Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/265

Rh at thirty-five. A critical study of most others will demonstrate that, while the recognition of their labors may have been deferred by circumstances—mainly lack of opportunity—till later in life, they were actively engaged in their life work by the twenty-fifth year and had laid the foundation of success by the thirtieth. The late Dr. William Pepper, though one of the most earnest advocates of a liberal education for medical men as well as of thorough medical training, declared at the time of his ripest experience that any educational system was a mistake which would not allow the average man to enter upon actual practice at the age of twenty-three or twenty-four. It would prolong this paper unduly to quote his arguments, none of which however, was so convincing as his own life-history. Business men would, probably, assign a still earlier age. Among educators and scientists, there exists a considerable diversity of opinion; probably the majority would favor a lengthening of the period of preparation but it is questionable whether their personal biographies would support this opinion. On the whole, it would seem that the preparatory period should not occupy more than a third of the maximum duration of active life and that it should not extend much beyond the period of physiologic growth.

As a matter of abstract fairness, it may be argued that the advanced degrees are, at present, open to all college graduates on equal terms—let them accept or reject these terms as they please; if the A.M. or Ph.D. is not worth the sacrifice of a year or two of active life, why complain because one cannot eat his cake and have it too? But is this a wise attitude to assume? Granted that the privileges of the master or doctor and the esteem in which he is held by the community in no practical way exceed those enjoyed by the bachelor, long custom has established the post-graduate degrees, and they should stand for the best, ripest, most practical and wisest scholarship of the times. When the immature critic and student of other men's writings is eligible to a title that is denied to the man who creates literature that is deemed worthy of serious consideration, even though not of epoch-making value; when the laboratory worker who follows the lines laid down by others receives a tangible reward from which the pioneers of such study are often excluded; when field-work in science must radiate from a college rather than from a center which offers equal or greater scientific opportunities; when one museum or library yields not only information but a scholastic degree, while another, as good or better but not incorporated as part of a university, receives no such recognition; when second-hand knowledge of old-world linguistics and anthropology is placed on a higher level than original research, carried on independently, and dealing with similar problems