ey are studying literature, but it is
contended--college students and college electives being what they
are--that there is nothing else to do. The situation sums itself up in
the attitude of self-defence. "It may be (as no one needs to point out),
that the teaching of literature, as at present conducted in college, is
a somewhat faithful and dogged farce, but whatever may be the faults of
modern college-teaching in literature, it is as good as our pupils
deserve." In other words, the teachers are not respecting their pupils.
It may be said to be the constitution and by-laws of the literature
class (as generally conducted) that the teachers cannot and must not
respect their pupils. They cannot afford to. It costs more than most
pupils are mentally worth, it is plausibly contended, to furnish
students in college with the conditions of life and the conditions in
their own minds that will give masterpieces a fair chance at them.
_Ergo_, inasmuch as the average pupil cannot be taught a classic he must
be choked with it.

The fact that the typical teacher of literature is more or less
grudgingly engaged in doing his work and conducting his classes under
the practical working theory that his pupils are not good enough for
him, suggests two important principles.

First. If his pupils are good enough for him, they are good enough to be
taught the best there is in him, and they must be taught this best there
is in him, as far as it goes, whether all of them are good enough for it
or not. There is as much learning in watching others being educated as
there is in appearing to be educated one's self.

Second. If his pupils are not good enough for him, the most literary
thing he can do with them is to make them good enough. If he is not a
sufficiently literary teacher to divine the central ganglion of interest
in a pupil, and play upon it and gather delight about it and make it
gather delight itself, the next most literary thing he can do is protect
both the books and the pupil by keeping them faithfully apart until they
are ready for one another.

If the teacher cannot recognise, arouse, and exercise such organs as his
pupil has, and carry them out into themselves, and free them in
self-activity, the pupil may be unfortunate in not having a better
teacher, but he is fortunate in having no better organs to be blundered
on.

The drawing out of a pupil's first faint but honest and lasting power of
really reading a book, of knowin