tion had been printed, and an unpopular student was accused of securing a copy from the printer on the night before examination. Conviction would have implied his expulsion by demand of the student body. The ground of complaint was not so much that the use of the questions would be unjust to fellow students as that the action alleged was characteristic of a sneak unfit to associate with gentlemen, and involved the culprit's signature to a false statement that his answers were written without aid. The accusation was based on circumstantial evidence alone and could not be sustained. The trial was necessary in the interest of the defendant, whose accusers were fellow students. So long as there exists such a jealous demand on the part of students that cheating shall not be tolerated in any form, direct or indirect, college authorities are abundantly safe in allowing them self-government.
But all cases are not so simple as the one just cited, nor is popular sentiment usually so pronounced as to secure the prosecution of offenders. Indeed the honor system is no longer a characteristic of any one section of the country. In the same institution of learning it may be trusted during one year and found wanting during another. College tradition has been perceptibly weakened during forty years. Ideals of education have been revolutionized, and it would be extraordinary if ideals of college honor should not be subject to gradual modification. The assumptions that once served as the foundation of the honor system can no longer be accepted without reservation, and the administration of such a system must be modified to suit changed conditions. It may be instructive to inquire briefly into these changes.
The southern college is no longer under the control of the social class that was in power when the honor system became established as a fact without being known as a system. With the establishment of public education at the south the classical academies have been dying out, one by one, and their places taken by the public high schools of the cities. The spirit of inherited aristocracy has been gradually disappearing, and with it are vanishing the home ideals that were formerly carried to the college. Population has grown, and the diffusion of elementary education, though still far from complete, is much better than it was a generation ago. Young men no longer come to college to receive the badge of respectability. They come to secure as directly as possible what they hope to utilize in the approaching competition with the world for a living. The testimonial of scholastic success is a baccalaureate or professional degree, the value of which depends upon the reputation of the college. Culture for the sake of culture, training for the avowed purpose of mental gymnastics, the pursuit of science for the love of knowledge and the desire to add to the sum of human ideas, have their advocates still, especially in the universities; but to the great majority of students such motives
