30 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The American university cares for its students, unwisely sometimes 

 in nagging or futile fashion, but still on the whole to their great ad- 

 vantage. She is always a cherishing mother, and as such her children 

 love her. I have never heard a German university called Alma Mater. 

 'Liebes narrisches Nest,' 'dear silly nest.' This Goethe once called 

 Jena, but Jena was held in remembrance not for her loving care, but 

 for the fond follies she, uncaring, allowed her sons to perpetrate. The 

 German university makes no effort to see that her students work wisely, 

 or indeed that they work at all. They are weaned once they leave 

 the gymnasium. There are too many of them anyhow. Most of them 

 go to swell the 'intellectual proletariat' which, so the Germans tell us, 

 with the military proletariat, is a national menace, and so what does 

 it matter? 



Bismarck is reported to have said that one third of the German 

 students drink themselves to death, one third die of overwork and the 

 rest rule Europe. In America, the college has tried to change these 

 proportions, college professors have thrown their personal influence to 

 induce young men to lead sane and profitable lives, to keep them from 

 throwing away their future till the time comes to rule. In this work 

 the faculty of Colorado College has long taken an honorable part. 

 It has shown the value of personality; men are saved by fellowship 

 as often as by precept or practise. By personality is built up the col- 

 lege atmosphere, the 'fellow feeling among free spirits,' an agency in 

 higher education as subtle as it is effective. For this reason the value 

 of the college depends largely on the nearness of the professors and 

 students — 'They know each one of us by name.' This has been de- 

 clared as the secret of the education of old Japan. Not professors, 

 not masters, not martinets of high or low degree, but men who were 

 fellow students have been, the most successful teachers. The value of 

 a teacher decreases with the increase in the square of the distance from 

 the student. In this matter the smaller universities have a great ad- 

 vantage over the larger ones if they will only be as careful in the choice 

 of teachers. Only those who are near him know that a teacher is 

 great. There are many graduates of our strongest institutions who 

 never in their whole four years came in contact with a professor. Not 

 long since, the editor of an eastern magazine, an able student and a 

 man of strong character, told me that in his college course he had a 

 speaking acquaintance with but one professor. There were a hundred 

 in the faculty, many of them men of high distinction, but what was 

 that to him? His work was laid out for him in a prescribed course, 

 long before he was born, and from young instructors he received all 

 his guidance. 



In this lies one value of the study of science. It has but one 

 method, Ihat of the laboratoiy, that of first-hand contact with the 



