AT
LOS ANGELES
LIBRARY
THE TEACHER
ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES
ON EDUCATION
BY
GEORGE HERBERT PALMER
AND
ALICE FREEMAN PALMER
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
CambriD0e
COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY GEORGE HERBERT PALMER
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published November iqo8
THIRD IMPRESSION
I9O3
Library
LB
PREFACE
THE papers of this volume fall into three groups,
two of the three being written by myself. From my
writings on education I have selected only those
which may have some claim to permanent interest,
and all but two have been tested by previous pub-
lication. Those of the first group deal with ques-
tions about which we teachers, eager about our im-
measurable art beyond most professional persons,
never cease to wonder and debate : What is teaching ?
How far may it influence character ? Can it be prac-
ticed on persons too busy or too poor to come to our
class-rooms ? To subjects of what scope should it be
applied ? And how shall we content ourselves with
its necessary limitations ? Under these diverse head-
ings a kind of philosophy of education is outlined.
The last two papers, having been given as lectures
and stenographically reported, I have left in their
original colloquial form. A group of papers on Har-
vard follows, preceded by an explanatory note, and
the volume closes with a few papers by Mrs. Palmer.
She and I often talked of preparing together a book
on education. Now, alone, I gather up these frag-
ments. >
CONTENTS
i
PROBLEMS OF SCHOOL AND COLLEGE
I. THE IDEAL TEACHER, . 3
II. ETHICAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS .... 31
III. MORAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS .... 49
IV. SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 72
V. DOUBTS ABOUT UNIVERSITY EXTENSION . . 105
VI. SPECIALIZATION 123
VII. THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT .... 143
II
HARVARD PAPERS
VIII. THE NEW EDUCATION 173
IX. ERRONEOUS LIMITATIONS OF THE ELECTIVE
SYSTEM 200
X. NECESSARY LIMITATIONS OF THE ELECTIVE
SYSTEM 239
XI. COLLEGE EXPENSES 272
XII. A TEACHER OF THE OLDEN TIME . 283
viii CONTENTS
III
PAPERS BY ALICE FREEMAN PALMER
XIII. THREE TYPES OF WOMEN'S COLLEGES . .313
XIV. WOMEN'S EDUCATION IN THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY 337
XV. WOMEN'S EDUCATION AT THE WORLD'S FAIR 351
XVI. WHY GO TO COLLEGE . . 364
PROBLEMS OF SCHOOL AND COLLEGE
-a
K
THE IDEAL TEACHER
2.0 32.5
IN America, a land of idealism, the profession of
teaching has become one of the greatest of human
employments. In 1903-04 half a million teachers
were in charge of sixteen million pupils. Stating the
same facts differently, we may say that a fifth of our
entire population is constantly at school; and that
wherever one hundred and sixty men, women, and
children are gathered, a teacher is sure to be among
them.
But figures fail to express the importance of the
work. If each year an equal number of persons
should come in contact with as many lawyers, no
such social consequences would follow. The touch/
of the tpflfhTi like that of no other person, is forma-
tive. Our young people are for long periods asso-
ciated with those who are expected to fashion them
into men and women of an approved type. A charge
so influential is committed to nobody else in the
community, not even to the ministers; for though
these have a more searching aim, they are directly
occupied with it but one day instead of six, but one
hour instead of five. Accordingly, as the tract of
4 THE IDEAL TEACHER
knowledge has widened, and the creative opportu-
nities involved in conducting a young person over
it have correspondingly become apparent, the pro-
/ fession of teaching has risen to a notable height of
dignity and attractiveness. It has moved from a sub-
ordinate to a .central place in social influence, and
/now undertakes much of the work which formerly
V fell to the church. Each year divinity schools attract
fewer students, graduate and normal schools more.
On school and college instruction the community
now bestows its choicest minds, its highest hopes,
and its largest sums. During the year 1903-04
the United States spent for teaching not less than
$350,000,000.
Such weighty work is ill adapted for amateurs.
Those who take it up for brief times and to make
money usually find it unsatisfactory. Success is
rare, the hours are fixed and long, there is repe-
tition and monotony, and the teacher passes his
days among inferiors. Nor are the pecuniary gains
considerable. There are few prizes, and neither in
school nor in college will a teacher's ordinary in-
come carry him much above want. College teach-
ing is falling more and more into the hands of
men of independent means. The poor can hardly
afford to engage in it. Private schools, it is true,
often show large incomes; but they are earned by
the proprietors, not the teachers. On the whole,
THE IDEAL TEACHER 5
teaching as a trade is poor and disappointing Js,
business.
When, however, it is entered as a profession, as
a serious and difficult fine art, there are few employ-
ments more satisfy ing. "7f 11 over the country thousands
of men and women are following it with a passion-
ate devotion which takes little account of the income
received. A trade aims primarily at personal gain j
a profession at the exercise of powers beneficial t^
mankind. This prime aim of the one, it is true,
often properly becomes a subordinate aim of the
other. Professional men may even be said to offer
wares of their own cures, conversions, court vic-
tories, learning much as traders do, and to receive
in return a kind of reward. But the business of the
lawyer, doctor, preacher, and teacher never squares
itself by equivalent exchange. These men do not give
so much for so much. They give in lump and they
get in lump, without precise balance. The whole
notion of bargain is inapplicable in a sphere where the
gains of him who serves and him who is served coin-
cide ; and that is largely the case with the professions.
Each of them furnishes its special opportunity for
the use of powers which the possessor takes delight
in exercising. Harvard College pays me for doing
what I would gladly pay it for allowing me to do.
No professional man, then, thinks of giving accord-
ing to measure. Once engaged,, he gives his best,
6> THE IDEAL TEACHER
gives his personal interest, himself. His heart is in
his work, and for this no equivalent is possible ; what
is accepted is in the nature of a fee, gratuity, or con-
sideration, which enables him who receives it to
maintain a certain expected mode of life. The real
v/ payment is the work itself, this and the chance to
join with other members of the profession in guid-
ing and enlarging the sphere of its activities.
The idea, sometimes advanced, that the profes-
sions might be ennobled by paying them powerfully,
is fantastic. Their great attraction is their removal
from sordid aims. More money should certainly
be spent on several of them. Their members should
be better protected against want, anxiety, neglect,
and bad conditions of labor. To do his best work one
needs not merely to live, but to live well. Yet in that
increase of salaries which is urgently needed, care
should be used not to allow the attention of the pro-
fessional man to be diverted from what is impor-
tant, the outgo of his work, and become fixed
on what is merely incidental, his income. When
a professor in one of our large universities, angered
by the refusal of the president to raise his salary on
his being called elsewhere, impatiently exclaimed,
" Mr. President, you are banking on the devotion of
us teachers, knowing that we do not willingly leave
this place," the president properly replied, "Cer-
tainly, and no college can be managed on any other
THE IDEAL TEACHER 7
/
principle." Professional men are not so silly as to
despise money; but after all, it is interest in their
work, and not the thought of salary, which predomi-
nantly holds them.
Accordingly in this paper I address those only
who are drawn to teaching by the love of it, who re-
gard it as the most vital of the Fine Arts, who intend
to give their lives to mastering its subtleties, and
who are ready to meet some hardships and to put
up with moderate fare if they may win its rich op-
portunities.
But supposing such a temper, what special quali-
fications will the work require ? The question asked
thus broadly admits no precise answer ; for in reality
there is no human excellence which is not useful for
us teachers. No good quality can be thought of
which we can afford to drop. Some day we shall
discover a disturbing vacuum in the spot which it
left. But I propose a more limited problem: what
are those characteristics of the teacher without which
he must fail, and what those which, once his, will
almost certainly insure him success ? Are there any
such essentials, and^ow many? On this matter I
have pondered long; for, teaching thirty-nine years
in Harvard College, I have each year found out a
little more fully my own incompetence. I have thus
been forced to ask myself the double question,
through what lacks do I fail, and in what direction
8 THE IDEAL TEACHER
lie the roots of my small successes ? Of late years
I think I have hit on these roots of success and
have come to believe that there are four of them,
four characteristics which every teacher must
possess. Of course he may possess as many more
as he likes, indeed, the more the better. But
these four appear fundamental. I will briefly name
them.
First, a teacher must have an aptitude, f or vica-
riousnessj and second, an already accumulated
wealth ; and third, an ability to invigorate life through
knowledge; and fourth, a readiness to be forgotten..
Having these, any teacher is secure. Lacking them,
lacking even one, he is liable to serious failure. But
as here stated they have a curiously cabalistic sound
and show little relation to the needs of any profession.
They have been stated with too much condensation,
and have become unintelligible through being too
exact. Let me repair the error by successively ex-
panding them.
/ The teacher's art takes its rise in what I call an
aptitude for vicariousness. As year by year my col-
lege boys prepare to go forth into life, some laggard
is sure to come to me and say, "I want a little advice.
Most of my classmates have their minds made up
about what they are going to do. I am still uncer-
tain. I rather incline to be a teacher, because I am
fond of books and suspect that in any other profession
THE IDEAL TEACHER 9
I can give them but little time. Business men do not
read. Lawyers only consult books. And I am by
no means sure that ministers have read all the books
they quote. On the whole it seems safest to choose
a profession in which books will be my daily com-
panions. So I turn toward teaching. But before
settling the matter I thought I would ask how you
regard the profession." "A noble profession," I
answer, "but quite unfit for you. I would advise you
to become a lawyer, a car conductor, or something
equally harmless. Do not turn to anything so peril-
ous as teaching. You would ruin both it and your-
self; for you are looking in exactly the wrong
direction."
Such an inquirer is under a common misconcep-
tion. The teacher's task is not primarily the acqui-
sition of knowledge, but the impartation of it, an
entirely different matter. We teachers are forever
taking thoughts out of our minds and putting them
elsewhere. So long as we are content to keep them
in our possession, we are not teachers at all. One
who is interested in laying hold on wisdom is likely
to become a scholar. And while no doubt it is well
for a teacher to be a fair scholar, r I have known
several such, that is not the main thing. What con-
stitutes the teacher is the passion to make scholars ;
and again and again it happens that the great scholar ,
has no such passion whatever.
10 THE IDEAL TEACHER
But even that passion is useless without aid from
imagination. At every instant of the teacher's life
he must be controlled by this mighty power. Most
human beings are contented with living one life
and delighted if they can pass that agreeably. But
this is far from enough for us teachers. We inces-
santly go outside ourselves and enter into the many
lives about us, lives dull, dark, and unintelligible
to any but an eye like ours. And this is imagination,
the sympathetic creation in ourselves of conditions
which belong to others. Our profession is therefore
a double-ended one. We inspect truth as it rises fresh
and interesting before our eager sight. But that is
only the beginning of our task. Swiftly we then
seize the lines of least intellectual resistance in alien
minds and, with perpetual reference to these, fol-
low our truth till it is safely lodged beyond ourselves.
Each mind has its peculiar set of frictions. Those
of our pupils can never be the same as ours. We
have passed far on and know all about our subject.
For us it wears an altogether different look from that
which it has for beginners. It is their perplexities
which we must reproduce and as if a rose should
shut and be a bud again we must reassume in our
developed and accustomed souls something of the
innocence of childhood.^ Such is the exquisite busi-
ness of the teacher, to carry himself back with all his
wealth of knowledge and understand how his sub-
THE IDEAL TEACHER 11
ject should appear to the meagre mind of one glanc-
ing at it for the first time. <
And what absurd blunders we make in the process !
Becoming immersed in our own side of the affair,
we blind ourselves and readily attribute to our pupils
modes of thought which are not in the least theirs.
I remember a lesson I had on this point, I who had
been teaching ethics half a lifetime. My nephew,
five years old, was fond of stories from the Odyssey.
He would creep into bed with me in the morning and
beg for them. One Sunday, after I had given him
a pretty stiff bit of adventure, it occurred to me that
it was an appropriate day for a moral. "Ulysses
was a very brave man," I remarked. " Yes," he said,
"and I am very brave." I saw my opportunity and
seized it. "That is true," said I. "You have been
gaining courage lately. You used to cry easily, but
you don't do that nowadays. When you want to cry
now, you think how like a baby it would be to cry,
or how you would disturb mother and upset the
house; and so you conclude not to cry." The little
fellow seemed hopelessly puzzled. He lay silent a
minute or two and then said, "Well no, Uncle, I
don't do that. I just go sh-sh-sh, and I don't."
There the moral crisis is stated in its simplicity;
and I had been putting off on that holy little nature
sophistications borrowed from my own battered life.
But while I am explaining the blunders caused by
12 THE IDEAL TEACHER
self-engrossment and lack of imagination, let me
show what slight adjustments will sometimes carry
us past depressing difficulties. One year when I was
lecturing on some intricate problems of obligation,
I began to doubt whether my class was following
me, and I determined that I would make them talk.
So the next day I constructed an ingenious ethical
case and, after stating it to the class, I said, "Sup-
posing now the state of affairs were thus and thus,
and the interests of the persons involved were such
and such, how would you decide the question of right,
Mr. Jones." Poor Jones rose in confusion. "You
mean," he said, "if the case were as you have stated
it? Well, hm, hm, hm, yes, I don't think I know,
sir." And he sat down. I called on one and another
with the same result. A panic was upon them, and
all their minds were alike empty. I went home dis-
gusted, wondering whether they had comprehended
anything I had said during the previous fortnight,
and hoping I might never have such a stupid lot of
students again* Suddenly it flashed upon me that it
-was I who was stupid. That is usually the case when
v a class fails ; it is the teacher's fault. The next day
I went back prepared to begin at the right end. I
began, "Oh, Mr. Jones." He rose, and I proceeded
to state the situation as before. By the time I paused
he had collected his wits, had worked off his super-
fluous flurry, and was ready to give me an admirable
THE IDEAL TEACHER 13
answer. Indeed in a few minutes the whole class was
engaged in an eager discussion. My previous error
had been in not remembering that they, I, and every-
body, when suddenly attacked with a big question,
are not in the best condition for answering. Occupied
as I was with my end of the story, the questioning
end, I had not worked in that double-ended fashion
which alone can bring the teacher success ; in short,
I was deficient in vicariousness, -/in swiftly put-
ting myself in the weak one's place and bearing his
burden. /
Now it is in this chief business of the artistic
teacher, to labor imaginatively himself in order to
diminish the labors of his slender pupil, that most
of our failures occur. Instead of lamenting the im-
perviousness of our pupils, we had better ask our-
selves more frequently whether we have neatly ad-
justed our teachings to the conditions of their minds.
We have no right to tumble out in a mass whatever
comes into our heads, leaving to that feeble folk the
work of finding in it what order they may. Ours
it should be to see that every beginning, middle, and
end of what we say is helpfully shaped for readiest
access to those less intelligent and interested than we.
But this is vicariousness. Noblesse oblige. In this
profession any one who will be great must be a
nimble servant, his head full of others' needs.
Some discouraged teacher, glad to discover that
14 THE IDEAL TEACHER
his past failures have been due to the absence of
sympathetic imagination, may resolve that he will
not commit that blunder again. On going to his
class to-morrow he will look out upon his subject
with his pupils' eyes, not with his own. Let him at-
tempt it, and his pupils will surely say to one another,
"What is the matter to-day with teacher?" They
will get nothing from that exercise. No, what is
wanted is not a resolve, but an aptitude. The time
for using vicariousness is not the time for acquiring
it. Rather it is the time for dismissing all thoughts
of it from the mind. On entering the classroom we
should leave every consideration of method outside
the door, and talk simply as interested men and
women in whatever way comes most natural to us.
But into that nature vicariousness should long ago
have been wrought. It should be already on hand.
Fortunate we if our great-grandmother supplied us
with it before we were born. There are persons
who, with all good will, can never be teachers. They
are not made in that way. Their business it is to
pry into knowledge, to engage in action, to make
money, or to pursue whatever other aim their powers
dictate; but they do not readily think in terms of
the other person. They should not, then, be teach-
ers.
The teacher's habit is well summed in the Apos-
tle's rule, " Look not every man on his own things,
THE IDEAL TEACHER 15
but every man also " it is double " on the things
of others." And this habit should become as nearly
as possible an instinct. Until it is rendered in-
stinctive and passes beyond conscious direction, it
will be of little worth. Let us then, as we go into
society, as we walk the streets, as we sit at table,
practice altruistic limberness and learn to escape
from ourselves. A true teacher is always meditating
his work, disciplining himself for his profession,
probing the problems of his glorious art, and seeing
illustration of them everywhere. In only one place
is he freed from such criticism, and that is in his
classroom. Here in the moment of action he lets
himself go, unhampered by theory, using the nature
acquired elsewhere, and uttering as simply as pos-
sible the fulness of his mind and heart. Direct human
intercourse requires instinctive aptitudes. Till al-
truistic vicariousness has become our second nature,
we shall not deeply influence anybody.
But sympathetic imagination is not all a teacher
needs. Exclusive altruism is absurd. On this point
too I once got instruction from the mouths of babes
and sucklings. The children of a friend of mine,
children of six and four, had just gone to bed. Their
mother overheard them talking when they should
have been asleep. Wondering what they might need,
she stepped into the entry and listened. They were
discussing what they were here in the world for.
16 THE IDEAL TEACHER
That is about the size of problems commonly found
in infant minds. The little girl suggested that we are
probably in the world to help others. "Why, no
indeed, Mabel," said her big brother, "for then what
would others be here for?" Precisely! If anything
is only fit to give away, it is not fit for that. We must
know and prize its goodness in ourselves before
generosity is even possible.
Plainly, then, beside his aptitude for vicariousness,
our ideal teacher will need the second qualification
of an already .accumulated wealth. These hungry
pupils are drawing all their nourishment from us,
and have we got it to give ? They will be poor, if we
are poor ; rich if we are wealthy. We are their source
of supply. Every time we cut ourselves off from
nutrition, we enfeeble them. And how frequently
devoted teachers make this mistake! dedicating
themselves so to the immediate needs of those about
them that they themselves grow thinner each year.
We all know the "teacher's face." It is meagre,
worn, sacrificial, anxious, powerless. That is exactly
the opposite of what it should be. The teacher should
be the big bounteous being of the community. Other
people may get along tolerably by holding whatever
small knowledge comes their way. A moderate stock
will pretty well serve their private turn. But that is
not our case. Supplying a multitude, we need wealth
sufficient for a multitude. We should then be clutch-
THE IDEAL TEACHER 17
ing at knowledge on every side. Nothing must es-
cape us. It is a mistake to reject a bit of truth because
it lies outside our province. Some day we shall need'
it. All knowledge is our province.
In preparing a lecture I find I always have to
work hardest on the things I do not say. The things
I am sure to say I can easily get up. They are
obvious and generally accessible. But they, I find,
are not enough. I must have a broad background
of knowledge which does not appear in speech. I
have to go over my entire subject and see how the
things I am to say look in their various relations,
tracing out connections which I shall not present
to my class. One might ask what is the use of this ?
Why prepare more matter than can be used ? Every
successful teacher knows. I cannot teach right up
to the edge of my knowledge without a fear of falling
off. My pupils discover this fear, and my words
are ineffective. They feel the influence of what I
do not say. One cannot precisely explain it; but
when I move freely across my subject as if it mat-
tered little on what part of it I rest, they get a sense
of assured power which- is compulsive and fructify-
ing. The subject acquires consequence, their minds
swell, and they are eager to enter regions of which
they had not previously thought.
Even, then, to teach a small thing well we must
be large. I asked a teacher what her subject was,
18 THE IDEAL TEACHER
and she answered, "Arithmetic in the third grade."
But where is the third grade found ? In knowledge,
or in the schools? Unhappily it is in the schools.
But if one would be a teacher of arithmetic, it must
be arithmetic she teaches and not third grade at all.
We cannot accept these artificial bounds without
damage. Instead of accumulated wealth they will
bring us accumulated poverty, and increase it every
day. Years ago at Harvard we began to discuss the
establishment of a Graduate School ; and I, a young
instructor, steadily voted against it. My thought was
this: Harvard College, in spite of what the pub-
lic imagines, is a place of slender resources. Our
means are inadequate for teaching even under-
graduates? But graduate instruction is vastly more
expensive ; courses composed of half a dozen students
take the time of the ablest professors. I thought
we could not afford this. Why not leave graduate
instruction to a university which gives itself entirely
to that task ? Would it not be wiser to spend ourselves
on the lower ranges of learning, covering these ade-
quately, than to try to spread ourselves over the en-
tire field ?
Doubting so, I for some time opposed the coming
of a Graduate School. But a luminous remark of
our great President showed me the error of my
ways. In the course of debate he said one even-
ing, "It is not primarily for the graduates that
THE IDEAL TEACHER 19
I care for this school ; it is for the undergraduates.
We shall never get good teaching here so long as our
instructors set a limit to their subjects. When they
are called on to follow these throughout, tracing
them far off toward the unknown, they may become
good teachers; but not before."
I went home meditating. I saw that the President
was right, and that I was myself in danger of the
stagnation he deprecated. I changed my vote, as
did others. The Graduate School was established;
and of all the influences which have contributed to
raise the standard of scholarship at Harvard, both
for teachers and taught, that graduate work seems
to me the greatest. Every professor now must be
the master of a field of knowledge, and not of a few
paths running through it.
But the ideal teacher will accumulate wealth,
not merely for his pupils' sake, but for his own.
To be a great teacher one must be a great personality,
and without ardent and individual tastes the roots
of our being are not fed. For developing personal
power it is well, therefore, for each teacher to culti-
vate interests, unconnected with his official work. Let
the mathematician turn to the English poets, the
teacher of classics to the study of birds and flowers,
and each will gain a lightness, a freedom from
exhaustion, a mental hospitality, which can only
be acquired in some disinterested pursuit. Such a
20 THE IDEAL TEACHER
private subject becomes doubly dear because it is
just our own. We pursue it as we will ; we let it call
out our irresponsible thoughts ; and from it we ordi-
narily carry off a note of distinction lacking in those
whose lives are too tightly organized.
To this second qualification of the teacher, how-
ever, I have been obliged to prefix a condition simi-
lar to that which was added to the first. We need not
merely wealth, but an already accumulated wealth.
At the moment when wealth is wanted it cannot be
acquired. It should have been gathered and stored
before the occasion arose. What is more pitiable
than when a person who desires to be a benefactor
looks in his chest and finds it empty ? Special know-
ledge is wanted, or trained insight, or professional
skill, or sound practical judgment; and the teacher
who is called on has gone through no such discipline
as assures these resources. I am inclined to think
that women are more liable to this sort of bankruptcy
than men. Their sex is more sympathetic than ours
and they spend more hastily. They will drop what
they are doing and run if a baby cries. Excellence
requires a certain hardihood of heart, while quick
responsiveness is destructive of the larger giving.
He who would be greatly generous must train him-
self long and tenaciously, without much attention
to momentary calls. The plan of the Great Teacher,
by which he took thirty years for acquisition and
THE IDEAL TEACHER 21
three for bestowal, is not unwise, provided that we
too can say, " For their sakes I sanctify myself."
But the two qualifications of the teacher already
named will not alone suffice. I have known persons
who were sympathetically imaginative, and who
could not be denied to possess large intellectual
wealth, who still failed as teachers. One needs a third
something, the power to invigorate life through learn-
ing. We do not always notice how knowledge nat-
urally buffets. It is offensive stuff, and makes young
and wholesome minds rebel. And well it may; for
when we learn anything, we are obliged to break up
the world, inspect it piecemeal, and let our minds
seize it bit by bit. Now about a fragment there is
always something repulsive. Any one who is nor-
mally constituted must draw back in horror, feeling
that what is brought him has little to do with the
beautiful world he has known. Where was there
ever a healthy child who did not hate the multipli-
cation table? A boy who did not detest such ab-
stractions as seven times eight would hardly be worth
educating. By no ingenuity can We relieve knowledge
of this unfortunate peculiarity. It must be taken in
disjointed portions. That is the way attention is
made. In consequence each of us must be to some
extent a specialist, devoting himself to certain sides
of the world and neglecting others quite as important.
These are the conditions under which we imperfect
22 THE IDEAL TEACHER
creatures work. Our sight is not world-wide. When
we give our attention to one object, by that very
act we withdraw it from others. In this way our
children must learn and have their expansive natures
subdued to pedagogic exigencies.
Because this belittlement through the method of
approach is inevitable, it is all-important that the
teacher should possess a supplemental dignity, re-
placing the oppressive sense of pettiness with stimu-
lating intimations of high things in store. Partly
on this account a book is an imperfect instructor.
Truth there, being impersonal, seems untrue, ab-
stract, and insignificant. It needs to shine through
a human being before it can exert its vital force on a
young student. Quite as much for vital transmission
as for intellectual elucidation, is a teacher employed.
His consolidated character exhibits the gains which
come from study. He need not point them out. If
he is a scholar, there will appear in him an august-
ness, accuracy, fulness of knowledge, a buoyant
enthusiasm even in drudgery, and an unshakable
confidence that others must soon see and enjoy what
has enriched himself; and all this will quickly con-
vey itself to his students and create attention in his
classroom. Such kindling of interest is the great
/ function of the teacher. People sometimes say, "I
should like to teach if only pupils cared to learn."
But then there would be little need of teaching.
THE IDEAL TEACHER 23
Boys who have made up their minds that knowledge
is worth while are pretty sure to get it, without regard
to teachers. Our chief concern is with those who are
unawakened. In the Sistine Chapel Michael Angelo
has depicted the Almighty moving in clouds over
the rugged earth where lies the newly created Adam,
hardly aware of himself. The tips of the fingers
touch, the Lord's and Adam's, and the huge frame
loses its inertness and rears itself into action. Such
may be the electrifying touch of the teacher.
But it must be confessed that not infrequently,
instead of invigorating life through knowledge, we
teachers reduce our classes to complete passivity.
The blunder is not altogether ours, but is suggested
by certain characteristics of knowledge itself: for
how can a learner begin without submitting his
mind, accepting facts, listening to authority, in
short becoming obedient? He is called on to put
aside his own notions and take what truth dictates.
I have said that knowledge buffets, forcing us into
an almost slavish attitude, and that this is resented
by vigorous natures. In almost every school some
of the most original, aggressive, and independent
boys stand low in their classes, while at the top
stand "grinds," objects of horror to all healthy
souls.
Now it is the teacher's business to see that the on-
slaught of knowledge does not enfeeble. Between the
24 THE IDEAL TEACHER
two sides of knowledge, information and intelligence,
he is to keep the balance true. While a boy is taking
in facts, facts not allowed to be twisted by any fancy
or carelessness, he is all the time to be made to
feel that these facts offer him a field for critical
and constructive action. If they leave him inactive,
docile, and plodding, there is something wrong with
the teaching. Facts are pernicious when they subju-
gate and do not quicken the mind that grasps them.
Education should unfold us and truth together ; and
to enable it to do so the learner must never be allowed
to sink into a mere recipient. He should be called
on to think, to observe, to form his own judgments,
even at the risk of error and crudity. Temporary
one-sidedness and extravagance is not too high a
price to pay for originality. And this development
of personal vigor, emphasized in our day by the elec-
tive system and independent research, is the great
aim of education. It should affect the lower ranges
of study as truly as the higher. The mere contempla-
tion of truth is always a deadening affair. Many a
dull class in school and college would come to life
if simply given something .to do. Until the mind
reacts for itself on what it receives, its education is
hardly begun.
The teacher who leads it so to react may be truly
called "productive," productive of human beings.
The noble word has recently become Germanized
THE IDEAL TEACHER 25
and corrupted, and is now hardly more than a piece
of educational slang. According to the judgments
of to-day a teacher may be unimaginative, pedantic,
dull, and may make his students no less so; he will
still deserve a crown of wild olive as a "productive"
man if he neglects his classroom for the printing press.
But this is to put first things second and second
things first. He who is original and fecund, am
knows how to beget a similar spirit in his students,
will naturally wish to express himself beyond his
classroom. By snatching the fragments of time
which his arduous work allows, he may accomplish
much worthy writing and probably increase too his
worth for his college, his students, and himself. But
the business of book-making is, after all, collateral
with us teachers. Not for Jhis are we employed, de-
sirable though it is for showing the kind of mind we
bear. Many of my most productive colleagues have
printed little or nothing, though they have left a deep
mark on the life and science of our time. I would
encourage publication. It keeps the solitary student
healthy, enables him to find his place among his
fellows, and more distinctly to estimate the contri-
butions he is making to his subject. But let him never
neglect his proper work for that which must always */''
have in it an element of advertising.
Too long I have delayed the fourth, the disagree-
able, section of my paper. Briefly it is this : a teacher
26 THE IDEAL TEACHER
must have a readiness to be forgotten. And what is
harder ? We may be excellent persons, may be daily
doing kindnesses, and yet not be quite willing to
have those kindnesses overlooked. Many a man is
ready to be generous, if by it he can win praise. The
love of praise, it is almost our last infirmity ; but
there is no more baffling infirmity for the teacher.
If praise and recognition are dear to him, he may
as well stop work. Dear to him perhaps they must
be, as a human being ; but as a teacher, he is called
on to rise above ordinary human conditions. Who-
ever has followed me thus far will perceive the rea-
son. I have shown that a teacher does not live for
himself, but for his pupil and for the truth which he
imparts. His aim is to be a colorless medium through
which that truth may shine on opening minds. How
can he be this if he is continually interposing him-
self and saying, " Instead of looking at the truth, my
children, look at me and see how skilfully I do my
work. I thought I taught you admirably to-day. I
hope you thought so too." No, the teacher must
keep himself entirely out of the way, fixing young
attention on the proffered knowledge and not on
anything so small as the one who brings it. Only
so can he be vicarious, whole-hearted in invigorating
the lives committed to his charge.
Moreover, any other course is futile. We cannot
tell whether those whom we are teaching have taken
THE IDEAL TEACHER 27
our best points or not. Those best points, what are
they? We shall count them one thing, our pupils
another. We gather what seems to us of consequence
and pour it out upon our classes. But if their minds
are not fitted to receive it, the little creatures have
excellent protective arrangements which they draw
down, and all we" pour is simply shed as if nothing
had fallen; while again we say something so slight
that we hardly notice it, but, happening to be just
the nutritive element which that small life then
needs, it is caught up and turned into human fibre.
We cannot tell. W work in the dark. Out upon
the waters our bread is cast, and if we are wise we
do not attempt to trace its return.
On this point I received capital instruction from
one of my pupils. In teaching a course on English
Empiricism I undertook a line of exposition which
I knew was abstruse. Indeed, I doubted if many
of the class could follow ; but there on the front seat
sat one whose bright eyes were ever upon me. It
seemed worth while to teach my three or four best
men, that man in particular. By the end of the term
there were many grumblings. My class did not get
much out of me that year. They graduated, and a
couple of years later this young fellow appeared at
my door to say that he could not pass through Cam-
bridge without thanking me for his work on Locke,
Berkeley, and Hume. Pleased to be assured that
28 THE IDEAL TEACHER
my questionable methods were justified, and unwill-
ing to drop a subject so agreeable. I asked if he
could tell precisely where the value of the course lay.
" Certainly," he answered. " It all centred in a single
remark of Locke's. Locke said we ought to have
clear and distinct ideas. I don't think I got anything
else out of the course."
Well, at first I was inclined to think the fellow
foolish, so to mistake a bit of commonplace for gos-
pel truth. Why did he not listen to some of the pro-
found things I was saying ? But on reflection I saw
that he was right and I wrong. That trivial saying
had come to him at a critical moment as a word of
power; while the deep matters which interested me,
and which I had been offering him so confidently
day by day, being unsuited to him, had passed him
by. He had not heard them.
To such proper unthankfulness we teachers must
accustom ourselves. We cannot tell what are our
good deeds, and shall only plague ourselves and
hinder our classes if we try to find out. Let us dis-
play our subjects as lucidly as possible, allow our
pupils considerable license in apprehension, and be
content ourselves to escape observation. But though
what we do remains unknown, its results often awake
deep affection. Few in the community receive love
more abundantly than we. Wherever we go, we
meet a smiling face. Throughout the world, by
THE IBEAL TEACHER 29
some good fortune, the period of learning is the
period of romance, In those halcyon days of our
boys and girls we have a share, and the golden lights
which flood the opening years are reflected on us.
Though our pupils cannot follow our efforts in their
behalf, and indeed ought not, it being our art to
conceal our art, yet they perceive that in the years
when their happy expansion occurred we were their
guides. To us, therefore, their blind affections cling
as to few beside their parents. It is better to be loved
than to be understood.
Perhaps some readers of this paper will begin to ~t
suspect that it is impossible to be a good teacher.
Certainly it is. Each of the four qualifications I have
named is endless. Not one of them can be fully at-
tained. We can always be more imaginative, wealthy,
stimulating, disinterested. Each year we creep a
little nearer to our goal, only to find that a finished
teacher is a contradiction in terms. Our reach will
forever exceed our grasp. Yet what a delight in
approximation! Even in our failures there is com-
fort, when we see that they are generally due not tp
technical but to personal defects. We have been put-
ting ourselves forward, or have taught in mechanical
rather than vital fashion, or have not undertaken
betimes the labor of preparation, or have declined the
trouble of yicarjousness.
Evidently, then, as we become better teachers we
30 THE IDEAL TEACHER
Iso become in some sort better persons. Our beau-
tiful art, being so largely personal, will at last be
seen to connect itself with nearly all other employ-
ments. Every mother is a teacher. Every minister.
The lawyer teaches the jury, the doctor his patient.
The clever salesman might almost be said to use
teaching in dealing with his customer, and all of us
to be teachers of one another in daily intercourse. As
teaching is the most universal of the professions,
those are fortunate who are able to devote their
lives to its enriching study.
II
ETHICAL INSTRUCTION IN THE SCHOOLS
WITHIN a few years a strong demand has arisen
for ethical teaching in the schools. Teachers them-
selves have become interested, and wherever they
are gathered the question, " What shall this teaching
be ? " is eagerly discussed. The educational journals
are full of it. Within a year there have been pub-
lished seven books on the subject. Several of them
it would be hardly an exaggeration to say all
are books of marked excellence. Seldom does so
large a percentage of books in a single year, in a
single country, and on a single subject reach so high
a level of merit. I shall not criticise them, however,
nor even engage in the popular discussion of which
they form a part. That discussion concerns itself
chiefly with the methods by which ethics may be
taught. I wish to go behind this controversy and
to raise the previous question whether ethics should
be taught to boys and girls at all.
Evidently there are strong reasons why it should
be. Always and everywhere it is important that
men should be good. To be a good man! it is
more than half the fulfilment of life. Better to miss
32 ETHICAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS
fame, wealth, learning, than to miss righteousness.
And in America, too, we must demand not the mere
trifle that men shall be good for their own sakes,
but good in order that the life of the state may be
preserved. A widespread righteousness is in a repub-
lic a matter of necessity. Where all rule all, each
man who falls into evil courses infects his neigh-
bor, corrupting the law and corrupting still more its
enforcement. The question of manufacturing moral
men becomes, accordingly, in a democracy, urgent
to a degree unknown in a country where but a few
selected persons guide the state.
There is also special urgency at the present time.
The ancient and accredited means of training youth
in goodness are becoming, I will not say broken, but
enfeebled and distrusted. Hitherto a large part of
the moral instruction of mankind has been super-
intended by the clergy. In every civilized state the
expensive machinery of the Church has been set
up and placed in the hands of men of dignity, be-
cause it has been believed that by no other engine
can we so effectively render people upright. I still
believe this, and I am pretty confident that a good
many years will pass before we shall dispense with
the ennobling services of our ministers. And yet it is
plain that much of the work which formerly was
exclusively theirs is so no longer. Much of it is per-
formed by books, newspapers, and facilitated human
ETHICAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS 33
intercourse. Ministers do not now speak with their
old authority ; they speak merely as other men speak ;
and we are all asking whether in the immense re-
adjustment of faith now going on something of their
peculiar power of moral as well as of intellectual
guidance may not slip away.
The home toe which has hitherto been the
fundamental agency for fostering morality in the
young, is just now in sore need of repair. We can
no longer depend upon it alone for moral guardian-
ship. It must be supplemented, possibly recon-
structed. New dangers to it have arisen. In the
complex civilization of city life, in the huge influx
of untutored foreigners, in the substitution of the
apartment for the house, in the greater ease of
divorce, in the larger freedom now given to children,
to women, in the breaking down of class distinctions
and the readier accessibility of man to man, there
are perils for boy and girl which did not exist be-
fore. And while these changes in the outward form
of domestic life are advancing, certain protections
against moral peril which the home formerly afforded
have decayed. It would be curious to ascertain in
how many families of our immediate time daily
prayers are used, and to compare the number with
that of those in which the holy practice was com-
mon fifty years ago. It would be interesting to know
how frequently parents to-day converse with their
34 ETHICAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS
children on subjects serious, pious, or personal.
The hurry of modern life has swept away many up-
lifting intimacies. Even in families which prize them
most, a few minutes only can be had each day for
such fortifying things. Domestic training has shrunk,
while the training of haphazard companions, the
training of the streets, the training of the newspa-
pers, have acquired a potency hitherto unknown.
It is no wonder, then, that in such a moral crisis
the community turns to that agency whose power
is already felt beneficently in a multitude of other
directions, the school. The cry comes to us teachers,
"We established you at first to make our children
wiser; we want you now for a profounder service.
Can you not unite moral culture with intellectual ? "
It may be ; though discipline of the passions is enor-
mously more difficult than discipline of the mind.
But at any rate we must acknowledge that our suc-
cess in the mental field is largely staked on our suc-
cess in the moral. Our pupils will not learn their
lessons in arithmetic if they have not already made
some progress in concentration, in self-forgetfulness,
in acceptance of duty. Nor can we touch them in
a single section of their nature and hope for results.
Instruction must go all through. We are obliged
to treat each little human being as a whole if we
would have our treatment wholesome. And then
too we have had such successes elsewhere that we
ETHICAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS 35
may well feel emboldened for the new task. Nearly
the whole of life is now advantageously surveyed
in one form or another in our schools and colleges ;
and we have usually found that advance in instruc-
tion develops swiftly into betterment of practice.
We teach, for example, social science and analyze
the customs of the past ; but soon we find bands of
young men and women in all the important cities
criticising the government of those cities, suggesting
better modes of voting, wiser forms of charity; and
before we know it the community is transformed.
We cannot teach the science of electricity without
improving our street-cars, or at least without rais-
ing hopes that they may some day be improved.
Each science claims its brother art. Theory creeps
over into action. It will not stay by itself; it is per-
vasive, diffusive. And as this pervasive character of
knowledge in the lower ranges is perceived, we teach-
ers are urged to press forward its operation in the
higher also. Why have we no school-books on
human character, the highest of all themes ? Once
direct the attention of our pupils to this great topic,
and may we not ultimately bring about that moral
enlargement for which the time waits ?
I have stated somewhat at length the considera-
tions in behalf of ethical instruction in the schools
because those considerations on the whole appear
to me illusory. I cannot believe such instruction
36 ETHICAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS
feasible. Were it so, of course it would have my eager
support. But I see in it grave difficulties, difficulties
imperfectly understood ; and a difficulty disregarded
becomes a danger, possibly a catastrophe. Let me
explain in a few words where the danger lies.
Between morals and ethics there is a sharp dis-
tinction, frequently as the two words are confused.
Usage, however, shows the meaning. If I call a
man a man of bad morals, I evidently mean to as-
sert that his conduct is corrupt ; he does things which
the majority of mankind believe he ought not to do.
It is his practice I denounce, not his intellectual
formulation. In the same way we speak of the petty
morals of society, referring in the phrase to the small
practices of mankind, the unnumbered actions
which disclose good or bad principles unconsciously
hidden within. It is entirely different when I call
a man's ethics bad. I then declare that I do not
agree with his comprehension of moral principles.
His practice may be entirely correct. I do not speak
of that; it is his understanding that is at fault. For
ethics, as was long ago remarked, is related to morals
as geometry to carpentry: the one is a science, the
other its practical embodiment. In the former, con-
sciousness is a prime factor; from the latter it often
is absent altogether.
Now what is asked of us teachers is that we in-
vite our pupils to direct study of the principles of
ETHICAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS 37
right conduct, that we awaken their consciousness
about their modes of life, and so by degrees impart
to them a science of righteousness. This is theory,
ethics; not morals, practice; and in my judgment it
is dangerous business, with the slenderest chance of
success. Useless is it to say that the aim of such in-
struction need not be ethical, but moral. Whatever
the ultimate aim, the procedure of instruction is of
necessity scientific. It operates through intelligence,
and only gets into life so far as the instructed in-
telligence afterward becomes a director. This is
the work of books and teachers everywhere: they
discipline the knowing act, and so bring within its
influence that multitude of matters which depend
for excellent adjustment on clear and ordered know-
ledge. Such a work, however, is evidently but par-
tial. Many matters do not take their rise in know-
ledge at all. Morality does not. The boy as soon as
born is adopted unconsciously into some sort of
moral world. While he is growing up and is think-
ing of other things, habits of character are seizing
him. By the time he comes to school he is incrusted
with customs. The idea that his moral education can
be fashioned by his teacher in the same way as his
education in geography is fantastic. It is only his
ethical training which may now begin. The attention
of such a boy may be called to habits already fonned ;
he may be led to dissect those habits, to pass judg-
38 ETHICAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS
ment on them as right or wrong, and to inquire
why and how they may be bettered. This is the only
power teaching professes : it critically inquires, it
awakens interest, it inspects facts, it discovers laws.
And this process applied in the field of character yields
ethics, the systematized knowledge of human con-
duct. It does not primarily yield morals, improved
performance.
Nor indeed is performance likely to be improved
by ethical enlightenment if, as I maintain, the whole
business of self-criticism in the child is unwhole-
some. By a course of ethical training a young per-
son will, in my view, much more probably become
demoralized than invigorated. What we ought to
desire, if we would have a boy grow morally sturdy,
is that ^introspection should not set in early and that
he should not become accustomed to watch his con-
duct. And the reason is obvious. Much as we in-
cline to laud our prerogative of consciousness and
to assert that it is precisely what distinguishes us
from our poor relations, the brutes, we still must
acknowledge that consciousness has certain grave
defects when exalted into the position of a guide.
Large tracts of life lie altogether beyond its control,
and the conduct which can be affected by it is apt
especially in the initial stages to be rendered
vague, slow, vacillating, and distorted. Only instinc-
tive action is swift, sure, and firm. For this reason
ETHICAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS 39
we distrust the man who calculates his goodness.
We find him vulgar and repellent. We are far from
sure that he will keep that goodness long. If I offer
to shake hands with a man with precisely that degree
of warmth which I have decided it is well to express,
will he willingly take my hand ? A few years ago there
were some nonsense verses on this subject going the
rounds of the English newspapers. They seemed
to me capitally to express the morbid influence
of consciousness in a complex organism. They ran
somewhat as follows:
The centipede was happy, quite,
Until the toad for fun
Said, "Pray which leg comes after which?"
This worked her mind, to such a pitch
She lay distracted in a ditch,
Considering how to run.
And well she might! Imagine the hundred legs
steered consciously now it is time to move this
one, now to move that! The creature would never
move at all, but would be as incapable of action as
Hamlet himself. And are the young less complex
than centipedes ? Shall their little lives be suddenly
turned over to a fumbling guide? Shall they not
rather be stimulated to unconscious rectitude, gently
led into those blind but holy habits which make
goodness easy, and so be saved from the perilous
perplexities of marking out their own way? So
40 ETHICAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS
thought the sagacious Aristotle. To the crude early
opinion of Socrates that virtue is knowledge, he op-
posed the ripened doctrine that it is practice and
habit.
This, then, is the inexpugnable objection to the
ethical instruction of children : the end which should
be sought is performance, not knowledge, and we
cannot by supplying the latter induce the former.
But do not these considerations cut the ground
from under practical teaching of every kind? In-
struction is given in other subjects in the hope that it
may finally issue in strengthened action, and I have
acknowledged that as a fact this hope is repeatedly
justified. Why may not a similar result appear in
ethics ? What puts a difference between that study
and electricity, social science, or manual training?
This: according as the work studied includes a
creative element and is intended to give expression
to a personal life, consciousness becomes an increas-
ingly dangerous dependence. Why are there no
classes and text-books for the study of deportment ?
Is it because manners are unimportant? No, but
because they make the man, and to be of any worth
must be an expression of his very nature. Conscious
study would tend to distort rather than to fashion
them. Their practice cannot be learned in the same
way as carpentry.
But an analogy more enlightening for showing the
ETHICAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS 41
inaptitude of the child for direct study of the laws
of conduct is found in the case of speech. Between
speech and morals the analogies are subtle and wide.
So minute are they that speech might almost be
called a kind of vocal morality. Like morality, it is
something possessed long before we are aware of it,
and it becomes perfect or debased with our growth.
We employ it to express ourselves and to come into
ordered contact with our neighbor. By it we confer
benefits and by it receive benefits in turn. Rigid as
are its laws, we still feel ourselves free in its use,
though obliged to give to our spontaneous feelings
forms constructed by men of the past. Ease, accu-
racy, and scope are here confessedly of vast conse-
quence. It has consequently been found a matter of
extreme difficulty to bring a young person's attention
helpfully to bear upon his speech. Indirect meth-
ods seem to be the only profitable ones. Philology,
grammar, rhetoric, systematic study of the laws of
language, are dangerous tools for a boy below his
teens. The child who is to acquire excellent speech
must be encouraged to keep attention away from the
words he uses and to fix it upon that which he is to
express. Abstract grammar will either confound the
tongue which it should ease, or else it will seem to
have no connection with living reality, but to be an
ingenious contrivance invented by some Dry-as-dust
for the torture of schoolboys.
42 ETHICAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS
And a similar pair of dangers await the young
student of the laws of conduct. On the one hand,
it is highly probable that he will not understand
what his teacher is talking about. He may learn
his lesson; he may answer questions correctly; but
he will assume that these things have nothing to do
with him. He becomes dulled to moral distinctions,
and it is the teaching of ethics that dulls him. We
see the disastrous process in full operation in a neigh-
boring field. There are countries which have regular
public instruction in religion. The argument runs
that schools are established to teach what is of conse-
quence to citizens, and religion is of more consequence
than anything else. Therefore introduce it, is the con-
clusion. Therefore keep it out, is the sound conclusion.
It lies too near the life to be announced in official pro-
positions and still to retain a recognizable meaning.
I have known a large number of German young men.
I have yet to meet one whose religious nature has
been deepened by his instruction in school. And the
lack of influence is noticeable not merely in those
who have failed in the study, but quite as much
in those who have ranked highest. In neither case
has the august discipline meant anything. The
danger would be wider, the disaster from the be-
numbing influence more serious, if ethical instruc-
tion should be organized; wider, because morality
underlies religion, and insensitiveness to the moral
ETHICAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS 43
claim is more immediately and concretely destruc-
tive. Yet here, as in the case of religion, of manners,
or of speech, the child will probably take to heart
very little of what is said. At most he will assume
that the text-book statement of the rules of righteous-
ness represents the way in which the game of life
is played by some people ; but he will prefer to play
it in his own way still. Young people are constructed
with happy protective arrangements ; they are envia-
bly impervious. So in expounding moral principles in
the schoolroom, I believe we shall touch the child in
very few moral spots. Nevertheless, it becomes dulled
and hardened if it listens long to sacred words un-
touched.
But the benumbing influence is not the gravest
danger; analogies of speech suggest a graver still.
If we try to teach speech too early and really succeed
in fixing the child's attention upon its tongue, we
enfeeble its power of utterance. Consciousness once
awakened, the child is perpetually inquiring whether
the word is the right word, and suspecting that it
is not quite sufficiently right to be allowed free pas-
sage. Just so a momentous trouble appears when
the moral consciousness has been too early stirred.
That self-questioning spirit springs up which impels
its tortured possessor to be continually fingering
his motives in unwholesome preoccupation with
himself. Instead of entering heartily into outward
44 ETHICAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS
interests, the watchful little moralist is "questioning
about himself whether he has been as good as he
should have been, and whether a better man would
not have acted otherwise." No part of us is more
susceptible of morbidness than the moral sense;
none demoralizes more thoroughly when morbid.
The trouble, too, affects chiefly those of the finer
fibre. The majority of healthy children, as has been
said, harden themselves against theoretic talk, and
it passes over them like the wind. Here and there a
sensitive soul absorbs the poison and sets itself seri-
ously to work installing duty as the mainspring of its
life. We all know the unwholesome result : the per-
son from whom spontaneity is gone, who criticises
everything he does, who has lost his sense of pro-
portion, who teases himself endlessly and teases his
friends so far as they remain his friends about
the right and wrong of each petty act. It is a disease,
a moral disease, and takes the place in the spiritual
life of that which the doctors are fond of calling
"nervous prostration" in the physical.. Few coun-
tries have been so desolated by it as New England.
It is our special scourge. Many here carry a con-
science about with them which makes us say, " How
much better off they would be with none!" I de-
clare, at times when I see the ravages which con-
scientiousness works in our New England stock, I
wish these New Englanders had never heard moral
ETHICAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS 45
distinctions mentioned. Better their vices than their
virtues. The wise teacher will extirpate the first
sproutings of the weed; for a weed more difficult to
extirpate when grown there is not. We run a serious
risk of implanting it in our children when we under-
take their class instruction in ethics.
Such, then, are some of the considerations which
should give us pause when the public is clamoring
at our schoolhouse doors and saying to us teachers,
"We cannot bring up our children so as to make
them righteous citizens. Undertake the work for
us. You have done so much already that we turn
to you again and entreat your help." I think we
must sadly reply, " There are limits to what we can
do. If you respect us, you will not urge us to do the
thing that is not ours. By pressing into certain re-
gions we shall bring upon you more disaster than
benefit."
Fully, however, as the dangers here pointed out
may be acknowledged, much of a different sort
remains also true. Have we not all received a large
measure of moral culture at school? And are we
quite content to say that the greatest of subjects is
unteachable ? I would not say this ; on the contrary,
I hold that no college is properly organized where
the teaching of ethics does not occupy a position of
honor. The college, not the school, is the place for
the study. It would be absurd to maintain that all
46 ETHICAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS
other subjects of study are nutritious to man except
that of his own nature ; but it is far from absurd to
ask that a young man first possess a nature before
he undertakes to analyze it. A study useless for de-
veloping initial power may still be highly profitable
for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruc-
tion in righteousness. Youth should be spontane-
ous, instinctive, ebullient ; reflection whispers to the
growing man. Many of the evils that I have thus
far traced are brought about by projecting upon a
young mind problems which it has not yet encoun-
tered in itself. Such problems abound in the later
teens and twenties, and then is the time to set about
their discussion.
But even in college I would have ethical study
more guarded than the rest. Had I the power, I
would never allow it to be required of all. It should
be offered only as an elective and in the later years
of the course. When I entered college I was put in
my freshman year into a prescribed study of this
sort. Happily I received no influence from it what-
ever. It passed over and left me untouched; and
I think it had no more effect on the majority of my
classmates. Possibly some of the more reflective
took it to heart and were harmed ; but in general it
was a mere wasting of precious ointment which might
have soothed our wounds if elected in the senior
year. Of course great teachers defy all rules; and
ETHICAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS 47
under a Hopkins, a Garman, or a Hyde, the dis-
tinctions of elective and prescribed become unim-
portant. Yet the principle is clear: wait till the
young man is confronted with the problems before
you invite him to their solution. Has he grown up
unquestioning? Has he accepted the moral code
inherited from honored parents? Can he rest in
wise habits? Then let him be thankful and go his
way untaught. But has he, on the other hand, felt
that the moral mechanism by which he was early
guided does not fit all cases ? Has he found one class
of duties in conflict with another ? Has he discovered
that the moral standards obtaining in different sec-
tions of society, in different parts of the world, are
irreconcilable ? In short, is he puzzled and desirous
of working his way through his puzzles, of facing
them and tracking them to their beginnings ? Then
is he ripe for the study of ethics.
Yet when it is so undertaken, when those only
are invited to partake of it who in their own hearts
have heard its painful call, even then I would hedge
it about with two conditions. First, it should be
pursued as a science, critically, and the student
should be informed at the outset that the aim of the
course is knowledge, not the endeavor to make better
men. And, secondly, I would insist that the students
themselves do the work; that they do not passively
listen to opinions set forth by their instructor, but
48 ETHICAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS
that they address themselves to research and learn
to construct moral judgments which will bear critical
inspection. Some teachers, no doubt, will think it
wisest to accomplish these things by tracing the course
of ethics in the past, treating it as a historical science.
Others will prefer, by announcing their own beliefs,
to stimulate their students to criticise those beliefs
and to venture on their own little constructions. The
method is unimportant; it is only of consequence
that the students themselves do the ethicizing, that
they trace the logic of their own beliefs and do not
rest in dogmatic statement. Yet such an under-
taking may well sober a teacher. I never see my
class in ethics come to their first lecture that I do
not tremble and say to myself that I am set for the
downfall of some of them. In every such studious
company there must be unprepared persons whom
the teacher will damage. He cannot help it. He
must move calmly forward, confident in his subject,
but knowing that because it is living it is dangerous.
Ill
MORAL INSTRUCTION IN THE SCHOOLS
THE preceding paper has discussed sufficiently the
negative side of moral education. It has shown how
children should not be approached. But few readers
will be willing to leave the matter here. Are there no
positive measures to be taken ? Is there no room in
our schools for any teaching of morality, or must the
most important of subjects be altogether banished
from their doors ? There is much which might lead us
to think so. If a teacher may not instruct his pupils
in morality, what other concern with itPhe should have
is not at once apparent. One may even suspect that
attention to it will distract him from his proper work.
Every human undertaking has some central aim and
succeeds by loyalty to it. Each profession, for ex-
ample, singles out one of our many needs and to this
devotes itself whole-heartedly. Such a restriction is
wise. No profession could be strong which attempted
to meet the requirements of man as a whole. The
physician accordingly selects his little aim of extir-
pating suffering and disease. His studies, his occu-
pation, his aptitudes, his hopes of gain, his dignity
as a public character, all have reference to this.
50 MORAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS
Whatever is incompatible with it, of however great
worth in itself, is rightly ignored. To save the soul
of a patient may be of larger consequence than to
invigorate his body. But the faithful physician at-
tends to spiritual matters only so far as he thinks
them conducive to bodily health. Or again the
painter, because he is setting ocular beauty before us,
concerns himself with harmonies of color, balance
of masses, rhythms of line, rather than with history,
anecdote, or incitements to noble living. I once
heard a painter say, "There is religion enough for
me in seeing how half a dozen figures can be made
to go together," and I honored him for the saying.
So too I should hold that the proper aim of the mer-
chant is money-making and that only so much of
charity or public usefulness can fairly be demanded
of him as does not conflict with his profits. It is true
that there are large ways and petty ways of acquiring
gain, and one's own advantage cannot for long be
separated from that of others. Still, the merchant
rightly desists from any course which he finds in
the long run commercially unprofitable.
What, then, is the central aim of teaching? Con-
fessedly it is the impartation of knowledge. Whatever
furthers this should be eagerly pursued ; and all that
hinders it, rejected. When schoolmasters under-
stand their business it will be useless for the public to
call to them, " We want our children to be patriotic.
MORAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS 51
Drop for a time your multiplication table while you
rouse enthusiasm for the old flag." They would
properly reply, "We are ready to teach American
history. As a part of human knowledge, it belongs
to our province. But though the politicians fail
to stir patriotism, do not put their neglected work
upon us. We have more than we can attend to
already."
Now in my previous paper I showed how a theo-
retic knowledge of good conduct had better not be
given to children. By exposition of holy laws they
are not nourished, but enfeebled. What they need
is right habits, not an understanding of them: to
become good persons rather than to acquire a criti-
cal acquaintance with goodness. What moral function
then remains for the schools ? To furnish knowledge
of morality has been proved dangerous. For teach-
ers to turn away from imparting knowledge and
devote their scanty time to fashioning character is
to abandon work which they alone are fitted to
perform. Yet to let them send forth boys and girls
alert in mind and loose in character is something
which no community will long endure.
Until one has clearly faced these alternative per-
plexities he is in no condition to advise about graft-
ing morality into a school curriculum; for until then
he will be pretty sure to be misled by the popular
notion of morality as a thing apart, demanding
52 MORAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS
separate study, a topic like geography or English
literature. But the morality nutritious for school-
children is nothing of this kind. No additional
hour need be provided for its teaching. In teaching
anything, we teach it. A false antithesis was therefore
set up just now when we suggested that a teacher's
business was to impart knowledge rather than to
fashion character. He cannot do the one without
the other. Let him be altogether true to his scientific
aims and refuse to accommodate them to anything
else; he will be all the better teacher of morality.
Carlyle tells of a carpenter who broke all the ten
commandments with every stroke of his hammer.
A scholar breaks or keeps them with every lesson
learned. So conditioned on morality is the process
of knowing, so inwrought is it in the very structure
of the school, that a school might well be called an
ethical instrument and its daily sessions hours for
the manufacture of character. Only the species of
character manufactured will largely depend on the
teacher's acquaintance with the instrument he is us-
ing. To increase that acquaintance and give greater
deftness in the use of so exquisite an instrument is
the object of this paper. Once mastered, the tools
of his own trade will be more prized by the earnest
teacher than any additional hand-book of ethics.
It will be easiest to point out the kind of moral
instruction a school is fitted to give, if we distinguish
MORAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS 5$
with somewhat exaggerated sharpness its several
lines of activity. A school is primarily a place of
learning; it is unavoidably a social unit, and it
is incidentally a dependent fellowship. No one of
these aspects is ever absent from it. Each affords
its own opportunity for moral training. The com-
bination of them gives a school its power. Yet each
is so detachable that it may well become the sub-
ject of independent study.
I. A school is primarily a place of learning, and
to this purpose all else in it is rightfully subordinated.
But learning is itself an act, and one more dependent
than most on moral guidance. It occurs, too, at a
period of life whose chief business is the transforma-
tion of a thing of nature into a spiritual being.
Several stages in this spiritual transformation through
which the process of learning takes us I will point
out.
A school generally gives a child his first acquaint-
ance with an authoritatively organized world and
reveals his dependence upon it. By nature, impulses
and appetites rule him. (A. child is charmingly self-
centre^ The world and all its ordered goings he
notices merely as ministering to his desires. Nothing
but what he wishes, and wishes just now, is impor-
tant^ He relates all this but little to the wishes of
other people, to the inherent fixities of things, to his
own future states, to whether one wish is compati-
54 MORAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS
ble with another. His immediate mood is every-
thing. Of any difference between what is whimsical
or momentary and what is rational or permanent
he is oblivious. To him dreams and fancies are as
substantial as stars, hills, or moving creatures. He
has, in short, no idea of law nor any standards of
reality.
Now it is the first business of instruction to im-
part such ideas and standards; but no, less is this a
work of moralization. The two accordingly go on
together. Whether we call the chaotic conditions of
nature in which we begin life ignorance or deficient
morality, it is equally the work of education to abol-
ish them. Both education and morality set themselves
to rationalize the moody, lawless, transient, isolated,
self-assertive, and impatient aspects of things, in-
troducing the wondering scholar to the inherent
necessities which surround him. "Schoolmasters,"
says George Herbert, "deliver us to laws." And
probably most of us make our earliest acquaintance
with these impalpable and controlling entities when
we take our places in the school. There our pri-
mary lesson is submission. We are bidden to put
away personal likings and see how in themselves
things really are. Eight times nine does not permit it-
self to be seventy-three or sixty-four, but exactly and
forever seventy-two. Cincinnati lies obstinately on
the Ohio, not on the Mississippi, and it is nonsense
MORAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS 55
to speak of Daniel Webster as a President of the
United States. The agreement of verbs and nouns,
the reactions of chemical elements were, it seems,
settled some time before we appeared. They pay
little attention to our humors. We must accept
an already constituted world arid adjust our little
self to its august realities. Of course the process is
not completed at school. Begun there, it continues
throughout life; its extent, tenacity, and instanta-
neous application marking the degree which we
reach in scientific and moral culture. Let a teacher
attempt to lighten the task of himself or his pupil
by accepting an inexact observation, a slipshod
remembrance, a careless statement, or a distorted
truth, and he will corrupt the child's character no
less than his intelligence. He confirms the child's
habit of intruding himself into reality and of remain-
ing listless when ordained facts are calling. Edu^)
cation may well be defined as the banishment of I
moods at the bidding of the permanently real. J
But to acquire such obedient alertness persistence
is necessary, and in gaining it a child wins a second
victory over disorderly nature. By this he becomes
acquainted not merely with an outer world, but with
a still stranger object, himself. I have spoken al-
ready of the eagerness of young desires. They are
blind and disruptive things. One of them pays small
heed to another, but each blocks the other's way,
56 MORAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS
preventing anything like a coherent and united life.
A child is notoriously a creature of the moment,
looking little before and after. He must be taught to
dp so before he can know anything or be anybody.
A school matures him by connecting his doings of
to-day with those of to-morrow. Here he begins
to estimate the worth of the present by noticing
what it contributes to an organic plan. Each
hour of study brings precious discipline in prefer-
ring what is distantly important to what is momen-
tarily agreeable. A personal being, in some degree
emancipated from time, consequently emerges, and
a selfhood appears, built up through enduring
interests. The whole process is in the teacher's
charge. It is his to enforce diligence and so to
assist the vague little life to knit itself solidly to-
gether.
Nor should it be forgotten that to become each
day the possessor of increasing stores of novel and
interesting truths normally brings dignity and plea-
sure. This honorable delight reacts, too, on the pro-
cess of learning, quickening its pace, sharpening its
observation, and confirming its persistence. It is
of no less importance for the character, to which it
imparts ease, courage, beauty, and resourcefulness.
But on the teacher it will depend whether such
pleasure is found. A teacher who has entered deeply
into his subject, and is not afraid of allowing en-
MORAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS 57
thusiasm to appear, will make the densest subject
and the densest pupil glow ; while a dull teacher can
in a few minutes strip the most engrossing subject
of interest and make the diligence exacted in its
pursuit deadening. It is dangerous to dissociate
toil and delight. The school is the place to initiate
their genial union. Whoever learns there to love
knowledge, will be pretty secure of becoming an
educated and useful man and of finding satisfaction
in whatever employment may afterwards be his.
One more contribution to character which comes
from the school as a place of learning I will mention :
it should create a sense of freedom. Without this
both learning and the learner are distorted. It is
not enough that the child become submissive to an
already constituted world, obedient to its authori-
tative organization; not enough that he find plea-
sure in it, or even discover himself emerging, as one
day's diligence is bound up with that of another. All
these influences may easily make him think of him-
self as a passive creature, and consequently leave him
half formed. There is something more. Rightly
does the Psalmist call the fear of the Lord the be-
ginning of wisdom rather than its end; for that
education is defective which fashions a docile and
slavish learner. As the child introduces order into
his previously capricious acts, thoughts, and feelings,
he should feel in himself a power of control unknown
58 MORAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS
before, and be encouraged to find an honorable
use for his very peculiarities. He should be brought
to see that the world is unfinished and needs his
joyful cooperation, that it has room for individual
activity and admits rationally constructed purposes.
From his earliest years a child should be encouraged
to criticise, to have preferences, and to busy himself
with imaginative constructions ; for all this develop-
ment of orderly freedom and of rejoicing in its exer-
cise is building up at once both knowledge and char-
acter.
II. Yet a school becomes an ethical instrument
not merely through being a place of learning but be-
cause it is also a social unit. It is a cooperative group,
or company of persons pledged every instant to con-
sider one another, their common purpose being jarred
by the obtrusion of any one's dissenting will. Ac-
cordingly much that is proper elsewhere becomes
improper here. As soon as a child enters a school-
room he is impressed by the unaccustomed silence.
A happy idea springs in his mind and clamors for
the same outgo it would have at home, but it is
restrained in deference to the assembled company.
In crossing the room he is taught to tread lightly,
though for himself a joyous dash might be agreeable ;
but might it not distract the attention of those who
are studying ? The school begins at nine o'clock and
each recitation at its fixed hour, these times being
MORAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS 59
no better than others except as facilitating common
corporate action. To this each one's private ways
become adjusted. The subordination of each to all
is written large on every arrangement of school life ;
and it needs must be so if there is to be moral ad-
vance. For morality itself is nothing but the accept-
ance of such habits as express the helpful relations
of society and the individual. Punctuality, order,
quiet, are signs that the child's life is beginning to
be socialized. A teacher who fails to impress their
elementary righteousness on his pupils brutalizes
every child in his charge.
Such relations between the social whole and the
part assume a variety of forms, and the school is the
best place for introducing a child to their niceties.
Those other persons whom a schoolboy is called on
continually to regard may be either his superiors,
equals, or inferiors. To each we have specific duties,
expressed in an appropriate type of manners. Our
teachers are above us, above us in age, experi-
ence, wisdom, and authority. To treat them as com-
rades is unseemly. Confession of their superiority
colors all our approaches. They are to be listened to
as others are not. Their will has the right of way.
Our bearing toward them, however trustful or even
affectionate, shows a respectfulness somewhat re-
moved from familiarity. On the other hand school-
mates are comrades, at least those of the same sex,
60 MORAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS
class, strength, and intelligence. Among them we
assert ourselves freely, yet with constant care to se-
cure no less freedom for them, and we guard them
against any damage or annoyance which our hasty
assertiveness might cause. In case of clash between
their interest and our own, ours is withdrawn. And
then toward those who are below us, either in rank
or powers, helpfulness springs forth. We are eager
to bridge over the separating chasm and by our will
to abolish hindering defects. These three types of
personal adjustment respect, courtesy, and help-
fulness, with their wide variety of combination
form the groundwork of all good manners. In their
beginnings they need prompting and oversight from
some one who is already mature. A school which
neglects to cultivate them works almost irreparable
injury to its pupils. For if these possibilities of re-
fined human intercourse are not opened in the school
years, it is with great difficulty they are arrived at
afterwards.
The spiritualizing influence of the school as a
social unit is, however, not confined to the classroom.
It is quite as active on the playground. There a
boy learns to play fair, accustoms himself to that
greatest of social ties, I 'esprit du corps. Throughout
life a man needs continually to merge his own inter-
ests in those of a group. He must act as the father
of a family, an operative in a factory, a voter of Boston,
MORAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS 61
an American citizen, a member of an engine com-
pany, union, church, or business firm. His own small
concerns are taken up into these larger ones, and
devotion to them is not felt as self-sacrifice. A pre-
paration for such moral ennoblement is laid in the
sports of childhood. What does a member of the
football team care for battered shins or earth-scraped
hands ? His side has won, and his own gains and
losses are forgotten. Soon his team goes forth against
an outside team, and now the honor of the whole
school is in his keeping. What pride is his ! As he
puts on his uniform, he strips off his isolated person-
ality and stands forth as the trusted champion of an
institution. Nor does this august supersession of the
private consciousness by the public arise in connec-
tion with sports alone. As a member of the school,
a boy acts differently from what he otherwise would.
There is a standard of conduct recognized as suitable
for a Washington School boy, and from it his own
does not widely depart. For good or for ill each
school has its ideals of "good form" which are
compulsive over its members and are handed on
from class to class. To assist in moulding, refining,
and maintaining these is the weightiest work of a
schoolmaster. For these ideals have about them the
sacredness of what is traditional, institutional, and
are of an unseen, august, and penetrative power,
comparable to nothing else in character-formation.
62 MORAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS
To modify them ever so slightly a teacher should
be content to work for years.
III. A third aspect of the school I have called its
character as a Dependent Fellowship, and I have
said that this is merely incidental. A highly important
incident it is, however, and one that never fails to
recur. What I would indicate by the dark phrase is
this: in every school an imperfect life is associated
with one similar but more advanced, one from which
it perpetually receives influences that are not offi-
cial nor measurable in money payment. A teacher
is hired primarily to teach, and with a view also to
his ability to keep order throughout his little society
and to make his authority respected there. But side
by side with these public duties runs the expression
of his personality. This is his own, something which
he hides or discloses at his pleasure. To his pupils,
however, he must always appear in the threefold
character of teacher, master, and developed human
being; while they correspondingly present them-
selves to him as pupils, members of the school, and
elementary human beings. Of these pairs of rela-
tionships two are contrasted and supplemental,
teacher and pupil, master and scholar, having no-
thing in common, each being precisely what the
other is not. As human beings, however, pupil and
teacher are akin and removed from one another
merely by the degree of progress made by the elder
MORAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS 63
along a common path. Here then the relation is one
of fellowship, but a fellowship where the younger
is largely dependent on the older for an understand-
ing of what he should be. By example, friendship,
and personal influence a teacher is certain to affect
for good or ill every member of his school. In
any account of the school as an ethical instrument
this subtlest of its moral agencies deserves careful
analysis.
There are different sorts of example. I may ob-
serve how the shopman does up a package, and do
one so myself the next morning. A companion may
have a special inflection of voice, which I may catch.
I may be drawn to industry by seeing how steadily
my classmate studies. I may adopt a phrase, a smile,
or a polite gesture, which was originally my teacher's.
All these are cases of direct imitation. Some one
possesses a trait or an act which is passed over entire
to another person, by whom it is substituted for one
of his own. Though the adoption of such alien ways
is dangerous, society could hardly go on without it.
It is its mode of transmitting what is supposed to be
already tested and of lodging it in the lives of per-
sons of less experience, with the least cost to the re-
ceivers. Most teachers will have habits which their
pupils may advantageously copy. Yet supposing the
imitated ways altogether good, which they seldom
are, direct imitation is questionable as disregarding
64 MORAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS
the particular character of him in whom the ways
are found and in assuming that they will be equally
appropriate if engrafted on anybody. But this is
far from true, and consequently he who imitates
much is, or soon will be, a weakling. On the whole,
a teacher needs to guard his pupils against his imi-
table peculiarities. If sensible, he will snub whoever
is disposed to repeat them.
Still, there is a noble sort of imitation, and that
school is a poor place where it does not go on. Cer-
tain persons have a strange power of invigorating
us by their presence. When with them, we can do
what seems impossible alone. They are our examples
rather as wholes, and in their strength and spirit, than
in their single traits or acts ; and so whatever is most
distinctive of ourselves becomes renewed through con-
tact with them. It was said of the late Dr. Jowett
that he sent out more pupils who were widely un-
like himself than any Oxford teacher of his time.
That is enviable praise; for the wholesomeness of
example is tested by inquiring whether it develops
differences or has only the power of duplicating the
original. Every teacher knows how easy it is to send
out cheap editions of himself, and in his weaker
moments he inclines to issue them. But it is ignoble
business. Our manners and tones and phrases and
the ways we have of doing this and that are after all
valuable only as expressions of ourselves. For any-
MORAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS 65
body else they are rubbish. What we should like to
impart is that earnestness, accuracy, unselfishness,
candor, reverence for God's laws, and sturdiness
through hardship, toward which we aspire mat-
ters in reality only half ours and which spring up
with fresh and original beauty in every soul where
they once take root. The Dependent Fellowship
of a school makes these larger, enkindling, and di-
versifying influences peculiarly possible. It should
be a teacher's highest ambition to exercise them.
And though we might naturally expect that such
inspiring teachers would be rare, I seldom enter a
school without finding indications of the presence of
at least one of them.
But for those who would acquire this larger in-
fluence a strange caution is necessary: Examples
do not work that are not real. We sometimes try
to "set an example," that is, to put on a type of char-
acter for the benefit of a beholder ; and are usually
disappointed. Personal influence is not an affair of
acting, but of being. Those about us are strangely
affected by what we veritably are, only slightly by
what we would have them see. If we are indisposed
to study, yet, knowing that industry is good for our
scholars, assume a bustling diligence, they are more
likely to feel the real portion of the affair, our lazi-
ness, than the activity which was designed for their
copying. Astonishingly shrewd are the young at
66 MORAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS
scenting humbug and being unaffected by its pre-
tensions. There is consequently no method to be
learned for gaining personal influence. Almost every-
thing else requires plan and effort. This precious
power needs little attention. It will not come in one
way better than another. A fair measure of sympa-
thetic tact is useful for starting it; but in the long
run persons rude and suave, talkative and silent,
handsome and ugly, stalwart and slight, possess it
in about equal degree, the very characteristics which
we should be disposed to count disadvantageous
often seeming to confirm its hold. Since it- gener-
ally comes about that our individual interests be-
come in some measure those of our pupils too,
the only safe rule for personal influence is to go
heartily about our own affairs, with a friendly spirit,
and let our usual nature have whatever effect it
may.
Still, there is one important mode of preparation :
seeing that personal influence springs from what
we are, we can really be a good deal. In a former
paper, on The Ideal Teacher, I pointed this out
and insisted that to be of any use in the classroom
we teachers must bring there an already accumu-
lated wealth. I will not repeat what I have said al-
ready, for a little reflection will convince any one
that when he lacks personal influence he lacks much
besides. A great example comes from a great nature,
MORAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS 67
and we who live in fellowship with dependent and
imitative youth should acquire natures large enough
to serve both their needs and our own. Let teachers
be big, bounteous, and unconventional, and they
will have few backward pupils.
Personal influence is often assumed to be greater
the closer the intimacy. I believe the contrary to
be the case. Familiarity, says the shrewd proverb,
breeds contempt. And certainly the young, who are
little trained in estimating values, when brought
into close association with their elders are apt to fix
their attention on petty points and so to miss the
larger lines of character. These they see best across
an interval where, though visible only in outline,
they are clear, unconfused with anything else, and
so productive of their best effect. For the immature,
distance is a considerable help in inducing enchant-
ment, and nothing is so destructive of high influence
as a slap-on-the-back acquaintance. One who is to
help us much must be above us. A teacher should
carefully respect his own dignity and no less carefully
that of his pupil. In our eagerness to help, we may
easily cheapen a fine nature by intruding too fre-
quently into its reserves ; and on the other hand I have
observed that the boy who comes oftenest for advice
is he who profits by it least. It is safest not to meddle
much with the insides of our pupils. An occasional
weighty word is more compulsive than frequent talk.
68 MORAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS
Within the limits then here marked out we who
live in these Dependent Fellowships must submit to
be admired. We must allow our pupils to idealize
us and even offer ourselves for imitation. It is not
pleasant. Usually nobody knows his weaknesses
better than the one who is mistaken for an example.
But what a helpful mistake ! What ennobling influ-
ences come to schoolboys when once they can think
their teacher is the sort of person they would like to
be ! Perhaps at the very moment that teacher is think-
ing they are the sort of person he would like to be.
No matter. What they admire is worthy, even if not
embodied precisely where they imagine. In humility
we accept their admiration, knowing that nothing
else can so enlarge their lives. As I recall my college
days, there rise before me two teachers. As I en-
tered the lecture rooms of those two men, I said to
myself, "Oh, if some day I could be like that !" And
always afterwards as I went to those respective
rooms, the impression of dignity deepened. I have
forgotten the lessons I learned from those instructors.
I never can discharge my debt to the instructors
themselves.
Such are the moral resources of our schools.
Without turning aside in the slightest from their
proper aim of imparting knowledge, teachers are
able, almost compelled to supply their pupils
with an intellectual, social, and personal righteous-
MORAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS 69
ness. What more is wanted ? When such opportuni-
ties for moral instruction are already within their
grasp, is it worth while to incur the grave dangers of
ethical instruction too ? I think not, and I even fear
that the establishment of courses in moral theory
might weaken the sense of responsibility among the
other teachers and lead them to attach less impor-
tance to the moralization of their pupils by them-
selves. This is burdensome business, no doubt, but
we must not shift it to a single pair of shoulders.
Rather let us insist, when bad boys and girls con-
tinue in a school, that the blame belongs to the teach-
ers as a whole, and not to some ethical coach. It is
from the management and temper of a school that its
formative influence proceeds. We cannot safely turn
over anything so all-pervading to the instructors of
a single department. That school where neatness,
courtesy, simplicity, obtain; where enthusiasm goes
with mental exactitude, thoroughness of work with
interest, and absence of artificiality with refinement ;
where sneaks, liars, loafers, pretenders, rough per-
sons are despised, while teachers who refuse to be
mechanical hold sway that school is engaged in
moral training all day long.
Yet while I hold that the systematic study of
ethics had on the whole better be left to the colleges,
I confess that the line which I have attempted to
draw between consciousness and unconsciousness,
70 MORAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS
between the age which is best directed by instinct
and the age when the questioning faculties put for-
ward their inexorable demands, is a wavering one and
cannot be sharply drawn. By one child it is crossed
at one period, by another at another. Seldom is the
crossing noticed. Before we are aware we find our-
selves in sorrow on the farther side. Happy the youth
who during the transition time has a wise friend at
hand to answer a question, to speak a steadying
word, to open up the vista which at the moment
needs to be cleared. Only one in close personal touch
is serviceable here. But in defect of home guidance,
to us teachers falls much of the charge of developing
the youthful consciousness of moral matters naturally,
smoothly, and without jar. This has always been a
part of the teacher's office. So far as I can ascertain
schools of the olden time had in them a large amount
of wholesome ethical training. Schools were unsys-
tematic then ; there lay no examination paper ahead
of them; there was time for pause and talk. If a
subject arose which the teacher deemed important
for his pupils' personal lives, he could lead them
on to question about it, so far as he believed dis-
cussion useful. This sort of ethical training the
hurry of our time has largely exterminated; and
now that wholesome incidental instruction is gone,
we demand in the modern way that a clear-cut de-
partment of ethics be introduced into the curricu-
MORAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS 71
lum. But such things do not let themselves be'
treated in departmental fashion. The teacher must
still work as a friend. He cannot be discharged
from knowing when and how to stimulate a ques-
tion, from discerning which boy or girl would
be helped by consciousness and which would be
harmed. In these high regions our pupils cannot
be approached in classes. They require individual
attention. And not because we are teachers merely,
but because we and they are human beings, we
must be ready with spiritual aid.
IV
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
ENGLISH study has four aims : the mastery of our
language as a science, as a history, as a joy, and as
a tool. I am concerned with but one, the mastery of
it as a tool. Philology and grammar present it as a
science; the one attempting to follow its words, the
other its sentences, through all the intricacies of their
growth, and so to manifest laws which lie hidden in
these airy products no less than in the moving stars
or the myriad flowers of spring. Fascinating and im-
portant as all this is, I do not recommend it here.
For I want to call attention only to that sort of Eng-
lish study which can be carried on without any large
apparatus of books. For a reason similar, though
less cogent, I do not urge historical study. Probably
the current of English literature is more attractive
through its continuity than that of any other nation.
Notable works in verse and prose have appeared in
long succession, and without gaps intervening, in a
way that would be hard to parallel in any other lan-
guage known to man. A bounteous endowment this
for every English speaker, and one which should
stimulate us to trace the marvellous and close-linked
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 73
progress from the times of the Saxons to those of
Tennyson and Kipling. Literature too has this ad-
vantage over every other species of art study, that
everybody can examine the original masterpieces
and not depend on reproductions, as in the cases of
painting, sculpture, and architecture ; or on interme-
diate interpretation, as in the case of music. To-day
most of these masterpieces can be bought for a trifle,
and even a poor man can follow through centuries the
thoughts of his ancestors. But even so, ready of ac-
cess as it is, English can be studied as a history only
at the cost of solid time and continuous attention,
much more time than the majority of those for whom
I am writing can afford. By most of us our mighty
literature cannot be taken in its continuous current,
the later stretches proving interesting through relation
with the earlier. It must be taken fragmentarily, if
at all, the attention delaying on those parts only which
offer the greatest beauty or promise the best exhila-
ration. In other words, English may be possible as a
joy where it is not possible as a history. In the end-
less wealth which our poetry, story, essay, and drama
afford, every disposition may find its appropriate nu-
triment, correction, or solace. He is unwise, however
busy, who does not have his loved authors, veritable
friends with whom he takes refuge in the intervals
of work and by whose intimacy he enlarges, refines,
sweetens, and emboldens his own limited existence.
74 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
Yet the fact that English as a joy must largely be con-
ditioned by individual taste prevents me from offering
general rules for its pursuit. The road which leads
one man straight to this joy leads another to tedium.
In all literary enjoyment there is something incalcula-'
ble, something wayward, eluding the precision of
rule, and rendering inexact the precepts of him who
would point out the path to it. While I believe that
many suggestions may be made, useful to the young
enjoyer and promotive of his wise vagrancy, I shall
not undertake here the complicated task of offering
them. Let enjoyment go, let history go, let science
go, and still English remains English as a tool.
Every hour our language is an engine for communi-
cating with others, every instant for fashioning the
thoughts of our own minds. I want to call attention
to the means of mastering this curious and essential
tool, and to lead every one who reads me to become
discontented with his employment of it.
The importance of literary power needs no long
argument. Everybody acknowledges it, and sees that
without it all other human faculties are maimed.
Shakespeare says that death-bringing time "insults
o'er dull and speechless tribes." It and all who live in
it insult over the speechless person. So mutually de-
pendent are we that on our swift and full communica-
tion with one another is staked the success of almost
every scheme we form. He who can explain himself
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 75
may command what he wants. He who cannot is left
to the poverty of individual resource ; for men do what
we desire only when persuaded. The persuasive and
explanatory tongue is, therefore, one of the chief
levers of life. Its leverage is felt within us as well as
without, for expression and thought are integrally
bound together. We do not first possess completed
thoughts and then express them. The very forma-
tion of the outward product extends, sharpens, en-
riches the mind which produces, so that he who gives
forth little after a time is likely enough to discover
that he has little to give forth. By expression too we
may carry our benefits and our names to a far gen-
eration. This durable character of fragile language
puts a wide difference of worth between it and some
of the other great objects of desire, health, wealth,
and beauty, for example. These are notoriously liable
to accident. We tremble while we have them. But
literary power, once ours, is more likely than any
other possession to be ours always. It perpetuates
and enlarges itself by the very fact of its existence
and perishes only with the decay of the man himself.
For this reason, because more than health, wealth,
and beauty, literary style may be called the man, good
judges have found in it the final test of culture and
have said that he, and he alone, is a well-educated per-
son who uses his language with power and beauty.
The supreme and ultimate product of civilization, it
76 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
has well been said, is two or three persons talking
together in a room. Between ourselves and our lan-
guage there accordingly springs up an association
peculiarly close. We are as sensitive to criticism
of our speech as of our manners. The young man
looks up with awe to him who has written a book, as
already half divine; and the graceful speaker is a
universal object of envy.
But the very fact that literary endowment is im-
mediately recognized and eagerly envied has induced
a strange illusion in regard to it. It is supposed to
be something mysterious, innate in him who pos-
sesses it and quite out of the reach of him who has it
not. The very contrary is the fact. No human em-
ployment is more free and calculable than the win-
ning of language. Undoubtedly there are natural
aptitudes for it, as there are for farming, seaman-
ship, or being a good husband. But nowhere is
straight work more effective. Persistence, care, dis-
criminating observation, ingenuity, refusal to lose
heart, traits which in every other occupation tend
toward excellence, tend toward it here with special
security. Whoever goes to his grave with bad Eng-
lish in his mouth has no one to blame but himself for
the disagreeable taste ; for if faulty speech can be in-
herited, it can be exterminated too. I hope to point
out some of the methods of substituting good English
for bad. And since my space is brief, and I wish to
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 77
be remembered, I throw what I have to say into the
form of four simple precepts which, if pertinaciously
obeyed, will, I believe, give anybody effective mastery
of English as a tool.
First then, "Look well to your speech." It is
commonly supposed that when a man seeks literary
power he goes to his room and plans an article for
the press. But this is to begin literary culture at
the wrong end. We speak a hundred times for every
once we write. The busiest writer produces little
more than a volume a year, not so much as his talk
would amount to in a week. Consequently through
speech it is usually decided whether a man is to have
command of his language or not. If he is slovenly
in his ninety-nine cases of talking, he can seldom
pull himself up to strength and exactitude in the
hundredth case of writing. A person is made in one
piece, and the same being runs through a multitude
of performances. Whether words are uttered on
paper or to the air, the effect on the utterer is the
same. Vigor or feebleness results according as energy
or slackness has been in command. I know that
certain adaptations to a new field are often necessary.
A good speaker may find awkwardnesses in himself
when he comes to write, a good writer when he
speaks. And certainly cases occur where a man ex-
hibits distinct strength in one of the two, speaking
or writing, and not in the other. But such cases are
78 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
rare. As a rule, language once within our control
can be employed for oral or for written purposes.
\And since the opportunities for oral practice enor-
mously outbalance those for written, it is the oral
which are chiefly significant in the development of
literary power. We rightly say of the accomplished
writer that he shows a mastery of his own tongue.
This predominant influence of speech marks nearly
all great epochs of literature. The Homeric poems
are addressed to the ear, not to the eye. It is doubt-
ful if Homer knew writing, certain that he knew
profoundly every quality of the tongue, veracity,
vividness, shortness of sentence, simplicity of thought,
obligation to insure swift apprehension. Writing and
rigidity are apt to go together. In Homer's smooth-
slipping verses one catches everywhere the voice. So
too the aphorisms of Hesiod might naturally pass
from mouth to mouth, and the stories of Herodotus
be told by an old man at the fireside. Early Greek lit-
erature is plastic and garrulous. Its distinctive glory
is that it contains no literary note ; that it gives forth
human feeling not in conventional arrangement, but
with apparent spontaneity in short, that it is speech
literature, not book literature. And the same ten-
dency continued long among the Greeks. At the cul-
mination of their power the drama was their chief
literary form, the drama, which is but speech en-
nobled, connected, clarified. Plato too, following the
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 79
dramatic precedent and the precedent of his talking
master, accepted conversation as his medium for phi-
losophy and imparted to it the vivacity, ease, way-
wardness even, which the best conversation exhibits.
Nor was the experience of the Greeks peculiar. Our
literature shows a similar tendency. Its bookish times
are its decadent times, its talking times its glory.
Chaucer, like Herodotus, is a story-teller, and follows
the lead of those who on the Continent entertained
courtly circles with pleasant tales. Shakespeare and
his fellows in the spacious times of great Elizabeth
did not concern themselves with publication. Mar-
ston in one of his prefaces thinks it necessary to
apologize for putting his piece in print, and says he
would not have done such a thing if unscrupulous
persons, hearing the play at the theatre, had not
already printed corrupt versions of it. Even the
Queen Anne's men, far removed though they are
from anything dramatic, still shape their ideals of
literature by demands of speech. The essays of the
Spectator, the poems of Pope, are the remarks of
a cultivated gentleman at an evening party. Here
is the brevity, the good taste, the light touch, the
neat epigram, the avoidance of whatever might stir
passion, controversy, or laborious thought, which
characterize the conversation of a well-bred man. In-
deed it is hard to see how any literature can be long
vital which is based on the thought of a book and
80 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
not on that of living utterance. Unless the speech
notion is uppermost, words will not run swiftly to
their mark. They delay in delicate phrasings while
naturalness and a sense of reality disappear. Women
are the best talkers. I sometimes please myself with
noticing that three of the greatest periods of English
literature coincide with the reigns of the three Eng-
lish queens.
Fortunate it is, then, that self-cultivation in the
use of English must chiefly come through speech ; be-
cause we are always speaking, whatever else we do.
In opportunities for acquiring a mastery of language
the poorest and busiest are at no large disadvantage
as compared with the leisured rich. It is true the
strong impulse which comes from the suggestion and
approval of society may in some cases be absent, but
this can be compensated by the sturdy purpose of the
learner. A recognition of the beauty of well-ordered
words, a strong desire, patience under discourage-
ments, and promptness in counting every occasion
as of consequence, these are the simple agencies
which sweep one on to power. Watch your speech
then. That is all which is needed. Only it is desir-
able to know what qualities of speech to watch for.
I find three, accuracy, audacity, and range, and
I will say a few words about each.
Obviously, good English is exact English. Our
words should fit our thoughts like a glove and be
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 81
neither too wide nor too tight. If too wide, they will
include much vacuity beside the intended matter. If
too tight, they will check the strong grasp. Of the
two dangers, looseness is by far the greater. There
are people who say what they mean with such a naked
precision that nobody not familiar with the subject
can quickly catch the sense. George Herbert and
Emerson strain the attention of many. But niggardly
and angular speakers are rare. Too frequently words
signify nothing in particular. They are merely thrown
out in a certain direction to report a vague and unde-
termined meaning or even a general emotion. The
first business of every one who would train himself
in language is to articulate his thought, to know defi-
nitely what he wishes to say, and then to pick those
words which compel the hearer to think of this and
only this. For such a purpose two words are often
better than three. The fewer the words, the more
pungent the impression. Brevity is the soul, not
simply of a jest, but of wit in its finer sense where
it is identical with wisdom. He who can put a great
deal into a little is the master. Since firm texture is
what is wanted, not embroidery or superposed orna-
ment, beauty has been well defined as the purgation
of superfluities. And certainly many a paragraph
might have its beauty brightened by letting quiet
words take the place of its loud words, omitting its
"verys," and striking out its purple patches of fine
82 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
writing. Here is Ben Jonson's description of Bacon's
language: "There happened in my time one noble
speaker who was full of gravity in his speech. No
man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more
weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in
what he uttered. No member of his speech but con-
sisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough
or look aside without loss. He commanded when he
spoke, and had his judges angry or pleased at his dis-
cretion." Such are the men who command, men who
speak "neatly and pressly." But to gain such pre-
cision is toilsome business. While we are in training
for it, no word must unpermittedly pass the portal of
the teeth. Something like what we mean must never
be counted equivalent to what we mean. And if we
are not sure of our meaning or of our word, we must
pause until we are sure. Accuracy does not come of
itself. For persons who can use several languages,
capital practice in acquiring it can be had by trans-
lating from one language to another and seeing that
the entire sense is carried over. Those who have
only their native speech will find it profitable often
to attempt definitions of the common words they use.
Inaccuracy will not stand up against the habit of defi-
nition. Dante boasted that no rhythmic exigency
had ever made him say what he did not mean. We
heedless and unintending speakers, under no exigency
of rhyme or reason, say what we mean but seldom,
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 83
and still more seldom mean what we say. To hold
our thoughts and words in significant adjustment re-
quires unceasing consciousness, a perpetual determi-
nation not to tell lies ; for of course every inaccuracy
is a bit of untruthfulness. We have something in
mind, yet convey something else to our hearer. And
no moral purpose will save us from this untruthful-
ness unless that purpose is sufficient to inspire the
daily drill which brings the power to be true. Again
and again we are shut up to evil because we have not
acquired the ability of goodness.
But after all, I hope that nobody who hears me
will quite agree. There is something enervating in
conscious care. Necessary as it is in shaping our pur-
poses, if allowed too direct and exclusive control con-
sciousness breeds hesitation and feebleness. Action
is not excellent, at least, until spontaneous. In piano-
playing we begin by picking out each separate note;
but we do not call the result music until we play our
notes by the handful, heedless how each is formed.
And so it is everywhere. Consciously selective con-
duct is elementary and inferior. People distrust it, or
rather they distrust him who exhibits it. If anybody
talking to us visibly studies his words, we turn away.
What he says may be well enough as school exercise,
but it is not conversation. Accordingly, if we would
have our speech forcible, we shall need to put into it
quite as much of audacity as we do of precision, terse-
84 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
ness, or simplicity. Accuracy alone is not a thing to
be sought, but accuracy and dash. It was said of
Fox, the English orator and statesman, that he was
accustomed to throw himself headlong into the middle
of a sentence, trusting to God Almighty to get him
out. So must we speak. We must not before begin-
ning a sentence decide what the end shall be ; for if we
do, nobody will care to hear that end. At the begin-
ning, it is the beginning which claims the attention
of both speaker and listener, and trepidation about
going on will mar all. We must give our thought its
head, and not drive it with too tight a rein, nor grow
timid when it begins to prance a bit. Of course we
must retain coolness in courage, applying the results
of our previous discipline in accuracy; but we need
not move so slowly as to become formal. Pedantry
is worse than blundering. If we care for grace and
flexible beauty of language, we must learn to let our
thought run. Would it, then, be too much of an Irish
bull to say that in acquiring English we need to cul-
tivate spontaneity? The uncultivated kind is not
worth much; it is wild and haphazard stuff, unad-
justed to its uses. On the other hand no speech is of
much account, however just, which lacks the element
of courage. Accuracy and dash, then, the combina-
tion of the two, must be our difficult aim; and we
must not rest satisfied so long as either dwells with
us alone.
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 85
But are the two so hostile as they at first appear ?
Or can, indeed, the first be obtained without the aid
of the second ? Supposing we are convinced that
words possess no value in themselves, and are correct
or incorrect only as they truly report experience, we
shall feel ourselves impelled in the mere interest of
accuracy to choose them freshly and to put them to-
gether in ways in which they never cooperated before,
so as to set forth with distinctness that which just
we, not other people, have seen or felt. The reason
why we do not naturally have this daring exacti-
tude is probably twofold. We let our experiences be
blurred, not observing sharply, nor knowing with any
minuteness what we are thinking about; and so there
is no individuality in our language. And then, be-
sides, we are terrorized by custom and inclined to
adjust what we would say to what others have said
before. The cure for the first of these troubles is to
keep our eye on our object, instead of on our listener
or ourselves ; and for the second, to learn to rate the
expressiveness of language more highly than its cor-
rectness. The opposite of this, the disposition to
set correctness above expressiveness, produces that
peculiarly vulgar diction known as "school-ma'am
English," in which for the sake of a dull accord with
usage all the picturesque, imaginative and forceful
employment of words is sacrificed. Of course we
must use words so that people can understand them,
86 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
and understand them too with ease; but this once
granted, let our language be our own, obedient to our
special needs. " Whenever," says Thomas Jefferson,
" by small grammatical negligences the energy of an
idea can be condensed, or a word be made to stand
for a sentence, I hold grammatical rigor in contempt,"
" Young man," said Henry Ward Beecher to one who
was pointing out grammatical errors in a sermon of
his, " when the English language gets in my way, it
does n't stand a chance." No man can be convincing,
writer or speaker, who is afraid to send his words
wherever they may best follow his meaning, and this
with but little regard to whether any other person's
words have ever been there before. In assessing
merit let us not stupefy ourselves with using nega-
tive standards. What stamps a man as great is not
freedom from faults, but abundance of powers.
Such audacious accuracy, however, distinguishing
as it does noble speech from commonplace speech,
can be practised only by him who has a wide range
of words. Our ordinary range is absurdly narrow.
It is important, therefore, for anybody who would
cultivate himself in English to make strenuous and
systematic efforts to enlarge his vocabulary. Our
dictionaries contain more than a hundred thousand
words. The average speaker employs about three
thousand. Is this because ordinary people have only
three or four thousand things to say ? Not at all.
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 87
It is simply due to dulness. Listen to the average
schoolboy. He has a dozen or two nouns, half a
dozen verbs, three or four adjectives, and enough
conjunctions and prepositions to stick the conglom-
erate together. This ordinary speech deserves the
description which Hobbes gave to his " State of Na-
ture," that "it is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and
short." The fact is, we fall into the way of thinking
that the wealthy words are for others and that they
do not belong to us. We are like those who have
received a vast inheritance, but who persist in the
inconveniences of hard beds, scanty food, rude cloth-
ing, who never travel, and who limit their purchases
to the bleak necessities of life. Ask such people
why they endure niggardly living while wealth in
plenty is lying in the bank, and they can only an-
swer that they have never learned how to spend. But
this is worth learning. Milton used eight thousand
words, Shakespeare fifteen thousand. We have all
the subjects to talk about that these early speakers
had ; and in addition we have bicycles and sciences
and strikes and political combinations and all the
complicated living of the modern world.
Why then do we hesitate to swell our words to
meet our needs ? It is a nonsense question. There
is no reason. We are simply lazy, too lazy to make
ourselves comfortable. We let our vocabularies be
limited and get along rawly without the refinements
88 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
of human intercourse, without refinements in our own
thoughts; for thoughts are almost as dependent
on words as words on thoughts. For example, all
exasperations we lump together as "aggravating,"
not considering whether they may not rather be dis-
pleasing, annoying, offensive, disgusting, irritating,
or even maddening; and without observing too that
in our reckless usage we have burned up a word
which might be convenient when we should need to
mark some shading of the word " increase." Like
the bad cook, we seize the frying-pan whenever we
need to fry, broil, roast, or stew, and then we won-
der why all our dishes taste alike while in the next
house the food is appetizing. It is all unnecessary.
Enlarge the vocabulary. Let any one who wants to
see himself grow resolve to adopt two new words
each week. It will not be long before the endless
and enchanting variety of the world will begin to re-
flect itself in his speech, and in his mind as well. I
know that when we use a word for the first time we
are startled, as if a fire-cracker went off in our neigh-
borhood. We look about hastily to see if any one
has noticed. But finding that no one has, we may be
emboldened. A word used three times slips off the
tongue with entire naturalness. Then it is ours for-
ever, and with it some phase of life which had been
lacking hitherto. For each word presents its own
point of view, discloses a special aspect of things, re-
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 89
ports some little importance not otherwise conveyed,
and so contributes its small emancipation to our
tied-up minds and tongues.
But a brief warning may be necessary to make my
meaning clear. In urging the addition of new words
to our present poverty-stricken stock I am far from
suggesting that we should seek out strange, technical
or inflated expressions, which do not appear in or-
dinary conversation. The very opposite is my aim.
I would put every man who is now employing a dic-
tion merely local and personal in command of the
approved resources of the English language. Our
poverty usually comes through provinciality, through
accepting without criticism the habits of our special
set. My family, my immediate friends, have a dic-
tion of their own. Plenty of other words, recognized
as sound, are known to be current in books and to be
employed by modest and intelligent speakers, only we
do not use them. Our set has never said " diction,"
or " current," or " scope," or " scanty," or " hitherto,"
or " convey," or " lack." Far from unusual as these
words are, to adopt them might seem to set me apart
from those whose intellectual habits I share. From
this I shrink. I do not like to wear clothes suitable
enough for others, but not in the style of my own
plain circle. Yet if each one of that circle does the
same, the general shabbiness is increased. The talk
of all is made narrow enough to fit the thinnest there.
90 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
What we should seek is to contribute to each of the
little companies with which our life is bound up a
gently enlarging influence, such impulses as will not
startle or create detachment, but which may save from
humdrum, routine and dreary usualness. We cannot
be really kind without being a little venturesome.
The small shocks of our increasing vocabulary will in
all probability be as helpful to our friends as to our-
selves.
Such then are the excellences of speech. If we
would cultivate ourselves in the use of English, we
must make our daily talk accurate, daring and full.
I have insisted on these points the more because in
my judgment all literary power, especially that of
busy men, is rooted in sound speech. But though the
roots are here, the growth is also elsewhere. And I
pass to my later precepts, which, if the earlier one
has been laid well to heart, will require only brief
discussion.
Secondly, "Welcome every opportunity for writ-
ing." Important as I have shown speech to be, there
is much that it cannot do. Seldom can it teach struc-
ture. Its space is too small. Talking moves in sen-
tences, and rarely demands a paragraph. I make my
little remark, a dozen or two words, then wait for
my friend to hand me back as many more. This gen-
tle exchange continues by the hour ; but either of us
would feel himself unmannerly if he should grasp an
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 91
entire five minutes and make it uninterruptedly his.
That would not be speaking, but rather speech-mak-
ing. The brief groupings of words which make up
our talk furnish capital practice in precision, boldness
and variety ; but they do not contain room enough for
exercising our .constructive faculties. Considerable
length is necessary if we are to learn how to set forth
B in right relation to A on the one hand and to C on
the other ; and while keeping each a distinct part, are
to be able through their smooth progression to weld
all the parts together into a compacted whole. Such
wholeness is what we mean by literary form. Lack-
ing it, any piece of writing is a failure; because in
truth it is not a piece, but pieces. For ease of read-
ing, or for the attainment of an intended effect, unity
is essential the multitude of statements, anecdotes,
quotations, arguings, gay sportings and appeals, all
"bending one way their gracious influence." And
this dominant unity of the entire piece obliges unity
also in the subordinate parts. Not enough has been
done when we have huddled together a lot of wan-
dering sentences and penned them in a paragraph,
or even when we have linked them together by the
frail ties of "and, and." A sentence must be com-
pelled to say a single thing; a paragraph, a single
thing ; an essay, a single thing. Each part is to be a
preliminary whole and the total a finished whole.
But the ability to construct one thing out of many
92 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
does not come by nature. It implies fecundity, re-
straint, an eye for effects, the forecast of finish while
we are still working in the rough, obedience to the
demands of development and a deaf ear to whatever
calls us into the by-paths of caprice ; in short it im-
plies that the good writer is to be an artist.
Now something of this large requirement which
composition makes, the young writer instinctively
feels, and he is terrified. He knows how ill-fitted he
is to direct "toil cooperant to an end"; and when
he sits down to the desk and sees the white sheet of
paper before him, he shivers. Let him know that the
shiver is a suitable part of the performance. I well
remember the pleasure with which, as a young man, I
heard my venerable and practised professor of rheto-
ric say that he supposed there was no work known
to man more difficult than writing. Up to that time
I had supposed its severities peculiar to myself. It
cheered me, and gave me courage to try again, to
learn that I had all mankind for my fellow sufferers.
Where this is not understood, writing is avoided.
From such avoidance I would save the young writer
by my precept to seek every opportunity to write.
For most of us this is a new way of confronting com-
position treating it as an opportunity, a chance, and
not as a burden or compulsion. It saves from slavish-
ness and takes away the drudgery of writing, to view
each piece of it as a precious and necessary step in
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 93
the pathway to power. To those engaged in bread-
winning employments these opportunities will be few.
Spring forward to them, then, using them to the full.
Severe they will be because so few, for only practice
breeds ease; but on that very account let no one of
them pass with merely a second-best performance.
If a letter is to be written to a friend, a report to an
employer, a communication to a newspaper, see that
it has a beginning, a middle and an end. The ma-
jority of writings are without these pleasing adorn-
ments. Only the great pieces possess them. Bear
this in mind and win the way to artistic composition
by noticing what should be said first, what second
and what third.
I cannot leave this subject, however, without con-
gratulating the present generation on its advantages
over mine. Children are brought up to-day, in happy
contrast with my compeers, to feel that the pencil is
no instrument of torture, hardly indeed to distinguish
it from the tongue. About the time they leave their
mother's arms they take their pen in hand. On paper
they are encouraged to describe their interesting
birds, friends, adventures. Their written lessons are
almost as frequent as their oral, and they learn to
write compositions while not yet quite understanding
what they are about. Some of these fortunate ones
will, I hope, find the language I have sadly used about
the difficulty of writing extravagant. And let me say
94 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
too that since frequency has more to do with ease of
writing than anything else, I count the newspaper
men lucky because they are writing all the time, and I
do not think so meanly of their product as the present
popular disparagement would seem to require. It
is hasty work undoubtedly and bears the marks of
haste. But in my judgment, at no period of the Eng-
lish language has there been so high an average of
sensible, vivacious and informing sentences written as
appears in our daily press. With both good and evil
results, the distinction between book literature and
speech literature is breaking down. Everybody is
writing, apparently in verse and prose; and if the
higher graces of style do not often appear, neither on
the other hand do the ruder awkwardnesses and
obscurities. A certain straightforward English is be-
coming established. A whole nation is learning the
use of its mother tongue. Under such circumstances
it is doubly necessary that any one who is conscious of
feebleness in his command of English should promptly
and earnestly begin the cultivation of it.
My third precept shall be, " Remember the other
person." I have been urging self-cultivation in Eng-
lish as if it concerned one person alone, ourself.
But every utterance really concerns two. Its aim
is social. Its object is communication ; and while
unquestionably prompted halfway by the desire to
ease our mind through self-expression, it still finds
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 95
its only justification in the advantage somebody else
will draw from what is said. Speaking or writing
is, therefore, everywhere a double-ended process. It
springs from me, it penetrates him ; and both of these
ends need watching. Is what I say precisely what
I mean ? That is an important question. Is what I
say so shaped that it can readily be assimilated by
him who hears ? This is a question of quite as great
consequence and much more likely to be forgotten.
We are so full of ourselves that we do not remember
the other person. Helter-skelter we pour forth our
unaimed words merely for our personal relief, heed-
less whether they help or hinder him whom they still
purport to address. For most of us are grievously
lacking in imagination, which is the ability to go out-
side ourselves and take on the conditions of another
mind. Yet this is what the literary artist is always
doing. He has at once the ability to see for himself
and the ability to see himself as others see him. He
can lead two lives as easily as one life ; or rather, he
has trained himself to consider that other life as of
more importance than his, and to reckon his com-
fort, likings and labors as quite subordinated to the
service of that other. All serious literary work con-
tains within it this readiness to bear another's burden.
I must write with pains, that he may read with ease.
I must
Find out men's wants and wills,
And meet them there.
96 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
As I write, I must unceasingly study what is the line
of least intellectual resistance along which my thought
may enter the differently constituted mind ; and to
that line I must subtly adjust, without enfeebling,
my meaning. Will this combination of words or that
make the meaning clear ? Will this order of presen-
tation facilitate swiftness of apprehension, or will it
clog the movement? What temperamental perversi-
ties in me must be set aside in order to render my
reader's approach to what I would tell him pleasant ?
What temperamental perversities in him must be ac-
cepted by me as fixed facts, conditioning all I say?
These are the questions the skilful writer is always
asking.
And these questions, as will have been perceived
already, are moral questions no less than literary.
That golden rule of generous service by which we
do for others what we would have them do for us is
a rule of writing too. Every writer who knows his
trade perceives that he is a servant, that it is his
business to endure hardship if only his reader may
win freedom from toil, that no impediment to that
reader's understanding is too slight to deserve dili-
gent attention, that he has consequently no right to
let a single sentence slip from him unsocialized I
mean, a sentence which cannot become as naturally
another's possession as his own. In the very act of
asserting himself he lays aside what is distinctively
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 97
his. And because these qualifications of the writer
are moral qualifications they can never be com-
pletely fulfilled so long as we live and write. We
may continually approximate them more nearly, but
there will still always be possible an alluring refine-
ment of exercise beyond. The world of the literary
artist and the moral man is interesting through its
inexhaustibility; and he who serves his fellows by
writing or by speech is artist and moral man in one.
Writing a letter is a simple matter, but it is a moral
matter and an artistic; for it may be done either
with imagination or with raw self-centredness. What
things will my correspondent wish to know ? How
can I transport him out of his properly alien sur-
roundings into the vivid impressions which now are
mine ? How can I tell all I long to tell and still be
sure the telling will be for him as lucid and delight-
ful as for me ? Remember the other person, I say.
Do not become absorbed in yourself. Your interests
cover only the half of any piece of writing ; the other
man's less visible half is necessary to complete yours.
And if I have here discussed writing more than speech,
that is merely because when we speak we utter our
first thoughts, but when we write, our second, or
better still, our fourth ; and in the greater deliberation
which writing affords I have felt that the demands of
morality and art, which are universally imbedded in
language, could be more distinctly perceived. Yet
98 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
none the less truly do we need to talk for the other
person than to write for him.
But there remains a fourth weighty precept, and
one not altogether detachable from the third. It
is this: "Lean upon the subject." We have seen
how the user of language, whether in writing or in
speaking, works for himself; how he works for an-
other individual too ; but there is one more for whom
his work is performed, one of greater consequence
than any person, and that is his subject. From this
comes his primary call. Those who in their utter-
ance fix their thoughts on themselves, or on other
selves, never reach power. That resides in the sub-
ject. There we must dwell with it and be content
to have no other strength than its. When the fright-
ened schoolboy sits down to write about Spring, he
cannot imagine where the thoughts which are to make
up his piece are to come from. He cudgels his brain
for ideas. He examines his pen-point, the curtains,
his inkstand, to see if perhaps ideas may not be had
from these. He wonders what his teacher will wish
him to say and he tries to recall how the passage
sounded in the Third Reader. In every direction but
one he turns, and that is the direction where lies the
prime mover of his toil, his subject. Of that he is
afraid. Now, what I want to make evident is that
this subject is not in reality the foe, but the friend.
It is his only helper. His composition is not to be,
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 99
as he seems to suppose, a mass of his laborious inven-
tions, but it is to be made up exclusively of what the
subject dictates. He has only to attend. At present
he stands in his own way, making such a din with
his private anxieties that he cannot hear the rich sug-
gestions of the subject. He is bothered with consid-
ering how he feels, or what he or somebody else will
like to see on his paper. This is debilitating busi-
ness. He must lean on his subject, if he would have
his writing strong, and busy himself with what it
says rather than with what he would say. Matthew
Arnold, in the important preface to his poems of 1853,
contrasting the artistic methods of Greek poetry and
modern poetry, sums up the teaching of the Greeks
in these words: "All depends upon the subject;
choose a fitting action, penetrate yourself with the
feeling of its situations; this done, everything else
will follow." And he calls attention to the self-as-
sertive and scatter-brained habits of our time. " How
different a way of thinking from this is ours! We
can hardly at the present day understand what Me-
nander meant when he told a man who inquired as
to the progress of his comedy that he had finished it,
not having yet written a single line, because he had
constructed the action of it in his mind. A modern
critic would have assured him that the merit of his
piece depended on the brilliant things which arose
under his pen as he went along. I verily think that
100 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
the majority of us do not in our hearts believe that
there is such a thing as a total- impression to be de-
rived from a poem or to be demanded from a poet.
We permit the poet to select any action he pleases
and to suffer that action to go as it will, provided
he gratifies us with occasional bursts of fine writing
and with a shower of isolated thoughts and images."
Great writers put themselves and their personal im-
aginings out of sight. Their writing becomes a kind
of transparent window on which reality is reflected,
and through which people see, not them, but that of
which they write. How much we know of Shake-
speare's characters ! How little of Shakespeare ! Of
him that might almost be said which Isaiah said of
God, "He hideth himself." The best writer is the
best mental listener, the one who peers farthest into
his matter and most fully heeds its behests. Pre-
eminently obedient is such a writer, refinedly,
energetically obedient. I once spent a day with a
great novelist when the book which subsequently
proved his masterpiece was only half written. I
praised his mighty hero, but said I should think the
life of an author would be miserable who, having cre-
ated a character so huge, now had him in hand and
must find something for him to do. My friend seemed
puzzled by my remark, but after a moment's pause
said, " I don't think you know how we work. I have
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 101
nothing to do with the character. Now that he is
created he will act as he will."
And such docility must be cultivated by every one
who would write well, such strenuous docility. Of
course there must be energy in plenty; the imagina-
tion which I described in my third section, the pas-
sion for solid form as in my second, the disciplined
and daring powers as in my first ; but all these must
be ready at a moment's notice to move where the
matter calls and to acknowledge that all their worth
is to be drawn from it. Religion is only enlarged
good sense, and the words of Jesus apply as well
to the things of earth as of heaven. I do not know
where we could find a more compendious statement of
what is most important for one to learn who would
cultivate himself in English than the saying in which
Jesus announces the source of his power, "The
word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's
which sent me." Whoever can use such words will
be a noble speaker indeed.
These then are the fundamental precepts which
every one must heed who would command our beauti-
ful English language. There is of course a fifth. I
hardly need name it; for it always follows after,
whatever others precede. It is that we should do the
work, .and not think about it; do it day after day and
not grow weary in bad doing. Early and often we
must be busy and be satisfied to have a great deal of
102 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
labor produce but a small result. I am told that early
in life John Morley, wishing to engage in journal-
ism, wrote an editorial and sent it to a paper every
day for nearly a year before he succeeded in getting
one accepted. We all know what a power he became
in London journalism. I will not vouch for the truth
of this story, but I am sure an ambitious author is
wise who writes a weekly essay for his stove. Publi-
cation is of little consequence so long as one is getting
one's self hammered into shape.
But before I close this paper let me acknowledge
that in it I have neglected a whole class of helpful
influences, probably quite as important as any I have
discussed. Purposely I have passed them by. Be-
cause I wished to show what we can do for ourselves,
I have everywhere assumed that our cultivation in
English is to be effected by naked volition and a kind
of dead lift. These are mighty agencies, but seldom in
this interlocked world do they work well alone. They
are strongest when backed by social suggestion and
unconscious custom. Ordinarily the good speaker is
he who keeps good company, but increases the helpful
influence of that company by constant watchfulness
along the lines I have marked out. So supplemented,
my teaching is true. By itself it is not true. It
needs the supplementation of others. Let him who
would speak or write well seek out good speakers
and writers. Let him live in their society, for the
SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH 103
society of the greatest writers is open to the most
secluded, let him feel the ease of their excellence,
the ingenuity, grace and scope of their diction, and he
will soon find in himself capacities whose development
may be aided by the precepts I have given. Most
of us catch better than we learn. We take up uncon-
sciously from our surroundings what we cannot alto-
gether create. All this should be remembered, and
we should keep ourselves exposed to the wholesome
words of our fellow men. Yet our own exertions will
not on that account be rendered less important. We
may largely choose the influences to which we submit ;
we may exercise a selective attention among these in-
fluences ; we may enjoy, oppose, modify, or diligently
ingraft what is conveyed to us, and for doing any
one of these things rationally we must be guided by
some clear aim. Such aims, altogether essential even
if subsidiary, I have sought to supply ; and I would
reiterate that he who holds them fast may become
superior to linguistic fortune and be the wise director
of his sluggish and obstinate tongue. It is as certain
as anything can be that faithful endeavor will bring
expertness in the use of English. If we are watchful
of our speech, making our words continually more
minutely true, free and resourceful ; if we look upon
our occasions of writing as opportunities for the de-
liberate work of unified construction; if in all our
utterances we think of him who hears as well as of
104 SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH
him who speaks ; and above all, if we fix the attention
of ourselves and our hearers on the matter we talk
about and so let ourselves be supported by our subject
we shall make a daily advance not only in Eng-
lish study, but in personal power, in general service-
ableness and in consequent delight.
DOUBTS ABOUT UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 1
A STEP has lately been taken in American educa-
tion which excites the interest and hopes of us all.
England has been our teacher, England and a per-
suasive apostle from that country. A few years ago
the English universities became discontented with
their isolation. For generations they had been devot-
ing themselves to a single class in the community, and
that too a class which needed least to be brought to
intelligence and power. The mass of the nation, those
by whom its labor and commerce were conducted, had
little access to Oxford and Cambridge. Poverty first,
then social distinctions, and, until recent days, sec-
tarian haughtiness barred them out. Their exclu-
sion reacted on the training of the universities them-
selves. Conservatism nourished. The worth of an
intellectual interest was rated rather by its tradi-
tional character than by its closeness to life. The
sciences, latter-day things, were pursued hardly at
all. The modern literatures, English included, had
no place. Plato and Aristotle furnished most of the
philosophy. While the rest of the world was deriving
1 Printed in 1892.
106 UNIVERSITY EXTENSION
from Germany methods of study, from France meth-
ods of exposition, and from America methods of
treating all men alike as rational, English scholar-
ship, based on no gymnasia, lycees, or high schools,
went its way, little regarding the life of its nation or
that of the world at large.
But there has come a change. Reformers have
been endeavoring to go out and find the common man,
and, in connection with him, to develop those subjects
which before, according to university tradition, were
looked at somewhat askance. English literature,
political economy, modern history, have been put in
the foreground of this popularized education. Far
and wide throughout England an enthusiastic band of
young teachers, under the guidance of officers of the
universities, have been giving instruction in these sub-
jects to companies in which social grades are for the
time forgotten. And since public libraries are rare in
England, and among the poorer classes the reading
habit is but slightly formed, an ambitious few among
the hearers have prized their opportunities sufficiently
to undertake a certain amount of study and to hand
in papers for the lecturer to inspect and to mark. In
exceptional cases as many as one third of the audi-
ence have thus written exercises and passed exami-
nations. The great majority of those in attendance
during the three months' term of course do nothing
more than listen to the weekly lecture.
UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 107
This is the very successful English movement
which for some years has been exciting admiration
the world over, and. which it is proposed to introduce
into the United States. Rightly to estimate its worth
those aspects of it to which attention has just been
directed should carefully be borne in mind. They
are these : the movement is as much social as scholarly
and accompanies a general democratic upheaval of
an aristocratic nation ; it springs up in the neighbor-
hood of universities to which the common people do
not resort, and in which those subjects which most
concern the minds of modern men are little taught;
in its country other facilities for enabling the average
man to capture knowledge public libraries, reading
clubs, illustrated magazines, free high schools are
not yet general ; it flourishes in a small and compact
land, where a multitude of populous towns are in such
immediate neighborhood and so connected by a
network of railroads that he who is busied in one
place to-day can, with the slightest fatigue and ex-
pense, appear in five other towns during the remain-
ing days of the week.
These conditions, and others as gravely distinctive,
do not exist in America. From the first the American
college has been organized by the people and for the
people. It has been about as much resorted to by the
poor as by the rich. Through a widely developed sys-
tem of free public schools it has kept itself closely in
108 UNIVERSITY EXTENSION
touch with popular ideals. Its graduates go into com-
mercial life as often as into medicine, the ministry, or
the law. It has shown itself capable of expansion too
in adjusting itself to the modern enlargement of
knowledge. The rigid curriculum, which suited well
enough the needs of our fathers, has been discarded,
and every college, in proportion to the resources at its
command, now offers elective studies and seeks to
meet the needs of differing men. To all who can af'
ford four years (soon it may be three), and who are
masters of about half as much capital as would sup-
port them during the same time elsewhere, the four
hundred colleges of our country offer an education far
too good to be superseded, duplicated, or weakened.
In these colleges excellent provision has been made,
and has been made once for all, for everybody who
has a little time and a little money to devote to sys-
tematic education of the higher sort.
But our educational scheme has one serious limi-
tation, and during the last fifty years there have been
many earnest efforts to surmount it. Not every man is
free to seek a systematic training. Multitudes are tied
to daily toil and only in the evening can they con-
sider their own enlargement. Many grow old before
the craving for knowledge arises. Many also, with
more or less profit, have attended a college, but are
glad subsequently to supply those defects of educa-
tion which the experiences of life relentlessly bring
UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 109
to view. To all these classes, caught in the whirl of
affairs, the college does not minister. It is true that
much that such people want they get from the pub-
lic library, especially as our librarians of the modern
type energetically accept their duties as facilitators
of the public reading. Much is also obtainable from
the cheap issues of the press and from such endowed
courses of higher instruction as those of the Lowell,
Cooper, Brooklyn, Peabody, and Drexel institutes.
But, after all, these supplementary aids, though valu-
able, are deficient in guiding power. Most persons,
especially if novices, work best under inspection.
To learners teachers are generally important. There
seems to be still a place in our well-supplied country
for an organization which shall arouse a more gen-
eral desire for knowledge ; which shall stand ready to
satisfy this desire more cheaply, with less interrup-
tion to daily occupation, and consequently in ways
more fragmentary than the colleges can ; and yet one
which shall not leave its pupils alone with books, but
shall supply them with the impulse of the living word
and through writing, discussion and directed read-
ing, shall economize and render effective the costly
hours of learning. Unquestionably there is a field here
which the colleges cannot till, a field whose harvest
would enrich us all. Can any other agency till it?
To every experiment thus far it has yielded only
meagre, brief and expensive returns. A capital thing
110 UNIVERSITY EXTENSION
it would be to give to the busy that which normally
requires time and attention ; but how to do it is the
question, how to do it in reality, and not in mere
outward seeming.
Chautauqua has not done it, impassioned though
that rough and generous institution has been for wide
and fragmentary culture. Its work, indeed, has had
a different aim ; and, amusing as that work often ap-
pears, it ought to be understood and acknowledged
as of fundamental consequence in our hastily set-
tled and heterogeneous land. Chautauqua sends its
little books and papers into stagnant homes from
Maine to California and gives the silent occupants
something to think about. Conversation springs up ;
and with it fresh interests, fresh hopes. A new tie is
formed between young and old, as together they per-
sue the same studies and in the same graduating class
walk through the Golden Gate. Any man who loves
knowledge and his native land must be glad at heart
when he visits a summer assembly of Chautauqua:
there listens to the Orator's Recognition Address ; at-
tends the swiftly successive Round Tables upon Mil-
ton, Temperance, Geology, the American Constitu-
tion, the Relations of Science and Religion, and the
Doctrine of Rent; perhaps assists at the Cooking
School, the Prayer Meeting, the Concert and the
Gymnastic Drill ; or wanders under the trees among
the piazzaed cottages and sees the Hall of Philosophy
UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 111
and the wooden Doric Temple shining on their little
eminences ; and, best of all, perceives in what throngs
have gathered here the butcher, the baker, and
the candlestick-maker, a throng themselves, their
wives and daughters a throng all heated in body,
but none the less aglow for learning and a good time.
The comic aspects of this mixture of science, fresh
air, flirtation, Greek reminiscence, and devoutness
are patent enough ; but the way in which the multi-
tude is being won to discard distrust of knowledge,
and to think of it rather as the desirable goal for all,
is not so generally remarked by scholarly observers.
Yet that is the weighty fact. The actual product
in education may not be large; enthusiasm and the
memory may be more stimulated than the rational
intelligence. But minds are set in motion; an intel-
lectual world, beyond the domestic and personal,
begins to appear; studious thought forms its fit
friendship with piety, gladness and the sense of a
common humanity; a groundwork of civilization is
prepared. To find a popular movement so composite
and aspiring, we must go back to the mediaeval Cru-
sades or the Greek Mysteries. In these alone do we
observe anything so ideal, so bizarre, so expressive
of the combined intellectual and religious hopes of a
people. In many Chautauqua homes pathetic sac-
rifices will be made in the next generation to send
the boys and girls to a real college.
112 UNIVERSITY EXTENSION
Now, in proposing to transport to this country
English extension methods the managers have had in
mind nothing so elementarily important as Chautau-
qua. They have felt the pity we all feel for persons of
good parts who, through poverty or occupation, are
debarred from a college training. They seek to reach
minds already somewhat prepared, and to such they
undertake to supply solid instruction of the higher
grades. It is this more ambitious design which calls
for criticism. Professor R. G. Moulton speaks of ex-
tension education as "distinguished from school edu-
cation, being moulded to meet the wants of adults."
And again, "So far as method is concerned, we have
considered that we are bound to be not less thor-
ough, but more thorough, if possible, than the univer-
sities themselves." If, in the general educational
campaign, we liken Chautauqua to a guerrilla high
school, university extension will be a guerrilla college.
Both move with light armor, have roving commis-
sions, attack individuals, and themselves appear in
the garb of ordinary life ; but they are equipped for
a service in which the more cumbrous organizations
of school and college have thus far proved ineffective.
It is a fortunate circumstance that, with fields of
operation so distinct, no jealousy can exist between
the two bands of volunteers, or between them both
and the regular army. The success of either would
increase the success of the other two. To Chautau-
UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 113
qua we are all indebted for lessening the popular
suspicion of expert knowledge; and if the plans of
the extension committee could be carried out, college
methods would have a vogue, and a consequent
respect, which they have never yet enjoyed.
Every one, accordingly, civilian or professional,
wishes the movement well, and recognizes that the
work it proposes to do in our country is not at present
performed. Its aims are excellent. Are they also
practicable ? We cannot with certainty say that they
are not, but it is here that doubts arise, doubts of
three sorts : those which suspect a fundamental dif-
ference in the two countries which try the experiment ;
those which are incredulous about the permanent
response which our people will make to the educa-
tion offered ; and those which question the possibility
of securing a stable body of extension teachers. The
first set of these doubts has been briefly but sufficiently
indicated at the beginning of this paper ; the second
may with still greater brevity be summed up here in
the following connected series of inquiries :
With the multitude of other opportunities for edu-
cation which American life affords, will any large
body of men and women attend extension lectures ?
Will they attend after the novelty is worn off, say
during the third year ? Will they do anything more
than attend ? Will they follow courses of study, write
essays, and pass examinations? Will the extension
114 UNIVERSITY EXTENSION
system, any better than its decayed predecessor, the
old lyceum system, resist the demands of popular
audiences and keep itself from slipping out of serious
instruction into lively and eloquent entertainment?
If the lectures are kept true to their aim of furnishing
solid instruction, can they in the long run be paid for ?
Will it be possible to find in our country clusters of
half a dozen towns so grouped and so ready to sub-
scribe to a course of lectures on each day of the week
that out of the entire six a living salary can be ob-
tained ? Will the new teachers be obliged to confine
themselves to the suburbs of large cities, abandoning
the scattered dwellers in the country, that portion of
our population which is almost the only one at pre-
sent cut off from tolerable means of culture ? If in
order to pursue these destitute ones, correspondence
methods are employed, in addition to the already
approved methods of lecture instruction, will lower-
ing of the standard follow? In England three or
four years of extension lectures are counted equiva-
lent to one year of regular study, and a person who
has attended extension courses for this time may be
admitted without further examination to the second
year of university residence. Will anything of the sort
be generally attempted here ?
These grave questions are as yet insusceptible of
answer. Affirmative, desirable answers do not seem
probable ; but experience alone can make the matter
UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 115
plain. Of course the managers are watchfully bear-
ing such questions in mind, and critical watchfulness
may greatly aid the better answer and hinder the less
desirable. Accordingly anything like a discussion of
this class of practical doubts would be inappropriate
here. Data for the formation of a confident opinion
do not exist. All that can be done by way of warning
is to indicate certain large improbabilities, leaving
them to be confirmed or thwarted by time and human
ingenuity.
But with the third class of doubts the case is dif-
ferent. These relate to the constitution of the staff
of teachers, and here sufficient facts are at hand to
permit a few points to be demonstrated with con-
siderable certainty. When, for example, we ask from
what source teachers are to be drawn, we are usually
told that they must come from college faculties. If
the method of the extension lecturer is to be as
thorough as that of the universities themselves, the
lecturers must be experts, not amateurs; and where
except at the colleges does a body of experts exist ?
No doubt many well-trained men are scattered
throughout the community as merchants, doctors,
school-teachers, and lawyers. But these men, when
of proved power, have more than they properly can
attend to in their own affairs. It seems to be the
colleges, therefore, to which the movement must look
for its teachers; and in the experiments thus far
116 UNIVERSITY EXTENSION
made in this country the extension lecturing has been
done for the most part by college officers. A profes-
sor of history, political economy, or literature has, in
addition to his college teaching, also given a course
of instruction elsewhere. This feature of the Ameri-
can system, one may say with confidence, must prove
a constant damage to the work of the colleges and,
if persisted in, must ultimately destroy the extension
scheme itself.
In England the extension teachers are not univer-
sity teachers. To have no independent staff for exten-
sion work is a novelty of the American undertaking.
The very name, university extension, besides being
barbaric, is in its English employment largely mis-
leading ; since neither the agencies for extending nor
indeed, for the most part, the studies extended, are
found at the universities at all. A small syndicate
or committee, appointed from among the university
officers, is the only share the university has in the
business. The impression, so general in this country,
that English university teachers are roaming about
the island, lecturing to mixed audiences, is an entire
error. The university teachers stay at home and send
other people, their own graduates chiefly, to instruct
the multitude. A committee of them decides on the
qualifications for the work of such persons as care to
devote themselves to itinerant teaching as a profes-
sion. For those so selected they arrange times, places,
UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 117
and subjects ; but they themselves do not move from
their own lecture rooms. Nor is there occasion for
their doing so. In the slender development of popu-
lar education in England, many more persons of the
upper classes become trained as specialists than can
find places as university teachers. There thus arises
a learned and leisured accumulation which capitally
serves the country in case of a new educational need.
On this accumulated stock of cultured men men
who otherwise could not easily bring their culture to
market the extension movement draws. These
men are its teachers, its permanent teachers, since
there are not competing places striving to draw them
away. In the two countries the educational situation
is exactly reversed : in England there are more trained
men than positions ; in America, more positions than
trained men. It seems probable too that this con-
dition of things will continue long, so far as we are
concerned ; at least there is no present prospect of our
reaching a limit in the demand for competent men.
Whenever a college has a chair to fill, it is necessary
to hunt far and wide for a suitable person to fill it.
The demand is not from the old places alone. Almost
every year a new college is founded. Every year the
old ones grow. In twenty-five years Harvard has
quadrupled its staff. Columbia, Cornell, Princeton,
Yale, the University of Michigan, the University of
Pennsylvania, indeed almost every strong college
118 UNIVERSITY EXTENSION
in the country, shows an immense advance. A
Western state is no sooner settled than it establishes
a state university, and each of the sects starts from
one to three colleges besides. No such perpetual ex-
pansion goes on in England. The number of learned
positions there is measurably fixed. If more experts
than can fill them, or than care to enter political life,
the liberal professions, and the civil service, are manu-
factured in the course of a year, the surplus stock is
at the disposal of the extension syndicate. Many of
these men too are persons of means, to whom a posi-
tion of dignity is of more consequence than a large
salary. The problem, accordingly, of organizing pop-
ular instruction out of such a body of waiting ex-
perts is a comparatively simple one ; but it is not so
simple here. In our country any man who has a fair
acquaintance with a special subject and moderate
skill in imparting it, especially if he will be contented
with a small salary, can be pretty sure of college
appointment.
Naturally enough, therefore, the organizers of the
extension movement, despairing of finding among us
competent unattached teachers, have turned at once
to the colleges ; but the colleges are a very unsafe sup-
port to lean upon. A professor in a university where
the studies are elective has no more superfluous time
than a busy lawyer, or doctor, or business man.
Merely to keep up with the literature of a subject, to
UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 119'
say nothing of that research and writing which should
enlarge its limits, is an enormous task. Teaching
too is no longer an affair of text-books and recita-
tions. Leisurely days of routine ease belong to the
past. A professor nowadays must prepare lectures
incessantly; must perpetually revise them; must ar-
range examinations ; direct the reading of his students ;
receive their theses ; himself read a large part of their
voluminous written work; personally oversee his
advanced men ; gather them about him in laboratory,
seminary and conference; attend innumerable com-
mittee and faculty meetings; devise legislation for
the further development of his college and depart-
ment; correspond with schools and colleges where
his students, after taking their higher degree, may
suitably be placed ; and if at the end of a hard-worked
day he can find an hour's leisure, he must still keep
his door open for students or fellow-officers to enter.
So laborious have become the duties of a university
teacher that few large staffs now go through a year
without one or two of their members breaking down.
With the growing complexity of work it often seems
as if the proper business of college officers, study and
teaching, must some day cease altogether, crowded
out by the multifarious tasks with which they are
only indirectly connected. It is useless to say that
these things are not necessary. Whoever neglects
them will cease to make his college, his subject and
120 UNIVERSITY EXTENSION
his influence grow. It is because professors now see
that they cannot safely neglect them that the modern
college differs fundamentally from its humdrum pre-
decessor of a quarter of a century ago. Any move-
ment which seeks to withdraw a professor's attention
from these things, and induces him to put his soul
elsewhere, inflicts on the community a serious dam-
age. No amount of intellectual stimulus furnished
to little companies here and there can atone for the
loss that must fall on education when college teachers
pledge themselves to do serious work in other places
than in their own libraries and lecture rooms. To be
an explorer and a guide in a department of human
knowledge is an arduous profession. It admits no
half-hearted service.
Of course if the work demanded elsewhere is not
serious, the case is different. Rather with benefit than
with damage a college teacher may on occasion re-
cast the instruction that was intended for profession-
als and offer it to a popular audience. In this way a
professor makes himself known and makes his college
known. Many of the small colleges are now engaging
in university extension as an inexpensive means of
advertising themselves. But such lecturing is inci-
dental, voluntary and perpetually liable to interrup-
tion. Beyond the immediate series of lectures it can-
not be depended on. There is nothing institutional
about it. The men who undertake it are owned else-
UNIVERSITY EXTENSION 121
where, and a second mortgage is not usually a very
valuable piece of property. A movement which places
its reliance on the casual teaching of overworked men
is condemned from the start. University extension
can never pass beyond the stage of amateurism and
temporary expedient until, like its English namesake,
it has a permanent staff of instructors exclusively de-
voted to its service.
Where, then, is such a staff to be obtained ? In
view of the conditions of education in this country
already described, it is improbable that it can be ob-
tained at all. But something may still be done,
something, however, of a more modest sort than en-
thusiasts at present have in mind. There issue from
our great universities every year a number of men
who have had two or three years' training beyond
their bachelor's degree. Some of them have had a
year or two of foreign study. They frequently wish
to teach. Places do not immediately open to them.
If the extension movement would set them to work,
it might have all their time at a moderate salary for
two or three years. Such men, it is true, would be
inexperienced, and their connection with itinerant
teaching could not be rendered lasting. As soon as
one of them proved his power as a teacher, some
college would call him ; and he would seldom prefer
the nomadic and fragmentary life to an established
one. Plainly too under the charge of such men the
122 UNIVERSITY EXTENSION
grade of instruction could not be the highest ; but it
might be sound, inspiriting even, and it is in any case
all that present circumstances render possible. We
may mourn that those who are masters in their several
provinces are already fully employed. We may wish
there were a multitude of masters sitting about, ready
for enlistment in a missionary undertaking. But there
are no such masters. The facts are evident enough ;
and if the extension movement aims at a durable
existence, it will respect these facts. The men it
wants it cannot have without damaging them; and
damaging them, it damages the higher education of
which they are the guardians. Teachers of a lower
grade are at hand, ready to be experimented with.
The few experiments already tried have been fairly
successful. Let the extension leaders give up all
thought of doing here what has been done in Eng-
land. The principal part of that work is performed
for us by other means. The wisest guidance, ac-
cordingly, may not lead the movement to any long
success. If, however, university extension will keep
itself clearly detached from other educational agen-
cies and make a quiet offer of humble yet service-
able instruction, there is a fair prospect that by
somewhat slow degrees a permanent new power
may be added to the appliances for rendering busy
Americans intelligent.
VI
SPECIALIZATION 1
LADIES and gentlemen of the graduating class,
this afternoon belongs to you. This morning we dedi-
cated a chime of bells to the memory of Mrs. Palmer,
and in those moving exercises you had but a slen-
der share. Probably not half a dozen of you ever
saw her who, once seen, was loved with romantic
ardor. Undoubtedly many of you are different from
what you would have been had she not lived, and
lived here ; for her influence so passed into the struc-
ture of this University that she will shape successive
generations of you for a long time to come. But
enough of her. Let us dismiss her from our thoughts.
Too much praise we have already lavished on one
who was ever simple and self-forgetting. She would
chide our profusion. If we would think as she would
wish us to think, let us turn rather to the common
matters of the day, reflecting on those joys and per-
plexities which have attended you throughout these
formative years. One especially among these per-
1 On the morning of June 9, 1908, a chime of bells was dedi-
cated at the University of Chicago in honor of Alice Freeman
Palmer. At the Convocation Exercises in the afternoon the fol-
lowing address was delivered.
124 SPECIALIZATION
plexities, perhaps the greatest of all, I would invite
you to consider now. Let me set it clearly before
you.
This morning I sat down to breakfast with about
a hundred of you who had entered on the attainment
of the highest degree which this University offers.
You were advanced specialists. You had each chosen
some single line of endeavor. But even then I re-
membered that you were not the only specialists here.
Before me this afternoon I see candidates in medi-
cine, men and women who have taken for their spe-
cialty the warfare with pain and disease. They have
said, "All that I can ever know, I will bring to bear
on this urgent problem." Here also are the lawyers,
impassioned for justice, for the quelling of human
strife. That is their specialty. They too restrict them-
selves to a single point of view. Beside them sit the
scientific men, who looking over the vast expanse of
nature have accepted the task of tracing the physi-
cal aspects of this marvellous machine. Nor can I
stop here. Throughout the undergraduate depart-
ment, as we all know, run dominant interests. I
should be ashamed of a young man who in his four
years had not found some compulsive interest; for
it is only when an interest compels that we can
say that education has begun. So long as we are
simply learning what is set before us, taking the
routine mass of academic subjects, we may be faith-
SPECIALIZATION 125
ful students, but we are not scholars. No, it is when
with a free heart we give ourselves to a subject, bid-
ding it take of us all it demands and feeling that we
had rather attend to it than to anything else, because
it expresses our personal desires then it is that its
quickening influence takes hold. But this is speciali-
zation. We might think of the University of Chicago
then as a great specializing machine.
But why has each of you set himself this task of
specialization ? Because the world needs leaders, and
you have chosen yourselves to be those leaders. Are
you aware how exceptional is your condition ? The
last census shows that at present hardly one per cent
of our population is in our colleges. You are of that
one per cent, and you are here in order that you may
enlighten the other ninety-nine per cent. If through
ignorance you fail, you will cause others to fail and
you had better never have come to this University.
To some sort of leadership you have dedicated your-
selves, and to this aim you should be true. But do
not at times doubts cross your mind ? Have you
not occasionally asked yourselves whether you can
attain such leadership and make the most of your
lives by shutting yourselves up to a specialty ? Mul-
titudes of interesting things are calling; shall you
turn away from them and follow a single line ? It will
be worth while to-day to consider these fundamental
questions and inquire how far we are justified in
126 SPECIALIZATION
specializing, what dangers there are in it, and in what
degree those dangers may be avoided.
Let me say, then, at the start, that I regard speciali-
zation as absolutely essential to scholarship. There
is no scholarship without it, for it is involved in the
very process of knowing. When I look at this desk
I am specializing; that is, I am detaching this piece
of furniture from all else in the room. I am limiting
myself, and I cannot see without it. I can gaze with-
out specialization, but I cannot see without speciali-
zation. If I am to know anything by sight, that know-
ledge must come through the limitation of sight. I
seize this object, cast away all others, and thus fix
my attention. Or if I am carefully to observe, I
even put my eye on a single point of the desk. There
is no other way. Clear knowledge becomes possible
only through precise observation. Now specialization
is nothing but this necessary limitation of attention ;
and we, as specialists, are merely carrying out on a
large scale what every human being must practise
in some degree whenever he knows. We employ the
process persistently, and for the sake of science are
willing to hold ourselves steadily to a single line of
observation. And we cannot do otherwise. The prin-
ciples involved in the specialization of the senses
run throughout all science. If we would know, we
must hold the attention long on a given subject.
But there is an unfortunate side to specialization.
SPECIALIZATION 127
It obliges us to discard other important interests.
To discard merely unimportant ones is easy. But
every evening when I sit down to devote myself to
my ethics I am aware that there are persons starving
in Boston who might be saved if I should drop my
work and go to them. Yet I sit calmly there and say,
"Let them starve; I am going to study ethics." I
do not see how I could be a suitable professor of
ethics unless I were willing thus to limit myself. That
is the hard part, as I understand it, of specialization,
the cutting off of things that are worth while. I
am sure you have already found it out. Many of
you have come from places of narrow opportunity
and here find a welcome abundance. Remembering
how you have longed to obtain such privileges, you
will be tempted to scatter yourselves over a wide
field, gathering a little here and a little there. At
the end of the year you will have nothing, if you do
that. The only possibility of gain is to choose your
field, devote serious time to it, count yourself a
specialist, and propose to live like one. Goethe ad-
mirably announces the principle : " Wer grosses will
muss sich beschranken konnen." You must accept
limitations if you will go on to power, for in limita-
tion the very process of knowledge is rooted.
Furthermore, not only is specialization forced upon
us by the nature of knowledge, but without it our
own powers cannot receive appropriate discipline. It
128 SPECIALIZATION
is difficult business to fashion a sound observer. Each
province of science has its special modes of observa-
tion, its own modes of reasoning even. So long as
we are unfamiliar with these and obliged to hold
ourselves to them through conscious control, our
work is poor. It is slow, inaccurate, and exhausting.
Only when we have trained ourselves to such aptitudes
that within a certain field our observations and rea-
sonings are instinctive do we become swift, sure, and
unfatigued in research. To train our powers then
we must begin to specialize early and hold ourselves
steadily within bounds. As one looks over the names
of those who have accomplished much, one is sur-
prised at the number who were early specialists.
Take my own department : Berkeley writes his great
work when he is twenty-five; Hume publishes his
masterpiece at twenty-seven. Or again, Keats had
brought his wonderful results to accomplishment and
died at twenty-five; Shelley at thirty; Marlowe, the
greatest loss English letters ever met, at twenty-seven.
It is just the same in other fields : Alexander dies
at thirty-six, Jesus at thirty-three. Yes, let us look
nearer home: the most forcible leader American
education has ever had became president of Harvard
University at thirty-five; President Hyde of Bow-
doin took his position at twenty-seven ; my own wife,
Alice Freeman, was president of Wellesley at twenty-
six. These are early specialists; and because they
SPECIALIZATION 129
specialized early they acquired an aptitude, a smooth-
ness of work, a precision of insight, and width of power
which could not have been theirs had they begun
later. I would not deny that there have been geniuses
who seemed to begin late: Kant was such; Locke
was such. You will recall many within your own
fields. But I think when you search the career of
those who come to power in comparatively late
years, you will find that there has usually been a train
of covert specialization running through their lives.
They may not have definitely named their field to
themselves, or produced work within that field in
early years, but everything had been converging
toward that issue. I believe, therefore, you ought to
respect your specialty, because only through it can
your powers be brought to their highest accuracy
and service.
One more justification of specialization I will briefly
mention, that it is necessary for the organization of
society. No motive is good for much until it is social-
ized. If specialization only developed our individual
selves, we could hardly justify it ; but it is the means
of progress for society. The field of knowledge is
vast; no man can master it, and its immensity was
never so fully understood as to-day. The only way
the whole province can be conquered and brought
under subjection to human needs is by parting it out,
one man being content to till his little corner while
130 SPECIALIZATION
his neighbor is engaged on something widely differ-
ent. We must part out the field of knowledge and
specialize on our allotted work, in order that there
may be entirety in science. If we seek to have en-
tirety in ourselves, science will be fragmentary and
feeble. That division of labor which has proved ef-
ficient everywhere else is no less needful in science.
But I suppose it is hardly necessary to justify
specialization to this audience. Most of you have
staked heavily on it, putting yourselves to serious
inconvenience, many of you heavily mortgaging your
future, in order to come here and devote yourselves
to some single interest. I might confidently go through
this room asking each of you what is your subject?
And you would proudly reply, " My subject is this.
My subject is this. My subject is this." I think you
would feel ashamed if you had not thus specialized.
I see no occasion, therefore, to elaborate what I have
urged. As I understand it, the three roots of speciali-
zation are these : it is grounded in the very nature of
the knowing process; it is grounded in the needs of
ourselves as individuals, in order that we may attain
our maximum efficiency ; it is grounded in the needs
of society, because only so can society reach that
fulness of knowledge which its progress requires.
But, after all, the beliefs which are accepted as
matters of course in this room are largely denounced
outside it. We must acknowledge that our confidence
SPECIALIZATION 131
in specialization encounters many doubts in the com-
munity. It may be well, then, to place ourselves
where that community stands and ask the general
public to tell us why it doubts us, what there is in
our specialized attitude which it thinks defective, and
what are the complaints which it is disposed to bring
against us ? I will try to take the position of devil's
advocate and plead the cause of the objector to
specialization.
Specialization, it is said, leads to ignorance; in-
deed it rather aims at ignorance than knowledge.
When I attend to this desk, it is true I secure a bit
of knowledge, but how small is that bit in compari-
son to all the things in this room which I might know
about! It is but a fraction. Yet I have condemned
all else in the room to ignorance, reserving only this
one little object for knowledge. Now that is what we
are all of us doing on a great scale; by specializ-
ing, by limiting our attention, we cut off what is not
attended to. It is often assumed that attention is
mainly a positive affair and occupied with what we
are to know. But that is a very small portion of it ;
really its important part is the negative, the removal
of what we do not wish to observe. We cut ourselves
off from the great mass of knowledge which is offered.
Is it not then true that every specialist has disciplined
himself to be an ignoramus ? He has drawn a fence
around a little portion of the universe and said,
132 SPECIALIZATION
"Within that fence I know something." "Yes," the
public replies, " but you do not know anything out-
side." And is not the public right? When we step
forward and claim to be learned men, is not the
public justified in saying, " I know a great deal more
than you do ; I know a thousandjhings_and you know
^^onlvone. You say you know that one through and
through, and of course I do not know my thousand
things through and through. But it is not necessary.
I perceive their relations ; I can handle them ; I can
use them in practice; can you ?" " Well, no," we are
obliged to say, "we specialists are a little fumbling
when we try to take hold of the world. We are not
altogether skilful in action, just because we are such
specialists." You students here have been devoting
yourselves to some one point I am afraid many
of you are going to have sad experience of it you
have been learning to know something nobody else
on earth does know, and then you go forth to seek a
position. But the world may have no use for you;
there are only two or three positions of that sort in
the country, and those may happen to be filled. Just
because you are such an elaborate scholar you can-
not earn your daily bread. You have cut yourself
off from everything but that one species of learning,
and that does not happen to be wanted. Therefore
you are not wanted. Such is the too frequent con-
dition of the specialist. The thousand things he does
SPECIALIZATION 133
not know; it is only the one thing he does know.
And because he is so ignorant, he is helpless.
Turning then to our second justification of special- "
ization, the case seems equally bad. I said that
specialization was needed for the training of our
powers. The training of them all ? Not that, but
the training of only certain ones among them. The
others hang slack. In those regions of ourselves we
count for little. We are men of weight only within
the range of the powers we have trained ; and what
a large slice of us lies outside these ! Accordingly the
general public declares that there is no judgment so
bad as the judgment of a specialist. Few practical
situations exactly coincide with his specialty, and
outside his specialty his judgment is worse than that
of the novice. He has been training himself in ref-
erence to something precise; and the moment he
ventures beyond it, the very exactitude of his disci-
pline limits his worth. The man who has not been a
specialist, who has dabbled in all things and has ac-
quired a rough and ready common sense, that man's
judgment is worth something in many different sec-
tions of life, but the judgment of the specialist is
painfully poor beyond his usual range. You remem-
ber how, in the comic opera, the practice is satirized
of appointing a person who has never been at sea
to take charge of the navy of a great country. But
that is the only sensible course to pursue. Put a
134 SPECIALIZATION
specialist there, and the navy will be wretchedly or-
ganized, because the administration of the navy re-
quires something more than the specialism of sea-
manship. It is necessary to coordinate seamanship
with many other considerations, and the man trained
in the specialty of seamanship is little likely to have
that ability. Therefore ordinarily we use our experts
best by putting them under the control of those who
are not experts. Common sense has the last word.
The coordinating power which has not been disci-
plined in single lines is what ultimately takes the
direction of affairs. We need the specialist within
his little field ; shut him up there, and he is valuable
enough ; but don't let him escape. That seems to
be the view of the public. They keep the specialist
confined because they utterly distrust his judgment
when he extends himself abroad.
And when we look at the third of our grounds for
justification, social need, the public declares that
the specialists are intolerably presumptuous. Know-
ing their own subject, they imagine they can dictate
to anybody and do not understand how limited is
their importance. Again and again it happens that
because a man does know some one thing pretty well
he sets himself up as a great man in general. My
own province suffers in this respect more than most ;
for as soon as a man acquires considerable skill in
chemistry or biology, he is apt to issue a pronuncia-
SPECIALIZATION 135
mento on philosophy. But philosophy does not suffer
alone. Everywhere the friends of the great specialist
are telling him he has proved himself a mighty man,
quite competent to sit in judgment on the universe;
and he, forgetting that the universe and the par-
ticular subject he knows something about are two
different things, really imagines that his ignorant
opinions deserve consideration.
Now I suppose we must acknowledge that in all
this blasphemy against our calling, there is a good
deal of truth. These certainly are dangers which all
of us specialists incur. I agree that they are inevi-
table dangers. Do not, however, let us on account
of them abandon specialization and seek to acquire
a mass of miscellaneous information. Bacon said, " I
take all knowledge for my province." If we say it,
we shall become not Bacons but fools. No, that is
the broad road to ignorance. But laying these pro-
found dangers of specialization well to heart, assured
that they beset us all, let us search for remedial
measures. Let us ask how such dangers may be re-
duced to a minimum. Is there a certain way in which
we may engage in the specialist's research and still
save ourselves from some of the evils I have here de-
picted ? I think there is. To find it we will follow
the same three avenues which have been leading us
thus far.
In regard to the first, the limitation of attention,
136 SPECIALIZATION
I understand that, after all, our specialty cannot
fill our entire life. We do sometimes sit down to
dinner ; we occasionally talk with a friend ; we now
and then take. a journey; we permit ourselves from
time to time to read some other book than one which
refers to our subject. That is, I take it, if we are fully
alive to the great danger that in specializing we are
cutting off a large part of the universe, we shall be
wise in gathering eagerly whatever additional know-
ledge we may acquire outside our specialty. And I
must say that the larger number of eminent special-
ists whom I have happened to know have been men
pretty rich in knowledge outside their specialties.
They were men who well apprehended the extreme
danger of their limited modes of pursuit and who
greedily grasped, therefore, at every bit of know-
ledge they could obtain which lay beyond their
province. They appropriated all the wisdom they
could; and merely because it did not exactly fit in
with their specialty, they did not turn it away. I do
not know how far it is wise to go in this effort to re-
pair the one-sidedness in which most of us are com-
pelled to live. A rather extreme case was once brought
to my attention. There was a student at Harvard who
had been a high scholar with me, and I found that
he was also so specializing in the classics that when
he graduated he took classical honors. Some years
later I learned that he was one of the highest scholars
SPECIALIZATION 137
in the Medical School. Meeting him a few years after
he had entered his profession, I asked, "How did
it happen that you changed your mind so mark-
edly ? You devoted yourself to classics and philosophy
in college. What made you finally decide to become
a physician ? " " Finally decide ! " said he. " Why,
from childhood up I never intended to be anything
else." " But," I persisted, " I cannot be mistaken in
recalling that you devoted yourself in college to
classics and philosophy." "Yes," he said, "I did,
because I knew I should never have another chance
at those subjects. I was going to give the rest of my
life to medicine, so I took those years for classics and
philosophy." I asked, " Was n't that a great mis-
take; haven't you now found out your blunder?"
" Oh, no," said he, " I am a much better physician
on that account ; I could not have done half so well
if I had n't had all that training in philosophy and
classics." Now I cannot advise such a course for
everybody. It takes a big man to do that. If you are
big enough, it is worth while laying a very broad
foundation ; but considering the size on which most
of us are planned, it is wiser to begin early and
specialize from the very start.
Well, then, here is one mode of making up for the
defects of specialization : we may pick up knowledge
outside our subject. But it is an imperfect mode;
you never can put away your limitations altogether.
138 SPECIALIZATION
You can do a great deal. Use your odd quarter-
hours wisely and do not merely play in fragmentary
times, understanding that these are precious seasons
for acquiring the knowledge which lies beyond your
province. Then every time you talk with anybody,
lead him neatly to what he knows best, keeping an
attentive ear, becoming a first-class listener, and seek-
ing to get beyond yourself. By doing so you will un-
doubtedly much enlarge the narrow bounds to which
you have pledged yourself. Yet this policy will not be
enough. It will require to be supplemented by some-
thing more. Therefore I should say in the second
place, that in disciplining our powers we must be care-
ful to conceive our specialty broadly enough. In tak-
ing it too narrowly lies our chief danger. There are
two types of specialist. There is the man who regards
his specialty as a door into which he goes and by
which he shuts the world out, hiding himself with his
own little interests. That is the petty, poor specialist,
the specialist who never becomes a man of power,
however much he may be a man of learning. But
there is an entirely different sort of specialist from
that; it is the man who regards his specialty as a
window out of which he may peer upon all the world.
His specialty is merely a point of view from which
everything is regarded. Consequently without depart-
ing from our specialty each of us may escape narrow-
ness. Instead of running over all the earth and con-
SPECIALIZATION 139
templating it in a multitude of different aspects, the
wise specialist chooses some single point of view and
examines the universe as it is related to this. Every-
thing therefore has a meaning for him, everything con-
tributes something to his specialty. Narrowing him-
self while he is getting his powers disciplined, as those
powers become trained he slacks them off and gives
them a wider range; for he knows very well that
while the world is cut up into little parcels it never
can be viewed rightly. It will always be distorted.
For, after all, things are what they are through their
relations, and if you snap those relations you never
truly conceive anything. Accordingly, as soon as
we have got our specialty, we should begin to coor-
dinate that specialty with everything else. At first
we may fix our attention on some single problem
within a given field, but soon we discover that we
cannot master that problem without knowing the
rest of the field also. As we go on to know the rest
of the field and make ourself a fair master of that
science, we discover that that science depends on
other sciences. Never was there an age of the world
in which this interlocking of the sciences was so
clearly perceived as in our day. Formerly we seemed
able to isolate a particular topic and know something
of it, but in our evolutionary time nothing of that
kind is possible. Each thing is an epitome of the
whole. Have you been training your eye to see a
140 SPECIALIZATION
world in a grain of sand ? Can you look through your
specialty out upon the total universe and say : " I am
a specialist merely because I do not want to be a
narrow man. My specialty is my telescope. Every-
thing belongs to me. I cannot, it is true, turn to
it all at once. Being a feeble person I must advance
from point to point, accepting limitations ; but just
as fast as I can, having mastered those limitations,
I shall cast them aside and press on into ever broader
regions."
But I said specialization was fundamentally justi-
fied through the organization of society, because by
its division of toil we contribute our share to the total
of human knowledge; and yet the popular objector
declares that we are presumptuous, and because we
have mastered our own specialty we are apt to as-
sume ourselves capable of pronouncing judgment over
the whole field. Undoubtedly there is this danger;
but such a result is not inevitable. The danger is
one which we are perfectly capable of setting aside.
The temper of our mind decides the matter, and this
is entirely within our control. What is the use of our
going forth presumptuous persons ? We certainly
shall be unserviceable if we are persons of that type.
That is not the type of Charles Darwin in biology,
of William James in psychology, of Horace Howard
Furness in Shakespeare criticism, of Albert Michel-
son in physics. These are men as remarkable for
SPECIALIZATION 141
modesty and simplicity as for scholarly insight. The
true characteristic of a learned specialist is humility.
What we want to be training ourselves in is respect
for other people and a sense of solidarity with them.
Our work would be of little use if there were not
somebody at our side who cared nothing for that
work of ours and cared immensely for his own. It
is our business to respect that other man, whether
he respects us or not. We must learn to look upon
every specialist as a fellow worker. Without him we
cannot be perfect. Let us make ourselves as large
as possible, in order that we may contribute our little
something to that to which all others are contributing.
It is this cooperative spirit which it should be ours
to acquire. And it seems to me that you are under
peculiarly fortunate circumstances for acquiring it.
What strikes me as fatal is to have a group of young
specialists taken and trained by themselves, de-
tachedly, shut off from others. Nothing of that sort
occurs here. Every day you are rubbing shoulders
with persons who have other interests than yours.
When you walk to dinner, you fall in with a comrade
who has been spending his day over something widely
unlike that which has concerned you. Possibly you
have been able to lead him to talk about it ; possibly
you have gained an insight into what he was seeking,
and seen how his work largely supplements your own.
If you have had proper respect for him and proper
142 SPECIALIZATION
humility in regard to yourself, this great society of
specialists has filled out your work for you day after
day ; and in that sense of cooperation, of losing your-
selves in the common service of scientific mankind,
you have found the veritable glory of these happy
years.
VII
THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT 1
A FEW years ago Matthew Arnold, after travelling
in this country and revising the somewhat unfavor-
able opinion of us which he had formed earlier and at
a distance, still wrote in his last paper on Civiliza-
tion in the United States that America, in spite of
its excellences, is an uninteresting land. He thought
our institutions remarkable. He pointed out how
close a fit exists between them and the character of
the citizens, a fit so close as is hardly to be found
in other countries. He saw much that is of promise
in our future. But after all, he declares that no man
will live here if he can live elsewhere, because Amer-
ica is an uninteresting land.
This remark of Mr. Arnold's is one which we may
well ponder. As I consider how many of you are
preparing to go forth from college and establish
yourselves in this country, I ask myself whether
you must find your days uninteresting. You cer-
tainly have not been finding them uninteresting here.
Where were college days ever dull ? It is a beauti-
ful circumstance that, the world over, the period of
1 Delivered at the first commencement of the Woman's College
of Western Reserve University.
144 THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
education is the period of romance. No such thing
was ever heard of as a college student who did not
enjoy himself, a college student who was not full of
hope. And if this has been the case with us prosaic
males of the past, what must be the experience of
your own hopeful sex ? I am sure you are looking for-
ward with eagerness to your intended work. Is it
to be blighted ? Are you to find life dull ? It might
seem from the remark of Mr. Arnold that it would
probably be so, for you must live in an uninteresting
land.
When this remark of Mr. Arnold's was first made
a multitude of voices in all parts of our country de-
clared that Mr. Arnold did not know what he was
talking about. As a stupid Englishman he had come
here and had failed to see what our land contains.
In reality every corner of it is stuffed with that
beauty and distinction which he denied. For that
was the offensive feature of his statement: he had
said in substance the chief sources of interest are
beauty and distinction. America is not beautiful.
Its scenery, its people, its past, are not distinguished.
It is impossible, therefore, for an intelligent and cul-
tivated man to find permanent interests here.
The ordinary reply to these unpleasant sayings was,
"America is beautiful, America is distinguished."
But on the face of the matter this reply might well
be distrusted. Mr. Arnold is not a man likely to
THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT 145
make such a mistake. He is a trained observer.
His life has been passed in criticism, and criticism of
an extremely delicate sort. It seems to me it must be
rather his standards than his facts which are at
fault. Many of us would be slow to believe our
teacher had made an error in observation ; for to
many of us he has been a very great teacher indeed.
Through him we have learned the charm of sim-
plicity, the refinement of exactitude, the strength of
finished form ; we have learned calmness in trial too,
the patience of duty, ability to wait when in doubt ;
in short, we have learned dignity, and he who teaches
us dignity is not a man lightly to be forgotten or dis-
paraged. I say, therefore, that this answer to Mr.
Arnold, that he was in error, is one which on its face
might prudently be distrusted.
But for other than prudential reasons I incline to
agree with Mr. Arnold's opinion. Even though I
were not naturally disposed to credit his judgment,
I should be obliged to acknowledge that my own
observations largely coincide with his. In Europe I
think I find beauty more abundant than in America.
Certainly the distinguished objects, the distinguished
persons, whom I go there to see, are more numerous
than those I might by searching find here. I cannot
think this portion of Mr. Arnold's statement can be
impugned. And must we then accept his conclusion
and agree that your lives, while sheltered in this in-
146 THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
teresting college, are themselves interesting ; but that
when you go forth the romance is to pass away?
I do not believe it, because I question the standard
which Mr. Arnold employs. He tells us that the
sources of the interesting are beauty and distinction.
I doubt it. However much delight and refreshment
these may contribute to our lives, I do not believe
they predominantly constitute our interests.
Evidently Mr. Arnold cannot have reached his
opinion through observation, for the commonest facts
of experience confute him. There is in every com-
munity a certain class of persons whose business it
is to discover what people regard as interesting.
These are the newspaper editors; they are paid to
find out for us interesting matters every day. There
is nothing they like better than to get hold of some-
thing interesting which has not been observed before.
Are they then searchers for beauty and distinction ?
I should say not. Here are the subjects which these
seekers after interesting things discussed in my
morning paper. There is an account of disturb-
ances in South America. There is a statement about
Mr. Elaine's health. There is a report of a prize
fight. There are speculations about the next general
election. There is a description of a fashionable wed-
ding. These things interest me, and I suspect they
interest the majority of the readers of that paper;
though they can hardly be called beautiful or distin-
THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT 147
guished. Obviously, therefore, if Mr. Arnold had
inspected the actual interests of to-day, he would
have been obliged to recognize some other basis for
them than beauty and distinction.
Yet I suppose all will feel it would be better if
the trivial matters which excite our interest in the
morning journal were of a more beautiful, of a more
distinguished sort. Our interests would be more hon-
orable then. These things interest merely because
they are facts, not because they are beautiful. A fact
is interesting through being a fact, and this common-
est and most basal of interests Mr. Arnold has over-
looked. He has not perceived that life itself is its
own unceasing interest.
Before we can decide, however, whether he has
overlooked anything more, we must determine what
is meant by beauty. Let us analyze the matter a
little. Let us see if we can detect why the beauti-
ful and the distinguished are interesting, and still
how we can provide a place for the other interests
which are omitted in his statement. If we should
look at a tree and ask ourselves why this tree is
more beautiful than another, we should probably
find we had thought it so on some such grounds as
these: the total bunch of branches and leaves, that
exquisite green mass sunning itself, is no larger than
can well be supported on the brown trunk. It is
large enough; there is nothing lacking. If it were
148 THE GLORY OP THE IMPERFECT
smaller, the office of the trunk would hardly be ful-
filled. If larger, the trunk would be overpowered.
Those branches which extend themselves to the right
adequately balance those which are extended to the
left. Scrutinizing it, we find every leaf in order,
each one ready to aerate its little sap and so con-
duce to the life of the whole. There is no decay,
no broken branch. Nothing is deficient, but at the
same time there is nothing superfluous. Each part
ministers to every part. In all parts the tree is pro-
portionate beautiful, intrinsically beautiful, be-
cause it is unsuperfluous, unlacking.
And when we turn to other larger, more intricately
beautiful objects, we find the same principle involved.
Fulness of relations among the parts, perfection of
organism, absence of incongruity, constitute the
beauty of the object. Were you ever in Wiltshire
in England, and did you visit the splendid seat of
the Earls of Pembroke, Wilton House ? It is a mag-
nificent pile, designed by Holbein the painter, erected
before Elizabeth began to reign. Its green lawns,
prepared ages ago, were adapted to their positions
originally and perform their ancient offices to-day.
Time has changed its gardens only by making them
more lovely than when they were planned. So har-
monious with one another are grounds and castle
that, looking on the stately dwelling, one imagines
that the Creator himself must have had it in mind in
THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT 149
his design of the spot. And when you enter, all is
equally congruous. Around the central court runs
the cloistered statuary gallery, out of which open
the several halls. Passing through these, you notice
the portraits not only of past members of the family
^ men who have been among the most distinguished
of England's worthies but also portraits of the
eminent friends of the Pembrokes, painted by nota-
ble artists who were often themselves also friends
of the family. In the library is shown Sidney's
"Arcadia," written in this very garden, with a lock
of Elizabeth's hair inclosed. In the chief hall a play
of Shakespeare's is reported to have been performed
by his company. Half a dozen names that shine in
literature lend intellectual glory to the place. But
as you walk from room to room, amazed at the accu-
mulation of wealth and proud tradition, you perceive
how each casual object makes its separate contri-
bution to the general impression of stateliness. A
glance from a window discloses an enchanting view :
in the distance, past the cedars, rises the spire of
Salisbury Cathedral, one of the most peaceful and
aspiring in England. All parts scenery, buildings,
rich possessions, historic heritages minister to parts.
Romantic imagination is stirred. It is beautiful,
beautiful beyond anything America can show.
And if We turn to that region where beauty is
most subtly embodied, if we turn to human character,
150 THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
we find the conditions not dissimilar. The character
which impresses us most is that which has fully or-
ganized its powers, so that every ability finds its
appropriate place without prominence; one with no
false humility and without self-assertion ; a character
which cannot be overthrown by petty circumstance,
but, steadfast in itself, no part lacking, no part su-
perfluous, easily lets its ample functions assist one
another in all that they are summoned to perform.
When we behold a man like this, we say, "This is
what I would be. Here is the goal toward which I
would tend. This man, like Wilton House, like the
beautiful tree, is a finished thing." It is true when
we turn our attention back and once more criticise,
we see that it is not so. No human character can be
finished. It is its glory that it cannot be. It must
ever press forward; each step reached is but the
vantage-ground for a further step. There is no com-
pleteness in human character in human character
save one.
And must we then consider human character unin-
teresting ? According to Mr. Arnold's standard per-
haps we ought to do so. But through this very case
the narrowness of that standard becomes apparent.
Mr. Arnold rightly perceives that beauty is one of
our higher interests. It certainly is not our only or
our highest, because in that which is most profoundly
interesting, human life, the completeness of parts
THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT 151
which constitutes beauty is never reached. There
must obviously be another and a higher source of
interest, one too exalted to be found where awhile
ago I sketched it, in the mere occurrence of a fact.
We cannot say that all events, simply because they
occur, are alike interesting. To find in them an in-
telligent interest we must rate their worth. I agree,
accordingly, with Mr. Arnold in thinking that it is
the passion for perfection, the assessment of worths,
which is at the root of all enduring interests. But I
believe that in the history of the world this passion for
perfection, this deepest root of human interests, has
presented itself in two forms. The Greek conceived
it in one way, the Christian has conceived it in an-
other.
It was the office of that astonishing people, the
Greeks, to teach us to honor completeness, the ma-
jesty of the rounded whole. We see this in every
department of their marvellous life. Whenever we
look at a Greek statue, it seems impossible that it
should be otherwise without loss ; we cannot imagine
any portion changed ; the thing has reached its com-
pleteness. Before it we can only bow and feel at
rest. Just so it is when we examine Greek archi-
tecture. There too we find the same ordered pro-
portion, the same adjustment of part to part. And
if we turn to Greek literature, the stately symme-
try is no less remarkable. What page of Sophocles
152 THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
could be stricken out? What page what sen-
tence? Just enough, not more than enough! The
thought has grown, has asserted its entirety; and
when that entirety has been reached, it has stopped,
delighted with its own perfection. A splendid ideal,
an ideal which never can fail, I am sure, to interest
man so long as he remains intelligent!
And yet this beautiful Greek work shows only one
aspect of the world. It omitted something, it omitted
formative life. Joy in birth, delight in beginnings,
interest in origins, these things did not belong to
the Greek; they came in with Christianity. It is
Jesus Christ who turns our attention toward growth,
and so teaches us to delight in the imperfect rather
than in the perfect. It is he who, wishing to give to
his disciples a model of what they should be, does not
select the completed man, but takes the little child
and sets him before them and to the supercilious
says, "Take heed that ye despise not one of these
little ones." He teaches us to reverence the begin-
ning of things. And at first thought it might well
seem that this reverence for the imperfect was a re-
trogression. What! is not a consummate man more
admirable than a child? "No," Jesus answered;
and because he answered so, pity was born. Before
the coming of Jesus Christ, I think we may say that
the sick, the afflicted, the child shall I not say the
woman ? were but slightly understood. It is be-
THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT 153
cause God has come down from heaven, manifest-
ing even himself in forms of imperfection, it is on
this account that our intellectual horizon has been
enlarged. We may now delight in the lowly, we may
stoop and gather imperfect things and rejoice in
them, rejoice beyond the old Greek rejoicing.
Yet it is easy to mistake the nature of this change
of standard, and in doing so to run into grave moral
danger. If we content ourselves with the imperfect
rather than with the perfect, we are barbarians. We
are not Christians nor are we Greeks, we are bar-
barians. But that is not the spirit of Jesus. He
teaches us to catch the future in the instant, to see
the infinite in the finite, to watch the growth of the
perfect out of the imperfect. And he teaches us that
this delight in progress, in growth, in aspiration, in
completing, may rightly be greater than our exulta-
tion in completeness. In his view the joy of perfect-
ing is beyond the joy of perfection.
Now I want to be sure that you young women,
who are preparing yourselves here for larger life and
are soon to emerge into the perplexing world, go
forth with clear and Christian purpose. For though
what I have been discussing may appear dry and ab-
stract, it is an extremely practical matter. Consider
a moment in which direction you are to seek the
interests of your life. Will you demand that the
things about you shall already possess their perfec-
154 THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
tion? Will you ask from life that it be completed,
finished, beautiful ? If so, you are doomed to dreary
days. Or are you to get your intellectual eyes open,
see beauty in the making, and come to rejoice in it
there rather than after it is made ? That is the ques-
tion I wish to present to-day ; and I shall ask you to
examine several provinces of life and see how differ-
ent they, appear when surveyed from one point of
view or from the other.
Undoubtedly all of you on leaving here will go
into some home, either the home of your parents or
less fortunate some stranger's home. And when
you come there, I think I can foretell one thing: it
will be a tolerably imperfect place in which you find
yourself. You will notice a great many points in
which it is improvable ; that is to say, a great many
respects in which you might properly wish it other-
wise. It will seem to you, I dare say, a little plain,
a little commonplace, compared with your beautiful
college and the college life here. I doubt whether
you will find all the members of your family dear
though they may be so wise, so gentle-mannered,
so able to contribute to your intellectual life as are
your companions here. Will you feel then, "Ah!
home is a dull place ; I wish I were back in college
again ! I think I was made for college life. Possibly
enough I was made for a wealthy life. I am sure I
was made for a comfortable life. But I do not find
THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT 155
these things here. I will sit and wish I had them. Of
course I ought not to enjoy a* home that is short of
perfection ; and I recognize that this is a good way
from complete." Is this to be your attitude ? Or are
you going to say, " How interesting this home ! What
a brave struggle the dear people are making with the
resources at their command ! What kindness is shown
by my tired mother; how swift she is in finding out
the many small wants of the household ! How dili-
gent my father ! Should I, if I had had only their
narrow opportunities, be so intelligent, so kind, so
self-sacrificing as they ? What can I do to show them
my gratitude? What can I contribute toward the
furtherance, the enlargement, the perfecting, of this
home?" That is the wise course. Enter this home
not merely as a matter of loving duty, but find in it
also your own strong interests, and learn to say, " This
home is not a perfect home, happily not a perfect
home. I have something here to do. It is far more
interesting than if it were already complete."
And again, you will not always live in a place so
attractive as Cleveland. There are cities which have
not your beautiful lake, your distant views, your
charming houses excellently shaded with trees. These
things are exceptional and cannot always be yours.
You may be obliged to live in an American town
which appears to you highly unfinished, a town which
constantly suggests that much still remains to be
156 THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
done. And then are you going to say, " This place is
not beautiful, and I of course am a lover of the beau-
tiful. How could one so superior as I rest in such
surroundings? I could not respect myself were I
not discontented." Is that to be your attitude? It
is, I am sorry to think, the attitude of many who go
from our colleges. They have been taught to rever-
ence perfection, to honor excellence ; and instead of
making it their work to carry this excellence forth,
and to be interested in spreading it far and wide
in the world, they sit down and mourn that it has
not yet come. How dull the world would be had it
come ! Perfection, beauty ? It constitutes a resting-
place for us; it does not constitute our working-
place.
I maintain, therefore, in regard to our land as a
whole that there is no other so interesting on the face
of the earth ; and I am led to this conviction by the
very reasoning which brought Mr. Arnold to a con-
trary opinion. I accept his judgment of the beauty
of America. His premise is correct, but it should
have conducted him to the opposite conclusion. In
America we still are in the making. We are not yet
beautiful and distinguished ; and that is why America,
beyond every other country, awakens a noble interest.
The beauty which is in the old lands, and which re-
freshes for a season, is after all a species of death.
Those who dwell among such scenes are appeased,
THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT 157
they are not quickened. Let them keep their past;
we have our future. We may do much. What they
can do is largely at an end.
In literature also I wish to bring these distinctions
before you, these differences of standard ; and per-
haps I cannot accomplish this better than by exhibit-
ing them as they are presented in a few verses from
the poet of the imperfect. I suppose if we try to
mark out with precision the work of Mr. Browning,
I mean not to mark it out as the Browning societies
do, but to mark it out with precision, we might say
that its distinctive feature is that he has guided him-
self by the principle on which I have insisted : he has
sought for beauty where there is seeming chaos ; he
has loved growth, has prized progress, has noted the
advance of the spiritual, the pressing on of the finite
soul through hindrance to its junction with the in-
finite. This it is which has inspired his somewhat
crabbed verses, and has made men willing to undergo
the labor of reading them, that they too may partake
of his insight. In one of his poems one which
seems to me to contain some of his sublimest as well
as some of his most commonplace lines, the poem on
" Old Pictures in Florence," he discriminates be-
tween Greek and Christian art in much the same way
I have done. In " Greek Art," Mr. Browning says :
You saw yourself as you wished you were,
As you might have been, as you cannot be;
158 THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
Earth here, rebuked by Olympus there;
And grew content in your poor degree
With your little power, by those statues' godhead,
And your little scope, by their eyes' full sway,
And your little grace, by their grace embodied,
And your little date, by their forms that stay.
You would fain be kinglier, say, than I am?
Even so, you will not sit like Theseus.
You would prove a model ? The son of Priam
Has yet the advantage in arms' and knees' use.
You're wioth can you slay your snake like Apollo?
You're grieved still Niobe's the grander!
You live there's the Racers' frieze to follow:
You die there's the dying Alexander.
So, testing your weakness by their strength,
Your meagre charms by their rounded beauty,
Measured by Art in your breadth and length,
You learned to submit is a mortal's duty.
Growth came when, looking your last on them all,
You turned your eyes inwardly one fine day
And cried with a start What if we so small
Be greater and grander the while than they!
Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature?
In both, of such lower types are we
Precisely because of our wider nature;
For time, theirs ours, for eternity.
To-day's brief passion limits their range;
It seethes with the morrow for us and more.
They are perfect how else ? they shall never change :
We are faulty why not ? we have time in store.
The Artificer's hand is not arrested
With us; we are rough-hewn, no- wise polished:
They stand .for our copy, and once invested
With all they can teach, we shall see them abolished.
THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT 159
You will notice that in this subtle study Mr. Brown-
ing points out how through contact with perfection
there may come content with our present lot. This
I call the danger of perfection, our possible belittle-
ment through beauty. For in the lives of us all
there should be a divine discontent, not devilish dis-
content, but divine discontent, a consciousness that
life may be larger than we have yet attained, that we
are to press beyond what we have reached, that joy
lies in the future, in that which has not been found,
rather than in the realized present. And it seems to
me if ever a people were called on to understand this
glory of the imperfect, it is we of America, it is you
of the Middle West; it is especially you who are
undertaking here the experiment of a woman's col-
lege. You are at the beginning, and that fact should
lend an interest to your work which cannot so read-
ily be realized in our older institutions. As you look
eastward upon my own huge university, Harvard
University, it probably appears to you singularly
beautiful, reverend in its age, magnificent in its en-
dowments, equable in its working ; perhaps you con-
template it as nearing perfection, and contrast your
incipient college with it as hardly deserving the name.
You are entirely mistaken. Harvard University, to
its glory be it said, is enormously unfinished; it is
a great way from perfect ; it is full of blemishes.
We are tinkering at it all the time ; and if it were not
160 THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
so, I for one should decline to be connected with it.
Its interest for me would cease. You are to start
free from some trammels that we feel. Because we
have so large a past laid upon us we have not some
freedoms of growth, some opportunities of enlarge-
ment, which you possess. Accordingly, in your very
experiment here you have a superb illustration of
the principle I am trying to explain. This young
and imperfect college should interest you who are
members of it ; it should interest this intelligent city.
Wise patrons should find here a germ capable of such
broad and interesting growth as may well call out
their heartiest enthusiasm.
If then the modes of accepting the passion for
perfection are so divergent as I have indicated, is it
possible to suggest methods by which we may disci-
pline ourselves in the nobler way of seeking the in-
terests of life ? I mean by taking part with things
in their beginnings, learning to reverence them there,
and so attaining an interest which will continually
be supported and carried forward. You may look
with some anxiety upon the doctrine which I have
laid down. You may say, "But beauty is seductive;
beauty allures me. I know that the imperfect in its
struggle toward perfection is the nobler matter. I
know that America is, for him who can see all things,
a more interesting land than Spain. Yes, I know
this, but I find it hard to feel it. My strong tempta-
THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT 161
tion is to lie and dream in romance, in ideal perfec-
tion. By what means may I discipline myself out of
this degraded habit and bring myself into the higher
life, so that I shall always be interested in progress,
in the future rather than in the past, in the on-going
rather than in the completed life?" I cannot give
an exact and final receipt for this better mind. A
persistently studied experience must be the teacher.
To-day you may understand what I say, you may
resolve to live according to the methods I approve.
But you may be sure that to-morrow you will need
to learn it all over again. And yet I think I can
mention several forms of discipline, as I may call
them. I can direct your attention to certain modes
by which you may instruct yourselves how to take
an interest in the imperfect thing, and still keep that
interest an honorable one.
In my judgment, then, your first care should be to
learn to observe. A simple matter one, I dare say,
which it will seem to you difficult to avoid. You
have a pair of eyes; how can you fail to observe?
Ah ! but eyes can only look, and that is not observ-
ing. We must not rest in looking, but must pene-
trate into things, if we would find out what is there.
And to find this out is worth while, for everything
when observed is of immense interest. There is no
object so remote from human life that when we come
to study it we may not detect within its narrow com-
162 THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
pass illuminating and therefore interesting matter.
But it makes a great difference whether we do thus
really observe, whether we hold attention to the
thing in hand, and see what it contains. Once, after
puzzling long over the charm of Homer, I applied to
a learned friend and said to him, " Can you tell me
why Homer is so interesting ? Why can't you and I
write as he wrote? Why is it that his art is lost,
and that to-day it is impossible for us to awaken an
interest at all comparable to his?" "Well," said
my friend, " I have often meditated on that, but it
seems to come to about this : Homer looked long at
a thing. Why," said he, " do you know that if you
should hold up your thumb and look at it long
enough, you would find it immensely interesting?"
Homer looks a great while at his thumb. He sees
precisely the thing he is dealing with. He does not
confuse it with anything else. It is sharp to him;
and because it is sharp to him it stands out sharply
for us over thousands of years. Have you acquired
this art, or do you hastily glance at insignificant
objects ? Do you see the thing exactly as it is ? Do
you strip away from it your own likings and dislik-
ings, your own previous notions of what it ought to
be ? Do you come face to face with things ? If you
do, the hardest situation in life may well be to you a
delight. For you will not regard hardships, but only
opportunities. Possibly you may even feel, "Yes,
THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT 163
here are just the difficulties I like to explore. How
can one be interested in easy things ? The hard
things of life are the ones for which we ought to give
thanks." So we may feel if we have made the cool
and hardy temper of the observer our own, if we have
learned to put ourselves into a situation and to under-
stand it on all sides. Why, the things on which we
have thus concentrated attention become our perma-
nent interests. For example, unluckily when I was
trained I was not disciplined in botany. I cannot,
therefore, now observe the rose. Some of you can, for
you have been studying botany here. I have to look
stupidly on the total beauty of the lovely object; I
can see it only as a whole, while you, fine observer,
who have trained your powers to pierce it, can com-
prehend its very structure and see how marvellously
the blooming thing is put together. My eyes were
dulled to that long ago ; I cannot observe it. Beware,
do not let yourselves grow dull. Observe, observe,
observe in every direction ! Keep your eyes open.
Go forward, understanding that the world was made
for your knowledge, that you have the right to enter
into and possess it.
And then besides, you need to train yourselves to
sympathize with that which lies beyond you. It is
easy to sympathize with that which lies within you.
Many persons go through life sympathizing with
themselves incessantly. What unhappy persons!
164 THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
How unfit for anything important ! They are full of
themselves and answer their own motion, while there
beyond them lies all the wealthy world in which they
might be sharers. For sympathy is feeling with,
it is the identification of ourself with that which at
present is not ourself. It is going forth and joining
that which we behold, not standing aloof and merely
observing, as I said at first. When we observe, the
object we observe is alien to us ; when we sympathize,
we identify ourselves with it. You may go into a
lome and observe, and you will make every person
in that home wretched. But go into a home and sym-
pathize, find out what lies beyond you there, see how
differently those persons are thinking and feeling
from the ways in which you are accustomed to think
and feel ; yet notice how imperfect you are in your-
self, and how important it is that persons should be
fashioned thus different from you if even your own
completion is to come; then, I say, you will find
yourself becoming large in your own being, and a
large benefactor of others.
Do not stunt sympathy, then. Do not allow walls
to rise up and hem it in. Never say to yourself,
"This is my way; I don't do so and so. I know only
this and that; I don't want to know anything else.
You other people may have that habit, but these are
my habits, and I always do thus and thus." Do not
say that. Nothing is more immoral than moral psy-
THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT 165
chology. You should have no interest in yourself as
you stand ; because a larger selfhood lies beyond you,
and you should be going forth and claiming your
heritage there. Do not stand apart from the move-
ments of the country, * the political, charitable,
religious, scientific, literary movements, however
distastefully they may strike you. Identify yourself
with them, sympathize with them. They all have a
noble side; seek it out and claim it as your own.
Throw yourself into all life and make it nobly yours.
But I am afraid it would be impossible for you
thus to observe, thus to sympathize, unless you bring
within your imperfect self just grounds of self-respect.
You must contribute to things if you would draw from
things. You must already have acquired some sort
of excellence in order to detect larger excellence else-
where. You should therefore have made yourself the
master of something which you can do, and do on the
whole better than anybody else. That is the moral
aspect of competition, that one person can do a cer-
tain thing best and so it is given him to do. Some of
you who are going out into the world before long will,
I fear, be astonished to find that the world is already
full. It has no place for you; it never anticipated
your coming and it has reserved for you no corner.
Your only means of gaining a corner will be by doing
something better than the people who are already
there. Then they will make you a place. And that
166 THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT
is what you should be considering here. You should
be training yourself to do something well, it really
does not matter much what. Can you make dresses
well ? Can you cook a good loaf of bread ? Can you
write a poem or run a typewriter ? Can you do any-
thing well ? Are you a master somewhere ? If you
are, the world will have a place for you ; and more
than that, you will have within yourself just grounds
for self-respect.
To sum up, what I have been saying throughout
this address merely amounts to this : that the imper-
fect thing the one thing of genuine interest in all
the world gets its right to be respected only through
its connection with the totality of things. Do not,
then, when you leave college say to yourself, " I know
Greek. That is a splendid thing to know. These
people whom I am meeting do not know it and are
obviously of a lower grade than I." That will not
be self-respectful, because it shows that you have not
understood your proper place. You should respect
yourself as a part of all, and not as of independent
worth. To call this wide world our own larger self
is not too extravagant an expression. But if we are
to count it so, then we must count the particular
thing which we are capable of doing as merely our
special contribution to the great self. And we must
understand that many are making similar contribu-
tions. What I want you to feel, therefore, is the
THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT 167
profound conception of mutual helpfulness and re-
sulting individual dignity which St. Paul has set
forth, according to which each of us is performing a
special function in the common life, and that life of
all is recognized as the divine life, the manifestation
of the life of the Father. When you have come to
that point, when you have seen in the imperfect a
portion, an aspect, of the total, perfect, divine life,
then I am not afraid life will be uninteresting. In-
deed I would say to every one who goes from this
college, you can count with confidence on a life which
shall be vastly more interesting beyond the college
walls than ever it has proved here, if you have once
acquired the art of penetrating into the imperfect, and
finding in limited, finite life the infinite life. "To
apprehend thus, draws us a profit from all things we
see."
II
HARVARD PAPERS
HARVARD PAPERS
THE following papers relate primarily to Harvard Uni-
versity and are chiefly of historic interest. But since out
of that centre of investigation and criticism has come a
large part of what is significant in American education,
the story of its experiences will be found pretty generally
instructive for whoever would teach or learn.
The first three papers were published in the Andover
Review for 1885, 1886, and 1887, and are now printed
without alteration. Time has changed most of the facts
recorded in these papers, and the University is now a dif-
ferent place from the one depicted here. An educational
revolution was then in progress, more influential than any
which has ever visited our country before or since. Har-
vard was its leader, and had consequently become an object
of suspicion through wide sections of the land. I was one
of those who sought to allay those suspicions and to clear
up some of the mental confusions in which they arose. To-
day Harvard's cause is won. All courses leading to the
Bachelor's degree throughout the country now recognize
the importance of personal choice. But the history of the
struggle exhibits with peculiar distinctness a conflict which
perpetually goes on between two currents of human pro-
gress, a conflict whose opposing ideals are almost equally
necessary and whose champions never fail alike to awaken
sympathy. As a result of this struggle our children enjoy
an ampler heritage than was open to us their fathers. Do
they comprehend their added wealth and turn it to the
high uses for which it was designed ? In good measure
they do. A brief consideration of the ethical aims which
172 HARVARD PAPERS
have shaped the modern college may enable them to do
so still more.
Appended to these are two papers: one on college
economics in 1887, describing the first attempt ever made,
I believe, to ascertain from students themselves the cost
of the higher education; the other setting forth a pictur-
esque and noble figure who belonged to the days before
the Flood, when the prescribed system was still supreme.
VIII
THE NEW EDUCATION
DURING the year 1884-85 the freshmen of Har-
vard College chose a majority of their studies. Up
to that time no college, so far as I know, allowed its
first year's men any choice whatever. Occasion-
ally, one modern language has been permitted rather
than another; and where colleges are organized by
" schools," that is, with independent groups of
studies each leading to a different degree, the
freshman by entering one school turns away from
others, and so exercises a kind of selection. But with
these possible exceptions, the same studies have al-
ways been required of all the members of a given
freshman class. Under the new Harvard rules, but
seven sixteenths of the work of the freshman year
will be prescribed; the entire remainder of the col-
lege course, with the exception of a few exercises in
English composition, will be elective. A fragment of
prescribed work so inconsiderable is likely soon to
disappear. At no distant day the Harvard student
will mark out for himself his entire curriculum from
entrance to graduation.
Even if this probable result should not follow, the
174 THE NEW EDUCATION
present step toward it is too significant to be passed
over in silence, for it indicates that after more than
half a century of experiment the Harvard Faculty
are convinced of the worth of the elective system.
In their eyes, option is an engine of efficiency. People
generally treat it as a concession. Freedom is con-
fessedly agreeable ; restive boys like it ; let them have
as much as will not harm them. But the Harvard
authorities mean much more than this. They have
thrown away that established principle of American
education, that every head should contain a given
kind of knowledge; and having already organized
their college from the top almost to the bottom on a
wholly different plan, they now declare that their
new principle has been proved so safe and effective
that it should supplant the older method, even in
that year when students are acknowledged to be
least capable of self-direction.
On what facts do they build such confidence ?
What do they mean by calling their elective prin-
ciple a system? Does not the new method, while
rendering education more agreeable, tend to lower
its standard ? Or, if it succeeds in stimulating tech-
nical scholarship, is it equally successful in fostering
character and in forming vigorous and law-rever-
ing men ? These questions I propose to answer, for
they are questions which every friend of Harvard,
and indeed of American education, wishes people
THE NEW EDUCATION 175
pressingly to ask. Those most likely to ask them are
quiet, God-fearing parents, who, having bred their
sons to a sense of duty, expect college life to broaden
and consolidate the discipline of the home. These
are the parents every college wants to reach. Their
sons, whether rich or poor, are the bone and sinew
of the land. In my judgment the new education,
once understood, will appeal to them more strongly
than to any other class.
But it is not easy to understand it. My own un-
derstanding of it has been of slow growth. When,
in 1870, I left Andover Seminary and came to teach
at Harvard, I distrusted the more extreme develop-
ments of the elective system. Up to 1876 I opposed
the introduction of voluntary attendance at recita-
tions. Not until four years ago did I begin to favor
the remission of Greek in the requisites for entrance.
In all these cases my party was defeated; my fears
proved groundless ; what I wished to accomplish was
effected by means which I had opposed. I am there-
fore that desirable persuader, the man who has him-
self been persuaded. The misconceptions through
which I passed, I am sure beset others. I want to
clear them away, and to present some of the reasons
which have turned me from an adherent of the old to
an apostle of the new faith.
An elementary misconception deserves a passing
word. The new system is not a mere cutting of
176 THE NEW EDUCATION
straps ; it is a system. Its student is still under bonds,
bonds more compulsive than the old, because fitted
with nicer adjustment to each one's person. On
H. M. S. Pinafore the desires of every sailor receive
instant recognition. The new education will not agree
to that. It remains authoritative. It will not subject
its student to alien standards, nor treat his deliberate
wishes as matters of no consequence ; but it does in-
sist on that authority which reveals to a man his own
better purposes and makes them firmer and finer than
they could have become if directed by himself alone.
What the amount of a young man's study shall be,
and what its grade of excellence, a body of experts
decides. The student himself determines its specific
topic.
Everybody knows how far this is from a pre-
scribed system; not so many see that it is at a
considerable remove from unregulated or nomadic
study. An American at a German university, or at
a summer school of languages, applies for no degree
and is under no restraint. He chooses whatever
studies he likes, ten courses or five or one ; he works
on them as much as suits his need or his caprice ; he
submits what he does to no test ; he receives no mark ;
the time he wastes is purely his own concern. Study
like this, roving study, is not systematic at all. It
is advantageous to adult students, to those alone
whose wills are steady, and who know their own
THE NEW EDUCATION 177
wants precisely. Most colleges draw a sharp dis-
tinction between the small but important body of
students of this class special students, as they are
called and the great company of regulars. These
latter are candidates for a degree, are under constant
inspection, and are moved along the line only as they
attain a definite standard in both the quantity and
quality of their work. After accomplishing the
studies of the freshman year, partly prescribed and
partly elective, a Harvard student must pass suc-
cessfully four elective courses in each of his subse-
quent three years. By "a course" is understood a
single line of study receiving three hours a week of
instruction ; fifty per cent of a maximum mark must
be won in each year in order to pass. Throwing out
the freshman year, the precise meaning of the Har-
vard B. A. degree is therefore this : its holder has
presented twelve courses of study selected by him-
self, and has mastered them at least half perfectly.
Here, then, is the essence of the elective system,
fixed quantity and quality of study, variable topic.
Work and moderate excellence are matters within
everybody's reach. It is not unfair to demand them
of all. If a man cannot show success somewhere, he
is stamped ipso facto a worthless fellow. But into the
specific topic of work an element of individuality
enters. To succeed in a particular branch of study
requires fitness, taste, volition, incalculable fac-
178 THE NEW EDUCATION
tors, known to nobody but the man himself. Here,
if anywhere, is the proper field for choice; and all
American colleges are now substantially agreed in
accepting the elective principle in this sense and ap-
plying it within the limits here marked out. It is an
error to suppose that election is the hasty "craze"
of a single, college. Every senior class in New Eng-
land elects a portion of its studies. Every important
New England college allows election in the junior
year. Amherst, Bowdoin, Yale, and Harvard allow
it in the sophomore. Outside of New England the
case is the same. It is true, all the colleges except
Harvard retain a modicum of prescribed study even
in the senior year ; but election in some degree is ad-
mitted everywhere, and the tendency is steadily in
the direction of a wider choice.
The truth is, Harvard has introduced the principle
more slowly than other colleges. She was merely
one of the earliest to begin. In 1825, on the recom-
mendation of Judge Story, options were first allowed,
in modern languages. Twenty years of experiment
followed. In 1846 electives were finally established
for seniors and juniors; in 1867 for sophomores;
in 1884 for freshmen. But the old method was aban-
doned so slowly that as late as 1871 some prescribed
study remained for seniors, till 1879 for juniors, and
till 1884 for sophomores. During this long and un-
noticed period, careful comparison was made be-
THE NEW EDUCATION 179
tween the new and old methods. A mass of faets
was accumulated, which subsequently rendered pos-
sible an extremely rapid adoption of the system by
other colleges. Public confidence was tested. Com-
paring the new Harvard with the old, it is plain
enough that a revolution has taken place ; but it is
a revolution like that in the England of Victoria,
wrought not by sudden shock, but quietly, consid-
erately, conservatively, inevitably. Those who have
watched the college have approved; the time of
transition has been a time of unexampled prosperity.
For the last fifteen years the gifts to the University
have averaged $250,000 a year. The steady increase
in students may be seen at a glance by dividing the
last twenty-five years into five-year periods, and not-
ing the average number of undergraduates in each :
1861-65, 423; 1866-70, 477; 1871-75, 657; 1876-80,
808; 1881-85, 873.
These facts are sufficient to show that Harvard
has reached her present great prosperity by becom-
ing the pioneer in a general educational movement.
What made the movement general was the dread
of flimsy study. Our world is larger than the one our
grandfathers inhabited; it is more minutely sub-
divided, more finely related, more subtly and broadly
known. The rise of physical science and the enlarge-
ment of humanistic interests oblige the college of
to-day to teach elaborately many topics which for-
180 THE NEW EDUCATION
merly were not taught at all. Not so many years ago
a liberal education prepared men almost exclusively
for the four professions, preaching, teaching,
medicine, and law. In the first century of its exist-
ence one half the graduates of Harvard became
ministers. Of the graduates of the last ten years a
full third have entered none of the four professions.
With a narrow field of knowledge, and with students
who required no great variety of training, the task
of a college was simple. A single programme de-
cently covered the needs of all. But as the field of
knowledge widened, and men began to notice a
difference between its contents and those of the
college curriculum, an effort was made to enlarge
the latter by adding subjects from the former.
Modern languages crept in, followed by sciences,
political economy, new departments of history, lit-
erature, art, philosophy. For the most part, these
were added to the studies already taught. But the
length of college days is limited. The life of man
has not extended with the extension of science. To
multiply subjects was soon found equivalent to
cheapening knowledge. Where three subjects are
studied in place of one, each is pushed only one third
as far. A crowded curriculum is a curriculum of su-
perficialities, where men are forever occupied with
alphabets and multiplication -tables, elementary
matters, containing little mental nutriment. Thor-
THE NEW EDUCATION 181
ough-going discipline, the acquisition of habits of
intellectual mastery, calls for acquaintance with
knowledge in its higher ranges, and there is no way
of reaching these remoter regions during the brief
season of college life except by dividing the field and
pressing along paths where personal friction is least.
Accordingly, alternative options began to be allowed,
at first between the new subjects introduced, then
between these and the old ones. But in this inev-
itable admission of option a new principle was in-
troduced whose germinal force could not afterwards
be stayed. The old conception had been that there
were certain matters a knowledge of which consti-
tuted a liberal education. Compared with the pos-
session of these, the temper of the receiving mind
was a secondary affair. This view became untenable.
Under the new conditions, college faculties were
forced to recognize personal aptitudes, and to stake
intellectual gains upon them. In assessing the worth
of studies, attention was thus withdrawn from their
subject-matter and transferred to the response they
called forth in the apprehender. Hence arose a new
ideal of education, in which temper of mind had
preeminence over qucesita, the guidance of the powers
of knowing over the store of matters known. The
new education has accordingly passed through two
stages of development: first, in order to avoid su-
perficiality when knowledge was coming in like a
182 THE NEW EDUCATION
flood, it was found necessary to admit choice; sec-
ondly, in the very necessity of this admission was
disclosed a more spiritual ideal of the relation of
the mind of man to knowledge.
And this new ideal, I hold, should now commend
itself not as a thing good enough if collateral, but
as a principle, organic and exclusive. To justify its
dominance a single compendious reason is sufficient :
it uplifts character as no other training can, and
through influence on character it ennobles all meth-
ods of teaching and discipline. We say to our stu-
dent at Harvard, "Study Greek, German, history,
or botany, what you will; the one thing of conse-
quence is that you should will to study something."
The moral factor is thus put forward, where it be-
longs. The will is honored as of prime consequence.
Other systems treat it as a merely concurrent and
auxiliar force. They try to smuggle it into operation
wrapped in a mass of matter-of-course performances.
It is the distinctive merit of the elective system that
it strips off disguises, places the great facts of the
moral life in the foreground, forces the student to be
conscious of what he is doing, permits him to be-
come a partaker in his own work, and makes him
perceive that gains and losses are immediately con-
nected with a volitional attitude. When such a con-
sciousness is aroused, every step in knowledge be-
comes a step toward maturity. There is no sudden
THE NEW EDUCATION 183
transformation, but the boy comes gradually to per-
ceive that in the determination of the will are found
the promise and potency of every form of life. Many
people seem to suppose that at some epoch in the
life of a young man the capacity to choose starts up
of itself, ready-made. It is not so. Choice, like other
human powers, needs practice for strength. To learn
how to choose, we must choose. Keep a boy from
exercising his will during the formative period from
eighteen to twenty-two, and you turn him into the
world a child when by years he should be a man.
To permit choice is dangerous ; but not to permit it
is more dangerous ; for it renders dependency habit-
ual, places outside the character those springs of
action which should be set within it, treats personal
adhesion as of little account, and through anxiety
to shield a young life from evil cuts it off from oppor-
tunities of virile good. Even when successful, the
directive process breeds an excellence not to be de-
sired. Plants and stones commit no errors. They
are under a prescribed system and follow given
laws. Personal man is in continual danger, for to
self-direction is attached the prerogative of sin. For
building up a moral manhood, the very errors of
choice are serviceable.
I am not describing theoretic advantages. A man-
lier type of character actually appears as the elective
principle extends. The signs of the better life are
184 THE NEW EDUCATION
not easy to communicate to those who have not lived
in the peculiar world of a college. A greater ease in
uprightness, a quicker response to studious appeal,
a deeper seriousness, still keeping relish for merri-
ment, a readier amenability to considerations of
order, an increase of courtesy, a growing disregard
of coarseness and vice, a decay of the boyish fancy
that it is girlish to show enthusiasm, tendencies
in these directions, hardly perceptible to others,
gladden the watchful heart of a teacher and assure
him that his work is not returning to him void. Every
company of young men has a notion of what it is
"gentlemanly" to do. Into this current ideal the
most artificial and incongruous elements enter.
Perhaps it is counted " good form " to haze a fresh-
man, to wear the correctest cut of trousers, to have a
big biceps muscle, or to be reputed a man of brains.
Whatever the notion, it is allegiance to some such
blind ideal, rather than the acceptance of abstract
principles of conduct, which guides a young man's
life. To change ever so little these influential ideals
is the ambition of the educator; but they are per-
sistent things, held with the amazing conservatism
of youth. When I say that a better tone prevails as
the elective system takes root, I mean that I find the
word "gentleman," as it drops from student mouths,
enlarging and deepening its meaning from year to
year, departing from its usage as a term of outward
THE NEW EDUCATION
185
description and drawing to itself qualities more in-
terior. Direct evidence on a matter so elusive can
hardly be given, but I can throw a few sidelights upon
it. Hazing, window-smashing, disturbing a lecture-
room, are things of the past. The office of proctor
the literary policeman of the olden time has
become a sinecure. Several years ago the Faculty
awarded Honorable Mention at graduation to students
who attained a high rank in three or more courses
of a single department. The honor was not an exalted
one, but being well within the powers of all it soon
became "not quite the thing" to graduate without
it. In the last senior class 91 men out of 191 received
Honorable Mention. This last fact shows that a de-
cent scholarship has become reputable. But more than
this is true : the rank which is reckoned decent scholar-
ship is steadily rising. I would not overstate the im-
provement. The scale of marking itself may have risen
slightly. But taking the central scholar of each class
during the last ten years, the scholar, that is, who
stands midway between the head and the foot, this
presumably average person has received the following
marks, the maximum being 100 :
YEAR
1
i
i
s
00
00
i
a>
I
&
?
i
|
%
s
i
I
Fresh.
59
55
57
56
62
62
65
87
64
63
Soph.
59
64
63
65
67
68
70
69
69
68
Jun.
67
65
66
67
70
68
74
75
72
72
Sen.
67
70
70
73
76
73
77
75
79
81
186 THE NEW EDUCATION
It will be observed that the marks in this table
become higher as the student approaches the end
of his course and reaches the years where the elec-
tive principle is least restricted. Let the eye pass
from the left upper corner of the table to the right
lower corner and take in the full significance of a
change which has transformed freshmen, doomed to
prescribed studies and half of them ranking below
sixty per cent, into seniors so energetic that half of
them win four fifths of a perfect mark in four elec-
tives. It is not only the poor who are affected in this
way. About half the men who appear on the Rank
List each year receive no pecuniary aid, and are
probably not needy men.
But it may be suspected that high marks mean
easy studies. The many different lines of work can-
not be equally severe, and it is said that those which
call for least exertion will be sure to prove the favor-
ites. As this charge of "soft" courses is the stock
objection to the elective system, I shall be obliged to
examine it somewhat minutely. Like most of the
popular objections, it rests on an a priori assumption
that thus things must be. Statistics all run the other
way. Yet I am not surprised that people believe it.
I believed it once myself when I knew nothing but
prescribed systems. Under these, it certainly is true
that ease is the main factor in making a study popu-
lar. When choice is permitted, the factor of interest
THE NEW EDUCATION 187
gets freer play, and exerts an influence that would
not be anticipated by those who have never seen it
in operation. Severe studies are often highly popular
if the subject is attractive and the teaching clear.
Here is a list of the fifteen courses which in 1883-84
(the last year for which returns are complete) con-
tained the largest numbers of seniors and juniors,
those classes being at that time the only ones which
had no prescribed studies: Mill's political economy,
125 seniors and juniors ; European history from the
middle of the eighteenth century, 102; history of
ancient art, 80; comparative zoology, 58; political
and constitutional history of the United States, 56;
psychology, 52; geology, 47; constitutional govern-
ment of England and the United States, 45 ; advanced
geology, with field work, 43; Homer, sixteen books,
40 ; ethics, 38 ; logic, and introduction to philosophy,
38; Shakespeare, six plays, 37; economic history,
advanced course, 36; legal history of England to
the sixteenth century, 35. In these years the senior
and junior classes together contained 404 men, who
chose four electives apiece. In all, therefore, 1616
choices were made. The above list shows 832; so
that, as nearly as may be, one half of the total work
of two years is here represented. The other half was
devoted to interests more special, which were pur-
sued in smaller companies.
Are these choices unwise ? Are they not the studies
188 THE NEW EDUCATION
which should largely occupy a young man's thoughts
toward the close of his college life? They are the
ones most frequently set for the senior and junior
years by colleges which retain prescribed studies.
From year to year choices differ a little. The courses
at the lower end of the list may give place to others
which do not appear here. I print the list simply to
indicate the general character of the studies elected.
In it appears only one out of all the modern languages,
and that, too, a course in pure literature in which
the marking is not reputed tender. Another year a
course of French or German might come in; but
ordinarily except when chosen by specialists
the languages, modern and ancient, are elected most
largely during the sophomore year. Following di-
rectly the prescribed linguistic studies of the fresh-
man year, they are deservedly among the most pop-
ular, though not the easiest, courses. In nearly half
the courses here shown no text-book is used, and the
amount of reading necessary for getting an average
mark is large. A shelf of books representing original
authorities is reserved by the instructor at the Library,
and the pupil is sent there to prepare his work.
How, it will be asked, are choices so judicious
secured ? Simply by making them deliberate. Last
June studies were chosen for the coming year. Dur-
ing the previous month students were discussing
with one another what their electives should be.
THE NEW EDUCATION 189
How this or that course is conducted, what are the
peculiarities of its teacher, what is the proportion
in it between work given and gains had, are matters
which then interest the inhabitants of Hollis and
Holyoke as stocks interest Wall Street. Most stu-
dents, too, have some intimacy with one or another
member of the Faculty, to whom they are in the
habit of referring perplexities. This advice is now
sought, and often discreetly rejected. The Elective
Pamphlet is for a time the best-read book in college.
The perplexing question is, What courses to give up ?
All find too many which they wish to take. The
pamphlet of this year offers 189 courses, divided among
twenty departments. The five modern languages,
for example, offer, all told, 34 different courses;
Sanskrit, Persian, Assyrian, Hebrew, and Arabic,
14; Greek and Latin, 18 each; natural History, 19;
physics and chemistry, 18 ; mathematics, 18 ; history
and philosophy, 12 each; the fine arts, including
music, 11; political economy, 7; Roman law, 2.
These numbers will show the range of choice; on
its extent a great deal of the efficiency of the sys-
tem depends. 1 After the electives are chosen and
1 But a great deal of the expense also. How much larger the
staff of teachers must be where everything is taught to anybody
than where a few subjects are offered to all, may be seen by com-
paring the number of teachers at Harvard 146, instructing
1586 men with those of Glasgow University in 1878 42,
instructing 2018 men.
190 THE NEW EDUCATION
reported in writing to the Dean, the long vacation
begins, when plans of study come under the scrutiny
of parents, of the parish minister, or of the college
graduate who lives in the next street. Until Septem-
ber 21, any elective may be changed on notice sent to
the Dean. During the first ten days of the term, no
changes are allowed. This is a time of trial, when one
sees for himself his chosen studies. Afterwards, for
a short time, changes are easy, if the instructors
consent. For the remainder of the year no change
is possible, unless the reasons for change appear
to the Dean important. Other restrictions on the
freedom of choice will readily be understood with-
out explanation. Advanced studies cannot be taken
till preliminary ones are passed. Notices are pub-
lished by the French and German departments that
students who elect those languages must be placed
where proficiency fits them to go. Courses espe-
cially technical in character are marked with a star
in the Elective Pamphlet, and cannot be chosen till
the instructor is consulted.
By means like these the Faculty try to prevent the
wasting of time over unprofitable studies. Of course
they do not succeed. I should roughly guess that a
quarter, possibly a third, of the choices made might
be improved. This estimate is based on the answers
I have received to a question put to some fifty
recent graduates: "In the light of your present
THE NEW EDUCATION 191
experience, how many of your electives would you
change?" I seldom find a man who would not
change some ; still more rarely one who would change
one half. As I look back on my own college days,
spent chiefly on prescribed studies, I see that to make
these serve my needs more than half should have been
different. There was Anglo-Saxon, for example,
which was required of all, no English literature being
permitted. A course in advanced chemical physics,
serviceable no doubt to some of my classmates, came
upon me prematurely, and stirred so intense an aver-
sion to physical study that subsequent years were
troubled to overcome it. One meagre meal of phi-
losophy was perhaps as much as most of us seniors
could digest, but I went away hungry for more. I
loved Greek, but for two years I was subject to the
instructions of a certain professor, now dead, who
was one of the most learned scholars and unprofit-
able teachers I ever knew. Of the studies which
brought me benefit, few did so in any vigorous fashion.
Every reader will parallel my experience from his own.
Prescribed studies may be ill-judged or ill-adapted,
ill-timed or ill-taught, but none the less inexorably
they fall on just and unjust. The wastes of choice
chiefly affect the shiftless and the dull, men who can-
not be harmed much by being wasted. The wastes of
prescription ravage the energetic, the clear-sighted,
the original, the very classes who stand in great-
192 THE NEW EDUCATION
est need of protection. What I would assert, there-
fore, is not that in the elective system we have dis-
covered the secret of stopping educational waste.
That will go on as long as men need teaching. I
simply hold that the monstrous and peculiarly perni-
cious wastes of the old system are now being re-
duced to a minimum. Select your cloth discreetly,
order the best tailor in town to make it up, and you
will still require patience for many misfits ; but they
will be fewer, at any rate, than when garments are
served out to you and the whole regiment by the
government quartermaster.
Nobody who has taught both elective and pre-
scribed studies need be told how the instruction in
the two cases differs. With perfunctory students, a
teacher is concerned with devices for forcing his
pupils onward. Teaching becomes a secondary af-
fair; the time for it is exhausted in questioning
possible shirks. Information must be elicited, not
imparted. The text-book, with its fixed lessons, is a
thing of consequence. It is the teacher's business to
watch his pupils, to see that they carry off the requi-
site knowledge; their business, then, it soon becomes
to try to escape without it. Between teacher and
scholar there goes on an ignoble game of matching
wits, in which the teacher is smart if he can catch
a boy, and the boy is smart if he can know nothing
without being found out. Because of this supposed
THE NEW EDUCATION 193
antagonism of interests American higher education
seldom escapes an air of unreality. We seem to be
at the opera bouffe. A boy appears at the learning-
shop, purchases his parcel of knowledge, and then
tries to toss it under the counter and dodge out of
the door before the shopman can be quick enough
to make him carry off the goods. Nothing can cure
such folly except insistence that pupil's neglect is not
teacher's injury. The elective system points out to
a man that he has something at stake in a study, and
so trains him to look upon time squandered as a
personal loss. Where this consciousness can be pre-
sumed, a higher style of teaching becomes possible.
Methods spring up unlike formal lectures, unlike
humdrum recitations. The student acquires what
he will need in after life the power to look up a
single subject in many books. Theses are written;
discussions held; in higher courses, problems of re-
search supersede defined tasks. During 1860-61,
fifty-six per cent of the Harvard undergraduates con-
sulted the college library; during 1883-84, eighty-five
per cent.
In a similar way governmental problems change
their character. Formerly, it was assumed that a
student who followed his own wishes would be in-
disposed to attend recitations. Penalties were ac-
cordingly established to compel him to come. At
present, there is not one of his twelve recitations a
194 THE NEW EDUCATION
week which a Harvard student might not "cut."
Of course I do not mean that unlimited absence is
allowed. Any one who did not appear for a week
would be asked what he was doing. But for several
years there has been no mechanical regulation, so
much absence, so much penalty. I had the curiosity
to see how largely, under this system of trust, the
last senior class had cared to stay away. I counted all
absences, excused and unexcused. Some men had
been sick for considerable periods; some had been
worthless, and had shamelessly abused their free-
dom. Reckoning in all misdeeds and all misfortunes,
I found that on the average each man had been ab-
sent a little less than twice a week. 1 The test of high
character is the amount of freedom it will absorb
without going to pieces. The elective system en-
larges the capacity to absorb freedom undisturbed.
But it would be unfair to imply that the new spirit
is awakened in students alone. Professors are them-
selves instructed. The obstacles to their proper
work, those severest of all obstacles which come from
1 Or sixteen per cent of his recitations. Readers may like to
compare this result with the number of absences elsewhere. At
a prominent New England college, one of the best of those which
require attendance, a student is excused from ten per cent of his
exercises. But this amount does not cover absences of necessity,
absences caused by sickness, by needs of family, and by the
many other perfectly legitimate hindrances to attendance. The
percentage given for the Harvard seniors includes all absences
whatsoever.
THE NEW EDUCATION 195
defective sympathy, are cleared away. A teacher
draws near his class, and learns what he can do for
it. Long ago it was said that among the Gentiles
people spiritually rude great ones exercised
authority, while in a state of righteousness this should
not be so; there the leader would estimate his im-
portance by his serviceability. It was a teacher who
spoke, and he spoke to teachers. To-day teachers'
dangers lie in the same direction. Always dealing
with inferiors, isolated from criticism, by nature not
less sluggish than others, through the honorable
passion which they feel for their subject disposed to
set the private investigation of it above its exposition,
teachers are continually tempted to think of a class
as if it existed for their sakes rather than they for
its. Fasten pupils to the benches, and nothing coun-
teracts this temptation except that individual con-
science which in all of us is a faculty that will well
bear strengthening. It may be just to condemn the
dull, the intolerant, the self-absorbed teacher; but
why not condemn also the system which perpetuates
him ? Nobody likes to be inefficient ; slackness is
largely a fault of inadvertence. That system is good
which makes inadvertence difficult and opens the
way for a teacher to discover whether his instruc-
tions hit. Give students choice, and a professor
gets the power to see himself as others see him.
How this is accomplished appears by examining
196 THE NEW EDUCATION
three possible cases. Suppose, in the first place, I
become negligent this year, am busy with private
affairs, and so content myself with imparting nothing,
with calling off questions from a text-book, or with
reading my old lectures ; I shall find out my mistake
plainly enough next June, when fewer* men than
usual elect my courses. Suppose, secondly, I give
my class important matter, but put it in such a form
that young minds cannot readily assimilate it; the
same effect follows, only in this case I shall probably
attract a small company of the hardier spirits,
in some subjects the very material a teacher desires.
Or suppose, lastly, I seek popularity, aim at enter-
tainment, and give my pupils little work to do ; my
elective becomes a kind of sink, into which are
drained off the intellectual dregs of the college. Other
teachers will get rid of their loafers ; I shall take them
in. But I am not likely to retain them. A teacher
is known by the company he keeps. In a vigorous
community a "soft" elective brings no honor to its
founder. I shall be apt to introduce a little stiffen-
ing into my courses each year, till the appearance of
the proper grade of student tells me I am proved to
have a value. There is, therefore, in the new method
a self-regulating adjustment. Teacher and taught
are put on their good behavior. A spirit of faithful-
ness is infused into both, and by that very fact the
friendliest relation is established between them.
THE NEW EDUCATION 197
I have left myself little room to explain why the
elective system should be begun as early as the fresh-
man year, and surely not much room is needed. A
system proved to exert a happy influence over char-
acter, and thence over manners and scholarly dis-
position, is* exactly the maturing agency needed by
the freshman of eighteen. It is the better suited to
him because the early years of college life are its least
valuable portion, which can bear, therefore, most
economically the disciplining losses sure to come
when a student is learning to choose. More than this,
the change from school methods to character methods
is too grave a one to be passed over as an incident in
the transition from year to year. A change of resi-
dence should mark it. It should stand at the entrance
to a new career. Parents should be warned, and those
who have brought up their sons to habits of luxu-
rious ease should be made fully aware that a college
which appeals to character has no place for children
of theirs.
Every mode of training has its exclusions. I
prefer the one which brings least profit to our dan-
gerous classes, the indolent rich. Leslie Stephen
has said that the only argument rascals can under-
stand is the hangman. The only inducement to
study, for boys of loose early life, is compulsion.
But for the plain democratic many, who have sound
seed in themselves, who have known duty early,
198 THE NEW EDUCATION
and who have found in worthy things their law and
impulse, the elective system, even during the fresh-
man year, gives an opportunity for moral and men-
tal expansion such as no compulsory system can
afford.
Perhaps in closing I ought to caution the reader
that he has been listening to a description of ten-
dencies merely, and not of completed attainment.
In no college is the New Education fully embodied.
It is an ideal, toward which all are moving, and a
powerfully influential ideal. In explaining it, for the
sake of simplicity I have confined myself to tracing
the working of its central principle, and I have drawn
my illustrations from that Harvard life with which
I am most familiar. But simplicity distorts ; the sha-
dows disappear. I am afraid I may seem to have
hinted that the Harvard training already comes pretty
near perfection. It does not let me say so dis-
tinctly. We have much to learn. Side by side with
nobler tendencies to which I have directed attention,
disheartening things appear. The examination paper
still attacks learning on its intellectual side, the
marking system on its moral. All I have sought to
establish is this: there is a method which we and
many other colleges in different degrees have adopted,
which is demonstrably a sound method. Its sound-
ness should by this time be generally acknowledged,
THE NEW EDUCATION 199
and criticism should now turn to the important work
of bettering its details of operation. May what I
have written encourage such criticism and help to
make it wise, penetrative, and friendly.
IX
ERRONEOUS LIMITATIONS OF THE ELECTIVE
SYSTEM
IN a paper published in the Andover Review a
year ago, I called attention to the fact that a new
principle is at work in American education. That
principle, briefly stated, is this : the student now con-
sciously shares in his own upbuilding. His studies are
knitted closely to his personal life. Under this influ-
ence a new species of power is developed. Scholar-
ship broadens and deepens, boyishness diminishes,
teacher and pupil meet less artificially. The college,
as an institution, wins fresh life. Public confidence
awakens; pupils, benefactions, flow in. Over what I
wrote an eager controversy has arisen, a controversy
which must have proved instructive to those who
need instruction most. In the last resort questions
of education are decided by educators, as those of
sanitation by sanitary engineers; but in both cases
the decision has reference to public needs, and people
require to be instructed in the working of appliances
which are designed for their comfort. There is dan-
ger that such instruction may not be given. Pro-
fessional men become absorbed in their art and
THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 201
content themselves with reticence, leaving the public
ignorant of the devices by which its health is to be
preserved. A great opportunity, therefore, comes to
the common householder when these professional men
fall foul of one another. In pressing arguments home
they frequently take to ordinary speech, and any-
body who then lends an ear learns of the mysteries.
The present discussion, I am sure, has brought this
informatory gain to every parent who reads the
Andover Review and has a studious boy. The
gain will have been greater because of the candor
and courtesy with which the attacking party has
delivered its assault. The contest has been earnest.
Its issues have been rightly judged momentous.
For good or for ill, the choice youth of the land are
to be shaped by whatever educational policy finally
wins. Yet, so far as I recall, no unkind word has
slipped from the pen of one of my stout opponents ;
no disparagement of man or college has mixed with
the energetic advocacy of principle; the discussion
has set in well toward things. I cannot call this
remarkable. Of course it is not easy to be fair and
strong at once. Sweetness and light are often parted.
Yet we rightly expect the scholar's life to civilize him
who pursues it, and we anticipate from books a re-
finement of the spirit and the manners as well as the
understanding. My opponeijts have been scholars,
and have spoken as scholars speak. It is a pleasure
202 ERRONEOUS LIMITATIONS
to linger in their kindly contentious company. So
I gladly accept the invitation of the editors of the
Review to sum up our discussion and to add some
explanatory last words.
The papers which have appeared fall into two
easily distinguishable classes, the descriptive and the
critical. To the former I devote but a brief space,
so much more direct is the bearing of the latter on
the main topic of debate the question, namely,
what course the higher education can and what it
cannot now take. Yet the descriptive papers perform
a service and deserve a welcome word. Suspecting
that I was showing off Harvard rather favorably,
professors planted elsewhere have attempted to make
an equally favorable exhibit of their own colleges.
In my manifesto they have seen " a coveted oppor-
tunity to bring forward corresponding statistics which
have not been formed under the Harvard method."
Perhaps this was to mistake my aim a little. I did
intend to advance my college in public esteem; she
deserves that of me in everything I write. But pri-
marily I thought of myself as the expounder of an
important policy, which happens to have been longer
perceived and more elaborately studied at Harvard
than elsewhere. I hope I did not imply that Harvard,
having this excellence, has all others. She has many
weaknesses, which should not be shielded from dis-
cerning discussion. Nor did I intend to commit
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 203
the injustice to Harvard an injustice as gross as it
is frequent of treating her as a mere embodiment
of the elective system. Harvard is a complex and
august institution, possessed of all the attractions
which can be lent by age, tradition, learning, con-
tinually renewed resources, fortunate situation, wide-
spread clientage, enthusiastic loyalty, and forceful
guidance. She is the intellectual mother of us all,
honored certainly by me, and I believe by thousands
of others, for a multiplicity of subtle influences
which stretch far outside her special modes of in-
struction. But for the last half-century Harvard has
been developing a new and important policy of
education. Coincident with this development she
has attained enormous popular esteem and internal
power. The value and limits of this policy, the
sources of this esteem and power, I wish everybody,
colleges and populace, to scrutinize. To make these
things understood is to help the higher education
everywhere.
In undertaking this quasi philosophical task, I
count it a piece of good fortune to have provoked so
many lucid accounts of what other colleges are doing.
The more of these the better. The public cannot be
too persistently reminded of the distinctive merits
of this college and of that. Let each be as zealous as
possible; gains made by one are gains for all. De-
preciatory rivalry between colleges is as silly as it is
204 ERRONEOUS LIMITATIONS
when religious sects quarrel in the midst of a perish-
ing world. Probably such rivalries have their rise
in the dull supposition that a fixed constituency of
pupils exists somewhere, which if not turned toward
one college may be drawn to another. As the old
political economists tell of a " wages fund," fixed and
constant in each community, so college governors
are apt to imagine a public pupil-hoard, not sus-
ceptible of much increase or diminution, which may
by inadvertence fall into other hands than their own.
In reality each college creates its constituency. Its
students come, in the main, from the inert mass of
the uncollegiate public. Only one in eight among
Harvard students is a son of a Harvard graduate;
and probably the small colleges beget afresh an even
larger percentage of their students. On this account
the small colleges have been a power in the land.
To disparage them shall never be my office. In a
larger degree than the great universities they spread
the college idea among people who would not other-
wise possess it. The boy who lives within fifty miles
of one of them reflects whether he will or will not
have a college training. Were there no college in
the neighborhood, he might never consider the mat-
ter at all. It is natural enough for undergraduates
to decry every college except their own ; but those who
love education generously, and who seek to spread
it far and wide, cannot afford the luxury of envy.
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 205
One common danger besetting us all should bind
us together. In the allurements of commerce boys
may forget that college is calling. They do forget it.
According to my computations the number of per-
sons in the New England colleges to-day is about
the same as the number in the insane asylums; but
little more than the number of idiots. Probably
this number is not increasing in proportion to pop-
ulation. Professor Newton, of Oberlin, finds that
the increase of students during the ten years between
1870 and 1880, in twenty of our oldest leading col-
leges, was less than three and a half per cent, the
population of the United States increasing during the
same period twenty-three per cent. In view of facts
like these, careful study of the line along which col-
lege growth is still possible becomes a necessity.
It will benefit all colleges alike. No one engaged in
it has a side to maintain. We are all alike seekers.
Whatever instructive experience any college can
contribute to the common study, and whatever pupils
she may thereby gain, will be matter for general re-
joicing.
To such a study the second, or critical, class of
papers furnishes important stimulus ; for these have
not confined themselves to describing institutions:
they have gone on to discuss the value and limits
of the principle which actuates the new education
everywhere. In many respects their writers and I
206 ERRONEOUS LIMITATIONS
are in full accord. In moral aim we always are, and
generally too in our estimate of the present status.
We all confess that the conditions of college educa-
tion have changed, that the field of knowledge has
enlarged, that a liberal training nowadays must fit
men for more than the four professions of preaching,
teaching, medicine, and law. We agree that the pre-
scribed systems of the past are outgrown. We do not
want them. We doubt whether they were well suited
to their own time ; we are sure they will never fit
ours. Readjustments of curricula, we all declare,
must be undertaken if the higher education is to
retain its hold on our people. Further still, we agree
in the direction of this readjustment. My critics,
no less than I, believe that a widely extended scope
must be given to individual choice. With the possible
exception of Professor Denison, about whose opinion
I am uncertain, everybody who has taken part in the
controversy recognizes the elective principle as a
beneficial one and maintains that in some form or
other it has come to stay. People generally are not
aware what a consensus of opinion on this point late
years have brought about. To rid ourselves once for
all of further controversy let us weigh well the words
of my opponents.
Mr. Brearley begins his criticism addressed to the
New York Harvard Club thus: "We premise that
every one accepts the elective principle. Some system
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 207
based on that principle must be established. No one
wants the old required systems back, or any new re-
quired system." Professor Howison says: "An elec-
tive system, in its proper place, and under its due
conditions, is demonstrably sound." Professor Ladd
does not express himself very fully on this point
in the Andover Review, but his opinions may be
learned from the New Englander for January,
1885. When, in 1884, Yale College reformed its
curriculum and introduced elective studies, it be-
came desirable to instruct the graduates about the
reasons for a step which had been long resisted.
After a brief trial of the new system, Professor Ladd
published his impressions of it. I strongly commend
his candid paper to the attention of those who still
believe the old methods the safer. He asserts that
" a perfect and final course of college study is, if not an
unattainable ideal, at present an impossible achieve-
ment." The considerations which were " the definite
and almost compulsory reasons for instituting a
comprehensive change" he groups under the follow-
ing heads : (1) the need of modern languages ; (2) the
crowding of studies in the senior year; (3) the hetero-
geneous and planless character of the total course;
(4) the need of making allowance for the tastes, the
contemplated pursuits, and the aptitudes of the in-
dividual student. Substantially, these are the evils
of prescription which I pointed out ; only, in my view,
208 ERRONEOUS LIMITATIONS
they are evils not confined to a single year. Stating
his observation of the results of election, Professor
Ladd says: "Increased willingness in study, and
even a new and marked enthusiasm on the part of a
considerable number of students, is another effect
of the new course already realized. The entire body
of students in the upper classes is more attentive,
regular, interested, and even eager, than ever be-
fore." "More intimate and effective relations are
secured in many cases between teachers and pupils."
These convictions in regard to the efficiency which
the elective principle lends to education are not con-
fined to my critics and myself. Let me cite testimony
from representatives of other colleges. The last
Amherst Catalogue records (page 24) that "excel-
lent results have appeared from this [the elective]
method. The special wants of the student are thus
met, his zest and progress in his work are increased,
and his association with his teachers becomes thus
more close and intimate." President Robinson says,
in his annual report for 1885 to the Corporation
of Brown University: "There are advantages in a
carefully guarded system of optional studies not
otherwise obtainable. The saving of time in prepar-
ing for a special calling in life is something, and the
cumulative zeal in given lines of study, where a grati-
fied and growing taste is ever beckoning onward,
is still more. But above all, some provision for
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 209
choice among ever-multiplying courses of study has
become a necessity." In addressing the American
Institute of Instruction at Bar Harbor, July 7, 1886,
Professor A. S. Hardy, of Dartmouth, is reported as
saying: "Every educator now recognizes the fact
that individual characteristics are always sufficiently
marked to demand his earliest attention; and, fur-
thermore, that there is a stage in the process of
education where the choice, the responsibility, and
the freedom of the individual should have a wide
scope." President Adams, in his inaugural address
at Cornell in 1885, asserted that " there are varieties
of gifts, call them, if you will, fundamental differences,
that make it impossible to train successfully all of
a group of boys to the same standard. These differ-
ences are partly matters of sheer ability, and partly
matters of taste ; for if a boy has so great an aver-
sion to a given study that he can never be brought
to apply himself to it with some measure of fond-
ness, he is as sure not to succeed in it as he would
be if he were lacking the requisite mental capa-
city."
In determining, then, what the new education
may wisely he, let this be considered settled : it must
contain a large element of election. That is the
opinion of these unbiased judges. They find per-
sonal choice necessary for promoting a wider range
of topics in the college, a greater zeal on the part of
210 ERRONEOUS LIMITATIONS
the student, and more suitable relations between
teacher and pupil. With this judgment I, of course,
heartily agree, though I should make more promi-
nent the moral reason of the facts. I should insist
that a right character and temper in the receiving
mind is always a prerequisite of worthy study. 1
But I misrepresent these gentlemen if I allow their
testimony to stop here. They maintain that the
elective principle as thus far carried out, though valu-
able, is still meagre and one-sided. They do not
think it will be found self-sufficing and capable of
guarding its own working. They see that it has
dangers peculiar to itself, and believe that to escape
1 These conditions of intellectual nourishment were long ago
recognized in other, less formal, departments of mental training.
In his essays on Books and Reading President Porter wrote in
1871: "The person who asks. What shall I read? or, With what
shall I begin ? may have read for years in a mechanical routine,
and with a listless spirit; with scarcely an independent thought,
with no plans of self-improvement, and few aspirations for self-
culture. To all these classes the advice is full of meaning : ' Read
what will satisfy your wants and appease your desires, and you
will comply with the first condition to reading with interest and
profit.' Hunger and thirst are better than manifold appliances
and directions, in respect to other than the bodily wants, towards
a good appetite and a healthy digestion. If a man has any self-
knowledge or any power of self-direction, he is surely competent
to ask himself what is the subject or subjects in respect to which
he stands most in need of knowledge or excitement from books.
If he can answer this question, he has gone very far towards
answering the question, 'What book or books can I read with
satisfaction and profit?'" (Chap, iv, p. 39.)
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 211
them it will require to be restricted and furnished
with supplemental influences. I believe so too.
Choice is important, but it is also important that one
should choose well. The individual is sacred, but
only so far as he is capable of recognizing the sacred-
ness of laws which he has had no part in making.
Unrestricted arbitrary choice is indistinguishable
from chaos ; and undoubtedly every method of train-
ing which avoids mechanism and includes choice as
a factor leaves a door open in the direction of chaos.
Infinite Wisdom left that door open when man was
created. To dangers from this source I am fully
alive. I totally dissent from those advocates of the
elective system who would identify it with a laissez-
faire policy. The cry that we must let nature take
care of itself is a familiar one in trade, in art, in
medicine, in social relations, in the religious life,
in education; but in the long run it always proves
inadequate. Man is a personal spirit, a director, a
being fitted to compare and to organize forces, not to
take them as they rise, like a creature of nature. The
future will certainly not tolerate an education less
organic than that of the past; but just as certainly
will it demand that the organic tie shall be a living
one, one whose bond may assist those whom it
restricts to become spontaneous, forcible, and diverse.
If I am offered only the alternative of absolutism or
laissez-faire, I choose laissez-faire. Out of chaotic
212 ERRONEOUS LIMITATIONS
nature beautiful forms do continually come forth.
But absolutism kills in the cradle. It cannot tolerate
a life that is imperfect, and so it stifles what it should
nourish.
Up to this point my critics and I have walked hand
in hand. Henceforth we part company. I shall not
follow out all our little divergencies. My object from
the first has been to trace the line along which edu-
cation may now proceed. It must, it seems, be a
line including election; but election limited how?
To disentangle an answer to this vexed question, I
pass by the many points in which my critics have
shown that I am foolish, and the few others in which
I might show them so, and turn to the fundamental
issue between us, our judgment of what the sup-
plemental influences are which will render personal
initiative safe. Personal initiative is assured. The
authoritative utterances I have just quoted show
that it can never again be expelled from American
colleges. But what checks are compatible with it?
Accepting choice, what treatment will render it
continually wiser ? Here differences of judgment be-
gin to appear, and here I had hoped to receive light
from my critics. The question is one where coopera-
tive experience is essential. But those who have
written against me seem hardly to have realized its
importance. They generally confine themselves to
showing how bad my plans are, and merely hint at
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 213
better ones which they themselves might offer.
But what are these plans? Wise ways of training
boys are of more consequence than Harvard mis-
deeds. We want to hear of a constructive policy
which can take a young man of nineteen and so train
him in self-direction that four years later he may
venture out alone into a perplexing, and for the most
part hostile, world. The thing to be done is to teach
boys how to manage themselves. Admit that the
Harvard discipline does not do this perfectly at
present; what will do it better? Here we are at an
educational crisis. We stand with this aim of self-
guidance in our hands. What are we going to do
with it ? It is as dangerous as a bomb. But we can-
not drop it. It is too late to objurgate. It is better
to think calmly what possible modes of treatment are
still open. When railroads were found dangerous,
men did not take to stage-coaches again; they only
studied railroading the more.
Now in the mass of negative criticism which the
last year has produced I detect three positive sug-
gestions, three ways in which it is thought limitation
may be usefully applied to supplement the inevitable
personal initiative. These modes of limitation, it
is true, are not worked out with any fulness of prac-
tical detail, as if their advocates were convinced that
the future was with them. Rather they are thrown
out as hints of what might be desirable if facts and
214 ERRONEOUS LIMITATIONS
the public would not interfere. But as they seem
to be the only conceivable modes of restricting the
elective principle by any species of outside check-
age, I propose to devote the remainder of this paper
to an examination of their feasibility. In a subse-
quent paper I shall indicate what sort of corrective
appears to me more likely to prove congruous and
lasting.
I. The first suggestion is that the elective prin-
ciple should be limited from beneath. Universities
and schools are to advance their grade, so that finally
the universities will secure three or four years of
purely elective study, while the schools, in addition
to their present labors, will take charge of the studies
formerly prescribed by the college. The schools,
in short, are to become German gymnasia, and the
colleges to delay becoming universities until this
regeneration of the schools is accomplished. 1 A cer-
1 In deference to certain writers I employ their favorite term
"university" in contrast with the term "college," yet I must own
I do not know what it means. An old signification is clear. A
university is an assemblage of schools, as our government is an
assemblage of states. In England, different corporations, giving
substantially similar instruction, are brought together by a com-
mon body which confers the degrees. In this country, a group
of professional schools law, medicine, theology, and science
are associated through one governing body with the college proper,
that is, with the candidates for the B. A. degree. In this useful
sense, Tufts and Bowdoin are universities; Amherst and Brown,
colleges. But Germany, which has thrown so many parts of the
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 215
tain " sum of topics " is said to be essential to the
culture of the man and the citizen. In the interest of
church and state, young minds must be provided with
certain "fact forms," with a "common conscious-
ness," a "common basis of humanism." Important
as personal election is, to allow it to take place before
this common basis is laid is " to strike a blow at the
historic substance of civilization." How extensive
this common consciousness is to be may be learned
from Professor Howison's remark that "languages,
classical and modern; mathematics, in all its gen-
eral conceptions, thoroughly apprehended; physics,
acquired in a similar manner, and the other natural
sciences, though with much less of detail; history
and politics; literature, especially of the mother
tongue, but, indispensably, the masterpieces in other
languages, particularly the classic ; philosophy, in the
thorough elements of psychology, logic, metaphysics,
and ethics, each historically treated, and economics,
in the history of elementary principles, must all enter
into any education that can claim to be liberal."
world into confusion, has introduced exaltation and mystery here.
A university now appears to mean " a college as good as it can be,"
a stimulating conception, but not a finished or precise one. I
would not disparage it. It is a term of aspiration, good to con-
jure with. When we want to elevate men's ideas, or to obtain their
dollars, it is well to talk about creating a true university : just as it
is wise to bid the forward-reaching boy to become " a true gentle-
216 ERRONEOUS LIMITATIONS
The practical objections to this monarchical
scheme are many. I call attention to three only.
In the first place, the argument on which it is
based proves too much. If we suppose a common
consciousness to be a matter of such importance,
and that it cannot be secured except by sameness
of studies, then that state is jcriminally careless which
allows ninety-nine hundredths of its members to
get an individual consciousness by the simple ex-
pedient of never entering college. The theory seems
to demand that every male and why not female ?
between sixteen and twenty be indoctrinated in
"the essential subject-matters," without regard to
what he or she may personally need to know or do.
This is the plan of religious teaching adopted by the
Roman Church, which enforces its "fact forms" of
doctrine on all alike; without securing, however, by
this means, according to the judgment of the out-
side world, any special freshness of religious life.
I do not believe the results would be better in the
higher secular culture, and I should be sorry to see
Roman methods applied there ; but if they are to be
applied, let them fall impartially on all members of
the community. To put into swaddling clothes the
man who is wise enough to seek an education, and
to leave his duller brother to kick about as he pleases,
seems a little arbitrary.
But secondly, there is no more prospect of per-
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 217
suading our high schools to accept the prescribed
subjects of the colleges than there is of persuading
our government to transform itself into the German.
Already the high schools and the colleges are unhap-
pily drawing apart. The only hope of their nearer
approach is in the remission by the colleges of some
of the more burdensome subjects at present exacted.
Paid for by common taxation, these schools are
called on to equip the common man for his daily
struggle, That they will one day devote themselves
to laying the foundations of an ideally best education
for men of leisure is grotesquely improbable. Al-
though Harvard draws rather more than one-third
of her students from states outside New England,
the whole number of students who have come to her
from the high schools of these states, during a period
of the last ten years, is but sixty-six. Fitting for
college is becoming an alarmingly technical matter,
and is falling largely into the hands of private tutors
and academies.
It may be said, however, thirdly, that it is just
these academies which might advantageously take
the present freshmen and sophomore studies. They
would thus become the exclusive avenues to the uni-
versity of the future, leaving it free to do its own
proper work with elective studies. Considering the
great expense which this lengthening of the curricu-
lum of the academy implies, it is plain that the num-
218 ERRONEOUS LIMITATIONS
her of schools capable of fitting boys in this way
would always be small. These few academies, with
their monopoly of learned training, would lose their
present character and be erected into little colleges,
colleges of a second grade. That any such thing
is likely to occur, I do not believe; but if it were,
would it aid the higher education and promote its
wide dispersion ? Precisely the contrary. Instead of
going to the university from the academies, boys
would content themselves with the tolerable educa-
tion already received. For the most part they would
decline to go farther. It is useless to say that this
does not happen in Germany, where the numbers
resorting to the university are so large as to have
become the subject of complaint; for the German
government, controlling as it does all access to the
professions, is able to force through the gymnasia
and through special courses at the university a body
of young men who would otherwise be seeking their
fortunes elsewhere. Whether such control would
be desirable in this country, I will not consider.
Some questions are not feasible even for discussion.
But it is to English experience we must look to see
what our case would be. The great public schools of
England Eton, Rugby, Harrow, Winchester, West-
minster, Cheltenham are of no higher order than
under the proposed plan Andover and Exeter would
become. From these two academies nearly ninety-
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 219
five per cent of the senior classes now enter some
college. But of the young men graduating from the
English schools named, so far as I can ascertain,
less than fifty per cent go to the university. With the
greater pressure toward commercial life in this coun-
try, the number would certainly be less than in Eng-
land. To build up colleges of a second grade, and
to permit none but those who have passed them to
enter colleges of the first, is to cut off the higher edu-
cation from nearly all those who do not belong to
the privileged classes ; it is to make the " common
consciousness" less common, and to turn it, even
more effectually than at present, into the conscious-
ness of a clique. He who must make a living for
himself or for others cannot afford to reach his pro-
fession late. The age of entering college is already
too high. With improved methods of teaching I
hope it may be somewhat reduced . At any rate, every
study now added to the high schools or academies
is a fresh barrier between education and the people.
II. If, then, by prescribing a large amount of
study outside the university the elective principle is
not likely to be successfully limited, is it not probable
that within the college itself the two counter princi-
ples of election and prescription, mutually limiting,
mutually supporting, will always be retained ? This
is the second suggestion ; to bring studies of choice
and studies commanded into juxtaposition. The
220 ERRONEOUS LIMITATIONS
backbone of the college is to be kept prescribed, the
fleshy parts to be made elective. By a special modi-
fication of the plan, the later years are turned largely,
perhaps wholly, toward election, and a line is drawn
at the junior, or even the sophomore year, below
which elective studies are forbidden to penetrate.
Is not this the plan that will finally be judged safest ?
It certainly is the safest for a certain number of years.
Before it can securely reach anything else, every col-
lege must pass through this intermediate state. After
half a century of testing election Harvard still re-
tains some prescribed studies. The Harvard juniors
chose for nineteen years before the sophomores, and
the sophomores seventeen years before the fresh-
men. In introducing electives a sober pace is com-
mendable. A university is charged with the greatest
of public trusts. The intelligence of the commu-
nity is, to a large extent, in its keeping. It is bound
to keep away from risky experiments, to disregard
shifting popular fancies, and to be as conservative
as clearness of sight will permit. I do not plead,
therefore, that Harvard and Yale should abolish all
prescription the coming year. They certainly should
not. In my opinion most colleges are moving too
fast in the elective direction already. I merely plead
that we must see where we are going. As public
guides, we must forecast the track of the future if
we would avoid stumbling into paths which lead no-
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 221
where. That is all I am attempting here. I want to
ascertain whether the dual system of limitation is a
stable system, one in which we can put our trust, or
whether it is a temporary convenience, likely to slip
away a little year after year. What does history say ?
Let us examine the facts of the past. The following
table shows at the left the fifteen New England col-
leges. In the next three parallel columns is printed
the percentage of elective studies which existed in
these colleges in 1875-76; in the last three, the per-
centage which exists to-day. To render the com-
parison more exact, I print the sophomore, junior,
and senior years separately, reserving the problem
of the freshman year for later discussion.
1875-76
1885-86
Soph.
.Iiiu.
Sen.
Soph.
Jim.
Sen.
Amherst . . .
Bates . ...
Boston . . .
Bowdoin . . .
Brown . .
Colby
.04
.20
.04
.08
.04
.20
.35
.15
.14
.75
.66
.25
.37
.08
.75
.82
.25
.55
.16
Dartmouth . . .
Harvard ....
Middlebury . . .
Trinity ....
Tufts
.50
.78
.17
1.00
.17
1.00
.41
1.00
.25
.28
.36
1.00
.25
.43
Vermont ....
Wesleyan . . .
Williams ....
Yale
.47
.47
.16
.13
.47
.53
.64
.37
.80
222 ERRONEOUS LIMITATIONS
This table yields four conclusions : (1) A rapid and
fateful revolution is going on in the higher education
of New England. We do not exaggerate the change
when we speak of an old education and a new. (2)
The spread of it is in tolerable proportion to the
wealth of the college concerned. The new modes are
expensive. It is not disapproval which is holding the
colleges back; it is inability to meet the cost. I am
sorry to point out this fact. To my mind one of
the gravest perplexities of the new education is the
query, What are the small colleges to do ? They have
a usefulness altogether peculiar; yet from the life-
giving modern methods of training they are of neces-
sity largely cut off. (3) The colleges which long ago
foresaw their coming necessities have been able to
proceed more cautiously than those which acknow-
ledged them late. (4) The movement is one of steady
advance. There is no going back. It must be re-
membered, too, that the stablest colleges have been
proceeding with these changes many more years than
the period shown in the table. Are we, then, pre-
pared to dismiss prejudice from our minds and to
recognize what steadiness of advance means? In
other matters when a general tendency in a given
direction is discovered, extending over a long series of
years, visible in individuals widely unlike, and pre-
senting no solitary case of backward turning, we are
apt to conclude that there is a force in the movement
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 223
which will carry it still further onward. We are not
disposed to seize on some point in its path and to
count that an ultimate holding-ground. This, I say,
would be a natural conclusion unless we could de-
tect in the movement tendencies at work in an oppo-
site direction. Are there any such tendencies here?
I cannot find them. Prescription invariably loses;
election invariably gains.
But in order to make a rational prediction about
the future we must know more than the bare facts of
the past ; we need to know why these particular facts
have arisen. What are the reasons that whenever
elective and prescribed studies are mixed, an extrusive
force regularly appears in the elective ? The reasons
are not far to seek. Probably every professor in New
England understands them. The two systems are
so incongruous that each brings out the vices rather
than the virtues of its incompatible brother. Pre-
scribed studies, side by side with elective, appear a
bondage; elective, side by side with prescribed, an
indulgence. So long as all studies are prescribed, one
may be set above another in the mind of the pupil
on grounds of intrinsic worth; let certain studies
express the pupil's wishes, and almost certainly the
remainder, valuable as they may be in themselves,
will express his disesteem. It is useless to say this
should not be so. It always is. The zeal of work,
the freshness of interest, which now appear in the
224 ERRONEOUS LIMITATIONS
chosen studies, are deducted from those which are
forced. On the latter as little labor as possible is
expended. They become perfunctory and mechani-
cal, and soon restive pupils and dissatisfied teachers
call for fresh extension of energizing choice. This is
why the younger officers in all the colleges are eager
to give increased scope to the elective studies. They
cannot any longer get first-rate work done in the pre-
scribed. Alarmed by the dangers of the new principle,
as they often and justly are, they find that the pre-
sence of prescription, instead of diminishing the dan-
gers, adds another and a peculiarly enfeebling one
to those which existed before. So certain are these
dangers, and so inevitable the expanding power of
the elective principle, that it is questionable whether
it would not be wise for a college to refuse to have
anything to do with elective studies so soon as it
knows itself too weak to allow them to spread.
For where will the spreading stop ? It cannot stop
till the causes of it stop. The table just given shows
no likelihood of its stopping at all, and a little re-
flection will show that each enlargement increases
the reasons for another enlargement still. If pre-
scribed studies are ever exceptional, ineffective,
and obnoxious, they certainly become more so as
they diminish in number. A college which retains
one of them is in a condition of unstable equilibrium.
But is this true of the freshman year? Will not a
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 225
special class of considerations keep prescription en-
during and influential there, long after it has lost
its usefulness in the later years ? A boy of nineteen
comes from home about as untrained in will as in
intelligence. Will it not always be thought best to
give him a year in which to acquaint himself with his
surroundings and to learn what studies he may after-
wards profitably select? Possibly it will. I incline
to think not. The case of the freshman year is un-
doubtedly peculiar. Taking a large body of colleges,
we have direct evidence that during their last three
years the elective principle steadily wins and never
loses. We have but a trifle of such evidence as re-
gards the freshman year. There the struggle of the
two forces has barely begun. It has begun at Har-
vard, and the usual result is already foreshadowed.
The prescribed studies are disparaged studies; they
are not worked at the best advantage. Still, I do
not like to prophesy on evidence so narrow. I will
merely say I see no reason to suppose that colleges
will meet with permanent success in mingling incom-
patible kinds of study in their freshman year. But I
can only surmise. Let any college that inclines to
try the experiment do so.
It may be thought, however, a wiser course to
keep the freshman year untouched by choice. A
solid year of prescription is thus secured as a limita-
tion on the election that is to follow. This plan is so
226 ERRONEOUS LIMITATIONS
often advised, especially by persons unacquainted
with the practical working of colleges, that it re-
quires a brief examination by itself.
Let us suppose the revolution which we have
traced in the sophomore, junior, and senior years to
have reached its natural terminus ; let us suppose that
in these years all studies have become elective, while
the freshman year remains completely prescribed;
the college will then fall into two parts, a preparatory
department and a university department. In these
two departments the character of the instruction, the
methods of study, the consciousness of the students,
will be altogether dissimilar. The freshmen will not
be taken by upper classmen as companions; they
will be looked down upon as children. Hazing will
find abundant excuse. An abrupt line will be drawn,
on whose farther side freedom will lie, on whose
hither side, bondage. The sophomore, a being who
at best has his peculiarities, will find his sense of
self-sufficiency doubled. Whatever badly-bred boy
parents incline to send to college will seem to them
safe enough for a year, and they will suppose that
during this period he will learn how to behave. Of
course he will learn nothing of the sort. Manly dis-
cipline has not yet begun. At the end of the freshman
year a boy will be only so much less a boy as increase
of age may make him. Through being forced to
study mathematics this year there comes no sustain-
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 227
ing influence fitted to fortify the judgment when one
is called the next year to choose between Greek and
German. On the contrary, the change from school
methods to maturing methods is rendered as dan-
gerous as possible by allowing it to take place quite
nakedly, by itself, unsupported by other changes,
and at the mere dictation of the almanac. An eman-
cipation so bare and sudden is not usual elsewhere.
For boys who do not go to college, departure from
home is commonly recognized as a fit occasion for
putting on that dangerous garment, the toga viri-
lis. Entrance to the university constitutes a similar
epoch, when change of residence, new companions,
altered conditions of living, a realization that the old
supports are gone, and the presumption with which
every one now meets the youth that he is to be
treated as a man among men, become helpful influ-
ences cooperating to ease the hard and inevitable
transition from parental control to personal self-
direction. A safer time for beginning individual re-
sponsibility cannot be found. At any rate, whether
my diagnosis of reasons is correct or not, the fact
is clear, self-respecting colleges do not tolerate
preparatory departments. They do not work well.
They are an element of weakness in the institution
which harbors them. Even where at first they are
judged necessary, so soon as the college grows strong
they are dropped. When we attempt to plan an
228 ERRONEOUS LIMITATIONS
education for times to come, we must bear in mind
established facts. Turn the freshman year into a
preparatory department, fill it with studies antithetic
in aim, method, and spirit to those of later years,
and something is established which no sober college
ever permitted to remain long within its borders.
This is the teaching of the past without an exception.
To suppose the future will be different is but the
blind hope of a timid transitionalism.
III. The third suggestion for restricting election
is the group system. This deserves a more respect-
ful treatment than the methods hitherto discussed,
for it is something more than a suggestion : it is a
system, a constructive plan of education, thought
out in all its parts, and directed toward an intended
end. The definition which I have elsewhere offered
of the elective system, that it demands a fixed quan-
tity and quality of study with variable topic, would be
applicable also to the group system. Accordingly it
belongs to the new education rather than to the old.
No less than the elective system it is opposed to the
methods of restriction thus far described. These
latter methods attempt to limit election by the bal-
last of an alien principle lodged beneath it or by its
side. They put a weight of prescription into the pre-
paratory schools, into the early college years, or into
parallel lines of study extending throughout the
college course. The source of their practical trouble
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 229
lies here : the two principles, election and prescrip-
tion, are nowhere united ; they remain sundered and
at war, unserviceable for each other's defects. The
group system intertwines them. It permits choice in
everything, but at the same time prescribes every-
thing. This it effects by enlarging the unit of choice
and prescribing its constituent factors. A group
or block of studies is offered for choice, not a single
study. All the studies of a group must be taken if
any are, the " if " being the only matter left for the
student to settle. The group may include all the
studies open to a student at the university. One de-
cision may determine his entire course. Or, as in the
somewhat analogous arrangement of the English
universities, one group may be selected at the be-
ginning and another in the middle of the university
life. The group itself is sometimes contrived so as
to allow an individual variation; different students
read different books; a special phase of philosophy,
history, or science receives prominence. But the
boundaries of the group cannot be crossed. All the
studies selected by the college authorities to form a
single group must be taken ; no others can be.
In this method of limiting choice there is much
that is attractive. I feel that attraction strongly.
Under the exceptional conditions which exist at the
Johns Hopkins University, a group system has done
excellent work. Like all the rest of the world, I
230 ERRONEOUS LIMITATIONS
honor that work and admire its wise directors. But
group systems seem to me to possess features too
objectionable to permit them to become the preva-
lent type of the future, and I do not see how these
features can be removed without abandoning what
is distinctive, and changing the whole plan into the
elective system, pure and simple. The objectionable
features connect themselves with the size of the unit
of choice, with difficulties in the construction of the
groups, and with the attempt to enforce specializa-
tion. But these are enigmatic phrases; let me ex-
plain them.
Obviously , for the young, foresight is a hard matter.
While disciplining them in the intricate art of look-
ing ahead, I should think it wise to furnish frequently
a means of repairing errors. Penalties for bad choices
should not be too severe. Now plainly the larger the
unit of choice, the graver the consequences of errone-
ous judgment. The group system takes a large unit,
a body of studies ; the simple elective system, a small
unit, the single study. Errors of choice are conse-
quently less reparable under the group system than
under pure election. To meet this difficulty the
college course at Baltimore has been reduced from
four years to three; but even so, a student who se-
lects a group for which he finds himself unfit cannot
bring himself into proper adjustment without the
loss of a year. If he does not discover his unfitness
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 231
until the second year has begun, he loses two years
Under the elective system, the largest possible pen-
alty for a single mistake is the loss of a single study,
one quarter of a year's work. This necessary differ-
ence in ease of reparability appears to me to mark an
inferiority in group systems, considered as methods
of educating choice. To the public it may seem other-
wise. I am often astonished to find people approving
irreparable choices and condemning reparable ones.
That youths between nineteen and twenty-three
should select studies for themselves shocks many
people who look kindly enough on marriages con-
tracted during those years. Boys still unbearded have
a large share in deciding whether they will go to
college, to a scientific school, to a store, to sea, or
to a cattle-ranch. Their lives are staked on the wis-
dom of the step taken. Yet the American mode of
meeting these family problems seems to our com-
munity, on the whole, safer than the English way
of regulating them by tradition and dictation. The
choice with heavy stakes of the boy who does not
go to college is frequently set off favorably against
the choices with light stakes of the boy who goes.
Perhaps a similarly lenient judgment will in the long
run be passed on the great stakes involved in group
systems. I doubt it. I think it will ultimately be
judged less dangerous and more maturing to grant
a young man, in his passage through a period
232 ERRONEOUS LIMITATIONS
of moral discipline, frequent opportunities of re-
pair.
Again, the practical difficulties of deciding what
groups shall be formed are enormous. What studies
shall enter into each ? How many groups shall there
be? If but one, we have the old-fashioned college
with no election. If two, we have the plan which
Yale has just abandoned, a fixed undergraduate
department maintained in parallel vigor with a
fixed scientific school. But in conceding the claims
of variety even to this degree, we have treated the
fundamental differences between man and man as
worthy, not reprehensible; and can we say that the
proper differences are only two? Must we not ac-
knowledge a world at least as complex as that they
have in Baltimore, where there appear to be seven
reputable species of mankind : " Those who wish
a good classical training; those who look toward a
course in medicine; those who prefer mathematical
studies with reference to engineering, astronomy, and
teaching; those who wish an education in scientific
studies, not having chosen a specialty; those who
expect to pursue a course in theology ; those who pro-
pose to study law ; those who wish a literary training
not rigidly classical." Here a classification of hu-
man wishes is attempted, but one suspects that there
are legitimate wishes which lie outside the scheme.
It does not, for example, at once appear why a pro-
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 233
spective chemist should be debarred from all regu-
lar study of mathematics. It seems hard that a youth
of literary tastes should be cut off from Greek at
entrance unless he will agree to take five exercises
in it each week throughout his college course. One
does not feel quite easy in allowing nobody but a law-
yer or a devotee of modern languages to read a page
of English or American history. The Johns Hopkins
programme is the most ingenious and the most flex-
ible contrivance for working a group system that I
have ever seen. For this reason I mention it as the
most favorable type of all. Considering its purposes,
I do not believe it can be much improved. As ap-
plied to its little band of students, 116, it certainly
works few hardships. Yet all the exclusions I have
named, and many more besides, appear in it. I in-
stance these simply to show what barriers to know-
ledge the best group system erects. Remove these,
and others quite as great are introduced. Try to
avoid them by allowing the student of one group to
take certain studies in another, and the sole line
which parts the group system from the elective is
abandoned. In practice, it usually is abandoned.
Confronted with the exigencies of operation, the so-
called group system turns into an elective system,
with highly specialized lines of study strongly recom-
mended. With this more genial working I have no-
thing now to do. My point is this : a system of hard
and fast groups presents difficulties of construction
and maintenance too great to recommend it to the
average college of the future as the best mode of
limiting the elective principle.
Probably, however, this difficulty will chiefly be
felt by persons engaged in the actual work of edu-
cational organization. The outer public will think
it a more serious objection that grouped colleges are
in reality professional schools carried down to the
limits of boyhood. So far as they hold by their groups,
they are nurseries of specialization. That this is
necessarily so may not at first be apparent. A little
consideration of the contrast in aim between group
systems and prescribed will make the matter plain.
Prescribed systems have gained their long hold on
popular confidence by aiming at harmonious culture.
They argue, justly enough, that each separate sort
of knowledge furnishes something of its own to the
making of a man. This particular "something,"
they say, can be had from no other source. The sum
of these "somethings" constitutes a rounded whole.
The man who has not experienced each of them in
some degree, however small, is imperfectly planned.
One who has been touched by all has laid the foun-
dations of a liberal education. Degree of acquaint-
ance with this subject or with that may subsequently
enlarge. Scholarly interest may concentrate. But
at the first, the proper aim is balanced knowledge,
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 235
harmonious development of all essential powers,
avoidance of one-sidedness.
On this aim the group system bestows but a second-
ary attention. Regarding primarily studies, not men,
it attempts to organize single connected departments
of knowledge. Accordingly it permits only those
studies to be pursued together which immediately
cohere. It lays out five, ten, any number of paths
through the field of knowledge, and to one of these
paths the pilgrim is confined. Each group constitutes
a specialty, a specialty intensified in character as,
in order to escape the difficulties of maintenance just
pointed out, the number of groups is allowed to
increase. By insistence on specialization regard for
general culture is driven into a subordinate place.
The advocates of prescription maintain that there
are not half a dozen ground-plans of perfected hu-
manity. They say there is but one. If we introduce
variety of design into a curriculum, we neglect that
ideal man who resides alike in all. We trust, on the
contrary, in our power to hit some line of study which
may deservedly appeal to one human being while
not so appealing to another. We simply note the
studies which are most congruous with the special
line selected, and by this congruity we shape our
group. In the new aim, congruity of studies, adapt-
ation to a professional purpose, takes precedence
of harmonious development of powers.
236 ERRONEOUS LIMITATIONS
I have no doubt that specialization is destined to
become more marked in the American education of
the future. It must become so if we are to produce
the strong departmental scholars who illuminate
learning in other countries; indeed, it must become
so if we are to train competent experts for the affairs
of daily life. The popular distrust of specializing is
sure to grow less as our people become familiar with
its effects and see how often narrow and thorough
study, undertaken in early life, leads to ultimate
breadth. It is a pretty dream that a man may start
broad and then concentrate, but nine out of every
ten strong men have taken the opposite course.
They have begun in some one-sided way, and have
added other sides as occasion required. Almost in
his teens Shakespeare makes a specialty of the
theatre, Napoleon of military science, Beethoven of
music, Hunter of medicine, Faraday of chemistry,
Hamilton of political science. The great body of
painters, musicians, poets, novelists, theologians,
politicians, are early specialists. In fact, self-made
men are generally specialists. Something has aroused
an interest, and they have followed it out until they
have surveyed a wide horizon from a single point of
view. In offering wider opportunities for specializa-
tion, colleges have merely been assimilating their
own modes of training to those which prevail in the
world at large.
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 237
It does not, therefore, seem to me objectionable
that group systems set a high value on specializa-
tion. That is what every man does, and every clear-
eyed college must do it too. What I object to is that
group systems, so far as they adhere to their aim,
enforce specialization. Among every half-dozen stu-
dents, probably one will be injured if he cannot
specialize largely; two or three more might wisely
specialize in lower degree; but to force the remain-
ing two or three into curricula shaped by professional
bias is to do them serious damage. There are sober
boys of little intrepidity or positive taste, boys who
properly enough wish to know what others know.
They will not make scholars. They were not born
to enlarge the boundaries of knowledge. They have
another function : they preserve and distribute such
knowledge as already exists. Many of them are per-
sons of wealth. To furnish them glimpses of varied
learning is to save them from barbarism. Still an-
other large class is composed of boys who develop
late. They are boys who will one day acquire an in-
terest of their own, if they are allowed to roam about
somewhat aimlessly in the domain of wisdom until
they are twenty-one. Both of these classes have their
rights. The prescribed system was built to support
them ; the elective shelters and improves them ; but
a group system shuts them all out, if they will not
on leaving school adopt professional courses. When-
238 THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM
ever I can hear of a group system which like the old
college has a place for the indistinct young man,
and like the new elective college matures him an-
nually by suggesting that he take part in shaping
his own career, I will accept the group system.
Then, too, the public will probably accept it. Until
then, rigid groups will be thought by many to lay
too great a strain on unseasoned powers of choice,
to present too many practical difficulties of construc-
tion, and to show too doctrinaire a confidence that
every youth will fit without pinching into a special-
ized class.
X
NECESSARY LIMITATIONS OF THE ELECTIVE
SYSTEM
THE preceding paper has sufficiently discussed
the impossible limitations of the elective system, and
has shown with some minuteness the grounds of
their impossibility. The methods there examined
are the only ones suggested by my critics. They all
agree in this, that they seek to narrow the scope of
choice. They try to combine with it a hostile factor,
and they differ merely in their mode of combination.
The first puts a restraining check before election ; the
second puts one by its side ; the third makes the two
inseparable by allowing nothing to be chosen which
is not first prescribed. The general purpose of all
these methods is mine also. Election must be limited.
Unchartered choice is licentious and self -destructive.
I quarrel with them only because the modes of effect-
ing their purpose tend to produce results of a tran-
sient and inappropriate sort. The aim of education,
as I conceive it, is to spiritualize the largest possible
number of persons, that is, to teach them how to do
their own thinking and willing and to do it well.
But these methods effect something widely different
240 NECESSARY LIMITATIONS
They either aristocratize where they should demo-
cratize, or they belittle where they should mature, or
else they professionalize where they should human-
ize. A common trouble besets them all : the limiting
authority is placed in external and arbitrary juxta-
position to the personal initiative which it professes
to support. It should grow out of this initiative and
be its interpreter and realization. By limitation of
choice the proposers of these schemes appear to mean
making choice less. I mean fortifying it, keeping it
true to itself, making it more. Control that dimin-
ishes the quantity of choice is one thing ; control that
raises the quality, quite another. How important is
this distinction and how frequently it is forgotten!
Words like "limitation," "control," " authority ,"-
"obedience," are words of majesty, but words also
of doubtful import. They carry a freight of wisdom
or of folly, according to the end towards which they
steer. In order to sanction or discard limitations
which induce obedience, we must bear that end in
mind. Let us stop a moment, and see that we have it
in mind now.
Old educational systems are often said to have
erred by excess of authority. I could not say so. The
elective system, if it is to possess the future, must be-
come as authoritative as they. More accurately we
say that their authority was of a wrong sort. A father
may exercise an authority over his child no less direc-
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 241
tive than that of the master over the slave; but the
father is trying to accomplish something which the
master disregards ; the father hopes to make the will
of another strong, the master to make it weak ; the
father commands what the child himself would wish,
had he sufficient experience. The child's obedience
accordingly enlightens, steadies, invigorates his in-
dependent will. Invigoration is the purpose of the
command. The authority is akin secretly akin
to the child's own desires. No alien power intervenes,
as when a slave obeys. Here a foreign will thwarts
the slave's proper motions. Over against his own
legitimate desires, the desire of a totally different
being appears and claims precedence. Obedience
like this brings no ennoblement. The oftener a child
obeys, the less of a child is he; the oftener a slave,
the more completely he is a slave. Roughly to say,
then, that submission to authority is healthy for a
college boy, argues a mental confusion. There are
two kinds of authority, the authority of moral
guidance, and the authority of repressive control :
parental authority, respecting and vivifying the in-
dividual life and thus continually tending to super-
sede itself; and masterly authority, whose command,
out of relation to the obeyer's wish, tends ever to
bring the obedient into bondage. Which shall col-
lege authority be ? Authority is necessary, ever-pres-
ent authority. If the young man's choice is to become
242 NECESSARY LIMITATIONS
a thing of worth, it must be encompassed with limit-
ations. But as the need of these limitations springs
from the imperfections of choice, so should their
aim be to perfect choice, not to repress it. To im-
pose limitations which do not ultimately enlarge the
youth they bind is to make the means of education
"oblige against its main end."
This moral authority is what the new education
seeks. To a casual eye, the colleges of to-day seem
to be growing disorganized; a closer view shows
construction taking place, but taking place along
the lines of the vital distinction just pointed out.
Men are striving to bring about a germane and ethi-
cal authority in the room of the baser mechanical
authorities of the past. In this distinction, then, a
clue is to be found which, if followed up, will lead
us away from impossible limitations of the elective
system, and conduct us at length to the possible,
nay, to the inevitable ones. As the elective principle
is essentially ethical, its limitations, if helpfully con-
gruous, must be ethical too. They must be simply
the means of bringing home to the young chooser
the sacred conditions of choice; which conditions,
if I rightly understand them, may compactly be
entitled those of intentionality, information, and
persistence. To secure these conditions, limitations
exist. In the very nature of choice such conditions
are implied. Choice is sound as they prevail, whim-
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 243
sical as they diminish. An education which lays
stress on the elective principle is bound to lay stress
on these conditions also. It cannot slip over into
lazy ways of letting its students drift, and still look
for credit as an elective system. People will distrust
it. That is why they distrust Harvard to-day. The
objections brought against the elective system of
Harvard are in reality not levelled against the elec-
tive system at all. They are directed against its
bastard brother, laissez-faire. Objectors suspect that
the conditions of choice which I have named are not
fulfilled. They are not fulfilled, I confess, or rather
I stoutly maintain. To come anywhere near ful-
filling them requires long time and study, and action
unimpeded by a misconceiving community. Both
time and study Harvard has given, has given largely.
The records of scholarship and deportment which I
exhibited in my first paper show in how high a de-
gree Harvard has already been able to remove from
choice the capricious, ignorant, and unsteadfast
characteristics which rightly bring it into disrepute.
But much remains to do, and in that doing we are
hampered by the fact that a portion of the public is
still looking in wrong directions. It cannot get over
its hankering after the delusive modes of limitation
which I have discussed. It does not persistently see
that at present the proper work of education is the
study of means by which self-direction may be ren-
244 NECESSARY LIMITATIONS
dered safe. Leaders of education themselves see this
but dimly, as the papers of my critics naively show.
Until choice was frankly accepted as the fit basis
for the direction of a person by a person, its forti-
fying limitations could not be studied. Now they
must be studied, now that the old methods of auto-
cratic control are breaking down. As a moral will
comes to be recognized as the best sort of steam
power, the modes of generating that power acquire
new claims to attention. Henceforth the training
of the will must be undertaken by the elective sys-
tem as an integral part of its discipline.
I am not so presumptuous as to attempt to proph-
esy the precise forms which methods of moral guid-
ance will take. Moral guidance is a delicate affair.
Its spirit is more important than its procedure.
Flexibility is its strength. Methods final, rigid, and
minute do not belong to it. Nor can it afford to for-
get the one great truth of laissez-faire, that wills
which are to be kept fresh and vigorous will not bear
much looking after. Time, too, is an important factor
in the shaping of moral influences. Experiments
now in progress at Harvard and elsewhere must
discriminate safe from unsafe limitations. Leaving
then to the future the task of showing how wide the
scope of maturing discipline may become, I will
merely try to sketch the main lines along which
experiments are now proceeding, I will give a few
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 245
illustrative examples of what is being done and why,
and I will state somewhat at large how, in my judg-
ment, more is yet to be accomplished. To make the
matter clear, a free exposition shall be given of the
puzzling headings already named ; that is, I will first
ramblingly discuss the limitations on choice which
may deepen the student's intentionality of aim;
secondly, those which increase his information in
regard to means; and thirdly, those which may
strengthen his persistence in a course once chosen.
I. That intentionality should be cultivated, I
need not spend many words in explaining. Every-
body acknowledges that without a certain degree of
it choice is impossible. Many persons assert also
that boys come to college with no clear intentions,
not knowing what they want, waiting to be told;
for such, it is said, an elective system is manifestly
absurd. I admit the fact. It is true. The majority
of the freshmen whom I have known in the last seven-
teen years have been, at entrance, deficient in serious
aims. But from this fact I draw a conclusion quite
opposite to the one suggested. It is election, sys-
tematized election, which these boys need; for when
we say a young student has no definite aims, we
imply that he has never become sufficiently interested
in any given intellectual line to have acquired the
wish to follow that line farther. Such a state of
things is lamentable, and certainly shows that pre-
246 NECESSARY LIMITATIONS
scribed methods the proper methods, in my judg-
ment, for the school years have in his case proved
inadequate. It is useless to continue them into
years confessedly less suited to their exercise. Per-
haps it is about equally useless to abandon the ill-
formed boy to unguided choice. Prescription says,
"This person is unfit to choose, keep him so";
laissez-faire says, "If he is unfit to choose, let him
perish"; but a watchful elective system must say,
" Granting him to be unfit, if he is not spoiled, I will
fit him." And can we fit him ? I know well enough
that indifferent teachers incline to shirk the task.
They like to divide pupils into the deceptive classes
of good and bad, meaning by the former those who
intend to work, and by the latter those who intend
not to. But we must get rid of indifferent teachers.
Teachers with enthusiasm in them soon discover
that the two classes of pupils I have named may as
well be dismissed from consideration. Where aims
have become definite, a teacher has little more to
do. The boy who means to work will get learning
under the poorest teacher and the worst system;
while the boy who means not to work may be forced
up to the Pierian spring, but will hardly be made
to drink. A vigorous teacher does not assume in-
tention to be ready-made. He counts it his contin-
ual office to help in making it. On the middle two
quarters of a class he spends his hardest efforts, on
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 247
students who are friendly to learning but not im-
passioned for it, on those who like the results of study
but like tennis also, and popularity, and cigars,
and slackness. The culture of these weak wills is
the problem of every college. Here are unintentional
boys waiting to be turned into intentional men.
What limitations on intellectual and moral vagrancy
will help them forward ?
The chief limitation, the one underlying all others,
the one which no clever contrivance can ever super-
sede, is vitalized teaching. Suitable subjects, attrac-
tively taught, awake lethargic intention as nothing
else can. An elective system, as even its enemies
confess, enormously stimulates the zeal of teachers.
It consequently brings to bear on unawakened boys
influences of a strangely quickening character. When
I hear a man trained under the old methods of pre-
scription say, "At the time I was in college I could
not have chosen studies for myself, and I do not be-
lieve my son can," I see, and am not surprised to see,
that he does not understand what forces the elec-
tive system sets astir. So powerful an influence have
these forces over both teachers and pupils, that ques-
tions of hard and easy studies do not, as outsiders
are apt to suppose, seriously disturb the formation
of sound intentions. The many leaders in educa-
tion whose opinions on election I quoted in my
previous paper agree that the new modes tend to
248 NECESSARY LIMITATIONS
sobriety and intentionality of aim. When Professor
Ladd speaks of " the unexpected wisdom and manli-
ness of the choices already made" in the first year
of election at New Haven, he well expresses the grati-
fied surprise which every one experiences on perceiv-
ing in the very constitution of the elective system a
sort of limitation on wayward choice. This limita-
tion seems to me, as Professor Ladd says he found
it, 1 a tolerable preventive of choices directly aimed at
ease. In a community devoted to athletics, baseball
is not played because it is " soft," and football avoided
on account of its difficulty. A similar state of things
must be brought about in studies. In a certain low
degree it has come about already. As election breeds
new life in teaching, the old slovenly habit of lik-
ing best what costs least begins to disappear. Easy
courses will exist and ought to exist. Prescribed
colleges, it is often forgotten, have more of them than
elective colleges. The important matter is, to see that
they fall to the right persons. Where everything is
prescribed, students who do not wish easy studies
are still obliged to take them. Under election, soft
courses may often be pursued with advantage. A
student whose other courses largely depend for their
1 Doubtless some have carried out the intention of making
everything as soft as possible for themselves. But the choices, in
fact, do not as yet show the existence of any such intention in any
considerable number of cases; they show rather the very reverse.
Professor Ladd in The New Englander, January, 1885, p. 119.
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 249
profit on the amount of private reading or of labora-
tory practice accomplished in connection with them
is wise in choosing one or more in which the bulk
of the work is taken by the teacher. I do not say
that soft courses are always selected with these wise
aims in view. Many I know are not. We have our
proper share of hardened loafers " tares in our
sustaining corn " who have an unerring instinct
as to where they can most safely settle. But large
numbers of the men in soft courses are there to good
purpose; and I maintain that the superficial study
of a subject, acquainting one with broad outlines, is
not necessarily a worthless study. At Harvard to-
day I believe we have too few such superficial courses.
As I look over the Elective Pamphlet, and note the
necessarily varying degrees of difficulty in the studies
announced there, I count but six which can, with any
justice, be entitled soft courses ; and several of these
must be reckoned by anybody an inspiration to the
students who pursue them. There is a tendency
in the elective system, as I have shown elsewhere,
to reduce the number of soft courses somewhat be-
low the desirable number.
I insist, therefore, that under a pretty loose elec-
tive system boys are little disposed to intentionally
vicious choices. My fears look in a different direc-
tion. I do not expect depravity, but I want to head
off aimless trifling. I agree with the opponents of
250 NECESSARY LIMITATIONS
election in thinking that there is danger, especially
during the early years of college life, that righteous
intention may not be distinct and energetic. Boys
drift. Inadequate influences induce their decisions.
The inclinations of the clique in which a young
man finds himself are, without much thought, ac-
cepted as his own. Heedlessness is the young man's
bane. It should not be mistaken for vice; the two
are different. A boy who will enter a dormitory at
twelve o'clock at night, and go to the third story
whistling and beating time on the banisters, certainly
seems a brutish person; but he is ordinarily a kind
enough fellow, capable of a good deal of self-sacri-
fice when brought face to face with need. He simply
does not think. So it is in study : there, too, he does
not think. Now in college a boy should learn per-
petually to think ; and an excellent way of helping
him to learn is to ask him often what he is thinking
about. The object of the questioning should not be
to thwart the boy's aims, rather to insure that they
are in reality his own. Essentially his to the last they
should remain, even though intrinsically they may not
be the best. Young persons, much more than their
elders, require to talk over plans from time to time
with an experienced critic, in order to learn by de-
grees the difficult art of planning. By such talk in-
tentionality is fortified. There is much of this talk
already; talk of younger students with older talk
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 251
with wise persons at home, and more and more every
year with the teachers of the courses left and the
courses entered. All this is good. Haphazard modes
breed an astonishing average of choices that possess
a meaning. The waste of a laissez-faire system comes
nowhere near the waste of a prescribed. But what is
good when compared with a bad thing may be poor
when compared with excellence itself. We must go
on. A college, like a man, should always be saying,
" Never was I so good as to-day, and never again will
I be so bad." We must welcome criticisms more than
praises, and seek after our weak points as after hid
treasures. The elective system seems to me weak at
present through lacking organized means of bringing
the student and his intentions face to face. Intentions
grow by being looked at. At the English universities
a young man on entering a college is put in charge
of a special tutor, without whose consent he can do
little either in the way of study or of personal man-
agement. 1 Dependence so extreme is perhaps bet-
ter suited to an infant school than to an American
college; and even in England, where respectful sub-
servience on the part of the young has been cultivated
for generations, the system is losing ground. Since
the tutors were allowed to marry and to leave the
1 As the minute personal care given to individual students in
the English universities is often and deservedly praised, I may as
well say that it costs something. Oxford spends each year about
$2,000,000 on 2500 men; Harvard, $650,000 on 1700.
252 NECESSARY LIMITATIONS
college home, tutorial influence has been changing.
In most American colleges twenty-five years ago
there were officers known as class tutors, to whom,
in case of need, a student might turn. Petty permis-
sions were received from these men, instead of from
a mechanical central office. So far as this plan set
personal supervision in the place of routine it was,
in my eyes, good. But the relation of a class tutor to
his boys was usually one of more awe than friend-
ship. At the Johns Hopkins University there is a
board of advisers, to some member of which each
student is assigned at entrance. The adviser stands
in loco parentis to his charges. The value of such
adjustments depends on the nature of the parental
tie. If the relation is worked so as to stimulate the
student's independence, it is good; if so as to dis-
charge him from responsibility, it unfits for the life
that follows. At Harvard special students not can-
didates for a degree have recently been put in charge
of a committee, to whom they are obliged to report
their previous history and their plans of study for
each succeeding year. The committee must know
at all times what their charges are doing. Something
of this sort, I am convinced, will be demanded at
no distant day, as a means of steadying all students
in elective colleges. Large personal supervision
need not mean diminution of freedom. A young man
may possess his freedom more solidly if he recog-
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 253
nizes an obligation to state and defend the reasons
which induce his choice. For myself, I should be
willing to make the functions of such advisory com-
mittees somewhat broad. As a college grows, the
old ways of bringing about acquaintance between
officers and students become impracticable. But the
need of personal acquaintance, unhappily, does not
cease. New ways should be provided. A boy dropped
into the middle of a large college must not be lost to
sight ; he must be looked after. To allow the teacher's
work of instruction to become divorced from his pas-
toral, his priestly, function is to cheapen and ex-
ternalize education. I would have every student in
college supplied with somebody who might serve as
a discretionary friend; and I should not think it a
disadvantage that such an expectation of friendship
would be as apt to better the instructor as the student
Before leaving this part of my subject, I may
mention a subordinate, but still valuable, means of
limiting choice so as to increase its intentionality.
The studies open to choice in the early years should
be few and elementary. The significance of ad-
vanced courses cannot be understood till elementary
ones are mastered, and immature choice should not
be confused by many issues. At Harvard this mode
of limitation is largely employed. Although the
elective list for 1886-87 shows 172 courses, a fresh-
man has hardly more than one eighth of these to
254 NECESSARY LIMITATIONS
choose from; in any given case this number will
probably be reduced about one half by insufficient
preparation or conflict of hours. Seemingly about a
third of the list is offered to the average sophomore ;
but this amount is again cut down nearly one half
by the operation of similar causes. The practice of
hedging electives with qualifications is a growing
one. It may well grow more. It offers guidance pre-
cisely at the point where it is most needed. It pro-
tects rational choice, and guards against many of
the dangers which the foes of election justly dread.
II. A second class of limitations of the elective
system, possible and friendly, springs from the need
of furnishing the young elector ample information
about that which he is to choose. The best inten-
tions require judicious aim. If studies are taken in
the dark, without right anticipation of their subject-
matter, or in ignorance of their relation to other
studies, small results follow. Here, I think it will be
generally agreed, prescribed systems are especially
weak. Their pupils have little knowledge beforehand
of what a course is designed to accomplish. Work is
undertaken blindly, minds consenting as little as
wills. An elective system is impossible under such
conditions. Its student must know when he chooses,
what he chooses. He must be able to estimate
whether the choice of Greek 5 will further his designs
better than the choice of Greek 8.
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 255
At Harvard, methods of furnishing information
are pretty fully developed. In May an elective pam-
phlet is issued, which announces everything that is
to be taught in the college during the following year.
Most departments, also, issue additional pamphlets,
describing with much detail the nature of their special
courses, and the considerations which should lead a
student to one rather than another. If the courses
of a department are arranged properly, pursuing one
gives the most needful knowledge about the available
next. This knowledge is generally supplemented at
the close of the year by explanations on the part of
the instructor about the courses that follow. In the
Elective Pamphlet a star, prefixed to courses of an
advanced and especially technical character, indi-
cates that the instructor must be privately consulted
before these courses can be chosen. Consultations
with instructors about all courses are frequent.
That most effective means of distributing information,
the talk of students, goes on unceasingly. With time,
perhaps, means may be devised for informing a
student more largely what he is choosing. The full-
est information is desirable. That which is at present
most needed is, I think, some rough indication of
the relations of the several provinces of study to one
another. Information of this sort is peculiarly hard
to supply, because the knowledge on which it professes
to rest cannot be precise and unimpeachable. We
256 NECESSARY LIMITATIONS
deal here with intricate problems, in regard to which
experts are far from agreed, problems where the dif-
ferent point of view provided in the nature of each
individual will rightly readjust whatever general
conclusions are drawn. The old type of college had
an easy way of settling these troublesome matters
dogmatically, by voting, in open faculty-meeting,
what should be counted the normal sequence of
studies, and what their mixture. But as the votes of
different colleges showed no uniformity, people have
gradually come to perceive that the subject is one
where only large outlines can distinctly be made out. 1
1 I may not have a better opportunity than this to clear up a
petty difficulty which seems to agitate some of my critics. They say
they want the degree of A. B. to mean something definite, while
at present, under the elective system, it means one thing for John
Doe, and something altogether different for his classmate, Richard
Roe. That is true. Besides embodying the general signification
that the bearer has been working four years in a way to satisfy
college guardians, the stately letters do take on an individual varia-
tion of meaning for every man who wins them. They must do so
as long as we are engaged in the formation of living persons. If
the college were a factory, our case would be different. We might
then offer a label which would keep its identity of meaning for all
the articles turned out. Wherever education has been a living
thing, the single degree has always contained this element of va-
riety. The German degree is as diverse in meaning as ours. The
degree of the English university is diverse, and more diverse for
Honors men the only ones who can properly be said to deserve it
than for inert Pass men. Degrees in this country have, from
the first, had considerable diversity, college differing from college
in requirement, and certainly student from student in attainment.
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 257
To these large outlines I think it important to direct
the attention of undergraduates. In most German
universities a course of Encyclopddie is offered, a
course which gives in brief a survey of the sciences,
and attempts to fix approximately the place of each
in the total organization of knowledge. I am not
aware that such a course exists in any American
college. Indeed, there was hardly a place for it till
dogmatic prescription was shaken. But if something
of the kind were now established in the freshman
year, our young men might be relieved of a certain
intellectual short-sightedness, and the choices of one
year might better keep in view those of the other three.
III. And now granting that a student has started
with good intentions and is well informed about the
direction where profit lies, still have we any assur-
ance that he will push those intentions with a fair
degree of tenacity through the distractions which be-
set his daily path ? We need, indeed we must have,
a third class of helpful limitations which may secure
the persistent adhesion of our student to his chosen
line of work. Probably this class of limitations is
That twenty-five years ago we were approaching too great uni-
formity in the signification of degrees, I suppose most educators
now admit. That was a mechanical and stagnant period, and men
have brought over from it to the more active days of the present
ideals formed then. Precision of statement goes with figures,
with etiquette, with military matters; but descriptions of the
quality of persons must be stated in the round.
258 NECESSARY LIMITATIONS
the most important and complex of all. To yield
a paying return, study must be stuck to. A decision
has little meaning unless the volition of to-day brings
in its train a volition to-morrow. Self -direction im-
plies such patient continuance in well-doing that
only after persistence has become somewhat habit-
ual can choice be called mature. To establish on-
ward-leading habits, therefore, should be one of the
chief objects in devising limitations of election.
Only we must not mistake ; we must look below the
surface. Mechanical diligence often covers mental
sloth. It is not habits of passive docility that are
desirable, habits of timidity and uncriticising accept-
ance. Against forming these pernicious and easily
acquired habits, it may be necessary even to erect
barriers. The habit wanted is the habit of sponta-
neous attack. Prescription deadened this vital habit;
it mechanized. His task removed, the student had
little independent momentum. Election invigorates
the springs of action. Formerly I did not see this, and
I favored prescribed systems, thinking them sys-
tems of duty. That absence of an aggressive intel-
lectual life which prescribed studies induce, I, like
many others, mistook for faithfulness. Experience
has instructed me. I no longer have any question
that for the average man sound habits of steady en-
deavor grow best in fields of choice. Emerson's
words are words of soberness :
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 259
He that worketh high and wise
Nor pauses in his plan,
Will take the sun out of the skies
Ere freedom out of man.
Furthermore, in attempting to stimulate persist-
ence I believe we must ultimately rely on the rational
interest in study which we can arouse and hold.
Undoubtedly much can be done to save this inter-
est from disturbance and to hold vacillating atten-
tion fixed upon it; but it, and it alone, is to be the
driving force. Methods of college government must
be reckoned wise as they push into the foreground
the intrinsic charm of wisdom, mischievous as they
hide it behind fidelity to technical demand. In other
matters we readily acknowledge interest as an effi-
cient force. We call it a force as broad as the worth
of knowledge, and as deep as the curiosity of man.
"Put your heart into your work," we say, "if you
will make it excellent." A dozen proverbs tell that
it is love that makes the world go round. Every
employment of life springs from an underlying de-
sire. The cricketer wants to win the game; the
fisherman to catch fish ; the farmer to gather crops ;
the merchant to make money; the physician to cure
his patient; the student to become wise. Eliminate
desire, put in its place allegiance to the rules of a
game, and what, in any of these cases, would be the
chance of persistent endeavor? It seems almost a
260 NECESSARY LIMITATIONS
truism to say that limitations of personal effort de-
signed to strengthen persistency must be such as will
heighten the wish and clear its path to its object.
Obvious as is the truth here presented, it seems
in some degree to have escaped the attention of my
critics. After showing that the grade of scholarship
at Harvard steadily rises, that our students become
more decorous and their methods of work less child-
ish, I stated that, under an extremely loose mode
of regulating attendance five sixths of the exercises
were attended by all our men, worst and best, sick
and well, most reckless and most discreet. Few por-
tions of my obnoxious paper have occasioned a louder
outcry. I am told of a neighboring college where
the benches show but three per cent of absentees.
I wonder what the percentage is in Charlestown
State Prison. Nobody doubts that attendance will
be closer if compelled. But the interesting question,
still remains, " Are students by such means learning
habits of spontaneous regularity?" This question
can be answered only when the concealing restraint
is removed. It has been removed at Harvard,
in my judgment too largely removed, and the
great body of our students is seen to desire learning
and to desire it all the time. Is it certain that the
students of other colleges, if left with little or no
restraint, would show a better record? The point
of fidelity and regularity, it is said, is of supreme
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 261
importance. So it is. But fidelity and regularity in
study, not in attending recitations. If ever the Har-
vard system is perfected, so that students here are
as eager for knowledge as the best class of German
university men, I do not believe we shall see a lower
rate of absence ; only then, each absence will be used,
as it is not at present, for a studious purpose. The
modern teacher stimulates private reading, exacts
theses, directs work in libraries. Pupils engaged in
these things are not dependent on recitations as text-
book schoolboys are. The grade of higher education
cannot rise much so long as the present extreme
stress is laid on appearance in the class-room.
In saying this I would not be understood to de-
fend the method of dealing with absences which has
for some years been practised at Harvard. I think
the method bad. I have always thought it so, and
have steadily favored a different system. The be-
havior of our students under a regulation so loose
seems to me a striking testimony to the scholarly spirit
prevalent here. As such I mentioned it in my first
paper, and as such I would again call attention to it.
But I am not satisfied with the present good results.
I want to impress on every student that absence from
the class-room can be justified by nothing short of
illness or a scholarly purpose. For a gainful purpose
the merchant is occasionally absent from his office;
for a gainful purpose a scholar of mine may omit a
262 NECESSARY LIMITATIONS
recitation. But Smith can be absent profitably when
Brown would meet with loss. I accordingly object
to methods of limiting absence which exact the same
numerical regularity of all. College records may look
clean, yet students be learning little about duty.
Limitation, in my judgment, should be so adjusted
as to strengthen the man's personal adhesion to
plans of daily study. Such limitations cannot be
fixed by statute and worked by a single clerk. Moral
discipline is not a thing to be supplied by wholesale.
Professors must be individually charged with the
oversight of their men. I would have excuses for
occasional absence made to the instructor, and I
should expect him to count it a part of his work to
see that the better purposes of his scholars did not
grow feeble. A professor who exercised such super-
visory power slackly would make his course the
resort of the indolent; one who was over-stringent
would see himself deserted by indolent and earnest
alike. My rule would be that no student be allowed
to present himself at an examination who could
not show his teacher's certificate that his attendance
on daily work was satisfactory. Traditions in this
country and in Germany are so different that I
should have confidence in a method working well
here though it worked ill there. At any rate, when-
ever it fell into decay, it could a proviso necessary
in all moral matters be readjusted. A rule some-
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 263
thing like this the Harvard Faculty has recently
adopted by voting that " any instructor, with the ap-
proval of the Dean, may at any time exclude from
his course any student who in his judgment has
neglected the work of the course." Probably the
amount of absence which has hitherto occurred at
Harvard will under this vote diminish.
Suppose, then, by these limitations on a student's
caprice we have secured his persistence in outward
endeavor, still one thing more is needed. We have
brought him bodily to a recitation room; but his
mind must be there too, his aroused and active mind.
Limitations that will secure this slippery part of the
person are difficult to devise. Nevertheless, they are
worth studying. Their object is plain. They are to
lead a student to do something every day; to aid
him to overcome those tendencies to procrastination,
self-confidence, and passive absorption which are
the regular and calculable dangers of youth. They
are to teach him how not to cram, to inspire him with
respect for steady effort, and to enable him each year
to find such effort more habitual to himself. These
are hard tasks. The old education tried to meet
them by the use of daily recitations, a plan not with-
out advantages. The new education is preserving
the valuable features of recitations by adopting and
developing the Seminar. But recitations pure and
simple have serious drawbacks. They presuppose
264 NECESSARY LIMITATIONS
a text-book, which, while it brings definiteness, brings
also narrowness of view. The learner masters a book,
not a subject. After-life possesses nothing analogous
to the text-book. A struggling man wins what he
wants from many books, from his own thought, from
frequent consultations. Why should not a student
be disciplined in the ways he must afterwards em-
ploy? Moreover, recitations have the disadvantage
that no large number of men can take part on any
single day. The times of trial either become amen-
able to reckoning, or, in order to prevent reckoning,
a teacher must resort to schemes which do not com-
mend him to his class. Undoubtedly in recitation
the reciter gains, but the gains of the rest of the class
are small. The listeners would be more profited
by instruction. An hour with an expert should carry
students forward ; to occupy it in ascertaining where
they now stand is wasteful. For all these reasons
there has been of late years a strong reaction against
recitations. Lectures have been introduced, and the
time formerly spent by a professor in hearing boys
is now spent by boys in hearing a professor. Plainly
in this there is a gain, but a gain which needs careful
limitation if the student's persistence in work is to
be retained. A pure lecture system is a broad road
to ignorance. Students are entertained or bored,
but at the end of a month they know little more than
at the beginning. Lectures always seem to me an
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 265
inheritance from the days when books were not.
Learning how often must it be said ! is not
acceptance; it is criticism, it is attack, it is doing.
An active element is everywhere involved in it. Per-
sonal sanction is wanted for every step. One who
will grow wise must perform processes himself, not
sit at ease and behold another's performance.
These simple truths are now tolerably understood
at Harvard. There remain in the college few courses
of pure recitations or of pure lectures. I wish all were
forbidden by statute. In almost all courses, in one
way or another, frequent opportunity is given the
student to show what he is doing. In some, especially
in elementary courses, lectures run parallel with a
text-book. In some, theses, that is, written discussions,
are exacted monthly, half-yearly, annually, in addi-
tion to examinations. In some, examinations are
frequent. In some, a daily question, to be answered
in writing on the spot, is offered to the whole class.
Often, especially in philosophical subjects, the hour
is occupied with debate between officer and students.
More and more, physical subjects are taught by the
laboratory, linguistic and historical by the library.
In a living university a great variety of methods
spring up, according to the nature of the subject and
the personality of the teacher. Variety should exist.
In constantly diversified ways each student should
be assured that he is expected to be doing something
266 NECESSARY LIMITATIONS
all the time, and that somebody besides himself
knows what he is doing. As yet this assurance is not
attained ; we can only claim to be working toward it.
Every year we discover some fresh limitation which
will make persistence more natural, neglect more
strange. I believe study at Harvard is to-day more
interested, energetic, and persistent than it has ever
been before. But that is no ground for satisfaction.
A powerful college must forever be dissatisfied. Each
year it must address itself anew to strengthening the
tenacity of its students in their zeal for knowledge.
By the side of these larger limitations in the interest
of persistency, it may be well to mention one or two
examples of smaller ones which have the same end
in view. By some provision it must be made diffi-
cult to withdraw from a study once chosen. Choice
should be deliberate and then be final. It probably
will not be deliberate unless it is understood to be
final. A few weeks may be allowed for an inspection
of a chosen course, but at the close of the first month's
teaching the Harvard Faculty tie up their students
and allow change only on petition and for the most
convincing cause. An elective college which did not
make changes of electives difficult would be an engine
for discouraging intentionality and persistence.
I incline to think, too, that a regulation forbidding
elementary courses in the later years would render
our education more coherent. In this matter elective
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 267
colleges have an opportunity which prescribed ones
miss. In order to be fair to all the sciences, college
faculties are obliged to scatter fragments of them
throughout the length and breadth of prescribed
curricula. Twenty-five years ago every Harvard
man waited till his senior year before beginning
philosophy, acoustics, history, and political economy.
To-day the fourteen other New England colleges,
most of whom, like the Harvard of twenty-five years
ago, offer a certain number of elective studies, still
show senior years largely occupied with elementary
studies. Five forbid philosophy before the senior
year; eight, political economy; two, history; six,
geology. Out of the seven colleges which offer some
one of the eastern languages, all except Harvard
oblige the alphabet to be learned in the senior year.
Of the six which offer Italian or Spanish, Harvard
alone permits a beginning to be made before the junior
year, while two take up these languages for the first
time in the senior year. In three New England
colleges German cannot be begun till the junior year.
In a majority, a physical subject is begun in the junior
and another in the senior year. At Yale nobody but
a senior can study chemistry. Such postponement,
and by consequence such fragmentary work, may be
necessary where early college years are crowded with
prescribed studies. But an elective system can em-
ploy its later years to better advantage. It can bring
268 NECESSARY LIMITATIONS
to a mature understanding the interests which fresh-
men and sophomores have already acquired. Ele-
mentary studies are not maturing studies; they do
not make the fibre of a student firm. To studies of
a solidifying sort the last years should be devoted.
I should like to forbid seniors to take any elemen-
tary study whatever, and to forbid juniors all ex-
cept philosophy, political economy, history, fine arts,
Sanskrit, Hebrew, and law. Under such a rule we
should graduate more men who would be first rate
at something; and a man who is first rate at some-
thing is generally pretty good at anything.
Such, then, are a few examples of the ways in
which choice may be limited so as to become strong.
They are but examples, intended merely to draw
attention to the three kinds of limitation still pos-
sible. Humble ways they may seem, not particu-
larly interesting to hear about ; business methods one
might call them. But by means of these and such as
these the young scholar becomes clearer in intention,
larger in information, hardier in persistence. In
urging such means I shall be seen to be no thick and
thin advocate of election. That I have never been.
Originally a doubter, I have come to regard the
elective system, that is, election under such limita-
tions as I have described, as the safest indeed as
the only possible course which education can now
take. I advocate it heartily as a system which need
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 269
not carry us too fast or too far in any one direction,
as a system so inherently flexible that its own great
virtues readily unite with those of an alien type.
Under its sheltering charge the worthier advantages
of both grouped and prescribed systems are attain-
able. I proclaim it, therefore, not as a popular cry
nor as an educational panacea, but as a sober oppor-
tunity for moral and intellectual training. Limited
as it is at Harvard, I see that it works admirably with
the studious, stimulatingly with those of weaker will,
not unendurably with the depraved. These are great
results. They cannot be set aside by calling them
the outcome of "individualism." In a certain sense
they are. But " individualism " is an uncertain term.
In every one of us there is a contemptible individual-
ity, grounded in what is ephemeral and capriciously
personal. Systematic election, as I have shown, puts
limitations on this. But there is a noble individuality
which should be the object of our fostering care.
Nothing that lends it strength and fineness can be
counted trivial. To form a true individuality is,
indeed, the ideal of the elective system. Let me
briefly sketch my conception of that ideal.
George Herbert, praising God for the physical
world which He has made, says that in it " all things
have their will, yet none but thine." Such a free
harmony between thinking man and a Lord of his
thought it is the office of education to bring about.
270 NECESSARY LIMITATIONS
At the start it does not exist. The child is aware of
his own will, and he is aware of little else. He im-
agines that one pleasing fancy may be willed as easily
as another. As he matures, he discovers that his
will is effective when it accords with the make of the
world and ineffective when it does not. This dis-
covery, bringing as it does increased respect for the
make of the world and even for its Maker, degrades
or ennobles according as the facts of the world are
now viewed as restrictive finalities or as an appara-
tus for larger self-expression. Seeing the power of that
which is not himself, a man may become passively
receptive, and say, "Then I am to have no will of
my own " ; or he may become newly energetic, know-
ing that though he can have no will of his separate
own, yet all the power of God is his if he will but un-
derstand. A man of the latter sort is spiritually edu-
cated. Much still remains to be done in understand-
ing special laws ; and with each fresh understanding,
a fresh possibility of individual life is disclosed.
The worth, however, of the whole process lies in the
man's honoring his own will, but honoring it only as
it grows strong through accordance with the will of
God.
Now into our colleges comes a mixed multitude
made up of all the three classes named : the child-
ish, who imagine they can will anything ; the docile,
so passive in the presence of an ordered world that
OF THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 271
they have little individual will left; the spiritually-
minded or original, who with strong interests of their
own seek to develop these through living contact with
truths which they have not made. Our educational
modes must meet them all, respecting their wills
wherever wise, and teaching the feeble to discrimi-
nate fanciful from righteous desires. For carrying
forward such a training the elective system seems to
me to have peculiar aptitudes. What I have called
its limitations will be seen to be spiritual assistances.
To the further invention of such there is no end. A
watchful patience is the one great requisite, patience
in directors, instructed criticism on the part of the
public, and a brave expression of confidence when
confidence is seen to have been earned.
XI
COLLEGE EXPENSES 1
THE subject of college expenses has been much
debated lately. At our Commencement dinner, a year
ago, attention was called to it. Our chairman on that
occasion justly insisted that the ideal of the Univer-
sity should be plain living and high thinking. And
certainly there is apt to be something vulgar, as well
as vicious, in the man of books who turns away from
winning intellectual wealth and indulges in tawdry
extravagance. Yet every friend of Harvard is obliged
to acknowledge with shame that the loose spender
has a lodging in our yard. No clear-sighted observer
can draw near and not perceive that in all his native
hideousness the man of the club and the dog-cart is
among us.
I do not think this strange. In fact, I regard it as
inevitable. It is necessarily connected with our growth.
The old College we might compare, for moral and
intellectual range, with a country village; our pre-
sent University is a great city, and we must accept
1 Delivered in Memorial Hall, Cambridge, June 29, 1887. Since
this date the scale of expenditure in college, as elsewhere, has been
steadily rising.
COLLEGE EXPENSES 273
the many-sided life, the temptations as well as the
opportunities, of the great city. Probably nowhere
on this planet can a thousand young men be found,
between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four, who
will not show examples of the heedless, the temptable,
and the depraved. Let us not, then, shrink from
acknowledging the ugly fact; extravagance is here,
shameless, coarse extravagance. I hope nothing
I say may diminish our sense of its indecency. But
how widespread is it ? We must not lose sight of that
important question. How largely does it infect the
College ? Are many students large spenders ? Must
a man of moderate means on coming here be put to
shame? Will he find himself a disparaged person,
out of accord with the spirit of the place, and un-
able to obtain its characteristic advantages? These
are the weighty questions. Only after we have an-
swered them can we determine the moral soundness
of the University. Wherever we go on earth we shall
find the insolently rich and wasteful. They, like the
poor, are always with us ; their qualities are cheap.
But what we want to know is whether, side by side
with them, we have a company of sober men, who
care for higher things and who spend no more than
the higher things require. Facts of proportion and
degree form the firm basis of general judgments,
and yet I am aware that these are the hardest facts to
obtain. Hitherto nobody has known any such facts
274 COLLEGE EXPENSES
in regard to the expenses of Harvard. Assertions
about the style of living here have only expressed
the personal opinion of the assertor, or at best have
been generalizations from a few chance cases. No
systematic evidence on the subject has existed. It
is time it did exist, and I have made an attempt to
obtain it. To each member of the graduating class
I sent a circular, a month ago, asking if he would
be willing to tell me in confidence what his college
course had cost. I desired him to include in his re-
port all expenses whatever. He was to state not merely
his tuition, board, and lodging, but also his furniture,
books, clothing, travel, subscriptions, and amuse-
ments ; in fact, every dollar he had spent during the
four years of his study, except his charges for Class
Day and the summer vacations ; these times varying so
widely, it seemed to me, in their cost to different men
that they could not instructively enter into an average.
The reply has been very large indeed. To my
surprise, out of a class of two hundred and thirty-
five men actually in residence, two hundred and
nineteen, or ninety-three per cent, have sent reports.
Am I wrong in supposing that this very general
"readiness to tell" is itself a sign of upright con-
duct ? But I would not exaggerate the worth of the
returns. They cannot be trusted to a figure. It has
not been possible to obtain itemized statements.
College boys, like other people, do not always keep
COLLEGE EXPENSES 275
accounts. But I requested my correspondents, in
cases of uncertainty, always to name the larger figure ;
and though those who have lived freely probably
have less knowledge about what they have spent
than have their economical classmates, I think we
may accept their reports in the rough. We can
be reasonably sure whether they have exceeded or
fallen below a certain medium line, and for purposes
more precise I shall not attempt to use them. Any-
thing like minute accuracy I wish expressly to re-
pudiate. The evidence I offer only claims to be the
best that exists at present; and I must say that the
astonishing frankness and fulness of the reports give
me strong personal assurance of the good faith of
the writers. In these letters I have seen a vivid
picture of the struggles, the hopes, the errors, and the
repentings of the manly young lives that surround me.
What, then, are the results? Out of the two
hundred and nineteen men who have replied, fifty-
six, or about one quarter of the class, have spent
between $450 and $650 in each of the four years
of residence; fifty -four, or again about a quarter,
have spent between $650 and $975; but sixty-one,
hardly more than a quarter, have spent a larger
sum than $1200. The smallest amount in any one
year was $400 ; the largest, $4000.*
1 Perhaps I had better mention the adjustments by which these
results have been reached. When a man has been in college during
276 COLLEGE EXPENSES
I ask you to consider these figures. They are not
startling, but they seem to me to indicate that a
soberly sensible average of expense prevails at Har-
vard. They suggest that students are, after all,
merely young men temporarily removed from homes,
and that they are practising here, without violent
change, the habits which the home has formed.
Those who have been accustomed to large expen-
diture spend freely here ; those of quiet and consid-
erate habits do not lightly abandon them. I doubt
if during the last twenty-five years luxury has in-
creased in the colleges as rapidly as it has in the
outside world.
There is no reason, either, to suppose that the
addition of the sixteen men who have not replied
would appreciably affect my results. The standing
of these men on the last annual rank-list was sixty-
only the closing years of the course, I assume that he would have
lived at the same rate had he been here throughout it. I have
added $150 for persons who board at home, and another hundred
for those who lodge there. Though I asked to have the expenses of
Class Day and the summer vacations omitted, in some instances
I have reason to suspect that they are included; but of course I
have been obliged to let the error remain, and I have never de-
ducted the money which students often say they expect to recover
at graduation by the sale of furniture and other goods. There
is a noticeable tendency to larger outlay as the years advance.
Some students attribute this to the greater cost of the studies of
the later years, to the more expensive books and the laboratory
charges; others, to societies and subscriptions; others, to enlarged
acquaintance with opportunities for spending.
COLLEGE EXPENSES 277
eight per cent. They seem to me average persons.
Their silence I attribute to mistakes of the mail, to
business, to neglect, or to the very natural disin-
clination to disclose their private affairs. To refuse
to answer my intrusive questions, or even to acknow-
ledge that college days were costly, is not in itself
evidence of wantonness. Small spenders are usually
high scholars; but this is by no means always the
case. In the most economical group I found seven
who did not reach a rank of seventy per cent, last
year; whereas out of the seven largest spenders of
the class three passed seventy-five per cent. It
would be rash to conclude that large sums cannot
be honorably employed.
But it may seem that the smallest of the sums
named is large for a poor man. It may be believed
that even after restraint and wisdom are used, Har-
vard remains the college of the rich. There is much
in our circumstances to make it so. An excellent
education is unquestionably a costly thing, and to
live where many men wish to live calls for a good
deal of money. We have, it is true, this splendid
hall, which lessens our expense for food and encom-
passes us with ennobling influences; but it costs
$150 a year to board here. Our tuition bill each year
is $150. The University owns 450 rooms; but not
a third of them rent for less than $150 a year, the
average rent being $146. These large charges for
278 COLLEGE EXPENSES
tuition and room-rent are made necessary by the
smallness of the general fund which pays the run-
ning expenses of the college. Very few of the pro-
fessorships are endowed, and so the tuition-fee and
room-rent must mainly carry the expenses of teach-
ing.
Still, there is another side to the story. Thus far
I have figured out the expenses, and have said
nothing about the means of meeting them. Perhaps
to get the advantages of Harvard a student may
need to spend largely; but a certain circumstance
enables him to do so, I mean the matchless
benevolence of those who have preceded us here.
The great sums intrusted to us for distribution in
prizes, loan-funds, and scholarships make it pos-
sible for our students to offset the cost of their edu-
cation to such a degree that the net output of a poor
boy here is probably less than in most New England
colleges. At any rate, I have asked a large number
of poor students why they came to expensive Har-
vard, and again and again I have received the reply:
" I could not afford to go elsewhere."
The magnitude of this beneficiary aid I doubt
if people generally understand, and I have accord-
ingly taken pains to ascertain what was the amount
given away this year. I find that to undergraduates
alone it was $36,000; to members of the graduate
department, $11,000; and to the professional schools
COLLEGE EXPENSES 279
$6000 : making in a single year a total of assistance
to students of the University of more than $53,000.
Next year this enormous sum will be increased
$13,000 by the munificent bequest of Mr. Price
Greenleaf. Fully to estimate the favorable posi-
tion of the poor man at Harvard, we should take
into account also the great opportunities for earning
money through private tuition, through innumer-
able avenues of trade, and through writing for the
public press. A large number of my correspondents
tell of money earned outside their scholarships. 1
These immense aids provided for our students
maintain a balance of conditions here, and enable
even the poorest to obtain a Harvard education. And
what an education it is; how broad and deep and
individually stimulating, the most truly American
education which the continent affords! But I have
no need to eulogize it. It has already entered into
the very structure of you who listen. Let me rather
close with two pieces of advice.
The first shall be to parents. Give your son a
competent allowance when you send him to Har-
vard, and oblige him to stick to it. To learn cal-
1 For the sake of lucidity, I keep the expense account and the
income account distinct. For example, a man reports that he has
spent $700 a year, winning each year a scholarship of $200, and
earning by tutoring $100, and $50 by some other means. The
balance against him is only $350 a year; but I have included him
in the group of $700 spenders.
280 COLLEGE EXPENSES
culation will contribute as much to his equipment
for life as any elective study he can pursue; and
calculation he will not learn unless, after a little
experience, you tell him precisely what sum he is to
receive. If in a haphazard way you pour $2000 into
his pocket, then in an equally haphazard way $2000
will come out. Whatever extravagance exists at
Harvard to-day is the fault of you foolish parents.
The college, as a college, cannot stop extravagance.
It cannot take away a thousand dollars from your
son and tell him what would be perfectly true
that he will be better off with the remaining thou-
sand ; that you must do yourselves. And if you ask,
"What is a competent allowance?" out of what
my correspondents say I will frame you five an-
swers. If your son is something of an artist in econ-
omy, he may live here on $600, or less; he will re-
quire to be an artist to accomplish it. If he will live
closely, carefully, yet with full regard to all that is
required, he may do so, with nearly half his class, on
not more than $800. If you wish him to live at ease
and to obtain the many refinements which money
will purchase, give him $1000. Indeed, if I were a
very rich man, and had a boy whose character I
could trust, so that I could be sure that all he laid
out would be laid out wisely, I might add $200
more, for the purchase of books and other appli-
ances of delicate culture. But I should be sure that
COLLEGE EXPENSES 281
every dollar I gave him over $1200 would be a dollar
of danger.
Let my second piece of advice be to all of you
graduates. When you meet a poor boy, do not rashly
urge him to come to Harvard. Estimate carefully
his powers. If he is a good boy, docile, worthy,
commonplace, advise him to go somewhere else.
Here he will find himself borne down by large ex-
pense and by the crowd who stand above him. But
whenever you encounter a poor boy of eager, ag-
gressive mind, a youth of energy, one capable of feel-
ing the enjoyment of struggling with a multitude and
of making his merit known, say to him that Har-
vard College is expressly constituted for such as he.
Here he will find the largest provision for his needs
and the clearest field for his talents. Money is a
power everywhere. It is a power here; but a power
of far more restricted scope than in the world at
large. In this magnificent hall rich and poor dine
together daily. At the Union they debate together.
At the clubs which foster special interests, the
Finance Club, the Philological Club, the Philosophi-
cal Club, the French Club, the Signet, and the O. K.
considerations of money have no place. If the
poor man is a man of muscle, the athletic organiza-
tions will welcome him; if a man skilled in words,
he will be made an editor of the college papers ; and
if he has the powers that fit him for such a place, the
282 COLLEGE EXPENSES
whole body of his classmates will elect him Orator,
Ivy Orator, Odist, or Poet, without the slightest re-
gard to whether his purse is full or empty. The poor
man, it is true, will not be chosen for ornamental
offices, for positions which imply an acquaintance
with etiquette, and he may be cut off from intimacy
with the frequenters of the ballroom and the opera ;
but as he will probably have little time or taste for
these things, his loss will not be large. In short, if he
has anything in him, has he scholarship, brains,
wit, companionability, stout moral purpose, or quiet
Christian character, his qualities will find as
prompt a recognition at Harvard as anywhere on
earth.
XII
A TEACHER OF THE OLDEN TIME
ON the 14th of February, 1883, Evangelinus Apos-
tolides Sophocles, Professor of Ancient, Byzantine,
and Modern Greek in Harvard University, died at
Cambridge, in the corner room of Holworthy Hall
which he had occupied for nearly forty years. A
past generation of American schoolboys knew him
gratefully as the author of a compact and lucid Greek
grammar. College students probably as large a
number as ever sat under an American professor
were introduced by him to the poets and historians
of Greece. Scholars of a riper growth, both in Eu-
rope and America, have wondered at the precision
and loving diligence with which, in his dictionary
of the later and Bzyantine Greek, he assessed the
corrupt literary coinage of his native land. His brief
contributions to the Nation and other journals
were always noticeable for exact knowledge and
scrupulous literary honesty. As a great scholar, there-
fore, and one who through a long life labored to
beget scholarship in others, Sophocles deserves well
of America. At a time when Greek was usually
studied as the schoolboy studies it, this strange Greek
284 A TEACHER OF THE OLDEN TIME
came among us, connected himself with our oldest
university, and showed us an example of encyclo-
paedic learning, and such familiar and living acquaint-
ance with Homer and ^Eschylus yes, even with
Polybius, Lucian, and Athenaeus as we have with
Tennyson and Shakespeare and Burke and Macau-
lay. More than this, he showed us how such learn-
ing is gathered. To a dozen generations of impres-
sible college students he presented a type of an
austere life directed to serene ends, a life sufficient
for itself and filled with a never-hastening diligence
which issued in vast mental stores.
It is not, however, the purpose of this paper to trace
the influence over American scholarship of this hardly
domesticated wise man of the East. Nor will there
be any attempt to narrate the outward events of
his life. These were never fully known; and could
they be discovered, there would be a kind of impi-
ety in reporting them. Few traits were so charac-
teristic of him as his wish to conceal his history. His
motto might have been that of Epicurus and Des-
cartes: "Well hid is well lived." Yet in spite of his
concealments, perhaps in part because of them, few
persons connected with Harvard have ever left be-
hind them an impression of such massive individu-
ality. He was long a notable figure in university life,
one of those picturesque characters who by their
very being give impulse to aspiring mortals and check
A TEACHER OF THE OLDEN TIME 285
the ever-encroaching commonplace. It would be un-
grateful to allow one formerly so stimulating and
talked about to fall into oblivion. Now that a decent
interval after death has passed, a memorial to this
unusual man may be reverently set up. His likeness
may be drawn by a fond though faithful hand. Or
at least such stories about him may be kindly put
into the record of print as will reflect some of those
rugged, paradoxical, witty, and benignant aspects
of his nature which marked him off from the hum-
drum herd of men.
My own first approach to Sophocles was at the end
of my Junior year in college. It was necessary for
me to be absent from his afternoon recitation. In
those distant days absences were regarded by Har-
vard law as luxuries, and a small fixed quantity of
them, a sort of sailor's grog, was credited with little
charge each half-year to every student. I was al-
ready nearing the limit of the unenlargeable eight,
and could not well venture to add another to my
score. It seemed safer to try to win indulgence from
my fierce-eyed instructor. Early one morning I went
to Sophocles's room. "Professor Sophocles," I said,
"I want to be excused from attending the Greek
recitation this afternoon." "I have no power to
excuse," uttered in the gruffest of tones, while he
looked the other way, "But I cannot be here. I
must be out of town at three o'clock." "I have no
286 A TEACHER OF THE OLDEN TIME
power. You had better see the president." Finding
the situation desperate, I took a desperate leap.
"But the president probably would not allow my
excuse. At the play of the Hasty Pudding Club to-
night I am to appear as leading lady. I must go to
Brookline this afternoon and have my sister dress
me." No muscle of the stern face moved ; but he rose,
walked to a table where his class lists lay, and, taking
up a pencil, calmly said : " You had better say nothing
to the president. You are here now. I will mark you
so." He sniffed, he bowed, and, without smile or
word from either of us, I left the room. As I came
to know Sophocles afterwards, I found that in this
trivial early interview I* had come upon some of the
most distinctive traits of his character; here was an
epitome of his brusquerie, his dignity, his whimsical
logic, and his kind heart.
Outwardly he was always brusque and repellent.
A certain savagery marked his very face. He once
observed that, in introducing a character, Homer is
apt to draw attention to the eye. Certainly in himself
this was the feature which first attracted notice; for
his eye had uncommon alertness and intelligence.
Those who knew him well detected in it a hidden
sweetness; but against the stranger it burned and
glared, and guarded all avenues of approach. Startled
it was, like the eye of a wild animal, and penetrating,
"peering through the portals of the brain like the
A TEACHER OF THE OLDEN TIME 287
brass cannon." Over it crouched bushy brows, and
all around the great head bristled white hair, on
forehead, cheeks, and lips, so that little flesh re-
mained visible, and the life was settled in two fiery
spots. This concentration of expression in the few
elementary features of shape, hair, and eyes made
the head a magnificent subject for painting. Rem-
brandt should have painted it. But he would never
allow a portrait of himself to be drawn. Into his per-
sonality strangers must not intrude. Venturing once
to try for memoranda of his face, I took an artist to
his room. The courtesy of Sophocles was too stately
to allow him to turn my friend away, but he seated
himself in a shaded window, and kept his head in
constant motion. When my frustrated friend had
departed, Sophocles told me, though without direct
reproach, of two sketches which had before been
surreptitiously made, one by the pencil of a stu-
dent in his class, another in oils by a lady who had
followed him on the street. Toward photography his
aversion was weaker; perhaps because in that art a
human being less openly meddled with him.
From this sense of personal dignity, which made
him at all times determined to keep out of the grasp
of others, much of his brusqueness sprang. On the
morning after he returned from his visit to Greece
a fellow professor saw him on the opposite side of the
street, and, hastening across, greeted him warmly:
288 A TEACHER OF THE OLDEN TIME
" So you have been home, Mr. Sophocles ; and how
did you find your mother ? " " She was up an apple-
tree," said Sophocles, confining himself to the facts
of the case. A boy who snowballed him on the street
he prosecuted relentlessly, and he could not be ap-
peased until a considerable fine was imposed ; but he
paid the fine himself. Many a bold push was made
to ascertain his age ; yet, however suddenly the ques-
tion came, or however craftily one crept from date to
date, there was a uniform lack of success. "I see
Allibone's Dictionary says you were born in 1805," a
gentleman remarked. "Some statements have been
nearer, and some have been farther from the truth."
One day, when a violent attack of illness fell on him,
a physician was called for diagnosis. He felt the pulse,
he examined the tongue, he heard the report of the
symptoms, then suddenly asked, "How old are you,
Mr. Sophocles?" With as ready presence of mind
and as pretty ingenuity as if he were not lying at the
point of death, Sophocles answered: "The Arabs,
Dr. W., estimate age by several standards. The age
of Hassan, the porter, is reckoned by his wrinkles;
that of Abdallah, the physician, by the lives he has
saved; that of Achmet, the sage, by his wisdom.
I, all my life a scholar, am nearing my hundredth
year." To those who had once come close to
Sophocles these little reserves, never asserted with
impatience, were characteristic and endearing. I
A TEACHER OF THE OLDEN TIME 289
happen to know his age ; hot irons shall not draw
it from me.
Closely connected with his repellent reserve was
the stern independence of his modes of life. In his
scheme, little things were kept small and great things
large. What was the true reading in a passage of
Aristophanes, what the usage of a certain word in
Byzantine Greek, these were matters on which a
man might well reflect and labor. But of what con-
sequence was it if the breakfast was slight or the coat
worn ? Accordingly, a single room, in which a light
was seldom seen, sufficed him during his forty years
of life in the college yard. It was totally bare of com-
forts. It contained no carpet, no stuffed furniture,
no bookcase. The college library furnished the vol-
umes he was at any time using, and these lay along
the floor, beside his dictionary, his shoes, and the
box that contained the sick chicken. A single bare
table held the book he had just laid down, together
with a Greek newspaper, a silver watch, a cravat,
a paper package or two, and some scraps of bread.
His simple meals were prepared by himself over a
small open stove, which served at once for heat and
cookery. Eating, however, was always treated as a
subordinate and incidental business, deserving no
fixed time, no dishes, nor the setting of a table. The
peasants of the East, the monks of southern monas-
teries, live chiefly on bread and fruit, relished with a
290 A TEACHER OF THE OLDEN TIME
little wine ; and Sophocles, in spite of Cambridge and
America, was to the last a peasant and a monk. Such
simple nutriments best fitted his constitution, for
"they found their acquaintance there." The western
world had come to him by accident, and was ignored ;
the East was in his blood, and ordered all his goings.
Yet, as a grave man of the East might, he had his
festivities, and could on occasion be gay. Among a
few friends he could tell a capital story and enjoy
a well-cooked dish. But his ordinary fare was meagre
in the extreme. For one of his heartier meals he
would cut a piece of meat into bits and roast it on
a spit, as Homer's people roasted theirs. "Why not
use a gridiron ? " I once asked. " It is not the same,"
he said. " The juice then runs into the fire. But when
I turn my spit it bastes itself." His taste was more
than usually sensitive, kept fine and discriminating
by the restraint in which he held it. Indeed, all his
senses, except sight, were acute.
The wine he drank was the delicate unresinated
Greek wine, Corinthian, or Chian, or Cyprian;
the amount of water to be mixed with each being
carefully debated and employed. Each winter a cask
was sent him from a special vineyard on the heights
of Corinth, and occasioned something like a general
rejoicing in Cambridge, so widely were its flavorous
contents distributed. Whenever this cask arrived,
or when there came a box from Mt. Sinai filled with
A TEACHER OF THE OLDEN TIME 291
potato-like sweetmeats, a paste of figs, dates, and
nuts, stuffed into sewed goatskins, or when his
hens had been laying a goodly number of eggs, then
under the blue cloak a selection of bottles, or of
sweetmeats, or of eggs would be borne to a friend's
house, where for an hour the old man sat in dignity
and calm, opening and closing his eyes and his jack-
knife; uttering meanwhile detached remarks, wise,
gruff, biting, yet seldom lacking a kernel of kindness,
till bedtime came, nine o'clock, and he was gone, the
gifts if thanks were feared left in a chair by the
door. There were half a dozen houses and dinner
tables in Cambridge to which he went with pleasure,
houses where he seemed to find a solace in the neigh-
borhood of his kind. But human beings were an ex-
ceptional luxury. He had never learned to expect
them. They never became necessities of his daily
life, and .1 doubt if he missed them when they were
absent. As he slowly recovered strength, after one
of his later illnesses, I urged him to spend a month
with me. Refusing in a brief sentence, he added
with unusual gentleness: "To be alone is not the
same for me and for you. I have never known any-
thing else."
Unquestionably much of his disposition to remain
aloof and to resist the on-coming intruder was bred
by the experiences of his early youth. His native
place, Tsangarada, is a village of eastern Thessaly,
292 A TEACHER OF THE OLDEN TIME
far up among the slopes of the Pindus. Thither,
several centuries ago, an ancestor led a migration
from the west coast of Greece, and sought a refuge
from Turkish oppression. From generation to genera-
tion his fathers continued to be shepherds of their
people, the office of Proestos, or governor, being
hereditary in the house. Sturdy men those ancestors
must have been, and picturesque their times. In late
winter afternoons, at 3 Holworthy, when the dusk be-
gan to settle among the elms about the yard, legends
of these heroes and their far-off days would loiter
through the exile's mind. At such times bloody do-
ings would be narrated with all the coolness that
appears in Caesar's Commentaries, and over the lis-
tener would come a sense of a fantastic world as
different from our own as that of Bret Harte's Argo-
nauts. "My great-grandfather was not easily dis-
turbed. He was a young man and Proestos. His
stone house stood apart from the others. He was
sitting in its great room one evening, and heard a
noise. He looked around, and saw three men by the
farther door. 'What are you here for?' 'We have
come to assassinate you.' 'Who sent you?' 'An-
dreas.' It was a political enemy. ' How much did
Andreas promise you ? ' ' A dollar.' ' I will promise
you two dollars if you will go and assassinate An-
dreas.' So they turned, went, and assassinated An-
dreas. My great-grandfather went to Scyros the
A TEACHER OF THE OLDEN TIME 293
next day, and remained there five years. In five years
these things are forgotten in Greece. Then he came
back, and brought a wife from Scyros, and was Proes-
tos once more."
Another evening: "People said my grandfather
died of leprosy. Perhaps he did. As Proestos he gave
a decision against a woman, and she hated him. One
night she crept up behind the house, where his clothes
lay on the ground, and spread over his clothes the
clothes of a leper. After that he was not well. His
hair fell off and he died. But perhaps it was not
leprosy; perhaps he died of fear. The Knights of
Malta were worrying the Turks. They sailed into
the harbor of Volo, and threatened to bombard the
town. The Turks seized the leading Greeks and shut
them up in the mosque. When the first gun was
fired by the frigate, the heads of the Greeks were to
come off. My grandfather went into the mosque a
young man. A quarter of an hour afterwards, the
gun was heard, and my grandfather waited for the
headsman. But the shot toppled down the minaret,
and the Knights of Malta were so pleased that they
sailed away, satisfied. The Turks, watching them,
forgot about the prisoners. But two hours , later,
when my grandfather came out of the mosque, he
was an old man. He could not walk well. His hair
fell off, and he died."
Sometimes I caught glimpses of Turkish oppres-
294 A TEACHER OF THE OLDEN TIME
sion in times of peace. "I remember the first time
I saw the wedding gift given. No new-made bride
must leave the house she visits without a gift. My
mother's sister married, and came to see us. I was a
boy. She stood at the door to go, and my mother re-
membered she had not had the gift. There was not
much to give. The Turks had been worse than usual,
and everything was buried. But my mother could
not let her go without the gift. She searched the
house, and found a saucer, it was a beautiful
saucer ; and this she gave her sister, who took it and
went away."
"How did you get the name of Sophocles?" I
asked, one evening. " Is your family supposed to be
connected with that of the poet ? " " My name is not
Sophocles. I have no family name. In Greece, when
a child is born, it is carried to the grandfather to
receive a name." (I thought how, in the Odyssey,
the nurse puts the infant Odysseus in the arms of
his mother's father, Autolycus, for naming.) "The
grandfather gives him his own name. The father's
name, of course, is different; and this he too gives
when he becomes a grandfather. So in old Greek
families two names alternate through generations.
My grandfather's name was Evangelinos. This he
gave to me; and I was distinguished from others
of that name because I was the son of Apostolos,
Apostolides. But my best schoolmaster was fond of
A TEACHER OF THE OLDEN TIME 295
the poet Sophocles, and he was fond of me. He used
to call me his little Sophocles. The other boys heard
it, and they began to call me so. It was a nickname.
But when I left home people took it for my family
name. They thought I must have a family name.
I did not contradict them. It makes no difference.
This is as good as any." One morning he received a
telegram of congratulation from the monks in Cairo.
"It is my day," he said. "How did the monks know
it was your birthday ? " I asked. "It is not my birth-
day. Nobody thinks about that. It is forgotten. This
is my saint's day. Coming into the world is of no
consequence ; coming under the charge of the saints
is what we care for. My name puts me in the \ 7 irgin's
charge, and the feast of the Annunciation is my day.
The monks know my name."
To the Greek Church he was always loyal. Its
faith had glorified his youth, and to it he turned for
strength throughout his solitary years. Its conven-
tual discipline was dear to him, and oftener than of
his birthplace at the foot of Mt. Olympus he dreamed
of Mt. Sinai. On Mt. Sinai the Emperor Justinian
founded the most revered of all Greek monasteries.
Standing remote on its sacred mountain, the monas-
tery depends on Cairo for its supplies. In Cairo, ac-
cordingly, there is a branch or agency which during
the boyhood of Sophocles was presided over by his
Uncle Constantius. At twelve he joined this uncle in
296 A TEACHER OF THE OLDEN TIME
Cairo. In the agency there, in the parent monastery
on Sinai itself, and in journeyings between the two,
the happy years were spent which shaped his intel-
lectual and religious constitution. Though he never
outwardly became a monk, he largely became one
within. His adored uncle Constantius was his spirit-
ual father. Through him his ideals had been ac-
quired, his passion for learning, his hardihood in
duty, his imperturbable patience, his brief speech
which allowed only so many words as might scantily
clothe his thought, his indifference to personal com-
fort. He never spoke the name of Constantius with-
out some sign of reverence; and in his will, after
making certain private bequests, and leaving to Har-
vard College all his printed books and stereotype
plates, he adds this clause: "All the residue and re-
mainder of my property and estate I devise and be-
queath to the said President and Fellows of Harvard
College in trust, to keep the same as a permanent
fund, and to apply the income thereof in two equal
parts : one part to the purchase of Greek and Latin
books (meaning hereby the ancient classics) or of
Arabic books, or of books illustrating or explaining
such Greek, Latin, or Arabic books ; and the other
part to the Catalogue Department of the General
Library. . . . My will is that the entire income of
the said fund be expended in every year, and that
the fund be kept forever unimpaired, and be called
and known as the Constantius Fund, in memory of
my paternal uncle, Constantius the Sinaite,
This man, then, by birth, training, and temper a
solitary; whose heritage was Mt. Olympus, and the
monastery of Justinian, and the Greek quarter of
Cairo, and the isles of Greece; whose intimates were
Hesiod and Pindar and Arrian and Basilides,
this man it was who, from 1842 onward, was deputed
to interpret to American college boys the hallowed
writings of his race. Thirty years ago too, at the
period when I sat on the green bench in front of the
long-legged desk, college boys were boys indeed. They
had no more knowledge than the high-school boy
of to-day, and they were kept in order by much the
same methods. Thus it happened, by some jocose
perversity in the arrangement of human affairs, that
throughout our Sophomore and Junior years we
sportive youngsters were obliged to endure Sophocles,
and Sophocles was obliged to endure us. No wonder
if he treated us with a good deal of contempt. No
wonder that his power of scorn, originally splendid,
enriched itself from year to year. We learned, it is
true, something about everything except Greek ; and
the best thing we learned was a new type of human
nature. Who that was ever his pupil will forget
the calm bearing, the occasional pinch of snuff, the
averted eye, the murmur of the interior voice, and
298 A TEACHER OF THE OLDEN TIME
the stocky little figure with the lion's head ? There in
the corner he stood, as stranded and solitary as the
Egyptian obelisk in the hurrying Place de la Con-
corde. In a curious sort of fashion he was faithful
to what he must have felt an obnoxious duty. He
was never absent from his post, nor did he cut short
the hours, but he gave us only such attention as was
nominated in the bond ; he appeared to hurry past,
as by set purpose, the beauties of what we read, and
he took pleasure in snubbing expectancy and aspira-
tion.
"When I entered college," says an eminent Greek
scholar, "I was full of the notion, which I probably
could not have justified, that the Greeks were the
greatest people that had ever lived. My enthusiasm
was fanned into a warmer glow when I learned that
my teacher was himself a Greek, and that our first
lesson was to be the story of Thermopylae. After
the passage of Herodotus had been duly read,
Sophocles began : ' You must not suppose these men
stayed in the Pass because they were brave; they
were afraid to run away.' A shiver went down my
back. Even if what he said had been true, it ought
never to have been told to a Freshman."
The universal custom of those days was the hear-
ing of recitations, and to this Sophocles conformed so
far as to set a lesson and to call for its translation
bit by bit. But when a student had read his suitable
A TEACHER OF THE OLDEN TIME 299
ten lines, he was stopped by the raised finger; and
Sophocles, fixing his eyes on vacancy and taking his
start from some casual suggestion of the passage,
began a monologue, a monologue not unlike one
of Browning's in its caprices, its involvement, its
adaptation to the speaker's mind rather than to the
hearer's, and its ease in glancing from heaven to
earth, from earth to heaven. During these intervals
the sluggish slumbered, the industrious devoted
themselves to books and papers brought in the pocket
for the purpose, the dreamy enjoyed the opportunity
of wondering what the strange words and their still
stranger utterer might mean. The monologue was
sometimes long and sometimes short, according as
the theme which had been struck kindled the rhapso-
dist and enabled him, with greater or less complete-
ness, to forget his class. When some subtlety was
approached, a smile the onjy smile ever seen on
his face by strangers lifted for a moment the corner
of the mouth. The student who had been reciting
stood meanwhile, but sat when the voice stopped, the
white head nodded, the pencil made a record, and a
new name was called.
There were perils, of course, in records of this sort.
Reasons for the figures which subsequently appeared
on the college books were not easy to find. Some of
us accounted for our marks by the fact that we had
red hair or long noses ; others preferred the explana-
300 A TEACHER OF THE OLDEN TIME
tion that our professor's pencil happened to move
more readily to the right hand or to the left. For
the most part we took good-naturedly whatever was
given us, though questionings would sometimes arise.
A little before my time there entered an ambitious
young fellow, who cherished large purposes in Greek.
At the end of the first month under his queer instruc-
tor he went to the regent and inquired for his mark
in Plato. It was three, the maximum being eight.
Horror-stricken, he penetrated Sophocles's room.
"Professor Sophocles," he said, "I find my mark is
only three. There must be some mistake. There is
another Jones in the class, you know, J. S. Jones"
(a lump of flesh), "and may it not be that our marks
have been confused ? " An unmoved countenance,
a little wave of the hand, accompanied the answer :
"You must take your chance, you must take your
chance." In my own section, when anybody was
absent from a certain bench, poor Prindle was al-
ways obliged to go forward and say, "I was here
to-day, Professor Sophocles," or else the gap on
the bench where six men should sit was charged to
Prindle's account. In those easy-going days, when
men were examined for entrance to college orally and
in squads, there was a good deal of eagerness among
the knowing ones to get into the squad of Sophocles ;
for it was believed that he admitted everybody, on
the ground that none of us knew any Greek, and it
A TEACHER OF THE OLDEN TIME 301
was consequently unfair to discriminate. Fantastic
stories were attributed to him, for whose truth or error
none could vouch, and were handed on from class to
class. "What does Philadelphia mean ?" "Brotherly
love," the student answers. "Yes! It is to remind
us of Ptolemy Philadelphus, who killed his brother."
A German commentator had somewhere mentioned
lions in connection with the Peloponnesus, and
Sophocles inquires of Brown if he knows the date
when lions first appeared in the Peloponnesus. He
does not, nor does Smith nor Robinson. At length
Green, driven to bay, declares in desperation that he
does n't believe there ever were lions in the Pelopon-
nesus. To whom Sophocles :" You are right. There
were none." " Do you read your examination books ? "
he once asked a fellow instructor. "If they are bet-
ter than you expect, the writers cheat; if they are
no better, time is wasted." "Is to-day story day or
contradiction day ? " he is reported to have said to
one who, in the war time, eagerly handed him a news-
paper, and asked if he had seen the morning's news.
How much of this cynicism of conduct and of
speech was genuine perhaps he knew as little as
the rest of us ; but certainly it imparted a pessimistic
tinge to all he did and said. To hear him talk, one
would suppose the world was ruled by accident or
by an utterly irrational fate ; for in his mind the two
conceptions seemed closely to coincide. His words
302 A TEACHER OF THE OLDEN TIME
were never abusive ; they were deliberate, peaceful
even ; but they made it very plain that so long as one
lived there was no use in expecting anything. Para-
doxes were a little more probable than ordered cal-
culations; but even paradoxes would fail. Human
beings were altogether impotent, though they fussed
and strutted as if they could accomplish great things.
How silly was trust in men's goodness and power,
even in one's own ! Most men were bad and stupid,
Germans especially so. The Americans knew
nothing, and never could know. A wise man would
not try to teach them. Yet some persons dreamed
of establishing a university in America! Did they
expect scholarship where there were politicians and
business men ? Evil influences were far too strong.
They always were. The good were made expressly
to suffer, the evil to succeed. Better leave the world
alone, and keep one's self true. "Put a drop of milk
into a gallon of ink ; it will make no difference. Put
a drop of ink into a gallon of milk; the whole is
spoiled."
I have felt compelled to dwell at some length on
these cynical, illogical, and austere aspects of Sopho-
cles's character, and even to point out the circum-
stances of his life which may have shaped them,
because these were the features by which the world
commonly judged him, and was misled. One meet-
ing him casually had little more to judge by. So en-
A TEACHER OF THE OLDEN TIME 303
tire was his reserve, so little did he permit close con-
versation, so seldom did he raise his eye in his slow
walks on the street, so rarely might a stranger pass
within the bolted door of his chamber, that to the
last he bore to the average college student the char-
acter of a sphinx, marvellous in self-sufficiency,
amazing in erudition, romantic in his suggestion
of distant lands and customs, and forever piquing
curiosity by his eccentric and sarcastic sayings. All
this whimsicality and pessimism would have been
cheap enough, and little worth recording, had it stood
alone. What lent it price and beauty was that it was
the utterance of a singularly self-denying and tender
soul. The incongruity between his bitter speech and
his kind heart endeared both to those who knew him.
Like his venerable cloak, his grotesque language
often hid a bounty underneath- How many students
have received his surly benefactions ! In how many
small tradesmen's shops did he have his appointed
chair ! His room was bare : but in his native town an
aqueduct was built ; his importunate and ungrateful
relatives were pensioned; the monks of Mt. Sinai
were protected against want ; the children and grand-
children of those who had befriended his early years
in America were watched over with a father's love ;
and by care for helpless creatures wherever they
crossed his path he kept himself clean of selfishness.
One winter night, at nearly ten o'clock, I was
304 A TEACHER OF THE OLDEN TIME
called to my door. There stood Sophocles. When I
asked him why he was not in bed an hour ago, "A.
has gone home," he said. "I know it," I answered;
for A. was a young instructor dear to me. "He is
sick," he went on. "Yes." "He has no money."
"Well, we will see how he will get along." "But you
must get him some money, and I must know about
it." And he would not go back into the storm this
graybeard professor, solicitous for an overworked
tutor till I assured him that arrangements had
been made for continuing A.'s salary during his ab-
sence. I declare, in telling the tale I am ashamed.
Am I wronging the good man by disclosing his secret,
and saying that he was not the cynical curmudgeon
for which he tried to pass ? But already before he
was in his grave the secret had been discovered, and
many gave him persistently the love which he still
tried to wave away.
Toward dumb and immature creatures his tender-
ness was more frank, for these could not thank him.
Children always recognized in him their friend. A
group of curly-heads usually appeared in his window
on Class Day. A stray cat knew him at once, and,
though he seldom stroked her, would quickly ac-
commodate herself near his legs. By him spiders
were watched, and their thin wants supplied. But
his solitary heart went out most unreservedly and
with the most pathetic devotion toward fragile
A TEACHER OF THE OLDEN TIME 305
chickens ; and out of these uninteresting little birds
he elicited a degree of responsive intelligence which
was startling to see. One of his dearest friends,
coming home from a journey, brought him a couple
of bantam eggs. When hatched and grown, they
developed into a little five-inch burnished cock,
which shone like a jewel or a bird of paradise, and a
more sober but exquisite hen. These two, Frank and
Nina, and all their numerous progeny for many years,
Sophocles trained to the hand. Each knew its name,
and would run from the flock when its white-haired
keeper called, and, sitting upon his hand or shoulder,
would show queer signs of affection, not hesitating
even to crow. The same generous friend who gave
the eggs gave shelter also to the winged consequences.
And thus it happened that three times a day, so long
as he was able to leave his room, Sophocles went to
that house where Radcliffe College is now sheltered
to attend his pets. White grapes were carried there,
and the choicest of corn and clamshell ; and endless
study was given to devising conveniences for housing,
nesting, and the promenade. But he did not demand
too much from his chickens. In their case, as in deal-
ing with human beings, he felt it wise to bear in mind
the limit and to respect the foreordained. When Nina
was laying badly, one springtime, I suggested a
special food as a good egg-producer. But Sophocles
declined to use it. "You may hasten matters," he
306 A TEACHER OF THE OLDEN TIME
said, "but you cannot change them. A hen is born
with just so many eggs to lay. You cannot increase
the number." The eggs, as soon as laid, were pen-
cilled with the date and the name of the mother, and
were then distributed among his friends, or sparingly
eaten at his own meals. To eat a chicken itself was
a kind of cannibalism from which his whole nature
shrank. "I do not eat what I love," he said, reject-
ing the bowl of chicken broth I pressed upon him in
his last sickness.
For protecting creatures naturally so helpless,
sternness or at least its outward seeming be-
came occasionally necessary. One day young
Thornton's dog leaped into the hen-yard and caused
a commotion there. Sophocles was prompt in de-
fence. He drew a pistol and fired, while the dog,
perceiving his mistake, retreated as he had come.
The following day Thornton Senior, walking down
the street, was suddenly embarrassed by seeing
Sophocles on the same sidewalk. Remembering,
however, the old man's usually averted gaze, he
hoped to pass unnoticed. But as the two came
abreast, gruff words and a piercing eye signalled
stoppage. "Mr. Thornton, you have a son." "Yes,
Mr. Sophocles, a boy generally well-meaning but
sometimes thoughtless." "Your son has a dog." "A
nervous dog, rather difficult to regulate." "The dog
worried my chickens." "So I heard, and was sorry
A TEACHER OF THE OLDEN TIME 307
enough to hear it." "I fired a pistol at him." "Very
properly. A pity you did n't hit him." "The pistol
was not loaded." And before Mr. Thornton could
recover his wits for a suitable reply Sophocles had
drawn from his pocket one of his long Sinaitic sweet-
meats, had cut off a lump with his jack-knife, handed
it to Mr. Thornton, and with the words, "This is for
the boy who owns the dog," was gone. The incident
well illustrates the sweetness and savagery of the
man, his plainness, his readiness to right a wrong
and protect the weak, his rejection of smooth and
unnecessary words, his rugged exterior, and the
underlying kindness which ever attended it.
If in ways so uncommon his clinging nature, cut
off from domestic opportunity, went out to children
and unresponsive creatures, it may be imagined how
good cause of love he furnished to his few intimates
among mankind. They found in him sweet cour-
tesy, undemanding gentleness, an almost feminine
tact in adapting what he could give to what they
might receive. To their eyes the great scholar, the
austere monk, the bizarre professor, the pessimist,
were hidden by the large and lovable man. Even
strangers recognized him as no common person, so
thoroughly was all he did and said purged of super-
fluity, so veracious was he, so free from apology.
His everyday thoughts were worthy thoughts. He
knew no shame or fear, and had small wish, I think,
308 A TEACHER OF THE OLDEN TIME
for any change. Always a devout Christian, he seldom
used expressions of regret or hope. Probably he
concerned himself little with these or other feelings.
In the last days of his life, it is true, when his thoughts
were oftener in Arabia than in Cambridge, he once
or twice referred to "the ambition of learning" as
the temptation which had drawn him out from the
monastery, and had given him a life less holy than
he might have led among the monks. But these were
moods of humility rather than of regret. Habitually
he maintained an elevation above circumstances,
was it Stoicism or Christianity ? which imparted
to his behavior, even when most eccentric, an un-
shakable dignity. When I have found him in his
room, curled up in shirt and drawers, reading the
"Arabian Nights," the Greek service book, or the
"Ladder of the Virtues" by John Klimakos, he has
risen to receive me with the bearing of an Arab
sheikh, and has laid by the Greek folio and motioned
me to a chair with a stateliness not natural to our
land or century. It would be clumsy to liken him to
one of Plutarch's men ; for though there was much
of the heroic and extraordinary in his character and
manners, nothing about him suggested a suspicion
of being on show. The mould in which he was cast
was formed earlier. In his bearing and speech, and
in a certain large simplicity of mental structure, he
was the most Homeric man I ever knew.
Ill
PAPERS BY ALICE FREEMAN PALMER
PAPERS BY ALICE FREEMAN PALMER
WHILE Mrs. Palmer always avoided writing, and thought
generous prodigal ! that her work was best accom-
plished by spoken words, her complying spirit could not
always resist the appeals of magazine editors. I could wish
now that their requests had been even more urgent. And
I believe that those who read these pages will regret that
one possessed of such breadth of view, clearness, charm
and cogency of style should have left a literary record so
meagre. All these papers are printed precisely as she
left them, without the change of a word. I have not even
ventured on correction in the printed report of one of her
addresses, that on going to college. Its looser structure well
illustrates her mode of moving an audience and bringing
its mothers to the course of conduct she approved.
XIII
THREE TYPES OF WOMEN'S COLLEGES 1
AMERICAN college education in the quarter-cen-
tury since the Civil War has undergone more nu-
merous and more fundamental changes than befell
it in a hundred years before. These changes have
not occurred unnoticed. A multitude of journals and
associations are busy every year discussing the results
of the experiments in teaching which go on with
increasing daring and fruitfulness in nearly all our
colleges and schools. There still exists a wide diver-
gence of opinion among the directors of men's colleges
in regard to a variety of important questions : the
conditions and proper age for entrance; the length
of the course of study; the elective system, both of
government and instruction; the requirements for
the bachelor's and master's degrees ; the stress to be
laid on graduate work these, and many sequents
of these, touching the physical, social, and religious
life of the young men of the land, are undergoing
sharp discussion.
The advanced education of young women is ex-
posed to all the uncertainties which beset the e,du-
1 Published in The Forum for September, 1891.
314 THREE TYPES
cation of men, but it has perplexities of its own in
addition. After fifty years of argument and twenty-
five of varied and costly experiment, it might be easy
to suppose that we are still in chaos, almost as far
from knowing the best way to train a woman as we
were at the beginning. No educational convention
meets without a session devoted to the difficulties
in "the higher education of women," so important
has the subject become, and so hard is it to satisfy
in any one system the variety of its needs. Yet chaos
may be thought more chaotic than it really is. In
the din of discussion it would not be strange if the
fair degree of concord already reached should some-
times be missed. We are certainly still far from
having found the one best method of college train-
ing for girls. Some of us hope we may never find it,
believing that in diversity, no less than in unity, there
is strength. But already three tolerably clear, con-
sistent, and accredited types of education appear,
which it will be the purpose of this paper to explain.
The nature of each, with its special strengths and
weaknesses, will be set forth in no spirit of partisan-
ship, but in the belief that a cool understanding of
what is doing at present among fifty thousand college
girls may make us wiser and more patient in our
% future growth. What, then, are the three types, and
how have they arisen ?
When to a few daring minds the conviction came
OF WOMEN'S COLLEGES 315
that education was a right of personality rather than
of sex, and when there was added to this growing
sentiment the pressing demand for educated women
as teachers and as leaders in philanthropy, the sim-
plest means of equipping women with the needful
preparation was found in the existing schools and
colleges. Scattered all over the country were colleges
for men, young for the most part and small, and
greatly lacking anything like a proper endowment.
In nearly every state west of the Alleghanies, "uni-
versities " had been founded by the voluntary tax of
the whole population. Connected with all the more
powerful religious denominations were schools and
colleges which called upon their adherents for gifts
and students. These democratic institutions had
the vigor of youth, and were ambitious and struggling.
"Why," asked the practical men of affairs who con-
trolled them, "should not our daughters go on with
our sons from the public schools to the university
which we are sacrificing to equip and maintain ?
Why should we duplicate the enormously expensive
appliances of education, when our existing colleges
would be bettered by more students ? By far the large
majority of our boys and girls study together as chil-
dren ; they work together as men and women in all
the important concerns of life ; why should they be
separated in the lecture room for only the four years
between eighteen and twenty-two, when that separa-
316 THREE TYPES
tion means the doubling of an equipment already
too poor by half ? "
It is not strange that with this and much more
practical reasoning of a similar kind, coeducation
was established in some colleges at their beginning,
in others after debate and by a radical change in
policy. When once the chivalrous desire was aroused
to give girls as good an education as their brothers,
western men carried out the principle unflinchingly.
From the kindergarten to the preparation for the
doctorate of philosophy, educational opportunities
are now practically alike for men and women. The
total number of colleges of arts and sciences empow-
ered by law to give degrees, reporting to Washing-
ton in 1888, was three hundred and eighty-nine. Of
these two hundred and thirty-seven, or nearly two
thirds, were coeducational. Among them are all the
state universities, and nearly all the colleges under
the patronage of the Protestant sects.
Hitherto I have spoken as if coeducation were a
western movement ; and in the West it certainly has
had greater currency than elsewhere. But it origi-
nated, at least so far as concerns superior secondary
training, in Massachusetts. Bradford Academy,
chartered in 1804, is the oldest incorporated insti-
tution in the country to which boys and girls were
from the first admitted ; but it closed its department
for boys in 1836, three years after the foundation of
OF WOMEN'S COLLEGES 317
coeducational Oberlin, and in the very year when
Mount Holyoke was opened by Mary Lyon, in the
large hope of doing for young women what Harvard
had been founded to do for young men just two hun-
dred years before. Ipswich and Abbot Academies
in Massachusetts had already been chartered to edu-
cate girls alone. It has been the dominant sentiment
in the East that boys and girls should be educated
separately. The older, more generously endowed,
more conservative seats of learning, inheriting the
complications of the dormitory system, have remained
closed to women. The requirements for the two sexes
are thought to be different. Girls are to be trained
for private, boys for public life. Let every oppor-
tunity be given, it is said, for developing accom-
plished, yes, even learned women ; but let the process
of acquiring knowledge take place under careful
guardianship, among the refinements of home life,
with graceful women, their instructors, as compan-
ions, and with suitable opportunities for social life.
Much stress is laid upon assisting girl students to
attain balanced characters, charming manners, and
ambitions that are not unwomanly. A powerful
moral, often a deeply religious earnestness, shaped
the discussion, and finally laid the foundations of
woman's education in the East.
In the short period of the twenty years after the
war the four women's colleges which are the richest
318 THREE TYPES
in endowments and students of any in the world
were founded and set in motion. These colleges
Vassar, opened in 1865, Wellesley and Smith in 1875,
and Bryn Mawr in 1885 have received in gifts
of every kind about $6,000,000, and are educating
nearly two thousand students. For the whole country
the Commissioner of Education reports two hundred
and seven institutions for the superior instruction of
women, with more than twenty-five thousand stu-
dents. But these resources proved inadequate. There
came an increasing demand, especially from teach-
ers, for education of all sorts; more and more, too,
for training in subjects of advanced research. For
this, only the best equipped men's universities were
thought sufficient, and women began to resort to the
great universities of England and Germany. In an
attempt to meet a demand of this sort the Harvard
Annex began, twelve years ago, to provide women
with instruction by members of the Harvard Faculty.
Where, in a great centre of education, for many
years books have accumulated, and museums and
laboratories have multiplied, where the prestige
and associations of a venerable past have grown up,
and cultivated surroundings assure a scholarly at-
mosphere; in short, in the shadow of all that goes
to make up the gracious influences of an old and
honorable university, it was to be expected that ear-
nest women would gather to seek a share in the enthu-
OF WOMEN'S COLLEGES 319
siasm for scholarship, and the opportunities for ac-
quiring it, which their brothers had enjoyed for two
hundred and fifty years.
These, then coeducation, the woman's college,
and the annex are the three great types of college
in which the long agitation in behalf of women's
education has thus far issued. Of course they are but
types that is, they do not always exist distinct and
entire; they are rather the central forms to which
many varieties approximate. The characteristic fea-
tures of each I must now describe, and, as I promised
at the beginning, point out their inherent strengths
and weaknesses; for each, while having much to
recommend it, still bears in itself the defects of its
qualities. To explain dangers as well as promises
is the business of the critic, as contrasted with that
of the advocate. To this business I now turn, and
I may naturally have most in mind the University
of Michigan, my own Alma Mater, Wellesley Col-
lege, with whose government I have been connected
for a dozen years, and the Harvard Annex, whose
neighbor I now am.
Coeducation involves, as its name implies, the
education of a company of young men and women as
a single body. To the two sexes alike are presented
the same conditions of admission, of opportunities
during the course, of requirements for the degrees,
of guardianship, of discipline, of organization. The
320 THREE TYPES
typical features are identical classrooms, libraries,
and laboratories, occupied at the same time, under
the same instructors; and the same honors for like
work. Ordinarily all the instructors are men, al-
though in a few universities professorships are held
by women. Usually no dormitories or boarding-
houses are provided for either the young men or wo-
men, and no more surveillance is kept over the one
than over the other. This feature, however, is not
essential. At Cornell, Oberlin, and elsewhere, often
out of local necessity, buildings have been provided
where the young women may in some instances,
must live together under the ordinary regulations
of home life, with a lady in charge. But in most of
the higher coeducational institutions the principle
has from the first been assumed that students of both
sexes become sufficiently matured by eighteen years
of home, school, and social life especially under
the ample opportunities for learning the uses of
freedom which our social habits afford safely to
undertake a college course, and advantageously to
order their daily lives. Of course all have a moral
support in the advice and example of their teachers,
and they are held to good intellectual work by the
perpetual demand of the classroom, the laboratory,
and the thesis.
The girl who goes to the University of Michigan
to-day, just as when I entered there in 1872, finds
OF WOMEN'S COLLEGES 321
her own boarding-place in one of the quiet homes of
the pleasant little city whose interest centres in the
two thousand five hundred students scattered within
its borders. She makes the business arrangements
for her winter's fuel and its storage ; she finds her
washerwoman or her laundry ; she arranges her own
hours of exercise, of study, and of sleep ; she chooses
her own society, clubs, and church. The advice she
gets comes from another girl student of sophomoric
dignity who chances to be in the same house, or pos-
sibly from a still more advanced young woman whom
she met on the journey, or sat near in church on her
first Sunday. Strong is the comradeship among these
ambitious girls, who nurse one another in illness,
admonish one another in health, and rival one an-
other in study only less eagerly than they all rival the
boys. In my time in college the little group of girls,
suddenly introduced into the army of young men,
felt that the fate of our sex hung upon proving
that "lady Greek" involved the accents, and that
women's minds were particularly absorptive of the
calculus and metaphysics. And still in those sections
where, with growing experience, the anxieties about
coeducation have been allayed, a healthy and hearty
relationship and honest rivalry between young men
and women exists. It is a stimulating atmosphere, and
develops in good stock a strength and independent
balance which tell in after-life.
322 THREE TYPES
In estimating the worth of such a system as this,
we may say at once that it does not meet every need
of a woman's nature. No system can no system
that has yet been devised. A woman is an object of
attraction to men, and also in herself so delicately
organized as to be fitted peculiarly for the graces and
domesticities of life. The exercise of her special func-
tion of motherhood demands sheltered circumstances
and refined moral perceptions. But then, over and
above all this, she is a human being a person,
that is, who has her own way in the world to make,
and who will come to success or failure, in her home
or outside it, according as her judgment is fortified,
her observations and experiences are enlarged, her
courage is rendered strong and calm, her moral esti-
mates are trained to be accurate, broad, and swift.
In a large tract of her character is it the largest
tract ? her own needs and those of the young man
are identical. Both are rational persons, and the
greater part of the young man's education is addressed
to his rational personality rather than to the pecu-
liarities of his sex. Why, the defenders of coeduca-
tion ask, may not the same principles apply to wo-
men ? Why train a girl specifically to be a wife and
mother, when no great need is felt for training a boy
to be a husband and father ? In education, as a pub-
lic matter, the two sexes meet on common ground.
The differences must be attended to privately.
OF WOMEN'S COLLEGES 323
At any rate, whatever may be thought of the rela-
tive importance of the two sides the woman side
and the human side it will be generally agreed
that the training of a young woman is apt to be pe-
culiarly weak in agencies for bringing home to her
the importance of direct and rational action. The
artificialities of society, the enfeebling indulgence ex-
tended to pretty silliness, the gallantry of men glad"
ever to accept the hard things and leave to her the
easy by these influences any comfortably placed
and pleasing girl is pretty sure to be surrounded in
her early teens. The coeducationists think it whole-
some that in her later teens and early twenties she
should be subjected to an impartial judgment, ready
to estimate her without swerving, and to tell her as
freely when she is silly, ignorant, fussy, or indolent
as her brother himself is told. Coeducation, as a
system, must minimize the different needs of men
and women ; it appeals to them and provides for them
alike, and then allows the natural tastes and instincts
of each scope for individuality. The strengths of this
system, accordingly, are to be found in its tendency
to promote independence of judgment, individuality
of tastes, common-sense and foresight in self-guid-
ance, disinclination to claim favor, interest in learning
for its own sake ; friendly, natural, unromantic, non-
sentimental relations with men. The early fear that
coeducation would result in classroom romances
324 THREE TYPES
has proved exaggerated. These young women do
marry; so do others; so do young men. Marriage is
not in itself an evil, and many happy homes have
been founded in the belief that long and quiet ac-
quaintance in intellectual work, and intimate inter-
ests of the same deeper sort, form as solid a basis for
a successful marriage as ballroom intercourse or a
summer at Bar Harbor.
The weaknesses of this system are merely the con-
verse of its strengths. It does not usually provide for
what is distinctively feminine. Refining home influ-
ences and social oversight are largely lacking; and
if they are wanting in the home from which the
student comes, it must not be expected that she
will show, on graduation, the graces of manner, the
niceties of speech and dress, and the shy delicacy
which have been encouraged in her more tenderly
nurtured sister.
The woman's college is organized under a different
and far more complex conception. The chief busi-
ness of the man's college, whether girls are admitted
to it or not, is to give instruction of the best available
quality in as many subjects as possible; to furnish
every needed appliance for the acquirement of know-
ledge and the encouragement of special investigation.
The woman's college aims to do all this, but it aims
also to make for its students a home within its own
walls and to develop other powers in them than the
OF WOMEN'S COLLEGES 325
merely intellectual. At the outset this may seem a
simple matter, but it quickly proves as complicated
as life itself. When girls are gathered together by
hundreds, isolated from the ordinary conditions of
established communities, the college stands to them
preeminently in loco parentis. It must provide res-
ident physicians and trained nurses, be ready in
case of illness and, to prevent illness, must direct
exercise, sleep, hygiene and sanitation, accepting the
responsibility not only of the present health of its
students, but also in large degree of their physical
power in the future. It generally furnishes them
means of social access to the best men and women
of their neighborhood; it draws to them leaders in
moral and social reforms, to give inspiration in high
ideals and generous self-sacrifice, and it undertakes
religious instruction while seeding still to respect
the varied faiths of its students. In short, the ar-
rangements of the woman's college, as conceived by
founders, trustees, and faculty, have usually aimed
with conscious directness at building up character,
inspiring to the service of others, cultivating manners,
developing taste, and strengthening health, as well
as providing the means of sound learning.
It may be said that a similar upbuilding of the
personal life results from the training of every col-
lege that is worthy of the name; and fortunately it
is impossible to enlarge knowledge without, to some
326 THREE TYPES
extent, enlarging life. But the question is one of
directness or indirectness of aim. The woman's col-
lege puts this aim in the foreground side by side with
the acquisition of knowledge. By setting its students
apart in homogeneous companies, it seeks to cultivate
common ideals. Of its teaching force, a large num-
ber are women who live with the students in the col-
lege buildings, sit with them at table, join in their
festivities, and in numberless intimate ways share
and guide the common life. Every student, no mat-
ter how large the college, has friendly access at any
time to several members of the faculty, quite apart
from her relations with them in the classroom. In
appointing these women to the faculty no board of
trustees would consider it sufficient that a candidate
was an accomplished specialist. She must be this, but
she should be also a lady of unobjectionable manners
and influential character ; she should have amiability
and a discreet temper, for she is to be a guiding force
in a complex community, continually in the presence
of her students, an officer of administration and gov-
ernment no less than of instruction. Harvard and
Johns Hopkins can ask their pupils to attend the lec-
tures of a great scholar, however brusque his bearing
or unbrushed his hair. They will not question their
geniuses too sharply, and will trust their students to
look out for their own proprieties of dress, manners,
and speech. But neither Wellesley nor any other
OF WOMEN'S COLLEGES 327
woman's college could find a place in its faculty for
a woman Sophocles or Sylvester. Learning alone is
not enough for women.
Not only in the appointment of its teaching body,
but in all its appliances the separate college aims at a
rounded refinement, at cultivating a sense of beauty,
at imparting simple tastes and generous sympathies.
To effect this, pictures are hung on the walls, statues
and flowers decorate the rooms, concerts bring music
to the magnified home, and parties and receptions
are paid for out of the college purse. The influence of
hundreds of mentally eager girls upon the characters
of one another, when they live for four years in the
closest daily companionship, is most interesting to
see. I have watched the ennobling process go on for
many years among Wellesley students, and I am
confident that no more healthy, generous, demo-
cratic, beauty-loving, serviceable society of people
existsthan the girls' college community affords. That
choicest product of modern civilization, the Ameri-
can girl, is here in all her diverse colors. She comes
from more than a dozen religious denominations and
from every political party; from nearly every state
and territory in the Union, and from the foreign
lands into which English and American missionaries,
merchants, or soldiers have penetrated. The farmer's
daughter from the western prairies is beside the child
whose father owns half a dozen mill towns of New
328 THREE TYPES
England. The pride of a Southern senator's home
rooms with an anxious girl who must borrow all the
money for her college course because her father's life
was given for the Union. Side by side in the boats,
on the tennis- grounds, at the table, arm in arm on
the long walks, debating in the societies, vigorous
together in the gymnasium and the library, girls of
every grade gather the rich experiences which will
tincture their future toil, and make the world per-
petually seem an interesting and friendly place. They
here learn to " see great things large, and little things
small."
This detailed explanation of the peculiarities of
the girls' college renders unnecessary any long dis-
cussion of its strengths and weaknesses. According
to the point of view of the critic these peculiarities
themselves will be counted means of invigoration or
of enfeeblement. Living so close to one another as
girls here do, the sympathetic and altruistic virtues
acquire great prominence. Petty selfishness retreats
or becomes extinct. An earnest, high-minded spirit
is easily cultivated, and the break between college life
and the life from which the student comes is reduced
to a minimum.
It is this very fact which is often alleged as the chief
objection to the girls' college. It is said that its stu-
dents never escape from themselves and their do-
mestic standard, that they do not readily acquire a
OF WOMEN'S COLLEGES 329
scientific spirit, and become individual in taste and
conduct. Is it desirable that they should ? That I
shall not undertake to decide. I have merely tried to
explain the kinds of human work which the different
types of higher training-schools are best fitted to
effect for women. Whether the one or the other kind
of work needs most to be done is a question of social
ethics which the future must answer. I have set forth
a type, perhaps in the endeavor after clearness ex-
aggerating a little its outlines, and contrasting it
more sharply with its two neighbor types than in-
dividual cases would justify. There are colleges for
women which closely approximate in aim and method
the colleges for men. No doubt those which move
furthest in the directions- 1 have indicated are capa-
ble of modification. But I believe what I have said
gives a substantially true account of an actually ex-
isting type a type powerful in stirring the enthusi-
asm of those who are submitted to it, subtle in its
penetrating influences over them, and effective in
winning the confidence of a multitude of parents who
would never send their daughters to colleges of a
different type.
The third type is the "annex," a recent and inter-
esting experiment in the education of girls, whose
future it is yet difficult to predict. Only a few cases
exist, and as the Harvard Annex is the most con-
spicuous, by reason of its dozen years of age and
330 THREE TYPES
nearly two hundred students, I shall describe it as
the typical example. In the Harvard Annex groups
of young women undertake courses of study in classes
whose instruction is furnished entirely by members
of the Harvard Faculty. No college officer is obliged
to give this instruction, and the Annex staff of teach-
ers is, therefore, liable to considerable variation
from year to year. Though the usual four classes
appear in its curriculum, the large majority of its
students devote themselves to special subjects. A
wealthy girl turns from fashionable society to pursue
a single course in history or economics ; a hard-worked
teacher draws inspiration during a few afternoons
each week from a famous Greek or Latin pro-
fessor; a woman who has been long familiar with
French literature explores with a learned specialist
some single period in the history of the language.
Because the opportunities for advanced and de-
tached study are so tempting, many ladies living
in the neighborhood of the Annex enter one or
more of its courses. There are consequently among
its students women much older than the average of
those who attend the colleges.
The business arrangements are taken charge of by
a committee of ladies and gentlemen, who provide
classrooms, suggest boarding-places, secure the in-
structors, solicit the interest of the public in short,
manage all the details of an independent institution ;
OF WOMEN'S COLLEGES 331
for the noteworthy feature of its relation to its pow-
erful neighbor is this : that the two, while actively
friendly, have no official or organic tie whatever. In
the same city young men and young women of col-
legiate rank are studying the same subjects under
the same instructors ; but there are two colleges, not
one. No detail in the management of Harvard Col-
lege is changed by the presence in Cambridge of the
Harvard Annex. If the corporation of Harvard
should assume the financial responsibility, supervise
the government, and give the girl graduates degrees,
making no other changes whatever, the Annex would
then become a school of the university, about as dis-
tinct from Harvard College as the medical, law, or
divinity schools. The students of the medical school
do not attend the same lectures or frequent the same
buildings as the college undergraduates. The imme-
diate governing boards of college and medical school
are separate. But here comparison fails, for the stu-
dents of the professional schools may elect courses
in the college and make use of all its resources.
This the young women cannot do. They have only
the rights of all Cambridge ladies to attend the many
public lectures and readings of the university.
The Harvard Annex is, then, to-day a woman's
college, with no degrees, no dormitories, no women
instructors, and with a staff of teachers made up
from volunteers of another college. The Fay House,
332 THREE TYPES
where offices, lecture and waiting rooms, library and
laboratories are gathered, is in the heart of Old
Cambridge, but at a little distance from the college
buildings. This is the centre of the social and literary
life of the students. Here they gather their friends at
afternoon teas ; here the various clubs which have
sprung up, as numbers have increased, hold their
meetings and give their entertainments. The students
lodge in all parts of Cambridge and the neighboring
towns, and are directly responsible for their conduct
only to themselves. The ladies of the management are
lavish in time and care to make the girls' lives happy
and wholesome; the secretary is always at hand to
give advice ; but the personal life of the students is as
separate and independent as in the typical coeduca-
tional college.
It is impossible to estimate either favorably or
adversely the permanent worth of an undertaking
still in its infancy. Manifestly, the opportunities
for the very highest training are here superb, if they
happen to exist at all. In this, however, is the incal-
culable feature of the system. The Annex lives by
favor, not by right, and it is impossible to predict
what the extent of favor may at any time be. A girl
hears that an admirable course of lectures has been
given on a topic in which she is greatly interested.
She arranges to join the Annex and enter the course,
but learns in the summer vacation that through
OF WOMEN'S COLLEGES 333
pressure of other work the professor will be unable
to teach in the Annex the following year. The fact
that favor rules, and not rights, peculiarly hampers
scientific and laboratory courses, and for its literary
work obliges the Annex largely to depend on its own
library. Yet when all these weaknesses are confessed
and by none are they confessed more frankly than
by the wise and devoted managers of the Annex
themselves it should be said that hitherto they
have not practically hindered the formation of a spirit
of scholarship, eager, free and sane to an extraordi-
nary degree. The Annex girl succeeds in remaining
a private and unobserved gentlewoman, while still,
in certain directions, pushing her studies to an ad-
vanced point seldom reached elsewhere.
A plan in some respects superficially analogous
to the American annex has been in operation for
many years at the English, and more recently at some
of the Scotch universities, where a hall or college for
women uses many of the resources of the university.
But this plan is so complicated with the peculiar
organization of English university life that it cannot
usefully be discussed here. In the few colleges in this
country where, very recently, the annex experiment
is being tried, its methods vary markedly.
Barnard College in New York is an annex of
Columbia only in a sense, for not all her instruc-
tion is given by Columbia's teaching force, though
384 THREE TYPES
Columbia will confer degrees upon her graduates.
The new Woman's College at Cleveland sustains
temporarily the same relations to Adelbert College,
though to a still greater extent she provides inde-
pendent instruction.
In both Barnard and Cleveland women are en-
gaged in instruction and in government. Indeed,
the new annexes which have arisen in the last three
years seem to promise independent colleges for
women in the immediate neighborhood of, and in
close relationship with, older and better equipped
universities for men, whose resources they can to
some extent use, whose standards they can apply,
whose tests they can meet. When they possess a fixed
staff of teachers they are not, of course, liable to
the instabilities which at present beset the Harvard
Annex. So far, however, as these teachers belong
to the annex, and are not drawn from the neighbor-
ing university, the annex is assimilated to the type of
the ordinary woman's college, and loses its distinc-
tive merits. If the connection between it and the uni-
versity should ever become so close that it had the
same right to the professors as the university itself,
it would become a question whether the barriers
between the men's and the women's lecture rooms
could be economically maintained.
The preceding survey has shown how in coeduca-
tion a woman's study is carried on inside a man's col-
OF WOMEN'S COLLEGES 335
lege, in the women's college outside it, in the annex
beside it. Each of these situations has its advantage.
But will the community be content to accept this;
permanently to forego the counter advantages, and
even after it fully realizes the powers and limita-
tions of the different types, firmly to maintain them
in their distinctive vigor ? Present indications render
this improbable. Already coeducational colleges in-
cline to more careful leadership for their girls. The
separate colleges, with growing wealth, are learning
to value intrepidity, and are carrying their operations
close up to the lands of the Ph.D. The annex swings
in its middle air, sometimes inclining to the one side,
sometimes to the other. And outside them all, the
great body of men's colleges continually find it harder
to maintain their isolation, and extend one privilege
after another to the seeking sex.
The result of all these diversities is the most in-
structive body of experiment that the world has seen
for determining the best ways of bringing woman to
her powers. While the public mind is so uncertain, so
liable to panic, and so doubtful whether, after all,
it is not better for a girl to be a goose, the many meth-
ods of education assist one another mightily in their
united warfare against ignorance, selfish privileges,
and antiquated ideals. It is well that for a good while
to come woman's higher education should be all
things to all mothers, if by any means it may save
336 WOMEN'S COLLEGES
girls. Those who are hardy enough may continue
to mingle their girls with men; while a parent who
would be shocked that her daughter should do any-
thing so ambiguous as to enter a man's college may
be persuaded to send her to a girls'. Those who find
it easier to honor an old university than the eager life
of a young college, may be tempted into an annex.
The important thing is that the adherents of these
differing types should not fall into jealousy, and be-
little the value of those who are performing a work
which they themselves cannot do so well. To under-
stand one another kindly is the business of the hour
to understand and to wait.
XIV
WOMEN'S EDUCATION IN THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY 1
ONE of the most distinctive and far-reaching
movements of the nineteenth century is that which
has brought about the present large opportunities
for the higher education of women. Confining itself
to no country, this vast movement has advanced
rapidly in some, slowly and timidly in others. In
America three broad periods mark its progress : first,
the period of quiescence, which ends about 1830;
second, the period of agitation, ending with the civil
war; the third, though far as yet from completion,
may be called the period of accomplishment.
For the first two hundred years in the history of
our country little importance was attached to the
education of women, though before the nineteenth
century began, twenty-four colleges had been founded
for the education of men. In the early years of this
century private schools for girls were expensive and
short-lived. The common schools were the only
grades of public instruction open to young women.
In the cities of Massachusetts, where more was done
1 Published in The New York Evening Post, 1900.
338 WOMEN'S EDUCATION
for the education of boys than elsewhere, girls were
allowed to go to school only a small part of the year,
and in some places could even then use the school-
room only in the early hours of the day, or on
those afternoons when the boys had a half-holiday.
Anything like a careful training of girls was not
yet thought of.
This comparative neglect of women is less to be
wondered at when we remember that the colleges
which existed at the beginning of this century had
been founded to fit men for the learned professions,
chiefly for the ministry. Neither here nor elsewhere
was it customary to give advanced education to boys
destined for business. The country, too, was im-
poverished by the long struggle for independence.
The Government was bankrupt, unable to pay its
veteran soldiers. Irritation and unrest were every-
where prevalent until the ending of the second war
with England, in 1815. Immediately succeeding this
began that great migration to the West and South-
west which carried thousands of the most ambitious
young men and women from the East to push our
frontiers farther and farther into the wilderness.
Even in the older parts of the country the population
was widely scattered. The people lived for the most
part in villages and isolated farms. City life was un-
common. As late as 1840 only nine per cent of the
population was living in cities of 8000 or more inhab-
IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 339
itants. Under such conditions nothing more than
the bare necessities of education could be regarded.
But this very isolation bred a kind of equality. In
district schools it became natural for boys and girls
to study together and to receive the same instruction
from teachers who were often young and enthusiastic.
These were as a rule college students, granted long
winter vacations from their own studies that they
might earn money by teaching village schools. Thus
most young women shared with their brothers the
best elementary training the country afforded, while
college education was reserved for the few young men
who were preparing for the ministry or for some
other learned profession.
From the beginning it had been the general cus-
tom of this country to educate boys and girls together
up to the college age. To-day in less than six per
cent of all our cities is there any separate provision of
schools for boys and girls. This habitual early start
together has made it natural for our men and women
subsequently to read the same books, to have the
same tastes and interests, and jointly to approve a
large social freedom. On the whole, women have
usually had more leisure than men for the cultivating
of scholarly tastes.
The first endowment of the higher education of
women in this country was made by the Moravians
in the seminary for girls which they founded at Beth-
340 WOMEN'S EDUCATION
lehem, Pennsylvania, in 1749. They founded an-
other girls' seminary at Lititz in 1794. Though both
of these honorable foundations continue in effect-
ive operation to-day, their influence has been for
the most part confined to the religious communion
of their founders. In 1804 an academy with wider
connections was founded at Bradford, Massachu-
setts, at first open to boys and girls, since 1836
limited to girls. From that time academies and sem-
inaries for girls increased rapidly. One of the most
notable was Troy Seminary, founded by Emma Hart
Willard and chartered in 1819. Miss Willard drew
up broad and original plans for the higher educa-
tion of girls, laid them before President Monroe,
appealed to the New York Legislature for aid, and
dreamed of establishing something like collegiate
training. More than three hundred students en-
tered her famous seminary, and for seventeen years
she carried it on with growing reputation. Her ad-
dress to the President in 1819 is still a strong state-
ment of the importance to the republic of an en-
lightened and disciplined womanhood.
Even more influential was the life and work of
Mary Lyon, who in 1837 founded Mount Holyoke
Seminary, and labored for the education of women
until her death, in 1849. Of strong religious nature,
great courage and resource, she went up and down
New England securing funds and pupils. Her rare
IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 341
gift of inspiring both men and women induced wide
acceptance of her ideals of character and intelligence.
Seminaries patterned after Mount Holyoke sprang
up all over the land, and still remain as centres of
powerful influence, particularly in the Middle West
and on the Pacific Coast.
With this development, through the endowment
of many excellent seminaries, of the primary educa-
tion of girls into something like secondary or high-
school opportunities, the period of quiescence comes
to an end. There follows a period of agitation when
the full privilege of college training side by side with
men was demanded for women. This agitation was
closely connected on the one hand with the anti-
slavery movement and the general passion for moral
reform at that time current; and, on the other, with
the interest in teaching and that study of its methods
which Horace Mann fostered. From 1830 to 1865
it was becoming evident that women were destined
to have a large share in the instruction of children.
For this work they sought to fit themselves, and the
reformers aided them. Oberlin College, which began
as a collegiate institute in 1833, was in 1850 char-
tered as a college. From the beginning it admitted
women, and in 1841 three women took its diploma.
Antioch College, under Horace Mann's leadership,
opened in 1853, admitting women on equal terms
with men. In 1855 Elmira College was founded, the
342 WOMEN'S EDUCATION
first institution chartered as a separate college for
women.
Even before the Civil War the commercial interests
of the country had become so much extended that
trade was rising into a dignity comparable to that of
the learned professions. Men were more and more
deserting teaching for the business life, and their
places, at first chiefly in the lower grades, were being
filled by women. During the five years of the war
this supersession of men by women teachers ad-
vanced rapidly. It has since acquired such impetus
that at present more than two thirds of the training
of the young of both sexes below the college grade
has fallen out of the hands of men. In the mean
time, too, though in smaller numbers, women have
invaded the other professions and have even entered
into trade. These demonstrations of a previously
unsuspected capacity have been both the cause and
the effect of enlarged opportunities for mental equip-
ment. The last thirty or forty years have seen the
opening of that new era in women's education which
I have ventured to call the period of accomplishment.
From the middle of the century the movement to
open the state universities to women, to found col-
leges for men and women on equal terms, and to
establish independent colleges for women spread
rapidly. From their first organization the state uni-
versities of Utah (1850), Iowa (1856), Washington
IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 343
(1862), Kansas (1866), Minnesota (1868), Nebraska
(1871) admitted women. Indiana, founded in 1820,
opened its doors to women in 1868, and was followed
in 1870 by Michigan, at that time the largest and far
the most influential of all the state universities. From
that time the movement became general. The ex-
ample of Michigan was followed until at the present
time all the colleges and universities of the West,
excepting those under Catholic management, are
open to women. The only state university in the East,
that of Maine, admitted women in 1872. Virginia,
Georgia, and Louisiana alone among all the state
universities of the country remain closed to women.
This sudden opening to women of practically all
universities supported by public funds is not more
extraordinary than the immense endowments which
during the same period have been put into independ-
ent colleges for women, or into colleges which admit
men and women on equal terms. Of these privately
endowed colleges, Cornell, originally founded for
men, led the way in 1872 in opening its doors to wo-
men. The West and South followed rapidly, the East
more slowly. Of the 480 colleges which at the end
of the century are reported by the Bureau of Educa-
tion, 336 admit women; or, excluding the Catholic
colleges, 80 per cent of all are open to women. Of
the sixty leading colleges in the United States there
are only ten in which women are not admitted to
344 WOMEN'S EDUCATION
some department. These ten are all on the Atlantic
seaboard and are all old foundations.
This substantial accomplishment during the last
forty years of the right of women to a college educa-
tion has not, however, resulted in fixing a single type
of college in which that education shall be obtained.
On the contrary, three clearly contrasted types now
exist side by side. These are the independent college,
the coeducational college, and the affiliated college.
To the independent college for women men are
not admitted, though the grade, the organization,
and the general aim are supposed to be the same as
in the colleges exclusively for men. The first college
of this type, Elmira (1855), has been already men-
tioned. The four largest women's colleges Vassar,
opened in 1861; Smith, in 1875; Wellesley, in 1875,
and Bryn Mawr, in 1885 take rank among the
sixty leading colleges of the country in wealth, equip-
ment, teachers and students, and variety of studies
offered. Wells College, chartered as a college in 1870,
the Woman's College of Baltimore, opened in 1888,
and Mt. Holvoke, reorganized as a college in 1893,
have also large endowments and attendance. All the
women's colleges are empowered to confer the same
degrees as are given in the men's colleges.
The development of coeducation, the prevailing
type of education in the United States for both men
and women, has already been sufficiently described.
IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 345
In coeducational colleges men and women have the
same instructors, recite in the same classes, and en-
joy the same freedom in choice of studies. To the
faculties of these colleges women are occasionally
appointed, and, like their male colleagues, teach
mixed classes of men and women. Many coedu-
cational colleges are without halls of residence.
Where these exist, special buildings are assigned to
the women students.
The affiliated colleges, while exclusively for women,
are closely connected with strong colleges for men,
whose equipment and opportunities they are ex-
pected in some degree to share. At present there are
five such: Radcliffe College, the originator of this
type, connected with Harvard University, and opened
in 1879; Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, at
Tulane University, opened in 1886; the College for
Women of Western Reserve University, 1888; Bar-
nard College, at Columbia University, 1889; the
Woman's College of Brown University, 1892. In all
these colleges the standards for entrance and gradu-
ation are the same as those exacted from men in the
universities with which they are affiliated. To a con-
siderable extent the instructors also are the same.
During the last quarter-century many professional
schools have been opened to women schools of
theology, law, medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, tech-
nology, agriculture. The number of women entering
346 WOMEN'S EDUCATION
these professions is rapidly increasing. Since 1890
the increase of women students in medicine is 64 per
cent, in dentistry 205 per cent, in pharmacy 190 per
cent, in technology and agriculture 194 per cent.
While this great advance has been accomplished
in America, women in England and on the Continent,
especially during the last thirty years, have been
demanding better education. Though much more
slowly and in fewer numbers than in this country,
they have everywhere succeeded in securing decided
advantages. No country now refuses them a share in
liberal study, in the instruction of young children,
and in the profession of medicine. As might be ex-
pected, English-speaking women, far more than any
others, have won and used the opportunities of uni-
versity training. Since 1860 women have been study-
ing at Cambridge, England, and since 1879 at Ox-
ford. At these ancient seats of learning they have
now every privilege except the formal degree. To
all other English and Scotch universities, and to the
universities of the British colonies, women are ad-
mitted, and from them they receive degrees.
In the most northern countries of Europe in
Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark the
high schools and universities are freely open to wo-
men. In eastern Europe able women have made
efforts to secure advanced study, and these efforts
have been most persistent in Russia and since the
IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 347
Crimean war. When denied in their own land, Rus-
sian women have flocked to the Swiss and French
universities, and have even gone in considerable
numbers to Finland and to Italy. Now Russia is
slowly responding to its women's entreaties. During
the last ten years the universities of Rumania, Bul-
garia, Hungary, and Greece have been open to wo-
men ; while in Constantinople the American College
for Girls offers the women of the East the systematic
training of the New England type of college. In
western, central, and southern Europe all university
doors are open. In these countries, degrees and hon-
ors may everywhere be had by women, except in
Germany and Austria. Even here, by special per-
mission of the Minister of Education, or the pro-
fessor in charge, women may hear lectures. Each
year, too, more women are granted degrees by spe-
cial vote and as exceptional cases.
In brief, it may be said that practically all Euro-
pean universities are now open to women. No Ameri-
can woman of scholarship, properly qualified for the
work she undertakes, need fear refusal if she seeks
the instruction of the greatest European scholars
in her chosen field. Each year American women are
taking with distinction the highest university degrees
of the Continent. To aid them, many fellowships and
graduate scholarships, ranging in value from $300 to
$1000, are offered for foreign study by our colleges
348 WOMEN'S EDUCATION
for women and by private associations of women who
seek to promote scholarship. Large numbers of am-
bitious young women who are preparing themselves
for teaching or for the higher fields of scientific re-
search annually compete for this aid. Three years
ago an association was formed for maintaining an
American woman's table in the Zoological Station
at Naples. By paying $500 a year they are thus able
to grant to selected students the most favorable con-
ditions for biological investigation. This association
has also just offered a prize of $1000, to be granted
two years hence, for the best piece of original scien-
tific work done in the mean time by a woman. The
American Schools of Classical Studies in Athens and
Rome admit women on the same terms as men, and
award their fellowships to men and women indiffer-
ently. One of these fellowships, amounting to $1000
a year, has just been won by a woman.
The experience, then, of the last thirty years shows
a condition of women's education undreamed of at
the beginning of the century. It shows that though
still hampered here and there by timorous restrictions,
women are in substantial possession of much the
same opportunities as are available for men. It shows
that they have both the capacity and the desire for
college training, that they can make profitable and
approved use of it when obtained, and that they are
eager for that broader and more original study after
IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 349
college work is over which is at once the most novel
and the most glorious feature of university education
to-day. Indeed, women have taken more than their
due proportion of the prizes, honors, and fellowships
which have been accessible to them on the same
terms as to men. Their resort to institutions of higher
learning has increased far more than that of men.
In 1872 the total number of college students in each
million of population was 590. Last year it had risen
to 1270, much more than doubling in twenty-seven
years. During this time the number of men had
risen from 540 to 947, or had not quite doubled. The
women rose from 50 in 1872 to 323 in 1899, having
increased their former proportional number more
than six times, and this advance has also been main-
tained in graduate and professional schools.
The immensity of the change which the last century
has wrought in women's education may best be seen
by setting side by side the conditions at its beginning
and at its close. In 1800 no colleges for women ex-
isted, and only two endowed schools for girls these
belonging to a small German sect. They had no high
schools, and the best grammar schools in cities were
open to them only under restrictions. The com-
moner grammar and district schools, and an occa-
sional private school dedicated to "accomplish-
ments," were their only avenues to learning. There
was little hostility to their education, since it was
350 WOMEN'S EDUCATION
generally assumed by men and by themselves that
intellectual matters did not concern them. No pro-
fession was open to them, not even that of teaching,
and only seven possible trades and occupations.
In 1900 a third of all the college students in the
United States are women. Sixty per cent of the pupils
in the secondary schools, both public and private, are
girls i. e. more girls are preparing for college than
boys. Women having in general more leisure than
men, there is reason to expect that there will soon
be more women than men in our colleges and gradu-
ate schools. The time, too, has passed when girls
went to college to prepare themselves solely for teach-
ing or for other bread-winning occupations. In con-
siderable numbers they now seek intellectual re-
sources and the enrichment of their private lives.
Thus far between 50 and 60 per cent of women col-
lege graduates have at some time taught. In the
country at large more than 70 per cent of the teach-
ing is done by women, in the North Atlantic portion
over 80 per cent. Even in the secondary schools,
public and private, more women than men are teach-
ing, though in all other countries the advanced in-
struction of boys is exclusively in the hands of men.
Never before has a nation intrusted all the school
training of the vast majority of its future population,
men as well as women, to women alone.
XV
WOMEN'S EDUCATION AT THE WORLD'S FAIR 1
FEW persons have stood in the Court of Honor at
Chicago and felt the surpassing splendors gathered
there, without a certain dismay over its swiftly ap-
proaching disappearance. Never in the world before
has beauty been so lavish and so transient. Probably
in all departments of the Fair a hundred million dol-
lars have been spent. Now the nation's holiday is
done, the little half-year is over, and the palaces with
their widely gathered treasures vanish like a dream.
Is all indeed gone? Will nothing remain? Wise
observers perceive some permanent results of the
merry-making. What these will be in the busy life
of men, others may decide : I point out chiefly a few
of the beneficial influences of the great Fair on the
life of women.
The triumph of women in what may be called their
detached existence, that is, in their guidance of them-
selves and the separated affairs of their sex, has been
unexpectedly great. The Government appointed an
independent Board of Lady Managers who, through
many difficulties, gathered from every quarter of the
globe interesting exhibits of feminine industry and
1 Published in The Forum for December, 1891.
352 WOMEN'S EDUCATION
skill. These they gracefully disposed in one of the
most dignified buildings of the Fair, itself a woman's
design. Here they attractively illustrated every aspect
of the life of women, domestic, philanthropic, com-
mercial, literary, artistic, and traced their historic
advance. Close at hand, in another building also of
their own erection, they appropriately appeared as
the guardians and teachers of little children. Their
halls were crowded, their dinners praised, their recep-
tion invitations coveted. Throughout they showed
organizing ability on a huge scale; they developed
noteworthy leaders; what is more, they followed
them, and they have quarrelled no more, and have
pulled wires less, than men in similar situations;
their courage, their energy, their tact in the erection
of a monument to woman were astonishing ; and the
efforts of their Central Board were efficiently seconded
by similar companies in every state. As in the Sani-
tary and Christian Commissions and the hospital
service of the war, in the multitude of women's clubs,
the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the
King's Daughters, the associations for promoting
women's suffrage, so once more here women found
an opportunity to prove their ability as a banded sex ;
and it is clear that they awakened in the nation a
deeper respect for their powers.
But the very triumph does away with its further
necessity. Having amply proved what they can do
AT THE WORLD'S FAIR 353
when banded together, women may now the more
easily cease to treat themselves as a peculiar people.
Henceforth they are human beings. Women's build-
ings, women's exhibits, may safely become things of
the past. At any future fair no special treatment of
women is likely to be called for. After what has
been achieved, the self -consciousness of women will
be lessened, and their sensitiveness about their own
position, capacity, and rights will be naturally out-
grown. The anthropologist may perhaps still assem-
ble the work of a single sex, the work of people of a
single color, or of those having blue eyes. But ordi-
nary people will find less and less interest in these
artificial classifications, and will more and more
incline to measure men's and women's products by
the same scale. Even at Chicago large numbers of
women preferred to range their exhibits in the com-
mon halls rather than under feminine banners, and
their demonstration of the needlessness of any special
treatment of their sex must be reckoned as one of the
most considerable of the permanent gains for women
from the Fair.
If, then, women have demonstrated that they are
more than isolated phenomena, that they should
indeed be treated as integral members of the human
family, in order to estimate rightly the lasting advan-
tages they have derived from the Fair we must seek
those advantages not in isolations but in conjunctions.
354 WOMEN'S EDUCATION
In the common life of man there is a womanly side
and a manly side. Both have profited by one splen-
did event. Manufactures and transportation and
mining and agriculture will hereafter be different
because of what has occurred at Chicago ; but so will
domestic science, the training of the young, the swift
intellectual interest, the finer patriotism, the ap-
prehension of beauty, the moral balance. It is by
growth in these things that the emancipation of
women is to come about, and the Fair has fostered
them all in an extraordinary degree.
Although the Fair was officially known as a World's
Fair, and it did contain honorable contributions from
many foreign countries, it was, in a sense that no other
exhibition has been before, a nation's fair. It was the
climacteric expression of America's existence. It
gathered together our past and our present, and indi-
cated not uncertainly our future. Here were made
visible our beginnings, our achievements, our hopes,
our dreams. The nation became conscious of itself
and was strong, beautiful, proud. All sections of the
country not only contributed their most characteristic
objects of use and beauty, but their inhabitants also
came, and learned to know one another, and their
land. During the last two years there has hardly been
a village in the country which has not had its club or
circle studying the history of the United States. No
section has been too poor to subscribe money for
AT THE WORLD'S FAIR 355
maintaining national or state pride. In order to see
the great result, men have mortgaged their farms,
lonely women have taken heavy life insurance, strin-
gent economy will gladly be practised for years. A
friend tells me that she saw an old man, as he left
the Court of Honor with tears in his eyes, turn to his
gray-haired wife and say, " Well, Susan, it paid even
if it did take all the burial money."
Once before, we reached a similar pitch of national
consciousness, in war. Young, unprepared, di-
vided against ourselves, we found ourselves able to
mass great armies, endure long strains, organize
campaigns, commissariats, hospitals, in altogether
independent ways, and on a scale greater than Europe
had seen. Then men and women alike learned the
value of mutual confidence, the strength of coopera-
tion and organization. Once again now, but this time
in the interest of beauty and of peace, we have studied
the art of subordinating fragmentary interests to those
of a whole. The training we have received as a na-
tion in producing and studying the Fair, must result
in a deeper national dignity, which will both free us
from irritating sensitiveness over foreign criticism,
and give us readiness to learn from other countries
whatever lessons they can teach. Our own provinces
too will become less provincial. With increased ac-
quaintance, the East has begun to drop its toleration
of the West, and to put friendliness and honor in its
356 WOMEN'S EDUCATION
place. No more will it be believed along the Atlantic
coast that the Mississippi Valley cares only for
pork, grain and lumber. As such superstitions decay,
a more trustful unity becomes possible. The entire
nation knows itself a nation, possessed of common
ideals. In this heightened national dignity, women
will have a large and ennobling share.
But further, from the Fair men, and women with
them, have acquired a new sense of the gains that
come from minute obedience to law. Hitherto, "go
as you please " has been pretty largely the principle
of American life. In the training school of the last
two years of preparation and the six months of the
holding of the Fair, our people, particularly our
women, have been solidly taught the hard and need-
ful lesson that whims, waywardness, haste, inaccu-
racy, pettiness, personal considerations, do not make
for strength. Wherever these have entered, they have
flawed the beautiful whole, and flecked the honor of
us all. Where they have been absent results have
appeared which make us all rejoice. Never in so wide
an undertaking was the unity of a single design so
triumphant. As an unknown multitude cooperated
in the building of a mediaeval cathedral, so through-
out our land multitudes have been daily ready to
contribute their unmarked best for the erection of a
common glory. We have thus learned to prize second
thoughts above first thoughts, to league our lives and
AT THE WORLD'S FAIR 357
purposes with those of others, and to subordinate
the assertion of ourselves to that of a universal rea-
son. Hence has sprung a new trust in one another and
a new confidence in our future. The friendliness of
our people, already rendered natural by our demo-
cratic institutions, has received a deeper sanction.
How distinctly it was marked on the faces of the vis-
itors at the Fair ! I was fortunate enough to spend
several hours there on Chicago Day, when nearly
seven hundred and fifty thousand people were ad-
mitted. The appearance of those plain, intelligent,
happy, helpful thousands, all strangers and all kind,
was the most encouraging sight one woman had at
the Fair. It has been said that the moral education of
a child consists in imparting to him the three quali-
ties, obedience, sympathy, dignity. These all have
been taught by the Fair, and women, more swiftly
perceptive than men, have probably learned their
lesson best.
One more profound effect of the Fair upon human
character must be mentioned, on character in those
features which are of especial importance to women.
Our people have here gained a new sense of beauty,
and of beauty at its highest and rarest, not the beauty
of ornament and decoration, but that of proportion,
balance, and ordered suitability of parts. Every girl
likes pretty things, but the rational basis of beauty
in the harmonious expression of use, and in furnish-
358 WOMEN'S EDUCATION
ing to the eye the quiet satisfaction of its normal de-
mands, seldom attracts attention. At Chicago these
things became apparent. Each building outwardly
announced its inner purpose. Each gained its effect
mainly by outline and balance of masses rather than
by richness of detail. Each was designed in reference
to its site and to its neighbor buildings. Almost
every one rested the eye which it still stimulated.
Color, form, purpose, proportion, sculpture, vegeta-
tion, stretches of water, the brown earth, all cooper-
ated toward the happy effect. What visitor could see
it and not have begotten in him the demand for
beauty in his own surroundings ? It is said that the
Centennial Exhibition affected the domestic archi-
tecture and the household decoration of the whole
eastern seaboard. The Fair will do the same, but it
will bring about a beauty of a higher, simpler sort.
In people from every section, artistic taste has been
developed, or even created; and not only in their
houses, but in the architecture of their public build-
ings and streets shall we see the results of this vision
of the White City by the Lake. Huddled houses in
incongruous surroundings will become less common.
At heart we Americans are idealists, and at a time
when the general wealth is rapidly increasing, it is
an indescribable gain to have had such a training of
the aesthetic sense as days among the great buildings
and nights on the lagoons have brought to millions
AT THE WORLD'S FAIR 359
of our people. The teachability of the common
American is almost pathetic. One building was
always crowded the Fine Arts Building ; yet great
pictures were the one thing exhibited with which
Americans have hitherto had little or no acquaintance.
This beauty, connected essentially with the feminine
side of life, will hereafter, through the influence of
the Fair, become a more usual possession of us all.
If such are the permanent gains for character which
women in common with men, yet even more than
they, have derived from the Fair, there remain to be
considered certain helps which have been brought
to women in some of their most distinctive occupa-
tions. Of course they have had here an opportunity
to compare the different kinds of sewing-machines,
pianos, type-writers, telegraphs, clothes-wringers,
stoves, and baby-carriages, and no doubt they will
do their future work with these complicated engines
more effectively because of such comparative study.
But there are three departments which ancestral
usage has especially consecrated to women, and to
intelligent methods in each of these the Fair has given
a mighty impulse. These three departments are the
care of the home, the care of the young, and the care
of the sick, the poor, and the depraved.
At Philadelphia in 1876 Vienna bread was made
known, and the native article, sodden with saleratus,
which up to that time had desolated the country,
360 WOMEN'S EDUCATION
began to disappear. The results in cookery from the
Chicago Exhibition will be wider. They touch the
kitchen with intelligence at more points. Where
tradition has reigned unquestioned, science is be-
ginning to penetrate, and we are no longer allowed
to eat without asking why and what. This new
"domestic science" threatening word was set
forth admirably in the Rumford Kitchen, where a
capital thirty-cent luncheon was served every day,
compounded of just those ingredients which the
human frame could be djemonstrated to require.
The health-food companies, too, arrayed their appe-
tizing wares. Workingmen's homes showed on how
small a sum a family could live, and live well. Arrange-
ments for sterilizing water and milk were there,
Atkinson cookers, gas and kerosene stoves. The
proper sanitation of the home was taught, and boards
of health turned out to the plain gaze of the world
their inquisitorial processes. Numberless means of
increasing the health, ease, and happiness of the
household with the least expenditure of time and
money were here studied by crowds of despairing
housekeepers. Many, no doubt, were bewildered ; but
many, too, went away convinced that the most ancient
employment of women was rising to the dignity and
attractiveness of a learned profession.
WTien it is remembered that nine tenths of the
teachers of elementary schools are women, it can be
AT THE WORLD'S FAIR 361
seen how important for them was the magnificent
educational exhibit. Here could be studied all that
the age counts best in kindergarten, primary, gram-
mar, high and normal schools, and in all the varieties
of training in cookery, sewing, dressmaking, manual
training, drawing, painting, carving. Many of the
exhibitors showed great skill in making their methods
apprehensible to the stranger.
And then there were the modes of bodily training,
and the lamentable image of the misformed average
girl ; and in the children's building classes could ac-
tually be seen engaged in happy exercise, and close
at hand appliances for the nursery and the play-
ground. Nor in the enlarged appliances for woman's
domestic life must those be omitted which tell how
cheaply and richly the girl may now obtain a college
training like her brother, and become as intelligent
as he. No woman went away from the educational
exhibits of the Fair in the belief that woman's sphere
was necessarily narrow.
There is no need to dilate on the light shed by the
Fair upon problems of sickness, poverty, and crime.
Everybody knows that nothing so complete had been
seen before. The Anthropological Building was a
museum of these subjects, and scattered in other
parts of the Fair was much to interest the puzzled
and sympathetic soul. One could find out what an
ideal hospital was like, and how its service and appli-
362 WOMEN'S EDUCATION
ances should be ordered. One studied under com-
petent teachers the care of the dependent and delin-
quent classes. One learned to distinguish surface
charity from sound. As men grow busier and wo-
men more competent, the guidance of philanthropy
passes continually more and more into the gentler
hands. Women serve largely on boards of hospitals,
prisons, charities, and reforms, and urgently feel the
need of ampler knowledge. The Fair did much to
show them ways of obtaining it.
Such are the permanent results of the Fair most
likely to affect women. They fall into three classes :
the proofs women have given of their independent
power, their ability to organize and to work toward
a distant, difficult, and complex end ; the enlargement
of their outlook, manifesting itself in a new sense of
membership in a nation, a more willing obedience
to law, and a higher appreciation of beauty; and,
lastly, the direct assistance given to women in their
more characteristic employments of housekeeping,
teaching, and ministering to the afflicted. That these
are all, or even the most important, results which each
woman will judge she has obtained, is not pretended.
Everybody saw at the Fair something which brought
to individual him or her a gain incomparable.
And, after all, the greatest thing was the total,
glittering, murmurous, restful, magical, evanescent
Fair itself, seated by the blue waters, wearing the
AT THE WORLD'S FAIR 363
five crowns, served by novel boatmen, and with the lap
so full of treasure that as piece by piece it was held up,
it shone, was wondered at, and was lost again in the
pile. This amazing spectacle will flash for years
upon the inward eye of our people, and be a joy of
their solitude.
XVI
WHY GO TO COLLEGE?
To a largely increasing number of young girls col-
lege doors are opening every year. Every year adds
to the number of men who feel as a friend of mine,
a successful lawyer in a great city, felt when in talk-
ing of the future of his four little children he said,
" For the two boys it is not so serious, but I lie down
at night afraid to die and leave my daughters only
a bank account." Year by year, too, the experiences
of life are teaching mothers that happiness does not
necessarily come to their daughters when accounts
are large and banks are sound, but that on the con-
trary they take grave risks when they trust every-
thing to accumulated wealth and the chance of a
happy marriage. Our American girls themselves
are becoming aware that they need the stimulus, the
discipline, the knowledge, the interests of the college
in addition to the school, if they are to prepare them-
selves for the most serviceable lives.
But there are still parents who say, "There is
no need that my daughter should teach; then why
should she go to college ?" I will not reply that col-
lege training is a life insurance for a girl, a pledge
WHY GO TO COLLEGE 365
that she possesses the disciplined ability to earn a
living for herself and others in case of need; for I
prefer to insist on the importance of giving every girl,
no matter what her present circumstances, a special
training in some one thing by which she can render
society service, not of amateur but of expert sort,
and service too for which it will be willing to pay a
price. The number of families will surely increase
who will follow the example of an eminent banker
whose daughters have been given each her specialty.
One has chosen music, and has gone far with the
best masters in this country and in Europe, so far that
she now holds a high rank among musicians at home
and abroad. Another has taken art; and has not
been content to paint pretty gifts for her friends, but
in the studios of New York, Munich, and Paris she
has won the right to be called an artist, and in her
studio at home to paint portraits which have a mar-
ket value. A third has proved that she can earn her
living, if need be, by her exquisite jellies, preserves,
and sweetmeats. Yet the house in the mountains,
the house by the sea, and the friends in the city are
not neglected, nor are these young women found
less attractive because of their special accomplish-
ments.
While it is not true that all girls should go to col-
lege any more than that all boys should go, it is
nevertheless true that they should go in greater num-
366 WHY GO TO COLLEGE
bers than at present. They fail to go because they,
their parents, and their teachers, do not see clearly
the personal benefits distinct from the commercial
value of a college training. I wish here to discuss
these benefits, these larger gifts of the college life,
what they may be, and for whom they are waiting.
It is undoubtedly true that many girls are totally
unfitted by home and school life for a valuable col-
lege course. These joys and successes, these high
interests and friendships, are not for the self-con-
scious and nervous invalid, nor for her who in the
exuberance of youth recklessly ignores the laws of
a healthy life. The good society of scholars and of
libraries and laboratories has no place and no at-
traction for her who finds no message in Plato, no
beauty in mathematical order, and who never longs
to know the meaning of the stars over her head or
the flowers under her feet. Neither will the finer
opportunities of college life appeal to one who, until
she is eighteen (is there such a girl in this country?),
has felt no passion for the service of others, no desire
to know if through history, or philosophy, or any
study of the laws of society, she can learn why the
world is so sad, so hard, so selfish as she finds it, even
when she looks upon it from the most sheltered life.
No, the college cannot be, should not try to be, a
substitute for the hospital, reformatory, or kinder-
garten. To do its best work it should be organized
WHY GO TO COLLEGE 367
for the strong, not for the weak ; for the high-minded,
self-controlled, generous, and courageous spirits,
not for the indifferent, the dull, the idle, or those
who are already forming their characters on the
amusement theory of life. All these perverted young
people may, and often do, get large benefit and in-
vigoration, new ideals, and unselfish purposes from
their four years' companionship with teachers and
comrades of a higher physical, mental, and moral
stature than their own. I have seen girls change so
much in college that I have wondered if their friends
at home would know them, the voice, the carriage,
the unconscious manner, all telling a story of new
tastes and habits and loves and interests, that had
wrought out in very truth a new creature. Yet in
spite of this I have sometimes thought that in college
more than elsewhere the old law holds, "To him
that hath shall be given and he shall have abundance,
but from him who hath not shall be taken away even
that which he seemeth to have." For it is the young
life which is open and prepared to receive which
obtains the gracious and uplifting influences of
college days. What, then, for such persons are the
rich and abiding rewards of study in college oif
university ?
Preeminently the college is a place of education.
That is the ground of its being. We go to college to
know, assured that knowledge is sweet and power-
368 WHY GO TO COLLEGE
ful, that a good education emancipates the mind
and makes us citizens of the world. No college which
does not thoroughly educate can be called good, no
matter what else it does. No student who fails to
get a little knowledge on many subjects, and much
knowledge on some, can be said to have succeeded,
whatever other advantages she may have found by
the way. It is a beautiful and significant fact that
in all times the years of learning have been also the
years of romance. Those who love girls and boys
pray that our colleges may be homes of sound learn-
ing, for knowledge is the condition of every college
blessing. "Let no man incapable of mathematics
enter here," Plato is reported to have inscribed over
his Academy door. " Let no one to whom hard study
is repulsive hope for anything from us," American
colleges might paraphrase. Accordingly in my talk
to-day I shall say little of the direct benefits of
knowledge which the college affords. These may be
assumed. It is on their account that one knocks at
the college door. But seeking this first, a good many
other things are added. I want to point out some
of these collateral advantages of going to college, or
rather to draw attention to some of the many forms
in which the winning of knowledge presents itself.
The first of these is happiness. Everybody wants
"a good time," especially every girl in her teens.
A good time, it is true, does not always in these years
WHY GO TO COLLEGE 369
mean what it will mean by and by, any more than the
girl of eighteen plays with the doll which entranced
the child of eight. It takes some time to discover
that work is the best sort of play, and some people
never discover it at all. But when mothers ask such
questions as these : " How can I make my daughter
happy?" "How can I give her the best society?"
"How can she have a good time?" the answer in
most cases is simple. Send her to college to al-
most any college. Send her because there is no other
place where between eighteen and twenty-two she
is so likely to have a genuinely good time. Merely
for good times, for romance, for society, college life
offers unequalled opportunities. Of course no idle
person can possibly be happy, even for a day, nor.
she who makes a business of trying to amuse herself.
For full happiness, though its springs are within,
we want health and friends and work and objects of
aspiration. " We live by admiration, hope, and love,"
says Wordsworth. The college abounds in all three.
In the college time new powers are sprouting, and
intelligence, merriment, truthfulness, and generosity
are more natural than the opposite qualities often
become in later years. An exhilarating atmosphere
pervades the place. We who are in it all the time
feel that we live at the fountain of perpetual youth,
and those who take but a four years' bath in it be-
come more cheerful, strong, and full of promise than
370 WHY GO TO COLLEGE
they are ever likely to find themselves again; for a
college is a kind of compendium of the things that
most men long for. It is usually planted in a beau-
tiful spot, the charm of trees and water being added
to stately buildings and stimulating works of art.
Venerable associations of the past hallow its halls.
Leaders in the stirring world of to-day return at each
Commencement to share the fresh life of the new
class. Books, pictures, music, collections, appliances
in every field, learned teachers, mirthful friends, ath-
letics for holidays, the best words of the best men
for holy days, all are here. No wonder that men
look back upon their college life as upon halcyon
days, the romantic period of youth. No wonder that
Dr. Holmes's poems to his Harvard classmates find
an echo in college reunions everywhere; and gray-
haired men, who outside the narrowing circle of
home have not heard their first names for years, re-
main Bill and Joe and John and George to college
comrades, even if unseen for more than a generation.
Yet a girl should go to college not merely to obtain
four happy years, but to make a second gain, which
is often overlooked, and is little understood even
,, when perceived ; I mean a gain in health. The old
notion that low vitality is a matter of course with
women ; that to be delicate is a mark of superior re-
finement, especially in well-to-do families ; that sick-
ness is a dispensation of Providence, these notions
WHY GO TO COLLEGE 371
meet with no acceptance in college. Years ago I saw
in the mirror frame of a college freshman's room
this little formula: "Sickness is carelessness, care-
lessness is selfishness, and selfishness is sin." And
I have often noticed among college girls an air of
humiliation and shame when obliged to confess a
lack of physical vigor, as if they were convicted of
managing life with bad judgment, or of some moral
delinquency. With the spreading scientific convic-
tion that health is a matter largely under each per-
son's control, that even inherited tendencies to dis-
ease need not be allowed to run their riotous course
unchecked, there comes an earnest purpose to be
strong and free. Fascinating fields of knowledge
are waiting to be explored; possibilities of doing,
as well as of knowing, are on every side; new and
dear friendships enlarge and sweeten dreams of fu-
ture study and work, and the young student cannot
afford quivering nerves or small lungs or an aching
head any more than bad taste, rough manners, or
a weak will. Handicapped by inheritance or bad
training, she finds the plan of college life itself her
supporter and friend. The steady, long-continued
routine of mental work, physical exercise, recreation,
and sleep, the simple and wholesome food, in place
of irregular and unstudied diet, work out salvation
for her. Instead of being left to go out of doors when
she feels like it, the regular training of the gymnasium,
372 WHY GO TO COLLEGE
the boats on lake and river, the tennis court, the golf
links, the basket ball, the bicycle, the long walk
among the woods in search of botanical or geological
specimens, all these and many more call to the
busy student, until she realizes that they have their
rightful place in every well-ordered day of every
month. So she learns, little by little, that buoyant
health is a precious possession to be won and kept.
It is significant that already statistical investigation
in this country and in England shows that the stand-
ard of health is higher among the women who hold
college degrees than among any other equal number
of the same age and class. And it is interesting also
to observe to what sort of questions our recent girl
graduates have been inclined to devote attention.
They have been largely the neglected problems of
little children and their health, of home sanitation,
of food and its choice and preparation, of domestic
service, of the cleanliness of schools and public build-
ings. Colleges for girls are pledged by their very con-
stitution to make persistent war on the water cure,
the nervine retreat, the insane asylum, the hospital,
those bitter fruits of the emotional lives of thou-
sands of women. " I can never afford a sick head-
ache again, life is so interesting and there is so
much to do," a delicate girl said to me at the end of
her first college year. And while her mother was in
a far-off invalid retreat, she undertook the battle
WHY GO TO COLLEGE 373
against fate with the same intelligence and courage
which she put into her calculus problems and her
translations of Sophocles. Her beautiful home and
her rosy and happy children prove the measure of
her hard-won success. Formerly the majority of
physicians had but one question for the mother
of the nervous and delicate girl, "Does she go to
school ?" And only one prescription, "Take her out
of school." Never a suggestion as to suppers of
pickles and pound-cake, never a hint about midnight
dancing and hurried daytime ways. But now the
sensible doctor asks, " What are her interests ? What
are her tastes ? What are her habits ? " And he finds
new interests for her, and urges the formation of
out-of-door tastes and steady occupation for the mind,
in order to draw the morbid girl from herself into
the invigorating world outside. This the college does
largely through its third gift of friendship.
Until a girl goes away from home to school or col-
lege, her friends are chiefly chosen for her by cir-
cumstances. Her young relatives, her neighbors in
the same street, those who happen to go to the same
school or church, these she makes her girlish
intimates. She goes to college with the entire con-
viction, half unknown to herself, that her father's
political party contains all the honest men, her mo-
ther's social circle all the true ladies, her church all
the real saints of the community. And the smaller
'374 WHY GO TO COLLEGE
the town, the more absolute is her belief. But in col-
lege she finds that the girl who earned her scholarship
in the village school sits beside the banker's daugh-
ter; the New England farmer's child rooms next the
heiress of a Hawaiian sugar plantation; the daugh-
ters of the opposing candidates in a sharply fought
election have grown great friends in college boats
and laboratories ; and before her diploma is won she
realizes how much richer a world she lives in than
she ever dreamed of at home. The wealth that lies
in differences has dawned upon her vision. It is only
when the rich and poor sit down together that either
can understand how the Lord is the Maker of them
all.
To-day above all things we need the influence of
men and women of friendliness, of generous nature,
of hospitality to new ideas, in short, of social im-
agination. But instead, we find each political party
bitterly calling the other dishonest, each class sus-
picious of the intentions of the other, and in social
life the pettiest standards of conduct. Is it not
well for us that the colleges all over the country
still offer to their fortunate students a society of
the most democratic sort, one in which a father's
money, a mother's social position, can assure no
distinction and make no close friends ? Here ca-
pacity of every kind counts for its full value. Here
enthusiasm waits to make heroes of those who can
WHY GO TO COLLEGE 375
lead. Here charming manners, noble character,
amiable temper, scholarly power, find their full op-
portunity and inspire such friendships as are seldom
made afterward. I have forgotten my chemistry,
and my classical philology cannot bear examination ;
but all round the world there are men and women
at work, my intimates of college days, who have made
the wide earth a friendly place to me. Of every creed,
of every party, in far-away places and in near, the
thought of them makes me more courageous in duty
and more faithful to opportunity, though for many
years we may not have had time to write each other a
letter. The basis of all valuable and enduring friend-
ships is not accident or juxtaposition, but tastes, in-
terests, habits, work, ambitions. It is for this reason
that to college friendship clings a romance entirely
its own. One of the friends may spend her days
in the laboratory, eagerly chasing the shy facts that
hide beyond the microscope's fine vision, and the other
may fill her hours and her heart with the poets and
the philosophers; one may steadfastly pursue her
way toward the command of a hospital, and the other
toward the world of letters and of art; these diver-
gences constitute no barrier, but rather an aid to the
fulness of friendship. And the fact that one goes in a
simple gown which she has earned and made herself,
and the other lives when at home in a merchant's
modern palace what has that to do with the things
376 WHY GO TO COLLEGE
the girls care about and the dreams they talk over in
the walk by the river or the bicycle ride through coun-
try roads? If any young man to-day goes through
Harvard lonely, neglected, unfriended, if any girl
lives solitary and wretched in her life at Welles-
ley, it is their own fault. It must be because they
are suspicious, unfriendly, or disagreeable them-
selves. Certainly it is true that in the associations
of college life, more than in any other that the coun-
try can show, what is extraneous, artificial, and tem-
porary falls away, and the every-day relations of life
and work take on a character that is simple, natural,
genuine. And so it comes about that the fourth gift
of college life is ideals of personal character.
To some people the shaping ideals of what char-
acter should be, often held unconsciously, come from
the books they read; but to the majority they are
given by the persons whom they most admire before
they are twenty years old. The greatest thing any
friend or teacher, either in school or college, can do
for a student is to furnish him with a personal ideal.
The college professors who transformed me through
my acquaintance with them ah, they were few,
and I am sure I did not have a dozen conversations
with them outside their classrooms gave me, each
in his different way, an ideal of character, of conduct,
of the scholar, the leader, of which they and I were
totally unconscious at the time. For many years I
WHY GO TO COLLEGE 377
have known that my study with them, no matter
whether of philosophy or of Greek, of mathematics
or history or English, enlarged my notions of life,
uplifted my standards of culture, and so inspired me
with new possibilities of usefulness and of happiness.
Not the facts and theories that I learned so much as
the men who taught me, gave this inspiration. The
community at large is right in saying that it wants the
personal influence of professors on students, but it is
wholly wrong in assuming that this precious influence
comes from frequent meetings or talks on miscellane-
ous subjects. There is quite as likely to be a quicken-
ing force in the somewhat remote and mysterious
power of the teacher who devotes himself to amass-
ing treasures of scholarship, or to patiently work-
ing out the best methods of teaching; who standing
somewhat apart, still remains an ideal of the Chris-
tian scholar, the just, the courteous man or woman.
To come under the influence of one such teacher is
enough to make college life worth while. A young
man who came to Harvard with eighty cents in his
pocket, and worked his way through, never a high
scholar, and now in a business which looks very
commonplace, told me the other day that he would
not care to be alive if he had not gone to college.
His face flushed as he explained how different his
days would have been if he had not known two of
his professors. "Do you use your college studies
378 WHY GO TO COLLEGE
in your business?" I asked. "Oh, no!" he an-
swered. " But I am another man in doing the busi-
ness ; and when the day's work is done I live another
life because of my college experiences. The business
and I are both the better for it every day." How
many a young girl has had her whole horizon ex-
tended by the changed ideals she gained in college !
Yet this is largely because the associations and studies
there are likely to give her permanent interests
the fifth and perhaps the greatest gift of college life
of which I shall speak.
The old fairy story which charmed us in child-
hood ended with " And they were married and lived
happy ever after." It conducted to the altar, hav-
ing brought the happy pair through innumerable
difficulties, and left us with the contented sense that
all the mistakes and problems would now vanish and
life be one long day of unclouded bliss. I have seen
devoted and intelligent mothers arrange their young
daughters' education and companionships precisely
on this basis. They planned as if these pretty and
charming girls were going to live only twenty or
twenty-five years at the utmost, and had consequently
no need of the wealthy interests that should round
out the fullgrown woman's stature, making her
younger in feeling at forty than at twenty, and more
lovely and admired at eighty than at either.
Emerson in writing of beauty declares that " the
WHY GO TO COLLEGE 379
secret of ugliness consists not in irregular outline,
but in being uninteresting. We love any forms, how-
ever ugly, from which great qualities shine. If com-
mand, eloquence, art, or invention exists in the most
deformed person, all the accidents that usually dis-
please, please, and raise esteem and wonder higher.
Beauty without grace is the head without the body.
Beauty without expression tires." Of course such
considerations can hardly come with full force to
the young girl herself, who feels aged at eighteen,
and imagines that the troubles and problems of life
and thought are hers already. " Oh, tell me to-night,"
cried a college freshman once to her president,
" which is the right side and which is the wrong side
of this Andover question about eschatology ? " The
young girl is impatient of open questions, and irri-
tated at her inability to answer them. Neither can
she believe that the first headlong zest with which she
throws herself into society, athletics, into everything
which comes in her way, can ever fail. But her elders
know, looking on, that our American girl, the com-
rade of her parents and of her brothers and their
friends, brought up from babyhood in the eager talk
of politics and society, of religious belief, of pub-
lic action, of social responsibility that this typical
girl, with her quick sympathies, her clear head, her
warm heart, her outreaching hands, will not per-
manently be satisfied or self-respecting, though she
380 WHY GO TO COLLEGE
have the prettiest dresses and hats in town, or the
most charming of dinners, dances, and teas. Unless
there comes to her, and comes early, the one chief
happiness of life, a marriage of comradeship,
she must face for herself the question, " What shall I
do with my life ? "
I recall a superb girl of twenty as I overtook her
one winter morning hurrying along Commonwealth
Avenue. She spoke of a brilliant party at a friend's
the previous evening. " But, oh ! " she cried, throw-
ing up her hands in a kind of hopeless impatience,
"tell me what to do. My dancing days are over!"
I laughed at her, "Have you sprained your ankle?"
But I saw I had made a mistake when she added,
"It is no laughing matter. I have been out three
years. I have not done what they expected of me,"
with a flush and a shrug, " and there is a crowd of
nice girls coming on this winter ; and anyway, I am
so tired of going to teas and ball-games and assem-
blies ! I don't care the least in the world for foreign
missions, and," with a stamp, " I am not going slum-
ming among the Italians. I have too much respect
for the Italians. And what shall I do with the rest of
my life? " That was a frank statement of what any
girl of brains or conscience feels, with more or less
bitter distinctness, unless she marries early, or has
some pressing work for which she is well trained.
Yet even if that which is the profession of woman
WHY GO TO COLLEGE 381
par excellence be hers, how can she be perennially //
so interesting a companion to her husband and chil-
dren as if she had keen personal tastes, long her own,
and growing with her growth ? Indeed, in that respect
the condition of men is almost the same as that of
women. It would be quite the same were it not for the
fact that a man's business or profession is generally
in itself a means of growth, of education, of dignity.
He leans his life against it. He builds his home in the
shadow of it. It binds his days together in a kind of
natural piety, and makes him advance in strength
and nobility as he "fulfils the common round, the
daily task." And that is the reason why men in the
past, if they have been honorable men, have grown
old better than women. Men usually retain their
ability longer, their mental alertness and hospitality.
They add fine quality to fine quality, passing from
strength to strength and preserving in old age what-
ever has been best in youth. It was a sudden recog-
nition of this fact which made a young friend of
mine say last winter, " I am not going to parties any
more ; the men best worth talking with are too old to
dance."
Even with the help of a permanent business or ,
profession, however, the most interesting men I know
are those who have an avocation as well as a voca-
tion. I mean a taste or work quite apart from the
business of life. This revives, inspires, and cultivates
382 WHY GO TO COLLEGE
them perpetually. It matters little what it is, if only
it is real and personal, is large enough to last, and
possesses the power of growth. A young sea-captain
from a New England village on a long and lonely
voyage falls upon a copy of Shelley. Appeal is made
to his fine but untrained mind, and the book of
the boy poet becomes the seaman's university. The
wide world of poetry and of the other fine arts is
opened, and the Shelleyian specialist becomes a cul-
tivated, original, and charming man. A busy mer-
chant loves flowers, and in all his free hours studies
them. Each new spring adds knowledge to his know-
ledge, and his friends continually bring him their
strange discoveries. With growing wealth he culti-
vates rare and beautiful plants, and shares them with
his fortunate acquaintances. Happy the companion
invited to a walk or a drive with such observant eyes,
such vivid talk ! Because of this cheerful interest in
flowers, and this ingenious skill in dealing with them,
the man himself is interesting. All his powers are
alert, and his judgment is valued in public life and in
private business. Or is it more exact to say that be-
cause he is the kind of man who would insist upon
having such interests outside his daily work, he is
still fresh and young and capable of growth at an
age when many other men are dull and old and cer-
tain that the time of decay is at hand ?
There are two reasons why women need to cul-
WHY GO TO COLLEGE 383
tivate these large and abiding interests even more
persistently than men. In the first place, they have
more leisure. They are indeed the only leisured class
in the country, the only large body of persons who
are not called upon to win their daily bread in direct,
wage-earning ways. As yet, fortunately, few men
among us have so little self-respect as to idle about
our streets and drawing-rooms because their fathers
are rich enough to support them. We are not with-
out our unemployed poor; but roving tramps and
idle clubmen are after all not of large consequence.
Our serious non-producing classes are chiefly wo-
men. It is the regular ambition of the chivalrous
American to make all the women who depend on him
so comfortable that they need do nothing for them-
selves. Machinery has taken nearly all the former
occupations of women out of the home into the shop
and factory. Widespread wealth and comfort, and
the inherited theory that it is not well for the woman
to earn money so long as father or brothers can sup-
port her, have brought about a condition of things in
which there is social danger, unless with the larger
leisure are given high and enduring interests. To
health especially there is great danger, for nothing
breaks down a woman's health like idleness and its
resulting ennui. More people, I am sure, are broken
down nervously because they are bored, than be-
cause they are overworked; and more still go to
384 WHY GO TO COLLEGE
pieces through fussiness, unwholesome living, worry
over petty details, and the daily disappointments
which result from small and superficial training.
And then, besides the danger to health, there is the
danger to character. I need not dwell on the under-
mining influence which men also feel when occupa-
tion is taken away and no absorbing private inter-
est fills the vacancy. The vices of luxurious city life
are perhaps hardly more destructive to character
than is the slow deterioration of barren country life.
Though the conditions in the two cases are exactly
opposite, the trouble is often the same, absence
of noble interests. In the city restless idleness organ-
izes amusement ; in the country deadly dulness suc-
ceeds daily toil.
But there is a second reason why a girl should ac-
quire for herself strong and worthy interests. The
regular occupations of women in their homes are gen-
erally disconnected and of little educational value, at
least as those homes are at present conducted. Given
the best will in the world, the daily doing of house-
hold details becomes a wearisome monotony if the
mere performance of them is all. To make drudg-
ery divine a woman must have a brain to plan and
eyes to see how to " sweep a room as to God's laws."
Imagination and knowledge should be the hourly
companions of her who would make a fine art of
each detail in kitchen and nursery. Too long has the
WHY GO TO COLLEGE 385
pin been the appropriate symbol of the average wo-
man's life the pin, which only temporarily holds to-
gether things which may or may not have any organic
connection with one another. While undoubtedly
most women must spend the larger part of life in this
modest pin-work, holding together the little things of
home and school and society and church, it is also
true, that cohesive work itself cannot be done well,
even in humble circumstances, except by the re-
fined, the trained, the growing woman. The smallest
village, the plainest home, give ample space for the
resources of the trained college woman. And the rea-
son why such homes and such villages are so often
barren of grace and variety is just because these fine
qualities have not ruled them. The higher graces
of civilization halt among us; dainty and finished
ways of living give place to common ways, while
vulgar tastes, slatternly habits, clouds and despond-
ency reign in the house. Little children under five
years of age die in needless thousands because of
the dull, unimaginative women on whom they de-
pend. Such women have been satisfied with just
getting along, instead of packing everything they do
with brains, instead of studying the best possible way
of doing everything small or large; for there is al-
ways a best way, whether of setting a table, of trim-
ming a hat, or teaching a child to read. And this
taste for perfection can be cultivated ; indeed, it must
be cultivated, if our standards of living are to be
raised. There is now scientific knowledge enough,
there is money enough, to prevent the vast majority
of the evils which afflict our social organism, if mere
knowledge or wealth could avail; but the greater
difficulty is to make intelligence, character, good
taste, unselfishness prevail.
What, then, are the interests which powerfully
appeal to mind and heart, and so are fitted to become
the strengthening companions of a woman's life ? I
shall mention only three, all of them such as are elabo-
rately fostered by college life. The first is the love
of great literature. I do not mean that use of books
by which a man may get what is called a good edu-
cation and so be better qualified for the battle of life,
nor do I mention books in their character as reservoirs
of knowledge, books which we need Tor special pur-
poses, and which are no longer of consequence when
our purpose with them is served. I have in mind the
great books, especially the great poets, books to be
adopted as a resource and a solace. The chief rea-
son why so many people do not know how to make
comrades of such books is because they have come
to them too late. We have in this country enormous
numbers of readers, probably a larger number who
read, and who read many hours in the week, than
has ever been known elsewhere in the world. But
what do these millions read besides the newspapers ?
WHY GO TO COLLEGE 387
Possibly a denominational religious weekly and an-
other journal of fashion or business. Then come the
thousands who read the best magazines, and what-
ever else is for the moment popular in novels and
poetry the last dialect story, the fashionable poem,
the questionable but talked-of novel. Let a violent
attack be made on the decency of a new story,
and instantly, if only it is clever, its author becomes
famous.
But the fashions in reading of a restless race
the women too idle, the men too heavily worked
I will not discuss here. Let light literature be de-
voured by our populace as his drug is taken by the
opium-eater, and with a similar narcotic effect. We
can only seek out the children, and hope by giving
them from babyhood bits of the noblest literature, to
prepare them for the great opportunities of mature
life. I urge, therefore, reading as a mental stimulus,
as a solace in trouble, a perpetual source of delight ;
and I would point out that we must not delay to
make the great friendships that await us on the
library shelves until sickness shuts the door on the
outer world, or death enters the home and silences
the voices that once helped to make these friendships
sweet. If Homer and Shakespeare and Wordsworth
and Browning are to have meaning for us when we
need them most, it will be because they come to us
as old familiar friends whose influences have per-
388 WHY GO TO COLLEGE
meated the glad and busy days before. The last time
I heard James Russell Lowell talk to college girls,
he said, for he was too ill to say many words,
"I have only this one message to leave with you. In
all your work in college never lose sight of the reason
why you have come here. It is not that you may get
something by which to earn your bread, but that
every mouthful of bread may be the sweeter to your
taste."
And this is the power possessed by the mighty
dead, men of every time and nation, whose voices
death cannot silence, who are waiting even at the poor
man's elbow, whose illuminating words may be had
for the price of a day's work in the kitchen or the
street, for lack of love of whom many a luxurious
home is a dull and solitary spot, breeding misery and
vice. Now the modern college is especially equipped
to introduce its students to such literature. The li-
brary is at last understood to be the heart of the col-
lege. The modern librarian is not the keeper of books
as was his predecessor, but the distributer of them,
and the guide to their resources, proud when he
increases the use of his treasures. Every language,
ancient or modern, which contains a literature is now
taught in college. Its history is examined, its phi-
lology, its masterpieces, and more than ever is Eng-
lish literature studied and loved. There is now every
opportunity for the college student to become an
WHY GO TO COLLEGE
expert in the use of his own tongue and pen. What
other men painfully strive for he can enjoy to the full
with comparatively little effort.
But there is a second invigorating interest to which
college training introduces its student. I mean the
study of nature, intimacy with the strange and beau-i>
tiful world in which we live. " Nature never did be-
tray the heart that loved her," sang her poet and high
priest. When the world has been too much with us,
nothing else is so refreshing to tired eyes and mind
as woods and water, and an intelligent knowledge
of the life within them. For a generation past there
has been a well-nigh universal turning of the popu-
lation toward the cities. In 1840 only nine per cent
of our people lived in cities of eight thousand inhabi-
tants or more. Now more than a third of us are found
in cities. But the electric car, the telephone, the
bicycle, still keep avenues to the country open. Cer-
tain it is that city people feel a growing hunger for
the country, particularly when grass begins to grow.
This is a healthy taste, and must increase the general
knowledge and love of nature. Fortunate are the
little children in those schools whose teachers know
and love the world in which they live. Their young
eyes are early opened to the beauty of birds and trees
and plants. Not only should we expect our girls to
have a feeling for the fine sunset or the wide-reach-
ing panorama of field and water, but to know some-
390 WHY GO TO COLLEGE
thing also about the less obvious aspects of nature,
its structure, its methods of work, and the endless
diversity of its parts. No one can have read Matthew
Arnold's letters to his wife, his mother, and his sis-
ter, without being struck by the immense enjoyment
he took throughout his singularly simple and hard-
working life in flowers and trees and rivers. The
English lake country had given him this happy in-
heritance, with everywhere its sound of running
water and its wealth of greenery. There is a close
connection between the marvellous unbroken line of
English song and the passionate love of the English-
man for a home in the midst of birds, trees, and green
fields.
The world is so full of a number of things,
That I think we should all be as happy as kings,
is the opinion of everybody who knows nature as did
Robert Louis Stevenson. And so our college student
may begin to know it. Let her enter the laboratories
and investigate for herself. Let her make her deli-
cate experiments with the blowpipe or the balance;
let her track mysterious life from one hiding-place
to another ; let her " name all the birds without a
gun," and make intimates of flower and fish and but-
terfly and she is dull indeed if breezy tastes do not
follow her through life, and forbid any of her days
to be empty of intelligent enjoyment. " Keep your
years beautiful; make your own atmosphere," was
WHY GO TO COLLEGE 391
the parting advice of my college president, himself
a living illustration of what he said.
But it is a short step from the love of the complex
and engaging world in which we live to the love of
our comrades in it. Accordingly the third precious^
interest to be cultivated by the college student is an
interest in people. The scholar to-day is not a being
who dwells apart in his cloister, the monk's succes-
sor; he is a leader of the thoughts and conduct of
men. So the new subjects which stand beside the
classics and mathematics of mediaeval culture are
history, economics, ethics, and sociology. Although
these subjects are as yet merely in the making, thou-
sands of students are flocking to their investigation,
and are going out to try their tentative knowledge
in College Settlements and City Missions and Chil-
dren's Aid Societies. The best instincts of generous
youth are becoming enlisted in these living themes.
And why should our daughters remain aloof from
the most absorbing work of modern city life, work
quite as fascinating to young women as to young
men ? During many years of listening to college ser-
mons and public lectures in Wellesley, I always
noticed a quickened attention in the audience when-
ever the discussion touched politics or theology.
These are, after all, the permanent and peremptory
interests, and they should be given their full place
in a healthy and vigorous life.
392 WHY GO TO COLLEGE
But if that life includes a love of books, of nature,
of people, it will naturally turn to enlarged concep-
tions of religion my sixth and last gift of college
life. In his first sermon as Master of Balliol College,
Dr. Jowett spoke of the college, " First as a place of
education, secondly as a place of society, thirdly as
a place of religion." He observed that " men of very
great ability often fail in life because they are unable
to play their part with effect. They are shy, awk-
ward, self-conscious, deficient in manners, faults
which are as ruinous as vices." The supreme end of
college training, he said, "is usefulness in after life."
Similarly, when the city of Cambridge celebrated in
Harvard's Memorial Hall the life and death of the
gallant young ex-Governor of Massachusetts, Wil-
liam E. Russell, men did well to hang above his por-
trait some wise words he had lately said, "Never
forget the everlasting difference between making a
living and making a life." That he himself never
forgot ; and it was well to remind citizens and students
of it, as they stood there facing too the ancient words
all Harvard men face when they take their college
degrees and go out into the world, "They that be
wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament,
and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars
for ever and ever." Good words these to go out from
college with. The girls of Wellesley gather every
morning at chapel to bow their heads together for a
WHY GO TO COLLEGE 393
moment before they scatter among the libraries and
lecture rooms and begin the experiments of the new
day. And always their college motto meets the eyes
that are raised to its penetrating message, "Not to
be ministered unto, but to minister." How many a
young heart has loyally responded, "And to give life
a ransom for many." That is the " Wellesley spirit " ;
and the same sweet spirit of devout service has gone
forth from all our college halls. In any of them one
may catch the echo of Whittier's noble psalm,
Our Lord and Master of us all!
Whate'er our name or sign,
We own Thy sway, we hear Thy call,
We test our lives by Thine.
That is the supreme test of life, its consecrated
serviceableness. The Master of Balliol was right;
the brave men and women who founded our schools
and colleges were not wrong. " For Christ and the
Church" universities were set up in the wilderness
of New England; for the large service of the state
they have been founded and maintained at public
cost in every section of the country where men have
settled, from the Alleghanies across the prairies and
Rocky Mountains down to the Golden Gate. Founded
primarily as seats of learning, their teachers have
been not only scientists and linguists, philosophers
and historians, but men and women of holy purposes,
sound patriotism, courageous convictions, refined and
394 WHY GO TO COLLEGE
noble tastes. Set as these teachers have been upon
a hill, their light has at no period of our country's
history been hid. They have formed a large factor
in our civilization, and in their own beautiful char-
acters have continually shown us how to combine
religion and life, the ideal and practical, the human
and the divine.
Such are some of the larger influences to be had
from college life. It is true all the good gifts I have
named may be secured without the aid of the college.
We all know young men and women who have had
no college training, who are as cultivated, rational,
resourceful, and happy as any people we know, who
excel in every one of these particulars the college
graduates about them. I believe they often bitterly
regret the lack of a college education. And we see
young men and women going through college deaf
and blind to their great chances there, and after-
wards curiously careless and wasteful of the best
things in life. While all this is true, it is true too that
to the open-minded and ambitious boy or girl of
moderate health, ability, self-control, and studious-
ness, a college course offers the most attractive, easy,
and probable way of securing happiness and health,
good friends and high ideals, permanent interests of
a noble kind, and large capacity for usefulness in the
world. It has been well said that the ability to see
great things large and little things small is the final
WHY GO TO COLLEGE 395
test of education. The foes of life, especially of wo-
men's lives, are caprice, wearisome incapacity, and
petty judgments. From these oppressive foes we
long to escape to the rule of right reason, where all
things are possible, and life becomes a glory instead
of a grind. No college, with the best teachers and
collections in the world, can by its own power impart
all this to any woman. But if one has set her face in
that direction, where else can she find so many hands
reached out to help, so many encouraging voices in
the air, so many favoring influences filling the days
and nights?
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
UCLA-ED/PSYCH Library
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