870 
liberal education should be limited to those 
only who have such capacities. We urge 
upon the future student of medicine that he 
should pursue a liberal classical course in 
preparation for his professional training. 
He replies that he has no aspirations and 
no ability to be a leader among men; he 
seeks only the best education he can get 
that will fit him for a more humble sphere. 
He skips the college course and devotes all 
his time to his professional studies. In fact, 
the strictly classical course, such as Yale 
best represents at the present day, is per- 
fectly adapted for but one class of people, 
gentlemen of leisure, who are not dependent 
upon their daily toil for their bread. One 
would not ask the hod-carrier to pursue a 
course in the ancient languages before be- 
ginning hisapprenticeship. Nor should one 
require the same of the ordinary professional 
student. 
As an opposite extreme to the conserva- 
tism of Yale may be cited Leland Stanford 
University, in which knowledge of the an- 
cient languages is not indispensable for 
graduation. In this institution twenty- 
two subjects may be offered for admission, 
only one of which (English) is required, 
the remainder to be chosen from the twenty- 
one other courses. This list includes alge- 
bra, geometry, trigonometry, physics, chem- 
istry, physiology, botany, zoology, drawing, 
American, English and ancient history, 
Spanish, French, German, Latin and Greek. 
In the college course certain groups of 
studies must be selected under advice, but 
this is the only restriction upon free choice. 
The effect that this latitude has upon the 
choice of studies is interesting. Of those 
who last year took their major work in Latin 
and Greek there were 76 ; in history and eco- 
nomics, 219; in mathematics, 29; in the 
natural sciences, 223; in modern language, 
80; in English, 140. In the ancient lan- 
guages 151 students were enrolled the first 
semester of last year; in the modern lan- 
SCIENCE. 
[N.S. Von. VI. No. 154, 
guages, 686; in mathematics, 148; in the 
natural sciences, 926. 
The friend of classical culture may justly 
say that the education that seems possible 
at Leland Stanford is a narrow and one- 
sided one. A student who knows nothing 
whatever of the foreign languages is as 
surely a dwarfed and one-sided man as is 
he who studies the languages only and 
none of the natural sciences. It is not to 
be supposed that the students of Leland 
Stanford are of a different class from the 
students of other universities. There their 
choice is almost wholly unrestricted and 
the natural inclination away from the an- 
cient languages is conspicuously shown. 
The only bachelor degree given for work in 
any of the lines possible is that of Bachelor 
of Arts. 
When the old classical idea was yet so 
firmly inwrought into higher education . 
that all else was leather and prunella, 
degrees of all sorts sprung up as mush- 
rooms—Bachelor of Science, of Philos- 
ophy, of Pedagogy, of Music, of En- 
gineering, of Pharmacy, of Agriculture, of 
Mechanics, and of goodness knows what. 
They were frank statements that such de- 
grees did not mean liberal culture and were 
given rather as placebos. These degrees 
have, fortunately, largely been abandoned, 
the older degree of Bachelor of Arts sup- 
planting them; an acknowledgment that 
liberal culture may be obtained in other 
ways than the old classical one. 
T am aware that many will lift up their 
hands in classical horror at the bare sug- 
gestion that such a thing is possible as a 
Bachelor of Arts course in science, thor- 
oughly convinced that the wolf has at last 
stolen bodily the raiment of the sheep. 
The effect of the present requirements 
for the admission to the colleges and uni- 
versity of Kansas has been in a high degree 
disastrous to science instruction in the sec- 
ondary schools. Chemical laboratories 
