Page:Essays on the Higher Education.djvu/61

 years of this education comprise subjects now reasonably required in our college curriculum, and let these last years be organically connected with the preceding five or six years, and then it will be perfectly feasible to prepare the average American youth at nineteen or twenty for beginning a true university education. Indeed, let the secondary education be properly reformed and duly elevated, and then the youth who has well accomplished it will be better fitted to enter upon a university education than is, at present, the average youth of twenty-two who has just graduated from a, first-class American college. And the youth of twenty, thus well educated in the secondary stage, will be more likely to desire to have a university education. If he sees before him the offer of three or four more years of training and research, in subjects and under teachers that he may select with perfect freedom, he will probably wish to accept that offer. If he or his guardians have wealth or a competency, he and they will certainly be more ready to spend the money as well as the time upon his higher education, when 1t becomes clearer in this country what the best scientific culture means for the individual and for society. If he and his friends be poor, he will be more likely to be willing to struggle hard and to deny himself, somewhat as large numbers of German students do, in order to enjoy this highest