244 SCIENCE SKETCHES. 



from breadth of life, and four years in college can- 

 not give it. The elective system, when carried out 

 in its entirety, involves the following elements : 

 (i) A substantial and thorough course preparatory 

 to the college course, — this course including much 

 that is now taught in the Freshman and Sopho- 

 more years in most of our Western colleges; 

 (2) The placing of all subjects taught in the col- 

 lege course on an equality so far as the degree is 

 concerned. 



The theory on which this system is based may 

 be briefly stated as this : No two students require 

 exactly the same line of work in order that their 

 time in college may be spent to the best advantage. 

 The college student is the best judge of his own 

 needs, or at any rate he can arrange his work for 

 himself better than it can be done beforehand by 

 any committee or by any consensus of educational 

 philosophers. The student may make mistakes in 

 this, as he may elsewhere in much more impor- 

 tant things in life ; but here, as elsewhere, he must 

 bear the responsibility of these mistakes. The 

 development of this sense of responsibility is one 

 of the most effective agencies the college has to 

 promote the moral culture of the student. It is 

 better for the student himself that he should some- 

 times make mistakes than that he should through- 

 out his work be arbitrarily directed by others. 

 Freedom is an essential to scholarship as to man- 

 hood. In Emerson's words, *' Free should the 

 scholar be, — free and brave." Not long since I 

 met a young German scholar, a graduate of a 

 Prussian gymnasium, who has enrolled himself as 



