I. The first suggestion is that the elective principle should be limited from beneath. Universities and schools are to advance their grade, so that finally the universities will secure three or four years of purely elective study, while the schools, in addition to their present labors, will take charge of the studies formerly prescribed by the college. The schools, in short, are to become German gymnasia, and the colleges to delay becoming universities until this regeneration of the schools is accomplished.[7] A certain "sum of topics" is said to be essential to the culture of the man and the citizen. In the interest of church and state, young minds must be provided with certain "fact forms," with a "common consciousness," a "common basis of humanism." Important as personal election is, to allow it to take place before this common basis is laid is "to strike a blow at the historic substance of civilization." How extensive this common consciousness is to be may be learned from Professor Howison's remark that "languages, classical and modern; mathematics, in all its general conceptions, thoroughly apprehended; physics, acquired in a similar manner, and the other natural sciences, though with much less of detail; history and politics; literature, especially of the mother tongue, but, indispensably, the masterpieces in other languages, particularly the classic; philosophy, in the thorough elements of psychology, logic, metaphysics, and ethics, each historically treated, and economics, in the history of elementary principles, must all enter into any education that can claim to be liberal." The practical objections to this monarchical scheme are many. I call attention to three only. In the first place, the argument on which it is based proves too much. If we suppose a common consciousness to be a matter of such importance, and that it cannot be secured except by sameness of studies, then that state is criminally careless which allows ninety-nine hundredths of its members to get an individual consciousness by the simple expedient of never entering college. The theory seems to demand that every male--and why not female?--between sixteen and twenty be indoctrinated in "the essential subject-matters," without regard to what he or she may personally need to know or do. This is the plan of religious teaching adopted by the Roman Church, which enforces its "fact forms" of doctrine on all alike; without securing, however, by this means, according to the judgment of the outside world, any special freshness of religious life. I do not believe the results would be better in the higher secular culture, and I should be sorry to see Roman methods applied there; but if they are to be applied, let them fall impartially on all members of the community. To put into swaddling clothes the man who is wise enough to seek an education, and to leave his duller brother to kick about as he pleases, seems a little arbitrary.