Undergraduate Scholarship

UNDERGRADUATE scholarship has been for some time, and not without reason, the object of special criticism in educational discussions. It is a matter of encouragement that criticism is beginning to advance toward the more direct and vital issues involved. Probably nine tenths of the critics, academic and non-academic, have attributed the deficiencies which they note to athletics, to fraternities, or to social distractions of various sorts — in a word, to the environment of the student. Such criticism is not uncalled for, but it is quite insufficient. It makes the problem too easy. No one, for example, who deprecates the effect of athletics upon scholarship would be willing to guarantee an advance in scholarship corresponding to a decline in athletics.

Due account must be taken of the reflex influence of environment upon the student; but any criticism of the undergraduate at so vital a point as scholarship, if it is to be really remedial, must concern itself with forces which are immediately and constantly directive, — forces in fact which are institutional. Undergraduate scholarship is the product of the undergraduate school, in a broad sense the exponent of its aim, whether the school be a department of a university, or an independent college. To the degree in which the ideal or type of scholarship aimed at, differs from that set forth by the preparatory, technical, or professional school, there must be, as compared with these schools, an equivalent adaptation of means to end. At the same time equal attention must be given to those principles and methods in general practice, which are found to be most effective in stimulating scholarship.

It is to be further noted, at the very outset of this discussion, that undergraduate scholarship, though the product of the undergraduate school, is not altogether and exclusively under its influence. Other forces which cannot produce scholarship may greatly affect it. Some of these outlying forces are very active and very influential. Special attention will be called later to this outward environment of educational work, of which the critics ought to be more observant and critical, and with which all who wish for the increase of scholarship ought to concern themselves.

But to return to the undergraduate school, which is immediately responsible for the character and quality of undergraduate scholarship — where may its responsibility be increased or be made more controlling?

A student is admitted to college by certification or by examination. In either event, during his course of preparation, his instructors have had continually in mind the tests through which he must pass to enter upon further academic study. They know that they are to be held reasonably responsible for the results of their instruction. The certificate system is supposed to stand, and does stand, in increasing degree, for guaranteed fitness on the part of the student certified. By the restriction of the privilege of certification to schools amply qualified to fit for college, and by the further restriction of the privilege, by the schools themselves, to students of high grade, a college is reasonably assured that authorized instructors have taken a proper responsibility for the training of the incoming student. The examination system throws a greater responsibility upon the college, but it in no way lessens the feeling on the part of the preparatory teacher that he is held to definite results from his teaching. Whichever the way by which the student is delivered to the college, he comes out of the hands of instructors who have accepted certain well-defined responsibilities for results.

Four years later the same student, if he enters a professional school, finds himself at work under like conditions. At the end of his course he must pass given tests, imposed from without — by Medical Boards, by Bar Associations, by Ecclesiastical Councils, in the case of medicine and law the State virtually determining the tests. Instructors in these schools know that their work is to be tested. The student in the graduate school (so called), at work for the doctor’s degree, carries on his investigations independently, and yet in a kind of comradeship with his instructors.

The work of college instructors is not subjected to any tests, except to those which are self-imposed. The diploma of a reputable college will admit to any professional school, unless there is some specific requirement for admission called for; but a college diploma represents the minimum of attainment which a given faculty judges to be necessary for graduation. It is not a certification of the special fitness of the student who holds it to proceed with academic study. The majority of college graduates do not carry their studies beyond graduation. This exemption of college instruction from such tests as are applied elsewhere, from outside the instructing body, has not always obtained in this country. In the days of oral examinations, boards of examiners were appointed by trustees, to pass upon the standing of students. The work of these boards, at the beginning at least, was not perfunctory. The rating of students was largely determined by these examiners, and the relative proficiency of instructors, as well as of students, was freely discussed in the reports which they submitted to trustees. With the necessary change from the oral to the written examination, and for the reasons attending the change, the principle fell into disuse. Trustees put the examination of students, as well as their instruction, into the hands of faculties.

Where the principle of separating examination from instruction survives, as in the English colleges, it is generally conceded that the separation is to the advantage of scholarship. On the one hand, the instructor is relieved altogether of the imputation of being a taskmaster, and becomes the intellectual helper and friend of the student in the accomplishment of a common task. And on the other hand, the substitution of an outside standard for one of his own making is a stimulus to the instructor, so far as his work with and upon the student is concerned with definite results. This phase of scholastic. life in the English colleges is brought out at first hand very clearly in an article by Assistant Professor Reed of Yale, entitled ‘Yale from an Oxford Standpoint,’ in the Yale Alumni Weekly for October 7, 1910; and also in the editorial comment upon this article in the Harvard Alumni Bulletin, under date of November 2.

Unfortunately, there has come of late into our American colleges a method of separating examination from instruction which is antagonistic to the original principle, and in every way deleterious to scholarship. As this method was in use while I was engaged in college work, and as I was ‘consenting to it’ under the exigencies of administration, I feel justified in condemning it, as in so doing I condemn myself for any official support which I then gave it. The instructor is allowed, and in most cases provision is made in accordance with the allowance, to turn over minor examinations, and not infrequently a large part of the major examinations, to subordinates who have had no place in instruction. The equal, if not superior, work of examination is committed to the inferior person. The examiner, known as the reader, may have scarcely more attainment in the subject than the better student. What incentive has such a student to do his best in an examination-paper which never comes under the eye of a really competent examiner? As a relief to an over-worked professor, or to an over-burdened treasury, the method speaks for itself; but it also speaks for itself as a method to degrade the examination system, to make instruction more impersonal, and to remove one of the chief incentives to the highest scholarship. The results of scholarship, when it really becomes scholarship, require delicate handling. The student of good intention and hard work, who can never be classed among scholars, is no less entitled to the most discriminating and therefore stimulating treatment.

It is also to be considered that the dignity as well as the validity of an examination depends upon the safeguards which are thrown around it. But proctoring is irksome, if not repugnant, to many members of a faculty. Consequently there is so much difference in the personal conduct of examinations as to affect at times the value of the result : and, what is of more account, the indifference or inefficiency of reluctant proctors lowers the general value and significance of the test.

The arrangement of the curriculum of the undergraduate school has a direct bearing upon the character of undergraduate scholarship. In general, it may be said that whereas the curriculum of the preparatory school is to a degree intensive and cumulative, and that of the professional school altogether intensive and cumulative, the curriculum of the undergraduate school is extensive and discursive. Some of the subjects which make up the curriculum are brought over from the preparatory school for advanced treatment. Whether specifically required or not, the further study of them is requisite as a condition to the choice of distinctively college subjects. The increasing variety of subject-matter consists in part in the introduction of new subjects, but more in the constant division and subdivision of subjects old and new.

In considering the effect of this confusing or tempting variety of subjectmatter upon scholarship, account is to be taken chiefly of its effect upon those who have the aptitudes and desires of the scholar. The omnivorous scholar still exists. Every new subject whets his appetite. Practically all subjects are of equal interest to him. The scholar still exists who likes to play the game, even though competition has pretty much died out. He is not so much interested in the thing to be done, as in the way of doing it. If anything is to be done it can be done in one way only, and that the best way — this compulsion being with him quite as much a matter of taste as of conscience. Such scholars as these are not types: they are simply individuals.

Undergraduate scholars are for the most part of three types: the born specialist, taking everything within reach bearing upon his specialty, taking anything else only by compulsion; the student who works under the lure of the practical end, keeping as close as possible to the vocational subject; and the man who wishes to make himself familiar with the widest range of subjects practicable. It is evident that no one of these types can represent the highest degree of conventional scholarship. The undergraduate specialist is pulled down by the necessary, but undesired subjects; the practical student cannot make his whole course, or indeed any large part of it, vocational; and the man-of-the-world in college does not aim so much at supreme excellence as at ready attainments.

What is the effect of the college curriculum upon the scholarship of the average student ? It cannot be said that it is a stimulus to competitive scholarship. Competition presupposes a common and restricted field of endeavor. Men do not compete in scholarship more than in other things for general excellence. The curriculum lacks the essential stimulus of concentrated and protracted interest. It tends rather to discursiveness, to a certain amount of experimentation, and to a conclusion of effort in secondary results.

It was assumed, and with good reason, that the elective system would prove to be a stimulus by individualizing scholarship: that somewhere within the range of personal choice the subject would ‘find’ the man. I think that it has in many cases justified this assumption. I have in mind not a few brilliant illustrations of its findingpower. But in fulfilling this purpose it necessarily allows much experimenting. As a result the majority, unaided (and too much aid is inconsistent with the principle), never get beyond the stage of self-experimenting. They keep, that is to say, too closely within the range of elementary courses; and when they are through college they can look back only upon a series of unfinished jobs.

Certain correctives, like the group system, the system of majors and minors, and, best of all, the requirement making proficiency in some advanced courses essential to graduation, have been introduced with good effect; but still comparatively few students reach the satisfaction, the courage, the joy, of any great accomplishment. It is something, sometimes it is very much, to have gained a certain facility in foreign languages, to have found out some of the methods of scientific research, to have become familiar with some of the problems of philosophy and of the social sciences, but these results cannot be very well expressed in the terms of exact scholarship. The construction of a curriculum which shall be a surer guide and a more effective stimulus to scholarship, is one of the inner problems of college administration which is yet to be solved, if scholarship of the intensive and cumulative type is expected of the colleges. At present, the curriculum is set toward breadth rather than toward intensity, toward quantity rather than toward quality.

A much more serious difficulty, in its effect upon undergraduate scholarship, than either of the foregoing, is the difficulty of making right adjustment between the mind of the instructor and the mind of the student. In the other higher departments of the educational system this adjustment is more nearly complete. The sympathetic relation between a preparatory-school teacher and his students is usually very close. The most effective teachers in this department, the most effective because the most influential and stimulating, are what Phillips Brooks used to call ‘boys’ men.’ In the technical and professional schools the mental adjustment of instructor to student is almost complete, largely because the specific intellectual interests are identical. The medical student is as eager to understand, as his instructor is eager to explain, the last discovery in medical science. So far as intellectual interest is concerned, the gap between the immature and the mature mind closes rapidly when the professional stage is reached.

Probably there are no two states of mind within any educational group of persons more remote from one another than the state of mind of the average boy entering college, and the state of mind of the doctor of philosophy just leaving the graduate school to enter upon college instruction. These, of course, are the extremes in the college group, yet they meet there and have to be adjusted. The solution of the difficulty does not lie in any lessening of the intellectual authority of the instructor. College students take very little account of instructors who do not know their subject, who have to draw too hard upon their reserves in teaching. But contact between instructor and student comes about only through the mutual widening of their intellectual sympathies, and here the greater obligation rests upon the instructor. That is, at least, the practical part of his business.

The separating effect of specialized study cannot be overlooked. It is manifest in the intellectual life of any faculty. The tendency of personal interest is more and more from the general to the specific. A language club tends to break up into several groups, or a scientific club, or any other club, which starts with wide affiliations. Any general club, to be successful, must be altogether social in its aims. It is doubtful if many members of a faculty take much interest in those parts of the curriculum which are unrelated to their own, but which make an equal claim upon the interest of the student. Probably the relative number of Phi Beta Kappa men among college instructors is less than formerly, not because the men are less intellectual, but because they are more specialized, caring more for the training of the graduate than of the undergraduate school.

Meanwhile the undergraduate is in the dilemma of working under a curriculum which is growing more extensive (through the constant division and subdivision of subject-matter), and under instructors who are growing more specialized in their intellectual interests. The curriculum bears the stamp of the college, the faculty bears the stamp of the university, many of them being on their way to university teaching, or having that before them as the goal of their ambition. Which stamp shall be put upon the student? Which type of scholarship shall he express, so far as he becomes distinctively a scholar? Or, if it be insisted that the inconsistency is not so great as it appears to be, how shall the spirit of scholarship be kindled and developed under these general conditions? When the question is thus simplified, it is quickly answered — the instructor must take the initiative. The student is the objective of the instructor, not the instructor of the student. The immediate objective of the student is the subject before him. If the instructor, who is, as he ought to be, an investigator, is to be a quickening force among undergraduate students, he must see to it that his intellectual sympathies widen as his intellectual interest intensifies. A recognized authority he must be at any cost, but this will not avail without some equivalent power of contact.

The adjustment between instructor and student through the principle of intellectual sympathy is substantially the process which is at work in the preceptorial system at Princeton. Undergraduates are grouped around an instructor, who is not only qualified to instruct, but is in sympathy with the method; and who is at an age when he can afford to take the time which the method demands. It is at least germane to the preceptorial system that an instructor shall have to do with two or three related subjects, thus neutralizing in some measure the effects of specialization. The retirement of President Wilson from Princeton while this most interesting experiment is going on, however great may be the ultimate advantage to the country, is to be much regretted from the educational point of view.

The questions which have been under consideration, suggested by the present state of undergraduate scholarship, are all inner questions, institutional, as being in and of the undergraduate school itself. Reversing the order of inquiry: How shall the right adjustment be effected between the mind of the instructor and the mind of the student? Which shall determine the type of scholarship in the undergraduate, the curriculum, or the intellectual interests of the instructor? Who shall examine the undergraduate? Shall examination be included in instruction, or shall instructor and student work together under the common stimulus of an outside test? These are questions which have an immediate bearing upon the scholarship of the undergraduate. On the one hand, the answer to them may relieve his mind of confusion as to the type of scholarship demanded of him. And on the other hand, the answer may determine more clearly the relation in which he stands to his instructor, and to his examiner, whether these be one and the same or different persons. Other questions of like character are coming under discussion. The suggestive and encouraging fact is, as has been already intimated, that the college mind is becoming introspective. The turn of thought is that way. It is no longer satisfied with excuses, or explanations, or criticisms, which have to do chiefly with the environment of the undergraduate.

Neither is it content to abide in the gains which have defined the progress of the colleges during the past thirty years. From the strictly educational point of view, the great gain of this period has consisted in the introduction of the new and vast subject-matter of the sciences, physical and social, into the curriculum; in the reconciliation of this subject-matter with that already in place; and in the provision made for the adequate treatment of the new and the old, by methods equally essential to both. In the order of progress it was clear that the next gain must come from the utilization of the new material and the new methods in the advancement of scholarship. By a happy coincidence, in the case of several of the New England colleges, the opportunity for this specific result in college development comes at the same time with changes in administration. A group of relatively young men, of similar training, with like general views and purposes, and all imbued with the high spirit of modern scholarship, have entered upon their several tasks with a fine community of interest, and a clear definiteness of aim. Much in every way is to be expected from their individual and united action, much especially because their approach to their task has been singularly positive and direct in the endeavor to reach the springs of scholarship. Unlike many of the critics, they do not appear to be overmuch concerned with questions of mere environment, while closer and more determining questions lie unsolved.

But what of the environment of the undergraduate as affecting his scholarship? Because it is not, as commonly interpreted, the determining influence, it does not follow that it is not a potent influence. There is a very definite, though very subtle, danger to scholarship in the environment of the undergraduate. It is important that no mistakes be made in the attempt to locale it. When a student enters college he goes into residence for four years in a somewhat detached community. This fact of protracted residence has gradually created an environment unlike anything which has preceded in the experience of the undergraduate, except as he may have come from a private school of long history; and unlike anything which will probably follow. The average professional student can hardly be said to be in residence. He may live anywhere; and, for that matter, anyhow. Careful provision has been made for the undergraduate in all that goes to make up his life in residence. College halls are halls of learning; they are equally the homes of men. This man lived or lives here, that man there. This life in residence, as it goes on from generation to generation, evolves its own environment of traditions, of associations and fellowships, of collective or organized activities, and, most subtle and powerful of all influences, of sentiment — college sentiment.

The ordinary effect of traditions is easily overestimated. In emergencies, or on occasions, the great traditions come out in commanding force. But the traditions which affect the daily life are quite ephemeral. Many of them disappear as quickly as they are formed. A graduate of ten years is surprised to find, on his return, that most of the traditions of his time have been supplanted. Few customs, good or bad, persist under the force of tradition; and of those which do persist, few have any direct bearing upon scholarship.

The social life of the undergraduate seems complex and distracting, but the complexity and distraction are more in appearance than in reality. For one thing, the undergraduate has no social duties. A few functions like Junior Prom, are exacting. These are in contrast with the ordinary conventions. There is the constant opportunity to waste time agreeably. The temptation to loaf is always at hand, but so is the remedy — increase the requirement of work. As to fraternities and clubs, it is probable that men who belong to them rank in scholarship below those who do not. It is, however, an open question whether the lower rank is due to the fraternity or to the man. The unsocial man has the advantage over the social man in respect to the use of time. It is doubtful if this advantage is a sufficient compensation for real social losses. The college fraternity has the same reason in human nature as the club in the towncommunity. A lonesome mind is not the only mind fitted for study. Companionship is a proper setting for intellectual effort. For this reason it is doubtful if social intimacy between the members of a faculty and younger undergraduates can be real enough to be very helpful. Among mature undergraduates there is a sufficient social basis for any direct intellectual stimulus from those of a faculty who are inclined and qualified to make use of it.

It is only as we enter the field of the organized activities of undergraduate life that we find anything which comes into competition with scholarship. All else is merely diverting: athletics alone are competitive. Why are academic athletics competitive with scholarship? Because they represent attainment, an attainment representing many of the qualities, and much of the discipline, which scholarship requires. At present, football is the only game which rises to the dignity of competition, largely because of its intellectual demands. It is a game of strategy quite as much as of force. The recent uncovering of the game makes this fact more evident. Baseball has become, for the most part, a recreation, and training for track events is an individual discipline.

An attitude of jealousy on the part of a faculty toward athletics, viewed as competitive with scholarship, is a weak attitude. Athletics, rising to the standard of attainment, and therefore of interest to a college at large, ought to be recognized, — in a certain way organized into the life of the college; or they ought to be abolished, that is, reduced to a recreation. Can the colleges afford to reduce athletics to a recreation? Would this course be in the interest of scholarship? What would take their place in supplying virility, physical discipline, and the preventive moral influence which they exert? What substitute would be introduced for protection against the soft vices? The alternative to athletics is to be feared. The virile sports must keep their place among us, lest there become ‘dear to us,’ as to the Phæacians of the Odyssey, ‘ the banquet, and the harp, and the dance, and changes of raiment, and the warm bath, and love, and sleep.’

Academic athletics have their drawbacks: there are personal liabilities from overtraining as from overstudy, there are tendencies to professionalism which must be carefully watched, there are rivalries which may become ungenerous, and which ought to be suspended; but, fundamentally, athletics are a protection to vigorous and healthy scholarship far more than a detriment to it, as I believe would appear in no long time, if recreation were offered as a substitute for athletics. From the days of the Greeks till now, athletics have had a legitimate place in academic life.

Wherein, then, lies the danger to scholarship from the environment of the undergraduate? I reply at once, in college sentiment — the most subtle, constant, and powerful influence which comes upon the undergraduate out of his environment. College sentiment is at present negative toward scholarship. By contrast, it is positive toward one form of athletics. But, as has been argued, if the athlete were removed, it does not follow that college sentiment would become positive toward the scholar. We must look deeper for the reason of the lack of undergraduate enthusiasm for scholarship.

Any analysis of college sentiment will show, I think, two facts bearing directly upon the question. First, the undergraduate has learned to dissociate scholarship from leadership. Has learned, I say, for this is the result of his own observation within his own world. It is difficult to show an undergraduate that he is mistaken in his observation, for leadership is an unmistakable influence. Men feel it, and can tell from whence it emanates. The opinions and practices of the leading men in college virtually determine college sentiment. Leadership grows out of the combination of personality with attainment. The proportion of personality to attainment varies greatly, but neither one is sufficient of itself to make a leader. The loafer cannot become a leader, however agreeable he may be personally. The athlete cannot become a leader, if he is not essentially a gentleman, with some recognizable intellectual force. When the scholar fails to reach leadership, the lack is somewhere in those qualities which make up effective personality—authority, virility, sympathy, sincerity, manners.

Probably the majority of real college leaders are to be found in the second grade of scholarship, adding a few athletes, who would be in that grade except for the exacting requirements of athletics at some one season of the year. These men have personality and attainment, but not attainment enough to make them influential scholars. If with one accord and with generous enthusiasm these men would add twenty per cent to their scholastic attainment, they would in due time convert the undergraduate to the idea of scholarship. This act on their part would require concentration of purpose, where now their energies are directed toward various kinds of attainment and accomplishment.

It would not be a difficult thing to effect this result were it not for the second fact which must be considered in this connection, namely, the fact that undergraduate sentiment regarding scholarship is the reflection, in large degree, of the sentiment of the outside world regarding it. Although it is true, as has been said, that the undergraduate lives in a somewhat detached community, still that community is very vitally and sensitively related to the world without, of which it is consciously a part. In this world into which the graduate passes, the scholar as such, with one exception which will be noted, has little public recognition and less public reward. In Germany the scholar is sure of reputation, if not of more tangible reward. This at least is the present fact. Whether the scholarship of the nation, which was developed during the period of its isolation, will maintain its relative place as the nation adjusts itself to the rising commercial instinct, and takes the political fortune of a world-power, is yet to be seen. In England, the leaders of the nation are picked from the honor men of the universities. It is not necessary that they make connection with the public service through related subjects of study. It is enough that they prove themselves to be men of power by the ordinary tests of scholarship. In this country there is no sure and wide connection between scholarship and reputation, or between scholarship and the highest forms of public service. The graduate, as he takes his place in the outer world, must pass the tests which are applied to personality quite as rigidly as to attainment. In Germany, the personal element is of secondary account. In England, care is taken in advance to see that it meets public requirements, so far at least as it can be secured by good breeding. Among us, the scholar of insufficient or of untrained personality takes his chance in the world, and usually at his cost.

An exception, a marked exception to the unresponsiveness of the public mind to scholarship, appears in the recognition and appreciation of scientific research leading to utility. The president of a university has recently proposed to concentrate the work of his university, through a great endowment, upon scientific research as the only rewarding business of a university. This would mean, as he frankly admits, the elimination of students to whom the scientific stimulus could not be applied. This proposal suggests the changing, if not the lessening, area of contact between academic scholarship and the outer world. Science has done much, very much, to quicken and enlarge the intellectual life; but it has not as yet created a widespread culture of its own. Meanwhile, through the interest which it has aroused in its practical application, and in the expectation which it is awakening of yet greater practical results, it has in a measure disconnected the mind of the world from the intellectual wealth of the past. Interest in the past has become of the same general kind with interest in the present and future: that is, scientific. The sympathetic attitude toward the higher experiences of mankind, resulting in a familiarity with the best things which men have said and done, has given place to the inquiring and investigating attitude. The humanities have not been discarded, but they have been discredited to the extent that no expression of human thought, outside the realm of poetry, is any longer taken at its face value. It is not too much to say that the current intellectual life is in a state of confusion, which makes it. incapable of reacting in any very stimulating way upon that intellectual life in the colleges which is in the formative and developing stage. The intellectual life of the undergraduate cannot be considered apart from the intellectual life out of which he comes, and to which he returns.

There is a certain apologetic attitude in this country toward intellectual achievement, of which we are hardly conscious, but which is manifest in our desire to associate intellectual power with some conspicuously worthy end — an attitude of which the Nation has fitly reminded us in a recent editorial on ‘Intellect and Service.' Acknowledging its full ‘admiration of the man who makes his scholarship an instrument of service,’ the editorial proceeds: ‘We do not object to praise of the scholar in politics, or of the scholar in social betterment or in economic reform; we object only to the preaching of a gospel which leaves all other scholars out in the cold. If, on the one hand, you offer all the shining outward rewards of effort to those who do not go into intellectual pursuit at all, and, on the other hand, you reserve all appreciation and praise for such intellectual achievements as bear directly on the improvement of political and social conditions, you cannot expect the life of the scholar and thinker and writer in other domains to present to aspiring youth that fascination which is the greatest factor in determining the direction of his ambitions. Exalt service by all means, but preserve for pure intellectual achievement its own place of distinction and regard. Do the one, and applaud it; but leave not the other undone or unhonored.’

The advancement, then, of undergraduate scholarship is to be considered, not merely or chiefly as a question of the environment of the undergraduate— his world of associations or activities, or even of sentiment, except as that is understood in its wide relations. Undergraduate scholarship is fundamentally related to the aim and purpose and actual operation of the undergraduate school, involving many questions of the kind which have been suggested. It is vitally related to those laws of human nature which insist upon personal power as an element in leadership, and which cannot be waived in favor of the scholar who persists in ignoring the requisite physical and social training. It is no less vitally related to the intellectual life of the whole community, committed as every college is, according to the measure of its influence, to the high endeavor of bringing order out of the present confusion; of elevating the intellectual tone of society; and especially of creating a constituency able to resist the more enticing, but demoralizing, influences of modern civilization, and able to support those influences which can atone invigorate and refine it. It is always best to take the real measure of an urgent problem, to dismiss all impatience, to work on under the inspiration of the knowledge that the process of solution is long and hard, and that it widens as it advances; but to feel that delaying questions, which rise on the way, contribute to the assurance of a satisfying result. Something will have been gained in the present instance, if it has been made evident to the public that the problem of undergraduate scholarship is not so easy, so narrow, or so uninspiring a problem, as many of the critics would have us believe.