508 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
which lies the disturbing distinction between training and knowledge. 
But, if we inquire further into these matters, I think we shall find 
that the fundamental question is to a large extent one of responsibility. 
Left to himself, a boy or a man will acquire a knowledge of the things 
which interest him, even though they be only the arts of a pickpocket, 
and will obtain a training from experience such as no school or college 
can give. If education is to achieve the great purpose of interesting 
and instructing him while young in the right objects, and also of 
training him for the proper business of his life before it is too late, is 
it not mainly a question of deciding when and how far to take for him, 
or to leave to him, the responsibility of what he is to learn and 
how he is to learn it? If the teacher bears the responsibility dur- 
ing the period of school training, should not the student have a 
large share of responsibility in the quest of knowledge at the university ? 
Now, it is of the essence of responsibility that there should be some- 
thing sudden and unexpected about it. If, before putting a young man 
into a position of trust, you lead him through a kindergarten preparation 
for it, in which he plays with the semblance before being admitted to the 
reality, if you teach him first all the rules and regulations which should 
prevent him from making a mistake, you will effectually smother his 
independence and stifle his initiative. But plunge him into a new 
experience and make him feel the responsibility of his position, 
and you will give him the impulse to learn his new duties and the 
opportunity to show his real powers. It is because I feel that this 
sudden entrance into an environment of new responsibility is so neces- 
sary that I would regard with suspicion any attempt to provide a grad- 
ual transition between school and university methods. 
In matters of discipline and self-control it 1s possible and advisable 
to place responsibility upon school children ; in intellectual matters it is 
not advisable, except for the few who are matured beyond their years. 
It is, therefore, all the more necessary that this should be done at the 
moment when they enter the university. 
This should be the moment of which Emerson says: 
There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction 
that he must take himself for better or worse as his portion; that, though the 
wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but 
through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till. 
The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what 
that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. 
The spirit of independent inquiry, which should dominate all uni- 
versity teaching and learning, is not to be measured, as I have already 
said, by the number of memoirs published, but it is to be tested by the 
extent to which university students are engaged upon work for which 
they feel a responsibility. Visit the universities at the present moment, 
and, in spite of all admirable investigation which is being carried on, 
