The Mediaeval 
 
 AND 
 
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 ^ PRINCETON, N. J. ^ 
 
 Presented byPVe^^ \ cX (2^\^-V VcA-V^o r~\ 
 
 LD4606 
 
 Division 
 Section ■ 
 
Or that the past 7vill always win, 
 A glory from its being far. 
 
 From art, from nature, from the schools. 
 Let random influences glance. 
 
 The Mediaeval 
 
 AND 
 
 The True Modern Spirit 
 
 IN 
 
 Education 
 
 A THESIS 
 
 On Education, with a Few Truisms, Commentaries and Suggestions on thk 
 
 Princeton Curriculum, by a Loyal and Grateful Alumnus, 
 
 Twenty-five Years after Graduation. 
 
 
 PRIVATELY PRINTED, NOT PUBLISHED 
 In April, 1903 
 
PBE8S OF 
 
 IHb NEW ERA PRINTJNS OOMPANK 
 
 LANCASTER, PA. 
 
The Medieval and the True Modern 
 Spirit in Education. 
 
 Written at a distance and some time after severing 
 direct connection with the University these observa- 
 tions may gain in perspective while they may lose 
 in exact reflection of present conditions. Wholly 
 impersonal, they represent the result of years of 
 experience, also of questioning students in different 
 colleges, especially those of Princeton, Columbia, 
 Yale, and Harvard universities. They purposely 
 omit all reference to questions of moral and physical 
 education. In course of comment on education as 
 it is at Princeton an original attempt is made to 
 develop a fundamental theory of education which it 
 is hoped may be of some service. This paper is 
 therefore partly critical partly constructive. 
 
 Let us love the Alma Mater, but not blindly. 
 
 It is the part of loyalty to an institution to recog- 
 nize its defects and its merits, not to publish abroad, 
 but to discuss them in the inner circle of friends, who 
 may differ as to means but are absolutely united as 
 to the end to be attained. This, all would agree, is 
 to keep Princeton to the front in religion, letters, 
 science and the service of the State. 
 
 As regards the public and educational life of the 
 
 3 
 
4 The Medicsval and the 
 
 country, we must take more account of changed con- 
 ditions ; of the fact that we are no longer preparing 
 largely for the ministry, although strong influence 
 should be exerted in this direction, and that while 
 law and medicine still make large demands on our 
 graduates, new objects of education are rapidly 
 springing up. There is the public service in city, 
 state and nation, the call for college-trained men in 
 the government scientific bureaus, in the colonies ; 
 the large demand for teachers incidental to the rapid 
 extension of educational institutions throughout the 
 country, and for men trained in literary lines. Is 
 Princeton doing her full share in entering men into 
 these lists ? This could only be fairly answered by 
 careful statistical inquiry, but we must not forget 
 that Princeton once held a leading position in the 
 national g-overnment and that this is no lono-er the 
 case. At present only a single graduate holds a 
 highly influential government office. In state ser- 
 vice, especially in New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsyl- 
 vania, some of our graduates are prominent. Among 
 great lists of appointees recently made under the 
 reform government of the city of New York, Prince- 
 ton graduates were conspicuous by their absence. 
 In the fillinor of hundreds of leoral and other offices 
 under the new grovernment but two Princeton men 
 were chosen. Both, it is true, have achieved con- 
 spicuous success. 
 
 It appears that Princeton is not in as close touch 
 as the third college of the country should be with 
 modern life in any of its manifold phases. As a col- 
 lege every historical and natural advantage is hers 
 
True Modern Spirit in Education 5 
 
 and it is the coUecje that we have in mind in this 
 paper. 
 
 Symptoms of the lack of public appreciation of the 
 Princeton educational system are found in the lack 
 of gifts to the University outside of those which come 
 from the large and ever-increasing circle of loyal 
 alumni. Our curriculum certainly does not inspire 
 public interest or confidence. It has the general 
 reputation of being excessively conservative. It 
 classes us with all the smaller colleges and separates 
 us from all the larger universities of the country and 
 the world. There is, moreover, a profound dissatis- 
 faction on the part of many of the most thoughtful 
 of our alumni with its present stationary or rather 
 reactionary condition. The writer's own thoughts 
 were turned several years ago in this direction by 
 the casual remark of an alumnus, who said: "Say 
 
 what you please of one can get an education 
 
 there." 
 
 One might pronounce with equal or greater stric- 
 ture and more or less fairly on other colleges but we 
 shall gain more at Princeton by cultivating a warm 
 admiration for the strong and good qualities of our 
 rivals and a judicial sense of our own vulnerable 
 points. 
 
 If our present college course is not accomplishing 
 what it should, let us reconstruct it ; if other colleo-es 
 are rising to modern conditions, let us frankly ad- 
 mire, not for imitation, but to build a system of our 
 own as effective or more so. 
 
6 The MedicEval ajid the 
 
 AN ILL-BALANCED CURRICULUM. 
 
 It is first to be noted that during the past twenty- 
 five years the Freshman and Sophomore curricula 
 have stood practically still, the new riches of the 
 University having been chiefly poured into the Junior 
 and Senior years, with the result of a total lack of 
 balance in the course as a whole. As a fact, we 
 have a two-year mediaeval and a two-year modern 
 curriculum, largely unconnected ; and the question 
 is, whether one is really preparing for the other. 
 
 This will, however, be made more clear after we 
 have considered the relations of School, Freshman 
 and Sophomore life, the nature of the mediaeval and 
 of the true modern spirit in education. 
 
 UnatU^active to the Schools. — As related to the 
 schools, two head masters, both loyal alumni and 
 exceptionally able educators, have recently expressed 
 their dissatisfaction with the lack of attraction in our 
 early curriculum. If one's advice were asked in the 
 case of a student with strong natural science tastes, 
 could one conscientiously recommend the early 
 Princeton curriculum ? Take a single instance. Mr. 
 A. (a man of classical and philosophical training) has 
 a son of fifteen, of strong scientific tastes, preparing 
 for Princeton. The boy is now reading Virgil and a 
 Greek reader, and at eighteen will be ready to enter. 
 At this time Princeton will demand of Mr. A,, "We 
 know more about this matter than you do ; the mind 
 of your boy still needs training in the classics, he 
 must continue until he is twenty. According to our 
 theory of education one third of your son's entire 
 
True Moder7i Spirit hi Education 7 
 
 life should be given to those studies. He will then 
 be admitted to the observational work of science." 
 What Oxford would demand of the same student 
 will be seen on another page. 
 
 I am not holding a brief for President Eliot's 
 policy as a whole, in general I am opposed to it ; in 
 some respects it has set back the cause of educa- 
 tion ; mere change has been mistaken for progress ; 
 there is a misdirection of fine intellectual material ; 
 there is a lack of sequence and logical development 
 of studies which is theoretically and practically at 
 faolt, especially prejudicial to scientific development, 
 and against which many Harvard professors are 
 strongly outspoken. 
 
 But when we candidly apply to the two systems, 
 as actually operating, the criterion of results we find 
 that : Harvard graduates in every sphere of human 
 activity are as successful as or more successful than 
 Princeton graduates ; and we must certainly judge a 
 system rather by its results than by its theoretical 
 value. 
 
 Whatever one may think of this freedom of 
 studies in general, it has certainly been masterly in 
 its attractiveness to the schools and to a very large 
 proportion of parents of culture but without college 
 affiliations throughout the country. By raising the 
 standard a few months above that of Princeton 
 and Yale, Harvard has attracted the cleverest and 
 most able students ; by enabling freshmen to hear 
 some of the ablest men in the University she holds out 
 a further inducement. It is a great mistake to sup- 
 pose that sub-freshmen are influenced only by social 
 
8 The MedicBval and the 
 
 and athletic considerations in their choice of a col- 
 lege. The thoughtless and backward students may 
 be ; the more thoughtful ones are attracted strongly 
 by the nature of the work offered in the earlier years. 
 From personal questioning in cases where I have 
 endeavored to exert some influence, I have been met 
 with the objection, " I prefer the academic course of 
 training, I want to study a certain subject. If I go to 
 Princeton I shall have to wait until I am twenty or 
 twenty-one years of age before I shall be allowed to 
 study it." Altogether, the Harvard system holds 
 out the strongest inducement to hiorh class enterino- 
 students ; the freshman is placed under an adviser 
 as to choice of subjects, and the range of subjects 
 recommends itself to young men of eighteen or nine- 
 teen. I can positively testify to the immediate intel- 
 lectual stimulus resulting from this system. "What 
 do you think of the Harvard elective system ? " I 
 asked a prominent New England school teacher. 
 "I do not know about the system as a whole," he 
 replied, "but I know that most of our boys become 
 interested and get to work as soon as they reach 
 there." 
 
 As regards the early introduction of scientific 
 courses, some of my old colleagues would consider 
 it revolutionary, and I myself would not consider it 
 at all advisable to open a general course in geology 
 to freshmen ; yet one hears the popular course 
 under Professor Shaler spoken of as one of the most 
 stimulating. Last year, on the occasion of a com- 
 petitive examination for the U. S. Geological Survey, 
 thirteen of the candidates were former auditors of 
 Shaler. 
 
True Modern Spirit in Education 9 
 
 Granted that we had an ideal educational system 
 at Princeton, we would still be handicapped if we 
 did not secure our share of the best intellectual 
 stock in the country and in the schools. A course 
 of study which would attract the most cultivated 
 parents as well as the brightest sons would furnish 
 a larger share of the promising new material out of 
 which strong men are developed. The most sys- 
 tematic and strenuous efforts should be made to 
 establish and maintain amono- schoolmasters and 
 pupils throughout the country the highest regard 
 and respect for our courses in the freshman and 
 sophomore years. 
 
 So much is said of system and organization in 
 these pages that counter emphasis must be laid at 
 the outset on men, that is, on the personality of 
 teachers. Better a great teacher than a great sys- 
 tem ; one McCosh or one Brackett than ten com- 
 mittees on pedagogy. If there is one feature above 
 others in which President Eliot has served Harvard 
 it is in his selection of stimulating men, and in his 
 elimination of men who have proved themselves in- 
 capable and unfit. The first duty of a college is not 
 to its professors but to its students. 
 
 Negative Influence of the first two Years. — Can we 
 maintain that the Princeton students entering for the 
 B.A. degree become interested and get to work as 
 soon as they enter Princeton ? Do they find much 
 to interest them ? Four hours Greek, four hours 
 Latin, four hours mathematics, and one paltry hour 
 in the mother tongue, recently increased to two. 
 Where are the riches of modern literature, the 
 
lo The Mediceval and the 
 
 splendid achievements of science, the refining influ- 
 ences of art, the contact with public service ? From 
 all this inspiring vision the freshman is debarred and 
 the sophomore gets but a partial glimpse. Here 
 and there, some able classical and mathematical 
 teachers in the earlier years arouse a wave of inter- 
 est, as brilliant teachers can do in any subject ; but 
 it was my own experience twenty-five years ago and 
 that of all freshmen whom I have been interrogat- 
 ing for some years past, that the general effect of 
 the first two years is deadening. 
 
 In theory, the freshmen are drinking in classical 
 culture and acquiring a rare and unusual mental 
 training ; in practice, or as a matter of fact, they are 
 going through drudgery, through a continuation of 
 school boy life, through a daily mill of dullness to 
 those who have no predisposition for languages or 
 mathematics ; guided by translations, seldom taught 
 actually to use the language, as the students of Eng- 
 lish public schools and universities are, but chiefly 
 to translate and parse. Even if this theory of mental 
 training were a good one, we cannot claim that it 
 has been fairly applied, because of the lack of expe- 
 rience and adequate training on the part of many of 
 the younger teachers. At the present time many of 
 the divisions are partly in the hands of men who 
 have not received the doctor's degree. Owing to 
 the unequal distribution of the riches of the Univer- 
 sity, the chief wealth of new teaching blood has gone 
 to benefit the junior and senior years. The state- 
 ment can be made without reservation that on the 
 average the freshman in 1873 had a higher general 
 
True Modern Spirit in Education 1 1 
 
 standard of instruction than the freshman in 1902 ; 
 the teachers in 1873, Cross, Halsey, Eddy, Hart, all 
 being men of experience. After the grind of the fresh- 
 man year the sophomore returns, knowing the real 
 freedom of colleore life — for his seventh or eisfhth 
 year of classical disciplinary work counting his school 
 life. Small wonder that the sophomore has become 
 a ' problem.' He enjoys a little more latitude, logic, 
 history, a limited amount of chemistry and physics, 
 English in very limited quantities, Latin, Greek and 
 mathematics in abundance. 
 
 Some of the results, so far as one can observe the 
 average student, are skepticism as to the merits of 
 work, indifference to education as a principle, lack 
 of culture, oreneral Philistinism, ig-norance both of 
 books and of current affairs, illiteracy in spelling and 
 expression, absorption in athletic sports. The offi- 
 cial attitude of the collegfe towards the freshmen as 
 an inferior order of beings intellectually is, to a cer- 
 tain extent, responsible for the general attitude of 
 the undergraduate body towards this class, and has 
 led to the creation, one cannot say revival, of cer- 
 tain boyish customs. Freshmen were treated more 
 as men in 1873 than they are in 1902. There is a 
 resulting immaturity, not only in manner and in con- 
 duct but in intellectual attitude ; but a more serious 
 indie tjnejit agaijist these tiuo years is that it has failed 
 to prepare the men for the modern training of the 
 juitior and senior years. 
 
12 The Medicsval and the 
 
 WHAT IS MEDIEVALISM? 
 
 As Huxley observes : " The mediaeval university looked 
 backwards ; it professed to be a storehouse of old knowledge, 
 and except in the way of dialectic cobweb -spinning, its pro- 
 fessors had nothing to do with novelties. Of the historical 
 and physical (natural) sciences, of criticism and laboratory 
 practice it knew nothing. Oral teaching was of supreme 
 importance on account of the cost and rarity of manuscripts. 
 The modern university looks forward, and is a factory of 
 new knowledge ; its professors have to be at the top of the 
 wave of progress. Research and criticism must be the 
 breath of their nostrils ; laboratory work the main business 
 of the scientific student ; books his main helpers. . . . The 
 cardinal fact in the university question appears to me to be 
 this : That the student to whose wants the mediaeval uni- 
 versity was adjusted, looked to the past and sought book 
 learning, while the modern looks to the future and seeks 
 the knowledge of things." * 
 
 Mediaevalism in education is a general attitude of 
 mind toward both the subjects, the methods and the 
 ends. It is the receptive and critical rather than the 
 productive. It should not for a moment be confused 
 with classicism. The relatively non-productive Ro- 
 mans were partially mediaevalists, but the highly 
 productive Greeks were in no sense mediaevalists. 
 Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were eminently men of 
 their period, or moderns, in education, as we learn 
 from their frequently reiterated views. If these 
 great men in their discourses on education had rec- 
 ommended the youth of Greece to devote ten of the 
 formative years of their lives first to the Mycenaean 
 
 * " Life and Letters," vol. 2, 328-329. 
 
True Modern Spirit in Educatioji 13 
 
 language and culture, and second to the Egyptian 
 lanoruag^e and culture, then those who maintain that 
 our modern youth should devote the entire formative 
 period of their minds to ancient languages might 
 rightfully claim to be classicists. The true classi- 
 cist in education would therefore appear to be one 
 who follows most closely the highest classical models 
 in education, and these are certainly the models set 
 by the Greeks, both in their methods and in their 
 results. 
 
 Plato, as a classic model observes: "We next 
 come to arithmetic, geometry and astronomy . . . 
 all citizens shall learn the rudiments of these sciences, 
 not because of the necessities of practical life but be- 
 cause these are endowments belonging to the divine 
 nature. By a good method the teaching of these 
 sciences may be made attractive and interesting ; so 
 that no force may be required to compel youth to 
 learny''' We thus find the highest classical author- 
 ity for the modern ideals of education, and that the 
 Greeks, while anticipating us in the sciences, gave 
 ethics, philosophy, literature and science their proper 
 balance and proportion. Their system resulted in 
 the most remarkable achievements in the way of pro- 
 duction the world has ever known. 
 
 This is in contrast to the practice of the mediaeval 
 
 * Compulsory education is for the school perhaps, certainly not for the col- 
 lege or university. A course which does not interest and attract is a failure. 
 A teacher who year after year fails to interest, attract or inspire, has mistaken 
 his profession and should take up some other calling. Stimulus and interest, 
 thoroughness and sequence in the course of study, may be taken as the methods 
 of handling pupils as set forth by Plato, while the subjects he recommended 
 were exactly those of our junior and senior curricula. 
 
14 The MedicBval and the 
 
 educators, in the renaissance of classical learning, 
 whose maxim was to study books, not nature ; it 
 never occurred to the mediaeval compilers to examine 
 the things about them, the birds, the fishes, flowers, 
 and leaves, or even human society ; their entire time 
 was occupied in studying and discussing what Aris- 
 totle and Pliny had to say about these matters. 
 
 This is the receptive rather than productive, the 
 centripetal rather than centrifugal spirit in education 
 and in learning. 
 
 THE TRUE MODERN SPIRIT. 
 
 One may ask at this point, what are these Greek- 
 modern ideals? What is the true modern spirit, 
 inculcated by Greek masters ? Have we gained a 
 fuller perception and clearer analysis of the ideals 
 and aims of education ? It is doubtful. In the 
 smoke and confusion about elective and required 
 courses the fallacy has got abroad that moderji sub- 
 jects constitute the essence of the true modern spirit 
 of education. Nothing could be further from the 
 truth. When we consider how entirely diverse the 
 subjects are on which the minds of great men have 
 been bred down the ages, we realize that it is not 
 the subject but the spirit. I can fancy a modern lan- 
 guage taught in a most intensely mediaeval fashion, 
 and an ancient language under a different type of 
 teacher, as the source of the most modern spirit. 
 
 If we would teach a youth, we may still safely fol- 
 low Socrates' rule that the less we think for him and 
 the more he thinks for himself the better. We want 
 
True Modern Spirit in Education 15 
 
 to turn out thinkers both in the theoretical and prac- 
 tical spheres of life ; men whose action is controlled 
 by reflection. 
 
 In this endeavor to produce thinkers and men, 
 back of all curricula, of all adjustments of required 
 and elective studies, we must constantly set before 
 us the true modern spirit of education, namely the 
 inculcation of the forces which underlie the intellec- 
 tual and moral progress of the individual and of 
 the race. 
 
 Write it down on the tables of the heart and mind 
 that these are : First, knowledge of right and wrong, 
 and the sense of beauty and fitness ; second, knowl- 
 edge of tradition, of books, of the experience of other 
 men in the present and previous generations ; third, 
 knowledge by direct and personal observation of 
 men and nature ; fourth, the truths which may be 
 derived from this knowledge by processes of reason- 
 ing ; fifth, the benefits which may be conferred on 
 mankind by conveying these truths through powers 
 of expression in speaking and writing ; sixth, and 
 finally as the highest goal of education, the produc- 
 tion of new ideas out of the study of past experience 
 and out of natural experiment. These are the six 
 grand forces of modern life and therefore of educa- 
 tion, which are as essential to the perfectly educated 
 man as the six great systems of organs in the human 
 body are to the man of ideal physical development. 
 They are also reflected in six great natural gifts or 
 constitutional predispositions of men, one having the 
 gift for truth, another for beauty, another for learn- 
 ing, another for observation, another for reasoning, 
 
1 6 The Medicsval and the 
 
 another for expression, another for creative produc- 
 tion. The rare man, the genius, is he who combines 
 the largest number of these gifts in the largest 
 measure. 
 
 The first four forces are purely receptive, or cen- 
 tripetal. Ethics and aesthetics, book learning, obser- 
 vation and reasoning may all be pursued in course 
 of a monastic existence, totally without benefit to 
 one's fellow men. The last two forces, expression 
 and production, are the centrifugal applications of 
 knowledge to service, and it is here that education 
 reaches its highest point. 
 
 The six great forces in 
 
 The final end and object of 
 
 education. 
 
 education. 
 
 Ethical and sesthetic. 
 
 Training 
 
 Learning. 
 
 
 Observation. 
 
 and 
 
 Reasoning. 
 
 Expression. 
 
 
 Production. 
 
 Service. 
 
 Granting, for the time, that ideal education in its 
 last analysis comes down to the cultivation of these 
 forces, the mediaeval and the Greek-modern theories 
 may now be contrasted in respect to each. 
 
 I. TRUTH AND BEAUTY. 
 
 "Again, many of you think it is not only a waste of time, 
 but a positive sin, to read novels and poetry and general 
 literature, to cultivate in any way the imagination, to take 
 an interest in painting or sculpture or music. You have yet 
 
True Modern Spirit in Education 17 
 
 to learn that although parrots and other imitative animals 
 can get on without imagination, there is no such thing in 
 existence as an unimaginative scientific man. That you 
 have some imagination and individuality is evidenced by 
 your differentiation from all other students of science classes; 
 but have you these well developed, and have you those other 
 quahties which are absolutely necessary for the success of a 
 scientific worker ? Imagination is far and away the most 
 important ; but there are also judgment and common sense, 
 and the love of truth and the power of self-sacrifice, which 
 seem always to accompany the pursuit of science." * 
 
 The divine order of truth and beauty is at the 
 foundation of all things and forms the soul of educa- 
 tion. It is aside from the present discussion whether 
 ethics and aesthetics were more of less appreciated 
 by mediaevalists than by moderns. Without truth as 
 the central principle education is fruitless. In the 
 sphere of aesthetic cultivation we are on more de- 
 batable ground, as will be readily seen from the fol- 
 lowing comparison. French environment from child- 
 hood abounds in aesthetic cultivation while perhaps 
 less insistent on the element of truth. German, 
 English and American, in short, Teutonic education 
 is deficient in the element of beauty, while perhaps 
 more insistent on the element of truth. Teutonic 
 education is, on the whole, of greater service to the 
 world. The combination of these elements is the 
 ideal to be sought by the educator. The inculcation 
 of this combination is through religion, nature, classi- 
 cal and modern literature, and art. 
 
 * Inaugural address of Prof. John Perry, Nature, October 23, 1902, p. 645. 
 
1 8 The Medicsval and the 
 
 II. LEARNING. 
 
 " With this close hold upon practical life and this con- 
 stant interest in the politics of the world, especially of Eng- 
 land and the United States, no one could be less like that 
 cloistered student who is commonly taken as the typical 
 man of learning. But Lord Action was a miracle of learn- 
 ing. Of the sciences of Nature and their practical applica- 
 tions in the arts he had indeed no more knowledge than 
 any cultivated man of the world is expected to possess. 
 But of all the so-called ' human subjects' his mastery was 
 unequalled. Learning was the business of his life. He 
 was gifted with a singularly tenacious memory. . . . The 
 passion for acquiring knowledge which his German educa- 
 tion had fostered ended by becoming a snare for him, be- 
 cause it checked his productive powers. It absorbed so 
 much of his time that little was left for literary composition. 
 It made him think that he could not write on a subject till 
 he had read everything, or nearly everything, that others 
 had written about it."* 
 
 Mediae valism was distinctively the period of book 
 learning. The survival of mediaevalism is the sur- 
 vival of faith in this single factor of education as of 
 paramount value and importance. This is merely 
 the centripetal h-adition factor which must precede 
 the centrifugal production factor. 
 
 General information, knowledge of tradition and 
 history as set forth in books and booklore, of litera- 
 ture and science, represent what we gain from what 
 other men have done for us. The late Lord Acton 
 
 * Special correspondent of the Evening Post, London, June 23, 1902. 
 The Evening Post, Friday, July 18, 1902. 
 
True Modern Spirit in Education 19 
 
 may be cited as a modern medisevalist of the highest 
 type, of vast learning, of limited production ; the les- 
 son of his life is extremely impressive. 
 
 By way of contrast to Acton, Victor Hugo, Balzac, 
 Browning, Tennyson, our own Fiske may be cited as 
 endowed with both factors, with stores of learning 
 which they were ready to pour into expression, into 
 the conversations, debates, and discussions of their 
 men and women or into pages of history. Darwin 
 while at Cambridofe neglected sources of book knowl- 
 edge ; but was led back to book learning after he 
 had become attracted to science by observation and 
 found that it was necessary to draw from the re- 
 corded observations of others ; and he became a man 
 more learned in books than any scientific man of his 
 generation, a fine illustration, by the way, of the 
 principle that the first aim of the teacher or the in- 
 stitution should be to enlist the spiiHt of the student 
 in some subject ; once enlisted the value and necessity 
 of correlated knowledge or learning becomes appareitt. 
 Book learning must occupy a very large amount of 
 time and it is of course absurd to depreciate book 
 learning in education, as is done in some faddist 
 schools, in early college specialization, or in the ex- 
 treme application of the laboratory system. The 
 point is, that in the mind of every teacher and in the 
 educational theory of the institution there should be a 
 clear realization of the exact position which it occu- 
 pies in relation to the other forces of education. 
 
20 The MedicBval and the 
 
 III. OBSERVATION. 
 
 " You know much of what has been done, but have you 
 the power to discover, to add to the world's knowledge ? 
 Your knowledge has been derived from books and lectures ; 
 you have now to learn that a week in the laboratory, during 
 which you seem to crawl, during which for examination 
 purposes you do less than in reading ten lines of a text- 
 book, is really of more value to your scientific education 
 than a month's hard reading. This is almost unbeliev- 
 able to you who are such adepts in passing examinations, 
 yet it is quite true. Lectures and lessons have spoon-fed 
 you until now ; lectures and lessons will in future teach you 
 to feed yourselves." * 
 
 " But how willingly I would as a poet exchange some 
 of this lumbering, ponderous, helpless knowledge of books, 
 for some experience of life and man." f 
 
 Here is the keynote of the transition from book 
 learning to original observation of men, of facts and 
 things, of nature, as the only absolute sources of 
 philosophical knov^^ledge. This gift of observation, 
 quick and keen in children, probably inherited from 
 our ancestral life w^here powers of observation w^ere 
 factors in survival, is studiously ignored in the medi- 
 aeval system of education. It is the fountain from 
 v^hich has flowed all our knowledge of the universe 
 — with its incalculable benefits to man — not the 
 least of which is his loftiness of purpose and spirit. 
 The world holds its own by learning, it moves by 
 observation. 
 
 * From abstract of inaugural address of Prof. John Perry, Nature, October 
 23, 1902, p. 645. 
 
 •]- Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Robert Browning, March 20, 1845. 
 
True Modern Spirit in Education 21 
 
 The college is primarily responsible for the per- 
 sistent warping, curbing and discouraging of this 
 God-given faculty even in the home and school life, 
 because it iofnores observation in its entrance re- 
 quirements, excepting in so far as some recent con- 
 cessions have been made to it in two of the sciences. 
 Here I may quote from a noteworthy recent address 
 by the head master of one of the most successful 
 colleges in England. "A school preparation should 
 be of a kind which will foster the desire and develop 
 the power to overcome difficulties ; it should give 
 self-reliance and sufficient knowledge of scientific 
 principles to enable the pupil in after life to under- 
 stand changing conditions and see their trend. 
 Above all, school work should encourage the spirit 
 of inquiry which finds delight in making new ob- 
 servations and experiments with whatever resources 
 are available. The principle upon which Humboldt 
 constructed Prussian education a century ago was : 
 whatever we wish to see characteristic of our nation 
 we must first implant in our schools. Assuredly if 
 we would prepare our scholars for life, the supreme 
 intellectual preparation is found in methods which 
 evoke the faculty, the originality, the mental re- 
 sourcefulness of our pupils. It is for us to see that 
 the subjects and methods of teaching in our schools 
 are such as to promote the development of these 
 qualities, for national progress depends upon them." 
 
 The college, again, is responsible if, when young 
 men are entrusted to its care, it does not at once 
 recognize that this grandest of human faculties must 
 be continuously cultivated and encouraged ; if it 
 
22 The MedicEval and the 
 
 does not recognize that what we observe is less vital 
 than that we observe at all. Food for observation 
 is what is needed ; not always the same food ; 
 neither is it necessarily in the scientific sphere ; it 
 may be in the poetical, literary, classical, social, or 
 political, as most admirably put by Montaigne : 
 
 " This great world which some do yet multiply as several 
 species under one genus, is the mirror wherein we are to 
 behold ourselves, to be able to know ourselves as we ought 
 to do in true bias. In short, I would have this to be the 
 book my young gentleman should study with the most at- 
 tention. . . . 
 
 " Truth and reason are common to every one, and are no 
 more his who spake them first, than his who speaks them 
 after : 'tis no more according to Plato, than according to 
 me, since both he and I equally see and understand them. 
 Bees cull their several sweets from this flower and that 
 blossom, here and there where they find them, but them- 
 selves afterwards make the honey, which is all and purely 
 their own, and no more thyme and marjoram : so the several 
 fragments he borrows from others, he will transform and 
 shuffle together to compile a work that shall be absolutely 
 his own ; that is to say, his judgment, his instruction, 
 labour and study, tend to nothing else but to form that. He 
 is not obliged to discover whence he got the materials, that 
 have assisted him, but only to produce what he has himself 
 done with them. . . . 
 
 " The boy we would breed has a great deal less time to 
 spare ; he owes but the first fifteen or sixteen years of his 
 life to education ; the remainder is due to action. Let us, 
 therefore, employ that short time in necessary instruction."* 
 
 * Montaigne, Vol. I, pp. 177, 187, 195. 
 
True Modeini Spirit in Education 23 
 
 Observation in the experience of every observer 
 becomes one of the strongest motive powers or in- 
 centives to book learning. 
 
 Here we may refer to the lack of sequence between 
 the mediaeval and the modern years of Princeton edu- 
 cation, to what has been styled above an "ill-balanced 
 curriculum." One can never forg^et the exhilaration 
 of entrance into the junior year. For men of all but 
 exclusively linguistic or mathematical tastes it is like 
 escape from a monastery. The college bell summons 
 to philosophy, psychology, political science, physics, 
 astronomy ! But as the student proceeds he dis- 
 covers two fatal defects in himself: first, his previous 
 training has not fitted him for original observational 
 sciences ; second, he has no foundation of learning 
 for his secondary sciences, no thoroughly funda- 
 mental or practical knowledge of chemistry or phys- 
 ics, such as he requires for his geology or biology. 
 Having devoted eight years of his life to Latin and 
 Greek including more than half of his freshman and 
 sophomore years, he finds that in an ill-balanced 
 curriculum little account has been taken of the prec- 
 ious value of time in relation to subjects and masters 
 in education. On translations under inexperienced 
 teachers time has been fairly lavished and now for 
 want of time he hurries through a grand subject, like 
 astronomy, under a grand master, at such a rate of 
 speed that the higher educational value of the sub- 
 ject is lost and only the lower informational value 
 remains.* 
 
 *To this haste rather than to any lack of ability and the inspiration on the 
 part of our two great teachers of physics and astronomy must be attributed the 
 fact that Princeton has not turned more men into these subjects. 
 
24 The Mediceval and the 
 
 Thus, quite unconsciously as a rule, the student 
 experiences the fact that the mediaeval education is 
 not articulated with the modern, and has not pre- 
 pared him for it ; he never realizes until later in life 
 if at all what he has lost by the non-cultivation of his 
 original powers of observation through the long 
 period beginning in school life and running through 
 early college life. 
 
 IV. REASONING. 
 
 The previous forces, beauty and truth, book learn- 
 ing, observation, do not imply reasoning power. I 
 have in mind two most gifted observers, profound 
 students and prolific writers, who were totally devoid 
 of logic. The courses most calculated to develop 
 this power are logic, philosophy, the history of the 
 sciences — more especially where taught by personal 
 contact and discussion between master and student. 
 In all this sphere the Princeton curriculum is theor- 
 etically strong. We breed sound thinkers. The 
 practical cultivation of reasoning power by the in- 
 ductive-deductive method must be separately developed 
 by the criticism of the teacher in every branch of 
 original work. 
 
 Thus far we have considered the centripetal or 
 receptive factors in education, although observation 
 and reasoning are on the border land. We now 
 pass to the purely centrifugal factors, the altruistic 
 ends of education. 
 
True Modern Spirit in Ed2ication 25 
 
 V. EXPRESSION. 
 
 " For my part, I venture to doubt the wisdom of attempt- 
 ing to mould one's style by any other process than that of 
 striving after the clear and forcible expression of definite 
 conceptions, in which process the Glassian precept, ' First 
 catch your definite conceptions,' is probably the most diffi- 
 cult to obey. But still, I mark among distinguished con- 
 temporary speakers and writers of English, saturated with 
 antiquity, not a few to whom, it seems to me, the study of 
 Hobbes might have taught dignity, of Swift concision and 
 clearness, of Goldsmith and Defoe simplicity." 
 
 The gist of Huxley's famous sentence quoted 
 above is that ideas, practice, and the native literature 
 are the three chief forces in the cultivation of style. 
 
 The mediaeval spirit has always been characterized 
 by prejudice to the mother tongue. Formerly it was 
 seen in the writing of the Bible and all works of sci- 
 ence in Latin, now it is seen in the reliance upon 
 Latin and Greek as adequate in the cultivation of 
 the art of expression. It is one of the most remark- 
 able features of modern times that this prejudice still 
 survives and is expressed in our college curricula. 
 
 The English system at Princeton is certainly intro- 
 duced too late ; as part of the great preparation for 
 the work of the junior and senior years English 
 should receive far more attention and time in the 
 freshmen and sophomore years. The writer's at- 
 tention was called to the ill-balanced condition of the 
 English courses by an excellent and conscientious 
 student who spoke of the English in the freshman 
 year as regarded by the students as a joke, namely, 
 
26 The Mediceval and the 
 
 as an hour's exercise with a text-book, never pre- 
 pared beforehand, nor seriously considered by any 
 one. This is a positive retrogression from our curri- 
 culum of a quarter century back. Not many years 
 ago, a professor from another university came to 
 Princeton to learn our methods. Since that time 
 Harvard, Yale and Columbia have all introduced 
 extensive and effective Engrlish training- in the fresh- 
 man year. 
 
 Princeton still holds back partly from inadequate 
 endowment but partly also from principle. One of 
 the writer's classical friends remarked : "I trust these 
 new ideas (of English education) will not be rapidly 
 introduced, and that my son, at least, will find his 
 English education in the classics, which are ade- 
 quate to give him all the necessary powers of style." 
 On this point it may be said that the classics as 
 generally taught in American colleges fail to have 
 the productive and constructive value in expression 
 which is afforded by the English system. In Eng- 
 land there is a constant interchange of classical 
 and English expression, and style is thereby culti- 
 vated and developed. In America, on the other 
 hand, the chief process in classical education is 
 translation, parsing, translation. As the college en- 
 trance examination approaches translation increases 
 in intensity ; not even a pretence can be made that 
 English style is thereby cultivated ; and the chief 
 argument for the classical system must be abandoned 
 if this system is not properly applied. On the other 
 hand, the ' productive ' methods of classical training 
 are of unquestioned advantage in style, both to the 
 man of letters and of science. 
 
True Modern Spirit in Education 27 
 
 In this day, when the chief exponents of EngHsh 
 style, Huxley with no early classical training, and 
 Tyndall of scientific education, stand shoulder to 
 shoulder as masters of style with Maurice and Gold- 
 win Smith, of classical education ; when Darwin 
 and Galton are models of simplicity and clearness, 
 it surely cannot be maintained that there is any 
 monopolistic classical road for the acquisition of 
 style. The writer has in mind a young naturalist 
 of no classical training whatever who expresses him- 
 self in charming style and is in great demand as a 
 writer for such a critical journal as the Evening Post. 
 
 VI. PRODUCTION. 
 
 " Produce ! Produce ! " exclaims Teufelsdrockh in Sartor 
 Resartus. " Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction 
 of a product, produce it, in God's name ! 'Tis the utmost 
 thou hast in thee : out with it, then." 
 
 This is the final goal of the educational system, 
 which should be prepared for by arousing the true 
 modern spirit in every course in school and college. 
 Practically applied during the senior year by the 
 preparation of an original thesis on a subject of elec- 
 tion, it represents the distinctive feature of the uni- 
 versity or graduate school. 
 
 Most men are born consumers, few are gifted with 
 the power or desire to produce. Yet the educator 
 should bear this centrifugal factor in mind in every 
 phase of education, in every subject, in every course. 
 In English it is the original theme ; in Classics it is 
 
2 8 The MedicBval aiid the 
 
 the turninp- of Enorlish into Latin or Greek ; it is the 
 original rather than the memorizing- task ; in mathe- 
 matics it is the original problem ; in science it is the 
 original experiment, however simple — in short, it is 
 the outflow from the student's brain instead of the in- 
 flow which constitutes the rudimentary steps in the 
 training for production. 
 
 The graduate school is the school of production. 
 Princeton is abundantly supplied with men capable 
 of directing graduate students in various lines of pro- 
 ductive and original work ; and it is expected that 
 the present organization of the graduate school will 
 prove to be effective in bringing all the forces at 
 present latent and potential in the University to bear 
 in this crowning work. A larger endowment is, of 
 course, greatly desired ; but the thing for Princeton 
 is first to show what she can do with her present men 
 and her present resources. When we consider that 
 in the little Princeton of 1877 with only 400 students, 
 seventeen men, including all the ablest men of the 
 graduating class and some others, remained for dis- 
 tinctively university work, and that out of this num- 
 ber a very considerable proportion have achieved 
 success, it is obvious that from the three-fold larger 
 classes now graduating a still larger body of men 
 may be attracted to return. 
 
 The ideal university course now is for the Ameri- 
 can graduate to devote not less than three years to 
 his doctorate, one of which, at least, shall be spent 
 abroad, returning for the final year of research and 
 for the degree from his own university. 
 
Trtie Modei'ii Spirit in Edzication 29 
 
 RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CUR- 
 RICULUM. 
 
 The inevitable conclusion is that the Princeton 
 curriculum requires thorough reconstruction rather 
 than alteration or repair. It must be considered 
 de novo and adapted to modern conditions. The 
 rigidity of our system is similar to that which 
 drove Darwin to idle away his days at Cambridge, 
 and frightened Rowland, the greatest physicist 
 America has produced, away from college altogether. 
 Are such minds worth arresting and interestino- if 
 good fortune sends them among us ? Our present 
 system ignores the profound constitutional or he- 
 reditary intellectual predispositions or differences 
 which exist among young men, and one of the 
 first objects of a curriculum shoidd be to fasten the 
 interest of the student at some poiiit for some subject, 
 and tise this as a lever to lead him to take a more 
 serious vieiu of other sttbjects. Every man is born to 
 do one thing better than any other ; the earlier he 
 discovers it the better it may be for his intellectual 
 salvation. 
 
 Princeton must progress with the rest of the edu- 
 cational world. In the past quarter century we have 
 stood absolutely still so far as any radical reconstruc- 
 tion is concerned, and now occupy a unique and iso- 
 lated position among the larger universities of the 
 world. The old and conservative colleges of Oxford 
 and Cambridge have abandoned certain principles 
 for which we are still standing. One would expect 
 to see in the current magazines and reviews the 
 
30 The MedicBval and the 
 
 friends of the Princeton system, if there be such, 
 taking the offensive and holding their ground ; but 
 one looks in vain for articles of this character. 
 
 Few of us appreciate how conservative and reac- 
 tionary our position is. Here is a part of a letter 
 regarding a young student entering a ' natural sci- 
 ence ' course at Oxford, which is in bright modern 
 contrast to the mediaeval conditions the same student 
 would face were he to desire to enter with us : " The 
 other Balliol scholarships are equally the first things 
 in their respective categories, and it is interesting 
 from the point of view of heredity that 4 of them are 
 now held by sons of Oxford resident teachers : 2 in 
 classics, I in modern history, and now i in natural 
 science. Ted will go back to Rugby till August, 
 and come up here next October when he will be just 
 over 19. That is I think just the right age to begin 
 University Hfe. He will in the meantime chiefly 
 study modern languages, especially German, as he 
 has finished his Greek and Latin two years ago [that 
 is at 1 7] and passed the ' certificate examination ' 
 which is accepted instead of all classics up here," 
 
 Altered Positioji of the Classics in Educatio7i. — 
 We should totally abandon the claim that the clas- 
 sics have superior ' mind training ' value or that 
 they alone best conduce to a ' pure English style ' — 
 and substitute the claims of the true modern spirit 
 that as perfected studies the classics develop syste- 
 matic thinking; by familiarizing us with the greatest 
 people of any age they give us a sense of perspec- 
 tive and proportion for our lives and times ; that they 
 tend to broad culture, and that they may be har- 
 
True Modern Spirit in Education 31 
 
 moniously and advantageously combined with classi- 
 cal history, art, archaeology and philosophy. 
 
 " No doubt both Greek and Latin are very great 
 ornaments, and of very great use but we buy them 
 too dear." These words of Montaigne exactly fit the 
 situation. College education in the classics now ex- 
 tends from the eighteenth to the twentieth year. 
 Years aofo it extended from the seventeenth to 
 the nineteenth year. It is extremely important to 
 keep in mind the advanced age of entrance, which 
 has been brought about partly by the increased re- 
 quirements, partly by the generally freer social con- 
 ditions in our colleges which lead parents to hesitate 
 to send their sons at the earher age. Thus has 
 arisen a greater disproportion between mediaeval 
 education and modern education than existed pre- 
 viously. In other words, there has been a positive 
 retrogression in this regard, an actual increase in 
 amount of time in proportion to the whole life period 
 which is given to these subjects. Summing up the 
 whole linguistic training as compared with training 
 in other subjects, or any other group of subjects, up 
 to the time of graduation, say at the twenty-first year, 
 we find that it compares in about the same ratio as a 
 cathedral to a village chapel. No cultivated man can 
 fail to appreciate classical education : on the contrary, 
 modern science, and more especially the biological 
 sciences, all benefit by classical preparation. The 
 question is not, therefore, as the value of the classics, 
 but as to whether the classics are so valuable as to 
 warrant their absorbing four fifths of the whole edu- 
 cational period, and nearly one third of one's life- 
 
2,2 The MedicBval and the 
 
 time. Exactly the same criticism applies to over- 
 mathematics. 
 
 ' Required ' classics beyond the freshman year is 
 an anachronism. Let the student learn what the 
 ancient authors, taught in the culture spirit, repre- 
 sent ; if they still do not appeal to him, nothing is 
 gained by continuing the high protective tariff another 
 year. It is this high protection which has been so 
 fatal to the life of these studies. From the sopho- 
 more year on let the classical and mathematical 
 teachers compete for students with the humanists 
 and the scientists. 
 
 Princeton, thanks to the new library, to the semi- 
 nar system, and to the accession of teachers of talent 
 and enthusiasm, is now enjoying a classical revival 
 in the best sense. There is a rare opportunity in 
 the future development of the Art School to make a 
 new departure in classical education. We would 
 rejoice to see a beautiful building exclusively devoted 
 to classical teaching, connected with the galleries of 
 the Art School and the monuments of Greek and 
 Roman antiquity. In other words, archaeological 
 should go hand in hand with linguistic teaching. 
 There is now a totally unscientific divorce between 
 the Greco-Roman archaeology, as taught in the junior 
 and senior years, and the purely linguistic work of 
 the freshman and sophomore years. This is another 
 illustration of the lack of sequence and correlation in 
 our present courses. 
 
 Theory of Reconstrttction. — For the early years of 
 the course we would first advocate in general that a 
 true proportion be established between the Classics, 
 
True Modern Spirit in Education -^Ty 
 
 English, Modern Languages, Mathematics, Physics 
 and Chemistry, Logic, History, Government (citizen- 
 ship and service of the state) ; as if the educational 
 problem were to be considered de novo, and we had 
 an opportunity to build up a curriculum not upon 
 tradition and custom, but upon the merits of various 
 subjects and upon their relative value in cultivating 
 the six Pfreat forces of education as above described. 
 
 The two fundamental sciences should be taught, 
 not in a technical spirit, nor even as groundwork for 
 serious research, but in a felicitous welding of hard 
 thinking, of information, of philosophy, of culture, 
 and glimpses into the marvels of the cosmos. Such 
 a lecturer as Brackett gave us a standard in 1875. A 
 well known man of letters still speaks of this course 
 as the most cultivating of all his four years. 
 
 The second step, partly a financial one, is to restore 
 the per capita cost of education. There is no inher- 
 ent reason why it should cost several times as much 
 to educate a junior or a senior as it does to educate 
 a freshman or a sophomore ; the under classmen 
 are paying as large or even larger total fees than 
 the upper classmen. They are not receiving their 
 share of the benefits of these fees, but these benefits 
 are crowded into the two upper years where there is 
 such a profusion of courses that no man can take ad- 
 vantage of them all. In other words, there should be 
 such a redistribution of the educational riches of the 
 University that the freshman and sophomore years 
 should be as full of inspiration as the junior and 
 senior years. 
 
 As soon as a student enters Princeton he should 
 
34 The MedicBval and the 
 
 feel a strong and refreshing contrast to school life in 
 the wider intellectual horizon ; in the continuation of 
 classical work on the culture rather than the ' cram ' 
 basis, in the immediate stimulus of English, in the 
 glimpse into political and national life, and if he 
 elects, into the world of science also through a 
 course in physics. 
 
 The third object is the establishment of sequence 
 in the various lines of work, such a sequence that 
 the freshman and sophomore work will naturally- 
 lead in the various lines into the junior and senior 
 work, and prepare men for it. The Chinese wall 
 which now divides these four years into ' mediaeval ' 
 and ' modern ' is wholly unnatural, and should be 
 replaced by a sequence of studies. 
 
 The fourth object is the recognition that the natu- 
 ral sciences and the humanities contribute alike to 
 modern liberal culture ; that the sciences supply far 
 the best media of original observation, of reasoning 
 from cause to effect, of induction and generalization. 
 This is their specific educational value. 
 
 Fifth, that laboratory instruction or direct observa- 
 tion in the sciences is the method most effective, al- 
 though for larger classes it involves expenditure 
 which will make it almost prohibitive at present. 
 
 Sixth, that a deliberate and thorough course, with 
 ;sufficient time for collateral reading, reflection and 
 'discussion, has more educational value than a large 
 number of hurried courses. 
 
 Seventh, that personal contact, discussion and de- 
 liberation between students and teachers is quite as 
 potent and in some cases even more potent than lec- 
 ture room contact. 
 
True Modern Spirit in Education 35 
 
 In the writer's opinion, the best method of bring- 
 ing about a sequence of studies in the first two years 
 is the institution of the group system, which has been 
 successfully tried at Johns Hopkins, Bryn Mawr, and 
 Chicago, and is under consideration elsewhere. This 
 system evades the extreme disadvantages of the free 
 range of election, and combines the advantages of 
 the elective and the required systems ; that is, after 
 the student has made a general choice, the faculty 
 decides what is the proper correlation and sequence 
 of studies, what should precede and what should 
 follow ; while still allowing for absolute freedom of 
 choice in the later years. 
 
 Science pursued as a technical profession belongs 
 by itself, and the ultimate destiny of the School of 
 Science is to divide into two parts, one part leading 
 to the technical professions, the other more closely 
 correlated with the work of liberal education. The 
 divorce between academic and general (that is, non- 
 professional) scientific studies is totally unnatural ; it 
 is another survival of mediaevalism, namely, the no- 
 tion that the trainingr of the mind throuQrh the works 
 and thoughts and language of man is superior to 
 training through the works of nature. All nature 
 studies pursued for their own sake belong in the 
 same category as classical, philosophical and literary 
 studies. All scientific studies pursued with reference 
 to technical professions, or, in other words, all ap- 
 plied sciences, belong in another class. The ten- 
 dency of recent progress has been clearly to recog- 
 nize this distinction ; and Princeton should rank with 
 the leaders in this inevitable educational reform. 
 
2,6 The MedicEval and the 
 
 Fallacy of the Three-Year Course Argument. — It 
 is to the interest of all education that the American 
 college should preserve its integrity, intermediate 
 between the school and the university. The three- 
 year question promises soon to be an economic one 
 of the first importance because it will soon affect 
 seriously the flow of student life and patronage. It 
 may be met only by moderating the age of entrance. 
 The fallacy of the argument for a three-year course 
 consists in the fact that when we look back at the 
 whole trend of American education in the last quar- 
 ter century it is obvious that the present cause of 
 this movement is the increased aofe of entrance to 
 college which, in turn, is partly the natural evolution 
 of the human race in the prolongation of childhood 
 and boyhood, partly the increased entrance require- 
 ments. The arithmetic of the matter is this : from 
 one to two years have been added to school life, and 
 to equalize matters it is now proposed to subtract 
 one year from college life, one whole year of loss in 
 the culture period of education as the net result. 
 The most sang-uine schoolmaster does not claim that 
 the school period, terminating with the dreaded two 
 years' cram for the entrance examination, is a culture 
 period. Similarly, university or graduate work, while 
 embracing and developing a larger culture, is dis- 
 tinctively special even when proceeding along lines 
 of three great subjects. For example, the graduate 
 may pursue physics, chemistry and biology, as his 
 two minors and a major. These will require his un- 
 divided attention and energy for at least three years, 
 and whatever culture he gains is that which always 
 
True Modern Spirit in Education 37 
 
 comes from the more profound, original, and pro- 
 ductive investigation of any subject. 
 
 The college course must, therefore, stand distinct- 
 ively for culture, not in the restricted sense but in 
 the broad sense of the cultivation of knowledge, of 
 book learning, reasoning, observation of men and 
 things, expression, and the firm establishment of 
 those high ethical and aesthetic standards which lend 
 to all future specialization the absolutely essential 
 elements of truth, beauty and service. Neither does 
 the college course of four years afford more than 
 sufficient time to prepare for university work in any 
 of the humanistic or natural sciences. On the con- 
 trary, these sciences demand at least two years of 
 special preparation before the student can advan- 
 tageously enter work for the degree of Ph.D. 
 
 The wise exception as regards the four-year course 
 is naturally that students preparing for the profes- 
 sions, ministry, law, medicine, may devote their 
 fourth year to the fundamental studies and work of 
 those professions. As long as Princeton lacks either 
 a law or medical school, it will be extremely difficult 
 to make this fourth-year preparatory work valid in 
 another university, such as Columbia, for example ; 
 but I believe that the desirability of securing Prince- 
 ton graduates in the professional schools of Colum- 
 bia, Harvard and other universities, will make it 
 possible to bring about some reciprocal arrangement 
 whereby Princeton senior work will receive the same 
 credit as Columbia or Harvard senior work. 
 
 April, 1902 
 
38 Postscript 
 
 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 At the head of the university is one who embodies 
 the true modern spirit in his education, his person- 
 ality, his ideals, his production. This spirit is rever- 
 ence for the past, appreciation of the present, readi- 
 ness for the future. Under his leadership trustees, 
 faculty, alumni and students will unite with mind, 
 heart and means to restore and maintain the historic 
 prestige of Princeton as a national influence in every 
 worthy branch of human activity. 
 
 April, 1903. 
 
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