EDITOR'S TABLE. 



269 



been forced for centuries. They have 

 been legislated as the tests of scholar- 

 ship, the credentials of culture, and the 

 badges of gentility. That the classical 

 spirit should be one of arrogance and 

 tyranny, and adverse to liberty, is suf- 

 ficiently explained by the history of the 

 old universities. There is much talk 

 about the freedom of the German uni- 

 versities ; but, so far as classics are con- 

 cerned, their policy is one of simple, 

 unmitigated despotism. Students, of 

 course, are left free to attend lectures 

 and recitations or not, as they please, 

 and to study much as they like; but 

 what does that amount to when they can 

 not get into the universities with any 

 chance of success except through the 

 gymnasium, where they are subjected 

 to years of unrelenting classical drill ; 

 and, if they do not graduate in conform- 

 ity to high classical standards, are un- 

 able to get places under the state in 

 either the church, the army, or the civil 

 service? The educational system of 

 Germany is an iron despotism of a mili- 

 tary state. Dr. McOosh understands 

 this ; and, true to his classical instinct, 

 would be willing to concede the utmost 

 option to Harvard University if Massa- 

 chusetts would but adopt the German 

 plan. He says : 



I know that in Germany they produce 

 scholars without requiring a rigid attendance, 

 and I rather think that in a few American 

 colleges they are aping this German method, 

 thinking to produce equally diligent students. 

 They forget that the Germans have one power- 

 ful safeguard which we have not in America. 

 For all offices in church and state there is an 

 examination by high scholars following the 

 college course. A young man can not get an 

 office as clergyman, as teacher, as postmaster, 

 till he has passed by that terrible examining 

 bureau; and, if he is turned by them, his 

 prospects in life are blasted. Let the State 

 of Massachusetts pass a law like the Prussian, 

 and Harvard may then relax attendance, and 

 the State will do what the colleges have neg- 

 lected to do. 



The following passages, from a paper 

 read before the Kegents of the Univer- 

 sity of New York by President Barnard. 



of Columbia College, is a sufficient an- 

 swer to the objections urged by Dr. 

 McCosh : 



Every new subject of study which has 

 been admitted in the college course since the 

 century began has been admitted in acknowl- 

 edged violation of the theory on which the 

 course is assumed to have been originally 

 founded. Chemistry has been admitted, for 

 instance, into the course, on the ground that 

 it is important that every well-educated man 

 should know something about the elementary 

 composition of the matter which surrounds 

 him ; anatomy and physiology, because he 

 ought to understand the structure of his own 

 frame and the functions of its several organs ; 

 and mineralogy, geology, botany, physics, 

 etc., for similar utilitarian reasons. So great 

 is the multiplicity of subjects at present 

 taught as to destroy altogether, especially in 

 later years, the character claimed for the col- 

 legiate course as a system of mental disci- 

 pline. 



It is time, as it appears to me, that we 

 should revise our theory of collegiate educa- 

 tion, with a view to make it conform a little 

 more nearly to our actual practice ; or that we 

 should modify our practice to make it harmo- 

 nize more nearly with our theory. The most 

 judicious course, apparently, would be to ad- 

 mit, to some extent, both species of change at 

 the same time ; and with this would neces- 

 sarily follow the introduction into the system 

 of instruction of the element of plasticity, 

 permitting it to be varied in its character 

 to accommodate the exigencies of different 

 minds. The doctrine that all varieties of 

 mind may be profitably subjected to the same 

 educational regimen is a doctrine which it is 

 not safe to admit, unless we confine its applica- 

 tion to the most elementary stages. The true 

 theory of education is not that theory which 

 aims professedly to secure for all minds iden- 

 tically the same description of development 

 and to force every mind into absolutely the 

 same mold ; but that, on the other hand, 

 which anticipates, as inevitable, differences 

 which no external influences can ever compel 

 effectually to disappear, and which adapts its 

 culture to these ineradicable and irrepressible 

 differences. 



The first business of education is, there- 

 fore, to find out what the individual is fit for ; 

 the next is to make the most of him in that 

 for which he is fit, and, according to this true 

 theory of a subject which plausible specula- 

 tion has done very much to obscure, a special 

 system or training, adapted to the idiosyncra- 

 sies of the individual, is just as distinctly in- 



