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WILLIAM E. CASTLE 
sions from them. Edison reports that the college men did not 
stand particularly high in the examinations which he set to test 
possession of a mass of miscellaneous information. By implica- 
tion the colleges are to blame. But the colleges are not concerned 
with imparting miscellaneous information to their students. 
If that is what is wanted, the student would do well to stay 
at home and study the World Almanac. The colleges are 
concerned primarily in teaching young people how to think. 
Some one has said that it makes no difference what subject you 
study provided you study it in the right way, so as to master 
it, so as to make it your own, so that if all the books on a subject 
were destroyed, all the facts and statistics about it were for- 
gotten, you could sit down and block out the principles on which 
the subject could be built anew. That is scholarship. 
While it is true, I believe, that all branches of knowledge have 
educational value, it is not true that all have equal educational 
value, or are equally serviceable in developing all types of minds. 
Some studies are more useful as instruments of education at one 
stage of mental development or to one type of mind than to 
another. Experience shows that language study is one of the 
earliest available and most generally useful instruments of educa- 
tion. Students of mankind tell us that in the development of the 
race growth in thought and in its vehicle, language, went hand 
in hand, each process stimulating the other, thought being incapa- 
ble of expression or even of formulation except as suitable lan- 
guage was found for it. What was true of the race is true in the 
development of the individual. Language is indispensable to 
thought but the amount of language study which can profitably 
be undertaken in individual cases varies greatly. Some find the 
mother tongue all they are able to master, and it is indeed ade- 
quate, if the other mental powers are well developed, to place 
at one’s disposal in translation or otherwise the wisdom of all 
the ages. A boy who is dull at language, should not be kept at 
language study all his school days, until his interest is killed in 
studies of every sort, but should be allowed to go on in other 
fields, as he shows capacity to do so. 
