There is no practical uniformity in the scope and requirement of the work for this degree. The Doctor's degree should stand in this country, as it does in Europe, for research, and a general knowledge of philosophy, with ability to open up original sources of information. The student should be a resident graduate for at least one year, and after rigorous examination be required to contribute something to the advancement of knowledge, and withal be a man of good character and judgment, before receiving this most desirable degree in American and European universities. With such a uniform standard, this degree will not likely depreciate in public esteem, but have, as all degrees should, a uniform value. A federation of colleges may help to attain this end.

College degrees are not essential to a man's success in life, but when they are obtained as a reward of merit have a certain social value which usually insures a speedier entrance into any chosen field of work.

Another characteristic of American colleges is that they are endowed either by churches, by the state or by individual donors. The endowment is generally in the form of property or stocks yielding an annual revenue. It may be a sum of money given to the college, to be loaned and the interest to be permanently appropriated to the support of professors or applied to the current expenses. The amount necessary to endow a professorship varies from twenty-five to fifty thousand dollars. The fund thus given remains intact, and the interest or revenue of it alone is used to carry out the purpose of the donor.

No college of a high grade can exist without a generous endowment or aid from some source. Education in the colleges and universities throughout the world is given almost as a gratuity. It is maintained principally through the benefactions of wealthy men who erect buildings, found professorships and establish libraries for the use of others.

The resources of American colleges surpass those of any other country in the world. In 1890, the value of grounds, buildings and apparatus for 378 colleges in the United States was $77,894,729, and the productive fund of 315 colleges aggregated $74,090,415. In Germany, the twenty-two universities are national property, and are supported out of the national treasury at a large annual expense. The annual incomes of Oxford and Cambridge in England aggregate more than $3,500,000.

Many of the American colleges have wealthy foundations. Harvard College has in grounds, buildings and productive endowment the sum of $12,000,000, with an income in 1892 of $978,881.92. Columbia College claims $13,000,000, with an annual income of $629,000. The estimated value of the funds of Cornell College is $9,000,000, with an annual income of more than $400,000, and Johns Hopkins University has $5,000,000 endowment. In 1892, Yale College had $4,019,000, with an annual income of $520,246. The Northwestern University has nearly $3,000,000 endowment and an annual income of $225,000. Boston University has more than $1,500,000 endowment and an annual income of $160,000. Chicago University is one of our youngest universities, and yet it has in property and endowment $7,500,000. These are only a small portion of the 415 colleges and universities in this country whose aggregate wealth and income are a source of satisfaction to all the friends of higher education.

The munificence of the wealthy men of this nation in behalf of higher education has excited the surprise and admiration of the old world. Within the last quarter of a century nearly seventy-five million dollars has been given for this cause. We recall with satisfaction some of these distinguished donors: George Peabody left $6,000,000 of his estate to the cause of education; Isaac Rich, $1,000,000 to Boston University; Johns Hopkins, $3,140,000 to found a university in Baltimore which bears his name; Asa Packard gave $3,000,000 to Lehigh University; D. B. Fayerweather left a bequest of nearly $3,000,000 to various colleges; Cornelius Vanderbilt gave $1,000,000 to the Vanderbilt University; John C. Green gave $1,500,000 to Princeton College; Amasa Stone, $600,000 to Adelbert College; George I. Seney, $450,000 to Wesleyan University; Matthew Vassar, $800,000 to Vassar College for women; John D. Rockefeller's gifts to the Chicago University aggregate $4,500,000, and Leland Stanford's estate will yield from $12,000,000 to $15,000,000 for the university that bears his name on the Pacific Coast. These men and a host of others will be remembered through succeeding generations for their generous liberality. The wisdom of these noble benefactions commends itself to the enlightened judgment of all good citizens. We believe, with President Schurman, that "the heart behind American wealth is at the bottom generous and discerning, and so long as money can foster intelligence, that heart will not suffer our civilization to become a prey to ignorance, brutishness and stupid materialism. No one knows better than the millionaire that man lives not by bread alone." The colleges are not founded to make money but to benefit the public by training and fitting men for the highest service. The majority of the students in American colleges are of limited means. If it were possible to sustain a first-class college by means of the income from students, the tuition would be so high as to limit the great advantage of a higher education to a few children of rich men. The annual cost of each undergraduate to the University at Oxford is $700, at Cambridge $600, and at Harvard $300. If the actual expenses of running a college of high grade were divided proportionately among the students, they would have to pay three or four times the amount they now do for tuition. It is important that these educational advantages and incentives come within the reach of the humblest youth of the Republic, in order that they may be productive of the noblest manhood and womanhood.

Time and experience confirm the claim that the wisest and most permanent use of money is to help endow a college. Large wealth imposes obligations to make the best and most permanent use of it. Every man of means ought to be a patron of learning, because it yields the most satisfactory returns. "What better gift can we offer the Republic," says Cicero, "than to teach and instruct the youth." Wendell Phillips says that "education is the only interest worthy deep, controlling anxiety of thoughtful men," and President Gilman makes an equally forcible statement when he says that "to be concerned in the establishment of a university is one of the noblest and most important tasks ever imposed on a community or on a set of men."

Many of our denominational colleges are parsimoniously sustained. If their constituency, both rich and poor, would become imbued with the spirit of the Colonial fathers, and arouse themselves to give liberally, their power and influence would be multiplied a hundred fold. "Let it not be forgotten," says President Thwing, "that if the college and university have large need of the wealth of the community, this wealth has yet a larger need of the college and university. Without the aid of the higher education in the past, much of the wealth could not have been created; and without the higher education of the present, wealth would now become sordid; gold-dust is no less dust because it is golden. The rich man needs the college as his beneficiary to help him to be a noble man quite as much as the college needs his benefactions to help it make noble men. A college in poverty can make men; a rich man (or a poor man, indeed,) cannot hoard in meanness without degradation of manhood." The colleges are the agencies to help call out the constructive talent of the nation. They open the pathway of opportunity to every young man and woman who desires to do the most for himself and humanity. Each one may link himself through his means and prayers to these powerful agencies for good.



IV.

THE FUNCTIONS OF THE AMERICAN COLLEGE—A SYMMETRICAL DEVELOPMENT.

The function of the American college is to train and develop all the human powers and faculties and help the student to attain a complete individuality. The broadest educational theory estimates the worth of all the human powers and has the highest notion of personality, the development of which demands the impact of physical, intellectual, moral, and religious forces. A rounded human development provides for the fullest and freest exercise of all the powers of being. "Culture," says Matthew Arnold, "is a harmonious expansion of all the powers which make the beauty and worth of human nature, and is not consistent with the over-development of any one power at the expense of the rest."

Man is a unit, but inasmuch as God has endowed him with various capacities, his highest glory should be to develop them. The only limit to the college student is his native abilities and aptitudes, modified by the parental training, various social influences, and the preliminary discipline in the public schools. The college that receives the students, with their different aims and predilections and acquirements, and leads them to appreciate the greater possibilities of their natures, and arouses and encourages them to strive for their fullest development, is worthy of confidence and support.

A symmetrically developed manhood or womanhood implies the training of the mind to think accurately and systematically. The tried and historic conception of education is expressed in the Latin word, educare: to lead out. It is to draw out of the living soul, by the aid of books, appliances, and instructors, all its latent capacities, to help in the formation of correct intellectual habits, and pre-eminently to form character, and thus to enrich and broaden the whole range of life. The purpose of a liberal education is not to cram the mind with facts and principles, but "to build up and build out the mind" by the natural process of growth, so that all knowledge from without will be assimilated by a living mental organism. The important work of the college is to develop intellectual power. It is to aid in giving such a directive power of mind as will enable the student, by a fixed determination, to recall facts, apply principles, and perform acts as if they were spontaneous. It is so to train the judgment and reasoning faculties of the student that in the end he will have acquired power to do earnest intellectual work.

The direct aim of the instruction in college is to give the student access to vital and formative knowledge by studying man and his works, and nature and her works. He is thus led to know himself and to know the world, and the laws which govern nature, and man as a part of nature. He comes to see things as they are and to understand the laws of things, and thus he thinks and acts on more perfect knowledge. If the student is to be trained to independent thought and action, he must have a sounder basis of knowledge than the teachings of those whose ideas and opinions are shaped by current, ephemeral literature. The majority of men act on too imperfect knowledge, because they will not take the time and exercise the patience to study the facts and principles relating to any given subject, and to do their own thinking. Goethe says: "To act is easy, to think is hard." The remedy is found in the college courses of study which involve the study of ourselves through psychology, logic, and mental, moral, political and social philosophy, and the study of nature through the sciences and the laws of the world about us.

Another method, aside from the nature and scope of the studies pursued, to attain the end, is through the strong personality of the college professor. Alexander the Great said: "Philip gave me life, Aristotle taught me how to live well," and Emerson's judgment was that "it is little matter what you learn; the question is, with whom you learn." It is within the power of the college professor to help enlighten the understanding, strengthen and guide the intuitions and reasoning faculties, and to awaken within the student a consciousness of his new powers and capacities, and incite him to mental activity. The highest scholastic training demands that the professor studiously avoid all those methods of instruction which tend to mechanical habits of thought, and which check the mind's spontaneity of growth and repress the individuality so essential to true scholarship.

Incidental to intellectual culture in college is the ability to find promptly the information we want. "Next to knowing a thing," says Dr. Johnson, "is to know where to find it." No student can become a walking encyclopaedia, but he should learn while in college how to avail himself advantageously of reference books, libraries and other sources of information.

A college education likewise implies the ability to express one's ideas in a clear, appropriate style. The student should be able to tell what he knows. This clearness of thought and precision of expression is best acquired in the class room, in the literary societies, and in the classes devoted especially to the study of expression.

The intellectual aim of a college should be not only to awaken and develop independent thinking power as an abiding impulse which will prompt to effective intellectual work, but withal the will, the imagination, and emotive nature should be so trained that the student will have a mental taste and moral appreciation for the best and noblest thought. Mental discipline and the dull routine of study will become cold and insipid unless the student is inducted into those fields of science and literature where he will find the richest sources of refined and elevating pleasures, and through them be incited to noble action. It is on these lines of study that the student acquires that spirit of study which becomes spontaneous, attractive, and joyous. He loves culture for culture's sake, and does not abandon its acquisition on leaving college.

A symmetrically developed manhood or womanhood involves physical culture. The ascetic idea of college life no longer prevails. The body, as well as the mind, is trained. The value to a student of good health and an alert and vigorous body cannot be overestimated. Educators are coming to realize more fully than in the past that the physical and psychical factors of life are inseparable. The body and mind are mutually related and affected. Systematic exercise stimulates quickness of mental processes and promotes brain power.

The leading American colleges are conducted on better physiological and hygienic principles than in the past. The student, on entering college, is subject to a careful physical examination by a competent physician, and a course of systematic physical training is prescribed. Any organic defect or incipient disease is discovered, and, if possible, corrected. Physical training has become an integral part of a good college course. Exercise is largely compulsory, because studious and ambitious students are likely to sacrifice physical for intellectual training.

A well-equipped gymnasium is essential for the most thorough physical culture. Bath-rooms, with facilities for plunge and shower baths, are an important adjunct in promoting that healthy condition of the skin which follows from frequent bathing. An athletic field for outdoor sports is, likewise, a valuable accessory to develop a lithe and active body.

The master of the gymnasium is generally a vigorous and enthusiastic instructor, who is able to conduct skillfully daily gymnastic class work, and relieve monotony and evoke interest by introducing a variety of exercises for the different college classes. He is also the hygienic adviser in all matters relating to study and recreation. The students are taught that regular exercise, sufficient sleep, personal cleanliness, and proper diet will correct most of the so-called pernicious effects of over-study.

Outdoor sports, under proper restrictions, promote health and foster mental qualities. Foot-ball and base-ball have gained an undue prominence in some colleges. It is questionable whether they are the most desirable forms of exercise for physical development, since only a very small portion of the students at any one time can engage in them.

The evil features of inter-collegiate games, especially as practiced, offset their advantages. The undue excitement and spirit of rivalry fostered is foreign to the true idea of an earnest student life. The college is no monastery to make the student a recluse, but it should be a place of solitude, a modern cloister, where the student may be kept in partial isolation and away from the turbulent stream of public life and distracting social influences. The student may keep in the midst of the current of actual modern thought and life without sacrificing the quiet seclusion which is an essential requirement for the best scholarship.

These inter-collegiate games have been attended with temptations perilous to character. Abundant testimony is not wanting to show that their tendency has been toward rowdyism, gambling, debauchery, and other disgraceful conduct. Some of the games scarcely rise above the brutality of the prize fight. They have no elevating tendency, and no apology can be made for their roughness and bad moral effects.

The fine natural instincts of the majority of American people are repelled at such physical prowess. It is not necessary to introduce the element of pugilism in order to give vent to the superabundance of youthful animal spirits.

The abuse of these outdoor sports should not make us blind to the fact that they have a legitimate use. It is wiser to control and direct them than to curb the exuberance of good feeling which they call forth, and which might find expression in less appropriate channels. It should be borne in mind that all physical training is a failure unless the aim is to maintain and develop health, to make the student symmetrical, strong, graceful and better fitted for the duties of living.

A symmetrical development involves, likewise, the cultivation of the moral and spiritual nature.

The Christian religion affords the broadest educational basis, because it presents the most exalted notion of personality and its development. It takes account of the deepest facts of our nature, and teaches philosophical principles that are true for all created intelligences. Hence it is that Christianity is essential to the best educational system. It precedes and governs true education. A narrow and false conception of man leads to building only one side of his nature. The will, the conscience, the emotional and spiritual natures demand a share in the broadest culture. We cannot divide these essential elements against themselves. The religious sentiment is so interwoven with our being that it cannot be eliminated or dethroned. It takes no subordinate place, because it is supreme. There is no true theory of life without the spiritual element. All theories of education and principles of action that do not recognize the relations of the human soul to the supernatural are out of harmony with the laws governing human life.

These truths have been impressed on the noblest minds. "The greatest thought," said Daniel Webster, "that ever entered my mind, is the thought of my personal accountability to God." And Channing says that "man's relation to God is the great quickening truth, throwing all other truths into insignificance, and a truth which, however obscured and paralyzed by the many errors which ignorance and fraud have hitherto linked with it, has ever been a chief spring of human improvement. We look to it as the true life of the intellect. No man can be just to himself, can comprehend his own existence, can put forth all his powers with an heroic confidence, can deserve to be the guide and inspirer of other minds, till he has risen to communion with the Supreme Mind; till he feels his filial connection with the Universal Parent; till he regards himself as the recipient and minister of the Infinite Spirit; till he feels his consecration to the ends which religion unfolds; till he rises above human opinion, and is moved by a higher impulse than fame."

The Christian religion is in harmony with intellectual activity, because it favors application to study, and enjoins the duty of seeking truth, as well as awakens and intensifies the love of the good and beautiful. In fact, the human intellect owes its greatest triumphs to Christianity. From the beginning, the Christian religion has assimilated and employed human learning, and has become a great formative force in modern intellectual movements. It favors a broad catholic spirit, and is the counterpoise and remedy of a narrow range of intellectual activity. History teaches that it has been a strong incentive in the search after truth, and the chief factor in training the race to a higher civilized life. The changes in the progress in modern civilization are stimulated and guided by Christian knowledge. The whole trend of modern thought and instruction in the higher intellectual circles is to apply Christian principles to the problems of life. In every age it has stimulated and invigorated the human mind. It has introduced nobler and better ideas of life, given impetus to self-development, and has produced the highest types of manhood and of womanhood. The inspiration and encouragement in advancing general intelligence and founding the higher institutions of learning is principally due to the Christian religion.

"From the days of the Apologists onwards," says Prof. John De Witt, "learning has always advanced under the fostering care of our religion. In the schools of Antioch and of Alexandria, in Carthage and Hippo, in the old Rome on the Tiber, and in the new Rome on the Bosphorus, throughout the period of the ancient church, religion is the great inspiration of intellectual labor. How true this is of the Middle Age I need not stop to say. Religion in Anselm assimilates the philosophy of Plato. In the Anglican doctor it employs the dialectic and metaphysics of Aristotle. And the true father of the inductive philosophy, who anticipated the Organon and the very Idola of his great namesake, is Roger Bacon, the Franciscan brother. It was to this wonderful and unique power of Christianity to assimilate and employ all the triumphs of the human intellect, that the Western World is indebted for the universities by which, most of all, learning was increased and transmitted from generation to generation. Bologna and Naples, the school of Egbert at York, the schools of Charlemagne in the New Christian Empire, with Alcuin as minister of education; the later universities, with their tens of thousands of eager students—Paris, Cologne, and Oxford—sprang into being obedient, indeed, to a thirst for knowledge, but a thirst for knowledge which, in turn, owed its existence and intensity to the unique fact that Christianity alone among religions can assimilate and employ all the truths of human philosophy, of science, and of literature."

The importance of promoting religious culture in our colleges cannot be overestimated. Dr. Thomas Arnold has spoken words that should be preserved in letters of gold. "Consider," he says, "what a religious education, in the true sense of the word, is: It is no other than a training our children to life eternal; no other than the making them know and love God, know and abhor evil; no other than the fashioning all the parts of our nature for the very ends which God designed for them; the teaching our understandings to know the highest truth; the teaching our affections to love the highest good!" One of the greatest teachers, Mark Hopkins, on the fiftieth anniversary of his connection with Williams College, said: "Christianity is the greatest civilizing, molding, uplifting power on this globe, and it is a sad defect in any institution of higher learning if it does not bring those under its care into the closest possible relation to it." The profound French philosopher, Victor Cousin, declares that "any system of school training which sharpens and strengthens the intellectual powers without supplying moral culture and religious principle is a curse rather than a blessing." And President M. E. Gates says: "In place of the fermenting despair of nihilism, the reckless immoralities of atheism, and the suicidal negations of agnosticism which have cursed liberally-educated Europe, if we are to have here in America an influence strong, binding and beneficient in our social system, as the result of collegiate education, it must be, it can be only by retaining in that system a clear faith in God, and by making prominent, as the highest aim of life, the service of God in serving the best interests of one's fellow-men."

The goal of all education is fulness of stature of men and women in Christ. Art and science are a vain show without this aim. A man may have a brain as keen as a Damascus scimiter, and yet he is wanting without piety. This moral and religious equipment is necessary for right conduct which, Matthew Arnold says, is three-fourths of life. Other things being equal, the student that is touched and saturated with the religious life will be under the strongest motives and attain the highest culture and efficiency in life. A pure heart and a clear brain are closely related. "Our education will never be perfect unless, like the ancient temples, it is lighted from above." Martin Luther said: "To have prayed well is to have studied well," which accords with the idea of the best scholars in former days at Cambridge: Bene orasse est bene studisse.

The Christian spirit is eminently favorable to culture and to the promotion of literary productivity. It helps to make brilliant and earnest teachers, and lends zest to professional ambition. "Other things being equal," says Noah Porter, "that institution of learning which is earnestly religious is certain to make the largest and most valuable achievements in science and learning, as well as in literary tastes and capacities."

President Gates forcibly expresses the thought in these words: "Man is not, and was not meant to be, pure disembodied intellect. True philosophy, as well as common sense, teaches that the heart and the will have their rightful domain in every man's life. If the understanding becomes arrogant and spurns the aid of the other powers of the mind, not only does the man become an incomplete man, but his intellect itself inevitably loses poise and clearness. The man ceases to be a man, and becomes a calculating machine, and his intellect becomes subject to those sudden reversals of legitimate processes and results which the law of construction for calculating machines renders inevitable in them, but from which life saves the living man, the feeling, worshiping soul."

There is nothing more important to equip the complete scholar and gentleman than the Christian religion. Tennyson's poetic interpretation of this truth is thus beautifully expressed:

"Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverence in us dwell, That mind and soul, according well, May make one music, as before, But vaster."

The methods of promoting religious life in college are widely varied. One of the most effective means is the positive Christian faith and the personal religious influence of the college professors. The student enters college at a vital and perilous period of life. The judgment is often immature and the life principles unsettled. In this speculative period the student may be blindly endeavoring to adjust his faith to his reason. Especially at this time he needs professors of superior reason, strength of faith and spiritual discernment to unveil the divine mysteries and aid in dispelling doubt. Ex-President Seelye, of Amherst, once said: "We should no more think of appointing to a post of instruction here an irreligious man than we should an immoral man, or one ignorant of the topics he would have to teach." It is certainly no narrow bigotry that leads the Christian public to demand that the colleges select professors loyal to the truth and the Christian Church. United with their scientific culture and professional ability as teachers they should embody Christian earnestness and purity of life, and aim to send out students with a positive and rational faith.

The parent who realizes that the moral character of his children will be fixed, in a large measure, while in college, believes that it would be moral suicide to permit them to come under the influence of a professor whose religious indifference, or unfavorable remarks about Christianity, might infuse the poison of skepticism, doubt, or indifference, and perhaps unsettle their early religious convictions, and "send them forth confused and adrift on the endless sea of conflicting notions."

The courses of study in college should be arranged so as to favor the study of the essential facts and truths of the Christian religion, and through them promote practical piety. There is no valid reason why the Christian religion, which is the chief energy and force in all intellectual culture, should not be distinctly and permanently recognized in the college curriculum. The well-established and accepted facts of the Christian religion should be gathered and studied with as much painstaking care, freedom of spirit, and loyalty to truth as the scientist studies his facts and constructs his theories. This method implies that the teacher and pupil hold in abeyance all those probable theories, speculations, and conjectures which are not established, as irrelevant to the work in hand. When this scientific spirit is more effectively introduced into the study of the Christian religion in our colleges, it will prepare the way for the restatement of doctrine so as to commend it with increasing force to every intelligent student. Christian truth is capable of being built up into a system as scientific as any other. The professor, in leading the earnest student in search of spiritual truth, will exercise tolerance and tact, so that he will not awaken suspicions of being actuated by a narrow bigotry, or appear as a lover of dogmatic teachings.

Again, it is better to select text-books that have been written by capable men who are in sympathy with the Christian religion. The student with an immature mind, who seeks to build his faith and theories of life on the teachings of those whose predilections are away from Christianity, will find it fatal to his lofty ideals and aspirations, while instruction based on Christian theism tends to lift the mind upward, and to foster a hopeful and earnest moral and intellectual life.

We grant that Christian character can only be incidentally produced through the subjects studied. The same study may be taught in different ways, and with entirely different results. The intellectual processes involved in study do not necessarily exert a spiritual influence. The aim and spirit of the professor and student will determine whether the study pursued shall contribute to the cultivation of greater reverence and exaltation of the soul. The charm of scientific study may so occupy the student's attention as to exclude all thoughts of the spiritual and eternal, or he may "look through nature up to nature's God." The student may be so absorbed with the human events and material conditions of history as to overlook the light of God's presence and guiding hand in it all.

To be liberally educated in Christian America, one should have a knowledge of the English Bible. It is the fountain and conservator of pure English and the storehouse of the most inspiring thought. Its classic beauty and lofty speculations and sublime morality are essential to a liberal education. "Froude calls the Bible the best of all literatures. Daniel Webster read the Bible through every year for its effect upon his mind. Charles Sumner kept the Bible at his elbow on his desk, and could find any passage without a concordance. Great men have found the Bible a great inspiration. But not this alone—as a great and inspiring literature,—but as a source of spiritual life and power, the Bible is the basis of true collegiate growth."

The study of the English Bible in colleges is important in developing the will and the conscience, and in evoking religious feelings which have a practical influence on conduct. It certainly imparts a vigorous character to education, and brings men face to face with the facts of sin and its remedy. The presence of Christianity in the intellectual life of the student is corrective of selfishness and other vices which enslave the intellect and render life a disastrous failure.

It is encouraging to note that the study of the Bible is finding a place in the American college curriculum on a level with other studies, and time is allotted to attain a certain intellectual mastery of it. The active class instruction is as exacting and exhausting as any part of the college course. The student is led to trace the historic movements and to perceive the organic character, the literary forms and personal factors in its composition. The inductive method adopted develops original and independent students of the Word. The intellectual, devotional, and practical ends attained by this study are a powerful factor in upholding and maintaining the moral and spiritual character of the students.

Another method is that of religious worship. Students living in a community with a separate intellectual and social life should be required to meet daily for religious worship and instruction. The sacred moments spent in the college chapel by the whole college community are an appropriate recognition of the worth and power of the Christian religion, and do something to meet the spiritual needs and aspirations of the human soul. The daily gathering of the academic body to listen to a brief but suggestive exposition of scripture, and to unite in praise and prayer, cultivates reverence and devotion in the student, and will be regarded by many of them in after years as among the most delightful experiences in college life. If the religious services are not made perfunctory, but attractive and inspiring, in college, the students may pass to the university in their maturer years with devotional habits, and, likely, to avail themselves of its voluntary system of daily religious exercises.

The colleges should ever keep in view the original aim of the founders to make them centers of evangelical power. Piety, however, should not be a substitute for honest scholarly work. They should never permit their enthusiasm for an intellectual training and the growth of the sciences to obscure or conceal Him who is the Light and Life of all men. Their immediate and primary aim should be to promote intellectual culture, but this in nowise involves a departure from the spirit of the forefathers who made them agencies for defending and propagating the gospel, and for leading the youth to remember that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."

It is evident, then, that the function of the college is to unfold the intellectual, physical, moral, and spiritual life of the young people, and especially to form character that shall be fully equipped for carrying out the divine purpose of life.

THE ADVANCEMENT OF KNOWLEDGE.

Another function of the American college is to extend the objective field of knowledge. The enlarged range of knowledge in our day is owing principally to the clear thinking and earnest, original, productive work done by college professors and students. They have done more to extend the empire of thought than any other class of intellectual workers. The college is the home of the arts and sciences, and it exists to teach and promote them. Professors should have the ability and the time, more and more, to make investigations, to extend the domain of truth, and to give philosophical and scientific guidance to the nation.

The university proper, as now being developed, regards as its special function the training of men for research and professional work. Its ample facilities and its methods of work give advanced students rare privileges in any department of research.

"The modern university," says Professor Josiah Royce, "has its highest business, to which all else is subordinate, the organization and advance of learning. Not that the individual minds are now neglected. They are wisely guarded as the servants of the one great cause. But the real mind which the university has to train is the mind of the nation—that concrete social mind whereof we all are ministers and instruments. The daily business of the university is, therefore, first of all, the creation and the advance of learning, as the means whereby the national mind can be trained."

The constructive intellectual spirit so paramount in the university begins in the college. The more formal methods of disciplinary work at the beginning of a collegiate course gradually shade off, during the closing years, into the methods and spirit of original discovery adopted in university work. In the college there is kindled in the student the love of new truth and an enthusiasm for the advancement of learning. He is led to undertake creative work, and become an active, intellectual producer, with aspirations to widen the horizon of thought and weave the best results of his discoveries into the warp and woof of the social organism.

The steps leading up to the important period in the student's life where research is for the sake of fruitfulness are traceable in the historic development and requirements of college studies. In nearly all the colleges there is manifest a growing spirit of freedom in pursuing a course of study. There is little doubt that elective courses of study are a recognized necessity and benefit. It remains, however, an open question what studies should be required and what elected, and when the work of specialization should begin. If we keep in view the fact that the primary aim of a college education is to elevate and broaden the student by training him to clear and exact thought and accurate observation and expression, we will see that, whatever the course or subject of study chosen, it is only the means to this end.

Required studies should be based upon the principle of the instrumental, substantive and interpretative elements in a liberal education. For example, the study of language is important as the instrument of thought. A knowledge of the rich and copious foreign languages opens up the wisdom of the past and present, and their study develops memory and precision, as well as stimulates and provokes thought. A knowledge of some of them is essential to the highest professional success. The student who can read and appreciate the foreign languages and appropriate their contents has a decided advantage.

Mathematics is, likewise, an instrument of thought. It is the foundation of the physical sciences and the framework of the material universe. Its study trains the mind to think in relations and quantities, and helps to obviate loose and confused thinking. Logic and psychology are also important factors in developing the power of orderly and protracted thought.

The substantive element in a liberal education is found in the study of the natural and moral sciences. The study of them is both attractive and stimulating, and helps to store the mind with useful facts and principles. A general study of science should be required. A knowledge of any favorite science involves in some measure a knowledge of others. Physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, are all more or less related. There is an interacting and interweaving of the facts and principles. Aside from the information imparted, there is no other class of study that will so effectively train the mind to accurate habits of observation.

Philosophy is the interpretative element in education, and helps to give unity to our knowledge. No one can reasonably lay claim to be liberally educated who has not some knowledge of the philosophical principles which underlie and explain the phenomena of history and life.

These required studies should be embraced and upheld in all college courses in order to give unity and consistency to the knowledge of the student. The value of these different studies cannot be reasonably doubted. The colleges of the past developed strength by studying these few subjects. No technical studies or professional training can be substituted for this scholastic training. The professional man especially needs this general culture, in order to escape the danger of concentrating and contracting his intellectual interest. Colleges may vigorously adhere to these scholarly requirements, and yet advantageously introduce the elective system. The student must have depth as well as breadth of scholarship. This can be effectively done by the specialization which the elective system affords. The character of the different studies chosen, however, should have a cohesive and logical connection in order to secure concentration and attain the best results.

The student who has had the advantages of a thorough preliminary training for admission to college, and has done faithful work in the required studies of the Freshman and Sophomore years, should have acquired such mental discipline and reached such a plane of scholarship that he is prepared for the more advanced work in special studies looking toward his life work. He should then be allowed to choose, within reasonable limits, those subjects for study during the Junior and Senior years in which his natural aptitudes and modes of thought would lead him to seek the highest degree of proficiency. This plan accords with the German system of education at the point where the student leaves the required work of the gymnasium and enters upon the elective work of the university. The most aggressive colleges in America have adopted this method, and are satisfied with the results.

The elective system is beset with difficulties. Liberty is always subject to abuse, but the best attainments are found where negligence and mental trifling are possible. The advantages, however, are many. When the student decides upon a course of study suited to his real or imaginary needs, he exhibits more enthusiasm than if it is imposed. He is spurred on to his best effort, and develops personal power in original work. He gains depth and breadth of training, and is better fitted for more extended study in a university where the means and facilities are unlimited for the highest attainments in technical and professional training.

This is the sure way to raise up a class of experts and investigators who will keep in touch with the sources of knowledge, and, by doing original work, contribute something new that will widen the horizon of knowledge and extend the empire of thought.

PREPARATION FOR SERVICE.

The function of the college is something more than developing men and women and promoting knowledge. Its aim is, likewise, to prepare the student for service. The knowledge and culture gained in college are only a means to an end. The student must not only know something, but be able to do something in the sphere of life. The ultimate object of all culture is to equip a person for life's work. Milton declares that the proper system of training is "that which fits man to perform justly and skillfully and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war;" and Herbert Spencer says that "the function which education has to discharge is to prepare us for complete living." And again, "the great object of education," says Emerson, "should be commensurate with the objects of life." The mind, placed in actual conscious relations with existing realities and phenomena, should be prepared for the largest service. To know, see, and learn the truth is a preparation for doing. The high type of manhood and womanhood which a liberal culture in college aims to promote should fit the student for every walk of life, in the family, society, church, and state.

The purpose of a college education should be twofold—professional and humanitarian—to prepare for one's vocation in life, and to cultivate humanitarian sympathies for the largest service. A person possessed of the humanitarian spirit realizes that the individual life is rooted in God, and consequently has a broader and deeper sense of human brotherhood, which enables him to keep in vital and sympathetic relation with human activity and experience. When these two aims blend, the best results are obtained, both for the individual and the community.

Aside from the scientific passion for knowledge, there is a view of culture, as Matthew Arnold puts it, "in which all the love of our neighbor, the impulses toward action, help, and beneficence, the desire for removing human error, clearing human confusion, and diminishing human misery, the noble aspiration to leave the world better and happier than we found it—motives eminently such as are called social—come in as a part of the grounds of culture, and the main and pre-eminent part."

It is to be feared that in some colleges the ideals and spirit are such as to lead the student to place power on wealth above culture, and social position above usefulness. Professor J. M. Hart estimates that nearly one-half of the students who attend Cambridge and Oxford Universities, in England, do so not for the sake of study, but in order to form good social connections. Liberal culture should not be sacrificed to preparing men for idle social life and paying places. Colleges do not exist to train the students' powers for personal benefits, but to promote culture, to the end that a larger service may be rendered to human progress. "An education," says President Hill, "that fails in producing lofty character, sustained and nourished by a pure faith, may, indeed, fill the world with capable and masterly men in their vocation; but, unless it can soften the heart of success and open the palm of power, it only strengthens the grasp of greed, and misses the making of noble men."

The true conception of man and his duties leaves but little room for individualism or insolent self-assertion. No one can divorce himself from his fellow-men and their interests without lowering and debasing his own vocation in life, and becoming enfeebled and stunted in his own development. "The supreme object of the college," says President M. E. Gates, "is to give an education for power in social life." Every advancement in knowledge should tend to strengthen the bonds of human sympathy. Learning should be turned to the advantage of the people, and thus cause intelligence and helpfulness to go together. The great example of Christ teaches that a life of service is the only real human life. The quality of the student's character will be determined by his use or abuse of opportunity for service.

The very character of culture is social and beneficent. The great men of the world have most fully represented humanity. Touching the hearts of men, they have brought out the best of humanity in themselves, illustrating the truth of the divine law whereby we attain eminence, "Power to him who power exerts." The best thought not only contributes to the fulfillment of duty, but we receive impulse and mental activity by obedience to duty. Farrar says: "There are some who wish to know only to be known, which is base vanity; and some wish to know only that they may sell their knowledge, which is covetousness. There are some others who wish to know that they may be edified, and some that they may edify; that is heavenly prudence. In other words, the object of education is not for amusement, for fame, or for profit, but it is that one may learn to see and know God here, and to glorify Him in heaven hereafter. Our education is desired that, in the language of a Harrow prayer, we may become profitable members of the church and commonwealth, and hereafter partakers of the immortal glories of the resurrection." The measure and worth of a college should depend upon the pure and forceful character manifest in its students, and upon their willingness to employ the ability and knowledge acquired to serve the highest good of their fellow-men. The college that does this most efficiently will produce the best results.

When this conception of the function of a college is more thoroughly fixed upon the attention of educators and students, it may help to present in a clearer light some educational problems in regard to culture and practical training in college. On the one hand, there is a demand that the work of our colleges should become higher and more theoretical and scholarly, and, on the other hand, the utilitarian opinion and ideal of the function of a college is that the work should be more progressive and practical. One class emphasizes the importance of true culture and of making ardent, methodical, and independent search after truth, irrespective of its application; the other believes that practice should go along with theory, and that the college should introduce the student into the practical methods of actual life.

They are both, in a measure, right. There are forces at work in society to strengthen the demand that colleges teach the branches of industry, as well as prepare men for the so-called learned professions. The demand is based on the worth and dignity of intelligent labor. In fact, a scientific and technical education in some branch of industry has already won its way to the rank of a learned profession.

The demand for industrial education has grown out of a reorganization of the industries and trades of the world. The great industries of the country require men of trained minds and directive intelligence to organize and control them. Mechanical skill is in great demand, and workmen must be trained not merely in dexterity and skill in the use of tools, but they must be so instructed in the principles governing science that they shall be able to reach results of the highest practical value in the sciences and arts. This age requires better mechanics, manufacturers, foremen, architects, farmers, and engineers—men whose creative genius will help to awaken the aspirations of the race to master the forces of nature and bring in an era of more convenience, comfort, and leisure for the cultivation of the mind and heart.

Our systems of education are planning to meet the needs of the people. Manual training that is adapted to youth between twelve and seventeen years of age is incorporated in the curricula of many of the existing public schools. Besides, we have in the United States more than one hundred advanced schools in technology founded as independent organizations. One-third of them have shops for laboratory practice.

The fact that such a prominent place has been given to the physical and practical sciences in the courses of study in colleges shows that these institutions are responding to the constantly increasing demands of a practical age. Scientific departments have been advantageously established in connection with our well-endowed universities. It is both desirable and practicable to give instruction in mechanical, electrical, and civil engineering in our high grade colleges. This should not be done, however, at the expense of liberal culture.

How far the colleges can meet the demand for technical and practical education depends upon their condition and resources. They cannot make bricks without straw. Wealthy men cannot perform a more generous act than to help establish these schools of technology in connection with our colleges, in order to give instruction in the practical and useful arts of life.

There is danger, perhaps, in pressing the utilitarian principle in education too far. It is not the colleges that make the greatest show of utility that develop the most effective men. In the effort to secure a practical education, it is important not to lessen the power to understand and apply the foundation principles which underlie actual practice.

In the German universities the practical and technical are left alone. Professor J. M. Hart says of them that their "chief task, that to which all their energies are directed, is to develop great thinkers—men who will extend the boundaries of knowledge." We are under different conditions in this country, but the importance of the principle should not be overlooked. Every one has not the desire or ability to be a great scholar and thinker, but preparation for all the so-called practical careers of life should at least carry the student through the rigorous discipline of a college course up to the Junior year, when he may elect studies of a more technical nature looking to his life work. This is the best way to get a profound insight into principles from which to deduce practice and promote the interests of human society.

Professor Josiah Royce has well said that "the result of this 'conflict' between the two ideals of academic work has been the union of both in the effort of all concerned to build up a system of university training whose ideal is at once one of scholarly method and of scientific comprehension of fact. For the scholar, as such, be he biologist, or grammarian, or metaphysician, the exclusive opposition between 'words' and 'things' has no meaning. He works to understand truth, and the truth is at once word and thing, thought and object, insight and apprehension, law and content, form and matter. * * * There is no science unexpressed; there is no genuine expression of truth that ought not to seek the form of science."

The importance of scientific theories leading to the best practical results is illustrated in the case of Columbus, whose investigations led him to believe in the sphericity of the earth and the probability of land in the far West. "Adams and Leverrier discovered Neptune simultaneously and independently, simply because certain observations had revealed perturbations that could be most naturally accounted for by the existence of an unknown planet." After Professor Helmholtz and others had made known the subtle laws of the transmission of sound, there was only a step to its practical application in the use of the telephone.

The essential condition in all industrial and social progress is the acquisition of judgement, skill, and foresight by patient study of facts and principles. It is energy within the being that gives birth to achievement in the outward sphere of practical life. It is certainly the prerogative of the colleges to extend the best educational opportunities to the people. It should embrace their intellectual and industrial pursuits.

The lofty and sacred purpose to render the highest service, to advance the welfare of men, is best reached by training men and women for leadership. The demand for educated and influential Christian leadership is greater than the supply. In 1890 there were about 15,000,000 pupils in the public schools receiving elementary instruction, while only one in 455 of the population was under superior instruction in colleges. The majority of this small number will be among the real leaders of the country. The character of the nation will, in a large measure, depend on the character of the colleges which train and shape these leaders.

A comparatively few men act as leaders, frame platforms, and shape legislation. It is quite difficult to find even this small number who are qualified for leadership. Nearly all our political and social reform movements are asking for a Moses, or a Luther, or a Lincoln, to lead them to victory. Some organizations of labor are officered by foreign born leaders who are ignorant and out of sympathy with the moral ideas and principles that have shaped our national life. There is a large number of imperfectly equipped men in all professions and in social movements, presuming to act as leaders, who might well be replaced by disciplined and cultured men, able to grapple with modern social problems, and to conduct the people to higher thought and nobler action. Men who are to become leaders and gain a strong hold on society must have a good foundation of general knowledge, and be trained to think on complicated questions. The man of thorough training, whether literary, scientific, or practical, has an immense advantage in leadership.

It is the prerogative of the college, in its aim to serve the people, to extend such educational opportunities to youth as will equip them for true leadership in every vocation of life.

The American college student should be sent forth with a purpose even stronger than that of the Greek youth, who took the oath of citizenship in these words:

"I will transmit my fatherland [its institutions, its civilization, its system of education, its people], not only not less, but greater and better, than it was committed to me."



V.

STUDENT LIFE IN COLLEGE.

Admission to college is dependent upon the mental and moral fitness of the student. If the student has completed the work of an advanced high school, or that of an academy, he may in many colleges pass immediately into the Freshman year without examination. The student is generally required to have, as a necessary preparation to gain admission to the Freshman class, three years of Latin and two of Greek, or an amount of modern languages equivalent to the Greek, besides mathematics, history, and English. In some cases the qualifications of the candidate must be such as to enable him to read at sight either Greek, Latin, French, or German. An essay in English must be correct in composition, spelling, grammar, expression, and division into paragraphs.

Some favor admitting the student on trial, and giving him an opportunity to show his fitness and worth by application to study. Certainly the best test of the student's knowledge is the ability to pursue advantageously the prescribed course of study.

After admission to college the student has at least fifteen hours per week of class room work. He may select, within a limited range, his studies. This selection is done under the guidance of the professors, and depends largely on the acquirements or deficiencies of the student. About three-fourths of the Freshman and Sophomore years are devoted to the classics and mathematics. A large share of the work in the Junior and Senior years may be devoted to specialization in science, language, mathematics, history, sociology, or philosophy. In some cases elocution, music, and the fine arts rightly receive a fair share of attention on the part of a large number of students throughout the college course.

The advantages of a college education do not consist alone in the training of the faculties and the acquisition of knowledge, but one of its chief advantages grows out of the incidental noble and generous associations and influences.

The college is a homogeneous community of a distinct and peculiar type. It is a little world by itself. The professors and students are separated from the common activities of life, and a common feeling unites all in a common bond. There are poured into this community the hopes, aspirations, habits, and tastes of the different students, which are soon molded into a common life, and become, in turn, an important factor in forming the character and directing the life of the student.

The college classes become the organic centers of college life. For four years the students meet, at least in the smaller colleges, in the same lecture rooms for common studies, and become acquainted with each other's talents, tempers, and characteristics. It is within this charmed circle that the students find their associates and form warm and lasting friendships. It is not to be wondered at that class spirit runs high and class sentiment becomes a strong abiding power with the student. It is worth much to any young man or woman to be initiated into this hallowed sanctuary and catch its spirit and receive its uplifting influence. These central forces of the college classes naturally combine into a community with a common life. Thus each college comes to have a genius loci of its own. The subtle and fascinating influence of the common life and spirit is the esprit de corps of a college, and exerts no small influence over the life of the students. It gives exhilaration and stimulus to the students, and its formative power is felt throughout their lives, molding character and giving form to their opinions and direction to their aims, so that the college becomes a real Alma Mater. It is this spirit that makes and enforces a peculiar sentiment in the college community, which becomes almost as strong as positive law. These influences emanate in various ways. No one can trace them to their ultimate source, but all feel the effect of these dominant forces, and realize that their lives are, in some measure, gradually but surely becoming molded and shaped by them. These influences are among the most cherished recollections in after years, and unite the student to his college with affectionate regard. There is certainly no better place for our youth to form and solidify a manly character, and develop independent convictions and humanitarian sympathies which will be of lasting satisfaction.

Noah Porter, in speaking of the benefits of association in a college community, truthfully says: "It is enough for us to be able to assert that thousands of the noblest men, who stand foremost in the ranks of social and professional life, would be forward to acknowledge that they are indebted to the cultivating influences of college friendships and college associations for the germs of their best principles, their noblest aspirations, and their most refined tastes. * * * True manhood, in intellect and character, is in no community so sagaciously discerned and so honestly honored as in this community. Pretension and shams are in none more speedily and cordially detected and exposed. Whether displayed in manners or intellectual efforts, conceit is rebuked and effectually repressed. Modest merit and refined tastes are appreciated, first by the select few, and then by the less discerning many. Each individual spectator of the goings-on of this active life is learning intellectual and moral lessons which he cannot forget if he would, and which he would not if he could, and he comes away with a rich freight of the most salutary experiences of culture in his tastes, his estimates of character, his judgments of life, as well as of positive achievements in literary skill and power."

Some of the effective means of social life among the students are the open and the secret societies. They are purely voluntary, and are originated and managed by the members.

The Greek Letter Societies are secret, and prevail in nearly all colleges. They are generally limited to ten or twenty members, and the chapters in the different colleges bear a friendly and mutual relation to each other. Among the Eastern colleges, nearly all these societies have elegant chapter houses, in which the members have rooms, and where they enjoy homelike comforts; while in the Western colleges the societies have attractive rooms, with tasteful appointments, which become a place of rendezvous for their members. Their only bond is congeniality. Some very different types of character are manifest in these societies. Students group themselves according to their common tastes, habits, and character. Some societies aim at scholarship or literary excellence, while others make wealth or social qualities an essential requirement. Even "fast fellows," if there be such, are eager to group themselves together into a secret society. A few of these societies are of a literary character, but the object of the majority is to promote sociability. It is claimed that their influence in some colleges is positively injurious, while in others they are beneficial and helpful in cultivating social qualities and in establishing warm intimate friendships among the members.

It is a question whether the attendant evils do not offset their advantages. They are expensive, and often accompanied with distractions unfavorable to student life. Sometimes the late hours and suppers and other convivial indulgences absorb time and lower scholarship. They afford opportunity secretly to do evil. The members may plan escapades and hatch intrigues, and cover them up so as to make it almost impossible for the college authorities to discover the guilty ones. Yet many excellent things are said of them and of the mutual benefits to their members.

The open societies, devoted exclusively to literary work, need no justification. They are voluntary associations for general literary and forensic culture. Oratorical and literary accomplishments are a prerequisite to the highest success and usefulness. The student who improves the opportunities of these societies need not neglect his regular college work, but in them can train himself to think consecutively, and gain facility of expression and an acquaintance with parliamentary law. If he makes faithful preparation, he will escape bombast and loose thinking and expression, and will become familiar with public movements, political questions, and social tendencies. For these and other reasons the literary societies should be encouraged, and students should consider it a privilege to become members of the same.

Political clubs are, likewise, organized among the colleges to promote the success of their several parties and the triumph of their respective principles. At the time of national contests the clubs are especially active at mass meetings, in joint debates, and speeches, which set forth the merits of party principles and candidates. These experiences are both pleasant and instructive. The dignified participation of students in active political work tends to fire their patriotism and better equip them for the important social and civil duties of life. Political leagues are now organized in nearly all our colleges, with a view to strengthen the political party ties of the students in the several colleges and extend the party spirit and principle.

Glee clubs and other musical clubs, together with classical and scientific clubs, likewise afford ample opportunity for cultivating social life, and furnish pleasant entertainment.

Interest in athletic sports and outdoor amusements is often intense. Foot-ball and base-ball are the most popular games. Boat clubs are especially popular at Harvard and Yale. Bicycle clubs and lawn tennis clubs are made quite enjoyable to a large class of students.

College students also edit and publish college newspapers and journals. They are issued as daily, weekly, or monthly papers, and are supposed to voice the sentiment of the college and reflect its social, intellectual, and moral conditions. These journals help to keep the alumni and the undergraduate students in touch with the college and its work.

The religious life in college is very important. One of the primary purposes of the founders of American colleges was to promote such a religious life among students that they would go forth into all vocations as religious teachers and leaders of the people. This religious purpose has not been entirely thwarted. The general religious interest was never more marked and aggressive than at present. From one-half to five-sevenths of the students in American colleges make an open confession of Christ. In 1893, there were 70,419 young people in Protestant colleges. Of these, 38,327 were members of churches. Within the last few years the religious tone of our colleges has been elevated and improved. The average American student feels the need of educating the spiritual nature, and that there is no better way to attain this end than through a knowledge of the Bible and the soul touch of the Christ-life.

College authorities, recognizing the student's need of daily spiritual food, almost universally require once a day attendance at college prayers, which last from fifteen to thirty minutes. The students have frequent opportunities to meet the college pastor or one of the professors for conversation on personal religion.

Revivals are of frequent occurrence in many of our American colleges. These religious awakenings are strong and pervasive, and not only show the deep religious interest, but give a Christian tone to the body of students. The extent and intensity of these revivals in some colleges is so manifest that from three-fourths to nine-tenths of the graduates go out from their halls professing Christians.

The Young Men's and Young Women's Christian Associations are organized in nearly all the colleges, to secure growth in the Christian life and to encourage aggressive work among the students. They have either separate buildings on the college campus, or rooms fitted up in some of the college buildings, for their regular religious meetings. These associations are operated through standing committees, composed of one or more members from each college class. These societies have done much to awaken, increase, and intensify the interest of the students in religious matters, and by prayer and mutual sympathy have strengthened each other's Christian character and principles during the trying years of college life.

The morals of students should not be expected to rise much above the morals of the homes from which they come. The formative period of the student begins prior to college life. Parents who neglect this opportune time for training the moral life should not place this responsibility upon college professors and expect them to make up for parental neglect. It is a well-known fact, however, that only a very small per cent. of college students are known to be immoral. The prevalence of the drinking habit is decreasing. In one or two of the Eastern colleges a large per cent. of the students will take a social glass on public occasions and at inter-collegiate games, but in Western colleges this custom is rarely practiced. Money supplied by over-indulgent parents is the occasion of most of the immoralities. There is no general laxity of college law and sentiment in regard to the morals of the student. Most college authorities deal severely with known cases of drunkenness, theater going, and gambling.

The consensus of opinion among college authorities is that the morals of students are better than those of the same number of youth outside the college. "Our opinion is," says Noah Porter, "and we believe it will be confirmed by the most extended observation and the most accurate statistics, that there is no community in which the pre-eminently critical period of life can be spent with greater safety than it can in the college." President Timothy Dwight bears this testimony: "There is no community of the same number anywhere in the world which has a better spirit, or is more free from what is unworthy, than the community gathered within our university borders. The religious life of the community has been earnest and sincere. The proportion of Christian men in the university is very large, and the influence exerted by them is manifest in its results."

President Thwing says: "I do believe, and believe upon evidence, that the morals of the American college student are cleaner than the morals of the young man in the office, or behind the counter, or at the bench. His life and associations belong to the realm of the intellect, not to the realm of the appetite. His discipline is a training in that virtue the most comprehensive of all virtues—the virtue of self-control. He is able to trace more carefully than most the relations of cause and effect in the sphere of moral action. He recognizes the penalties of base indulgence. It is, therefore, my conviction that the college man is at once less tempted to the satisfaction of evil appetites, and less indulgent towards this satisfaction, than are most young men."

The expenses in college vary according to the means and dispositions of the students themselves. In making general estimates, it is impossible to be strictly accurate.

The average cost per year of an education at Harvard is estimated at about $900; at Yale and Columbia, $700; at Princeton, Boston, Cornell, and Amherst, $600; at Wellesley, Smith, and Vassar Colleges, $500 to $600. The average cost of an education in most Western colleges does not exceed $300 or $400. At Oberlin College, Wooster University, and the Ohio Wesleyan University the average yearly expenses are reduced to $200 or $250.

It is evident that higher education is more expensive in Eastern than in Western colleges. The difference arises from various causes. The tuition ranges from $100 to $150 in Eastern colleges, and from $30 to $50 in Western colleges. Again, the professors in most of the Western colleges receive smaller salaries than those in the Eastern colleges. In many of the smaller college towns the cost of living is low.

Then the student's personal and social habits play an important part in making up the general average. The large room rent and elaborate furnishings, expensive athletic sports, and costly fraternity life is much more manifest in the Eastern than in the Western colleges. The students are prone to follow the standards of home expenses, and fall in with the spirit of the wealthy social class, and indulge in elaborate living. Parents should discourage any display of wealth or extravagance in college if they wish their sons not to spend their time attending clubs, theaters, and questionable places of amusement, but to devote their attention to attaining true scholarship.

The student's manner of living varies according to location and circumstances. In Eastern colleges the students reside mostly in dormitories located on the college campus, or in fraternity chapter houses, and secure their board outside in clubs or restaurants. These rooms rent from $50 to $300 a year, and the price of board varies from $3 to $7 per week. The dormitory system does not prevail to any great extent among Western colleges. Students rent rooms in private residences, paying from 50 cents to $2 per week, and find board in families or clubs at a cost of $2 to $3 per week. The students boarding in clubs are comparatively free from restraints, and often fail to cultivate the social amenities and table manners which should characterize a cultivated gentleman. For this reason, boarding in private families, where a woman's presence usually lends grace and dignity to social life at the table, is better for the student. The college student cannot afford, for the sake of cheapness in club life, to become rude or coarse. The people look to the college-trained man for that inherent polish which reveals itself in good taste and refined manners. Success and usefulness in life often depend upon these small matters.

The students in American colleges are not measured by social and financial standards. The colleges sustain democratic ideals and methods by discouraging costly luxury, and encouraging simplicity of living without making life bare of all that is elevating and refining. They believe that "plain living and high thinking" is the way to call out the talent hedged about by financial difficulties, as well as to spur those gifted with fortune to higher aims and nobler efforts. The student who has the promise of a large inheritance has intimate social relations with those whose only capital is brain and heart. The true college test is thus expressed by President Thwing: "Brain is the only symbol of aristocracy, and the examination room the only field of honor; the intellectual, ethical, spiritual powers the only test of merit; a mighty individuality the only demand made of each, and a noble enlargement of a noble personality the only ideal." This is a healthful condition in college life, and tends to develop in the student self-respect and independence as an essential element in true citizenship.

Students of limited means are encouraged to secure an education. The young man of ability and perseverance, who commands the esteem of the college community, will receive encouragement and support to complete his course in college. There are many charitable foundations to help a needy young man in college. Harvard gives away annually to students nearly $100,000 in prizes, scholarships, and fellowships. Cornell has six hundred free scholarships, and other colleges deal generously with earnest and worthy students. The hesitating young man who desires an education would do well to follow Franklin's advice, "Young man, empty your purse in your head." If necessity requires that the student should go through college poorly dressed and with plain living, he can afford to face these apparent disadvantages when he is confident that within a few years, by force of application, he can win a position of honor and independence as the reward of true merit. It is a significant fact that the majority of the students in our American colleges come from homes of moderate means, and that fully one-third are earning their way through college.



VI.

THE PERSONAL FACTORS IN A COLLEGE EDUCATION.

One of the personal elements entering into a college education is the choice of a college to attend. This decision is a problem of the first importance, and should not be left to ignorance or caprice, but ought to be carefully considered, inasmuch as it largely involves the future type of character a student will have after the formative period of college life. The college puts a life-long stamp upon its graduates. It largely shapes their tastes, determines the company they keep, and greatly influences the serious work of their lives. There are a few principles by which we may test the excellence of a college without undue disparagement of any.

In the first place, a young man or woman should select a college where the standard of scholarship is high. The number and extent of studies in the college curriculum is not so important as the quality and tone of instruction. The world has come to require accuracy and thoroughness in instruction. What little a student knows he ought to know thoroughly, and then he can speak and act with assurance. A low intellectual tone or lack of critical work on the part of a college has a debilitating influence on the student. The professors should have a ripe scholarship, and be earnest and strong in their work, as well as inspire scholarly ambitions. Their bearing should be kind, courteous, and gentlemanly, in order that the students may come to possess more manly and womanly qualities of character as well as scholarship. Such teachers, in close personal contact with students, will awaken new powers, and help to discipline the mind to clear thinking, and impart noble impulses that will enrich manhood and womanhood.

Again, the college buildings, libraries, apparatus, and general equipment are important, but not as essential as the teaching force. President Gates says: "Harvard ranked as a small training college, and had no cabinets illustrative of science, when she trained Emerson and Holmes and Lowell, among all her gifted sons still her triple crown of glory. Bowdoin had no expensive buildings upon her modest campus when Hawthorne and Longfellow there drank at the celestial fount. Amherst, among her purple hills, boasted no wealth of appliances or endowment when she printed the roll of undergraduates rendered forever illustrious by the names of Richard S. Storrs, Henry Ward Beecher, and Roswell D. Hitchcock. Presidents Woolsey and Wayland, and Mark Hopkins and Martin B. Anderson, were trained for their noble and ennobling work in colleges which lacked rich appliances and thronging numbers." Such, however, has been the growth of the sciences and advancement in the methods of teaching, that in our modern schools for superior instruction the well-equipped college has a decided advantage over those with meager appliances.

Likewise, select a college where the life and esprit de corps is the very best. The college is not an exercising ground for the intellect alone, but a place for inspiring ideas and aims. These are the soul of college life. They are more important than college buildings, endowment or libraries.

The religious principle should have the ascendancy in the choice of a college, because religion demands the supreme place in life. The moral and religious character is by no means fixed when the student enters college, and he needs to come into a pure Christian atmosphere, where the heart, as well as the mind, is molded and stimulated.

Other things being equal, the student should favor a college of his own denomination, or the one that he thinks best represents the spirit and form of Christianity. His church affiliations should be strengthened. In advising this, we do so not from any sectarian bigotry. The probabilities are that if the student attends a college of another denomination, the impressions made may tend to produce indifference to the church of his fathers, or weaken his own Christian efficiency in it. The young should maintain personal loyalty to the church that has helped to build up their Christian character and to inspire in them a thirst for a broader culture.

It is claimed to be an advantage to the student living in the West to select a college in his own state, where he will form his friendships and associations, which afterward may be of value to him in his chosen profession. In such cases, it is thought advisable to take graduate work in the East, in some university which is pre-eminent for its special courses, libraries, laboratories, and appliances. On the other hand, it would often be an advantage for the Eastern student to take work in the best universities of the West.

We come now to speak of some of the personal hindrances and advantages in acquiring an education. Student life has its hindrances. All have not the same capacity to assimilate culture. It requires more effort for some to master a college course than for others. A thorough college training costs arduous labor. Many are not willing to pay the price, and to practice the self-denial necessary to acquire the power to think and master the great subjects of study. It demands all the force of a strong conviction and an earnest resolution to go through college and win a place among the thinkers of the world. One reason why so many students enter college and drop out before they complete their course of study, arises from the fact that they have not acquired the power of application. Their feeble wills and intellectual lethargy succumb before mental tasks requiring eight or ten hours of hard, earnest work a day. They should be encouraged with the words of Lord Bacon, who says: "There is no comparison between that which we may lose by not trying and not succeeding, since by not trying we throw away the chance of an immense good, and by not succeeding we only incur the loss of a little human labor."

Again, there are those who are led to look for some short cut to obtain a college education. This is a serious mistake. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap," is as true in an intellectual career as in any other work of life. The laws of mental growth must be observed to make the most of ourselves, and to do the most for humanity and God. The young must learn that it takes years of work to get a college education. "If I am asked," says President J. W. Bashford, "why Methodism does not produce more John Wesleys, I assign as one reason of this failure the fact that none of us observe the laws of mental development as John Wesley kept them, and devote the time to mental growth which John Wesley gladly gave. I turn to Arminius, and find that he spent between twelve and thirteen years at the universities of Europe before he began to preach. Arminius died at fifty-nine. Yet he left behind him a work on divinity which ranks him with La Place and Newton, with Calvin and Augustine and Spinoza, as one of the world's master minds. Calvin spent nine years at college, and later was able to devote three years more to study. Augustine devoted thirteen years to study after his father sent him away to college before he accepted the professorship at Milan. It was eleven years after Luther left home for college before he left the scholar's bench for the professor's chair. Four years later, Luther took another scholastic degree, showing that he was still pursuing his studies. Five years more were required for Luther to reach clear convictions on religion and theology. Paul was a student in the most celebrated schools in Jerusalem for fifteen years. If, therefore, you do not seem to have that mastery of truth, if you do not find yourself the intellectual giant which you once thought you might become, do not blame the Lord, do not depreciate your talent, until you have devoted as many years to college studies as did Arminius, and Calvin, and Augustine, and Wesley, and Luther, and Paul. If you would do a great work in the world, fulfill the conditions by which men outgrow their fellows." The student should be willing to begin at the bottom of the ladder and work upward. It will take more time, but it will yield rich returns and bring real satisfaction.

Again, if the college life is to be profitable and pleasant, the student should refuse to enter an advanced class when his general culture or discipline is so deficient as to render it difficult to make reasonable progress in his studies. It is true that the entrance examination is not always a fair test of the student's capacity or promise. The difficulty cannot be corrected, and study be made a pleasure, unless a student himself shows frankness, and is willing to begin where every step forward is thoroughly understood.

Among the personal advantages of a college education is the fact that it helps to emancipate the individual. The studies pursued take the student out of his narrow self and his present environment, and make him conversant with other ages and conditions, where he finds his larger self. The personality becomes enlarged and enriched by a wider vision and a knowledge of the great and good men who have lived to make the world better. The best thoughts of the past and the present are at the student's command. He may place himself in touch with all ages and peoples and feel that he is contemporaneous with the best spirit and thought of all that have gone before. Truth thus gathered and stored up in life and character has a wonderful emancipating power. The gateway of truth is always thrown open to those who earnestly knock and search for her hidden treasures. The individual in this age, more than in any other, needs the emancipating power of truth to act intelligently and effectively in the drama of life.

A college education likewise tends to liberalize the individual by first eliminating any self-conceit, or inclination to rashness or falsity, and to build up firmness, judgment, and sincerity of character. The aim of the college is to enable the student to know himself and his mission in life. He must have a right conception of self, because he must everywhere live and act with self. He owes it to himself, and to the race, and to God, to make the most of life by developing his God-given faculties. God had a purpose in creating each person, and the aim of each individual should be to live worthy of his origin, by finding out what God wants of him, and then training his faculties and aptitudes on the line of this purpose. He who lives in willful ignorance lives beneath the privileges and possibilities of a human being created in the divine image. No one ought to be satisfied with anything short of the noblest and best possibilities for himself. The majority of men and women have rich capacities, and their natures are full of resources, but these are not always called out. Their incipient powers often need some outside impulse or suggestion to open the chambers of the soul and lead them to discover their unconscious capacities, natural aptitudes, and untried powers.

There are hidden forces in our nature and in life about us of which we little dream. The marvelous forces of electricity are being applied to all human activities, and are unfolding to us new life and new possibilities. We are told that there are mightier currents in the atmosphere above us than those in the Mississippi or the Amazon. Likewise, the science of education exhibits how the trained powers of man reveal unexpected forces and capacities, which have needed only the touch of truth and personality to awaken a higher life and to impart fresh inspiration. Now the college is the best place to discover our inborn energies, and to awaken talent and develop greatness through the influence of men and books.

The student is also liberalized by a knowledge of the truth. Ignorance is the synonym for narrowness and bigotry. Charity, good-will, and human brotherhood spring from a kind heart and an enlightened understanding. The student, by reason of years of study, is better able to see truth in its various human relations and personally exhibit a breadth of charity unknown to those of narrow vision. His informed judgment and quickened conscience will enable him to act generously and to stuffer courageously, because his soul is quietly resting in the bosom of truth.

A college education likewise helps to fortify the individual for complete living. It is in the college that the student gains a deeper consciousness of his own ability, which gives independence to character. Through genius, or by dint of extraordinary application, he attains an intellectual ability which gives him the right to wield his trained powers to uphold the truth and work for the general good. His mental powers, stores of knowledge, and humanitarian sympathies naturally give greater opportunity for influence and usefulness. The judgment and reasoning powers have been trained so that the student goes forth fortified against the acceptance of plausible delusions and sophisms, and can speak with rightful authority as to the facts or principles he has observed and verified. Truth and personality, thus coupled together, face practical duties and questions with the confident strength and heroic courage which presage victory.

The college-trained man, who enters his vocation in life as a vigorous, virtuous and capable being, equipped with facts and principles as the propelling power of life, will wield the greatest influence for good. He will be fortified for the battles of life, and able to maintain himself in honest independence.

The college offers another safeguard to the student by conserving scholarly tastes and habits. The student who acquires a literary taste is never at a loss to know how he may best employ his time. The baser things of life are crowded out to give place to nobler thoughts and higher aims. He finds his real happiness in cultivating the inner life of exalted thought and generous impulses. He realizes that, as the body demands sustenance, and the soul needs "bread from heaven," so the mind must have intellectual food, which gratifies a taste for the best thoughts of the best thinkers.

The student is also helped to fortify himself with a noble purpose. He is led to feel that he has a mission in life, and the power of this purpose gives an elevation to the spirit and a dignity and loftiness to conduct. More than anything else, it helps to strengthen the will to resist temptation and to conform to the highest moral code. By far too many of our youth are drifting through life without any particular aim or purpose. They fail to act in life under the inspiration of a devotion to a great purpose. Henry D. Thoreau was right when he wrote: "The fact is, you have got to take the world on your shoulders, like Atlas, and put along with it. You will do this for an idea's sake, and your success will be in proportion to your devotion to ideas. It may make your back ache occasionally, but you will have the satisfaction of hanging it or twirling it to suit yourself. Cowards suffer; heroes enjoy." Any worthy calling or useful employment will lead to honor and a broader development of self, providing that self is filled with an absorbing love to God, so that it will be the unit of measure for action towards a neighbor and the true base line from which his rights and boundaries are surveyed and determined.

The college helps to fortify the young by imparting good impulses, which enable them to enter upon life full of hope and courage. It is the place to kindle the youth with a glow of enthusiasm, and impart an inspiration which will pervade the whole career of life. It speaks for the immaterial and unseen forces of life, and supplies the purest motives by which to form a true and beautiful character.

No young man can afford to enter the wide-open door of the twentieth century without a harmonious development of his faculties, and a nature sensitive to the best and holiest influences, and responsive to the most generous impulses. The aspirations of bright minds and noble natures can never excel the lofty descriptions of wisdom by the wisest of men.

"Happy is the man that findeth wisdom And the man that getteth understanding, For the merchandise of it is better than silver, And the gain thereof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies, And all things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her. Length of days is in her right hand, And in her left hand riches and honor; Her ways are ways of pleasantness, And all her paths are peace."



VII.

THE PRACTICAL VALUE OF EDUCATION.

Prince Bismarck is reported to have said that in Germany "there were ten times as many people educated for the higher walks as there were places to fill." Many uninformed persons are ready to make similar statements in regard to this country, and believe that we are over-educating the people. Colonel R. G. Ingersoll says: "You have no idea how many men education spoils. Colleges are institutions where brickbats are polished and diamonds dimmed."

The public schools have nearly fifteen million pupils enrolled, or nearly one-fourth of the population of the entire country. In 1890, the four hundred and fifteen colleges had 118,581 students in all departments. This vast army of youth receiving instruction is regarded, on the part of some people, with a little disquietude, and it is believed that we are likely to have too many college-trained men and women. There are certainly no grounds for fear if we take education to mean the broadest culture for complete living.

If we examine more closely the figures regarding our school population, we will find that, of the large number of pupils enrolled in 1890, there was only "an average of three and one-half in one hundred pupils studying any branches above the courses of study laid down for the first eight years; that is, between the ages of six and fourteen years."

Of the 118,581 students in our colleges, there were only 35,791 men and 7,847 women in the collegiate department, making a total of 43,638 receiving higher instruction. The remaining number were in the preparatory, normal, and professional departments. These students are scattered over a great nation, and if we take students in all departments they represent one in four hundred and fifty-five of the population who are under superior instruction, and only one male student in the collegiate department to a group of 1,770 of the population. Many of those enrolled in college do not complete the course of study. It is evident that the number of students in our colleges is proportionately small, considering our population and the requirements of our age, and the proportion of graduates is even smaller.

The practical value of a college education is seriously questioned by many good people unacquainted with the facts. There is abundant evidence, however, which goes to prove that the college graduate has better chances for success than the non-graduate.

It is admitted at the outset that some self-educated men have succeeded without a college education, while some college-trained men have failed in active life. It should be remembered that colleges do not exist to make ability, but to develop it. There is certainly nothing in a college education which unfits men for the practical duties of life. Some college students have meager talent to begin with, and a college training aims to help them make the most of themselves.

The so-called "self-made" men have undergone the severest discipline. By force of native ability and energy, they have surmounted difficulties and achieved success which merits the warmest praise. There is scarcely one of them who would not have availed himself of a collegiate or technical training if force of circumstances had not ordered otherwise. They feel keenly their educational disadvantages, and believe that they would have had greater success if they could have had the disciplinary training of a college course. Many feel as did the distinguished orator, Henry Clay, who, when in Congressional debate with John Randolph, a collegian, is said to have acknowledged, with tears, the disadvantage he suffered from not having had a liberal education.

Washington, Franklin, and Lincoln achieved success by their application, but they were among the foremost to recognize the value of a college training. These examples show that a college education is not always essential to the highest service. The only just claim for a collegiate training is that it increases the probabilities of a person's success in life.

The criteria of comparison of the achievements of men are imperfect, and the measure of success is not easily calculated. Great men are not those who simply climb up to some conspicuous position. It is important to estimate the quality of the work done, as well as the place occupied. A greater premium should be placed upon the manhood and womanhood put into the work, rather than the place filled. The teachings of Christ show that there is no place in the Kingdom of God for a place hunter, but that greatness is measured by service. In the competition for success in life, it is often necessary to have not only ability and worth, but the commercial instinct to gain public recognition. The safe rule for men of talent to follow is to make themselves conspicuously great in their present position, and make it a stepping-stone for something greater. Charles Kingsley occupied, in England, an apparently humble position in his rural pastorate, but the thinking world has felt the power and influence of his great life.