41 8 Edward Livingston Youmans. 



controlling ends of culture. Misled by the fallacy that, 

 through a scheme of aimless exercises for discipline, men- 

 tal power n.ay be accumulated for universal application, it 

 sees no necessity of organizing education with explicit 

 reference to ultimate and definite purposes, and it thus for. 

 feits its right of control over the educational interests of 

 the time. For that there are great and well-defined aims, 

 revealed with more clearness in this age than ever before, 

 to which a higher mental culture should be subservient, 

 does not admit of intelligent question. If the classical 

 system grasps the conception of education, in its ends as 

 well as its beginnings, as a preparation for the activities of 

 life ; and of discipline, as the formation of habits to guide 

 a constantly unfolding mental career ; and of knowledge, 

 as consisting of a chain of relations, along which the mind 

 is to move in accomplishing that career ; if it unfolds the 

 order of the world, and puts the student in command of 

 the ripest and richest results of past thinking; if it quali- 

 fies best for the relations of parenthood, citizenship, and 

 the multiform responsibilities of social relation ; if it equips 

 for the intelligent and courageous consideration of those 

 vital questions which the progress of knowledge and aspi- 

 ration are forcing upon society ; if it fits most effectually 

 for these supreme ends, then, indeed, it affords a proper 

 discipline for the needs of the time ; but if the student, 

 after having faithfully mastered his collegiate tasks, finds, 

 upon entering the world of action, that his acquisitions are 

 not available that he has to leave them behind him and 

 begin anew, then his preparation has been a bad one ; time 

 has been irretrievably lost, power irrecoverably wasted, and 

 the chances are high that he will give the go-by to modern 

 knowledge, and thin down his intellectual life to the lan- 

 guid nursing of his classical memories. 



It is well known that, in numerous cases, the success 

 of educated men may be directly traced to neglect of the 



