EDUCATION 171

ments in writing this chapter, but on reading
what I have written a doubt crosses my mind
as to whether I have been guarded enough.
In the matter of " standards/' especially, I fear
I may have given too complete an endorsement
to the common verdict which places the American
standard lower than the British, at least as regards
the universities. Qualifications are certainly
needed; so many indeed that a full rehearsal of
them would fill a chapter longer than this, I will
mention only one which may serve as a sample
of all.

While some of the great universities have
committed the fatal error of including in their
curricula " everything that anybody wants to
know," thereby losing the character proper to
a university and becoming a crowd or collection
of unrelated " schools," each having a standard
of its own, perhaps, but the totality having none
—while some of the larger ones have thus sur-
rendered the unitary aim which should characterize
a university, there are others, mostly smaller,
where the traditions of sound learning are faith-
fully upheld and the elements of a universal
culture firmly held together. Such universities I
have found in places as far apart as Pennsylvania
and Oregon. In the multitude of American
"colleges both extremes are to be met with: super-
ficiality at one end, thoroughness at the other.
It may be that America has need of both types of
university in her present stage of social evolution,