that describes so well the
result at which our institutions ought to aim? If they do that, they
do the best thing conceivable. If they fail to do it, they fail in
very deed. It surely is a fine synthetic formula. If our faculties
and graduates could once collectively come to realize it as the great
underlying purpose toward which they have always been more or less
obscurely groping, a great clearness would be shed over many of their
problems; and, as for their influence in the midst of our social
system, it would embark upon a new career of strength.

[1] Address delivered at a meeting of the Association of American
Alumnae at Radcliffe College, November 7, 1907, and first published in
_McClure's Magazine_ for February, 1908.

XIV

THE UNIVERSITY AND THE INDIVIDUAL

I. THE PH.D. OCTOPUS[1]

Some years ago we had at our Harvard Graduate School a very brilliant
student of Philosophy, who, after leaving us and supporting himself by
literary labor for three years, received an appointment to teach
English Literature at a sister-institution of learning. The governors
of this institution, however, had no sooner communicated the
appointment than they made the awful discovery that they had enrolled
upon their staff a person who was unprovided with the Ph.D. degree.
The man in question had been satisfied to work at Philosophy for her
own sweet (or bitter) sake, and had disdained to consider that an
academic bauble should be his reward.

His appointment had thus been made under a misunderstanding. He was
not the proper man; and there was nothing to do but to inform him of
the fact. It was notified to him by his new President that his
appointment must be revoked, or that a Harvard doctor's degree must
forthwith be procured.

Although it was already the spring of the year, our Subject, being a
man of spirit, took up the challenge, turned his back upon literature
(which in view of his approaching duties might have seemed his more
urgent concern) and spent the weeks that were left him, in writing a
metaphysical thesis and grinding his psychology, logic and history of
philosophy up again, so as to pass our formidable ordeals.

When the thesis came to be read by our committee, we could not pass it.
Brilliancy and originality by themselves won't save a thesis for the
doctorate; it must also exhibit a heavy technical apparatus of
learning; and this our candidate had neglected to bring to bear. So,
telling hi