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clients' causes hereafter, some of them in hell." It is likely that if there were only one-third as many legal practitioners, but these had studied deeply into the evolution and constitution of human society, and had become acquainted with the principal events, with their causes and effects in the history of the race; and if they had also had developed in them social good-will in the place of selfish greed, society would be far better off than it is among us today. Think of a youth still in the pin-feather stage attempting to adjust the relations of men out of sorts with one another in such a complex social mechanism as our own! He has had but four or five years of study beyond the high school, and in this time he has had to possess himself of the principles and the technique of his trade; not to speak of all else he needs to make him a friend instead of an enemy of society. Is the law such a simple thing that it can be mastered in this brief space? Or is it not essential that one whose function it is to conserve the social organism and cause justice to prevail everywhere should study deeply into the nature and history of society, and the impulses which regulate the human heart ?

It seems scarcely necessary to say that every pettifogger is a menace to the community in which he lives; he is a relic of a simple and crude social organization. If all those in our country who interpret and apply the laws should not rise above mere pettifoggers, we should drop back in the scale of civilization many centuries. Of course, society appreciates this in a way, and it has established regulations to protect itself against quackery and pettifoggery. But society is never aggressive in this matter; it does not act until it is evident that action is absolutely imperative. There is never any danger of people moving too rapidly in the direction of increasing the requirements for those who would fill the offices and professions in the community.

Looking at the matter from this point of view, one cannot fail to reach the conclusion that it is most inopportune to urge the shortening of the college course at this point in our evolution, and especially in our own country. Rather, every effort

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ought to be made to lengthen and to strengthen it; to increase, instead of diminish, the requirements of the physician and the lawyer and the teacher, and above all the politician and the statesman. The doctrine that all young men ought to feel the harness as soon as they pass the twenty-one-year mark is a relic from primitive times; no one today can have faith in it who studies the altered conditions of society, and the factors which contribute to its stability and continuous development. In the place of talk about curtailing the period of training, we should be hearing more about the duty and opportunity of individuals and commonwealths to contribute to the maintenance of men of talent as long as they will continue in study, in the effort to possess themselves of all the race knows and can do in given fields, and make additions thereto. What a warning it ought to be to us to learn, as we seem to be learning today, that there were ancient civilizations whose culture and arts exceeded our own, but they have perished from the earth altogether for long ages, and the secrets of many of their accomplishments are lost forever! Cut short the time which our youth now spend in study, and instead of leading the way in the onward movement of civilization, we shall inevitably begin to retrace our steps, and we must ultimately swell the ranks of decadent nations.

Happily, though, there is no imminent danger; private citizens and states alike are constantly lending greater aid to young men and women who have the ability and courage to push on and reach the summit of racial achievement, and it is in this great movement that we must place our faith and hope for the future. And we ought to do all in our power to encourage this tendency; we ought to exalt this and not the other thing. Nothing could be more gratifying to a well-wisher of our nation than to see how our great state universities are meeting their responsibilities in this respect. They not only furnish free tuition for all the gifted youths within their respective domains who have an inclination to engage in mental pursuits; but they are, in addition, gradually establishing fellowships whereby "lads o' pairts" are relieved for several years from the neces

sity of earning their daily bread by practical labor, so that they
may keep on pushing upward in the attempt to reach the pin-
nacle of human achievement. We ought not in this day and
age
of the world to be complaining about the expense of giving
a few choice men a little food and clothing while they are try-
ing to master for their own generation what the generations
before have accomplished. Woe be to our civilization the
moment it concludes, and acts upon its conclusion, that men are
now studying too long, and that they ought to begin earning
their living earlier! Our universities get a chance at but an
infinitesimal part of humanity anyway—just a handful of per-
sons who, speaking generally, have the power to deal with
complex things of an intellectual character. These need to be
encouraged to keep on in their course; the natural tendency is
to stop, for the road is steep and rocky. We need not fear
that too many people will follow the difficult path; the chief
source of danger is in the likelihood that too few of them will
have strength and courage enough to scale the heights.

Of course, if they should all give their whole time to Hebrew, or Greek, or metaphysics, or philology, they would soon be a drug in the market; and this may account for the situation in Germany. But we need have no fear of such a catastrophe here. Science in all its ramifications, and history in its relation to present problems of government, and medicine and law and commerce and engineering-in brief, everything that concerns the progress of mankind—is too much in fashion in the universities of our country to admit of the development of a class of learned paupers. It is true, without doubt, that a man may become possessed of vast learning and not employ it for the good of his kind; but, taking the thing as a whole, the educated man in all times and places has served the community that begot him. If his service in the sum has not been as great as it should be, and if in individual cases nothing at all has been given, the defect must be due to the method of the teacher, who has either taught useless stuff, or who, while filling the heads of his students, has forgotten their hearts. He has left the springs of conduct untouched; he has not fired them

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with the thoughts and aspirations of the race which are embodied in its literature and institutions and art. But this defect suggests the need of more, not less, education; it requires for correction a longer, rather than a shorter, period of training; it makes it imperative to add to the college course instead of subtracting from it.

THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN.

M. V. O'SHEA.

MOOT POINTS IN SOCIOLOGY.

I. THE SCOPE AND TASK OF SOCIOLOGY.

SO THE subject-matter of sociology is the social aggregate ! But what is meant by the social aggregate ? Where does it begin, where end? Is it humanity, the race, the nation, the community, the class, or the voluntary association? "Study the social organism," they bid us, but nowhere do we perceive a social body complete in itself, with head and members, periphery and viscera. We see extending everywhere a web of human beings, woven now close, now loose; binding men together sometimes with many threads, sometimes with few; uniting them at times directly, oftener indirectly, through other men, or through centers of attachment such as common interests, ideals, or institutions. Where in this continuous tissue shall we find a social cadaver to dissect?

In another quarter it is held that sociology is concerned only with the action of human groups on one another—social phenomena—and the influence of the group on its individual members-psycho-social phenomena. According to Gumplowicz and Bauer, not social wholes, but the hundred interlacing groups into which men combine, are the proper subject of study. This, no doubt, is an enticing conception, for it excuses us from showing how groups form and how a group-type or a group-will arises out of the play of mind on mind. It is not clear, however, that the sociologist may ignore the genesis of the group any more than the biologist may ignore the genesis of the organism. Then, too, quite aside from the group, there are man-to-man relations, which are well worth studying. How the social mystery begins to clear when we have made out such typical relations as those between model and imitator, apostle and disciple, leader and follower, or between two dissentients, two consentients, two competitors, or two persons with common interests! Yet such a couple is not a group any more than a

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