irection, possessed of the same viewpoints, the same hopes and
aspirations. The professor of English literature does not see that in
teaching _Hamlet_ he forsook his specialty, literature, for philology
and mythology; that he turned his back on art and took up language
structure. Thoroughness is not completeness, because the possession of
the details of a subject does not necessarily bring with it a true
comprehension of it. Add all the details, and the sum total is nothing
more than the group of details. Thoroughness is a degree of
comprehension resulting from the acquisition of new points of view.
The teacher of history who sees underlying forces in the facts of the
past, who understands that true inwardness of any movement which shows
him its relation to all phases of life, but who nevertheless may not
have ready command of all the specific details, is more thorough in
his scholarship. He has the things that count; the facts that are
forgotten can easily be found. The class that studies the dramatic
structure of _Hamlet_, that sees Shakespeare's power of character
portrayal, that takes up only such grammatical and language points as
give clearer comprehension or lead to greater appreciation of diction,
is thorough although it does not possess all the facts. It is thorough
because what is significant and dynamic in _Hamlet_ is made focal. The
postgraduate student assiduously searching for data for his doctorate
thesis is often guided by the erroneous conception of thoroughness; he
wants facts that have never seen the light. The more he gets of these,
the nearer he approaches his goal. He avoids conclusions; he is
counseled by his professors against giving too much of his book to the
expression of his views. Analyze the chapters of a doctorate thesis
and note the number of pages given to facts and those to conclusions
and interpretations. The proportion is astonishing. The student's
power to find facts is clearly shown; his power to use facts is not
revealed by his thesis. The richer the thesis is in detail, in
references, in allusions to dusty tomes and original sources, the more
thorough is it frequently considered by the faculty. We have failed to
realize that this excessive zeal in gathering and collating a large
number of not commonly known facts may make the thesis more
cumbersome, more complete, but not necessarily more thorough. However,
the plea for a new standard in judging doctorate theses is meeting
with gra