328 Darwinism and Other Essays. 



conditions he shall keep a dog or a horse, it is 

 not only exceeding its proper functions, but it is 

 also forgetting its own dignity. Years ago, when 

 black broadcloth was generally considered the 

 only suitable material for a gentleman's coat, and 

 when none but truckmen and coal-heavers smoked 

 in the streets, these laws might have been rea- 

 sonable, though they were not even therefore 

 necessarily justifiable. Now they have neither 

 reason nor justice to recommend them. The state 

 of things to meet which they were framed has 

 entirely passed away, and the result of maintain- 

 ing and even partially enforcing them is to widen, 

 instead of closing, the social gulf which is fixed 

 between instructors and students. Only when 

 this chasm, is removed by more familiar inter- 

 course, and by the abolition of the petty re- 

 straints which have in times past caused students 

 to regard with distrust and suspicion the officers 

 placed over them, can the graver evils of college 

 life, such as hazing and rowdyism, be effectually 

 done away with. The self-respect awakened in 

 the mind of the student by treating him as a gen- 

 tleman will go much farther toward insuring his 

 gentlemanly behaviour than all the censorial laws 

 which corporations can frame and proctors ex- 

 ecute. That undergraduates have too often de- 



