Proceedings of the Board of Regents (1864-1870)

109

Our students are the sons of men engaged in all varieties of
industry, and are preparing for as great a variety of employments as those pursued by their fathers, and are all on terms of
equality in the University.
The Department of Science, Literature and the Arts has not
increased in numbers in proportion to the other two Departments. Indeed for several years previous to 1864 it had been
gradually diminishing, and though it has considerably increased for the past two years, it is not now much larger than
it was in 1859, and for several years preceding. Several reasons can be given for this fact. The standard of scholarship
in this Department is high,-none being admitted who are
not prepared. There are many other colleges in this part of
the country the most of which require much less of candidates
for admission, while the professional schools are few. But
perhaps the greatest difficulty that this Department has to contend with, is the extravagant zeal of our young men to study
a profession without an adequate preliminary education. It is
painful to think of the superficiality and feebleness in scholarship which threaten our Western society, from the hot haste of
our young men to assume the most difficult tasks of manhood,
without a proper training. The few instances of highly successful men who have not been educated largely in schools, mislead this class of minds, who are not sufficiently well informed
to see that on such subjects every rule has its apparent exceptions. The great want of the day is a thorough, accurate
scholarship. There is a plenty of general information, of flippant familiarity with many subjects-but there is not enough
of broad and thorough culture.
We would draw no unfavorable comparison in this respect
between our own and other lands-many of which are often
overestimated on the principle that distance lends enchantment
to the view-least of all do we lend our influence to the silly
sentiment that it has lately become fashionable to retail, that
America has no universities-but still we cannot deny that in
such a gloriously free land as ours, where without restrictions
genius or talent, educated or uneducated, has opportunity to
exert itself, it is not'wonderful that the temptations should be
great to avoid hard labor, and to substitute the showy for the
weighty, the striking for the profound.
It is therefore becoming that all who have influence over the
young, and especially that teachers should sustain and promote
a healthy public opinion on this subject. It is a wrong done
to a young man to hurry him into a profession without adequate scholarship-a wrong which we have heard many persons bitterly deplore-while we have never met an instance of
a person who regretted having spent a long time in previous
study.