d especially of books and study, ambitious of reward
and recognition, poor often, and needing a degree to get a teaching
position, weak in the eyes of their examiners,--among these we find the
veritable _chair a canon_ of the wars of learning, the unfit in the
academic struggle for existence. There are individuals of this sort
for whom to pass one degree after another seems the limit of earthly
aspiration. Your private advice does not discourage them. They will
fail, and go away to recuperate, and then present themselves for
another ordeal, and sometimes prolong the process into middle life. Or
else, if they are less heroic morally they will accept the failure as a
sentence of doom that they are not fit, and are broken-spirited men
thereafter.

We of the university faculties are responsible for deliberately
creating this new class of American social failures, and heavy is the
responsibility. We advertise our "schools" and send out our
degree-requirements, knowing well that aspirants of all sorts will be
attracted, and at the same time we set a standard which intends to pass
no man who has not native intellectual distinction. We know that there
is no test, however absurd, by which, if a title or decoration, a
public badge or mark, were to be won by it, some weakly suggestible or
hauntable persons would not feel challenged, and remain unhappy if they
went without it. We dangle our three magic letters before the eyes of
these predestined victims, and they swarm to us like moths to an
electric light. They come at a time when failure can no longer be
repaired easily and when the wounds it leaves are permanent; and we say
deliberately that mere work faithfully performed, as they perform it,
will not by itself save them, they must in addition put in evidence the
one thing they have not got, namely this quality of intellectual
distinction. Occasionally, out of sheer human pity, we ignore our high
and mighty standard and pass them. Usually, however, the standard, and
not the candidate, commands our fidelity. The result is caprice,
majorities of one on the jury, and on the whole a confession that our
pretensions about the degree cannot be lived up to consistently. Thus,
partiality in the favored cases; in the unfavored, blood on our hands;
and in both a bad conscience,--are the results of our administration.

The more widespread becomes the popular belief that our diplomas are
indispensable hall-marks to show the ste