Acting President Harry Pratt Judson followed Dean Vincent with an address setting forth the opportunities that lie in a college course. Other speakers emphasized the necessity for not letting the university life take precedence over home ties.

letics.

An additional step toward the reformation of college sports has been taken by the Council of New True College Ath York University, following the example of Harvard and some other institutions, in its resolution restricting participation in intercollegiate athletic games and contests to bona fide undergraduate students in the University College and in the School of Applied Science, and barring out from such participation all special students and members of the various professional and graduate schools.

Commenting upon this act, the New York Tribune says: We believe we do no injustice in saying that a considerable part of the brutality which has disfigured football, and of the "professionalism" and other improper practices which have brought reproach upon college sports, is due to the playing of students from professional or graduate schools in intercollegiate games. It is credibly reported that some institutions have taken into some of their departments-for which college entrance examinations are not required-brawny young men who were in no true sense "college men," and who had no thought of completing the courses of study, for the sole purpose of putting them into teams for intercollegiate sports. That was the grossest form of abuse, but it is not the right thing to put into such teams bona fide students in noncollegiate departments, and it would be a good thing to rule out law, medical, dental, veterinary and other professional students from all intercollegiate competi

tions.

This is not, of course, to deny such students the privileges and advantages of physical culture. They may still make full use of the gymnasium and athletic field, and they may compete in all the contests within their own institution. The

effect of the rule will simply be to insure that intercollegiate contests shall be participated in by none save true college students, to wit, undergraduates who are pursuing regular courses for baccalaureate degrees. With that rule firmly and faithfully enforced, college sports should be largely freed from the worst reproach which has fallen upon them in recent

years.

For the first time in its history the University of Pennsylvania will give an Degrees for Women Opportunity to women to obtain its at University of much coveted bacPennsylvania. calaureate degrees in the sciences and arts. By the inauguration of a series of special courses which the trustees of the University will put into effect at the beginning of the second term, next January, professional men and women who cannot spare time from their business to take up the regular college courses will have a chance to win diplomas and be graduated with the regular classes by taking special courses after working hours and on Saturdays.

The decision of the trustees to adopt such a course was reached after many months' discussion. It was pointed out that many school teachers have been hampered in their advancement because they were not graduates of a college of standing. Such a course has been working at the Chicago University for two years, and it is estimated that at least 75 per cent of that city's school teachers have taken advantage of it. An equal number are expected to attend the courses at Pennsylvania.

The courses will be entirely separate from the regular studies at the college, although they will be much the same. Sixteen different subjects will be taught in thirty-eight courses and the graduates will receive the regular college diploma. They will cover every branch of the arts and sciences taken up now in the regular curriculum and will extend the same number of years. The requirements for admission will be identical with those of the regular courses.

To obtain the diplomas students will be

required to take a certain number of units in the following branches of study: Chemistry, English, foreign languages (two at least), history, logic and ethics, mathematics and physics. Elective subjects open to students in the course include anthropology, astronomy, botany, chemistry, economics, English, fine arts, French, geology, German, Hebrew, history, Italian, Latin, linguistics, metallurgy, mineralogy, pedagogy, philosophy, physics, political science, psychology, Sanskrit, sociology, Spanish and zoology.

The Harvard Ethical Society opened its work for the year with an address by Professor George

The Basis of Obliga- Santayana. Profestion. sor Santayana has just returned after a two years' absence to take up his work in the department of philosophy; during the past year he served as Hyde lecturer, in succession to Professor Wendell, in the Universities of France. His topic was, "The Basis of Obligation"— an attempt to formulate a standard of right.

Professor Santayana took up in turn the various bases which have been suggested as criteria of the moral "ought,' and pointed out their inadequacy, finally presenting a solution of his own. The mere conscience would not do, as it is too variable and is apt to be irrational and not truly representative of our moral demands. Neither would physical necessity serve as an explanation of why a certain act is right. The force of nature is no doubt a moral suasion; egotism, for instance, is corrected by the contemplation of nature. But, however great the moral force of environment, progress is often the result of rebellion against en vironment, against nature and dominant opinion. The will of God, considered externally as a basis of duty, is not even as potent as the suasion of nature; nothing external can really make our action right. With many, however, the will of God is not an external conception; if it represents an ideal with respect to yourself, embodied in nature or some divine form, it approaches much nearer to an adequate criterion. Finally, the further

ance of the interests of other men is a moral doctrine rather persuasive to men interested in practical ethics, but still to be considered unsatisfactory if regarded as an external force. Our relations to other men, however, are not only external, but sympathetic. Other people are to a certain extent embodiments of ourselves in other relations, and an action is right because others, who are a part of ourselves, demand it. Selfishness is thus a folly.

This approaches close to the view finally offered by the lecturer himself, that the basis of obligation is one's own nature. What our own ideal nature demands is right. This standard would be identical with the first standard of conscience, provided the conscience truly represented one's own nature. Conscience must be rational-rational on the basis of a particular animal constitution, for reason is a method in man of making an animal nature harmonious and intellectual. Conscience ought to be the expression of one's own nature, and is aided as a criterion by the more we know of ourselves. Experience and reason help us to act in accordance with our own nature as a basis of what is right.

Course.

Professor Eugen Kunnemann of the University of Breslau, visiting professor Harvard Visiting from Germany in German Profes- the annual exsor Begins change between Harvard and the German universities, has begun his course of lectures. They will be delivered in German throughout. In his inaugural remarks, he expressed his appreciation of the great privilege granted to him as successor to Professor Ostwald at Harvard University. He recalled his visit to America last fall, in which he became acquainted with our glorious Indian summer. "I come again under the most auspicious circumstances to a place. where not only American life has its most spiritualized and cultured expression, but where also the future of America is being shaped. Among my hearers, I am sure, are some of the intellectual leaders of coming America, and it is a

keen pleasure to me to come into contact with the soul of Young America." Referring to the question of the choice of language in his lecture, he was pleased at the request made to him to deliver his course in German, so that they might hear a German give in the German language the great history of the German intellect and spirit. He believed this request revealed some of the aspirations of American life of today, for America, which is now creating its own national expression in literature, philosophy and art, must needs be acquainted with the youngest spiritual expression of Germany and of Europe.

Dr. Charles A. Eastman, of Amherst, Mass., a full-blooded Sioux Indian, is the only North AmeriA Sioux Indian Leccan Indian now lectures on "The turing on his peoReal Indian." ple. He was born among his tribe in Minnesota in 1858, and spent the first 15 years of his life with his people, never hearing a word of any foreign tongue, and all the while was taught distrust of the white man. Later he went to school and attended Beloit and Knox colleges, and after that was graduated from Dartmouth. For the last 15 years he has been a physician, a missionary and a writer.

He delivered a lecture recently before the Harvard Union, in which he said: "The Indian is a true philosopher, and as such he has never been surpassed by any representative from civilization. He has his high ideals and he lives up to them. He credits everything that is beautiful to the Great Mystery. He worships a perfect physique.

"The paleface turns out good-shaped fellows, but they are perfect mushrooms. They are incubator-hatched. The soil in which they are brought up is too artificially fertilized with tenderloin and baked potato. The Indian developes a stomach and a heart, a stomach to digest rawhide if necessary. He will run all day without his breakfast, for he is taught by experience that he can do it casier with an empty stomach.

"He can run every other day like this

for a month and sleep in the snow, and there is no rubbing down, either. I believe it is a good thing for a man to rest his stomach, better than to fill it full of a variety of civilized victuals.

"The trouble with the paleface is that he is a boaster. We could pile up buildings, but we do not want to deface mother earth. Civilization has ruined the virgin forests. Some of the laughing waters which have been big streams are now but a few sad trickling tears because the white man uses up the stream."

German

Restriction.

The decision taken by the Prussian Government to protect its university degrees at the outset, University by requiring certificates of a proficiency from foreigners who wish to matriculate that is roughly equivalent to that demanded from Germans, is in line with the attitude of the more advanced American universities toward their higher instruction. Harvard's refusal to admit students to the study of theology, law, medicine or the many branches of graduate research, unless they can show the earlier academic degree of bachelor, has been followed by other universities, especially in the East, and still others are preparing to join in the movement.

So long as the number of Americans frequenting German universities was small, these institutions could afford to be very liberal as to terms of admission. The foreigner was something of a curiosity, and the mere fact that he had traveled a long distance attracted by the fame. of Jena or Griefswald or Giessen, was flattering and counted for much in his favor. In time the Germans have found out at examination time that, in many cases, unfamiliarity with their language and methods covered gaps in the foreigner's home education, and they have learned to distinguish. The numbers, too, have increased greatly, so that at the most frequented universities, especially Berlin, German students complain of being crowded and hampered in their work by foreigners.

Prussia, of all German States, has always been least willing to make concessions in educational as in other matters. Even in the older days she held more stiffly to the letter of her university requirements than the other States, insisting, for instance, long after the others, that the doctor dissertation must be written in Latin. The admirable equipment of her chief university, Berlin, in professors, in laboratories, in other appliances for research, has attracted more than a due proportion of foreign students. So she takes the lead in applying restrictions.

If, as is reported, the catalogue of Berlin University specifically requires degrees of English and American students only, there is, undoubtedly, no intention of discriminating against either nationality or of reflecting on their educational standing. It is, probably, merely a matter of administration. In neither the United States nor Great Britain does the national Government take school examinations in hand or provide the official certificates dear to the German heart. Every Government on the continent of Europe does hold State examinations similar enough to those of Prussia to be accepted as an equivalent at its face. value. The nearest approach to these certificates that the Berlin authorities have found in the two countries that do without them are the college degrees of bachelor, and for this reason England and the United States are put in a class by themselves.

The concession obtained as to general attendance is probably merely a safeguard against officious interference. All kinds of persons are admitted to university lectures in Germany, who may be supposed to profit by them, without rigorous investigation of previous training. These are "hearers," and in no academic sense students or candidates for a degree. As Berlin is a big city, and is subject to literary and scientific whims like others, the numbers often prove embarrassing for the university and interfere with the regular students. The restrictions put on this class of "hearers" in order to exclude the merely curious may have been so worded as to enable zealous officials to keep out all degreeless Americans, an

unfairness the possibility of which seems to be now obviated.

The relations between Germany and America in matters of the higher education have been too long and too cordial to admit the suspicion of any intentional slight in the action of Berlin University. Germany has no more loyal friends than the Americans who spent their years of wandering at her universities. Of that fact no man has a better comprehension than Kaiser Wilhelm II., as has been shown repeatedly, and his university authorities are the last people in the world to run counter to his wishes.

Hermann Schumacher, professor of political science in the University of Berlin and Kaiser

Columbia 153d Year.

Begins Wilhelm, professor of German history and institutions at Columbia, and Prof. William Hubert Burr were the principal speakers at the opening exercises of Columbia University. Professor Schumacher came to this country under an arrangement made between the trustees of Columbia and the Prussian Ministry of Education for an exchange of professors.:

Columbia has sent to Germany, on the nomination of the German Emperor, John W. Burgess, dean of the School of Political Science. The post that he occupies is known as the Theodore Roosevelt professorship of American history and institutions. institutions. President Hadley of Yale University has been nominated as the next occupant of the position.

Professor Schumacher in his inaugural address compared Germany and America along traditional, economic, industrial and educational lines. Germany, he declared, was a country built on tradition, in which the natural conditions had demanded the development of her inner wealth and made them "a nation of thinkers and poets." In America immense territory and resources had made the economic tasks stand to the front since the beginning fostered the acquisition of wealth to the exclusion of culture. He urged a greater attention to science and art in America.

"Thus it seems to me the development of your nation carries with it a further inevitable consequence. The first period, in which each man, looking with joy to the future, full of strength and courage, approaches in his own way to the solutions of the great problems presented by colonization-this first period, I add, must be linked unto a second, and this second has already set in, strong and fuli of promise. In this period it is-at least in my judgment-imperative to develop traditions in the most varied departments of modern life in order to lead onward safely and to achieve more completely that which individual energy has created.

"Most especially is that necessary in political life. President Roosevelt expressed it: "The more a nation develops the more it must make use of the power of the State.' And so once more we arrive at the conclusion that both peoples supplement each other in regard to the most important tasks of national life. It is true, what has already been said so often, that in the whole world there are no two nations which can learn so much from each other as the German and American peoples."

Prof. Burr, professor of civil engineering at Columbia, had for his subject "The Technical School and the University." He emphasized the need of practical education in colleges and universities. After speaking on the advantages gained by a technical school in the university and the demands of the technical professions, he said:

"The university has long since lost the character, if it ever properly had it, of a place where abstractions of learning separated from the things which only give them life are to be dispensed after the manner of instruction to men who are never to deal with the affairs of life.

"The creative or evolutionary influence of the university upon the community is exercised chiefly, and it will ultimately be exercised entirely, through its professional faculties, its faculty of philosophy already having become essentially a professional faculty of teaching, a character which it is bound fully to assume hereafter. This means with absolute certainty that professional instruction shall be given not by closet professors, but by men who are students in the highest and best sense of the word. This knowledge must be gained by taking their full part in human experience, and not by withdrawing from it."

propriate exercises on October 11th. Dr.

John A. Brashear, of Pittsburg, the for

mer acting chancellor of the Western University of Pennsylvania, was the orator of the occasion. He spoke on the theme, "The University and the World's Great Workshop." "I do not argue here," said Doctor Brashear, "nor do I wish it to be understood that as soon as a graduate has secured his diploma he is ready to take a position as a full-fledged astronomer, electrician, engineer, chemist or other position the university has prepared him for, but I do say and believe that the earnest student will in his three or four years become so well grounded in the fundamental principles taught him that a very few years of practical work will place him as far along as the self-made man after half a lifetime of hard, hard struggle to gain such knowledge. There are exceptions to this statement, but they are all too rare."