Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/202

198 The spirit of the real university should reflect the characteristics of youth in its love of testing new opinions and courting new impressions. Without the presence of a large body of investigators an institution ceases to live or, if vitality is prolonged, it is merely of the vegetative type. The spirit of investigation leads men to conquer difficulties which would terrify them if they were driven into the breach solely by the voices of authority. The spirit of investigation is as important to the artist, the business man and the writer as it is to the scientist in his laboratory. The American university has not yet succeeded in injecting the energy proportional to its resources into our intellectual life, because it has not yet attempted to develop the driving power which alone can save us from the disastrous results of having so recklessly sacrificed the heritage of youth. The majority of the graduates who yearly go out from the doors of our higher institutions of-learning without any definite intellectual interests have passed directly from the period of adolescence to that of old age.

The intellectual vigor of the average college graduate has been dwarfed by the conventional system of education, in which the spirit of dogmatism in teaching crowds out most of the natural impulses to learn. He is not given a moment in which to develop any ardor for the pursuit of knowledge. Little emphasis is given in the curriculum to the value of research, and this lack destroys initiative and smothers individuality by catering to the wishes of those educational promoters who are always eager to gain prestige by organizing personally conducted parties in search of liberal education and general culture. Another very serious defect in the curriculum of our universities is shown in the effort made to protract the period of training the acquisitive functions at a time when the initiating and productive capacity of the student should be developed to the highest degree possible. The most productive years of the average student in our universities are now wasted in copying models at a time when they should be encouraged "to block out their own ideas."

There is no civilized nation which should be as optimistic of its intellectual development as the United States. The fact that ideas and ideals have not been completely crushed out of existence by the perpetuation of school methods during the university years is the best testimony that the innate qualities of the American mind have extraordinary powers of growth even among most unfavorable environments. The relation of the alma mater to the majority of college students is that of the governess to pupils, deliberately sacrificing vigorous mental traits for drawing-room accomplishments. Our American higher institutions of learning pay far too much attention to the cultivation of mere forms of thought, and have neglected the study of the mechanism and laws of thought production.

The period of vigorous manhood is, as has already been indicated,