578 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



to the ends of athletics, social functions or the pleasures of inertia, is 

 not only justifiable but necessary for any worthy standard of educa- 

 tional work, and if acted on intelligently would go far toward getting 

 rid of the greatest difficulties in the proper working of the college. 



But with these drawbacks discounted, I do not believe there need be 

 any great problem arising from the merely average, the naturally less 

 gifted student, who comes to his work well prepared in fundamentals, 

 and with enough of interest to lead him to exert his best powers. And 

 it is to this class in particular that the college, if it is to have any rea- 

 son for existing alongside the university, should, I believe, professedly 

 aim to adjust itself, instead, as now, of accepting the situation as one 

 that is forced upon it, while its heart is in the university ideal of ma- 

 king professional scholars and investigators. And the reason is, again, 

 that the exceptional man in a democracy loses a great share of his so- 

 cial value unless there is a large public to which he can appeal, through 

 reasoned judgment rather than emotional prepossessions — a public pos- 

 sessed of a maturer outlook than it is possible for the high school to 

 insure. This is not to give countenance to the superstition that no one 

 can be a sound philosopher and a good citizen without a college degree. 

 And I am intending, too, to exclude a more debatable aspect of the 

 matter which confronts us under present academic conditions. It un- 

 doubtedly is true that many men now in our colleges might well be ad- 

 vised that they are out of place; not, however, because such a training 

 might not enhance for them the value of life and enlarge their own 

 value as citizens, but because if they persist they are likely, owing to 

 the common aristocratic conception of a college course which they share, 

 simply to look upon it as a means of escape from the life work for which 

 they are really fitted, in order to enter a more respectable line. It is 

 this tendency to a resulting maladjustment, perhaps, which teachers have 

 in mind when they deplore so frequently the ambition of certain stu- 

 dents for a college career. But if, instead, they are setting up to say, 

 on any large scale, that a man's mind is unimprovable, and that he is a 

 fool to try to make of himself anything but the slow and stupid animal 

 he is by nature, one can only attribute such a judgment to that other 

 product of nature — an intellectual intolerance and superciliousness 

 which should be educated out of the teacher, of all men, before he is 

 fit for his job. 



If this aim be accepted for the college, certain modifications of aca- 

 demic tradition might conceivably follow. It would suggest some 

 change of attitude in the matter of conditions of entrance. The pur- 

 pose would then be to encourage as many as possible to utilize the ad- 

 vantages which the college offers, whereas at present the chief concern 

 seems to be to keep out the unworthy. Of course the justification for 

 such entering tests, which are all the time becoming more rigid, is the 



