In a Harvard address a few years ago, it was remarked by Mr. Owen Wister that America possessed only three men of unquestioned preëminence to whom students could turn for academic tuition in their respective lines. I believe it was Edmund Gosse who said that America had not produced a single poet deserving to rank with the unquestioned masters of English poetry. While these statements may be questioned, one realizes the general truth behind them when we contrast the marvelous and expensive architectural equipment of American universities with the paucity of great men and teachers. The trend of the times, however, is slowly but certainly toward a new individualism. Attention is being focused more and more upon the values of life rather than upon the volume of life. The college graduate may not be able to deliver an oration in Hebrew in the morning and in Latin in the afternoon, but he is able to think through and around his problem, and this is mental resourcefulness, truly a chief aim of collegiate education and one of the first necessities for success. Emerson’s prophecy may be realized in our day: Perhaps the time has already come, when the sluggard intellect of this continent will look from under its iron lids and fill the postponed expectation of the world with something better than the exertion of mechanical skill. Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close. The millions that around us are rushing into life cannot always be fed on the sere remains of frozen harvests. Who can doubt that poetry will revive and lead in a new age, as the star in the constellation Harp, which now flames in our zenith, astronomers announce shall one day be the pole star for a thousand years. The challenge is to our undergraduates. And it will be accepted. The colleges will teach men to think, to be mentally alert and resourceful, and then the man will count in the leadership of modern life, in the sense intended by Dr. Simeon who, upon seeing a trained graduate approach, exclaimed, “There comes three hundred men.” In order to accomplish this, however, the college must make it a point to teach principles rather than dogmatic methods. Too often our systems of learning are too bookish. The boy is inclined to get the impression that there is only one way to do a thing, and that is the way he has learned from his professor or his text-book. A business man told me that he was recently obliged to dismiss one of his college graduates because the young man could not see or think of but one way to work out a mechanical proposition. His training had circumscribed him, cramped, limited, and enslaved him instead of freeing him. He was unable to move about easily in his sphere of chosen activity. He had gained a prejudice rather than a principle. He still lived in a classroom, though out in the world. His progress was water-logged in academic conservatism.