrown upon them. 
 
 If the civilization of the one is shared by the ten, it 
 must increase tenfold in amount. If it does not, the 
 Golden Age it seems to represent must pass away. To 
 hold the civilization we enjoy to-day is the work of 
 higher education. Every moment we feel it slipping
 
 THE PRICE OF LIBERTY. 71 
 
 from our hands. Hence, every moment we must strive 
 for a fresh hold. "Eternal vigilance," it was said of 
 old, ' ' is the price of liberty. ' ' And this was what was 
 meant. The perpetuation of free institutions rests with 
 free men. The masses, the mobs of men, are never free. 
 Hence the need of the hour is to break up the masses. 
 They should be masses no longer, but individual men and 
 women. The work of higher education is to put an end 
 to the rule of the multitude. To tyranny confusion is 
 succeeding, and the remedy for confusion is in the growth 
 of men who cannot be confused. 
 
 The university of to-day must recognize the need of the 
 individual student as the reason for its existence. If we 
 are to make men and women out of boys and girls, it will 
 be as individuals, not as classes. The best field of corn 
 is that in which the individual stalks are most strong 
 and most fruitful. Class legislation has always proved 
 pernicious and ineffective, whether in a university or in a 
 state. The strongest nation is that in which the individual 
 man is most helpful and most independent. The best 
 school is that which exists for the individual student. A 
 university is not an aggregation of colleges, departments, 
 or classes. It is built up of young men and women. 
 The student is its unit. The basal idea of higher edu- 
 cation is that each student should devote his time and 
 strength to what is best for him; that no force of tradi- 
 tion, no rule of restraint, no bait of a degree should 
 swerve any one from his own best educational path. As 
 Melville Best Anderson has said, ' ' The way to educate 
 a man is to set him at work; the way to get him to 
 work is to interest him ; the way to interest him is to 
 vitalize his task by relating it to some form of reality. ' '
 
 72 THE CARE AND CULTURE OF MEN. 
 
 No man was ever well trained whose own soul was not 
 wrought into the process. No student was ever brought 
 to any worthy work except by his own consent 
 
 So the university must not drive, but lead. Nor, in 
 the long run, should it even lead; for the training of the 
 will is effected by the exercise of self-guidance. The 
 problem of human development is to bring men into the 
 right path by their own realization that it is good to walk 
 therein. The student must feel with every day's work 
 that it has some place in the formation of his character. 
 His character he must form for himself; but higher edu- 
 tion gives him the materials. His character gathers con- 
 secration as the work goes on, if he can see for himself 
 the place of each element in his training. Its value he 
 has tested, and he knows that it is good, and its results 
 he learns to treasure accordingly. 
 
 Individualism in education is no discovery of our times. 
 It was by no means invented at Palo Alto; neither was 
 it born in Harvard nor in Michigan. The need of it is 
 written in the heart of man. It has found recognition 
 wherever the f ' care and culture ' ' of man has been taken 
 seriously. 
 
 A Japanese writer, Uchimura, says this of education in 
 old Japan: " We were not taught in classes then. The 
 grouping of soul-bearing human beings into classes, as 
 sheep upon Australian farms, was not known in our old 
 schools. Our teachers believed, I think instinctively, that 
 man (persona)\s unclassifiable; that he must be dealt with 
 personally i.e. face to face, and soul to soul. So they 
 schooled us one by one each according to his idiosyn- 
 crasies, physical, mental, and spiritual. They knew each 
 one of us by his name. And as asses were never harnessed
 
 KNOWING STUDENTS BY NAME. 73 
 
 with horses, there was but little danger of the latter be- 
 ing beaten down into stupidity, or the former driven into 
 valedictorians' graves. In this respect, therefore, our 
 old-time teachers in Japan agreed with Socrates and 
 Plato in their theory of education. So naturally the rela- 
 tion between teachers and students was the closest one 
 possible. We never called our teachers by that unap- 
 proachable name, Professor. We called them Sensei, 
 men born before, so named because of their prior birth, 
 not only in respect of the time of their appearance in 
 this world, which was not always the case, but also of 
 their coming to the understanding of the truth. It was 
 this, our idea of relationship between teacher and student, 
 which made some of us to comprehend at once the inti- 
 mate relation between the Master and the disciples which 
 we found in the Christian Bible. When we found written 
 therein that the disciple is not above his master, nor the 
 servant above his lord; or that the good shepherd giveth 
 his life for his sheep, and other similar sayings, we took 
 them almost instinctively as things known to us long 
 before." 
 
 Thus it was in old Japan. Thus should it be in new 
 America. In such manner do the oldest ideas forever 
 renew their youth, when these ideas are based not on 
 tradition or convention, but in the nature of man. 
 
 The best care and culture of man is not that which 
 restrains his weakness, but that which gives play to his 
 strength. We should work for the positive side of life. 
 We should build up ideals of effort. To get rid of vice 
 and folly is to let strength grow in their place. 
 
 The great danger in democracy is the seeming pre- 
 dominance of the weak. The strong and the true seem
 
 74 THE CARE AND CULTURE OF MEN. 
 
 to be never in the majority. The politician who knows 
 the signs of the times understands the ways of majorities. 
 He knows fully the weakness of the common man. In- 
 justice, violence, fraud, and corruption are all expressions 
 of this weakness. These do not spring from competi- 
 tion, but from futile efforts to stifle competition. Com- 
 petition means fair play. Unfair play is the confession 
 of weakness. 
 
 The strength of the common man our leaders do not 
 know. Ignorant, venal, and vacillating the common man 
 is at his worst; but he is also earnest, intelligent, and 
 determined. To know him at his best, is the essence of 
 statesmanship. His power for good may be used as well 
 as his power for evil. It was this trust of the common 
 man that made the statesmanship of Abraham Lincoln. 
 And under such a leader the common man ceased to be 
 common. To know strength is the secret of power. To^ 
 work with the best in human nature is to have the fates 
 on your side. 
 
 ' ' A flaw in thought an inch long, ' ' says a Chinese 
 poet, ' ' leaves a trace of a thousand miles. ' ' If collect- 
 ive action is to be safe, the best thought of the best men 
 must control it. It is the ideal of statesmanship to bring 
 these best thoughts into unison. The flaw in the thought 
 of each one will be corrected by the clear vision of others. 
 And this order and freedom, clear vision and clean act- 
 ing, we have the right to expect from you. Knowledge 
 is power, because thought is convertible into action. 
 Ignorance is weakness, because without clearness of pur- 
 pose action can never be effective. 
 
 The best political economy is the care and culture of 
 men. The best-spent money of the present is that which
 
 THE POWER OF THE UNIVERSITY. 75 
 
 is used for the future. The force which is used on the 
 present is spent or wasted. That which is used on the 
 the future is repaid with compound interest. It is for 
 you to show that effort for the future, of which you are 
 the subjects, is not wasted effort. That you will do so 
 we have no shadow of doubt. If its influence on you 
 and you only were the whole of the life of the university 
 we love, it would be worth all it has cost. The money 
 and the effort, the faith and devotion these halls have 
 seen would not be wasted. The university will live in 
 you. You are her children first-born, and it may be 
 best-beloved, and in the ever-widening circle of your 
 work she shall rejoice. For your influence will be posi- 
 tive, and therefore effective. It stands for the love of 
 man and the love of truth. No one can love man aright 
 who does not love truth better. And in the end these 
 loves are alike in essence. 
 
 The foundation of a university, as Professor Howard 
 has told us, may be an event greater in the history of 
 the world than the foundation of a state. By its life is it 
 justified. The state at the best exists for the men and 
 women that compose it. Its needs can never be the 
 noblest, its aims never the highest, because it can never 
 rise above the present. Its limit of action is that which 
 now is. The university stands for the future. It deals 
 with the possibilities of men, with the strength and virtue 
 of men which is not yet realized. Its foundation is 
 the co-operation of the strong, its function to convert 
 weakness into strength. The universities of Europe have 
 shaped the civilization of the world. The universities 
 of the world will shape the growth of man so long as 
 civilization shall abide.
 
 V. 
 THE SCHOLAR IN THE COMMUNITY.* 
 
 ALL civilized countries live under a government by 
 popular opinion. In proportion as public opinion 
 is wise and enlightened, the government will be en- 
 lightened and wise. In other words, the people will 
 always have as good a government as their intelligence 
 and patriotism deserve, and no better. In the long run 
 government can be made better only by the improvement 
 of the public opinion on which it rests. This can be 
 done only by the spread of knowledge and the develop- 
 ment of the moral sense. It is one of the chief duties 
 of the University to send out men who, by their personal 
 influence, shall help in the making of good citizens. The 
 management of a great republic in these days is not a 
 simple thing. Our nation has within itself a host of evil 
 forces, and these forces will destroy it if their influence 
 is not met by still more potent forces working together 
 for good. We must know these evil influences, their 
 origin, their power, and their results, if we are to do 
 effective work against them. In this need lies the reason 
 for your education. 
 
 The nation and the university have the right to expect 
 of you, as educated men and women, to stand every- 
 where as forces on the side of good government. Not 
 that you should be good citizens merely; that you should 
 
 * Address to the Class of 1893, Leland Stanford Jr. University. 
 76
 
 THE HOPE OF THE STATE. 77 
 
 observe the laws, deal justly with your neighbors, pay 
 your debts, support your families, and keep out of jail. 
 All this we expect of men in general; but as you have 
 had opportunities not granted to the majority, the State 
 has the right to expect more of you. It asks not only 
 that you should break none of its laws, but that you 
 should help to make and sustain wise laws; that you 
 should stand for good, for right living, right thinking, 
 and right acting in the community. It expects you to do 
 this, even at a sacrifice of your own personal interests. 
 If you should not so stand, your education has been 
 a losing bargain. It has simply ' ' sharpened your claws 
 and whetted your tusks ' ' that you may the more easily 
 prey upon your unenlightened neighbors. 
 
 What then shall the State expect of you more than 
 of the others ? Where shall you stand when the count 
 is taken in politics, in morals, in religion? If you are 
 to help raise the standard of public opinion, you must 
 address yourself to the work in earnest. You must not 
 stand aloof from the people it is your duty to help. 
 Yet, standing with the masses, you should never lose 
 yourself in the mass. You must keep your own com- 
 pass and know your own road. The mass will move 
 to the left when your instincts and principles tell you to 
 go to the right. You may find it a hard struggle, and 
 may seem to fail at last; but a force once exerted can 
 never be lost. 
 
 It is not your duty to join yourself to organizations 
 which can take away any part of your freedom. It is 
 not your duty to vote the ticket of my party, nor of your 
 party, nor that of any one of the time-honored political 
 organizations into which men naturally fall. For you
 
 78 THE SCHOLAR IN THE COMMUNITY. 
 
 and I know that the questions which divide the great 
 parties of a free country are not, as a rule, questions 
 of morals or good citizenship. The sheep are never all 
 on one side, nor the goats on the other. Party divi- 
 sions are based, for the most part, on hereditary tenden- 
 cies, on present expediencies, and hopes of temporary 
 gain, and too often on the distribution of power and 
 plunder, of power to plunder. When your party is led 
 by bad men, or when its course is headed in the wrong 
 direction, your State expects you as educated men to 
 know it. 
 
 Your State expects you to have the courage of your 
 convictions. Your State expects you to have the power 
 to stand alone to bolt, if need be, when other modes 
 of protest fail. You will not win friends by asserting 
 your manhood against partisan pressure. You will not 
 pave the way to a vote of thanks or a nomination to Con- 
 gress, but you will keep your own self-respect, and some 
 day, when the party recovers its senses, you will see 
 it come in full run in your direction. 
 
 One duty of the scholar in politics is to serve as an 
 antidote to the thick-and-thin partisan the rock-ribbed 
 Bourbon of any party, who learns nothing, and scruples 
 at nothing. A good citizen, as has been well said, can- 
 not vote an unscratched ticket. The man who does so, 
 in whatever party, leaves in the course of years few sorts 
 of rascals, public or private, unsupported by his vote. 
 The men whom your vote helps to elect are properly 
 regarded as your representatives, and the knave, the 
 trickster, the gambler, the drunkard, the briber, the 
 boss, should not rightfully represent you. If such do 
 represent you, it would be better for our country if you
 
 7HE FREE MAN. 79 
 
 were left unrepresented, and the State has made a losing 
 bargain in educating you. 
 
 I do not plead for political isolation. That you stand 
 aloof from the majority, is no proof that you are right 
 and they are wrong. For the most part, we believe, the 
 feeling of the majority is not far from right. The great 
 heart of the republic beats true. To doubt this would 
 be to despair of popular government. But whether right 
 or wrong, the majority of the party are not the keepers 
 of your conscience. Your conscience is your own. ' ' I 
 went into this convention," said a brave man once, "a 
 free man, with my own head under my own hat, and a 
 free man I meant to come out of it. ' ' The opinions of the 
 majority are molded by the few. That among these few 
 who would mold opinion you should stand, is a reason 
 for your training in the science of government. In all 
 questions of public or private policy, be yourself, no mat- 
 ter who your grandfather was, no matter who your neigh- 
 bor may be. If you are born and bred in any party, 
 think of these things. A hereditary yoke is ignoble; 
 shake it off, and then, when once a free man, you may 
 resume your place, if you choose. If there must be a 
 hereditary partisanship in your family, be you the man 
 to start it. Be the first in your dynasty, and encourage 
 your son to be the first in his. 
 
 But your State expects more of you than mere inde- 
 pendence of hereditary prejudices. Let it never be said 
 of you: " It is for his interest to do so and so; therefore 
 we can count on him. He lives in the First Ward; there- 
 fore he believes in prohibition. He lives in the Sixth 
 Ward ; therefore his vote is for free whisky. He will make 
 by this thing; therefore he favors that course of action."
 
 8o THE SCHOLAR IN THE COMMUNITY. 
 
 It is much easier to be independent of political bosses than 
 to be free from the dictation of your own selfish instincts. 
 But the good citizen is superior to the prejudices of his 
 locality, to the selfish interests of his trade. The good 
 man is a citizen of the State, not of the Sixth Ward not of 
 the iron county, nor of the raisin county, nor of the State 
 merely, nor of the United States. The good citizen is a 
 citizen of the world; itself, as citizenship improves, be- 
 coming one vast community, the greatest of all republics. 
 For true patriotism is not a matter of waving flags and 
 Fourth of July orations. It lies not in denouncing Eng- 
 land nor in fighting Chile; not in cock-crowing nor in 
 bull-baiting. It consists in first knowing what is true 
 about one's own community or country, and then in the 
 willingness to sink one's personal interest in the welfare 
 of the whole. All patriotism which involves neither 
 knowledge nor self-devotion is a worthless counterfeit. 
 
 We have the right to expect the scholar to serve as an 
 antidote to the demagogue. You have been trained to 
 recognize the fetiches and bugaboos of the past; you 
 should know those of the present. Notions as wild, if 
 not as wicked, as the witchcraft that haunted Salem two 
 hundred years ago still vex our American life. The 
 study of history is your defense against these. As ' ' the 
 running stream, they dare na' cross," kept off the witches 
 of old, so will your studies in this field defend you from 
 bugaboos, alive or dead. You hold the magic wand be- 
 fore which the demagogue is silent and harmless. It is 
 your duty and privilege to use it for the people's good. 
 
 It is true that America is not the best governed of the 
 civilized nations. You know that this is so. You know 
 that America's foreign policy is weak, vacillating, inem-
 
 MISRULE IN AMERICA. 81 
 
 cient. You know that her internal policy is lavish, 
 careless, unjust. You know that we no longer send, as 
 in the old days, "our wisest men to make the public 
 laws. ' ' You know that our legislative bodies, from the 
 board of aldermen to the United States Senate, are not 
 always bodies of which we are proud. You know that 
 their members often are not men in whom the people 
 have confidence. Our civil service has been one of the 
 worst "on the planet"; our foreign service has been the 
 laughingstock of Europe. Our courts of justice, on the 
 whole the soundest part of our Government, are not 
 all that they should be. Too often they are neither 
 swift nor sure. Too often the blindfold goddess who 
 rules over them is quick to discern the pressure of the 
 finger of gold on the "wrong side of the balances." 
 Our currency fluctuates for the benefit of the gambler, 
 who thrives at the laborer's cost. In all this our own 
 California offers no exception. The history of her gov- 
 ernment is a short one, but it is long with the records of 
 misrule and corruption. Her average of general intelli- 
 gence is high. Her average of special knowledge is 
 low, and equally low is her standard of patriotism. 
 
 All these things we know, and worse, and they vex us 
 and discourage us, and some there are among us who 
 wish that we had a heaven-descended aristocracy, an 
 aristocracy of brains at least, who could take these 
 things out of the people's hands, out of your hands and 
 mine, and make them and keep them right. I do not 
 feel thus. It is better that the people should suffer, with 
 the remedy in their own hands, than that they should be 
 protected by some power not of themselves. Badly 
 though the people may manage their own affairs, the 
 G
 
 82 THE SCHOLAR IN THE COMMUNITY. 
 
 growth of the race depends upon their doing it. We 
 would rather the people would rule ill through choice 
 than that they should be ruled well through force. The 
 Reign of Terror gives more hope for the future than the 
 reign of the good King Henry. The story of the decline 
 and fall of empires is the story of the growth of man. 
 
 It is not that the laws of England should be made better 
 that Gladstone took into partnership, as law-makers, two 
 millions of England's farmers and workmen who can 
 barely read or write. The laws for a time, at least, will 
 not be as good, but those for whom the laws are made 
 will be better, and the good of the people is the object 
 of law. It is not our confidence in Irish wisdom and 
 prudence that leads every American to approve of Home 
 Rule in Ireland. It is our sympathy with Irish manhood 
 and our belief that Irish manhood can manage its own 
 affairs. It is not that our Southern States should be bet- 
 ter governed that three millions of freedmen, little more 
 intelligent in the mass than the dog or horse with which 
 a few years before they had been bought and sold, were 
 given the right to vote. No better for the State, per- 
 haps; for an ignorant vote is a cowardly vote, and a vote 
 which money will buy. No better for the State, but 
 better for humanity, that her laws should recognize the 
 image of God hidden in each dusky skin. For lawless- 
 ness, turbulence, misgovernment is better than prosperity 
 with its heel on the neck of a silent race which cannot 
 rise nor speak. 
 
 But all government by the people is made better when 
 the people come to know and feel its deficiencies. No 
 abuse can survive long when the people have located it. 
 When the masses know what hurts them, that particular
 
 IDEALS OF UTOPIA. 83 
 
 wrong must cease. Its life depends upon its appearing 
 in the disguise of a public blessing. Straight thinking, 
 as you have learned, comes before straight acting, and 
 both we expect of you. To you, as educated men and 
 women, the people have a right to look. They have a 
 right to expect your influence in the direction of the 
 ideal government, the republic in which government by 
 the people shall be good government as well; the govern- 
 ment from which no man nor woman shall be excluded, 
 and in which no man nor woman shall be ignorant, or 
 venal, or corrupt. 
 
 The influence of the university life is in the direction 
 of high ideals. The trained mind is the best keeper of 
 the clear conscience. It is the duty of the university to 
 fill the student's mind with high notions of how his per- 
 sonal, social, and political life ought to be conducted and 
 to lead him toward discontent with that which is on a 
 lower plane. You have all heard it said that certain 
 reforms in American life are advocated only by college 
 professors and by boys just out of college. It is said 
 that these notions of college boys would be admirable in 
 Utopia, but are ridiculous in nineteenth-century America. 
 We are told that self-seeking and corruption are essen- 
 tial elements in our American life. That in our political 
 and social battles we must not be squeamish, but must 
 fight our adversaries as devils are said to fight each 
 other with fire. Of course, this charge of Utopianism 
 is in the main true, and I trust that it may remain so. 
 The Utopian element is one which our life sorely needs. 
 We have fought the devil with fire long enough. Too 
 long have we attempted good results by evil means. 
 Too long has the right been grandly victorious through
 
 84 THE SCHOLAR IN THE COMMUNITY. 
 
 bribery, falsehood, and fraud, till we are more afraid of 
 the bad means of our friends than the bad ends of our 
 adversaries. 
 
 What though all reform seem Utopian, does that ab- 
 solve you ? Unless your soul dwells in Utopia, life is not 
 worth the keeping. Your windows should look toward 
 heaven, not into the gutter. You should stand above 
 the level of the world's baseness and filth. If our schol- 
 ars do not so stand if our training end in the production 
 merely of sharper manipulators than those we had before 
 (and we know there is an undercurrent in our college life 
 tending just in that direction), then the sooner we bar 
 our windows and don our striped uniforms, the better for 
 the country. 
 
 But we need not take this dark view of the future. We 
 know that, on the whole, training makes for virtue. 
 There is a natural connection between ' ' Sweetness and 
 Light." We know that whatever leads the youth to look 
 beyond the narrow circle in which he stands, is his best 
 safeguard against temptation. We know that if the youth 
 fall not, the man will stand. I shall not argue this ques- 
 tion. I assume it as a fact of experience, and it is this 
 fact which gives our public-school system, of which my 
 life and yours is in some degree a product, the right 
 to exist. "A dollar in a university," says Emerson, 
 ' ' is worth more than a dollar in a jail. If you take out 
 of this town the ten honestest merchants, and put in ten 
 rogues, with the same amount of capital, the rates of 
 insurance will soon indicate it, the soundness of the banks 
 will show it, the highways will be less secure, the schools 
 will feel it, the children will bring home their little dose 
 of poison, the judge will sit less firmly on his bench, and
 
 THE NATION'S NEED OF MEN. 85 
 
 his decisions will be less upright; he has lost so much 
 support and constraint, which we all need, and the pulpit 
 will betray it in a laxer rule of life." If taking from the 
 community ten good men and replacing them with bad 
 men work this evil, what will come from doing the 
 reverse ? If we add ten good men one good man 
 to any community, the banks, the courts, the churches, 
 the schools will feel it as an impulse toward better 
 things. 
 
 The statesmanship of every nation has regarded the 
 development of higher education as a plain duty to itself. 
 The great universities of the world have arisen, not from 
 the overflow of riches, but from the nation's need of men. 
 The University of Leyden was founded in the darkest 
 days of Holland's history as the strongest barrier Holland 
 could raise against Spanish oppression rs the most 
 effective weapon she could place in the hands oi W .lliam 
 the Silent. 
 
 For the State that is, every man in the State is 
 helped and strengthened by all that makes its members 
 wiser, better, or more enlightened. That you are edu- 
 cated, if educated aright, tends to raise the price of 
 every foot of land around you. When Emerson, and 
 Hawthorne, and Thoreau lived in Concord, this fact was 
 felt in the price of every city lot in Concord. Men from 
 other towns were willing to pay money in order to live 
 near them. When a smart lawyer, a few years ago, was 
 elected governor of Massachusetts, there were men who 
 left that State rather than that he should be their gov- 
 ernor. You and I are not so sensitive, perhaps; but 
 however that may be, the election of a bad man as gov- 
 ernor will be felt in the falling price of land and houses,
 
 86 THE SCHOLAR IN THE COMMUNITY. 
 
 in the falling price of honesty and truth in the markets 
 of the nation. 
 
 As in political, so in social life, should the student 
 stand as a barrier against materialism. Not alone against 
 the elaborate materialism of the erudite philosopher. Its 
 virus, dry and dusty, attenuated by its transfer from 
 Germany, can rarely do much harm. But there is a 
 subtler materialism which pervades our whole life. It 
 sits in the cushioned pews of our churches, as well as in 
 our marts of trade. It preaches the gospel of creature 
 comforts and the starvation of the spirit. It preaches 
 the gospel of selfhood, instead of the law of love. It 
 asks of all the scholar should hold dear, of truth, and 
 beauty, and goodness, and sweetness, and light, what 
 are these things worth? If they will bring no money 
 in this world, nor save our souls in the next, we want 
 nothing of them. Wherever you go after you leave the 
 college halls, you will feel the chill of this materialism. 
 You must keep your sympathies warm, and your soul 
 open to all good influences, to keep it away. 
 
 There is, too, a sort of skepticism about us against 
 which the scholar should be proof. Once the skeptic 
 was the man simply who had his eyes open; the man 
 who questioned nature and life, and from such question- 
 ing has all of our knowledge come. But questioning 
 with eyes open is not the same as doubting with eyes 
 closed. There is a doubting which saps the foundation 
 of all growth, which cuts the nerve of all progress. It is 
 the question of Pilate, who doubted "What is truth? " 
 Whether, indeed, any truth exists? And whether, after 
 all, being is other than seeming? 
 
 Every robust human life is a life of faith. Not faith
 
 THE LIFE OF FAITH. 87 
 
 in what other men have said and thought about life, or 
 death, or fate; but faith that there is something in the 
 universe that transcends man and all man's conceptions 
 of right and wrong, and which it is well for man to know. 
 
 Some forty years ago a president of the University of 
 Indiana is reported to have said: "The people insist on 
 being humbugged ; so it is our duty to humbug them. ' ' 
 Great is the power of Humbug, and many and mighty 
 are his prophets! Do you never believe this. A pin- 
 prick in the ribs will kill the charlatan, but the man who 
 is genuine throughout is clad in triple armor. To him 
 and to his teachings will the people turn long after the 
 power of humbug is forgotten. The studies you have 
 followed as a scholar should teach you to know and value 
 truth. You have found some things which you should 
 know as true, judged by any tests the world can offer. 
 
 In his relations with others, the scholar must be toler- 
 ant. Culture comes from contact with many minds. To 
 the uncultured mind, things unfamilar seem uncouth, out- 
 landish, abhorrent. A wider acquaintance with the affairs 
 of our neighbor gives us more respect for his ideas and 
 ways. He may be wrong-headed and perverse; but there 
 is surely something we can learn from him. So with 
 other nations and races. Each can teach us something. 
 In civilized lands the foreigner is no longer an outcast, 
 an object of fear or abhorrence. The degree of tolerance 
 which is shown by any people toward those whose opin- 
 ions differ from their own is one of the best tests of civ- 
 ilization. It is a recognition of individuality and the rights 
 of the individual in themselves and in others. 
 
 I need not dwell on this. The growth of tolerance is 
 one of the most important phases in the history of mod-
 
 88 THE SCHOLAR IN THE COMMUNITY. 
 
 ern civilization. The right of freedom of the mind, the 
 right of private interpretation, is a birthright of humanity. 
 As the scholar has taken a noble part in the struggle 
 which has won for us this freedom, so should he guard 
 it in the future as one of his highest possessions. It is 
 each man's right to hew his own pathway toward the 
 truth. If there be in this country a town, North, South, 
 East, West, on the banks of the Yazoo, or the Hudson, 
 or the Sacramento, where an honest man cannot speak 
 his honest mind without risk of violence or of social 
 ostracism, in that town our freedom is but slavery still, 
 and our civilization but a barbarism thinly disguised. 
 
 The man who speaks may be a sage or a fool; he may 
 be wise as a serpent, or harmless as a calf; he may please 
 us or not: yet, whatever he be, his freedom of speech is 
 his American's birthright. To words, if you like, you 
 can answer with words. The whole atmosphere is yours, 
 from which to frame your replies. If you are right, and 
 he is wrong, so much the stronger will your answer be. 
 But the club, the brick, the shotgun, or the dynamite 
 bomb are not the answer of the free man or the brave. 
 They convince nobody; and of all oppressive laws, the 
 law which is taken in the hands of the mob is the most 
 despotic and most dangerous. 
 
 The scholar should never allow himself to become a 
 mere iconoclast. He has no strength to waste in con- 
 troversy. Truth is non-resistant because its enemies 
 cannot last. There is not much to be gained from 
 tearing down. Build something better, and the old will 
 disappear of itself. 
 
 When a righteous man attempts to reform society by 
 attacking an unrighteous man, the public forms a ring
 
 THE SEARCH FOR THE HOLY GRAIL. 89 
 
 around the two, to see that there is fair play, and that 
 truth and falsehood are given alike a fair show. Soon 
 the public ceases to be interested in the question of who 
 is right, and becomes interested in who is the best fellow. 
 
 The people have the right to expect of the scholar 
 growth. One of the saddest products of the college is 
 that which in science is called ' ' arrested development. ' ' 
 When the student is transplanted from the hotbed of the 
 college to the cold soil of the world, his growth some- 
 times ceases, to the disappointment of his friends and 
 the dismay of those who have faith in higher education. 
 Without that perseverance which thrives under adver- 
 sity, your attainments in college will avail you little. 
 
 You have reached one port in the journey of life; and 
 of this achievement you have the right to be proud. 
 But the first port is not the end of the voyage. The 
 great ocean is still beyond you, and the value of the 
 voyage in the long run is proportionate to the distance 
 of the port for which you are bound. It takes a longer 
 preparation and a larger equipment for a voyage to the 
 Cape of Good Hope than for a sail to the ' ' Isle of Dogs. ' ' 
 
 The value of a life is measured by its aim rather than 
 by its achievement. Loftiness of aim is essential to lofti- 
 ness of spirit. Nothing that is really high can be reached 
 in a short time nor by any easy route. Most men, as 
 men go, aim at low things, and they reach the objects of 
 their ambitions. They have only to move in straight 
 lines to an end clearly visible. Not so with you. You 
 are bound on a quest beyond the limit of your vision. 
 There are mountains to climb, rivers to ford, deserts to 
 cross on your search for the Holy Grail. The end is 
 never in sight. You have always to trust and struggle
 
 90 THE SCHOLAR IN THE COMMUNITY. 
 
 on, parting company at every step .with those who have 
 chosen more accessible goals or are diverted from the 
 great quest by chance attractions. ' ' Heaven is not 
 reached by a single bound," nor by him who knows not 
 whither he is going. 
 
 That your aims in life are high, that you are pledged 
 to a life of effort and growth, is shown by your presence 
 here. Were it not so, you would never have pressed 
 thus far onward. You-would be with the hundreds and 
 thousands of your contemporaries who are satisfied with 
 inferior aims reached in an inferior way. 
 
 We all recognize this fact, even though we may not 
 have put the thought into words. The banks recognize 
 it. Without a dollar in your pocket, you can borrow 
 money on the strength of your purpose. Many of you 
 have already done this. You may have to do it again. 
 It is right that you should. Strength of purpose is a 
 legitimate capital. By your own desires and aspirations 
 you are enriched. In a free country there can be but 
 one poor man the man without a purpose. 
 
 What you have done thus far is little in itself. You 
 have reached but the threshold of learning. Your edu- 
 cation is barely begun, and there is no one but you who 
 can finish it. Your thoughts are but as the thoughts of 
 children, your writings but trash from the world's waste- 
 paper basket. Nothing that you know, or think, or do 
 but has been better known or thought or done by others. 
 The work of your lives is barely begun. You must con- 
 tinue to grow as you are now growing before you can 
 serve the world in any important way. But the promise 
 of the future is with you. You have the power and will 
 of growth. The sunshine and rain of the next century
 
 THE LAW OF GROWTH 91 
 
 will fall upon you. You will be stimulated by its 
 breezes, you will be inspired by its spirit. 
 
 It is not an easy thing to grow. Decay and decline is 
 easier than growth so the trees will tell you. Growth 
 is slow, and hard, and wearisome. The lobster suffers 
 the pangs of death every time he outgrows and sheds his 
 shell; but each succeeding coat of armor is thicker, and 
 stronger, and more roomy. So with you. You will 
 find it easier not to develop. It will be pleasanter to 
 adjust yourself to old circumstances and to let the moss 
 grow on your back. The struggle for existence is hard; 
 the struggle for improvement is harder; and some there 
 are among you who sooner or later will cease struggling. 
 Such will be the cases of arrested development those 
 who promised much and did little, those whose educa- 
 tion did not bring effectiveness. Be never satisfied with 
 what you have accomplished, the deeds you can do, the 
 thoughts you can think. Such satisfaction is the sting 
 of old age, the feeling that the best is behind us, and that 
 the noble quest is over forever. 
 
 The scholar shall be a man of honor, one whom men 
 may trust. Once a king wrote to his queen, after a 
 disastrous battle: "Madam, all is lost all but our 
 honor." When honor is saved a battle can never be 
 lost. But in many of the battles and sham fights of the 
 world in most of those, perhaps, in which you will be 
 called to take part, the honor on one side or the other is 
 the first thing to be lost. Some men, in entering public 
 life, lay aside their consciences as Cortez burned his 
 ships, that they may not be tempted to retreat toward 
 honor and decency. People say, as you have heard, 
 that the sense of honor in our republic is waning; that
 
 92 THE SCHOLAR IN THE COMMUNITY. 
 
 sentiment in politics or business is a thing of the past. 
 Certainly, from Franklin, and Hamilton, and Knox, and 
 Jay to some public servants we have seen, the fall has 
 been great, and the descent to Avernus seems easy. We 
 hear sometimes of men who possess the old-fashioned 
 ideas of honor, and we associate these men with the 
 knee-breeches, and wigs, and ruffles of the same old- 
 fashioned times. The moral law is growing flexible with 
 use, and parts of it, like the Blue Laws of Connecticut, 
 are already out of date. See to it that it is not so with 
 you. In any contest fair play is better than victory. The 
 essence of success is fair play. 
 
 As honest men and women, you will often find your- 
 selves in opposition to those who regard themselves as 
 leaders of reform.* A cause founded on sentiment, even 
 though it be righteous sentiment, cannot succeed all at 
 once, and never, unless controlled by wisdom. Political 
 expediency may be a wiser guide than feeling alone. 
 There is some truth in the paradox that sentimentality in 
 politics is more dangerous than venality, and that the 
 venal man is our safeguard against the idealist and enthu- 
 siast. Venality, with all its evils, is conservative, hence 
 
 * Professor H. H. Powers has said : "A knowledge of the magnitude and 
 complexity of the causes of social phenomena tends to disparage panaceas 
 and all hasty efforts for social improvement. However much we may believe 
 in the control of social evolution by reason and human effort, a study of 
 society cannot but convince us that changes must be slow to be either whole- 
 some or permanent, and that effort spent on merely proximate causes is 
 ineffectual. These conclusions are not agreeable to those who organize cru- 
 sades. It is one of the painful incidents of science that the student is so 
 often called upon to part company with the reformer. The fervid appeals and 
 enthusiastic championship by which he seeks to enlist men into a grand 
 reforming mob grate harshly on the ears of one who sees the difficulties of 
 bettering society, while the other sees only its desirability. After a few vain 
 attempts to inoculate a little science into these reformers while they are 
 charging at double-quick, the student is apt to give up the attempt and to 
 seem henceforth unfriendly to reform."
 
 "LAISSEZ-FAIRE." 93 
 
 opposed to ill-considered action. ' l Laissez-faire ' ' is now 
 a discredited principle. It is no longer possible to let 
 things take their course when so many men try to find 
 out what is right, and use every effort to bring it about. 
 But we must remember that men can do only what is 
 possible. All unscientific or sentimental tinkering with 
 society, and law, and government is still "laissez-faire." 
 The blind effort to do the impossible effects nothing. It 
 is only the whirl of the water in the eddy of the stream, 
 which in no way hastens or changes its flow. Man must 
 first learn the direction of the currents. The efforts 
 he puts forth must be in harmony with these currents, 
 else his labors may hinder, and not help, real progress. 
 The opposite of laissez-faire is not action simply, but 
 action based on knowledge. 
 
 To be known as an apostle or as the devotee of some 
 special idea, often prevents a man from learning or from 
 growing. The apostle fears to confuse his mind with 
 the results of the study of social forces. The scholar 
 cannot ignore these forces, and must be prepared to 
 reckon with each one. But this does not justify indiffer- 
 ence or obstruction. Wisdom and sobriety arise from 
 the efforts of wise and sober men. Wise and sober you 
 should be, if you are rightly educated. 
 
 Not all of you will leave your names as a legacy to 
 your country's history. The alumni roll of your Alma 
 Mater may be at last the only list that remembers you ; 
 but if you have been a center of right living and right 
 thinking, if the character of your neighbors is the better 
 for your having lived, your life mission will have been 
 fulfilled. No man or woman can do more than that. 
 "True piety," as you have heard to-day, " consists in
 
 94 THE SCHOLAR IN THE COMMUNITY. 
 
 reverence for the gods and help to men.* Therefore 
 help men. Seek that spiritual utilitarianism whose creed 
 is social perfection, and foster that intelligent patriotism 
 which chastens because it loves. ' ' 
 
 * Professor George Elliott Howard.
 
 VI. 
 THE SCHOOL AND THE STATE.* 
 
 THE very essence of republicanism is popular educa- 
 tion. There is no virtue in the acts of ignorant 
 majorities, unless by dint of repeated action the ma- 
 jority is no longer ignorant. The very work of ruling 
 is in itself education. As Americans, we believe in gov- 
 ernment by the people. This is not that the people are 
 the best of rulers, but because a growth in wisdom is sure 
 to go with an increase in responsibility. 
 
 The voice of the people is not the voice of God; but 
 if this voice be smothered, it becomes the voice of the 
 demon. The red flag of the anarchist is woven where 
 the people think in silence. In popular government, it 
 has been said, ignorance has the same right to be repre- 
 sented as wisdom. This may be true, but the perpetuity 
 of such government demands that this fact of represen- 
 tation should help to transform ignorance into wisdom. 
 Majorities are generally wrong, but only through the ex- 
 perience of their mistakes is the way opened to the per- 
 manent establishment of right. The justification of the 
 experiment of universal suffrage is the formation of a 
 training-school in civics, which, in the long run, will bring 
 about good government. 
 
 Our fathers built for the future a future even yet 
 unrealized. America is not, has never been, the best 
 
 Address given on Charter Day of the University of California, at Berkeley, 
 March, 1893. 
 
 95
 
 96 THE SCHOOL AND 7 HE STATE. 
 
 governed of civilized nations. The iron-handed dictator- 
 ship of Germany is, in its way, a better government than 
 our people have ever given us. That is, it follows a more 
 definite and consistent policy. Its affairs of state are con- 
 ducted with greater economy, greater intelligence, and 
 higher dignity than ours. It is above the influence of 
 the two arch-enemies of the American State the cor- 
 ruptionist and the spoilsman. If this were all, we might 
 welcome a Bismarck as our ruler, in place of our succes- 
 sion of weak-armed and short-lived Presidents. 
 
 But this is not all. It is not true in a changing world 
 that that government "which is best administered is 
 best." This is the maxim of tyranny. Good government 
 may be a matter of secondary importance even. Our 
 government by the people is for the people's growth. 
 It is the great training-school in governmental methods, 
 and in the progress which it insures lies the certain pledge 
 of better government in the future. This pledge, I 
 believe, enables us to look with confidence on the gravest 
 of political problems, problems which other nations have 
 never solved, and which can be faced by no statesman- 
 ship other than 
 
 "The right divine of man, 
 The million trained to be free." 
 
 And, in spite of all reaction and discouragement, every 
 true American feels that this trust in the future is no idle 
 boast. 
 
 But popular education has higher aims than those in- 
 volved in intelligent citizenship. No country can be 
 truly well governed in which any person is prevented, 
 either by interference or by neglect, from making the 
 most of himself. " Of all state treasures," says Andrew
 
 THE DUTY OF THE STATE. 97 
 
 D. White, " the genius and talent of citizens is the most 
 precious. It is a duty of society to itself, a duty which 
 it cannot throw off, to see that the stock of talent and 
 genius in each generation may have a chance for develop- 
 ment, that it may be added to the world's stock and 
 aid in the world's work." 
 
 This truth was recognized to its fullest degree by the 
 founders of our Government, and so from the very first 
 provision was made for popular education. The wisdom 
 of this provision being recognized, our inquiry is this : 
 How far should the State go in this regard? Should 
 popular education cease with the primary schools, or is it 
 the duty of the State to maintain all parts of the educa- 
 tional system primary schools, secondary schools, col- 
 leges, technical and professional schools, and the schools 
 of instruction through investigation, to which belong the 
 name of university ? 
 
 There have been from time immemorial two schools in 
 political economy two opposite tendencies in the ad- 
 ministration of government; the one to magnify, the 
 other to reduce the power and responsibility of the State. 
 The one would regard the State as simply the board of 
 police. Its chief function is the administration of justice. 
 In other matters it would stay its hands, leaving each 
 man or institution to work out its own destiny in the 
 struggle for existence. The weaker yield, the stronger 
 move on. Progress must come from the inevitable sur- 
 vival of the fittest ' ' Laissez-faire, ' ' (let it alone) is the 
 motto, in all times and conditions. 
 
 The opposite tendency is to make the State not just, 
 but benevolent. In its extreme the State would become a 
 sort of generous uncle to every man within it. It would 
 H
 
 98 THE SCHOOL AND THE STATE. 
 
 feed the hungry, clothe the needy, furnish work for the 
 idle, bounties for those engaged in losing business, and 
 protection for those who feel too keenly the competition 
 inherent in the struggle for existence. It would make of 
 the State a gigantic trust, in which all citizens might take 
 part, and by which all should be lifted from the reach of 
 poverty by official tugging at the common boot-strap. 
 
 Somewhere between these two extremes, I believe, 
 lies the line of a just policy. Aristotle says that "it is 
 the duty of the state to accomplish every worthy end 
 which it can reach better than private enterprise can do. ' ' 
 Accepting this view of the State's duty, let us see to 
 what extent education comes within its function. Edu- 
 cation is surely a worthy object. Mill says: "In the 
 matter of education, the intervention of government is 
 justifiable, because the case is not one in which the 
 interest and judgment of the consumer are a sufficient 
 security for the goodness of the commodity." 
 
 In other words, unless the State take the matter in 
 hand and make provision for something better, a cheap 
 or poor article of education may be furnished, to the in- 
 jury of the people. This authority of the State over the 
 lower schools has been jealously guarded by the Ameri- 
 can people, and the result of this care has been one of the 
 chief objects of our national pride. On the other hand, 
 the higher schools, and to a still greater degree the pro- 
 fessional schools, of America, have been allowed to shift 
 for themselves, in accordance with the doctrine of " laissez- 
 faire" What has been the result? 
 
 "The common school is the hope of our country." 
 So we all agree, and this sentence stands on the letter- 
 heads of half of the school officers in the West. It is
 
 THE VOICE OF THE MOB. 99 
 
 the common-school education that elevates our masses 
 above the dignity of a mob. Such slight knowledge at 
 least is essential to the coherence of the State. 
 
 "An illiterate mass of men, large or small," says Presi- 
 dent White, " is a mob. If such a mob had a hundred 
 millions of heads if it extends from ice to coral, it is 
 none the less a mob : and the voice of a mob has been in 
 all time evil; for it has ever been the voice of a tyrant, 
 conscious of power, unconscious of responsibility." 
 
 "The great republics of antiquity and of the medieval 
 period failed, ' ' he continues, ' ' for want of that enlight- 
 enment which could enable their citizens to appreciate 
 free institutions and maintain them. Most of the great 
 e/Forts for republican institutions in modern times have 
 been drowned in unreason, fanaticism, anarchy, and blood. 
 No sense of responsibility can be brought to bear on a 
 mob. It passes at one bound from extreme credulity 
 toward demagogues to extreme skepticism towards states- 
 men; from mawkish sympathy towards criminals to blood- 
 thirsty ferocity against the innocent, from the wildest 
 rashness to the most abject fear. To rely on a constitu- 
 tion to control such a mob would be like relying on a 
 cathedral organ to still the fury of a tornado. Build your 
 constitution as lordly as you may, let its ground-tone of 
 justice be the most profound, let its utterances of human 
 right be trumpet-tongued, let its combination of checks 
 and balances be the most subtle, yet what statesman shall 
 so play upon its mighty keys as to still the howling 
 tempest of party spirit, or sectional prejudice, or race 
 hatreds, sweeping through an illiterate mob crowding a 
 continent ? ' ' 
 
 The reformer Zwingli saw three hundred years ago
 
 ioo THE SCHOOL AND THE STATE. 
 
 that Protestantism meant popular education, and popular 
 education meant republicanism. It meant popular edu- 
 cation because the recognition of the right of the indi- 
 vidual to form his own opinions made it the duty of the 
 state to give him the means of making these opinions 
 intelligent. It meant republicanism, because the right 
 of private interpretation in religion gave the people the 
 right to opinions of their own in matters of politics. 
 Where the people have a mind, they must, sooner or 
 later, have a voice. 
 
 Long ago, at the end of the war, Edmund Kirke told 
 us, in the Atlantic Monthly, the story of the life of a brave 
 but unlettered scout, who served in Garfield's army in 
 Southern Kentucky John Jordan, "from the head 
 of Bayne. ' ' * The story, which was a true one, was 
 designed to furnish a sort of running parallel between 
 the lives of two brave and God-fearing men, supposed to 
 be equal in ability, and equally lowly in birth. The one 
 wore the general's epaulets, and still later, as we know, 
 he became President of the United States, known and 
 honored of all men. The other wore the rough home- 
 spun garb of the scout, and now that the war is over, he 
 lies in an unknown grave in the Cumberland Mountains. 
 And this difference, so the story tells us, lay in this: 
 "The free schools which Ohio gave the one, and of which 
 Kentucky robbed the other!" "Plant a free school on 
 every Southern cross-road, ' ' says Edmund Kirke, ' ' and 
 every Southern Jordan will become a Garfield. Then, 
 and not till then, will the Union be redeemed. ' ' 
 
 And so this is no idle phrase, ' ' The common school 
 is the hope of our country, ' ' and its maintenance is a 
 
 * The Bayne is a small tributary .of Licking River, in Kentucky.
 
 THE HOPE OF OUR COUNTRY. 101 
 
 worthy object which the statesmanship of the people 
 must not neglect. It is something by which all citizens 
 are helped; for in the end all interests are touched by it. 
 
 It is too late to ask in America whether this result 
 could be reached in no other way. Private benevolence, 
 private enterprise, the interest of religious bodies, none 
 of these has been trusted by the American people as a 
 substitute for its own concerted action. In the early his- 
 tory of the West, Judge David D. Banta tells us, ' ' There 
 were two red rags that required but little shaking to in- 
 flame the populace. One of these was sectarianism; the 
 other, aristocracy." Our young democracy was in con- 
 stant fear lest one or the other of these evil influences 
 should enter and dominate its schools. 
 
 And even now, while the early prejudices have in great 
 part passed away, our people are especially jealous of any 
 attempt on the part of any organization to turn the 
 schools to its own ends. No church can touch them, 
 and ultimately they are beyond the reach of any political 
 party. Religion, morality, politics even, may be taught 
 in them, but in the interest of religion, morality, and 
 politics alone not to advance any political party or to 
 increase the following of any religious sect or coalition 
 of sects. In no matter is there greater unanimity of 
 feeling among our people than in this, and he must be 
 an ardent partisan, indeed, who does not feel it and 
 respect it 
 
 From another quarter we hear this objection to popu- 
 lar education : The public schools render the poor dis- 
 contented with poverty. The child of the common 
 laborer is unwilling to remain common. The pride of 
 Merrie England used to lie in this, that each peasant and
 
 102 THE SCHOOL AND THE STATE. 
 
 workman was contented to be peasant and workman. 
 To those who inherited the good things of the realm, it 
 was a constant pleasure to see the masses below them 
 contented to remain there. 
 
 But popular education breaks down the barriers of 
 caste, and therefore increases the restlessness of those 
 shut in by such barriers. The respect for hereditary 
 rank and title is fast disappearing, even in conservative 
 England, to the great dismay of those who have no claim 
 to respect other than that which they had inherited. 
 
 Nor has this spirit been wanting in America. My own 
 great-grandfather, John Elderkin Waldo, said inTolland, 
 Connecticut, a century ago, that there would ' ' never again 
 be good times in New England till the laborer once more 
 was willing to work all day for a sheep's head and 
 pluck." That the good times were past was due, he 
 thought, to the influence of "the little schoolhouses 
 scattered over the hills, which were spreading the spirit 
 of sedition and equality. ' ' 
 
 But the progress of our country has been along the 
 very lines which this good man so dreaded. The spirit 
 of responsibility fostered by the little schoolhouses has 
 become our surest safeguard against sedition. The man 
 who is intelligent and free has no impulse toward sedi- 
 tion, and for this reason, the people have the right to see 
 that every child shall grow up intelligent and free. They 
 must create their own schools, and they have the plain 
 duty to themselves in making education free to make it 
 likewise compulsory. No child in America has the right 
 to grow up ignorant. 
 
 So, leaving the common schools to the State, shall the 
 State's work stop there? Is further education different
 
 THE UNIVERSITY A PUBLIC SCHOOL. 103 
 
 in its relations to the community ? Does a special virtue 
 attach to reading, writing, and arithmetic which is not 
 found in literature, philosophy, history, or science ? And 
 shall the State give only the first, and leave the others to 
 shift for themselves ? 
 
 In Europe, education has progressed from above down- 
 ward. From the first, higher education has been under 
 public control, and the maintenance of universities is a 
 state duty which few have ever questioned. The struggle 
 for public control in England has concerned only the 
 lower schools, not the universities. The school problem in 
 England to-day is the absurd one of how to make educa- 
 tion compulsory without at the same time making it free. 
 
 In America the same traditions were inherited, and 
 the founding of the first colleges on a basis of public 
 funds came as a matter of course. The State univer- 
 sity, maintained by direct taxation, has been a prominent 
 factor in the organization of each State of the Union 
 outside of the original thirteen, and most of the latter 
 form no exception to the rule. And, with varying for- 
 tunes, the growth of each one of these schools has kept 
 pace with the growth of the commonwealth, of which it 
 forms a part. 
 
 Eighty years ago, when ignorance and selfishness 
 held less sway in our legislatures than to-day, because 
 the influence of a few men of ideas was proportion- 
 ately greater, the Constitution of the infant State of 
 Indiana provided that: "Whereas, knowledge and 
 learning generally diffused through a community being 
 essential to the preservation of a free government, and 
 spreading the opportunities and advantages of education 
 through the various parts of the country being highly
 
 104 THE SCHOOL AND THE STATE. 
 
 conducive to this end, it shall be the duty" of the 
 General Assembly to ' ' pass such laws as shall be calcu- 
 lated to encourage intellectual, scientifical and agricultural 
 improvement, by allowing rewards and immunities for 
 the promotion and improvement of arts, sciences, 
 commerce, manufactures, and natural history, and to 
 countenance and encourage the principles of humanity, 
 industry, and morality." To these ends the General 
 Assembly was required ' ' to provide, by law, for a general 
 system of education, ascending in a regular gradation 
 from township schools to a State university, wherein 
 tuition shall be gratis and equally free to all." And 
 all this was guarded by a further provision ' ' for absolute 
 freedom of worship, and that no religious test should 
 ever be required as a qualification to any office of trust 
 or profit," in the State of Indiana. 
 
 It is evident from this that the pioneers of the West 
 regarded the colleges as essentially public schools as 
 much so as the township schools, and that no idea of 
 separate control and support of the higher institutions 
 was present in their minds. But the judgment of the 
 fathers is ever open to reconsideration. That the last 
 generation thought it wise that the State should provide 
 for higher education is in itself no argument. What 
 shall be our answer in the light of facts to-day? Let us 
 recall the words of Aristotle: " It is the duty of the state 
 to accomplish every worthy end which it can reach better 
 than private effort can do." 
 
 I do not need to plead for the value of higher educa- 
 tion. The man who doubts this is beyond the reach of 
 argument. The men who have made our country are 
 its educated men; not alone its college graduates for
 
 THE ME*{ WHO MADE AMERICA. 105 
 
 there is no special virtue in a college diploma, but men 
 of broad views and high ideals, to give which is the end 
 of higher education. 
 
 Moses Coit Tyler, of Cornell University, has said that 
 the men of the early American colleges made success in 
 the Revolutionary War possible. Discussing the effect 
 of the higher institutions of learning on colonial life, he 
 observes: "Still another effect of the early colleges was 
 on the political union and freedom of the colonies. To 
 them we are indebted for American liberty and independ- 
 ence. The colleges educated the people and hastened 
 the advent of freedom by rearing the men who led the 
 colonists in their uprising. It was a contest of brains 
 ten years before the war. The colonies sent to their 
 congresses representatives who began issuing state papers 
 in which the King and Parliament expected to find crude 
 arguments and railings. They were astonished to find 
 in them, however, decency, firmness, and wisdom, solid- 
 ity, reason, and sagacity. Chatham said: 'You will find 
 nothing like it in the world. The histories of Greece 
 and Rome give us nothing equal to it, and all attempts 
 to force servitude on such a people will be useless.' 
 And these men," continues Mr. Tyler, "were the 'boys' 
 of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and William and 
 Mary." 
 
 Dr. Angell has lately said that the history of Iowa is 
 the history of her State university. The greatness of 
 the State has come through the growth of the men the 
 State has trained. If this be true of Iowa, how much 
 more is it true of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Virginia, 
 States which have shown more liberality toward higher 
 education than Iowa has yet done.
 
 io6 THE SCHOOL AND THE STATE. 
 
 "The preliminary education which many of our 
 strongest men have received," says President White, 
 ' ' leaves them simply beasts of prey. It has sharpened 
 their claws and whetted their tusks. A higher educa- 
 tion, whether in science, literature, or history, not only 
 sharpens a man's faculties, but gives him new exemplars 
 and ideals. He is lifted to a plane from which he can 
 look down upon success in corruption with the scorn it 
 deserves. The letting-down in character of our National 
 and State councils, has notoriously increased just as the 
 predominance of men of advanced education in those 
 councils has decreased. President Barnard' s admirable 
 paper showing the relatively diminishing number of men 
 of advanced education in our public stations, decade by 
 decade, marks no less the rise, decade by decade, of 
 material corruption. This is no mere coincidence. There 
 is a relation here of cause and effect. ' ' 
 
 The common school is the hope of our country. In 
 like manner, the high school and college are the hope of 
 the common school, and the university the hope of the 
 college. Each part of the system depends on the next 
 higher for its standards and for its inspiration. From 
 those educated in the higher schools the teachers in the 
 lower must come. Lop off the upper branches of the 
 tree, and the sap ceases to rise in its trunk. Cut off the 
 higher schools from the educational system, and its growth 
 and progress stop. Weakness at the head means paralysis 
 of the members. 
 
 In the early days, when, as Whittier tells us, "the 
 people sent their wisest men to make the public laws," 
 the close relation of higher education to the public wel- 
 fare was recognized by all. John Adams said: "It is
 
 THE GROWTH OF COLLEGES. 107 
 
 Jo American seminaries of learning that America is in- 
 Sebted for her glory and prosperity. ' ' 
 
 The early colleges were sustained, as a matter of course, 
 either from public funds or from voluntary gifts, in which 
 every man and woman took part. ' ' The strongest col- 
 leges," says Professor Tyler again, "were not created 
 by foreign patrons, but by the mass of the people. They 
 were the children of poverty, self-sacrifice, and toil. Har- 
 vard sprang from the popular heart. In its early days, 
 the families of all the colonies were invited to set apart, 
 each person, an annual donation for the college, a peck 
 of corn or twelvepence in money. And to this invita- 
 tion all responded willingly. ' ' 
 
 This direct connection of college and people was one 
 of constant mutual advantage. It intensified the public 
 interest in higher education, while it constrained the col- 
 lege to shape its work for the people's good. The high 
 esteem accorded to the colleges led wealthy men to give 
 them their attention. So it became with time the fashion 
 to leave money by bequest to the colleges. In the older 
 States, such money was usually given to the schools 
 already established, and, through repeated bequests, 
 some of these became comparatively wealthy and inde- 
 pendent of the aid of the public funds. 
 
 In the West and South, this generosity has shown 
 itself rather in the founding of new institutions, instead 
 of making the old ones strong. As the little towns of 
 the forest and prairie grew into great cities, so it was 
 supposed that, through some hidden force of vitality, the 
 little colleges would grow into great universities. This 
 process of planting without watering has gone on until 
 the whole country is dotted with schools, called by the
 
 io8 THE SCHOOL AND THE STATE. 
 
 name of college or university on an average more than 
 a dozen to each State. Some of these are well endowed, 
 more ill endowed, and most not endowed at all. But 
 rich or poor, weak or strong, each one serves in some 
 way to perpetuate its founder's ideas and to preserve his 
 name from oblivion. 
 
 Many of these are honored names, the names of men 
 who have loved learning and revered wisdom, and who 
 have wished to help, in the only way possible to them, 
 toward the discovery and dissemination of truth. Other 
 names there are which can be honored only when the 
 personality of their possessor is forgotten, men whose 
 highest motive has been to secure a monument, more 
 conspicuous, if not more enduring, than brass. The col- 
 lege founded by rich men, and obliged to depend on the 
 gifts of rich men for its continuance, is sometimes, though 
 not always, forced into degrading positions on account 
 of favors received or favors expected. The officers of 
 more than one of our colleges dare scarcely claim their 
 souls as their own for fear of offending some wealthy 
 patron. There is a college in New England of old and 
 honored name, in which to-day the faculty go about with 
 bated breath for fear of offending two wealthy spinsters 
 in the town, whose money the college hopes to receive. 
 
 This growing dependence on the large gifts of a few 
 men tends to carry our colleges farther and farther from 
 the people. A school supported wholly by the interest 
 on endowments too often has little care for public opin- 
 ion, and hence has little incentive to use its influence 
 toward right opinions. Too often it ceases to respond 
 to the spirit of the times. The Zeitgeist passes it by. 
 It becomes the headquarters of conservatism, and within
 
 A BATH OF THE PEOPLE. 109 
 
 its walls ancient methods and obsolete modes of thought 
 are perpetuated. Such colleges need what Lincoln called 
 a " bath of the people " a contact with that humanity 
 for whose improvement the college exists, and which it 
 should be the mission of the college to elevate and inspire. 
 Endowments, independent of popular influence, may be- 
 come fatal to aggressiveness and to inspiration, however 
 much they may give of material aid to the work of in- 
 vestigation. 
 
 It is not a misfortune to a college that it should be 
 dependent on the will of the people it serves. The pio- 
 neer school in the education of women (Mount Holyoke 
 Seminary), has to this day neither patron nor great en- 
 dowment. Its founder was a woman, rich only in zeal, 
 who gave all that she had her life to the cause of the 
 education of girls. Mary Ly on' s appeal was not to a few 
 rich men to give a hundred thousand apiece, the pro- 
 ceeds of some successful deal in stocks or margins, but to 
 the farmers, clergymen, mechanics, and shopkeepers of 
 New England to give each the little he could spare. The 
 prayers, and tears, and good wishes, and scanty dollars 
 of thousands of good people gave to this school of faith 
 and hope a most substantial foundation. 
 
 Huber says of the University of Oxford, that when it had 
 neither buildings nor land, "its intellectual importance 
 was fully acknowledged. ' ' When it received vast privi- 
 leges, and vast endowments, its intellectual prominence 
 was obscured by the growth of forms, conventionalities, 
 and sinecures. It became the stronghold of conserva- 
 tism, of reaction against modern civilization and modern 
 science. 
 
 Darwin speaks of the instruction in the English uni-
 
 no THE SCHOOL AND THE STATE. 
 
 versities in his time as " incredibly dull," and in almost 
 all of their departments an absolute waste of the student's 
 time. " Half of the professors of Oxford," said a grad- 
 uate of one of its colleges to me only a few days ago, 
 "live on their stipends and simply soak." The strug- 
 gle for existence is the basis of progress. Let all the 
 professors in a university be placed beyond the reach of 
 this struggle, and the influence of the university rapidly 
 deteriorates. It is a law of nature, from which nothing 
 can escape. Whatever is alive must show a reason for 
 living. 
 
 Not long ago Dr. Dollinger said in the University of 
 Munich that there was not in all America a school which 
 rose to the rank of a third-rate German university. This 
 may be true, so far as privileges and endowments go, for 
 the wolf is close to the door of even our richest colleges. 
 But the usefulness of the college is not gauged by its size, 
 nor by its material equipment. Ernst Haeckel, profes- 
 sor in the third-class University of Jena, tells us that the 
 amount of original investigation actually done in a uni- 
 versity is usually in inverse ratio to the completeness 
 and costliness of its equipments. In this paradox there 
 is a basis of truth. 
 
 We speak too often of the university and of its pow- 
 ers or needs, as though the school were a separate crea- 
 ture, existing for its own sake. The university exists 
 only in the teachers which compose it and direct its ac- 
 tivities. It exists for the benefit of its students, and 
 through them for the benefit of the community, in the ex- 
 tension of culture and the increase in the sum of human 
 knowledge. Its only gain is in making this benefit greater; 
 its only loss is in the diminution or deterioration of its
 
 THE WINDS OF FREEDOM, in 
 
 influence. All questions of wealth and equipment are 
 wholly subsidiary to this. The value of the university, 
 then, is not in proportion to its bigness, but to its inspi- 
 ration. The Good Spirit cares not for the size of its 
 buildings or the length of its list of professors or stu- 
 dents. It only asks, in the words of the old reformer, 
 Ulrich von Hiitten, if "die Luft der Freiheit weM?" 
 whether "the winds of freedom are blowing." 
 
 Doubtless, wealthy men would grade our roads, build 
 our courthouses, conduct our courts do anything for 
 the public good, if the State should neglect these mat- 
 ters, or turn them over to private hands. But this would 
 not release the people from their duty in this matter. 
 The people have safety only in independence. ' ' There 
 is," says President White, "no system more unrepubli- 
 can than that by which a nation or a State, in considera- 
 tion of a few hundreds or thousands of dollars, delivers 
 over its system of advanced instruction to be controlled 
 and limited by the dogmas and whims of living donors 
 or dead testators. In more than one nation dead hands, 
 stretching out from graves closed generations gone, have 
 lain with a deadly chill upon institutions for advanced 
 instruction during centuries. More than one institution 
 in our own country has felt its grip and chill. If we ought 
 to govern ourselves in anything, it ought to be in this." 
 We should trust the people to judge their own needs, 
 and should have faith that eventually no real need will 
 be left unsatisfied. 
 
 But may we not depend upon the interests of some one 
 or more of our religious organizations to furnish the means 
 of higher education ? One of our great religious bodies, 
 at least, stands ready to relieve the State of all responsi-
 
 ii2 THE SCHOOL AND THE STATE. 
 
 bility for education, higher or lower, if it may be allowed 
 to educate in its own way. But the people are not will- 
 ing that this should be so. They believe that the public 
 school should be free from all sectarian influences of 
 whatever sort. The other religious bodies in our midst, 
 for the most part, disclaim all desire, as well as all power, 
 to provide for lower education, preferring to spend their 
 strength on the higher. This is apparently not on ac- 
 count of the superior importance of collegiate education, 
 nor because denominational influences are stronger on 
 young men than on boys. It is simply because a college 
 is less expensive, and can be more definitely controlled 
 than can a system of lower schools. 
 
 I shall have little to say on the subject of denomina- 
 tional colleges, and nothing by way of criticism. If they 
 do not stand in the way of schools of higher purpose 
 and better equipment, they can do no harm. If again, 
 like Yale and Harvard, they become transformed into 
 schools of the broadest purpose, they cease to be, whether 
 in name or not, denominational, but become, in fact, schools 
 of the State. Very many of the denominational schools 
 have been well equipped and well manned, and have 
 fought a good fight for sound learning, as well as for the 
 belief which their founders have deemed correct. But 
 in too many of them the zeal of the founders has out- 
 run their strength, and a pretense of doing on the part 
 of a few half-starved professors has taken the place of 
 real performance. 
 
 It is certainly fair to say this of all the denominational 
 colleges of America: The higher education of youth, 
 pure and simple, is not, cannot be, their chief object. 
 Such schools are founded primarily to promote the growth
 
 THE COLLEGE OF THE CHURCH. 113 
 
 and preservation of certain religious organizations. This 
 is a worthy object, as all must admit; but this purpose 
 we recognize as something other than simply education. 
 
 I read not long ago an appeal from the president of 
 one of our best denominational colleges. Its burden 
 was this: " Unless you are willing to see our church dis- 
 appear from the West, do not let our college die." This 
 recognizes the ultimate function of the denominational 
 college. The church depends upon it for its educated 
 men. It should furnish the leaders for the church; and 
 the better trained these leaders are, the better for all the 
 people. 
 
 But this phase of education is not the State's work; 
 and so no private school or church school can enter the 
 State's scheme of education. To do the State's work, 
 the denominational school must cease to do its own ; for 
 no organization can be allowed to color the water in the 
 fountains of popular education. Our bill of rights, the 
 State Constitution, recognizes the equal rights of all men, 
 whatever their religious belief or preferences. This could 
 not be the fact, if the scheme for higher education in- 
 cluded sectarian colleges only; and all schools are sec- 
 tarian in which the ruling body belongs by necessity and 
 by right to some particular religious denomination. 
 
 If the State have any duty toward higher education, 
 the existence of denominational colleges does not release 
 it from this duty, any more than the existence of Pinker- 
 ton's band of peacemakers absolves the State from its 
 duty to maintain an efficient police system. It is the 
 free investigation and promulgation of truth which is the 
 function of the university. But the denominational school 
 must also stand for the defense of certain doctrines as the
 
 ii4 THE SCHOOL AND THE STATE. 
 
 ultimate truth. The highest work demands absolute 
 singleness of purpose. The school cannot serve two 
 masters; and the school maintained for the special work 
 of the part cannot meet the needs of the whole. 
 
 The most unfortunate feature of higher education in 
 America lies in the universal scattering of its educational 
 resources. For this local pride and denominational zeal 
 are about equally responsible. If it be true, as Dr. D61- 
 linger says, that among our four hundred American 
 colleges and universities there is not one worthy to rank 
 with the least of the eight maintained by the Kingdom 
 of Prussia, whom have we to thank for this ? Not our 
 poverty, for New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois 
 are not poor, even in comparison with Prussia; not our 
 parsimony, for no people give more freely than we; not 
 our youth, for more than half these schools are older 
 than the great University of Berlin. It has been this, 
 and this alone the scattering of educational funds, pub- 
 lic and private, at the demand of local ambition or local 
 jealousy. It has been the creation in each State of a host 
 of little colleges, each one ambitious to control the higher 
 education of its vicinity, and each one more or less defi- 
 nitely standing in the way of any other school which 
 might rise to something better. Let us take an example: 
 
 It was not in response to the educational needs of Kan- 
 sas that four universities were founded in a single year in 
 one of its real-estate towns, institutions without money 
 and without credit, whose existence can be only one long 
 wail for help from the rich men or rich denominations 
 under whose patronage they are. There is a little 
 college in the West, almost under the shadow of an ex- 
 cellent State University, which for years sent forth its
 
 THE SCATTERING OF RESOURCES. 115 
 
 appeals for help to denominational friends in the East, 
 on the ground that it is the ' ' sole educational oasis ' ' in 
 the great State in which it was located. We have not 
 reached the end of this. The number of our colleges 
 has doubled within the last thirty years, and the increase 
 in number still goes on, far outrunning the rate of im- 
 provement in quality. 
 
 "Within the last twenty years," said President White 
 in 1874, "I have seen many of these institutions, and I 
 freely confess that my observations have saddened me. 
 Go from one great State to another, and you shall find 
 that this unfortunate system has produced the same 
 miserable results in the vast majority of our States 
 not a single college or university worthy the name; only 
 a multitude of little schools with pompous names and 
 poor equipments, each doing its best to prevent the 
 establishment of any institution broader and better. The 
 traveler arriving in our great cities generally lands in a 
 railway station costing more than all the university 
 edifices of the State. He sleeps in a hotel in which 
 there is embanked more capital than in the entire uni- 
 versity endowment for millions of people. He visits 
 asylums for lunatics, idiots, deaf, dumb, blind, nay, 
 even for the pauper and criminal, and finds them 
 palaces. He visits the college buildings for young men 
 of sound mind and earnest purpose, the dearest treasures 
 of the State, and he generally finds them rude barracks. 
 
 "Many noble men stand in the faculties of these col- 
 leges men who would do honor to any institution of 
 advanced learning in the world. These men of ours 
 would, under a better system, develop admirably the 
 intellectual treasures of our people and the material
 
 n6 THE SCHOOL AND THE STATE. 
 
 resources of our country; but, cramped by want of 
 books, want of apparatus, want of everything needed 
 in advanced instruction, cramped above all by the spirit 
 of this system, very many of them have been paralyzed." 
 
 This picture is by no means so dark in the West 
 to-day as it was twenty-five years ago. And the reason 
 for this is to be found in the rise of the State universities. 
 These schools have struggled along with many vari- 
 ations of fortune until within the last few years, when 
 success has come to every one of them, and their develop- 
 ment has become the most striking feature in our recent 
 educational history. 
 
 When the State universities cast off the self-imposed 
 fetters of the conventional college and took their place 
 with the public schools, supported by the public money 
 and existing for the public good, their real growth began 
 in friends, in numbers, in equipment, in usefulness. 
 What they have deserved they have received, and they 
 will receive in the future. It requires no prophet to 
 foresee that before the middle of the next century these 
 creatures of the public-school system will be the centers 
 of the chief educational forces on our continent. They 
 will cost the people many hundred dollars, perhaps, for 
 every one which is expended now; but every dollar given 
 to higher education shall bring its full return. The great- 
 ness of the State is measured not by numbers nor by 
 acres; not by dollars on the tax-roll, but by the wisdom 
 of its people, by the men and women of the State who 
 have learned to take care of themselves. 
 
 It is sometimes proposed to treat all higher education 
 simply as a matter of business. Let wisdom be sold in 
 the open market, and let its prices be ruled by the laws
 
 THE COMMERCIAL BASIS. 117 
 
 of supply and demand. The college professor deals in 
 mental wares, as the shopkeeper deals in material com- 
 modities. Let him fill his store with a stock which the 
 people will buy, and advertise what he has, as the shop- 
 keeper does. On this basis he will not carry a dead 
 stock long. There is no room for conservatism in com- 
 merce. This is a commercial age, and professors should 
 govern themselves accordingly. If the people want book- 
 keeping or dancing instead of Latin and Greek, they can 
 have it. If the people retain the old prejudice in favor 
 of classical training, they can have classical courses of 
 the latest Chautauqua pattern, all in English, all the 
 play left in and all the work left out. Busy people can 
 then attend the universities without interruption of their 
 daily work, while the law of supply and demand will 
 regulate everything. Commerce can have no difficulty 
 in modernizing the curriculum. The latest fashions 
 might be quoted in education as well as in millinery. 
 
 This could have no result except to cheapen and vul- 
 garize the college. The highest need is not the need of 
 the many; still less is it the multitude's demand. Inves- 
 tigations without immediate pecuniary result would find 
 still less encouragement than now. Vulgarity is the 
 condition of satisfaction with inferior things. A college 
 dependent each day on the day' s receipts must pander 
 to vulgarity. And vulgarity, too, is said to be the 
 besetting sin of democracy. If democracy leads to 
 vulgarity, it defeats its own ends. The justification of 
 popular suffrage is to make the multitude better, not to 
 bring the better to the level of the multitude. The many 
 are ready only for the rudiments. The teacher of ad- 
 vanced subjects would starve in open financial competi-
 
 n8 THE SCHOOL AND THE STATE. 
 
 tion, while the teacher who could train the many to keep 
 account-books or to get a six-months' license would be 
 exalted. If, on the other hand, the fees of the higher 
 teacher were proportionately increased, only the rich 
 could make use of him, and the rich would find their 
 purposes better served in the endowed schools of other 
 countries. 
 
 The demand for many students rather than good ones, 
 already too strong in our colleges, would be intensified, 
 if everything were left to business competition. The 
 whole category of advertising dodges known to the deal- 
 ers in quack medicines or ready-made clothing would 
 become a permanent part of our higher education. A 
 cheap article furnished at a low price meets with a won- 
 derful sale. We do not need to trust to theory in this 
 matter. In Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas, 
 are some two-score private schools called colleges. These 
 schools are run without endowment or equipment on the 
 plan of free competition, and for the purpose of making 
 money. One has not to visit many of these to see clearly 
 what would be the result of trusting higher education 
 solely to business enterprise. Any form of educational 
 charity, private gifts, public spirit, denominational zeal, 
 anything leads to better results than this. For the essence 
 of education is something that cannot be bought and sold. 
 It is the inspiration of character, which cannot be rated 
 in our stock exchanges. 
 
 If quick sales and steady profits are to be the watch- 
 word of educational progress, the student of the future 
 will look toward Lebanon and Valparaiso, rather than to- 
 ward Johns Hopkins or Harvard, and the great expendi- 
 tures which New York, and Michigan, and Wisconsin,
 
 MANAGEMENT BY THE PEOPLE. 119 
 
 and California have made for higher education will be 
 a needless waste. 
 
 But it is said sometimes that the State cannot properly 
 manage its own institutions. Ignorance and venality are 
 often dominant in public affairs, and it is claimed that 
 work undertaken in the name of the people is sure to be 
 marred by ignorance, affected by partisanship, or tainted 
 by jobbery. The first professor in the State University 
 of Indiana, Baynard R. Hall, said sixty-five years ago: 
 ' ' Nothing, we incline to believe, can ever make State 
 schools and colleges very good ones; but nothing can 
 make them so bad as for Uncle Sam to leave every point 
 open to debate, especially among ignorant, prejudiced, 
 and selfish folks, in a new purchase. ' ' 
 
 This question touches the very foundation of popular 
 government. In the beginning, as a rule, the affairs of 
 the State are not well administered. Many trials are 
 made. Many blunders are committed before any given 
 piece of work falls into the hands of competent men. 
 But mistakes are a source of education. Sooner or later 
 the right men will be found, and the right management 
 of a public institution will justify itself. What is well 
 done can never be wholly undone. In the long run, few 
 institutions are less subject to partisan influence than a 
 State school. When the foul grip of the spoilsman is 
 once unloosed, it can never be restored. In the evil days 
 which befell the politics of Virginia, when the fair name 
 of the State was traded upon by spoilsmen of every party, 
 of every degree, the one thing in the State never touched 
 by them was the honor of the University of Virginia. And 
 amid all the scandal and disorder which followed our 
 Civil War, what finger of evil has been laid on the Smith-
 
 lao THE SCHOOL AND THE STATE. 
 
 sonian Institution or the Military Academy at West Point? 
 On that which is intended for no venal end, the people 
 will tolerate no venal domination. In due time the 
 management of every public institution will be abreast 
 of the highest popular opinion. Sooner or later the 
 wise man leads; for his ability to lead is at once the test 
 and proof of his wisdom. 
 
 Charities under public control result badly, not because 
 of the theory, but because of certain relations in prac- 
 tice. Their bad effects tend to increase and perpetuate 
 themselves, because every organization tends to magnify 
 its function; and the sole legitimate function of public 
 charity is to make public charity unnecessary. State 
 schools are not good at first, because under control of 
 unstable forces. They tend to grow better and better; 
 for they tend to draw these forces into a following. All 
 schools tend to improve, because they make their own 
 following. In the same way all charities tend to degen- 
 erate, because goodness in this case consists in being 
 needed just as little as possible. Neither schools nor 
 charities are industrial investments, and they are not sub- 
 ject to the laws which govern enterprises for profit. 
 
 Methods must be judged by their results. Co-opera- 
 tion in higher education is always legitimate, because 
 those to be educated have not the money which great 
 enterprises cost. Co-operation, on the one hand, and ap- 
 preciation, on the other, are necessary to build up schools. 
 In similar ways, we must test the best method of carry- 
 ing out any enterprise. Dr. Amos G. Warner says that 
 if it were found that better results and a better quality 
 of air came from placing the atmosphere in private hands, 
 or using it as a municipal monopoly, he would favor do-
 
 CO-OPERATION IN EDUCATION. 121 
 
 ing so. Matters of this kind cannot be settled by theory, 
 but by experiment. 
 
 I need say but a word on the subject of applied educa- 
 tion. 
 
 Shall the people provide for technical or professional 
 training, as well as for general education ? My answer 
 is, Yes; for no other agency will do as well as the State 
 the work that should be done. 
 
 Already the General Government has recognized the 
 need of industrial training, and has made liberal provi- 
 sion for it. Special grants of land and money have been 
 made to each State for the purpose of carrying on instruc- 
 tion and investigation in the line of mechanics, engineer- 
 ing and agriculture. Each State has accepted this trust, 
 and in each the work is being carried out with fidelity 
 and with success. 
 
 My conclusions may be summed up in a few words : 
 
 In every demand the people make, the State must fur- 
 nish the means for satisfaction. Whatever schools the 
 State may need, the State must create and control. 
 
 If the State fails to furnish the means of education, 
 higher or lower, these means will never be adequately 
 furnished. The people must combine to do this work; 
 for in the long run no other agency can do it. Moreover, 
 any other means of support, sooner or later, forms the 
 entering wedge between the schools and the people. 
 
 The first constitution of several of our States contained 
 the embodiment of educational wisdom, when it provided 
 for a general system of education, ascending in regular 
 gradation, from the township schools to the State univer- 
 sity free and equal, open to all, and equally open to all 
 forms of religious belief.
 
 122 THE SCHOOL AND THE STATE. 
 
 The State of California, following the lead of Michi- 
 gan, did wisely when it added to this the provision for 
 special training in all lines of technical and professional 
 work in which the skill or the wisdom of the individual 
 tends toward the advantage of the community or the 
 State. Its next duty in this regard is to make this pro- 
 vision adequate, that these professional schools may be 
 capable of doing well what they attempt to accomplish.
 
 VII. 
 THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 
 
 THE subject of the higher training of young women 
 may resolve itself into three questions: 
 
 1 . Shall a girl receive a college education f 
 
 2. Shall she receive the same kind of a college educa- 
 tion as a boy f 
 
 3. Shall she be educated in the same college? 
 
 As to the first question: It must depend on the char- 
 acter of the girl. Precisely so with the boy. What we 
 should do with either depends on his or her possibilities. 
 No parents should let either boy or girl enter life with 
 any less preparation than the best they can give. It is 
 true that many college graduates, boys and girls alike, 
 do not amount to much after the schools have done the 
 best they can. It is true, as I have elsewhere insisted, 
 that "you cannot fasten a two- thousand-dollar education 
 to a fifty-cent boy," or girl either. It is also true that 
 higher education is not alone a question of preparing 
 great men for great things. It must prepare even little 
 men for greater things than they would otherwise have 
 found possible. And so it is with the education of 
 women. The needs of the times are imperative. The 
 highest product of social evolution is the growth of the 
 civilized home the home that only a wise, cultivated, 
 
 123
 
 124 THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 
 
 and high-minded woman can make. To furnish such 
 women is one of the worthiest functions of higher educa- 
 tion. No young woman capable of becoming such should 
 be condemned to anything lower. Even with those who 
 are in appearance too dull or too vacillating to reach any 
 high ideal of wisdom, this may be said it does no 
 harm to try. A few hundred dollars is not much to 
 spend on an experiment of such moment. Four of the 
 best years of one's life spent in the company of noble 
 thoughts and high ideals cannot fail to leave their 
 impress. To be wise, and at the same time womanly, 
 is to wield a tremendous influence, which may be felt for 
 good in the lives of generations to come. It is not forms 
 of government by which men are made or unmade. It 
 is the character and influence of their mothers and their 
 wives. The higher education of women means more for 
 the future than all conceivable legislative reforms. And 
 its influence does not stop with the home. It means 
 higher standards of manhood, greater thoroughness of 
 training, and the coming of better men. Therefore, let 
 us educate our girls as well as our boys. A generous 
 education should be the birthright of every daughter of 
 the republic as well as of every son. 
 
 2. Shall we give our girls the same education as our 
 boys f Yes, and no. If we mean by the same an equal 
 degree of breadth and thoroughness, an equal fitness for 
 high thinking and wise acting, yes, let it be the same. 
 If we mean this: Shall we reach this end by exactly the 
 same course of studies? then my answer must be, No. 
 For the same course of study will not yield the same 
 results with different persons. The ordinary "college
 
 INDIVIDUAL TRAINING. 125 
 
 course ' ' which has been handed down from generation 
 to generation is purely conventional. It is a result of a 
 series of compromises in trying to fit the traditional edu- 
 cation of clergymen and gentlemen to the needs of men 
 of a different social era. The old college course met the 
 needs of nobody, and therefore was adapted to all alike. 
 The great educational awakening of the last twenty years 
 in America has lain in breaking the bonds of this old 
 system. The essence of the new education is individual- 
 ism. Its purpose is to give to each young man that 
 training which will make a man of him. Not the train- 
 ing which a century or two ago helped to civilize the 
 mass of boys of that time, but that which will civilize 
 this particular boy. One reason why the college stu- 
 dents of 1895 are ten to one m number as compared with 
 those of 1875, is that the college training now given is 
 valuable to ten times as many men as could be reached 
 or helped by the narrow courses of twenty years ago. 
 
 In the university of to-day the largest liberty of choice 
 in study is given to the student The professor advises, 
 the student chooses, and the flexibility of the courses 
 makes it possible for every form of talent to receive 
 proper culture. Because the college of to-day helps ten 
 times as many men as that of yesterday could hope to 
 reach, it is ten times as valuable. This difference lies in 
 the development of special lines of work and in the 
 growth of the elective system. The power of choice 
 carries the duty of choosing rightly. The ability to 
 choose has made a man out of the college boy and trans- 
 ferred college work from an alternation of tasks and play 
 to its proper relation to the business of life. Meanwhile 
 the old ideals have not risen in value. If our colleges
 
 ia6 THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 
 
 were to go back to the cut-straw of medievalism, to their 
 work of twenty years ago, their professors would speak 
 to empty benches. In those colleges which still cling 
 to these traditions the benches are empty to-day or 
 filled with idlers, which to a college is a fate worse than 
 death. 
 
 The best education for a young woman is surely not 
 that which has proved unfit for the young man. She is 
 an individual as well as he, and her work gains as much 
 as his by relating it to her life. But an institution which 
 meets the varied needs of varied men can also meet the 
 varied needs of the varied women. The intellectual 
 needs of the two classes are not very different in many 
 important respects. The special or professional needs, 
 so far as they are different, will bring their own satisfac- 
 tion. Those who have had to do with the higher train- 
 ing of women know that the severest demands can be 
 met by them as well as by men. There is no demand 
 for easy or "goody-goody" courses of study for women 
 except as this demand has been encouraged by men. In 
 this matter the supply has always preceded the demand. 
 
 There are, of course, certain average differences 
 between men and women as students. Women have 
 often greater sympathy or greater readiness of memory 
 or apprehension, greater fondness for technique. In the 
 languages and literature, often in mathematics and his- 
 tory, they are found to excel. They lack, on the whole, 
 originality. They are not attracted by unsolved prob- 
 lems and in the inductive or "inexact" sciences, they 
 seldom take the lead. The ' ' motor ' ' side of their minds 
 and natures is not strongly developed. They do not 
 work for results as much as for the pleasure of study.
 
 THE WOMAN'S COLLEGE, 127 
 
 In the traditional courses of study traditional for 
 men they are often very successful. Not that these 
 courses have a fitness for women, but that women are 
 more docile and less critical as to the purposes of edu- 
 cation. And to all these statements there are many 
 exceptions. In this, however, those who have taught 
 both men and women must agree; the training of women 
 is just as serious and just as important as the training 
 of men, and no training is adequate for either which falls 
 short of the best. 
 
 3. Shall women be taught in the same classes as men f 
 This is partly a matter of taste. It does no harm what- 
 ever to either men or women to meet those of the other 
 sex in the same classrooms. But if they prefer not to do 
 so, let them do otherwise. Considerable has been said 
 for and against the union in one institution of technical 
 schools and schools of liberal arts. The technical qual- 
 ity is emphasized by its separation from general culture. 
 But I believe better men are made where the two are not 
 separated. The culture studies and their students gain 
 from the feeling of reality and utility cultivated by tech- 
 nical work. The technical students gain from associa- 
 tion with men and influences of which the aggregate 
 tendency is toward greater breadth of sympathy and a 
 higher point of view. 
 
 A woman's college is more or less distinctly a technical 
 school. In most cases, its purpose is distinctly stated 
 to be such. It is a school of training for the profession 
 of womanhood. It encourages womanliness of thought 
 as more or less different from the plain thinking which is 
 called manly. The brightest work in women's colleges
 
 128 THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 
 
 is often accompanied by a nervous strain, as though 
 its doer were fearful of falling short of some outside 
 standard. The best work of men is natural, is uncon- 
 scious, the normal result of the contact of the mind with 
 the problem in question. 
 
 In this direction, I think, lies the strongest argument 
 for co-education. This argument is especially cogent 
 in institutions in which the individuality of the student 
 is recognized and respected. In such schools each man,, 
 by his relation to action and realities, becomes a teacher 
 of women in these regards, as, in other ways, each culti- 
 vated woman is a teacher of men. 
 
 In woman's education, as planned for women alone, 
 the tendency is toward the study of beauty and order. 
 Literature and language take precedence over science. 
 Expression is valued more highly than action. In carry- 
 ing this to an extreme, the necessary relation of thought 
 to action becomes obscured. The scholarship developed 
 is ineffective, because it is not related to success. The 
 educated woman is likely to master technique, rather than 
 art; method, rather than substance. She may know a 
 good deal, but she can do nothing. Often her views 
 of life must undergo painful changes before she can find 
 her place in the world. 
 
 In schools for men alone, the reverse condition often 
 obtains. The sense of reality obscures the elements 
 of beauty and fitness. It is of great advantage to both 
 men and women to meet on a plane of equality in edu- 
 cation. Women are brought into contact with men who 
 can do things men in whom the sense of reality is 
 strong, and who have definite views in life. This influ- 
 ence effects them for good. It turns them away from
 
 IDEALS RATHER THAN CAPRICE. 129 
 
 sentimentalism. It is opposed to the unwholesome state 
 of mind called " monogamic marriage. " It gives tone 
 to their religious thoughts and impulses. Above all, it 
 tends to encourage action as governed by ideals, as op- 
 posed to that resting on caprice. It gives them better 
 standards of what is possible and impossible when the 
 responsibility for action is thrown upon them. 
 
 In like manner, the association with wise, sane, and 
 healthy women has its value for young men. This value 
 has never been fully realized, even by the strongest advo- 
 cates of co-education. It raises their ideal of woman- 
 hood, and the highest manhood must be associated with 
 such an ideal. This fact shows itself in many ways; but to 
 point out its existence must suffice for the present paper. 
 
 At the present time, the demand for the higher educa- 
 tion of women is met in three different ways : 
 
 1. In separate colleges for women, with courses of 
 study more or less parallel with those given in colleges 
 for men. In some of these the teachers are all women, 
 in some mostly men, and in others a more or less equal 
 division obtains. In nearly all of these institutions, 
 those old traditions of education and discipline are more 
 prevalent than in colleges for men, and nearly all retain 
 some trace of religious or denominational control. In 
 all, the Zeitgeist is producing more or less commotion, 
 and the changes in their evolution are running parallel 
 with those in colleges for men. 
 
 2. In annexes for women to colleges for men. In these, 
 part of the instruction given to the men is repeated for 
 the women, though in different classes or rooms, and 
 there is more or less opportunity to use the same libra- 
 
 J
 
 130 THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 
 
 ries and museums. In some other institutions, the rela- 
 tions are closer, the privileges of study being similar, 
 the difference being mainly in the rules of conduct by 
 which the young women are hedged in, the young men 
 making their own. 
 
 It seems to me that the annex system cannot be a per- 
 manent one. The annex student does not get the best 
 of the institution, and the best is none too good for her. 
 Sooner or later she will demand it, or go where the best 
 can be found. The best students will cease to go to the 
 annex. The institution must then admit women on equal 
 terms, or not admit them at all. There is certainly no 
 educational reason why a woman should prefer the annex 
 of one institution when another equally good throws its 
 doors wide open for her. 
 
 3. The third system is that of co-education. In this 
 system young men and young women are admitted to 
 the same classes, subjected to the same requirements, 
 and governed by the same rules. This system is now 
 fully established in the State institutions of the North 
 and West, and in most other colleges in the same region. 
 Its effectiveness has long since passed beyond ques- 
 tion among those familiar with its operation. Other 
 things being equal, the young men are more earnest, 
 better in manners and morals, and in all ways more civ- 
 ilized than under monastic conditions. The women do 
 more work in a more natural way, with better perspect- 
 ive and with saner incentives than when isolated from the 
 influence and society of men. There is less of silliness 
 and folly where a man is not a novelty. In co-educational 
 institutions of high standards, frivolous conduct or scan- 
 dals of any form are unknown. The responsibility for
 
 THE COLLEGE WOMAN. 131 
 
 decorum is thrown from the school to the woman, and 
 the woman rises to the responsibility. Many professors 
 have entered Western colleges with strong prejudices 
 against co-education. These prejudices have never 
 endured the test of experience. What is well done has 
 a tonic effect on the mind and character. The college 
 girl has long since ceased to expect any particular leni- 
 ency because she is a girl. She stands or falls with the 
 character of her work. 
 
 It is not true that the character of college work has 
 been in any way lowered by co-education. The reverse 
 is decidedly the case. It is true that untimely zeal of one 
 sort or another has filled the West with a host of so-called 
 colleges. It is true that most of these are weak and 
 doing poor work in poor ways. It is true that most of 
 these are co-educational. It is also true that the great 
 majority of their students are not of college grade at all. 
 In such schools, low standards rule, both as to scholar- 
 ship and as to manners. The student fresh from the 
 country, with no preparatory training, will bring the 
 manners of his home. These are not always good man- 
 ners, as manners are judged. But none of these defects 
 are derived from co-education; nor are any of these con- 
 ditions in any way made worse by it. 
 
 A final question: Does not co-education lead to mar- 
 riage? Most certainly it does; and this fact need not 
 be and cannot be denied. But such marriages are not 
 usually premature. It is certainly true that no better 
 marriages can be made than those founded on common 
 interests and intellectual friendships. 
 
 A college man who has known college women is not 
 drawn to those of lower ideals and inferior training. His
 
 132 THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 
 
 choice is likely to be led toward the best he has known. 
 A college woman is not led by propinquity to accept the 
 attentions of inferior men. 
 
 I have before me the statistics of the faculty of a uni- 
 versity open to both sexes alike. Of the eighty profes- 
 sors and instructors, twenty-seven men and women are 
 still unmarried. Of the remaining fifty-three, twenty-one 
 have taken the Bachelor's degree in co-educational insti- 
 tutions, and have married college associates; twelve, 
 mostly from colleges not co-educational, have married 
 women from other colleges, and in twenty cases the wives 
 are not college graduates. 
 
 It will be seen, then, that nearly all those who are 
 graduates of co-educational colleges have married col- 
 lege friends. In most cases college men have chosen 
 college women; and in all cases both men and women 
 are thoroughly satisfied with the outcome of co-educa- 
 tion. It is part of the legitimate function of higher 
 education to prepare women, as well as men, for happy 
 and successful lives. 
 
 An Eastern professor, lately visiting a Western State 
 university, asked one of the seniors what he thought 
 of the question of co-education. 
 
 "I beg your pardon," said the student; "what ques- 
 tion do you mean ? ' ' 
 
 "Why, co-education," said the professor; "the edu- 
 cation of women in colleges for men. ' ' 
 
 "Oh," said the student, "co-education is not a 
 question here." 
 
 And he was right. Co-education is never a question 
 where it has been fairly tried.
 
 VIII. 
 THE TRAINING OF THE PHYSICIAN.* 
 
 IT is a matter of common observation that the various 
 elements in the educational fabric of America are not 
 in any proper sense parts of an educational system. 
 Each kind of school has developed in its own way, in 
 response to a special demand, or in furtherance of some 
 educational tradition. Our colleges are English in blood 
 and ancestry, our universities German. Our academies 
 are children of the colleges, and our high schools and 
 professional schools are for the most part wholly distinct 
 in their origin and native to our soil. They have arisen 
 in obedience to the Jaw of supply and demand, and their 
 methods and ideals are often wholly at variance with 
 those of the colleges. 
 
 There have been some good results arising from these 
 conditions. The progress of evolution is most rapid 
 where the chains of tradition are weakest. These chains 
 have been strongest in our colleges; and of all our schools 
 our colleges have been until lately the least progressive. 
 The chains of tradition have been weakest in our profes- 
 sional schools; but all that they have gained in freedom 
 has been more than lost by their separation from other 
 educational agencies. The bad results of our lack of 
 correlation have been numerous and positive. Among 
 these have been the general weakness of the whole sys- 
 
 * Commencement address at Cooper Medical College, San Francisco, 1892; 
 reprinted from Occidental Medical Times, January, 1893. 
 
 133
 
 134 THE TRAINING OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
 
 tern and a prodigious waste of strength throughout its 
 parts. Much of the best of the educational thought of 
 the day is devoted to the work of bringing together and 
 properly dovetailing the scattered parts of our system. 
 To consider a single one of these problems, the relation 
 of medical education to the college education, is the pur- 
 pose of the present paper. 
 
 The Bachelor's degree, as generally understood, is an 
 index of general culture, the mark of that degree of 
 training which fairly prepares a bright man to enter upon 
 professional work. The colleges have, as a rule, regarded 
 this standard as a low one, rather than a high one, and 
 with the improvement of our educational methods, the 
 requirements for this degree have been steadily advanced. 
 Better work and more of it is necessary for graduation 
 with each succeeding class. The result of this is, that 
 the student who has spent all his life in the schools is not 
 through college and ready to begin his professional 
 studies much before the age of twenty-two, while the 
 man who is forced by any reason to interrupt his school 
 work may be anywhere from twenty-five to thirty years 
 of age on graduation. 
 
 This fact has led to a demand for the shortening of 
 the college course in the interests of practical life. The 
 medical faculty of Harvard University has led in this 
 demand in the interest of professional studies, and the 
 question of reducing the college course from four years 
 to three, has become a subject of general discussion. It 
 is, of course, evident that there is no special virtue in 
 four years of work, as opposed to three, or to five, or to 
 any other particular number; nor is there any universal 
 agreement at present as to the separation of the work of
 
 IS THE COLLEGE COURSE TOO LONG? 135 
 
 the colleges from that of the high school or academy. 
 That the standard of requirement for admission at Har- 
 vard is unusually high may be in itself a valid reason for 
 lowering the requirements for graduation in Harvard. In 
 that case, however, the discussion of the question would 
 practically concern Harvard University alone. 
 
 But viewing the subject from the side of the student 
 of medicine, this question is before us: Is the college 
 course too long? That it is so, is practically the verdict 
 of the medical schools as well as of the great body of phy- 
 sicians themselves. The medical colleges have made 
 the preliminary training a matter of luxury, rather than 
 of necessity, by putting into the same classes, under the 
 same instruction, the graduates of colleges and persons 
 who come from the country district school. If general 
 culture be essential to professional success, the medical 
 college should say so to those who enter its doors. So far 
 as any official action in most of our medical colleges is 
 concerned, the illiterate boor, if he can sign the matricula- 
 tion book, is as ready for medical education as the most 
 accomplished college graduate. 
 
 The physicians of our country say the same thing; for 
 the number of college-bred men in medicine is lower 
 than in almost any other profession. Statistics furnished 
 me by Professor Richard G. Boone, show that in the 
 United States at present, about one clergyman in four, 
 one lawyer in five, and one physician in twelve, has had 
 a college education. Connected with the lack of pre- 
 paratory training on the part of medical students, there 
 are certain recognized facts, one of which is this: Taking 
 the country over, of all classes of students, those in 
 medicine are as a rule (though such a rule admits of
 
 136 THE TRAINING OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
 
 many individual exceptions) the most reckless in their 
 mode of life and the most careless of the laws of hygiene, 
 and of decencies in general, of any class of students 
 whatsoever. This is not so true now as it was a few 
 years ago. For this change the rising standards of our 
 medical schools are certainly responsible. This change 
 results directly from making it -more difficult for unculti- 
 vated men to win the Doctor's degree, and indirectly 
 from bringing better men into the field as competitors. 
 Already there is a good deal of crowding at the bottom 
 of the stairs in the profession; and in view of this fact 
 the scramble for the name of doctor is somewhat abating. 
 
 A concerted effort is now being made to raise the 
 standard of the profession of medicine by raising the 
 general culture of physicians. Its purpose is to make 
 medicine a worthy branch of applied science, and its 
 votaries men to whom the word Science is not an empty 
 name. It has been a frequent reproach to the medical 
 profession that physicians are not doing their part in this 
 age of scientific investigation and discovery, in a time 
 when the boundaries of knowledge are widening in every 
 direction at a rate of progress never before known. 
 
 It is said that, although their work- brings them into 
 daily contact with the very subjects over which the 
 battles of science are being waged, they know nothing 
 of the struggle and have no share in the victory. Right 
 in the path of the physician lie the great problems of the 
 nature of heredity, of psychology, histology, sociology, 
 criminology the manifold problems of all the laws of 
 life. Individual physicians have found out many things 
 much more than the world outside has recognized; 
 but the profession at large is not interested in these mat-
 
 BRING IN BETTER MEN. 137 
 
 ters. Although not one of these problems is alien to the 
 daily work of any physician, the average practitioner 
 neither knows what is already known nor what is yet to 
 be found out. 
 
 When our physicians are ready for it, the whole ad- 
 ministration of criminal law will be turned over to them. 
 The responsibility for crime or craziness cannot be fixed 
 by jurisprudence. The criminal cannot be cured by law, 
 and no good end is served by the punishments the law 
 metes out. He can perhaps be healed. If incurable, he 
 can be kept in confinement; and to physicians, and to 
 them alone, the community must look for help in these 
 matters. 
 
 If our physicians be deficient in general culture, and 
 if it be true that they are not taking their share in the 
 progress of science, may not these facts be associated ? 
 May we not have here the relation of cause and effect ? 
 What then is the remedy? Is it not this? Bring in 
 better men; shut out from the medical profession the 
 ignorant, the trifling, and the unambitious, the tinker 
 and the job-worker, and reserve the training of our 
 medical schools for those who can bring to their work 
 the instincts, the traditions, and the outlook of the scholar. 
 
 A writer has lately maintained that a man without in- 
 dependent means should not study medicine. The phy- 
 sician can no longer be sure of earning his living in our 
 cities on account of the competition of the free dispen- 
 saries. Whether the free dispensary be a wise charity 
 or not, is perhaps an open question. But surely the skill- 
 ful physician has a field which the free dispensary cannot 
 invade. The physician we dream of is something more 
 than the automatic dispenser of drugs. Skill and wis-
 
 i 3 8 THE TRAINING OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
 
 dom will always be valued and paid for. The thoroughly 
 trained man fears no competition; for it is by measure- 
 ment with others that his value can be estimated. 
 
 For the training which shall enable the medical student 
 to enter on his professional work in the spirit of science 
 and of scholarship, we must look to the college. To give 
 this breadth and skill, to fit men and women to enter 
 with large views and trained minds on the work of life, 
 the college exists. The general culture of the physician 
 should have its roots in the work of the college. The 
 amount and the kind of culture regarded by the colleges 
 in general as essential to the highest professional success, 
 they have roughly estimated by their requirements for 
 the degree of Bachelor of Arts. This degree, or its equiv- 
 alent, has been taken by the American Academy of Medi- 
 cine as its standard of admission to membership. Some 
 measure of culture is better than no measure, however 
 fluctuating the standard may be, and this is the only meas- 
 ure which is furnished by the colleges themselves. If 
 we require or recognize collegiate attainments at all, the 
 Bachelor's degree furnishes the only available method 
 by which general culture may be indicated. 
 
 It is very easy to see that this standard is not absolute; 
 that it means in one college something different in kind 
 as well as in amount from that which obtains in another. 
 Its meaning to-day is not what it was ten years ago, nor 
 what it will be ten years hence. Much time has been 
 spent in tabulating the different elements involved in the 
 requirements for this degree in the different American 
 colleges. The results are unsatisfactory; for the value 
 of the degree is not to be determined by the percentage 
 of required work in Greek, Latin, German, nor in any
 
 VALUE OF THE COLLEGE DEGREE. 139 
 
 of the sciences. The school which shows the greatest 
 amount of required work in any particular subject may 
 be the very one where the least of this work is really 
 done. The freedom of the elective system gives, in any 
 line of work, the greatest possibilities. But the very 
 fact of freedom prevents its results from appearing in a 
 table of percentages. The essential fact is the extent 
 to which the spirit of the scholar has been inspired in 
 the student, and this varies in every case with the differ- 
 ences of teacher and scholar. So this fluctuation is 
 inherent in the nature of things. It is well that it should 
 be so, and that its variations should be greater, rather 
 than less, for its maximum indicates the unrestrained 
 influence of great teachers. There are men in some of 
 our colleges under whom a single year's study is better 
 than many years of ordinary drill. 
 
 Moreover, America is a broad land, and yields nour- 
 ishment for many different educational ideas. In many 
 cases, too, the variations in the requirements for a degree 
 are more apparent than real; for the difference of sub- 
 jects pursued in a college course is a very small matter 
 as compared with the question whether the best years 
 of youth are spent in mental training, in the demands of 
 trade, or in fruitless idleness. 
 
 Is this standard of the Bachelor's degree too high for 
 the best results in professional work ? In other words, 
 is the physician who has waited to secure his Bachelor's 
 degree thereby handicapped in his professional life? Has 
 he lost a year or two which, in this hurrying age, he 
 can never regain ? I cannot think so, and I am sure 
 no such view could be sustained by statisics. Are the 
 members of the American Academy less successful than
 
 140 THE TRAINING OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
 
 their brother physicians ? Is the college degree which 
 they bear the mark of those who have fallen behind in 
 the active work of the physician? To state this ques- 
 tion is to answer it. The broadest outlook on nature 
 and human life goes with the highest professional success. 
 The educated physician is the man of science. The un- 
 educated physician is the quack. 
 
 But, as I have said, our medical schools seem to think 
 otherwise; for in most of them the requirement for en- 
 trance, so far from being that of college graduation, is far 
 less than that necessary even for entrance into the college. 
 If general training be important, the schools should in- 
 sist upon it. That it is not necessary in their judgment 
 is apparently shown by the requirements for admission. 
 
 This condition of things, I believe, has two causes 
 the one discreditable to the profession, the other to the 
 colleges. In the first place, most of our medical schools 
 are scantily endowed, or else are purely private ventures. 
 It has been for them a business necessity to demand not 
 the preparation they want, but that which they can get. 
 In other words, they have been forced to cater to the 
 desire of ignorance and impatience to take part in the 
 honor and emoluments of the medical profession. For 
 the same reason the standard of graduation has been kept 
 low. A high standard would diminish the sale of the 
 lecture tickets. The character of the profession has been 
 lowered that the medical college may be self-supporting; 
 for not to support itself in part at least means to close 
 its doors. 
 
 I do not mean to depreciate this class of medical 
 schools; for many of our best teachers of medicine have 
 belonged to them, and have given their instruction in
 
 TEACH MEDICINE IN THE UNIVERSITY. 141 
 
 the intervals of an active practice. But this is not the 
 ideal medical school; for no school can be effective until 
 it exists for its work alone instruction and investiga- 
 tion, with no ulterior end whatever. Its teachers should 
 never have to look to the interests of the cash account, 
 and its examiners should never be forced to say that 
 black is white at the demand of an empty treasury. 
 The medical schools of the future will be sustained as 
 necessary parts of university work, and the freedom 
 of the university professor will be the right of the 
 teacher of medicine. The medical schools have the 
 same claim for support that other professional schools 
 should have. They have the same claim on the interests 
 of the wealthy friends of education. In the West and 
 in the South, where colleges and the lower schools are 
 alike maintained at the public expense, the medical schools 
 have the same claim for State support that is awarded to 
 other parts of the public-school system. 
 
 When a medical school is well endowed, or has the 
 State behind it, it can exact the standards the good 
 of the profession requires. Till then it is at the 
 mercy of the demands about it. Its students are the 
 product of its surroundings, not the choice of the school 
 itself. 
 
 That the proper training of teachers is a matter of real 
 economy has been recognized by every State in the 
 Union, and this fact has led to the establishment of the 
 State normal schools. We recognize that thorough 
 professional training is the best antidote to educational 
 quackery and fraud. It is cheaper for the people to pay 
 for the education of the teachers, and then to pay the 
 teachers an increased salary because they are educate J,
 
 142 THE TRAINING OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
 
 than it is to depend on the haphazard training furnished 
 by the law of supply and demand. 
 
 There was a time when to be fit for nothing else was 
 the chief requisite for the schoolmaster. But experience 
 has shown that such teaching is the costliest of all. It 
 has shown that one teacher worth two hundred dollars a 
 month is more effective for educational advancement than 
 ten who find their proper level at forty or fifty. 
 
 As with teaching, so with all other professions cheap 
 work is never good. It is often said in the West, and 
 this statement is applauded by our farmers and me- 
 chanics, the very men who should know better, that the 
 State should not support schools for the making of 
 physicians and lawyers. The people should not be 
 taxed to help young men into these easy professions 
 already so overcrowded. 
 
 Let us state this proposition in another form: Shall 
 the State demand that the lawyers, physicians, survey- 
 ors, and architects who serve its people should know 
 their business ? Why not ? Have we not had enough 
 of the work of frauds and fools ? The money wasted 
 each year in California on quacks and quack medicines, 
 revealed remedies, and blessed handkerchiefs, would 
 educate every physician in the State who has the brains 
 to bear education. 
 
 Bring in better men. There is no more effective way 
 of thinning out incompetent men in any profession than 
 to bring trained men in competition with them. If the 
 State could require each physician or lawyer to know 
 what a physician or lawyer ought to know, the quacks 
 and pettifoggers would disappear as surely as an army 
 of tramps before a stone-pile. This country is now their
 
 THE AMERICAN DOCTOR. 143 
 
 paradise. These professions are overcrowded in America 
 simply because they are not professions at all. 
 
 Not long ago the University of Berlin refused to recog- 
 nize the degree of Doctor of Medicine from an American 
 school as a degree at all. It is easy to see a reason for 
 this. In our best schools the total educational require- 
 ment for this degree is lower than in Berlin. In our worst 
 schools it may fall seven years behind. One of the very 
 best of our medical colleges has lately decided to raise 
 the standard of admission a little each year until 1899. 
 When this is done the entrance requirements will be 
 those of the Freshman class in the Academic department 
 of the same institution. 
 
 American physicians are often among the most skillful 
 in the world; but this comes through individual capacity 
 and through that native ingenuity with which every 
 American is blest, rather than from any requirement of 
 the schools. 
 
 It was my fortune some three years ago to meet that 
 which in Europe is regarded as a typical American phy- 
 sician one who was taught by nature, and not by the 
 schools. He was, therefore, regarded by the people 
 of rural England with a reverence which the man of 
 training often fails to inspire. It was in the solemn and 
 decorous village of Stratford-on-Avon that I met this 
 physician. Riding on a gilded circus wagon drawn by 
 four noble horses, attired in a cowboy's splendid uniform, 
 in gray sombrero, with a red scrape, accompanied by a 
 band of musicians dressed as cowboys and stained as 
 Indians, this man was going through England selling 
 from the wagon that famous remedy of the Kickapoo 
 Indians, the August Flower. It cures every disease
 
 144 THE TRAINING OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
 
 known to that countryside by the simple purification 
 of the blood. In one day in Stratford-on-Avon he won 
 back for America all the money the Americans have 
 spent on the shrine of Shakspeare within the past three 
 hundred years; and on Sunday evening I saw him in- 
 stalled in the famous parlors in the ancient Red Horse 
 Inn at Stratford, sacred to the memory of Washington 
 Irving, as the one American there worthy to dine within 
 its historic walls. The scarcity of quacks in England 
 made his business profitable. 
 
 A medical student killed himself in New York the 
 other day, leaving behind him these words: "I die 
 because there is room for no more doctors." Over- 
 crowded, poor fellow, smothered by the weight of the 
 mass of his fellow-incompetents, and all this while the 
 science of medicine stands on the verge of the greatest dis- 
 coveries since the time of Galen and ^Esculapius. ' ' Room 
 for no more doctors," just now when the theory of evo- 
 lution begins to throw its electric light down thousands 
 of avenues closed to the fathers of medicine; " room for 
 no more doctors, ' ' when the germ theory is working its 
 revolution in surgery, obstetrics, and in the treatment 
 of contagious diseases; "room for no more doctors," 
 when a thousand applications of antiseptics and anes- 
 thetics are yet to be made, or made in better ways; 
 ' ' no more doctors, ' ' when with the discoveries of each 
 succeeding year it is more and more worth while to be 
 a doctor for each year strengthens the doctor's grip 
 on the forces of sin and death. 
 
 There is always a place for doctors; but only for men 
 of the nobler sort. Their profession is not overcrowded. 
 The overcrowd is outside the profession. The great
 
 ROOM FOR MORE DOCTORS. 145 
 
 majority of our physicians have had only the commonest 
 of school advantages. What wonder that so much of 
 the world is a sealed book to them ? Men who do not 
 read ' ' bound books, ' ' cannot share in the advancement 
 of science. 
 
 I do not mean to depreciate in any way the work of 
 the many who are really great in the noblest of all pro- 
 fessions. Of our best we have the right to be proud. 
 It is only when we regard the amount of ignorant, 
 empirical, and dishonest work called professional that 
 the record grows dark, and we doubt whether our Ameri- 
 can system of medical laissez-faire can be a wise one. 
 
 Only by the requirement of training can our profes- 
 sions be restored to their ancient respectability. Their 
 work must rest on a basis of science. A man who has 
 spent years with the great jurists will not sell his soul 
 for a twenty-five dollar fee to the first scoundrel who 
 would use him. The scientific physician does not pros- 
 titute his skill in any of the hundred ways condemned 
 by the code of ethics. A true man cannot be used for 
 base purposes. Noblesse oblige; and professional train- 
 ing implies professional honor. Only the highest stan- 
 dards can purge the profession of parasites and quacks ; 
 only honest knowledge can save us from the Christian 
 scientist and the almanac. But in every demand the 
 people make the State must furnish the means for 
 satisfaction. 
 
 As I have already said, there has been another reason 
 why the medical student has shunned the college, name- 
 ly, the tremendous waste involved in the old-fashioned, 
 prescribed course; or, for that matter, in any course of 
 study inflexibly prearranged. This waste is threefold.
 
 146 THE TRAINING OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
 
 The time spent on subjects in no wise concerned with 
 the future studies of the student thoughts which form 
 no part of his culture; second, the time spent on sub- 
 jects for which the student has no aptitude, from which 
 he derives not the strength gained by mastery, but only 
 the aversion felt for the unwelcome task; and third, and 
 greatest of all, the waste of subjects taught by dull 
 teachers, dry, dreary, or mechanical, from whom the 
 student received nothing, because there was nothing in 
 them to give. 
 
 Those of us who have been through the prescribed 
 course of the college have run the gauntlet of all these 
 parasites on higher education. Only he who is familiar 
 with the life of college boys can realize the great waste 
 connected with work in wrong subjects under wrong 
 teachers; and no one can estimate the number who have 
 been repelled from the college by one or both of these 
 evil influences. Many of those who remained to the end 
 did so because their college lives were spent in the 
 atmosphere of good-fellowship, not because they were 
 attracted by their teachers or the work they were set 
 to do 
 
 If our medical schools cede four years to the culture 
 of the colleges, they have the right to ask that the 
 colleges waste no time. They cannot ask any particular 
 curriculum or any special order of studies. They can 
 only ask for the student the freedom of choice which shall 
 enable him to steer clear of deficient teachers, and to 
 work in fields from which he may in later life expect 
 to reap a harvest. The college should furnish such 
 means of study that the future student shall not go to 
 the medical school ignorant of the use of the scalpel
 
 MENTAL CULTURE NECESSARY. 147 
 
 and the microscope. Cats are abundant and cheap. 
 The elementary facts of anatomy can be learned from 
 them in college far better than in the dissecting-room of 
 the special school, where advanced work should be done, 
 instead of the bungling efforts of beginners who do not 
 know a vein from a tendon. 
 
 The college course should also teach the medical stu- 
 dent the general facts and theory of chemistry and the 
 processes of chemical manipulation. The elements of 
 botany and of vegetable and animal physiology should 
 be in his possession; the facts of comparative anatomy, 
 and the great laws of life, of natural selection, heredity, 
 variability, functional activity, and response to external 
 stimulus, which form the basis of organic evolution. He 
 should know a bacterium when he sees it, and should 
 know how to see it. He should have heard of the cor- 
 relation and conservation of forces; in short, he should 
 know what is meant by scientific investigation, and in 
 some degree have caught the inspiration of it. The 
 physician should, moreover, learn to write and speak 
 good English. Besides this, he ought to he rmist 
 read French and German. Other languages will not 
 hurt him, nor will a knowledge of literature, philosophy, 
 or history. 
 
 Such a course of study as is here contemplated is 
 actually provided in the undergraduate department of 
 several of our universities. It is, however, a course of gen- 
 eral culture, not a technical or professional course. This 
 course, or its equivalent, is recognized as a necessary 
 condition of entrance in the new medical school of Johns 
 Hopkins University. No more important movement 
 has been taken toward raising the standard of medical
 
 148 THE TRAINING OF THE PHYSICIAN. 
 
 education in America than this recognition by Johns 
 Hopkins University of the absolute necessity of mental 
 culture as a requisite for professional training. 
 
 But all that he wants the student cannot get in a four 
 years' college course, no matter how fully he may crowd 
 it. The whole time is little enough if every moment be 
 saved. But four years is far too long if it is made a time 
 for dawdling and cramming, and for merely going 
 through the motions of study. Let the college permit 
 the medical student to get a fair return for every hour 
 he spends, and the requirement of a college degree at 
 the door of the medical school will shut out no worthy 
 man, nor will it hold back any in the race for life. 
 
 Nor need the medical school fear that it will suffer 
 through the neglect of the college to furnish the neces- 
 sary training. Let the collegiate course be required as 
 a requisite to the professional degree, and the inexorable 
 law of the survival of the fittest will eliminate every waste 
 teacher and every waste subject from the college course 
 for the student preparing for work in medicine. 
 
 But I do not wish to lay a disproportionate stress 
 upon the college diploma. It is at the best a temporary 
 thing a mere milestone, convenient to measure from 
 so long as it is in sight. The world, it has been said, 
 "cares little for that baby badge," though it will never 
 cease to care for the culture that ought to be behind it. 
 
 Some day, our students will need the badge no longer; 
 and the Bachelor's degree, with college honors, and 
 prizes, and other playthings of our educational childhood 
 will be laid aside. All these things are forms, and forms 
 only, and our higher education is fast outgrowing them. 
 The boundary line between general and professional edu-
 
 HOW SCHOLARS ARE MADE, 149 
 
 cation will be broken down to the advantage of both. 
 We shall have the ' ' school where any person can have 
 instruction in any study, ' ' and the study of the humani- 
 ties need not end where the study of the human body 
 is begun. Let each come who will, and let each take 
 what he can, and let the ideals be so high that no one 
 will imagine that he is getting where he is not. Scholars 
 can be made neither by driving nor by coaxing. In any 
 profession the inspiration and the example of educated 
 men is the best surety that the generation which suc- 
 ceeds them shall be likewise men of culture.
 
 IX. 
 
 LAW SCHOOLS AND LAWYERS.* 
 
 MR. JAMES BRYCE, writing of the universities 
 of America, uses these words: "While, of all the 
 institutions of the country, they are those of which the 
 Americans speak most modestly, and, indeed, depre- 
 catingly, they are those which seem to be at this very 
 moment making the swiftest progress, and to have the 
 best promise for the future. They are supplying exactly 
 those things which European critics have hitherto found 
 lacking in America, and they are contributing to her 
 political as well as to her contemplative life elements of 
 inestimable worth. ' ' 
 
 The various influences German, English, and Ameri- 
 can which are molding our higher education, are join- 
 ing together to produce the American university. And, 
 as Mr. Bryce has clearly indicated, the American 
 university is becoming an institution in every way worthy 
 of our great republic. Its swaddling-clothes of English 
 tradition are being cast aside, and it is growing to be 
 American in the high sense of adjustment to the Ameri- 
 can people's needs. The academic work of the best 
 American institutions is characterized by vigor and 
 thoroughness, and in the free air that pervades them 
 there is every promise for their future. 
 
 But with all this, the professional schools of America 
 
 * Published in The Forum, 1895. 
 150
 
 THE AMERICAN LAW SCHOOL. 151 
 
 have not taken their part in the university development. 
 It has been lately said of the American law schools, for 
 example, that they are the weakest, and therefore the 
 worst, to be found in any civilized country. Broadly 
 speaking, and taking out some half-dozen notable excep- 
 tions (not so many nor so notable as they should be), 
 this statement cannot be denied. Of this deficiency, its 
 causes and its remedy, I propose briefly to treat in this 
 paper. 
 
 In Europe, professional training is in general the cul- 
 mination of university education. It is not so in America. 
 It is here rather a "practical short-cut," by which uned- 
 icated or ineducable men are helped to the rewards of 
 knowledge and skill with the least possible loss of time. 
 In most of our States provision is made for a system of 
 public education beginning with the common schools and 
 culminating in the university. The law schools, however, 
 in the different States form no part of this system. They 
 are rarely, even, in real alliance with it. Their place 1* 
 with the ' ' independent normal ' ' and the ' ' school of ora- 
 tory." Instead of a requirement of general intelligence 
 and a special knowledge of economics, history, literature, 
 and language, as a preparation for the study of law, our 
 law schools have been eager to admit any one who can 
 pay the required fees and perchance read the English 
 language. 
 
 Instead of trained professors who make the methods 
 of investigation and instruction in law the work of a life- 
 time, we find in most of our law schools lawyers who 
 have turned incidentally to teaching, with no knowledge 
 of the methods by which teaching may be made effective. 
 Some of them are young men who have not yet found
 
 152 LAW SCHOOLS AND LAWYERS. 
 
 anything more serious to do. But usually the chairs of 
 law are occupied by broken-down lawyers, released from 
 active practice old men who read old lectures to 
 audiences inattentive or occupied with newspapers, or 
 who conduct a lifeless quiz from lifeless text-books. 
 Sometimes these veterans of a thousand fields are wise 
 with the results of many experiences. These teachers 
 may interest and inspire their students. But training 
 they seldom give. Only the man with whom teaching 
 is the first interest can be an effective teacher. Able 
 jurists sometimes fill these chairs, men still in active 
 practice, whose hour in the classroom is taken early in 
 the morning or late in the afternoon, before or after the 
 arduous duties of a day in court. With these men the 
 court, and not the school, occupies their thought and fills 
 their ambitions. 
 
 The law students are in general assistants in law offices 
 or clerks in business establishments. They devote their 
 hours outside the classroom, not to library research or to 
 the investigations of principles and precedents, but to 
 the making of money. The law school is expected not 
 to interrupt their usual vocations. The atmosphere of 
 culture which surrounds every real institution of learning, 
 and which it is the business of great teachers to create, 
 is unknown to the average student of law. 
 
 Often the law school appears in its register as a branch 
 of some university. In most such cases this relation is 
 one which exists only in name. It is a common expres- 
 sion that such and such a college is ' ' surrounded by a 
 fringe of professional schools." These exist as stolons 
 or suckers around a stalk of corn, rather than as repre- 
 senting "the full corn in the ear." When a nominal
 
 WALKING INTO A PROFESSION. 153 
 
 alliance exists, it rests not often on unity of purpose or 
 method, but on the fact of mutual service. The reputa- 
 tion of the university tends to advertise the law school. 
 The roll of law students swells the apparent attendance 
 of the university. By the number of names on the 
 register the success of the American university is popu- 
 larly measured. 
 
 There is, besides, a strong force of precedent, which 
 causes each new law school to be modeled on the lines 
 of the old ones. These influences, and others, oblige 
 our universities to wink at the obvious incongruity of the 
 requirement of elaborate and careful preparation for the 
 study of literature, chemistry, and economics, while for 
 the study of law a mere reading acquaintance with the 
 English language passes as adequate. More than once 
 college faculties in this matter have had to subordinate 
 their opinions to those of timid boards of trustees, who 
 are afraid that high standards in a law school would be 
 fatal to its success, measuring success in the conventional 
 fashion, as boards of trustees are prone to do. 
 
 It is thus true, as President Eliot has said, that into an 
 American law school any man ' ' can walk from the 
 street." But in most of the States he can do better, or 
 worse, than this. From the street he can walk directly 
 into the profession of law, disregarding even the formulas 
 of matriculation or graduation. Even the existence of 
 the law school is a concession to educational tradition. 
 It is possible with us to enter any one of the "learned 
 professions" with no learning whatsoever. In fact, in 
 many of our States it requires no more preparation to 
 be admitted to the bar than to be admitted to the saw- 
 buck. Fortunately, admission to either on these terms
 
 154 LAW SCHOOLS AND LAWYERS. 
 
 carries with it no prestige or social elevation whatever. 
 But the danger in the one case is greater than in the 
 other. The inefficient lawyer may work the ruin of 
 interests intrusted to him. The ignorant physician is 
 more dangerous than the plague. The incompetent 
 wood-sawyer harms only the wood-pile. A large part of 
 our criminal records is devoted to legal and medical mal- 
 practice. In other words, our bulk of crime is swollen 
 by robbery and murder committed under the guise of 
 professional assistance. When the professions cease to 
 be open wide to adventurers and thieves, they will rise to 
 something of their ancestral dignity. It has been said 
 that the only "learned profession " in America at present 
 is that of engineer. The value of knowledge and train- 
 ing in the various applications of science to human affairs 
 has always been recognized among us. The people have 
 freely taxed themselves for industrial instruction, and it 
 is now generally recognized as a necessary part of the 
 State university system. The faculty in mechanic arts 
 stands on an equality with the university faculties, and ii 
 general the standards of admission and methods of work 
 in these branches compare favorably with those in any 
 other field. The reason for this is not far to seek. The 
 necessity of education in these lines is self-evident. Men 
 cannot trifle with the forces of nature. The incompe- 
 tence, or ignorance, or dishonesty of an engineer will 
 soon make itself evident. The incompetence of men in 
 other professions is not less disastrous, but it is more 
 easily concealed. And for this reason the common man 
 regards it with greater indifference. 
 
 It seems to me that the essential weakness of the 
 American law school, as well as that of our professional
 
 JAMES BRADLEY THAYER. 155 
 
 schools in general, lies in the method of organization. 
 They have lost their place in the university. In a recent 
 address,* Professor James Bradley Thayer has these 
 strong words: 
 
 ' ' We must not be content with a mere lip service, with 
 merely tagging our law schools with the name of a uni- 
 versity, while they lack entirely the university spirit and 
 character. What, then, does our undertaking involve, 
 and what that conception of the study of our English 
 system of law, which, in Blackstone's phrase, 'extends 
 the pomceria of university learning, and adopts this new 
 tribe of citizens within these philosophical walls ' ? It 
 means this: that our law must be studied and taught as 
 other great sciences are taught at the universities, as 
 deeply, by like methods, and with a concentration and 
 lifelong devotion of all the powers of a learned and stu- 
 dious faculty. If our law be not a science worthy, and 
 requiring to be thus studied and thus taught, then, as a 
 distinguished lawyer has remarked, 'a university will 
 best consult its own dignity in declining to teach it. ' 
 This is the plow to which our ancestors here in America 
 set their hand, and to which we have set ours; and we 
 must see to it that the furrow is handsomely turned. 
 
 ' ' But who is there, I may be asked, to study law in 
 this way ? Who is to have the time for it and the oppor- 
 tunity? Let me ask a question in return, and answer 
 it. Who is it that studies the natural or physical sciences, 
 engineering, philology, history, theology, or medical 
 science in this way ? First of all, those who, for any 
 reason, propose to master these subjects, to make true 
 
 " University Teaching of English Law." Address before tde American 
 Bar Association, Detroit, August 27, -.895.
 
 156 LAW SCHOOLS AND LAWYERS. 
 
 and exact statements of them, and to carry forward in 
 these regions the limits of human knowledge, and 
 especially the teachers of these things; second, not in 
 so great a degree, but each as far as he may, the 
 leaders in the practical application of these branches of 
 knowledge to human affairs; third, in a still less degree, 
 yet in some degree, all practitioners of these subjects, if 
 I may use that phrase, who wish to understand their 
 business and to do it thoroughly well. 
 
 "Precisely the same thing is true in law as in these or 
 any other of the great parts of human knowledge. In 
 all it is alike beneficial and alike necessary for the vigor- 
 ous and fruitful development of the subject, for the best 
 performance of the every-day work of the calling to 
 which they relate, and for the best carrying out of the 
 plain, practical duties of each man's place, that some- 
 where, and by some persons, these subjects should be 
 investigated with the deepest research and the most 
 searching critical study. 
 
 ' ' The time has gone by when it was necessary to vin- 
 dicate the utility of deep and lifelong investigations into 
 the nature of electricity and the mode of its operation; 
 into the nature of light, and heat, and sound, and the 
 laws that govern their action; into the minute niceties 
 of the chemical and physiological laboratory, the specu- 
 lations and experiments of geology, or the absorbing 
 calculations of the mathematician or astronomer. Men 
 do not now need to be told what it is that has given 
 them the steam-engine, the telegraph, the telephone, 
 the electric railway and the electric light, the telescope, 
 the improved lighthouse, the lucifer match, antiseptic 
 surgery, the prophylactics against simll-pox and diph-
 
 THE USE OF THOROUGH KNOWLEDGE. 157 
 
 theria, aluminum the new metal, and the triumphs of 
 modern engineering. These things are mainly the out- 
 come of what seemed to the majority of mankind useless 
 and unpractical study and experiment. 
 
 ' ' But, as regards our law, those who press the 
 importance of thorough and scientific study are not yet 
 exempt from the duty of pointing out the use of it and 
 its necessity. To say nothing of the widespread skepti- 
 cism among a certain class of practical men, in and out 
 of our profession, as to the advantages of everything of 
 the sort, there is also, among those who nominally admit 
 it, and even advocate it, a remarkable failure to appreciate 
 what this admission means. It is the simple truth that 
 you cannot have thorough and first-rate training in law 
 any more than in physical science, unless you have a 
 body of learned teachers; and you cannot have a learned 
 faculty of law unless, like other faculties, they give their 
 lives to the work. The main secret of teaching law, as 
 of all teaching, is what Socrates declared to be the secret 
 of eloquence understanding your subject; and that 
 requires, as regards any one of the great heads of our 
 law, in the present stage of our science, an enormous 
 and absorbing amount of labor." 
 
 This separation, which I have tried to describe, exists 
 only in America. For this separation, the popular desire 
 to reach these professions by short cuts, and the popular 
 distrust of those who have done so, are equally respon- 
 sible. 
 
 Our people have always been willing to tax themselves 
 to furnish a general education for their children. The 
 common-school idea from the very first has included a 
 liberal education. But in most of the States the people
 
 158 LAW SCHOOLS AND LAWYERS. 
 
 have at one time or another definitely refused to devote 
 public funds to the making of lawyers and doctors. 
 They would not, at their expense, help men into profes- 
 sions they believed to be overpaid as well as overcrowded. 
 This policy has been a most shortsighted one. It has 
 been responsible for the existence in every part of our 
 country of hordes of pettifoggers and quacks, who rob 
 the people instead of serving them. Incompetent pro- 
 fessional service is always robbery. The professions are 
 overcrowded simply because they have ceased to be 
 professions. The remedy for incompetence is found in 
 insisting on competence. This can be done by furnish- 
 ing means by which competence can be possible. 
 
 The forces which have operated here are necessarily 
 associated with the growth of democracy. The move- 
 ment of civilization has been constantly in the direction 
 of the extension of the powers and privileges of the few 
 to the many. By this influence careers and distinctions 
 once reserved for the aristocracy have been opened to 
 the common man. One immediate result temporary, 
 I believe, is that the common man has invaded these 
 provinces without abating one whit of his commonness. 
 This is a necessary phase of the vulgarization which 
 follows the extension of justice known as democracy. 
 Jt is connected with the vulgarization of the press, the 
 theater, the pulpit, which must follow their adjustment 
 to the needs of the many, rather than to the finer tastes 
 or juster judgment of the few. The common man is 
 satisfied with common lawyers. When he ceases to be 
 thus satisfied, he is no longer common. That his free- 
 dom of choice and the training which results from it 
 will, in the long run, eliminate this vulgarization, is the
 
 POOR TEACHING NOT DEMANDED. 159 
 
 justification for democracy. Our hope for the future 
 lies largely in our recognition of the badness of the pres- 
 ent. From the weakness of our professional schools the 
 common man is the chief sufferer. And already he is 
 joining in the demand that these schools be made better. 
 It is one virtue of democracy that it is free to meet 
 its own demands. It is absolutely certain that those 
 schools whose work is most thorough and whose require- 
 ments are most exacting will have the most students, 
 as well as the best ones. It is not true that the stu- 
 dents of America demand poor instruction because it is 
 cheap. 
 
 Notwithstanding all adverse conditions, there have 
 been many great teachers of law in America, as there 
 have been and are many great lawyers. The great teacher 
 makes his influence felt, whatever the defects in the 
 organization of the institution which claims his services. 
 The present strength of the University of Michigan 
 rests in large degree on the work of Thomas M. Cooley. 
 The work of John B. Minor in the University of Vir- 
 ginia gave a well-deserved prominence to the Virginia 
 School of Law. Theodore Dwight was once the Law 
 School of Columbia College. Other law professors have 
 added in no small degree to the prestige of Harvard, 
 Cornell, and the University of Pennsylvania. In all 
 these institutions a strenuous effort has been made to 
 place the work in law on a basis not less high than that 
 occupied by history and economics. In other words, 
 in these and in some other institutions the law faculty 
 is to be not an "annex," but an integral part of the 
 faculty of the university. When this is done, the 
 requirements for graduation as a lawyer will not be less
 
 160 LAW SCHOOLS AND LAWYERS, 
 
 than equivalent to the work for which a degree would 
 be granted to a chemist or a civil engineer. 
 
 To find the cause of any deficiency is to go a long 
 way toward curing it. In this case, it seems to me, the 
 remedy lies in placing the instruction in law on the same 
 footing as that of other departments of the university. 
 The teaching of law should be a life work in itself. The 
 requirements and methods in law should be abreast of 
 the best work in any department. The university atmo- 
 sphere and the university ideals should surround the 
 student in law as well as the student in history. No one 
 should be encouraged to take professional studies until 
 he is capable of carrying them on seriously and success- 
 fully. 
 
 There is, moreover, no reason for segregating the 
 teachers of law in any way from the other members 
 of the university faculty. As well make chemistry or 
 economics a separate school, as to set off the law by 
 itself. All these separations may be made in name, but 
 they should not exist in fact. The elements of law have 
 as strong claim to a place in general education as the 
 elements of geometry or psychology. Even for purpose 
 of professional education, it is better that the study of 
 law should be carried on simultaneously with that of the 
 historical and social sciences, which are its natural asso- 
 ciates. The basis of law is in the nature of man, not 
 in the statutes of the United States, nor in those of Eng- 
 land. The common law has it source in man and his 
 civilization, not in the books. This the student must 
 learn to know and feel. So history, social science, and 
 law must be mutually dependent on one another. The 
 student of the one cannot be ignorant of the others.
 
 EDUCATE YOUR RULERS. 161 
 
 The suggestion that social studies should accompany 
 rather than precede law studies has lately received the 
 strong advocacy of Dr. Woodrow Wilson and Professor 
 Ernest W. Huffcut.* This association should give to 
 the student not only a lawyer's training, but a scholar's 
 horizon. Without this, broad views in jurisprudence 
 and in politics are impossible. Such a course of study 
 would give dignity to the general culture of the college. 
 A student takes a better hold on culture studies where 
 they are clearly related to the work of his life. 
 
 Moreover, the politicians of each country are for the 
 most part its lawyers. Our lawyers are our rulers, f We 
 
 Professor Huffcut says: "We may safely give our assent to the plan 
 whereby the study of law is to be treated like the study of any other branch 
 of human knowledge; that the preparation for it should be mainly the same 
 as for the study of history and political science ; and the law, upon the one 
 hand, and history, political science, and philosophy, upon the other, will 
 profit from the closer union between the two. I confess that this plan has for 
 me personally many attractive features. It drives out at the outset the pro- 
 fessional or technical atmosphere which is likely to surround the law when 
 disconnected from other human interests. It brings the law school into the 
 warmth and color and light of a general university atmosphere. It relates 
 the subject of law logically and consistently to the general field of political 
 science. The student from the outset of his studies in the field of law is 
 encouraged, if not compelled, to make constant investigations in history, polit- 
 ical science, and government, which cannot fail to give him a broader appre- 
 hension of the true meaning and import of legal institutions and the admin- 
 istration of justice. Our law schools are parts of a university system. By 
 making them organic parts of such system, asking; our colleagues of the uni- 
 versities to recognize that our work is part and parcel of their own, and our- 
 selves frankly recognizing that theirs is essential to the success of ours, we 
 shall yet arrive at a solution of our problem which shall advance the interests 
 of legal education and of sound learning." (Huffcut: Transactions Ameri- 
 can Bar Association, Detroit, 1895.) 
 
 f Mr. James DeWitt Andrews says: " One might almost say that this was 
 a government of the lawyers by the lawyers. Of the lawyers, because of the 
 prominent, almost controlling, part they played in its institutions; by the law- 
 yers, because of the important part they have taken in its administration. 
 In every branch of government legislative, executive, and j udicial, lawyers 
 have always predominated ; but so well have they borne in mind the ethics of 
 the profession, that their office, whether in the administration of justice or
 
 162 LAW SCHOOLS AND LAWYERS. 
 
 can never hope to see our State well governed till its 
 lawyers are well trained. Our greatness has been in 
 large degree the work of our great jurists. To know 
 the law not merely the statutes, or the tricks for evad- 
 ing them, makes men great. Of these we have had 
 many, though scant our provision for their training has 
 been. There can be no political conscience except as an 
 outcome of political knowledge. Right acting can only 
 come as a result of right thinking. The men who think 
 right will, in the long run, act in accord with their 
 knowledge. Those who have known that there is a 
 science of human institutions can never wholly forget 
 that fact. There can be no right thinking in matters of 
 public administration without a knowledge of the laws 
 of growth of human institutions. Only in accordance 
 with these laws is good government possible. Of these 
 fundamental laws of being the statutes of man must be 
 an expression. Where they are not so the people have 
 sooner or later a fearful score to pay. The Fates charge 
 compound interest on every human blunder, and they 
 have their own way at the last. 
 
 when coupled with other public trusts, is but an agency and a trust, that their 
 real supremacy has never been felt. Whoever impugns the integrity of the 
 profession at large casts a slur on the nation." (Andrews: "The Works of 
 James Wilson," Vol. I, preface.")
 
 X. 
 
 THE PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 A PRACTICAL education is one which can be made 
 1~\ effective in life. We often abuse the word practi- 
 cal by making it synonymous with temporary or super- 
 ficial. It should mean just the opposite. An education 
 which takes but little time and less effort, and leads at once 
 to a paying situation, is not practical. It is not good, 
 because it will never lead to anything better. An edu- 
 cation which does not disclose the secret of power is 
 unworthy the name. Nothing is really practical which 
 does not provide for growth in effectiveness. There is 
 nothing more practical than knowledge, nothing more 
 unpractical than ignorance ; nothing more practical than 
 sunshine, nothing less so than darkness. The chief 
 essentials of education should be thoroughness and fit- 
 ness. The most thorough training is the most practical, 
 provided only that it is fitted to the end in view. The 
 essential fault of educational systems of the past is that, 
 in search for breadth and thoroughness, the element of 
 fitness was forgotten. We have tried, as we used to say, 
 to make well-rounded men, ' ' men who stand four-square 
 to every wind that blows." This is a training better 
 fitted for hitching-posts or windmills than for men. This 
 is the day of special knowledge. Only by doing some 
 one thing better than any one else, can a man find a 
 worthy place in our complex social fabric. The ability 
 
 163
 
 164 THE PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 to do a hundred things in an inferior way will not help 
 him. This is a fact our schools must recognize. No 
 man is great by chance in these days. If one is to do 
 anything of importance he must first understand what 
 he is to do, and then set about it with all his might. 
 
 Men of affairs often sneer at college men and college 
 methods. Some of their criticisms are justified, others 
 not. Such justification as they may have had is found 
 in the lack of fitness in college training. Among condi- 
 tions of life infinitely varied the college has decreed that 
 all boys should take the same studies, in the same way, 
 and at the same time, and that these studies should be 
 the routine of the English boy of a century ago. In 
 thus repeating the thoughts and learning of nations half 
 forgotten, the minds of some ' ' Greek-minded ' ' and 
 "Roman-minded" men were stimulated to their highest 
 activity, and for them such training was good and ade- 
 quate. 
 
 But there were some, "American-minded" perhaps, 
 whose powers were not awakened by such influences. 
 These came forth from the college walls into the life of 
 the world, as Rip Van Winkle from the Catskills, dazed 
 by the new experiences to which their studies had given 
 no clue. 
 
 I do not wish to depreciate the value of classical 
 training. There is a higher point of view than that of 
 mere utility, and the beautiful forms and noble thoughts 
 of ancient literature have been a lifelong source of inspi- 
 ration to thousands who have made no direct use of their 
 college studies in the affairs of life. But there are other 
 sources of inspiration which, in their way, may affect 
 many to whom Latin or Greek would be a meaningless
 
 WORK THAT LASTS. 165 
 
 grind. For such as these a different training is neces- 
 sary, if our education is to be practical. The schools 
 of the future will avoid not only bad training, but also 
 "misfit" training; for the time of the student is so 
 precious that no part of it should be wrongly used. 
 
 The remedy for the evils of misfit training is not to 
 discard the high standards or the thorough drill of the 
 old college, but to apply it to a wider range of studies. 
 No two students are ever quite alike, and no two will 
 ever follow exactly the same career. If we work to the 
 best advantage, no two will ever follow the same course 
 of study. And thus recognizing in our efforts the 
 infinite variations of human nature, the work of higher 
 education acquires an effectiveness which it could never 
 have under the cast-iron systems of the traditional col- 
 lege. Misfit training is good only as compared with no 
 training at all. Any sort of activity is better than stag- 
 nation. 
 
 The purpose of right training is to prepare for work 
 which is to last. There is enough already of poor and 
 careless work. Whatever is done needs to be done 
 well. Let it be done honestly not as to-day's make- 
 shift, but as done for all time. 
 
 High under the roof of the Cathedral of Cologne 
 there is many an image carved in stone and wrought 
 with the most exquisite care, but which human eye has 
 never seen since it was first placed in the niche in which 
 it stands. This work of the Gothic sculptors was done 
 for the sight of God, and not for the worship of man. 
 The Cathedral of Cologne was almost a thousand years 
 in building. I saw, the other day, a cathedral in one 
 of our Eastern cities, built in barely as many weeks as
 
 166 THE PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 the other in centuries. The marble sculptures on its 
 lofty towers are made of sheet-iron, zinc-lined, and 
 painted to represent stone. Such is the work of modern 
 cathedral builders. But the slow-moving centuries will 
 show the difference. 
 
 A Swiss watchmaker said the other day: "Your 
 American manufacturers cannot establish themselves in 
 Europe. The first sample you send is all right, the 
 second lot begins to drop off, the third destroys your 
 reputation, and the fourth puts an end to your trade. 
 All you seem to care for is to make money. What you 
 want is some pride in your work." If this has been 
 true of American watchmakers, it should be true no 
 longer. The work that lasts must be not the quickest, 
 but the best. Let it be done, not to require each year a 
 fresh coat of paint, but done as if to last forever, and 
 some of it will endure. This world is crowded on its 
 lower floor, but higher up, for centuries to come, there 
 will still remain a niche for each piece of honest work. 
 
 "Profligacy," says Emerson, "consists not in spend- 
 ing, but in spending off the line of your career. The 
 crime which bankrupts men and States is job work, 
 declining from your main design to serve a turn here or 
 there. Nothing is beneath you, if in the direction of 
 your life; nothing, to you, is great or desirable, if it be 
 off from that." 
 
 The test of civilization is the saving of labor. The 
 great economic waste of the world is that involved in 
 unskilled labor. The gain of the nineteenth century 
 over the eighteenth is the gain of skill in workmanship. 
 But with all our progress in labor-saving, we have yet 
 far to go before our use of labor shall balance our waste
 
 THE WASTE OF LABOR. 167 
 
 of it. The work which goes to waste in Europe, even 
 now, through lack of training and lack of proper tools, 
 is greater than all the losses through wars and standing 
 armies and the follies of hereditary caste. It is second 
 only to the waste due to idleness itself. For idleness 
 there is no remedy so effective as training. To know 
 how to do is to have a pride and pleasure in doing. In 
 the long run, there is no force making for virtue and 
 sobriety so strong as the influence of skill 
 
 If a man knows how to do and how to act, he is 
 assured against half the dangers which beset life. 
 Training of the hand, training of the mind, training 
 of any kind, which gives the man the power to do 
 something which he knows to be genuine, gives him 
 self-respect, makes a man of him, not a tool, or a force, 
 or a thing. 
 
 An unskilled laborer is a relic of past ages and condi- 
 tions. He is a slave in a time when enforced slavery 
 is past. The waste which comes from doing poor things 
 in poor ways keeps half of humanity forever poor. What 
 the unskilled man can do, a bucket of coal and a bucket 
 of water, guided by " a thimbleful of brains," will do more 
 effectively. It is the mission of industrial training to put 
 an end to unskilled labor; to make each workman a free 
 man. When the time shall come when each workman 
 can use his powers to the best advantage we shall have 
 an end to the labor problem. The final answer of the labor 
 problem is that each should solve it for himself. 
 
 I have spoken of the training of the hand; but all 
 training belongs to the brain, and all kinds of training 
 are of like nature. The hand is the servant of the brain, 
 and can receive nothing of itself. There is no such
 
 168 THE PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 thing as manual training as distinguished from training 
 of the intellect. There is brain behind every act of the 
 hand. The muscles are the mind's only servants. 
 Whether we speak of training an orator, a statesman, 
 or a merchant, or a mechanic, the same language must 
 be used. The essential is that the means should lead 
 toward the end to be reached. 
 
 An ignorant man is a man who has fallen behind our 
 civilization and cannot avail himself of his light. He finds 
 himself in darkness, in an unknown land. He stumbles 
 over trifling obstacles because he does not understand 
 them. He cannot direct his course. The real dangers 
 are all hidden, while the most innocent rock or bush 
 seems a menacing giant. He is not master of the situ- 
 ation. We have but one life to live; let that be an effect- 
 ive one, not one that wastes at every turn through the 
 loss of knowledge or lack of skill. What sunlight is 
 to the eye education is to the intellect, and the most 
 thorough education is always the most practical. No 
 traveler is contented to go about with a lantern when 
 he could as well have the sun. If he can have a com- 
 pass and a map also, so much the better. But let his 
 equipment be fitting. Let him not take an ax if there 
 be no trees to chop, nor a boat unless he is to cross a 
 river, nor a Latin grammar if he is to deal with bridge- 
 building, unless the skill obtained by mastering the one 
 gives him insight into the other. 
 
 I often meet parents who wish to give their sons a prac- 
 tical education. They think of practical as something 
 cheap and easy. A little drawing, a little tinkering with 
 machinery, a little bookkeeping of imaginary accounts, 
 and their sons are "ready for business." " Ready for
 
 EDUCATION FOR BUSINESS. 169 
 
 business," as though the complex problems of finance 
 were to be solved by a knowledge of bookkeeping by 
 double-entry! Life is more serious than that. It takes 
 a thorough education to make a successful business man. 
 Not the education of the schools, we say, and it may be 
 so; but if so, it is the fault of the schools. They ought 
 to make good business men as well as to make good men 
 in any other profession. They ought to fit men for life. 
 Why do the great majority of merchants fail ? Is it not 
 because they do not know how to succeed? Is it not 
 because they have not the brains and the skill to com- 
 pete with those who had both brains and training ? Is 
 it not because they do not realize that there are laws 
 of finance and commerce as inexorable as the law of 
 gravitation ? A man will stand erect because he stands 
 in accord with the law of gravitation. A man or a nation 
 will grow rich by working in accord with the laws which 
 govern the accumulation of wealth. If there are such 
 laws, men should know them. What men must know 
 the schools can teach. 
 
 The schools will indeed do a great work if they teach 
 the existence of law. Half the people of America be- 
 lieve this is a world of chance. Half of them believe 
 they are victims of bad luck when they receive the re- 
 wards of their own stupidity. Half of them believe that 
 they are favorites of fortune, and will be helped out 
 somehow, regardless of what they may do. Now and 
 then some man catches a falling apple, picks up a penny 
 from the dust, or a nugget from the gulch. Then his 
 neighbors set to looking into the sky for apples, or into 
 the dust for pennies, as though pennies and apples come 
 in that way. Waiting for chances never made anybody
 
 170 THE PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 rich. The Golden Age of California began when gold 
 no longer came by chance. There is more gold in the 
 black adobe of the Santa Clara Valley than existed in 
 the whole great range of the Sierras until men sought 
 for it, not by luck or chance, but by system and science. 
 Whatever is worth having comes because we have earned 
 it. There is but one way to earn anything that is to 
 find out the laws which govern production, and to shape 
 our actions in accordance with these laws. Good luck 
 never conies to the capable man as a surprise. He is 
 prepared for it, because it was the very thing he has 
 a right to expect. Sooner or later, and after many hard 
 raps, every man who lives long enough will find this 
 out. When he does so, he has the key to success, 
 though it may be too late to use it. 
 
 It is the work of the school to give these laws reality 
 in the mind of the student. The school can bring the 
 student face to face with these laws, and even teach him 
 to make them do his bidding. If we work with them, 
 these laws are as tractable as the placid flow of a mighty 
 river. If we struggle against them, they make the ter- 
 rible havoc of an uncontrolled flood. To ignore them 
 is to defy them. From our knowledge of the laws of na- 
 ture arise the achievements of civilization. These are our 
 knowledge wrought into action. The thing we under- 
 stand becomes our servant. Whatever we know we can 
 have. But whatever we conquer, our victory is a tri- 
 umph of knowledge. 
 
 We speak of this age as the age of inventions, the age 
 of man's conquest of the forces of nature. But the man 
 who invents or constructs machinery is not the conqueror. 
 It is easy for one to harness the lightning when another
 
 PURE SCIENCE BEFORE APPLIED SCIENCE. 171 
 
 has shown him the lightning's nature and ways. It is 
 easier still to repeat what others have done. The appli- 
 cations of science are only an incident in the growth of 
 science. The electric light and the locomotive follow 
 sooner or later, as a matter of course, when we have found 
 the laws which govern electric currents and the expansive 
 power of steam. It is this knowledge which gives con- 
 trol over the forces of nature. It is by investigation, not 
 through application or repetition, that man's power ad- 
 vances. It is the investigator who comes in contact with 
 the unveiled ways of God. The applications of elec- 
 tricity to common purposes have been for the most part 
 made in our day, but the knowledge on which they are 
 based goes back to the earliest investigators of physical 
 laws. These men forced their way into the infinite dark- 
 ness, regardless of the multitude that would crowd into 
 their path. An investigator is the cause of a thousand 
 inventors. A Faraday or a Helmholtz is the parent of a 
 thousand Edisons. Without the help of the university 
 Edisons are possible. Only the highest training can 
 make a Helmholtz; for no man can reach the highest 
 rank who has not entered into all the work of all his 
 predecessors. 
 
 And this brings me to say that the great work of a 
 university is to be the center of investigation. It should 
 be the source of new truths of new conquests in every 
 field. To it will come for the brief course of training 
 and guidance many who, in the maturity of their lives, 
 will accomplish much good for their fellow-men. In the 
 ever-increasing circle of human knowledge new fields are 
 being constantly opened. The whole knowledge of the 
 last generation must be taken for granted as the basis of
 
 172 THE PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 advancement for the next. Not till the circle of human 
 knowledge has widened to infinity, shall we comprehend 
 the infinite goodness of God.
 
 XL 
 SCIENCE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL.* 
 
 THE purpose of science-teaching as a part of general 
 education is this to train the judgment through 
 its exercise on first-hand knowledge. The student of 
 science is taught to know what he knows and to dis- 
 tinguish it from what he merely remembers or imagines. 
 Our contact with the universe is the source of all our 
 knowledge. This knowledge tested and set in order we 
 call science. Throughout the ages, the growth of the 
 human mind has been in direct proportion to the breadth 
 of this contact. To the man without knowledge of 
 science, the universe seems small. Science is our per- 
 ception of realities; and as the realities come, year by 
 year, to occupy a larger and larger place in our life, so 
 the demand for more and better training in science will 
 long be an urgent and growing one. But science should 
 hold its place in the schools by virtue of its power as an 
 agent in mental training, not because of the special use- 
 fulness of scientific facts, nor because knowledge of 
 things has a higher market value than the knowledge 
 of words. 
 
 The time will come when the study of the objects and 
 forces of nature will be as much a matter of course in all 
 our schools as the study of numbers, but the science- 
 work of the next century will not be the work we are 
 
 Address before the Indiana State Teachers' Association, December 26, 
 1889 ; published in the Popular Science Monthly, April, 1890. 
 
 173
 
 174 SCIENCE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL. 
 
 doing now. The science in our schools is too often a 
 make-believe, and the schools gain with every make- 
 believe that slips out of the curriculum. Deeply as I 
 am interested in the progress of science, both in school 
 and out, with Professor Huxley, ' ' I would not turn my 
 hand over ' ' to have biology taught in every school in 
 the land, if the subject be taught through books only. 
 To pretend to do, without doing, is worse than not to 
 pretend. The conventional ' ' fourteen weeks ' ' in science 
 gives no contact with nature, no training of any sort, no 
 information worth having; only a distaste for that class 
 of scattering information which is supposed to be science. 
 
 There is a charm in real knowledge which every stu- 
 dent feels. The magnet attracts iron, to be sure, to the 
 student who has learned the fact from a book; but the 
 fact is real only to the student who has himself felt it 
 pull. It is more than this it is enchanting to the 
 student who has discovered the fact for himself. To 
 read a statement of the fact gives knowledge, more or 
 less complete, as the book is accurate or the memory 
 retentive. To verify the fact gives training; to discover 
 it gives inspiration. Training and inspiration, not the 
 facts themselves, are the justification of science-teaching. 
 Facts enough we can gather later in life, when we are 
 too old to be trained or inspired. He whose knowledge 
 comes from authority, or is derived from books alone, 
 has no notion of the force of an idea brought first-hand 
 from human experience. 
 
 What is true of one science is true of all in greater or 
 less degree. I may take the science of zoology for my 
 illustration, simply because it is the one nearest my 
 hand. In very few of our high schools has the instruc-
 
 SMATTERING AS SCIENCE. 175 
 
 tion in zoology any value. For this unfortunate fact 
 there are several causes, and some of these are beyond 
 the control of the teachers. In the first place, the high- 
 school course is overloaded, and the small part of the 
 course given to the sciences is divided among too many 
 of them. A smattering of one science is of little use, 
 either for discipline or information. A smattering of 
 many sciences may be even worse, because it leads the 
 mind to be content with smattering. Indeed, so greatly 
 have our schools sinned in this respect that many writers 
 on education seem to regard science as synonymous with 
 smattering, and they contrast it with other branches 
 of learning which are supposed to have some standard 
 of thoroughness. Most of our colleges have, at one 
 time or other, arranged courses of study not approved 
 by the faculty, in response to the popular demand for 
 many studies in a little time. Such a course of odds 
 and ends is always called ' ' the scientific course, ' ' and 
 it leads to the appropriate degree of " B. S.," Bache- 
 lor of Surfaces. 
 
 The high school can do some things very well, but it 
 will fail if it try to do too much. Unfortunately, the 
 present tendency in our high schools is in the direction of 
 such failure to do many things poorly, rather than a few 
 things well. In other words, we try to satisfy the public 
 by a show of teaching those subjects which we do not 
 really teach. In the sciences we study books instead 
 of nature, because books are plenty and cheap, and can 
 be finished quickly, while Nature herself is accessible 
 only to those who want something of her. The high 
 school would do well not to attempt to give a general 
 view of science. It is better to select some two or three
 
 176 SCIENCE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL. 
 
 of the number a physical and a biological science, per- 
 haps, and to spend the available time on these. The 
 choice should depend mainly on the interest or the skill 
 of the teacher. Teach those sciences that you can teach 
 best. 
 
 President Hill, of Rochester, has well said : " Thou- 
 sands of our youth have studied chemistry without ever 
 seeing an experiment, physics withoutseeing an air-pump, 
 and astronomy without ever looking through a telescope. 
 A professor of the ancient type maintained that this is a 
 great advantage, like the study of geometry without 
 figures, because it stimulates the imagination. It is an 
 invigoration of stupidity and conceit, sealing the mind to 
 reality by substituting subjective fancies for experimental 
 proofs, and the pretense of knowing for clear ideas. Its 
 effect upon the morals is as pernicious as its effect upon 
 the mind; for it weakens the reverence for truth and 
 engenders the habit of mental trifling. ' ' 
 
 One of our wisest writers on education excludes sci- 
 ence-teaching (by which he means giving information 
 about scientific subjects) from the fundamental require- 
 ments of education, because the knowledge of nature is 
 not one of the ' ' five windows ' ' through which the soul 
 looks out on life. These windows, according to this 
 author, are reading and writing, grammar, arithmetic, 
 geography, and history. The simile is a happy one. 
 The soul, confined in the watch-tower of medieval educa- 
 tion, looks out on the world through these five windows 
 and they are but windows, for they give no contact 
 with the things themselves. The study of nature throws 
 wide open the doors, and lets the soul out to the fields 
 and woods. It brings that contact with God through
 
 GOOD AND BAD TEACHERS. 177 
 
 His works which has been, tnrough all the ages, the 
 inspiration of the poets and the prophets, as well as of 
 those long-despised apostles of truth whom we call men 
 of science. 
 
 A second difficulty is this : Our towns will not pay for 
 teachers enough to do the work as it should be done, and 
 of the few teachers we have the people make no demand 
 for thorough preparation. Very few of them are broadly 
 educated or have had any scientific training whatever. 
 And such teachers are expected to teach a dozen sub- 
 jects each, and therefore have no time to make good 
 their defective preparation. Thus good teaching of sci- 
 ence cannot be expected, for streams do not rise higher 
 than their sources. The only remedy for these condi- 
 tions seems to lie in the gradual education of the people. 
 A series of object-lessons, showing the difference between 
 a good teacher and a poor one, is the most effective 
 means of causing good work to be appreciated. 
 
 But, taking things as they are, even with uneducated 
 teachers and teachers crowded for time, fairly good work 
 may be done by the use of good methods. A great deal 
 will depend, not on the kind of books you use, but on 
 the kind of books you avoid. Most of the current text- 
 books of elementary zoology are simply pernicious so far 
 as your purposes are concerned. Even if these books were 
 well digested and accurate in their statements of fact, 
 which is rarely the case, they are based on incorrect prin- 
 ciples. They are not elementary but fragmentary in their 
 character. It is a great mistake to suppose that because 
 a book is small and says very little about each one of the 
 animals of which it treats, it is thereby rendered elemen- 
 tary. Fragments are not necessarily elements. A frag- 
 jf
 
 iy8 SCIENCE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL. 
 
 ment of rock is as hard to digest as a bowlder. Ele- 
 mentary work in science should treat of but few things, 
 but the impressions it leaves with the child should be 
 very clear ones. The ideas derived from the common 
 text-books are of the vaguest possible character. These 
 books are the parasites, not the allies, of science. They 
 bear the same relation to the progress of science that 
 barnacles bear to the progress of a ship. If you keep 
 clear of these, you cannot go far astray. Let us recall 
 the words of Agassiz to the publisher who tried to induce 
 him to write a school-book on zoology: 
 
 " I told him," he said, " that I was not the man to do 
 that sort of thing; and I told him, too, that the less of 
 that sort of thing which is done the better. It is not 
 school-books we want, but students. The book of na- 
 ture is always open, and all I can do or say shall be to 
 lead students to study that book, and not to pin their 
 faith to any other. ' ' And at another time he said, ' ' If 
 we study Nature in books, when we go out of doors we 
 cannot find her." 
 
 The essential of method is that we allow nothing to 
 come between the student and the object which he stu- 
 dies. The book, or chart, or lecture which can be used 
 in place of the real thing is the thing you should never 
 use. Your students should see for themselves, and draw 
 their own conclusions from what they see. When they 
 have a groundwork of their own observations, other 
 facts can be made known to them as a basis for advanced 
 generalizations, for the right use of books is as impor- 
 tant as their misuse is pernicious; but work of this sort 
 belongs to the university rather than to the high school. 
 You do not wish to have your students tell you from
 
 WHAT THE FROG CAN TELL YOU. 179 
 
 memory the characters of the Sauropsida as distinguished 
 from the Ichthyopsida. What you want is the answer to 
 their own questionings of the frog and the turtle. 
 
 I was lately present at a high-school examination in 
 zoology. The teacher gave a number of the stock ques- 
 tions, such as "Describe the Gasteropoda," "What 
 are the chief differences between the domestic turkey 
 and the turkey of Honduras ? " " How do Asiatic and 
 African elephants differ ? " ' ' On which foot of the 
 ornithorhynchus does the webbing extend past the 
 toes?" and so on. At last he said: " I will now give 
 you a practical question: A few days ago we had a frog 
 in the class, and all of you saw it; now write out all the 
 characteristics of the sub-kingdom, class, and order to 
 which the frog belongs." 
 
 This is all useless. The definitions of these classes 
 and orders do not concern the child. To the working 
 naturalist, these names are as essential as the names of 
 the stations on the road to a railway engineer. They 
 belong to his business, but the names and distances of 
 railway stations do not form part of any good work in 
 primary geography. You do not need to teach your 
 students that vertebrates are divided into mammals, 
 birds, reptiles, batrachians, and fishes. It is not true in 
 the first place, and, if it were, it is not relevant to them. 
 Stick to your frog, if you are studying frogs, and he 
 will teach you more of the science of animals than can 
 be learned from all the memorized classifications that 
 you can bracket out on a hundred rods of blackboard! 
 
 The prime defect in our schools is not, after all, that 
 the teachers do not know the subjects they teach, but 
 that they do not know nor care for the purpose of their
 
 i8o SCIENCE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL. 
 
 teaching. In other words, they do not know how to 
 teach. The book is placed in their hands by the school 
 board, and they teach by the book. If the book comes 
 to them wrong-side up, their teaching is forever inverted. 
 That this is true, the statistics gathered recently from the 
 high schools of Indiana, by Dr. Barton W. Evermann, 
 very clearly show. It is no wonder that a superintend- 
 ent is needed for every dozen teachers. A good teacher 
 should know the end for which he works, and then he 
 can adapt his means to fit this end. 
 
 I once visited a large high school, one of the best in 
 the country, with a science-teacher whose studies have 
 won him the respect of his fellow-workers. But for some 
 reason, on that day at least, he failed to bring himself 
 into the classroom. I heard him quizzing a class of boys 
 and girls on animals not on the animals of the woods 
 and fields, not on the animals before them, for there 
 were none, but on the edentates of South America. An 
 especial point was to find out whether it is the nine- 
 banded armadillo (novemcinctus) or the three-banded 
 armadillo (tricinctus) which does not dig a hole in the 
 ground for its nest. The book, written by a man who 
 did not know an armadillo from a mud-turtle, gives this 
 piece of information. It was in the lesson, and the stu- 
 dents must get it. And on this and like subjects these 
 boys and girls were wasting their precious time 
 precious, because if they do not learn to observe in 
 their youth, they will never learn, and the horizon of 
 their lives will be always narrower and darker than it 
 should have been. Already the work of that day is a 
 blank. They have forgotten the nine-banded armadillo 
 and the three-banded, and so has their teacher, and so
 
 THE METHODS OF NON-SCIENCE. 181 
 
 have I. All that remains with them is a mild hatred of 
 the armadillo and of the edentates in general, and a 
 feeling of relief at being no longer under their baleful 
 influence. But with this usually goes the determination 
 never to study zoology again. And when these students 
 later come to the college, they know no more of science 
 and its methods than they did when in babyhood they 
 first cried for the moon. 
 
 Darwin tells us that his early instruction in geology was 
 so ' ' incredibly dull ' ' that he came to the determination, 
 afterward happily changed, ' ' never so long as he lived 
 to read a book on geology or in any way to study the 
 subject. " 
 
 I once had a student, well trained in the conventional 
 methods of non-science, who was set to observe the 
 yeast-plant under the microscope. He had read what 
 the books say about yeast, and had looked at the pic- 
 tures. So he went to work vigorously. In a short time 
 he had found out all about the little plant, and had made 
 a series of drawings which showed it very nicely. By 
 and by some one noticed that he was working without 
 any object-glass in his microscope. He had not seen the 
 yeast-plant at all, only the dust on the eye-piece. This 
 is the vital fault of much of our teaching of elementary 
 science. It is not real; it is not the study of nature, only 
 of the dust-heaps of old definitions. 
 
 Yet nothing is easier than to do fairly good teaching, 
 even without special knowledge or special appliances. 
 Bring out your specimens and set them before the boys 
 and girls. They will do the work, and do it eagerly; 
 and they will furnish the specimens, too. There is no 
 difficulty about materials. Our New World is the " El
 
 182 SCIENCE IN THE HIGH SCHOOL. 
 
 Dorado" of the naturalists of Europe. You can get 
 material for a week's work by turning over a single 
 rotten log. I once heard Professor Agassiz say to an 
 assembly of teachers, and I quote from him the more 
 freely because he gave his life to the task of the introduc- 
 tion of right methods into American schools: 
 
 ' ' Select such subjects that your students can not walk 
 out without seeing them. If you can find nothing better, 
 take a house-fly or a cricket, and let each one hold a 
 specimen while you speak. . . . There is no part 
 of the country where, in the summer, you cannot get a 
 sufficient supply of the best of specimens. Teach your 
 pupils to bring them in. Take your text from the brooks 
 and no,t from the booksellers. . . . It is better to 
 have a few forms well studied than to teach a little about 
 many hundred species. Better a dozen forms thoroughly 
 known as the result of the first year's work, than to have 
 two thousand dollars' worth of shells and corals bought 
 from a curiosity-store. The dozen animals will be your 
 own. . . . You will find the same elements of 
 instruction all about you wherever you are teaching. You 
 can take your classes out and give them the same lessons, 
 and lead them up to the same subjects in one place as 
 another. And this method of teaching children is so 
 natural, so suggestive, so true. That is the charm of 
 teaching from Nature. No one can warp her to suit his 
 own views. She brings us back to absolute truth so 
 often as we wander."
 
 XII. 
 SCIENCE AND THE COLLEGES.* 
 
 WE have come together to-day to do our part in 
 raising one of the milestones which mark the pro- 
 gress of education in America. Our interest in higher 
 education and our interest in science bring us here. 
 More than ever before in the history of humanity we find 
 these interests closely associated. More and more each 
 year the higher education of America is taking the char- 
 acter of science ; and in the extension of human knowl- 
 edge, the American university now finds its best excuse 
 for being. 
 
 I hope that in what I shall have to say I shall not be 
 accused of undue glorification of science. I recognize 
 in the fullest degree the value of all agencies in the de- 
 velopment of the human mind. But the other depart- 
 ments of learning may each have its turn. We are here 
 to-day to dedicate a hall of science. We are here in 
 the interest of science-teaching and scientific research. 
 When, in a few years to come, we may dedicate a hall 
 of letters, we shall sing the praises of poetry and litera- 
 ture. But to-day we speak of science, in the full cer- 
 tainty that the humanities will not suffer with its growth. 
 All real knowledge is a help to all other, and all real 
 love of beauty must rest on love of truth. 
 
 At this time, as we stand together, by the side of the 
 
 Address at the dedication of the Science Hall of the University of Illi- 
 nois, November 16, 1897; from the Popular Science Monthly for April, 1893. 
 
 183
 
 184 SCIENCE AND THE COLLEGES. 
 
 milestone we have set up, on the breezy upland which 
 marks the boundary of our nineteenth century, it is 
 worth while for a moment to glance back over the de- 
 pressing lowlands from which we have risen. And in 
 our discussion of the relations of the American college 
 to science, we find depression and darkness enough with- 
 out going back very far. 
 
 I am still numbered, I trust, with the young men. I 
 am sure that I have never yet heard the word ' ' old ' ' 
 seriously joined to my name. When men speak of ' ' Old 
 Jordan," I know that they mean the river of Palestine, 
 and not me. Yet, in the few years during which I have 
 taught zoology, the relation of science to education has 
 undergone most remarkable changes. 
 
 I remember very clearly that twenty years ago, when, 
 in such way as I could, I had prepared myself for the 
 two professions of naturalist and college professor, I found 
 that these professions were in no way related. I remem- 
 ber having in 1872 put the results of my observations 
 into these words : ' ' The colleges have no part or interest 
 in the progress of science, and science has no interest 
 in the growth of the colleges." 
 
 The college course in those days led into no free air. 
 A priori and ex cathedra, two of its favorite phrases, 
 described it exactly. Its essentials were the grammar 
 of dead languages, and the memorized results of the 
 applications of logic to number and space. Grammar 
 and logic were taught in a perfunctory way, and the 
 student exhausted every device known to restless boys in 
 his desire to evade the instruction he had spent his time 
 and money to obtain. Then, when all the drill was over, 
 and the long struggle between perfunctory teachers and
 
 HOW SCIENCE INVADED THE COLLEGE. 185 
 
 unwilling boys had dragged to an end, the students were 
 passed on to the president, to receive from him an expo- 
 sition of philosophy. This was the outlook on life for 
 which three years of drill made preparation. And this 
 philosophy was never the outgrowth of the knowledge 
 of the day, but simply the d&bris of outworn speculations 
 of the middle ages. It bore no relations to modern life or 
 modern thought. It was therefore peculiarly safe and 
 tranquil izing. 
 
 Let us recall the first invasion of science in the conven- 
 tional programmes of study. It came in response to an 
 outside demand for subjects interesting and practical. It 
 was met in such a way as to silence, rather than to sat- 
 isfy, the demand. A few trifling courses, memorized 
 from antiquated text-books, and the work in science was 
 finished. The teachers who were capable of higher 
 things had no opportunity to make use of their powers. 
 Their investigations were not part of their duties. They 
 were carried on in time stolen from their tasks of plod- 
 ding and prodding. It is to the shame of the State of 
 Indiana that she kept one of the greatest astronomers 
 of our time for forty years teaching boys the elements of 
 geometry and algebra. That he should have taught 
 astronomy, and made astronomers, occurred to no one 
 in authority until Daniel Kirkwood was seventy years 
 old, and by the laws of nature could teach no longer. 
 What was true in this case was true in scores of others. 
 The investigator had no part in the college system, or if 
 on sufferance he found a place, his time was devoted to 
 anything else rather than to the promotion of science. 
 Everywhere in Europe and America were men who were 
 devoting their lives eagerly to scientific research; but, in
 
 186 SCIENCE AND THE COLLEGES. 
 
 nine cases out of ten, these men were outside of the col- 
 leges. Even with the others, very few had any opportu- 
 nity to teach those subjects in which the interest was 
 deepest. 
 
 The American college of the middle of this century, 
 like its English original, existed for the work of the 
 church. ' ' If the college dies the church dies, ' ' was the 
 basis of its appeal for money and influence. Its duty was 
 to form a class of educated men in whose hands should 
 lie the preservation of the creed. In the mouths of igno- 
 rant men the truths of the church would be clouded. 
 Each wise church would see that its wisdom be not 
 marred by human folly. The needs of one church 
 indicated the needs of others. So it came about that 
 each of the many organizations called churches in Amer- 
 ica established its colleges here and there about the coun- 
 try, all based on the same general plan. 
 
 And, as the little towns on the rivers and prairies grew 
 with the progress of the country into large cities, so it 
 was thought, by some mysterious virtue of inward expan- 
 sion, these little schools in time would grow to be great 
 universities. And in this optimistic spirit the future was 
 forestalled, and the schools were called universities from 
 the beginning. As time went on, it appeared that a uni- 
 versity could not be made without money, and the source 
 of money must be outside the schools. And so has 
 ensued a long struggle between the American college 
 and the wolf at the door a tedious, belittling conflict, 
 which has done much to lower the name and dignity of 
 higher education. To this educational planting without 
 watering, repeated again and again, East and West, 
 North and South, must be ascribed the unnaturally severe
 
 "THE FRESH-WATER COLLEGE." 187 
 
 struggle for existence through which our colleges have 
 been forced to pass, the poor work, low salaries, and 
 humiliating economies of the American college professor, 
 the natural end of whom, according to Dr. Holmes, is 
 " starvation." 
 
 The intense rivalry among these schools, like rivalry 
 among half-starving tradesmen, has done much to belittle 
 the cause in which all are engaged. At the same time, 
 their combined rivalry has too often prevented the growth 
 within their neighborhood of any better school. 
 
 In this connection, you may pardon me for a word of 
 my own experience, when twenty years ago (1872) I set 
 out in search of a place for work. A chair of natural his- 
 tory was the height of my aspirations; for anything more 
 specialized than this it seemed useless to hope. I was early 
 called from New York to such a chair, in a well-known 
 college of Illinois. But in those days, the work attached 
 to a college chair was never limited by its title. As pro- 
 fessor of natural history , I taught zoology, botany, geol- 
 ogy, physiology a little of each, and to little purpose. 
 Then physics, chemistry, mineralogy, natural theology, 
 and political economy, also, as a matter of course. With 
 these went German, Spanish, and evidences of Christi- 
 anity, because there was no one else to take them. 
 There finally fell on me the literary work of the college 
 the orations, essays, declamations, and all that flavorless 
 foolishness on which the college depended for a creditable 
 display at commencement. When to this was added a 
 class in the Sunday-school, you will see why it seemed 
 necessary that the naturalist and the professor must 
 sooner or later part company. I tried at one time to 
 establish a little laboratory in chemistry, but met with a
 
 i88 SCIENCE AND THE COLLEGES. 
 
 sharp rebuke from the board of trustees, who directed 
 me to keep the students out of what was called the ' ' cab- 
 inet," for they were likely to injure the apparatus and 
 waste the chemicals. 
 
 When I left this college and looked elsewhere for work, 
 I found on all sides difficulty and disappointment; for the 
 reputation I had, wholly undeserved, I am sorry to say, 
 was the dreaded reputation of a specialist. 
 
 The question of conventional orthodoxy seemed every- 
 where to be made one of primary importance, and candi- 
 dates for chairs who, like myself, were not heretics on 
 the subject of the origin of species, passed the rock of 
 evolution, only to be stranded on the inner shoals of the 
 mysteries of the Scottish philosophy. 
 
 But these were not the only sources of difficulty. In 
 one institution toward which I had looked, the chair of 
 natural history was found unnecessary. In the meeting 
 of the board of trustees, a member arose and said, in sub- 
 stance: "We have just elected a professor of history. 
 This includes all history, and the work in natural history 
 is a part of it. Let the professor in history take this y 
 too. ' ' And for that year, at least, the professor of his- 
 tory took it all, and it was not hard for him to do this, 
 because the work in history was the cutting of straw. 
 He read a chapter in a text-book in advance of the stu- 
 dents. This was no heavy drain on either his time or his 
 intellect. Even in the excellent State university into 
 which I ultimately drifted, I was met at the beginning by 
 the caution that the purpose of my work must be ele- 
 mentary teaching, the statement of the essential facts of 
 science, and by no means the making of naturalists or 
 of specialists.
 
 AGASSIZ AS A UNIVERSITY. 189 
 
 I could give more illustrations, and from better institu- 
 tions, showing that the demand of the colleges of twenty 
 years ago was a demand for docility and versatility, 
 rather than for thoroughness or originality; that, as a 
 rule, the progress of science in America came from men 
 outside of the college, and in a great part outside of col- 
 lege training and college sympathies; that to promote 
 science or to extend knowledge was not often one of the 
 college ideals; and that the college's chief function was to 
 keep old ideas unchanged. What was safe in times of old 
 will be safe to-day, and safety, rather than inspiration or 
 investigation, was the purpose of the college. From time 
 immemorial until now, Oxford and Cambridge, the 
 schools of clergymen and gentlemen, have been the cen- 
 ter of English conservatism. The American colleges 
 dilute copies of Oxford and Cambridge came nearest 
 their models in their retention of old methods and old 
 ideas. The motto, once suggested for a scientific 
 museum, "We will keep what we have got," might 
 have been taken by the American college. There was 
 no American university then, unless a few broad-minded 
 teachers mostly in Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Mich- 
 igan could, as so many individuals, be properly 
 regarded as such. 
 
 The coming of Agassiz to America may be said to 
 mark the foundation of the first American university. 
 Agassiz was the university. The essential character of 
 the university is Lernfreiheit, freedom of learning, the 
 freedom of the student to pursue his studies to the limit 
 of the known, the freedom of encouragement to invade 
 the realm of the unknown. It is from this realm that 
 come the chief rewards of the scholar. The school from
 
 igo SCIENCE AND THE COLLEGES. 
 
 which no exploring parties set out has no right to the 
 name of university. In the progress of science, and the 
 application of its methods to subjects not formerly con- 
 sidered scientific, the German university has its growth 
 and development. In like progress must arise the Amer- 
 ican university. 
 
 You remember the story of the discussion, some forty 
 years ago, between Emerson and Agassiz, as to the 
 future of Harvard. Emerson, himself one of the sanest 
 and broadest of men, saw in the work of Agassiz ele- 
 ments of danger, whereby the time-honored symmetry 
 of Harvard might be destroyed. In a lecture on univer- 
 sities, in Boston, Emerson made some such statement as 
 this: That natural history was " getting too great an 
 ascendency at Harvard "; that it " was out of proportion 
 to other departments, ' and hinted ' that a check-rein 
 would not be amiss on the enthusiastic young professor 
 who is responsible for this. ' ' 
 
 " Do you not see," Agassiz wrote to Emerson, "that 
 the way to bring about a well-proportioned development 
 of all the resources of the university is not to check the 
 natural history department, but to stimulate all the 
 others ? Not that the zoological school grows too fast, 
 but that the others do not grow fast enough? This 
 sounds invidious and perhaps somewhat boastful; but it 
 is you," he said, "and not I, who have instituted the 
 comparison. It strikes me that you have not hit upon 
 the best remedy for this want of balance. If symmetry 
 is to be obtained by cutting down the most vigorous 
 growth, it seems to me it would be better to have a 
 little irregularity here and there. In stimulating, by 
 every means in my power, the growth of the museum
 
 MODERN UNIVERSITY PROGRESS. 191 
 
 and the means of education connected with it, I am far 
 from having a selfish wish to see my own department 
 tower above the others. I wish that every one of my 
 colleagues would make it hard for me to keep up with 
 him; and there are some among them, I am happy to 
 say, who are ready to run a race with me. ' ' 
 
 In these words of Agassiz may be seen the key-note 
 of modern university progress. The university should 
 be the great refuge-hut on the ultimate boundaries of 
 knowledge, from which, daily and weekly, adventurous 
 bands set out on voyages of discovery. It should be 
 the Upernavik from which Polar travelers draw their 
 supplies, and as the shoreless sea of the unknown meets 
 us on every side, the same house of refuge and supply 
 will serve for a thousand different exploring parties, 
 moving out in every direction into the infinite ocean. 
 This is the university ideal of the future. Some day it 
 will be felt as a loss and a crime if any one who could be 
 an explorer is forced to become anything else. And 
 even then, after countless ages of education and scien- 
 tific progress, the true university will still stand on the 
 boundaries, it walls still washed by the same unending 
 sea, the boundless ocean of possible human knowledge. 
 
 The new growth of the American university which we 
 honor to-day is simply its extension and its freedom, 
 so that a scholar can find place within its walls. The 
 scholar cannot breathe in confined air. The walls of 
 medievalism have been taken down. The winds of free- 
 dom are blowing, and the summer sunshine of to-day 
 quickens the pulse of the scholar in the deepest clois- 
 ter. In the university of the future, all departments of 
 human knowledge, all laws of the omnipresent God will
 
 192 SCIENCE AND THE COLLEGES. 
 
 be equally cherished because equally sacred. The place 
 of science in education will then be the place it deserves 
 nothing more, nothing less. 
 
 Many influences have combined to bring about the 
 emancipation of the American college. Not the least 
 of these is the growth of the State university as an insti- 
 tution, existing for all the people, and for no end except 
 the purpose of popular instruction. It is a part of the 
 great training-school in civics, morals, and economics 
 which we call universal suffrage. 
 
 Most of these schools have celebrated their coming of 
 age within the last five years, and their growth is cer- 
 tainly one of the most notable features in the intellectual 
 development of America. The State university was 
 founded as a logical result of the American system of 
 education. It was part of the graded system through 
 which the student was to rise, step by step, from the 
 township school to the State university. It has grown 
 because it deserved to grow. When it has deserved 
 nothing, it has received nothing. In the persistence of 
 old methods and low ideals we find the reason for 
 the slow growth of some of the State universities. In 
 the early dropping of shackles and the loyalty to its 
 own freedom we find the cause of the rapid growth of 
 others. 
 
 In its early years the State university was in aim and 
 method almost a duplicate of the denominational schools 
 by which it was surrounded. Its traditions were the 
 same, its professors drawn from the same source; its 
 presidents were often the defeated candidates for presi- 
 dencies of the denominational schools. Men not popular 
 enough for church preferment would do for the headship
 
 DIVISION OF EDUCATIONAL SPOILS, 193 
 
 of the State universities. The salaries paid were very 
 small, the patronage was local, and the professors were 
 often chosen at the dictates of some local leader, or to 
 meet some real or supposed local demand. I can remem- 
 ber one case when the country was searched to find for a 
 State university a professor of history who should be a 
 Democrat and a Methodist. All questions of fitness 
 were subordinated to this one of restoring the lost sym- 
 metry of a school in which Presbyterians, Baptists, and 
 Republicans had more than their share of the spoils. 
 This idea of division of spoils in schools, as in politics, is 
 only a shade less baleful than the still older one of taking 
 all spoils without division. And when the spoils system 
 was finally ignored, and in the State universities men 
 were chosen with reference to their character, scholar- 
 ship, and ability to teach, regardless of ' ' other marks or 
 brands ' ' upon them, the position of professor was made 
 dignified and worthy. 
 
 The first important step in the advance of the State 
 universities came through the growth of individualism in 
 education that is, through the advent of the elective 
 system, and its first phase was the permission to substi- 
 tute advanced work in science for elementary work in 
 something else. It does not matter from what source the 
 idea of individual choice in education has arisen. It may 
 be a gift from far-seeing Harvard to her younger sisters; 
 or it may be that in Harvard, as elsewhere, the elective 
 system has arisen from a study of the actual conditions. 
 The educational ideas which are now held by the major- 
 ity of teachers in our larger schools were long ago the 
 views of the overruled minority; and for fifty years or 
 more individuals in the minority have looked forward to
 
 194 SCIENCE AND THE COLLEGES. 
 
 the time when inspiration, and not drill, would be the aim 
 of the colleges. 
 
 Agassiz said, in 1864, in advocating the elective sys- 
 tem, that although it might possibly give the pretext for 
 easy evasion of duty to some inefficient or lazy students, 
 it gave larger opportunities to the better class, and the 
 university should adapt itself to the latter, rather than 
 to the former. "The bright students," he said, "are 
 now deprived of the best advantages to be had, because 
 the dull or the indifferent must be treated like children." 
 
 In the same year, Emerson spoke of the old grudge he 
 had for forty-five years owed Harvard College, for the 
 cruel waste of two years of college time on mathematics, 
 without any attempt to adapt the tasks to the capacity of 
 learners. ' ' I still remember, ' ' he said, ' ' the useless 
 pains I took, and my serious recourse to my tutor for 
 aid he did not know how to give me. And now I see 
 to-day the same indiscriminate imposing of mathematics 
 on all students during two years. Ear, or no ear, you 
 shall all learn music, to the waste of the time and health 
 of a large part of the class." 
 
 I remember well the beginning of the modern system 
 in the university of a neighboring State. It came as the 
 permission, carefully guarded, to certain students, who 
 had creditably passed the examination of the Freshman 
 year in Latin, to take, instead of the Sophomore Latin, 
 some advanced work in zoology. To the very great 
 surprise of the professor of Latin, those who availed them- 
 selves of this opportunity "to take something easy" 
 were not the worst students in Latin, but the best. 
 Those who were attracted by investigation chose the 
 new road; the plodders and shirks were contented with
 
 GROWTH OF SCIENCE COURSES. 195 
 
 the evils they had, rather than to fly to others that they 
 knew not of. And so, little by little, in that institu- 
 tion, and in all the others, has come about a relaxation 
 of the chains of the curriculum of Oxford and Cambridge, 
 and the extension of opportunities for students to find out 
 the facts of nature for themselves, rather than to rest 
 with the conserved wisdom of an incurious past. 
 
 Thus slowly and painfully came about the development 
 of the scientific courses. We can all remember the 
 dreary time when in the tedious faculty meetings we 
 used to devise scientific courses, short in time and weak 
 in quality, for students who could not, or would not, 
 learn Latin and Greek. There was no scientific prepara- 
 tion or achievement required in these courses. They were 
 scientific only in the sense that they were not anything 
 else. Their degree of Bachelor of Science was regarded, 
 and rightly, as far inferior to the time-honored B. A. In 
 the inner circle of education it was regarded as no degree 
 at all, and its existence was a concession to the utilitarian 
 spirit of a non-scholastic age. The scientific course was, 
 indeed, inferior; for it lacked substance. There was no 
 lime in its vertebrae. The central axis of Greek had 
 been taken out, and no corresponding piece of solid 
 work put in its place. Gradually, however, even this 
 despised degree has risen to a place with the others. 
 Slowly and grudgingly the colleges have admitted that 
 under some circumstances the study of science might be 
 as worthy of recognition as the study of Greek. When 
 science was worthily studied, this proposition became 
 easy of acceptance. In our best colleges to-day the study 
 of science stands side by side with the study of language, 
 and the one counts equally with the other, even for the
 
 196 SCIENCE AND THE COLLEGES. 
 
 degree of Bachelor of Arts. For not the Greek itself, 
 but the culture it implies, was the glory of the course of 
 arts. When equal culture and equal work come through 
 other channels, they are worthy of this degree. To deny 
 this, would be to make of the degree itself a mere child's 
 toy, a play on words. As a matter of fact, it can be 
 little more, and sooner or later the college will have no 
 need for degrees. Science has shown herself a worthy 
 suitor of the highest degree the university can give. She 
 will show herself strong enough to care for no degrees at 
 all. In the great schools of the future, each study shall 
 become its own reward. Let all come who will, and let 
 each take what he can, and let the ideals be so high that 
 no one will imagine that he is getting when he is not. 
 
 Not the least of the aids to freedom in science was the 
 Morrill Act, under which a certain part of the public 
 lands was given for the foundation of schools of applied 
 science. Unhappily, much of this fund was wasted out- 
 right by thriftless management. Much more was in some 
 States half- wasted by the formation of separate schools for 
 applied science, where Slate colleges of the old type already 
 existed. Indeed, in many States, the college and the 
 technical school were so far separated, that the legislators 
 of 1868 saw in them nothing in common. Nevertheless, 
 the highest wisdom in education is to bring the various 
 influences together wherever it is possible. There is no 
 knowledge which is not science, and there can be no 
 applied science without the basis of pure science on which 
 to rest. Schools of applied knowledge cannot be legiti- 
 mately separated from schools of knowledge. But 
 whatever the use made of the money, the passage of the 
 Morrill Act in the interest of applied science has given
 
 THE ONE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS. 197 
 
 scientific work a prominence in our colleges it did not 
 have before. It has given science definite rights in the 
 curriculum where before it seemed to exist by sufferance. 
 
 I congratulate the State of Illinois that its university 
 is one university; that its pure and applied science, its 
 literature, history, philosophy, and art are taught in one 
 institution, by one united faculty. The best results in 
 any line of education cannot be reachad without the 
 association of all others. The training of the engineer 
 will be the more valuable from his association with the 
 classical student. The literary man may gain much, and 
 will lose nothing, from his acquaintance with the practical 
 work of the engineer. The separation of the schools 
 founded by the Morrill Act from the State university, as 
 we have seen in nearly half the States of the Union, was 
 a blunder which time will deepen into a crime. With the 
 union of the two has come the rapid growth of the uni- 
 versities of Wisconsin, California, Illinois, Minnesota, and 
 Nebraska, when the higher work of the State is all con- 
 centrated in one place. 
 
 The freedom of choice has not worked to the advan- 
 tage of science alone. The element of consent in college 
 study has brought about a revival in classical education 
 as well as in science. It is not certain even that more 
 science studies are chosen by students, under the elective 
 system than were taken on the old plan of a required cur- 
 riculum. But the work is done in a different spirit. The 
 colleges and the investigators are being drawn together. 
 There is no line of investigation in which the college 
 cannot help, if the investigators have freedom to use it 
 The scientific men are being drawn into sympathy with 
 higher education. Men are now in college who under
 
 198 SCIENCE AND THE COLLEGES. 
 
 the former system would have been self-made men, with 
 all the disadvantages that isolation implies. Education 
 gives the ability to enter into the labors of others; and 
 the scientific man of to-day must use every advantage, if 
 he is to make his own work an advance in knowledge. 
 He must know what has been done by those who have 
 gone before him. He must use their highest achieve- 
 ments as a basis for further progress. Science cannot let 
 go of its past. And to the self-made man of science, 
 struggle as he may, the books of the past are at least 
 partially closed. 
 
 Twenty-five years ago the college repelled rather 
 than aided !jien of science. After a brief experience 
 in college, many men of scientific interests went away 
 and carried on their own studies in their own fashion. 
 And others similarly situated, with aspirations in liter- 
 ature, history, or engineering, stayed away, and grew 
 up untouched by the higher education of their times. 
 The elective system provides for such as these. It not 
 only gives a new impulse to the students' work, but it 
 brings a new body of students under collegiate influences. 
 
 Nothing in our educational history has been more 
 remarkable than the increase in numbers of students in 
 our principal colleges, and the corresponding increase in 
 influence of these schools, within the last ten years. Yet 
 nothing is more evident than the fact that these students 
 are not going to college in the old-fashioned sense. The 
 old-fashioned college ideals are not rising in value; but 
 new possibilities of training and the inspiration of mod- 
 ern thought bring to the university all sorts and condi- 
 tions of men and women whose predecessors twenty 
 years ago would not have thought of entering an Ameri-
 
 THE COLLEGE MEN OF THE FUTURE. 199 
 
 can college. Where old educational ideas still reign, be 
 the college rich or poor, there is no increase in numbers 
 nor in influence. Unless a college education involves 
 the emancipation of thought, unless it gives something 
 to think about, it has no place in the educational system 
 of the future. The future of our country will rest with 
 college men, because the college of the future will meet 
 the needs of all men of power, and draw them to its walls. 
 
 Scientific men have no wish to underestimate literary 
 or classical training. The revolution in our higher edu- 
 cation is not a revolt against the classics. It is an appeal 
 from the assumption that the classics furnish the only 
 gate to culture. It asserts the existence of a thousand 
 gates as many ways to culture as there are types of men. 
 Scientific training asks only for freedom of development, 
 and for the right to be judged by its own fruits. 
 
 With the growth of investigation has come the demand 
 for better means of work, better apparatus, more and 
 better books, larger collections, and especially collections 
 for work, not for show or surprise. Better teachers are 
 needed, and more of them. A healthy competition is 
 set up, by which in these later days a man's pay is in 
 some degree proportioned to his power, and the com- 
 petition for places among half-starved men Is changing 
 into a competition for men among rich and ambitious 
 institutions. 
 
 One of the great changes which have come to Ameri- 
 can education has been the extension of scientific methods 
 to many subjects formerly deemed essentially unscien- 
 tific. For this change the influences which have come 
 to us from Germany are largely responsible. Thirty 
 years ago the mental philosophy which formed the
 
 200 SCIENCE AND THE COLLEGES. 
 
 staple of the work of the college president was thoroughly 
 dogmatic, like his moral science and his political economy. 
 It was a completed subject, having its base in speculation 
 and its growth by logical deductions, and no thought of 
 experimental proof or of advancement by investigation 
 was ever brought before the student. 
 
 Now psychology is completely detached from meta- 
 physics, and is an experimental science as much as 
 physiology or embryology. By its side ethics and 
 pedagogics are ranging themselves the scientific study 
 of children and the study of the laws of right, by the 
 same methods as those we use to test the laws of chem- 
 ical affinity. Metaphysics, too, has ranged itself among 
 the historical sciences. It is the study no longer of intu- 
 itive and absolute truth, but the critical investigation of 
 the outlook of man on the universe, as shown through 
 the history of the ages. The old metaphysical idea is 
 passing away, soon to take its place with the science of 
 the dark ages in which it rose. 
 
 History, too, is no longer a chronicle of kings and 
 battles. It is the story of civilization, the science of 
 human society and human institutions. The Germans 
 have taught us that all knowledge is science, capable of 
 being placed in orderly sequence, and of being increased 
 by the method of systematic investigation. 
 
 The study of language now finds its culmination in the 
 science of philology, the science of the growth of speech. 
 Every branch of learning is now studied, or may be 
 studied, inductively, and studied in the light of the con- 
 ception of endless and orderly change, to which we give 
 the name of evolution. This conception has come to 
 be recognized as one underlying all human knowledge.
 
 SCHOLARS MAKE THE UNIVERSITY. 201 
 
 Seasons return because conditions return, but the condi- 
 tions in the world of life never return. The present we 
 know, but we can know it thoroughly only in the light 
 of the past. What has been must determine what is, 
 and the present is bound to the past by unchanging law. 
 All advance in knowledge implies a recognition of this 
 fact. The study of science must be grounded in the 
 conception of orderly change, or change in accordance 
 with the laws of evolution. 
 
 It is, after all, the presence of scholars that makes the 
 university. It is in such men that the University of 
 Illinois has its existence. It is located neither in Cham- 
 paign nor in Urbana; it is wherever its teachers may be, 
 wherever its workers have gone. We have met to-day 
 to dedicate its science hall. To the future work in this hall 
 we do all honor, but we do not think of it as a new hall, 
 nor a new creation. It is simply a natural outgrowth of 
 the work of Burrill and Forbes. Ever since, in 1878, I 
 visited the little zoological workshop of Dr. Forbes in 
 the old school building at Normal, and ever since, in 
 1882, I saw toadstools and bacteria in the little room 
 across the way, which Dr. Burrill called his own, I have 
 been able to prophesy the growth of this building. We 
 care nothing for the brick building, its desks, its shelves, 
 and its microscopes, as things in themselves. We are 
 thinking of Forbes and Burrill. The building is only a 
 better tool-house in which these master-workmen can 
 shelter their tools. Their work will be what it was 
 before. And in this impulse and example is our best 
 guarantee that so long as this building stands we shall 
 find in it master-workmen. Another Forbes, another 
 Burrill, another Rolfe shall fill the gaps when these lay
 
 202 SCIENCE AND THE COLLEGES. 
 
 down their work, and the University of Illinois shall live 
 through the years, because the men who compose it are 
 truthful, devoted, and strong.
 
 XIII. 
 
 THE PROCESSION OF LIFE.* 
 
 I ONCE walked one Saturday afternoon out from the 
 city of Canterbury across the fields of Kent. The hops 
 were ripe on the chalk hills; for the growing of hops is 
 the chief industry in that part of England. The hop- 
 pickers had finished their week's work and were return- 
 ing to their homes in Canterbury for their Sunday rest. 
 I walked out on the Gadshill road and met them on the 
 way a long, long procession of modern pilgrims. 
 They came by hundreds and hundreds. There may 
 have been five thousand of them in all. In the lead 
 were the young and vigorous, the stalwart young man, 
 the spirited young woman, those who thought nothing 
 of a ten-mile walk when the day's work was over. Next 
 came the older ones, equally strong, but more serious, 
 who went on their way with an even step; while behind 
 these, in the main body of the procession, were the old 
 and the young, those whose strength was passing and 
 those to whom strength had not yet come. 
 
 Then, behind the middle came those who had more 
 than themselves to carry; men leading boys or girls, 
 women with baskets, or with children who clung to their 
 skirts. Still behind these were women carrying babies, 
 and men limping on crutches. And, last of all, were 
 men who had taken the burden of a load of gin from 
 
 * Address to graduating class. University of Indiana, 1890. 
 103
 
 204 THE PROCESSION OF LIFE. 
 
 some wayside tavern; for the heaviest load a man can 
 carry is the weight of a glass of liquor. 
 
 And the thought came to me, as I watched them, that 
 this modern procession of pilgrims to Canterbury was 
 but a fragment of a greater procession which moves 
 before our eyes all our lives the endless procession in 
 which you who go from us to-day step forth to form a 
 part. The thought of a Pilgrim's Progress, as it came to 
 John Bunyan in the Bedford jail, is one which rises 
 naturally as we look over the course of human life. 
 What loads have we to carry, and how shall we come 
 to our journey's end? We start with our burdens of 
 hereditary weaknesses and hereditary sins, and to these 
 we add many new ones which we take up along the road. 
 What prospect have we of reaching Canterbury before 
 the sun goes down ? And of what avail are our efforts 
 on the road if we never reach Canterbury ? 
 
 Or, laying aside the metaphor, which may prove cum- 
 bersome, we meet the old question which comes afresh to 
 every man, though countless generations have attempted 
 its solution; what for us constitutes success in life? Cer- 
 tainly not the gaining of wealth, though many of our 
 fellow-pilgrims seem to think so. If it were wealth 
 alone, we have surely missed the way. You are not on 
 the right road. There is a shorter way to wealth than 
 the way you have taken, though the road may not lead 
 to Canterbury. If you spend your day searching for gold, 
 you will find it. A man finds whatever he goes forth lo 
 seek; but gold has no value except the value your fellow- 
 pilgrims agree to set upon it the worth of the time, we 
 may say, they waste when they stop to look for it. 
 When a man is alone with gold, he is alone with nothing.
 
 BROKEN LIVES. 205 
 
 Not fame alone can constitute success. The gods 
 care little for what men say of one another. Not the 
 acquisition of power alone. The force of man can 
 change nothing which is not already bound to change. 
 A lever can move the world only when applied to a 
 world which is moving. The force of man counts for 
 nothing when placed in opposition to the laws of human 
 development. 
 
 We are encompassed about by the forces that make 
 for righteousness. All power we possess, or seem to 
 possess, conies from our accord with these forces. There 
 is no lasting force, except the power of God. All else 
 in the world is speedily passing away. Is there no suc- 
 cess for the individual ? Are all lives alike ineffective ? 
 Not so. Measured by the standard of the Infinite, all 
 life is short, and weak, and impotent; yet we know that, 
 gauged by the measure of a man, there are many lives 
 which are successful. We have all come in contact with 
 such, and our own lives have been the richer for the 
 contact. But we know, too, that there are broken lives. 
 We pass them on the road. They stagger against us 
 from the tavern steps. They are carried on for a time 
 by the procession; but having no impulse of their own, 
 they drop farther and farther behind sometimes alone, 
 sometimes dragging others with them. 
 
 These are not successful lives. What lessons do they 
 teach ? What have these broken lives in common ? 
 And what is this common element which we who hope 
 for success can avoid ? Is it poverty ? Is life a failure 
 if we gain not wealth, we who now live in the wealthiest 
 of all times, here among the richest of all peoples ? 
 
 There are many who think this. Poverty is pictured
 
 206 THE PROCESSION OF LIFE. 
 
 as the yawning and relentless gulf beneath our whole civ- 
 ilization. If we avoid poverty, are we assured against 
 all forms of spiritual failure ? 
 
 We know that this is not true. Broken lives are as 
 common among the rich as among the poor. In the 
 palace and the hovel we may look for them alike. 
 Chronic poverty may be a sign of a withered spirit, but 
 it is not the cause. The real disease lies far behind this, 
 as those know well who have tried to heal the sores of 
 poverty by filling them with gold. 
 
 Poverty, in itself, is not even a cause for discourage- 
 ment. Poverty has been through the ages the heritage 
 of the student, and in the procession of life the student 
 has never walked in the rear. You who stand before 
 me, the flower of our student body, do not stand with 
 well-filled purses. Your money and lands, to take the 
 average, would not keep you for a single year. The 
 inmates of many poorhouses could make a better actual 
 showing than you could make to-day. Yet you are not 
 paupers. No one dreams of thinking you such. You 
 have something, not money, which helps you to face the 
 future. And it is something real something which has 
 a quotable value. No; the element of likeness in broken 
 lives is not their poverty. 
 
 Is it sickness or weakness which makes failure in life ? 
 We know that it is not. Stalwart frames stand all about 
 us from which the spirit seems to have fled, while there 
 are other souls whom no pain or disease can tame. The 
 great name of the nineteenth century cannot be that of 
 an unsuccessful man; yet for forty years of his earnest 
 and beautiful life Darwin knew not a single day of health 
 such as other men enjoy not a single day such as
 
 LIFE MADE WORTHY. 207 
 
 comes unasked and unappreciated to you and to me. 
 Health is much, but it is not everything. A withered 
 arm does not mean a broken spirit. 
 
 What then can we ask as our surety against failure? 
 That which we seek, does it not lie in the very heart of 
 man, the presence of a reason for living ? Is not this 
 the one touchstone which through the ages has separated 
 success from failure in life ? If a man live for worthy 
 ends, his 'life is made worthy. With a lifelong purpose, 
 and a purpose worthy of a life, there can be no failure. 
 How can there be ? Be a life long or short, its complete- 
 ness depends on what it was lived for. 
 
 Stand for something something worthy to build a 
 life around. As your aim, so your life is. Your purpose, 
 like an amulet, will guard you from failure. While it 
 remains intact, yoyr life cannot be broken. Poverty 
 cannot hold you down, disease cannot weaken, adversity 
 cannot crush. Your life remains, and you alone can 
 break it. It takes a strong impulse to live a life out to 
 the end. If you live to no true purpose, your life is a 
 burden on the atmosphere, and death will come to you 
 long before you even suspect it. All around you are 
 those who have 'died already perhaps never have lived 
 at all. More terrible than ghosts or disembodied spirits 
 is the spectacle we see every day of spiritless bodies 
 the forms of those who move and breathe when we know 
 them to be dead. 
 
 And so, when as year by year your paths diverge over 
 the earth, let us hope and pray, that you may live your 
 lives out to the end; that at every roll-call in this world, 
 when you answer to your names, it will be in the full cer- 
 tainty that you are still alive.
 
 XIV. 
 THE GROWTH OF MAN.* 
 
 A WISE man once said, ' ' The Bible was written by 
 outdoor men; if we would understand it, we must 
 read it out of doors." They were shepherds and fisher- 
 men who wrote the Bible; men who, night after night, 
 lay under the stars, and to whom the grass on the 
 Judaean hills had been the softest of pillows. Even kings 
 and prophets were out-of-door men in the days of Sam- 
 uel and David. Out-of-door men speak of out-of-door 
 things, and each man who speaks with authority must 
 speak of things which he knows. 
 
 In this fact, if you will let me compare small things to 
 great, you will find my apology for speaking my mes- 
 sage to-day in my own way. I wish to draw certain 
 lessons in morals from certain facts, or laws, in the sci- 
 ences of which I know something. For we study what 
 we call Nature, not for the objects themselves, but be- 
 cause the study brings us nearer to the heart of things, 
 nearer to the final answer to all the problems of death 
 and of life. 
 
 There is a stage in the development of the human 
 embryo when it is not yet human, when it cannot be dis- 
 tinguished from the embryo of other mammals, as of a 
 dog or a sheep. There may be, at the same time, two 
 embryos apparently alike, the one destined to be a dog, 
 
 * Commencement Address, University of Indiana, 1889. 
 208
 
 THE POTENTIALITY IN EMBRYOS. 209 
 
 because of its canine ancestry; the other, in like manner, 
 to become human. These two, we may assume, may be 
 absolutely alike to all the tests we can offer. They differ 
 neither in structure, nor in form, nor in chemical compo- 
 sition. The lines along which they develop seem par- 
 allel for a time, but at last divergence becomes evident, 
 and their courses separate forever. The one seems to 
 lose, little by little, its human possibilities, while the other 
 goes too far in its way ever to turn aside to doghood. 
 The one moves toward its end as man; the other toward 
 its destiny as dog. 
 
 But a difference must exist, even when the identity of 
 the two seems most perfect a difference intangible, 
 immaterial, but none the less potent in its certainty to 
 lead to results. The one embryo holds within it the pos- 
 sibility of humanity which the other has not. No condi- 
 tions of which we can conceive will bring the dog embryo 
 to manhood, because the possibility of manhood is not in 
 it. There is something which transcends chemistry, 
 which tends to bring each embryo through many changes 
 to a predetermined end. 
 
 This is essentially true if the development be complete 
 and normal. If its growth goes on in the wonted fash- 
 ion, it becomes what it can become. Its enclosed poten- 
 tiality, or hidden powers, give form to its life. But not 
 all development is normal. Growth may cease prema- 
 turely, or it may be cut short by death, and that which 
 might have been a man becomes as nothing; or arrested 
 development may leave a state of perpetual immaturity. 
 This happens among men sometimes. There are dwarfs 
 in body and dwarfs in mind those who reach the age 
 of manhood while retaining the stature or the intellect of 
 o
 
 210 THE GROWTH OF MAN. 
 
 children. Again, decay and decline come sooner or 
 later to all living things. If decline begins prematurely, 
 we have degeneration instead of development. What is 
 true of man in these regards is true of all life in its de- 
 gree; for there is no law of human development which 
 does not, in corresponding measure, apply to animals 
 and plants. 
 
 On the other hand, progress begets progress. Natur- 
 alists tell us of cases of development beyond ancestral 
 lines, of perfection beyond previous completeness. In 
 such growth, the conditions which mark full maturity in 
 the ancestor become phases of youth in the ambitious 
 progeny. The maturity of the latter in one or more ways 
 overleaps ancestral lines. Such advanced development 
 here and there through the organic world is one of the 
 causes of the progress of the mass. By the side of the 
 philosopher the common man seems like a child. The 
 development of great souls has gone on in accordance 
 with a higher potentiality than ours. Or, rather, it may 
 be in accordance with a potentiality which we possess, 
 but which has lain dormant within us. For great men 
 need great occasions. Circumstances affect all develop- 
 ment. They may draw us out, or they may hem us in. 
 They may raise us, as it were, above ourselves, or they 
 may close around us, so that the man we ought to have 
 been we are only in our dreams. And if the environment 
 be too exacting, even these dreams cease at last. 
 
 The lower animals and plants offer analogies to this. 
 Each individual develops along the line of the resultant 
 between the force of its own potentiality and the resist- 
 ance of its environment. Thus, all degrees of fitness are 
 produced, and from these varying degrees comes our
 
 ACCELERATION IN DEVELOPMENT. 211 
 
 perception of the law of the survival of the fittest in the 
 struggle for existence. One of the primal causes of 
 difference in organic life lies in the conditions of advanced 
 or retarded development. A higher that is, a more 
 definitely developed organism is one that has taken a 
 step in its growth beyond those taken by its ancestors. 
 It has omitted non-essential phases and has leaped at 
 once to a higher range of its possibilities. It has come 
 so much nearer the fulfillment of the potentialities within 
 it. Another organism may stop short of ancestral ac- 
 quirements. It is degenerate; for less of its potentiality 
 has become actuality than in its ancestors. 
 
 Florists save the seed of their fairest flowers, that from 
 these the species may reach still higher perfection. 
 Stock-breeders recognize that individual gains are inher- 
 ited, and they choose their stock accordingly. So we 
 have, year by year, swifter race-horses, better milk cows, 
 sheep with heavier fleece, more sagacious dogs, and 
 pigeons of more fantastic forms. Along certain lines of 
 development anything is possible with time and patience. 
 Because this is so, with each generation our domestic 
 animals and plants become better and better adapted to 
 satisfy man's needs or man's fancy. But the potentiality 
 of the race-horse was in the old nag, its far-off ancestor, 
 who may have trotted his leisurely mile in ten minutes. 
 The potentiality of the trained dog, ' ' who can do any- 
 thing but talk," lay in the gaunt and cowardly wolf, 
 from which the races of dogs are descended. 
 
 More perfect development comes from within, and is 
 assisted, not caused, by favorable surroundings. This is 
 shown in the very terms we use. We educate that is, 
 we "lead out." We develop that is, we "unwrap"
 
 H2 THE GROWTH OF MAN. 
 
 what was hidden in the original package. We evolve 
 that is, we "unroll," as the ball of the fern-bud unrolls 
 into the great fern leaf. And so we unroll, unwrap, lead 
 out whatever is already within. We can help to actualize 
 latent possibilities. But whatever is finally brought forth 
 existed in potentiality in the embryo, no matter how 
 inert and impotent this may have been. But not alone 
 in the embryo; for whatever is in the embryo must have 
 been a possibility with the parent. 
 
 No great thing comes from nothingness. There must 
 have been strength behind it. There must have been a 
 potential Lincoln in Lincoln's humble ancestry, else a 
 Lincoln could not have been. We can trust that studies 
 in genealogy will some time show this. In each life there 
 must exist a potentiality of something not yet attained. 
 Were it not so, the bounds of progress would be already 
 reached, and swifter horses, brighter flowers, sweeter 
 songs, nobler thoughts, and purer lives than have already 
 been there could never be. Potentiality may be con- 
 ceived as a series of direct lines leading from the past 
 into the future, outward into space. The highest poten- 
 tiality is that one of these lines which most favors 
 fullness of life. For any organism to grow along this 
 highest line is for it to make the most of itself and the 
 most of its descendants, too; for the will to do the best 
 may fall into the grasp of heredity. The gain of the 
 individual becomes the birthright of the race. The man 
 of yesterday is a child beside the man of to-morrow. 
 Our ancestors of centuries ago dwelt beside the Swiss 
 lakes in children's playhouses. Whatever one genera- 
 tion has tried persistently to do, the next may accomplish 
 easily. If by effort we have, as it were, excelled our-
 
 GREAT MEN ARE THE REAL MEN. 213 
 
 selves, our children may also without effort excel us in 
 the same line. The man we dream of will be above the 
 weaknesses of past humanity. The perfect man will be 
 the master of the world, because the perfect master of 
 himself. 
 
 As in the physical world there are many departures 
 from the normal type, there may be partial, distorted, or 
 degraded development. In the moral world the same 
 conditions exist; and such departures from the ideal 
 type we call sin. Sin is man's failure to realize his 
 highest possibilities. Its measure is the discrepancy 
 between the actual and the possible man. It is the 
 spiritual analogue of retrograde or distorted develop- 
 ment. Personal degeneration is sin. Misery, in general, 
 is nature's protest against personal degeneration. 
 
 Total depravity is not the state of nature. It is the 
 good man who is natural; it is the weak and vicious who 
 are least human. " Great men are the true men," says 
 Amiel, " the men in whom nature has succeeded. They 
 are not extraordinary. They are in the true order. It 
 is the other kinds of men that are not what they ought 
 to be. If we wish to respect men, we must forget what 
 they are and think of the ideal they have hidden in them 
 of the just man and the noble, the man of intelligence 
 and goodness, inspiration and creative force, who is loyal 
 and true, of the higher man and that divine thing we 
 call soul. The only men who deserve the name are the 
 heroes, the geniuses, the saints, the harmonious, power- 
 ful, and perfect examples of the race." 
 
 If, then, sin is retarded or distorted development, 
 righteousness is further development along the line of our 
 ethical possibilities. Righteousness is thus achieved only
 
 214 THE GROWTH OF MAN. 
 
 by constant effort in the direction of self-control and self- 
 devotion. As Aristotle says, ' ' Nature does not make 
 us either good or bad; she only gives us the opportunity 
 to become good or bad that is, of shaping our own char- 
 acters." "Emphasize as you will," says Dr. Schur- 
 mann, ' ' the bulk of the inheritance I have received from 
 my ancestors, it still remains that in moral character I 
 am what I make myself." This is the higher heredity, 
 the aggregate of all our own past actions or conditions; 
 our deeds in the ' ' vanished yesterdays that rule us abso- 
 lutely." " On stepping-stones of their dead selves do 
 men rise to higher things." And in a similar way, on 
 stepping-stones of their ancestry, do races of men rise 
 to higher civilization. But without effort, conscious or 
 unconscious, in the direction of a higher life, each suc- 
 ceeding generation will fail to rise above the level of 
 those before it. Then, as nothing is stable in the world 
 of life, where there is no advance there will be retro- 
 gression. And thus have fallen all races, and nations, 
 and communities whose guiding principle has not been 
 the fulfillment of duty. 
 
 If there be any truth at the basis of these analogies, 
 they are susceptible of wide application to the affairs 
 of human life. 
 
 The central thought of modern biology is that all life is 
 bound together by heredity, the ancestry of all beings 
 going back with gradual changes through countless ages 
 to simpler and simpler forms. Connected with this is 
 the fact that the various stages in the development of an 
 embryo correspond essentially with the conditions of full 
 development in the creatures which, one before another, 
 have preceded its appearance in geological history.
 
 CONDUCT THAT JUSTIFIES ITSELF. 215 
 
 ' ' The physical life of the individual is an epitome of 
 the history of the group to which it belongs." The 
 embryonic life of the child corresponds in a general way 
 to the history of the group which culminates in man. 
 The stages in the mental development of the child 
 of this century represent roughly the stages passed 
 through in the infancy of our race. In this sense each 
 life is a condensation of the history of all life. " In every 
 grave," says the German proverb, "lies a world's his- 
 tory." 
 
 From our study of evolution arises the new science 
 of ethics, which teaches what ought to be from the 
 knowledge of what has been. ' ' Time was, unlocks the 
 riddle of Time is. ' ' The central question in this study 
 cannot be, as some have said, "what in the past man has 
 thought ought to be," but what in the past has justified 
 itself by leading man on to higher things. We can dis- 
 cover traces of the path which humanity shall tread, by 
 looking backward over the road humanity has trodden, 
 not alone over the early history of man; for only the 
 smaller portion of this is within our reach. Our history 
 of man is only a history of civilization; for barbarism 
 writes no history, We can look beyond the clouded 
 period of human barbarism to the still older history 
 which we share with the brute. If we find the line of 
 direction of past development from animalism to civiliza- 
 tion, we may in a way project this line into the future as 
 the direction of human progress. 
 
 What is this line of direction ? How does man differ 
 from the brute ? 
 
 The intellect of man is certainly a distinctive posses- 
 sion. It is not necessary, as has been said, ' ' to deny
 
 216 THE GROWTH OF MAN. 
 
 intelligence to the lower animals when we assert that the 
 human mind is the most colossal and revolutionary of all 
 the modifications any species has undergone." It is not 
 necessary to deny the elements of conscience to a dog or 
 a horse in recognizing the fact that conscience is one of 
 the essential attributes of manhood. The feeling of 
 individual responsibility, the knowledge of good and evil 
 this is man's burden and his glory. Intellect and con- 
 science these are the acquisitions won by humanity, 
 and by virtue of which it is humanity. 
 
 This thought need not prevent our recognition of the 
 natural origin of these powers; for all phenomena are 
 alike natural. The simple automatic reflex action in which 
 the psychic force of the lower animals expresses itself is 
 unquestionably the prototype of all nervous processes. 
 Sensation thought action : this is the only order 
 in which these phenomena can arise. The senses are 
 the only source of action. All thought tends to pass 
 over into deeds, and no mental process is complete until 
 it has wrought itself into action. The brain has no 
 teacher save the sensory nerves, which bring it knowl- 
 edge. Its only servant is the muscles, for by their agency 
 alone can it reach the outside world. In its essence, the 
 intellect is the ability to choose among many possible 
 responses in action. Simple reflex action, or "instinct," 
 has no choice. It acts automatically, and in its one 
 unchanging way. To choose one act rather than another 
 is an intellectual process. This power of choice brings 
 its responsibilities. Whoever chooses must choose aright. 
 Wrong choice carries its own destruction. The con- 
 science is the recognition, more or less automatic, that 
 some lines of choice are better than others, and must be
 
 ORIGIN OF CONSCIENCE. 217 
 
 followed. By "better," in this connection, we must mean 
 favoring life. That is best that ' ' brings life more abun- 
 dantly. ' ' That is best which brings self-realization to 
 the individual and to his fellows. In social life, self- 
 seeking is not "right," even for the individual. For 
 the welfare of the one is bound up in the welfare of all. 
 Here arises the ever-present problem of the conciliation 
 of the claims of oneself and the claims of others. To 
 solve this problem is part of the work of the rational life. 
 All right must be relative. It may be compared to a line 
 of direction rather than a position in space. There can 
 be no absolute righteousness. If there were, it would 
 mark the limit of spiritual growth. 
 
 To show the origin of conscience by the natural pro- 
 cesses of development and competition in life is not to 
 deny its existence or to lower its importance. All things 
 we know are natural alike the creation of man, or the 
 formation of a snow-bank. All are alike supernatural ; for 
 the nature we know is not the whole of nature. Any 
 fact or process becomes exalted when we see it in its true 
 relation, as inherent in the nature of things. Right 
 conduct, so Emerson tells us, is " conformity in action 
 to the nature of things, and the nature of things makes 
 it prevalent. ' ' The automatic or rational recognition of 
 the fact that one response is better than another is an 
 attribute of man. The stronger the conscience of man 
 or race, the higher its place in the scale of spiritual 
 development The conscience is the real essence of that 
 "something not ourselves that makes for righteousness." 
 For that "something," though "not ourselves," has 
 its seat in the nature of man. The fulfillment of the 
 noblest possibilities of the individual that is right.
 
 2i8 THE GROWTH OF MAN. 
 
 What falls short of this is arrest of development, imper- 
 fection, sin. 
 
 The conscience no more than any other group of 
 mental processes can claim infallibility. It may be dis- 
 torted, dormant, ineffective. A "clear" conscience is 
 of itself the result of normal development. Arrested 
 development is none the less a fault that its subject is 
 not aware of it. Nature absolves no sinner on the plea 
 of ignorance of her laws. The bent twig is none the 
 less bent that outside influences have done the bending. 
 The tree should have grown upright, and in this it has 
 failed. 
 
 It is often said that conscience is only relative; that 
 what is right to-day will be wrong to-morrow, and there 
 can be no absolute good but the pleasure or the utility 
 of the individual. What is the truth of this ? Let us 
 take for illustration the customs and laws of marriage. 
 The patriarchs of old did wrong, so the chronicles tell 
 us; but neither the patriarchs nor their prophets, scath- 
 ing moralists though these were, counted the possession 
 of many wives as even the least of their wrong-doings. 
 The sin of David lay not in taking another wife, but in 
 the murder which gave him possession of her. Our 
 civilization now condemns polygamy, and our statutes 
 and beliefs tend to exalt the sanctity and the unity of the 
 home. Is marriage for life but a fashion of the time, 
 to pass away as polygamy has done, when opposite tend- 
 encies have sway? Is the one really right, and the 
 other really wrong? What tests can we apply to this 
 question ? 
 
 It can be shown, I think, that the richest human life 
 is dependent upon the development of the home. The
 
 GROWTH OF THE HOME. 219 
 
 elevation of woman has been the keystone in modern 
 social development The ennobling of the wife and 
 mother means the elevation of the race. And the eleva- 
 tion of woman is impossible in polygamy. If this be 
 true, the highest potentiality of the race can be brought 
 about only through the marriage of the equal man with the 
 equal woman. It may be literally true that polygamy, 
 wife-beating, wife-selling, and similar practices were right 
 in the infancy of the race. They may be right among 
 races still in their infancy. "It is their condemnation 
 that light has come into the world. ' ' They may be part 
 of a stage of growth through which humanity must pass 
 before higher things are possible. 
 
 In like manner, we have gone through a slow process 
 of development in our regard for the rights of others. To 
 the lower animals, each other animal is an alien and an 
 enemy. A little higher in the scale we observe the rudi- 
 ments of family, or social, life; yet, in a general way, to 
 the brute all other brutes are objects of suspicion and 
 hatred. The earlier tribes of men killed the stranger, 
 and doubtless ate him, too, with perfect serenity of con- 
 science. Even the most enlightened nation of ancient 
 times murdered and robbed all alien to their race, as a 
 high and sacred duty toward the Lord. Their God was 
 a god of battles. 
 
 Every foot of soil in Europe bears the stain of blood 
 wantonly shed. There is not a moment in its history 
 but has been marked by some cry of anguish. The 
 history of the Old World has been one long story of 
 needless suffering and needless waste. Yet the wave of 
 brutality has been an ever-receding tide. With each cen- 
 tury it rises never so high again. We have seen the last
 
 220 THE GROWTH OF MAN. 
 
 St. Bartholomew, the last Bloody Assizes, and perhaps the 
 last Waterloo and the last Sedan. The old house ' ' in 
 Duizend Vreezen, " the house of the "thousand terrors," 
 on the marketplace of Rotterdam, stands as a memorial 
 of what can never happen again. Human life is growing 
 sacred. The history of civilization is a story of the 
 growth of kindness and tolerance among men. 
 
 The history of slavery teaches us the same lesson. 
 Once to enslave a conquered enemy was to treat him 
 with comparative kindness. Slavery is a positive advance 
 from cannibalism, or from massacre. We find no con- 
 demnation of slavery in the early history of the Jews. 
 We find none in the early history of Europe. Slaves 
 have been bought and sold in our country by strong, 
 pure men, who felt no rebuke of conscience. The heroes 
 of the Revolutionary history were not abolitionists. 
 
 Yet it is true, "for the Lord hath said it,"* that the 
 man of the future will not be a slave-holder. There 
 can be no free men in a land where some are slaves, 
 because whatever oppression conies to my neighbor in 
 some sort comes to me. " He hath made of one 
 blood all the nations of the earth, ' ' and ' ' Whatsoever 
 
 * This metaphor may find its justification in the line* of Maurice Thomp- 
 son: 
 
 " I am a Southerner. 
 I love the South. I dared for her 
 To fight from Lookout to the Sea 
 With her proud banner over me. 
 But from my lips thanksgiving broke 
 When God in battle thunder spoke, 
 And that black idol, breeding drouth 
 And dearth of human sympathy, 
 Throughout the sweet and sensuous South, 
 Was, with its chains and human yoke 
 Blown hellward from the cannon's mouth 
 While Freedom cheered behind the smoke."
 
 OUR BROTHERS, THE LOWER ANIMALS. 221 
 
 ye do to one of the least of these my brethren, ye do it 
 unto me." 
 
 We know that humanity is growing toward the recog- 
 nition of the need of equal opportunity for all men and 
 women. The cardinal doctrine of democracy is "Equal 
 rights for all, exclusive privileges to none. ' ' This is the 
 tendency of human institutions. " We hold these truths 
 to be self-evident," said our fathers a century ago, "that 
 all men are created free and equal, endowed with certain 
 inalienable rights, and that among these rights are life, 
 liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. " And these rights 
 cannot be denied, even though the image of God shine 
 faintly through a dusky skin. 
 
 The feeling of brotherhood is extending to the brute 
 creation. A society for ' ' the prevention of cruelty to 
 animals ' ' would have been inconceivable in the days of 
 Front-de-Bceuf or of Cceur-de-Lion. It is inconceivable 
 now in those countries which are a century or two behind 
 our race in the march of civilization. In the city of 
 Havana, in the early morning, long lines of mules laden 
 with pigs and sheep come in from the country. These 
 animals' legs are bound, and they are slung head down- 
 ward, in pairs saddlewise, over the back of a mule. Thus 
 they come down from the mountains in long processions, 
 the pigs lustily squealing, the sheep helpless and dumb. 
 No one notes their suffering; for in Cuba no one seems 
 to care for an animal's pain. On Sunday afternoons in 
 the same city of Havana, fair ladies and gay cavaliers 
 repair to the brightest of their festivals, the bull-fight. 
 A bull- fight is not a fight; it is simply a butchery; a fair 
 battle has some justification. The bull, maddened by 
 pricks and stabs, is permitted to rip up and kill some
 
 222 THE GROWTH OF MAN. 
 
 two or three feeble or blind horses, to be afterwards 
 stabbed to death himself by a skillful butcher. A civil- 
 ization which delights in scenes like this is to us simple 
 barbarism. The growth of the race is away from such 
 things. Cruelty to animals may not have been wrong 
 when the race was undeveloped, and no conscience 
 enlightened enough to condemn it. Cruelty in all its 
 forms is a badge of immaturity, and toward neither man 
 nor beast will the ideal man of the future be cruel. With 
 time the feeling of brotherhood will extend to all living 
 things, so far as community of sensation makes them 
 akin to us. 
 
 We cannot tell how far this feeling of brotherhood must 
 go. This is certain, that our present relation toward 
 animals, right as they may be now, will some day be 
 barbarous. It may be that the time will come when the 
 civilized man will feel that the rights of every living crea- 
 ture on the earth are as sacred as his own. This end 
 may be far away, too far for us even to dream of it; but 
 anything short of this cannot be perfect civilization. 
 
 " If man were what he should be," says Amiel, "he 
 would be adored by the lower animals, toward whom he 
 is too often the capricious and sanguinary tyrant. A day 
 will come when our standard will be higher, our human- 
 ity more exacting. ' Homo homini lupus, ' said Hobbes, 
 ' man toward men is a wolf. ' The time will come when 
 man will be humane, even toward the wolf 'homo lupo 
 homo.'" 
 
 No fact in Jewish history stands out more clearly than 
 that of the gradual growth of the law of love. ' ' An eye 
 for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" even this marks a 
 great advance over the ethics of the Ammonites and the
 
 LOVE YOUR ENEMIES. 223 
 
 children of Heth. Yet between this and the Sermon on 
 the Mount lies the whole difference between barbarism 
 and the highest civilization. 
 
 " Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbor and hate thine enemy; but I say unto you, Love your 
 enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate 
 you." 
 
 " But dig down, the old unbury, thou shalt find on every stone 
 That each age has carved the symbol of that God to them was 
 
 known. 
 Ugly shapes and brutish sometimes; but the fairest that they 
 
 knew; 
 If their sight were dim and earthward, yet their hope and aim 
 
 were true. 
 As the gods were, so their laws were, Thor the strong might 
 
 rave and steal, 
 So through many a peaceful inlet tore the Norseman's eager 
 
 keel. 
 But a new law came when Christ came, and not blameless as 
 
 before, 
 Can we, paying Him our lip-tithes, give our lives and faiths to 
 
 Thor." 
 
 This question, then, is ours Are we doing our part 
 in the growth of the race ? In the current of life are we 
 moving forward? Do our years mark milestones in 
 humanity's struggle toward perfection? Is the god 
 within us so much the more unrolled, when our develop- 
 ment has reached its highest point ? Can we transmit to 
 our children a better heritage of brain and soul than our 
 fathers left to us ? Has the race through us gained some 
 little in the direction of the law of love ? If we have 
 done our part in this struggle, our lives have not been in 
 vain. If we have shirked and hung back, then ours is a
 
 224 THE GROWTH OF MAN. 
 
 line of retrograde descent, and our lineage is a withered 
 branch on the tree of humanity. 
 
 To live aright, is to guide our lives in the direction in 
 which humanity is going not all humanity, not average 
 humanity, but that saving remnant from whose loins 
 shall spring the better man of the future. The purpose 
 of life is to be as near the man of the future as the man 
 of the present can be. But we must be patient, with all 
 our striving. The end of life is not yet. Humanity is 
 still in its infancy, and this old world is old only in com- 
 parison with the years of human life. Only through 
 centuries on centuries of struggle and aspiration can 
 humanity approach divinity and the law of love be 
 supreme. 
 
 Books have been written on the seven or eight " de- 
 cisive battles ' ' in the history of civilization. Great 
 battles there have been ; but the stake in any battle is 
 less than it appears. There can have been no decisive 
 battles. The growth in humanity goes on whether 
 battles be lost or won. The leaven of Christianity 
 would have wrought its work in Europe if Charles Mattel 
 had been overpowered by the Moors at Poitiers. A 
 battle may decide the fate of a man or a nation, but not 
 the fate of humanity. Kings cannot check its growth. 
 Priests cannot smother it. It is never buried in the dust 
 of defeat. 
 
 Slavery died not because the battle of Gettysburg was 
 lost. It was doomed from the beginning, and its death 
 was only a question of time. Nothing could have saved 
 it, and the success of its defenders on the field of battle 
 would only have postponed the end. The forces of 
 nature are fatal to it. Even the law of gravitation and
 
 THE MAN OF THE FUTURE. 223 
 
 the multiplication-table would have conquered it at last. 
 That which endures is that which brings out the higher 
 potentialities of manhood. All else must pass away. 
 
 Not long ago, in a gallery in Brussels, I saw that 
 striking painting of Wiertz, ' ' The Man of the Future 
 and the Things of the Past." The man of the future 
 has in his open right hand a handful of marshals, guns, 
 swords, and battle-flags, the paraphernalia of Napoleon's 
 campaigns. These he is carefully examining with a 
 magnifying-glass which he holds above them in his left 
 hand. At the same time a child beside him looks on in 
 open-eyed wonder that a man should care so much for 
 such little things as these. For these banners and arms, 
 so potent in their day, dwindle to the proportions of 
 children's toys when seen in the long perspective of 
 human development. 
 
 The decline and fall of empires is not decline or decay. 
 It is the breaking of the clods above the growing man. 
 Kings and nations recede as man moves on. The love 
 of country must merge into the higher patriotism, the 
 love of man. Viewed as steps in the growth of ascend- 
 ing humanity, the changes in history have a deeper 
 meaning to us. Our studies become ennobled. What 
 have been the conditions of growth in the past ? What 
 conditions have led to decline and degradation ? What 
 tends to keep the individual retarded and immature, and 
 what tends to bring him farther toward the ultimate 
 humanity ? 
 
 Now, as we look back over the annals of slowly 
 advancing humanity, and behold the gradual develop- 
 ment in wisdom, skill, self-control, and kindness can we 
 not also look forward along the same line to a future of 
 p
 
 226 THE GROWTH OF MAN. 
 
 ideal manhood? If Christ be the perfect man, He is 
 perfect in this, that the potentiality of the race finds its 
 fulfillment in Him. Seen in contrast with the perfect 
 humanity, all else that we know is but infantile. Decay 
 and death overtake us long before we begin to realize 
 any appreciable nearness to the sublime ideal of the 
 Christian faith. 
 
 " De Imitationc Christi" is one of the grand books 
 of the middle ages. "Imitation of Christ," so far as 
 the imitation is real not in speech, not in dress, not in 
 ceremonies, but in the inner life, this alone can place us 
 in close harmony with nature, and closer with our fellow- 
 men. The expression, "love of God," is the love of 
 good, the love of that which is abiding, in distinction 
 from that which is merely temporal. It may reduce itself 
 into love of the higher life, in which the progress of the 
 race consists. For, in the words of the good Thomas a 
 Kempis, " It is vanity to love that which is speedily pass- 
 ing away." In the despairing words of Guinevere may 
 be heard the keynote of the conditions of growth: 
 " It was my duty to have loved the highest ! " 
 
 "This is the first and great commandment. And the 
 second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy- 
 self. On these two commandments hang all the law and the 
 prophets." 
 
 What I have tried to say, I may sum up in a few 
 words. There is an ideal manhood to which our human 
 race must come. Every step toward this end which the 
 individual man may take is a step won for humanity. 
 The end rests with us. It is our part in life to work with 
 all our strength toward the realization of ideal humanity, 
 to add one more link to the chain which joins the man-
 
 THE WEAL MANHOOD. 227 
 
 brute of the past through the man of the present to the 
 man of the future the man who is likest Him we have 
 chosen for our ideal.
 
 XV. 
 THE SOCIAL ORDER.* 
 
 IN the crude civilization of to-day there is no place for 
 anarchy. Order is more important than even free- 
 dom, and order must be upheld by force if it cannot be 
 maintained in any other way. Yet the ideal of civiliza- 
 tion must be perfect anarchy order maintained from 
 within, the recognition of order in the hearts of men; 
 not order imposed upon men from without, but the 
 forces within that make for righteousness of thought 
 and action. The fruitage of civilization must be volun- 
 tary co-operation. When this fruitage is reached, then 
 it will be time for us to cast aside our present social 
 order, to organize a new one adapted to the changed 
 human nature of the coming time, if indeed the new one 
 by that time is not already formed and adopted uncon- 
 sciously and in spite of ourselves. We have been 
 thousands of years working out the social order we have. 
 It is the best that man has ever found; it is the best that 
 has been possible with the weak and wayward men who 
 are the units of civilization. It is easy to find fault with 
 our present social organization. Like the men of whom 
 it is made, it has thousands of crimes to answer for. It 
 has been the chief of the "plug-uglies." It has ground 
 slaves into the dust and murdered those who would be 
 their liberators. In the name of law it still daily defies 
 
 * Notes from an unpublished lecture. 
 228
 
 THE PERFECT ANARCHY. 229 
 
 all law. It daily stands, and must stand, for injustice and 
 oppression, but it also stands for the removal of injustice 
 and oppression, for the growth of knowledge, the lessen- 
 ing of crime, the bringing of freedom to the oppressed, 
 of wisdom to the foolish, of help to the unfortunate. It 
 has throughout the ages been in advance of the men 
 from whom it arises and of whom it is composed. Its 
 movement is not the expression of the best in man. 
 That could not be, for society is collective. Nor is it 
 the expression of the worst, nor even of the average. It 
 is better than the average, for this reason that a good 
 man has more weight in society and more force in him- 
 self than a bad one; a strong man counts for more than 
 a weak one, a wise man for more than a fool; and this 
 will always be so. 
 
 The perfect anarchy will not come through dynamite. 
 Dynamite is the weapon of a coward. The men who, 
 by deeds of violence, have broken systems or shaken 
 society have been the men who have given their own 
 lives as a sacrifice, not the men who have given the lives 
 or property of their neighbors. Such men as these 
 have not needed to fortify themselves with stimulants 
 nor with the enthusiasm or the cheers of others. It was 
 not the courage of whisky that brought John Brown to 
 the gallows nor John Huss to the stake. These men 
 had no need to manufacture dynamite bombs or to kill 
 the burghers that their influence might be felt. They 
 gave themselves as a sacrifice to an unjust statute or an 
 unjust decree, that people might learn to see clearly the 
 difference between these and the laws of God. These 
 laws have their basis, not in legislation, not in the statutes
 
 2 3 o THE SOCIAL ORDER. 
 
 of Congress, but in the very center of human nature, 
 and can never be overthrown. Against law neither 
 bullets nor ballots avail anything. But in mere statutes 
 there is no force. Statutes are the manners and cus- 
 toms; law is the life itself. It is the expression of the 
 onward movement of human civilization. A statute is 
 a temporary compromise between struggling wills and 
 jarring interests. It is the expression of the "patched- 
 up broils of Congress." Through forms of statute men 
 play at government, and in the long run in human 
 development statutes count for nothing. Government 
 by the people can be successful only as it becomes in 
 time goverment by law, and not by statute. 
 
 The very perfection of society must always appear as 
 imperfection; for a highly developed society is dynamic. 
 It is moving on. A static society, no matter how perfect 
 it. may seem, whether a Utopia, Icaria, or City of the 
 Sun, is in a condition of arrested development. Its 
 growth has ceased and its perfection is that of death. 
 The most highly advanced social conditions are the most 
 unstable. The individual man counts for most under 
 such conditions; for the growth of the individual man is 
 the only justification for the institutions of which he 
 forms part. The most highly developed organism shows 
 the greatest imperfections. The most perfect adaptation 
 to conditions needs readaptation, as conditions them- 
 selves speedily change. The dream of a static millen- 
 nium, when struggle and change shall be over, when all 
 shall be secure and all happy, finds no warrant in our 
 knowledge of man and the world. Self-realization in 
 life is only possible when self-perdition is also possible.
 
 LAW AND STATUTE. 231 
 
 When cruelty and hate are excluded by force, charity 
 and helpfulness will go with them. Strength and virtue 
 have their roots within man, and not without. They 
 may be checked but not greatly stimulated by institu- 
 tions and statutes. 
 
 Thoreau tells us that, " as a snowbank rises when there 
 is a lull in the wind, so when there is a lull in the truth 
 an institution springs up. By and by, the truth blows 
 on and sweeps it away. ' ' This truth which sweeps away 
 institutions comes in the growth of the individual man. 
 As his knowledge increases it is translated into action. 
 In adapting himself to his environment, that which was 
 the work of his own ignorance is swept away. By this 
 means he is sometimes helpless, as the the lobster who 
 has shed his shell. But the new shell he has formed, 
 and which later he must likewise shed, is ever stronger 
 and more roomy. 
 
 In making their own statutes the people come dimly 
 to see that there is a power behind and above their 
 efforts the power of the nature of man. Hence, 
 slowly as the experiment of self-government goes on, 
 the rule of the people changes from folly to wisdom, 
 from caprice to principle, from selfishness to justice, 
 from statute to law. This is the expression of the 
 growth of civilization. It is the essence of government 
 by public opinion. It is the justification of universal 
 suffrage. Universal suffrage is the expression of the 
 growth of civilization, its extension downward, from 
 rank to rank, from caste to caste or, rather, from indi- 
 vidual to individual. Thus "freedom slowly broadens
 
 232 THE SOCIAL ORDER. 
 
 down, from precedent to precedent." Each generation 
 of men is as free as its character and training allows it to 
 be. Each man has the rights he has the strength and 
 wisdom to hold. 
 
 Any mistake in statutes is followed always by going 
 farther in the same direction. The harm done by stat- 
 utes based on unemotional reasoning is nothing to the 
 mischief due to unreasoning emotion. The man who 
 refuses to reason is always sure to be wrong. Emotion 
 is not virtue not always on speaking terms with it. 
 ' ' Virtue is more dangerous than vice, because its excesses 
 are unchecked by conscience," says a French writer. 
 The most dangerous of moral ideas are those held by 
 men without intellectual ideas. 
 
 All goodness, all special helpfulness, is in some sense 
 sacrifice, though this sacrifice may be recompensed in 
 other ways. Men must be good if they are to live in 
 society; that is, they must be considerate "in honor 
 preferring one another." But the virtues of men gov- 
 ernments cannot have. A government cannot be good; 
 it can simply be just; for government can sacrifice 
 nothing. If it attempts to be kind as to the property 
 and interests of others in one case, injustice results in 
 other cases. Justice demands with all force that one set 
 of interests shall not be sacrificed to another. Enforced 
 sacrifice of the interests of others is not virtue, but 
 injustice. Goodness must throw away self. The sacrifice 
 must be self-sacrifice. Goodness enforced by law is cor- 
 ruption and injustice.
 
 MEN MUST GIVE AND TAKE. 233 
 
 Society seems to exist for its own sake, but it does 
 not. It exists for the sake of the individuals; but when- 
 ever society is imperiled, or in a struggle against its 
 enemies, it must appear as a thing in itself. We must 
 save our country in order to save ourselves. 
 
 All changes in human society and government must 
 be dictated by wisdom, and actions must be right and 
 wise. Hence the failure of the temperance movement 
 and the populist movement as political attempts, because 
 they are based on feeling, and on no scientific apprecia- 
 tion of the laws which determine what should be done, 
 and what can be done. Good intentions do not rescue 
 unwise actions from failure. A man of the best inten- 
 tions is not always a good driver of an unruly team. 
 
 The growth of man means the decline of the ma- 
 chinery to control or to help him. He does not need 
 governing when he has self-control. If he continuously 
 needs special help, he is not a man, but a weakling or a 
 degenerate. To give help at special times, for special 
 needs, is part of the duty of altruism. All children are 
 weaklings for the time being. They should be trained 
 never too much if wisely. But when full-grown, a man 
 must give and take give his power, and take the 
 results of his actions. "To save men from the conse- 
 quences of their folly," says Spencer, "is to fill the world 
 with fools." 
 
 By good or right in human development, we mean 
 simply the opportunity for more life or higher life. That 
 is good which makes me strong and gives strength to my
 
 234 THE SOCIAL ORDER. 
 
 neighbors. Might does not make right; but whatever 
 is right will justify itself in persistence; and persistence 
 is strength. That which is weak dies. We only know 
 God's purposes by what He permits. That which per- 
 sists and grows, must be in line with such purposes. A 
 law is only an observed generalization of what is. There 
 is no law which reads, ' ' This and this ought to be, but 
 is not." 
 
 The law of God is different from the ordinances framed 
 in His name by bands calling themselves His servants. 
 His law has binding force from eternity to eternity. The 
 decrees of the church extend only to the bounds of its 
 own vestry. The statutes of the state have validity only 
 when its armies can secure their enforcement. 
 
 A parable of the conduct of life shows man in a light 
 skiff in a tortuous channel, beset with rocks, borne by a 
 falling current to an unknown sea. He is kept awake 
 by the needs of his situation. As his boat bumps against 
 the rocks, he must bestir himself. If this contact were 
 not painful, he would not heed it. If it were not hurtful, 
 he would not need to heed it. Had he no power to act, 
 he could not heed it if he would. But with sensation, 
 will, and the impulse to act, narrow though the range 
 of freedom of action may be, his safety rests in some 
 degree in his own hands. That he has secured safety 
 thus far is shown by the fact that he is alive. He may 
 choose his course for himself not an easy thing to do, 
 unless he scans most carefully the nature of rocks and 
 waves, and his control of the boat itself. He may follow 
 the course of others with some degree of the safety
 
 THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 235 
 
 that others have attained. He may follow his own im- 
 pulses, the incentives those before him found safe as 
 guides to action. But in new conditions neither conven- 
 tionality, nor impulse, nor desire will suffice. He must 
 know what is about him in order that he may know what 
 he is doing. He must know what he is doing in order 
 to do anything effectively. Blind action is more danger- 
 ous than no action at all. He must be in friendly rela- 
 tions with others, if for no other reason than that mutual 
 help may bring a safety which no one could secure for 
 himself alone. Wisdom is knowing what should be 
 done next. Virtue is doing it. The will is man in 
 action. The intellect is its guide. If the life of man, 
 as thus pictured, be a life hemmed in by the inexorable 
 Fates, then the Will is one of the Fates, and must take 
 its place with the rest of them. The man who can will 
 is a factor in the universe.
 
 XVI. 
 THE SAVING OF TIME.* 
 
 " r I ^HE gods for labor give us all good things." This 
 1 was part of the philosophy of the ancient Greeks. 
 They learned it as a fact of experience long before Epi- 
 charnus first put it into words. Over and over again each 
 generation of men tries its own experiments, and comes 
 back to the same unvarying conclusion. In a thousand 
 forms, in all languages, this idea has found its way into 
 the wisdom of men. And it is a part of the same expe- 
 rience that the gods never give anything worth having 
 for any other price. In their dealings with men they 
 receive no other coinage. They know no other meas- 
 ure of value. Temporary loans they sometimes grant, 
 but when the day of payment comes, they do not fail to 
 charge their due rate of interest They never change 
 their valuations, and they never forget 
 
 " By their long memories the gods are known." This 
 proverb, like the other, has its source in a universal ex- 
 perience. Taken from the forms of classic poetry and 
 cast into the language of to-day, it indicates simply the 
 universality of law. When they spoke of the gods in 
 phrases like these, the Greeks meant what we, in a 
 different way, personify as the " Forces of Nature." 
 These are the powers about us which act unceasingly, 
 and in ways which never change. These are the realities 
 
 * Commencement Address, University of Indiana, 1891. 
 236
 
 THE FORCES OF NATURE. 237 
 
 of the universe. All else is inert matter. Human knowl- 
 edge consists in the recognition of these ways and forces. 
 We learn to know them from our contact with them. 
 Human power depends on acting in accord with such 
 knowledge. In this lie the possibilities of man. He 
 who knows the truth can trust all and fear nothing. 
 There is no treachery in Nature's laws. He who strikes 
 as the gods strike has the force of infinity in his blows. 
 He who defies them wields a club of air. 
 
 These laws are real and universal, and no man nor 
 nation has ever accomplished anything in opposition to 
 them. The existence of the simplest of these laws, those 
 which, like the law of gravitation, can be exactly deter- 
 mined, men now readily admit. The man who leaps from 
 a precipice expects to be hurt when he reaches the earth. 
 The law of falling bodies is too obvious to leave room for 
 doubt as to its results. But the laws of organic life are 
 less simple than these. The laws we but half understand 
 we hope in some way to defeat. Most complex of all 
 laws are those of ethics and economics. Because these 
 are not well understood, and the relations of cause and 
 effect are not easily traced, the average man believes that 
 he is shrewd enough to break them and to escape the 
 penalty. 
 
 One of these laws of life which men are prone to dis- 
 regard is that which decrees failure to him who seeks 
 something for nothing, and well-being to him who pays 
 as he goes. 
 
 It is one of the truths of modern biology that progress 
 in organic life comes through self-activity. In the last 
 analysis most forms of advance in power or in specializa- 
 tion of structure among- organisms reduces itself to the
 
 238 THE SAVING OF TIME. 
 
 saving of time. Time must be measured in terms of 
 effort, and the essence of progress is that none should 
 slip by without effort or change. 
 
 In the embryonic stages of the various animal forms 
 there is a period when any two, higher and lower, are 
 alike; in this, at least, that no tests we may apply can 
 show a difference. One element of divergence comes 
 through the varying rates of developments. Time is saved 
 in the one organism; it is lost in the other. As growth 
 goes on, the forms we call lower pass slowly through 
 the various stages of life; their growth is altogether 
 finished before any high degree of specialization is 
 reached. The embryo of the higher form passes through 
 the same course, but with a swiftness in some degree 
 proportioned to its future possibility. Less time is spent 
 on non-essentials, and we may say that, through the 
 saving of time and force, it is enabled to push on to 
 higher development. 
 
 The gill structure of the fish, its apparatus for purify- 
 ing the blood by contact with the air dissolved in water, 
 lasts for its whole lifetime. In most fishes there is no 
 hint that any other mode of respiration could exist, or 
 could be effective. The frog, a higher animal than the 
 fish, sustains for part of its life a similar apparatus, but a 
 further development sets in, and at last the inherited 
 structure of the gills gives place to organs which insure 
 the contact of the blood with atmospheric air. Gill struc- 
 tures are likewise inherited by the bird, and mammal, 
 and man, as well as by the frog and fish; for by the law 
 of heredity no creature can ever wholly let go of its past. 
 The fact that its ancestors once breathed in water can 
 never be entirely forgotten. The same stages of growth
 
 ACCELERATION AND RETARDATION. 239 
 
 are passed through in birds or mammals as in frogs or 
 fishes, but long before the bird is hatched or the mammal 
 is born, the gill structures have disappeared, or have 
 suffered total modification. The true life of the new 
 animal is begun at a point far beyond the highest attain- 
 ment of the frog or the fish. The law of acceleration 
 hurries the embryo along through these temporary 
 stages, and in this fact of acceleration comes the possi- 
 bility of progress. 
 
 On the other hand, with animal or plant, degeneration 
 and degradation result from the loss of time. Retarded 
 development is incomplete development. Whatever 
 narrows the activity of the individual, whatever tends 
 to make of life be it of animal or man simply a 
 matter of eating and sleeping and a continuance of the 
 species, leads to degradation and loss of effectiveness. 
 The creatures which rule the world are the children of 
 struggle and storm. The sheltered life leads to inability 
 to live without shelter. The loss of self-activity makes 
 parasites and paupers, whether among animals, or plants, 
 or men. It is one of those universal laws which act 
 through all ages and all organisms, through the long 
 memories of all the gods, that the creature which does 
 not translate time into growth shall drop out of existence. 
 
 And now, leaving the lower orders of life aside, I wish 
 to consider some relations of these laws of self-activity 
 to our own lives and the lives of our neighbors. ' ' A 
 nation, ' ' it has been wisely said, "is an assemblage of 
 men and women who can take care of themselves." 
 Whatever influence strengthens this power in the indi- 
 vidual makes the nation strong; and, conversely, the 
 presence of every man or woman who does not, or can-
 
 2/}o THE SAVING OF TIME. 
 
 not, take care of himself, casts an additional burden on 
 the rest. This power of self-support goes with the saving 
 of the individual time. Franklin calculated that if every 
 man and woman should spend three or four hours each 
 day in useful occupation, poverty would disappear, and 
 the afternoon of each day and the whole afternoon of our 
 lives could be reserved for physical, mental, or spiritual 
 improvement. That we cannot thus have the afternoon 
 to ourselves is due to the fact that we are paying our 
 neighbor's debts. Our neighbor has taken our time. 
 We are doing more than our share of the drudgery that 
 hinders growth, and this because others in the same 
 community are doing too little for their own develop- 
 ment. 
 
 The end of the social organism is fullness of life for the 
 individual. The forms of society avail nothing if they do 
 not bring larger life to the individual units. Whatever 
 is not good for the individual man, cannot be good for 
 humanity. 
 
 We hear every day allusions to the wrongs of labor, 
 to the justice which never comes to the poor man, and 
 to the favor which always follows the rich. We hear 
 of the industrial crimes by which the rich grow richer and 
 the poor grow poorer. We see every day the advertise- 
 ments of the poor man's friend, paid for out of the poor 
 man's money, and all of them seem to tell the same 
 story. It is the desire of the poor man's friend to 
 handle the poor man's money, and his chief qualifica- 
 tion is the fact that he has never yet shown any skill in 
 handling his own. 
 
 We know very well that these wrongs of labor are not 
 imaginary. It happens too often that those who are
 
 INDUSTRIAL WAR. 241 
 
 within may bar tne doors against those who are without. 
 We know, too, that under human laws it too often occurs 
 that those the world calls fortunate have the luck of foxes 
 and wolves, and can show no moral claim to the game 
 they are devouring. 
 
 Much that we call money-making is not the addition 
 of wealth. It is money-transferring, not money-gaining. 
 It is the process of making slaves of others, by turning 
 into the pocket of the one that which is rightfully earned 
 by the brains or the hands of others. Some day this 
 manner of "making money," whether practiced by the 
 "predatory rich," or the equally "predatory poor," 
 will become impossible. It will pass under the ban as 
 blackmail and highway robbery have passed. When it 
 is condemned by public opinion the law will condemn it, 
 too; for our statutes are only attempts at the formal 
 expression of such opinion. Industrial warfare is not 
 competition. It is the struggle of devices to stifle com- 
 petition. Competition is rivalry, to be sure, but rivalry 
 under conditions of fair play. Its function is to secure 
 the best service to put the right man in the right 
 place. That one man should devour another is not 
 competition. It is war. The abolition of private warfare 
 within a nation has been one of the most important steps 
 in human civilization. The abolition of private war in 
 industrial relations will be another step scarcely lower in 
 importance. But this must come with the growth of 
 human wisdom, by which destructive and dishonest prac- 
 tices may be condemned. It cannot be brought about by 
 the application of force. It cannot follow any form of 
 arbitrary legislation. All statutes must be of equal appli- 
 cation; for in taking away from the barons, of whatever
 
 242 THE SAVING OF TIME. 
 
 kind feudal or industrial, the right of private war, 
 the people are bound to guarantee that private war shall 
 not be waged against them. 
 
 With all that may be said of the injustice of our social 
 order, there are not many whose place in it is not fixed 
 by their own character and training. In America to-day 
 most men find that the position awarded them is the 
 only one possible. Accident and misfortune aside, not 
 many are poor who could ever have been otherwise. To 
 Robinson Crusoe alone on his desert island, as Dr. 
 Warner has shown, most forms of misery we know could 
 have come if he had developed their causes. Weakness 
 and poverty are not wholly caused by social condi- 
 tions. Even with no social system at all, folly, vice, 
 or crime will always bring weakness, misery, poverty. 
 Misery, in general, is nature's protest against personal 
 degradation. No man needs the help of others in order 
 to degrade himself. 
 
 To be poor in worldly goods is not all of poverty. 
 Such poverty may be in itself no evil. Wealth is a 
 costly thing. Many a man is poor because he has 
 intelligently refused to pay the price of wealth. He has 
 turned his time and effort into channels which brought 
 him spiritual or mental rather than economic gain. But 
 such as these are satisfied with their bargain, and not one 
 of them is aware that any wrong has been done to him. 
 He has what he has paid for, and asks for nothing else ; 
 and we who know him as our neighbor never think of 
 him as poor. He could only wish for wealth as a means 
 of securing a more perfect povefty. 
 
 "The gods for labor give us all good things," but not 
 all to the same man. Each must choose for himself,
 
 THE RICH AND THE POOR. 243 
 
 and it is a happy condition that each one who has earned 
 the right to choose is satisfied with his choice. Those 
 who have not earned this right must, from the nature 
 of things, be discontented. The man who has wasted 
 his time must take the last choice. He comes in for the 
 little that is left. With the leisure of life all spent in 
 advance, the interest on borrowed time must be paid 
 under the hardest of creditors. 
 
 A great problem of our day, which engages the best 
 thoughts of the strongest minds, is this: How can the 
 power of self-support be restored to those who have lost 
 it ? How are those who swim on the crest of the wave 
 to lend a hand to the submerged tenth who struggle 
 ineffectively in waters which only grow deeper as our 
 civilization moves on ? What can the strong do for 
 the weak? 
 
 "The rich man," it is often said, " must know how 
 the poor man lives," for in keeping together is the safety 
 of humanity. But even more pertinent than this is the 
 other saying, that, in his turn, "the poor man must 
 learn to know how the rich man works." It is true 
 enough that there are among us some rich men who 
 never work, some few supported splendidly in idleness, 
 at public cost, the reward of the good fortune, or the 
 hard work, or the successful trickery of some ancestor. 
 These gilded paupers are not many in America, after all, 
 some "four hundred " are there not, in each of our 
 great cities? And the number is not increasing; for their 
 hold on inherited power grows constantly weaker. They 
 are but froth on the waves of humanity, and the burden 
 of carrying them is not one of the heaviest the American 
 citizen has to bear. Their life in our country is an
 
 244 THE SAVING OF TIME. 
 
 anachronism, as they themselves are not slow to recog- 
 nize. Their place, and their time, is in feudal Europe, 
 and not in the America of to-day. 
 
 In the old times the poor man worked, and the rich 
 man was idle; the poor man paid the taxes which sup- 
 ported the gentleman in pauperism. "The rich," 
 indeed, "grew richer, and the poor poorer." The 
 poor man worked on with an ever- decreasing vitality, 
 because work absorbed his strength, and he could not 
 direct his own forces. Work without self-consent is not 
 growth, but slavery. In like manner, the rich man 
 slipped into degeneracy, because his existence was pur- 
 poseless, and he was conscious of no need of self-support. 
 The man of leisure, whether rich or poor, is in the body 
 politic like carbonic acid in the air it supports neither 
 combustion nor respiration. His presence is poisonous, 
 though in himself he may be productive of neither harm 
 nor good. 
 
 There are some rich men, however, who have the right 
 to be rich. They have paid the price, and they are en- 
 titled to enjoy their bargain. He who saves the toil 
 of a thousand men has a right to some share of their 
 earnings. Sooner or later, we may be sure, this share 
 will be no more and no less than has been fairly earned. 
 The forces of nature are hemmed in by no patent. No 
 man can have a perpetual monopoly; and, sooner or 
 later, the knowledge of the one becomes the property 
 of all. 
 
 The power of capital does not lie in its own force, but 
 in the force of the brains which must, sooner or later, 
 take possession of it, and to which labor undirected by 
 mind must ever stand in the relation of a slave. Money
 
 CAPITAL AND BRAINS. 245 
 
 alone has no power. ' ' The fool and his money are soon 
 parted." Capital is only an instrument. It is effective 
 only when it represents a single will in action. The 
 decision of one man has greater force than the feeble 
 or clashing desires of thousands. 
 
 It is not true that wealth is the result of "labor ap- 
 plied to the forces of nature." The gaining of wealth 
 is the result of wise direction or of skillful manipulation. 
 In the long run, the majority of employers of labor are 
 eaten out of house and home by employees who have 
 no stake in the result, and, therefore, nothing to lose 
 from failure. 
 
 The little boy in the child's story* says: 
 
 "My feet, they haul me round the house; 
 
 They hoist me up the stairs; 
 
 I only have to steer them, and 
 
 They ride me every wheres." 
 
 The average man's view of capital is of the same kind. 
 He underestimates the importance of the steering part 
 of the work, without which no labor yields wealth, and 
 without which capital is ineffective. If he understood 
 the value of wise direction of effort he would cease to be 
 an average man. 
 
 The industrial dangers which threaten our country 
 come not primarily from the power of the rich, but 
 from the weakness of the poor. Too often the poor are 
 taking to themselves a leisure which they have never 
 earned. The price they have paid in life is the price of 
 poverty. If part of it goes for whisky and tobacco, the 
 rest must go for rags and dirt. Even the lowest reward 
 of labor well spent will buy a happy home. But, with- 
 
 From " The L*rk," San Francisco.
 
 246 THE SAVING OF TIME. 
 
 out frugality and temperance, no rate of wages and no 
 division of profits can avail to save a man from poverty; 
 and the waste of one man injures not only himself, but 
 carries harm to all his neighbors, joined to him in dis- 
 astrous industrial alliance. 
 
 We are told that ' ' poverty is the relentless hell ' ' 
 that yawns beneath civil society, So it is; and a sim- 
 ilar comparison may be made in the case of the penalty 
 which follows the violation of any other law of ethics 
 and economics. ' ' By their long memories the gods are 
 known." Under their laws we live, and beneath us 
 forever yawn their penalties. But we may change this 
 metaphor a little. May it not be that this yawning, 
 "relentless hell," is due in part to the presence among 
 us of the yawning, relentless horde of men who would 
 gain something for nothing? In whatever form of in- 
 dustry this influence is felt, it must come as industrial 
 depression. 
 
 The essential cause of poverty is the failure to adapt 
 means to ends. A woman in the Tennessee mountains 
 explained once the condition of the ' ' poor whites ' ' in 
 these words: " Poor folks have poor ways." That 
 their ways are poor is the cause of their economic weak- 
 ness. And again it is written : ' ' The destruction of the 
 poor is their poverty. ' ' Without skill to bring about 
 favorable results, the poor are constantly victims of cir- 
 cumstances. These conditions of their lives lead to 
 reduced vitality, lowered morality, and loss of self- 
 respect. Effective life demands, as Huxley tells us, 
 "absolute veracity of thought and action." Those who 
 lack this will always be poor, whatever our social or 
 industrial conditions, unless they become slaves to the
 
 THE POOR AND THEIR WAYS. 247 
 
 will of others, or unless their weakness be placed as a 
 burden on collective effort. It is certainly true that, 
 even though each man in America were industrious 
 to the full measure of his powers, the poor would still 
 ' ' be with us. ' ' There will always be impracticable and 
 incapable men, those who put forth effort enough, but 
 who can do nothing for others that others are likely 
 to value. There will still be the sick and the broken, 
 the weak and the unfortunate. But if these were our 
 only poor, all men would be their neighbors. Statis- 
 tics have shown that, of ten persons in distress in our 
 great cities, the condition of six is due to intemper- 
 ance, idleness, or vice, three to old age and weakness 
 following a thriftless or improvident youth, and one to 
 sickness, accident, or loss of work. The unfortunate 
 poor are but a small fraction of the great pauperism. 
 Were there no pretenders, all who travel on the road to 
 Jericho should be Good Samaritans. Why not ? The 
 impulse to charity is the common instinct of humanity; 
 but the priest and Levite of our day have been so many 
 times imposed upon that all distress is viewed with sus- 
 picion. The semblance of misfortune is put on for the 
 sake of the oil, and the wine, and the pieces of silver. 
 We ' ' pass by on the other side ' ' because in our times 
 we have learned that even common charity may become 
 a crime. We have seen the man who has ' ' fallen by the 
 wayside" put vitriol in his children's eyes that their 
 distress may appeal to us yet more strongly. We have 
 learned that to give food to starving children thereby 
 helps to condemn them to a life of misery and crime. 
 To give something for nothing is to help destroy the 
 possibility of self-activity. And money gained without
 
 248 THE SAVING OF TIME. 
 
 effort is ill-gotten gain. A blind man, to whom some 
 one offered money, once said: "We should never give 
 money to a blind man; for he needs all the strength he 
 can have to help him compete with men who can see." 
 Ill-timed help destroys the rationality of life. If the 
 laws of life were changed so that the fool and his money 
 were less easily parted, money would be wasted still 
 more foolishly than now. 
 
 Money given outright is as dangerous as a gift of 
 opium, and its results are not altogether different. Only 
 the very strong can receive it with safety. Only the very 
 earnest can repay with interest the loans of the gods. 
 Unearned rewards cut the nerve of future effort. The 
 man who receives a windfall forever after watches the 
 wind. There is but one good fortune to the earnest man. 
 This is opportunity; and sooner or later opportunity will 
 come to him who can make use of it. Undeserved help 
 brings the germs of idleness. Even nature is too generous 
 for perfect justice. She gives to vagabonds enough to 
 perpetuate vagabondage. 
 
 The strength of New England lay in this that on 
 her rocky hills only the industrious man could make a 
 living, and with the years the habit of industry became 
 ingrained in the New England character. This strength 
 to-day is seen wherever New England influences have 
 gone. The g*eat West was built with the savings of 
 New England. Go to the prairies of Iowa, where the 
 earth gives her choicest bounty for the least effort, over 
 and over again you will find that these rich farms bear 
 mortgages given to some farmer on the Massachusetts 
 hills. The poor land of the mountains, worked by a 
 man who gave his time and his work, yields enough to
 
 THE FREEDOM OF THE FARMER. 249 
 
 pay for the rich land, too. The Iowa farmer must work 
 with equal diligence if he is to hold his own against the 
 competition of Massachusetts. 
 
 Not long ago, I crossed the State of Indiana on the 
 railway train. It makes no difference where or in what 
 direction. It was a bright day in April, when the sun 
 shone on the damp earth, and when one could almost 
 hear the growing of the grass. There are days and days 
 like this, which every farm boy can remember days 
 which brought to him the delight of living; but to the 
 thrifty farmer these days brought also their duties of 
 plowing, and planting, and sowing. The hope of the 
 spring was in all this work, and no one thought of it as 
 drudgery. The days were all too short for the duties 
 which crowded, and the right to rest could only come 
 when the grain was in the ground, where the forces of 
 nature might wake it into life. An hour in the grow- 
 ing spring is worth a week in the hot midsummer; and 
 he must be a poor farmer, indeed, who does not realize 
 this. 
 
 And I thought that day of the freedom of the farmer. 
 He trades with nature through no middle-man. Nowhere 
 is forethought and intelligence better paid than in deal- 
 ings with Mother Nature. She is as honest as eternity, 
 and she never fails to meet the just dues of all who have 
 claims upon her. She returns some fifty-fold, some hun- 
 dred-fold, for all that is intrusted to her: never fifty-fold 
 to him who deserves a hundred. 
 
 Just then the train stopped for a moment at a flag- 
 station a village called Cloverdale, a name suggestive of 
 sweet blossoms and agricultural prosperity. A commer- 
 cial traveler, dealing in groceries and tobacco, got off; a
 
 250 THE SAVING OF TIME. 
 
 crate of live chickens was put on, and the cars started 
 again. The stopping of a train was no rare event in 
 that village; for it happens two or three times every day. 
 The people had no welcome for the commercial traveler, 
 no tears were shed over the departure of the chickens; 
 yet on the station steps I counted forty men and boys 
 who were there when the train came in. Farm boys, 
 who ought to have been at work in the fields; village 
 boys, who might have been doing something somewhere 
 
 every interest of economics and aesthetics alike calling 
 them away from the station and off to the farms. 
 
 Two men attended to the business of the station. The 
 solitary traveler went his own way. The rest were there 
 because they had not the moral strength to go anywhere 
 else. They were there on the station steps, dead to all 
 life and hope, with only force enough to stand around 
 and ' ' gape. ' ' 
 
 At my destination I left the train, and going to the 
 hotel, I passed on a street corner the noisy vender of a 
 rheumatism cure. Sixty men and boys who had no 
 need for cures of any kind for they were already dead 
 
 were standing around with mouths open and brains 
 shut, engaged in killing time. I was sorry to see that 
 many of these were farmers. All this time their neg- 
 lected farms lay bathed in the sunlight, the earth ready 
 to rejoice at the touch of a hoe. 
 
 Not long ago I had occasion to cross a village square. 
 I saw many busy men upon it, men who had a right to 
 be there, because they were there on their own business. 
 Each one takes part in the great task of caring for the 
 world when he is able and willing to care for himself. 
 On the corner of the square a wandering vagrant, with a
 
 THE BIRDLIME OF HABITUAL IDLENESS. 25 r 
 
 cracked accordion, set forth strains of doleful music. The 
 people stood around him, like flies around a drop of mo- 
 lasses. An hour later I returned. The accordion and 
 its victims were still there, as if chained to the spot. 
 The birdlime of habitual idleness was on their feet, and 
 they could not get away. They will never get away. 
 The mark of doom is on them. They will stay there 
 forever. 
 
 In these days, the farmer and the workingman have 
 many grievances of which they did not know a genera- 
 tion ago. The newspapers and the stump-speakers tell 
 us of these wrongs, and, from time to time, huge unions 
 and alliances are formed to set them right. I go back to 
 the old farm in Western New York on which I was born 
 the farm my father won from the forest, and on which 
 he lived in freedom and independence, knowing no mas- 
 ter, dreading no oppression. I find on that farm to-day 
 tenants who barely make a living. I go over the farm ; 
 I see unpruned fruit trees, wasted forest trees, farm im- 
 plements rusting in the rain and sun, falling gates, broken 
 wagons, evidences of wasted time and unthrifty labor. 
 When one sees such things, he must ask how much of 
 the oppression of the farmer is the fault of the times and 
 how much is the fault of the man. 
 
 It may be in part the poorness of his ways, rather than 
 the aggression of hi? neighbors, which has plunged him 
 into poverty. In very truth, it is both; but the one may 
 be the cause of the other. It is only the born slave that 
 can be kept in slavery. If a farmer spend a day in the 
 harvest-time in efforts to send a fool to the Legisla- 
 ture, or a knave to Congress, should he complain if the 
 laws the fools and knaves make add to his own taxes ?
 
 252 THE SAVING OF TIME, 
 
 If he stand all day in the public square spellbound by 
 a tramp with an accordion; or, still worse, if he lounge 
 about on the sawdust floor of a saloon, talking the stuff 
 we agree to call politics, never reading a book, never 
 thinking a thought above the level of the sawdust floor, 
 need he be surprised if his opinions do not meet with 
 respect ? 
 
 I can well remember the time when the farmer was 
 a busy man. There is many a farm to-day on which he 
 is still busy. It does not take a close observer to recog- 
 nize these farms. You can tell them as far as you can 
 see. Their owners are in alliance with the forces of 
 nature. The gods are on their side, and they only ask 
 from politicians that they keep out of their sunlight. 
 Their butter sells for money; their oats are clean; their 
 horses are in demand; whatever they touch is genuine 
 and prosperous. The cattle call the farmer up at dawn ; 
 the clover needs him in the morning; the apples and 
 potatoes in the afternoon; the corn must be husked at 
 night. A busy man the successful farmer is. Being 
 busy, he finds time for everything. He reads ' ' bound 
 books"; he enjoys the pleasures of travel; he educates 
 his family; he keeps intelligent watch on the affairs of the 
 day. He does not find time to stand on the station steps 
 in the middle of the afternoon to watch a thousand trains 
 go by on a thousand consecutive days. He carries no 
 handicap load of tobacco and whisky. He goes to the 
 county-seat when he has business there. He goes with 
 clean clothes, and comes back with a clean conscience. 
 He has not time to spend each seventh day on the court- 
 house square talking the dregs of scandal and politics 
 with men whose highest civic conception is balanced by
 
 THE TAX OF SHIFTLESSNESS. 253 
 
 a two-dollar bill; nor has he time to waste on nostrum- 
 venders or vagrants with accordions. 
 
 I hear the farmers complaining and most justly com- 
 plaining of high taxes; but no duty on iron was ever 
 so great as the tax he pays who leaves his mowing- 
 machine unsheltered in the storm. The tax on land is 
 high; buM^fipays a higher tax who leaves his meadows to 
 grow up TO whiteweed and thistles. The tax for good 
 roads is high; but a higher toll is paid by the farmer who 
 goes each week to town in mud knee-deep to his horses. 
 There is a high tax on personal property; but it is not 
 so high as the tax on time which is paid by the man 
 who spends his Saturdays loitering about the village 
 streets, or playing games of chance in some ' ' dead-fall ' ' 
 saloon. 
 
 Mowing-machines, thrashers, harvesters, and all the 
 array of labor-saving contrivances of an altruistic age 
 serve nothing if they are not rightly used. They are 
 burdens, not helps, if the time they save be not taken in 
 further production. Labor-saving machinery becomes 
 the costliest of luxuries if the time it saves be turned into 
 idleness or dissipation. 
 
 I know a hundred farmers in Southern Indiana who 
 lose regularly one-sixth of their time by needless visits 
 to the county-seat, and in making these visits needlessly 
 long. The farmer's time is his capital; its use is his 
 income. One-sixth of his time means one-sixth of his 
 income, or else his whole time is not worth saving. It 
 is this sixth which represents the difference between 
 poverty and prosperity. If this wasted sixth were saved 
 by every fanner in Indiana, the State would be an 
 industrial paradise. To have lived in Indiana would
 
 254 THE SAVING OF TIME. 
 
 be an education in itself. People would come from the 
 ends of the earth to see the land which has solved the 
 labor question. 
 
 But it may be that their own valuation is a just one. 
 Perhaps there are some farmers whose time has no 
 economic value. There are other such in every com- 
 munity and in every line in life. The idiot, the insane, 
 the broken, the dilettante, the criminal. For some of 
 these great hospitals are maintained, because they can 
 be more cheaply supported in public lodgings at the 
 common cost. Shall we add the weary farmer to this list? 
 Why not have a great State hospital for all men whose 
 time is worthless a great square courtyard, covered 
 with sawdust, with comfortable dry-goods boxes, where 
 they might sit for the whole day, and the whole year, 
 talking politics or "playing pedro" to the music of the 
 hand-organ, watching the trains go by? The rest of the 
 world could then go on with the world's work, with some 
 addition, no doubt, to the taxes, but with corresponding 
 gain in having the streets open, the saloons closed, the 
 demagogue silenced, and the pastures free from weeds 
 and thistles. 
 
 The frost is a great economic agent as a spur to human 
 activity. There are lands where the frost never comes, 
 and where not one-sixth, but six-sixths, of the time of 
 almost every man is devoted to any purpose rather than 
 that of attending to his own affairs. It is nature's great 
 hospital for the incurably lazy. The motto of the tropics 
 is summed up in one word, ' ' Mafiana, " " to-morrow. ' ' 
 To-morrow let us do it; we must eat and sleep to-day. 
 "Mafiana por la mafiana," one hears over and over 
 again at every suggestion involving the slightest effort.
 
 THE LAND OF TO-MORROW. 255 
 
 It is too warm to-day; the sunshine is too bright; the 
 shade too pleasant;' " Mariana" let it be. This is the 
 land where nothing is ever done. ' ' Why should we do 
 things when to rest and not to do is so much pleasanter ? 
 There is the endless succession of to-morrows. They 
 have come on to us since eternity, and surely they will 
 continue to come. Let us rest in the shade, and wait 
 for the next to-morrow. ' ' 
 
 I have not meant that one word of this should be a 
 special criticism of the American farmer. It is still 
 broadly true that the farmers as a class are the sanest of 
 our people, the least infected by follies and with most 
 faith in the natural relations of cause and effect. The 
 farmers have not yet come to feel that their advancement 
 must be assured through the repression of others. They 
 have not yet turned from nature to legislation in their 
 search for wealth. The farmer deals with the earth 
 directly. It is the earth, not society, that owes him a 
 living. Of all callings, his is least related to the con- 
 ventionalities of man. That he has scorned these con- 
 ventionalities, that he has ' ' hated the narrow town and 
 all its fashions," has been the source of some of his 
 misfortunes. For the town is nearer the center of legis- 
 lation, and it has not been slow to cast burdens upon 
 others for its own purposes. But if the farmer is the 
 victim of unequal taxation or of unjust discriminations, 
 as he certainly is, it is his duty and his privilege to make 
 matters right. Even though sometimes he acts blindly 
 with the discrimination of the "bull in a china-shop," 
 as when he votes for bad roads, cheap men, cheap 
 money, and crippled public schools, it is not a source 
 of discouragement. Men in cities do even worse than
 
 256 THE SAVING OF TIME. 
 
 this. The farmer will know better when he has looked 
 more deeply into the matter. But whatever the repeal 
 of bad legislation may do, the primal necessity remains. 
 
 " He who by the plow would thrive, 
 Himself must either hold or drive." 
 
 Whoever will prosper in any line of life must save his 
 own time and do his own thinking. He must spend 
 neither time nor money which he has not earned. He 
 must not do in a poor way what others do in a better. 
 The change of worse men for better is always painful 
 it is often cruel. But it must come. The remedy is to 
 make men better, so that there need be no change. 
 
 The rise of the common man which has been going 
 on all these centuries demands that the common man 
 must rise. This is the ' ' change from status to con- 
 tract," to use the words of Sir Henry Mayne, which is 
 the essential fact in modern progress. But this rise has 
 its sorrows as well as its joys. Man cannot use the 
 powers and privileges of civilization without sharing its 
 responsibilities. 
 
 In the progress of civilization every form of labor 
 must tend to become a profession. The brain must con- 
 trol the hand. The advance of civilization means the 
 dominance of brain. It means the elimination of un- 
 skilled work. The man who does not know, nor care 
 to know, how farming is carried on, cannot remain a 
 farmer. Whatever human laws may do, the laws of the 
 gods will not leave him long in possession of the ground. 
 If he does not know his business, he must let go of the 
 earth, which will be taken by some one who does. In 
 the words of a successful farmer whom I know, ' ' Let
 
 TIME AND ETERNITY 257 
 
 other people's affairs alone, mind your own business, and 
 you will have prosperity." If not in the fullest measure, 
 it will still be all that you have paid for, and thus all that 
 you deserve. 
 
 I have wished to teach a single lesson, true alike !o 
 all men, the lesson of the saving of time. 
 
 To you, as students, I may say: The pathway of your 
 lives lies along the borders of the Land of Mariana. It 
 is easy to turn into it and to lose yourselves among it* 
 palms and bananas. That thus far in your lives you are 
 still on the right way is shown by your presence here 
 to-day. Were it not so, you would be here to-morrow. 
 You would wait for your education till the day that never 
 comes. 
 
 Different men have different powers. To come to the 
 full measure of these powers, constitutes success in life. 
 But power is only relative. It depends on the factor of 
 time. With time enough, we could, any of us, do any- 
 thing. With this great multiplier, it matters little what 
 the other factor is. Any man would be all men, could 
 he have time enough. With time enough, all things 
 would be possible. With eternity, man becomes as the 
 gods. But our time on earth is not eternity. We can 
 do but little at the most. And the grim humorist 
 reminds us "we shall be a long time dead. ' ' So every 
 hour we waste carries away its life, as the drop of falling 
 water carries away the rock. Every lost day takes away 
 its cubit from our stature. 
 
 So let us work while yet it is day, and when the even- 
 ing falls we may rest under the shade of the palm-trees. 
 He who has been active has earned the right to sleep; 
 and when we have finished our appointed work, "the 
 R
 
 2 5 8 THE SAVING OF TIME. 
 
 rest is silence." The toilsome, busy earth on which the 
 strength of our lives has been spent shall be taken away 
 from us. It shall be "rolled away like a scroll," giving 
 place to that eternity which has no limit, nor environ- 
 ment, and whose glory is past all understanding.
 
 XVII. 
 THE NEW UNIVERSITY.* 
 
 WE come together to-day for the first time as 
 teachers and students. With this relation the 
 life of the Leland Stanford Junior University begins. It 
 is such personal contact of young men and young women 
 with scholars and investigators which constitutes the life 
 of the university. It is for us as teachers and students 
 in the university's first year to lay the foundations of a 
 school which may last as long as human civilization. 
 Ours is the youngest of the universities, but it is heir to 
 the wisdom of all the ages, and with this inheritance it 
 has the promise of a rapid and sturdy growth. 
 
 Our university has no history to fall back upon; no 
 memories of great teachers haunt its corridors; in none 
 of its rooms appear the traces which show where a great 
 man has lived or worked. No tender associations cling, 
 ivy-like, to its fresh, new walls. It is hallowed by no 
 traditions. It is hampered by none. Its finger-posts 
 still point forward. Traditions and associations it is ours 
 to make. From our work the future of the university 
 will grow, as the splendid lily from the modest bulb. 
 
 But the future, with its glories and its responsibilities, 
 will be in other hands. It is ours at the beginning to 
 give the University its form, its tendencies, its customs. 
 The power of precedent will cause to be repeated over 
 
 President's Address, Opening Day of the I.rlan ' Stanford Junior Uni- 
 versity, October i. 1891.
 
 26o THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 and over again everything that we do our errors as 
 well as our wisdom. It becomes us, then, to begin the 
 work modestly, as under the eye of the coming ages. 
 We must lay the foundations broad and firm, so as to 
 give full support to whatever edifice the future may 
 build. Ours is the humbler task, but not the least in 
 importance, and our work will not be in vain if all that 
 we do is done in sincerity. As sound as the rocks from 
 which these walls are hewn should be the work of every 
 teacher who comes within them. To the extent that this 
 is true will the university be successful. Unless its work 
 be thus ' ' wrought in a sad sincerity," nothing can redeem 
 it from failure. In this feeling, and realizing, too, that 
 only the help we give to the men and women whose lives 
 we reach can justify our presence here, we are ready to 
 begin our work. 
 
 We hope to give to our students the priceless legacy 
 of the educated man, the power of knowing what really 
 is. The higher education should bring men into direct 
 contact with truth. It should help to free them from the 
 dead hands of old traditions and to enable them to form 
 opinions worthy of the new evidence each new day 
 brings before them. An educated man should not be 
 the slave of the past, not a copy of men who have gone 
 before him. He must be in some degree the founder of 
 a new intellectual dynasty; for each new thinker is a new 
 type of man. Whatever is true is the truest thing in the 
 universe, and mental and moral strength alike come from 
 our contact with it. 
 
 Every influence which goes out from these halls should 
 emphasize the value of truth. The essence of scholar- 
 ship is to know something which is absolutely true; to
 
 THE VALUE OF TRUTH. 261 
 
 have, in the words of Huxley, ' ' some knowledge to the 
 certainty of which no authority could add nor take away 
 one jot nor tittle, and to which the tradition of a thou- 
 sand years is but as the hearsay of yesterday." The 
 scholar, as was once said of our great chemist, Benjamin 
 Silliman, must have "faith in truth as truth, faith that 
 there is a power in the universe good enough to make 
 truth-telling safe, and strong enough to make truth- 
 telling effective." The personal influence of genuine- 
 ness, as embodied in the life of a teacher, is one of the 
 strongest moral forces which the school can bring to its 
 aid; for moral training comes not mainly by precept, but 
 by practice. We may teach the value of truth to our 
 students by showing that we value it ourselves. 
 
 In like manner, the value of right living can be taught 
 by right examples. In the words of a wise teacher,* 
 ' ' Science knows no source of life but life. The teacher 
 is one of the accredited delegates of civilization. In 
 Heine's phrase, he is a Knight of the Holy Ghost. If 
 virtue and integrity are to be propagated, they must be 
 propagated by people who possess them. If this child- 
 world about us that we know and love is to grow up into 
 righteous manhood and womanhood, it must have a 
 chance to see how righteousness looks when it is lived. 
 That this may be so, what task have we but to garrison 
 our State with men and women? If we can do that, 
 if we can have in every square mile in our country a man 
 or woman whose total influence is a civilizing power, we 
 shall get from our educational system all it can give and 
 all that we can desire." So we may hope that this new 
 school will do its part in the work of civilization, side by 
 
 Professor William Lowe Bryan.
 
 262 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 side with her elder sister, the University of the State, 
 and in perfect harmony with every agency which makes 
 for right thinking and right living. The harvest is 
 bounteous, but laborers are still all too few; for a gen- 
 erous education should be the birthright of every man 
 and woman in America. 
 
 I shall not try to-day to give you our ideal of what a 
 university should be. If our work is successful, our 
 ideals will appear in the daily life of the school. In a 
 school, as in a fortress, it is not the form of the building, 
 but the strength of the materials, which determine its 
 effectiveness. With a garrison of hearts of oak, it may 
 not matter even whether there be a fortress. Whatever 
 its form, or its organization, or its pretensions, the char- 
 acter of the university is fixed by the men who teach. 
 " Have a university in shanties, nay in tents," Cardinal 
 Newman has said, "but have great teachers in it." The 
 university spirit flows out from these teachers, and its 
 organization serves mainly to bring them together. 
 ' ' Colleges can only serve us, ' ' says Emerson, ' ' when 
 their aim is not to drill, but to create ; when they 
 gather from far every ray of various genius to their 
 hospitable halls, and by their concentrated fires set the 
 heart of their youth in flame. ' ' Strong men make uni- 
 versities strong. A great man never fails to leave a 
 great mark on every youth with whom he comes in con- 
 tact. Too much emphasis cannot be laid on this: that 
 the real purpose of the university organization is to pro- 
 duce a university atmosphere such an atmosphere as 
 gathered itself around Arnold at Rugby, around Dollin- 
 ger at Munich, around Linnaeus at Upsala, around 
 Werner at Freiburg, around Agassiz at Cambridge,
 
 INFLUENCE OF GREAT TEACHERS. 263 
 
 around Mark Hopkins at Williamstown, around Andrew 
 D. White at Ithaca, around all great teachers everywhere. 
 
 A professor to whom original investigation is unknown 
 should have no place in a university. Men of common- 
 place or second-hand scholarship are of necessity men 
 of low ideals, however much the fact may be disguised. 
 A man of high ideals must be an investigator. He 
 must know and think for himself. Only such as do 
 this can be really great as teachers. Some day our uni- 
 versities will recognize that their most important pro- 
 fessors may be men who teach no classes, devoting their 
 time and strength wholly to advanced research. Their 
 presence and example will be, perhaps, worth to the 
 student body a hundred-fold more than the precepts and 
 drill of the others. They set high standards of thought. 
 They help to create the university spirit, without which 
 any college is but a grammar school of a little higher 
 pretensions. 
 
 And above and beyond all learning is the influence 
 of character, the impulse to virtue and piety which 
 comes from men whose lives show that virtue and piety 
 really exist For the life of the most exalted as well 
 as the humblest of men, there can be nobler motto than 
 that inscribed by the great scholar of the last century 
 over his home at Hammarby : " fnnocue vivito ; numen 
 adest" Live blameless; God is near. "This," said 
 Linnaeus, ' ' is the wisdom of my life. ' ' Every advance 
 which we make toward the realization of the truth of the 
 permanence and immanence of law, brings us nearer 
 to Him who is the great First Cause of all law and all 
 phenomena. 
 
 While the work of the teachers must make the kernel
 
 264 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 of the university, we must rejoice that here at Palo Alto 
 even the husks are beautiful. Beauty and fitness are 
 great forces in education. Every object with which the 
 young mind conies in contact leaves on it its trace. 
 "Nothing is unimportant in the life of man," and the 
 least feature of our surroundings has its influence, greater 
 or less. ' ' There was a child went forth every day, ' ' 
 Walt Whitman tells us, "and the first object that it 
 looked upon, that object it became." It may be for 
 a moment or an hour, or 4 ' for changing cycles of years. ' ' 
 The essence of civilization is exposure to refining and 
 humanizing influences. "A dollar in a university," 
 Emerson tells us, ' ' is worth more than a dollar in a 
 jail," and every dollar spent in making a university 
 beautiful will be repaid with interest in the enriching of 
 the students' lives. 
 
 It has been a reproach of America that for the best 
 of her sons and daughters she has done the least. She 
 has built palaces for lunatics, idiots, crippled, and blind, 
 nay, even for criminals and paupers. But the college 
 students "the young men of sound mind and earnest 
 purpose, the noblest treasures of the State," to quote 
 the words of President White, "she has housed in vile 
 barracks." The student has no need for luxury. Plain 
 living has ever gone with high thinking. But grace 
 and fitness have an educative power too often forgotten 
 in this utilitarian age. These long corridors with their 
 stately arches, these circles of waving palms, will have 
 their part in the students' training as surely as the chem- 
 ical laboratory or the seminary-room. Each stone in 
 the quadrangle shall teach its lesson of grace and of 
 genuineness, and this Valley of Santa Clara the valley
 
 THE BEAUTY OF PALO ALTO. 265 
 
 of ' ' holy clearness ' ' shall occupy a warm place in every 
 student's heart. Pictures of this fair region will cling 
 to his memory amid the figures of draughting-room. 
 He will not forget the fine waves of our two mountain 
 ranges, overarched by a soft blue Grecian sky, nor the 
 ancient oak-trees, nor the gently sloping fields, changing 
 from vivid green to richest yellow, as the seasons change. 
 The noble pillars of the gallery of art, its rich treasures, 
 the choicest remains of the ideals of past ages all these, 
 and a hundred other things which each one will find out 
 for himself, shall fill his mind with bright pictures, never 
 to be rubbed out in the wear of life. Thus in the char- 
 acter of every student shall be left some imperishable 
 trace of the beauty of Palo Alto. 
 
 Agassiz once said : ' ' The physical suffering of human- 
 ity, the wants of the poor, the craving of the hungry 
 and naked, appeal to the sympathies of every one who 
 has a human heart. But there are necessities which only 
 the destitute student knows. There is a hunger and 
 thirst which only the highest charity can understand and 
 relieve; and on this solemn occasion let me say that every 
 dollar given for higher education, in whatever depart- 
 ment of knowledge, is likely to have a greater influence 
 on the future character of our nation than even the 
 thousands, hundred thousands, and millions which we 
 have spent, or are spending, to raise the many to material 
 ease and comfort." 
 
 I need not recall to you the history of the foundation 
 of the Leland Stanford Junior University. It has its 
 origin in the shadow of a great sorrow, and its purpose 
 in the wish to satisfy for the coming generations the hun- 
 ger and thirst after knowledge that undying curiosity
 
 266 THE NEW UNIVERSITY. 
 
 which is the best gift of God to man. The influence of 
 the boy, to the nobility of whose short life the Leland 
 Stanford Junior University is a tribute and a remem- 
 brance, will never be lost in our country. To him we 
 owe the inspiration which led the founders to devote the 
 earnings of the successful ventures of a busy life to the 
 work of higher education. 
 
 Six years ago, in one of our California journals,* these 
 words were used with reference to the work which we 
 begin to-day: " Greater than the achievement of lasting 
 honor among one's fellow-men of later generations, is it 
 to become a living power among them forever. It rarely 
 happens to one man and woman to have both the power 
 and the skill to thus live after death, working and shap- 
 ing beneficently in the lives of many not of tens nor 
 of hundreds, but of thousands and of tens of thousands, 
 as the generations follow on. Herein is the wisdom of 
 money spent in education, that each recipient of influ- 
 ence becomes in his time a center to transmit the same 
 in every direction, so that it multiplies forever in geo- 
 metric ratio. This power to mold unborn generations 
 for good, to keep one's hands mightily on human affairs 
 after the flesh has been dust for years, seems not only 
 more than mortal, but more than man. Thus does man 
 become co-worker with God in the shaping of the world 
 to a good outcome." 
 
 The Golden Age of California begins when its gold is 
 used for purposes like this. From such deeds must rise 
 the new California of the the coming century, no longer 
 the California of the gold-seeker and the adventurer, but 
 the abode of high-minded men and women, trained in 
 
 Milicent W. Shinn, in The Overland Monthly.
 
 THE GOLDEN AGE OF CALIFORNIA. 267 
 
 the wisdom of the ages, and imbued with the love of 
 nature, the love of man, and the love of God. And 
 bright indeed will be the future of our State if, in the 
 usefulness of the university, every hope and prayer of 
 the founders shall be realized
 
 XV111. 
 A CASTLE IN SPAIN. 
 
 T KNOW a castle, in the Heart of Spain, 
 Builded of stone, as if to stand for aye, 
 With tile roof, red against tJie azure sky, 
 For skies are bluest in the Heart of Spain. 
 So fair a castle men build not again ; 
 ' Neath its broad arches, in its courtyard fair, 
 And through its cloisters open everywhere 
 / wander as I will, in sun or rain. 
 Its inmost secrets unto me are known, 
 For mine the castle is. Nor mine alone: 
 1 Tis thine, dear heart, to have and hold alway. 
 ' Tis all the world' s, likewise, as mine and thine; 
 For whoso passes through its gates shall say, 
 "I dwelt within this castle: it is mine!" 
 
 THE END
 
 List of Miscellaneous Publications 
 
 ...OF... 
 
 THE WHITAKER & RAY COMPANY 
 
 San Francisco 
 Complete Descriptive Circular sent on application 
 
 Postpaid Prices 
 
 Adventures of a Tenderfoot H. H. Sauber $1 00 
 
 About Dante Mrs. Frances Sanboni ....... 100 
 
 Among the Redwoods Poems Lillian H. Shuey 25 
 
 Beyond the Gates of Care Herbert Bashford 1 00 
 
 Backsheesh Book of Travels Mrs. William Beckman - - - 1 50 
 
 California and the Californians David Starr Jordan - 25 
 Care and Culture of Men David Starr Jordan - - - - -150 
 
 Chants for the Boer Joaquin Miller ------- 25 
 
 Complete Poetical Works of Joaquin Miller 2 50 
 
 Crumbs of Comfort AllieM. Felker 100 
 
 California's Transition Period S.H.Willey - - - -100 
 
 Doctor Jones' Picnic S. E. Chapman - 75 
 
 Delphine and Other Poems L. Adda Nichols - - - - 1 00 
 
 Educational Questions W. C. Doub 100 
 
 Forty-Nine Song Lelia France -------- 10 
 
 Forget-Me-Nots Lillian L. Page 50 
 
 Guide to Mexico Christobal Hidalgo 50 
 
 Hail California Song Josephine Gro ------ 10 
 
 History of Howard Presbyterian Church S. H. Willey - - 1 00 
 
 Life Book of Essays John R. Rogers 100 
 
 Love and Law Thos. P. Bailey 25 
 
 Lyrics of the Golden West W. D. Crabb - 1 00 
 Main Points Rev. Chas- R. Brown ----- --125 
 
 Man Who Might Have Been Rev. Robt. Whitaker 25 
 
 Matka and Kotik David Starr Jordan - ... - - 1 50 
 
 Modern Argonaut L. B. Davis -------- 100 
 
 Missions of Neuva California Chas. F. Carter 1 50 
 
 Pandora Mrs. Salzscheider 100 
 
 Percy, or the Four Inseparables M. Lee - - - - - -100 
 
 Personal Impressions of Colorado Grand Canyon - 1 00 
 
 Rudyard Reviewed W.J. Peddicord 100 
 
 Seven Ages of Creation 2 50 
 
 Some Homely Little Songs A. J. Waterhouse 125 
 
 Songs of the Soul Joaquin Miller ------- 100 
 
 Story of the Innumerable Company David Starr Jordan - - 1 25 
 
 Sugar Pine Murmurings Eliz. S. Wilson 100 
 
 Training School for Nurses A. Mabie - 50 
 
 Without a Name Poems Edward Blackman ----- l 00 
 
 Wolves of the Sea Poems Herbert Bashford 1 00 
 
 LATEST ISSUES 
 
 Interviews with a Monocle Leopold Jordan 50 
 
 My Trip to the Orient Rev. J. C. Simmons .... 150 
 
 Rearing Silkworms Mrs. Carrie Williams 1 25 
 
 Western View Series, No. i San Francisco Views - - 15 
 
 Western View Series, No. a Alaska Views .... 15
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES 
 
 COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below. 
 
 APR 3 
 
 e.o.i 
 
 Book Slip-25m-9,'60(.B236s4)4280
 
 College 
 Library 
 
 LB 
 
 2319 
 J76 
 
 L 005 710 953