ing 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