Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/82

78 the sympathy and ultimately the activity of the students in the cause of social progress and public welfare. That the students recognize and cordially respond to the changing tone of college instruction many gratifying signs indicate. The excellent article in the number of The Atlantic Monthly for November, 1911, on "The College: an Undergraduate View" saves me from the need of bearing further testimony on this point. If I might state the educational problem of the college instructor as it here presents itself to my mind, I should say: How can the esthetic appreciations of adolescents be transformed into the ethical judgments of the manly and womanly mind?

Naturally, in a really educational process such as I am briefly outlining the personality and ideals of the instructor must play a large part, and the change in the social efficiency of the college toward which some of us are groping our way seems to imply a shifting in the conception of academic culture. It is difficult to arraign any type of culture, and almost ungrateful to imply that the eighteenth-century idea that the finest type was secured by reading a little good poetry, hearing some good music and speaking just a few words of sense daily is from our present point of view untenable. A comparison of two Oxford men of the nineteenth century, Lewis Carroll and T. H. Green, will help me in my statement. Lewis Carroll was a thoroughly cultured gentleman, presentable in the best society, a delightful companion, an ingenious writer, whose pages have delighted thousands in need of innocent entertainment. In addition he was for long years a college instructor and a contributor to the literature of mathematics. Green was a man of different stamp. He lacked something of the grace and charm of Lewis Carroll. He was less popularly known, but no less socially important. His contributions to the literature of philosophy were weighty. He was the leader of a great movement in the history of the thought of our race. He exerted an immense influence on the minds and conduct of the college men with whom he came in contact. Through Mrs. Humphry Ward's presentation of him as the Mr. Grey of "Robert Elsmere," he gained recognition with the reading public as one of the great forces in modern social progress. Lewis Carroll was extremely conservative, opposed to the rights of women, complacent about children's acting on the stage, hostile to the advance of science study at the university. Green succeeded in the conciliation of town and gown, became a member of the municipal council, was instrumental in establishing a local secondary school, and had his university duties permitted it, might have become representative of the city in the councils of the nation. He extended his sympathy to the cause of human liberty beyond the sea, and received the news of Gettysburg and Vicksburg with the enthusiasm becoming a large man. Can we not say that he represents a type of culture as worthy as any, and increasingly