16 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



faculty in regard to the course of study. It only serves to show how 

 overwhelming the arguments in favor of such a course must have been 

 when the prayer of such a distinguished body of clergymen as that 

 whose names were appended to this document should have produced 

 no visible effect whatever, except to lend additional force to the victory 

 of the aggressive party. 



The great and imperishable service which Harvard College has 

 rendered to American education in the last fifteen years consists in 

 two things. It has extended enormously the range of subjects in 

 which instruction is offered within it own limits, and thereby made it 

 absolutely necessary for all other institutions which did not wish to 

 lag hopelessly in the rear to do the same. This necessity has produced 

 unusual efforts in every one of these old institutions to extend its facili- 

 ties. One is perfectly safe in saying that the students of every other 

 American college of high rank owe it to-day very largely to the example 

 of Harvard that they have in their own college far better opportunities 

 for study than their predecessors of fifteen years ago. And the boys 

 of to-day may largely thank Harvard for taking such a position as has 

 resulted in bringing to them advantages which otherwise might have 

 come only to their children. 



The other service is one of equal if not of greater value, viz., the 

 full recognition of the equivalency of different lines of study from a 

 liberal point of view, thus practically giving force to a conviction 

 which almost always forces itself upon one as the result of any extended 

 study of the art and science of education. This recognition has been 

 given in two different forms, though at bottom they are parts of one 

 and the same general plan. It has been given by the general intro- 

 duction of the elective-study system within the college itself, thus rec- 

 ognizing the equivalency from a liberal point of view of all lines of 

 study, at least after the student had learned a minimum amount of 

 Latin, Greek and mathematics, and modern languages and science. It 

 has now gone still further, and recognizes the full equivalency of dif- 

 ferent lines of preparatory study before the student comes to the college 

 itself. Every one who has taken the requirements for admission and 

 studied them carefully, is surprised to learn how many different com- 

 binations may be made, all of which are recognized as equally fitting a 

 boy to take a liberal course of study. The difference between the new 

 list and the old is very great, and may be properly denominated as 

 epoch-making. The most important feature, and the one which inter- 

 ests us most in this immediate connection, is the fact that it is now 

 possible to make up a combination which will be accepted as satisfying 

 all requirements but which shall contain no Greek. 



I am not trying to prove that this last-mentioned feature is a good 

 thing, though it is my personal opinion that it is good. I wish merely 

 to call attention to the fact that Greek is finally ousted from the place 

 which it has hitherto held in the curriculum of the oldest and most 



