to develop a tyrannical Machine with
unforeseen powers of exclusion and corruption. Observation of the
workings of our Harvard system for twenty years past has brought some
of these drawbacks home to my consciousness, and I should like to call
the attention of my readers to this disadvantageous aspect of the
picture, and to make a couple of remedial suggestions, if I may.

In the first place, it would seem that to stimulate study, and to
increase the _gelehrtes Publikum_, the class of highly educated men in
our country, is the only positive good, and consequently the sole
direct end at which our graduate schools, with their diploma-giving
powers, should aim. If other results have developed they should be
deemed secondary incidents, and if not desirable in themselves, they
should be carefully guarded against.

To interfere with the free development of talent, to obstruct the
natural play of supply and demand in the teaching profession, to foster
academic snobbery by the prestige of certain privileged institutions,
to transfer accredited value from essential manhood to an outward
badge, to blight hopes and promote invidious sentiments, to divert the
attention of aspiring youth from direct dealings with truth to the
passing of examinations,--such consequences, if they exist, ought
surely to be regarded as drawbacks to the system, and an enlightened
public consciousness ought to be keenly alive to the importance of
reducing their amount. Candidates themselves do seem to be keenly
conscious of some of these evils, but outside of their ranks or in the
general public no such consciousness, so far as I can see, exists; or
if it does exist, it fails to express itself aloud. Schools, Colleges,
and Universities, appear enthusiastic over the entire system, just as
it stands, and unanimously applaud all its developments.

I beg the reader to consider some of the secondary evils which I have
enumerated. First of all, is not our growing tendency to appoint no
instructors who are not also doctors an instance of pure sham? Will
any one pretend for a moment that the doctor's degree is a guarantee
that its possessor will be successful as a teacher? Notoriously his
moral, social and personal characteristics may utterly disqualify him
for success in the class-room; and of these characteristics his
doctor's examination is unable to take any account whatever. Certain
bare human beings will always be better candidates for a given pla