Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/85



HERE are few subjects of broad interest in America that have shown more radical changes of view-point during the last half-century than those pertaining to the aims and influence of college education. When Thoreau entered Harvard the older conviction prevailed, that college must be a stepping-stone to some one of "the gentlemanly professions." The broader sentiment of to-day, that college is preparation for life in any vocation,—profession, trade, society, philanthropy, statescraft,—was then but an embryonic and feeble vision of a few minds. The college graduate was expected to swell the ranks of clergy, physicians, lawyers, or, when other chances failed, to become a teacher. Analogous to this tenet regarding the purpose of a college education, was a corresponding fixed code of judgment upon a young man's mentality and promise. To gain recommendation by a faculty he must devote himself to the prescribed texts, often winning greater enconium by "a good memory" of some insignificant passage than by "a good