the college. The considerations upon which selection fitly turns have reference solely to the original force of the men who direct the various departments of study in different universities, to the adequacy of the equipment which is provided for research, and to the geographical relations of the institution to supplies of material for the investigations which are to be undertaken.

The conditions which ensure breadth and wholesomeness in college life become matters of indifference in the university; for in the latter it is not the variety of interests represented and the bringing together of many types of local culture which make for strength, but the singleness of enthusiasm for intellectual discovery which exists among a body of men pursuing common objects of investigation. The graduate schools of a university do not logically receive the generations which the college connected therewith brings forth from year to year. Local bonds have no proper value here, and every practicable facility should be provided which will enable the university to draw its constituents from the widest geographical range, and which will permit the graduating members of the college to scatter as freely as possible to institutions where the most adequate means is afforded for carrying on their several special lines of study.

University work is essentially of the class known technically as "residential." The deplorable practice exists in certain American institutions of granting the doctoral degree to those who have never been thus identified with their work. The requirements in such cases are commonly the passing of a set of examinations, the presentation of an essay, and the payment of a considerable fee. The work performed by this class of students is not done at other institutions of a similar character to that which grants the degree. There could ordinarily be no reason for such a transference of credits, and the degree would naturally be sought from the university at which the work was carried on. The offering of degrees for work done in absentia is an appeal to those who are compelled to carry on their studies privately and without the aid of that literary and experimental equipment which is afforded only by extensive libraries and laboratories, and which is indispensable to the successful pursuit of that work for which the university degree stands.

Almost all our universities add to the general condition that the candidate's work shall have been done at some recognized institution, the further requirement that a considerable portion of that work shall be pursued at the institution from which his university degree is to be received. The first of these conditions ensures the student's access to adequate material and equipment for the prosecution of his studies; the second secures that personal knowledge of his character as a student which in the conferring of this recognition of attainment-the highest which the educational system comprises-is of the first importance. I recall only three institutions of consideration where the condition of residence is not specified. In a series of fifty schools which grant the doctoral degree,-among which are to be found all the more prominent universities of the country,— twenty-three require at least one year of resident study, nineteen require two years, and five demand even a period of three years' residence for the attainment of the final certificate.

The work which a university student does is not necessarily carried on at a single institution. That work should indeed be conceived as an essential unity, but the pursuance of it may admit, or in virtue of the distribution of material may even require, residence at more than one center of learning in the course of its completion. In such a case the institution from which the final degree is received should be able to vouch for the character of the work as a whole, and wherever possible the complete course of study should be under its direct supervision. One application of this general principle is presented in the system of traveling scholarships, the incumbents of which are still in the most real sense members of the university which has thus honored them; and the custom of returning to that institution for their degrees, instead of presenting their credentials at the foreign universities where they have been temporarily in residence, is much to be commended.

The natural qualification of any student to enter upon university work is the possession of the Bachelor's degree. With a system of education presenting organic continuity no other criterion should be necessary. Of the fifty institutions already mentioned forty-seven require this certificate from candidates

Taster's degree, proceeding to the doctorate, two require the and one only leaves the relation unspecified, the latter being an Eastern technical school. The status of the Master's degree, to ed by which reference has already been made, is again indicat the rarity with which it is made a required preliminary

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The work of the university student culminates in the doctoral thesis. Other criteria are distinctly and permanently of ondary value to the capacity of the student to give evidence of original constructive ability in the results of a special research undertaken and carried on by himself. The task which he is now called upon to perform is of a new and peculiar kind. Hitherto his observation of fact has been under guidance, no it becomes self-directed. Hitherto his criticism has been ex perimental and subject to correction, now it becomes effective and must be self-reliant. Hitherto his constructive and inventive abilities have been employed in the repetition of demonstrations as a formal discipline, now they are to be put to serious work which invites a merciless criticism. It is, therefore, not the range of his acquaintance with facts which is here of primary importance, though that must be sufficient to enable him to apprehend the value of existing contributions to his special field of research. It is not even the measure of his logical penetration in criticising the productions of other minds, though such sanity and acumen are essential to all productive work of high order. It is the possession of that scientific vision and inductive grasp which makes possible the accomplishment of the perfectly definite task which is set before him; namely, the successful prosecution of a problem in experimental or historical science.

From its very nature the subject of the doctoral thesis cannot well be prescribed by an external authority. It represents the direction of the student's own intellectual growth, and the theorems with which it is concerned must needs be of those problems with which he is brought face to face in his own thinking. So long as he goes on assimilating the thought of others without advancing beyond it, no such attitude toward the world of knowledge as the doctoral thesis presupposes can arise in his mind. Original scientific analysis or philosophical construction

appears only when limitation and inadequacy are immediately felt and an explicit and sustained attempt is made to supply the deficiency. It is evident that such problems must be set by the student himself, in the sense at least that he must feel the shock of discovery by an immediate realization of the actuality of their existence within his own horizon.

The prescription of topics for essays is eminently wise at all preceding stages of the student's career; for there the need is to ensure a sufficiently varied material for the application of those capacities for selective and discriminative thought which it is the aim of the educator to develop. But such an imposition would be disastrous in that piece of composition in which the student undertakes to show not only his mastery of method, but also the application of inventive skill and a disciplined imagination to the solution of an original problem in science or philosophy.

The outcome of the thesis work should be positive. Within the scope of the term, as here employed, falls destructive criticism, the so-called negative results of experimental science, such as are involved in the refutation of an historical error or the demonstration of the inapplicability of an assumed hypothesis in science. In both cases a positive advance in knowledge has been made by establishing true historical relations and closing false byways to vain exploration in the future. The thesis must show some bit of knowledge which previous to the work of the writer did not exist, and which owes its existence to his patience and penetration. No such bit of knowledge can rightly be called insignificant. Special and minute it may be in the highest degree; to the layman it may be unintelligible or of little practical importance, but somewhere in the general system of science it has its place,-a place which indeed in the largest sense may be of high significance for that very body of secure and practical knowledge upon which the conduct and enjoyment. of ordinary life depend.

The doctoral thesis is therefore of a class of work which from its very nature should be known to other productive scholars. It springs out of a field of activity which, in all ordinary cases, is common to a group of workers, since upon the existence of a

body of literature concerning its general province the interest of the student in his special topic as a matter of course arises. The publication of such theses is both negatively and positively important; negatively, in that the same problems are likely to arise in the minds of others as well as in that of the writer when all are pursuing the same general ends, and the communication of each new contribution to knowledge obviates the misfortune of fruitlessly duplicated work; and positively, because every addition to the sum of special knowledge illuminates the pathway of the investigator, and thus furthers the progress of other research. The value of the alluring yet perilous goal of publicity as an incentive to the highest activity of which the candidate is capable needs no emphasis.

While pointing out the value of documentary evidence, both in relation to the entrance of the student upon university study and to his graduation from it, the fact must not be lost sight of that examinations possess a proper function in that sphere of training as well as in the college. It has been said that the topic of a doctoral thesis cannot well be too technical and specialized. It is nevertheless possible for the student to confine his attention to such a narrow range of related facts that, while the particular piece of work in question may have been carried through satisfactorily, his efficiency as an investigator, even in that special branch of science, is impaired through a failure to apprehend the interrelations of its phenomena with those of independent but closely allied fields of study.

This is not a matter of general culture, nor one for which the college can be relied on to provide. It is distinctly a question of scholarship, and concerns systematic acquaintance with a province of related facts all of which bear more or less directly upon the special phenomena which the student has selected as his own field of work. The thesis is evidence of the specialization of activity upon a definite problem; these examinations aim to prevent unhealthy narrowness of view and to ensure sanity of scholarship on the part of the student. Out of the fifty schools referred to above forty-four make the successful passing of examinations obligatory.

The method of these examinations is of interest. The stu