re
specifically an expression of that heritage of clannishness which is
so large a feature in the temperament of the predatory barbarian. It is
also noticeable that a close relation subsists between the fraternities
and the sporting activity of the schools. After what has already been
said in an earlier chapter on the sporting and gambling habit, it
is scarcely necessary further to discuss the economic value of this
training in sports and in factional organization and activity.

But all these features of the scheme of life of the learned class,
and of the establishments dedicated to the conservation of the higher
learning, are in a great measure incidental only. They are scarcely
to be accounted organic elements of the professed work of research and
instruction for the ostensible pursuit of which the schools exists. But
these symptomatic indications go to establish a presumption as to the
character of the work performed--as seen from the economic point of
view--and as to the bent which the serious work carried on under their
auspices gives to the youth who resort to the schools. The presumption
raised by the considerations already offered is that in their work also,
as well as in their ceremonial, the higher schools may be expected to
take a conservative position; but this presumption must be checked by a
comparison of the economic character of the work actually performed, and
by something of a survey of the learning whose conservation is
intrusted to the higher schools. On this head, it is well known that
the accredited seminaries of learning have, until a recent date, held
a conservative position. They have taken an attitude of depreciation
towards all innovations. As a general rule a new point of view or a new
formulation of knowledge have been countenanced and taken up within the
schools only after these new things have made their way outside of
the schools. As exceptions from this rule are chiefly to be mentioned
innovations of an inconspicuous kind and departures which do not bear
in any tangible way upon the conventional point of view or upon the
conventional scheme of life; as, for instance, details of fact in the
mathematico-physical sciences, and new readings and interpretations of
the classics, especially such as have a philological or literary bearing
only. Except within the domain of the "humanities", in the narrow sense,
and except so far as the traditional point of view of the humanities has
been left int