Most of our colleges are situated in small towns. To this circumstance, more than to any other, perhaps, is due the exclusiveness which, in its exaggerated manifestations, is so puzzling to the city visitor. Petty items of life and character, intrigues, quarrels and social jealousies have an importance which the world outside cannot understand. They affect the college more or less directly. The professor finds it doubly hard to exercise his vocation in a place where the details of his home life are known and exposed to comment. The student's power for mischief is increased. He has only too much reason for believing that he is indispensable from the business point of view. Besides, as every one knows, close contact in narrow circles has a tendency to cramp the mind. Trifling annoyances, real or imaginary, are apt to rankle in the spirit unless they be brushed away by the quick, firm touch of the great world. Kleinstädtisches Leben, despite its many advantages, fails to develop the burgher in every direction. It leaves him one-sided, if not exactly narrow-minded. Professor C.K. Adams, in his admirable essay upon "State Universities,"[1] has touched upon this point with reference to studies. His words should be carefully weighed: "If the best education consisted simply of making perfect recitations and keeping out of mischief, the smallest college would be incomparably the best college. But the best education is far more than that. Perhaps it is correct to say that it is an inspiration rather than an acquisition. It comes not simply from industry and steady habits, but far more largely from that kindling and glowing zeal which is best begotten by familiar contact with large libraries and museums and enthusiastic specialists.... It is the stir, the enthusiasm, the unceasing activity, and, above all, the constant intercourse with men of the same pursuits and the same ambitions, that develop the greatest energies and secure the highest successes."
Professor Adams, it will be observed, is contrasting small colleges with larger ones. We are not bound by his concessions in favor of the former. And we may also take the liberty of advancing his comparison a step by claiming for large cities, no less than for large colleges, the superiority over small ones. Without intending disrespect, we may even put the direct question, Would not your own university, for whose advantages you are contending, be better off to-day had it been placed in Detroit instead of Ann Arbor? Is there not something dwarfing in the atmosphere of a small country town, where character is undiversified and life uneventful? Were books the sole source of knowledge, were the acquisition of ideas and principles the sole aim, we could wish for our professors and students nothing better than monotony of life. But success, whether in professional or scholarly pursuits, depends largely upon temper and practical judgment—qualities which are developed by contact with the busy world. Whoever has had the experience, knows that life in large cities is both stimulating and sobering. It enlarges one's range of ideas and sympathies: it also keeps idiosyncrasies within proper bounds. The individual does not lose his individuality, but rather intensifies it: he loses only the exaggerated sense of his own importance. We must regard it, then, as unfortunate that so many of our seats of learning are out of the world, so to speak. Our professors would probably do their work better—that is to say, with greater freshness of spirit—and would exert a wider influence, were they thrown more in the company of men of the world. In like manner, our colleges would play a more direct part in the affairs of the country. The history of the German universities suggests a lesson. Is it a mere accident that the oldest and the youngest German universities are in large cities? In the Middle Ages, before the political organization of the country had fairly entered upon its morbid process of disintegration, we find Vienna, Prague[2] and Leipsic heading the list. Subsequently, each petty duke and count, moved by the sense of his autonomy, sought to establish a university of his own. The Reformation increased the spirit of rivalry. Most of these second- and third-rate universities have passed away or have been merged in others. The three youngest, Berlin, Munich and Strasburg, are all in large cities, and are all three the direct offspring of political and educational reorganization. As Germany is now constituted, it would be impossible to found a new university in a small town. Such places as Jena, Erlangen, Greifswald, Rostock, Marburg and Giessen barely hold their own against the strong movement in favor of concentration.
The wholesome influence of large surroundings upon students is perhaps even more marked than upon professors. History teaches us with singular clearness that small towns are precisely the ones in which student character is distorted out of all proportion. No better example can be found than the University of Jena. From the time of its foundation down to the present century the name of Jena stood for all that was wild, absurd, and outrageous. In a village whose permanent population did not exceed four thousand, students were crowded by hundreds and thousands. To speak without exaggeration, they ruled Philistia with a rod of iron, in defiance of law and order, and not infrequently of decency itself. On this point we have an eye-witness of unquestionable veracity. In 1798, Steffens, a young Dane brimful of enthusiastic admiration for German learning, arrived in the course of his travels at Jena. He gives the following account of his first impressions of German student manners:[3] "I looked out into the neighborhood so strange to me, and a restless suspicion of what was to come ran through my mind. Then we heard in I the distance a loud shouting like the voices of a number of men, and nearer and nearer they seemed to come. Lights had been brought shortly before, and, as the uproar was close upon us, a servant burst in to warn us to extinguish them. We asked with curiosity why, and what the shouting mob wanted. We suspected, indeed, that it was students. The servant told us that they were on their way to the house of Professor A——, who was unpopular with them—I knew not why—to salute him with their Pereat, or college damnation. The cry of some hundred students grew plainer and plainer. 'Out with lights!' was called, and just then we heard the panes of glass clatter when the warning was not quickly enough complied with. I confess that this circumstance, occurring so soon after my arrival, filled me with a kind of gloom. It was not such things as this that had called me to Jena: these were not the voices which I had wished and expected to hear, and my first night was a sad one."
Jena, be it said in her praise, is no longer what she was: her students no longer break window-panes or perform the Gänsemarsch or elect their beer-duke of Lichtenhain. The great herd has scattered, and the few who are left dwell with their professors in peace. But has the spirit of brutality passed wholly away? Perhaps loving parents who have placed their sons under the "protecting" influence of some quiet country town believe so. It is almost a pity to disturb their faith. Yet truth is uncompromising. Let us record and ponder the fact—epithets are superfluous—that in the year of grace 1874, in a small college town not one hundred miles distant from the City of Brotherly Love, students supposed to be guided and restrained by influences more distinctively "Christian" than any that ever mitigated the barbarism of Jena, could become utterly lost to all recollection of father and mother, brother and sister, could forget their own manhood, could steal under cover of night to the house of an unpopular professor and bombard the windows, to the peril of his wife and mother, and of his child in the cradle.
Truly, we have been surfeited with mistaken praise of small colleges and rural virtue. We have a right to demand that our colleges, whatever they may undertake or omit, shall teach at least the first lesson of life—manliness. This lesson is not best learned by withdrawing one's self from the world, burying one's self in an obscure and unrefined village, foregoing social intercourse with amiable men and women, and wrapping one's self in a mantle of traditional prejudice. President Porter, although a staunch defender of the existing college system, concedes its weakness. He says (p. 168): "It is no paradox to say that the first essay of the student's independence [i.e., the independence of college as contrasted with school] is often an act of prostrate subserviency to the opinion of the college community. This opinion he has little share in forming: he does little else than yield himself to the sentiment which he finds already formed.... It [this community] is eminently a law unto itself, making and enforcing such laws as no other community would recognize or understand—laws which are often strangely incongruous with the usually received commandments of God and man.... No community is swayed more completely by the force of public opinion. In none does public opinion solidify itself into so compact and homogeneous a force. Before its power the settled judgments of individual opinion are often abandoned or overborne, the sacred associations of childhood are relaxed, the plainest dictates of truth and honor are misinterpreted or defied."
It may surprise us to find the author contending, only a few pages farther on, for "the civilizing and culturing influences which spring from college residence and college associations." The truth is that the case has two sides to it. No friend of education could wish to see student opinion or student sentiment banished wholly from student life—to reduce study to a mere intellectual process without any trace of esprit de corps. Some such spirit is not only good in itself, but is natural and unavoidable. Three hundred or four hundred young men cannot associate freely day by day for years in succession, pursuing the same studies under the guidance of the same teachers, without establishing a certain community of sentiment and action, from which the student's intellectual efforts must derive a great share of their nourishment. Yet, admitting the principle, we cannot justify or palliate the excess to which it has been carried. We insist upon the observance of certain limits, which no man, whether old or young, learned or unlearned, is at liberty to transgress. And when these limits are transgressed we have a right to regard the offenders as all the more culpable because of their advantages. The circumstance that they come of a "good stock," as it is called, and are pursuing liberal studies, is only an aggravation of the offence. We expect youthful extravagances, waste of time, neglect of opportunities, exaggerated self-importance, a supercilious way of looking down upon the outside world—these are all phases of growth, and are usually short-lived—but we cannot tolerate any violation of the rights of property, any overawing of individual conscience, any breach of public order, any disregard of public decency. Such offences we must resent and punish, not only for the sake of those injured, but in the best interests of the offenders themselves. We cannot afford to let the most promising class of our young men entertain even for the brief period of four years false and pernicious views of the fundamental principles of life. It is the duty of every community to suppress error en voie de fait, wherever it may occur. And if it is our duty to suppress, it is no less our duty to prevent. Common sense and experience teach us that danger must arise from gathering large numbers of young men in places too small to hold them in check. Are we not at liberty to borrow an example from the history of President Porter's own college? In the days when the president was a young professor, Yale was a small college and New Haven was a small town. The name of the college then was, to speak mildly, notorious. The Yale of thirty or forty years ago seemed to personify everything that was obnoxious and lawless in our college life: in no other place did the conflict between "town" and "gown" assume such dimensions and lead to such deplorable results. Yet the Yale of to-day, although the number of students has trebled, will compare favorably with any college or university. The students, without having lost a particle of true manliness and independence, riot less and learn more: they show in every way that they are better students and better citizens. Wherein, then, lies the secret of the change? Evidently, in the circumstance that the city has outgrown the college. New Haven is no longer an insignificant town, but has become the seat of a large local trade and the centre of heavy manufacturing and railroad interests. Like other cities, it has established a paid fire department and a strong police force for the protection of all its residents, the college included. It is no longer overshadowed, much less over-awed, by the college. On the contrary, the observation forces itself upon the visitor in New Haven that the college, notwithstanding its numerous staff of able professors, notwithstanding its great body of students, its libraries and scientific collections, is far from playing the leading part in municipal matters. It is only one among many factors. Life and its relations are on an ampler scale: the wealth and refinement of the permanent population are great, and are growing unceasingly. In a few years more New Haven will be fairly within the vortex of New York. This change, which has come about so gradually that those living in it perhaps fail to perceive it readily, has affected the college in many ways. It has made the life of the professors more agreeable, more generous, so to speak, and it has toned down the student spirit of caste. The young man who enters Yale feels, from the moment of matriculation, that he is indeed in a large city, and must conform to its regulations—that there are such beings as policemen and magistrates, whom he cannot provoke with impunity. Even were this all, it would be gain enough. But there is another gain of a far higher nature. The student perceives that outside his college world lies a larger world that he cannot overlook—a world whose society is worth cultivating, whose opinions are backed by wealth and prestige. It does not follow from this that he ceases to be a student. Companions and study make him feel that he is leading a peculiar life, that he is a member of an independent organization. But he does not feel—and this is the main point—that he has retired from the world or that he can set himself up against the world.
In this connection we have to be on our guard against the opposite extreme—namely, the inference that the larger a city the better for the college. The very largest cities are perhaps not favorable to the growth of institutions of learning. Even in Germany, where the university system rests upon a different basis and adapts itself more readily to circumstances, the leading capitals, Berlin and Vienna, are at a disadvantage. The expenses of living are so great as to deter all but the wealthy or the very ambitious, and the pomp and pageantry of court and nobility, the numerous personnel of the several departments of state, finance, war and justice throw the less ostentatious votaries of science and letters into the shade. Nevertheless, the universities of Berlin and Vienna can scarcely be said to be threatened with permanent decline. The governments of Prussia and Austria recognize the necessity of a great university in a great capital to give tone to the administrative departments and to resist the spread of the spirit of materialism. Besides, the resident population of each of these cities is entitled to a university, and would be sufficient of itself to support one. We may rest assured, therefore, that the Prussian government will act in the future as it has done in the past, by sparing no efforts to make the Frederico-Gulielma the head of the Prussian system in fact as well as in name. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that the present hard times and the unsettled state of society in Berlin tend to restrict the number of students. The remarkable contrast presented in the sudden growth of the Leipsic University shows how even matters of education are influenced by social and economic laws. This Saxon city seems marked out by Nature for a seat of learning. It combines almost all attractions and advantages. It is accessible from every quarter, the climate is good for North Germany, and the neighborhood is pleasant, although anything but picturesque. The newer houses are well built, rooms and board are not expensive. The inhabitants are wealthy and highly cultured, the book-trade is enormous, and the banking-business considerable. Yet trade does not move with the fever-heat of speculation: the life of the city is quiet and regular. Amusements of a high order are within the reach of every one. These minor attractions, combined with the more important ones offered by the university itself, will explain to us how it is that Leipsic has taken the foremost rank. Students who are used to city ways, and who would have chosen Berlin ten or twenty years ago, now come here because of the cheapness of living. Others, tired of the monotony of the smaller university towns, come to get a foretaste of the world that awaits them after the completion of their studies. The temper of the students is admirable. Rarely if ever do they betray any traces of the hectoring spirit which still lingers at Heidelberg, for instance. But for the display of corps-caps and cannon boots and an occasional swagger in the street, one might pass an entire semester in Leipsic without realizing that the city contains three thousand students. Undoubtedly, the young men perceive, like their colleagues of Yale, that their surroundings are too much for them.
Another prolific source of trouble is the class system. Whether this system is to be maintained as it is, or to be modified, or to be abandoned for another more in accordance with the needs of the age, are questions which must be kept in abeyance. The answer will depend upon the view which we take of higher education in the main. Meanwhile, let us consider the system in its operations during the past and at the present day. Here, as so often before, Germany affords us a warning example of the dangers consequent upon the recognition of class distinctions. The comparatively harmless practice of Deposition—a burlesque student-initiation which sprang up in the sixteenth century and obtained a quasi sanction from no less a person than Luther—degenerated in the seventeenth century into Pennalisimus. Newly-matriculated students, called Pennalists (the modern term is Füchse), were maltreated by the elder ones, the Schorists, and were pillaged and forced to perform menial services "such as a sensible master would hesitate to exact of his servant[4]." The Schorists considered themselves a licensed corporation. To give an idea of their deportment, not merely toward the younger students, but even toward the university itself, it will suffice to state that they conducted their orgies at times in the public streets without fear or shame. In 1660, during the student insurrection at Jena, they assaulted and dispersed the Academic Senate in session. The governmental rescripts of those days are taken up with accounts of the evil and the means proposed for curing it. The matter was even brought before the Imperial Diet. Pennalismus was not suppressed until the close of the century, after the various governments had resorted to the most stringent measures. Such excesses have, of course, never been committed in America; yet we observe the same spirit of insubordination to superiors and domination over inferiors betraying itself in the New World. When we hear of "rushing," "hazing," "smoking-out" and the like, we must admit to ourselves that the animus is the same, although the form be only ludicrous. And what shall we say to performances such as the explosion of nitro-glycerine? Much may be urged in extenuation of the offences of the German students in the seventeenth century. Their sensibilities were blunted by the horrors of a Thirty Years' War; they had been born and reared amid bloodshed and rapine; some of them must have served in the campaigns of Banér, Torstenson and Wrangel, where human life went for nothing, and honor for less than nothing. Some of them, perhaps, could not name their parents. They were waifs of the camp, their only education the crumbs of knowledge picked up in the camp-school mentioned by Schiller in his Wallenstein. Our students, on the contrary, are anxiously shielded against temptation and are carefully trained for their work. Why, then, should they be the only set of persons to disobey, as a set, the rules of public order? The answer suggests itself: Because they have acquired the habit of joint action without the sense of individual responsibility.
The advantages of the present system of instruction by classes are not to be overlooked. Yet they are attended with one serious evil. The members of a class, reciting day by day, term after term, upon the same subjects, acquire the notion of a certain average of work. The class, as a unit, has only so much to learn, and the professor is not to exceed this maximum. Furthermore, each class gauges its work by the work of its predecessors. The Sophomore class of this year, for instance, is not willing to do more than the Sophomore class of last year. To introduce more difficult text-books, or to increase the number of hours, or to lengthen the lessons, is injustice. The notion of unity extends itself to social relations. Each member considers himself identified with his comrades. Tradition—everywhere a power, and especially powerful in college—establishes nice distinctions. It lays down the rule that one class shall not wear beaver hats or carry canes—that another class shall steal the town-gates on a particular night of the year or publish scurrilous pamphlets. Each member of the class must do certain things or must refrain from them, not because he wishes to, but because he is a member of the class. The strength of this community of feeling and interests can be estimated only by one who has experienced it. Were its operations confined to the relations among students, they would be less formidable. We might perhaps shrug our shoulders and leave the young men "to fight it out among themselves." The case becomes quite different, however, when a class arrays itself in opposition to its professor or to the entire faculty. Then we see plainly the dangers of insubordination. The immature and inexperienced set themselves above their elders: they arrogate to themselves the right of deciding what they shall learn, how much they shall learn, how they shall learn it. And, being a class, they stand or fall as a class. They exhibit tenacity of purpose and an unscrupulous use of improper means. Many a professor has learned to his cost what it is to be defied by his class.
An example will be more instructive than vague generalities. About seven years ago a gentleman was engaged by one of our colleges to take charge of a new department until a permanent appointee might be found. The resident faculty committed one blunder after another. It added the new study outright without adjusting it to the previous studies. It also fixed upon Saturday as the day for beginning. Thus, the students were prejudiced against their new instructor before they had even seen him. Besides, they regarded the innovation as an "interloper." The victim to student rule may now tell his own story: "I took the 6 A.M. train Saturday morning from the city. After breakfast I was directed by the president to go to a certain room, unaccompanied, to meet the Sophomore class. One hundred hyenas! My entrance was greeted with groans, 'Ahas!' 'Hums!' I spent half an hour in the vain attempt to explain the subject. Before I was half through I had made up my mind to return to the city by the first train. On leaving the room I met Professor ——, who comprehended the situation at a glance. He said that he had been through it all himself—that it had taken him two years to get control of his classes. I learned afterward that this is the usual time allowed for such purpose. The president on meeting me, said in his usual abrupt, nervous brogue, 'It's nothing against the men, sir! It would be just the same if it were anybody else, sir! (!!!). Just go on, sir.' I finally decided 'to go on, sir,' but I hardly retain my self-respect when I remember how I submitted for three months to a series of petty annoyances unworthy the lowest gamins of New York. Students purposely made mistakes to give others an opportunity to groan. The Sophomore class was divided into two sections after the third week. By dint of strict watching, which so absorbed my attention that I could do little in the way of instruction, I succeeded in obtaining tolerable order. Usually, a painful silence was observed, every one knowing that there was a hand-to-hand fight going on for the mastery. The Junior class could not be divided because of other studies. Their recitations (?) continued to be a bedlam, a pandemonium. I afterward learned that some students, who already had some knowledge of the subject, remained on purpose to create disturbance. One of them, a son of a trustee, I caught blowing snuff through the room. It was a favorite trick of the class to drop a bundle of snuff in the stove. Each one of the fifteen recitations that I had with this class was spoiled by some disturbance. On two occasions some of them stole the keys of the room and locked me in with part of the class. Fortunately, I was able to drive back the bolt. The president was less lucky. Twice he and his entire class were obliged to climb down from the window by a ladder. There is no use in multiplying words. The treatment to which I was subjected was shameful. What made it even worse was, that the authorities permitted such conduct toward one whom they had invited to take the initiative in beginning a new study. It was a perfectly-understood thing that I had accepted the temporary appointment more to relieve the college than for my own benefit."