Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 24.djvu/605

Rh has developed. Each generation, heir to the endowments of all preceding ones, has added its increment of gain, and later generations—those which belong to the historic period—have begun their lives with a vast amount of inherited intelligence. There is sound philosophy in the statement once jocosely made, that the natives of a certain part of the country, remarkable for their intellectual activity, are born with a good common-school education. By far the greater part of our education is indeed born with us.

Increased refinements of emotion, clearer subtilties of thought—these are the directions which further development of the race must take; and the individual who experiences a hitherto unrealized emotion, or who grasps a new thought which corresponds with some never before observed fact or relation in the external world, is the seat and center of progress. In such minds, nature is undergoing a still higher evolution, and the colors of humanity are thus successively planted on hitherto unsealed summits.



ITH regard to the evils of the present system of college athletics it must be remembered that the best system will not be free from all evil. No human system can be free from evil. Even the divine government of the world does not exclude the existence of evil. That the present system has evils is no valid argument against it, unless it can be shown either that these outweigh the good, or that some other practical system can be devised which shall have all the good with less of the evil of the present system.

1. One evil alleged against the present system is the excessive amount of time required for exercise under it. It is no doubt true that some students do give too much time to athletics. Some students also give too much time to study; yet that fact is not brought forward as a fatal argument against the college course of study. Of the two excesses—excess of study and excess of exercise—the dangerous pressure at present is toward excess of study. But, in point of fact, this evil of too much time given to athletics has been greatly exaggerated. The winter term is not open to the charge of excessive athletics. The athletes then training do not devote an average of more than an hour a day to exercise. Perhaps a few give an hour and a half. It would be safe to say that, counting all the time consumed, including the time 