Septembeb 20, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



363 



the highest graduate schools of the New 

 World, justly surprises the Old World. 

 Yet the most beautiful feature remains, 

 after all, the quiet intellectual and moral 

 work done in the college halls from the 

 Atlantic to the Pacific. It was my growing 

 acquaintance with the college life that gave 

 me ever new inspiration to tell my country- 

 men the story of American idealism. You 

 know the traditional European prejudice 

 did not admit that idealism could be at 

 home here. America seemed the land of 

 commerce and industry, and all for the sake 

 of gold; the wild chase for outer gain 

 seemed the whole meaning of American 

 effort. No wonder that every educated 

 European who comes with open eyes and 

 has a chance to see not only the outer, but 

 the inner life, feels still to-day like a be- 

 lated Columbus, who has yet to discover 

 the true America, the land of ideal desires 

 and ideal energies. And certainly, of all 

 idealistic emotions of this people, there is 

 none deeper, none purer, none more blessed, 

 than the demand for instruction, for learn- 

 ing, for self-perfection, with its climax in 

 the desire for collegiate education. 



I do not want to be misunderstood, as 

 seeing no fault in the American system of 

 instruction. There are not a few wrong 

 tones in the symphony, wrong tones which 

 hurt the ear of the newcomer, discords to 

 which he will never become insensible. But 

 those fundamental errors belong rather to 

 the school than to the college. It is enough 

 to point to the most devastating one : the 

 lack of mental discipline at the very be- 

 ginning of intellectual growth. The school 

 methods appeal to the natural desires, and 

 do not train in overcoming desire ; they 

 plead instead of commanding, they teach 

 one to follow the path of least resistance 

 instead of teaching to obey. The result is 

 a flabby inefficiency, a loose vagueness and 

 inaccuracy, an acquaintance with a hun- 



dred things and a mastery of none. Public 

 life has to suffer for it; a community 

 which did not get a rigid mental discipline 

 through home and school influence must 

 always remain the plaything of the lower 

 instincts. Such a community will continue 

 to follow without check its untrained im- 

 pulse; it will prefer the yellow, big head- 

 line paper to the serious newspaper which 

 appeals to sober thought ; it will prefer on 

 the stage of the theater and on the stage of 

 life the vulgar vaudeville and the cheap 

 melodrama to the refined and the noble 

 play ; it will be impressed by every glaring 

 outer success and by showy size, by quan- 

 tity instead of quality and value ; it will be 

 swept by every passion of the crowd, ap- 

 plauding mediocrities, enthusiastic for 

 every one who poses for the uncritical, and 

 a quick victim of every short-sighted fancy. 

 And yet can there be any doubt that it is 

 just a political democracy which ought to 

 be protected against such an inner foe? 

 And no one has to suffer more from these 

 sins of the school than the college. How 

 much more the American college might 

 have been able to produce if it could have 

 received into its freshman class young dis- 

 ciplined minds, trained in accurate and 

 careful learning, and in the restraint of 

 primitive impulses. The college would not 

 have been burdened by wasting much of its 

 costly time in repeating the elements of 

 learning and patching up the slang-disfig- 

 ured English language. It would not have 

 been vexed by the hysterical excitement 

 which so often turns the recreating pleasure 

 of sport into a ruinous passion. 



But I would rather contemplate, and 

 must admire the more, what, in spite of all 

 these hindrances, the American college has 

 made and makes to-day and will make in 

 the future out of the entering freshman in 

 the few years until he receives his bachelor 

 diploma. He came as a boy and goes out 



