President Hadley of Yale had this to say: "We never have been able, and I suppose we never shall be able, wholly to realize our ideals. There will always be some who think play more important than study; and there will always be some who value study in proportion to the profit in money or fame which its pursuit is likely to bring. But we always have had, and we shall, I think, continue to have in increasing numbers, a nucleus of true scholars of students who value science and letters for their own sake and are preparing to help the community to value them higher with each successive generation."

Address of

In

"The college is essential to civilization. Every people that has made a luminous spot in history has The Inaugural generated its light in President Shanklin the halls of colleges and universities." With these words President Shanklin of Wesleyan University, in Connecticut, opened his inaugural address. And then he continued: "To destroy the college would be to turn back the hands upon the dial of history for centuries; to support it is to set free a vitalizing energy in every field of human endeavor. deed, the very existence of the free institutions of which we boast may depend at last upon the work of the college. The problems of constitutional liberty must be solved in our colleges and universities. They must instill a deeper discipline, a higher manhood, and a more intelligent patriotism than we have at present. The college is the fountain of intelligence. Without the college we cannot long maintain common schools. Without common schools we cannot long maintain general intelligence. Without general intelligence we cannot maintain our liberties. Our republic will not survive our intelligence.

"The unconscious aim and spirit of the American college may best be defined by the word service. The moral obligations of college men to make their learning efficient in the stream of life cannot compel too sternly. Service is the business Service is the business of the college man. Capacity to serve,

diligence to serve, is the only earldom in this land. One maximizes service by minimizing self, finds life by losing it, the paradox of all loftiest manhood. I am not partcularly insistent that the college be small or large. It should be the qualitative and not the quantitative that should distinguish her. There must, however, be the personal touch and impact. The value of any teacher diminishes as the square of his distance increases.

"Amidst the epidemic, now happily lyterian, toward the free and easy options of the extreme elective system, some of us have persistently denied that 'all subjects are equally valuable,' and have held fast to certain disciplines as not exclusive, but as indispensable to the wellformed mind. We have refused to fall in line with that mischievous 'scrapheap' educational fad, which is now coming to be recognized as such even by many who until recently accepted it. Nor does this mean that I am not a believer in the fundamental idea of an elective system—namely, that of individuality and the cultivation of aptitudes; but that idea has found poor expression through the unscientific system, or rather lack of system, now so largely in use. Happily we are in the midst of a salutary reaction against the excesses of the elective system. The pendulum is swinging back.

"The college exists for the undergraduate, and has in mind both the individual welfare of the student and the society which he would serve. In the general atmosphere of freedom, which is now recognized in college life, it is natural that in increasing measure the responsibility of the good conduct and the good name of the college body should be thrown upon the students themselves. A large share of the friction in college government has come from the fact that the faculty and students have failed to understand each other.

"Misleading as the predominance of athletics in a college may be, bad as the management of college athletics has often been, the fact remains that in athletics lies a saving power. Athletics supply what Dr. Eliot calls 'a new and effective motive for resisting all sins which

weaken or cripple the body.' We cannot afford to lose either this high motive or the lessons of self-control, concentrated attention, prompt and vigorous action, and instant and implicit obedience. Steadily the standard of honor in all intercollegiate contests is rising. On the whole, undergraduates exhibit and demand today a higher degree of true sportsmanship than ever before. The contests create and foster a healthful college spirit, a needed esprit de corps. The problem is to secure intercollegiate rivalry enough to foster the right college spirit, while at the same time exalting and holding fast the main objects of college life scholarship and service.

"Historically there is a profound interdependence between the American college and the American church.

The historical scope of the college recognizes that this is God's earth, and that man is God's to guide and complete. Character makes men, and its salvations are more than knowledge. Christ must be placed in the very centre of the intellectual life if its highest possibilities are to be realized. When He is so enthroned truths will adjust themselves to one another in their proper relations. To the colege which maintains that "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,' the people must look for the cadets of truth and reality."

There was one of those frank and honest meetings of frank and honest educators at Philadelphia Adverse Tendencies last month. The conIn American University Life spicuous member was President Emeritus Eliot, but others frank and honest who entered into the discussions frankly and honestly were Professor Arthur Hobson Quinn of the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Edward A. Pace of the Catholic University of America, Miss Mary Winsor of Haverford College, and President M. Carey Thomas of Bryn Mawr.

Doctor Eliot was down for a paper on "Adverse Tendencies in American University Life," but discussions of his subject and his answers thereto, all of them

frankly and honestly put, lengthened the evening and made it one of superior in

terest.

During Doctor Eliot's address he said: "University life for young men is by far the most favorable condition of life between the ages of eighteen and twentyfive-the most favorable that has ever been invented or discovered in this world. Such diverse tendencies as there are are the consequences of the great liberty or freedom which young men going to any American college or university suddenly enjoy.

"At the age of eighteen a young man needs the restraints of his home. He is used to guidance in his eating, drinking, sleeping, working, playing and exercising. He is suddenly given the utmost liberty in all these things. But the average human character can develop only in a state of freedom. That is the way God brings out character, not only in individuals but also in the human race. Selfreliance, self-control-character-can be produced in no other way.

"The first class of adverse tendencies results from this freedom. A small proportion of the students coming to college have no real will power and these are the young men in greatest danger in university life.

"There has been an enormous improvement in university life during the last thirty years. Now the student is expected to learn a good deal of something, while he also obtains an elementary knowledge of a good many things. No student under the elective system ever attains to such a scattering as was prescribed fifteen or twenty years ago.

"There is great foolishness not only in the individual, but in the country which depends on the exclusion of competition. That policy is very weakening for our nation as for any other. Shutting out competition is a very adverse tendency, whether in a university or outside."

Professor Quinn stated that the American people judge a man by the amount of salary he receives, and that for this reason they have a tendency to despise the college professor.

Doctor Eliot took exception to this, saying, "That would be a very sad thing if it were true. The American people value a man for his serviceableness, for what he contributes to the energy of the country and to our serviceableness as a nation among nations. Have we not had illustrations in America of men who were very rich and were yet despised? And have we not had illustrations of men who were poor and were yet held in the highest esteem, not to speak of love?"

Dr. Pace demanded a statement of what was the criterion of adverse tendencies. Doctor Eliot replied that this is a question that concerns the progress of the whole human race. "Ideals can only be entertained by a person who has in mind that progress which has been made toward those ideals. The ideals of the human race have been fluent, changing from generation to generation, becoming always more insufficient, but always more beautiful and contributing more and more to enjoyment and happiness and achievement of the good. It is through an intelligent companionship with books and men and women that ideals are developed. And the women have more to do with it than any man. When men want to represent wisdom, literature and liberty, they always give their representatives the form of woman."

These last words brought Miss Winsor to her feet: "Every adverse tendency has been touched upon here tonight," exclaimed the well-known advocate of woman's suffrage, "except the inhospitality of American universities to women. That is the greatest manifestation of materialism. . . A woman was shut out of the Harvard law school merely because she was a woman. It is therefore better to be a man, even if you misbehave yourself, than to be a woman if you want to study law. The doors of the school of architecture of the University of Pennsylvania are closed to women. It is therefore better to be a bird than a woman if you want to study architecture. The women of Pennsylvania are taxed to

support the university, and they are given an inadequate return in education."

President Thomas compared the opportunities given to men and to women for post-graduate work. This, she said, would disappear because the people of the country are finding out what the colleges are doing. She declared that there were no adverse tendencies in graduate work, and that doctors of philosophy, despite the fun that is made of them, are coming to the front as the educators of American children.

Miss Thomas said that the Western universities were forging ahead of the Eastern because of the appropriations made to them by their graduates in state legislatures.

Doctor Eliot replied that he thought this would benefit the Eastern universities by forcing them to greater efforts. Then he touched on the discussion as to the value of the classics in education.

"Formerly," he said, "cultural education consisted of Latin, Greek, a bit of mathematics, a bit of history and a bit of philosophy. But in its origin the classical course of study was the most intensely vocational course that could have been devised at that time. Latin was the only means of universal communication. Greek was the only means of access to acquire scholarship. Today the means of access to knowledge is not Latin, but English, French, German and Italian. The great treasures of the world in scholarship, philosophy and history are now in those languages. Only a small element is in Greek, and that element can be gotten through translations. The most of us need only the barest elements of arithmetic, algebra and geometry. We have a great deal too much of them in our schools.

"What we need is real knowledge of the scientific method, because that is the only method of scholars and investigators today. The study of modern languages, modern literature and the modern scientific method is the equivalent of the classical curriculum. And professional courses of study are just as truly cultural as any professed cultural course."

The Scholar

In
America

You may remember that in the Atlantic for October Professor Hugo Munsterberg deplored the lack of public interest in scholarship in America, setting forth the fact that scholarship, for itself, is treated with scanty consideration here. Andrew Lang, in the London Post, replies to Professor Munsterberg, and claims that in no country and in no time has the scholar had his due. Reading between the lines this question is found: How can the millions honor a man whom the millions know nothing of? And again: The scholar may be well known in scholarly circles, but to be known to the public at large he must do something which will attract the attention of that public. The many educators who constantly are being quoted and misquoted in the newspapers are frequently accused of trying to attract the attention of the public, and are criticised for it. There should be no criticism, for the more the public reads of education and educators the more interest is aroused, and there cannot be popularity without first there is interest. And further, to interest a people in education is to make them desire education.

Throughout his reply Mr. Lang quotes from the article by Mr. Munsterberg, thus making both sides of the controversy very intelligible:

"Scholarship has no real standing in the American community," writes Professor Munsterberg, "and the foreigner feels at once that great difference between the Americans and the Europeans." The British foreigner, if it is any consolation to Professor Munsterberg, would feel no difference. This scholar is, if I do not err, an experimental psychologist, a scholar in that branch of learning. Now, do many of us know even by name the experimental psychologists of Britain? Professor Munsterberg remarks that the death of Mr. Simon Newcomb "did not bring the slightest ripple of excitement," more interest was taken in the decease of a professional manager of a baseball team.

Mr.

Newcomb was "the greatest American astronomer." I never heard of him before, and who is our greatest living astronomer? The Germans are different; they "grieved the loss of men like Helmholtz and Mommsen and Virchow." To be just, the deaths of Darwin, of Macaulay, of Froude, with others, were not ignored. But they, with the great Germans named, were scholars in fields of human interest. The Roman History of Mommsen was "as interesting as a novel," whereas astronomy, except in the hands of the Martian Mr. Lowell, is a rather cold and remote affair. So is experimental psychology, except when it comes to crystal-gazing, and, with Mr. William James, to mediums and Mrs. Piper. At least, that is the general opinion. I myself, like Malvolio, "think highly of the soul," and of experiments in the science of souls. America does not. When Mr. James left Harvard there were festivities, which seems odd; fasting was more to the purpose. But the speakers at the festivities celebrated "the departing administrative officer" and "no one thought of the departing scholar." That was very British. The public is very human, "it has no use for dead persons," and revealers of buried civilizations. "The public," says our psychologist, "does not consider the university professor primarily as a productive scholar, but essentially as an officer of the institution." It is very nice of the public to consider a professor at all! But the public knows something about administration; about matters of disinterested intellectual activity it knows no more than classical scholars know about science men and science men about classical scholars. Men of "world-wide reputation" in their own fields are generally unheard of at home.

"In the United States and Germany the scholars are almost exclusively university professors, in striking contrast to France and England, where many of the greatest scholars have always been outside of the universities." Professor Munsterberg may not be aware that at our universities there are very few pro

can

fessors, and that they are rather decorative than utilitarian. Again, one think of but few English scholars outside of the universities: Grote is the most prominent exception, unless we call Darwin a "scholar;" the term is not commonly applied to him. But it is true that the scholar and the man of science are, except historians, best known "by their by-products," lectures (with magic lanterns), magazine articles, and so on. How can you expect the public to pore over mathematics, and the obscure metaphysics of Homeric grammar, and the Cypro-Arcadian dialect? The Greeks were an intellectual people, but they did not ripple with excitement at the names of Zenodotus and Aristarchus, they put an end to Socrates, and Theocritus himself tells us that his own poetry was a drug on the market.

The Americans cannot give "baronetcies for the leading scholars," as we do, according to Professor Munsterberg. I am not able to remember any scholar who was given a baronetcy for his learning. Scholars, like the little modest girl at the school feast, may cry, "I asked for nothing and I got nothing." Baronetcies come by asking, not by scholarship.

"The most direct reflection of this public situation in the college life is not the disrespect for high-grade class work, but still more, the unwillingness of the best men to turn toward a scholarly career." This is so far true that in reading the works of scholars with whom I do not agree I often feel that les esprits puissants are not busying themselves with anthropology, Homeric criticisms and these kinds of things. Such things are treated with so much prejudice, indolence and haughty contempt of logic that Lord Chesterfield might have thought of his remark about "the silly old man who does not know his own silly old business." But it is not absence of worldly honor and reward that keeps the best minds apart from scholarship. It is their much greater natural interest in practical affairs. The scholar, like the poet, "is born to be so;" he is naturally interested in the disinterested exercises

of the mind. It was so in Greece. Nobody in Ionia thought much of Professor Thales, he was only a "crank," with peculiar opinions about water; was a scholar in the sense of Professor Munsterberg. But when he made a corner in oil mills, when he struck ile, and prevented other people from striking it, Ionia knew no bounds to her admiration. Let Professor Munsterberg make a corner in something, say in radium, and America will ripple with excitement, while he will be mobbed by interviewers and photographers. Laputa was the right country for the professor; there only were scholars objects of popular enthusiasm. Meanwhile the scholar is not complaining; he is sincerely indifferent to baronetcies; he does not want paragraphs in the press; he is not anxious to see blotched and black photographs of himself in the newspapers. Ambition, love of money, love of "one crowded hour of glorious life," take puissant men into the law, Wall street, dentistry, the cult of Plato's "great beast," the political public and take them away from scholarship.

It takes all sorts to make a world, but the scholar (if he does not invent gramophones and that kind of thing) represents the sort which the world would most readily see die. Professor Munsterberg speaks highly of Hegel as a force in the creation of Germany. But if Hegel had never been born he would never have been missed. Germany would stand where she does without Hegel, who is not quite so much read as he should be. The world has never yet been interested in the scholar, as such. To interest the world he must get into the divorce court, or make a corner in radium, or spout on platforms, or be amateur champion at golf. Now the golf of professors is the worst in the world.