entific skill and the technical ingenuity of the American mind. But if we are wise, we shall not forget that more important lesson which a recent writer in the London Times has seen fit to remind his own countrymen of. "We have no wish," he says, "to neglect these (scientific) studies. They have their place. But it is the second, not the first. It is not matter but spirit that is going to win this war. It is not matter but spirit that we are going to need to solve the problems that will come after the war. And it is literature and literature alone which can nourish that vital spirit. For literature by its very nature deals always with human life, while physical science by its very nature deals with matter which, if it has life at all, has at least no life which is human. . The whole of the people, each for his own sake, and for the sake of all the rest too, will need a knowledge of human life.. .. The wisest man of all antiquity turned away from the study of physical sciences and gave himself to that of the life of man. And why? Because, as his greatest pupil declared, 'an intelligent man will prize those studies which result in his soul getting soberness, righteousness and wisdom, and will less value the other'."4

Scientific studies will find their appropriate place, and it will be one of increasing honor and service, but they can never supplant without irreparable loss those disciplines whose special function it is to open the mind, to clarify the vision, and "to extend from the few to the many the delights which thought and knowledge give, saving the people from degenerating into base and corrupting pleasures by teaching them to enjoy those which are high and pure." Not even the bitter exigencies of modern warfare and the hard necessity of meeting a resourceful and unscrupulous enemy will make us forget the value of our human heritage. Surely no worse calamity could befall us intellectually and morally than the wilful neglect of those studies which have come down to us from the past redolent with the wisdom of the ages and still capable of firing the imaginations and inspiring the hearts of our youth to become "brave men and worthy patriots, ♦ Times Literary Supplement, June 1, 1916.

dear to God and famous to all ages." If we wish to realize Milton's dream of responsible liberty thru an ordered democracy not only in our own country, but thruout the world, we must not neglect to school our children in a knowledge of those literatures which in both ancient and modern times have preserved the great ideals of the race. The necessity of this procedure is eloquently brought home to us in an essay on Education and freedom by Professor R. S. Conway, of Manchester University. He says:

The epoch in which the free life of England bore its most glorious fruit, both in action and letters-the age of Elizabeth-was the age in which Greek literature had just been re-discovered, an age in which the Greek sense of beauty and the Greek passion for freedom inspired our own poets. For if Shakespeare knew only a little Greek, Thomas More and Spenser and Herrick and Herbert and Sidney knew a great deal; and Shakespeare's whole political thought is colored by his love for the Greek biographies of Plutarch, read in the magnificent English of Thomas North. Since that day such names as Bacon, Milton, Clarendon, Burke, Chatham, Gladstone, to mention no living examples, are those of men who have learnt from classical scholarship to be great defenders of freedom. Our public schools have not studied the ancient authors for nothing; if you want to implant in a boy some reverence for freedom, some knowledge of what it means, you will not give him definitions or well-meaning talk about civic or ethical theory; he merely hates such abstractions. Nor will you hope to achieve this end by concentrating his thoughts on the exact laws of physical science, important as they are for other ends. The study of physical science at its best should awaken some conception of the wonderfulness of the world, of the fixity of its laws, of the danger and futility of falsehood and impatient or careless observation; but for more far-reaching ideals which he is to follow in public conduct a boy must look not to the scientific but to the humane side of his training. If education is to make men good citizens of the world, not merely good carpenters and plumbers, not merely docile instruments of tyrannical commands, it must teach them something of men, must inspire them with some affection for the ideals by which mankind has been swayed. And that is the reason for the study of literature; only from the record of what men have thought and felt can a

boy or girl learn to understand the conceptions that move men most. To implant the sources of morality, the ethics of private conduct, no disquisitions on the beauty of the separate virtues will ever compete with the divine parables of the New Testament; so in the region of public ethics, if you wish to kindle patriotism and courage, teach your children such poetry as the Agincourt scenes of Shakespeare's Henry the fifth. And if you wish to instil into a boy's mind a conception of freedom, give him to read the story of the struggle of Athens with Persia in Herodotus, or in the patriotic drama of the poet Aeschylus, who fought himself at Marathon; give him to read the defense of Plataea in Thucydides, or any one of the great speeches of Demosthenes against Philip, and he will come away with a knowledge of the meaning of freedom that no experience can blot out, with a respect for the free spirit which no hardness or bitterness of life will ever wholly extinguish.5

And now, as we behold our nation-God grant she may prove both "noble and puissant"-"rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks," as she arms herself for the purpose of bringing peace, safety and freedom to the world, shall we not rededicate ourselves to the high calling wherewith we have been called, resolved that our students shall receive as far as we are able to give them that "complete and generous education" which shall fit them "to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war?" 1 Contemporary Review, vol. 109.

RANDOLPH MACON WOMAN'S COLLEGE

LYNCHBURG, VIRGINIA

WILLIAM A. WEBB

VII

THE PH.D. OCTOPUS

[The following article by the late Professor William James appeared in the Harvard Monthly for March, 1903, and is here reprinted by permission. The conditions which it describes have been but slightly altered, if at all, in the intervening years.-Editor.]

Some years ago we had at our Harvard Graduate School a very brilliant student of philosophy, who, after leaving us and supporting himself by literary labor for three years, received an appointment to teach English literature at a sister institution of learning. The governors of this institution, however, had no sooner communicated the appointment than they made the awful discovery that they had enrolled upon their staff a person who was unprovided with the Ph.D. degree. The man in question had been satisfied to work at philosophy for her own sweet (or bitter) sake, and had disdained to consider that an academic bauble should be his reward.

His appointment had thus been made under a misunderstanding. He was not the proper man; and there was nothing to do but to inform him of the fact. It was notified to him by his new president that his appointment must be revoked, or that a Harvard doctor's degree must forthwith be procured.

Altho it was already the spring of the year, our subject, being a man of spirit, took up the challenge, turned his back upon literature (which in view of his approaching duties might have seemed his more urgent concern) and spent the weeks that were left him, in writing a metaphysical thesis and grinding his psychology, logic and history of philosophy up again, so as to pass our formidable ideals.

When the thesis came to be read by our committee, we could not pass it. Brilliancy and originality by themselves won't save a thesis for the doctorate; it must also exhibit a

heavy technical apparatus of learning; and this our candidate had neglected to bring to bear. So, telling him that he was temporarily rejected, we advised him to pad out the thesis properly, and return with it next year, at the same time informing his new president that this signified nothing as to his merits, that he was of ultra Ph.D. quality, and one of the strongest men with whom we had ever had to deal.

To our surprize we were given to understand in reply that the quality per se of the man signified nothing in this connection, and that three magical letters were the thing seriously required. The college had always gloried in a list of faculty members who bore the doctor's title, and to make a gap in the galaxy, and admit a common fox without a tail, would be a degredation impossible to be thought of. We wrote again, pointing out that a Ph.D. in philosophy would prove little anyhow as to one's ability to teach literature; we sent separate letters in which we outdid each other in eulogy of our candidate's powers, for indeed they were great; and at last, mirabile dictu, our eloquence prevailed. He was allowed to retain his appointment provisionally, on condition that at one year later at the farthest his miserably naked name should be prolonged by the sacred appendage, the lack of which had given so much trouble to all concerned.

Accordingly he came up here the following spring with an adequate thesis (known since in print as a most brilliant contribution to metaphysics), past a first rate examination, wiped out the stain, and brought his college into proper relations with the world again. Whether his teaching, during that first year, of English literature was made any better by the impending examination in a different subject, is a question which I will not try to solve.

I have related this incident at such length because it is so characteristic of American academic conditions at the present day. Graduate schools still are something of a novelty, and higher diplomas something of a rarity. The latter, therefore, carry a vague sense of preciousness and honor, and have a particularly “up-to-date" appearance, and it is no wonder if smaller institutions, unable to attract professors already