550 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



taneously. It is, however, absurd to use the word " work " of the 

 productive energy of a man who does everything with the uncon- 

 scious ease of a child at play. The only thing that really worries 

 him is a full-dress dinner, with its dissipating accompaniments 

 of smoking, drinking, and speech-making. He is so thoroughly 

 imbued with the conviction that a straight line is the shortest 

 distance between two points that he is incapable of the circui- 

 tous treatment of a subject essential to the after-dinner speech. 

 Like all penetrating minds, he is intolerant of verbiage, and has 

 never been known to be guilty of a lapse into " fine writing." 



Jordan is still in his prime, his vigor of mind and body unim- 

 paired, and it is reasonable to hope that his main life work is still 

 before him. But even should his career be cut short at any time, 

 its influence would survive. The nature of this influence may be 

 partially inferred from his published utterances on educational 

 subjects; but only those who have been associated with him, 

 either as fellow-teachers or as students, can be aware of its per- 

 vasive power. To scores of teachers and to hundreds of earnest 

 students, Jordan has been something like a spiritual emancipator. 

 It was delightful to see him, at the University of Weissnichtwo, 

 confronting hide-bound pedants with the simple nature of things. 

 He went quietly about his business ; he did not strive nor cry, 

 much less scold; but somehow tradition, system, dialectic, cur- 

 riculum everything in short that had hitherto passed unques- 

 tioned in that place softly faded like the ghost when it begins 

 to scent the morning air. Cautiously, after much debate, some 

 changes were made ; the timid hied to cover ; but the sky did not 

 fall. Once it became understood that change was possible in 

 matters academic without greater harm than that of converting 

 impotent philippics into whining jeremiads, things moved very 

 rapidly. The great discovery was made that the laws of Nature 

 operate in college as well as elsewhere. It was suggested that the 

 way to educate a man is to set him at work ; that the way to get 

 him to work is to interest him ; that the way to interest him is to 

 vitalize his task by relating it to some sort of reality. Teachers 

 were amazed to find that students work better when they are led 

 than when they are driven. The abounding ingenuity of Ameri- 

 can youth, which had hitherto been exhausted in cheating at ex- 

 aminations, victimizing professors and freshmen, evading duty, 

 eluding detection, and framing perennial excuses, found ample 

 scope in fascinating experiments leading up to some scientific 

 result. Without losing their natural vivacity boys became men, 

 bringing to the serious work proper to men the spring and hope- 

 fulness of youth. College pranks ceased, but by no means college 

 sports. Academic rules and regulations became dead-letter, not 

 because of their frequent infringement, but because no need 



