of the elective system to effect, leaves little room for the restless leisure that used to vent itself on signboards and hen roosts. Congenial work and plenty of it will do more to harmonize a student to his surroundings than all the formal regulations or systems of espionage that the mind of man could devise.

But while there has been improvement in the respects noted, student standards have still their inconsistencies. The two nerve centers of student honor are now athletics and examinations. It would be hard to overrate the significance of athletics in modern college life. Time was when the commencement exercises furnished the chief point of contact between the collective life of the student body and the outside public. The point of intersection is now the intercollegiate game of football or baseball. Both games are characteristically American and have proved effective agencies for the discipline of manliness and the development of college spirit. The popularity of these games, however, and especially the unprecedented interest in football, have grown faster than the means devised to meet and control the abuses connected with them. Methods of safeguarding intercollegiate athletics are yet in an experimental stage. While I have perfect faith in the ultimate competency of student honor, reënforced by the American love of a square deal, to meet the exigencies presented, the duty of the hour is to educate public sentiment in and outside of our colleges so that it will despise the doctrine of victory at any price. This is the slogan that is responsible more than anything else for the lie signed to the examination paper as well as for the lying evasion of the aspiring athlete.

In intercollegiate athletics, as practiced in nearly all of our American colleges and universities, a student becomes ineligible who has received or is receiving compensation "direct or indirect" for his athletic services. This inhibition, it is true, strikes at the root of athletic commercialism; but there has grown up a code of casuistry in the interpretation of this clause that threatens to undermine the integrity of athletic ideals. The faculties of our colleges have here a rare oppor

tunity and duty. It is a duty requiring tact, insight, courage, and unfailing fidelity to truth and honor. The slightest inconsistency or evasion on their part, the slightest concession to the lust of victory without merit, the slightest relaxation of vigilance or interest, even the complacent smile that sometimes accompanies the formal rebuke of victorious trickery may lower the whole standard of athletic honor. It must be remembered, too, that no institution can long maintain one standard of honor for the athletic field and another for the recitation room. Both student and public are quick to make their inferences, and these inferences, even if unfair, become in turn almost as prejudicial to the maintenance of student honor as are overt acts of dishonor.

I am convinced, however, that in many instances of supposed underhandedness in college athletics the case is one of perverted vision rather than of moral obliquity. We need constantly to remember that many things which to the faculty and to outsiders appear palpably dishonorable are not so regarded by the student, because he is in the grip of a collective athletic sentiment of which others know but little. He is in need of enlightenment rather than of censure. He is a reminder that athletic tactics have not been adequately interpreted to college students in simple terms of right and wrong. The strategy, for example, by which a pitcher leads a runner on the bases to overestimate his chances "to get away," is perfectly legitimate; but the strategy employed by the catcher who habitually pulls the ball down as he catches it, and thus leads the umpire to call a strike, is dishonest. The principle is perfectly clear: to practice deception on the umpire is to practice imposition on the opposing team. But how many students ever pause to make the distinction, and how often has it been made to them?

Mr. Briggs narrates the following case: "A whole-souled and straightforward young athlete told me once, with smiling good humor, that a football player in his own college (who had everybody's respect) owed his success in the game to a knack of holding his opponent in such a manner as made his 1 School, College, and Character, page 75. [Author's note.]

opponent seem to hold him." Does not the very frankness of the young man in making this disclosure to the dean show that he saw nothing dishonorable in it? His sense of honor was not involved because his intelligence had not been appealed to. So far from púrposely affronting faculty sentiment, he was ignorant of it.

Another case in point is found in the most important declaration made by the well-known Conference on Intercollegiate Athletics held at Brown University, February 18, 1898. The declaration reads: "The practice of assisting young men through college in order that they may strengthen the athletic teams is degrading to amateur sport." This declaration, I repeat, is all-important; but it needs explanation to the prospective matriculate. It does not commend itself to his sense of fairness or of consistency. He is more likely to see in the offense inhibited, so far as it regards himself, not a malum in se, but only a malum prohibitum. He knows that the practice of assisting worthy young men through college that they may strengthen some musical organization, or serve as typesetters in the office of the college paper, is perfectly legitimate. "Why may not I," he asks, "pay in part for my education by my physical prowess, if my brother pays in part for his education by his musical talent?" The question is a natural one and should be answered before it is asked. Left unanswered, it tempts the student to evasion and duplicity.

One other illustration of the obscurity that should not exist in matters affecting student conduct relates not to athletics, but to examinations, an illustration that may serve also to introduce the subject of the honor system. In an article entitled "Student honor: a study in cheating," 1 Mr. Earl Barnes writes as follows: "Not long since there was a flagrant case of cheating discovered in one of our large universities. An examination paper had been stolen from a printing office and several students had used it to secure superior standing. An attempt was made to arouse public sentiment in the institu1 See the International Journal of Ethics, Volume 14, page 481 (1903-1904). [Author's note.]

tion; and the student body appointed a committee from its numbers which was to receive reports and try future offenders." While the matter was under discussion, three professors in different and representative departments asked their students to state in writing whether they would themselves, had they become cognizant of the theft, have reported it to the student committee, it being taken for granted that they would not report to the faculty. The majority of the students, men and women, said "No." The author concludes: "And so we must be patient with children, and university students, and with ourselves until we grow up to social manhood and womanhood."

The position of the author seems to me not well taken. Something ought to have been done, but all the world despises a tattler. Some of the students wrote: "I despise the spirit that actuates a talebearer. How can a person respect himself and be a talebearer?" Others said that "even the faculty professors would secretly despise them, and the public would consider them contemptible informers." Was there no other exit except through tattling? My own feeling is that a student who has witnessed the theft would, under the circumstances, have done his full duty had he gone to the ring-leaders and expressed to them his own sense of indignation and wrong, adding no threat of possible exposure. But if the student committee had been an established agency of the institution, and not called into being solely by this emergency, in other words, if the honor system had prevailed in the institution,— reporting to the committee would not have been tattling, nor would it have been so regarded by the students themselves. If an institution uniformly ignores the student's sense of honor on examinations, is it to be expected that this same sense of honor can be confidently appealed to when an emergency arises, an emergency due to the almost inexcusable carelessness of a member of the faculty?

The honor system as it prevails in Southern colleges and universities to-day is itself an evolution. Inaugurated by

Thomas Jefferson in the founding of the University of Virginia in 1825, it was not until 1842 that the system may be said to have culminated in the following resolution:

"Resolved. That in all future written examinations for distinction or other honors of the University, each candidate shall attach to the written answers presented by him on such examination a certificate in the following words: I, A. B., do hereby certify on honor that I have derived no assistance during the time of this examination from any source whatever, whether oral or written, or in print, in giving the above

The pledge is now simplified into "I certify upon my honor that I have neither given nor received aid on this examination," and is used in this form, or with unimportant modifications, in all Southern colleges and universities. The professor remains in the room during the examination to preserve quiet and to answer necessary questions, but there is no suggestion of espionage. The student is presumed to be a gentleman, and this trust in his honor is a powerful influence in making him honorable. It at least shields him against the subtle temptation to act on the principle that where there is no confidence, deceit is no crime. Violations of the written pledge are rare and are usually dealt with by the students themselves, sometimes by the faculty alone, not infrequently by both.

That the honor system prevails only to a limited extent outside of the South is no indication that student nature is essentially different in different sections. I have yet to hear of any college or university where the honor system, if faithfully tried, has proved a failure. "I have yet to meet a single

1 It is possible that the honor system may have been in vogue in a few Southern colleges before 1825. The claim of precedence is often made for the South Carolina College. President Benjamin Sloan writes, however, as follows (May 27, 1905): "I am very sorry that I can find no record of the origin of the honor system in South Carolina College. It seems, though, that this principle was adopted at the birth of the college, for one of the by-laws published in 1804 states that rewards and punishments shall be addressed to a sense of duty, and the principle of honor and shame.' I can find no further documentary evidence of the adoption of the honor system by the Board of Trustees." [Author's note.]

See The Genesis of the Honor System, by Professor William M. Thornton, an address (1904) privately printed. [Author's note.]