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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



basis of modern views of life's needs, 

 it is partly because they are more easily 

 introduced and retained as electives and 

 partly because there is no agreement as 

 to which studies will be the best to pre- 

 scribe. 



The idea that reformers desire to 

 have a course containing studies good 

 for children and studies not good for 

 them and to trust the scholars' likes 

 and dislikes to guide them to the for- 

 mer, is absurd. Whether they are right 

 in assuming that what is best for one 

 boy may not be best for another, that 

 his teachers and parents can help him 

 to pick out a course of study better for 

 him than any inflexible course prescribed 

 for all can be, is a question of impor- 

 tance, but one which Professor Mun- 

 sterberg does not try to answer. In- 

 stead, he tells us about his gratitude 

 to his parents and teachers for never let- 

 ting him neglect his steady toil at pre- 

 scribed Greek for the pursuits which he 



himself elected out of school, such as 

 electrical engineering, botany, novel- 

 writing, reading Arabic, writing books 

 on the prehistoric anthropology of West 

 Prussia, etc., etc. Now, this confession 

 about his early life absolves us from 

 paying any further attention to his ex- 

 perience as a lesson to our high-school 

 youths. The youth Miinsterberg and 

 the average high-school student do not 

 belong in the same class. For he was 

 evidently an eminent boy as he is an 

 eminent man. We must admit, how- 

 ever, that the rigorous discipline af- 

 forded by the prescribed Latin and 

 Greek is evidenced in the present stern 

 moral sense of the professor, who is will- 

 ing to abandon his chosen and favorite 

 pursuit, laboratory experimentation, 

 and at the call of duty give himself to 

 the hated but necessary tasks of writing 

 philosophical disquisitions, political dis- 

 cussions and articles on school reform. 



