mould his character and control his conduct beneath the family roof. In place of those conditions he finds himself in a large and more or less free society, composed of his teachers and of the young men of his time. The ideals of his classmates are naturally somewhat peculiar. College society retains the average motives derived from a long past. These motives are unqualified by the experience of active life, and so remain archaic. However much the teaching body of the school may endeavor to affect the tone of the student life, it always abides singularly by itself, a creature of youth; not alone of the youth of our own day, for the traditions of other generations dwell there. It is indeed to this isolation of student life from the influences of the moment, to its separation from the active world, that we owe much of the good which it affords to those who partake of it. In it as in a stream a youth's intellectual frame is purified and strengthened by the motives of his kind. If he be strong enough to keep afloat, the effect is wonderfully bettering.

Though the influence of academic life is on the whole extremely advantageous, acting in a myriad ways to widen and deepen the better motives of youth, it brings dangers with it. At the age when young men generally resort to these schools, their propensities towards ill as well as towards good are strong, and are uncontrolled by habit. In all such assemblages of youth, like minds tend to form small societies, in which there may be moral gain or moral loss. No school, however small or however well watched, is free from the possible evils of such association. At most the system of government can only diminish the dangers. In no case can they be entirely avoided.

To meet the evils arising from the social effect of academic life, the managers of such schools have for centuries been framing systems of discipline. The ideal sought to be attained is the control

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of the youth's action throughout his academic course, or at least during the term time of the schools. The ends towards which the discipline is directed are in the main as follows. In the first place, the design is to obtain such a control over the time of the student that there will be no room for evil. In the second place, the object is to develop habits of regular action, so that a good methodical routine of life may be induced. of all, there is an effort, at least in the schools which inherit the English custom, to turn the attention of youths to religious considerations, with the hope that the sense of moral obligations may be strengthened thereby. Our American colleges have derived their methods of discipline mainly from the English seats of learning. In the schools of the mother country, the ideal of discipline was first developed under the influence of the priests, and the system of discipli nary culture took an ecclesiastical form. To these earlier ideas of priestly training there has been added more or less of another ideal of discipline derived from military training; so that in a large part of our American institutions, in nearly all of those in which discipline has a place in esteem, the project of control of the students rests upon theories of training which have been found applicable to two very peculiar walks in life, to the soldiers of the church and to those belonging to the arm of the secular law. It is easy to see that the ideals of discipline fit for the needs of a school which is designed to train priests of the ancient pattern or to shape soldiers may be very far removed from the true purposes of universities. The aim of our academic culture at the present time is to make a man of varied, elastic mind, who can readily turn himself to any of the multifarious duties of ordinary life. The discipline to which candidates for the army or the church are subjected is intended to breed certain very particular habits. If they are to enter the priest

hood, they need in a way to be withdrawn from the tide of the world's life, to be elevated to a peculiar intellectual and moral plane. In the old theory of the priestly function which prevailed in the times when our schools took their discipline from the church system, the candidate for orders was supposed to be even more removed from secular influences than he is at present. He was expected to enter on a very formal habit of life; to acquire a tone quite different from that which should characterize men of the world, even in the better sense of that term. The training of the soldier, which has much affected the ideals of American schools, is even more special than that of the church. The first object of the discipline which fits a man for military life is to instill the habit of prompt and unquestioning obedience to the orders of a superior. The aim is not to develop the individual initiative, but rather to suppress that quality. It is not to be denied that the ideals of military discipline afford very much which is of value in the walks of civil life. The sense of honor and of duty, the obligation of personal sacrifice, are among the highest ideals which any training can give. Nevertheless we must hold that the education of the soldier is not that to which we would willingly subject the body of our youth, for the reason that the motives of a military system are not such as can be made to fit in the system of civil life.

Resting upon these somewhat peculiar ideals of control, the system of discipline in our academic institutions has undergone a very gradual development. Slowly and imperfectly it has been adjusted to the needs of our ordinary society. The motives of our college life are almost necessarily behind those of the age. It is a fact well recognized by those in the tide of the world's affairs that some of the influences of a disciplinary sort which affect the college boy are not such as to prepare him for the career

upon which he is to enter. Every year we hear from the public press, or privately from the spokesmen of the various professions to which the graduates of our schools resort, that the young men have to learn new ways of action, and with difficulty adapt themselves to the ordinary work of secular affairs.

This doubt as to the fitness of collegebred youths for the work of the world finds a practical expression in the determination of many narrow-minded business men not to receive such youths into their offices. They prefer to take untrained lads as office boys, and bring them up to their trades, rather than to break down the habits which have been formed in the very remote field of academic life.

This criticism from the outer world has reached even the cloistered life of some of the colleges. It affects the students even more than the teachers, though both are accessible to its influ

ence.

The young men who are wise enough to foresee their trials in the world are apt to become restless, from the sense that their academic life is not one which will fit them for the paths into which they are to enter. They either work in a discontented manner, or they look upon college life as a time of frolic, an interlude between childhood and the duties of the world, which is to be taken to its utmost as pure enjoyment. The result is that in our American people, who are more given to care for their children than the parents of any other country, we find that year by year there is a lessened eagerness to send their boys to our higher institutions of learning. Most of our colleges gain slowly in numbers of students, if they are so fortunate as to escape a decrease in attendance. But few of the greater schools are prosperous, as regards the numbers in their classes, up to the measure of increase of our population. Clearly the meaning of this is that the people doubt the fitness

The peculiar separation of our colleges from the life of the world, indeed from any consciousness of that world, is due in the main to the fact that the teachers of the schools are usually men who know only the life the scholar ordinarily leads. In the greater part of our colleges and universities the clerical element in the government is large. Indeed, it seems to be supposed by men of the world that a professor is as a matter of course a clergyman. I find myself frequently addressed by strangers by the title of Reverend, and I believe it to be a tolerably common experience with other college teachers. Trained in schools where the clerical motive predominates in the discipline, going in most cases directly from the life of the student to that of the college teacher, the instructors of our collegiate institutions have generally little chance for making acquaintance with the affairs of the outside world. The ordinary experience of citizens in

1 As I propose to offer myself as a witness concerning the history of the disciplinary methods in the college during the last thirty years, it seems fit that I should state my opportunities of acquiring information as to the conditions of the university during the most eventful years in the development of its motives. I entered the school in 1859. I was a student within its walls for the four following years. In 1864 I became a teacher in the university. During my term as an instructor my tasks as a teacher of geology have served to bring me into very close association with the students. In term time, my day, from early morning until late in the evening, has usually been passed in a public office of the university, to which students have had the freest access. During the vacation period I have generally been employed in state or government surveys, and in connection with my work it has been my habit

To illustrate the relation of our higher schools to the work of the world, and to secure a basis for further discussion of our problem concerning the relation of such schools to practical life, I propose to consider the history of the disciplinary system in Harvard College from its foundation to the present day. I select this school for illustration because it is not only the institution of the greatest age and of the largest average attendance of any in this country, but is the one which has been most influenced in its system by contact with men of the world, and has been subject to more modifications by virtue of this reaction which society has effected upon it.1

to take into the field each year a considerable number of students from the college classes. These camp schools have occupied numerous stations in a dozen different States, and have brought me into singularly close relations with several hundred students. Even in term time it has been my habit for years to spend many days in the field with my classes. I have thus personally known, in a more intimate way than it often falls to the lot of a teacher to know his pupils, more than a thousand students of the college, and I have had opportunities of acquaintance with about two thousand other young men who were in my classes.

I count it a piece of great good fortune that I have known so much of the youth of my time. It not only affords me an opportunity to bear testimony as to the facts I am to detail with an assurance which would not otherwise

Harvard College was founded by graduates from the Emanuel College of Cambridge. The parent school was the centre of the Puritanic motive in the university of Cambridge. In building Harvard College its founders sought two ends in the first place, they desired to train up a body of Puritan clergymen, who should be the moral and intellectual masters of the colony; in the second place, they hoped to educate the Indian youth, so that they should disseminate the gospel among the heathen aborigines. Thus the motive which guided the directors of the institution in its beginning and for a century afterwards was almost purely clerical. The scheme of the Puritan commonwealth provided that the clergyman should be the intellectual and moral leader in each parish. The churches were the units of the political and social system, and the clergy were intended to be the masters of those units. For the first century of its history, this ideal of a college system was substantially maintained. It is true that with the increase in the wealth and the consequent diversification of the society many sought a college education who were not intended for clerical employment. Nevertheless, the prime object of the school was the education of clergymen.

Only during the second century of the institution did it become apparent that the college proper could no longer accomplish the clerical training, and that the final preparation for the priestly office must be attained in a school specially organized for that purpose. It is therefore with no surprise that we find the system of discipline in the college during the first century of its develop

have been afforded me, but it has given me a growing confidence in the quality of the educated young American, which is one of the most precious results of my life.

I should state furthermore that my life has not been by any means purely academic. My service in the government surveys for years, during the vacation period, in the mining dis

ment far more rigorous than that which existed in any of the more secularized schools of Europe. The order of the students' life was monastic in its severity and in its limitations. The methods of punishment were curiously clerical in their form. During the time when the students were whipped for grave offenses the punishment was preceded by prayer. In the purely clerical time of the college history the ideal of discipline was extremely formal and severe. The elevation of the youth was sought by compelling him to walk in very narrow paths. From the moment he arose in the morning until he went to bed he was supposed to be under a constant and rigorous control. Offenses were special, and the punishments equally so. Through the greater part of the clerical period of the college the punishments were largely in the shape of fines, assessed according to a specified list. We find in Quincy's History of Harvard University, vol. ii. p. 499, the following list of "pecuniary mulets" for misdemeanors down to 1761: