Mat 13, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



725 



and standards ; and where anything but the 

 best work is rebuked for alma mater's sake 

 and in her name by a man's friends. It 

 has no official marking system and no ex- 

 aminations, but gives judgment upon the 

 spot by one's peers, who demand that each 

 college champion shall put forth his utmost 

 powers. Often this is the only plane in 

 which an individual throughout four years 

 has the very best teaching, and the very 

 best coaching, and the very best practise 

 which can be afforded, along a single line 

 which is not mentioned in the college 

 catalogue, but in which the college unoffi- 

 cially makes him a past master and expert. 

 Yet the college as such, from the first, 

 could see no diploma values and hence no 

 official values whatsoever upon the com- 

 munity plane, apparently because it was 

 not class-room work. Directly and indi- 

 rectly the colleges have gained millions of 

 dollars and thousands of students because 

 of the successful conduct by graduates and 

 undergraduates of the various college 

 activities, but officially, in their diplomas 

 and their catalogues, the colleges do not 

 admit the existence of these activities. A 

 successful hero of the football field may 

 attract to the college more new students 

 than any three professors, but the time and 

 strength thus spent for alma mater do 

 not help him under the marking system or 

 upon examinations. A strong editor of a 

 college periodical or the leader in the cast 

 of a Shakespearean play may do wonders 

 morally or educationally for the college, 

 but usually he gets no official or diploma 

 credit— even in his English courses. The 

 college organization meets any evils in the 

 community plane, not upon that plane, not 

 by a philosophical method, but by a greater 

 emphasis upon the marking system and 

 promotion examinations which belong to 

 the statutory plane. Here again the col- 

 lege activities can say, "If my alma mater 



forsakes me, then the students and alumni 

 will take me up." 



We see, therefore, that when a new order 

 arose on the college community and home 

 planes, the institution did not put itself at 

 the head of this new educational movement, 

 but officially ignored its existence and 

 enacted new standards of marks and pro- 

 motion examinations and courses to meet 

 evils which lay upon another plane. Col- 

 lege evils and vices are chiefly upon the 

 home and community planes, and can be 

 effectually solved only by remedies acting 

 within these planes— by public sentiment 

 within the student body and among the 

 alumni raising the ideals of the community 

 life, and by the leaders in and the owners 

 of the home acting upon the individual 

 members of each home. 



The changes which can be wrought in 

 college upon the individual undergraduate 

 are either physical, mental or moral, which 

 latter term includes religious. These 

 changes may be wrought— largely outside 

 of the statutory plane— by the influence 

 and personal character or teaching of any 

 one of scores of instructors ; by the college 

 community life in any one of the twenty- 

 seven or more college activities; by the 

 general tone and stimulus of the student 

 life ; or by the social, moral or religious 

 uplift or downpuU of scores of college 

 homes, each differing as do ordinary homes 

 and each varying widely from year to year. 

 Thus each little college cosmos presents an 

 almost infinite number of combinations 

 working upon and through the three planes 

 of each student's life, which may well 

 account for the totally different results of 

 the college course in educational but not 

 necessarily diploma values upon the indi- 

 vidual. Yet the college as an institution 

 puts all its official values upon class-room 

 work and promotion examinations and an 



