SEMI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 217 



training in the new college, Mr. Morrill said, must be liberal and 

 practical. The education in the old college, the best leaders 

 today are successfully maintaining, must be both practical and 

 liberal. Probably no one man has exerted so powerful an in- 

 fluence toward the fusion of the best in the old education and 

 the new, as, during the past quarter-century, has President 

 Charles William Eliot. By his advocacy of the elective system, 

 he has certainly vitalized the education of the old college no less 

 profoundly than the training of the new college has been vital- 

 ized by the ideas of Mr. Spencer and Mr. Morrill. 



Perhaps a personal reminiscence may be pardoned, since it 

 indicates better than almost anything else could do the nature 

 and spirit of our modern instruction. The brother of one of 

 my college mates came to Cambridge on a visit. This brother, 

 as a boy, could never be made to apply himself to books. Once 

 out of the grip of the compulsory-attendance law, he left school 

 and learned the plumber's trade. During this visit, he went 

 with us to a lecture in a course in ethics called "Philosophy 3," 

 presented by Professor George Herbert Palmer. It was not 

 "Philosophy i," an elementary treatment of the subject; nor 

 yet "Philosophy 2." It was a decidedly advanced course in the 

 midst of which he spent that hour. Knowing the family circum- 

 stances, I was exceedingly curious to learn what would be the 

 effect on such a man's mind of modern Harvard, and at the close 

 of the lecture I asked him how he liked it. His answer was 

 almost startling: 



"That," he said, "is what I call getting right down to 

 brass tacks!" 



Harvard is typical of the best, in her aims and in her methods. 

 Individual freedom achieved by cultivation, education getting 

 right down to the brass tacks of living — this is the spirit today of 

 education in the East. There is the fullest warrant for the 

 assertion that the best college education of our time is not so 

 much preparation for life, as it is a cross-section of life. 



