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SCIENCE. 



[X. S. Vol. XVI. No. 410. 



expert uses of civilization. There may 

 come a day when general study will be no 

 part of the function of a university, when it 

 shall have been handed over, as some now 

 talk of handing it over, to the secondary 

 schools, after the German fashion ; but that 

 day will not be ours, and I, for one, do 

 not M'ish to see it come. The masters who 

 guide the youngsters who pursue general 

 studies are very usefiil neighbors for those 

 who prosecute detailed inquiries and devote 

 themselves to special tasks. No investiga- 

 tor can afford to keep his doors shut against 

 the comradeships of the wide world of let- 

 ters and of thought. 



To have a great body of undergraduates 

 crowding our class rooms and setting the 

 pace of our lives must always be a very 

 wholesome thing. These young fellows, 

 who do not mean to make finished schol- 

 ars of themselves, but who do mean to 

 learn from their elders, now at the outset 

 of their lives, what the thoughts of the 

 world have been and its processes of prog- 

 ress, in order that they may start with light 

 about them, and not doubt or darkness, 

 learning in the brief span of four years 

 what it would else take them half a life- 

 time to discover by mere contact with men, 

 must teach us the real destiny with which 

 knowledge came into the world. Its mis- 

 sion is enlightenment and edification, and 

 these young gentlemen shall keep us in 

 mind of this. 



The age has hurried us, has shouldered 

 Tis out of the old ways, has bidden us be 

 moving and look to the cares of a practical 

 generation ; and we have suffered ourselves 

 to be a little disconcerted. No doubt we 

 were once pedants. It is a happy thing 

 that the days have gone by when the texts 

 we studied loomed bigger to our view than 

 the human spirit that underlay them. But 

 there are some principles of which we must 

 not let go. We must not lose sight of that 

 fine conception of a general training which 



led our fathers, in the days when men knew 

 how to build great states, to build great 

 colleges also to sustain them. No man who 

 knows the world has ever supposed that a 

 day would come when every young man 

 would seek a college training. The college 

 is not for the majority who carry forward 

 the common labor of the world, nor even 

 for those who work at the skilled handi- 

 crafts which multiply the conveniences and 

 the luxuries of the complex modern life. 

 It is for the minority who plan, who con- 

 ceive, who superintend, who mediate be- 

 tween group and group and must see the 

 wide stage as a whole. Democratic nations 

 must be served in this wise no less than 

 those whose leaders are chosen by birth 

 and privilege ! and the college is no less 

 democratic because it is for those who 

 play a special part. I know that there are 

 men of genius who play these parts of cap- 

 taincy and yet have never been in the class- 

 rooms of a college, whose only school has 

 been the world itself. The world is an ex- 

 cellent school for those who have vision and 

 self-discipline enough to use it. It works 

 in this wise, in part, upon us all. Raw lads 

 are made men of by the mere sweep of their 

 lives- through the various school of experi- 

 ence. It is this very sweep of life that 

 we wish to bring to the consciousness of 

 young men by the shorter processes of the 

 college. We have seen the adaptation take 

 place; we have seen crude boys made fit in 

 four years to become men of the world. 



Every man who plays a leading or con- 

 ceiving part in any affair must somehow 

 get this schooling of his spirit, this quicken- 

 ing and adaptation of his perceptions. He 

 must .either spread the process through his 

 lifetime and get it by an extraordinary gift 

 of insight and upon his own initiative, or 

 else he must get it by the alchemy of mind 

 practiced in college halls. We ought dis- 

 tinctly to set forth in our philosophy of 

 this matter the difference between a man's 



