EVOLUTION OF THE COLLEGE CURRICULUM. 257 



Special departments are already taking its place. 

 The traditional four years of college training will 

 disappear; and with it the sharp lines which have 

 so long set apart the Freshmen, Sophomores, Jun- 

 iors, and Seniors. Later on, but not far in the 

 next century, the Bachelor's degree will cease to be 

 regarded ; and its kindred, the degree of the Mas- 

 ter and the Doctor, may perhaps not survive it long. 

 All these things are forms, and forms only, — not 

 substance ; and the substance of our higher edu- 

 cation is fast outgrowing them. College marks, 

 college honors, college courses, college degrees, — 

 all these things belong, with the college cap and 

 gown and the wreath of laurel berries, to the baby- 

 hood of culture. They are part of our inheritance 

 from the past, — from the time when scholarship 

 was not manhood, when the life of the student had 

 no relation to the life of the world. 



The American college of the future will be a 

 place for self-culture. In the words of Emerson : 

 '* Colleges can only serve us when they aim not to 

 drill, but to create; when they gather from far 

 every ray of various genius to their hospitable 

 halls, and by the concentrated fires set the hearts 

 of their youth on flame." 



The chief need of a college organization is to 

 bring great teachers together, that their combined 

 influence may effect results which cannot be 

 reached in isolation. In other words, the use of a 

 college is to produce a college atmosphere, — such 

 an atmosphere as formed itself around Arnold at 

 Rugby, around Bollinger at Munich, around Wer- 

 ner at Freiberg, around Agassiz at Cambridge, 



17 



