What does history say? Let us examine the facts of the past. The following table shows at the left the fifteen New England colleges. In the next three parallel columns is printed the percentage of elective studies which existed in these colleges in 1875-76; in the last three, the percentage which exists to-day. To render the comparison more exact, I print the sophomore, junior, and senior years separately, reserving the problem of the freshman year for later discussion. | 1875-76 | 1885-86 +------+-----+-----+------+-----+----- | Soph.| Jun.| Sen.| Soph.| Jun.| Sen. ----------+------+-----+-----+------+-----+----- Amherst | .04 | .20 | .08 | .20 | .75 | .75 Bates | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 Boston | 0 | 0 | 0 | .35 | .66 | .82 Bowdoin | 0 | 0 | 0 | .15 | .25 | .25 Brown | 0 | .04 | .04 | .14 | .37 | .55 Colby | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .08 | .16 Dartmouth | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .41 | .36 Harvard | .50 | .78 |1.00 | 1.00 |1.00 |1.00 Middlebury| 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 Trinity | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .25 | .25 Tufts | 0 | .17 | .17 | 0 | .28 | .43 Vermont | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 Wesleyan | 0 | .47 | .47 | .16 | .47 | .64 Williams | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .37 Yale | 0 | 0 | 0 | .13 | .53 | .80 This table yields four conclusions: (1) A rapid and fateful revolution is going on in the higher education of New England. We do not exaggerate the change when we speak of an old education and a new. (2) The spread of it is in tolerable proportion to the wealth of the college concerned. The new modes are expensive. It is not disapproval which is holding the colleges back; it is inability to meet the cost. I am sorry to point out this fact. To my mind one of the gravest perplexities of the new education is the query, What are the small colleges to do? They have a usefulness altogether peculiar; yet from the life-giving modern methods of training they are of necessity largely cut off. (3) The colleges which long ago foresaw their coming necessities have been able to proceed more cautiously than those which acknowledged them late. (4) The movement is one of steady advance. There is no going back. It must be remembered, too, that the stablest colleges have been proceeding with these changes many more years than the period shown in the table. Are we, then, prepared to dismiss prejudice from our minds and to recognize what steadiness of advance means? In other matters when a general tendency in a given direction is discovered, extending over a long series of years, visible in individuals widely unlike, and presenting no solitary case of backward turning, we are apt to conclude that there is a force in the movement which will carry it still further onward. We are not disposed to seize on some point in its path and to count that an