8o BULLETIN OF THE LABORATORIES 



fering with the main object of college work. ^Ve are told often that a 

 man who spends an hour in sharpening his ax is likely to do more and 

 better work during the day than the man who refuses to spend the 

 morning hour in sharpening; but the man must have his breakfast as a 

 prerequisite. In the case of the human mind, the implement and its 

 user cannot be separated, they are one - and this is where the simile 

 fails, despite its frequent use as an end of all argument. The man who 

 spends all his time only in sharpening is less likely to do the full tale of 

 work than is the one who ate a good breakfast and neglected the sharp- 

 ening. But given the sharp ax and the better breakfast, there can be 

 no doubt as to the quality of the work. Strong man and sharp ax 

 together answer to the human mind, strong, cultured and well fur- 

 nished. 



Thoughtful men feel that there is a serious defect somewhere in 

 our methods ; keen, bright students find many of their studies irksome, 

 and a few of them attractive, despite the fact that oftentimes those 

 teaching the attractive studies are less skillful than the others. Long 

 ago, the wise man told us that much study is weariness to the flesh; 

 but certainly it is no more a weariness than are baseball, football, crick- 

 et, boating, foot races or squirrel hunting; physical exercise of these 

 types is taken with a zest which all understand. And all understand 

 equally well that exercise thus taken is vastly more beneficial than the 

 irksome exercise of the daily "constitutional" taken under the direc- 

 tion of a physician. There is no reason why mental exercise, to be 

 beneficial, should be irksome, should have the task feature prominent. 

 The difficulty in the curriculum lies in the undue proportion of certain 

 types of study. 



The preponderance of studies looking to culture is far too great — 

 studies without apparent relation to present or future conditions as far 

 as the student can see, even toward the end of his course. No matter 

 how willing a man may be to work, he cannot work heartily if there be 

 no apparent result ; the most hopeful of men needs a little occasional 

 fruition to keej) him up; pounding a log with the blunt end of an ax is 

 not half so cheerful work as chopping. The curriculum should com 

 mend itself, in some degree at least, to the intelligence of the student 

 as of practical value, for interest is a vastly better incentive than disci- 

 pline. More stress should be laid on such studies as geology, physics, 

 chemistry and biology, including here psychology, of wiiich now only 

 the merest elements are taui^ht in the arts courses of man\- leading col- 



