694 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of this fatal outbreak was not the uu- 

 healthfulness of the place, but bad sew- 

 age arrangements in the college build- 

 ings, where the unfortunate students 

 resided. 



There was, of course, nothing new 

 or unusual in such an occurrence. 

 There have been thousands of cases like 

 it before. Indeed, as we go back in the 

 centuries we read of great fever-plagues 

 carrying off millions of people, and 

 which were caused by air-poison and 

 water-poison engendered in the filth of 

 human habitations, when the methods 

 and the virtues of sewage and drain- 

 age were unknown. 



And yet there was something unex- 

 pected and startling about this affair at 

 Princeton. The sickness and death that 

 occurred there were not from want of 

 knowledge. The calamity was entirely 

 preventable. It could not be charged 

 to the mysterious providence of God, 

 as is often so plausibly done when the 

 causes of disease and death are not un- 

 derstood. It took, place in a great seat 

 of learning, where young men gather to 

 be educated. The business of the place 

 was to think. But if there was knowl- 

 edge sufficient to prevent this disaster, 

 and the young men were learning how 

 to use their minds, why did the catas- 

 trophe occur? The answer is, these 

 young men were sacrificed to an educa- 

 tional theory. 



The theory to which the Princeton 

 students were offered up is that col- 

 lege knowledge is not to be of the use- 

 ful kind that is necessary to save life. 

 Utilitarian knowledge that which in- 

 structs people how to preserve life 

 and maintain health, and deal intelli- 

 gently with practical affairs is decried 

 in these institutions as vulgar and unfit- 

 ted for educational purposes. Knowl- 

 edge for its vital life-uses is flatly repu- 

 diated, and the courses of study are 

 made up with reference to quite other 

 objects. The study of dead languages, 

 which, for general students, is most per- 

 fectly freed from all utilitarian taint, is 

 the earliest, the most prolonged, and the 



most prized of all college studies. The 

 whole pressure goes in this direction. 

 Whatever else is neglected, the Greek 

 and Latin are always insisted upon. The 

 students are told that this will make men 

 and scholars of them, while an acquaint- 

 ance with modern knowledge, science, 

 and the laws of their own nature is hard- 

 ly to be ranked as education at all. A 

 knowledge of sewage is not included in 

 the Princeton ideal of scholarship, nor 

 is it exacted by the Princeton curricu- 

 lum. There was information enough to 

 prevent the calamity that happened 

 there, but nobody had any interest in 

 making use of it. It was dead knowl- 

 edge in the College of New Jersey. The 

 intellectual interest fostered by the in- 

 stitution impels to other acquisitions. 

 The whole battery of examinations, 

 honors, prizes, is adapted to favor 

 dignified, traditional, and disciplinary 

 studies. The Princeton student is not, 

 first of all, thoroughly instructed in re- 

 gard to the laws of breathing and the 

 circulation, nor of the brain and its con- 

 ditions of action and limits of endurance, 

 nor of the nervous system and its perils 

 of exhaustion, nor of the stomach with 

 its dyspeptic dangers, nor of the vital 

 forces of the living system and the laws 

 of their economical exercise, nor of the 

 complex influence of environing condi- 

 tions over human health, efficiency, and 

 enjoyment. He is not taught these 

 prime essentials of welfare as the most 

 imperative of intellectual requirements, 

 because they are slurred as mere " utili- 

 ties " ; and so he is left to die or sicken 

 from poisonous air, or to undermine his 

 energies and break clown his health in 

 any of the numberless ways to which 

 carelessness, ignorance, and unregulated 

 ambition may lead. If he does not die 

 of collegiate sewage, he is turned adrift 

 with his " miserable scrapings of Greek 

 and Latin," to find out by bitter experi- 

 ence that it would have been better if 

 he had devoted more of the precious 

 time of his college years to the study 

 of useful things. 



We have spoken of the college at 



