38 Editorial Comment. 
material interest. It is self-sustaining, unremitting, and demon- 
strative. It commands admiration for its assiduity and earn- 
estness. It commands respects for the numbers which it unites 
in a common aim, and for the revenue which numbers bring 
to the imiversity. The outside world appreciates an education 
which it can call "practical." It understands the value of a 
department in the university which qualifies young men to ac- 
cumulate money. That, it thinks the chief end of all educa- 
tion. So the outside public unites with the inside authorities in 
expressing their satisfaction with the poj^ularity of the school 
and th€ abundance of fees which it brings. They also unite in 
tendering it all the support and fostering care which it needs. 
They supply it with requisite equipment and an adequate corps 
of instructors and assistants. In the abstract, these things are all 
exactly as they should be. Great good results from bringing 
all these professional and industrial schools to as perfect a state 
as possible. 
If we turn to the academic department of the university, we 
obtain a further comprehension of the nature of the environment 
of the geological interest. Here, concisely stated, we find pur- 
sued linguistic studies, mathematical studies, philosophical studies, 
literary studies, and studies in physical and natural science. By 
immemorial prescription, the linguistic, mathematic and philoso- 
phic studies have enjoyed the first place in position and in gen- 
eral esteem. The trivium, took possession of the university by 
right of discovery, and, in its modern guise, has asserted with 
haughty and militant exclusiveness, the righteousness of its ap- 
propriation. As the trivium supplied the means of a liberal ed- 
ucation in an age when the sum of non-j^rofesslonal human 
knowledge was a trivium, so it has always asserted that the old 
triviiun, with a seasoning of mathematics, is the chief essential 
of a liberal education, even since the field of human knowledge 
has become so enlarged that the trivium covers but a small 
fraction of it. The representatives and devotees of the tradi- 
tional culture proclaim that there is no other real culture; 
and since, in scholastic circles, they constitute a large ma- 
jority, they succeed in creating a public sentiment accordant 
with their pretension. Though this public sentiment is not 
the popular one, it is imbibed largely by young men seeking a 
