July 5, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



9 



highly desirable that college students 

 should be free from care for their liveli- 

 hood during the whole period of education, 

 accepting support from their parents or 

 other loving friends. To give this support 

 is the precious privilege of parents, to ac- 

 cept it the precious privilege of children. 

 Nevertheless, it is one of the best results 

 of democracy that young men of capacity 

 and character find it possible to obtain a 

 prolonged education for the professions or 

 for business, although they are obliged to 

 support themselves wholly or in part dur- 

 ing the long period of strenuous study. 

 Endowments, the bounty of the state, or 

 the facilities for obtaining appropriate em- 

 ployment which colleges now provide, pro- 

 cure this freedom for thousands of young 

 Americans every year. The young men 

 thus aided to attain a larger and freer 

 career should invariably feel bound in after 

 life to pass on and amplify the privilege 

 they enjoyed. 



Finally, the student ought to find him- 

 self free to determine the method of his 

 daily life with no more restrictions than 

 the habits and customs of civilized society 

 necessarily impose. His problem will be to 

 regulate his own life wisely by self-control 

 in liberty. Up to his entrance to college 

 his mode of life has probably been regu- 

 lated for him by home rules, or school 

 rules; and he has been almost constantly 

 under the observation of parents or teach- 

 ers, or both. Now, at college, be should be 

 free. He will probably make some mis- 

 takes, at firet, about eating and drinking, 

 sleeping, taking exercise, arranging his 

 hours for work and for play, and using 

 his time; but his mistakes will not be fatal 

 or beyond remedy, and he will form habits 

 based on his own observation and experi- 

 ence and his own volitions. These are the 

 habits that prove trustworthy in adult life. 

 As in the outer world, so in the compara- 

 tively sheltered college world, freedom is 



dangerous for the infirm of purpose and 

 destructive for the vicious; but it is the 

 only atmosphere in which the well-disposed 

 and resolute can develop their strength. 

 Under any college regime, whether liberal 

 or authoritative, a very valuable though 

 dangerous part of the student's freedom is 

 his freedom to choose his comrades, or 

 habitual associates. That choice will show 

 in every individual case whether the young 

 man possesses moral principle and firmness 

 of character or not. If the choice is good, 

 he will be safe in liberty; if the choice is 

 bad, he will be unsafe under any regime. 

 The student ought to choose his own com- 

 rades deliberately, and after some study of 

 the accessible variety of associates. To be 

 forced to accept an unknown group of 

 permanent associates within three weeks of 

 entering college is an unfortunate limita- 

 tion of academic freedom. 



I have thus far spoken as if academic 

 freedom were one thing for teachers and 

 another thing for students ; and, indeed, the 

 aspects and results of that freedom for the 

 mature men whose life work is study and 

 teaching, and for the youth who are only 

 beginners in the intellectual life, are some- 

 what different. Nevertheless, in a college 

 or university there is a perfect solidai-ity of 

 interests between teachers and taught in re- 

 spect to freedom. A teacher who is not 

 supposed to be free never commands the 

 respect or personal loyalty of competent 

 students, and students who are driven to 

 a teacher are never welcome, and can 

 neither impart nor imbibe enthusiasm. 



The real success of a college or univei-sity 

 teacher in the long run depends on his 

 training up a few sincere and devoted dis- 

 ciples. To this process, freedom on both 

 sides is essential. The student must be free 

 to choose the same teacher for several 

 years, and the teacher to hold the same 

 student. There must be a voluntary co- 

 operation of tastes, capacities, and wills for 



