Specialism.

It was remarked by President Eliot, in one of his recent addresses, that a college should not be turned into a professional school, that specialism in its narrow sense should not be pursued in a four years' college course. While every one should be prompted by some one purpose in choosing his electives, yet that purpose should not rule supreme. The line of courses pursued should not at college be a sharply defined line all of one color, but rather a line, it is true, easily distinguished, but here and there shaded off even into entirely different colors. These are not the words of the address, only the ideas as the writer understood them. Strict specialism during a college course was decried and declared to belong only to the professional school. Slight divergences from the bee line were encouraged, as being likely to accomplish more successfully the purpose of a college education.

This kind of specialism, however, suggests another quite different kind which has not been very generally noticed, but which, nevertheless, is very prevalent here at Harvard and elsewhere. Reference is had to the "grind," and the "swell" (or, to be more modern, the "dude"), and the "professional" athlete. All men, who are properly called by any one of these names, and to whom any other can be applied only with a very slight degree of correctness, are specialists; and their specialism has to be attended with great injury to themselves as well as to the general interests of the college. We have men who grind all the time, whole sole ambition is to grind in that ever laudable hope of getting high marks. Others desire nothing but athletic records, or reputations for dress, good looks, rapidity of living, and number and size and variety of bull-pups. All such are specialists. Not one of them is getting that for which he came to college, or that at least for which he ought to have come. Their specialism is of the most condemnable sort, and as specialists they themselves are to be most mercifully pitied.

That the grind should be called a pitable specialist doubtless surprises many. And yet a little thought must show the reader how much the grind should be pitied. All study, and that on only two or three subjects and on only their limited class-room phases, no social intercourse, no general reading, no recreation of any sort for mind or body, are things that are not very likely to make such a fully developed manhood as a college education certainly ought to make. To "grind" is, it is true very laudable, but to grind all the time is not so. Grind some of course, but read also, converse, be sociable, take recreation, above all don't let books control the mind in all its active hours, think yourself and aim at some originality.

As a close to this discussion the following from an article on "Students at Harvard," in a New York Times of a year or two ago will not be inappropriate:

"To fly in the face of outside opinion once more," says the writer, "I would not hesitate to affirm that, with the sole exception of the 'swell,' the 'grind' is the least valuable and useful type of college student. While a rational and vigorous attention to study is the prime object of a college course, the man who devotes himself to study exclusively, withdrawing himself from all human interest, is quite as mistaken an extremist as he who neglects his studies altogether. The former's science of navigation may be excellent, but if he does not know the sun when he sees it, his ship will fail of a successful voyage all the same. It is for this reason that the names most prominent on the honor list during the college course are so seldom heard of after graduation. The man who will succeed and whose training will do the greatest good to himself and to others is the man who, while not neglectful of his studies, adds to this an appreciation of the practical experience which the college life is so ready to bestow, and in the literary or scientific undergraduate societies, on the staff of a college paper, and in a dozen other possible ways, takes advantage of the rich opportunities to strengthen himself in body and mind. The ambition to lead one's class is not, of itself, a high ambition."