510 



SCIENCE 



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



minds of credulous readers. The study of 

 science may do for the student other and 

 better things than those he anticipates, yet 

 many will be inevitably disappointed at 

 the problems which the study of science 

 will not solve. Enthusiastic parents, heed- 

 less of taste and fitness, too often urge 

 their sons into scientific pursuits, not real- 

 izing that lack of intellectual preference in 

 a boy is inadequate proof that he pos- 

 sesses that balanced mind which scientific 

 investigation requires, and unusual pleas- 

 ure at riding in an electric car is insuffi- 

 cient evidence of a marked capacity for the 

 broader problems of electrical engineering. 

 May not science be spared by some of her 

 too enthusiastic publishers and over cred- 

 ulous admirers, who urge popular and 

 sensational courses in science in place of 

 the fundamental instruction now given? 

 How much longer must newspapers and 

 magazines give money and valuable space 

 for worse than useless matter only because 

 it masquerades in the garb of science ? 



UNDERGRADUATE LIFE 



From every point of view the under- 

 graduate is the central figure of the col- 

 lege. Clever or dull, industrious or lazy, 

 serious or trifiing, he is the only apology 

 the college has to offer for its life. Him 

 our restless critics would give no peace 

 and he takes a gentle A'cngeanee upon his 

 accusers by being unconscious of them. 

 All their thrusts are lost on him, at whose 

 shortcomings they are mainly directed, for 

 the real miscreant rarely reads. 



The reformer's indictment is much too 

 long to discuss here in detail, but he has 

 discovered, for instance, that the average 

 young man in college does not care enough 

 for knowledge to pay proper attention to 

 his studies. But this is not new, the aver- 

 age student never has. Again he finds 

 that too many young men in college drift 



into a life of ease and indolence. But this 

 is as true out of college as in, and worse, it 

 is a failing by no means confined to the 

 young. To the stress of modern athletics, 

 he claims the average student contributes 

 not his muscle but only a voice. Yet in 

 the earlier days before athletics, which a 

 few of us remember, some men in college 

 were even voiceless. A very slow growth, 

 well rooted in a time-honored past, of in- 

 difference to scholarship on the part of 

 some students seems to him a deadly 

 fungus which has sprung up over night, 

 an evil which requires some immediate 

 and drastic remedy if the college is to sur- 

 vive, and he chafes at our tolerance and 

 slowness to act. 



An unhappy requisite for any thorough- 

 going dissection is that death must pre- 

 cede it. Thus many a recent thrust at the 

 college is directed at conditions belonging 

 to a past existence. An even greater weak- 

 ness of the critical faculty, in our day, is 

 an, intemperance which loses all sense of 

 proportion and puts things too strongly — 

 a weakness into which even those in the 

 highest places have sometimes fallen. 

 Thus evils which occur in the few receive 

 a stress and lack of measure which seem to 

 attach them to the many. In the practise 

 of the newer criticism "the exception 

 proves the rule" in an unfamiliar sense. 



What class of students in college, it may 

 reasonably be asked, cause us most con- 

 cern ? Certainly not the capable and ener- 

 getic men who earnestly seek knowledge. 

 Such do not even require very skilful 

 teachers in the pedagogical sense, for given 

 the necessary facilities they teach them- 

 selves most things. Some guidance from 

 scholarly men they need, and little else. 

 The dull but hard working student, though 

 less independent, knows quite well how to 

 care for himself and becomes educated in 

 doing so. The real difficulty comes with 



