122 THE COLLEGE 



which would be fatal in either academy or university. In order to 

 be profitable, however, it must be the leisure of a mind previously 

 subjected to prolonged and thorough discipline. 



The method of teaching in the college is on the whole different 

 from that of either school or university. In the school the abstract 

 facts and principles, as laid down in approved and authoritative 

 books, are transmitted by the teacher to the student. The indi- 

 vidual reconstruction of those principles and facts in the mind of 

 teacher and student, though important, is relatively less essential. 

 If by gift of genius you get this element of individuality in either 

 teacher or student, you are profoundly grateful; but the school can, 

 and in a vast majority of cases must, get on without the interpreting 

 individuality of the teacher and the reconstructive unification of the 

 student. I am speaking not of ideals, but of facts. 



Now there is room for the schoolmaster in the college, but his 

 sphere is very limited. In formal studies like mathematics, and the 

 elements of such languages as have not been previously acquired, 

 every college ought to have two or three thorough drillmasters on 

 its faculty. There is nothing about a college atmosphere that can 

 make analytical geometry easy, or the irregular French verb fasci- 

 nating, or German prose sentences intelligible without grammar. 

 Such school work as our requirements for admission permitted to be 

 postponed until after admission to college must be done there in the 

 hard, exacting school way. 



In the university it is the individuality of the student that counts. 

 Not the facts in the text-books; not the insight and interpretation 

 of the professor; but the initiative of the individual student is what 

 the university is after. The college in the more advanced courses 

 must introduce also a moderate degree of this university element. 

 Most of our colleges, by the group system, or by the requirement of 

 major and minor subjects as a condition of taking the bachelor's 

 degree, insist that something like a fourth or a third of a student's 

 courses shall lead up to and culminate in such comparatively inde- 

 pendent work. In this way we give every college student a taste 

 of real scholarly work; and discover the comparatively few who are 

 fitted to prosecute it to advantage in the university. 



The college professor, the type to which the majority of the college 

 faculty should belong, is very different from either the schoolmaster 

 or the university specialist. He is a man who grasps his subject as 

 a whole; deals with each aspect of it in its relation to the whole; 

 is able to make the subject as a whole unfold from day to day, and 

 grow in the mind of the student into the same splendid proportions 

 that it has assumed in his own; and who can put it to the test of 

 practical application in matters of current interest. If he is a 

 chemist he is able to give expert testimony in court. If a geologist, 



