Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/578

574 years squandered. If no existing college dares to take quite that stand, then let some benefactor found the University of Dolce Far Niente. Such a venture would not demand much money for libraries and laboratories; and the salary account could be kept very low, since the faculty would not need to be either large or distinguished. A few "interesting" lectures—to keep up the "college degree" illusion and to provide relief from the monotony of serious occupations—would be the only necessary equipment. But this university would be provided with all the attractive decorations of "college life," free from the incubus of work; there would be clubs and "frats," dances and dramatics, beer nights and bonfires—even athletic teams, if the discipline of training and practise could be tolerated. Such an institution would be doubly beneficial; it would provide the ideal place for the idle to prolong their boyhood amid pleasant surroundings, and it would rid educational colleges of material that is now clogging the wheels of progress. Seriously, why not? "Why do even the enemies of study prefer universities of distinction to the mere companionship of the club? We may admit that age and tradition often play a large part in this preference, but is it not also true that many idlers find their way into colleges that are by no means old? What then would the University of Dolce Far Niente lack? What but that noble prestige which quickly develops in an atmosphere permeated by the serious ideals of men who, however much they may have delighted in the diversions of the college, have regarded work as its first business? What right, therefore, in such an institution has any man who will not play the game, who will not contribute his share to the maintenance of that tradition, who acts the part of parasite upon the body intellectual?

Life's choices are relative, not absolute; play will be welcomed in the University of Work, and the University of Play will perhaps continue to work between busy days. It is, therefore, largely a question of emphasis, but it is an emphasis which sets off species from species. Hence we can not insist too strongly upon the necessity for frankness in the declaration of our ideal, whatever may be the ultimate merit of the debate over the business of the college. This is vital, for by a confusion of ideals wrong may be done to men of parts eager for an education, but who discover too late that the easy-going institution is not the place to get it. As an illustration of this danger we may quote the remark of a man who was graduated with highest honors from one of the most charming old universities in this country, and who has begun to win more dearly bought success in surgery; his regretful comment upon his college "training" was something like this: "The first thing I had to learn when I got to the medical school was that trifling does not win honors in a serious institution." What that man looked upon as trifling was accepted by his college instructors as honor work; how