Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/200

196 to be the dispenser of these special mental traits during the latter years of the educational curriculum is quite obvious to those who know that mental habits are, to a large extent, definitely and permanently formed much earlier than this period. If the qualities commonly designated as balance, interest and sympathy, the dominant characteristics of those who actually possess a liberal education have not budded in the school period, they can not be successfully grafted during the university years. The formation of mental habits belongs to the school and not to the university period. To-day the university unfortunately limits its sphere of usefulness in our intellectual life to frittering away energies and resources in attempting to reeducate those who have failed to develop intellectual interests during the school years. At the age of seventeen or eighteen, when the average student enters the university, his mental habits are already formed to such a degree that the catalogued promises made to him of the efficacy of liberalizing studies smacks more of the east wind of authority than of common sense. If those who defend the present conditions of affairs as a necessary form of compromise are correct, then we may well be pessimistic of our future intellectual development, inasmuch as the university is revealed to us as a nurse for the sick rather than as a counselor and aid to the strong. The dominance of that kind of mediocrity which imperils the life of democracy is very plainly indicated in the present organization of our universities that make ample provision for the day-nursery treatment of those who are devoid of intellectual interests and ambitions, and take little cognizance of the great numbers of students possessed of mental health, vigor and praiseworthy ambitions.

Many parents and teachers have the unfortunate habit of assuming a semi-apologetic attitude when referring to courses of studies, as if they were tasks to be undertaken merely in order to satisfy the conventional demands of society, while all manly virtues are commonly referred to as if they could only be exercised by training the biceps and were quite independent of brain development.

At school attention should be directed to the value of constant continuous effort, emphasizing the fact that a desire to work with one's brain is just as much a sign of health as the wish to excel in physical exercises. The importance of mental habits and the formation of thought processes should be emphasized not only as a means of attaining success in practical issues, but as the essential factors in the preservation of mental balance.

The silly conventional values commonly attached to an education should be replaced by substituting those intellectual interests in work that add so materially to the pleasure of living. The success of an education and the intelligent interest of an individual in his occupations may often be directly measured by estimating the degree of pleasure taken in "talking shop." The devitalizing influences of our