OCTOBEB 15, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



501 



matter for it is one on ■which great diver- 

 gence of opinion exists. The instructors 

 in the various professional schools are by 

 no means of one mind in regard to it, and 

 their views are of course based largely 

 upon experience. Our law school lays 

 great stress upon native ability and schol- 

 arly aptitude, and comparatively little 

 upon the particular branches of learning 

 a student has pursued in college. Any 

 yoTsng man who has brains and has learned 

 to use them can master the law, whatever 

 his intellectual interest may have been; 

 and the same thing is true of the curricu- 

 lum in the divinity school. Many profes- 

 sors of medicine, on the other hand, feel 

 strongly that a student should enter their 

 school with at least a rudimentary knowl- 

 edge of those sciences, like chemistry, biol- 

 ogy and physiology, which are interwoven 

 with medical studies; and they appear to 

 attach greater weight to this than to his 

 natural capacity or general attainments. 

 Now that we have established graduate 

 schools of engineering and business ad- 

 ministration, we must examine this ques- 

 tion carefully in the immediate future. If 

 the college courses are strictly untechnical, 

 the requirement of a small number of elec- 

 tives in certain subjects, as a condition for 

 entering a graduate professional school, is 

 not inconsistent with a liberal education. 

 But I will acknowledge a prejudice that 

 for a man who is destined to reach the top 

 of his profession a broad education, and a 

 firm grasp of some subject lying outside 

 of his vocation, is a vast advantage; and 

 we must not forget that in substantially 

 confining the professional schools at Har- 

 vard to college graduates we are aiming at 

 the higher strata in the professions. 



The last of the aspects under which I 

 proposed to consider the college is that 

 of the relation of undergraduates to one 

 another; and first on the intellectual side. 



We have heard much of the benefit ob- 

 tained merely by breathing the college at- 

 mosphere, or rubbing against the college 

 walls. I fear the walls about us have little 

 of the virtue of Aladdin's lamp when 

 rubbed. What we mean is that daily as- 

 sociation with other young men whose 

 minds are alert is in itself a large part of 

 a liberal education. But to what extent do 

 imdergi'aduates talk over things intellec- 

 tual, and especially matters brought before 

 them by their courses of study? It is the 

 ambition of every earnest teacher so to 

 stimulate his pupils that they will discuss 

 outside the class-room the problems he has 

 presented to them. The students in the 

 law school talk law interminably. They 

 take a fierce pleasure in debating legal 

 points in season and out. This is not 

 wholly with a prospect of bread and butter 

 in the years to come; nor because law is 

 intrinsically more interesting than other 

 things. Much must no doubt be ascribed 

 to the skill of the faculty of the law school 

 in awakening a keen competitive delight 

 in solving legal problems ; but there is also 

 the vital fact that all these young men are 

 tilling the same field. They have their 

 stock of knowledge in common. Seeds cast 

 by one of them fall into a congenial soil, 

 and like dragon's teeth engender an im- 

 mediate combat. 



Now no sensible man would propose to- 

 day to set lip a fixed curriculum in order 

 that all undergraduates might be joint 

 tenants of the same scholastic property; 

 but the intellectual estrangement need not 

 be so wide as it is. There is no greater 

 pleasure in mature life than hearing a 

 specialist talk, if one has knowledge 

 enough of the subject to understand him, 

 and that is one of the things an educated 

 man ought so far as possible to possess. 

 Might there not be more points of intel- 

 lectual cdStact among the undergraduates, 



