the American college is to-day in a condition of exceedingly unstable equilibrium. Such a condition is by no means wholly due to intelligent objections to this curriculum; but neither is it due to wholly irrational objections. The amount and kind of studies now required by this institution can by no means be clearly justified. The permission to elect, with respect to the amount and kind of studies to which it applies, is plainly given in many cases as a matter of accident or of temporary convenience rather than as a conclusion based on reason and experience. The result is that the present position of the curriculum of the American college is anomalous; and the higher the grade of the college whose curriculum we examine, the more anomalous is its character. Such a condition cannot be regarded as anything better than the best temporary expedient,—a creditable makeshift devised in the effort to advance, but not to advance too fast or in the wrong direction. Inevitably, those institutions which have admitted most of the university principle into their college courses have obtained the largest mixture of the secondary and the truly higher education.
At the same time that a variety of elective courses has been introduced into the college curriculum of our institutions of the first rank, the same institutions have been making the effort to develop a true university education outside of and farther up than
