studious purpose. The modern teacher stimulates private reading, exacts theses, directs work in libraries. Pupils engaged in these things are not dependent on recitations as text-book schoolboys are. The grade of higher education cannot rise much so long as the present extreme stress is laid on appearance in the class-room. In saying this I would not be understood to defend the method of dealing with absences which has for some years been practised at Harvard. I think the method bad. I have always thought it so, and have steadily favored a different system. The behavior of our students under a regulation so loose seems to me a striking testimony to the scholarly spirit prevalent here. As such I mentioned it in my first paper, and as such I would again call attention to it. But I am not satisfied with the present good results. I want to impress on every student that absence from the class-room can be justified by nothing short of illness or a scholarly purpose. For a gainful purpose the merchant is occasionally absent from his office; for a gainful purpose a scholar of mine may omit a recitation. But Smith can be absent profitably when Brown would meet with loss. I accordingly object to methods of limiting absence which exact the same numerical regularity of all. College records may look clean, yet students be learning little about duty. Limitation, in my judgment, should be so adjusted as to strengthen the man's personal adhesion to plans of daily study. Such limitations cannot be fixed by statute and worked by a single clerk. Moral discipline is not a thing to be supplied by wholesale. Professors must be individually charged with the oversight of their men. I would have excuses for occasional absence made to the instructor, and I should expect him to count it a part of his work to see that the better purposes of his scholars did not grow feeble. A professor who exercised such supervisory power slackly would make his course the resort of the indolent; one who was over-stringent would see himself deserted by indolent and earnest alike. My rule would be that no student be allowed to present himself at an examination who could not show his teacher's certificate that his attendance on daily work was satisfactory. Traditions in this country and in Germany are so different that I should have confidence in a method working well here though it worked ill there. At any rate, whenever it fell into decay, it could--a proviso necessary in all moral matters--be readjusted. A rule something like this the Harvard Faculty has recently adopted by voting that "any instructor, with the approval of the Dean, may at any time exclude from his course any student who in his judgment has neglected the work of the course." Probably the amount of absence which has hitherto occurred at Harvard will under this vote diminish.