Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/288

284 measure been made what he is by the conditions in which he has been placed and he has lacked the courage to insist on having these conditions changed. But many men are conscious of the present, though not inevitable, limitations of vision, and they would most gladly welcome an opportunity to exchange opinions and experiences with others of the guild. Faculty meetings that should be genuine discussions of the large educational questions of the day would lengthen the range of vision of the college professor, perhaps even that of the college president; they would deepen and broaden his educational foundations; they would make him more sympathetic with the difficulties of his colleagues and more tolerant of opinions that differ from his own. "How can I hate a man I know?" asked the gentle Elia, and his own implied answer would be that given by the vast majority of college professors could friendly relationships be established among them. The great national learned societies whose annual meetings are a source of profit and inspiration to all who attend them show that college professors, given freedom of action, can conduct large meetings with decorum, and without bickerings and petty jealousies. Can it not be assumed that these same men in their own college faculties, were the opportunity offered them, could and would discuss large educational questions in the same tolerant, inquiring spirit? Is not the spirit of the seeker after truth the same both at home and abroad, and should not his own college receive the benefit of this spirit? Many men are heard year after year at the sessions of these learned societies whose voices have never been heard in their own colleges outside of their own class-rooms. Is not the college the loser, whether the college be interpreted as meaning board of trustees, president, faculty, students or alumni?

Members of college faculties want at least the opportunity of taking a more active part in the smaller as well as in the larger affairs of the college. Probably nearly every member of a college faculty belongs to a club that has rooms or a building of its own, and he finds there, hung in a conspicuous place, a "book of suggestions" wherein he is not only invited but even urged to enter any ideas he may have for the improvement of the club. He goes to the public library and he finds a box of slips whereon he may record the title and author of any book he thinks it advisable to add to the library. He works for a summer in the British Museum and one of the first books he sees is a portly volume in which he may register inquiries or make reports of conditions to be changed, and to all inquiries he speedily finds an answer recorded in the same volume, together with the thanks of the administration for calling attention to matters to be remedied. He dines on a railway train, and at the bottom of the menu card he finds an invitation to report to the officer named any lack of attention on the part of the waiters. He goes to a great railway restaurant and he finds there a request to report at the desk any complaint in regard to food or service.