14 On the Campus 



days no difficulty in finding things worth while in educa- 

 tion. If he had found any such embarrassment, his in- 

 structors had quickly solved his problem for him. There 

 is the course of study; it is four years long. It has al- 

 ways been the same ; it is neither too long nor too short ; 

 as the priest says about the church, qwod semper, quod 

 ubique, qwod db ommbus. This course of study has 

 served all the men of the past centuries in all the world ; 

 it will serve you. There were no electives there was 

 nothing to make electives of, and there had been no choice 

 if there had been electives offered. 



Now it may be remarked at the outset that it is by no 

 means doubtful that these people, our predecessors, found 

 the things essential in education. There is no doubt they 

 found the results. They found intellectual and moral 

 life and health; they found appreciation and happiness 

 and power, and in so far were blessed. Nevertheless, it 

 is equally a matter of no smallest doubt that within the 

 last fifty years the whole fashion of the world has 

 changed. Up to the middle of the last century men were 

 living in all civilized countries very much as men had 

 lived for two or three thousand years. The plantings 

 and sowings and buildings and all domestic arts of the 

 Iowa pioneers were not unlike those which Pliny de- 

 scribes on the hills and valleys of Italy and Spain twenty 

 centuries ago. In our houses we had window-glass, our 

 greatest invention, cast-iron stoves, and wooden floors. 

 Beyond this I know of nothing in which we much excelled 

 the civilizations of the ancient world. They cooked, they 

 spun, they wove, in linen, in wool, in silk; they manu- 

 factured silver and gold and iron; they carved the 



