576 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



scientific habits of mind applied to some narrow field ; without it, there 

 is not the slightest guarantee that the trained man will be a better citi- 

 zen, though he may be a better physician or lawyer or engineer, than 

 the comparatively uneducated artisan. Indeed the artisan, because of 

 his wider human contact, may easily have the advantage. That the 

 specialist is in constant danger, through over-estimating the sufficiency 

 of the scientific intelligence, of losing his sense of democratic propor- 

 tion and so becoming a member of a narrow caste, is shown in the 

 actual tendency in academic circles. On the whole, the university 

 reveals a tone of aristocracy which is constantly passing over into snob- 

 bishness. It inclines to the principle of the closed shop, where a small 

 group of men with peculiar interests look down with more or less 

 imperfectly concealed disdain upon the uninitiated. If one is con- 

 vinced that in this direction social salvation lies, very well. But if he 

 still inclines to the older ideals of democracy, it will seem to him a risk. 

 And the nearest salvation lies in the creation of a more massive body of 

 enlightened good judgment, which shall bridge the chasm between 

 ignorance and special ability, and obviate the excuse which the preten- 

 tious claims of the few profess to find in the incapacity of the masses. 



Now in the American college we have an institution which seems 

 admirably fitted to perform just this service if it sets about it in the 

 right way. So regarded, its function would be not to cater to the specially 

 gifted class, but to provide a means by which the great mass of ordi- 

 narily intelligent men and women can, if they have the will, absorb a 

 measure of disinterested culture, and so broaden their vision of men 

 and things that, leading the lives of ordinary citizens, they may furnish 

 a saner, less hide-bound, more dependable quality of citizenship, such as is 

 needed to temper the ambitions and the self-sufficiency of the powerful 

 and able few, and to afford a medium through which more humane and 

 gracious political manners may leaven the majority. It seems verv ques- 

 tionable whether the extension of the high school could accomplish just 

 this task, certainly as the high school exists to-day. For the earlier work 

 of the high school necessarily presupposes a lack of maturity which de- 

 termines its methods as not the same that the college requires; and 

 constituted as the pedagogue is and probably always will be, it is too 

 much to expect that a teacher will be able to adapt himself successfully 

 to two quite different tasks. 



I look, therefore, to see the college more and more, if it recognizes its 

 responsibility to democracy, make its main end not scholarship in the 

 technical sense, but breadth, poise, vision. Furthermore, it must aim 

 to extend its opportunities to just as many as possible, instead of serv- 

 ing as a selective agency to sift out those of special promise in things of 

 the mind. I do not mean by this that to every one alike a college 

 course is beneficial. Doubtless there are many now in college who would 



