EDITOR'S TABLE. 



695 



Princeton because it happens to have 

 furnished us with a text; but these 

 strictures have a wider application, for 

 the vice we are condemning vitiates 

 the college system of the country. 

 There may have been excuse for this 

 in institutions founded long before the 

 claims of modern knowledge had any- 

 thing like their present urgency; but 

 the later colleges exhibit the same de- 

 fects. The University of Michigan, for 

 example, is of modern origin, having 

 been established nearly a hundred years 

 later than the College of New Jersey, 

 but its educational spirit is of the same 

 kind. It was organized by State au- 

 thority, and has been maintained from 

 the beginning by public taxes. It is 

 open to all within the State or out, and, 

 excepting a slight initiation fee, is free 

 to every student. One would think 

 that the circumstances were here favor- 

 able for giving precedence to that later, 

 higher, and more perfect knowledge 

 which is vindicated in its beneficent 

 uses, and is equally valuable to all 

 classes. Yet this great institution, with 

 its fourteen hundred students, seems 

 just as much enslaved by vicious tradi- 

 tions as the older schools. Middle-age 

 studies are still in the ascendant, as 

 " three years in Greek required for 

 A. B." sufficiently attests. The sci- 

 ences are taught there, but the classical 

 course is the one encouraged by the 

 whole weight of the university influ- 

 ence; and, consequently, as statistics 

 show, it is the one pursued by an ex- 

 cessive majority of the students. The 

 theory of education which bore its fatal 

 fruit at Princeton is loudly defended 

 at Ann Arbor. A newspaper comes to 

 us with report of the proceedings of 

 the last commencement, held July 1st. 

 These are grand occasions, when the 

 colleges are sure of public attention. A 

 vast audience gathered at this thirty- 

 sixth annual commencement of the 

 Michigan University, but, in place of the 

 usual speeches by the graduating stu- 

 dents, an elaborate address was delivered 



by the Right Rev. Samuel T. Harris, 

 D. D., Bishop of Michigan. The elo- 

 quent speaker did not fail to improve 

 the occasion in the interest of all col- 

 legiate traditions. Knowing that they 

 are under indictment by the common 

 sense of the age, he came to their de- 

 fense with a kind of fanatical despera- 

 tion. The Bishop said : 



Scarcely less cruel is the introduction of a 

 false utilitarianism into education. In edu- 

 cation the usefulness of a study is not to be 

 measured by its availability for the business 

 purposes of later life. In education those 

 things are useful, not which may be employed 

 thereafter for business purposes, but which 

 best develop and train the student's faculties 

 and powers. Until education is completed, 

 no student ought ever to be permitted to study 

 anything simply because he proposes to make 

 money by it. It is not the object of educa- 

 tion to learn useful things, but to become 

 able to learn and use them. So I say it is a 

 cruel wrong to the student to permit either 

 the instruments or the spirit of mere money- 

 making to be introduced into his educational 

 life. Permit me to say that this is a great 

 evil of which I am now speaking. In too 

 many cases education is dwarfed and per- 

 verted by the tendency to yield to this false 

 utilitarianism. In too many cases allurements 

 of worldliness and mammon are allowed to 

 call our ingenuous youth away from the 

 proper objects of education. In too many 

 cases short roads and by-paths are opened up 

 to tempt them away from the proper work of 

 the college and the university, and so to send 

 them prematurely to schools of professional 

 and technical instruction. The result is, that 

 too often we see half-educated men and un- 

 formed men sent forth to plead the cases and 

 heal the diseases and lead the thinking of the 

 age. Let us all protest against this evil ten- 

 dency. For, unless we succeed in checking 

 it in some way, it will lead to the impoverish- 

 ment of this generation. Let our schools and 

 our colleges and universities make men first, 

 and then let them make lawyers and physi- 

 cians and teachers. Ordinarily, so far as 

 education is concerned and we are confining 

 our discussion to that now the only path to 

 true completed manhood is through a thor- 

 ough course of educational training. Latin 

 and Greek and the higher mathematics, rhet- 

 oric and logic and mental and moral philoso- 

 phy, these are the useful studies in education. 

 These are the studies by which such men as 

 Newton and Bacon and Stevenson and Butler 



