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of new knowledge, and all other matters should be arranged with a view 
to encourage and stimulate scientific investigation. A very moderate 
amount of class instruction and other duties should be demanded of the 
members of the faculty, and students should be sufficiently mature and 
earnest to work without compulsion and with little direction under the 
guidance and inspiration of the men who are doing real original work. 
The case of the undergraduate school is fundamentally different. I 
believe that the prominence given to research in many undergraduate 
schools is a positive injury to the student; his instructors are chosen on 
account of their ability or promise as investigators instead of their quali- 
fications as teachers, and even the student himself is encouraged or forced 
to undertake so-called research with entirely inadequate training, both 
as regards breadth and depth. The undergraduate years should be em- 
ployed in acquiring a well balanced knowledge of the fundamentals of the 
student’s specialty, and an acquaintance with the elements of many allied 
subjects, together with a working grasp of such tools as modern languages, 
to make professional literature accessible at first hand, and mathematics, 
for the mental training and grasp of the quantitative and statistical treat- 
ment of all studies, and every undergraduate student should give such 
attention to history, literature and economics as to make him an intelligent 
citizen and man of culture. 
Only when this has been in a measure accomplished—and in looking 
back to our own college days we realize that a mere beginning had been 
made when we graduated—is the student in a position to profitably under- 
take research, with a proper appreciation of what he is doing and how to 
do it, so that it is really research for him and be is not merely a pair 
of hands under the direction of another’s brain. ‘The effectiveness of a 
scientific investigator is generally proportional to the thoroughness of his 
preparation; too many attempt te discover new truths before they have 
grasped those already discovered by others. 
In many institutions one of the requirements for graduation is called 
a thesis, and such a tradition is difficult to dislodge, but I think the 
name is unfortunately pretentious and is apt to mislead the student into 
thinking himself more advanced than the facts justify; it savors of the 
same spirit that induces the high school to ape the college in so many ways, 
in its pernicious fraternities and even in having a “baccalaureate” service— 
doubtless to celebrate the fact that the boys about to graduate are still 
