Januaey 22, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



147 



any group of educational philosopliers who 

 Lave never known him. Here, as elsewhere, 

 the student learns from his own mistakes. 

 Moreover, the elective system brings the stu- 

 dent in contact with the best teachers he 

 knows, and the teacher in' turn is refined and 

 stimulated by the students who have chosen 

 his work. To the patchwork courses which 

 followed the break-up of the classical system, 

 the elective courses are in every way to be 

 preferred. The mind is made strong by the 

 continuous study of something, and in pre- 

 scribed courses made up of odds and ends un- 

 related to any central purpose, thoroughness 

 in any line is impossible. At the present 

 time there is a distinct reaction against the 

 elective system, but not in favor of any other 

 system which has been actually under trial. 

 The elective system will not make scholars out 

 of rich and idle lads whose only interests in 

 college are in games and social pleasures. 

 Once in a while such a one is reclaimed, but 

 the percentage is too small to justify the 

 effort. The elective system is as good as any 

 other system for such as these, but no system 

 will make a man out of a boy who has him- 

 self no interest in the process. It is the duty 

 of the college to withhold its degrees from 

 idlers of whatever class. To give the titles 

 of higher education where the substance is 

 lacking is to cheapen our ovm work. The 

 remedy for slipshod college work is found in 

 the scholarship committee, rather than in the 

 arrangement of courses of study. The final 

 answer to criticisms of the elective system is 

 to recognize its occasional abuses by professors 

 as well as by students, and to ask, what else 

 will you put in its place? 



Doubtless a prescribed course is sometimes 

 effective, as in engineering or in medicine, but 

 only where it is prescribed by the nature of 

 the subject. Mathematical subjects are linked 

 together, one dependent on another, and the 

 student desiring mathematics makes no com- 

 plaint of this prescribed order. But for 

 courses of mixed science, literature, art and 

 philosophy, so many units of one, so many of 

 another, disjointed fragments brought together 

 in the name of culture, the student can have 



no respect. Required courses of this fashion 

 have passed away never to return. The cheeks 

 on the elective system must come from the 

 student himself. He must be trained to guard 

 himself from premature specialization on the 

 one hand and from limp diffuseness on the 

 other. If he is a real student, the safe mean 

 leans strongly toward the side of specializa- 

 tion, for after all this is but another name for 

 thoroughness. " The mind is made strong by 

 the thorough possession of something." 



The writer once heard President Eliot dis- 

 claim any unusual degree of prophetic vision, 

 allowing for himself only an honest industry, 

 attacking one problem as it arose after 

 another, with such solution of each as might 

 be within the range of practical action. 



One of Dr. Eliot's predecessors in Harvard 

 was once complimented on the logical coher- 

 ence of his sermons. He disclaimed all special 

 excellence in this regard. " I write one sen- 

 tence," he said, "then I thank God and write 

 another." President Eliot has himself ac- 

 cepted this definition of his method. One 

 thing done, he turns to and does the next, and 

 this is the essence of his educational foresight. 

 He does the next and the next, never stopping 

 with the first result or the first achievement; 

 and thus he has made of the administration of 

 Harvard a continuous struggle, while all our 

 other colleges have followed near or far along 

 the same lines of progress. 



And to the young man on whom his mantle 

 shall fall, the administration of Harvard will 

 still be a struggle. Nothing is completed, 

 nothing is settled, nothing is final. New lines 

 of development will follow swiftly on the old. 

 The university must be separated from the 

 college, and must be devoted wholly to the 

 work of men as distinguished from the work 

 of boys. All trace of the trade school must 

 be eliminated from the training of pro- 

 fessional men. The university professor on 

 the firing line of scientific advance must be 

 maintained and appreciated and none the less 

 the college teacher whose first aim shall be 

 to develop the boy into the sound, sober and 

 enlightened man. The unification of higher 

 education has been in a degree accomplished. 



