classes may be subdivided and the instruction and tasks adapted to the capacities of the members of these divisions. Extra studies or studies for special honors may be superadded, and still an average amount of diligence and success may be made the condition of an honorable testimonial; when the student proceeds to the professional or technological school or to higher attainments in some specialty of general learning.

The theory of higher education which has been briefly sketched, has been generally accepted since the revival of learning, and has shaped the constitution and administration of our colleges and universities with their classes, their curricula, their examinations, and their degrees. A brief sketch of these institutions may give us a clearer conception of the American college and its appropriate place and proper functions. The German and French Universities are what we should call professional schools, with the addition of schools of Philology, Physics, Metaphysics, and Mathematics, all looking toward the degrees of Medicine, Law, Theology, Philosophy, or to some testimonial upon examination which shall admit to some honorable place in public life. These degrees and testimonials, not only presuppose a su ccessful examination, but a fixed curriculum usually of lectures, extending over a prescribed number of terms. They also presuppose a rigorous course of enforced study at the Gymnasium or College or Lyceé, which is analogous to that prescribed in the American college, with this difference, that the latter in the last year proposes studies and gives instruction which in France and Germany are assigned to the University. The English University prescribes a curriculum with residence as the conditions for its degrees, with admission to special honors and rewards on passing rigid competitive examinations in a very limited number of special departments mostly, we may say wholly, in the line of general as contrasted with professional culture. The Scottish Universities are the most consistent adherents of the elective system which is so strongly recommended in this country and has been introduced in part into a few American colleges. These universities give but few degrees. So far as the curriculum of general culture is fixed, it is determined by requirements and a sentiment which is outside of the university, created by ecclesiastical bodies and professional guilds, etc., etc. The American college was originally modelled after one of the colleges of the English University, but it has undergone many changes in accordance with the peculiarities of American life and the rapid developments of modern science and modern learning. Most, if not all of these changes have been taught and confirmed by experiment, and have been safely incorporated into their original structure in the way of natural assimilation and growth. The earliest important deviation from the typical American college was made by the organization of the University of Virginia, which whether designedly or not approached more nearly in its constitution and workings to the Scotch University than to any other model. It allows the student to elect as many or as few courses of study as he chooses-arrang. ing these courses for his convenience, but leaving it for his option to select those which he will attend. For its degrees it prescribes a severe curriculum which it enforces by a rigid examination, but as these degrees are given to mark rare and extraordinary attainments, the majority of the

students have little care for them-the public little interest in them-this being the case, it is not surprising that degrees in Arts or in the several professional schools are rarely sought for. The certificates or testimonials which the majority of students receive in their place must necessarily be so varied in their signification as to have no significance, even to the limited public of educated men.

More recently in the University of Michigan and the Cornell University, elective courses of study have been introduced, running through several terms, of which the several branches are arranged in a certain order of progress and relationship, and each leads to a special degree.

Under this arrangement the old class system has not been abandonednor the fixed curriculum except so far as special students are admitted freely (especially in Cornell University) to study any high branch of knowledge which he is judged capable of pursuing with advantage. Inasmuch, however, as these various courses and their degrees require a residence for a fixed term of years, the integrity of the classes must be more or less weakened and the culture and stimulus which proceed from a common life in liberal studies must be far less marked and positive. In Harvard College, residence for four years is required with now and then a possible exception. A single degree is proposed in the college proper. A fixed curriculum for the candidates for this degree is however abandoned after the end of the first year. After the Freshman year a multitude of elective studies (not courses) is proposed, a certain number of which must be taken in order to admission to the first degree in Arts. We observe also that in many if not all of the colleges there is an increasing partiality for elective studies on the part of professors and teachers for reasons which are sufficiently obvious. There is also a popular desire for such studies, on the part of students who are naturally impatient of the severity of any study which is imposed and of the value of which they can know but little. The changes in the direction already made are so many and the tendency to other changes is so decided that the inquiry is becoming serious and practical, whether any curriculum of studies is to have any significance even when it seems to be retained if a great diversity of studies is to admit to a degree in Arts or if the number of degrees is to be so largely increased as to outgrow the capacity even of the educated public, to interpret the significance of the letters by which the degree is symbolized. It is also a question whether the colleges of the country in aiming to become universities, will not in fact become professional and technical schools, and whether a curriculum of general and generous culture shall have any place in our educational arrangements except in the High School and Academy; viewed in this aspect the discussion of the claims and advantages of the class as compared with the elective system becomes important.

The writer holds that it is vitally important to the culture of this country, he would almost say to the existence of this country as a country, that the American College with its class system, its fixed curriculum, its generous and earnest common life and its enforced discipline, should be retained and re-enforced, and for the following reasons.

It is important that the ideal of what constitutes a generous education

should be distinctly defined and should be made familiar to the public mind and should be suitably honored in order that the civilization of the country may be sustained and advanced. There is no method by which these results can be attained so effectually as for the institution of higher education to require certain studies in a fixed curriculum. If nothing else is accomplished one end is certainly secured and that is the assertion for these studies, the place of honor which they deserve. If the colleges do nothing more by this arrangement they testify to the importance that every man should have some acquaintance with the ancient languages and with ancient life, with modern languages and modern history and with the sciences of nature and of man which are working such changes in modern civilization and modern speculation. We believe that it is true, that with the best appliances and under favoring circumstances, this cycle of studies can be mastered with reasonable success by any studious and earnest youth of ordinary endowments, with ordinary industry, and that it is well for the community to accept the conviction that every young man who aspires to the highest position in society must master this curriculum at whatever sacrifice of disinclination or labor. It is not for our colleges to indulge the whims or fancies or the indolence of the young men of a country like ours, nor to pander to the prejudices of half-educated and conceited specialists who are tempted to despise or depreciate those branches of knowledge of which they are ignorant. It is urged indeed by the advocates of elective studies that we exalt the curriculum of generous studies, to still higher honor when we give the opportunity for eminent attainments in special branches-as in the classics or the mathematics or the physical and moral sciences-by concentrating the energies and kindling the enthusiasm of a few pupils in each direction.

To this we reply, that so far as the community is concerned, the colleges which adopt this system declare that it is not necessary that the generously-educated man should know something of all these studies, in order to take his place among its leaders and guides on the contrary they assert that it is better that he should master some few of these studies; even if he be wholly or almost wholly ignorant of the rest. The educators of the country would say in effect that a mastery of Greek and Latin or Philology is wisely purchased at the cost of entire ignorance of modern physics and physiology with their wide-reaching applications to every form of human belief and every species of human institutions. They insist that a student who is to devote himself to history or political science should select from the curriculum those studies which bear most directly upon his subsequent life-overlooking the fact that not a few of the studies which seem remote may prove to be most important and that he must remain in total ignorance of them, unless he masters their elements in his youth.

We repeat the assertion that the colleges do a great service though it be an undesired service to the community by holding its youth to the necessity of a fixed curriculum as the condition of entering into the honorable rank of generously-educated men. They cannot render this service by providing for instruction in this round of studies while they are elective, because they thereby testify that eminent attainments in a few

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branches are equally if not more valuable than a general acquaintance with all.

To this it is replied, that the university does by no means abandon the theory of a generous education by making its studies largely elective, but requires that the elements of certain branches of science and learning should be learned at the High or Preparatory school. And yet its advocates urge as a reason for the elective system that under the fixed curriculum even when extended through the university the attainments are so meagre. They assert that under the enforced system, whether it be classics, mathematics, or any of the sciences--with all the time and force of both preparatory school and college, nothing beyond a scattering of results is achieved and yet they argue that all which the pupil needs to know, say of Greek or astronomy or chemistry or physiology can be learned at the preparatory school. They assume moreover that as soon as the magic influence of the opportunity to elect one's studies begins to act-every student will be inspired with enthusiasm, will be animated to industry and will move forward to eminent success in some favorite field of activity.

The class system again brings the important advantage of uniting the students in those common sympathies and that common life which grows out of common interests and common pursuits. We assume that it is of the greatest service that the men of culture and education in any country, pre-eminently in a country like ours, should have common convictions and common sympathies. Common convictions must have as their basis common studies. Common sympathies must grow out of congenial tastes. Unless the men of highest education have common thoughts and common sympathies among themselves, they can neither form a community among themselves nor exert a strong and united influence upon the community without. Unless the students of our schools of liberal learning are held together in the same class by a curriculum of common studiesthey will be divided into separate cliques or factions. If the devotees of science and culture desire and expect to exert that influence in the commonwealth, which it is their duty and privilege to exert, they must be united by common bonds of thought and feeling. The culture which they represent must be honored by a definite curriculum in which each one has had a personal share and from which each has derived a conscious advantage and in which every one has enlightened faith and for which he feels an intelligent and fervent gratitude. It is not alone for his successes and acquisitions that the student of the American College is grateful. Even his failures and his neglects continue to instruct and warn him intellectually and morally, in all his subsequent life. Viewed in this aspect the common studies, and common pursuits-the achievements and failuresthe sympathies and the antipathies attendant upon the class system, constitute a very important part of the general and the generous education of the college life. The college itself becomes by these characteristics an important bond of union and source of inspiration to the entire community. If on the other hand the college or university is only the common dwell. ing-place of many separate sets or cliques, each shut up for the time to its special studies, its selected instructors and its limited spheres of instruc

tion and inspiration,-if even these cliques are constantly disintegrated and reconstituted, largely of new materials, the chances are that the opportunities for intellectual and personal intercourse will be limited to brief periods and shut up within narrow bounds; or if social relations occasionally shall stretch across the boundary lines drawn by special and favorite studies these relations are not necessarily cemented by common intellectual tastes and activities.

It is otherwise when a college class is gathered at the beginning of four years to pursue for four successive years substantially the same curriculum. During this period, the most exciting and plastic period of life, the members of this class are brought into contact with each other and as their capacities are tested their growth is observed-their characters are manifested and, it may be, are changed for the better or the worse. They seem at times to learn as much from one another whether in success or failure as they learn from their text-books and their instructors. It cannot be questioned that the opportunities of studying one another under these varied experiences prepare them eminently for the knowledge of their fellow-men in subsequent life.

It is not to be denied that certain disadvantages are incidental to the class system, and the enforced curriculum. There is more exposure to wearisome routine-there is less opportunity of taking advantage of decided tastes or preferences in individuals and of making extraordinary acquisitions in a special line of studies. These advantages, however, are dearly purchased at the cost of the certain evils which attend the elective system in fostering capricious self-indulgence, unreasonable and ignorant tastes and in opening the way to habitual indolence. Compulsion is an odious term-but the best things come to men through the force of necessity-which compels them to do what they are disinclined to, and often through the judgment of those who are older and more experienced than themselves. We offer no apology for teaching which is mechanical and perfunctory. We are well aware that it is never pleasant to press men to study what they do not believe in or do not like, but we have yet to learn that under an elective system indolence and neglect and superficial work are unknown. We have abundant evidence that under the Class System those who do the best work are the most eager for special improvement and those who stand highest for general excellence are most eager to perform extra and elective work. Whatever advantage attends elective studies, may be attained by giving such studies a limited place in the regular curriculum. By such an arrangement all the desired variety can be secured, individual tastes may be gratified and the satisfaction of mastering some special field of study may be experienced.

Some of the reasons which are urged in favor of the election of studies according to the tastes and prospective occupations of life seem to be arguments for the very opposite method. The very fact that a young man has a positive distaste for the mathematics and as decided a love for the classics may be a reason why he should be trained in the very school the threshold of which he desires to avoid. If he is to be an engineer or a chemist all his life it may be the more desirable that he should know something of the languages and of philosophy and should even be compelled to give atten