238 SCIENCE SKETCHES. 



needs of the college, or with the real or imaginary 

 claims of candidates for recognition. Then in the 

 Faculty meetings each one of these professors 

 claims what he wants and receives what he can 

 get, in accordance with the law of the survival of 

 the fittest and the rule of the majority. Thus the 

 curriculum in each college becomes the resultant 

 of many forces, in a condition of unstable equi- 

 librium. It is altered, not in accordance with the 

 educational needs of the students, but when one 

 professor gives place in the Faculty to another 

 more or less energetic or clamorous than he. 



Occasionally in these patchwork courses of 

 study, the traces of some master-hand is visible, — 

 some method in its madness which shows that 

 somebody has tried to work out an idea. But this 

 is rarely so, I think ; and in the arrangement of 

 most courses of study, nothing higher has been 

 thought of than expediency and the exigencies 

 of compromise. From the struggle between the 

 representatives of rival subjects in an overloaded 

 course, has come about, by way of compromise, 

 the establishment of different courses of study, in 

 each of which it is assumed that some scholastic 

 faction will have the ascendency. In some col- 

 leges these various courses have been put on an 

 exact equality, but in most cases a more or less 

 positive pressure has been brought to bear in 

 favor of the classical course, and especially away 

 from the sciences. This is well, I think; for in 

 most of our colleges the instruction in science is 

 still absurdly inadequate, and wholly valueless for 

 the main end of scientific instruction, — the training 



