72 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



shop. ... It does not beget generous' comradeship or any ardor of al- 

 truistic feeling such as the college begets. It does not contain that 

 general air of the world of science and letters in which the mind seeks 

 no special interest, but feels every intimate impulse of the spirit set 

 free to think and observe and listen — listen to all the voices of the 

 mind." Yet Princeton, of all American colleges freest of the taint of 

 the elective system, had become, as described by ex-President Wilson 

 himself, the pleasantest country club in America. Under the precep- 

 torial system ex-President Wilson is now able to report Princeton as a 

 place where undergraduates do a fair amount of good, intelligent work 

 — " but," he adds, " nothing to get excited about " ! 



President Lowell notes that what has given these twenty-seven oc- 

 cupations — at least the absorbing ones — their fascination is the spirit 

 of emulation which they foster and bring out to its fullest extent. The 

 corrective therefor is to put the spirit of emulation into scholarship, 

 to find the American equivalent to the Oxford and Cambridge dual 

 pass-and-honor system. On this point Professor Miinsterberg says : 

 " If we can foster scholarship by an appeal to the spirit of rivalry, by 

 all means let us use it. We may hope that as soon as better traditions 

 have been formed, and higher opinions have been spread, the interest in 

 the serious work will replace the motives of vanity. ... Of course, no 

 one can overlook some intrinsic difficulties in the way of such plans. 

 No artificial premium can focus on the scholar that same amount of 

 flattering interest and notoriety which the athletic achievement repre- 

 sents, in that little field, a performance which may be compared with 

 the best. The scholarly work of the undergraduate, on the other hand, 

 at its highest point necessarily remains nothing but a praiseworthy 

 exercise, incomparable with the achievements of great scholars. The 

 student football player may win a world's record; the student scholar 

 in the best case may justify noble hopes, but his achievement will be 

 surpassed by professional scholars every day." 



In trying to domesticate the Oxford-Cambridge system Columbia 

 has hit upon an interesting principle of segregation, described in the 

 October Educational Review. A generation ago few students entered 

 college without the definite desire to obtain a scholarly education. The 

 student body was small and united in aim. To-day conditions are far 

 otherwise. The spread of popular secondary education, the rapid in- 

 crease and distribution of wealth, have placed a college education 

 within the reach of those lacking both scholarly ambition and the tra- 

 ditions of culture, but to whom have come the opportunity and desire 

 for social betterment. A boy of this sort is sent to college in order that 

 in later life he may mingle freely and equally with college-bred men, 

 that he may learn how to get along with his fellows, and by contact 

 with them have his angularities removed. " It is quite idle," declares 



