Page:Essays on the Higher Education.djvu/100

 a less degree. A marked improvement in these regards has gone on at Yale, until the more offensive forms of such misbehavior are matters of tradition and of the past. It could be shown by all the testimony possible to obtain on such a, point that both the major and the minor morals of the students have steadily improved for the last twentyfive or more years. The relations between the Faculty and the students, instead of the old feeling of antagonism or division of interest, are cordial and tending to more and more of friendliness and co-operative work. This is perfectly well understood by the students themselves; it is remarked upon in their conversation and in the papers which they publish. But I should not for a moment suppose that the same kind of improvement had not taken place—at least to some considerable degree—in other institutions of learning; nor should I venture to attribute it largely to any peculiar method of education, either as partly elective or as largely prescribed. Such improvement is chiefly the result of the steady change in our civilization which has been going on, of better manners everywhere, of the gradual decay of barbarous and mediæval antagonisms, of the spread of kindliness and intelligence. It is also due, in special, to the fact that teachers and parents take a different attitude toward the young under their charge, and that the young themselves have a wider outlook on life. It