UBER DIE GRENZEN

Frequent and futile are the complaints from many mouths concerning the Procrustean rigours of the course system, which, cultivating knowledge in small and vigorous doses, so often blinds the intelligence of the student to problems and pleasures beyond the narrowest limits of his work; in examining the surface similarities between two versions of Goethe's "Faust" he forgets that the play is a thing of beauty and a living comment on life; in studying the calculus he overlooks that mathematics is a method of expressing the truth, as capable of interpreting the science of physiology as of indicating the proper way to cut a pie. The cramped outlook is a general and common failing, equally characteristic of the student of the arts who protests at a laboratory requirement, and of the scientifically minded whose dreams are of stewing alembics and spectroscopes.

To turn back the subtle inroads of this form of philistinism only the sped of suggestion which awakens broader interests in needed. The plan of throwing students together in Houses is being tried, but it would seem that the difficulty might be attacked much nearer its root in the system of courses. If, for example, Professor Whitehead gave a lecture to the Freshmen who take Mathematics A, explaining the significance of mathematics in Philosophy, the mental horizon of all the intelligent students in the course would be appreciably widened. The same scheme, modified for various fields, would work successfully in almost all the large introductory courses. The plan could be carried to absurdity, indeed, but none need fear that Harvard College will ever go to extremes.