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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 410. 



of philosophy, the indispensable instruc- 

 tions of history, and the enlightenments of 

 economic and political study, and to these 

 the modern languages which are the tools 

 of scholarship, we stand confused. How 

 are we to marshal this host of studies with- 

 in a common plan which shall not put the 

 pupil out of breath? 



No doubt we must make choice among 

 them, and suffer the pupil himself to make 

 choice. But the choice that we make must 

 be the chief choice, the choice the pupil 

 makes the subordinate choice. Since he 

 cannot in the time at his disposal go the 

 grand tour of accepted modern knowledge, 

 we, who have studied the geography of 

 learning and who have observed several 

 generations of men attempt the journey, 

 must instruct him how in a brief space he 

 may see most of the world, and he must 

 choose only which one of several tours that 

 we may map out he will take. Else there 

 is no difference between young men and 

 old, between the novice and the man of 

 experience, in fundamental matters of 

 choice. We must supply the synthesis and 

 must see to it that, whatever group of 

 studies the student selects, it shall at least 

 represent the round whole, contain all the 

 elements of modern knowledge, and be it- 

 self a complete circle of general subjects. 

 Princeton can never have any uncertainty 

 of view on that point. 



And that not only because we conceive it 

 to be our business to give a general, liberal- 

 izing, enlightening training to men who 

 do not mean to go on to any special work 

 by which they make men of science or 

 scholars of themselves or skilled practition- 

 ers of a learned profession, but also be- 

 cause we would create a right atmosphere 

 for special stiidy. Critics of education have 

 recently given themselves great concern 

 about over-specialization. The only special- 

 ists about whom, I think, the thoughtful 

 critic of education need give himself any 



serious concern are the specialists who have 

 never had any general education in which 

 to give their special studies wide rootage 

 and nourishment. The true American uni- 

 versity seems to me to get its best charac- 

 teristic, its surest guarantee of sane and 

 catholic learning, from the presence at its 

 very heart of a college of liberal arts. Its 

 vital union with the college gives it, it seems 

 to me, the true university atmosphere, a 

 pervading sense of the unity and unbroken 

 circle of learning— not so much because of 

 the presence of a great body of undergrad- 

 uates in search of general training (because 

 until these youngsters get what they seek 

 they create ideals more by' their lack than 

 by their achievement), as because of the 

 presence of a great body of teachers whose 

 life-work it is to find the general outlooks 

 of knowledge and give vision of them every 

 day from quiet rooms which, while they 

 talk, shall seem to command all the pros- 

 pects of the wide world. 



I should dread to see those who guide 

 special study and research altogether ex- 

 cused from undergraduate instruction, 

 shoiild dread to see them withdraw them- 

 selves altogether from the broad and gen- 

 eral survey of the subjects of which they 

 have sought to make themselves masters. 

 I should equally despair of seeing any stu- 

 dent made a truly serviceable specialist who 

 had not turned to his specialty in the spirit 

 of a broad and catholic learning— unless, 

 indeed, he were one of those rare spirits 

 who once and again appear amongst us, 

 whose peculiar, individual privilege it is to 

 have safe vision of but a little segment of 

 truth and yet keep their poise and reason. 

 It is not the education that concentrates 

 that is to be dreaded, but the education 

 that narrows— that is narrow from the first. 

 I should wish to see every student made, 

 not a man of his task, but a man of the 

 world, whatever his world may be. If it be 

 the world of learning, then he should be a 



