Page:Essays on the Higher Education.djvu/98

 its methods would think of denying that other colleges also have made a large place for the new sciences, are using improved ways of instruction with fresh enthusiasm on the part of both teachers and pupils, and have their eyes and hearts open to all that is going on in the wide world of science and learning. No one acquainted with Yale at present, as compared with Yale fifty or even twenty-five years since, could for a moment doubt that much of its education is worthy of being called "new."

With the ethical spirit of Professor Palmer's article I am also in the fullest accord; he meets a hearty response from the Yale method when he proposes to measure the success of education by standards that are strong and high in an ethical way. I, too, understand the end of education to be not merely information in certain subjects—few or many—of scientific or historical research, but, also and chiefly, control of the faculties, and vigorous, reasonable, symmetrical use of them for the attainment of worthy ideals. And if he will show me that the so-called New Education really does "uplift character as no other training can, and through influence on character ennoble all methods of teaching and discipline," I will not wait to be his ardent convert. It is precisely because of my fears that it will not accomplish this in the majority of cases that I am reluctant to accept the methods