2 58 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



than the bachelor's, but of the same general scope, and they may be 

 sought with the same propriety as any other reward which represents 

 a performance of a definite task and which is honorary only in the 

 sense that the formal recognition of an accomplished work is an 

 honor. The plea for conferring these degrees in absentia might, at 

 first thought, be regarded as in the interests of young men and women, 

 prevented by poverty actual or relative from pursuing their studies 

 beyond the usual limits of the college course. On the contrary, few 

 are prevented from continuing their education at college by lack of 

 funds, on account of the generous provision of scholarships and be- 

 cause the experience of undergraduate life renders it comparatively 

 easy for the post-graduate student to be self-supporting, as a tutor, 

 a literary hack or in some other capacity. The real obstacle to post- 

 graduate study in prcesentia is that every young person of energy and 

 ambition realizes, with the advent of that indefinable condition which 

 we call maturity, that it is time for him to be about the serious 

 business of life, that he must cease to be a consumer, even of scholar- 

 ship, and that he must become a producer. Some few lines of life 

 work admit of a protraction of residence at a university without 

 interference with the demands which society justly makes on a well- 

 trained intellect, some few are favored by accident of location, but, 

 in the vast majority of all instances, the man or woman who decides 

 to remain at college beyond the usual undergraduate period, must 

 make a sacrifice of the best years of life, years which might better 

 be applied to the preliminary struggle for position which is inevitable 

 to success in every business or profession and which must be under- 

 taken in the arena of actual life. The desire for thorough educational 

 preparation, however laudable, must be recognized as futile in the 

 sense that no scholar can hope to gain the point at which he can con- 

 sider his past progress as having measurably subtracted from the 

 infinite possibility of the future. On the other hand, all educational 

 systems must frankly recognize that senility begins its inroads before 

 full maturity is reached. The appearance of grey hairs before the 

 beard is fully established is but the symbol of all physical and mental 

 development. The man who waits for his judgment to be fully formed 

 and his knowledge to be completed even according to human stand- 

 ards before engaging on his life work, has already lost something 

 of mental flexibility and of the vigor of innervating centers. It is 

 impossible to translate this principle into terms of age and the formu- 

 lation of standards must be left to the collective experience of educa- 

 tors, sociologists and of that paramount factor in education and social 

 progress which we so often forget the people. A surprisingly large 

 number of great men have practically completed their work in life 



