344 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



men, who shall really develop that boy's mind and character. "We must 

 then persuade the college authorities not to turn callow undergraduates 

 into a jungle of courses taught by specialists, but to lay out for those 

 boys really developing and strengthening coherent work which shall 

 make them acquainted, as far as they can learn at that time of life, 

 with men, society, philosophy and genuine wisdom. As to professional 

 training, the physicians are getting most nearly at the heart of the 

 problem by means of their clinics, their hospital and " externe " train- 

 ing, through which the embryo physician studies not simply medicine, 

 but human nature and human life. 



Supposing a youth to be really educated in school and college and 

 to be genuinely trained in his professional school, he ought not to 

 specialize until he shall have had a number of years of wide experience 

 in his work, until, if possible, he shall have traveled, until he shall 

 have taken a thorough, graduate course in the university of the world. 

 Then he will have breadth and wisdom and true learning ; then he will 

 know real scholarship from false ; then he will be humble, reverent and 

 eager to know the truth; and only when a man arrives at this mental 

 and spiritual condition is he fit to be a specialist. Even then, as has 

 already been said, no man except a genius or a " grubber " is justified 

 in being an out-and-out specialist. All others must have at least one 

 avocation with which to temper and to put in proper perspective their 

 chosen specialties. 



