IMPRIMATUR

As another Reading Period flashes across the nether side of the horizon, none too brilliantly, the same old question arises as to the reason for its existence. Certainly one of the most important causes, if not the important; is to afford the faculty an opportunity to do more research work, and then under the rule of cause and effect, to publish the findings. It is difficult to quarrel with the proposition of whether the university of reputation exists for its students or for its teachers.

The problem lies with the present pronunciamento that the rising pedagog must publish if he hopes to climb to a worthwhile rung on the academic ladder. Whether or not the command is an intangible one, there are too many instances of the scholar's success being based wholly on the number of fly-leaves bearing his name. It has been said somewhere that the true scholar never creates; he delves into the past and criticizes. Practically all academic presses are engaged in printing and binding these gleanings. The creation of intellectual curiosity, and then of intellectual appreciation, in the minds of a few hundred pupils may be a greater thing than a rehashed Doctor's thesis, but it counts not as much. The great teacher may suffer from a prosaic style when he forsakes the classroom for the more material pen, but he publishes all the same; forced by this vicissitude of present convention.

It matters little whether the pages are dull; he has published. And another step toward the Olympic goa! has been negotiated successfully. In the mean-time, the man who came to Harvard to sit at the feet of her Great Men sits in Widener. He turns the pages of their latest opera. In a little while there will be more to take their place.