Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/641

Rh of the street may pitch pennies for the sake of winning them, why should not the students secure a little pelf by a trial of skill with their tongues?—all we ask is that the policy shall be formulated and recognized. We hope that in future the advocates of the perfection of our college system of culture will consent to regard it as a composite system working in various ways, and appealing to divers motives for the attainment of its ends. Hitherto we have been assured with great emphasis that this system—the perfected and purified result of centuries of experience—has risen above all low and sordid inducements, and rests its superior claims on the dignity of scholarship, the value of knowledge for its own sake, and the intrinsic excellence of culture. When it has been urged that college studies are susceptible of wise amendment, and should be arranged with some reference to the future needs of the student's life, the suggestion has been repelled with indignation, as born of a base, utilitarian, bread-and-butter motive that would degrade the lofty and disinterested ideal that should ever be held before the student—the cultivation and discipline of his intellectual powers, as an end in itself, to be debased by none of the vulgar incentives which animate the beastly crowd in the practical scrambles of life. To be sure, we have known that, notwithstanding all this sounding talk, the higher institutions have not hesitated to use the vulgar spurs of action by which human nature is everywhere moved. They are very far from having disdained the appeal to mercenary motives. The great universities of England are notoriously worked by cash bribes, in the shape of fellowships—honorary positions with incomes attached, which are securable by proficiency in certain prescribed studies. The universities have immense incomes and are enabled to cling to their mediaeval courses of study in defiance of public opinion and the demand for reform, mainly through the pecuniary prizes which in this way they hold out to students. And this policy, in modified forms, is extending to other collegiate institutions as fast as they can get the money for the purpose. Rich people are inspired with the ambition of encouraging learning; that is, they get some crotchet or hobby of education, which they are willing to back with money, and then prizes are founded, and the students set into a fever of emulation to gain them. In this way sordid inducements become a part of the system, and, as most of the donors have been educated in the old way, their money goes to perpetuate it. But no sooner do the friends of science demand that modern studies shall have an equal chance with the ancient studies, and that the knowledge which is necessary for guidance in life shall be put upon an equality with dead languages, than the champions of the colleges are at once upon their dignity, and beg to know if the grand old liberal and ennobling culture consecrated by centuries is to go down before the narrow and selfish exactions of a materialistic and money-getting age. But these gentlemen are not, after all, unmindful of the educational potency of filthy lucre, nor that students may be plied with the motives of the gamester—the passion to win. The intercollegiate speaking-match had about it more of the ethics and incitements of the cockpit than is quite consistent with the lofty claims that are put forth in regard to the inspirations of the higher culture. We doubt if the multiplication of intercollegiate contests and ostentatious rivalries, whether for the winning of purses, or the beating of antagonists, or the exhibition of accomplishments, is either healthy in its influence upon the internal life of the institutions themselves, or favorable to that quiet, concentrated, uninterrupted mental exercise which is the indispensable condition of solid attainments and sterling scholarly character.