ADDRESSES 43 
mitted them to wander to little purpose through the whole 
field of human knowledge, or even allowed athletic or social 
ulnbition to take the place of scholarly aspiration. 
If graduates of high schools and normal schools who be- 
come teachers in the primary school cannot answer those 
very simple but very perplexing questions that are character- 
istic of little children, are they likely to offer to their pupils a 
choice of secondary or artificial interests better fitted to serve 
as the web of an education than those they repress? If they 
themselves do not know the common things of nature, of ag- 
riculture, or of world science at large, and so fail to make 
good, who is to blame? Is it that their teachers in the secondary. 
schools failed because their own teachers in the college failed, 
because in turn these did not get from the university what it 
owed them? We are disposed to pass the blame along or to 
lay it on faulty materials out of which even a good workman 
cannot make anything capable of standing inspection. Do we 
bring it to rest somewhere on ourselves? If so, the remedy 
ought to be applied right there. Do we distribute it equally or 
partially? If so, the average ought to be raised by removing 
the weakness. 
Teachers cannot place the trouble indefinitely with the hu- 
man materials that go through the workshop. Men and 
women are not born into the world equal in talent, physical 
vigor and environment. We are coming to recognize the obli- 
gation of society to make the best possible out of every human 
stick, and we may be going even beyond the dictates of wisdom 
in what we do for the deformed and the defective. If a child 
is incapable of marching with the other children, we put him 
into a grade or a school where his gait is that of the others 
instead of holding back a normal class, or dragging him 
hopelessly along at its pace. 
There are some who contend, and with emphasis, that if a 
student is not able or willing to sustain a rather high grade of 
scholarly progress in college, he should not be permitted to 
direct public or private benefaction to himself from some one 
more capable or more worthy. And not a few people think 
that the benefits of university student life should be restricted 
to those who demonstrate from the start or by very marked 
improvement, that these are being assimilated. A more careful 
