versities, and, to a less degree perhaps, in our own. Clark, Johns Hopkins, Leland Stanford and Harvard are foremost in the work of investigation, breadth of curriculums and choice of studies, in this country. Professor Perry, in the Educational Review, pertinently exclaims, "How many noted English investigators are inconceivable as professors at Oxford or Cambridge?" Professor Guthrie, in the Journal of the Society of Arts, in speaking of the universities of England says, "It does not admit of a shadow of a doubt but that on the whole these opportunities (for science teaching) have been greatly wasted, these means wrongfully applied, and these duties wantonly neglected. In the matter of chemistry, the record of what we owe to the universities is shamefully short.

"While the intellectual world was ringing with the discoveries of Priestly, Black, and Lavoisier, the universities were concerned with the insignificant squabbles of philologists. While Faraday and Dumas, Liebig and Darwin were at work, what was, say, Oxford doing? Future generations will scarcely credit it. The leading lights in the university had nothing better to do, apparently, than to issue and discuss tracts on the difference between tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee." Possibly he may refer to such matters as have come out in the discussions and pamphlets of our own university professors, the correct (?) pronunciation of Latin, "Is Greek dead," the second Aorist, the Doric dialect- all of which may be interesting to a literary antiquary and serve to keep students busy; but it is proper enough to consider whether the transmission of such obsolete learning forms any part of the supreme art of the university.

Even as late as February, 1894, Dr. N. M. Butler had occasion to write, "The Oxford and Cambridge dons are beginning to recognize that they ought to take an interest in education. It is not easy for them to overcome the habits built upon centuries of exclusiveness and narrow educational ideals." After all, Englishmen have been the severest and most numerous critics of the English universities.

Herbert Spencer speaks to the point when he says, "The vital knowledge that by which we have grown as a nation to what we are, and which now underlies our whole existence - is a knowledge that has got itself taught in nooks and corners, while

the ordained agencies for teaching have been mumbling little else than dead formulas."

As a rule, in the world's work the men outside of the universities have been ahead.

Reformers, discoverers and progressionists have never been content with transmitting to others the learning that was transmitted to themselves. They have had a good deal to say that was not transmitted by vocal or written expression to any measurable extent. That is where the element of leadership comes in, in accordance with the law of inheritance and variation. If the university would be a leader in education, rather than a mere conserver and transmitter of learning; if it would have efficient, directive power in developing youth into noble men and women, it must have an innate, inspiring force in its faculty, not derived from transmitted learning, although aided by it.

If "he who should be content with mere learning would be no true German student," so that institution which should be content with mere transmission of learning would be no true university.

In effect, the transmission of learning is much like the transmission of property. A young man who never earned a dollar does not know how to use properly the thousands or millions of dollars that may have fallen into his lap at the age of twenty-one. He has receptivity and passivity, but discriminating benevolence and activity in actually earning money are wanting, and must be learned late, if at all. So the young man who is given every opportunity to appropriate all stores of learning has neither time nor disposition to make any stores by his own thought and work. The power of original research has not been developed. He is all the time getting ready to develop his powers of investigation, but too seldom really gets ready, because he is content with investigating what others have done. That so many young men now should spend from ten to fifteen of the most impressionable years of their lives on the mere symbols of knowledge, or in gaining second-hand knowledge, is reason enough that graduates of high-grade technical schools sooner attain to positions of eminence and influence. At all events, no one would ever think of applying to them the term "educated fools."

A bright young man, nearly prepared to enter Yale College, was walking with me in the woods. Seeing some plants of the

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very common checkerberry" (Gaultheria procumbeus), some in blossom, others in fruit, he said, concerning the latter, "These have n't turned into blossoms yet." He came out strong on Greek roots, but apparently had not observed that exceedingly common process of nature manifested in the fruit following the blossom. Being a city boy, and having been closely limited to the study of Greek, Latin and mathematics for six years, his ideas of country matters, customs, occupations, animal and plant life were infantile, and were likely to continue to be until he became twenty-one years of age, because he intended to continue his classical course in college. He already had marked qualifications for an "educated fool," wholly owing to his artificial, narrow, ascetic life. He and his ambitious parents, like so many others, over valued the transmitted learning that has formed the staple working material of colleges and universities for centuries, and undervalued that experimental knowledge that gives common sense and the power to adapt one's self to the varying conditions of a progressive world. The things that would serve him at every turn were neglected, while the things that were likely to serve no purpose of life except that of a professor, were assiduously followed.

Α

The simple transmission of learning is important, but not all-important; possibly half-important will express my meaning. The other important thing is experience with life and the things that form one's environment. Proper schooling and education should carry on the two important factors pari passu. collegiate course too narrow, too long pursued and dealing mainly with obsolete matters, incapacitates one for living a modern, individual and useful life. Usefulness, adaptability, keen observation, sound judgement, the faculty of original research and allied faculties are cultivated best in practical life, before the age of twenty-one, before the impressionable years pass to return no

more.

Adherence to fore-ordained curriculums and the transmission of learning on the part of universities and colleges, and secondary and elementary schools as well, previous to 1870, and to no slight extent now, have been the causes of much waste of energy and many lamentable misplacements. Universities and colleges especially have been instrumental in converting first-class farmers into third-rate clergymen, first-class mechanics into low-grade

lawyers, and first-class business men into country pillicoddies.

Many of the most eminent university professors have admitted the inadequacy of the systems of education prevailing now; and the university itself is involved. President Eliot has indicated wherein our systems of education have failed, and the general recognition of such failure and the attempt to remedy it has resulted in the rise of technical, industrial and manual training schools, nature study, experimental science as a requisite for admission to college, the elective system, the complete change in the methods of teaching and the incorporation of the kindergarten spirit all along the line. It should be noticed that this exceedingly important movement has been more largely in the direction of experimental science, the work of the German universities, and away from the old subjects and methods that prevailed before 1870.

Moreover, the subjects and methods themselves have undergone a remarkable change. The laboratory method of study formerly applied to only a few subjects, especially those involv ing tangible, ponderable materials; now we hear of the laboratory method of studying Latin, history, psychology, pedagogy, etc.; and although the term laboratory at present wears a strained look, the destiny of terms is of no great importance inasmuch as there is a tacit but satisfactory confession of the inadequacy of mere learning in all this work.

The universities, excepting the German, have had so much to do in transmitting learning that they have given but little attention to the principles of education. In this country the study and application of those principles have been left to normal schools. If the term normal has a definite meaning and is now applied properly to a certain class of schools, it is fair to infer that our colleges and universities and their immediate feeders have been to a considerable extent ab-normal in their work. Within a very short time a chair of pedagogy has been established at Harvard.

No doubt this has resulted from a recognized need of the study and application of educational principles, not only in elementary schools, but in secondary schools and all our higher institutions of learning as well. The establishment of such a chair in a university shows, as clearly as can be, that the leaven is needed in the university, since the normal schools have fur

nished the leaven of educational principles for the elementary schools.

The "new education" implies a forgetfulness of the old principles, and "new departures" mean departures from errors to truths.

"We teach and teach until, like drumming pedagogues, we lose the thought that what we teach has higher aims than being taught and learned."

At this late day, we ought not to have had any occasion to use such terms as "new education" and "new departures," and should not, had our colleges and universities heeded the advice and work of the educational reformers.

Three hundred years ago, Montaigne wrote, "Though we should become learned by other men's reading, I am sure a man can never be wise but by his own wisdom." "Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius in sensu" was the foremost educational principle of Comenius. Said Rousseau, "My object is not to furnish his (the pupil's) mind with knowledge, but to teach him the method of acquiring it when he has occasion for it." In Rousseau's opinion, self-teaching was the supreme art. Pestalozzi said, "An interest in study is the first thing which a teacher should endeavor to excite and keep alive." Mr. John F. Reigart has wisely said, recently, "The truly reformatory service of Froebel consisted in that he allowed children themselves to invent and discover."

Now, all these ancient but fundamental principles are talked and written about as if they were new, or had recently been discovered by the speaker or writer. The inadequacy of the transmission of learning long ago induced the educational reformers to talk over, write about and apply incessantly the principles of true education so very feebly manifested in the transmission of learning down to the present generation.

The future is full of hope and happiness for the coming generations of children and youth.