Mat 13, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



7'23 



lived upon three distinct planes: the stat- 

 utory or governmental plane, wherein the 

 written law defines, commands or forbids 

 certain rights, duties and acts; the con- 

 tract or community plane, wherein eon- 

 tracts, more or less formal, govern his re- 

 lations with his fellows in the community 

 and in his profession or business; and 

 lastly, the home plane, wherein the parent 

 or other head teaches and enforces his pre- 

 cepts and his commands under quite a dif- 

 ferent law than that of the governmental 

 or community planes. 



Turning to the governmental plane, we 

 find that the statute recognizes and pun- 

 ishes legal crimes and misdemeanors but 

 not moral or social vices. It takes no cog- 

 nizance of even the blackest lie unless it 

 assumes the form of legal perjury or of 

 criminal slander or libel. It does not reach 

 private betting or gambling, or many other 

 forms of social vices, any more than it 

 does selfishness, sloth, inattention to busi- 

 ness, breach of contracts, overreaching, 

 Sabbath breaking and thousands of other 

 things which we speak of as moral or social 

 shortcomings. These belong to the com- 

 munity or home planes. 



The statute can not make a man honest 

 or moral or religious any more than it can 

 make him fat or lean, or say what he shall 

 eat or drink, or how he shall train his 

 children or treat his wife. The statute, 

 like all forms of governmental control, is 

 artificial and inherently weak, and covers 

 only the relation of the individual to the 

 government or to those who have joined 

 with him in giving up certain natural 

 rights that they 'may have the protection of 

 a common government. From its very 

 nature, the statutory plane is the weakest 

 and lowest in our lives, unknown in strictly 

 patriarchal times and a necessity only as 

 communities form and grow and inter- 

 mingle. The statute has little to do with 



moral character. If the veriest saint 

 breaks the statute he is guilty of a crime 

 or misdeameanor, and if the worst villain 

 keeps within the written law, or is not 

 proved guilty, he is accounted innocent. 

 By careful observance of the written law a 

 man does not become a model citizen. On 

 the contrary, he may be dishonest, dishon- 

 orable or shiftless in his professional or 

 business career, or be profligate in his 

 home, or be selfish, cross-grained and un- 

 lovely in every way. In fact, it is the 

 latter kind of men who are most likely to 

 observe the letter of the statute. 



When there was no adequate prepara- 

 tory school system below the college, it was 

 the last room of the boy 's education. Now 

 with a complete public school system below 

 it, the college has become the first room of 

 the young man's training for citizenship 

 and should be so regarded. As befits the 

 threshold of its students' citizenship, the 

 college to-day has its clearly defined statu- 

 tory or governmental, its community and 

 its home planes ; but it takes official cogni- 

 zance only of the statutory plane in arriv- 

 ing at diploma values, and, ofSeially and 

 as an institution, neglects and apparently 

 despises the community and home planes 

 and the important educational effects for 

 which they stand in the life of the future 

 citizen. As we shall see, the American col- 

 leges long since and needlessly abandoned 

 any close organic connection with the 

 home and community planes of the college 

 life and concentrated their official notice 

 upon class-room work. 



The college might have continued to use 

 officially a clean and stimulating home life 

 to aid in class-room work and in the devel- 

 opment of citizens who should have high 

 ideals of their duties in the college home 

 and afterwards as husbands and parents 

 in their own homes. But the institution 

 allowed its pendulum to swing from an 



