508 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXX. No. 772 



every ijseful pui'pose all the freedom af- 

 forded by what I have called the unbridled 

 elective system; but obstacles and hazards 

 which required some serious thought and 

 discipline to surmount were strewn in the 

 path of least resistance. The incomplete 

 angler also was compelled in some places 

 to go deep enough to get the flavor of sev- 

 eral branches of learning and acquire 

 some sort of discipline. 



Under this so-called group system, which 

 has taken many forms in different col- 

 leges, our education is become liberal in 

 fact as well as in name (the newer studies 

 may be followed for their own sake as well 

 as the older ones), and the college horizon 

 has been vastly widened. The older and 

 newer knowledges now stand on a footing of 

 complete equality of opportunity, our edu- 

 cation has caught up with the time and is 

 in harmony with modern needs. More- 

 over the framework of the present curricu- 

 lum is elastic enough to easily adapt itself 

 to any changed conditions which may 

 later arise. 



In all this readjustment, many advo- 

 cates of the classics have, it seems to me, 

 been somewhat unduly alarmed and have 

 lost sight for the moment of some of the 

 sources of greatest strength in classical 

 learning. They have emphasized the dis- 

 cipline of classical studies too much, and 

 their charm too little. The undergraduate 

 of to-day will not shirk disciplinary 

 studies if he can be made to see definitely 

 whither they lead and that the end be one 

 which appeals to his understanding and 

 tastes. He refuses to elect courses which 

 are only disciplinary or are so represented. 



The classics are as truly humane to-day 

 as they ever were. Scientific studies have 

 exalted observation and reason, we are 

 gaining a sudden and surprising insight 

 into nature and into social problems. We 

 have grown in constructive imagination 



and the power to think relentlessly 

 straight forward, but the vision has been 

 mainly external. Spiritual interpreta- 

 tions embodied in the nobler forms of 

 artistic expression, in music, in poetry, 

 in art, have not kept pace with our intel- 

 lectual progress. It was in a genius for 

 adequate, free and artistic expression, it 

 was in imagination, in poetry, in consum- 

 mate art and an exalted patriotism that the 

 classic civilizations were strong. They 

 had that in them to which man with a 

 clearer insight and finer appreciation will 

 one day gladly return. Their literatures 

 give the fullest expression to the adoles- 

 cence of the race, that golden time when 

 men were boys grown tall, when life was 

 plastic, had not yet hardened, nor men 

 grown stern. Truth, beauty, goodness 

 were still happily united; men did not 

 seek them separately, nor follow one and 

 slight the rest. Even philosophy with 

 Plato was poetic in conception, and rarely 

 smelt of the lamp. 



Some of the deepest experiences of the 

 race can not be justly characterized as 

 either true or false because they have no 

 place in the logical categories, hence xui- 

 feeling reason can not wholly find them 

 out nor utterly destroy them. Much con- 

 fusion and harm have come to man's most 

 vital concerns through loss of balance and 

 failure to recognize limits to pure reason 

 as we now know it. Many a soul has been 

 beaten back or shrunk by rejecting all im- 

 pulses which could not be explained or 

 fitted into some partial scheme of things. 

 In this both science and theology, in dif- 

 ferent ways, have at times offended. Both 

 with an assumed authority have marred 

 the spirit by attempting to crowd it into 

 the frame of a procrustean logic or to 

 square it with a too rigid dogma. That 

 this was neither true science nor good 

 theology is now becoming clear, bound- 



