Slichter—Recent Criticism of American Scholarship. 7 
student to account, in seeing that tilings are done at a specified 
time and in specified amounts. It results that the work is ema¬ 
ciated and lifeless, both for instructor and student. The lec¬ 
turer gives in two or three lectures what should be given in 
one, and the student has twelve to eighteen of these periods 
per week instead of half a,s many—numerous lunches instead 
of half as many substantial meals. Such a system I believe 
to be disastrous to the best scholarship. Ao one working under 
such a plan can give or receive the highest inspiration. There 
is too much detail in instruction and too much detail in ad¬ 
ministration. The system has not produced scholars, and we 
may doubt if it has adequately succeeded as an educational 
scheme. Instruction of the higher undergraduates, as well as 
of the graduate students, must depend, I am convinced, upon 
inspiration rather than upon watchfulness. It must hope to 
reflect culture upon the students from the fire of higher in¬ 
vestigative scholarship, rather than expect to force it upon them 
by the pressure of an educational system,. 
It is idle to expect any surrender of educational purpose in 
our colleges and universities. They must exist for the educa¬ 
tion of youth quite as much in the future as in the past. The 
change will come when it becomes apparent that this very work 
can be better done by a different and no more expensive sys¬ 
tem. Associated with such change will come a broadening of 
American scholarship. Instructional positions in American 
colleges and universities will become more attractive to ambi¬ 
tious scholars, and our position in science materially advanced. 
American scholarship seems to be content with the filling 
in of details within boundaries outlined by continental mas¬ 
ters. Men from other countries have mapped out the new 
regions and noted the chief features; American work has con¬ 
sisted in supplying particulars. This is a corollary to what 
we have said about our peculiar educational system. The sci¬ 
entific work of young men, of graduate students, is amply en¬ 
couraged by scholarships and fellowships and the like. Their 
theses, written in this country or abroad, are too often the 
best pieces of work that they ever do, for our encouragement 
stops when one of them begins instructional work. At the time 
