262 Wisconsin state agricultural society. 
as being the best to secure the desired discipline. The individual 
differences between men in mental grasp and power were neglect¬ 
ed, although by defining the amount of preparation necessary to 
enter upon the prescribed course, an attempt was made to equal¬ 
ize these differences. While this secured an even start in the col¬ 
legiate race, it did not confer equal powers of endurance upon the 
students, and in a year or two all the original differences of intel¬ 
lectual endowment were more than ever manifest, because of in¬ 
creased intellectual activity secured by this discipline. Thus 
while the average student was worked up to the full measure of 
his ability, superior men, through lack of sufficient employment 
were apt to form habits of mental irregularity, if not of physical 
dissipation ; while inferior men were so overworked as to lose 
heart, and being carried forward more rapidly than was compat¬ 
ible with thoroughness, formed habits of loose, superficial thinking, 
which, in a great measure, unfitted them for the business of real life. 
The question has been lately raised, whether this system of ex¬ 
clusively intellectual education was not insufficient to meet the 
popular want, and to satisfy the ideal of popular education; and 
it has been strenuously urged by many that physical culture and 
discipline should go hand in hand with intellectual development, 
if the common pursuits of life are to feel the benefits of universal 
education. 
One class of reformers has endeavored to remedy the evils in¬ 
herent in the established college course, without materially chang¬ 
ing its general character. To remedy the difficulties arising from 
the natural inequality of men, the favorite plan has been the se¬ 
lection of optional courses of study, wherein one natural aptitude 
may offset another, so that all students will average together, 
although pursuing different studies. It may be that this, like 
other proposed reforms has been carried too far, and the general 
average of scholarship reduced by this substitution of taste for 
application, rather than elevated, as was the original design: but 
it has at least had this one good result; it has called the attention 
of our educational men to the fact that it is of more importance 
that students graduate with an equivalent amount of mental dis¬ 
cipline, than that they begin their course with an equivalent pre¬ 
paration. 
