Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/576

572 whether, in the course which is on our conscience, they ever did any reading before examination time, and how much they found it necessary to do then. Another interesting test would be to compute and compare the average standing of the men who take the different courses year after year, not forgetting to calculate also the average of passes (or perhaps of all the marks) in the various courses. It would not cause great surprise to some observers if such a scrutiny of the facts should indicate that birds of the D feather flock together under those generous trees from which the fruit (the passes, not the intellectual profit) falls with the least coaxing. But it would seem that we are in for a long wait before some administrators and instructors will care to collect facts in regard to scholastic conditions. The snap course goes on, the lazy student stays in college, and the snap professor flourishes like the green bay tree. Evidently this complacent faith of the academic stand-patter in the utter loveliness of the local landscape is a greater breeder of popularity than is the restless spirit of doubt, criticism and reform.

Almost imperceptibly we have been led, in this discussion of academic toleration, from a consideration of its causes to an analysis of its fallacies and its harmful effects. It may have been noticed, also, that, in some important particulars, the influence of the educator who has been characterized herein as a compromiser is in harmony with that of the alumnus or the undergraduate who is altogether hostile to the severely intellectual ideal; for the objection—if any there be—to the comfortable creed of compromise lies not in its toleration of scholarship, but in its friendly feeling for ignorance and sloth, in which gracious capacity it is in complete sympathy with the out-and-out negative. For this reason we may treat these two types together in our further attempt to point out others of their common weaknesses.

In the first place it is quite justifiable to note a little inconsistency. What shall we say of men who despise the intellectual in its practical application to their own college experiences, but who reject with indignation the accusation of laxity in scholastic conditions in the alma mater? Is it consistent and honest to boast before strangers of the distinction of scholars whom at home we scorn as students or hamper as administrators? It is said that the late Professor Child, a scholar of whom any university in the world might have been proud, was a butt in the class-room for ill-bred students who took his courses with no desire to learn; it would be interesting to discover whether or not some of these "students" are to-day boasting of the distinction which Professor Child brought to Harvard. And if an officer in a college deliberately takes a stand for a policy of compromise with idle students, what just cause has he to grow angry with critics whose arraignment of