198 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



The spirit of the real university should reflect the characteristics of 

 youth in its love of testing new opinions and courting new impressions. 

 Without the presence of a large body of investigators an institution 

 ceases to live or, if vitality is prolonged, it is merely of the vegetative 

 type. The spirit of investigation leads men to conquer difficulties 

 which would terrify them if they were driven into the breach solely by 

 the voices of authority. The spirit of investigation is as important to 

 the artist, the business man and the writer as it is to the scientist in 

 his laboratory. The American university has not yet succeeded in 

 injecting the energy proportional to its resources into our intellectual 

 life, because it has not yet attempted to develop the driving power 

 which alone can save us from the disastrous results of having so reck- 

 lessly sacrificed the heritage of youth. The majority of the graduates 

 who yearly go out from the doors of our higher institutions of- learning 

 without any definite intellectual interests have passed directly from the 

 period of adolescence to that of old age. 



The intellectual vigor of the average college graduate has been 

 dwarfed by the conventional system of education, in which the spirit 

 of dogmatism in teaching crowds out most of the natural impulses to 

 learn. He is not given a moment in which to develop any ardor for 

 the pursuit of knowledge. Little emphasis is given in the curriculum 

 to the value of research, and this lack destroys initiative and smothers 

 individuality by catering to the wishes of those educational promoters 

 who are always eager to gain prestige by organizing personally con- 

 ducted parties in search of liberal education and general culture. 

 Another very serious defect in the curriculum of our universities is 

 shown in the effort made to protract the period of training the acquisi- 

 tive functions at a time when the initiating and productive capacity 

 of the student should be developed to the highest degree possible. The 

 most productive years of the average student in our universities are 

 now wasted in copying models at a time when they should be encour- 

 aged " to block out their own ideas." 



There is no civilized nation which should be as optimistic of its 

 intellectual development as the United States. The fact that ideas 

 and ideals have not been completely crushed out of existence by the per- 

 petuation of school methods during the university years is the best 

 testimony that the innate qualities of the American mind have extraor- 

 dinary powers of growth even among most unfavorable environments. 

 The relation of the alma mater to the majority of college students is 

 that of the governess to pupils, deliberately sacrificing vigorous mental 

 traits for drawing-room accomplishments. Our American higher insti- 

 tutions of learning pay far too much attention to the cultivation of mere 

 forms of thought, and have neglected the study of the mechanism and 

 laws of thought production. 



The period of vigorous manhood is, as has already been indicated, 



