October 13, 1909] 



SCIENCE' 



511 



the indifferent, idle, ambitionless man who 

 often, by reason of native capacity or sound 

 early training, easily makes the passing 

 mark which technically puts him beyond 

 the reach of formal discipline and he 

 tempts envious chance no further. This 

 man is no stranger to us, he has always 

 been in college, but we have come recently 

 to take more notice of him. He oftener 

 comes of well-to-do parents who also may 

 look upon college as a polite formality in a 

 young man's life. But too much emphasis 

 must not be put on money, for the sons of 

 the rich are not all idle nor, alas, are the 

 sons of the poor always industrious. To 

 take an extreme case, he is a man lacking 

 in ideals, or equipped with an unprofitable 

 set. He often comes to college avowedly 

 despising books and their contents. He 

 longs only to study men, to biiild those life- 

 long friendships which brighten later years, 

 and he too often hears much to encourage 

 this attitude at home. How then does this 

 youth go about so serious a business as the 

 study of men? By closely observing the 

 more earnest among his teachers and his 

 fellow students who are using their college 

 opportunities to fit themselves for life? 

 No. But rather by seeking companions as 

 passive as himself and drifting in the same 

 sluggish current. I have no wish to give 

 this wretched man more discu.ssion than his 

 flaccid and misguided purposes deserve, yet 

 as critics have made much of him and 

 greatly magnified his numbers, surely we 

 should give his weakened state a thorough- 

 going diagnosis that the treatment may be 

 carefully chosen and salutary. 



For this class of men home influence, or 

 the lack of it, is more often to blame than 

 the college. It is an open question whether 

 the college has any obligation to help a 

 small group of men who care so little to 

 help themselves. In the English system the 

 answer frankly given is that the college has 



none. The pass and poll men of Oxford 

 and Cambridge are present examples of a 

 lifeless indifference to earnest scholarship 

 in which the university has acquiesced. In 

 England, however the indifferent are sepa- 

 rated from the working students and are 

 never a drag on their betters. In this 

 country the numbers of this extreme type 

 in most colleges are, as yet, small, bi;t the 

 range between it and the real student is 

 long, and young men who are learning less 

 than they might are scattered all the way 

 between. The problem is not new, but it 

 perplexes us and disturbs our counsels ex- 

 ceedingly. It is difficult to conduct a col- 

 lege which shall be at once an effective 

 training school for studious men and an 

 infirmary for the treatment of mental 

 apathy. If it is our duty to keep such 

 men in college, and many think it is, the 

 problem presented is how to wake them up, 

 and a pertinent question arises— are we at 

 present organized to get at them by the 

 only open door? Do we often enough get 

 at the center of the man through his false 

 ideals and the husks of his intellectual 

 sloth? Can our teaching be made more 

 direct and personal, not in a meddling way, 

 but by methods vigorous and manly? In 

 most colleges this problem has been compli- 

 cated by numbers. The staff of teachers is 

 not as large as it should be, and the human 

 side of teaching, which requires the closest 

 contact as well as breadth and sanity in the 

 teacher, is in danger. That flint and steel 

 contact between teacher and pupil, which 

 many have reason to remember from the 

 classrooms of their day, is now less fre- 

 quent. The spark we have seen start men- 

 tal fires in many an indifferent mind is 

 struck less often. The hope of closer per- 

 sonal attention to students in college is in 

 larger endowTaents which will sustain a 

 more numerous teaching staff" and permit 

 classes to be further subdivided accoi-ding 



