October 15, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



515 



of first-rate abilit}' has improved, but there 

 is need of further improvement. As soon 

 as the public will give the colleges sufficient 

 means to command the men they want, all 

 cause for criticism will be removed. 



We need special knowledge in college 

 teachers, but not specialized men. What- 

 ever the subject, it is the whole man that 

 teaches. While being taught the under- 

 graduate observes the teacher and takes his 

 measure in several well-defined directions: 

 the richness of his knowledge, his enthu- 

 siasm for learning, his way of putting 

 things, his sense of humor and the range 

 of his interests. He shrewdly guesses 

 whether or not his inistructor would be an 

 agreeable companion, if all restraints were 

 removed, and the subject of the day's les- 

 son swept out of mind. The student fre- 

 quently knows, too, whether or not his in- 

 structors are producing scholarly work 

 which competent students elsewhere admire 

 and respect. Nothing gives a teacher more 

 authority and command over the imagina- 

 tions of his students than a well-earned 

 reputation for fundamental scholarship 

 and research, and nothing so much stimu- 

 lates the undergraduate's ambition for 

 sound learning and intellectual achieve- 

 ment as sitting at the feet of a master who 

 has traveled the road to discovery. Even 

 as much as a virtuous example breeds vir- 

 tue in others, so scholarly work breeds 

 scholarship. Presidents and boards of trus- 

 tees have not always seen the great advan- 

 tage to a college of retaining a group of 

 strong productive scholars with an instinct 

 for teaching, on its faculty. All these ele- 

 ments enter into the unconscious respect 

 the student fe^ls for his instructor, and 

 increase or lessen a teacher's influence and 

 worth in the college. The driving of men 

 through college is not as reputable as it 

 used to be, and real intellectual and moral 

 leadership in teaching is .steadily taking 

 its place. Students now largely choose 



their courses and instructors, for varying 

 reasons to be sure, but some of them are 

 good. Student opinion freed from mixed 

 motive and superficial judgment is usually 

 wholesome and sound. 



The college in all its relations is the most 

 human and humanizing influence in all 

 our civilization; and year by year its 

 gains in this direction are substantial. 

 Taking the good with the bad our colleges 

 have never been as M'ell organized and 

 equipped as now, nor have they ever done 

 their work more efl'eetively than they are 

 doing it to-day. Any dis.satisfaction with 

 college life does not find its basis in com- 

 parisons with earlier years, notwithstand- 

 ing many find, in such comparisons, par- 

 tial reason for complaint. We are not 

 quite satisfied with the college, because it 

 does not realize our later ideals of educa- 

 tion, not because it falls short of our 

 earlier ones. It is well to have ideals and 

 to have them high, and it is a wholesome 

 sign of intellectual vigor to be impatient 

 at the long distance which separates the 

 way things are done from the way we 

 think they ought to be done. Beyond just 

 measure, however, dissatisfaction paralyzes 

 hopefulness and eif ort ; we must keep clear 

 of pessimism, if we are to go forward. 



In twenty years of teaching and obser- 

 vation, I have become convinced of some 

 things connected with teaching as a pro- 

 fession. No teacher can hope to inspire 

 and lead young men to a level of aspiration 

 above that on which he himself lives and 

 does his work. Young men may reach 

 higher levels but not by his aid. The man 

 in whose mind truth has become formal 

 and passive ought not to teach. What 

 youth needs to see is knowledge in action, 

 moving forward toward some worthy end. 

 In nobody's mind should it be possible to 

 confuse intellectual with ineffectual. Let 

 it not be said: 



